NintendoLogic

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There's a sequence in the Ishikawa Sumo Hall match that encapsulates both the best and the worst of Miyahara. After a Fire Thunder on the apron, he clenches his fist to check for nerve damage. That's the kind of subtle detail you only see from the true greats. But less than two minutes later, he pops up after a superplex so he can do a fighting spirit comeback. It's stuff like that that makes him so frustrating. He'll build a match around sublime selling and deep layered storytelling, but then he'll throw it all away so he can get his shit in.

Except the Joe Savoldi who worked as a spy during WWII and the Joe Savoldi who was Angelo's son are two different people. In fact, Angelo's real name was Mario Fornini. He was given the name Angelo Savoldi by promoter Jack Pfefer so he could be billed as the older Joe's brother, the same way Ricky Steamboat was billed as a relative of Sam Steamboat.

Based on these MSG shows, it looks like the three biggest stars in WWE right now are Steve Austin, Undertaker, and Shane McMahon.

What the hell happened to rock and roll? Even bloated septuagenarian Flair is a million times cooler than these rock "stars."

Only 34? It'll be at least a decade before he's worthy of headlining Wrestlemania.

Looks like the era of Takeovers being part of Big 4 PPV weekends is officially over. Will they start being counter-programmed against AEW PPVs? Or will WWE try to undercut AEW by running them on USA? It's a lot harder to justify spending $50 on a PPV when there's a PPV-level card on TV every few months, to say nothing of the impact on AEW's ratings.

Casas has to be setting some kind of record as a full-time serious wrestler in a major promotion, right? Giant Baba and Rusher Kimura were both full-timers into their 60s, but they had long been relegated to old man comedy matches by that point.

Didn't Monsoon have an ownership stake in the WWC? Vega and Perez both started their careers there, so that would explain that connection. Also, I've never really thought of Puerto Ricans as being heavily involved in organized crime.

Dave posted on the F4W board today that he got into an argument in 1997 about Rey Mysterio with Buddy Rose, who said that Rey didn't know how to work and you could find someone like him on every street corner in Tijuana. Is Buddy Rose cancelled?

My wrestling universe has expanded significantly over the past seven years, so I decided to revisit this. Also, I thought some of our newer blood might be interested in sharing their thoughts. This time around, I limited my selections to matches I feel strongly about and am completely certain of or close to it. Note that the lineages of the WWE world and tag titles are so convoluted that I picked one match for each to represent all of them. WWE Championship: Eddie Guerrero vs. Brock Lesnar, No Way Out 2004 WWE Tag Team Championship: Shawn Michaels/Diesel vs. Razor Ramon/123 Kid, Action Zone WWE Intercontinental Championship: Randy Savage vs. Ricky Steamboat, Wrestlemania III WWF Women's Tag Team Championship: Jumping Bomb Angels vs. Glamour Girls, 11/24/87 NXT Tag Team Championship: #DIY vs. The Revival, NXT Takeover Toronto 2016 NWA World Heavyweight Championship: Ric Flair vs. Ricky Steamboat, Clash of the Champions VI WCW World Heavyweight Championship: Vader vs. Sting, Great American Bash 1992 NWA/WCW United States Championship: Lex Luger vs. Ricky Steamboat, Great American Bash 1989 NWA/WCW World Tag Team Championship: Dustin Rhodes/Ricky Steamboat vs. The Enforcers, Clash of the Champions XVII NWA/WCW United States Tag Team Championship: Steiner Brothers vs. Nasty Boys, Halloween Havoc 1990 WCW Cruiserweight Championship: Eddy Guerrero vs. Rey Misterio Jr., Halloween Havoc 1997 IWGP Heavyweight Championship: Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Kazuchika Okada, 4/7/13 IWGP Tag Team Championship: Hiroshi Tanahashi/Shinsuke Nakamura vs. Minoru Suzuki/Kensuke Sasaki, 12/11/04 IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship: Jushin Liger vs. Naoki Sano, 8/10/89 WWF Junior Heavyweight Championship: Dynamite Kid vs. Tatsumi Fujinami, 2/5/80 Triple Crown Heavyweight Championship: Mitsuharu Misawa vs. Toshiaki Kawada, 6/3/94 World Tag Team Championship: Mitsuharu Misawa/Kenta Kobashi vs. Toshiaki Kawada/Akira Taue, 6/9/95 All Asia Tag Team Championship: Kenta Kobashi/Tsuyoshi Kikuchi vs. Doug Furnas/Dan Kroffat, 5/25/92 GHC Heavyweight Championship: Kenta Kobashi vs. Yoshihiro Takayama, 4/25/04 GHC Tag Team Championship: Mitsuharu Misawa/Yoshinari Ogawa vs. KENTA/Naomichi Marufuji, 4/25/04 GHC Junior Heavyweight Championship: KENTA vs. SUWA, 9/18/05 WWWA Championship: Aja Kong vs. Dynamite Kansai, 8/30/95 AAAW Championship: Aja Kong vs. Meiko Satomura, 9/15/99 OZ Academy Openweight Championship: Aja Kong vs. Hikaru Shida, 9/17/18 AWA World Heavyweight Championship: Nick Bockwinkel vs. Curt Hennig, 11/21/86 AWA World Tag Team Championship: Midnight Rockers vs. Buddy Rose/Doug Somers, 8/30/86 AWA Southern Heavyweight Championship: Jerry Lawler vs. Bill Dundee, 6/6/83 ROH World Championship: Bryan Danielson vs. Takeshi Morishima, Manhattan Mayhem 2007 TNA X Division Championship: Samoa Joe vs. AJ Styles, Turning Point 2005 WLW Heavyweight Championship: Takeshi Morishima vs. Daisuke Ikeda, 6/1/04 Real Pro Wrestling World Heavyweight Championship: Vader vs. Nobuhiko Takada, 8/18/94 KO-D Openweight Championship: Dick Togo vs. Antonio Honda, 1/30/11 CWA World Heavyweight Championship: Bull Power vs. Otto Wanz, 12/22/89

There's two things I wish for above all else. One, no automatic rematches when a champion loses a title. Two, any contender who gets a title shot and comes up short moves to the back of the line.

Tuesday Night Titans actually moved to Fridays on January 4, 1985. It moved to Wednesdays on April 2, 1986 and remained there until the end. For the first few episodes after the initial switch, Lord Alfred Hayes introduced the show as "Tuesday Night Titans on Friday Nights." Beginning with the January 25, 1985 episode, he introduced it as simply "TNT," at which point it presumably became an orphan initialism.

Wow. That's a yikes from me, dawg.

Clash of Champions is in Charlotte, so she'll have the crowd behind her on that night at least.

She needs to keep her inflatable tube men, just make them evil versions with angry frowning faces.

It wasn't long ago that the most unconditionally beloved babyfaces in the company were Daniel Bryan, Sami Zayn, and Bayley. They've now had to turn all three heel because the booking killed them dead as babyfaces. But let's not undersell how much damage has been done to Becky. Earlier this year, the crowd reactions she got essentially forced WWE to turn Ronda Rousey heel. Now, when someone turns on her and leaves her laying, the crowd responds with cheers and yes chants. I honestly don't know if it's incompetence or deliberate character assassination.

What kind of rock star eats at Longhorn Steakhouse? Talk about killing the gimmick.

Dave on Twitter is doubling down on the argument that the Young Bucks/Lucha Brothers ladder match should have gone last based on the crowd reaction. I'm sorry, but that's ridiculous. You simply can't allow the crowning of your inaugural world champion to play second fiddle to another company's tag titles if you want the belt to mean anything. If the world title match was overshadowed that badly by a ladder spotfest, then the wrong people were in it.

They've only had three women's singles matches so far, two of which (Allie/Leva and Allie/Brandi) were glorified angles. They seem to be going out of their way to hide the women, which doesn't exactly inspire confidence in the strength of the division.

The same thing happened with Stacey Ervin a few months ago. Maybe tiny-ass gymnasts aren't the kind of athletes wrestling companies should be going after.

Interesting how the game contains "ONE FALL!" chants when Vince hates the chant and goes out of his way to suppress it.

She went on the shelf after Double or Nothing with an unspecified medical issue, deleted her Twitter account a few weeks ago, and now this. I saw some vague thirdhand gossip on the F4W board that something unfortunate happened that derailed her career but it wasn't a mental breakdown or anything scandalous. Still, it is a concerning chain of events. Does rovert have the scoops?

The crowd seems burned out.

Jesus, I just realized we still have the world title match.