What are you watching right now?

Also the Benoit in Japan stuff from his DVD, soundtracked by Malenko and Benoit answering confused questions from Todd thingy. The new-ish speccy one, not Pettengill, that'd be kind of awesome.

2005 fat/falls over a lot Vader: not so much. Shame.

i've NEVER seen the Sting/Vader series, or any pre-Nitro/non-Saturday Night WCW for that matter... probably on my to-watch list. Vader just scared me through the Apter rags, and his legend just grew through my own imagination. his U.S. career arguably ended with his feud with Hulk Hogan (surprise); he was as threatening as Earthquake after that.

i'm drawing a blank here... which monster heels have The Rock faced?

Lately I've been into a comp I got of Kevin Sullivan's Satan worshipping gimmick segments from the NWA florida territory in the 70s-80s. Video quality is shit unfortunately but I have to see more Florida stuff.

I've never seen any of the Sting-Vader matches either! [friendly reminder ... we have a wrestling YSI thread]

A couple of weeks ago I took inventory on one of my recent WWE TV tapes. The Atlanta RAW (Rockers reunion, Jake the Snake, Benoit v HHH in an "Everyone Knows That Benoit Is Returning the Job From WMXX Because It's the One Year Anniversary of His Big Win and HHH has Been Jobbing To Him All Year" Match), Cena's RAW debut (it was all downhill from there), Matt Hardy jumping Edge (back when that meant something), etc.

I also re-watched the famous Taue/Kawada vs Misawa/Kobashi match from June 1995 that a lot of people say is the best tag match ever. They might be right. I am hurting for Japanese wrestling kinda bad these days. Have any of you seen the Misawa vs Kawada match from earlier this year?

From the sounds of it, Kobashi vs Sasaki was just the two of them slapping the shit out of each other for the entire match. In other words, much the same storyline as Kawada vs Sasaki from 2000, which was also hailed as MOTY by fans of strong style / super-stiff matches.

Its definitely not "just the two of them slapping the shit out of each other", but god, the chop sequence was unholy awesome. When I heard about it, I had mixed feelings, but when you see it, its fucking ILL. And there's some great sequences with the near countout to Kobiashi and the whole finish is superb. I know a lot of people are pimping stuff from Arena Mexico (if you ask me, Mistico is blessed to have the guys he does to bump and sell for him), but there's nothing around that touches Sasaki/Kobiashi. Nothing. The whole NOAH dome show (except really for the gaijin stuff) is ace. A worthy buy.

I hadn't seen a Kobashi match since his March 2003 GHC title win over Misawa. It's really too bad that we'll never see 1995 Kobashi vs 2005 Joe -- two very agile big men with vast movesets, amazing striking ability, and a somewhat sickening talent for taking insane head bumps. Now that his knees are balls of goo, Kobashi has to rely on the bumps and chops more than ever, but he can certainly still tell a great story in the ring.

MisaHHHwa was diagnosed with a degenerative eye condition that will force him into retirement soon, so we're nearing the end of his spotlight-hogging ways.

Dammit if he's not as great in this match as he's ever been. The crowd was completely behind him for the entire second half of the match, and totally deflated when Kobashi retained. I'm sure if they'd known that Rikio would flop so badly as champion then they would have moved the belt onto Taue here.

I also saw the AJ Styles vs Samoa Joe match at Turning Point a few days ago, and man, that was brutal. Probably my favourite match in recent memory.

http://www.youtube.com/w/Teddy-Hart-Promo%21?v=8-GyIYMJS4c&search=teddy%20hart

Typically you here only bad things about this guy, but I don't yet understand why he isn't everybody's favorite current performer in wrestling.

I didn't realise that Dusty Rhodes stole so much of his promo style from the Superstar.

He really let himself go between losing the title in 1978 and returning to wrestling in 1980. Doing drugs and lying in bed for two years + cycling on and off steroids = BAD FOR YOU. Physique-wise, he went from Scott Steiner 2000 (= Superstar Billy Graham 1978, of course) to Ric Flair 2006 in just two years.

The Vince and HHH ass-kissing at the end was a bit revolting, actually. HHH inducted him into the HoF, yeah that was worth going out of their way to put him over at the end of Superstar's doc. OTOH, Vince cries on camera in the final scene, if you're into that.

I wish there had been more about how the Superstar character was created, and *why* he felt the need to break the mold the way he did -- did he feel that wrestling lacked certain character types, or that the era of the larger-than-life heroes like Bruno was coming to an end? (although it obv. wasn't, with Hogan on the horizon)

Still, it's definitely recommended.

http://www.wwe.com/content/media/video/494698/1892550/batistatotti

These are two fun matches I found on different web sites.

Carly Colon vs. Tully Blanchard -Puerto Rico early 80s.
This was shot on a single camera, mostly from far away with roughly executed zooms and pans and this helps showcase how well each performer is actually playing to the large live crowd; telling a story without benefit of close-ups. Blanchard's primary heelisms occur at the opening with a repetition of energetic stalling spots; he fakes a quick approach to lock up then backs away with slower arrogance. Colon's frustration builds reacting to Blanchard's psyche-out tactics. Creative guard rail spots on extreme stage left, then extreme stage right. Without giving away the finish, I think the lesson is that cheating, short cuts, and general unsportsman-like conduct will bring bad accidental karma one's way.

Giant Baba vs Stan Hansen Japan 80s
I've only recently discovered Hansen and I enjoy his work for what are probably the same reasons lots of other people still care about his matches today. I particularly like how he utilizes his whole body whilst selling another's offense or the strain of infliciting pain on someone else. Case in point is this match's opening, when Hansen places his boot on Baba's throat in the corner, Hansen sells the force his legs exact by broadly expressing his shoulder contractions which is a magician's misdirection tactic to diminsh the audience's detail focus on how the move is actually being applied. Also as he's choking Giant Baba in the corner, the pre-match streamers continue to rain down into the ring and oddly with greater intensity than before the bell rang, leading to a strangely beautiful chaos of motion filling the frame.

Giant Baba's showing his age; tiny arms, a reverse mohawk shape receding hairline, and some pained struggle apparent in really basic movements so Hansen does some bumping all over for him. Baba, to his credit, does a pretty good job selling a kick to the face in falling backwards with a slow then shockingly sudden impact. After that it became apparent to me that Baba's age helps establish a visual dichotomy in the match since the vulnerability he projects in the situation makes his physical welfare seem precarious in dealing with such a reckless force of instinct driven disorder personafied by Hansen. And only now do I understand how natural it is that many of the Stan Hansen matches that I've seen have ended in double DQ pull apart brawls. This standard Hansen match finish reveals that the unbottled energy brought into the arena by his reckless gestures were enough to overtake the atmosphere and define the context by his very prescence.

I recently saw Heavenly Bodies vs Thrillseekers from SMW. This is the match where Jericho wrestles with a broken arm and bleeds buckets. Whatever happened to THAT Lance Storm? Where did his personality go?

How was he in SMW?

here's a trailer for an upcoming religous themed bio-pic that tells the life story of wrestling superstar Sting. Evidently one Steve "Sting" Borden offered to portray himself in the major motion picture. The fantasy sequences seem nutty.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=362188899930984667&q=sting+moment+of+truth