"He's ambitiously stupid" - Why Scott Keith's new book is scary bad

[tigerpride]

>Bad Influence with the HART ATTACK for two. I think it’s kind of a cool that a move that was never named while it was actually used by the Hart Foundation has since retroactively acquired the name that everyone online called it.

[BruiserBrody]

Q: Most boring wrestler to have a run at the top? [not a cup of coffee like Garvin]

 

A: 2003 HHH if we're allowed to delineate by year. Otherwise, Nick Bockwinkel. He's a fascinating guy to listen to, but I just never bought him as a World champion as a fan

[jdw]

My guess is that SKeith is talking about the 1986-87 run, which is the only "national" one he would have seen as a fan.

 

And... if we're honest... while we might like his matches in that run... in 1986-87 opposite NWA World Champ Flair and WWF World Champ Hogan, Bock was pretty damn boring to the vast majority of wrestling fans in this country. :/

 

I don't think SKeith has seen a lot of 1975-84 Bock prior to writing that, not do I think that 1975-84 wrestling in general is up his wheelhouse in terms of what he finds non-boring.

 

God lord, I think SKeith is an idiot on nearly everything he writes. But I'd cut him some slack on that given the likely circumstances and also what lots of "fans other than us" would think.

[Matt D]

I get the public perception but Bock was frigging awesome in 86-87.

 

He has the Flair match. He has some great stuff with Larry. He has the Debeers match I love. He has the match where he is a super god face against Hansen. He has the Hennig series which are brilliant.

 

I'm curious. What does Flair have in 86-87 that stand up to the Hennig series?

[Victator]

>Bad Influence with the HART ATTACK for two. I think it’s kind of a cool that a move that was never named while it was actually used by the Hart Foundation has since retroactively acquired the name that everyone online called it.

No, Joey Styles called it The Hart Attack. Hell pretty sure I have heard Bret call it the Hart Attack.

[Loss]

I get the public perception but Bock was frigging awesome in 86-87.

 

He has the Flair match. He has some great stuff with Larry. He has the Debeers match I love. He has the match where he is a super god face against Hansen. He has the Hennig series which are brilliant.

 

I'm curious. What does Flair have in 86-87 that stand up to the Hennig series?

* The Windham series (Battle of the Belts, Worldwide and Crockett Cup)

* The Morton series (TBS match, Pro match, World Pro cage match, and Horsemen DVD cage match)

 

1987 isn't as strong as the other Flair years during the 80s because he was working through an injury and was put in lots of 8-man tags.

[jdw]

I get the public perception but Bock was frigging awesome in 86-87.

 

He has the Flair match. He has some great stuff with Larry. He has the Debeers match I love. He has the match where he is a super god face against Hansen. He has the Hennig series which are brilliant.

The Flair match was before Bock got the title back. Lord knows if SKeith has even seen it since it wasn't on ESPN at the time.

 

Bock vs DeBeers was before Bock won the title back.

 

Bock vs Hansen was before he won the title back.

 

So it's Bock vs Hennig. Which *we* all love. But to most fans in 1986-87 it wasn't terribly interesting.

 

 

I'm curious. What does Flair have in 86-87 that stand up to the Hennig series?

I suspect people like the matches with Ron Garvin, Ricky Morton and Barry Windham. He had the matches with Dusty and Nikita which folks at the time didn't think we all that bad.

 

John

[Matt D]

I get the public perception but Bock was frigging awesome in 86-87.

 

He has the Flair match. He has some great stuff with Larry. He has the Debeers match I love. He has the match where he is a super god face against Hansen. He has the Hennig series which are brilliant.

 

I'm curious. What does Flair have in 86-87 that stand up to the Hennig series?

* The Windham series (Battle of the Belts, Worldwide and Crockett Cup)

* The Morton series (TBS match, Pro match, World Pro cage match, and Horsemen DVD cage match)

 

1987 isn't as strong as the other Flair years during the 80s because he was working through an injury and was put in lots of 8-man tags.

 

These are good choices and it'd be a fun argument. I'd have to rewatch a lot of the Windham stuff though. I've seen the Morton series more recently.

 

My gut says that the gradual narrative told in Bock/Hennig and just how they switch up the individual narratives of the matches put it on top but it'd be an argument.

[Ricky Jackson]

"The AWA was lame" seems to have been a default opinion by many wrestling fans for years and years, based on wrestlers bad mouthing Verne in shoots as being out of touch by the late-80s (the Rockers/rocking-chair story from Michaels), the ESPN show often coming off as looking minor league compared to WWF and Crockett/WCW TV, and a lot of poor booking choices during the last few years. Meltzer seemed to bash the AWA with every chance he got in the 80s, and even the Apter mags regularly ripped the AWA at the same time. I would guess that outside of pockets of revisionism here and there, "the AWA was lame" is still a pretty standard opinion by many fans, unfortunately.

[Jason Mann]

It's funny that the guy who rocked a mullet until 1995 was mocking others for being out of touch.

 

"The AWA was lame" seems to have been a default opinion by many wrestling fans for years and years, based on wrestlers bad mouthing Verne in shoots as being out of touch by the late-80s (the Rockers/rocking-chair story from Michaels), the ESPN show often coming off as looking minor league compared to WWF and Crockett/WCW TV, and a lot of poor booking choices during the last few years. Meltzer seemed to bash the AWA with every chance he got in the 80s, and even the Apter mags regularly ripped the AWA at the same time. I would guess that outside of pockets of revisionism here and there, "the AWA was lame" is still a pretty standard opinion by many fans, unfortunately.

[Al]

Boring is in the eye of the beholder, really. Stampede was somewhat connected with the AWA in the early '80s though. So a fan in that area would've seen a far bit of Bockwinkel. I don't know how much Keith saw in the early '80s.

[sek69]

Didn't the AWA tour in parts of Canada? There's probably a better than average chance he's seen more that just the ESPN TV years.

[jdw]

Boring is in the eye of the beholder, really. Stampede was somewhat connected with the AWA in the early '80s though. So a fan in that area would've seen a far bit of Bockwinkel. I don't know how much Keith saw in the early '80s.

Here's the thing:

 

The majority of WON readers thought the majority of WWF product in the 80s was boring.

 

The AWA wasn't alone, at least in terms of hardcore fans.

 

In turn, I suspect that a majority of 80s JCP "non-hardcore" fans thought that the WWF was boring as well, since they were JCP fans and you tend to like what you like and hate the enemy.

 

Lots of people thought the AWA was boring in 1986-87. The reality is that *few* fans didn't, given their attendance tanking and the WWF frankly eating up their entire territory for good by that point. :/

 

So... it's really nothing to get bent about. That we can find 30-50 AWA matches from 1986-87 and say, "Hey... these are good / watchable / damn fine matches" is cool. Same for the WWF.

 

John

[Dylan Waco]

Let's not forget that the AWA was never a favorite of Dave.

[Matt D]

Boring is in the eye of the beholder, really. Stampede was somewhat connected with the AWA in the early '80s though. So a fan in that area would've seen a far bit of Bockwinkel. I don't know how much Keith saw in the early '80s.

Here's the thing:

 

The majority of WON readers thought the majority of WWF product in the 80s was boring.

 

The AWA wasn't alone, at least in terms of hardcore fans.

 

In turn, I suspect that a majority of 80s JCP "non-hardcore" fans thought that the WWF was boring as well, since they were JCP fans and you tend to like what you like and hate the enemy.

 

Lots of people thought the AWA was boring in 1986-87. The reality is that *few* fans didn't, given their attendance tanking and the WWF frankly eating up their entire territory for good by that point. :/

 

So... it's really nothing to get bent about. That we can find 30-50 AWA matches from 1986-87 and say, "Hey... these are good / watchable / damn fine matches" is cool. Same for the WWF.

 

John

 

I still think a lot of it is our tastes changing. I know that a lot of the stuff I like now I wouldn't like ten years ago.

[jdw]

Mine have changed too. I didn't like Backlund in 1996.

 

John

[shoe]

Were the Flair/Ronnie Garvin matches well received by the Observer at the time? I know Meltzer wasn't a fan of the Starcade match. I think he gave it 2 1/2*'s. I know for the most part the online community looks back on the matches favorably.

[Loss]

In general, the WON readers like Garvin as a challenger to Flair, and turned on him when he won the title.

[Death From Above]

I loved their Starrcade match. Business implications not considered.

[jdw]

Were the Flair/Ronnie Garvin matches well received by the Observer at the time? I know Meltzer wasn't a fan of the Starcade match. I think he gave it 2 1/2*'s. I know for the most part the online community looks back on the matches favorably.

That's a little post-Bock as AWA champ. I was thinking more in terms of the 1986 match that people loved.

 

John

[Jingus]

Does anyone know if the Scott Keith point about great promos having three things -- motive, intent and hype -- is something that came from him, or something he got from someone else? If he did come up with it himself, it's probably the sharpest thing he ever said, but I was curious.

That's pretty close to the sort of stuff they teach you in sophomore-level business marketing classes. "This is the product, this is why you want to consume it, and here's a bunch of flashy or funny stuff to catch your eye so that our advertising is memorable." It's a fairly basic and standard formula, just slightly tweaked for the wrestling industry model.

 

I don't think SKeith has seen a lot of 1975-84 Bock prior to writing that, not do I think that 1975-84 wrestling in general is up his wheelhouse in terms of what he finds non-boring.

Even if he ever felt like watching that stuff, a lot of it is really hard to find and pretty much requires you to go out of your way in terms of tracking it down. The more convenient access channels like Youtube, PWTorrents, or WWE On Demand are all notoriously inconsistent when it comes to the selection they offer, and pre-80s stuff makes up a tiny fraction of the overall choices. You'd have to go to the old-school trouble of finding a tape trader who has that stuff, buying it, messing with all the shipping; in the internet age, how many smarks still want to go through that much effort? Especially a lazy fat fuck like Scott.

 

God lord, I think SKeith is an idiot on nearly everything he writes. But I'd cut him some slack on that given the likely circumstances and also what lots of "fans other than us" would think.

That part's sadly true. You'd be amazed at the number of naive young smarks out there who still preface statements with "well, Scott Keith said..."

 

I loved their Starrcade match. Business implications not considered.

The most common consensus seems to be "the matches were fine, but hardly anyone cared". Even if the booking hadn't forced Garvin into that infamous period where he never showed up on TV, it's doubtful if the crowd would have really gotten behind him.

 

>Bad Influence with the HART ATTACK for two. I think it’s kind of a cool that a move that was never named while it was actually used by the Hart Foundation has since retroactively acquired the name that everyone online called it.

No, Joey Styles called it The Hart Attack. Hell pretty sure I have heard Bret call it the Hart Attack.

 

Whenever I was announcing, I always just called it "a Hart Attack clothesline". All the wrestlers always referred to that particular variation as the Hart Attack, for what it's worth.

 

"The AWA was lame" seems to have been a default opinion by many wrestling fans for years and years, based on wrestlers bad mouthing Verne in shoots as being out of touch by the late-80s (the Rockers/rocking-chair story from Michaels), the ESPN show often coming off as looking minor league compared to WWF and Crockett/WCW TV, and a lot of poor booking choices during the last few years. Meltzer seemed to bash the AWA with every chance he got in the 80s, and even the Apter mags regularly ripped the AWA at the same time. I would guess that outside of pockets of revisionism here and there, "the AWA was lame" is still a pretty standard opinion by many fans, unfortunately.

Sometimes just one person can manage to influence the opinions of countless others, as Dave apparently did here. Perfect example: today's teenage smart marks largely tend to have the opinion that Combat Zone consists of literally nothing but a bunch of backyarders blowing all their spots in stupidly risky deathmatches. Why? Not because they watch the shows. Simply because the hilarious Botchamania videos have made "badly blown spots in a CZW hardcore match" into a running gag in those compilations, and MANY more people watch those videos than actually watch CZW shows.

 

 

And sorry to necro-bump this part about Halftime Heat, but I didn't see it at the time:

 

As an aside Vince doing commentary for that show and speaking to the audience as if they had never seen wrestling before was so so strange. I can remember people online being outraged over that. I know they were trying to hook casuals/first timers but it came off so poorly and patronizing

From anecdotal experience, I'd say it worked. That was the first wrestling match I ever saw. I didn't get hooked until a few months later, but I remember thinking "damn, this doesn't look at all like that phony old Hulk Hogan crap that I always ignored".

 

The worst part of halftime heat was the ridiculous close-up they had on Rock while Foley was lowering the forklift on him. That got a lot of groans in the room I saw it in.

Oh fuck yes. Even despite this literally being the first match I'd seen in my life, even I recognized that they'd broken the unwritten "rules" about how this sort of thing is supposed to work and laughed at it.

[Jingus]

Also: I haven't actually read any of Keith's reviews in forever, so I stopped by his site (they're often pretty funny, both intentionally and not). This quote is directly from his review of a mediocre Lawler/Foley match from KOTR '97:

 

It’s Jerry Lawler, you were expecting something good?

That oughtta provide a nice chuckle, considering this board's feelings for the King. Also, Keith seems legitimately shocked when Lawler throws a dropkick; I guess Scott just happened to miss the fact that Lawler does this in half the matches he ever had in the WWF/E.

[Loss]

I'll defend him and say that most of his WWF stuff isn't that good. I would be surprised if I saw a good Jerry Lawler match there too.

[Dooley]

I'll defend him and say that most of his WWF stuff isn't that good. I would be surprised if I saw a good Jerry Lawler match there too.

Nothing with Bret Hart?

[Loss]

On the level of the best Bret Hart stuff? No.