Thursday, May 10, 2018

Twitter Request Line, Vol. 234

One of the all-time great title retentions
Photo Credit: WWE.com
It's Twitter Request Line time, everyone! I take to Twitter to get questions about issues in wrestling, past and present, and answer them on here because 140 characters can't restrain me, fool! If you don't know already, follow me @tholzerman, and wait for the call on Wednesday to ask your questions. Hash-tag your questions #TweetBag, and look for the bag to drop Thursday afternoon (most of the time). Without further ado, here are your questions and my answers:

For the purposes of this exercise, I am totally counting WWE Women's Championships, whether main roster or NXT. Chronological and off the top of my head.
  • Mitsuharu Misawa vs. Toshiaki Kawada, All-Japan Super Power Series Day 16, June 3, 1994 - Considered by many to be the greatest match of all-time, I watched this six or seven years after the fact on grainy VHS and was immediately hooked to a wider world of pro wrestling than what was going on on American cable television on Monday nights. It was just a mastery in brutality without the weapons and a clinic in escalation. I would recommend it to anyone.
  • Bret Hart vs. Owen Hart, WWE SummerSlam, August 29, 1994 - Is it the greatest cage match of all-time? It wouldn't be a very high bar to clear, at least in WWE, but man, the Hart Brothers really knew how to work a wrestling match, especially with each other, didn't they?
  • Bill Goldberg vs. Diamond Dallas Page, WCW Halloween Havoc, October 25, 1998 - In retrospect, would it have been better to have had Page win the title here and not deal with the messy clusterfuck of involving Goldberg's title reign ending in nWo fuckery. I think the rib tape added several layers of enjoyment here.
  • Sheamus vs. Daniel Bryan, Best Two-of-Three Falls, WWE Extreme Rules, April 29, 2012 - For as angry as I was when Bryan lost the title, I couldn't be mad at him not getting it back here, because him and Sheamus just kicked each other's asses in what might have been the highlight match of one of WWE's strongest in-ring pay-per-views ever. I guess whether you want to call it the best on the card depends on how you feel about John Cena vs. Brock Lesnar.
  • Sasha Banks vs. Becky Lynch, NXT Takeover: Unstoppable, May 20, 2015 - The Bayley matches were great, but I feel like Banks and Lynch having this match at that time was the most important of the Boss' title reign, because it did a world of good for the mystique of the Horsewomen, mainly because Lynch hadn't really found her footing yet.

I feel you, man. I've hit doldrums more often than not, and I blame WWE being spotty but also being a dad with increasing responsibilities at work, limiting my time and means to check out alternatives. Lately, I've been obsessively grinding in Pokémon Ultra Moon, trying to get about 400 or so Pocket Monsters up to level 100 and facing down the Battle Tree to earn BP. If Pokémon isn't your thing, I hear video games are a diverse and varied genre of entertainment. This Fortnite game sounds like something everyone's playing, and not only is it interactive, but you can get just as mad as you do at too good players sniping you from behind as you can with bad and stupid booking decisions!

It's funny that you put these two guys in juxtaposition, because they both misused rosters featuring Kevin Steen/Owens and El Generico/Sami Zayn. Before you say "well maybe it's the wrestlers and not the bookers," please note that Gabe Sapolsky, Super Dragon, and Paul Levesque didn't seem to have problems utilizing their talents effectively, and it's also not like Brian James or Cornette really lit the world on fire with the rest of their rosters. Anyway, as much as I am loath to do so, I gotta give the edge to James here, because in 2009, Ring of Honor had not yet gotten backing from Sinclair and thus it could be argued that Cornette was doing the best he could with limited resources, and in terms of baffling choices as Champion, at least Davey Richards had non-ironic fans when Cornette strapped him. I'm not sure Jinder Mahal was all that popular in his home country at the time, and that title reign, regardless of what pro-WWE trolls would have you believe, did nothing to foster that relationship with the budding market. I'm not saying Cornette did a good job for ROH, but it feels like his "bad" was garden variety compared to what James did with Smackdown in the last year.

Protected user @adamsgroove asks:
Who wins the Money in the Bank ladder matches, and who do the winners cash in on, and when?
Your winners are going to be Andrade "Cien" Almas and Sarah Logan. One will cash in almost immediately, my guess being Almas, who'll cash in on AJ Styles. I don't think that feud will go into SummerSlam, but Almas will walk in and perhaps out of Brooklyn as Champion facing a challenge from Daniel Bryan. Logan will wait until Ruby Riott has won the RAW Women's Championship to cash in, thus causing a fissure within the Riott Squad. It will also be the impetus for Riott to assume her natural role as elemental white meat babyface and for Logan to rise to her potential as being a big rowdy ass-kickin' heel.

It might be the recency bias talking, but man, Prince Hans from Frozen was quite the doozy. Even though the signs were all present that Anna wasn't going to end up with him and rather be bound to Kristof, I didn't think Hans would be the villain of the movie, just a love triangle dude who may have ended up being aloof and not a right fit for him.