ohtani's jacket

Blue Panther vs. Super Astro, Mexican National Middleweight Championship, AAA 10/9/92 I've always thought this match was a disappointment and still do. The matwork in the first caida is nothing special and actually pretty weak by lucha title match standards. When you consider that it's a Blue Panther title match it's even more frustrating. Worse still is the second caida. I'm sure we've all made concessions for a weak caida in the past, but a soft fall is not what you'd expect from an oft-cited classic. I'm not against short falls by any stretch of the imagination, but a pinfall or submission shouldn't just fall into your lap. They do some good things in the third fall but it doesn't happen in rhythm with the rest of the match so it's hard to get excited about. It does salvage the match to a fair extent, but not to the point where it's a classic. Panther vs. Angel Azteca was better than this and that's hardly a classic either. When I think about what's missing from this match it's difficult to imagine what people see in it. There's none of the beauty and struggle of Panther's matwork against Atlantis or the breathtaking work of Super Astro in trios. I'm not sure what causes people to elevate this match beyond its proper station, but at least their impression is favourable. Hopefully, they use it as a gateway to the better stuff because I just don't see this as a high point in either guy's work.

Obviously, wrestlers create their narratives whereas narrative in sport is whatever's happening to the athletes, but athletes are usually aware of the narrative that frames their matches. The All Blacks, for example, were aware of New Zealand's history at Rugby World Cups prior to last year's tournament. They knew that New Zealand had been waiting 20 years to win back the Cup and that the rugby world considered them chokers. Athletes know what's being said and written about them and often use it for motivation. That's about where the comparison ends, but wrestling being a faux sport often borrows ideas from sport. It's a bit silly to argue that wrestling borrows more from Rocky than sport when Rocky is a sports movie that was supposedly inspired by Rocky Marciano and the fight between Ali and Chuck Wepner. It's also silly to claim that there's no sense of morality in sport or any soap opera stuff. There's instances of just about everything in sport as you'd well know being an English football fan. Anyway, as I said in my earlier post it's worthless making comparisons with sport or movies. Wrestling is wrestling. Somewhere out there there's probably someone who watches professional wrestling but never watches sports or movies and I'm sure they get it. It's meant to be archetypal or universal not pinching stuff from here and there.

Actually, the Piper stuff is a lot of fun. I dunno if I'd call it great but it was a strong feud with good matches. I should really watch more matches that Rude had in that period between the Warrior and Piper feuds to see whether it was a purple patch or just good chemistry with those workers.

I think it was fairly obvious that I was referring to Flair as the heel champ. The local fans wanted to see Jerry or Kerry or Tommy kick Flair's ass and part of that narrative of kicking Flair's ass was a fairly simple arc of Flair going from being cocksure ahead of the match to desperate by the end of it. Within that narrative arc it makes sense for Flair to be caught off the top and slammed to the canvas as it's a strong visual image. The fact that Wrestler Ric claims to be the best wrestler in the world is all the more reason to do it. I mean the formula was pretty simple: Flair comes into a territory, baits the local fans about how he's better than their man, local guy ends up being a tougher proposition than Flair gave him credit for, Flair gets his ass kicked and leaves humiliated but still managing to hold onto the belt somehow. Sometimes he'd tweak it a bit and sometimes he'd play it a bit more straight, but basically it went something like that. Within that context, what does it matter if he's caught off the top? The whole thrust of the match is to disprove Flair's claims of being better than anybody. What are you worried about a low percentage play for? It sounds like the type of criticism Gorilla Monsoon would make. They wouldn't exactly be local heroes if they let Flair intimidate them would they? Since when did they have to be intimidated for it to be a form of intimidation? Christ by that rationale no heel has ever cut an intimidating promo. Of course the babyface is going to stand up to it. Wil E. Coyote was a cartoon coyote who failed time and time again to catch and eat a bird. I'm pretty sure that Ric Flair managed to capture the title on one or two occasions and we were led to believe that in the 80s he ate very well. Besides, we're supposed to be sympathetic to Wil E. Coyote because the Road Runner is an annoying little shit. I don't think Ric is meant to have our sympathy. Are you trying to say that Flair never won a match by holding the tights or putting his foot on the ropes? Ric's bullshit backfiring is again a pretty obvious narrative element but it hardly makes him a dumbass bitch now does it? If that's the standard for being a dumbass bitch then his opponents were far dumber. All right, perhaps "blind panic" is the wrong choice of words, but I don't think he's meant to be thinking straight. When he does the turnbuckle flip and sprints down the apron is he meant to be thinking like the best wrestler in the world or in a state of panic? His reaction is to try to come off the top but 99% of the top he's knocked off the apron. But hey, it's a spot that tells the crowd Flair's reeling and they've all seen it a hundred times and recognise and love it. Ah c'mon, he didn't start every match bumping and selling. What have a couple of screwy finishes in Dallas got to do with Flair's character? We don't know what would have happened in each match had it gone beyond the screwy finish. The finishes are external factors and not character defining. I'm sure the Dallas fans knew that Emperor Ric had no clothes. The finishes are designed to annoy the shit out of them while providing Kerry the moral victory. Sure, the plot changes but the story stays the same. I don't think I've argued that Flair matches are isolated events. The argument is about whether Flair matches show him to be a dumbass weak bitch. How is being a bitching, stooging heel a movie analogy? It's an archetype and existed long before there was ever wrestling or movies. There's a huge and obvious difference between when Flair would trick an opponent by stooging and the stooging late in the match where he's reeling. Are you honestly trying to say that Ric Flair never panicked in a match? I guess you missed that et cetera there. Considering that Wrestler Ric almost lost the title on a nightly basis in city after city you'd have to say he was a choker. He may have managed to escape with the title but it was a far cry from what he claimed he'd do. What is there to defend? There's no need to defend anything if people don't make claims like Flair being a dumbass bitch. This goes against your definition of psychology being the why and the thought process behind what the wrestlers do. Now you're saying it's just stuff. There's no reason to be so noncommittal. I know you're reluctant to give wrestlers too much credit in case you overstep the mark of how much you think wrestlers think about wrestling, but if Ric Flair could articulate in promo after promo a basic narrative for his character/match I think we can take for granted that he had some idea what his stuff meant. Then again, who cares whether Flair could put a name to it? What does it matter if he doesn't think in terms of desperation if he's acting desperate? We've already covered wrestling's lack of storytelling depth. The things Ric did in the ring weren't complicated. You just said that Flair isn't a deep enough thinker to dream things up and that it's just stuff to him. Now you're saying he had a fine sense of drama.

Sean Mooney or Todd Pettengill?

TITO SANTANA VS. THE WORLD #27 -- "Ravishing" Rick Rude I talked about their 1988 match in the Most Consistent, Most Hit and Miss thread that was the catalyst for this mini project. Their 2/89 match is a more drawn out houseshow version of the match minus the hot finish. It's an okay match but nothing special. Didn't see the correlation between the Tito match and the Warrior carry. I'm not convinced that Rude was really that great against anybody else but Warrior in the WWF. TITO SANTANA VS. THE WORLD #28 -- The Red Rooster/"Terrific" Terry Taylor The first match was the Rooster's face turn from SNME after Bobby slapped him. Fun little match and a great angle. One thing I'll give the WWF credit for from this era was their ability to turn people heel or face. Their execution of character turns was generally outstanding. Taylor's not one of my favourites and had all the charisma of a plank of wood, but Bobby was so good at what he did that even the Rooster's turn was enthralling. Bobby's range was amazing when you think about it. The second match is from '92 and part of some WWF grudge match tape. Didn't know that El Matador and Terry Taylor had a grudge in '92? Neither did Sean Mooney but he sure tried to explain it. TITO SANTANA VS. THE WORLD #29 -- "Dr. D" David Schultz Couple of short matches. Exactly what you'd expect from Schultz. Can't really recommend them in good faith, but they weren't bad. TITO SANTANA VS. THE WORLD #30 -- Jerry "The King" Lawler This was pretty much the Jerry Lawler Show with Tito along for the ride. It's a fun match if you'd into Jerry working the crowd, but a meaningless match Tito wise.

I think we all understand the spots. We just disagree that the psychology is Flair being a dumbass bitch.

Wrestling has always been like a cousin to sports. It may be the blacksheep of the family or the cousin you don't tell the girlfriend's family about when you ask for her hand in marriage, but wrestling and sports elicit the same emotions in folks. Yes, wrestling borrows narrative elements from film and television but as a direct comparison with film and television it's a complete failure. Wrestling is far closer to the narrative element found in real sports than it is to film and television, and if you don't believe there's a narrative element in real sports take a look at this -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcdUn34PnmU I don't know about you, but I'm excited. Sport is all about human drama and the way we express that drama is through narrative. As sports fans we all have our favourite teams or athletes and teams we hate and we all go through the full gamut of emotions from joy to despair. Wrestling feeds off those emotions and is able to control and manipulate them. I think you'll find that wrestling is closer to sporting themes than film and television themes as wrestling simply cannot express the majority of things that film and television does. Wrestling does morality well and in particular the theme of justice and injustice, but ultimately it has to convey a theme that can be expressed through violence or physical action and that's extremely limiting compared to what a film or television writer can do. On the other hand, there are a lot of soap opera aspects to pro-wrestling and we shouldn't ignore them just because they're not enjoyable even on a B-film level. The idea that wrestling is like sports is legitimate in my view, but it's also an ideal that a lot of us want to see happen. We've already established that wrestling falls short of the mark on most occasions and that the majority of matches are a failure from a narrative aspects so I honestly think that wrestling should be argued for on its own merits and not by making comparions to film, television and sports. The question people should really be asking themeselves is "was this a good match compared to the thousands of other pro-wrestling matches I've seen?"

How can you get over what a lowdown heel you are while working an incoherent match? Wouldn't a successful portrayal of a lowdown heel add some coherency to the match? Both A and B sound like crap, though.

Yeah, it was me who fucked up. I watched his debut on Prime Time Wrestling and they called him "The Widowmaker" Barry Windham.

I wouldn't call him dumb as he always managed to escape with the title or win it back again. And I wouldn't call him weak either, since the last Flair match I woatched was an '85 bout against Garvin where the beat the shit out of each other. I just think that Flair getting caught off the tope is a different part of his characterisation from the cocksure promos he delivers beforehand.

Cheers, I'll check out that Beefcake/Steamboat match once I'm done with this Tito stuff. TITO SANTANA VS. THE WORLD #20 -- "The Incredible" Hulk Hogan This was awful. Hogan was by far the worst of the opponents I've watched. Just shit. Granted this was from 1980, but he was so ungainly and clueless in the ring. TITO SANTANA VS. THE WORLD #21 -- "The Million Dollar Man" Ted Dibiase These two could've had a really good match had the WWF promoted really good matches in the late 80s, but I guess the closest we got was their 1988 Prime Time Wrestling bout. Decent TV match that's really just an excuse for Hercules to do a run in as this was during Herc's babyface turn where Dibiase bought his services as a slave. The other Tito/Dibiase match I watched was from 1992 but was a Sherri manager cam match. If I hear her mention her Teddy Bear one more time I think I'll scream. TITO SANTANA VS. THE WORLD #22 -- "The Mighty" Hercules Their 1986 match takes place after The Honky Tonk Man has laid Tito out. Hercules spends most of the match working over Tito's knee before Tito makes a comeback and the Brain leaves the broadcasting booth to interfere. A difficult match to gauge anything from. I also saw a match they had from '91 but it was so boring I gave up. TITO SANTANA VS. THE WORLD #23 -- "The Narcissist" Lex Luger This was all right. Nothing to write home about but Luger has had plenty of worse matches. I can't understand what the steel plate controversy had to do with a narcissist gimmick, though. Seemed like a stupid way to bring Luger in. I can't figure out why they didn't bring him in as a face. TITO SANTANA VS. THE WORLD #24 -- The Bolsheviks This was a pair of separate matches -- a Nikolai Volkoff match from '87 and a Boris Zhukov from '89 -- but they might as well have been the same match. Tito went through his whole routine and took the matches seriously, which suggests he was a pro I guess, but singles matches against the Bolsheviks. Who watches these? Why were they uploaded? Crazy. TITO SANTANA VS. THE WORLD #25 -- The Honky Tonk Man This was actually a lot of fun. I don't know how much HTM I could stomach on a regular basis, but I dug his schtick here. The match sort of ended just as I was getting into it, but for a match I thought would be awful this was a pleasant surprise. My favourite thing about it was Jimmy Hart telling the crowd if they didn't shut up HTM wouldn't sing for them tonight. Awesome. TITO SANTANA VS. THE WORLD #26 -- The Widowmaker This was far from vintage Windham, but it was better than a kick in the teeth. They probably could've done a better job with the amount of time they had, but I wasn't expecting much. Windham didn't really fit the WWF formula that Tito liked to work and this was kind of a hybrid between a WCW TV match and Tito trying to do his thing, but at least that made it interesting. Lord Alfred Hayes kept fucking up and calling the Widowmaker Windham. I am really sick of Lord Alfred.

TITO SANTANA VS. THE WORLD #17 -- "The Birdman" Koko B. Ware This was a face vs. face match-up from early '91 that like most Tito matches could've been so much more than it was. Some decent spots in between a failed attempt at Koko being the one to flare things up. Skippable. TITO SANTANA VS. THE WORLD #18 -- "Outlaw" Ron Bass Rewatched their 8/22/87 MSG bout and definitely think it's one of Tito's best matches. I haven't seen much of Bass and don't know if he ever had a reputation as a good worker. He seems a Stan Hansen/Blackjack Mulligan cowboy clone to me, but if he wasn't a decent worker at some point in his career (which he probably was), he was having his JBL moment in this match. Really entertaining brawl with great selling to set it above the usual Tito fare. Their early Philly match (6/20/87) isn't anywhere near as good, but worth watching if you want to see some more from these two. TITO SANTANA VS. THE WORLD #19 -- Brutus "the Barber" Beefcake Man, I knew that 1985 was the peak of Brutus' career work wise, but that didn't prepare me for how good their 5/18/85 match was. It's got to be the best singles match I've seen from Beefcake; hell, are there any other contenders? If the finish had been better I would've been pimping this even stronger, but as it is this is proof that everybody was good at some point.

Ric Flair claiming to be the best wrestler in the world and proceeding to out wrestle his opponent doesn't work in a pro-wrestling context because the crowd wants the exact opposite. Flair claiming to be a better wrestler than his opponent was a form of intimidation. At the end of the day what he really meant was that he knew all the tricks, and since his definition of being the best in the world meant wearing the gold, he would do anything to retain his title. The whole sports analogy falls apart for me for the simple reason that when he was a face he hit moves more often than when he was a heel, and most of the time he came off the top in a blind panic. The whole point of Flair's schtick is that it all unravels and he looks like the Emperor with no clothes. It just doesn't work as a sports analogy and there's no point thinking about it like that. If you wanna kayfabe it, then I think he panicked when the pressure was on. The real reason is that people wanted to see the spot in the same way they wanted to see James Brown get injured and leave the stage, etc., but most of Flair's matches involved an escalating sense of panic. Early on in a match, he'd beg off to trick his opponent into an inside shot, but as the match wore on the begging off more and more legitimate. You could probably write an entire treatise on Flair choking.

Virus vs. Stuka Jr., Arena Coliseo de Guadalajara, 8/30/11 Wow, after crying out for CMLL to give Virus more time to work they finally went and did it. Thank you, CMLL. This was a wonderfully old-school match. The matwork was short and not much more than a feeling out process, but the rope exchanges and transitions were classic lucha and the slower, more deliberate pace had a strong resonance with me. The match didn't have a big arc, but in this particular case the simplity of the match outweighed the need to make it dramatic and I liked the fact that Virus was able to end the match cleanly and simply from a series of moves that Stuka should have kicked out from. You could probably argue that it made Stuka seem like more of a jobber than is usually portrayed in lucha, but it was worth it to be free from the trappings of the modern day style. I didn't really follow lucha last year, but more matches like this and I think I'll enjoy catching up on it over the New Year period.

Thought the first Philly match was mediocre, and had high hopes for it. Haven't seen the second one yet. John If you didn't like the first match then there's no reason to watch the second. It's the exact formula Matt D and Jingus were talking about in the psychology thread. I just liked it because I think the Sheik is fun to watch. It would've been awesome if the matches had been on the level of Sheik's feud with Slaughter and Santana's work with Valentine and Savage, but I've kind of given up on the idea that Tito hit those high points against anyone else.

TITO SANTANA VS. THE WORLD #14 -- The Hart Foundation Is it just me or did the Hart Foundation suck as heels? Bret was unconvincing in his role as cocky young heel, Neidhart didn't even appear to be making an effort to play heel and Jimmy Hart didn't seem to give a shit. I watched three matches these teams had from '87 and two from '88 and all of them were worthless. They're not a very good showcase for Tito either as he tends to play FIP while Martel does all the work. TITO SANTANA VS. THE WORLD #15 -- "The Russian Bear" Ivan Koloff This match from MSG (12/26/83) is missing about a third of what would make it a great match, but I liked it all the same. It was a slower, old-school WWF bout, but had plenty of nice touches like Tito using a full nelson to ram Koloff's head into the turnbuckle. TITO SANTANA VS. THE WORLD #16 -- Bad News Brown I like Bad News more than most so I thought this was perfectly decent. It didn't really go anywhere as they weren't feuding at the time (to the best of my knowledge) so it was just a run through of Bad News' heel schtick. Tito retaliated quite a bit in reply, which was better than watching a meaningless stretch of Tito in peril. It's too bad Gorilla was in one of those belligerent moods where he wouldn't shut up about the referee.

TITO SANTANA VS. THE WORLD #11 -- "Nature Boy" Ric Flair As fate would have it, there are Flair vs. Santana matches from the beginning, middle and end of Flair's WWF tenure (Royal Albert Hall 10/3/91, SummerSlam Spectacular 8/23/92 and Monday Night Raw 1/18/93), so you get to see the evolution in Flair growing his hair back out at any rate. I don't really care for Flair after his 1990 feud with Luger and I think his WWF run is more interesting for his promos than ring work, but these were okay. The SummerSlam Spectacular was the most enjoyable match even if it was just an excuse to show what Perfect was capable of as the perfect manager. A houseshow match between these two might have been the best chance for a strong match, but as with most Tito matches no beef = no lasting impression. TITO SANTANA VS. THE WORLD #12 -- The Iron Sheik Saw two matches between these guys. One was a WWF title match from the Spectrum (1/21/84) and the other was an IC title defense from the same venue (2/18/84.) The WWF title shot is apparently one of only two title matches Tito ever got. Does anybody know the other? It was worked less like a heavyweight title match and more like an affronted babyface sticking up for the red, white and blue, but neither guy minced around and since fired up Tito is the best Tito I appreciated the energy levels. The Sheik was a really fun worker and so I enjoyed this particular match-up. Worth checking out if you have some time to kill. TITO SANTANA VS. THE WORLD #13 -- Sgt. Slaughter I would've preferred to see one of their matches from the early 80s, but all I could find were their Survivor Series Showdown match and their 11/24/90 Superstars match which were both taped at the Indianapolis Market Square Arena on 10/29/90. The Sarge was still a fun worker in his early 90s run and took some great bumps. The Survivor Series Showdown match was a bit slow, but the Superstars bout was a decent little match. It ended with Tito tied up in the ropes and Slaughter insulting all the immigrants in the US and ordering Tito to salute the Iraqi flag. Tito spat at the flag and Duggan made a run in to save him from the beating Slaughter was giving him before delivering this oddly eloquent speech about US immigration and the Gulf War situation and leading off chants of "USA, USA, USA" with Vince screaming crazy shit about sticking it to the country of Iraq. Just the sort of thing El P would dig.

Working an arm or leg is the pro-wrestling equivalent of plot. If the workers don't have a story to tell then there isn't one and that plot is simply work. It may be good work, smart work, effective work, great work, whatever, but at best it's just characterisation or more commonly the type of wrestling strategy/psychology that Gorilla Monsoon and Lord Alfred Hayes prattle on about. A wrestling match doesn't tell a story by default nor does it have to tell a story to be good. We all want to see something that is coherent and makes sense, but I guess Jerry is arguing that we shouldn't necessarily praise a match for delivering on those basic requirements whereas everyone else is arguing that they're such rare qualities in a match that those things alone are worthy of praise. To be honest, I don't think a wrestling match making sense is all that uncommon. Moreover, I don't think coherency prevents a match from being uninteresting. To me, the biggest problem with wrestling matches isn't structure or lack of a story but pacing. Most matches are boring because they lack rhythm and are poorly paced. But two people can watch the same match and have a different feel for the rhythm, and you can watch the same match a couple of nights apart and feel differently about it was well. Ultimately, it's the person watching the match who draws the meaning out of it. For some people a heel/face narrative structure is enough of a story element to satisfy them. For some people maybe a coherent match structure. Personally, I don't think you can really tell a story without a significant change taking place. That hardly ever happens because wrestling isn't a great storytelling medium, so I'm happy enough with great acting/performing and/or great work.

I can understand being impressed by a good bit of work and wanting to expatiate upon the bigger picture, but I think there's a limit to how much you can praise this sort of thing. I know you haven't said it's the case, but I don't think Demolition matches are good because they have captivating shine periods. I dunno, it just seems like mechanics to me. But anyway, we all watch wrestling in our own way and care about different things at different times. Tito's philosophy is probably true of most wrestlers. Wrestling really is the same schtick every time, but as people have pointed out in the past it was never really meant to be watched on televisions and computers years after it was worked for a paying audience. Well, except for the forays into the home video market. Those Coliseum videos were made to last a lifetime, I'm sure. I don't think anyone was meant to watch copious amounts of Tito Santana matches in a row, though.

The way I see it, that's just good wrestling. I've been watching these Tito/Orton matches were the work is mostly good, but you'd be hard pressed to say they have any sort of story unless you think Tito and Orton go to a draw is a story. I suppose my argument is that work is mostly just work and only sometimes gets elevated to storytelling.

TITO SANTANA VS. THE WORLD #8 -- "Handsome" Harley Race, the King of the Ring The mind was willing but the body wasn't. Harley still did some cool things at this stage of his career, but he was so slow. I watched two bouts they had in '86, one from Boston and the other from MSG, and they were both pretty lifeless. Tito wasn't the kind of worker who pushes his opponent to do anything special. A lot of the time it seems like he's along for the ride w/ the heel dictating everything. This was the case here as Harley called these matches rather audibly. Unfortunately, he couldn't really bump anymore but was still using the same old match structure. Hence, the mind being willing but the body not. TITO SANTANA VS. THE WORLD #9 -- "Adorable" Adrian Adonis This might have been a good match before the "adorable" gimmick, but Adonis' matches were messy. He never really got how to wrestle well and stooge in the same match. It's very disjointed the way he moves from one to the other. Plus, this match starts off with some good exchanges then turns into a three minute hammerlock. I like some of Tito's hammerlock spots against Don Muraco and Bob Orton, but I'm not about to praise him filling in time in this match. All told a bit of a disappointment, but it would've been a major surprise if it hadn't been. Match was from the Spectrum, 6/28/86. TITO SANTANA VS. THE WORLD #10 -- "Cowboy" Bob Orton Orton was a nice opponent for Tito. They worked time limit draws against each other so the matches are a bit measured to say the least, but the work is mostly good. I saw an IC title defense from MSG (7/23/84) and a later match from Boston (8/9/86). Personally, I preferred the MSG match as it felt shorter and tighter, but they're both worth watching.

See Windham, Barry. Also Rhodes, Dustin. BTW, I didn't just pull the Davey/Eddie example out of thin air when trying to give my definition of psych. I purposely used an example where leg work would be meaningful to the hypothetical match. For every match with meaningful leg work like that, there are probably 1000 where it's strictly filler and has no meaning or impact at all. It's not meaningful to the match unless there's something more going on than leg work. Leg work doesn't tell a story no matter how logical it may be. Bret Hart setting a guy up for the sharpshooter involves a logical progression of moves but it doesn't tell a story. Now if the guy he's doing it to kicked his leg out from under his leg and just happens to be his little brother, then you've got some sort of a story.

I took a quick look at the results and seems they did a mixture of time limit draw and the Boston 4/22 angle. HistoryoftheWWE says Tito won a couple of times without specifying how. They didn't wrestle as many times as I would have imagined so I guess it wasn't as big a deal as I thought.

The percentage of great to bad is the same in any medium. The difference between wrestling and other creative endeavours is that at every stage of the creative process be it scriptwriting or songwriting or even shooting a film there is the chance for revision. Basic competency in these endeavours doesn't come easily but you can achieve it by reworking what you've created. If I rewrite a screenplay a dozen times it's going to be a lot more competent than the first time I wrote it regardless of how good I am at structuring a story. In wrestling, you can only really improve your match by doing it again and even if you do the same match night after night on the houseshow circuit you still need to produce your improved performance live. It's a much different discipline. Wrestlers don't labour over a match for a year like writers do with a screenplay. It doesn't take two or three years to produce a match like it does a film. The closest analogy is probably a prolific songwriter, but they still craft their work far more than a wrestler does. But really, most wrestling sucks because it's not important. Aside from matches that disappoint, there's no reason for most wrestling to be any better than it is. Take the Tito/Bossman match I watched earlier tonight. Theoretically, Tito and the Bossman had a great match in them but there was no reason to have one. Thankfully, some wrestling environments are better than others when it comes to the motivation or incentive to have a great match, but 90% of the time it's missing.