Matt D

Has he had an encounter with Maximo recently then?

A quick (overly personal, I admit) point on "giving too much:" The only Bockwinkel matches I am relatively down upon are the ones vs Verne right around 1980 where I think he gives Verne almost the entirety of the match, stooging and bumping around the ring with a sort of verve and exuberance that you wouldn't really expect out of him. To a lesser extent, he works this way against Hogan and JYD. It's one reason why (Pete and) I thought the Atlas match that recently surfaced was so remarkable, because he makes Atlas look like a mat whiz instead of working like this which he could have easily done. It's much more of a traditional world title match. When it comes to comparative categorization of matches, I know Loss is a proponent of using time as the primary key field. Every match in January, 1990 around the world, etc. I am much more interested about situations. Broadly that could be narrative based: Big vs Little. Old vs Young. Strong vs Sneaky. But it could also be more purpose-driven. Return matches. Retirement matches. Matches to lead to a turn. Matches to establish a young lion as a star. And yes, matches vs the Boss, like Hansen vs Colon, for instance.

I'm not sure how frequently I'll do this or how far I'll get but I am going to watch some Noah. I have seen >5 Noah matches and could not tell you what they were if you asked. Except for Marifuji vs Taue. I'm pretty sure that was Noah. Young GOTNW has sent me a list of things he thinks I'd like. I'll do a write up, include my real time notes in a spoiler tag (probably best not to read those), and then conclude with a 1-5 Noahs ranking based on the following criteria solely: "How glad am I that I saw this match?" Don't look at them like star ratings. They're not. Let's begin. Kenta Kobashi vs Masao Inoue - 3/1/2009 This felt like Jerry Lawler returning to the Mid-South Coliseum in December, 1980, if he was ten years older and up against Carl Fergie instead of Dream Machine. That's a bit of a stretch. Maybe it was more like if 1980 Jose Lothario was up against 1980 Rip Rogers? We learn by building off of our pre-existing knowledge and that's where my mind went first. This was the returning babyface king, tough as nails, absolutely deadly, perhaps a step slower but as tough as ever against a stooging heel well over his head. It was pure Memphis to begin, with Inoue, who has a sort of jovial, friendly look to him, dodging an early chop. That's how the match began, with a lock up and the duck of a Kobashi chop. It was all heightened reality. The chop was a home run swing. The duck was exaggerated. The reaction from the crowd and Inoue was if he dodged a bullet. Realizing the climb before him and the fact that the last thing he wanted in the entire world was to get hit by one of those chops, Inoue, no longer jovial but instead a man with his own doom upon his mind, went straight for the eyes. He utilized these long, extended (again over-exaggerated in the best way) rakes and followed with some World of Sport styled positioning of the ref so as to punch repeatedly in a headlock (the ref didn't play along). He tried some shoulder blocks to no avail (selling the difference between the two with comedic running in place before the second one). When that didn't work, he went back to the eyes. Kobashi, partially blinded, responded with another home run shot, this time a spinning back chop. Inoue ducked it and then powdered hitting the floor to stall. The fans responded exactly as they should, seeing full well the symbolic value of every swing. Kobashi was patient and stoic, sitting upon the ropes, opening them to goad Inoue back in (another gasp). They reset and locked back up, but only for a moment, as Inoue went back to the eyes. This led to some comedically ineffective clubbering, a futile kick, and a second attempt, which Kobashi, perfectly serious and unaffected, caught. He slammed the foot down temporarily immobilizing Inoue, and the entire world came to a halt as the chops began. Kobashi knew 100% the value of his every strike here, built up both over the years and within this match itself. His windup was huge. Inoue dropped like a brick and rolled out to delay the crowd's gratification for just another moment. The tide had shifted though and the genie was out of the bottle. Kobashi immediately pressed Inoue into the ropes upon his entrance back to the ring and the chops continued, slow, methodological, paced with big set ups and time given for their effect to settle in. Standing, falling, to the throat, with a suplex and a few pins interspersed. At one point, Kobashi, having Inoue in the corner after a failed attempt from the latter to fight out, even hopped from foot to foot (small motions, but measured ones) in order to set up a chop. Inoue collapsed, sold and begged off but I would have liked to see a bit more active flailing. At times, it seemed like he almost went catatonic from the impact. It was effective and perhaps didn't take attention away from Kobashi, but I would have liked to see something a bit more broad and visual from him to get across the severity of the blows. In general though, it was a hugely effective opening that allowed for the establishment of symbolic meaning, anticipation and then satisfying payoff. The rest of the match was centered around Inoue doing anything in his power to get an advantage but being completely unable to capitalize. His lone advantage was his youth, shown first and foremost in his ability to reverse Kobashi's whips. One of these, into the guardrail, gave him his best chance. He was able to keep control for a minute after that by working over the back, but abandoned it after Kobashi decided to do some push ups out of a Boston Crab (Inoue's stooging facial reaction to that was great, it's worth noting). I'm guessing his finisher was some sort of contrived 2009 head drop out of a torture rack. He went for it twice only to have it fail and cost him each time. On the second, Kobashi reversed and went for the half-nelson suplex. Inoue gasped and escaped but at the cost that he was finally opened up and trapped in the corner for the rapid-fire chops. This felt like an almost religious experience for the crowd, who clapped along. The most striking image of the whole match to me was a middle-aged (maybe even older) man in a suit with glasses and a giddy look in his face as he clapped to the oscillating speed of the chops. Kobashi followed this by hitting the half-nelson suplex. Inoue took it like a champ but did make it back to his feet for one last eyerake (which I was okay with because he'd mostly taken pain but not punishment in the back so far), before eating a huge Kobashi clothesline for the win. Inoue played his role well, looking for any opportunity, treating Kobashi with the proper fear and respect. The one moment in the match where he dared to stand up and even ask for those chops, he could only take two (to huge effect; no no-selling here) before begging off in the corner (that didn't work). He was more comedic than credible but was persistent and frenetic enough to bring movement to the match and he made sure to react for the back row to every situation he found himself in. I appreciated how he let Kobashi embrace him after the match but continued to sell and almost melted out of the ring after a few seconds, letting Kobashi seem magnanimous while not making it about him at all. Kobashi's restraint was admirable and it more than paid off. He garnered a lot of value from almost every chop and the end result felt, as I indicated, almost like a religious experience for the crowd. I enjoyed this a lot. I loved the thought put into the opening of the match, and thought most of what Inoue did throughout the match as he tried to deal with the monolith that was Kobashi made sense and had meaning. They went home exactly when it should have. It had to be, more or less, what people wanted out of a feel-good Kobashi return match. Four and a half Noahs (not a star rating). Notes (I don't suggest reading these):

Truly the unsophisticated words of an undereducated, working class lout, lacking some sort of visceral thrill in his daily life and trying to make up for it though a voyeuristic vicariousness when it comes to men backhand chopping each other at high speed and frequency. Probably works in a coal mine and can only make analogies based on cheese appetizers. This is exactly why the Victorians insisted all the museums be free of charge.

Someone give me a list of matches that I can find online and I will watch them.

It's a little funny in this specific situation because if there was anything wrong with the match, it was the layout. The actual performances, commitment to character, intensity... all of the things that feel like "performance elements" separated from practice-able ones or agent-lay-out or whatever, is what was we have pretty direct evidence of being strong.

Again, I think it's worthwhile then to think about the opportunities provided to cerebral wrestlers relative to ones more-heart focused, the drawbacks. What does it mean to "wrestle smart" if you're a wrestler like Kobashi? What does it mean if you're Andre? What does it mean if you're Kamala? What does it mean if you're Primo Colon in 2016? Or Mike Jackson in 1984? Working smart, to me, is generally about economy. It's about getting the most narrative and emotional value out of every single movement in the ring, every move, every bump, every bit of selling, every iota of crowd interaction, every two-count or cut off or bit of manager interference or rope break or reversal. It's about value, and then adding up all of that value to create a total effect (and likely over time with all of the context in the world mattering). You can do that in a match like AJ Styles vs John Cena, which was full of spots and kick-outs. You can do it a UWF Fujiwara match. You can do it a southern tag or a lucha trios spotfest or in a thumbtack death match. It's just getting the most out of everything you're doing and conversely, doing the things that you'll get the most out of. I'll admit that it may be easier or harder depending on the circumstance, however. Moreover, it doesn't need to be about intent, but instead what worked within a match (or over a series a matches or a career) or didn't. We can extrapolate backwards through our own lenses (and that's where the bias comes in, since we tend to decide what works and what doesn't and how to judge efficiency. But most of us are consistent between wrestlers at least).

Sure. I don't disagree that we should think about why someone is acting as they're acting. That said, just because it's potentially the right thing for him to be doing, doesn't mean it works to make good matches. Sometimes it hurts a match. That goes back to styles and crowds to some degree. I actually don't think RVD should have worked much differently than he did work. It got him over. It made the fans happy. It doesn't mean that I think his matches are good. In the Benoit vs RVD matches, for instance, Benoit is the one who works the matches wrong, focusing too much on limbwork against a guy who won't sell it properly and who the crowd doesn't really want to see sell it properly. I give Kobashi a lot of credit for getting over with his fighting spirit to the extent that he does. At times, I think it's amazingly effective and at times I think it goes too far and it takes me out of the match. Does it take the crowd out of the match? No. That's one of the biggest theoretically splits in wrestling analysis, isn't it? If it works for the crowd, is it objectively good or are there higher values, be they based on narratives or workrate or whatever?

We control for it, like any other bias. I think, as far as biases go, it's not at all a major one in the grand scheme of things. I'd be open to other sorts of arguments, like, for instance, that it's easier for someone to portray an intellectual heel, in-ring, than a high flying heel or a monster heel or a stooging one. I think that's an interesting discussion. I don't think "People can't distinguish between a wrestler and his character" is a very interesting discussion. It's how a wrestler plays his character that matters. There are different challenges to playing different characters and it's those challenges we should be looking at (even comparatively). I'm much more of an input guy than an output guy, but I do think it's possible that certain characters make for more consistently good matches. (And that's another interesting discussion). I think there are bunch of interesting discussions to have, just not the "People mistake Kamala for being a sloppy worker because he plays an out of control savage!" one.

I think a) It's a point that's been raised before, so if people weren't aware of their biases on this issue, then they've had plenty of notice to stop and look at it, and b ) we're far enough along in the analysis of character work to really look at the character being played. That's part of the entire point of it. We've spent years delving into this stuff. I think we're able to be aware of the difference between the wrestler and the character. We all have preferences, but everyone, from Parv to Chad to you to I to Sam to everyone here, often goes out of their ways to acknowledge preferences and try to control for them in looking at matches. It's what we do. To say we're not aware of that, almost half a year after the GWE project ended, years after it began, and after people have reviewed hundreds upon hundreds of matches here is pretty absurd to me.

I can understand why that might be a pitfall somewhere else, but I don't think that's even remotely an issue here. Not even a 1% chance with the people we have on this board and the depth they look at matches. Not even a ghost of a chance. It's the equivalent of saying that people think that Mike Shaw was a pretty dumb and wasteful worker because he portrayed Norman the Lunatic. Just ridiculous.

Part of my personal frustration with mid-late 90s AJPW is just how good and smart they are, with an attention to detail to very small things that can have huge emotional impacts within a match and over matches. There are so many specific elements that are completely down my alley and better and more layered than any other attempt at them I've come across. Then, they just go on too far with too much and lose me and it's much worse than if the match was terrible to begin with. It's, in part, why I gravitate towards Taue, because his physical limitations meant that he could only go so far and he was still awash in the general style and everything else. It doesn't mean his input is better necessarily but that I am more comfortable with his output. It's not a very good argument for him as a better wrestler (he probably wasn't), but it's the argument for him having matches that I'm happier watching. I also recognize my lack of breadth of watching, so I'm not a particularly loud voice on this topic. I should check out mid-2000s Kobashi at some point. Someone suggest me a few specific matches I'd probably be high on? I've said this before but Nick Bockwinkel's character was "smart guy", "wily vet", "sneaky champ", when THAT's your character then of course a lot of stuff you do is going to "smart". But Kobashi didn't have that character. Ric didn't either, but I don't think there are four faces of Bock like there are four faces of Flair ... from a certain perspective Bock is more one dimensional in his actual character work than Flair is. I think that's utter nonsense. Not even worth replying to. As for the other point, I just made a distinction of Taue as a worker vs Taue matches. Inputs vs outputs. Which goes against your last complaint completely.

Part of my personal frustration with mid-late 90s AJPW is just how good and smart they are, with an attention to detail to very small things that can have huge emotional impacts within a match and over matches. There are so many specific elements that are completely down my alley and better and more layered than any other attempt at them I've come across. Then, they just go on too far with too much and lose me and it's much worse than if the match was terrible to begin with. It's, in part, why I gravitate towards Taue, because his physical limitations meant that he could only go so far and he was still awash in the general style and everything else. It doesn't mean his input is better necessarily but that I am more comfortable with his output. It's not a very good argument for him as a better wrestler (he probably wasn't), but it's the argument for him having matches that I'm happier watching. I also recognize my lack of breadth of watching, so I'm not a particularly loud voice on this topic. I should check out mid-2000s Kobashi at some point. Someone suggest me a few specific matches I'd probably be high on?

Yeah totally. I reserve the right to up or downgrade any ratings on 2nd, 3rd, 4th viewing. I've also adjusted ratings before now, talked up or talked down after discussing them over with someone else whose takes I really respect. Sometimes people can see stuff you can't. And for me that's one of the key reasons to read or listen to reviews period. If you look at my initial post, I was mainly saying: "Okay, that's a big star rating. I'd be curious to see you watch some more Evolve and see if you still feel that way." That's all. I could have framed the tone better. As for understanding. I think we're looking for as much of the truth of the match as we can figure out. It could be our truth of how we see it. I think understanding is a part of that. Our understanding of a match shapes our analysis and ultimately our contextual placement.

To some degree it's more of an temporal issue in this specific case. I need Loss to come in here and explain how he likes to understand what's happening in a certain year around the world and defend the value of that.

This is an interesting stance to me, I don't disagree with you idea. That said I wonder who you would see that information effecting a rating negatively unless you are implying that if Parv understood the background more he might give it a higher rating? That's a fair question. Ok, the answer, as best as I can give it is this: It's one thing to give something a 5* rating. It's another to start to promote or drive people towards it or to utilize that rating in a social context. And then, really, what's the purpose of a star rating in the first place? Is it the end point of analysis or the starting point? Is it only worthwhile for listmaking purposes? To fill out an excel sheet? If I come across a match that I rate so highly, I want to get all the way around it and understand it because it's a very rare beast. I want to really break it down and figure out what makes it tick. I want to be sure of my own rating. I want to hear others' opinions to see if they agree or disagree, if they might see something I'm missing. Moreover, just by the way I look at wrestling, I do tend to connect dots, and I want to make sure those dots are accurately connected. I want to check and double check my work. In this case, while Parv dips his toe into 00s wrestling, it's usually with a level of disdain. I think he was surprised that he found this match, not only that it wasn't talked up much, but that it actually existed on this card, in the weeds of the sort of cosplay pretend indy wrestling of the modern day (even in front of a crowd that he probably didn't think deserved or appreciated what they saw correctly). That dissonance was striking to him, and whenever I encounter that level of dissonance I want to dive deeper and look for corroboration. The more information I can bring to the table, the better. I've seen my share of Hero in 2015 (if not 2016). Parv hasn't. I think the ultimate goal of analyzing wrestling is understanding it, not necessarily ranking it.

I voted Charlotte, but if Charlotte was a face right now and Sasha a heel, I probably would have voted Sasha.

I've watched a lot of wrestling. That said, I'd be hesitant to be introduced to a new style (and this is a new style for him) and immediately give a match on the first show I see five stars on a first watch. There are plenty of places that I might be missing some element because of lack of context or that I might have connected dots that I shouldn't have, for instance. I know my own limitations. I'm not saying Parv's limitations are the same as mine, but I find it useful to get a better 360 view of things.

In general, I tend to be in agreement with that, and I certainly gave them credit above (though it's interesting to me that they accomplished it not through adapting to the mishaps as we've seen in plenty of other situations with other experienced wrestlers but instead by doubling down upon them through commitment to character. I can't think of any other match where that's true. Can you? Usually we're praising for adapting instead of just repeating a spot or some such, not just for powering through mistakes). I do think someone could separate out the end match table spots with some of the other ones, however, the difference between an act of god/something outside of their control and a series of physical mishaps that were execution issues. I'm not sure if that changes things.

Parv, While (and I haven't seen it either) apparently that match is exceptional, I think it would be good for you to watch a few more Evolve shows for stylistic context before going all in on it.

I guess part of my question is this: Does it affect your rating of a match if so much of it is full of obvious happy (horrible) accidents?

Let me try to talk this bit out. I only watched four real matches Sunday night into Monday morning. I saw the Kendrick one while it happened, more or less, and caught the women the next morning. The two others I saw? the Korchenko squash on NWAonDemand and the Blade Runners one. I figured someone should check them out just in case there was anything noteworthy in them. For the Blade Runners match, at least, it likely never aired and this is the first time anyone's seen it in 30 years. I have some doubts that more than fifty people in the world have even seen it now. It's not exactly a huge pull. The match ended with one of the two ways a Blade Runners win ends. Either they hit the bearhug/running (no jump) clothesline Hart Attack combo or Rock/Warrior does a press slam and then Sting comes in with a big splash. In this case, it was the latter. Rock would, at times, do a press slam where he bumps the person like someone tossing Flair off the top rope, forward. Other times, he'd drop the guy like he'd do later in his career. In both cases, he usually needed to rely on the tights to get the guy up and it was bad when he didn't. We saw him, at the height of his career, dangerously drop Heenan time after time, for instance. Rock absolutely could not get his opponent up here. He made it about halfway and then just crumpled him, dropped him, and he landed in the most awkward, horrible way possible. It was nasty and gnarly and in that moment, actually helped the mystique of the Blade Runners, because it made it seem like they just killed this poor bastard and that they kayfabe had no regard for human life. His inability to hit his move successfully added to the moment instead of hurting it, but it probably did so at the cost of the the jobber's health, not because of any sort of skill or precision, but instead because of the lack of such. That's what drove a lot of the women's title match. I mentioned that it had a mood before, that it felt more like a horror movie. Some of that was the intensity and Charlotte's heeling. Some of it was the innate concern that they were going to try to do something to warrant the main event spot. Most of it, however, was in their execution. People have mentioned sloppiness as a positive but I see sloppiness as a certain disregard or inexperience or lack of timing. That wasn't what this was. The match was made through them attempting things that they couldn't hit over and over again and there being obvious negative consequences to the attempt. It was made by being more real than it should have been and the Faces of Death impulses that seeing this, again and again, were sent down your spine; the way you might watch some sort of backyard trainwreck with lighttubes. There was the tope into the cage. There was the apron bump that went all sorts of wrong. There were the table spots. There was a willing disregard for safety so long as the the match worked. It wasn't built into the match, necessarily. Those spots were planned out to be mostly safe ones, but there was no veering off course when something didn't work out. It was total commitment and total immersion. The most memorable thing about the match wasn't them climbing the cage and the announcer table powerbomb. It wasn't the pop when Sasha got up. It wasn't the early Bank Statement attempt. It wasn't even that tope or apron spot. It was the two table throws in the end. Why? Because they didn't work and because Charlotte didn't for a moment show any sign of caring. She was completely immersed into her character. When Sasha didn't go through the first time, she lawn-darted her even more severely the second time. Unlike the case with Rock and the jobber, Sasha almost certainly wanted her to do exactly that, and it created one of the most striking moments we've had in a Cell in a decade. So they get a ton of credit for keeping together in the midst of all the failed attempts at execution, of working that into the match by never forgetting the characters they were portraying, by never interrupting the purity of the match with audibles or disingenuous repeats of spots. But from a comparative sense, I wonder if it doesn't raise some red flags that, in a business which is supposed to be about the illusion of danger and harm, they were able to craft a match with so distinct a mood primarily out of grisly, far too real, athletic failures.

Yeah, goc. That's the moment I remembered. I included that in the "Finish." Up until the collapse I had forgotten (or maybe moved on). Maybe that's more on me. I'll rewatch at some point, but that is the sort of thing I look for, and at some point in the match, I moved on and stopped looking for it and was looking for other things.

The three amigos, especially, kind of bugged me, because I didn't notice what you did at all. In fact it was the opposite. One of the announcers said "With her hurt back, I don't see how she's doing this!" which is a way of covering, but not as ideal as her doing more to overtly sell it (she should have probably at least missed the frog splash because she was delayed by the cost of what she just did). I'll admit that was just notional. I'd have to watch again to really be sure. And it wouldn't have been an issue to me to any great degree if it wasn't so pivotal to the finish.

My only problem with the finish is that I literally forgot that Sasha had problems with her back by the point it happened because it was such a non factor for the few minutes before (even the side slam on the chair felt far more like just a gimmicky counter than something specifically hurting the back too). She hadn't really struggled to hit any offense for most of the match. I don't remember if Charlotte specifically used it for cut offs either. The match wasn't really structured with a lot of heat and cut offs once it got going. You see some of the great matches that have a moment of a worked body part leading towards a finish and it's usually built better within the match (with transitions and cut offs centered around it and more of a sense of having to fight through it by the babyface), not just as a flashpoint in the beginning and then again at the end with a small bit of focused offense within. By that last sequence, I was far more focused on whether Charlotte was going to moonsault through the table or not. I thought that the pinfall, when it came and abrupt as it was, felt totally earned BECAUSE the table didn't break and she tried twice and it was so brutal looking. It surprised me because we're so conditioned to the way ending sequences are supposed to feel. It was more a sense of "Oh, ok. Ok. I'm ok with that." when it ended as opposed to something more emotional. But again, I was okay with it. I do have more to say about the intensity of the match tomorrow though.