El-P

So, he is gonna get bestendeavoured before the end of his contract ?

So, Meltz said Eva Marie was done with pro-wrestling. What a great stint. That was worth the time.

Ok, there you go. Here we are. You reached *that* moment. I admit I had to go back to some old sources to remember exactly what happened there. Since you're watching a best-off comp, you don't even know about the Ryo Miyuki debacle that went on in January. The story is, Miyuki was a tall, athletic, fairly good looking girl whom Rossy Ogawa wanted to push the hell out of despite being a total rookie with zero experience and… in-ring potential. Aja was opposed to that apparently. Miyuki's debut performance was embarrasing. And then we get that shoot-angle that turned into a shoot, with Aja basically "leaving" the promotion along Miyuki (yeah, makes all the sense in the world), hence letting Yoshida getting destroyed by LCO. On the same show, you had the infamous Ohmukai vs Miyuki "job-of-doom" where Miyuki shows up in street clothes and does the job in one minute (because she doesn't want to work here anymore, ya know). Thing is, Aja and Miyuki really did leave the promotion that day and never returned back. So there, Aja was pissed at Rossy because of his booking and Miyuki was a failed rookie debacle that ended up sucking in GAEA a few months later, then went on to work for DDT for a while. A month later, this was Fukawa's retirement show, which was quite fitting as ARSION as a cool little upstart company was no more. A few months later, Lioness Asuka would get the keys to the kingdom and would effectively kill the company by doing what she does : putting herself over everybody and garbaging up the product. By the end of the year, ARSION was going the way of what I'd call back then, a zombi promotion, with the depressing Carnival 2001 show. I think it went one until 2003 when Yumiko Hotta, of all people, took over and the promotion turned into AtoZ. To me, 2001 is where I simply stopped giving a fuck. It had been my all-time favourite pro-wrestling in 98 & 99. 2000 was rougher with Fukawa's injury but Hamada's rise to the top was cool. The Miyuki debacle, Aja's departure and Lioness taking over put the nails in the coffin in 2001

Damn. It's not a matter of kayfabe anymore. It's a matter of knowing way too fucking much about these people, especially their worst traits that emerge through social networks. Keep just a wee bit of mystery, will you ? (and no, I don't mean clean up you phones either)

She should work an Azealia Banks gimmick. Kill chicken in her closet, make Trump supporting tweets and insult entire countries. Seriously, she even got the right last name !

#dumbasfucktwitterfeud You know, some days I do yearn for the older times...

Without Shawn pushed as the main guy in DX and Nash & Hall in WCW, Trip never get passed the mid-card, it's as simple as this. The New Age Outlaws and Chyna were more over than he was months after he got the DX leader position. He only got there by SummerSlam working with Rocky in the ladder match. No main event push, no Stephy angle, no son-in-law, no 15 years of suck and boredom on top. Doesn't matter if Mr. McMahon doesn't get the "Bret screwed Bret" stuff, the anti-authority nature of Austin was still there by mid 1997. Before Bret left, Austin had already stunned JR if I recall right. The seeds were there. And Rocky still happens too, and working with Bret certainly beats the tepid HHH matches of the Summer of 98 (yeah, I know they were super heated despite being tepid, but that's neither here nor there, Rocky didn't need HHH to get over). Oh, and of course, Russo doesn't get to do half the shit he did because Bret wasn't gonna allow it. And Micheals doesn't get his "great" comeback stint as a living legend in the 00's with all those overrated self-consious epics and those DX revival shit. Damn Vince, why didn't you pick Bret ?

That bump was sure worth it....

More KC goodness with Honky Tonk Man covering his journey to SummerSlam 88. It's really an interesting dive into how business worked back then, especially how Vince functions (the part where he tries desperately to sell HTM as a babyface for sheer merchandise reasons echoes with some familiar modern situations…) and treats his talent. HTM goes pretty much in details about the whole refusing to job to Savage, and again it's quite interesting to grasp how he was considering his whole stint and how things worked then.

Sato sucked by 2000. And KAORU was never very good (the Aja match is like a miracle and Aja working her magic). So there. Oz Academy was really GAEA at this point.

I'd rather watch Edge than just any of these guys save for Koko (especially in Memphis).

Ding ding ding. End of match. Your winner is.

Cody Rhodes is like the Randy Orton of his dynasty.

Not really. There have always been "workrate" (before it turned into an ugly word in the mouth of our brand new crowd of retrohipsters) territories and promotions where doing as little as possible wasn't gonna fly. Hence the differences between Memphis, Mid-south, Mid-Atlantic, AWA, New York, 80's New Japan etc... Doing what is necessary, depending on the context and what you want to achieve. Actually, Cena and Micheals were having those self-conscious epics, finishers kick-outs burning borefest way way before the #evilindydarling came in and "changed the style". And honestly, I'd take a stupid and ridiculous modern spotfest over a fake overdrawn "epic" anyday.

Arn Anderson. The best ever to me.

Listen to that sound ? That's me marking the fuck out already (Weeds fan). Awesome Kong to boot ? I'm there. This is gonna be glowious.

We should make every thread ever about how Randy Orton is a fucking bore. Yeah, it would get old quick. But not quite as dull as a Randy Orton match or promo or angle.

He already is, by the way of 15 years of dull as fuck matches, promos, feuds and terrible acting.

The thing is, you can think whatever you want about the Young Bucks, but they manage to *draw* and *make money* out of their act. I mean, Rip Rogers was a guy doing jobs on WCW TV and he was taking really stupid bumps during those matches too. As much as I do agree with him on some aspects, there's plenty of stupid as fuck work in WWE too, it's not just #evilindies. It kinda reeks of "old man yells at cloud" a bit...

That's a pretty accurate sump-up of the first three years. Chama (Ohmukai) showed so much promised in 1998 but she never became what she could have. Futagami switching to GAMI worked wonders for her character wise (and she is GAMI in real life) but the match quality suffered a lot because of it. Candy had a great 1998 comeback but her back injury probably was too much to keep that high level of work. And her character got annoying. Tamada is someone who took a lot of crap back in the days but she was more hit and miss and still delivered nice work at points. Ayako becoming ace was a nice cap-off of her… two years career (amazing when you think of it!) and for all the talk of her being overpushed because of her name early on, she really took the ball and ran with it with her mega push and at the end of 2000 there was no doubt she had earned every bit of it and it was the right choice. Yoshida was still the best and coolest wrestler on earth too. Ah, 2001, the beginning of the TV shows There's a famous power play debacle at the beginning of the year. I have to watch that stuff back at some point. Good memories. Really enjoying this thread.

This is what I thought too.

Both very good matches. The tag team match was actually excellent and what bothered me the most was the ridiculous and dated use of some random amazon-looking women to "neutralize" Gail Kim (who took a terrific bump from the top rope). I guess it was supposed to be Jackie Gayda before she left as she got pregnant, it would have at least pay off an otherwise totally useless stint (which seems to sum up Gayda's entire pro-wrestling career). Yes, they didn't respect the tag legalities at the very end but it wasn't that bad, plus the finish was exactly what it should have been with a great feel-good moment. Steiner was all business and worked very well with Joe. Nice psychology and build, too bad the lead to the finishing spot was indeed blown, which made the ending kinda odd, the powerslam not being one of Joe's finisher. Still, Steiner showed he could absolutely work and deliver as late as 2006. Too bad they manage to fuck up the King of Mountain match. It was already the worst of the three, not nearly as good as the other ones, as if they forgot how to make the best and most fun use of the cage gimmick. Uneventful with long, boring crowd brawling sequences and Ron Killing wassuping his way into nothingness (really, why was he booked back in the main event at this point ?). It got better toward the end with some big spots, but the "creative" booking got in the way, including a particulary annoying Earl Hebner performance and totally screwy ending with some kind of Dusty finish. Kinda sad as it probably foreshadows the arrival of Russo on booking in the following months. This is the first true fail of D'Amore's booking era, and the fact it happened within their big annual gimmick match could not have been worse timing.

Cool to see those Jd' reviews in 2017. This was the ultimate cult-following (like, a dozen people including yours truly ) in joshi community lovers at the time. The Bloody & Yabushita were my two favourites, but I also enjoyed Sakai a whole lot and Fang was the unexpected underrated brawler.

Never heard it ever anywhere unless on WWE TV or what followed suit (WCW, TNA etc).

Sports-entertainment still sounds dumb as fuck, 30 years later. No one in real life says there's "sports-entertainment fan" or that they watch "sports-entertainment" or that they go to a "sports-entertainment show". It sounds completely idiotic.