El Dandy

[Loss]

These comments make me sad.

 

They seriously have no idea.

 

Good to see Pete in the comments fighting the good fight.

[tigerpride]

These comments make me sad.

 

They seriously have no idea.

 

Good to see Pete in the comments fighting the good fight.

Who are you to doubt El Dandy?

[Loss]

That's what I mean. It always comes back to the Bret Hart quote.

 

Anytime El Dandy gets praised, it is assumed that it's a joke.

[soup23]

It is really sad that this is what Dandy has been resorted to. He was always in the wrong environment to really catch on or gain notoriety for US fans and sadly it seems like more and more of hardcore wrestling fans have little patience to go back to 1990 and watch a lucha match even though it was my 1990 MOTY and blows away something like Hogan vs. Warrior when looking at the two matches objectively.

[NintendoLogic]

The sad fact is that most people who don't follow lucha only know Dandy as a jobber in WCW. It's kind of like people who only know Buddy Rose for the Blow Away Diet.

[Loss]

Yeah, and I suppose that's not even unique to El Dandy. La Parka love is often seen as ironic too. It makes me wonder if Satanico not getting a WCW run was a good thing. He's probably one of the 10 or 20 best wrestlers who ever lived, and a lot of fans have never heard of him, but at least he's not perceived as a joke.

[soup23]

I would absolutely say Satanico not being in WCW is a good thing.

 

I would lump Dandy, Parka, and Silver King as the "remember when wcw had 20 luchadors" victims. While the other two are good/great workers, obviously Dandy is the one who suffers the most because of how great he really is all joking aside.

 

I think the Japanese counterpart might be Tenryu as lately he has kind of gotten some jokes for his WM 7 and Clash appearances with the Regis interview being tossed around.

[Gregor]

I dunno if people think La Parka love is ironic. A lot of people remember him as the guy in the awesome skeleton costume who got big pops for bashing everyone with a chair. Even fans with no interest in or knowledge of lucha thought that he should've been pushed harder. El Dandy was just a dumpy guy who looked miserable all of the time and had a goofy name. While WCW's other Mexican wrestlers were doing crazy acrobatic stuff, Mike Tenay was on commentary talking about how Dandy had a good right hand. The guy's finisher (not that anyone would know it, as it almost never finished anyone) was a cradle. You'd actually have to have some knowledge of Mexican wrestling to know that he was way better than WCW made him look.

[Graham Crackers]

La Parka love is often seen as ironic too.

When I was 10 years old La Parka was my second favorite wrestler next to Mankind and many of the former wrestling fans in my age group have fond memories of him. I think the people who ran WCW may have thought that fans' reactions to La Parka were ironic but he was definitely over with a lot of those crowds.

[JerryvonKramer]

Scott Keith seems like a sort of smark dinosaur to me.

[ohtani's jacket]

Bret's El Dandy crack was a great line so I have no problem with it being ironic. I'd also expect this corner of the Internet to have about as much interest or knowledge in Dandy as they do Naoki Sano or anybody else from the yearbooks. Keith is a relic like Angelfire or Tripod.

 

More pertinent were how weak the pimping points were. I don't know who wrote that but it's not exactly balanced.

[Chess Knight]

Gee I wonder if anybody actually bothered to watch the matches he linked to in the post.

[jdw]

He actually linked to quality matches, rather than just random matches that popped up on a youtube search. So it's highly likely that his post is in response to a specific thread that mentioned (or linked to) specific matches that he then went and found.

 

Or he actually loves Dandy and was expressing it.

 

John

[NintendoLogic]

To be fair, putting in the Bret quote at the end the way he did greatly lessened the chances of his argument being taken seriously.

[Bix]

Now that Internet wrestling discussion is so frayed, I doubt it can change too much. As has already been said, when you put together the goofy out of place name, the stylistic issues, being used as a job guy so much, and add the Bret promo, you get...that.

 

Plus you have what WCW presented "Lucha Libre" as. In that context, everyone else, from Silver King to Lizmark Jr, all gave off more of an air of "yeah, I can see how this guy is being misused." Maybe if he had teamed with Silver King a little more prominently he'd be taken more seriously since that's when he looked best in WCW, even if he didn't look like the GOAT candidate he is.

[JerryvonKramer]

Do feel like there's a hard split between, for example, this place and your typical wrestling fan who likes old-school wrestling. This is not a knock on them, but the Place to Be guys and their following kinda represent that view. I don't think many of them are seriously going to sit down at watch 4 hours of prime El Dandy matches to overturn this sort of received opinion.

 

So AWA is boring. Buddy Rose is a fat jobber. Shawn and Bret are the best wrestlers of all time. etc. etc. There's no imperitive there to question or challenge those assumptions by watching footage. You have to expect that, I guess.

[ohtani's jacket]

I'm still confused over who wrote this. Is it a parody or was it sent to Keith by someone? What does "I'm honored that Dave and Bryan were also CC'd on this one" mean?

[Loss]

Do feel like there's a hard split between, for example, this place and your typical wrestling fan who likes old-school wrestling. This is not a knock on them, but the Place to Be guys and their following kinda represent that view. I don't think many of them are seriously going to sit down at watch 4 hours of prime El Dandy matches to overturn this sort of received opinion.

 

So AWA is boring. Buddy Rose is a fat jobber. Shawn and Bret are the best wrestlers of all time. etc. etc. There's no imperitive there to question or challenge those assumptions by watching footage. You have to expect that, I guess.

There is a difference, yes. But sometimes people move from one category to the other. I understand people not being interested in lucha and not being likely to check out a bunch of prime El Dandy. I just wish he wasn't seen as a joke. At the very least, I just wish he was a guy like El Hijo del Santo where most people have a general idea that he is probably great, but just have never taken the time to check it out for themselves. That's better than El Dandy having a reputation of being like Outback Jack or Cheatum the Evil Midget.

 

I'm still confused over who wrote this. Is it a parody or was it sent to Keith by someone? What does "I'm honored that Dave and Bryan were also CC'd on this one" mean?

It seemed like an obvious troll, even if there may have been some truth in it. I was more focused on the comments than the post itself.

[JerryvonKramer]

The thing with this, Loss, is that it sometimes feels like all it would take to change the perception of El Dandy as a joke or Dennis Stamp meme sort of character would be for someone like Mick Foley to come out and say he's an all-time great. THE JIMMY SNUKA SPLASH!!!! The greatest moment in wrestling history pre-1985.

[ohtani's jacket]

If it's a troll then perhaps we can turn this thread into a Dandy thread.

 

Did he really incorporate shoot style into lucha? Is he really the greatest singles match worker of all-time? Were his mat skills several leagues ahead of anyone else at the time? Was he the best at trios? Did he have durable workrate? Is his post-prime stuff any good? Was Santo turning heel the greatest angle and feud ever? All worthwhile questions.

[Loss]

The shoot style question is tough for me to answer because I haven't watched as much 80s UWF as I'd like at this point, and also because I'm not really sure if the matwork he rolled out in title matches was something new or something that just continued in the lucha title match tradition. It seems like it would be an easier question to answer if we had some title matches from the 60s and 70s available. What's your take on that point?

[Tim Cooke]

I believe incorporating shoot style is a Meltzer talking point.

[goc]

There are always people who are going to immediately dismiss anyone that didn't wrestle in WWE or WCW. Or that wrestled there but did nothing of importance, especially relative to their careers elsewhere. Being frustrated about El Dandy not being taken seriously is the kind of "hardcore" vs "casual" fan argument that you'll see on plenty of different discussion boards whether it be gaming, music, movies, comic books, whatever. You can always try to educate people to broaden their horizons but you'll almost always be getting a few out of the crowd instead of a large majority of converts.

 

So I guess to answer your question, in certain circles yes. It will always be seen as ironic. But at the same time, you have to look at the source. I would imagine most people still reading a Scott Keith blog are stuck in the Monday Night War/Attitude Era period and think anything that didn't happen in WWF or WCW between 97-2000 is inferior wrestling.

[NintendoLogic]

I believe incorporating shoot style is a Meltzer talking point.

I heard it from Steve Sims.

[tomk]

As an evangelist of true and good wrestling, I don't worry too much about the great mass of people who will be damned to never see it.

Do less and less missionary work looking for mass conversions.

Instead I try to focus more on immersing myself and better understanding the gospels, and it is through that immersion that I think you have a better chance of creating converts and fighting off false prophets.