Matt D

I know multiple kids who stopped watching out of fear of Papa Shango.

I'd like to hear Bret justify the difference between the ringpost bump and the Flair flop. That's not all that hard. Direct vs Indirect. Whether you buy that justification is another matter, but I think it's pretty easy to differentiate. The issue with signature defensive spots is also a direct vs indirect thing. They often rely on the other wrestler doing something that he wouldn't normally do. It's the difference between doing something to a wrestler and having him do something to you. If it's something he'd do anyway, in that way and at that time in a match, great! If it's not, then it causes dissonance. It raises a flag. If it happens as a signature spot in a "Powerbombing Kidman" sort of way, then it raises a huge red flag. It's one reason why the 619 was so effective relatively. That was almost always Rey actively doing something to his opponent to get him into that spot, even if it was using a reversal to do it. It was rarely him reversing something that was outlandish for his specific opponent to do.

I think Dawson's ring positioning stood out as a major positive to me in that match. Dash was far more lacking in that regard but they made it work with their struggle and reactions. Dawson came off hugely precise and polished to me. That was pretty much my only non-structural comment on the match.

# of overall title reigns?

TA vs Kelly Kiniski is a perfectly fine young lions opening match. It's early into Magnum's career, which is always cool to see. They work a very simple match, shine headlock, heat headscissors, come out and finish. It's a bit clumsy but the effort level is there and the exuberance makes it worth spending ten minutes on. There are moments where an exchange doesn't go quite as smoothly as it should and it works all the more for it because of the realness in them trying to grab to recover. Also fun is Boesch lauding the first female director they ever had on Houston wrestling. The top of this show looks like a blast too, so hopefully we get it.

Balor, Bayley, Cass, Carmella could for NXT in ten years.

To be fair, 1982 Houston technology looks like this:

It's much more of an Indy gimmick but the fact he can work it into the match puts him over a guy like Enzo who is mostly entrance.

Slater vs Tully/Gino is quickly becoming another one of those legendary feuds as we get more and more of the pieces. I think we have most of the big ones now. There are a couple more tags I'd like to see (Especially the Brody cage matches), plus the footage of when they injure Slater that led to this specific set of matches. And I guess there has to be a turn at some point since Slater was teaming with them just a week or two before he started to wrestle Gino. The high moments have been great though and this was no different. I'm with Pete on this. Manny was big in Houston but a lot of that footage (both as a face and a heel) just hasn't turned up yet. It's obvious that he just got it so intrinsically though, knowing exactly when to play to the crowd and how much anticipation to put into things. He was a ham of sorts, but in a way that really connected. Tully was just a total joy in this. He walked the perfect line between total stooging and a sort of stubborn toughness. They managed to cover a lot of ground in relatively little time. The limbwork was a lot of fun. The KO knee in the second fall was awesome. All of the end match stuff was so heated and violent. And even though it was half the time, Slater vs Tully was hugely economical too. Both of them were coming in hurt and that played into the time they had, keeping in mind, of course, Slater's huge advantage. Great, lost feud.

"Sure Canada. We'll give you a PPV again....."

They do the Pink versions for Breast Cancer Awareness month. They could do blue and red of the normal merch and probably make money, yeah.

The only things with any stakes are the title matches. If they were going to go this route, they had to come up with some sort of stake other than "brand pride."

Thus the PPV ban. The only reason why they went back on it is because demographic changes and the rise of social media have made it so all the crowds are now revolting.

Oh yeah, I need to see that too.

I just watched #1. Thoroughly enjoyed it. Dan Kroffat is the best guy in that specific match, right? That's not a crazy notion is it? I'm not going to get Taue-sized crap for that notion, right? I want to watch basically all of the Dan Kroffat matches now.

Thirded

You call Creationists idiots pretty frequently. Just saying.

I'm behind on everything this week but the Duggan stuff was a lot of fun. I would have liked a bit more of a mauling. I wonder if Pete learned a bad word from Duggan. I liked the Brody match. It had issues (some stuff didn't look great, there was annoying lip service to selling the shoulder at the end). It was about as good as you could possibly expect a five minute Smirnoff/Brody match to be though. There are a thousand little and big things I wish Brody would have done differently (in crowd interaction, in energy levels, in selling, in attributing meaning to things) but the fans bought him on this night certainly.

There can be a middle ground. For instance, there can be a middle ground between Styles going against direction being an issue AND what he said specifically being an issue, and the two of them combined being enough to get him canned.

I like how he invalidated the firing by taking credit for it.

That was going great but really came together when Elliott brought in Eddy.

First off, I'm more glad than anyone that this is happening. I like the name, if only because I can picture the two of them portraying the different roles of Bill and Ted and the Grim Reaper in Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey and constantly forcing each other to play different games (or in this case watch different matches). Obviously this was not that format completely yet, but I think it works as a special extended pilot, like you'd get on TV, which is almost a mini movie, if that makes sense. I've laid out my views on the match pretty thoroughly. I do love this level of analysis. Parv gave me a little (friendly) heat the other day for the amount of detail/scrutiny I went into with Akiyama/Kobashi, but that's what I like best in wrestling, both in matches and analysis, the big picture AND the little one, the way a match builds from start to finish and to me, it's the matches that can handle that level of scrutiny that really hold up as the best ever. I don't agree on every point. I think they gave a bit too much credit where we just couldn't be sure, like Sasha's offense being limited due to her injury. I think a lot of what she did is what she would have done anyway, which I don't hold against her, but I'm not sure how much extra I give for it. More importantly, despite Charlotte's focus, I had somewhat lost the back-injury thread by the final spots so the back giving out felt sudden. I appreciate that they didn't though and I'm glad that bit worked for them. To me, the most important thing about the match was the level of character conviction and commitment shown by the two, even through botches. It's so important, especially with these two as the curtain is so thrown back now. We've seen more of Sasha as a human being than almost anyone else in her spot in history, I think. We also know Charlotte pretty well and we see both of them interact with each other out of character. But during the match, they were reacting, completely in character, to things that they couldn't anticipate, whether it was an awkward spot or (maybe) the table not breaking, or even the initial bit with the cage. They could have reset spots or worked around them, but instead they plowed through as the two characters and that gave a meaning and an absolute truth to what would otherwise feel false. There was a rawness to it all that made it feel like there was real danger, and that's not always what I want in wrestling. I'm still not 100% comfortable with it (and I would like to think that's not based on their gender. The last example before this that came to mind was, as I said, a Blade Runners squash), because I like my wrestling more illusionary (less is more, etc), but I appreciate commitment and conviction as much as anyone. In the cell, specifically, that's what a match is supposed to feel like. And this might be the first match that felt like it earned the cell in a decade. Great first show. I can't wait to hear a match that you two disagree on though.

That's fair, and again, I don't heavily hold it against Conrad (especially on a show like this where he admitted he didn't have time to do his research), but I have so little time to listen to things and there are so many things to listen to, that it's a killer for me on a show like this.

The Lawler/Superstar match was good for what it was. I think there were certain demands. Superstar was the one who had to get over more than Lawler to some degree. Mainly, I don't think the fans were super familiar with either guy (despite the magazines or Atlanta TV) and it reminded me a little at Dusty's reactions in Houston that we've seen. I really liked how Lawler used the mask at almost every point. I think he understood (like only he could) that he wasn't super over, that Superstar wasn't super over, but the idea of the mask, in general, was, so he kept going to it in order to get reactions, in order to help create unique hope spots and in order to help explain when Superstar got back over on him. I'm with Pete that it's obvious from this match that these two could have had an amazing one in Memphis. Also, I think, given enough time, Lawler would have had no problem getting over in Houston. If nothing else, it was very cool to hear Boesch announce one of his matches.