March 2023 Wrestling Discussion

[Kang]

Another Hall of Fame

https://www.wrestlinginc.com/1231500/bret-hart-muta-misawa-headline-international-pro-wrestling-hall-of-fame-2023-class/

[Ramo2653]

On 3/17/2023 at 10:44 AM, Greggulator said:

WWE question: 

Am I crazy in thinking that nearly everyone on the main roster right now is at least very good? The one guy who actively isn’t is Top Dolla, but he is really green and should still be in NXT. 

Dom deserves all his rave reviews for his character work. But in his recent matches - he hit all his spots clean, he has a really killer frog splash and he has really good heel timing. He won’t have any traditional five star matches but he will 

Even people who make me snooze like Karrion Kross can have really good matches. It’s just the character and presentation aren’t for me. But an example of how he’s good: They botched a fireball thing against Drew and had to improvise and covered it really well. You don’t do that without being skilled.

Maybe Omos? But he’s used in limited doses and just does a snarling mean giant thing, and that’s fine.

Maybe Carmella? She’s more shtick and not put in lengthy matches. Even when she’s in a match against someone she’s usually at least passable. 

I am really hard pressed to think of anyone who just flat out sucks. Dexter Lumis is fine. Austin Theory has had some good matches. Dolph and The Miz are stale but good gatekeepers. (And The Miz isn’t even stale.)

Bray’s current gimmick even lost me (the biggest Wyatt’s mark) but if you’re the leader of a stable who had one of the handful of best wrestling matches of the century and a bunch of other bangers you know how to work. Just he needs an editor real bad.

I think WWE has had a comically talented roster for like the last 10 years. The 50/50 booking sort of made sense when you considered that not too many people on the roster were actually bad.

Same goes for wrestling in general, you don't see too many bad folks on TV these days, but you know they're out there. It's what makes the last few Parker matches stand out because he's so green and his timing is so off.

[Matt D]

3 hours ago, S.K.o.S. said:

New wrestling crossword up today. Will this tweet embed? Let's find out!

 

How do I put this sans spoilers...

That Glenn Gilbertti answer was rough!

Thanks for these as always.

[S.K.o.S.]

22 minutes ago, Matt D said:

How do I put this sans spoilers...

That Glenn Gilbertti answer was rough!

Thanks for these as always.

I'm very proud of that clue. Lol.

[nate]

Was it "Cannon" or "Canon"?

[S.K.o.S.]

6 minutes ago, nate said:

Was it "Cannon" or "Canon"?

I actually would have thought it was Cannon, but Wikipedia and Cagematch both say Canon.  Cannon does get a lot of Google hits but they don't seem like the most trustworthy sources.

[nate]

1 hour ago, S.K.o.S. said:

I actually would have thought it was Cannon, but Wikipedia and Cagematch both say Canon.  Cannon does get a lot of Google hits but they don't seem like the most trustworthy sources.

So Canon is ... canon. 

[Ziggy]

5 hours ago, Ramo2653 said:

I think WWE has had a comically talented roster for like the last 10 years. The 50/50 booking sort of made sense when you considered that not too many people on the roster were actually bad.

Same goes for wrestling in general, you don't see too many bad folks on TV these days, but you know they're out there. It's what makes the last few Parker matches stand out because he's so green and his timing is so off.

I think alot of that is the larger number of people that have spent time on the Indies and other Countries. Most of the people that aren't good are the ones that haven't had much ring time. That's going to be more of an issue in this post pandemic era of wrestling with talent in both companies aren't working that much. Has Jade Cargill had more than 50 matches? Has Omos had much more than that. Even in AEW the only people working outside of AEW are the people that have already spent time on the indies or experienced talent that managed to take advantage of AEWs partnership with New Japan. Nash worked probably 4 times the amount of times of the time he did the entire 3 -4 years of career in his first year in WWF. It's going to be difficult for homegrown talent to get good with only once a week.

WWE lucked up with alot of these celebrities actually being atleast decent in the ring. I think it Lead people to believe that they can lead anyone to have a good match if they go over it a thousand times. With people like Bad Bunny, Pat McAfee and Logan Paul being athletic enough to do entertaining spots , they've been able to be able to be lead to great matches but it's still alot they lack and would be exposed if they had to work more than just 2 - 3 major PPVs and didn't have the luxury of going over their matches several days at a time.

[JLowe]

8 hours ago, DEAN said:

What the fuck!

 

That almost went horribly, horribly wrong.

[Ace]

22 minutes ago, JLowe said:

That almost went horribly, horribly wrong.

I just commented in the joshi thread about this. 4'10" 90 lb. Mei is NOT a suitable base to dive upon. Do it Stardom style where you dive on like 6 people to catch you.

 

[Eivion]

37 minutes ago, Ace said:

I just commented in the joshi thread about this. 4'10" 90 lb. Mei is NOT a suitable base to dive upon. Do it Stardom style where you dive on like 6 people to catch you.

Mei's size had little to do with it. She and the other girl were just too far away. Both were intended to help catch her. That is not a Stardom thing so much as modern joshi thing. Not sure when, but they started having teammates and/or ring seconds help break falls years ago. 

[Ramo2653]

3 hours ago, Ziggy said:

I think alot of that is the larger number of people that have spent time on the Indies and other Countries. Most of the people that aren't good are the ones that haven't had much ring time. That's going to be more of an issue in this post pandemic era of wrestling with talent in both companies aren't working that much. Has Jade Cargill had more than 50 matches? Has Omos had much more than that. Even in AEW the only people working outside of AEW are the people that have already spent time on the indies or experienced talent that managed to take advantage of AEWs partnership with New Japan. Nash worked probably 4 times the amount of times of the time he did the entire 3 -4 years of career in his first year in WWF. It's going to be difficult for homegrown talent to get good with only once a week.

WWE lucked up with alot of these celebrities actually being atleast decent in the ring. I think it Lead people to believe that they can lead anyone to have a good match if they go over it a thousand times. With people like Bad Bunny, Pat McAfee and Logan Paul being athletic enough to do entertaining spots , they've been able to be able to be lead to great matches but it's still alot they lack and would be exposed if they had to work more than just 2 - 3 major PPVs and didn't have the luxury of going over their matches several days at a time.

Jade is at 56 as of Wednesday, but we can see that she's in the process of learning. It's something new and unknown that we get to witness her training on TV every time she wrestles. The fact that she hasn't done anything as awful as a Tom Magee or Parker Boudreaux is a credit to her and the agents in AEW. I didn't check to see if she's on the house show circuit or not this weekend, but it's not like everything from those shows won't be put out there. 

Omos is an odd case, he had a few NXT matches in late 2019 and early 2020 but then the pandemic hit and that stopped. There's a gap of February 2020 to April of 2021 when he and AJ won the tag titles. I know guys did basically empty arena matches in NXT to train (not the TV shows but in the PC where coaches and refs watched) but that's not very close to the reps you would need since there's no crowd to work with. So he had this year plus gap in not wrestling and is thrown on TV. He's probably someone trying his best, but he's just not that great and I'm not even sure what would make him better. Everything outside of the shows indicates he's a funny personable person that could probably try to get that across on TV, but they don't go that route. After this Brock match, if he doesn't show something, he might be on the soon to be future endeavored list and there aren't too many people in the world I wish to be out of a job.

[TheVileOne]

On 3/14/2023 at 5:26 PM, Niners Fan in CT said:

Watched Bash at the Beach '96 again while we're here wondering whether it's gonna snow or not.  It's really amazing how the closing segment all came together with the crowd organically becoming more and more pissed where now everyone is throwing trash..   There's no way WCW could have thought that it would have worked out THAT well with the crowd participation.  

What are some other moments you can remember where the crowd takes a cool moment and elevates it to legendary status? 

The reaction to Goldberg beating Hulk Hogan. That audience was primed for a title change.

Danielson beating Triple H at WrestleMania 30 was pretty good, the reaction wasn't as big for the main event because WrestleMania is so long and WWE really wears their audiences out by the end.

https://youtu.be/c0hXmq9yNlI

 

[Krone]

We desperately need Mike Bailey in one of the two major North American promotions. That guy has so much talent that I don't know how he hasn't found himself an AEW or WWE/NXT contract yet. Hopefully by the end of this year he ends up in one of those two places because I'm thinking he's well on his way to possibly being my MVP for the second straight year in a row.

[EVA]

8 minutes ago, Krone said:

We desperately need Mike Bailey in one of the two major North American promotions. That guy has so much talent that I don't know how he hasn't found himself an AEW or WWE/NXT contract yet. Hopefully by the end of this year he ends up in one of those two places because I'm thinking he's well on his way to possibly being my MVP for the second straight year in a row.

He was in talks with WWE in 2021 when he was about to come off his ban from the US, but that was right around when HHH lost power and NXT changed directions to their “no Indie guys” policy and that fell apart.

I think he’s locked in with Impact for another couple of years.

[Log]

Bailey is wrestling Osprey and Ibushi on the same day and Vikingo the next day this month. I’m kind of digging him not being signed to WWE or AEW. 

[TheVileOne]

Bailey is better off in Impact at the moment. There'd be no spot for him in WWE or AEW right now. In WWE, the best he could hope for is a lower midcarder role like Ricochet.

[Log]

Honestly, Impact might be the best place right now for a wrestler who you want to see have intriguing matchups. If your favorite is in Impact, you can conceivably see them against talent form every non-WWE wrestler in the world. 

[Nice Guy Eddie]

5 hours ago, Log said:

Honestly, Impact might be the best place right now for a wrestler who you want to see have intriguing matchups. If your favorite is in Impact, you can conceivably see them against talent form every non-WWE wrestler in the world. 

I love Kushida working Impact, getting to team with Alex Shelley and Chris Sabin as Time Machine. 

Edited March 19, 2023 by Nice Guy Eddie

[Dolphman 3000]

2 hours ago, Log said:

Bailey is wrestling Osprey and Ibushi on the same day and Vikingo the next day this month. I’m kind of digging him not being signed to WWE or AEW. 

Ospreay's hurt

[BloodyChamp]

On 3/17/2023 at 10:35 PM, For Great Justice said:

My vote for “best non-formula match from a formula wrestler” might go to Goldberg/Steiner from Fall Brawl 2000. Holy shit this match rules at a time when neither guy did much out there, and is really the prototype for the last decade of Brock Lesnar main events. 

I’ll also throw the Austin/HHH vs Jericho/Benoit tag a bone. That was four formula guys to a degree and they just go tear the house down in something totally unique. 

I haven’t gotten around to watching this because I’d checked out by then but this match got repeated by somebody every week who came just to post about it on the old board and all the other old boards. Today it still gets talked about occasionally even. It must have been a killer match. I don’t doubt it. BPP was still good in the ring until the broken foot. 

I also agree that heel Austin was good once they got over the initial let down. The Benoit feud in particularly was killer. I don’t quite remember how that ended because my life changed somewhere in the middle of it then I don’t think I watched Raw again until Bret Hart came back. 

[Cobra Commander]

the summer of 2000 was just before I entered high school and for some reason, that was also the summer where I ended up having a rotating sleep cycle for a few weeks of going to sleep/getting up at slightly different hours of the day.. so I think I ended up either waking up or falling asleep during a Nitro during that summer.

Sleeping from like noon to 6pm to stay up all night was more entertaining than some weeks of Nitro around that time.

[Zakk_Sabbath]

19 hours ago, Log said:

Honestly, Impact might be the best place right now for a wrestler who you want to see have intriguing matchups. If your favorite is in Impact, you can conceivably see them against talent form every non-WWE wrestler in the world. 

Maybe a bit off topic, but I think at this point, it would strongly behoove Impact to make that particular selling point a bigger part of their identity. If you remember a few months ago, there was talk of merging ROH with NJPW Strong and I liked that idea for the same reason - a weekly, small-scale Forbidden Door-event, or at the very least, something harkening back to the super-indies of the '00s in terms of that all-star feel. Just seems to be a smarter long-term path to continued viability for them, I think. No offense to anyone working there, but I think they could be doing a much, much better job at trying to grab that #3 position in the US - I just very seriously doubt they will be able to re-harness any kind of meaningful buzz at this juncture (QUICK EDIT ABOUT THIS: Didnt they pick up 30K extra Twitch viewers for Omega vs Swann... that never came back?) As it stands today, their level of relevancy is hovering somewhere around being a less-problematic NWA; not great. 

Edited March 20, 2023 by Zakk_Sabbath

[Go2Sleep]

On 3/17/2023 at 10:18 PM, GuerrillaMonsoon said:

I'll throw up a topic for debate.

Best matches of guys who had a clearly established formula they did most nights that broke that mould.

Bret, Flair, later Shawn, Cena, Hogan, the Bucks, suplex city Lesnar..?

The mold breaking matches always tend to be among a wrestler's best, but I think the spirit of the question is when both wrestlers involved deviate from their structure. Bret/Austin at Mania 13 is one of the best matches ever. It's a big deviation from Bret's baseline, but not really outside of what would become Austin's baseline for his attitude run. Flair/Foley I Quit at Summer Slam 06 is gritty and viscerally hate-filled in a way that few matches are. It was incredible to see Flair venture into those waters at the stage of his career where he definitely didn't have to, but it wasn't out of the norm for Foley.

Combining the names on the list is where you find the hidden gems.

Bret vs. Shawn at Survivor Series 97: The Bret/Shawn Iron Man is exactly what you would've expected from those two in the mid 90s. While the Survivor Series match is mostly known for the finish, it's a lot of fun to see these two working a distinctly attitude style main event instead of a golden generation one. Lots of brawling, strike-based offense, no real dead time. Just two guys who hated each other slugging it out until the best fuck finish of all time.

Flair vs. Hogan at Superbrawl 99: Their BATB 94 match was a perfect blend of their routines, but much like Bret/Shawn, it was really fun to watch these two just fight like they meant it instead of milking every second for the ideal crowd reaction. This was the at the start of WCW's free fall, so one could be forgiven for missing it (and yeah, it does end with David turning on Ric using a taser while both guys are tied up in a figure 4), but this is definitely worth 10 minutes of your time.

Shawn vs. Cena at Mania 23: HHH tearing his quad again and avoiding the planned triple threat was a blessing in disguise. Shawn got to work as a crafty overmatched vet instead of a standard WWE face who takes a bunch of moves then goes straight to his signature spots. Cena got to work as dominant champion instead of a fighting spirit WWE "face." Really smart match that flies under the radar as one of the top career matches for either (granted both have so many to choose from).

Matt Hardy vs. Edge at Summer Slam 05: Not guys on the list, or with a distinct formula per se, but they were both very much pure WWE style guys in 2005. Here in the wake of the affair, though, these two brought it for the grittiest most violent 5 minutes of their careers. Nothing cheesy or over done, they just both acted like they wanted to kill each other and it's my #1 sub 5-minute match, and I would think rather easily the best non-gimmick match of either of their careers.

Edited March 20, 2023 by Go2Sleep

[clintthecrippler]

My favorite Adam Cole match in WWE was when him and Pat McAfee finally had their one-on-one because it forced Cole out of his "30 minutes of even-steven and 2.9 kickouts" formula and both competitors looked like absolute stars. 

Edited March 21, 2023 by clintthecrippler