Matt D

There's an alternate reality where Windham is in the Zeus role in 89.

Every pro hates him for being a shitty payoff guy so no one in the business has anything good to say about him?

And since we're in touch with each other, someone whose opinion he would have trusted would have said "Hey! You should check this out!" and he would have. So he might have missed the ground floor but not anything else. Far less grief than if he had been tuned in the whole time and it was horrible.

I would probably listen to the opinion of almost anyone here, whether they've seen whatever it is or not if I think they've educated. I'm not saying i'd agree with that opinion. I will say, however, that I'd probably be more interested in what most people here have to say after reading the Smackdown spoilers than I do at what Johnny has to say after WATCHING smackdown because he's been so absurdly positive at everything this year that I don't need to read what he has to say in order to know what he's going to say.

Ken Patera deserves extra points for his role getting Flair into the business

Now you need to act as middleman so Will and his wrestling conglomerate can purchase all of this footage from Color Vision.

I can't imagine they'd put Goldust over the champ in this setting. Maybe if BD costs Orton the match it'd be good.

Buddy vs Butch Miller - Lumberjack Match - June 21, 1980 So the new army is Rose, Rogers, and Wiskowski, which is as good as a stable gets. Same crew that was there for the battle royal is there, basically. Buddy still has the hair mask. Miller's early offense is a bunch of shots up and down. The ones to the gut Rose sells huge. I feel like Miller had some of his later mannerisms already a a heel but as a face, they're all there. Buddy can't escape so Butch is all over him with measured blows, stalking around the ring. Rose finally makes it out but he ends up right by Luke and Roddy and gets rolled back in. Miller goes for the mask and Buddy rakes the eyes and takes over. He's in the corner Flair chopping which I haven't seen him do much before. Fans are chanting for Butch but Buddy sends him out by the heels. The faces come over to stop them but Buddy still is able to kick him right back out. They're using the toss-outs as transitions, as Butch comes back with kicks of his own when he comes back in. Rose rabbits! The faces (And Volkoff, the commie scum!) bring him back. No transition this time as Butch keeps on him. He had a pretty good flying back elbow at this point. He follows up with an elbow drop but misses. Rose rolls him up off the rope wanting to end this but Butch kicks out and drives Buddy's head into the mat for a near-fall (With Roddy knocking his feet off the ropes). Buddy tries to rabbit again but gets dragged back. The crowd is loving this. He comes back in to a Miller slam but reverses a pile driver. Buddy hits a body slam of his own and hits a top rope splash! I like how active the lumberjacks are here. This time Luke tried to stop him but Buddy was too quick. Big spot but just a two count. Rose complains too much and Miller starts on him again with a double turnbuckle treatment. He goes for the mask again but Rip is up on the apron. He throws in a chain but Roddy sees it and tries to stop. He gets nailed but it gives Butch time to take out Rose from behind. and get the win I THINK what happens is that he slams into him and Buddy goes crashing into the corner, head hitting his outstretched hands, including the chain. It's a pretty cool, quick visual moment. Everything breaks down post match with Buddy getting the upperhand on the faces with the chain which leads to Roddy finally getting past his differences and teaming with the Sheepherders in a big moment. Very fun for what it was with an extremely clever finish. EDIT: Context matters. There's a Rip vs Roddy match from earlier that night which is super, just a great under-seven minutes match which has a finish where Buddy threw the chain to rip that made the finish of the later match even better. Piper's promo between the two matches is really good too.

An image for Dustin vs Randy is the first thing on WWE.com right now. If they give it time it could be really good.

Man, Cody having a huge moment at NOC would be pretty amazing. I think the crowd would come unglued for him.

Is there an easy list of who Bastien trained?

Watching the L.A. Park vs Wagner Jr. match now. I like that the first fall wasn't necessarily overkill. Yes it was a lot, but once they got back to the ring, they went right to driving the point home. I think a lot of wrestlers from around the world would have drawn that out more after the power bomb and it was absolutely not necessary. The blood stuff was all twisted, both Wagner wiping it on his own chest and then Park wiping it on his hands and licking it EXACTLY while the ring girl walks out with the segunda caida sign. That was all fairly grindhouse. I think Park had some very varied and interesting ways of just brutally dismantling the hell out of Wagner. I'm not sure I've ever seen the basic idea of "just slam the guy's head into something repeatedly" done so well. The transition was awesome because you're kind of thinking at that point: "what can Wagner do to get back into the match quickly and believably?" And just spearing Park into the chairs was so simple and effective. It was also one of the more believable "Bursts of adrenaline" I've seen when Wagner takes over. Some of that is how he moves around the ring, but I think some of it is just the natural thrill of the possibilities of revenge, if that makes any sense. It's visceral here. It's also a matter of pacing. He's not doing a ton of stuff. He's slamming a chair into his enemy with well-paced shots, the best being the momentum gathering running one. I love the fans with the masks trying to rouse their hero but then it's followed by one of them stooging while Park is about to get nailed with a chair. Weirdly surreal image. All this crowd stuff is a hell of a spectacle and I really like the symmetry with the beating around the arena and the ramp and the mask tearing. Someone like the Mando > Eddie guy could write up some crap about how surreal it is to see Park's mask ripped since it's representative of what's inside of him, so to see it opened up ... something, something. For someone who hasn't seen it before, it just came off as an offputting image. There's this hugely triumphant feel when Wagner's back in the ring and doing the clotheslines. It's like a celebration. Yeah, I really liked those first two falls and especially how they played off each other.And I am perfectly cool with the reset to start the last fall. It fit into the symmetry well and both guys are just reeling from the get go. When Wagner holds up his hands for Park to stop, it's one of those moments where I don't know if I'm seeing something that usually happens in lucha or not. Independently, it's cool, since both wrestlers are channeling the crowd and even after all the hatred, it's believable that there'd be that moment of pause. Granted Wagner uses it to start fighting back from the slaps but I don't think it was just misdirection. It's almost like these two wrestlers have transcended the hatred and reached a higher plateau of existence through trying to kill each other. What makes all of this work is the space between moves. Every little thing is so damn weighty. And then it kind of goes on and loses me a little. I think this is a personal problem I've been having with lucha though. I don't really see the shape of the third fall after the dive. it becomes very much "I hit a big move. You hit a big move." and on paper it's not too different from WWE Main Event ending run style, and in a lot of ways is superior since the pacing is slower and the kickouts aren't so ridiculous but I think because I'm used to something so different, it throws me off a little. It's almost like, because they're moving so slowly, I can see the strings holding the trick up? MAYBE it's not just me though since, from what I can tell, the crowd loses a lot of energy mid way through the third fall. It's still hot, but it was explosive before and instead of escalating, it deflates a little. I do think it really does come back after the leg whip though, mainly because of the "What else can we do?" mannerisms both guys are showing, and it's only increased from there with the ref bump/low blow and the near falls as they head towards the finish. The finish has the real feel of one of those 70s/early 80s interpromotional US Champion vs Champion matches. There's the visual fall but the ultimate win and no one leaves satisfied. Anyway, I thought it lost its way a little in the third fall, but almost because it had raised the emotional stakes SO high at the start of the fall. It's sort of a shitty thing to hold against a match and sort of hard to explain. In total I thought it was great and I'm pretty sure I like brawls way more than title matches, but for my own weird reasons. I didn't meant to write so much about this at all. I'm glad I watched it.

There was definitely a sense that Christian was finally getting elevated though, and I think everyone thought that when he got drafted to Smackdown it'd be his moment to break out.

I also think that many positive uses of go-go-go are for discussing not an entire match but a portion of a match, like a rope running segment during a shine before things settle down.

Someone should do a "armchair booking" note about Flair jumping to WWF in 98.

I love the Go-Gos as much as the next guy but we've entered into Pro Wrestling Not At All land. Though if John wants to write up the Go-Gos break up as a Barber Shop Windowesque heel turn, I'd read it.

Or that match had beautiful choreography but none of it sure meant much of anything?

I like adding a third "Go." There's a Seth Rollins vs Drew Mcyintre match that really bugged me because I was hoping for a lot more and it was just go go go. Rollins has gotten better with this though.

BATTLE ROYAL - June 14, 1980 They moved the anything goes match with Miller and Rose to the Tuesday after the last match and switched the Battle Royal to Saturday which works for us as we get to see it. I am not going to go through this thing like usual. I'll just point out cool things in bullet point format. -One interesting thing about the portland footage I've been watching is that it's really just the top of the card. Sometimes there's the extra match but i rarely have sense of what's going on in the rest of the card. This is 13 men so it's everyone in the area at the time. -Steve Pardee, Roddy Piper, Mike Hennesey, Martel, Ricky Hunter, Tough Tony Borne, Sal Martino, Luke and Butch, Chris F'n Colt! Igor Volkoff, Rose, Rip Rogers -Rose is great from the get go, running in and out of the ring to avoid the Sheepherders. Piper is also great just unloading on everyone. -The crowd is irate for Rose to go in the ring. Battle Royals were huge draws back then and you can feel the excitement here. -Ha! Sandy Barr is just chasing Buddy around ringside trying to cajole him in. Now one of the Sheepherders is chasing after him. -Bonnema says it's a minimum $1500 purse "probably more with side bets" which is such a cool idea that it's a shame it gets brushed over so quickly. -Okay, this is one of the coolest Battle Royal spots of all time. Sal Martino has Rip held and Pardee is about to dropkick him. Buddy comes flying in the ring, disrupts the dropkick out of nowhere allowing Rip to move and Pardee to accidentally dropkick Martino out. Buddy keeps on moving out of the ring. The timing on this is amazing. -Buddy pulls Piper's tights from the outside. Piper comes out. Colt comes out and holds him. Martel comes out to break it up and Buddy rabbits around the ring again. He heads down the aisle but Martino is leaving ringside and threatens him back. Everyone hates poor Buddy. -Piper is going at the Sheepherders (And Pardee) but not Martel. He was really made for 1980 Battle Royals -I get worried that Chris Colt was eliminated, but he's just hiding. Tony Borne goes and it was nice to see him briefly. -Buddy pulls Butch under the ring rope and out but gets reversed into the pole and they brawl on the outside. -Piper and Martel just about have Rip out but Buddy grabs all three of them and pulls the mass of humanity out from the outside. The base villain. -Chris Colt begs off against Hunter(?) for no reason! Go Chris Colt. Oops. He got eliminated. -Buddy goes for the leg of Miller again meaning to drag him out but gets dragged in instead. We're down to Sheepherders, Hunter, Volkoff and Rose. Rose sends Volkoff after Hunter, but he's a scrappy fighter. Rose comes to help and they toss him. -Heels and faces pair off as teams, but Buddy takes a powder letting the Sheepherders toss Volkoff. Fans go NUTS. -A Fan runs in from the crowd with a cane. He starts taking out the security guards, coming REAL close to nailing a female one by accident which is kind of a jarring image. In the melee, one Sheepherder goes out. Buddy sets up the other for a shot and they toss him and that is how Ed Wiskowski returned to Portland. Very fun battle royal with a great stooging performance by Buddy and a really good one by Piper. Post-match the faces run back in and the heels run, with Wiskowski getting in a shoving match with a fan on the way out.

Just curious: does NXT have a chance in hell of winning?

I was hoping it was somehow good luck and he would only act reasonably with his money from now on.

I will be really impressed if they can make it to Mania in one piece. It's just so damn hard with all the TV time they have to fill, even if they didn't have a writing staff mostly pulled from soap operas or whatever and all the egos involved. I think there's a pretty clear line to Mania with a few bumps given the PPV choices (Battleground/Survivor Series/hell in a cell) along the way.

Paul Ellering working a muscleman gimmick is more offputting to me.

I think it should just be Waltman stooging in the background getting X-Pac heat as a hanger-on'er getting the ol' X-Pac heat. For the sake of the angle, however, Billy Gunn might be a better choice since he was loathed by the internet crowd in the early 00s when he was getting pushed over other people.