S.L.L.

Not to complicate Jerry's upcoming response further, but I'm throwing in the next part of my argument now. All the non-wrestling aspects of the product: the promos, the angles, etc As I've said before. In other words, matches are overrated? Well, you already know that I and everyone else here doesn't buy that, but I remain unconvinced that you really believe it either. From the older thread: 4. Apparently, an awful lot. You say that the essence of wrestling is not the matches, but you illustrate that point by pointing to DiBiase vs. Virgil, DiBiase vs. Savage, and Watts/Lee vs. MX....three wrestling matches. So, yeah, I think it's safe to say that's where the essence is. You can throw Sheik/Steamboat in there as well. You can't downplay the importance of wrestling matches by pointing out the importance of wrestling matches, and since you keep doing it, I'm inclined to think they're a lot more important to you than you let on, maybe even more than you're aware of. Psychology: The Campbell/Williams definition is the correct one - why the wrestlers do what they do. If a wrestler thinks psyching their opponent out or working the crowd would be in their best interest, that's psychology. Logic: Exactly what it says on the tin - things making sense. Obviously, being a medium of fiction, allowances are going to be made for suspension of disbelief, but within reason does everything make sense. Working the arm if you've already started attacking it would be a logical approach, but not necessarily the one you have to take. However, if your arm has been worked over, and you suddenly start throwing clotheslines with it with no ill effect, we have a problem. Storytelling: Exactly what it says on the tin - telling a story, and the nature of the medium is such that all matches do this automatically. If absolutely nothing else, a wrestling match will, by default, tell the story of two or more people who are trying to win a martial arts competition against one another. Usually, this built-in story is kinda unremarkable on it's own, though, so we often look for additional story to be piled on top of it. "This arm injury has put worker A at a serious disadvantage, especially as he needs this arm to do his finisher" would be an example of such a story, though it's hardly the only one. But it elevates it above the basic "two fighters fighting" and can make the match pop and stand out from the pack more. I've been taking part in the DVDR project -- admittedly late on board with the All Japan set. But I've read through many comments in Too Short on the Mid South set too. People do draw a distinction, whether explicitly or implcitly, between "I really enjoyed this" and "this was a great match". I can't point to individuals, but there IS a tendency to draw a line between FUN on the one hand, and QUALITY on the other. Flair vs. Jumbo is QUALITY A chaotic 6-man tag from 88 is FUN Do you think this distinction doesn't exist? And do you think I'm mistaken to point to it? I think you're mistaken as to what it means. I don't want to speak for everyone, but when I say a match is "fun but not great" or something like that, it doesn't mean that great things aren't also fun. I enjoy greatness. That's what makes it great. But not everything I enjoy is necessarily great. You look at my iPhone, you'll see I listen to a lot of really cheesy, embarrassing 80's music that well and truly enjoy, but I would be very squeamish about calling great. But that doesn't mean I don't genuinely enjoy all of the actual great music I also have on there. People are saying that thus and such match is enjoyable but not great, but are any of them saying that thus and such match is great but not enjoyable? These people are making a distinction, but it doesn't mean what you think it means. Oh God, no! Look, wrestling's narrative tools are limited. Very, very limited. Maybe more limited than any other medium of fiction in existence. It does not have the weight necessary to embrace high artistic concepts. And even if it could, does anyone actually want to see that? Do you even really want to see that?

It's not that he can't point to concrete examples. He can and has. It's that the examples he points to don't fit his arguments, and I don't know that he can point to examples that do. When talking about how great matches don't have to make sense or have a coherent story, he points to Steamboat vs. Sheik...which made sense and had a coherent story. In the older thread he pointed to DiBiase as a possible all-time great who didn't have great matches, and illustrated his point in part by pointing to great performances in matches with Savage and Virgil...which are, you know, wrestling matches. The problem seemed to be a semantic one the older thread. What he meant by "great matches" was not what I or seemingly anyone else on the board meant by "great matches": You seem to be suggesting that reliance on the heel/face dynamic, characterization, storylines, angles, and so on precludes a match from being a "great match", but most of us think that that's a key part of most great matches. And as a side note, that really made this thread all the more confusing to me. Workrate/"wrestling" is overrated. Psychology, logic, and storytelling is overrated. What's left to rate? This thread seemed completely oppositional to everything Jerry had put forward until now. How it's supposed wrap around to a support of his earlier posts is mind-boggling. But, I thought there was a similar error in play here - when he said psych/logic/storytelling in matches was overrated, he wasn't actually trying to say that. His interpretation of "psych/logic/storytelling" was not ours, just as his interpretation of "great matches" was not ours. What I don't get, though, is why he hasn't picked up on this yet, because it really seems like he hasn't. Wrestling matches are supposed to be entertainment. Why would I ever want to watch a wrestling match that I didn't think was entertaining? Why would "entertainment" and "wrestling match" be mutually exclusive? Yes, there are assholes out there like Scooter Keith who might treat it that way, but we're not them, and you'd think he'd know that by now. Why is he still talking to us like we are?

Well, maybe now you understand why I told you that the marquee said "wrestling". In wrestling you want your animals to be wild and rabid and vicious than George. Confused, scared, and hungry doesn't make for compelling conflict.

I agree with this. It's overly simplistic to say playing roles well is all it takes to make a match good. There is an athletic component to wrestling -- otherwise actors could step in and do it well without any training. The thing is, the nature of wrestling is such that I don't think the athletic/"wrestling" component of wrestling is really all that separated from the storytelling aspect in the first place. It's actually the major component in the medium, just as dance is in ballet and singing is in opera, and treating the two as somehow unrelated just seems weird and wrong to me. Did Steele play his role well in those matches? Perhaps. Did he play it "to perfection"? Hell no, and I don't think he ever did. George was supposed be an animal, but he wrestled like a pretty feeble one. It's shitty ringwork, yes, but it also hurt my ability to buy his character, which means it's shitty character work as well.

Who/whear's that quote from? It's paraphrasing Bryan in a lot of his arguments: "If you can't realize [insert stupid unsupportable point here], I really don't know what else to say."

I don't know about a proper ring as we know it, but they definitely had a mat of some kind, if only because at one point, "Whistler swore he would beat Muldoon on the mat or in the street". I guess one could have a "mat" of gravel, but it seems counter-intuitive to me. Incidentally, I have just discovered that Clarence Whistler's Wikipedia page is totally awesome. It seems like Blacktop Bully should have been challenging people to gravel matches, but that would probably have gotten him booted from WCW faster than the King of the Road match did.

Technical issues aside (you were fucking with the spacetime continuum, after all), it was another great show. People who have read me for a long time might guess this, but since I haven't brought it up in a while, my #1 pick if I were a hypothetical guest on this show would have probably been the William Muldoon/Clarence Whistler match in San Francisco in either 1883 or 1884. Their eight-hour 1881 match that the New York Herald called a "torture marathon" would be tempting, too, but the San Fran match sounds just as - if not more - intense, and wasn't eight hours long. Courtesy of Karl Stern: Stern seemed to think their matches were shoots, despite all logic suggesting otherwise (Whistler was pretty much outright trying to murder Muldoon, but Muldoon, despite being a uniformed police officer himself, never got Whistler into any hot water legally, and the New York Police Gazette that backed Muldoon heavily spoke very respectfully of Whistler after his death). I don't know if he still believes that, but if you don't - and you shouldn't - it really reads like wrestling's first great blood feud, and would've been an awesome thing to see.

I give up. That line has been in the FAQ forever, and I've always wondered about it. And by "wondered about it", I mean "was there actually a match between these two that he's thinking of, or did he just pull it out of his ass", because I've never seen this "famous" match referred to by anyone else ever.

Unquestionably the best wrestling news site in the world today.

Buried under a mountain of 80's lucha, which is not the worst place to be if you're a wrestling fan, but it kinda forces me to shift around my priorities. But I'm not that far behind. The Pirate vs. The Spartan will be watched!

OK, so originally, I was just going to dust off my old "KENTA vs. Nakajima/reality vs. realism" post - and I probably still will, but before I can even address that, I have to look at the foundation of Jerry's argument. I want to preface all the stuff I'm about to write with this: Jerry, you seem like a good dude, and I have nothing personal against you whatsoever, so please don't take any of this too personally. Also, I realize that you're a doctor of English and I'm a college dropout, but honestly, I don't think I need a degree to say this: your argument is bullshit. Not always, but way more often than you're giving it credit for. For the most part, people do expect their stories, regardless of the medium, to make some degree of sense, fit into some kind of internal logic, and tell a coherent story. There are works that are clearly not supposed to do that, and people will adjust their expectations for those accordingly, but that's the default. I really don't see how you concluded otherwise at all. Not really, it's just that it's the bare minimum of what we expect. If a match doesn't do that, then there's going to be complaints, and if you compare matches that do it to matches that don't, it's something that will be brought up as a positive. But generally, that's just framework - not enough to praise on it's own, but it's absense is a major flaw. I'm having trouble coming up with words to describe just how wrong this line of thought is, but it's very, very wrong indeed. If nothing else, it seems to be suggesting that any film who's plot flows logically is automatically unadventerous, conventional, predictable, derivative, and overall not worthy of praise. It's basically Vince Russo's attitude towards wrestling as applied to film, so I can't support it here any more than I would there. As to what we praise, again, a plot flowing logically is the bare minimum of our expectations. To say that we must either praise it for that fact or dismiss it entirely in favor of the illogical is a false dichotomy. And would people praise films who's plots flowed logically instead of dismissing them? Well, "They Shoot Pictures Don't They?" is a website that, amongst other things, catalogues the top 1000 films of all time based on critical consensus. I don't know that their methods would be considered 100% accurate, but it looks solid enough to me. As of their last update, the top 25 films of all time - based on critical consensus - are.... 1. Citizen Kane 2. Vertigo 3. The Rules of the Game 4. 2001: A Space Odyssey 5. The Godfather 6. 8 1/2 7. The Seven Samurai 8. The Searchers 9. Singin' in the Rain 10. Battleship Potemkin 11. Tokyo Story 12. Sunrise 13. Lawrence of Arabia 14. Bicycle Thieves 15. The Godfather: Part II 16. Casablanca 17. L'Atalante 18. Rashomon 19. Raging Bull 20. The Passion of Joan of Arc 21. Touch of Evil 22. La Grande Illusion 23. Some Like It Hot 24. City Lights 25. La Dolce Vita Of these 25 films, how many do not possess a logically flowing plot? And here's a free hint: the fact that a movie has a non-traditional narrative structure does not automatically mean it doesn't have a logically flowing plot. Here's another free hint: a story being weird does not automatically mean it doesn't have a logically flowing plot. I'm not a Joyce expert, and I won't pretend to be, but from what I can tell, his plots are pretty straightforward and do flow logically. They do not flow efficiently, that's for damn sure, but they do take a very scenic route from A to B to C. I've not read Finnegan's Wake, nor do I have any desire to, but that seems to fall into the "some people will shift expectations if they know a work isn't supposed to be logical" thing I mentioned above. It's an exception, not the rule, and that's ignoring all the people who don't like it specifically because it's so far removed from convention. I did a double take when I read this. Shakespeare's writing wasn't "logical"? Since when? I can't even begin to see this one. If it really does stand out more in wrestling - and I'm not entirely convinced it does - it's probably because it's such a simple medium of entertainment that it's easier to notice and appreciate the things we take for granted in every other medium. It also doesn't help that certain high-profile smarks heap praise on guys who's matches don't do this, so it gets brought up as a bone of contention more than it does in aesthetic criticism for any other form of entertainment. But nobody really thinks it's the only thing that matters. Again, I'm really not seeing this as a meaningful example. And not because it's a bad match, either. I thought it was awesome. But therein lies the rub: it met my expectations for psychology, logic, and storytelling. In fact, it was pretty much exactly what I expected a match between Ricky Steamboat and The Sheik to look like. How was this in any way proof of psychology, logic, and storytelling being overrated qualities in wrestling, or any medium? I'm sorry, Jerry, but I'm just not seeing your argument, at all. It's based on claims that are either unsupportable or just plain make no sense, to the point that that the alternative you cite matches the norm to a tee. The one thing I can give you is that, in the past, you've used certain terms differently than the rest of us, and we had misunderstandings stemming from semantic issues stemming from that. I'd be willing to believe something like that is happening here, because otherwise, this just comes off as alien.

Oh, absolutely. I mean, WildPegasus may have been as much of a dick about liking Tiger Mask and Dynamite Kid as he was about disliking Jerry Lawler. That is a very important corollary to what I posted to keep in mind. I would suggest that not wanting to/being able to articulate your points specifically is OK if you're not pressing the issue nor have an interest in pressing the issue. A casual statement can have casual support, or one made about a subject that the speaker just isn't interested in. Jerome, just as an example, not wanting to explain his dislike of post-'04 WWE in detail because he doesn't like it and has no desire to spend his time discussing it, makes perfect sense to me. I don't think that stance is unfair. But by that same token, he shouldn't actually push the issue himself if he isn't ready to back it up. And if you're going to be a dick about something, you better be ready to answer EVERYTHING you get called out on in the process. I think it goes without saying that articulating points with bullshit is unacceptable under any circumstances, but especially if you're being a dick about it.

So if Brock Lesnar has been a huge draw the last few years because he drew wrestling fans to watch MMA, why wasn't he able to be a huge draw by drawing wrestling fans to watch wrestling? Cause...you know...he wasn't chopped liver or anything, but I don't think anyone really looks back on Brock's actual wrestling career and sees a great drawing card. All these wrestling fans being drawn to MMA by Brock...where were they when he was actually wrestling?

It's was actually TomK, but yeah. I was gonna do it, but the whole thing wasn't up on YouTube at the time. Checking back back now....it is. Fuck.

I would suggest that paying dickishness unto dickishness is...well, I hesitate to say "justified", but perhaps "justifiable". It's certainly more of a grey area. And a lot more fun.

I understand your point. Rick Steiner menacing Chucky was one of the most retarded thing ever. That said, it's a different case simply because it's the Muppets. Muppets are cool by definition, so people are willing to accept the fact that hell, it's a Muppet episode of Raw, and should be seen as such. Does anybody remember what the critical consensus on them co-promoting the "Shaft" reboot by having Crash go to Shaft for protection was? I haven't thought about it in ages, and I might be insane, but I remember it being warmly received, at least compared to Rick Steiner meeting Chucky or Sting being saved from the Horsemen by Robocop. Or what about Leslie Nielsen's segments during the Undertaker vs. Undertaker angle? That was the one of the only things about that angle that didn't totally shit the bed, and while they used the name "Leslie Nielsen", it was pretty obvious that he was playing it as Frank Drebin. Hell, thinking that was the actual Nielsen and not just his famous fictional character probably required more suspension of disbelief. It seems to me - as Jerome alludes to - that what separates the Muppets, Leslie Nielsen, and Sam Jackson's take on Shaft (if I remembered that one correctly) from Chucky, Robocop, and Arliss isn't so much whether or not it's any more or less believable as whether or not it's any more or less entertaining. People are a lot more forgiving about unbelievable/impossible/downright stupid things in their professional wrestling if it's something they actually enjoy.

Basically this:

By '98-'01 they were a national promotion. Not saying it was a hotter period overall for wrestling, but there is a reason why they ran one specific arena less. Well, my point was every major arena was run less. Philadelphia was run seven times by the big two in '98, whereas the old WWF ran the Spectrum 10 times a year. Because the old WWF ran the northeast exclusively, and WCW (or what became WCW) didn't run the Spectrum at all. In '98, they both ran nationally, and no other major feds were running. Mathematically speaking, of course there were going to be less shows per arena. I'm sure folks in California and other places that didn't have/had lost viable territories think it's a fair trade. I'm not saying it's impossible, but I need numbers for that last one. But really, is "volume of major wrestling events being held" the defining metric for wrestling's peak? How often individual venues are run? By these standards, has any American based wrestling promotion in any period have a higher peak than Joint Promotions? Joint Promotions was obviously successful in their day, but it somehow seems wrong to point to their strongest runs a the peak of all wrestling while Hulk Hogan, Steve Austin, and The Rock watch from the sidelines. And again, that's not to say '98-'01 definitely is the hottest period in wrestling history - in fact, I really don't think it is - but focusing on this as a/the defining metric seems like a mistake that doesn't take into account how wrestling changed through the years.

By '98-'01 they were a national promotion. Not saying it was a hotter period overall for wrestling, but there is a reason why they ran one specific arena less.

He's a guy who works from above. I'm not saying he doesn't eat offense, everyone eats offense. Goldberg eats offense. But he still works from above. Percy Pringle was a guy who worked as ruddy faced, blonde haired, hammy, flamboyantly gay dude. That's not the character they wanted managing The Undertaker, so they took the part they needed (hamminess) and changed everything else. YMMV on the results, but my point is that if you're not going to book Sin Cara as Tiger Mask/Goldberg dominant guy, you could at least watch him get the shit kicked out of him by Perro Jr. and then try focus on the other things he can do well. It should be noted that Sin Cara as Sayama is really something I have no desire to see, but in terms of getting your money's worth from your investment in the guy, yeah, that's not a bad idea.

True, but as I've gone over before, bringing in Averno to work with Sin Cara isn't really a long term solution. I like Averno, and it'll be interesting to see what he can do in WWE other than carry Sin Cara (if he ever shows up), but if Sin Cara is just having the same old matches in his comfort zone against the guy he worked them best against...well, then what? Where does he go from there? He still hasn't adapted his style to work with anyone else, and WWE isn't going to change the company style to accommodate him like CMLL did. It's not a bad idea, but I don't see how it's going to help him fit in in WWE.

Not that I disagree with anything TomK is saying, but there's another half to the Antonio Pena approach that needs to be mentioned, as best said by Jose Fernandez: It's not just that Mistico and Amazing Kong - as they were - weren't natural fits for WWE as is. It's that despite not being natural fits, there was no attempt made to find ways to fit them in effectively, instead just throwing them out there as is and expecting that what worked for them in one setting would work just as well in a completely different one. There are reasons why you would want to hire them, but absolutely no thought was put into how you would use them in this setting. Sin Cara was never going to be booked as Tiger Mask or Goldberg in WWE, and you'd be stupid to try and do that. But he is a guy who can work underneath against rudo brawlers effectively. Booking him as spectacular high-flyer Rey misses the point, but booking him as underdog Rey who gets the shit kicked out of him by heavyweights and then catches them off-guard with his flying is something he can do that fits in WWE. I also thought his brief rudo tease last year was a lot of fun, so if you need him to work on top, heel Sin Cara wouldn't have been a terrible approach, either. Kharma kinda undermines the whole reason the Divas are there, but I think Tom is putting too much stock in the "humiliating uppity girls by booking them as Dump" thing, since that seems to have been phased out of the playbook after the Piggie James angle blew up in their faces. Neither Maria or Melina got the public humiliation treatment, they were just fired outright. So with that out of the way, having one woman around who the guys on the roster don't want to bang probably doesn't upset the status quo that much. Besides which, Kharma blowing up in their face didn't have anything to do with her inability to fit in, anyway. But the larger point is that the HHH projects aren't so much guys who can't fit into WWE as guys who got hired due to perceived value with no thought given as to what they would actually be able to do for the company.

How exactly did Kanyon "set himself up" to be humiliated by having his sexuality mocked with the Boy George angle and be bashed in the head with an unprotected steel chair shot? By being a WWE performer? By being gay? By hiding his sexuality? Is Babinsack trying to say that Kanyon was silly to get so affected by a punishment angle to the point that he attempted suicide, because he should have saw it coming and had somehow "set himself up" for it? It's offensive to put part of the blame on the victim for workplace bullying. Babbysack is a guy who openly mocked the scientific method in defense of creationism. Not to put everyone with right-wing political views in the same bucket, but it's not exactly surprising that a guy with pre-17th century scientific and religious views also has pre-17th century social views. Disgusting, yes, but not surprising.

39% under a huge glut of guys who got 40's and 50's - three of whom are fellow Brits - doesn't really sound like smooth sailing. Unless there's a change in his resume in the next year, he's probably gonna have a rocky road ahead of him.

To me, there are two approaches one can take to refereedom, and they're both equally valid. One is the one Loss described. I'd list a few token examples, but I can't think of any offhand, which probably means they were doing their bit well. I guess I can't remember Jerry Calhoun ever being really show-offish, nor can I remember him being incompetent, so there's one. The second is "the referee as character", and this seems to be something that a lot of people don't like. And well, that's their right, certainly, but you look over a thread like this, and you see that most of the guys we can actually think of to name as refs we like fit this category, I wonder if people really dislike it, or if they just say they do because they associate it with refs who do it poorly. And believe me, it's very easy to do poorly. As David Manning's lone defender, I've made the point elsewhere that if every other non-wrestling figure on a wrestling show is allowed to be a character - and, if done well, is rewarded by us for his work - then why not refs? But it's actually not that simple. Unlike every other non-wrestler, they're actually in there with the wrestlers themselves, which means if they're going to be characters, they have to do it without distracting or detracting from the wrestlers themselves. And lord knows a lot of "character refs" fail at this: Slick Johnson and Earl Hebner come to mind as prime offenders, as did the horrifying Billy & Chuck-esque referee from Matrats, who might be the worst example I've ever seen. Tirantes kinda slips in and out of this. I've seen matches where his shtick fits and matches where it doesn't. But that doesn't mean it can't be done. Tommy Young wasn't afraid to get himself over with some big bumps while keeping the focus of the match where it belonged. Nick Patrick was always good to help get an angle over, but also generally came across to me as a lot more alert and competent than your average ref. He always made an impression on me as a character while keeping the focus of the match where it belonged. Pepe Tropicasas knew when to step to the forefront and did it well, but didn't overstay his welcome. Manning...I realize I'm in a minority here, but I never felt like he ever really put himself on par with/over the wrestlers. I felt like he put himself on par with/over every other non-wrestling figure in World Class, and by a large amount at that. But never got the sense he was trying to steal the spotlight in matches. He got larger supporting roles than most referees, to be sure, but they were just that, and I thought he tended to be very good in them. I understand why he's disliked. I can't really think of any other mainstream US ref in the last 30 years quite like him, and that's probably a good thing, as I doubt there are many who could pull it off. I think he pulled it off, though.