S.L.L.

7. How many of the million-or-so guys who have worked Brody tribute/knockoff acts over the years are actually better than him? (I'm tempted to just say "all of them", but I'd want to actually think about it first)

Hell, the match with Kobashi is basically Ground Zero for modern heavyweight puro. Modern heavyweight puro fans not liking Sasaki is like an LMFAO fan not liking Digital Underground. Why do you like the mediocre, watered-down version of an act but not the original?

With the 80's Lucha set ready to roll, I should probably start trying to make a dent in the big stack of 80's Joshi I have, because the small sampling I've watched so far blew my doors in. From a purely mechanical standpoint, Jaguar Yokota has to be the best wrestler I've ever seen, female or otherwise. I am someone who is very hesitant to label anyone the "best whatever ever", but at least on that front, she is so far ahead of the competition that I really can't see any other option to point to.

Fuck, I actually liked that feud, too. Granted, it was mostly Kamala, but Brody at least sold in all the matches I saw, and the lumberjack match was probably his only match from that run where he actually brought something more to the table than, say, Big John Studd would have in the same situation. I was actually borderline on nominating that. 6. Is there enough quality Brody out there to construct a single-disc comp of him with which you could trick people unfamiliar with his work into thinking he was good? (My position would be that there's enough decent performances and good/great tags where he's hidden behind better wrestlers that you could convince someone he's good...probably not enough to convince people he's great, or anything near what legend suggests)

http://mabsonenterprises.bandcamp.com/album/we-cant-stop People, help me out. What does this mean in the grand scale of indie cred-ness? I honestly don't know.

Wait...is "We Can't Stop" getting indie cred?

I would also point to large parts of his '04/'05 run, where he was being pushed as the sleazy heel anarchistxx suggested he should be, with the announcers really pushing the "Creepy Little Bastard"/"CLB" thing to the crowd, and fans routinely rejecting it and giving him babyface reactions. That doesn't really happen to people fans don't want to invest in.

It was Matt D. I am not Matt D. It's stupid to respond to my arguments by responding to Matt D's arguments. Is that something that really needs to be explained? I don't think Christian is one of the best babyfaces in company history. Best working babyfaces? Possibly. But as an overall package, no, I don't think so. Hell, I'm not even arguing he's world title - as in WWE Title - material. If I had my way, he'd still be king of ECW. I thought that was the perfect spot for him. BUT.... The idea that Christian lacks the charisma or personality or connection to the crowd to ever even potentially succeed in a theoretical main event run flies in the face of all available evidence and is made by people who either let their own hangups with the guy cloud their objectivity, or by people who are as dull, lazy, and unimaginative as WWE Creative themselves. Should Christian win the WWE Title tomorrow? Of course not. Should Christian ever win the WWE Title? How should I know? He's never been tested on that level. Is he so lacking as a potential star that he's clearly unworthy of ever receiving such testing from the company? No, and I'm really hard-pressed to think of a non-stupid reason to believe otherwise.

I am not Matt D. I am not arguing these things. I said.... Argument isn't that he gets Hogan/Austin/Rock reactions. That's stupid. Even Matt D isn't arguing that. Hell, I'm not even arguing that he should be a world champion right now. He clearly doesn't fit in that picture. Argument is that Christian is a guy who historically gets strong reactions from the crowd that suggest his popularity could be capitalized on. That popularity has since waned, but if they really committed to him, no reason to believe it's not still possible. Hogan/Austin/Rock? Probably not. Ziggler winning the Title? Entirely possible. Nothing life-changing. He is a guy who the crowd has been consistently strongly behind, moreso than most. No reason to think you can't build that into something more. But if you want to measure by incredible pops for individual moments, nothing really comes to mind. Also no reason to think Rikishi couldn't have been built into an even bigger babyface if they wanted to given how over he was, and Christian doesn't have to overcome a comedy gimmick to be taken seriously in that spot, either. He's never been a truly top guy in WWE. I don't know what his failure to do a thing that he was never in a position to do proves. So...you agree that he's in the right position right now? Yeah, funny thing about this "is Christian world champion material" issue...he's not going for a world championship. He's going for the World Championship, but I thought it was pretty clear to everyone by this point that the World Championship is not a world championship. It's a secondary title for upper midcarders and main eventers with nothing else to do. Even if you don't believe that Christian is or ever has been capable of being a main eventer...what does that have to do with the current situation? He's never given a "Hard Times" level promo. He's never been booked to give a "Hard Times" level promo. No, because he was never booked in a massive, defining match that didn't involve loads of others guys and a ton of props. I can't help but notice your argument seems to be "Christian can't be a main event star because he's never been a main event star". Good thing we didn't have this argument a year ago or I guess Daniel Bryan would be fucked. And Lord knows they're right about everything! Who are the other WWE wrestlers who look like Christian? Here's me from a few years ago disagreeing with you: "I had spent a few years writing about how the WWE's biggest problem (besides their campaign to kill off everyone who ever works for them) was their complete absence of an identity because they had become so squeamish about letting any one wrestler or group of wrestlers become the face of the brand that the closest thing they had to a personality was the brand itself, which is just "a place where wrestling happens". In 2009, Christian actually gave ECW an identity, specifically that of undersized, outmatched guy who isn't afraid to mouth off to his bigger, stronger rivals and won't back down when they confront him. That felt like a really appropriate identity for ECW, both historically (indy fed that tried to forcibly wedge themselves into the major leagues) and currently (the third brand, essentially a glorified developmental, but with a roster that refused to be overlooked), and Christian was masterful at working it in and out of the ring. It went a long way in making ECW the most watchable wrestling show out there and making a lot of the other guys on the brand seem really vital in a way they wouldn't have otherwise" Has there ever been any proof of Christian eating at Denny's? Because if he's never eaten at Denny's before, clearly it's IMPOSSIBLE for him to EVER eat at Denny's. He'd probably spontaneously combust the second he walked in the door. Don't you tell me there's a first time for everything! We have reached the great plateau of history! The status quo is eternal!

"Christian can't connect with an audience" is a really odd claim presumably made by people with short memories. Christian is a guy who's proven capable of getting huge reactions from the crowd, moreso than the vast majority of guys on the current roster. He's not getting that currently, probably on account of spending the last few years either off TV or suffering through shitty booking. He's a guy who needs to be rehabbed if you want to get the full value of him. And I can see people saying they personally don't like his look or whatever, but when you project that claim onto the masses, it gets slapped down by reality. It's not really a point up for debate.

A lot of people who hate watching HHH be his own booker in WWE love watching Jerry Lawler be his own booker in Memphis. Jerry wielded just as much power in that setting as HHH does in his, but they love one and hate the other. So, no, it's not that simple. It would be very naive of me to say that doesn't play a factor at all, especially considering that HHH plays politics on a level that few ever dream of, and has arguably done less to deserve the level of power he has relative to the amount of power he has than any wrestler ever. But at the same time, if it were just about backstage politics, if people turned up their noses at every wrestler who played dirty backstage to get ahead...how many wrestlers would even be left to like? Because from everything I can tell, that's an almost universal trait amongst successful pro wrestlers. Then again, HHH is tends to book himself to put his biggest flaws on display, so I guess you could argue his self-booking is the source of 95% of his hatred in the sense that he books himself very poorly. But no, the simple fact that he has the booking power in the first place does not explain it alone, just in part.

Before clicking the link, I thought this was going to be a thread about the oddest hand gestures made by wrestlers during matches. WWE signing Super Porky as one of the Juniors was pretty strange.

Yeah, I am totally on board with the Cherry love here. I wrote this review of her match with Natalya back when it happened: As I recall, after this, they started to phase out the "terrified non-wrestler" aspects of Cherry's matches to show her growing in confidence. Admittedly, you can't be a terrified non-wrestler forever, but that dynamic was what made her interesting, and without it, she didn't really bring a ton to the table. I'm inclined to think they could've found other ways to deal with that, and I was bummed when they fired her, but she never really was the same after that. Still, it was a glorious couple of weeks.

Not passing judgement one way or the other, but it does seem like it's a hell of a lot easier to hate a guy when the only contact you have with him happens over a TV screen.

Also.... So the 80's Forum stuff may be spared yet.

But Jerry was asking about sustainability as well. Hogan was wildly successful as a heel ace for, what, a year-and-a-half, two years tops before it became a contributed-to-the-company's-death-level problem? The answer, as everyone has pointed out already, is The Sheik, but what I want to know is how did he pull it off?

Wrestlers and promoters. The question is how much blame do you level at each group.

Haven't most reliable sources exposed that as bullshit? Murdering Daniel with the crossface was just a rumour going around when it first happened. Quite the opposite, as Loss pointed out. In fact, I distinctly remember a number of people - including myself - who dismissed the reports at first because it just seemed too ridiculous to be true, only to find out that it was. That was a weird, weird time to be a wrestling fan.

I wrote something somewhere a while back about my issues with Dragon Gate in comparison to mid-90's Michinoku Pro....ah, here it is: Sometime after that, I'd watch a CIMA match where he was clearly just as bad as the younger guys. But I'd also watch a Sumo Fuji match that I almost liked thanks to his valiant attempts to hold it together, so who knows?

There are a few people here - myself included - who were really into Toryumon back in the day. I haven't revisited that stuff in quite a while. Given how I feel about Dragon Gate now, I'm almost afraid to. Leave the memories alone and all that.

I'm not sure those things are mutually exclusive. I know when I really get into a match or an angle, I'm usually not thinking about it on that technical a level. I'm thinking, "Oh shit, that was AWESOME!" And then, a little bit later, I will often think "and this is WHY it was awesome." Sometimes they happen more or less at the same time. As a rule of thumb, the more impressive the moment, the longer the gap seems to be. And of course I can't speak for everybody here, but my point is, yes, suspension of disbelief is a thing for me all the time in wrestling, and understanding of what makes for good wrestling is a thing for me all the time, too. Usually, when there's something going wrong with the former, it's a result of something wrong with the latter, but it still manifests as inability to suspend disbelief. Now, having said that, I see no real reason why that should be a problem here. Did anyone watch that match and think that Eddie was really any more or less credible of a Lesnar opponent because of his musculature? Can we point to anything in that match that suggested that - on a purely kayfabe level - Eddie's musculature was giving him any kind of meaningful advantages that he wouldn't have had otherwise? It's been a long time since I've watched the match, I admit, but I don't recall Eddie getting the better of - or even just looking competitive with - Lesnar in brawling exchanges. I don't remember him busting out a lot of power spots. In kayfabe, the standards advantages of being muscular are that you hit people hard and throw people around. Eddie didn't do those things, and while you could argue that that's because Lesnar was more muscular and Eddie was just at less of a disadvantage than normal, did that slight evening of the playing field really manifest in any way during the match? Did anything that happened in Eddie's favor in that match happen because Eddie was juiced to the gills? Not that I recall. In fact, if anything, I'm tempted to argue Punk - who isn't especially muscular, but is presented as being in great shape and having excellent cardio - should be able to do all the things that worked for Eddie in that match better than Eddie himself - a guy carrying too much muscle mass for his frame and who eventually died because he was a cardiovascular train wreck. Well, OK, maybe he won't be able to get Goldberg to do a run in for him. Other than that, not sure what Eddie's real advantage over Punk is in this situation. So I guess what I'm trying to say is that Matt is wrong in that suspension of disbelief is still a thing and we shouldn't dismiss it so quickly, but Matt is also right in that if your suspension of disbelief for pro wrestling is being affected in any way by Heath Herring, you my need to step back and remember that wrestling is fake.

I was about to say HHH! Shawn Michaels, Kevin Nash and Eric Bischoff are also good choices. Don't forget the Vinces McMahon and Russo. Always a safe bet.

ELVIS WAS A HERO TO MOST

You mean my post? What does being a moral crusader have to do with anything? I laid out the standards of diagnosis quite plainly. Nowhere in there did it say "individual is exempt from diagnosis if it's not their job to be a moral crusader", nor for that matter was anyone arguing that it was Vince's job to be a moral crusader. I thought it was quite clear that my argument was "Vince is crazy". If you want to argue that it's not Vince's job to not be crazy, that's not really an argument, at least not against my point. If you want to argue "it's not Vince's job to not be crazy, therefore Vince is not crazy," you might be crazy yourself. What was jdw just saying? I quoted from DSM-IV, which, up until a few weeks ago, represented "the facts", at least from a diagnostic standpoint, and built my argument around that. With limited actual arguments available against that (most of which I provided in that post), a New Version of the story is invented.