supremebve

I'd take this one step further. I took a criticism class in college and the thing I learned is that you can only judge things on what they are, not what you want them to be. We had to watch the movie "Invincible" which is the true story of a regular ass dude who tried out for the Philadelphia Eagles and somehow made the team. It was an overwhelmingly average movie, but that isn't what bothered me. I wrote my entire paper on how the movie portrayed the well known, to me at least, characters in the movie who clearly had nothing to do with the real people. I got my paper back and the professor basically told me to rewrite it, because whatever I wanted the movie to be is irrelevant to what the movie actually was. I try to bring that to any criticism I do for anything. Unless someone specifically asks me what I want to see, hear, feel, smell, or whatever I try to remove what I want from my criticism of it. If Cactus Jack and Vader put on a grappling exhibition full of chain wrestling and subtle limb selling, I'm going to judge it based on that. I'd find it ridiculous for them to do that, but I can only judge them on what they actually did not what I wanted them to do. Whether or not a match is successful should be based on whether or not Vader and Cactus Jack were able to put on a great match based on chain wrestling, not the fact that I'd rather see them brawl. I think 95% of my arguments about wrestlers and matches is based on people wishing a wrestler or a match was something else. What we want is irrelevant to what actually happens in a match, so judge what actually happens. If what they do doesn't work in the structure of the match go ahead and say it, but don't ask, "why didn't they work the match I wanted?"

I continue to be interested by this because I do think it is held against him. Why aren't we seeing Earthquake in top 10 lists? "Because he didn't have great matches". Okay, well why didn't he have great matches? You see the point? It is held against him. He was limited. And correspondingly there's a limit to how good his matches could have been. Let's up the stakes and make the case more extreme. I can think of a MORE limited guy who had a much better match than any Tenta match I've ever seen: I put Bill Watts and JYD vs. Midnight Express in my top 100 matches. That was a match all about smart booking, working smart, maximising strengths, telling a great story, etc. etc. It wouldn't have been possible without a superworker like Bobby Eaton to execute it. Bobby Eaton will be in my top 100, JYD won't. JYD played his part in that match. But I do hold it against him that he was limited. This is a different argument in my mind. Earthquake isn't an all time great worker, because he wasn't an all time great talent. Earthquake didn't fall short, because he was lazy, he pretty much reached his peak as a worker. Vader is an all time great talent, who also put forth an all time great effort. A difference in talent isn't the same thing as a difference in effort. He could have worked twice as hard as Vader, and never been Vader. Tenta was a really good athlete for someone his size, Vader was an exceptional athlete for anyone at any size. Some guys are just better at wrestling than other people, that doesn't mean the less talented person was working less hard. According to Meltzer's definition of workrate "It doesn't signify high spots, or signify not using rest holds, but having to do with lazy guys and hard working guys." Tenta wasn't a lazy guy, so it is unfair to say he wasn't working as hard because of his limitations. I don't think anyone has said that Tenta was as good of a wrestler as Vader, but don't agree with the criticisms of his workrate.

This lacked a clear thesis in my view. And I didn't really buy its conclusion that his brief and anecdotal exploration of a few different people's take on what workrate means that "there is no definition of workrate". There is a definition of workrate. It is Meltzer's one. The other people are stretching the word to mean something else. Here is Meltzer's definition. I think the problem with this as a definition isn't the definition, but how we all define "working hard" as individuals. A lot of people that we don't call workrate guys, are working just as hard as the guys that we do describe as workrate guys. Just because you are doing more stuff doesn't mean that the person doing less isn't working just as hard to get the match over. Stan Hansen isn't someone usually described as a workrate guy, but his matches are basically all action all the time. He isn't doing a bunch of suplexes and topes, but he clearly isn't being lazy. If I work in an office and you work in a coal mine, you can call me lazy because I'm not doing manual labor. Despite the fact that you could be a lazy ass coal miner, and I could be the hardest working desk jockey in the world. My point is that the kind of work should not matter as much as the work, when we define workrate. I judge workrate on how much effort, physical, mental, emotional, or otherwise goes into putting on a good match. I don't think Tully Blanchard's stalling should be a hit to his workrate, because that crowd interaction is important to the storytelling of his matches. I don't think Earthquake not bumping around like Vader should be held against him. In my mind the whole concept of anti-workrate is more of a issue with how we limit the definition of workrate, not the fact that I don't believe workrate is important.

I don't think it's an issue of working hard or not working hard enough. I think it's an issue of having better matches. Why did Vader have better matches than Earthquake? Because he was a more compelling character with more aura, more athletic ability and more options for constructing a match because of said athletic ability and aura. Earthquake was able to have perfectly acceptable matches based on ideas of how big men work that existed long before he came along. Vader, to an extent, rewrote the rules. "Big guys shouldn't play pinball because they'll be neutered" might be conventional wisdom, but Vader played pinball without being neutered because he's Vader. There's nothing wrong with John Tenta. It's just that Vader is an exceptional talent. It's not even really fair to point to Vader as how big men should work because he's the exception to so many rules that other guys with less gifts trying to do it wouldn't be able to pull it off. Vader could because he was a very special performer. Well said. Perfectly said, and the exact reason Tenta doesn't fit into the Anti-workrate discussion. His work shouldn't be discounted, because other people are exceptional.

This is my exact point in a much easier to understand format.

Do you think Tenta didn't have a high workrate? Vader was probably the best super heavyweight ever, and Blackwell is also an outlier when it comes to big guys. That doesn't mean that Tenta was just a fat dude wobbling around the ring. He was working his ass off. His most high profile run was against a Hogan, who was basically the definition of anti-workrate at the time. That didn't stop Tenta from going out there and working his ass off. He could have worked an easier style, but he went out there and busted his ass every night. I'm not saying that workrate isn't an important measure, but the definition of workrate seems to be limiting to guys like Tenta who was clearly working his ass off.

I think the biggest problem with this entire argument is that workrate doesn't really have a definition. I think the only real reason to think that Malenko has more workrate than Tenta is that Malenko is smaller. It isn't like guys like Tenta and Vader weren't working just as hard as someone like Malenko or Guerrero, they are just working differently. Malenko couldn't credibly work Tenta's style any more than Tenta could work his. We should judge these guys based on what they're trying to accomplish, not against some random concept that doesn't really apply to everyone. I don't know if that means I'm anit-workrate or if I'm just anti-arbitrary grading systems. It is kind of like grading Wayne Gretzky's hockey skills with football stats. He doesn't look like he's that great of an athlete, because you decided on a grading scale that doesn't fit his skills.

Local MMA fighter means about as much as local independent wrestler as far as skill goes. As someone who has done some training, I could probably get signed up for a fight next weekend if I asked around. That doesn't mean that I'd win every bar fight. That isn't the same thing as we're talking about here. Fighting a legit professional fighter in a bar is a terrible idea. Fighting a dude who signed up to fight in a barn a couple weekends ago is essentially the same thing as picking a fight with the average dude at the bar. My response was based on a guy like Eddie Alvarez saying he doesn't go to bars, because people want to test his skills. Fighting a guy like Eddie Alvarez in a bar is a horrible idea, he spends more time training to fight than you spend training to do anything. He's going to beat 95% of the population of the world into a bloody pulp.

Your point on Ohtani is dead on. If he would have retired in 2000, he'd be top 25 on my list, but I honestly haven't thought about him in years. He's one of my favorite wrestlers of the 90s, but he gained weight to become a heavyweight and lost everything that made him special.

There are a few MMA fighters, especially lighter weights (Eddie Alvarez comes to mind) that have said that they rarely ever go to bars anymore because people want to challenge them when they find out that they are a fighter. On the list of horrifically bad ideas where does picking a fight with an MMA fighter rank? My cousin and his friends were bouncers in Columbus Ohio for a while, and after dishing out many a beating they decided that they would go to the Team Hammer House gym to see how they matched up with MMA fighters. My cousin's friend(who they all agree is the best fighter of the bunch), who is basically the last dude you'd ever want to fight in a bar, ended up rolling with Wes Sims(Sims is best known for going crazy and stomping Frank Mir in a UFC fight. Stomping on an opponents head is illegal in UFC). My cousin's friend was a pretty decent high school wrestler, and would brag that he had never been put on his back. He said that Sims basically took him down and held him there, and there was nothing he could do. My cousin and his friends, who were essentially professional bar fighters, had no success whatsoever against the MMA guys. MMA is probably the only professional sport where you can just walk into a gym off the street and practice with a professional. The Hammer House dudes were apparently really cool about them just walking in their gym and working out with them. They basically just walked in one day and told them they wanted to see how they matched up with professionals. They said after they rolled with the guys, they gave them some pointers about how to counter the techniques they used against them and invited them back any time they wanted. If you want to see how you match up against professionals, go to the gym and do it in a controlled environment, you'll get beat within an inch of your life in a bar.

As a man who has been blessed with amazing good looks, great athletic ability, and general awesomeness, I'm tired of being judged by haters like you. It isn't my fault that women throw themselves at me. It isn't my fault even homeless people offer me money for the privilege of looking upon my face. It isn't my fault that I have adoring fans despite the fact that I don't really do anything but wake up in the morning and piss greatness. You can't justifiably hate me for it any more than you can hate Matt Sydal for it. Gorgeous Jimmy, is that you?

As a man who has been blessed with amazing good looks, great athletic ability, and general awesomeness, I'm tired of being judged by haters like you. It isn't my fault that women throw themselves at me. It isn't my fault even homeless people offer me money for the privilege of looking upon my face. It isn't my fault that I have adoring fans despite the fact that I don't really do anything but wake up in the morning and piss greatness. You can't justifiably hate me for it any more than you can hate Matt Sydal for it.

Nobody likes a hater. It's unbecoming.

I'm also someone who fought a lot as a teenager. I've found that if you get into multiple fights as an adult you are either a huge asshole or you have a crazy significant other.

I think these two are the kings of the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. I was to look at their matches move to move, I wouldn't really be impressed, but by the end I always feel like I watched something special. The way they build their matches clicks for me as well as any two wrestlers ever.

I don't remember exactly who it was, but one of the Divas was on the local sports radio show the morning before Raw was at the Verizon Center a couple years back. She told a story about how they were all at a bar and some guy was being a dick to a couple of the women wrestlers. Chavo Guerrero came to stop it, and the guy acted like he wanted to fight him until...Mark Henry walked up and no one thinks they can win that fight.

I'm not disputing that Orndorff could lose, he seems like the type who would go to the end of the earth not to lose. Paul Orndorff seems like the guy you would call if someone stole something from you that you can't afford not to get back. He's not the friend you call when you want some back up, he's the guy who is in the glass case that you don't break unless there is an emergency. I don't know what kind of neighborhood you guys grew up in, but I grew up in a neighborhood where fighting was fairly prevalent. There were guys who fought all the time, but then there were guys who only had to fight once. Orndorff seems like the type of dude who only had to fight once.

That sounds like Bill Watts logic. You go to work after getting your ass kicked by multiple people and your boss looks at you and says, "Let me see your knuckles." He looks at his hands, then he shakes his head with a tsk tsk and says, "well, this won't do at all." Then he walks out without saying another word, and you know that you don't have a job any more.

Orndorff kicked Vader's ass and was tougher than Orton. If I had to guess one wrestler at a time who got their ass kicked in a bar fight, I'd probably name 250 guys before I even considered that Paul Orndorff could have got his ass kicked by some random dude at a bar. If you've ever heard any of the witness accounts to the Vader fight, you you wouldn't dream about fucking with Paul Orndorff.

First of all, Loss I wish the like button worked for your response. Here is my (31st?) defense of the Ishii/Shibata match. When you were a kid did you ever play that game with a friend where you would punch each other in the arm and the first person who gives up loses? You punch your friend and then he punches you, and no matter how hard he hits you, you pretend it doesn't hurt. That is the story of this match. These two guys respect each other's toughness and they want to prove their tougher than the other. They hit each other with all of these big strikes, but don't want to give their opponent the satisfaction that they were hurt. If you are watching the match you know these strikes hurt, because they are stiffing the hell out of each other. The match works if you don't get caught up in thinking this match follows the same logic as all of the other matches on the show. The match follows its own logic, that is pretty simple if you aren't prejudiced by what you think it should be. It's like when you watch a boxing match and a guy lands a big shot, but his opponent shakes his head as if to say, "that didn't hurt." Of course it hurt, a professional boxer just punched him square in the face, but he's not going to let his opponent have the satisfaction of showing him the obvious pain that he is in. Hashimoto and Choshu were enemies who want to desperately prove that they are the better wrestler. These are two guys who kind of like each other who want to prove once and for all which one is tougher. I thought they made it very clear from the beginning that these guys were more interested in playing their private game than putting on a traditional wrestling match. Not everything needs to be a serious athletic contest, or a hate filled brawl. Sometimes, a couple of guys trying something a little different works, as I thought it did here.

It is so hard to go backwards though. I don't see how they could possibly go back to a less impactful style without the fans turning against them. Not only that, I don't think the wrestlers would want to go backwards either. For what it is worth, these guys all seem to have professional pride and want to put on good matches. Telling them to tone it down isn't going to go over well, espeically if the crowd isn't reacting to it. I hope the rash of injuries will cut down on the multiple man ladder, cage, cell matches, because those matches are crazy risky(and completely played out).

My first day doing judo was fairly rough. I had to learn how to fall, I only learned one throw, and one hold down, but was expected to participate in the end of class rolling(by end of class, I mean the last hour). So not knowing how to defend throws I hit the ground a lot. I really didn't have any idea how to defend myself from anything. Most of the class was gentle, but this guy who had just earned his yellow belt threw me around like a rag doll. At the time I was 19 and about 175 lbs. of brutal force whose entire life was based upon eating and working out. So this 130 pound dude kept throwing me on the ground until he made the tactical error and went for a Tomoe Nage. What he didn't know is that Mr. Perfect was one of my favorite wrestlers as a kid. I caught his leg when he went to post his foot and hit that bitch with a fisherman's suplex. I was frustrated from getting my ass kicked and just went with what I knew. He had the wind knocked out of him, but he was OK, but I was told with no uncertain terms that suplexing people would not be tolerated.

I can see where you're coming from, but I'd say their partnership with the Komen group is worse. Those people trying to bully others about breast cancer is about as scummy as it gets.

The Connor's Cure thing isn't exploitative. They are raising money and awareness for a disease that affects millions of people. Sure, that cute little kid's memory is being used to raise that money and awareness, but his parents are clearly happy with how their child's memory is being used. Cancer sucks, and I can say for a fact that you feel lonely and helpless if someone you love is diagnosed. The WWE, and the WWE audience gave that family a level of support they wouldn't have received otherwise and that shit matters. Cancer is one of those things that you'd do everything you can to help the person who has it, except there really isn't anything you can do. If that charity helps at all it is a net positive.

Even if no one actually said those words, it can't be an accident that the divas slip from face to heel like they do.