JRGoldman

https://soundcloud.com/prowrestlingonly/super-apuestas-podcast-super-porky-vs-rey-escorpion-101813 After a brief post WrestleMania hiatus, SAP is back with JR Goldberg and a rotating cast of guest hosts. This week Sam from the "We Don't Know Wrestling" podcast joins to discuss one of the most unique matches in all of professional wrestling. After some listener questions and history, Sam and JR dive in and try to explain what exactly about this match they love, where it fits in to the wrestling landscape at large, and what sort of fan might enjoy this match if they haven't seen it before. Let us know your thoughts! Questions and comments are always appreciated!

I had a bunch of fun watching and talking about this match. Thanks if you listened! Did anyone have any thoughts regarding the match or the podcast, or any requests for future episodes?

This was another really fun episode to record, and I was relieved that we seemingly had stuff to say about modern lucha in addition to classic stuff. What did people think?

Thanks, everyone! I had so much fun doing this. I know Elliott has suggested a few matches, but if there is something you'd like to hear discussed in a similar fashion, let us know!

It is mystifying to me that people still respond to Stro, the most obvious troll on the board, and not even a particularly interesting or clever one. To clarify, before anyone says anything: it's not that he disagrees about a well regarded match, it's that he continually and willingly ignores people who respond and give him evidence, which inevitably leads to those people conflict.

Pynchon is terrible Some people in this thread would say that means I have made the perfect analogy.

Why are people seemingly so opposed to the idea of "hard work" involved in the enjoyment of something? People say lucha being harder to grasp at first as though it's a criticism and a black mark on the style. Gravity's Rainbow requires more hard work to enjoy than Harry Potter does, but that doesn't make it less of an accomplishment or mean that it has less merit.

There has been a lot of thought provoking discussion in this thread. Except by Stro, who has seemingly decided that the behavior that got him rightfully banned from DVDVR deserved an unnecessary sequel.

So throughout the process, Grimmas has stated he would be open to publishing results using different voting critera. I know a lot of people have come up with suggestions and interesting spins, but they are seemingly scattered throughout the different threads I thought it might be nice to have a centralized thread. My suggestion would be to see what the overall top 100 would look like if only votes for people's top 10 counted, like the actual Sight&Sound poll. I would also ask that Grimmas has already shot down any sort of "PWO Posters Only" list, so it's probably safe not to request something like that, considering that conversation has already happened and doesn't need to be rehashed.

I think Sami Callihan could have a Chris Hero type run where he stays on the indies for the next 10 years, but as people start to make their ballots, they realize that he's been a top 5-10 guy every year since 2015. Depending on how popular NJPW stays, I think Ospreay could see a huge increase in votes. Roman Reigns is probably the best bet. I think the key to something like this is picking someone who is going to stay in one place for an extended period, because leaving a federation and starting over somewhere else creates a necessary loss of momentum. It's really hard to go from one place to another and not stumble a little while they figure out how best to use the performer.

Parv, I understand your point but I think it's a bit of a false equivalency. You wouldn't teach a survey course to a group of undergrads and then seriously expect them to contribute to a deconstruction of the Western Canon. Or, if they did, I would listen to their ideas with an open mind but I'd have to take them with a grain or two of salt. If someone has two years to get ready for this project, and wants desperately to participate, but can't find the requisite time to get a firm grasp on many candidates that others are considering for a top spot, I think we can reserve the right to be quizzical of their process.

Parv, you address the influence of people like Dylan and Matt and others in promoting "niche picks", but do you feel that you were influential in on the other side of the pendulum? For example, you weren't the high vote on Ted. Do you feel as though your defense of your admitted favorites created a bias that was equally present but perhaps less noticeable because the influence was leaning toward workers from a period that the silent majority was already going to represent (although perhaps not as highly in some cases)?

I'm high on the Khali match.

I wouldn't have voted for him, but I feel as though he would have gotten some love. He was in a lot of people's match of the decade. I guess it's sort of noteworthy and interesting that two of John Cena's five best matches were against people that went un-nominated. That feels like a credit to Cena's skill that couldn't really be addressed until after we saw how this all shook out.

Did Umaga not get nominated, or am I just unable to use a search function effectively?

I think Flair is better at being "The Nature Boy" than any other wrestler is at portraying a singular character, but Funk is so much more versatile that I have to give him the edge. Flair will be number one. That is fine. I had both in the top 10. Funk was my number 2.

I think it's perfectly fair to say this project was about the journey and not the destination. I agree wholeheartedly. That being said, we shouldn't use "It was a journey" as a blanket to protect from criticism and prevent discussion. If you took a two year long journey and didn't rank Negro Casas, you got a flat tire somewhere along the way. Also, welcome shittylittleboots. I would love to see your ballot and hear you talk about some of your high votes!

If you didn't vote for Casas, your ballot was a failure. Simple as that. I'm not even going to get in to him being lower than Bret and Regal and some others because I'll just get more and more angry. Like Breaks, Casas is one of the most universal performers in history. To not rank him is unfathomable to me. I honestly feel like if you don't like or understand Casas, you don't actually like or understand pro wrestling.

I did. And I did adress why. Familiar with the AWA stuff and the Hennig feud in Portland. Basically : not seen enough for him to go higher. I'll be honest, I've heard so much hardcore pimping of Buddy Rose Portland years, that I have a hard time believing it can live up to such a hype at this point. I'll only know if/when I'll check it out. I'm not saying this is what happened, but do you feel like you're punishing Rose because of his vocal fanbase? It seems like your viewpoint on this is inherently contrarian. It's like picking apart a movie just to be different from all your friends. And here we have the first Godwin point of this thread with the infamous "contrarian" bullshit. If I was trying to be contrarian, I would not have voted for Lawler or Rose at all, I would not have put Fujiwara higher than where he ended up (#27 on my list), I would not have voted for Rey in my Top 20 (I did despite my disdain for the 619), I would not have voted for anyone from the 00's and I would probably have put a bunch of woman in my top 10, Ric Flair around #80 and Bockwinkle at #1 on the strenght of only his past 45 work. That's being contrarian. I wasn't speaking about your list as a whole, merely your stance on this one person. I also opened my question (which was a question) with "I'm not saying this is what happened". I also didn't compare you or your list to Hitler or Nazis. You seem to be getting a bit defensive about an honest question asking for clarification of your earlier point.

I did. And I did adress why. Familiar with the AWA stuff and the Hennig feud in Portland. Basically : not seen enough for him to go higher. I'll be honest, I've heard so much hardcore pimping of Buddy Rose Portland years, that I have a hard time believing it can live up to such a hype at this point. I'll only know if/when I'll check it out. I'm not saying this is what happened, but do you feel like you're punishing Rose because of his vocal fanbase? It seems like your viewpoint on this is inherently contrarian. It's like picking apart a movie just to be different from all your friends.

Another case where one guy was perceived as elite by more voters but the other beat him by appearing on way more ballots. I voted Buddy higher but don't see a huge gap between the two. Both incredibly adaptable workers with shortish peaks. I do think Buddy was more consistent and creative within his peak. But the bottom line is a lot of people still haven't dived deep on Portland. Sorry for the immediate double post, but I think this is an interesting point, because the average vote between the two wasn't really that different, despite Rose getting 12 top 10s, a #2 and a #3. This is compared to Windham who got more votes (38 more, to be precise), but only one top 10 vote, which came in right at 10. To me, this says that despite Rose seeing a heavier contingent of voters that views him as one of the best of all time, there was an equal or greater block of voters that placed him on the back end of their ballots. More than anything, I'm interested to hear from someone who decided that Rose was worth ranking, but only in the bottom 25. That's a position that no one has really addressed for anyone throughout this project, and is inherently more interesting to me than leaving a person off a ballot completely.

It comes down to visibility. I'm not going to accuse people of not doing their homework, but Buddy Rose's most notable run for the vast majority of voters involved a vignette about the blow away diet. I think there is a vast difference between the careers of both men, but let's say for the sake of argument the careers are perfectly equal. Does anyone really think Barry Windham would be a top 25 worker of all time if he had the exact same set of matches, but the only nationally televised stuff was him as The Stalker? I think Windham's placement is actually one of the most interesting of the whole project. It shows more than anything else the biases that we all come in with, and in a way shows the attempts or lack there of to address those biases and achieve some sense of objectivity. Even if you don't agree with that, it shows how many participants value "input" over "output", or value a greatest hits CD over a 30 disc boxed set. I'm not saying these things as complaints, or to dismiss the process. I think they are arguments that we have been having since the mid 400s, and I can't find a candidate that better speaks to the divide than Windham.

I think it's natural that a lot of voters would consciously or subconsciously give wrestlers preferential rankings for promo work, because it's hard to separate from overall charisma. I think it's why Austin is so high, I think it's why Foley was so high, and I think it's part of the reason that Macho Man is so high. I get it, and I don't say it as a judgement. I actually felt when my ballot was done that I had made such an effort to not have promos effect rankings that the pendulum swung a bit to far the other way for me.

I think Casas also has at least 3 #1 votes.

I know we had previously talked about other lists that may be interesting to look at, and I would love to see two: - A list ranked purely by number of ballots (which I think will give a more concise picture of representation) - What the top 100 would look like with just everyone's top 10s. Like the GWE: Sight & Sound edition. I think that would be sort of a cool thing.