S.L.L.

What was the source? Alright, let me put it to you this way: You say the SD6 aren't above criticism. OK...so what about the criticism here caused you to cry foul? You might find it, you might not, but I again ask what that would prove. No one is saying "the Smackdown Six weren't as great as we said at the time" was a mainstream view. Are you trying to prove that the PWO/Segunda Caida/DVDVR aesthetic is uncommon amongst wrestling fandom? I think we all knew that already.

This is the part where I ask you to show me this post. If I sound disbelieving, it's because lots of people have claimed to have seen it in the past, and no one's ever provided any hard evidence. There has been many an opportunity to prove that it happened, and no one ever made good on it. Typical cryptozoology bullshit. Gimme some proof, and I'll take it seriously And thus proves nothing. There were plenty of unremarkable/marginal guys who Schneider/TomK et al pointed to as being better than Michaels in that thread, but the one apologists point to is almost always Snitsky...who they didn't say was better than Michaels. Ever. Are you drunk? And if you have an opinion, then clearly everyone must share that opinion, unless they are just saying so to be an Anti-Meltzerite trying to look cool on the internet. Or, stated honestly, it's above criticism. jdw to the white curtsey phone....The Other Arena guys were the ones on top of that at the time. Outside of this board? I don't think anyone is trying to argue SD6 criticism is some kind of mainstream opinion...just an opinion that's not new to this niche. "And I assume Resident Evil would tell you that Steiners v Heavenly Bodies was better because it was worked like proto-Smackdown Six with lots of meaningless moves to get pops." -TomK, 8/24/2007 Possibly because no one here has actually said they think it sucks as a whole, just that it may not have been this pinnacle of quality wrestling - even just within the confines of WWE - that some people claim it is.

It was said by Kerry Von Erich backstage at WrestleMania VIII, right before he debuted as the new Ultimate Warrior after Jim Hellwig had died. Actually, seeing as how the old stuff from the DVDVR board has been inaccessible for a while now, how recently/regularly did you read that thread, if at all? I should be fair...there wasn't hate in the strictest sense of the term. But as others are pointing out, there isn't really hate now - just people saying it's not above criticism, and that it doesn't all hold up, and that you can do better, and that's been said by people since it happened. You questioned people's ability to honestly criticize Angle because.... You presume people critical of the Smackdown Six are speaking from ignorance and therefore must have a sinister ulterior motive, but pulling out stuff like "they said Snitsky is better than Michaels!" and the general idea that SD!6 criticism is a totally new phenomenon reveals that you are speaking from ignorance in your criticisms of people who disagree with you, and while it doesn't necessarily mean you have a sinister ulterior motive, it does at least make you a massive hypocrite.

There was SD6 hate while it was happening, and there's been growing criticism for it ever since. People's criticisms aren't valid if they haven't watched someone recently/regularly if ever, but criticisms of those criticisms are valid if you haven't read them recently/regularly if ever? You mean the one that never actually said said Snitsky was better than Michaels, but a lot of Michaels apologists claim that it did because it was easier than defending him on his merits? You realize this effectively gives you away as either a liar, or as someone who never actually read that thread. In which case...people's criticisms aren't valid if they haven't watched someone recently/regularly if ever, but criticisms of those criticisms are valid if you haven't read them recently/regularly if ever? Have a little consistency, man.

Was this some snarky attempt at lampooning my position on this? If so, go fuck yourself. One of the least considered, most ill thought out contributions anyone has made to this thread to date. Dick. Actually, it wasn't, although it certainly looks that way, doesn't it? I initially wrote this as sort of a summation of the points John and Will were making, which in turn seemed more in response to the article you quoted rather than your own take on it. It was only after I posted it that I realized it was right after your post, and that it looked like a response, but it's not. I've stopped trying to argue with you. No good comes of it - you refuse to have your views challenged about anything ever, and that's that. Fine. Unlike you, I will not let something as simple and commonplace as a contrary opinion diminish my enjoyment of a message board. No, that post was not meant to be snarking at you. This post is meant to be snarking at you, but that one was aimed at this Gabler bozo. If you were angered by that post, I'm sorry. I genuinely did not mean it that way, and I realize it totally looks like I did, so I can understand you being upset. If you're angered because you attached your ego to Gabler's article, I'm not sorry. I meant what I said, and if you don't like it, that's your problem, not mine. If you're angered by this post, I'm not sorry, but take comfort in the fact that I generally don't respond to you anymore about anything, because I know I can handle walking on eggshells around your posts and you can't do the same with anyone else's even if you literally use the ignore feature on them twice, so I generally avoid participating in threads you're in unless I'm going to post something I know you'll find inoffensive. Getting into shouting matches that the mods have to come in and break up accomplishes nothing, so I just don't do it anymore, and I don't intend to start again now.

I am shocked - SHOCKED - by the notion that people of any age group in any generation gravitate towards things that are readily available rather than things that you have to go out of your way to hear about and find. That's unpossible!

I'm surprised Bond didn't go in by fiat in '96. He seems like an obvious dunker as a candidate - drew huge numbers for decades, was considered an excellent worker at least during the early part of his run, inspired a lot of "spy" acts that tried to piggyback off of his success to one degree or another (some of which are arguable candidates in their own right), and was really the key figure in establishing the British wrestling industry as a powerhouse that could succeed internationally. How did JDW miss this guy but let Bert Asserati in?

Someone on Reddit posed the question, "Is there a more 90's photo?":

This has a 50/50 shot of either clarifying the "Hogan: Not That Big a Deal" argument or making it even more confusing, but I'm going for it anyway. If there was a Hall of Fame for fame itself, and Hogan was being considered as a potential inductee, I think you could make a comparison of his candidacy for that to The Fabulous Moolah's candidacy for the WON HOF - a known entity who was synonymous with his field for a very long time, but his field meant very little in the grand scheme of things, and he doesn't really have many pluses beyond kneejerk recognition. And even that might be a generous comparison - my gut feeling is that Moolah meant more to wrestling than Hogan meant to mainstream celebrity in general, though I admit I can't really back that up with anything concrete.

This is the most perfect description of the WON HOF I have ever seen. Maybe that's the real reason Meltzer doesn't feel the need to put himself on the ballot. The HOF is already all about him.

Is there a reason people disagreeing with Loss are ignoring this point? I mean, other than the most obvious and cynical ones? Because there are people posting responses patting OJ on the back for his insight, and acting like Loss didn't have anything to come back with, and that's weird to me. Do you guys think Loss' point here doesn't merit rebuttal? If so, why? I mean, I think if you asked most people who, say, The Joker was, I'm sure most of them would tell you he's a comic book supervillian. They know that much. But if you asked them to describe something specific that The Joker had done, how many people would talk about him beating Jason Todd to death with a crowbar, and how many people would start in on "Did I ever tell you how I got these scars?" or "I'm gonna make this pencil disappear" or, on the outside, "Did you ever dance with the devil in the pale moonlight?"? Would Jason Todd's violent and incredibly well-known amongst comic book fandom death have more traction amongst the general public than Cesar Romero painting over his mustache? How many of those people would even know who Jason Todd is? There's a difference between being able to successfully identify what medium a celebrity or character originates from and actually knowing who they are in any sort of meaningful way. If I'm reading Loss correctly, the big thing he's saying is that people know Hulk Hogan as the definitive professional wrestler...and that's it.

You keep using that word...I don't think it means what you think it means. Even if I thought Tanahashi was a much, much better worker than I do, his run of HOF-worthy greatness represents such a narrow slice of history, and one that coincides with arguably wrestling's all-time low point as both a business and a form of entertainment. The circumstances required to point to this and say "this is worthy of Hall of Fame induction" would have to be so incredible that even niche dissenters such as myself would be unable to deny it. Can you imagine how good a wrestler would have to be to be a top five big match wrestler of all time based primarily on a two-year run? Most of the guys who compete for that spot have a decade - sometimes more than one - in which to build up a massive body of great work to stand as evidence of their worth for consideration. Tanahashi created the equivalent of that...in two years. In fact, no, he created something superior than that when compared to all but a maximum of four wrestlers ever. In two years. Think of the implications of that. Think of how good you have to be for your two years to be nipping at the heels of, say ten Mitsuharu Misawa years (as a rough estimate of Misawa's run as a great big match worker). You would have to be approaching, on average, being five times as good as the best 20% of Misawa's performances from that run. You would have to average that level of quality. Has any wrestler in history ever pulled that off? I don't mean to snark. But when he says.... ....I wonder how literally I should take that statement.

Pro Wrestling Intellectual 2: Even Intellectualer We also would have accepted "Intellectual Harder"...or, on the outside, "Intellectual Boogaloo".

That's true on a very, very macro level, and it's kinda what I'm talking about, in that the fundamental reasons Rock 'N' Wrestling and Attitude (and for that matter, every successful promotional run in wrestling history, probably) succeeded are the same. However, when we look at Rock 'N' Wrestling and Attitude (and for that matter, every successful promotional run in wrestling history, probably), we can see that they're very different in very obvious ways. The most basic and important principles are the same, but different times, different places, different wrestlers, and different bookers and promoters create different circumstances, which mean the same rules get applied in radically different ways, and sometimes, what might work for a promotion and it's fans now won't appeal to people who were fans then. It's not so much that people might be upset or annoyed by a competently run wrestling promotion...it's that "competently run" does not automatically equal "something you like". I mean, Rock 'N' Wrestling-era WWF was arguably the most competently run wrestling promotion ever, but old timers still talked about how Vince McMahon killed wrestling because it wasn't what they wanted. People aren't afraid of a competent WWE. People are afraid of a competent WWE that they don't like, at which point they become the old guy who bitches about how these fancy-dan tumblers ruined wrestling by making it "entertainment" instead of real sportsmen like Triple H and The Undertaker who didn't need any fancy gimmicks and worked 60-minute technical classics every night. Every time a wrestling promotion moves forward, it inevitably leaves things behind, including fans, but since WWE's company policy is to stand completely still, there are a number of fans who are in a sort of twilight zone - things are recognizably not what they want, but not so alienating that they'll abandon it. It's safe. It's like the wrestling equivalent of the Eagles. If the Eagles released a new concept album inspired by alternative R&B sounds, and they actually managed to pull it off and it became a huge hit that justified pushing their sound in that direction, you know that a lot of people who are comfortable listening to the Eagles as they are/were - even people who don't necessarily love the Eagles as they are/were - are not going to want to follow them in this new direction, even if it worked out great for the band. And it's just the same with WWE. If they suddenly became a company that was willing to reshape itself to capitalize on the popularity of Daniel Bryan and maximize potential gains from that popularity the way they were for Hogan and Austin, there would be fans left behind, and the possibility of someone as smark-friendly as Bryan being the center of that does not necessarily make change any easier for people, nor does it guarantee that they'll like the change. It's a risk, and current WWE cultivates a following by the easily-threatened. I mean, look at this mess..... TIL you can get battered wife syndrome from a wrestling promotion. Seriously, "objective criticism"...does he even know what those words mean? This is not someone you can push change to, and I wish WWE would stop booking towards him.

Man, it's deja vu all over again. Just about a year ago, I wrote this.... As the thread went on, it became pretty clear to me that the big problem was that for a lot of people, their issues with current WWE were trumped by fear of change. You actually pointed this out quite nicely.... Old fans were alienated by Rock 'N' Wrestling. Old fans were alienated by Attitude. Most of us on internet wrestling message boards are old fans. If WWE makes a drastic change on the level of Rock 'N' Wrestling or Attitude...what happens to us? Obviously, you welcome this sort of change. I get more enjoyment from low-context/no-context modern WWE than you do, but I wish it didn't have to be that way, and the willingness to make that kind of change is the only thing that will fix that, so I welcome it, too. And you and I are not alone in feeling that way, but it's quite obvious to me that there are a lot of people who, if presented with the choice between a WWE that's stale enough for them to gripe about but stable enough for them to be comfortable with and a WWE that makes radical changes to push forward and risks leaving them behind, they'll pick the former every time. And what's especially stunning in light of recent events is that this is just as true if that radical change is spearheaded by John Cena as it is if that radical change is spearheaded by Daniel Bryan. If arguably the most smark-friendly wrestler who ever lived can't rally the internet to support radical change in WWE, there's really no hope, is there?

Jose, I know you've said before that interviews aren't that big a deal in lucha as they are elsewhere, but without going too far off-topic, I wonder you could expand on that a bit, particularly as it relates to this point Loss made earlier: Is, say, Atlantis a bad promo just because he's ineloquent, or is he also a guy who doesn't come off as believable? I know the structure of lucha is such that promos aren't presented as as meaningful a part of the package as they are in the US, but I'm also wondering if part of it is the larger issue of "great talkers" not meaning what we think they mean anywhere, especially what we think they mean in the post-territorial era.

Solid fucking gold.

Ton of great matches in 2011. Looking over your list, the highlights you're missing are... Jimmy Jacobs vs. Jon Moxley (Dog Collar Match) (IPW, 1/1) The Miz vs. John Morrison (Falls Count Anywhere Match) (WWE, 1/3/11) The Big Show vs. vs. Drew McIntyre vs. Cody Rhodes vs. Dolph Ziggler (WWE, 1/7/11) Negro Navarro & Black Terry vs. Gran Apache & Angel Mortal (IWRG, 1/9/11) Kana & Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs. Yuki Ishikawa & Carlos Amano (Kana Pro, 1/10) Jerry Lawler vs. Tommy Dreamer (NEW, 1/15/11) Negro Navarro & Black Terry vs. Gran Apache & Angel Mortal (IWRG, 1/16/11) Negro Navarro, Dr. Cerebro, & Multifacetico vs. Gran Apache, Mazada, & Comando Negro (IWRG, 1/23/11) Black Terry vs. Angel Mortal (IWRG, 1/23/11) Solar I vs. Black Terry vs. Negro Navarro vs. Villano IV vs. Ray Mendoza Jr. vs. Ultraman vs. El Dandy vs. Fuerza Guerrera (Tag Torneo Incredibles?) (Arena Neza, 1/29/11) Los Traumas vs. Fabi & Mari Apache (DTU, 1/29/11) Dr. Cerebro vs. Comando Negro (IWRG, 1/30/11) Kana vs. Meiko Satomura (Kana Pro, 2/13) John Cena vs. C.M. Punk (WWE, 2/23/11) Dick Togo vs. HARASHIMA (DDT, 2/27/11) Jerry Lawler & Brian Christopher vs. Bill & Jamie Dundee (???, 3/2/11) Blue Panther & Negro Navarro vs. El Satanico & Solar I (CMLL, 3/5/11) John Cena vs. C.M. Punk (WWE, 3/13/11) Blue Panther, Solar I, & Rocky Santana vs. Black Terry, Negro Navarro, & Ray Mendoza Jr. (UWE, 3/16) The Stro vs. King Bulldozer (NWA Mountain State, 3/20) Solar I & Ultraman vs. Black Terry & Negro Navarro (PROLLM, 3/20/11) Rey Cometa, Pegasso, & Angel de Plata vs. Arkangel de la Muerte, Nitro, & Skandalo (CMLL, 4/8/11) Low-Ki vs. Akira Tozawa (PWG, 4/9) Ultimo Guerrero vs. Hirooki Goto (CMLL, 4/29/11) Freelance vs. Avisman (IWRG, 5/29/11) Jake Davis vs. Vince Vega (Cage Match) (EPWA, 8/12/11) Damien Wayne vs. Charlie Dreamer (OSF, 8/20/11) Dean Allmark vs. James Mason (ASW, 8/31/11) C.M. Punk vs. Alberto Del Rio (WWE, 9/3/11) Necro Butcher vs. Sami Callihan (IWA:EC, 9/20/11) Bam Bam vs. Pierrothito (CMLL, 9/20/11) Dragon Lee & Stuka Jr. vs. Euforia & Misterioso Jr. (CMLL, 9/30/11) Necro Butcher vs. Mark Savoir (WVWA, 10/1/11) Trauma I vs. El Hijo del Pirata Morgan (IWRG, 10/23/11) Trauma I vs. Trauma II (SomosLuchadores.com, 10/29/11) Black Terry, Dr. Cerebro, & Robin Maravilla vs. Dinastia Navarro (AULL, 10/29/11) Jake Davis vs. Luke Gallows (Last Man Standing Match) (EPWA, 11/19/11) Pantera vs. Trauma I (IWRG, 11/20/11) Bugambilia del Norte vs. Eterno (IWRG, 11/24/11) Hy-Zaya & Suicide Kid vs. Adam Gooch & The Rick (D1W, 11/24/11) Triton vs. Negro Navarro vs. Trauma I vs. Trauma II vs. Black Terry vs. Judas el Traidor vs. Belial vs. Terremoto Negro (LUCHA POP, 11/26/11) Trauma I & Oficial AK-47 vs. Trauma II & Oficial 911 (Relevos Suicidas) (IWRG, 12/22/11) That oughtta keep you busy for a while.

I realize the "autism spectrum" is officially no longer a thing, and thus I am officially no longer on it. That said, I'm very tempted to follow suit in telling Jerry to fuck off, but while it was a wildly inappropriate comment, considering the boatloads of projection he's displaying in these posts, I'm not sure he didn't inadvertently reveal something about himself. At this point, I'm a little less inclined to react with hostility, and a little more inclined to react with pity towards a guy who obviously has a very hard time understanding the world beyond very narrow parameters, and has no way of coping with that other than to demand that everyone else conform to his understanding of the world rather than expand his own mind or even just shrug his shoulders and accept that other people see things differently. It's sad, really. As to the subject at hand, even if we were to grant that Vince was an innovator, I still don't know that I could grant he's a genius. That said, I don't think I would call any wrestling promoter a genius, and Vince is far and away the most successful there's ever been. I just think that's less proof that he's a genius, and more that he's the smartest moron - he did things and seized opportunities that were really obvious (I'll allow that there may be some hindsight bias there, though I sense that it's not much), but that everyone else was too backwards to do. That's certainly impressive, and worthy of recognition. "Genius"? No. Isaac Newton was a genius. Albert Einstein was a genius. In the art/entertainment world, Michelangelo, Orson Welles, and John Lennon were geniuses. I'm disinclined to include Vince amongst those names.

I've found that, if you're dealing with people not too squeamish about blood, Brody vs. Abby from World Class in '86 tends to go over well with non-fans.

It is a bit funny how Arn's super-agent powers only ever seem to make Cena's matches awesome, and everyone else either doesn't need his help or are beyond helping.

So, way earlier in this thread, when talking about the company's failure to really capitalize on Cena, I wrote that.... I'm still on guard about this whole angle, since WWE has burned me so many times before...but it's really nice to not see them make the same mistake with Bryan. For that matter, THAT was what the aftermath of Punk being stripped of the title should've looked like.

I could swear I've seen "go-go-go" used in positive contexts by people who usually deride the style - possibly including myself - though concrete examples aren't jumping at me right now. But yeah, I thought it was a descriptive term rather than a judgmental one, it just happens that a lot of the worst wrestlers of the last decade or so work that style, so it has negative connotations attached to it.

I'm a little hesitant to post this, because we have Tanahashi defenders actually defending Tanahashi right now, and I don't want to distract too much from that. One of the defining features - maybe the defining feature - of Tanahashi fandom to me is that he's the critical darling who nobody likes. My previous attempts to pin down what Tanahashi fans specifically like about the guy have been like pulling teeth, to the point that I was more likely to see his fans talk about specific negatives of his than positives. So seeing his fans actually talk about specific positives is really cool, and I don't want to take away from that part of the discussion. Having said that, I do want to ask, on the Tanahashi vs. Cena front...how much of the difference is marketing? For all their similarities, the way the two are presented to fans - both by online tastemakers and by the promotions themselves - are radically different. I don't think it tells the whole story. People still have to actually enjoy the things they like. But I wonder how much of an effect it has on fan perception of them.

Single disc? Definitely enough matches w/ Abby, Blackwell, the Funks, Gordy, and Jumbo for that, plus one offs like Sawyer and Lawler. True. I guess the follow-up questions would be how far you could stretch it out before it falls apart, and how strong a case you could theoretically make for him based on cherry-picking his best stuff.