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Everything posted by funkdoc
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no way in hell does Baba deserve a 9 for making new stars. probably the main reason he's not a GOAT booker/promoter is that he was far too slow to push native wrestlers, which killed AJPW's chances of recruiting new talent after the lightning-in-a-bottle that was the Pillars. even Misawa likely would have had to wait years longer for his time had Tenryu not left, to say nothing of the others. consider: Kikuchi didn't beat Fuchi for the junior title until freaking *1996*. that was pretty typical of how Baba handled natives; considering how gaijin monsters typically got the rocket strapped to them, that had to be frustrating for an awful lot of people. i remember jdw arguing that late-90s AJPW should have been pursuing guys like Masato Tanaka to build a future, but do you really believe he'd rather do 5+ years of undercard jobs than become an instant hot act in the indies & ECW to build his name value for NJPW? i think Baba tends to get a pass on this because of when he died, as the fallout with his wife meant we didn't get to see the long-term effects of all this. but i would absolutely factor it in!
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This is really interesting to me. I'm 33, and definitely a product of the 90s. I mostly teach 18-21 year olds and, yes, they are FAR FAR more sincere and earnest than I am. Now, partly, that is because 18-21 years olds, just finding their feet in the world and figuring out their basic stances, are generally are more earnest and serious than older people. But it's also quite interesting. As well as a New Sincerity, I also think there's a New Moralism, which has quite a hardline stance on matters of political correctness especially as regards gender, race and sexuality -- here, there is little scope for irony or even humour. I have often thought to myself that it is my generation -- 30-somethings now -- who lived in the *most* post-ironic, post-modern moment. We are primed for it -- more cine-literature and pop-literate than both our parents' generations and indeed the internet kids (whose frames from reference are actually narrower than they should be). I find this stuff pretty fascinating. hey, you're not much older than me! figured as much actually - just my interests that lead me to spend more time among younger crowds, it seems. i would argue that there's a duality in play here with many in this generation: far more serious toward sociopolitical issues as you said, but far LESS serious and more ironic toward plenty of other things. patriotism, for instance. the one that i think is most relevant to wrestling is the change in how pro sports are viewed. younger folks here are more apt to see all of sports as inherently silly - this doesn't mean they don't follow them, but it means they're less likely to emotionally invest in winning & losing. people increasingly follow sports for the excitement/flashiness and the individual personalities and the off-field drama, and are less likely to care about whether or not Peyton Manning was a choke artist. there's even a stark generation gap on the matter of steroids, with it being mostly older fans who see them as this major blight on the game. if this is how people feel about real sports, how can you possibly expect anything more for a known fake one? i'm not saying that type of investment is impossible anymore, but it requires top-notch writing and/or a story that plays into the things people do take seriously nowadays. regionalism, love of country, masculinity...these simply don't work in this day & age. that's a lot of the old-school wrestling playbook disqualified there...
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It's interesting that you say the 80s stuff just isn't the relevant older wrestling people look back to, because I don't think that's the case for 1990s or 2000s wrestling either, nor am I sure it's even the case for wrestling that is more than six months old. I can't recall a time when historical comparisons of matches were more out of style than they are now, or where people can give a match ****+ and it's considered old news within a month. I also didn't say the old stuff isn't remembered, I said it's resented, and to an extent, I do believe that to be true. i think this is more a function of the age of the people involved. my buddies in their 30s still bring up the Attitude Era all the time - they absolutely love D-X to this day, to refute another talking point i often see on this board. my suspicion here is that the overall smart-fan scene trended much older in the 90s & before. think of how many of the big names there already had kids & families at the time, and compare it to the number of teens who were taken seriously at all. the community being built around newsletters & tape trading made it far less accessible to younger folks, with your Bixes as the exception to the rule. nowadays it's all about the internet & social media, which are easier than ever for kids to explore. i think that's a major reason the community seems less interested in history than it did back then. by and large, regardless of era, younger people haven't cared much for past history in any avenue...and we're seeing more and more college-age or younger folks among the relevant voices in this sphere. another factor to consider is preference for shorter pieces of entertainment. there's more competition than ever on that front, and more and more media is trending longform - think writing & video games, or the decline of film dramas in favor of full TV series. in my experience, this leads people to have their 1 or 2 main "things" where they make that time commitment, while taking a "sampler platter" approach to everything else. i would argue that this drastically hurts the appeal of a lot of non-Vince wrestling from the 80s and before, since so many of the great matches are 30-60 minutes. that's to say nothing of cases like Portland & Memphis where the hardcore fans say you need to watch entire years of TV. that's just not happening if you don't already have an attachment to that style/era, or wrestling isn't the main thing you nerd out over - too much other stuff to catch up on! modern wrestling is much more bite-sized in comparison, and i would argue that's more important than the generation gap in many cases.
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he's a podcaster who has posted here from time to time, forget his handle though. possibly an even bigger modern NJPW fanboy than Meltzer.
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Your most "Against The Grain" opinion on wrestling
funkdoc replied to JaymeFuture's topic in Pro Wrestling
i feel like there's a particular group of acts that are hated here but get near-universal love from the rest of the internet, and Omega is right near the top of that bunch. see also: New Day, Kevin Owens, Seth Rollins, Tanahashi & Okada -
Your most "Against The Grain" opinion on wrestling
funkdoc replied to JaymeFuture's topic in Pro Wrestling
Not my posts, of course. But don't worry, I'm pretty sure the OP posts to several boards and picks and chooses which responses to use. Posters should have these opinions next to their name in their forum profile. It would save people a lot of time and energy whenever threads get gridlocked with opinions that are never going to change. Most of these reactions were a lot more relevant back in the early 2000s than they are now. The size of the pwo/dvdvr/WKO/VOW/PWP/etc type of fan is so varied now. Any consensus opinion isn't anywhere near the influence that it would have held back when all we had was RSPW/tOA/DVDVR or the small groups that grew out of them. also twitter, which has now developed its own unique smart-fan scene. a bunch of the people who registered here for GWE seem to just hang around there these days... -
Your most "Against The Grain" opinion on wrestling
funkdoc replied to JaymeFuture's topic in Pro Wrestling
wrestling needs to cater *more* heavily to internet nerds since it has itself become another nerd fandom in a sea of them. i will always point to making Tensai a heel as one of the most out-of-touch ideas in the modern era - "westerner obsessed with Japan" sums up at least half of the people who go to RAWs & PPVs, and even a fair portion of the wrestlers themselves. granted, house shows are a different story, but i'm not sure how big their piece of the pie is these days. rather than going for universal faces & heels, wrestling could generate more buzz today by coming up with angles that divide the crowd. in the era of social media there's debate over *everything*, and that debate is what gets people talking. it's not like this is without precedent either - think of the '97 Hart Foundation and how that laid the groundwork for the WWF's comeback. one that runs hugely counter to this board in particular: i have long been convinced that wrestling has needed to take itself less seriously. it's largely been stuck in this weird middle ground for a while now, and that hasn't helped. countless people around my age or younger live on irony, and rarely get emotionally invested in wins or losses for real sports (much less a fake one). The Final Deletion should be the blueprint for wrestling in the future, but you have to sustain that level long-term which TNA won't do. JvK's thoughts on OG Tiger Mask are almost exactly my thoughts on joshi. those promotions had a bunch of institutional hurdles that nobody ever talks about, such as the near-complete lack of gaijin talent. i absolutely think it makes their achievements much more impressive. finally: the Irish whip & 99% of worked punches do more to expose the business than any Matrix flip sequences or blown spots. i have personal experience here, showing wrestling to non-fans and getting the "you still watch this shit?" response the moment they saw an Irish whip. -
Are Well Behaved Wrestlers Bad for Business Long Term?
funkdoc replied to Jesse Ewiak's topic in Pro Wrestling
this ties very well into something i've wanted to make a thread about: MMA may not have hurt wrestling's raw numbers as much as some believed, but it's had a huge effect on the demographics of both wrestlers and fans. tl;dr MMA has siphoned off the normies and turned wrestling into the dr. who of athletics -
yep, i sure can't wait for eli to get in the hall of fame because of his last name and his rings, while romo & rivers can't get on the ballot
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Is TNA the worst wrestling promotion in history?
funkdoc replied to Loss's topic in Megathread archive
it's basically the heir to the WCW mini-movies in every way, with no Cheatum but even longer i think -
this is more a symptom imo the bigger issue here is that younger audiences are less likely to take much of anything seriously. you can actually look at the Rock as a sort of preview in this regard - as Loss loves to point out, fans weren't invested in him winning or losing so much as getting a chance to sing along with his catchphrases. even real sports have been gradually heading in this direction, with more fans following them mainly for the flashiness or the off-field drama. i would argue that this generation is less likely to care about the narratives resulting from the events on the field (breaking records, being clutch or a choke artist, etc.) than previous ones, for reasons too detailed to get into here. also, remember that there is now a whole generation that grew up on Mystery Science Theater, and a generation currently growing up on the Youtube superstars influenced by MST3K. that lends itself to a more detached worldview with regard to this sort of thing...
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BrianB, i think that's more an 80s promoter thing than a Bad News thing. Duggan never seemed to job clean either, at least on TV. that was the conventional wisdom at the time - "name" wrestlers of any sort shouldn't do jobs except on very special occasions. the top Japanese promotions worked the same way during the 80s, and it took the success of shootstyle to drag NJPW & AJPW kicking & screaming into booking clean finishes for big matches.
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i mean, isn't the Iron Sheik account not him? and that one's still verified
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Second, you are being a bit hyperbolic there. Story of the year? Okay, I can give you that, but calm down with the decade aspect. clearly someone here hasn't been exposed to enough "God Hates Cleveland" or "The Factory of Sadness" from the mainstream media. similar position to DMJ (Cleveland expat here) but this is absolutely monstrous in general. remember when the Red Sox finally broke the curse? this easily trumps that, even. EDIT: i assumed we were talking specifically about sports here. if this was supposed to be biggest news story in general, then OK i'm with you
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not sure about this, but the guy's definitely kept himself busy and seems to be doing perfectly fine apparently he's doing olympic weightlifting competitions now, maybe it was some sort of commitment related to that for all we know
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Gymnastics in pro wrestling/the Ricochet-Ospreay/Vader drama
funkdoc replied to GOTNW's topic in Pro Wrestling
don't forget Nash & Ricky Morton building an indie match from shoot interviews too! -
it's more about learning different approaches and then feeling those out for yourself, i think i doubt most people would naturally think "the punch is the most common move in pro wrestling, so it's really important to have a good one" because they watch for the other stuff also i'm glad to see /wooo/ mentioned, that's the sort of thing i was thinking about. that's part of a 4chan offshoot board so of course they'd be huge Japan fanboys!
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thank you very much, this is the sort of thing i was worried about with the OP! it just seems to me like if you're putting yourself out there publicly as much, across multiple formats, as someone like you or Dylan does, that shows some desire to be heard and to be taken seriously. speaking as someone who's done something similar (live streaming) for years, it always seemed to me that influencing others & gaining popularity are inherent motivations for broadcasting yourself. otherwise it would be a lot less stressful just to shoot the breeze with your pals off-air, no? if there's some other perk here i'm missing, i am genuinely curious and would like to hear more thoughts!
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hello everyone, this is something i've been thinking about recently... searching for the GWE project online mostly just turns up our own threads & podcasts. from what i can tell, there hasn't been much discussion of it among the wider internet, and what little i've seen is dismissive and rather confused about the overall singles list. i think part of the reason for this was the sheer amount of content that came out. i talked with someone on Twitter who found all the GWE podcasts unbearable and "masturbatory", saying that it was impossible to get into them when there were so many and it seemed like every one was as long as a Between the Sheets. this is someone who's just discovered the PWO podcasts within the last few months and hasn't checked out the forum yet - i told him about some of the good stuff here like elliott's Satanico posts, and that intrigued him a lot more. i think the bigger issue, though, is that our entire way of viewing wrestling is just completely unheard of outside this little scene. most smart fans are still about Meltzer as the end-all be-all of criticism, and a large number are now heavily influenced by Youtube stuff like Botchamania & OSW Review. judging wrestlers by the number of moves they use is probably a more widespread gospel than ever now, as we can see from reactions to Cena & Reigns. what's interesting is that non-PWO people who look at the GWE list don't bat an eye at all the Japanese wrestlers or even the shoot-style & WoS guys, probably because they don't know them at all. it's Jerry Lawler at #10 vs. Undertaker & Kurt Angle being in the lower half of the list that kills it. people tend to comment that the list seems inconsistent, having no idea that guys like Lawler & Ronnie Garvin (one of the main punching bags on OSW Review, FYI) genuinely are considered elite workers by a bunch of people, or that many of those same people despise the modern WWE big-match style. what's the point of all this? well, this is where, loathe as i am to admit this, rovert may have a point. if a goal of ours was to make more people think beyond workrate dogmatism (and all the podcasts make me think it is), we are failing pretty miserably at the moment. and if that's the case, then perhaps this project truly was "masturbatory" in the end. this is tough, because people here have done a lot in recent years to step up their internet presence...yet it doesn't seem to translate to this fundamental issue. one thing i notice is that the PWO people most active on Twitter tend to give out hot takes on the current stuff, and not engage people as much on cool old matches or historical tidbits. i actually think Twitter would be a great avenue for something like Dustin of the Day, to give one idea. the larger point that ties into is the ongoing decline of forums. PWO's best work is still on here, but it's podcasts & social media that grab the attention of newcomers. that was particularly problematic for GWE due to the reasons i discussed above, but it goes beyond that. i mean, how many people have even heard of the Yearbooks? in my view that's the single most valuable thing yall have done, but it's totally stuck within the bubble. i'm at work so i need to stop here, but i would love to hear if anyone else has ideas or criticisms of my points here. in particular, i'd like to know if i'm misconstruing anybody's motivations here!
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Between the Sheets #47 (June 7-13, 1997)
funkdoc replied to KrisZ's topic in Publications and Podcasts
here let me introduce you to this fine fellow named Bill Simmons -
i mean, they are listed with the wrong team name in the results but i don't see any other problem? if you think they're too high, their career in Japan is the entire reason people rank them. i can see why it would seem ridiculous if you aren't as familiar with those matches!
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Between the Sheets #47 (June 7-13, 1997)
funkdoc replied to KrisZ's topic in Publications and Podcasts
horns.aiff is pretty played out for me as well but that's more because fricken everyone on the internet uses it i'm just glad pudding pops appear not to have become a running joke -
Hello, figured this thread should go up now that we've gotten down to the 25! not many big surprises thus far, but Demolition shocked me. even given all the love they've gotten on this board, i thought there was no way they break the 25. all of my predicted top 10 teams are still alive thus far...but so are the Hart Foundation/Bulldogs/Road Warriors. if more people cared as much about the tag ballot as the singles one, i imagine those would be the HHH/Sting/Rock of this list.
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throwing in my required mention of Virtual Pro Wrestling 2 (basically Revenge/No Mercy but with the AJPW license and all the other major promotions) and Super Fire Pro Wrestling X Premium (you can customize your create-a-wrestler's AI for fuck's sake) as the best ever. i think VPW2 came out in 2000 so you can extend that grace period to the early 2000s. also Pro Wrestling ain't even the best NES wrestling game, Tecmo World Wrestling smokes it. has Ninja Gaiden-style cinematic cutscenes for big moves!
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Hulk Hogan vs. Sgt. Slaughter Desert Storm Match & SummerSlam 1991
funkdoc replied to Bigelow34's topic in Pro Wrestling
i just don't buy any form of Hogan-Slaughter moving the needle at that point. if you look at the build to Wrestlemania, it was basically "Hogan's going to win the title back for AMERICA" - they didn't do much to pretend Slaughter had a chance. and nobody was buying his flunkies as anything meaningful, even if Mustafa did get the only(?) TV pinfall win over the British Bulldog that year.