NintendoLogic

Neither is the Kobashi part. Kobashi beat Misawa in singles matches in the 1997 and 2000 Champion Carnival Tournaments. You're right about Kawada not being on par with Misawa, but Kobashi was positioned that way in All Japan toward the end of Misawa's run there and in NOAH, before he went down with his knee problems. I had gotten 98 and 03 from a couple of different sources. I'm pretty disappointed to discover that there's inaccurate information on the Internet. Yes, Kobashi was positioned at roughly Misawa's level in 2000 and in NOAH. But in the 90s, Misawa was the clear #1. It is always best to watch footage - and purolove.com is a reliable source for results. I try to watch as much as I can to get a more complete picture. But even though I've probably seen a lot less than anyone else who regularly posts here, I've seen enough to know where my tastes lie. If something doesn't reel me in right away, I just don't have the patience to see it through. Like, I'll download a bunch of lucha or Mid-South or second-tier AJPW, but when I try to watch it, I lose interest in a hurry. It's like the more stuff I watch, the less stuff I end up liking. Anyway, here's some news that's germane to this thread: http://www.rspwfaq.com/2011/08/10/coming-soon/ I can only think of one comparable historical precedent:

Is it really long ignored? The Rock has been murdering Cena over the past few months expressing similar sentiments. And even as far back as 2006, Kurt Angle and HHH used anti-Cena sentiment to fuel their face turns.

But like we've both said, Chikara has traditionally been pretty allergic to breaking kayfabe, for whichever reasons. Doing a worked injury angle has always been the standard wrestling go-to method of explaining away a performer's absence due to more serious medical issues, and I don't see the problem with that. Of course. But none of them looked like 1991 Freddie Mercury. Protected or unprotected? I'm fine with the former, as long as the stunt is executed correctly in a relatively safe manner. It apparently came courtesy of Mima Shimoda. Japan is pretty far behind the curve when it comes to worker safety, and I'm sure that's doubly true for someone who cut her teeth in 90s AJW.

Well, you know what they say about the best wrestling characters being the wrestler's actual personality turned up to 11.

Referring to the WWWF as "just a territory" is selling it short, I think. The BosWash corridor is by far America's most important region from a historical, cultural, and population (especially prior to mass migration to the Sun Belt) standpoint. I'm pretty sure that in Bruno's time, it encompassed a fifth of the US population.

Here's what appears to be a quote from an official Chikara rep: http://realwrestlecrap.proboards.com/index...;page=4#7515844 Not wanting to feed the dirtsheets is understandable, but stuff like this just insults the viewer's intelligence. "Sure, Daizee makes Amy Winehouse look like Yokozuna, but the real cause of her health issues is a Claudio Castagnoli chokeslam. Who are you going to believe, a bunch of carnies or your lying eyes?" Also, are they still doing chairshots to the head in Chikara? Jesus.

They can't mention Super Dave because he appeared on TNA once.

It fit in the context of the whole Punk deal being all shooty and inside referential. Nothing at all odd about mentioning workrate and heel persona when you have Punk call out Johnny Ace for firing people over the phone and mentioning SHOOTNAMES~!. If he would have just mentioned it out of the blue then it would have been Russoific. Also it helped that Cena is 100% right when he said he will never win that crowd over. No I mean it veered too closely to "This is not real". I can explain it in a kayfabe context but any more and it will be too far. If this goes past Summerslam I guarantee they mention TNA by name. That is one of the last safe shoots they can do. Yeah, the difference is that Punk's "shoot" promos didn't intimate that wrestling was fake. Calling people by their real names isn't appreciably different from Floyd Patterson or Ernie Terrell referring to Muhammad Ali as Cassius Clay.

That is legit scary. I don't know whether to laugh or shake my head at Chikara trying to kayfabe the whole thing.

Did they, though? Sin Cara isn't all that useful if no one else on the roster can work lucha style. And Kharma's a division killer when 90% of her opponents are barely trained swimsuit models. You can only run Kharma/Beth and Kharma/Nattie so many times. What did it even mean? Almost 10 years later and I'm still stumped. I did some Googling, and and it means pretty much what you'd expect it to mean. It refers to someone who has red hair and is ugly as a booger.

And Booger Red for Undertaker. Then there's the WWE's penchant for scripting Cena to give his opponents awful nicknames like Y2Cheap and CM Sucks.

Neither is the Kobashi part. Kobashi beat Misawa in singles matches in the 1997 and 2000 Champion Carnival Tournaments. You're right about Kawada not being on par with Misawa, but Kobashi was positioned that way in All Japan toward the end of Misawa's run there and in NOAH, before he went down with his knee problems. I had gotten 98 and 03 from a couple of different sources. I'm pretty disappointed to discover that there's inaccurate information on the Internet. Yes, Kobashi was positioned at roughly Misawa's level in 2000 and in NOAH. But in the 90s, Misawa was the clear #1.

That's apparently their SOP. Dave Lagana recently recounted a story about how when Punk first came to the WWE, a lot of the agents had it out for him for similar reasons as Jericho. It took Shawn Michaels of all people to stand up and say "Um, if you don't like something the kid is doing, why don't you work with him to fix it... instead of killing him?" for things to turn around for him.

Here's what I wrote (emphasis added): It appears that the Kawada part isn't quite accurate, so my bad on that (but it is true that Kawada didn't pick up a TC win over Misawa until 1998). In any event, my larger point (Kawada and Kobashi, let alone Taue, were in no way positioned as anything close to Misawa's equals) still stands.

Zack Ryder moves merchandise too, and the WWE had to be dragged kicking and screaming into doing anything with him. My comment forecasting Punk's inevitable doom was somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but I'm not necessarily inclined to give the WWE the benefit of the doubt.

With the stories about Punk talking Creative out of the original plan of HHH laying him out, the impression I got was that Punk could lobby just like anyone else, but if Vince put his foot down, there wasn't anything he could do about it.

Will he have a choice? I strongly doubt he has veto power in his contract.

Cena. It's obviously not happening next year, but it's the only dream match they have left. On a somewhat related note, does anyone else find it somewhat alarming that in the past year, the WWE has lost so many tippy-top guys (HBK, Batista, Edge, HHH and Taker as full-timers) and not even attempted to use them to elevate anyone on the way out? Though I suppose that if they knew they were going to lose Edge, they probably would have had Del Rio go over at Wrestlemania.

So how do all those anti-Jericho stories look now that Jericho has basically corroborated them in his book?

So apparently MITB did about 135K domestic. Good numbers for a B-show, but not blowaway. Looks like we'd better get used to Punk eating Pedigrees.

http://twitter.com/#!/wwemasterp/statu...560011822411776 The funny thing is, the WWE seemed to agree. Whenever he appeared on Raw or Smackdown, the commentators always put over how much he'd improved in the ring. The match I've seen pimped the most is against Drew McIntyre on Superstars last August. I was pretty skeptical of all the Masters love until I saw it.

The writing was on the wall for Gail when she eliminated herself from the Diva battle royal just to see if anyone would notice, wouldn't you say? Maybe they'll bring her back to feud with Kharma. I really don't understand the WWE's treatment of Masters. He can go in the ring and is totally jacked to boot. If someone unfamiliar with the current product were shown a picture of Masters and The Miz and asked to guess which one was main eventing Wrestlemania and which one was pulling Superstars duty, what do you think they'd say? Maybe he forgot to shake HHH's hand backstage once or something.

I'm disappointed that they didn't go full carny and do something like CM PUNK IS COMING TO TNA on demand

Will it really be a "Miami crowd," though? At this point, I think the only Wrestlemanias with any kind of local flavor are the MSG ones. Otherwise, it's like the Super Bowl where the host city is largely incidental. Besides, any crowd in the country would cheer for Rock over Cena.

This might have been a legitimate concern in 2006. But that ship has long since sailed.