Matt D

I think there are a lot of interesting points here that don't entirely fit for the GWE discussion but that we should delve into deeper for their own sake.

Any chance that any more IWE with him from 71-72 exists?

He gets pissed off when Eddy Guerrero takes too long to sell.

2 Cold Scorpio! There's a guy that I just didn't see the footage in time for. A lot of it isn't hugely accessible. He could have been a contender.

I understand the idea that people's expectations might be too high but the only Wrestlemania I can think of with worse build than this is 27. And that's pretty close.

Whereas live crowds tend to go apeshit for Shawn Michaels and Kurt Angle matches, despite the fact that a lot of people here think neither one of those guys "knows how to work". It's all in what you value as an individual. It's the wrestling equivalent of cotton candy or a firework display. Firework displays have a long history of dazzling crowds, but they are quickly forgotten. That's a weird analogy to me because I don't know what the artistic counterpoint to fireworks would be. Kurt Angle to me is like Def Leppard. Yeah, most of their work is grossly overproduced and their lyrics are juvenile to the point of being incomprehensible, but I still love listening to Hysteria and 30 years on I still sing along to "Pour Some Sugar On Me" because it makes me feel good. Their job, like Angle's, is to entertain me. They accomplish that in spades. Do they make me think the way U2 might? No. Do they make me appreciate musicianship the way Stevie Ray Vaughan might? Hardly. But I don't always want those things. If you can succeed in what you set out to do as an entertainer then it doesn't matter what other people do. Kurt Angle might not structure his matches in a way that is as pleasing to hardcore fans as somebody like Misawa does, but he's still succeeding at his goal, because his goal is not necessarily to please those fans. His work is not quickly forgotten by me. It left an impression on me that lingers to this day, whether or not it holds up to microscopic scrutiny. I think we've seen wrestlers that are able to do a lot of what Angle does well and also structure their matches far better. I don't think those things are mutually exclusive or that wrestling can only be entertaining in that wildly exciting, frenetic way if it's big and dumb. It can still be big without being dumb. It doesn't have to be an either/or.

Presentation matters when it comes to this.

Villano III was on there until the last second, when I was entering my list, and I finally decided that I couldn't justify him if pressed. He was more or less the only person I felt like that about. He was on based on glimpses I'd seen and rep. No one else on my list was like that. I just couldn't do it. My list is probably going to give you an aneurysm, OJ. Sorry.

Not really Bubble again, but guys who I just didn't have enough time to do a last lap with. The ones that I just didn't feel confident enough to place. Someone like Jack Brisco could have been, I don't know, 40 on the weighted scale of footage, but I just didn't feel like I had enough of a grasp of him. Villano III, Keith Haward, Van Buyten, Leo Burke, Espanto, Jr., Gino Hernandez, Jerry Estrada, Little Guido, Super Astro, Alan Sargent, Ron Starr, Jack Brisco.

Too much on my plate over the next few weeks. Pulled the bandaid off and submitted my ballot. Still a few things I would have liked to look into but it's off into the ether now for good or ill.

In some ways, that's part of what made Christian so amazing in 2009, that he was constantly resequencing the same moves to different and compelling effects on a week to week basis.

I think that's actually changed, Parv, maybe if only because Vince doesn't have as close a handle on things as he once did. It was on shows like the ignored WWECW in 07-09 where you really started to see this sort of thing rise up, or on Smackdown where it was obvious far less attention was being paid, or on the C-Shows, where you could tell just by the announcing that they didn't have that same level of "Adult Supervision". Then it bled into the three hour Raws as well. It's arguable that this had something to do with a generation of wrestlers coming in that were somehow different from the ones before, but there's a lot on the plate here.

A way to stay sane in the midst of 7+ hours of TV a week?

Can you imagine the sort of Indy tour he'd have if he got cut? Well, you probably can't (which is fine, honest), but ask Pete or Chad if they can.

I bet an 8 year old takes this stuff way more seriously and follows things from a kayfabe perspective way and is way more into "learned psychology" than more than most 30 year olds watching. It's also something that happens a lot. It's basically the midcard house style now. I would have NEVER given Kofi Kingston credit for it, but after reading his thread, and thinking about those matches, yeah, sure, absolutely. He just does it without it feeling as natural and impactful as others I'd actually give more credit to, like Cesaro (at least to me). If it's caviar, then they sell it by the pound.

This goes back to my "It's not wrestling that's changed; it's us." argument. Except for I think the circle keeps repeating itself.

I'm not sure that's true in 2016. There's an entire fanbase that doesn't simply swallow what the announcers are feeding them, the same one that got behind Daniel Bryan. Wrestlemania XXX was Bryan's crowning, but Cesaro was the prince on that show, the same swell of support rising him up, and this was while he was in the Real Americans having tag matches with the Rhodes' brothers. He was not positioned to be the person that people were supposed to get behind, but he was, to a certain section of the crowd, and it was almost entirely due to SOMETHING in his ringwork, and something that wasn't just the standard WWE Mass Appeal that they were trying to push. I think fan-driven narratives are more important in 2016 than ever. Cesaro got himself over through his ringwork alone to the point where they almost had to push him. Slightly different question: do you think it's not important, if you're on TV against the same sorts of opponents on TV week in and week out 2-3 times, plus house shows, to change things up in creative and interesting ways within your matches? If you don't do that, do you think the fans will notice or care, even if the announcers don't play it up one way or the other because they're barely focused on calling the match anyway. Hell, it's not like the live crowd has Michael Cole and JBL bickering in their ears about tangential stuff, and I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility to think that people excited to go to a Smackdown taping on a Tuesday night won't make extra sure to watch the Raw that week closely, so that they can prime themselves for the show they're about to see. And likewise for the people going to Raw the next Monday when it comes to Smackdown. That's the live crowd that they're playing to. And that goes without asking the question of just who actually watches Superstars week in and week out and whether or not it makes sense to assume those people are paying a certain amount of attention, especially in an age of serialized television that builds season to season as opposed to "Crime of the Week" type shows. I think it could well be a reaction to the current audience base and the current style of TV and really shouldn't be dismissed so casually.

I think you're underplaying the "learned psychology" and rearranging of spots in Cesaro matches. He's also very good at teasing things and paying them off later. He often comes off not as a character so much as a force of nature, but in a productive way instead of a Brock way, in a way that really utilizes the WWE house style to the fullest as opposed to a way that actively breaks it.

Does it help or hurt Buddy Rose?

I feel like that's a rib on Michael Hayes

If I was going to put someone on for just one match it would be him. I love him so much in that IWE six-man.

His quality is arguably very relative, but it is refreshing.

I like you guys and all, but this thing is going to take me a week and a half to get through! (I mean, I will, but yeah)

Not to be overblown, but the idea that Angle is probably going rate kind of hurts.

I do. I'm probably slightly high on Fuerza relative to everyone else here and slightly lower on Morgan, but both of them are solidly above Park. Park's highs are very high and he's underrated in his early AAA trios/atomicos work when he was more agile, but my gut says that if you pick a random Park match, you've as much chance of getting a bad one. Plus he's hurt by having so much of his run in the indies over the last decade where I think he has his own personal heel ref to stooge. A little of that gets old very quickly.