DVDVR 90s voting vs. DVDVR 80s voting

[Ditch]

On another, related subject... is there any chance of seeing this sort of focus on the '70s? Is much new footage surfacing in recent years the way it has been for the' 80s?

[Dylan Waco]

On the 90's...

 

I just watched virtually every ECW match committed to tape. I am in the process of watching every SMW match committed to tape. SMW has lots of solid wrestling and it is probably fair to say that the average match (even squash matches) is better structured than the average ECW match. I could also see the case for someone preferring best of Smothers in SMW to the best of Scorp in ECW (Tajiri is another matter), preferring any single year of SMW to any single year of ECW, and thinking the best few SMW matches are better than the best few ECW matches.

 

Having said that, in terms of depth ECW destroys SMW. Part of this is the fact that it was around longer, but probably an even bigger factor is the sheer volume of stuff. Not only do we have tv, commercials and ppvs - we have a fuckload of FanCams. Reality is that ECW probably had a higher percentage of their shows taped than any other major fed in wrestling history and virtually all of those tapes is available. I know Tom was not making an argument between ECW/SMW, but my point is that ECW is a unique example of a company with a relatively brief history that has such an insane volume of available footage that lumping it in with other indy groups just doesn't seem right to me.

[Bix]

There are a ton off SMW handhelds shot by Tommy Noe and Regis Hildebrand that we don't have. Dave Prazak has Noe's at least if someone wants to try hitting him up again. I have no idea if Pam Clark is still selling the other stuff.

[jdw]

On another, related subject... is there any chance of seeing this sort of focus on the '70s? Is much new footage surfacing in recent years the way it has been for the' 80s?

Some new stuff in Japan has popped up, such as IWE. Less AJPW and NJPW. Since the weekly stuff isn't available, it probably would be best to throw the three of them into one large set. A 70s Japan would be interesting down the road.

 

Some WWF stuff trickles out. Overall, the amount of US stuff available is pretty light. That probably isn't going to change over time, other than perhaps all of the taped MSG & Spectrum shows getting released at some point.

 

John

[Phil Schneider]

The idea we had spitballed for the 70's was three sets, US, Japan, Europe. Probably enough in those three categories to make three good sets.

[jdw]

Yeah, Europe might have more than the US.

 

There is some US stuff that aired in Japan, but not a ton. How much Portland goes back to the 70s? Mid Atlantic was mostly handheld. Some Florida. Is any of the STL stuff of note that's not handheld from the 70s?

 

There's some AWA out there, but I wonder how much it's representative of big AWA matches. :/

 

Looks like about 19 or so MSG cards and about five Spectrum card from the 70s are out there. Some misc WWF matches that have popped up. 13 of the MSF cards are from Jun 1977 on, while all of the Spectrum are from 1978 (1) and 1979.

 

It would be a very skewed look at the US in the 70s, not in terms of bias but in what's available.

 

Japan is a bit more interesting. There's a fair amount missing that could be choice (Baba & Jumbo vs Texas Outlaws is my current holy grail). But there's a lot that's available.

 

Pre-1970 world wide would be interesting as well. Probably one big bucket there, and perhaps not a bad idea to simply do whatever is available. Probably not 150 matches, but a lot of it hasn't been collected into one set, or widely circulated.

 

John

[Ditch]

I've been pleasantly surprised by some of the IWE. Mighty Inoue could be the Kantaro Hoshino of a '70s Japan set.

[Cox]

There are a ton off SMW handhelds shot by Tommy Noe and Regis Hildebrand that we don't have. Dave Prazak has Noe's at least if someone wants to try hitting him up again. I have no idea if Pam Clark is still selling the other stuff.

There have been times where I've gotten Prazak to agree to send these to me only for him to fall through because he's so busy. I'll try him again.

[Bix]

Some of the officially shot film collections (like JCP and Gulas) do have full or nearly full matches mixed in. JCP has an extended Flair-Steamboat or two for starters. The Fargo-Greene hair match on the '70s TN/KY films is pretty complete.

[jdw]

Have the JCP ever gotten out? I know the Cornette stuff that came out was 8mm and all JIP if I recall.

 

There is the Lawler-Race match.

 

I guess the worry is that there's so little that it's skewed:

 

* to WWF because that's where most is

 

* pretty much everything gets on

 

There stuff like the second Backlund-Valentine in first MSG feud that's pretty pedestrian. But if you're struggling to get 50 or 100 matches, it goes on. It wouldn't make the cut in the 80s... and I'm not even sure how many of the 80s Backlund-Valentine matches make it. Something like their 1984 match is better than the second 1979 match, but the 1984 might not be worthy of making the 80's cut.

 

The draw, of course, is terrific. But I'm not sure if the 24 cards MSG/Spectrum cards that out there average between 1-2 match worthy of getting on.

 

John

[Bix]

I'm talking about the Cornette 16mm JCP. The common 18 disc set. I was surprised when I pulled stuff for the Flair-Steamboat comp. to see that they had some extended matches.

 

Lawler-Race was shot on tape and is around thanks to Cornette via RF. There's also a full Lawler-Dundee (Mickey Poole's hair vs Dundee leaves town) from a few months earlier, which is also excellent. That's via a tape from Steve F. The Gulas film stuff I mentioned is from PM Film, though there's more around that's not from them.

 

There's also a decent amount of '79 Memphis TV available now, with plenty of competitive TV matches as well as the Dundee-Tony Charles match from Jackson, TN complete with Lance hyping how they had to show this wonderful technical match from a house show. It's very good, maybe a tad disappointing because the finish was in Dundee music videos for years and really cool, intricate stuff, while the rest of the match isn't as fancy.

[JerryvonKramer]

As I mentioned briefly before, I have a PhD in English lit, and, as such, I'm absolutely fascinated with analytical approaches, aesthetics, critical theory and so on.

 

I have my own little forum (attached to my site) which is closed to the public, but on which there are about 30 core posters, non of whom are wrestling fans. I only mention this because a couple of weeks back I made a long post there in which I described the DVDR 80s project approach. It has led to a 5-page thread of very very very long posts discussing the merits and drawbacks of this approach - with me, the objectivist, advocating the approach and a number of people who abide by relativism attacking it. I don't think the discussion itself would be of particular interest to anyone here, but perhaps my opening post might be.

 

I've tried to edit this down as much as I can. Please bear in mind the "audience" for this post are like 100% non-wrestling people. I mean most of them couldn't name 5 wrestlers, so to them the description would be pretty accurate -- take it as a compliment!

 

Now believe it or not, the following is directly relevant to the ongoing aesthetics/ value judgements debates that we routinely have here.

 

Ok, so currently my geek cycle is smack bang in the middle of a big wrestling period (it was games last month, music the month before that). It's amazing how full on these are now. I kinda like my sick levels of obsession these days. Not that I really have the time, but anyway.

 

So I've come across a group of super-duper hardcore wrestling nerds. I mean think of the most extreme possible wrestling nerd and multiply that muthafucker by five or even ten times. Their message group is this:

 

http://deathvalleydriver.com/

 

A lot of these people have been tape traders for decades. Basically, if footage exists of a given match, they can get it. So the guys at DVDR have set themselves the almighty task of putting together definitive sets to bring certain unappreciated things to light for the discerning fan: the old territories of the 1980s, Japanese wrestling, Lucha Libre (Mexican) even.

 

When these guys say they make "definitive" sets, they MEAN it. They review absolutely everything. Like any and all footage - all TV, all handheld footage, all known events. Like ALL of it. They have a committee of 4 people who select the highlights of that and put it on the final set. These sets are typically between 40 and 60 hours long, but they'll watch 100s and 100s of hours to make the initial selection. This process takes about a year.

 

Then, the small band of dedicated hardcore nerds from that site (and 1 or 2 others) will each buy these sets -- and they'll have a 4-month review period in which to watch them in their entirety.

 

THEN, each of them has to complete a secret ballot of their top 150 matches, plus I think their top 5 workers from the sets.

 

Then, a mathematician who posts there, collates all of the stats and does various calcuations, working out standard deviation and all sorts of stuff, to work out the definitive top 150 matches from that set.

 

These calculations are quite hardcore, some examples:

 

http://sites.google.com/site/chrisharringt...idsouth_results

 

http://sites.google.com/site/chrisharringt...new-japan-dvdvr

 

Here is the voting model explained: http://sites.google.com/site/chrisharringt...?attredirects=1

 

I think this is the point where geekery becomes so extreme and so OTT that it crosses the line from being sad to being actively admirable. That's right, I admire the dedication of these guys.

 

Why have I told you all of this?

 

Well, this model of assessment is pretty much nearing the pinnacle of what I'd consider to be a perfect model of aesthetics.

 

1. Since every person rating is both a super-nerd and has seen a very good portion of the material required, that basically eliminates the ignorance factor. No one can say they haven't seen X, because it is required viewing even to take part in the ballot

 

2. This is complete as complete can be. There are no acts or works that time left behind - because the viewing committee watched EVERYTHING. That means, if there is something of value, they'd have unearthed it and put it on the set. Part of the very motivation of making them was to unearth slept on classics and hidden gems. Cream will rise eventually.

 

3. Since the eventual list is decided by a group of people 50 strong, that eradicates "eccentric" personal opinions or tastes. That's about as objective a measuring bar as you can get. YOU might think match X is the best of all time, but the 49 other experts watching this ranked it 68. Your view is an outlier. You've gone against critical consensus.

 

This is, in my view, amazingly watertight and what I'd love to see in every field.

 

Subjectivity is still part of each person's experience, but in the end we get an objective view of what is great and what is not.

 

So - Steve, Crowls, Adam - any objections?

 

Like I said, the ensuring debate is 1000s and 1000s of words long and runs over many pages, but I still basically hold that the 80s DVDR method is as close to perfection as I can think of.

 

I'll just include some snippets from some of my own follow-up posts here where I'm specifically talking about the 80s DVDR rating system:

 

So let me get this right.

 

The committee spend 100s of hours exhaustively seeing ALL available material, no stones left unturned, no gaps.

 

They sift out all of the shit and then hand the ratable stuff over to the community.

 

The community then individually rate that and it all gets collated and calculated.

 

Out of interest, what in that process is "not of worth" to you?

 

Because to my eyes, it's really fucking thorough, really fucking academic, really fucking worthwhile.

 

Ignore the fact that it's wrestling for a second, just look at the methodology.

 

What method is BETTER than that? NOT being completist in the first instance? Leaving stones turned up? Ensuring you still have gaps? Giving it to just one expert rather than a community of experts?

 

Here's the thing - whether you like it or not and even whether it itself knows it or not - "the academy" is founded on these principles. It's founded on them man and the power by which you earn your degree rests on its sanctity.

 

What are the alternatives that give us a system of greater worth?

1. People in the know who've done all their homework rate X

2. Therefore X, whichever way you look at it, is really very good

3. Therefore if random clown Y thinks X is not good, he can be dismissed as someone not "in the know"

 

This only gets interesting if random clown Y is "in the know" and 90%+ in-line with the consensus "in the know" view. Then it becomes an interesting opinion worth bearing in mind.

 

If random clown Y ends up winning a lot of people over, then maybe some sort of counter-orthodoxy can get going and you have a real dichotomy on your hands and you have to make up your mind which is more persuasive.

I think that's the point the thread just explodes and we don't really talk about the DVDR 80s project system specifically again after that.

[goodhelmet]

I think you missed 2 things...

 

1. It really is just an excuse for a bunch of wrestling nerds to watch wrestling. Giving it a purpose is the rationale.

 

2. We do leave stones unturned and there are matches left on the table that people bitch and moan about. Thankfully, we account for this with the idea of an errata set that will include leftovers.

[Ditch]

And the '80s crew is open to suggestions from people who are not quite as hardcore (ie. me)