Matt D

I understand you're speaking more generally, but since I'm the one who raised it, do you really think that I, personally, would pick Bock over Flair to be niche or contrarian or controversial, Parv?

Not to be a broken record, but I think they should have gone even further a few months ago and done an Authority throws a party for Sting angle because they thought he'd be joining them.

I love 84 mid south and 85 Crockett. I love 79-80 Memphis before Lawler goes down with the injury. I'm such a sucker for Dangerous Alliance era WCW. But i'd be 79-80 Portland instead. It's this perfect mix of a really intimate promotion that feels like family with the same sponsors and Sandy Barr's flea market and what not, but you still get the champ and Andre and bigger names coming in now and again. Everything's centered around Buddy Rose and his army. What we have from the Saturday TV is just awesome, each and every week, and we don't have the Tuesday shows which is where all the blow offs were. I love the 2/3 fall style, and even the under card was made up of fairly enjoyable wrestlers.

My talking point is that 80s Bock does everything that 80s Flair does well just as well if not better, but way smarter. But I'm six months away from really talking about that.

The Arnold Classic one is a little more interesting to me since I don't understand the demographics there. Was there already a crossover of wrestling fans attending? Was it just drawn from people in the local area? Did people actually travel far just for the novelty of seeing NXT?

No way will I have time to see all the HOFs before the end of March, so I hope they don't take them down once we hit April.

I think we need to revisit Cesaro/Zayn and really analyze what Loss just said about it.

To be great? Absolutely not. To be one of the greatest WWE matches (for instance), maybe. Flair vs Magnum seemed like a cheat on the AWA set because they worked the same match they would have worked anywhere else. Briscos vs Murdoch/Adonis feels sort of alien on the original WWF set too. Ultimately, I think the answer is no, but it may feel like a bit of a cheat to be able to move out of the normal restraints. It sort of changes the "level of difficulty" score, which may or may not matter.

I'll do what I can in the months I have remaining while balancing it with all the other things I have going on. I plan on looking at a decent amount of Destoyer, Fujinami, Fujiwara, and Baba in April/May.

I really like his backbreaker! I can't say that enough:

I've been tempted to put HTM as my 100

Ok, I watched Spud vs EC3. I'm not familiar with any of this. What I liked: -The God Save the Queen bit was great, even with Matthews talking over it. It felt organic. -The opening intensity though Spud's chops are way better than his punches. If they were both equal he could lean on the punches and I wouldn't care but the chops are way better. He has a lot of good flukey offense in general, I think. It fits his character. -The blade-job in that it set up the forearm brace as a big deal and I thought EC3 did a great job in screaming to distract the fans and cover it: misdirection -The cinematic nature of the last comeback. I'm not always big on that sort of storytelling but I thought it worked here. Tossing off the bow-tie, etc. I thought EC3's expressions were good throughout. I didn't love the Borash bit (it was fine but Borash isn't great at this) but I did love the endless headslams until he woke up. What I didn't mind -The interference as a transition. I thought it was face saving and you expect this shit out of TNA What I didn't like: -The execution of the interference. First you have Hebner not even wondering why Spud was in charge on the outside and then suddenly on his back in the ring on the inside now that Brodus is out? Come on. Then Anderson's Mic Check looked ridiculously bad. I was okay with it in theory. -I thought Spud looked to the crowd a little bit too much. It got over the "Can you believe I'm doing this?" feel when he had he advantage, but it took away from the hate. Maybe it was a guy, in his home country, living his dream, but that story didn't jibe with the hatred. The two stories sort of clashed and the dissonance hurt the match. -Both guys do tribute acts? EC3's stealing of his fallen foes' moves is kind of neat but then Spud was adrenaline-powered Eugene? It felt like overkill unless it was part of their friendship or something. The Stunner and even the You I was mostly okay with (only mostly ok with that one), but the rope shaking was a bit much. - The match desperately needed 1 more big nearfall by Spud as he was making his comeback. Desperately. Even and especially a roll up. -And then I don't even know what to think about EC3's facial expression as he was hitting his finish. He was already starting the post match "angle" before the match was over and I don't know if that's brilliant given that he was totally in charge after the Bob Orton forearm or unbelievable. If it wasn't TNA, I'd think it was brilliant and played into the cockiness of his character. As it is, I just think it was over-swerviness. Weird things -Tazz sounds like he's somewhere else, like in a video game with post-produced scripted lines -The Black and White thing was weird as they went in and out of it. -Again, Matthews talking over God Save the Queen. Way to waste a great moment. It was a very good match. Without more context, I'm not sure I'd call it great.

It could be that with 20 years distance, we like that now? I've liked the little I've seen of 90-92 a lot more than what followed. I should really focus on that period, but I'd feel the need to penalize guys for their later work that I really don't want to see so who knows. If I watch it, it'd be solely for my own enjoyment and not for any sort of project.

No one cares about anything anymore, mainly? Also, at the Rumble, I thought Rusev was going to be super over just because I'm so used to here and DVDVR and it was such a smart crowd, but it was Wreddit/wrestlezone smart, not here/DVDVR smart, so if Henry had come out, he would have gotten boo'd huge for being slow and fat and not doing Phoenix Splashes or whatever, and Rusev maybe had bits of support but he was anti-american enough to be boo'ed a lot. It's harder to boo Cena against him than most guys.

i need to capture a gif of the shark attack later. I love that finisher.

You should cycle out Goldberg and cycle in the Terry Garvin one

Lita Fan with Muppet mannerisms. For a while there she was like that that dog that always repeated what Spike said in the Looney Toons cartoon for Sasha. I was all in on the plucky riverdancing babyface too.

It's march.

It's March. Mania's almost here. ROH just had a big show that people reacted to. There's the Demott scandal. 65% of us are also heavily focused on 2014-2015 matches due to March Madness over at DVDVR. April will be better for the rest of you.

I don't blame the placement. You wouldn't really know that without watching the TV.

No, I get it, and I get that the matches have buzz and its a facet of our community to watch things with buzz, but so much of what makes NXT special is that it's a studio show built not necessarily for touring but just for TV and the payoffs at the special. It's one hour a week which gets a quarter of a year to build to something. If you're just going to pick and choose after the fact, that is what it is. For the purpose of this note, I don't think that you can judge how ready someone is to be called up or not from the specials alone without seeing how they handle shorter TV matches, for instance. I just don't think there's much point to following NXT at all if you're not going to watch the TV. Even binging it the week before the big shows works really well. Otherwise, it's like skipping to the last chapter of a book and then complaining you don't know who the characters are.

I don't get the point of watching the NXT Specials and not the tv. The whole point is the build and payoff.

Literal ones to prop up and drink beer with?