Matt D

I wrote way too much about Athena/Billie the other day since it’s one of my favorite things going now too: http://segundacaida.blogspot.com/2023/11/aew-five-fingers-of-death-1030-115-bonus.html?m=1 I do hope this is a stop on the road and not the destination but it should be a fun and unexpected stop.

You have access to the master list, right? I had some project drift at the end so I have to double back and put in those last matches and yeah, I never redid it fully chronologically like I said I could, but it could be useful to you if you don't have it. https://segundacaida.blogspot.com/2021/05/french-catch-tuesday-master-list.html And I don't want to downplay your interest. I spent three years with this stuff, right during the worst of the pandemic. It was a big part of my life and I was working with meager language skills and youtube's translate function and not a lot of documentation out there that I can access. A lot of my conclusions (Ben Chemoul/Cesca > Ben Chemoul/Bordes > Bordes/Gordon.. or how Carpentier carried himself more like a star than anyone else.. or comparing/contrasting Mercier with LeDuc, or rating/ranking the Spaniards/Mexicans/Peruvians, etc.) are purely textual. Obviously "The Death Of" is interesting to people. Look at the success of the Alvarez book relative to overall WCW discussion. A lot more people are going to talk about the Fingerpoke of Doom and Russo booking than Regal's 94 TV title run or the weekly Dangerous Alliance matches from 91-92 or whatever. And yes, we want to apply things to our own lives when possible. I'm an American who got into wrestling when he was 9-10 in 1990-91 and I had zero points of personal connection with the footage, save for maybe my journey in figuring out how lucha functioned. But if you're going to delve into anything, figuring out who the heck Quasimodo was and if he actually had a tour of Amarillo or digging into Spartacus being a contract killer or figuring out if there's a case for Saulnier in the WON HOF as a worker/trainer/featured referee who was treated as a centerpiece in so many matches all seem like more bountiful uses of one's time.

This feels like talking about the entire history of the NWA in 2060 and primarily focusing on Tyrus’ cultural influence since he was on Fox News.

There's probably a fascinating book to be written but the answers aren't on the tapes. We're the blind men touching the elephant. I've seen every bit of the archive footage there. There's no fingerpoke of doom, and even if there was, we're in a world where people spend hours upon hours saying it was all about the merger instead anyway. Watts pointing to the oil crash has always been compelling because it's not like UWF is all that bad, even if he was overstretching himself. We have every indication that all of those things you mentioned were symptoms and not the disease.

I've written thousands upon thousands of words about this stuff, but I kept it almost completely textual for any number of reasons. Here's what I'll say from a purely textual perspective of Hervé/Gordon in the late, late 70s into the 80s: He was presented as the heir to the Ben Chemoul > Bordes line. More showy, less gritty, crowd pleasing, heel embarrassing, crowd singing. And in that role, he was believable enough. In a different world where there was steady and constant tv presence and connected promoters and more of a cultural need for wrestling, I honestly think that he could have carried that banner in the 80s and maybe even onwards before handing it off to someone else. He more or less had their tricks down and was relatively skilled at seeing what was going on around him and incorporating it into his act, including the Jon Guil Don finishing move that almost no one else has ever done before or after. Crowds were behind him. He was credible against all manner of opponents. He captured that same sort of energy in the 80s. There's definitely a world where which it was possible. But this is the world we live in instead and obviously that didn't happen.

I’d rather it be Cole Karter again than that.

I'm really looking forward to them getting the new TV deal because that should give them more money to operate with and a little more freedom in how they structure things.

I’ve been loving less-is-more, make every thing matter MJF. (here’s my take on the Righteous match: http://segundacaida.blogspot.com/2023/10/aew-five-fingers-of-death-and-friends.html?m=1) I think I’m skipping Omega vs MJF though. Seems very much not for me.

100% agree. She’s gotten so good at reacting to everything. I like her a lot in the interviews with Maria as well.

I see it as a bonus coliseum video tape drop.

Bumping this to let people know that @El Boricua and I are covering 1989 and onwards over at Segunda Caida right now. http://segundacaida.blogspot.com/search/label/El Deporte de las Mil Emociones (and as it's already lapsed because the posts are so long and informative and I need to make a master list sooner than later, here is the first/intro post explaining what we're doing) https://segundacaida.blogspot.com/2023/09/el-deporte-de-las-mil-emociones.html

Just skip matches you don’t want to see. There’s zero reason to ever watch a match you don’t want to on Dynamite. There’s zero reason not to watch a match you do want to see on Rampage. Etc. We’re all old. We don’t need to be part of the immediate discourse.

I meant you’d never hear the end of it from the kid. I was kidding though. There’s always another show.

When I was in high school, I couldn’t get my dad to take me to the Worcester show where Foley won the title for the first time. I never got over it. Trauma for life. You’re doomed.

I thought Gordon in that 79-85 range was perfectly fine. He becomes whatever he becomes but as the partner/heir to Bordes, he more than held his own. Maybe that was my expectations. Obviously, he's not some sort of mat genius but for where the French scene was at that point, he was a perfectly fine lead babyface, very good at aping a lot of those who came before him and even those who were his contemporaries (I'd see him pick up moves that I saw someone else do weeks or months before; some of that was always zeitgeist and a token trait of the scene though) and he had the crowd. Plus he had a great finishing move with the Juan Gil Don up and over mare thing. In general @David Mantell, I'm sorry you weren't around a couple of years ago when I was living and breathing this stuff week to week. I ended up project drift by the end as you can imagine (though I'm proud for finishing it out and enjoyed almost all of it, even deep into the 80s). Now I'm on to Panama.

There are a lot of commonalities between lucha and French catch, which isn't surprising since the one (at least in the mythology) helped inspire the other and there was a South American contingent and vice versa. There's a certain code to being a stylist that feels not dissimilar to being a tecnico. So heel refs being a thing both places isn't too surprising. More likely though, I think it's just that it got heat and was a part of the show that got over so they leaned into it. When you had Saulnier there, he was a guy who could take bumps and stooge and get proper comeuppance like a bumping manager could. He was someone who was a better wrestler than most of the people who were in there with him, despite being on the short site. Hell, he probably trained a good chunk of them. It was a short cut. There's so much we don't know about how they drew money and how important the TV was, etc., but just from the text itself, it was almost always over, gave them a narrative tool to prolong matches and make them a little more interesting than the really dominant babyface tags you'd get in the Hunter/Hayes era for instance, while still keeping the stylists protected by giving them a reason they weren't steamrolling the bad guys. Now if there's something in French culture about authority figures and sports referees being notorious villains I couldn't tell you. To me, it's that confluence of having Saulnier in place and the narrative shortcuts it allowed that seemed to work for the crowd match after match after match after match.

My take on this is that he came out last year looking for Punk's approval and friendship and Punk turned him down, starting their feud. Now that he's found everything he had been looking for in Punk in Adam Cole, Punk is kind of beneath his notice. He's putting aside everything that he previously felt was important for his new friendship. That's the story and this tracks for it.

It’s the Jake we were always promised but never really got.

In that case, I am all for that ROH show. Whenever I get around to watching it next week. And I think Clayton has upside between his size and the JWOW (?) connection. Whenever you have someone with millions of followers tweeting about your product, it's a good thing. That's happened before. I just don't really want to see him at this stage and I know @The Thread Killer doesn't want to pay to see him.

I’m excited to see that match. Should be a lot of fun. Zack Clayton vs KM on the other hand sounds rough.

You should make sure to watch all three matches in the series if you're going to go out of your way to watch the one. But Athena's the female MVP of AEW this year so you should watch basically everything she's done anyway.

All I really care right now is that they got the ROH tag belts off the Lucha Bros. Massive anchor on that division.

I need @ohtani's jacket and @elliott to record an anti-Kawada podcast.

Got to roll with the hot hand. It's just business. They're the ones who want the Bucks match, not me!

I don't know. This feels like just the right amount of time for me. A one month reign. They can sell a few more shirts, build up the tension. After they win the belts, they can feud with Roddy and a partner (He had been a PWG Tag champion with PAC. That sounds good). Khan can make the announcement for All Out despite Cole not wanting him to, etc. You get out before it wears out its welcome so you can go back to it at some point. (Btw, part of this plan is Kenny and Page winning, FTR beating the Bucks at All In for a number one contender's match, and FTR winning the titles back at All Out. I just don't know what to do with Punk in this scenario).