NintendoLogic

Awesome match. Like Finlay/Regal with a proper finish. And Hansen's facial expressions were amazing. He looked like he was getting legit choked the fuck out in the Stretch Plum.

The only thing that can make "what" chants worse is when the fans in the Impact Zone do them. I can hardly think of a purer combination of two of the worst things in existence. Except for maybe Juggalo Furries.

HHH is already in.

Funny you should mention Taue. I've been thinking lately that maybe the WON HOF should be like the Rock & Roll HOF and allow multiple inductees. Take Terry Gordy, for example. He's in as a member of the Freebirds, but he also probably merits inclusion as a singles competitor. As for Taue, he might be borderline as a singles guy, but he has a much stronger case as a member of the Holy Demon Army. But Kawada is already in, and in any case, it'd be ludicrous to prioritize Kawada's tag work over his singles career.

Did anybody else get a "Matt is one step away from carving tally marks into his skin to represent his victims" vibe from that?

So how about Cena busting out the crossface in Edmonton, huh?

I've thought about it for a while, and I think what sets a Self-Conscious Epic apart is the deliberate attempt to stuff the match with as many of the, shall we say, accoutrements of a good match as possible. That usually means that there isn't really an overarching story to the match. Rather, there's a bunch of mini-stories, and the match resets after each one ends. What happens at the five minute mark has no relation to what happens at the 25-minute mark. Some matwork to open the match? Once the punches start flying, it may has well have never happened. A segment centered around working a body part? It'll be forgotten once the finishing stretch begins.

Inspired by the following post: Abraham Lincoln's NWA title loss. He couldn't balance his political career with the demand for more and more defenses in the exspanding American territories so they worked out an elaborate plan to have him drop the strap via screw job so he could still keep his heat. Little known fact, a young Gypsy Joe who was only 20 years into the business at that point worked as the ref. Lincoln became a huge draw at the presidential level after the Southern states turned heel and kick-started the most over feud in the history of the promotion. The Confederacy had nuclear heat, especially after Lincoln cut a five-star promo at Gettysburg. The only problem is that the blow-off match was a squash.

I like how the very next article in the wrestling stream is "WWE: 10 Wrestlers You'd Love to Grab a Drink with."

I don't think the WWE is the worst company in the world at all. In fact, I'd say it's the best, considering that it's the only one whose product I follow on a regular basis. But that's a pretty low hurdle.

On a related note, I absolutely hate it when guys say stuff to the effect of "I just had a great match" in their promos, especially when the guy lost the match in question. From a kayfabe standpoint, you shouldn't care about having good matches. You should be concerned with winning matches. When the '81 Dolphins lost to the Chargers in the playoffs, did they go around bragging about what an epic game they were in?

At first blush, I thought that even trying to compare any year from the 80s to 1997 was ridiculous. But then I remembered that 1987 had the Flair/Windham matches, Savage/Steamboat, Santo/Casas, and the semi-legendary 12-woman AJW match. I'd still give the nod to 1997, but it's closer than I initially thought.

The saga continues: Pretty much all the signs are pointing to HHH as the mastermind, but it's so obvious that it has to be a red herring. Or maybe that's what the WWE expects everyone to think, so they'll swerve us by having HHH really be behind everything.

I think you might be on to something. What were some notable matches from 1988? Hansen/Gordy vs. Tenryu/Kawada, Maeda/Takada, Flair/Sting, Flair/Luger, what else?

Branched off from the Rey thread. Do me a favor. Make a new post discussing that ten year period from 1989 to 1998 and support your opinion with some examples. I would love to branch on a new discussion about the era you are mentioning. When the thought first occurred to me, it didn't strike me as all that controversial. But in the interest of discussion, here's a sample of the acclaimed matches that took place during that period. 1989: Flair/Steamboat series, Flair/Funk series, Jumbo/Tenryu series (yes, I know it started earlier), Liger/Sano 1990: Liger/Sano, Jumbo/Misawa (6/8/90 and 9/1/90), MX/Southern Boys, Flair/Luger (Wrestlewar) 1991: Atlantis/Blue Panther, Warrior/Savage, 4/20/91 six-man, Sting/Luger vs. Steiners, Wargames 1992: Dandy/Casas, Dream Rush tag, Kobashi/Kikuchi vs. Furnas/Kroffat, Sting/Vader (GAB & Starrcade), Wargames, Liger/Samurai 1993: Hansen/Kawada, Hansen/Kobashi, Hokuto/Kandori, Dreamslam II tag, Tenryu/Hashimoto (6/17/93 and 8/8/93), Sting/Vader strap match 1994: 6/3/94, Bret/Owen (Wrestlemania & Summerslam), HBK/Ramon Ladder Match I, Pegasus/Sasuke 1995: 6/9/95, Misawa/Taue (4/15/95 and 9/10/95), HBK/Ramon Ladder Match II, Rey/Psicosis 1996: Hart/Austin, HBK/Mankind, Rey/Psicosis, RWTL finals, Han/Tamura 1997: Santo/Casas, Hart/Austin, HBK/Taker HIAC, Rey/Eddy, Misawa/Kobashi (1/20/97 and 10/21/97), Han/Tamura (1/22/97 and 9/26/97) 1998: Kobashi/Kawada, Austin/Dude Love, Goldberg/DDP Note that the above is not intended to be an exhaustive list, just what I could come up with off the top of my head. Still, that's a total murderer's row. I'm sure that if you asked the people here to list their favorite matches, a clear majority would come from this period. You could certainly quibble about individual years, but as far as ten consecutive years go, it's pretty hard to beat. I had originally thought of just listing the 90s as the best decade ever, but upon further consideration, 1999 is pretty bad. King's Road had completely gone off the rails by that point, and WWF and WCW were both mired in Russo-ism, which is the kiss of death for good wrestling. Thoughts?

Don't these tend to be mutually exclusive, though? Aren't those who pooh-pooh the importance of selling and things making sense the ones placing all the emphasis on MOVEZ and execution, and vice versa? No. Seriously... no. John What?

To be fair, my perspective is somewhat skewed by the fact that 1989 to 1998 is almost certainly the greatest ten-year period in wrestling history from an in-ring standpoint. Still, I do find it somewhat remarkable that there isn't a single promotion in the world that consistently puts on matches that can reasonably expected to be really high-end. I can't think of the last time that was the case. As for a week-to-week perspective, I would argue that it's far less important than it was 15 or so years ago. Back then, something like 6/3/94 was something you had to go out of your way to see. Unless you were on the tape-trading circuit, you were stuck with what WWF and WCW gave you. Nowadays, just about any match you can think of is just a click away, so a good TV match isn't as big a deal.

Don't these tend to be mutually exclusive, though? Aren't those who pooh-pooh the importance of selling and things making sense the ones placing all the emphasis on MOVEZ and execution, and vice versa?

It could be a language barrier thing, but for me, "not very good" has always been a euphemism for "shitty."

It isn't? I'm pretty sure that saying someone isn't very good at his job isn't a compliment. And yes, he's awkward. So what? That really has no bearing on his ability to perform. Plenty of wrestlers with much more severe physical limitations have had good matches.

What a stupid thing to say. Just for reference, in case it wasn't clear: That was a (paraphrased) statement by some crank on WrestlingClassics more than a half decade ago. He wasn't without supporters who thought the say thing. So please credit it to WC cranks. I like Rey. Suspect I saw and liked him before all but one or two posters on this board, and certainly have defended him against cranks over the past two decades. John Yeah, I didn't mean to imply that those were your actual sentiments. And that WC thread was a hoot and a half, especially the notion of Kurt Angle as the standard-bearer of wrestling based more on psychology than risky highspots. Anyway, I want to go back to Dylan's statement about Rey being one of the top five workers in the world right now. I don't disagree, and it really is incredible how well he's been able to adapt to his increasing physical limitations. But that ranking is also a reflection of how drastically the bar has been lowered over the past decade or so. In fact, I might even go so far as to say that from an overall standpoint, wrestling right now is as bad as it's ever been. If you took 2011 Rey and stuck him in, say, 1993, would he still be a top five worker? Or even top 25? Rey is definitely an all-time great. But I wouldn't put him in the GOAT conversation. Then again, I don't think anyone who worked primarily in the US merits GOAT consideration except for Ric Flair. ETA: jdw sort of beat me to it.

People are still shitting on Cena's wrestling ability? He's been in way too many good matches to be considered a bad or even a mediocre worker.

More TSM highlights: I think that WP/RE's comments about being a ladykiller were something of a put-on. Kill Bill is wrestling! Wait, what? And this, a fitting coda to WP/RE's posting career.

Could this be where Vader's rep for taking liberties with jobbers comes from? If you're enhancement talent, you're not really in a position to give as good as you get.