NintendoLogic

The Alexa push was awful. There's not much worse than a heel who verbally eviscerates her opponents before beating them clean. Especially when she's the smallest wrestler in the division and one of the worst workers. Anyway, I'm sure her depush was due to injuries catching up to her. It's hard to build around someone who's on the shelf for an extended period of time every few months.

Anyway, let's get real. Nothing is in the same galaxy as the early-mid 00s HHH reign of terror in terms of damage to the product from both a business and creative standpoint. Don't allow yourself to be gaslighted by WWE's revisionist history.

If you're talking about their match at Backlash, Carmella sandbagged herself by sucking.

Hopefully, they'll have someone from the Kansas City police department on to explain why they didn't immediately order the show to be shut down. By allowing it to continue, they were allowing a crime scene to be tampered with.

I was speaking about the Blue Lives Matter slogan in general since it had been brought up. If a conversation is about X and someone brings up Y in relation to X, it's not unheard of for people to discuss aspects of Y that have nothing to do with X. It happens quite frequently on message boards. This is all pretty far removed from Pro Wrestling Only, so I'll just leave it at that.

This is quite the non sequitur, but your opinion is noted.

"I Stand for Our National Anthem" isn't a generic patriotic slogan. It's a direct response to NFL players who kneel during the anthem to protest racism and police brutality. Whenever I see "Blue Lives Matter" and like slogans, I think about the time a few years ago I saw a car festooned with various political bumper stickers. One of them said "Police lives matter" and another said "If they come for your guns, give them your bullets first." So police lives matter...unless they come for your guns. I suspect that mindset is typical among the Back the Blue crowd.

Oh no no no...

Re: Becky Lynch, two things. 1. It's easy to dunk on a guy who criticizes someone for putting having a family ahead of the business, but I'm more troubled by the fact that family is considered the only legitimate excuse for not centering your life around your job. We hear all these horror stories about people hardly ever getting to see their spouses and children because of the work culture in WWE, but single people need time off the clock too. 2. Making as much as you can during your prime earning years and then walking away is a nice idea, but I don't know if it jibes with reality. Wrestling is littered with examples of guys who were seemingly set for life and ended up broke. Money comes and goes, but time is something you can never get back once it's gone.

I thought the Abrams episode was a bit of a whitewash. As has been noted, the notion that the UWF was even remotely a threat to the WWF is preposterous. And if they were going to spend so much time discussing his dalliances with hookers, it was probably worth mentioning that he was married. Speaking of which, does anybody know the real story behind this match? I've seen it alleged that Abrams paid Williams extra to rough Ray up because he mistakenly believed that Ray was fooling around with his wife. Or because Ray screwed him on a drug deal. Or both. I've also seen it suggested that it was simply a matter of Williams not liking how stiff Ray was working and stiffing him back as a receipt. Watching the match, the latter explanation seems more plausible to me. When Williams took Ray down a couple of times after Ray tagged him with some kicks to the head, it seemed like he was trying to warn Ray to loosen up. That evidently didn't work, so Doc started laying into him. That doesn't explain Ray taking a swing at Abrams when Abrams whispered something in his ear after the match, though.

That Kross entrance was some embarrassing tryhard edgelord shit. All the elaborate jerkoff entrances in NXT are as much of a turnoff to me as the heavy-handed melodrama in the matches.

There's a Slaughter/Wanz match on 7/9/83 that's been in circulation for a while. This match that just got uploaded is a different one. It looks to be about twice as long and is fought under the rounds system.

WTF I love the Maryland State Athletic Commission now

To be honest, I don't think it's possible for the most part. I really think that wrestling is something you have to get into as a child so that nostalgic attachment can override the logical part of your brain.

Did anybody try to shoot or stab this Audiard fella?

Raw set a record for fewest viewers at 1.686 million. And that's without any asterisks like a holiday or going up against a major sporting event. I suppose you could say the pandemic is something of an asterisk, but if anything, they should benefit from a captive audience. I think it's more a matter of no audiences exposing how stale the format is, like a shitty sitcom being exposed by the lack of a laugh track. If ratings keep falling, I wouldn't be surprised if they brought Vince Russo back. I mean, could he really do any worse?

There's a pretty big difference between harassment on the street and attempted stabbings and shootings, which a lot of old-school heels had to deal with.

https://twitter.com/RickRudeSells The greatest Twitter account in the history of our sport.

Knowing WWE, they'll probably tell Seth to bash Becky in the media for turning her back on wrestling as a loyalty filter. Knowing Seth, he'll probably do it.

Updated top 150:

Well, like Dusty said, it will never be over. Going forward, I'll be updating this whenever a new match enters my top 150 (which I've decided is my cutoff for desert island status). Genichiro Tenryu/Masao Orihara vs. The Great Kabuki/Tatsumi Kitahara (WAR, 7/14/92) After some initial feeling out, Tenryu tries to collapse Kabuki's trachea with a chop to the throat, which Kabuki sells like he just swallowed battery acid. He then retaliates by trying to shatter Tenryu's jaw with uppercuts, so the tone is pretty well established. Orihara looks out of place with his attempts at complex athletic sequences, but at least they usually end with him getting dropped on the mat or kicked in the head. Kabuki and Kitahara unleash a hellacious beating on Orihara, and he sells throughout like he's on death's door. He also gets plenty of chances to show his stuff, most notably on a moonsault from the top turnbuckle to the floor. There's even some surprising learned psychology. When Orihara tries to make a comeback with kicks, Kabuki catches his leg and takes him down with a single leg trip. When Kitahara tries to do the same thing shortly afterward, Orihara shuts him down with slaps and then lays in a stomp for good measure before tagging out. Tenryu spends the bulk of the match standing on the apron and running in to break up pins with soccer ball kicks, but he's a surprisingly giving seller whenever he's the legal man. This is easily the best WAR match I've ever seen outside of the New Japan feud. ****1/2

Kobashi vs. Williams on 8/31/93 is another important one. For better or worse, that was the match that really got the ball rolling on the head drop era in All Japan.

Some galaxy brain takes in this thread right now. Authority-era Stephanie is probably the worst character in history in terms of damage done to the product.

I'm inclined to say that Hardys vs. Edge/Christian at No Mercy was at least as influential as HBK/Ramon. In addition to raising the bar for death-defying spots, it really marked the beginning of sticking as many guys as possible in a ladder match so there was never a break in the action.