Woof

I've been watching wrestling for over 30 years. I was a pure mark as a kid in the 80's, came back to it in the late 90's in time to mark out for the attitude era while also immersing myself in the "smart" culture, transitioned into my "workrate" phase during the indie boom of the early 00's, and have settled into an "I just want to be entertained again" old man hammock for the past 6 years or so. I've followed the major American feds closely, dabbled in the indies for stretches, cherry picked some Japan viewing, and at one time or another have given every major promotion/style at least a cursory look. I've even take a few brief stabs at recapping/reviewing some stuff. All in all I feel like I'm a pretty well rounded wrestling fan. And yet in the six months since I discovered this PWO message board and the PWO/PTBN podcasts, I feel like everything I knew – or thought I knew – about wrestling has become a giant dumpster fire of wasted brainwaves. The way some of you guys absorb a match is mind-blowing to me. I read some of the match reviews on this site and I think to myself, "how did they GET that from watching this match? Or worse, "from watching this match ONCE"? I am genuinely in awe of the depth of knowledge that so many of you guys have. I feel like I'm getting a legit wrestling education just by coming here and I gotta say, a lot of what I have learned has enhanced the way I watch stuff nowadays. That being said, I have to ask: How the hell do you still enjoy it if you come at everything with such a hypercritical eye? I can understand being distracted by overly fake or just generally shit looking work. Obviously blown spots can completely take me out of a match. And I feel like if the story is clear enough going in I can usually pick up smaller, subtler details that might enhance my enjoyment of it. But I just can't seem to get my head around how so many of you can plop in a match at random and immediately be conscious of the match structure; of how long the shine segment was, or how effective the heat segment was, or whether or not one guy was carrying the other, or any number of details that at first pass I would find completely distracting to focus on. Is there some great art to watching a match that I simply don't grasp, or have some of you simply accepted that you absorb the product as something different than pure entertainment now and you get enough out of that to make up for whatever mindless joy you might have once got? I'm genuinely curious. How the hell do you do it?

Fun listen, but which one of you was recording this while frying bacon from inside an iron lung?

Watching at the time I remember my only real beef was the jackknife finish. I get Sleeze's point about it showing that Shawn only had so much left in the tank to make the pin, but for the story they were telling winning didn't really matter. Shawn was only coming back for that one match to face Hunter and get revenge for the attack. Whether he won or lost was irrelevant to Shawn, since he wasn't going to be wrestling again. He wasn't concerned about positioning, so merely pinning Tiple H didn't really mean anything to his character. He needed to take him out, so I always felt he should have expelled every last bit of energy toward that end. The pin should only have come after he knocked Triple H out so significantly that a three count would have seemed definitive, as in "I accomplished what I set out to do - I beat you down". A flashpin, even after all the carnage, seemed pointless. I don't mind the kip-up because it always read to me as "this is gonna hurt like hell, but I *NEED* to do this". MJH is right about that being his "thing".

Couple of YouTube links for Johnny and Pete (and anybody else who might be interested) for the PROGRESS promotion that Pete reviewed. They put a full show from back in May of 2014 online (they had some hard camera problems so they gave it away rather than charge fans for it). It's a little ragged due to the ringiside only camera work but hot damn do you ever get a sense of the atmosphere. I've been watching a lot of Revolution Pro over the last few weeks and even though they use a lot of the same workers the two promotions have SUCH a different feel. Progress is definitely the ECW to Rev Pro's ROH. This is also the show where the Havoc-Ospreay feud is essentially begun, as Jimmy goes after the young golden boy midway through the show and goes all Reservoir Dogs on him (complete with "Stuck In The Middle With You" playing over the house PA). It's pretty intense. The show can be found here: There's also a fantastic 5 minute video highlight package of the Havoc-Ospreay feud that was used for their title match this past July. Totally makes me want to go out and get that match and might help give you a little contextual background for their recent re-match. You can find that here:

The more I think about it, the more I favor the NXT model. A weekly one hour show that is a breeze to sit through and where every match and segment has some form of long-term meaning. The quarterly specials give them something big to build to, but they do little mini blow-offs along the way for stuff that isn't as crucial (Rhyno vs Joe being a recent example). I'm generally excited about the big specials because they're far enough apart and I'm not burnt out on the product, so I give NXT my full attention when I watch the weekly show.

I'm not so sure AJ and Joe are a in a similar place career-wise. Joe is starting to break down physically, and that tends to happen faster with bigger guys. I got the feeling he took the WWE offer because he could see the end coming and wanted to grab something while it was there. Plus he's booked more as a special attraction than the "Best In The World" litmus test that AJ is, at least out on the indies. Feels like AJ is just better suited to be a freelancer. Not that I wouldn't love to see him tear it up in NXT/WWE. I just get the feeling it's not likely, at least not anytime soon.

Isn't AJ in that very rare sweet spot right now where going to WWE would be considered a step down for him? He's better protected in NJPW and the indies than he would ever be in WWE and by all accounts is making serious bank.

ECW TV in the mid 90's didn't show a LOT of feature matches. When the Gangstas debuted and feuded with the Public Enemy for example, none of their arena matches made TV. Plus a lot of the other main event matches were clipped to holy hell on the show. I agree that they're fun to binge watch, but you end up missing a lot of the payoffs. I really liked the original ROH model where they booked DVD to DVD, because they often added a lot of backstage promos and whatnot to flesh out the stories. The problem was those promos were often pretty terrible and the shows were just too f'n long to sit through in a single setting. If they had adapted the ECW style and cut each show into 3 or 4 one hour blocks for TV, they probably would have been my favorite promotion of all time. You're dead on about the territories though. That's kind of what got me started on this subject. All of the territories were using TV to hype their house show circuit, but they all did it in wildly different ways.

That Tanahashi quote is interesting. I don't think it necessarily undoes the drama of the match UNLESS the story you were telling is one of hatred. For example, the Cena-Owens series was more or less about "who can beat who", so handshakes after any of those matches would have been okay, because those guys weren't in a blood feud, they were in it to see who the better man was. The fact that Owens got offended by Cena's handshake and "you deserve to be here" comment makes him a great heel in part BECAUSE that moment wasn't one where the handshake was out of line. That fact that he felt it was just reinforced what a jaded a-hole he is (as a character). Same with Jericho vs Michaels at WM19. The post-match hug was earned, because they were fighting for respect. Jericho's punt to the nuts was awesome because as a fan I was totally okay with the hug of respect, and yet there was Jericho being a shitty loser about it. It fit the story. I think I might have been okay with Banks hugging Bayley after her win on Saturday if it was just the two of them, because even though Banks is a total badass, I could accept a heel having the dimension to at least acknowledge Bayley's quest for the title and the fact that she beat her clean. What took me out of the moment completely was the presence of Becky & Charlotte, because in the storyline Sasha has NO reason to respect those two. They were both once her on-screen partners who were now against her, and they both failed to take the title from her previously. Plus she was facing them the next night in the tag match. It made ZERO sense for her to be buddy-buddy with them at that time. If they had done one or the other (Bayley and Sasha hug or Bayley, Becky & Charlotte sans Sasha), it would have worked. Instead it just reminded in the middle of a show that I was watching a performance rather than a competition.

Point taken about Memphis, but I was more talking about how there was rarely (always an exception of course) a lot of long term build-up to a particular match-up. The feud may have a long build, but in terms of making you wait to see two guys FINALLY clash, that wasn't something they usually did.

Random WWF MSG show from late '91. Vince McMahon, Bobby Heenan and Lord Al Hayes are on commentary. Now clearly Hayes is out of his league here, and better yet, he knows it. Heenan is a whirlwind, putting over and putting down everybody who's name is even mentioned. So his Lordship quickly fades into the background and says next to nothing of note for the entire show. During one particularly boring match, Hayes goes silent for at least ten minutes. I mean, he says NOTHING, to the point that you forget he's even there. McMahon calls a move or something and then finishes the thought with, "You alive over there Alfred?". The pure randomness combined with McMahon's clear annoyance that Hayes is doing jack shit was enough to crack me up. But Hayes tops it, as he INSTANTLY pipes up with a very enthusiastic "Yes, indeed!", to which McMahon sardonically replies, "Well, that's good." Al then proceeds to go off on a two minute rant about the match while Heenan and McMahon stand by in stunned silence. Pure genius.

So I've been bouncing around a lot lately in my viewing, hitting various promotions and time periods for stretches at a time, and one thing that has struck me is not only the stylistic difference in the wrestling and/or booking, but the difference in structural booking, by which I mean, what they're booking to. There seem to be as many variations on the "booking calendar" (if we want to call it that) as there are in wrestling styles. I've also seen this reinforced a little bit in the 1983 Project that's going on over in armchair booking. You've got the weekly episodic style, probably most famous in Memphis, where they booked week-to-week, the TV setting up the Monday Coliseum show. There was almost no long term build going on, as a match would get set up on the TV, then the match would occur on Monday, followed by fallout and follow-up match. The plus side was that the angles were white hot because they were constantly moving forward and you never knew what was going to happen, but it seems to me there was very little in the way of big match anticipation. (Oddly enough I fele like TNA is kind of doing this now, except there's no Coliseum show, they just blow it off in the second hour of the show.) The old school WWF style was more of showcase booking, where the TV was there to just promote the wrestlers as personalities, with an occasional angle thrown out there just to hype a program that they were going to run across all the house shows. But for the most part the building of future match-ups took place in the specific arenas (MSG being the prime one). Once they added the big 4 PPV's that changed slightly, but there will still plenty of matches on those early mega cards that had little-to-no build. TV was purely there as an ad for the house show and to build anticipation for featured match-ups. The current WWF PPV model is sort of between the two, where the TV is episodic, with one week building off of the previous, but the payoff is almost always only going to come at the PPV. NXT uses the same model, just stretched out more between big shows (although as a result they use a form of showcase booking mixed in). Then you get the current indy DVD model where each show is more or less equal, with each one just building to the next and angles and feuds getting blown off sporadically along the way as needed. Sure, some of the bigger indies are now at the point where they have "mega shows", but the other events still aren't treated as meaningless. I kind of feel like ECW popularized this style (just that they had TV to show highlights and promos as they went). They never really had TV tapings as such until the very end when they went on TNN. Honestly, I have no idea how the various Japan or Mexico promotions work, since I mostly only ever watch one-off matches or mega events (and the lack of understanding commentary doesn't help me get how/what they're building), so if anybody has anything to add there, fill me in. Anyway, I'm curious what people think about the various styles and which ones you prefer. Some feel like they're better set up to deliver big matches, while other styles feel like they're more about storytelling. Do you have a preference? Or is the variety part of the appeal of watching different promotions?

You may want to name drop the name of the band that does your music. I know you did on the episode it debuted, but giving them a little shout out each episode would fill people in who may have missed that episode. Or you know, people like me, who forgot to write it down at the time are now curious, "hey, who does your music?".

Why do people get so hung up on the idea of a "botched" move? If wrestling is supposed to be an athletic competition, isn't it reasonable to expect that not every attempted move is going to be successful or hit cleanly? When that fall happened on Saturday I just took at as "Bayley went for something there but didn't hit it", even though in the moment I knew it was probably not *meant* to happen as it did. I didn't view it any different than a guy blowing a dunk in basketball. The only time a botch irritates me is when it exposes the business as being staged. Going for a move and missing it, or at the lest not hitting it cleanly, never bothers me.

I like that as this show has progressed over the last couple of weeks you guys are really starting to establish your unique group dynamic. I feel like you three each come at wrestling from pretty diffferent perspectives and now that you're getting used to each other we're starting to hear more passionate and more firm stances on things. Makes for an entertaining listen. Keep 'em coming.

I'm actually curious as to why they haven't given Christian a shot at commentary somehwere. They plug Byron Saxton into at least three different shows (Raw, Superstars, NXT) as well as PPV pre-shows and he brings zero to the table in terms of personality, ring experience, or broadcasting skill. Christian is very easy on the mic, quick witted, and was a guy who got by through most of his WWE run thanks to his ability to tell basic stories in less flashier matches (his E&C days excepted, of course). Seems to me he'd be perfect in the Lawler role they're trying to shoehorn crank JBL into.

I guess I'm not 100% sure that everyone has the same take as that. I often get the feeling that some people when breaking down a match and assigning it a rating are doing so from the perspective of "based on the technical merits of layout and execution, this match is of *insert rating here* quality", at which point they might add the qualifier, "but I loved the hell out of it and had a blast watching it", which to me are two separate views. I think there's value in each approach, but the difference is why there tends to be a lot of flame wars over "star rating" on boards like this. People go into it with different intentions. I don't rate matches just because I simply can't get my head around it, due to the fractured nature with which I consume wrestling. I do it with music though, because I listen to so much stuff I need the reference points just for my own sanity. When I do it there, it's entirely within the context of my own personal taste. I might give a particular old school Rush album a 4 out of 10 simply because I have a lot of Rush albums and that one doesn't speak to me for whatever reason. I might then turn around and give 8 stars to some newer prog band that I've only heard one album from because their sound feels fresh to me. At no point am I making the argument that this newer album is twice as good as the old Rush album. It's more for me to know how necessary the album is for me. To bring it back to the "context and quality" issue, my enjoyment of a match can be completely altered by the conext in which I'm viewing it. I personally LOVED the Bayley-Sasha match on Saturday in large part because NXT is the only current promotion I watch with any consistency, so I went into it looking for the payoff and was deeply invested in getting it. Conversely I watched some random All Japan tag match on YouTube the other day involving Jumbo and a partner who I forget versus an aging Pat O'Connor and Ken Mantell, and I loved that depsite having ZERO context. I could never really compare the two experiences because one them was just me enjoying a random match for the art of the craft, whereas the other one was completely influenced by an emotional connection that would not have been there had I known the outcome going in. Even if I revisit the NXT match years from now, it will be impossible for me to view it in a vaccuum, because it was always bring back the feeling I had watching it live.

This conversation kind of begs the question "what do you see as the purpose of star ratings to be?". Pete and Steven got into it on the This Week In Wrestling podcast this past weekend and it seems relevant here. For those of you who choose to apply star ratings, are you just using them as a self-referrential tool to mark where it falls in your own personal viewing experience, or are you trying to truly grade every match as some sort of artistic endeavor independent of your own emotional ties to it?