Matt D

Most of the complaints I hear are at live events. LIke tonight for example. NXT ran two shows, one in the midwest and the other in Orlando. All the big time "tv stars" were in the midwest and the only guys people in Orlando knew were the Revival, The Drifter and Nia Jax. Granted the Vaudevillans made a surprise appearance but the Florida shows aren't drawing like they use to. They need to build more stars on TV to help out with these split shows and not just bring in indie guys that only work the out of state shows. What did they draw at peak and what are they drawing now?

Not a lot to say about Johnson vs Gino. It was a great coming out party for early heel Gino and I bet Boesch was super proud of him. Brody vs Valentine (Buddy Roberts) was extremely interesting. The best way I can explain it would be like a lucha title match Brody (or to a lesser extent a NWA title match), in that he did a lot things on the level and there was more wrestling, even if it was more headlocks than anything else. It's a testament to Roberts how different he is as Dale Valentine but he really is a poor man's Johnny/Greg. Here, though, I think he was in a position to show a little more. This is a Brody I've rarely seen and I think he wrestled the match extremely appropriately, with a lot of the positives without many of the negatives you usually get from him. If we had a whole career of this guy acting this way, I could see him as more people's favorite. Let me put it this way, there's a moment early in the headlock sequence where it's pretty obvious Valentine is calling spots with him. The level of cooperation was there. They still had their limitations, both of them, but it was a lot better than I was expecting coming in and it frankly has me optimistic for other 78 Brody matches we've yet to get but might like the Wahoo, Dusty, and Bockwinkel ones (And even some more of the Rocky Johnson ones).

Sandow was the third most over guy at the Rumble last year, after Brock and Bryan. It wasn't even close.

I can't get enough of the pitch punch finish.

It also got him away from opponents with bad habits and overbooked matches so that he'd wrestle a broad range of opponents in a lot of different places without any sort of house style. That helped, I think. The difference between a lot of great performances and less than great matches and great performances that could lead to great matches?

Does anyone know why Toscano isn't a CMLL lifer? That's something I've always been curious about.

I wanted to learn more about the Mighty Atlas the other day, so I did a search and found this. https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1499&dat=19510914&id=disaAAAAIBAJ&sjid=riMEAAAAIBAJ&pg=4626%2C6118466&hl=en That made me wonder how much wrestling was covered in the Journal and I browsed a bit and found this as well: https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=HulQAAAAIBAJ&sjid=HiQEAAAAIBAJ&pg=6006%2C2080846 I don't have time to dig too much but that one was really timely for me as I'd just read about Verne in Capitol Revolution. I'm not sure how many other newspapers from the territory days are online but there could be a lot of interesting articles out there even just from the Journal over the years.

(Also, the best match on the Summerslam 92 card is definitely Beverly Brothers vs Natural Disasters. Super Underrated match. I haven't said that for a while, so I'm saying it again).

Now that we're past the live streaming for the Friday-Thursday period, let me steal some upcoming lineups from cubsfan: So the Friday Clarosports show is: That's a pretty fun card actually. Panthers vs Fujin/Raijin would be fun, but more fun if Skandalo wasn't there to hit people in the groin a lot (and not in the great Fuerza way). Who's going to be matched up against Porky in the tercera? Vangellys? I kind of want to see that regardless. I'm higher than anyone else in the world on Bucanero in general, but he can go in a lightning match against someone like Titan. Second to top has more Cometa vs Cavernario and Casas to boot. And then the main has a lot of good wrestlers and Mascara, so there should be a fun beatdown in there at least. Next Monday's show live on youtube: No follow up to Cavernario/Terrible, which makes me sad. No Toro Bill Jr./Rey Apocolipsis either. I thought Dalys and Estrellita did pretty well in the lightning match, so we'll see how they do for a title match. I love the rudos trio of Virus, Warrior Steel, and Yago already. Shocker (finally back) is a very weird fit in that main event, but I really like Marco/Maximo/Casas as a team too. And Tuesday live on youtube: My initial takeaway is that the show the same night in Guadalajara has Rush vs Terrible and a BP, Titan, Cometa vs Cavernario, Puma, Tiger match, so we're getting screwed here, but it has the better looking Panthers vs Fujin/Raijin match, a decent enough lightning match, and Hechicero (YMMV on Porky vs Kraneo, of course) so it's not all bad. Nothing jumps out like last night's title match though. That's for sure.

I don't think babyface Perfect in 93 was all that much based around the big bumping. He was even able to tap into some of the AWA-era offense in the Doink series.

Someone's posted a ton of 3PW in the last day. I won't link to the whole show but this is out there, currently, as part of the "A Night for the Flyboy" show. Keep that in mind. This was a Ted Petty tribute show, immediately following Jasmin St. Claire turning on Blue Meanie and going with Tod Gordon and preceding Saby vs Pitbull Gary Wolfe. So you can imagine the sort of crowd here. The match itself was very cool for what it was. Hennig was bloated, absolutely, as this was just a few months before his death, but it fit the way he was working, and was very appropriate for this match. Past a couple of big bumps (a 360 off a punch and one over the top onto the announcer's table) and the neck flip, he was mainly bruising. It was almost like he was slowly turning into his father and I feel like we were robbed from years of cool indy Curt "the Axe" Hennig senior tour matches. Lawler, on the other hand, wrestled this as if it was his first big babyface appearance in the Northeast in twenty years (which I'm sure wasn't the case). He came out to the theme from Rocky but this could have been 1981 with him coming out to Star Wars after recovering from the leg injury. There was that same serious, no-nonsense vibe to him, playing off Hennig's cocky, grumpy heel performance. They never really got out of second gear, but they never had to, able to achieve everything they set out to do by mainly brawling and working a TV style main event match. I had a lot of fun watching it. It provided some level of closure with Hennig too. After jawing with the crowd post-match, when he's almost back to the end of the ramp, he raises his hands to let some of the rising applause sink in. That's as good as a farewell moment we'll get for him.

That's the big question, isn't it.

Lightning matches aren't my favorite thing in the world either, certainly. I have less of a problem with the hierarchy of what will finish a match, though, just in general. You can rationalize it a lot of ways, but I generally see lucha as symbolic and what matters more in any moment is whether or not a trios team, for instance, has the momentum, the mandate of heaven, really. Pretty much anything can finish a lightning match at any time and we're lucky in a lot of ways that mostly anything could end mostly any fall in a title match. The doubt is at least there.

Regal's half nelson suplex is great.

That's the biggest intersect with NXT in my mind. Wins GENERALLY matter. Losses generally matter. Titles matter. Feuds transition from one to the next. Things are remembered from week to week and even season to season so far. Characters develop. It's fundamental stuff, basic stuff, but it's been so rare in the US scene since, what, the early 90s? It stands out.

I'm generally more forgiving with lightning matches, I'll admit. It's an expectation thing. Here's last night's show. I didn't catch most of it so I can't speak to the quality of most of the card, but I did see the end and the main event is well worth watching. It starts at 1:51:45 or so.

Probably in 2036

I think Riverdance Becky totally had some wings. Granted, i think Steampunk Becky (collect all 5) could too if they dug deeper on it. Having Cole or Saxton say "She's a Steampunk Enthusiast" and giving her goggles and clockwork gear isn't exactly character development. Granted, can you imagine someone trying to explain "Steampunk" to Vince?

Hope people caught the Dorada/Mephisto match. Really strong tercera. Exciting stuff. The only problem is that so much of Dorada's offense involves elaborate set ups which doesn't always work well with the sort of selling they try to do in a title match tercera (I hate the no sell corner clothesline spot but that's not going away so I'll get over it). Some crazy spots/bumps (including Mephisto BOUNCING after a top rope rana and some nutty stuff using the apron) with real escalation. People should check it out. EDIT: yeah, what Quentin said

I don't think I buy that. This is a simulated fight. I don't think anybody is pushing for intergender fights in UFC. This is a pretend fight that I believe is art. Why can't women fight men the same way Nancy and Frank Sinatra sing a duet? Wrestling is ultimately about "presentation over time." The fans need to be conditioned in a certain way to accept what they are seeing as plausible within the confines of the environment created. In this a lack of "reality" isn't a dealbreaker, but I think "reality" makes it easier for fans to accept things. That's just a starting point though. It's about consistency in conditioning (which is really about announcing, selling, and wins and losses).

I appreciate those issues. I wonder if they structured it the way that they did because he was going to sneak out the win. Cavernario certainly didn't lose much heat in that loss. I think the bigger issue is this: I know Cometa hits his things well and he's looked pretty decent in the Elite matches vs the Traumas or what not from last year, but I think he, more than anyone I can think of as of late, was hurt by losing his mask. There's a real lack of it factor to him. I'm not entirely sure he had it before, but he definitely doesn't have it now. He really needs to do something with his look.

I enjoyed the Cavernario vs Cometa lightning match:

I think of the matches listed previously, what I'm most curious about now is Patera vs Lothario.

This isn't a full answer, but it's part of one: Portland was a very interesting place. It's a very interesting feel for a promotion. There's something welcoming about it. So much of that is Frank Bonnema blatantly lying in the booth about things like how many sell outs Stan Stasiak has had in MSG (which actually carries over to inflating young Curt Hennig's importance in NYC even after Bonnema's death) or the fact that the head ref, one who stymied Buddy all the time, also promoted one of the other cities and had a big flea market in the Arena. Then there's Dutch Savage being all over TV and Don Owen getting so frustrated with grandstanding loser leaves town challenges because they cost him money, or how he rationalizes the big matches due to the sponsors demanding them, and then, to give some credence to that, you see the sponsors in the studio, right afterwards. It's the fans mugging for TV. It's Rick Martel getting flowers and Bonnema saying that the reason kids get in free is because Martel DEMANDED it. And yeah, it's Buddy pretending to have gone to Hawaii for a few weeks. The fans were in on it in every territory to some degree, obviously, but Portland was a crazy fantasyland, up in the corner, distant from the rest of the country. People have it right to some degree when it comes to Flair, but you also have to keep in mind that Ric Flair meant something different in 1982 (or 1985) than he did in 1978, and Buddy is pretty much the same thing even back when Ric was facing off against Steamboat for the first time and teaming with Valentine. He's not just a bullshit Buddy Landell version of Flair (as glorious as that version is). He is, however, a star in his own mind. He's also someone who's hugely dangerous. He's a squealing opportunist, but one who could absolutely go. He was protected. He won. He and his cronies often had all the belts, but he more overtly hid behind them than Flair did the Andersons (though that was always covertly implied). Beneath the charming lies and the BS and the mass delusion that surrounded Portland was the basic truth that if and when Andre came in, Buddy was screwed. If Harley Race came in, Buddy wouldn't really have a shot at him, not really. He was a big fish in a small pond, and that came through in his ringwork. He might have faced off against Jay Youngblood or Rocky Johnson or what not, guys who were known entities, but a lot of times, you came through Portland on the way up and would stay there for a bit (which I think is different than Memphis where they'd create very short term monsters and bring in very short term threats, along with the lifers like Dundee and Mantell and Valiant) and it was up to Rose to balance being credible and dangerous with making talent who weren't true stars and didn't come off as true stars, seem bigger than they were, not just in one night, but over a span of weeks and months.