Timbo Slice

Kobashi/Honda is the great Honda showcase match AND the great Kobashi GHC title match. Causal, not correlation, as Kobashi's GHC title matches weren't all great. The one thing Kobashi did have was the glue to have matches with multiple guys that were at least compelling. The Takayama and Minoru title defenses stand out as Kobashi working "their" match while making sure the other guy forced him out of what had become the norm in his title defenses. That norm started with the Honda match, coincidentally, but it got repetitive over time to an extent. I actually would love to hear Parv's views on Kobashi/Ogawa from November 2003, which is worked in a way I think he'd enjoy. And considering he didn't like the Joe/Styles pairing, might as well see what he thinks of Joe/Kobashi.

I just...well, just take a look at this damn thing: I don't even know where to start.

LOVE this match. Nakano as grumpy guy thinking Tamura is beneath him but Tamura thinks he's still got the technical skills to hang makes this for me. Young, fiery Tamura is the Tamura more people need to check out.

Asuka's basically there as the barometer for everyone else to get up to speed before they go to the main roster. Problem is that, well, as it's been said, there's really nobody that's close to her right now.

Asuka's over as all hell. It's just that they have nothing to do with her. Nobody's credible enough to beat her, not even Ember. I also love how they're making Roode such a huge heel, and then he's going to his friggin home town in a month against a fellow Canadian and he's going to get a definitive hero's welcome. ADR has too much sour grapes to take anything he says seriously at this point. Plus, Andrade as a heel is much better anyways, especially if we get anything near an Ingobernable-type run once he's established. Give Tino six months and he's gonna be the biggest heel on NXT.

Weird bump, but the Hotta double title match on 3/21/98 is this incredibly violent PWFG-style match with Hotta doing what Hotta normally does (and even going with a fucking shoot headbutt like a crazy person), but Kandori putting on a selling clinic. It's not even remotely everybody's cup of tea, but it's up there with some of my favorite sprints ever and to get that type of match out of Hotta is pretty nuts. The rematch where Hotta won the belt back a year later doesn't even touch this.

Nak at Dallas still gives me goosebumps. An incredible combination of anticipation and payoff that I don't think WWE has ever really done. Including Styles. Also, the pre-Attitude era answer is Ricky Steamboat as the mystery partner at Clash XVII, damn it. The dragon mask had me intrigued that it was another Muta-type guy, and then when it was Ricky Steamboat, 7-year-old Tim marked the FUCK OUT.

Complaining about Raw being three hours at this point is pointless. It's not going away until their TV contract is over. They actually have me a bit excited for Orton/Brock. I can't believe it.

PRINCE MOTHERFUCKING ALI IN THIS THING. HELL YES.

Favorite things about last night: -Nak's actually getting how to wrestle on WWE TV. He's doing cool little things that only he can do with his charisma and it really adds to matches. I know they aren't the matches his fans are used to seeing from him, but I enjoy him figuring out how to work guys like Buddy Murphy and actually make them compelling matches because he knows how to work some different things in. -Corey Graves totally calling out Tom Phillips on the idea that whoever he's around gets fired in an offhand comment had me HOWLING. -Nia Jax went to the powerbomb for the finish. FINALLY.

So, I think at this point, almost anything he does is going to be talked about in a way that doesn't show good on him. He's basically Sheamus at this point, as Randy, even at his worst, was over thanks to the RKO. He's been unbelievably bungled, and now they have basically zero golden boys ready to step in for him. Rollins thinks he is, but at this point, I'm not seeing it as a heel. He has to be a true face at some point.

I think it was way better than just your normal NXT good match, especially because it forced Nak to work a different style. He's so used to working 50/50 in big matches that actually working from underneath was a nice change of pace, even if Aries didn't have the best control segment. The stretch run was great, too. Much more like a struggle than a your turn/my turn run. Really good stuff.

Dude in the lower right hand corner of that picture always slays me. Opener was fine, but it actually came off more like a Tye showcase than an Andrade showcase. Andrade is a quick learn, though, and I hope they let him do something akin to the Ingobernables stuff at some point, even though Cesaro has the suit gimmick on lockdown. Tag match was fire. This is it for now, but if Alpha gets the call up and Revival drops the belts to Gargano/Ciampa, they need to feud over the WWE tag belts for the next 10 years. They seem like they are smart enough to mix it up from show to show to the point where it doesn't get stale. Great cutoff spots here, making the guys actually kick out and give more drama to the pin falls. That's a smart, subtle change to tag formula. Aries/Nakamura was a terrific match, Aries' best showing, and great to see it not a 50/50 Indy Dream Match. Aries had a good control segment (fine with the leg selling, 2 minutes a leg work does not a legless Nakamura make) and the stretch run was different and added a lot to Aries' ability to pull off the win. Finish was great, too, as Nak baited the Missile trying to beat the 10 count to set up the win. People who said Nak was coasting here are absolutely 100% wrong. Women's match was really good, as Asuka's dangerous enough to take out even the biggest of competitors, and Jax did enough to make you believe all she needed was one shot. She's definitely improved a lot since the London match, and her getup was straight out of the Combat Toyoda wardrobe, so I'm fine with that. Finish was great, but Asuka/Bayley II is gonna have to deliver something big because I'm not sure how the crowd is going to react after Dallas. Main event was solid, but cage matches in WWE probably need not exist anymore, to be honest. They don't really add anything unless people are doing stuff off the top of them (sad, but unfortunately true), and without blood and without the idea of outside interference helping things aesthetically, it doesn't do much. That being said, Finn bumped like a moron (in a good way) and Joe was just an absolute beast. I'm so happy to have him back and he's right now amongst my Top 10, maybe even Top 5 in the world. Joe/Nak is going to fucking rule.

It was the night after he beat Taker if I remember right. The timing was either then or right before it.

Not to mention that in a weird roundabout way Ali directly influenced Billy Graham's promos, which then influenced Dusty, which then influenced basically everyone.

It was always going to happen. Simmons is a mark for Shoemaker.

The issue for me has always been that they choose when to sell in a way that makes whatever athletic feat they do mean very little in the end. Vader's point is definitely a bit "Old man not a fan of the modern style" type, but the essence of what he's saying rings true, even if he didn't exactly say it the right way. I know people are going off crowd reaction as a reason as to why the style works, but we also have to remember that AJPW decided the headdrop stuff was getting over with the crowd and that took them down a path they couldn't come back from, really. That's great that it pops the crowd, but you're speeding things up to a point that nothing else matters unless it's over the top like that. There's a middle ground here, they just need to find it.

Jax/Bailey was terrific. I think it might have been better than the London match. Jax has a presence and is getting better. Her vs. Asuka has a chance to be special.

So my question is whether or not they're gonna have crossover with NXT backstage people, too. It would seem weird if this is set up to get NXT talent integrated into the main roster while also being NXT guys that NXT backstage stuff doesn't have a say. It's funny that there's RAW, then there's the SD!/NXT bridge along with the EVOLVE/NXT bridge. I do agree with the sentiment that this would give WWE the ability to run a couple Network Specials a month now, because this seems like a way to give the TV brass what they want along while really trying to make the Network jump outside of the original programming, which now seems like a lost cause by all accounts.

Right after SuperBrawl would probably be the best time because the DA had established themselves by then and won all the big belts other than the world title. It's a couple months, but good lord is it a gold mine for great TV stuff.

There are myriad problems with ROH's current business model, and they are now in a really troubling situation in that they're completely subservient to NJPW talent on their own shows and can only really push guys as clingers on to something that is beginning to run its course in the Bullet Club. There isn't a single ROH talent seen on the level of NJPW talent, and while people point to the Fish win over Ishii, Ishii never even defended the belt before that to help put the belt over. I think Delirious doesn't realize that NJPW is basically using them to test the waters of a possible US expansion (Grimmas brought the theory up to me and I totally agree), because it's obvious that crowds are there more to see NJPW talent than ROH talent, and that the over acts in the company are mainly over because of their Japan exposure (including Cheeseburger, who somehow has transcended any ROH booking into being perhaps the most over talent in the company). Plus, ROH is now entrenched with them and it's more symbiotic than ever, so going forward, with guys like Cole getting pushes basically to keep him from jumping to NXT, they're continuously booking themselves into a corner. They've had Kamaitachi, who's developed a rep and is respected even by fans who don't like lucha that much, and he's been a total nonfactor. Not to mention the refusal to push guys like Castle, Dijak and Cheeseburger while they're hot. There are booking cycles, and it's only been a year since their TV was absolutely on fire, but this feels like the beginning of quite a down cycle for ROH, especially with the Evolve/NXT relationship heating up and their ability to tell a coherent story in a way ROH just can't right now. They're isolating themselves in favor of a relationship with a company that looks down on them while they think they're on somewhat equal footing. That's not a good look for them.

Was I the only one who liked the Mexico/Japan 8-man from Dos Leyendas? I know Fujin/Raijin are newbies and such, but after the first fall, it's like they figured some things out and that third fall was really great.

I'm down for that. A lot of the issues brought up in the reaction threads really made me long for a place to actually have the type of discourse worthy of the topic.

Funk 2, Flair 4 for me. I remember Dylan talking about GAB 89 and I went back and revisited it because it had been awhile and it really lit me up. Then I saw it again when I was going through all the pre-Hogan NWA/WCW stuff on the Network and it still resonated with me, as did that entire feud. I was one of the guys who wanted to remind people who were tearing down Ric's case for #1 that the piling on got to a point where it was difficult for me to take criticism of a lot of people in this project seriously. The tearing down became easier to do than the defending. I ended up going with Lawler because the sheer scope of his career and how good he was for basically four decades was enough for me to take notice of his greatness, but there was no better peak than Flair's and no more varied career than Funk's. It's a boring choice so to speak, but there's a reason he was the consensus #1 guy coming into this. It's hard to knock off a guy like that.

Love how Maeda and Fujinami's match the next month inadvertently plays off the finish of this match. One of my favorite matches ever, need to re-watch it.