S.L.L.

In hindsight, I probably should've gone with a 7x7 card.

Dave sez.... (Dave Meltzer has cornered Alicia Webb/Ryan Shamrock with the damning evidence) Dave: I want the truth! Ryan: Alright....Ken....he's my father. *SLAP* Dave: I said I want the truth! Ryan: He's my brother. *SLAP* Ryan: He's my father. *SLAP* Ryan: He's my brother. *SLAP* Ryan: He's my father. *SLAP* Ryan: He's my brother. *SLAP* *SLAP* *SLAP* Dave: I SAID I WANT THE TRUTH! (He throws Ryan down in a heap on the floor. S/he starts sobbing loudly) Ryan: HE'S MY FATHER AND MY BROTHER! (Fin)

Sure, but what you're saying doesn't really merit it. Besides, I thought you were done with this thread?

Okay, THAT'S Bingo. The second gives us B3, so second place comes if he brings up the dangers inherent in other sports and media sensationalism.

Well, for me personally, it's not even really a conscious thing. I've loved wrestling since I was 7 years old. In general, nothing about what I was seeing on TV fundamentally changed that. Since then, I've learned all this behind the scenes stuff that makes me realize how scummy wrestling really is. But that didn't make what was happening on TV all those years any less entertaining. I can certainly see why it would for some, but it didn't for me. I'm not sure why. I have a pretty dark sense of humor, I guess that helps. And I'm pretty good at separating performer from performance. And in general, I have the sense that I love wrestling far more so than I love any actual wrestler or people working in wrestling. I still kind of feel that wrestling as a concept is inherently bad, but the people who bring wrestling to life make it bad. I know that doesn't really explain everything away, but that's basically where I'm coming from.

Of course I can be inconsistent and flat out wrong about things. If you want my honest opinion, I don't think I could watch wrestling anymore if I felt as strongly about things as other people do, but I keep watching because I've always watched it and don't want to stop, except for Benoit matches which I avoid. (Something I'm not entirely comfortable about.) I think people can negotiate their way through a pro-wrestling career, but most don't. Really I have no justification to keep watching and have the most respect for people who've stopped. Tnen again, I couldn't enjoy anything if I worried about all the shit that goes along with it. Then why the beef with people who essentially feel the same way you do, but openly acknowledge their concerns instead of trying to squelch them because they're not comfortable dealing with them? Don't get me wrong, the situation is fucked up, and I don't blame you if it's not something you want to spend a lot of time thinking about, but I don't see how you can complain about people being dishonest and inconsistent with the "I can enjoy it and criticize it" line when your own solution seems to be to just ignore the elements being criticized even though you know they exist and that they're a problem. I guess that's more consistent than what I'm saying, but it's consistent because you willfully dismiss reality in order to make the pieces fit better in your head.

Not sure there are too many people in wrestling today who's brains have been fried worse than Misawa's, but your point stands. But I do think, as you seem to, that they should be reduced on general principle.

Wrestling is fake. If people are getting hurt doing it they can change what they're doing. If they won't that has absolutely nothing to do with the nature of wrestling. Theoretically you could work a style that would guarantee no one would ever get hurt. The question is how far you can go toward that style without becoming unbearably boring, not whether you can go towards it. Impossible. Absolutely impossible to work a style that would guarantee no one would ever get hurt. Wrestling is fake and real. There is impact in wrestling. A TV fight is completely "fake". It's the real aspect of the wrestling show combined with the emotions that one can dig up with the benifit of the fakeness that makes wrestling tick for its fans. That's the nature of wrestling and why it differs to something like a movie fight and this leads to inuries, injuries, injuries. You might not agree that that's what wrestling should be but for better or for worse that's what it is It's not all or nothing though. You can take a lot of precautions that are not being taken, and even though it won't make wrestling "safe", it'll still be better than the current status quo. It's not like there's no middle ground between totally safe wrestling (read "none") and dudes headbutting ringposts in front of a couple hundred people. Look, I live on Long Island, and when ROH comes around, I usually go. It's Long Island, so the crowds tend to be pretty indifferent, and knowing this, the shows usually aren't that significant, and the internet at large tends to ignore them. There is precisely zero reason why the Briscoe Brothers should be doing lengthy spot-fu/headrop/indy stiffness/DANGEROUSSSSSSS matches that go 20+ minutes. And yet, that's exactly what happens, and they're not the only ones doing it. Why? Why does this have to be the match they work every time out, no matter the card position, card significance, match significance, etc. These are the kind of risks that can be reduced, and even though it won't make the matches "safe", it won't make them needlessly dangerous, either.

I agree with what you're saying in general, and I don't think this is strictly what you're trying to say, but getting hurt is "necessary" in wrestling insofar as it seems to be inevitable. However, as I think you're saying, wrestling culture leads them to push their luck in that regard far moreso than is really necessary. Edit: In general, it seems like the anti-anti-wrestling movement is saying that "all wrestling carries risk, therefore you can't complain about any of it or you're inconsistent", which seems silly to me.

I'm not sure if this is apropos of anything, but....

It comes across like people are picking and choosing their spots to criticise, based on whether they like the wrestling product or not. I'm sure that's not true, but that's how it comes across. I know people here have no illusions about workers & promotions they like, but time and time again people fall back into old habits of pimping workers and matches they like with no regard to their concerns about the business or the participants' welfare... It's confusing. For example, if Bob Roop becomes a pimped worker after the Mid-South, is he a fuck-up for being in the business, a great worker or a fuck-up and a great worker? If it makes you feel any better, any time I write about wrestling, the fact that the people involved are fuck-ups is a given, so I don't feel the need to specifically mention it unless it's important to what I'm trying to say. So a thread about how awesome JYD & Mr. Olympia vs. Ted DiBiase & Matt Borne is isn't guaranteed to contain comments about the drug abuse that destroyed JYD's and Borne's careers, the blatant hypocrisy of DiBiase in his post-retirement years, and the fact that Jerry Stubbs probably did horrible things, even if I don't necessarily know what they are, but it's not like I'm unaware. What of you, OJ? Has everything you've ever posted about wrestling contained equal amounts of praise and scorn? Are you not guilty of this same "inconsistency" when discussing things in wrestling you like? Or is it only a double standard when somebody else does it?

The "inconsistency", if I'm reading this correctly, is that everyone's opinions on wrestling should either be uniformly positive, uniformly negative, or equal parts positive and negative on all subjects. So, if the praise for Mid-South in the DVDVR 80's project is not equal to the scorn for Mid-South-related sleaze in the same discussion, or the praise for Kobashi/Kikuchi vs. The Can-Ams doesn't equal the scorn for it's dangerous nature in the same discussion, that's inconsistent. I assume there's inconsistency in this very thread, because no one is praising Jim Ross in the "Jim Ross Is A Grouchy Hateful Vile Human Being" thread, and unless you make Janus-like comments weighing the positives and negatives of a situation evenly in every post you make, that's inconsistent. I think.

The Mid-South project is about watching great wrestling and talking about what was the best. Why would you expect to see huge amounts of criticism there? "Best of the 80's: Mid-South Project" vs. "The Jim Ross Is A Grouchy Hateful Vile Human Being thread". Why is it so shocking to you that one is loaded with praise and the other is loaded with scorn?

Yeah, that was a good one. Then there were all the Benoit-specific ones I left out. "He probably just snapped", "Maybe he accidentally tied up Nancy and strangled her to death", "He never did anything bad before, and at least he killed himself after the first time, as opposed to Randy Orton....", and so on.

No prob. I felt like variations on personal choice would be too redundant. Final square came down to "it's the recreational drugs" or "Mysterio can't be on steroids because he's short", and the Mysterio one seems to be both more common and more laughable, so I went with that.

Could you tell us that these are grown men free to make their own decisions, next? I'm so close to getting "Wrestling Death Apologist Bingo" here.

I don't know what kind of an effect it has on his HOF credentials. In terms of judging him as a career worker, it hurts him. Lots of good-great wrestlers have post-prime periods where they start to suck. Not a lot of those guys get heavy airtime where they're promoted as great workers and booked into designated workrate matches. Shawn is, and so the prominence of his suck reflects badly on his career body of work. Compare to someone like Barry Windham. The story with Windham is usually that he was a great worker with a short prime, and afterwards he fell apart hard, and thus he's not one of the very greatest workers ever. But Barry had a prime that was about as long as Shawn's, probably produced the better body of work between the two, and when he fell apart after 1993, he basically disappeared. Barry from 1994 on wasn't getting featured in high profile "mat classics" where announcers gushed over what a great worker he was. He disappeared outside of various midcard stints, and his legacy is better off for it. If he didn't, I'd probably think a lot less of him as a worker than I do now. If Shawn had stayed retired after 1998, I'd probably think a lot more of him as a worker than I do. But he didn't, and to paraphrase Bill Corbett, I believe the saying is "leave them wanting more", not "leave them wishing you retired ten years ago".

Did he really rip them outside of decrying "Big Show" as his "slave name"?

This is actually an interesting point. Not one I agree with necessarily, but I've often made the point that a lot of Shawn fans are easily taken in by the whole "Showstopper" gimmick. Even amongst fans on the internet who claim to be too smart to fall for the cheap tricks of wrestling promoters, hype and gimmickry is still very potent.... -Broken down shell of his former self Michaels is still a top-flight worker because he's "The Showstopper" -Kurt Angle, Lance Storm, Shelton Benjamin, Charlie Haas, Brent Albright, John Walters, et al are great technicians because they have "great technician" gimmicks -MVP and The Miz are bad workers because they have "bad worker" gimmicks -Carlito starts working a high energy style, but still retains the "cool, indifferent guy" gimmick, and gets criticized for being lazy I don't doubt for a second that there are people out there who think Bret is a great worker because he's "The Best There Is, etc., etc.", but I do think that independently of the hype, he's still a great wrestler. Same with Shawn, or at least it was at one point. As for my own top ten, it's liable to change at any given moment, but right now, these are the guys who would probably be in contention.... Lioness Asuka Atlantis Steve Austin Giant Baba Bob Backlund Chris Benoit Blue Panther Jack Brisco Negro Casas Javier Cruz El Dandy The Destroyer The Dynamite Kid Ric Flair Tatsumi Fujinami Terry Funk Fuerza Guerrera Eddie Guerrero Volk Han Stan Hansen Bret Hart Shinya Hashimoto Toshiaki Kawada Aja Kong Jerry Lawler Jushin Thunder Liger Devil Masami Mitsuharu Misawa Pirata Morgan Rey Mysterio Jr. Chigusa Nagayo Harley Race El Hijo del Santo El Satanico Randy Savage Ricky Steamboat Nobuhiko Takada Genichiro Tenryu Jumbo Tsuruta Big Van Vader Jaguar Yokota Take that for what you will.

I can't be the only one entertained by that stuff though. When he was smiling & grinning while getting beaten & bludgeoned by Bret Hart in the SS '97 match, I was laughing. Maybe I don't take pro wrestling seriously enough, but most of that shit just added to Shawn's greatness in my eyes. I mean he had the audacity to do it to guys who could legitimately kill him with their bare hands if they wanted to. And he got away with it. I chuckle just thinking about it. I got more than a few laughs out of Shawn over-overselling for Hogan, myself. That said, if we're really appraising Shawn as a worker, that kind of thing has to count against him. I suppose, if we're doing a poll on the most professional in-ring technicians of all time, that is true. Topic says "Greatest Wrestler" which is definitely more vague. You almost have to break it down into different categories, no? Well, "great" is definitely a vague term. I don't remember what the specific standards were for the Smarkschoice poll. I imagine if it was just "guys you enjoyed for whatever reason" that sort of thing could help Shawn. If it was "greatest worker", as I interpreted it, it would have to hurt him.

I can't be the only one entertained by that stuff though. When he was smiling & grinning while getting beaten & bludgeoned by Bret Hart in the SS '97 match, I was laughing. Maybe I don't take pro wrestling seriously enough, but most of that shit just added to Shawn's greatness in my eyes. I mean he had the audacity to do it to guys who could legitimately kill him with their bare hands if they wanted to. And he got away with it. I chuckle just thinking about it. I got more than a few laughs out of Shawn over-overselling for Hogan, myself. That said, if we're really appraising Shawn as a worker, that kind of thing has to count against him.

I'll have my own thoughts a little later. I was just curious what folks around here are looking for in the new year.

Yeah, it was a sewer, but I'd hate to see all those amusing anecdotes and elaborate hit pieces on various idiots and their stupid opinions lost forever.

I don't see any reason that that thread should have dissapeared but can't find it. I thought Non-Stick was deleted entirely. There was stuff saved?