NintendoLogic

I'm no Seth Rollins fan, but calling him worse than Jinder Mahal can only be described as Rollins Derangement Syndrome. You know you're out to lunch when the argument for Jinder is that he sucks so much that nobody wants to see him in a main event position again.

I'm not disputing that Cena would be a better Mania opponent for Angle than Corbin in every way. I mean, that's a no-brainer. But he hasn't been an actively good wrestler in ages. Anyway, I think a major problem with stories in WWE is that there's simply too much time in between the Royal Rumble and Wrestlemania. There's only so many ways to say "I don't like you and I'm going to take your title," and even the deepest stories don't need ten weeks of buildup. Combine that with the billion hours of TV time they have to fill each week and you get all the twists and turns they think they need to keep things moving.

2019 Cena isn't a good worker, though. He's almost as washed-up as Angle.

Okada/Ishii wasn't quite on the level of their 2016 G1 match, but it was indeed a MOTYC. They match up incredibly well because they seem to cancel out each other's more annoying/problematic tendencies. Ishii's cross armbreaker is the first time I can ever recall him applying a wrestling hold in a match.

When New Japan ran a show in Charlotte last month, they apologized for the lack of Japanese talent and said that the shutdown had prevented their visas from being processed. This led to a "Fuck you Trump" chant, which shows how much both Charlotte and wrestling crowds have changed. Can you imagine a "Fuck you Reagan" chant at a JCP show in the 80s?

There's a niche audience for all kinds of stupid shit that makes the business look like even more of a joke than it already is. That doesn't mean they should be catered to. Then again, this is an era where wrestlers shove tampons down their opponents' throats and sell pictures of their bowel movements online, so we're probably past the point of no return.

That's not really true, though. The classic wrestling holds are mostly modified versions of catch wrestling submissions (somebody actually won an MMA fight with a Boston crab a while back). And suplexes and the like have their origins in Greco-Roman wrestling. As for the Irish whip, it was more of a judo-style takedown in its original form. Obviously every aspect of pro wrestling wasn't sports-like, but the wrestlers themselves were pretty much always presented as elite athletes and genuine tough guys. Managers like Cornette don't count because their heat came from having no physical credibility. The whole idea behind Cornette's feud with Baby Doll was that he was such a sissy that he got his ass kicked by a girl. People like to say that doesn't matter anymore, but WWE's biggest stars are Brock Lesnar and Ronda Rousey. And Becky Lynch standing tall with a bloody face and a broken nose took her to new heights of popularity. And Roman Reigns was at his most over when he was the Shield's silent enforcer. Being perceived as a badass matters. It's much harder to create that perception when you go out of your way to remind everybody that it's all fake and bullshit.

To be honest, I do find Rey working competitively against the likes of Kane and Mark Henry to be absurd on a certain level. He makes it work because he's a once-in-a-lifetime athletic marvel. Being juiced to the gills also helps. There are few, if any, women who are anywhere close to him technically or athletically. That's precisely it. Women's bodies aren't equal to men's bodies for the purpose of competing in combat sports. Even when a man and woman are the same height and weight, the man is going to have more muscle mass and denser bone structure than the woman if he's any kind of athlete. Therein lies the problem. Pro wrestling isn't a comic book or a video game. It's a simulated athletic contest. It has fantastic and theatrical elements, but it has to be grounded in realism or else you get shit like Bray Wyatt projecting maggots onto the mat. The fact that we're having this discussion is another indication of how nerd culture has cannibalized every aspect of American popular culture.

The match I'm looking forward to the most is Lesnar vs. Rollins. I have no love for Seth, but it's pretty much impossible for Brock to have a bad match with a smaller guy who's willing to bump big. Joe vs. Rey would have been off the chain in 2005, but Joe hasn't been that level of worker in eons. And from what I've seen of Rey since returning to WWE, he's basically a PWG wrestler now. Plus, Rey always gets a raw deal when it comes to match time. He's only had two Mania singles matches go longer than 10 minutes.

You can put me in the "uncomfortable for personal reasons" category. A man beating up a woman isn't something I can find entertaining under any circumstances. Plus, a woman having a competitive match with a man makes a complete mockery of any pretense of realism and destroys my suspension of disbelief. It's like deathmatch wrestling. It doesn't matter to me how well-worked it is because it's too inherently offensive to my sensibilities to derive any enjoyment from.

I've never had much interest in Eli Drake, but good on him for taking a stand against that nonsense. Intergender matches have to be the worst trend in wrestling this decade, and think of the ground that covers.

I will say that the story strikes me as suspect for other reasons. It seems implausible to me that a couple of old-school carnies like Hogan and Piper would have been blabbing about the payoff to a major angle in front of some marks. Maybe someone from WCW leaked it and the part about it coming from a movie set was a smokescreen to protect the identity of the leaker.

The difference is that 1998 Austin and 2005 Cena had significant measurable impacts on business. If Braun is drawing like Goldberg, then by all means give him the Goldberg push. But I've seen no evidence of him being a significant mover of ratings, attendance, merch sales, or really anything other than crowd pops. Granted, that's better than no reaction at all, but let's get real. He's a monster who performs superhuman feats of strength and has a monosyllabic catchphrase. It'd be alarming if he didn't get some kind of reaction. At some point, though, you have to deliver some steak to match the sizzle. Great matches may not be the end-all be-all, but in-ring ability is more important than it's ever been. Having him work garbage brawls all the time sounds great in theory, but what do you do when the injuries start piling up? He's already falling apart physically as it is. With all that said, he's obviously not being used to anywhere near his potential. Baron Corbin is this era's Kane: he's supposed to be this heel gatekeeper who gets vanquished by up-and-coming babyfaces, but everyone he feuds with ends up less over than they were beforehand.

Dave mentioned the movie in a few other issues. It was called The Overlords, and it also starred Gary Busey. As best I can tell, it never saw the light of day.

There's only so much you can do with a giant who can't work long singles matches. Having him run through everybody would get old in hurry, and having him work competitive matches on a regular basis kills his aura. Guys like Braun work best as special attractions.

The Observer 2018 awards issue came out today. I was somewhat surprised to see Daniel Bryan beat out Samoa Joe for Best on Interviews, but all the other winners were what you'd expect.

Honestly, AJ has mostly underwhelmed since the Lesnar match. If you told me at the beginning of 2018 that he would have extended feuds that year with Shinsuke Nakamura and Samoa Joe, I would have expected at least one all-time classic match, but it never happened. He can still deliver with the right opponent (I'm apparently the only person who really liked the Bryan match at the Rumble), but he hasn't been the kind of wrestler who could work a **** match in his sleep for a long time. For the record, Orton's best career match was against Cena at Summerslam 2007. Granted, it was pretty much impossible to have a bad match with 2007 Cena, but Orton held up his end of the bargain as well.

She was inducted in 2006. Plus, it's hilarious that Booker T is a multiple-time inductee and Bret isn't.

I don't see how anyone can think Dave and Bryan are excessively nitpicky. If anything, the opposite is true. I mean, they were defending the Ronda/Becky storyline up until the other night.

If it were simple, they wouldn't need 30 writers or however many they have. They need to complicate things to justify their existence.

I didn't watch this (I was in transit all day), but the best solution to me would be to have Ronda attack Becky while she has Charlotte in the Dis-Arm-Her. That way, Becky doesn't look like a chump who had to have Ronda bail her out, and Ronda could pass it off as not wanting Becky to have the satisfaction of a clean win. I guess that makes Charlotte look weak, but come on. If the billion title reigns she's had haven't made her strong enough, there's nothing that can be done. Plus, the whole point of the storyline is that she did nothing to earn a spot in the match and didn't deserve to be there. Or at least, it used to be. I don't know what the hell's going on anymore.

For what it's worth, Dave said on the F4W board that they're trying to recreate the build for Mania 11 where Bigelow was told to go on talk shows and say that wrestling wasn't real, but he hated LT and was going to fight him for real once they got in the ring.

Have the final four be IYH 13 rules where eliminations can come by pin, submission, or being thrown over the top rope. Actually, they should do that for the regular Rumbles as well.

More "Ronda refuses to follow the script" nonsense: WWE's inability to leave well enough alone never ceases to amaze me. They were handed the most idiot-proof storyline imaginable on a silver platter, and they've larded it up with injuries and suspensions and worked shoots and adding Charlotte for no real reason-and for what? Is there a single person who is more excited to see this match now than they were a month ago? Especially since Dave has been implying recently that Becky winning at Mania isn't a sure thing.

This is a match I think a lot of people here would dig. It can best be described as a Bizarro World version of the Steiners vs. Sting and Luger match at Superbrawl the previous year. That was a crowd-pleasing spotfest with two babyface teams while this was a cheat-fest, for lack of a better term, between two heel teams. There was an illegal double-team or a run-in to break up a pin or submission or some other illegal tactic roughly every 30 seconds. And that's on top of the gritty brawling and matwork you'd expect from these guys. Eaton was the star of the match, with his uppercut to Slater on the outside being the highlight. I also loved Slater's punches and elbows. Unfortunately, it's too short to be a true classic, although it may be the greatest sub-6 minute match of all time. If they had twice as much time to work with, it could've been a top ten match in WCW history. Still, it's well worth going out of your way to check out.