Loss

Bucanero ambushed Tarzan as he was being interviewed at the entrance before the match. The contrast between the two is pretty obvious right away. Tarzan Boy is a good looking guy who is all smiles. A young girl in the crowd holds up a sign made out of pink posterboard, cut in the shape of a heart, professing her love for the guy. (I think she wanted him that way, if you know what I mean.) He's facing Rey Bucanero, a demonic figure wearing face paint accompanied by longtime hellraiser El Satanico as a corner man. This had all the makings of a classic. I wouldn't quite put it at that level because of a few shifts in momentum that seem more perfunctory than earned, but I do think there's lots to love about this. They did a great job building heat on Bucanero and really making me want to see Tarzan Boy mount a strong comeback. Satanico was so awesome at ringside sneaking in slaps to the face when he could and otherwise antagonizing before eating his lunch near the end. This is also a good antidote to those that can't get past the way lucha matches are structured because of the falls. Here, they don't even break between them and they are just there to facilitate shifts in control, so they aren't terribly important. What was more important was the overall arc: Rey endlessly worked over Tarzan's cut, which set Tarzan up to do the same before they started going for pins near the end, so you get heat, revenge and payoff, with double juice to boot. The blood, the contrast in personae, the drama and Satanico's ringside antics come together to make this pretty great. ****

This was a fun way to get PWO2K going! Solar has been a favorite since I went through 1990 EMLL, but lots of the other guys were fairly new to me. The ones that stood out the most were Zumbido and Violencia. Violencia is terrific at setting up other guys for spots and eating moves. If I'm a high flyer, I want Violencia as my opponent every night of the week. Zumbido is just awesome -- he does the Shawn Michaels working style, but pairs good flying offense with the exaggerated bumping. There were a couple of rough moments -- Mr. Mexico's dive at the end was pretty awkward, and the attempted backbreaker from Solar at the beginning didn't quite hit the mark. Fans in the building seemed a little bored, but in 13 minutes, they accomplished what I hoped they would -- showcase some guys and get me pumped for the decade ahead. ***

My main issue with that is that I feel like arguments should be about merits, not about the people making them. The post should in theory read the same whether you can see who wrote it or not. Also, some people can spin a yarn and write really eloquently. Some people may have more valuable points to make, but can't express them as well. Do we value substance or style? (Just talking out what all of this means.)

Yeah, it's not so much about truth or orthodoxy or anything like that. I just see it as being about the obvious. The Great Khali is not better than Bret Hart. He's just not. The end. So where do you go? How do you not ridicule someone who tries to say otherwise? (I'm using an extreme example to make a point.)

I'm not sure I know sometimes. I'd like to think all opinions have value and none should be dismissed, but should we really hear someone out who tries to argue that The Great Khali is better than Bret Hart?

I haven't seen a single match from him this year and was never a particularly huge fan, but I have seen the name "Marufuji" next to typed asterisks quite a few times this year after not seeing such a thing for many years. So is he in the conversation?

Moving to The Microscope.

Good topic. I'm going to move it to The Microscope, which is more a folder for threads about specific wrestlers.

If I'm seeing anything resembling agreement, it's that we need more hands-on moderating. I've always tried to resist that on principle, but maybe we have reached a point where it's necessary, at least for a while. Is this a fair read? Edited to add: I don't want to turn the board into a dictatorship, but I also see stuff here that I think would be useful for new posters to see and for older posters to be reminded of. I think it would be useful to do a write-up of posting guidelines and pin it (and unpin some of that stuff that doesn't need to be there anymore.)

Semi-related to this thread, I just started this in Announcements & Feedback: http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/36326-where-is-the-line/

This board was founded on the idea that we would discuss Pro Wrestling Only. Of course, it only makes sense when discussing matches that often double as morality plays, or storylines that tend to implicitly and explicitly touch on issues of gender and race, or capitalist business models of wrestling companies, that sometimes the discussion will spill into broader issues. It seems to be happening more often lately, I think because of a changing culture and more politically-charged times. I also sense that the community seems pretty divided over whether this is a good thing or a bad thing. I don't think it's necessary that we are all in agreement on this issue, but I would like to hear some thoughts on where you think the line is that you would prefer that we not cross where we still maintain the spirit of the board as a pro wrestling site. Goodhelmet and I made the conscious choice not to set up a Current Events folder or a Music folder or anything else off-topic when we launched precisely because we had seen it do a number on other once-thriving message boards -- people formed opinions of others based on their personal stances that had little or nothing to do with their wrestling opinions, and that ended up poisoning the wrestling waters. I hope we haven't passed the point of no return with that happening here, and I'm willing to accept that maybe what pro wrestling "only" meant when we launched in 2007 is not what it means ten years later. Ultimately though, all I want is for this board to be everything for everyone within the scope of wrestling. There is plenty of room for lots of divergence and differing opinions on what that means. But I don't think the current approach is working, because it is causing a lot of resentment and threads aren't as civil as they have usually been around here. I'd like to have a productive conversation about how we can get things back on track.

It's been ages since I've seen Satanico-Koshinaka but the visual that stands out most in my head when thinking about it is of the sunset flip attempt from Koshinaka being resisted by Satanico. Mid Atlantic hardly has an exclusive on that spot, but for some reason, that reminded me of Mid Atlantic in how it was done. I thought it was pretty cool and kind of atypical also. My memory is that Koshinaka worked that match as more of a classic U.S.-style babyface in the Steamboat vein than he would even in Japan.

Jeff Jarrett vs Dutch Mantell (Kentucky Orchestra Match 1988) Abdullah The Butcher vs Zeus (WWC Anniversario 07/07/90) Hiroshi Hase vs Tiger Jeet Singh (NJPW 12/08/91, Island Death Match) Undertaker vs Yokozuna (WWF Royal Rumble 01/22/94, Casket Match) Atsushi Onita, Katsutoshi Niiyama & Mr. Gannosuke vs Mr. Pogo, The Gladiator & Hideki Hosaka (FMW 09/25/94, No Rope Barbed Wire Electrified Dynamite Pool Hell Death Match) Survival Tobita vs Ken The Box (Saitama Pro 08/23/99) Scott Hall & Kevin Nash vs Porn Stars (WCW Monday Nitro 10/25/99) Pat Patterson vs Gerald Brisco (WWF King of the Ring 06/25/00, Evening Gown Match) Trish Stratus & Bradshaw vs Jackie Gayda & Christopher Nowinski (WWE RAW 07/08/02) Minoru Suzuki vs MECHA Mummy (Ultimo Dragon Fiesta 06/23/06)

Funny you mention GAEA. I always saw GAEA as the 90s version of 80s AJW. I always saw ARSION as the 90s version of 80s JWP. I love the company too. From what I hear, ARSION eventually became more run-of-the-mill Joshi, which is unfortunate, but I'm not sure if that claim is exaggerated or not. Yoshida remained a fixture even through the transition of ARSION to A-To-Z, and I can't imagine her not always dictating the style to an extent. She's too good not to affect everyone around her.

I love how he keeps upping the amount of his bribe offer to the referees to get out of the straitjacket.

I don't think you're the problem. I wouldn't really hang that on any person. I think as a collective, we have hit a bump in the road that we haven't quite figured out how to overcome yet. We will get there.

A big part of it is that most of the great matches aren't happening in front of big, hot crowds. That's not a dealbreaker for me in the least, but it's why they aren't as memorable. Great matches are also treated as more disposable now. Dave spent about three weeks raving about Clash I in the WON in 1988. I can't imagine him doing that for any show in 2016-2017. People largely consume, praise and then move on to the next thing. I remember a match from Evolve getting the full five earlier this year between ZSJ and Ospreay. I think VoW heralded it as a true breakthrough for British wrestling in America. I haven't heard anyone so much as mention the match since, or if they have, I genuinely don't remember. Shouldn't a match like that be talked about as iconic and be at the forefront of wrestling discussion pretty much everywhere for the rest of 2016 and beyond? Ospreay-Ricochet in Japan got a lot of talk that lasted months, mainly because of the Vader stuff on Twitter. Wrestling absolutely has no shortage of great matches now -- in some ways, there's an overabundance to the point it's hard to keep up with everything that gets MOTYC buzz. But even the great stuff tends to come across to me as easy to admire and pretty tough to love -- I think that's because when I watch stuff now, I feel like in most instances I'm watching guys perform instead of watching guys work (which I'll admit is a hilarious line coming from a fan of Ric Flair, the ultimate performing wrestler, but he at least could wrestle mean). As I've said recently, I put most of the inability to connect on me and not current wrestling itself. But if we want to compare now to the 80s, have there been any live reports from WWE or NXT house shows of MOTYCs lately? Have any fancams surfaced to confirm this to be the case for any of them? Lucha libre, from what I've seen, seems to be the only genre left that doesn't go half speed when professional cameras aren't rolling, as handhelds like Black Terry vs Wotan nicely demonstrate.

Calling understanding lucha "hard work" trivializes actual hard work. Asking someone who knows, "Hey, why is Thing A this way?" and being told the answer is just seeking an answer and getting an answer from a trusted source. Those types of things are common in Japanese wrestling and even some territory wrestling. - Why are Japanese crowds so quiet? - Why do lots of WWF crowds only pop for entrance music and finishing moves? - Why do they go straight to the finish after the hot tag in most Mid South matches? - Why does the referee still enforce the rules in No DQ matches in Houston? - Why do most AWA tags have a double heat? - What is the Code of Honor? - How does the point system work in UWFI? - Why is the crowd in the Worldwide Arena acting like that? - In Memphis, if it's truly an "expiration of time" match, shouldn't it go all the way to very last second of air time? - Why don't WWF announcers do time calls and countdown when the time limit is about to expire? - Why don't wrestlers in Japan throw punches as much? You get the idea.

I couldn't get over the piledriver on the floor. If the table piledriver sidelined Flair for three months, then the floor piledriver definitely shouldn't have been used as a mid-match spot here, especially when Funk was putting away job guys with it during this time week after week, and especially especially when they needed him to be over strong as a challenger going into the Bash. I think they felt like Flair's return seeking revenge was enough to sell the show and saw turning Luger as the bigger priority. The show was a big success, so maybe they were right. I just think had Funk seemed credible by getting wins over some high-level guys -- Sting refused to do a job and Steamboat didn't do one here -- they could have gone even further. But yeah, as far as the match quality, just that floor piledriver takes down something that I otherwise really enjoyed quite a bit.

That boot to the face from Barbarian in the post-match, though.

Flair pinned Sting relatively clean as the real finish, which is what they were doing around the loop at the time, and I assume they didn't want to beat Sting on TV, so they just cut out early.

Have you seen the Windham-Tully match from January? They foreshadowed Barry's turn then actually, with the Horsemen beating down Luger and Flair offering him a spot with the group before Windham helped fight them off. That was when the Luger-Windham partnership was solidified. *That* was to play off of Luger's debut from the year before, where Windham tried to talk him out of joining the Horsemen and he spit in his face. For months in early '88, Flair would casually mention in his own promos that they were considering all options for the fourth Horseman and that he wished it could be Barry Windham, but he had to be the one to make the leap. After the turn, JJ did a long promo explaining that for months, he had been talking to Barry privately to try to convince him, but that Barry kept blowing him off. Take this all the way to Chi-Town Rumble where Luger won the U.S. title, and this all plays out as a two-year saga that started the moment Lex walked in the door.

It always seemed like people were more into the power juniors like Benoit and Liger than the guys who worked a more high-flying style like Ultimo Dragon, Rey, Juventud and Psicosis or Sasuke, Taka and the Michinoku Pro crew, although they definitely all had their supporters. So I do think there's something to that.

Japanese wrestling is just more excessive than American wrestling in general. The absurd is more absurd just as the serious is more serious.

I do agree with that, and one reason is because even when it's not the intent, we end up talking about ourselves more than I wish we did. I think there's no way to escape that entirely, nor do I think that is appropriate, but I do prefer that the focus stay on wrestling itself and not our consumption, our tastes and the historiography of hardcore fan tastes. Both have always had a place here, and both always will. I just wish it was more of an 80/20 split than a 50/50 split. (I say that as a poster, not as an admin issuing an edict.)