JerryvonKramer

If Ricky Steamboat's armdrags are top 5 all-time, then it is trolling to say that there are 250 luchadores better than him at it. Seems to me his crime is not being Mexican or Japanese.

Open trolling. That's enough of this now.

I won't hear a bad word said against Steamer's armdrags. He's got a better armdrag than anyone who ever wrestled. I consider OJ's post a troll.

To be fair, I haven't read an awful lot from anyone on Shawn not being a SMART worker. I've read about him having crappy offense. I've read about his post-comeback stuff being overrated, but that is directly tied to the qualms about the WWE-main event style. I've read about him being a dick, etc., but I'm not sure if I've ever seen it laid out how and why he doesn't work smart. Not like there has been for someone like Kurt Angle. Any links would be appreciated on that score. My dislike of HBK is irrational, and not based anything I have against his work. I just don't like him or his face. I think he has great performances in the 80s and right through the 90s until the injury. I can leave all of the 00s stuff, save maybe some of the stuff with Jericho, but that's true of 95% of 00s wrestling for me.

Jumbo vs. Tenryu spoke to me as a superb establishment vs. rebel narrative, that was at once very pro wrestling and very Japanese, with Jumbo representing the hierarchy and Tenryu the rebel. To me that feud speaks to me like Flair vs. Steamboat or Vince vs. Austin, or any other all-time US feud you care to name. I guess I just don't really understand what Fujinami vs. Choshu is about.

I'm not sure I'd make Fujinami a poster boy for character work, Matt.

Look forward to the ones I've not seen. I didn't even think Fujinami vs. Choshu was 4-star when I watched it. I mean I wasn't aware that was the one that was talked up as I was watching it, and it just seemed like a match setting up for a bigger feud to me. For hype vs. how much I enjoyed it, it might be the most disappointing series I can think of. 7/7/83 was the one I liked most and even that wasn't really threatening to sniff five-star. I guess it may also come down to which style you prefer. NJ is just much too mat-heavy for my philistine tastes. Not enough action generally. Which probably makes sense for a company run by the most boring wrestler who ever walked the planet (Inoki).

How many Fujiwara or Fujinami matches would feature in such a list? And which ones? I ask because as time runs out I may have to bee-line 80s NJ a bit more. Seems unlikely that I'll get through 8 more discs at this point. Unless I literally spend all of my spare time in February watching wrestling, which also seems unlikely.

OJ, I've already said many times I don't give a shit about the final results or, indeed, what anyone else does with their list. The process ceased to mean anything to me beyond my own list a good while back. I want to provide a semblance of scrutiny and ask questions and for reasoning, but I think I will stop doing that because it seldom seems to lead anywhere good. The main reason I've asked quite a lot of questions in this thread is summed up by the disparity between these two screen shots: But then again I do realise that the current crowd and the crowd who were involved in that project are slightly different.

Has Connor been given a missive to be a lot more quiet on these shows? He doesn't talk nearly as much as he used to.

See, I was always taught to provide textual evidence for claims, and I feel that "analysis" by its very nature is not just pure opinion, but rather a kind of partial description. I've marked enough papers where I've given "this was description not analysis, we already know the plot of the play, you don't need to tell us again" in the feedback, but now I think about it criticism requires some degree of description to actually function.

That was awesome!

Valiants in (W)WWF were fun, mostly saw 1979 run when it was three of them and Jimmy was carrying an injury. I thought John was the charisma of the group and Jerry was the best worker. Jimmy just seemed like he was there to me. In Crockett, I am in the camp that hate the endless Paul Jones's Army vs. Jimmy Valiant feud, but I have seen at least one excellent match from Valiant where they work around his obvious limitations, it's Jack & Jerry Brisco vs. Jimmy Valiant & Bob Orton, Jr. (12/6/83) if you are interested. That's the best Valiant has ever looked to me, but he's in there with two all-time greats and a very solid hand in Jerry Brisco.

The dates thing comes from 1) helping other people find these matches and 2) experience of writing lots of reviews and many podcasts in which sometimes the ONLY thing people will comment on is a mistake. Finding dates sometimes takes as long as watching the match. And even then I sometimes get the wrong one and someone (hey OJ! will almost immediately come in with a date correction ... I recall GOTNW recently said no sooner than I'd hit post "you could have at least got the date right" after one review ) -- so there's your answer These little comments at the start of matches are usually there as a "human connection". Again, it's probably a legacy of doing podcasts, where I'll often mention stuff like that as a lead into to "well, Chad, what did you make of this one?" Which is to say that none of this stuff like the beard or the music matters much. But if the reviews were all serious biz all the time I probably wouldn't be able to get through writing them. Well, here's what was cut from the middle: See, for me, the "specific examples" are all there. And this is what I mean by process. You can see I'm starting to edge towards the conclusion in one comment ("A bit stop-start so far."). And whoever reads that conclusion can then look up and see "well, oh yeah, the suplex was met by a suplex, the uppercut was met by a hip toss". This is no defensiveness on my part, I have considered cutting the middle portions out for some time, but I really want to think through why it's there in the first place and why I've struggled to get rid of it before now.

Yeah, this is one reason I've struggled to drop it before, because it's a process and I feel the JOURNEY doesn't come across if you cut straight to the conclusion. Here's what the first page of Learning to Love Dory would look like with the description cut entirely. You get the concluding thoughts and the thoughts alone, but I can't help but feel that something is lost along the way.

Yeah the same. It's actually one of my FAVOURITE things to do and one of many reasons to love this board.

Another thing I wonder about is how do you review when you are the 5th or 6th person reviewing a match that other people have covered. One reason I do all of mine in Microscope threads as opposed to in the Yearbooks section is because I like my take to be my own and not just "yeah, what Loss said". This also happened with the 80s Projects a little bit. Not only is it the fact that by the time you are comment number 15, you are feeding on real scraps, but also, I was finding myself unduly influenced by previous posters which rankled with my sense of honesty. It makes a difference if you are watching a match 15 people have called great / shitty vs. going in blind.

It also works both ways, of course. I'm going to watch a whole batch of Hash soon, and ideally I'd want to go in just viewing the guy on its own merits, and I'll try to do that, but it's rather difficult if I have "so this is the guy who is meant to be better than Jumbo" running in the back of my mind during it. It could end up being unfair to him, because well Jumbo is Jumbo and most people aren't going to compare favourably. But now he's been hyped and touted as the best thing. I guess this is the nature of hype and the expectations it creates.

I guess what it boils down to is that when it comes to GWE, all I care about is "who is better", and to me it always seems a bit strange -- not just in this process but just in general -- that someone can be actually hurt by being the existing favourite. That SHOULDN'T matter, I mean it shouldn't matter to the assessment of any given person, but it does. I mean, I'm a Shakespeare critic, as you know, and I see it all the time -- people want to pull their guy up, Christopher Marlowe say, or Ben Jonson, or Kyd or some newly discovered female author, whoever, by pushing Shakespeare down. This is a phrase Will (he of "from Texas" fame, not "from Stratford") is fond of using, and I'm definitely fan of his line of thinking on this: "You don't need to push one thing down to pull another thing up", but that is what seems to happen a lot, all over the place.

Several of us on this site have written many match reviews. My own entries are in the 100s. In this thread, I'm interested in views on reviews.* I've been thinking about this recently after reading the introduction to Frank Kermode's The Uses of Error. We often write reviews without really thinking much about the process of writing them. On one memorable occassion, jdw reviewed one of my reviews (the match was Rey vs. Santito), and gave it one star. But this sort of thing is memorable precisely because it is so uncommon. Although there have been exceptions, the vast majority of my reviews follow the same format: Many times, I've thought about trying to do this: Here are some questions, obviously this is directed at people who actually read and / or write reviews: 1. When you read reviews, do you read the whole thing or just the final paragraph and the rating? 2. If I lost the middle section of mine, would you miss them at all? 3. What are you looking for in a review of a wrestling match? 4. Who's reviews do you like reading? Why? What do they do well? 5. When you are writing your own reviews, what are you looking to achieve? Hopefully this will get some meaningful conversation going. --------------------------- *Note I review matches in two different forms of course, on here and on podcasts. I generally prefer the latter form not only because I have someone to bounce off, but also because I usually host and so someone else does the heavy lifting (Chad on WTBBP, Pete on Titans, I just carry Steven on AJ Excite!) which allows me to come in with some observations at the end before we move on.

I've watched a few Demolition matches recently, and honestly I've struggled to see it. I doubt Bill Eadie will be making my list. In fact, I'm not sure he'll even get BIGLAV ratings. Shawn will do better than anyone would expect because of the aforementioned ratings.

Legitimately has over a dozen ***+ matches to his name on the losing end of jobber matches. The one with Ivan Koloff sticks in my mind.

Okay, but then why do people get all precious and up in arms if I ever suggest they are ever willingly trying to be different or that they are writing with an existing concensuses already in mind? This is an environment where I get laughed at for suggesting Taue is "under the radar" and told that 250 luchadores have a better arm drag Ricky Steamboat. But woe betide the man who suggests that people are being self-conscious about their lists. Forgive me for thinking it's a little disingenuous. I've been interested in the critical process and in the idea of list-making for many years now. Maybe I'm acutely aware of the risks of posturing and am prone to point it out when I see it. Although looking at recent threads, since there are such a spread of views I wonder if any of the three jdw named will finish top 5. Tenryu most likely I'd say, the Pepsi to Jumbo's Coke. My suspicion is that the collective list results will be more conventional than so much of the talk has suggested. Apart from things most are agreed on (like Kurt Angle not being all that). On another note, I might spend a good chunk of today watching New Japan matches featuring the musketeers.

Who are you giving credit to for it, Barry Darsow?

I see Punk as almost like the Jake Roberts of this era. Cleverer than most of the guys around him and a better promo, mostly disappointing matches (at least for me, quite removed from the hype and emotion of it all), and a great "psychologist" whatever that means. Always more over than his push. Also lives his gimmick outside of the ring. Given how associated Jake is with drugs and how associated Punk is with straight edge, that comment might seem comical to some.