Matt D

For some reason I always read that as Trotamaker.

Step 1: Do a search for Gonzalez.

"Rumblings" usually means that someone's been talking to underground mole-people again.

Babyface, Cien Caras y Mascara Ano 2000 vs. Lizmark, Rayo De Jalisco y La Fiera (September 1986) On to Disc 6, the disc of endless trios. I forgot everything I've learned about lucha in the last month, I think, so trying to figure out who is who will be tough. Babyface has no mask! Ok, he's short, stumpy, and in blue tights. Fiera has the black tights. Caras has the white and black mask. That means Mascara has the blue one with the cool curvy lines. I know Lizmark by now! So Rayo is the other guy. Okay, we're in business. I think a lot of the rudo gangings are not because the faces WON'T stop them, but because they CAN'T. That's an important distinction in understanding trios matches. This was a good example as Lizmark tries and fails. By nature, once the ganging up starts, the rudos have weakened one of their opponents and already have an advantage on the numbers game. Anyway, here I really like the focus on Fiera's arm. There's a nice pacing and ebb and flow to this, with hope spots peppered in both from Fiera fighting back and his partners charging in with the cut off being the arm being attacked. He finally makes the tag and Rayo and Lizmark just punch the crap out of everyone, Babyface's awesome punch counter, and then Lizmark doing his thing. It all breaks down with the faces hitting their stuff, including Lizmark's awesome little hopping around the ring pin with 2000 that he uses to get out of the way of Fiera and Babyface, and that's the first fall. Fun stuff, punctuated by the MASSIVE selling of the arm when the ref tries to raise Fiera's hand. Lucha guys don't always sell body parts, but when they do, they sure do. Babyface being chickenshit and refusing to get in the ring with Fiera (even hurt) is a fun start to the second fall and lets the rudos transition right back to Fiera's arm when he gets overzealous. This leads right into 2000 and Rayo and 2000 is just brutal in his biting and ripping at the mask. There's a real zing and visible hatred in what he's doing. I kind of like Lizmark's ineffectual complaining to the ref too. Rayo ends up posted and Lizmark comes in only to get swarmed and eat another awesome babyface punch. Rayo ends up back in, now a bloody mess and this is a quality rudo mauling. I especially like Caras punching him repeatedly over the top rope. We are in swarm mode here. Rayo makes it out and Fiera comes in only to end up caught from behind and punched repeatedly in the arm by Babyface, who is making like Babyface Anderson here. I agree with Tim with a period that this is really a two story match, but those two stories are brutal. After taking out Rayo and Fiera, they pound away on Lizmark in the middle of the ring until the ref calls it. By this point I kind of feel that you can judge how good the lucha match you're watching is by how much you're looking forward to the technicos comeback, and by the end of the second fall, I really am. Lizmark has to rush to beat the count in and that means he ends up ambushed, including a Babyface punch so hard that he takes a crazy diving bump through the ropes. Fiera is selling so hard that he can barely stand due to his arm pain. He can kick though, and he comes back with three nice ones, followed by a huge punch with his good hand and than some well deserved biting. Babyface comes back a bit but ends up beaten up and down the ring with punches and kicks and an atomic elbow off the second rope. Fiera's pretty agile, and his kicks come from every direction. The biting only comes from one direction. Finally Babyface comes sailing out and we get Rayo and 2000, which gives us a moment of glorious revenge followed by everything breaking down and loads more revenge as the crowd erupts. It ends up Babyface vs Fiera again, the highlight of which was Babyface's crazy crawling reverse sell around the ring. Lizmark gets to do his dive on Caras, Rayo gets to unload on 2000 again. Rayo misses a reverse headbutt off the second rope and gets pinned. Babyface follows it up with an armlock on Fiera and that's the match. I think ultimately the comebacks could have been paced better. Maybe they could have happened in tandem somehow, but I suppose this way, each guy got to visually best his opponent before the rudos took the win. Part of my problem is that it'd be more narratively satisfying if the good guys won, but that wasn't the finish here. What we did get was a very entertaining trios. Rayo's post match taunting with the Santino horn was great. Good stuff.

What's the next few locations for Raw/Smackdown?

Watch this match. Watch Andre do everything he was supposed to in order to get across the story and really execute everything well. Watch Warrior follow directions well for the sake of the big picture of the match and sell the match to the crowd. Tell me that's the worst match of 1989. Just tell me. It's not top rate Andre stuff, sure, but it's still so logical and almost everything means something and matters. Frigging Action Junkie bozos. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xkiGavjk7M

When the Network launches I won't have to watch it from my computer, which I hate doing. We kind of hate when you do stuff on your computer too. But yeah, I'm glad for the new eyes NXT will get when the Network debuts. I only hope that they don't start micromanaging it.

NXT watching should be mandatory here.

Hulk Hogan doesn't point at the Wrestlemania sign. The Wrestlemania sign moves to wherever Hulk Hogan is pointing.

People sleep on Andre more than any of wrestler I've ever seen. Yes, he was a giant. Yes, he had the presence and the voice and all of the nature, but at the same time, he could have been Spike Dudley sized and he probably still would have been an amazing wrestler, because he's so good at so many things. His timing is amazing. His selling is just right almost all the time. He'd bellow and give exactly as much as he was supposed to exactly when he was supposed to. Every move he did looked like death and he carried the respect that made people sell it like death. That's my favorite thing about the really late Andre stuff. He wasn't mobile at all but he was like a walking explosion. If he touched you, just touched you, you would go flying across the ring, and it was the most believable thing in the world. The action came to him, because he had the sheer gravity to draw it to him and make it work. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8muus_andre-the-giant-vs-kamala-cage-matc_shortfilms

Bryan wins Rumble Flowers bloom with net nerd joy Fooled You Bwa Ha Ha

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-j3GL6D2s4 Skip the guy in the front. On the one hand Dick the Bruiser is such a terrible FIP. On the other, you kind of feel bad for him because it's his promotion and you can tell he REALLY wants to get in there and help out in the shine and it's totally unnecessary. Krupp and Ox are such great Andre opponents here, stooging all over the place. You can practically see the delight in the fans' eyes when Andre's doing his thing. I think my favorite out of ring thing about Andre was how jovial heel Andre was in promos. He was the hero of his own story and you can tell that he just loved his fellow Heenan Family members. I love the celebration after the Brainbusters win the tag title and I think there's a Survivor Series promo where he goes on about how he's doing it all for his fans that's great. This isn't those but it's still a great Heenan + Andre promo. Heenan's sort of understated because he can be. He has freaking Andre next to him: This promo, on the other hand, is just glorious, even just visually: And frankly, the bits of the clip at the start here terrified me as a kid because it seemed like the grossest thing in the world when I was 10. Granted I was also afraid to get licked by the Bushwhackers:

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x4c6n1_andre-the-giant-paul-orndorff-vs-ro_sport?search_algo=1 I really kind of love this tag too. And though Dylan says there's a better version of this idea, this is still so much damn fun:

Better catching that than this?

Aw man, we're in business now. I really, truly think the MSG Demos vs Colossal Connection isn't online which is a damn shame. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEdcHBKiV7g

I still think Cesaro is going to get a lot of attention the night after Mania.

In retrospect, they really should have had the Rumble itself been Batista's return. If this was the first time people had seen him in 4 years instead of Raw he would have gotten a better reaction.

Legit heat is the business model since people are hip to kayfabe. As long as Bryan is on the roster, no fan will just up and stop watching in protest because they'll be cutting Bryan's throat. He is the Tommy Dreamer of the fed. Chasing the title is all part of the plan. As long as he is almost but not quite and continues to have five star epics, fans will still watch The thing you guys should be considering is that the catch is never as good as the hunt. So what happens when DB wins the belt and WWE cannot come up with the proper Rogues Gallery of Special Guest Villains to throw at him to make his title run meaningful? Or worse, if the belt just withers around his waist like it did when He Who Cannot Be Named was champ because non-title feuds got pushed to the main event while the title was relegated to the mid-card? Hmm, I did not see the Tommy Dreamer analogy until just now. I'd be all for a Bryan/Wyatt feud lasting half as long as Dreamer/Raven. Brie becomes Sister Abigail. It writes it self. Tommy Dreamer stole my "Wouldn't it have been great if Bryan was under the Rey mask" joke.

If Barrett came out with a live mic he would have gotten massive heat. That would have been kind of great. I think the whole point was to not take attention away from Batista though.

Wait, only 19 pages. I still have ten minutes on this commuter bus. As much as I love the Rhodes brothers run, I do think they devoured the PTP face push that would have happened.

Cesaro getting key moments for four or five entrances in a row was kind of cool. I didn't like Harper doing European Uppercuts though. It seemed kind of weird for him and... Wait, are we talking about something else?

Must have. How else would he know the guy's name?

If they turn him it will be based on the Rumnle match. I think the ans wouldn't allow it though. He said on twitter he's not interested in facing Cody anymore.