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2 hours ago, SirSmUgly said:

Or you could just give me a lucha tag and spare me. 😅

That is actually something I was thinking of, but I couldn't come up with just a traditional tag. I might have to go look at the '80s set lineup for some ideas.

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1 hour ago, Matt D said:

And pick my poison, I’ll take either of those. 

Let's go Death Triangle vs The Elite from Dynamite #169 12/28/22. I don't recall all these matches, but I vaguely remember the 6th being a standout. 
 

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1 minute ago, HarryArchieGus said:

Let's go Death Triangle vs The Elite from Dynamite #169 12/28/22. I don't recall all these matches, but I vaguely remember the 6th being a standout. 
 

Does this mean I get to rewatch a Jumbo vs Bock match instead?

I kid, I kid.

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On 8/4/2024 at 9:19 PM, RazorbladeKiss87 said:

If I'm being honest, the only style I'm not fond of is traditional British wrestling. I have access to the Network and just about any streaming site. How about you? Anything you're interested in or not interested in?

Glad you have access to the Network so I can gift you The Nasty Boyz vs. Cactus Jack/Maxx Payne from WCW Spring Stampede 1994 as it turned 30 this year. Hope you like it. As for me, as long as it isn't F Hulk Hogan, Dailymotion or deathmatches involving shit like syringes, I'm good thank you. If it's a WWE match I should be covered with my DVDs and online. Cheers!

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3 minutes ago, The Natural said:

Glad you have access to the Network so I can gift you The Nasty Boyz vs. Cactus Jack/Maxx Payne from WCW Spring Stampede 1994 as it turned 30 this year. Hope you like it. As for me, as long as it isn't F Hulk Hogan, Dailymotion or deathmatches involving shit like syringes, I'm good thank you. If it's a WWE match I should be covered with my DVDs and online. Cheers!

Oh nice. I'll be watching that tomorrow on my day off. I'm going to have you watch Tiger Mask vs. Eddie Gilbert. 

https://archive.org/details/njpw-the-first-tiger-mask-60fps/The+First+Tiger+Mask/1982.11.25-WWF-Tiger+Mask+VS+Eddie+Gilbert.mp4

That should take you right to the video. Let me know if there's a problem playing it. Enjoy!

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1 minute ago, RazorbladeKiss87 said:

Oh nice. I'll be watching that tomorrow on my day off. I'm going to have you watch Tiger Mask vs. Eddie Gilbert. 

https://archive.org/details/njpw-the-first-tiger-mask-60fps/The+First+Tiger+Mask/1982.11.25-WWF-Tiger+Mask+VS+Eddie+Gilbert.mp4

That should take you right to the video. Let me know if there's a problem playing it. Enjoy!

Thank you. One I've never seen before.

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59 minutes ago, The Natural said:

Glad you have access to the Network so I can gift you The Nasty Boyz vs. Cactus Jack/Maxx Payne from WCW Spring Stampede 1994 as it turned 30 this year. Hope you like it. As for me, as long as it isn't F Hulk Hogan, Dailymotion or deathmatches involving shit like syringes, I'm good thank you. If it's a WWE match I should be covered with my DVDs and online. Cheers!

 

54 minutes ago, RazorbladeKiss87 said:

Oh nice. I'll be watching that tomorrow on my day off. I'm going to have you watch Tiger Mask vs. Eddie Gilbert. 

https://archive.org/details/njpw-the-first-tiger-mask-60fps/The+First+Tiger+Mask/1982.11.25-WWF-Tiger+Mask+VS+Eddie+Gilbert.mp4

That should take you right to the video. Let me know if there's a problem playing it. Enjoy!

 

52 minutes ago, The Natural said:

Thank you. One I've never seen before.

Tiger Mask vs. Eddie Gilbert. WWF, 25th November 1982.

This match reminds you how great Tiger Mask is, the fluidity of his counters. The escape from Gilbert's armbar, going to the mat and two flips out of the hold. It's still used to this day. We get Mask's trademark headlock to hammerlock to drop toe hold. Smiled seeing the spinning leg break. I know Bryan Danielson occasionally used it. More should. Shame the camera misses the Tiger feint kick. Chuckled at Mask using the Tombstone Piledriver. When I think of that move it's him, Kazuchika Okada and most of all The Undertaker. Nice back suplex by Gilbert. Pace picks up. Gilbert suplexes Tiger back into the ring from the apron but Mask gets an inside cradle while both are lying down for the three. Good technical showcase. Thank you for this, RazorbladeKiss87!

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On 8/5/2024 at 5:10 PM, HarryArchieGus said:

Let's go Death Triangle vs The Elite from Dynamite #169 12/28/22. I don't recall all these matches, but I vaguely remember the 6th being a standout. 
 

This was the Falls Count Anywhere match and it's just so, so amazingly far from what I want out of my pro wrestling. Let's say you're writing a novel. In the novel, you think of three or four big moments, cool moments, powerful moments, moments that you think will wow your audience. Then you just do enough of the rest of the book to make sure everything lines up perfectly for those moments. Or a movie. You've got a few amazing setpieces or special effects or fights and it's just a matter of getting to those points and nothing else really means anything. You just have to make sure that nothing else gets in the way of it. That's this match. The connective tissue is meaningless. It's a falls count anywhere brawl but the brawling isn't driven by anything. There's no emotion underlying it. It's all clearly there just to get people in position for big spots. The heart and the soul which is supposed to underpin this stuff is just gone. They miss the idea that a high spot is supposed to be the explosion that comes from the build up of emotion. They just skip all of that part and the spot itself becomes the point, the goal, not instead a means to accomplish a larger emotional goal. The only bit of real emotion in the entire match is PAC at the end when he has the Brutalizer on a Jackson as Omega hits the Angel through a table and gets a pin. The Jackson didn't even tap after the fact which is insane for this scenario! but his frustration after the fact was real emotion. I didn't see anything else. The Elite didn't really show me any extra bit of desperation that they were about to lose the series and the titles. Again, this whole match, even with its big spots, just felt like another stop in the road to get them to the ladder match. That was the high spot they were going for, that match, and this was just some more noise along the way. Were there specific set pieces I liked? Sure. I loved how they started it in the back with the brawling. That first bit of hallway brawling was very good actually. They were contained and there was a chaotic mood to it. When they went up into the stands and Penta grabbed a crutch and used it, that felt organic. Maybe it was a staged crutch but I bought that he just found a crutch and that was a breath of fresh air in the match. And throughout there were specific bits of execution or timing or camera angles that I thought were very well done (let's say PAC breaking things up after the Meltzer Driver on the floor or Omega's V trigger out of nowhere on the stage). Even the endless Northern Lights Suplexes on the ramp. It felt like an accomplishment and an achievement, like it was a video game and he got a bonus Achievement and a little thing popped up in the corner of the screen. You didn't really get the sense he was doing damage to his opponent. One Northern Lights on the ramp, which was then treated as painful and dangerous and a big deal would have meant more than seven that had no real consequence. It was all about the act of doing it, not about it having been done. All about the action, not about the reaction. All about the destination, not the journey, and it's not even really about the destination but about having your phone out and taking a picture of the destination so you can make a gif out of it. It's just a completely backwards approach that misses everything that is beautiful in pro wrestling. 

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On 8/6/2024 at 7:32 AM, The Natural said:

Glad you have access to the Network so I can gift you The Nasty Boyz vs. Cactus Jack/Maxx Payne from WCW Spring Stampede 1994 as it turned 30 this year. Hope you like it. As for me, as long as it isn't F Hulk Hogan, Dailymotion or deathmatches involving shit like syringes, I'm good thank you. If it's a WWE match I should be covered with my DVDs and online. Cheers!

This is extremely my type of match. It's the basic ECW formula but without the down time so common in brawls from that era and today. First though, the bad. WCW production sucks. Missing the first shovel shot, focusing on Knobbs and Maxx when Cactus just splats off the ramp. Switching to split screen (good) that's sized for ants (bad). 

Now, besides that, I LOVE this. Wild brawl with four guys who were game. Brain and Tony are good on the call. I love Tony saying something about not being sure that t shirt will fit Knobbs as Maxx is about to choke him with it. Cactus takes multiple insane bumps. I'd forgotten about that guard rail bump off the Irish whip. Taking multiple shots to the head and back with a heavy table. Falling through a table that can't support two beefy men. Just wild nutty stuff. Great match. 

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6 hours ago, RazorbladeKiss87 said:

This is extremely my type of match. It's the basic ECW formula but without the down time so common in brawls from that era and today. First though, the bad. WCW production sucks. Missing the first shovel shot, focusing on Knobbs and Maxx when Cactus just splats off the ramp. Switching to split screen (good) that's sized for ants (bad). 

Now, besides that, I LOVE this. Wild brawl with four guys who were game. Brain and Tony are good on the call. I love Tony saying something about not being sure that t shirt will fit Knobbs as Maxx is about to choke him with it. Cactus takes multiple insane bumps. I'd forgotten about that guard rail bump off the Irish whip. Taking multiple shots to the head and back with a heavy table. Falling through a table that can't support two beefy men. Just wild nutty stuff. Great match. 

Glad you loved Nasty Boyz vs. Cactus Jack/Maxx Payne from WCW Spring Stampede 1994. I need to watch it again. It'd make my top ten Mick Foley matches. It's also one of the wildest Mick Foley matches and think of the ground that covers. Cheers!

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@HarryArchieGus also, I don’t regret seeing it or you giving it to me. I value the things I value and it was good to watch it and think hard about what I felt how I did. It was a positive exercise for me even if it went to dark places. I appreciate you giving it to me. 

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On 8/4/2024 at 8:54 AM, AxB said:

 

It HAS to be Atsushi Onita vs Terry Funk.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doSM6OIRXME

 

Terry Funk vs. Atsushi Onita

A long time ago, back in college and when I was still learning to be a functional adult, I used the tail end of the Limewire/BearShare/etc. period to watch wrestling from everywhere. This dove-tailed right into the YouTube era, especially once you could post videos ten minutes or longer. I digress. Anyway, I’ve seen this match before back in those days, at least when I had time to sit down and seek out older stuff, including this match, which I’m pretty sure I watched with some friends when we just wanted to drink cheap alcohol and see some nonsense. We went from WWF ladder matches to Japanese deathmatches at some point in these random watches.

At the time, I thought stuff like this was enjoyable in the sense that I found entertainment in it as a spectacle of senseless violence. Whatever happened during the process of learning to be a functional adult changed me once I got to the point that I actually was able to (mostly) fulfill the duties of being one, and I found this sort of violence a little bit gross. It’s bad enough that wrestlers give themselves concussions all the time and the mere act of bumping has long-term consequences; I can hide that at the back of my mind for the most part and enjoy some pro wrestling. But the Nick Gage/Necro Butcher/CZW/light tubes and glass shards stuff maybe was too late in my personal development for me to enjoy.

I say this as a prologue to talking about how I feel about this match now that I’m an older dude. What I think works about this match that is missing from the little deathmatch stuff that I’ve seen since then is that, at its barest level, these guys are clearly trying to win a wrestling match, and it feels like that is the ultimate goal of the proceedings. They struggle over the first contact with the barbed wire and explosives, and Funk makes early covers for two counts. I think deathmatch stuff that’s more modern loses the ability to suspend my disbelief and to make me feel like I’m watching an athletic contest in which the ultimate goal is to win a match. Rather, these matches (and I think increasingly modern pro wrestling in the States, generally) care more about sheer spectacle than anything else. Too many matches offer up amazing spots where guys bleed and do Tsukaharas onto a bunch of guys at ringside and risk their health, but you could take any of the spots out of context of the rest of the match and not miss anything because the bleeding and the diving is the major point. It’s not just the major point, in a lot of cases: It’s the only point.

Funk/Onita is nice enough to remind you that it’s still a wrestling match and that you should enjoy the spectacle of the blood and the spots with explosions, but there are spots that matter that don’t depend on those things, as when Onita and Funk fight and fight and fight over Funk trying to toss Onita forward into the explosive wire, and Onita hits a simple back suplex to barely escape the predicament. There is connective tissue here in between all the stuff for the freaks who want to see these fellas lose a bunch of plasma.

Now, do I think the connective tissue is good enough to make this a match that I actually like in spite of the fact that I don’t much enjoy watching dudes bleed all over one another and slash themselves up? No, I don’t. I’ve come much closer to the belief that wrestling should only look like it hurts more than it should actually hurt, and other than the rare blade job, I just don’t get the value of having guys actually slice themselves to ribbons and risk even greater injury than a worked pro wrestling match typically asks wrestlers to risk – and your typical match makes quite a lot of asks in this regard!

But I do think this is a thoughtfully worked match. I think that Onita taking the first two wire/explosion spots, then fighting desperately to avoid the third and escaping with a back suplex before winning another struggle and sending Funk into the wire and the explosion was pretty great. The rule of threes is a trustworthy trope in almost any form of art.

I also loved that when the timer hit five minutes on the exploding ring, Funk and Onita panicked, as one does when a claxon hits and danger is imminent, and started throwing wild fists at one another trying to get out of dodge before the ring goes up in smoke. Funk going to the spinning toe hold as his death move so that he can get outta there with a win, but being kicked back into the wire, which leads directly to him stumbling back into a DDT for the loss, is a nice initial finish to the match. It’d even be easy to let down your guard a bit and think, Well, Onita’s safe. Good for him, he got the win in time. Funk being a petulant loser who would rather stick around and take an explosion along with Onita rather than simply take the L and save his own health is a nice escalation to things.

Even then, Onita’s able to fight Funk off when Funk is diverted by attacking the ref, but it’s as if he also loses himself in the bloodlust and really goes to town on Funk, and it’s as if that last gasp has taken it all out of him and, as the timer hits a minute and the klaxon is joined by the irritating whine of a siren, Onita is basically Samus at the end of Metroid. He makes it out of the ring, but then he realizes that he has to go save the last Metroid and bring it back into captivity so the Galactic Federation can make a vaccine with it get Funk out of there before it’s too late, and he sacrifices himself to go back and try and save Funk. He doesn’t drag Funk away in time, but he covers Funk, the ring explodes, and this is truly a modern WWE-style way to conclude this match. Heavy on spectacle in both its spots and its soap operatics (I’ve decided that this is now a new term that I've created), playing up the respect these warriors ultimately have for one another even as they have their own internal issues springing from the story that AxB laid out, meant to very overtly make you feel the emotion that the wrestlers are begging you to feel.

This was more WWE than CZW, ultimately, and in some ways it mixed the things I like least about both of them together – wrestlers injuring one another for real on purpose + FEEL THE EMOTION-style spots and facial expressions to try and enhance the match story. This means that while I didn’t like it much, I did respect what it was trying to do, and it certainly did those things very well. Twenty years ago, I would have loved the spectacle, but now, I prefer my tightly-woven stories with less spectacle, both in terms of the spots and bumps as well as in the presentation of the overarching narrative.

 
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On 8/4/2024 at 7:16 PM, SirSmUgly said:

I'll just go ahead and shoot you a match that gets forgotten, I think, and is even better than the PPV match they had that doesn't ever get forgotten: DDP vs. Goldberg on 4/19/99. I was delighted when I saw this match a few weeks ago, and it's shorter than the even better DDP/Sting match on the following Nitro while still being pretty fun. 

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xdmmjh

Skip to about five minutes in for the entrances. 

So, fr the WCW World Heavyweight Championship, Bill Goldberg vs DDP (c). I'm not sure if this is face vs face or if DDP is playing tweener here... he doesn't appear to be a heel exactly. Goldberg challenged him and he said no, but then changed his mind immediately after some very mild taunting.

Now populat myth says Goldberg's popularity was thanks to The Streak and once that was over, he was greatly diminished and the fans never got behind him again. Watching just the entrances here, that's proved to be not the case. They are going flipping mental!

They shove the ref down to start... there's a Fit Finlay house show spot where he backs the ref off to begin with and lets him know to stay out of things. This was a broader, louder version of that. Early on, DDP is doing a lot of "This guy is overpoweringly strong" flopping around.  Goldberg gets a cross armbreaker, which appears to be not over at all as a realistic submission, and DDP frantically scrambles to get his feet on the ropes, and immediately stops selling the hold (while it's still applied) because a rope break is supposed to happen soon. So that's a nitpick.

Miscommunication into the shoulder block, and DDP knocks Goldberg down. So his indestructable superhuman period has ended, and he's wrestling a bit more 50/50 by 99. And then he hits the short spear out of nowhere. DDP gets back in control with a tights pull into the turbbuckle, swinging neckbreaker and a Belly to Belly, to set up a grounded front facelock. Front Chancery Suplex from Goldberg, and there's a move more people should do. We're a few minutes into this, and neither guy has run out of moves at all. Side slam reversed into a Flying Headscissors? That was unexpected. Goldberg does seem to have the same issue Roman Reigns does, where all of his moves are either running moves, or set up by him Irish Whipping his opponent. Only his moveset in this match is huge compared to the Two Moves o'Doom style that has conquered WWE post-Suplex City.

Goldberg goes for The Spear and DDP blocks it by holding the ref in front of him. Page rolls out of the ring, Goldberg brings him in the hard way with a Jackhammer, no ref. Now I know what happens next is a foundational text of American wrestling, but I never understood it. If you know the ref is down and you're planning on hitting your finish, why didn't you revive him first and then hit your big move? It would give you a far greater chance of winning! Alternatively, if you've got a finishing move applied (especially if it's a submission) and the ref is down, why release the hold to revive the ref, when you could just hold on to it? Like if they're tapping out due to the pain, just keep cranking it until the ref wakes up by himself (or another one shows up) and you'll win. Letting them out to wake the referee up is the stupidest possible option.

Anyway, back to the match. DDP blindsides Goldberg, throws him out of the ring, ground and pounds him a bunch, then puts his leg on the ringsteps and hits them with a chair a bunch of times. Then lifts the chair up so the ref on the apron can grab it (only he's out of position so he just stands there awkwardly for a bit before hitting him again). Eventually, they get their "Referee pulled off the apron and into the guard rail" spot. DDP sets up the figure four around the ringpost, and Kevin Nash runs in and... attacks DDP. I'm sure this was shocking and inconceivable at the time or something. Nash saved Goldberg, that is unbelievable apparently. DDP hits Nash with the belt and the show abruptly ends right there. So I'm guessing it was a DQ or something.

The actual match, that was a ton of fun. Both guys were probably pretty close to their peaks in terms of the "athletic decline due to age/ Wrestling improvement due to experience" sliding dual scale. The crowd was hot for everything they did, and it was a nice, solid, fast paced hard hitting match. The finish of the match, eh. 1999 WCW. They have ways of making you think "Well, that was fun but ultimately pointless".

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I know moribund hasn't reviewed it yet but I'm watching it and I can't wait to give my opinion about Rude/Chono. 

Spoiler

It's crazy how good this is. Rude just taking off his robe (and calling the audience "nips", Jesus fucking Christ) gets so much heat. At this point -- and this is around the time Steamboat was having his classics with Flair, and also had Rude's legendary Iron Man match with Steamer -- he might've been the best US heel. His facial reactions, his selling, his animosity are just next-level. If you can outdo Flair, you're on the top of... well, Space Mountain? And Chono at this point was one hell of a great US Pro Style babyface wrestler. Hold after hold after hold. It also feels sadly like a dream deferred because both of these guys ended up with horrible neck injuries that almost entirely ended Rude's career not five months later and turned Chono into the Man of A Thousand Yakuza Kicks. The irony is double when Rude busts out both TWO incredible piledrivers and a perfect DDT that you believe would have done what Steve Austin did instead. Looking it up, it's a shame Rick never went to Puerto Rico because I can only imagine him getting together with Chicky Starr as a Spanish mouthpiece and them having loaded diapers thrown at them. Also of note is the lineup at ringside: Hash, Fujinami, Choshu, Mutoh (looking for all the world like a young Martin Sheen), Madusa crying in frustration, and in the crowd Inoki, Dusty (?!) and Bill Watts, who I guess got a plane ticket just because the NWA belt was on the line. The crowd pops for everything including the most basic stuff like back bodydrops. It's so different from stuff today, and so cool. 

 

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On 8/7/2024 at 7:15 AM, Matt D said:

One Northern Lights on the ramp, which was then treated as painful and dangerous and a big deal would have meant more than seven that had no real consequence. It was all about the act of doing it, not about it having been done. All about the action, not about the reaction. All about the destination, not the journey, and it's not even really about the destination but about having your phone out and taking a picture of the destination so you can make a gif out of it. It's just a completely backwards approach that misses everything that is beautiful in pro wrestling. 

I highly recommend you watch Chono/Rude. 

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On 8/5/2024 at 12:56 PM, Curt McGirt said:

That is actually something I was thinking of, but I couldn't come up with just a traditional tag. I might have to go look at the '80s set lineup for some ideas.

So, I watched quite a bit of '70s and early '80s AJPW recently, and I have some definite opinions about Giant Baba. I'm picking a match that I don't think is great or anything, but it is a match that helped me form a lot of those opinions: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dePUrYgakc0&list=PLTP0s7JwUsGxCKXdAoFWFwpnUnHrrsfe9&index=33

Giant Baba and the Destroyer vs. Karl Kox and Dick Slater. 

If that's too long for you, I have another Baba match that I think I want to show you. 

 

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Oh my, Baba and Dick versus Nise Terry Funk and Kox, yeah boy that is right up my alley. What's the other one, incidentally? 

I looked at the '80s lucha set and picked one of the closest tags to the top for you, and I'm gonna let this be a blind pick until you watch it (I've seen it but it's been years and I don't know where I put it on my list). 

El Dandy/El Satanico vs MS-1/Masakre (CMLL August 11th, 1989)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWOuQbtFQ4k

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2 hours ago, Curt McGirt said:

Oh my, Baba and Dick versus Nise Terry Funk and Kox, yeah boy that is right up my alley. What's the other one, incidentally? 

There was a Sheik/Baba match in one of the 70s AJPW playlists on YouTube that I would have picked that also supports some of my thoughts about what I think that Baba does really well and what I don't like so much about him that is also shorter.

I prefer Baba in tags by a huge amount, though, and I'd spotlight five or six Baba tags I've seen between YT and Daily Motion before I highlighted one Baba singles match. 

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13 hours ago, Matt D said:

Ok, wasn't the smoothest week 1, but I think we're doing more ok than not. Week 2 then!

@moribund
@HarryArchieGus
-----
@SirSmUgly
@Curt McGirt
-----
@The Natural
@Matt D
-----
@AxB
@RazorbladeKiss87

Get your partner a match, friends.

 

8 hours ago, Matt D said:

@The Natural have you seen the 93 Bret vs Backlund match from the night before KOTR from MSG. It’s a little long but it’s the best Bret match no one’s seen.

If you want something shorter let me know.

I genuinely had a feeling we'd be drawn this week, mate so smiled it came to pass and gifting me a Bret Hart match I've never seen. Thanks, Matt. Anything you want/don't watch? Any sites you use/refuse?

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3 hours ago, The Natural said:

 

I genuinely had a feeling we'd be drawn this week, mate so smiled it came to pass and gifting me a Bret Hart match I've never seen. Thanks, Matt. Anything you want/don't watch? Any sites you use/refuse?

I can find anything there is to find. (Probably). Paul’s Choice.

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