SirSmUgly

While watching the Rumble '93 today, I saw Flair and Lawler, two heels, tear into one another. It led me to researching how much back history in terms of feuds there was between them, thinking that I was getting some sort of easter egg for fans who might have seen these two feud in Memphis months earlier or something. Anyway, this led me to reading a few articles on Flair and Lawler drawing a record gate in Memphis in 1985. In one article, posted here, I read this sentence: "Even with Hulk Hogan on the card, Vince couldn’t draw in Memphis in 1985." I looked around to try and find numbers for WWF shows in Memphis in 1985, but I couldn't find anything. I know that a few of you are privy to these numbers. In short, is this statement true? If it is, that is pretty amazing. I wonder if there were other territorial holdouts too. For example, did WWF and Hogan draw well in Minneapolis, Portland, Charlotte, Atlanta, etc.?

I don't know about this latest Countdown. I refuse to be cynical about a high voodoo priest giving convulsions to and causing black blood to leak from the head of a facepainted warrior that draws power from the ancient gods of his people, and the day that I am cynical about this sort of thing is the day that I should just quit watching wrestling or even having fun forever.

If memory serves, he was booking the whole show as part of a committee. Then, when Russo came in, he was shunted over to booking the women, which not coincidentally became the best part of the shows as he booked around Awesome Kong as the monster heel.

This was wonderful. My only gripe with your post is that you did not introduce him as "Currently Reigning March Madness Champion Cesaro."

Macho Man/Doink on this latest episode of RAW is the best. It starts off pretty hot, Doink has a lot of nice offense, and the mini Macho Man and ending run had me actually laughing. I wonder why Vince McMahon wanted to push Savage into a part-time role. Savage was awesome in the ring in pretty much any type of match you could put him in, the crowd loved him, and he was good for about another three or four years of very good in-ring production past 1993.

I don't know if this has been true for anyone else, but I just opened up a WCW PPV that I stopped in the middle of last week, and it continued right where I stopped off. It looks like they have added that feature.

I don't know if I would have ever gone back to really watch 1993 Raws episodically without the WWEN, but I'm glad I did. I'm not sure it's in my top five for years of weekly TV shows, but it's definitely in my top ten. One of my favorite things about these RAWs other than Doink, who is the best, is 1993 Shawn Michaels finding a way to have interesting matches with the likes of Hacksaw and Kamala.

I think my favorite little random thing in this show was Saxton (I believe) alluding to his Archer fandom when he called the kid at ringside that Sheamus high-fived who looked sorta like him "the Wee Baby Sheamus."

This thread has me rolling. I like it better when the trolling is less serious and more self-aware.

Anyway, I'm voting Cesaro. I love Bryan and he's my personal favorite wrestler, but I cannot say that he was better than Cesaro this year. Cesaro churned out good work against everyone from Kofi to Zayn to Cena, sometimes doing great epic-style matches and sometimes doing wonderful competitive or semi-competitive midcard stuff. He can be the ace, he can challenge the ace, he can play cocky or be a Mark Henry style Godzilla monster swatting people away and tossing them around the ring. I just think his year was amazing. The only argument I can accept for Bryan is that Bryan was clearly better in tags (at least to me). He had more good tags than Cesaro and played both FIP and hot tag excellently in them at different times, but I don't think Bryan's tag work overcomes Cesaro's work in singles.

You posted that right after a post that gave Cesaro special points because of circumstance. Case: Rested. They aren't "special points because of circumstance." They're points earned because Cesaro filled multiple roles well, just like I would take those "special points" away if Cesaro sucked in those roles. Your argument doesn't work because we have spent this whole tournament comparing guys who work primarily in tags to guys who don't, guys who work totally different styles to one another, etc. Not everything is going to be even stevens.

Bryan's also more formulaic because except for in tags, he essentially played the same role all year as the underdog who makes fiery babyface comebacks. In his tag matches, he actually was a great FIP AND a great hot tag at times. Cesaro has done more because he was forced into different roles, particularly when he switched between wrestling NXT as an ace and wrestling on other WWE shows as anything but that.

Sorry to be commenting so often here, but I just had to say that Doink's celebration after hitting the Whoopee Cushion for the first fall is fantastic. Speaking of '93 Raw, I have seen Shawn Michaels get good matches out of Hacksaw and Kamala. He has been awesome so far on these RAWs. I would kill to see some of the WWF Manias and All American Challenges that they endlessly promote on these RAWs, too.

Sid's best run in-ring was '96, I think. I remember liking him in the International Incident six-man tag, against Vader at...some IYH, maybe Buried Alive, and against Michaels at the Survivor Series. I also remember Sid/Bret at the IYH (It's Time?) after Survivor Series being solid. But Sid is awesome even when he's being terrible in the ring as far as I am concerned.

Stone Cold and Vader are the all-stars of this match. Not that Bret and Taker were bad, but Vader was killing it with awesome strongman offense and bleeding everywhere. Man, watching this, it's easy to see how Stone Cold got over. He came off as utterly unpredictable, as if he could ratchet up the violence quotient at any time or attack anyone. It's so exciting watching to see what he's going to do next. I mean, Austin is great in WCW, but his greatness there mostly came from being a smarmy bastard who was a great athlete that wasn't above cheating. Three years later, he's totally reinvented himself as a lunatic of sorts that might just do anything. Watching Austin in '97 reminds me of watching Sabu in '93/'94 in that both those guys had an aura around them where you never knew what the fuck they were going to do.

The problem with Bryan's promos is he actually seems like a pretty happy dude. Raging against the machine works for Punk the last few years or HHH in '99 because in their minds, they actually believe they should be the top guy forever and ever and are underappreciated by management/the fans. They have that well to tap into. Bryan, on the other hand, seems chill as fuck. This makes him probably cooler to hang out with, but less believable as a pissed-off dude angry at people for holding him down. If Bryan were cutting regular face promos where he just made fun of the heels, he'd be fine. He cut a nice one making fun of Batista. It's just that in this role, he doesn't work as well.

I plan to vote for Cesaro, but I do think that you can make the argument that Bryan was better in tags along with having his singles year that he had. I would argue that Cesaro worked a great match as the ace and a great match as an up-and-comer against the ace along with being solid in tags. What impresses me the most is that Cesaro comes off like The Man in NXT, then goes the next week and comes off like The Up-and-Comer when he takes The Man to the limit on RAW. I value that a bit more than Bryan being an awesome FIP and a great underdog. I also would argue that Cesaro has had to do more with less and has been as good or better than Bryan for the whole year anyway. On a personal note, I love watching Bryan wrestle, but all the strongman spots Cesaro has are maybe my favorite things to watch in current wrestling period, and he throws the best strikes of anyone in the company in my opinion with those uppercuts.

I like Reigns quite a bit, but him making it this far somehow is pretty much bullshit, I think.

Savage/DDP was up there, IMO. See Savage/DDP at Spring Stampede 1997 and GAB 1997. The only thing that mars it is that Savage had the nonsensical heel turn to set up the feud. The weekly shows were driving toward a Sting/Savage/DDP coalition that would challenge the NWO, and Savage's heel turn made no sense. The matches are actually better in a vacuum when you don't realize why these two are feuding.

Outside of his heel stint hanging out with Piper and Orton, I actually enjoy Orndorff the most in '95 right after the Gary Spivey thing, where he has the ridiculous HE'S WONDERFUL SO WONDERFUL AND HE KNOWS IT TOOOOOOOOO music and is putting on really fun TV matches most Nitros. It's a shame he had to retire just around that time because I really wanted to see him get revenge on the Horsemen for putting him out with a brutal attack. I would have liked to see Savage and Orndorff team up to try and take down Flair and Arn.

I will blow up the tracks with dynamite, Nanking Railway style, if FSW or anyone else tries to do this.

My argument for Cena here is simple: I would trust Cena and Reigns to be awesome in a number of situations after seeing their work this year (on RAW, on PPV, in tags), but I would only trust Cena if I needed a great one-on-one bout to headline a major PPV. Cena knows how to work big fights. Reigns hasn't really been given the chance and was good in limited showings - his work against Batista at the end of the Rumble was promising - but Cena is still better.

Pillman is the best. Watching the network over the first month or so has made Pillman and Rude into top five guys for me. Pillman can work great light-heavyweight fast-paced stuff, he does some really good small man-big man stuff, and he's awesome as a heel, too. He's a good FIP and a good fiery babyface hot tag in face tags with Zenk and a great cheating dick as a heel tag guy with Steve Austin. He can do everything and do it seemingly effortlessly. It's a damn shame he shattered his ankle and died, obviously for him and his family, but selfishly for me as a wrestling fan because he would have been awesome in the Attitude Era. He would have gotten WAY over wrestling regularly, to the point where I believe there's an alternate universe where he's a two-time WWF Champ from that era.

To be fair, I was also fifteen at the time and I thought that anything offensive was funny and worth doing. Going back and watching most of this Attitude Era stuff is difficult now in part because of the creepy sexism and overt racism of some of these skits and angles, but then again, nowadays I find implied or attempted rape not to be something funny that I should cheer cool heels for doing, mostly because I'm not a subhuman monster like many teenagers tend to be.

I don't want to veer off-topic too much, but in my opinion, there is only one way to have someone dress up in blackface and have it not be offensive (well, at least to me, but I am only one black dude in this world): 1. Have the creator/writer/actor of the content be someone who is pretty clearly not the type of person to be racist. 2. Have the joke that involves blackface be done to make fun of the person dressing up, not the black person or persons being imitated. For example, Jenna Maroney singing "Ease on Down the Road" in blackface on 30 Rock fits those two points. Tina Fey is probably not racist, for one, and second, the joke is that Jenna's whole concept of black people is basically from watching The Wiz, which makes the joke about Jenna's ignorance and not black folks. The problem with the DX skits is that based on the history of WWE (Saba Simba, Kamala) and pro wrestling in general, the company probably won't get the benefit of the doubt in regards to the first point, and in regards to the second point, the blackface was obviously a way to get the crowd to laugh at the NOD and not DX. It's definitely problematic, even if it is chuckleworthy in its own way.