World's Worst Man

Love the generic rock music that goes along with those too. WWE theme music is so awesome.

Fair enough, thats why I like Vernon Wells in the top 3. The defense is just incredible. I'm surprised Papi is so low. His AVG isn't stellar this year, but he has a ton of RBI, including a few game winners. He's Mr. Clutch.

Mauer ahead of Hafner? That's odd, considering Hafner's been involved with 153 of the Indians runs this year (72 R, 81 RBI), while Mauer has 102 (52 R, 50 RBI). Not to mention the .637 SLG and 1.075 OPS.

The loss was a complete technicality. Given the circumstances surrounding it, it's just so, so irrelevant.

You'd probably want to qualify that with "in matches where that many near falls don't make sense". If Joe and Dragon wrestle, you'd expect there to be a lot of nearfalls, since both guys are at the top of the game, and it would logically take a lot of offense to finish them off. Ring Crew Express and The Carnage Crew? Not so much.. Just saying is all.

Thanks for clarifying. I don't think anyone will argue that many of pro-wrestling's rules aren't "business exposing", but pro-wrestling doesn't really exist without those rules, so it's sort of an irrelevant discussion. Certain things that either break those rules (no-selling) or are so far beyond the realm of those "rules" (spots that take forever to setup or require clearly distinguishable cooperation) are what REALLY exposes the business though.

And that's only because there are more wrestling fans in the US than in Japan or Mexico. In terms of past historical significance and importance in the promotion, the IWGP and TC smoke it. And today, the GHC title is probably the most legitimate, given how it's treated and booked and given that the old TC lineage essentially travelled with Kobashi to NOAH, and given that Misawa basically carries the tradition of Baba and Jumbo, as he was the last true heir of their legacy.

By fanboys with no knowledge outside of one promotion maybe.

Do people purposely ignore certain glaring facts, or are they just too dense to understand why they're relevant?

Thanks so much for that. But if you had actually read the original post, you would have seen that the point of the thread seems to be to about stuff that exposes the business moreso than the basic, contrived "rules" of wrestling do. So Fear Havoc is pretty much the only person who doesn't have the right idea. Well, until that post anyway.

Sounds like the Sapolsky/Nulty announce team, which was dreadful. But they haven't really been a problem for about 18 months or so, since Prazak had taken over the announce duties, and he's generally entertaining to listen to and knows about wrestling. And realistically, JR is as bad or worse than the bad indy announcers, so there's always that to consider when talking about announcers ruining matches or what have you.

No-selling of high end offense. Selling offense that looks like crap. An utter lack of setup to certain spots (I'm looking at you, Scott Steiner and Kurt Angle). Any sort of spot or story that alludes to wrestling being scripted/not real (I'm looking at you, finish to Danielson vs. Strong). Pretty much anytime Hulk Hogan was a face, post-1984.

Interesting. Thanks for the tidbit.

So is anyone else perplexed as to why in Astonishing X-Men they're telling a story that has nothing to do with anything else that's going on in the other books? I assume it's just a timeshift story, but they never actually mentioned that the particular story was happening in the future, did they? It just seems so bizarre and I'm finding it annoying to see certain characters in the other books, not knowing how the stuff in Astonishing is going to turn out.

For one thing, the match was wrestled at an absolute snail's pace. Do a weak forehead to the back, stand there for a few seconds, do the same thing, stand there for a few seconds, throw a punch. If this was anything resembling good offense, it would have been fine. You know, time for selling and all that. For such poor, low-end offense, it was just mind-numbing. Schultz hits an elbow from the middle rope, and literally takes 15 seconds to go for a cover. There's a heel gloating when he thinks he's won the match, and there's stalling for 15 seconds doing nothing before going for a pin. Just excruciating stuff like that. The obligatory Hogan no-selling comeback is present of course. Cartoonish bullshit that I certainly don't want to see, and it pretty much brings down every match I see it in. And I don't particularly care that it was a staple of Hogan's, or whatever other argument you want to make. It's ridiculous and business exposing. The best part of the match was as you mentioned, that Hogan's big comeback doesn't spell the end of Schultz' chances. But you say Hogan acted like it was the most important match of his career? I suppose that's why he pulled Schultz up from a pin, twice? Once after he had hit his finisher no less. In this particular match, that just doesn't make much sense. The match being clipped as it is makes it impossible to know whether the FIP sections were any good. From what was shown (and that's what we really have to go off of, not a guess as to what happened in the parts that weren't shown), there wasn't nearly enough of it for me to consider this match being anything even approacing good. A basic, short FIP sequence, which featured some lame looking offense and stalling, and Hogan's no-selling comeback. Then a decent change of pace where Schultz ended up having one last chance after Hogan's comeback. I don't know what your exact judgement of the match was, but I thought it was a passable match, so it's not like I'm saying it was some awful contest. But given how little the match offered and how clipped it was, I fail to see how anyone considers it good in the grand scheme of things, unless their standards are just incredibly low. I don't mean that as a dig, it's just the best way I can explain it. I see most of what you're saying, I just don't see how that translates into anything more than passable. On Hogan, he could work his formula, of that there is no doubt. Unfortunately, his formula pretty much sucked. His selling was over the top and silly, his offense generally sucked (both execution wise [important] and variety [not so much]) and his matches were just so, so basic (in terms of story). In my eyes, that puts a pretty harsh limit on how good his matches could ever be. Kind of like post-97 Steve Austin, although Austin at least had better selling, and his matches weren't quite as formulaic and ridiculous.

"If you don't like these matches, you just don't get it." Yea, that's so much better than just calling people stupid for not liking something. What a prick I am to criticise you for acting arrogant. But whatever, if people want to express the virtues of routine things and claim a minute of control and a 30 second comeback (not literally, but close enough) constitutes a heel beatdown and face comeback, by all means.

Some people don't like poorly wrestled matches just because they're loosely put together with a face vs. heel dynamic. Hogan vs. Schultz had nothing going for it, unless you dig matches with any semblance of a face vs. heel story, no matter how poorly and vaguely it was done. If you think all a great match needs is a vague storyline, horrible looking offense and cartoonish selling, good for you. Being a prick about it and saying others don't get it is just inviting people to flame you for being stupid though.

That's what I thought when I read what Brock said. But given the fragility of NJPW's situation, I can't imagine they'd risk the awful PR of him pulling out of the show on such short notice, just to pull an angle that may or may not make much money for them.

It's been done, most often by women.

nm

http://new.ivpvideos2.com/ or http://www.purodvdsource.com/ will have it quickest. Never buy Japanese wrestling on ebay, unless it's for a master (original store bought copy).

I wouldn't be surprised if Nagata wins the tournament and drops the title to Tanahashi sometime later this year/early next year. As for Lesnar, he brought nothing to the table for New Japan. He wasn't drawing, he was god awful in the ring and he wasn't touring. It wasn't originally a bad idea to bring him in, but once it was apparent that he was a bomb, New Japan should have moved on.

Well done, old bean.

Lets see. Akira Taue & Toshiaki Kawada vs Kenta Kobashi & Mitsuharu Misawa (6/9/95) Toshiaki Kawada & Akira Taue vs Mitsuharu Misawa & Jun Akiyama (12/6/96) Yea, that's pretty much it. The former is probably the best match of all time though. You'll occasionally see the same "face in peril" type stuff in Japan, but it's not as goofy or contrived as it typically is in the US. Meaning no "phantom tags" where the ref misses the tag due to being distracted, etc.

Misawa vs. Muto in 1993 or so would have been insane. Ditto for Misawa vs. Hashimoto in '96 or '97 (not quite Misawa's prime, but likely Hashimoto's). We're talking selling out the Tokyo Dome 10 times over for those matches.