July 2023 Wrestling Discussion

[Cobra Commander]

gimmick names that would probably cause Tony Atlas to ask for a paycheck:

"Senor USA" Antonio Atlas

(Tony Atlas' real name being Anthony White)

Now, Senor USA probably shouldn't have an on-air foot fetish even if Tony Atlas is public about that

[Curt McGirt]

It was really funny on I believe Dark Side of the Ring (what was it? Snuka?) where Tony was on there and admitted that in an anecdote. I was like "well, guess it wasn't a secret".

[worldcupfever]

29 minutes ago, Curt McGirt said:

It was really funny on I believe Dark Side of the Ring (what was it? Snuka?) where Tony was on there and admitted that in an anecdote. I was like "well, guess it wasn't a secret".

He definitely mentioned it on the JYD episode when he was talking about the parties with their patrons.

[The Natural]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yWpONrrg8I0&pp=ygUDV3dl

Rise of Jey Uso.

[StretchMediatedHypertrophy]

On 7/18/2023 at 4:39 PM, AxB said:

He’s not that old or useless, is he?

Magnus sucks.

I mean seriously, yeah ok he's a solid promo, and admittedly he fit the role of NWA Champion like a glove - but did he actually have any good matches like...ever?

If he'd ended up in Japan regularly, or hell even WWE..then yeah maybe he would have got better. But is anyone seriously going to point to even 3 Aldis matches worth going back and watching? I'm all for contrarian DVDVR board 'x was/is actually good' reappraisals, but it feels like Aldis is getting a pass on sucking because he was a better NWA Champ than Tyrus or something.

Probably the highpoint of his career was tagging with Samoa Joe, and some team should steal the snapmare-elbow spot, but that was only 3 months iirc. Let's face it, the moment he became TNA Champion was...well hard to call anything in TNA a nadir really....but it still feels like a Top 5 lowpoint for the company.
 

 

[Curt McGirt]

Any thoughts on him as a talker? I've seen very little of him and didn't care for the wrestling, but he seemed to be, how to put it -- believable? -- on the mic. 

[porksweats]

2 minutes ago, Curt McGirt said:

Any thoughts on him as a talker? I've seen very little of him and didn't care for the wrestling, but he seemed to be, how to put it -- believable? -- on the mic. 

He talks and conducts himself like a world champion. He can sell me on the old time ideal of a champion for sure.

[John E. Dynamite]

 Nick Aldis vs. IMPACT World Champion Alex Shelley just happened, last week, in a 16-minute PPV main event title match and it was pretty darn good.

[SturmCRF]

I really liked Aldis vs Cody on the original All In, but it had the advantage of being the only traditional, meat and potatoes, old school wrestling match on a show full of mainly flippies. It was a perfect change of pace in the context of that show.

[StretchMediatedHypertrophy]

1 hour ago, John E. Dynamite said:

 Nick Aldis vs. IMPACT World Champion Alex Shelley just happened, last week, in a 16-minute PPV main event title match and it was pretty darn good.

It started well, but the way you put it over I expected them to pay off the arm and leg work more than they did. Aldis going back to the belt in plain sight of the ref made no sense, and none of the nearfalls were convincing. It felt like the finish should have been Shelley breaking him down enough to win with the BCS, but Aldis probably hasn't tapped on a televised event in a long time so didn't feel like doing so here, therefore we got some very hacky belt spots instead.

I may rewatch the Cody match again, but if the best people have to offer is Mags being 'the other guy' in a 'Cody wrestles for his Dad's title in the game-changing 10K attendance show he put together' then that in itself feels like a strong vindication.

Looking at his cagematch list, I am morbidly curious about his match with Davey Richards last year. Lol.

[The Natural]

The greatest wrestling match of all time. What a lovely thing for Steve Austin to gift Bret Hart including the blade.

[DreamBroken]

16 hours ago, SprintingFromAmerica said:

Magnus sucks.

I mean seriously, yeah ok he's a solid promo, and admittedly he fit the role of NWA Champion like a glove - but did he actually have any good matches like...ever?

If he'd ended up in Japan regularly, or hell even WWE..then yeah maybe he would have got better. But is anyone seriously going to point to even 3 Aldis matches worth going back and watching? I'm all for contrarian DVDVR board 'x was/is actually good' reappraisals, but it feels like Aldis is getting a pass on sucking because he was a better NWA Champ than Tyrus or something.

Probably the highpoint of his career was tagging with Samoa Joe, and some team should steal the snapmare-elbow spot, but that was only 3 months iirc. Let's face it, the moment he became TNA Champion was...well hard to call anything in TNA a nadir really....but it still feels like a Top 5 lowpoint for the company.
 

 

My favorite Aldis match is still probably vs. Tim Storm from the first episode of Powerrr in 2019.  I recall really enjoying that as they had a story, history to play off of, emotion, and Tim Storm rules.

Agreed on the tag with Joe being really good also. 

[StretchMediatedHypertrophy]

17 hours ago, SturmCRF said:

I really liked Aldis vs Cody on the original All In, but it had the advantage of being the only traditional, meat and potatoes, old school wrestling match on a show full of mainly flippies. It was a perfect change of pace in the context of that show.

It's really not all that good on rewatch, & to me it's another bad finish - why is Aldis doing a sunset flip like he's Bret Hart?

Though I mean seriously, watch Hart-Bulldog do that spot and then watch Aldis-Cody do it. It's not good. He's a cosplay old-school wrestler basically.

[The Natural]

5 minutes ago, SprintingFromAmerica said:

It's really not all that good on rewatch, & to me it's another bad finish - why is Aldis doing a sunset flip like he's Bret Hart?

Though I mean seriously, watch Hart-Bulldog do that spot and then watch Aldis-Cody do it. It's not good. He's a cosplay old-school wrestler basically.

Excellence of Execution was such a fitting name for Bret Hart. Flawless.

[Octopus]

Ugh, I’m gonna be sappy and cheesy for a sec. 
God bless Tony Khan. He’s easy to joke about and can be overly defensive on twitter, etc. But the wrestling landscape is so much better now because of his (and his partners) goal to start a wrestling company. I find the product of AEW exciting and I really enjoy a lot of the talent they employ. I haven’t yet, but I’m excited to dig through the Honor Club (finally canceled my Criterion Channel subscription to justify it) and rewatch some of my favorite matches. Having competition is great for wrestlers to bargain for better wages. Even if you don’t like what AEW does, WWE has stepped up and is doing some of their best television and feuds in response. 
Pre-Tony I was so down on mainstream wrestling. Now I’m just so happy to be a wrestling fan. We had a PPV where Suzuki was getting a pop. That’s insane. I see blood on tv. Jake the Snake! Even with the Brawl Out mess and the possible refusal of a match, it’s so far leading to a whole different show that is presented differently that I absolutely love. 
Good stuff. 

[Shartnado]

19 hours ago, Curt McGirt said:

Any thoughts on him as a talker? I've seen very little of him and didn't care for the wrestling, but he seemed to be, how to put it -- believable? -- on the mic. 

He always sounds rather sincere, regardless of whether you agree with what he is saying, or not!

[twiztor]

11 hours ago, Octopus said:

Ugh, I’m gonna be sappy and cheesy for a sec. 
God bless Tony Khan. He’s easy to joke about and can be overly defensive on twitter, etc. But the wrestling landscape is so much better now because of his (and his partners) goal to start a wrestling company. I find the product of AEW exciting and I really enjoy a lot of the talent they employ. I haven’t yet, but I’m excited to dig through the Honor Club (finally canceled my Criterion Channel subscription to justify it) and rewatch some of my favorite matches. Having competition is great for wrestlers to bargain for better wages. Even if you don’t like what AEW does, WWE has stepped up and is doing some of their best television and feuds in response. 
Pre-Tony I was so down on mainstream wrestling. Now I’m just so happy to be a wrestling fan. We had a PPV where Suzuki was getting a pop. That’s insane. I see blood on tv. Jake the Snake! Even with the Brawl Out mess and the possible refusal of a match, it’s so far leading to a whole different show that is presented differently that I absolutely love. 
Good stuff. 

man, what's crazy is that you can pick any random episode of Dynamite from it's 4 year history, and there's some crazy matchup on it. THIS will be the tv show that people look back to years from now like "can you believe we got X vs Y on free tv?"

Dynamite is a wrestling show that is focused on wrestling. that shouldn't be a novel concept, and yet, it seems like it is. ::shrug::

[Goitre]

Aldis is an actor and sees wrestling as an acting gig. I once wrestled a TV-extra and he was basically in wrestling to pad out his acting resume; no interest in the sport at all.

[Ziggy]

14 hours ago, SprintingFromAmerica said:

It's really not all that good on rewatch, & to me it's another bad finish - why is Aldis doing a sunset flip like he's Bret Hart?

Though I mean seriously, watch Hart-Bulldog do that spot and then watch Aldis-Cody do it. It's not good. He's a cosplay old-school wrestler basically.

What's your opinion on Punk doing Bret tribute spots ? You think it takes away from his matches. Punk has never been the most crisp in execution of moves and such. He moves he does pretty well but especially when he does other people's moves it really stands out how much better the originator of that move/spot is. The top rope elbow is slopy looking but it doesn't bother me because I know he’s doing it a tribute to Savage. As for doing Brets stuff on one hand I love that Punk and FTR are so open about playing tribute to Bret in some of the things they do in the ring. It's like they are dedicating their whole career to Bret, but Bret is one of those guys that he was so flawless in his execution it makes anyone who does certain of his stuff look like they shouldn't be doing the at all. FTR are really good the way they do Brets stuff and them being a team it makes it cooler. More importantly though I hope more people take more things from Brets work not just his spots. He approach to match structure, believability , attention to detail and nuances. I'm a huge fan of Shawn Michaels in ring work but there's too many people that take stuff from him even long before he retired and now you have him training people in developmental directly. That's definitely not a bad thing but there was so much more Bret was good at from an inring perspective than Shawn. As time goes on and people go further and further with the crazy moves and spots, alot of Brets approach to wrestling with be needed. I often think to my self, if that Montreal screwjob didn't happen. Bret would have been the one running developmental like Hunter and Shawn is now and had a more direct influence on current wrestling. Even if he never go his career cut short and he got to be active in the ring much longer he would have had a more direct influence just by proxy of working so many people, especially coming out of the Ruthless Aggression era.

The Natural was just talking about how flawless Bret is and how fitting the Excellence of Execution monitor is. I just see a post on my Instagram timeline of a reel of clips Brets punches. His punches looked so snug and crisp because he laid them in.

[StretchMediatedHypertrophy]

I suspected Punk's tribute spots would get brought up, but tbh it doesn't bother me so much because Punk has hardly ever won matches with the elbow, nor do I recall a big match ever really being built around it. See also The Rock's crappy Sharpshooter. Whereas many of Aldis' matches pivot around things he can't, or chooses not to, do well.

 

[Dog]

27 minutes ago, SprintingFromAmerica said:

Whereas many of Aldis' matches pivot around things he can't, or chooses not to, do well.

This describes Punk's entire career. 

[StretchMediatedHypertrophy]

I mean his GTS isn't as good as KENTA's or his Anaconda Vice as good as Tenzan's but I think they are ok. 

I mean if someone wants to make comparisons between current-day 'Mid-Atlantic Tribute Act' Punk and whatever Magnus thinks he is, then cool I don't really care to watch Punk thesedays anyway. Though I saw some of Punk-Starks match and think the finish looked pretty smooth actually, infact I watched it in slo-mo and it's definitely slick (I'd probably give much of the credit to Ricky, and the ref arguably counts prematurely on the two preceding nearfalls, but Punk was fine there). 

Noone actually thinks Aldis is better than Punk surely?

[SirSmUgly]

I'd rather watch Aldis cosplay Ric Flair in a promo (except without the mic skills of Flair, obviously) than watch Punk do worked-shoot bullshit or whatever.

I'm not sure Punk has ever been that good, but he does have a better catalog of matches than Aldis, for sure. Aldis is acceptable. He's 2002 HHH, roughly. Punk is a guy who I have zero time for in the ring, but he's probably having better matches with Danielson or Cena than Aldis would, so I give the slight edge to him there. 

[John E. Dynamite]

Modern Punk fluctuates whiplash-hard between a guy who does good, simple work for the right reasons and a guy who is BEGGING you to applaud the fact that he is doing good, simple work for the right reasons.

[Casey]

52 minutes ago, SirSmUgly said:

Aldis is acceptable. He's 2002 HHH, roughly.

2002 Triple H is nowhere near acceptable, IMO. I've watched that year in the last month or two, and the only thing I can remember liking is the Michaels match at SummerSlam.

Unrelated but I'm about to enter 2003 WWE and god help me. It's really a chore to watch RAW around that time, and Smackdown is getting close to that territory, but both shows still have their bright spots at this time. Jericho/Michaels and Brock/Angle are starting up, and the tag title scene on Smackdown is barren but fun, but then you also have bullshit like Steiner/Triple H and the I'm pretty sure Nathan Jones' debut is right around the corner.

I also experienced Katie Vick for the first time since it originally aired and I'm still just absolutely flabbergasted that it was approved to be on TV.