Matt D

We should start a pool about how successful or not this will be.

What would have happened if Lawler turned in 93 when he went to WWF and he feuded with Jarrett as the top face? I can't imagine the fans would side with Jarrett over Lawler, but he's a good enough heel that maybe? Jarrett's push in 93 was heinous, with the whole "new fabulous one" stuff and all of his celebrity friends.

One thing about NXT is that you could easily toss oh, say ten of those guys and four of the women on the main roster tomorrow and it'd be fine. Even when the in ring isn't quite up to snuff, the characters are. Another brand split would be fine across the card except for on the very top.

Saw a Terry Fargo vs King Parsons match from Portland and I thought Fargo was a very fun stooging mid-card heel. I want to see some of his All Star stuff as Terry Adonis now.

Inclement weather means I get to write this up instead of toiling through my 1.25 hour commute to work. There's a great talk show segment that was posted too, where they have Borne and Buddy in. Buddy's great saying that he really wants to team up with his brother in law. They also show footage of a six man from the week before with Borne/Hack Sawyer/Regal vs Stasiak/Oliver/Buddy which has a blistering rope running segment with Buddy and Borne and a fun machine gun arm drape spot by Buddy. It's too bad we don't have that. The best part is when it comes back from commercial break with the show's elevator music in the background of the action. $1500 Battle Royal - 8/29/81 Let's see, Stasiak, Oliver, CHRIS COLT, Tiny Anderson, Destroyer, Buddy. That's who I hear announced. King Parsons is in there. Matt Borne is in there as is his dad I think. Hack Sawyer, who apparently wrestled Buddy at some point because he rushes right at him and starts kicking at the leg. Regal. The VQ on this is really rough for a battle royal, so I'm depending on Bonnema for the most part. Oh good, Colt is a member of the army now. Buddy sells a headbutt from Parsons by almost going over the top. Great stooging bump. There goes Colt. He never lasts long in these. Parsons has Destroyer pretty much on top of Buddy and it's pretty funny. There's a headbutt war going on with Destroyer (And the loaded mask) and Parsons. Hack Sawyer is patently ridiculous. Buddy rolls out and hides in the corner of the ring. At this point it's Oliver/Destoyer/Rose and Matt Borne/Regal left in. Buddy sneaks back into the ring, but Regal ducks a punch as Buddy hits Oliver. They've been keeping Rose away from Borne for the most part. It was built up big when they got in during the six man the week before. According to Meltzer that is because people didn't think brother-in-laws would fight. They get Regal out, but then Borne drops Sawyer and Oliver, so now the two are matched up and the crowd is into it. Tony Borne comes on down to ringside to keep an eye on them. They glance at him and only after he nods does Matt chase after Buddy, who runs around the ring before rolling back in. he immediately starts bumping all over the ring for Borne. Regal stays at ringside to watch too. Borne gets Buddy up in the airplane spin, but keeps punishing him instead of tossing him. This lasts til he misses a high knee in the corner. Buddy starts on the leg with butt drops with the leg draped over the bottom rope, but after two of these, Borne shifts his foot around and shoves Buddy over the top with it in a pretty novel spot for the win. It sure looks like kids swarm the ringside area to celebrate post match. Anyway, this was fun, but the VQ made it pretty rough. It's one of those signs of how protected booking (Even with real life reasons) can make a match up really pop a crowd in a situation like this.

I could honestly see them doing Bryan vs Kane.

Anyone strong enough to carry Memphis to that level would have gone to Vince or Turner. It had to be Lawler since only he had the incentive to stay.

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.