Matt D

Ok, more or less caught up. I can't believe they didn't announce the guys on the way out (Did I miss that? I was jumping around). Plus no real surprises in the BR? We had Tatanka and Shaq and whatever else before. No random NXT guys either. I feel like Bray should have had different gear for that. I'm totally with everyone on the Cena reaction shots.

Between dinner, kids, errands to get ready for the week, sickness, etc. I'm probably hours away from syncing up with you guys. 5:00 PM wrestlemania is insane.

Then when they blow Gargano as a face and use him to put over every new heel for 18 months, he can go heel and team with Ciampa against Shane.

I have been trying to give Sabre more of a shot lately since people I trust are high on his recent work and I shouldn't be holding 2011 against 2017-8. WALTER is a once in a generation talent, mixing size and presence, with deep and complex selling. He has Henrys sense of timing and knowledge of when and just how much to give and the riddle of Aja Kong where its just fascinating to watch wrestlers try to figure out how to solve the puzzle of him. I liked this. I thought it was good and at times great. I loved how Sabres first real offense was because WALTER found himself stuck in some chairs. I thought the finishing stretch was excellent. Where I struggled was in the character of Sabre, who came of as a wrestling savant moron, more concerned about being cocky than anything else. He wrestled the entire match as reactive and that clashed with my perception of him. He seemed to have no strategy and when he did lock in a hold, it was due to luck and reflex and he never capitalized. It was as if this was some video game challenge about how many times he could get up from WALTERs stuff and execute his taunt in his face. Again, thats ok and it can be effective in general, but it wasnt what I was expecting or looking for from Sabre and I struggled a little bit accordingly. I also think, that in an absence of strategy, he shouldn't have survived as long as he did. I am ok with wrestlers with different body types surviving against giant odds if the match warrants it, but it was toughness and not skill that kept Sabre in this, and I just didn't but that. Ultimately, I do think it accomplished what they were going for, but what they were going for was more like 4 stars then 5, and that is absolutely okay. I am guessing this was something of a work in progress for Sabre as he transitioned into a heel and WALTER probably wasn't the best opponent for him in the midst of that progress.

That match was everything WWE always wanted with the concept of being "cinematic" just with all of the other shit you and I want out of wrestling too. It's what Michaels hunted for year after year with his big Mania matches but never had the emotional chops to pull off. Everything he was going for in those Taker matches, but actually hit instead of just attempted, and then on top of that, it was full of hate and callbacks and worlds within worlds. There might be better matches, but is there really a better match possible that goes for exactly what WWE wants out of wrestling?

Almas is exceptional at making heavily choreographed sequences seem not just organic but inevitable, like there was almost no other way the dominoes could fall, no matter how contrived the sequence might seem on paper. That might be the single most important skill in 2018 wrestling.

Playing catch up: it's actually been forever since I saw one of those car crash matches. I didn't see War Games. I've missed the last few TLCs. Etc. Since I haven't seen one in a while, I thought this was fairly compelling. I liked the personalities in the match for the most part. Just a strong variety. I thought it was pretty well put together though it would have benefited from losing the segment in the middle with a lot of "one person climbing, another pulls him off." It was definitely most interesting when multiple guys were involved at once. My favorite bit was Dream's elbow drop parade. His selling is so much fun to watch. I liked the build and the payoff to Dain vs Lars. I've never seen an Adam Cole match before, actually, and the finish was definitely a let down.

I came in skeptical of Riddle vs Suzuki but liked it. Very little wasted motion. Real sense of struggle up and down. Eric said that it was everything you wanted from the match up and I'd add that it had next to nothing I didn't want from it, too (which isn't always the case with Riddle).

I watched Fenix vs Pentagon vs Aries. That was fun. I guess Del Rio was supposed to be in it as a tag (which would have been more interesting just because it would have had a bit more structure) but ah well. You can't actually expect him to be places he's booked. That was on youtube. That's about my speed this weekend. There are fancams of Ohno vs Keith lee out there too. People should find those.

He's like a Scooby Doo monster. He can just keep breaking up fights so that they can never name a new champion.

Have they released matches for these guys on the network in the past? I'd love to see some unearthed Hayes at the very least. We just have a handful.

Huh. I mean I feel like Alfred could have gotten a full induction but I'm glad he's in there anyway. I like that list a lot.

Are we sure its not Shane?

I wouldn't be so sure. Heyman was what made the Punk heel turn work as much as anything else.

My personal best possible scenario is pairing him with both Rousey and Asuka and using that to keep them apart for a year.

I fully believe that there are probably easily two dozen 3* matches globally every month right now, even in styles (or with flourishes) I don't personally care for. That may even be low. There's a lot of wrestling.

I think Elias is the favorite at the moment, but since they like to have big dudes win it and this is about the time he was supposed to return from injury, my money is on a Big Cass return for the win. Joe has to be up there too.

Week 14. I thought last week went pretty well across the board. Siredgar is back. I Get that it's Mania week so some people are traveling. As such, it's more important to give your partner a match and if you have to delay watching yours into next week that's ok. I'm under the weather and don't have the spreadsheet in front of me so hopefully at least some people get fresh partners. HeadCheese joeg Nintendo Logic Matt D Jmare007 dawho5 laz siredgar Tim Evans DR Ackerman Richeyedwards jetlag oldbirds shodate WingedEagle rah Sr. Logic, here's a match from the recently unearthed NJPW Handhelds that I thought was pretty great, one of the real gems of that set.

I'd be curious to hear khawk's opinion on the most interesting matches that could realistically be out there from Winnipeg. I looked at the results and there were definitely some things that potentially stood out.

Instead of Sunny and the fake Clinton, they could do Stormy.

The problem is how to do it. You can release episodes of WCCW or Mid-Atlantic. It's a lot harder to release a dump of 1981 Winnipeg arena matches in a way that's consumable to their target audience.

Anyone that's been out back in for this week? Anyone need a week off? I'll spin the wheel/make the deal tomorrow.

We had 6 minutes of this before. Now we have the full ~20. I had seen 82 Andre in NJPW lately so my hopes were probably a bit too high. This is still very good for what it tried to be. It was a perfectly logical story. For the first act, Andre controlled as Bockwinkel tried to make the gloating most of every chance at an advantage only to get overpowered and forced to retreat. The second third came on a fun transition (Bockwinkel getting his knee up on the corner butt ram), and consisted of him working on the back long enough to lock in the dreaded Singapore Sleeper. While I'm sure Bockwinkel's facial expressions were great enough to carry this for the live crowd, and while they did work in and out of it to a degree, sometimes in clever ways, the camera angle didn't give us the most here and this felt like laying around more than it should have. It was obvious Bockwinkel knew what he was working with and both men knew how to make the most of it though. There's almost no one in wrestling that can just wrap one leg around the other and warrant such selling like Andre. So much of what made the Bock vs Martel series (for instance) work was the multiple camera angles that let you in to see the selling on holds. While the VQ is fine here, we didn't have that and the match suffered for it. In the end (your third act, including the post-match), Andre got out, Larry Hennig (special ref) got involved, and after some Heenan Family shenanigans, the crowd got sent home happy with the babyfaces standing tall. Very good stuff but maybe not great stuff.

I think it's like night and day between ~6 months ago and now. So that's something.