Matt D

There's not really an alternative. Not to that Monday Night fix. Not to years and years of engagement, something that you've invested in for most of your life, something that appeals to childhood memories and some of the best feelings of spectator triumph and heartbreak of your life. WWE feels like "history" in a way that TNA or an indy can't. It's not about quality. It's about being part of something that is literally impossible to replace. You can find other wrestling, but you can't rewrite your life or history so that WWE wasn't a part of it. It'll always scratch slightly different itches. I am always confused when people don't seem to understand this.

I think there's every indication that Bryan's pretty happy.

My first couple of posts in this thread was assuming that this was the case.

I'm only an hour in but I was hoping for a long discussion on Big Daddy Dink.

Is the Vehicle called "Ladies and Gentle,en, I present you with...."

It's a damn shame Tenay stole the professor title. With Solie dead, Kris Z can be the Dean of PWO.

Haven't heard this yet but I hope part 1 is just Pringle and Hayes watching Gulf Coast together.

Look, I have a harder time respecting Flair because there isn't the thought behind what he did. On the one hand, though, Rose said that's how he wrestled too, but then there was all the research he did and how he came up with moves with Wiskowski and the amount of work that he put into things that was on a different level than spending money on suits. It's obvious in his work and his angles and in everything he did. Also the wide variance of working week after week in front of the same crowd, which is something we don't have as much with Flair, and I wish we did. He wasn't good at explaining what he did, but I believe fully that he spent all of his time thinking about it whether he realized he was doing it or not. With Flair, I can't, in good faith, put the world's most talented (and/or drunk) idiot savant as my #1 I think,

I don't think the right comparison is the Beatles. I think it's Elvis. Especially in his movies. No one was better at being Elvis than Elvis. No one could possibly star in an Elvis movie as well as Elvis could. You could put him in almost any scenario. Give him any leading lady and he could give you an Elvis movie. If you asked him what went into a good Elvis movie, he couldn't tell you. He'd just shrug and say "I'm Elvis." He'd just be himself and that was enough. Then my analogy ends with King Lear. But I'm sick here and at half speed, so you guys can just work out the rest.

I wouldn't be surprised if Vince thinks the WWE brand is what's driving the NXT sales.

EDIT: don't have the time to put this right now. Will try later.

Profit's an interesting question though. Are these guys getting paid more per appearance like on the main roster or do they get paid the same whether they're doing house shows or not? Do they charge less for NXT tickets in general? If the training center is training new cameramen, sound guys, etc, does it make sense to tour so that they can get experience on the road as well?

Santo/Flair is actually a pretty interesting compare/contrast. I'd love to see someone go more in depth there.

King of the Mountain is strategy used organically to cool down a hot babyface. Flair Flip is a spot that Flair forces into his matches because he thinks the crowd will be disappointed if he doesn't. In some ways you just made my argument for me. But seriously, I get your meaning and I do think Bock in the 70s/early 80s is an issue especially in what we have with him vs Verne (where he worked more like Flair).

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.