RavishingRickRudo

I still love hearing it. "God" is so, 'big', ya know? The master was a vampire, Angelus was a vampire, there were various mummies and wolfmen, the Mayor was a giant snake, there was Frankenadam and his Universal Soldiers... Glory was a God... Plus she was insane - which is a cool undertone. The season is young Mole, the season is young. I'm pacing myself, you'll burn out by Xmas break...

JR: What a great night we have for you tonight in the DFF. We have Buttons the Wonderpup vs. The British Bulldog in a kennel in a cell match with those dirty rabid professional wrestlers outside the cage ready to strike. King: PUPPPIES!!!

...The Rez Evil 2 trailer was pretty nifty. RRR: Waiting for DUCK HUNT movie.

Meltzer said on WOL that the ad agencies pay attention to this poll - so it does have relevance.

'My vagina's angry. It is. It's pissed off. My vagina's furious and it needs to talk. Goldberg fucking sucks.' - TSM Vagina Monologues.

RVD tends to be the exception to the rule when it comes to physical injuries/durability.

No Banky, Boys have penises...

I think I heard that too.

Oh, and that eps. established Buffy's reluctance to kill and how that would come back to haunt her with the knights... the theme was revisited in "The Gift" where she refused to kill Ben - so Giles had to.

I'm a big fan of checkpoint, it's just an all-round fun episode and then it ends with... "She's not a demon... she's a god" - gotta love Season 5 cliffhangers (oooh, another common theme for me to write about in the Season 5 review.... which will be done... sometime... before I die.) RRR: 6 posts away from entering the Top 5.... watch your back BPS, cause I won't be for long!!

The WWE has been selling "retro" t-shirts like the Austin 3:16 and S*ck it, this taker one is no different. I'd buy the retro WM shirt though.

I believe this says it all.

Benoit: All about the Children

It's just starting to heat up.

What eps. are you on?

Yeah, call out Linda on all her bullshit.

Dames writes TNA reports? I never knew. If anything, you need to pimp more...

Rules or no rules, I'm stealing "clapmonkey".

It's interesting, but I didn't see any Steph filings when all the execs were doing their reports/purchases.

There is a reason why I used the term "generalization" more than once in my post - what I said is not indicative of all indies or all of Japan. I used UWF-i and ASE as examples because I watched them both within a 24 hour time period - yes, there have been plenty of All Japan matches where there was massive overkill in terms of suicidal moves, I have acknowledged this point as well. Again, it's generalizations. I have not seen every indy (or anywhere near it) or every Japanese Pro wrestling match - I am not an expert in either field. But from what I have seen, specifically from ROH, I feel that the majority of it is Monkey-see, Monkey-do. Not all Puro is great, not all Indy is bad... however, when push comes to shove, I'd recommend Puro over Indy any day of the week. Maybe not current Puro, but I don't believe that's the case right now as 1inch said he had some DVD's and that doesn't sound too extensive (correct me if I am wrong). I'd like to hear some of the matches (specifically from ROH) that you consider to be 'of substance', and if I have em, I'll watch them again and see what I'm missing. I have what's considered to be one of the best ROH tapes in ASE and a lot of it I found to be fluff (IMO the best match was the Main Event... Ohtani got more of a reaction from his bootscrapes than the any of the scamble moves... The 6 man was decent enough, Dragon vs Styles I should watch again..) UWF-i was a "unique" promotion in the way they went about making matches (or at least, not indicative of the rest of the Puro landscape), but the spirit of it I believe rings true in a lot of Japanese Pro Wrestling. It's a competition. It's a fight. It's not an exhibition of moves. As I said before, the need to do moves rather than the 'choice' - those mat sequences are a perfect example. I don't see a need for it (and they are rarely ever worked well). Perhaps it's just the match-layout, or the pacing, but in Dragon vs London 2/3 falls they were all over the place with some of their stuff. They did a "oh they're both so tired" desperation spot and I just wasn't buying it (maybe it's the horrible announcing which totally kills the suspension of disbelief). Meanwhile, Akiyama vs. Hase 5/2/98 -which by no means is considered a classic- incorporates such things much more intelligently and added to the match. It took two stories of "young punk" vs. "old vet" and "Akiyama goes the extra-distance to beat Hase/Old Dog..new tricks" and played it up throughout - all leading up to the Exploder 98 finish. Workrate wise, it couldn't touch Dragon/London, but it was the smarter/tighter/better match. I believe that was in regards to Low Ki vs. Dragon where there was a triangle choke applied... yeah, ya see, the triangle choke is an MMA move. It's not a sharpshooter, it's not a figure-four leglock, it's MMA. You don't get taught that in wrestling school. So when you work moves like that into a match, when you use MMA elements, you should try to be as real as possible with it - because that's the pretense you are giving. Of course, they only used it because "it's from MMA" and they "wanted to be like MMA"... they didn't need to do it, just like they don't need that stupid GnP they used as well. Both were poorly performed moves because all they wanted was the image. They set the standards themselves, yet I'm the bad guy for holding them to it? What's this about logic? As for running the ropes, they *don't* run the ropes during their little sequences because they're "playing shooter" and that goes out the window once they want to play something else. I wouldn't mind that if they actually put a better story (ala, Hase/Akiyama) other than "can you top this" behind it to give it a context and didn't do it in seemingly every match up - but they just do it to show it. Wrestling used to be about Fighting 100% btw. and it went to looking like fighting 100% right up to the 70's and 80's (again, another generalization as one could point out several different wrestlers that didn't do that, but I don't think you could deny that this wasn't the case for some of pro wrestling)and it never hurts to try to be as real as possible to help maintain that level of disbelief. Nothing wrong with treating it like a legitimate contest, nothing wrong with the catch-as-catch-can style, it's just about consistancy, execution, content and context. But even then, I wonder if they (The Generalized Indy Guy) could perform a "simple, fake" match if they wanted to. If they could just play "wrestler".. And I usually do stick with MMA, but every once in a while I'll check out what's goin on in the indies to see what all the kidz are talkin bout. Still, I don't ask for my wrestling to be MMA, I just would like to see them incorporate MMA moves correctly rather than "monkey see"..

I think it's company policy that any of the "higher ups/VP's") have shares in the promotion. Kevin Dunn does, Shane does, JR does, etc. etc. I believe it's part of a pension program.

Indy Wrestling (ROH in particular) is like "Monkey-see, Monkey-do". Those guys (and yes this is a generalization) see the Japan stuff and copy it - they do the stiffness, they do the headdrops, they do the submissions, they do the sequences... but it all feels so forced. It's them pretending to be Misawa or Kawada or Vader or Lyger or Ohtani whereas the Puro guys (yes, another generalization) pretend to be real. So we have one group pretending to be real, and one group pretending to be fake - can you see the problem this creates? I dl'd the American Dragon vs. Paul London 2/3 falls match and I had to turn it off immediately after one of the announcers said "THIS is how you do a collar-and-elbow tie up!". Crap like "American Strong Style", or those scramble matches (I know, they're meant to be spot-fests, but that doesn't mean they have to be stupid), it's all monkey-see, monkey-do and there's no rhyme or reason to it all other than "pretending to be (insert puro-star here)". That's ROH to me. If I wanted to see Japan, I'd buy Puro. They take the moves and the "style" but forget the content - they forget that it's supposed to be "real", how it's supposed to be "sport" (sure, the announcers love to brag about how it's not Sports Entertainment -a line that should have retired with Joey Styles- but in reality the majority of these matches are spotfests like the WWE; just less punches and flashier moves than their more-successful counter-part) and that is part of the appeal (at least for me) of Japanese Pro Wrestling. I made the mistake of watching a Vader in UWF-i tape and All Star Extravaganza in the same time period - Vader's Powerbomb was made-out to be the deadliest weapon on the planet, his punches were unstoppable, his chokeslam and powerslam were finishers, his german suplex = death... and that's about all of the moves he did in these matches... and the crowd eats it up because it's made to be real. I eat it up because they established right-off-the-bat that this is a universe where you can get KO'd by a punch, or a kick. Maybe it's the MMA fan in me, but I love that sort of style where every move has a meaning. Then there is ASE where a powerbomb is a transition move, a powerslam is non-existant because it's too weak, and a chokeslam has to be off the top rope or apron to have any effect; it's just not smart. It's all gratuitous spots whose only effect is to show that the Wrestlers can do it just as good as the Japanese guys which means it the same... but it's not. It's copying. It's pretending. When the match gets heated and somone does a big time move, I don't get that feeling that he "needed" to do it - and that's ultimately the main point. The need. In Japan there's the need, in American Indy there isn't. (Yes, Generalization - the case could be made against many Japanese wrestlers for overkill, and you wouldn't be wrong.)

Well there is a great amount of Puro out there. All Japan, New Japan, UWF-i, RINGS, Mich Pro, Toryumon, etc. etc. and different eras and decades - a lot of which I would recommend getting before "dropping down" to the majority of the indies out there today. I don't want to be called a "puro-snob", but it's quite simple - Japanese Wrestling (for the most part) tries to be like a real sport. Indy wrestling (FTMP) tries to be like Japanese Wrestling and completely misses out on that "sporting" aspect.

The Rundown has been promoted for like a MONTH in advance - I see it everywhere. At least 10x's more than anything else out there right now. 20 mil is certainly disappointing and it doesn't look to be breaking 100 mil or even make back the money put into it (well, I'll bet that Worldwide and on Video it should, but not by a lot - I wonder if that 80+ mil accounted for advertising.)

Get Puro tapes - it's what ROH tries to be...