Matt D

I feel bad doing this as someone (especially someone who generally has a lot of valuable things to say about wrestling) wants to jump on, but I'm pretty sure we've run our course with this iteration of the experiment. We made it six months and a lot of reviews, but attrition is a powerful force. If you guys want to keep throwing matches at each other in this thread, great. If someone else wants to randomly generate the draws for the people that are left and have been active, that's great too. Otherwise, my plans are to let this sit for a while and to come back after Thanksgiving with Secret Santo II on the idea that we get a couple of months out of a refreshed community over the holidays. I'll still hit my last two matches and write them up. It might just be another week or so. Thanks for everyone who participated. I think we all had a lot of fun with this.

I don't think that's true at all. I haven't seen the Harper match from last night yet, just the aftermath, but he's had a slew of fun TV matches so far. Styles, Rusev, the Gauntlet (Big E/Samoa Joe), Benjamin. If you look at the WWE over the last ten years or so, the TV matches have always been the real strength. You have ECW and/or a bunch of other C-show stuff in 2008-2009, the shield six-mans in 2013, maybe Cena's open challenges depending on how you feel about those. How many feuds does WWE actually nail?

Crowd was hugely into it. It's fine for a few week nostalgia act. They'll have a few fun skits, a match at the PPV, and then Jacobs will go back to campaigning and Bryan will move on to the next thing.

DEAN having LA Park at #4 on his GWE list feels justified now.

I haven't seen any turtles this year so I'll go for that, thanks! Been having some technical difficulties but for you I've got some easy, kind of well-known ones that I'd be curious on your thoughts on. You can pick though both are kind of short.

Tonight was an awesome spectacle and I swear I thought the place was going to riot when they were trying to get Rush out.

I'd love to be in the room when Flair was ordering specific colors of tights. Why that shade of blue or green?

I enjoyed the second episode a lot. I'd explain it like this: you don't always get what I think the absolute truth is, but you always get the truth Jerry believes, and because he's so interesting a guy, it's a truth worth hearing. Like, I wouldn't have the heart to tell him that no, Waltman and Marty didn't have a long reign.

Often time the natural break that comes with both falls and longer periods between momentum shifts make them feel a lot shorter than they actually are relative to Japanese matches of similar length. There are very few great lightning matches. (Indy matches can run closer to ~15 sometimes and some are great but you're not getting the real experience). There's like... this and that's it?

Alright, I'm still going to be behind for a few more days. Life's been busy. But I will watch the Santo retirement match and give it a worthy response! smartmark is off. I have some suspicions about where we're going with this (in that the experiment might have been great and gotten us a couple hundred reviews, but it might be petering off for a few months), but I'm happy to see where this week takes us. Randomizer says: jetlag dawho5 Nintendo Logic Grimmas Matt D Headcheese fxnj SirEdger Victator JoeG Headcheese, I will look forward to bitching about your match when you give it to me and I'll try to find you something suitable as well.

I feel kind of bad because I didn't believe him when he kept saying he was dying in the last year.

I have a pretty good handle on pop culture, etc, but is there any other industry where one major company puts on a huge event and there are dozens of parasitical (symbiotic at best) feeder events that pop up around it from other companies? Are there a bunch of sister cons the same weekend of the San Diego Comic Con? Are there a bunch of other football games (not signings or whatever but actual games) around the Superbowl? Another film festival that attaches itself to Cannes without permission?

They got rid of him because creative had nothing for him. They brought him back because creative had something for him.

Ok, rolling the dice tomorrow for everyone.

If so, it is their fault for putting them together so much.

There is a big difference between taking initiative and risks to get over and doing something after asking permission multiple times and being told no.

At least he didn't concuss Bryan on the way out.

Me too. Just ordered it. There's so much for me to learn here. I've seen so many of these matches but lack a lot of context. Looking forward to it.

The idea that you can't get over while only taking 20% of a match is ridiculous though.

It's honestly shocking to me that they're not just having Rousey steamroll everyone. Instead, they're protecting her and everyone else on the roster by portraying her as almost superhuman in one aspect of the game, but actually inexperienced and vulnerable in a lot of others. The commentary was overbearing as always but pointing out the fact she's not used to fighting people twice her size or that she's never taken a powerbomb before really helped things. It's making matches far more compelling than you'd ever expect them to be, because it's not just balanced but it's also telling a story that has rarely been told in these rings at least. Suddenly, a single flying body press means more than twenty dives might in a different match. It even makes some of the physical awkwardness forgivable. I really, really hope that in the eventual Alexa match, they have Alexa cheating left and right and Ronda vulnerable because she's never encountered someone doing that quite in that manner. There are a lot of possibilities if they're willing to really commit in this direction. Also, it's going to go a long way to allow her to be a sympathetic babyface instead of having the crowds turn against her.

One of these days I'll actually see a Rousey match.

I wasn't able to watch, but you guys were all over the place tonight. There goes our hivemind cred.

92 WCW.

Can I make a Nailz joke?