thebrainfollower Posted January 23, 2016 Report Share Posted January 23, 2016 I'm not talking about a guy making his legit debut, or at least who's been in obscure indies not in your area and thus you'd probably have no reason to know anything about him For me I'm talking about Ric Flair and WCW, but anyone can chime in with anyone they want. I grew up in MA without cable. Had no idea when WCW Worldwide was on (assuming it was) in my area. Never caught WCW at all. But in the summer of 91 I went to a WWF house show that had Bobby Heenan announced Ric Flair was coming to the WWF. Now having a reason to care I went to the video store. We had Betamax still and there was one WCW tape to choose from Starrcade 90. Now I already knew Flair was the BS because I had a friend a few houses down who watched WCW and explained it. As a kid I didn't get that Ric Flair was playing generic wrestler I thought that was how Flair worked. And his first televised WWF match against Jim Neidhart didn't help. I thought, faster Greg Valentine and was done with it. Didn't get WHY my friend touted him as the GOAT even then and didn't see any reason to think differently until Royal Rumble 92. Likewise my friend mocked my WWF viewing for years and assured me WCW was better. We got cable in June of 93 and I remember being psyched for Saturday Night and............they showed the Beach Blast mini movie. So I wonder how stuff like that matters. 6/3/94 is another example as I think it's great, 5 stars but have never seen why it's the GOAT. Anyone else have experiences like this where a first exposure skewed your POV towards wrestler X (good skewing welcome too) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Johnny Sorrow Posted January 23, 2016 Report Share Posted January 23, 2016 If anything ever made me think a guy stunk, and then I saw stuff later that ruled....I'd immediately go "Oh, I was wrong." Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeCampbell Posted January 23, 2016 Report Share Posted January 23, 2016 I think first impressions, no matter how great or not-so-great, shouldn't matter at all. A very good worker could just be having an off-night. A not-very-good worker could just be having a lucky night. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JerryvonKramer Posted January 23, 2016 Report Share Posted January 23, 2016 Ron Garvin comes to mind. I thought he was extremely lame for many years, a view reinforced by the Scott Keiths and so on -- until I watched his stuff with Flair in the NWA and realised how wrong basically everyone had been on him. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pantherwagner Posted January 23, 2016 Report Share Posted January 23, 2016 Lawler was the one for me. I had read a lot about him at the Napolitano mags and seen great bloody brawl pictures of him vs Funk, Gilbert... I knew he was this great legend, then I saw him on WWF TV and he looked like an absolute geek. I was into WORKRATE so Lawler was the antithesis of what I was looking for in wrestling. Plus the pedo stories didn't help... he still looks like a creep, so even seeing his face would make my stomach sick. It took me until the mid 00's and the Smarkschoice GWE poll to actually being able to appreciate Lawler's work. I reconsidered my stance due to Goodhelmet talking about him all the time as the best ever and Phil Schneider and Dean Rasmussen praising his punches. I also thought Garvin was the lamest man ever for a very long time. I'm currently going through a lot of 1986 NWA and he's my favourite guy to watch. He's still quite awkward, though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jingus Posted January 23, 2016 Report Share Posted January 23, 2016 First impressions shouldn't bias our later viewings... but they do. It's something which has actually been researched in academic studies, and has generally been found to be completely true (sometimes in really weird ways). It's one of those psychological blind spots in the human brain, where our thought processes aren't nearly as logical or objective as we'd like to believe they are. I've had it happen to me with various wrestlers. The first Ultimate Warrior match I ever saw was Wrestlemania 6, and it took me a while to realize just how overall terrible a performer he was. Every time I saw him wrestle after that, the presence of that first perfectly-structured masterpiece of a match was in the back of my mind, subtly convincing me to give him the benefit of a doubt at all times. Same thing with Goldberg, the first time I saw him wrestle was the DDP miracle at Halloween Havoc 98, and as a young rookie fan it took a long time for me to figure out "hey, this guy has a lot of things that he's not very good at". And it can certainly work the other way too: the first time I ever saw Fujiwara was in an embarrassingly lame match against Dan Severn, where Yoshiaki looked about two hundred years old and Severn kept giving him the world's gentlest "playfully dropping a small child onto a mattress" belly-to-back suplexes which couldn't have hurt Mr. Glass from Unbreakable, let alone an allegedly tough professional wrestler. After watching him get treated like a Faberge egg, that "he's old and weak and can't do anything" prejudice took a long time to wipe from my hard drives, until I finally watched a bunch of his best work. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thebrainfollower Posted January 23, 2016 Author Report Share Posted January 23, 2016 I take your point Johnny and in Flair's case that's what happened, but I'd argue that first impressions matter. In my case for WCW by the time I started following it was really hit or miss TV and not where it had been even a year earlier. It wasn't until 1996 that I felt WCW caught up. And it wasn't until ten years later I got to see the really good stuff. Lawler is another obvious good choice, but I could at least see he looked older and just assumed he was past his prime. It wasn't until I got the Wrestling Gold set (I never was a tape trader as a teenager) that I saw how wrong I was on the King. The first Bruiser Brody match I ever saw was the Luger one around 2000 (again living in MA without cable really limited you in the 80's as a kid) and since I liked Luger that made me really dislike Brody. Mind you I haven't seen anything to change that view really. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gregor Posted January 23, 2016 Report Share Posted January 23, 2016 I'm worse about this for matches than for wrestlers. A wrestler can change my opinion after a bad first impression, largely because I'm watching a bunch of stuff from that promotion and can't avoid watching anyone more than once, but if I don't enjoy a match the first time that I watch it then that sticks with me. I might appreciate it more on a second viewing (if it gets one), but it has a ceiling and I'll probably never consider it great or a personal favorite. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
soup23 Posted January 23, 2016 Report Share Posted January 23, 2016 I think impressions can certainly taint your view and project your expectations going into things. It can be a prickly path that is constantly something I try not to over influence me to this day.I also don't see it as just an issue of when I first came online and heard about all of these foreign wrestlers and the talent before my time. For instance, if I watch a random yearbook match without any context and without reading the reviews, I watch the match as a whole and assert my opinion. However, if I see something like Sheik/Abby vs. Funks with the assertion that Parv called the Sheik's cheating as a magnum opus of that genre, I am really ingrained in paying attention into what he is doing and how that holds up. That can lead to disappointment to a degree in the case of the 1978 match, however this mindset can also lead to new discoveries and confirmation of something that was asserted by someone else. Bigelow34 praised the Masters vs. Michaels match from Unforgiven 2005 and that intrigued me since I liked Masters a good deal when he became the C-show superworker. I went back and watched the match and found not only Masters giving a great performance focusing on the back of HBK and finding neat variations to lock on the Masterlock, but also HBK doing a really solid sell job and him getting over the underneath talent like Masters as someone on his level. Being as plugged in as I am to this message board it is tough to ignore the norm sometimes like Parv loves Flair, Matt loves Bock, Dylan loves southern indies etc and not have that creep into my mind when watching certain stuff. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sidebottom Posted January 24, 2016 Report Share Posted January 24, 2016 Ron Garvin comes to mind. I thought he was extremely lame for many years, a view reinforced by the Scott Keiths and so on -- until I watched his stuff with Flair in the NWA and realised how wrong basically everyone had been on him. Sorry Jerry, but just because you thought contrary to their opinion, doesn't make them wrong my friend. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JerryvonKramer Posted January 24, 2016 Report Share Posted January 24, 2016 Yeah it does actually, because the position was that Ron Garvin wasn't a very good wrestler because he bombed as world champ and that his matches weren't very good as a result. That is the wrong conclusion. Starrcade 87 would get ratings like **. Comes from a wrongheaded way of reviewing, where backstage stories somehow end up being reflected in the rating. That's not an opinion thing, it's a "smart" fans being stupid thing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sidebottom Posted January 24, 2016 Report Share Posted January 24, 2016 Jerry, people are entitled to their opinions and because you don't agree with their opinions, it doesn't make them as you literally said: "wrong". That's such an asinine way of thinking. I'm not talking about Garvin at all btw, I'm talking in the most general sense possible. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JerryvonKramer Posted January 24, 2016 Report Share Posted January 24, 2016 It's a point that doesn't need making. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JerryvonKramer Posted January 24, 2016 Report Share Posted January 24, 2016 That came across as harsher than intended. I meant, yeah, it's well understood, we've discussed it a million times. I'm saying the opinion that Flair vs. Garvin isn't a good match because Garvin bombed as champ is a silly way of looking at matches. If I can't say that without relativist quibbles there is no hope for meaningful conversation ever to take place. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ohtani's jacket Posted January 24, 2016 Report Share Posted January 24, 2016 Eh, the Garvin/Flair feud not working is a perfectly valid reason not to rate that match highly. The '87 version of their feud was weaker than the '86 stuff, the Garvin title reign doesn't work and the heat for the Chicago match is weak. Flair chasing the title at Starrcade comes across as a poor man's version of Starrcade '83 and the whole thing is overshadowed by the moves the WWF were making to screw Crockett and Crockett trying to take New York. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JerryvonKramer Posted January 24, 2016 Report Share Posted January 24, 2016 And see, ideally this is where a disagreement and conversation arises. Or we can pussy about saying, "hey dude, cool if you think that, you aren't wrong, but hey, I think this totally opposite thing and I'm not wrong either". We can't have conversations if we just do that all the time. Meaningful conversation starts when you put the (general, abstract, and basically boring) relativistic point to bed. I disagree with OJ for all sorts of reasons. How do we proceed? If I say "he's not wrong and he's entitled to that opinion", the conversation ends. Maybe we want the conversation to end, I dunno. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ohtani's jacket Posted January 24, 2016 Report Share Posted January 24, 2016 It's not a conversation that's going to go anywhere. I like Garvin as a worker -- the Tully match is one of my all-time favourite bouts -- but any way you cut it Starrcade '87 isn't great. Even if you think it's a ***, *** 1/2 or *** 3/4 match, that's not good enough from a Flair match on a major PPV. Flair seemed to have a pretty weak year in '87. What's his best stuff from that year? The Windham matches? War Games? I thought the Garvin bout from the Bash was awful, but Crockett era fans seem to like the Precious angle. . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JerryvonKramer Posted January 24, 2016 Report Share Posted January 24, 2016 There are lots of us who think the Starrcade 87 bout is ****+ I also like the Jimmy Garvin match and think the finish is memorable. Maybe, you're right, it's not going to go anywhere. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ohtani's jacket Posted January 24, 2016 Report Share Posted January 24, 2016 ****+ is the opposite extreme of **. The truth, as ever, lies somewhere in the middle. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim Cooke Posted January 24, 2016 Report Share Posted January 24, 2016 I haven't seen anyone call the Starrcade match ****+ Until Will started getting all of this footage collected and into the public's hands in 2005, I imagine almost no one on this board (nonetheless elsewhere) had seen the full September title switch. That match is one that I know Ohtani's Jacket doesn't like but I found it to be excellent. Meltzer wasn't a Ron Garvin fan and you may as well listen to a 14 month old than listen to Scott Keith. And Scott Keith's influence is still very strong, maybe stronger in some ways than 15 years ago. But that's why wrestlers constantly being reevaluated is a good thing. In 2001, was there anyone online talking up the positives of El Dandy? Maybe Rob Bihari but in 2016 that seems comical as Dandy has been revisited via new footage, more wide spread matches, and a bigger sample size. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
soup23 Posted January 24, 2016 Report Share Posted January 24, 2016 I haven't seen anyone call the Starrcade match ****+ Me, Loss and Parv all have it at ****+, I don't know where Shoe/KrisZ weigh in but I know from reading the 80's discussion, it has a big following. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
soup23 Posted January 24, 2016 Report Share Posted January 24, 2016 Eh, the Garvin/Flair feud not working is a perfectly valid reason not to rate that match highly. The '87 version of their feud was weaker than the '86 stuff, the Garvin title reign doesn't work and the heat for the Chicago match is weak. Flair chasing the title at Starrcade comes across as a poor man's version of Starrcade '83 and the whole thing is overshadowed by the moves the WWF were making to screw Crockett and Crockett trying to take New York. I don't all the way agree that just because the feud doesn't work, the match being ranked lowly is perfectly valid. However, I think my annoyance with the Garvin issue is the inconsistency of ranking stuff like that. Shawn Michaels 1996 title run was a failure from a box office perspective across the board. Yet, the same folks that rank that Starrcade 87 match poorly in due part because Garvin isn't seen as a believable champion also will rate Mind Games near *****. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JerryvonKramer Posted January 24, 2016 Report Share Posted January 24, 2016 Scott Keith was also wildly inconsistent with it. Flair vs. Steamboat didn't work in many ways, 5,000 people at the New Orleans Superdome, fans cheering Flair and booing Steamboat, that's the booking not working. But that didn't seem to bother him nearly as much as the booking not working for Garvin. Also, I guess non-WTBBP listeners would have heard a lot less of this Garvin talk because it tended to take place in the feedback threads to our shows. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ohtani's jacket Posted January 24, 2016 Report Share Posted January 24, 2016 Mindgames is a legitimately great match that has always been thought of as a great match. The Clash match is a legitimately great match that has always been thought of as a great match. The rethinking on Flair/Garvin (to me anyway) would be more akin to people claiming that Shawn/Vader was a better match than anybody had ever thought or the Flair/Sting match from the 1990 Great American Bash. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thebrainfollower Posted January 25, 2016 Author Report Share Posted January 25, 2016 Moderation as always correct is a fallacy OJ. By that standard it's no big deal to be mostly dead. Insert any Billy Crystal joke you like. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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