Matt D

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.

I also want to put my comments in context. They don't come from a point of whether the match was really good or not (it was). They come mainly from the response of the "top ten WWE ever" talking point. I think the match earned the main event spot and justified the cell.

Benoit's going to beat Lawler, right?

Sure, but there's her landing that way on EVERY subsequent move. Like the monkey flip, or the suplex into the corner, creating some sense of diminishing return. Those bumps, all horribly nasty and contorted should have had an escalating effect. Instead, they all paled to what happened at the very start of the match. I'm not sure what sort of layout I would have liked more in that regard, maybe if the stoppage tease happened mid match instead? I think they were trying to copy the 98 match but that might not have been the best narrative choice for the entirety of the match even if ... ... the moment of Sasha getting up from the stretcher ultimately DID work because the crowd popped so big. As a moment, it worked BECAUSE of the crowd. Within the match as a whole it was a little wonky, maybe?

Just watched. Charlotte's commitment to her character is beautiful. Sasha's intensity was something else and there was such a sense of danger which had NOTHING to do with the cage, necessarily, and everything to do with the stakes and the setting. It's like the difference between knowing you're going to a movie theater to see a RomCom and going to see a Horror movie. Pratfalls in a RomCom are funny. You're in on the joke. If someone falls in a Horror movie, it's a lot more worrying. So there was a definite sense of mood to the match, which they more than earned. I had two major issues, one textual and one contextual. Contextual first. Even with Sasha's injury history, the actual spot where she gets hurt early on isn't enough to warrant what happens next, not in a company where someone goes through the announce table in bigger ways every main event. Maybe we're supposed to feel like it was a bigger deal because they were the females. We WERE supposed to feel like it was a bigger deal because Charlotte caught her off the cage first, but even symbolically that was a stretch. They still popped huge when she shot up and Sasha hitting the official really sold it, so I don't ultimately have a problem with how long they let it go with the stretcher, but the move itself wasn't believable to put her in that state. That's not necessarily the fault of the match in a vacuum, but this isn't' a vacuum. And yes, I would have liked just a little more back selling while on offense throughout the match from Sasha. She hit the three amigos and the announcers asked how she did it, and it would have been great if she indicated that there was anything wrong there. I buy adrenaline at the start of the match, during some comebacks, but it was a bit much since it was both the beginning and the finish. If something's going to be the finish it should be represented more in the middle as well. When her back gave out, I completely bought it, after the fact, a few seconds later, but not in the moment, because I had sort of forgotten that was an element of the match at that point. I have one other thing to say, relating to the danger of the match indicated up top and it has to do with Blade Runner Rock, but I'll get to that later.

I think it's very important to ask yourself why you're doing this too. That's not something I've seen mentioned yet. What is the metric for success. Why? Are you doing it to try to make some extra money? On some far-fetched (but I suppose not impossible) dream of making a living in wrestling this way? Are you just trying to give back to the small subsection community that you're a part of with entertainment? Are you trying to get a specific point of view across? Are you trying to teach people something? Are you just doing it for yourself and for fun? Do you feel unfulfilled in your life and need to have thousands of hits to feel important? Are you looking for interaction and feedback? Even if you're trying to fill a niche, why does that niche need to be filled? I think we did the Parejas Increibles limited run because people requested it, but we were aimed at the people we knew at PWO, primarily, not to have a wide appeal. It was a way to get our lists out and to talk to each other and have a back and forth on what we loved about wrestling because we thought it'd be interesting, to ourselves most of all. I started writing at Segunda Caida because I had a hole in my life at that point. There was a gap. Something was missing and an outlet would help. Moreover, I kind of liked the idea to be part of that as I always enjoyed the site. And it'd give me a reason to dive into lucha. Apparently, we're doing well on hits but we never hear a lot about what we do. When I started writing those smaller columns to go along with WTBBP, it was because I knew I couldn't fit in a regular podcast, but I felt like I was being a little bit left behind within the community. Everyone else was, and I thought a written piece could mesh well with what Parv and Chad were doing. Both work (which has increased hugely over the last few years) and SC picked up and I ran out of time. But I think I just wanted to be part of the wave any way I could. So I do think you need to figure out what you want specifically and why. Success is a relative term with this sort of thing. Maybe you can change your style, have a much larger reach, but ultimately compromise what you were trying to do in the first place.

You're not wrong. In over her head as a babyface when called up but she's been the standout heel performer since turning. Perhaps since Punk as a heel with Heyman or the Shield before they were getting babyface pops? She's a real highlight of TV. I'm going to play the Miz card.

What's the best Loss lucha match of the 90s?

Let's cut out the insults then. Glad to do so from my side. Some of this was thinking out loud for me, and I think where I've ended up is more of an Athleticism vs Acting divide as the top level one, which does, amongst other things, separate bumping and traditional selling as I agree these things should be separate. As for character work, I'd like to say a few people here have been vocal about not finding it satisfying (OJ, maybe?). I've seen it enough that it feels like an issue. It's only problematic to me when people dismiss it upon reading it which is something I've seen.

My entire philosophy of wrestling analysis is to look for patterns over matches and try to identify them so I don't disagree. I just think it's skewed at the top right now.

I think, ultimately, and this is a compromise of sorts, I want to cordon off the reactive elements of character work as you've listed them, tie them under a large umbrella with the reactive portrayal elements traditionally in selling, call this now "selling" and make hard subdistinctions under that new umbrella. I think that would be a more accurate classification than what we already have. Edit: what I might be trying to make a distinction between athleticism and acting as two of the three major umbrellas.