NintendoLogic

I really don't get this idea that being consensus and "boring" renders an idea invalid. Knee -jerk contrarianism is just as boring, if not more so.

I'm sure they get some kind of payoff, but they probably get stiffed on the percentages. That's what happened to the lower card guys at Wrestlemania.

For what it's worth, I'm on the New Japan love train, and I thought Orton/Del Rio was really good. Del Rio had some great arm work, and I liked him busting out stuff like the Minoru Suzuki rope-assisted cross armbreaker and the ghetto stomp. I also love it when guys counter their opponent's signature moves. It gives the impression that they took the time to scout their opponents and come up with a gameplan.

Question for Johnny: when was the last time the WWE did something that upset or disappointed you? But liking shitty matches doesn't equal only liking shitty matches or hating good matches. The unadvertised matches thing is a killer for me. Part of me wonders if it isn't a way to screw guys out of a PPV payday by saying they had nothing to do with attendance or buys.

I agree with the general principle that the heel ref who calls the match down the middle until the end is stupid, but I think Punk/Ryback did it about as well as it can be done. HIAC is no holds barred, so there was nothing for the ref to rule on. And I'm pretty sure there were no actual pin attempts before the finish. Not trolling. Just tired of seeing the same straw men pop up repeatedly.

It seems that Meltzer did not, in fact, shit on Show/Sheamus. Can we stop pretending that he only likes guys who wrestle like Davey Richards?

Jesus Christ, JBL, shut the fuck up about college football. Although he almost made up for it with "I was sick that day...both days."

Everybody, don't get too excited, but I saw Resident Evil reading this topic about an hour ago. Anyway, I find the notion that the WWE dropped the ball in not becoming the Cena Show to be off base, not to mention the notion that adult male fans turned on Cena because he represented morality and authority. In fact, it's pretty much the opposite. They hated him because they saw him as a phony, a poser, a soulless corporate creation shoved down their throats. Even in the supposed golden age of 2007, there were dark clouds on the horizon. Look at Backlash, the very first PPV after that record-setting Wrestlemania. It did something like 194k buys, which for the time was disastrously low. What made it even more alarming was the fact that it was the first tri-branded PPV. The WWE had rebounded from its 03-04 nadir, but it wasn't on the cusp of bigger things. It wasn't failing to go all-in on the Cena Show that held them back, it was failing to offer something to people who didn't want to see the Cena Show. Man, that tomk post about the WWE brand taking precedence over individual performers has not aged well at all. You'd have to be out of your mind to watch the past few years and conclude that Cena is just an interchangeable cog in the WWE machine. The current product is more Cena-centric than ever. Counterpoint: the Austin heel turn. Sometimes the fans you've driven away never come back even after you reverse course. Oh, and Shawn did play heel against Hulk Hogan. And Bruno Sammartino sold out the Garden more than anyone else.

It has occurred to me that the current WWE product is the spiritual successor of Bischoff's Nitro more than it is of that era's Raw. I'll go into more detail once I've fleshed it out a bit more.

Daivari's nipples are pretty far down on the list of things that horrify me in that photo.

Over the long term, it's absolutely true. There are year-to-year fluctuations, but the trend for everything is downward. Overall, wrestling in America is less popular than it's been since the advent of television, possibly ever. The main thing propping up the WWE's PPV business is special attractions like The Rock and Brock Lesnar. And their only real day-to-day draw is falling apart physically. They may not be in any immediate danger, but the future looks pretty bleak.

Rise above cancer, Santito!

It's true that it's basically impossible for the WWE to lose money under its current business model, money pits like the network and the film division notwithstanding. But every single business indicator is in a steady state of decline. It's not unthinkable that Raw ratings could fall to the point where USA seriously considers pulling the plug, to say nothing of a Jamie Kellner type coming into power at NBCUniversal.

Wow, I walked right into that one.

Random question: has it ever been definitively established who invented the scorpion deathlock? I've seen it attributed to Tatsumi Fujinami, Masa Saito, and Karl Gotch.

This reminds me of the five stages of decline. I'm inclined to say that the WWE is in Stage 4, but they're not really looking for salvation. They do lots of things out of desperation, but they tend to be short-term band-aids rather than attempts to turn things around in the long term.

Part of it is that I'm an unabashed mark for both guys. But even setting that aside, the match is everything that's right with wrestling. Great action plus great psychology means it's the kind of match that's timeless. Plus, the buildup led to what is probably my favorite promo of all time.

I presented a similar question some time ago: http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?showtopic=14200 The consensus was that 1988 to 1997 was the best ten-year stretch in wrestling history. For best individual year, I'd say either 1993 or 1995, with 1997 not too far behind. If you look at my desert island match list in that other thread, 28 of the 44 matches, including the entire top ten, are from the 90s. So this is an easy call for me.

After some rewatching and rethinking, I dropped some matches from my list. They're not bad matches, they're just not quite desert island material. I can't think of anything to replace them with, so I'm at my 44 favorite matches for the time being. If you can't tell, my list is pretty volatile.

Davey's conduct is obviously completely indefensible, but did the promotion really have no other options? They couldn't declare the match a no contest or have someone run in from the back? Anyway, I've said it before and I'll say it again: the only acceptable ending to this saga is Davey going into MMA and getting Yuji Nagata'd.

That's the thing, though. Linda shouldn't be leading among working-class voters at all. In 2010, she only won 39% of the votes of those with a family income of less than $50,000 and 43% of the votes of those with a high school education or less. It's not a general anti-Democrat sentiment, since polls show Obama with a comfortable lead. There has to be something else at play. I don't have a problem with people viewing wrestling as lowbrow or trashy. It's the notion that involvement in wrestling is so disreputable as to be a disqualifying offense for someone seeking high office. There are plenty of legitimate criticisms to be made of the impact the McMahons have had on the wrestling industry, but most of the actual criticisms tend to be of the moral panic variety. There's been far more discussion of the propriety of Vince making Trish bark like a dog than of the propriety of the death clause. Sturgeon's Law, dude. 90% of everything is crap. It's not specific to wrestling.

It seems that this race has caused the monocle to pop out of the eye of someone at The New Republic: http://www.tnr.com/blog/plank/108687/why-d...ons-senate-race Stuff like this just smacks of cultural elitism (note the reader comment about "coarsening of popular culture"). Wrestling fandom has become almost exclusively the province of the poor and uneducated, and I'm inclined to believe that Democrats harping on the issue has caused a backlash among working-class voters.

Apparently, it was a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Just like his dad.

It should be noted that Tenryu being better than Jumbo is hardly a consensus view. You just happen to have come across the corners of the Internet where a lot of Tenryu advocates reside. And for the record, I don't dislike Magnum/Tully at all. I'd have it just outside my top 50.

I already did something like that. http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?showtopic=14217 Anyway, here's my list broken down by promotion: 19-AJPW 12-WCW 8-WWE 3-Memphis, NJPW 1-AJW, AWA, CMLL, Mid-South, WCCW And by wrestler: 12-Mitsuharu Misawa 9-Toshiaki Kawada 7-Kenta Kobashi, Jumbo Tsuruta 6-Akira Taue 4-Steve Austin, Stan Hansen, Dustin Rhodes, Ricky Steamboat, Genichiro Tenryu 3-Eddy Guerrero, Bret Hart, Jerry Lawler, Vader, Barry Windham What does this say about my tastes? Well, I value strong storytelling above all else. I tend to enjoy high-end brawls and well-done big man-little man matchups. I really like targeted body part work that plays an important role in how a match unfolds and isn't just done to kill time. The Hart/Austin submission match isn't my favorite match, but it is the most influential on the development of my tastes. It's the match I've watched more than any other, and it's the one that led me to the view that brawling combined with submission wrestling is basically the ideal style of wrestling.