Matt D

Took one for the team and watched the Dirty White Boys vs Torres/Brown match. Paint by numbers, but they're numbers that we love. Just a little ten minute match with shine, heat, and comeback, a crowd way hotter than it should have been, Brown doing a great job in conducting them and riding their wave, the DWBs solid in their ring control/clubbering, etc., and a surprisingly hot tag. Got to love that Houston crowd. Nothing you'll remember a month after you see it but a fine way to kill ten minutes.

When I mentioned that Hansen was a tool in Japan, I indicated that he was an amazing tool and highlighted his selling. I've done legwork and have a much deeper appreciation of Hansen's selling than previously. That didn't really change how I felt though, which is why I tried to refine my thoughts further. Some of this is stylistic backdrop too, though. As Elliott pointed out, I praise Eadie (who certainly won't make my top 10 either) for doing much the same thing as part of Demolition, but that's because of his environment where babyfaces were taking way too much of the matches. Japan is a very different place than 1988 WWF. For full disclosure, my top 10 might well be as you described, and Buddy Rose, who had the illusion of illusion of intent, maybe? Dylan, yeah, the Bock match (or the White match) is a much better example than the Hennig match, but please note that I'm saying "in Japan" over and over again when discussing this element of Hansen. I feel differently about him outside of Japan, but most of the matches people have to look at for him and that they are ranking him so highly on ARE the Japanese matches. He'll still rank very highly for me on the merits of everything we've been discussing but also, especially, on his non-Japan work. He just won't be in my top ten likely.

I'm not saying every Hansen match is a spring brawl, but that he exerts a consistent pressure that limits possibilities, and then, only in Japan.

Couple of things to hit. As always, we're talking about things that separate #20 on my list from #10 or #10 from #1 so all of these guys are good and this is very much about me working through why I feel how I do. 1.) "Illusion of Intent:" I'm coining phrases here in order to try to understand why and how I feel the way I do about things. I didn't well define this one, but to me illusion of intent is not intent itself. It's not calling a match or preparing it beforehand. It's being able to present, in ring, a proactive instead of reactive strategy. Bockwinkel often does that. You get the sense he's come into a match with a gameplan. It's an element of storytelling. I like watching a match and having the perception that the character I am watching wrestle has a reason for doing what he's doing and that the reason is proactive and not reactive. It doesn't mean there's anything necessarily bad about being reactive. It's a preference and I think it's something that I respond to negatively with both Flair and Hansen, though they both portray it in different ways. This is down to being biased towards different genres or tropes. If a wrestler can have great performances without this, I note that. I respect it, but my preference towards it may color my perspective when it comes to the difference between #1 and #10. 2.) Hansen, in general. I still don't have the right words for Hansen. It's not lazy storytelling, except for maybe it is. Hansen, in Japan, to me is lazy from a narrative sense. He forces his opponent down one specific path. There's no room for imagination or for deviation. He'll present a vulnerability and the opponent either has to take it or he'll eat him alive. Hansen matches are about how the opponent reacts to Hansen, and while they are often very good because of the consistency and focus and because of Hansen's energy and what he forces out of his opponent, it's not a narrative that I'm particularly interested in. It's not collaborative. It's not overly creative to me, at least not over multiple matches. I come across the occasional one which is interesting due to the vulnerability the opponent manages to strike or in the way he mounts his comeback but it's all reactive in a way that doesn't appeal to me over a number of matches as much as other more varied styles of narrative in wrestling. Hansen comes off as a tool to me, basically. I always say that about RVD, that he's a prop, sort of an automaton that you can utilize to certain ends, and it's not at all fair to compare that to Hansen, but there are similarities. There are certain things you can get out of Hansen, and they are amazing things, inputs that you can utilize as another wrestler. His intensity, his timing, his selling, his character, his aura, etch. But the impression I get from him is that he is an engine that drives forward constantly, and it's up to his opponent to redirect and try to manage to steer. I feel differently about Hansen in other settings. I love his match with Bockwinkel for instance because it works in a different way. Likewise the match with Hennig.

I say this as a friend, but you need to stop questioning people's motives. Nothing makes any of this more joyless than you repeatedly seeing people as less than earnest. I will clarify tomorrow, even if I found your tone and your lack of grace in granting the benefit of the doubt to be both petty and woefully unsurprising.

The best part of that match is Heenan rooting for him. He has some really fun jobber squashes where he just kills guys in 1992. Then he has a number of underappreciated Saturday Night matches towards the end of his WCW run.

The Taylor/Duggan vs Darsow/Volkoff match was pretty enjoyable. Double heat, with the nexus of the match being Duggan trying to get his hands on Darsow (presumably for betraying him and signing up with the reds). The finish was wonky but it had a great crowd. The Volkoff vs Duggan cage match was pretty slight but the post match angle was molten.

Sometimes I wish he'd just take it 5% further. He already went that far, you know? Like the Hogan thing. He asked about Hogan getting money for a Monday Night Jericho shirt, but that wasn't the issue. It was that it rung up as Hulk Hogan merchandise instead, according to Jericho. Go the rest of the way if you're going to go that far, etc.

A match made in heaven.

He sounds like Chad to me. I've never seen them in the same place.

They really need to stop putting the Rumble in places like Philly.

It's always possible that some other Lawler match might turn up too. Greg Valentine was a guy I didn't expect us to have any of from the initial match list so I was surprised when he showed up battling Brody in that battle royal.

Yeah. Like mine. His is "R."

Good. You found Eva Marie's new gimmick.

Sting may have even moved the needle, so far as we can tell these days. WWE was much more socially active than for usual PPVs and it was up against football and the emmy's.

Hey, they'll almost certainly be in my top 30, and probably higher than that. It's a personal preference thing. I can appreciate that something is effective but still not prefer it or think it is superior (even if it's potentially more effective).

I've done the legwork. I'll write a lot about this sometime in the next month. I think it has to do with implicit vs explicit storytelling though.

It's a personal thing. I think this is my biggest problem with Flair and Hansen and why I lean so heavily towards Bockwinkel. I want, at the highest level, at the very least, the illusion of intent.

I doubt I'll be the low vote on Hansen but he's going to be outside my top 20. I think I have a pretty good sense of him now. In general, I find him unimaginative in Japan. I'm not saying anyone could do what he did, because he's talented and very good at portraying consequence and I enjoy him more elsewhere, but I think the "unrelenting guzzle," which is what I'd call his style there, is about the most uninteresting style imaginable. It's real in all the ways that wrestling should not be real.

Are we sure this isn't just WWE realizing that they need more guys at the top of the card over the next few years and keeping Cena out of that scene? Or is that too logical?

The injury actually protects Sting a bit.

The best thing about Sting is that he forces everyone not to work the super indy style.

Rollins finally gets to work like Honkytonk Man like he should be instead of like Blitzkreig on steroids.

It's easy to have a decisive finish if you're putting the loser over in the main event right after.