Dylan Waco

I read Meltzer's write up of the most recent angle they did and it sounded awesome. I am downloading these now. Thanks rob.

I fucking loved the New Foundation when I went back and watched some WWF stuff in bulk several years back.

Carlos Colon v. TNT - 1990 This was a chore to get through, but a part of me wishes this existed in full, because the good parts of this were good and I have a feeling the slow parts wouldn't have seemed as bad in the context of a more complete match. Anyhow, this was about 30 minutes of a sixty minute draw. The opening stuff is there, then there is a cut and we come back with TNT bleeding. I'm not going to even attempt a run down, but there are some hot near falls down the stretch and they work figure-four v. cobra clutch as a theme of sorts. What's really notable about this is that the ring is completely caked in mud and trash and so are both guys. I'm not someone easily disgusted, but Colon and TNT are rolling around in filth with huge open wounds on their heads for over a half an hour (at least). It's almost worth watching just for that, even if the entire idea of it is insane. Ric Flair v. Tommy Gilbert - 1982 The promo before this is pretty cool. This was by no means an outstanding match, but it's so randomly awesome that this occurred in a PR studio that it has a lot of charm. On some level this your standard Flair studio match, where he gives the underdog a good bit, gets his stiff shots in, and ends up winning of of a face mistake. Having said that Flair busted out some solid offense here and I really liked Gilbert's work underneath. Again nothing out of this world, but I liked the way he sold Flair's offense and he had some really interesting spots himself. Really liked his cradle counter and his crossbody where he almost walked himself up Flair's body was neat. He got in a couple of good dropkicks too and took a nice bump before the finish. Nothing special, but a fun find. Tony Atlas v. Stan Hansen Another studio match. This was really short, but actually fairly fun while it lasted mainly due to Hansen. Atlas isn't any good, but this features maybe my all time favorite racist wrestling spot, as Hansen goes to knee Atlas in the head and of course ole hard headed Tony hurts Hansen's knee. Stan actually sells the knee for the entire rest of the match. They end up doing a bit with the bullrope on the floor and the match gets tossed out as Hansen barely misses splattering Tony's head with a chair.

Irrational? Bah. I've seen more realistic fighting in a high school production of West Side Story. If you enjoy matches with Crusher and Baron Von Raschke lack of realism is not the way to go after this match. And West Side Story can be brutal

I enjoy listening to them even when I disagree with what you guys are saying. There are a variety of reasons I don't really think it's for me, but "it wouldn't be fun" isn't one of them.

I've got a big write up at the DVDVR on the match where I explain many of the little things I really like in the match. I appreciate the offer, but after listening to the first couple of shows I'm pretty sure this sort of thing isn't for me.

I don't hate the Roadies v. Blackwell/Bundy match, but along with the Crusher Cage Match it is the match I have been most surprised by the response too. There are people who are talking about that match as top twenty and I have no fucking clue how that is a top twenty match. I get that it is unique and big v. bigs is always fun on some level. That's what it was included. But it has the single worst spot on the entire set (maybe on any 80's Set ever actually) and on a set filled with good tag matches there is nothing it does to distinguish itself from the pack. But again all this speaks to my view that there really isn't any consensus on this set.

Not my baby, I just think it's transparently obvious that it's a great match, particularly for the style they were working. If you like little things in wrestling, I can't see not liking the match.

Jumbo worked heelish in the AWA. I'm too lazy to look, but if this was the first Jumbo v. Martel match I think Martel v. Rheingans was clearly better. Second Jumbo match is basically your 80's version of workrate sprint, with admittedly smarter than normal spots for a match of that sort. I expect people will love that, especially on this set.

The match really wasn't that clipped. I remember that being your criticism the original time around so I watched a lot more closely the second time to see how much of it was eaten up. It really wasn't that bad at all. Not even close to the worst clip job on the set, but this match didn't involve blood and was face v. face so it has to immediate knocks against it from some people.

Looking for a different wrestling book to read. Something maybe slightly less talked about but worth my time. I was thinking maybe the new book on the Missouri Title or Dick Beyer's book but I'm open to other suggestions

You guys are fucking insane. Maybe I'll vote it number 3 on my ballot to offset the nonsense.

Would it really shock anyone if Reno Riggins was full of shit?

Cannot wait to hear Johnny shit on that awesome Martel v. Rheingans match and see if it leads to piling on.

Randy Orton is a star to the WWE audience. Mark Henry isn't. I guess it comes down to that in their mind, no matter how bad Orton would be in that spot. Tell this to 2011 viewers of Smackdown

I love Dave saying in this weeks Observer that Del Rio v. Henry at Mania wouldn't be a big match. I'm not even going to argue that it would be, but given the options and history the implied argument that Orton as a heel would be a better choice is comical.

Cena as Tiger Woods angle coming?

TNT/Invader 1 v. Texas Hangmen -1990 Man this was even better than the Colon/TNT v. Hangmen brawl. It's not every day you get to see guys in S and M gear disrobe in front of thousands of people, cops casually spraying what looked like mace in the air and some sort of gunpowder fueled device exploding and leaving behind a huge trail of smoke in the middle of a match. The crowd is fucking amped as fuck to see Invader 1's return from the the attempted murder at the hands of the Hangmen and they love them some TNT too. TNT is crushing one of the Hangmen with sick punches and kicks, while Invader takes the other one all around the infield bumping him off a dugout and smacking him with chairs. Things break down further and he ends up picking up this random, non-gimmicked table over his head and crushing both of the Hangmen with it. The Hangmen are great bruisers on offense and they get there by just sort of desperately steamrolling TNT into their corner. Really fun peril section as TNT is a really expressive seller from underneath and takes one nutty head first corner bump on a hope spot gone wrong. When he makes the hot tag this turns into a completely wild affair again with the Hangmen trying to cheat via various means, Invader decking a ref, El Profe getting hung with the noose, and the Hangmen chased out of the building while getting slapped around with their own weapon. Totally awesome "revenge" brawl. Carlos Colon v. TNT - 1986 This is a studio match and angle at the beginning of TNT's first big push and it is really outstanding stuff. Colon tries to work a clean match and that last for about 2 seconds as TNT brings the fire power so he has to fight back. This ends up turning into this great back and fourth fight, with both guys throwing punches, chops, thrusts, kicks, et at a break neck pace. There was one really awesome chop to the head by TNT with a great close up of Colon wincing in pain. Colon even hits a pair of nice dropkicks and a butterfly suplex of all things. TNT locks in the Cobra Clutch and Colon is absolutely desperate to get out of the move. He kicks off the ropes and they knock down the ref, then Colon kicks off the ropes again but TNT keeps holding on. He goes to kick off of the ropes but TNT pulls him back into the ring so Colon breaks free with a short elbow. It looks like Colon is going to make a comeback but El Profe climbs in the ring and fucking waffles him full tilt with a briefcase and TNT locks the hold on again choking Colon out. The ref signals for the bell and you think it's going to be a title switch, but he ends up DQing TNT and giving the match to Colon. Meanwhile Colon is foaming at the mouth. This is totally classic as it looks like Colon rubbed shaving cream into his mouth when Profe covered his face with a towel. They have to bring a doctor in to rub Colon's shoulders and revive him and even then Carlos is drooling over himself and looking like he's about to yack. Awesome tv segment from beginning to end. Carlos Colon/Miguel Perez Jr v. The Sheepherders - ? I thought this was pretty great. I loved the opening face shine, with the Herders getting worked over. Perez through a reckless chairshot, Colon had a great punch exchange with Luke Williams and the spot with Colon taking the slow mo bump off of the double leg, only to kick Luke right in the face was awesome. I love Colon, but really the stars of this were the Herders. They were bumping all over the place for the faces and I loved them once they took over on Perez. I am a mark for kidney based offense and they opened up some serious violence on Perez's kidney's. On top of the typical strikes, they busted out a Finlayesque looking body slam, a cool spot where one Herder whipped the other into the outstretched boot of the other and their double rib breaker. Really good shit and entirely focused on Perez back. When Perez finally gets the hot tag, it's back to crazy bumps from the Herders and Colon is fun as shit breaking out a double dropkick of all things onto both Herders. Perez ends up scoring the win off of a flash O'Conner roll to get his revenge and post match the faces beat the hell out of Luke and Butch some more. PR is the gift that keeps on giving.

National Pro Wrestling Day Evening Show Reed Bentley/Tripp Cassidy v. Devin Bliss/Heidi Lovelace I alluded to this earlier, but there was a fair amount of controversy in some quarters over the Resistance Pro mixed tag match which is still to come on the show and the way it portrayed women. I am a guy who generally opposes intergender matches because I think it's virtually impossible to do it right and the end result is almost always something that makes someone look bad or is extremely uncomfortable. Having said that if you are going to run these matches, a match like this makes the most sense from a raw logic perspective. Heels ambush babyfaces, girl gets isolated, girl gets pummeled, rookie guy gets hot tag, makes mistake, girl gets finished off with one big shot. This is a logical way to book a match like this and as such it is a reasonably decent match despite some pretty poor exchanges early on. But I have no clue how someone could watch this and come away thinking that this portrayed Lovelace as an equal to her opponents (something that was said by many comparing the RPro match to this one) or how you could watch this and not think there was an element of male on woman violence that was pretty uncomfortable at times. Bentley kept crushing Lovelace with forearms and she took some really impressive - but frightening - bumps. She got forearms rubbed against her face and was trapped underneath two different guys mounting her. I'm not saying the intention was to present her as a victim, nor am I saying that such a presentation would even be bad in the context of pro wrestling. But even if the RPro match turns out to be worse, I'm not sure how this could be pointed to as an example of sexual egalitarianism in a wrestling ring. The SAT v. Angel Ortiz/Mike Draztik Damn another guy named Ortiz who's not Ricky? These people are killing me. The SAT look like two pudgier versions of Michael Elgin at this point and in my head I was kind of hoping this would be a match built around them doing strong man spots. Not so. Really this wasn't built around anything and was a total mess of a match. It's really hard to fuck up a basic tag match that is given a lot of time, but they absolutely butchered this. I can live with a certain amount of poorly timed stuff or guys not knowing what is going on or shit ring positioning. But if you are given fifteen minutes to work a tag match, you ought to at least figure out who is working face and who is working heel. I swear to god they switched that up two or three times here and it just serves to enhance the other weaknesses. I did like Ortiz dive and the double Spanish Fly looks cool, but this match was shit. Christina Von Eerie v. Ezavel Suena God do I hate Dasher Hatfield on commentary. Just awful. This match was pretty short and fairly inoffensive, but aside from maybe one sick kick from Suena and a pretty well executed finish there was really nothing of note. Von Eerie has some hype surrounding her, but I thought Suena was clearly the better worker in this match. I spent most of this wishing someone would punch Dasher in the throat. Robert Anthony/ThunderKitty v. Jay Bradley/D'Arcy Dixon So this match has been shit on in a variety of places. Just the other day I saw Flik talk it up as something of a clusterfuck on DVDVR and while I often disagree with Flik he's a guy who's opinion I generally respect. My good, close, personal, long time friend Thomas Holzerman was there for both shows live and took a massive shit all over this, to the point of getting into something of a twitter war with some of the participants after a blog posting where he argued that the match was the absolute worst example of intergender wrestling as a showcase for misogynistic fantasies. So I was expecting this to be a pretty bad match and possibly a very offensive match. To be fair I rarely get offended by wrestling, but I am predisposed to see intergender matches as slippery slopes, and the comments of Tom and other led me to believe this might be bad enough where even I would cringe. So I watched the match and it turns out I don't think it represented women nearly as bad as the opening match on the evening show with Lovelace. In fact of the intergender matches so far on both shows I thought the women were presented the best in the ring here, as it didn't have the over the top bumping that the Cornado match on the afternoon show had (I gave the guy credit, but he was basically working comedy schtick) and neither was presented as particularly weak. In fact if anything Dixon was presented TOO strongly. I admit that I thought the death valley driver she hit on Anthony was really impressive, but to me that's a perfectly example of "just because you can do it, doesn't mean you should do it." In any even Dixon actually dominated Anthony when she was paired up against him. Yes he slammed her and screamed domestic violence, but it was off an exchange where she out wrestled him. Yes the Philly crowd was chanting "domestic violence," possibly for the wrong reasons, but this is a risk you take when you run these sort of matches and it was clear that Anthony was heel even if the typical pro-heel Philly crowd was cheering for him. Yes she took a nasty kick from him, but it was done off of a misdirection spot. In fact she NEVER got manhandled or taken out by him in an even exchange. The presentation was "she is small, but technically talented to the point of being equal or better than the Resistance Pro Champion." I honestly have no clue how anyone watching the match could come to any other conclusion. Thunderkitty was not presented as strongly, but that's not surprising - she was the female heel. Still she wasn't presented poorly, as she did more opposite Dixon than Anthony did, hit some nice offense, got in a nutshot that disabled Bradley and when she ate her own kick from Bradley it didn't completely eliminate her from the match even though it was a huge shot. I thought there were two clear problems with the match. The first is that Bradley was working as a cocky, douche heel too. This in and of itself is not a massive negative, but he was paired with a babyfaces, babyface in Dixon and while I got the feeling they were sort of teasing a slow heel turn for him over the course of the match, he just oozes dick and that's effectively how he looked all match long. Still when he dropped the fall and attacked Dixon post match in no way did it make Dixon look weak as critics claimed. In fact it made her look strong - she bet the champs ass, and the giant dude got out wrestled by him. I can see how it came across differently live since the Philly fans loathe women, but that's not the fault of the wrestlers. That's the fault of the fans and more importantly the fault of wrestling promotions that see no danger in promoting intergender matches in front of audiences like this. The second problem with the match was the commentary, which was really bad (as noted by Flik on the DVDVR) and which I thought reflected incredibly poorly on Chikara. Chikara is a company that goes out of it's way to promote intergender wrestling, to treat women as equals to men in matches and to get away from the notion that women's wrestling is an irrelevancy. And yet here you have their ring announcer Gavin Loudspeaker and even worse their top official Bryce Remsburg cracking jokes about Thunderkitty for most of the match, with almost all of their jokes being mocking shots at women's wrestlers of years past and how much of a joke they were. I'm hardly a "wrestling history is serious business!" guy, but that was easily the most offensive part about the match to me, particularly because Chikara sells itself as being the vanguard of gender equality in wrestling. Remsburg is a semi-regular guest on Holzerman's podcast (as am I) and I'd be interested to hear Bryce's defense of his commentary, which was distracting, seemed to be deliberately designed to undermine the match and was at direct odds with the PC/ultra inclusive way his home promotion markets themselves. I could see not loving the match, because it wasn't close to great. Hating it? Hell at this point it was the best match on this show by a safe margin and I would argue it was actually pretty good for what it was but my expectations coming in were about as low as they could possibly be. Hating it because it was a woman hating, offensive, piece of trash? I don't see it at all and I'm puzzled as to how anyone could. The Colony/3.0 v. Los Ice Creams/Team FIST The first half of this was everything I hate bout Chikara as it was in full blown "did you know wrestling was fake? Let us show you!" mode. I understand there are people who like that stuff and yes you can point to plenty of other business exposing shit in all sorts of promotions, but I don't think anything is as ridiculous as Chikara, where they literally undermine heat sections for the sole purpose of getting laughs. Not even the Kaiju match I watched on the afternoon show was guilty of that. Anyhow, the second half of this was more tolerable, as they integrated the comedy into the match in a way that led to some interesting spots and counters. I really liked Matthews triple stomp into Fire Ant's big splash and the dive train was pretty good including the spot that Green Ant fucked up. Half of this was terrible, the other half was reasonably entertaining. Pretty much the story of Chikara. Apollyon/Tony Nese v. Alex Reynolds/John Silver This was a really enjoyable spotfest, that even mixed in some sound wrestling structure to give it a little extra something beyond just crazy moves. Nese is a guy that has impressed me before, but has also disappointed me. Still this is a match with two guys who are regular dance partners of his and he gets in all of his signature spots. The escape sequences he does are really sharp and don't look super choreographed even if though they are something he works into a lot of matches. I like his big rotating dive a lot too and his Backlund power lift and face wash knee are great impactful spots. Silver looks sort of silly, but he throws bombs and can take punishment. Reynolds looks pretty douchey and while the spot with him tying Nese up in the ropes looked pretty goofy, I enjoyed it as an attempt to do something interesting while staying within formula. Apollyon got the most hype out of this and I see whyas big dudes who do dives, splashes, bump big, et will always stand out. I'm not sure he really lived up to the chatter I heard about him in this match, but the finish he hit was sick and I did leave this wanting to see more of him. Balls to the wall match that made good use of it's time. AR Fox v. Shane Strickland Fox is one of my favorite of the current indy spot monkeys as he generally doesn't try and work absurdly long near fall fests and instead focuses on getting his impressive stuff in and then going home. This match got just about the perfect amount of time for an AR Fox match and aside from Strickland's silly spinning Canadian Destroyer thing I liked it. I even thought they did a pretty good job of segmenting the match as much as you possibly can in a match that is essentially a "top this" highspot contest. Still I really like Fox's corner combo, his triple dives, the sick double knees that folded up Strickland like an accordion, et. Strickland for his part hit a really nasty looking double stomp and a really nice high kick cut off of a Fox dive. Having said that, my favorite part of the match might have actually been Fox mocking Strickland's dancing. As a whole this was sprinty and fun, though it may have suffered a little following a match with Nese working his Amazing Red/Low Ki tribute spots and a fat guy doing dives. The Devastation Corporation v. The Estonian ThunderFrog/The Latvian Proud Oak The pre-match bit with the Tony Clifton lookalike playing delusional manager who claims territorial era guys are still alive and involved with his promotion was done fifty thousand times better by "Big Don" era Tommy Rich in ECW. Not sure why the Baltic States wildlife would be teaming up here, as my understanding is that these areas see themselves as culturally distinct. Anyhow this was presented by a fed called Wrestling Is Awesome, which is basically just a bobo version of Chikara. I honestly can't think of anything in wrestling I'd rather see less than a bobo version of Chikara so I didn't like this. I especially didn't like this because the Devastation Corporation could be really fun in the right setting, but this ain't it. John McChesney v. Logan Shulo This seemed like it would have been really good if they had more time to space out the spots, but following a couple of big time spotfests earlier in the night hurt this. McCheseney really impressed me as the guy smacked the fuck out of the post on his missed chop, took an insane full length of the ring bump on a suplerplex and almost died on his wild ass tope. Shulo looked fine, but really generic, and having the stupid "Jesus" gimmick meant me were subjected to more awful Bryce/Gavin commentary. I did think the finish with the foreign object being stopped, only to lead to the belt shot would have worked great to end a twenty minute match, with well paced spots. But this match was half that length and while a lot of the spots were impressive they weren't well paced. Matty de Nero/The Hurricane v. Kobald/Ophidian This was way better than I expected, which is to say it was pretty good. This had some of the Chikara-y stuff, but it was well integrated into the confines of a traditional tag match. For example the face shine included a dance off and some schtick from Helms, but it was sold well by the heels and came across as heels trying to upstage a babyface and getting shown up, rather than guys in masks doing a Who's Line Is It Anyway? bit. Think Rougeas v. Rockers almost. This led to a nice couple of dives from the babyfaces before the heels took over. Heels offense was a reasonable combination of indyish offense that at least looked like it hurt and traditional stomps/heel stuff. de Nero wears power glove to the ring and his gimmick is that he powers up rather than hulks up, but to his credit it is way less cartoonish than it sounds and actually worked pretty well. I could have done without the bit with Ophidian hypnotizing Helms, but it was a minimal part of the match and it didn't go too far into the realm of absurdity. Double chokeslam finish was fun. Helms still looks really good and this was a pleasant surprise. ACH v. Too Cold Scorpio I expected this to be the best match of the day and it was. In some respects it was a bit disappointing as I thought working in the comedy spot on the floor didn't really fit the "respect" theme of the match, even if it made sense given the setting. I also thought ACH probably should have gotten to kick out of one big spot before being put away. But otherwise I liked this a lot. The early exchanges, were really good "flashy" spots of the "feeling each other" out mold and there was some cool nuance to them. I liked ACH slipping out from the back elbow to show his speed and using the foot stomp to counter the overhead wristlock a lot. Scorp going nasty with that first big kick was really awesome and even though the follow up stuff on the floor lost me for a second it sort of made sense in the grand scheme of things. ACH's first big run of spots looked good, but I thought this really heated up when Scorp started fire off with the kicks. At that point this turned into something more serious and it escalated with both guys going for the big KO as time went on. Scorp ate some really big shots and I really liked his selling as he kept teasing that he was going to blow shit off, only to get hit by one more big shot from ACH. It's strange but that was a really effective way of making ACH's offense look big time. Finishing run was solid with ACH getting some good near falls and Scorp counting with the big koppokick and then Dropping the Bomb for the win. I get the feeling that they might have done a bit more if the crowd wasn't obviously gassed from the ridiculously long day. I like ACH, but I came away from this match thinking it would have been a better match if he had worked more from underneath, though I'm not positive his selling is sharp enough to have made it work. In any event this was a really good match and a good way to end the show, even if I had built it up to be a slightly better match on paper. Overall I thought the evening show smoked the afternoon show. There were things on the show I didn't like, but the stuff I expected to dislike was better than I thought it would be and the stuff I expected to like I liked. Not a great show, but a good one.

If Valentine got good match out of Strongbow in 79 he my have been the best non-Buddy Rose wrestler on earth that year

Final Conflict is probably my favorite Cage Match of all time

There were two Van Dam's in ECW. Pre-Fonzy RVD was a lot of fun and at times very good. I think the Sabu matches are absolute dogshit for the most part and I don't care for the Elims matches either, but there are plenty of RVD matches during this era I like a good bit. What is notable about this era is that a lot of best matches are built around RVD taking insane bumps, rather than RVD doing stock spots. Fonzy era RVD? Well he certainly had some good matches, even some great matches. But as a worker I thought he was far worse. Every match would go too long because he had to go through his extremely choreographed, Carrot Top, prop wrestling routine. Just tedious and annoying to watch. Even in the WWE I thought his best matches where matches where he was on defensive as much or more than he was on offense

Seems possible

Name of the movie is Barbed Wire City. Premiere is set for April 20th in Philly

I liked the Lawler/Mulligan tag a lot better on rewatch, I just wish Lawler had a better partner. Also while I am not as down on Da Crusher/Gagne Cage Match as Matt, I have been pretty shocked at people tossing it around as an absolute upper tier match. I can love a competitive squash as much as the next guy, and the match featured a great big bumping performance from Blackwell, but when I start comparing this to other stuff on the set I'm high on I don't really think it's all that close. I'm guessing it will finish in my top half, but I'm not positive it will be in my upper third.