Board 8 > All-Purpose Wrestling Topic 494: But The Stock Is Up!

(+) Yeah! (+)

StealThisSheen posted...

And then I made Corbin the King as punishment.

You mean reward.

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TheRock1525 posted...

You mean reward.

Soon they'll understand.

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StealThisSheen posted...

But I started complaining about all the interference and rankings seeming irrelevant/random and crap like "Look at these celebrities in the crowd" spots and people were like "no sep YOU are the wwe"

You said it like the second episode but it's gotten way worse over time imo

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Good, somebody remembers. I'm not crazy.

I'm not taking Corbin back, though. Let it be a warning.

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A sexy warning.

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But I mean AEW is still good TV, it's just not must see TV. I think they made a huge mistake not putting the title on Cody and the product suffered for it. Honestly a heel Moxley coming for Cody would have been more compelling than Moxley's "Will he join the Inner Circle?!?!" stuff.

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I personally really enjoyed the segment with him pretending to join and then taking the car anyway.

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Yeah I have loved every second of Moxley/Jericho.

Cody/MJF is pretty good only downside is MJF cant really wrestle that well

Page/Omega has been fantastic

Shanna/Nyla has been a fun thread on Dark

Dark Order isn't terrible

Id rather Janela/Sabian was less featured and that Nightmare Collective had in her Prime Kong but otherwise reasonably happy.

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I've had no problems with the Moxley feud on a segment to segment or even overall idea level-- I just figured AEW would be a bit less tunnel vision with their top guys, almost by necessity, due to the stress on rankings.

Like if Moxley's record gets too far above the field it becomes harder and harder for him to not Batista his way into infinite title matches, so having him lose once in a while when it makes sense is just smart

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Also we need to move ahead with PAC/Omega. That's been waiting to many weeks now. Like Omega's buddy got beat up and then abducted and then we never followed up on it.

Unless they are going to use it to keep annoying Page, then I'm fine with it.

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Maniac64 posted...

Also we need to move ahead with PAC/Omega. That's been waiting to many weeks now. Like Omega's buddy got beat up and then abducted and then we never followed up on it.

Another reason PAC/Jericho filler would have been excellent since clearly PAC/Omega is being built for the PPV but we kinda need to justify why they aren't fighting now at this point.

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I do sort of like the idea of Ortiz going over Moxley for exactly this reason but I dunno what to tell you - I am just inexplicably not worried about the direction in which AEWs angles are headed

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Kelce rips a good promo

https://www.instagram.com/p/B8M52RcBZaU/?igshid=1a6ldhm0n9u6i

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Alright, we talked a lot about bad wrestling yesterday and I took a day off from the list, but let's get back to some good wrestling today as we're into the 4 3/4 star matches of 2019. And we've got our first day spilling into two posts!

#25 - El Phantasmo and Taiji Ishimori vs Birds of Prey - NJPW - Destruction in Kagoshima, September 16th
Birds of Prey, despite only teaming together for a few months at the tail end of the year, built a fairly strong TTOTY case in what was in my opinion a bit of a down year for tag wrestling, mostly due to a very strong output in the Super Jr. Tag League and this feud with Robbie Eagles's former Bullet Club stablemates. This was the best of their series of matches, partly because it was in the biggest spot of any of them but also because everything just clicked. Ospreay's smoothness goes without saying, but Eagles is right behind him in terms of always being in the right place and making this whole wrestling thing look really easy. Ishimori has been floundering a bit in New Japan as he's no longer a big fish in the small pond that was NOAH, but when he's on his game he brings a lot of high-speed energy and innovative offense, which was exactly the case here. The revelation that has been Bullet Club ELP was the glue of the match, the final piece, making sure the crowd stayed engaged the whole way through with his heat-magnet antics and general shenanigans.

Eagles, after joining Ospreay in CHAOS, is finally starting to break out after spending several years as a little-known but consistently great feature of the emerging Australian scene, and matches like this are the reason. The other three guys in this match have already been firmly established in New Japan, but he's got the versatility to be a fixture in his own right, and he's sneakily over with the Japanese fans. Look for bigger things out of him in 2020.

#24 - Tribe Vanguard vs R.E.D. vs MaxiMuM - Dragon Gate - Kobe World, July 21st
Kobe World was one of the best and most memorable wrestling shows of the year. The coronation of Ben-K, the incredible return of Ultimo Dragon to the promotion, a couple of other awesome singles matches that aren't seen all that often in DG, and this match - one of the promotion's signature multi-man tags.

Matches like this, when they're put in a big spot like this one, deliver 100% of the time in this company, ESPECIALLY at Kobe World. Twin Gate title matches always rule at this show. If you've never seen a Dragon Gate offering like this, there's really nothing else like it in the entire world of wrestling. Pure chaos, but in the best way. Bell-to-bell fast-paced action, creative tag moves, exciting finishing sequences, everyone getting their time to shine. I'll never understand how pretty much everyone on the Dragon Gate roster always manages to be in the right place at the right time for matches like this, but they are. Naruki Doi and YAMATO, two of the greatest tag-team wrestlers of all time, put in another astounding performance, and their young partners held up their end of the bargain as well. The nefarious R.E.D. team played their role perfectly too, as usual, reminding everyone who may have forgotten that there are some great wrestlers hiding underneath the underhanded tactics they employ.

You won't see a match quite like this from any other wrestling company, for the simple reason that no other company is capable of it. This is required viewing for any tag team wrestling fan.

#23 - TLC Match - Swords of Essex vs Aussie Open - PROGRESS - Chapter 87, March 31st
Will Ospreay's surprise return at the end of 2018 to PROGRESS, the house and company that he built and that gave him a platform to break out to the world, to team with trainer and on-again off-again pal Paul Robinson was upstaged only by the fact that they actually won the tag straps that night, unseating Aussie Open from a reign that felt like it had only just begun after their long journey to winning them in the first place. Which brings us to this car crash of a rematch.

This match was tough to rate at the time, and even now it feels a little weird having it this high up. There's a non-insignificant number of not-insignificant botches, it's filled with a lot of ladder match tropes I generally dislike, and at times it just seems a little excessive.

As a total package, though, this was one of the best examples of a true "storytelling" match in recent memory in indie wrestling. Mark Davis won the promotion's Natural Progression Series tournament and could've challenged for any title he wanted, but he chose the tag titles because he knew how much they meant to partner Kyle Fletcher. He'd prove that devotion several times over again in this match, including a spot that will literally pop me every single time in wrestling where he throws himself over the prone body of Fletcher in a seemingly vain effort to protect him from the viciousness of the Swords, a la Kobashi with Misawa on 6/9/95.

There's some truly unforgettable spots in this match, too, usually by virtue of Paul Robinson being an absolute lunatic willing to madly throw his body around for any spot. It's also fun to see Ospreay on a rare occasion of working true heel, just in case anyone forgot that he really can do it all. This match is far from perfect, but there are perfect things about it, and it gave us a brief glimpse back into what PROGRESS used to be all about.

#22 - Kazuchika Okada vs Hiroshi Tanahashi - NJPW - G1 Climax Night 1, July 6th
I'll be up front with this one and say that, in a vacuum, it's not a 4.75 star match. Now, that's not to say it isn't great by any measure - these guys could have a 4+ star match with each other in their sleep - but it's one of their least strong efforts together and, by their standards, fairly rudimentary. They mostly played the hints.

But without this rivalry, I would not be watching wrestling right now. Their Wrestle Kingdom 9 match came just a few weeks before WWE finally turned on its fans for good and began my strong disillusionment with the company. It was my first exposure to NJPW and, to say the least, it left a lasting impression. Even now, I consider it one of the greatest matches of all time.

Fast forward four years later and, amazingly, I get to see it live. I was there in Dallas, and I watched these two guys spend the first couple minutes doing nothing but staring at each other as the entire crowd gave them a standing ovation. I'll never forget that moment. I'll never forget the coin dropping in Okada's entrance theme. I'll never forget joining the dueling chants. I'll never forget watching him deliver the Rainmaker, as I'd seen it on video so many times before. And I'll never have a wrestling experience quite like it.

Atmosphere is the oft-forgotten ingredient that makes a

#21 - Will Ospreay vs SHO - NJPW - Super J Cup Night 2, August 24th
I mentioned in #23 that we don't get true heel Ospreay very often, but we do get subtle heel Ospreay fairly often, especially when he's working a match like this. We start with a split crowd here, but they slowly turn on Willy boy as he gets to be more and more of a prick once his frustration starts to rise at not being able to put the other guy away, and by the end they're all in SHO's corner. Just masterful work.

The elevation (heh) of SHO continued here with his last high-profile singles match of the year, and once again he rose to the occasion. This match doesn't need superlatives - you know the drill with these guys by now. It was slick, it was violent, it was awesome. We can only hope for a rematch before Ospreay goes full heavyweight.

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I totally understand your reasoning for #22! And Ospreay/SHO is so damn good.

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I just want to mention how much my wife and I love the occasionally comedic headers on AEW entrance graphics. They are great.

Especially the ones about Hangman Page. Letting us know about him still owing Private Party and now not liking the Being the Elite music.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjWdLvdHuVA

DREW MAC is such a friendly guy. Also I love how every god damn person brings up "BRING BACK BROKEN DREAMS"

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Maniac64 posted...

I just want to mention how much my wife and I love the occasionally comedic headers on AEW entrance graphics. They are great.

Especially the ones about Hangman Page. Letting us know about him still owing Private Party and now not liking the Being the Elite music.

I do love those graphic lines as well! The fact that only some are comedic make those so much better.

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i'm in agreement about a lot of the criticisms of AEW of late, but what I do still like quite a lot is the gradual way they fill in PPV lineups and leave you with something to speculate over

We have... Moxley vs. Jericho and Cody vs. MJF announced. Omega & Page defend against SCU next week, and the week after is a tag team battle royal to determine the challengers for Revolution. And the week after, days before the PPV, Omega faces PAC in an iron man match. Leaves me intrigued as to what direction they're actually going with Omega for the PPV.

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scarletspeed7 posted...

I do love those graphic lines as well! The fact that only some are comedic make those so much better.

Yep. It's like a reward for paying attention.

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Yeah my original thoughts were that Page/Omega would fight PnP or Dark Order at Revolution.

Now? I think Bucks, Butcher/Blade and Lucha Bros are the front runners. Just different evidence every month.

And will they tell the story of Omegas split devotion creating even more friction with hangman? Could be great shit.

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From Brandon Thurstons thread recapping the investors call

https://twitter.com/brandonthurston/status/1225421692429881345?s=21

Remember when they thought theyd get 3-4 million
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The big news from the call is that theyre looking to sell rights for PPVs to other streaming services as an additional source of revenue

Even less reason to have the Network
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https://twitter.com/trevordame/status/1225488679134777345?s=21
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Pretty fun set of matches today.

#20 - Arisa Hoshiki vs Jungle Kyona - STARDOM - Stardom x Stardom, August 10th
So, for some perspective, back in 2016 Io Shirai and Kairi Hojo(Sane) had a match that I came very, very close to going five stars on. Before that, you'd have to go back to the early 2000s to find another women's match I liked better than this one.

And to explain why, I'm gonna have to get on my soapbox for a minute and talk about selling. I strongly believe that the majority of people, fans and wrestlers alike, get selling very wrong these days when it comes to limb work. Adrenaline is a big deal - athletes play through pretty severe injuries all the time in sports. So why is it that people act like some wrestler's a terrible seller if they don't treat their leg like it's been amputated after their opponent does one dragon screw and kicks it a couple of times?

This match doesn't have that issue in the slightest. Kyona does some work on Hoshiki's leg early on in an attempt to take away the lethal kicks that have been bringing her so many victories. Then Hoshiki kicks her in the head anyway a couple minutes later and Kyona thinks, "Well, damn, that still really hurt!" and abandons that strategy. She tried something and it didn't work. That's not bad psychology - that's just the normal course of an athletic competition. I love that sort of thing.

It's not the only thing that made this match awesome, though. Jungle Kyona is the Tomohiro Ishii of the joshi world - rarely gets pushed and often works as the underdog despite her size, but no one would call you crazy if you said she was the best female wrestler in the world, and if Stardom ever wants a great in-ring match, they inevitably go to Kyona for it. Her fans, me among them, have been clamoring for her to finally win a singles title for years, and this match had us collectively living and dying by every near-fall. There was a message being sent: for Arisa to win this, she was gonna have to kick Kyona's head into the fifth row.

There's a deceptive amount of depth here, too. Hoshiki, to a degree, represents every one of the younger and more attractive (conventionally speaking) wrestlers that have come into Stardom and found immediate success while Jan-Kyo looks on from the background. And the glittery, squeaky-clean nature of Hoshiki's STARS stable looks conformist to the fiercely individualistic Tokyo Cyber Squad that Kyona's a part of. The turning point in the match where she gives up on the leg targeting and starts throwing bombs feels momentous as a part of that story - she's Jungle Kyona, she doesn't do limb work, she just runs into you with lariats and elbows until you don't get up anymore.

You could really pick any of Hoshiki's White Belt defenses from 2019 at random and it wouldn't feel out of place on this list, but if you're invested in Kyona the way I am, this stands as the clear best. And because I can't talk about Hoshiki without posting this gif, here she is murdering Hazuki. https://i.imgur.com/ZYE3lMO.mp4

#19 - Yuji Okabayashi vs Dylan James - AJPW - Champion Carnival Night 12, April 20th
2019's was the best Champion Carnival in recent memory, and these two guys were big reasons why. James stepped up in a big way after his return from injury, and Oka was just the straight MVP of the tournament despite technically being an "outsider."

There's no deep background here, no additional context needed to understand. It's a longer match, but it breezes by as these two just slap and chop and elbow and lariat and suplex the life out of each other. You want to see two big tough guys trying to figure out which one's tougher? Watch this match.

#18 - Daisuke Sekimoto vs Michael Elgin - BJW - August 24th
... Or this one. Or both!

Elgin's really fallen out of the public eye since the controversy that surrounded him and his subsequent departure from NJPW, but he's still one of the very best going right now, especially in Japan. You can just see a certain pep in his step in that country that isn't present elsewhere, and when he gets to work against a guy like Sekimoto, it's only amplified.

Again, it's a big boy formula match. Fighting spirit and stiff strikes abound. And it's awesome. I can't wait to see what variation of the dancing gimmick Sekimoto gets in WWE.

#17 - Strong BJ vs Violent Giants - AJPW - Dream Power Series Night 6, March 19th
With apologies to WALTER, these are the best four wrestlers in the world at the 2v2 hoss fight, and Yuji Okabayashi is the one true Sekimoto partner. This match had the tidy little story of the Giants, the most prolific AJPW tag team of recent memory, trying to reclaim AJPW's tag titles from the outsider team that took them away in January, which worked perfectly as a backdrop to what was yet another amazing hoss fight. Strong BJ aren't "invaders" or even heels, they're just simply not All Japan, so they brought their regular style here just as they should have. Suwama is a full step (or maybe two) below the other three guys in this match as a worker, but one thing he always does well is timing, so he thrives in this environment where he can just throw in a perfectly placed lariat or suplex and bring the match to emotional highs. I mentioned yesterday that 2019 wasn't a great year for tag matches, but this is absolutely an exception.

#16 - Will Ospreay vs Robbie Eagles - NJPW - Southern Showdown Melbourne, June 29th
Thought you were gonna get away without an Ospreay or NJPW match today, didn't ya?

I love this rivalry, and this felt like the culmination of it. Callbacks to their previous matches, playing off their recent history in NJPW proper, building up the tension between Eagles and ELP that would lead to Eagles finally turning on the BC after the match, all backed by the kind of smooth but hard-hitting wrestling that these two do better than maybe anyone else in the world. Eagles came off like a huge star in his native country, too, which added a really cool atmosphere to the match as Ospreay had to work to a hostile crowd despite Eagles not technically turning yet, and they popped huge for every tease of discord between the Bullet Club contingent. I'm running out of praise to heap on Will at this point, but it really can't be overstated just how much he did for both himself and all his opponents in 2019.

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NBIceman posted...

I'm running out of praise to heap on Will at this point,

gonna be rough writing this top 15 then

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in comes adam cole, an avid gamer who's also an expert at mind games and a savant like mind for strategy has made him the leader of his league of legends

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WWE getting some of that mainstream coverage they crave

https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/06/investing/wwe-earnings-stock/index.html
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I'm the weird guy looking at the WWE stock freefall thinking I want to buy their stock now once they drop enough

I think I'm just kicking myself cause I had a ton of disposable income when WWE announced the network and could have sunk like 20k into it then and was tempted to and didn't. Could have like octupled my money pretty easily

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Would you have gotten out when it hit $100?
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Wasn't it like $7 before the network or something like that?

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I mean I dunno. I would've got out whenever the first drop after when the Fox deal announced was. Well before it was actually on Fox cause I was expecting it to tank after it got on the network and underwhelmed. I'm thinking that's probably when it dunked to $80 last April just after it hit $100.

Point is I wanted to buy when it was like $10 a share so even if I sold now I would've killed.

I still feel like WWE will recover to some extent (a large extent, really) because it's swindled so many people out of money I'm sure it'll find a way to do it again. Do I just wait for Vince McMahon to keel over and buy it after people panic sell I dunno.

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Anyone else find it hilarious all this stock tanking is happening right in time for XFL to start?

This might be the year that breaks Vincent Kennedy McMahon.

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TheRock1525 posted...

Wasn't it like $7 before the network or something like that?

Back in like 2008 I bought maybe $1000 worth of it when it was around $10 or so. Sold it within a year or so when it was about the same.

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Ratings:

AEW - 928k, .36 18-49
NXT - 770k, .22 18-49

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FFDragon posted...

Anyone else find it hilarious all this stock tanking is happening right in time for XFL to start?

This might be the year that breaks Vincent Kennedy McMahon.

He made it very clear on the investors call that they are separate companies with no overlap and he can handle adding the XFL to his WWE duties with no loss of focus
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TheRock1525 posted...

Ratings:

AEW - 928k, .36 18-49
NXT - 770k, .22 18-49

These numbers have pretty much settled at this point.

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Jakyl25 posted...

He made it very clear on the investors call that they are separate companies with no overlap and he can handle adding the XFL to his WWE duties with no loss of focus

Says the guy who can't keep Smackdown from sucking most weeks. Vince is hopeless.

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BTW, I hated the Cody/MJF stipulations on paper but the 10 Lash Segment was really really good.

The best way to put it: I could never buy Babyface Seth Rollins being willing to do that.

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god damn i got fired up reading this

https://twitter.com/JamieOD/status/1225694744379936768

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Man I feel the opposite. I was whatever on the lashes when it was announced. But felt it went waaaaay to long. Especially the early lashes.

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Oh no way - the lashes segment was amazing - especially once it became clear what the segment was gonna be.

Not merely torture but a test of Cody's resolve. This is the kind of thing only a whitemeat babyface that the audience actually loves like Cody can pull off.

Compare and contrast to this Roman dogfood angle.

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Yeah, I'm definitely in the camp that it was just too long. Conceptually I think it was cool but I was just bored by the end even though I got what they were going for. Just wasn't great viewing for me.

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That's everything in AEW. Shorter segments would be a godsend.

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I'm personally of the feeling that a segment that isn't a match should probably be capped at like 6 minutes or so as a general rule. If you need more time than that just split it up over multiple segments. Like you look at the all time great promos most of them are well under that. Heck even the ones you might remember as being long like Hogan's Heel Turn or Punk's Pipe Bomb are only around that.

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I'm even worse than you, Lopen. I don't think wrestling shows on TV should have more than one 15-minute match. I would cap most matches at 8 minutes.

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I generally agree with that but raw is so long I kinda want two longer matches, but the real answer is to cut an hour off raw
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https://nypost.com/2020/02/07/son-of-wwe-legend-million-dollar-man-arrested-in-4m-welfare-scam/

"Legacy"

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Well I'm closer to agreeing than you'd think there, but maybe for a different reason.

I don't think wrestling shows on TV should have commercial breaks during matches.

By necessity that means they'd probably need to cap most at somewhere around 8 minutes. Which is fine. You can have perfectly good TV matches with that amount of time.

That being said if you could run a bunch of 15-20 minute matches without bisecting em all with commercials then I'd support it, unlike with promos which just shouldn't run that long period.

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