Matt D

I'm another hour in and will double down on the no commentary thing. Tully and Arn's chatter and coordination ("Arn, I need your knee!"), Precious' constant yelling, etc. It'd be one thing if we had Jim Ross and David Crockett tripping over each other at the time, but it'd be a crime to dump even someone like Tony over this decades after the fact.

They only kept this thing from us for almost twenty years. No big deal....

I disagree. I'm only midway through but I'm much happier to hear the crowd booing Wahoo or them being supercharged for Valiant against Ivan without some sort of artificial after the fact commentary overlaying it.

Four Hours. Crockett Cup. 1986.

Does any Michel Martel exist? 70s Canada and PR feel like relatively tricky places to get footage from but I'd be curious to see him.

Is the Jerichoholic Ninja there?

Just think. They would have been spared ten minutes of that if they let Nattie and Alexa wrestle.

Have you tried the 15 second skip button?

Did it look like they were turning Brock with all of this Heyman stuff?

Also about whether or not the crowd will rise up and overthrow the government in the middle of the HHH vs Orton match.

That's a fair stance to have.

So WWE does a lot less promotion online of their Saudi tours than they do of other things, so a cursory glance at WWE.com didn't show me a lot of PR stuff from the last day or two. That said, I did see all of the Ghana photos and I've seen a lot of other stuff with Kofi over the years and I think, if nothing else, he seems like the sort of the guy who tries to make the most positive experience possible out of this sort of thing. I don't know the itinerary for a tour like this. I'd assume that WWE would play towards what they know and how they interact with other organizations and countries but also that a lot is out of their hands as this is very much a vanity project by a money mark. I can see Kofi interacting with a lot of fans on the ground level and meeting people and maybe meeting kids. I can also see him not having that sort of opportunity. I don't think Kofi's going to come into this sort of a situation blind, not on the third show with guys either forced to sit or sitting by choice. I can see him trying to make the best of this situation and separating the people from their government if he had the opportunity to do so. It's a PR statement and one full of hyperbole. In it, he mentioned the crowd, the people, the culture, the pyro and money that goes into it. He didn't mention the government or their initiative or anything else. I don't think his statement is nearly as bad as a lot of the other things we've seen come out of this arrangement.

Pete thinks we have the Arn vs Barry match already. We have most of the 7:24 of the Larry/Dusty match on youtube. Jake vs Garvin could be new? We have December 83 and March 84 TV matches but not the April one? Not sure though.

I agree completely that the sloppiness from Metalico added, especially down the stretch. It felt like visceral desperation, especially when you compared it to some of the early roll ups or the early dive flurry. In the back half, it was obvious that Virus had more skill and more in the tank, but Metalico was literally fighting for his life. You seriously wondered how he was going to hit that last dive and it was like a bullet because of it. I thought the fact that it was just one fall added a lot too because you never see that in CMLL outside of lightning matches. There was belief. There was investment. Everything felt like it mattered to the wrestlers, to the crowd, and to you as a viewer, from beginning to end.

I feel like we've been robbed of dozens of Virus singles matches over the last few years just because they haven't had one of their twenty belts on him.

It's a tool like any other tool and it's all how you use it. For instance, I don't use it at all for wrestling.

Five is the new four, mind you.

Ok, they're screwing with us over at Segunda Caida now. They know we've got, at the very least, State Patrol vs Can-Ams, Malenko/Guerrero vs Samurai/Ohtani and Gordy/Slinger vs Kawada/Kikuchi to watch for New Footage Fridays, and they keep giving us stuff like this: 12/14/1954 – The Legend of The Sheik [Duration: 11:09] On his path to achieving legendary status as one of the pioneers of hardcore wrestling, The Sheik faced Juan Humberto at The Sportatorium. 02/22/1955 – The Bull is Loose [Duration: 21:30] Danny Savich looks to tame one of the sport’s founding fathers of the hardcore style when he faces Wild Bull Curry from Dallas. 03/19/1957 – Becoming a Mad Dog [Duration: 14:34] Before becoming known worldwide as the Mad Dog, ‘Mad’ Maurice Vachon took on The Amazing Zuma in this rarely seen contest from Texas. @khawk20 All of those sound amazing and important.

Not even canny millennials can pirate a live experience?

Has history shown that once an illegal stream gets shut down, people buy the PPV? Anecdotally, I've never heard anyone say "I tried to stream it but I couldn't get it to work so I ended up just buying it even though I was planning to?" I could see it being a deterrence that might affect the next PPV mind you.

Demographics and five years of the network defining the correct market price for PPVs primarily?

You have to assume that most people who watched it didn't actually pay for it.

We have the two Wahoo/Robinson tags too.

Ok, you guys sold me. I will track that match down sometime soon.

1989/04/08 Ebino, Miyazaki - Laborers Center (1,350) Dusty Rhodes Jr. (12:25 pin) Kenta Kobashi 30 years ago.