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I think people are way too harsh in talking about ECW's spotty quality. The cards didn't have technical classics top-to-bottom, but the promotion still worked to make things constantly entertaining. Even with the filler you could still tell that Joey and the crowd were having fun and having a great time being there, and just by that alone I'd much rather watch lower-end ECW over lower-end WWE where it just feels like a waste of time for all parties involved. Christian/Swagger and Christian/Regal are still the best things to come out of ECW, though.

I've seen this match numerous times and always thought it was obviously a deliberate part of the story they were telling to have KENTA blow off the leg work to play mind games with Nakajima. KENTA wasn't squashing Nakajima so much as offering the fans a decisive end to their year-long feud and I think the guys deserve some credit for having the balls to do that instead of relying on dodgy booking to protect Nakajima as a rising star. It's fine if that's not a story you can get into but viewing the leg selling as arising from miscommunication (no way even half those exchanges weren't preplanned) or just these guys with 15 years experience between them not understanding basic storytelling strikes me as ridiculous.

I think the reason wrestling doesn't get much academic attention even compared to something like boxing is pretty clear just by looking at that topics list. From what I've read most academics who've watched wrestling seem fixated on things the nationalism shit and don't pay much attention to the brilliance of the ring work. Which is a shame since a book could probably be written about the depth behind something like Misawa/Kobashi 1/20/97.

Edited to make it more clear.

Disclaimer: Haven't seen anything from 2014 outside of the G1 Final and Summerslam. I rate these as must-see Kana vs. Meiko Satomura 4/2010 Takashi Sugiura vs. Yoshihiro Takayama 7/2010 Daisuke Ikeda vs. Takeshi Ono 9/2010 Yoshiko Tamura vs. Ayumi Kurihara 12/2010 Takashi Sugiura vs. Go Shiozaki 7/2011 Satomura & Kagetsu vs. Takahashi & Yoshiko 10/2011 Jun Akiyama vs. Suwama 10/2011 Ikeda & Shuri vs Yamamoto & Kana 6/2012 Kenny Omega vs. Kota Ibushi 8/2012 Tanahashi vs. Suzuki 10/2012 Kobashi retirement tag 5/2013 KENTA vs. Takashi Sugiura 5/2013 Go Shiozaki vs. Suwama 7/2013 KENTA vs. Naomichi Marufuji 7/2013 Kazuchika Okada vs. Shinsuke Nakamura 8/2014

Having rewatched this I think the match is disappointing because even though both guys were obviously working hurt, they didn't do a whole lot to make that add to the drama in a positive way. Those seemingly unplanned moments of Shawn writhing in back pain while trying to build heat off some dull leg work err more on side of awkward watching than an engaging showing of fighting spirit. If anything, the fact that they insisted on working 20 minutes with minimal interference and Shawn getting badly exposed instead of a 12 minute smoke-and-mirrors deal takes a bit away from Austin's win by making it feel more like a formality than a hard-fought victory. Also, I'm not even sure if Shawn's performance deserves the rep it seems to have gotten as one of the gutsiest performances ever considering that a few months later Misawa had a MOTYC at the dome with Kawada while in just as bad shape.

I'm surprised at this reception as I watched it a few weeks ago after realizing how awesome Hogan's entrance was during this period and I was pleasantly surprised. All 4 guys put in a lot more effort than usual with Giant and Nash doing a really good job playing their roles and making their exchanges feel like a big deal while Hogan and Piper keep things moving with their charisma. I admit the part that made this set was pretty cheesy but that's probably the worst part of the match.

What's wrong with his blond heel work? Sure, his offense was pretty basic (odd complaint for a board that regularly shits on movez stuff) but the match I linked has him doing all kinds of fun expressions to keep things entertaining while getting in just enough offense to keep looking like a threat, similar to what you get in old Destroyer matches.

I actually think he's pretty underrated. His work for the first few years he was in WWF was pretty bad but by the late 80s he became a pretty fun heel who took some nice bumps. It doesn't sound like the highest praise but this Brian Blair match is pretty much as good as you could expect a throwaway 80s WWF mid card singles match to be http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xaqllj_brian-blair-vs-dino-bravo_sport

Rutten/Funaki II should be on there since it's the closest I've seen a shoot fight come to pro wrestling, complete with Funaki drawing off the crowd heat to keep fighting. Also agreed on Nog/Sapp.

I'm not sure what it means to "side" with someone in this. On one hand, I can completely understand why Bret wouldn't want to lose on that night to Shawn and why he would have been as pissed as he was with how things turned out. On the other, I also think it was a brilliant and ballsy move by Vince to do that so he could jump start the Mr. McMahon character he had been building for months and turn Shawn into the hottest heel possible for Austin to take the title off him. After reading Meltzer's account I see no reason Vince would have done it if he didn't foresee how it could have helped business and he deserves more credit than he usually gets for taking such a huge risk to help his company in the long run.

Of course different crowds react to things differently. That's not the same thing as implying that there is some magic objective standard that changes with time and that makes it "unfair" to give your opinion on older matches, which is what most of the "standards change" talk seems to argue. That last part was a strawman and I won't argue or discuss it, I don't think that's at the center of the argument despite people on this board THINKING it's the center of the argument. It's not a strawman given that for it to even be possible for standards to change, there need to be some established standards the first place. For that to be possible, we would need some sort of God-given universal criteria for what makes a good match, instead of it just being people giving opinions based on their own unique subjective criteria.. That is clearly absurd. If the point you're making is more along the lines of "different people like different things" or "different wrestlers do different moves," then why not just say that? The huge argument and seeming misinterpretation makes it obvious "standards change" is a horrible way to describe whatever you're going for. The argument is (as far as I can tell, even though it's went into 15,000 directions) is: does the standard of what constitutes a good wrestling match change/evolve? My point is the basic, barebones standards have not changed, nobody really ever argued that. But... a lot of the delivery methods have indeed changed from 1950 or whatever to the present and thus the overall conclusion is that by and larges standards have changed/evolved. That seems like a non sequitur. Yes, a US match from 1950 will be worked different from one in 2014. Just like how a Japanese match from 2014 will be worked different from a Mexican match from 2014. I'm not seeing how the existence of stylistic variances means that there are some ever-changing objective standards for what makes a good match.

Of course different crowds react to things differently. That's not the same thing as implying that there is some magic objective standard that changes with time and that makes it "unfair" to give your opinion on older matches, which is what most of the "standards change" talk seems to argue. That last part was a strawman and I won't argue or discuss it, I don't think that's at the center of the argument despite people on this board THINKING it's the center of the argument. It's not a strawman given that for it to even be possible for standards to change, there need to be some established standards the first place. For that to be possible, we would need some sort of God-given universal criteria for what makes a good match, instead of it just being people giving opinions based on their own unique subjective criteria.. That is clearly absurd. If the point you're making is more along the lines of "different people like different things" or "different wrestlers do different moves," then why not just say that? The huge argument and seeming misinterpretation makes it obvious "standards change" is a horrible way to describe whatever you're going for.

Of course different crowds react to things differently. That's not the same thing as implying that there is some magic objective standard that changes with time and that makes it "unfair" to give your opinion on older matches, which is what most of the "standards change" talk seems to argue.

I'm shocked people are digging the Jarrett angle. WWE/TNA soap opera bullshit like that is not something I want to see in my puro. Maybe it was having to stay up until 6 am to watch it, but that and the mostly disappointing undercard matches had me ready to turn the thing off before the main event. Glad I kept watching though, since Okada/Nakamura was a fucking masterpeice. Great character work from both guys and I love how it slowly built from that tentative shoot-style beginning to the molten stretch run. Between the match and the promo afterwards, Okada came off as a serious bad ass to me.

Shows that were horrible aside from the stuff involving the main event guys was pretty much the norm since late 1997. It's not like they were hitting it out of the park back when the midcard was basically horrible gimmick tag-teams and juniors working 5 minute spot matches. On another note, I'm also pretty sure late 1997 was when Russo started to get a lot of influence. I remember watching the episodes as they went up on Classics on Demand and noticing a very clear shift towards the edgy crash TV shit right around Badd Blood.

Malenko's "lacking charisma" was clearly a deliberate part of the shooter/iceman gimmick. I don't see why people don't want to give him credit for trying something different by working a serious and conservative character at a time when major US promotions were doing all kinds of wacky shit, or why people seem so focused on that side while considering Misawa an all-time great for working a similar stoic gimmick.

Without meaning to sound like I'm putting down Dave, I think a big part of his shift towards emphasizing crowd heat is as a shortcut from his work load increasing to where he doesn't have much time to analyze matches in detail. Hence, he knows he can review matches by just running down the play-by-play and people will still listen to his opinion because of who he his rather than what he's saying.

Flair/Undertaker 1992? You mean this match? http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xdmaew_undertaker-vs-ric-flair-wwf-title_sport I guess you could call it a by-the-numbers type match but I definitely see him changing things up to fit in with Undertaker's no-selling schtick back then like the cool figure-four spot. Not sure why the match would be brought up as a point against Flair. If anything it helps out his case by showing how he could make thing entertaining while also doing nothing to detract from the aura of a guy whose gimmick at the time seemingly ran completely against having good matches.

I say review the entire Jack Brisco series since that's Dory's most famous opponent. Also this http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x16jgjy_masanobu-fuchi-osamu-nishimura-vs-the-funks-dory-funk-jr-terry-funk_sport

As I've said before, the separation people make between storytelling and workrate is a false dichotomy. Nobody would give a fuck about physicality if it didn't create a stronger emotional connection. I haven't listened the Storm/Cornette podcast so they may be deserving of a bit more credit but the only point I really see made in the OP after unpacking the buzzwords is that it's harder for US guys to get over based on ring work now that promotions are placing less emphasis on promos/angles/squash matches, and that just seems obvious.

So basically the only thing separating "believable" from "unbelievable" is one falls in line with what you're used to seeing while the other doesn't.

It's kind of hard to reply without specific examples. I don't know if they do it differently on the US indies or whatever, but from the puro I watch it seems pretty inaccurate to characterize fighting spirit spots with no selling. It would be no selling if the guy just casually sat up, but when a guy makes it look he's digging as deep as he can to get up from a german, hits a quick counter move, and then collapses immediately afterwards, there is pretty clearly some selling going on. The only difference between that and just staying down is that it showcases another aspect of selling in addition to (not in place of) the damage of the move in the determination of the guy to fight through the pain. In the context of a match like Shibata/Gotoh 1/4/14 where it's clear neither guy wants to give the other an inch and they're willing to throw everything at each other to stop that from happening, I see nothing inconsistent in that the guys trading head drops is simply a larger scale version of them trading strikes. As you kind of imply, the main reason for people disliking such spots seems mainly due to what they're used to watching. Most of the people who rag on fighting spirit also seem to be pretty big fans of WWE and I often have a really hard time getting into that style. Not just because a lack of things like stiffness and movez but even little things like punches getting spammed and sold like weak chops whereas I'm used to seeing them rarely used and treated like a big deal.

Thing is there's plenty of repeated match-ups on the set so I don't see why that disqualified those matches when you look at the historical significance factor. The RWTL 1983 Jumbo/Tenryu tag was huge in getting over Tenryu as a top level star and establishing Jumbo/Tenryu as the top native team, while the 1984 RWTL tag was the big rematch following up on Terry's retirement and works to bookend the era before the Choshu/Tenryu feud. Both of those, especially the Jumbo/Tenryu match, also happen to be clear examples of Brody putting over his opponents as bad asses and disprove the idea that he was just a politician who never got anyone over. "Laying around in holds" is pretty much wrestling 101 on how to build heat. Him going in there and working even with old-school technicians like Jumbo and Dory also added to his legitimacy as a main eventer by showing that he wasn't just a one-dimensional brawler. I'll admit that he wasn't exactly doing RINGS level matwork, but then how much of that did you see from Tenryu? I also don't count it against him just because he didn't make too many funny faces while brawling or selling. He might not have been flopping around like a cartoon character in his 4/82 Dory match but looking at the overall layout reveals a smartly worked match that builds to an explosive climax of Brody being forced to expend every bit energy and ring smarts he has to put away Dory while still coming out of the match looking like a monster. Sure, you can rag on his selling in things like the Steamboat/Youngblood match but then you'd be missing the point as you can't have your monster team working every match 50/50 and wrestling a throwaway tag in that way only serves to make it more compelling in those rare moments when he does look hurt.

I'm not sure if Dave really meant argue that Brody is an indisputably great worker so much as he was giving his stock response to the mentality that leads people to ask him if he wishes he could somehow go back and change the thoughts he had on something. Once you concede that a match (or worker, if you prefer) is really only as good as what the tastes of a viewer lead them to see it as, it seems pretty pointless to ask if he might have been wrong in pimping a guy who he not only liked at the time, but who his peers also liked and who is still remembered as one of the greats by a pretty large section of older fans in Japan. I call Brody underrated because it seems the hate for Brody on boards like these has gone beyond just people watching old footage and coming up with different opinions to active attempts at revisionism, like making a set chronicling 80's AJPW and not giving people the opportunity to vote for Brody matches like the tags I mentioned that are not only highly regarded but also very significant to the promotion's history. I think that's just dumb.