Matt D

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.

Babyface control? See the heel control segment has some obvious functions and its rationale is pretty clear: - generate heat for the heel - generate sympathy for the babyface - build the crowd to the point where they are ready to pop big for the comeback For a babyface control segment there is no such obvious function. The only one I can think of is: - kill time What else is a babyface control segment in the middle of a match really doing? Not a whole lot. You see it more as a version of extended shine which basically gets over the idea that the heel is formidable and has to be grounded for if he gets up, it's all but over for the babyface. The best recent version of this I saw was Race vs Martel from Portland and I wouldn't even call that all that good. On the other hand, there's a Rogs/Demolition match where it sort of raises the tension for when Demolition might get their hands on the babyfaces again.

I recommend them if you want to fall asleep.

"Control" exists but it's not always compelling.

Or it's a good indicator of what to expect. It's like a relationship. If trust is broken, it can be earned back. It's just not easy and takes time. But it's wrestling. An entertainment that constantly changes. Nickel back may do a good song and McDonalds may make a good sandwhich. You never know, and taking pre emptive strikes on anything is again, highly illogical. You keep using that word.... One uses logic to derive patterns from preexisting information in order to make decisions in life when it comes how to spend your time, money, etc. That's how we interface and understand the world around us. Moreover, it's insane to continue to do the same thing and somehow expect different results. I always try to explain why i like or don't like something though! I spend lots of time doing that. I'm generally consistent too. Sometimes we like things for the same reasons, I think. Sometimes we like or dislike them for different reasons. That's a testament to Buddy, by the way. If there's something we find common ground on, whether it's Buddy or Bock or what, it has to be pretty damn good.

You can take pre-existing information and extrapolate possibilities. I think you may actually use logic to do it. Sometimes you might even go "hey, this sounds great. I want to see it."

It's like anything else. You have to admit and understand your bias and then use that as a gauge to how far you want to go with things. The more you know about a topic the more confident you might be in arguing the point. At the same time, you have to be wary about the fact that you might be wrong. Everyone on this board is capable of having a pretty legitimate opinion from reading spoilers, I think. I can go "Hey, Will, do you think that Smackdown is going to be good based on the spoilers and how the shows have been over the last few months?" and I would respect his opinion. I could also ask. "So based on your years of watching wrestling, what do you think about that booking decision in the main event," and again, I'd be interested in what he would have to say. Would I take it as gospel? No, but I also wouldn't if he had seen it. We're not arguing truth about this stuff. A booking decision can't be objectively good (unless, I guess, it draws? and even then). It's all opinion and I'm going to factor in what I know about the person and some of that is whether or not they've actually seen it or not. I also factor in that Johnny has been positive about every single thing over the last 9 months. Some of that i'm sure is to combat people have been negative about every single thing over the last nine months. It doesn't mean I discount him or accept him out of hand, but I keep it in mind.

Boo. I love Stan Stasiak with the right opponent.* *Buddy Rose.