NintendoLogic

I believe you're referring to the Balor match. But yeah, it was an amazing sell job. His ability to project vulnerability without losing his aura of danger is why you can't just plug any musclehead into his match formula and get the same results. The AJ match is another example. He made the audience actually think he might submit to the calf crusher right before escaping by ramming AJ's head into the mat like a basketball.

I haven't seen it in a while, but I liked this 8/18/91 match against Takako Inoue enough to use it for Secret Santo.

Here's my somewhat contrarian top three of the decade: Shinya Hashimoto vs. Kazuo Yamazaki (8/2/98-G1 Climax Finals) Vader vs. Keiji Mutoh (8/10/91-G1 Climax) Genichiro Tenryu/Takashi Ishikawa vs. Shinya Hashimoto/Michiyoshi Ohara (6/14/93) I wanted to highlight them since they were either undersold in the year-end rankings (the G1 matches) or not on the yearbook at all (the tag match) and would likely get lost in the shuffle otherwise.

I completely disagree that 2010 Brock's matches only work in the moment. That might be true of his lesser outings, but the high-end stuff absolutely holds up to repeated viewings. I'll likely have four matches from that run on my 2021 GME ballot (2012 vs. Cena, 2013 vs. Punk, 2015 vs. Reigns, 2017 vs. Styles), and my favorite of the bunch (the Punk match) is the only one I didn't see live. The other three I liked even more on rewatch than I did on initial viewing. I can see the argument that his booking and match construction broke the rules and hurt the rest of the product, but modern WWE is completely incapable of telling compelling stories to begin with. If anything, they've gotten worse since he left. All I expect from them is the occasional standalone match that holds up as entertaining and fulfilling in a vacuum. On that front, Brock likely delivered better than anyone possibly could.

It looks like this is the new NXT logo. Because you can't have a HHH-run brand without skulls.

Budget cuts. This fucking company.

Good on the Bucks for picking a lane and sticking to it. All the evidence we have suggests they're best as cocky prick heels. The fact that they keep trying to be conflicted tweeners is baffling. They've done "I don't want to fight my friend and it's tearing me apart" storylines what, three times since AEW began? Absolutely nobody on Earth wants to see that shit.

Nobody could have predicted that someone who burned her bridges with every single promotion she's worked for would end up burning her bridges with AEW. For those who like to read the tea leaves, AEW ref Frank Gastineau tweeted "My character would never take that finish." He deleted the tweet shortly afterward, but not before Thunder Rosa liked it. Speaking of Rosa, Ivelisse gave the following statement to Fightful Select: I spoke up about mistreatment from a Coach, even to other women too, there were witnesses and I was the one suspended and left in limbo and just now let go, and nothing has been done at all the entire time about (Thunder Rosa) slandering my name the entire time in AEW and doing everything to sabotage my position there, I kept quiet, (Thunder Rosa) also has a history of getting involved with officials in order to get ahead which there was a lawsuit and everything in (Lucha Underground). Given her track record, "mistreatment" likely refers to being asked to sell and put people over. And accusing another wrestler of sleeping her way to the top is the kind of thing that gets you kicked out of locker rooms. Whatever locker rooms she hasn't already been kicked out of, I mean.

Rick Rude. Worked Memphis, World Class, Crockett, 80s WWF, early 90s AJPW/NJPW, and early 90s WCW and faced a lot of the top guys in each spot.

Too many PPVs is a problem from a storytelling standpoint, but so is too few. If there's too much time between big shows, you end up spending a lot of time spinning your wheels or making storylines needlessly complicated. And if you fill in the gaps with supercards on free TV, that makes the PPVs less special. I'd say in most cases, the ideal build for a PPV is 6 to 8 weeks. That maps out to 7 or 8 PPVs a year.

Regarding Kitao, his obit in the Observer notes that the scandal that led to him being expelled from sumo is believed to be at least partially a frame-up. The details are murky, but apparently Tatsunami was embezzling from the stable and got in trouble with the mob. Kitao got caught up in it without his knowledge and ended up as the fall guy. This article in Sumo Fan Magazine covers it in more detail: https://www.sumofanmag.com/content/Issue_30/Rikishi_of_Old.pdf

Even when babyfaces are presented strongly and given lengthy title reigns, they invariably get the rug pulled out from under them and end up back where they started if not worse. Take Kofi, for example. After losing the belt, he went right back to throwing pancakes in the midcard without missing a beat. We're seeing the pattern repeat with Drew right now. After spending the better part of a year as a kick-ass babyface champion, he loses the title to The Miz, who up to that point had won zero singles matches in 2021 and only won two in 2020. Then he loses clean to Lashley at Mania and gets laid out by T-Bar the next night on Raw. He'll be feuding with Baron Corbin or Dolph Ziggler over the US title by Summerslam.

Well, gee. If Steamboat couldn't have great matches with legendary workers like Shunji Takano and Shinichi Nakano, that changes everything. I agree that Steamboat's style didn't naturally lend itself to touring NWA champion style, but I don't think you can grade him that harshly off a sample size of three matches where he was set up for failure. Takano and Nakano speak for themselves, and Misawa ruptured his ACL during their match. It ended up putting him on the shelf for nearly a year. Keep in mind that taking significant time off for injury is basically unheard of in Japan, so that tells you how severe it was. I don't know when exactly the injury took place, but I have to imagine it played a major role in dragging the match down.

Leading up to Mania, a lot of people, myself included, were convinced that the WWE audience was rejecting Edge and Bryan had to be added to salvage the match and that Tribal Chief Head of the Table Roman was too badass for fans to boo. As it turns out, Edge got a huge reaction-even bigger than Bryan-and Roman was roundly booed. It just goes to show how hard it is to get a read on fan sentiment without actual live feedback. On that note, my favorite development of the weekend was the Fiend horseshit dying a horrible death as soon as it took place in front of a crowd whose reactions couldn't be controlled. That should put an end to arguments that there's a silent majority of Fiend superfans who need to be catered to.

Beyond that, the heels are the ones who form factions and look out for each other while the babyfaces are only in it for themselves. I don't know if it's Ayn Rand Kool-Aid seeping into the booking or what, but it surely plays a role in WWE's inability to get babyfaces over.

I was legitimately impressed that Roman made sure Edge's shoulders were on the mat and didn't just stack him on top of Bryan. Nice attention to detail. Beyond that, it's nice to see that WWE remains a crapsack world where evil always triumphs because good is dumb. Of WWE's 14 championships, only three are currently held by full-fledged babyfaces. And one of them is the 24/7 title, which doesn't even really count.

Seriously? The fuck tybs

Can someone tell me what exactly happened? I ain't watching this shit.

I'm pretty sure Tanahashi has the strongest combined resume of high-end singles and tags of any 21st century worker. The match with Okada at Invasion Attack is my pick for greatest IWGP title match, and the match with Nakamura vs. Suzuki/Sasaki that brother Clayton mentioned is my pick for greatest IWGP tag title match. How many other wrestlers can credibly claim to have been involved in both the best world title match and the best tag title match of a major promotion?

Bret/Piper at WM8 wouldn't be nearly as well-regarded without the finish. It's a great finish in its own right that stands out even more by virtue of being one of the few clean jobs Piper did in the WWF.

The Naito/Tanahashi vs. Okada/Nakamura tag right before WK8 is really good as well. Nailing Okada with a missile dropkick during the Rainmaker pose is probably the coolest thing Naito did pre-LIJ.

We have some footage of Flair as a fat jobber in the AWA.

Darby Allin The best underdog of this generation. Amazing seller and lunatic bumper. One of the few guys working today who can make high-flying offense look dangerous, like he's flinging his body at opponents like a missile. Excels at spots that are creative without feeling contrived. Also excels at making it look like he's genuinely catching his opponents off-guard with his dives. Spectacular, violent, and logical-he's the total package. Matches: vs. WALTER (EVOLVE, 6/23/2018) vs. PAC (AEW, 1/15/2020) vs. Brian Cage (AEW, 1/13/2021)

Doesn't Hikaru Shida use the falcon arrow as a finisher?

11/22/86. https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=484727678931421