ohtani's jacket

I thought Watts tried to capitalise on the prominence of black sporting stars by pushing a black wrestler as a main eventer. Watts saw a trend, created a fad, and kept trying to replicate it with black football players. JYD may have drawn a melting pot of fans, he may have even been a cultural icon for a time, but he was largely forgotten by the time he died. We don't know if JYD would have kept drawing in Mid South, but in any event it didn't happen and it doesn't make JYD any less of a fad. There are plenty of reasons why fads end and plenty of reasons why they could've kept on drawing if things had been different. Wrestling booms are generally fads where wrestling is suddenly more popular than usual. If a ton of people are going to the wrestling because they're into JYD, then JYD leaves and people stop going, that was a fad. It's no different from Chigusa retiring and a whole bunch of schoolgirls not giving a shit about wrestling anymore. If she hadn't been forced to retire, she might have kept on drawing, and she pretty much flirted with returning from the second she left, but that doesn't mean girls were listening to her records in 1990.

That gives more weight to JYD being a fad. If other black wrestlers couldn't draw then it shows there was no trend of black wrestlers drawing. I don't understand why fad is being given negative connotations in this thread.

Does fad have a different usage in the US? Beauty Pair was a fad. The Crush Girls was a fad. UWF was a fad. The WWF's mainstream appeal in the mid-to-late 80s was a fad. The WWF's international appeal in the late 80s was a fad. Austin's popular was a fad. The attitude era was a fad. In the Junkyard Dog's case, it's difficult to know whether he was a fad or not because he was pinched by Vince before it was apparent whether he was another Bruno or not.

Why do you keep engaging him in conversation? I can't be the only one who finds this shit painful reading.

The major tennis venues are usually open to the public or to members during non-tournament times.

Excellent.

Why do people care about the undercard so much when none of the matches will get enough time?

C'mon, Jerry, on one hand you're saying wrestlers are very good actors or performers and on the other hand you're saying that in the 80s the workers were able to adlib everything. Scripted needn't mean scripted word for word, it could simply mean bullet points, but it's fairly obvious that not everything you saw on WWF television was adlibbed, especially the angles they used to do on Piper's Pit and the other talk show segments. If you watch the opening few minutes of Wrestling With Shadows, you can see Bret fumbling over his lines and having to do retakes in front of a camera guy. If he was just improving he wouldn't be trying so hard to remember his lines. Since most of that backstage stuff was pre-recorded, how do you know how much was improv and how much rehearsed? The other day I started watching the Paul Bearer/Cornette shoot and Bearer was talking about what an abused human being Howard Finkel was and how they shot a vignette with Finkel and the Bushwhackers where Finkel was made to eat sardines over and over again. That was a rib, but still retakes had to have been common. As was Vince standing behind the camera directing. Older workers are always going to claim that they adlibbed everything, but improv is rarely neat and tidy. Think of Piper's Pit or a Warrior promo. They tend to be rambling in nature compared to a perfect thirty second promo.

Marty Jones vs. Giant Haystacks (6/5/85) I guess I'm only watching this to be a completest. The size difference between Marty and Haystacks was significant. We talk about guys who got away with being bad, well Haystacks is a prime example. Once you get past his size, you realise that's all there is. His heel schtick was bad and he was a poor promo. I'm not sure why they fed him the Mid-Heavyweight champion here, but Marty was starting to topple the giant when they did an odd finish that saw Marty hit a cross body press from the top and get rolled to the outside, where he landed badly and was too injured to continue. Lasted about a round and a half and had me wondering what the point was.

You can say that. But to me this is also why I hate the current format so much. Whether you hate it or not is a separate issue from whether it needs writers. I haven't watched RAW in years aside from what I've seen here or there on youtube, but I think it's pretty clear that it needs writers. Others have touched on the real issues -- the quality of the writers they'd had, writers who don't know the business, Vince not wanting writers who know the business, good writers (if there have been any) not lasting long because they were fired or found a better gig, and let's face it most of them are probably aiming for better jobs in TV. People who follow the WWE closely will know better than I do, but since they're forever messing around with people's pushes, I'd be surprised if a fifth of what they come up with in creative ever reaches fruition.

Do we get to hear on Bret's new DVD which of today's workers compare to him and who throws out little nods to him on every single show? Goodie, goodie.

I don't care for the backstage vignettes, but if you're going to have them (and let's face it, they are) then they need writers. It's not supposed to compare to quality film and TV. I thought you had the same argument about Ted Dibiase and Orson Welles. Any wrestler who can talk well, sell well and has their act down pat is a quality performer in my book. You love that period of WWF you grew up on, to the point where maybe you're still justifying the inordinate amount of money you spent on WWF home videos , but a lot of that was stuff was hokey. You love it because it's kitsch. Today's stuff will probably be kitsch in thirty years time. Besides, if you really go through that stuff you'll find there was a lot of bad acting and a lot of scripted promos to boot. Wrestlers who couldn't talk were told what to say. Quite often it looks like they're reading it off auto cue. Prime Time or TNT was a different television format from what they do today. Heenan could adlib to his heart's desire because he was the type of quality performer that apparently doesn't exist in wrestling. Today's commentators have so many stock lines they're supposed to utter that I wouldn't be surprised if there was some kind of Commentators Bible floating around. I thought the question was whether wrestling needs writers. Wrestling has been having opening quarter hour promos since 1998. Why are you railing against it in 2013? The thing about WWE today is that if there is something good, say the Cena/Punk match, you can easily find it online. You don't need to watch the other two and half hours of programming. What you're describing is an angle, most of which happened in a tiny television studio, not in a sports arena, and led to weeks upon weeks of the same promos. As fans we have a tendency to remember the past in a "Best Of" fashion, but I don't think a hell of a lot has changed over the years. RAW has been doing the same basic format for donkey's years -- opening interview sets up the main event, main event ends with a cliffhanger, etc., etc. Even the backstage segments aren't that original. The problem isn't the vignettes as such, it's that they're not clever and the comedy isn't funny. When they first started doing them as a regular format in '98, they were clever. The whole story line where Vince was injured and Foley went to visit him in the hospital and Vince was riding around in that electric wheelchair for a while, that was good stuff. The current stuff is built around a punch line or some kind of sophomore humour, but since it's basically sketch comedy sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. How many years did Gene spend sucking in WCW? If you were going to get rid of the modern format, you'd have to replace it with something new not a 1980s nostalgia act. People bitched about WWF when it didn't have any good wrestling at the height of the attitude era and they bitch about it now because the TV isn't as fresh. Unless wrestling somehow gets hot again, the TV's not going to be especially compelling no matter what way you format it. The current in-ring promos aren't much different from that.

Forgot to mention, when I watched the Flair/Luger Starrcade '88 match I saw a lot of the build-up and the interviews were amazingly repetitive even back then. Even a great talker like Flair can only say the same thing so many times.

If they were just cutting promos then I could buy the improv argument but the way the television is formatted with backstage vignettes, sketches and quarter hour long interview segments they absolutely need writers. Producing all those backstage vignettes without a script isn't a professional way to produce TV. The in-ring promos are almost 100% scripted, I'd say. The top guys might not stick to it, but I'd wager most of them do. It's not that difficult to memorise 10 minutes of dialogue when there's so many breaks and pauses and cues. Most retakes on a film set are for coverage or to get the performance the director wants, not necessarily because an actor can't remember their lines. Wrestlers get a bad rap for their acting but a lot of them are quality performers.

All right, I think it pays to watch some of the more highly touted stuff before dismissing a style completely. I also wonder how lucha isn't kitsch.

How much does that amount to?

Oh, Jerry, lucha is not guilty of anything. There is lucha that feels choreographed and lucha that is exhibitiony but a magnificent display of skill, just as there are matches on the AWA discs you like and matches you don't. It has more to do with the quality of the workers than lucha itself, as lucha isn't a style per se but a name for a particular region of wrestling. There's as many ways to work the mat in lucha as there are match types. The idea that all lucha is crazy Dos Caras submission holds is a stereotype. You have this extraordinary habit of rushing to conclusions based on one or two matches. I wonder what you'd tell your students if they reached similar conclusions about literature with little or not supporting evidence. Mil Mascaras in Japan is not lucha. Having said that, I wouldn't recommend you get the lucha set as it's obvious you're going to like it about as much as you like jazz.

So you're trying to tell me that you can tolerate Hercules Hernandez's awful matwork because you've somehow talked yourself into believing it fits his character, but you can't understand the asthetic appeal of undressing a hold?

Most of the high end lucha from the 80s is brawls. I can only think of four or five significant title matches from the available footage. I can't really reconcile how someone who likes crappy US gimmicks and soft US matwork can have a problem with believability, though.

I'm filing this in the "Walton pisses me off category:" Steve Grey vs. Eddie Capelli (aired 3/25/72) It was weird hearing Walton talk about Grey as a comparative newcomer who had only made his debut on TV the year before. Little did Walton know what a mainstay Grey would become. This had some awesome matwork that the Bedford crowd shat all over. Walton had some weaknesses as a commentator that I've begun to pick up on over time and one of them was how he pandered to a bad crowd like this one by criticising the workers. If they don't like the awesome matwork on show, fuck 'em, the ingrates. That was certainly Capeli's attitude, as he stuck to his guns while Walton was busy making excuses. Match was too short to consider great and Grey was treated like a freshman rather than the worker we know he is, but it had a lot of neat wrestling.

Marty Jones vs. Dave Finlay (11/23/84, JIP Rd 4) This was Finlay and Jones' best match together. A really heated bout for the World Mid-Heavyweight title with both guys being openly aggressive. There were a lot more strikes thrown in this match than your average WoS bout and Szakacs had real trouble on his hands with these two. One thing that Jones was really good at was playing the ill tempered baby face. Every time he paces around the ring pointing at Finlay, back chatting the referee or complaining to the timekeeper, I imagine him as some kind of turner and fitter who keeps shouting over the top of everyone at a union meeting. Finlay was an unbearable prick as well, so the dynamic here was really two assholes fighting over who the bigger prick was. The crowd fed into this and were massively pro-Jones. When he fell out of the ring, fans rushed to his aid, including one older woman who was frantically pushing him back in the ring to beat the count. I've never really liked Princess Paula era Finlay, but it worked really well here. When Finlay dropped a fall, instead of his usual kiss he got kicked to the canvas. This was a great touch for a guy who was supposed to be hard as nails and the crowd rode him for it. The finish here was also great: the crowd were whipped into a frenzy; tempers between Jones and Finlay reached a boiling point; Szakacs started dishing out public warnings left, right and centre, giving two at the same time to Jones; Finlay blindsided Jones with the mother of all cheap shots; and Szakacs DQ'ed him. The crowd rushed to the ring and Jones cut a rabid promo into the camera, lazy eye and all. Hot damn was this exciting. Marty Jones vs. Dave Finlay (7/31/85, JIP) Joint Promotions had moved away from Jones vs. Finlay at this point, after two years of having them feud for the World Mid-Heavyweight title. This was the semi-finals of one of the endless knock out tournaments they used to run and was a throwback to their bitter rivalry. The mullet was fully grown by this point and looking glorious. This was another good bout between the two, a twenty minute contest with no rounds. There was plenty of quality niggle and some stiff hitting action, but the finish cut them off at the knees. Still, a nice extra to their feud.

Marty Jones vs. Dave Finlay (5/5/82) This was a special fifteen minute contest. I believe it was the first televised match between these two. Finlay was so awesome before he grew the mullet and stache and hooked up with Paula. This wasn't a classic (I'm not sure any of their matches were, to be honest), but every so often they'd do a follow up move or hold that made you think, "Yip, this is Marty Jones and Dave Finlay all right." The finish was really cool and not at all what I was expecting. Made it seem like you were witnessing the birth of a rivalry. Marty Jones vs. Dave Finlay (9/1/83, JIP Rd 2) This was a step up in intensity and had a really great stretch where Jones started going after Finlay's knee. Jones seems to have started using Andy Robbin's Powerlock, which is a leglock that starts out like a sharpshooter and turns into something of a figure four. Jones used it to get the equaliser and in all of the WoS matches I've seen I don't think I've ever see a guy who had someone on the ropes as much as Jones had Finlay cordoned here. Then they went and did another totally unexpected finish by having Skull Murphy appear at ringside to distract Jones. Finlay attacked Jones from behind and Marty got his ankle caught in the ropes, the resulting injury being enough for Finlay to bag the one, two, three. The interesting thing about this wasn't so much that it was a rare, US style finish, but that Walton couldn't really sell it. I had to watch it again to see what really happened because Walton was confused and missed the Jones accident. It was kind of interesting to hear a commentator with little experience at calling such angles struggle to put it over. Marty Jones vs. Dave Finlay (11/2/83, JIP Rd 8) All of the above finally led to Finlay getting a crack at Jones' World Mid-heavyweight title. Paula was now in Finlay's corner and he'd already grown the moustache and started wearing the white and green. He was in the early stages of growing his hair out as well. This was a 15 round title match that went the full 15 rounds. On paper, it was cleverly booked as Finlay was nursing a one fall to nil advantage late in the match and there was immense pressure on Jones to score a fall in the 14th and then 15th round to at least draw and retain his title. In terms of the execution, it was kind of a mix of two guys selling that they're fatigued after 15 rounds and actually being fatigued. 15 rounds was a lot of time for these guys to fill in with their style of working together and the match ended up being kind of good in a Bret Hart vs. Shawn Michaels ironman match kind of way as opposed to the epic it could have been.

By default, yes, but his Crockett work from '76-84 is probably a better indicator of his work given that practically everyone who worked for Vince was better in the territory they came from.

I watched every Dream Team/Bulldogs match known to man at one point. Didn't write much about them but this will at least let you know what's online: http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?show...1910&st=100 I recommend the Dream Team/US Express title switch with the awesome finish.

Ron Garvin vs. Tully Blanchard, 10/7/87 This is one of my favourite match-ups in all of professional wrestling. Even in a short match like this, which was really an excuse for Flair and the Horsemen to do a run-in and kick Garvin's ass before Starrcade, there's plenty to love. It was a bit looser than their usual matches, but fuck me I love the hands of stone gimmick.