S.L.L.

It is kind of a shame that the deletion of Non-Stick erased a lot of really great discourse about what makes stupid arguments stupid.

The range is pretty wide, no doubt. That said, despite the wide range of possible and even existing opinions, I do think it's a mistake to overlook the frequency of certain opinions compared to others, and I also think it's a mistake to chalk that frequency up to coincidence. I don't know if there's quantifiable proof that a White Castle burger is not as good as a really fine New York diner burger, but I think when you look at the frequency of opinions from those who have tasted both, it's kind of hard to deny that there's something happening right with one that isn't happening with the other. And again, that doesn't make the dissenters "wrong", but they're going to have to explain their position if they don't want to get looked at weirdly by everyone else. Under ideal circumstances, none of this is "wrong", so to speak. But.... 1. A lot of us feel Shawn has a lesser body of work than Bret and Eddie 2. A lot of us feel Bret and Eddie both became consistently great workers before Shawn did 3. A lot of us feel that Shawn's run as a great worker didn't really outlast Bret's 4. A lot of us feel that while Eddie was pretty inconsistent for about a year after his accident, after that he was pretty consistently one of the best workers in the world until his death, to the point there would be a section within this group that actually feels Eddie was at his best in this period 5. A lot of us feel that Bret's best work holds up better than Shawn's best work ...so while I recognize that it's entirely possible to believe the above, it's kind of puzzling for someone like me who definitely believes the first four points and thinks that Bret's best work at least matches up to Shawn's to read what Ragemaster is saying.

Well, not strictly speaking, no. But people don't pick their favorite wrestlers by throwing darts at names on the wall. It's not completely arbitrary. People base their opinions on something. And sometimes that basis might not make any sense, or might not jibe factually with what that wrestler actually did. There are both objective and subjective elements to it. Yeah, people base their opinions on personal taste. Sure they do, but to just say "personal taste" by itself means nothing. In fact judging something purely on "personal taste" by itself is logically impossible, because it still has to be personal taste in something. And then that personal taste has to reflect what's being judged in some specific way. You never see a review of anything that just says "personal taste", it's always how personal taste reflected certain specific aspects of the work being reviewed. "Personal taste" means nothing when stripped of context. But people aren't always honest about that. Or they act like their personal hangups and biases are something more than that. In my experience, people who play the "it's just my opinion" card are almost always people who got into the argument stating their personal biases like they were fact, and that anyone who disagrees with them are crazy morons. Then, when the dissenters dissect their own opinions, they fall back on that old saw. I have no problem with people who disagree with me who can be honest about their opinions and can recognize their biases as such. It's everyone else who bugs me. Again, logically impossible, because subjective opinion requires objective fact for basis. Go ahead, try and have a subjective opinion right now about something that doesn't exist in objective reality. I wouldn't even know where to start. As best I can tell, opinions on professional wrestlers are formed when a wrestler's talent - an objective quality, unless you want to tell me that there's nothing Kawada can do differently than Giant Gonzalez that will make him a better wrestler, and that opinions on both men have no reflection on what they do in the ring whatsoever - are judged by a viewer through the prism of their personal taste - a subjective quality, and even then, one that usually falls within the usual range for our species or our given culture. And while that doesn't mean there's a "right" top 10, it means that any given top 10 is going to be based on a certain standard that, to some degree, will match up to other top 10's, even if the exact results don't. If it doesn't, that doesn't necessarily make the opinions "wrong", either. But it does mean that the person stating them will need to do serious explaining so as not to be misunderstood.

Well, not strictly speaking, no. But people don't pick their favorite wrestlers by throwing darts at names on the wall. It's not completely arbitrary. People base their opinions on something. And sometimes that basis might not make any sense, or might not jibe factually with what that wrestler actually did. There are both objective and subjective elements to it.

Okay, I'll bite...what's your rationale for putting Shawn ahead of Eddie and Bret?

I don't know exactly how many matches of his are floating around, but the general consensus seems to be that he's amazing in almost all of them. It's an incomplete picture of his career, but there's enough there to strongly suggest that he was great.

Me four. And not to be a nudge, but I never did get the password for the downloads folder. PM'd you. -- Loss, 01/09

Look, this is all besides the point. Can't we just agree that Dave Ditch sending in a top 50 ballot that had Chris Hero on it was weird and move on?

I usually don't like when people complain about "arguing over semantics", because semantics are actually pretty important, and understanding semantics is pretty key to communication. That said, I do see his point. Arguing over the specific definition of "great" misses the point of the whole project, and while sharing a definition would make communication easier, it's not really significant functionally. I mean, look at how the list turned out. Conveniently, the top 25 is made of people who we'd probably all agree were "great", and then #26 is Akira Taue, who a lot of us would probably have a very high opinion of - even a roughly identical high opinion - and not all of us would assign the word "great" to him. But if our actual opinions of his quality as a wrestler match up, what does it really matter what words we use to describe it are? #27 is Shinjiro Ohtani, who we probably almost all agree was "great" at one point in his career, but not all of us would describe him as "great" when looking at his entire career. But we'd all have roughly the same actual opinion of his work. I'm not sure how much it really matters.

There was a house show run in 1998 that I attended where they ran what was functionally a WarGames match between DX and the Nation. It was only one ring, allowed pinfalls, and was never advertised with the term "WarGames", but it was basically the same thing. And bear in mind that this was while WCW still existed as a viable competitor. I don't know if that's indicative of anything, just figured I'd mention it.

"Herb couldn't convince me that Tsuruta could be in a "Top 100" match" This sentence is a really great thing to have on hand as an illustration of why argument by assertion is not argument.

That depends. Finlay is older than Michaels, really broken down, and had a worse selection of major opponents than Michaels, and I'd have a really, really hard time arguing that 2007 Michaels was a better worker than 2007 Finlay.

"Great" is kind of a vague term. I imagine I could have the same opinion of The Big Boss Man as another guy, and I would call him "great" and he wouldn't, just because of different standards we have for using the term. And realistically, this is going to be more apparent when judging something like pro wrestlers, where the art is much lower and the scope (that we have available on tape, anyway) is much smaller than in film or music or something like that.

So you literally think that, aside from Savage/Steamboat, that there wasn't a single match from the WWF after 1984 which deserved to make a best-of list? Whoa. That's some pretty intense hatred. Let's not forget the scope that "80's wrestling" covers. It's pretty huge. 100 matches doesn't cover a lot of that. I'm not sure Savage/Steamboat is the only '85-'89 WWF match that belongs there, but it's not like that claim is ridiculous when you're considering the scale of the project.

I believe there was a Stecher/Lewis match that (allegedly) ended with Stecher in the hospital and Lewis out on the town drinking and dancing. Something like that.

Depends on how you want to define talking point. He's defended it when called on it. In discussion of the greatest workers of all time, he uses it as evidence of why Jumbo isn't one. Was a big reason behind his belief that Flair is a better all-time worker than Jumbo. Don't think he brought it up when saying that Kurt Angle was a better career worker than Jumbo, but I get the sense that if you asked him, he would say that was a reason. It's not like he said it once and then backed off of it, never to be used again.

Maybe so, but the information we have about Japanese wrestling is extremely limited. There's only so much you can surmise from watching tapes. The thing is, if I understand correctly, it's Dave's talking point, and Dave's own experiences with Jumbo's house show matches were almost uniformly positive. The only exception was a tag match against the Funks, after which, Dave talked to Terry Funk about it, and Terry told him that Jumbo was lazy at house shows. We can't really prove that the claim is true or false, but it's main proponent believed it, not only because of the claims of a wrestler trying to defer blame for a bad match from himself, but in spite of Dave's own first-hand evidence to the contrary.

I can't speak for your own experiences, but I became a wrestling fan at age 7. I think most people would tell you that the way they saw the world at 7 and the way they saw the world at 23 were very different.

Like I said earlier, you have to consider the issue of desensitization. I'm inclined to think that if I knew then what I know now, I'd never have become a wrestling fan in the first place. But now, it's all too easy for me to separate my immediate enjoyment of something in wrestling from my understanding of it's long-term consequences. That doesn't mean I can't understand both. Certainly doesn't mean that being aware of a problem and ignoring/denying/understating it is somehow better than being honest about it.

A wrestling promotion is supposed to use lies and deception to manipulate their fans, not vice versa. If there's no way to solve a problem because fans are marking out for it, that's a pretty sorry statement about wrestling promoters these days. Seriously, if a wrestling promoter is so spineless as to let his investment willfully destroy itself because of "please don't stop" chants, he might as well cut to the chase and close up shop.

It's not so much that I'm opposed to weeding idiots out of the gene pool, it's more that.... 1. ....on a strictly selfish level, these dudes getting badly hurt and/or dying fucks up my good time pretty badly. 2. ....if you're going to create an environment to let these retards do their thing, you could at least do a better job of keeping it contained. I'm aware that what Benoit did was a pretty extreme example of what can go wrong, but on general principle, it still seems like a really bad idea to take psychopaths, hit them in the head really hard a bunch of times, and then let them loose on an unsuspecting populace. Isn't there a prison we can renovate for use in a studio wrestling promotion? It's not like any of these loons would turn down a life sentence if it meant the freedom to practice their artform without the constraints of sane behavior. If dudes still think that indy workrate stuff is what gets you into the WWE, then they're crazy anyway. It's not that the link isn't there, it's that the degree to which this is present in wrestling is so much greater that suggesting it's not so bad because the same problem can be found elsewhere misses the point. It's not that wrestling has to be perfect. It can't be. It's that it doesn't have to be this bad.

Watching another human being, who clearly has psychological problems, run his own head full force into a hunk of steel is "entertaining as hell?" What in the name of fuck is wrong with you? Christ, I used to think only CZW fans would be better served just cutting to the chase and going to a geek show. Now I see many ROH fans are in the same boat. Not to defend this, but a lot of us have become so accustomed to that type of risk-taking at this point that it becomes hard to separate the "Wow, that guy hit his head into the ringpost! Cool!" feeling from the "Wow, that guy hit his head into the ringpost! What the fuck is wrong with him?" feeling, as least not in the heat of the moment. Not that this makes it okay, mind you, that's just what's behind it. Also, doing anything at all in ROH for reasons of economics means you fucked up severely. Also, comparing risks taken in wrestling to risks taken in boxing or the NFL directly and seeing no significant difference suggests a major lack of perspective.