Daily Discussion Thread – 7/7/17


Join us today as we preview Great Balls of Fire and get ready for our evening thread and live watch by letting us know if you’re up for Great American Bash ’92 or ’97!

Check out Brian’s Great Balls of Fire preview!

Fresh on PTBN audio feeds:

162 thoughts on “Daily Discussion Thread – 7/7/17

  1. Slow day at work so my wrestling watching is going to look something like this:

    Ishii vs Omega (half watched this the other night so need to give it a better watch) > Bailey vs Takeshita from 7/2 DDT > Main event from Chikara Aniversario show > 2000 stuff

    1. I’m badly behind on my NJPW. My queue is BoSJ Final, NOAH Great Voyage uppercard, Dominion, W1 Outbreak uppercard, CMLL Universal Championship Block B (tomorrow).

      1. When you get to W1, post some thoughts. I am pretty big on Ashino and top to bottom enjoy the cards of Wrestle-1 as much as something like Big Japan or All Japan (more than NOAH).

        1. They have been so much fun this year.

          I love Ashino as champ. Him vs Jiro is the big match they need. They have just rapidly improved with this group of young guys. Even Kono seems like he has woken up lately.

          They are definitely in that AJPW/BJW tier of enjoyment.

  2. Ill be writing a research paper this weekend, so I will definitely have my eye on some network stuff. Is there a live watch tonight? I saw a rumor about the Great American Bash ’90.

          1. We saw what wwf was up to in July 97 last Friday let’s check on wcw around that time.

      1. I love tag team wrestling, so Bash 92 would be my vote. In doing my research on these shows, it was very disappointing to see Eaton/Anderson tag team defeated in the TV round.

          1. Yeah in my MNW rewatch, which is every raw/nitro and all special events. I am only at Superbrawl 96. So It will take me a while

          2. I started a WCW Chrono as well. I started with Starrcade 85 last summer. I watch every PPV and Clash with some Worldwides and Saturday Nights in between. I just finished Bash 88 last night.

            The storylines were much longer in builds in Crockett and WCW then the WWF. I mean the Dusty/Four Horseman feud lasted as long as their careers.

            Im looking forward to the Dusty/Road Warriors feud. Plus the Luger/Flair matches are probably Luger’s career highlights. His best matches were with Flair.

  3. KUSHIDA vs Ospreay was excellent. I always enjoy when Ospreay gets to the point where he is too pissed to do the elaborate choreography and starts just elbowing and kicking his opponents in the head. Frustrated Ospreay is way more fun as a character than normal Ospreay.

    1. I cant decide if I liked this one or the BOSJ final with Taguchi more but both are excellent and my two favorite Ospreay performances in his career.

          1. Yeah that is a nice one too. I really thought Ospreay was peaking hard around that time between the EVOLVE stuff, Invasion Attack KUSHIDA match and his BOSJ run.

          1. He is a relatively cheap contract you can move if needed and some scoring off the bench.

    1. I think they’re fixing a quick error – but should be the same link and then sheet.

      Despite flaming out with the NJ Cup, i’ll be back for more here (stupid Fale).

          1. Makabe is like Fale. He’ll always end up with 6-10 points because he doubles as Japanese Guy Fieri.

          2. For sure, I shouldn’t have dogged Makabe like that – clearly he’ll get some wins, but picking those spots has to be a challenge.

  4. Just finished the NOAH Great Voyage 6/25 uppercard.

    Tag team match (Marufuji & Maybach vs Shiozaki & Kitamiya) was great.

    Ishimori vs HAYATA was just kind of there.

    Nakajima vs Kotoge for the GHC title was very good but not great.

      1. I’ll have to take a look. Kenoh got kind of screwed over by Sugiura’s heart issues. I’m interested what they do with him when he comes back from the Fire Festival.

  5. This crowd was super into Hennig vs Page but it was a bit sloppy in spots, especially at the end. It was a good feud though for sure, I enjoyed the build on Nitro heading in.

    1. Their whole feud was so wonky. Hennig comes in as Page’s BATB mystery partner, immediately turns on him (but DOESN’T go nWo), and they have the Road Wild match. OK, cool. But then Page goes back to Savage, Hennig does the Horsemen fake-out, joins the nWo, and it looks like his program is with Flair going forward. Then building to Starrcade, they swap out Flair with Page, and it still kind of makes sense because they have history dating to Hennig’s debut.

      I think Starrcade was legit supposed to be Flair/Hennig, but it was one of those rare times Flair was injured. Guess it still worked out since gave DDP the U.S. title win and he didn’t otherwise have anything going on heading into Starrcade.

      1. Yeah that is a good synopsis… it was weird but also makes sense, which sums up WCW well.

        I never realized how much they built this show as a pivotal WCW vs NWO event… every match has some sort of stakes and they really set it up as a big potential turning point in the war throughout, tallying all the wins and titles. It flows nicely too, no BS.

        1. lol. WCW, Ladies and Gentlemen.

          Hmmmm! That sounds not unlike Summerslam ’97, where all the singles matches for the Hart Foundation had those (often outrageous) stipulations. Another parallel between the two promotions, deliberate or not.

          We’ve talked about this, but for as much as people like to shit on Hog/Road Wild as a disposable show, it always had a lot going on. Granted, it’s usually surrounding some significant Hogan presence – ’96 has his title win as Hollywood, ’97 he wins it back from Luger, ’98 the Leno stuff, ’99 “retirement” match against Nash. He kinda owned that two-month stretch in the summer beginning with BATB for good while, but it does give the shows a real big event feel. Helps that Sturgis was always an easy watch made possible by the unique setting and solid undercard matches (even if they were playing to no one).

          1. I need to watch more WCW stuff. I’ve watched a few Shows but at times I have to be in the mood for WCW.

  6. It would be kind of cool to do a March Madness style G1 contest just for the site. Even if someone doesn’t know most of the competitors, it’s like, how many people really know about the majority of Madness teams, y’know?

      1. I wouldn’t mind tallying it up actually. I’d just have to make a spreadsheet for anyone to fill out and then give running scores. Probably higher points for guessing main events and semi main winners correctly.

        I’d just need someone to make a primer so Names can be put to faces.

        1. It was actively embarrassing to watch Shane fumble and stumble his way through everything he tried to do. The spot where he “countered” AJ into Hell’s Gate by splaying his legs and waiting for AJ to arrange his arms was one of the worst spots the company’s had all year. If there’s been a worse match this year I’m not aware of it.

          1. Dear lord, I never thought I’d hear someone say they need to watch WM33 again.
            Good luck slogging through that 7-hour long shit-show.

          2. Really? Maybe it was me being there live but I thought up until Bray vs. Orton it was shaping up as a pretty highly ranking show. Things slowed up at that point but I loved Goldberg/Lesnar and thought Reigns/Taker was fine too.

            I just put it on now to start watching, not the pre show though.

          3. I’ve got it firmly middle of the pack leaning down. There’s been so much worse before.

          4. Can’t think of many outside of 32, 29, or 27.
            Anything else that was bad wasn’t nearly as long as WM33 so it wasn’t as offensive and painful to sit through.

          5. It is getting harder to compare Manias due to the dramatic shift in presentation of the show since they super sized them. It is near impossible to stack rank something like WM11 and WM32 even though both are considered on the low end of shows, they are so disparate in presentation and structure.

          6. I can’t hate on 4 since Macho Man is the best.
            Every match is short enough that nothing feels too long, and there’s so much great stuff there, even outside of the tournament with Bret and Demolition.

          7. The build for IV was bad and the first round of that tournament was unbelievably bad in terms of workrate, heat, and finishes.

          8. I guess anything’s better live.
            Let me know how you feel after it’s all over.
            I did not think Reigns/Undertaker was fine, as it is offensive to have Reigns main event his 3rd WM in a row presented as a babyface to a sea of boos.

          9. Sure, the overall decision to stick with him as a top face is questionable… but I didn’t think he was the face in that feud. Do they push it that way on commentary in the match?

          10. I think so, as Cole still had his usual “Big Dog” orgasm, that you can’t help but imagine Vince jacking it as he screams it into Cole’s headset.
            I don’t think they’ve portrayed him as heel since he was in the Shield before they turned.

          11. It was a long ass day but I felt at the time that Reigns worked his ass off in that match and carried a gassed and shot Undertaker to a solid bout. But again, I have to sit and watch in a vacuum to reassess.

          12. I actually didn’t like Reigns-Taker at all live. But I did like the rest of the show. Really good Mania, I felt. Goldberg-Brock was awesome, and the more I think about it the higher it climbs in my favorite live Mania experiences.

          13. It was certainly every bit of 7 hours, but didn’t drag NEARLY as bad as 32. That was the same length, but I could feel myself rotting while actually watching it.

          14. Yeah, I’ll give you that.
            It was definitely easier to sit through than last year’s.

          15. I felt 33 moved along much better than last year. I came out of it liking it better than 32.

          16. Better than one of the worst Manias ever is not exactly a ringing endorsement of a show.

          17. I agree with you about that spot, though I enjoyed the match by the end.

  7. May be late joining the live watch tonight. My parents are having a cookout tomorrow and I SHOULD head over there tonight, but I’d rather kick it here with ya’ll so we’ll see. Relative to my other responsibilities today, I am also seriously considering ducking out of the office early to watch 1998 Nitros.

    That summer was fucking STACKED.

      1. Now my mom’s trying to ply me with alcohol.

        In any event, do not hold out on my account. I’ll be along when I can (probably around 10 or so).

    1. I am also seriously considering ducking out of the office early to watch 1998 Nitros.
      That is a great line right there.
      It seems most around here watch more in work than at home.

      1. Right? I’m usually too busy at work to do much more than pop in with the occasional comment. I truly envy these people whose jobs afford them opportunities to actually watch wrestling on the clock.

  8. Hogan vs. Luger had a good big match feel but the finish was such a mess with another fake Sting. Luger also had such soft strikes in fending off the NWO troops. Not sure I have a better way to do this, but maybe just have Savage or Nash cost him instead of doing the fake Sting fooling the announcers again.

    1. One odd problem of the massive nWo vs. the world storyline that grew out of the faction just exploding in late ’96 is that it left some of the top faces without proper feuds. DDP/Savage was like the one saving grace. But who were Luger and the Giant really feuding with for the better part of ’97 and ’98? You could always just stick them with random nWo guys, and that’s for the most part what they did – it’s all various combinations of tags and main event special attractions. Luger didn’t have a singles rival outside of this quick shot with Hogan and then Buff at the end of the year. Giant just had Nash, then joined the black & white after the split. If Luger actually had a proper feud, the logical answer is have that guy cost him the match/title. Give somebody like Norton the bump. Then you’ve got a ready-made upper midcard match for Fall Brawl or Havoc.

        1. Ah yes, that was another problem. The fucking interminable Steiners/Outsiders program. I get using the heels to hold the tag belts hostage, but Nash and Hall just individually have far too much juice to be tied up with that shit for so long.

          1. Yeah it was absurd… how many times were they gonna fuck the Steiners over? And they celebrate a clear DQ like idiots after.

  9. vhttps://www.cagesideseats.com/2017/7/7/15933046/globalization-and-homogenization-pro-wrestling-njpw-wwe-kenny-omega-okada-dave-meltzer-star-ratings

    This is a neat piece that talks about the homogenization of wrestling currently

  10. I don’t think AJ vs Shane is the worst match of the year. I actually thought this was better than the usual “Shane can hang” stuff they do. The story was clearly that AJ was better and Shane only got offense on desperation moves or AJ slipping up.

    It worked as a spectacle and AJ was great as always. It was shrewd to open the show with it as it was guaranteed the crowd would be hot for it.

    The Hell’s Gate spot that Glenn mentioned was terrible though.

          1. I’ve got Pierroth vs Vangellys from next week penciled in for presumptive worst.

      1. I didn’t get the logic in doing it as a vanilla wrestling match. Shane’s still going through a table and doing his usual tricks, so just remove the pretense and make a street fight/no DQ. That way, you can at least contrive an advantage for Shane and it probably produces a more entertaining match. Certainly better than AJ slipping on a banana peel or “underestimating” Shane (it’s a non-wrestler… who gives a fuck if he does). There was just no world in which I could suspend my disbelief that Shane has a decent showing in a match where Styles is completely in his element.

          1. AJ certainly made the most of what he had to work with, better than anyone else in the same position. Probably the best we could’ve gotten given the constraints of the match.

        1. I really enjoyed it live. I admit, about five minutes in, we were groaning at Shane’s offense. But it turned into a really fun, exciting match, and I thought Shane looked good when he wasn’t doing laughable submission attempts.

  11. I really enjoyed Owens v Jericho… old school title match that got lots of time to build and no BS involved.

    I think what makes this show more watchable than WM32 is that there is less filler and fluff and while the show is long most of that time is given to the matches in the ring. At 32 that time was spent on bullshit and that endless Shane/Taker debacle.

    1. I was stunned and borderline pissed at the lukewarm reception to Owens/Jericho at the time. It was outstanding given Jericho’s in-ring limitations. What the FUCK did people expect from Jericho, a year removed from him having barely above just OK matches with AJ Styles?? As much as that match could blow me away, it blew me away.

    2. Excellent match with lots of great little touches. The storytelling was on point, especially when you follow it with the rematch the following PPV.

  12. Listened to the Main Event Show today, excellent stuff again guys. I am pretty surprised Austin Aries is gone. Also how did they get Dixie Carter on the Angle 24?

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