SirSmUgly

This is the best time of the year because the Best Short Animated Films Nominees come out at the theatres. Those are my favorite thing to see in theatres every year.

I think the counter-points that PE was in a loaded division with the Steiners and Road Warriors (though the Warriors were gone pretty quickly there) are good, and they were over to a solid degree partially because of their use of tables as props. They also had an underrated brawl with the Nasties at...maybe Uncensored 1996? I can't quite remember. They didn't come off as big or as violent though. Part of that is WCW being more corporate and for a different audience, but they also did seem a bit overshadowed by other violent/brawler tag teams that did that schtick way better than they did at the same time.

Heyman was definitely the obvious answer. I agree with that sentiment. Someone (Gregg, maybe?) always points out how Public Enemy seemed like a legit tough-guy tag team from the streets in ECW and a Nasty Boys cosplay except with a hip-hop influenced theme in WCW. I actually enjoy PE's short run in WCW, but I also agree with that sentiment, and I think they might be the best example of how Heyman got the most out of guys that really looked sort of low-rent in any other setting. Re: Ramsey's point about Bill Watts, I sort of accept that idea except that he didn't get the most out of Ron Simmons while trying to book him the same way as JYD, and I think Ron Simmons is a generally underrated talent that wasn't out of place as WCW Champ. Part of it was that he was undercut by who he was booked against when defending the gold and it all came off lame duck. He really needed Rude not to get hurt so that he could have defended against him, and he also probably needed to have a face-vs-face "respect" style match against Sting that ended in a draw or something and showed that he was on that level. I was wondering about other people both now and historically. For example, is New Japan's resurgence because Jado and Gedo are maximizing their talent at a historically-impressive level in comparison to other promoters? I also wonder how people view Vince McMahon Sr. as a creative mind. Where do you all place him?

Building on this topic, whom do you guys think are the antithesis of Vince McMahon in terms of being able to create stars and strong draws out of nothing? Historically, who took talent and squeezed every drop out of that talent the most as a booker or creative exec?

I'm posting to both follow this topic and to remind myself that at some point this weekend, I need to sit down and make a strong case for Sasha Banks. The other people I think should win (Kidd, Zayn, Nakamura) will probably be covered by other people.

No. I have a hard time watching him, too. I get that everyone flat-back bumping is having CTE issues, but I find that I now have a really hard time watching guys like Foley, Jeff Hardy, or whoever go splat on concrete or take those headshots and falls that just don't look right and remind me that for the fact that this is a work, people sometimes work styles that are just brutal. Oddly, I enjoy watching guys get rocked in pro football still despite people like Jovan Belcher or Junior Seau, so clearly, I am an inconsistent person, and I do not judge anyone else on where they stand on the topic.

Yeah OJ is still funny as shit in them Naked Gun movies, ipso facto Benoit matches=guilt free. Art isn't reality. I absolutely understand where you're coming from, but I guess the difference for me is that OJ's acting wasn't possibly causing brain damage that was exacerbating his already unstable state as Benoit's wrestling might have been doing. Well, unless OJ was doing all his own stunts as Nordberg and getting his head stove in.

Nitro 38, 6/2/96 - High Voltage vs. Faces of Fear. FoF murders poor Ruckus, including Barbarian deciding to do a top-rope belly-to-belly suplex for whatever reason. One of those squashes that just makes my day so very much.

NOOOOOOOOPE. You're wrong. God bless.

I feel like Roman Reigns did that promo with the wink-and-smile necessary to let me know that he knows how stupid it was. Also, I bet Vince McMahon performs his own writing for promos in front of the mirror to test it out, a la Aaron Sorkin. I wish I had video of him ripping out a "ddddddDONKEY DUNG...FOR BRAINSSSSS" and then smiling to himself like he just wrote "The Destruction of Sennacherib" or something.

I really like Doink/Crush, but I am a massive fan of Matt Borne as Doink. Perfect/Luger was really disappointing. Perfect is a candidate for having the most "I had high expectations and ended up disappointed" matches in WWF of anyone I can think of. Luger, Michaels, even his Bourne Doink matches. It's like he was really great against Bret Hart, solid against Ric Flair, and kinda not that great against anyone else.

Why should I trust Daily Wrestling News? Do they typically break news or seem to have reliable sources? I mean, that story isn't infeasible, but it's also the type of story that a big NXT fan or Vince hater would also make up and float as news.

I am voting Sami Zayn, Tyson Kidd, and Sasha Banks all the way. I will probably vote Shinsuke Nakamura pretty heavily, too.

I have to be honest, I only care about the Rumble, and if Bryan doesn't win, I'll probably just skip WM this year and check out on the PPVs as well as RAW and Smackdown! I'm at the point where the only thing that really interests me on the main show is Bryan with the gold.

I don't think I've seen Hansen tag matches, so I can't speak to that point you made, Matt. What I like about Stan Hansen basically is a couple key things: Hansen's selling and Hansen's brawling. Hansen gets rocked, he does that selling which is kinda like a Terry Funk-like weeble-wobble, but not cartoonish. It looks like a guy just about to go out on his feet, which fits right in with his style since he's usually giving and taking some vicious offense. Everything feels like a real fight with Hansen, like each blow is a) a struggle and b) could be the blow that ends the match. I'll have to watch a few Hansen tags in Japan and see what you mean. Would you suggest some matches that aren't necessarily the best, but that illustrate the issue that you have with him?

I just want to say, even though this is off-topic, my wrestling experience is pretty much U.S.-based as far as what I've seen, even though I have some general knowledge about Japan and Mexico through osmosis. My experience with Stan Hansen is pretty much his work in WCW in the early '90s, therefore, and while I enjoyed it and thought he had a good match with Lex Luger in particular, I wasn't sure why people would insist that he was a top-five guy all-time just out of my own ignorance. So then I saw this Andre/Hansen match a few months ago somewhere, maybe I was clicking around YouTube, and it's pretty much amazing. That match alone has me understanding what people love about Stan Hansen. I just wanted to point this out for anyone who hasn't yet seen it. It's on YouTube and WELL worth your fifteen minutes or however long it was.

Honestly, even with Cole and being over-produced by Vince, putting Albert and Graves on RAW with Cole right now probably makes for a considerably better announcing situation on that show.

Tyson Kidd, King of the Promos. "They're my cats" to Saxton after Natayla left made me spit food. That and him laying down the gauntlet for Sarah McLachlan. I'm still only midway through the show, but that's probably my favorite thing I'll see in wrestling this week.

Honestly, I find the presentation charming. Not "big time" by our standards, but then again, that sort of presentation is grating at this point.

I think the quickest fix for the show is to rip out the heel authority and just have a matchmaking committee that rarely makes air (and only for important events). Then, have everyone care about being champion. That immediately adds a high-stakes sense to the shows because right now, everything is low-stakes. Lose? You'll just win the belt back eventually. Get fired? You'll be back on TV in two weeks. NXT sold to me that Sami Zayn might well lose and leave NXT forever. Heck, Bo Dallas has only been on NXT television once since losing his match to leave NXT, and that was under a hood trying to sneak back in. NXT's stips matter. Their belt matters. They don't need a heel commish because the stakes of being champion are enough for everyone's motivation. Why does the NXT Women's Championship mean as much as the WWE WHC at this point? It genuinely does. That is a big problem. Same with the NXT Championship. Honestly, both belts would mean more than the WWE WHC were the gold not on a monster that never shows up.

I think the problem with the angle is the Authority coming back is a) too soon after their loss at Survivor Series, b ) was spurred by a weak angle where Cena could have just gone down and fought off the dudes threatening Edge, and c) the Authority running roughshod over the heels all summer was barely over enough as it was - the real heel with heat was Brock Lesnar, but because of limited dates, he was off TV and barely even mentioned as champ. So while Gregg is right that the angle makes sense structurally - bad guys ousted come back due to a nefarious plan and exact revenge on the faces that ousted them until a mega-face sets wrongs right - he is totally missing that the ways that the company put that story into motion are flawed. - The Authority is rapidly becoming heatless. - The nefarious plan to get the Authority back in power looks like Rollins and J+J Security drew it up with chalk on a sidewalk somewhere - Sting probably isn't over enough with the current crowd to pull off the MEGAFACE AVENGER thing, but that's because they have mentioned him roughly as much as they have mentioned Brock Lesnar during Lesnar's title reign. Multiple hours of TV a week, and no priming of the audience to understand why Sting is a dude to rely on in this case Those are three things off the top of my head that make this something that people probably find unsatisfying.

That you actually believe that tonight's show is in any way comparable to any of those angles is why it is so hard for me to take anything you say seriously. Did I compare this angle to those? No. I'm stating that everyone has a knee jack reaction to everything on Raw these days. It's a yawn fest reading it, honestly. People love the strong angles on NXT and Lucha Underground as they happen, so it's not a case of people being unreasonably knee-jerk on this board.

Was Bryan on this show? I was planning on watching any segments he was in after the fact, but I didn't see anyone mention him. I'm on "only watch Bryan" mode right now until they ditch the Authority and start booking at least at 1995 WWF-level of competence.

Konnor at least fits the part reasonably. Viktor looks like he's cosplaying or something, though. Totally inauthentic. If their work was good, they could overcome it, though. Bill Eadie looked only somewhat less goofy in his costume than Tobias Fünke did in his "Discipline Daddy" getup, but his work was so good that it didn't matter in the end.

Re: Match lengths - Every case is different, but I've come around to thinking that somewhere between fourteen and twenty minutes is the best length for most matches (excluding stuff that needs to be shorter or longer for specific situations, like squash matches). That gives enough time to complete a clear narrative structure without getting repetitive or meandering too much.