Bix

Figured I'd crosspost this here since nobody's gonna look in my BR articles thread but the topic is interesting... I know I haven't been bothering to link anything here lately but I'm curious what people think of the epiphany I had at the end of the article: WWE's Lack of Faith in Daniel Bryan Is a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy. Most of it is what you expect. Then I realized something I decided to end the article on, albeit less colorfully and detailed that I'm going to say it here: "Daniel Bryan is too ugly to be a star. He's too short to be a real man...probably has a small penis. Watch his wacky adventures in love with his fiance, a woman we sell to you as the epitome of female beauty and hotness who you should want to fuck!" Did anyone think about this for five seconds? Or is it proof they think Brie is the "ugly" Bella twin? 'Eew, she's dating Daniel Bryan. And she's a "granola girl.' I bet she wouldn't shave her armpits if she wasn't on TV in her underwear each week. Haha, Bryan is so ugly he can't get a girl with big fake tits like Cena can."

I think this is a key point. How can he be compared to other wrestlers from the past decade or so like Akiyama, Sasaki, Nagata or Suzuki when the numbers have been so heavily worked? With that NOAH Dome Show in 2004 that drew 58,000, the rumour was that the real number of ticket sales was 20,000, so how do you wade through all that and figure out whether Akiyama was a better draw than Tanahashi? Folks are relying on Dave to report the real numbers. On the Wrestling Culture podcast, Dylan questioned why Tanahashi's candidacy wasn't debated as heavily as John Cena's and I would argue that people simply don't get as much backstage knowledge or business details about Japan as they do about the US. Even if the Noah dome shows were heavily papered, they still filled the dome, which similarly papered NJPW shows at the time didn't.

I know I haven't been bothering to link anything here lately but I'm curious what people think of the epiphany I had at the end of the article: WWE's Lack of Faith in Daniel Bryan Is a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy. Most of it is what you expect. Then I realized something I decided to end the article on, albeit less colorfully and detailed that I'm going to say it here: "Daniel Bryan is too ugly to be a star. He's too short to be a real man...probably has a small penis. Watch his wacky adventures in love with his fiance, a woman we sell to you as the epitome of female beauty and hotness who you should want to fuck!" Did anyone think about this for five seconds? Or is it proof they think Brie is the "ugly" Bella twin? 'Eew, she's dating Daniel Bryan. And she's a "granola girl.' I bet she wouldn't shave her armpits if she wasn't on TV in her underwear each week. Haha, Bryan is so ugly he can't get a girl with big fake tits like Cena can."

To be fair though, isn't kinda how this sort of thing happens? Isn't that essentially how every wrestling star was created. It's all about being talented but also being in the right promotion at the right time with the right opponents. Yes, but the introduction of fairly cheap IPPVs in a culture where it was unprecedented (no PPVs for the vast majority of fans plus regular PPV being considerably more expensive to people who have satellite dishes) is something that theoretically could have done that at any time if the technology was ready. It's completely theoretical and thus unfair to use it as a solid argument against Tanahashi, but I think it's part of the equation. I think it was a solid argument to "wait and see", as there was no baseline to compare his iPPV business to and no perspective as to what it meant for the future. Yeah, I'll agree with that.

One of which was a "live sex show" that led to them losing their fairly valuable deal with TSN in Canada, Edge's home country. Oops.

Listening to this now... "I don't know if for continental Europe we have [a suitable historian]..." Indikator?

To be fair though, isn't kinda how this sort of thing happens? Isn't that essentially how every wrestling star was created. It's all about being talented but also being in the right promotion at the right time with the right opponents. Yes, but the introduction of fairly cheap IPPVs in a culture where it was unprecedented (no PPVs for the vast majority of fans plus regular PPV being considerably more expensive to people who have satellite dishes) is something that theoretically could have done that at any time if the technology was ready. It's completely theoretical and thus unfair to use it as a solid argument against Tanahashi, but I think it's part of the equation.

Is that online somewhere? A quick google search gave me a dead link. I think I found the Ray Mendoza one though. http://luchawiki.org/index.php?title=Villano_III Pretty sure all of Jose's bios were ported over to LuchaWiki when it effectively replaced La Arena.

Also, Koko was the "The Birdman" doing the dance and coming out to the song by The Time for like a year in Memphis and the UWF beforehand, Frankie was the only change.

BTW since it became a point of contention, I'll cop to forgetting I was already voting for Japan via Matsunaga. The non-wrestler candidates are so heavily skewed towards North America that it never crossed my mind in that way for some reason.

1. Because sometimes they'll push someone because he was a nice guy or say he was a great worker without giving one reason why.2. Considered a bit of a con-man, wife beater, unrepentant drug addict, etc...there have been guys that hasn't stopped but the voters have to be more gung ho in the first place.

Want to have that qualifier at the top before looking at these. Workrate didn't drive her in. In fact, it was a negative as Dave kept banging the "Another Dump but not as good" and "Aja wasn't as good as Bull" drum when talking about her. What got her over the top was people articulating her impact on getting Joshi over to Men, and quite wisely using Dave's own words at the time to get that point across. Dave forgot it, but some of us didn't. "Impact" and being the top woman in the 90s glory era of the promotion got her over the top. But it was a struggle to get there. I don't remember Dave saying she was an inferior worker to Dump, I'm not sure how much of an argument there is for that...I mean I guess there is in that Dump was so good at the intangibles and got by almost completely on having ring psychology. I know Kong's drawing record put her over the top but it's hard for me to see anyone from that era of AJW *not* as primarily being a workrate candidate based on the way AJW was pushed in the WON.

Portland was a weekly territory. The Tuesday shows were about monthly but IIRC it wasn't necessarily as a rule. In addition to what Loss said, to me, personally wrestlers' opinions matter on Rose because it's substantive praise that can be seen in watching the matches. The rep is that he was a genius at taking the crowd up and down with a creative flair as a promo and booker, and that's what you see when watching him. If the praise for Brody was more substantive, it wouldn't be discarded as easily.

Re: IPPV: Like I said, it would be completely unfair to say it's all the technology if the numbers are legit, but it's something that should be given at least a small amount of consideration when it being given none. Have there been any remotely solid figures for DG and W-1 yet? I thought I heard the DG shows were doing well. And the U.S. indies are absolutely not apples to apples: The only company we've any gotten any numbers for was ROH and we have no idea how many of those people were buying DVDs at the same rate the IPPVs are going on. These are tiny companies, the IPPVs could very well be successes relative to their size. WWE tops out at something like 10,000 worldwide for WrestleMania, but in the primary market, it's a pointless exercise for anyone with cable/satellite because the prices are fixed to be the same as the traditional version. Everywhere else it's artificially limited by the time difference.

Ha, where in the book and for what?

Did anyone figure out if WWE was actively pursuing BS data to push the idea to stockholders or if the polling company gave them skewed data to try to get on their good side?

I also think that some people are taking claims of numbers in the range of 100K with a massive grain of salt. John And while it's impressive if it's legit, I do find myself wondering if they would've done similar numbers proportionate to the overall level of business if such a service was available years earlier. Obviously it's an unfair comparison, but IMO there's a pretty decent argument for it just being proof that the market was always there and was untapped due to the lack of cable/satellite penetration, which would say more about the technology than anything else.

Nobody who was a territorial star is going to get in as a workrate candidate other than maybe Red Bastien. Again, here are the wrestlers who were voted in that can be seen as going in solely on work: Aja Kong Akira Hokuto Bull Nakano Chris Benoit Chris Jericho Eddy Guerrero Hiroshi Hase Jushin Liger Kenta Kobashi Kurt Angle Manami Toyota Shawn Michaels Ultimo Dragon There are additional arguments for some of them (and you have to take note of when they were inducted, as Kobashi didn't have the long Noah run as champion when he went in), but I think we can agree that everyone on this list was a workrate candidate, more or less. There are 13 wrestlers on this list. 8 are Japanese. Benoit's formative training was in the NJPW dojo and he made his mark there as a junior heavyweight. Jericho first made his name in Mexico and Japan plus his career inextricably linked to Benoit: A Benoit match got Jericho his job in WCW and they had their first great WWF matches with each other. Eddy was similar. They only ones completely removed from magical international workrate land are Michaels, a guy who stood out as the best worker in a company with a lot less great workers and Angle, he of the go-go-go style. Only Michaels worked the territories but wasn't any kind of star until they had died off. The first class had very few candidates who would be seen as primarily going in for work, and the only ones who were American territorial stars were Ted DiBiase and Ricky Steamboat, both of whom became national names after the expansion. An American territorial star just isn't going to go in on work. That's just not the perception of the voting pool, and I'm going to blame Dave a little bit for that with how much he discourages evaluating older wrestlers with hindsight on newly found footage and that type of stuff. American territorial stars aren't seen as "great workers" to that degree to where enough of the non-wrestler voters (and even some of the wrestler voters) are going to vote them in. It has nothing to do with merit as much as, along with some other factors, Japan has always been the land of escapism for five star matches to get away from those dastardly cartoon angles that clueless American promoters force on us. After the WWF expansion and especially the dark period for American wrestling in the early to mid '90s, Japanese wrestling wasn't just something cool to check out anymore. Disillusioned fans were sold on Japanese wrestling (or ECW or SMW or ROH or AAA during their boom period) because it was a current alternative. Nobody was pushing "Hey, watch some old wrestling" because there wasn't a lot you could track down and the focus was always on an alternative and thus something relatively current. When most of the voting pool thinks of "great workers," they're going to put Japan first because that's where they went for great wrestling when American wrestling sucked. Watching a lot of older wrestling, as a thing, is an incredibly recent phenomenon, as in the last 10 years for DVDs and the last 5 for YouTube. A whole lot of footage came out of the woodwork and technology changed: DVDs were incredibly cheap and could be duplicated quickly without quality loss. YouTube and other sites allowed people to enjoy old wrestling for free. If you wanted to spend your time watching older wrestling, there was a ceiling to it financially and in terms of how much you'd be able to find, so it was never the alternative. Hell, aside from Ric Flair matches, territorial footage was rarely pushed as something you checked out for the in-ring action. The focus was on angles. Memphis wasn't really thought of as a place to look for great matches in part because nobody thought there was anything to dig up. World Class tapes were heavy on the famous angles and skits. The awful "every title changes hands" episode UWF TV was considered an all-time great installment of wrestling television programming. And so on. Japanese wrestling was happening "right now," with all sorts of home videos and eventually special shows on a magical all-wrestling network allowing everyone to see full matches so TV time constraints weren't an issue much of the time in the '90s. Obviously it'll be different for younger fans, but old territory footage was always the lowest priority behind Japan, ECW, SMW, AAA, workrate indies, etc, and the lack of complete matches of note meant it wasn't a destination for "workrate" fans. That carries over now, so: Even if Buddy Rose had great matches every week where he had to constantly be on his toes and mix things up due to the limited roster, the main house show being on TV, and the same fans being at the live show every week, he's not going to be seen as a candidate based on work because he wasn't a "great worker" as the hardcore newsletter reading fans are concerned, especially due to how little footage was available. Dundee was a little more on the radar of newsletter fans because of how hot Memphis was among tape traders and even had matches on Jeff Bowdren's top matches of the '80s list, but because he was a Tennessee wrestler doing Tennessee style matches that weren't traded around a lot, he's not seen as a "great worker" by writers and wrestling people couldn't carry him either because so many saw "Tennessee" as a dirty word. And that doesn't even touch on what Will and I mentioned earlier about wrestlers who will refuse to vote for certain wrestlers for reasons having nothing to do with merit.

I have a bunch of Honky Tonk Wayne footage. While Vince did turn the Elvis aspects up to 11, he already had the jumpsuit and the hair before, the original version of the character was fairly different with Ferris acting like Schneider from One Day at a Time.

I did NOT copy something you posted here and put it on the Observer board. You posted it there. In the Alan forum. I have no clue if you are confused or posted it in both places, but that's where it is, or at least where I found it. Combined with the weird AJ Styles post, that's why I called you out on it. Anyway, its explained over there in the Tanahashi thread. You specifically noted that you no voted an entire category for two guys. Yes, I found that odd. Because, well, it is odd. But you explained it further, so thanks. The rest is circular arguments, agree to disagree. Snowden's replies to me throughout the entire discussion were condescending in tone, that's all I'll say about that. Not remembering I posted it at Alan's was the late hour, but the point still stands with how riled up you were getting on your podcast.

Ay W2BTD, please stop doing the podcaster equivalent of of subtweeting. It's kind of lame: http://www.voicesofwrestling.com/2013/11/0...power-struggle/ Also lame? Calling me out at the F4W board over something I posted here. If you're so annoyed that I "no voted" Japan when abstaining on the other categories I didn't vote in, take it up with Dave Meltzer for allowing me to do so. It's not a chickenshit thing to do. Would you prefer if I just swapped Volk Han with my least likely pick to get in? You also bring up a ton of things without having any idea what the context is: There's no style bias against Japan. There's a style bias against American territorial wrestlers. A "great worker" of equal ability is more likely to go in if he's Japanese. Buddy Rose is considered a genius at how to work by wrestlers who knew him. He had great matches on TV every week. He was also in a territory not collected much by tape traders and was not a canonical guy for reasons having nothing to do with his work. While obviously Tanahashi is drawing and NJPW is Japan's hottest promotion, it's really impossible to determine how much of the iPPV boom is because now people can get PPVs? Satellite and cable are minuscule there. That's not to take away from him as much as say you're missing the context of what's going on. This is a HOF where a wrestler I consider a friend won't vote for the R&R Express because Gibson doesn't know what an O'Connor Roll is. That type of weird reasoning is common. Us geeks are applying more critical thinking than the guys who theoretically know better. Buddy Rose falling off the ballot doesn't mathematically make him an inferior worker to Hiroshi Tanahashi. As for Snowden saying he had no idea who you were: You have no identifying information in your username or signature. I had no idea who you were until I asked Dylan because I was curious how you got a ballot and he said "the Voices of Wreatling guy." Without even asking him I'm positive that's how he meant it.

I wouldn't even say Maeda had a short career since RINGS drew pretty damn well.

For reference: http://wrestlingclassics.com/.ubb/ultimate...ic;f=7;t=000257

In 2013 he's a glorified workrate candidate. Like I said before, he could very well be a great all-around candidate a few years from now. He's been wrestling a lot longer than Kurt Angle had been when he went in but he's really just being pimped on the strength of the last 2-3 years. It's like I've said before when people have argued with me about Angle: It's not just that I didn't think he was as great as everyone else was saying he was. If it was someone who I thought was as good as everyone was saying Angle was, I wouldn't vote for him in the HOF so quickly. Someone made the Jumbo comparison because of the similarities (Olympic wrestlers turned pro wrestling prodigies who were trained by Dory Funk Jr.) and I said well, if Jumbo fell off a cliff as a broken down drug addict by the end of the '70s then no, he wouldn't be an HOFer. As an aside, does the weird misogynistic cultural stuff about him being stabbed by a woman still follow him around at all or are the current/newer fans completely unaware of that? Does it have anything to do with him/NJPW having trouble breaking through to the mainstream as they've rebuilt the company? I remember following that story at the time (his Samurai TV hostess girlfriend was crazy and stabbed him, he wasn't injured worse because he was so roided up and I'm not making that part up, and it became a problem for him in NJPW because it was a woman who stabbed him and Japan is weird) and the politics of it were bizarre.