Matt D

Thanks for posting that. I'm most of the way through. Pillman was my favorite wrestler as a kid in 91 though he's someone I have to revisit now. You have to feel for Meltzer. He's seen a lot of bad shit happen to people that he was close to that we've only sort of experienced through osmosis and in our own head.

The "Oh god, what did we let these carny bastards and action junkies do to our precious hall of fame." clause.

Anyway, I really do love this place. We're like some crazy thinktank of wrestling, with each of us sort of going off and doing our own projects and coming back in. You have the old guard who were out in the field in the 80s and early 90s and the next generation podcasting and delving back into the archives and then we have the equivalent of a young hotshot grad student in someone like Devon. Hell, we even have the burnt out older guy from Real Genius.

The only podcast I am ever doing with Johnny is a high-depth examination of Tanahashi.

I thought he was kidding about stuff. Man the internet makes reading tone tough.

There's also a perception issue. The official story of the WWF in the 80s is that the tag division was not just a big deal but a golden age. It was also probably something represented in the sheets with the Bulldogs and the Harts lionized. When some of our community went back and actually watched the matches a few years ago that didn't hold up. I know when I started naturally going through Demolition matches in a chronological watching, I was surprised because a lot of the common complaints of the era/style (From our community) wasn't true for them so ultimately it becomes really meta.

One of those people is not like the other. One of those people just does not belong. I am honored but I am a ways away from becoming that level of wrestling analyst. After calling me out a couple times, Matt, about the Colossal Connection matches, they are the best babyface Demolition matches because Eadie respects Andre enough to sell for him like a face in peril. Still no face Demolition matches come close to how good heel Demolition could be against the Rockers, Bulldogs and Hart Foundation. Do you agree that heel Demolition >>> babyface Demolition? To me it is not even close, but I would like to hear your thoughts on that. Probably best if you put it in the Demolition thread. I had a few minutes I didn't expect to have so let me take a whack at this. I think there was a general consistency with Eadie and Darsow (Darsow led by Eadie) in that they gave their opponents exactly how much their opponents should have had most of the time. This, in general, defuses the heel-in-peril dynamic. A Killer Bee's match full of early match control armwork means a hell of a lot more if their opponents are constantly fighting back instead of just laying there. And it varied match by match. As heels they had this great rapid selling keeping up for the Rockers and against the Hart Foundation at Summerslam 88 actually begged off because it made sense given the Harts' placement and the stage they were on. This holds true for the most part as faces. Did they eat up the Brainbusters? Yeah, but that was the story. The first SNME match was all about the 'Busters being overwhelmed but expert cheaters and the Demos getting more and more frustrated until they made a mistake. That mistake led to the second match where ultimately the Brainbusters were positioned to get the upper hand on them, the MSG revenge match, and then finally the squash that ended it all. Would have those first two matches been better if they were more even? Maybe, but that's not the story they were telling, and whoever decided that they should tell that story (and on SNME you can never really tell) wanted it, and I think they delivered, to the point that if they gave the Busters more, then maybe they wouldn't have told it as well. On the other hand, they gave the Twin Towers a ton of offense. I know you didn't like those matches and sort of discounted the Towers and I think that's a shame. They did well at FIP there. A lot of the time they relied on heel miscommunication to win those and easily my favorite thing about face Demolition was Ax being unleashed after the hot tag and how much fire he brought to slamming them and what not. It's all about versatility in the end. I really thought that they played different roles to different matches with different opponents as heels but as faces as well. Let me put it this way. I think they had more interesting matches as faces than you give them credit for. The first SNME Brainbusters match is more of a worked angle than a match. So I think they had objectively better matches as heels, yes, but they had were just as effective in achieving their (still more interesting than you'd think on paper) goals as faces.

One of those people is not like the other. One of those people just does not belong. I am honored but I am a ways away from becoming that level of wrestling analyst. After calling me out a couple times, Matt, about the Colossal Connection matches, they are the best babyface Demolition matches because Eadie respects Andre enough to sell for him like a face in peril. Still no face Demolition matches come close to how good heel Demolition could be against the Rockers, Bulldogs and Hart Foundation. Do you agree that heel Demolition >>> babyface Demolition? To me it is not even close, but I would like to hear your thoughts on that. Probably best if you put it in the Demolition thread. I'll shoot a reply up to this in the Demo thread as soon as I can. Holiday stuff is vaguely disruptive at this point.

Man, Demolition was great, death camps aside. Every damn move made sense. Bill Eadie was a master craftsman. EDIT: Personally, I'm okay with anyone thinking anything but I do appreciate it when people meet me halfway in understanding WHY I feel like I do about what I do. Not agree, but at least understand. It's what I try to do for them. DOUBLE Edit, post Parv's reply: Just to make things clear, I think that almost everyone here, to a person, at least tries to do that back with me, at least most of the time (sometimes everyone gets a little heated, sure) and it is appreciated thoroughly.

One thing I do love about this place is the sort of macro view that one can only get by watching ALL the footage.

I'm curious what the buyrate will be here. Between the weak card and the football game (And they never seem too aware of context), I could sort of see it being under one of the Bryan-helmed, Cenaless PPVs. What would that tell them?

Basically they panicked due to ratings and the fact they need strong numbers right now for the TV contract renewal/network launch and are putting together the only thing they think that will actually draw, right? That's the narrative I'd pick up from all the notes around here lately at least.

Survivor Series card looks like it'll be full of good matches to me. A little boring, but past the divas match, everything should be good and that should at least be quick and full of pinfalls.

It does. It's basically a heel hope spot (which is then cut off, though the idea of cut off is really implicit in the hope spot) which happens during a shine or a more extended heel-in-peril segment. Another good example which is full of them is the first fall of the Portland 2/3 Falls Race vs Martel match from the very beginning of 1980.

When writing about matches and breaking down common elements, we, as a community, have a lot of terms that are useful. Face-in-peril, heat segment, hot tag, shine, transition, cut-off, etc. These are all various narrative tools that we've found used in multiple matches, enough so that we decided to use terms to classify them. They help us understand what we're watching and portray it to others. One of these is "hope spot," namely being when a babyface who is getting dominated by a heel (either in a standard heat segment or a face-in-peril scenario) fights back to the point where the crowd experiences hope that he'll be able to gain the advantage or make the tag. This ultimately ends in a cutoff spot where the heel stops the babyface and recovers the advantage. This is generally done multiple times to crank up the heat and make the babyface's final, successful comeback resonate more when it finally happens. The timing, number, and ingenuity of hope spots has a lot to do with how successful a match will be as, generally, the heat segment is the longest part of the match. My question is this. What should we call the same functional idea as hope spots in a match that has a section where a face is dominating, usually by locking on a long, generally controlling or limb weakening hold? While it's usually structured with the hold as a base and the heel trying to escape and then getting cut off and put back into it, I don't think a hope spot is accurate. It's not about giving the fans hope. It's instead about showing the dominance of the babyface through the cut offs or countering the vulnerability of the heel by letting him make some strides in getting out. It's also, sometimes, just a way to kill time with them basically saying "this is the match." It can be comedic or be a way to rise the heel's ire and frustrate him to the point of brutality when he finally takes back over. I'm just crowdsourcing for a better way of saying "hope spot" in this heel-in-peril comeback/cutoff scenario. "Transition tease" or "escape attempt" are the best I can come up with. The first is obtuse and the second isn't entirely accurate as it doesn't necessarily have to be a hold-based scenario. The face could just be beating on the heel in other ways.

You know I did see this Billy Robinson vs Nick Bockwinkel match tonight.

Corrected. Ha, very good. I always sort of see the two of you as a tag team.

Bock/Lanza vs Funks - AJPW - 12/5/78 I don't have time to really write this up but I liked it a ton. It was best when Terry and/or Bockwinkel was in there but the other two did their part as well. The basic story was that the Funks outwrestled Bockwinkel and Lanza but Bock and Lanza were able to use heel tactics and smart tag wrestling. The best stuff was the early armwork, the great transition where Lanza took over on Funk by tossing him out (huge bump) and slapping the claw on the outside and the FIP segment that followed and the return of the claw at the end of the match, which had some real drama. Bockwinkel and Funk especially worked the holds so well and Lanza looked positively deranged with his balding crazy hair when he was using the claw. Bockwinkel vs Robinson - AJPW - 11.12.1980 You crazy folks are really telling me there are 14 80s AJPW matches better than this? Really? Holy crap. The sense of struggle in this match is amazing. In the beginning you see one of the best worked headscissors ever followed by one of the best worked headlocks ever and it just goes up from there. There are so many moments in this thing, the european uppercut followed by Bockwinkel's return punch, Bock trying to get out of the headlock but getting taken back down and in a moment later again and again, the sheer desperation once he goes to the leg the first time and starts to get some traction only to be unable to keep it up (and the way he RUSHED back to the leg after the ref broke it was just brilliant as ever Bock), again the sense of struggle in things like the piledriver reversal and even a whip into the corner. They don't half ass anything and the attention to detail adds so much emotion. When Robinson's leg finally goes out on the second Robinson backbreaker, and then Robinson after the figure four fighting on one leg with his own sense of desperation. The finish is downright beautiful with the two of them punching away as the time goes out, both half dead from the war, and ending up collapsed against each other in the ropes, even though they'd just been trying to kill each other. They didn't want to be there in that sort of kindred embrace but their bodies gave them no choice. It makes the shake of the hand that follows even more poignant.

I think the match quality is extremely high but there's also a higher level of difficulty from a novice. You're dropped into these not knowing who you're looking at a lot and also the matches tend to go longer. Well worth it though, and the DVDVR notes and a lot of the podcasts help. I still wish someone would write a match by match cheat sheet.

It kind of feels like that's almost been done already though. Especially if you believe the reports that they are blaming weak buyrates in the last 3 PPVs on Daniel Bryan and not Randy Orton. Bryan hasn't had nearly as much of a chance to prove himself as a draw as Randy. Randy however has shown he ISN'T a draw, especially when they tried to move him to Smackdown and make him the "ace" and house show ticket sales dropped off big time. Obviously that was Christian's fault.

In my rush to get out of the office I left disc 5 at work and I won't be back there for a week. I was JUST to the Chicana vs Perro match too and was very eager to watch it.

I've gone over my complex booking plan using Eddie Gilbert as a smokescreen to put the belt on Barry.

I think Cody's actively better at switching his stuff up than he was even three months ago. Really, where the lack of Goldust was felt the most to me was in the six man with Rey and the Usos.

If I wanted to spend $15 a month on wrestling, I could think of better ways to do so.