Breaking TMW Radio Silence

Yes I know it seems that I have forgotten about this blog. I get it, and I understand why.

But let me, if I can, explain why this is the case. When i started this blog my main mission statement, as much as I had one, was to enjoy wrestling deeply and passionately wherever I found it. That's what I have been doing. The funny thing however is that I wasn't motivated to write what I was enjoying. Just enjoying it felt good enough.

That stops. When i get home tonight, i'll try and write something about the biggest story of the weekend for me. Mike Quackenbush and Jigsaw, and how we might be one step closer to the complete re-drawing of what it means to be face and heel, and whether or not I care for it.

How to Build A Light Heavyweight Division In The WWF Part 1: The Roster

This Could Be A Big Deal.
Photo Credit: Stock Image

There was a time, maybe in the heyday of WCW, where the Light Heavyweight or Cruiserweight Title was a supremely important belt. Through a combination of WCW's gigantic talent budget, and their affiliations with New Japan and AAA, the end result was that the championship seemed like a huge deal even with what was WCW's dismissiveness towards it. But with the demise of WCW, and the confusion about who could step into the breach,  one thing died.  And that was the relevancy of the Light Heavyweight Title. Sure, WWE paid lip service to the idea for a little while but since, at its core, WWE is run as a "big man's territory" it was only too long before the cruiserweight champion became a joke.

But I want to fix it. I want to make it work again. Sure, this is probably a 1-man crusade. But it's my crusade. Want to join me?

Flyin' Brian: A Gushing Appreciation

Flyin' Brian: My Favorite Junior Heavyweight Ever.

If, by some minor fluke, you listened to this you may have discovered that I sincerely love 1992-era WCW. And above all else, there was one reason I enjoyed that era of WCW (shortly before Bill Watts came in and it all went to hell in a handbasket). It was Flyin' Brian. And believe me when i tell you, because this is the absolute truth, we are never going to see his like again. No matter how hard you may want it, no matter how good it may be for wrestling as a whole, the cold hard fact is that it will never happen.

Free Wrestling On The Internet: The Midnight Express

The best part about the internet, besides reading this fine blog, is the sheer preponderance of awesome wrestling from a variety of sources that you can find. All you need to know how to do, really, is look for what YOU like. I'm not asking you to enjoy what I enjoy, but that you enjoy something. 

What do I enjoy? The Midnight Express for one. Watching them do what they did was awesome. Admittedly, the Eaton-Condrey variant doesn't have nearly as much tape available. But from what you hear from people who were around during that time period, they were as good as it got. But the Eaton-Lane version? That's the fun stuff. 

Below are links to matches against the Fantastics, and the Rock N' Roll Express. You can find more. I recommend you do just that. 

The Dream Match To End All Dream Matches, Or Discussion Of Them

KANA. 1\2 of the greatest dream match ever.

(Full disclosure: I root passionately, unabashedly, and shamelessly for both KANA and her opponent in this match. I don't think that will change the way I write this match, but I needed to clear that up before I kept going in this piece.)

One of the beautiful things about this blog is that I get the chance to spitball ideas for this blog of mine on Twitter. For some reason, my mind and my heart has been drawing me to discuss dream matches. For whatever reason, they've always captivated me. The idea that 2 wrestlers who are clearly stars coming together to figure out which one of the 2 is the better has always interested me. And when I think about what dream matches are left, there's really one left. And it's so beautiful that I had to talk about it, write about it, and hopefully do my small part to make it happen.

It's not Working: Jim Cornette & ROH

I know a lot of people who would argue vociferously that somehow everything from the current era of wrestling is superior than what came before. But that isn't true all the time. Yes, in terms of innovative offense, 2012 has it all over 1988. But are the workers better, smarter, more capable now than then? Depending on who you ask, you'll get a different answer.

Jim Cornette is one of those people. He has argued, in the multitude of shoots that he's done, that wrestlers today are less qualified, less skilled, than their peers from eras past. Combine this with his admitted obsession with making pro wrestling more like MMA, and you have a very strange booking philosophy. How do you fix it? And what are the problems?

A Welcome, and something new on the agenda

Firstly, before I write the rest of this, a big thanks to Thomas Holzerman, Brandon Stroud, and Dirty Dirty Sheets for being nice enough to RT the Team Texas article I posted earlier today. I really do appreciate it, because for a long while, this blog lay dormant and fallow. I didn't post enough, and that's my fault. But that ends. There's enough cool wrestling, both past and present to get lots of cool topics out of. Which actually is the subject of my article today.

A Trio Whose Time Has Come: Team Texas

With Chikara Pro's King of Trios upcoming, we've already seen a whole bunch of trios announced. Traditional Chikara trios like The Batiri, The Spectral Envoy, FIST, and the Throwbacks. Add to this the outside trios of The Extreme Trio (2 Cold Scorpio, Jerry Lynn, and Tommy Dreamer), Team JWP (Commando Bolshoi, Tsubasa Kuragaki, and Kaori Yoneyama), and Team ROH (The Young Bucks and Mike Bennett) and it seems like the King of Trios tournament is on the verge of being absolutely awesome. But there is a trio that hasn't been announced yet. Frankly, I am not sure it ever will be. Which is a shame. Because if they put this trio together, Millions of Buys. The trio I'm talking about? Team Texas.

Chikara vs WCW: An Idea whose time has come

WHen I think of my 2 favorite promotions, from the past and the future, there are only 2 right answers.





I actually started this with my last dream match:  Pillman\Liger vs Quackensaw.

So with that post in mind, I am announcing Chikara vs WCW on this blog. But I can't figure out what to write. What matches should I pick? That's where you come in, readers. Leave something on the comments here about what you would like to see. Donst vs Bagwell? Tell me. Eddie Kingston vs Barry Windham? let me know. 

Brian Pillman And Jushin Liger vs Mike Quackenbush and Jigsaw: A Dream Match.

When I was a kid, as I was sure the case with a lot of people, I wanted to be a Pro Wrestler. The only problem was that, as I got older, the knowledge of my low pain threshold outweighed that desire. So what i decided to do instead was become a pro wrestling fan. And ever since I became a fan, I had 2 favorite wrestlers. One was Jushin "Thunder" Liger. I like him so much that I started a Daily Liger feature, which you may or may not have read on this very same blog. But the other favorite is a bit more complicated.

The other favorite hasn't been around nearly as long, and he is perhaps best known not for his workrate apex but rather for a persona. And this is a shame. Because make no mistake, if we didn't have Brian Pillman, we wouldn't have the 1-2-3 kid. And thus we wouldn't have Rey Misterio Jr.

So what do I do with my 2 favorite wrestlers you might be asking? Easy. I do what WCW did with them. Team them up.


Pillman & Liger vs Benoit & Wellington by Hook_Line_and_Sinker

But question: Who in the world do I team them up against? What team could I trust to do this junior heavyweight dream team justice?



That's easy. The team that is, for a lot of people, the junior heavyweight dream team of this decade. Mike Quackenbush and Jigsaw. The former Campeonatos de Parejas of Chikara, and tag team specialists on par with any team in the world. But it isn't just that this dream team of the '00s was brought together to face the dream team of the 1990's because Quack's dream was to face Liger, and Jigsaw reminds me of a prime Flyin' Brian (although thankfully,without the bengal-print speedos.) It's also because Quackensaw is perhaps the tag team most suited to studying these 2 men, and finding a weakness. In fact, Mike Quackenbush was kind enough to submit to the Majesty of Wrestling what his strategy would have been. 


 Pillman is the weak link. His flying moves never had the precision that Liger's did. You just have to wait for him to make a mistake, even if you bait him a bit. Both those guys are stronger than Jig and I. In their primes, they were faster than us. But they were never really good teammates, and so you wait for a mistake and lay on the double teams. Smother them with double team moves. That's the way to win. 

LMQ

 

How would Liger and Pillman win this match? Use their experience, and extend the match. Because while Quack and Jigsaw are the equals, and perhaps superior, to Liger\Pillman in terms of tag team work their bodies might have trouble keeping a long and demanding pace. Quack's back and wrist problems are well-documented, as are Jigsaw's knee issues. If the Liger-Pillman tandem can cut the ring off and attack one of those weakened body parts, they might have a chance. 

Will we ever see this match? No. And that's a shame. But believe me when I tell you, if any promotion would ever put it on, it wouldn't be WWE or TNA. Curious to the promotion that would have the foresight to do it, and do it with the care and love that a match like this would require? Good. Because I am about to tell you.

Chikara. That is the company with the foresight to book a match of this quality, the respect to give it to you with a minimum of fluff, and the environment where that match means as much as it should. 

Thank you for reading this. I hope you enjoy the perspective I brought to this.

Tag Team Wrestling: A Gushing Appreciation, And Announcing The First Annual TMW Tag Team Tournament

There are many things i find troubling about current WWE. Many many things. But chief amongst them is the way that they de-emphasized what was once one of the coolest things about old WWF, and the thing that got me into modern wrestling: Tag Teams.

Now to be clear, the "Rock 'N Wrestling" era didn't have the tag team situation all to themselves. It was the southern wrestling scene that started it, and you could argue, perfected it. The southern tag structure is still the basis upon which your best tag matches have always been built. And Jim Cornette, no matter what you might think of him as a man with anger issues, does know how to make tag team wrestling work. The Midnight Express were state-of-the-art tag team wrestling for decades. And ever since the Midnights and the Rock N' Rolls, teams with the mastery of this art have always had a special place in my heart.

So it's in honor of that aesthetic, and frankly because I need a few more hits on this blog, that I am announcing the first-ever TMW Tag Team Tournament. If I knew someone who made trophies, I'd hand one out to the winner. But I don't. So instead the winner will just have to be confident in the knowledge that they were the first-ever winners of the Tag Team Tournament on the Majesty of Wrestling.

Here are the 4 regions of the Tournament.

East. First-Round matches to be held in the Asylum Arena, Second-Round Matches to be held in Madison Square Garden, and the Regional Finals to be held in the Barclays Center.

Midwest. First-Round matches to be held in the Frontier Fieldhouse in Chicago, 2nd-round matches to be held in the AllState Arena, and the Finals to be held in the United Center.

South. First-Round matches to be held in the Mohawk in Austin, TX, 2nd-Round Matches to be held in the Philips Arena, and finals to be held in the Fed-Ex Forum.

West: First-Round Matches to be held in the American Legion Hall in Reseda, CA, 2nd-round matches to be held in the Rose Garden in Portland, finals in the Great Western Forum.

Where will the final four be you ask? The Tokyo Dome.

But i know what you're thinking. I haven't listed any teams yet. And you're right I haven't. Because in the next couple of days, I am going to release the names of the teams who have made the cut. And believe me, you will be surprised as to who does make the cut as well as who DOESN'T.

Thank you for reading.