Dylan Waco

Jesus Fucking Christ. For the last time, it was still by far the worst part of any of the Doug/Buddy v. Rockers matches. Christ.

Lots of territories had spins on that bit where if the masked guy loses he drops the mask

I haven't watched, thought or cared about Joshi much in years. Long ago I thought Aja was the best and was in fact a top ten all time worker. Now that feels like a pretty massive stretch, but there is still something about her that I enjoy more than almost any other Joshi workers. Hokuto at her peak was as good as anyone I ever saw, but the peak was really short and I have no clue how that would hold up. I think Kudo is one of the most underrated wrestlers ever male or female but she's not the best female ever. Possibly top five though

I think the opposite actually. A heel turn wouldn't work because most of the guys who hate him would immediately start liking him, because heels are cool and are better workers. Plus at this point, everyone would be too relieved that it finally happened to truly hate it. Only good way to turn Cena heel would be for him to cheat to beat Taker at Mania

A question for Childs: Is tier one made up of guys you would personally consider for number one? Guys who are rock hard top ten picks? Guys who represent the very best of their particular styles? I'm just curious. All of the guys certainly look like they fit in that category, but it interest me as to why they are there and makes me think about what I would do if I were applying a certain standard. For example if the first tier is only guys I would personally consider strongly for "best of all time" I think I'd only have four guys, but that feels off for whatever reason

HHH drove away far more fans than Cena did. That sounds like a dig or part of my "fuck HHH" gimmick but I really believe it

Yes I have no fucking clue how this will be edited but look forward to listening to it tomorrow. One thing I want to note and I'm not sure this part of the conversation survived, but one of the big things that came out of this set to me was how visceral many of the disagreements were even among people who often disagree. There was really much less consensus then I would have guessed and that has bothered me and confused me all through the process mainly because I hadn't been able to figure out why this was the case. Shortly after we recorded I thing I sort of figured it out. Basically it's my view that the level of disagreement and at times really spirited disagreement is because of the fact that the AWA lacked any real standard bearer matches coming in, nor was it a fed where anyone had a real fixed opinion on anything. In other words this set more so than others before it was a ground floor endeavor. People weren't just picking favorites, they were setting the table for how the AWA was being perceived in general. I'm sure some people will say that they weren't conscious of that but that's not necessarily the point. The point is that the lack of sacred cows, meant that to varying degrees everyone was trying to erect their own idols and/or keep things out of the pantheon that they thought weren't deserving.

One of my favorite nights ever in a mass viewing environment was Cena/Khali at JD 07. The place was going nuts, biting on everything in the match, freaking out left and right. Probably 80 percent of the crowd of 150 or so at the sports bar were visceral anti-Cena haters and the view number of supporters were the quiet type with one or two exceptions. Everyone was raving about how great the match was - then Cena won. People start throwing shit a the big screens and whining like babies and it was obvious to me they were pissed because they were worked and weren't as smart as they thought they were. They believed Cena would lose, he didn't, and it made them feel stupid. The best was arguing right after the match with some of the anti-Cena brigade "man that Cena sure does suck. I mean you guys were marking out left and right in that match, but we all know Khali just carried him...." crickets

The Ryback/Cesaro series was one of the unsung series of the year. Not great but good and they seemed to be building to something significant. And then it ended and in a way I think it hurt both guys

I listened to all of those at the time. Probably should listen to them again some day. Cubeta was fucking insane though as khawk said. Also I think his previous fetish was actually pinball not video games

Vintage Wrestling Summerbash 2013 Team Lucha v. The Exerguys This wasn't any good but I enjoyed watching because the concept of The Exerguys is pretty great. Two dudes in pink spandex coming out to the blaring tune of "I Want To Get Physical!! Physical!" while tugging at various low intensity exercise equipment is the sort of gimmick that really works in a setting like this. I especially enjoyed the fact that one of the guys is pretty chunky and grizzly in look, completely un-Bodydonnaesque in every way. I do think the act would be slightly enhanced if they came out to the Hot Sundae classic "Go For It," but what they have is fine. They were also the vastly better team in this. Team Lucha look and wrestle like what old school wrestling guys in shoot tapes always accuse all indie wrestlers of being. One of them looks almost Tanahashiesque with his hair cut and the other just looks boring. The boring guy ends up playing the FIP in this and his selling is just astoundingly bad, filled with stupid "yuk, yuk" moments and ending in one of the lamest and most choreographed looking falling hot tags I've ever seen. The Exerguys actually had a good command of tag psychology, a couple of nice double teams and some decent individual offense, but they couldn't overcome that scrub. The Tanahashi guy was slightly less offensive and had a couple of spots that looked pretty decent, but the way Team Lucha tried to run through all of their offense in sequences really exposed how shitty most of it was. It was almost like they watched some Guerreros tags without understanding that a key part of the Guerreros act was that they were actually flashy for their time and more importantly had good timing. Anyway, The Exerguys piqued my interest enough where this wasn't a total disaster and I will say that Team Lucha was over, but I never want to see another match of theirs again. The Southern tag format and setting (pretty hot crowd and a ring that looked like it was covered with two or three layers of staph) made this more watchable than it normally would have been. Sam Shaw v. QT Marshall I've said this before and he's since been released, but I still cannot believe TNA signed Sam Shaw of all people. If you wanted to pick a random Florida/South Georgia indie guy there are easily 20-30 guys better and of those only a handful might have wanted any real money to sign. Here Shaw comes to the ring and immediately dresses the ref in his hat and shirt. I have no clue what the significance of that was, but this would be a theme with Shaw putting on Marshall's robe in order to spark outrage from him a little later. In general Marshall is one of those ROH guys who I sort of thing would be really good most places other than ROH (he's decent there) and this match kind of validates my thoughts in that respect. I really enjoyed his interaction with the crowd during the stalling bit, especially his Yes/No battle with the little kid in the front row. He had some fun spots on offense and took a couple of really nice bumps too. Shaw is as bland and do nothing as it gets and sure enough this ended as indiesh as I had feared but this match sort of succeeded at making want Marshall to get signed by the WWE, where I could see him having good matches in NXT. Sobeq Ra v. ? This was just a two move squash. The Ra character is completely bizarre. He is billed from Egypt and I think he's supposed to be inspired by the Mummy movies in appearance, but he has greenish hair and a real white trash looking valet. On top of it he doesn't have the mystical quality you would expect a guy like this to be trying to project. When he tossed his vest on the floor instead of into the waiting arms of his valet it did make me want to punch him in the face though so he has that going for him I guess. Opportunity Knocks Battle Royal The winner of this gets a title shot or something. Normally I would have skipped over this but I'm committed to this whole show thing. I wish I had skipped over this. This included a big guy working a Norman The Lunatic/Eugene hybrid gimmick, a football player, Deathrow Jethro - who was eliminated first despite having an insanely elaborate entrance and being hands down the best guy in the match - a guy who looked like he was doing a Heath Slater rip off act (no I'm not kidding) and a couple of other scrubs. This is as bad as you would expect, with lots of bad comedy and awkward looking exchanges. Milo Beasley v. Eric Cooper - Street Fight I was kind of hoping for something out of this because I have seen shows where two random guys had a street fight and it ended up stealing the show. Well that didn't happen here. This may have suffered some from the fact that I watched Luke Gallows v. Jake Davis the other day and that is just a vastly, vastly better match worked in an at least theoretically similar fashion. I should have know this would be bad when Milo came to the ring to "Bro Hymn" with a shopping cart full of weapons, an entrance that is possibly the most CZWish thing I've ever seen, but even if I had projected that it would stink at that point I wouldn't have guessed it would be this soulless and boring. I did appreciate them building to the big table spot, Cooper took one huge bump and the finish did look sick, but the bulk of this was just really tedious with nothing interesting at all happening. I actually got pumped for the run in of Cooper's Eric Bischoff lookalike manager, but that didn't last and didn't mean anything either. This just wasn't good. Mike Cruz v. Gus Money This was a pretty good sprint. Nothing outstanding, but on a weak show, the effort of Cruz stands out. I'm still not sold that he can carry a weaker opponent, or lead a long match, but they got about seven minutes here which was the right length for what he can do. Some really stiff shots in this, decent structure for such a weak match and Cruz took two really nice bumps. I wish they had shaved about ten minutes off of the last piece of shit and tacked some of that on here, because I think they might have been able to do something really good with a bit more time. Even still this was a solid enough match. Beast Mode v. Circle of Disrespect This was actually structured well enough where it kind of made up for the match that no one in the match was any good. I am not a guy who thinks match lay out is everything, but there are times where layout can really disguise flaws and while their were plenty of flaws on display here, chunks of this were fine because they kept the formula fairly simple. I mean Beast Mode are just too pasty, long haired, big guys who can barely execute basic stuff, Simon Sez is pretty terrible though extremely charismatic and Francisco Ciasco (sp?) is serviceable but nothing more and still this was not terrible. It wasn't good, but it wasn't terrible. Next. Maxwell Chicago v. Bruce Santee Everyone should see Chicago at least once. I'm not even touting him as a worker per se, but the guy wrestlers in various tuxedo get ups and just looks completely absurd even on a card with a ton of absurd shit. He's working the up coming EVOLVE tourney and I have no fucking clue how that is going to come off. I'm pretty sure Santee is the guy who had a roid rage attack on Kahagas on an indie show some time back so I expect him to work stiff and Maxwell to bump around like a goof for him and that is exactly what I got. I have to admit Chicago was incredibly entertaining crawling around in his red tux get up, throwing half hearted shots trying to defend himself, desperately clinging to the ref in an attempt to escape. This ended up being worked sort of like a sniveling manager v. strong man babyface hero, albeit with Chicago being more athletic then most manager types. He took over with nut shots, did a couple of semi-impressive spots, then got cut down to size, had his nuts squeezed and was powered down. Fun match actually, made me want to see Chicago work as a manager/wrestler type in a bigger promotion. Kory Chavis v. Jon Davis Ugh what a way to end the show. This started hot with some decent brawling, built to a reasonably solid heat segment from Chavis and then on the back end it was a pretty indierific affair though at least stuff looked good. Then we got a stupid ref bump and a Dusty finish. Pretty fitting ending to this show. Overall Thoughts Poor show. On paper this looked interesting to me because there were several solid enough guys on the card and they were fairly well spread out. Instead the whole show was really flat, with nothing worth going out of your way to see.

I think Lucha does have it's own conventions and in a sense it's own reality, but I also don't think it's anywhere near as "different" as it is often portrayed

My beard is even longer than Bryan's. By a large margin actually

I know the talking point is that Cena was pretty bad back then and maybe he was. I haven't watched very much of the stuff in ages. But there were 03 Cena matches I really liked, so I am skeptical about the notion that he was terrible when he first started

Worth noting that there are plenty of good Lucha (there I go again!) articles online if you know where to look.

I like Punk, but until and unless a review of his non-ROH indie work really knocked me on my ass, I'd say Cena has had the better career as a worker

We all have blind spots. Best you can do is be open minded about watching new things when you get the chance and go with what you know

Honestly I had no desire to continue the sub argument, but I have to point out that this is pretty much textbook "playing the martyr" dogshit right here. You might as well post a pic of yourself on a cross. Enough of it.