Matt D

I've not seen the Mesias one yet. I felt strongly about the TXT Wagner match but that was, admittedly, before I had seen a lot of lucha.

Same. Seems there are a lot of rubes on PWO, eh. HBK's rep as a GOAT contender in the WWE universe and online is one of the great mysteries of the world. It's really Scott Keith and Meltzer who drove the Michaels love. Plus he stood out in the WWF in 1994-1996 as someone unique. It's the post comeback love that I really don't get and those are the matches that are getting him to "greatest of all time level" even though for the most part, they aren't better than average to a little above average. The HHH matches in particular are matches I never want to see again. It's been said, but I think it can't be underrated how thoroughly guys like Austin and Flair support Michaels. The main take away I get from hearing them talk are "excitement" and "can do anything in the ring." Past a few Johnny Valentine stories and the selling of DDTs, most wrestlers seem to mainly value athleticism (especially stamina), legit toughness, and coordination.

His second banana has some issues but in general, I think he's good. He's knowledgeable for the most part, and there are times where he can chime in with a key focusing question. For instance, when Foley mentioned Gilbert, I barely wanted to hear what Flair had to say about him, even if it wasn't going to be that valuable, just the tone in which he'd talk about him, etc. And it was slipping away and Conrad (is that his name?) doubled back for it. I feel like maybe we'll never get another chance to hear Flair talk about Eddie Gilbert and we at least got 45 seconds of it.

This is one of my major issues in general. It goes back to the Taue thing. If I watch a hundred more matches with the four pillars, I'd probably flip my positioning around. I admit that. The holistic approach involves plenty of time. One good thing about what I've seen with Breaks, for instance, however, is that he matched up against a lot of different sorts of adversaries: young, old, face, heel, etc, just due to the nature of the shows he was on, so you do get to see him in a lot of different scenarios.

Mil's motivation could vary, to be nice. I certainly didn't like him in the Blue Panther/Arkangel de la Muerte match from 01 and I downright loathed him in the Brody/Hansen match from 83. That's one of my least favorite performances by a single wrestler ever. There are parts of the Abby match I like, but they're all Abby. I've never actually seen the Destroyer matches. I should at some point. I see Mascaras as a wrestling problem. He's interesting to watch wrestlers wrestle against to see how they deal with him, kind of like RVD, though for different reasons. You don't wrestle Mil Mascaras, you cope with him.

It's been a while since I watched any Buddy but I watched the Rose/Hennig vs Assassin/DK match, the one where the heels take the titles. (think it's 11/12/83) I have some takeaways: 1.) I think Rose was a great face. He moved in and out of things well. He was great working from underneath during the first fall King of the Mountain. I love how he turned some of the same tricks he used to get stooged as a heel to stooge the heels as a face. I think he was good on the apron and was a fun fiery hot tag. He made everything matter. 2.) Hennig was excellent working from underneath. He also has great snappy offense on a comeback or to cut off a heel comeback during a shine. I'd never seen that double monkey roll before. He sold well, he garnered sympathy. I thought he was much better a couple of years later at control offense, of keeping that compelling. He just had a wristlock on and he didn't move in and out of it as a face as well as, let's say, 1984 Martel did. There were moments I was outright bored, frustratingly so. 3. Dynamite is a great heel bully. One of my favorite performances I've ever seen out of him. All it took was him playing the right role. Things that he'd do that would be problematic as an undersized babyface worked great as a heel in a tag garnering heat. 4. I liked assassin here but it's sort of moot to talk about him too much. The match didn't have those fabled Dynamite/Rose workrate fests, so I'll have to watch more. I thought it was okay but not as good as many of the 79-82 tags I've seen so far in Portland.

I'm 3/4 in and laughed way more than I usually do listening to a wrestler podcast

I'm still having a hard time with this because of all of the Japanese watching I have to fill in.

We shall agree to disagree

The build is the Haku/Benoit match right? I wasn't too high on that either even though I wanted to be. I thought the other Haku match I saw was definitely better. This was pretty functional and had its moments though. (Edit: Just saw your review. The other haku match is way more fun: . I really need to write up the kamala matches at some point. I saw them in passing before I really knew what I was watching and enjoyed them but I probably didn't give them the credit they deserved at the time)

I think it's a different challenge for someone like Lawler or Rose to draw in the same arena week after week after week than someone to go town to town to town and draw based on national TV. Neither of those are Bruno who drew in the same arena every month. That doesn't seem as impressive to me as either of the above.

For WWF guys, Eadie had a better year than Dibiase and I wouldn't put him on this list.

My absolute favorite wrestlers when I was 9. No one except for Pillman was close, and even then, he was only close.

Is anyone going to have Charles Lucero? I mean the footage just isn't there, right?

Brock is sort of the definition of tweener.

Let's put it this way. If you dove into a shallow pool head first and smacked your head against the bottom, you're going to hurt the top of the head. But it's the neck that's taking the serious damage. You have some weird ideas for gimmick matches.

I make up fake probabilities all the time. The key to doing so is never using round numbers.

I was going to make a gif of Kerry's big no sell but I couldn't make that happen.

I just got to watch it a couple of days ago but haven't had time to figure out how to do anything with it yet (was planning to this weekend), so good on you for sharing with the class. My main takeaways were that it was a wonderful beatdown on Casas for basically the whole match, which started with bloody violence and moved on to using limbwork to create openings; great selling by Negro Casas, perfect asshole offense by Cota, and way way way too stilted a comeback to justify it all. It's a frustrating match for what it could have been. Everything they do is great but it's just not enough. A lot of that is because it was just one fall, I think. There was a sense that Cota was vulnerable and all it'd take was one good shot from Casas but there wasn't ENOUGH of that sense to make it work.

Bret's big in Germany though!

Shawn's ego was both his biggest boon and his worst enemy.

Natural heel.

Is there something written somewhere about Batista as a draw. Just curious.