Matt D

I think the idea is that TNA offered to pay Storm a lot of money and then did not have said money to pay him with.

Yeah, Dick Kroll being there definitely made it feel more special too. I thought that Boesch (who I love on commentary) was a little more subdued given the situation as well. Glad you guys enjoyed it.

Quick thoughts: Every time they hit each other in any way, shape, or form. it was awesome. The repeated targeting of the stomach by Race to shape transitions and key moments in the match was awesome. Wahoo's selling was awesome. Wahoo's butterfly suplexes were awesome. The valuation of Race's vertical suplex was awesome. The fight that almost broke out in the front row towards the end was awesome. The holds, while well worked, were headlocks, and while they moved in and out of them sort of interestingly, it wasn't quite enough. Race, especially, really dropped a ball in the second fall by not using some sort of stomach hold. This was very much a NWA title match. It was very much a Race defense, though the two out of three structure meant that he took a little more than he might otherwise. It had all the pros and cons of that. Race stooged well and bled well. I just wish the holds were a little more interesting though they were absolutely well worked. There's a moment on a rope break where you can clearly see Wahoo call for a headbutt in the break. And you don't care. At all. Because the headbutt was that amazing. Just like every other headbutt Race threw in the match. I'm so glad we got to see this. I wish, even more, that we could have seen them in a non-title strap match, though.

Someone on DVDVR posted this as coming up this week: 05/30/1951 – Texas Rasslin’: Thesz vs Gunkel Journey back in time to see Lou Thesz defend the NWA World Heavyweight Championship against Ray Gunkel in a 2-Out-of-3 Falls Match. 09/23/1964 – Gagne-Metrics Learn a different way to get in shape and feel great with Gagne-Metrics, courtesy of the Verne Gagne Foundation for Physical Fitness. 03/16/1961 – Gino ‘Gorilla Monsoon’ Marella The dominance of the late Gorilla Monsoon is on display in this hidden gem, as Dave Ruhl tries to defeat Gino Marella for a monetary prize. 02/11/1969 – NWA Title: Funk, Jr. vs Kiniski Witness Dory Funk Jr. establish his legacy when he battles the legendary Gene Kiniski for the NWA World Heavyweight Championship. 01/12/1976 – Andre The Giant Feat Of Strength Discover why Andre The Giant earned the moniker of The Eighth Wonder of The World through these impressive Feats of Strength. 06/12/1976 – McMahon Interviews Muhammad Ali Muhammad Ali uses his extraordinary charisma to show his determination to dominate the wrestling world in an interview with Vince McMahon. 07/07/1982 – Roddy Piper vs Jack Brisco Will the dirty and underhanded tactics of Roddy Piper cost him when he challenges Jack Brisco for the Mid-Atlantic Heavyweight Championship? 09/22/1980 – Champs Collide: Race vs Backlund Styles clash when NWA World Heavyweight Champion Harley Race collides with WWE Champion Bob Backlund to see who is the Undisputed Champion. 10/23/1983 – The Last Battle Of Atlanta In this historic confrontation, Buzz Sawyer and Tommy Rich battle inside a Steel Cage while Paul Ellering is confined to a cell of his own. 01/20/1987 – Ric Flair vs Barry Windham The allure of championship gold leads Barry Windham to push Ric Flair to the limit in this classic bout for the NWA World Heavyweight Title. 08/19/1995 – Brothers Of Destruction Before waging war with Kane in WWE, The Undertaker traveled to Smoky Mountain Wrestling to go one-on-one with Unabomb. 09/14/1996 – South Africa: Austin vs Bret Far from their battle at Survivor Series ’96, Stone Cold Steve Austin and Bret Hart lock up in this rarely seen encounter from South Africa. 09/11/1997 – ECW: Bret Hart vs Terry Funk Go beyond the mat to relive the first of many ‘Retirement Matches’ for Terry Funk when he faces off against WWE Champion Bret Hart. 10/11/2000 – Samoa Joe vs William Regal In a sign of things to come, Triple H travels to Ultimate Pro Wrestling to witness William Regal face future NXT Champion, Samoa Joe. 04/29/2012 – FCW Champion: Seth Rollins Seth Rollins proves he has the heart of a champion early in his career by defending the Florida Heavyweight Title against Kassius Ohno. --- So uh.. Last Battle of Atlanta?

I'm looking forward to seeing 74 Lothario. That match sounds great. He was only 40. Any idea how long the Wahoo vs Harley match is, Bruce?

Join the Dave Musgrave-Steven Graham PWO Party Just add in Ivan Koloff and that's basically the Canadian Communist Party.

Fuji vs Morales was a hugely fun 7 minute sprint.

Fuji had pretty good timing when it came to interference, and his act was simple but effective when it came to mid-late 80s promos. It was nuts he won so many WON worst manager awards in a world with Frenchy Martin, Coach, and Big Daddy Dink. I think he was portrayed as more of a physical threat than most other managers and they got a lot of mileage out of that.

I hadn't seen that list before, actually. What it says is that it's very likely the two Slater vs Bock and the Rich vs Bock matches are there somewhere, which to me is great news.

That list is already incomplete, though, right? It doesn't have some of the other Thornton matches or Harley vs Andre, just to name a couple. It only has one Bock vs Brody too, and none of the Bock vs Dusty (can't remember if the one we had was a title match or not).

Hell of a trick. Can only do it once:

Also, I'm wondering when that Mephisto match is from. I don't see anything from 77 on. Most likely feels like 74 as he feuded with Lothario for the Texas title that year. Results are more scattered in the middle of the 70s though. Could be very cool.

It made me want to see the cage match, so we have to give it that. It's always really uncomfortable to see Gary Hart in physical peril post-accident. Lewin is the Randy Orton of 1979. He bores the crap out of me as a heel but I kind of love him as a cartwheeling babyface.

Someone somewhere (maybe here) said that Kendrick was wrestling exactly like they wanted Ambrose to wrestle, and I'm completely on board with that. It was pure up desperate hobo wrestling and it was awesome. Boxcar Kendrick.

While a match can stand on its own, so much of how this should be looked back upon hinges on the follow-up. As much as I think there's benefit to running with Ambrose as a strong babyface/tweener champion who wins for a long time (even if he's not exactly producing in the ring), there's much more upside to pushing Styles as a long-term champion stemming from this. We've seen the card for Backlash. Smackdown needs consistently high-quality main events to carry cards and to take up large chunks of the temporal real estate. They just don't have the roster size and depth to fill out cards. Styles, built up in this specific, definitive way, is a very workable solution to that problem.

I hadn't really watched this back at Summerslam and people's comments led me not to watch it after that. I was perfectly okay with this. I loved the teases for the top rope AA. I thought the submissions sequence was good though I wish there was more leg selling from Cena after the fact. They were even talking about how it hurts his strength and he wasn't selling it. Mauro may be my least favorite play-by-play announcer ever. He hurt the match at a number of points. I was, frankly, expecting a lot more in the way of finisher spam. It's pretty broken up. We've seen matches a lot worse in the last few years. It's certainly far better than most of the BS Brock does (and that his very presence creates). The ending felt appropriate. You can even say it was Styles constant struggling (and he made Cena earn almost everything) that let him kick out of the top rope AA. He was elbowing him in the skull the entire time. Things like that matter, if they make them matter. I think they did in this match. All that said, and this is going to sound absolutely crazy coming from me, but... All that said, I think the most important part of the match was the execution. I'm not sure I've ever seen a Cena match where all of his stuff looked so good. The Code Red was absolutely crisp. I loved his goofy dropkick early on. The top rope leg drop thing was picture perfect. He didn't bother with the stupid stunner, but his body cutter thing looked exactly like it should. He had that one clothesline which took off Styles' head. And Styles was just as good if not better. The forearms both hit dead on. I don't even understand how he managed some of the submissions reversals. Part of the calf crusher's visual effectiveness is that it comes at a weird and unsettling angle in the set up and that played into those submission reversals so well. There was a snap and a zing to everything. I'm not sure if without that, the match would have held up in that sort of dream match, top of the top, two men at the very best of their game, way that they were presenting it, and you need it to hold up to justify what they were doing. And while I didn't love all of the specifics of the selling, they sold the overarching story of the match and that was struggle, oneupsmanship, and perseverance. I thought the end worked as well as any match in the modern era that was so heavily carried by self-conscious WWE acting (and a lot of that was JBL hitting his mark and it actually representing what Cena was expressing in the ring as opposed to earlier points in the match where they'd bring something up that wasn't representative of what was happening).

Do we even have a singles Wahoo vs Race match on tape up until now? There's some garbage footage of tags, I know.

I do find it interesting that there is very little discussion of the individual aspects Roman brings to these matches to help make them great, especially when it comes to looking for patterns from match to match.

Lucha Underground and The Ultimate Fighter both count, and TUF has won. Would Breaking Ground count?

Does Lucha Underground count?

Made it up to this one. In the Hayes interview he outright said he was going to MSG. Not sure if that's referenced later by it plays into the questions about David Wolff. Also, the Hayes vs Williams NWAOnDemand cage match is that great match/performance that was missing from the talk/reevaluation of him. I feel like that this is a skeleton key to his heat seeking ability in ring. Curious if that moved the needle.

I hit the five minute mark on this and was a little worried. Yes, they were chopping the hell out of each other. Yes, they were headbutting one another like billygoats without any abandon. Yes, there was just the tiniest sign of working that made this art and not idiocy of two people hitting each other as hard as they could, like Terry getting rammed into the corner, but I was worried this was going to be one of those matches where two guys kill each other and there's simply nothing to latch on to, a gritty realism and violence, but no narrative, no story, no heart. There's a place for senseless violence, but I so much prefer sensible violence. Then they got in the ring and I had nothing to worry about, because Black Terry, just by the nature of who and what he really is, due to the nature of the limitations of his age and the endless skill that he's garnered over the years, grounded all of this perfectly for me. This is an old warrior, one that doesn't get those plush Friday night bookings, who's been in Arena Mexico wrestling twice in the last five years, who has nothing left but the fight and the adrenaline. That's the only thing that lets him push past the pain of a career of blood and bumps. All he has is the thrill of battle, bouncing from one struggle to the next, one arena to the next. So he goes and challenges the best and the worst, all in their own styles, because he is the old master of a thousand wars, has seen it all, and it only matters if he meets them half way. He has all all of the old tricks (be it pulling an opponent off the apron or what), a gruff seriousness that prevents distraction (and Wotan suffered so much for celebrating in the ring when there was a chair in Terry's hand) and the ability to go over any line, because he'd been over all of them before (just like with that bottle). Wotan is at least twenty years younger, though the mask makes him somewhat unknowable. He's more agile, more physically resilient, more able to snap back from what Terry gives him. He's been the holder of multiple "extreme" titles, and may well represent, in this match, that more hardcore style that permeated into Mexican indies over the last two decades, that are wholly represented in Pagano and all of his localized, and increasingly mainstream star power. And Terry, as only he can, sinks down to that level to meet Wotan down in the gutter but never forgets who he is and all that he's learned, using every bit of it to fight for his life, once again against the odds. I can only think of one other wrestler so versatile, one other who can do so much, so well, and with such visceral meaning, all without foolish human constraints like "age" holding him back, and that's the person we voted as #2 ever in the GWE poll. Amazing spectacle, yes. But heart-pounding and emotionally gripping too. And that is the magic of Black Terry.

During the countout spot, I did a quick check on twitter because I was expecting everyone to cry foul about the edit. I think out of the hundreds of mention of Kendrick or Ibushi there were less than five about the countout edit. Very surprising to me and it says something about people's willingness to avoid spoilers or the way that they engage with this that I wasn't expecting at all. Either they weren't spoiled to the match or they just didn't care because they were enjoying it.

Like The Rock?