Jiji

Those were on house shows, right?

Stephanie was de facto face in their feud after Brie turned out to be awful at acting. I could see some sociopaths rooting for Nikki out of spite. I can understand people preferring Nikki or Steph because they think they're better performers than Brie, but I don't see how anyone can think that they were the babyfaces, or sympathetic, or justified in their actions, in those feuds, which I've seen a few people say. While this makes perfect sense, Brie's poor acting makes it very difficult to show any, to quote Big Poppa Pump, sympy at all for her.

I am so psyched for Sportsfriends so I can play some Johann Sebastian Joust.

Hernandez was a really promising youngster with Palermo years ago when we got Serie A footage in Canada. That was such a neat team to watch with that little bastard Miccoli doing crazy stuff nobody could predict, Cavani showing huge potential, Pastore creating from midfield, and Kjaer looking like the next Daniel Agger. They also had Balzaretti's hair. Good times. Also, I love ESPN's headline: "Have United overpaid for Di Maria?" Hmm, is this a serious question by somebody getting paid to write this shit? How anybody has any interest in Fernando Torres in the year 2014 is beyond belief.

The Black Saturday bit was in part one of the Monday Night Wars series as well. Reading some fans' reactions to Black Saturday and the watching WWE's take... man. There's some really big eye roll inducing moments so far in the series. Not only are they pushing the WWF basically gifted Bischoff the nWo and all of WCW's success to a ridiculous degree, Kevin Sullivan has talked about the Hulk turn on a number of shoot interviews and not once did he mention referring to the Undertaker as a sign of the times. More Vince masturbatory stuff. It's to be expected, but unfortunately a huge chunk of the fanbase won't be able to sift through the nonsense. Loved the Cody quote about stealing stars not being fair to open the sum'bitch up too.

Also, it's Tony Gallagher. Hold off on the outrage until somebody with actual credentials supports this stuff. Fully agree with DFA. The league's talent pool is pretty weak, the last thing we need is the addition of four teams. A team in Seattle and a team in QC would be bad ass but moving some of the shittier franchises would be the fan favourite option - never going to happen with the corporate bull shit, though. Florida (no offense mco and company) only has a team because of that arena.

The new Monday Night War series.

That womb bit is definitely from the mind of Vince McMahon. "I'll never forgive your mother for giving birth to you!" I enjoyed Nikki's heeling. No comment on the rest of the show. Sigh.

Fair play to City. Will be interesting to see how Liverpool reacts to this.

Ironically enough, because WWE pushed whatever Cena was doing as more important than their title match. EDIT: Cheap jokes aside, does he, though? I'm not sure I can think of a single reign of Cena's I'd actually call particularly important. The reign he had leading up to Edge cashing in MitB should have be seen as important. That first cash in should be an all time great moment but Cena winning the belt back a month later killed it dead. Timely, lol.

I've been trying to figure out a way to describe this for years, but this nails it. I don't think I've ever seen a guy who looks like he believes less in what he's saying/doing than Swagger. And this is different from not giving a shit. He tries...he always seems to be trying...but he seems very aware that he's acting and pretending to fight which makes us, the audience, very aware that he's acting and pretending to fight. Thought his Raw interview that they showed on Smackdown might have been the best thing he's done since the Swagger Soaring Eagle stuff. THAT whole schtick: goofball champ sneaking out victories while being goofy worked because we didn't have to take him seriously. Transparency and either an unwillingness or inability to lose oneself in the part is pretty widespread at this point. Even announcers are guilty of this with Michael Cole always coming off as a fake ass buster when compared to any of the greats, but in particular Jim "THE LOADED GUCCI BAG!" Ross. That new jabroni that stinks up NXT and is now being eased into Smackdown, Tom Phillips, is even worse and he's so forced. He also spouts off the dumbest shit all too often and JBL called him on it more than a few times on this week's episode. I suppose this is one of, if not the biggest pet peeve of mine in regards to rasslin. My favourites are Hansen, Vader, Kawada, and Hokuto - people who went all out on a mother fucker.

Speaking of which, Starrcade '97 is the most depressing WCW PPV ever. How do you fuck that up that badly? I forgot entirely about the Nash no show as he refused to do the job to Giant (give that man the book!) and Raven bailing on the Benoit match, sticking Saturn in his place. But, fuck, that main event!

Swagger's got a pretty poor grasp of psychology (frequently missing easy heel moments with Zeb distracting the ref back when he was with Cesaro - I bet Dutch died inside a little bit each time) and he has zero presence for a guy that big and that intimidating looking. Part of it is his punch is the drizzling shits and he's a charisma vacuum, but there's more to it. He doesn't exude confidence in himself, so why should the fans care about him? I've rarely been drawn into a Jack Swagger match or feud because he's transparent as hell, he's fake fighting. He should be way more aggressive, leaning on guys and laying in strikes. Just because you aren't charismatic doesn't mean you can't have a bad ass presence in the ring. When you look at his eyes, you rarely see a passion or intensity but you can see the wheels turning as he figures out what he should be doing next in the fake fight. Swagger has all of the tools but can't put it together. He's 32 and got all of the time in the world but if he hasn't done it yet, can he ever do it?

Similar hairlines.

Main folder. Also, Dan Ginnetty, tape trader extraordinaire responsible for those badass season sets, used to do a cable access lookin' show doing commentary over random Japanese matches. It was awkward and the commentary wasn't very good but it's still out there on youtube I believe. Yep, here it is. Looks as if they rebooted it last year.

In what world is Angel di Maria worth £60m? He's a guy that seems like he struggles when he's not the third or fourth option, though I suppose he'll be just that for United behind Wade Rodney, RVP, and perhaps Mata. How does he fit into Van Gaal's 5-3-2?

Until Bischoff tweets the results three minutes before the show airs. Have you gone through the remedial Kawada/Misawa thread, Jstout?

While Kawada wasn't completely innocent of this, Misawa and Kobashi were absolutely guilty of wrestling an unsustainable style with their increased head dropping and busting out new and more dangerous moves. They introduce a killer move, it wins them the big match, the next time out, their opponent kicks out at 2.9 and they have to hit it again or debut another move. It was an arms race in terms of moves that worked against and eventually destroyed the long-term sustainability and nuanced storytelling of post-Riki Choshu invasion All Japan the best in-ring company up until the tag match of '95. Kawada was the best of the bunch at selling and telling a story in the ring and that's what's most important in my opinion. Misawa was like the straight line that did anything and everything to win, which is great, but doesn't exactly build up a sense of attachment on the audience's part. We need to get on the remedial Jumbo tip sharpish. I think he's much more down Matt's alley because of his exquisite psychology and selling. Also, more shame: I'm still working on trying to "get" lucha libre. There are certain matches where it will click and everything is jazzy and then there are other matches like Virus vs. Fuego that just hurt my head. The over-the-top cooperation makes it hard to suspend my disbelief. A friend and I watched the '97 cibernetico match that's #1 on the DVDVR best of the '90s results and were left confused and bored.

Or Hey Diddle Diddle.

I'm in!

He had some classics with Tenryu for the IWGP title in the late '90s and was great in the UWFi feud. He was part in some really good tag matches that were included in the DVDVR best of the '80s results that you can find through youtube or Ditch's site I imagine. I have years of NJPW TV to get to but haven't for years but I have seen '92 and '93 and he was as frustratingly inconsistent as you'd imagine. Also, check out he and Chono face off against Hase and Sasaki from November '90. Seguing back to the topic, I recommend both the '99 Mutoh/Tenryu matches. It's been about a decade since I've seen them but I remember wondering why the hell nobody was talking about them. Oh, and I also want to thank you, Ditch, for hosting bad ass matches in great VQ. Thanks! Edit: I REMEMBERED! I was thinking which match I had recently gone on your site to find and was kind of surprised, but not really, to not find it: the Chono/Tenzan vs. Nakanishi/Nishimura 60 minute draw from 2002. You're not a fan? I thought it was a great way of reintroducing the time limit draw title match and, though it dragged at times like most 60 minute matches do, it had a hot crowd and was really enjoyable. Haven't seen it in years but I loved it at the time. Sweet injury story, too. Nishimura was at his best in that match and they limited Nakanishi's time in the ring and played to his strengths.

Yeah, they painted WWE the victim as usual. Wasn't too thrilled with the first episode. Seems like these were in the bucket before Sting signed his deal with WWE, which is a shame. Speaking of Sting, he's mentioned only in passing and the show focuses on WWF guys leaving for WCW, because they're the only reason why WCW was successful.

The first episode, "The War Begins," of the Monday Night War is up and is 55 minutes in length. Keith David is the narrator. I wonder if this will be the first time WWE acknowledges that WCW was only doing what Vince had done in 1983 onward.

Great save by Neuer but the second chance should have been put away. It's been an enjoyable 80 minutes.

I guess the idea is to carry over the 4-4-2 diamond. Two pretty big egos incoming for Brendan to balance, good luck. Then you have Coutinho, Lallana, Sterling, and Markovic battling it out for one position - though both Coutinho and Lallana can and have played deeper it's not their best place to play.