Stiva

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.

Sucks about Bourne since I was holding out hope that he'd return and have some great matches with the current crop of guys. I guess Jarrett's talent pool just got a little deeper.

Oh man, Bryan. Just take the time off, dude.

I missed this. I'd love to sit in on one of the meetings where they're discussing shit like this. I bet they last twice as long as the booking meetings do.

If Bryan is pretty banged up, they should keep him off tv and build to a huge return with him winning the Rumble and challenging Lesnar at Mania. Which means we'll probably get the complete opposite of that.

So, I think we can all agree that the post-Mania stuff has been...poor to say the least. It's kind of crazy to me that everything seemed so exciting and full of potential and it's just fizzled out into compete nonsense. The Shield have been split way too early, Bryan can't wrestle, Cesaro has lost all his momentum with Heyman, RVD is still hanging around, Sheamus is getting staler every week as a babyface, it's like they're using everybody incorrectly. Though, I wouldn't be surprised if this Rollins turn is a double swerve and he costs Orton MITB and joins back up with Reigns and Ambrose.

I've really got to pick that up soon. Maybe once England have beaten them in their first group game

Against all my better judgment, I like the proposed idea for MITB as long as it doesn't involve the Shield getting mixed up in another break-up angle. I'd actually like to see Batista win the title ladder match, just for the reaction. He's gonna lean into the heel stuff as much as possible and I think that'd get a perfect response. I'd like to see Lesnar take the belt off him and then Bryan take the belt off him but I don't know who I'd give the MITB case too. A Shield guy is probably the safest bet but I just want those guys to run trios matches from now until the end of the decade.