Matt D

We also come into this having seen some of the footage, which isn't going to be true of everyone. I think a lot of us have seen the Dibiase/Duggan gimmick match probably multiple times. It's one of the best matches of the 80s, but we're very familiar with it. Same with some of the other high end stuff, so there are things which on paper that we should get really excited about and I'm sure people more unfamiliar with this stuff are getting excited about, that we're not. Even then we've gotten some VQ updates, etc. So it's not fair to hold that against the service. The fact that in a two month span we've gotten something like 10 great matches that no one's seen in thirty years and a number of other good ones that have given some underlooked wrestlers more exposure is phenomenal. Sometimes we go a year and only a fraction of that number might emerge. And there's so much more to come.

I was in the very last row of the building, as far back as you can get and I had a pretty good vantage of the place. I was probably one of the first jerks to pop up too. I lean against work.

I wish Johnny Ace was my uncle.

I wonder if he's not unlike Michaels in that regard, with the caveat that where Michaels failed in his execution was in a lot of the emotional delivery and where Punk could fail was somewhat more physical. I find your inclusion of the word "modern" interesting there. He worked a much more self-aware style (as did Michaels at the end) then someone thirty years ago. I can't quite flesh out my thoughts on that right now, but I think it's something worth exploring in general. There's a fan fiction element to almost all wrestling now (but then was that what Flair was doing on some level? Ray Stevens fan fiction? As opposed to a guy like Luger or Rotunda who didn't start out a fan?). there's something to discuss here later, I think.

Did Harvey really manage Papa Shango? I don't remember that at all.

I'm going to be earnest about this, as the original poster seemed to be, mainly focusing on two points. Johnny can respond with some kooky animated gif, of course. This is much more about watching older wrestling than live wrestling, by the way, though it applies to both. 1. The first is that I kind of watch wrestling like I might watch a play that I love and have seen a number of times. Every production is different. A director might put it in a different era. They might use different numbers. The staging could be different. They could frame the acts differently. And then there are the performances. An actor might go this way or that, might choose one reading or another. You pretty much know the plot, but a lot of the fun is in the individual choices and deviations and whether or not they pull them off. Wrestling is kind of like that. There's a general model in my head for something like a southern tag or a WWE main event title match, and how the actual match deviates from the model is what's interesting. What was the choice that the wrestlers (or agents) made? Why did they make it? What effect did it have on the match? Was it effective? Why was it effective? Why wasn't it? How does it follow with other matches with the same wrestlers? Other matches that are trying to achieve the same things? etc. I get excited for hot tags, but not because I feel emotionally connected to Ricky Morton and want to see Gibson beat up the heels. I get excited to see how they build it, how they make the babyface work for it, the extra hoops, the timing, the crowd reaction. Or I get disappointed if I think any of those things don't pay off right. 2. The trick, if you really want to watch wrestling this way, is in finding patterns. You can break down anything in this world to find them; wrestling is no exception. I had no idea about lucha a few years ago, none at all. So I watched matches and I paid attention to what happened and why over ten, twenty, thirty matches, many of them with the same wrestlers, matches that happened one week after the next. Why did they go this direction for one match and that for another? How many times did they go that first direction? What were they trying to accomplish (most matches aren't going out to get a 5* rating from Meltzer after all)? What did they use to try to accomplish it? Did it work? Why did it work or why didn't it? Someone could note all this down and quantify it but that's not really my style. If you keep trying to figure out the whats and the whys (and the whys of the whats), you'll start to notice patterns and from there, it'll be easier to qualify things. Sometimes, that means you end up dogmatic about things. But there's not just one way to stage Hamlet (or, you know, Pirates of Penzance). There might be more dissonance or friction if someone tries to do it differently, and the gain from doing it that way has to be enough to overcome that. Sometimes really daring choices can be hugely exciting. I can't shut that part of my brain off now. I can't really watch a match and just experience it, except for maybe when it's live in the moment, and even then, during something like Bayley vs Sasha, I'll get honestly excited when Sasha's slamming her foot repeatedly into Bayley's hand, but I'll get excited because it's a clever spot that really drives home the story and makes the most of the hand injury, not because Sasha's being particularly nefarious or anything. Sometimes I envy people who can let go more, but I think what Zenjo said was true; if I didn't look at things this way, I probably wouldn't still be watching or enjoying it nearly as much as I do.

I'm real excited for when we start getting more of the Gino vs Lothario feud. They wrestled a ton of times with a half dozen gimmicks. The taste of what we've gotten there was great.

Tharpe is a capricious wrestling lord. Today's match is JYD vs Darsow.

Pete and I just pulled together our top fives of the new content in no order: We both had: Gordman/Lothario Hector Guerrero/Lothario This MX/Fantastics tag and Andre/Race I had Tito vs Reed too and he had Wahoo vs Flair. But some of the stuff most worth seeing aren't the things that'd get the highest star ratings. Everyone has to see Bracero vs Blanchard for instance but it's more of a jobber tv match where the heel shows a lot of ass in some extraordinary ways.

When I first sold it to Pete, I said "The match isn't perfect, but I'm not entirely sure what else they could have done."

I think there would have been an upside to having Taker in the Summerslam main event as part of the heel team instead of Adnan if they wanted to make it mean more. Also, it meant a big deal to me as a kid that Warrior was gone, if only because the Jake angle was SO distinct and striking and they never even faced off once.

I couldn't finish the Madden one. How about you listen to this one first for us and report back.

The lack of commentary may have created the illusion of more heat for me, but it sure seemed off the charts, especially considering this was a non-title match.

First thing I said to Pete after watching the match was "I wonder how high you're going to go on this." Now we know.

If we're asking you guys to dig up legal stuff, I'd love to see anything from the riot in 1957 in MSG.

You know, that Training Center Tour Experience thing is totally a way to get "Whales."

AWESOME match. It's so good. One of the best Cornette performances I've ever seen. One of the hottest crowds for the hottest tag I've ever heard. I think I gasped when I heard the level increase for it because the whole match was hot, but I wasn't expecting that. A picture perfect shine where the timing was spot on and the little things like how fluidly the MX would go for the hair to force the whips worked. Then all the Cornette Shtick which was so over the top and the crowd was so into. That led up to the transition where Rogers played an amazing FIP but Fulton especially had this sense of near-desperation in being unable to protect his partner. You get the stupid babyface who keeps distracting the ref but this felt more genuine somehow. Rogers with a few really solid hope spots and the MX grinding down and punishing him and Cornette getting his licks in again and again, and finally that hot tag and a fun finish. Crowds don't get better than this. No, this was great. Stop what you're doing and watch this. EDIT: It's way better than the one from World Class from around the same time, which is a good fundamental match with fire and great heeling, but this was so much more.

cha ching.

More this:

I read his comments as the parable of the blind man and the elephant, mainly, and I was okay with them for what they were. Look, I'm the last person in the world who thinks you have to be a wrestler to have an opinion on wrestling, or even strong opinions, but at any point we are dealing with incomplete information. We can only go off what we are shown. Opportunity is an idea that comes up a lot in ranking wrestlers and what have you, and part of that is their opportunity to perform or show off or to have different sort of matches and part is our opportunity as viewers to see those things. So, maybe a guy like CJ Parker is better than people have been given reason to believe. Without the matches for us to see, we can't judge that. All we can judge is what we have to work on. There are plenty of ways to judge, mind you. Matches and ratings, performances, roles, etc, and if you've watched enough wrestling, you can extrapolate some things outwards, or at least try to. There are always things we simply can't know about a match, let alone a wrestler, but so long as we're consistent in our metrics, it's generally okay. There are times where we'll be wrong. There are more times when we'll be right or at least right to our own feelings. At the end of the day, it's a personal thing anyway. When we start interacting with one another on it, it's still okay. we just have to try to understand and admit our biases and blind spots and try to adjust for them best we can.

These are getting me through work this week. I just got through #5 and am starting here. I'm looking forward to this one because it's probably the absolute sweet spot of me watching wrestling as a kid.

I watched the Jones tournament final last night and liked it. I'll probably check out the McHoy match this week too. He's more kinetic than Breaks, but I need to see more before I have any real thoughts.

When's the last time they did one?

We talked a little about this here back in April: http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/30781-wwe-the-two-fanbases-hot-crowds/