NintendoLogic

The two Rock/Punk matches.

Would the Lion's Den match between Owen and Shamrock count?

Read the OP, everyone. He's asking about Attitude Era cage matches.

They allude to it several times. Jesse makes the hilarious comment "They said he's got a lot of heart, but I'd personally say he's got a lot of throat." Also, Gorilla asks why Savage isn't targeting the throat. And when Savage grabs the ring bell after the ref bump, they mention that was how Steamboat originally got put out of commission.

Johnny Football made the NCAA look like the dipshits they are, so he's cool in my book.

To kill puppies with a hammer?

What did he say about Manziel?

For a long time, I thought it wasn't wrestled in the context of the storyline so I can see someone not liking it. I do like it now though. The Toronto house show match in February - where I saw Steamboat show the hatred you'd expect him to have after getting his larynx crushed, only for his temper to cost him - was the missing piece that made me appreciate WM more. WM3 doesn't look as good if you think the storyline is Steamboat getting his hands on Savage for the first time since the injury. But yes, this is a good choice. Even before that, you have the January matches in which Steamboat doesn't care about the title, he just wants to get his hands on Savage. So he ends up getting disqualified, usually by shoving the referee out of the way when he tries to stop him from hitting Savage with a chair. By the time the MLG show rolls around, Steamboat has figured that the best way to hurt Savage is to take his title, but he's still allowing his temper to get the best of him. Eventually, we get a calmer Steamboat emerging victorious at Wrestlemania.

Crockett fans would probably see Tyson as the bad guy.

Just about everyone seems to like Eddy/Rey from Halloween Havoc and the 1992 Wargames match.

I think we're starting to conflate matches just about any wrestling fan would enjoy and matches even non-fans would enjoy. They're two different things. Here's an outside the box pick for both: Hogan/Rock at WM18. It has two stars everyone has heard of, the action is simple and easy to follow, and the crowd is molten.

I concluded some time ago that Hansen/Kawada from 2/28/93 was the match with the most universal appeal.

"His dad was a monster" and "That's how shit was done back then" are not mutually exclusive.

As entertaining as the next chapter in the eternal Jerry/jdw feud is shaping up to be, I'd like to jump in to dispute the notion that Vince created a nationwide wrestling boom out of whole cloth. Promotions all over the country were doing huge business in the 80s even before Vince went national. I think it'd be more accurate to say that he captured an audience that was already receptive to wrestling and turned them on to his vision of wrestling. Sure, he created new fans. But so did Crockett and World Class and Memphis and Mid-South.

Genichiro Tenryu/Toshiaki Kawada vs. Stan Hansen/Taiyo Kea All Japan Pro Wrestling, 7/23/00 Gee, I wonder who's going to take the pin in this match. The Tenryu-Hansen exchanges are by far the best part of the opening minutes despite the two having a combined age of approximately 800. The match picks up in a big way once Kawada decides he wants to start selling. A few slaps from Stan Hansen will do that to you. There's a funny moment during the Kawada-in-peril segment when Mossman knocks Tenryu off the apron and the crowd gasps because they know he is not long for this world. Sure enough, once Kawada makes the hot tag, he and Tenryu take turns treating Mossman to a beating not even Hansen can provide respite from. The finishing stretch consists of Kawada shutting down Mossman's lame attempt at a fighting spirit comeback while Hansen and Tenryu brawl on the outside. I literally laughed out loud when I saw a chair flying in the background while Kawada delivered the final powerbomb. A super-fun match that will finish high. Dragon Kid vs. SUWA Toryumon, 8/24/00 First of all, Dragon Kid is tiny. Like, really tiny. The women in the audience were taller than him. SUWA is pretty small himself, but he looked like Brock Lesnar in this match. Anyway, this is a hair/mask match, and it's initially worked like a traditional lucha wager match with lots of hate and punches and mask ripping and throwing each other into rows of chairs. About seven minutes in, SUWA gets the pin with his feet on the ropes. But Ultimo Dragon won't allow such an injustice to stand on his watch, so the match gets restarted. From here, things get a lot more juniorish with SUWA busting out all kinds of indyriffic offense. It was a pretty one-sided beatdown, which was fine because Dragon Kid's offense is pretty terrible. What wasn't fine was that SUWA threw everything but the kitchen sink at Kid to the point where it became clear that he didn't have enough to put Kid away. Sure enough, Kid gets the pin after a short comeback and an admittedly impressive dragonrana. Flippy juniors wrestling is very much not my thing, and this match did nothing to disabuse me of that sentiment. I'm not sure where it will finish, but it won't be high.

Bottler?

Wait, so Bryan won with a fast count? What?

Thanks a lot for having me on. Hopefully, I didn't sound like too much of a dumbass. It was a lot of fun, and it was a lot less contentious than I thought it was going to be. Fair warning: I say "like" and "you know" a lot. EDIT: Holy shit, I sounded nervous as fuck the whole time.

Kane and Sabu have to be up there as well.

Weren't Christian and Jericho pretty much in the same spot during that period?

I just skimmed through the match, and I don't think Jerry's description is accurate. For one thing, it isn't close to 30 minutes. Beyond that, there's plenty of slow spots in the form of working holds and lying around selling. Hell, Choshu spends the whole match selling his ribs. And I didn't see any massive bombs that weren't treated and sold like massive bombs.

From here on out, I'm going to forgo the play-by-play and just give my thoughts on the matches. Kenta Kobashi vs. Yoshihiro Takayama All Japan Pro Wrestling, May 26, 2000 One thing that stood out to me was the lack of head drops in this match. That's not to say they take it easy on each other, as the stiffness is off the charts. The problem is that Takayama isn't quite there yet, either as a worker or a serious threat to Kobashi. His arm work was good, but his offense wasn't all that compelling otherwise. And working on Kobashi's lariat arm didn't seem to bother him all that much, as he fended off Takayama with his left arm with little difficulty. Interesting as a precursor to their 2004 classic, but it'll probably finish in the middle of the pack. Koji Kanemoto & Minoru Tanaka vs. Shinjiro Ohtani & Tatsuhito Takaiwa New Japan Pro Wrestling, June 25, 2000 Straight up, I hated this match. The macho slugfest style of wrestling is pretty dumbed-down to begin with, and when you add spotty junior selling to the mix, you get two teams beating the hell out of each other for 20 minutes without any rhyme or reason that I was able to detect. There were a couple of nifty sequences where Kanemoto and Tanaka would counter Ohtani and Takaiwa's attempts at a powerbomb/missile dropkick combination, but that's about it. If you dig Kawada/Sasaki-style matches, this will be right up your alley. I don't, so this will finish low.

The key difference to me is that Choshu and Yatsu didn't blow off the damage they'd sustained so they could get their shit in. Anyway, no discussion of this style would be complete without mentioning Manami Toyota.

It's true. He was voted Athlete of the Year three years in a row by Bravo magazine (which, as far as I can tell, is the German equivalent of Tiger Beat).

Canada is a town? I didn't mean it literally. But you already knew that.