How have your tastes in wrestling changed?

[joeg]

So how has your personal taste in wrestling changed? As we get older it seems our taste or interests in everything sort of grows up as well. How has this affected the wrestling you watch, the way you watch it, and the styles, promotions or workers you prefer?

[gordi]

Since moving to Japan, I have come to enjoy going to live events with my drinking/wrestling friends so much that - even with the huge amount of wrestling footage available now - I only watch a tiny handful of matches on my computer in a given month. I just enjoy it so much more as a social thing.

[fxnj]

Since moving to Japan, I have come to enjoy going to live events with my drinking/wrestling friends so much that - even with the huge amount of wrestling footage available now - I only watch a tiny handful of matches on my computer in a given month. I just enjoy it so much more as a social thing.

I lived in Japan for a few months in 2015 and had basically the same feelings while I was there. I saw nearly all the big AJPW matches from that period live and had a fantastic time every show I attended, but when it came to watching stuff alone on a computer the magic just wasn't there. It really opened my eyes when I saw the crowds attending the shows weren't the businessmen intently watching that I imagined, but just guys in casual wear cracking open beers and having fun with their friends. I didn't have the fortune of making friends with the boys like you did, nor did I even have anybody to attend the shows with, but I did still start to appreciate wrestling predominately as a live experience.

 

Now that I'm back to living without any great live wrestling nearby, though, I'm pretty much back to where I was before in terms of tastes. Just as I have for many years now, I mostly watch pre-split AJPW and its influences and derivatives with some shoot-style on the side. It would be nice if I could talk about going through this period of discovering a completely different style, but that just hasn't happened, and the explosion in AJPW footage appearing online hasn't really helped matters.

[Loss]

I don't think my tastes have changed so much as they've expanded. I definitely find that the more wrestling I watch, the more wrestling I really enjoy. I often observe that the more wrestling people watch, the less stuff they really love. It's possible "I didn't like this as much as Loss" is the most frequently used phrase in the Match Discussion Archive. That's not always the case, as I do see some people - Dylan comes to mind - who only love more stuff as they watch more stuff. But disappointment, or at least lack of admiration, does seem to happen more often. I'm curious why that is.

[cad]

Isn't it fairly simple? The more you've been exposed to, the harder it is for something to feel different enough that it changes the way you think about anything, and the more top level stuff you see, the tougher the comparison becomes for everything else.

 

To use an example, Atlantis vs Blue Panther from 1991 used to be considered one of the classic matches from Mexico, especially if you're just limiting it to championship style. Then you go to the thread about it on this site, with all the posts in it coming within the past five years, and it may not even rank as a consensus four star match in there. Could be that it's a different set of opinions coming from people with different tastes, sure. But I'd guess that it's more that there's so much readily available to watch now, even just in the category of championship wrestling from Mexico, that the match doesn't stand out like it did back when the field was smaller.

[ohtani's jacket]

Is there a consensus about the classic matches from Mexico? There are only 8 posts in the Atlantis/Panther thread and half of them are favorable. Some people compare the match disfavorably to Azteca/Dandy, which was a popular match at the time but went on to have its own detractors later on. I wouldn't put too much stock into what people are jotting down on a particular given night. A match will either stand the test of time or it won't. Unfortunately, Panther vs. Atlantis isn't an important enough match for people to revise their opinions on it every decade or so.

[soup23]

I've found that my opinion on certain things has softened. I think it has to do with the influx of indie footage and me going back to 2000 which is really the onus of headdrops and no selling really running rampant but I don't get as caught up in the lack of limb selling to a degree and usually go along with a narrative of the match if it is well done. Being a fan of CWF-MA has really forced that mentality as well as two of the biggest matches they have had in the past year (Trevor Lee vs Brad Attitude and Trevor Lee vs Arik Royal) had a ton of overbooking and gimmicks at the finish.

[Matt D]

We more or less did when this back after GWE:

http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/33616-what-did-you-learn-about-your-fandom-from-gwe/

 

I guess it'd be interesting to think about how things have changed in the year since then. I have a lot less time so I'm much less likely to go out of my way to watch something just to be part of the conversation.

 

I think I'm pretty consistent in my tastes though, for good or ill (I imagine I frustrate Loss to a degree though I think it's probably somewhat refreshing too). I wish there was more time in the day. I wish I had more time to review things and write. I wish I had time to do some of the projects I want to do. I wish I had time to properly argue with Jerome. I haven't even had time to catch Reigns vs Cena yet, let alone the Mae Young Classic or anything else I'm supposed to be watching this year.

[Loss]

Isn't it fairly simple? The more you've been exposed to, the harder it is for something to feel different enough that it changes the way you think about anything, and the more top level stuff you see, the tougher the comparison becomes for everything else.

 

To use an example, Atlantis vs Blue Panther from 1991 used to be considered one of the classic matches from Mexico, especially if you're just limiting it to championship style. Then you go to the thread about it on this site, with all the posts in it coming within the past five years, and it may not even rank as a consensus four star match in there. Could be that it's a different set of opinions coming from people with different tastes, sure. But I'd guess that it's more that there's so much readily available to watch now, even just in the category of championship wrestling from Mexico, that the match doesn't stand out like it did back when the field was smaller.

 

I definitely think that's one way to look at it, and it's probably the answer to the question as I raised it. But the reason I raised it was more to bring up that I think there's this subconscious idea that liking less wrestling is a sign of better tastes. I just don't see it that way. The fan who is harder to please isn't so much the fan who always has a point, or whose recommendations are always going to be good. But I do think we've biased, without intention, having "higher standards" over having better standards. I'm not sure I'm formulating this in a way that makes sense or if this is even the thread to hash it out. Just something on my mind.

[soup23]

Scope has a lot to do with it. Watching the 1990-1999 stuff in yearbook form gives you a jist of the year where I think you can talk confidently about the goings on in the wrestling world. However, with us going through 2000 now, the scope has widened significantly. That has at moments caused me to take solace in the fact that maybe I have too many ****+ matches, etc. but in the end I just think because we are watching so much MORE from this year compared to 1990-1999, it is natural for stuff to rise to the top. Especially stuff that hasn't gotten much praise like the lead in to Villano vs Atlantis which absolutely enrich an already classic match into maybe the best match of all time. Sometimes it makes me take solace like when I watch Benoit/Jericho from SummerSlam, rank it ***3/4 and realize it has no chance at my top 100 of the year. For example, if it was on most of the yearbooks, it would at least slot into the 80-100 range. While there is a ton of crap that has been watched in 2000, I also think there is a ton of great stuff that has me championing it as a damn good wrestling overall with 125+ matches I would consider great by the end.

[ohtani's jacket]

I don't think my tastes have changed so much as they've expanded. I definitely find that the more wrestling I watch, the more wrestling I really enjoy. I often observe that the more wrestling people watch, the less stuff they really love. It's possible "I didn't like this as much as Loss" is the most frequently used phrase in the Match Discussion Archive. That's not always the case, as I do see some people - Dylan comes to mind - who only love more stuff as they watch more stuff. But disappointment, or at least lack of admiration, does seem to happen more often. I'm curious why that is.

 

Speaking as the complete opposite of you, digging harder to find the stuff you like can also be satisfying. My tastes are ever changing, ever evolving and ever-narrowing but that doesn't mean that I'm never happy. It just means I have to wade through more matches to get to the stuff that excites me. If I couldn't find anything I like then there would be a problem and I would probably stop watching.

[NintendoLogic]

Since I started posting here, I feel like my tastes have simultaneously broadened and narrowed. There's more stuff I like and appreciate on some level, but less stuff I absolutely love.

[cad]

Is there a consensus about the classic matches from Mexico? There are only 8 posts in the Atlantis/Panther thread and half of them are favorable. Some people compare the match disfavorably to Azteca/Dandy, which was a popular match at the time but went on to have its own detractors later on. I wouldn't put too much stock into what people are jotting down on a particular given night. A match will either stand the test of time or it won't. Unfortunately, Panther vs. Atlantis isn't an important enough match for people to revise their opinions on it every decade or so.

Maybe it's just confirmation bias, but I can recall people talking about Dandy vs Angel Azteca. Atlantis vs Blue Panther not so much. I haven't been on this board very long, so maybe I wasn't here for what you're referencing, but the only detractors I can remember for Dandy vs Angel basically came at it from a "Nick Bockwinkel wouldn't have wrestled like this" way rather than actually criticizing the things that made that match unique. It felt like annoyance that something like THAT was challenging Flair, Steamboat, Misawa and Kawada. That speaks to Dandy vs Angel having a reputation. No real need to take Atlantis and Blue Panther down a peg, their match isn't threatening Flair. We should do that for a thread though, consensus classics from everywhere (by "we" I mean "one of you," of course).

[cad]

 

Isn't it fairly simple? The more you've been exposed to, the harder it is for something to feel different enough that it changes the way you think about anything, and the more top level stuff you see, the tougher the comparison becomes for everything else.

 

To use an example, Atlantis vs Blue Panther from 1991 used to be considered one of the classic matches from Mexico, especially if you're just limiting it to championship style. Then you go to the thread about it on this site, with all the posts in it coming within the past five years, and it may not even rank as a consensus four star match in there. Could be that it's a different set of opinions coming from people with different tastes, sure. But I'd guess that it's more that there's so much readily available to watch now, even just in the category of championship wrestling from Mexico, that the match doesn't stand out like it did back when the field was smaller.

 

I definitely think that's one way to look at it, and it's probably the answer to the question as I raised it. But the reason I raised it was more to bring up that I think there's this subconscious idea that liking less wrestling is a sign of better tastes. I just don't see it that way. The fan who is harder to please isn't so much the fan who always has a point, or whose recommendations are always going to be good. But I do think we've biased, without intention, having "higher standards" over having better standards. I'm not sure I'm formulating this in a way that makes sense or if this is even the thread to hash it out. Just something on my mind.

 

In a way it goes hand in hand with my first response. If seeing more and knowing more raises the bar, then higher standards would indicate that this is someone who knows his stuff. I agree with what you're saying--tearing down something that other people like isn't any more intellectually demanding than building up something that other people don't--but it's also human nature. If a woman looks in the mirror and likes what she sees, and then she goes out and someone tells her "Hey, you have a really big nose," and someone else tells her that she has a pretty smile, what do you think is going to stick with her more? Now let's say that she herself has never really thought much of her teeth. And the person who complimented it is a cheery, optimistic soul who tries to see the beauty in everything and make people feel better when they're down.

 

Instead of a dumbass analogy, let me try a wrestling example. One of my favorite wrestlers is La Fiera. Someone writes a scathing review of Fiera vs Negro Casas, which I think is one of Fiera's best matches. Someone else calls Fiera vs Atlantis a lost classic, one of the best championship matches in CMLL history. With the first one, maybe it would hit a nerve somewhere inside of me and have me thinking, "Hmm, did I miss something when I watched that match? Was I too busy marking out to actually pay attention to it? Maybe I was just biased towards one of my guys." With the second one, well, maybe they'd have a logical point, and they could frame things in a way that made the match read like a classic, but it's going to be hard to override the memory of watching that match and not loving it. Tendency toward self doubt might just be a personal thing, but I think it's a lot easier to for love to be torn down than to be created out of nowhere--so a nasty review about a match I thought was outstanding is going to hit home a lot more than a glowing review of one for which my primary recollection of it will be not enjoying it. And if it's from a person who tries to see the good in everything, my thinking is going to be that I might have to TRY to like this match in order to actually like it, and that's just not how I do things.

 

(Sorry for the double post. I didn't know whether that or a long post in which I replied to two different people would have been a bigger breach of message board etiquette.)

[El-P]

Since I started posting here, I feel like my tastes have simultaneously broadened and narrowed. There's more stuff I like and appreciate on some level, but less stuff I absolutely love.

 

I can relate to that. I think it works for me too. Well, there a a lot of things I love, but I don't throw the *great* line that easily. That's a big point of contention to me, has been for years, when every week you hear about several "great" matches. If everything is great, then nothing is that great. The MOTYC thread for instance I don't participate because I'd say NO about 99% of the time. Basically, if you get down to snowflakes, ****1/4 (which equals "great" to me) you don't see everyday. Past that, it's simply damn rare. On the other hand, I've lightened up quite a bit on the different stuff I get enjoyement out of. I can like a lot of different stuff, including really goofy shit, which is fine with me. But the systematic praise of whatever "solid" or "ok" stuff as something special just doesn't fly with me.

 

So yeah, I like "more" stuff but I find it harder to get blown away (last time was, well, the Tully vs Magnum TA cage match).

[gordi]

I've also become way less interested in watching "great" matches the last few years. In particular, the common deal recently where the people in the ring are obviously trying to "work a great match" rather than "tell a story in the ring" just puts me off entirely these days. Hopefully that's clear enough and I don't have to explain it further.

 

I find myself getting a lot more pleasure, most of the time, out of a simple "three star" match where everyone is working safely and within their own reasonable limits and everyone has a clear role and character and the good guy is doing good guy things and the bad guy is doing bad guy things... I prefer being honestly and simply entertained for ten or twelve minutes to watching guys risk their health to try and blow my mind for half an hour.

 

Hope that makes sense.

[Matt D]

One thing that plays a little off of what people have been saying is that I'm much more interested in watching a wrestler's performance than looking for a great match. Moreover, I want to learn something from a match that I didn't know before. I'd rather watch a three star match which puts a wrestler in a situation I haven't seen him in before than a four and a half star match which has a lot of elements I've seen again and again from a certain wrestler. I like looking for understanding as I watch. I like an element of learning.

[El-P]

I'd rather watch a three star match which puts a wrestler in a situation I haven't seen him in before than a four and a half star match which has a lot of elements I've seen again and again from a certain wrestler.

 

I can relate to that too. But if the end result is not good nor fun to watch, I'm not gonna enjoy that more than a really good match that I've seen before. It's gonna be a footnote.

[Matt D]

 

I'd rather watch a three star match which puts a wrestler in a situation I haven't seen him in before than a four and a half star match which has a lot of elements I've seen again and again from a certain wrestler.

 

I can relate to that too. But if the end result is not good nor fun to watch, I'm not gonna enjoy that more than a really good match that I've seen before. It's gonna be a footnote.

 

It's a balance. Plus with the really good matches that I've seen before that I go back and rewatch, there's always new things to pick up on based on other watching I've done and changes in me.

[Shrike02]

I'll just echo some others and state that my tastes have both broadened and narrowed. I'm appreciating more styles and time periods; and some of what I liked before I like even more as I watch more of the build-up to certain feuds. I still haven't been really able to get into lucha (although some of what I've seen from 2000 I've liked), joshi or WoS though, so those are some viewing projects for me going forward.

[El-P]

 

 

I'd rather watch a three star match which puts a wrestler in a situation I haven't seen him in before than a four and a half star match which has a lot of elements I've seen again and again from a certain wrestler.

 

I can relate to that too. But if the end result is not good nor fun to watch, I'm not gonna enjoy that more than a really good match that I've seen before. It's gonna be a footnote.

 

It's a balance. Plus with the really good matches that I've seen before that I go back and rewatch, there's always new things to pick up on based on other watching I've done and changes in me.

 

Agreed. I appreciate different things in matches I've seen before too, although at this point I really don't rewatch anything TBH. So it would be more worker-based.

[Mr. Lacelle]

Ive been rewatching WCW big events from Starrcade 83 & I just finished Starrcade 94 last night. The tastes I had as a 14 year old compared to watching now at 37 are the same.

[Microstatistics]

I'm not quite as high on 90s All Japan as I used to be. Nothing too dramatic considering 3-4 of the certified super classics would still make my all time Top 20-25 easily (including my undisputed #1). Plus I absolutely love Kobashi/Kikuchi vs. Can-Am and other under the radar stuff like Taue vs. Hansen or Kawada vs. Albright. But I wouldn't consider many of the acclaimed classics (12/3/93, 5/21/94, Kawada vs. Williams etc. etc.) great anymore and think many of the matches that were praised as **** ish/MOTYC level are merely good. A big part of that I feel is fatigue due to limited combinations of guys and lack of variety. I'd rather watch Tenryu vs. Hashimoto over Misawa vs. Kawada (tags or singles) nowadays.

 

No longer a fan of the traditional big match WWE style. Matches (even the highly acclaimed ones which I used to like as recently as a couple of years ago) with reversals and kickouts and "drama" do nothing for me. Much prefer more unorthodox stuff like Foley brawls or Lesnar beatdowns or something with a narrative hook or stylistic twist.

[Johnny Sorrow]

Mine changed when I grew up about wrestling in my late twenties and fully embraced that it's a form of entertainment that can be anything it wants to be.

[SirEdger]

I think my tastes have changed when I discovered other styles of wrestling. I'll always be a WWE fan because that's the first promotion I ever watched, along with Jim Crockett Promotions but I've discovered puroresu several years ago and I try to expand my horizons as much as I can. I think that it's important to be introduced as many styles as we can in order to truly form a better appreciation & knowledge of the product. But first and foremost, I still can appreciate watching wrestling for what it is without overanalyzing too much.