Voting for guys who are in their prime?

[Grimmas]

Also I really do disagree with this idea that a worker at 50 can tell you something about the worker at 28, doesn't tell me anything about the worker at 28 only what he's like at 50.

 

Again I think of real sports. Like who cares what Thierry Henry was like at 35? Doesn't matter, it's what he was like when he was scoring shitloads of goals for Arsenal that matters.

 

Who cares if Kobasho was excessive in 2004? He was awesome in 1993.

 

Etc

 

One of those hard philosophical differences between some of us it seems.

I don't like the sports comparisons, because wrestling is not just about being an athlete.

 

I think the prime of a wrestler is a good starting point, but should not be the be all and end all.

[Matt D]

We've been over this again and again and again.

 

Of the people I know factoring in post-prime, it's not to:

1) Average the star rating of every match (or performance) for the entire career

or

2) calculate every stat in Parv's BIGLAV.

 

It's because they value highly what Parv would have as the psychology stat, or what Loss came up with as "Vision." And that downplays a lot of other more athletic or technical stats.

 

And the way to really understand that metric is to watch a lot of matches and look for patterns and use elements of matches as a lens, to watch different matches as experiments to see how a wrestler will deal with a particular situation, etc. And in that regard, every single match a wrestler has might shed some light on every other single match that he has. You're constantly building a bigger picture of who that wrestler was, how he wrestled, what was his vision. In that regard, there may or may not be things that you can learn from his post prime, once some of the physical gifts have diminished or if he's in a very different situation. It's not ever, ever, ever about penalizing. It's always about understanding. It's about gathering more data to understand the wrestler as a whole, to understand his development, to understand his vision, to gain a new lens to try looking at his prime or pre-prime matches with, to run that experiment and see what you discover about his performances.

 

It doesn't necessarily apply for a Great Match or BIGLAV driven approach.

[Grimmas]

We've been over this again and again and again.

 

Of the people I know factoring in post-prime, it's not to:

1) Average the star rating of every match (or performance) for the entire career

or

2) calculate every stat in Parv's BIGLAV.

 

It's because they value highly what Parv would have as the psychology stat, or what Loss came up with as "Vision." And that downplays a lot of other more athletic or technical stats.

 

And the way to really understand that metric is to watch a lot of matches and look for patterns and use elements of matches as lens', to watch different matches as experiments to see how a wrestler will deal with a particular situation, etc. And in that regard, every single match a wrestler has might shed some light on every other single match that he has. You're constantly building a bigger picture of who that wrestler was, how he wrestled, what was his vision. In that regard, there may or may not be things that you can learn from his post prime, once some of the physical gifts have diminished or if he's in a very different situation. It's not ever, ever, ever about penalizing. It's always about understanding. It's about gathering more data to understand the wrestler as a whole, to understand his development, to understand his vision, to gain a new lens to try looking at his prime or pre-prime matches with, to run that experiment and see what you discover about his performances.

 

It doesn't necessarily apply for a Great Match or BIGLAV driven approach.

Thanks Matt, that clarifies what I am trying to say better than I said it.

[JerryvonKramer]

Like look at Flair, he's constantly telling us that after he couldn't really go anymore, he became more of a gimmick worker and pared back to like three moves. On the face of it, it's smart. And he did get over and adapted enough to stay on TV until he literally couldn't be in the ring any more.

 

To me, looking at old man Flair reveals precisely ... nothing about Ric Flair from 1985. Like nothing at all, they might as well be two different guys.

[Grimmas]

Like look at Flair, he's constantly telling us that after he couldn't really go anymore, he became more of a gimmick worker and pared back to like three moves. On the face of it, it's smart. And he did get over and adapted enough to stay on TV until he literally couldn't be in the ring any more.

 

To me, looking at old man Flairs reveals precisely ... nothing about Ric Flair from 1985. Like nothing at all, they might as well be two different guys.

He did that in 07, after 4 years of being the worst wrestler in a major promotion.

 

As Matt noted, sometimes watching someone post prime does not reveal much.

[JerryvonKramer]

See I'd argue he started doing it as far back as 1996.

[Matt D]

Flair is the poster child for what you can learn. We've had this argument before. Multiple times. You can dig through the archives to find my feelings on this specific thing with Flair if you care so much. There are pages and pages of back and forth on this. I don't suggest that you do it. You should focus on WoS and other things to round out your ballot as we get close to the end. Everyone will get a lot more out of that. I don't think you've written a ton about WoS past Breaks, and I'm sure people would be more interested to see your thoughts on those matches than to go around this circle again.

 

I've made a general clarification point about the reasoning because I thought that might have still somehow been unclear.

 

If you want to argue with me more about this, you can argue with the me of two years ago, McFly.

[JerryvonKramer]

I guess the underlying problem I have is that in Matt's formulation the wrestler's "smarts" seems like an unchanging unified constant.

 

But people change over time. They lose motivation or get lazy or complacent. Or maybe they start hotheaded and gain wisdom with experience. They might adopt different personal beliefs or philosophies.

 

It's not like magically transporting the same brain to a different body.

 

Some guys might be smart during their prime and stupid in post prime. Others might be smarter later in their careers.

[Loss]

 

Like look at Flair, he's constantly telling us that after he couldn't really go anymore, he became more of a gimmick worker and pared back to like three moves. On the face of it, it's smart. And he did get over and adapted enough to stay on TV until he literally couldn't be in the ring any more.

 

To me, looking at old man Flairs reveals precisely ... nothing about Ric Flair from 1985. Like nothing at all, they might as well be two different guys.

He did that in 07, after 4 years of being the worst wrestler in a major promotion.

 

As Matt noted, sometimes watching someone post prime does not reveal much.

 

 

How extensively has this claim that Ric Flair was the worst wrestler in a major promotion been vetted?

[Matt D]

I guess the underlying problem I have is that in Matt's formulation the wrestler's "smarts" seems like an unchanging unified constant.

 

But people change over time. They lose motivation or get lazy or complacent. Or maybe they start hotheaded and gain wisdom with experience. They might adopt different personal beliefs or philosophies.

 

It's not like magically transporting the same brain to a different body.

 

Some guys might be smart during their prime and stupid in post prime. Others might be smarter later in their careers.

 

Yeah, that gets factored in. You're looking for patterns, not for one magic bullet. How they learn matters. If they don't learn, that matters too. If they never needed to learn, that matters.

 

Frankly, isn't what you just said true with BIGLAV too though?

 

What if Wrestler A is best at Psychology in 2000, best at offense in 1984 and best at selling in 1994? Etc.

 

Big Show was throwing missile dropkicks in 1997 when he was young and most athletic but didn't get the ring presence down or figured how much to give and when to give it until years later. That sort of thing.

[Microstatistics]

I am not as high on Flair as most people in general, but there was absolutely no way he was the worst wrestler in the WWE during the mid 2000s. I remember his 2005-2006 stuff was actually pretty good and he adapted well and become Terry Funk like hardcore/gimmick match worker, having some good matches with HHH, Foley etc.

[Grimmas]

 

 

Like look at Flair, he's constantly telling us that after he couldn't really go anymore, he became more of a gimmick worker and pared back to like three moves. On the face of it, it's smart. And he did get over and adapted enough to stay on TV until he literally couldn't be in the ring any more.

 

To me, looking at old man Flairs reveals precisely ... nothing about Ric Flair from 1985. Like nothing at all, they might as well be two different guys.

He did that in 07, after 4 years of being the worst wrestler in a major promotion.

 

As Matt noted, sometimes watching someone post prime does not reveal much.

 

 

How extensively has this claim that Ric Flair was the worst wrestler in a major promotion been vetted?

 

Hyperbola by me. He wasn't good at all for a period, though.

[Matt D]

I'm higher than most people on the Foley match, which is totally beside the point.

[Loss]

I said this to Matt in a private conversation and felt like it should be posted here:

 

If I tell someone the potato is the best food ever, I don't think the proper way to start investigating that claim is to eat a burned one.

 

I'll let him add his response here if he chooses, because it was an interesting one.

[Matt D]

I said this to Matt in a private conversation and felt like it should be posted here:

 

If I tell someone the potato is the best food ever, I don't think the proper response is to eat a burned one and disagree.

We've had a ten minute conversation about potatoes after that. You can't just put out the first bit of potato talk.

 

The mental illness argument was one I was having a lot more problem with, to be honest.

[Loss]

I was editing my post while you were posting.

[Matt D]

I do that all the time. And then I keep doing it. I figure it's fair game right up until the point someone quotes you in a reply. I lost a nice bit about "Everyone values different things." for one of my last ones.

[Loss]

That point, for the record, was that Ric Flair has probably been mentally ill for at least 20 years, and when so much of his greatness was routed in his self-confidence, I'm not sure his latter years tell us anything all that valuable, other than that he had regressed. Wrestlers are capable of change -- not just physically, but mentally too.

[Grimmas]

That point, for the record, was that Ric Flair has probably been mentally ill for at least 20 years, and when so much of his greatness was routed in his self-confidence, I'm not sure his latter years tell us anything all that valuable, other than that he had regressed. Wrestlers are capable of change -- not just physically, but mentally too.

This is a really interesting point, that I never thought about. Explains a lot. Won't move Flair above Hansen or anything, but gives me some thoughts.

[Matt D]

Concussions are an issue as is drug use. I don't think they're enough of one to invalidate the point as a whole.

 

I think you can learn a lot from an author's last work, even if he's a little slower, or a little more derivative or no longer ahead of the curve.

 

Playback is not a strong Raymond Chandler book relative to his previous works. It came out five years after Long Goodbye, and after he had lost his wife, in the year before he died. I think you can still learn a lot about him as an artist from it, and what you see there can help you in evaluating his previous, far superior works. It doesn't meant that you'll end up necessarily thinking they're better or worse specifically, but it could help you see the color in them differently, the themes more clearly, and in that, you might come to the conclusion that he was a better or worse writer.

 

That, to me,is a much better example than sports or spuds.

[JerryvonKramer]

To me it still doesn't tell me anything.

 

I'm not being facetious or anything, it just genuinely doesn't.

 

I've thought about this many times before about writers.

 

Some have strong late periods, Bob Dylan, WB Yeats, Milton would all spring to mind. I don't see the late work telling us much about the early work. I really don't. They capture their minds at a different point in their life. An old man could not have written Easter Rising or Times They Are A-Changing, a young man could not have written The Tower or Love and Theft.

 

Similarly, other writers, William Wordsworth springs to mind, have really poor late careers, and similarly it doesn't really tell you much about his earlier work other than that he became a massive Tory in later life.

[Matt D]

One thing Steven reemphasized for me is that it's not that you learn something with every case. It's just more data to look at. Some new lens you can use to reexamine previous work. If you use that lens, reexamine it, and find nothing to go with, that's fine. It's just another tool at your disposal when you're working to understand a wrestler as a whole and to figure out #6 vs #5 or whatever. Another experiment to run.

 

In the end, we disagree. I'm always happy to agree with you, Parv. I'm always happy to disagree too.

[InYourCase]

I don't have a problem with voting for anyone in their prime. Okada is making my ballot. Same with YAMATO, Sekimoto, and Akira Tozawa, among others. Someone like Tozawa has done more than enough over the last five years to make me go, "yes, he's one of the 100 greatest wrestlers of all-time". He doesn't have the benefit of hindsight, but in the moment I can clearly see that he's good enough to make my list.