The Historiography of the Greatest Match Of All Time

[JerryvonKramer]

As a little aside: I basically hated that Shawn vs. Undertaker match from Mania a couple of years back, like I properly hated it, represents everything wrong with wrestling at the moment for me. Just want to confirm what the consensus here is on that.

[Dylan Waco]

Which match? I liked the first of the two a lot, though not as much as it's biggest fans who were touting it as one of the great matches in wrestling history. The second match I enjoyed, but thought Taker's selling is what made the match interesting.

[Ricky Jackson]

Overall, Shawn kind of reminds me of that joke about how Canada could have had British culture, French cuisine, and American technology but ended up with American culture, British cuisine, and French technology.

American culture, yes, but we definitely don't have British cuisine, unless you go out of your way to seek it out (and who the fuck would do that? ) . And what exactly is "French technology"?

[El-P]

Overall, Shawn kind of reminds me of that joke about how Canada could have had British culture, French cuisine, and American technology but ended up with American culture, British cuisine, and French technology.

And what exactly is "French technology"?

 

Minitel.

(sorry, only French people could understand this one, but I garantee you it's funny.)

 

That Canada joke is indeed quite funny by the way. Never heard it before, but it's a nice one.

[ohtani's jacket]

Has Shawn Michaels ever had a match as good as the best Dandy stuff? That's not a very fair comparison for Michaels.

You'd obviously think so because you're a lucha superfan. For me, it boils down to "who would you rather watch." I'd rather listen to a decent metal band than the greatest reggae band of all time.

Sure, but if you had to argue which is better, the metal band or the reggae band, what would you do? I'd rather listen to the 23rd best soul album of 1970 than Black Sabbath, but it would pretty outrageous to claim that Wilson Pickett in Philadelphia is better than Paranoid, and I'm a guy who loves making outrageous claims. Now Wilson Pickett in Philadelphia is a pretty good record, especially if you're a soul collector like me, and I'd just as soon ignore Sabbath and listen to my soul record just like I watch Dandy matches and ignore Shawn's matches, but in the spirit of endless comparisons it's not like comparing Sabbath with a late career Wilson Pickett record. We're not comparing Shawn and say Javier Cruz. Dandy and Michaels is like comparing Stevie Wonder and Sabbath (not a Stevie Wonder fan, but it's musical heavyweights.) I don't really care about objectivity in these articles, but it does require a bit of thought and more consideration than which you'd rather watch/listen to. Dandy tore shit up in 1990. When has Shawn ever torn shit up?

[Jingus]

I've never understood the whole concept that a person's subjective reaction to a work of art is somehow different from, and inferior to, this nebulous idea that you can somehow objectively "judge" an artwork's merits in a quantifiable manner. If you like Artist A better than Artist B, why would you ever think that Artist B is better? I've always personally been of the "if it sounds good, it is good" school of critique. "I liked A more, but B is objectively better" makes no sense to me at all. How are we supposed to be critiquing these things objectively, when everything we think about this stuff is, by definition, our own subjective opinion?

[El-P]

No, everything doesn't come down to subjective opinions. Bret Hart is objectively a better wrestler than Sid. But one can still be more entertained by Sid than by Bret Hart, for various subjective reasons. I know Eric Rohmer is probably a great and important director, but he's not for me and it doesn't interest me much, and I'd rather watch a minor comedy by some minor director simply because I enjoy it more. That won't change the fact that yes, Eric Rohmer is a great director. Just not for me.

[Jingus]

Bret Hart is objectively a better wrestler than Sid.

But how do you prove that? If something is objective, it means there's no room for disagreement or interpretation whatsoever. You have to be able to support your claims with concrete indisputable evidence. It's basically a mathematical process. And if there's even one person who truly believes that Sid is better than Bret (and I'm sure there is), there's really no way you can prove they're wrong. The only hard facts we can look at are how well they drew money, and of course that's always been a rather tricky thing to determine.

[El-P]

Bret Hart is objectively a better wrestler than Sid.

But how do you prove that?

It is what geeks like us have been doing on messageboards for like 15 years now. We're spending our time to try find reasons than X wrestler is better than Y and try to explain why and give evidence.

 

If something is objective, it means there's no room for disagreement or interpretation whatsoever.

Yes, but there are clear answers that can be given by watching tons of footage, analysing, comparing and determining whose better between Sid and Bret at : selling, offense, execution, building a match, bumping, facials etc... Of course there's room for disagrement, especially when the case is not as black & white as this one, but there's a part of objective facts that can just be observed.

 

And if there's even one person who truly believes that Sid is better than Bret (and I'm sure there is), there's really no way you can prove they're wrong.

Of course there is. Not that the guy will admit it, but at some point it's easy to respond to a guy who says Sid was a better wrestler than Bret because the facts are there on video to prove him wrong : execution, selling, offense, bumping, facials, ability to build a match etc etc... These are not totally subjective stuff, there is room for debate, but in the end I defy anyone to come to the conclusion that Bret Hart was a worse pro-wrestler than Sid based on watching their matches. There's just no way to twist it.

 

Of course subjectivity plays a part, and consensus doesn't always mean it's the right one, but it's like anything else. I totally understand Dan's point.

[MJH]

'Objective' is the wrong world, and 'consensus opinion' (the closest I guess we have) is much less definite. James Joyce is/was a better writer than Dan Brown. There's no definite, factual way to prove that, it's not a scientific theory or what-have-you, but... I mean, how do you 'prove' one dissertation is better than another? An essay isn't a general knowledge question where there's only one correct answer.

[ohtani's jacket]

I don't really care about objectivity in these arguments; I think it's more important to understand why you like something. I like soul music more than rock music. I used to like rock music when I was in high school, but in my early 20s I got into funk, soul, jazz, blues, gospel and hip-hop (i.e. black American music.) Because I like these genres I dig a little deeper than musical styles where I only have some general knowledge of artists and albums. Now maybe it would be fun to say "fuck Sabbath, this Johnny Guitar Watson album is fucking amazing", but I don't really like Johnny Guitar Watson because he's better than Black Sabbath. I like Johnny Guitar Watson more than Black Sabbath because I like funk/soul/blues more than rock or metal. But if you really want to get into it -- who's better! Johnny Guitar Watson or Black Sabbath! -- I think it's stupid to use personal taste as a determiner. What makes me the arbiter of who's better? Besides, it's a pretty short argument: Johnny Guitar Watson because I like him more. I just think you need to stretch yourself and challenge yourself a bit if you want to make such arguments. I mean nobody's really forcing anybody to compare Shawn Michaels and El Dandy, but rating Michaels above Dandy because you don't like watching lucha is a bit of a cop out to me. I like watching lucha but that's not the reason why I'd rather Dandy over Michaels. There might be a fair number of luchadores I rate above Michaels because I like lucha so much, but really Dandy is better than Michaels for the same reason that Fujiwara is better than Takada and Tibor Szakacs is better than Marc Rocco or Johnny Saint in my eyes. It's more about my take on greatness than personal likes. I actually think the standards I would apply to artists within the genres I like is the same I would apply to wrestling, so if I like an Ann Peebles or Millie Jackson more than Aretha Franklin or think Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder are overrated it's comparable to the way I compare wrestlers. I'm not really sure wrestling breaks off into genres as distinctly as music does.

 

Don't know that any of that made sense. Sorry for so much name dropping.

[Jingus]

Yes, but there are clear answers that can be given by watching tons of footage, analysing, comparing and determining whose better between Sid and Bret at : selling, offense, execution, building a match, bumping, facials etc... Of course there's room for disagrement, especially when the case is not as black & white as this one, but there's a part of objective facts that can just be observed.

But how do you evaluate all of them "objectively"? Once again, I'm sure there's someone out there who thinks that Sid's selling, offense, execution, building a match, bumping, facials, etc. are all better than Bret's. And we may think that person's ideas are very very strange, but how can you "prove" him wrong? We all use our biased, imperfect brains to evaluate this stuff in the first place. Different people will look at the same thing and see different stuff.

 

'Objective' is the wrong world, and 'consensus opinion' (the closest I guess we have) is much less definite. James Joyce is/was a better writer than Dan Brown. There's no definite, factual way to prove that, it's not a scientific theory or what-have-you, but... I mean, how do you 'prove' one dissertation is better than another? An essay isn't a general knowledge question where there's only one correct answer.

Yeah, I agree with all this. You guys ever notice how I tend to use a lot of first-person qualifiers in my posts? "I think", "it seems to me", "I never understood", so forth and so on. It's because I'm not a big fan of stating opinions as if they were rock-solid scientific facts. "Hydrogen atoms have one proton and one electron" is an objective fact. "Akira Hokuto is a better wrestler than El Gigante" is an unprovable opinion, no matter how large a supermajority of people would agree with it.

 

What makes me the arbiter of who's better?

Nothing. There are no arbiters.

 

I mean nobody's really forcing anybody to compare Shawn Michaels and El Dandy, but rating Michaels above Dandy because you don't like watching lucha is a bit of a cop out to me.

If you don't watch lucha, how else are you supposed to vote? I think I've only seen Dandy's WCW stuff, and he never blew me away there. He was kinda lost in the shuffle of all the luchadores, many of whom I liked a lot better than him.

 

It's more about my take on greatness than personal likes.

Yeah... but each person's take on greatness is also their personal opinion. Even when we try to separate artworks into "what I like" and "what most people whose opinions I trust like the most" (which is really all our concept of "greatness" equals out to), we're still using our own subjective tastes and biases to evaluate where we feel that artwork belongs compared to its other brethren in that medium.

[Ricky Jackson]

Overall, Shawn kind of reminds me of that joke about how Canada could have had British culture, French cuisine, and American technology but ended up with American culture, British cuisine, and French technology.

And what exactly is "French technology"?

 

Minitel.

(sorry, only French people could understand this one, but I garantee you it's funny.)

 

That Canada joke is indeed quite funny by the way. Never heard it before, but it's a nice one.

 

The Minitel is a Videotex online service accessible through the telephone lines, and is considered one of the world's most successful pre-World Wide Web online services. It was launched in France in 1982

Canada: Bell Canada experimented with a Minitel-based system known as AlexTel. The system was technically similar to Minitel, with the exception that the telephone connector was modified to use the Bell System RJ-11 standard connectors. Originally launched experimentally in the Montreal area, "Alex" was then launched in most areas served by Bell Canada (primarily Ontario and Quebec) with offers of a free trial period and terminal. Although branded as a "bilingual" (English and French Canadian) service, the majority of the services offered were the experimental ones originally offered in Quebec and completely Francophone. Retention rates were reportedly close to zero. The service closed down shortly after exiting the experimental stage.

[jdw]

We seem to be arguing two things here.

 

It's quite easy, and in fact perfectly reasonable, to think Shawn > Dandy if you don't like Lucha at all. While they're both "wrestlers", 90s WWF style and 90s Lucha as practiced by Shawn and Dandy are different beasts. All pro wrestling isn't the same, anymore than all sports isn't the same. The sporting equiv would be arguing with someone who hates soccer that the 1999 FA Cup Semifinal Replay was a classic football match. If they hate soccer, you might be able to get a "That Giggs goal was prett cool", but you'd also get from them lots of comments about how they were bored for most of the 120 minutes and they would much rather watch Game 4 of the 1987 NBA Finals. In the end, it's pointless to try to turn their thoughts on soccer: if it doesn't click, it doesn't click and move on.

 

In turn, Bret-Sid are more direct comps. It's like arguing Game 4 of the 1987 NBA Finals with Game 7 of the 2010 Finals. The 2010 Game is one that looks great "on paper", a bit like Sid has that great body... but technically was a pretty awful game that just had a strong ending run. Look, I loved the result because I'm a Lakers Fan... but it was the worst game I've ever seen where I loved the result. About 2:30:00 of awful fingers on the chalkboard stuff. The 1987 Game is better, and if we broke it down like a Bret vs Sid argument, we'd have compelling reasons for it. If the other person in the discussion were a self acclaimed Basketball Hardcore and still clung to claiming that 2010 Game / Sid was better than 1987 Game / Bret, most people reading the thread would think that Sid Fan's opinions aren't of much value in judging basketball games.

 

Now before we go to "It's an opinion and can't be wrong" meme, we all need to admit that's utter bullshit. All of us... every single one of us judges the opinions of others in life on a wide variety of topics and dismiss them as utter shite. Politics? Sports? Movies? Books? Musics? Food? The looks of Women / Men? Stuff your father said to you that you thought was shit?

 

Really the only time we see the "It's an opinion and can't be wrong" meme is when someone doesn't agree with our opinions, or we simply don't like the other person and don't want to cop to the fact that they might be right.

 

Bret-Sid? If someone wants to think Sid is a better worker than Bret, more power to them. But most of us would probably think the person's views on work aren't one we're going to seek out.

 

Shawn-Dandy because the guy doesn't like Lucha? Well, that's hard for a Lucha Lover to take. I like Lucha, probably did before 95% of the posters here. I like Dandy. But I can read that and just get the fact the poster isn't a Lucha Fan, so I won't read him for opinions on Lucha... but his opinions on US vs US comps are ones I'll read to get a feel for. If I run across a Brett-Sid from him, then the US vs US comps aren't ones that have a lot of value for me.

 

We all do this already anyway.

[El-P]

The Minitel is a Videotex online service accessible through the telephone lines, and is considered one of the world's most successful pre-World Wide Web online services. It was launched in France in 1982

Canada: Bell Canada experimented with a Minitel-based system known as AlexTel. The system was technically similar to Minitel, with the exception that the telephone connector was modified to use the Bell System RJ-11 standard connectors. Originally launched experimentally in the Montreal area, "Alex" was then launched in most areas served by Bell Canada (primarily Ontario and Quebec) with offers of a free trial period and terminal. Although branded as a "bilingual" (English and French Canadian) service, the majority of the services offered were the experimental ones originally offered in Quebec and completely Francophone. Retention rates were reportedly close to zero. The service closed down shortly after exiting the experimental stage.

Crap, Canadians do end up with French technology !

Minitel was probably ahead of its time for a while. But it also overstayed its welcome, and France was behind the times as far as Internet goes for a while, so the joke here was that while the US had Internet, we still had the Minitel.

[Jingus]

Now before we go to "It's an opinion and can't be wrong" meme, we all need to admit that's utter bullshit. All of us... every single one of us judges the opinions of others in life on a wide variety of topics and dismiss them as utter shite. Politics? Sports? Movies? Books? Musics? Food? The looks of Women / Men? Stuff your father said to you that you thought was shit?

No, it's not bullshit at all. Can you prove an opinion right, either? How? Every single form of proof offered so far basically boils down to something which is still judged in a subjective manner, somewhere down the line.

 

I can dislike or disagree with someone's opinions, sure. Often and strongly. But the very definition of "opinion" means "not a fact".

[Dylan Waco]

Jingus prove to me that Hawaii exists. I've never been. 100% prove to me it is real. And don't fucking give me some bullshit about maps or other people having visited it either. For all I know that's mass delusion/conspiracy.

[Jingus]

Jingus prove to me that Hawaii exists. I've never been. 100% prove to me it is real. And don't fucking give me some bullshit about maps or other people having visited it either. For all I know that's mass delusion/conspiracy.

That's a horrible example, because you can go there and observe for yourself and receive an indisputable answer. Not remotely the same thing as what we're talking about here. What we're arguing is more akin to proving that mustard tastes better than ketchup.

[Dylan Waco]

In other words you can't prove it and you know it.

[Jingus]

Horseshit. In this case, you're actively refusing the proof of "go and look for yourself, it's right there, ya lazy bastard".

[Dylan Waco]

No I'm not. You aren't man enough to send me a ticket yourself, not that visiting a place you claim to be Hawaii is real proof anyhow.

 

The point here is that arguing over all of this is imbecilic nonsense. Putting a qualifier on every fucking statement you make is absurd and while everyone is entitled to their own opinions, some opinions are pretty stupid.

 

Sticking out your tongue and saying "prove it!" is pretty much the least interesting, engaging and worthwhile thing someone can do on a message board

[Jingus]

No I'm not. You aren't man enough to send me a ticket yourself, not that visiting a place you claim to be Hawaii is real proof anyhow.

 

The point here is that arguing over all of this is imbecilic nonsense. Putting a qualifier on every fucking statement you make is absurd and while everyone is entitled to their own opinions, some opinions are pretty stupid.

 

Sticking out your tongue and saying "prove it!" is pretty much the least interesting, engaging and worthwhile thing someone can do on a message board

You are entirely missing every single point I'm trying to make. I'm talking about the inherent subjectivity of our own mental processes, which is thoroughly proven by neuroscience; and you're basically doing that 3-year-old thing where you keep asking "why?" in response to every answer, until the adult runs away screaming.

[Dylan Waco]

No what I'm saying is that as usual you are shitting up a thread with pedantic nonsense and also as usual you are the first cry like a small infant when someone returns the volley in your direction.

 

This subjectivity argument has been had about twelve thousand times. It's not going anywhere and everyone who posts here and elsewhere is aware of it. It's also a sure fire way to cripple any interesting discussion. Can it.

[Jingus]

No what I'm saying is that as usual you are shitting up a thread with pedantic nonsense and also as usual you are the first cry like a small infant when someone returns the volley in your direction.

Hey, personal insults! Haven't gotten that in a long while from you.

 

This subjectivity argument has been had about twelve thousand times. It's not going anywhere and everyone who posts here and elsewhere is aware of it. It's also a sure fire way to cripple any interesting discussion. Can it.

And once again, a fundamentally childish response: in this case, putting your fingers in your ears and loudly demanding that you can't hear the person who is saying something that you dislike. But yeah, I'll can it, if only to stop your whining about it.

[Dylan Waco]

I don't think that was much of a personal insult, but this will be - you are a fucking moron. Nowhere am I saying that I am ignoring your point or that that I can't hear it or that I dislike it. I'm saying it's something you have beaten into the ground and I'm tired of it shitting up threads so you can make a point that ultimately goes nowhere. Even your "when I was hanging with da boys...." meme is better than this.