Reel in Place

GWE season is here, and I've been slacking, so with about one year to make a ballot, I'm starting to review wrestlers I've considered, but not fully formed an opinion on. So we begin with Buddy Rogers, a guy who has two of my favorite matches of the Golden Era, against Lou Thesz in 1950 and Pat O'Connor in 1961 .   Buddy Rogers/Magnificent Maurice/Johnny Barend vs Bobo Brazil/Art Thomas/Dory Dixon - Chicago 3/15/1963 There are 10 complete Buddy Rogers matches out there, and this is one of them. He's barely in this, it is mostly a showcase for the face team, Buddy spends a lot of time on the apron playing a chickenshit. In some ways that is Buddy Rogers' greatest contribution to modern wrestling, he sort of codified what it meant to be a heel, and you can see a glimpse of why he was so successful, but its only just a glimpse.  Buddy Rogers vs. Cyclone Ayana - Chicago 1/5/1951 From a modern perspective, so much of the Golden Age stuff just seems boring or stall-y,...

 There's some stuff that no one is watching. I don't mean that literally, of course someone, somewhere watches it, but they're not talking about it. They're not doing anything about it. There are a lot of wrestling companies like that, they exist, they put on shows, and people watch and attend them, but they have no impact. Heat-Up is kind of that way. I don't really understand it, the guy who runs it seems weird to me, I've never really seen a single person discuss it, but most of their events have results on Cagematch, so someone, somewhere cares, but only just enough so that the results aren't lost to history. White Moriyama is a guy from the FUTEN promotion, and he now only works occasionally on HEAT-UP shows. I care, because I like White Moriayma, but not enough to watch a show live, or seek it out if it doesn't go up on Youtube, but I care a little bit, so here we are, me writing about Heat-Up, which I don't think has happened, at least in Engl...

  We've chronicled most of this feud up to this point. Edge cashed in the Money in the Bank in January, and Cena reclaimed the title at Royal Rumble. We didn't see Edge winning the title on Raw in a triple threat with Cena and RVD in July, but Cena had RVD beat until Edge stole the pin. After that, our last installment, Edge got Disqualified at Saturday Night's Main Event. Since then, Edge had sex on TV and slapped Cena's dad, bringing us here, Cena challenging Edge in Boston and if Edge gets DQ'ed, he loses the title.  Cena comes out ultra-confident and Edge is not, he knows Cena has his number and that, in some ways, the deck is stacked against him due to the stipulation, on top of this match being in Cena's backyard. All Cena early until Edge throws him into the ring post and takes over. Edge seems to think his best chance of winning is to have Cena counted out, and he attempts that feat twice to no avail. On the second 9 count, the Anti-Cena crowd really sho...

There's this narrative, and it's not without merit, that WWE is some rudderless ship with no foresight or interest in the long-term. Certainly, there are times when things are dropped and forgotten, but watch any TV show, things like that happen there all the time too, but people choose to watch and enjoy TV shows, unlike wrestling where they watch it at gunpoint and rate it on some faux-objective scale and also follow the business metrics for 'fun'. It doesn't seem to be an enjoyable way to consume things, but that's just where we are. So when Becky Lynch beats Bianca Belair, the masses are up in arms, but when it comes time for Bianca to get revenge, the most obvious conclusion, there is this sense that somehow this wasn't always the intended direction, that somehow this match on this night was a matter of mostly coincidence. It wasn't. The bad guy showed up and beat the good guy. It took the good guy a while to another shot at the bad guy, but when th...

I should have voted for Gary Hart. I was under the impression that he didn't wrestle any matches in Crockett, one of the criteria I had for my list was for everyone to have at least one match, no matter how farcical it may have been, so I never really considered him, but he did work some tags as a manager in 1983. So, I blew it with Gary Hart, he should have made my list somewhere below Jim Cornette.  Two things stand out to me from the final list. The first is that the Nitro-era is, in my mind, over-represented, guys who had maybe a two-year run on the undercard in the 90s placed a lot higher than a guy like Don Kernodle who was a major pushed player for JCP. It's not surprising, but I don't think it's right. The same goes for Piper and Jimmy Valiant.  The other thing that stands out is there are a lot of guys I was the low voter on who I think are really great, but from a WCW perspective, they just didn't do a ton. Jushin Liger and Steve Austin are great wrestlers...

In June, Rob Van Dam beat John Cena for the WWE Title, but here, a little over a month later, Edge is the champion and RVD has been suspended as a result of a drug-related arrest. So, things have changed, but the backup plan is a pretty good one. Edge cost Cena the title, so there is still that issue, and Edge pinned RVD in a triple threat with Cena to win the title, so the title has been integrated into things seamlessly. That leads us to this night, singles match for the WWE title between Edge and John Cena, not where the WWE planned to be, but still a worthy main event.  Before the bell rings, Edge is pulling his funny faces, looking fired up, but when the bell rings be bails to the outside immediately. Cena catches up with him, but Edge uses his overexuberance to get the advantage as we go to commercial. Edge botches a superplex, slipping on the top rope, but Cena manages to get himself over on it, so it ends up looking good anyway.   We get another one of those dread...