JerryvonKramer

Did Bruno ever face either of the Funks?

No, pretty sure it's just the generic Superstars theme. DiBiase didn't have entrance music till 1990.

Don't know if we were all in a particularly silly mood or something that night, but had a real blast recording this one. About an 11.0 on the giggling-like-school-girls scale. Thanks for having us on Steve. This show has been a welcome addition to the rotation!

Right before we started recording, we had this exchange: Me: You still into board gaming Chad? Chad: Yeah Me: There's this game I think you'd like called Splendor .... Chad: I told you about that a month ago!!! I think I'm getting worse.

I think to be "athletic" to to be fit ("cardio"), strong, physically capable and so on. Verne Gagne in his day would have been a prime athlete. I think you're mistaking "athleticism" for what I'd call gymnastics. Athletics Gymnastics

What does this mean though? Flair went over 30 minutes to 1-hour broadways something like 300 times a year, if not more. Are guys now wrestling 90 minutes 12 times a week? Are the modern wrestlers really fitter than that? Bob Backlund dead-lifted 300lbers onto the turnbuckle? Are the modern wrestlers really stronger than that? You're talking about how fast someone runs or how flashy their punch is. That's just execution of moves.

I think generally speaking many spots look more athletic then they did in the average match in say 1984. But you could easily argue wrestling was more athletically demanding in the picture sense of the term then. So, despite his protestations, when it comes down to it Joe is in fact talking about MOVEZ and not "athleticism"?

Forgot to mention last week I loved the little random story after Bischoff interview part 2. Austin just going off on one about a "caaaaaaannndddllle" with "three wicks up in this son of a bitch". Then the stuff about him trying not to fart in the gym. Then the stuff about the dead squirrel. Awesome and totally surreal 15 mins of podcast right there.

Just passing on something that came up during a recording session. Can we even be sure that wrestlers have got "more athletic" with time? Verne Gagne, Bill Watts, Jack Brisco, Ernie Ladd, Wahoo McDaniel, Bob Backlund, Brad Rhenigans, Iron Sheik -- to name just eight guys, you could probably reel off many more -- there were a lot of guys with very strong legit credentials back in the day. Flair could go 60 minutes five or six times a week, sometimes working double duty. Struck me as something worth sharing for this thread.

Kris had the Oceanfront leads

http://placetobenation.com/where-the-big-boys-play-62-wcwnew-japan-1991-supershow/ Chad and Parv take a trip to the Egg Dome in Tokyo for the WCW / New Japan Supershow 1991: Rumble in the Rising Sun! - [3:25] Wrestling Observer and PW Torch roundup: Butch Reed off to the rodeo circuit?, health update on Tommy Young, yet another sensational firing for Buddy Landel, and the find out what's the most talked about backstage story in the wrestling business! - [43:30] Review of WCW / New Japan Supershow: Arn buys a robe, Jim Ross provides a guide to wrestling in Japan, Tony Schiavone makes fun of the concession stand, and El Gigante does a suplex! - [1:41:10] End of show awards and question for the listeners: what are some better interpromtional shows than this one? The PWO-PTBN Podcast Network features great shows you can find right here at Place to Be Nation. By subscribing on iTunes or SoundCloud, you’ll have access to new episodes, bonus content, as well as a complete archive of: Where the Big Boys Play, Titans of Wrestling, Pro-Wrestling Super-Show, Good Will Wrestling, and Wrestling With the Past.

I should come out and say that I don't think this at all. Later on tonight I'm uploading a podcast in which I rate The Steiners vs. Hiroshi Hase & Kensuke Sasaki from the 91 WCW / New Japan Supershow ****1/2 and in defence of the match argue that it has a ton more psychology that people give it credit for. I say something along the lines of "the thesis is too easy, if a match is a spotfest I think people default too quickly to assuming there is no compelling storyline or psychology, but this match has both of those things ..." I didn't want to set up a false dichotomy when I said that. I think a lot of guys on this board would even see me as a MOVEZ guy. I was just saying that it TENDS to be the case that the guys who are pushing this line of things "advancing" with time keep harping on about athleticism. And although athleticism = / = MOVEZ, they kinda go hand in hand don't they. Moves being the demonstration of athleticism. By your own posts here, it seems that you think athleticism is tremendously important. But I think a lot of people here (including me) would argue that it's much much less important than psychology and storytelling. It's not an either / or thing, but the fact it's continually brought up as evidence of "standards improving" creates the dichotomy, because people who think old wrestling is as good or better than wrestling now are going to be pointing to superior psychology, storytelling and match structure. ----------- But honestly, your argument is like saying music in 2014 is better than music from 1960s because bands now have better guitars and better equipment. For me, it's a nonsense argument and I can't really relate to it. If it's NOT like saying that, then maybe explain how it isn't. "The basics of a good song never change. Melody, rhythm, harmony. But the methods used to accomplish these things change & evolve. That is what you guys are failing to accept ... But the methods to skin the song cat have evolved & changed over time, with better guitars, better production methods and computer programmes being *some* of those things. That also does not always equal more exciting songs, by the way. But it does mean that bands are capable of doing all sorts of things they couldn't do before." Would you co-sign the re-write? Please, http://insomnia.ac/commentary/on_the_genealogy_of_art_games/#partii Read the first few paragraphs of the second essay and maybe you'll understand things a little better. Also, for that "gameplay" shit, here's this http://insomnia.ac/commentary/gameplay/ What you're basically saying is that art, whose purpose is to create immersion, isn't getting better by having tools available that enable it to reach a higher level of immersion. If the technology doesn't matter and it's all STORY~! there's no reason that we should have ever evolved past books. That makes no sense. To tie this into wrestling, just think about those terms you are using, "psychology," "storytelling." If wrestlers choose to do a move with a face value attached to it of inducing a shocked psychogical state, how is that not psychology? Who the fuck would want to listen to a storyteller recount a narrative in plain monotone when you have the option of seeing someone do it colorfully and with energy? No matter how you slice it, those graphics are part of the game. If not, you're saying you'd be fine with watching matches built around weak/shitty looking punches if the "story" is good. Dude come on now, you're going to have to do better than palming me off with some links to some blog which advances weak arguments through assertion. The "Gameplay" point is terrible because it's based on little more than a pedantic little semantic point. Use another term, let's borrow "mechanics" from the board gaming world, and the argument just goes away. So the argument there is "let's use another word". Fuck, he even says it himself. Woeful stuff. The first link is just embarrassing and mildly offensive, what a terrible article -- and a bad advertisment for internet writing. The casual statements about Shakespeare are wince-inducing. Badly researched blow-hard rubbish dressed up in vitriol and misplaced self-confidence. And yes, art is not "getting better" with the advancement of time and technology. It just isn't. Tech gets better, art changes with tech, it doesn't get better. Breaking Bad is great, better than Virgil or Homer? Better than Dante? Better than Shakespeare? Think about what you're saying now. Is the art in a modern art gallery better than Michaelangelo? I said it in another post: any age, any given year will produce X% of great stuff, Y% of shitty stuff and Z% of stuff in between. There's no "art keeps getting better". Don't talk complete crap now.

I was having this issue but it went away after I upgraded my iTunes. So basically upgrade and reinstall iTunes and the problem will go away. Yes, iTunes is a total piece of shit, but what can we do.

I know I keep bumping round with the analogies but it's like graphics on video games. Lovely shiny graphics are always nice to have, always, but the thing gamers really value will always always be gameplay. Graphics are a "nice to have", but gameplay is fundamental. So it is with athleticism in wrestling. Course, among gamers, you'll get those guys who won't play old games "because of the graphics". You can imagine where I stand on that topic too.

Dan Spivey is the guy who springs to mind for me. "Dangerous" is one of the most apt ring-names ever.

A little off-topic, but I'd probably go gay for Pirlo.

^ Tim's post up there, which he must have made as I was hitting submit, is really good. I think there's an interesting distinction to make between innovation and quality. Things lauded at the time because of innovation, things that stand the test of time because of quality. I think that might hit the nail on the head for this topic. A pat on the back for tim.

I should come out and say that I don't think this at all. Later on tonight I'm uploading a podcast in which I rate The Steiners vs. Hiroshi Hase & Kensuke Sasaki from the 91 WCW / New Japan Supershow ****1/2 and in defence of the match argue that it has a ton more psychology that people give it credit for. I say something along the lines of "the thesis is too easy, if a match is a spotfest I think people default too quickly to assuming there is no compelling storyline or psychology, but this match has both of those things ..." I didn't want to set up a false dichotomy when I said that. I think a lot of guys on this board would even see me as a MOVEZ guy. I was just saying that it TENDS to be the case that the guys who are pushing this line of things "advancing" with time keep harping on about athleticism. And although athleticism = / = MOVEZ, they kinda go hand in hand don't they. Moves being the demonstration of athleticism. By your own posts here, it seems that you think athleticism is tremendously important. But I think a lot of people here (including me) would argue that it's much much less important than psychology and storytelling. It's not an either / or thing, but the fact it's continually brought up as evidence of "standards improving" creates the dichotomy, because people who think old wrestling is as good or better than wrestling now are going to be pointing to superior psychology, storytelling and match structure. ----------- But honestly, your argument is like saying music in 2014 is better than music from 1960s because bands now have better guitars and better equipment. For me, it's a nonsense argument and I can't really relate to it. If it's NOT like saying that, then maybe explain how it isn't. "The basics of a good song never change. Melody, rhythm, harmony. But the methods used to accomplish these things change & evolve. That is what you guys are failing to accept ... But the methods to skin the song cat have evolved & changed over time, with better guitars, better production methods and computer programmes being *some* of those things. That also does not always equal more exciting songs, by the way. But it does mean that bands are capable of doing all sorts of things they couldn't do before." Would you co-sign the re-write?

I'm not necessarily talking about special effects. Mankiewicz wasn't the most visual director. Every shot was framed for dialogue and his films were often overly long and overly wordy. He didn't make use of the visual language that existed in the 50s let alone the techniques that have been developed since. We're just about to wrap up the 50s film poll at DVDVR and I can tell you there were better directed films in 1950 alone. Which isn't to say that All About Eve isn't a great film, because it is, but it's a writer's film and an actor's film. The directing is in the performances and the DOP was there to give it a certain tone. There's a lot of people who only like to watch modern day films. There are a lot of people who are adverse to black and white films and older acting styles. I'd wager that there are only a handful of 1950s films that the average film watcher would consider classics. People who watch 50s films either grew up on them, are lovers of old movies, or obsessives like me. If you're not part of those groups, you're probably going to view them through 2014 eyes. I don't think Meltzer is wrong on that point. This will get us off on a tangent, and maybe we should discuss this elsewhere OJ (I don't got to DVDR much), but I've always thought that Sight and Sound types privilege the visual way way too much in their estimation of films. Far more is made of camera angles and framing and so on among that brand of film buffs than other aspects of movies (script, performances) because they want to make it above all else the director's medium. A lot of my favourite films -- not just All About Eve by Mankiewicz, but Sleuth too, Rope, Who's Afriad of Virginia Woolf, Glengarry Glen Ross -- are generally dismissed for being too dialogue heavy and "stagey". Unfairly in my view. I don't know if that's a 1950 vs. 2014 thing, but a "Sight and Sound type" vs. a "literary / drama type". To try to bring this back to wrestling, I don't know if it boils down to much more than the difference between two types of fans in this way. "Athleticism and MOVEZ type" vs. "psychology and storytelling type". But perhaps that is being unfair on Meltzer and co, I dunno.

I think this is equivocation and an assumption that lies at the root of this debate. Time moving forward = / = "advancement" There is some weird theory of progress at stake here that I'm just not seeing. Art forms aren't like technology where you can just draw a straight graph of computing power exponentially increasing over time. Just doesn't work like that. I'll admit, my own view is pretty harsh on this: I see the fetishization of the new as an acute form of laziness. It's a very convenient little assumption that means: 1. You have a ready-made excuse never to check out stuff from the past. and 2. (more appropriate to Meltzer), you never have to re-check conclusions you drew in the past. This is just laziness in my view and nothing more. ------- With wrestling, it may be true that the average wrestler in 2014 is more athletic and may do more MOVEZ than the average wrestler in 1983, but who knows how to work better? Who can control the crowd better? Who are the smarter workers? And more to the point, what makes good wrestling? Being athletic or knowing how to work? But I don't want to make any old vs. new claims. There'll be great and shitty workers in both eras. The fact is that any claim for one over the other is a form of fetishization. And both can entail laziness: old guys assuming things were better in their day (so they conveniently don't have to give anything new the time of day), and other guys not wanting to looking beyond the present (and so ignoring the past). Fact is, regardless of the field, there'll be X amount of great films / matches / albums / games / etc. etc. released every single year. You may sometimes get bumper years, you may get more fallow years, but on average there is X% of GREAT things produced year on year, Y% of really shitty stuff and then Z% of all the stuff in between. Anyone who argues otherwise has some agenda they are pushing. And my suspicion is always that the root cause of such agendas is laziness. --------- Is that what is meant by standards in this case, though? All About Eve is black and white, dialogue heavy and shot on set (apart from some establishing shots filmed by the Second Unit and using stand-ins.) The same script shot in 2014 would look dramatically different. So is the argument coming from Meltzer, W2 et al the wrestling equivalent of "better special effects = better film"? Who really believes that?

I dislike the general idea that moving forward in time necessarily indicates an improvement in standards. It's just as easy to make "standards are generally declining" type arguments. For example, when was the last time a major film -- one that would be nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars -- come out with a script as intelligent and witty as, say, All About Eve? If we could only really judge things from our own historical contexts then why read books, watch films, listen to music or engage with ANYTHING from previous eras? It's a monumentally myopic way of viewing the world. Meltzer is actually re-articulating an argument made by Jean-Paul Sartre somewhere about old literature being like dead or rotten fruit. According to Sartre, you want to eat fruit the moment it drops from the tree, and if you miss that moment, of course the fruit goes rotten. You need to try to uncover the original context in order truly to appreciate it, but all such attempts are futile because the moment, the zeitgeist, is forever lost. I've always thought that this argument is crap. Despite that, it does have a grain of truth to it: yes, the zeitgeist is gone and for some things "you had to be there". But mostly I think the real great deep stuff -- the stuff you take into your heart and love -- whether it's art, literature, wrestling or anything else, doesn't happen in the zeitgeist but after the moment. I used to have this argument with a buddy of mine who is into music. He's always reading Pitchfork and raving about the latest and greatest album. I accuse him continually of "being on the steam train", of being essentially a slave to fashion. All of a sudden he got into rap when Pitchfork gave My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy their 10.0 rating, or whatever. I often feel with him that he gets as much buzz from the fact that everyone else is talking about the thing at the same time as well, and that this in some way validates his listening experiences. He's a hipster. I'm the complete opposite as a music fan. I want to feel like I'm the only guy in the world listening to American Gothic or John Wesley Harding or whatever. I'd get much more pleasure unearthing a lost gem from the 1960s that no one ever talks about than joining the thousands of people talking about the latest album by whatever indie band. I like to feel like I'm forging my own way through history carving my own idiosyncratic, esoteric, and wildly eclectic path. I guess with the ultimate aim of being a "connoisseur" of some sort -- at least within my own mind. And my approach is the same to film. And to most the things I deem to be important in life. I think we can see much the same thing in play as wrestling fans -- the same two basic approaches. Seems to me that the majority of guys on this board tend towards that latter sensibility.

Primetime Wrestling 2/25/91 Ted DiBiase vs. Tugboat I was just doing the Meltzers for the next WTBBP when I came across this: "Everyone in the WWF expects Tugboat to be leaving and heading to WCW as The Big Steele Man, which is probably why Tugboat was shown on television this past Monday doing a clean job to Ted DiBiase." Well this I just HAD to see and sure enough it is online. Sean Mooney and Lord Alfred Hayes on commentary here in 91, as the team on the house shows they showed on PT and Wrestling Challenge. Mike McGuirk with the introductions. Ted is looking CLASSIC here in the black and gold with the Million Dollar Belt. This is after Virgil has left him but before Sherri, so a fairly RARE match in which Ted has no one at all in his corner. His hair a a lovely golden brown here, starting to transition to the darker hair we see in 92 but not there yet. Tugboat has awful music. Mooney: "Well guaranteed that it is not money that brings most pleasure to the sailing superstar, Tugboat". I love that Mooney refers to him as the "sailing superstar"! Tugboat has very little heat at this point. DiBiase tries to jump him but gets the short end of the stick and bails. Crowd busts out a spontaneous "Virgil! Virgil!" chant. Ted can't do much but chop and punch Tugboat so he plays it smart and takes things outside the ring where at least he can do a few things that are more interesting. Back in with a series of chokes on the bottom rope breaking before the count of 5. Clothesline. Tugboat goes down. The SWEET diving fist drop now. DiBiase was pretty hot in early 1991. They'd done a great job of rebuilding the character. Lord Alfred for some reason pronounces "expertise" with a capital "I", to rhyme with ICE. Crowd pop a bit more for Tugboat on his comeback now, which is testament to Ted's ability to work a crowd. Million Dollar Dream!! Tugboat breaks it. Misses a splash in the corner and Ted rolls him up for 3. Always nice to see him get a 3-count.

Don't want too big a spoiler for the upcoming WTBBP, but this is probably one of my favourite matches of all time. Don't know what planet the rest of you are on, this shit is AWESOME AWESOME AWESOME, ****1/2, considering going higher.

Does anyone know who got the job at WWF that Bischoff went for? It has to be Sean Mooney doesn't it?