The bar for dangerous spots is crazy right now

[Loss]

WWE made a nice effort to tone down their style for many years, but it seems like needless risks are creeping up again and have been for a little while. When the bar is so high that a superplex through a table is just a highspot and not a credible finish, there's a serious problem with the style. Ambrose-Rollins was a very good match, but they took it several steps too far. It's also amazing how meaningless weapons shots have become.

[Guest Eduardo James]

I hope you don't watch any/much of the indys.

While the bar is being raised for WWE a bit, there's still a ton of stuff stupider than a superplex though a table getting a 2 count.

[NintendoLogic]

The risky highspots never really went away. In fact, it seems to me that they've increased to compensate for getting rid of blood and chairshots to the head.

[dawho5]

It's happened in Japan more than the WWE though. Not exactly in the same fashion, but all the head drops and uber-stiff shots to the head are going to take their toll on a generation of wrestlers a lot earlier even than it did the main All Japan guys. 5-10 years from now, a lot of the big names now will be retired for all the stupid things they do now. Could be that Tanahashi fellow has the right ideas about how to work a match after all.

[Hobbes]

It's happened in Japan more than the WWE though. Not exactly in the same fashion, but all the head drops and uber-stiff shots to the head are going to take their toll on a generation of wrestlers a lot earlier even than it did the main All Japan guys. 5-10 years from now, a lot of the big names now will be retired for all the stupid things they do now. Could be that Tanahashi fellow has the right ideas about how to work a match after all.

 

Meltzer has mentioned how Tanahashi has been very banged up for quite awhile now, and that working the G-1 made it worse. I think he said or wrote something recently to the effect of "Working with these neck injuries is likely going to make Tanahashi very limited in a few years". I'm not sure if I'm remembering this correctly but I think he might have even went to the hospital between matches at one point during the tournament.

[cpst]

I feel a bit guilty for being such a fan of the stupid stuff happening in the 90s: the unprotected chair shots, the stupid dives from the top of cages and balconies, head drops, etc. Looking back at what happened to some of the practitioners of the style, it's sad to see what happened to their lives afterwards, and you wonder how much of it could have been prevented had they worked a 'safer' style. Of course, there is a bit of a confounding factor in that the people who are doing questionable spots like that probably wouldn't be making sound life choices in the absence of the opportunity to do those things in wrestling matches.

 

I have pondered if there is an economic model of the escalation of credibly vicious high spots over time, and how it is affected by the ability to easily watch clips of spots from wrestling matches, both past and present. I can search on YouTube and see clips of guys like Jun Kasai doing things that would probably kill or paralyze most people. In this world, how long does it take to rehabilitate a spot like going through an announce table to the point where it can finish a match again?

 

It's especially interesting because the WWE has at least 4 PPVs based around gimmick matches (MITB, HIAC, TLC, and EC). If you keep doing them every year, then they eventually either get watered down or they have to come up with ways to make each year's match more spectacular than the ones in previous years. It would be better if they found a way to save them for truly heated feuds instead of bringing them out on a fixed schedule.

[cm funk]

This is a big pet peeve of mine about the current WWE style

 

I can't lie, I do pop for some of the spots in the big matches, when they're done well and mean something, but I really don't need to see guys killing themselves to pull off crazy big crowd popping spots all the time. It's very much a symptom of the "pop the crowd" "make em chant" "social media" mentality of WWE right now.

 

I would cringe at some of the stupid shit Daniel Bryan would do.....just incredibly reckless with his body.....all the diving into the dasherboards and the flying headbutts and the missle dropkicks. It produced great matches and he got super over doing it.....but at what price? I watched some of those matches and was just thinking, "you really don't need to be doing this". And now he should probably retire before he does even worse damage to himself

 

I thought the Cena-Brock match at SS was great, but I could not believe Cena taking all of those suplexes like that. I mean, I get why he did it, he's a showman and he wanted to put over Brock really strong, and I applaud him for that, but it made me a little bit uncomfortable with some of those hard bumps he was taking on his neck and head

 

I thought it 2014 we'd be past that kind of stuff. After Benoit and after Edge having to retire because of his neck it's kind of amazing and shocking to me how the company allows guys to work at a breakneck high risk pace.

 

I've never been in the ring, I'm not a wrestler, but I've always been in favor of the "work smart" mentality. Cactus Jack and Sabu were two of my favorite wrestlers in the 90's, so that's a bit weird coming from me, but I was more of a fan of the characters and gimmicks they portrayed, and I didn't need to see Sabu flipping out of the ring thru a table and landing right on his tailbone or Cactus doing the nestea plunge to be entertained by them

 

Also, the "no blood" rule in WWE is so bizarre to me when they have people doing all these crazy high risk dives and spots in matches, on a regular basis. From what I gather it's due to sponsors and the "PG" rating or whatever, and I certainly don't want to see blood in every match, but it's like they replace blood sometimes with stupid risky spots, and isn't that kind of ridiculous? I'd feel way safer having a stiff brawl and casually blading my forehead and selling my ass off than doing some insane dive out of the ring

 

I don't know, I kind of roll my eyes at some of the old timers who are like, "these kids don't know how to work. back in my day we could work a headlock for 15 minutes" but it is kind of true. Sometimes less is more

[Timbo Slice]

The superplex wasn't a credible finish due to interference. Had Rollins just kicked out, I would have been pissed. But Ambrose crawling over like he did to try and get there at least sold that it was hurt. I'm more pissed that somebody thought cinder blocks were a good idea for that finish.

 

Logic's right. When you lose things like blood and head shots, you have to overcompensate somehow. So upping the risky highspots is the next step in the evolution.

[dawho5]

I would guess Tanahashi's injuries are more from other people's offense. His style is pretty low impact, so I doubt many people get injured by something like a sling blade or high fly flow.

[Ditch]

The Japanese head drop thing has been reeled in significantly over the last decade. There are still big moves, but nothing like the Misawa vs Kobashi spine-rattling bump-fests.

[dawho5]

From what I've watched, many wrestlers still take backdrop bumps that make me think of the "7/10" thing that some wrestler said about Misawa's last bump. I realize it was probably due to the amount of stress he had taken on his spine over the years, but you would think somebody would learn.

[rzombie1988]

I would guess Tanahashi's injuries are more from other people's offense. His style is pretty low impact, so I doubt many people get injured by something like a sling blade or high fly flow.

Tana's constant flying has to be bad on his knees.

[BigBadMick]

From what I've watched, many wrestlers still take backdrop bumps that make me think of the "7/10" thing that some wrestler said about Misawa's last bump. I realize it was probably due to the amount of stress he had taken on his spine over the years, but you would think somebody would learn.

What's the 7/10 thing?

[Hobbes]

That in terms of severity, the last bump was only a 7 out of 10. The point being that the spot that killed Misawa wasn't so much some extra brutal fuck up, but just the final straw for a body that had taken so much abuse over the years.