S.L.L.

What's disappointing is that is probably the only area in which Flair isn't living the gimmick, and it's the one where living the gimmick would be (debatably) preferable. For whatever it's worth, my brother seems to be into the chaw to some degree or another, and the only reason I know this is because he's got the occasional Skoal container around. Other than that, he's undetectable, so there's some anecdotal evidence of CFCW's claims right there. That said, wrestling is about realism, not reality. "Realistic" perception, as has been noted, is that smoking is classy and cool, and chewing tobacco is gross hillbilly shit. Reality is that smoking and chewing are both popular amongst multiple classes and cultures, are both kinda cool and kinda gross depending on the context, and will both give you cancer. But this is wrestling, so I don't see why a little thing like reality should be an issue.

Surely Jake Roberts? Taking it a step further, Mid-South era Jake Roberts rocking the belly shirt.

For that matter.... In 1989, when he was backing up Kerry Von Erich? Yeah, maybe. In 1994, when Hogan was giving all his old friends a free ride on the WCW gravy train? Yeah, maybe. In 1985? I pity the fool who's stupid enough to believe that.

Again, not that I would advise a lucha newbie to go cold into maestro wrestling, but if you did, this is a good one to start with for reasons Phil and I explained back when we first saw it:

Then the thread needs to be renamed, because that's not the question it's asking. Counterpoint: yes they do. If with the comparatively limited number of people who can throw fireballs, let's not pretend that the style of combat we see on a regular basis in pro wrestling is even remotely realistic outside of some of your worked shoot feds. The Undertaker and Kane don't summon lightning and thunder in their matches, but they do forcefully drop people on the tops of their heads, with all of their body weight coming down on top of them, without killing them, crippling them, or even really injuring them. Forget what Taker and Kane can do. LOSING to Taker or Kane and simply being able to walk away from it under your own power is a superhuman feat.

Ergo, if Big Show worked ten good TV matches with ten different guys and with none of them getting more than ten minutes, he would be the best wrestler ever. Also: Santino Marella Vladimir Kozlov Kid Kash Roderick Strong Jack Evans Alex Shelley Jimmy Garvin (mostly because I'm curious as to why you think HHH is a poor man's version of him...yeah, Garvin is obviously better, but I don't see the similarities)

Regarding lucha matwork, I wrote this about the above match:

Two things: 1. The discussion of whether or not female athlete X could effectively compete against male athlete Y in legitimate spot Z completely misses the point, as wrestling is fake, and as Matt D so eloquently pointed out, it is about symbolism and perception. Wrestling taught us that guys with bodybuilder physiques, guys with the kind of musculature that's visually impressive but doesn't have much athletic functionality, can excel in wrestling. Wrestling has taught us that the morbidly obese are dangerous powerhouses who can excel in wrestling. Wrestling has taught us that people decades past their physical primes can excel in wrestling. I wouldn't necessarily advocate wrestling promotions going mixed-gender for the most part and for a number of reasons. But if Chun-Li can hang with the rest of the World Warriors, an equivalent figure doing the same in wrestling doesn't seem laughable to me. 2. Back when I was in high school, I was watching my recently-arrived copy of Schneider Comp #9 with a friend of mine whose wrestling fandom was a bit more Big Two-centric. The Shinobu Kandori/Bull Nakano chain match came up and, well, he wasn't quite sure how to react to it. Talking about it with our friends at lunch some time later, his words were something along the lines of "don't get me wrong, it was an amazing match...but that shit was messed up". Point is - and I'm kinda surprised we've gone five pages into this thread without bringing this up - there are more than a few people out there who recognize the talent of certain joshi workers, but who don't like to watch it simply because violence against women, even when perpetrated by other women, makes them uncomfortable. And yeah, I guess there is a chauvinistic element to that, but it's one I don't think can be as easily dismissed as others.

Rayo has the same anti-HHH thing that Caras does. Caras is definitely a better brawler than HHH, and a more compelling main event star. More convincing working the gritty tough guy gimmick, and more entertaining as well. Better expressions even when he had a mask. Rayo is a more charismatic and entertaining performer than HHH. For guys with a lot of silly signature spots, Rayo's are probably sillier, but they're also worked into his matches better and can be pretty fun. His offense is better, with even some of the goofier stuff looking high-impact, and he moves around very fluidly. Rayo also smokes HHH for longevity as a quality performer. I've seen quality work from him as recently as 2010. And well, for a guy so reliant on the "big match feel" to cover up his shortcomings, HHH has never had as big (or as good) of a "big match" as Rayo vs. Cien mask vs. mask. I would put both of those guys comfortably ahead of him. Canek is tricky because footage of his prime is sparse even by 80's lucha standards, and his his post-prime was shit. The "received wisdom" with him was that he was a good worker, but not an elite one, and from what I've seen, I don't really doubt that. Still, there is something to be said for the fact that he was not only one of the few guys on the 80's New Japan set to have a good match with Tiger Mask, but possibly the only one to actually coax a decent performance from the guy instead of just hiding how much he sucked. Also, I think anyone who slammed Andre should be considered better than HHH until proven otherwise. I've seen Blue Demon Jr. have flashes of competence but...yeah, that dude is pretty terrible. I think HHH goes 1 for 3 here, with Canek being undecided.

The death of Eddie Guerrero and the realization that I had - in a small way - contributed to the system that facilitated and encouraged the things that ultimately killed arguably my favorite wrestler ever caused me to swear off WWE forever...for two months, before I found out Finlay was coming out of retirement. I am a consumer whore, and how.

Weren't they doing this because he had been traded to Smackdown, and UPN wanted the porn star gimmick toned down, and wanted the name rhyming with "penis" to go away? Which just makes it weirder since, when you listen to his promos, "The Big Valbowski" was rarely used as a nickname so much as it was as a euphemism for his cock. And that's the part that always struck me as weird about that period: his gimmick went from being a porn star to being his own penis.

During Sean Stasiak's 2002 run with the deranged poet from "Planet Stasiak" gimmick, he had one match where his introductory chyron read "Sean Stasiak 'Planet Stasiak'", suggesting that "Planet Stasiak" was not only his place of origin, but also his nickname, and that it was meant to be placed after his proper name for some reason.

Honestly, even calling '05-'06 Impact "good television" feels like overstating it's case. "Better television" than what would follow, certainly. It wasn't a totally unwatchable show, and there were enough good things going on that you could justify being a regular viewer. Still, I'd have a hard time calling it better than current Raw, and current Raw is not all that great. So when you spend five-and-a-half years making a show so bad that it makes a period where it was slightly worse than current Raw look like a golden age by comparison...yeah, worst wrestling promotion in history.

It's bad enough that the dude plagiarized me, but that was a pretty serious butchering of my original post. becomes.... Who reads my writing and says "this needs more words...his original point was too coherent"? becomes.... Ummm...no. One does not have to be working towards the greatest needs of society to be the hero of a story. It would be kinda limiting if only those working towards the "greatest" societal needs qualified, and the whole point of this is that the storytelling template we follow isn't limiting. It's further limiting when doing something to benefit oneself could only be heroic in "ideal" circumstances, though to be fair he does not actually define what qualifies as "ideal". But yeah, by this definition, does any character in wrestling history qualify as a hero? Epic plagiarism fail. becomes.... One also doesn't have to obey the rules and laws of their real government to be a hero in fiction, either. I wrote that line specifically in response to someone who, when I challenged them to name a great fictional hero who wasn't really heroic, had the balls to name Robin Hood. Yeah, robbed from the corrupt rich, gave to the oppressed poor. What an asshole. Thing is, standing up to King John's corruption wasn't really heroic because John was usurping the throne from Richard, it was heroic because he was fighting for those in need, even though the guy he had to fight against was the goddamn King of England. Not only is he adding more words to my writing, the words he's adding are muddying the point. becomes.... NO! They have to put the needs of all of humanity - a group that includes the hero themselves - before other concerns, like personal wants. Yes, sometimes the hero can't save everyone. Sometimes he has to make tough choices about which sections of humanity are going to have their needs met, and which aren't. But the structure isn't about "sometimes". It's about "every time". He's placing further limitations on a structure who's whole point was to be as limitless as possible before a story could no longer function. becomes.... 1. No, the opposition doesn't have to be "a LITTLE bit more powerful" than the hero, not that he can't be. What he has to be is "more powerful than him, or more resourceful, intelligent, connected, or otherwise has some kind of advantage" over the hero. That's why I wrote that. Lex Luthor is not "a little bit more powerful" than Superman. He's actually a lot less powerful. He's still an effective villain because he's found other ways of getting the upper hand on Supes. Bobby Heenan was a lot less powerful than Hulk Hogan. He was still an effective heel because he had a seemingly endless supply of hired goons who could do what he couldn't on his own. Relevant to this thread, Ric Flair was a lot less powerful than many of his opponents. He was still an effective heel because he was craftier and more devious than most of them. 2. This is one of the few places where he actually removes lines completely from my original piece, and maybe it's just me, I do think it benefited from the little extra bit of clarification I gave when talking about what I meant by "doubt". Might just be me, though. becomes.... The Epic of Gilgamesh wasn't a play, jackass. I don't know why he went with "every major play" as a replacement for "everything". I guess it just goes to show why he needs to steal other people's material. But at least you could claim that NCIS (and why was that the automatic replacement for 24?) is a teleplay. The Epic of Gilgamesh was a written work. becomes.... APOLOGIZE TO BIX! becomes.... Again, he tries to streamline my point, and this time, I'm pretty confident that my version reads better. Even if I didn't need to fully clarify that I wasn't talking about a satirical portrayal of Superman as a jerk, at least my full clarification reads better than him awkwardly alluding to it in passing. becomes.... Well, at least now we see why he stripped down some of my earlier clarifying points. It was so he could add clarifying points of his own. And by that, I mean he pumped these lines full of random words until they were barely recognizable as sentences. becomes.... I like how he managed to keep all the bells and whistles of that sentence intact while removing the actual point. It has no reason to be in his article at all in this form, but he left it's dried-out husk impaled on a stake, possibly with the words "Shylock Go Home" written on it in case I ever came across it. becomes.... "Either" does not mean "such as". If I didn't have my original post to compare this to, I wouldn't know what he was trying to say. becomes.... Oh, and there's another thing that I didn't clarify in my original post that he fixed for me. Apparently, dropping a biblical verse without explaining how you came to know said biblical verse leaves too many unanswered questions. Idiot that I am, I figured I could quote scripture and leave it at that, as further details about my religious affiliations and beliefs weren't relevant to the post. And why the exclamation point at the end of that sentence? Why is he so damn happy that he knows his Bible? becomes.... If they dropped a piano on you, you'd probably die. On top of that, they'd be dropping an object that you commonly think of when you think about objects getting dropped on other people for comedic purposes...which is stupid, because the whole point of that analogy was to illustrate the perils of being creative/different/unpredictable for the sake of being creative/different/unpredictable. Replacing the halibut with the vastly more predictable payload of a piano defeats the purpose. becomes.... LOLspeak? Really? Goddammit, this guy sucks. My hate is not lol.

I would think of that as "false patriotism" for lack of a better explanation. It's actually kinda weird that that happened first. "Guy making obviously false claims of patriotism to appeal to jingoistic fans" seems like an obscure enough concept that you wouldn't get there without going through "guy who's actual sense of patriotism leads him to be a complete asshole" first, but they did.

Babyface working an anti-nationalist gimmick. No, I would think not. But looking at it from the other end, I do think we're well past due for a heel working an "ugly American" gimmick. I guess that was one of the aspects of JBL's larger JR Ewing/Tom DeLay gimmick. I can't really recall it being the central focus of a wrestler's gimmick, and I'm inclined to think that most wrestling fans could grasp the difference between "good patriotism" and "bad patriotism" if you spelled it out for them and had a guy who was enough of an insufferable jerk to lend weight to it.

Well, not in those words, obviously, but how else do you interpret announcers specifically pointing out that a noted heel has symbolically associated himself with the Polish resistance against the Nazis?

You still don't grasp how these sets are made do you? Even putting aside that, he's complaining about how awful the Dudley Boys were, and especially Spike, and how excess focus on them squeezed out focus on more deserving wrestlers like...Raven? First complaining about people not liking Nobuhiko Takada, now sticking up for goddamn Raven? Anyway, more to the actual point of the thread...Loss, are you familiar with Lazz? Quote Pete Stein from an old DVDVR Road Report: Obviously, that's not what you're talking about, I would need one of the guys who was actually there to tell me how representative, say, OMEGA crowds were of the general population of the south, but it does give one hope. I mean, it's wrestling. You gotta have your Bobo Brazils and whatnot before you can have The Rock. You can't throw them into tolerance and expect them to adapt easily. They need those baby steps away from "boo the evil stereotype" to "cheer the likeable stereotype" before we can get to "the trait we usually stereotype is completely incidental to this character". I'm inclined to think that they'd be able to get there with gay wrestlers, though it seems unlikely at the moment that they'll try.

You think that's bad? Wade Barrett has started wearing trunks with a symbol on it that the announcers inform me is associated with the Warsaw Uprising. At least I could pretend that La Resistance was just a team of Francophones who were resisting something and chose the most obvious - albeit ill-advised - name to represent that. Now Vince McMahon is more or less actively telling us to boo a guy in part because he sympathizes with das Juden.

FWIW, my point was not so much about clean finishes but rather abrupt/truncated finishes. There were no shortage of matches from a lot of promotions domestic and foreign that fed fans a steady diet of matches with screwy finishes, but that still felt like fully realized matches. I can't say that about 80's WWF.

The crowd responses would say otherwise. Good for the crowd, but I'm pretty sure Frankensteiner was speaking to his own personal feelings on the matter. CFCW's (admittedly very compelling) thoughts on the matter aside, I never had a problem with Hogan's selling during the body of his matches. They fit what he was going for fine for the most part, but I never really found anything especially laudatory about it. He's not Ricky Steamboat. He's not Ricky Morton. He's not Cena or Lawler or Eddie or Rey or Savage or Funk or Dustin or Necro Butcher...not any of those guys. He's better than Triple H. He's a guy who clearly got how to lay out a match effectively for his (very, very large) crowd. But being better than Triple H in just about any respect isn't laudatory. I think he's good at selling during the body of his matches. I don't think it's a stand-out quality for him. I also think his frequently poor long-term selling often undercut a lot of the good he might have done in the first two-thirds of his matches. I think the Hulk-Up isn't necessarily a bad spot. It fit his character, he had the charisma to pull it off effectively on an aesthetic level, and there's certainly no arguing with it's value as a crowd pleaser. But the way so many matches would just end right after that instead of using it to spin into a larger third act always frustrates me. People who have read enough of my stuff know one of my biggest pet peeves is matches that build up a strong first two acts, but end without a third, or with a very truncated third. The Hulk-Up, more often than not in Hogan's salad days, marked the end of the second act, and then was usually the third act by itself, and those matches always left me feeling unfulfilled. And if what was happening up to that point was interesting, it also left me feeling robbed. And that's not just a Hogan problem, I grant you, but an 80's WWF program. When the first attempt at the DVDVR Best of the 80's WWF set came out, an adage sprouted about the use of foreign objects by heels. How in any other territory of the era, the heel using a foreign object was a way to let him take advantage for the next part of the match. It was a turning point in the match. In 80's WWF, it was the end of the match - the heel either won immediately, or he got caught and was DQ'd. In the immortal words of Crow T. Robot, "and the tension is thwarted". And really, I tend to feel 80's WWF was very bad overall about booking the third acts of their matches. But Hogan's matches were by far the highest profile example of that.

Rob Naylor as the Precious to Ricardo Rodriguez' Sunshine is an angle with great potential in my imagination.

Tell that to Ted Woolsey. Not to go too far afield, but wasn't Woolsey's whole bit that he mastered the art of reworking Japanese gaming things into a western context to the point that there only remained "a lingering amount of uniquely Japanese element to it"?

I might take his point better if it weren't coming from a site known to occasionally post a deceptive headline to an article from time to time, but in general, and certainly in this specific case, it's kinda hard to disagree.

My reaction to Rod Trongaurd was always that he sounded like a more eloquent Neil Hamburger. That, and that he totally sucked.