Do "Standards change" in wrestling?

[Steenalized]

I've been watching the late 80s Crockett/WCW shows and how they treat the piledriver for Funk's return is very weird. It breaks Flair's neck (because it's on a table and Flair is exhausted?) but Steamboat kicks out at two in Funk's match against him. It's not talked about as a killer move.

[JerryvonKramer]

Ha ha Johnny

 

[fxnj]

 

 

You could argue, it's not being built up properly (which I agree) but the fact that this was commonplace in major wrestling some 20 years ago and now would incite a riot, is evidence that by and large, standards have changed.

 

Of course different crowds react to things differently. That's not the same thing as implying that there is some magic objective standard that changes with time and that makes it "unfair" to give your opinion on older matches, which is what most of the "standards change" talk seems to argue.

 

 

That last part was a strawman and I won't argue or discuss it, I don't think that's at the center of the argument despite people on this board THINKING it's the center of the argument.

 

It's not a strawman given that for it to even be possible for standards to change, there need to be some established standards the first place. For that to be possible, we would need some sort of God-given universal criteria for what makes a good match, instead of it just being people giving opinions based on their own unique subjective criteria.. That is clearly absurd. If the point you're making is more along the lines of "different people like different things" or "different wrestlers do different moves," then why not just say that? The huge argument and seeming misinterpretation makes it obvious "standards change" is a horrible way to describe whatever you're going for.

[ohtani's jacket]

Either way, the reason this got me thinking about this topic is because if progression equals stellar mat work that establishes a match being boring then I want nothing to do with progression. But, truthfully I think a guy like Thatcher proves that wrestling hasn't progressed all that much. It's still about the same ideas and emotions that it was in the 1950s, and the execution can even be quite similar depending on the wrestler.

 

I liked the Busick/Thatcher Beyond Wrestling match for the most part, but I don't see how it relates to 50s wrestling. To me it was completely post-modern. And overly aggressive.

[BillThompson]

 

Either way, the reason this got me thinking about this topic is because if progression equals stellar mat work that establishes a match being boring then I want nothing to do with progression. But, truthfully I think a guy like Thatcher proves that wrestling hasn't progressed all that much. It's still about the same ideas and emotions that it was in the 1950s, and the execution can even be quite similar depending on the wrestler.

 

I liked the Busick/Thatcher Beyond Wrestling match for the most part, but I don't see how it relates to 50s wrestling. To me it was completely post-modern. And overly aggressive.

 

 

It's more aggressive, but the style Thatcher/Busick/Gulak are working is essentially a stripped down modern style that hearkens back to the 1950s. It's not about building up to a big move, or even working over a specific body part, but rather using mat work and wrestling control to work over your opponent, essentially grind him to a finish. In a lot of ways it's very catch-as-catch can on a base level, and when watching a lot of older catch stuff I can very much see the matches this trio of guys are having fitting into that time frame.

[FedEx227]

 

 

 

You could argue, it's not being built up properly (which I agree) but the fact that this was commonplace in major wrestling some 20 years ago and now would incite a riot, is evidence that by and large, standards have changed.

 

Of course different crowds react to things differently. That's not the same thing as implying that there is some magic objective standard that changes with time and that makes it "unfair" to give your opinion on older matches, which is what most of the "standards change" talk seems to argue.

 

 

That last part was a strawman and I won't argue or discuss it, I don't think that's at the center of the argument despite people on this board THINKING it's the center of the argument.

 

It's not a strawman given that for it to even be possible for standards to change, there need to be some established standards the first place. For that to be possible, we would need some sort of God-given universal criteria for what makes a good match, instead of it just being people giving opinions based on their own unique subjective criteria.. That is clearly absurd. If the point you're making is more along the lines of "different people like different things" or "different wrestlers do different moves," then why not just say that? The huge argument and seeming misinterpretation makes it obvious "standards change" is a horrible way to describe whatever you're going for.

 

 

The argument is (as far as I can tell, even though it's went into 15,000 directions) is: does the standard of what constitutes a good wrestling match change/evolve?

 

My point is the basic, barebones standards have not changed, nobody really ever argued that.

 

But... a lot of the delivery methods have indeed changed from 1950 or whatever to the present and thus the overall conclusion is that by and larges standards have changed/evolved.

[ohtani's jacket]

 

 

Either way, the reason this got me thinking about this topic is because if progression equals stellar mat work that establishes a match being boring then I want nothing to do with progression. But, truthfully I think a guy like Thatcher proves that wrestling hasn't progressed all that much. It's still about the same ideas and emotions that it was in the 1950s, and the execution can even be quite similar depending on the wrestler.

 

I liked the Busick/Thatcher Beyond Wrestling match for the most part, but I don't see how it relates to 50s wrestling. To me it was completely post-modern. And overly aggressive.

 

 

It's more aggressive, but the style Thatcher/Busick/Gulak are working is essentially a stripped down modern style that hearkens back to the 1950s. It's not about building up to a big move, or even working over a specific body part, but rather using mat work and wrestling control to work over your opponent, essentially grind him to a finish. In a lot of ways it's very catch-as-catch can on a base level, and when watching a lot of older catch stuff I can very much see the matches this trio of guys are having fitting into that time frame.

 

 

Really, because I just see them borrowing elements from everywhere, not really working from a catch-as-can base. They never really ground that hard in catch. It was more about dressing and undressing holds. These guys were overly aggressive w/ a focus on stiffness and much nastier throws. The influences seemed to be shoot style and British heavyweight workers as opposed to the really great catch workers. The people in the room were really annoying as well. "Please don't tap" may have overtaken "this is awesome" as the worst chant conceivable.

[KrisZ]

The South was different though as piledrivers were "banned" in some states

[fxnj]

 

 

 

 

You could argue, it's not being built up properly (which I agree) but the fact that this was commonplace in major wrestling some 20 years ago and now would incite a riot, is evidence that by and large, standards have changed.

 

Of course different crowds react to things differently. That's not the same thing as implying that there is some magic objective standard that changes with time and that makes it "unfair" to give your opinion on older matches, which is what most of the "standards change" talk seems to argue.

 

 

That last part was a strawman and I won't argue or discuss it, I don't think that's at the center of the argument despite people on this board THINKING it's the center of the argument.

 

It's not a strawman given that for it to even be possible for standards to change, there need to be some established standards the first place. For that to be possible, we would need some sort of God-given universal criteria for what makes a good match, instead of it just being people giving opinions based on their own unique subjective criteria.. That is clearly absurd. If the point you're making is more along the lines of "different people like different things" or "different wrestlers do different moves," then why not just say that? The huge argument and seeming misinterpretation makes it obvious "standards change" is a horrible way to describe whatever you're going for.

 

 

The argument is (as far as I can tell, even though it's went into 15,000 directions) is: does the standard of what constitutes a good wrestling match change/evolve?

 

My point is the basic, barebones standards have not changed, nobody really ever argued that.

 

But... a lot of the delivery methods have indeed changed from 1950 or whatever to the present and thus the overall conclusion is that by and larges standards have changed/evolved.

 

That seems like a non sequitur. Yes, a US match from 1950 will be worked different from one in 2014. Just like how a Japanese match from 2014 will be worked different from a Mexican match from 2014. I'm not seeing how the existence of stylistic variances means that there are some ever-changing objective standards for what makes a good match.

[FedEx227]

In your mind, what are the objective standards?

 

The reason I feel so strongly that standards DO change is I put a lot of stock in crowd reaction and how the crowd reacts to your match. There are non-changing aspects of getting the crowd into your match but as has been stated 20k times throughout this thread what popped a crowd in 1983 doesn't necessarily do so in 2014.

[W2BTD]

If anybody in this thread arguing that standards don't change ever uses the phrase "The (insert match here) match doesn't hold up", prepare to be called out.

 

I'M WATCHING YOU.

[W2BTD]

Big Show is roughly nine billion times more talented in every single way than Andre the Giant and isn't a fraction of the star.

 

Chief Jay Strongbow was a semi main eventer forever in MSG and isn't half as talented as the guys who get cut from developmental before cracking NXT, let alone RAW. He also always looked like absolute shit, the antithesis of tough or athletic by any stretch of the definition.

 

That takes nothing away from Andre or Strongbow. It is not fair to compare them to 2014 standards if they peaked in 1977 or whatever. The standards have changed, a guy like Strongbow couldn't cut it in the same company today beyond TV jobber at best and would certainly never sniff #2 babyface.

 

Los Ben Dejos are a low/mid level indie tag team. A team like Los Ben Dejos or Zero Gravity on a random card in 1979 would blow away crowds with their "death defying" moves and nothing that came after them could possibly follow. In 2014, they are opening match fodder on small indie shows, and cant crack an ROH or PWG lineup.

 

I know this is Bizarro World where Tiger Mask supposedly isn't any good (grab a hold, kid), but there was a reason he was so over in 1982, and it was because he was way ahead of the standards of his day. Same for Dynamite. Neither stack up to guys like Ricochet or Ibushi or Flamita or even people who were never stars like Takuya Sugi (Yoshitsune/El Blazer/etc). And forget the juniors that TM & Dynamite left in the dust, most of whom would have trouble breaking in today. Jimmy Snuka's basic leap off the top rope made him the preeminent high flyer of his day. Snuka coming off the cage is an iconic moment. Now guys do moonsaults and SSP's and all sorts of wacky shit off of the cage, even larger guys like Rikishi & non flyers like Kurt Angle were doing stuff Snuka would never dream of, and that was a decade ago. Snuka's state of the art stuff from 1983 would happen on RAW today, and you'd forget about it a week later. Or by the next match.

 

There is either a massive disconnect in this thread (which is what I think is happening), or I am not being articulate enough. I am open minded to just about any wrestling related debate, and even when I disagree with something I can usually see why people see the other side. On this, I am absolutely baffled that there are really smart people who I have a ton of respect for who are failing to see what I think is something incredibly obvious. We're all just talking in circles now, unfortunately.

[Matt D]

I know this is Bizarro World where Tiger Mask supposedly isn't any good (grab a hold, kid), but there was a reason he was so over in 1982, and it was because he was way ahead of the standards of his day.

 

Ignoring the Andre thing completely: At this point, I'm kind of okay with a "standards are transitory and good wrestling is timeless and not in the very least tied to them." mindset, if it'll make this argument go away?

[Loss]

I also think we're having a discussion about two different things. One side is discussing intent and the other side is discussing outcome. Whether wrestling matches withstand the test of time or not has nothing to do with whether they were created with the intent of withstanding the test of time. They either do or they don't. I agree with Dave and others in the sense that matches are worked for a specific time and place, and they are only trying to get over in that specific time and place. But sometimes, matches intended to get over in a specific time and place still transcend that specific time and place. Those are the great matches. The discovery of those types of matches is what keeps a lot of us excited about wrestling.

 

I don't think it's a grave insult that Tiger Mask matches don't look great in 2014. As is said, they weren't intended to look great in 2014. Neither were Fujinami matches during the same time period, but they still do. I don't care about intent. I care about outcome.

 

I fully admit that when we are discussing great wrestling matches, we are discussing something that is often happenstance rather than something calculated by the wrestlers in the ring. If two matches looked equally great in 1982 and one does now and the other doesn't, I'm more interested in discussing why.

 

So, in short: standards change, yet standards never change. The opposite of one profound truth is another profound truth.

[dawho5]

So the way that standards change is in judging the "language" the wrestlers are using in telling the story, not in the storytelling itself is, I believe, the argument presented.

 

I'm not 100% behind that as I think there are folks out there who judge wrestling by the standards they did in a time period they particularly enjoyed rather than a more modern viewpoint. Like I wrote earlier, I think that there are certainly more ways of looking at a wrestling match now due to the accessibility of many, many different styles with the use of youtube, tape trading, DVD trading, bit torrents, etc. With this access to multiple wrestling styles from around the globe, people will develop different ways of judging the storytelling methods based on what they have watched. Where before, you had limited availability of wrestling that wasn't on TV in your area or actually taking place in your area. So your standards were limited by what you had access to.

 

I think that it just adds more variety to the standards people use, not as much a wholesale change. People will take pieces from different styles that they enjoy and add them to what they already had in place, probably changing some things along the way but staying very similar at the core of it.

 

I also think that you have different levels this question works on. If you look at the most basic level of things, standards are exactly the same as they always were. Does the story the match tells appeal to you emotionally? Then there is the question of what kind of wrestling hits the right notes to do that for you. That is the one that changes over time. And I think that has changed for every one of us as we've watched, rewatched, found new wrestling, whatever it may be. That's why I love PWO, because there are a lot of folks who post here that can eloquently sum up their feelings on wrestling in text form. It's not always something I agree with, but I like seeing how other people view wrestling. I also like reading when people write about matches that really affect them, because you can sometimes see shades of how they view that match in how they write about other matches. So yes, standards change all the time in that respect. They are also very much individual standards also. But without that, places like PWO would be unnecessary. We'd all like the same stuff because "this is the good wrestling."

[Shining Wiz]

I generally agree with Loss in his above comments, but I think the idea that personal tastes change over time also applies on the macro scale. Just as I don't get as excited for Brutus Beefcake matches as I did when I was 8, I don't think a hair cutting male stripper who is a shitty wrestler is going to get a 10 year run in WWE nowadays.

[ohtani's jacket]

 

I know this is Bizarro World where Tiger Mask supposedly isn't any good (grab a hold, kid), but there was a reason he was so over in 1982, and it was because he was way ahead of the standards of his day.

 

Ignoring the Andre thing completely: At this point, I'm kind of okay with a "standards are transitory and good wrestling is timeless and not in the very least tied to them." mindset, if it'll make this argument go away?

 

 

"Standards" to me simply means a measure, norm or model for comparative evaluations. I don't think it necessarily refers to the level of quality, though it can do. I'm not so sure that I agree that good wrestling is timeless. There are fundamental aspects of wrestling that are timeless, but wrestling is so tied up in presentation that you can't escape the fact that it's ever changing. Think about the AAA you've been enjoying. That was a different style from CMLL or the UWA. The fundamentals were similar but the style was markedly different. When AAA got over, the standard for trios wrestling changed. CMLL looked old and obsolete at both the level of the work and the gimmicks. We can come along and cherry pick what we think is good wrestling, but that ignores the reality of what was happening at the time.

[funkdoc]

honestly, W2BTD's arguments here remind me quite a bit of the OSW Review guys when they said "Christian vs. Orton at Over the Limit[?] was 10 times the match [savage-Steamboat] was"

 

and if you look at great wrestling as athletic and fast-paced with cool moves and lots of them, that opinion makes sense. i lean toward the notion that great wrestling is made by certain universal, timeless qualities...and that is also an opinion shared by much of this board. what stands out to me in particular is that emotion seems to be the main quality valued much more highly with this community than with Meltzer & his ilk, and that may be a relevant dividing line in this whole argument. not sure, just throwing ideas out there!

 

EDIT: OJ's post right above has some interesting points that tie into this as well. i'm speaking strictly in terms of those of us who go back to watch old wrestling, reappraise workers, and so on. this whole argument takes a much different tone with this audience vs. the fanbases at the time, obviously...

[BillThompson]

 

 

 

Either way, the reason this got me thinking about this topic is because if progression equals stellar mat work that establishes a match being boring then I want nothing to do with progression. But, truthfully I think a guy like Thatcher proves that wrestling hasn't progressed all that much. It's still about the same ideas and emotions that it was in the 1950s, and the execution can even be quite similar depending on the wrestler.

 

I liked the Busick/Thatcher Beyond Wrestling match for the most part, but I don't see how it relates to 50s wrestling. To me it was completely post-modern. And overly aggressive.

 

 

It's more aggressive, but the style Thatcher/Busick/Gulak are working is essentially a stripped down modern style that hearkens back to the 1950s. It's not about building up to a big move, or even working over a specific body part, but rather using mat work and wrestling control to work over your opponent, essentially grind him to a finish. In a lot of ways it's very catch-as-catch can on a base level, and when watching a lot of older catch stuff I can very much see the matches this trio of guys are having fitting into that time frame.

 

 

Really, because I just see them borrowing elements from everywhere, not really working from a catch-as-can base. They never really ground that hard in catch. It was more about dressing and undressing holds. These guys were overly aggressive w/ a focus on stiffness and much nastier throws. The influences seemed to be shoot style and British heavyweight workers as opposed to the really great catch workers. The people in the room were really annoying as well. "Please don't tap" may have overtaken "this is awesome" as the worst chant conceivable.

 

 

They definitely borrow from a lot of places, but I think the base they work off of is a catch-as-catch can style. The people in the room I can't/won't defend, they are a prime example of smart crowds and why I really don't like the modern wrestling crowd.

 

 

Big Show is roughly nine billion times more talented in every single way than Andre the Giant and isn't a fraction of the star.

 

That Andre comment is pretty hard to ignore, because in every way possible Andre was a more talented wrestler than the Big Show, and that even includes his later period stuff where he can barely move.

[JerryvonKramer]

I can scarcely believe that W2BTD has said that.

[BillThompson]

I should add, I'm not someone who hates the Big Show, and I think he has a lot of talent himself. It's just, no, he's nowhere near as talented as Andre.

[Matt D]

EDIT: Bill replied again while I was typing this

 

To be fair, Big Show is HUGELY talented. Hugely. Look at the Wrestlemania match with Mayweather. It's an amazing performance, one of the best of my lifetime. There isn't one breath that Show takes in that match that's not exactly where it should be. It's not a case where one guy is great and the other sucks.

 

That said, it's still a pretty nutty statement if only for how brazen it was and certainly not a given on any level. Maybe it shows some true colors when someone sees "talent" only as "athletic ability," but even then, Andre had that in spades in the 70s and early 80s. That's still where I'd choose to get the pitchforks out, were I to.

[moazzam23]

It also shouldn't be a given that Andre is better than Show. Over time Show has become every bit as smart a worker as Andre was, plus his ability to take big bumps at his size and age is super impressive. I say Big Show is better but not by a big margin.

[funkdoc]

part of me wonders whether andre deserves more credit for doing what he did with acromegaly, while paul wight had surgery to fix that before he ever got into wrestling. but then, you could argue that it was a choice andre made and etc. etc.

 

70s andre *is* even more amazing to watch when you realize that his condition actually makes you much weaker than normal for your size, i will say...

 

EDIT: shining wiz, i would bring up billy gunn as the 90s-early 00s equivalent to brutus beefcake. don't think there's anyone quite like that today, granted, though maybe you could argue for kane sorta?

[BillThompson]

It also shouldn't be a given that Andre is better than Show. Over time Show has become every bit as smart a worker as Andre was, plus his ability to take big bumps at his size and age is super impressive. I say Big Show is better but not by a big margin.

 

Andre's body of work easily trumps Show's body of work. I'm not trying to diss on Show, and his longevity has been impressive. But, I'd put Andre's peaks above Show's peaks, and I'd still put late Andre over prime Show because they both basically served the same function, Andre just served it better and worked a better style for getting people over.