Matt D

Sound the alarm! Will's generalizing and discounting stuff without watching specific matches again! And really, the argument isn't even ABOUT Kane. He's the control in this situation, the constant. The argument is about the other guys in the matches relative to Shawn and how the matches are put together, how well they can work with Kane and how well Kane can work with them. The match that the others are being compared to is a Kane match too! The argument, as best I understand it, is that Shawn vs Kane is a shitty match and a big reason for that is due to decisions Shawn made in his offense and how he decided to work Kane. While the matches were touted as good, that's independent of the prime argument, which is that they're better than a possibly terrible Shawn vs Kane match.

I'm disregarding your opinion completely for just tossing away the backlash 08 match like that. It's great. That you come off like a rude jerk for no reason doesn't help. Seriously read through this note from start to bottom and really take a look at why people are saying what they're saying. It could just be that you look at wrestling differently than a lot of us do. But you're just listing off matches or dismissing them with a few words. Wasn't one of the big arguments in this note that we SHOULD push Shawn with great matches, because if we break him down with things he does well and things he does poorly, it doesn't look nearly as good on paper as if you look at his "great matches?"

He will too.

Tim is a wise man.

Yeah, I was about to say.... Well I'm younger than YOU!

Fans went nuts for him. I always forget Taker, but he was more over than Bulldog. I don't know why. He just was before they gave him the accent. Savage, Warrior, Bret, and Taker, yes. Though Warrior was gone a week before Survivor Series. He had a dark match and again, was super over. Like Sid right before Royal Rumble 92 over. I think kids loved the head vice or something. He was the wrong guy for the Doink feud. I don't feel like going Superstars digging. Can we just trust that he was over enough to surprise me despite logic dictating otherwise?

Uh, considering the weird Vince/Steph dynamic, Chinatown comparisons for the WWE rather creep me out. I think Vic said Finkel and that would have made sense to me.

Do we have younger fans here?

Honestly, Crush was super over for his first couple of months, before they really played up the accent and everything. I think he was the third most over babyface on the roster right before the Perfect turn.

I think either Barry Windham as The Stalker or DDP as A Stalker would count.

So when have you ever got the indication that what you want and what Meltzer wants are the same thing when it comes to this?

It's okay not to like Demolition, but if you don't, and you actually watch some matches, then all I ask is that take a look at WHY I like them and if you're going to engage, engage me on either whether I'm wrong about those points and why, or why you just don't think they matter. The latter is perfectly valid. People have different tastes. But it's not some crazy random thing, me liking them. It's not a whim.

I LOVE Bock's WWF announcing. It's so different than anything else you get.

We could probably break off a note just on what having "Good offense" means. Is it meaningful offense? Is it offense that looks believable? Is it varied offense? Is it innovative offense? Is it offense that the fans respond to?

isn't a lot of the offense issue being able to fill in the gaps and find things to do. In that regard, Steamboat had the opening match arm work and then the karate stuff for his come back. I can't see Arn Anderson going "NOOOO! NOT SHAWN MICHAELS!" but with Steamboat it was believable.

I'm curious (and I know you were sort of fishing for flaws since you generally like his stuff, but humor me). How long do you think a finishing comeback should be in 1996 WWF? From what i saw in 96, the MAIN Shawn Michaels match story was one of cutoff comebacks. And USUALLY, the payoff would be that he'd come up with a distinctive comeback of a few moves before kipping up and starting towards the finish. I think it'd bug me a lot more if all of his matches went forearm > kip up > inverted atomic drop > bodyslam > top rope elbow > SCM. Usually they don't. There's usually at least a twist or two in there somewhere from what I've seen. The only one that sort of ended like that was the house show match. Does it make sense for him to kip up mid match and then have another 6 minutes of back and forth, or another cut off and a second kip up? I'm curious what you'd prefer.

Duggan I could understand, but Bossman had a pretty solid 91-93.

Past MAYBE a Steamboat match or two and some of the underdog matches like Koko and Sam Houston, name me a few matches where the first few minutes of a Flair match actually matter? I'm not arguing that they're not entertaining. I think Flair is awesome at making holds interesting, both applying them and taking them, but he just runs through his shit. Are you arguing that he doesn't do that? As for Shawn, I think he actually rarely does a real superman comeback in what I saw in 96. He definitely changed things up. Oh wait, there was that terribly frustrating 95 Bulldog MSG match where he kips up three times. Anyway, later Shawn, when the entirety of matches are built upon backwork.. well, that's a different story.

Isn't that "Every Flair Match Ever?"

From what I've seen now of 96 Shawn vs Post-Comeback Shawn, the latter is a much huger issue as a lot of his matches are based around the heel working on his damaged back.

Our tastes don't match up anywhere close to perfectly, but I remember the Gunn match as Michaels' worst of the year. Gunn is worse than Helmsley, and Michaels is more interested in Sunny than in the match. The Lawler match is more fun. I know you're mostly doing TV stuff, but the International Incident match seems like the sort of thing you'd be interested in - you get to see which guys are entrusted with certain portions of the match and just how much Sid and Ahmed are allowed to do. That's exactly why I want to see the Gunn match, btw. Well Not because of Sunny, but because it's not against a guy the quality of the others.

I still have one more Michaels match to watch! And I kind of want to see the Billy Gunn one too. Someone break this stuff off to its own note.

I've seen a bunch of matches where it hasn't happened QUITE like that and a bunch where it did, and it's weird to me. Did people make the Hogan comparisons in 96 at all?

Try this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cf66Zlt3P7s and here's the first half of the stern interview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVrluiMq_bs

I've got one more Shawn vs Goldust match (house show) to watch (Thanks Gregor!) but I did watch the 9/6/96 Shawn vs Goldust Raw match and I thought it was actually better than all the other ones I've seen so far. It didn't have the fast action, necessarily, but it was really solid. Goldust was very aggressive in the early going and it was obviously he wanted to win the thing. Dustin's offense was both believable and smart. Exactly what the match called for. Shawn was a bit more active from the bottom; instead of just laying there in a chin lock, he'd kick his feet and what not. You really got the sense that Dustin knew this was for the title, that he had earned the shot, and he wanted to WIN it. I thought for sure the kip up was gong to come after the double clothesline but it didn't, and I would have bought the finish after the elbow-drop as into SCM but they twisted it a bit. I think some of the other matches I've seen so far were flashier, but this was the best. Also, one thing I've noticed that 1996 Shawn is very good at is that when he flubs something (which is about once a match), he's USUALLY pretty good at recovering through sheer athleticism and instincts alone. I know sometimes he doesn't and throws a fit, but I've seen more recoveries than not. and I saw the 8-9-96 house show. I'll say off the bat that the most interesting thing about Shawn in 96 is that he really changes things up. I know I said that before, but here it is again after seeing a few more matches. This didn't look all that much like the other two Goldust matches I saw. Lots of different spots and some unique spots, such as missed kick to the head by Goldust (trying to counter a back body drop set up by Shawn) followed by a missed elbow drop by Shawn. Or the beginning of the match being Goldust reversing a Shawn attempt at a piledriver on the floor. The real meat of the match storywise was Goldust grounding Shawn and hooking in a chinlock. Shawn comes back the first time with the elbows but is cut off with a kneelift to the gut. Comes back the second time in a test of strength sort of way a couple of minutes later, but is powered down, and then the third time actually powers out of the thing and tosses goldust across the ring. It's a solid story if not an entirely compelling one. Goldust's chinlocks are pretty good though Shawn's selling isn't as interesting. The fans pop for each comeback but I think in this case, the blending of a slightly quicker pace and the story being told in the TV match worked better.