Dylan Waco

I think 92-97 is a perfectly reasonable argument for Bret's peak. Anything before or after that feels like a real stretch.

I like Bret. I don't love Bret. Bret is a guy who has a lot of matches I think are good and some that I think are really good. All time great matches? Not that many I can think of off hand. When I was watching matches for the SC poll years back I came away having a higher opinion of Bret than I had prior to it, but I still didn't think he was an all time great wrestler. Having seen all the stuff I've seen since then he'd be farther down my depth chart, but he's not someone who I can't appreciate.

You are always looking to trim down lists. In this case it was retroactive. In the case of your desert island lists you have been chipping away at it for months for reasons I don't really understand. To give you one highly touted match Christian v. Jack Swagger from Feb. 24th is a match that was universally praised at the time.

So my wrestling related New Year's Resolution is to review more full shows. I enjoyed doing it for King of Trios even though I didn't really like at least half of the weekend, so I figured I will keep it up and dump everything into this thread unless/until I start up a blog of some sort again. Show One House of Hardcore, October 6 2012 This is Tommy Dreamer's new promotion. In theory this could be a disaster of a show based on EXTREME nostalgia and old guys phoning it in. Let's see how it turns out in practice. Crowbar v. Shawn Daivari This was actually a pretty good opener. It was kept short and worked back and fourth, but all the transitions made sense and were believable. Devon Storm is a guy I always liked as the geek in the neon, taking lunatic head bumps to the floor for Taz suplexes and feuding with Ace Darling for fifty years in Northeast indies, but I was never a huge Crowbar guy. Here he looks like a washed up 80's hair metal star and sort of wrestles like one too which is a big plus. His ring movements are still sharp, but he totally comes across as a grumpy old man, kicking Daivari in the balls, dropping him nastily on the guardrail, et. There was a really nice looking superplex spot and while the finish took too long, this really makes me want to see some of the other stuff from Crowbar's Great White tour. FBI v. Danny Doring/Roadkill I cannot stand Danny Doring as a rule, though he had a surprisingly fun match with Brodie Lee last year and he was fine in this. Is the Mamaluke/Guido FBI and is probably one of the last few matches of Mamaluke's career. Roadkill and Doring have a "young Roadkill" in their corner, and Big Sal is in the FBI corner. They do a lot of your staple comedy spots, all of which are executed okay, though having watched hundreds of ECW FanCams they don't resonate with me in any meaningful way. The FBI control segment is not bad and we get some big stuff from Mamaluke including a really nice headscissors on Roadkill, a crazy head off an overhead suplex, and a wild bump off the apron onto the guardrail for a superkick that barely connected. Roadkill and Doring won with their old finisher. Perfectly acceptable match. Jazz v. Katarina Lee I think Katarina is Winter/Katy Lee Burchill or whatever the hell she want by in WWE. I don't really pay attention to Divas or Knockouts wrestling so I'm not sure. Jazz does a really slick floatover escape from a headscissors into a semi-cloverleaf that is easily the coolest thing I've seen so far on this show. Over all this was decent, but did nothing to renew my interest in women's wrestling. Alex Reynolds v. Tony Nice These are two Mikey Whipwreck trainees and he is announced as the guest ref for the match. I was shocked to see that Mikey Whipwreck is now the spitting image of Butterbean. Seriously I didn't catch the pre-match stuff on the first go around and literally thought Dreamer had been duped into doling out the cash to get Butterbean to ref a match between two indy guys. Reynolds looks enough like Johnny Swinger that I thought he was Johnny Swinger at first. In any event these are two young guys, sent out cold on a show filled with names and "legends" and clearly looking to do something to stand out and they absolutely succeeded. I am not a big fan of your "go, go, go" style indy matches and while this has some surface level elements of that style, the way they transitioned and set up the big spots was way better than what you would see out of your average Davey Richards match. They ended up using Mikey as a way for Reynolds to work heel spots, with Mikey pointing out his cheating and getting more and more frustrated with him as the match went along. Reynolds heel work was pretty basic and his big offense is pretty Novaish, but he was decent enough. Nice is a Pac like musclehead who is a freak athlete, with pretty nice strikes and a ton of nutty spots. There is an early sequence in this where Reynolds manages to avoid two dive attempts and when he gets back in the ring Nice makes busts out this series of flips and escapes ala Low Ki/Amazing Red that eventually builds to a massive dive which gets a huge pop. That is how you build to a spot. Later they actually come up with really creative ways to get Reynolds in the face wash position and while Mikey's involvement in the finish was kind of "eh" it made sense within the context of the match and Nice still ended up winning with a big 450 finish. This was about ten thousand times better than I would have expected coming in. Scott Steiner v. The Big XLG (Luke Gallows) This fucking ruled. Scott Steiner comes out wearing an NWO shirt and cuts a very Scott Steinerish shoot promo on Bischoff and Hogan pre-match. Then Gallows music hits and he comes out and I'll be god damned if Eddie Kingston of all people isn't his second for some unknown reason. Gallows comes straight in and tries to stare down Steiner and Steiner goes straight to him and this is like the best possible 1999/2000 era Big Poppa Pump v. Captain Rection/Booker T match, as Gallows bumps around huge for Steiner and it spills out to the floor with Scotty beating him up with a kendo stick, the ring bell and one of those small plastic chairs that populate every kindergarten classroom in America. Gallows takes a couple of big bumps into the guardrail, one of which almost takes out the entire front row. Just when you think this is going to be a total squash Eddie Kingston (who was awesome fleeing in terror from Steiner earlier) tries to trip him off the ropes and Gallows takes his head off with a pump kick. It's Steiner's turn to return the favor on the floor and I've got to give him credit as he takes a pretty big bump into the guardrail for a semi-crippled guy, let's Kingston put him in his own finisher on the floor as Eddie rips at his face and then eats a couple of really nasty shots from the aforementioned kindergarten chair of doom. Rick Steiner shows up and chases Kingston around ringside before settling into Scott's corner, while Gallows throws sick punches at Scott's head with Scott avoiding big shots for mini-hope spots. Yes Scott Steiner is working underneath hope spots in 2012 and it's pretty good - albeit basic - stuff. Scott comes back with some suplexes and goes to finish him off with a top rope overhead suplex, when Kingston throws a cheapshot and Gallows comes off the second rope with an elbow for a near fall. Rick chases Kingston into the ring and decks him with a lariat, right as Gallows eats an STO from Scott for the finish. Extremely fun match from bell-to-bell. Chris Masters v. Hale Collins This segment starts off with a great heel promo from Masters and a Masterlock challenge with a plant from the crowd. Collins ends up showing up and taking the challenge himself. Of course as the hometown hero he starts to look like he will break it and Masters starts wailing on him which leads to a match. The match itself is a complete and total Masters carry job and the sort of match that almost pisses you off as the fact that he's not signed is utterly ridiculous. He controls the match well with his offense including an awesome delayed vertical suplex, is great antagonizing the crowd by strutting around like a douche after chops and sells and bumps like a champ for the extremely questionable offense of Collins. Match isn't great and has a shit finish, but it's fun to watch Masters do his thing. Rhino v. Sami Callihan Before I saw this match I thought Sami Callihan was arguably the best wrestler in the world in 2012. After seeing this match I think Sami Callihan was definitely the best wrestler in the world in 2012. I like Rhino fine for what he is, but I cannot remember the last time I saw a Rhino match this good. This goes about fourteen minutes and it is Sami plugging Rhino into his formula match, with some nice change ups and a bunch of surprises. This has the frantic pace of all of Sami's best matches, but I thought the transitions and big spots were really well laid out and played well to the strengths of both guys. Lots of sick stuff in this, including Sami chopping the fuck out of the ringpost, taking a massive bump onto the floor and then onto the ramp and then getting clobbered hard as fuck in the face with the kindergarten chair. Rhino goes for a running start, springboard off the chair into a gore and eats a nasty kick to the face. Then Sami hits a running hilo onto Rhino from the ramp into the ring, which is a total mark out spot for me as a WCW fan who misses the fun stuff you could do with those ramp way entrances. Sami started the match with an ambush attack and one of the things I really love about "Sami v. the vet" matches is that you get the sense in everyone of these matches that he is going for absolute broke and knows he has to bust out everything to win. Great stuff setting up the finish run as Rhino goes for a gore, but Sami catches him with a guillotine in mid-air. He fights through and hits a sick over head suplex into the corner and ends up hitting a gore but Sami kicks. Rhino survives a brief bit in the stretch muffler and then Sami kicks out of his jumping piledriver, before Rhino goes nuclear and puts him away with the jumping piledriver off the second rope. Really I cannot imagine someone having a better match with Rhino in 2012 and even in losing Callihan came across looking like a tough son of a bitch. Big Daddy V v. Jobbers A couple of quick squashes and then Spike runs in and hits the Acid Drop. I can hear El-P's head exploding as I type this. The weakest thing so far and this was perfectly fine. Edge in ring promo. Edge puts over the history of the Mid-Hudson Civic Center where the show is being held and puts over a lot of talent, including Callihan. He talks up Tommy for doing the show a bit and then introduces The Young Bucks v. Londrick by comparing them to The Hardys and Edge/Christian. I don't like Edge but this was a good use of a "name." The Young Bucks v. Paul London/Brian Kendrick This is probably a dream match to some people. I actually think these teams may have worked each other before in PWG, but I'm too lazy to check. In any event this was a very good spotfest, that was helped dramatically by the fact that the Bucks actually worked a heat section first and were in full blown heel mode which is really where they excel. Too much crazy shit in this to call, but the early structure allowed for the big spots on the back end to actually come across as a big deal and I thought London in particular sold really well throughout. Londrick did there double dive spot, the Bucks hit a bunch of their big stuff include the turnbuckle powerbomb/enziguri combo, and both teams interrupted the fancier tandem spots of the other team which I thought was a nice touch. Finish with London getting the knees up on stage two of More Bang For Your Buck and then turning it into their own double finisher combo was well timed and looked really good. For matches of this sort, this is about as good as it gets. Mike Knox v. Carlito v. Tommy Dreamer On paper you think this could be a complete disaster, but this was actually a very fun, hardcore sprint. Dreamer is a guy who always tries hard and Carlito is a good a guy who is almost always lazy so the wild card here is Knox who now looks like a Nazi skinhead. I have been wanting to see Knox pop up since he vanished from the face of the Earth a couple of years back and while he wasn't great here, he picked his spots and looked good when he got to lay them in. Very much a car crash affair, but Carlito was unusually hyped and took a pretty crazy table and ladder bump. Knox took a nutty Ladder bump of his own and hit his big crossbody which still looks great. The finish was Tommy's turn to get fucking crushed with a nasty bump onto the ladder and then the back cracker while he was tied up in it which looked really gnarly. Much better than it looks on paper. This was a shockingly good card from top to bottom. Absolutely nothing on the show was bad. They did a good crowd for this (about 2000 paid) and I could honestly see myself going to a show of their's if they continue to run. This will sound like hyperbole, but this was one of the five best shows I saw from anywhere in 2012.

That is really awesome. Where was the interview? Masters had a ton of good matches over a 20-month or so period. Superstars in general was a great show and he was consistently the highlight of it. There was a period of time where he had a good match with just about every mid-carder/undercard worker on the roster, and was the best guy in virtually everyone of those matches.

Man that really was some shit. Luger winning got a huge reaction and it was less than nothing in the scheme of things thanks to the booking.

no problem

This is the most unintentionally funny post ever on this forum. Literally laughing out loud.

I honestly don't think it is hyperbolic, but I think your jump point is late - it started in 08. I'm not up on 08 Lucha, but I would actually go so far as to say that Chavo, Evan Bourne, Matt Hardy, Finlay and Mark Henry would all be in my top ten from 08 and they were all ECW guys. Actually Miz/Morrison had some really good stuff on ECW that year too IIRC. It was EASILY the best WWE show that year in terms of match quality. In fact it's possible it was even better than 09 in terms of depth, though I'm not sure the highpoints were as high (Christian v. Swagger, Christian v. Regal)

When I think "top promotion" I think promotion that was on top. Not promotion that did things I like. I LOVED IWRG for a couple of years (and it's still pretty good when it turns up), but in no way could it reasonably be called a "top promotion"

Here is what you said: To say a show was better than a promotion that revolutionized wrestling and helped turn WWE into the most profitable wrestling promotion in the US is a little far fetched. I assume your point when you use that sort of language is that the influence was big time and significant. I suppose the line about how ECW helped turn WWE into the most profitable promotion in the U.S. could be read a multitude of ways, but I don't read it to mean "eh, they had some influence and deserve credit for it."

ECW was maybe a top three promotion in the U.S. from 96 on, but the gap between them and two massive. I don't know how AAA was drawing from 1996 on in the States which is why I say "maybe." They were almost certainly not a top three promotion in North America at any point.

Hyperbole is saying ECW was a "top promotion of its era." It wasn't. At any point. In fact it was never even CLOSE to being a top promotion of it's era. I'm not even sure we can point to a point where ECW was a top three promotion in North America. ECW was never a to five promotion in the World. Calling it a "top promotion of its era" is not a claim I would want to have to defend, particularly in an argument about hyperbolic statements. ECW had influence - crediting them with having a big hand in making WWE a huge juggernaut strikes me as a far more hyperbolic statement than saying "I think WWECW's best matches were better."

Yea i agree. To say a show was better than a promotion that revolutionized wrestling and helped turn WWE into the most profitable wrestling promotion in the US is a little far fetched. ECW had a lot of faults but it was also very ground breaking. To reach national exposure from where they started says a whole lot as to how popular ECW became. WWECW had good wrestling on it from time to time but also had very shitty wrestling. A better comparison would be WCW Worldwide to WWECW or something of that nature. I remember a lot of people shitting on WWECW at the time and now everyone loves it, gotta love the internet. I loved it in 08 and 09 and said so at the time to anyone who would listen. Also as much as I love ECW an as influential as I think they were, that second sentence is a hyperbolic even by my standards.

Come on what? I said this in more detail in the first response in this thread.

This is a random question, but how much 70's Stan Hansen is available? I know the Bruno Cage Match exists and I think there is a Destroyer match from the mid-70's that is on youtube. Not sure about anything else. I'd be interested to see what is out there so if anyone finds anything drop the link in here.

The third reign is hilarious because it made Cena look like the biggest piece of shit on Earth, to the point where it totally killed the Cena character dead forever with my daughter.

I mentioned him to Loss as a possibility last night. Seems really likely to me just based on the handful of stuff I've seen

They had totally different goals so the comparison is not easy. WWECW - particularly during the period where it was really good (08 and 09) was basically a place for guys getting broken in to work some of the better vets on the roster in long(ish) matches. The ECW title was sort of the equivalent of a tv title in that it was defended most weeks and the challenger could be anyone from Yoshi Tatsu to Tommy Dreamer to Harry Smith to William Regal. The storylines were completely self contained within that show and were given a more narrow focus than on the other major shows let alone the original ECW. I will preface this by saying I haven't gone back and watched it the way I did with ECW, but I would say at it's absolute peak WWECW was better. That pains me to say because I'm a proponent of the view that "ECW is dated/doesn't age well" isn't true. But for the sort of matches I enjoy - psychology/selling heavy matches, with guys who have multiple credible finishes, getting plenty of time to work - WWECW was about as fulfilling as modern wrestling is going to get. As a total package I'll take the original ECW because it was not a sterile promotion. It was filled with vitality and the errors were there but it didn't feel like an experiment being conducted in a lab with NIH funds. The crash tv booking could be annoying at time, but it led to lots of memorable moments and extremely fun angles. WWECW had it's own surreal/crazy moments - Ric Flair rolling around in tacks in a hometown ring while the crowd chants ECW being the most obvious - but not nearly as many and virtually none during the point where I thought it was really good. Over the course of their respective runs I'm not sure who averaged more good matches relative to shows held. With ECW I've seen virtually everything that was committed to tape. I didn't see any WWECW house shows (though there weren't that many IIRC) and they had FAR less content. Guys like Tajiri and Scorp would maybe be comparable to Christian and Matt Hardy, though it really doesn't work because the WWE guys got far more time and weren't expected to fall through tables and smash each other with chairs nearly as much. I still think Tajiri from 99/00 is as consistently good a guy as I've ever seen and Scorp doing what he did was more impressive to me than what Hardy or Christian did. But in terms of really good matches? I'd really need to go back and watch the WWE stuff.

I watched this a few months back and at the time I thought it was clearly several pegs below the other good Flair/Luger matches. No problem calling it a good match, but it really felt like Flair in "get all my shit in" mode more than any other big match of his I can think of from that era.

I don't like Brody and do think he was mythologized in death, but he was clearly a big star in life. He's not one of the twenty best wrestlers of all time like the Molinaro book argued, but he's not Sid either.

I like Chavo, but he wouldn't have done better than Rey in that role on any level. Rey is a bigger star, better in the sympathy role, and more overtly an "underdog."

I like Chavo, but I don't believe that story for a second.

This is an odd guy for me to mention in this thread because I'm not really that big a fan of his, but Paul London is a guy who had an awful lot of matches that people thought highly of on the indies, then as a guy working random Velocity matches, then teaming with Spanky. I really want Schneider to come into this thread and argue on behalf of Ian Rotten. I don't mean that as a troll either. I think someone could probably make a case for him, but it needs to be someone who has seen more IWA-MS than me.

Jericho maybe. Flair in 03 and 04 was easily the worst I've ever seen. Virtually everyone of his tv matches had him visibly calling spots.