SirSmUgly

I disagree with that to some extent. The stuff that's all bomb-throwing is somewhat passe now, but a surprising amount of the Malenko stuff in '95 and early '96 where he was the base for a high-flyer is still very good. I was thinking that what I really want to see in this tournament is the style-clash where WoS tribute guys like Busick try to ground the high-flyers and act as a base for them because to me, those were always the best Nitro Cruiser matches.

I guess the big news is Wade Barrett leaving WWE.

Dawson does a slingshot suplex and thus should be automatically included in the tournament for that reason alone.

Someone argued Swagger as a guy to place in the field and his PPV output was solid. What are his ME/Superstars matches that one should watch? EDIT: I knew that I saw someone do a good post on this. Charlie M wrote this in the Best WWE Matches 2015 thread:

My big issue with the Sting match is that a gassed Rollins who had just lost one title in an eighteen-minute war should have gone to eye poke/rollup heavy offense. I accept the Cena match right before it being worked like a PWG sprint because both guys wanted to show each other up. However, Rollins's style needed to change to logically fit the narrative of the Sting match, which was Cerebral Assassin Jr. trying to desperately hold onto his other title and prove as resourceful as his mentor against a fired up vet getting maybe his only shot at being WWE champ. Instead, Rollins worked both matches in the same way.

I'd rather watch, say, Sabu's poor mechanical execution over Rollins's fairly crisp execution ten out of ten times because everything Sabu does is fraught with the potential for danger while Rollins's moves are like one long, ultimately meaningless floor exercise. That Cena Summerslam match was a great moves exhibition, but not so much a good match. Re: the Jeff Hardy comparison, Hardy at his best blows away Rollins as a worker. Hardy is a better bumper, a better seller, and better at pacing a match so that it feels like a pro wrestling competition and not a gymnastics routine.

I've got massive blind spots here, but I'd nominate: Ibushi Ishii Nakamura Styles Sadly, my knowledge of Japan is really just New Japan's big shows.

Zack Sabre Jr. Dave Mastiff Timothy Thatcher Also, I roundly enjoyed any and all Kongo Kong that I saw last year (which was like six matches), so I nominate him as well.

This is how I feel exactly about Charlotte. I'd nominate: Sasha Banks Becky Lynch Emma Bayley Asuka Kevin Owens Roman Reigns Big E Chad Gable Scott Dawson I'm doing this while assuming that injured folks are out of the running, like John Cena. I'm also on the fence about Xavier Woods who, as a personality, is probably the best guy they have on the stick and perfect in his usual role of managing Kofi and Big E. Fuck it, I'll throw him on there. Xavier Woods

Gargano kinda sucks, but Corbin is always entertaining, shit-talking the fans while beating up Gargano and selling for that superkick and such. I wish they'd put the title on him because he's drawing legit heat. Hype Bros, Alexa, Cameron was run-of-the-mill mediocrity. Well, Cameron threw utterly shitty strikes in this match, so she was a bit worse than mediocre. Let's just have Gable, Jordan, Enzo, and Cass have a segment each week for awhile. Bayley was super-vocal tonight. She looked like she was mostly just fucking around for the first five minutes, which she can get away with because she has charisma. After the break, they picked it up, though. Bayley bumped around and sold for Carmella nicely and Carmella did what she could to keep up. I really dug the dive spots to pop the crowd, particularly where she was trying to figure out whether to go for it again, then decided that this was her one chance and hit it for the second time in a row. That got the crowd behind her and was really well-laid-out. The finish was also really good and surprised me. Good match! Not to take away from Carmella, who looked better than she has ever looked by far in this match, but I think there is no coincidence that she looked so good opposite Bayley. Bayley deserves a bit more love for her ring generalship. The Eva Marie match had a lot of jibber-jabber to help Bayley along, but pair it with the Jax and Carmella matches and I think Bayley is clearly one of the better workers in the company at this point, maybe top ten or twelve or so. In a company full of awesome workers, that means something. The end sequence with Nia Jax, Eva Marie, and Asuka was pretty awesome, too. Asuka turning to look at Bayley and Bayley being like "Aw, shit" was priceless.

I know it's the NY Post, but still, yeesh. Not the story you want to be run today. However, if this causes everyone to discuss how racist the company is and has been, I'll take it.

Enough money to put the water coolers back in Titan Towers?

Well, '97 Vince would have let HBK give him a reach-around right in the middle of the ring on live television - in fact, that might have actually happened - so it's clear that Vince doesn't really like Titus by comparison.

Everybody's Shelton Benjamin to Vince. (Also that was a poorly-written sentence, but I am on my phone and writing quickly.)

Yeah, a little punishment is one thing, but three months for the black dude in this company doesn't shock me.

Well, I have no interest in seeing DB wrestle again after that ESPN interview. Go home and be a family man, Bryan. Look, I know it's the Full Sail mutants who accepted this style with applause, but the women of NXT have shown that you can get over a match working holds. This company can get over whatever style they want. They need to start doing their own WoS tribute and cut down on the reckless shit, dangerous dives, dangerous gimmick matches that are overused and have little return on the damage they cause, etc. They won't cut these guys' and gals's schedules down to 170-180 dates a year like they should, so the least they can do is enforce a new house style that focuses on limb work and brawls over this indy-lite shit that is killing guys. It's not like their product is hot anyway, so who cares if you turn off fans while establishing an easier style to work? The core will stick around anyway. It might also help if some of the wrestlers stopped with the stuff like Crossfit. I have read enough about Crossfit and how it damages ligaments, tendons, etc. to guess that Rollins probably destroyed his leg because of it. They should put down some edicts about what workouts their talent is allowed to do. And they should not have these guys working so many dates, but again, no chance of that.

Bryan and Brie live in Arcadia in the Phoenix area, which is a nice-but-not-super expensive neighborhood. Give me 6M at 4% and I could buy a nice, tacky McMansion in a Phoenix suburb for a relatively low price and live really well off the interest. If they were living in Seattle, different story. I always think, Man, I could have bought a nice house in Phoenix for a steal. Then I remember that I'd have to live in Arizona, and I remember why I didn't buy a house in Phoenix.

Kevin Greene actually was very good for his experience level and had a great meathead athlete charm that made him a natural face.

I'm going to drop some revisionist history on Dennis Rodman, who I think was really fucking fun in his actual matches in WCW, even that so-bad-it's-good match against Savage with the porta-potty and everything. I am grading on a curve, of course, but he would be on the high end of the "non-wrestler performers" curve. Not near Andy Kaufman or Money Mayweather, but somewhere after them.

It is weird, though. I don't want to be hyperbolic and hope that I am not proceeding to do so, but Bryan really felt like the first guy to get over at a transcendent level in the company since John Cena. I don't think even Punk got to that same place that Bryan got. There is a very clear void on these shows with Bryan gone and Cena out, and when Cena is done with a full time schedule in the next three or four years, where does that leave this company? Reigns's best hope is to get as over as Randy Orton at Orton's peak. There is just a massive vacuum of star power on the show. There are a lot of guys that I enjoy, but currently on the roster, only Ambrose and Owens have (fairly remote IMO) shots at breaking through into that level. In NXT, they have four or five people who have a chance to do it (Zayn, Balor, Bayley, Gable off the top of my head), but all of them have the sorts of flaws that mean that they'll only get "sigh, okay, we'll do this half-heartedly" pushes like Bryan got for most of his career.

It's going to be Zayn. Vince won't like his size or physique, but people will love him because he's got that quality of a star who will get over with the millennial audience. Bayley will be that for the women. Maybe not quite on Zayn's level, but I'm sure she's not conventionally pretty enough for Vince or Kevin Dunn and they care about the women even less than they do the men, shamefully.

That crowd chanted FEED ME MORE a ton, but they really wanted to cheer the Wyatts so badly. I don't think anyone really got boos in that match...or in most other matches except for maybe Owens, who got a little heat. If you heard random boos or SEA-HAWKS chants, some dude in a New Day shirt who should go back to the Bay Area or Phoenix and STAY THERE had a "The Seahawks are booty" sign up that generated heat at random times, such as when Charlotte had a rest hold on Alicia Fox. We were bummed about no Sasha Banks for most of the show, so when her music hit, she got a big initial pop. I feel like Becky Lynch got a great reaction too. I was hoping for a good Superstars match, but we didn't get one. Sandow is absurdly over. Stardust's gimmick is terrible on TV, but his Frank Gorshin Riddler overacting actually is pretty entertaining in person.

Anyway, this show was fun enough. The problem with RAW is all the commercial breaks, which dampen the mood. Crowd was super into Owens/Ziggler, which was the best match of the night. I don't know how the crowd came off on TV, but they were hot for almost everything. They weren't perfect - "What" chants at Miz, "SEA-HAWKS" for about ten seconds during Foxy/Charlotte - but they at least cared a lot about everything. The kids sitting near us were cool. One asked his dad what the crowd was chanting at Mark Henry. His dad answered, "Sexual Chocolate." One beat. Two beats. Then his response: "...that's weird." If only this kid were around in '99, he'd think it was REALLY fuckin' weird. The Bryan stuff was great. People booed that he had to quit wrestling, but no one wants him to kill himself in the ring or anything. His attempts at having a kid getting "Yes!" chants actually did make me laugh. Obviously, this was a show missing star-power, but it was still cool to see RAW live and worth the money. We had fun. Oh yeah, Brock sold the nut-shot all the way after the cameras were off. He struggled to his feet and sold it back down the ramp. He or Owens was MVP of the night aside from Bryan.

I was there. No one booed his wife. Quit making shit up just to be a contrarian dumbfuck.