Why does puro get so much love? Why does lucha get so dismissed?

[Grimmas]

 

Grimmas may be determined to scream racism at any and everyone who doesn't love lucha (and not loving it -- or any wrestling style, as others have noted -- is perfectly great as no one should watch wrestling they don't care and not everything will click with every fan, and no, I'm not quoting the particular post where that ad hominem attack was launched at everyone or the half baked defense that followed because it was a quite shameful attack and arguably the most toxic statement anyone's made here, but I digress. How's that for a sentence long enough to stretch 2 segments and possibly merit its own commercial break?

 

Learn to read, never once said it was racism. Just said completely dismissing it seems wrong.

 

Others have asked, why would anybody care that wrestling coverage follows America and puro and ignores almost everything else?

 

It seems pretty obvious that people would want wrestling coverage and fandom to not ignore a giant country like Mexico.

 

A few have come back with lucha is just not for them, which is completely fine. However, I feel like that is too simple of an answer. Would lucha be as hard to get into if it was covered like puro and if the tapes flowed as freely. Would it be as hard if people talked about MS-1 vs Sangre Chicano like they do 6/3/94?

 

Also, maybe Trauma vs Lupus is a bad example. Looking back Atlantis vs UG was 4th match of the year in the WON. That's not too bad at all, of course it's the only lucha match to place or get honourable mentions. Would that be the case with a different narrative and history?

[WingedEagle]

 

 

Grimmas may be determined to scream racism at any and everyone who doesn't love lucha (and not loving it -- or any wrestling style, as others have noted -- is perfectly great as no one should watch wrestling they don't care and not everything will click with every fan, and no, I'm not quoting the particular post where that ad hominem attack was launched at everyone or the half baked defense that followed because it was a quite shameful attack and arguably the most toxic statement anyone's made here, but I digress. How's that for a sentence long enough to stretch 2 segments and possibly merit its own commercial break?

 

Learn to read, never once said it was racism. Just said completely dismissing it seems wrong.

 

Others have asked, why would anybody care that wrestling coverage follows America and puro and ignores almost everything else?

 

It seems pretty obvious that people would want wrestling coverage and fandom to not ignore a giant country like Mexico.

 

A few have come back with lucha is just not for them, which is completely fine. However, I feel like that is too simple of an answer. Would lucha be as hard to get into if it was covered like puro and if the tapes flowed as freely. Would it be as hard if people talked about MS-1 vs Sangre Chicano like they do 6/3/94?

 

Also, maybe Trauma vs Lupus is a bad example. Looking back Atlantis vs UG was 4th match of the year in the WON. That's not too bad at all, of course it's the only lucha match to place or get honourable mentions. Would that be the case with a different narrative and history?

 

 

I'm not interested in whether Mexico is a giant or small country. I'm interested in whether the wrestling it produces is compelling and interesting according to my tastes. Why on earth would I want to dedicate time to something just because it originates in a big place? Just don't see the logic there at all.

 

If there was a groundswell of discussion about MS-1 vs. Sangre Chicana, or any big lucha matches -- whether Atlantis/V3, highly touted Santo/Casas/Dandy matches from the 90s, or Mistico / Anniversary show matches from the last 10 years, I believe there would be a hell of a lot more discussion about them. Then again, I don't think it compares to Misawa/Kawada or the best of All Japan from that era, or even New Japan from this era. That's my taste. Its a great match but not an all-timer for me. But you seem intent on tying this directly to WON MOTY voting. I can't explain the reasons there but can't think of a good one off the top of my head. Do you want people to understand and be open to lucha, or are you beating the drum that they adopt your views of lucha, and if not, content to resort to personal attacks for why their tastes are wrong?

 

If people who are diehard lucha fans believe that Mexican promotions are putting forth the best wrestling in the world, here's what they should do. Skip right past the point where you condemn people who have other tastes and suggest that they're racist. Instead, talk about Mexican wrestling. Say why its great, what to look for, give it context and tell people where to watch it. If people still don't like it, perhaps consider its not racist and not a personal affront to the person making the recommendation, but a matter of taste. And then continue talking about Mexican wrestling that is great until you're tired of doing so. What's so difficult about that tact?

[Grimmas]

 

 

 

Grimmas may be determined to scream racism at any and everyone who doesn't love lucha (and not loving it -- or any wrestling style, as others have noted -- is perfectly great as no one should watch wrestling they don't care and not everything will click with every fan, and no, I'm not quoting the particular post where that ad hominem attack was launched at everyone or the half baked defense that followed because it was a quite shameful attack and arguably the most toxic statement anyone's made here, but I digress. How's that for a sentence long enough to stretch 2 segments and possibly merit its own commercial break?

 

Learn to read, never once said it was racism. Just said completely dismissing it seems wrong.

 

Others have asked, why would anybody care that wrestling coverage follows America and puro and ignores almost everything else?

 

It seems pretty obvious that people would want wrestling coverage and fandom to not ignore a giant country like Mexico.

 

A few have come back with lucha is just not for them, which is completely fine. However, I feel like that is too simple of an answer. Would lucha be as hard to get into if it was covered like puro and if the tapes flowed as freely. Would it be as hard if people talked about MS-1 vs Sangre Chicano like they do 6/3/94?

 

Also, maybe Trauma vs Lupus is a bad example. Looking back Atlantis vs UG was 4th match of the year in the WON. That's not too bad at all, of course it's the only lucha match to place or get honourable mentions. Would that be the case with a different narrative and history?

 

 

I'm not interested in whether Mexico is a giant or small country. I'm interested in whether the wrestling it produces is compelling and interesting according to my tastes. Why on earth would I want to dedicate time to something just because it originates in a big place? Just don't see the logic there at all.

 

If there was a groundswell of discussion about MS-1 vs. Sangre Chicana, or any big lucha matches -- whether Atlantis/V3, highly touted Santo/Casas/Dandy matches from the 90s, or Mistico / Anniversary show matches from the last 10 years, I believe there would be a hell of a lot more discussion about them. Then again, I don't think it compares to Misawa/Kawada or the best of All Japan from that era, or even New Japan from this era. That's my taste. Its a great match but not an all-timer for me. But you seem intent on tying this directly to WON MOTY voting. I can't explain the reasons there but can't think of a good one off the top of my head. Do you want people to understand and be open to lucha, or are you beating the drum that they adopt your views of lucha, and if not, content to resort to personal attacks for why their tastes are wrong?

 

If people who are diehard lucha fans believe that Mexican promotions are putting forth the best wrestling in the world, here's what they should do. Skip right past the point where you condemn people who have other tastes and suggest that they're racist. Instead, talk about Mexican wrestling. Say why its great, what to look for, give it context and tell people where to watch it. If people still don't like it, perhaps consider its not racist and not a personal affront to the person making the recommendation, but a matter of taste. And then continue talking about Mexican wrestling that is great until you're tired of doing so. What's so difficult about that tact?

 

You are still missing something, so I must really suck at explaining. My apologies.

 

I'm not offended or hurt by lack of lucha coverage. Lack of lucha discussion. Lack of lucha getting awards, etc...

 

What you seem to be claiming is lucha is not for you, so you ignore it. That is fine. Nothing wrong with that. What an individual does is not important to me.

 

Lucha libre draws really well in Mexico. They draw thousands of people every day and run a ridiculous amount of shows. If we are claiming that it gets no overall narrative or coverage because it's just not for the people who ignore, then how did it get so popular in Mexico and with certain (small minority) of fans?

 

Saying it's not for this person, it's not for this person, does not explain it at all. Saying puro is not for everything explains why some people like it, and some don't. If it's not just for some people, lucha would be a LOT more popular.

 

Also, if you see no problem at all with lucha getting almost no coverage in the WON and WON awards, the torch, etc.. etc... that's fine. I think that seems wrong and doesn't seem like those things are accurately covering wrestling.

 

EDIT: I am just saying I think there is a problem here, I'm not upset or angry or sad or flipping out.

[Dylan Waco]

One thing that is interesting to consider is the popularity of Minchinoku Pro in hardcore fan/tape trading circles. While MPro is not identical to lucha trios wrestling, it is close enough, and closer in form in almost every way to that than it is to anything that was going on in Japan at the time. MPro was never as popular as NJPW juniors, AJPW heavies, or even peak FMW, but all those promotions were much larger operations. When you adjust for the size of the company, MPro was actually incredibly popular stateside, producing multiple wrestlers that were beloved figures, and at least one match that was widely considered "canon" for the 90s and an all time classic.

 

One would think that if hardcore fans had a strong stylistic aversion to lucha, MPro would never have been a favorite of hardcore fans in the 90s, even if we grant the point that MPro isn't "pure lucha" (not sure such a thing exists). Of course you could argue that many hardcore fans and traders from that era were sampling chunks of every promotion in Japan, and in that context MPro felt different and thus was the right niche, in the right place, at the right time. But that still doesn't speak to why the stylistic quirks shared by MPro and lucha would work with hardcore fans in one setting, and be thoroughly rejected in the other.

 

Which wraps back around to the bigger point which is that I don't really think lucha has been thoroughly rejected by hardcore fans - it's just generally been ignored. The truth is that in cases where lucha has been made accessible AND has been promoted by the house organs of hardcore fandom it has largely been well regarded and praised, whether it be Rey Jr, Psicosis and Juventud in ECW/WCW, Super Crazy in ECW, Pentagon and Fenix on the indies today, AAA in the mid-90s in the U.S., or even Mistico era CMLL. Regardless of the tastes of any contributors to this thread, I strongly suspect that if Dave Meltzer was praising lucha title matches, brawls, or even old man's maestros matches and they were easily available to the public, the typical hardcore fan reaction to those things would be overwhelmingly positive. Whether or not that praise would reach the level of similarly well positioned Japanese wrestling and why lucha has been covered so poorly relative to Japan and the U.S. wrestling are separate questions, the first not terribly interesting to me, and the second problematic for a variety of reasons.

[Grimmas]

One thing that is interesting to consider is the popularity of Minchinoku Pro in hardcore fan/tape trading circles. While MPro is not identical to lucha trios wrestling, it is close enough, and closer in form in almost every way to that than it is to anything that was going on in Japan at the time. MPro was never as popular as NJPW juniors, AJPW heavies, or even peak FMW, but all those promotions were much larger operations. When you adjust for the size of the company, MPro was actually incredibly popular stateside, producing multiple wrestlers that were beloved figures, and at least one match that was widely considered "canon" for the 90s and an all time classic.

 

One would think that if hardcore fans had a strong stylistic aversion to lucha, MPro would never have been a favorite of hardcore fans in the 90s, even if we grant the point that MPro isn't "pure lucha" (not sure such a thing exists). Of course you could argue that many hardcore fans and traders from that era were sampling chunks of every promotion in Japan, and in that context MPro felt different and thus was the right niche, in the right place, at the right time. But that still doesn't speak to why the stylistic quirks shared by MPro and lucha would work with hardcore fans in one setting, and be thoroughly rejected in the other.

 

Which wraps back around to the bigger point which is that I don't really think lucha has been thoroughly rejected by hardcore fans - it's just generally been ignored. The truth is that in cases where lucha has been made accessible AND has been promoted by the house organs of hardcore fandom it has largely been well regarded and praised, whether it be Rey Jr, Psicosis and Juventud in ECW/WCW, Super Crazy in ECW, Pentagon and Fenix on the indies today, AAA in the mid-90s in the U.S., or even Mistico era CMLL. Regardless of the tastes of any contributors to this thread, I strongly suspect that if Dave Meltzer was praising lucha title matches, brawls, or even old man's maestros matches and they were easily available to the public, the typical hardcore fan reaction to those things would be overwhelmingly positive. Whether or not that praise would reach the level of similarly well positioned Japanese wrestling and why lucha has been covered so poorly relative to Japan and the U.S. wrestling are separate questions, the first not terribly interesting to me, and the second problematic for a variety of reasons.

I agree with this, so much.

[stro]

So, how would this change?

 

What could be done to get lucha viewed as favourably as puro?

 

EDIT: For example, something like Trauma I vs Canis Lupus is a match that most are calling a MOTY, maybe even a MOTD. What are the chances it finishes number 1 for the WON Awards? Top 3? Top 5? Top 10?

 

What could be done for future matches like that to place high and be treated in the same breath as top puro matches?

Literally no other board I've been to has even mentioned Trauma vs Lupus at all, let alone as a MOTY or MOTD. When you say "most", do you mean most just on this board? I watched the match and thought it was decidedly average. It certainly doesn't deserve to win any awards outside of maybe best bladejob. When has a match from a tiny indie no one has heard of in America ever won WON MOTY? Like, AAW or AIW will never win MOTY from WON, let alone some of those promotions out of the Carolinas area or the various NWA promotions still around.

 

 

 

 

 

Here is some of the Black Terry stuff I tried, I'm hardly an expert, but these would be mat based "maestro" style bouts no?

 

I watched 30 seconds in the middle of this match and gave up. Unbelievably terrible. Matches worked slower than a training demonstration? I'll pass.

 

Way to put in the effort.

 

Here's the thing: People shouldn't have to put in the effort to make you feel justified in liking what you like.

 

The real question that needs to be asked here is why the fuck do you give a shit about what Dave Meltzer (or anyone else) thinks about lucha? Why do you need others to like what you like, and be condescending to those that don't? You're on that 20 year old music snob gimmick right now, and it is not becoming at all. Like what you like and move on with your life. The reasons why lucha isn't covered as much have been covered multiple times. Nothing is going to change, nor does anything NEED to change for you to keep enjoying your luchas. There is nothing wrong with people don't like lucha. There is nothing wrong with people who do like lucha. Keep watching what you watch and stop worrying about what other people aren't watching.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lucha libre draws really well in Mexico. They draw thousands of people every day and run a ridiculous amount of shows. If we are claiming that it gets no overall narrative or coverage because it's just not for the people who ignore, then how did it get so popular in Mexico and with certain (small minority) of fans?

 

 

 

 

Oh weird, Mexican wrestling is very popular in Mexico? I wonder why a style of wrestling wrapped up in the Mexican culture and easily understood by people living in Mexico would be far more popular in Mexico than anywhere else. American wrestling has traditionally been far less popular in Mexico, with WWE's tours drawing much less than AAA/CMLL. If there was a Mexican Dave Meltzer type, do you think he'd cover American and Japanese wrestling as much as Mexican wrestling? Currently at least, it seems like Mexican fans are a lot more interested in puro than they are WWE/American indies. Is there some insidious reasoning behind it, or could it just be that there are more working agreements between Mexican and Japanese promotions, so they're more exposed to Japanese wrestlers today than Americans?

[El-P]

Regardless of the tastes of any contributors to this thread, I strongly suspect that if Dave Meltzer was praising lucha title matches, brawls, or even old man's maestros matches and they were easily available to the public, the typical hardcore fan reaction to those things would be overwhelmingly positive.

 

Who is the "typical hardcore fan" ?

 

For year I had talked about trends (about Lawler for instance, but not only) only to be derided and even insulted at times, because there couldn't be any kind of influence and groupthink at play in the DVDVR projects (because all the people taking part in these were absolutely imune to any kind of influence whatsoever, they just watched the matches and all agreed (this always comes up when talked about some unseen "classic" BTW, the fact that "all the people who watched it agreed it was great", which is always suspect to me and plays a part into building a narrative that already goes beyond the simple match, which may or may not be great)), but these days it basically all comes down to "typical hardcore fans are Meltzer sheeps" when it comes to "bad opinions". So, there are trends and groupthink, but only on the "other side of the fence". Interesting.

 

(I do agree about MPro though, I was thinking about that too. Much like my beloved ARSION had a clear lucha influence too, if only by Gran Apache and his daughters working over there regularly)

[W2BTD]

If dave praised those things heavily, maybe more people would sample them (although I'm not totally convinced, because he praises CMLL three times per week very publicly on Twitter and on his radio show, and I'm not seeing any kind of palpable uptick in CMLL interest in and around F4W), but I'm not convinced the masses would parrot his praise. I again refer to his current fascination with the CMLL streams. I'd also refer to his overrating of stuff like any Randy Orton match, which has become a meme at this point, with dave essentially on an island. I don't ever see Orton bouts filling up the MOTY leaderboards and dave is always going ****+ on his stuff.

 

There is an entire generation of fans under the age of 35 or so that has never read a word of the Observer and never will. They largely don't care about dave, and a good number of them see him as an out of touch "garbage person"/racist/sexist and have no respect for him. dave certainly has influence and is still a tastemaker to some degree, I'm not denying that, but I think his influence shrinks a good deal with each passing year.

 

Is there a big time CMLL MOTY contender that dave has gone overboard with this year? I can't think of one. That would be a decent test case, but I'm really not seeing dave's current love affair with CMLL trickling down to the masses to any palpable degree.

[Matt D]

Plus Volador is terrible.

[stro]

DVDVR and indeed the GWE lists here are clearly full of groupthink, because that's the only way Jerry Lawler ends up in the top 10 over guys like Steamboat/Savage/Austin/HBK/Arn etc. When you have a list where Bobby Eaton is 80 ahead of The Rock, and Chris Hero is 3 behind The Rock, you know you're in a place where a bunch of like minded people have gathered and think this is how "everyone" thinks because they're all in agreement.

 

I say this as someone who loves both Jerry Lawler and Bobby Eaton. Their rankings are so out of whack that it's genuinely laughable. Random shit like a 3 minute Tojo vs Dundee studio match from 1981 would get praised as being so incredible, a lost classic, etc etc. Then you watch it and it has 3 punches, a kick from Dundee, both choke and nerve hold spots, and a DQ. DVDVR always had a strong tenancy to make sure everyone knew they were smarter than the average smark, which ended up meaning they'd fight to find the most obscure match to hype up to show how deep in it they really were. It's no surprise that that happens here as well, considering the DNA of this place. Anyone that would ever try to deny such things is just being silly. When you make a Greatest Ever list and the majority of posters agree on the top 10, that should be enough to tell you there is groupthink going on.

[W2BTD]

I'd also note that dave's CMLL & AAA sections each week in the WON are almost always larger and run deeper than any puro section with the exception of NJPW. dave doesn't watch any puro promotion with regularity other than NJPW. A common complaint among puro fans is how lazy & poor his Japanese coverage is.

 

If NJPW wasn't "hot" right now and getting the occasional lead story, I'm not even sure you could make a real case that dave is covering puro to some crazy degree over lucha. His interest level in NJPW & CMLL seems about the same. This isn't 1991, he isn't doing 5-6 pages on Japanese TV every week.

[GOTNW]

DVDVR and indeed the GWE lists here are clearly full of groupthink, because that's the only way Jerry Lawler ends up in the top 10 over guys like Steamboat/Savage/Austin/HBK/Arn etc. When you have a list where Bobby Eaton is 80 ahead of The Rock, and Chris Hero is 3 behind The Rock, you know you're in a place where a bunch of like minded people have gathered and think this is how "everyone" thinks because they're all in agreement.

 

I say this as someone who loves both Jerry Lawler and Bobby Eaton. Their rankings are so out of whack that it's genuinely laughable. Random shit like a 3 minute Tojo vs Dundee studio match from 1981 would get praised as being so incredible, a lost classic, etc etc. Then you watch it and it has 3 punches, a kick from Dundee, both choke and nerve hold spots, and a DQ. DVDVR always had a strong tenancy to make sure everyone knew they were smarter than the average smark, which ended up meaning they'd fight to find the most obscure match to hype up to show how deep in it they really were. It's no surprise that that happens here as well, considering the DNA of this place. Anyone that would ever try to deny such things is just being silly. When you make a Greatest Ever list and the majority of posters agree on the top 10, that should be enough to tell you there is groupthink going on.

You need to take that presumption people like wrestling ironically and to prove points and sincerely fuck off.

[Migs]

If dave praised those things heavily, maybe more people would sample them (although I'm not totally convinced, because he praises CMLL three times per week very publicly on Twitter and on his radio show, and I'm not seeing any kind of palpable uptick in CMLL interest in and around F4W), but I'm not convinced the masses would parrot his praise. I again refer to his current fascination with the CMLL streams. I'd also refer to his overrating of stuff like any Randy Orton match, which has become a meme at this point, with dave essentially on an island. I don't ever see Orton bouts filling up the MOTY leaderboards and dave is always going ****+ on his stuff.

 

There is an entire generation of fans under the age of 35 or so that has never read a word of the Observer and never will. They largely don't care about dave, and a good number of them see him as an out of touch "garbage person"/racist/sexist and have no respect for him. dave certainly has influence and is still a tastemaker to some degree, I'm not denying that, but I think his influence shrinks a good deal with each passing year.

 

Is there a big time CMLL MOTY contender that dave has gone overboard with this year? I can't think of one. That would be a decent test case, but I'm really not seeing dave's current love affair with CMLL trickling down to the masses to any palpable degree.

 

Agreed, and I think the focus on Meltzer now is probably a bit misguided. There's likely a large effect among "hardcore" circles from the way Meltzer wrote about puro and lucha in the late 80s and early 90s (particularly with the way it coincided with people starting to get online, RSPW, trade trading, etc.), but that's history and can't be changed. Meltzer praising something can help, but influence is so diffuse at this point that one person really can't shift popular opinion in a big way.

[Grimmas]

 

If dave praised those things heavily, maybe more people would sample them (although I'm not totally convinced, because he praises CMLL three times per week very publicly on Twitter and on his radio show, and I'm not seeing any kind of palpable uptick in CMLL interest in and around F4W), but I'm not convinced the masses would parrot his praise. I again refer to his current fascination with the CMLL streams. I'd also refer to his overrating of stuff like any Randy Orton match, which has become a meme at this point, with dave essentially on an island. I don't ever see Orton bouts filling up the MOTY leaderboards and dave is always going ****+ on his stuff.

 

There is an entire generation of fans under the age of 35 or so that has never read a word of the Observer and never will. They largely don't care about dave, and a good number of them see him as an out of touch "garbage person"/racist/sexist and have no respect for him. dave certainly has influence and is still a tastemaker to some degree, I'm not denying that, but I think his influence shrinks a good deal with each passing year.

 

Is there a big time CMLL MOTY contender that dave has gone overboard with this year? I can't think of one. That would be a decent test case, but I'm really not seeing dave's current love affair with CMLL trickling down to the masses to any palpable degree.

 

Agreed, and I think the focus on Meltzer now is probably a bit misguided. There's likely a large effect among "hardcore" circles from the way Meltzer wrote about puro and lucha in the late 80s and early 90s (particularly with the way it coincided with people starting to get online, RSPW, trade trading, etc.), but that's history and can't be changed. Meltzer praising something can help, but influence is so diffuse at this point that one person really can't shift popular opinion in a big way.

 

This, the damage was done in the 80s and 90s.

[Matt D]

 

DVDVR and indeed the GWE lists here are clearly full of groupthink, because that's the only way Jerry Lawler ends up in the top 10 over guys like Steamboat/Savage/Austin/HBK/Arn etc. When you have a list where Bobby Eaton is 80 ahead of The Rock, and Chris Hero is 3 behind The Rock, you know you're in a place where a bunch of like minded people have gathered and think this is how "everyone" thinks because they're all in agreement.

 

I say this as someone who loves both Jerry Lawler and Bobby Eaton. Their rankings are so out of whack that it's genuinely laughable. Random shit like a 3 minute Tojo vs Dundee studio match from 1981 would get praised as being so incredible, a lost classic, etc etc. Then you watch it and it has 3 punches, a kick from Dundee, both choke and nerve hold spots, and a DQ. DVDVR always had a strong tenancy to make sure everyone knew they were smarter than the average smark, which ended up meaning they'd fight to find the most obscure match to hype up to show how deep in it they really were. It's no surprise that that happens here as well, considering the DNA of this place. Anyone that would ever try to deny such things is just being silly. When you make a Greatest Ever list and the majority of posters agree on the top 10, that should be enough to tell you there is groupthink going on.

You need to take that presumption people like wrestling ironically and to prove points and sincerely fuck off.

Is it groupthink if I agree with GOTNW?

[Dylan Waco]

 

 

Oh weird, Mexican wrestling is very popular in Mexico? I wonder why a style of wrestling wrapped up in the Mexican culture and easily understood by people living in Mexico would be far more popular in Mexico than anywhere else. American wrestling has traditionally been far less popular in Mexico, with WWE's tours drawing much less than AAA/CMLL. If there was a Mexican Dave Meltzer type, do you think he'd cover American and Japanese wrestling as much as Mexican wrestling? Currently at least, it seems like Mexican fans are a lot more interested in puro than they are WWE/American indies. Is there some insidious reasoning behind it, or could it just be that there are more working agreements between Mexican and Japanese promotions, so they're more exposed to Japanese wrestlers today than Americans?

 

 

In terms of drawing, lucha libre actually has a very good track record in the United States. One could point to the success of AAA in the 90s, border town shows drawing thousands in the 00's, that somewhat well known match in our circles between Park and Santo that drew something like 5k people in suburban Atlanta off of only radio and print ads, PWR in California regularly drawing strong houses in the Bay Area that double and triple what the strongest indies in that area typically draw, a group like Mucha Lucha in Atlanta which is the largest drawing indie in Georgia by a massive margin if not the entire South, or even the business spike at AAW that people inside the promotion have linked directly to the use of lucha talent, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. There is probably no way to know for sure, but it's very likely that along with convention linked shows, and legends events, lucha themed shows and/or shows that prominently feature lucha talent draw stronger on the U.S. indie scene than anything else. I can say with certainty that promoters all over the country are very high on using lucha talent, and luchadors tend to do more business at the merch table than pretty much anyone that didn't use to work for the WWE. The point of this is that at the grassroots level, among people who actually pay to attend wrestling shows in the United States, lucha does well. I think regardless of your feelings about the quality of lucha, this is pretty hard to dispute, and I think it's also difficult to dispute that lucha isn't covered with near as much detail or insight by the major wrestling media outlets as you might expect given the close proximity of Mexico to the U.S., and the popularity of lucha in both Mexico AND the U.S.

 

I'm really going a bit a stray from stro's post here, but given the disparity in coverage, it's interesting to me that it's hard to make direct comparisons with Japanese wrestlers, because their presence has largely been wedded to national host promotions. Clearly some of them are regarded as legends or are incredibly popular figures (Liger, Muta and Nakamura for example), but I can think of no framework that has existed for a "Japanese wrestling" themed indie show, other than maybe those shows on the West Coast years ago that brought in Misawa, Chikara's Joshimania event, and the Kobashi v. Joe ROH show (at a time when ROH could still accurately be called an indie). Guys like Dick Togo or Shigehiro Irie have had indie tours or dates in the U.S., but they haven't been positioned the way someone like Pentagon is, and no serious follower of indie wrestling would argue that either guys popularity on that scene rates with the top Lucha Underground talent. Wrestle-1 tried to do U.S. shows a couple of years ago but cancelled due to money and a complete lack of interest. Kanemoto wanted to do a U.S. tour a couple of years back but there was a lack of interest from promoters. You can certainly find more than your fair share of U.S. based lucha shows that don't draw worth a damn, and of course it costs far more to import talent from Japan than it does from Mexico, but none of those things feel terribly relevant in a discussion about the coverage and perception of lucha which to me is more interesting than a debate about why it doesn't rate highly in the WON Awards.

[Dylan Waco]

If dave praised those things heavily, maybe more people would sample them (although I'm not totally convinced, because he praises CMLL three times per week very publicly on Twitter and on his radio show, and I'm not seeing any kind of palpable uptick in CMLL interest in and around F4W), but I'm not convinced the masses would parrot his praise. I again refer to his current fascination with the CMLL streams. I'd also refer to his overrating of stuff like any Randy Orton match, which has become a meme at this point, with dave essentially on an island. I don't ever see Orton bouts filling up the MOTY leaderboards and dave is always going ****+ on his stuff.

 

There is an entire generation of fans under the age of 35 or so that has never read a word of the Observer and never will. They largely don't care about dave, and a good number of them see him as an out of touch "garbage person"/racist/sexist and have no respect for him. dave certainly has influence and is still a tastemaker to some degree, I'm not denying that, but I think his influence shrinks a good deal with each passing year.

 

Is there a big time CMLL MOTY contender that dave has gone overboard with this year? I can't think of one. That would be a decent test case, but I'm really not seeing dave's current love affair with CMLL trickling down to the masses to any palpable degree.

 

I don't think Dave's Twitter has much influence. The Observer does. It's the place people copy and paste all news from, and it's the hub from which hardcore fan culture flows out of. In some sense I agree that his influence is waning, and there are definitely a larger percentage of people who are openly hostile to him now than at any point I can recall in the past. That said, most of these people are informed by the broader culture that the Observer is at the center of.

 

In any event, my point was less that people would just parrot Dave's likes or dislikes, and more that I think people are more likely to give chances to, and be positive about, things that are praised by those with the loudest voices. If people come in to something looking for the good things they have heard about they are easier to find, than if they come in expecting a confusing, chaotic, cooperative, or foreign "style." It's a framing thing.

[Dylan Waco]

DVDVR and indeed the GWE lists here are clearly full of groupthink, because that's the only way Jerry Lawler ends up in the top 10 over guys like Steamboat/Savage/Austin/HBK/Arn etc. When you have a list where Bobby Eaton is 80 ahead of The Rock, and Chris Hero is 3 behind The Rock, you know you're in a place where a bunch of like minded people have gathered and think this is how "everyone" thinks because they're all in agreement.

 

I say this as someone who loves both Jerry Lawler and Bobby Eaton. Their rankings are so out of whack that it's genuinely laughable. Random shit like a 3 minute Tojo vs Dundee studio match from 1981 would get praised as being so incredible, a lost classic, etc etc. Then you watch it and it has 3 punches, a kick from Dundee, both choke and nerve hold spots, and a DQ. DVDVR always had a strong tenancy to make sure everyone knew they were smarter than the average smark, which ended up meaning they'd fight to find the most obscure match to hype up to show how deep in it they really were. It's no surprise that that happens here as well, considering the DNA of this place. Anyone that would ever try to deny such things is just being silly. When you make a Greatest Ever list and the majority of posters agree on the top 10, that should be enough to tell you there is groupthink going on.

 

A very sizable percentage of GWE contributors weren't even active participants on this board.

[stro]

 

DVDVR and indeed the GWE lists here are clearly full of groupthink, because that's the only way Jerry Lawler ends up in the top 10 over guys like Steamboat/Savage/Austin/HBK/Arn etc. When you have a list where Bobby Eaton is 80 ahead of The Rock, and Chris Hero is 3 behind The Rock, you know you're in a place where a bunch of like minded people have gathered and think this is how "everyone" thinks because they're all in agreement.

 

I say this as someone who loves both Jerry Lawler and Bobby Eaton. Their rankings are so out of whack that it's genuinely laughable. Random shit like a 3 minute Tojo vs Dundee studio match from 1981 would get praised as being so incredible, a lost classic, etc etc. Then you watch it and it has 3 punches, a kick from Dundee, both choke and nerve hold spots, and a DQ. DVDVR always had a strong tenancy to make sure everyone knew they were smarter than the average smark, which ended up meaning they'd fight to find the most obscure match to hype up to show how deep in it they really were. It's no surprise that that happens here as well, considering the DNA of this place. Anyone that would ever try to deny such things is just being silly. When you make a Greatest Ever list and the majority of posters agree on the top 10, that should be enough to tell you there is groupthink going on.

You need to take that presumption people like wrestling ironically and to prove points and sincerely fuck off.

 

Maybe you misread. I'm not saying people like wrestling ironically (I mean, obviously some do, but not the ones I'm talking about here and at DVDVR). I'm saying they take it so seriously that they'll find obscure things to point to to prove themselves as REAL fans, truly educated and better than the average WON reader. They're into wrestling TOO MUCH to step back a bit.

[Jetlag]

This, the damage was done in the 80s and 90s.

 

 

I just checked and that Casas/Fiera match that was sort of "rediscovered" last year got a **** 1/4 from the WON. Dandy/Casas also got a +**** rating from someone important. That's hardly a burial. If anything "the damage" (what?) was also done by the hardcore fans of the time not just Dave. People just weren't into mexican wrestling (or CMLL specifically) enough at the time. Hardcore fans like the DVDVR guys that watched all kinds of random tapes not knowing what they would get were the minority (still are). People got japanese wrestling tapes because it was what they wanted to see.

 

I want to mention that death/black metal music from Mexico and south america was traded around the world in the 80s and 90s. Look at a band like Sepultura that got world famous with a demo tape that had terrible production. Simply because people wanted dark, fast and heavy stuff, and if it sounded rough and the lyrics were demented as if written by a teenager with a poor grasp of english, then even better. Wrestling fans in the 90s didn't want matwork or bloody brawls or trios built around graceful wrestling exchanges that lead to a DQ finish. They wanted headdrops and 2.9999999999 finishing runs and clean endings and production where they could hear the impact of all the strikes. And it makes sense when you look at the product of WWF and WCW at the time.

[El-P]

A very sizable percentage of GWE contributors weren't even active participants on this board.

 

Than they weren't active doesn't mean they weren't influenced though.

 

This fact also explain results like Daniel Bryan getting so high BTW (if you look at the top votes for instance).

[El-P]

They wanted headdrops and 2.9999999999 finishing runs and clean endings and production where they could hear the impact of all the strikes.

 

Are you serious ? People were criticizing headdropping *as it was happening*.

[stro]

If you want to discuss a real problem, we should discuss why 90s heavyweight NJPW gets ignored so much in favor for AJPW, at the time and today. 90s heavyweight NJPW was better than AJPW at the time.

[El-P]

90's NJ heavies have been pimped for ever at this point. Then kinda forgotten about again, because the 80's got more in vogue. The idea that they were better than the AJ ones is… incongruous to say the least (and I'm a fan of 90's NJ heavies). But at this rate, what the hell.

 

(damn, puro is taking over this thread. Poor lucha. Poor, poor lucha)

 

(one should never write "puro" anyway. "lucha" is acceptable)

 

("puro-lucha" anyone ?)

[stro]

70s AJPW is the gold standard, imo. Even shitty lucha dudes looked good over there.