Matt D

Tag teams can be 2031.

I haven't seen this yet but it could be fairly interesting:

The comic parallels are interesting and I think a lot of it is about canon and the barriers, but I'm not sure how. I know when I got into comics, I loved the idea that there was this whole universe I could learn about of all these stories that mattered and counted. I know when I got into wrestling, it was first with WWF but I got a bunch of the 1990 WCW trading cards and it was this whole new world I didn't know about and it was exciting to me and i wanted to know everything about it. I don't see that so much anymore, maybe because there's just so much available now that you can dip into a lot about a lot of things instead of everything about one thing? I know what my 19 year old does and how he absorbs things. He'll watch two dozen youtube videos on people explaining some old aspect of Marvel comics or who Adam Warlock is and why he might show up in the next Guardians of the Galaxy movie but he wouldn't go back and read the comics. And he'll dive right into something else. A lot of what he spent his time on in the last decade was something like Minecraft or other games he plays with people where they can play the same game year in and year out, or a bunch of different anime where he either goes through one series and then moves right to a different one that's completely unconnected, or he rewatches/rereads the same things over and over again because they're familiar and comfortable and he doesn't need new content. Kids today have infinite content. They don't have to be beggars. They are choosers and more than that, so much of what they have are not the actual content itself but more personal remixed versions where they can interface with someone playing/watching/discussing it instead of doing it themselves.

Brody is by far my least favorite Bock opponent and Bock basically shit talked him as terrible to work with. Those matches are not very good at all. The Hansen matches aren’t my favorite by any means but I do think they show a standing tall side to babyface Bock that helps to round out his case.

It’s like anything else. It’s all about what people (or big media companies) will pay for it.

People making guides early in the process matters, I think. OJ ranked European workers and that impacted who people spent time watching, to a degree. A lot of the podcasts/final write-ups were a little late, since they were all talking about individual lists that were already made or justifying a #1. I know I made my Bock case too late, and even lamented it at the time, though I'm not sure it would have mattered much one way or the other.

The only uncomfortable bits of that to me is that Ric did just raise certain elements very publicly and that Arn, for as much as I like the guy as a personality, is sort of cashing in, to a degree, on telling Flair stories. In general, I agree with you though.

I participated quite a bit with a few people, and I would not say they created groupthink. There was a good amount of "hey, did you see that moment?" and "Do you think that was a good thing or a bad thing in the match?" that kind of thing, but it was more fun and free flowing and there weren't really big rounding off discussions in the end. It was more about bringing specific moments to people's attentions and talking about them in real time as the match was going on and a little a bit of he associated joy or frustration that comes with that. I will say that these were almost entirely chat based and I think it might have been different if they were vocal. My experience in listening to people's watch parties for the AWA or lucha sets feels a little different, with more people getting swept along and maybe more groupthink. I know the technical advancements in things like discord have more easily allowed for everyone to be on mics, but I'd note that it would be much easier for me to participate in chat-only settings as I'll be almost constantly multitasking to at least a small degree given real life pressures. I don't know where everyone else would fall on that though. I imagine the opposite. I also imagine there'd be a lot of opportunities for a lot of modalities.

You’re a good son.

It’s all there in my post.

I said that was only half of it for that exact reason. It’d be a misconception.

Double posting to add one additional point. And this is why I didn't post that here and posted something else here instead. DVDVR is not PWO. You want to argue that the Faces of Fear are the best team of the 90s on DVDVR? Great. Go for it. Back your shit up. People will engage and 80% will engage positively if you back your shit up well. PWO has a different feel and a different attitude and that's totally ok. I post a little differently in one place than the other, and I have deep affection for both boards. I'm doing reviews of 89 AJPW that I watch while I'm on a treadmill over there right now. (http://deathvalleydriver.com/forum/index.php?/topic/8657-matt-watches-1989-ajpw-on-a-treadmill/#comments) I'm writing little reviews. Were I to write them here, they'd have a lot more rigor to them. You can make that argument on DVDVR and I think you should be allowed to and not laughed out of the room. If you do it here, it'll be a slightly higher bar. That's ok.

I said that I wasn't going to make the argument. I just said that someone could make it, and yeah, probably make it easily if they broke down match by match. Would I buy it? Maybe not, but let them make the argument. There's one to make there. My argument and my point was basically three-fold (and yes, NL can disagree, that's fine). Anvil brought more to the table than he gets credit for, and he doesn't get the credit half because people haven't gone back and revisited the footage and half because of workrate dogmatism (But again only half as he still brings something to the table there). Actually, those Hart Foundation matches don't hold up as well as they get credit for and a good chunk of that IS Bret, so the level that Neidhart has to rise to is less than what you'd otherwise think. Someone can make the argument and they shouldn't be laughed out of the room. They should be allowed to make the argument if they think they can back it up. The fact someone would just accept that as dogma and look down at people who have done the legwork and want to voice an opinion on that is bullshit.

Yeah sure, but you still have to write the zine.

Yeah, I can do that. It's probably not what you'd think (as in I didn't focus on Henry). http://deathvalleydriver.com/forum/index.php?/topic/8985-february-2021-discussion-of-wrestling/&do=findComment&comment=1076306

I said what I was going to say about Alvarez' tone and comments over at DVDVR and I'll leave that there, but I'll reiterate here that there was something really earnest about how Khan described his time. Lonce vs the World driving him to defend Robert Gibson's work and start a whole thread is something very different than just being the guy who started the sleaze thread, you know?

Yeah, it's more indirect. If you're a big draw, you're going to have a big, probably hot crowd. You may be able to have longer matches. You may be able to have matches with bigger stakes. There are opportunities involved in that. We can then see how the wrestler utilizes the opportunities. As per GMT, when we're dealing with the best hundred (or especially the best 25) wrestlers ever, all of them are going to have great matches, and a lot of times, just like drawing power, the sheer number of them comes down to bookings and opportunities as well. So instead of making it a numerical exercise at that point, you break down what a wrestler does with opportunities they have.

There are ways to recontextualize things like "drawing power" to purely in-ring work by thinking about things like connection to the crowd. Full houses, hot crowds, ok, it's chicken and egg, but what does the wrestler DO with that situation. Look at a guy like Hogan and see how he uses the hot crowd to his advantage in crating a match or how he squanders it. Someone like Cena knows what sort of reaction he's going to get with five-knuckle shuffle set up. How does he use that relative to other people in other situations, that sort of thing. There are a lot of interesting ways to think about "in-ring" other than just great matches. It just all has to come back to "in-ring" in the end.

This is what I said in the 2021 thread I poked at: So I went with Hodge instead of Londos.

There obviously needs to be a monthly web-zine with a collected summation of all of the big discussions going on everywhere. I nominate Steven.

Then there's this casket match:

I really like the 5/9/94 Tenryu vs Yoko match when I saw it a few months ago: This was great. Totally great. The opening exchange: Tenryu can't chip away at Yoko. Yoko slams him. Tenryu chops him right in the face. Yoko's retaliation in this was the stiffest I've ever seen him and this is a guy who'd crush jobbers in the corner on the regular. Likewise, Tenryu's back brain kicks were able to hit in a way that would have just been impossible against a normal opponent. Obviously, Yoko knows exactly what to give and what not to at this point and the two or three kicks just stagger him so Tenryu can hit the first Russian Leg Sweep I've ever seen him do. Later on it's three clotheslines with the last one flying, etc. Anyway, I'm used to these things going an extra 5-10 minutes and this doesn't. Once they hit the floor and get the weapons involved, it's over, right when it was getting good. Excellent match up though.

First of all, I'm not entirely sure that all of this is connected to your central thesis, but you're having fun as Steve Austin in one of those late 90s Rumbles at least. Second, You're just doing a pretty poor job of defending me. Just saying.

It was a turn of phrase, old chum. I meant that instead of using it for the greater good of the match, he was actively harming the quality of the match.

They should have done a Teddy Long thing where Miz got to be out of the Chamber but he needs to face Edge instead. Safe showcase match for Edge.