Matt D

You want to cause yourself pain? Watch some Bolsheviks/Young Stallions matches. Or Nikolai vs Zhukov. Actually, the latter ones are really interesting if only to see how astoundingly over Volkoff was in the summer of 90. He was the #3 WWF Babyface for a while. Also, Middling Demoliton Squash: http://board.deathvalleydriver.com/index.p...663&st=120#

Where does Koko fall?

WCW's Tag Division in 1995 is actually amazing. The really fun stuff was just relegated to the C shows. Lightning Express, Studd Stable, Bagwell/Patriot, Pillman/Badd, Blue Bloods. Armstrongs. http://board.deathvalleydriver.com/index.php?showtopic=54696 actually, go there. I want someone to get use out of that.

Buck, Dick Slater (I like Slater more than Buck but that's just a personal preference) and Austin are definitely up there (and on a slightly lower level would probably be Tim Horner of all people). Austin was AMAZING even in jobber matches that year. If you haven't seen much of his syndi stuff from the end of the Stunning Steve run, let me know and I'll try to find a match or two.

Double Post. Sorry

Really good two match series with Cactus Jack in early 93. And I think a pretty good two match series with Dustin around that time too. Also, they're in my absolute favorite Lethal Lottery match, Rude/Shanghai vs Tex/Bagwell. re: Rip Oliver. I was trying to explain on DVDVR why I'm a little soured on Portland right now after watching a whole lot of Portland TV all at once and I got some nasty looks I think. I think it'd be different if I could just hop between Buddy Rose matches. Holy god yes. Wrestling is all about doing the right thing well at the right time to tell a story. Except for, you know, if you don't think wrestling is about that at all, which is absolutely fine, but makes for some tricky attempts at conversation since we're going from very different starting points. I know you say it's not about workrate, but then you mention moveset. You can have a match between two guys just doing crappy punches and it can be good so long as the punches are done at the right time and sold the right way and the narrative pulls together around it.

Him talking about getting the Stalker gimmick and summarily blowing it is pretty interesting too.

I am haphazardly throwing terms around, I freely admit, but he mentioned the cadaver bits not setting in correctly repeatedly.

He has some problems with the timelines in the shoot, but what I worked it out to is that he gets injured right around the title switch, has a ghastly knee replacement surgery (he keeps talking about cadaver ligaments or something), and then it doesn't take and at Slamboree 94, within a few minutes of the match starts, it just "disintegrates" and he and Flair have to scramble to work the rest of the match.

Barry had a definite formula on TV in late winter-early summer 93. He was doing the same match every week from right before when he got the NWA Belt to well into his run. It's really interesting if you watch those matches back to back. And It's not a bizarro mystery, John. He cleared it up in his shoot. His knee literally decomposed completely in the midst of that Flair match, just a few minutes in. The replacement didn't take and it had decayed within his knee and poof, once he put pressure on it, it went again.

The weirdest thing, to me, is that when Hennig comes back later in the year, they pretend this stuff never happened.

Mine is easily Rude winning the US Belt off of Sting and Bobby Eaton trying to delay the ambulance and all that.

Bulldog's last WWE match vs Eddy was really quite good though. Track it down. Also, Re: Windham. You have to keep in mind he had his knee totally reconstructed in 93 and then when he came back in 94, it literally decomposed and fell apart in his first match back with Flair.

Herc is awesome in 91. He's got a string of good PTW matches and the best Inverted Atomic Drop in wrestling history that year. And honestly, that survivor series team is pretty good. Steve Mfing Keirn who had the craziest moveset in the WWF in 1991, John Nord, who had probably the best looking offense in the WWF in 1991, and Herc who really did have a good year in 91 (I suggest checking out the bossman matches). 3 out of 4 isn't bad.

I love Darsow taking credit for the Goldberg gimmick.

Now the Jerry Flynn match, on the other hand, holds up!

I kinda like the japanese themed Rude one, but the best part of these in general was Ric talking about arn's proclivities.

There isn't a wrestling fan in the States that doesn't, at least a little, want to be involved in what's going on. Past a heel specifically taunting members of the crowd or a babyface asking the crowd if they want "one more" of a move, I don't think there's anything that involves them so directly as the ten-count punches in the corner.

The heel winning at Wrestlemania was a big deal. It just didn't happen.

Goldberg vs Jerry Flynn from the 3/26/98 Thunder is the best Goldberg squash.

Larry Z used to make bets while announcing on how many clotheslines he'd see in a match.

To give Hunter fair credit, were I to give him a second moment, it would be the reaction he got on Raw that night when he came back from that injury. And number 3 would be that promo in the ring with Cena where he just demolished him.

I feel like 2000 is the moment since it's the first time a Heel came out of wrestlemania on top and no one was expecting it.

Having read those issues recently, some of that to me seems that he was just busy with his life and some of it was obvious frustration over what he felt to be the WWF's manipulation of the media and its sort of self-actualizing myth. If you read the late 84 stuff, he was predicting that the WWF surge was going to ultimately be a failure, that the steam was running out and that they were getting over extended, that the power of Hulkamania had a relatively short shelf-life. And then they turn the corner into 85 and right into Rock'n'Wrestling, with a whole new breed of fan entering into things that couldn't have been more divergent in tastes and desires than Dave and his reader-base. Moreover, this new breed of fan was going to not only allow WWF to thrive by presenting a product diametrically opposed to what he liked, but it was also going to define wrestling in the rest of the country. From the feel that I get from the text, I think it was that frustration that really pushed him over the edge. For a little bit it looked to him (maybe overly optimistic) as if the WWF style was just a little surge that appealed to certain traditional elements of the fanbase for a little bit, but that it would cycle back around to what he he felt was proper. But then as things progressed, it became so successful that it changed the fanbase itself and in doing so, ensured its own survival for YEARS. In 85 it became strictly evident that McMahon's take on wrestling was not going away anytime soon.

I love Windham in 93 because he had this real presence as champion but his TV matches once he gets the belt (outside of this one, if I remember correctly) start to fall into a real formula. Which isn't bad but it does make them a little more slight than they could be. I don't think it's my favorite Face Regal match in 93 though. That would be vs Barbarian from the TV title tournament, which is more of a novelty, I suppose, but it's a lot of fun.