F4W

[Guest Dangerous A]

I think it's more arrogance and being lazy to defend arguments against people with a different opinion.

[sek69]

I don't know if it's laziness or if it's the ego of being a big shot on the net. I see a lot of people who get well known start to develop the "I don't have to defend my position because I have a column/newsletter/etc" attitude.

 

I keep reading what Loss posted and I swear if it wasn't Alvarez himself I'd think it was someone trolling the board by being obtuse on purpose.

[Guest EastCoastJ]

If you have had enough and want to get yourself banned, it wouldn't hurt to mention the fact that Alvarez has spent the last few years using Vince Russo as a punchline and wrote a book based largely on how much Russo killed WCW, yet when Russo was on Wrestling Observer Live tonight Alvarez said roughly two sentences in the entire hour, both with a shakey voice.

[Guest bravesfan]

Isn't that his role on every WOL?

 

Meltzer is a guy to yap on and on, and with Russo on board....oh boy.

[sek69]

Alvarez is the Ed McMahon of the Internet community to Meltz's Johnny Carson.

[kjh]

I don't know if it's laziness or if it's the ego of being a big shot on the net. I see a lot of people who get well known start to develop the "I don't have to defend my position because I have a column/newsletter/etc" attitude.

Yeah, that attitude is sadly widespread through most of the major columnists. Whether it be Bruce Mitchell taking cheap shots in his forum at DVDVR for calling Mark Henry gasp a good worker now and making the cardinal sin of criticising Angle's and Michaels' work, James Caldwell standing by what he wrote when Dave Meltzer criticised his horrible Bret Hart columns on Figure 4 Daily or Dan Wahlers also slipping in cheap shots to the DVDVR brigade in his most recent column, they are all the same. They treat the outspoken minority who watch wrestling with a critical eye like they do but come to different conclusions than them like delusional idiots, which really encourages bitching and trolling rather than debate and discussion and does their profession a disservice.

[Guest Famous Mortimer]

I am now going to go to F4W and in the "Ask Bryan" folder, ask him why he didn't bother asking Russo about the Death of WCW, given that he spent so much of the book bashing him. Let's see what happens.

[Loss]

I think, for the record, the DVDVR guys are smoking crack sometimes on their tastes, but I respect them for putting it all out there, and more than any other "established" writer or group of writers online, they'll talk to anyone who questions anything they say.

[Guest TheShawshankRudotion]

DVDVR is filled with bloomin idiots, but at least some of them are willing to push the boundaries and challenge conventional wisdom. Has Bryan or Daves opinions or tastes changed in the last 5 years? 10 years? Those guys are in a bubble like the one they say Vince is in, where they have people who continually agree with them and tell them they are brilliant and the two have gotten to the point to where they believe that just because they like something it means its good, and if someone challenged it and said the match or the wrestler was bad it couldn't possibily be because it was, in fact, bad. It can't be bad if they liked it, they are Dave Meltzer and Bryan Alvarez, dammit.

 

I've said it before, but the problem with measuring and qualifying things based on your own enjoyment rather than objective analysis is that the match itself can have very little to do with your own enjoyment - we're talking about your emotions and your emotions are not just effected by a lil box. What the wrestlers did in the match can have little to do with how much you enjoyed it. You think if anyone else had the match that Flair and Edge had on Monday that Dave would be raving about it, or acting indignant if someone criticized a match that was structured the same way Angle/Michaels but didn't involve Angle/Michaels. I don't. Clearly there are other influences at work that affect their enjoyment, which is great cause if you enjoy it, you enjoy it and it's amazing you can enjoy anything on the Worst Show On Television, but then they go on and say as if it were fact "This is a great match" and probably give it a quantifiable star rating and won't bother to defend it beyond their own enjoyment level. That's not enough. At least not enough for anyone who has reasonable standards.

[Mad Dog]

DVDVR is at the point TSM was at about 3 years ago. 90% of the posters are complete wastes of space and there's 10% trying to make the board worth something.

[Guest Josh]

DVDVR is filled with bloomin idiots, but at least some of them are willing to push the boundaries and challenge conventional wisdom. Has Bryan or Daves opinions or tastes changed in the last 5 years? 10 years? Those guys are in a bubble like the one they say Vince is in, where they have people who continually agree with them and tell them they are brilliant and the two have gotten to the point to where they believe that just because they like something it means its good, and if someone challenged it and said the match or the wrestler was bad it couldn't possibily be because it was, in fact, bad. It can't be bad if they liked it, they are Dave Meltzer and Bryan Alvarez, dammit.

 

I've said it before, but the problem with measuring and qualifying things based on your own enjoyment rather than objective analysis is that the match itself can have very little to do with your own enjoyment - we're talking about your emotions and your emotions are not just effected by a lil box. What the wrestlers did in the match can have little to do with how much you enjoyed it. You think if anyone else had the match that Flair and Edge had on Monday that Dave would be raving about it, or acting indignant if someone criticized a match that was structured the same way Angle/Michaels but didn't involve Angle/Michaels. I don't. Clearly there are other influences at work that affect their enjoyment, which is great cause if you enjoy it, you enjoy it and it's amazing you can enjoy anything on the Worst Show On Television, but then they go on and say as if it were fact "This is a great match" and probably give it a quantifiable star rating and won't bother to defend it beyond their own enjoyment level. That's not enough. At least not enough for anyone who has reasonable standards.

They're no worse than people who go around acting like Michaels and Angle are these awful, clueless workers who are no better (or worse, even) than Gene Snitsky or the Carnage Crew.

 

There's a big difference between challenging conventional wisdom and being radically different for the sake of different.

[World's Worst Man]

They're no worse than people who go around acting like Michaels and Angle are these awful, clueless workers who are no better (or worse, even) than Gene Snitsky or the Carnage Crew.

 

There's a big difference between challenging conventional wisdom and being radically different for the sake of different.

Welcome to the IWC, where hyperbole is a way of life.

[Mad Dog]

Yeah, I'm by no means a fan of Michaels or Angle. In fact I think they're pretty terrible but even I feel the need to defend them against some of the attacks that go on against them on other boards.

[Loss]

In their defense, sometimes exaggeration is used to make a point, but people have a tendency to take everything l.i.t.e.r.a.l.l.y. as well. Saying a match had a "million" false finishes, for example, isn't a *lie* if it just had a lot of them.

[World's Worst Man]

True, but that's a fairly obvious exaggeration. If someone says a wrestler "sucks", who's to know if it's literal or not? There are no matches that actually have a million nearfalls, but there are wrestlers who suck

[Guest Some Guy]

Yeah, I'm by no means a fan of Michaels or Angle. In fact I think they're pretty terrible but even I feel the need to defend them against some of the attacks that go on against them on other boards.

his I don't understand. I can see and recognize that both men have negative aspects to their ring work, but I wouldn't say that either of them are any where close to terrible. Terrible workers can't tear the house down for minutes like they did at WM 21. Say what you will about the match quality but HBKand Angle owned that crowd on that night. That, while not being the whole package is a major part of being a good worker. That's why Hogan is a good worker, he's a shitty wrestler at this point but he is a good worker.

 

I enjoy watching Shawn Michaels work (think largely because he was my favorite wrestler from 95-98). I don't think he is a God in the ring anymore, but I think his ring work is more than passable and the fact that he actuallt controls the crowd better at this point in his career than he did during his prime (when couldn't stop the crowd from turning on him).

[Loss]

If Shawn Michaels would turn heel and stick to it, 90% of my problems with him would cease to be.

[Guest Some Guy]

I agree. I finally got to watch his heel turn promo in Montreal during the Hogan feud on Youtube.com and it was one of the most awesome displays of playing the crowd like a fiddle and showed he still can turn up the heat when he wants to.

 

Oddly, in his book HBK says that he prefers to work heel but says that the fans keep cheering for him despite his character being more dislikeable now than it ever was.

 

With HBK I think that there will always be a certain section of the fans who would cheer for him if he back a dump truck full of dead babies to the ring and started flinging them at fans with a pitchfork, but there is a still a large section who will play along and boo him and a section who hate his face gimmick and want to boo him because they enjoy it more than cheering him.

 

If he went with an arrogant heel gimmick laced with some self-righteous religious shit then he would be the most over heel in the company.

[Mad Dog]

I think Michaels is terrible. Why? He's built like a 60 year old woman yet works like he's Hulk fucking Hogan in the 80s. It's embarassing to see guys like Chris Masters who have to sell for Michaels like he's Superman. Why is it Kane can destroy 3/4th of the Raw roster but has to lay down for some 40 year old 150 lb. near cripple that still acts like he's a 20some heart throb.

 

Angle is terrible because he's gotten progressively worse since 1999 when he should be a top 10 worker in the world right now. He had all the goods to succeed but he's shown no desire to become more than he was. Brock Lesnar in his short stint with the company easily eclipsed him in almost every department of the game except for promos.

[Guest Some Guy]

I think Michaels is terrible. Why? He's built like a 60 year old woman yet works like he's Hulk fucking Hogan in the 80s. It's embarassing to see guys like Chris Masters who have to sell for Michaels like he's Superman. Why is it Kane can destroy 3/4th of the Raw roster but has to lay down for some 40 year old 150 lb. near cripple that still acts like he's a 20some heart throb.

 

Fair enough. Would a heel turn help your opinion of him?

 

Angle is terrible because he's gotten progressively worse since 1999 when he should be a top 10 worker in the world right now.  He had all the goods to succeed but he's shown no desire to become more than he was.  Brock Lesnar in his short stint with the company easily eclipsed him in almost every department of the game except for promos.

Agreed. When he came in he tons of potential and then he started working Taz-style matches. (suplex, suplex, suplex, submission move on a body part not at all affected by the suplexes). Too bad for Angle that Taz's gimmick and suplexes were way better.

[Mad Dog]

It would depend with Shawn. He's in that HHH mold where I think a heel turn would involve him exposing the weaknesses of others to try and kill their heat. I think he needs to become a tag worker and play the Ricky Morton role for me to not hate him in the ring.

 

Someone used this before and I'm stealing it now. Every form of logic should say that Angle should be a better worker than Steve Williams but he's not. Williams would sell for smaller guys and the matches would either involve the small guy outsmarting him or wearing him out by running around a lot. Angle works stupid comedy spots with smaller guys while not selling for them.

 

Williams had a desire to learn and become better. Angle doesn't. Angle's content to have his wife whine to the media about RVD cracking him in the lip during the match and then whined to management because Eddie dared to sell instead of letting him do an endless stream of suplexes.

[Guest Some Guy]

It would depend with Shawn. He's in that HHH mold where I think a heel turn would involve him exposing the weaknesses of others to try and kill their heat. I think he needs to become a tag worker and play the Ricky Morton role for me to not hate him in the ring.

 

I don't think his ego would ever allow that to happen.

[Guest TheShawshankRudotion]

They're no worse than people who go around acting like Michaels and Angle are these awful, clueless workers who are no better (or worse, even) than Gene Snitsky or the Carnage Crew.

 

There's a big difference between challenging conventional wisdom and being radically different for the sake of different.

I disagree. The people arguing for Mark Henry are actually providing actual *reasons* as to why they think he's better than HBK. Things like selling, playing his role and psychology, moveset, convincingness, etc. which is far more than the dismissive attitude of a Meltzer or an Alvarez who only back their opinion up with crowd reaction and their opinion. I think the Mark Henry people -even if they don't truly believe it and are doing it just to be controversial- are bringing way more to the table than the Michaels people are, which is funny given the history of the two wrestlers and how it should be an _easy_ argument to prove Michaels is the better worker, but they don't seem to be bringing it, or at least, bringing it as well as the Henry people.

[kjh]

Williams had a desire to learn and become better. Angle doesn't.

Why should he? His peers and the wrestling media have treated him as the Second Coming for years, so why would he feel the need to change what he does. I really think Angle's early success and praise went to his head and he started to regress as a worker, because he thought he had nothing more to learn and started to ignore the importance of psychology and pacing in his matches. Great athlete, poor wrestling brain.

[Coffey]

I don't think that Michaels and Angle are terrible by any stretch of the imagination. They are great wrestlers. The problem is, they're great WWE wrestlers. So, they get "graded" with a finer toothed comb than other people like Mark Henry. HBK will mess something up, or do his kip-up spot and suddenly he lacks pyschology and selling skills. If Henry were to do it, people would be like "wow, I can't believe he can do a kip-up." OK, bad example, but the point still stands. Angle and HBK are like...the worst of the best. If they were just compared to the other wrestlers around them, they're good. When they're compared to the best workers in the world of all-time, their flaws start to stand out more.

 

I think it was Cooey that rated the Royal Rumble match between Angle/Benoit at like ***. The majority of people that saw that match loved it. Yet, when he goes back and goes over ever second of the match, looking for negative aspects, he's going to find them. Other matches on the same card got a "free pass" so to speak. Just thoughtless snowflakes thrown out to them because it was stuff that won't be re-watched with participants that the IWC doesn't care about.

 

I feel like a lot of people are already writing off the Angle/Henry match at the Rumble because of their preconception that Henry is a terrible worker that Angle, whom is sometimes spotty, won't be able to carry. However, personally, I'm looking forward to the match because Henry has impressed me as of late. Especially his match with Mysterio from Smackdown last week.