Loss

I would also add that "it's all subjective" should be the beginning of the conversation, not the end.

The reason wrestling matches now don't look like wrestling matches 30 years ago is because of wrestlers caring about their craft. You could argue changes being for better or worse, but if wrestlers didn't care, they'd still be working the same way they did when the in-ring component was much easier on their bodies. But again, the intention of the creator has nothing to do with it.

Has anyone said anything to the contrary, really? The way the word "objectivity" is being used here, it's not about forming an opinion that is factually correct, it's about making comparisons that are as fair as possible.

Cena's greatest asset in the Owens match was his credibility. That he has so many admitted micro-level flaws in his game doesn't bug me so much because his position as the active elder statesman really adds big stakes to matches where guys are trying to unseat him. I think the run as U.S. champ has been one of the highlights of his career. So yeah, I do agree that Owens was the star here, which means the match worked as designed. We've (well, maybe not you specifically, but some) often talked about how we wished guys would actually work for heat and play to the crowd more. Kevin Owens brings that in a way no one else is doing, which leads me to believe that while there are some style edicts at play, a lot of the reason other guys don't do that boils down to personal choice in how they perform. This is the type of match I suspect won't look as good in a few years, even if Owens sticks as a superstar, but what made this match great for me is the little touches KO brings that no one else cares to do. It was a contrast to the WWE norm. Excitement over that may blind me a little, but in the now, this match works really well for me.

I also want to add that I cannot objectively define quality. But I can have an idea in my head of what quality is and hold everything to that single standard. And there's nothing wrong with that.

how do you think you can objectively define "quality"? this is the issue people like jimmy redman and myself have. i flat-out don't think it's possible. the issue is that seeing merit in anything requires you to buy into a surrounding value system that prizes the qualities you think are "objectively" important. and that value system itself may not necessarily have any objective arguments in its favor, or have strong arguments against it. for instance, i could easily picture someone not rating any 90s AJPW ***+ because of the long-term effects of the style. they would basically be saying "celebrating these matches is implicitly celebrating brain damage, and that's such an important issue to me that it overrides anything the matches themselves have to offer". and i think that would be a perfectly reasonable viewpoint as long as it's applied to other culpable wrestling out there. i don't see any concrete case for "the art and the personal are separate" being inherently more valid than "the art and the personal are linked". or imagine someone who doesn't get much out of even the most celebrated wrestling stories, like magnum-tully. this person has also been desensitized to highspot wrestling. so they end up seeing the corniness/weirdness as the creative heart & soul of wrestling, and could consider a lot of 80s WWF straight-up better than the stuff i've mentioned in this post. if they can explain why they've ended up turning the smart-fan value system on its head, how can you say their opinion is any less relevant than anyone else's? I have never said objectivity can be achieved. In fact, I'll say for the third time in this thread that knowing that, I still think it's worth striving for, knowing we'll fail all the while. It's not about liking what you like. Everyone should like what they like. But "I liked it" and "It was good" are mutually exclusive. As one example, I liked Angle-Show at Backlash 2000. It wasn't a great match. That's not me establishing that I'm objective, that's me making an attempt to be objective. An attempt. If people have different takeaways, that's fine. It's up to everyone to figure out how they are going to rate, watch and talk about wrestling. But where people lose me is when two wrestlers do the exact same thing and one gets criticized for it while the other gets praised for it. That's the kind of objectivity I like to see at least attempted in match reviews - not factually correct opinions (that idea is laughable), but not trashing matches solely because of predisposition against the wrestlers, or the fans of the wrestlers, or the promotion it happens in, or some other environmental factor. It's not about objectivity for me. It's about consistency. And really, "fair" is a better word than objective here. It bugs me when I think people aren't giving something a fair chance. If they are, whatever takeaways they have aren't going to get too many objections from me, even if they are drastically different from my opinions.

They usually react when the share price drops. That's why they did all of those cuts and scaled back the Network plans last year.

I always thought Cena-RVD at One Night Stand was awesome. The crowd was predisposed to hate him, but he still played them like a fiddle to get even more heat.

Their self-awareness is charming, I will say that. But I haven't seen enough of them to honestly assess.

There's still more threads to come. Quite a few, in fact.

Would Tyler Breeze have a chance of being at the Sheamus-Barrett-Dolph level on the main roster, or are they more likely to use him as a comedy figure like Fandango? Also, it seems like a feud between Dolph and Breeze would be a natural first direction.

The coke can was designed by an artist. But if someone else interprets it as a statement on American excess becoming a cultural institution, it's art, whether that was the intent or not.

Cesaro is the guy as long as Tyson Kidd is injured.

And Duran Duran is awesomely awesome.

One more -- what are your favorite EVOLVE matches?

See, from my point of view, if Lawler-Snowman is just as good to me (in it's own way...) as other ****1/2 matches I've watched, why wouldn't I give it ****1/2? How long is a ****1/2 match supposed to be exactly? It's all the qualifications and shit that people place on different matches, styles, workers, etc. that I don't go in for. If a 3 minute Divas match is one of the greatest things I've ever seen in my life, I will rate it ****1/2. Why the fuck wouldn't I? Because a three minute match can't be ****1/2? Says who? Same goes for a 4-minute Lawler quasi-shoot, or a 6 minute comedy match, or a "match as angle", or a Goldberg squash, or a "this was a fun popcorn sprint", or any other kind of delination of match that makes people hesitant for some reason to throw snowflakes on it. Like I remember recently in a thread, possibly the Tenta vs Someone thread, where someone argued that Tenta's *** match was better than Someone's **** match, some shit like that. And like...huh? If that's the case, why is Tenta's match only *** then? Because he's a big fat guy doing big fat spots in short matches, and that shit isn't as snowflake worthy as someone stringing moves together in a long workrate match? THAT is the shit I dislike about star ratings. Again, it's the idea that they are some kind of scientific marker, and thus matches with moves, length, psychology, selling whatever other things a great match is "supposed" to have are more worthy of snowflakes than a match with comedy, fat guys, women, no-selling, botches, brevity, etc. Even if it's a better match. Saying "I liked Lawler-Snowman better than a match five times its length, but I can't rate it higher because it's a sloppy four-minute match" is ridiculous in the extreme to me. Literally the only thing I could possibly care about when rating a match is how good it was. On another note, I actually agree with the point that star ratings are eminently useful for ranking and organisation. I use other people's as a gauge for what I should check out. If I see you or Meltzer or Parv or whoever else give something a high rating, I feel safe checking it out, even though I don't necessarily agree with you or Meltzer or Parv when it comes to ratings. (1) It's not about the length of the match, it's about the match having a strong beginning, middle and end. Lawler-Snowman was pretty much just a strong beginning. But it was also the first match in the feud so I don't want to criticize it for that. But I'm not going to hold it up as a solid comparison to other matches that are more fleshed out either, no matter how long or short they are. I've definitely seen some great short matches. (2) I think what people are saying is that they would rather watch Tenta's good match than someone else's great one, which has nothing to do with quality and far more to do with personal mood and watchability. (3) It's possible to enjoy things that aren't good. Wrestling has its share of proverbial junk food. (4) I don't think "good" and "enjoyable" are always the same thing. It's rare that a good match isn't enjoyable to some degree, but there are plenty of enjoyable matches that aren't good but they are enjoyable for other reasons. There's nothing wrong with having a principled view of what good wrestling looks like and then ranking everything against that standard. It doesn't mean you don't like things that fall outside of that standard. It just means not throwing snowflakes at them. Snowflakes are far more than entertainment value to me. If I did that, Nick Patrick vs Randy Anderson from Nitro might be my 1997 MOTY.

Even though 99% of the people in the business don't treat it that way? There's a reason everyone calls it "the business" - because that's what it is and how it's approached by damn near everyone in it. I doubt "artistic integrity" and other such pretentous buzz phrases are considered much, if at all. Even Bobby Heenan stresses that the point was to make as much money as possible. Intent of the creator isn't usually something that matters in art. Lots of music is put out solely to make money. It's not necessarily great art, but it's still art.

Simple is good, but there are ways to do it right. I could watch Masa Fuchi work a side headlock for 30 minutes if such a match existed. On the other hand, Doc and Gordy are good at just about everything, except they forget to be interesting.

I remember when tomk would talk about FIP being more of a traditional, old school presentation than ROH with a stronger face-heel divide. However, the only match I've seen is Punk-Danielson from 2005. What FIP is worth seeking out? Lots of matches look good on paper, but I never really heard too much buzz for this group.

Good post! I would add that the main reason I like star ratings is because they quantify how good something is. I often read reviews without a star rating (or some type of rating -- it doesn't have to be stars) and wonder, "Ok, is this fun TV match good or is this Flair-Steamboat or Misawa-Kawada level good? Or is it somewhere in the middle, and if so, how does it compare to other matches in the middle?" I usually want to know how the reviewer compares it to other ratings of matches that I *have* seen, because then I have a rough idea of the quality of it. I agree that a star rating is limited in what it can represent. Something like Lawler-Snowman is a four-minute match, but it's exactly the four-minute match it needed to be and it's hard to think of ways it could have been better. I don't know that a star rating can capture that because giving it ****1/2 implies that it's at the level of other ****1/2 matches when it's not. It's a masterpiece in an entirely different way. There are also B-show matches, Goldberg squashes, etc. that fall into this category. Hopefully one day, we'll figure out what to do with those.

Where can I read your thoughts on Azteca-Dandy?

Not all good crowds result in good matches but most good matches have good crowds.

The challenge with that is that WWE has many stakeholders who don't understand wrestling on any level past, "Sell what sells." So the idea of sacrificing merchandise in the short-term in order to create a new long-term cash cow is probably a concept that would be lost with Wall Street, most vendors and other business partners. WWE knows it's time to move on from Cena, and they've used him to put over quite a few of their pet projects, but the truth is that he probably will have that spot as long as he wants it unless someone comes roaring out of the gate who is immediately more of a merch mover than he is, and by a substantial margin at that. I've said many times that added revenue streams are terrible for wrestling fans, but great for wrestling companies.

Well, I explained what I'm trying to base it on. And yes, I am putting my personal subjectivity in, no doubt about it. It's impossible not to do that. To answer the question you asked about why anyone else's opinion is worth more than my own, it's because wrestling matches aren't worked for an audience of one. They are worked for the many. I get enjoyment out of seeing excited people watching wrestling, especially when I can pinpoint what the people in the ring did to generate that reaction. It's not objective. It's an attempt to be objective where I know I will fail because it's impossible, but try anyway. That's an important distinction.

The goal is to entertain a lot of people, not just you. If a match doesn't do much for me personally for *whatever* reason (I didn't sleep well the night before, I don't like one of the participants very much, there was some little inconsequential thing I couldn't get past because of my own hang-ups, etc), but I can see why people liked it AND that those reasons are more related to substance than style, then I'm probably going to rate it very highly. If I had enjoyed it, I would rank it higher, yes, but I don't want to trash a match too much for catching me on a bad day. Sometimes I do fall into that, but again, I *try* not to do that.