air_raid

That Jamie Kellner killed WCW simply because they “didn’t want wrestling on the channel” and not because it was a money-losing property of epic scale?

Just to follow up from this (excuse the pasting from a different thread) ; In case anyone missed it, the Observer reported the other day that McIntyre's signed to stay until 2027, all but confirming in my eyes that he's main eventing this show. Punk came back. Cody won. Drew signed. You'll all learn to trust me one day.

I just realized that in all the flap about the draft, we've glossed over Braun coming back. One of the worst misses of a "can't miss" guy after years of bad booking, his reign getting scuppered by a pandemic environment, MORE bad booking and Spooky Bollocks, his big money contract making him a necessary cut, then an injury layoff. He'll make an EXCELLENT and believable threat to Priest... unless they predictably turn him heel to feud with Jey while Priest moves on to someone else.

I think those of us raised on a stream of late 80s/early 90s WWF tapes were conditioned to it, a finisher always ended the match, unless you were doing it to Hogan, Warrior or later, The Undertaker. The only times “mortal men” got to kick out of finishers were where the other guy was on the way out like Perfect letting Bret kick out of the PerfectPlex at SummerSlam 91… although that same show had the frankly unbelievable sight of The Mountie surviving the Boss Man Slam, though he still lost. Few and far between. But it’s a thin line between utilising a finisher kick out sensibly, and Roman Reigns kicking out of four F5s to the point of boring then still losing to a fifth, making both him AND the move look weaker in one calamitous match. It’s part of the reason I got so heavily into New Japan, where hitting your finisher wasn’t always decisive but how and when e.g after a good flurry or in a particularly effective counter. The Rainmaker was very well protected in a different way, even though people were permitted to kick out of it, for over six years Okada never went on to lose a match in which he hit it - so it was still pretty lethal even if the first didn’t always win the match and you always had doubt someone could break that record - which Omega finally did, in the famed 7* match in Osaka. Or prior to that, the old All Japan approach to how matches could end. Take our old friend Musawa - right when I started following closely, his given finisher for singles matches was usually the Emerald Frozien, but on occasion any combination of “boxing” elbows, a rolling one or just one good running smash (like the one that beat Vader for the Triple Crown) could see him home, or on special occasions, he could reach deep into the bag of tricks and pull out the Tiger Driver 91.

The Ballad Of Never Watched The Bucks?

JULY-AUGUST 2021 ... and we're back! Jesus, much has changed. Major players have been created from NXT, returned from retirement, or departed. In some cases departed and returned. Title changes, drafts, all sorts. But they're back on the road, that's all that matters. And Big Match John is back. I mean, so is Eva Marie, but she's not on the road. THE MAIN EVENTS Jesus Christ. Over a year has passed since house shows last happeninged, meaning we are nearly a year into the Neverending Story that will be Roman's reign as the Undisputed, Undefeated WWE World Heavyweight Champion of Life, The Universe And Everything. July 24th/25th in Pittsburgh (7700) and Louisville (6000) then 31st in Milwaukee, it's John Cena, Rey Mysterio & Dominik Mysterio vs Roman Reigns & The Usos. We continue into August 1st in Detroit (10,000+), 7th in Estero and 14th/15th in Charlotte and Columbia. Finally 22nd in Denver, Roman/Jimmy/Jey beat Rey, Dom & Finn Balor. THE CARDS July's return to audiences has two rounds of Bobby Lashley vs Kofi Kingston for the WWE title and three of Nikki ASH vs Charlotte vs Rhea Ripley for the Raw Womens title and Sheamus vs Drew McIntyre for the UST ; Pittsburgh and Louisville also repeat Matt Riddle vs AJ Styles, Bianca Belair vs Carmella for the SmackDown belt and the worst-sounding match ever for the Womens tag belts - Natalya & Tamina vs Nia Jax & Shayna Baszler. Milwaukee into August we see shifts to Big E vs Seth Rollins, Lashley & MVP vs Kofi & Xavier Woods, Apollo Crews vs Kevin Owens vs King Nakamura vs Sami Zayn for the ICT and Belair vs Sasha Banks, Nikki vs Charlotte vs Ripley rolls on except by Denver Charlotte's already won it back. In Charlotte and Denver its Damien Priest vs Sheamus for the UST and both shows in the Carolinas get Drew & Priest vs Sheamus & Jinder Mahal, Finn Balor vs Baron Corbin, Nikki vs Rhea, Styles & Omos vs Riddle & Randy Orton for the tag belts and more of E vs Rollins and Kofi/Woods vs Hurt Business. VARIATIONS Estero has Balor vs Zayn, Drew vs Veer Mahaan and Crews vs Owens vs Nakamura. In Denver, McIntyre vs Mahal (street fight), Nakamura vs Owens, Lashley vs Woods and Belair vs Carmella vs Zelina Vega. TVs 16th in Houston fans are finally allowed back in full force and 15,000 of them are rewarded with NXT dark matches of Odyssey Jones & Xyon Quinn vs Austin Theory & Harry Smith (WTF) and Xia Li vs Aliyah (well, some things don't change), a show proper where The Bloodline drop the Mysterios and Edge (hello you!) and then a dark battle royal won by Big E, who then promptly beats Rollins in the main event. Two nights later near 10,000 in Fort Worth see Money In The Bank, where Charlotte wins the Raw belt from Rhea (booo), Nikki and Big E win briefcases, Reigns retains over Edge and The Usos beat Rey & Dom for the SmackDown tag belts on the pre-show. Next night on Raw Nikki cashes in (yay). More than 10,000 come to Cleveland for the next SmackDown - Aliyah beats Indi Hartwell and Jones beats Theory before the show, Big E/Cesaro/Nakamura beat Dolph Ziggler/Bobby Roode/Crews in a match taped for SmackDown but not used, show proper has Toni Storm vs Zelina, and the dark main has Cena/Rey/Dom beat Reigns & The Usos. 26th Raw in Kansas City Cena & Riddle beat Retribution nobodies Mace & T-Bar even though they just lost on the live TV to Mustafa Ali & Mansoor so were hardly going to lose to Big Match John. 30th SmackDown in Minneapolis has Jones vs Theory and Aliyah vs Indi again, and Cena and the Mysterios beat Reigns/Jimmy/Jey again dark. 2nd August Raw at the AllState (>12,500) Kofi & Woods beat Lashley & MVP in the dark main, 6th SmackDown in Tampa Keith Lee vs Theory and Dakota Kai vs Aliyah go on early, and Cena and the Mysterios beat the Bloodline again in the Coliseum Video main event. Monday's Raw in Orlando has Lee beat Chico Adams (who literally just worked ROH this month) as well as what's taped for Main Event, on the show proper amazingly Jeff Hardy does a job to Karrion Kross, then after the show Cena & Priest team to beat Jinder & Veer. 13th SmackDown in Tulsa, Ridge Holland vs Theory and Aliyah & Xia vs Dakota & Kacy Catanzaro are the early dark matches, on the show itself Nakamura relieves Crews (surely the least-remembered holder ever) of the ICT and dark Cena/Rey/Dom beat Reigns/Jimmy/Jey yet again. 16th Raw in San Antonio, Jeff loses to Kross again in less than a minute and New Day beat The Miz & John Morrison in the dark main event. 20th SmackDown in Phoenix (10,000+) has an interesting story dark, New Mexico's Andy Palafox (Awesome Andy) comes out of retirement for his first match since 2013 (and last match) to do a job to Keith - plus Holland vs Theory happens again. Regulars may also be amused to read Nakamura & Rick Boogs beat Crews & Commander Azeez on the show proper. The very next night it's SummerSlam and an unbelievable 45,500+ squeeze inside Allegiant Stadium in Vegas. The show got slated online for WWE "making calls" to Brock Lesnar and Becky Lynch to rescue a stale product, and the reliance on part-timers and the formerly retired all over the show is stark - Lynch shows up unannounced to return from her mat leave, pins Belair in seconds to win the SmackDown belt and continue her unbroken chain of wrestling as a champion that stretched back to Mania 35 (which seemed senseless to treat Bianca like that at the time), Edge goes over Rollins, Bill Goldberg falls to WWE Champion Lashley, and Cena puts over Reigns, after which Lesnar trots out to resume hostilities with Roman. Because we hadn't seen enough of that by 2021. Otherwise, RK-Bro beat AJ & Omos for Raw's tag belts, Priest wins the UST from Sheamus and Charlotte annoyingly gets her title back in a three-way with Nikki and Rhea. Next night at a Performance Center TakeOver we need to mention - Cameron Grimes wins the revived Million Dollar Belt (what??? This happened??? Ted DiBiase was there and everything!) from LA Knight (yeah!), Ilja Dragunov liberates Walter from the meaningless UK belt, and Samoa Joe beats Kross to win the NXT title for a record third time. The next night in Raw is notable for Miz turning on JoMo, 27th SmackDown in North Little Rock have our next and final dark matches - Cal Bloom vs Theory, Xia & Kacy vs Kai & Aliyah and Balor & Street Profits vs Reigns & The Usos. Though I should mention 30th Raw - pity Morrison, he's crushed in 2 minutes by Omos. NON TITLE WHINING Beaten on TV this month : Nattie & Tamina (Womens Tag Team Champions) by Tegan & Shotzi (unbelievable, the first TV I get to after fans are back..) Sheamus (United States Champion) by Priest, Nikki (Raw Womens Champion) by Charlotte (FUCK SAKE), AGAIN by Ripley, CHARLOTTE (Raw Womens Champion) by Nia. Fucking hell. DEPARTURES A scattered few interesting ones while we were on hiatus ; Feb 21, Steve Cutler - I didn't find out that as Steve Maclin he'd won Impact's World title until March gone. April 21 - having not wrestled since December 2020, Bray Wyatt as "The Fiend" loses to Randy Orton at Mania 37 and will soon thereafter be released, not wrestling against until December 2022. Having been wrongly separated as a tag team, The Iiconics are nonetheless released at the same time as a cost cutting measure. An utter nonsense, the whole was definitely more than the sum of the parts. They sit out their 90 day no competes, do six months for Impact than retire from wrestling altogether. Both have since had babies, which is nice. June 21 budget cuts - Killian Dain, Bollywood Boys, Ariya Daivari, Tony Nese, Tyler Breeze, Fandango, Marina Shafir, Aleister Black, Lana, Buddy Murphy, Ruby Riott, Santana Garrett.. and, ridiculously, Braun Strowman, despite him being a former Universal Champion and having just faced Shane O'Mac in a cage at Mania and been challenging for the WWE title at Backlash. His pay was just too high for them to keep him, though it does beg the question why they felt the main event scene was strong enough that they could do without Braun and The Fiend given that Brock (at the time) was considering himself retired after Mania 36 and Reigns was about to dial back his schedule quite a bit. As for August, we might as well include John Cena again, he's going to work an MSG TV in September but these are his last matches on the road to date.

For the fans to be told "this might happen" and the talent to not find out "this is happening" until it happens live on air are not comparable. Horrible bastards.

LWO to Raw, finally divorcing them from the LDF feud, and Nakamura to SmackDown are the only notable switches from a skim read of the happenings. Also, I know Naomi is a third wheel in the title match for Backlash but it’s somewhat pleasing to see a rivalry set up with Nia, assuming the title focus ends up on Bayley vs Stratton. Aside from the tag belts, it’s high time that they give more of the women feuds to focus on that aren’t just “who’s going for the belt this month.”

It’s the rational, logical approach. Unfortunately tv, cinema, video games, music etc don’t seem to have one critic where an overwhelming majority of the consumers of the entire art form have latched onto their word as gospel. Nor do any of those “normal people” pursuits likely have as much toxic nerdiness going on, by which I mean amounts of passionate energy to argue the toss about something so wholly subjective, even with the industry expert whose opinion apparently matters to them. And I don’t know what’s worse, that people are so invested in these things, that people actually take it up with Dave, or that he so often is willing to engage with them. It’s such a load of nonsense. People will STILL take it up with Dave years later why X match “only” got 4 3/4 and not 5 years later where Dave will point out that 4 3/4 still makes it one of the best matches you’re likely to have seen that year. The historical nitpicking is something I think only wrestling fans would give a shit to keep doing. Or maybe I’m wrong, and people still ask Rolling Stone if they consider re- scoring Baby One More Time (**) because they gave Mutations by Beck **** and it doesn’t sit well with them? I think it’s a symptomatic thing, the wrestling fans seem to have a weird fascination with their opinions of wrestlers, shows or matches being the right ones, and being able to “prove” them right either by popularity or correlation to what Dave thinks. So if Meltzer doesn’t rate a match as highly as one of these weirdos, they take it personally that the revered voice on star ratings suggests they’re “wrong” in their opinion. And sadly whereas if you argue the toss with an average Ian or raid about an opinion on Twatter you’ll get called a moron and blocked, Meltzer actually engages with them. He’s an enabler.

Because Goldberg and Rhino got it over in WCW and ECW respectively, they like to keep using it. Of course, the two things lost in the mists of time is that it was only ever a setup originally for the Jackhammer or Rhino’s piledriver in those places. Blame Edge spearing Jeff Hardy from the heavens at Mania 17 for them thinking it should end a match, probably, around the same time they hired Rhino and he started winning with the Gore because piledrivers were out. Somewhere they forgot they realized the explosive impact move worked great for Goldberg and Rhino because it fit to their intense, explosive personality. There have been plenty of crap ones - Edge AND Christian both using them usually looked rubbish, my personal strongest distaste was Batista doing it when he already had a fine repertoire of signature power moves, but there’s been loads. Charlotte always looks awful doing it, especially. Nobody else should do it while Reigns isn’t retired, he’s been the closest to a good one this century. You’re not wrong on power moves - we need more press slams, powerbombs and stuff Sid would do. Bring back the whirlybird! Leave the memories alone.

This has been on my mind a lot. I will probably do a poll because there are many options - revisit previous ones and refresh to the more detailed format (I.e the bi annual or quarterly ones, do them monthly instead), go back to 84 and the return of Hogan, go back further and see what a Bruno schedule looked like… or do the NWA or WCW. And where’s a good starting point there? Flairs first title reign? 83 to lead to Starrcade? 1990 and the Turner buy out of JCP? It’s definitely more fun to be deeper in the past. I mean, it IS fun to think (example) “I wonder what they’ve done with Cody on the road since he came back?” (Spoiler - Rollins for months, Solo for months, Balor for a bit) But it was more fun spotting jobbers that became stars on old Challenge tapings or counting down until the last time they book Jim Brunzell.

That would be Allentown. https://www.wrestlingdata.com/index.php?befehl=shows&show=483773

Truth. The value therein is only to decide if Dave has a similar taste to your own, then use his ratings as a rough guide to whether or not a match is likely to be to your tastes/worth your while to watch. Not to stat spaff yourself silly over.

I'm sure there are some snide types preparing a joke about "if it had been in the Tokyo Dome".... well, joke's on them, because Okada vs Omega (*******) was in Osaka.