overbooked

Ballot is in. I really regret not joining in discussions and just lurking, but I really appreciate the inclusiveness of this project - encouraging ballots is a really good thing and should lead to some interesting results, and perhaps more of us lurkers joining in the post-result debate. The process has led to me watching more in order to put together a list, but I think it has also inspired me to keep watching more widely. My list feels a little more like a jumping-off point than a conclusion. I now want to fill in more gaps from those who didn't make my 100 and watch more of guys that are further down the list. So thank you for that! I'm really looking forward to the discussion, number-crunching, podcasts etc to come over the next month or so...and thanks again.

The section on Memphis gave me goosebumps, then I went away and watched the TV and got goosebumps again. Just perfect television, perfect wrestling, perfect storytelling. And the three of you did a wonderful job of conveying all that. I'd happily listen to the three of you discussing Memphis TV week on week, let alone discussing anything else. Thank you!

Latest issue of Real in Memphis video review is available to read now. Features reviews of Ring of Honor Final Battle, 1981 Memphis and the TNA re-set. Any comments/thoughts/suggestions very welcome! Cheers, Steve

Really looking forward to this, but could you enable the download option on Soundcloud please? Cheers!

I love the PWI 500 as it seems like one of the last gasps of kayfabe - that rather than agonising about workrate and drawing power they just throw together a top 10 that looks about right, then fill up the other places according to wrestlers they are aware of, and wrestlers who have sent in a bio/cheque/whatever else. As much as I enjoy real analysis (that's why I enjoy reading so much here) I think there is still a place for fun, dumb stuff like the PWI 500. It is part of the appeal of wrestling.

Wrestlemania 8 was a little like this. Flair/Savage halfway through the card, then Sid/Hogan in the main event. I agree that a card should progress, but I think it is really tough to build momentum without burning out a crowd. I guess it is easier on shows with an interval, as you can have a big match right before intermission, and then a break for people to recover before building again. PPVs are a much tougher proposition. Keeping people engaged over three or four hours isn't easy, let alone guaranteeing that they peak right at the end of that.

It would be interesting to see a breakdown of how many hours TV a month there were for various promotions in the past compared to current WWE. The current product is bound to seem rushed and accelerated when they have so much time to fill, and when that time is so vital to the bottom line. And with a completely different business model things can't just go back to how they were, although I don't think the current way works either. I do think they are trying to avoid an over-reliance on stars. In the past, your big star gets injured or walks out, you just bring in someone else from somewhere else. That just isn't viable anymore. Wrestlemania, and perhaps the Royal Rumble, will always do well because those brands are so strong. The card and the stars don't matter as much. I think the WWE just want everything to head in that direction as it is far more secure and less prone to fluctuation. Which is pretty important with shareholders. They can't just build in downtimes as easily as they might have the past. Saying that, it would be good to see more countouts and DQs provided they are heated and not hokey. They seem the natural stepping stones to gimmick matches and would give workers another tool in every match, if people start to buy in to the danger that a guy might get counted out, for example. As for the parity booking, I agree, but if they went back to more hierarchical booking everyone would start moaning that their favourite wrestler was being held down...

In theory, I would say watching live is more valid (or insert similar term here). I see wrestling primarily as a live medium, with the work geared towards the immediate, live audience. However, in practice I think with live matches it is far easier to either over-rate, as I'm caught in the moment, or under-rate because it is an annoying crowd etc. Re-watching can be great, but I think it is important to not lose the sense or feel of surprise the match was aiming at. Getting all analytic in a re-watch there is the risk of underappreciating the more emotional elements.

In terms of music/video game/etc reviews I've always figured there are a couple of factors: 1. Magazines are dependent on advertising money, plus co-operation from those in the industry for interviews and so on. So, they are unlikely to print anything that looks like a hatchet job, for fear of losing revenue and/or contacts. So, lots of broadly positive reviews. 2. An editor is far more likely to send a new album/game/whatever to someone who is likely to like it, or has past form for appreciating that genre, style, artist or similar. In terms of wrestling, I imagine there is an unconscious bias not too far removed from point 2 above. We are more likely to hunt out stuff we might like, be it certain styles, promotions or workers, and mix with others who will recommend stuff we'll probably at least be receptive too. We won't always love what we watch, but are more likely to be predisposed to liking it. So, the bunching seems pretty logical in that context. I'd say the only exception would be absolute completists who watch everything, everywhere. God help them.

Well, the terms of art and craft and the boundaries between them are already pretty contested generally, so that might makes a tough framework for a debate on wrestling. But...I'd perhaps see craft more around the execution (moves, selling, crowd interaction etc) with the art being the overall effect that craft produces.

But those limits are subject to change. Photography, film, folk art, cave paintings were once considered not to be art. The definition of art is not set in stone. And wrestling already fulfils plenty of the conditions to be art.

You'll note that all of these examples are man-made things. The cloud is Duchamp's "Found Art" taken to its logical extreme. My point is that art is an evolving concept - plenty of things considered art now were not in the past. Either the creator, the appropriator or the consumer decided it was art further down the line. And I'm pretty sure wrestling is man-made, anyway.

Art is an ever-changing concept. Duchamp's urinal once wouldn't have been considered art. Performance art once wouldn't have been considered art. Plenty of people would still be wary of calling either art, but doesn't make them non-art. Same for movies and TV. A fair bit of auteur theory involves finding art in films made primarily for monetary gain. So primary intention isn't even that important either. If something can be defined and interpreted in multiple ways, and actively is, then it has cultural value, and within that context is probably art. The existence of this thread, this board, seems a pretty good argument for wrestling being art.

I generally find with reviews that the assessment is the interesting bit. Play-by-play can be hard work at times, and if I haven't seen the match then I quite like it to remain vaguely unspoiled. It feels a little like a book review that just outlines the plot. However, I don't mind a little play-by-play if it is illustrating a wider point, just like how you might pull apart a passage in a book to see how an author achieved a particular affect, for instance. I really think there is a lot of potential in writing about wrestling that has yet to be fully realised. I'm not sure there have been many great writers who have also been influential, so the quality remains variable. There are a lot of routes that haven't been fuly explored, but could be explored further - something a little academic, something kind of Gonzo journalism influenced, something more abstract, I dunno. Star ratings perhaps stunt the growth of decent writing about wrestling, as it is easy for the writer to lean on them and easy for the reader to skip to them.

The main problem I have with star ratings is I often find myself skipping someone's review and going straight to the snowflakes. While I can see some value and fun to be had in rating matches (whether by stars, numbers, letters or whatever else), particularly for ranking stuff, I think the reviewing and analysis should be the important bit. Wrestling is completely subjective and it is more meaningful when people reflect that, rather than try to turn an artform into an equation. Arguing over 1/4* is far less fun and useful to me than genuinely engaging with a match, the story it tells and the emotion it produces. I feel the same about book, film and music reviews. It seems really reductive.

Hope this isn't too much of a tangent, but how valuable is the concept of a "draw" in this day and age? Analyzing how effective someone is at attracting people to live events only seems worthwhile and meaningful if you consider that to be the main barometer for popularity, and popularity translating into profit. That makes perfect sense pre-PPV, TV as income generator rather than advert for house shows, widespread merchandise etc. But now, if we're looking to ascertain the popularity/profit from a particular worker, we need to take a lot of different things into consideration. And with that in mind, when in the past 30-odd years does drawing a house stop being the main (only?) way to gauge success? And within the above context, is it even possible to make meaningful comparisons between eras?

A massive oversimplification of what they needed to do, but I'd boil it down to: 1. Sort out the finances - stop the massive overspending, work towards balancing the books 2. Make the product/company less of an embarrassment, and more of a good 'corporate' fit The AOL/Time Warner merger was on the horizon, WCW needed to look like an attractive, potentially profitable and low-maintenance product, either for whatever corporate structure it ended up in (so they would keep WCW as an asset), or to make it more appealing to any other corporate structure that might want to buy it/invest in it. WCW could have had the best booking in the history of the world, but if the finances weren't right its days were numbered. And I'm not sure a hot product would be enough to shore up the company.

I belive it was/is just Gravesend Town Hall It is the Woodville Halls (and was since the early 70s, I think). It still runs wrestling now. I used to go along frequently in the late 90s/early 2000s, during that strange era when you had as much chance of watching Steve Grey as you had of watching Bryan Danielson. A really fun venue, and was still full of fans who really believed.

It seems pretty much impossible to turn Cena heel with any of the usual heel turn tricks. I'm also not sure any heel in this day and age is hated by everyone - there will always be a small contrary group cheering them. Saying that...could Cena turn heel successfully purely through his work in the ring? He could tease all of his signature spots, but refuse to do them, stick to a bland offence, resort to stalling, play off the crowd when he keeps returning to a headlock - a bit like Corino's old school gimmick in ECW. It might produce horrible matches, but I can't imagine it would go down well with the fans who cheer him now, and I'm not sure it would make him a cool/cheerable heel either. While it doesn't exactly scream money, I reckon something like this would turn him properly heel.

I have no idea how to go about it, but some sort of equivalent to Wins Above Replacement in baseball could be interesting. Essentially work out some sort of average draw for a period or territory and then see if a wrestler drew more or less from that. I guess then you'd have to quantify it in a way that enabled proper comparisons between eras and territories, and make adjustments for anything that didn't look right - for example, does improving a gate by 25 per cent mean more when you're drawing 20,000 than improving a gate by 30 per cent when you're drawing 10,000? Or something...

I thought there was something really sweet about this show, the meeting of two generations of wrestling fans. Will's reaction to Danny's first wrestling memory was priceless, as was Danny's to Will's number of wrestling DVDs.

Loved both these shows and really appreciated the give-and-take between the three of you. It felt like a genuine discussion rather than just three guys talking over each other. A good mix of anecdotes and analysis too. In terms of requests, I'd love to hear a podcast on the history of televised wrestling. How did it start? How were formats settled? How did it change the business? Then perhaps some focus on key events - Black Saturday, first Nitro etc.

Fair enough, thanks for replying! Good luck with the future episodes, looking forward to seeing how this show develops as it already has a different feel to the other PTBN/PWO podcasts.

A fun, slick show and I enjoyed the time limits more than I thought I would. One criticism would be I could have lived without all the NBA video game talk at the end, especially with so many good questions in the mailbag thread going unanswered.

- When do people think wrestling had the most female wrestling fans? Prime-era British wrestling does seem as good as answer as any - the granny in the front row hitting the heel with her handbag was pretty much a standard archetype or cliche for the time. World Class for younger women is a pretty good call too. But looking at lots of old footage it seems like there was often quite a mixed crowd and that wrestling was something groups of friends, couples, families would feel comfortable attending. - Why do you think those women came to the matches? What was over with them? Women like sport just like men do. Wrestling was a good night out. Good wrestling storylines are compelling for everyone. Wrestling at its best is the perfect mix of athleticism and emotion, which should have a pretty broad appeal. - Why didn't they stay fans? How long were they fans for? It seems like over the last 20 years or so wrestling (well, mainly WWE) got pretty sexist. It was one thing to have valets as a bit of eye candy or whatever, but the Attitude Era saw them often become little more than sexual objects. I imagine that is/was quite a turn-off. I also wonder if the lack of great episodic booking hasn't helped either. Plenty of men have stopping watching for that reason too - I wouldn't necessarily give completely different reasons for men and women not staying as fans. Plus, maybe there are just more things to do these days, more places to go, more things to see. Culturally, it is a more crowded marketplace, and more things are targeted specifically at women. - What do you think would be some ways to get similar fans now? I think an excellent product with great action, compelling storylines and genuine emotion. Magnetic, charismatic personalities. So, what would attract more male fans too. But treating women less as objects and/or a sideshow wouldn't hurt. I guess Stephanie is actually a pretty strong character who should have attracted more female fans, but I'm not sure if she has. The NXT women could, but I know that is another discussion in another thread. Or maybe if women aren't ever going to be treated seriously then just phase them out completely - women didn't ever watch wrestling for the women, but women portrayed badly is likely to drive them away.