Death From Above

Maybe the bigger wrestling con there is people convincing themselves that the statement "90% of the people who trumpet (insert wrestling match from any style) as the day the Lord himself smiled upon the wrestling world have no idea why they think that way other than someone told them it was a Momentous Event for wrestling." doesn't somehow apply to every style, country, era, and promotion, when it becomes conveinent for it not to anymore. Because it probably does.

I really think this belongs in the wrestling myth busters thread. Or maybe I'm just odd and I was the only one who thought it was batshit awesome on a first viewing (and it was the first Misawa/Kawada match I ever saw). I argued pretty heavily during the Mid-South set that if you want "wrestling that requires context to understand", the Duggan/DiBiase uber-stips on a pole match is probably the best example of it I've ever seen. Without the setup it's some 10 minute clusterfuck, with it... it's amazing. And that really the 94 Misawa/Kawada context arguement looks awfully silly put next to something like it. I don't need "context" for athletic exhibition. I do need it for "guys in tuxes fighting a pole match". I was already watching the athletic exhibition because I happen to like that shit to begin with. To get me to watch "two guys in tuxes fighting a pole match", and not only pop for it, but be blown away by it... that's a much bigger accomplishment. And requires a lot more context to make happen. If I were to put together a list of the top 100 matches I thought needed "context" to become "good", Misawa/Kawada 94 wouldn't crack the top 100. Hell I doubt it would crack the top 500. But I was always of the opinion All Japan's appeal (for me personally) was the raw athleticism. I didn't need that sold, which is good, beause they never did much to sell it. It was just (as someone once described it) "guys in trunks and boots, and they just wrestle". The wrestling had to stand on it's own merit because there wasn't anything else. Once that athletic level eventually dropped off (along with running out of new shit to do)... well, people can see where it's at now. And in hindsight that was probably an inevitable consequence of going that way. I find most American-style wrestling requires far more context for me to enjoy, because not that some of the matches aren't great, but there's a lot more going on aroud them. Which is probably why it's hard to get back into it once one has been out for a while, "do I really want to go through learning all the backstory, again". Maybe that's just me.

Oh Baba's not exactly flawless granted. I just think the amount of venom he takes from the people who fling it is somewhat over the top. The people who hate him, obviously hate him a lot. I guess his unique qualities make him a take it or leave it kind of worker.

I've seen the "you can win 1-0" stip used in 2 out of three falls, but not with the NWA title. I'm forgetting what belt they wrestled for, but the Inoki vs. Billy Robinson match that was over a belt was 2/3 falls and it was run with the "if you end up 1-0 you win the match" stip, which once I found it out increased the awesomeness of "Robinson is stalling/Inoki getting pissed off with him because he's down a fall" routine tenfold.

Wrestling is both so sleazy yet so entertaining. I CANNOT IMAGINE WHAT HAPPENED HERE~ Was this during the phase when they were running Hogan vs. Kimala? If so I guess that would have been one of the big billed matches and this would make sense.

I never got the Baba hatred to begin with when it was applied to Old Man Baba. He's not the only slow dude in wrestling. He's not the only dude in wrestling who's strikes looked... odd. Or silly, in his late career work. A vast majority of his late career work was undercard filler/comedy 6-mans that were the pro wrestling equivilant of "guys in blowup sumo suits race around a hockey rink at intermission" and were a nice place to keep some of the loyal old guys employed in harmless fun, as opposed to say... Kevin Nash booking himself into the WCW title. For a guy that booked his own company he seemed a lot more willing than most to hand over the spotlight when he had the chance to. Sure he showed up in the Real World Tag League once a year... and the All Japan fans loved it, if nothing else. But otherwise he mostly stayed out of the top programs entirely. For a guy his age and size, he would also take bumps when he had to and wasn't pussying out of working guys like Brody and Hansen in the 80's at all. From the psychological standpoint, when given a serious match it's not like Baba didn't know what he was doing. He had a strange physical build which didn't help... he kind of looked like a 7 foot tall marathon runner (if such a thing exists I guess it would probably look like Baba) in a business where a lot of people are conditioned to look for something else. If Baba had a more traditional body type I doubt the criticism of his career from 80's-onward is as heavy. As for Prime Baba, he was really pretty awesome from what I've seen. I wish there was more of it out there. Even by the late 70's although he's still a great worker he's probably past his peak, but even so 70's Baba > a hell of a lot. Basically I find Baba hatred really annoying and short sighted. There's a ton of guys in wrestling people could pick on who probably have it coming more.

I'd take the Flair/Race match that preceded the Kerry Von Erich/Jumbo Tsuruta NWA title match in All Japan over the Starrcade 83 match without even having to give it a thought. I have a feeling I've seen a couple other Flair/Race matches as well though the details haven't stuck as much, but I feel pretty confident calling the 83 Starrcade match the least of the Flair/Race matches I've watched.

Running the show in LA is so choice. Vince, whether it fails or succeeds, I salute you and whatever goes on in that mind of yours.

I would never go as far as to call myelf a "women's wrestling fetishist" though I've got a handful of AJW and GAEA events around somewhere. And really even bringing up almost anything the WWE has ever promoted in a discussion of quality women's wrestling is fairly ridiculous from what I've seen. So I guess I fall more into the category of a "happy women's wrestling snob" than a "fetishist". But I'll put forward the belief that if admitting to being attracted to Manami Toyota (I guess I just dated myself with that) or Ayako Hamada cracks the top 5 kinky things you can say about yourself, you're really not nearly kinked up enough to be involved in a discussion about dirt in pro wrestling. And there really is a group out there that can't wrap their head around the concept of being attracted to a woman while being able to respect her as a worker. As if putting the two together is some act of miraculous work. Granted that hardly reaches to the level of "women's wrestling fetishist" in the sene that bashers use the term, but the existance of them in general is really overblown by the second group (the haters) and can't possibly involve more than a few dozen people across a few dozen wrestling message boards. The haters and those small handfull of genuine fetishists are probably just about equal on a weird scale for me. But I don't really find either shocking in either direction on an overall scale of "weird shit people sexually fetishize" or "shit other people want to claim is the weirdest creepiest shit ever for whatever reason". I find both pretty mild examples in each direction. Obviously this isn't wrestling exclusive. There's millions of men walking around in our society who can handle a woman being attractive, or smart/successful/skilled/whatever. But not both at once. I'm sure there's mountains of psycho-analysis to run through there but I'm not the one to do it. Hell, there are plenty of women who can't handle seeing another woman be both at once.

Yeah it's definitely a different kind. I compare Ebessan to stand up comedy because, essentially, that's what it is. It's just a very physical routine. I get why people who don't like it, don't. It's certainly no less forced than many kinds of spot-fu, which usually I'm not a fan of at all. But, what the hell, Ebessan made me laugh (for the right reasons as opposed to laughing at guys because they think they are 500 times better than they are) from time to time so I'll cut him a break.

Obviously, not something that's ever really happened, and considering what often passes for humor in wrestling, not an idea I have any faith would work in practical application. But I do think it's hypothetically possible. I've never really seen the big problem with comedy in wrestling as long as the people there have a good time. Especially since it's not like anyone really buys into kayfabe anymore on a large scale, it's not like Kamen taking a slow motion shining wizard from Ebessan is going to expose the business or something. Speaking of which I thought a lot of the Ebessan (original, I haven't seen much of the newer ones) vs. Kamen work was pretty choice if comedy is your thing. You can only watch a stand up routine so many times before the jokes are old, but I thought most of it was harmless fun and fairly entertaining. And Ebessan is hardly the only guy to put out "wrestler imitates other wrestler for laughs", although it's more central to his stuff than most. I don't know if I'd ever want to watch a whole show of 10 Ebessan's but I certainly think it has it's niche. Although you could bill a show with 10 Ebessan's as the Ebessaganza, which in itself makes it an idea worth considering.

This is hardly a wrestling-exclusive issue. More an issue of wrestling appealing to teenagers in general, and teenagers mostly being complete fucking retards (with rare exceptions from time to time).

I'm always baffled by the absolute lack of love for Starrcade '87. It often gets brough up in weakest Starrcade discussions. Even if you take it as a one match show (which it wasn't in my opinion), Flair/Garvin alone makes it worth watching more than some of the others. I dunno, I'd have a hard time naming a Flair match I like more than his match with Steamboat from the Meadowlands in '84 that got around on Tabe's Flair/Steamboat comp. One of my favourite matches of the '80's.

There's got to be about 50 Hawkwind references I could use but I'm blanking on anything but "Motorhead". And if I reference that, I have to get kicked out of the thread for referencing the "wrong drugs". EDIT: Flair's my dad, with golden mane I want your help yet once again That's better.

There are really a lot of different ways to approach storytelling in wrestling. All Japan was (by a WWE fan's standards) a gimmick-less company. All the storytelling is in the ring, so certain elements in a match have to be presented in a certain way or it's no good. There are no promos, no heel manager interference, no smashing in a guy's winshield because he stole your belt. So the wrestling tells the story. The matches have to be engrossing in and of themselves or there's no story. That's one way to do it. I don't really think that in general, when you're talking about a lot of WWE wrestling (or televised American wrestling in general), that the actual wrestling is really all that important in and of itself to the storytelling. The storytelling of wrestling in that environment is much more angle-driven, promo-driven and gimmick-driven. And at the end of the day with a televised company, that's the stuff that has to sell people on your product. The match becomes just another part of the overall formula, and really I sort of believe in that environment almost the only thing that matters in your matches in the end is making sure you get the finishes right, and make the finishes memorable for fans. The rest of your match is really just setup to make that moment work, but doesn't have to be memorable otherwise, because (I don't think) it's even as important as the lead-in promos, angles, and such. Ask American wrestling fans about "big moments" and all that comes up are finishes (Hogan bodyslams Andre), and angles (Austin/McMahon "did you see Austin drive a Zamboni to the ring? That was something else"). Nobody outside of hardcore internet fans talk about match content, and in some ways I think it misses the point of how you make bigtime American-style wresting tick. To sum that up, I just think "telling a story in the ring" with American TV wrestling is really not nearly as important as some people would argue it is. For people like us, it's a nice bonus when it happens. But I'm not sure it has a huge amount in the US mainstream to do with "how to make money in pro wrestling" which is always the ultimate goal.

That's such a stereotypical puro-fan swipe at the poor dumb American rasslin' fans. I think WWE specifically did a good job making sure the fans "got" submission work, especially during that period where it seemed like almost all the top guys were using submission holds as finishers (Taker, Edge, Angle, Benoit, even Eddy was using the "Lasso from El Paso"). Sometimes it's too easy to blame the fans for not getting something when it's more a matter of guys being too lazy to put some effort into not making restholds look too obvious. I think it really depends how you are defining the point. There's a really big difference between "a submission finish" and "fans not chanting 'boring' for a match that is 75% on the mat". It's almost two totally seperate points. American fans will accept a submission finisher sure, but matches built entirely around matwork are almost totally unheard of in mainstream American wrestling because fans routinely start up "boring" chants and other such antics. There's a big difference between the Undertaker applying a UFC choke after 10 minutes of punch/kick/brawl/highspot, and a match that really does anything to get fans to "accept/get" mat wrestling/submissions, in my view. WWE used plenty of submission finishes, Baba-era All Japan never did. But if you ran a poll "which group of fans is more likely to revolt at a matwork segment lasting more than 5 minutes", it's a 100% vote. Not that I'm waving the flag for pure mat wrestling. UWF/UWF-i style tends to be either really, really good, or really, really rancid and horrifically boring. I've never seen much that falls into the middle ground for my tastes, but that's the price you pay running a "minimalist gimmick" company that wants to book 20+ minute matches. Sometimes it wanders off into "pretentious art for the sake of pretentious art" territory. But the fans that were there seemed to eat it up. There is some evidence that American fans will go for the matwork thing if you sell them on it the right way. The Angle vs. Benoit WWE feud was basically sold to people as a "wrestling contest" more so than anything else around it. And people marked out like all hell for really some basic amateur wrestling sequences, many of which contained no submission work at all, it was just straight amateur, and crowds accepted it fine. But in general that doesn't seem to be the case very often. Whether that's on the fans, or on promoters for not trying it often enough, it's hard to say.

There's got to be a YouTube of it out there somewhere, but I only have an obscure memory of it so I can't place the exact time frame. There was a promo where Hogan and I think Beefcake were working as a team and Hogan tells Savage Elizabeth has been off riding on their motobikes with them "getting double teamed", and Mean Gene was all "Whoa! Hulkster you can't say that!", it was pretty bizzare for a guy that was a childhood superhero. I think it might have been in the lead-in to the Wrestlemania 5 match... the memory is kind of foggy. But the point is it was a pretty mind blowing "hey I wonder why Savage hates Hogan... oh, that" moment.

Or Misawa. Even before he actually was fat.

Seriously, Cornette is enough of an old school carny to understand his product can suck (not that Cornette is why TNA sucks) while still collecting a paycheck. He is working for Jerry Jarret after all. If any combination should understand the concept of "make sure you end up holding the bag of money", I'd say those two would have a fair crack at winning.

Inoki is indisputably the most famous wrestler in Japan from his time frame, and he was constantly all over the title in his "heyday" as well, before he made himself into more of a "special attraction" later in his career. Inoki as champ vs. (insert invader here) would go right along with Hogan and Austin in that example. So that's (I think) the three biggest money draws of all-time standing in the corner of Myth Busters Inc.

Was Bret any more formula than anyone else working under the "10 minutes on TV = match of the century because it's an oddity, and maybe 3-4 genuinely long PPV matches a year" that was the WWF formula of it's day? There's only so many ways to work a match inside those constraints. WWF has never been a company about creativity from it's workers. Creativity with match gimmicks from time to time ("Buried Alive" matches, casket matches, hell in a cell, etc), but workers themselves rarely strike me as being under liscence to go nuts out there. Bret was champ a lot when I was entering my teen years, and I'm from Alberta, so obviously he was a focal point to me as a youth watching wrestling. And even so... I don't really get the hysteria he generates either way in hindsight. I don't think he's as great as his big fans make him out to be. I don't think he's as bad as his biggest critics make him out to be. For me the truth lies somewhere in the middle. If he hadn't been a world champion - and one that inherrited the near impossible spot of trying to headline the post-Hogan WWF business decline that, in my view, was at least partially inevitable - I think the ratio of fans on both sides of the fence and the ratio of fans more in the middle would look a lot different. Bret was no more to formula than the company as a whole was, unless I missed something. He just gets singled out for it because he had the belt.

When I think about how much money I burned in the early days of the "hey copying DVD's is now possible and VHS trading is dead" days, and how far it would go now... well, I have some lovely early decade NOAH shows in perfect VQ and all, but Jesus. That doesn't even touch what Japanese shows on VHS once were going for to people who didn't know where or how to shop around when getting hold of them really was like some sort of "buried treasure from an alternate dimension" thing (never mind trying to find sources that had VQ that would be close to top notch today). I know probably I sound like a grumpy old bastard (I'm really not I think the current scene is great if you are a fan), but I think a lot of the online wrestling fans that have come along the last 5 years or so really don't appreciate how much easier they have it now. It's very easy now to ingest any style of wrestling you want, in large doses, very quickly. I think if the actual in ring product was in as good a shape as the IWC is these days, we'd all have very little to complain about. I find the (right) message boards are these days the best part of wrestling for me. I barely watch anymore but I still am fascinated enough by the business that I talk it pretty much daily. I guess I think the concept of pro wrestling is better than the execution. I'm like a science professor: no field work, all theory.

Oh, and throwing one out there (not arguing for or against but have at it): - Andre the Giant was "just another big man".