Matt D

Mean Mark had a really fun match vs Luger in 90.

I think at Survivor Series either Zeke or Mason Ryan(I forget which. they are interchangeable to me), had some segment where they did 3-4 slams (or press slams) in a row, and it was just starting to move the crowd, actually.

Hayes is actually a super fun color commentator before 91 or so. He starts to slip after that. The very best thing about Hayes is that he'd watch the match and pull together a narrative which had NOTHING to do with what was going on in the ring. But he'd work really hard to lace it together and it'd make sense. It just wouldn't be what you were watching. He was a really solid storyteller, just.. a bit askew. Highly entertaining.

I like Kane more than the next guy but he could have never had the Mayweather match.

Heels did Gorilla Press in Mid South, both Volkoff into the ribbreaker and Butch Reed

Also, I hate saying it, I really do, but I feel like at this point, with all the discussion about ownership of teams and salaries and evil empires and what not, we have to talk about the comparison to the BEHIND THE SCENES elements of wrestling, which is, honestly, more than half of what we talk about and follow.

You guys have gone far and wide with this. It's TERRIBLY frustrating that while wrestling SHOULD be better than reality, it's not.

That is super harsh on Christian. Yeah, he didn't draw, but each of the Orton matches were different and in my mind each was worth watching.

Me too, absolutely.

I LOVE the reaction of the kids in the crowd to Sting as he comes out. They were so into him.

Wrestling should be better than these other things because in wrestling, they can shape and control the narrative.

Mooney/Lord Alfred was a great team. Hayes is a guy who I thought was terrible when I was a kid and who I've come around on 180 since then through actually watching matches.

Obviously, the purpose of the figure-four is a set up move making it harder to kick out of the cheap roll-up later. (I'm kidding, mostly). Also, I don't watch sports regularly (not even MMA), but I do watch wrestling. The serialized elements appeal to me just like they do on a show like lost or in comics, and I definitely see a lot of what happens as wrestling as symbolic/mythic. what matters isn't how it relates to basketball or boxing but that it stays consistent within itself. Wrestling has way more in common with Rocky (or a longform serialized TV show ABOUT Rocky, like some of the sports anime, I would assume, than actual boxing.

Having a bunch of moves isn't nearly as important as knowing what to do between those moves.

Where would that be a heresy? http://board.deathvalleydriver.com/index.p...all&st=1860 For instance, keep going back pages and see all the FoF polls.

There was a lot of other stuff going on with that match, though. Context. No one really wanted to see Gibson fight Morton. And those poor bastards had to sit through a PN News Scaffold match first.

I really like Tito vs Barry. It was super back and forth but totally believable.

We can never know intent. Even when they TELL us the intent in a shoot or interview or commentary or what have you, we still can't know it. All that we can judge on is what we see. If that means we end up connecting dots that were never meant to be connected, well, it means something that the dots were there in the first place. And if those dots are there over a huge run of matches? Well, that probably means something. To me, having a "great match" doesn't mean nearly as much as a large body of work that shows signs of things I like. A match like Hogan/Warrior at WM VI was absolutely laid out by someone like Pat Patterson. Should that fact matter? Savage faxed a script long enough to be War and Peace to Steamboat pre WM III. Should that matter? Intent is a bitch and context makes things interesting and is worth knowing BUT art is in the eye of the beholder and all that. i know to me, I like watching a lot of work by a wrestler, in context, and then I judge more on the whole of what I've seen the wrestler do than any specific match. I don't look for great matches. I look forand tend to appreciate great work in context. I also lean away towards stuff I know are least likely to tell a story, because at this point of my viewing life, I know it'll just frustrate me. That's just me. It's ultimately subjective. Some people might enjoy moves and action and spectacle, or yeah, pacing might be the most important thing to them, and they're no more wrong or right than anyone else, but it sure makes discussion tricky sometimes.

That would be assuming that the Press was the only move Ric did off the top. It wasn't. I'd also say that a 2 Wins for 500 Getting Tossed Off The Top isn't exactly something that evens out in any sporting context. Can you think of anything where a 0.4% of success is consider good odds in sports? I can't think of one that comes to mind. John Still, if you only win 0.4% of the time and at least one is the whole kit and kaboodle that gets your name in the history books.

I actually asked Page about that once and he said that he actually taped over the last night's match every night instead of building up a library, thus now instead of having a treasure trove of lost house show matches he's got nothing.

To me, a more important aspect isn't whether or not they play into the over riding single story of a match, but whether or not they can be logically chained together to create something at least feasibly coherent. At the very least a framework. Does one chapter somehow lead into the next? After seeing the whole thing, does it feel like it all had some point? Or did it all just feel haphazard and disjointed?

I do tend to believe/agree that even when a bit of storytelling in a match really stands out, it's still only rarely because wrestlers were thinking of a bigger picture/story/"the why of the what." I think a lot of the time they were either protecting themselves/their character/their image or simply doing what they knew worked. So sometimes when a match really sings storywise, it's because of the combination of those things (that is, sometimes, when both participants in a match are trying to make themselves look good, it creates a logical sort of competitive story/chess match OR things that move the crowd tend to move them for a reason, and sometimes it's a narrative one). But I just can't believe it's like that all the time, or that it's just subconscious in the wrestlers all the time. Sometimes some wrestlers had to be thinking about it and it shows up in some wrestlers' work. That said, at the end of the day, what really matters, I suppose, isn't the intention of the wrestlers but the match itself, and then how you as a viewer choose to watch and enjoy it. I like matches where I can overlay coherent narratives more than ones where I can't, all else equal. I think those matches are (subjectively) better than ones where I can't, all things equal. That's just me, though, but if I am going to discuss a match with someone, that's my bias.

The way I see it, that's just good wrestling. I've been watching these Tito/Orton matches were the work is mostly good, but you'd be hard pressed to say they have any sort of story unless you think Tito and Orton go to a draw is a story. I suppose my argument is that work is mostly just work and only sometimes gets elevated to storytelling. Which is an argument for why it stands out so much and is more than just a "bare minimum" requirement when it does, no? There are a ton of meaningless shine periods in... well, 90% of all 80s tag team matches, no matter what company we're looking at. (likewise with "playing a role." It wouldn't be thought of as anything special for a big man to play his role well, that is to know when to give and when not to give, to have offense that makes sense and uses his mass effectively, proper intimidation, etc., if every big man did it and did it well) Since we're talking about Tito a lot, he had a very distinct view of how wrestling should work and he has voiced it. Basically: In the opening third, he outwrestles the heel (with no exception!), then the heel does something underhanded to get on top, and finally Tito has his big comeback. That seems to be the extent of thought he put into it.

One thing I thoroughly enjoyed about all the Demolition matches I saw was how Darsow and (especially) Eadie's constant pressure, making the babyfaces work for every single inch they got, provided the traditional babyface armwork during the shine period more meaning. In every one of those matches vs the Rougeaus or Killer Bees, it feels like they're just trying to CONTAIN the bigger wrestlers with the armwork, that they're just fighting for their lives because if they let the Demos get on offense it will go very very poorly for them. It's not necessarily about setting up a finish, but to me it was a very clear, logical, and meaningful part of the matches and a lot of that played out in the little things that a guy like Eadie would do, both in selling and in constantly attempting to find a way to get on offense instead of just sitting down and taking it.

I'm sure John is going to come in and call me a rube BUT, a lot of the old timey guys say that during long car rides in the territory days one of the only things they COULD do was talk about wrestling.