Matt D

Geez, in the span of about three months in 1980, Portland loses Martel, Piper, Wiskowski, Rip Rogers and the Sheepherders. At this point the faces are basically Jonthan Boyd, Mike Popovich, and Joe Lightfoot, with Dutch Savage "injured" and semi-retired. The army is Rose, a newly debuted Rip Oliver and Cortez the Cuban. And the Popovich thing is about to explode in Portland's face. Are there drawing figures from this era? I'd love to see if Buddy can hold the fort down.

Do we know who's the lead creative voice on NXT now? There's a lot that they really do well like setting up matches for the next week and seeding future feuds.

I'd love to hear Kris' take on the question, then. I've thoroughly enjoyed hearing the background he adds on the lucha podcasts so far and it's been as big help. Likewise, I'd like to hear more from Childs since he raised the question.

My real pie in the sky stuff would be them having Regal go Mr. Wrestling II heel on Bryan for a few months, but obviously we're not getting that.

What I'm hearing from OJ here is that any title match at seems particularly heated or aggressive or intense or anything that's not, you know, Rheingans vs Martel with the world's biggest stakes (and I say that as someone who could appreciate it as much as the next guy and more if the next guy is some of you), is an outlier and exception and not really indicative of most title matches.

and then Edge!

When does Sheamus come back? HE'd be a good heel opponent for Bryan for a few months.

He had a hand in the FCW booking though, right? That's what Naylor was his assistant on, no?

So do title matches just suck then, or what? You're very good at making lucha not nearly as fun, you know. I swear it's some sort of karmic thing getting back at me for my past transgressions.

Does Dusty book NXT or is it the Junior version of the normal WWE writers? I do sort of hope we get the Bryan/Punk Mega-Powers I wanted last year after Mania.

We're burned every single year after the summer story gets us all drawn in. At least we get a ton of really good matches out of things this year and a very unexpected Goldust return.

They could add Heyman to the Authority and toss Ryback at Bryan. It's a shame that the Real Americans aren't built up more.

Alright, what about Bryan then?

What should they do with Show for the next couple of months?

"SHAWN, SHAWN ARE YOU OKAY!" If they were going to do this, they should have done it back during month one and then kept Bryan away from Orton subsequently.

It's like having one of those fake twitter robots on the board. "Buy Crest!"

Alright, I just watched the match again. I wasn't watching it with you guys (I got ran off during the last match, sorry), but this time I picked up on a lot more subtext. I'm still not 100% sure on what I saw, but it felt a lot more like what people have described to me when they describe a title match. It may not be my favorite one on the set so far though, because others have elements that are less "perfect title match" but that call to me more. Here's what I just said at DVDVR:

I just saw the first fall of Lizmark vs Satanico and it sure as hell felt like it mattered there. Also, neither here nor there but Wiskowski has an awesome "body dive" where he just does that jumping sit on the neck that Lizmark does here.

How much 77-83 Santana exists?

What about Undertaker vs Hogan for, let's say, people under 25?

I watched it before the set. It was the very first title match i saw so I'm looking forward to going through it again now that I know a little more. It was also my first Satanico match. I did do a write up of it. Let me find it. http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?show...t&p=5557495 In the exchange that follows, I'm a glorious, reprehensible ass to OJ too.

Isn't another problem with UK workers the nature of the UK wrestling industry? It's tough to prove anyone's a "draw," no? That sort of means everything has to be work and historical significance. You can't make a Ken Patera argument for a lot of these guys, basically.

So far, to me, the hard part isn't necessarily "keeping up," though that's obviously hard. It's keeping up while still making the matwork actually feel like it means something. I feel like the matwork's been good in all of the title matches on the first two discs so far but it's only felt like it mattered on about half of them. That's what I was trying to say.

One thing Will says here is that you can't criticize Super Astro's comedy magic if you're going to criticize Chikara's comedy magic. I kind of feel like you can extrapolate that to some of the spottier stuff on the set or some of the bloodier brawls/cage matches on the last set and maybe some of the stuff here relative to other current indies. I also am with Will that the selling (and thus in a lot of ways the psychology) is stronger in the brawls. If you just explained things to me on paper coming in, I would have thought I'd like the title matches far more than the brawls but it really hasn't been the case. The lucha brawls are really primal and logical. Maybe I'm still not reading the psychology in every title match, but about half of them really do have good storytelling that I can pick up on and the other half feels like it has a lot of matwork done for the sake of matwork, basically. It's cool matwork but I'm not 100% sure I want to just write off some of the "this is just the style in a title match" excuses when about half of them really feel gripping to me.

Maybe how it felt to get the pop he did on the last WWE Europe tour?