rolling Jericho calls The New Day trap queens 2016

louis and lefort gone too. I actually liked louis's bald bond villain gimmick

To be clear, my problem is that the superkick isn't treated like a finisher. That's fine. It's just that a move loses some of its impact if it's being done all over the place by every other wrestler on the show. And unlike, say, a hip toss, a superkick looks like a move that should do real damage, so it's more of a shame if the audience gets at all desensitized to it.

Plus I generally think diversity in movesets helps wrestlers establish distinctive styles, which makes everything more interesting.

I actually do feel similarly about clotheslines. I've always like how the lariat is treated as an upper-tier move in Japan. (And it actually bothers me a little that for as long as I've been watching wrestling, close-fist punches to the head have been treated as no big deal. But that's REALLY a lost cause.)

JRN otm.

I get that Michaels was a special entity on himself. But fuck me what move actually means anything? Cos what is wrong with Michaels just fucking kicking you in the face, or Okada lariating you in the face, or Lesnar throwing you like a motherfucker and it MEANING something? If everyone does every move its just like yeah whatever. Sami Zayn's finisher isn't just the helluva kick, cos he needs to suplex you first into a turnbuckle to get you all fucked up first. Idk, maybe dudes should think about *why* a bit more. Cos I love the Young Bucks moveset but the Usos can get fucked, cos at least I feel like the Young Bucks understand their superkick partyyyy.

Er, my last post should start "To be clear, my problem ISN'T that the superkick isn't treated like a finisher." Kind of a bummer to start a sentence with "to be clear" and then immediately assert the opposite of what I think.

U started writing a big old response on my phone about protected moves but instead deleted it and decided to say: rainmaker is so much more than a lariat. The twist. The flip. It's like a violent tango. I love the rainmaker.

I*

Is it that he came through in a period where shit was actually p. fuckin dire for the fans from a smarky in-ring perspective and that the subsequent rise of NXT and the emergence of Bryan, Rollins, Owens, Neville, Balor etc. has made him obsolete?

This. He was a guy they could plug into a main event once in a while for a change of pace, but once better and fresher guys made the roster, he was done at the top of the card. That's not to say that he couldn't have been programmed as a main event guy with the right push behind him -- he could have easily done Rollins' part as the Authority's chosen one.

Ambrose's moveset is fine for the role he has as the plucky IC champ. Maybe that's why the WWE doesn't see him as a main event guy. Then again, their top star of the last decade uses a glorified fireman's carry as a finisher, and the NXT women's champion finishes matches with a belly to belly suplex, which hadn't been used as a credible finisher since the 90's. Point being, if you put a move over, it's gets over.

I've been trying to avoid NXT spoilers, but it's all but impossible. The card at Takeover:Dallas is going to crush whatever they manage to scrape together for Mania.

i feel that there was a chance to capitalise on ziggler after he was the survivor series sole survivor but then they did... whatever the absolute opposite of capitalising is

wasn't that meant to be Roman's spot as well? I thought Ziggler was just shoved in there as a body, they clearly didn't have any intention of using him properly

forever and always

http://www.angelfire.com/wrestling3/kotdm15/listsleeze.html

Gary Hart busted the Tommy Rich 'story' in his book; it was just common-or-garden homophobia in his view.

a good third of those seem like common-or-garden homophobia...

Oh yeah, quite a few are racist or sexist too. It just fascinates me that wrestling was once a collection of the craziest, drug addled psychopathic bodybuilders in modern history.

Yeah I only read the first few and I was like 'blah'. I much prefer stories like The Ryback popping a Cialis to impress Brock Lesnar.

bryan's retired :'''''(

:(

i'm with ahoyboy on that urban myths thing btw, of course you've gotta allow for a lot of tedious gay-bashing bullshit, it was compiled on a wrestling forum! but beyond that, a lot of that stuff is just what wrestling is!

the pre-modern days of pro-rasslin' when it was this collection of assorted oddballs and dead-end weirdos who'd kind of fallen into this bizarre lifestyle after getting out of jail or not making it as smalltime crooks or nightclub bouncers or w/e, the rapacious sleaziness and dishonesty and backstabbing and tragedy - all of this shit is basically what makes the industry so fascinating!

i would definitely be interested in reading some serious scholarly work on the fucked up history of pro-rasslin'

surprising myself with how put out that Danielson news makes me, i'm not normally at all bothered by retirements or like, celebrity deaths or whatever. i've been toying with the idea of watching the entire Danielson-McGuinness feud from start to finish.

is there any wrestler of his status and ability more entirely and justifiably beloved than Bryan Danielson? like ever? Eddie, perhaps? I was thinking about Bret but even Bret, as much as I love him, has got a few too many homophobic/womanising black marks on his record to qualify.

Owen was amazing obv. but for all his brilliance he was never at the level that Bryan is/was

I will wait till i've seen Raw to say anything because lol its wrestling and everyones injured, but yeah it seems likely to be true and really sucks. He was the greatest professional wrestler, I loved everything he did and to see his true peak at the top of the mountain end with two terribly timed injuries really is unfortunate.

probably isn't but bryan's announcement could be a work?

just hoping it's retiring from WWE and not from wrestling

(which is sort of selfishly what i was hoping for anyway)

to the extent that in wrestling everything might always be a work, sure, but it feels legit. ESPN appearance booked in with the Coachman, Meltzer reporting that this has been prompted by some recent (pre-Rumble) brain scans that are not looking what they should be for a healthy 34 year old guy and so on :(((((

i mean obviously it'd be sweet if at the climatic moment of his big retirement speech, just as everyone is bursting into floods of tears, Sheamus jumps into the ring and kicks him in the face or sthing to FINALLY set up the Wrestlemania match that they were destined never too have, but yeah. i don't think so this time, would love to be proved wrong

xpost to qualx - if his brains really are scrambled then i think it'd probably be better if he didn't go off to New Japan to let Okada hit him in the head real hard or w/e

i'm inclined to believe him (and meltzer etc) when he says he's been cleared by everyone except maroon. hopefully he'd stop taking head shots but i don't think you can keep him away from wrestling if that's his choice right now

i'm just hoping this doesn't result in a nasty lawsuit with WWE because of their non-compete bullshit

but aside from that, i think he's had a very good career in WWE but this whole saga makes me uneasy and even if he did come back to wrestle, we'd all just be waiting for them to shut him down again

Yeah, as incredible as it would be for WWE to pull a fast one on the fans AND the media with this, I think it's for real, and for the best. For his sake, I hope Bryan retires and stays retired. (Although I'm afraid it may take some contract maneuvering on WWE's part to get him to stick to that second bit.)

If he does retire tonight as expected, I wonder what effect this might have on the broader culture of pro wrestling. Will it motivate some ambitious indie wrestlers to tone down their style, for fear of being forced into retirement in what should have been their prime?* Will it move WWE to tone down the increasingly high-spot-driven house style that's been developing over the past few years, thanks in part to guys like DB? Will we look back on this as a turning point for how seriously concussions are taken within the industry?

*I don't follow the independent scene at all really, but I have heard that there's a wave of guys right now who are making their names on an updated version of the old-school World of Sport UK mat wrestling style. I think that's pretty cool. I've thought for a while that nifty chain wrestling could make inroads in the mainstream with the right proponents, since it can be both crowd-pleasing a relatively safe. Chad Gable offers a glimpse into a possible future there.

Xpost I think that's the point that meltzer's made today though?? That bryan's finally been convinced himself that there's no way back from here following these recent brain scans??

Nb I have no clue what "brain scans"
means here or how they would differ from whatever else he's been having done for the last 9 months. But that's what 411mania says that Dave meltZer is saying, and as any fool knows that is about as close to truth as you can get in wrestling

:(

o man :''''''''(

Ok so I just woke up in the middle of the night to cry like a baby.

Daniel Bryan was truly the best thing to ever happen to professional wrestling and i'm happy that he seems to have learnt to retire before he ended up even more hurt.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsX1ATcyQxU

Daniel Bryan was truly the best thing to ever happen to professional wrestling and i'm happy that he seems to have learnt to retire before he ended up even more hurt.

Remember what Edge said about feeling the weight lift off his shoulders when the doctors took the decision out of his hands? I think the same thing is going on here. I hope he doesn't disappear from the business, but I never want to see him take a bump again, he owes that to himself and his loved ones.

With that being said, I've got YEARS worth of Bryan Danielson matches that I've never seen, only ever read about, that I can watch from here on in.

i'm seeing WWE getting good press for this but it's still worth questioning why tommy dreamer was allowed back for multiple matches

Get him in as a trainer down in NXT and make him a big part of the next season of Breaking Ground. Show him and William Regal being nerdlinger wrestling bros together :) A generation of new superstars trained by William Regal and Daniel Bryan, imagine!

With that being said, I've got YEARS worth of Bryan Danielson matches that I've never seen, only ever read about, that I can watch from here on in.

Yeah I'm feeling this pretty strongly right now, I've seen hardly any Ring of Honor stuff from before the last year or two. I downloaded all of the Danielson/McGuinness matches last night (watched the first one from the 2006 Weekend of Champions, it was really really great, cant wait to see more) and one of the ones I picked up was a fatal-four-way of Danielson vs McGuinness vs Castagnoli vs Black.

I knew they all came through Ring of Honor at some point, I never realised that they were all main-eventing at the same time. And then from a little earlier there were matches with Punk and Joe, and then a little later matches with KENTA, Steen and Generico. It was at this point that it hit me with full weight for the first time that holy shit, all the best stuff in WWE for years now has basically just been mid-late 00s Ring of Honor.

I don't follow the independent scene at all really, but I have heard that there's a wave of guys right now who are making their names on an updated version of the old-school World of Sport UK mat wrestling style

Yeah this is all the EVOLVE dudes right? Zack Sabre Jr., Timothy Thatcher, Drew Gulak and so on? Quite wanna start paying attention to this stuff

can't find a source but i've read that he's tried training before and hated it because he has no patience for trainees that essentially aren't as nerdy and dedicated to wrestling as him and regal

which sounds right

He also talks in his book about being a bad trainer - he did it for Roland Alexander for a while when he was only a greenhorn himself. Though that shouldn't stop him popping in now and then for special coaching/pep-talk sessions like they're doing with Quack this week, if he were game.

quackenbush was at nxt?

shit dun' changed

It's a sad way to go out but he really had a exceptional career. Who knows how many concussions he had, especially wrestling in that style. I keep thinking of a guy like Nick Bockwinkel, who was universally regarded as one of the smartest, most cerebral wrestlers ever, ending up with severe Alzheimers in his final years. Even at age 50 I'm sure he would have passed most or maybe all of the tests that Bryan took.

Like others here, I have years of Brian Danielson matches to catch up on -- stuff I read about while it was going on but never got around to checking out. Danielson vs Morishima, vs McGuinness, vs Joe ... a few weeks ago I stumbled upon a Tanahashi vs Danielson match!

In less important news, I have no clue what WWE is trying to accomplish with Roman Reigns anymore. The match at Fastlane is all about Lesnar vs Ambrose, while Reigns is just a guy who happens to be hanging around in the background while they fight. Shouldn't the main story be about Reigns and Lesnar having unfinished business from last years' Mania, while Ambrose tries to weasel his way into the title picture? I don't get it.

10 documented concussions, many more undocumented, occasional seizures that he didn't tell anyone about, lesions on his brain. fuuuuuucking hell bryan :(((((

dad of the year mr charity work titus oneill suspended 90 days for lightly grabbing vinces arm after raw ended?

black history month at the wwe everybody

Or vinny mac prepared to swallow a "cranky out of touch old bastard does something crazy" shaped pill in order to prevent telling anyone that dad of the year Titus has been on the naughty juice

Drug suspension is 30day, doing something slightly innapropriate after raw and while they all walk off stage is 90 days

Fair nuff, massive overreaction of course, but p. much serves him right anyway imo, was a stupid thing to do.

http://i.imgur.com/8v4kQ14.jpg

Maura - you have a magazine and its got okada on the front cover???

the whole issue is wrestling!

I just bought it - kind of a pain as the website kept timing out setting up my account, and no PayPal option?. Anyway, looking forward to reading this along with the Gary Hart memoir and the latest Atomic Elbow that's been sitting here for weeks.