NMB Wrestling Archive

Vote for the wrestler that you think had the better career in WWE (whether you base that on impact or match quality is your decision), from 1985 to 2005. Voting will end tomorrow morning at the latest. Please give the wrestler's name first and any explanation thereafter. Thanks.

I decided to rewatch a couple of my favourite Benoit vs Smith matches and talk about them. BENOIT VS JOHNNY SMITH 6/4/88 This is for the Commonwealth mid heavyweight title and is a rematch from their first bout the previous week. In that bout Smith was 3pds over the weight limit so the title wasn't on the line. This time he has made the limit at 225pds and thus the title is on the line. The match is unfortunately JIP about 2 min in. From there we have several very cool exchanges between Benoit and Smith that almost alyways end up with Benoit getting the advantage and Smith bailing to the outside. In fact Smith being a total heel vacates the p…

Vote for the wrestler that you think had the better career in WWE (whether you base that on impact or match quality is your decision), from 1985 to 2005. Voting will end tomorrow evening at the latest. Please give the wrestler's name first and any explanation thereafter. Thanks.

Vote for the wrestler that you think had the better career in WWE (whether you base that on impact or match quality is your decision), from 1985 to 2005. Voting will end tomorrow evening at the latest. Please give the wrestler's name first and any explanation thereafter. Thanks.

Vote for the wrestler that you think had the better career in WWE (whether you base that on impact or match quality is your decision), from 1985 to 2005. Voting will end tomorrow evening at the latest. Please give the wrestler's name first and any explanation thereafter. Thanks.

Vote for the wrestler that you think had the better career in WWE (whether you base that on impact or match quality is your decision), from 1985 to 2005. Voting will end tomorrow evening at the latest. Please give the wrestler's name first and any explanation thereafter. Thanks.

Just thought I'd throw this one out there. What titles attained world title status? Did the ECW title ever deserve world title status? What other U.S. titles deserved recognition outside of the WWF, WCW and AWA. Did any titles in Japan such as the Triple Crown deserve recognition as a world championship?

I didn't get to watch Backlash last night. I haven't watched Raw in three weeks now but I have been following via message forums. I tried to watch Backlash with Anvil and a couple of other friends last night but we're having PPV problems here in town. We couldn't buy the UFC PPV, we couldn't get the Pride PPV and now Backlash didn't work. Anyway, I might actually watch the show tonight. The SA wrestling thread is hard to keep up with because it moves so fast plus I want to see all the fallout from Backlash. I'm curious if Hassan & Daivari are dead in the water since they jobbed out last night. I'm curious if Big Vis will be on TV again. There's just a lot of ques…

Vote for the wrestler that you think had the better career in WWE (whether you base that on impact or match quality is your decision), from 1985 to 2005. Voting will end tomorrow evening at the latest. Please give the wrestler's name first and any explanation thereafter. Thanks.

Vote for the wrestler that you think had the better career in WWE (whether you base that on impact or match quality is your decision), from 1985 to 2005. Voting will end tomorrow evening at the latest. Please give the wrestler's name first and any explanation thereafter. Thanks.

Vote for the wrestler that you think had the better career in WWE (whether you base that on impact or match quality is your decision), from 1985 to 2005. Voting will end Sunday morning. Please give the wrestler's name first and any explanation thereafter. Thanks.

Vote for the wrestler that you think had the better career in WWE (whether you base that on impact or match quality is your decision), from 1985 to 2005. Voting will end tomorrow evening at the latest. Please give the wrestler's name first and any explanation thereafter. Thanks.

Vote for the wrestler that you think had the better career in WWE (whether you base that on impact or match quality is your decision), from 1985 to 2005. Voting will end tomorrow evening at the latest. Please give the wrestler's name first and any explanation thereafter. Thanks.

Vote for the wrestler that you think had the better career in WWE (whether you base that on impact or match quality is your decision), from 1985 to 2005. Voting will end tomorrow evening at the latest. Please give the wrestler's name first and any explanation thereafter. Thanks.

Vote for the wrestler that you think had the better career in WWE (whether you base that on impact or match quality is your decision), from 1985 to 2005. Voting will end Sunday morning. Please give the wrestler's name first and any explanation thereafter. Thanks.

Vote for the wrestler that you think had the better career in WWE (whether you base that on impact or match quality is your decision), from 1985 to 2005. Voting will end tomorrow evening at the latest. Please give the wrestler's name first and any explanation thereafter. Thanks.

American Dragon v Donovan Morgan - ROH Honor Invades Boston I think Donovan is a little confused about his role at times, as he's supposed to be the heel aligned with Christopher Daniels, but he starts clapping and rallying the crowd at one point. Besides that, this is a really nice match with all sorts of stuff I've never seen in a US ring. Morgan wins the test of strength early on, which is a good way to establish roles and put sympathy on Danielson, but I don't know if it worked with this crowd. Dragon outwrestles him in the early stages and gets a very close two-count, and the look on Dragon's face when this happens in priceless. He goes to work on the arm, but he…

AJ Styles v Jerry Lynn - ROH Road To The Title The announcers are still jabbering on about "match of the year candidates", and it's really an annoying breach of kayfabe. This match is essentially a wankfest, with the armbar reversals and fast paced stuff. Don't get me wrong, a fast pace is nice, but here, it only seems to be there to give the illusion that fans are actually seeing action with true cause and effect, and to give the illusion that they're building toward some type of finish. Jerry Lynn looks worse every time I see him, I guess because his total lack of charisma brings all of his matches down. No matter how athletic he is, there's no fire in his eyes, and…

American Dragon v Doug Williams - ROH Road To The Title At last, I can see what the fuss is about as it relates to Bryan Danielson! I definitely get the hype, because he's terrific in this match, and it's my understanding that he's gotten even better since. The match is everything it is because of Danielson; that's not to say that Williams brings nothing, because he's good, but Dragon is the one that gives everything meaning, the one who knows when to speed up and when to slow down. It's a sixth sense that wrestlers either have or don't have, and it's obvious that American Dragon has it here. He also brings some nice highspots and reversals -- check out his enzuigiri …

Paul London v Spanky - ROH Road To The Title This was going along just fine until the last few minutes, when they started blowing nearly every move they tried. They covered as best they could, and they sold the move the way it was executed instead of the way it was intended, which is really all they can do at that point, but the performance was really lacking. I understand that ROH prided itself on competition at this point over face/heel alignments or hatred or any other normal aspect of American wrestling, but it makes the whole thing sort of an exercise in frustration, and as would be the case on all the ROH I watched today, the announcers are clueless -- they open…

I remember one time on Wrestling Observer Live how Dave Meltzer once compared Chris Jericho's transitional title reign to that of Superstar Billy Graham's. If anything, the match that Graham won the title kind of showed that, as while he may have won the title from a WWWF legend, that same legend was beating him in many ways, so much that the only way Graham could win was via a fluke. The story of this match is very simple: Whatever Graham could do, Sammartino could also do, sometimes quite better, and he could also do things that Graham can't do. Graham has most of the edge for the match, but Sammartino is able to match Graham's offense with the very same offense. I…

BENOIT VS SMITH 6/24/88 ENGLISH Rounds This was the climax of the first series of matches between Benoit and Smith. 3 weeks later they had another match but you could tell from watching the TV shows that was never supposed to originally happen. As a general rule, I don't like English rounds in wrestling. They almost always are a detriment to a match because they wreck the flow of a match and stop the sympthany of a wrestler getting beaten up as he has a chance to recover. In saying that I must say 1 match that managed to use the Enlish rounds well was the Dynamite Kid vs Marty Jones from England These rounds are 5 minutes long with 1 minute r…

Ultimate Warrior v Mr. Perfect Chris Jericho v Rob Van Dam Demolition Smash v Razor Ramon Bob Backlund v Owen Hart Marty Jannetty v Diesel Rey Misterio v Christian Sid v Undertaker Sgt Slaughter v Bad News Brown Big Show v 1-2-3 Kid/X-Pac Booker T v Ted DiBiase Tito Santana v Paul Orndorff Greg Valentine v Honky Tonk Man Jake Roberts v John Bradshaw Layfield Kane v Taijiri Ricky Steamboat v Davey Boy Smith Dynamite Kid v Brock Lesnar

#1 - Bret Hart v Roddy Piper #2 - Rick Martel v Mick Foley #3 - Eddy Guerrero v HHH #4 - The Rock v Shawn Michaels #5 - Yokozuna v Hulk Hogan #6 - Chris Benoit v Edge #7 - Randy Savage v Ric Flair #8 - Kurt Angle v Steve Austin

My review last summer at TSM: Revised: The setting for this match was perfect, even if it was totally by accident. Austin and HHH had been dominating the promotion for months (longer, actually) as the Two Man Power Trip. They sidelined Rock, held the top two singles titles and were tag team champions. HHH lost the Intercontinental title the night before to Kane, but Austin managed to hold off a challenge from the Undertaker. HHH was still a tag team champion and Austin was still a world heavyweight and tag team champion. Rock, Undertaker and Kane were the three most established babyfaces in the company at this point and the heels had managed to neutralize them a…