SirSmUgly

I feel like I have to click the "Like this" button anytime someone mentions WWE doing a WarGames. Elimination Chamber is right around the corner, so I'll get my hopes up again just because. I really feel like Brock Lesnar needs to be in WarGames, though, just so Heyman can be his ringside manager and do stuff like yelling "WAR WAR WAR WAR WAR WAR WAAAAARRRRRRRRR" to pump Lesnar up before he gets into the cage.

Is there anyone else who's first- or second-biggest angle in their career hinged on them not wrestling, but being on TV numerous weeks? Sting's impact on business for that time is so hard to quantify precisely because it's hard to know how much of it was him and how much of it was just the nWo. Watching that stuff then and now, my only focus was "When is Sting showing up and wrecking up the place?" As someone mentioned, Uncensored '97 is amazing and I think is genuinely one of the best segments in U.S. wrestling history just because of how unglued the place came when Sting finally started beating everyone down. In my mind, it is really hard to say that the nWo angle would have been nearly as good with anyone else in his position. Even Flair, who was also viewed as WCW through and through, just couldn't have possibly filled the role of lurking in the background and intending to put things right in any capacity near Sting, IMO. At the same time, the nWo would have still been pretty hot. Basically, without Sting getting significant credit for 1996/1997, I don't see how you can put him in the HOF based on the criteria because, as many great matches as he had, he doesn't have volume on his side to make up for 1991-1993 WCW being a dysfunctional company that put him in a terrible position to draw, thus killing the argument that he could carry the gate.

in one of his nightly concerts with Satan, just after Bray got done sacrificing the goat, Satan was like, "Oh yeah, did I tell you Dean Ambrose's dad is in prison? For cooking and selling meth to nine-year-olds, as a matter of fact. Who would have guessed that?" He says that last sentence really sarcastically, too. Voila, Bray's on TV with knowledge of Dean's daddy.

I'm also fine with what Skelemania says. I feel old as hell knowing that Sting is in his mid-50s, but considering that he is in his mid-50s, it might just be better to have him as a corner man that hits another Scorpion Death Drop on HHH during a ref bump or something. I think a tag match is probably the very best way to go if Sting has to wrestle. That or a five-minute glorified squash match.

I hope Sting and HHH never wrestle one-on-one and we get Sting/'Taker or Sting/Rock. Of course, Sting is 55 and probably needs to wrestle someone that could help him out in the ring. Actually, it's too bad that part of the crowd would crap on a Sting/Cena tag team because that's what I'd like to see. Assuming Reigns is slotted into WM to face Lesnar and Daniel Bryan makes it back to be at WM, I also would not mind Sting/Bryan vs. HHH/someone else (Batista?).

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?