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

[jdw]

You seem to be misinterpreting what jdw and I have said. I never said that 90s All Japan is flawless or the only style worth watching. But yes, I do think it's the best. Anyway, the fact that versatility is so rare is precisely what makes it so extraordinary when someone demonstrates it. When guys are relatively equal in other respects, it's something that should be taken into account.

Actually, I think most people are misinterpreting what *I've* said over the years.

 

I've praised some of the workers and some of the matches as being the best in the world at the time, though lord knows if I'll still think that re-watching the stuff 20 years after the fact.

 

I also was highly critical of the "style" and many of those same workers as the decade went on. Mind you, this was counter to the "consensus" at the time.

 

"Oh, but jdw-to... you always loved All Japan."

 

No. I was just about the only person critical of these two matches:

 

10/31/98 Mitsuharu Misawa vs Kenta Kobashi

06/11/99 Mitsuharu Misawa vs Kenta Kobashi

 

when everyone else was whipping out their cocks while watching them and jizzing on themselves?

 

Minor, insignificant matches that weren't representative of the All Japan "style" at the time?

 

Triple Crown matches.

Budokan main events.

The top two stars in All Japan at the time.

 

And... wait for it...

 

Wrestling Observer Match of the Year award winners.

 

I took a load of shit at the time for not also whipping out my cock over those matches like everyone else.

 

I've also written a number of times since then that while I liked the 07/24/95 Misawa vs Kawada at the time as essentially a "sprint" between the two relative to what they had done in the past and what pretty much every other heavy was doing at the time, that I also suspect that if we go back and watch the entire decade of All Japan that's it's a match (and possibly the match) where the promotion moves away from the style of past and into the style of the later part of the decade that I increasingly found problematic. In other words, the evolution coughed up an example earlier than I thought, in a match I liked a lot at the time, in a rivalry that I liked a great deal.

 

I suspect people will find that I'm more reflective on and critical of my "favorite" promotion and period than most folks... well... almost anyone.

 

John

[jdw]

I'm not sure how the 90s All Japan style is the best style in history. It has probably produced the most great matches, but it was also a dead end style that was unsustainable because the physical risks were too high. At a certain point, matches started going longer than they needed to go. There were too many kickouts, and too many head drops.

I would split the styles.

 

What was done in 1990-92 was probably sustainable, in the sense that lots of other workers has sustainability issues (Hennig, Savage, Steamboat, Austin, Arn, etc). AJPW was a "stiff" promotion in that era, but hadn't gotten fully insane.

 

What was done in 1996-99 wasn't sustainable, even though a lot of wrestling followed that path.

 

1993-95 is a period of change, and you can probably find some things that are sustainable and others that more than hint at what comes later.

 

John

[JerryvonKramer]

I want to talk about the Scott Keith style of criticism. Reading that WWF Colesium reviews book I got recently, it is clear that guys like Arnold Furious and Bernard "The Rage" have been influenced by Keith. I like the book, it's comprehensive and doesn't skip anything at all, and has good detail in parts, but at times it's almost excessively smarky.

 

That smarkiness to me feels dated, very early 00s -- on occasion it even borders on ignorance, espcially when I see guys like Greg Valentine getting a very rough ride and sentences like "Andre the Giant didn't have a good match after 1973".

 

I am not plugged into any "smart" communities outside of PWO though, so I have no idea if Keith-style rants are still the norm out there. Are they? I'd like to think they belong to a moment that passed about 8 or 9 years ago.

 

I don't want to discourage anyone from getting that book, because it's worth having and is one-of-a-kind, but the smarkiness can get a bit tiresome after a while. There are 4-5 different writers and I definitely prefer one or two of them over the ones who seem stuck in a Keith time warp.

[Ricky Jackson]

I think the stereotypical workrate and movez are king/"Hogan was a shitty worker"/anything pre-94 was boring attitude is still dominant in most hardcore circles.

[JerryvonKramer]

I think the stereotypical workrate and movez are king/"Hogan was a shitty worker"/anything pre-94 was boring attitude is still dominant in most hardcore circles.

That's very disappointing.

[Matt D]

Seriously, go out into the wild for a while.

 

Mention John Cena. Then Mention Mark Henry. See what happens.

[BrickHithouse]

Post with a different username out there. Those fuckers will follow you around and harass if you don't fall into line.

[Dylan Waco]

I think those books are a great idea and plan to get them myself even if I strongly disagree with the reviewers. I think supporting independent wrestling voices that aren't directly attached to/have a vested interest in the business is a good thing.

 

Having said that I was afraid the reviews would be really Keith-y.

[JerryvonKramer]

I only have volume 1 so far and it is really worth having. The Keith-ishness is not enough to be really irritating for me, and I basically can't read Keith himself anymore. But there's just enough there to make me roll my eyes occasionally, it's mainly from the contributors who made their name on 411.com.

 

We'll be talking to one of the authors in a couple of weeks, and I have to say that his contributions -- probably about 40% or even more of the whole thing -- are really quite good.

[tomk]

That Flair has flaws is undeniable but are they enough to discount him from being the GOAT?

 

I've said it before: no one else in the history of wrestling faced a greater variety of opponents over such a long period of time and in so many places. Look at the #150 results from all of the DVDR sets to date -- Flair is in the top 15 in almost every territotry including All Japan.

 

The fact he was having great matches in the 1970s and arguably had one or two great matches in the 2000s just adds to his case. Funk, Lawler, Jumbo, etc. can't compete with Flair's career because it's one of a kind. Beyond comparison almost. I've said it before -- he's akin to being something like the Bob Dylan of wrestling. Dylan had his fair share of shitty albums, but no one else has a career to match that. No one else has that sort of range, variety and longevity.

 

Cher is the only artist to have a number one single on a billboard chart in each of the last six decades.

Ray Charles tried his hand at everything from jazz, blues, country, pop, and gospel and had a significant impact on all of them.

There are also guys like James Brown and Ron Isley who have great range, variety, longevity and commercial relevance.

 

I think the biggest knock on Flair from a GOAT standpoint is lack of versatility. It's not that he never stepped outside the box at all, but he never reinvented himself like Funk or Jumbo did.

Huh?

I'm not sure how much footage we have of Fliar between 74-81.

Flair dropped about 75% of his offense from when we first have complete footage in the 80s and 89.

He drops about 75% of what's left between 89-91. And just keeps on streamlining.

 

He goes from being a technical wrestler who when push comes to shove will rely on brawling and shortcuts, to a chicken shit brawler who when push comes to shove will rely on shortcuts, to a WWF style weak heel, to a guy who is all shortcuts and when push comes to shove has to rely on garbage.

[Strummer]

I want to talk about the Scott Keith style of criticism. Reading that WWF Colesium reviews book I got recently, it is clear that guys like Arnold Furious and Bernard "The Rage" have been influenced by Keith. I like the book, it's comprehensive and doesn't skip anything at all, and has good detail in parts, but at times it's almost excessively smarky.

 

That smarkiness to me feels dated, very early 00s -- on occasion it even borders on ignorance, espcially when I see guys like Greg Valentine getting a very rough ride and sentences like "Andre the Giant didn't have a good match after 1973".

 

I am not plugged into any "smart" communities outside of PWO though, so I have no idea if Keith-style rants are still the norm out there. Are they? I'd like to think they belong to a moment that passed about 8 or 9 years ago.

 

I don't want to discourage anyone from getting that book, because it's worth having and is one-of-a-kind, but the smarkiness can get a bit tiresome after a while. There are 4-5 different writers and I definitely prefer one or two of them over the ones who seem stuck in a Keith time warp.

I'm ashamed to admit I used to navigate all through Rantsylvania.com while in college (in computer labs-Im old) reading over every rant they put up. It took like a decade to get that swill out of my system.

 

 

Senior year I had a lot of time in between classes and probably read every Keith rant twice over. I can't believe it's been that long ago. Scott is pushing 40 years old

[sek69]

I think everyone who first came online in the mid 90s read Rantsylvania. There weren't many sites covering a wide array of wrestling at the time, and there were some good writers there before it seemingly crumbled into a sea of egos and interwebs POLITIXXX~!

[tigerpride]

I was just reading a piece by you and you mentioned that the WWE was really interested in only Perry Saturn and didn't care either way wether they got the other 3, my question is, had they ever watched WCW before? Benoit, Malenko and Gurerro were clearly all better workers and while only Eddie was a decent mic worker it's not like saturn ever cut a decent promo or was an outstanding worker other than his ECW days from what I remember. Who in WWE wanted him so bad? It's like looking at The Beatles and coveting Ringo Starr.

 

I dunno, WWE has weird qualifications for what they consider to be a star look sometimes. Benoit, Guerrero and Malenko are all much smaller guys so it's almost understandable that they'd look at Saturn compared to them and see a bigger star. It's not like they didn't know who the others were or anything, but they just didn't see any value in them.

 

Is this true?

[Loss]

When Dave asked the question of who he could have from any other promotion on Wrestling Observer Live if he had his pick, Jim Ross specifically said Benoit. This was almost three months before they jumped. Benoit was also the hardest pushed right out of the gate. Saturn would have been the one to get the pinfall over The Rock his third week in if he was the one they were excited to get.

[MJH]

Edit: Loss beat me to the punch...

[BruiserBrody]

I know you usually don't field questions from the pre-WWF expansion era. But hopefully you can reach back and dig something up, If not, I'd like to hear you riff on this...

 

I saw a Kayfabe Commentaries preview with Larry Zbyszko talking about 1980 WWF. This was the year he turned on Bruno Sammartino and they had a major feud that lasted most of that year. From what I gathered is, Larry Z is claiming the WWF was on the verge of bankruptcy, his feud with Bruno saved the company, he should have been given a run with the WWF title because Backlund wasn't drawing and he left the Northeast after disputing money with Vince McMahon Sr.I don't want to understate the Larry-Bruno feud because it was a big deal, Zbyszko had nuclear heat and Backlund was pretty much pushed in the background because of it, which of course hurt his drawing power as champion.

 

But how much of this is really true? Was the WWF in that kind of financial straits heading into 1980? Was there a plan to put the title on Zbyszko? I had heard years ago that Zbyszko was suppose to turn face after the Sammartino feud (as evidenced by raising Bruno's hand after he lost the blowoff cage match at Shea Stadium). And the fact Zbyszko never went back to the WWF/WWE even when the territories went belly up and companies were going under just adds to the mystery.

 

What do you got?

 

OK, here's what I know about the Larry-Bruno situation, which is very limited because all the stuff I have from that time is very kayfabe-y and the Observer didn't start up in the form we know it until the mid-80s. So this is all stuff I've cobbled together from Meltzer's radio shows and Karl Stern and such.

 

Basically, yes, there was a rough plan to catapult Zbyszko from the Bruno feud into the WWF World title, and in fact I've also heard separate talk that the plan was for Bruno to get a third long run with the belt himself, so you could probably do some associative property math and speculate that Backlund would drop the belt to Larry in 81ish, then Bruno would win it from Larry for his big blowoff victory and last World title (remember, he didn't actually pin Larry in the cage match, so it wasn't definitive by the standards of the time). However, Bruno and Larry were really tight in real life, and once Bruno started having problems with the WWF, he allegedly got into Larry's ear and convinced him that he shouldn't concede to the booking plans so easily. So after the cage match at Shea, Vince Sr would pitch programs for Larry where he'd do the job, and Larry would be like "Oh, well, I main evented Shea Stadium with Bruno, so if you're asking me to job to his schmuck then you're basically asking Bruno to do the job." And then of course things got nasty and Bruno left, which left Larry without his leverage and he quickly bailed on them as well and in fact never came back. So obviously there was some BAD blood in the split, since you're think Bruno's return would have opened the door for him in 85, or even when the WCW buyout happened.

 

As for the bankruptcy, doubtful. They were still selling out MSG every month even with Howdy Doody on top for six years, so things couldn't have been particularly bad. Not to mention Graham was a hell of a draw on top before that for a year.

 

:rolleyes: :rolleyes:

[kjh]

Bruno wanted the title again in 1981? Goes against every interview he's done in the past 20 years. And how does Zybysko turning babyface fit with Bruno winning the title back.

[Loss]

There is nothing wrong with saying, "I don't know. You should email Dave Meltzer. Here is his email address. Let me know what he says and I'll post it on the blog." Ridiculous.

[JerryvonKramer]

Thoughts?

 

It kind of pisses me off and would stop me from purchasing the book (which I was considering purchasing today). Is the whole book filled with shit like this?

 

I don't mean to derail the Valentine thread to discuss this "author"...

The answer about the book is "yes and no". The bits by Rage, who handles a lot of the profiles, are all in that mode. Arnold Furious is much like he is in his 411 reviews (I've always liked him, myself). Of the four other writers, only one is really like that, but he's REALLY like that. The problem is, that dude (who goes by "Evil Ste") and Rage handle the majority of the little insert profiles (about 2 thirds). To give you an idea, Ste starts his Backlund profile as follows: "The mere thought of writing a few hundred words about Backlund, is a tiresome prospect".

 

Backlund's title reign gets three lines and most of them talk about him being "bland" and "dull", a guy who "somehow managed a near six-year reign".

 

By comparison, his 92-94 run gets 11 lines and seems to revel in the Diesel squash.

 

--------------

 

I'm at the stage where I'm thinking that the profiles by those two are an active determent to the book. It's got nice art, it's well presented, it's well structured, it's comprehensive, some of the reviews are pretty good, so I don't really understand why they had to go and undermine it all with these horrible, basically ignorant little profiles.

 

Rage doesn't do any reviews, but Ste does an odd sort of double act with a chap called James Dixon and they write the review in dialogue form. Dixon plays the straight man giving information and mild critique, Ste the uber-smark.

 

I'm not totally adverse to a bit of smarkiness. I mean shit, people have said that I'm smarky on the podcast, but when you're just spouting lazy opinions like calling Backlund dull and his entire reign basically a waste of time it goes beyond that into the realms of idiocy.

 

If this is enough to stop you buying the book, then fine you can make your own mind up, but there really is some decent stuff in there. I suppose that's what you get when five different people write a book. If nothing else though, it's worth having as a nice record of what's on all those VHS tapes.

[BrickHithouse]

Damn Jerry, now you've got me re-considering the purchase again. I enjoy a bit of smark myself, and can generally plow through opinions that I don't agree with. Keith's books are a solid source of info if you know going in what he's all about, but a person just starting out with watching wrestling damn sure better not start with SKeith or these guys for their history lessons.

 

One would think that with multiple authors at least one of them could come up with a paragraph or two of decent Backlund info, and for whatever reason, that Valentine paragraph had me seeing red instantly.

 

Based on that single paragraph, the author(s) come across as "thicker than two short planks", fair or not.

[blueminister]

The Saturn thing is the most bizarre thing I've ever heard him push (I mean, it's not like it was before his time, he hasn't written a Benoit book or that the era hasn't been covered to death) and makes me wonder if we should be looking at him less as a confident dumb guy with a weird memory and more as someone with some sort of pathological personality disorder.

[Bix]

Now Scott is saying the Kane character was supposed to be blown off at WM14, which I have never heard before in my life.

[Guest Nell Santucci]

I was just reading a piece by you and you mentioned that the WWE was really interested in only Perry Saturn and didn't care either way wether they got the other 3, my question is, had they ever watched WCW before? Benoit, Malenko and Gurerro were clearly all better workers and while only Eddie was a decent mic worker it's not like saturn ever cut a decent promo or was an outstanding worker other than his ECW days from what I remember. Who in WWE wanted him so bad? It's like looking at The Beatles and coveting Ringo Starr.

 

I dunno, WWE has weird qualifications for what they consider to be a star look sometimes. Benoit, Guerrero and Malenko are all much smaller guys so it's almost understandable that they'd look at Saturn compared to them and see a bigger star. It's not like they didn't know who the others were or anything, but they just didn't see any value in them.

 

Is this true?

Of course a lot of things change in six years, but the WWF wanted to sign Chris Benoit to a contract as early as 1995, but Benoit chose WCW due to his connections with New Japan Pro Wrestling.

[Guest Nell Santucci]

The Saturn thing is the most bizarre thing I've ever heard him push (I mean, it's not like it was before his time, he hasn't written a Benoit book or that the era hasn't been covered to death) and makes me wonder if we should be looking at him less as a confident dumb guy with a weird memory and more as someone with some sort of pathological personality disorder.

I've long wondered about Keith's psychology. He's some guy who likes to say strange, counterintuitive tidbits with the seeming goal being to make himself seem like the insider who has all the information. Most of his past works are obviously sensationalistic by nature, and he writes history with the intent of putting himself over more than constructing narratives that are supported by both facts and critical analysis. Honestly, he reminds me of those carny barker trolls who used to frequent wrestling figure websites by claiming his inside source within Jakks has given him a list of the next few sets of figures, creating an impressive but obviously bs list in the process. Over time, those people were banned or not trusted, but it got them over for that minute I suppose.

 

IIRC, Keith wrote a book called "The Death of the WWE". If he did, I wonder how he justified that title given that the company was still making ginormous amounts of money that WCW could only dream of.

[khawk20]

Honestly, he reminds me of those carny barker trolls who used to frequent wrestling figure websites by claiming his inside source within Jakks has given him a list of the next few sets of figures, creating an impressive but obviously bs list in the process. Over time, those people were banned or not trusted, but it got them over for that minute I suppose.

The tape-trader equivalent of this would be the dudes that would show up yearly and claim to have footage of Backlund-Flair or the Last Battle of Atlanta, or whatever the hot "wish this clip existed" want for that year was.