NintendoLogic

Sometime last year, my wrestling fandom was in a state of flux. I wasn't really sure what I thought was good, and there were whole worlds out there I had little to no exposure to. So I set out to watch as many highly rated matches from as many styles and promotions as possible to provide a basis for drawing informed conclusions. Dave Meltzer and Scott Keith are probably the most prolific and well-known match reviewers on the Internet, so I used their ratings as a starting point. Loss' huge list of matches he gave star ratings to was invaluable for providing a different perspective. Also useful were the DVDVR 90s and 80s projects, Ditch's All Japan 90s Project, and the "matches you must see before you die" thread from this forum. In the end, though, I sought out basically anything that had been pimped by somebody. Now that my horizons have been significantly broadened and my perspective has somewhat shifted, I thought it would be fun to look at what I would consider the most authoritative and broad-ranging ***** match lists and see how I think the matches rated thusly hold up. Meltzer's list: http://www.puroresu.tv/forums/topic/498-wr...5-star-matches/ He didn't officially give ***** to the Dream Rush tag, but he said it was better than the 12/6/93 tag he did give ***** to, so I'm counting it. SKeith's list: http://www.freewebs.com/wrestlinglists/5.htm He has subsequently downgraded his ratings of the 2004 and 2010 Rumbles, which is a relief. Loss' list: http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?showtopic=4803 I figured I'd do Segunda Caida-style ratings and declare each match to be Epic, Great, Fun, or Skippable. My plan is to just review the matches in random order, but if anyone has any burning desire to hear my take on a particular match (and I can't imagine you do), feel free to make requests.

Also in the most recent Observer is this paragraph regarding Shaq at Wrestlemania: Didn't Vince used to be the guy who'd rather lose money off of 500k buys than make money off of 300k? Whose purse are his balls in?

The interesting thing to me is the apparent revelation that Chris Brown is a Bret Hart fan.

See, this is why I think having a no-blood policy makes no sense if you're still going to book car-crash matches. All things considered, taking a razor to your forehead is a hell of a lot safer than falling off a ladder.

I probably could have worded it better, but I suppose I got my point across eventually. He was a top guy, but Luger was being positioned as the tippy-top guy. The Rumble was the start of the shift back to Bret. Arguably RVD in 2006, but that wasn't so much for him as it was for the new ECW. This past year is interesting in that it provides a direct apples-to-apples comparison. Del Rio won both the Rumble and MITB and received a far bigger boost from the latter.

To be sure, I'm not saying that the Rumble win itself elevated someone as much as it served as confirmation that the winner was on his way to bigger and better things (or that someone who had been injured was definitively back in a couple of cases). And the main period I was thinking of was from 1993 (the first year the winner received an automatic title shot at Wrestlemania) to 2005 (the year MITB was introduced). Let's break it down: 1993-Yokozuna definitely. 1994-Bret had already won the title before, but his first reign was widely considered a flop, and he spent a good chunk of the previous year feuding with Jerry Lawler. This was part of building him back up as the ace. (Yeah, technically he tied with Luger, but we all know Bret really won.) 1995-This probably wasn't so much an attempt to elevate Shawn as it was building someone up to feed to Diesel. 1996-This was definitely part of building up Shawn as the guy. 1997-No elevation, just part of the WWF's screwy booking during the first few months of 1997. 1998-Austin was a runaway freight train by this point, but the Rumble win was the exclamation point. 1999-Ummm...yeah. Let's pretend this never happened. 2000-The first instance during this time period of the winner already being super over. 2001-Re-establishes Austin after a lengthy absence. 2002-Re-establishes HHH after a lengthy absence. 2003-Brock was already established, this was just part of his title chase. 2004-Benoit was a solid hand who had been in a few world title matches, but he wasn't anywhere near Wrestlemania main event level before this. 2005-Batista definitely. 2006 marked the first time since 1995 that the Rumble winner wasn't in the Wrestlemania main event, and it was all downhill from there.

While watching Elimination Chamber, it occurred to me that the Royal Rumble has become just another PPV. MITB has taken its place as a way to elevate guys to the main event, and now the Chamber has taken its place as a way to establish feuds for Wrestlemania. When you take away those aspects and a Pat Patterson laying things out, all you're really left with is a big battle royal with some comedy spots. I wouldn't be surprised if it joined Survivor Series in becoming largely irrelevant. On a completely unrelated note, I've been watching a lot of Bret Hart lately. Five Moves of Doom is a myth, yo.

Yeah, 2005-06 is probably the one exception to TNA never successfully executing a storyline from start to finish. Sting no-selling the guitar shot and winning the title at Bound for Glory felt like a satisfying conclusion to the era of Jarrett's new-wave Honky Tonk Man act being the centerpiece of the promotion.

I thought it was neck problems that ended DDP's career. I don't know that bumping on your back would have much to do with those. Flat back bumping can cause concussions. It can most certainly cause neck problems. From Dave's Misawa obit: "Most likely, if he had gone to a doctor in the U.S., like Steve Austin or DDP did when they had serious neck injuries, his level of his neck damage would have been discovered. It’s very possible, if not likely, he’d have been told, like Austin, DDP and Ted DiBiase had, that one more bad bump could leave him as a paraplegic. DiBiase retired at that point, although in the last year has talked of coming back for one last match. Austin and DDP wrestled a few times after that diagnosis, but got out for good, in the case of Austin, spurning some huge offers to come back, and at times considering them." I'm no doctor, but I would think it would take more than a few months of flat back bumps to jack up someone's neck to that degree. I'm not saying that it had no impact at all, mind you. EDIT: After reading up some more, it seems that what actually ended DDP's career was the neck injury he sustained in this match against Hardcore Holly on Smackdown: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRyVqXSaM34 Check out the superplex at 3:44. Ouch. Also, I was under the impression that the main reason for luchadores bumping the way they do is the fact that the mats in Mexico are a lot harder than in the US and Japan.

I thought it was neck problems that ended DDP's career. I don't know that bumping on your back would have much to do with those. Anyway, after thinking about it, I think you'd have to add Guerrero and Benoit to the conversation since there's a strong argument that going to the WWE was directly responsible for their deaths.

I wouldn't be so quick to discount Jarrett. He's lost most of his power in TNA, he and his father are no longer on speaking terms, and he's completely burned his bridges with the WWE so he's SOL if/when TNA goes under.

In other news, this Hunter Golden dude totally plagiarized the shit out of Loss' first post in this thread: http://sportales.com/wrestling/the-ric-fla...-a-closer-look/ Or could it be that Hunter Golden IS Loss? We're through the looking glass here, people.

Yet he has the power to fire the RAW GM, but not to make himself the RAW GM. And he apparently only has that power while Raw is on the air. He was all set to fire Laurinaitis before Undertaker showed up, but then he did nothing the entire rest of the week.

Arguing over Flair's age when he went to see Ray Stevens or whoever it was misses the point. The main takeaway is that when he was a fan, Flair had certain expectations of what he wanted to see when he went to a wrestling match and was disappointed when they didn't happen. So when he was in the ring, he made sure to do those things so that the people who came to see him weren't similarly disappointed.

Brock Lesnar vs. Undertaker Hell in a Cell, No Mercy 2002 I've heard a lot of people whose opinions I wouldn't dismiss out of hand praise this match to the heavens and call it a MOTDC. I would like to know why. The story of the match is centered around Lesnar going after Taker's broken hand, but Taker completely undermines it with his inconsistent (to put it charitably) selling. It starts out well enough. Taker clubs Lesnar with his cast, busting him open in the process, but he doubles over in pain after every blow. This does a nice job of getting over a "this is going to hurt you more than it hurts me" vibe. So Lesnar goes after the hand, destroying it with some chairshots and ripping off the cast. Once the cast comes off, though, Taker's hand apparently magically heals, as he does punches and chokeslams with no trouble at all. It's bad enough that the announcers have to play the "he's running on pure adrenaline" card to cover for it.

The more Flair I see, the more convinced I become that the Flair Formula is a misnomer. The term "fomula" implies a certain degree of order and structure. Mid-2000s Shawn Michaels, for example, clearly had a formula. Flair just had a big grab bag of signature spots that he would employ when the mood struck him. Like, there was no real rhyme or reason as to whether he would beg off at the 3 minute mark or the 20 minute mark. And since a lot of his matches had finishes (rollup, time limit draw, schmoz) that didn't really have to be built up to, the stuff in between the signature spots tended to be little more than filler. When people talk about Flair matches all being the same, I think that's what they mean.

I don't know how legit this is (considering it's Hogan, probably not very), but: http://www.nme.com/news/metallica/61668 If nothing else, he would've Hulked up after the bus landed on him.

Does that mean that Bryan is going to drop the strap to The Mountie?

I'm just getting warmed up. HUNTER HEARST HAIL-MSLEY! COLDUST! SURVIV-BRRR SERIES!

Ohno, indeed.

This inspired me to spend way too much time coming up with weather-related New York Post-style pun headlines. MACHO MAN RAIN-DY SAVAGE! EMERALD SNOW-SION! IN YOUR HOUSE: BEWARE OF FOG!

Looking at the history of TNA, I can't help but be reminded of the quote about America being the only country in history to go from barbarism to decadence without an intervening period of civilization.

The Naylor comments from a few pages ago got me to thinking. What ever happened to Kevin Cook?

Having rewatched both matches recently, I don't see the case for rating 19 over 17. One, 17 doesn't have 19's leg work that goes nowhere. Two, 17 doesn't have submissions being applied in the first ten minutes. Three, the finisher overkill in 19 was much worse.

That's always been Russo's MO, though. He's been pretty open about his view that his job is to pop ratings and that drawing money is "old school" and therefore irrelevant.