Matt D

Boesch @ Houston, TX - Sam Houston Coliseum - May 23, 1980 Tiger Conway Jr. d. Lord Alfred Hayes That's the one I really want to see. Hopefully it turns up.

I think it's possible to control for booking to some degree. Take a look at some of Sami's bigger matches in NXT and on the main roster, breakdown what he does to garner sympathy and get the crowd behind him in both settings. Compare, Contrast, and note the effectiveness of it all. Is he wrestling differently on the main roster than he was in NXT? Should he be? Etc. Breaking down matches is what we do. I think we can get at this better than just shouting "He was never that good in the first place!" and "They're just using him poorly!" at each other.

One of the best things about the site is getting more of a 360 view on certain wrestlers we've only had bits and pieces of before. Conway, Jr. is someone I think we're not quite there on yet. I think so far he's been better in shorter matches and in tag matches as he's charismatic, has a connection with the crowd, and a certain effectively awkward athleticism that I'd almost call Greg Gagne-ish in the best ways, but longer 2/3 falls singles matches don't always hold together.

Look at how over Crush was at the very end of 92 until Doink took him out. That's the real answer of who should have been pushed.

I still think the IC belt should have a ten minute time limit on TV (longer on PPV) and they should have some slightly different rules for cruiserweights. Maybe the Smackdown Title should be 2/3 falls on PPV, to help make up for the smaller roster.

I have to admit that it's all the commentary and between the scenes stuff that's the big draw here. The action and the screencaps are good, don't get me wrong, but it's the meta-narrative that's over the top great. I think that's true of the project as a whole right now. When the 1984 one dropped, a lot of the appeal in reading was how people moved the pieces around. With this 95 one, it's all of the creative presentation styles. You wouldn't think something like this would have a real sense of "mood," but it absolutely does.

Or Rollins during the Authority era. Just without a babyface challenger.

I would have loved to be in the meeting with Owens when they laid that out for him.

Yuck. Well, we know what the opposite of "meaningful thought" is.

Women's match was absurd. Charlotte was the heel in that situation. Moreover, she was going over. And on top of that, she had Dana out there. They had her no sell all sorts of things, like the Bayley to Belly, or recover super quickly from a long Bank Statement with no ill effects. They had her outwrestle Bayley and Sasha in almost every 2 on 1 situation. It wasn't miscommunication from the faces or Dana interfering (She interfered what, twice in the whole match?) It was the heel outwrestling the babyfaces against the odds. It was brutal and blatant. Just totally backwards. Dana should have been evening the odds at every point or Bayley and Sasha should have been tripping over each other as they realized that they wanted to win. Etc. Instead it was Charlotte just being a superior wrestler than the other two, even the two combined. I was gawking every other minute in that match when they had Charlotte look way too strong. What's the opposite of a Political Hit?

Perkins does a lot of really stupid moves.

Amazing how into the Blue Thunder Bomb that crowd was when he's never actually won a match with it. They really built to it.

I think it would have gotten a screenplay award too in that case.

Cross post from SC: I have a bit of a hard time going back to longer Flair matches after watching Bockwinkel. Therefore, I may not be completely fair with this. There are a few things I want to talk about and they don't do the whole of the match justice, so let me try to get to focus on the big picture first. This was incredibly heated. I think Colon looked excellent in it. His early armwork was varied and aggressive. The fans responded perfectly to him pumping the arm in various hammerlocks and holds. Ritualistic, repetitive, crowd interaction is so huge and doing that (or the repeated pumphandle you see more in Portland) is an easy way to engage them. Was some of his spots with Flair as smooth as you'd get from other opponents? No, but they always recovered well. Nothing seemed flubbed. Flair, especially would be quick to throw in an extra punch on something like the late Sleeper attempt when he didn't quite get around him. It made everything seem grittier and better for the setting. You could tell they made multiple audibles on the finish, but that just made everything more chaotic and emotional. As always, it's frustrating to watch 82 Flair and see the things he dropped from his act later on. Here, the two snake eyes style hotshots were just great and helped to cement a long-in-coming transition into heat. It was also a hugely appropriate use of the King of the Mountain to destroy Colon's momentum. Obviously, in this setting, he wasn't going to take very much of the match, so it was important they came up with a way to definitively let him take over, at least for a little while, to build towards a comeback and finish. Unsurprisingly, my biggest issue with the match was the arm work. It wasn't that Flair didn't sell it between holds as well as someone like Bockwinkel would have. It wasn't JUST that, at least. You can't criticize someone for something no one does. People do sell early matwork better, though, especially when going in and out of it. Once or twice Flair would give a little bit of lip service to it, and that was nice, but it wasn't hardly enough. In this match, it was a problem because it took up so much time, sure, but it was a bigger problem because it created a massive inconsistency. Flair spent ten minutes barely selling an arm as Colon went every which way on it. Then, after one elbow drop to the leg, he spent the rest of the match, more or less, selling his leg. Was that a more important part of the match? Sure, but the inconsistency between the two was frustrating. It took me out of the match because the leg selling didn't feel at all earned in comparison to the ten minutes of offense on the arm we'd just seen that Flair didn't really feel like selling. Two working theories: The first is that Flair simply cares more about selling the leg because that builds into his own offense. He has every interest in making even a few seconds of a figure four reversal matter more because that's his move. It also allows him to do things more visually and take bumps, like the top rope one more believably. That'd interest him more as well. The second is simply that Flair cares far more about the back half of a match than the first. His selling (and by selling, I mean the broader sense of reacting to things) was perfect during the comeback, highlighted by the sunset flip attempt by Colon and his massive desperation in trying to reach the ropes to prevent it or even in Colon starting to punch back and Flair pressing his body against him in the corner to try to stop it. Both attempts were futile but they made the moment seem like so much more. That's valid, but it's not necessarily mutually exclusive. It's the difference between a match that has clear, unrelated act breaks, and one that builds from beginning to end. This was far more the former than the latter. This was still a very good match. I just think it could have been better.

Mansfield vs Conway was very solid. Mansfield was that great sort of stooging sleazy heel in the Rip Rogers mold, but I swear his offense came by way of early 80s Randy Savage. He spent much of the first two falls flying off the second rope and even hit a sort of hangman's noose clothesline (slingblade-y) towards the end. Conway was as solid as ever as the sort of athletic local hero with a good punch and who could get a lot of sympathy. They even did a Savage/Steamboat roll up exchange at the end, but it was more novel because it was sloppier, with more of a sense of struggle.

Here's what I posted about that back when it first dropped: Okay, yeah. Conway Jr vs Valentine was some pretty great stuff too. The first fall was back and forth with a lot of Valentine stalling and stooging and a king of the mountain that was full of brutal Valentine shots. There was one slow bit of pedestrian arm control from Conway but in general, it was all enjoyable. It ended with Valentine starting on the leg and the second fall was really good stuff. I wasn't sure what to expect from Conway here but he sold the leg really well, and there was a unique sense of struggle for him to come back that I really haven't seen in too many other matches. It was just paced differently. Instead of hope spots and comebacks, there was this constant flow of him trying to fight back through the pain while Valentine more or less maintained control. Greg was so good here at closing the distance between them and controlling the situation. He also had some really good and varied stuff with the leg. I loved how he just stood on it, for instance. They got pretty heated at times too. I'm curious to see what other people think about it. I liked it a lot. Valentine was made for a 2/3 falls structure and it's a shame we don't have more of those sorts of matches from him. Post match is an interview from the following week setting up DVE vs Valentine for the Texas title. Bruce, please tell me we have that too. --- Bruce said they found one fall, I think, but not the others yet. We've gotten a number of other Conway matches since then, including some very good tags.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRHJt6GAI5M

Have you seen Andre vs Tito from Europe?

Pre-Matador, I meant.

That's Tito's lowest moment.

It's pretty out there.

For what it's worth, there are a few jobber matches in 1992 where Virgil just kills the guy he's in the ring with.

Who had more house show/tv/ppv main events? Just curious.

I need to catch up and hear this to figure that one out. It wasn't one of mine. I remember Tito saving him after Repo Man got involved and then they teamed up at This Tuesday in Texas, but after that Tito moved into the Dibiase feud (including the Manager Cam Sherri match) and I thought that was the end of it.