SirSmUgly

EDIT: I guess I was wrong - he did win the NWA championship in TNA, AKA "that place I hate because now instead of getting Sting at 45 in WWE, we're getting him at 55." Nope, Summer Rae sucks. That match had no chance anyway with how fans are conditioned to expect two-minute women's matches and the fact that Cameron and Summer Rae got fairly significant ring time.

The problem is that Reigns is supposed to be a badass shitkicker type, but every time I see him out of character, he comes off as a laid-back, cool type of dude. I feel like he should be trying to channel someone like face Diesel. He'll get stern with you and beat you up, but he's also pretty laid back and funny otherwise. Diesel's probably not the best example of what I have in mind, but I've been watching lots of 1995 WWF recently, so he's the first guy who popped into my head.

If Sting is wrestling at WM, it needs to be five minutes, and he needs to just kill someone with a finisher barrage at the end. Maybe The Rock would come back to do it; didn't he always want to wrestle Sting? I think if it was five minutes of epic staredown -------> punches and chops -----------> signature spot trading into the finish, people would enjoy it as spectacle.

Let's try the sandwich method. That was the epitome of a one-match show, but it was a heck of a match. Also, 55-year-old balding Sting is STILL awesome. Bray/Ambrose was not good. It was an awkward, ineffective brawl (though Bray's stiff clothesline on Ambrose was great). Bray still hasn't had a really good singles match with anyone not named Daniel Bryan in my view. Goldust was good in the four-team-tag-match, but the match had weird pacing and that tower suplex spot looked terrible. Mizdow being mad over was great, though, as was the continued teasing of him getting into the match. Starting this PPV with a fifteen-minute promo sucked. I paid for this. I don't pay for RAW for a reason, but I paid for this. The four-on-four women's match was overlong. I don't really remember much else of what happened on this show. It was almost completely forgettable pre-main event. I do appreciate WWE giving us actual continuity. Brie Bella getting revenge on AJ for her husband after almost three years was priceless. That was perfect. Also, Big Show reminding us that he can't afford to get fired by turning on Team Cena was also a nice nod to continuity. Dolph Ziggler can take one heck of a beating. I think he does certain things well: Bumping and selling that he's half-unconscious after landing from a wild bump. In this match, it worked perfectly and he garnered a lot of sympathy with me. There were a lot of nice surprises and swerves to the main event outside of the Sting thing. Cena's elimination and Henry's elimination were both great. I thought Ryback went down for the count too quickly, though.

I'd say that third thing is not going to happen, but I also don't think the person who is saying that it will is the type to just say stuff like that, so...I'm assuming it's all noise and WWE personnel is "leaking" a bunch of shit just to confuse everyone.

I forgot that the PPV was tonight until I was reminded. Now, though, I'm kinda excited to see the main event. I think this is one main event that needs some overbooking to make it meaningful.

I enjoy Roode in the ring, but I'm not on board with his reign being the best of TNA. I enjoyed Austin Aries's road to becoming champ or the women's division circa-2008 centered around Kong, Kim, and Wilde more than Roode's title run.

I think Flair/Anderson vs. The Gangstas in some backwoods little arena in Tennessee is the greatest tag team match that this earth never got to see.

Speaking of Goldust... WWE Network has really brought me back into wrestling in a big way. Not that I ever stopped watching, but there's so much awesome stuff that I want to revisit and other things that I haven't seen that I am really, really excited just to watch and think about wrestling and to re-visit what I think about certain wrestlers. One thing I realize after watching lots of early-'90s WCW and a ton of WWE stuff is that Goldust/Dustin Rhodes has a legit claim to being the best U.S. wrestler ever. Like, he's great in pretty much everything. He's an amazing tag worker with whoever you throw him in there with, he's a great bleeder and is wonderful in brawls, that Goldust character (while extremely problematic) was something that enhanced his matches in 1996 when he really didn't have a great lineup of people to work with necessarily. Those Savio Vega matches on RAW are legitimately awesome, and while I was disappointed by his match with Ahmed Johnson at KotR because I really like Ahmed and think Dustin is great, he generally exceeded expectations for me in 1996 because he seamlessly integrated his character into his matches. I think most wrestlers suck at pulling off stalling in an effective manner, but 1996 Goldust is fucking awesome at this. On top of that, he's pretty much been good since then even as he nears fifty, excepting that Black Reign garbage (but TNA is a wasteland for veterans from WWE/WCW so I can't hold that against him), He's one of those guys like Finlay that never seem to drop off no matter how old they get except that he's doing crazy sunset flips and other really athletic things on top of being an awesome tag worker that shows vulnerability as a face or viciousness as a heel. The guy that I think I've come the farthest on because of having lots of his work at my fingertips due to the Network is probably Dustin Rhodes. I get extremely excited whenever he pops up on my television...which is why that Rick Rude thirty-minute Iron Man match at Beach Blast '93 might be the single most disappointing match that I've ever seen in my life.

OK, that makes sense. Thanks, Matt.

Yeah, I can't see how anyone can honestly say that Dolph has no charisma. I don't like him, but he makes people care about him. Lots of people.

I didn't think of Austin and Pillman as a short-term team even though they weren't around long, but I'm not sticky about criteria. I could see a case for them fitting this. They'd land on my list, too, probably knocking off Bagwell and Scorp.

What I understand from the WON HOF is that I don't know the first thing about Mexico or Puerto Rico. Instinctively, Carlos Colon should be in pretty easily just thinking about what I know about him (which admittedly isn't much). Am I wrong about this?

Random observation leading to a question: While many people point to Manny Fernandez and Rick Rude as their favorite temporary tag team of singles guys, I think that for me, Booker T and Goldust top them as my favorite temporary tag team. Probably, if I had to pick my three favorite teams of this nature, they'd go like this: 1. Booker T and Goldust 2. Manny Fernandez and Rick Rude 3. 2 Cold Scorpio and Marcus Bagwell Just throwing this out there: Which teams are your favorite temporary tag teams where both guys are really singles wrestlers being thrown together for a limited time? If you have matches that you want to share to help explain why you feel the way that you do, I'd love to see them.

I actually REALLY liked this match, which I just watched. There are three reasons beyond what you've talked about. First, this a face team vs. face team match where everyone works borderline heel. They come in talking shit to one another and do so throughout the match, Bart has that great bump over the top rope after the Kid pulls it down, both teams try to cheat and move their partner on top for a pin behind the refs back, and everything seems actually fairly violent (particularly the striking), especially compared to what I expected coming in. Second, this match feels like a real harbinger of things to come. Billy comes out with short hair and no mustache, looking like he'd be putting on those ridiculous Mr. Ass tights any day now. Kid comes out throwing up a Kliq sign and looking Syxx-level sleazy. Even Razor comes off more like Scott Hall than Razor in the pre-match promo. It really added to this match for me personally for whatever reason. Third, the crowd is very hot for this match, chanting for Razor and popping pretty loud on a couple of near falls, especially one where they thought Kid got the three. I need to watch this again to temper myself, but right now, I'd place this as one of the five best matches I've seen so far on RAW or PPV in 1995.

Dolph's gimmick is "athletic showoff who shows how many cool moves and bumps he can do." It's a weird kind of meta-gimmick: "Look at how good I am at some of the aspects of the art of professional wrestling." I mean, 1995 Shawn Michaels does that very same gimmick way better than Dolph could ever dream of, but that's Dolph's gimmick. Kofi's gimmick is "jolly smilin' black guy." He's somewhere above early '90s Koko B. Ware at executing that gimmick. Roode's gimmick is "skilled top-level wrestler who wants to be champ because of the money it brings in/the accolades/the title of being the best." Like Flair or Bockwinkel except without any of the charisma at all. That's what a good manager is for, though.

Dolph Ziggler has some sort of weird natural charisma, though. He stays over no matter what, and in front of a modern WWE crowd, the only answer for that is that he's charismatic. Roode isn't nearly as charismatic, not anywhere in the same league as someone like Ziggler (or even someone like Kofi, who has stayed fairly well over with a portion of the crowd even after doing pretty much nothing the past five years). I do think that he's a perfectly fine heel champ for an organization TNA's size. He does need a mouthpiece in lieu of a full charisma transplant, but he's fine in the ring and looks like a guy who fits being champ when he dresses in his suit and tie.

You know what's great about this Zayn/Neville thing is that I know someone's turning heel, but I genuinely don't know who that's going to be. They've done a great job of giving both guys motivation to do so (and glimmers of maybe taking that path). I admit to being super-excited when Bull Dempsey's music hit while Baron Corbin was walking back up the ramp. I think they should have booked Bull to beat the crowd's count/Baron's mark, actually. That would have been great. Anyway, I'd love to see them do that more often; one after the other squashes by two guys who will eventually meet to see who the baddest man is. For example, it would be a great RAW moment if they could do a Ryback squash followed immediately by Rusev storming out for a quick squash without cutting away; that would be a great way to indirectly tease a future match. Charlotte's "What am I gonna do with this girl" face when Bayley came in for a hug was maybe the best thing on this show, and that is high praise, actually. The matches were generally fine, but almost everyone had some really quality character work on this ep.

If there's room for TNA on television, I feel like CHIKARA should be on TV too. I think that a weekly show aired on Cartoon Network during Adult Swim is the best option for it. Anyway, TNA does badly need to re-brand because that name is just terrible. It encapsulates everything that I hate about that Crash TV-era of the '90s. In fact, this company started as the shambling zombie of Crash TV-style television, and I was hoping Spike would finally give it a double-barreled headshot, but I guess not. The only way to make this company watchable is to hire Jerry Lawler to book it '80s Memphis style. If you're going to base your show on soap-operatic intrigue with a few tasteless, lowest-common-denominator angles sprinkled in, at least do it in a really fun and entertaining way. Also, shoot at a studio where the crowd is darkened and you can hear angry Southerners yelling abuse at the heels. Retro is in, so go back to that dank studio wrestling look.

This match is great because The Rock has no sense of needing to protect himself at all. For example, he gets arm-dragged multiple times and then begs off Flair when he gets up and sees Flair with his dukes up. Would any other main eventer give to a guy like that when he didn't really need to?

I'm waaaaaaay behind Yo-Yo, but quickly, I gathered two things from IYH 3. First, this was a solid PPV from an in-ring standpoint. Except for KotR, I think all the PPVs post WM XI have been really quite good in terms of the in-ring work. I'm surprised at this because RAW in 1995 is usually a slog (and it's only an hour), but I have genuinely enjoyed the work in each IYH. Second, Bret Hart has to be the in-ring MVP for WWF in 1995. He had an awesome match with Lafitte. I enjoy Carl Ouelette and am actually looking forward to him showing up on Nitro in 1996 as part of the Amazing French Canadiens, but even with my like of Ouelette out there, this was really noticeably good, stiff work. Bret also had multiple good matches with Hakushi and I honestly really liked Hart/Yankem from Summerslam of that year. Hart pretty much killed himself bumping around for Yankem, and for his part, Yankem did whatever he could to make that match good (top rope legdrop to a draped-over-the-top-rope Bret looked sweet, he was doing some really good monster-movie stalking of a hurt and scrambling Hart mid-match). Bret started 1995 having that awesome match with a still pretty green Nash and ended it with two classics against Nash and Bulldog. In between, he has really good matches with almost everyone. I think here between 1995 and 1997, he does his best work in the ring by far, better than anyone else I can think of in the company. He has good matches with everyone from Nash to Yankem to the Patriot to Austin. It's not like those guys are all bad or something, but he just gets the best out of everyone he's in the ring with. I wish we could pull 1995 Bret Hart out of a time machine and have him wrestle Roman Reigns on three straight PPVs to get him ready for delivering longer matches that guys working WWE mains and semi-mains need to consistently pull off. I'd get 1995 Hart in there with Ryback for a couple months, too.

If you like structureless, extremely charming matches, the six-man lumberjack strap match on the Nitro two weeks before Uncensored 1996 (I believe the March 11th show) is for you. First of all, all the lumberjacks are wearing actual plaid shirts, which should be the standard for lumberjack matches going forward. Regal and Eaton have their little ruffles from their formal wear sticking out over the plaid - truly an amazing look. With the beard and the plaid shirt, Meng looks like a Tongan Richard Karn, which if you're reading this Meng is not an insult please please please don't decide to seek me out and murder me using only your left pinkie toe. Anyway, this match doesn't really have a traditional pro wres narrative format and isn't a traditional strap match. They just give everyone straps to hit each other with - the lumberjacks AND the wrestlers (Hogan/Savage/Booty Man vs. Flair/Anderson/Sullivan). So this immediately explodes into everyone just whipping the crap out of each other with straps. At one point, Flair says "fuck it" and tries to run away, but then Animal runs him down and just hoists him over his shoulder and marches him right back, which was a really funny spot that is better than I described it. Flair is actually the star of this thing between that spot and Hogan just whipping the shit out of him until, in a short burst of bravery, he puts his dukes up and squares off with Hogan. Of course, Hogan whips him a couple more times and he's on his knees, begging off. The only thing that didn't work in this match is Kimberly coming down and acting smitten with the Booty Man. It's just not believable that she'd be in love with a goof like Beefcake. Sure, Johnny B. Badd was kinda a goof ("I DIDN'T SAY FOOOOOOOUR FLAT TIRES! I SAID...AAAAAAAAAAAAA FLAT TIRE!"), but he was also good looking enough that you could understand it. DDP was a total sleazeball, but sleazeballs with sleazeball charisma attract good looking girls all the time. Booty Man, though, I'm not buying. After the match, Sullivan, Arn, and Flair cut promos for Uncensored and that insipid two-on-nine triple cage match. Sullivan is whatever, but Arn has a nice two-minute thing where he bases his promo on a biblical reference or religious saying. He still works for WWE, right? He should be tutoring Bray Wyatt on how to effectively use religious or spiritual overtones in his promos. Then Flair does a nutty old man Flair promo and storms the announcer's booth afterward for the hell of it. 10/10 stuff if you just want to have fun and realize why you enjoy pro wrestling.

Why would the Authority want Cesaro? That guy was beaten like a drum by one of Cena's teammates all Autumn, and he just got aced by another of Cena's teammates that same night. Is this Brand New Day stable going to pull a Broadus Clay and come out acting way differently from their vignettes?

Apparently, there are no ladder matches in 1 v. 1, no handicap matches, and a ton of other missing match types besides that. This is a terrible rush job. This list is sourced in multiple places and was created by early players who got their copies over the weekend:

Speaking of Hogan, I just finally saw Hogan's birthday skit on RAW today, and Paul Orndorff coming out to the operatic "Wonderful" theme, tweaking his handlebar mustache, and then demanding and getting a kiss from Natalya is one of the best things that I've seen on television all year. I watched just that part on repeat like five times in a row.