dawho5

As Matt has pointed out, all things need room/time to breathe.

I can agree with this. Very often there are a lot of responses to posts about certain workers and the indies in general that come across as dismissive. And I think a certain portion of the hostility that comes into threads like this is because people like Joe feel there is a need for a strong voice in defense of the things that very often get shit on here. Which leads to angry responses from a few and ends up being an unsalvageable argument because both sides get dug in so deep that nobody is moving. And I'm sure there's lots of blame to spread around for that situation. Might be a better and more productive venture to find a solution though.

I have my share of opinions that don't run along the same lines as other people's here. And I will post them, but in a non-hostile way. Nor will I get overly worked up when somebody or multiple somebodies disagree. Very often I'll actually take their talking points into account when I find myself looking at something it might apply to afterwards. I can't say it always changes my mind, but I refuse to dismiss something just because it doesn't agree with how I look at wrestling. You never know when something will click for you and a match or wrestler or promo you didn't care for before all of a sudden makes more sense. I think that some folks (Joe is one of them, very often Parv comes across this way to me when arguing with certain people but not the majority) are so dug in at this point that it becomes an exercise in futility to argue. You can usually point to the exact spot in this thread and some of those mentioned above where things got personal and it stopped being a discussion. It is possible to disagree without attacking the points made by somebody else. Very often it comes down to the language you use to express what you're trying to say. I tend to look at the way I'm posting things and try to put more of my own thoughts and feelings on the topic rather than how I view what other people have written and my disagreements with that. A positive expression of your own thoughts is very often more conducive to a good argument than a negative take on somebody else's.

I ask because it has been something I've been thinking about on a broader scale recently. I'm 37 years old. If you talked to me at 25, 30, 35 and now, asking any questions you liked you would get different answers. I know this for a fact. The interesting part to me is that the gaps between the answers get closer to one another as I get older. My feeling is that my tastes in wrestling have changed in a very similar manner. I don't think it's ever going to stop. I do, however, know that my opinions will continue to change. To the point where I could go back and read something I wrote this year about a match and wonder what I was thinking about it if I dug it up a year later to the day. So I'm going to try and track my personal evolution in terms of watching wrestling and what I looked for/enjoyed. I started with WCW somewhere in 1996. Loved me some cruiserweight wrestling. I also enjoyed the internet darlings of the time quite a lot. I tried watching WWF but it didn't have the same feeling for me. There was a lack of all the cool stuff the guys I liked in WCW were doing. Then I got into tape trading and the NJ juniors and All Japan stuff blew me away. For the same reasons, all the cool stuff. I enjoyed a lot of the Hayabusa matches I watched. I thought RVD was a lot of fun to watch. Not saying these are inherently bad or good things, just giving a general idea of how I looked at wrestling. If you did loads of cool stuff, I liked watching the matches. ECW was incredible stuff when Tajiri, Lynn, Guido, RVD, etc. were wrestling. Then I stopped watching wrestling until I one day decided to start again. And oddly enough, the first thing I hit really hard was Stan Hansen. For whatever reason, it stuck. It's nothing like the stuff I used to watch and love. But the simplicity of it without losing any of the effectiveness really spoke to me a lot more than any amount of cool stuff ever could. I followed that up by going back through All Japan and I'm still up in the air as to the results on that. I liked a lot of what I saw and I think a lot of it does have value. But I'm a bit hesitant to start my rewatch of it all. Since then I've bounced around from watching stuff as far apart as the 1985 I Quit match, selected stuff from the 2014 G1, Chigusa vs. Dump, a bunch of Starrcade and WWE SNME stuff, and going through 2000s Japan. During that trip through 2000s Japan I discovered a lot of differences in the way I looked at matches from when I had started the All Japan project. Somewhere over the course of that I had really found a lot of the core things I like about wrestling. And my feeling is that I may find a lot more of the flaws in All Japan as I go through again. Because when I watch stuff like Tully vs. Magnum and see how that same level of hate and desperation, the way it seemed like everything was a struggle and this was a fight to the finish, can by achieved with so much less, I start to wonder if Misawa and co. had to go to the lengths they did. I understand that they had different audience demands, but they largely shaped those demands through their work. Watching through the Starrcade set, I found that matches that came in under 20 minutes (unless they featured very skilled and experienced wrestlers) got on my nerves. The Luger vs. Flair match from Starrcade had a great section of Luger work on Flair's arm. It was well done by both and it surprised me to have that reaction. The only problem was, they went right back to cycling through Luger power spots for the third time not long after. If you cut off enough of that match where Luger doesn't have to repeat himself with the powerslams, it's far better for it. One thing about the SNME set I'm seeing is how great Savage was. He's got this great, believable tough guy persona, but he'll hide behind Liz when Jake brings out the snake. And I think it's the Bret match where he does this incredible leg selling at the end. If nothing else on those discs clicks for me I'm glad I watched those two matches for sure. And last year I would have never even thought of watching it, so there's a pretty big change for me as well. I'm interested to see how other people see their own evolution as wrestling fans, what they think triggered the changes, things they might have been surprised to find out they liked. That's one of the things I like about reading people's posts here , seeing how they react to the same things I watch. I think that the way we came to where we are now, even if things have changed, is just as important as the opening part of a wrestling match is to the middle (where we are now). I also think that seeing that kind of thing would help a little in being able to see how other people view matches when we disagree with their conclusions.

A little history first. From 1996-early 2000s, I looked at stuff like Dean Malenko vs. Ultimo Dragon matches, Benoit, Eddy, NJ juniors stuff as some of the best wrestling you would ever find. All Japan was pretty sweet when I discovered it too. So I used to be (without really knowing it) a workrate fan. I still like watching a lot of that stuff, but some of it has really aged badly while some of it I still rate pretty high. How do you define workrate? Workrate is how much stuff the wrestlers in the ring are doing. That's the simple answer. The more complex issue at the heart of this question in my mind is the use of the term "rest hold". If a guy slaps on a chinlock or side headlock and the two wrestlers lay there for a few minutes to catch their breath, then it is indeed a rest hold. If the wrestler putting on the hold cranks on it and the victim is trying different ways of escaping the hold only to get shut down, it's no longer a rest hold regardless of how basic it might be. Then it becomes part of the discussion on workrate if you ask me. As mentioned above, bumping around when the time comes is also a part of workrate. I've never used the term before that I remember, but if we're talking about it. Is workrate important to you? Somewhat. It has been downgraded in importance, but it is still a necessary part of a good match in the sense that the wrestlers involved need to be doing something that works towards the story the match is trying to tell or supports the psychology of the match. What elements make up a quality match for you, and how much of that is workrate? A coherent story from start to finish has become a real big thing for me. And by that I mean a minimum of wandering off into filler material before we move on to the next chapter of the story. Which I think a lot of the "stuff" I have seen in modern wrestling tends to do. Good psychology is pretty essential to a coherent story being told in the ring so it's pretty high up there. It also gets the crowd into the match, which can elevate the way I look at matches. Efficiency and simplicity in achieving the above elements is huge for me. Consistent selling is something I've gotten softer on, but I still look for it. Workrate can certainly add a lot of fun to a match when the "stuff" fits into the way a match plays out. It really becomes a combination of a lot of different factors, but some I'm willing to go easy on if the rest are strong. Workrate is one of those things in the more common view of the term. Do we need to move away from workrate as a metric in evaluating matches? As stated above, I think wrestling has to be judged based on a combination of factors. To ignore any of them completely is going to skew the way you look at wrestling as a whole. It's just as bad to ignore workrate as it is psychology, storytelling or selling. How did the online communities view of workrate influence you earlier in your wrestling fandom? It was the big thing at the time. I had been a fan of the more workrate stuff before I hit the internet, but it only reinforced my views when I read a lot of it. My feeling is that when we are younger we tend to want to know that other people share our views in order to validate them.

Man, I had a cereal case (the ones that grocery stores get 16-20 boxes of cereal in) full of VHS wrestling I did that with. I believe there were several tapes with Best of Waltman on them too. Not that I have a working VCR anymore, but I always regret throwing that box away.

I wouldn't put together a ballot without comprehensive watchings of anyone I considered for my top 150. Which means I probably won't. Doesn't mean I don't want to be part of the discussion for wrestlers I have seen a ton of.

I would agree that the final year or so of All Japan was toned down, but once NOAH took off it started again and continued to get worse. I don't know if the younger wrestlers within NOAH (who had all been training while watching their heroes work in All Japan) just didn't get the reasons why Misawa and co. were toning things down or really wanted to get the big pops that the big guys got and went ahead with it anyway. Either way it stuck. And I wonder if Misawa couldn't have been a bit smarter and forced a general toning down of the style given it was his company.

He works the leg to kill the "lift up the knees" counter to the HFF. It's similar to how Kawada would work the arm so that when somebody blocked a jumping high kick he had time to go back on offense as they sold the injured arm. I like that touch for both.

So if there is a separate section for 3-man teams, it would be best to keep it to lucha so that the sheer volume of votes wouldn't put Freebirds and the Shield at 1/2 while lucha trios were delegated lower.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MovHA-5tdfI Link for the Nishimura vs. Tajiri MUGA match from 07. Different than any Tajiri I had seen to that point.

For watching them work with lesser opponents, the RWTL match in 98 against Hayabusa/Shinzaki is surprisingly watchable. I think that was the year they wrestled Takayama/Kakihara also.

I can understand that argument because the driving force behind the way All Japan (and later on NOAH) evolved was the way Misawa was Mr. Invincible for so long. It went from no natives being able to beat Misawa for so long to them slowly catching up to his levels of invincibility, which led to longer matches with more ridiculous nearfalls off of head drops and refusals to submit afterwards. Then you get to NOAH and midcarders are surviving big amounts of damage like that and things have spiraled completely out of control. I don't know if I necessarily blame Misawa for all that came after, because a lot of it was everyone trying to be Misawa. I have a hard time separating the influence, positive or negative, from the great performances he did put on entirely. I still rank Misawa really, really high, but I think that some of what he did was really bad for wrestling as a whole. I felt like there was this competition between the Misawa/Kobashi/Akiyama school of big match wrestling vs. the Kawada/Taue "less is more" approach that one side was destined to win before it even started. And I can't help but think it was the wrong side. That doesn't keep me from loving a lot of what Misawa did, but it leaves me with a lot of mixed feelings about the way things played out.

Once again, I might point out that this is hardly applicable *only* to Jerry Lawler. Is there a better spot to have this so people can read this argument if they have no interest at all in Lawler?

It would probably end up being mostly lucha though. Maybe some lucharesu with inclusions like The Shield and Freebirds. Guess where the majority of the votes would go. It's really not big outside of Mexico to have long running six man tag teams.

I would say watch every tag they had against Misawa/Akiyama from 96 in order. The narrative is what made 96 for me.

That's what I liked about it Matt. It went to extremes to do what it intended to do, but that only made it all the more awful and incredible all at once. One of the reasons I watch wrestling (and movies) is for that emotional roller coaster that it can take you on. And that first hair vs. hair match is absolutely awesome for that. You watch this thing thinking that in the end, despite being dominated by Dump, Chigusa is going to get her victory. And she does, because she finally gets that deathlock on and it's huge and amazing and everything that spot could ever hope to be. But you're right in thinking it's futile because Dump goes nuts finding a way to cheat her way back in despite Chigusa being all but beaten anyway. She could do it any number of ways, but she chooses to cheat and work her ass off way harder to cheat than she would have had to in doing it legit. It's wrong on so many levels. And that's why it works so damn well, because there's absolutely no reason to go to that length to win that way other than to piss everyone watching off as much as possible. And Chigusa refusing to allow her hair to be cut afterwards along with the brawl it touches off over the hair cutting is absolutely the right choice after that finish. It's spectacle on a level you really don't see even in pro wrestling. A lot of it is wrong and insulting and pisses you off because deep down you know it appeals to the darkest side of human nature and you still love it. I think a lot of the great moments in artistic forms that involve interaction between people work that way. They present a situation in a way that you understand, but you don't want to. And you are conflicted about the way things go despite this understanding. I look at movies I consider great like Up In the Air in the same way. It's a movie I rewatch very occasionally, but I do it when I know I'm gonna have time to digest it because it doesn't go down easy. A few examples for me that correlate more to this are the Siege or the original Straw Dogs. They are unbelievably great movies for what they are intended to be. They hit you on such a primal level that it's impossible to ignore what's going on in them. And yes, they are both manipulative as fuck. I don't care to see either of them again for a long time, but I'm glad I watched them once. I can say the same for both of the Chigusa vs. Dump matches.

I think this is a really good argument to have, and I come down on the side of Venegas and Steenalized. I question whether or not this particular thread is the place for it though. I get that it applies to somebody like Lawler, but it applies to a great many people nominated so I'm not sure it should be limited to only Lawler.

Those two hair vs. hair matches are great. So much atmosphere and emotion. Dump as the bully heel who feels the need to cheat despite being able to overpower her opponents is such a great foil. Chigusa is really over as the face and puts over the beatings she takes while getting her hope spots in. And bleeds like a champ. Crowd is absolutely incredible reacting to everything. One of the reasons I've always liked joshi is the HATE that gets put out there during matches. And I have to say this is some pretty top-notch hate going on between these two.

It's like somebody said in the Meng/Haku thread. When you're working with an extremely limited set of tools it becomes very important how and where you use them. I can see that applying to any aging wrestler as their body starts to go on them and they have to learn to use an increasingly smaller toolset to meet the demands that come from "prime" versions of themselves.

Sometimes I think Matt and Parv argue just for the sake of arguing. Whether or not that's true, I don't see how late career coasting can either tarnish the earlier greatness or be completely ignored. To me it's a matter of the sum total. Did the great stuff outweigh the subpar late career paydays? By how much did that late career slide hurt Flair's (or anyone else's) case in your eyes? Or on the opposite side, did the garbage come out ahead for a career with great matches peppered in? How much do those great performances elevate the career underachiever to the point where they make the lower part of a ballot? Those seem like the more pressing questions than the big extremes being presented.

I liked how Kawada came into the match looking to do a bunch of amateur style wrestling against Doc. Kind of a "I know you're good at this, but I can do it too" to get inside Doc's head. It at the very least made the match interesting and different from their CC Final match, even if that was the better of the two.

His AWA vs. NWA title match with Flair from All Japan in 1983 is really great. Need to see more of Martel after seeing that.

Fair enough on the Marufuji point. At the very least KENTA goes easy on the excessive flippy crap.

I think that one of the goals of this would have to be more folks who have seen a more varied set of wrestling matches from different areas of the world and can talk intelligently about them. Having fun watching a lot of wrestling would be another, going right along with the possibility of discovering a few wrestling styles you like more than you thought you would.. Making these kinds of lists also tends to make you look at what is important to you when you watch pro wrestling. I found that out during that last Ditch project. Not sure if I'll have the time to put into this, but I really want to.