Matt D

Are Masters and Gallows in TNA? I can't keep track anymore.

I hate the Heavenly Bodies move where they assist a ddt with a clothesline.

Like when they signed Smothers and Tony Anthony. Except for, y'know more like signing Tom Brandi.

that they didn't run with it just made Ambrose look desperate and low grade

And again, to me it's not that he does the same thing, but HOW he utilizes the same things.

The Post-Match thing is my least favorite wrestling thing ever maybe

Barbarian's Rope Walk Elbow Drop Miss. He never hits it. Ever.

It's not about if they "Are" going to be worked the same way but if they were. And the answer is that I have to watch them again and compare and contrast. And I'm totally game on doing this sometime in the next 3-4 months, Absolutely. On paper, they shouldn't be, so it'll be really telling what a tight look at them next to each other reveals.

I actually always dug the Claw > Punch. The punch was sort of silly but he immobilized the opponent temporarily with the Claw. Kerry had a way of making it look like magic.

We obviously used time travel there.

I think this is a great exhibition of telling a very specific narrative. I don't think it's a great match.

I think you're wrong. You can have a pattern and it can be incoherent when analyzed. You can do the same stuff and it can be a poor, disjointed narrative. You're still doing the same stuff. You're still telling the same narrative. It's just not a very good, complete one. I'd point to Bockwinkel as someone who is the opposite. Not only did he work tons of wildly different, compelling matches with different guys but he started almost every match with a game plan, and a lot of the time those game plans would be very different depending on who he was wrestling and where they were in a feud. Did he go back to the King of the Mountain segments a lot? Sure, but he made it work and make sense within the match in a far more organic way than a lot of Flair's transitions and control segments. I'm perfectly fine with someone doing the same things. But you're not the greatest of all time unless you do the same things in different ways. That's where I think Flair is lacking compared to Bockwinkel or even Bret, who while he has other flaws that knock him out of contention, was masterful in doing the same things different ways.

I could write a thousand words about How I Learned to Love the 619 pretty easily.

No one else in the history of wrestling faced a greater variety of opponents over such a long period of time and in so many places and did the same three matches over and over again. I'm partially kidding, but only partially. It's an argument.

Honestly? What hurt me the most with Flair was A) more and more matches being easily available and his shoot. It was very much a pull back of the curtain and it opened my eyes to negative elements of his wrestling that I had been glossing over. I can't "unsee" them now, if that makes any sense.

I was thinking about Mike Shaw's perils of showing up when he did in 93 (I know. The things I think about). Earthquake was on his way out, yes, and Typhoon soon after, but the roster had Yokozuna, Bam Bam, Kamala, Hughes, with Mabel about to come in. What the heck COULD they do with him but something like Booger. It made me think of the diversity of the roster, mainly, and the complaints over the last five years that WWE had a huge deficit in that area. This made me wonder: have we finally hit the point where people can no longer reasonably complain about the WWE roster being full of guys who all look the same?

Moving back on subject, yes, I really love the DDP has come into money skits, with my favorite being the one on the golf course with Kimberly dragging the clubs as Page and Maxx chum around. I think you're going to hit that soon. It's funny.

I don't even like Kane! It's just that everyone else uses hyberbole and some of you even mean it! Everytime someone goes "Kane's never had a good match," I'll point to that. Demolition I will defend in the specific way I always do. Anyway I'm best typecast as a poor man's structural extremist version of Dylan.

My advice is not to cite anyone, ever as a match rating authority. In this day and age the access is there. Watch the matches and give thoughts yourself. I think Matt's point was more to point to quality matches that Lawler had in WWF though I don't want to speak for him. I mainly wanted to point out that there are quality matches and ones that aren't necessarily as well remembered/watched as his TV/PPV efforts because they were on fanshot house shows, but that they are important to include. One thing I've learned from watching a lot of WWF in the 80s/early 90s is that it's the MSG/Boston/Copps/Philly shows where you really learn the most.

Last time I saw Summerslam 90, this was the best match on the card. Definitely the smartest put together. It's been a little while but that really surprised me at the time a year or two ago

I just watched 8/13/93 MSG in context (Both all the tv of the time and yeah I just saw a Smoking Guns vs Headshrinkers match before it which wasn't great, I can assure you, but 123 Kid Vs Doink was at least a lot of fun once it got going) and the wrestling is actually really good. Lawler is masterful and there's only one chain bs spot out of 3-4 that bugs me. That Danny Davis is such a hawk on him makes it better than the last hyper chain match I saw (the unification vs KVE). I think it was very, very functional in helping to get Lawler over in front of the core audience and he is masterful how he works the crowd. Macho has a pretty heated comeback and the cut off towards the end is very good and builds on the match up until then. The Hart intervention that ends it completely fits what's going on at the time and the tension between Hart and Macho at the end is both well executed and one of those "not on tv" moments you pay to go to house shows to see. That said, while it's a super functional match and probably the RIGHT match in that it makes Lawler look really good because Macho gets cut off so thoroughly and Hart's the one who gets his hands on Lawler for the finish, I don't think I'd call it a great match. It needed just a little more meat in the ending sequence. I totally see why it didn't get it though and in some ways, in context, it's all the more impressive (and Savage more giving) for it.

I've been saying forever that Ambrose would be on the path to being one of the most promising guys in ages if he just toned it down by 15%

Vic is his own beast and he doesn't say something unless he means it. For me, the matches of Demolitions I think are great are matches I think are great. There is a handful of them. For the most part, though, I think that what they do that is exceptional isn't necessarily caught in the "great match" paradigm but in examining comparative trends over the breadth of their work. And I don't claim otherwise. As for Kane, whenever he comes up it's because someone says he's never had a good match and then people go and counter THAT specific argument. The best I'll argue is that Kane vs Chavo from Backlash is "really good and borderline great." Watch it and tell me if I'm wrong. I think that's a fair assessment, at least with my criteria. Honestly, John, when you say stuff like that, all it makes me think is that you really aren't familiar with the actual arguments being made and discussions taking place.

I don't always agree with him but I think if he says something's great, it's at least arguably great to me. There's an argument. Phil, who is a guy whose opinion about wrestling I respect, made it. Even so, I didn't sneak in the word arguably in my initial post for fun.