Matt D

I honestly wouldn't mind reading more about Butch Reed.

Losing Lawler and Heenan in quick succession was a hit.

Sting is more of a personal favorite. Luger is better. Early on definitely. Even in 93 I like Luger a lot though.

JvK, while I'm glad to go digging, if you were to represent me with the short list of Flair matches you wanted me to compare/contrast once again, I intend to do that this month and it'd make things easier.

How resented was Bock for how he got the title in the early 80s?

I love Pro Wrestling USA Robinson where he's backstage as Kamala's handler. It's the most random thing.

They should have put him with Kassie. That was way too extreme for AWA though.

Well I've seen two far more than competent performances albeit in very small doses between 00 and 02 today. One that I didn't like as much but it was, you know, a two minute syndi match.

Is this a meaningfulness thing again?

Big Boss Man vs the Hurricane Metal 02/02/02 Now this is a fun sub 3-min match. These things do exist. It's worked very smartly. Tons of shtick from both guys. Hurricane starts out with the handshake and Boss Man takes his hand. They share a thumbs up and Boss Man pulls him in and intimidates him. Hurricane tries for a slam but gets clubbered for his trouble. Boss Man taunts Molly outside. Hurricane tries offense. Boss Man overpowers him. His strikes again look good. Hurricane goes for the chokeslam. Boss Man chokes him instead. Does the "I'M THE KING OF THE WORLD" thing again. Ref breaks it. Molly hits a missile dropkick. Boss Man sells it exactly as much as he should, chases Molly around, runs back in. Hurricane briefly takes over, hits a big move or two, including the big body slam, and then Boss Man hits the Boss Man Slam out of nowhere with a huge hook of the leg and that's the match. They managed to set up things early in the match (the bodyslam attempt, Boss Man's taunting of Molly) that paid off later on. It was very believable with Boss Man giving just about as much as he should have for Helms. Again, it's not a great match in the time limitation, BUT if you can come up with a better sub-3 minute big man/little man match I'd love to see it.

Big Boss Man vs Test SmackDown 1/4/00 Official WWEFanNation youtube site link: One problem with looking at matches from Boss Man's matches from his comeback is that the matches were so damn short back then. This went about four minutes. It was set up after two big encounters with Albert and Boss Man that Steph and Hunter put Test in and the main story was Boss Man working over Test's broken nose. There's a lot you can see from this though. Boss Man had great nose-based offense. Lots of varied stuff including nasty knees and punches, dropping him on the barricade, a mugging sort of rear-noselock. He had smart cut-offs of hope spots, including a backelbow and boot in the corner to the nose. He ate Test's offense really well, especially his crappy strikes and died amazingly on a big boot. He was great jawing to the fans early on and was really good at giving his offense room to breathe. His timing on his cut offs/eating Test's hope spots were really good. Obviously this isn't going to be a GREAT MATCH or anything (it's four minutes long) but everything Boss Man had to do here, I think he did well. I even think he did a very good job of getting stuff in those four minutes effectively. I also saw a nothing two minute Metal Saturn vs Boss Man match from 02 and he was definitely not in as good shape. His punches were still great. His selling of Saturn's punches were great, but he was sluggish down to his gear which was his black swat shirt with khaki pants. After hitting a big boot he raises his hands and shouts "I'M THE KING OF THE WORLD!" which was pretty awesome.

Who in the history of wrestling not Ricky Steamboat or Tito Santana actually prefer being a face?

I'll say this about meaningless depth. You watch enough 84 WWF TV and you come to really appreciate all that meaningless depth in 88.

Over on DVDVR we decided the best choice was Punk/Lesnar vs HHH/Ryback.

I think that he also had different aims in a different territory than Flair. To me, the AWA booking from 80-83 or so seemed very reluctant to actually put heat on the heels and it rather celebrated the babyfaces, all while having a heel champ and a lot of bs finishes. Bock, to me, is a guy who knows what he wants to accomplish as a worker in almost every match I've seen him in and then he goes out and accomplishes that. For instance, in the Ladd match, he comes in to make Ladd look like a monster, to beg off and be afraid, to come back with really measured leg attacks and then with chokes/nerve holds that'll be fierce enough and brutal enough and even cheap enough to piss Ladd off enough that he gets suckered into the finished. Bock comes out of the match looking smart enough to goad the monster but the crowd knows that he escaped by the skin of his teeth. Ladd comes out looking like a righteous monster and the crowd knows that if he ever gets another shot at Bock there's a great chance he's coming out with the belt.

Hogan's response to Luger set some new record even for him for the number of "brotha"s. It's insane. It's almost every other sentence. In just less than one minute he says it (and I counted) ten times. It's pretty amazing.

There should be a FAQ

I totally forgot we had that Hogan vs Cena note. I've got nothing then. I just wanted to post that picture mainly. I really loved that Wrestlemania Challenge game as a kid.

I like how his dropkick the other night looked like the dropkick from WWF Wrestlemania Challenge from the NES. I saw Sabu vs Cena the other night. That was a lot of fun. Sabu was rabid. Here's a question. Who garners sympathy better vs a monster? Cena or Hogan?

I like how his dropkick the other night looked like the dropkick from WWF Wrestlemania Challenge from the NES. I saw Sabu vs Cena the other night. That was a lot of fun. Sabu was rabid.

The level of arguments we get in here is interesting. For instance, Flair's booking matters in a WON HOF thread, and Lawler's promotion matters there, but neither matter on a GOAT sort of way.

Curious: Do you think that drawing every week in the MSC is a harder gig than being the travelling NWA champ?

They ran the same building every Monday night. I don't care how much you care about a wrestler, you can't draw a crowd week after week that way unless people care about the feud. I think it was the hardest gig in wrestling. Granted, you wonder how much the lack of pro sports teams helped.

Where have we ended up here?

And then when we go off and back up what we say with lots and lots of data you go.. "Oh, I see what you meant now even though I still disagree, but I am no longer going wtf, because I am better than those closed-minded HBK fans!" And then we shake hands and you go back to forcing people to watch Portland footage so that the 80s project can continue.