SirSmUgly Posted February 8, 2019 Share Posted February 8, 2019 Can you believe that Liger wrestled Tyler Breeze in a WWE-affiliated ring in 2015? That was probably the harbinger that shit was about to get weird in our reality, honestly. Liger wrestled Tyler Breeze in NXT, and the Cubs won the World Series next year. There obviously was a glitch in the fucking matrix. 8 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
quackhell Posted February 8, 2019 Share Posted February 8, 2019 Muta and Liger for sure blew my mind as a young fan. Seeing the SSP for the first time in a time in a WCW hype package I was just "wtf was that?!!!" That would usher in the heavy Japanese workrate snob phase of my fandom for better or worse. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SirSmUgly Posted February 8, 2019 Share Posted February 8, 2019 Though honestly, since this was pre-internet and I couldn't just go YouTube up lucha or NJPW juniors matches, I was still even deeply impressed by Marc Mero's mediocre SSP in 1996 because they were just so rare in the United States, at least in the big two companies. Going back to early '90s WCW, I'm convinced that 2 Cold Scorpio is one of the best guys ever never to get a sustained top-level push. I thought Scorp was just the coolest as a kid. He was also very, very good. He was way over in my household, at least. '92-'93 WCW should have done more with him. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
odessasteps Posted February 8, 2019 Share Posted February 8, 2019 My watching wrestling had dipped in college but discovering the Observer and Liger revived it. And then we got to see him live in Baltimore during that holiday tour vs Pillman. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Craig H Posted February 8, 2019 Share Posted February 8, 2019 Oh yeah, Muta and Liger were two others that blew me away, but I didn't watch as much WCW around that time. Even still, I painted the face of one of my GI Joes to look like Muta and then I would use the GI Joes to try to figure out how Liger or Blue Blazer did their moves. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LoneWolf&Subs Posted February 8, 2019 Share Posted February 8, 2019 Owen's condescending catchphrase "My brother, Bret" never ceases to make me laugh. It was even better when Bret turned heel, and formed the New Hart Foundation that he started to do it sincerely in a cheesy way now that they were back on the same side. 4 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SirSmUgly Posted February 8, 2019 Share Posted February 8, 2019 My favorite thing about Muta was that he was one of those wrestlers whom I totally believed was a killer. My parents had, since the beginnings of my fandom, let me know that it was a pre-meditated performance ("fake," in the parlance of the day), but when I saw Muta come out and carry the J-Tex Corp's sorry asses on his back, I actually believed that the dude could probably dismantle anyone in real life. Like, when he started to lose quite a lot to the tippy-top guys, particularly toward the end of his first run there, I definitely remember thinking that it was obvious that wrestling was fake because Muta would probably kill Sting or Flair in a real fight. He had that aura. It's a rare thing. 7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Overly Critical Man Posted February 8, 2019 Share Posted February 8, 2019 1 hour ago, LoneWolf&Subs said: Well Masters was getting good near the end of his WWE run, so if he still had that fire, then sure. It’s that I just remember someone here suggesting Masters was better than Owen Hart in any point in Owen’s career. I’m glad you weren’t here for the “LayCool are a better duo than Arn and Flair” talk. 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eivion Posted February 8, 2019 Share Posted February 8, 2019 Just now, Overly Critical Man said: I’m glad you weren’t here for the “LayCool are a better duo than Arn and Flair” talk. I don't recall that ever. Same with the Masters better than Owen talk. I remember Mark Henry better than HBK. The other two feel like someone picking up on someone making a crazy statement once or twice that was promptly ignored by everyone else. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Stefanie Without Stefanie Posted February 8, 2019 Share Posted February 8, 2019 44 minutes ago, Smelly McUgly said: Going back to early '90s WCW, I'm convinced that 2 Cold Scorpio is one of the best guys ever never to get a sustained top-level push. I thought Scorp was just the coolest as a kid. He was also very, very good. He was way over in my household, at least. '92-'93 WCW should have done more with him. My dream match using the late-1992 WCW roster would've been 2 Cold Scorpio vs. Brad Armstrong. A million billion stars. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kang Posted February 8, 2019 Share Posted February 8, 2019 (edited) From wrestling inc "Cleveland area lists the following matches for the WWE Fastlane pay-per-view:" Spoiler * Samoa Joe vs. AJ Styles vs. WWE Champion Daniel Bryan * Finn Balor vs. WWE Intercontinental Champion Bobby Lashley * Becky Lynch vs. Charlotte Flair Edited February 11, 2019 by Dolfan in NYC Spoilers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Craig H Posted February 8, 2019 Share Posted February 8, 2019 Cool spoilers. THANKS. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt D Posted February 8, 2019 Share Posted February 8, 2019 59 minutes ago, Eivion said: I don't recall that ever. Same with the Masters better than Owen talk. I remember Mark Henry better than HBK. The other two feel like someone picking up on someone making a crazy statement once or twice that was promptly ignored by everyone else. Screw you all. I kind of want to give the Owen/Masters thing some thought. You'd probably have to cherry pick a certain Owen era to make it work though. I really didn't like the Blue Blazer tryout match from the WWE Unreleased DVD for instance, and I think that was sort of indicative of a lot of Owen's work around then. Just because you can do a lot of stuff doesn't mean you should. But we'd be talking Masters' best and Owen's most egregious. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SirSmUgly Posted February 8, 2019 Share Posted February 8, 2019 7 minutes ago, Matt D said: Screw you all. I kind of want to give the Owen/Masters thing some thought. You'd probably have to cherry pick a certain Owen era to make it work though. I really didn't like the Blue Blazer tryout match from the WWE Unreleased DVD for instance, and I think that was sort of indicative of a lot of Owen's work around then. Just because you can do a lot of stuff doesn't mean you should. But we'd be talking Masters' best and Owen's most egregious. I knew that the Owen vs. Masters post would bring out MattD! These sorts of thought experiments are the MattD version of the Batsignal. Per the statement that I bolded, can we just call this "The Ric Flair Corollary" for shorthand? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AxB Posted February 8, 2019 Share Posted February 8, 2019 By a certain metric, Masters could be seen as... not necessarily better than Owen, but possibly he'd be a higher draft pick. Tall handsome heavyweight with an A+ physique, and he can sell ice to an Eskimo. Owen, not to disrespect the guy, but he was always more valuable in the context of being Bret's brother. In his WCW & NJPW (and Tri-State) days, he was a good light heavyweight wrestler who wrestled wrestling matches. Also, he dogged it on house shows for no good reason. Well, he had a good reason, him and Bret used to not try if the cameras weren't there because they didn't want to end up like Dynamite ended up. But still, you buy a ticket to see him at a house show because you love his athletic moves, and he decides to have a lazy comedy match instead. But y'know, devil's advocate. If they had any common opponents, I reckon most likely Owen would have got a better match out of them than Masters would. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SirSmUgly Posted February 8, 2019 Share Posted February 8, 2019 I liked Owen's juniors stuff in context, at least from what I saw. In WWF, he worked a few different styles that I don't think make for "epic WWE-style match," and he never had many chances to do that anyway, but what he did do was excellent. I'd disagree with @AxB in his assertion that Owen worked "lazy comedy matches," as I don't think that comedy is at all easy to do or to pull off. It's not like Bret, who sort of just dogged it in regular matches. Owen at least worked effective comedy matches (and I've seen one in person and enjoyed it) to replace the more hard-hitting matches that he'd have on TV or PPV. With respect, I think calling those matches "lazy" is sort of unfair to good comedy-match wrestling. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sydneybrown Posted February 8, 2019 Share Posted February 8, 2019 2 hours ago, Craig H said: I don't know if anyone actually said that Masters was better than Owen, but for a short while there were a bunch of people who made it seem like Masters was some kind of elite level talent. Oh, I ABSOLUTELY remember the Masters/Owen remark because I called out whoever it was who said it right when they said it. You don't see it as much but back in the day there was definitely a tendency for people to try to one-up their appreciation for someone under-appreciated until it manifested itself up in some bizarre over-the-top fandom. That's how we ended up with "Dustin Rhodes had 50 matches better than HHH's best match" and "Bill Dundee was a bigger star than Kurt Angle." 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SirSmUgly Posted February 8, 2019 Share Posted February 8, 2019 8 minutes ago, sydneybrown said: That's how we ended up with "Dustin Rhodes had 50 matches better than HHH's best match" Gonna have to stop you there. I think he might have done so. EDIT: This feels like a project. How many Dustin Rhodes matches can I review and identify as better than DVDVR's consensus best HHH match? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kang Posted February 8, 2019 Share Posted February 8, 2019 I wish WWE would freeze their main rosters for 5 years. Only letting NXT guys change or move up to those brands. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sydneybrown Posted February 8, 2019 Share Posted February 8, 2019 6 minutes ago, Smelly McUgly said: EDIT: This feels like a project. How many Dustin Rhodes matches can I review and identify as better than DVDVR's consensus best HHH match? Can't tell if serious. You know this site already did that, right? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SirSmUgly Posted February 8, 2019 Share Posted February 8, 2019 1 minute ago, sydneybrown said: Can't tell if serious. You know this site already did that, right? I remember lots of HHH review threads, but I don't remember that one specifically. Welp, now's the time to hit the search engine on this site! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AxB Posted February 9, 2019 Share Posted February 9, 2019 50 minutes ago, D.Z said: I wish WWE would freeze their main rosters for 5 years. Only letting NXT guys change or move up to those brands. I wish all Pro-Wrestling was run like the Indian Premier League, and every roster was wiped annually, and they would do a full draft every year. Imagine the NFL draft, only you could draft any NFL player instead of just the rookie class. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt D Posted February 9, 2019 Share Posted February 9, 2019 1. This whole message board thing works a hell of a lot better when we don't question each other's motives but take people at face value. We're all a lot older than we used to be (well, not Casey), and most of us have grown out of that sort of thing ages ago. 2. Conventional Wisdom is bullshit. So are twenty year old memories. If someone can back up what they're saying with evidence or explanation, more power to them. If someone shoots them down after doing so just because it goes against what people have always thought, then it's pretty easy to see who the bad guy in that scenario is. 3. We come from a pretty monolithic analytical tradition. Workrate is king. It's the be all end all, with stiffness a far off second and other things like selling and character work and storytelling way down the list. This is the Meltzerian ideal (a backlash to a lot of less-is-more/crowd manipulation elements now taken for granted), which was bastardized further by Scott Keith and his ilk. This place was something of a deviation from that, a different school of thought or a number of such, but we're still stuck, decades later, in this first, singular mentality. It's gotten to the point where it heavily shapes wrestling and wrestlers themselves, a snake eating its own tail. 4. One of the more interesting discussions I've seen in the past few years is that very few of us argue about wrestlers or matches, but that we're instead arguing about styles. I'd shift that slightly and say that we're arguing about skills and which we value more, and then who is superior within those skills we value the most. In this example, the value to 2010 era Masters is his selling, his working from underneath despite his gimmick, and his ability to create valuable moments and enjoyable story-driven matches while banished to C-shows in front of crowds who aren't there to see him. Those are not the same sort of skills that a guy like Owen would be recognized for through most of his career (with the exception of working from underneath though I'd put that into question as a given). With Owen you'd be much more apt to talk about the dynamism and crisp execution and bumping and later on, absolutely, the heel mannerisms. But Owen was a made man in the fan community long before he expressed those. You're basically comparing apples and oranges and we're all stuck in a tradition where people value oranges way more than apples, something that people rarely even ever question. 17 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
clintthecrippler Posted February 9, 2019 Share Posted February 9, 2019 2 hours ago, AxB said: Also, he dogged it on house shows for no good reason. Well, he had a good reason, him and Bret used to not try if the cameras weren't there because they didn't want to end up like Dynamite ended up. I keep seeing "dogged it on house shows" as a reason to discredit a lot of WWF wrestlers from the '80s and '90s, but I never see any counter points of guys who DIDN'T dog it at house shows. Given the schedule they ran back in those days and the uneven travel and routing of the time, I would be stunned if there were more than a few folks that didn't dial it back on house shows. Is there evidence that Randy Savage was busting out the top rope axehandle to the floor every night whether he was in MSG or at the Scranton Catholic Youth Center? While there does seem to be enough anecdotal evidence that JCP guys were running it hard consistently in the 85/86/87 days, are there any WWF guys that were known for putting on lost classics only seen by house show crowds outside of maybe the biggest cities in the loop? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LoneWolf&Subs Posted February 9, 2019 Share Posted February 9, 2019 4 hours ago, sydneybrown said: "Dustin Rhodes had 50 matches better than HHH's best match" I wouldn’t say 50, but that isn’t that far off from the truth. Hell Hunter’s last good/great singles match was the one he had with Goldust during the Authority Vs. Rhodes Dynasty feud. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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