S.L.L.

Yeah. Like that fucking hack Shakespeare, for example. That idiot always made his protagonists doubt themselves and commit unspeakably horrible acts. Clearly he didn't know anything about storytelling. The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark would have totally been better if the babyface had just Hammed Up and kicked the heel's ass, instead of whining about all his insecurities for three hours in a row. Wrestling isn't Hamlet. It's not A Wonderful Life, either. It doesn't even have the depth of a comic book. The trouble with the WWE is that you have these writers who want to write for film or TV who've read all the right books or graduated from college writing courses and want to write all these "great" stories in a medium that doesn't let itself well to depth in storytelling and is not properly serviced by it. Look at the angles that people brought up in Dean's WWF thread on DVDVR: they were all simple and direct. A lot of great promos, strong characterisations and decent narratives, but none of this bullshit you see with ham actors like Shawn Michaels making that patented Shawn Michaels look of concern. The WWE became so EMO last decade (for want of a far better word.) Way too many promos about people's feelings. I'm the last guy in the world who's going to argue that wrestling storytelling is/should be deep. But then, I don't think "hero must make a sacrifice" or "hero is brought low before reaching greater heights" are really deep storytelling concepts. They're actually incredibly basic. It's just that Shakespeare and Capra get to explore those ideas in depth with talented actors, whereas in wrestling, they're surface-level motivation for not so talented actors to beat the fuck out of each other. Pretty much every major Bret Hart angle of the 90's was about him as George Bailey-esque everyman concerned about his family. The important thing is that it all makes you want to see him get in the ring with someone. I guess that's the most obvious problem with this or any "babyface forced to be heel's lackey" angle. The only fights this creates that you want to see are Cena vs. other Nexus guys, specifically a rematch with Barrett. That would seem to be the logical conclusion to all of this, but what's happening in the mean time that we should care about? This isn't Sting in the rafters. Cena is going to be called upon to do something between now and whenever he gets out of Nexus. What match does Cena have as an unwilling member of Nexus that we want to see? And how do you do it without making him look like a wimp or a heel? "Hero is brought low" isn't the problem. It's to what end. I guess what I'm trying to say is that Ben Miller is an idiot who doesn't understand storytelling independently of whether or not this angle is any good.

Odds of SLL drawing comparisons between Giant Bernard and Arn Anderson or Strongman and Paul Ellering in his next day of G1 Climax coverage - 1:1.

Yeah. Like that fucking hack Shakespeare, for example. That idiot always made his protagonists doubt themselves and commit unspeakably horrible acts. Clearly he didn't know anything about storytelling. The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark would have totally been better if the babyface had just Hammed Up and kicked the heel's ass, instead of whining about all his insecurities for three hours in a row. You know, I have mentioned several times on message boards that It's a Wonderful Life flopped on it's initial release. I'm not sure that was specifically because George Bailey didn't just toss his brother back into the river like a real man, sell the Savings & Loan to Mr. Potter, and go off to college like he wanted to, but still, maybe Ben will come around to the angle in 30 years. Seriously, sacrifice being presented as a noble trait in storytelling? The hero being brought low to increase dramatic power when he rises to his greatest heights? What kind of zaniness is that?

Thing is, I doubt that there are a lot of people who seriously question that is a great game. If I may jack something tomk posted elsewhere: I guess Res would disagree with the notion that Lawler is a consensus great worker, but imaginary surveys aside, that seems to be a minority opinion nowadays. Even if you strip him from the list, it seems that for guys called "anti-smarks", guys like Phil, Tom, Bix, Will, Loss, Eric, Dylan, and myself all hold a lot of commonplace smark opinions. I don't totally agree with Tom about "sharing that subculture's aesthetic values". I tend to think of Segunda Caida/"anti-smark" wrestling aesthetics being a (largely unintentional) rejection of certain more traditional smark values that they thought wrongheaded. Not a total rejection of all smark values, mind you. More a matter of the "wrestling as narrative entertainment" vs. "wrestling as a math equation/figure skating/social dance" thing. Guys who realized that they didn't become wrestling fans to count how many suplexes a guy does in a match. Still, differing perspectives lead to a lot of similar conclusions, and for similar reasons much of the time. I don't know that there's a significant sub-subculture of video game fandom that thinks A Link to the Past is crap. If you're looking for something that would get knocked by a gaming Segunda Caida, that ain't it.

I feel sorry for you here. You have no natural instinct to warn yourself of sexual predators or people that just come off as phony in life. I do. I also have a natural instinct that tells me that potential sexual predators cannot prey on me by jumping through my TV screen or my computer monitor. And a natural instinct that tells me that the sexual predator in question has a taste for young girls, and being a 26-year old man, I am an extremely unlikely target for him. So, yeah, I think my instincts are firing on all cylinders here. I also have a natural instinct that protects me from violent drug addicts who wake up their spouses every morning with a gun to their heads. Using morality/wrestlers being a potential danger to knock Lawler while supporting Dyno kinda bolsters my "no internal consistency" argument nicely. And while I'm on a roll, "instinct" doesn't mean what you think it means, and human beings have - at most - one. And while I'm still on a roll, if I didn't have the natural "instinct" that told me potentially dangerous people can't harm me just by observing them on TV or the internet, I'd stop reading or responding to your posts before I'd stop watching Jerry Lawler matches. The King's got his problems, but he's the picture of mental health compared to you. Aside from what Bix already said, of I can comprehend it. It was a crazy, sound-and-fury spectacle, the wrestling equivalent of a Michael Bay or Roland Emmerich movie. Like many Bay/Emmerich movies, it was an effective crowd pleaser, but there wasn't much going on beyond the big explosions and fancy CGI effects, metaphorically speaking. You've disagreed with that assessment, and that's your right. But that's not enough for you. Every single time I've seen someone disagree with you about anything - from big socio/anthro/biological questions about how men and women operate in relation to one another to petty little issues like whether or not Judd Apatow is famous - you stubbornly insist that you are objectively, 100% right, regardless of how much evidence there is to the contrary. You do sometimes pay lip service to the idea that different people can see different things in different ways and form different opinions about them, but always with the coda that the way you see things is the unquestionable right way: And you feel sorry for me because of what my mind and my emotions can't grasp?

Well, I did say "most", not "all". I don't deny that people other than yourself who dislike Memphis wrestling exist, though others have pointed out the obvious problems with Bret's comments. But as Herodes alluded to, you have a long, storied history of "proving" your more dubious points by claiming that the majority agrees with you, even when you have no actual evidence that this majority exists, and even when the people arguing against your have evidence that it doesn't and/or that the actual majority believes the opposite. But we've been down this road already, and as you are the most impossibly closed-minded person walking the face of the Earth, I doubt there's anything new to bring to the discussion there. Honestly, I'm more interested in finding out why you always spell the word "magic" with a "j". What Loss said. Not liking it is one thing. You have that right as a fan. Problems are with the specific arguments and with the guy making them. 1. Claiming the inferiority of Memphis wrestling is not his opinion, but an objective fact, despite having no real evidence to support that, and plenty of evidence against it. 2. The supporting evidence he does try to provide doesn't reflect reality, or are based on appeals to majorities that don't exist, or to intellectual authority that he doesn't have. 3. The stated reasons behind Memphis' objective inferiority show almost no internal consistency when put in the larger context of his opinions believed objective facts about wrestling (Lawler is objectively the worst ever because he's so incredibly fake....but Tiger Mask vs. Dynamite Kid 4/21/83 is one of the best matches of all time).

Fixed.

But.... Vader sitting around for eight years is bad, Rey sitting around for ten years is good? And realistically, that is what he's doing. You may not be comfortable with him going in at 35, and I don't even think he should be on the ballot until he's 39, but it seems fairly unlikely that he's going to be doing anything between 2014 and 2020 that's going to severely affect his candidacy. And with almost a decade of highly-touted work and viability as a ratings draw under his belt before Angle even debuted, it seems really silly for Angle to go on the ballot before Rey does. 2023 seems harsh, and it's true that either standard would result in guys who built up candidacies early waiting around. I just think it makes more sense to use a standard that actually ties to their wrestling career and is somehow reflective of that than one just tied to existing.

Why an age metric vs. time spent in the business metric, out of curiosity? In 2010, I'm not really sure what more Rey has to prove in terms of a HOF candidacy. I don't think it would be unreasonable to wait until 2014 (25 years since his debut) to put him in, but 2020 (45 years of age), especially considering the way his body is going south on him, doesn't seem like a date by which he'll really prove much of anything more than he already has. If 45 years of age is the standard, Chigusa Nagayo would have gone on the ballot for the first time this year. She hit the 25 years since her debut mark in 2005. Frankly, she seemed like a slam dunk when she was actually inducted in 1997. I'm really not clear on what she did between '05 and '10 that would give us a better picture of her candidacy. Looking at the names Loss mentioned.... Austin goes on the ballot this year regardless of whether you use of 45 year old standard or the 25 years since debut standard. Likewise, Jericho would go on in 2015 either way, and Cornette in '07 either way (though I tend to agree with you that he should have been inducted with the Midnight Express, but that's besides the point) Foley would have gone on the ballot in '08 by the 25-year standard. Has his TNA run hurt his candidacy so much that it would seriously affect him if he went on now? Would having that fresh in our minds really even paint an accurate picture of his career? 45-year standard may give us a less clear picture of Foley's candidacy if anything. 25-year standard would have put Shawn on the ballot last year. Same with The Undertaker and Liger. 45-year standard puts all three on the ballot this year. Doubt it would make a difference. Similarly, Eddie goes on the ballot in 2012 with the 25-year standard, and 2013 with the 45-year standard, so no real issues there. Benoit would have gone on the ballot for the first time this year under the 25-year standard, and in 2012 with the 45-year standard. Both would have had a significant impact on his candidacy compared to inducting him in '03, but having an extra two years to think about it would likely change nothing. Kobashi would go on the ballot in 2012 under the 45-year standard, but the 25-year standard would actually put him on a year later. And that brings up something interesting to me: if the idea is that 45 years of age will give us more distance and more time to reflect on someone's career than 25 years since their debut, you forget that some guys get late starts and end up hitting the former benchmark before the latter. They're shitty candidates any way you slice it, but if time and contemplation is your thing, would you rather put Paul Heyman and Kurt Angle on the ballot this year and in 2014, respectively (when they turn 45), or 2012 and 2023 (25 years after their debuts)? Rey not being a certain age when he goes into the Hall might seem weird to you, but I have to think that using a metric related to someone's actual wrestling career makes more sense as a standard than age.

I would suggest this was less a catalyst and more supporting evidence as the argument went along. I think the argument really began in earnest with the "Angle and Michaels: ROH guys better than both" thread, which started December of '05. At that point, most wrestler deaths were being chalked up primarily to drug abuse. It wasn't until Benoit that the issue of the moves themselves contributing to wrestler deaths really came into play. And in fairness, Benoit was lauded as a great wrestler right to the bitter end by anti-smark/pro-role/whatever guys. I myself said that 2006 may have been his career year for work. True, he had boiled down his moveset to the bare essentials, but those essentials still included the triple Germans and the diving headbutt that we can now see he had no business doing anymore. But when he went, and took his family with him, it became supporting evidence. It's even that we don't like dangerous moves anymore. Sure, Tiger Mask's reputation is tanking after the New Japan 80's set, but Vader still rules the roost. And yes, I can still separate Benoit the performer from Benoit the person enough to enjoy his matches today, though I can't blame those who can't. But now that we know that doing these moves to excess can be a major contributing factor to a premature trip to the cemetery, I think it has become a strong argument against moves for moves' sake. It's one rarely directly invoked, but I know it's in the back of my head when I think about the issue. Absolutely true. I don't suppose I'll ever know why I became a wrestling fan, or why I stayed with it as long as I have, but I know it wasn't to count how many suplexes a guy did, or to watch a bunch of guys flip around and judge it like it was figure skating. And I think when people talk about guys like me being anti-moves, that's really closer to the issue. Not "moves vs. anti-moves", but "wrestling as conflict-based narrative entertainment vs. wrestling as figure skating or diving". Elsewhere in that thread with I pointed out later that I made a major semantic error when I wrote that, as I said "wrestling" when I meant "wrestling matches". Obviously, wrestling as a whole is very spectacle-oriented. But when it comes to the matches themselves, I don't think people turned out in droves to see Hogan fight Andre in a moves-heavy match. I don't think that's why I became a wrestling fan, either.

And even that hasn't sucked nearly as much as I feared it would so far. Hey, I played with pogs and owned a virtual pet, too. Fads happen. I can dig that. But we're not talking about things that flare up for a little while and then whither away and die here. As you pointed out, the re-evaluation of Tiger Mask isn't a new thing, and it's only gaining steam over time. If it was mere marketing (so to speak) at work, people would've gotten over it by now and gone back to watching the guy's matches, because they really liked him the whole time. I don't think there are really that many people who are that desperate to roll with Phil & the SC Cru. That is more about taste than trends though. No, I'm talking about trends, at least as you define them. You say masses and vast majorities are forming opinions not out of their own tastes, but to follow certain trends dictated by a handful of hive leaders. Unless you want to tell me that the most powerful marketing machines in Hollywood, the music industry, professional wrestling, etc. do not have the power over the masses that PHIL FUCKING SCHNEIDER does....well, then we're talking about trends. I don't disagree with any of this, but trends by definition don't last the test of time. Again, you yourself have noted that people turning on Tiger Mask is nothing new, and it's an idea that's only grown stronger with time. Most actual trends would give anything to live half as long as this "trend" has. Liking Mark Henry has been "in" for at least five years now. Five years. How many people actually gave a shit about their pet rocks for five solid years? Not even close. Incredibly predictable actually. Irony is a guy who's been away from the scene for years coming back, taking a quick look around, and coming to a hasty, ill-conceived conclusion about certain people's ideologies being pointed to as superior evidence that those ideologies exist than the arguments of the actual people in question, who describe their real ideologies at length, but get dismissed as being in "denial". He's wrong. You're wrong. Prove otherwise or deal with it.

Not gonna deny the presence of trends. Not gonna deny the existence of hive mentality. But you talk about "a handful of people are pimping some workers and a mass of posters follow". How big is this mass? Earlier, you wrote: How vast is the majority? As a general rule, I don't think people follow things in entertainment that don't actually...you know...entertain them. Didn't dig Tiger Mask, but I don't dispute that people at the time - and his defenders today - genuinely enjoy his matches. Listening to Linkin Park feels like someone forcibly jamming a chainsaw into my ear, but I don't dispute that a whole bunch of people genuinely enjoy their music. I got absolutely nothing out of watching The Blair Witch Project. Nothing at all. But I don't dispute that a whole bunch of people genuinely enjoyed that movie. Oh, sure, these acts all had big marketing campaigns backing them up. So did Diesel as WWF Champion and Battlefield Earth. Hype doesn't do all the work for you. Generally speaking, people's main motivation for liking things isn't that they're told to like them. It's that they like them. And if I'm wrong, then does that mean that the "vast majority" of film aficionados who think It's a Wonderful Life is an all-time classic are just following a trend?

Man, everybody is Ganc.

DVDVR poster As I told him at the time, his comment proved my point for me - It's a Wonderful Life was critically panned and a box office bomb upon it's initial release in 1946. It wasn't until the 70's that the tide of critical and public opinion started to turn in it's favor. Am I a bandwagon jumper because I think It's a Wonderful Life is one of the best movies of all time?

You're gonna have to explain that. On a certain level, it seems the "problem" with the discourse is that it exists at all. That fact that Dylan can explain in sound and coherent terms why, say, 2010 Chris Masters is a great wrestler is a problem to those who disagree or refuse to consider him but can't back up their claims as well. Can o' worms. Do you not see that there is an inherent or even an associated douchbaggery to terms like "believable strikes" or "limb selling"? Of course not. What's so douchey about them? Don't blame him. It's a good running gag about guys with Segunda Caida-ish tastes in wrestling. I have enough of a sense of humor about myself that I can laugh at it, too. But I'm not seeing how it's douchey. Offhand, I can only think of two. 1. The terms are used to praise a wrestler you dislike/criticize a wrestler you like. You can't defend your position as well as they can defend theirs, and you're too insecure to accept people with divergent opinions. Therefore, you interpret legitimate wrestling criticism as douchebaggery, allowing you to dismiss it offhand and carry on with your day. It's not the terms that are the issue, it's what they represent - somebody disagreed with you about something, you didn't like it, but you didn't have a good counterpoint, so now you're all upset, and are deeming these guys "douchbags" to help rationalize your failure. The problem - aside from this making you an intellectually cowardly and dishonest twit - is that the people making the "douchey" argument might identify you as an intellectually cowardly and dishonest twit, and if they're also the kind of people who like to kick around intellectually cowardly and dishonest twits for their own amusement, you've just become their new punching bag. But you're not about to seriously consider the merits of their opinion vs. the merits of yours. If you did, you might see things in a different light, and possibly even agree with them. And that would mean they win! We can't have that, can we? So you continue to shut your eyes and cover your ears, refusing to hear out any kind of contrary opinion to your own, perhaps putting up the occasional strawman or windmill along the way in the hopes that will do you some good. But it won't. Not with seasoned dogs of internet war such as myself. No, it will just create an endless, self-inflicted cycle of flaming, which.... 2. ....some people might walk in on or witness long enough that they just become sick of it, regardless of which side (if either) they're on. Again, the terms aren't the issue, it's what they represent - petty bickering over drug addicts in funny underwear. Sounds like reason #1 to me. "They can't possibly have a genuine, well thought out reason for having a different opinion than me. They're probably just compensating for their shame. That'll let me sleep at night."

You're gonna have to explain that. On a certain level, it seems the "problem" with the discourse is that it exists at all. That fact that Dylan can explain in sound and coherent terms why, say, 2010 Chris Masters is a great wrestler is a problem to those who disagree or refuse to consider him but can't back up their claims as well.

I thought we all agreed on Mogur as the new wrestler we would start arbitrarily pimping.

I know, I feel the same way about Mark Henry and plenty of other workers who have lots of fans around various places. You just stated your point in an awkward way, as if Watching The NJPW Set = Tiger Mask Is Meh like it were some kind of mathematical equation with only one possible correct answer. In a weird way, it actually is. Practically everyone who watched that set came away with a pretty low opinion of Tiger Mask. To put that into perspective, there were seven Tiger Mask matches that I ranked higher than the statistical average, and I think Tiger Mask sucked. If I was upvoting Tiger Mask matches, imagine how much the consensus viewers must have hated him. If that's the reaction people who watched the set had to his matches, I don't think it's that hard to hear Stern say "these guys are crazy, Tiger Mask was great" and jump to the conclusion that he didn't see the set. It's not impossible for that to be wrong, but unlikely enough that I can see why Dylan would (correctly, FWIW) think that. I know I did. Aww come on, Dylan, you know exactly what I'm talking about. It's been going on for a few years now. I don't even see the point of denying the obvious. I don't know why you would even argue about that anyway. Because there are two different ideas that are being conflated here: 1. Wrestlers who don't have a large and varied moveset aren't necessarily bad, and wrestlers who do have a large and varied moveset aren't necessarily good. 2. Wrestlers who don't have a large and varied moveset are good, and wrestlers who do have a large and varied moveset are bad. The former is the actual point of view of Dylan, myself, and other "anti-smarks" as we've been labeled. The latter is obvious nonsense that no one has actually said, but it's a handy strawman, and it's easier to argue against that than to form a coherent defense of Sayama's work. When you talk about "anti-M0VES~!" bias, it suggests the latter, and I think that's what Dylan is (correctly) arguing against.

Unless they get hit in the back. Excuse me...the spine. On one hand this may seem silly, but on the other...remember how Gordon Solie used to say the figure-four leglock affected 13 points in both legs? Imagine having to break that down because you have to reference the individual bones within each leg instead of just the legs themselves? You could do an awesome Discovery Channel special on shit like that. On the other other hand, we could be inflicted with a barrage of "there is nothing humerus about [insert arm-based submission here]" puns, but I can't think of too many holds that target the upper arm specifically, so we might be spared.

It was, but it was a brief, off-hand comment, so Beast seems to think he can spin it by changing the terms of the argument after the fact. The old "Moving the Goalposts" fallacy - he bets X won't do Y after everyone predicted they would, X does Y, but Beast decides it doesn't count because now X had to have done Y for Z length of time. Not that it's working, but that's Beast for ya. Why are you here, again? To read what all the cool kids are bitching about. And to bitch about the bitching in return, occasionally complaining about the lack of positivity on this board, despite the fact that you contribute little-to-no positive discussion yourself, and spend the bulk of your post bitching. "We accept you, one of us! Gooble Gobble!"

In fairness, they have a lot of women in developmental, and if NXT is going to be the official transition stage between that and the regular roster, well, it was kinda inevitable that they'd start showing up. I mean, it'll still suck, and the half-and-half idea that was floated around before this would probably have been more appealing, but them's the breaks. On the plus side, Goldust as a pro in an all-girl NXT season could at least provide something entertaining here. And it keeps my TV Tyler Black-free for a little while longer. It does make me wonder a little about the whole "we want one indy darling per season to spice things up" plan that they were supposedly working with. I mean, Alousia was apparently a last minute signing, but she doesn't really qualify, does she? You're telling me Sara Del Ray wasn't available?

I don't have a subscription, but anyone who would could put links of these up on the F4W board and show me the reaction would have my gratitude.

Why are you here, again?

Slow and steady wins the race, as Part 3 of my look at Judy Garland goes up. http://www.cagesideseats.com/2010/8/30/165...-wrestling-judy

Aside from all the other things wrong with what he said, Bischoff would probably be wise not to point out that WWE's McMahon-acknowledged "lousy quarter" was still considerably more successful than what TNA is doing.