Comparing men and women as wrestlers

[jdw]

The GOAT Tennis player would have to be separate for men and women because there is no way to compare Roger Federer with the Williams sisters (for example).

This is perhaps true on some level, but:

 

Martina > Roger

 

And it's not even close.

 

Yes, we know what would happen if you put them on the court at the same time at their peak against each other. But that's not relevant to the discussion:

 

We're not putting Aja in the same ring as Bret Hart and Misawa and Kawada.

 

But then again, we never had Hart in the same ring with Kawada or Santo or Casas or Dandy or Kobashi or Liger or Hansen. Yet Will can/does/will make a comparision between the skills of those male wrestlers based on...

 

Watching them and judging their work.

 

Right?

 

John

[jdw]

I don't think it's sexist to insist on a SPLIT between men and women for the purposes of a GOAT conversation. What can be achieved by comparing Aja Kong to the likes of Flair and Jumbo? How are they comparable? How could you justify ranking one above the other without getting involved in complex questions of gender politics? Aja Kong vs Bull Nakano is a proper debate. Aja Kong vs. Ric Flair is just nonsense.

So how do we compare Jumbo vs Flair?

 

I guess their matches against each other, but they kind of stop after a certain point so we don't really get to see how they'd look against each other in 1990 & 1991.

 

Against common opponents? If we slow down and think about it, there aren't a lot of great common opponent matches to study. There are some, they are worthwhile in some degree, but they really don't give is the whole picture of either Flair or Jumbo.

 

What we generally have to do is compare their work against a variety of workers (and types of workers) over a period of time an mentally analyze them.

 

This is actually *exactly* the same thing we can do with Aja.

 

Aja vs Hotta is comparable in type to what opponets of Flair and Jumbo? How does the work compare.

 

Aja vs Kansai is comparable in type to what opponets of Flair and Jumbo? How does the work compare.

 

Aja vs Toyota is comparable in type to what opponets of Flair and Jumbo? How does the work compare.

 

Aja vs Bull is comparable in type to what opponets of Flair and Jumbo? How does the work compare.

 

There are Aja matches against other lower ranked wrestlers that are useful to comp with lower ranked opponents of Flair and Jumbo.

 

This isn't complicated stuff. It's what we *already* do.

 

John

[jdw]

Just started a thread.

I think that list already exists to a degree:

 

The stuff that's made the Yearbook.

 

John

[Matt D]

Well, I don't think those awards should be separate. I think it's archaic and a relic from an era where women were seen as inferior to men. I hate making assumptions, but it's hard not to see "I have no interest in watching women wrestle" as not being chauvinist.

It's largely because there are fewer quality roles for Women. If they weren't split, you'd have men dominate the nominations.

 

Don't think so?

 

Sample the last 20 years of Best Picture nominees. Split them into categories by Man Is The Lead, Woman Is The Lead, Tweener. Even the Tweener part is tricky, because as much as there's Johnny & June in I Walk The Line, it is more about Johnny than June. It just happens to have a strong woman role. You might even need to have Tweener Lean Man, Tweener Lean Woman and True Tweener.

 

Why is this the case?

 

As truly compelling as June's life is relative to Johnny's (and it's arguable even more compelling), Men for the most part Write / Direct / Produce / Greenlight movies. Even major indy houses are... The House Of Weinstein.

 

It kind of sucks that they're split. But I'd rather see 5 women get the nod than 1. Or worse, they expand the field to 10 and 7 end up men on average, and 3 women.

 

It sucks, but it's the reality of US movie making.

 

John

 

I don't want to do it right now, but if you were to look not at the best Picture nominees, but the best Actress Nominees and see they are Man is the Lead, Woman is the Lead, Tweener.

 

Then...

 

I had an argument in there but it fell apart. But do that anyway! or something.

[jdw]

I suspect you'd find that a large majority of Best Actress Nominees over the past 20 years come from movies where the Woman Is The Lead. A smaller % would be tweeners (and depending on how we shade them), and still fewer Man Is The Lead.

 

By large majority, I suspect the split would be 67% / 20% / 13% at worst.

 

20 year is a bit of a pain in the ass, but just as a starter look at the last 5 years:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academy_Award_for_Best_Actress

 

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo might be the only one with a Male Lead... and perhaps some would call it Tweener Leans Male.

 

But beyond that, it's a little surprising how few Tweener movies there are in the last five years. Blue Valentine. Doubt. The Last Station... maybe... though that leans more to Helen. An Education really is Mulligan's. Rabbit Hole is Kidman's movie, right down to it being her project.

 

Of 25 nominees, 1 has a Male Lead, two are tweener movies... The Last Station in the gray area between Woman Lead and Tweener Leaning Woman, but I think most people would see it as Helen's movie.

 

John

[Dylan Waco]

There is nothing sexist about abhorring a style or promotion that has let you down multiple times. If that is the argument people are making against watching Joshi I get it. Another argument against it is that it feels tired and worn out to some of us who have been around forever. I feel the same way about Joshi as I feel about All Japan from the 90's - lots of great stuff (okay not THAT much great stuff) but if its been talked and watched to death and if I never saw it again I wouldn't care.

 

Having said that I am obsessed with trying to get things right and for the purposes of a GOAT poll I think it would be ludicrous to split them. Do I think they might get screwed over in the final tally? Possibly and that sucks. But if the process was done right you could at least try and avoid that risk. I said this before but I worry FAR more about Lucha, which has tons of great stuff that people either don't watch or don't get or whatever. To me a guy like El Dandy is such a no brainer top hundred guy that I would have to look with some skepticism at a ballot that didn't include him - I would feel the same way about a ballot that didn't include Hokuto as well to keep this topical

[El-P]

El Dandy is a guy that was pimped pretty hard back during the GOAT poll by the few lucha hardcores, and the big matches that had been posted convinced me he was a great worker in his prime and I actually included him in my list because of it. Fun times.

[Dylan Waco]

Lucha deserves it's own thread if we are going to continue this discussion further, but there are a lot of no brainers, El Dandy was just the first that popped to mind.

 

With Joshi I personally couldn't imagine leaving Aja, Chigusa, Jaguar and Hokuto off my ballot. I also really like Kudo and always have. I'm sure I'm forgetting a few others, though I doubt I'd have more than eight or nine TOPS. I'm still a novice to Lucha so it feels much fresher to me which makes a difference. Still I could see having twelve-fifteen luchadores on my ballot for sure, without even getting into guys who I suspect would have a strong case if I scratched the surface some

[Phil Schneider]

Yes, I think think it would be fair to assume that she could not.

Why?

 

You are kidding right? There isn't a woman athlete alive who can compete on an even level with male athletes in the same sport, especially in something like a combat sport. Cyborg would get smashed by every single male fighter in her weight class at any level. Forget about UFC or Strikeforce, I imagine she would get smacked by guys working outlaw shows in Kentucky.

[Johnny Sorrow]

Yes, I think think it would be fair to assume that she could not.

Why?

 

You are kidding right? There isn't a woman athlete alive who can compete on an even level with male athletes in the same sport, especially in something like a combat sport. Cyborg would get smashed by every single male fighter in her weight class at any level. Forget about UFC or Strikeforce, I imagine she would get smacked by guys working outlaw shows in Kentucky.

 

Combat sports for sure, but what about, say, tennis?

[Gregor]

Combat sports for sure, but what about, say, tennis?

It's been over thirty years, but in the '70s a male tennis player in his 50s handily defeated one of the top female players of the time, and she was only 30. He later lost to another female player. Still, that a middle-aged man could beat a woman who was closer to her prime is decent evidence that men's tennis is (or was in the 1970s) a higher level of play than women's tennis.

[Johnny Sorrow]

I was gonna bring up Bobby Riggs vs. Billie Jean King, but King was the best female player in the world and Riggs was pretty much a journeyman.

[Phil Schneider]

Riggs was also 50 and out of shape.

[goodhelmet]

Wait, does that mean you wouldn't watch a movie with mostly women acting ?

I don't want to watch chick flicks. If those women were doing something I wanted to see then great. The point was it is perfectly acceptable to avoid something that is critically acclaimed. It's like Twilight fans being pissed off aout people not wanting to watch their vampire movie.

 

 

Yeah. You can choose. Just like I've choosen long ago to not watch lucha because I don't get into it. But it's a matter of style, not gender.

Except that in the only women's wrestling worth watching (joshi) the style has as much to do with gender as any other factor.

 

 

I'd be interested in hearing exactly why Will doesn't like to watch women wrestle.

It isn't women wrestling but joshi that I am not digging right now. Sarah Del Ray had a match with Claudio Castagnoli last year that I enjoyed... really good story, good match. It has to do with the individual wrestlers and personal tastes. I was working on the joshi 80s project, watched about ten discs, got quickly tired of the 80s joshi and have had an aversion ever since. I watched tons of New Japan, All Japan, Portland, Texas, Mid South, Memphis and AWA for this project. I want to actively seek out more of these promotions. I never care if I see another AJW match in my life. I wasn't the only one who tapped out on the project either.

 

 

The only way I could see someone not liking joshi is if they didn't care for Japanese wrestling in general or had some kind of psychosexual hang-up about women performing the manly art of professional wrestling. I can understand not liking the Manami Toyota sprint style, but that doesn't warrant writing off the genre as a whole. At its heart, wrestling is about storytelling. There's no reason women should be necessarily inferior at that to men.

It has nothing to do with sexual hang-ups. In fact, Schneider has joked for years now on the air about the creepiness factor of the hardcore joshi fans.

 

 

I'd much rather listen to Sleater-Kinney than Nickelback.

I love Joan Jett.

 

 

In 2000 ARSION & Battlarts ran the P*Mix tournament, which was about mixed matches, and with the exception of your token pervert comedy spot by one guy (hey, it's wrestling, and it's Japan, what do you expect ?), it was pretty straight on and serious, and the girls and the guys worked spots together like it was nothing different. ARSION ran a few of these matches with the Apache sisters too, including working with their father, and it was good and refreshing. No bullshit.

This sounds different and unique enough that I would want to watch this.

[Cross Face Chicken Wing]

For what it's worth, on the rare occasion that I watch Joshi or a women's match from a different promotion, I need to watch it when my wife is out of the house. She cannot stand women's wrestling. Drives her nuts. When I ask her why, she just says it's "weird," "just wrong," or "gross."

[jdw]

I was gonna bring up Bobby Riggs vs. Billie Jean King, but King was the best female player in the world and Riggs was pretty much a journeyman.

Court was #1 in the world in 1973 when Riggs beat here and King beat Riggs.

 

The top womans player would never compete against the top mens players.

 

But that's relevant... how? Womens tennis at a high level has been exceptional for decades, probably always has been. Martina & Chris were every bit as awesome to watch as Borg, Mac and Connors.

 

John

[Gregor]

But that's relevant... how?

It was brought up in response to the "can women wrestle men" sidebar that popped up. It wasn't an argument against watching women's wrestling.

[Jingus]

Cyborg would get smashed by every single male fighter in her weight class at any level. Forget about UFC or Strikeforce, I imagine she would get smacked by guys working outlaw shows in Kentucky.

If you wanna say that she couldn't compete against the top professional male fighters, that's one thing and I don't have a great argument against it. But it's ridiculous to claim that every man would beat her. I still vividly remember attending a jiujitsu class where this tiny little teenage girl was their best fighter, easily running circles around all the guys in the session. MMA isn't just about physical strength; if it was, then the stronger dude would win in every single fight and that's obviously not the case. Remember those early UFCs where Royce was usually the smallest guy in the entire tournament? He still had little problem in beating a ton of guys who were much larger and stronger than him.

 

EDIT: back to the topic at hand, a common complaint I hear about joshi is that people dislike all the screaming. Women tend to have higher and thus more piercing voices than men; and for whatever reason, this trend seems unusually pronounced among Japanese women. So if they simply get an earache every time they try to watch Manami screeching her head off, I do understand that part. Kinda like how I often find Chono's weird muttering during his matches to be rather distracting.

[ohtani's jacket]

The one time I went to a Joshi show the go-go-go style was a million times more fun to watch than the slower, storytelling matches. Those matches don't really resonate when you can't see what they're doing.

[Phil Schneider]

Cyborg would get smashed by every single male fighter in her weight class at any level. Forget about UFC or Strikeforce, I imagine she would get smacked by guys working outlaw shows in Kentucky.

If you wanna say that she couldn't compete against the top professional male fighters, that's one thing and I don't have a great argument against it. But it's ridiculous to claim that every man would beat her. I still vividly remember attending a jiujitsu class where this tiny little teenage girl was their best fighter, easily running circles around all the guys in the session. MMA isn't just about physical strength; if it was, then the stronger dude would win in every single fight and that's obviously not the case. Remember those early UFCs where Royce was usually the smallest guy in the entire tournament? He still had little problem in beating a ton of guys who were much larger and stronger than him.

 

EDIT: back to the topic at hand, a common complaint I hear about joshi is that people dislike all the screaming. Women tend to have higher and thus more piercing voices than men; and for whatever reason, this trend seems unusually pronounced among Japanese women. So if they simply get an earache every time they try to watch Manami screeching her head off, I do understand that part. Kinda like how I often find Chono's weird muttering during his matches to be rather distracting.

 

Give me one example where a female athlete has been able to compete with a professional male athlete at the same sport at any level. Much less a combat sport where the natural advantages of strength and flexibility would be exacerbated. It doesn't happen in something like cycling which is no contact at all, I can't even believe you are arguing this seriously, it is like trying to argue with someone who doesn't believe in evolution

[FLIK]

Yeah. Two examples: there was a Lufisto vs Sabian match in CZW which I found pretty disgusting. Practically every spot Sabian did involved some kind of sexual harassment, to the point of obsessing on the "hey y'all, there's a wimmin in this here ring!" aspect of the match (which oddly didn't happen when Lufisto was in the Cage O' Death match with three male opponents in the same promotion).

Oh, that was simple, half of Sabian's gimmick is that he's a giant pervert. Since that's not the gimmick the rest of the CZW roster had they didn't work their matches with her that way.

 

Except that in the only women's wrestling worth watching (joshi)

Heh, completely disagree with this. There's been tons of great female talent from Mexico, the US & Europe. Modern indy wrestling is full of talented girls, the Moreno sisters smoke most men, i've watched a lot of old school 1980's stuff and women like Lelani Kai, Judy Martin, Velvet McIntyre, Wendi Richter were damn good, etc...

[Dooley]

Cyborg would get smashed by every single male fighter in her weight class at any level. Forget about UFC or Strikeforce, I imagine she would get smacked by guys working outlaw shows in Kentucky.

If you wanna say that she couldn't compete against the top professional male fighters, that's one thing and I don't have a great argument against it. But it's ridiculous to claim that every man would beat her. I still vividly remember attending a jiujitsu class where this tiny little teenage girl was their best fighter, easily running circles around all the guys in the session. MMA isn't just about physical strength; if it was, then the stronger dude would win in every single fight and that's obviously not the case. Remember those early UFCs where Royce was usually the smallest guy in the entire tournament? He still had little problem in beating a ton of guys who were much larger and stronger than him.

 

Your argument is just plain goofy. Cyborg's been destroyed by women, she'd have little to no chance against a properly trained male MMA fighter. If you want to argue she'd smash the loudmouth at the bar, then fine. But beyond that, no.

 

I don't want to watch chick flicks. If those women were doing something I wanted to see then great. The point was it is perfectly acceptable to avoid something that is critically acclaimed. It's like Twilight fans being pissed off aout people not wanting to watch their vampire movie.

This should be the take-away for the entire thread. Personal likes and dislikes are just that. Not liking women's wrestling sometimes just means you don't like women's wrestling. It has nothing to do with "psychosexual hang-ups" or any of the other nonsense flying around this thread.

[Jingus]

Give me one example where a female athlete has been able to compete with a professional male athlete at the same sport at any level.

You know there aren't any, because it never happens. Nobody's willing to even try it. But "competing against a male athlete at the top professional level" isn't what you said. You basically said that no woman can beat any male athlete regardless of their respective levels, period. Which isn't close to true, since different people have vastly different levels of talent, experience, and skill. Would the Williams sisters have any trouble destroying some random guys from a high school tennis club?

 

Oh, that was simple, half of Sabian's gimmick is that he's a giant pervert. Since that's not the gimmick the rest of the CZW roster had they didn't work their matches with her that way.

Ah. I've only seen him work a handful of times, didn't know that.

[NintendoLogic]

This should be the take-away for the entire thread. Personal likes and dislikes are just that. Not liking women's wrestling sometimes just means you don't like women's wrestling. It has nothing to do with "psychosexual hang-ups" or any of the other nonsense flying around this thread.

Just to be clear, what I meant that by that is that joshi encompasses pretty much every style imaginable, so if you can't find at least some stuff that you like, there might be some deeper issues at work.

[jdw]

The one time I went to a Joshi show the go-go-go style was a million times more fun to watch than the slower, storytelling matches. Those matches don't really resonate when you can't see what they're doing.

I've been to several joshi cards. Storytelling was as fun as go-go-go. That was both in smaller buildings and at major arenas. Good workers can get across "what they're doing" in their storytelling matches.

 

John