Matt D

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.

It's Pro Wrestling, not advanced trig. You know what you're talking about, you can pretty much figure out booking from reading about it. On the other hand, if you are a poster who is a snarky douche who thinks you're funny, then you can watch it all and still have a moronic opinion. Watching it helps, but there isn't exactly a ton of nuance. Someone gets heat on someone else. Who, why, how? It's not rocket science.

"Big match feel" is something that matters less to me than almost any other factor, but it's something I think has always been important to Dave.

You know what would really put this angle over the top? If they brought in Sean Waltman to just stooge in the background of all of Hunter's promos.

I think height is an issue way more than body type. What Bill Dundee accomplished really can't be overstated.

Daniel Bryan could totally be a Mike Graham in Florida sort of guy or a Denny Brown in Crockett sort. I think he could be okay in the Danny Davis role in Memphis (which is sort of like the Bill Dundee role but with smaller crowds).

I think Cena vs Edge from Summerslam 06 is an interesting match because Edge's offense looks way better than usual. I'm not sure if it's the stage or if it's Cena making it look good or what.

Thirty points to NintendoLogic for getting on the Arn Anderson, Super Agent bandwagon.

Flair's stuff looks pretty damn good, usually.

Just the ones on Verne in Bockwinkel in 86-7 or all of them?

To be fair, if you've been watching wrestling all your life, you can pretty much figure out if something's booked well or not by reading the results/comments/catching youtube links. I don't think your opinion is going to wildly change if you saw the whole show. If anything, you'll probably like it less since you just sat through three hours of it. I don't think that's unreasonable for people who have been engrossed in this their entire life. Often times those same people would say that they liked the sound of something if it looks good on paper too. It's a cost/benefit. The chances that someone's opinion will differ is probably pretty minimal from seeing, well, I don't know what? How the pacing of a R-Truth match fifteen minutes before affects the tenor of the youtube clip that they saw? How that commercial break airs out the segment?

Neither here nor there, but one guy who was exceptionally good at making Edge's offense look worthwhile was Cena.

I am. Absolutely. He's one of my favorite guys on the WWF roster in 91-92. His offense looks king-sized compared to most of the roster. He bumps huge, all over the ring. He has the manic energy that Brody wished he had. There's a six minute sprint(yes, sprint) vs Bulldog on youtube. Watch the way he bumps on his missed dropkick, over the rope, off of Bulldog's armdrag, the energy in the opening clubber exchange, the rope running. How good his transition headbutt to the chest looks, his flying tackle, his early big boot, his constant frantic motion between his stomps, with his later punts looking actively good. Even his chinlock makes for a solid visual (though some of that is bulldog's selling, but some is the yanking back and the hus-ing). He keeps stuff pretty interesting too, switching up his offense briskly. Bulldog's comeback is led by Nord taking a huge bump over the top rope, and they work a pretty damn good finishing sequence for a early 90s syndi show. Watch the match.