FLIK

Wasn't so much that Vince had a grudge or hated him, he just didn't see him as credible in the role. His 2nd world title run didn't come until 4 years later and lasted less then a month, his 3rd they wouldn't even let him have it a day and he lost it later on in the same show he won it on to Cena.

Never heard the Chavo story either From the stories Court Bauer, Lagana & other former creative team members who were around at the time have said, Rey's run with the title was something Vince had to be dragged kicking & screaming into agreeing to, then when he got it Vince couldn't wait to take it off him and would constantly remind creative that he was loosing it soon and would nix any ideas brought up to keep him strong which most of the ppl on creative wanted to do.

Storyline reason is because of the screwy ending in this match with the ref. Except for the 11/91 tag, every AJW cage match after this is then fought under, over the top only escape rules with no ref. Always thought it made for great matches. Except for War Games, AJW style is my favorite type of cage match ever.

In the old interview of Brody's I posted he talks a lot in the begining about how he was a tv producer for World Class so he clearly was preparing to be able to have some sort of backstage/office role in wrestling post retirement.

This caught my attention Zombie clown is the exact same wrestler as Monster Clown Monster Clown: 1795 max ELO rating from 10/28/2010 (390 matches with 175 ranked matches) Killer was formerly Murder Clown Murder Clown: 1800 max ELO rating from 10/28/2010 (397 matches with 181 ranked matches) Exact same gimmick, look, etc... AAA just randomly changed the names for some reason

My pick is Tensai. As mentioned above, Mike Awesome is a guy who's act wasn't suited for the major league companies in the US but worked great in Japan and the less restrictive environment of ECW. Tensai is super talented guy who's act worked great in Japan and could have done the same in WWE but poor booking and a failure to maximize his strengths & hide his weakness pretty much has him labled as a failure and as someone who sucks in the eyes of many who've only seen his US run. Don't think he'd have fit in with NJPW much either. He did have 2 runs in AJPW, 1 before he left for ECW and 1 after he left WWE and then a run in NOAH all of which produced some good stuff but didn't last long.

Random pointless fact I found amusing. Hamada's UWF was co founded by Hisatsune Shinma who is the son of Hisashi Shinma who helped start up shoot style UWF & used to be president of the WWF in the late 70's & early 80's.

Just read the short obit Meltzer did on him whear he writes Not that many ppl seem to get consideration if their main qualification is training (Yamamoto seemed to have never been more then a mid carder as a wrestler) but i'd figure a guy with that kind of resume could atleast sniff the ballot.

Anyone know if Kotetsu Yamamoto was ever on the ballot? Seems like a guy who'd have a case just as a trainer considering he was in charge of the NJPW dojo from the 80's on and all the top lvl guys that came from thear.

Who on Earth are the people making that argument?

Meiko's spent the better part of the last 14 years feuding with Aja Kong, it'd be more awkward if he didn't lay it in

No offense but uhhhhh WTF? I think I got that you don't like Rhino from reading that. The other 99% of it I have no clue what you're trying to say.

In no particular order, based mostly on stuff i've been watching in the past month or so. Daisuke Sekimoto - I think hands down he's been the best currently active wrestler walking the planet for the past 3 years minimum. Don't think anyone comes close as far as delivering in big matches goes. Glad he's finally started to catch on & gain popularity with a wider audiance but he's been awesome for the last decade, just no one was paying attention earlier. Timothy Thatcher - My pick for best guy in the Nor Cal indy sceen. Always go out of my way to watch his stuff. Great technical wrestler, great brawler. Can have good to great matches with any type of wrestler, from Finlay to Drake Younger to Mustafa Saeed. Starting to break out a little beyond the local sceen, just did a short tour for WxW in Germany but still not 1/10 as well known as he deserves to be. Would be huge if he was a East Coast indy guy instead of a West Coast. Genki Misae - On the joshi front i've been watching a lot of 2008 NEO lately & she's stolen the show on every DVD. Sheamus - Haven't been keeping up like I hoped but i've gotten back into watching WWE again the last few months and he's been one of the biggest highlights. Show/Sheamus was the best match at HIAC & Survivor Series and 3rd best on TLC. Young David (Davey Boy Smith) - Haven't talked about it much lately but i'm still training to actually become a wrestler. Because of the holiday season ppl are out of town so training is currently on hold and during the break our trainer told us to go watch a bunch of matches with great chain/technical wrestling so of course I decided that'd be a great opportunity to get back into WoS again, especially after the latest WC podcast. Of the batch of stuff i've watched so far, Yound David vs Jim Breaks stood out as a true "holy shit this is great" type match. Then I discovered there's a 2nd (earlier) Breaks/David match and I came across 2 Finlay/David matches so those 3 are at the top of my list of things I need to see ASAP. Honorable mentions to Tanahashi, Okada, Togi Makabe, Manabu Nakanshi, Takashi Izuka, Mayumi Oazki, Nanae Takahashi, Kyoko Kimura, Natsuki Taiyo, Ray, Arisa Nakajima, Sweet Saraya, Cheerleader Melissa, Atsushi Onita, Sir Samurai, Jim Breaks, Johnny Saint, The Dangerous Alliance, Great Kabuki, Killer Khan, Osamu Nishimura, Tajiri, Masa Fuchi, Tenryu, Jun Kasai, CM Punk, The Shield & Daniel Bryan for others i'm really digging from recent viewing OR am looking forward to watching a lot more of in the immediate near future.

Funk/Backlund is really good and I definitely want to include it. Just watched this and I don't think i've legit ever been more let down by a match in my life. Funk's my #3 favorite wrestler of all time and i've always loved Backlund too. This started out awesome for about 4-5 mins, then they did a 5 min head lock spot followed by a 10 min test of strength spot followed by 1 min of action and a roll up finish by which point I was screaming "fuck you both" in my head.

.....you know you've got too much wrestling when it takes 15 mins to find a list of shows you've got to confirm you even have what you're looking for, then a further 20 mins to find the actual show.

Kind of in the in the same boat as I like Brody too but not enough to bother counter arguing the intense hatred he gets in some parts. By and large he's still mostly loved outside of pockets of the super hardcore fandom though. Years ago I uploaded a semi shoot interview Brody did in the 80's to my youtube account and it's dwarfed anything else i've ever put up in terms of views (20 thousand+ more then my next higest rated video) and comments almost all of which tend to be positive.

Dan Ginnety put together some really good sets covering late 70's through 80's AJW. PUNQ used to do yearly best of the year sets during the early to mid 2000's. He's not around much anymore but a bunch of other vendors like IVP & Highspots picked up his comps and are still selling copies of them. For the 90's there's a few diffrent sets I know of that the above are also selling but they're more limited in scope and really only cover the cliff note/highlights of joshi most of which you'll have seen anyways if you're getting the year book sets. Jeff Lynch has also put together a couple of exstensive sets over the years, namely best of's for ARSION & the joshi matches from Hamada's UWF. Most of the other major comps I know of off the top of my head tend to focus more on specific wrestlers like Manami Toyota or Megumi Kudo.

David McClain bringing back WOW out of the blue a decade + after it ended.

Awwww, no wonder he got Hep

???? Alex Wright was like 6'2 - 6'3

http://www.wowe.com/ http://www.youtube.com/user/wowentvideos/v...0&flow=grid ............da fuk? Did not see this coming

I don't know what this means but last night I had a dream I was watching a classical music concert preformed by Al Snow, Mick Foley, Terry Funk, Blue Demon, Black Terry (wearing Steve Corino's Monster C mask), Jim Breaks & a bunch of random no bodies. After the show I was hanging out with Gabe Sapolsky talking about how we needed to track down Breaks because he was a drunk who'd blow all his pay off on booze and Hyundai cars then black out & not remember any of it.....

Eh, it's a practicality thing. Rey is nearly a midget & the top rope is higher then his shoulder which makes it not impossible but certainly harder & more dangerous for him to hit the ropes properly if he did it the normal way.

There's a lot in that period i'd rate good to great, especially once the Nitro era kicked in. The Savage matches stand out above anything else but he had good stuff with Luger, Arn, Hogan, Sting & others. Carried the Giant to the best matches of the early part of his career. Same time frame he was still doing tours of Japan and I thought his matches vs Hase, Mutoh & Koshinaka were great. Recall liking the Inoki match from Korea. He worked Hashimoto too but I can't remember anything about it other then I didn't think it was bad atleast. To me the start of Flair no longer being a consistent high lvl guy is 97.

Undertaker when he was full time never had a problem working with and putting over guys WAY below his lvl so I really don't think that's an issue for him. He jobed 100% clean to Vladimir Fucking Koslov once. He's more of a victim of circumstances to whear, he appears so rarely that it would diminish his value to not treat him as an ubber top lvl guy or else why bother and I think at this point, it would do more harm then good to end the streak. It's become such a once in a lifetime big deal to most of the fan base that if they ended it it would only give the guy the wrong type of heat and there'd be a bunch of backlash over it. Eh, even if you dislike his matches or the way he's booked I don't think you can really objectively say he's failed on top. He's been on the backburner of late but for most of the last 7 or so years he's been the #2 guy in the company behind Cena and he got over huge & did good business in the spot. If he can remain injury free I think he's going right back to the main event title picture the second he turns heel again.