AEW Dynamite - Grand Slam - September 22, 2021

[Kadaveri]

If I were to sum up the difference it's that Bryan Danielson has the "I can't make anyone believe wrestling is real, but I can make them believe I'M real" attitude in how he presents himself. Kenny Omega is completely inauthentic in everything he does and revels in it, he's all about irony and meta.

It's not really about what moves they do or whatever, it's the bigger picture things.

[Matt D]

29 minutes ago, Kadaveri said:

If I were to sum up the difference it's that Bryan Danielson has the "I can't make anyone believe wrestling is real, but I can make them believe I'M real" attitude in how he presents himself. Kenny Omega is completely inauthentic in everything he does and revels in it, he's all about irony and meta.

It's not really about what moves they do or whatever, it's the bigger picture things.

And the little ways they present themselves too.

Look, I haven't seen many Omega matches but the ones I've seen have almost all been ones where he's been on his best behavior from what you people are saying, and I was completely turned off.

I was trying to explain it to Stacey (after talking to Loss a few days ago) and here's what i came up with:

Omega to me, feels like a very, very skilled sleight of hand magician. Excellent technique. Excellent imagination. Comes up with new tricks. Builds a whole mythos around his act for people really paying attention. Except for he doesn't actually go to any of the effort that all of his predecessors had to make it seem like he's doing actual magic and not just tricks. Everyone can see how he does what he does. He makes no effort to hide it. He wants everyone to know it's an act and he wants everyone in on the act. He wants people to see the strings, because part of the appeal is how careful and intricate and perfectly placed they are. If people didn't see the strings, how could they possibly appreciate the mastercraft of his work?

And hey, maybe that's the correct attitude to have in a post-chemical change world of wrestling in 2021. But it's almost so far distanced from what appeals to me right now that I couldn't possibly be more turned off as a viewer.

[El-P]

31 minutes ago, Matt D said:

Except for he doesn't actually go to any of the effort that all of his predecessors had to make it seem like he's doing actual magic and not just tricks. Everyone can see how he does what he does. He makes no effort to hide it. He wants everyone to know it's an act and he wants everyone in on the act. He wants people to see the strings, because part of the appeal is how careful and intricate and perfectly placed they are. If people didn't see the strings, how could they possibly appreciate the mastercraft of his work?

Hum... no. That's purely projecting stuff. The idea that Omega wants his audience to "see the strings" (really now, people have seen the strings for decades) is a complete projection, there's exactly *nothing* in his work that would indicates this.

The whole "Kenny Omega is a post modern worker who's all about irony and meta" is inaccurate. Is there meta in Omega and the Buck's work ? Sure. But it's mostly in term of presentation and characters (honestly, the whole meta stuff is kept onto BTE). Omega's quest to dethrone Okada in Japan had nothing inauthentic about it. He made people in the audience cry when he won the title. So, the whole "he's not believable and all about irony" just doesn't work. People mix up the fact he (and the Bucks) are aware of the ridiculousness of pro-wrestling and actually revel and embrace it in a, yes, very meta way, and the fact everything about them would just be ironic. It isn't. We don't need to pretend we don't know what it's about, no one has to "show us the strings" (even Orange Cassidy, whose gimmick on the indies was entirely ironic, did not need to). Omega & the Bucks are actually banking of their audience to be smarter, but not to be cynical. Post-modern ? The fuck if I know, especially since that term has been overused and abused for years in every aspect of pop culture. Brillant ? No doubt. 

[strobogo]

I disagree that Omega is bad about that stuff in the ring (for promos yes certainly), and also that Bryan hasn't engaged in that stuff in all stages of his career as well. 

[Matt D]

I think you guys are just way more used to him than I am. It was very striking and offputting to me just watching his expressions and how he carries himself. Im just trying to make sense of what I saw and why I didn’t like it.

I’m also one of the more skeptical people here about Indy Danielson (though not negative on it necessarily) and not necessarily bringing cynicism into it with Omega at least. 

So don’t conflate every criticism. 

[El-P]

13 minutes ago, Matt D said:

I think you guys are just way more used to him than I am. It was very striking and offputting to me just watching his expressions and how he carries himself.

May take a while. First time I saw him in 2015 I called him "putrid" and the worst thing in pro-wrestling or something. I'd slap myself.  He's definitely an acquired taste.

[Steenalized]

I know this isn't up to the discourse level of the board (I mean that sincerely) and it would take more time and effort than I'm probably willing to commit to proving or disproving, but I don't think Matt D and Kadaveri are wrong, I'm picking up on that same issue. Phoniness is too strong of a term and I want to make it clear I liked that Omega-Danielson match and Omega didn't bother me in it, but there is still something that just seems off. I'd say the violence doesn't quite seem legit enough with him but that's not fair either, those V-triggers were great, the dragon suplex on the aisle was great, etc. I'll try to pin it down if I can.

[Coffey]

53 minutes ago, Matt D said:

Omega to me, feels like a very, very skilled sleight of hand magician. Excellent technique. Excellent imagination. Comes up with new tricks. Builds a whole mythos around his act for people really paying attention. Except for he doesn't actually go to any of the effort that all of his predecessors had to make it seem like he's doing actual magic and not just tricks. Everyone can see how he does what he does. He makes no effort to hide it. He wants everyone to know it's an act and he wants everyone in on the act. He wants people to see the strings, because part of the appeal is how careful and intricate and perfectly placed they are. If people didn't see the strings, how could they possibly appreciate the mastercraft of his work?

For what it's worth, I feel this way too & I get what you're trying to say. Instead of presenting wrestling as if it were real, in a post kayfabe world, he's presenting himself as the best worker/athlete in the atmosphere where everyone knows it's a work. So when you grew up on guys like Harley Race or Terry Funk, it's a pretty big disconnect. That's not to say that those guys didn't have their quirks too, like Funk's spaghetti legs sell, or Harley doing the rope spot & what not. With Omega it's just like... everything. Like even the way he starts to run before hitting the ropes. It's theater & being projected for the very back rows of seats. 

And that's not to say I don't think Omega is an amazing talent as he very obviously is. His matches with Okada are all-time great classics. But to me, it's just different generations & seeing the new generation that grew up with a different group of wrestlers influencing them. You look at wrestling today & you see Shawn Michaels & Rob Van Dam & Kurt Angle in a lot of the current talent. 

[El-P]

Just now, Coffey said:

It's theater & being projected for the very back rows of seats. 

Like Steamboat's shotgun sell of Flair chops or his über-theatrical karate chops.

To me there's no disconnect whatsoever. Earlier in the year when I was watching some Lou Thesz matches I was legit cracking up at some oh-so-obvious theatrical bullshit from good old Lou and I was thinking "This is so great, things haven't actually changed very much, it was the same awesome bullshit back then." 

Now, where you can actually underline a difference is that, yes, there is a use of meta in the game of some workers today, Omega and the Bucks being obvious ones but not the only ones. They are twisting some pro-wrestling tropes in ways that goes beyond what was done before (the way Matt Jackson was mocking the babyface hot-tag formula in a match recently absolutely had a meta aspect to it, and it's precisely where he's banking on his audience intelligence, because the audience can read and appreciate both layers of the match *at the same time*, everybody knows what they are watching and you can multitask your watching experience).

[Coffey]

31 minutes ago, Steenalized said:

Phoniness is too strong of a term and I want to make it clear I liked that Omega-Danielson match and Omega didn't bother me in it, but there is still something that just seems off. I'd say the violence doesn't quite seem legit enough with him but that's not fair either, those V-triggers were great, the dragon suplex on the aisle was great, etc. I'll try to pin it down if I can.

Yeah, I wouldn't say phoniness. Phoniness to me, in pro wrestling, is more like when someone is super green, doesn't know what they're doing & keep fucking up. Happened a lot in the Divas era of WWF. Shit that just would make the crowd groan. Constantly pulling back the curtain, unintentionally.

I think "meta" is a good word for the Omega distinction because I can't think of any better way to describe it myself, but I know exactly what you three (you along w/ Matt D & Kad) are talking about & it's been something brought up in other corners of the internet for awhile too. I know people take shots at Omega a lot, especially the likes of Jim Cornette, and a lot of the time it's for stuff he did much earlier in his career. But ever since he went to New Japan & turned himself into a top worker, some of his early quirks remained. But even after vastly improving, some people will always hold his old stuff against him. My issue isn't about the old stuff. It's about the bad habits he learned that remained along the way. 

For what it's worth, I was never a big fan of the Flair Flop either but I get that sometimes, regardless of era, different guys will have different go-to moves/spots whatever & they're not always offensive moves. Like DiBiase doing the flip bump off the punch to the stomach, or Rick Rude selling Atomic Drops. I just think that most of that stuff was purposely silly & a lot of the stuff that Omega does comes off as silly even when it's not necessarily supposed to be the purposely silly shit.

He runs the ropes the same way A.J. Lee used too. Like he's having to rev up & get a jump start. It's... odd. More often than not though, I think his V-Trigger looks like death & I wish he didn't do so many so it would be more impactful.

[El-P]

23 minutes ago, Coffey said:

Instead of presenting wrestling as if it were real, in a post kayfabe world, he's presenting himself as the best worker/athlete in the atmosphere where everyone knows it's a work.

I've been thinking about something for quite a while, is that pro-wrestling is actually getting more and more real as it evolves. What they do inside the ring in term of actual physical stuff, because of the complexities of the spots and sequences, the legit strenght spots (in a match with Jeff Cobb for instance), the flying that has never been as crazy as it is today, the pacing, the stiffness in some cases, all of this is infinitely more real than it ever was before. And as the audience enjoys it for what it is, the need to be "believable", whatever that even meant (because really now let's be serious), is getting more and more irrelevant because there is no need to believe what supposedly happens, because what actually happens is real. The most unrealistic it gets, the more real it actually is and the more straight (both as in direct and also honest) the relationship between the performance and its audience gets. I find it fascinating that something that was born as a fraud and total pretend carny game at the beginning has basically evolved toward a form that has no care for any kind of "realism" and no care for believability anymore, because it doesn't need to, as the pretend as turned into an actual reality, with an honest value of its own.

[Steenalized]

Meta or (too) self-aware is getting at the issue, yeah. And no amount of "well what about Funk's spaghetti legs selling or this guys spot or that guys whatever" can fully take away that it's there, even if plenty of people aren't bothered by it or even enjoy it. For what it's worth, I love Funk's spaghetti leg bit, I used to have a gif of it in my signature here. Individual spots are what they are.

[strobogo]

11 minutes ago, El-P said:

Like Steamboat's shotgun sell of Flair chops or his über-theatrical karate chops.

To me there's no disconnect whatsoever. Earlier in the year when I was watching some Lou Thesz matches I was legit cracking up at some oh-so-obvious theatrical bullshit from good old Lou and I was thinking "This is so great, things haven't actually changed very much, it was the same awesome bullshit back then." 

Now, where you can actually underline a difference is that, yes, there is a use of meta in the game of some workers today, Omega and the Bucks being obvious ones but not the only ones. They are twisting some pro-wrestling tropes in ways that goes beyond what was done before (the way Matt Jackson was mocking the babyface hot-tag formula in a match recently absolutely had a meta aspect to it, and it's precisely where he's banking on his audience intelligence, because the audience can read and appreciate both layers of the match *at the same time*, everybody knows what they are watching and you can multitask your watching experience).

 

Yeah Lou Thesz is a great example because his matches are actually full of sports entertainment theatricality that borders on comedy spots. 

[Steenalized]

1 minute ago, El-P said:

I've been thinking about something for quite a while, is that pro-wrestling is actually getting more and more real as it evolves. What they do inside the ring in term of actual physical stuff, because of the complexities of the spots and sequences, the legit strenght spots (in a match with Jeff Cobb for instance), the flying that has never been as crazy as it is today, the pacing, the stiffness in some cases, all of this is infinitely more real than it ever was before. And as the audience enjoys it for what it is, the need to be "believable", whatever that even meant (because really now let's be serious), is getting more and more irrelevant because there is no need to believe what supposedly happens, because what actually happens is real. The most unrealistic it gets, the more real it actually is and the more straight (both as in direct and also honest) the relationship between the performance and its audience gets. I find it fascinating that something that was born as a fraud and total pretend carny game at the beginning has basically evolved toward a form that has no care for any kind of "realism" and no care for believability anymore, because it doesn't need to, as the pretend as turned into an actual reality, with an honest value of its own.

Not sure if I'd say it gets more real by any stretch. I think that's the wrong term since I understand what you're driving at - in many ways there are more visually dazzling displays of athleticism - but realness as in authenticity or even "this is a top caliber athlete who could beat the piss out of me if I charge the ring", that I do not think is more prevalent now than before.

[ohtani's jacket]

52 minutes ago, Matt D said:

I think you guys are just way more used to him than I am. It was very striking and offputting to me just watching his expressions and how he carries himself. Im just trying to make sense of what I saw and why I didn’t like it.

I’m also one of the more skeptical people here about Indy Danielson (though not negative on it necessarily) and not necessarily bringing cynicism into it with Omega at least. 

So don’t conflate every criticism. 

The first time you see Omega it is a WTF moment. It was the same for me with Shinsuke Nakamura. It's just too much. There should be a little warning on the screen like "do not adjust your television set." Omega & Danielson grew up in the same era as us, watching the same tapes, wanting to emulate the wrestlers they saw and have great matches. There's no way that they can't be self-aware. If you are actively trying to become the image of what you think a great pro-wrestler should be then you are fully self-aware. In the hardcore tape trading days, this is what we all wanted to see -- great wrestlers, great matches, workrate, four star classics, five star classics, the kind of things ROH fans ate up. So it's no surprise to me that Danielson and Omega are the way that they are, or that those are the types of fans they appeal to. These are the wrestlers we created on messageboard forums and online chatrooms. 

[Coffey]

40 minutes ago, Coffey said:

It's theater & being projected for the very back rows of seats.

Maybe part of the issue is just how much the medium has changed, as well. Harley Race overselling so the back rows of the smoke filled room could see him being dramatic is a lot different than a modern wrestler working in high definition to people watching on 60" 4k screens.

[El-P]

22 minutes ago, ohtani's jacket said:

These are the wrestlers we created on messageboard forums and online chatrooms. 

Promoted by Coach Tony K., from sleaze thread fame.

Yeah, I mentioned it before, but the fact Mox got familiar with Japanese deathmatches the same exact way as I did (saw the Cactus Jack pictures from Japan on WWF TV and Terry Funk in ECW, bought the IWA King of Deathmatches tape)  really struck me in term of how much this generation of pro-wrestlers are basically like "us". They are the product of the culture we were all (speaking for the boomers on this board) an active part of.

21 minutes ago, Coffey said:

Maybe part of the issue is just how much the medium has changed, as well. Harley Race overselling so the back rows of the smoke filled room could see him being dramatic is a lot different than a modern wrestler working in high definition to people watching on 60" 4k screens.

Or simply phones. But mostly 4K screens, for sure.

I think somewhere there's also the Internet culture of memes showing up in the middle of this. I mean, Orange Cassidy is totally a meme pro-wrestler. And meme absolutely play on recycling pop culture trash and clashing bizarre aesthetics, which also gave us the vaporwave scene in the 10's. When I think about it, Blue Meanie X Lemmy X Japan X meta... Yeah, maybe Kenny Omega is the first vaporwave pro-wrestler. 

[strobogo]

"Working to project for the cheap seats" is the weirdest complaint I've ever heard about a wrestler. Literally every single one of the greats of every style and era work to project for the cheap seats. 

[Coffey]

1 hour ago, strobogo said:

"Working to project for the cheap seats" is the weirdest complaint I've ever heard about a wrestler. Literally every single one of the greats of every style and era work to project for the cheap seats. 

Which is why I mentioned the medium changing... 

[gordi]

Omega and the Bucks are Tenacious D. They are absolutely taking the piss out of pro wrestling, but they are doing it from a place of deep love and drawing from a deep well of knowledge.

You can love heavy metal and also love Tenacious D. Probably, you can't really love Tenacious D if you don't also love heavy metal. (I kinda like some metal and love tiny isolated chunks of it... which is close to how I feel about Jack Black...)

I don't think it's possible to fully enjoy, say, The Pick of Destiny if you appreciate heavy metal in a more serious way, though. I don't mean any sort of criticism by that, at all. It's obviously fine to take some things seriously. And I don't mean the big picture of not liking it when people take the piss out of something you love, more that there are inevitably going to be some details in what they do that just rub you the wrong way.

Also, it would not be possible for Tenacious D (or for that matter Spinal.Tap) to do what they do the way that they do it if they weren't massively talented. Good enough to "play it straight" when that's what they want to do.

Hopefully it's pretty clear how all of that applies to Kenny and the Bucks, etc.

To me, it's like my beloved Osaka Pro, but on a much larger scale, and playing to a bigger crowd. It is AMAZING to me that there is this much of an audience for it, but of course it's not for everybody. 

I also love @ohtani's jacket's take on it. Most of us posting here, if we'd been gifted with enough athleticism, power, and toughness, would likely be our own little versions of Ishii, Cobb, Walter... Makabe... but we all know guys who'd be doing exactly what The Elite are doing now, if they were able. 

 

[El-P]

32 minutes ago, gordi said:

but we all know guys who'd be doing exactly what The Elite are doing now, if they were able. 

*raise hand *

Actually, knowing myself, I'd be Orange Cassidy in lazy mode.

[gordi]

40 minutes ago, El-P said:

*raise hand *

Actually, knowing myself, I'd be Orange Cassidy in lazy mode.

I'd be a dollar store version of Gentleman Jervis Cottonbelly. 

[southofheavy]

My heart wants to be a heavy metal version of The Great Muta or Terry Gordy, but my narrow ass is far better suited to being a heavy metal version of JC Ice. 

[Matt D]

I was worried we'd go off the rails on this, but ultimately, it's been a pretty constructive discussion. I don't think anyone is taking too extreme an anti-Omega view at least. Moreover, we're all more or less on the same page when it comes to what it is that he is, albeit with some variation on whether the pros are pros and the cons are cons.

We've ended up in a world of wrestling where Tenacious D is considered not only the best current band in its genre, but also potentially the best band of all time putting out the highest rated songs. We've ended up in a world where Arrested Development is not just the best sitcom of all time (as opposed to Dick Van Dyke show or Cheers or even more self-aware things like Seinfeld or whatever) but the best show of all time. We've ended up in a world where What We Do in the Shadows is actually the best vampire fiction of all time over Dracula and whatever else. That's kind of what I'm hearing here.

I'm sometimes bemused with the comics readers here focusing so much on the 60s and 70s instead of some stuff from the last 20 years or even now that I'd rather talk about with them that have a lot more complexity and lore but are also self aware and can't stop winking. It's fan fiction to a degree, but then so is Arn Anderson and Steve Austin. It's just more times removed maybe? With new mediums and revenue sources and purposes and closeness to the fans. The genie isn't going back into the bottle, but the self-awareness plays out in different ways. Even in AEW, there's FTR and Darby and Hobbs and Omega and Danielson and still guys like Christian and Dustin all at once. Omega may be pushed on top but different people go at it in different ways.

So people can have those views from paragraph 2. But people can have the opposite view as well. We don't need someone rushing in about canon and dismissing everything modern that people are earnestly enjoying but we also don't need people who don't connect to this stuff getting shot down hard or dismissed or told that they just have to swallow their medicine and only see the good in it to be happy, functioning members in 2021 society. There's a spectrum and I don't think we're going to fall to extremism (until we finally do get to GWE voting, because, let's be reasonable here; we're only human).

And, of course, we can keep pushing and presenting and highlighting and reviewing the wrestling that we like the best (and also explaining why we like it the best) so that it's out there in the broader community and accessible as possible to maybe influence and be seen by the wrestlers of today and tomorrow.

[El-P]

Christian Cage being called "old-school" is something that is pretty amusing to me. When the late 90's/early 00's came, with them came a new generation of workers who did not, at all, work like their predecessors. Christian was one of them. The very way he was moving inside the ring felt foreign to me. He absolutely wasn't like Tito Santana, Bret Hart and even Shawn Micheals, not to mention Savage or Flair. He did bizarre looking moves and tons of dives. The structure of his matches did not look like anything close to what I was used to. And it wasn't really the stuff Benoit, Malenko & Eddie were doing in WCW either (and that I had seen in NJPW earlier in the decade). With Edge and the Hardys, Christian Cage is the picture boy from that first generation of guys who had this "indy" feel to it, before the first generation of ROH came on the scene.

The fact his style of work, which has evolved over the years of course, but remains very different from what I was used to when I discovered pro-wrestling, is called "old-school" or even "classic" demonstrates too things : 1/I'm old. Fuck me. 2/"old-school" is only relative. In 25 years, 18 years old guys will talk about the Omega/Ospreay stuff as "old school, boomer (I mean, whatever term they'll use then) pro-wrestling from back in the days" and it's a given some people will refer to this period as the "old-school mentality". For Lou Thesz, the ever credible and oh-so-believable NWA World Champion, Ric Flair was a clown who was business exposing and doing nonsensical trampoline-looking shit.

One of the funniest and actually most accurate thing I've heard about this was the Best Friends joking (in those segments the Bucks used to tape in hotel rooms) that the next generation of workers will be "Lock up, 450 !!!!!!!!". There is historically an evolution of pro-wrestling that goes toward quicker, more athletic, with more spots and more *spectacular* and physically demanding spots. Mind you, not *everybody* is going this route (Okada built his entire style around a fucking dropkick and a short clothesline, in US wrestling it's the equivalent of borrowing from Jim Brunzell & Jake Roberts, to stay in the 80's state of mind, but of course the complexity and actual structure of the matches are absolutely contemporary), but that's the way it goes overall. Which isn't just a pro-wrestling thing, it's very much linked to many many sociological, economical, physiological elements. But that is the way it goes. And the "back to the basics" approach can only be both a reactionary movement (like every retro stuff in pop music, not that it's necessarily bad, but it definitely clutch onto an imaginary norm from a golden age, which is always the most "bourgeois" kind of attitude, because it's always about the past and defending the status quo) but also a very relative experiment, because every generation has its own idea of what the old-school is. And of course, totally self-aware, in essence (he cannot be otherwise, their can't be spontaneity in trying to recreate something that isn't anymore). Hence, the fact Christian Cage being considered like this very much old-school kind of worker kinda strikes me as odd to me because my mind has discovered pro-wrestling goodness with Curt Henning vs Tito Santana. This is old-school, not Christian Cage ! (but of course it's not, because what is really old school is Ray Stevens, except it's not etc etc...)