NintendoLogic

Dorks like MSW who make mountains out of molehills and pull quotes out of context to try to rile people up are the absolute worst. Case in point, Meltzer literally says "she was a real college hurdler" right before the excerpted clip. Please keep that trash off this board.

With Prichard, there's no reason to think he's doing anything but giving Vince exactly what he wants no questions asked. Come to think of it, Vince McMahon absolutely belongs in the conversation for worst bookers, although certainly not the worst. Vince the booker is a far cry from Vince the promoter. Booking and promoting are two distinct skills, and it's rare for someone to be brilliant at both. Vince's biggest successes have come when actual wrestling minds had significant input into the booking. When left to his own devices, the results have been embarrassing.

Count me among those who doesn't see what the big deal is when Aalyah is a consenting adult in both real life and storyline. If they try to imply that Murphy was grooming her while she was underage, that's a different story.

That doesn't warrant a response because you clearly didn't read past the first sentence of my post. Come on, man. You're better than that.

Family members engaging in brutal combat isn't authentic emotion. It's either too over-the-top to take seriously or too uncomfortable to be entertaining. The same problem as intergender wrestling, really. Cody/Dustin only worked because they reconciled immediately afterward. I can't think of any protracted wrestling feud between family members that was successful other than Bret/Owen, and even that would have flopped if it had risen to the level of homicidal violence. Hell, the climax of their feud was a cage match where they spent half an hour running away from each other.

Is that the story WWE is presenting or is that your headcanon? As best I can tell, they stuck Reigns and Heyman together and expected fans to fill in the gaps themselves.

Imagine if Roman had done that five years ago when it would have mattered instead of saying sufferin succotash.

All the guys you mentioned would have been multi-time world champions in modern WWE. Is Cesaro really less suited for a main event run than Jinder Mahal?

Riki Choshu got a title shot at the Tokyo Dome in 1997 after winning the 1996 G1, but the G1 winner traditionally got a title shot in the fall unless he was already IWGP champion. Okada in 2012 began the tradition of the G1 winner earning a Tokyo Dome IWGP challenge rights certificate that he carried around in a briefcase and had to defend until Wrestle Kingdom.

You can see Sika say something like "We won't take this lying down" to Roman at the end of WM34.

Roman's comment is unintentionally revealing. Good steak should be eaten rare (medium rare at most). If you leave it on the grill, you're cooking all the flavor out of it.

PWinsider is reporting that Mercedes Martinez will be known as Retaliation and Mia Yim will be known as Reckoning. Did Rob Liefeld join WWE's creative team and no one told me? Also: "My brother SLAPJACK." My fucking sides. You know what, I respect his commitment to playing this lameass gimmick completely straight without trying to be self-aware and winking at the audience.

It's certainly for the best that AJ has a college-educated wife. Otherwise, he might be susceptible to crackpot ideas like the Earth being flat...oh, wait.

Nobody should sign with WWE unless they're a big enough star to bypass NXT. If you have any preexisting damage to your knees or shoulders, the PC will aggravate it exponentially. If you don't, the PC will inflict some.

Professional wrestling is the only industry where guys like Kane and Chris Jericho can be considered intelligent. However, I will say it's kind of cool that he used his Kane promo voice in that video calling public health officials sinister forces.

Four luchadores (Ultimo Guerrero, Bandido, Lluvia, and Princesa Sugehit) have tested positive for COVID and are off CMLL's anniversary show on Friday. Common sense would dictate that the show be postponed in the wake of a serious outbreak. But as thecubsfan has pointed out, doing so would require multiple powerful parties (CMLL and the authorities who gave them permission to start running again) to admit that they made a serious mistake in allowing shows to resume. So it's not going to happen.

It looks like this came out of nowhere since he was still taking bookings for appearances and was scheduled to be at Jerry Lawler's 50th anniversary celebration on Saturday. Sadly, 60 puts him at the high end of longevity for his peer group. Nikita Koloff, Barry Darsow, and John Nord are just about the only ones left from that crew of Minnesota wrestlers who broke into the business in the early 80s.

Credit where credit is due, I thought this was a borderline masterpiece. One of the things that set this apart from a typical strong style slugfest was the fact that they both seemed to have strategies beyond "take turns clobbering each other until one of them goes down." Goto won me over in the opening minutes when he responded to Tenzan's invitation to come off the ropes with a shoulder tackle by kicking him in the gut and following up with elbows. I also really liked the struggles to maintain control and the way both men had to gradually fight their way back in rather than transitioning with a single big move or counter (or worse, no-selling). There was a sequence near the end (Tenzan ducks a Goto lariat, Goto blocks a Tenzan kick, Tenzan blocks a Goto lariat and headbutts him in the gut, Goto catches Tenzan coming off the ropes with an ushigoroshi) that felt closer to high-end King's Road than modern strong style. Finally, it was compact enough to prevent them from going off the rails with overkill. With this style, less is almost always more.

Update: Hirooki Goto vs. Hiroyoshi Tenzan (NJPW, 8/1/14) It's been a while since I felt compelled to add a singles match to my list, and I never in a million years figured it would be a match with these two. But credit where credit is due, I thought this was a borderline masterpiece. One of the things that set this apart from a typical strong style slugfest was the fact that they both seemed to have strategies beyond "take turns clobbering each other until one of them goes down." Goto won me over in the opening minutes when he responded to Tenzan's invitation to come off the ropes with a shoulder tackle by kicking him in the gut and following up with elbows. I also really liked the struggles to maintain control and the way both men had to gradually fight their way back in rather than transitioning with a single big move or counter (or worse, no-selling). There was a sequence near the end (Tenzan ducks a Goto lariat, Goto blocks a Tenzan kick, Tenzan blocks a Goto lariat and headbutts him in the gut, Goto catches Tenzan coming off the ropes with an ushigoroshi) that felt closer to high-end King's Road than modern strong style. Finally, it was compact enough to prevent them from going off the rails with overkill. With this style, less is almost always more. ****1/2 I need to redo my 101-150 rankings, so I'm not quite sure where this will end up. My guess would be somewhere in the 110s.

I saw clips of the Retribution crap and the Rollins/Mysterio crap. You know what, I'm tapping out. I've way past the point of being a serious WWE fan, but I don't even think I can follow casually anymore. There's no reason for you guys to subject yourselves to this week after week when there's literally decades worth of actual good wrestling to watch.

MLW only runs like 10 dates a year, so $3k plus trans with TV exposure actually sounds like a good deal for most of the undercard as long as they're allowed to work indies.

Isn't that basically the same argument used against Akira Taue as as worker? That just about anybody could have had great main events working with Misawa and Kawada and Kobashi? Again, the closest historical parallel is Bob Backlund. The WWF title was strong enough, and the MSG cards were loaded enough, that they could've put the belt on any number of guys and drawn well. And he virtually fell off the face of the Earth while the WWF kept going strong after they let him go, which pretty well indicates that the brand was the main draw. But 41 MSG sellouts is 41 MSG sellouts. Maybe WWE's stadium business would be exactly the same with R-Truth in main events, but any guesses would be pure speculation. Wrestlers can only be evaluated on what they did, not what they hypothetically would have done on Earth-Prime.

Look at who liked that tweet.

According to Higuchi's Observer obit, he was universally regarded in Japan as the GOAT referee. He was especially great at things that a typical fan wouldn't notice like not obstructing ringside photographers (a huge deal given how important wrestling magazines were back then). But even given all that, having him on the ballot for the first time well after when he would have benefited from a death bump is rather bizarre.

I'm all for Minoru Suzuki winning the G1. Naito/Suzuki is the only matchup they have that feels big enough to headline Wrestle Kingdom while also being relatively fresh (their last singles match was in 2018). And if they want to give Suzuki a run as IWGP champion as a kind of lifetime achievement award, the COVID era would be the time to do it.