Stiva

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.

Lots of jabs at people complaining about things on Twitter. I guess HHH promos about social media are the new "Vince promos about politics"

Hahaha, the only match people want to see postponed! Maybe Ambrose costs Rollins a MITB cash-in later on?

I love when you can tell Lawler is being genuine when completely losing his shit.

I love when you can tell Lawler is being genuine when completely losing his shit.

I guess Cesaro wins the battle royal and there's a Sheamus/Cesaro match to unify the two belts? Who the hell knows though?

Yeah, as someone that budgets from month to month, the network's pricing structure is just right. Maybe the option to pay all up front will come along in the future but I think we all have to remember that we're still in the teething stages of this thing. That doesn't excuse their reported awful customer service though.

Fuck, I just watched that show and I think you're selling it short. That battle royal was as if you gave someone the instruction to make everyone look as shitty as possible. It shouldn't be difficult to make crazy, athletic offense get over but TNA succeed at it all the time.

I'd like to hear someone go to bat for Hardcore Holly as an underrated guy. I'm not going to sit here and say he could have been a top guy or anything but from The Big Shot onwards, he was always, at least, entertaining and by the time, WWECW rolled around, he had perfected the WWE TV style to the point where you knew you were going to get something fun from him. He was a great foil to Crash, had a fun little run opposite Lesnar (though the outcome was never in doubt, of course) and wasn't afraid to lay it in.

I dug Hollywood Miz' entrance attire but the term 'Money-Maker' has lost all meaning

Ambrose's wifebeater and jeans look is absolutely perfect.

One that always stands out for me for whatever reason is an Ace Steel blade-job in the undercard of an ROH show. Collyer hits him with a chair and I don't know if Ace cut too deep or he cut in the wrong place but it's pretty sickening. Like the Gowen one, his face is just lying in a pool of blood.

This is the most ill informed post I've read on here. It's actually not. Look at amateur wrestling as an example. We've pulled resources and money away from our amateur program for years now, to the point where it's now one of the least funded programs out there. Yet, because of the size of the nation and the talent pool that naturally produces America is still able to produce world class amateur wrestlers who can compete with anyone and win on the big stage. And again, I'm not even putting forth my own opinion, but the opinion put forth by analysts, which basically means it can't be ill informed as I'm speaking about something they've informed me on. Either way, I'm not a huge football fan, probably won't even watch one World Cup game, so it's doesn't matter to me in the end whether the analysts were right, wrong, or completely crazy. Yeah, dude, the major mistake here is trusting football analysts. They're constantly the most ill-informed, knee-jerking people paid to talk about sport. The US throwing money at a sport doesn't stop other nations from producing the players and coaching methods they have for decades now. If talent pool was an issue, The Soviet Union would have won the World Cup. Instead, the last World Cup final was Spain vs. Holland who have a combined population of around 60 million. I don't doubt the US COULD put together a pretty great international set-up but it involves an insanely well-structured system that involves extensive youth coaching, the quality of your national league, the number of coaches produced and their methods. Throwing money at something isn't the answer in a sport where the biggest leagues in Europe already have more money than you can possibly spend.