NMB Wrestling Archive

Ric Flair v Scott McGhee - 04/15/84 - Florida territory Ric Flair v Scott McGhee - 05/04/84 - Florida territory Well, it's nice to know what it would have been like had Flair in his prime gone against 1993 Chris Benoit. Two excellent, fast-paced matches -- McGhee is actually really awesome and seems to be the lost worker of the mid 80s. His style is pretty much exactly like that of Benoit in '93, and it's cool seeing him finish Flair off in the 4/15 match with a German suplex into a bridge, a great spot for any era and especially for the US in 1984. The 4/15 match is a studio match played off as a huge upset with Flair talking about everyone else in the territory exc…

This was a hit at SNKT, so I thought I'd bring it back here. I'll start us out: "Last night, this girl came knocking on my door at midnight. Finally, I let her out." -- Gene Okerlund "Look at us! We've reduced ourselves to wearing overalls!" -- Road Dogg to the Godwinns, RAW 1997 "I look like Vince Neil over here!" -- Kevin Nash at the broadcast booth, Nitro 1996, looking at himself in the monitor "Tony Schiavone! I'm glad to see you back, especially after seeing your front." -- Jim Cornette "You should have the Rock & Roll Express arrested! Last week, they came out here and killed your ratings." -- Jim Cornette "Tommy, try to unders…

JBL vs. Eddie Guerrero - Judgment Day 2004 I finally had a chance to watch this last night. After seeing all of the hoopla that went down when Tim Cooke dissected SK's shitty recap, I had to see the match Tim called the WWE MOTY even if there is absolutely nothing else on the DVD worth watching. The Good - They had a pretty good build-up for this feud even though JBL came out of nowhere to be a contender. More importantly, it set the stage for Eddie to hate JBL's guts and the early portion of the match shows that. With a "hoss" like JBL, you expect him to take control early while Eddie tries to escape. Not so with this match. Eddie attacks early and often …

Eddie Guerrero vs. Kurt Angle, 14/4/05 I just had to re-watch this after talking to someone about it. I had in the past said that it?s the best match between these two (with their match last September coming close) and an easy candidate for WWE Match of the Year. Too my luck I still had fun with it. I like my matches super heated and this match had as much crowd reaction as you?ll ever hear in the current WWE climate. They decided to start the match with Eddie frustrating Angle. Angle tends to run with that a lot and I know he did it with Michaels at Wrestlemania, but in this match it?s got heat and they don?t just use a basic headlock as a means to show Eddie dom…

Steve Austin v The Undertaker from Backlash 2002 This one starts off strangely, at least for these two, with an attempt at actual wrestling. Not sure why they do this, especially when the ‘wrestling’ consists of Undertaker constantly applying a side headlock, and Austin using a hip toss, an armdrag, and then going to a Fujiwara armbar. It doesn’t lead to anything at all, so I can only surmise they did this just to show that they could. It was a nice idea in theory, but it would have been better had it actually built to something. As it is, all it really did was kill time, and these two had plenty to kill seeing as this thing went 27 minutes. Other than some ‘wrestling…

I posted this in Announcements, but no one has replied, so I thought I'd post it here just to make sure people see it. On 1/15, we will launch a new board where NMB will re-direct. It will be restricted to only wrestling folders, as we really feel that's the heart of this place, and the space the other folders are taking up can better be utilized. The board will be starting fresh, except for MMA which will be carried over, but all the NMB wrestling topics will still be available in read-only format. We are also adding a Blogs feature which I know I will be using, and I hope others of you will be as well. This is going to be a board all about the wrestling and nothing…

For those of you who don't know who Rodimer is: Stephanie wants him pushed to the top in January.

From Meltzer today: Nash has been doing quite a few interviews for gay magazines and gay media lately for some reason.

WWE: TNA: Credit for typing it out goes to The Decemberists.

http://noah.puroresufan.com/ This is the best Budokan card they've put together in six months. Finally we have some interesting singles matches in the undercard, instead of a ton of random tags. With Taue vs Hashi and Akiyama vs Shiosaki we get the vet/youngster thing, and with match #8 we get more KENTA/Suzuki interaction, which was the highlight of the last tag they were in.

I regret ever signing up for the F4W board and newsletter and I sort of resent Dangerous A and others saying it's a good investment. There was a thread there recently with some gem comments. Since it's a members only board, I'll copy/paste some of the exchanges. There was a bit of debate over the Michaels/Angle match from RAW and another poster started a thread wanting to know why it was so great. This was Alvarez's response: My response: Alvarez's response: My response: Then, someone says that things like that happen in Ric Flair matches all the time and that no one cares and it hasn't damaged him at all because he's RIC FLAIR. My respons…

For me, it was the Dragon's Gate six-man at Supercard of Honor, closely followed by Danielson vs. McGuinness at Unified. I watched some decent WWE stuff but nothing really came close to MOTY level.

This embarrasses me, and I'm not even the one performing it. As anyone who lives in the South and has ever had someone find out you watch wrestling knows, people around this age still talk about wrestling in these terms to this day, just without the horrible background track. This reminds me of how my grandpa talked about wrestling, er, rasslin'. Of course, there were lots of great things about being a fan in this time frame, but GOD.

This should really be its own thread.

>>1975 >>#1 - Harley Race v Giant Baba (AJPW, 12/09) ****3/4 One of the greatest matches of all time. I don't really know what to say about it beyond that. I think Race is better at putting over Baba as a serious threat than anyone ever was. Some may have had slightly better matches with him, but the end result of Baba looking like a million bucks is something where no one can really touch Race. >>#2 - The Destroyer v Hiro Matsuda (AJPW, 12/15) ****1/4 Destroyer does most of the work, Matsuda does a little, and they have a great match that's basically a one man show. Beautiful, defined build that is carried almost completely by Beyer. A must o…

Inspired by something jdw posted in the GC thread, I'd like to throw out the question and ask who is on your ideal booking team? There can be a lot of people or a few, and it can be a committee who votes or a group of people with one leader who has the final say. I'll elaborate later, but people on my ideal booking team would include Cornette, Heyman, Tenay, Lance Storm, Sapolsky and for a wildcard to think way outside the box, Ian Rotten or Vince Russo, though I'm leaning towards Rotten.

AJW, 1981, maybe 1982 - Mimi Hagiwara vs. Nancy Kumi Let's start a Mimi Hagiwara review the same way Manzerman or most creepy fucks would, talking about her bath suit. Does this make me a creepy fuck? Hagiwara usually looks way too skinny in her usual white outfits, and I'm not a fan of the Kate Moss kind of build, but the rainbow outfit makes her look much nicer. Anyway, Kumi is one of the few wrestlers of the Pairs-Era (every tag team but one -Queen Angels- were called Something Pair... she was in the Golden Pair with Victoria Fujimi) and one of female wrestlers from those days with better fundamentals. They worked a mostly technical match, which is always a nice break…

>>1969 >>#1 - The Destroyer v Giant Baba (JWA, 03/05) ***** At one time I considered this the greatest match I had ever seen. It's still near the top for me, and it may still yet be the best match I've ever seen. Baba is more than capable here, but this match is what it is because of Destroyer and because he's the blueprint in this match for most of my favorite heels of the subsequent 30 years. Hiding the foreign object, loudly arguing with the ref, celebrating victories that don't matter much ... all heel staples that Beyer excels at. My only complaint against Dick Beyer, if you want to call it that, is that in most of the matches I've seen of his, he …

Lou Thesz v Rikidozan - JWA 10/07/57 What an awesome match! So much snap to every movement and so much great, inspired matwork. I have very little doubt that more footage availability would pretty clearly make the case for Lou Thesz as the greatest wrestler ever. One thing that I said bugged me about Baba/Destroyer when re-watching it was that they did so many standoffs after they teased going in a direction that was working, but this match is completely built around restarts and standoffs, and it works brilliantly, because Thesz tries a brand new strategy every time. He would start by going for a hammerlock, Rikidozan would counter it, so he'd force the ropes so they co…

Giant Baba v Bruno Sammartino - JWA 08/07/68 THIS is the Baba/Bruno match you want to see! Bruno is really motivated and fired up, and he and Baba have an excellent match with some really awesome matwork. The matwork is great more because of the passion of both guys than it is that they're doing anything all that out of the ordinary, but they also work at a pretty fast pace and do a terrific job building to a finish. I know that all sounds a little generic, but it's really the best way I know to surmise this. Better than any Bruno match I've ever seen, and another great match to add to Baba's resume as well. I've seen plenty of 70s Bruno and can't really recall him worki…

Giant Baba v Gene Kiniski - JWA 08/14/67 Another really strong Baba match that I've never heard all that much about. Someone should really comp Baba, as I think it would do a lot for his reputation, and maybe convert a few people that just don't seem to get him. Kiniski is good in this match, but I was more impressed with Baba's fire and it seemed like he was actually calling spots in this match at times, which is weird considering the heel is usually in that role. A shade better than the Fritz match because there's more wrestling, but it escalates into a brawl which is also really well done, as the whole build is about tempers eventually flaring. Great match! Giant …

Giant Baba v Fritz Von Erich - JWA 12/03/66 This was a really outstanding brawl. Fritz seems to be a really capable worker, and I look forward to watching more of his stuff as I watch more and more 70s All Japan. Baba shows that he can work a really good brawl when matched with an opponent that remembers to work wrestling spots into the match, and both come out looking really good. Fritz is a monster, but he's a monster who sells. He dominates early and for a long time, but it leads to some good paybacks and Baba knows how to time a babyface comeback really well. Something everyone should see, as both guys had a really strong performance.

Rikidozan v The Destroyer - JWA 12/02/63 It was mentioned that I may be watching the clipped version of this, but this is apparently a version that aired on G+ within the past few years, so maybe not. Anyway, this was a really good match with lots of stalling, which is something I always enjoy when it's done right, but it's more of a showcase of Destroyer's heeldom than it is a great match. Of course, that's always pretty entertaining in its own right, as he does a lot to put over Rikidozan throughout the match, although at times it's to a point where he looks like a bit of a fool. A very good match, enjoyable and full of energy, but not a classic.

You decide... From this week's Observer... Well, on one hand, I don't blame him if he really needs the paycheck and bygones should be bygones. On the other, can you really believe Cornette has any conviction left? first Heyman, now Russo? Next... Ed Ferrara!!!

wo.com I just had to post these. OH. MY. GOD. My head hurts. WHAT THE FUCK?? Can anyone make sense of this mess? ANYONE? Can you say convoluted? This is insane. You make Angle and Joe personal and then book... an Ironman Match?