Matt D

There's never really been a Paul Lynde-based heel, has there? The Hooded Claw would have been a perfect Chikara character, but I think a Lynde-styled manager would have gotten tons of heat in certain parts of the country during the territory days.

It is a bit funny how Arn's super-agent powers only ever seem to make Cena's matches awesome, and everyone else either doesn't need his help or are beyond helping. Well, to me, and I don't know how Dave frames it, it's like Patterson. Patterson received a lot of credit for, let's say, Hogan vs Warrior at WM VI. Obviously Hogan knew a lot about how a match should be framed by 1990, but Patterson still gets and probably deserves, a decent amount of the credit. It's a pretty well known theory(fact?) that for a number of years Anderson has been Cena's personal go-to Agent. We're not sure who else he works with heavily except for Punk, so I tend to give him some credit for both of their matches. I don't know how much to give him so I say "some." I could be wrong but I don't think Patterson was spending a lot of time laying out matches for mid-carders. The only example I know off the top of my head was a throw away tag match with the prime time players on TV which (per rumors) got Dustin fired due to a botched double powerbomb type move. There is this: The difference between me and someone like Dave is that I give Cena a ton of credit for what he does by way of execution (selling, timing, presence, effectively using his power, crowd interaction, and effective nuance, etc). When it comes to the match layouts/calling them, I don't know. Why did something like Cena vs Rock or even Cena vs Bryan which were considered to be "video game matches" by some, look so different than a lot of his other PPV matches of the last year or two? These are things I'm not sure we can get an answer for but I like to keep them in mind because they're interesting to me.

Johnny's Stu impression is awesome and the Patterson one's pretty great too but I'm not a fan of the Vince one.

Tyson would have killed him and eaten his liver. I kind of want to see late 80s Tully vs Tyson. Would Tully be able to use ref distractions to cheat?

One exception would be the Buck Zumhofe-Bobby Heenan series from the AWA in the early 80's. They had Bobby dominate the offense in several of their matches, with a stip that if Heenan couldn't beat Zumhofe in ten minutes he would get stuffed in a weasel suit. The gimmick that they sold (and, to their credit, consistently throughout the existence of the belt, the "didn't make weight" stip made many bouts non-title over the years to set up "at weight" rematches) was that Heenan weighed so much more than Zumhofe that it would make a significant difference in who would get the advantage in the bout. And, they booked it that way, with Buck being on the defensive against Heenan in their bouts, with Heenan throwing the kitchen sink at Buck trying to get the pin and avoid the Weasel suit. Heenan could actually wrestle so him showing off an offense was ok. He was a very credible wrestler. With most Managers this would not have worked at all. I agree with your initial assessment overall, Heenan-Buck is just an example of how an exception to the concept can actually work ok. How did they work the Pringle vs Von Erich matches?

It starts with Survivor Series 94 when he's the only Hart eliminated. He was eliminated after crashing into Bret who had his bell rung and was walking around the apron. He comes back out at the end of the match but refuses to celebrate with them. There are a couple of weeks of frustrated Owen promos after that until they have Bret make an announcement that he's going to end his singles career and focus on a tag wrestler with Owen for the rest of his career. In order to bring the family back together, he's going to rededicate so that he and Owen can win the tag titles. They have these promos where Bret says something then Owen butts in front of him and says that he's going to carry Bret to the championship and now that they're together Owen will lead the way and nothing will stop them. Bret looks kind of bemused but tolerant in the background. The best one of these is after Marty and 1-2-3 Kid win the titles on Raw when Owen is passive aggressive and pissy that their title shot vs the Quebecers at the Rumble is no longer a title shot while Bret is congratulatory. Owen, at this time, is handing out the pink shades like Bret, etc. It comes to a head at the Rumble where Bret's leg gets hurt and when he starts to come back he goes after the Quebecers instead of tagging in. Eventually the ref stops the match and Owen destroys the leg post match. All in all, it's a well done angle. The biggest problem is that they lost Lawler right before Survivor Series and given his animosity with Bret he would have gotten the angle over better than anyone. They lose Heenan right after Survivor Series too so you have Stan Lane and Johnny Polo and Bruce Pritchard (and for one Raw, Cornette) trying to sell the heel side of things behind the booth and it just doesn't work as well as it would if Lawler was there.

Parv, Go watch the match again. In the meantime: http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?showtopic=15575 My comments are the last post. Charles' are the first. they make for a good bookend if you don't want to watch the match. Isn't the yearbook section great?

There's a pretty fun Mid-Atlantic match on youtube vs the Masked Superstar which isn't a lot of action but the crowd is so hot for it that every time the two guys touch they go nuts.

Vulnerable heel champ matches where the face isn't taking the title.

I probably need to cool it on the "Arn Anderson, super-agent" thing.

I should go back to archive.org and find that write-up. Can't have it lost from (to?) the annals of time. For Will's sake, I will not discuss that match again until we see how it ranks.

I rewatched the 6-person tag with Despina and Sherri since I know people had that high. I like everything but the FIP on Michaels, which is well worked but doesn't have the involvement of Sherri at all. It's weird since she's all over both the transition in the corner and the second FIP leading to both hope spots and the eventual hot tag in a really big moment. It's not a match killer but it took me out of it enough that it's going to be just under my top third I think,

Everything I've read from Dave makes me thinks that he feels like Edge, Angle, and Michaels are both better workers and better big match workers. Everything. The things that Cena does well aren't the things that he values the most.

Was he talking in terms of a box office draw or atmosphere though? I'd certainly say I've looked forward o Angle / Michaels matches far more than Cena's - and those two more regularly delivered the goods in the ring as well. Depends on your definition of goods. There's a whole note about Cena. Go find it and read it. http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?showtopic=20910 Here, then at least you can start a discussion with us from the same starting point since we already got this far with it.

At the very least, there's a lot going on right now. There's a sense that things "matter" in a way that I'm not sure I've seen in a couple of years at least and they've kept it going for a relatively lengthy time. More than that, it almost seems like they have a plan. These are all good things.

I tried googling that book and couldn't find it, btw.

Not saving Miz IS the right thing to do.

Islanders is the missing turned WWF team. Someday I will watch a bunch of their matches since they apparently hold up. As for obscure, great Bret matches in the early 90s, the place to look isn't the CVs but the MSG/Boston garden shows. I have a lot of fun living in the opportunity world where Barry is the best ever.

My initial guess is that it will be like the Wahoo vs Bock match to me. High on the intensity, relatively weak on the micro building the macro. Bloody. Top third but nothing I am very excited about. But it was the first thing I saw so I might feel very different on a rewatch. I like brawls more than title mtaches so far. I am still a week or two out from buying the set.

I'm 40 mins in and it'll be a spotty journey the rest of the way. I'm not going to either defend Neidhart or bash the Road Warriors. I'm too lazy and apathetic for the one and for the other there's an "aura" thing which really can't exist for someone who didn't start watching wrestling til 90-91. I do want to talk about the tag teams/crusierweight thing. To me that all comes back to meaningless depth. The reason why tag teams were more highly presented in Crockett was two fold. You can't overlook that Mid-Atlantic was traditionally a tag team on top territory so there were fans (and even announcers like Johnny Weaver) who bled that sort of thing. Past that though, they pushed tag teams on top more or let the tag teams interact with the top guys because they had to. Cards were more fluid. The roster was smaller. WWF would have things far more structured throughout the year while Crockett had cards that looked wildly different two nights in a row. There was a lot more need to shake things up than in the WWF.

I look forward to finding something else to harp upon.

I think the biggest problem is the number of PPVs and especially the fact that Hell in a Cell is upcoming. That said the build to Night of Champions wasn't exactly well balanced and overly smart.

The flip side is that if Bryan had the belt, he would have a legitimate claim to being the face of the WWE. It wasn't just that Orton was their handpicked champion, it was that Bryan DID NOT have the title, because that would be "bad for business."

Yes, well, I don't quite understand why he has the belt now. And I absolutely think he should have a No Way Out sort of cage match with HHH to get into the Rumble or something. I've said that before. I think the end goal has to be winning the belt in a meaningful way though.

It's not just having the belt. It's having the belt in this specific angle where the idea presented in the storyline is that Orton is the face of the WWE since he has the belt.