Matt D

This is my Rip Rogers, Bobby Bass, Chris Colt category. With some I just don't know if there's the footage.

I will post this, but to be honest, it's really more of a capsule look at how I was thinking about wrestling almost 5 years ago than anything else. In a lot of ways, I relearned to watch wrestling by watching Demolition in 2010. http://www.thehistoryofwwe.com/demolitionproject.htm I'd say I'll have a post up in 9 months or so.

I have to break down and watch that six man and all of the matches leading up to it now, which feels a bit like taking my wrestling medicine.

These aren't my answer, but they're ones that are important to me in similar ways. Jericho vs Malenko - I had really fallen out of wrestling in late 1992 and I didn't start watching again until 1998. The reasons why are a little unclear to me. It had something to do with Papa Shango freaking me out and something to do with Bill Watts banning top rope moves. I just got interested in other things. I was really into basketball for the 1992-1993 season, for instance, probably the only year that I ever REALLY followed pro spots heavily, watching Sportscenter twice a day and what not. In 98, Wrestlemania was in Boston so all the kids in high school were pretty hyped for things. I knew a lot of people that went to the DX public work out, for instance, and the idea that my beloved WCW was actually WINNING the ratings war was pretty crazy, so I got drawn back in. I'm not sure i would have stuck around if it wasn't for Jericho. At 16-17, I thought he was hilarious and Malenko fell in line with my "little guy who can do a lot of moves" mentality that I always had. The Ciclope reveal was huge. The listing of the 1004 moves was probably my favorite wrestling bit from that era. I thought the Mean Gene interview where he just rails on Malenko was honestly emotional and the segment with Joe was so well done too. I honestly don't remember if the matches hold up and I haven't gone back to it but I don't think a cruiserweight ever got the pop that Malenko did when he pulled the mask off. Christian vs Regal - When I moved in with my wife-to-be and stepson-to-be on June 1, 2007, that was more or less it for me and wrestling. My time was going to be spent differently and I'd been less into it for a while now, really ever since I went off to England for a year in the fall of 2003. When I moved down to DC in January, 2006, I pared back a lot of my watching, for instance. I moved in with her on June 1 and Benoit was dead by the end of the month and I was done. I got back into things in 2009 when I started to use the exercise bike to prepare for the wedding. I got into a lot of old territories on justin.tv but the only modern wrestling I watched was WWECW on hulu, and it was Christian's banner year as a TV Ace and I became really invested in the Regal feud. I thought for sure Regal was going to win on the UK episode and I dropped everything to watch it. I loved the Roundtable. I think they have some really great matches that build off of each other. It helped draw me back into modern wrestling again.

I'm going to assume you're coming at this from an honest place. That said, I still don't entirely think it's worth my time. It also feels a little like piling on here when I'm trying to disengage. But you're pressing, so, in short, I frankly think that rovert is symbolic of a lot of the worst things the internet wrestling community has to offer, at least the part that I interact with. He's someone who's shown a real lack of perspective, that's been so far up his own ass when it comes to his point of views which are really polarized off to one side. He's shown a grating nationalism, a borderline creepy obsession with the wrestlers he really cares about, the absolute flaunting of the insider information (which, when false, as has happened, is then disgarded as 'something changed.'), a mentality that if a majority of the rest of the internet community (whatever that is anymore, mainly Meltzerian thought, I guess) thinks something and someone doesn't, then that person has a real problem, and he feels a lot like a relic of a bygone age that cares much more about talking about talking about talking about wrestling than actually talking about wrestling. There's a general sense of gloat-y-ness in a lot of his posts. Maybe some of it is just me and I'm reading one or two things into it, but probably not all fifteen or whatever. Frankly, he doesn't come off as an actual, well rounded human being to me, more a parody of one. I believe he's earnest because there's a certain amount of enthusiasm to him and an unflinching consistency to his posts, but if someone could create a troll persona nearly as grating and effectively obtuse as rovert on purpose, I would be HUGELY impressed. There's a reason why the guy's been banned multiple places. I didn't hound him. I responded to blatantly and frustratingly irritating or insulting things he said in places I happened to be. And after a certain point I stopped and I just tried to focus on my own stuff. I wasn't involved in him getting banned from DVDVR. I was ignoring the guy by that point. I'm not on twitter so I wasn't involved with this one either. So there you go. Hopefully this answered your well-meaning question to satisfaction. I'm really going to go watch some Baba or something now.

We disagree. Got it. That's okay. Moving on.

I think I just gave some reasoning there, but like I said, this isn't really worth the time. The guy isn't worth the time. He was given rules. He was given warnings. He was given chances. He refused to follow the spirit of it. I thought that Charles' decision was both warranted as part of a greater whole and probably something that should have been done a while ago. I'm moving on. I've got a lot of Giant Baba to watch apparently.

Whatever spurious inside information he might have had was really not worth the "Well, I don't know how much of this is public, and I probably shouldn't say anything, BUUUUUUUT" Look-At-Me-And-What-I-Know bs that he tossed out at every chance. I'll take a JVK vs JDW derailing over that anyday. We're better off without him, easily. I don't think there's much more to say here. Let's get back to talking about Jerry Brisco.

Surprising to just about no one: 1.) I've got very few problems with Dylan's list. 2.) I'm not going to be watching any New Japan anyway, except for maybe that Styles match. I am less high on the Thatcher/Gulak Evolve match. I haven't seen the CZW match. I could probably find a few Ingobernales trios I like more than the former though, at least. I much prefer dickish bitching heel Thatcher to highly technical and very serious Thatcher. I'm not convinced on Cavernario yet but that's why I'm going through a ton of his stuff on Segunda Caida right now.

It's the internet. Actions have consequences. All we have here is how we present ourselves over time. That's it. It's why people think I'm a logic-only robot when it comes to the stuff I like sometimes. It's why he ended up in a situation where it wasn't wholly unreasonable to think that he was taking a generalizing potshot. When you get your last chance, you use it more carefully and watch what you say or you get what you get because people will assume the worst. I don't think this is rocket science.

So the problem is that Al Capone got caught on tax evasion?

The difference between Rovert and Joe and Rich is that Rovert has a history of being banned other places, usually for doing the same sort of things he did here or worse. I think we can bring up the posts where he was warned. This wasn't one incident or overnight. Frankly, given his behavior and personality and unwillingness to even seem to understand compromise, let alone actually do it, I think it's a more welcoming website without him. At the end of the day, this is Charles and Will's place, and I know that if I broke their rules repeatedly and without remorse, I'd get canned. It's happened to friends of mine too for doing exactly that. I think they're pretty fair and consistent and that's part of why we have such a high level of discourse here.

Really, most CMLL trios are either an A-B-A (shine-beatdown-comeback) format or a B-A-C (beatdown-comeback-reset) one. The value isn't necessarily in variation so much as it's in how deeply they build anticipation for the comeback and how well they pay it off, or in how fun the work is in either the primera or the tercera depending on where most of the sequence is.

I should say more but I have to point out on the promo for the Clash that you guys played, they mention Steiner vs Luger, Sting (the Living Legend) vs Rude, and then "ALSO: Van Hammer and PN News." The only other two guys mentioned. I've spent part of last week working on a document to sell something to another department and figuring out what they want so we can highlight that. I can almost assure you that someone in the marketing/production team was trying to figure out what the highers up wanted there. Also, remember, 2013 Dolph Ziggler = 91 Van Hammer according to Parv.

Watching you write up the late 1999 WWF stuff, I'm sort of disappointed that there's not 2000 coming to see what you think of the "prime HHH" period.

It was really blatant to me. Laughably blatant. Other opinions?

Thanks Charles. I'm glad you liked it. It's nice to try to synthesize some of the thoughts we've developed over the years in discussion here.

holy hell

I think that is a double edged sword though in all honesty. Current matches can benefit AND be hindered by having the context around it AND having a bunch of people communicating about it over the interweb during real time. An older match tends to lack both.Well at least it does for me. Case-in-point: Just watched Steve Viedor vs Gwyn Davies. Only seen one Viedor match and nothing of Davies. All I knew was that it was a championship bout. This match completely latched on to me emotionally as if I were watching a 20+ minute Rocky Balboa fight. Stylistically there were a few things that were jarring but emotionally, something that doesn't tend to happen to me these days, I was overwhelm in the best of ways. Now, it is hard to give an example of a match that was poorly viewed during the time but aged and was viewed better cause I've probably never went back to watch those but I like to believe the point still holds some water. I was buzzing over that match for days after I watched it. I know I'm one of the youngest guys on the forum, but you do guys still have vocal reactions to matches? If I'm watching a match I'm really into, it's completely normal for me to let out a "Woo!" for a stiff shot or "Let's Fucking Go!" for a great baby face comeback. It just makes me enjoy it that much more if I treat it like a real sporting event. On an emotional level, I do think there's huge a difference between watching something as its happening and something from twenty years ago. I got in trouble back during something in the last couple of years (Maybe Brock vs Punk?) because I was watching it downstairs while it was happening and I vocally let out a "Come on!" and the baby, upstairs (and she had to be just over 1 if it was that summerslam), thought I was talking to her and started to get upset at the baby gate because she couldn't get to me. As for note taking, I do it if I'm going to write up a match for a project, or segundacaida. I used to write down every single thing that happened in the sort of stream of consciousness real-time reviews that I did for things like the Buddy Rose matches. Now I do bullet points with key transitions/cool things to note or that I want to remember. You can see a more detailed version of what those look like in the first DVDVR remedial wrestling thread. Ideally, I'd watch a match once and then watch it again, taking notes, but i just don't have that sort of time right now. If I'm not going to write up a match, I won't take notes. I've never in my life taken notes of something that was happening live like a PPV or Raw.

Judy Martin vs Bambi, WCW Saturday Night... right before Halloween Havoc 91. I'm too lazy to get the date on this, but i went looking for funny Monsoon/Heenan PTW stuff on Monsoon Classic and he had just posted this a couple of days ago, so there you go. This was all to build up Madusa as she'd attack the winners, right before the birth of the Dangerous Alliance. Bambi's billed from Stone Mountain GA and she was a pretty good fiery babyface, taking it right to Martin from the get go. Martin sold pretty big around the ring, eating nice enough strikes. She was older now, but still a presence. When she went on offense she proceeded to hit an awesome dropping headbutt to the abdomen, a great heave off of a fireman's carry into a front drop sort of thing(like Warrior's gorilla press but from a fireman's carry and forward not back) and this insane snap suplex that was like a snap brainbuster. The foot choking and hair pulling and what not was used sparingly and well timed to argue with the ref and draw heat. Bambi had a pretty good comeback off of a missed corner charge after a few hope spots/cut offs but then they veered into a confusing Bambi chinlock and sort of stumbled to a finish a minute or two too late. Martin still had it though and she'd added some just brutal offense over the years.

I think if you get to that point, you stop enjoying wrestling for what you enjoy it for. I'm not going to go to the theater and watch the Dumb and Dumber sequel this weekend. Lots of people will. They'll enjoy it. I suppose on some level I can appreciate WHY they are enjoying it, but I'm good, really. Same with whatever Izzy Azalea song is really popular right now (I kind of love Shake it Up as a pure pop song so I'm not arguing that). I can't shut my brain off in any aspect of my life, not watching a movie, not reading a book, not for a single thing. It drives me nuts sometimes, but it's who I am. There's no zen to wrestling watching and there's no universal standard for what's good. I enjoy interacting with it and it's easier for me to do that on an intellectual/analytic level than a more emotional one (not that I don't ever get drawn in that way; it's just even when I do, I'm still trying to figure out what makes it tick). i think the issue here isn't letting go, it's a positivity/negativity issue. I have a finite amount of time to watch wrestling and in that time I don't generally watch a lot of stuff I think I'll hate or even dislike. I don't think you see a lot of reviews like that one that began this thread on this board. We might dislike a match that we watch as part of a larger project but we're probably disliking it in relation to a lot of matches that we dig a ton. I'm not generally going to watch a show just to rip it apart.

If I didn't have a lot of fun watching wrestling, I wouldn't do it.

They hit each other really hard. That's all it takes for some people apparently. The only thing I really like about the match is how it feels like Bock came in with a gameplan, but he's like that in every match.

Really, there's only one top notch WWE source left in this cold, harsh world.

I think there can be a middle ground between the two, though. Honestly, a lot of the Honky Tonk Man matches I was revisiting recently had just that.