NintendoLogic

To paraphrase a guy on the F4W board, some big Lex Luger wearing FUBU energy from Orton. Then there's this: She fucking wrote "yowie wowie" in a tweet. Geeks. The whole lot of them.

Encouraging if not outright forcing wrestlers to walk out of promotions without giving notice beforehand was a dirty tactic as well. By the way, Dick Ebersol's role in the WWF's popularity can hardly be overstated. The increased production values at his insistence made the WWF look like the big time and the other companies seem bush-league in comparison.

You're probably asking yourself "What kind of scumbag would book Joey Ryan in 2021, especially for a women's charity benefit show?" The answer to that question is quite simple: Joey Ryan himself. By the way, Project GRL is a fundie charity run by noted con artist and tax cheat Joyce Meyer.

Running in big cities may have been part of it, but it was far from a guarantee of success. LA and Detroit were the third- and fifth-largest cities in America in the 70s, and they were both dead as a doornail by the end of the decade. And as brother Ricky Jackson noted, New York itself was dead as a wrestling town for decades before Antonino Rocca revived it. In fact, it could be argued that smaller population centers like Memphis and the Carolinas were at an advantage for drawing wrestling fans due to lack of major league sports competition. Andre was far from idiot-proof. By the early 70s, it was apparent that he would start to kill territories if he stuck around in one place for too long. It was Vince the Elder who had the idea to make him a touring special attraction. If not for that, he may have ended up being a flash in the pan.

It should be noted that the guy at the center of this demonic possession storyline is currently beefing with Soulja Boy on Twitter over the latter calling WWE fake.

We're in literal Papa Shango territory now. Cool.

It was originally scheduled for February 27, but they moved it back a week to avoid going head-to-head with the Canelo fight. And UFC 259 is on Saturday, so they moved it to a Sunday. That puts them head-to-head with the NBA All-Star Game, but I guess they figured that would hurt them less than the other two.

It's not just the instances of selfishness but the damage they did. The WWE star-making machine completely broke down during Cena's time on top, and I think he has to bear a degree of responsibility for that.

Edge and Jericho have said that Cena making a 2-on-1 comeback after being DDTed on the floor at Summerslam 2010 was Cena's own idea. They also said that they both fought for the Nexus to go over in that match, but Cena had other ideas. Speaking of terrible booking decisions, it's worth remembering that Cena beat Lesnar clean in Brock's first match back with the company and apparently double-crossed him in the post-match. He also had a near-submission off an STF late in their Summerslam match, so saying he had zero offensive moves is incorrect. More broadly, his losses were mostly negated by the fact that he almost always got his win back shortly afterward and almost never sold the impact of the losses in his promos.

The WWF actually had serious interest in bringing in Kobashi in 1998 as a top level star. I can't imagine that ending in anything but disaster, but it shows that American decision-makers saw something in him. More generally, he was versatile and driven enough that I think he would have done whatever it took to get over at least at a cult midcard level. There's the famous story about how he thought he would have to work as a stereotypical salt-throwing Japanese heel in ROH before Samoa Joe set him straight.

I've set up something for sharing matches. Anyone who wants in, PM me for details.

Even Dave thought Moxley and Jericho placing second and third in Best Box Office Draw was absurd. That's definitely a category where MMA should be split off from pro wrestling because the current nature of the business makes it impossible for any pro wrestler to be in the same galaxy as top UFC stars when it comes to drawing power.

Update: Darby Allin vs. Brian Cage (AEW, 1/13/21) I may end up regretting jumping the gun on this one, but this increasingly feels like an all-timer to me. Allin's just about the best thing going today because he's a member of that rarest of breeds: the thinking man's spot machine. High-risk offense is his stock in trade, but the way he flings himself at his opponent makes them seem like primarily acts of violence rather than feats of athleticism. He also makes a concerted effort to minimize the suspension of disbelief necessary to buy into his matches. In particular, he's one of the few remaining practitioners of the lost art of making it look like he's genuinely catching his opponent off-guard with his topes (as when he nails Cage in the back of the head with one in the opening minute). The flip side of that is when his opponent has enough time to react, it usually doesn't end well for him (as when Cage catches him on his second tope attempt and turns it into a suplex). The stuff with the belt was perhaps a bit too cute, but being pressed off during a pin attempt and turning it around into a diving double foot stomp is an example of a spot that's creative without feeling overly contrived. It takes two to tango, and this match wouldn't have worked nearly as well without Cage turning in a superlative big man performance. Most of his power moves looked like they would cripple a normal man, and he had the good sense to space them out enough to allow the impact of each to sink in. His character work was on point as well. Between preening, posing, and fist-bumping his dudebro buddies, he came across as a completely unlikable douchebag. Of course, Allin amplified the impact both with his lunatic bumps (I seriously hope no one ever tries to replicate that table spot) and his more understated selling, like collapsing when Cage picked him up after bieling him halfway across the ring into the turnbuckle and then pummeling him with mounted punches. The kick-outs at one were great psychology because Cage was making nonchalant covers that left Allin's shoulder exposed. Most wrestlers these days are so focused on hooking the leg that they seem to forget that the goal is to pin your opponent's shoulders to the mat. It also played into the storyline of Allin managing to turn the tables by causing Cage to blow his stack with his defiance. An angry fighter is a sloppy fighter, and Cage's sloppiness gave Allin the opening he needed. A lot of people seem to be down on the finish, but it worked for me. After the beating Allin had sustained, making a full-fledged comeback and hitting his finisher wouldn't have been plausible (the coffin drop isn't exactly something that can be hit out of nowhere). And the size difference between the two was such that a flash pin wouldn't have worked either. The crucifix bomb off the top was a nice middle ground. ****1/2

Also, young fans are where the vast majority of future wrestlers will come from. If only a few hundred thousand are watching rather than several million, that means far fewer youngsters attempting to enter the business, and the ones that do are much less likely to be the cream of the crop. That's a big part of why AJW ended up going down the tubes.

You also have to remember that Misawa was handicapped by the TV situation, which made it virtually impossible to create new breakout stars. How big do you think Rock and Austin would have become if Raw was only half an hour long and aired after midnight?

I think Vince is far too much of a micromanager to allow underlings going into business for themselves to be a regular occurrence. Especially Prichard. He's a yes man who hasn't had an independent or original thought in decades. If he does bottle something up, it's because he knows Vince would never go for it in the first place. There's a reason "Vince loved me but that son of a bitch Johnny Ace" is a running joke. The TTK recap thread has a textbook example from the Mike Chioda shoot interview.

Don't get me wrong. I think there is value in trying to engage with a worldview largely alien from one's own, and I'll give any argument made in good faith at least a cursory hearing. But if someone watches Hart Foundation matches and concludes that Neidhart is the straw stirring the drink, the gulf between us in how we watch and evaluate wrestling is such that any fruitful dialogue on the subject is likely impossible.

Brother Matt D might. "Moreover, if you actually watch the matches, you see that Neidhart brought quite a bit to the table in those matches and I think someone could easily make an argument that he brought as much as Bret, if not more so. I'm not sure I'd go out of my way to make the argument, but it's not a crazy argument if you actually watch the footage and don't just rely on either memories or the evidence of Bret's later singles career vs Neidhart's 90s work. It's certainly not an argument to be dismissed with a mocking laugh."

I'll copy what I wrote at DVDVR: I've seen my fair share of Hart Foundation matches and rank a few of them among my favorite matches of all time, and I consider the idea that Neidhart contributed at least much to the team as Bret to be thoroughly worthy of derision. More often than not, he was either actively detracting from matches or clearly being hidden so he wouldn't drag things down too much.

Like a lot of wrestlers who became promoters, Misawa preferred to book what worked for him in his in-ring career. From his perspective, a win over Jumbo made him a superstar overnight. If one big win wasn't enough to elevate Akiyama or Morishima or whoever else to his level, there must be something wrong with them.

I believe the "best pure striker" line was first used during the Angle match at No Way Out 2006. In fairness, Cole said it right after Taker threw a pretty great uppercut. More broadly, that match really marks the beginning of Taker's late career in-ring renaissance.

There's actually a fair amount of Londos footage available. In particular, a match against Bronko Nagurski from 1938 a lot of people are really high on.

Rick Steiner's kid is part of the recent group of PC signees. I can't wait for him to debut on NXT as Rogan Stewart. That is, if he doesn't blow out his knees doing forward rolls for three years while having worse fundamentals than someone who trains for two weeks at the Nightmare Factory.

He thought he could get away with not delivering on advertised stipulations when babyfaces came up on the short end because he figured the fans would be happy something bad didn't happen to them.

That sounds like an All Friends Wrestling hire if ever there was one. He must be tight with Cody and/or Jericho from their WWE days.