JerryvonKramer Posted June 18, 2015 Report Share Posted June 18, 2015 http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/19739-el-dandy/?p=5671849 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
funkdoc Posted June 18, 2015 Report Share Posted June 18, 2015 personally i'd like to see more of a move away from ratings in general video games are currently going through the whole "is it art?" debate, and part of that involves the way games have traditionally been evaluated. magazines or other major outlets would always give numerical or star ratings to different components of a game (graphics, sound, controls, replay value, etc.) and give it a total score based on that. there's been an increasing amount of people arguing that this amounts to judging a game as a consumer product rather than as a creative work, and there's an emerging indie scene making games that defy this whole system. to give an example of where you get a divide here, let's look at one of those indie games - Gone Home. this is a simple, low-tech, highly story-driven game featuring a lesbian relationship as a major part of the plot. it won a bunch of awards from IGN and other mainstream outlets, the most success an indie game has had in that regard thus far. it's also $20 and extremely short for a video game (you can finish it in an hour or so), and there isn't a lot of "action" in the conventional sense (the entire game is looking at objects in a house to piece together the story). thus, the anti-art crowd in games will often argue that all the praise & awards for this game mean that the media is in cahoots with the political correctness nazis or whatever, and they cite reviews not mentioning the price or length of the game as proof of "corruption in games journalism". rather than, you know, a statement that those things can be irrelevant if you create a strong enough experience. this kind of absurdity is the logical end result of any hard rating system, in my view. true, wrestling doesn't have as much that's as outside the box as my example above, but there already is some. i would point to the Lawler-Snowman matches, for one - they wouldn't do well in any conventional rating system, but the Snowman's many "weaknesses" as a performer are actually strengths here. that's a case where you WANT someone who can't wrestle and who stumbles over his words in interviews, because that's more realistic and realism was the point of this feud. i think we're eventually going to see a wave of this stuff in wrestling, probably some years from now. given where comic books and video games (two very good comps because of the similar audience) are at right now, it seems inevitable to me. wrestling is always behind the times, but it also usually gets there eventually... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BillThompson Posted June 18, 2015 Report Share Posted June 18, 2015 Do you really like that arm work where Azteca is tugging on Dandy's arm in the lamest possible way imaginable? I don't see what makes it "unfounded"? It's not a very good piece of business. Well, personally I wouldn't say any of the arm work in that match was lame tugging, but really good, crisp arm work. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JerryvonKramer Posted June 18, 2015 Report Share Posted June 18, 2015 If I get the time at some point (looking unlikely), I'm going to isolate the part I mean so everyone can watch it together. I thought it was lame as fuck. Maybe I'm too used to Backlund's row row arm wrenches. But Azteca looked like he was tugging on a limp noodle. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Man in Blak Posted June 18, 2015 Report Share Posted June 18, 2015 (Disclaimer: this post is long and a bit digressive, but I think there are some useful parallels to the discussion at hand and I do try to tie things back to wrestling wherever I can. Apologies if this strays too far afield.) personally i'd like to see more of a move away from ratings in general video games are currently going through the whole "is it art?" debate, and part of that involves the way games have traditionally been evaluated. magazines or other major outlets would always give numerical or star ratings to different components of a game (graphics, sound, controls, replay value, etc.) and give it a total score based on that. there's been an increasing amount of people arguing that this amounts to judging a game as a consumer product rather than as a creative work, and there's an emerging indie scene making games that defy this whole system. I was just about to drop in here with the comparison to what's currently going on in video games, since there is a very loud segment of critics in that field that are pushing back against any sort of scores/ratings whatsoever. One of the big points of contention there is exactly the one that was raised in this thread earlier - tons of readers just scroll down to see the score and those scores can often leave readers with an overly reductive view of a game (the score) that doesn't ultimately reflect all of the nuances provided by the critic's impressions and assessments in the actual review. Part of that problem in a game review is effective editing -- maybe people are conditioned to scroll to the end because game reviews have generally offered utterly terrible writing and critique for decades -- but another significant part of that is that the audience usually just wants something new to consume, so the score has more utility to that end goal than reading through and considering a long, thoughtful critique. (And we can jump down a whole new rabbit hole for review vs. critique there as well.) That "drive to consume" is a part of wrestling or any other entertainment medium, especially in the information age where so much (ugh) content is available to a consumer and, thus, figuring out what to consume becomes a more pertinent concern. Ultimately, I am personally fine with ratings/scores. In some ways, I think the runaway popularity of the snowflake system in wrestling makes things easier than in video games, I think, because quibbling over scoring systems is minimized in comparison. (Though, obviously, this thread is an exception to that.) As someone who has written game reviews, I understand why some reviewers object to score, but I appreciate them as a tool to refine my thinking about a game; they enforce an element of comparison that makes me think about the game in a larger cultural context and I think that's useful. Where scores go off the rails for me is when both critics and audience treat them as some sort of objective or timeless measure. True objectivity in media criticism is a myth; even the criteria for desirability that one can choose for an "objective" measure are based upon subjective preferences. Using those criteria as a part of a critical exercise that results in a numerical rating doesn't remove subjectivity from the equation and, as critics, I think it's our job to communicate that subjectivity to the audience and make it clear, regardless of the medium. Gone Home was a perfect flashpoint for the cultural problems in video games because so much of the audience in gaming -- which, to be frank, is collectively about as uncritical and obsequious to the industry as you can get -- has been trained over years to see product-focused aspects like game length as being more important, much in the same way that some folks in wrestling have been conditioned to see "movez" or match length as an conclusive indicator of quality. (Insert Charles's joke about Hulk Hogan earning an extra star by using a Burning Hammer here.) Some of that comes from long-outdated vestiges of video game history: video games being equated to toys or software, rather than actual aesthetic works. Some of it comes a highly effective marketing machine from game publishers that many gaming media outlets don't see fit to challenge or interrogate in any substantial way. Wherever it comes from, it lingers over everything when a small-but-brilliant indie game like Gone Home gets recognized by some critics for actively pushing against most of those vestigial norms of what makes a good video game and, as a result, some overly-traditional segments of the audience freak out. In my eyes, the closest comparison in wrestling to the Gone Home situation would be recognizing someone like Regal as one of the best wrestlers in the world. Regal was never a "company ace" -- he himself admits that he was never a draw or a main event player in any substantial way -- but there are multiple threads here on this forum and elsewhere that have dissected his matches and found all sorts of fantastic touches to his work, some of which wouldn't actually play well in a main event context, but are absolutely perfect for his role on the card. Is it blasphemous to suggest that William Regal is one of the greatest 100, 50, or even 30 wrestlers of all time? The GWE project will bear that out, I guess, though I can guarantee you that he will be on my list. Would it have been blasphemous to suggest that twenty years ago? Our criteria for critically assessing performers or works in media evolve all the time. There are some elements to our critical discussion that will always remain the same -- it is difficult for me to imagine a world where Flair/Steamboat at Chi-town Rumble isn't recognized as a classic -- but, ultimately, everything is always up for reconsideration, so I think it's important to recognize that both matches/works and their reviews are products of their time. As long as we're doing that and we're also keeping in mind that the method behind the math is ultimately a subjective one, then I think ratings can be useful. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Loss Posted June 18, 2015 Report Share Posted June 18, 2015 Good post! I would add that the main reason I like star ratings is because they quantify how good something is. I often read reviews without a star rating (or some type of rating -- it doesn't have to be stars) and wonder, "Ok, is this fun TV match good or is this Flair-Steamboat or Misawa-Kawada level good? Or is it somewhere in the middle, and if so, how does it compare to other matches in the middle?" I usually want to know how the reviewer compares it to other ratings of matches that I *have* seen, because then I have a rough idea of the quality of it. I agree that a star rating is limited in what it can represent. Something like Lawler-Snowman is a four-minute match, but it's exactly the four-minute match it needed to be and it's hard to think of ways it could have been better. I don't know that a star rating can capture that because giving it ****1/2 implies that it's at the level of other ****1/2 matches when it's not. It's a masterpiece in an entirely different way. There are also B-show matches, Goldberg squashes, etc. that fall into this category. Hopefully one day, we'll figure out what to do with those. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LariatMMBOPPO Posted June 18, 2015 Report Share Posted June 18, 2015 it's also $20 and extremely short for a video game (you can finish it in an hour or so), and there isn't a lot of "action" in the conventional sense (the entire game is looking at objects in a house to piece together the story). Am I anti-art for thinking that sounds like a boring rip-off? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdw Posted June 18, 2015 Report Share Posted June 18, 2015 Interesting look at star ratings in book and film review. As pointed out earlier, I suspect we all knew Dave lifted Jim's lifting of Dooley lifting it from his local movie / record reviewer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_%28classification%29 I don't really assign star ratings to stuff I watch anymore, and tend to go "Eh... I don't know" when Hoback asks me the stars after something good that we've watched at Wrestlemania. I'm more a "that was good" or "that was solid" or "that was a helluva match" guy now. But I've also been around for decades of people having issues with star ratings and trying to come up with something new. I'm not terrible against 1-10, but I also tend to toss out that it doesn't really add more slots than the 5* system. It's not 1-5 or 0-5 in integers. Dave's has 21 slots due to the 1/4, ignoring the "negative" and +++ that he rolls out occasionally. Ebert's 0-4 stars had 9 slots since he only did 1/2's. The problem with star ratings and 1-10 scales rarely is the "system". The problem is with the reviewer / applier, and also the consumer. People tend to cram a ton of stuff up into the higher end, rendering it somewhat meaningless. If Dave's regular system through much of the 80s, ** was an average match, **1/2 was above average, *** was good, and ***1/2 was very good. You still have 8 slots do describe and differentiate below average matches, and six for stuff that was above "very good". The **1/2 and *** and ***1/2, and stuff in between those ranges, stopped having meaning. How many people back in the 90s went out of their way to seek out a ***1/2 All Japan match? Or Lucha match. Etc. The concept of Very Good lost that meaning. A rating of Good meant nothing. Much of that is on the reviewer / applier. Some of that is on the consumer. I'd toss myself in that as well. I recall thinking that the 11/30/93 Baba & Hansen vs Misawa & Kobashi was one of the more entertaining and amazing AJPW matches that I'd seen that year, just mind boggling in how good it was with the name "Baba" attached to it. When Dave got around to writing it up, it got ****. I was annoyed: there were loads of matches that year that he'd given **** to, and damnit, this was better than any of them! It should have had another quarter or half snowflake added to it! **** is an excellent match. It leaves margin for ****1/2, which use to be a MOTYC. I wasn't really arguing that Baba & Hansen vs Misawa & Kobashi was a MOTYC, as there were a number of those matches in 1993 that were clearly above it not just in AJPW but elsewhere. So... WTF was I going on about? It was an "excellent" match, and **** is a good rating for it if the rating has any true meaning. All of us did it / do it. We contribute to what could have been a useful system being of marginal value. Of course Dave (or any other reviewer) doesn't help if they're tossing out 30+ ****1/2+ ratings in a calender year. Who cares about a "good" *** match if there are 200+ matches rated above it. * * * * * It really doesn't matter what system one moves to if the same reviewer / consumer issues remain. Which of course they will. We see it in other forms of entertainment. That doesn't mean to stop doing them if you dig doing them, or to stop digging the rankings someone else does if you find them useful. It just means that there is no Magic Bullet that would create a perfect ratings / rankings system. Any new one would soon pull in the short comings of the prior one. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zenjo Posted June 18, 2015 Report Share Posted June 18, 2015 I don't want to trash a match too much for catching me on a bad day. Sometimes I do fall into that, but again, I *try* not to do that. If I'm having a bad day I try and ensure I watch only bad or average matches. That way you don't have to worry about whether you're being fair or not. And if something good happens and cheers me up then it's a bonus. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
concrete1992 Posted June 19, 2015 Report Share Posted June 19, 2015 Working on the "KOTAKU SYSTEM" for wrestling matches, be right back... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NintendoLogic Posted June 19, 2015 Report Share Posted June 19, 2015 One thing I will never understand about star ratings is when people try to pretend that they have some basis in objectivity. I think using math makes things sound more scientific and thus people think they're judging things more objectively than if they just use their words...I don't know, but when I see people say things like "This match was **** but I liked it less than this match I only rated ***1/4..." I'm just like...what? Why didn't you rate the second match higher if it was better? By what kind of fucked up, bullshit, asshole criteria are you ranking matches with if it results in you ranking matches you liked less higher than matches you liked more?? That makes zero sense to me and never will. I think you're making a flawed argument here because whether you liked something or not doesn't necessarily make it "better". I could tell you that I liked Plan 9 From Outer Space more than Citizen Kane and you could probably see where I was coming from even if you didn't agree with me, given that it's a matter of taste, but you'd probably still think I was an idiot if I gave Plan 9 a higher rating. I know Kane is better. You know Kane is better. I know why it's regarded as a groundbreaking masterpiece. Doesn't mean I don't get a bigger personal kick out of Ed Wood and his nonsense. This analogy has limited value, though. Plan 9 is a fundamentally incompetent film on pretty much every level. It has no artistic merit except as kitsch. The wrestling equivalent would be something like Abdullah the Butcher vs. Zeus. And just about anyone would agree that Flair/Steamboat is a better match than Zeus/Abby. The question comes when you try to compare matches that have passed the threshold of competence. How do you compare Flair/Steamboat to Hart/Austin or Misawa/Kawada or Dandy/Casas or whatever? At that point, it's almost entirely a matter of personal taste. You're basically trying to rank flavors of ice cream. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dawho5 Posted June 19, 2015 Report Share Posted June 19, 2015 Two arguments so far have really caught my attention. The idea that there is a drive to consume is absolutely spot-on to me. But I have certain things I am looking for in the wrestling I am driven to consume. A number of snowflakes is not one of them. I've said before that Kawada vs. Hansen and Tully vs. Magnum are my two favorite wrestling matches. Those matches contain everything I need at the most basic level to enjoy wrestling. Would I give them both *****? I honestly don't know. I could watch each again and come up with new details to add to the old ones that I absolutely love and write a short essay on them. And then do it again in a few months with a different review from the last. The reasons I love or like a wrestling match are far more important to me than how much I enjoyed it. So when I read somebody else's reviews I look for details that I would see and fall in love with. I don't care one bit how many snowflakes are attached to the end. Does that make me different from most? I have no idea, but it's how I approach wrestling. As for not watching wrestling in a bad mood I have my views on that. I won't watch a MVC match in a bad mood because I'm likely to shit all over it mentally or in writing. Even their better matches rub me the wrong way if I'm unhappy going in. But watching something that is up my alley immediately perks me up and brings me back to a better mood. So I'm not entirely against watching wrestling when I'm a bit pissed off as long as it's something that I know won't make it worse. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jimmy Redman Posted June 19, 2015 Report Share Posted June 19, 2015 JVK's point is basically my point. He watched a match that a lot of other people like and can explain in detail what was great about it. But he didn't care for it, and can explain in detail what wasn't great about it. So he didn't rate it that highly. The rating is a reflection of how he felt about the match. Good post! I would add that the main reason I like star ratings is because they quantify how good something is. I often read reviews without a star rating (or some type of rating -- it doesn't have to be stars) and wonder, "Ok, is this fun TV match good or is this Flair-Steamboat or Misawa-Kawada level good? Or is it somewhere in the middle, and if so, how does it compare to other matches in the middle?" I usually want to know how the reviewer compares it to other ratings of matches that I *have* seen, because then I have a rough idea of the quality of it. I agree that a star rating is limited in what it can represent. Something like Lawler-Snowman is a four-minute match, but it's exactly the four-minute match it needed to be and it's hard to think of ways it could have been better. I don't know that a star rating can capture that because giving it ****1/2 implies that it's at the level of other ****1/2 matches when it's not. It's a masterpiece in an entirely different way. There are also B-show matches, Goldberg squashes, etc. that fall into this category. Hopefully one day, we'll figure out what to do with those. See, from my point of view, if Lawler-Snowman is just as good to me (in it's own way...) as other ****1/2 matches I've watched, why wouldn't I give it ****1/2? How long is a ****1/2 match supposed to be exactly? It's all the qualifications and shit that people place on different matches, styles, workers, etc. that I don't go in for. If a 3 minute Divas match is one of the greatest things I've ever seen in my life, I will rate it ****1/2. Why the fuck wouldn't I? Because a three minute match can't be ****1/2? Says who? Same goes for a 4-minute Lawler quasi-shoot, or a 6 minute comedy match, or a "match as angle", or a Goldberg squash, or a "this was a fun popcorn sprint", or any other kind of delination of match that makes people hesitant for some reason to throw snowflakes on it. Like I remember recently in a thread, possibly the Tenta vs Someone thread, where someone argued that Tenta's *** match was better than Someone's **** match, some shit like that. And like...huh? If that's the case, why is Tenta's match only *** then? Because he's a big fat guy doing big fat spots in short matches, and that shit isn't as snowflake worthy as someone stringing moves together in a long workrate match? THAT is the shit I dislike about star ratings. Again, it's the idea that they are some kind of scientific marker, and thus matches with moves, length, psychology, selling whatever other things a great match is "supposed" to have are more worthy of snowflakes than a match with comedy, fat guys, women, no-selling, botches, brevity, etc. Even if it's a better match. Saying "I liked Lawler-Snowman better than a match five times its length, but I can't rate it higher because it's a sloppy four-minute match" is ridiculous in the extreme to me. Literally the only thing I could possibly care about when rating a match is how good it was. On another note, I actually agree with the point that star ratings are eminently useful for ranking and organisation. I use other people's as a gauge for what I should check out. If I see you or Meltzer or Parv or whoever else give something a high rating, I feel safe checking it out, even though I don't necessarily agree with you or Meltzer or Parv when it comes to ratings. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ray Posted June 19, 2015 Report Share Posted June 19, 2015 I use star ratings because I watch an inhuman amount of wrestling and it's the easiest way to keep track of it all. Don't see why it has to be any more complicated than that. My own quirk is I don't use quarter star ratings. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
goodhelmet Posted June 19, 2015 Report Share Posted June 19, 2015 I have been accused by two of my friends (Loss and shoe) in the past and present of not knowing how star ratings work or not manning up and putting my own stars on a match. I refuse to because in observing people's star ratings, they are in a constant state of flux. If they are fluid, and not the concrete objective standard they appear to be or people want them to be, then I would rather discuss the merits and faults of a match than apply a rating to them. We have seen Scott Keith, people in the yearbook discussion, and other examples in the microscope and GWE forums change their star ratings after revisiting a match again sometimes a mere day or two after giving the initial ranking. What people are really doing is saying "This is the subjective number ranking I am putting on this match factoring in all of the outside disruptors (amount of sleep, experience, amount of footage consumed, age, mood, etc.) that have influenced my thought process at this specific moment in time." I often do this with shoe (because I'm an asshole) not because I think his ratings have objective merit but because I am using his own ratings compared to his other star ratings. From his rankings, i can draw conclusions to what shoe likes in his wrestling (nonstop action, flippy high flyers, tributes to the art of selling) and what he doesn't value (badass limb work from women, the best punch exchanges in history, the role of the cut and exploiting that cut). Again, this is also only relative to what I have seen from Pete through my own experiences. He may have other ratings on the Titans or whatever that may make me change my mind on what Pete likes. In this case, I am as limited as Pete in what those star ratings mean. Again, star ratings aren't telling me how good a match is as much as it is telling me what an individual values in their wrestling. My point isn't that star ratings don't have value. They do have value. Loss and I used Meltzer's and other people's rankings when we decided what matches should go on yearbooks. We also used the match rankings from the DVDVR projects. We also used recommendations from people here and at DVDVR. In the end though, the star ratings weren't concrete. They were only a momentary glimpse of what people ranked highly back in 2000 or what Meltzer or Lorefice or Scott Keith thought back in 1997 or whatever. Midway through the project, there were opinions we valued more than others. If Childs recommended a match, we probably considered it more than random poster ECWFAN420FOREVER. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ohtani's jacket Posted June 19, 2015 Report Share Posted June 19, 2015 Do you really like that arm work where Azteca is tugging on Dandy's arm in the lamest possible way imaginable? I don't see what makes it "unfounded"? It's not a very good piece of business. It's fair to say that I like lucha matwork. My only problem with lucha matwork is that there isn't more of it. Lucha matwork is a style of matwork much like European style matwork, shoot style, submission wrestling, amateur wrestling, NWA heavyweight mat wrestling, good old regular pro-wrestling matwork, and so on. It's possible to like one style more than another, or like one style of mat wrestling and not another. I know you're finicky about what you like in your matwork (or should I say particular) and firm in your convictions, but when you're dealing with a particular strand of matwork, you have to appreciate that there are inbuilt expectations that may differ from you'd personally like to see. When I watch lucha matwork, I want to see different things from different workers. I want to see some guys work tough gritty mat contests and some guys work surrealist masterpieces that don't look like anything else in pro-wrestling. The very best guys can do both. Matwork that may look lame to you meets my expectations. Dandy vs. Azteca met a lot of people's expectations. Most people have praised it for its execution and enjoyed whatever tropes it contains; but really the point isn't whether you like the trope or not, it's whether the trope was well executed in the first place. If you time code the limbwork you're talking about on YouTube, I will check it and decide whether I think it's poor or not; but I don't think you can say just because you've watched a lot of pro-wrestling that everything about the match is obvious or apparent. The only way you can learn about a style is by watching as much of that style as possible, making assumptions and getting things wrong and learning through those mistakes. Writing things off on the basis that it didn't look like something familiar to you is unfortunate. Writing things off because they don't stack up to other examples is unfortunate. Like the Dandy/Satanico, Tully/Magnum thing... why should Dandy hate Satanico as much as Magnum hated Tully? There is no basis for such a comparison. Anyway, no-one is going to as you to invest anymore time in lucha than you would jazz at this stage, but telling a lucha fan that Dandy/Azteca is crap is like telling a jazz fan that a great jazz lp is crap. Do you have the grounds to really say so? Generally, people ignore what they're not interested in. Writing off an entire genre in a more verbose way -- while a natural thing for many of us to do -- is an annoying thing for its fans if it doesn't seem like you really made an effort to understand it. Especially, a genre that has always suffered from stereotypes and lazy criticisms. Maybe I'm being overly protective of my beloved lucha, but matwork that doesn't look like it hurts etc is a craw in any true lucha fan's side. But please time code it because it may not actually look good. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Loss Posted June 19, 2015 Report Share Posted June 19, 2015 JVK's point is basically my point. He watched a match that a lot of other people like and can explain in detail what was great about it. But he didn't care for it, and can explain in detail what wasn't great about it. So he didn't rate it that highly. The rating is a reflection of how he felt about the match. Good post! I would add that the main reason I like star ratings is because they quantify how good something is. I often read reviews without a star rating (or some type of rating -- it doesn't have to be stars) and wonder, "Ok, is this fun TV match good or is this Flair-Steamboat or Misawa-Kawada level good? Or is it somewhere in the middle, and if so, how does it compare to other matches in the middle?" I usually want to know how the reviewer compares it to other ratings of matches that I *have* seen, because then I have a rough idea of the quality of it. I agree that a star rating is limited in what it can represent. Something like Lawler-Snowman is a four-minute match, but it's exactly the four-minute match it needed to be and it's hard to think of ways it could have been better. I don't know that a star rating can capture that because giving it ****1/2 implies that it's at the level of other ****1/2 matches when it's not. It's a masterpiece in an entirely different way. There are also B-show matches, Goldberg squashes, etc. that fall into this category. Hopefully one day, we'll figure out what to do with those. See, from my point of view, if Lawler-Snowman is just as good to me (in it's own way...) as other ****1/2 matches I've watched, why wouldn't I give it ****1/2? How long is a ****1/2 match supposed to be exactly? It's all the qualifications and shit that people place on different matches, styles, workers, etc. that I don't go in for. If a 3 minute Divas match is one of the greatest things I've ever seen in my life, I will rate it ****1/2. Why the fuck wouldn't I? Because a three minute match can't be ****1/2? Says who? Same goes for a 4-minute Lawler quasi-shoot, or a 6 minute comedy match, or a "match as angle", or a Goldberg squash, or a "this was a fun popcorn sprint", or any other kind of delination of match that makes people hesitant for some reason to throw snowflakes on it. Like I remember recently in a thread, possibly the Tenta vs Someone thread, where someone argued that Tenta's *** match was better than Someone's **** match, some shit like that. And like...huh? If that's the case, why is Tenta's match only *** then? Because he's a big fat guy doing big fat spots in short matches, and that shit isn't as snowflake worthy as someone stringing moves together in a long workrate match? THAT is the shit I dislike about star ratings. Again, it's the idea that they are some kind of scientific marker, and thus matches with moves, length, psychology, selling whatever other things a great match is "supposed" to have are more worthy of snowflakes than a match with comedy, fat guys, women, no-selling, botches, brevity, etc. Even if it's a better match. Saying "I liked Lawler-Snowman better than a match five times its length, but I can't rate it higher because it's a sloppy four-minute match" is ridiculous in the extreme to me. Literally the only thing I could possibly care about when rating a match is how good it was. On another note, I actually agree with the point that star ratings are eminently useful for ranking and organisation. I use other people's as a gauge for what I should check out. If I see you or Meltzer or Parv or whoever else give something a high rating, I feel safe checking it out, even though I don't necessarily agree with you or Meltzer or Parv when it comes to ratings. (1) It's not about the length of the match, it's about the match having a strong beginning, middle and end. Lawler-Snowman was pretty much just a strong beginning. But it was also the first match in the feud so I don't want to criticize it for that. But I'm not going to hold it up as a solid comparison to other matches that are more fleshed out either, no matter how long or short they are. I've definitely seen some great short matches. (2) I think what people are saying is that they would rather watch Tenta's good match than someone else's great one, which has nothing to do with quality and far more to do with personal mood and watchability. (3) It's possible to enjoy things that aren't good. Wrestling has its share of proverbial junk food. (4) I don't think "good" and "enjoyable" are always the same thing. It's rare that a good match isn't enjoyable to some degree, but there are plenty of enjoyable matches that aren't good but they are enjoyable for other reasons. There's nothing wrong with having a principled view of what good wrestling looks like and then ranking everything against that standard. It doesn't mean you don't like things that fall outside of that standard. It just means not throwing snowflakes at them. Snowflakes are far more than entertainment value to me. If I did that, Nick Patrick vs Randy Anderson from Nitro might be my 1997 MOTY. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shoe Posted June 19, 2015 Report Share Posted June 19, 2015 I use star ratings as a reference guide for my notes. They are fluid. They aren't meant to be the be all end all. As far as Will pigeonholing what I like and don't like whatever. I think I like good work around working the cut. I'm guessing it's because he loves Lawler vs me who likes Lawler. As for flippy shit I can get behind a good one, if it.'s a match for the sake of flips not so much. If he's talking about the Young Bucks vs ReDragon from Vegas. Everyone on the reaction show thought it was the best match on the show except him. I find it odd I'm feeling like I have to defend myself in a thread I never posted in the 1st place. If I'm reading into it too much my bad Also the Sasha /Becky match argument is stale . I get it you think I undervalued it because they're girls. If I did or didn't I don't care. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
goodhelmet Posted June 19, 2015 Report Share Posted June 19, 2015 You're being too defensive. I was trolling you. You did challenge me on why I didn't use star ratings on the podcast so I was having a little fun at your expense. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shoe Posted June 19, 2015 Report Share Posted June 19, 2015 Sorry bud I'm having a shit day at work and wouldn't have even noticed if it wasn't brought to my attention. Young Bucks still rule. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt D Posted June 19, 2015 Report Share Posted June 19, 2015 They would be better if they were the Young Bocks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WingedEagle Posted June 19, 2015 Report Share Posted June 19, 2015 Love the Young Bucks. Have yet to watch a match of theirs that did not entertain. I get why they're not everyone's cup of tea but its good for this soul. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Loss Posted June 19, 2015 Report Share Posted June 19, 2015 Their self-awareness is charming, I will say that. But I haven't seen enough of them to honestly assess. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mad Dog Posted June 19, 2015 Report Share Posted June 19, 2015 Love the Young Bucks. Have yet to watch a match of theirs that did not entertain. I get why they're not everyone's cup of tea but its good for this soul. I feel the same way. It might not be a classic match but I'm never disappointed after a Bucks match. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WingedEagle Posted June 19, 2015 Report Share Posted June 19, 2015 Their self-awareness is charming, I will say that. But I haven't seen enough of them to honestly assess. Agreed, they really walk that line well by always offering a wink & a nod with their schtick without letting it completely take over a match and become some parody. If I had to watch a full 3 hour show of that act up & down the card it would tire pretty quickly, but they stand out in a fun and fresh way. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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