Commonly used words and phrases that annoy you

[MikeCampbell]

The first time that I remember the proverbial light bulb turning on in my head as far as the idea of booking went, was when I was 11 watching the WWF Tag Title tournament. And I noticed how every match set up another between good guys and bad guys. By the time it was wrapping up, my reaction to watching the Heavenly Bodies vs. 123 Kid/Bob Holly was "I know that Kid and Holly are going to win, even though I want the Bodies to, because Bigelow and Tatanka are already in the finals." I wouldn't be online another 3 or 4 years.

 

All the internet really added were some terms to concepts that I already knew, like selling, juicing, etc.

[Lee Casebolt]

The first time that I remember the proverbial light bulb turning on in my head as far as the idea of booking went, was when I was 11 watching the WWF Tag Title tournament. And I noticed how every match set up another between good guys and bad guys. By the time it was wrapping up, my reaction to watching the Heavenly Bodies vs. 123 Kid/Bob Holly was "I know that Kid and Holly are going to win, even though I want the Bodies to, because Bigelow and Tatanka are already in the finals." I wouldn't be online another 3 or 4 years.

 

All the internet really added were some terms to concepts that I already knew, like selling, juicing, etc.

 

Tournaments were very good for that. Similarly - how long did it take you to realize that, in every two out of three falls match, whoever won the first fall was going to lose the second? Not long, probably. And that's hardly a new phenomenon. I can get you a newspaper article from the 1880s talking about it. (At length, and with as much smug superiority as you'll find anywhere on the internet. That part's not new, either.)

[jdw]

Good points by Mike and Lee.

 

There are levels to understanding pro wrestling.

 

There's the initial one: This is some Fake Shit.

 

That really doesn't take long, if say you've watched people punching each other. Be that in Boxing, or just in real life. Wrestling kind of stood out pretty quickly in that regard, especially in the days when wrestlers worried a lot less about being stiff on their punches.

 

Then you wander into one of the secondary directions:

 

How They Do It

Why They Do It

 

The first are things like guys "catching" the other guy, or the guy getting suplexed "jumping" into it, or the guy getting gorilla pressed exerting his own muscles to press down and "help" maintain the press:

 

 

There are countless things like that that pop out to you if you're paying attention. Eventually you pick up on guys stomping their foot down when punching to get a nice sound that plays to the crowd. Do you pick up on Blading, even without seeing the Blade but figuring out what's going on? Or do you know it's *not* blood caused by the Punch or Posting, and instead roll through your mind the various ways they might be doing it? And on and on.

 

The Why They Do It gets to Booking.

 

If you know it's Fake, then you know the Storylines are Fake (even if you don't know the word Storylines), and you start wondering why shit happens. Why did Orndorff turn on Hogan? So that they could have Matches. Steamboat ate the move on the cement against Muraco, and the ring bell against Savage... it was to set up matches.

 

When the Dream Team held the titles, Good Guy teams challenged for the title. When the Bulldogs held the belts, Bad Guy teams challenged for the title.

 

Etc.

 

John

[JerryvonKramer]

A more succinct way of putting all that is that you know when you see a magic show that it's an illusion, but you don't know how they are pulling off the tricks.

 

This is what I was trying to articulate before. The difference between your 1930s fan knowing that the game is rigged and your 1998 dude on the internet, is that the 1998 dude has had many of the tricks of the trade revealed to him. 1930s guy knows that it is a trick, 1998 guy knows how the trick works.

 

I am still exceptionally skeptical about the extent to which fans back in the day knew "how the trick works" outside of a tiny, tiny handful which does not at all compare to the number post-internet.

[jdw]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hC3o20LgPs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdqrEcUhWNE

 

That was 20/20 back in 1984/85. It never was as popular as 60 Minutes, but it averaged about 14M viewers a week, and probably spiked for a show like that given pro wrestling was semi-hot. Given the lawsuit, it's also likely it got re-run at some point.

 

Anyway, there have been various things like that over the years. That's the most famous, but there have been all sorts of articles.

[Lee Casebolt]

The Fall Guys was published in 1937.

[JerryvonKramer]

Still not really any evidence that there were fans discussing wrestling in the way that we think of hardcore fans (or "the IWC") discussing wrestling. Show me that evidence, and I'll happily concede. I've seen none at all. And I have been looking.

 

I would be interested to know how exactly Meltzer started and who the real pre-cursors to Meltzer were.

[jdw]

On specifics:

 

A more succinct way of putting all that is that you know when you see a magic show that it's an illusion, but you don't know how they are pulling off the tricks.

 

I agree to a point. But with knowing that Pro Wrestling Is Fake, it's more akin to knowing the Magician Didn't Saw The Lady In Half. It really isn't all that important to know how. I mean... a lot of it is obvious in Pro Wrestling: those punches don't land. Those kicks don't land. The heads don't hit the mat on a piledriver, except when it's an accident. :/ But the specific mechanics of how to land a suplex without hurting someone... well... in the 80s it's not like a lot of them looked like they hurt.

 

 

This is what I was trying to articulate before. The difference between your 1930s fan knowing that the game is rigged and your 1998 dude on the internet, is that the 1998 dude has had many of the tricks of the trade revealed to him. 1930s guy knows that it is a trick, 1998 guy knows how the trick works.

 

 

More tricks were exposed in 1998. But really... think about pro wrestling in 1930. How many tricks really needed to be exposed in wrestling? Or even watch some 1950s wrestling with Russ Davis announcing. What tricks aren't there to be seen? :/

 

 

I am still exceptionally skeptical about the extent to which fans back in the day knew "how the trick works" outside of a tiny, tiny handful which does not at all compare to the number post-internet.

 

 

Again, I could pop in Backlund vs Valentine from MSG in 1981... and I'm not sure what deep, hidden secrets I couldn't see?

 

There were things that later became a little more common, like chairshots to the head. Well... guys getting hit *always* looked up, saw the chair, and put their arms up to block the blow... then sold like they took a chair to the head. We invented the term "unprotected chairshot" when idiots stopped doing that. But the process of protecting one's self from a chairshot exposed that it wasn't a really knocking of a guy out with a chair. It's why stuff like Dusty's chair to Big Bubba was a "holy shit" moment: they used a worked chair and Bubba didn't put his arms up. We were so use to protected chair shots that when one wasn't protected, the instinct was "holy shit"... until we watched it again and got that it was a movie-style worked chair.

 

Is it suppose to be a trick on how you apply a chinlock or headlock without hurting the opponent? Kids figured that out on their own. If you were an adult, it looked obvious.

 

More complex things that we talk about now such as "building heat", "shine", "hot tag", "face in peril"? Those are wrestling conventions like movie conventions. Do you really have to know about movie structure to know that movies are some form of storyline? Do you need to know how a Stunt is done in a movie to know it's a Stunt?

 

That's what pro wrestling was like.

[jdw]

The Fall Guys was published in 1937.

 

I got my copy of Fall Guys before I started reading the WON. Ran into it in college, checked it out over the summer and made a photo copy of it on a good copier at my father's office.

[JerryvonKramer]

None of this stuff matters to the argument. What matters is how fans engaged with and talked about wrestling. Were they talking about booking decisions? Were they recognising who was a good wrestler and who was a shitty one based on non-kayfabe criteria such as selling? Did the mythical 1968 smart fan know that Chief Jay Strongbow pretty much sucked?

 

The pre- and post- Meltzer newsletters seem worlds apart to me, worlds apart.

[Lee Casebolt]

I had those conversations as a teenager - the Blue Blazer, Curt Hennig, Ricky Steamboat, and the Rockers were awesome, the Ultimate Warrior and Hulk Hogan and Hacksaw Jim Duggan were terrible. I'd never heard the word "workrate" but it's easy to recognize, as is who makes an opponent look good and who makes them look bad. That was late 80s/early 90s; post-Meltzer, but I never heard the man's name, nor knew there was anything even vaguely like the Observer til I got online in 1996. We talked about the WM 6 main event in terms of Hogan never loses, but he's getting old, so is Warrior supposed to replace him? We were informed solely by what we saw on TV and read in the WWF and Apter magazines. That's just the experience of one kid in a small town in Iowa, but I think this is a pretty standard sort of conversation to have whenever you have fans above a certain minimum level of interest and intelligence.

[Matt D]

Calling spots wasn't real mystery to me as a kid. I had no idea how they could possibly have rehearsed an ENTIRE match. I knew they had to have managed it somehow but it seemed so difficult.

[JerryvonKramer]

The case remains, Lee, if it's as easy as all that, where are the pre-Meltzer newsletters of the 1960s and 70s discussing matches in those terms? Show me and I will believe.

 

The more interesting thing is how and when did the break come? Who was the first to really use insider terminolgy if it's wasn't Meltzer? That's something that I'd like to know about.

[ohtani's jacket]

None of this stuff matters to the argument. What matters is how fans engaged with and talked about wrestling. Were they talking about booking decisions? Were they recognising who was a good wrestler and who was a shitty one based on non-kayfabe criteria such as selling? Did the mythical 1968 smart fan know that Chief Jay Strongbow pretty much sucked?

 

The pre- and post- Meltzer newsletters seem worlds apart to me, worlds apart.

 

You lost me at the mythical 1968 smart fan part. How do you know there weren't smart fans in 1968? Just because you imagine there weren't doesn't mean it's true. I could just as easily convince myself that there were smart fans in 1968 simply by stating so.

[Lee Casebolt]

If you find it more plausible that no one thought of wrestling in analytic terms before they had contact with Dave Meltzer than that people had these conversations but elected not to publish them (except when they did, in the form of various books and newspaper articles), I don't know what to tell you.

[JerryvonKramer]

 

None of this stuff matters to the argument. What matters is how fans engaged with and talked about wrestling. Were they talking about booking decisions? Were they recognising who was a good wrestler and who was a shitty one based on non-kayfabe criteria such as selling? Did the mythical 1968 smart fan know that Chief Jay Strongbow pretty much sucked?

 

The pre- and post- Meltzer newsletters seem worlds apart to me, worlds apart.

 

You lost me at the mythical 1968 smart fan part. How do you know there weren't smart fans in 1968? Just because you imagine there weren't doesn't mean it's true. I could just as easily convince myself that there were smart fans in 1968 simply by stating so.

 

 

Find me the evidence. There is quite a lot of evidence of fans not being smart -- riots, death threats, and so on. 20,000 people at MSG who'd throw a fit if Pedro lost, etc. etc. You find me the evidence to suggest that a significent proportion of them were "smart". The onus is not on me. I'm peddling the line of what is known. The onus is on those people claiming that there were smart fans discussing wrestling like the IWC in 1998 back in the 60s or even the fucking 1930s. They are the one making the claim, it is up to them to prove it.

 

 

 

If you find it more plausible that no one thought of wrestling in analytic terms before they had contact with Dave Meltzer than that people had these conversations but elected not to publish them (except when they did, in the form of various books and newspaper articles), I don't know what to tell you.

 

Newspaper articles such as? Let's see them.

 

I've been reading plenty of newspaper articles from the 60s and 70s recently, and none of them are "analytic". Not in the way that is being suggested, not in the slightest.

[MikeCampbell]

 

Find me the evidence. There is quite a lot of evidence of fans not being smart -- riots, death threats, and so on. 20,000 people at MSG who'd throw a fit if Pedro lost, etc. etc.

Jerry, you make it sound like that sort of stuff is a byprodcut of an era that has long since passed, and that's just not the case. It's not a regular occurance, but that kind of stuff still goes on nowadays. Shane Douglas grabbing Gary Wolfe by the Halo, any of the Dudley Boyz riots in ECW. Concrete and I have told the story on this board before, of Brodie Lee KOing some dipshit who took a swing at him in the parking lot.

[ohtani's jacket]

 

 

None of this stuff matters to the argument. What matters is how fans engaged with and talked about wrestling. Were they talking about booking decisions? Were they recognising who was a good wrestler and who was a shitty one based on non-kayfabe criteria such as selling? Did the mythical 1968 smart fan know that Chief Jay Strongbow pretty much sucked?

 

The pre- and post- Meltzer newsletters seem worlds apart to me, worlds apart.

 

You lost me at the mythical 1968 smart fan part. How do you know there weren't smart fans in 1968? Just because you imagine there weren't doesn't mean it's true. I could just as easily convince myself that there were smart fans in 1968 simply by stating so.

 

 

Find me the evidence. There is quite a lot of evidence of fans not being smart -- riots, death threats, and so on. 20,000 people at MSG who'd throw a fit if Pedro lost, etc. etc. You find me the evidence to suggest that a significent proportion of them were "smart". The onus is not on me. I'm peddling the line of what is known. The onus is on those people claiming that there were smart fans discussing wrestling like the IWC in 1998 back in the 60s or even the fucking 1930s. They are the one making the claim, it is up to them to prove it.

 

If you think that they're a myth then the onus goes right back on you. You've had the argument put to you that the media has always tried to expose pro-wrestling as fake (as far back as the 1870s or before) and that there was very little difference between how people viewed pro-wrestling then and now, i.e. the media thought it was fake, the public thought it was fake, and the fans didn't care. Of those fans, you don't think there were people capable of viewing it as a performance? In the 1960s? Does it really matter if they didn't use the same terminology or that there was no internet? I get your general point that people were unlikely to have been talking about wrestling the same way that we do in the 1930s, but what does it matter if they appreciated it the same way?

[Lee Casebolt]

I'll dig through my archives. Meantime, read The Fall Guys (1937) and Barthes' "The World of Wrestling" (1957).

[Loss]

I keep wanting to make the point about how fans have changed and that hi-jacking wasn't really something that happened in previous eras like it does now. Then I realized that it did. Remember babyface Honky Tonk Man? Or Freebirds vs Dynamic Dudes at Halloween Havoc '89? Or Jeff Jarrett reading that poem? Stepping outside of U.S. wrestling, there was even the late 1987 thing where Sumo Hall fans turned on the angle that led to Vader beating Inoki in three minutes or whatever it was -- not because there was a strong heel involved, but because they rejected the promotional direction. "Boring" chants used to be really common too. Flair would get cheered and Garvin would get booed. Fans would show their support for heels like Cornette and the Horsemen in the front rows of TV tapings. We don't have as much footage from before the 1980s, but I'm sure that sort of thing happened then too.

 

"Match of the Year" and "This is awesome" chants are new, but cheering actual matches of the year and things that were awesome is not new at all.

[MikeCampbell]

Something else I just thought of: Didn't Maeda present his version of UWF, and later Takada present UWFI, as being "real wrestling" with the idea that New Japan and All Japan were "fake wrestling?"

[Lee Casebolt]

I keep wanting to make the point about how fans have changed and that hi-jacking wasn't really something that happened in previous eras like it does now. Then I realized that it did. Remember babyface Honky Tonk Man? Or Freebirds vs Dynamic Dudes at Halloween Havoc '89? Or Jeff Jarrett reading that poem? Stepping outside of U.S. wrestling, there was even the late 1987 thing where Sumo Hall fans turned on the angle that led to Vader beating Inoki in three minutes or whatever it was -- not because there was a strong heel involved, but because they rejected the promotional direction. "Boring" chants used to be really common too. Flair would get cheered and Garvin would get booed. Fans would show their support for heels like Cornette and the Horsemen in the front rows of TV tapings. We don't have as much footage from before the 1980s, but I'm sure that sort of thing happened then too.

 

"Match of the Year" and "This is awesome" chants are new, but cheering actual matches of the year and things that were awesome is not new at all.

 

Or split crowds. I forget which, but at least one of the Flair/Steamboat '89 series had dueling "STEAMBOAT!" "FLAIR!" chants going on.

[ohtani's jacket]

Something else I just thought of: Didn't Maeda present his version of UWF, and later Takada present UWFI, as being "real wrestling" with the idea that New Japan and All Japan were "fake wrestling?"

Sayama also wrote a book exposing the business. The same thing happened in England when Tony Walsh had an expose in the Sun. That was around the time Jackie Pallo blew the lid on the business in his autobiography. All pre-internet and non-WON influenced.

 

The real vs. fake tabloid coverage was a big deal in the British papers long before '85. Walton used to rail against the Fleet Street press every so often.

[Eduardo]

I keep wanting to make the point about how fans have changed and that hi-jacking wasn't really something that happened in previous eras like it does now. Then I realized that it did. Remember babyface Honky Tonk Man? Or Freebirds vs Dynamic Dudes at Halloween Havoc '89? Or Jeff Jarrett reading that poem? Stepping outside of U.S. wrestling, there was even the late 1987 thing where Sumo Hall fans turned on the angle that led to Vader beating Inoki in three minutes or whatever it was -- not because there was a strong heel involved, but because they rejected the promotional direction. "Boring" chants used to be really common too. Flair would get cheered and Garvin would get booed. Fans would show their support for heels like Cornette and the Horsemen in the front rows of TV tapings. We don't have as much footage from before the 1980s, but I'm sure that sort of thing happened then too.

 

Another example was a match in 1989 in Arena Mexico where El Hijo Del Santo was getting booed pretty loud that even the broadcast team had to acknowledge.

[JerryvonKramer]

Split crowds don't really mean much though as regards this particular topic. It says basically nothing about the fans' status as being "marks", "smart" or whatever. The split reaction could result from bad booking. It could be a sign that it's time to turn a guy. It could be evidence that a particular babyface isn't over. "Boring" chants could be a sign that ... the match is boring. None of this really demonstrates much.

 

 

 

 

None of this stuff matters to the argument. What matters is how fans engaged with and talked about wrestling. Were they talking about booking decisions? Were they recognising who was a good wrestler and who was a shitty one based on non-kayfabe criteria such as selling? Did the mythical 1968 smart fan know that Chief Jay Strongbow pretty much sucked?

 

The pre- and post- Meltzer newsletters seem worlds apart to me, worlds apart.

You lost me at the mythical 1968 smart fan part. How do you know there weren't smart fans in 1968? Just because you imagine there weren't doesn't mean it's true. I could just as easily convince myself that there were smart fans in 1968 simply by stating so.

 

Find me the evidence. There is quite a lot of evidence of fans not being smart -- riots, death threats, and so on. 20,000 people at MSG who'd throw a fit if Pedro lost, etc. etc. You find me the evidence to suggest that a significent proportion of them were "smart". The onus is not on me. I'm peddling the line of what is known. The onus is on those people claiming that there were smart fans discussing wrestling like the IWC in 1998 back in the 60s or even the fucking 1930s. They are the one making the claim, it is up to them to prove it.

 

If you think that they're a myth then the onus goes right back on you. You've had the argument put to you that the media has always tried to expose pro-wrestling as fake (as far back as the 1870s or before) and that there was very little difference between how people viewed pro-wrestling then and now, i.e. the media thought it was fake, the public thought it was fake, and the fans didn't care. Of those fans, you don't think there were people capable of viewing it as a performance? In the 1960s? Does it really matter if they didn't use the same terminology or that there was no internet? I get your general point that people were unlikely to have been talking about wrestling the same way that we do in the 1930s, but what does it matter if they appreciated it the same way?

 

There is huge world of difference between stories exposing the business and reporting it like it's some major scoop and "smart fans". As I said, everyone knows it's a trick, but how is the trick done? The burden of proof does not lie with me.

 

The terminology matters less than the entire way they think about and engage with the product. And to be clear, I'm talking about fans in the 1960s or the 30s or whenever talking about booking decisions as fans now talk about booking decisions. "I think Wrestler X should have won and it was a mistake for that promoter to make Wrestler Y win". That sort of thing, doesn't matter what words they were using.

 

How many shoot interviews have we all seen and heard from guys who got into the business in the 50s, 60s and 70s? How many times do you hear guys talk about being "smartened up"? And this is people into wrestling enough to, y'know, actually become a wrestler. How many times do you hear those same types of guys talk about being part of "smart communities" of fans? The answer is zero is so far. Zero.

 

We're not talking about the distant past here, this isn't the stone age before men and women could write things down, it's not the even the medieval age, it's the 20th century. Evidence shouldn't be hard to come by. Fuck, let's go to Kayfabe Memories and get some of those 70-year olds to explain what their fandom was like in the 1950s.

 

I literally have no idea why so many people here are not willing to admit something as painfully obvious as the seismic shift in fandom that happened post-internet.