Stiva

Just reading Alan's blog post now and I got into puro the same way! Can you remember, a few weeks before The Wrestling Channel actually launched, you could dial in a certain frequency through a certain menu in Sky and you'd be able to see them testing the signal and their programming? I remember vividly because it showed two things on a loop: Al Snow's RFVideo Shoot Interview and a NOAH show that had a tag main event with, I think, Kobashi and Marufuji in it. I remember watching that and really enjoying it in my 14 year old smark way of "hating" WWE. As a side note, TWC was such a disappointment for how cool it could have been.

Thanks, this is great. The Mysterio match will be my first port of call since I'm on a real Rey kick atm. RVD vs. Rey Mysterio - WWE VS. ECW Head to Head I now remember how weird a year 2006 was for WWE between the ECW revival, the Rey title run and the period where Ric Flair was working crazy hardcore matches. Anyway, this is the RVD that I do enjoy, which is, him being a gigantic prick, showboating and posing as a heel which I think he does really well. The press slam into a moonsault looks really nasty since his knee comes right down across Rey's face. There's a slight fuck-up where RVD slips on the barricade before a leg-drop and re-does it again, only to quickly get in his little pose which I would normally hate but Rey moves so it's cool. Like I say, this is the RVD that I find entertaining since he fully leans into being an asshole. RVD is now in the crowd but Rey follows up with a springboard dive into the first row which looks so great. We come back from the break with the match still moving fast as they continue the running theme of RVD having the power advantage over Rey when RVD reverses a bulldog attempt and crotches Rey on the ropes. He follows it up by hitting a kick from the top rope that sends Rey crashing to the outside in a nice bump. There's a guillotine leg-drop from RVD that looks really nasty as Rey's selling and bumping remains great, especially when he takes a drop-toe hold straight into the turnbuckle at real speed. RVD grabs a chair and dropkicks it right into Rey's face in a spot that I wish the camera had picked up slightly better but Rey sells it incredibly and RVD follows it up by bowing to the audience. Rey is now in the corner and RVD tries a strange Rolling Thunder attempt whilst holding a steel chair but Rey moves and this time, hits a bulldog from the top straight onto the discarded chair. I'm not sure what RVD was going for there but the bulldog spot was a nice callback. Rey lays RVD onto the chair and goes for the West Coast Pop whilst groggily walking to the ropes in a great little bit but RVD moves and plants the chair into Rey's chest before heading to the top and hitting the Five Star. Strangely, right before impact, Rey throws the chair off of his chest. Maybe that wasn't the planned finish? Well anyway, RVD wins going into the PPV and yeah, that's a really good match. I think Rey is the better of the two in it because it lets Rey sell a lot which is what he's great at but RVD is good here, acting the dick, even selling the knee immediately after the tumble into the crowd. This is well worth a watch for both guys, not just Rey, even though there's that one spot where RVD derails it slightly.

I may have to rewatch his 2006 run since I tend to fall on the side of not liking RVD at all. I will say that I like RVD/Orton from One Night Stand 2007 and think he does a great sell job in that one if anyone hasn't seen it. When I get started on viewing for this (should be soon), I'm going to explore the tag runs of a lot of workers and I'm interested to see how the team with Sabu holds up and even the run with Kane which I remember spawning some fun matches. As far as people who have jumped off high things in the past, I'd definitely put Matt Hardy on the list ahead of him but I'll rewatch his matches, for completion sake.

Weren't they hyping it that someone from Team WWF would turn rather than any surprise new faces showing up? That was Survivor Series later in the year when Angle defected to The Alliance.

I'm not sure it would have ever worked, knowing how WWF, and wrestling in general, tends to struggle with these kind of things but the timing of it has always interested me. I know Taker didn't do great opposite Austin at Backlash/Judgment Day but the build, to Backlash in particular, was terrible and right around May/June was the time they started giving away matches on TV like Austin/HHH vs. Benoit/Jericho and Angle/Benoit in the cage so, yeah, people aren't going to pay for PPVs with underwhelming cards. Would the impact of it be lessened the longer they waited? Did they need to strike when the iron was hot? I always wonder what it would have been like if they had given Austin that heel run through the summer opposite HHH, Angle, Taker, Jericho, even DDP (not as an invader, just a new top guy) and then kicked into the Invasion angle around Survivor Series, with Austin back face, Rocky back, Flair around, maybe even Bischoff in earlier instead of running right off with who they had. Not even a case of Goldberg, nWo, Sting but just a reshuffling of the deck on their own side. To answer some of the questions in the first post, the high-point for me is Austin driving into the arena and cleaning house ahead of Invasion. In fact, I really like that big 10 man at Invasion; it has a massive feel, even with The Dudleys and Rhyno and is front of a hot crowd. Amazingly, the moment it died for me was in the same match when Austin turned on Team WWF. That was it for me, even as an 11 year old and it absolutely started me down the path of not watching wrestling for a year or so when Smackdown pulled me back in with Rey and Eddie doing cool shit.

The Shield's stuff with Bryan and a whole host of others in 6-man tags around summer of last year is tremendous. I'd suggest you just wait for the end of year lists to come out and go through it since 2014 has still been a good in-ring year for them, albeit a poorer one than 2013 due to no Bryan, less time for Cesaro, the Shield break-up etc. The Usos have had a great year though so maybe dip into their title defenses. I honestly think the booking, the presentation etc. is so bad right now, that you'll never get into it watching week to week but it remains a good in-ring company. Maybe watch NXT week to week, that's a world better than the main roster as an actual show.

The problem with Cena/Orton is what the hell do they actually do to make this fresh? They've had a HIAC before, along with just about every gimmick match going and in their match at the Rumble, they finally resorted to the old "hitting your opponents finisher" tactic to try and make the finishing stretch interesting. I can't possibly imagine what they're going to do for this one.

God damn, Vince. I'd love a compendium of Vince stories.

The fact that WWE didn't do Cena/Taker at Mania is a masterclass in leaving money on the table.

so, is Dean Ambrose's transformation into Dennis the Menace complete?

"I don't mind you making fun of me but don't make fun of The Simpsons" "Oh, is that for the guys or the girls?" "You got the jam or not?" I'm rewatching The Hart Foundation stuff atm and god damn does Bret Hart ever save this segment.

I'm interested in looking back on his brief WWE run. It's a real shame he never got to work a main event match opposite Austin (other than their interactions at Invasion) but there could definitely be some fun TV matches on Raw, Smackdown or even the C-shows. I'm not sure he'll make my 100 but I'd like to see some of his matches as he was winding down, just to get a more complete look at him. If we were talking Greatest Finishers of all time...

Yeah, that was a good post from Marvin and I will say that one aspect of this GOAT list that I really like is the potential re-evaluation of guys who you've perhaps never really liked or haven't watched for a while. I would have never even considered Warrior for that kind of re-evaluation, especially with so much other wrestling to watch but fuck it if that post hasn't almost convinced me.

I have listened to 35 seconds of Christopher's album and can confirm it is as every bit as good as any seminal work of music you can think of.

My subscription runs out in 4 days or so and I've decided against renewing, especially after seeing what may become of this in the UK with the apparent Sky wrangling.

PWO 2.0 goes ELO.

I think I'm still in the afterglow of Bryan's run last year to truly evaluate it but I absolutely loved it. I completely understand the criticisms of his formulaic hot-tag but I look at things like the Cena match, the Extreme Rules match with Orton, the Raw gauntlet as a way that he still managed to show his diversity whilst operating under the WWE style. I'd have to go back and re-watch his matches with guys like DiBiase Jr. and The Miz in his early WWE career but for me, his ROH stuff as champ elevates him highly for me as him going out there with a bunch of guys I found completely uninteresting and his performances really getting me into it suggest he has a lot about him. I think he had a tendency to drift into matches that were too long for his own good and the Kamala match is a good example of him working matches that he shouldn't have. I also think that the Homicide cage match ending with that ridiculous airplane spin was a bad idea for a supposed blood feud. Nevertheless, he's a guy that I've seen work real blood feud type matches with the likes of Morishima and I've been completely amazed by his performances in matches like that. I'd agree with whoever said they'd like to see his FIP performances because I've seen none of them and 2005/06 Bryan working in front of a crowd of kids is something that I think could well put him over on a ton of lists.

Taker is a guy that I love. I love the crazy production-heavy entrances, I love the sit-up, I love the chokeslam, the tombstone, I have a soft spot for the first HBK/Taker match because I watched it live and completely lost my mind at it but man, what does Taker actually have match wise to warrant a place on this list? I think 98 WWF is one of his strongest years due to his matches with Foley and Austin but I have no idea how they stand up and I'm assuming not very well. For me, his place on this falls on things like the Batista matches and the latter day Mania matches and I don't think they're good enough to warrant a spot.

I am not factoring TNA into my voting. Staying consistent. His Indy run would put him at about 750. I haven't seen anywhere near enough TNA to vote for the guys who were in there but if AJ's stuff in there is on the level of the Bully Ray Last Man Standing match, then he'd have had a great run there. Somehow.

so, this ballot is due in 2016, right? I actually think that, in that time, Cesaro could be a lock for this list if, and it's a big if, he manages to transcend WWE's god-awful booking. Two years can be a long time in wrestling, especially in a company as impulsive as WWE and I think he has the ability to find himself back over enough to have a good main event run. This isn't the place for speculation so we'll take his career as a whole; my experience with him started with 05/06 ROH and him looking kind of bad in Pure title matches. The ROH/CZW feud allowed him to look better than that but it's a case of me being kind of unfamiliar with his most pimped indy work. Like, he was a guy who was signed, right when I had fell out of love with wrestling and when I tuned back into WWE, he was on the main roster, looking great. So, he's a guy that could definitely be helped by the next couple of years which could see him at the top of WWE's cards and having PPVs main events and also give me the time to check out his indy stuff from 09-11 and man, he might just make it.

Lesnar is a guy I'd really love to place because since his return to WWE, he's been consistently the only guy that makes me perk up and pay attention because the way he builds his matches since his return, HHH aside, have been so interesting and fascinating to watch that he excites me and frustrates me in equal measure. On one hand, those matches with Cena/Taker/Punk are such a spectacle because of the aura he's built up of himself through UFC and it's frustrating because he just GETS pro wrestling on such a level that it would have been amazing had he been around for the last decade. But, then maybe the mystique would be gone? Either way, he doesn't make my list but his past couple of years are absolutely fascinating and he's really the only guy in WWE that has had a must-see feel about him in years.

I haven't jumped in on this yet but I'm going to start with Luger as a guy who I have always enjoyed, even past what people would consider his peak years. Having rewatched those early Nitro episodes recently thanks to the Network, I was instantly struck with Luger as a guy who stands out on those shows. His matches with Savage, the whole program with Sting and everything surrounding that has some really strong performances from him, I think. Moving on from that, I like his NWA/WCW stuff before he jumped to the WWF; that portion of his career I can give or take and I'd really be judging on his time with NWA/WCW and I mean, I have a fuckload of wrestling to watch before submitting a ballot (joshi and 2000s Japan mainly with smatterings of Lucha) but I can actually see Luger sneaking on as a personal preference pick.

PAUL PAUL I CAN'T FEEL MY LEGS Who the hell was supposed to be responsible for that? Or was it just a way to get rid of that segment in the craziest way possible? 2008 WWE was fucking weird, man.

I think the guest host stuff was a definite nadir but at least you had ECW and Smackdown that had interesting things going on and good matches every week. Now, you don't even get many good matches pop up on Raw anymore and the whole feel of the shows has never been more "scripted", for a lack of a better word. And that's saying something for WWE. I also don't watch it live though; I gave up with that a couple of weeks after Mania but the amount of things that I actually watch is shrinking week after week.

Yeah, that's really annoyed me too. Even just getting the Raws up until the end of 95 would have been fine to give people the opportunity to see them both in the early stages.