Matt D

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.

We have a lot of data points on Cody.

Nope, this isn't 78. Can't find the result anywhere, so I'm not sure (but it makes for a mystery card, which could be fun, right?) The match itself wasn't so great for the first ten minutes. Nerve holds. Even Lothario can't do do a lot with nerve holds. Boesch is great at filling the time in these situations. There are two sorts of announcers, the ones who make the match more emotional resonant and the ones who make the matches more entertaining. Boesch is in the latter camp but I've come to really like him. Everything from the ten minute mark was pretty good though. Some dueling claws, some armwork to counter the claw, Krupp looking pretty effective as a heel, a nice comeback. The Supersock as a counter to a top rope move is a weird parallel to Sweet Chin Music in that same scenario.

There's a bunch of Krupp up and down the Houston cards, so it'll be good to see how he worked in that gimmick against someone as good as Lothario. I will say that if that's the March 24, 1978 card, and you have that one, well, that's an interesting card.

I thought this was the second strongest Lewin singles match we've seen so far. He does well as a babyface against a stooging heel. Gino bumping around and eating his mysterious strikes from the orient and clubbering blows kept things moving. The blood took care of a lot of the heavy lifting when it came to Lewin selling. Some of his actual bumping was pretty rough (especially that one into the corner shoulder first) but they kept it sufficiently violent with the chairs. There are things I really like about Gino. He's more than willing to just cut someone off with a knee or strike when he's brawling but then he'll make sure to rake his opponent's eye not once before taking over. This was probably the best use of Hart we've seen up until now on Classics. I liked the mixed tag quite a bit too, for what it was. Sherri was very sympathetic. I wish we had seen Martin in control a bit more since she has great offense but she played her role well for what she was supposed to be doing. Entertaining stuff and Boesch is really fun on commentary in any sort of out of the norm situation like this.

The issue is with Edge's center of gravity. He literally can't get the opponent to land like that.

This thing is pretty damn stupid:

Panther/Puma could be the rivalry of the next decade.

The STF doesn't bother me because it's been built and has symbolic meaning. If the company treats it as a big deal and it's sold as a big deal, it's a big deal. I wonder if that means I'd be okay with the Rainmaker? I have no idea.

This might be easier for you: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLChv0pBLKwSz8ySu_UdvxPb6syzLG44_J

I can't listen to Exile, BtS, AND 6:05. I don't have the time for all of them. so I don't listen to 6:05. That said, I'm glad it exists so that others who can find the time to listen to it do listen (and if i do someday have the time to go back). That's like getting mad that there's too much wrestling on TV and not enough time to watch it all. I'd rather have too much to consume than too little.

I'm keeping up with this feud and little else on Raw right now. I liked the first few bits of move stealing, but thought it got to be a bit much by the end. It went from being clever and novel and trollish to being too cutesy.

Matt, I'm kind of surprised you liked this match considering you are not a Volador fan. I give Volador fair shakes. I think he's very good at certain things (hitting spots, complex sequences, being a dick to mascots). He's a very useful role player in tags and trios. Where he's most problematic is when he's in a singles match because he has a tendency to bring the worst out of his opponents, will be prone to hit spots for the sake of spots, make things overly complex, contrived, and obviously collaborative, and have far too drawn out finishing sequences where something less bloated would be more appropriate and make for a better, tighter, more impactful match. He does cool stuff but way too much of it to the point where none of it matters in the least. That's less of an issue in a tag because cut offs and trading of partners can dilute that in the very best way (though it's still a danger). Here, the pacing works very well, the escalation is meaningful and pays off, and as a whole, the thing doesn't overstay its welcome. I'm as hard as I am on him because he does a lot of things well and because I generally want to like his stuff, and often do for the first two to three fifths of his matches and then get increasingly frustrated after that. If I thought he was Thunder-quality or something, I wouldn't care nearly as much. A match that could and should be great getting ruined is far more heretical and offensive than a match that never had a shot at being good.