dawho5

I loved the performances from Sasha, Charlotte and Bayley in this. Sasha ducking Charlotte early and using the Lynch distraction to clothesline her on the apron was great heel work. As were the little taunts thrown Charlotte's way. Charlotte played the badass face perfectly. Bayley starting off as the fiery avenger and morphing into the FIP was great as well. Becky was fine but overshadowed by the other three by a long way. If this match had about five to ten more minutes and was the blowoff to a tag feud it would have been a MOTYC, but it was a buildup match for Sasha vs Charlotte. So the Bayley FIP turns into a quick Sasha rollup to get the one-up on Charlotte instead of a big Bayley comeback that sets up a Charlotte hot tag (the crowd would have gone for this hook, line and sinker with a few more cutoffs.) Regardless, really good stuff and worth seeing if you like tag wrestling and great heel work.

I'm with JAC on this. According to Vince, the wrestling done outside the WWE is "different" as specified by the "sports entertainment" moniker rather than pro wrestling. There does seem to be a high level of contempt from Vince towards anything that comes from the indies. It's almost worse than somebody being big in WCW or one of the other territories, which always seemed to piss Vince off more than a little. Then you add in how everything is heavily scripted and controlled, why would they send people to the places around the country or the globe where they called matches on the fly and, as mentioned, may pick up "bad habits." It's not that I disagree with the idea that indy wrestling has always nurtured certain bad habits in wrestlers, but I'm not going to pretend the WWE style is somehow beyond reproach. So I don't see them seasoning people like Enzo, Cass, Mojo, etc. around the world or the indies first. It would also be difficult for them to convince indy promotions to take their guys given the WWE's overall attitude towards the indies as well as the recent talent raids. As for what they are trying to do, I think there were two major shifts between July 2014 and Fatal Four Way in both production and presentation. A bunch of people got new music (sometimes more than once). Entrances became more grand. The angles and interviews became a lot more similar to the main shows than what they had been. Regal was named GM and they started having references and angles involving him. They gave the show a lot more polish and started to make it a lot more like watching a shorter Raw or Smackdown. What this means in the long run I don't know, but it seems like they stopped looking at NXT as some sort of feeder show to develop guys for their undercard alone. The undercard is filled with guys like that, but once you get to the main event there's a lot of really good ex-indy talent hanging around. And they even brought the racist booking with the Ascension trying to chase Itami out, all the while telling him to "go home." The tag titles seem like they are still used in the developmental sense, which is odd given Vince's aversion to tag wrestling. Why build a bunch of tag teams out of your young guys when tag wrestling is mostly dead in the WWE proper? There are a lot of contradictions between the stated purpose of NXT and what has happened. That makes it really hard to say what it truly is at this point, but my feeling is that it's some sort of hybrid where the WWE attracts all this indy talent to hold the top of the card over and maybe kill off some of the bigger indy buzz. All the while they are developing their own guys who will eventually be using whatever indy talent is there when they are ready (or somebody in the WWE believes they are) to springboard into the main event and quickly into the WWE proper. But they are going to be telling these indy guys all along the way that their turn on the main roster is coming.

I was wondering when I read OJ's point this morning whether or not that's a rabbit hole worth going down. When you get down to it every worker who innovates is taking bits and pieces from the people they watched as a kid and making them into something "new". So if you were going to say Marty Jones and Mark Rocco invented the Calgary style, who invented their style? And who were their heroes watching when they grew up?

It would be pretty much the exact opposite of the Dylan comparing guys to HHH thread. Still fun, but complete other end of the spectrum.

You guys do a great job with this topic every time out. I had no idea that Davey was supposed to get Show's spot in the NWO. That could have been a major career boost for Show if it had turned out that way. Also, I had to pop in my Horsemen disc two and watch that promo on Nitro. Great, great stuff from Arn and Flair. Stuff like that makes you wonder how great the NWO angle could have been if the inmates hadn't been running the asylum and Bischoff had any kind of respect for/idea of what Flair meant to the WCW fans. he got so caught up in "his idea" that he tossed aside anything already existing that might work within it, something that is frighteningly similar to how Vince operates when faced with things that he didn't make himself.

My feeling is that structure is a starting point. It's something used for less experienced workers to have something to fall back on when they get stuck. It also makes the story easier for the audience to follow. It seems like most movies have a very similar structure to your shine-heat-comeback setup. I get why, it's a good basic story. The good guy shows you why you should like him, the bad guy finds a way to circumvent the good guy's strengths to get the advantage and the good guy rewards our faith by coming back. If you're going to go with "good guy vs. bad guy" as your basis it's a strong narrative despite being as basic as it is. I think a lot of the time face control tends to be filler, but that doesn't necessarily make it bad. If it's treated by the wrestlers in the ring as not worth their time, why is it worth mine or anyone else's who might be watching? But there are ways it can be done that make a match better. Let's say that the heel misses an elbow drop and comes up holding his elbow and the face notices. Since the heel has probably proven in the past that he is a dangerous opponent, it only makes sense that the face attacks said arm to weaken the heel despite their finisher having nothing to do with the arm. You're still wearing the opponent down and it gives the idea of an athletic competition. If your opponent in a competition shows some kind of weakness you attack it. Then later in the match the face can keep the heel from cutting him off by going to the injured arm when nothing else works. This would work especially well in matches where the heel was higher up the card than the face. It shows the face may be overmatched, but he is resourceful enough to find a way to stay in the fight. This is one example of how a variation on the structure can work. Very often the deviations from the shine-heat-comeback formula are very heavily dependent on context. What is the history between the two wrestlers? Does the face have an injury they need to protect that might cause them to deviate from their normal offense and use what might be termed as "rest holds" to control the heel? How far apart are the wrestlers involved on the card? Do these wrestlers have a lot of matches against one another that would require different structures to set them apart? One feud that this site has turned me on to has been Valentine vs. Tito. One of the things that makes it great is how the matches are different from one another. Tito comes in with his leg all taped up and ends up beating the shit out of Valentine for the majority of the match with teases of Valentine getting the advantage by going after the leg. But he never quite does. There are several things that make this structure work. First and foremost is Tito's character. He's a guy who will get fired up and destroy an opponent when they piss him off. Secondly, the execution is pitch perfect. Valentine spends any time he gets on offense trying in vain to get ahold of Tito's leg. It's way off classic match structure but it works both as a single match and within the feud. I will say though that in context that match becomes far better than just as a singles match because of all the why involved in that match structure. To sum up, I think that as wrestlers get more experienced they ought to be able to execute more variations on classic American match structure. It's a basic template that can be rearranged effectively by wrestlers who know their craft. But given that the "big leagues" in the U.S. script all of their matches to a fault it's something I feel will become a lost art. Edit: Does anyone else think that classic American match structure has a lot to do with the lack of national TV for so long? It seems almost designed to work for any audience, context or no context, that would fit a regional promotion. People in one part of the territory wouldn't have seen the rest of the feud unless it happened on TV. So the matches would tend to be fairly simply laid out rather than matches in a feud evolving as the feud continued.

TV, internet, however GFW gets their shows seen is secondary to getting their shows seen. But to me that's not the most important part. They have to present something different than WWE, TNA, NXT, anything readily available anywhere so that it stands out enough to get noticed. Otherwise it's just another wrestling show in a sea of wrestling shows. I think that's why LU has had the success it has. It's got a different flavor to it and stands out from the crowd. Obviously this has to be accomplished in a way that can be continued into future seasons, but I think that's the most important thing they can do. Second would be growing your own stars over time. If they can get even two or three current midcard guys over and keep them there as new stars they will have a leg up on the WWE in that regard. I'm not saying don't look for big names right away, but keep an eye on who your crowds (both live and whatever media outlet(s) come along) and make sure you make the new stars you can while you can. If history is any indication the biggest issues even successful promotions have center around the ace going down unexpectedly and floundering until they return. If people are developed from within in relation to the reactions they get from the fans maybe you have a guy ho can keep numbers from nosediving for six months to a year even if they are down while your ace heals.

Is it possible that he got the Jr. belt when he actually was within weight limitations then gained weight? I know a lot of juniors guys who go heavyweight don't get a ton of respect after they switch divisions. And Kawada was a really short heavyweight. I wonder if it isn't a blessing in disguise that early career Kawada never got a junior title run because that might have served more as a long term stigma than a notch on his belt.

4/18/91 is also a must-watch Hansen match. Anything vs. Kobashi after 1992 is probably going to be really good to great. His CC in 1994 was nothing short of spectacular. Then he ends up doing not a whole lot that is the good kind of noteworthy until the 1999 RWTL and the 2000 reboot match.

Which most people will do after starving their way through years in the indies. I can't imagine it's a tough call for anybody. Put your body through the wringer unnecessarily for years on end making little to no money with the chance that you might get screwed out of a paycheck or work a much less punishing style for more, guaranteed money. As much as fans want everything to be about their needs, most guys aren't going to make that sacrifice when they could be living better regardless of what the output is in terms of match quality.

I would agree on what Marty said for about all of it. This match was an example of what they could do with the women's division given a little buildup and gravitas. The early match with Charlotte being outwrestled and having to use her length to keep Nattie away was really well done with lots of struggle. I also dug the slapping and chippiness as the match wore on, especially given how they built to it with Nattie taunting the Flairs and Ric going nuts on the outside. Like it or not, rope running is a part of WWE style wrestling that you're not going to get away from in any match. It wasn't as extreme here as a lot of the men's matches are with half of what you see coming off of the ropes, so I won't complain too much. The ending of the match was really exhibition-y and needed a lot of tweaking. Instead of all the fast rolling, maybe have Natalya keep Charlote on her stomach a bit longer before Charlotte rolls back through. And finally, I liked Paige/Emma a lot more than this based on ring work. If that had been given this kind of atmosphere it would have been absolutely incredible. Looking forward to the Charlotte/Sasha explosion now. In addition, when are they going to get the idea that they need to give people gimmicks that will work on the big show right away? Look at Emma and Adam Rose. Hugely over with the NXT crowd because they have layers. Both have a serious side that comes out in the ring and legitimizes their character despite the goofiness. But they seem to forget that once you hit Raw and Smackdown there are no layers. There's just the big, cartoony "I AM THIS" gimmicks. So you look at Tyler Breeze or Alexa Bliss and you know they aren't going to make it past NXT with any kind of success because the layers that go into their characters are necessary for the audience to buy into them.

Great show as always. I have loved Kobashi in every match I've seen him wrestle in 1993. Kawada has less great stuff to his name very likely because he was always in the secondary role through 92 and was less developed for at least 1990. That and when he had shots against somebody like Jumbo or a big name gaijin in the first three years he seemed to hold back quite a bit. Misawa's dive sequences are more about avoiding a big whiff. When people started moving out of the way he'd grab the ropes and flip over to set up the apron dives. Athletic stuff like that and the diving elbow or frog splash are Misawa staples all the way until the end of his run in All Japan. It seems like underdogs in All Japan take a larger portion of the offense in a match than almost anywhere else. I think it has something to do with Misawa's way of portraying the ace role. He would let the action come to him and counter, which very often meant somebody like Kawada would get in 75% of the offense in a singles match. It almost seems like a way of putting the challenger/underdog over by making them look good for being able to take it to the other guy for so long despite losing. I also think that this reflects in a lot of finishing stretches where if you have the little time bar down on the bottom of your screen it's almost detrimental to your viewing enjoyment. When you see about five minutes left in the match and somebody puts together a long string of nearfalls the first reaction is, "that guy is taking the fall." As for Fuchi, he was always going to be an afterthought after a while. He was a junior heavyweight, which automatically put him lower than even Kobashi in 1991. And his style of offense doesn't work in the post-Jumbo era. Once Misawa & co. start getting away from weardown submissions and a lot of the 70s/80s stuff Fuchi has a lot harder time fitting in to matches against them. Not to mention they all outrank him by a long, long way. I'm not saying it never happens, just that it becomes more rare. Akiyama is a perfect Fuchi opponent for sure though. I do think that Fuchi, along with Jumbo, had a very critical role in teaching the younger generation how to work from 1990-92. There is a great Fuchi vs. Kawada match from 7/18/1991 that I think both of you would love. It shows how Kawada could work outside the box as early as mid-91 as well as showcasing how great Fuchi was during that era.

I enjoyed this show despite never seeing any of the footage. I enjoyed Steven's joke, but I think it needs a certain audience to get over. I would, however, love to see that Heenan vs. Fuji match. From watching old WWF/WWWF footage, the thing that stands out to me more than anything is how into the shows and performers the crowds were as opposed to today. Even midcard guys would be getting huge responses. But today it's special cases like Bryan where the majority of fans get into one guy enough to get that kind of reaction. Or the big reaction Cena gets because of his circumstances. For whatever reason, very likely the death of kayfabe, wrestling fans seem to have a harder time getting behind what they see.

I doubt it had to do with much besides necessity and fit. Without Jumbo the war was really one-sided. Sure Taue was a big name, but even Jumbo with Taue would have been hard pressed to hold off Misawa, a much improved Kawada to the point of being almost on Misawa's level and a heavily pushed Kobashi. Taue had at best Fuchi on his side, and Fuchi was behind Kobashi before the 1993 Kobashi push. Sure Akiyama and Ogawa were around, but that wasn't going to compare to the firepower on the other side. So you look at Misawa's side and Kawada is easily the most heelish of the bunch. Kobashi is 100% pure babyface and Misawa is the reason his "side" exists. So you pull the guy who is closest to Misawa in card placement, who is also easily as prickish as Taue in a different way, and put him in the top spot opposite Misawa with a role reversal. Instead of Misawa chasing down Jumbo, Kawada is emerging from Misawa's shadow and wants to take on his former squad leader to prove that he can be just as big. It also frees up Akiyama to go to his more natural side in the face/heel spectrum at this point. It's also been suggested on this site that Kawada and Taue knew how to bring the best out in one another and teaming them made a lot of sense because of that. I figure it was the only viable option for Baba at that point that didn't involve bringing in outside talent.

The fact that Kawada took until 98 to get his first "real" singles win over Misawa seems pretty widely accepted as the main reason Kawada was never truly seen as capable of being an ace regardless of what came after. It also seems to be seen as one of Baba's big booking errors. My own feeling is that Kobashi being the secondary ace rather than Kawada is largely due to his comparably meteoric rise. I know it took a while, but when you compare it to how long it took Kawada to beat Misawa in a contested singles match it was really fast. Also factor in that Taue had beaten Misawa in singles competition well before Kawada had. I will say for the 1997 Kawada "win" that Kawada's facial expressions during that few minutes were absolutely sublime.

For me it was also a downhill slope because of what it had to follow. It was the extension of Misawa's vision for All Japan, which was more and more excessive as the 90s went on. So it was always going to be a journey forward into more excess. The only saving grace was going to be the new supporting cast developing. As it turns out the best that should have been expected was a crew of midcard supporting players that fill up the card far better than ate 90s AJPW ever could. At least for the first nine or ten years. Part of what hurt NOAH was how everyone was trying so hard to be on the level of the Four Pillars right away. If they had moved their young guys through stages the way Misawa and crew came up it would have been far better for business over time. But what they did was have young guys in 20+ minute matches far before they were ready without a veteran in the ring to guide them. There were a few occasions where Misawa and co. were stuck into longish singles matches with each other before 1993, but those are the exception rather than the rule. And those matches show plenty of promise despite their flaws while the tags those same wrestlers had with one another were far more consistently good. It also helped that they weren't trying to live up to some impossible standards set by the generation before them.

Bray is a three or four spot guy for me. He has those nice spots where he really throws his momentum into it and they look real explosive, but everything else is middle of the road at best. Ryback is yet another failed WWE big man who is almost all physique with little to no in-ring skill. At this point my big question is what sort of attribute does Triple H and/or Steph value that will define future WWE failures in the way that Vince's physique obsession has for the 80s, 90s, 0s and 10s?

I have to comment on the DDT, atomic drop, and back drop. These are all very dependent on the person taking them to make them look devastating. For the DDT watch some mid-90s Akiyama or Misawa (with Roman reigns as part of the Shield coming in a close third). Reigns is also great at making an atomic drop look great. For examples of both by Reigns the 2013 Shield vs. Rhodes feud is good material. As far as the backdrop I think Eddy Guerrero was a guy who made spots like this way better than they normally were. Somehow he would get ridiculous amounts of height on his bumps for these as well as monkey flips. Throw in whatever name you give the move where a guy tosses the opponent straight up in the air and watches them come down on their face/stomach. For whatever reason Eddy could get a lot out of "height" bumps and I always thought that added to his matches against anyone remotely bigger than him.

I question the idea of "accuracy" here. Clearly this is very subjective material that involves a lot of personal biases and feelings towards the wrestling that is being watched. If I think a certain wrestler or style is boring I'm probably not going to put much time or effort into watching. Even if it's something that's been critically acclaimed and is almost universally thought of as great. I disagree with Dylan on Jumbo, but I do understand how he feels about watching him. I can't in any way pretend that it would be wrong of him to leave Jumbo off his 100 if he honestly hates watching Jumbo wrestle. Regardless of anyone's opinion on Jumbo, I can't imagine anyone would make the argument that he ought to include Jumbo despite his feelings because they feel the guy is basically a shoe-in. If that were the case there wouldn't be the need for everyone scrambling to watch all of this footage. I'm sure everyone on here has seen names on this list that they absolutely disagree with and will not put the time into watching. That's one of the main reasons I think accuracy is a hard thing to achieve. However many different ballots are submitted seems equal to the amount of sets of criteria that were used that went into those ballots. Dylan, Parv, Bill, Ackermann, OJ, jdw, Loss and Tim would very likely have different-looking ballots based on their own views on wrestling with different explanations as to why each wrestler was given the spot they were. Which is the right one if we're looking for accuracy. And I think it's hard to have a project like this without some novel picks thrown in, be it because of somebody's personal preference or an attempt to be different by putting an unlikely name really high (or low, or on the ballot, etc.) It's going to happen, but the more ballots you get the less it's going to impact anything. Overall, I think that one of the most difficult aspects of this kind of project is the "what is everyone else going to do?" factor. It's really easy to get wrapped up in trying to make things happen the way you think they ought to. But the reality of it is you're going to have an incredibly diverse amount of responses, many of which don't line up with your way of thinking. The best you can do is put the time and thought into your own list that you can (given how much time you get to watch wrestling) and have that to fall back on when you start second-guessing this or that placement. I can see trying to make a convincing argument for your favorite wrestlers as it becomes an issue, but at a certain point it is on the other voters to see the things they want in the wrestling. You can't force them to see somebody differently if they aren't going to. To Dylan's point above, late career Kobashi is hit and miss, with the misses driving me up a god damn wall. If I do make a 100 I can't see him below 30, but there are ways that his very late 90s and 2000s matches wear on my last nerve to the point where higher than that is not going to happen. This despite my absolute LOVE for his early career. I actually think there is a connection between that and my hatred for his later career, but that's for another topic. This is more to highlight the idea that personal biases will show up everywhere you look. I'm not going to say that Kobashi isn't a great talent, but I personally refuse to rate the guy very highly because he gets on my nerves.

I'd venture to say that a lot of the handling of Akiyama in his early NOAH run had a lot to do with him not drawing. Instead of him keeping momentum after his big Misawa win in Febuary while still in AJPW, he ends up losing steam in his first Misawa singles match. If you want a guy to be the new Ace you have to commit to that push.

I think I may have been worse when I answered the Plan Nine From Outer Space question right while listening to Brainbuster. I only know of it because of a MST3K spinoff, but it's still kind of embarrassing that it was one of the very few answers I knew that show.

That seems like a really effective way of teaching on the job. I don't like the idea that "being carried" is necessarily a bad thing for the wrestler who was. If you were a young guy in the ring with Steamboat or Flair in the mid 80s and beyond, where is the shame in letting them teach you something about wrestling? The only time I can see this being a problem is if the guy being carried is a 45 year old veteran who just never had the intelligence or ambition to learn ring psychology or how to work a match. The whole idea of having veteran guys work with younger guys is precisely so the younger guy can pick up a few tricks of the trade as they mature.

The Bryan spot that got me was him taking the Sister Abigail off the barricade at RR 2013. That was way too much impact for that unsafe of a spot. I'm all for guys making things look good but there has to be a line.

I can only think of one other brawl that can compete with this match. This is (depending on the day) my favorite or second favorite match of all time. I know it's not the best, but I don't care one bit. If you ever wanted to ask me what I love about pro wrestling, watch this and Tully vs. Magnum Starrcade 85. I could try to answer you with words, but none of them would be as accurate as my two favorite wrestling matches. Something that stood out to me on this watching of it was how the 92 TC match was referenced with the Hansen legwork, as well as Kawada's great reversal of Hansen's earlier tit-for-tat wrestling with the lariat nearfalls during the finishing stretch. That and how great Hansen's tumble from the ring after the lariat was. I've read about Jeff Hardy's ability to make his falls look not like a guy who was trained to fall, but like a guy who is falling. That's what I got from Hansen falling out of the ring. One thing you always get from Hansen when he's on is that everything seems organic. That's something I think Kawada very much took from Hansen over the years.

I thought this match started absolutely great. Fuchi kept ramping up the violence as it went to the point where it gets really, really uncomfortable. By the end I actually wanted the match to end so Kikuchi's neck and spine might live to see another day. Maybe it's the knowledge that Misawa met his end because of stuff like this, but it got hard to watch Kikuchi keep getting up. Great stuff leading into the finish and I imagine there are those who don't mind the finish.