Matt D

Raw tonight. If they're in Des Moines then I wouldn't be too worried. If they're in Philly, I would.

Where are they?

As for athleticism as a trait for a wrestler to have, I think in general of course it helps a lot. It gives you more tools to chose from as to what you do in the ring. At the same time, I think it can be something of a primary resource curse. Guys rely on their athleticism to get pops and don't work on their selling, timing, structure, etc. Kurt Angle to me is exhibit one for that class. A crutch! Exactly. Also you learn way more from watching a guy at 48 than at 32! Ok I'm done.

I feel like the first time that Dave said anything vaguely excited or interested in CMLL in a hell of a long time in the WON was this: "The Busca en un Idolo tournament has really been something when it comes to innovative moves. On the 5/9 show at Arena Mexico, they had an awesome match where Cachorro beat Hechicero via submission with the Fujiwara armbar, with each getting 33 points. In the next match, which had its spectacular moves as well, but wasn’t nearly as good,... Wrestling in CMLL right now is way down in popularity, but they’ve got guys who are innovating like crazy both at the top and coming up." That's what makes them worth talking about again, apparently. Innovation (and you know, spectacular moves but I think the innovation bit is more important).

And sometimes because you can do things doesn't mean you should or that it leads to the best narrative choices.

We did do a long note about "what is good wrestling?"

It would be so amazingly unproductive for me to pull the "athleticism is a crutch" card right now.

I don't think we can totally dismiss athleticism. If you were to compare the Shield, for example, with 80s WWF tag wrestling then I think a big difference in the standard of quality would be athleticism, and I suppose moves too. A lot of workers who we think are great at psychology or storytelling were originally lauded for their athleticism. Bihari always likes to say that older lucha fans likely felt the same way about early 80s Casas, Fuerza and Santo that we felt about Mistico, etc. So, athleticism has always played a part, much as it does in real sports. The reason why most 90s wrestling was originally praised was because 90s wrestling ratcheted up the athleticism. I think this is an important point but not an exclusive one because there are also workers who were originally lauded for their athleticism that we don't look back at as being great with psychology and storytelling. Is it worth looking at whether the opposite was true? No one gave Slaughter credit for bumping like he did in 90-91? That seems like sort of a dead end road though unless people feel otherwise.

I get the mindset behind it, absolutely. I just look at it from a practical point of view, like I do most things. I generally come into these big arguments in a "Will this help us or hurt us in having a constructive, interesting conversation?" Amusingly, my personal bias was pretty strong in how I framed my comments like I did, which was probably not entirely fair or complete. But yes, no need to derail!

So wait, does that make SFX fans into Deathmatch fans?

If you're not part of those groups, you're probably going to view them through 2014 eyes. I don't think Meltzer is wrong on that point. This is probably very true, but if that's the case, then you probably wouldn't be viewing them in the first place, and if you were, you wouldn't be doing so to the level that you start having a discussion with someone the equivalent as Meltzer. He's right, but only about an argument that is completely irrelevant, basically, a blanket dismissal that completely misses the point.

And more importantly, like Will said, a well-crafted story is a well-crafted story no matter the form of entertainment.

My gut says that this is part of the problem of Dylan framing this through a Meltzer argument. While it's an overstatement, part of me really thinks that Meltzer really thinks we have to be talking about the latter because, to him, the former doesn't really exist. It's Bigfoot. Guys just did "what felt right" or "what popped the crowd" without really giving it thought, etc. You can't easily engage him on these levels so framing this whole discussion with him in mind seems like a problematic starting point.

I kind of want to compare/contrast the TM/DK stuff with the current En Busca de un Ídolo stuff, since I think it speaks to some of what you're saying here about innovation in the moment and how something might be remembered in time, but I don't really want to push hard in that direction since people are enjoying it so much.

This is also something that I encountered, albeit in a different form, in grad school for history, where due to post-modernism, there was an increasingly prevailing thought that you couldn't do African History unless you were African or women's history unless you were a woman, etc. I was a Medievalist, so, you can see the problems that mindset might have created for me. In the end though, I don't think this deserves one-tenth of the words you've given it, Dylan. Wrestling is a work of art. It's a text. You can compare one text against any other and against a general ideal. Most of us aren't going around giving things star ratings. Most of us are very open and honest about our criteria, about what we like or think is good and why we feel the way we do. Either a match meets those criteria or it doesn't, and certain matches from almost any era or place in the world tend to be able to. I think the 80s project is partially proof of that. We might understand WHY a match was worked the way it was and take that into consideration. In fact most of us do and I'm sure I've seen dozens of reviews that factor in that a match might "accomplish what it was supposed to," but most of the time, when we do review a match, it's for each other, not for some history book, and we're trying to discuss something that each other might like or something that we think should get more attention, or maybe something that people view one way that we think people should examine another. For Dave's purposes, maybe it does matter more. For ours? Not at all. "Our standards changed and these are the matches we think are good now, regardless of what people thought then, and here's why." I think that's a perfectly reasonable statement and we have, again, tons of proof on this very board that it generates intensely interesting conversation.

I haven't had any time to see any Legends House yet but of everything listed so far, on paper, the LARPing by far sounds like the only can't miss stuff that they've done yet.

Will they actually be able to grab any cash?

You've become very fond of Bischoff lately, huh?

That happens almost every year now. Take a look at last year's Raw-After-Wrestlemania. Frankly, if I had to choose between going to Mania or the Raw after Mania, I'd pick the latter.

I don't think anyone is saying that a show that they skip 70% of is necessarily good. What they're saying is that they enjoy watching it the way that they watch it, that if they watch it a certain way, a way that's in a lot of ways, easier and less time consuming than catching it live, they find it really enjoyable.

It's a silly thing to get hung up on but I found it really funny that AJ said (and I quote) "I remember how everyone was excited to see who Macho Man's manager was going to be," when it happened two years before she was born.

According to the WON of the time, it went like this: -Originally it was supposed to be Sting's team at the third team, but Piper was really over so they went with him and prolonged the Sting angle. -Piper had creative control so when he suggested his outsiders, they couldn't really say no. -He wanted Tenta who was a personal friend and then "also get work for his bodyguard/gofer and a friend of his from his straight-to-video action movies." The gofer was joked to be Piper's "bruti" backstage. -They realized how massive a disaster it was as it was happening and people wanted to call an audible and have the show end with Piper's team getting destroyed but no one could figure out how to break it to Piper. -Already after Nitro they were thinking of finding a way to pull Jarrett/Mongo from a Public Enemy match at the PPV and shorten a Benoit injury angle to get them in there instead.

I inched 45 minutes closer to death. Maybe if he was talking to Steve Blackman or someone, but not Bischoff.

I think there are a couple of levels. One is that people do follow things on a business level. The other is something you can appreciate a bit more and that's build and payoff. Why do Austin vs Brock on a random Raw when you can spend weeks building up to it on PPV. I think most people would be fine if you spent weeks building up to it and making it matter for a well-hyped Raw. Sort of like the NXT specials, but it means less if you just toss it on TV without build. The problem with Austin/ Brock was that there was no build. What Im talking about is people actually complaining about seeing cool matches for free. It's silly. I think it's more intertwined than you think.

Yeah, Will should ban all football fans.