Matt D

I'm keeping up with this feud and little else on Raw right now. I liked the first few bits of move stealing, but thought it got to be a bit much by the end. It went from being clever and novel and trollish to being too cutesy.

Matt, I'm kind of surprised you liked this match considering you are not a Volador fan. I give Volador fair shakes. I think he's very good at certain things (hitting spots, complex sequences, being a dick to mascots). He's a very useful role player in tags and trios. Where he's most problematic is when he's in a singles match because he has a tendency to bring the worst out of his opponents, will be prone to hit spots for the sake of spots, make things overly complex, contrived, and obviously collaborative, and have far too drawn out finishing sequences where something less bloated would be more appropriate and make for a better, tighter, more impactful match. He does cool stuff but way too much of it to the point where none of it matters in the least. That's less of an issue in a tag because cut offs and trading of partners can dilute that in the very best way (though it's still a danger). Here, the pacing works very well, the escalation is meaningful and pays off, and as a whole, the thing doesn't overstay its welcome. I'm as hard as I am on him because he does a lot of things well and because I generally want to like his stuff, and often do for the first two to three fifths of his matches and then get increasingly frustrated after that. If I thought he was Thunder-quality or something, I wouldn't care nearly as much. A match that could and should be great getting ruined is far more heretical and offensive than a match that never had a shot at being good.

It can make sense, if they make it make sense. It doesn't make sense in every situation without them doing the legwork (you know, "putting the work into it" not "working over the leg." Homograph. One of those wrestling terminology issues.). It could make sense, but then so could masked confusion or twin magic or poison mist or preternaturally hard heads. It doesn't inherently make sense on its own and shouldn't be naturally forgiven unless they actively make it work within the match.

Again, it goes back to transitions. Wrestling is a collaborative art form. Sport is a competition. Narratives are narratives sure, but it's a different world. The parallel isn't sport. It's a movie about sport or a well balanced fight scene in a genre novel (though that involves one person instead of two. Maybe a comic where you have both a writer and an artist working in tandem). There's a different level of control and cooperation and the ability to craft a story that's proactive and not just reactive. I watched Butch Reed vs Dick Murdoch last night. The first 15 minutes or so are based on armwork. Murdoch sells well, even when he tries to regain some sense of offense. Reed is mostly focused. At the end of the 15 minutes, the time limit ends, and they agree to go on in the match. This leads to a break in the momentum, stalling, and Reed getting frustrated, shifting his gameplan, and going with haymakers instead. That allows Murdoch, who was knocked out of the ring, to recover his arm enough and engage in some rope running as, by this point, Reed just wants to get him. Out of that, he gets a quick cut off and starts on the leg. Now, later on, Reed goes back to the arm as a way of fighting back, which is one thing that brings the match to a next level, but if he never went back to the arm, it'd still be perfectly acceptable because of the way they transitioned out of it and gave Murdoch time to recover. There were enough dots to transition out of it while still respect what happened earlier in the match. Reed's shift in behavior (which is a word I'd use even more than gameplan or strategy) was believable to me and fit his character and the match and wasn't dissonant to the rest of the actions and consequences of those actions that surrounded it.

According to Kris' lucha report it's Liosas Nuevo Laredo.

People should check out Mascara Dorada/Volador vs Flamita/Caristico. It's up on youtube. Very fun match with great action, great spots, some surprising and enjoyable rudo work from Dorada (and Volador, who's a natural jerk) in the middle, and it never wears out its welcome or escalates to the point of ridiculousness. Plus it's cool to see Flamita interact with these guys.

If you can connect the dots and contrive that story from what you're watching, sure, but the dots have to be there. You can't just accept the dropping of one thing or another unless the match justifies it. It's not a get out of jail free card just because it exists in sport.

Looking forward to tonight's Mixed tag match with a young Sherri and Judy Martin. I won't get to it tomorrow though but Martin's one of my favorites.

What matters most is the way they transition between chapters. The comparison to sport is the wrong path to go down though.

I know that you qualified this, but I think in this regard, look is a tool just like moves or blood or southern tag tricks or spots or weapons or whatever else. A lot of the discussion we have is split into a couple of categories. 1.) How good are the tools? 2.) How well does a wrestler use the tools he has? In this regard, when it comes to look, I think we do a pretty good job hitting #2 a lot of the time. Maybe not enough focus is given to #1 when it comes to "look." Wrestlers have to work extremely hard to get a good body just like they have to in order to hit moves smoothly and what not. It's not a big issue to me because I care about #2 a hundred times more and I'll factor that in just as much as I will anything else. That means that if Mike Shaw was able to utilize his look extremely well to have good matches, I'd value that as much as Scott Steiner doing the same, all other things equal.

I just hate when soundcloud crashes when I'm 2:36:00 into a 4 hour podcast because I have to listen over the span of two weeks. It's better with the iPhone6. I wish that it could remember where i am on multiple podcasts at once. I had an MP3 Player that could do that with multiple audio files.

Miz preparing to do the Giant Swing is the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuFQEYXrffs&app=desktop that one?

The cool thing about ten years from now is that there'll be a backlash against "storytelling" and towards action in three years or so and then there'll be another backlash against that backlash and things'll come full circle by the end of it and everyone will appreciate Jerry Lawler again.

I feel like we need to poke at this a bit.

I think there probably is JUST enough footage with Jones and he's better than people would have reason to think. That's the general exploratory mindset (PWO conventional wisdom). Valentine probably doesn't have quite enough though.

If the wrestling is good now, was good six months ago, and will probably be good in six months, then why does it matter? It's not a political party or a union you're a part of or something. It's a pro-wrestling company and you're a consumer of their product, not some sort of shareholder.

We're almost to the end of the matches we know about. Bock vs Brody from the Race vs Halcon night is still on deck, as is Dusty vs Graham? Lewin vs Brody, Lewin vs Gino, Jake vs Humungous, The Valentine/Wahoo match, whatever that is (as well as some of the shared tape like Bruno vs Graham), and Stomper vs Casey, plus that Conway Jr/Sr vs Lewin/Hart, and a few more Gino matches from the previous set.

The dynamic duo stuff has been right down your alley. I'm with both of you on Apolo. He's Hansen to Mil's Brody. Maybe even the other way around. It was still a fun match just for how the heels feed.

I love the heart punch. But mainly used by Stan Stasiak. It's so great in both the Buddy Rose matches and the Andre match. You guys just haven't seen those yet. I hate any move that involves a wrestler dangling from the corner forever, like Dragon Lee's double stomp (which Del Rio uses too). It's okay in trios when they have the partners set it up, but in general, it's stuff that's too obviously collaborative that bugs me the most.

I blame you for jinxing things.

Quick comments. I liked Patera vs Lothario. The bearhug was a bit much maybe but I still think they worked it well. JJ was awesome in his role. He brought so much more to the table than Gary Hart in what we've seen. Patera is a perfect stooging heel to eat Lothario's punches. Good effective wrestling. It's the sort of thing we take for granted because it comes in a sea of matches. If it was the only thing to pop up, we'd value it a lot more. I actively liked Duggan vs Mil too. This is the card with Lucas vs Gino and Tully vs Morton on it so that's cool right there. 82 Duggan feels immediately special. He's just got this reckless heel energy to him. He bumps all over the ring for Mil's stuff with an off-beat charisma that's just electric. He's wild in the way you always hope Brody is (I had a weird Monty Brown vibe from him actually). It's a 12 minute 2/3 fall sprint, basically, but it's well worth watching.

I think I missed this thread before. I'm not entirely sure what to do with it now.

You guys know this. They decide the poster images months in advanced and usually without any idea what the card is, often times with just something that fits the theme. Dean Ambrose is the extreme guy. it makes sense he'd be on the poster. Payback had the Wyatts who weren't on the card, etc.