ghost

Ronnie Garvin pinning Andre The Giant.

Pre-Nitro WCW has tonnes for me. Let's see: Arn & Tully vs The Road Warriors (26/11/87, Starrcade) Arn & Tully vs Barry Windham & Lex Luger (27/03/88, Clash of the Champions I) The Steiners vs Doom (19/05/90, Capital Combat) The Steiners vs The Nasty Boys (27/10/90, Halloween Havoc) Arn Anderson & Barry Windham vs Doom (16/12/90, Starrcade) Arn Anderson vs Bobby Eaton (19/05/91, SuperBrawl) Arn Anderson vs Steven Regal (20/02/94, SuperBrawl) Vader vs Boss Man (17/2/94, Spring Stampede) Ric Flair vs Steven Regal (28/5/94, WCW WorldWide) Steven Regal vs Ric Flair (28/5/94, WCW Saturday Night) I love "fat guy" wrestlers and big lugs who have plenty of fun stuff in this range too: "Crusher" Jerry Blackwell & Sheik Adnan Al-Kaissie vs. High Flyers (18/4/82) "Crusher" Jerry Blackwell & Ken Patera vs. High Flyers (24/11/83) "Crusher" Jerry Blackwell & Ken Patera vs. Blackjack Mulligan & Jerry Lawler (4/3/84) "Crusher" Jerry Blackwell & King Kong Bundy vs. The Road Warriors (22/11/84) Hulk Hogan vs Earthquake (27/8/90, SummerSlam) Steve Williams vs Bam Bam Bigelow (9/6/91, UWF Beach Brawl) Most of Bam Bam Bigelow's matches in NJPW John Tenta & King Haku vs The Barbarian & Tony Halme (17/6/93, WAR 1st Anniversary Of Revolution) Sting vs Avalanche (27/4/94, Starrcade) These matches are generally too short, suffer from a weak finish or lack psychology on display, or are too spotty to be MOTY-worthy, but are still pretty damn good. "Crusher" Jerry Blackwell

"I’ve wrestled with alligators, I’ve tussled with a whale. I done handcuffed lightning and throw thunder in jail. You know I’m bad. Just last week, I murdered a rock, Injured a stone, Hospitalized a brick. I’m so mean, I make medicine sick."

I don't see worked MMA or worked boxing taking off. Pride and K1 overtook shoot style pro-wrestling in popularity. Boxing fans would want the real thing and I've never heard anyone wanting to bring back Brawl For All. However, boxing and MMA, whilst not being a work, are still heavily manipulated. Guys who are big draws and have lots of charisma are often fed lesser opponents so they can stay on top. If Lucha Underground proves popular, I speculate that pro-wrestling will become more like a regular TV show than something resembling a legit sport. I don't know what ratings LU get but I've seen positive reviews of it in the non-wrestling press, I can imagine AMC, Netflix (or whoever) jumping on the bandwagon. As an addendum: The Wrestler achieved critical acclaim in 2008 and whilst it didn't paint wrestling a glorious light necessary, it was the first film that took wrestling seriously. I wonder if that's influenced the general audience to look at wrestling through a different lens and see it as something more than just a goofy carnival sideshow.

Vinny Ru being sent to destroy WCW by Vince McMahon.

I was there yesterday and enjoyed the show. I'm on mobile so can't type a long reply but the highlight for me was Shirai/KLR, I thought Nixon and Santana looked good too. I am happy I got a picture with Io Shirai as well because she is my favourite 😄

The Kudome Valentine is the best!

Definitely before. If I had to list my 10 favourite matches, they would all date before 1996. NWA/JCP, all the other great territories, 80s Japan and Mexico, World of Sport etc. epitomize wrestling to me. Quality drops off a cliff for me after '97. The Monday Night Wars era is fun but I've seen it all by now and don't care to watch that stuff again; having re-watched a lot of mainstream US wrestling that came after (the SmackDown Six stuff, for instance), I found it didn't hold up for me; don't care for NOAH (too excessive); don't really care for modern NJPW (feels too homogenized); and I'm out of the loop when it comes to lucha. I would miss out some great years for RoH, Daniel Bryan and the indy guys around now I like such as Thatcher, Busick, ZSJ et al, Battlarts, and there's still some good joshi out there which I try to keep up with (Stardom, Ice Ribbon mostly)... but all in all I feel comfortable with going pre-'96. Now if you made it '90-92 then it would be way more of a hard decision: I would really miss the early '90 years of All Japan, NJPW juniors, lots of joshi, AAA's early years and some fantastic lucha in general - especially 1992, a lot of really good WCW in that time frame as well, FMW, and SMW (which is one of my favourite episodic wrestling shows). All in all, I'd say my favourite years for wrestling are around '84-96. It's not even so much that I think the matches were better; it's the total package: the crowds and atmosphere in general. Hell, I even love watching some random WWF card from '81 with half a dozen jobber vs jobber matches because the crowd gets so into it it's impossible to not get drawn into it yourself (and the WWF/WWE is not one of my favoured promotions). The modern presentation style; things like the commentary and over-production in current WWE, as well as the crowds doing annoying chants, and general smarkiness in a lot of the indies etc. I find a real turn off.

One thing I dislike about the indies in particular is that often times they just feel inauthentic. I hated Joe/Kobashi, not just the match but the crowd and presentation. I don't want to see Joe cosplay an AJPW big four. I don't want to see Davey Richards cosplay his favourite wrestlers from when he was a kid etc. To give an analogy, there are plenty of heavy metal bands today aping Slayer or whoever, and whilst technically proficient, they feel kinda like tribute bands and I want the real deal. I hate the self-consciousness of it because it just feels like they're pretending, there's a certain level of mock-"irony" even. There's also a big drop off point in AJPW, the late '90s stuff is worlds apart in terms of quality from what they were doing in the early part of the decade. They really descended into mindless excess.

Goldberg/Lesnar. You can argue the crowd was predestined to shit on them, but they didn't even try to engage them or give them something to cheer for. It was just a spit in the face of the audience.

I just got tickets for this. It looks like a good show, I'm a big fan of the Stardom women. Only seen bits and pieces from the others on the card, but they look good too from what I have seen.

I have just been watching a few post-87 Andre matches and whilst I could not call them great and retain any credibility; his ability to work smartly within his limitations and make every movement count cannot be under-sold. His ability to interact with the crowd, his facial expressions, and other little things like that are excellent. Even from the earliest matches oh his I have seen from 1972, he was an incredibly smart wrestler with brilliant timing; he could play the stooging, chicken shit heel or the monster, and he was also an expert in drawing sympathy from the crowd and making it believable when he was in danger - not an easy thing to do as a Giant. Not really a classic but his match with Blackwell is fun, short and sweet, but worth a watch.

Trish is notable only in that she was a fitness model with zero wrestling experience who worked hard to become a perfectly acceptable wrestler (ie someone who didn't botch basic moves like most of the other terrible women's wrestlers at the time) and had buckets of charisma. She had 2 or 3 good matches and a lot of people who likely hadn't watched any other women's wrestling went nuts over her at the time. Her and Lita also took a number of hard bumps that none of the other women really did at the time; Trish had that hardcore match with Victoria (actually I think Ivory and someone had a hardcore match a few years before so it wasn't the first), being put through a table by the Dudleys, Lita threw herself off ladders, nearly broke her neck with a suicide dive, and took a beating from Austin and a steel chair. I think their long term impact was precisely zero. It's not as if they started pushing women's wrestling off the back of them; Trish and Lita main evented a Raw in 2004 and it took years for two women to main event a show again. Still they were part of a time which many people have fond memories off and were popular.

JBL's was pretty bad. The matches with Undertaker, Booker T, Kurt Angle & Big show in a triple threat, and then Big Show again just stunk. In fact he was the least talented wrestler in all his championship matches by a large margin. I can't believe it lasted so long, SmackDown was entertaining at the time; I enjoyed the rise of John Cena, Rey & Eddie, Angle was doing some good stuff but JBL just got more dull by the week and killed my interest dead. Really took a long time for the title to recover in image for me.

Volk Han vs Kenichi Yamamoto (07/20/1998) Chris Benoit vs Eddie Guerrero (11/06/1995) Chris Benoit vs Eddie Guerrero (10/16/1995) Butch Reed & Ron Simmons vs Arn Anderson & Barry Windham (12/16/1990) Shinya Hashimoto vs Victor Zangiev (04/24/1989)