Matt D

I think DK vs Shawn is actually pretty interesting. I actually feel like Shawn is a better tag worker for a completely backwards reason. DK was REALLY good at getting as much offense in a match as he wanted, whether it was to the detriment or benefit of the match. Shawn before his singles run, was not. He couldn't bully people and tended to back down and I think that made his tag matches actually much better, as they weren't so littered with Heel In Peril BS.

Piper: Energy, obviously, but also a sense of outrage. When the heels were doing something really nasty you could sense him frothing, especially with anti-american stuff, and yes, while that was, in part, to put himself over, it carried over and helped the heel get more heat. I really believe that. He also worked in topical issues outside the usual WWF bubble. In 98, it was REALLY dated on promos. In 90-91, however, it stood out and usually in a good way. Ventura used to do it but he was always more hollywood focused. Sometimes he'd also bring an honesty to the proceedings like when he flat out admitted he had no idea what the hell Warrior was doing at Summerslam 90. I don't think he was great at actually calling the action though. Note I haven't seen much of his GA (or was it crockett) Commentary. As for Larry, he was good at the SUPER Big picture stuff. Getting over wrestling as a game of human chess and all that. i feel like he made things more legitimate somehow even if he didn't add a ton to specific matches.

Thoughts on Shane Douglas? Personally I love Johnny Polo with Monsoon but I wouldn't call him GOOD by the terms we're talking about. Just highly entertaining. Actually along similar lines, Matt Striker?I thought at FIRST he added a ton to 2009 ECW. I think he ended up going a little overboard though.

I think our feelings on dusty as an announcer is a great sign that as a community we've all lightened up in the last fifteen years.

I think Hennig did a good job in 92. He was a very good partner for Vince. Piper had pros and cons. How do people feel about Dutch Mantell?

Jake was awesome on that one wcw sn

I wrote that up: http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?show...p;#entry5489506

I could go on for about an hour about how frustrating the build to the Butcher match is. No one wants me to do that though.

To be fair, I'm pretty sure he didn't lose a single match in Europe that year!

Important to note that a lot of traditional big man spots (Which is what you'd use in a Duggan vs big man match generally) were held off because they were saving them for Sting vs Tenta later in the night. It pushed this closer to a brawl and made it ultimately more interesting.

Honestly, I don't think anyone on this board would have a problem with me saying that I'd rather watch 1992 John Tenta than 1992 Shawn Michaels, and if I explained why and gave examples, people would listen. It's a revisionist board, but it's also an EXTREMELY reasonable one most of the times. So long as you explain yourself and listen to what other people have to say, you can argue anything/

There are a FEW singles matches in 91 that made tape. There's the 3/15/91 Kato MSG match (aired 3/26/91 PTW), the 3/17/91 PTW Mr. Perfect Match, the 12/16/91 Flair PTW match, a 1/29/91 Crush match that made a CV release. And of course, the Dibiase match in 90. I swear there was a Roma match too but that could be Jannetty. To me, the most interesting 92 Michaels match is the Snuka one from MSG (1/31/92). Not the best but the most interesting. Everyone should watch that. It's very early in the heel run and VERY late in Snuka's run.

Tito vs Windham is super fun too.

http://board.deathvalleydriver.com/index.p...all&st=1860 Better than HHH!

I can't even imagine having this discussion with someone who doesn't admit how good Dustin was. There wouldn't be enough middle ground to even begin to have a useful discussion. It'd just be frustrating for all parties. Which doesn't mean you don't have a point. It's not what we're doing here, however. I think even the strongest Michaels supporters in this note respect Dustin's abilities and matches.

I want to talk about the build to WM IX at some point, but I was going to do it on Jae's 1993 WWE note on DVDVR (http://board.deathvalleydriver.com/index.php?showtopic=54630). I hadn't seen it before and it really surprised me since I HAD seen the show before and I didn't realize just how deeply some of the undercard was built. But I think i's great how the feud was Heenan using Luger as his replacement Flair.

Honestly, Hennig's initial WWF run is hampered by the fact he's forced to work 1990 Kerry for a huge chunk of it. The Rooster match is good, the Piper match is borderline great, the Hart match IS great, and he's super broken down there. Also, around 90 a lot of the secondary footage (Boston, Toronto, Philly) dries up so there are less matches available than there would be otherwise.

Honestly, 3 more Superstars type matches a week is a good thing

I freaking love heel Rich in memphis while Lawler was out in 80-81. I know the babyface turn is sort of classic, with his mother and all but the heel stuff is just great.

Seriously, Vader got a video game pop. The kids knew him from the game. Sid hasn't been in one of the WWE games.

For some reason it's always striking to me just how quickly they went to the blood in Magnum vs Tully. And also how nice a dress Baby Doll had on.

So baby in fact happened Sunday night, but I did finally watch the Shawn/Bulldog 95 MSG match today. And there were things I liked a lot and things I didn't. Shawn came in with a massive energy and Bulldog fed on it, bumping big and making Shawn's offense look surprisingly great. Sometimes it's too much. He does a bump at the beginning which is just ridiculous. The story of the match was basically one of comebacks and cutoffs. I thought it was pretty well structured. I didn't like the chinlocks though. What I learned by watching a lot of old WWF is that it takes two to chinlock well and while Bulldog shifted the second one a little Shawn basically just laid dead in both. A guy like Flair or Eadie can make a chinlock interesting and there are plenty of guys who can work from under on it and make it look engaging. It's okay to have a chinlock in a match. You don't need crazy submissions/grinding moves unless the match warrants them, but at least look like it's hurting or like you're trying to get out, or if you're doing it, that you're trying to hurt the guy. Maybe he'd have tried harder on them if it was a taped match. Obviously I didn't love the triple kip up. I didn't completely hate it though. It was clever and self-aware. IT fed into the cut-off story of the match. If one kip up is believable, then three are sort of believable. And it didn't lead right to the finish Cornette was great. I've seen very little of him with Bulldog/Owen. Really, in my mind, the biggest difference between pre-and-post comeback Shawn is the match structure shifting to backwork post-comeback, and how the kip up operates. Yes, after he turned face again, he always had athletic superman comebacks, and it's partially problematic given his relative size (and how guys that size are traditionally portrayed in the WWF; context is king), but when they were smart and didn't automatically lead to forearm, bodyslam, elbow, superkick, like they later did, it's not quite as much of a concern. The back work structure is a lot more damning later on. Here, the triple kip up was a little bit clever but I wish they had come up with something ELSE just as clever that didn't involve Shawn shrugging off two pretty killer clotheslines (sometimes his selling actually damns him in trying to tell a story,if that makes any sense). It was engaging and clever but made everything around it resonate less.

Would Christian's 2009 work for this? It wasn't that his work was THAT much better but it was that he had the opportunity to showcase it on a weekly basis.

Barring crazy things like the imminent birth of my daughter, I'll try to watch Shawn vs Bulldog tomorrow.

As has been stated in this thread (or the other one - don't remember which), this paints Michaels in the worst possible light. Michaels, for whatever reason, was generally greater than the sum of his parts. His best quality was putting together entertaining matches - that or athleticism, but I'm aware that you don't put much stock in that. Most wrestlers were better when paired with Michaels, and not just because they were given opportunities to have longer matches or anything like that. I'm trying to think of someone who was worse when wrestling Michaels. Maybe Bulldog or Jannetty - I guess Bret Hart could be here, although it's not like his matches with Michaels were garbage. Anyway, an attribute-by-attribute checklist for Shawn Michaels would probably make him look worse than he was, but I guess that's part of the problem with him. If your strongest point is entertaining a live crowd, and you're not excellent at any of the small underpinning stuff, then you've kind of set a ceiling for yourself. The output probably won't be boring, but it'll be devoid of a lot of what makes people connect emotionally, especially on the second view, third view, and so on. Are those matches ultimately hollow when broken down and analyzed then? (and I'm honestly asking. 96 WWF is a hole of mine, as I fully admit).