Matt D

Safer to say that he doesn't fit due to your subjective criteria in this case. We certainly don't have agreed upon criteria between us here. I haven't seen enough key era Backlund to chime in one way or another. How you put it reminds me a little of Greg Gagne's overcompensation though.

It's a good deal and depending on the territory options I might even jump on it. Probably not though. There are 80s sets to follow moving foward and that'll more than take up my time.

Has any wrestler gone through developmental in the last three years and not gotten better?

I'm already grumpy about all the podcast-driven people we have showing up. No, no. I'm kidding. You're all lovely people.

The flipside is that there's a non-zero chance that they might just dump whole territories on demand, which would give, let's say Kevin, a chance to see some AWA he's never even seen before, just like that. I realize that's a bit of a longshot right now but it's at least possible.

I have no real good sense of who the WON audience would think is overrated. Orton? Bully Ray? How's Magnus generally seen? Big Show is probably fresh on people's minds even if that's blatantly ridiculous. Actually, with the way Cena shrugged off all the arm work over the last few months I could see people voting that way even if it'd be a little silly.

Goldust has to be PWI Comeback of the Year, no? Just saying. He should get a Bill Apter given plaque. Seriously, though, I'd be surprised if anyone other than Cesaro gets Underrated, though Ziggler and even Bryan might be in the running given the audience base. EDIT: Impact really won Best TV Show last year?

I thought Nattie had a pretty good showing on NXT this week. Probably the best I've seen out of her in a long time. Some competent chain wrestling, some good character work, a well-worked abdominal stretch. Some of the selling I liked more and some I liked less (Paige's selling after the sharpshooter escape was notable though). Good intensity. Pretty varied offense one she got going including a nice snap suplex and michinoku driver of all things. Not sure how much credit should go to Paige or Del Rey, but it was a relatively good showing.

I think Rollins has come a really long way this year but I doubt the WON audience base will have thought he had that far to come in the first place.

Sometimes I want to write a lot about why I think matches work or don't work in general, sort of like my hope spot paragraph above, but it feels a little too pretentious, even for me. I like the idea of trying to classify wrestling though. Obviously, we don't want some sort of equation that tells you if a match is good or not; that's been done and it's always hilarious and ridiculous, but matches can be deconstructed and examined and I do think classified and organized. So much of what I enjoy in watching wrestling is trying to figure out why I or others enjoyed something or not, even more than actually enjoying it, because it works on a deeper level for me than just experiencing.

Apparently they're running Rhodes Bros vs Real Americans in a cage at MSG this month. Someone needs to fancam that. EDIT: I really liked Rhodes/Show vs Shield too. It's crazy how WWE has really embraced the double-FIP structure with all of these 6 mans this year.

I don't think I've ever heard a wrestler praise another for using scummy heel tactics really well.

I actually have no idea what Memphis I've seen and what I haven't at this point. I've seen a lot of the available 79-81 TV but I decided to start back with 81 on the side for shits and giggles. I really like the booking at the beginning of the year. They keep escalating things with Lawler vs Hart, first about whether or not he's ready to come back and then the revenge on Ellering who pretended to be king while he was gone and then whether or not he can beat Idol with Hart's record on the line after all of the things Idol had done to him over the years. Then they make LeDuc look like a world killer (and they're so good at bringing up past things like when he chucked Lawler "seven feet.") They keep the ebb and flow as he loses to LeDuc by DQ and has to get lashed ten times because of that. Meanwhile, Valiant wins a title tournament for the Southern belt by cheapshotting Hector Guerrero before the bell. He gets past Dundee to establish his reign and then gets past Guerrero who wants revenge. So these are two parallel tracts (for the most part at least), leading to the two of them wrestling at the Cook Convention Center midway through Feb so Lawler can triumphantly get the belt back.

I liked the Thanksgiving article a lot fwiw.

I was always curious - are these shows the first time we're seeing this footage or is this something you probably have some place already? Bits and pieces (the odd match or two) have been out there for some time--1981 isn't a complete black hole for footage (unlike 1983, which had massive gaps in it until very recently), but not whole shows. The arena matches that have popped up recently have not been out there previously (Patera vs. Robinson, Laurent Soucie vs. Evan Johnson, Tito Santana vs. Sgt. Jacques Goulet). Same with the odd interview segments that pop up. How's Patera vs Robinson?

He's basically trying to say "Workrate Indy" which i guess is a thing?

I feel like I've seen more ICW than a lot of other things from that era.

I am the only person on this board that has the talking point that athleticism can be a crutch and it's much more interesting to see a wrestler at 50 than at 30 when they really have to rely on craft and pick their spots very carefully and you can really tell if they "get it" or not, so I don't disagree with you. I just read that yesterday and thought it was worth noting. Also, since people would probably be interested, I did find this yesterday: http://www.irongarmx.net/phpBB2/viewtopic....492b0110e88d7df It's the WON obit of Stevens, from 96, I think, and has a NSFW sig picture at the bottom, just as a warning.

One thing with Stevens is that even in the Stevens we have, it's after his injury (in 69 I think; he hurt himself both in 62 and 69 doing non wrestling things, though not at the hands of Jerry Calhoun) and Meltzer has said that he was never quite the same after that.

When is Chad's book of my AWA reviews coming out? I'm also annoyed you no-sold Foucault.

Thanks for starting these, OJ. Just from these two I can see that they're going to be a hugely useful reference not just for the project but for people trying to get into this era of lucha in general. There were huge swaths in there that I didn't know anything about before reading.

I don't hate Keith, in fact I've rather enjoyed his recent appearances on the Place to Be show. However, I think you are underselling his influence a little bit. No one really reads A.C. Bradley anymore, he arguably hasn't been relevent since the 1930s, and yet his spectre still haunts Shakespeare criticism to the extent where his take on Hamlet is still the default one. Anyone writing on Hamlet, even now, whether consciously or not, is in some way reacting to Bradley. On the show, we've always used Meltzer's ratings as our benchmark, but Chad and I often look to see what else people have said. It's become clear to me that very often the benchmark "out there" on the internet is not Meltzer's rating but Keith's. So often it's his rating that permeates all of the reviews of these shows out there. People often (rightly) criticise Keith for his historicial inaccuracies. My problem, however, is that his match reviews are often lazily automatic and predictable. This is bothersome to us because you get these weird common places right across the internet. We try to analyse things in-depth on this show, and very often the common places we're battling have their source in Keith. There's no place for Keith in a post-Benoit world. He's like academia before Foucault! He doesn't represent the Cultural Turn or using Literary Theory for Textual Interpretation, let alone modern feminist examinations! The man is a dinosaur. He's still espousing positivist epistemology! Man, I would have been so much happier in 1910.

Was Summerslam not a swing and a miss? I guess the idea is that last year's number was inflated.

Carting out Hogan isn't the worst idea in the world.

Spanky Kendrick is the best 1910 pitcher name.