NintendoLogic

Speaking of fantastical weirdos of yesteryear, I don't think anyone's mentioned Zeb Colter's Frenchy Martin impression yet. The Real Americans need to go back to feuding with Los Matadores so Colter can bust out a sign that says OLE IS NOT OK.

"You can skip the stuff that sucks and watch the good stuff on Youtube" is a pretty lousy argument. If I'm going to look up wrestling on Youtube, I'm not going to settle for current WWE when so much genuinely great wrestling is right there at my fingertips.

So how about that VINTAGE Lilian Garcia horse joke? Maybe he was trying to put himself in HHH's good graces.

Oh, for fuck's sake, that song came out in the 1990s, not the 1890s. So did Monday Night Raw.

After reading the house show reports, my main fear was that Bryan was going to end up the Buddy Roberts of the Wyatts. Based on tonight, it looks like they're going in the opposite direction. Plus, I'm a huge fan of coveralls in wrestling. So consider me cautiously optimistic. Did anyone else see that "I'M ONLY HAPPY WHEN IT REIGNS" sign? Jesus, talk about old school.

Spotty indy-esque selling from Bryan is nothing new. Look at the Orton match from a few weeks ago. He went from actling like his arm was about to fall off to skinning the cat and applying the Yes Lock with no apparent difficulty. In addition, I guess you just have to accept the fact that in WWE, finishers have magical opponent-finishing properties that other moves don't. An even more egregious example was in that street fight between Damien Sandow and Dolph Ziggler. In that match, a DDT onto a steel chair only got a nearfall, but a full nelson slam onto a garbage can got the pin.

You mean matches ending in rollups after one of the wresters gets distracted by someone else's music isn't good enough for you?

Bryan becomes the Wyatt family's whipping boy, the audience begs for him to turn back, the wait and see bunch creams themselves in anticipation for a turn that only comes after Bryan has lost his heat, and when it finally does, and the crowd doesn't give a shit, you'll be telling us all "SEE? SEE? YOU JUST HAD TO WAIT!" at which point Bryan goes off and has a feud with Miz or something. When has Bryan lost his heat in the past? He's been losing his heat since the day after Summerslam.

Benoit's matches not holding up has nothing to do with him being a piece of shit. When I rewatched Benoit/Regal a while back, it struck me as a respect-through-stiffness macho pissing contest. What about it was strong from a psychology standpoint? And don't say "Well, they had the crowd on their feet", because that would get you laughed off the board if you said it about Kurt Angle or Shawn Michaels.

I didn't think Regal/Cesaro was similar to Regal/Benoit at all. Personally, I thought it was better. Then again, I value things like selliing and psychology more than I do dumbfuckery like busting yourself open with shoot headbutts.

Yo, fuck the Brock/Taker HIAC match. Throwing punches and doing chokeslams like it's nothing when your hand is supposed to be broken is inexcusable.

What exactly is ridiculous about a guy using a chair to even the odds against a larger and stronger opponent? Or taking advantage of the time said opponent spent to introduce said chair into the match to recover from the beating he had sustained?

The Summerslam 2012 buyrate is actually pretty interesting. Buys were way up domestically, suggesting that Brock still had drawing power based on UFC name recognition. But they were way down internationally. UFC isn't popular in most of the countries in which WWE runs PPVs, so Brock's only value in those markets was as an unstoppable monster. That went out the window when he lost his first match.

You were here then! This place went nuts over that finish because everyone thought that Brock should go over first and Cena would have to Rocky his way back in the rematch and that they just threw money away by sending a signal to Brock and MMA fans and whatever by having Cena go over. Considering what's happened to Brock's drawing power in the past year and a half, this seems difficult to dispute.

Hogan/Andre was a bigger size disparity than Punk/Lesnar.

Punk did not whoop on Lesnar for ten minutes. You're clearly just seeing what you want to see.

I like how we're all ignoring the fact that Punk needed a weapon to gain the upper hand on Lesnar.

I suspect that a lot of it has to do with Bryan beating John Cena clean and winning the big one. If Cena had put on the exact same match move for move with Randy Orton, I doublt it'd be as highly regarded.

Finally watched Rhodes/Shield from Battleground. From a strictly in-ring standpoint, I didn't think it was any better than the Shield matches we get on Raw every week. But the fact that it provided a truly satisfying payoff to the Rhodes storyline is enough to push it over the top. Here's a question: where does it rank among all tag matches in WWE history? In a way, it's damning with faint praise since WWE has never been known for strong tag team wrestling. But off the top of my head, the only WWE tag I'd definitely place above it is the Kliq tag from Action Zone.

I think rebuilding around Magnus is a pretty good idea if that's the plan. But making him the puppet of the heel authority figure is the wrong way to do it. Make him a dynastic babyface and have Dixie send a revolving door of indy geeks after him.

Lack of familiarity isn't really a valid reason to exclude puro/lucha guys. Even if you're not familiar with Okada or Rush's output, all their major matches are on Youtube or Dailymotion, so bringing yourself up to speed is a simple task. The same isn't true of most of the indy scrubs who have polluted this tournament in years past. I'm not going to buy a fucking Chikara DVD just so I can have an informed opinion on Green Ant.

I literally just now realized how close American Wolves is to British Bulldogs.

You mean you guys weren't already aware of the Obama selfie controversy? DVDVR bubble!

That would explain why WWE tag matches are so restricted.

Big Show got DQed for breaking up a pin in a tag match a while back.