The KENTA/Nakajima series was excellent for 'learned psychology' IIRC.

That's not at all true now.

 

I should clarify and say *mostly* coincidence without announcers pointing it out.

I remember seeing a Chris Sabin vs (I think) Juventud Guerrera match from TNA that had about ten minutes of wall to wall counters and the commentators were going crazy about how much they had scouted each other.

Imagine that match with Cole and JBL announcing.

If its not brought up by the announcers or made an explicit focus, such as working a limb for an extended period, why would we go the choose your own adventure route and read things into a match? If its really that subtle I don't see how one can say they're picking up on the actual storytelling. One thing I've realized while watching for GWE is just how big an impact announcing, and in the case of foreign announcing, can have on a match. Right or wrong it will color what you see in the ring to varying degrees. When watching matches in a foreign language I'll to some extent rely on prior matches I may have seen and the "big" expressiveness, if you will, of the performers. But I think it requires a pretty big leap of faith and creativity to look for fine print.

 

I'm kind of amazed JVK hadn't really heard that term before now. It's pretty critical to how many people view AJPW

 

just came in here to say exactly this

 

it was such a huge concept among that crowd that you eventually had people using it to describe shit like Kelly Kelly matches

 

 

The Kelly Kelly vs Beth Phoenix series did actually build upon itself quite well.

If it wasn't obvious to their audience, it was virtually pointless to do it. That's not really an example of great psychology on its own, as much as it was the ability to work a solid series of matches. A valuable skill to be sure, but I wouldn't point to it as an example of strong psychology.

Just wanted to mention that Gordon Solie and Coach Heath teach me a shit load about wrestling psychology any time I hear them on old Florida footage. In terms of a pure colour analyst Heath might be the best there ever was. If you have even a passing interest in the topic I'd encourage you to seek out matches he calls just purely to LEARN stuff.

It's not exactly grand psychology, but it is...cerebral, I guess. And it's something I really, really enjoy and appreciate when I see it, and I couldn't care less if I'm the only one who sees it. That's everyone else's problem, not mine.

 

And sometimes it is very obvious to their audience. The Cena/Punk matches, for example, were based around the idea and they got people to bite every time they countered or switched up a spot.

The arena crowd isn't the only crowd in 2016, especially for things like Superstars matches.

Joe/Punk III is another good example. Had so many spots built around the previous two matches - in fact the entire way the match was built, structured and explained was via reference to the two sixty minute draws.

It comes up in the AJPW classics as well.

Years of being in one of the greatest tag teams in WWE history, amazing Rumble performances, a real good title run, and the title victory is one of the greatest matches in WM history.

Is Kofi a contender now? Really he may be for me.

I think if Tito Santana is in the top 100, Kofi Kingston definitely is, because imo he's this generation's Tito and likely has a better overall track record once you really dig in.

He could be someone that sneaks in at like 99-100 for me because of that lightning in a bottle month in 2019 putting the cherry on a nice midcard career and being part of one of the companies best tag teams.  However, Kofi's unlikely to add anything extra to his case now he's back down to being a tag guy so come 2024 it might be a harder sell.

Big E might have the opportunities as a singles guy going forward to really compliment the New Day tag track record and stake a claim at the top 100.

Honestly Big E might have a better chance of getting on than Kofi. That's not a slight on either man but I've never been particularly convinced he's this amazing wrestler: more so sub-par but carryable to great stuff under the right conditions. Lots of fun little agile spots and some fairly good matches under his belt but his main belt run put me to sleep more often than not. Yes, part of that is down to booking, but when you are working with guys like AJ Styles, Owens, Samoa Joe and getting "it's fine...I guess?" quality out of good PPV slots, there's a bigger issue underlying there. Good wrestler but not a top 100 by a fair margin. 

 

 

I'd be interested to see how many of the good to great New Day matches have Kofi in them because if you asked me to rank the New Day members off the top of my head, without doing any research, I'd easily slot Kofi at 3. Obviously, he's in some of them, but it seems to me like when people say 'Kofi is in the New Day, one of the best tag teams of the decade' it is in some ways a bit unearned. Not that this is an exact 1-to-1 comparison, but it is kinda like giving Crush credit for Demolition matches. Kofi is a bigger part of the group than Crush was and the dynamics of how Crush got into the group are different, but I think giving equal credit to all 3 isn't an accurate assessment either.