Matt D

Which is still probably more important than any of the belts they have now.

The Roku news is great. I won't be using it but know a few people who haven't jumped in yet because of it. As for the broader site, so long as you keep the old Houston footage coming at least 4 or 5 matches a week, you've got me on board for the long haul. I'm as happy with the service now as I was when I first signed up, maybe even more so now that I'm more acclimated with the territory.

Some writers are way better with a strong editor.

We've been around this circle for years. We've spent years writing thousands of words about it. This is just another drop in the bucket of the conversation. It's just a little more mainstream today, that's all. Tomorrow it won't be and we'll talk about it more in two months and in six months and in three years, especially as new kids find the board and it takes awhile for them to wrap their heads around the opposing point of view, which is, for perfectly understandable reasons, counter-intuitive to everything else they experience from almost everywhere else. And now I feel like John Williams. Great. Thanks. We need a FAQ or something.

Oz as WCW's attempt at the Undertaker is kind of brilliant.

this channel was mentioned I bet, but he just posted a 73 AWA show which isn't new or anything but it was new to me. It has midgets at the end and A 2/3 falls Robinson/Muraco vs heel Dusty/Murdoch match in the middle

Did you bring up that Mascaras match?

Slightly related, one very cool thing about the footage now, as opposed to a year ago, is that we're starting to see gaps filled and whole swaths of matches, to the point where Houston is coming into focus as a territory instead of just a series of matches. We're starting to see more narratives over weeks and months and years and the fans' evolving relationship with certain wrestlers or the wrestlers' relationship with one another, or specific stylistic things that you can only spot when you have context. That's one of the things I'm most excited about moving forward. I don't think we can easily talk about Houston like we do Memphis or Portland currently, but I think we're getting there and it really was a hell of a territory.

Hopefully Smackdown is ignored and unimportant within six months.

So what? That definition of important is the least important definition of important.

We should look forward to the stereotypical banding of Nakamura, Itami and Okada once they realize that they have no idea how to book three+ Japanese guys as separate characters.

Yeah, I really don't think there's necessarily a main eventer John Cena without the brand split. They wanted to ride the Batista horse. The brand split meant they didn't have to choose between both of them.

Or, counterpoint, Smackdown was enjoyable because it was a B show and Vince wasn't paying attention to it. I really feel like most people's arguments are of "importance" and "business sense" as opposed to quality or enjoyment or fun watching or good matches.

It's not like they weren't going to just devalue the titles anyway. We would have ended with tedious Triple H runs one way or another, probably with more hotshotting and BS babyface screwjobs. The only difference is that there wouldn't have been anything to counterbalance it.

I'd be ok with a year or two of cool.

Vince did say in the last conference call that they're bringing a ton of new faces to the roster in the next month or so.

It feels really goofy that they did this right after roster cuts too. It's a lot easier to use a guy like Sandow on a split roster, if only for that mid card comedy spot since you only have one Truth.

Bring on the craziness. Hopefully they split the world title.

Twenty minutes of nothing?

Where do people stand on Triple H/Owens vs Zayn/Ambrose?

Babyface Muraco's pretty out there too. Orndorff in his last babyface run against Rude, too.

Patera in 87-88 stands out huge to me.

Place to look is probably his IC title run, August 2011 - May, 2012, including the Show series (he lost it and gained it back), the Christian match at the end, an Orton match, a Morrison match, the Dibiase match. It's still 10-15 minute matches but that, with the Mysterio match, is probably the best you're going to get there. I'm sure someone could dig through the Smackdown matches for that era and find some more. I think there's enough to know. EDIT: Yeah,that there post after mine.

He always did have a soft spot for hillbillies.

AJ "needs" the entry humbling. Especially since he bypassed NXT and Vince never made him. The Jericho loss doesn't count.