Matt D

I freaking love Barry vs Tito from PTW in 89.

I just want to cannibalize some catchy terms here and you people are making it difficult with your logic.

What % of the fans are marks? Most everyone knows it's fake. John I think in 1999 or 2011 the term should generally means someone who doesn't follow the backstage elements of the business.

I think we all like semantics too much though, and no selling rants. Anyway, isn't the issue a mark/smark divide anyway? you have the people who watch the product (though they obviously don't believe it's real) and then the people who follow the backstage news. Though I think the rise of social media is what complicates that now.

There's hardcore, there's casual, and then there's oddball. I think we generally fall into that last class. The category I see as hardcore fans like Davey Richards a lot.

I don't care that it's not believable. 99% of wrestling offense is not believable. My issue with it is that it looks terrible and damages my enjoyment of the match I'm watching whenever Stan gets on offense with it. It's the cringeworthy minute of every MX match. I'm trying to figure out how that's not a believability issue. If they were more "real" looking, you'd like them more, and you'd be distracted less. I kind of like the idea that it's about them being aesthetically pleasing. If they were prettier and more artistic, you'd like them more. I don't know if that means they'd be more or less stylized though.

Believable strikes just aren't something I tend to care about. I care more about effective strikes or well-used strikes or meaningful strikes than believable ones. Wrestling is fantasy to me. What matters is consistency and coherence within the fictional universe. One way of gauging that (though not the only one) is whether or not the fans buy what's going on. That said, I'd would have to watch a bunch of Lane/Eaton MX stuff to see how I felt. I've seen a lot more Eaton/Condrey lately and a lot more solo Stan Lane stuff.

Re: Lane's kicks. I think they bought the kicks because people sold for them, too, no? And more than that they were presented by the announcers as something honestly dangerous. Wrestling is ultimately symbolic. If you train the audience to buy something, they will buy it. If you train them that something doesn't matter, then it won't matter despite being used in the best way imaginable with the best execution imaginable. Every point of evidence said that his kicks were dangerous save for maybe actually watching him kick someone. I've been loving the John Tatum/Rod Price Tags in Global. I know he had some runs with Jack Victory in Texas. I want to see that stuff.

Definitely...and I quite like the Lane/Eaton version. I think Bobby Eaton is the end-all, be-all for me on this. From what little I've seen of his team with Koko, to the more available stuff with both MX's, to his Dangerous Alliance stuff, he's just so solid. I think he defines tag wrestling for me because he's a guy that's never really stood out in singles. Stick him in a tag situation, and he's gold. I feel like there are a whole bunch of guys that we'd think more highly of now if tag teams were more prominent. Eaton just keeps trucking along too. In 92 he has Arn. In 93 he has Benoit. In 94 he has Keirn. In 95 he has Regal. He's got really good matches with each pairing.

http://www.thehistoryofwwe.com/85.htm He's all over this year. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xa3drt_mr...funk-pt-1_sport http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xa3fae_mr...funk-pt-2_sport This is one of those.. "wait, did this actually happen?" wwf matches. As for why he was there, you can sort of work it out here: http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?show...=11633&st=0 I thought it was specifically talked about but I don't see it.

You can tell if he's a good wrestler or not since he can't fall back on token athletic spots and has to be more clever with his work?

So much GWF lately. It's surprisingly awesome but still..

Who would induct Mick? The Rock? Terry Funk? Taker? Vince? Edge? HHH? Talk about a guy with almost endless choices. Hell I could make an argument for Rip Rogers.

On the one hand it's a complete and utter personal preference thing, so I can't really mount a counter argument. All I can do is respect the explanation. On the other, the sheer subjective nature there makes me feel like we're judging an iron chef contest or something in examining the match. That's what it made me think of, so that sort of amused me. The only answer I'll give is that they were very adaptable and did what the match called for, including, amazingly enough, begging off against the Hart Foundation at Summerslam 88, and it was tremendously striking when they did and put over the Harts as huge superstars. It was what the match called for. Now then, Blackjack Lanza or Jay Strongbow or whoever put the on the card is the one that we're going to have stern talking to for your negative impression of it, lack of mindblowing offense aside. Or I guess maybe Rene Goulet, but I'd just feel sad yelling at him. For starters i remember him as the "Hey! Who the hell is that guy who always shows up!" guy who I'd ask my clueless dad about as a kid. And he's also REALLY withered right now.

The heel in peril thing is fairly unique with the Brainbusters matches when it comes to the Demos and that has a lot to do with the structure of the story they were trying to tell. The first match was the Busters being unable to beat them and infuriating the Demos to force the DQ in order to save their lives. The second match (which is what you saw) is a revenge-driven house show match which is basically about Demos destroying them but not getting the belts. I think if Demos were going over more cleanly, they'd tell a story where they were careless from the anger and the Busters capitalizing on that. But it's pretty much the match they should have worked for the crowd they were in front of during the midst of the story. Which is tricky. The third is the two-three falls match and more balanced anyway. But Brainbusters should have a harder time GETTING on top in the beginning of the match against Demos than the Twin Towers or Powers of Pain, just due to the size difference, no? As for the "state of the art offense" talking point, it's not really my talking point at all, so I'm not going to argue it much. My talking points are above. I'm sorry you didn't like the Twin Towers match more. I think it shows how adaptable the Demos were (in that they not only played FIP but did so in a way that made you check one off in the Southern Tag Category) even if you didn't think it was a great match in itself. I think what's most interesting to me is watching all three Demos/Towers matches and watching how the match changes night to night but again, I can see why you wouldn't do that.

Well, that was apparently a long, painful night of three pages of posts that I'm tremendously glad I slept through. Anyway, my talking points are slightly different. I don't think that Demos are the best ever. I also don't think that their highs are necessarily higher than other people's. To me, that was never the point of going through the matches, though I can see how it would be easy to get too close to the source material certainly especially after putting the work in. The entire point of how great Demolition is is summed up in two words really, Consistency and Variation. I think I summed it all up 9 or 10 pages ago and I'm not sure why we're even still on the subject, since the people who disagree with me on this disagree about what makes wrestling good, which is fine but there's not going to be any convincing anyone of anything, as is pretty damn obvious at this point. But what I found is that they weren't necessarily great over one or two matches, but when you watch the lot and see that they almost never do the wrong thing or never do anything for the sake of doing it or never ever fail to make the opponents work for what they're doing. When you see those trends over time, they really stand out. There are nights were Bret is lazy or where Arn falls to doing a few spots that don't make any sense because he likes to stooge too much or where Dynamite takes WAY too much offense because he thinks he deserves it or something. I'm not going to say that they're the best ever, but I've never seen a team better at staying focused and on task and on the story of the match and that I've never seen a team that changed things up, not necessarily when it came to moves, but when it came to the specific story of the match, even on a night to night basis. Does that make Demolition the best ever? No. Does it make them unique to me and am I impressed by it? Absolutely. And it's not something that you'll spot in watching four or five matches (though you can see how well they could adapt in different situations, sure). The whole is so much greater than the sum of its parts. It's like the reverse of watching too many Ric Flair matches. Am I going to ask you guys to watch all of the matches? No. I did it for you a couple of years ago, because only through examining a large body of work do the most important things come to the surface with this particular team. If you do, I think you'll come to be impressed in the same way I was. But it's okay if you don't. There's only so much time in the world. But that's what I feel and why I feel like I do. I obviously can't talk for Vic. I was trying to raise their profile as workers because that stuff stood out so much to me and no one ever, ever talked about it. Now, can we please move on to something else. Like comparing the two MX squads and the Heavenly Bodies or something.

Dylan, you should watch Hart Foundation vs US Express (Spivey version). It's got an awesome finish out of nowhere. Worth seeing just for that. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xczqpa_ha...ress_shortfilms I think it's that one. Might be the other one (the boston one) but I can't load that one right now.

I actually sometimes get more impressed when they turn a blown spot into an opportunity than if they had pulled off whatever they had planned in the first place. Edit: I started to write something but it was turning into War and Peace so I stopped.

Have the obits traditionally been done in that light? Or do they work on a somewhat different level than the usual WON articles?

1.) You really don't want me to get any work done today, do you? 2.) I think already straight off from post #2, we're already diving into a tricky area when it comes to "in ring" vs "out of ring and in ring as a total package." I actually think that this is going to be one of the biggest problems we're going to deal with here. I look at matches for structure and fairly analytically (and yes, I'm going to expand upon this later, once I get some work done and can rationalize it), BUT I also try to look at things in context. I'd rather watch an entertaining hour of wrestling TV than 3 isolated excellent matches. Matches often only make sense in context, within their program, within their match series, within their specific show. For example, the Vader vs Duggan match from Starccade 94 cannot be understood at all unless you realize that they're holding back some traditional big man spots due to Sting vs Avalanche later in the night. But none of that really deals with the divide listed above. I'll give a real answer later.

I think he already needed surgery when he worked the Dome Show and had a great match with Inoki. Vader debuted later in the month at the Royal Rumble, then worked the following RAW, and was off the road for a few. So, I guess the timeline is right, unless he got surgery between the Dome Show and the Rumble. The other HUGE problem Vader has about 96 is that they ran Michaels vs Vader on house shows all around the loop before Summerslam 96 with Vader losing cleanly. So by the time the PPV hit the majority of the fanbase who would have ordered the PPV had already seen the match and a definitive result. The Vader shoot is pretty good.

Re: Vader's debut. I thought he had to go in for surgery or something along those lines. So he destroyed Monsoon and then they couldn't do much with him for a few months. I might have the timeline wrong.

1. I haven't really been involved lately because I don't really argue about Demolition's presence. I started the whole project to talk about the work since their presence is pretty fondly remembered on its own. I pretty much said what I had to say many pages ago. 2. There are some inseparable ravines here on what makes for good wrestling and why, and I think there are some moving goalposts too which are blurring matters and a lack of acceptance or attempts to understand. There's also some dismissal out of hand which is a shame, but that's how it goes. 3. And to reference the quote above. No. But that's already been covered. Dylan wrote an excellent post a few pages back on a whole school of thought of enjoying and appreciating wrestling and you'd do well to read it a few more times.

There are two things to keep in mind, Re: Repo Man. One is that he patterned the character after the Frank Gorshin Riddler. Two is that he really, really wanted to be a face with the character.

What role do you think the agents have in that?