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March 2023 Wrestling Discussion


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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 by Nice Guy Eddie
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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. 

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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.

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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 by Zakk_Sabbath
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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 by Go2Sleep
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37 minutes ago, clintthecrippler said:

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. 

I thought I heard too that they didn't go over much of the match beforehand which is why I'd consider him better than Logan Paul,  not that I'm not impressed by him but the fact that they'd trust him to work on the fly is more impressive to me especially as an outsider

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Did I miss the discussion of WWE workers finally standing up to professional autograph airport stalkers after video got out of Rey being harassed a couple weeks ago?  I keep seeing stories on FB about various talent saying “enough already.” 

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17 minutes ago, odessasteps said:

Did I miss the discussion of WWE workers finally standing up to professional autograph airport stalkers after video got out of Rey being harassed a couple weeks ago?  I keep seeing stories on FB about various talent saying “enough already.” 

Rhea tweeted last week that she had a really bad experience and I guess someone followed her out of the airport, which resulted in a bunch of shitty takes like mark madden saying that’s part of your job and I think that’s what all the back and forth was about. Reasonable people vs psychos. 

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11 minutes ago, matt925 said:

Rhea tweeted last week that she had a really bad experience and I guess someone followed her out of the airport, which resulted in a bunch of shitty takes like mark madden saying that’s part of your job and I think that’s what all the back and forth was about. Reasonable people vs psychos. 

Rhea said she would only sign pictures that are of her and the person so seemingly some neck beard probably asked her to sign his junk or something else just as stupid.

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1 minute ago, matt925 said:

Reasonable people vs psychos. 

That about sums up the last decade on this planet all around, unfortunately. This ought to be used as the new 'Unstoppable Force vs. Immovable Object.'

Once again, the psycho few ruin things for the reasonable many. 

The last few run-ins I've had with current workers, maybe its just my perception, but I felt like I could sense palpable relief that we weren't shoving sharpies and toys and shit in their faces, or following them around or anything. Hell, I was recently on an escalator with Hook and Anthony Bowens, and they both seemed genuinely confused when we got to the bottom and I was like 'Take it easy, fellas' and walked the opposite way - kinda sad, really

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14 minutes ago, FourPostMassacre said:

Rhea said she would only sign pictures that are of her and the person so seemingly some neck beard probably asked her to sign his junk or something else just as stupid.

Nah, I just figured someone was waiting for her with like 10 action figures for her to sign. Obviously a reseller/dealer.

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