S.L.L.

You're getting warmer. I bolded the part you still need to work on. You said that you shouldn't have said "never buy someone losing", but you're saying it in a paragraph where you're still saying "can't buy someone losing". I never said it was the only way to work a tag match. Just that it was a way that worked. You said it didn't work anymore because it had been done to death and they should stop doing it, or at least do it a lot less, because fans were sick of it. I pointed out that fans still reacted strongly to it, you pointed to imaginary surveys...our usual argument. I dunno, maybe you had this argument with a different guy. But that's not really what I was getting it when I pointed to the other paragraph. The new, more accurate argument of Sayama as guy who isn't Steven Seagal, who does show vulnerability, doesn't jibe with earlier claims that he NEVER fails to work matches around his opponents having trouble with him because he's the better wrestler, and that it CAN'T BE ANY OTHER WAY because Sayama is OBVIOUSLY better. It's a sentiment that jumps out more in it's original context than it does in the new argument, I admit, but it still doesn't fit. It's what makes me dubious when you say what makes Sayama great is the same thing that made Stallone great. I have a very vivid picture of what great Stallone is, and it certainly isn't a guy who "never fails to give off the impression that his opponents have trouble with him" because "it can not be any other way for the most part because he was on such an obvioulsy higher level".

K, yes with people generally if someone is too powerful and they have no conflict than they lose interest. At first he's super cool but if things are too easy for him than after X amount of time than interest in his story wanes. Kind of reminds me of fans reasons for prefering Batman over Superman though I never did think that was fair because I think Superman went through a lot of tough things that get looked over because people just think well he's Superman. Anyway, with Tiger Mask as has been discussed was basically Superman/Bruce Lee like in the ring. On a totally different level. HOWEVER, this does not mean there was an absecence of dramatic conflict. FAR FROM IT. In fact, watching his matches from a kayfabe point of view yes he would be winning his matches -- I feel like using an amateur term -- well ahead on points. Still, even with the lesser opponents he never had it easy so people could at least relate to the struggle some. You can't have him too weak either though at the same time because you have to build the SuperTiger persona up. I think they hit it right on the nose here similar to as mentioned before Goldberg. Once you have that built up than you have the dramatic conflict built in. See, in Tiger Mask's matches it's just not about him that makes the match. Because he's now Superman, when he's fighting all the little Batmans (and yes, I am pretty sure that Batman beat Superman in the comics before but just stick with me here) all emotions are amplified making some things worth more. The dramatic conflict often comes from the opponents in these matches. You can't just do this though forever otherwise people would tire of it and the dramatic conflict wouldn't be as intriguing anymore. But that's just the beginning. Than you gotta have someone take it to TM/Superman but still be beneath his level therefore keeping the legend of Tiger Mask as strong as possible. In this instance, we have the excellent wrestler Kobayashi in this role. He had some terrific matches against Tiger (what are the odds someone will say they liked them better than the DK matches hmmm?) where the dramatic conflict was off the hook. Besides them creating that conflict in the match themselves they get a bonus from the fans seeing the dramatic conflict of TM against his "lesser" opponents. Those matches allow this match(es) to be that much better. And this in turn allows the dramatic confict in 4/21/83 to unheard of levels. Than finally in the TM/DK series we get tons of dramatic conflict on a higer emotional level making the series a goosebump producing classic. DK who is inbetween Superman and Batman (which is perfect in this instance for creating more of that good ol storytelling confict stuff) is always the biggest threat to Tiger and you feel that he is the one who can finally beat this guy. Throughout the whole series you feel that DK is closing in on Superman himself and is actually going to be the one who can topple him. And in their last match DK gets closer than anyone ever has before. TM can't get even beat him!! Things are so heated/chaotic and dramatic. The guys are so talented that your eyes are just left wide open pupils enlarged, with your jaw hitting the floor in amazement. Both are going all bleeping out. DK gets the skin ripped off his back. TM gets annihilated, DK takes the sickest irish whip into the guardrails ever and in the climatic finale both wrestlers piledrive each other on the floor in one of the sickest spots of all time. Because of TIger Mask's rep/skill/talent and his history in the wrestling ring the dramatic conflict is at a level that is pretty much untouchable. They just run with it in 4/21/83 and produce one of the best matches of all time. SO YES, you can have wrestling storyelling that hinges upon the protagonist being a superhuman -- that Dragonball show was popular wasn't it? --, have dramatic conflict and reach a peak like in TM/DK that is untouchable. Hmm, in some ways, this reminds me of why DDP vs Goldberg was/is such a favourite of many. Now you can't have everyone be a Tiger Mask/Superman in your wrestling organization but you gotta have at least someone that can do it. Sayama's first match with Kobayashi was, in fact, the only Sayama singles match that that cracked the top 25 of my NJ 80's ballot, and for precisely the reasons discussed here (well, that and that Kobayashi was the one guy who was good enough at reeling in Sayama in such a way that he could prevent him from wrestling like a chimpanzee on crystal meth without completely negating the things he brought to the table). Long story short, while we obviously disagree about the quality of the matches, I think this is a reasonably accurate description of the Tiger Mask I saw in action. Note that this last round of slagging wasn't really about any problems with Sayama. It was about you and your loony description of what made Sayama great and what makes great storytelling from your point of view. Honestly, I thought it was not only inaccurate, but that it was a far more damning criticism of Sayama than anything I actually felt about the guy. I was mocking the fact that you seriously saw it as praise. I don't know that you still do, because this seems a lot more accurate, and consequently, doesn't really jibe with what you wrote before.... I mean, these claims and the ones you wrote above are mutually exclusive. Odds are, you won't realize why, and you'll defend both viewpoints to the death, so I'm not going to ask you to clarify/retract/whatever. This is more for general illustrative purposes.

Been a long time since I've watched any of Bruce Lee's work, and have never watched Jaa's work, though I've heard nothing but good things about it. That said, I can very safely say that Chan and Stallone are about as far removed from your description of what makes Sayama great as you can get. YOU know I had a similar thing going a year-two ago, but it was never that way. You think, I mean, really think RE is that way? Eh...it's complicated, to put it mildly. We probably shouldn't take the thread in that direction, anyway. Let's just say that Res definitely likes girls from all I can tell, but I've also never seen anyone quite so non-ironically obsessed with "manliness" and "masculinity" outside of over-the-top camp gay stereotypes from TV and movies. Mind you, most actual gay men don't seem as obsessed with those concepts as Res does, either, so...yeah, it's complicated. Let's leave it at that. Hopefully Seagal then, not now. The dude loves him ham sandwiches. Hey, so does current Sayama. If Seagal's love for bacon cheeseburgers helped his work half as much as it seems to have helped Sayama, I'd probably be watching a hell of a lot more of his schlock.

Oh, no no....that's Ken Begg of Jabootu, a website dealing in bad movies. Res may not be familiar with Seagal's work, but I can't imagine he would ever have anything bad to say about it if he did. As really, Seagal's approach to action movie herodom - as outlined by Begg - is eerily similar to the dramatic ideal Res espouses, with it's invincible, infallible protagonist steamrolling his way through the competition, theoretically leaving the audience in awe of his greatness. And that worked fine for Seagal for two or three years, just like it worked fine for Sayama for two or three years. The problem, as Begg alluded to, is that stories built around utterly flawless protagonists kinda suck reasons that everyone other than Res already understand, and that Res himself is incapable of understanding, and that the mass appeal of Steven Seagal: Invulnerable God of Destruction could only last as long as the novelty of Seagal's style did. He theorized that had Seagal's career not utterly collapsed after On Deadly Ground bombed largely for unrelated reasons, people probably would've gotten bored of him annihilating everyone put in front of him without ever showing a trace of weakness, and started looking for some actual competition to show up. And when that didn't happen, they would have done what they ended up doing anyway: ditch him and go back to Arnold and Sly, who weren't afraid to deliver on that front. But whereas conflict is generally recognized as the central, critical aspect of good storytelling, it's actually the antithesis of Res' concept, which is that good storytelling hinges upon the protagonist as omnipotent Ubermensch displaying a perfect masculine ideal for him to jack off to. And well, that's Seagal in a nutshell.

You know, I never mistook Res for an accurate representation of the average....ummm....anything, but it is interesting to see just how fully diametrically opposed his storytelling values are to the rest of humanity. I mean, I never really argued with him with the intent of changing his mind or anything, but still, I've been trying to present an argument based on logic and reason to someone who's saying that up is down, black is white, and absence of dramatic conflict is compelling storytelling. So, en lieu of an actual drawn out explanation of why he's wrong (since, if you're a functioning human being, you should be able to figure it out on your own), I want to provide this excerpt from the Jabootu review of On Deadly Ground to compare and contrast. http://jabootu.net/?p=611

It's cute that you believe that.

Current fans? Lapsed fans? Do you just hang with a lot of Real Japan fans? I mean, I imagine the majority of of people who go to Real Japan shows are there mainly to see Tiger Mask. But that's not really a lot of people. "Many", in this case, would seem to be relative. Explain. Sayama's body language struck me as a pretty clear weak point of his. Some thoughts from when I was watching the 80's NJ set: On Tiger Mask vs. Steven Wright On 4/21/83 I seem to recall liking his body language in his match with El Canek, though I didn't specifically write about it. Still, mostly seemed like a guy with no mastery of body language. Um, I don't dispute that Goldberg was underrated in some circles, but he's a guy who wasn't really regarded for using stand-out wrestling to engross the crowd (Largely because he was rarely given the forum to do so....when he was, like the DDP match, he proved he could go), and the engrossing match construction was mostly just squashes. That's why he was underrated in the first place. If he got to do more stuff like the DDP match, people who wrote him off as a simple squash machine might have been forced to reconsider him. That's not what happened. Not sure where you got the idea that it did. He got over by being a big charismatic dude who mowed through opponents. The similarities with Sayama begin and end with them being really over guys with good gimmicks and winning streaks. Warrior has those similarities, too. It takes a little more to impress me. Goldberg had it. The other guys, not so much.

Hey, remember when Dave used pretty much this exact talking point when pushing Masakatsu Funaki for the HOF? Oh, sure, every drop of available evidence suggested he wasn't nearly as big of a deal as Dave made him out to be, but how would YOU know? YOU WEREN'T THERE, MAN! I assume from the "older people" lines that you are referring to current mainstream popularity? OK, you may be right about that for all I know. A couple of things, though.... 1. Considering what a sad state of affairs the puro scene is in these days I don't know that being the second most famous wrestler in Japan presently means anything. It feels like kind of a backhanded compliment. 2. Scratch that, I know it doesn't mean anything, because if it did, Sayama wouldn't be main eventing his vanity fed in front of high school gymnasiums. I mean, I like Real Japan, and I like old, fat Sayama way more than young, trim, can't-hit-that-flipping-armdrag-to-save-his-life-but-will-attempt-it-in-every-match-he's-ever-in-anyway Sayama. But you watch him on those shows, and you tell me he's the second most famous wrestler in Japan today, it's gonna say way less about how great Sayama is and way more about how deep of a pit puro is in right now. 3. I don't know for sure, but there's a pretty good chance that a list of the top five wrestlers best known by the American general public would include David Arquette. If not top five, he's definitely top ten. 4. So when FLIK said... ...I assumed (and still do) that he was being facetious. Satoru Sayama didn't have his own cartoon. Naoto Date had his own real life professional wrestler. And as it relates to the subject at hand, I was tooling around Wikipedia the other day, and ended up finding this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger_Mask_donation_phenomenon Now, unless "Naoto Date" is actually gross misspelling on the editor's part, I can't help but notice that the name "Satoru Sayama" appears precisely zero times in the article, and that no mention is made at all of "Tiger Mask" having ever been a real life professional wrestler. I've always been of the understanding that Tiger Mask - unlike conceptual successors Jushin Liger and Big Van Vader - never outgrew the fame of the anime his character sprang from. I've also understood that was less about Sayama not being a hit and more about the anime being a much bigger deal than the ones Liger and Vader's gimmicks came from. But it does lead me to wonder...when we talk about the enduring fame of Tiger Mask, how much are we really talking about Satoru Sayama, and the things he did under the mask, and how much are we talking about a guy who exists only in ink and paper? So...which version of the UWF was able to run the Tokyo Dome again? Yeah, more people know he is, but the people who know who I am actually show up!

Confirmation, my ass. Yeah, I was only a main event box office draw for, like, 25 years or something. But there were those two years where Sayama drew RATINGS~! BAY-BEE~! so clearly he's the bigger all-time star. Hey, Tatsumi, weren't we the guys who actually drew the house on 4/21/83? And, like, a bajillion other houses? Yeah, but he was a ratings draw and moved merch for two years. He was like the best possible New Age Outlaws, but without Road Dogg's crisp execution. Hey, where does the line start? How many dome shows did this guy headline? How many times did he sell out the Budokan? At least he's the second biggest star ever to work the Tiger Mask gimmick. Hell, I have a longer run as a bigger star AND a longer run of tricking Meltzer into thinking I'm not a useless piece of shit in the ring! Hey, guys! What's going on over here?

Note to self: read more of Victator's stuff.

Johnny Fahrenheit, one half of The Loverboys, the biggest tag team of the 80's and PPV draws on par with Hulk Hogan. Vince McMahon used his mob ties to get him driven out of the States because of the threat he posed to Hogan, so went south of the border and donned a mask as "El Dracula". He headlined a record-breaking streak of sold out shows at Arena Mexico against El Santo between 1989 and 1994 until Santo died in the middle of the ring during one of their matches of triple pneumonia. He retired immediately thereafter and dedicated the next few years to training Son of Santo (who named his first son Johnny after him), during which time he also found Jesus. He has since become an ordained minister, and is the official chaplain of the Cauliflower Alley Club. Vince McMahon asked for - and received - Fahrenheit's forgiveness some years back, but Fahrenheit has declined lucrative offers to stage a comeback or be inducted into the Hall of Fame as he wishes to maintain a quiet life out of the spotlight these days.

I'm mildly disappointed in the indy wrestlers of America that none of them were ever enterprising enough to bill themselves as "Smart" Mark Video.

Man, it's been a loooooong time since I watched that match (and I don't think I've ever watched Misawa/Doc, which I probably should). I remember really liking it at the time for all the reasons most people liked it at the time (LOOKIT! HE GOT BACKDROP DRIVERED THREE TIMES! THREE FUCKING TIMES!!!THREE), and I have no sense of how it would hold up if I watched it again now (which I also probably should). But I do kinda see how it would have worked better when seen out of context like I did than in context like John did. Although I also see how Kobashi being the most fighting spirit-y of the Four Pillars would kinda make it work in character. I mean, Kobashi isn't precisely a dude with an invincible head gimmick, but he might he might be a relative of that, sorta. Like, I'd be willing to pretend he got some extra fighting spirit from a Samoan great-grandmother or something. I mean, I was willing to pretend that Yokozuna was Japanese to some extent. Hmmmm....does anyone know what the font they used for the Twins logo was? I smell a Photoshop....

Darn, I was really starting to dig Fierce Fuego as the workhorse of Secret Society. Felt like the one guy in the group stiff enough to go toe-to-toe with the Unholy Alliance. Still, I know the roster was starting to get kinda crowded, and better to put a hood on Cross than bring back *shudder* Mori Guana.

Cox hipped me to UWC a while back, as I've mentioned a few times on Segunda Caida, and it has been a pretty darn enjoyable super low-rent indy for the most part. I have fallen behind lately (sorry, Cox), but I'm trying to play catch-up now. I caught the second episode, and it was a step up from the first, where I liked the format, but the angles and in-ring stuff fell flat for me. Here, neither match was blow away great, but they were both pretty solid. Twiggy is a guy some of you might remember as an unremarkable indy flier from the late-90's/early-2000's, but he has really nicely matured into an old-school territorial babyface. Big Rig is one half of CB4, a decent enough heel tag team that has the troublesome problem of constantly trying to draw face heat. But Big Rig did a pretty good job of curtailing that here, and I could kinda see them transmuting their attempts at getting face pops into arrogant heel bluster if they put their minds to it. All in all, a fun show, and I'll be checking out episode 3 shortly. And yeah, Cox is kinda stiff in front of the camera. A bit Zach Galifinakas like, except Zach is intentionally awkward. But I've cyber-hung with him for a while now, and I know he's a cool dude who knows how to get a point across, so I think he might be able to grow out of his initial awkwardness. They've got a fun, enthusiastic crowd, a pair of good hands on top with Twiggy and Biggie Biggs, a great heel manager in the Wallace Shawn-esque Joe Rules, some diamonds in the rough like Geoffrey Bravo, The Secret Society, Andd Bivians, The Unholy Alliance, Blackhearted Justice, and to a lesser extent the wildly inconsistent Peter Cross, and they also do the cool AAA/CHIKARA thing of giving their lesser workers fun, crowd-pleasing gimmicks like The Short Bus Express, The Big Unit, Taylor Nicole Rules, and the Staten Island Wrecking Crew, and even some of those guys feel like they might have hidden depths as workers. In the best of all possible worlds, they get a bit more exposure, get noticed by JAPW, and work out a talent-sharing deal that lets some of these guys get a bit more polish from working with a more talented (and less inhibited) roster. In any case, they've definitely shown improvement even in the short time that I've been actively following them, so I look forward to seeing where they go next.

Wow, Flair really did live the gimmick, didn't he? If he showed up at all. What about the big return to TNA a year or so back where he was supposed to main event a PPV reuniting the Outsiders that he just no-showed, and instead they had Eric Young fill in after Samoa Joe cut a goofy worked shoot promo on Nash?

I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt on this one and assuming he meant that the PSA frequently played - amongst other places - during wrestling shows.

Here is the one guideline for selling that applies universally: sell things the way you want people to buy them. As far as that applies to this match...I've never been as bothered by that spot as others. I mean, I don't like it, but I kinda accept on some level that these matches were never about selling the audience on how much the moves hurt as they were about selling them on how cool they were. They weren't sold as great stories, athletic competition, or great stories about athletic competition. They were sold as stunt shows. And if you ever read my criticisms of any of Sayama's matches, they were usually about how they tended to be really, really shitty stunt shows. For all the talk about people not being willing to step back and open themselves up to the Sayama/Billington experience, I actually set the bar really low for those guys. Just hit a bunch of cool looking spots, and I'll at least rank you above the Takada/Koshinaka matches. Anything more than that, and I will be blown away. But they couldn't even clear that bar. And the 4/21/83 match just ups the ante because they wrestle they same shitty stunt show they wrestled a billion times before, but at the end, they try to awkwardly wedge some serious drama in there, and it looks so out of place, and both guys are clearly out of their depth trying to do it. I thought that was a much more egregious problem than the tombstone no-selling. That didn't really clash with the feud's general theme of "LOOK AT THESE GUYS DO THINGS!", which isn't the most compelling theme for a match to me, but not the least, either. Trying to force drama where there was none from guys who can't deliver any was a much bigger problem. I've said before that the matches are like a Michael Bay or Roland Emmerich movie, but this was more like On Deadly Ground. Yeah, you already have the normal shitty Steven Seagal movie there. It's not my cup of tea, but I get why his movies appealed to people in the early 90's. But now you are taking that same shitty Steven Seagal movie and awkwardly shoving a bunch of poorly conceived agitprop in there that's supposed to make me want to care more about the environment and take on the evils of big business, and it's so poorly done and so clearly out of place that it just makes me want to beat a baby seal to death with a cricket bat adorned with the Exxon logo. Also, I don't get how someone as obsessed with displays of masculinity as you are could ever approve of Dynamite's dainty bottle breaking. I'm surprised he didn't have his pinky up when he did that.

The grammar in that post is really good. If he were a great poster like Sayama was a great wrestler, 90% of the words would be misspelled and the punctuation would be nonexistent. The 10% of words he spelled right would be big, impressive ones, but seriously, that post had mostly good spelling and grammar, and effectively communicated a message using mostly simple terms. It was like a Jerry Lawler post. Absolutely terrible. Worst post ever, and anyone who disagrees is lying in order to look cool on the internet. You can survey any group of people in the world, and they will agree with me.

Like Loss and smkelly said, nothing at all....which makes it so baffling that people like Dave and Res get so defensive about the matches when people point out that they don't hold up. If they could offer some legitimate defense of the quality of the matches today - even if I didn't necessarily agree with the conclusions - that would be fine. If they shrugged their shoulders and gave the Apple Jacks defense ("I like them because...because I just do!"), that'd be fine, too. Taking this approach, where they have to be objectively "right" and the other guy has to be objectively "wrong", where they have to "win" and the other guy has to "lose", because God forbid that anyone see your opinions on professional wrestling as being anything less than the wisdom of Solomon...that's a problem independently of whether or not the TM/DK matches are any good. Fujinami showed up at MSG more frequently than than those guys. None of his MSG matches were ever as pimped as TM/DK at MSG was as far as I know, but he was there. Looking at them in context, the TM/DK matches were definitely novel, and I think that is probably where the praise comes from. But it's 2011, and I've seen Masato Yoshino. Yoshino moves at least as fast as Sayama did back then, and unlike Sayama, he can actually hit his spots regularly. And I don't even like Yoshino. Why would I want to watch his vastly sloppier predecessor?

Come on, you can do better than this! I think it's the most compelling argument he's made yet.

The Last Unicorn 2: The Quickening

I don't exactly have a ton of glowing praise for TNA's booking, but I have to give them this much - hiring Daivari and booking him as an Arab-American whose life fell apart due to anti-Arab sentiments after 9/11 and deciding to take revenge by becoming the embodiment of all of America's fears about Islamic terrorism >>>>>>>>>>>>> anything WWE ever did to try and capitalize on 9/11.

You know, I don't know whether or not I'm excited or disgusted by the possibility of Alvarez outing himself as a moon landing denier. Not sure if I want him to start dialing back the crazy or if I want to laugh at him for being even crazier than I already thought he was.

I'm struggling to think of a specific instance of me flipping opinions, though I'm 100% certain it's happened a number of times. I guess ECW in general was really appealing to me at the time, but much of it doesn't hold up 15 years later. Although exposure to handhelds has caused me to flip back a little. Actually, Raven specifically is a good example, as he is a guy who's shtick I bought hook, line, and sinker in the mid-90's, but now it all comes off as sad and embarrassing.