Rick Rude vs. Ted Dibiase

[JerryvonKramer]

 

When people don't have Lawler in their top 1000, that's not really a project I signed up for or really want to be a part of. I'm one guy, it means nothing.

 

My word Parv! Really?!

Greatness comes down to more than personal taste. Which is a position at the heart of this conflict.

[cheapshot]

But who defines the parameters of greatness Parv? it's all interpretation.

 

I thought you'd at this point you would of showed some humility but that doesn't seem to be the case. I am rather disappointed if I am being honest.

[Poneglyph]

I'm sorry, but have you even seen any of the individual ballots for the Sight & Sound list? It's full of people not ranking Hitchcock or Godard or Ford. There are ballots ranking Arnulf Rainer by Peter Kubelka or Andy Warhol's Empire. The fun (?) thing is canonical choices ended up pretty high on the final list anyway.

[Matt D]

 

I think yearly changes would only be noticeable and relevant on a personal level. As you say it would basically be a reflection of what you've been watching in the last year. And hell if you want to sit down and write out your GOAT list every year, nobody is stopping you, and I'm sure people would be interested in seeing it, myself included. But I don't think that calls for a collective vote every year.

 

 

This is fair. It's all good points. To me, there are two categories of people here, those who are like Will and have seen enough to feel like they have it all worked out. For them, things will only move a little here or there. Then there's a lot of the rest of us who are missing huge swaths of wrestling. As much as I'd love to do it before the ballot, I just don't think I have time to focus heavily on Puerto Rico. However, I intend to watch a lot of Puerto Rico in 2016, not necessarily for this project, but just to get a better sense of it and because people have talked it up so much recently. I'm going to keep watching 70s and 80s UK. I'm going to keep delving into lucha. I'm going to lean more towards BattlARTS or whatever. I'll watch more joshi. But most of this, not by the deadline.

 

I'm sure a good chunk of us are in that same boat one way or another. For the person who said that he was looking forward to watching stuff specifically not for this project, I'm sure that means "wrestling he hasn't seen," and some of that would, by its nature, play into the project.

 

That said, you made valid points and it would be a more personal thing for everyone. The lower cost means a lower benefit. I was focused on the cost when it made more sense to focus on the benefit. Even so, I think the sum of new or different material that everyone is watching, along with new voices coming here and some wrestlers on the list being on the cusp when it comes to having enough matches under their belt, is enough that we should at least consider a 3 or a 5 year check in.

[Childs]

What you don't seem to grasp is that your definition of greatness as it applies to this project is as defined by personal taste as anyone else's.

 

You're still essentially sniping rather than articulating a better approach.

[ohtani's jacket]

Parv,

I'm philosophically opposed to the adherence to canon and have long since moved beyond Sight and Sound as a guide to what to watch, but as a seasoned voter in these polls from Smarkschoice to DVDVR let me say this: the enjoyment you get out of these polls can only be personal. The measure of your satisfaction should be how many discoveries you've made since the project was announced not what the final outcome will be and how in line with your thinking it is. I know how frustrating it is to feel like you're the only one who's making an effort or taking the poll seriously, but you wouldn't have signed up for it in the first place if you didn't like polls and didn't like ranking things.

 

If you go the GWE loses one of its pillars. You've been committed to the project more than just about anyone. I think it's a waste of your discoveries thus far not to vote. For every comment you receive in this thread there will be a guy who checks out Jack Brisco, or someone else, because of your hard work. Instead of worrying about canon, why not count the small victories?

[KrisZ]

This is completely ridiculous.

 

Any project like this in any form or fashion will ALWAYS come down to personal taste....it's human fucking nature.

 

Joe may hate Lawler & Dundee which is his personal belief and while it may be offbase in a lot of our minds....it's what he doesn't like about wrestling. There will be people that feel the same way he does about his personal favorites and yes that is why this project is good is because everyone doesn't think the same way and are able to expound their beliefs.

 

This isn't Communism......Chairman Mao isn't in charge of this project folks.

 

When we have people that want to act like children because their favorites aren't getting the love they think they deserve then that falls on the person themselves not the project. If you aren't able to stand your ground and fight for who you believe in that much then maybe you are not fit to participate in a project like this.

[Hobbes]

As someone who has just been observing (and enjoying) the GWE discussions for months, I'm not as surprised that people are having this argument as much as I'm surprised that they're having it this deep into the process. Parv seems to be looking for some kind of clinical, "authoritative" GWE list, one that tries to de-empasize people's personal tastes and where their heads are currently at as fans in 2015. I don't know if such a list is even possible, but if it is, it's been pretty clear from the start that this project was never going to fit that bill.

 

The kind of project I think Parv is looking for.would need a lot of strict criteria, and could only be open to a very small, select group of voters who have seen a ton of footage, that are fans of an incredible spread of styles, regions and eras. Speaking as someone who just reads this forum, this project never gave off any impression of even coming close to attempting that. It's always been about trying to encourage as many people to vote as possible, using whatever criteria they want. If anything, I get the impression that for a lot of people, the poll is almost secondary to sparking discussion here. In fact, we know for certain that there's people participating on the GWE forum discussions that don't even intend to cast a ballot. I could get behind the kind of Parv's list is talking about, it would be an interesting exercise, but again, this clearly was never aiming to be that. To suddenly realize that now is perplexing.

 

All that being said, while I understand that people are worried that Parv is stifling conversation by intimidating some people, I hope this doesn't turn into some kind of witch hunt to run him out of town. I like his podcasts, he provokes interesting conversations here, he's clearly passionate about his views, I can put up with him getting a little snooty sometimes and heavily sighing whenever Will started talking during the Fair for Flair podcast. I grew up reading peak jdw and Boston Idol on tOA, this is nothing.

[JerryvonKramer]

If it boils down strictly to personal taste, then what is the distinction between 'favourite' and 'greatest'? Is your final 100 simply a list of your 100 favourite guys, or is it something more than that. That is a question for voters to answer.

 

I did not say that personal taste is not a factor at all, of course it is, but is that all it is? Again, a question for voters to answer.

 

I'm sorry, but have you even seen any of the individual ballots for the Sight & Sound list? It's full of people not ranking Hitchcock or Godard or Ford. There are ballots ranking Arnulf Rainer by Peter Kubelka or Andy Warhol's Empire. The fun (?) thing is canonical choices ended up pretty high on the final list anyway.

On this small point, I believe S&S asks for only a top 10, not a top 100, so it is a small sample size from each critic or director. And with a top 10 and top 10 only, there is more of a chance to "make a statement" with your list. I'd be interested to see if any voter has ever gone on record to say that Citizen Kane or Vertigo wouldn't make their top 1000s. Not impossible, of course.

 

What you don't seem to grasp is that your definition of greatness as it applies to this project is as defined by personal taste as anyone else's.

 

You're still essentially sniping rather than articulating a better approach.

I'm going to reply to this with a question, or rather two of them: if you and 9 other hardcores from here sat down in a room for 2 hours to hash out a criteria, how much disagreement do you think there would be when you started getting down to brass tacks? A serious question. Which criteria that I've gone on record as being important, specifically, is contentious?

 

Parv,

 

I'm philosophically opposed to the adherence to canon and have long since moved beyond Sight and Sound as a guide to what to watch, but as a seasoned voter in these polls from Smarkschoice to DVDVR let me say this: the enjoyment you get out of these polls can only be personal. The measure of your satisfaction should be how many discoveries you've made since the project was announced not what the final outcome will be and how in line with your thinking it is. I know how frustrating it is to feel like you're the only one who's making an effort or taking the poll seriously, but you wouldn't have signed up for it in the first place if you didn't like polls and didn't like ranking things.

 

If you go the GWE loses one of its pillars. You've been committed to the project more than just about anyone. I think it's a waste of your discoveries thus far not to vote. For every comment you receive in this thread there will be a guy who checks out Jack Brisco, or someone else, because of your hard work. Instead of worrying about canon, why not count the small victories?

For me, it's not about canon. It really isn't. Like I honestly don't care if it ends up where Ted doesn't rank and Flair comes 10th. It really doesn't matter to me. What matters to me is how those decisions are reached. And the extent to which decisions are made "willy nilly". It seems to me from various people in this thread that to an extent people want a more litmus-test "what do you love right now" sort of thing, which is cool, but of less interest to me for reasons I've articulated.

 

I've nothing to add to anything I've said already. These are all now all issues for GWE voters to grapple over, if they care seriously about them, they can hash them out and it might be fun to read. I must exercise no small amount of self-control now to refrain from posting any more about it. Feel I've said my piece and more than once. I'm going to watch and review some Memphis circa 1982-3.

[kid dracula]

I've been following the proceedings from a distance because I haven't seen nearly enough footage to vote, but this current blow-up is extremely interesting to me. I think I am in sympathy with Parv here. If you were making a list of the 100 wrestlers you're most excited to watch, it would be totally reasonable not to rank Jerry Lawler, based purely on your feeling that you don't enjoy his work.

 

I think in a poll like this, though, participation means taking on the responsibility of reckoning with those guys who you don't personally love. I wouldn't rank the Beatles on a list of my favorite bands, but if I was voting on the Greatest Bands Ever I would feel obliged to listen to them, and think seriously about their relative greatness. The idea that there are 100 rock bands better than The Beatles doesn't seem to even merit consideration. I might not place them in my top 10, because their work doesn't resonate with me in the same way as say, The Velvet Underground, but surely they'd make my list somewhere.

 

Likewise, the idea that there are 100 (or, good lord, 1000!) wrestlers better than Jerry Lawler seems difficult to accept. People seem to want to cry "but it's my opinion!" as if there's something sacred and holy about having one. I'm not sure how I feel about that. To make an extreme example, if someone says it's their opinion that Goodfellas is a lesser movie than Spongebob Squarepants, well, how can you refute that?

[Hobbes]

There might be a difference between "favorite" lists and "greatest" lists but they do have one huge thing in common: They're generally only interesting if you know each voter's thought processes behind them. The sum total ranking of wrestlers from a few dozen people who I vaguely know isn't that fun. To me, the fun in these rankings comes from seeing what criteria each person uses, and how they judge each performer by that criteria. A bunch of lists of wrestlers means little to me, but people writing out their thought processes? I'll read those all day.

 

Parv, there's no reason you can't make your list using your favored criteria, and I know that many people, including me, would be interested in reading how you interpret the project, how you're judging the wrestlers, and the thought process behind your decisions. You might be bored and frustrated by other list makers who don't use your criteria, but your list is still valid to you, and still has merit to the people who read it.

 

When you add up all the rankings, the final list isn't going to be "the greatest", but it's not going to be "favorites" either, it's going to be a bunch of people each defining what a 100 wrestler ranking means to them. I think the enjoyment is going to be reading people's interpretations, not in who "won".

[Loss]

Dear Future Me,

 

I've been hesitant to do a ballot so you don't laugh at my rankings. But I've decided to submit a ballot whether you like it or not. Perfect and Good have finally made amends.

 

So go easy on me for once, you asshole.

 

Sincerely,

Current Me

[KrisZ]

One sports example I can think of is when the NBA put out their Top 50 Players Ever in 1996, Dominique Wilkins was left off the list when most experts easily could point out was a travesty of justice especially when Shaquille O'Neal (who would prove his greatness later) was on the list after only being in the league for 3 or 4 full seasons. Nique's stats and impact on the game definitely warranted him being on the list but the people that made up the list obviously thought differently.

 

Lists like this are supposed to have arguments because what fun would it be if everyone had almost the same exact list. Plus everyone will never have the same criteria unless it was set from the start that you have to follow certain rules and if there was such a thing I doubt a lot of people would be involved in the first place as who wants to be limited in their decision making.

[Loss]

I've been following the proceedings from a distance because I haven't seen nearly enough footage to vote, but this current blow-up is extremely interesting to me. I think I am in sympathy with Parv here. If you were making a list of the 100 wrestlers you're most excited to watch, it would be totally reasonable not to rank Jerry Lawler, based purely on your feeling that you don't enjoy his work.

 

I think in a poll like this, though, participation means taking on the responsibility of reckoning with those guys who you don't personally love. I wouldn't rank the Beatles on a list of my favorite bands, but if I was voting on the Greatest Bands Ever I would feel obliged to listen to them, and think seriously about their relative greatness. The idea that there are 100 rock bands better than The Beatles doesn't seem to even merit consideration. I might not place them in my top 10, because their work doesn't resonate with me in the same way as say, The Velvet Underground, but surely they'd make my list somewhere.

 

Likewise, the idea that there are 100 (or, good lord, 1000!) wrestlers better than Jerry Lawler seems difficult to accept. People seem to want to cry "but it's my opinion!" as if there's something sacred and holy about having one. I'm not sure how I feel about that. To make an extreme example, if someone says it's their opinion that Goodfellas is a lesser movie than Spongebob Squarepants, well, how can you refute that?

 

And for the record, I think this is a terrific post and agree with virtually all of it. I want my ballot to represent the conflict between my favorites and the guys that I truly think are the greatest. And I feel like I have a lot of cases to make for wrestlers that I want to make sure get a fair shake. I'm with JvK that I don't care so much about the final rankings, but how they get there matters to me.

[KrisZ]

One thing though is that if you are making such a big argument about people voting the way they vote, then you shouldn't be going on record saying that you won't be voting for certain genres of wrestling. Your opinions on the matter then should be taken with a grain of salt because you have closed your mind on some of the best performers ever in the business because you don't feel comfortable with it.

[Loss]

I think in principle, that's true. I don't entirely agree with that approach, but I do understand it if the idea is that wrestling is an American construct that later spread to other places. So if time is an issue, perhaps he thinks that is where most of his focus should go. To be very clear, that is not intended to be a claim of American superiority as much as it a deference to the idea that pro wrestling's roots are in the American style.

[Quentin Skinner]

The way I look at it is that how "great" someone is, is still subjective to the voter. The Beatles could be the most acclaimed band of all time, but if I don't like their work, why should they be on my greatest bands ever list? That's just me being dishonest to myself if I put them on there just because OTHERS consider them to be great. That way of thinking doesn't work for me.

[Loss]

I think the point is that you shouldn't rank them if they do nothing for you, but they deserve heightened consideration because of that acclaim.

[kid dracula]

The way I look at it is that how "great" someone is, is still subjective to the voter. The Beatles could be the most acclaimed band of all time, but if I don't like their work, why should they be on my greatest bands ever list? That's just me being dishonest to myself if I put them on there just because OTHERS consider them to be great. That way of thinking doesn't work for me.

 

But would you say that everything you don't like is without merit?

[KrisZ]

So if Ted DiBiase or Jerry Lawler does nothing for you then it is the same if El Satanico or Akira Hokuto does nothing for you.

 

I want to make sure that everyone is in agreement here....

 

I'm not a Joshi fan but I can definitely recognize that they had some of the best wrestling in the world in their heyday and I kinda feel inclined to have that represented on my list because that's the way it should be if we are going "Greatest Wrestler Ever." I'm not going to totally dismiss the style because I don't feel comfortable with it.

[KrisZ]

I think in principle, that's true. I don't entirely agree with that approach, but I do understand it if the idea is that wrestling is an American construct that later spread to other places. So if time is an issue, perhaps he thinks that is where most of his focus should go. To be very clear, that is not intended to be a claim of American superiority as much as it a deference to the idea that pro wrestling's roots are in the American style.

 

But wasn't one of the main goals in this project to get people to watch stuff out of their comfort zone to become more inclusive in their watching instead of just focusing on what they already liked to begin with. Especially if you are trying to get people to watch more of certain wrestlers because you like them but totally dismiss others because they don't fit your preconceived notions as a fan.

[Loss]

There is a lot of great wrestling in WoS, lucha libre and Joshi. Wow, is that a late entry candidate for biggest understatement of 2015. But those styles are also farther from the traditional American style than something like All Japan or New Japan, so they can take more adjustment from the viewer. Not ranking them is what it is -- I wish everyone would watch as much as possible and at least consider them, but at the same time, I get the logic of avoiding styles that carry the weight of a much deeper plunge in order to properly sort out a list. It's not what I'd do, but I do get it. For someone born and bred on American wrestling, I think in most cases the greatness is more quickly apparent when watching the best All Japan and New Japan guys. It doesn't mean they're better, just that accepting their greatness doesn't require quite as much investment.

[Quentin Skinner]

 

 

The way I look at it is that how "great" someone is, is still subjective to the voter. The Beatles could be the most acclaimed band of all time, but if I don't like their work, why should they be on my greatest bands ever list? That's just me being dishonest to myself if I put them on there just because OTHERS consider them to be great. That way of thinking doesn't work for me.

But would you say that everything you don't like is without merit?

No not at all. I try to give anything a fair and honest look especially if it's something where I see a ton of roses being thrown at it, but if I come to the conclusion that I personally don't think it's as good as others think it is, so be it, it's not for me. A LOT of people fucking love Volk Han and I have no problem acknowledging that, they think he's the best shoot style worker ever and he might even be number 1 on a few ballots. For me, I watched a majority of his work and I came away thinking this guy won't even sniff my list.

[KrisZ]

Yeah but how long has this project been going on.....and we still have until the end of March 2016 to hash this out.......that's 5 fucking months.....if you really want to open your mind and search stuff out there is plenty of time left.

 

A line I've always used in regards to picking up women is "Closed Mouths Don't Get Fed"......well Closed Minds Don't Get Fed either.......

[Dylan Waco]

Not all styles are created equal. Outside of Necro, how many indie death match workers will make ballots? I'll have more to say later, a lot of which won't go over well.