Matt D

^ I love wrestling.

It's almost a sin to watch Buddy Rose stuff out of context, because it's SO good out of context, but when you see all the promos leading up to it and how one match leads to the next, it's like nothing else that we have access to. It's so cool seeing face Adonis btw. He had crazy John Belushi charisma. Some of the tags with him and Ron Starr vs Buddy/Partner are great. Let's look at versatility: Buddy vs a British technical guy, playing the stooging role to make his opponent look great while feeding right into all of his stuff and playing his role perfectly. Buddy in a blood feud match vs a guy he turned on and put out. Buddy vs a longtime Local yokel underdog jobber minion that had enough of him. Very memphis-y. But he has to make the guy look like he has a chance while still staying dominant.

I posted two pictures and three animated gifs! Okay, so... yeah. I'm just going to repost my essay here. Let me say this. All of you watch wrestling almost every day. You watch WWE, TNA, Lucha, Japanese guys with air guitars, whatever. Some of you haven't seen a ton of Buddy Rose. No matter how good the stuff is that you're watching, you are watching the wrong wrestling if you haven't seen Buddy Rose in his prime yet. You just are. Matches to come throughout the day. Buddy Rose should get a month. ------

Bear with me here for a second: I've spent a lot of the morning watching the Wrestlemania Today from yesterday. There was one point where Riley, Booker, and Tensai were talking about how they prepared for a big match, because Big E was in the Andre Invitational and in order to win it, he had to get his head straight and focus and what not, and it really dawned on me that I was watching a framing device hyping up a completely fictional event within the confines of its own universe. There are other mediums like wrestling, be it serialized television or comic books or what not, but nothing like this. This isn't like Talking Dead where they talk about a show. It's not Siskel and Ebert. It's not that Marvel: Creating a Universe Special from a week or two ago. It's also not Baseball Tonight or a halftime show, because what they're talking about isn't real. The same thing wit the apter mags. Something like Doctor Who Magazine or the Marvel comics website talks to creators and production people. Marvel doesn't publish a full magazine version of The Daily Bugle that covers all of the last couple of months' happenings in the comics as if they're real. Maybe there's some kids' publication that does, but I think in this regard, Wrestling might be completely unique. It spends hours and resources and magazines devoted to talking about its own fictional universe. Do those soap opera digest things at Supermarket check outs work completely in soap opera kayfabe or do they talk about the actors coming and going and the writers and what not? The closest thing I can even think of when it comes to something like this are those teenybopper magazines that portray teenage rock stars' and their adventures as real, when there are blurred lines and they're just playing characters, but I'm just guessing there having never read a Tiger Beat or what not. I guess the only other thing that would be close would be those short term alternate reality games/websites that get put up for promotional reasons for TV shows or what not. I think Lost did that or The Dark Knight, but those are flashes in a pan. It's all really surreal to me when you look at it.

Hunter DOES sort of look like Sean Bean.

I updated the Android app and THOUGHT it was working ok. I streamed 3 minutes of Superstars before the thing crashed my tablet again. Ah well.

I was going to make a "reclaiming" sort of note for Mania 20 with Natural, since it was probably the key moment of our community as fans and it's gone for us now, but it was in the middle of march madness and we were all just having too much fun so I said screw it.

It at least feels SORT Of like a Mania. It's been years since that.

This is going to bring us back to workrate.

In general, it's probably a good thing if they get the library. I feel like more people have seen World Class in the last few weeks than in decades, and it'd be great to expose Memphis to people and to have some reliable way to watch it, sure, and maybe some people might get royalties (but I doubt it). It's just not necessarily a good thing for the people here. I don't think anything would necessarily be unearthed from it as opposed to other libraries they've gotten and it'd be years and years before is available to all of us for free.

Check out his Portland work too. It is easy to find.

They're not necessarily mutually exclusive, but yeah. That's kind of the point. They shouldn't be mutually exclusive. The idea is that great wrestlers can use the moves and spots and holds and selling to create an emotionally driving match.

It's not just that they won't put it up for a long time. It's that they'll also actively have it taken down on youtube. So we're better off now than we would be if they bought it.

Exciting and mysterious footage of FIGHT PANTHER.

That was his awesome El Matador finisher which was a flying punch to the back of a hunched over guy's head. This is one of my talking points, but Tito's matches became a lot more interesting when he got the new gimmick because after losing the figure four, for years, his big PTW or house show matches would have him hit the flying forearm but the heel would roll out. At that point, since he used up his finisher, everyone sort of knew that Tito was going to lose. After that, they could still work that spot in but there was a chance he'd win.

That's terrible news. Almost all the TV we have is available on youtube right now. At the rate WWE is putting up any territory footage at all, we might see some Memphis on the network in 2024.

Also here's Mark's image:

I'm always tempted to spend my lunch hour at some national monument when Raw is in DC just on the hope Zeb might be there.

Great, but why the fuck are there still gaps? This is episodic TV. They babble on about that all the time. I just don't get it. Why keep pushing forward instead of giving us episode 29 or 31-35 or whatever else we're missing.

I at least know what happened in 94 WCW. I'm just saving that for a rainy day. Motorcycle Palumbo is new to me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyhd8WaxCv0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEXADVnN8EQ 07-08 WWE is a black hole for me BUT one of these has to be good!

I liked the finals to the Parejas tournament a lot too. It's just such an easy format for novel storytelling. I really need to dig through youtube for the last few years' torunaments.

Not enough likes in existence for this. Maybe if we go back in time since that's what people wanted two years ago when Punk was a babyface and Bryan was with AJ and they were feuding, right before they inserted Kane into things.

It's funny how things were actually far, far nicer during March Madness than in the immediate follow up.

I don't know about you guys, but it's weirdly hard for me to leave the bubble and get into the larger outer smark bubble. Just Rosenberg mentioning all the problems he has with John Cena's ringwork or (and this makes me a horrible person) having the belt signed by Shawn and Bret sort of made me groan. I think it's because we've gone through all these discussions over the years and it's sort of hard to insert yourself back into a point before those.