Do "Standards change" in wrestling?

[Dylan Waco]

I don't think it's nearly that simple or deliberate, but I do think Dave has adopted a position that allows him to deflect or ignore criticism about these things. I'm not saying that's the sole reason for his position, or even necessarily a conscious reason for it, but in a thread where people are being accused of being defensive, it seems odd to ignore the fact that Dave himself would have great reason to be engaging in defensive reasoning.

[ohtani's jacket]

This will get us off on a tangent, and maybe we should discuss this elsewhere OJ (I don't got to DVDR much), but I've always thought that Sight and Sound types privilege the visual way way too much in their estimation of films. Far more is made of camera angles and framing and so on among that brand of film buffs than other aspects of movies (script, performances) because they want to make it above all else the director's medium.

 

A lot of my favourite films -- not just All About Eve by Mankiewicz, but Sleuth too, Rope, Who's Afriad of Virginia Woolf, Glengarry Glen Ross -- are generally dismissed for being too dialogue heavy and "stagey". Unfairly in my view. I don't know if that's a 1950 vs. 2014 thing, but a "Sight and Sound type" vs. a "literary / drama type".

 

To try to bring this back to wrestling, I don't know if it boils down to much more than the difference between two types of fans in this way. "Athleticism and MOVEZ type" vs. "psychology and storytelling type". But perhaps that is being unfair on Meltzer and co, I dunno.

 

 

 

Film is above all a visual medium. When I was a screenwriting major, it was instilled in us that we had to write visually no matter what type of story we were telling. I watch all sorts of films, but I dislike the "filmed stage play" aesthetic immensely.

 

I don't think we can totally dismiss athleticism. If you were to compare the Shield, for example, with 80s WWF tag wrestling then I think a big difference in the standard of quality would be athleticism, and I suppose moves too. A lot of workers who we think are great at psychology or storytelling were originally lauded for their athleticism. Bihari always likes to say that older lucha fans likely felt the same way about early 80s Casas, Fuerza and Santo that we felt about Mistico, etc. So, athleticism has always played a part, much as it does in real sports. The reason why most 90s wrestling was originally praised was because 90s wrestling ratcheted up the athleticism.

 

I also think a lot of the psychology and storytelling type matches today are wretched because they try to be too cinematic. There's been a big change there and not for the better. But you have to wonder whether they're going in that direction for a reason. Perhaps the dramatic pre-match montage and in-match soliloquies are the new standard.

[goodhelmet]

It is notable that when I made this argument on twitter, both Joe and Rich didn't buy it, with Joe in fact calling it "bullshit" to suggest that Dave Meltzer's views on the subject reflected an individual bias toward certain forms/styles of wrestling. This is important because it suggests that the "standards change" argument is something that they see as universal and global in scope. In other words - if I am following their argument correctly - they are not talking about a change in personal tastes, but in fact a change in some sort of objective or at least consensus based standard for what constitutes good wrestling.

 

 

 

I keep thinking I have the answers but you keep throwing out some loopholes so i am going back to the original post and breaking it down. What is good wrestling to them is limited to the WON sphere of good wrestling. Since the Observer is highly popular, I think the assumption is then it must be the global standard. That is why in the past, PWO has been dismissed as Fetish Fandom or that the DVDVR project is not valid because it doesn't represent the "global" perspective.

 

 

But even the particulars of the spots in question are not what really interests me. Instead I am most interested in the context of the particular spots. Why is Thatcher doing what he is doing? Why is Flamita doing what he is doing? The internal context of a match does NOT change, even if the external context does. Do "modern eyes" really preclude us from understanding the psychology of a match? Do they make it difficult to understand the history or storyline that contributed to the context of the match itself? Is it really impossible, or even extremely difficult, to analyze an older match merely because it's older?

 

 

The age of the match doesn't prevent us from analyzing the match, the experience of the viewer does.

 

 

And going further than that, if it is true that these matches were worked for particular people at particular points in time and thus it is unfair to judge them unless one was a part of that place and time, how far does that window extend? NJPW ran a show last night in Japan that was reviewed by Joe from VOW. I read the review and enjoyed it. But Joe is not Japanese. Is he the target audience? Does that even matter? Going further if I watch the show next week has the window closed? What if I watch it in a year? To take another example, what if a house show is taped by a fan, who shows it to his friends the next day? Those wrestlers certainly weren't working for any cameras, or intending their efforts to be seen by people outside of that building that night. Does that matter?

 

 

 

How much DK-TM did Dave see live or on videotape? If it really was that revolutionary and important to wrestling, why didn't it become the standard way of working since there were other fast, flippy guys who could fly around the time? I am sure there were guys who weren't as sloppy as Sayama. I enjoyed the hell out Wrestlemania 28 and you didn't enjoy watching it live. Did it matter that I told you that the matches were a blast in the arena? No, because you weren't enjoying them while sitting in front of your TV set. We watched the same show from a different perspective at the same time but one doesn't automatically invalidate the other. Knowing how Dave felt in 1983 or how Johnny Sorrow felt watching Muraco when he was 12 is a valuable tool for historical purposes but it doesn't mean it is the only acceptable way of viewing wrestling.

 

 

Are we talking about standards here or tastes? Or is there no difference? To me there is. More later

 

 

I'll retract this if I find your answer later in this thread but what are the standards you think have remained constant from say... 1983 until the present day? I think we have already established that what people want from their wrestling is a matter of taste.

 

 

Well part of the purpose of this thread is to get to the bottom of what people mean when they use the "standards change" argument or when they discuss how to evaluate or look back at past wrestling "through modern eyes." I don't think we all mean the same things. My general point of view is that the standard for what makes a good match doesn't necessarily change just because movesets now are more athletically impressive (or to take another example I don't think bumps have to be bigger now because Foley got chucked off a cage).

 

 

Once again, I'll go back to the experience vs. year argument. The actual year does not matter, the experience of the viewer does. Maybe Meltzer is saying that wrestling fans know too much now and back then, they were stupid and didn't know it was fake and what guys did back then worked for the stupid audience. Since stupid fans back in the 80s thought Brody was awesome, we just have to accept that he was awesome.

 

 

donsem43... I personally think that the whole "Changing Standards/Modern Eyes" argument is just a mask for people who don't want to state what they truly like in wrestling. On Meltzer, I'd respect him if he just said "That's what I thought of that match when I saw it and I either don't have the time or the interest to go back to rewatch it." For others, it's probably fear that they'll get roasted for simply saying, "I love matches with big flashy moves and don't really put much value in context." It just seems like they are trying to make their opinions have more thought behind them.

 

Shit, here i am making long posts and I think you really summed it up right here. I am still going to make a long post.

 

 

-First, he (Meltzer) said he doesn't put a single second of thought into his star ratings after he makes them. He rates the match in the moment, and then never thinks about it again. He doesn't care enough about the ratings to think about going back to change them.

 

 

It shows that he puts no thought into them or even cares to explain why a match is good.

 

 

His second point, was that he would never change a rating anyway, because it's not fair to look at an old match and change what you thought about it "in the moment", to what you think about it out of context years later. He used the Kerry/Flair cage match as his example, of a match he liked "in the moment", and it doesn't really matter if he goes back and doesn't like it now (or likes it more, for that matter), because it only matters if it worked for him in context in 1982. They weren't working a match for 2014 eyes in 1982.

 

What is interesting about this argument is that we often do hear about wrestlers wanting to have a match for the ages or announcers calling a match one for the ages even back then, the same as sports announcers calling a game one for the ages. Nobody wants Meltzer to change his ratings. However, when a work of art from the past doesn't hold up or loses some of its value, nobody is trying to rob him of his memories.

 

 

I agree 1000% with the second point, because I firmly believe in the idea that standard change. In wrestling, in film, in TV, in comedy, in almost any for of entertainment. Shit moves forward and advances. That will never change.

We always talk about certain matches that "don't hold up". The reason some matches don't hold up, is usually because standards have changed. The basics of psychology may not ever change (I would argue this point, but it would derail the thread), but the athletic standards certainly do.

 

 

Athleticism is almost never given as the reason that something doesn't hold up. Moving forward doesn't mean moving upward. Just because something is new or current doesn't mean it is actually better. Are the athletes today better than in the 1980s? Yes. Does it mean the body of work is better. No.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Matt D]

 

This will get us off on a tangent, and maybe we should discuss this elsewhere OJ (I don't got to DVDR much), but I've always thought that Sight and Sound types privilege the visual way way too much in their estimation of films. Far more is made of camera angles and framing and so on among that brand of film buffs than other aspects of movies (script, performances) because they want to make it above all else the director's medium.

 

A lot of my favourite films -- not just All About Eve by Mankiewicz, but Sleuth too, Rope, Who's Afriad of Virginia Woolf, Glengarry Glen Ross -- are generally dismissed for being too dialogue heavy and "stagey". Unfairly in my view. I don't know if that's a 1950 vs. 2014 thing, but a "Sight and Sound type" vs. a "literary / drama type".

 

To try to bring this back to wrestling, I don't know if it boils down to much more than the difference between two types of fans in this way. "Athleticism and MOVEZ type" vs. "psychology and storytelling type". But perhaps that is being unfair on Meltzer and co, I dunno.

 

 

I don't think we can totally dismiss athleticism. If you were to compare the Shield, for example, with 80s WWF tag wrestling then I think a big difference in the standard of quality would be athleticism, and I suppose moves too. A lot of workers who we think are great at psychology or storytelling were originally lauded for their athleticism. Bihari always likes to say that older lucha fans likely felt the same way about early 80s Casas, Fuerza and Santo that we felt about Mistico, etc. So, athleticism has always played a part, much as it does in real sports. The reason why most 90s wrestling was originally praised was because 90s wrestling ratcheted up the athleticism.

 

 

I think this is an important point but not an exclusive one because there are also workers who were originally lauded for their athleticism that we don't look back at as being great with psychology and storytelling.

 

Is it worth looking at whether the opposite was true? No one gave Slaughter credit for bumping like he did in 90-91? That seems like sort of a dead end road though unless people feel otherwise.

[W2BTD]

Every time someone types TM/DK, I think to myself briefly, what do Shane Haste & Mikey Nicholls have to do with this?

 

Anyway, I'm not gonna die on a hill defending dave's mindset because i'm not dave. I *think* I have a good grasp of what he was trying to convey, and I think you (Dylan, as i'm not quoting that wall of text to preserve thread continuity) are misinterpreting him. You seem to think he sees no value in analyzing old footage, and as someone who likes to analyze old footage, you obviously got upset about that, because to you that's shitting all over what you do. That's not what I picked up from his comments. I *think* he meant that it isn't fair to change your thoughts on a match in hindsight, because what you thought in the moment is what matters. I never got the idea from his comments that he "sees limited value at best at exploring old footage".

 

But enough about dave, you can take that up with him.

 

A big problem here is I keep reading people talk about "athletic/MOVEZ" type vs "psychology/selling" type. What does that even mean? This is suggesting that if a match is very athletic with lots of action, it means there is no psychology. Or that a mach with a lot of selling automatically has great psychology. That, of course, is total bullshit. I don't believe pacing or how much groundwork you can shoe horn into a match means a damn thing in terms of psychology & storytelling. It all depends what kind of storytelling YOU enjoy. This is where taste interjects itself.

[W2BTD]

RE: goodhelmet

 

I never, ever said everything is automatically better because it is new or current. I said standards change. These are two completely different thoughts.

 

And athleticism is absolutely a valid reason for something not holding up. I'm actually baffled that anybody could possibly think different.

 

For those who don't think standards change, do you not think that certain matches or shows look dated (not better or worse - dated)? That's because standards change! I'm not even sure how this is being argued.

[Dylan Waco]

What Dave said in that particular instance was one case of a consistent viewpoint he's made for years regarding viewing old footage. in isolation it can be viewed a couple of different ways, but taken as a whole I think it's clear Dave doesn't see the point of watching old footage, at least not in "project" form.

 

I don't think Athletic/highspots v. psychology/storyline is a particularly helpful way of looking at things either, but when the "standards change" crowd keeps talking about athleticism and moves when talking about the changes in standards that's where the conversation is going to end up.

[Dylan Waco]

RE: goodhelmet

 

I never, ever said everything is automatically better because it is new or current. I said standards change. These are two completely different thoughts.

 

And athleticism is absolutely a valid reason for something not holding up. I'm actually baffled that anybody could possibly think different.

 

For those who don't think standards change, do you not think that certain matches or shows look dated (not better or worse - dated)? That's because standards change! I'm not even sure how this is being argued.

 

When you watch entire eras of wrestling and/or wrestling promotions or wrestlers careers it is very rare for the word "dated" to come up. I doubt it has come up more than a handful of times in the whole of the 80's projects threads, maybe not even that many.

 

If someone says they don't think something holds up for reasons of athleticism I wouldn't necessarily argue against them without knowing the particulars. But I would identify it as a personal taste/bias and not indicative of some non-existent universal standard.

[W2BTD]

 

This will get us off on a tangent, and maybe we should discuss this elsewhere OJ (I don't got to DVDR much), but I've always thought that Sight and Sound types privilege the visual way way too much in their estimation of films. Far more is made of camera angles and framing and so on among that brand of film buffs than other aspects of movies (script, performances) because they want to make it above all else the director's medium.

 

A lot of my favourite films -- not just All About Eve by Mankiewicz, but Sleuth too, Rope, Who's Afriad of Virginia Woolf, Glengarry Glen Ross -- are generally dismissed for being too dialogue heavy and "stagey". Unfairly in my view. I don't know if that's a 1950 vs. 2014 thing, but a "Sight and Sound type" vs. a "literary / drama type".

 

To try to bring this back to wrestling, I don't know if it boils down to much more than the difference between two types of fans in this way. "Athleticism and MOVEZ type" vs. "psychology and storytelling type". But perhaps that is being unfair on Meltzer and co, I dunno.

 

 

 

Film is above all a visual medium. When I was a screenwriting major, it was instilled in us that we had to write visually no matter what type of story we were telling. I watch all sorts of films, but I dislike the "filmed stage play" aesthetic immensely.

 

I don't think we can totally dismiss athleticism. If you were to compare the Shield, for example, with 80s WWF tag wrestling then I think a big difference in the standard of quality would be athleticism, and I suppose moves too. A lot of workers who we think are great at psychology or storytelling were originally lauded for their athleticism. Bihari always likes to say that older lucha fans likely felt the same way about early 80s Casas, Fuerza and Santo that we felt about Mistico, etc. So, athleticism has always played a part, much as it does in real sports. The reason why most 90s wrestling was originally praised was because 90s wrestling ratcheted up the athleticism.

 

I also think a lot of the psychology and storytelling type matches today are wretched because they try to be too cinematic. There's been a big change there and not for the better. But you have to wonder whether they're going in that direction for a reason. Perhaps the dramatic pre-match montage and in-match soliloquies are the new standard.

 

 

Great post, and I agree that dismissing athleticism is silly. That aspect is never going backwards. Being a better athlete doesn't make you a better wrestler. That's absurd. But it sure as hell gives you an enormous advantage over the shitty athlete. That can not be denied.

 

And I completely agree with the idea of matches these days being way too cinematic. It's a drum I bang constantly on the podcast, but I use the word "theatrical". The Cena/Wyatt stuff, which I think is some of the worst shit to come down the pike in many years, is a great example of this. Same for Bryan/Kane, which isn't far behind.

 

EDIT - In fact, I would argue the theatrical/cinematic style of storytelling is a GREAT example of standard changing, but for the worse. It goes both ways.

[Matt D]

It would be so amazingly unproductive for me to pull the "athleticism is a crutch" card right now.

[Dylan Waco]

Answering Will:

 

"I'll retract this if I find your answer later in this thread but what are the standards you think have remained constant from say... 1983 until the present day? I think we have already established that what people want from their wrestling is a matter of taste."

 

The general standard of what I consider a good match is pretty close to universal. At bare minimum it has to have solid presentation, building of heat, milking of big moments. How these things are done may change from era to era or promotion to promotion, but that is skeleton of what I look for whether I am watching something from 1948 or 2008

[Matt D]

We did do a long note about "what is good wrestling?"

[Dylan Waco]

I don't see any reason why athleticism would be an inherent advantage, beyond a certain baseline one needs to not look completely ridiculous (i.e. ability to run the ropes). Athleticism can and does often help matches, but I don't think better athletes are necessarily more likely to be better wrestlers. And some of my favorite wrestlers were/are outstanding athletes

[goodhelmet]

RE: goodhelmet

 

I never, ever said everything is automatically better because it is new or current. I said standards change. These are two completely different thoughts.

 

For those who don't think standards change, do you not think that certain matches or shows look dated (not better or worse - dated)? That's because standards change! I'm not even sure how this is being argued.

 

The presentation has nothing to do with the star rating of the match or the worth of the match. Every match I watch looks fucking old. I would argue that even the WWE's current product looks dated because they haven't done anything since the Attitude Era to reinvent themselves from a presentation standpoint.

 

 

And athleticism is absolutely a valid reason for something not holding up. I'm actually baffled that anybody could possibly think different.

 

There ins't one thing I have seen Tanahashi or Davey Richards or Adam Cole do that a prime Brian Pillman or Jushin Liger or young Fujinami couldn't execute. Yet, I love the latter and can't watch the former.

[Matt D]

And sometimes because you can do things doesn't mean you should or that it leads to the best narrative choices.

[goodhelmet]

Re-reading Dylan's posts... wait, what.... do we have to define presentation now? Dylan says it needs solid presentation and I just said presentation has nothing to do with the star rating or worth of a match.

[Dylan Waco]

By presentation I mean that there has to be some sort of structure that you can at least follow which makes sense for the promotion in question.

[DR Ackermann]

I think that what matters the most in wrestling, at least to me, is meaning. Things need to have meaning. Selling makes things mean something. If Davey Richards suplexes someone and himself over the top rope and to the floor and then gets right back up then it didn't meany anything. It had no impact. Some arbitrary move later on causes the finish. Why was that move a bigger deal? You can't suddenly assign things meaning in a vacuum. The Attitude Adjustment means something because we've seen that it means something. I don't like it as a finisher but if someone kicks out of it, that means something because they way it has been portrayed. The audience believes in it. If you do a suplex over the top rope and get right back up then who cares? It can be an effective spot if you make it one. If not, then whats the point? You're showing no restraint. If a song had no music, just lyrics that just said "life sucks!" over and over for 5 minutes then who cares? If every song just summed up its message like that, then what's the point? Athleticism is good, insane spots are good. But on their own that's all they are. Things have changed so that a piledriver isn't a finish anymore, but if you saw someone get hit with 10 piledrivers and then kick out like its nothing and then run through a bunch of spots 30 years ago like you would with its equivalent today then it would suck just as much as matches like that suck today.

[W2BTD]

 

RE: goodhelmet

 

I never, ever said everything is automatically better because it is new or current. I said standards change. These are two completely different thoughts.

 

For those who don't think standards change, do you not think that certain matches or shows look dated (not better or worse - dated)? That's because standards change! I'm not even sure how this is being argued.

 

The presentation has nothing to do with the star rating of the match or the worth of the match. Every match I watch looks fucking old. I would argue that even the WWE's current product looks dated because they haven't done anything since the Attitude Era to reinvent themselves from a presentation standpoint.

 

 

And athleticism is absolutely a valid reason for something not holding up. I'm actually baffled that anybody could possibly think different.

 

There ins't one thing I have seen Tanahashi or Davey Richards or Adam Cole do that a prime Brian Pillman or Jushin Liger or young Fujinami couldn't execute. Yet, I love the latter and can't watch the former.

 

 

Exactly! People like Liger & Pillman & Fujinami are great examples of changing the athletic standard.

 

Not sure why you guys seem so adverse to better athletic ability enhancing matches. Its a pretty simply concept that has held true since forever.

 

(And again, before we go in circles, more athletic does not = automatically better. But athletic standards most definitely have changed, and will keep changing. And to me, it's foolish to think this doesn't matter.)

[DR Ackermann]

The art is in making things matter, making people care. If you just played every single note on a guitar in one insane 35 second guitar solo then who cares? Its the how, when and why that matter.

[W2BTD]

I also find it interesting that when I have cited style bias in the past in terms of not being able to compare certain wrestlers in any meaningful way, Dylan claims that's a cop out. Yet on this topic, Dylan is the first to toss style bias into the discussion.

 

My stance is actually pretty simple, and has nothing to do with any sort of style bias at all. I think standards change in wrestling, just like they do in any form of entertainment. For some reason, this is being interpreted as me saying things are getting better (when in fact some new standards have clearly made things worse in my view), or that i'm shitting on the past. That to me is where the disconnect lies.

[TravJ1979]

I remember in a past Observer (not sure which one, I think it was during a WrestleMania respective type article) he talked about giving Steamboat/Savage at WM 3 4.5 stars, but said that he must have been wrong because of the how everyone feels about it today. Just thought that was relevant since it was noted Dave says he never second guesses his ratings.

[Dylan Waco]

How is acknowledging style bias as being real - something I have never once denied - the same thing as claiming you can't compare across styles?

 

Your stance has everything to do with bias, and you can't even see it because you are unwilling or unable to acknowledge that your viewpoint on athleticism/moves is not indicative of a universal standard.

[Dylan Waco]

Another point worth making is that one can acknowledge the difference in styles, and also believe that not all styles are created equally.

[W2BTD]

How is acknowledging style bias as being real - something I have never once denied - the same thing as claiming you can't compare across styles?

 

Your stance has everything to do with bias, and you can't even see it because you are unwilling or unable to acknowledge that your viewpoint on athleticism/moves is not indicative of a universal standard.

 

No, it's just that you guys are hyper focusing on the aspect of athleticism.

 

Of course the basics of good wrestling never change. Telling a story, creating emotion, suspending disbelief. But the methods used to accomplish these things change & evolve. That is what you guys are failing to accept. You can talk about PSYCHOLOGY!!111!! all day long, and nobody is even arguing with you. But the methods to skin the psychology cat have evolved & changed over time, with better athleticism being *one* of those things. That also does not always equal more exciting moves, by the way. But it does mean wrestlers capable of doing all sorts of things they couldn't do before.