Matt D

I've only seen Black vs Lars but I liked it a lot. I liked how hard it was for Black to hurt Lars. I liked all of the big power reversal/transitions. The jaw/knee stuff worked well without seeming overwrought. Even the whiffed Black Mass was instantly forgivable as it a) protected the hold and was followed immediately by color that built into the jaw incident. I liked it.

Then he dropped it and came back to it a few other convenient times. In and of itself, that might not have bugged me or even been a plus but in a match where they were running the leg experiment, it was jarring.

I thought it was flawed but fun. Here's what I said in the Meltzer thread. "The idea that the Bucks' match was 4.5 stars speaks to the inflation as much as anything else, maybe because we have so many other 4.5 star matches to compare it to. It was a fun little thought experiment of a match: "What if you tack on hyper-focused limb selling to a standard sort of YB NJPW match?" but it wasn't any sort of organic selling that drove the spots; instead the spots drove the selling. The back selling was far more inconsistent and never, to me, felt earned. The timing on the mid-match hot tag was hardly maximized and the work that he had to do for it involved a lot of standing around a waiting for people to get into their places. Again, fun thought experiment and solid effort but 4.5 stars apparently don't buy you what they once did." There were moments where they used the leg selling as an excuse to not sell other things as well. The cart was driving the horse which made it all seemed way more staged and contrived than any tag match I'm going to rate highly can be. I did love the moment when Sanada kicked the leg out on the apron though. That was great.

Pro-Shot with Tony. Great VQ too.

Transmet mattered a lot to me when I was ~20 or so and I think it was prescient in a lot of ways like the best cyberpunk is, but I'm not sure I'd want to revisit it now. I'm not who I was sixteen or seventeen years ago and the world isn't what it was then either. It did have a big influence on me at the time though.

On paper, this is much closer to my ideal for every week (no spoilers for Nick, just generalities): Old 70s segment, 80s-90s star-powered match that we might have already had, 70s-80s gem match that we might not have, couple of 00s developmental/metal matches. 5 segments. Everyone's happy every week and they have plenty to burn through. In this case, that depends a bit on whether or not the "gem" is a pro-shot since what we have (in full) currently is more of a fancam.

The idea that the Bucks' match was 4.5 stars speaks to the inflation as much as anything else, maybe because we have so many other 4.5 star matches to compare it to. It was a fun little thought experiment of a match: "What if you tack on hyper-focused limb selling to a standard sort of YB NJPW match?" but it wasn't any sort of organic selling that drove the spots; instead the spots drove the selling. The back selling was far more inconsistent and never, to me, felt earned. The timing on the mid-match hot tag was hardly maximized and the work that he had to do for it involved a lot of standing around a waiting for people to get into their places. Again, fun thought experiment and solid effort but 4.5 stars apparently don't buy you what they once did.

Ok, tenor in the room is that we're going to take this week off. That gives everyone another week to pick matches (if not already done) and watch/review them (I'm still working on mine though it's way more heated than I was expecting, a nice surprise). I'm wondering if we might not have a bit of fatigue here in general after having done this for half a year steadily. In general we've probably reviewed well over 200 matches which is pretty impressive, and everyone got to stretch a bit. So I'm giving it a week and we'll see where we are next Tuesday or so.

I read about 70% of Marvel's current output and maybe 35% of DC's, plus a few other things like Wicked + Divine. I'm currently catching up on the current run of Flash, having just done that for Aquaman. I was also reading a ton of The Black Moon Chronicles recently, just on a whim. I've been at this since ~91 or so (not much unlike wrestling), though I spent most of the last few years not reading DC because New 52 really alienated me. It's really hard to pin down favorites. James Robinson's Starman run comes to mind. Fabian Nicieza's Thunderbolts. Wolfman/Perez Titans. Matt Wagner's Mage work and High Society out of Cerebus. The first two years of Post-Zero Hour LSH. Gillen's Journey Into Mystery. For the last couple of years, I liked the short Kingpin series by Rosenberg, thought Gwenpool was irreverent, imaginative, and surprisingly full of heart, and enjoyed the Avengers crossover for mainly nostalgic reasons (it felt like Operation Galactic Storm). Aaron's Thro's been consistently great. I'm not sure what I'd rank so highly over at DC. I did think the Abnett's Aquaman was overall very good. I'm constantly impressed by the sheer craft in Doomsday Clock while thinking it's both tonally misguided and completely unnecessary. I thoroughly enjoyed Orlando's JLA and am sad it's gone. I really have to catch up on Priest's Deathstroke and King's Mister Miracle too. Oh, back to Marvel, Black Bolt from last year was excellent too, and Taylor's All New Wolverine was the most entertaining comic either company was putting out for the last few years.

I think there are diminishing returns for Dave being over the top. You hit so many spots in a row, month after month, and soon nothing means anything anymore. Social media's allowed him to become just like the wrestling he loves the most. He could give it twenty stars and I doubt we're going to have the same reaction we did a few months ago.

Nothing matters anymore. We've hit the end of history. I'm glad for the people who had an amazing wrestling experience last night though.

It's ironic that a guy who was so dedicated to being straightedge drove so many MMA fans to drink tonight.

They have infinite moneys. What do they care?

From what we have. Wait. I'll get back to that. Ok, I have a question for next week. A stop the presses sort of question. They showed a couple of minutes on TV of a lot of the arena stuff, even in 93. Like the Owen Hart or Bret Hart stuff. Is there any chance at all the full tape of those matches exist somewhere or was it just cut up, taped only in part, or simply taped over? So my absolute favorite part of the WWF/Memphis thing, past maybe Fink's promo, is Doink in the studio, especially his TV squash match tag with Christopher where he just absolutely kills a jobber. It's the best Matt Borne Doink performance ever. Just brutal. That's not on youtube, I don't think, but man is it good stuff.

The ring, the rust, the announcing, the crowd, the neck.

Is there a launch date?

Given what they have, trickle down wrestlenomics still stinks.

I think it's safe to say we're all behind you on this one and want nothing for you but success.

I'd like to ignore Johnny, including the easy line about how he can't eat his head because it's up his own ass, because that's just weird, and talk more about how Pete's going to have to watch this match:

Just so long as you're making Pete watch a Kane match that I don't have to see. We're going to watch some unearthed Brazos instead. To hell with the man and his vast, vast library of wrestling footage from 1983.

On the one hand, we all know that. On the other hand, we didn't know that 100% until a few hours ago. There were still different possibilities. Really, it's last week that we should have been disappointed after that initial dump and the poor messaging. It just didn't set in until today.

Neither hidden nor a gem.

Week 1: They raised expectations wildly. Week 2: They lowered them considerably. Week 3: They demolished them. I get that we should never, ever have any expectations for this company but it was nice to have something else to look forward to every week.

Well, that was fun while it lasted.