NintendoLogic

I actually wrote a mini-treatise on wrestler names a few years ago. http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/15399-wrestler-names/

I was just about to give them credit for giving the world champion a decisive clean victory and then that shit happens. Fucking bullshit.

Props to Ambrose for not completely blowing off the leg like Shawn in the SS95 match.

That was like the best possible PWG match.

As part of his Dusty retrospective, Scott Keith reposted an old recap of a shoot interview from like 1999 in which he said the following: "He talks a bit about Japan and how he wasn’t a big fan of Giant Baba (now there’s an understatement), and so he got caught up in the NJ-AJ wars when he worked a New Japan show and defended the NWA title there. Backstory: All Japan was an NWA member at the time, but Baba HATED Dusty, and in fact his booking of himself to the World title in 1986 caused a major PR problem between Crockett and Baba." What's the story here? Did Baba and Dusty have some kind of falling out? Did Baba think Dusty exposed the business? Or is this just some third-hand RSPW rumor that Scott passed along as undisputed fact as was his wont in those days?

I don't disagree with the last part, but I think that the worst All Japan heavy was better than the best New Japan heavy. Here's how I see it: Actually, now that I think about it, I'm open to being persuaded that Hashimoto was better than Taue.

I find it interesting that so many of the people who are negative on HBK's post-comeback work also effusively praise John Cena. That strikes me as rather inconsistent, as I'm hard-pressed to think of any criticisms of post-comeback Shawn that wouldn't also apply to Cena.

My mom grew up watching Florida wrestling in the 70s, so she was pretty bummed about the news. She told me about how when she was 16, her German cousin was visiting the States and she took him to whatever the main civic center was in Orlando at the time to see Dusty vs. Ivan Koloff. That must have been quite the shock for someone who, if he watched wrestling at all, was probably used to the likes of Horst Hoffman.

And Christopher Lee. Anyway, the truth of the matter is that I'm far too desensitized when it comes to wrestler deaths for one to have any kind of emotional impact. Still, it's really cool to see all the awesome Dusty promos people have posted in remembrance.

That raises the question of how much you should penalize someone for not having great matches in an environment where no one was having great matches.

I think HBK/Taker HIAC works great as a self-contained match. Shawn gets himself put in a situation where he can't run away from Taker, gets beaten within an inch of his life, connives a way to escape the cell, but he still can't escape Taker's wrath. The problem is that it set a precedent for HIAC matches to be focused on stunt bumps outside the cell rather than brawling inside it. But I don't think it's really fair to blame Shawn for all the lesser workers who took the wrong lessons from his matches. As for the Mania matches, I haven't watched the 26 match since the day it happened, but I think that 25 is as good as the modern WWE Main Event Epic style gets. I think the style as a whole is pretty degenerate, but they had as good a match as you can have while adhering to the tropes of the style.

No wrestler in history consistently had great matches with bad workers, so I don't think it's fair to hold that against Shawn. On the other hand, the transitive property doesn't really work as a means of comparing wrestlers. Some guys just don't have chemistry with each other. Jumbo Tsuruta and Mitsuharu Misawa, two of the greatest wrestlers who ever lived, both struggled to have great matches with Stan Hansen, another all-time great. And Austin's matches with The Rock consistently delivered. I wouldn't use that as an argument that Rock was a better wrestler than Undertaker. I'm honestly not sure which way to go on this. Austin's best blows away Shawn's best, and Austin's worst isn't as bad as Shawn's worst. But the gap between Austin's very best and the next level down is pretty steep, and Shawn has a much higher volume of good-to-great matches.

Tenryu didn't have great matches with everyone under the sun for 20 years. And even if he did, there's a pretty big difference between "great matches" and "the greatest matches of all time."

I'm somewhat sympathetic to the argument that the New Japan heavies were unfairly maligned, particularly in relation to the juniors. But I'm flabbergasted by the argument that they were on the same level as the All Japan heavies.

Owens has a pretty noticeable accent, at least to me. And weren't there USA chants during Cena/Owens?

I think it's pretty self-evident that great wrestlers have great matches. It's the wrestling equivalent of "you are what your record says you are."

To the Canadian fans, yeah. But do most Americans really know the difference between, say, Toronto and Quebec? I'm not talking necessarily about the educated people on this forum, but rather the general masses who watch Raw. Absolutely. Anglophone Canadians can easily pass for Americans (recall the hilarious "USA" chants during the Bret/Yoko match at WM9). Francophone Canadians are more clearly foreign. And cutting promos in a foreign language is always good for easy heat. Anyway, here's a question: would it have been better if Roman Reigns rather than Cena had been the one to beat Rusev? It's not like Cena gained anything from beating him, and having Reigns cut his teeth in the upper midcard seems preferable to fast-tracking him to a main event slot he clearly wasn't ready for.

Doing more with less is great. Doing much more with more is even better.

My understanding is that the Sharpshooter was basically forced on him. The way Bret tells it in his book, Pat Patterson came up to him one day and asked him if he knew how to do a scorpion deathlock. He didn't, so he had Konnan of all people teach it to him, and the rest is history. As for Cena's promo ability, I think he's outstanding when he cuts calm serious promos. The problem is that 99% of the time, he's either insufferably jokey or screaming at the top of his lungs to try to convey intensity.

Dory/Hoffman is on Ditch's site.

Because you insisted:

I'm nominating Fritz Von Erich now that he has a Microscope thread with match reviews. I'd been planning on making one for a while, but I got beaten to the punch. He who hesitates is lost.

Isn't this pretty much what actually happened? Except it was probably a Pedigree rather than a bionic elbow. Also, I was going to suggest an edit to the Zumhofe paragraph that greatly overstepped the bounds of good taste, but I thought better of it.

The issue isn't really with Cena himself. It with what he represents. Pretty much all the vocal Cena haters were fans during the Attitude Era, when wrestling was cool and mainstream and adult-oriented. These days, wrestling is decidedly uncool and much more kid-friendly. As the biggest star of the past decade, Cena is the living symbol of that shift. Those fans who hate what wrestling has become take it out on Cena. I don't see that changing regardless of how he's booked.

I think people overstate the extent to which fans who currently boo Cena would cheer him if he turned heel. A lot of them don't just dislike his booking or his character. They genuinely hate him.