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Showing content with the highest reputation on 08/08/2020 in all areas

  1. Abby breaking kayfabe by eating cooked chicken.
    6 points
  2. The other layer here is that Vince used tags as "that's where the non-giants go, see". And once Bret and Shawn were the top guys I guess if we add 2 and 2 here, Vince no longer saw that as a value place to stick his smaller guys. Then things just got so muddled from there and it falls apart.
    5 points
  3. 5 points
  4. Having worked off and on for Turner over the years (left there for good last year), I can tell you that, once the AT&T merger was approved, something like this was expected -- streaming and linear departments being combined, executives on the linear side being pushed away, etc. "Content" is one of the big buzzwords in modern media these days. Media groups want content, and lots of it. And if it gets plenty of eyes, even better. AEW has eyes, a lot more than some prognosticators thought would happen when Dynamite launched. At the very least, WarnerMedia should consider some kind of AEW content on HBO Max, whether launching a second show on the streamer or other unique content. WarnerMedia also seems to be doubling down on 18-49 demo content, having committed itself to the NBA, MLB playoffs, expanding the Impractical Jokers franchise, etc. They also announced plans to a do an American version of the UK game "The Cube" with Dwyane Wade hosting and producing. AEW fits in that demo content so, at least to me, it would seem foolish to try and break any deals.
    5 points
  5. As I redeveloped my interest in wrestling in 09 onward after a couple of years of not being so focused on it, post-Benoit, and as i started to really take a more complete textual approach to things, there were a few moments which were either eye-opening or frustrating as I sort of pushed hard against Meltzer's star rating/it's dumber cousin Keith-ism/the realplayer-youtube-comp tape mentality of cherry picking matches/the blinding mentality of workrate in general. 1. Watching Demolition matches in context, one after the other, really by accident, as they faced different opponents. You would never be able to understand the structural diversity in their matches if you just tried to cherry pick or if you avoided them altogether because you'd rather watch Harts vs Bulldogs or Rockers vs Busters or something. 2. Pcisosis in 90s AAA, not as the guy who would bump to the floor, but as an amazing heel/bully/base, and how rounded his work was if you didn't just focus on elaborate sequences, bumps, and dives, but on everything else he was doing. When you read real time (and into the early 00s) reviews of these matches from Dave and others, it's all "This match had great dives" or "Great action" or whatever else. The most superficial commentary possible while Psicosis was out there hitting so many different angles. (and here's the relevant one) 3. How broken generational wrestling commentary/criticism/fandom is that conventional wisdom has it that everyone should watch the Jumping Bomb Angels vs Glamour Girls matches and come off of it with the notion that JBA was better than everything else around them, but not realizing how amazing Martin/Kai (but especially Martin) were at giving everything structure and meaning and contrast and and anchoring everything while also being amazingly brutal in their execution. This is an asshole comment, but it also pushes back the tide of forty years so I don't care: real maturity as a wrestling fan is being able to come out of those matches realizing that Judy Martin is the best part of them.
    5 points
  6. Anyone else with a toddler? I’m seeing Ninjalinos from PJ Masks.
    4 points
  7. Just a couple of these and who knows what they'll do.
    4 points
  8. They should mess around with people. Have the midgets attack week after week but when they get the reveal it's Bronson Reed, Damien Priest and the Indian tag team of Rinku and Saurav.
    3 points
  9. How you doin? It's $96 now, we had to add an extra surcharge to filter out M.A.S.H. memes.
    3 points
  10. Both, with increasing ferocity and conversely less selling as the match progresses, to the point of exhaustion and spent passion climax (and then a cigarette). I always noticed that Hansen, and Brody and Abdullah and Vader and TJSingh and Sheik and even Wiiliams/Gordy and Sapp, were revered by the Japanese for exactly what Matt D described - these gaijin are a force of nature, unstoppable and chaotic, and must be dealt with in sccordance to the warrior smarts of whoever is fated to face them, and thus were feared and respected. This gimmick was in the eyes of the audience, not necessarily adopted by the worker but the smart ones used this perception - making this either m,ore worked or slightly shooty, depending on how you look at it. I am a big Flair mark but with the big pic you can see his faults. That's true for everybody; he is #1, or at least the one to beat for that spot. He both suffers AND benefits from having so much footage of him available. Part of the context in this debate is one's age - who did you grow up with as champ, and/or who were you "smartened up" to a "real" champion? The kind of wreslting you emotionally and/or intellectually bond with affects your opinion evermore. The older guys suffer from lack of footage - do the newer one suffer from overexposure (or extant embarrassing backyard/indy botches)? I like how the CLUBBERIN Thread has temporarily become the intellectual analysis pulpit... - RAF
    3 points
  11. Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels happened, proving to Vince the only purpose of a tag team is to find a main event star.
    3 points
  12. Hansen has a few different templates to work from and his main template is "chaos", so you're not seeing the same thing every time even if he is wrestling a similar style. That is part of the reason why I love him so much and think he may be the GOAT. Been watching a lot of '90 footage and that's the year he's selling his ass off for top guys: Tenryu, Hogan, both of MVC individually and together. Stan Hansen: giving performer (when he wanted to be).
    3 points
  13. As a cinema-nerd (hence Cinema used to be in my name) I tend to relate most things to filmmaking. I’m working on a write-up which I lazily haven’t put enough time into about the idea of Auteur Theory in wrestling. Especially, who are they authors in a match (or even a promotion) who can work in their voice, for better or worse. A Bockwinkel is a great example, and how you’re describing Demolition, because he/ they can have so many great different style matches but inherently if you generic-CAW edited their body’s you could tell it is them. At that point you are an author. Tarkovsky films were Tarkovsky films. Godard films are Godard films. Welles films were Welles films. All of them felt created from the same person, but Citizen Kane and F For Fake are wildly different experiences, but the same voice. Bock against Rick Martel and Wahoo McDaniels were different, but it still had those Winkel fingerprints on it. Then you have someone that can literally make the same movie over and it can still be enjoyable and have an audience. You mentioned Shawn Michaels and Flair. Let’s through Stand Hansen in here, which I could be off on. Maybe they’re a Buster Keaton. Hopefully this example works. A lot of people love Keaton because when you watch Keaton you get Keaton. Same voice but also very much the same film, generally. Anyone that criticizes Keaton looks like a jerk, because Keaton makes most people smile. Same with Hallmark movies as a brand. I can say this because I absolutely adore them as a guilty pleasure, have a formula that is specific to them. You can even time out where in the movie a miscommunication will lead to a short break up and when they’ll get back together to live happily ever after. If you can pull it off, I love it. This isn’t saying people that don’t fit that criteria have points against them. Negro Casas is a chameleon and can have phenomenal matches that feel so different. They’re all good. Good is good. And maybe that’s whats most important. Flair was my example earlier, and I love Flair, but as more and more footage comes out we should always be challenging. To movie-ize this again, Citizen Kane being dropped to #2 in both Sight & Sound’s total and Director-only lists (to Vertigo and Tokyo Story, respectively). As a Welles mark I was irrationally upset that Hitchcock passed him. But I can see Tokyo Story passing Kane. Looking at the films themselves, we should constantly be challenging our notion of art-hierarchy. The greats will stand the test of time and if not that’s ok. Appreciation and understanding changes over time. Flair (or JBA) being in the top 5 or 10 is far from an insult. Edit: hopefully if they do that PWO project again, I’d love to be apart of it. I love long nerd projects.
    3 points
  14. The tag title scene in the 80's was so great... I'm not sure what happened to Vince. Hart Foundation, Rockers, Powers of Pain, Brain Busters, British Bulldogs, Killer Bees, Twin Towers, Strike Force, Demolition, on and on and on.... so many great teams.
    3 points
  15. How to torture an indie wrestling commentary team: Find an unknown guy and change his name to "Valentine Blake" Book him in a 4 corners match with Blake Christian, Christian Casanova and Casanova Valentine
    3 points
  16. Judy Martin and Lelani Kai were great workers (the Leilani Kai vs. Chigusa matches need to be posted in these threads somewhere), but I don't think you should sell the JBA short. Yamazaki, in particular, was a really good worker. Check out Jetlag's reviews of pre-split JWP, etc. JBA in the States was the Tiger Mask effect, i.e. something the fans had never seen. They were two young Japanese girls on an OE in New York. Give them a break. It's not their fault fans zero in'ed on their workrate during that particular era of fandom. They did the same thing over other workers too like early Owen Hart.
    3 points
  17. If I had to guess, a little like this:
    3 points
  18. I am sure most of the people here know Roy Lucier, wrestling upload God and he saves our ass here. Only place I could find Great Muta vs Hakushi which 100% belongs here and dawned on me was missing. Muta literally writes the Japanese symbol for death in Hakushi's blood while the announcer shouts "DEATH" like he just saw the devil himself and it's the greatest shit. Maybe the best Freakshow vs Freakshow match. The bonus? This also has the Tenryu vs. Fujinami match where Tenryu just fucking demolishes Fujinami's nose legit for God knows what reason by punching him right in the face during a suicide dive. So honestly all of this belong here.
    3 points
  19. Goddamn this is some big boy wrestling. Takayama and Misawa from 2001 figure out every way they can think of to throw a knee or an elbow, and I'm here for it.
    3 points
  20. I can't believe I'm saying this but I actually laughed out loud at the fucking stupid Dunn Camera Cuts© between Miz, Morrison and the dumb googly-eyes hair thing. The cuts were so over-the-top absurd that it made me laugh. The RETRIBUTION thing was ridiculous. Not a single one of them looked like they were over 5'4", 140 pounds. And that includes the males.
    3 points
  21. Y'all are getting later and later with the Krusty gif.
    3 points
  22. Riki Choshu vs Killer Khan (Death Match). Khan bleeds.
    2 points
  23. I have never been less surprised by anything.
    2 points
  24. Devil Masami is aligned with the lunatic gaijins and gets a singles match with the petite queen, the Pat Benatar of Women's Wrestling, Mimi Hagiwara. Devil starts off by establishing her biker chick cred by chasing Mimi with a pool cue. Mimi responds by punching Devil in the face. 80s Japanese women's wrestling is the best Russ Meyer film ever made.
    2 points
  25. Last minute of the Tucker/Jayne first round was WILD. Like no pants wild.
    2 points
  26. 11/14/1887 Somebody has been posting a lot of these really old articles in Chris Hero's subreddit at r/WrestlingGenius. They're pretty cool.
    2 points
  27. We're bogarting the thread. I thought about doing a thread in September about guys who the conventional wisdom doesn't match the footage on in September and I might still. Since you mentioned him, I am not going to say I'm the traditional low vote on Hansen, especially not in the Clubberin' Thread, but I do feel like a Hansen match, more than almost any other Great wrestler, entirely depends upon his opponent. Hansen is a tool, a problem that must be dealt with. He's not going to give you anything. He's not going to stop. He's not going to hesitate. A Hansen match is all about how the opponent deals with the Problem of Stan and how well they're able to utilize this incredible dynamo of energy and presence. The narrative almost always becomes implicit, where the problem exists and it must be solved. Can they push back against it? Can they believably fire back? Can they create distance? Can they find a way to keep Hansen down or away long enough to even breathe? To a degree Brock's like that now but he's like the world's stupidest, one-dimensional (as opposed to Hansen's two maybe?) Hansen. Both of them were absolutely amazing at selling when it was warranted, but the hurdle to warrant it was so unbelievably high. There are so many amazing things about Casas. He, like Bock or Funk, is always in the moment, always reacting, always dynamic. One amazing thing about Casas as opposed to almost anyone else, is that in 95% of Casas matches, even random 00s trios, you'll see Casas react to something or do something in a way that you've never seen before. He doesn't need to do this, but there is a spark of deviation or originality (sometimes a tiny one) in almost all of his matches. With Bret, on the other hand, he did mostly the same things, but where he placed them in the match and what effect they had within his matches tended to be different given on circumstance. Christian, alternatively, had a sort of learned psychology, where in three matches against the same opponent, he'd build his counters upon counters and put an extra flourish on how he got into his signature offense or fed into his opponents, so it got just a bit more complex each time and kept the fans on their toes.
    2 points
  28. Id be more upset at Vertigo being the film that passed Kane than Hitchcock passing Welles. Id be more understanding if it was Rear Window or even Psycho that passed Kane. But that's for a different thread.:)
    2 points
  29. I've got him on ignore, so I wonder why he feels compelled to post 4-6 times in a row.
    2 points
  30. And their big man enforcer, Austin Aries!
    2 points
  31. Your statement on Demolition is why I try and hold context of a match in high regard. I used to see criticism of 90’s AJPW, lucha, etc. involving the phrase “if you took that match and saw it today at some Indy show, would you and the fans be entertained?” Some matches can be really exciting exhibitions, but what makes wrestling so special is the Why’s and other Questions. Why are the working the way they are? Is there a reason they’re mad at each other? Why go after a certain limb? Who even are they? Being able to see a full run allows you to witness the magic of day-to-day. Does someone change their game-plan for opponents or do they have a set style? The other fun thing to notice is if they work a certain way because of what town they are in. I found Psicosis to be a great heel, but seeing so few of his matches couldn’t contribute to worthy discussions of him. I think you saying this hits the nail on the head for a misrepresentation of lucha in general. Especially 90’s. It is such a unique and wonderful world that the details of a match can be missed and just looked at as beautiful spots. It took me a long time to crack, and at times I’m still cracking. As for the JBA, I’ve seen very-very-very little so I have nothing specific to add. More a question: Is what you’re saying people’s responses are due to latching on to a gimmick and not going further with it? Like Flair (Who I like) will get GOAT status from people because he’s considered and presents himself as GOAT. Not saying he is or isn’t, but people buy into that aura greatness and will stick with it instead of digging deeper into why he is or isn’t.
    2 points
  32. Yeah but Turner doesn't own the product outright this time. Plus, AEW at least has a positive veneer around it right now. And an owner who is passionate about wrestling and the product. Now, worst case scenario, the new corporate bureaucrat RatBat schmucks come in and spoil the party. "We don't like rasslin! Reee!" and all that. AEW gets transitioned or kicked off Turner Broadcasting/TNT. AEW doesn't get its second Turner Broadcasting show. As of now, isn't AEW supposed to be on TNT until at least 2023? Well, if Turner were to try and kill that deal early, does anyone really think AEW couldn't get a decent deal coming off the strong key demo numbers they've been able to pull off on a major cable network? The TNT deal was the one they were able to put together before AEW was a proven commodity and viable product. Now they are a proven commodity and a viable product. I feel like, worst case scenario, some schmuck decides to yank them off of TNT, they'd recover and at least be able to find something decent. TNA got kicked off Spike TV and Destination America all inside a year. They got kicked off freaking POP TV. Each TV deal TNA had was worse than the last. It took them years and a complete and total rebranding, new ownership, and a buyout of AXS TV to somewhat recover. Not only that, Impact's viewership is a FRACTION of what TNA used to draw in its peak viewership days on Spike. And yet at the end of this, Impact Wrestling still exists. AEW has a roster of bankable stars. They have merchandising deals in place. They've proven they can sell out major arenas and sell live PPV events at a time when WWE has put its premium PPV cards for a low cost on the WWE Network. I think they will be OK in the long-term. Could be wrong, but I'm not worried at the moment even if the worst happens with Turner. I have no doubt they could find something better than marginal networks like Destination America, Pop TV, Pursuit channel TNA/Impact was forced to contend with until the AXS TV deal happened.
    2 points
  33. It's like someone watched the Nexus debut and said, "How can we do this worse?" It's a good thing they showed up or else Smackdown would have had 10 minutes of dead air. Why wasn't there a main event that they could have interrupted, beat down a couple of name guys and maybe get a little bit of heat?
    2 points
  34. All safety/COVID concerns about moving that show indoors to an unregulated venue on residential property aside, I do think it is absolutely hilarious that WWE spent thousands of dollars on producing the Raw Underground segments and ICW/IWTV basically fell ass-backwards into putting together something that pulls off a grimy "underground" aesthetic a million times better with a few hours notice.
    2 points
  35. I get a kick out of WWE's "Women must have enormous waist-length voluminous manes of hair or they are SOCCER MOMS!" mentality.
    2 points
  36. Awesome picture of Sasha Banks, the Legit Boss.
    2 points
  37. The krusty gif was too good to be wasted on it.
    2 points
  38. How much was that Seinfeld free forum.again?
    2 points
  39. Yeah. I mean, Russell Dalrymple left NBC to join Greenpeace just to impress Elaine Benes. ?
    2 points
  40. This story should be way bigger than what it has been. A team employee sold drugs that caused the death of a player, and nobody really ever cared. Think how much time we spent talking about whether or not the Lakers should let Lonzo Ball's dad come to games, or Magic Johnson quitting as the GM...neither of those things matter at all. Someone in baseball ODs on drugs supplied by a team employee, and I don't think it got 1% of the coverage.
    2 points
  41. NXT: 753,000, .20 demo Dynamite: 901,000, .36 demo
    2 points
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