Matt D

Different matches on the card have different purposes. Generally. That's a generally minor part of my mindset though. But I've got an attacking six month old here, so I am going to let other people chime in. I've said my thoughts a million times, but I can focus them here, certainly. I think I'm the minority not you though, if that helps! Honestly, I'm just glad you people put up with me most of the time.

Can we just stop and make a blanket statement here?

Now we're going all over the place. The WWF match up I actually want to look at is against Hercules. They feuded for a while and he physically can't do some of the things he did with smaller babyfaces with Hercules. I think that'll be telling. As for mid-south, I need to think what I want to see. Maybe vs Terry Taylor?

I watched the first Patterson match and I think it'd be reasonable to call Dibiase a technical wrestler in it. Stalling to begin and a fiery babyface assault with punches/stomps after that, but then he uses armwork (not wildly varied but interesting enough) to keep Patterson in the ring after he takes a powder, and he capitalizes on a corner posting with a couple of big abdominal stretches. Yes, there were slams/dropkicks, etc, and nothing was brilliant or anything, but I don't think it'd be unreasonable to call him 79 babyface WWF Ted technical from that match. I'll watch the other one later.

I love Gorilla but he was a cynical snark.

We're a little busy here, gramps. We're having a serious internet argument almost solely about semantics.

"A running team" in football used to be the old three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust, grind-it-out, Woody Hayes offense--passing only when necessary. Now, particularly in the NFL, you're a "running team" if you rush on 50% of your plays. These things can happen. This is a performance art not a sport. Is this sort of how Nickelback became metal or something? My view is in that in pro wrestling perception is reality. DiBiase in kayfabe terms was a technician--so that's what he is. Then what he does should be what a technician does. Barring some great revelation, a technician is someone who does a few big suplexes (vertical, belly to back, gutwrench) with fairly good execution. Has a couple of other power impact moves (power slam, pile driver, neckbreaker). Has a hold for a finisher. A lot of stomps, etc. And has a bitching fist drop. I'm glad we figured out what a technician does. I'll watch those Patterson matches tomorrow and then we can move on.

I'm seeing Dylan transform before my eyes.

Does the Dibiase/Patterson title change exist? youtube has I know what I'm watching tomorrow.

"A running team" in football used to be the old three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust, grind-it-out, Woody Hayes offense--passing only when necessary. Now, particularly in the NFL, you're a "running team" if you rush on 50% of your plays. These things can happen. This is a performance art not a sport. Is this sort of how Nickelback became metal or something?

It's just become less technical.

i made a very honest effort to get DEAN to draw Sandow today.

I'm still not feeling it. If a technical wrestler is one thing, and that thing doesn't exist anymore, then there are no more technical wrestlers. What we have instead is something else.

When we start coming up with terms like "mat grappler" I think we're veering into dangerous territory.

I know I see limbwork or matwork as the key to the word

Which goes back to needing to look at his relatively early babyface work, right? Of which we don't have a ton of?

I think we need to define what the hell we're talking about a little bit better.

He was thought of a future NWA champ when he was a babyface in Mid-South, WWF and Georgia, right? Most of the matches most of us have seen with him are after the Georgia run, no?

Though I'll admit one thing. I've seen a lot of heel dibiase, both in Mid South and WWF, but I've seen less of his face work, especially from Georgia, but also in mid-south. You look at a match like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0w-6JVsDr2c And you see some semblance that he did some early (and vaguely interesting) armwork but even more, that when he was using the figure-four as a finisher, he'd set it up on some level in a vaguely technical way? Of course, VON KRAMER is making a mostly WWF argument, so I imagine it's moot.

What i'm saying is that you can at least call Dory a mat technician, whether a good one or a bad one. You can't call Dibiase one, one way or the other.

At least you see where they're coming from though. Ted just didn't do any of that. That's the difference.

Isn't he really more of a power wrestler in WWF (relative to the moves of the time). I'm only partially kidding. More seriously, I think one issue is the definition of "technician." That really needs to be hammered down. But this goes back to what I was saying in the other note. If every wrestler in the world says one thing, and the evidence in the matches say something else, it'd be crazy not to go with the evidence we can actually see, especially in a case like this.

In my mind, the only thing it has weight on, even a little, is when it comes to "leading matches." For some people that doesn't matter at all, since they care about great matches, and if someone happened to be lucky enough to be led in great matches by a ton of different opponents, over a span of years, then why wouldn't they be great? Maybe someone who hits softly but looks like they have great strikes should get more credit than someone who just hits hard in order to have good looking strikes? Maybe? Maybe if we're in an era or territory where we have very very little footage to look at and all we have to go on is what other wrestlers say? But really, we're talking very few situations where what other wrestlers say matters in the least.

Why?

The simple fact of the matter is that we have different criteria. When we say a wrestler is better or worse, the criteria is what matters to us, whether it's having a match with coherent storytelling, having offense that look realistic, selling well and consistently, bumping big, or having a wide moveset. Everyone's criteria are different. Different things matter to different people. But since I don't have to work with the wrestler in question, I care a hell of a lot more about what people WATCHING the matches think than what people not watching the matches think, even if those people are other wrestlers.