Wrestlers out of time

[Mantaur Rodeo Clown]

Short and sweet: How much weight are you giving to professional wrestlers who wrestle a style out of touch with their era?

There are plenty of examples, but I'll use two specific ones:

1. FTR

Very clearly, Dax Harwood and Cash Wheeler wrestle a throwback style, and owe an incredible debt to the 1980s JCP-era tag team wrestling. Although they are good wrestlers in their own right and have added various things to the formula, they essentially would not have an act without that foundation. It is buoyed by the fact that no one wrestles like this anymore. Does this hurt or harm their case? Would they have been as successful in a different era, and do you hold this against them?

2. Joshi

Just choose a name out of a hat. There are countless women who were doing things in AJW in 1985 that male wrestlers still wouldn't be able to do 20 years later. How much weight do you give wrestlers for pushing the boundaries of what professional wrestling was? Would those same wrestlers have been able to work that style and been A successful if they instead had to run shows in say Kansas City for Central States Wrestling?

There are wrestlers that seem like they stepped out of a time machine, whether forwards or backwards. Perhaps one day we will speak of Will Ospreay or Logan Paul the same way. Or perhaps in 2040 a wrestler will make it big by imitating Brock Lesnar. How does a wrestler's congruence or incongruence with the style of their peers affect how you see them?

[El McKell]

 

2 hours ago, Mantaur Rodeo Clown said:

How much weight are you giving to professional wrestlers who wrestle a style out of touch with their era?

I'm not consciously thinking about this question at all when ranking wrestlers and I don't think it's much of a real thing. Everybody is a product of their own surroundings and the wrestling from the past that they want to emulate.
 

2 hours ago, Mantaur Rodeo Clown said:

Cearly, Dax Harwood and Cash Wheeler wrestle a throwback style, and owe an incredible debt to the 1980s JCP-era tag team wrestling. Although they are good wrestlers in their own right and have added various things to the formula, they essentially would not have an act without that foundation.

I think the degree to which FTR work a throwback style is being overstated here. They take many trappings and aesthetics from 80s Crockett tag wrestling while simultaneously structing matching in a way that is not very different from the PWG influenced AEW (or even NXT when they were there) house style. I do agree that their act couldn't exist as it is without the existence of 80s tag teams on TBS, but all wrestlers take their aesthetic from somewhere.
 

2 hours ago, Mantaur Rodeo Clown said:

 It is buoyed by the fact that no one wrestles like this anymore. Does this hurt or harm their case?

I think they are buoyed what they take from 80s tag wrestling, but only in the same way that any act is buoyed by the things that make them different from the baseline of what's around them, an act that has no aspects that make them stand out is never a good act. So it helps their case because it is an interesting gimmick that creates opportunities to do interesting stuff in matches playing off the gimmick.
 

 

2 hours ago, Mantaur Rodeo Clown said:

Would they have been as successful in a different era, and do you hold this against them?

It's all guesswork, because it all depends on how well they adapt their act to environments they'll never be in, which is why I don't like to think too much about this. But if I am guessing, in the right environment I think they could have been just as successful in another era. I think if promoters gave them a chance and they were worked at an era appropriate pace they could've got over well in JCP/WCW or AJPW from like 85-94.

 

 

2 hours ago, Mantaur Rodeo Clown said:

2. Joshi

Just choose a name out of a hat. There are countless women who were doing things in AJW in 1985 that male wrestlers still wouldn't be able to do 20 years later. How much weight do you give wrestlers for pushing the boundaries of what professional wrestling was? Would those same wrestlers have been able to work that style and been A successful if they instead had to run shows in say Kansas City for Central States Wrestling?

I do not think 80s Joshi wrestlers are an act out of time and it only seems that way because they were influential on 90s joshi wrestlers who has some influence on wrestling broadly, combined with the move towards athleticism as a selling point for wrestling more broadly. 80s Joshi wrestlers are clearly a product of their time and place, they are developing from their own predecessors in AJW and it seems so different from the other wrestling at the time because it they were not influenced by any contemporary wrestlers in other promotions. If 2000s wrestling looked more 80s lucha or world of sport then those would be the ones "out of time" instead.

And yeah, I think if The Jumping Bomb Angels could get over with WWF crowds without being hyped at all in advance they could've also got over in front of Kansas City crowds.

[donsem43]

The motivation for AJW wrestlers working the style that they did was that they didn't think that they would get noticed any other way.

Osamu Nishimura in the 00's was able to take a dated style and adapt it to the style of the time with the result being that he got really over by having some tremendous matches.