Pro Wrestling

With so many new business models popping up in wrestling lately -- like the planned 'The Elite' self-promoted show later this year -- I've been wondering how close we have ever gotten to a collectivist wrestling promotion. What I mean by this is a "a promotion run and owned democratically by the talent themselves". The best I can come up with is early PWG, but even then outside of the first few shows there was only ever a small number of roster members making decisions -- Super Dragon, Joey Ryan, Lost, and Excalibur as far as I understand it. And later it would seem that most of the power collected in the hands of Super Dragon. Is this really the closest we have gotten …

Just want to take a moment here to appreciate all the wacky stuff going on in pro wrestling now and how wrestling hasn't been this interesting since the late 90's. - WWE currently has a higher valuation than any pro wrestling company in history. Dave is indicating that they are considering Ronda Rousey the biggest star in their company moving forward. AJ Styles and Shinsuke Nakamura is your WWE title match at Mania. Vince has so much money he's restarting the XFL. There is a lot of speculation about their next TV deal, with Dave saying they could even end up on the Fox network itself. -NXT has HHH, HBK, Regal, and Gabe creating a possible second boom for the y…

So another upcoming episode of my podcast will cover Crockett from 81-83 (no Starrcade stuff, I want to stop just before the build up to that for a later episode). Here it's not so much not knowing about the promotion as it is there's a fairly large amount out there (and a ton more thanks to the recent network upload). So if people had to pick say 75 minutes or so of a good sampler of the best matches, talent, moments, promos etc what are your suggestions? I also plan on doing a separate episode watching the Final Conflict but am happy to include the build up to that.

9PM CT twitch.tv/luchalibreaaa from the lucha blog:

The members of this board have been very helpful in selecting footage for me to show 2 newer fans for my podcast. They asked to see a long running feud and have seen very little of pre WWF Jerry Lawler. So I decided to do the King vs. the Superstar Bill Dundee. I am looking for between 60-75 minutes of their best matches, promos, angles and moments through the decades. What should I put in?

What is the best squash match of all time? Top 3? Top 5-10? Right now I am leaning towards Brock vs. Cena at SS14. Volk Han vs. Mitsuya Nagai (4/24/1993) and Shinya Hashimoto vs. Naoya Ogawa (10/11/1999) are up there with it. Definitely Top 3 for me, there are other really good matches that are squashes as well but those 3 I consider to be legitimately fantastic matches.

I was just wondering if we could get a Match of the Year 2018 Yes/No thread started. I've seen some really matches so far this year.

I recently had an idea for a series of projects (not all necessarily involving me) for the board. After talking to a few people about them it seems like there might be a section of people around who would be willing to do this kind of thing, so I'm just going to put it out there. We take the areas of wrestling that may not be that popular or understood: - World of Sport - Lucha Libre - Joshi - Shootstyle - Puerto Rico - lucharesu that isn't MPro If you can think of something else to add, great. We add it to the list of projects. And have a theme to the whole project, a goal in mind. My first thought was taking lucha libre and comparing …

Hallo PWO! In this shoot interview, The Iron Sheik discusses the details of how Verne Gagne tried to pay him for not dropping the WWF belt to Hogan and injuring him in the same process: Just think about it - he couldve not only take the WWF title to AWA, but also quite possibly injure the mega star WWFs rise to the global phenomenom had been built around. What if the birth of Hulkamania wouldve happen a few months/yearls later? Would it still be as big as the original one? or what would it mean to WWF if it would never happen, because Hogan would never be able to compete again? Would Hulk Hogan or WWF sue AWA? Could Vince and WWF reach their globa…

In here I will write a LOT about Southern Indie wrestling. Would love for others to chime in. First order of business is to note that this years Scenic City Invitational has been set for the first weekend in August and the slow release of names has begun. Though not officially announced a "hint" last week revealed that Lio Rush will be in the tournament, and Jimmy Rave is returning again to see if he can be a repeat winner. More names will be released in the coming weeks, but the promoters have promised to announce the next entrant when the Facebook match gets 730 likes. As of this writing that means it needs 9 likes to get over the hump and make it happen. ht…

So i was listening to the What happened when episode on the horsemen with Shiavone and he told the story of when Ole Anderson decided to shoot on a Jobber in the ring after he refused to sell for him. The story is here http://wrestlingnews.co/wwe-news/tony-schiavone-on-the-time-ole-anderson-destroyed-a-jobber-for-no-selling/ Just wondered if anyone can remember it and knows when/where/who.

So, for this week's podcast, we're looking to tap into the more cynical and humourous part of people's minds, and talk about different pet peeves or just utter hatreds you have when it comes to the world of wrestling. Is there one wrestler you always just utterly despised? A TV or PPV show that grates on your nerves? A commonly held belief that you completely disagree with? A pet peeve you constantly have to deal with that you'd like to eradicate? Ultimately, who or what do you hate, and more importantly, why? As always we'll be reading the best submissions on the show and crediting you accordingly, so this should be fun to get a handle on who and what people personally…

So the card goes as following: New Japan Rumble Roppongi 3K vs Young Bucks - IWGP Jr. Tag Titles Fale/Tonga/Loa vs Beretta/Ishii/Yano vs Elgin/War Machine vs Taichi/Iizuka/ZSJ vs Juice/Taguchi/Makabe - Gauntlet match for the NEVER 6-Man Tag Titles Cody vs Ibushi Killer Elite Squad vs LIJ (Evil/Sanada) - IWGP Tag Titles MiSu vs Goto - NEVER Openweight Title Scurll vs Kushida vs Takahashi vs Ospreay - IWGP Jr. Title Hiroshi Tanahashi vs Jay White - IWGP Intercontinental Title Omega vs Jericho - No DQ match for the IWGP US Title Okada vs Naito - IWGP Heavyweight Title Are you guys hyped for this? Honestly, the card looks pretty..... daft on paper.

Over at PTBN, we are starting the process of discussing and ranking the Greatest Wrestler Ever for WWE. The span of time we are going for is from 1953 - current day and we are asking for lists in the top 100. Below is a link to the facebook discussion forum as well as the rules. For me personally, this will be an interesting list because of how much weight I'll give to the workrate quotient considering the recent tendency for WWE to have really good workrate output. You think about someone like Steve Austin and the amount of ****+ matches he had in WWF and it really may not be as many as someone like say Roman Reigns by this point. How much do I weight that? Wil…

Sometimes it feels like PWO is more "old school" focused with such quality discussion on this thread I'm interested to hear who you think is this year's Wrestler of the Year and why. You can use any metric you want. For me it is without question David Starr. Has wrestled a ton of places this year, putting on good to great matches everywhere. Then when you see him in his homebases of Beyond and wXw he cranks it up to another level against guys like WALTER and Joey Janela.

I was just wondering if anyone had any New Year's Resolutions for 2018. I have a couple this year. Actively follow and watch PWG with the DVD releases. Watch at least an hour of wrestling a week. This will probably be watching CWF Mid-Atlantic on YouTube.

*Raises hand* I've been e-wrestling in some form since the mid-'90s, and other than a couple of breaks for health or real life issues, I've never really stopped. Is this something anyone else still does? Have any of you thought about it in years? I sort of feel like the Last of the Mohicans over here. If anyone is interested, I know a couple of e-feds that are looking for people. I help book one of them and I run a character in the other. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, basically it works like this: There are shows every couple of weeks, and you write roleplays (think of wrestler promos) discussing your match on the next show, who you're fe…

Here's my list (as much a favorite match list as a best of list) as it stands right now 1- Kazuchika Okada vs Katsuyori Shibata 2- Rush vs LA Park 3- Brock Lesnar vs AJ Styles 4- Brock Lesnar vs Braun Strowman vs Samoa Joe vs Roman Reigns 5- Kazuchika Okada vs Kenny Omega 1 6- Low Ki vs Sami Callihan 7- Kazuchika Okada vs Kenny Omega 2 8- Twin Towers vs Strong BJ 1/2 9- Hiromu Takahashi vs Dragon Lee 2/11 10 - Dr Wagner Jr vs Psycho Clown Mask vs Mask

When it comes to putting on an enjoyable match, wrestlers with good-looking and hard hitting strikes go a long way for me. Matches and wrestlers with good strikes just engage me a lot more than matches and wrestlers with soft or weak-looking strikes do. Personally I think Stan Hansen has some of the best. I could watch him just lay into people all day. On the other hand I can't stand to see Sid Vicious throw a "punch." It takes me right out of the match. I really love the Mind Games match between Mankind and Shawn Michaels but Sid Vicious' horribly awkward punches in the aisle after the match stand out in my mind as much as the match itself. Who are the wrestle…

If a wrestling Genie showed up and offered you a magic google drive full of all the shows from one Arena in one Year which would you pick?

I've seen this done before in a couple of places, and I think it's a cool concept. Mitsuharu Misawa of the Year 1983-vs. Shiro Koshinaka, 4/22 1984-vs. La Fiera, 8/26 1985-vs. Kuniaki Kobayashi, 3/9 1986-w/Giant Baba vs. Jumbo Tsuruta/Genichiro Tenryu, 11/28 1987-w/Jumbo Tsuruta vs. Genichiro Tenryu/Ashura Hara, 6/11 1988-vs. Jumbo Tsuruta, 3/9 1989-vs. Ricky Steamboat, 3/8 1990-w/Toshiaki Kawada/Kenta Kobashi vs. Jumbo Tsuruta/Akira Taue/Masanobu Fuchi, 10/19 1991-w/Toshiaki Kawada/Kenta Kobashi vs. Jumbo Tsuruta/Akira Taue/Masanobu Fuchi. 4/20 …

It's that time of year and I think it's one of the most important times of the year to really accentuate the positive. I know it can be difficult with the way the Holidays go, but it's important. I started celebrating by watching one of my two favorite matches of all time, Magnum vs. Tully, Starrcade 85. And it is every bit as glorious as it was the last 8 times I watched it! I had never seen the match before I started posting here and that is something that will forever endear PWO to me. I also would have never discovered the joys of Puerto Rico or Buddy Rose or...you know, the list goes on forever. No matter how often we may disagree on what constitutes good…

So far so good on these topics. I am expecting less about this one but we will see. Not even sure what a front runner for WWE looks like. Same for NJPW I guess. My vote would be for wXw AMBITION if I was shooting off the cuff. Great tournament. Moved at a good clip. Sort of wish there was a fun superfight to break things up. No wrestler put in a bad shift. LET ME HERE YOUR CONTENDERS FOR SHOW OF THE YEAR 2017!

All right, let's talk Young Bucks. They're a huge independent draw. But their independent schtick, the way it's so meta and insider, their inside jokes at the camera during matches, the jokes inside matches, it's everything I don't want from indy wrestling. I'm old and remember the days of peak indy wrestling being Danielson and Joe stiffing each other. Punk cutting tremendous promos, the Raven-Punk feud full of authentic emotion if not workrate. But they're super successful and have ROH doing their best business ever. Am I out of touch? Am I allowed to not enjoy it like Meltzer hated 80s WWF? Is this just the direction indy wrestling is heading and I should fold…

I'm going to take El-P's advice and spin this off into its own thread. So, here goes... Feel free to post your funny interactions with wrestlers, serious interactions, interactions that pissed you off or made you scratch your head. But that's the fun part of Twitter! Especially when they respond. I think the Bucks responded to something of mine once, though I can't imagine I would've @ them since I was even less familiar with them when this happened. I can only assume I responded to someone's else post where they were already @. I've been blocked by: Bubba Ray Dudley: He was doing his usual "you marks don't know anything" routine and I gave…