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PG-13 vs. The World


Dylan Waco

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Terry Funk is the greatest wrestler of all time and these guys had some fucking awesome matches because Terry Funk is the greatest wrestler of all time. Remember what I said about the Birds and Hayes? Well that can be applied to the Funks fifty times over. Dory really was a non-factor in most of their best matches and at times made otherwise good/great matches way worse than they otherwise should have been. When a guy is THAT big a detriment/non-factor I can't seriously argue that the team is an all time great team.

I agree with you Dylan on most stuff, but I'm sure you didn't mean imply that Gordy and Roberts were as much a non factor in Freebird tags as Dory was in Funk brother tags...

 

Dory was the real Robert Gibson. Everyone talks about how great Rick Morton was and kind of write off Gibson as a turnbuckle decoration for the Morton show, but a lot of my favorite RNR tags feature extensive Gibson FIP segments where he's actively a great worker throughout (like the DWBs tag from Mid South, for example) Dory is the epitome of a dude who, in that role, was ok for hot tags and not much else. Consistently the least guy in all their matches while Gibson a lot of times felt on par with Morton.

 

I'm rambling but yeah, while i agree Hayes was great in a ton of situations, Gordy and Roberts were great workers in all of those matches, too. Unlike Dory

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I'm not saying he was a big piece of shit. I was shocked by how much I enjoyed Dory vs Brody as neither are guys I like. Dory shows fire sometimes by association with Terry. Still though, he's a major no factor in most of those early 80s tags, esp the high end ones like the Funks vs Gordy/Hansen. He had a front row seat to the Terry Funk show.

 

Sorry for taking your thread a bit off course, Dylan.

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Not just in the singles match though, but in the one where Stan Hansen is outside and Terry gets knocked out for about 15 minutes following a lariat. Dory perhaps brings it even more in that match than he did in the singles match. It's Brody and Snuka I believe. I was HATING Dory on Disc 1, but he turned it round with those couple of matches. Sure, he's still not Mr. Charisma or anything, but at least he can show guts and passion. I don't think the performance in the tag match there was just because of Terry, that would sell Dory's performance short.

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Yeah I remember he did a pretty good job as the handicap in that match while Terry was knocked out, but if the roles were reversed and Dory was out, it's a given that that section of the match would've been way better IMO,and probably would've finished higher on my ballot (I have it pretty high anyway).

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Jingus, after reading your thoughts, since you are not a fan of Southern Style Wrestling, does that mean you also dislike other heel teams like the MX, PYTs, Freebirds, Brainbuters, etc.? All of them worked shtick and sometimes had entire matches built from stalling, jawing with fans (or manager jawing with fans), cheating, cutting off the ring.

I haven't seen enough of the PYTs to comment on them, but on the others: there's a sliding scale for me here. Those tactics you mentioned at the end, I don't have a problem with all of 'em. My problem comes when a match grinds to a halt in order for them to do their schtick. A heel talking shit while he's beating up the face: fine. A heel sliding out of the ring to go grab the mike and talk shit while everyone else just stands there: not so fine. I want the action to continue during the gaga, not for them to be two separate sections. Hiding a foreign object and continually using it is okay; but doing that bit where you play hide-and-seek with a chain for five minutes while the heel moves it around and the ref keeps searching for it, that one makes me sigh. Cutting off the ring shouldn't be named in the same list with stalling, because they've got nothing to do with each other. One is wrestling action, the other is not.

 

And even then, I'm okay with some exceptions. If Tracy Smothers stops a match to do a dance-off, that usually entertains me. As mentioned once before, I'm completely amused by the sort of tomfoolery that you get in a Sakura Hirota match. So this isn't a consistent "stop that talking, all talking bad, all workrate good, bow down at the feet of Davey Richards!" sort of it's-still-real-to-me-dammit smarkitude. It's just that, in general, I'd rather for them to actually be making physical contact and wrestling rather than doing almost anything else. When someone stops the match and stalls, my instant reaction is "get on with it!" and that's not even stopping to think about it, it's my genuine feeling upon seeing this sort of thing.

 

It might just be familiarity breeding contempt, with me having seen these same southern spots so many goddamn times that they've entirely lost their effect on me. Like, in this PG13 vs Spike/Mikey match I'm watching now. Jamie grabs the mic and says to some lady in the front row: "I was gonna tell you a joke so funny, it'd knock your titties off... but I see you already heard it!" I've heard that lousy line a thousand times, and repetition does not make it funnier. Meanwhile, I haven't seen the comedy spots from Hirota or Cabana or most other non-mainstream types on a billion different occasions, so their stuff is newer and fresher to me. Maybe if I'd seen their stuff as many times as I've seen the southern spots, done as badly as I've seen many of these southern spots done, then it would be a different story.

 

Same thing with watching older PG-13 matches; you see, I've watched Jamie and Wolfie wrestle more times live in person than I have seen them on tape. In those live matches, they're middle-aged and pudgy and barely putting forth any effort much of the time. So I probably associate any mention of that team (in a subconscious fashion, not deliberately) with my own memories of these fat older guys half-assing it, rather than their glory days of being the rambunctious young troublemakers. Which isn't really their fault, nor mine because I'm not doing it on purpose, but it's still an obstacle to get past when we're talking about this and you're talking about fiery young hellcat JC Ice and I'm picturing fat old toothless Jamie Dundee.

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And also, just thought about this, another problem for me is that some of the old Southern comedy spots just don't make logical sense. Like this one:

 

For instance, this weekend, Austin Aries did the old "wrestler takes a sunset flip.... but staggers.... staggers..... flails arms.... allllllmost dropping... grabs the rope to disallow it, hold till five and have the ref kick your arm and fall back into the sunset" spot, which is such a great spot that always works and gets something little over as something big.

I hate that spot. Never liked it, even when I was just a fan. Hated it even more when I was the referee in question who was kicking the heel's arms. Why the fuck would the referee kick the arms? Any other time a wrestler grabs the ropes, you call for a rope break. This is the only time you ever have a ref physically yanking a wrestler away from the ropes when they've grabbed them. Worse yet, it only happens with the babyface doing the sunset flip, you never see the roles reversed. How does that make any sense at all? It's kind of like the common complaint that nobody ever happens to fall conveniently onto the second rope unless they're in a Rey Mysterio match; except worse, because in this instance you've got a referee apparently breaking the rules he's supposed to enforce. So I've always found it to be a bit insulting to everyone's intelligence.

 

Lots of other similar spots are the same way. Like, I mentioned the one where the babyface somehow convinces the heel to get into a game of leapfrog which ends with the heel flinging himself out of the ring. Or the one where they do a criss-cross running spot, the babyface bails out, and the heel is stuck just doing an endless marathon back and forth. I've never liked spots like that, because it makes the heels look like they're literally retarded. Or those cheating spots which makes a referee look like he must be "the stupidest son of a bitch to ever shit between two legs" (to use an old wrestler-ism), where they have to be so blind and/or dumb to miss the cheating that the audience gets mad at the ref instead of getting mad at the heels. It devalues your characters to make them look so moronic and incompetent. Which is fine, if their gimmick is being a retard; doing this with, say, a comedic masked jobber isn't gonna hurt him. But I've seen those done with guys who are allegedly supposed to be real threats, in title matches which are allegedly supposed to garner real heat; and it completely torpedoes any heel's menace or any referee's authority when they're made to look like fools and geeks.

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I'm sorry, but it boggles my mind that this board is actually discussing the "greatness" of PG-13. What's next? A thread about how Public Enemies were a top ECW tag team?

 

Seriously though, PG13 was a pretty ok team but nowhere the level that is being espoused here.

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Ill get into the meat of jingus post later but i should note that ive seen several wolfie and jamie matches in the last few years that i would call very good largely due to their efforts. I doubt even now that there are20 indy guys i would rather watch. So im not buying the old, fat and lazy stuff.

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I'm sorry, but it boggles my mind that this board is actually discussing the "greatness" of PG-13. What's next? A thread about how Public Enemies were a top ECW tag team?

 

Seriously though, PG13 was a pretty ok team but nowhere the level that is being espoused here.

Quality contribution here
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I'm sorry, but it boggles my mind that this board is actually discussing the "greatness" of PG-13. What's next? A thread about how Public Enemies were a top ECW tag team?

 

Seriously though, PG13 was a pretty ok team but nowhere the level that is being espoused here.

Quality contribution here

 

At work here so I can't get into it further but I'll leave a post later breaking down my opinions of them and the teams they are being compared to.

 

One team being forgotten is Los Gringos, interested to hear others' take on them before I post later.

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I'm sorry, but it boggles my mind that this board is actually discussing the "greatness" of PG-13. What's next? A thread about how Public Enemies were a top ECW tag team?

 

Seriously though, PG13 was a pretty ok team but nowhere the level that is being espoused here.

Quality contribution here

 

At work here so I can't get into it further but I'll leave a post later breaking down my opinions of them and the teams they are being compared to.

 

One team being forgotten is Los Gringos, interested to hear others' take on them before I post later.

 

Yes, it will be interesting, since the "body of work" argument is being used against PG-13, and I'm guessing most of the people in this thread have never seen a Los Gringos Locos match except When Worlds Collide.

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I doubt even now that there are20 indy guys i would rather watch. So im not buying the old, fat and lazy stuff.

PG-13, top 20 tag team of all time.

Jamie Ice and Wolfie D, top 20 indy wrestlers in 2011.;)

 

But seriously, I'm actually enjoying this thread a lot. Keep on coming and argue about the merits of tag teams.

 

From the joshi ranks : Marine Wolves, Crush Gals, Toyota & Yamada, LCO, Oz & Kansai, Oz & Cuty, HamaKINO, Juming Bomb Angels... there are more.

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Yes, it will be interesting, since the "body of work" argument is being used against PG-13, and I'm guessing most of the people in this thread have never seen a Los Gringos Locos match except When Worlds Collide.

Waiting for Dan to tell us how much Los Gringos Locos sucked.

But yeah, most people, including me, haven't seen much of LGL.

BTW, I know Lucha is mainly trio based, but I guess there are tons of tag teams still who could, well, give PG13 a hard time, no ?

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Ill get into the meat of jingus post later but i should note that ive seen several wolfie and jamie matches in the last few years that i would call very good largely due to their efforts. I doubt even now that there are20 indy guys i would rather watch. So im not buying the old, fat and lazy stuff.

I've seen them have perfectly decent matches too, but many more that were boring stall-fests where they barely took any bumps and just in general seemed like they didn't want to be there. Admittedly, many of these were on Tony Falk-promoted shows where they weren't getting paid jack shit, so that might've been a factor. And admittedly, you've looked at matches I thought were boring stall-fests and declared them great, so clearly we're judging from different tastes and standards here. But still, from everything I've seen, PG-13 in big promotions in the 90s put out a hell of a lot more effort than PG-13 in little indies in the 2000s.
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I think in any case, the baseline for "who's better?" arguments should be a comparison of the best efforts, not a comparison of the worst efforts. I don't know anything about PG-13 post-90s so I'll defer to Jingus on that, but it's no more relevant to me than Jumbo's post-hepatitis matches or Flair in the 00s matches are in a GOAT argument.

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Anyway, I'm 100% with you on Demolition sucking, I always thought they sucked hard. I mean what did they ever do? Forearm smash? Double axe-handle. And that was about it.

I'm just a little baffled that you're here, trying to have a conversation with everyone, and using moveset as not just a argument, but as a primary reason to like or dislike a body of work. In 2011. Here. That's all. When I was 9, I thought that Hogan was TERRIBLE because he only punched and bodyslammed people. And then when on the UNREAL History of Professional Wrestling on A&E when Bruno or someone made that exact same comment, I felt so vindicated. Now, I like to think I look at things a little more openly. Moreover, I actually read the back and forths here. They're great. It's a great sight, and that's the last argument I'd make around here, because I'd look like a complete and utter ass in making it.

 

I think in any case, the baseline for "who's better?" arguments should be a comparison of the best efforts, not a comparison of the worst efforts. I don't know anything about PG-13 post-90s so I'll defer to Jingus on that, but it's no more relevant to me than Jumbo's post-hepatitis matches or Flair in the 00s matches are in a GOAT argument.

As for late-career arguments, I think that they can really only help a wrestler/team in a situation like this. What you can do in a match after you can't resort to physical shortcuts says a lot about how good of a wrestler you are. But then I always put a lot more stock in working smart than working hard.

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I think in any case, the baseline for "who's better?" arguments should be a comparison of the best efforts, not a comparison of the worst efforts. I don't know anything about PG-13 post-90s so I'll defer to Jingus on that, but it's no more relevant to me than Jumbo's post-hepatitis matches or Flair in the 00s matches are in a GOAT argument.

Oh sure, naturally someone's highs are more important for a "where would they rank among the best" argument than their lows. Nobody holds those matches with Gigante and JYD against Flair when discussing his GOAT credentials. Although the lows should still be held relevant to some degree, I forget who said this, but it was a great statement: Ultimate Warrior has had a tiny handful of matches that were greater than anything Brad Armstrong has ever done, but nobody in their right mind would claim that Warrior is an overall worker than Armstrong.

 

 

My point about my own experiences was more about the subjective prejudices that we all have. Let's say for the sake of hyperbole that, when you were young, some pervert molested you with a popsicle. That's a fucking bizarre hypothetical example, I know, but bear with me here. In this case, should anyone blame you if you came to hate popsicles after that? You can't eat them, can't stand to look at them, can't even stand to hear the word "popsicle" at all. None of this has changed the fact that popsicles are tasty treats and most people love them; you've got a permanent wall built in your mind against the idea of enjoying these things.

 

That's how it can be when your primary experience with some aspect of wrestling is negative. Let's say you went to some shitty indy shows featuring a bunch of backyarders who constantly did Canadian Destroyers over and over and fucking over again. Match in and match out, there were inevitably a bunch of flip piledrivers, many of them performed badly or sold poorly, and the Canadian Destroyer was always the finish. You'd come to fucking hate the very idea of watching a Petey Williams match after that, wouldn't you? Never mind the guy's own merits, or how good his matches might be. After you've seen that move done several times per show on a weekly basis, you hate it so goddamn much that you never want to witness another one again.

 

Well for me, these Southern comedy and cheap heat spots are the popsicle or the flippy piledriver. I've seen them done SO many times (and often done very, very badly) that I never, ever want to see them again. I don't care how well they're done, or how skilled the performers are who are doing them. I just plain don't want to see that shit, at all, period. It's not something that I intellectualize, it's not a deliberate choice I've made. It's that when I see a guy bailing out in the middle of the match to grab the mic, or a game of hide-the-chain, or any of that kind of action-killing bullshit which stops the match dead in its tracks: I've got an automatic, instinctual, emotional reaction of "oh fucking hell, not this again." I know that some other people love it, I know they don't understand why I don't love it, but none of that changes the fact that I hate it from the bottom of my heart and there's basically nothing that can change that at this point.

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My question to Jingus would be - what wrestling trope hasn't been run into the ground at this point? Hell most effective wrestling psychology is built on consistently repeated spots and themes that have been going on for god knows how long. To me how well something is executed is what is important. I agree that even some good Southern style wrestlers can over rely on stalling/schtick (I've seen some Smothers matches on youtube from the last two years that definitely fall under this category and I LOVE Smothers). And obviously certain people are going to like certain things more than others. But I don't think you can group "every match ending with a Canadian Destroyer" in with tactics that exists primarily to build heat. The difference in degree there is so big in represents a difference in kind.

 

Anyhow I wish I had the link for the PG-13 SAW title win from last year as it was BETTER than I expected if anything and while Loss is basically right about the peak v. peak nature of GOAT debates I think it shows them in a very strong light for a team that is clearly past their physical prime.

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The WWF "heel in peril" thing is a myth. Faces spent no more time of offense than any other promotion.

I'm sorry but that's just not true. WWF ran heel in peril matches FAR more often than any other territory/wrestling company with a serious tag division. Was it a dominant theme for the entire run of the companies history? No. Was it more prevalent their than anywhere else? Yes. Worse yet a lot of the more traditional style tags with FIP segments would end at curfew with the fucking faces being saved by the bell which is just as absurd.

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I would say that sometimes the WWF had extended shine periods for their babyfaces or alternatively shorter heat periods on the face-in-peril than other places but some of that is an illusion due to the shorter match times in general. Some of it was giving the Northeastern fans what they wanted. I don't think it's quite as over the top as some people indicate.

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