El-P

1A - 2B Check mate. Lucha Underground won.

Negro Casas really didn't showcase very much crossover appeal when he showed up in New Japan to me. He mostly looked like a fish out of water much like Barry Windham in All Japan a few years before, at a time he was arguably the best active US wrestler (yeah better than Flair). Those luchadors from the late 70's showing up against Fujinami on the other hand, they just blended easily and brought tons to the style that would become the "junior" style of NJ, which would evolve into the lucharesu, US cruiserweights, and X-div workers of the world. So, there. Lucha Libre may be my favourite pro-wrestling I don't actually like watching very much.

At least I learned that Mexico wasn't in the western world. Learnin' everyday about geopolitics thanks to good ol' pseudo intellectual pro-rasslin' debates. Joshi ? Blah. Who cares ? Women and creepy fans. Yeah, creepy fans (like that Mick Santa guy). Because those good'ol' boys from the South during the glory days of Memphis were great people ya know, chanting against faggots and raising ol' Glory. Hey, Trump is your new president, so I guess gotta turn everything into low-brow politic and moral arguments now. Lucha is fine. It's surprisingly still the most purely "popular" form of wrestling and the most "hipster" as well, thanks to its aesthetics. Pro-wrestling is cheesy. Always will be. Hulk fucking Hogan, bro. But Lucha Libre is cool in a B-movie kinda way. There was even a lucha themed bar in Paris, despite having no lucha TV at all in the country. That's interesting to me. Probably why Lucha Underground works too, because it's so heavy on aesthetics.

This. Pretty much. I've been a fan for more than 25 years now. Never really *got* lucha libre. And never ever got *into* it. Probably never will at this point. Don't care anymore. LU rules though. (not Lucha) I know. And ?

Only watched Charlotte Flair (since when ?) vs Sasha Banks, since I couldn't care less about the rest (Rusev in a stupid angle in the pre-show with a complete tool, what a waste of talent). I thought it felt a little bit too choreographed after the opening matwork section, with both girls going through their dance. It did pick it up with the first serious submission. And that Sasha bump on the stairs from the apron was a thing of beauty. Then was very good. Ok, so first fall had a nice slow build into it and I didn't think the equalizer came too awkwardly. Then the final third picked up and the match got excellent, then great despite... stupid booking. Which made the figue-four kinda weak in a way, and Sasha taping out three seconds before the bell doesn't make sense. A babyface either faints or just doesn't give up at this point. Of course one could argue she couldn't imagine the referee would be a complete dick a la Gorilla Monsoon with this sudden death overtime, which reeks of favoritism and kinda makes the whole thing booked like Sasha was the heel (really, giving up three seconds before the bell, and having to still defend her title with overtime). That aside, that overtime was all kinda great, with the damn hardway adding a dramatic visual aspect. Sasha really grew as a babyface worker, although I really wish she had the opportunity to be all bitchy and mean again. Charlotte has improved so much on the facials and attitude that it makes up for some shaky execution at times (those low dropkicks), she really brought a lot in term of character (everything Randy Orton tried to be but never managed to in term of predatory tactics). She overdoes it a tad at time, but she's a lot of fun to watch react to the dynamics of the match. Very involving. The booking is kinda baffling really, with Charlotte beating Sasha on PPV *again*. At this rate, Charlotte will beat her father's title record in a matter of two years. Only other negative, did this crowd suck or what ? They were dead for most of the match it seems. Did hurt the aura of the match, which deserved way better. Overall excellent, with a great final stretch. (despite the booking, but this company is useless on this matter anyway)

So that was the Third Face. How could I forgot ? But yeah. That elbowdrop on the concrete. Looked amazing but...

Well, I will watch Sasha vs Charlotte going 30 mn. If Rusev is on the card, I might watch him too.

Wait, what ? Tonight ? Charlotte vs Sasha ?

The one thing I hate more than the obligatory capitalistic fake-joy of the über consumption party know as Xmas is someone, anyone, using the following argument about *anything* : "You'll see when you'll have kids.". I deeply despise the social injunction of reproducing as much as the patronizing that goes with it, as if having kids was some kind of magic trick a human being was supposed to go through to have a purpose in life and understand whatever meaning of it. Fuck kids. Well, not litteraly of course… But you get the drift. So yeah. Fuck Xmas. And fuck you Mick Foley, you Xmas-tree masturbating Santa Claus look-alike creepo. There. There are no year end awards on PWO so you can stop competing for "most miserable person on the board" any time now. Considering the super enthousiastic posts I make about great matchs from TNA 2005, NXT Takeovers, Charlotte vs Sasha stuff and other random really good stuff from WWE PPV (including Miz matches), plus my undying love for Lucha Underground for which I created a thread by my own self so I could deverse the LU luv on the board, I'm pretty sure I wasn't near the top of that list anyway. (And again, not having kids doesn't make people miserable. The things I plan to do next year : whatever the fuck I feel like doing. Yay !)

The one thing I hate more than the obligatory capitalistic fake-joy of the über consumption party know as Xmas is someone, anyone, using the following argument about *anything* : "You'll see when you'll have kids.". I deeply despise the social injunction of reproducing as much as the patronizing that goes with it, as if having kids was some kind of magic trick a human being was supposed to go through to have a purpose in life and understand whatever meaning of it. Fuck kids. Well, not litteraly of course… But you get the drift. So yeah. Fuck Xmas. And fuck you Mick Foley, you Xmas-tree masturbating Santa Claus look-alike creepo. There.

And will Steve Austin work against Brock Lesnar this year ?

Wearing Christmas shirts in April is what made you think Mick Foley was fucking weird ? Mick Foley ? From the Nestea Plunge bump/hit me again in the head with a chair Shane or Rocky/IWA Japan King of the Deathmatch tournament/Hell in the Cell death spots fame ? A Christmas Shirt in April ?

The New Three Faces of Foley : creepy feministstalker, awkward X-mas fetischist and what else already ? Seriously, who gives a flying fuck if Foley loves Xmas or theme parks ? People obsessing about Foley's idiosyncrasies are way more creepy, I'd say. For the record, fuck the holiday season, and Xmas especially. Really depressing period of the year.

Wow. What a terrific match. They had some excellent stuff together the previous year, but this was incredible. Battling outside was not exactly a change of pace since Jarrett & Waltman began the exact same way the previous match. However here it looked focused, stiff and built to that amazing spot with the door. Awe inspiring bump from AJ. AJA is so great. Such an amazing worker. It's funny how people seem to discover that now that he's in WWE (and since NJ is evil, ya know). Watching back early TNA, AJ Styles was already a great worker in 2003. Abyss has carried himself as quite the game piece of luggage. Bring him a shit opponent (Jeff Hardy), he'll do a shit match. Bring him a great worker, chances are you'll get something very good, maybe even great, like this. And he does bring his A-game in term of pacing and doing smart stuff too. So many great things about this match, how it slowly built, how they smartly set up gimmick spots, how they didn't overused the cage (especially after an entire PPV of cage matches, with a few good moments too like Chris Daniels vs Elix Skipper, a 2/3 of Dustin Rhodes vs Booby Roode, the last half of Team Canada vs AMW and even a decent little fake Wargame including Sean Waltman, Monty Brown and the NAO facing off and building tension) but when they did use it made it important and memorable. Even the thumbtacks spots were well teased and executed. Great match, terrific performance from AJ, Abyss at his best (that big lumbering sado-machistic trucker pretending he's a monster finally grew on me with good stuff like this) MOTYC for 2005. That's two for AJ Styles thus far too, for anyone keeping score.

Right now, as I'm going through 2005 TNA : Jeff Hardy. Easily one of the worst all-around worker I've ever seen. Not one redeeming quality about him at that point. Awful looking offense, shit selling, sloppy on all level, zero "character work", dull promo, dumb as fuck garbage work, terrible pseudo "artistic" look, idiotic nickname.

Jeff Hardy in 2005 is probably one of the worst, most useless, dumbest worker I've seen. And that covers a lot of ground. There's no way to have a good match with him. The "table match" gimmick is stupid to begin with. And hey, it's in a cage, since it's Lockdown, the first "all cage match" PPV, another dumb as fuck idea which was rendered even dumber with the added gimmick in every match. So you can have clusterfuckery on top of making the cage match irrelevant in one night. So there. Hardy. The cage at least prevents him from walking around for ever, but he's just worthless. When Raven is on offense you can at least get a sense of purpose. He sells too, and bleeds so to make the cage a palpable element for the first time since the beginning of the PPV. Hardy's offense looks like shit, he can't sell one bit, making comebacks on random. It's just painfull and predictable. Yeah, he does falls from high places, here the top of a cage, twice, but that's about it. One smart spot when Raven uses the big "door" to unbalance Hardy. But nothing leads to nothing, Hardy thrashing himself through a table from the top has him making a comeback two minutes later. Zero drama. Just a bad, overclusterfucky heritage of the Attitude Era-kinda gimmick match. Waste of time. It was however, still better than the Hardy vs Abyss matches the previous months. That's how godawful these were. (and yeah, the usual bad TNA referee work coupled with Don West at an all-time terrible and annoying just made this even worst. The women looking concerned looked like shots from some other card, I have no idea why anyone in that smarcky annoying crowd would be concerned for Jeff Hardy, who is unable to showcase any "character work" except "look at me, I'm gonna fall !")

Funny how some people don't seem to get the subtlety of bending an old narrative into a slightly new one. Of course the Madusa incident was refered to for years when Montreal was brought up. The difference now is that : *Madusa fired the first shot in the Monday Night Wars* and basically is the reason why "Montreal happened". How isn't this completely ridiculous ? Like it's been said, Flair fucking showed up on WWF TV with the WCW Big Gold Belt in 1991. Between December 1995 and November 1997, you have two years of petty shit and lawsuits between the two companies, you really think it would have changed anything when Bret didn't want to put over Shawn, Vince's golden boy, if just the Madusa incident had not happened two years before ?

She was dull as hell as a babyface in WWF. If at least she would have kept her MadUSA identity, she could have been the counterpart to Lex Luger. Well, we know how well it worked out for Luger, but those were the years. The name Alundra Blayze always sounded contrived to me (and back then I had never saw the girl before). Her first Mania match was basically a competitive squash against Lelani Kai who had not been around since the Glamour Girls days, not built at all. Speaking of which, the idea that the american audience had "never seen anything like Madusa" before is kinda funny when you think about those matches against the JBA. Kai was certainly a better worker than Madusa in her prime. And I like Debbie, but like you said her better days were in WCW working along Heyman. I did enjoy her and Mona working around a washed up Savage too though.

Read the post. Orton doesn't talk about how to approach Vince or to deal with the writers. He's talking about "not knowing how to show respect to the business backstage". It's the usual etiquette bullshit.

Of course it was mentionned. But it was never made that important before th HoF. Luger showing up on Nitro was infinitely more important. Luger's profile as a star improved ten times just by jumping back to WCW. He was over as all hell during the glory days of WCW. He popped ratings when he won the title from Hogan. Madusa was an afterthought (although she has been used much better over there than in WWF too, before Russo showed up that is).

I can agree with this. Both made pretty stupid decisions at the time.

It wasn't the start of the MNW. Lex Luger showing up on Nitro was. Bischoff giving out results happened way before that point. Yeah, it did lead to a lawsuit. Then the Billionnaire Ted stuff happened. Then the other lawsuits about Razor & Diesel. Madusa thrashing the belt wasn't that big of a deal when it happened really, apart from a "holy fuck" moment. It was given a brand new meaning this year, as part of the brand new WWE narrative of Alundra Blayze being a big deal and shit. Which, she really wasn't. Like, ever.

Vince "didn't know" that Bischoff supposedly never would have had Bret throw the belt in the trash because of the lawsuit. Still. The whole "Madusa throwing the belt is the first major blow of the MNW" is a brand new narrative that magically appeared because of Madusa's HoF induction. Now we're getting even sillier with "Madusa throwing the belt is the reason why Montreal happened", when infact, yeah, the very fact Madusa threw down the belt and the following lawsuits made the very idea of WCW doing the same shit again with Bret Hart quite insane. WCW were stupid, but not that stupid.

Hilarious and absurd on so many level. Randy Orton. A guy who "paid his dues to da business" by working nowhere but the WWE and getting pushed to the top straight away solely because of his family name, while remaining a black hole of work, promo an charisma for his entire career, the only thing getting him over being re-doing DDP's finishing gimmick. For more, see two posts above.

Well, watched the beginning of that show. Kinda odd to see shoot interviews on WWE TV now to be honest. Is JBL always that wooden ? He's a terribly dull interviewer, he's like an old fucked up Ken plastic figure. Got my bullshit detector going crazy in the first ten minutes already, with Madusa talking about how great a worker she was and how guys in WCW couldn't follow her matches. Well. I still want a real, non corporate interview with her so she can give actual memories of AJPW (instead of just "Japan"), but what I saw is soooo dry because of the usual WWE twist. The stuff where she was shooting shit with other girls was much more interesting. WWE produced shows are just so…. WWE. EDIT : oh man, and now we have to hear again that Madusa trashing the belt was the start of the MNW. Funny how it wasn't even a blip on the radar for ever but since they got back to her now it's like the biggest event ever. That company...