Matt D

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.

Does anyone know if this audio recording exists? WCW @ Inglewood, CA - Great Western Forum - March 6, 1992 (5,000; 2,000 paid) Broadcast live with play-by-play via Cable Radio Network by Dynamite D Richard Morton pinned Johnny B. Badd with a roll up at the 10-minute mark Marcus Alexander Bagwell pinned Terrence Taylor with an inside cradle at the 10-minute mark Abdullah the Butcher defeated Cactus Jack via count-out Mr. Hughes & Vinnie Vegas defeated Ron Simmons & Big Josh when Vegas pinned Josh after Harley Race interfered Barry Windham pinned Larry Zbyzsko in a Death Match at the 3-minute mark Dustin Rhodes, Rick & Scott Steiner defeated WCW TV Champion Steve Austin, WCW Tag Team Champions Arn Anderson & Bobby Eaton in an elimination match; Rhodes and Austin were both counted out; Scott Steiner was disqualified for throwing Anderson over the top rope; Rick pinned Eaton with a powerslam; Rick pinned Anderson with a clothesline WCW US Champion Rick Rude pinned WCW World Champion Sting in a non-title steel cage match at the 12-minute mark after hitting Sting with Paul E. Dangerously's phone

I don't have a great sense of Virus in the last few years. More of the same really. He's had more indy maestros matches as he's treated a bit more like an old guy. No title run, which is a shame. That means no CMLL singles matches basically. What major footage dumps have we gotten over the last few years? We had the last year of the Houston footage, right? The Japanese handhelds and some 77-83 or so TV we didn't have before. WWE Hidden Gems. German footage 80s-90s. French footage obviously. Some lucha.

All of those first matches back for Bryan were fascinating, just in the decisions of what he kept and what he got rid of, etc. I imagine there's some value in overachieving during the no-crowds era too.

At least they give proper credit to Martin and Kai.

There's some good Loss and Dylan stuff here on Toyota: