NintendoLogic

It seems to me that Cena being constantly programmed against babyfaces is a function of WWE's inability to build strong heels.

Giving us a taste of Cena/Henry to set up Cena/Ryback was downright cruel.

Hokuto is fucking insane for taking a second rope tombstone after she broke her neck doing a similar spot.

You know Race was the one who put the bounty on Kevin Ware.

I was out of town this weekend and didn't make it home in time for Mania. From what I'm hearing, I didn't miss much. No real memorable moments, and only Punk-Taker sounds like it was worth going out of my way to see.

I suspect that if Paul Bearer hadn't died, we would have heard some variant of "This is Phil Brooks talking to Mark Calaway" at some point.

The issue isn't that the call was released to the public, it's that TMZ chose to publish it.

Apparently, I'm the only one who doesn't really care for Savage/Warrior at all. Also, I disagree with Yo-Yo about Angle/HBK. I thought Shawn was the one doing all the heavy lifting in terms of keeping the match together and providing a semblance of structure.

I'm not sure you can really compare that aspect. You really just weren't allowed to swear on TV at all during that time period. There was no swearing on TV in the 60s or 70s and very little by the time most territories dried up in the mid-80s. Some heels today might be able to swear (although they don't really do it in WWE anymore) but they would have their shows thrown off TV if they did some of the race baiting angles that took place back then. It wasn't just four-letter words. It was stuff that wouldn't even raise an eyebrow today. Back in the 60s, Stampede Wrestling was thrown off TV after Iron Mike DiBiase said that if brains were dynamite, the people of Calgary wouldn't be able to blow their noses. I'm sure not everywhere was that strict, but it does indicate the general mindset.

Sorry, I was going by your quotation of the Observer where you said he was talking about a match in San Diego: http://wrestlingclassics.com/.ubb/ultimate...7375;p=1#000033 In any event, Dave didn't say that he disliked the match. He said that the people in the audience thought it was boring. I'm sure that to Dave, having a match the audience hates, even if he personally enjoyed it, would constitute stinking up the joint.

Again, Benoit was as responsible as Angle for the development of the mid-2000s WWE workrate style. In their matches together, not only did Benoit not rein in Angle's spottiness, he actively contributed to the atmosphere of one-upmanship.

That's not what Dave wrote. He wrote that Eddy and Rey had a bad match in San Jose and that Benoit's cardiovascular conditioning was superior to Eddy's. They're two separate unrelated thoughts. Also, the part about controlling the crowd at will wasn't in reference to the match in San Jose. He was talking about a completely different match at a house show in San Diego. I don't quite agree with this. I think it's true that all other things being equal, he prefers fast-paced matches with lots of high-end offense. But he's given high ratings to plenty of matches that don't meet those criteria. Someone who thinks that Randy Orton is one of the top three workers in WWE clearly isn't someone who puts too much of a premium on the ability to put on a show. Anyway, here's a quote from the most recent Observer that I thought was interesting given the discussion several months ago about how far heels could go to get heat in the old days:

I'm not missing anything, am I? There's no joke beyond Race being photoshopped into random situations?

I've been thinking for a while about Benoit's legacy from strictly an in-ring standpoint. Yes, I know. Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play? But hear me out. When I got back into wrestling in late 2004, Benoit became my favorite wrestler. Then in 2007. after the, um, unpleasantness happened, I stopped watching wrestling for a few years. Even after I resumed watching, it was a while before I could bring myself to watch his matches again. These days, I don't watch his matches for a different reason: for the most part, they just don't do much for me. Looking back, I find it funny that Benoit was largely exempt from the criticisms that Angle received even though he was guilty of many of the same sins. Wade Keller caught some grief for saying that Benoit's psychology was generally only as strong as his opponent's, but that seems impossible to dispute in retrospect. So where does he rate historically? I wouldn't put him in the top 20, but top 50 seems reasonable.

It's offensive enough to be banned on Japanese TV.

Maybe he means the thread shouldn't exist because it's so self-evidently true as to not even be worthy of discussion. Kind of like starting a thread asking if water is wet.

Lucha libre and sombrero are blanket terms in Spanish. Do you consider them to be misused as well?

If I'm not mistaken, what Dave said about the Eddy/Rey house show matches was that audiences were disappointed by them because they were expecting lots of high-flying lucha action. Anwyay, that quote from the archives is from his Summerslam 1995 review, which also contains the following love letter to HBK: I don't think even Shawn's mom would go that far. Also, in his review of that year's KOTR, he said that Lawler wrestled an outdated style. These days, he's a lot more appreciative of Lawler and not quite as enamored of Hot Moves.

I recall seeing a Bourne interview where he mentioned discussing Chomsky and Zinn with Daniel Bryan, so I rather doubt that he's a Republican.

Perhaps Will can introduce a politically correct filter to PWO. Something like gaikoku no senshu. Considering how everyone misuses words like puroresu and joshi at least they get the usage of gaijin right. How are puroresu and joshi misused?

The rest holds are a dealbreaker for me. They make it impossible for me to watch a Rude match of any length.

In a move that will no doubt cause consternation among many, I've undone the expansion pack and pared my list back down to 40. I've decided that when making lists like this, you need a hard numerical target. Otherwise, why not just list every match ever? And 40 isn't an entirely arbitrary number. Whenever I've tried to move beyond that, I've ended up with matches that either are lesser versions of matches already on the list, exist mainly to fill a niche, or just don't do much for me after a while. In particular, Rick Rude is a guy I've soured on a lot recently.

Agreed with everyone about Eddy being the star of this match. I literally laughed out loud when he walked into the ring to give Benoit a Three Stooges-style eye poke. Overall, though, this was pretty exhausting to watch. Toward the end, there were tons of big moves and nearfalls in rapid succession without much in the way of long-term selling. I didn't hate it or anything, but it's easy to see how the style would end up going off the rails.

To echo everyone else's comments, the sheer amount of accumulated knowledge on this board is simply outstanding. The months I spent lurking here were like a postgraduate course in wrestling history. Also, the board has taught me to reach my own conclusions and not simply defer to established authority. My first forays into non-US wrestling were New Japan juniors matches. They didn't really do much for me, but I was under the impression that they held in universally high regard, so I figured the problem was lack of understanding on my end. Coming here and being exposed to different perspectives gave me the courage to say "You know, maybe these matches just suck." The thing is, this board's greatest strength is also its greatest weakness. Simply trying to hold your own in a discussion can be incredibly demanding in terms of both knowledge and intensity. In fact, that's why I haven't been around too much lately. I've been going out and dating more recently, and it's kind of hard for me to shift my brain from in-depth match/wrestler analysis mode to date conversation mode.

It was Brock's doing. If he can't win March Madness, no one can.