JerryvonKramer

Feels a bit stagnant this year and like none of the topics have moved on, which is an excellent case for inducting Big Daddy. Sting obviously should never go in.

Tazz was genuinely excellent in his original SmackDown run. He did a great job of the Jesse-style "I'm not playing favorites, it's just that the heels do what it takes to win." self-alignment and sticking with it so you felt his interest in both sides during a match. Great at calling moves and explaining why they're effective. I actually like Cole/Tazz & Tony/Jesse for a lot of the same reasons. Yeah, when I reviewed Wrestlemania 19 the other day, I thought the announcing on the matches that were called by Cole / Tazz was much better than those called by JR / Lawler, and that was mainly because Tazz was excellent at talking strategy.

The narratives in real sports are made by the media. Even though there are heros and villains in every sport, the actual game is seldom if ever a battle of good vs. evil in the way it's been in wrestling over the years. The moral element is brought to sports byt the obervers, whereas in wrestling it is an intrinsic part of what is going on when there are clear face / heel divides. This isn't a controverial statement. A wrestling heel is paid to rile up fans and draw boos, and for people to pay to see them get their come uppance. Someone like Jose Mourinho is paid to win football matches in whatever way he sees fit. There's a huge difference between those two things.

http://placetobenation.com/titans-of-wrestling-70-wwf-at-msg-112282-and-philadelphia-spectrum-112582/ Parv, Pete, Johnny, and Kelly are back together to discuss two WWF cards from November of 1982. The DUD ratings fall like hail as the boys watch some of the worst wrestling ever committed to tape. On the docket: 11-82 BOB BACKLUND, SUPERSTAR GRAHAM PROMOS WWF TV 11-22 BOB BACKLUND vs SUPERSTAR GRAHAM WWF TITLE MADISON SQUARE GARDEN 11-22 PEDRO MORALES vs BUDDY ROSE IC TITLE MADISON SQUARE GARDEN 11-22 JIMMY SNUKA vs LOU ALBANO MADISON SQUARE GARDEN 11-22 RAY STEVENS vs JAY STRONGBOW MADISON SQUARE GARDEN 11-22 ROCKY/GAREA vs CHOSHU/SAITO MADISON SQUARE GARDEN 11-25 TIGER MASK vs EDDIE GILBERT PHILADELPHIA SPECTRUM 11-25 SUPERSTAR GRAHAM vs JAY STRONGBOW PHILADELPHIA SPECTRUM 11-25 BOB BACKLUND vs BUDDY ROSE WWF TITLE PHILADELPHIA SPECTRUM This show includes: - Consideration of why The Grand Wizard is not in the Observer Hall of Fame - The absolute travesty that was Superstar Billy Graham and his general face and state of mind in November 1982 - A modern day tragedy: Jimmy Snuka vs. Lou Albano - "Cho Chu": Rikki Choshu as a generic Japanese villain at MSG - A consideration of Gorilla Monsoon on commentary - Collective marking out at Buddy Rogers's ability in the ring and capacity to "still go" at the age of 61 BONUS content: Baron Scicluna titantron: Footage of SD Jones cutting a promo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tUzB7Wn5t0

Might sound strange but when he's on, Tazz can add some decent insight into a match.

I think Tony Schiavone is really underrated for talking about match strategy when he's announcing -- especially when he's the colour guy paired with Ross circa 91. Ventura is also good at it when he's not telling jokes / abusing his partner / putting himself over / cheering heels. Early (82-5ish) Gorilla Monsoon does a good bit of it too, before he lapses into his bag of stock phrases. Every once in a while, him and Lord Al will get into a bit of ring psychology.

Interesting thoughts Brian, I liked reading your takes. I feel the same re: Payne / PN News, which is why I was a bit shocked at Chad's answer to that question. PN News is like bottom 10 worker we've seen on WTBBP, only Motor City Mad Man, Giant Gonzalez, and Master Blaster Iron are clearly below him. And when we're talking about guys like Ranger Ross, Van Hammer, Nightstalker, 83 Billy Graham or 91-2 Jimmy Jam Garvin above that level, that's a pretty low bar. PN News was atrocious. Isn't the general consensus that the strap match is the #1 out of the Sting vs. Vader trilogy? Or is it the Starrcade match? I watched Donnie Brasco when I was 17 and my girlfriend (now ex-wife!) moaned all the way through it that it was boring. I've just realised that was 17 years ago. Makes me feel a bit old. Probably due a rewatch. I think the WCW corporate stuff fried my brain on this show. I was all over the place ("Starrcade", not being able to remember Johnny Depp's name, etc.).

I've said it before but any match I've ever seen called by Solie and Coach Heath from old-school Florida definitely adds a layer of psychology and understanding. This is one reason why my examples were from Japan because most of us don't know what they are saying on commentary and the narratives we kinda come up with ourselves.

Shingo Takagi vs Masaaki Mochizuki (11/01/15) So I saw some gifs on Twitter of Dragon Gate and I assumed the action was sped up like the Adam West Batmobile, but apparently they do work that fast. Very intrigued. I'm not even going to try to describe the action here, so just gonna watch in full and register my impressions. Okay ten minutes in, and I'll just say this: man, this is not what I was expecting AT ALL. For whatever reason I was expecting indie-style flippy nonsense, this isn't that. Actually it's pretty fucking cool. High impact, stiff as hell, well worked, well sold, meaty wrestling. Takagi (whose hairstyle is absolutely atrocious by the way!) seems to be a real nasty bastard, and he's been working the left leg pretty consistently. I love the fierceness of the strikes. Also while they are working at some pace, it hasn't been insane, no more go go than Flair / Steamboat I wouldn't say. Also, these guys take some time to work the crowd between their moves, and there's some real heft and sense of weight to everything. Digging this a fair bit so far, which I have to say is a total shock. Anyway, back to it. Finished now. I thought this was wild, both guys absolutely worked their arses off. Couple of small things: it's weird to see a wrestling match built so entirely around strikes and martial arts type exchanges, but I thought that worked really well. They had this tendency to be "staggered" or dazed though, almost like in Street Fighter 2 when you can see the birds swirling round the head. I'm guessing that's a stylistic thing, but y'know Terry Funk or Arn "drunk punching" is not a million miles away. These guys work big so I bought it. Mochizuki's long term selling could probably have been better though, he had one leg destroyed early on and he was bouncing around with those kicks as if it was nothing. Also, some of his "pop ups" in the finish seemed a bit ridiculous, on the level of a Hogan comeback, and a ONE count after the beating he'd taken less than 90 seconds from him actually getting pinned was odd. I like Takagi's performance a bit better, just one little moment when he seemed a bit too cooperative on a superplex, but otherwise he was pretty good. But all in all, I thought this was a lot of fun, with some cool spots, and some really hard hitting strikes. I watched Superbrawl III a couple of days back and was thinking how this would compare if it was on that card. Obviously not Sting vs. Vader level, but I'd take it over Benoit vs. Scorpio for sure. Probably about on par with Orndorff vs. Cactus Jack which I gave ****, so this can have the same. Something of a revelation to me, however, that this promotion isn't 150lb guys doing somersaults. ****

I turned this off after ten minutes after Conrad just went apeshit on Bruce for his ECW trolling. I will finish the ep though as topic of great interest to me.

Worth listening to the Hayes one from today. Flair talking about Rude sometimes being impaired in the ring was something I didn't know. Although Ric's cough becomes borderline intolerable by the end.

Well, I was thinking more of stuff like Act Without Words (which has no words), or Come and Go (with its insanely precise stage directions). Some of his plays which can be read in about 2 minutes, are much longer in performance. Then again, I wrote my MA dissertation on Beckett and Existentialism and at that point had only read most of the plays, and I loved them then. Krapp's Last Tape probably my fave.

When discussing this over at a music forum I sometimes post on, had this exchange: Me: Couple of replies: Was kind of interesting.

Right, I don't think it means much to any of the legacies of most of these people. It still remains to be seen as to whether Dylan is even going to address being given the award. Some writers (Doris Lessing) didn't want to know. Sartre turned it down. I think for long-time Dylan fans, there might be some sort of legitimsing that this has had ... y'know him being a song and dance man and this being a prize for literature. It's some recognition he can be thought of as a writer in those terms. Although looking across reaction the past couple of days, there are plenty of voices saying it shouldn't "count" as literature. I mean, my view is that songs aren't "literature" in the strictest sense of words on a page, and that Dylan to be gotten properly must be listened to, just as Shakespeare or Beckett must be performed and seen in a theatre rather than read.

I guess though if you set a precedent for that, then every Nobel prize would be used to make a political statement of some sort. Looking at the history of it, arguably Solzenitsyn in 1970 right in the middle of the Cold War was political. Possibly also Wole Soyinka in 1986 while apartheid was still going on and Mandela was still in prison (Soyinka used the speech to talk about that). Harold Pinter was also very vocal about the Iraq war when he got it in 2005. But I guess you don't want a situation where it is widely felt that someone is receiving the prize ONLY because of something topical. Nobel prize seems to be something more for historical posterity than anything else.

Well the thing about the Nobel prize is that they can give it every year. There also seems to be a category error going on in your posts between political topicality and "relevance". The sphere of "relevance" is much wider than politics. Great writers don't just talk about events going on in world news, they cover the whole gamut of human experience. This is not to say your Syrian poet is not deserving of the prize, maybe they are. But it's a bit of a false dichotomy to say that because Dylan doesn't really touch on topical events much in his songwriting, he's somehow less relevant. Although "Pay in Blood" from 2013's Tempest did seem to gesture towards some sort of political comment. Generally, though, Dylan has not been a political writer for the vast majority of his career. And even when he was, a song like "Masters of War" is pitched at a quite general level. I mean does that song lose any power today just because it was written in 1963? Anyway, he's yet to make any sort of statement about this and didn't mention it when he was on stage in Vegas last night.

Some of Dylan's strongest work has been in the past fifteen years or so. And he produced some incredible songs in every decade with masterpieces even at seemingly his lowest points (e.g. early 70s, mid-80). To say he isn't relevant or that he didn't deserve his prize somewhat misses the mark, and I'll warrant in a 100 or even 200 years they'll still be writing about Bob Dylan songs. This is the sort of artist that doesn't come around terribly often, not every generation has one. He's a Shakespeare or Dante level of artist with an astonishing body of work. I regularly teach Beckett as well as Pinter, both of whom won the Nobel prize, and I would rank Dylan safely on par with either of them in terms of his overall artistic vision across all his works, if anything he exceeds them because his range is wider.

***** 1. Sting, Barry Windham, Dustin Rhodes, Ricky Steamboat & Nikita Koloff vs. Rick Rude, Steve Austin, Arn Anderson, Bobby Eaton & Larry Zbyszko (5/17/92) 2. Ricky Steamboat vs. Rick Rude (6/20/92) 3. Sting, Brian Pillman, Rick Steiner & Scott Steiner vs. Ric Flair, Larry Zbyszko, Barry Windham & Sid Vicious (2/24/91) ****3/4 4. Ricky Steamboat vs. Rick Rude (2/29/92) 5. Arn Anderson and Larry Zbysko vs. Ricky Steamboat and Dustin Rhodes (11/19/91) 6. Arn Anderson vs. Barry Windham (6/6/92) 7. Sting vs. Vader 2/21/93) 8. Ric Flair vs. Lex Luger (2/25/90) 9. Sting vs. Vader (12/28/92)

Further reading and views on this particular topic: http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/15302-are-psychology-logic-and-storytelling-within-a-match-overrated/

I've been thinking about that. We've had it since day 1. Whatever happens, Dr Tom Miller stays in the intro, but I'm not entirely opposed to changing the outro.

I happened to be reading over the discussion here earlier: http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/32049-fair-for-flair-a-mini-series/. Looking back, the debate in that thread was remarkably measured and pitched at a level of respect, insight and intelligence that I was pleasantly surprised to see. From it, one post stood out to me, I thought it was interesting and might be pulled out for discussion here: Just leave Ric aside for the moment. I was more interested in the general principle in the sorts of reviews people write all the time here. A lot of the stuff written on the 90s AJPW classics between Misawa, Kawada and co, for example, all talk about the deeply layered pyschology, call backs to certain moves, etc. Is there anything that guards them against this same charge? That the psychology is being "read into" it by the viewer? Imagine we went down to Kawada's sushi shop and asked him if he really indended all those little wrinkles we love so much in those matches and his answer was just to shrug and say "I was just working, it was something to do. It was just my job". Would that matter to the matches or our various "readings" of those matches?

I was over the moon yesterday at that news. I will share once again my long guide to all Dylan's albums which I tried to design to help people get into him: http://placetobenation.com/parvs-guide-to-bob-dylans-albums/ One of only a handful of writers I'd put in the same sort of league as Shakespeare. After my next book, I'm determined that the one after is going to be on Dylan.

Geat info guys thanks. Why would they ever put Sidello in charge of anything wrestling related? The whole structure is completely wrong-headed. Also I find it weird that Grand Wizard has never been on the ballot. He was a major part of The Sheik drawing heat in Detroit and Toronto and then formed one of the best manager-wrestler combos in terms of drawing and heat with Billy Graham in WWWF. Vince Sr relied on the three wise men to carry a lot of the tv promos to draw in all his key markets for a decade. Wizard managed a lot of the major challengers. He was more of an enhancer, a manager who'd never overshadow the talent.

http://placetobenation.com/where-the-big-boys-play-88-superbrawl-iii/ Chad and Parv are back to look at Superbrawl III, before doing so Chad runs through his Observer Hall of Fame ballot. - Wrestling Observer round up [0:25:09]: extra packed edition featuring Bill Watts resigns, Jim Ross stripped of power, WCW's new corporate hierarchical structure, valuing the worth of managers in contractual terms, Johnny B. Badd's contract, and much, much more. - Review of Superbrawl III [1:33:19]: the sparks fly between Jesse Ventura and Tony Schiavone, assessing Max Payne, Flair is back!, Paul Orndorff: underrated in 93?, and, of course, the White Castle of Fear. - End of Show Awards [2:28:21]

Who do you think were the last guys who did it well? There's plenty of really good 70's AJPW matches in that style as mentioned. There's kind of a dearth of footage of the 70's NWA champs Dory/Terry/Brisco working the style, especially stateside, but what we have shows them as fine in that regard. There seems to be a steep decline with Race and Flair with their go-go-go workrate that often treated the mat work as just something to get out of the way or to kill time with. Unfortunately those two are also who we have by far the most footage of as old school NWA champs, which probably plays a factor in the criticism the style received earlier in the thread.I don't disagree with that. Apparently Flair was meant to be really good at that stuff, but he gives every impression that he sees all matwork as essentially being downtime. I guess we only glimpse it properly in the Jumbo matches. At least one of which I think is 5-star and an example par excellence of NWA style, others I'm sure find it a bit long and maybe even boring. Flair on his podcast has talked about how he'd didn't like working with Jumbo, thought he couldn't get anything out of him. Has also suggested that he thought Dory and people like Johnny Valentine were boring cos "they'd just lay on you". Just thinking out loud, but I wonder how influential Flair's attitude and ethos to working was to Dave's concept of workrate, and later the idea that any submission hold was a resthold, a la Scott Keith. Does seem that the entire smark framework for workrate comes from Flair's and Race's way of truncating the amount of "downtime" on the mat in order to highlight motion, movement and action.