WingedEagle

Had me fooled as well. I still don't get the guy. Haven't seen anything impressive.

If only he addressed you as Bookerman.

Interesting. I think junior is a lock on mine but haven't fleshed it out. Big Dusty is absolutely making it, though where remains to be seen.

I could see having as many as 6-7 of your top 10 in mine, and very possibly the same top 2 (order not withstanding). Top of the board will be a tough one!

No love for big Dusty? or little Dustin?

OJ, watching the 80s AJ set this was the one matchup that disappointed more than any other. As you noted the expectations were so high and yet they never clicked on even a four star level. Definitely kicked it into gear in tags against and with each other, but one on one always left you underwhelmed. Both can sell, but I'm not sure either was willing to fully take on that role and perhaps as as a result the matches fell into a clash of the titans type of struggle, only missing the epic clash. Really odd dynamic.

Go alone. I hit events alone all the time. Yep that is absolutely where we're leaning. But will wait to see how the weather holds up.

Almost entirely lineup based for me. NXT was close to sold out before they announced anything, and the card isn't one I felt I had to be there for. Planned on going to ROH because with the NJPW crew in town its a great looking show, but my friend backed out so its either go solo or drag the wife and issue a huge IOU. We'll see what the forecast is in a couple days and make it a game time decision.

Tanahashi vs. Ibushi Ibushi vs. Styles Styles vs Tanahashi Ishii vs. Elgin Nakamura vs. Okada Tanahashi vs. Nakamura

TNM was GREAT. No clue if Oliver Copp is still doing anything with it, but I remember having a blast with that as far back as high school. I still even email every so often with someone I met through there that's a big wrestling fan. Hours upon hours of fun in an age before I could get my hands on a comparable quantity of the real stuff.

Bruce Tharpe-uh! Pretty cool.

Bryan/Cena, Lesnar/Punk, Lesnar/Cena, Triple H/Michaels, Austin/Angle are definitely the in the elite tier.

Loved Nak-Tanahashi and there are not enough snowflakes to throw at it. Didn't even realize it ran over 30 minutes. Absolutely flew by. Serious MOTYC and far and away their best match ever. If that isn't a top 3 match of the year for me the next 4.5 months will be awesome.

anybody here going to field of honor?

Fuck yeah do I remember those cards! There was also a series with black borders and I believe gold stars or some other design on it. Hopefully mixed in with my old baseball cards somewhere.

From matches involving Dory, these are ones I've given ***3/4 or above to: Dory Funk Jr. and Terry Funk vs. Genichiro Tenryu and Rocky Hata (2/12/77) **** Dory Funk Jr. and Terry Funk vs. Stan Hansen and Jimmy Snuka (4/16/82) ***3/4 Dory Funk Jr. And Terry Funk vs. Harley Race and Genichiro Tenryu (4/28/83) **** Dory Funk Jr. And Terry Funk vs. Nick Bockwinkel and Harley Race (12/12/84) ***3/4 [come on this is a DREAM match] All of those are worth going out of your way for. Not listed above because I reviewed them in Dory thread. Everyone probably needs to see that Bock / Race one, just because there are so many legends are in it. 3 NWA champs and the long-time AWA champ. Now that's the type of guidance I'm looking for! Will hit these when I get home tomorrow.

Hopefully you guys can highlight the ones that are must see.

Who is this guy? Evolution! Love it. Watch, 3 years from now you're not a fan of it.

InYourCase, thanks for linking to those. Great to have those collected here.

Definitely no room for Meek at Mania at this point.

All of that was spectacular.

What happened?

Wanted to echo the love for this match. I'm not a huge Shibata fan because his matches always seem to become both guys striking one another as hard as possible. They worked this very differently and only sparingly went to strike vs. strike like the Goto & Ishii matches that got a lot of love. Pretty comfortable saying this is the best Shibata match I've seen.

Looks like something removed all of the tags and related info from the thread titles for 1997.

Jesus this sounds like one hell of a disaster.