JerryvonKramer

There's an elephant in the room here. I mentioned King Crimson as my example. You mentioned The Beatles as yours. The Beatles are more difficult to ignore than King Crimson. Why? They were more important to the history of popular music. More influential, more visible, just bigger and basically impossible to ignore. I was trying to get at this earlier when I asked Dylan for his 10-week course on 1980s wrestling for the student starting from scratch. If you've got ten weeks on the history of popular music, you have to spend a week on The Beatles. King Crimson? Probably not.

What is your point here? Is it that because wrestling is not as diverse as music, the analogy about styles doesn't hold? My point is that if you're doing a greatest musician ever ballot and your list only includes popular acts from the past century your ballot is a joke. Try to stay focused on the actual argument being made in that case. It's a non-point. And for the purposes of the analogy it would be something like "Greatest Ever Popular Music Act". Alright.

What is your point here? Is it that because wrestling is not as diverse as music, the analogy about styles doesn't hold?

Let's say I don't value prog rock because I favour tight economy in song-writing and prefer stripped down styles of music. I don't want 20-minute epic tracks meandering all over the place. I want 3-minute tracks with strong melodies and catchy choruses. Just an example. Should I have to rank King Crimson and early Genesis just cos all the prog fans rave about them? I don't value the style, so why would I when I've got Randy Newman waiting in the wings looking for a spot in the list?

Why should someone who doesn't really value Lucha as a style vote for Santo and rank him over a guy like, let's say, Rick Rude who they've loved for 20+ years? Serious question. Should they be force-fed Lucha until they tap out and give in? GOTNW is just about the only guy who came out and said that he doesn't value US wrestling from the 1980s as a style. I think he was one of the three people who left Flair off his ballot. I've come to accept that it's all cool. Imagine it was a music poll. Are you going to make the hip hop heads rank metal albums? Why would you do that? Like I said in my essay, I think Will's point about valuing styles was the greatest insight of all in terms of process.

I'm just gonna bury the hatchet with goc cos life is too short. Carry on.

Oh right, I'm the bad guy, fine. Move on.

You say this now because the "correct" #1 was found to be Ric Flair but you were hand wringing for months on here and twitter about how people weren't taking it "seriously" enough and were worried people were trying to be trendy or "cute" with certain picks. I feel like this comment is pretty disingenuous. It isn't disingenuous at all. I argued at the start of the process for standards, and for a smaller number of ballots of guys who would take it seriously, everyone called me an asshole. After that I got on board with the idea of it being more all-inclusive, and made peace with it. I said then, "these results probably won't mean that much, it is what it is". But I got on board with it and strongly encouraged everyone to vote. What I don't like is people being encouraged to vote and then getting told off. The Taker stuff also was so clearly just a joke, that being brought out as some strike against me after some of the shit that went down is pretty laughable. I should also mention that I take the post from goc as a real personal insult and slight, but then I've come to except personal attacks from him, so there it is.

I wanted to have a crack at this outside of the confines of the GWE. I don't think it is necessarily a GWE topic, but it is quite interesting. Similar things have occurred to me. I've jokingly asked Matt D a few times if Nick Bockwinkel's gimmick of being the smartest guy in the room actually contributes to our view of him as a "smart" worker? I don't see Jim Duggan being described as a smart worker very often. His gimmick was, for a very long time, "patriotic idiot". Backlund and Bret Hart -- their gimmick was "fighting champion" and "best wrestler around". Misawa and Jumbo -- their gimmick was "ace", top dog of the hierarchy Tenryu and Kawada -- their gimmick was upstart, rebel, challengers to the status quo Flair and HBK -- their gimmick was GOAT Kobashi -- his gimmick, to an extent, was "chosen one" Stan Hansen and Vader -- their gimmick was "force of nature" Arn Anderson -- his gimmick, especially around 1993 sort of time when he started wearing the glasses in his promos, was "total pro". Tully Blanchard -- his gimmick was "hatable prick" We can keep on moving down the line. But I think the blurring between the kayfabe character and our perception of them is interesting at least to ponder. It's often occurred to me that the older generation's view of Dory Funk Jr as one of the very best essentially boils down to the fact that Gordon Solie just told them so.

It's a thought-exercise in microcosm. The point is not about the specifics of the time, the point is that when you are faced with huge gaps, you have to make decisions and priorities. If Randy Savage is a gap, I'd warrant that most people would see it as a priority to fill that gap before Battlearts. I appreciate not everyone will see it that way, but everyone has heard of Randy Savage (even if they are too young to have seen him), because he is an icon, whereas lots of people voting might never have heard of Daisuke Ikeda until they came here. Daisuke Ikeda might be as big as Randy Savage in Japan, but most people taking part aren't Japanese. This isn't rocket science here. I'm saying the reasons are practical, not political. Let's say someone deep dives on WoS and then on Battlearts. They are probably giving some other style, era or promotion, lets say 70s AJPW or TNA, short shrift. You said it yourself: most people aren't going to devote all of their free time to wrestling. There are other things that compete for the time. Shit, I was watching as much as 10-15 hours a week at one point and there was tons of stuff I didn't get to. In the end, you can't do it all. Something has to give and you have to make difficult cuts. I don't think it is fair to encourage people to vote and then lambaste them for not knowing enough or not participating enough or whatever. I will defend all 151 voters because they took the time to fill out the ballot and were encouraged to vote. I don't like this idea that they are now being collectively told off for not having diverse enough tastes. I also think the vast majority of voters tried. But if one guy is off watching WoS and another is off watching Lucha from the 1980s, that's probably 1 more vote for Jim Breaks, but 1 less vote for Negro Casas, and vice versa. Just how it is. I feel strongly about defending the entire voter base. I felt to an extent that they were really sucker punched as the reveal process was going on. I didn't like that. I think that "discovery" and the enthusiasm that comes with it is a real emotion that is impossible to quell. I mentioned an album from 1972: American Gothic by David Ackles. When I first read about that, I had to get a store in Cardiff -- about 30 miles from the town in which I grew up -- to order it in, especially. They had to import it in from the US. Things were harder to get hold of back then. I really loved that album, and wanted to tell a lot of people "hey, this album here is a lost classic". I get that enthusiasm and relate to it. I could probably get more animated talking about Silver Apples from 1968, a concept album people don't tend to talk about, than Sgt. Pepper which is on the front cover of magazines at least 3 or 4 times a year and talked about to death. My point was only that my enthusiasm doesn't change the fact that Sgt. Pepper is the better album. Of course, in certain circles, Ackles or Silver Apples wouldn't be seen as "discoveries", but as known quantities, in yet other circles, they aren't just known quantities but actually old hat and even overrated by the likes of me. Even if I'm bored of all those albums now, it doesn't really affect my ratings one way or the other. Wrestling is smaller and less diverse than music, and to an extent, in this community virtually everything is always-already a known quantity. To quote Morrisey: "there's always someone, somewhere. With a big nose, who knows." One man's discovery is another's "old hat". My point was only ever that we should try not to punish the "old hat", but rather aim for honest assessment. Like I came across a baroque pop singer from the late 60s / early 70s recently, Barry Ryan. On an initial listen or two, I got excited. "Wow, is this the lost Harry Nillson!?" Upon further exploration, I figured out pretty quickly that his stuff was mostly average. Sometimes, the initial enthusiasm carries over into assessment, sometimes it doesn't. Hase, Breaks, Brisco ... it carried over. AJ Styles? Much less so. Even though I still ended up ranking him. I thought you made some excellent points about Jim Breaks not really seriously being scrutinised. I mean, there are things to say. His matches are samey. He has a few little tricks he leans on in every match, which after 20 years of being pimped might start to bug those who are now so high on him. I totally get your point. And it's an astute one: we need more time with the new discoveries. It can be tough because we are human. The GWE process was always going to be flawed.

When Dory Funk Jr taught Jumbo Tsuruta how to do a butterfly suplex was he oppressing him with American cultural imperialism? Was there a West Texas conspiracy to dominate Japan through the use of the lariat ... One way, literally, through Stan Hansen, and another way, ideologically, through its appropriation by Jumbo Tsuruta? Was Billy Robinson latently working for the last vestiages of the British Empire when people copied his tilt-a-whirl backbreaker? This might sound like I'm reducing the discussion to banalities, but if we aren't talking about that, what exactly are we talking about? I must say, I don't really get it.

My main issue with it was that it ended up being so pointless. The "pay-off", if you can call it that, is so ridiculously short-term that perhaps the only purpose it served was to ruin the main event later on. I quite liked Vince's personal performance.

Three hours. Okay, that's fine. And I don't think a single person who has read your posts throughout the project now has any doubt about what you value in wrestling. I'm interested, however, in how others would answer this question. Especially Dylan.

Just wanted to touch on one thing, which is Dylan's big talking point about American(-ised) hegemony in the list. I don't think it is quite right. Think about the ask being made of people who are starting from a point of never having seen a given style: 1. Get into the style, and overcome your expectations of what you know wrestling to be. 2. Now watch enough that you can assess an exponent of that style to the point where you can rank him over guys you've known for 20+ years 3. Oh, and do so somehow comparing all of them to Misawa etc. Now add on top of that what happens if someone tries 1. and also struggles to get into the style. The ask is too big if your starting position is "scratch". Even with 2 years of run up time, it can't be done. Not everyone is Kris, not everyone can be Kris or Childs or Pete or Chad or Charles or, indeed, you. You guys are like a 1% who can talk to absolutely everything. Most of us can't and will never watch enough stuff to be able to. There's a huge difference between having watched Battlearts back in the day and then watching a few matches to remind yourself of the guys, and starting from scratch. People have different levels of experience. This is a basic reality. There were people who voted who were "catching up" on Randy Savage. Think about that now. "I need to see more Randy Savage to be able to know" is a statement I've heard. When Randy Savage is "homework", and you have, let's say three hours to devote to wrestling in a given week. How much time do you give Battlearts? When I design course syllabuses, these are real questions. I've got 10 weeks to teach 100 years worth of English literature, two hours a week. Let's say it is 1530 to 1640. They do a text a week. Can I realistically represent all the styles and diversity of writing in that 10 weeks? Someone might say "well you probably need more women writers on this course" and my answer is "okay, so what do I cut? Paradise Lost or Doctor Faustus?" Now I have to think about if I want to send students who might go on to do a Masters or PhD at another institution, who were taught this period by me, and came out never having read Milton or Marlowe. Can I be happy with that? Do you see why that is a bind? Some people are in the boat of catching up on whole decades. Imagine someone is starting from scratch. Let's say you need five matches minimum to even get a feel for a given style, let's say about 3 hours of viewing pimped matches from a place. What does your 10-week 1980s course look like? Do you cut WWF highlights like Savage vs. Steamer or Greg vs Tito to ensure you get Joshi on there? Serious question. Do you give a whole week over to World of Sport if it means cutting, let's say, NWA 85-89? I say this, because in some ways, I was in this boat myself. I had roughly 2007-2016 as a decade I was sort of starting from scratch with. I gave my time to guys like John Cena and Daniel Bryan. They are are the "must haves" right? Would Dylan seriously advocate instead devoting that time to Dragon Gate or Chikara? My take on this, I guess, is much more practical than political. And a lot of people, I think, despite how mammoth an ask this was, did make a real fist of it. They tried. Even when they were in the position of "filling in" on literally the entirety of the 1980s including WWF, they still somehow managed to find time for World of Sport. That's my serious question to Dylan here. You've got ten weeks. Your student has seen very few matches from the 1980s period, no NWA, no WWF, no AWA, no Lucha, no AJPW, no NJPW, no WCCW, no Portland, no Memphis, nothing. Where do you start? What makes the cut and what doesn't? Ten weeks, three hours of viewing a week. I do agree with him that this should be discussed, but where he sees American cultural imperialism, I see fans with earnest and honest good intentions failing with an almost impossible task.

The moment when Roman looked over after the low blow as Stephanie walked out, I genuinely felt sorry for him. Genuinely. It's like he was looking over and his face said "I know, I'm being totally fucked by booking and there's nothing I can do about it". This show has made me sad.

This is officially one of the worst shows I've ever seen at this point.

If they really wanted to get him over as a heel, they would have just left this on a countout finish.

Contender for one of the worst cards I've ever witnessed so far. I would take Black Scorpion stuff over most of this.

Shane and Steph are going to "co-run" RAW.

Most puzzling and time-wasting 15 minutes of wrestling TV ever produced? What the flying fuck was that?

Vince McMahon re-writes King Lear?

This is like Hulkamania, with Shane getting Hogan pops and Stephanie as Jesse Ventura just spitting 100% truth right down the line.

I can't really get my head around this promo or situation.

Can anyone who watches RAW remind me how they got from Shane vs. Taker to this? Wasn't the stip of that match over exactly this?

Loved Vince slipping in his "as a matter of fact", straight out of his 1980-commentator-days Canary Yellow playbook.