I’m wondering if Jake the Snake fell off the wagon. He’s saying all sorts of uncharacteristically cynical and borderline insane stuff… He sounds like Jim Cornette might if he did so much meth that he simultaneously marked out and became a lunatic.

Wyatt vs Knight was terrible. After not having a televised match in like two years, his first back is an add for mountain dew. The Uncle Howdy spot was bad too. Didn't look even a little like he actually hit him or that there wasn't a crash pad underneath.

I’ve never been impressed by Wyatt’s matches. But pro-wrestling has never been one size fits all.

Wrestlers tell stories in the ring, different types and they all have their places: you have your repetitive comic strips by Hogan and Warrior, your novels by Bret and Shawn (Gargano and Ciampa more recently), but in the ring, I think Wyatt should stick to short stories… maybe not even that, flash fiction. He’s a great character, and can draw a lot of attention, but he’s kind of like Undertaker - unless you have a Bret caliber guy running the match, his matches are going to be mainly going to find their strength in the pageantry.

Now I’m drifting onto another topic:

Telling a story in the ring is more than just being able to chain a hierarchy of moves together. but that seems to be the main takeaway a lot of more modern matches have. I love the flashy new stuff, but so much of it isn’t sold—or if they sell it, the consequences of the move are reset in 45 seconds, like some kind of video game, then it doesn’t matter how flashy the move is, its meaning is lost. Those all flash and no substance matches might be impressive the one time, but they are forgettable and disposable. The ones that people remember for decades are the ones with excellent story… otherwise, the only thing about the match that gets remembered is a spot, like Andre getting slammed. And often in the great matches those climactic moments are the most remembered part, but the rest of the match, the context, is also memorable.

I love the wrestlers, who even in the long 35 minute matches, know that after the midpoint, or maybe earlier than that, they have to basically get their signature stuff out, BUT something has to happen to escalate from their on, something new and unexpected Even if a wrestler tries a move and it doesn’t quite work out, the attempt still doesn’t hurt the escalation, it may even still help. A setback is a setback. If a wrestler has 7-12 minute matches that end in a people’s elbow and Rock Bottom, then minute 13 something should go drastically wrong, and something more desperate has to be attempted. There has to be foreshadowing to the depths of hell that Rock is going to take his opponent to overcome him. Handcuffing Foley and smashing him (well, maybe something safer, as I’m pretty sure that spot caused brain damage) maybe at the end his opponent won’t submit, won’t quit, and Rock finishes with a fake recording on the mic of Foley yelling “I Quit!”

Benoit vs Angle, Royal Rumble - everyone remembers that match, but the full 360 spin on the suplex was something that hadn’t really been done in WWE at that point. That was the big moment, but the match itself that led to the context of that moment also made that moment. 

Or, maybe (switching to the Bret vs Austin, an even more famous match) Austin’s head gets busted open, and he sells the shit out of that, it fucking rocked the wrestling world and remains one of the most iconic moments ever.

More recent examples of great selling are the Ciampa leg stuff in that match, that actually got me marking out legitimately marking out. I knew it was story, but in the back of my head “Is he still recovering? Is he still covering for the fact he can’t do much? Even if this is the story, is this going to be his demise?” They even brought back a moment where Gargano sat down beside Ciampa, a memory of a time when the two were friends and Ciampa’s injury was a real thing: and Ciampa went for the opportunity to smash the guy.

So, I think great novel matches do happen, but it sometimes looks like part of the art of storytelling is going away.

Apparently Lanny Poffo (Leaping Lanny/The Genius, brother of Randy Savage) has passed away of heart failure, age 68.

I actually think, in WWE at least, the match quality has been getting better in terms of storytelling. Rhodes vs Rollins was great each time, every one of Gunther's matches but especially the ones against Dragonov and Sheamus, Becky vs Bianca, and Reigns vs Mcyntyre are recent examples of great matches. And Brock vs Reigns last man standing in more of a spectacle way. I've been watching old PPVs a bunch recently, and overall I'd say modern WWE wrestling is better. I don't think anything today is as good as the stuff with Angle, Benoit, Jericho, Guerrero, and Mysterio back in the day, but I think you're forgetting how much of the stuff they were doing absolutely sucked. 

Nobody should ever ever do the reverse hurricanrana or poisonrana or whatever it's called again. The hurricanrana is already pushing it in terms of believability, but there's some logic to it in that if I throw your head forward and down you may wind up doing a summersault since your body bends that way and will follow the head. But there's absolutely no way that pulling your head backwards will make you do a backflip. And every time they do it it looks like the person taking it is an inch away from breaking their neck. No reason to do something that dangerous when it doesn't even look good. Considering piledrivers are banned dunno why they would let anyone do this.

Edit: Gotta double down on this one. Just an insanely dangerous bump to take where either or both people can easily land directly on their neck. Just go back to using the Canadian destroyer in every match. Looks just as ridiculous and cooperative, but it much safer.

That’s true, I don’t disagree with what you’ve said about earlier wrestling and can’t really comment on WWE for the past few years.

I think my take on that is that there were some absolutely putrid matches in the past. 98/99 had very few good matches, perhaps even the lowest concentration of them. Rewatching the entire Attitude era was a real eye opener in just how much better things got after late 1999 or so. Jericho and Angle came in, but I think it was Angle that really lit a fire under their asses because Jericho didn’t seem to have anything spectacular under his belt until he became involved with the Radicalz in early 2000. Also, I think Edge and Christian, The Hardy Boyz, and the Dudley Boyz really stepped up the quality of the tag division which before was kind of a shock-TV side show featuring Outlaws, DX, and the Nation—and later on stable stuff like the Ministry and the Corporation and the Corporate Ministry—IMO, so lacklustre and anti-climactic that it made the Alliance vs WWE seem brilliant by comparison.

My main recent experience is with AEW, and I’ve noticed that a lot of wrestlers take really brutal moves and don’t sell it a great deal. The athleticism and move complexity is outstanding, don’t get me wrong, but it seems (to me) that the consequences of spots don’t really impact the stakes or tension—if I’m talking in storytelling terms. It’s like a blockbuster film, all flash and little to no tension. To me, top tier selling is 1990s Japanese wrestling, moves look like they hurt and have consequences, they build and build until they have trouble delivering moves—they look exhausted. Then they execute the big desperation spots that look insane, until finally someone is destroyed.

I think a lot of modern wrestling was influenced heavily by that, in that they get the hierarchy of moves down, but there’s a bit of a difference in “how do I put this guy down? Let’s try a bigger move!” than “OMG! If I don’t win now I might actually die!” type tension. When you’re looking at a less brutal match (than an exploding barb wire death match, for example), like Jericho be Benoit Ladder Match at Royal Rumble 2001, the way they sold gave the match a level of authenticity, even if it’s only subconscious.

To be fair, I haven’t really been watching much wrestling in the past year or so. I also think there are some great wrestlers still around who know how to sell, and I probably do have a large bias given I was a teenager back when the Attitude era, and have a lot of nostalgia for it. But, the wrestling I think I enjoyed the most, ever, was NXT during the time period in the era when Asuka, Gargano, and Ciampa were at the core. Something happened to the quality when it moved from 1 to 2 hours, or maybe it was just too much wrestling. There was something great about NXT, as well, when it wasn’t an equal brand, but a brand where if someone became good enough, dominant enough, they’d eventually be raised to the Smackdown and RAW rosters. That added a whole level of intrigue, even when some were sticking around for a few years at the top (like Asuka).

EDIT: Removed my original quote from the post.

Wrestlemania weekend boys!!!!

Pretty much agree with your take on AEW. Just think it's a little broad to say that encapsulates modern wrestling. There may be other complaints you can validly make against WWE style, but I don't think that particular criticism would apply. 

I'd really recommend looking up Gunther (Walter at the time) vs Ilya Draganov. Despite having absolutely no idea who either was before hand, I was on the edge of my seat. All done solely through in ring work. 

Yup. I will get very high and watch lots of wrestling. Obviously, looking forward to the bloodline stuff since that's basically been the best story in wrestling over at least the last 5 years. I think the final face to face with Cody and Reigns could have been better but what can you do.

The card actually came together pretty nicely. Less celebrity involvement and novelty matches than last year, which is a good thing to me. I do wish they had one really good pure wrestling match on the card. Along the lines of Owen/Bret or Steamboat/Savage. Maybe Charlotte and Rhea can kind of fill that void, although Rhea is great but not really a "technical" wrestler. 

Its too bad Bobby Lashley wont be in a match - guy got screwed by Bray Wyatt's issue.

Hopefully he does a challenge match like Rollins did last year or he gets involved somehow in the Lesnar VS Omos storyline.

I'm excited the most for the Roman Reigns VS Cody Rhodes match and the Sami Zayn/Kevin Owens VS Usos match.