Matt D

Only point I'll argue is the Angle one, because it obviously needs to be broken out. I've been using shorthand on bit and that caused confusion. Yes, lots of people liked Angle in 2004 (five or six years after he went pro), wrestlers and fans alike. Yes, DAVE liked Angle and touted him. The specific criteria about the WON HOF is that guys rarely get in through work alone and Angle wasn't exactly a huge draw, nor did he have a lot of years TO draw. A lot of the early 00s decline happened with him close to the top of the card (I'm not 100% sure about this, but I think it's the case). There are two sorts of wrestlers who like Angle, those who are impressed he got aspects of the business so quickly and worked with him (Austin will bring up this point), and then a lot of the old guys who talk him up a lot. It had to be a near perfect storm for a guy with so few years on top and relatively unsuccessful ones at that to get in so early. There's something going on there, and I think it's pretty safe to say that one element of that thing was people focusing on Angle's real life achievements. One aspect of THAT was the way it legitimized the older guys in their own minds, which follows almost any interview you've ever heard with almost any carny old wrestler. Is it FACT? I don't know. Dave didn't break up voting back then. It's a pretty viable theory though. It's not saying that people don't like Angle and that they didn't like him. It is saying that something pretty weird and unusual was going on in 04 when he got into the very-hard-to-get-into WON HOF. That's mainly what's being said there. The Devitt stuff was its own beast and I'm pretty certain that for once I can speak for everyone (and I will try not to do that in the future save for this time) that pretty much everyone gets it, right? (IT WAS ABOUT ROVERT AND HOW HE GENERALLY PRESENTS HIMSELF TO PEOPLE ON THE INTERNET. IT HAD VERY LITTLE TO DO WITH DEVITT. It was very much an aberration on this site.) Ok. No, it's not easy to argue ANYTHING on this site except for maybe JERRY LAWLER WAS GREAT but it serves a function that nowhere else on the internet serves because of that. I spent a couple of years hesitant to say much here too. I think people are generally happy to reach a point of mutual understanding even if only rarely agreement.

I think there's an argument to be made that there was a shift, it was a backlash to Benoit(and later Misawa), and that MAYBE shift went too far, but I think it's only happened in relatively small circles. I'm an extreme outlier. I do think you heavily underplay the footage that became more easily available and the effort that went into the 80s projects, as well as a lot of the excess that started to show up on the US Indy scene. Things developed organically over a span of years, and a lot of people came to a similar conclusion in different ways and to different extents. To me, it was sort of like seeing a magic eye. Once you start seeing wrestling this way and valuing other aspects, you kind of can't unsee it. You start looking for it everywhere. I think something comparable is post-modernism in academia, where you have a lot of old texts looked at using different methods. Older wrestlers and matches were examined using different criteria.

The issue isn't the difference of opinion. It's how you present yourself. I think Alan usually comes off as a gentleman and as someone who is very enthusiastic about the things he likes. His honest love for the wrestling he cares for is actually a joy when it comes to reading his posts and hearing his podcasts. I haven't had many interactions with him but I'm always willing to read his opinion and I find it very useful even if I have to take it with a grain of salt. You come off like a combative jerk, generally.

Indeed. But to me this has nothing to do with workrate. This is the definition of a spotfest. And a spotfest can also have terrible workrate, meaning sloppy execution, useless stiffness, bad selling, contrived spots, bad setups etc… That's the problem I have with this whole question, I feel like we're confusing spotfest and workrate a bit here (and that is my issue with a lot of exemples you gave in your first post when you refered to what the word "workrate" makes you think about, Matt). I think the issue there is whether workrate can actually mean "to work slower if it is appropriate to work slower," a balance. If that's the case, then I don't think it's generally used that way. "Proper and balanced workrate." Workrate isn't used as "to work at the appropriate speed for a match." Maybe it should be used that way but I don't think it's generally used that way. I don't think it was used that way in the statement I was countering. The confusion in semantics is part of the reason for the note, but I'm pretty certain my statement holds on the idea I was countering that "bad workrate" is "lazy," not "ill-paced."

1.) Maybe I should have put it that "We've moved away from workrate as the #1 component in judging matches." Which is a huge leap and it took many years to get there, I think. 2.) Good workrate can absolutely be a negative if it takes away from a smart match. If they're so focused on working hard and hitting their shit that they aren't selling or letting things breathe or making sure that they matter. I'm not sure I want to have this discussion with you to be honest, because you are so vehement about it and so exasperated, that I'm not sure you're a guy I really want to talk to about this. Sorry. Take a breath. Slow down. Try to look at a bigger picture. I think you hang around here sometimes just to get into these arguments and go back to the rest of the internet and tell like-minded people how crazy everyone is here, like you're earning some sort of forest exploration badge or like it's some burden you carry for the sake of the greater good. I'm not particularly interested in that. Bill asked questions. He singled me out in asking for an answer. I'm happy to oblige. I'm not happy to have this discussion with you right now when you're expressing yourself in such a petty, immature, and small-minded manner. Look at the difference between how Jerome presented himself and how you did.

Some of the problem is that it takes a long time to watch a lot of Ric Flair matches. I put him at the top of my priorities, but even in what I've been able to watch in the last week, I ended up with clipped versions of long matches and I've only made it through even four of those, because I have so much else to watch, so I've got a ways to go. The argument ought to be more interesting in two years after everyone's revisited the things on the list that Loss has posted. Right now mostly everyone just has incomplete notions to work off of.

That's why Bill put "you" in every question but one. I feel strongly about my views, but they're my views, and they weren't always my views, so I can appreciate your views as well and your right to have them. There's nothing objective here. I do personally feel like I get more out of pro wrestling than someone who cares more about execution. I probably also have to put in more to get more out, though. I'm kind of curious though. If that's what you want out of wrestling, why the heck did you spend so much time going through late era WCW instead of a different time/place/territory/etc where you might have found a lot more to enjoy? Because from reading your posts, I don't think you got a whole lot of what you enjoyed from that project, especially relative to the copious amount of time you put into it.

I'm increasingly tempted to just make Volk Han my #1 because then I can watch a lot of short matches. I'm kidding but great wrestlers sure like broadways and it's tough to find an hour at a time to watch wrestling.

And that's a useful statement, and it probably speaks to the "sports" side of things. I first encountered it in 98/99, and what I listed above was the sense of I had of it. I think that's the sense a lot of other people had of it as well. A couple of generations of people. I know we've mined a lot over the years (and I saw some definite frustration in the standards notes, for instance), but I think there's actually more to mine when it comes to the relationship between wrestling, sports, and fiction.

Do either of the two Butch Reed title matches exist in full?

Alright, I've given it a couple of days for the most part. Let's spew some text. It's the amount of stuff done in the match, basically. Stuff/time is fine. That's where you get the rate I guess. I do see it as much more of a qualitative thing. It means something other than just that. And it's usually only discussed when it comes to someone with high workrate. You don't talk about a match having low workrate. A lot of it is a backlash to WWF main even wrestling in the 80s-early 90s, I think. It was a way to band together against what was presented in the mainstream and maybe to make people feel better about the aspects they liked. "Wrestling is dumb and fake," says person one from 1997. "Well, the stuff you see, but I like this stuff from Japan called puroresu, which has a really high workrate," responds person too as if that explains everything. As a general concept? The fact the concept exists is important to me. It was much more important to me when I was younger. Now I generally see it as an unfortunately dismissive thing. Frankly, I think people who primarily enjoy workrate in wrestling look at wrestling in the laziest, least interesting way possible. I'm not saying this to be offensive or to be a jerk. It's the lowest common denominator to me. Workrate is candy. It doesn't involve thinking to enjoy. You can shut your brain off and watch guys huff and puff and run around the ring and hit each other in the face really hard and do elaborately planned spots very, very well, and that's great, but it doesn't take lick of intellectual engagement. Emotional engagement, sure, but not a intellectual engagement. You don't have to break it down, except for maybe in a "Well, how did he get the leverage to do that dive!" There's the what, the how, and the why of the what. The why of the what is psychology. It's why you do every thing you do in the ring, not just moves, but pauses, interactions, "character work," selling, everything. To me wrestling is symbolic. A punch is symbolic. It's not really a punch. It's something done that is supposed to have the effect of a punch. A legdrop has a specific effect both in a match and in the context of all matches. A punch isn't a punch anymore. It's a "punch." And it's all relative to everything else. Let me put it this way. Selling is so much more important than workrate, because selling defines importance, especially over time. Selling (as well as other aspects such as announcers and actual match results) help define things. John Cena does not have great looking offense. People consistently sell John Cena's offense as if it is great. Therefore, it is great and it is credible. Wrestling is symbolism and controlling perception. That means that at any point the facade can be broken though. It can't be broken through something that's done consistently. It can be broken by a break from that. Wrestling within your own personal limitations and understanding them is thereby far more important to me than wrestling hard. I love wrestling. Working a hold is important. If something's happening in the ring, you should be selling it. The more consistently you sell things, the more they matter. On the other hand, if you do a lot of stuff and none of it is sold, then none of it matters. Do I want exciting stuff that looks cool? Sure, it's candy, who doesn't want that, but it needs to mean something. I'll take a logical match that really means something over an exciting match than means nothing anyday. I'll take a really clever match where they don't do a lot but they tell a great story, sell really well, and move the crowd, over a really exciting match where some things mean something and some things don't. I'd value a supremely clever match where everything means something and they really play with the storytelling tools of prowrestling and a really exciting match where everything builds and has weight and leads to something fairly equally, but I'd probably lean towards the clever match due to my own tastes and because I think it's more impressive to do more with less. I'll still really enjoy the other one though. In general I won't call a match bad if it tells a story with some success, especially if it does the job I think it was sent out to do. I might not call it GOOD either, unless that story is interesting and compelling. i think a match can be great without having one high spot, though. Here, we have for the most part. I appreciate how someone like FedEx feels. He likes what he likes and he likes it a lot and more power to him. To me though, manipulating a crowd and putting together a coherent narrative, especially an interesting and compelling one, is so much better than just being able to hit a bunch of stuff smoothly. A trained monkey could probably do that on command. To really understand hearts and minds and story, there's just so much more to that. A ton. I came in through DVDVR, and their workrate reports, but they were only half about "workrate" I think. They were more about What Worked/What Didn't Work. Still, you could look at the basic assignment webpage I made for compsci 2a in 1999, one that was about wrestling and that defined workrrate and talked about how amazing Chris Benoit was because he worked so hard. I have it on a hard drive somewhere and it's the most embarrassing thing in the world. I liked the guys I was supposed to like and I lived for Cruiserweight matches with lots of moves and dives and whatever else. It wasn't until after 07 when I started to watch a lot of whole shows instead of just great matches and older shows, that I really started to look for patterns and try to understand how and why matches worked instead of just drooling at how fast guys were moving. I don't think workrate is a useful phrase anymore, to be honest. I think it was, in part, a way to rebel against something that has long ceased to need rebelling against between the ease of availability and stylistic changes. If all you could get on TV was Superstars and Wrestling Challenge and Prime Time Wrestling, that was one thing. In today's day and age, forget it. I think it's also done far more harm than good as a concept since it made people look past the actual nuance and craft of wrestling. Part of that IS knowing how to do things, how much to do things, when to do those things, and how to make those things matter, and sometimes the answer really is "A lot," but it's a tool to a greater end, not an end to itself. From an aesthetic sense, Good Storytelling IS the end. (From a functional sense, making money is the end and part of that is being able to extend your career, but that's not what we're talking about). Workrate (as in how much you do or how many cool moves you do or how hard you work) can be a stylistic decision towards that end.

My biggest problem with his WCW run is his string of throwaway tv matches. This is the guy who was frothing at the mouth to get back into the ring regularly on WWF TV in 94, and when he gets his shot, he wrestles some of the most interesting and diverse wrestlers possible (be it a guy like Finlay or the hugely underrated Pittman), he gives them the whole match, hits a bodyslam and his elbow and that's it. Over and over and over again. It's maddening.

"Why is Taue so awesome relative to the obviously far superior Pillars of all japan?" "An eyepoke." The internet explodes.

What do the clouds represent?

That's just the Madness.

I actually kind of hate sports. I like baseball though. And I like books; books are good.

I'll have some matches I want you to take a look at later, Bill. Not necessarily to say he makes my 100, but I think Bossman was actually a king of the 3 minute WWF/E C show match, and you'd be curious to see it.

A lot of what we have is just snippets: It's cool that we have it, but I don't have a great picture either.

I'm not jumping into this note frothing at the mouth and throwing around "Workrate Dogmatism." I'll look at this in a couple of days after people say what they say. But I do want to repost this. http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/24598-what-is-good-wrestling/&do=findComment&comment=5588073

All I remember is that Hayes got super drunk at Steph's wedding and starting singing.

Savage/Garvin Cage. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xvc125_icw-randy-savage-vs-ronnie-garvin_sport

If it was like that Dump vs Chigusa match I saw the other night, they'd work towards a spot where the person with Hep would have an open wound and the entire heel stable would try to force the babyface towards it. In related news, I'm going to tackle the two Brisco vs Jumbo matches next.

I think right now Cesaro is unquestionably better than Bryan. I have a lot of Bryan indy matches to watch, but as I go back I'll have to see if I think any of those matches are better than how good Cesaro is now. They could well be. People regard them highly after all.

I WISH we had so much more Flair/Valentine tag work.

Is anyone going to vote for Flair just because they think he has the most great matches on tape? I'm honestly curious. Likewise Misawa or Hansen or whatever other candidate someone might feel that way about? Is anyone looking this as a purely numerical exercise and will vote for Flair for that reason? And it's a matter of people digging up obscure matches with other guys or what not?