Wrestling overload?

[Matt D]

So I do an exercise bike here at home for maybe four nights a week for an hour at a time and I watch stuff on the laptop while I do that. And I've spent the last 9 months or so mostly filling that time with pure nostalgia. I've been watching everything I can find online and streaming from WWF from 89 or so on. (I started watching as a 9 year old as a kid in Fall 1990). There's a huge chunk of stuff on dailymotion. I just watch everything I can find in order: Superstars, PTW, the MSG shows, the SNMEs, the PPVs, from start to finish. I guess I've never entirely got over the Benoit stuff (yeah, I know. Boo hoo for me) so this is the most harmless stuff imaginable and I find it all really easy to enjoy. After years of just watching one random pimped match after another, it's nice to see things in context. There are only a couple of guys from the roster at that point that are really terrible and they're sort of worth watching because they're so bad. And there are tons of guys I'm happily surprised about even if it goes far against internet conventional wisdom or how I felt as a kid (when I only liked small, fast guys with lots of moves basically).

 

I basically stopped watching as a kid for 5 years by 1993 or so, so all of that stuff is going to be new for me, more or less. I plan on going up to Mania XIV which should take me a few more years. At that point maybe I'll go back to Wrestling Classic and fill in the gap, or maybe there'll be more WCW out there or maybe I'll just get that Dangerous Alliance comp and relive the rest of my youth before looking for GWF season sets or something.

 

I also watched most of last year's ECW on hulu and a few of the new Superstars. I enjoyed the heck out of ECW. I'll also watch any FCW episode which has Dusty announcing.

[Ditch]

Lots of what SLL wrote hits home for me. Not watching full shows, lack of patience, not following the weekly US shows.

 

Earlier in the decade, I was still discovering lots of styles and promotions and wrestlers. So I shifted from watching mostly the mainsteam US stuff, to some of that but also lots of puro and US indies. Now that certain indies (IWA:MS) have stopped being relevant, and others (ROH) have tanked in quality, I've shifted to trying to find every last 'hidden gem' from Japan in the endless Lynch catalog. It's much harder for me to find something I like from the current scene, and as a result I'm having to buy DVDs to find new matches to enjoy even though there's a vast amount online. Thankfully DVDs are much more affordable than the VHS days!

 

I'm still amazed at the volume of quality matches Japan produced over the decades. Every new nook provides new goodies. Ryuma Go in the '70s! IWE! Semi-obscure tapings from the '90s!

[jdw]

* very selectively watch current stuff, and largely "keep up" by skimming the WON

 

Time constraints and just don't have massive interest. Haven't cared for the promos or storylines for much of the past decade. Match style... just rarely found things that hit the spot for me. It's a bad sign when I can watch a Tito-Rude match and have it keep my attention more than the last few itterations of Misawa-Kobashi, or most anything the WWE has done in the past 6-7 years.

 

* it's pretty easy to find older stuff that I like

 

Ironically, it's not even my "sweet spot" of 1989-96 All Japan.

 

It's bizzaro, but I can watch Hogan-Rude, be bored by what an early mess it iss, yawn at the arm wrestling subplot, then suddenly when the go to fake-Hogan Comebacks with Rude cutting Hogan off, I'm pulled back in by how they're doing a decent job of getting the fans expectations headed one direction before pulling out the rug. Then when the eventual Hulking Up comes, they've actually laid out a decent stretch... and I'm wishing they had a match on tape from 1989 or 1990 when Rude was a heck of a lot better worker.

 

Or having long lusted after Grails like the Jumbo-Murdoch title changes turn up. That they did long after seeing enough Dick matches that left me cold (when he's in there with someone who can go, I like his comedy quite a bit less than most people do), I started to worry about them not being any good. Then getting to watch them for the first time with my longtime wrestling running budies and they each, in turn, ending up being very satisfying good/fun matches... it reminds me why I'm a wrestling fan.

 

There is a ridiculous amount of stuff out there. When I was joking with Hoback that I probably picked up a thousand disks in the past couple of months, I was only half joking. I don't actually know how many there are... but it's pretty close to that. When will I watch all of it? Who knows. Don't have a ton of time, and there's a variety of things like Mythbusters, Castle, BBQ Pittmasters, Leverage, CSI, today's ManU vs AC Milan match, the latest Duke game, the Daytona 500 and other things on the tube that end up on the DVR that I end up watching to clear off space. But I am trying to build up my AJPW 80s collection with everything that's available while also getting back to my 80s WWF viewing. I've built up a big chunk of both batches of that nosense, and am starting to work my way through it. Things like hooking up with the gang on Saturday does remind me that I love good wrestling.

 

My advise always is:

 

Watch collect what you like. Collect what you like. Then watch and collect more of what you like.

 

If you're newer to what's available out there, then take some tastes around of different things until you find the scope of what you like.

 

But when you hit the wall of time and stuff, with too much stuff and too little time, settle on what you like. There are periods of your life where forcing yourself to "watch everything" (on some relative level) just to "keep up" are doable. I think a lot of us spent a chunk of the 90s doing that, and lord knows how much utter shit we watched from the WWF, WCW and ECW for the occassional (and at times regular) "good stuff". But you also reach a point where there's plenty of other "good stuff" in life, and wasting time on the bad stuff is a waste of part of your life.

 

John

[Ditch]

But when you hit the wall of time and stuff, with too much stuff and too little time, settle on what you like. There are periods of your life where forcing yourself to "watch everything" (on some relative level) just to "keep up" are doable. I think a lot of us spent a chunk of the 90s doing that, and lord knows how much utter shit we watched from the WWF, WCW and ECW for the occassional (and at times regular) "good stuff". But you also reach a point where there's plenty of other "good stuff" in life, and wasting time on the bad stuff is a waste of part of your life.

And to me it isn't even that hard to determine what one can live without. Lots of people seem to feel obligated to watch every last second of WWE-produced content when all they really care about is bell-to-bell wrestling, in which case there's much better uses of time than skit-heavy Raw and Smackdown. Or, people will watch something that they're 99% sure they'll hate, but because it's a big match they'll go ahead with it. Hey, 1% of the time it winds up being a pleasant surprise, but there's a much better than 1% chance that the person will enjoy something they EXPECT to enjoy. I can somewhat understand when it's someone's "job" to watch things they don't actively like, but the vast majority of the time it's a total waste.

 

((By the way, where can said Jumbo vs Murdoch be found?

edit: JDW answered at DVDVR '80s board.))

[Kronos]

I have to agree with other comments on this list. The biggest stressor is this perceived need to see EVERYTHING new every week, in case something gets missed. If one wanted to just watch US TV each week, that's:

 

WWE - 6 hrs

TNA - 2 hrs

ROH - 1 hr

 

Nine hours!!!

 

But you know what? It's okay to miss it. If a really standout match occurs, you'll hear about it. It'll be on youtube or dailymotion. Or heck, wait a whole year and catch it on Will's end of year comp. Life goes on. I am preaching at myself as much as at anyone else. Like Ditch and John say, there's too much time wasted watching crap.

 

Me? These days I pretty much only catch the WWE PPVs and the occasional pimped match (like Danielson/Jericho on NXT - I made an effort to track that one down on youtube). I haven't watched TNA or ROH in months. I am busy enough with SHIMMER and joshi -- and I am always trying to dig into puro, which is essentially an endless sea of matches. I also love to troll through youtube and dailymotion and find older WWF and WCW matches (and world class, mid south, memphis, ECW, etc), and from time to time I feel the desire to learn about lucha. That's waaaaaaay too much. But I just have to keep remembering that it's not going anywhere. The more time that passes, the more stuff becomes easily accessible.

 

It's supposed to be fun. Haha.

[Dylan Waco]

I just picked up Ron Garvin, Tully Blanchard, Fantastics, Barry Windham and Terry Funk sets from Will. Got a Horowitz and Lawler set coming soon from Bix. Also bout the Savage set WWE produced last week. There is never enough!

[Kronos]

I just picked up Ron Garvin, Tully Blanchard, Fantastics, Barry Windham and Terry Funk sets from Will. Got a Horowitz and Lawler set coming soon from Bix. Also bout the Savage set WWE produced last week. There is never enough!

 

 

 

Isn't Terry something like 40 discs?  (Oh, wait, that's the Horsemen - and I am too lazy to go into the other forum and count the number of discs on will's thread.)  LOL - you're gonna be freaking busy.  That's what we call overload!

 

 

 

 

 

Reminds me of the month I rented a seedbox and torrented something like 400GB of rasslin footage in about 5 days.  

[Dylan Waco]

Terry is 37 discs. The wife and daughter are out of town this weekend, so I'm diving in head first.

[Kronos]

Terry is 37 discs. The wife and daughter are out of town this weekend, so I'm diving in head first.

 

 

 

Nice. . .

[El-P]

37 disk ? That's insane ! Of course if one wrestler deserves a 37 disk anthology, Terry would be that wrestler.

[Kronos]

37 disk ? That's insane ! Of course if one wrestler deserves a 37 disk anthology, Terry would be that wrestler.

Eddy Guerrero is 30+ discs, too. 

[khawk20]

37 disk ? That's insane ! Of course if one wrestler deserves a 37 disk anthology, Terry would be that wrestler.

A trader named mwtapes is putting out a Horseman set of his own that will likely top 100 discs when it's all said and done. Seriously....and 100 discs is probably a conservative estimate.

[El-P]

Yeah, but does disk 87 include Paul Roma ?

[Herodes]

Serious question (coming from someone whose wrestling viewing these days consists of watching RAW and little else) - I know DVDs are dirt cheap and availability of footage is higher than it has ever been, but has anyone really got the time and patience and desire to sit through a 37 disc set let alone a 100 disc set, especially one devoted to a single wrestler? I realise guys like Funk and Santo are awesome but it seems like overkill and I am genuinely curious whether anyone has watched and finished one of these sets. 15 discs of New Japan seems daunting enough and that at least covers a decade's worth of different wrestlers and styles. The height of my fandom was over 10 years ago when a 'best of' was usually an 8 hour comp tape at most and back then I would have dreamed to have this kind of stuff available so cheaply...in theory, but in practise I don't know if I could have sat through that much footage of one wrestler even back when I used to watch a lot of wrestling.

 

(For the record I think the work goodhelmet and co do is awesome especially for the completists and the best of 80s comps are great historical documents and the time and effort put into them must be staggering)

[Herodes]

Just to add when I first got on the net there was a tape site run by John Mcadam who had so many Memphis and other tapes I would have loved to had and he was charging around $25 for a 4 or 6 hour tape and the quality (and service) was the shits compared to the amazing quality we have nowadays...I can't imagine how much wrestling I would be buying nowadays if I was as big a fan as I was then given how cheap it is now and how much is available! Even the thought of these season sets that are around now with complete years worth of TV shows is mindblowing...but again I wonder if even back then I would have the patience to watch it all.

[Loss]

And just think, no one has done the complete Ric Flair career set yet, which would probably be at least 120 discs if it spanned the 70s through Mania in '08.

[Resident Evil]

How much discs would a complete Brian Danielson comp end up being? He has to have so much footage out there.

[El-P]

And just think, no one has done the complete Ric Flair career set yet, which would probably be at least 120 discs if it spanned the 70s through Mania in '08.

Well, the disks covering Flair post 93 would quickly end up being a torture, especially after you get past 97.

[jdw]

And just think, no one has done the complete Ric Flair career set yet, which would probably be at least 120 discs if it spanned the 70s through Mania in '08.

You're not even remotely close to how many disks it would be, especially if it included interviews and angles.

 

Someone did a "ultimate" Samoa Joe set years ago that ran 40+ discs covering just 2000 (where there weren't many matches) to the end of 2005. There's a "Sting: The Return of an Icon" set on just his TNA stuff that runs 34 discs. Corey did a Hogan in the WWF from 1984-92 that ran 31, and Hulk was wrestling short matches.

 

Granted, Flair wasn't on TV wrestling as many matches in the 80s as Hogan (thanks to MSG/Philly/Boston/LA and other WWF house show tapings). But his matches were longer, and folks dig his interviews.

 

I suspect an Ultimate Flair would run 200+ discs covering his career, and probably a ridiculous length more than that if the person doing it tried to get "completist" on his interviews or found several treasure troves of Local Promos to mix in. Look Will's 4H set: that's just 1985-88 and it's a monster. It does have more folks in it that just Ric, which does help expand it. But still...

 

It would be an insane project. No doubt there already are several monster ones out there already.

 

John

[Kronos]

When you get that comprehensive, it almost becomes more of a reference than something to watch on a day-to-day basis. You know, like Bix's collection. (teasing -- actually, Lynch is probably a better example)

 

If you had 100+ discs, you'd have to build a massive cross-referenced Access database or something just to find anything - and maybe you even spending months and terabytes ripping it to high bit rate AVI or MP4 for easier access. Again, it would be a beautiful tape library, encyclopedic in scope. But who could ever watch it all?

 

Speaking of too much, it's time I placed an order for some more PS, RN, and PWO comps.

[Bix]

I don't think it's possible to undertand the depths of Lynch's collection since there's a ton of stuff he has that he never listed, like lots of '90s American TV.

[Dylan Waco]

Speaking entirely for myself but I will watch the entire Funk comp. It's going to take me a LONG time to be sure, but Funk is someone I never get bored with.

[Wahoos Leg]

If you had 100+ discs, you'd have to build a massive cross-referenced Access database or something just to find anything.

I've actually been trying to do this through excel, a spreadsheet with my collection indexed by disc, and by wrestler/tag team

[Kronos]

If you had 100+ discs, you'd have to build a massive cross-referenced Access database or something just to find anything.

I've actually been trying to do this through excel, a spreadsheet with my collection indexed by disc, and by wrestler/tag team

 

 

 

 

That would be a helpful project, too.  But I have recently begun using Access for some records at my job -- records we used to keep on Excel.  It's a bit of a steepish learning curve, but it's so far superior in ease of data entry, updating existing info, running all sorts of reports that show the data, exporting to Excel, PDF, etc.  I haven't even really begun to learn it, yet, and already I would never go back on these projects, anyway.  I highly recommend it (or filemaker or whatever one likes).  

[Bix]

I wonder what sort of database software WWE uses for its internal video library database (which has notes about key spots in each match).