Matt D

There are a lot of factors there (including being on smackdown with the taped nature of the show and certain things inherent with DX and nostalgia). Frankly, though. I don't know. I missed a lot of the first half of that and frankly don't remember a ton of the back half. That such things are happening now make me think that we have a demographic change in general, maybe even one that WWE has created with their push for social media? If they want to create a more active, tuned in audience base, then they might end up with a more informed and harder to control one as well? All these are just thoughts. I'd love if someone like Chris was able to find more demographic data somehow and map some of this stuff out.

His most recent babyface run? The fans sure as hell didn't want to give him the standing ovation after the Brock match that it was obvious he was supposed to get.

If a random fan in the crowd that wants to be heard and I see Trips and Steph do the yes chants, I'm probably more likely to chant CM Punk, maybe?

I think WWE is a little more niche than that. I also think that the younger fans are more tuned in by nature. Almost every person I know under the age of 35 that's into sports connect to it differently than the people I know over 50 who are into sports.

At least 27.3%. It's 2014. Teenagers/college kids who follow wrestling do so on the internet/twitter too. That's one side effect of all the social media stuff. I refuse to believe that all those people who are tweeting enough to make WWE trend or whatever else don't know about the reputation. This isn't 1999 with just a bunch of nerds like us using the internet and reading scoops and 1wrestling or whatever. Enough people were talking about Matt Hardy on facebook a few days ago that it was trending. Matt Hardy, not The Rock or someone. This is a totally different world.

I thought Dave's indication was that they actively moved the venue to Seattle from wherever it initially was, or at the least that they planned for it to be there long term. So the push came first and Seattle was the means, after the reaction he got there last time. It wasn't just that they happened to be in Seattle for the PPV already?

Wouldn't it be more the case that the plans weren't there to alter in the first place?

Yeah, injuries. There were reports that Mark Henry was selling an injury on house shows over the weekend and I have no idea if it was legit or him selling the Brock stuff or what. WWE doesn't usually show that attention to detail but Henry himself is a guy who seems to care about it.

How prevalent were roids among top talent in Japan? It never seemed as big an issue as in the states, or perhaps just wasn't covered as much. Nor did you have a bunch of Warlords running around drawing your attention to it. But it must've had some kind of presence. Not sure if this helps, but here's something Meltzer said in a March 1992 Observer when everything was coming to a head in the US.

One of the maddening things about following pro wrestling is that whenever there is something real that happens, it eventually gets made into a work.

Raw is going to be weird between the Bryan hijacking, the potential for CM Punk chants, One-Eyed Cena and NAO in a Tag Team Cage match in 2014. I wonder if the Shield promo about Punk was a dry run for Raw. I'm going to be automatically disappointed since nothing, in my head, can live up to Cory Graves as Fake Diesel CM Punk, and for some strange reason, I don't think they're going to do that. Midget Punk would be pretty good too though.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DOCegPA8Pw Hogan could totally do a neck wringer on someone at Mania. Forget this hosting crap. It's right there. Neck Wringer.

I was trying to think of something and really couldn't. I guess sometime in Dec/Jan of 1990-1991, Perfect had just reclaimed the IC belt and he was wrestling Piper on the house shows and I saw a local promo where he said he'd take the IC belt from Perfect and I didn't want that to happen because I wanted Kerry to get it back. I really thought that Piper might get it on a house show because his promo was good. Even by that point, maybe ten, I realized that nothing would ever happen on house shows since there were no cameras. But I always felt like the dates on that were right before Summerslam, but that makes no sense, so it really had to be in December/Jan.

Probably a mild understatement to say he's lucky to have you.

I think that's more about "small white workrate indy guys" the only other Japanese wrestler they have that I know is Yoshi Tatsu who is pretty much a non-entity for them. Wouldn't hurt to have him for when they do their rare Japan tours. I don't know. if I was doing a Crusierweight only show, I'd probably want to sign Richards for it, if he was right there, and I can't stand him as a wrestler.

1.) Best I can tell, there's been nothing new since last summer. It's mainly KENTA speculation, but if that was the case then the arguments about them not signing Richards/Edwards because they had too many guys like them already would be a little contradictory.

Neither here nor there, but we'll have to make some call about double posting. Do we keep using the microscope threads as central repositories? Do we use the new EVERYTHING threads? Do we double post things?

Neither here nor there, but we'll have to make some call about double posting. Do we keep using the microscope threads as central repositories? Do we use the new EVERYTHING threads? Do we double post things?

I get it, and you guys did a good job at what you set out to do, absolutely. I just came in expecting something else and was a little disappointed accordingly. It fit the Wrestling With the Past format that you guys used for the Bret and IC/TV title shows much better than what I have wanted would have.

I think most people here would put Rikishi as being better than HHH.

What is there to breakdown? Breaking down HHH's ringwork is like breaking down a Nickelback record. Sure, you could try it, but... I have full faith that Dylan and Will could do it. I've seen them both do it before in a myriad of ways for both the best and the worst wrestlers in the world. I don't know Scott really (at least I think I don't. Does he post here? If he doesn't, he should), but he obviously has some vivid memories of these matches and strong feelings about them, so I think he could likely pull together patterns as well. It was interesting to hear someone defend Triple H as a character/presence/etc. since that argument is so often one sided, but a lot of it is also common sense and a lot of the positive raised were really personal things. I just thought that using this format to really dissect the work of a wrestler who's been in as many "big matches" as just about anyone in the last twenty years would be a bit more novel and interesting than the chronological view, especially since, as I said before, that was the brunt of the initial argument of people having better years than Trips. I guess I kind of wanted an argument about the hundred guys who were better and how and why instead of just a chronological view and poking at some of the usual talking points. That said, they covered almost three hours with what they had, which might have been necessary for a starting point of this argument and it probably worked better for a broader audience. I just don't think the initial issue that spurred on this podcast in the first place was really touched on, let alone resolved.

I've never seen this before but came across it today. It's from the Feb 24, 1992 Observer, and I would LOVE for the Dave who wrote it to have to have a conversation with the Dave of today.

Now I want to see the Kane vs X-Pac and Jericho vs X-Pac matches and compare. Kind of. You have to figure that there are Kane/X-Pac vs Jarrett/Owen matches that are better than anything Jericho did in 1999, at least. Anyone remember how the D-Lo/Mark Henry tag was. That was on PPV at least.

Did Kane have better matches than Chris Jericho in the WWF in 1999? I mean, it's possible right? What was Kane doing that year? Tagging with X-Pac?

I'm going to want to see this in action first to really wrap my head around it and the organization behind it, but in five years or so, this could make this place one of the best resources on the internet for wrestling (not that it isn't already in some ways).