SirSmUgly

So, I know these matches aren't that great by themselves, but as a kid, I had never seen the British rounds system, and they did a bastardized version between Flair and Regal on Worldwide, I believe. It was a series of matches over maybe five weeks? that was best-of-five. I thought it was so cool and different and I LOVED them. Then years later, I was lurking here and someone mentioned Jim Breaks, so I went to watch a bunch of his matches and put two-and-two together. So now I love British World of Sport wrestling. Thanks Flair, Regal, and DVDVR

Do people talk about that Midnights/Fantastics match in '88 where the Midnights lost the U.S Tag Team Championships? Because that is one of my favorite tag matches ever. I am probably in a minority, but I prefer Eaton/Lane to Eaton/Condrey. And man, Cornette was just so awesome as a mouthpiece. '88 Midnights might be one of my three favorite tag teams ever. Corny talking shit to JJ, Tully, and Arn during that short Midnights/Horsemen feud was the best, too. Also, if Rude/Steamboat 30-minute Iron Man counts, that too. I guess most people think of Bret/HBK, HHH/Rock, or even Angle/Lesnar whenever they think about Iron Man matches, or at least that's what I tend to see on most message boards. Rick Rude vaulted up my list of favorite wrestlers ever. I do not contend anything about him being one of the objective greatest wrestlers ever, but subjectively, I think this guy is one of the greatest wrestlers ever.

I think, to refer to the discussion awhile back, that WWE has the talent for a brand split, but for whatever reason, they have almost no interest in booking the midcard in a fashion other than having really awesome guys that the crowd wants to get behind trade wins for months on end until no one cares about them. I think that the talent is there to sustain one main event feud, a tag team feud or two, and three or four midcard feuds per show. Given the chance, I think the crowd would get behind a lot of guys that aren't getting steady enough pushes right now.

When you watch four weeks of Raw/SmackDown and then the PPV, Rock matches are awesome. Needs context to really enjoy it. Fair enough, but you could say that for a lot of guys. I don't remember many matches where Rock elevated a lesser talent or had a great match with a shitty worker. Most of his solid matches (Austin, HHH, Taker, Benoit) was with a better worker than he was. Hell, I would say Mick Foley was the better worker in their series of matches. You could say he was better than Jericho and Shamrock in their feuds, but even that's not indisputable. Bret got a good match out of a pirate, Shawn gave Sid his best match and Eddie made JBL look like a fucking monster. Rocky wasn't that kind of worker. Bite your tongue; Carl Oulette is an awesome wrestler.

Hasn't everyone been griping about Bryan walking into no-lose situations and looking dumb as a result? There is a middle ground. Beer truck milk truck Naked Juice truck driven into the arena, contents sprayed on HHH and Orton as they flounder around in the ring looking like doofuses is that middle ground that I think people want to see. I think. I could be characterizing some of the complaints incorrectly.

Thinking of bad day-job gimmicks that would work in 2013, we might just need a welder character that comes in as a heel and mocks college-educated wrestlers for wasting money on a business or Humanities degree while they went straight into a blue-collar career at 60K a year, starting.

The Mountie and Boss Man. They were both arrogant police authority figures who routinely overstepped his bounds by using non-lethal weaponry to subdue people that were no longer a threat. They were often over-aggressive and really seemed like bullies that got into their jobs to hurt defenseless jobbers citizens. This is clearly a prescient critique of the relationship between authority figures and citizens that should be applauded. Also, Duke Droese should have been a heel. We need to recycle, not fill limited landfill space with more of our garbage. Heel Doink was the best out of the "every wrestler needs a side job" era. *Bill Simmons mode* NO ONE DENIES THIS! I always understood heel Doink as a character that wasn't a clown as a job, but that was a sicko that got his jollies from dressing up as a clown, scaring kids, and pulling the various stumps of jobber-folk until they popped right out of their sockets. I feel like Big Josh is a better example of a Matt Borne working-class character.

Thank you very much. I might try to look for it some more just to see how 1997 Vince's VOs talk about all these guys that have left for WCW and made Nitro such a hot show.

I was reading some old DDT Digest reviews and one of them mentioned a WWF special called "WWF: The Way We Were" that was airing after RAW on 7/14/97. I did a cursory look up on the old YouTubes and on Daily Motion, but to no avail. Does anyone remember this special and if so, would you mind letting me know if you think that it is worth trying to more actively track down?

Writing from an academic standpoint about wrestling is fantastic and gives an enjoyable added texture to why certain things in our fair sport become popular. Wrestling is pretty much a reflection of the power fantasies of the fans, and those change based on social, economic, and political issues, like concern about foreign powers invading America, the economic elite cheating their way into the champion over more honest and hard-working people, or some dude getting jealous eyes and stealing your girl so you have to elbowsmash the shit out of him. The problem with The Masked Man is that he sees himself as Roland Barthes, but he writes more like Barthes after a severe brain hemorrhage.

I read this as "The Return of Hollywood Blondes" for some reason, and I was all prepared to get behind Zombie Brian Pillman vs. Daniel Bryan.

In that case, what would be Dolph's match equivalent of "Running Wilde," a surprisingly delightful show that could not possibly live up to fan expectations?

This is such a TNA personnel move that it's almost mean to point it out. Yep. One "We know who THAT is!" later, and Ortiz and Rampage are turning on the Main Event Mafia to form a new stable called the R.A.F. ("Real-Ass Fighters") that cuts shoot promos on how they have actually been in actual fights unlike the rest of the TNA roster.

Aw, I enjoy Bill Simmons. I get why people wouldn't enjoy him, but he is pretty entertaining when it comes to basketball and football. I would enjoy him more if I didn't have to skip three-fourths of his columns because they are about the NBA. Simmons is more of an '80s WWF cartoon character wrestling fan, so that explains his "Bret Hart is boring" stance, I think He also said, in the same column, that he would like MitB to be the fourth PPV to make up the Big Four over Survivor Series. Personally, I prefer Elimination Chamber to MitB by miles, but I don't even think there is a traditional Big Four anymore, really. There is everything along the Road to WrestleMania and SummerSlam as far as what gets promoted like it is special.

Owen was really over doing the Sole Survivor thing. He should have at the very least had that title match at IYH: Degeneration X with Michaels instead of having it on RAW. I get that Michaels probably refused to work much with him, but the crowd was popping big for Owen at the time. Speaking of which, what about Ken Shamrock?

I remembered the knee injury, but you know what? I forgot about the heel turn, and now that I consider it, I think we can point to the confusing turn on DX and joining of the Corporation as a big de-railer. That and Austin not putting him over clean at Summerslam '99.

As I recall, while HHH had sustained pushes except for during the MSG-incident punishment, he was WAAAAAAY over for most of it, too. Around Summerslam '98, he was clearly a future World Champ. I think what happened, as I recall correctly, is that people took a lot of time to buy him as champion by the time he got to the main event scene for good in '99. It took a lot of pushes and ultimately the Cactus Jack series to get him over. Even then, though, I don't know how much people ever bought him as the heel ace. It probably does not help that his Race/Flair hybrid character that he likes to portray as an ace is a number of steps below either of those guys' actual work. This is probably dumb, but watching HHH in, say, 2003-2004, I always feel like he reminds me that I could instead be watching 1987 Ric Flair and it would be pretty much what he is doing except far more entertaining. Anyway, I cannot remember if something happened to throw him off track between Summerslam in 1998 and Summerslam in 1999, but my remembrance is that he was a surefire world champ in '98 after that ladder match judging by crowd reaction, but a year later people weren't fully behind him and it took some convincing booking to get him there.

That strongman spot with Cesaro countering the tornado DDT into the uppercut was SO COOL.

Somebody is posting old mid- and late-80s AWA shows and old Global shows as well as all the WCW Nitros and PPVs from 1995 forward over on Daily Motion. I have discovered the awesomeness of Rick Martel, AWA Champion. I think I was into AWA maybe in '87/'88 as a very young child when it was on ESPN because I had AWA figurines of the Midnight Rockers, Nick Bockwinkel, and Larry Zbyszko, but I do not remember any of this Rick Martel stuff.

I don't know how people generally feel about ICP around here, but I actually enjoy them lots of the time. They are decent garbagey/high-spotty type workers and they always at least try really hard. They aren't bad, man. I am about two-and-a-half years behind this thread in my WCW re-viewing, but man, I am not looking forward to crazy misogynist Randy Savage. He's my favorite wrestler of all-time, and I just hated to see a broken down Savage resort to pushing women around to get heat. I mean, he always had that streak to his character, but it's just too much for me in 1999. Just unenjoyable to watch in all facets.

Why would Triple H continue across the ring when Irish-whipped, only to rebound back toward his waiting opponent? The answer to your question, my question, and really to any question about the mechanics of pro wrestling, as always, is "Because it's pro wrestling."

I enjoy Chikara precisely because it deconstructs pro wrestling's tropes, but I don't know if that's something that would appeal to a massive audience of people. I think that in general, audiences are more satisfied by seeing tropes held up and used really, really well over having them deconstructed with a wink and a nod.

That was me. It was the most compelling that Hogan had been in forever. I look forward to John Cena's version of this character in 2024. I was just watching a ton of '90-'93 WCW, and Rick Rude is like the coolest dude ever. He's impossible to root against. The goofy-yet-catchy "Simply Ravishing" theme, the awesome tights, the Rude Awakening which is one of my favorite finishers ever...everything about that era of Rick Rude was so great.

The Nexus storyline didn't peter out. It ended when Cena beat Barrett at TLC. This is a fair point; I was not as precise as I could have been with my wording. The Nexus storyline started out as this group of NXT upstarts making a statement by taking out John Cena, Edge, Justin Roberts, and a referee and declaring war against the whole WWE. This is a pretty wide-spanning narrative, potentially, that sets up to have the Nexus take out the whole WWE and declare themselves as the leaders of the company. They attacked multiple wrestlers, not just Cena, after all. The simplest way to capitalize is to have guys try to take Nexus on alone because they don't trust one another, and then when that fails, reluctantly band together to take out Nexus. Then, it was scaled down to Cena vs. Nexus, complete with a "John Cena is fired" angle that didn't even lead to a Midnight Rider-like angle where Cena shows up under a hood and the Nexus tries to un-mask him. It did have an ending, but it certainly was not what it probably could have or should have been. They went from crashing WWE title matches and group mugging WWE guys backstage to the WWE effectively beating NXT in a group match like two months later at Summerslam to Cena finishing off the group entirely by beating Barrett at TLC. I guess that's what I mean by "petered out." We had a nWo-lite angle that began by spanning the whole company and ended up concluding on a B-PPV. Maybe this is what the WWE planned all along, but man, they missed lots of narrative opportunities along the way. I hope that better explains what I mean. This is also a fair point, but even so, they had a chance at recovery after that merely by bringing Daniel Bryan back at Summerslam on the side of Nexus (and having Nexus win as a result) or, at the very least, milking the "John Cena is fired" angle for all it was worth. Anyway, I don't want to get caught up on this specific example of an angle except to say that my point is that, even with some of the stuff that happened during the angle, the WWE never booked the NXT guys the way that was needed to spur the narrative along in an interesting way. Cena never felt in any danger past that first night on RAW where Nexus took him out, for example. Even when he lost and was forced to be in NXT (and then fired), he didn't have to sacrifice anything or do something daring to get reinstated and to finish off Barrett. I think that this juxtaposition between the booking and the narrative direction doesn't help the WWE tell satisfying narratives at this point, and if (like me), you are a narrative-driven watcher, it's quite possible that these things make watching the weekly show not very satisfying as well.

I'm on the other side of this, as WWE has finally gotten me to stop watching after over 25 years. I watch matches out of context, but I don't honestly find the storytelling to be consistently very good, though Greggulator's assessment of Daniel Bryan as a character was really excellent, and as someone who lives in the Pacific Northwest and appreciates our weird little hippie-ish culture that D-Bry embodies, it's good to see a Granola Guy get to the top of the Wal-Mart of professional wrestling. If this story does end with him going over HHH/HHH's Corporate Champ at WM, that will be an amazing thing. I think back to late-'80s/early-'90s WWF storytelling, which was targeted toward the same audience, and I just think the narratives have better arcs. That could be me being charitable to something that I liked very much as a child, but if you look at something like the Mega-Powers arc, that had a definitive beginning, middle, and ending that I think a lot of big angles in the WWE don't have. They just seem to peter out most of the time in this era, like the Nexus storyline as one big example. The middles are also squishy. For example, the Shield came in and seemed to be mixed up with Heyman and Punk. Then they sort of disattached from that storyline and broke up Team Hell No, but after that, they have just floated around the midcard lately. What happened to their story with Heyman and Punk? I know that we can interpret an ending based on what happened, but logically, they should have been somehow involved in Lesnar/Punk, which I have not seen (so if they were, I take this back). Characters tend to drift in and out of narratives in their middles in current WWE, which is one issue that I have with the shows. The other issue that I have with long-term storylines is that they are not backed up with proper booking too often. For example, the "Cena has lost his fastball" storyline should probably have him lose to The Rock, lose to Brock Lesnar so badly that he is kayfabe-injured, and then leave television for months before having to "prove" himself by beating Brock in a return match at Summerslam or Survivor Series, winning the Rumble, and winning the belt back at WM. Instead, Cena stayed on TV and looked pretty good, beat Brock in a great match that just wasn't booked to fit the storyline, and never really seemed like he'd lost anything at all. Instead, he just looked like a dude that screwed around and lost to The Rock but that otherwise probably would have won if he'd kept his head on straight. That isn't to say anything bad about the matches. Cena is consistenly awesome and that Cena/Brock match is just fantastic in its brutality. But where's the storyline? I got why Macho Man thought Hulk Hogan was hitting on his woman and why he ended up getting driven to attack him on SNME. I wasn't getting why Cena thought he needed to prove anything to either himself or The Rock, however. The dude was money. He did something The Rock never did - beat Brock Lesnar - the month after losing to The Rock at WM. This is long and rambling, and I apologize very much for that, but I have read other people say that the WWE knows how to start a hell of a story, but not how to finish it. I agree broadly with this, and I also think that the WWE has a hard time with the middle of the story too. The booking too often does not match up with the narrative that they appear to want to tell. EDIT: And while I enjoy matches out of context, as do many of the posters here, what compels me to watch each week is to see everybody have great matches while also carrying out some basic, compelling narrative. This is why, even though '95 WCW is not as consistently good with the in-ring product as '13 WWE, I much, much, much would prefer to watch a 1995 Nitro over a 2013 RAW.