What is the USP of the junior division now though? The best flyers like Ibushi and Styles are fighting at heavyweight, so it's difficult to see how the division appeals. Omega getting the belt will surely help with match quality, however, as will Goto/Shibata winning the tag titles.
That exact statement could be applied to 100% of the population - in part b/c of the Internet, 24 hours of Sports/News/etc. Besides....dude changed the game, and the way people look at ESPN.
? It had a month build. HHH/Austin were feuding up until No Mercy (?) and the 3 stages of hell match. Then it was a month build to HHH/UT with no real back story to it.
Did he? If he did it, he changed it for the worse. Sportscenter became more unwatchable as he took center stage. I never really gave any thought to Stuart Scott besides oh, that guy's annoying, until today.
Olbermann, Patrick, Kilborn, Mayne were all far better
WrestleMania XV is horrible, but if you count the build to Rock vs Austin starting from Survivor Series 98 up to Mania, then the build for that match was pretty good. And yes, the Rumble match from 1999 was freaking terrible as well.
Don't discount the average age of this blog readership as being a major factor. There are many other sites online that think the WWE is awesome right now. I don't agree with that sentiment in the slightest but I am also part of that older 30s and 40s demo. That's colouring a lot of the perspective here, I think.
The beginning (when Austin first confronted Rock the night after No Way Out) and end of the build (the sit down interview and the Limp Bizkit package) was great. Everything in between kind of sucked.
I spoke to a friend about this and something that bothered me about the Tanahashi match was the fact that Ross and Stryker were constantly saying how bad Tanahashi's neck and back were, yet there was no real selling of either one. They also kept repeating that Okada was the future of NJPW. I felt it was the perfect setup for him to go over, but Okada gets beat by a guy who (at least the way Ross and Stryker were speaking) was broken down. Maybe minor nitpicking but it kept it from being a ***** classic for me. Nakamura/Ibushi is my MOTN.
It's the bigger picture (not the WWE version!)! Okada was absolutely sure to have Tanahashi's number, beat him the last time they met for the title and attacked him on the way to WK9 to make him weaker. So losing here, he was absolutely gutted, he even cried. This will lead to one last match between these 2 men at WK10, were Okada finally seals his spot as the No.1 wrestler in NJPW and even beats Tanahashi's undefeated streak at WK!
No better way to do that all! He had to lose here.
Well it was all Vince don't want Austin as the champion and doing everything he must, to prevent it and it was maybe one of the best road to wrestlemania ever. Everything was connected. Vince vs Austin, Austin vs Rock, Mankind vs Rock, then Big Show coming to help Vince and so on.
Okada looked like a crying lesbian to casual fans. Also, their series is now tied at 3-3 so the rubber match will be won by Okada and he becomes "the man" for sure. Maybe even wins the G1 again and then risks his career.
Hogan vs Sarge is actually a pretty decent match. Mania 7 as a whole is pretty underrated actually. The weak spot for me though was Boss Man not going over Hennig.
I can't argue about the money it drew, but I would have gone Taker vs cena (seriously, why was it never done?) and held off Punk/Rock (seriously, who were they never a tag team. PERFECT name right there) till mania.
You are definitely in the minority with loving that match. There was a perfect way to book it (Cena, unlike the year before isn't fooled by the rock and caught in the rock bottom, this time it's Cena fooling him) and it didn't happen. The first one was decent, but, IMO, thank Cena for that. I always felt Rock was way out of ring shape.
HBK/Taker II started from pretty rocky foundations - Shawn just deciding apropos of fuck all that he needed to beat Taker and his life absolutely depended it.
Then, of course, things got fucking awesome with Shawn's Rumble run (I was marking out at all the failed elimination attempts and genuinely gasped when he was finally gotten rid of), interfering in Elimination Chamber, etcetera. That's a pretty slowburning feud by modern WWE standards, and a really interesting use of a contender in a RR (one of the best ever, in fact) - have someone go in wanting to win for reasons which are vaguely separate to the title shot, and have their odyssey lend a fresh storyline to the Rumble in general. It'd be nice to see someone used in the next Rumble even half as innovatively, given how the accepted way of booking things now seems to be someone wins and then a feud is manufactured out of nowhere for the two months until WM (sometimes, it's just one).
That Rumble faceoff is still fucking awesome. Shows that if you book people properly and have a great announce team, two sweaty, muscled men staring at each other can be really fucking exciting.
Taker was originally in a tag match with Haku & Rikishi if memory serves. The build was still pretty good though, there was a bit of build on every show and you were ready for them to kill each other.
You know, even though it would be very recent to do a rematch, and there's NO WAY it would happen, would there be any objection to Bryan/HHH II career vs career if it meant Bryan going over, and Trips being gone even from an on air role. To me, it's the perfect story right now. Trips couldn't end his career, but still wants him gone. Bryan uses that leverage to get him to put up his career as well.
Foley wanted to retire, the Backlash main event was an awesome bit of overbooking which didn't make Rock look weaker at all (and, Rock lost the previous month due to a chairshot from Vince), Rikishi as the driver flopped big time, he didn't overshadow Austin at all. You may as well accuse Austin of tearing HHH's quad so he wasn't overshadowed.
Although, winning at WM, winning the title back a month after Rock won it and then not actually losing it back is pretty unforgivable.
WM 7 is my far and away favourite of the first 10, actually. Not so tough maybe, because 1, 2, 4, 5 and 9 are all shit, and 6 is pretty ropey too, but there's loads of unexpectedly good stuff on there. Sarge/Hogan is great, and Warrior/Savage will always be one of my absolute favourite matches.
Very good idea I never thought of. There'd be a nice synergy with Warrior 'retiring' Savage the year previously (although I guess Warrior was 'pally' with Hulk at Summerslam 91).
I think 14 was the first year since 3, maybe, that it really did have that 'IF YOU ARE A WRESTLING OR SPORTS FAN YOU MUST WATCH THIS SHOW' feel. It felt special and significant.
Yeah, this is a major, major problem. Often now, there's only a single month (after EC) to build up a story - if we're lucky, sometimes it's two. The worst offender in this regard is HHH/Orton at 25 - whilst I think that build was actually booked remarkably well, and the writers tied it to Orton's 'bitterness' that HHH turned on him in 2004 (giving it a historical edge totally lacking from...every other storyline WWE have run at all in the past 10 years), ultimately Orton eliminated HHH from the Rumble to win. He only started chasing Hunter from mid-February onwards.
Lots of modern Mania matches are only cobbled together in the month or two before, actually. They really suffer for it. Punk/Orton at WM27 was chucked together on the basis of Orton costing Punk a title years previously.
He's still willing to hurt the overall product and any other talent as he sees fit, for no other reason than self-interest. It's pitiful, and I'm scared about what'll happen when he properly takes over.
Hogan-Warrior gets the nod for me just behind Megapowers, because not only was it a really good build (and a match people had been privately wondering about since Warrior won his first IC title), but it was the only match that sold WM VI. Truly the definition of a "one match show".
It's even better when you consider their attempt to recreate it a few years back with Cena and Orton and how that crowd just shits all over their dreams.
Well the original WM plan for Bryan was against HBK which would have been fantastic but after thinking it over, Shawn decided he didnt want to do one more match. They geniuses in creative then decided on the Wyatt crap
NITPICK ALERT! Tanahashi lost to Nakamura at WK 2! :) But yeah that seems to be where they're going but I'd still have Okada win here. I hate to think the GWF thing changed the booking because I don't see NJPW getting over in the US besides the hardcore that already watches it.
I thought it was a great finish to the IC match. Nakamura had to pull out his old finisher the Landslide to set up the Boma Ye. Also Ibushi hitting Nakamura with the Boma Ye is what set this into classic status.
Yeah, I pointed out in a thread a few months back (about the Twin Towers vs Mega-Powers Main Event) that Macho Man is almost a textbook Shakespearean tragic hero, and that Michael Nalbach guy got all indignant about how wrestling fans have a warped idea of morality as pertains to violence against women, ignoring the fact that Shakespeare's tragic heroes tend to kill people and be the antagonist of a story basically by definition.
I thought Ross and Striker did great. You could tell JR was a little lost in the tag matches but as the show went on, he really picked it up and he was fucking killing it in the main event. "THAT'S THE GREATEST DROPKICK IN THE WORLD!"
Striker had a few of his cringey, overly pandering moments that plagued him in the WWE but they were few and far between and he really did a great job of setting the context/scene of each match for new fans.
I can't wait for a feud with Rollins where he doesn't need to limit his offense and can go 100% against a dude, cause his flurries are fucking amazing.
I voted Kid/Jannetty because if the match was on Raw tomorrow, that's who i would root for.
ReplyDeleteAt the time that both tea,s were active, I would have voted Gunns.
What is the USP of the junior division now though? The best flyers like Ibushi and Styles are fighting at heavyweight, so it's difficult to see how the division appeals. Omega getting the belt will surely help with match quality, however, as will Goto/Shibata winning the tag titles.
ReplyDeleteThat exact statement could be applied to 100% of the population - in part b/c of the Internet, 24 hours of Sports/News/etc. Besides....dude changed the game, and the way people look at ESPN.
ReplyDeleteTotally agree but for me it's WM 24-29, but that's nitpicking
ReplyDelete? It had a month build. HHH/Austin were feuding up until No Mercy (?) and the 3 stages of hell match. Then it was a month build to HHH/UT with no real back story to it.
ReplyDeleteSame here. It's all a blur of Cena-Rock-Orton-Triple H-Big Show matches and three-ways. The only identifier for me is the Taker streak series.
ReplyDeleteSee, Punk did get a main event at Wrestlemania!
ReplyDeleteI don't recall 11 being an awful build, but I was 13 at the time.
ReplyDeleteThey had their hands tied with 13 because of Shawn's bullshit, so they did the best they could there.
18 stI'll gives me nightmares. Good Lord.
Yeah now I wanna play Mega Man.
ReplyDeleteDid he? If he did it, he changed it for the worse. Sportscenter became more unwatchable as he took center stage. I never really gave any thought to Stuart Scott besides oh, that guy's annoying, until today.
ReplyDeleteOlbermann, Patrick, Kilborn, Mayne were all far better
Jones started the weigh in brawl, which I'd have a hard time believing was anything other than 100% staged anyway.
ReplyDeleteHaving had to deal with this fanbase for years, I can say MMA fans are actually even more racist than football die hards.
Dog shit. The fuck...
ReplyDeleteEspecially the end. Wow.
ReplyDeleteWrestleMania XV is horrible, but if you count the build to Rock vs Austin starting from Survivor Series 98 up to Mania, then the build for that match was pretty good. And yes, the Rumble match from 1999 was freaking terrible as well.
ReplyDeleteWho were the other gangsters? Wanna see who I can use to retroactively credit Punk's WWE career to (ala Holly, Richards)
ReplyDeleteI honestly can't think of a single win Jericho had over HHH.
ReplyDeleteFixed.
/If only he knew how to work.
Same thing happened to Angle, his first was another HTM reign.
ReplyDeleteAustin in the shape he was in then overshadowed a lot ;-)
ReplyDeleteR.I.P.
ReplyDeleteWM20...why promise a three way when there clearly was NO THIRD MAN,EVER?!!?
ReplyDeleteYeah, 11 they at least tried with the promise of mainstream media coverage. Speaking of which, anyone else read/reading "Titan Sinking"? Good stuff.
ReplyDeleteJust wait for the Network retrospective of Wrestlemania XXX in another four years.
ReplyDeleteSteph: "We saw fire in that little indy geek. We knew he was a star all along."
Vince: "We brought Batista in solely to ensure Daniel was going to get the kind of crowd support we knew he would."
HHH: "The only way he was going to get to the top was in a match with me, so I begged Vince to make it happen and let me make him a star."
Seeing that live at Fleet Center was memorable. Great stuff. Peter Rose getting tombstoned and Kane getting a pop for it, memorable
ReplyDeleteIf it hasn't been mentioned Austin - HBK was fantastic despite HBK's limitations.
ReplyDeleteThe build for the fatal four way was insane though, especially when it came to Rock trying to fight his way into the match.
ReplyDeleteDoes the Flair/Piper team feature half-black Piper? That could be the difference maker.
ReplyDeleteB of D vs Kronik was the stuff of legend.
ReplyDeleteJust finished Titan Sinking, is it worth looking at James Dixon's other books?
ReplyDeleteA real dick promo for sure.
ReplyDeleteBut Tanahashi has the right of saying that, Okada got what he deserved after attacking him in other shows.
ReplyDeleteCould be just me but I don't find that bizarre at all. The Rick Steiner vs the Varsity Club angle is awesome.
ReplyDeleteDon't discount the average age of this blog readership as being a major factor. There are many other sites online that think the WWE is awesome right now. I don't agree with that sentiment in the slightest but I am also part of that older 30s and 40s demo. That's colouring a lot of the perspective here, I think.
ReplyDeletei think his win against Rock at Rumble was clean?
ReplyDeleteWhoa I've never seen this go home promo reconciliation. Any pointers to episode date or anything like that? Sounds like it would be neat to see.
ReplyDeleteFrom just storyline, the WM30 build has got to be Top 5.
ReplyDeleteThe beginning (when Austin first confronted Rock the night after No Way Out) and end of the build (the sit down interview and the Limp Bizkit package) was great. Everything in between kind of sucked.
ReplyDeleteI spoke to a friend about this and something that bothered me about the Tanahashi match was the fact that Ross and Stryker were constantly saying how bad Tanahashi's neck and back were, yet there was no real selling of either one. They also kept repeating that Okada was the future of NJPW. I felt it was the perfect setup for him to go over, but Okada gets beat by a guy who (at least the way Ross and Stryker were speaking) was broken down.
ReplyDeleteMaybe minor nitpicking but it kept it from being a ***** classic for me. Nakamura/Ibushi is my MOTN.
A McMahon in Every Corner felt more like a random filler PPV than Wrestlemania.
ReplyDeleteIt's the bigger picture (not the WWE version!)! Okada was absolutely sure to have Tanahashi's number, beat him the last time they met for the title and attacked him on the way to WK9 to make him weaker. So losing here, he was absolutely gutted, he even cried. This will lead to one last match between these 2 men at WK10, were Okada finally seals his spot as the No.1 wrestler in NJPW and even beats Tanahashi's undefeated streak at WK!
ReplyDeleteNo better way to do that all! He had to lose here.
Well it was all Vince don't want Austin as the champion and doing everything he must, to prevent it and it was maybe one of the best road to wrestlemania ever. Everything was connected. Vince vs Austin, Austin vs Rock, Mankind vs Rock, then Big Show coming to help Vince and so on.
ReplyDeleteOkay bro.....agree to disagree. Either way, sucks that the guy dies at 49 of Cancer and left 2 teenage daughters behind
ReplyDeleteOkada looked like a crying lesbian to casual fans. Also, their series is now tied at 3-3 so the rubber match will be won by Okada and he becomes "the man" for sure. Maybe even wins the G1 again and then risks his career.
ReplyDeleteIt didn't go on last, but that WM's selling point was the "Double Main Event".
ReplyDeleteThat's a great point.
ReplyDeleteHogan, Sid and Liz were all gone almost immediately after. That'd been the perfect way to transition out of that feud.
The only thing missing from that feud was a rubber match. I'm thinking a YAPAPI strap match.
ReplyDeleteShows how important these packages are. A great one can wash away a multitude of sins.
ReplyDeleteKind of reminds me of Hogan/Rock -- which had a very simple and effective build -- except for the part where Hogan hits Rock with a semi. *delete*
I'll add from semi recent times. Batista/HHH and HBK/Taker II. Especially the latter.
ReplyDeleteHogan vs Sarge is actually a pretty decent match. Mania 7 as a whole is pretty underrated actually. The weak spot for me though was Boss Man not going over Hennig.
ReplyDeleteI can't argue about the money it drew, but I would have gone Taker vs cena (seriously, why was it never done?) and held off Punk/Rock (seriously, who were they never a tag team. PERFECT name right there) till mania.
ReplyDeleteYou are definitely in the minority with loving that match. There was a perfect way to book it (Cena, unlike the year before isn't fooled by the rock and caught in the rock bottom, this time it's Cena fooling him) and it didn't happen. The first one was decent, but, IMO, thank Cena for that. I always felt Rock was way out of ring shape.
ReplyDeleteEven though people would have shit on it, the better redemption would have been ending Taker's streak.
ReplyDeleteHBK/Taker II started from pretty rocky foundations - Shawn just deciding apropos of fuck all that he needed to beat Taker and his life absolutely depended it.
ReplyDeleteThen, of course, things got fucking awesome with Shawn's Rumble run (I was marking out at all the failed elimination attempts and genuinely gasped when he was finally gotten rid of), interfering in Elimination Chamber, etcetera. That's a pretty slowburning feud by modern WWE standards, and a really interesting use of a contender in a RR (one of the best ever, in fact) - have someone go in wanting to win for reasons which are vaguely separate to the title shot, and have their odyssey lend a fresh storyline to the Rumble in general. It'd be nice to see someone used in the next Rumble even half as innovatively, given how the accepted way of booking things now seems to be someone wins and then a feud is manufactured out of nowhere for the two months until WM (sometimes, it's just one).
Amazing they managed to get any mileage out of that feud in the months leading up given that Michaels was pretty much out of commission.
ReplyDeleteThat Rumble faceoff is still fucking awesome. Shows that if you book people properly and have a great announce team, two sweaty, muscled men staring at each other can be really fucking exciting.
ReplyDeleteThe 17 build was whack.
ReplyDeleteTaker was originally in a tag match with Haku & Rikishi if memory serves. The build was still pretty good though, there was a bit of build on every show and you were ready for them to kill each other.
ReplyDeleteHe beat HHH on an episode of SmackDown in 2002.
ReplyDeleteFeet on the ropes, if memory serves. He cheated a lot during the match, too. Read SK's review for a good laugh.
ReplyDeleteYou know, even though it would be very recent to do a rematch, and there's NO WAY it would happen, would there be any objection to Bryan/HHH II career vs career if it meant Bryan going over, and Trips being gone even from an on air role. To me, it's the perfect story right now. Trips couldn't end his career, but still wants him gone. Bryan uses that leverage to get him to put up his career as well.
ReplyDeleteFoley wanted to retire, the Backlash main event was an awesome bit of overbooking which didn't make Rock look weaker at all (and, Rock lost the previous month due to a chairshot from Vince), Rikishi as the driver flopped big time, he didn't overshadow Austin at all. You may as well accuse Austin of tearing HHH's quad so he wasn't overshadowed.
ReplyDeleteAlthough, winning at WM, winning the title back a month after Rock won it and then not actually losing it back is pretty unforgivable.
I agree with this. I actually really like that match. Goes to show how little faith Vince had in Rey as champion.
ReplyDeleteWM 7 is my far and away favourite of the first 10, actually. Not so tough maybe, because 1, 2, 4, 5 and 9 are all shit, and 6 is pretty ropey too, but there's loads of unexpectedly good stuff on there. Sarge/Hogan is great, and Warrior/Savage will always be one of my absolute favourite matches.
ReplyDeleteVery good idea I never thought of. There'd be a nice synergy with Warrior 'retiring' Savage the year previously (although I guess Warrior was 'pally' with Hulk at Summerslam 91).
ReplyDeleteI think 14 was the first year since 3, maybe, that it really did have that 'IF YOU ARE A WRESTLING OR SPORTS FAN YOU MUST WATCH THIS SHOW' feel. It felt special and significant.
ReplyDeleteYeah, this is a major, major problem. Often now, there's only a single month (after EC) to build up a story - if we're lucky, sometimes it's two. The worst offender in this regard is HHH/Orton at 25 - whilst I think that build was actually booked remarkably well, and the writers tied it to Orton's 'bitterness' that HHH turned on him in 2004 (giving it a historical edge totally lacking from...every other storyline WWE have run at all in the past 10 years), ultimately Orton eliminated HHH from the Rumble to win. He only started chasing Hunter from mid-February onwards.
ReplyDeleteLots of modern Mania matches are only cobbled together in the month or two before, actually. They really suffer for it. Punk/Orton at WM27 was chucked together on the basis of Orton costing Punk a title years previously.
The ref in the main event looked a whole lot like Shigeru Myamoto.
ReplyDeleteHe's still willing to hurt the overall product and any other talent as he sees fit, for no other reason than self-interest. It's pitiful, and I'm scared about what'll happen when he properly takes over.
ReplyDeleteHogan-Warrior gets the nod for me just behind Megapowers, because not only was it a really good build (and a match people had been privately wondering about since Warrior won his first IC title), but it was the only match that sold WM VI. Truly the definition of a "one match show".
ReplyDeleteIt's even better when you consider their attempt to recreate it a few years back with Cena and Orton and how that crowd just shits all over their dreams.
ReplyDeleteI'm guessing somewhere in there, that has relevance...to SOMEthing
ReplyDeleteWell the original WM plan for Bryan was against HBK which would have been fantastic but after thinking it over, Shawn decided he didnt want to do one more match. They geniuses in creative then decided on the Wyatt crap
ReplyDeleteI feel like the first eight Manias all had great builds for a variety of reasons, but 5 will always stand out as one of the greatest year+ story arcs
ReplyDeleteOh. Well, I guess my list was wrong, then.
ReplyDeleteClean?
ReplyDeleteIf no one else said it yet....SAME THREAD, OTHER PPVs!
ReplyDeleteNITPICK ALERT! Tanahashi lost to Nakamura at WK 2! :) But yeah that seems to be where they're going but I'd still have Okada win here. I hate to think the GWF thing changed the booking because I don't see NJPW getting over in the US besides the hardcore that already watches it.
ReplyDeleteI thought it was a great finish to the IC match. Nakamura had to pull out his old finisher the Landslide to set up the Boma Ye. Also Ibushi hitting Nakamura with the Boma Ye is what set this into classic status.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I pointed out in a thread a few months back (about the Twin Towers vs Mega-Powers Main Event) that Macho Man is almost a textbook Shakespearean tragic hero, and that Michael Nalbach guy got all indignant about how wrestling fans have a warped idea of morality as pertains to violence against women, ignoring the fact that Shakespeare's tragic heroes tend to kill people and be the antagonist of a story basically by definition.
ReplyDeleteI had Nakamura/Ibushi as the match of the night, personally. But everything on this show was paced and timed nearly perfectly. And Honma gets a win!
ReplyDeleteAlso agree with the early betting on Tanahashi/Okada 7 for the main event of WK10. Now, if we get Castagnoli/Nakamura on top of that ...
Nakamura/Ibushi was some of the best storytelling you'll ever see. 5 stars. Nakamura is the best wrestler going, in my opinion.
ReplyDeleteWith Tanahashi it's more "how much longer can he be the best" more than "he's broken."
ReplyDeleteAndré Stenzel nails it with where this is heading.
Oh, my bad...I skipped WK2 when I looked at Tanahashi's win streak...why? I DON'T KNOW!
ReplyDeleteI thought Ross and Striker did great. You could tell JR was a little lost in the tag matches but as the show went on, he really picked it up and he was fucking killing it in the main event. "THAT'S THE GREATEST DROPKICK IN THE WORLD!"
ReplyDeleteStriker had a few of his cringey, overly pandering moments that plagued him in the WWE but they were few and far between and he really did a great job of setting the context/scene of each match for new fans.
I couldn't agree more.
ReplyDeleteThanks for that, I didn't realize it was his old finisher until I read your comment.
ReplyDeleteI can't wait for a feud with Rollins where he doesn't need to limit his offense and can go 100% against a dude, cause his flurries are fucking amazing.
ReplyDelete