SirSmUgly

In two weeks an aging QB that thinks he's a model once again loses a championship game to an elite defense? Is that what you were going to type? Because, you know, that's the probable outcome. EDIT: I'm not serious about that above thing. Should be a good game...even if I have a rooting interest and strongly dislike Tommy Brady.

Just WWE or including NXT? Including NXT, I'd have it like this: 1. Sami Zayn 2. Sasha Banks 3. Tyson Kidd 4. Luke Harper 5. Rusev Just WWE, I'd go: 1. Luke Harper 2. Rusev 3. The Usos (I know, but I put them together as a package deal because it's their work as a tag team that I think was awesome this year) 4. John Cena That's technically five there. I also think Big E and Brock Lesnar were better, but had less volume, so it's hard to argue them versus a guy with the volume that Rollins has. I know people will roll their eyes, but Nikki Bella put together a really good year especially on Superstars and ME, had a very good match with Brie on PPV, and was solid and convincing doing heel work in that feud on the mic and in the ring. She came off as a more convincing heel than Rollins, but that's because she fit the role she was in, and Rollins doesn't fit his role so much to me. Dolph Ziggler is a guy I don't love, but I have to admit that he had a really good year and had awesome matches with Cesaro, Miz, and Luke Harper among others, and was really wonderful in the SurSer 5v5. Cesaro was buried under the ground, but had a ton of good matches and had Sheamus's best non-Goldust matches so far. All those people are people that I think had better all-around years than Rollins.

Yeah, agree to disagree. The Ambrose matches were not good, the Lumberjack match being particularly bad, and his mic work isn't very good either, though then again, it can be hard to tell considering who is writing for him. He's not the most convincing "mastermind" or "schemer" type, though. In my view, he hasn't had a really good match that wasn't a multi-man tag yet, which would be fine except that he's the heel they center the shows around. He might get better at this, and his delivery has improved to some degree since he broke away, but no, the dude has been a channel changer for me. The best thing he's done was the five-on-five Survivor Series match, and I give him credit for performing his role really well in that match, but he hasn't had a singles match above average at this point. We probably just enjoy different things about wrestling, which is cool. As for who had a better year in WWE and excepting NXT-only guys, I don't think anyone has had a higher profile or was harder-pushed than Rollins, but Cena, Luke Harper, Tyson Kidd (if we can mix his WWE work with his NXT work from the year and count him), Rusev, both Usos, and honestly, Nikki Bella all were better all-around performers just off the top of my head.

Rollins is terrible. His offense looks weak besides not fitting his character. He's a pretty dire worker in singles and one of the main reasons that watching RAW is a chore, IMO. I wouldn't mind them putting the gold on Owens coming out of this feud. Zayn doesn't need the title and Owens does, for one.

OT, so I won't linger on this, but he looks stupid selling as if he were dying and using dynamic offense like a babyface when he's supposed to be working a Cerebral Assassin Redux gimmick, at least in my view. If other people can look past it, good for them. I'm not saying he has no heel heat, and he'd better after the way they have so heavily pushed him. I think his work still sucks, though.

Shit, I forgot Bayley. They could print some money with her if they booked her right on the main show. I think Seth Rollins is actually not very good at this point as a singles wrestler (wrestles like a babyface even though he's a heel, no real presence on promos because he seems like he's reciting lines for a play), so if Finn's upside is Rollins, I don't feel great about him.

I don't really get the love for Finn. I've seen him as Devitt, and he wasn't really that entertaining then to me, and pretty much that's how he is now; seems like a guy that does lots of moves, but there's really not much there beyond that. I think his stomp looks awful, too. He DOES look like a guy that has "it" in the way that he jumps off the screen as a star. I don't quite know how to describe it. He looks like way more of a star than Tyler Breeze does, and I like Breeze way better. The thing about Breeze is that he should be taking Marcus Louis as a bodyguard or something. That act is fine as a midcard act where he's the small guy with the big bodyguard. If he gets stronger in the ring or more comfortable as a persona all around, you can do more with him or break him away from that. However, if you look at Breeze, his best matches are with Sami Zayn, which is kinda like having a good match with Bryan in the sense that Zayn right now is so good at EVERYTHING that it's more of an indictment if you don't have a good match with him. What's Breeze's best work after that? He had a solid match with Tyson Kidd IIRC (which, again, Kidd is really fucking good anyway). Then there's not much else there. His squash matches show that he's got pretty shitty, soft offense, and the Beauty Shot doesn't look like a insta-KO the way that they push it as one. I think he does an amazing job with that character, but the ring work doesn't back it up, necessarily. In terms of coming off as a star, though, Zayn is far and away the guy who does that as an all-around talent. That dude should, barring injury, be main-eventing WM at some point in the next decade. Finn looks like a star, but his work in the ring isn't that great. Then, we have a bunch of guys still getting acclimated or who look like they have the ceiling of a strong midcarder, which is no knock on them since the world needs awesome midcarders, but which won't help them in the midcard-averse WWE. I mean this in terms of the men only. On the women's side, Charlotte and Sasha Banks look like can't-miss prospects, and I suspect that Carmella and Alexa Bliss both approach that level as well when they start to get bigger pushes once the former two are gone to RAW. Sara Del Ray is clearly really good at developing wrestlers.

I really don't like Finn's intro. I am in the minority, but he looks like a doofus as far as I'm concerned. The wrestling on this show wasn't great except for Zayn/Neville, which was solid. I was actually excited for Corbin/Dempsey. They should probably just book Reigns like Corbin since they both rely on signature moves and a piercing gaze (though obviously Reigns is farther along in his ring work). I thought Bull getting up for that End of Days was cool! That looked impressive. Sasha Banks continues to be awesome.

This is the best time of the year because the Best Short Animated Films Nominees come out at the theatres. Those are my favorite thing to see in theatres every year.

I think the counter-points that PE was in a loaded division with the Steiners and Road Warriors (though the Warriors were gone pretty quickly there) are good, and they were over to a solid degree partially because of their use of tables as props. They also had an underrated brawl with the Nasties at...maybe Uncensored 1996? I can't quite remember. They didn't come off as big or as violent though. Part of that is WCW being more corporate and for a different audience, but they also did seem a bit overshadowed by other violent/brawler tag teams that did that schtick way better than they did at the same time.

Heyman was definitely the obvious answer. I agree with that sentiment. Someone (Gregg, maybe?) always points out how Public Enemy seemed like a legit tough-guy tag team from the streets in ECW and a Nasty Boys cosplay except with a hip-hop influenced theme in WCW. I actually enjoy PE's short run in WCW, but I also agree with that sentiment, and I think they might be the best example of how Heyman got the most out of guys that really looked sort of low-rent in any other setting. Re: Ramsey's point about Bill Watts, I sort of accept that idea except that he didn't get the most out of Ron Simmons while trying to book him the same way as JYD, and I think Ron Simmons is a generally underrated talent that wasn't out of place as WCW Champ. Part of it was that he was undercut by who he was booked against when defending the gold and it all came off lame duck. He really needed Rude not to get hurt so that he could have defended against him, and he also probably needed to have a face-vs-face "respect" style match against Sting that ended in a draw or something and showed that he was on that level. I was wondering about other people both now and historically. For example, is New Japan's resurgence because Jado and Gedo are maximizing their talent at a historically-impressive level in comparison to other promoters? I also wonder how people view Vince McMahon Sr. as a creative mind. Where do you all place him?

Building on this topic, whom do you guys think are the antithesis of Vince McMahon in terms of being able to create stars and strong draws out of nothing? Historically, who took talent and squeezed every drop out of that talent the most as a booker or creative exec?

I'm posting to both follow this topic and to remind myself that at some point this weekend, I need to sit down and make a strong case for Sasha Banks. The other people I think should win (Kidd, Zayn, Nakamura) will probably be covered by other people.

No. I have a hard time watching him, too. I get that everyone flat-back bumping is having CTE issues, but I find that I now have a really hard time watching guys like Foley, Jeff Hardy, or whoever go splat on concrete or take those headshots and falls that just don't look right and remind me that for the fact that this is a work, people sometimes work styles that are just brutal. Oddly, I enjoy watching guys get rocked in pro football still despite people like Jovan Belcher or Junior Seau, so clearly, I am an inconsistent person, and I do not judge anyone else on where they stand on the topic.

Yeah OJ is still funny as shit in them Naked Gun movies, ipso facto Benoit matches=guilt free. Art isn't reality. I absolutely understand where you're coming from, but I guess the difference for me is that OJ's acting wasn't possibly causing brain damage that was exacerbating his already unstable state as Benoit's wrestling might have been doing. Well, unless OJ was doing all his own stunts as Nordberg and getting his head stove in.

Nitro 38, 6/2/96 - High Voltage vs. Faces of Fear. FoF murders poor Ruckus, including Barbarian deciding to do a top-rope belly-to-belly suplex for whatever reason. One of those squashes that just makes my day so very much.

NOOOOOOOOPE. You're wrong. God bless.

I feel like Roman Reigns did that promo with the wink-and-smile necessary to let me know that he knows how stupid it was. Also, I bet Vince McMahon performs his own writing for promos in front of the mirror to test it out, a la Aaron Sorkin. I wish I had video of him ripping out a "ddddddDONKEY DUNG...FOR BRAINSSSSS" and then smiling to himself like he just wrote "The Destruction of Sennacherib" or something.

I really like Doink/Crush, but I am a massive fan of Matt Borne as Doink. Perfect/Luger was really disappointing. Perfect is a candidate for having the most "I had high expectations and ended up disappointed" matches in WWF of anyone I can think of. Luger, Michaels, even his Bourne Doink matches. It's like he was really great against Bret Hart, solid against Ric Flair, and kinda not that great against anyone else.

Why should I trust Daily Wrestling News? Do they typically break news or seem to have reliable sources? I mean, that story isn't infeasible, but it's also the type of story that a big NXT fan or Vince hater would also make up and float as news.

I am voting Sami Zayn, Tyson Kidd, and Sasha Banks all the way. I will probably vote Shinsuke Nakamura pretty heavily, too.

I have to be honest, I only care about the Rumble, and if Bryan doesn't win, I'll probably just skip WM this year and check out on the PPVs as well as RAW and Smackdown! I'm at the point where the only thing that really interests me on the main show is Bryan with the gold.

I don't think I've seen Hansen tag matches, so I can't speak to that point you made, Matt. What I like about Stan Hansen basically is a couple key things: Hansen's selling and Hansen's brawling. Hansen gets rocked, he does that selling which is kinda like a Terry Funk-like weeble-wobble, but not cartoonish. It looks like a guy just about to go out on his feet, which fits right in with his style since he's usually giving and taking some vicious offense. Everything feels like a real fight with Hansen, like each blow is a) a struggle and b) could be the blow that ends the match. I'll have to watch a few Hansen tags in Japan and see what you mean. Would you suggest some matches that aren't necessarily the best, but that illustrate the issue that you have with him?

I just want to say, even though this is off-topic, my wrestling experience is pretty much U.S.-based as far as what I've seen, even though I have some general knowledge about Japan and Mexico through osmosis. My experience with Stan Hansen is pretty much his work in WCW in the early '90s, therefore, and while I enjoyed it and thought he had a good match with Lex Luger in particular, I wasn't sure why people would insist that he was a top-five guy all-time just out of my own ignorance. So then I saw this Andre/Hansen match a few months ago somewhere, maybe I was clicking around YouTube, and it's pretty much amazing. That match alone has me understanding what people love about Stan Hansen. I just wanted to point this out for anyone who hasn't yet seen it. It's on YouTube and WELL worth your fifteen minutes or however long it was.

Honestly, even with Cole and being over-produced by Vince, putting Albert and Graves on RAW with Cole right now probably makes for a considerably better announcing situation on that show.