Matt D

I get the Flair vulnerability. I get the Jericho vulnerability especially. I get the fact that he's a billionaire son and not our posting pal, but it seems like people likening WWE (what being the corporation who just had Vince with them to cut red tape and celebrate mergers and what not and that voted him back on the board after knowing and that had the corporate culture that allowed this stuff and still has a bunch of the same execs and staff, etc.) to Weinstein are kind of sort of on the right side of history, no?

I appreciate you reading. I appreciate the question. I have a lot of plates in the air this morning but let me run through some of this stuff quickly to the best of my ability. On a second read, I realize that this has as much to do with them as it does with me. I really wasn't familiar with them so I wasn't sure what we'd be getting here but this does spell it out pretty well. The way I initially read the question (and there's still some of it in there) was a bit of bothsidesism. Let me try to cover some of this ground though. It should probably be more of a gazing thing but I'm not cross-linking right now. Me: If you asked me ten years ago what was most important, I'd say narrative/storytelling and I'd lean hard on selling and things having meaning through the match. Excitement/execution were secondary to this. Second-level even. You couldn't even consider them if the first level wasn't met. I think I have developed in that time to have a bit more of a balance but that balance leans hard towards.. Commitment/immersion: this is what I balance the coherency/consistency of the narrative with primarily. How deeply is a wrestler submerging themselves into what they're doing. How well can they use that to pull the fans in. It means that I give more credit to someone like Sabu that I might have previously because they're so thoroughly and consistently in the moment. A lot of times this is where I struggle with Omega because he feels like a director carefully staging every shot wanting perfection as opposed to an actor in the moment who has given in to the moment. I struggle a little with Dax now too primarily because I listened to too much of his podcast and get more how his mind works and how he puts together matches. It means that I can appreciate it on a different level but it's not exactly the level I enjoy wrestling on normally and it chafes. This does make me kind of want to revisit TNA Angle at some point, after he'd completely gone off the rails and see if there's something Sabu-ish to like there. But not enough to actually do it. Implicit storytelling: Through watching all of that Hansen and AJPW, I am higher than I used to be on people who are so thoroughly their character and that eat up so much air in the room that they sort of force a logical, path of least resistance sort of storytelling onto a match. I do see huge differences between Tenryu and Hansen when it comes to the former finding ways to outwardly highlight the strengths of his opponent (even without it seeming like he's doing so) vs the latter who forces his opponents to find ways to be strong on their own in order to stay with him. When the second happens, you get amazing matches, maybe even more so than what Tenryu was generally doing, but Tenryu's method and skill and consideration creates a far stronger baseline. Individual attributes for wrestlers I may not overall rank: This is something we're bad at as a community. We don't give credit for small things because we're always focused on the big picture. I give the example of John Studd. Terrible offense. Miserable control. Often just lays in holds. But he was a wonderful early match stooge who used his size as a point of dissonance by stalling and complaining and refusing to engage. I really enjoy those 2-3 minutes of his matches. Recently, I think Kyle Fletcher has some great instincts when it comes to working with the crowd and doing some of the in between stuff, especially during AEW mandated commercial break heeling pauses. If you just have him react and be a jerk, he's going to do ok with it. It doesn't mean I even liked his ospreay match and i was just ok with the Lee Johnson one but he seems like a guy who would pop a beach ball very well and he should watch old Gino Hernandez matches if he's going to stay a heel. Likewise, I do respect Omega's ability to devise complex stories in his matches. I just can't help but see the strings, which ironically at this point of my watching life, more or less invalidates the positives in the same way immersion without story might have ten years ago for me. I absolutely respect his ambition. I just find myself not enjoying the actual results. Tag wrestling: This is pertinent. The thing I dislike the most about modern tag wrestling is that the matches break down too soon. They jettison so many of the narrative opportunities to get heat and build anticipation for a hot tag and a comeback that makes tag team wrestling so special in order to get to the complex spots and quick in and out action too soon. They miss the forest for the trees and boy do they ever love trees. The one team, strangely enough, that somehow figures out a way to structure it to make it work for me is Silver/Reynolds. They're like idiot savants in structuring "everything breaking down too early" in a compelling way that still feels like it has meaningful momentum shifts and build and payoff. Overall: I do still lean towards minimalism. I love the manipulation/working aspect of pro wrestling, the idea that by putting the smallest finger on the pulse, you can completely move a crowd this way or that. I do feel like people do more and more with less and less result, or that it's become much more of an explicit collaboration with the crowd now where there's mutual feeding and pandering and basically surrendering to the will of the crowd instead of the sort of one-directional manipulation and the a skilled response to the crowd's reaction to that manipulation. I heard Mansury on the AEW podcast gloat about how yes they do rehearse everything, and that's well and good, but it's much more compelling when there's a bit of flex in the moment. I thought the Bunkhouse match was pretty fun along those lines, especially Claudio.

This is why I ask both questions.

Are GYV good? Will I like them?

Mercedes is easy to talk about. I (like the rest of the crowd) gave way too long of a standing ovation in 2002 to Mercedes vs Sumie Sakai at NECW and I cringe thinking back to it but I was young and dumb and on the internet too much. But I feel fortunate I saw that match live then and Mercedes has been a favorite of the last few years, most especially her feud with Serena Deeb but not just. She has great presence in the moment, which, past the ability to structure matches in a logical and compelling way (which she has as well) is probably the most important thing for me when it comes to a wrestler. Regal talked about how it wasn't selling but reacting and if you get two classically trained and experienced wrestlers in there, they can just react to one another. She's great at reacting. She's one of the most emotive wrestlers going. You can always see what she's thinking (as a character) in any moment. Kylie baffles me a bit. I get what she's going for and it's obviously over but it's much more artificial and plastic than other comparable examples like babyface Bayley and Willow. She's doing these staged poses and smiley faces and has the gear and the nickname (and the pokemon song!) and it's all way too in your face and obvious. But it works with the crowd which seems to desperately want to make it work so that they can feel better about themselves. To me, there's much more of an 80s vibe to her, and... I'm trying to express what I want to compare it to. It feels a bit Von Erich-y when it comes to the relationship with the crowd and how badly they want something to believe in and how thoroughly she can provide it but they were so natural in their own jocky bufoonish way. It feels kind of like... babyface Brutus Beefcake, who was, let me remind you, basically the #3 babyface in WWF in 1989 and a guy who could main event B shows and tag with Hogan as the main event of PPVs. He absolutely had a connection with the crowd but it felt like someone who didn't actually get it and just had read a book how to do it and there was nothing genuine about it necessarily. But it was 1989 so it worked. She somehow makes it 1989 again. And I appreciate that level of being able to work people, I guess? Of being able to manipulate people, even if maybe they're vulnerable people in the first place in a sort of less toxic hyper positive Amanda Palmer sort of way? I don't know enough about her to really go deeper down this path in a way that I feel comfortable and good with. I'll just say it sure feels like working and since no one works these days, I appreciate it. As for the match itself, it was good! I didn't love the two big transition spots of Mercedes going into a post. The second was better than the first. I would have had them play just a little more with the no-ropes gimmick. I liked Henry vs Priest a bit more in how they used it maybe? More teases of falling to doom. More inability to get rope breaks. Kylie at a disadvantage because she can't rope run? I have more respect for the Brass City Sleeper now but I get that maybe in 2019 it wasn't as big a deal. In general I loved how Mercedes filled time not with spots but with consistent and opportunistic violence in the moment. She just does damage and then milks it for all that it's worth as she interacts with the ref and the crowd and the wrestler and reality. Kylie is talented at what she does and what she does best is to reward the crowd when they chant for her with smart timing. Even if she's going to get cut off. She makes them feel like they matter in the match, like they have agency in helping her. Finish was neat with the la mistica set up and was bolstered by the commentary talking up the crossface throughout the match which covered for the fact she didn't really tease it or try for it at any point. I would have maybe had Mercedes try to make it to ropes that weren't there to help protect her in the finish? I don't know. I just find Kylie unsettling to watch on some level, like an uncanny valley sort of thing, but I also have to kind of respect it. Just like watching 89 Beefcake, which you won't get but someone else reading this will.

My personal issue is that the only potential matches I am looking forward to at all out of the angle are Jack Perry ones, so…..

It’s too bad that Copeland is stuck with Black still. The first match, to me, seems to new Elite vs Cope/FTR and someone else.

The biggest thing wrong with pro wrestling is that everyone is happy that they “let Chuck say shit” instead of being moved that he was so upset that they couldn’t stop him from doing it.

7/17/87: Nakano/Anjo vs Funaki/Nogami: This was pro shot with commentary so it was a great way to really see these guys who I tend to only see in blurry HHs. I more or less figured out who was who (Nogami had white shoes; Nakano had kickpads; Anjo had a funnier head maybe?). These guys were very good at what they were trying to do. It was a bit unfocused but very gritty and they were smacking and kicking and twisting and flying in off the edge of the screen. It was just sort of formless and I couldn't really differentiate between any of these guys, even just the UWF rookies vs NJPW ones. I need some sort of contrast here and I wasn't seeing it in this one. If these guys end up in the mix more I'll get a better sense of them. 7/17/87: Bigelow vs Maeda 2: Bigelow had snuck out a roll up last time. This is only five or six minutes. Bigelow overpowers him early. Maeda comes back with a belly to back out of nowhere and they get real sprinty for a little bit and it's great for about thirty seconds before they spill to the floor and Bigelow accidentally sends him tumbling over the rail for the DQ. 7/31/87: Bigelow vs Maeda 3: This felt a little like Maeda's second chance at an epic Andre match though of course Bigelow brings totally different things to the table. It was quite back and forth. Bigelow would grind him down and Maeda would do something impressive to fight back and bigelow would continue to grind (even with some mat dominance like slapping on a headscissors). Everything built to Maeda tossing Bigelow off the top and hitting a belly to back. He then hit the spin wheel kick and Bigelow didn't go over the top like he was supposed to but still rolled out and almost immediately hefted Meada over the rail in desperation. It was progression but this probably should have been the end of it and it wasn't. They never face each other again.

I watched Kylie vs Yamashita when I came in for ZSJ vs Makabe and I had not seen much Kylie and have some questions now so this will be illuminating. Also a big fan of Mercedes but I'll talk about that. Will catch it over the next few days. Thanks.

I liked the main event quite a bit. One of my favorite Swerve matches ever. It was ok that he took so much of it because it was due to him capitalizing on opportunities (some of which he was able to create) and because you want your new chant to win definitively. It wasn't enough for him to win; he had to Beat Joe and he did.

My take on the big match: http://segundacaida.blogspot.com/2024/04/aew-five-fingers-of-death-415-421.html?m=1

Going back through ep 5 with the 11 year old. Did people notice the Watcher in the stars before everything went down?

@Casey As always I'm trying not to give you the most, most famous thing so not the Dibiase vs Duggan tuxedo match for Mid-South. Instead Duggan vs Buzz Sawyer. I don't think it was on youtube so I tossed it on a burner.

Tony looks like the dad in an 80s sitcom where a lovable Soviet soldier accidentally lands in America and befriends the kids of a suburban family and they have to hide him from the nosy neighbors.