AEW Dynamite - Grand Slam - September 22, 2021

[El-P]

1 hour ago, Matt D said:

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.

The issue I have with this argument, which I have heard before, is that generally speaking, people who blast Omega & the Bucks (to take the biggest offenders, but you can throw in modern NJPW in general, Will Ospreay, Adam Cole and the likes) usually say "This is shit, this is not how pro-wrestling used to be done and should be done, it's insulting to compare them to the actual great workers in history", while you very seldom hear (and honestly I have *never* heard it) people who love Omega, the Bucks and whatnot shit on the great workers of the past (and why would they, as OJ said these guys are the product of 25 years of studying and loving all those great workers and geeking out on the internet about them). It's pretty much a one way street. 

[WingedEagle]

One issue with Wednesday's taping is that it was far from the smoothest live event experience and certainly lacking compared with other events in the area.  Vaccination was required for admission yet I didn't hear of a single person being asked to present evidence at the door.  Similarly, my seats were in a section in the stands that's there year round as opposed to something constructed on the floor for this show.  However, it turns out my section number didn't actually exist.  There was only one instance where someone came by thinking they should've been in our seats (which we ID'd and confirmed with an usher and supervisor using a seating chart) but it seemed a bit amateur hour.  I've got no idea whether these fall on AEW or Arthur Ashe, but especially with the roof closed I would've liked a bit more vigilance on the vaccination front.

[Matt D]

8 minutes ago, El-P said:

The issue I have with this argument, which I have heard before, is that generally speaking, people who blast Omega & the Bucks (to take the biggest offenders, but you can throw in modern NJPW in general, Will Ospreay, Adam Cole and the likes) usually say "This is shit, this is not how pro-wrestling used to be done and should be done, it's insulting to compare them to the actual great workers in history", while you very seldom hear (and honestly I have *never* heard it) people who love Omega, the Bucks and whatnot shit on the great workers of the past (and why would they, as OJ said these guys are the product of 25 years of studying and loving all those great workers and geeking out on the internet about them). It's pretty much a one way street. 

The other side of the street is “this is the best ever.”

[ohtani's jacket]

Can we stop toting this line that Lou Thesz did lots of comedy spots or shtick? He didn't really. His favorite go-to spots in most footage is to lose his cool and use inside moves. 

[El-P]

28 minutes ago, Matt D said:

The other side of the street is “this is the best ever.”

And why not ? I mean, I'm sorry but why should it be, by default, an unacceptable idea ? Because that's where the issue lies. For some reason, the idea that these guys are, forget "the best ever", simply some of the greatest workers ever is apparently unfathomable to some in ways that triggers them.

And I get "not getting it" or not even wanting to contemplate it, because for instance when I heard people talk about how Okada vs Tanahshi was the equivalent of Kawada vs Misawa (and maybe even better) years ago, my first reaction was "How dare you !" and I would not contemplate that idea whatsoever. Right now, I don't find it shocking at all and I find my first reaction to be pretty ridiculous. But I had to work around my own cognitive bias and habits to begin to change my own perception of how things work and why they work the way they do. Like I said in the Tamura vs Han survey thread, any prescriptive approach of pro-wrestling I have zero time for anymore. It's just too much of a subjective thing. I'm much more interested in a descriptive approach, first of all because it's much "easier" that way to try and reach for the most objectivity possible (although it's never really attainable), and also because it's basically more interesting to try and understand how things works rather than "Do I agree with it or not ?" (because really, who cares ?). The last big lesson I received was when I was doing my reviews of Taker matches at Mania, during the infamous streak of epics. It occurred to me that it did not matter whether some stuff were the most suited to my own taste, when taking the right amount of distance from my own bias I was able to get why some stuff were indeed rightly called great and a success despite me not being the biggest fan. Plus this way I was able to actually enjoy them more than I would have otherwise, so it's a win-win.

[Matt D]

4 minutes ago, El-P said:

And why not ? 

For the specific reasons people are giving you and are trying to work out for themselves in good faith? I am not sure where else you are going on the Internet, but I don’t see a lot of people being “triggered” here. 

[NintendoLogic]

Here's a direct quote from a post on the F4W board: "The vast majority of old school wrestling sucks anyway compared to today." I'm sure that sentiment is far more common than the notion that Omega and the Young Bucks don't know how to work. But the latter seem more prevalent than they are because they get signal boosted by Meltzer when he argues with them on Twitter. I should note that Bret Hart seems universally respected by fans on both sides of the fence, which truly warms the cockles of my heart.

[El-P]

1 hour ago, Matt D said:

For the specific reasons people are giving you and are trying to work out for themselves in good faith?

I don't have to agree with those reasons though, especially when they seem to be pretty entrenched in a very normative discourse, which is something, like I said, I don't really care for anymore (I used to, I don't anymore). And we should always be wary of our own good faith, I in good faith said tons of stuff I absolutely disagree with today (including about, well, those guys and contemporary pro-wrestling in general as I stated way earlier). The thing that made me change my mind about a lot of things (and that goes way beyond my pro-wrestling tastes/opinions) was working on my own cognitive bias, and it's an everyday thing, really, it never ends.

1 hour ago, Matt D said:

 I am not sure where else you are going on the Internet, but I don’t see a lot of people being “triggered” here. 

1 hour ago, NintendoLogic said:

Here's a direct quote from a post on the F4W board: "The vast majority of old school wrestling sucks anyway compared to today." I'm sure that sentiment is far more common than the notion that Omega and the Young Bucks don't know how to work. But the latter seem more prevalent than they are because they get signal boosted by Meltzer when he argues with them on Twitter.

This may explains that indeed. You always hear the most vocal minority indeed and it does twist the perceptions.
As far as pro-wrestling being overall better now than it ever was, that's an opinion I share, yes. But that doesn't mean I don't think there wasn't absolute greatness before.

[strobogo]

2 hours ago, ohtani's jacket said:

Can we stop toting this line that Lou Thesz did lots of comedy spots or shtick? He didn't really. His favorite go-to spots in most footage is to lose his cool and use inside moves. 

Lou did a "why I otta, you dirty rat" flustered spot that got a laugh from the audience and announcer in almost every match I've seen out of him. It gets a laugh every time so in my view it's a comedy spot and is used as such. 

[Migs]

3 hours ago, WingedEagle said:

One issue with Wednesday's taping is that it was far from the smoothest live event experience and certainly lacking compared with other events in the area.  Vaccination was required for admission yet I didn't hear of a single person being asked to present evidence at the door.  Similarly, my seats were in a section in the stands that's there year round as opposed to something constructed on the floor for this show.  However, it turns out my section number didn't actually exist.  There was only one instance where someone came by thinking they should've been in our seats (which we ID'd and confirmed with an usher and supervisor using a seating chart) but it seemed a bit amateur hour.  I've got no idea whether these fall on AEW or Arthur Ashe, but especially with the roof closed I would've liked a bit more vigilance on the vaccination front.

I definitely had to show my vaccine card on the way in, although I was there on the earlier side. Possible they got lax on that to try and move people in.

[Gramsci]

I agree that there's a normative discourse in wrestling about what is right and what's not. It's like a process that most people have, including myself, when they are starting to post on forums. You start by absorving various ideas like "X wrestler needs to work that leg before going for the submision finisher" that, if you think about it, doesn't make any sense in a real life or a fighting sport.  What I don't understand is why the stuff Omega does looks fake and incoherent but Lawler and Funk or Satánico and Chicana throwing punches in the air without protecting their face and selling in a pro wrestling weird way it's ok? Sabin and Shelley doing cooperative matwork sucks (which I agree) but Satánico and Gran Cochisse doing a similar awful matwork is "the best ever"?

Maybe I'm being a little exaggerated, but my point is that all of the things that are being discussed can work both ways. 

[WingedEagle]

2 hours ago, Migs said:

I definitely had to show my vaccine card on the way in, although I was there on the earlier side. Possible they got lax on that to try and move people in.

That's good to hear.  I was there before 6PM and didn't see anyone asked for their card.  Same for my friends who arrived over the next half hour or so, but at least it seems like it wasn't policy to completely disregard it.

[Migs]

8 hours ago, Matt D said:

The other side of the street is “this is the best ever.”

It's not, actually. (Certainly not here, at least.) The argument is that in the great history of wrestling that we all discuss on here, Kenny Omega and the Young Bucks (and more broadly, this style / generation of wrestling, because there are plenty of AEW fans on this board who aren't the biggest Omega or Bucks fans) absolutely should be in the conversation and respected in the way that other top eras are. To use a term that comes up a lot around here, their best stuff is all canon, in the same way Flair-Steamboat is, in the way 90s All Japan is, in the way you'd get nowhere in a conversation around here if you didn't see the value in Lawler or Funk's work. But it's a lopsided argument because no one here is arguing you shouldn't watch that other stuff (I'm sure someone on Twitter is right now, but that's not who I'm interested in chatting with.) 

Moreso, this stuff needs to be understood in context. All of these guys grew up working for the smartest possible crowds. One thing about the Bucks that gets misunderstood is that they absolutely can do a southern style tag match. But watch some 2010 PWG, and you can see them figuring out that the whole crowd is sitting on their hands for the first 2/3 of the match because they know the style too well - the hot tag is coming, and the awesome finishing sequence is what they're waiting for. So they restructure the matches to not have that downtime, figure out how to get responses out of that crowd. They figure out the ways to be a heel for those crowds when the classic shtick wouldn't work (and they've figured out how to do it again - Kenny and the Bucks are getting booed in a promotion that's literally built on how beloved they were.) If you want to call what they do "meta," so be it, but it's really understanding your audience.  (Now, some may feel that something is lost when wrestling is performed for a smarter audience - there's certainly a joy in watching old Mid-South hick crowds want to murder someone for using a fake chain. But it's pretty unfair to ding these guys for working a style that's clearly turned on a lot of people.)

Look, it's great that people are jumping in now and watching these matches. It shows that people are coming to the idea that this stuff is going to be in the historical conversation long-term.  I respect that different people are in different stages of their journey with this. Same as @El-P, it took me a while to fully get the Bucks and Omega, and even the apex of the modern style (mid-late 2010s New Japan) wasn't something I attached to immediately. If people feel like overly theatrical wrestling isn't their thing, that's fine (and please, also tell me how you don't enjoy Randy Savage gesturing with every move or wide swaths of lucha). I'd just prefer not being told that I like things that are "phony" on a pro wrestling board when someone hasn't connected to a performer. 

 

[sek69]

I'm not particularly married to either side (I think Kenny and the Bucks are great in ring, but I also can see how their antics rub people the wrong way), but I wonder if sometimes we sound like the grizzled vets who complain the young guys are exposing the business and don't know how to work.

I tend to agree with Dave when he says that if something draws, even if you personally don't like it, then it works. If you complain about something that works, it makes you look out of touch.  

I also think a lot of it comes down to everyone, smart fans and casuals alike, having to get used to there being a different style of wrestling in a major US promotion for the first time in decades. We've all been accustomed to things being Done A Certain Way for so long, seeing someone do things differently appear alien even if they are succeeding because there's always that hind part of your brain that is like "that can't be possible, they didn't do it this way".

[Migs]

58 minutes ago, sek69 said:

I also think a lot of it comes down to everyone, smart fans and casuals alike, having to get used to there being a different style of wrestling in a major US promotion for the first time in decades. We've all been accustomed to things being Done A Certain Way for so long, seeing someone do things differently appear alien even if they are succeeding because there's always that hind part of your brain that is like "that can't be possible, they didn't do it this way".

I also think this might be particularly true because WWE has spent so long fighting the fans. It's meant their style hasn't really evolved over the last decade to incorporate the modern fanbase, at least not as aggressively as it has outside WWE. If someone hasn't been following the stuff outside WWE over the last 10 years, a lot of this stuff may seem like it's coming out of nowhere. NXT had some parts of this, although I think it may have lacked the sense of humor that runs through much of the modern style.

[gordi]

19 hours ago, El-P said:

The issue I have with this argument, which I have heard before, is that generally speaking, people who blast Omega & the Bucks (to take the biggest offenders, but you can throw in modern NJPW in general, Will Ospreay, Adam Cole and the likes) usually say "This is shit, this is not how pro-wrestling used to be done and should be done, it's insulting to compare them to the actual great workers in history", while you very seldom hear (and honestly I have *never* heard it) people who love Omega, the Bucks and whatnot shit on the great workers of the past (and why would they, as OJ said these guys are the product of 25 years of studying and loving all those great workers and geeking out on the internet about them). It's pretty much a one way street. 

What bugs me is, how can anyone call guys like Terry Funk, Tenryu, Bockwinkel, MS-1, or Bull Nakano "great" with a straight face? None of them can properly execute the most basic and simple of all pro wrestling maneuvers: The Canadian Destroyer. 

[El-P]

1 hour ago, gordi said:

What bugs me is, how can anyone call guys like Terry Funk, Tenryu, Bockwinkel, MS-1, or Bull Nakano "great" with a straight face? None of them can properly execute the most basic and simple of all pro wrestling maneuvers: The Canadian Destroyer. 

And I'd bet you anything that if Tenryu and Terry Funk were 50 years old in 2021, they absolutely would do it ! And people would got batshit insane for it. I mean, Ricky Morton did it at past 60 and Dustin Rhodes has made the Code Red a part of his arsenal, so, it's totally in line with the kind of workers they were/are and their mentality.

[El-P]

12 hours ago, Migs said:

(and please, also tell me how you don't enjoy Randy Savage gesturing with every move or wide swaths of lucha).

Glad you bring up Savage, I think about him *every time* when people talk about Omega doing goofy faces and gestures.

12 hours ago, Migs said:

I'd just prefer not being told that I like things that are "phony" on a pro wrestling board when someone hasn't connected to a performer. 

Yep, this. 

Also, pro-wrestling has nothing to do with believability, it has to do with acceptance. Plenty of stuff in pro-wrestling looks dumb as fuck, awkward, or just plain nonsensical in a straight physical way (the way people move, bump, go along with spots, sell), the question is not about it being believable or not, the question is about whether it's accepted by the crowd or not. If it is, then it doesn't matter if it looks "phoney" or "not believable", there is a dialectic between the move (which can be anything, a spot, a sell, a facial expression), which is really nothing more than a sign, and the viewer. And BTW :

12 hours ago, Migs said:

it's really understanding your audience.  (Now, some may feel that something is lost when wrestling is performed for a smarter audience - there's certainly a joy in watching old Mid-South hick crowds want to murder someone for using a fake chain. But it's pretty unfair to ding these guys for working a style that's clearly turned on a lot of people.)

Yep. That's another thing. Let's stop judging the crowds as if there were the "good" fans (the ones who provide "real heat", whatever it's supposed to be) and the "bad" fans ("This is awesome!", "fight forever!"). That's just awful (and yes, I have done it myself too, but it's never too late to change). That's basically a not so subtle form of classism in the context of pro-wrestling fandom. When you are judging a crowd to argue a point about a worker, that means you have no argument whatsoever. 

[Coffey]

13 hours ago, sek69 said:

I wonder if sometimes we sound like the grizzled vets who complain the young guys are exposing the business and don't know how to work.

Eh, I liken it to the NBA. I grew up watching the NBA in the 80's & 90's. I watched Michael Jordan & the Chicago Bulls win 6 NBA Championships. Then I watched Michael Jordan retire. Then I watched the likes of Kobe Bryant, Tim Duncan, Kevin Garnett, etc. come & go. 

Now I'm in an era where Michael Jordan hasn't played in the NBA since 2003. Almost twenty years ago. People were born & grew up watching basketball without ever getting to see Michael Jordan play. And then they get online & partake in discussions about who the greatest ever is... and don't understand why Jordan was so good & put the likes of LeBron & Kobe above him. 

Same way where guys like Bill Russell & Wilt Chamberlain came before my time, so I can't fairly judge them. 

I think it's just part of getting older. Same thing happens in wrestling too. I grew up on 1980's professional wrestling. I'm never going to be able to admit that guys like Terry Funk, Ted DiBiase, Rick Rude, Randy Savage, Tito Santana, Bret Hart, etc. are worse than guys from today... because I'm biased. I remember being in disbelief when the PWO GWE had Daniel Bryan in the top 5! Above Bret Hart, Kobashi, Kawada, Jumbo, Steamboat. And Kenny Omega will probably be super high in the next one. A lot of wrestling fans today, including the people that buy tickets to the show & talk about wrestling online, were born AFTER the Attitude era, let alone were old enough to live through Hulkamania.

There's a lot of things that factor into it all. Nostalgia, age, recency bias, all kinds of things. And although people don't want to admit, Dave Meltzer definitely influences people's opinions too. Hell, he influences people IN THE BUSINESS. 

[Mad Dog]

I think part of the disconnect comes from the fact that a lot of people are just out of touch with wrestling and what the fanbase is now. I go to wrestling shows in my city, I go to live sporting events and I do to anime conventions and comic shops. 

Way back in the 90s, I was more likely to see the live sports people at wrestling as well. Now, it's the comic shop and anime people. Wrestling is part of the nerd culture boom. 

Also, a lot of guys like Cornette have rose colored glasses for what the old time was. I love old footage and classic wrestling but there's just as much if not more bullshoy surrounding the matches. A lot of the live sports fans that I don't see, left because of all the fuck finishes and just overall getting screwed by bad booking or shitty matches. 

[Matt D]

I keep sort of wanting to bow out of this, but I will say that I don't actually think that the meta/self-aware approach is a wrong approach for 2021. We have a lot of different people arguing a lot of different things and different variations here and there's a decent amount of cross-talk. Moreover, I think there's a lot of lingering talk from other people and other places that is affecting the discussion. Generalization too. There's a difference between Savage being over the top and Funk's wobbly legs and Flair's flopping from one another, for instance, let alone from modern things and these would all be different discussions.

I'm pretty sure I get what Omega and the Bucks do (which, speaking of generalization, doesn't even necessarily have to be the same things; those could be separate arguments too, as could what Omega does, how he does it, and his particular expressiveness while doing it; could but I'll generalize a bit here because that's the discussion on the last few posts), why they do it, the value of it, why it works, why doing something else might not work, and I get that without having to inoculating myself or going through some sort of journey with it. I might not be able to convince myself I like it without going through such a journey, but I'm pretty much ok with that.

I went back and watched Darby vs Ethan Page casket match today. The finish was Darby taking an ego's edge off the top onto the stairs in the center of the ring, before recovering and getting the win. Darby is a very over, very sympathetic babyface. Page is a competent heel with fairly over the top mannerisms that do get some heat. The crowd's response to the edge wasn't sympathy or concern for Darby or anger for Page or worry that the guy they like wasn't going to win the match. It was a This is Awesome chant. Darby's really good at drawing engagement and sympathy but there's nothing you can do there. I'm not saying the crowd is wrong to have done that or that it would have been any better if Darby was more than really good and was instead good enough to convince the fans to feign concern instead so that they were playing along too or whatever (which feels like it happens in some other situations where you get a simulation of actual heat in 2021). It is what it is. The genie's out of the bottle. And wrestlers have to respond accordingly. I get that. Moreover, those that do and do well and create some sort of honest and earnest engagement from a crowd should be acknowledged for doing so. 

I just don't particularly enjoy it and don't have a lot of time to be watching things I don't enjoy, especially in a promotion like AEW which has a bunch of stuff I do like.

[Kadaveri]

39 minutes ago, Matt D said:

I keep sort of wanting to bow out of this, but I will say that I don't actually think that the meta/self-aware approach is a wrong approach for 2021. We have a lot of different people arguing a lot of different things and different variations here and there's a decent amount of cross-talk. Moreover, I think there's a lot of lingering talk from other people and other places that is affecting the discussion. Generalization too. There's a difference between Savage being over the top and Funk's wobbly legs and Flair's flopping from one another, for instance, let alone from modern things and these would all be different discussions.

I think the distinction is when Savage/Funk/Flair did those things they were portraying over the top wrestling characters. When the Bucks do a parody of babyface comeback spots they're not actually portraying any kind of wrestling character, they're making a joke of wrestling itself.

People can like or dislike that line being crossed, I'm just arguing that it's a real thing and not just a natural continuation of Lou Thesz being funny or whatever. It's what distingushes the Bucks/Omega from still 'modern' wrestlers like Christian or Bryan.

[El-P]

2 hours ago, Coffey said:

I think it's just part of getting older. Same thing happens in wrestling too. I grew up on 1980's professional wrestling. I'm never going to be able to admit that guys like Terry Funk, Ted DiBiase, Rick Rude, Randy Savage, Tito Santana, Bret Hart, etc. are worse than guys from today... because I'm biased. I remember being in disbelief when the PWO GWE had Daniel Bryan in the top 5! Above Bret Hart, Kobashi, Kawada, Jumbo, Steamboat. And Kenny Omega will probably be super high in the next one.

Of course it is. There was a study about pop music that stated that more or less people got settled in their ways at about 35 and past that point they really weren't open to new things. But the beauty of knowing that you (I mean you and I and everybody) are biased is that it's the first step in eventually seeing through those bias and avoid them as much as possible. In a way the last few years with me as been a process of unlearning what I thought I knew (always gotta ask yourself "How do I know what I think I know ?"), and it's an incredibly liberating process. Fact is, I was brought up on early 90's pro-wrestling, I basically checked out for a while in the early/mid 00's, which really doesn't help, but now I'm very comfortable with the idea that I've seen the best pro-wrestling I've ever seen happen in the last 5 years. And I'm 45. So yeah, it is a part of getting older, but it does not *have to* be.  

2 hours ago, Coffey said:

And although people don't want to admit, Dave Meltzer definitely influences people's opinions too. Hell, he influences people IN THE BUSINESS. 

Agreed. The thing that is clearly undersold with Meltz because he's very polarizing and you're either a haterz or a stan apparently, is that he has learned first hand from some of the smartest people in pro-wrestling, including Terry Funk and Jim Cornette. Like him or not, he's not just some dude. One of the most interesting anecdotes he tells is how he learned very young that the whole "believability" thingy was totally relative when his friends from Mexico were telling him how US wrestling looked totally fake and phoney (yeah, those words again). Or stuff about Terry Funk telling him to study Japan because they were always more or less 5/10 years ahead of the curve. 

44 minutes ago, Kadaveri said:

People can like or dislike that line being crossed, I'm just arguing that it's a real thing and not just a natural continuation of Lou Thesz being funny or whatever. It's what distingushes the Bucks/Omega from still 'modern' wrestlers like Christian or Bryan.

Like I said before, there is definitely a meta aspect to the Bucks & Omega (but that's part of their own identity and not a global generational thing, although they are not the only ones, Orange Cassidy comes to mind to), which is a new thing. I mentioned Thesz being goofy and comedic at times as a reference to the so-called "believability" of the "old-school". 

[NintendoLogic]

The 1998 Kobashi/Akiyama Triple Crown match is relevant to a few of the points raised in this discussion. After working Kobashi's leg for most of the match, Akiyama slaps on a figure-four late. That's good psychology in a vacuum, but it kills the crowd because a late 90s All Japan audience doesn't buy a submission as a finisher. However, Kobashi sells so dramatically that he manages to get the crowd back into it. I bring it up because it shows that the right move in one context is the wrong one for a different audience. It also shows that the true greats can manipulate crowds into producing the desired reaction. For a more recent example, look at Brock Lesnar. In his WWE return match, he managed to get a Chicago crowd completely behind John Cena. There's obviously something to be said for giving the audience what it wants, and Omega and the Bucks are tops at that. But have they (or Bryan, for that matter) ever turned around a crowd that was indifferent or hostile to what they were trying to sell? I'm not saying they haven't, I'd just like to be pointed to some examples.

[El-P]

7 minutes ago, NintendoLogic said:

But have they (or Bryan, for that matter) ever turned around a crowd that was indifferent or hostile to what they were selling? I'm not saying they haven't, I'd just like to be pointed to some examples.

The question is, did they ever need to ? A hostile crowd is not something you see everywhere, and it has been pretty much a staple of WWE thanks to their ridiculous booking. John Cena has been a master dealing with (semi) hostile crowds.

As far as indifferent (or simply tired) crowd goes, the exemple I use over and over and over again is Raven vs Saturn at WWIII (I think) 1998. Crowd is *dead* at the start of the match. By the end the heat is molten, peaking with the infamous Kidman turn. Raven = genius.