Matt D

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.

A three hour raw would be a problem whether or not they had Thursday. I think a two hour Raw and a two hour Smackdown would be better than a three-hour Raw and no Smackdown.

Even then, Big E is right there!

I want to see a La Parka top 20.

100% made up bullshit. Brock would do it yes. Austin would do it, maybe? He probably won't, he has never said he has a desire to have another match. Until he completely changes his mind, it's not happening. Why throw out a bullshit number like 35 per cent? Either they can convince Austin to have one more match or they can't. That is what matters. The point, I think wasn't that Austin had a 35% chance of doing it, but that he had a 65% chance of NOT doing it. Ross was trying to stress, once again, that it probably wouldn't happen.

I imagine it's just gonna be Brock crushing somebody. It'd be cool to see Cesaro in there with him, but Kofi is probably the better choice. I'd even prefer Bo Dallas. I think they could make sort of a mini Jericho vs Goldberg thing out of that which might actually get Bo over.