ESPN's Grantland

[marrklarr]

There are largely these types of wrestling writers:

 

* Newsletter / primary Wrestling Website writers

 

That's the WON (including Fig-4 now), Torch. You could toss PWSpyware in here since it, and it's predecessor in spirit (Bob.com), has been around long enough.

 

* Company website writers

 

Who gives a shit about these? That goes for any company message boards they have, though perhaps the local indy ones are more interesting because they're not flooded with a mass of people.

 

* Network Sites

 

That would be ones connected to SBNation, Bleacher Report... there's probably another one or two like that I'm missing. Bix and Keith write for some of these. Jon writes for one.

 

* Wrestling Websites & Boards

 

There are loads of these. The genre has evolved over time, with loads coming and loads going. Most of them are ones we'll never hear about or read or give a shit about if we stumble upon. In turn, this place is probably small potatoes compared to some larger websites and boards

 

* Mainstream writers

 

There are hardly any of them. Maybe Mooneyham is still writing, and perhaps some other local papers have guys. Our friend at Grantland is one. Historically they've not been terribly relevant. Shoemaker likely gets a crapload of hits, but how well that lines up with drawing in wrestling fans and keeping them interested... who knows.

 

 

Overall... the first group dominated through 1995/96. Online wrestling discussion took a while in getting going. Through the balance of the Monday Night Wars era, they directly and indirectly continued to dominate even if the majority of people reading "wrestling writers" weren't specifically reading the Torch and WON: they were reading news lifted from the Torch & WON, and maybe half or more of the hardcore thinking was shaped by the old school thinking. It wasn't like there were a ton of people talking about Sid being a great worker: the shaping of things on work, and how angles worked, was still at its core an extension of newsletter writers or "thinking" cultivated in the past by the newsletter writers.

 

If I'd hazzard a guess of when things changed, it was in the area of WCW and ECW dying. Just one promotion. Can't say that the newsletters loved that. It wasn't an era of much new thinking coming out of the newsletters. Not saying they sucked, but it was a stagnant period for the business, and for the newsletters covering now just one thing of note. People online tended to either wander off, or reach out for other things to take a look at. Indy's were moving along, and of course ROH focused a lot of indy attention not unlike ECW the prior direction. People who liked TNA really didn't give a shit if the newsletter didn't like it. Folks looked at older stuff that became more available in the DVD era, etc, etc, etc.

 

I don't know how much the Newsletter / primary Wrestling Website writers drive much of the discussion anymore. Certainly in some ways, like the WON HOF... which is kind of what you'd expect since it's Dave's HOF. But on the rest? I don't think that what Newsletter / primary Wrestling Website writers have massive impact beyond (i) news, and (ii) how a lot of how we look at work was long ago shaped as I said in that prior post.

 

Dylan is far removed from his Torch reading days, and he disagrees with a lot of what Dave, Bruce, Wade and Bryan write. His view on work has probably changed a ton from 1996 when he was reading the sheets, and again from say the turn of the decade when he was getting knee deep in online discussions. What he looks for in terms of good work has likely changed. But that he looks, that he gives it thought beyond simply "I liked it", and that he organizes his thoughts on it... that's stuff that tends to go back to the sheets, and his early days on boards.

 

Anyway, a the best "writing" I see on wrestling now is less on the "writing" side than the "thinking" or "analysis" or "research" side. The quality of wordsmithing is less important than the thought content.

 

* * * * *

 

I don't know if all of that post is terribly coherent.

Nice rundown. Makes sense. I am open to the idea that most of the interesting work going on right now is on "analysis" and "research." (I also agree with putting these words in quotes.) If you could point to some of the best examples of this kind of work, I'd like to have a closer look.

 

Is it fair to say that most of it centers on evaluating ring work? This is a worthy topic, and a lot of good has come from it. I worry that it can be a bit reductive, though. Wrestling is more than just the dance steps of a match. If the best thinkers are spending all their time breaking down match footage frame by frame, will they lose sight of the big picture?

[Bix]

Actually John, WWE.com has been producing excellent content this year, especially for the WWEClassics.com subsite. Zach Linder and others have turned the non storyline content into a total old school wrestling geek site that happens to have all of WWE's resources (I don't mean financial, I mean photos, videos, contacts, etc) at their disposal. I wouldn't throw out official sites just for being official sites.

[jdw]

I'm not sure if most of it centers on work. We tend to be a board that looks at that, but there's probably lots of boards that look at angles and quality of TV, etc. There are other threads/boards that look at history... all sorts of topics.

 

Here are a few from here:

 

Vince McMahon vs. The World

http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?showtopic=11633

 

Basically looking at Vince & Hogan vs The World in the Expansion Era (1984-89). It's business focus is more "conquest" strategy, and doesn't care about work. It's long, with lots of data to wade through... but I thought quite good.

 

 

These two look at alternative champions:

 

If Not Race Then Who?

http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?showtopic=19796

 

If not Backlund who?

http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?showtopic=19792

 

The first one has a lot of good stuff in it, but a Jerry-jdw (with others in it) section in the middle that may drive you nuts. But even that is analysis.

 

I could list a half dozen ones, but others probably should toss up ones they like.

[evilclown]

The most interesting person writing about wrestling right now, bar none, is Steve Yohe. And I wouldn't trust Steve to write an 8th grade English paper. I say that with love. So I agree with John that craft may not be paramount, at least not me.

 

Of course the best of both worlds is the writer who can combine interesting analysis and history with an artistic flair. That would be something special. It happens rarely. I think Mark Kram and Joyce Carol Oates are boxing writers who had it. MMA doesn't have it yet. Neither does pro wrestling. Maybe one day.

[JerryvonKramer]

Actually John, WWE.com has been producing excellent content this year, especially for the WWEClassics.com subsite. Zach Linder and others have turned the non storyline content into a total old school wrestling geek site that happens to have all of WWE's resources (I don't mean financial, I mean photos, videos, contacts, etc) at their disposal. I wouldn't throw out official sites just for being official sites.

I agree with this. Their recent Top 50 lists are a hell of a lot more informed than you typically find. They aren't peddling a set script as regards wrestling history either. I'd point to stuff like including the Valiants in their Top 10 WWE Tag teams, and ranking Mr. Fuji & Professor Tanaka above DX. As well as using the word "wrestling" rather than "sports entertainment". It seems like its own little autonomous entity; I've been pleasantly surprised by it recently.

 

Check out this for example: http://www.wwe.com/classics/classic-lists/top-50-good-guys

 

50. Diamond Dallas Page

49. Rocky Johnson

48. Bob Armstrong

47. Trish Stratus

46. Danny Hodge

45. Tommy Dreamer

44. Pedro Morales

43. Kofi Kingston

42. Ivan Putski

41. Tommy Rich

40. Lex Luger

39. Wahoo McDaniel

38. Eddie Guerrero

37. Antonino Rocca

36. Mr. Wrestling II

35. Jerry "The King" Lawler

34. Tito Santana

33. Verne Gagne

32. Rob Van Dam

31. Chief Jay Strongbow

30. Jack Brisco

29. "Hacksaw" Jim Duggan

28. Bob Backlund

27. Mil Mascaras

26. The Road Warriors

25. Bobo Brazil

24. Shawn Michaels

23. The Crusher & The Bruiser

22. Jimmy Snuka

21. Goldberg

20. Mankind

19. "Macho Man" Randy Savage

18. Magmum TA

17. Ultimate Warrior

16. Jeff Hardy

15. Andre The Giant

14. The Rock n' Roll Express

13. The Junkyard Dog

12. The Undertaker

11. The Von Erichs

10. Rey Mysterio

9. Ricky Steamboat

8. Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson

7. Dusty Rhodes

6. Bret "The Hit Man" Hart

5. Sting

4. John Cena

3. "Stone Cold" Steve Austin

2. Hulk Hogan

1. Bruno Sammartino

[jdw]

Actually John, WWE.com has been producing excellent content this year, especially for the WWEClassics.com subsite. Zach Linder and others have turned the non storyline content into a total old school wrestling geek site that happens to have all of WWE's resources (I don't mean financial, I mean photos, videos, contacts, etc) at their disposal. I wouldn't throw out official sites just for being official sites.

Historically they've been crap. If there's an uptick, that's a positive.

 

That's said, I was less enraptured by the Last Battle of Atlanta than most. "Oral Histories" are hip and hot right now. But that ones was... pretty vacant. When did the feud start? What were the phases of it? How did the cycle away from it and back to it? It was pretty empty of dates. We get the "they were never the same", with no real thought behind why or what happened to them. Ellering and Apter were in half kayfabe mode, and Tommy wasn't exactly giving a lot of depth or insight.

 

I get that people want to be careful about the "personal stuff". But if we compare it with the Oral History of Cheers that Grantland did, those guys were willing to talk about the coke and partying of people who are *living*.

 

It's better than how the WWF use to treat history. There's some cool pics, and 4 clips. But if you're asking whether that's good pro wrestling writing... it isn't. :/ I'd get vastly more out of watching your Slaughter-Shiek comp, and I wouldn't even need to have Slaughter, Shiek, Apter and say Lord Al provide soundbite blurbs.

[jdw]

Two more threads that I think are terrific:

 

Puerto Rico Wrestling

http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?showtopic=19176

 

It's backbone are matches and work/match discussion, but what takes this to a different level than a usual thread along those lines are:

 

* fresh area of discussion

* El Boricua

 

PR isn't an area that has had a lot of match discussion and analysis over the years. It's mostly been limited to, "Holy shit what a BLOODBATH!!!!!" Dylan and the others go beyond that, though of course there is a lot of blood.

 

But not only has there been little match discussion and analysis over the years on the territory, there also have been very little general discussion of the territory other than the old meme of "PR was a hellhole" and stuff of that kind. We're lucky that a local fan has popped up to give us a lot of additional background and storyline and general info on the territory. El Boricua is a rare treat, and we're lucky to have him... and I think future folks looking at PR will be lucky for it as well.

 

WCW's Highway to Hell: 27 months of fucking it up a notch

http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?showtopic=19237

 

Jerome's insane project to watch everything WCW from The Finger Poke of Doom to "Vince & Shane Show Up". He's not trying to write essays about it like Shoemaker would. He's not doing a CRZ-style recap of each show. He'd got his format, he hits all the big things, he hits what's good, he hits what's bad, he hits what is batshit crazy. By feeling his pain, you relive your own pain from having lived through it back at the time. When things like General Rection show up, you go, "Oh fuck... I forgot about the stupidity." Since there was so might dumb ass shit, it's easy to have forgotten most of it. Thanks to Jerome and a host of people following up on the posts, we'll have a nice overview to look back at if we ever want to wade into it. Or... just thank Jerome for doing it so that we don't have to.

[Timbo Slice]

It's funny because considering Grantland's status as the offshoot of ESPN that people are more likely to read because they don't want to read the generic ESPN fluff, Nate Silver's 538 site, which will be presented similarly to Grantland, is going to blow Grantland out of the water for anyone interested in analytics. If there's one thing Silver gets, it's how to present analytical information in a coherent manner no matter the audience, something that I think only Lowe and Jonah Keri get on Grantland. Rany Jazayerli does, too, but he's too infrequent a contributor.

 

This site is very analytical and strives to push forward ideas that aren't so much contrarian as they are outside the box. The biggest talking point from wrestling fans is how if someone has an opposite opinion of something, that he's simply doing it to buck a trend or be contrarian or stir up shit...but that's how analysis works. You're taking a deeper look into something and trying to see it from as many perspectives as you can. I can't even begin to tell you what sites like these and tOA and the older version of the DVDVR boards did for me in how I perceived wrestling, simply because a lot of people decided to look at it differently and made you think about those perspectives. Sure there were assholes who said it was their way or the high way...these are pro wrestling boards we are talking about, after all.

 

It's not so much that Shoemaker is a bad writer. It's that he presents wrestling in an antiquated context with his bullshit "post-modern" gimmick.. I have no doubt that if he wanted to sit down and present wrestling the way he perceives it without having to water it down that he'd be perfectly fine. And the hilarious part is that Simmons would have no problems with it either. They fucking let Triple H sit there and give as candid an interview as you'll ever see on pro wrestling (with bullshit involved because it's Trips) and it was a great read because Shoemaker wasn't trying to spin it with his gimmick. Or Vince gave Trips an earpiece to give to Shoemaker so that he could yell the right questions in Shoemaker's ear. One of the two.

 

Point is that basically everyone on here believes in transparency and can snuff out bullshit pretty easily. They just want to know more about something they're passionate about. The more information there is about anything, the more we can figure out so that we can understand it better. They don't care so much about being right as they do about finding new ways to look at things both already covered and not yet found. And I feel like that sentiment is growing more and more over time.

[jdw]

The most interesting person writing about wrestling right now, bar none, is Steve Yohe. And I wouldn't trust Steve to write an 8th grade English paper. I say that with love. So I agree with John that craft may not be paramount, at least not me.

Yeah, Steve is content over craft to a T. We disagree on all sorts of things. He'll pull something out of left field that sounds nuts, and a good chunk of the time is nuts (like most of what all of us pull out of left field). But there a lot of times where something he said two years ago, sounded goofy at the time, turns out to be pretty damn spot on when you've had more time to ripen it in the brain.

 

I could give two examples of major advancements that he's had, which are just two of many:

 

Fall Guys was like the Old Testament of pro wrestling, with the WON the New Testament. It was sacred holy writ, unassailable except for having some dates wrong perhaps, but even there fewer than most books of that vintage. At some point, Steve started noodling around in his brain that one of the primary sources of it was Toots Mondt, that it shamelessly put over Toots and the Toots Version Of History, and that maybe it was full of shit on that stuff. After giving it a fair amount of thought and thinking there was a germ there, he want to work on it. And more work. And researching. And writing. In the end, it was an epic hammer job that shredded the Toots Version of History.

 

"Toots Mondt writing wrestling history is like the Nazis running the Nuremberg trials."

-Steve Yohe

 

Fall Guys is no longer thought of as the Old Testament of pro wrestling.

 

The second would be Gambling & Pro Wrestling, which is a concept that's been developed enough over the past decade that Jon touched on it in his book. The early days of pro wrestling weren't about making money off of spectator tickets. It was about ripping off / conning / working the gamblers. You find talk of it in 1904 when Gotch and others are ripping off gamblers in the Pacific Northwest, burning out the territory, and the fact that it's a work getting out in the papers (right down to a classic quote of Gotch along the lines of "even if it's fake, I'm still the champ"). You get the gambling, and stuff like the booking of Gotch-Jenkins (even the cities run in) get richer, the turn around with Beel gets does as well, Stecher-Caddock gets deeper, Stecher-Lewis does as well.

 

There's lots of other stuff that Steve, and a lot of other people doing research, have come across and given thought to. It's been pretty cool to watch and read and talk about.

 

 

Of course the best of both worlds is the writer who can combine interesting analysis and history with an artistic flair. That would be something special. It happens rarely. I think Mark Kram and Joyce Carol Oates are boxing writers who had it. MMA doesn't have it yet. Neither does pro wrestling. Maybe one day.

This is true.

[jdw]

Good post, Tim.

[Timbo Slice]

Nate Silver opens 538's new stuff with a bang.

 

This is what I was talking about earlier. Grantland's content won't be able to match up to 538 from an analytical standpoint overall, no matter how much I love Lowe, Keri and Jany.

[Childs]

I love Nate but didn't think that piece was anything special (nor do I think he intended it to be.)

[Timbo Slice]

It's your normal stuff from Nate, but even then, it still resonates well.

[bradhindsight]

Where does one find Mr. Steve Yohe's stuff?

 

The offshoot around good wrestling writers is something I've always been interested in. Is there one place on the internet that houses a majority of them?

[marrklarr]

Here are a few from here:

 

Vince McMahon vs. The World

http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?showtopic=11633

 

Basically looking at Vince & Hogan vs The World in the Expansion Era (1984-89). It's business focus is more "conquest" strategy, and doesn't care about work. It's long, with lots of data to wade through... but I thought quite good.

 

These two look at alternative champions:

 

If Not Race Then Who?

http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?showtopic=19796

 

If not Backlund who?

http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?showtopic=19792

 

The first one has a lot of good stuff in it, but a Jerry-jdw (with others in it) section in the middle that may drive you nuts. But even that is analysis.

 

I could list a half dozen ones, but others probably should toss up ones they like.

These are great. Been wasting a LOT of time at work reading.

 

The most interesting person writing about wrestling right now, bar none, is Steve Yohe. And I wouldn't trust Steve to write an 8th grade English paper. I say that with love.

I've been reading Yohe's biography of Strangler Lewis. I love it, but, yeah, he really needs a proofreader.

[Bix]

http://nypost.com/2013/10/27/true-stories-...-pro-wrestling/

 

This is a thing.

[Childs]

I love where he describes Harley Race as a "local wrestler."

[Zoo Enthusiast]

It's sad that this guy is the semi-"mainstream" wrestling writer.

[jdw]

Boy that book is going to suck.

[rovert]

I heard that this is a Scott Keith-esque book where online work is reproduced. Most of it seems to be drawn from his old Deadspin Dead Wrestler of the Week articles. K. Sawyer Paul got an advanced copy and seemed disappointed/conflicted about the book.

[Cross Face Chicken Wing]

His Dead Wrestler of the Week stuff was actually decent. I'm not buying the book either way, but rehashing his Dead Wrestler of the Week work in book form would be a helluva lot better than writing an entire book in Grantland style.

[Zoo Enthusiast]

I heard that this is a Scott Keith-esque book where online work is reproduced. Most of it seems to be drawn from his old Deadspin Dead Wrestler of the Week articles. K. Sawyer Paul got an advanced copy and seemed disappointed/conflicted about the book.

Pot and kettle, or something.

[Bix]

I heard that this is a Scott Keith-esque book where online work is reproduced. Most of it seems to be drawn from his old Deadspin Dead Wrestler of the Week articles. K. Sawyer Paul got an advanced copy and seemed disappointed/conflicted about the book.

Pro Wrestling Intellectual 2: Even Intellectualer

[S.L.L.]

I heard that this is a Scott Keith-esque book where online work is reproduced. Most of it seems to be drawn from his old Deadspin Dead Wrestler of the Week articles. K. Sawyer Paul got an advanced copy and seemed disappointed/conflicted about the book.

Pro Wrestling Intellectual 2: Even Intellectualer

 

We also would have accepted "Intellectual Harder"...or, on the outside, "Intellectual Boogaloo".

[Timbo Slice]

I'm still in shock that they used Meltzer for one article, it was on MMA, but then they signed Shoemaker to be their regular wrestling columnist.