Matt D

I didn't know you were tight with Norman Smiley.

They never do two things when they think they can get away with one. Having Retribution come out there and stare at Roman from different parts of the arena or some such would have worked too.

Wait, why is This Tuesday in Texas next week? If they really wanted to run two PPVs two weeks in a row, they should have made it Summerslam Part 1 and Part 2

Roll up finish does Drew no favors. If they really wanted to go that route, they should have had Orton roll him up after the missed Claymore (which would remind people of Bayley's win earlier) and then have Drew reverse it for the 3 or something.

The camera work is mind boggling. It's like some sort of rhythm video game where you have to switch every time they come into bodily contact. And you lose points if you miss one. What madness.

All of this is very interesting. I was curious why, after not being mentioned at all in the Bourreau match, they led by calling L'Homme Masque the mirror image of L'Ange Blanc and that clears it up You look at all those cards and lament all that we don't and never have. Now that we know these wrestlers a lot better, the quality is so high up and down.

Piper is a guy who I think footage has smiled upon, actually. We got an over the top great JCP Valentine match. A rare Piper/Brooks vs Adonis/Starr match. A really good Rude dark match. Some of his 77 AJPW run which is fun if nothing else (And occasionally great like the tag with Mullgan). A new 86 Savage match. The super cool Kuwait tag with Orton against Afi and Tonga, plus a bunch of California stuff has become easier to find.

I'm much higher on Bryan's current return than I was on his 2015 return.

Here’s a fun thought: within two years we’ll probable get an interminable Rollins/Cole feud.

Thanks. That's interesting and, even if it doesn't necessarily make sense, does explain the reality of it. Obviously, I immediately want to know the etymology of that and what I found (all I found quickly with English searches) is that in fencing, still, the last hit in a tied match is called "La Belle" too. That's even for English speakers.

Sure, we'll probably be doing this one next week. Around the 3:10-20 mark

Ok, translation time. Couderc will announce a 2/3 falls match something along the lines of "en deux manches un bruit le bel il ya league" What's the "bel" doing in there?

Did they just do a poison-related Ultimate Warrior heart attack angle?

We'll hit it on Friday for NFF for a full review but I think you're underselling it. They really go hard in the first ten minutes and Chene has this way to make sure he bumps himself 30% more than he ought to at times. Davis seems to switch which one is which at times, mind you.

The person to keep forever in NXT was Bayley. With a studio show, you can run a top babyface for a lot longer and she could have carried that brand like its Hogan or Sting for years, especially when you factor in that people would only see her live once or twice a year tops at house shows. She would have meant so much more in NXT than on the main roster.

I wasn't going to bring this up because : 1.) it seemed a little self-serving, especially because it's consistent with at least my view of Shawn over the years. and 2.) During GWE, as I've stated before, one argument for cinematic Shawn was that he had good ideas but not the acting chops to pull them off and that he'd be a better director than an actor in this regard, and that is probably the single most erroneous take I've had in the entire 2010s. But yeah, have at it. There's definitely a throughline between Shawn the wrestler and Shawn the agent.

I had said this back in October. So I'd put a turning point with the 2016 callups (American Alpha/Finn/Bayley especially), but there were other turning points both before and after.

How do we feel about "ciseaux de volée" for a 'rana? I think I caught that in the Teddy Boy vs Aledo match.

If anything draws in 2020, is it real life heat?

I know we have some footage of Strangler Lewis. Are there any matches/footage where we can see how he utilized the headlock and built a match around it?

I feel like CMLL has candidates. Negro Casas had the team with Santo, the Mistico team, and the overachieving team with Shocker (mainly vs Ingobernables) and a million trios matches. Likewise Ultimo Guerrero. Or a guy like Mephisto.

Tell them we're not home.

I'd argue that 2010s WWE Main Roster Tag Wrestling is basically broken anyway, with a majority of matches where 2/3rds of the match is an extended finishing stretch.

Something something Houston Footage.

Literally the only Demolition (Ax + Smash) matches NOT worth watching are the Powers of Pain ones. Every other rivalry either has good matches or something you can learn, with the only other real exceptions things like Bolsheviks (just as short TV squash or two), Orient Express (Supertape match where Demos eat them alive), or Young Stallions (Just not much there). These are all 8 minute nothing matches that usually end in a DDQ or double count out. In general, the real value and worth of Demolition is to see how they vary their in-ring act against different opponents (they wrestle the Twin Towers differently than the Brainbusters; they wrestle the Killer Bees differently than the Hart Foundation) , but there's just nothing doing with the PoP matches.