Stiva

The lumberjacks all being guys that The Shield fucked up is a neat little bit of continuity.

Rusev vs. Swagger Fuck, I absolutely loved this. I don't think Swagger was particularly great but I thought Rusev was tremendous. The ankle selling was slightly spotty at times but I thought it played into the major spots in the match really well. Rusev's face during that last Cobra Clutch was awesome! A perfect "Jesus Christ, just fucking tap" face. All of Rusev's facial expressions are great, actually. He's becoming one of my favourite guys on the roster. Next, he's got to take the US belt

AJ vs. Paige I actually really enjoyed this and thought it was the best Paige has looked since debuting. Loved the finish but liked the knees on the apron, the hair pulling and the slam on the barricade. At this point though, they need to dispose of this "Frenemies" nonsense and just lean into "These two women fucking hate each other" territory. I wish Paige would also lean fully into her shit-eating persona because she's way better at it.

Oh man, that German announce team looks incredibly uncomfortable on camera. For my 9.99 a month, I should be able to view a special camera just on them.

Ha, the "9.99" chants. People will chant along with anything if you phrase it right.

I was reading something about Swagger possibly going over Rusev and that just seems crazy to me. Rusev is a guy that I would build and build; I wouldn't have his first loss be to Swagger, of all people.

As Clay Davis says, "I'll take any motherfucker's money if he's giving it away" You can't blame a guy for taking a paycheck

Gene calling that dude "Sean Mooney" got a legit laugh out of me. Chalk this up as another WWE online bit that should be on their TV shows.

Arn Anderson vs. Johnny B Badd I was watching Clash 30 this morning on a whim and this match opens that show for the TV Title. Arn is Arn so he's always great but I was definitely struck with how good Badd looked. The story at the start is Arn not being able to get any offense in but all of Badd's stuff looks great; there's a good plancha, an axe handle off the top that really looks good and it's just a real good babyface performance once Arn gets on offense. Especially as he contends with Meng and Col. Parker at ringside who eventually help Arn win the match and keep his title. As said throughout the thread, there's no way you can watch matches like this and not come away thinking that Mero has been underrated throughout the years.

I tend to check in on the Raw threads to see how some people bend over backwards to defend WWE booking this week. The Wrestler of the Day posts are always good fun too.

Totally. I want to relive everything in chronological order

For all I, and everyone else, has complained about the lack of weekly TV content, I know for a fact that if they do a big bulk upload of Nitro, Raw and Hardcore TV to the end of 95, I'll probably put down another 6 month commitment. If they're focusing on that period for uploading old stuff, I hope that when the time comes around, they get Thunder and Smackdown up as they come along in the timeline.

I had actually just gotten back into wrestling in the Spring of 2007 because I really enjoyed the WWE product at the time and me and my friends were having so much fun with it. Then, the Benoit business happened and, to be honest, I had an odd reaction that meant I really jumped in even further to see how WWE reacted, wrestling in general reacted and the internet reacted. It was a fascinating time but for absolutely all the wrong reasons. I actually read Ring of Hell a couple of months ago and it's still a really engrossing read. It has the typical wrestling hang-up of knowing to take what any wrestler (and subsequent source) in the book has to say with a huge grain of salt but it remains a vivid look into the mind of Benoit.

Lance Russell is the man. I know it's kinda cliche to say but his call of the Lawler/Funk Empty Arena angle may be the finest call of all time. How he juggles contempt, sympathy, disbelief and professionalism at the same time is masterful

Yeah, this happens to me once a year or so. A lot of it is due to there being no current promotion offering me something I enjoy but I'll get wind of a series between guys in WWE or an indy card that looks particularly promising and I'll be right in again. I often find, as Matt says, that binge watching something you haven't seen can get you back into things. Around Christmas, right when it looked like the Bryan stuff in WWE was being killed off, I went and watched a ton of old SMW that I had never seen before and all those angles and the general feel of the fed got me remembering why I love pro wrestling in the first place. so, in short, it's normal to get burned out but take a month or so away from it and something, whether it be current or old, will get the juices flowing again.

I've enjoyed all three nights I've watched so far but I've learned to accept that just about everything is going to be overrated. Even the strong matches. I suppose that's just the price you pay when dealing with a super over promotion with invested fans. Everything is going to be nudged up a bit.

That's great. I hope guys have tried to introduce him to different bands over the years. I would love to see Vince's reaction to a CM Punk-made mixtape.

Just stupid. This company is desperately lucky that everything else surrounding the wrestling part is so competent.

Ishii/Kojima was a really good opener but I think it's being overrated in places. I thought Ishii looked great selling Kojima's stuff, some of which I thought looked great (the DDT, especially) and some that fell flat. The crowd being so hot really helped too but i agree with the review that the pacing was just right to never get boring. Benjamin/Fale, I thought was really bad though. Fale's offense fucking sucks beyond belief and, thankfully, the match was short that he didn't run out of it but man, aside from the Vader-style rights and lefts in the corner, nothing works for me. I thought Benjamin was OK but man, I hate his finish and I don't think it worked as a flash finish here. I can't help but think that I'd just prefer TAKA working all his matches ahead of him. Only this far into Day 2 atm but I will say that I enjoyed Day 1 and am currently enjoying this more than I did last years for whatever reason. Maybe it's because I'm a real wrestling binge mood right now but it's ticking the right boxes for me.

Not sure how out of line this but the torrents of the show going around have it.

The Ishii match was OK but I thought Bad Luck Fale looked really bad. There was times where he was on offense and visibly wasn't sure what to do next. It's the opener and is short though so it's quickly forgotten about.

Before I'd opened this thread, I was thinking of Big Show and yeah, he's super fun when you see him live. I saw a Show/Eddie Guerrero main event on a house show and Eddie was also good for this. I was pretty close to the ring but he had all the selling and facials you needed for a bigger arena down perfect and he played to the upper deck just as well as us. I'd say a lot of "giant" workers can fall into this category; for all his faults, Great Khali is also a guy who was super impressive live just because of the aura he gives (or gave) off. Taker's entrance is the perfect example of WWE as a live production and his matches, at least from 2005 or so onward, were always exciting whenever I saw him. I think live wrestling as a rule, tends to be better live on TV, especially when you've got really good workers in there taking you on the ride.

Can't see a thread for the G1 Climax but I really enjoyed Day 1 more than I have recent New Japan in a while. Okada/Styles was excellent with Styles looking better than he has in a while and Honma/Tanahashi was my favourite. I don't enjoy Tanahashi but really enjoyed the meat of this match with the build to Honma hitting the headbutt a lot more than his usual stuff. Favourite spot of the show was Shibata responding to Nakamura's posing by kicking him straight in the face which is A-OK with me. Day 2 doesn't look to have many standouts but Day 1 has made me really excited to watch Styles throughout this tournament. His interference spots were already 100x better than Devitt's shitty ones and I prefer him as a worker anyway.

There was always a lot of Premier League footballers at Raw tapings around 10 or so years ago. They're considerably less famous now though.

Yeah, thank God Lesnar is coming back because the past two months of shows have been dull as dishwater. The Shield breaking up hasn't helped either and between that, Bryan being away and the long trios and tag matches going away, it's been a rough watching these shows live.