NintendoLogic

So if contemporary opinion is all that matters and how well matches and wrestlers hold up decades later is irrelevant, is there any value in watching old footage? I'd like to see Dave address that.

I don't mean to sound like Bryan Alvarez, but Cutie Suzuki ran the ropes about as well as Kelly Kelly.

Remember when I promised to kill you last, Robley? I lied. Too soon?

So is Brody someone whose work holds up so well that big guys still study his tapes to learn how to work? Or is he someone whose work doesn't really hold up but it doesn't matter because wrestling is all about time and place?

Sure, but you don't need to watch matches to get that. You can just have someone tell you. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with watching everything if you have the time and inclination. But it's not an absolute necessity. If you're intimidated and don't know where to begin, don't be afraid to start at the top. There are plenty of knowledgeable people who can help you fill in the blanks.

We're obviously not talking about complete blank slates. Everyone here has seen enough wrestling to know what they consider good and bad.

Allow me to join your friends in mocking you. I think the notion that you need to watch a bunch of mediocre lead-in matches to appreciate a great one is a crock of horseshit. Take 6/9/95, since it came up earlier in the thread. I've never seen the lead-in match where Kobashi injures his leg, nor do I ever intend to. Why would I? He's got a big-ass fucking bandage on his leg. What more do I need to know? 99% of the time, everything you need is right there in the match.

That's the thing, though. Watching wrestling is supposed to be fun. It's not something you should have to force yourself to choke down because it's good for you.

I think all this talk about context is overblown. Do you really need to be familiar with the Misawa/Kawada rivalry to appreciate 6/9/95? Do you really need to know why exactly Hokuto and Kandori hate each other to appreciate Dreamslam? I don't think you do. To the OP, it sounds to me like you view puro as completely inscrutable and you're afraid to even try to approach it. Don't be afraid, just dive in. For the most part, the matches speak for themselves. If you're intimidated, my advice would be to focus on All Japan because it most closely resembles American heavyweight wrestling.

I just realized the correct answer: Ultimate Warrior.

So I finally managed to watch Punk/Lesnar and Cena/Bryan. The former has been getting pretty much universal praise and I don't have much to add on that front, so I'll just say that it was fucking awesome. It looks like it may have to eat my words, because it has a serious shot at surpassing Okada/Tanahashi in my MOTY rankings. I don't know that it was better than Cena/Lesnar, but it ended the way the Cena match should have. I didn't think Cena/Bryan was nearly as good, and there were quite a few moments that annoyed me. I found the slapfight near the end particularly cringeworthy. Still, it felt like an epic title match, and Bryan winning felt like a big moment, so it's an easy thumbs-up.

Killer Khan?

If I'm not mistaken, if there hadn't been a huge walk-up crowd for the first Wrestlemania, Vince would've gone bust in his first year of national expansion. So that future revenue was by no means a sure thing.

I really hate how the wrestlers are portrayed as living paycheck to paycheck.

Vince was successful in the 80s because of his creative vision. The 90s were more about things falling into place for him.

Vince's success in the 90s was due more to luck than any kind of brilliant creative vision. He didn't win the Monday Night Wars with Rocky Maivia and The Ringmaster, he won them with The Rock and Stone Cold Steve Austin.

Girls, Girls, Girls would at least be upper midcard, right?

Sid?

Is Steve Austin really clueless?

Would Randy Orton qualify?

I watched the number one contender's match. I thought Cena looked really good in it. I should probably do a back-to-back comparison with the Unforgiven match. I also watched a couple of 2003 matches-the Undertaker match from Vengeance and the Angle match from No Mercy. They were both good, but Cena was kind of along for the ride in both of them. However, he did do a really brutal-looking ring apron DDT on Angle.

John Cena vs. Shawn Michaels vs. Carlito vs. Kurt Angle vs. Chris Masters vs. Kane New Year's Revolution 2006 This is an Elimination Chamber match. Cena and Michaels start out. The crowd has a full-on hate boner for Cena tonight, as he gets booed like Roger Goodell at the NFL Draft every time he executes an offensive maneuver. There are also several "Cena sucks" chants over the course of the match. The Cena/HBK matchup provides an interesting contrast in their styles of selling. When Michaels chops Cena in the corner, Cena's selling is theatrical but done in a way that puts over the chops as killer (to be fair, it looked like Michaels was really laying them in). By contrast, when Michaels gets hung up on the top rope and Cena kicks him, he does some ridiculous cartoonish bouncing selling that all but screams "Look at lengths I have to go to to make this goof look good!" Nothing much of note happens until Angle comes in and destroys everybody with suplexes. Michaels blades after being catapulted into the cage, giving him an excuse to spend most of the rest of the match lying around. Angle eventually puts Cena in the ankle lock, but Michaels hits him with the Sweet Chin Music and gets the pin. Yes, once again Cena needs HBK's help to keep his title. Carlito and Masters, who are a tag team at this point, enter the match with an agreement to work together, and they take out Kane and Michaels with their double-team strategy, leaving only Cena. As an example of how far the anti-Cena backlash had gone, we get an audible "Let's go Masters" chant. Masters was far from an Internet darling at this point, I assure you. Anyway, Cena blades after getting DDTed onto the steel. Masters wants to pin Cena, but Carlito tells him to go for the Masterlock. Naturally, this is a setup for a double-cross, as Carlito low-blows Masters and schoolboys him for the pin. However, immediately afterward, Carlito is himself schoolboyed by Cena to end it. But then Edge arrives to cash in his Money in the Bank briefcase, and you know how the rest goes. So Cena spends most of the match getting beaten down and then wins with a fluke rollup? I find it interesting that WWE booked its top babyface like a chickenshit heel for most of his reign. This merits further investigation.

John Cena vs. Kurt Angle Survivor Series 2005 This isn't really a proper match, just a giant ball of sports entertainment. Let's start with Daivari, the special guest referee. For those of you who have forgotten, WWE tried to fight growing anti-Cena sentiment by having Angle do everything short of eat a baby in the middle of the ring. To wit, he censored the You Suck chants, cut a promo insulting the troops, and hired Daivari as his manager. So who decided to let Angle's manager officiate the match? Why, that'd be Raw GM Eric Bischoff. I forgot to mention that Cena and Bischoff have been feuding since Cena got drafted to Raw in a sad attempt to recreate Austin-McMahon. So Daivari is the ref and of course is totally biased. Cena eventually gets tired of his shenanigans and slaps the taste out of his mouth. He tries to call for the DQ, but Angle stops him. Cena then runs into both of them, knocking Daivari out. Another ref runs in, and Cena and Angle wrestle for a bit before Angle gets frustrated and knocks the ref out. More refs come, but Angle keeps taking them out because he wants his guy in there. Why none of this results in a DQ is never explained. Daivari eventually recovers, but Cena knocks him back out. The match ends with the ring full of fallen referees and Angle walking into an FU for the pin. So how effective was turning Angle into history's greatest monster in getting the crowd back behind Cena? Well, during the match, we get a dueling "Let's go Cena"/"Let's go Angle" chant and a loud "Cena sucks" chant. So, not very.

John Cena vs. Kurt Angle vs. Shawn Michaels Taboo Tuesday 2005 Oh, boy. This match. It starts out as a pretty entertaining triple threat clusterfuck with all three guys throwing bombs nonstop. Eventually, Angle and Michaels double-team Cena and put him through a table, turning it into a de facto Angle/HBK singles match. That portion of the match pretty much goes how you'd expect it to. Cena eventually returns but gets put in the ankle lock, which gets broken only when Michaels hits Angle with a flying elbow drop. After taking out Angle with Sweet Chin Music, Michaels runs into an FU and gets pinned. It's kind of hard to judge Cena's performance considering he was absent for the bulk of the match. All I can say is that this is some seriously counterproductive booking. Cena looked like a chump who was completely out of his league. As you might expect, this did nothing to stem the anti-Cena backlash.

I'd go with Aja myself. Overall, I'd have her somewhere in the top 20.