John E. Dynamite

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94A3LwJT29w I was afraid that I'd go back and watch it and it would all be played out, but it's like a super workrate 92 Rumble if it had to simplify it. Everybody's there, there's a million stories going on at once that a viewer can just intuitively pick up on, and I think Flair compared to Santo/Casas as throughlines have enough in common.

This made me double check if Tengu Kaiser/KAMIKAZE is still wrestling on the weekends. He is. EDIT: whoa, that was not supposed to be a parallel post w/ Steph

I think this was one of the tamer mentions in the Sleaze Thread?? Maybe it came out of the same Spanky(?)-in-Japan shoot interview that gave us the Wacky Dominatrix Story but left out the alleged pregnancy scare?? I can't believe I've retained this information.

i think doing Top Lists and star ratings and stuff like that exists to fill a need to quantify our enjoyment of pro wrestling. Like, we feel like we can't just like stuff or dislike stuff, we have to rank it and rate it with real, hard numbers so our opinions can feel like real, hard facts. More and more I'm starting to think that this is a fallacy, so I guess I'm doing this pretentious, let's-be-honest-judgemental thing where I'm not trying to rank or rate anything. It's starting to tie in to the way I think about Meltzerism and the Olympic Figure Skatingization of pro wrestling. The preferred form of pro wrestling in this post-post-kayfabe era is becoming this thing that's judged on Degree of Difficulty and Cleanliness of Execution and How Many Things Can Happen in a Set Amount of Time and I think that's appealing to the young male masses the same way Eddie Van Halen playing the most notes the fastest made him the young male's fave guitarist decades ago. "If I'm going to make my enjoyment of [entertainment thing] part of my identity, I want to quantifiably argue why it is The Best Thing." A very teenage boy way of thinking. Not to say Eddie can't play great licks or that Ospreay can't have great moments. But the things they do, it's talent show, a guy doing the fastest moves and the fastest flips is a lot less abstract then the guy doing the most "feeling". And mainstream entertainment is so, so Not Abstract. Everything is so literal now. Maybe it's because the stories are FAKE and the athleticism is REAL and the modern fan is too ashamed to prioritize the FAKE artistic over the REAL athletic, and that this is a deeper symptom of post-kayfabe than we realize. Still, it's all a way to make the intangible tangible. Turning English into Math and all that. I've been writing up wrestling matches in a waaay more casual space than this one and three best ones out of the thirty or so I've posted before are Chigusa / Dump - Hair vs. Hair (the first one, the immoral manipulation of the audience one, the better one), the CMLL Torneo Cibernetico (the one you think), and JYD & Slaughter vs. Iron Sheik & Volkoff (again, the first one). So those are the recent classics that have brought me the most joy, although I'm sure I could argue that 6/9/95 is better or whatever. The Hair Match is the peak of audience manipulation. I've never seen anyone do that to a crowd, ever. I don't know if it's possible, I don't think you can get a crowd like late-80's Japanese Schoolgirls who can't Google the word "kayfabe" on their phones anymore. It speaks to a deeply jealous part of my theater kid self. I would kill to have that kind of power over an audience. It's perverse. The Cibernetico speaks to my love of long-form buffets. I'm not a horror movie buff, but I am VERY much an anthology horror movie buff. It's probably my favorite format for any kind of film. One out of every ten major releases should be an anthology. An hour plus of a bunch of thematically connected dope things happening in parallel. Even if it's the obvious choice the Felino Cibernetico is the best example of it I've seen. Helps that the framing device is Santo vs. Casas. My Dream AEW Match is making an entire episode of Rampage a Cibernetico with every luchador and ex-CHIKARA guy they have. The Big Philly Tag Match is perfect broad-stroke babyface vs. heel, a perfect New York brawl, it's the best glimpse of JYD's potential as a top babyface in the Fed if he hadn't been as troubled as he was, I actually posted it pre-Mania as a study in how smart and loud Philly crowds have always been. Something's always happening and everybody cares, every kid has a sign, nobody's cheering the heels even though you can tell the crowd is far more educated than others of the time. It's just neat.

I just want to go online and talk about why a match was dope or why an angle was good or how much somebody bled. I don't care who's right or wrong. I don't crave a binary brand war. I don't think that us-vs-them internet arguments are the most enjoyable part of being a wrestling fan. TK would rather stir dumb shit up, HHH would rather lob hate during Mania weekend, every journalist knows talking about Punk or whatever other drama is hot is the more profitable choice. I refer to my prior post - I just want to be able to go online and talk about wrestling without having to dread the process. I don't have the energy or passion to put together a solution that will never come to fruition. The AEW roster should legitimately bully TK as if they were children. Shoot noogies. Shoot swirlies. Shoot wedgies until this stops.

I read Segunda Caida and I don't want to dog you on anything, but there have been Elite matches that I think you would have... liked. Kenny, in particular. I get the blinders, just for the sheer amount of wrestling you consume and write about. I tried to do it last year stepping in for DEAN I couldn't come close. I guess... I wonder, who have you come around on? Who have been the anti-DVDVR Kobashi/Toyota/Angle Psychologicaly Deficient types who you've learned to love? Maybe the GYV have something in common with those you've forgiven. I'm not even a big fan of theirs but I don't want anybody missing out, y'know?

They're UK Indie -> NXT guys. They're good enough. You won't like them.

Real talk? I will love Excalibur forever. I saw the dude at least three times live in Philly, I dig early PWG, I probably unknowling interacted with him multiple times on Fire Pro message boards, he is an important figure in pro wrestling history and should be remembered as such. But he cannot keep up with the duties of being the lead play-by-play guy in an organization this big. He can't read the copy, he can't organize his thoughts fast enough, he isn't a teacher. His tone isn't authoritative enough, and that is huge. Kills me to type this, but he should have been reassigned as the Tenay years ago.

Do we respond to things like the final segment of Dynamite based on our immediate interpretation and enjoyment of the events on-screen? Or do those feelings instantly get filtered through our doubts/hopes about how the larger pro wrestling fanbase will react to it? I've been slowly conditioned to think that things I find mildly cringe will be interpreted as harbingers of the end times, that good-not-great overwrought workrate epics will be called MotY and transcendent bloody brawls will be called "pretty good", and that once a month a "neat little match" I feel like chatting about is regarded as a travesty because somebody realistically covered for a botch. (Seriously, I saw a kid arguing that Dustin Rhodes vs. Butcher was a candidate for Worst Match of the Year and people were agreeing with him. You feel like you're eating three square meals of crazy pills every day.) The anti-AEW troll contingent was frothing at the mouth over the All In footage because it seemed like the kind of thing they could shitpost about for ages. A bullet in the chamber for the neverending propaganda war that they find far more interesting and engaging than any actual television show. The beleaguered AEW diehards were cringing at the thought because it seemed like not just some desperate worked-shoot trainwreck, but something that was going to be discussed online ad nauseam and create the same doomclick feedback loop that's been dragging everything down for however long. But we're a few weeks removed from it and thus far they've actually managed to thread the needle. They figured if things were still getting clicks then people must care, so they assumed people cared about Jack Perry and they were right. You have to wonder if they were going to air the footage regardless of the Punk interview because they were timing it around Mania hype. Regardless, here we are, Jack Perry is over. So I watch the final segment of Dynamite and I'm thinking "hey this is pretty good soap opera stuff" until about ten seconds later, when the bad feeling in my guts says "you are going to go on the internet and all people are going to talk about is how much they hate this". Which in the moment muted my enjoyment, embarrassing as it is to admit it. But then the next morning I see that a healthy majority of people really liked the angle, and that it's getting a ton of engagement and people are already theorizing how it might bleed into the NFL Draft and a Kenny return and all that stuff. So I feel silly, but better. But then again this board hates it so IDK anymore. I guess I'm arguing that some of you reacted negatively because you feared the fans would reject it. I want the text to be the text but that's impossible in all artforms as long as they're being created and experienced by human minds. I'm glad I'm watching the NBA Playoffs live and putting Dynamite on later because engaging in the moment is so dreadful now. Obviously this and that are driven by a broader "Negativity Gets Clicks" culture that is literally making the entire world depressed but I don't have the words for that right now.

I could see Trev salvaging the Matt Hardy signing if they book it right.

Quite possible the first time I ever spent money on non-WCW or WWE wrestling was giving one of my parents a five dollar bill so I could buy an Comcast OnDemand PPV with a bunch of joshi matches. LCO was included and the Death Lake Driver left a proper mark on me. Speaking of proper marks, between the Reddit Cares Safety Squad going all-out on that first post & the thousands of takes getting mad at Bryan Danielson for selling too good... can every human being go away? I feel like I am trapped in a madhouse. The pro-wrestling fanbase simultaneously complains about no-selling and gets mad when you pretend a move hurts. This wasn't even exploiting Danielson's concussion history. He sold like his neck got compressed. Like he was in a ton of pain and had his nerves jammed. I've had that happen to me. I've felt the painful results of it every day for over a decade. It was a proper, realistic sell and I thought that was the point. God damnit, we can't have any fun. No nice things.

It wasn't a seizure sell. It was a neck sell.

We've got to keep level heads and look at all sides here. Who's to say this isn't a huge misunderstanding, and that the Oklahoma republicans weren't simply opressing Nyla for being Native American?

Boy, y'know who can't gameplan against Olypmic-medal level judo? Holly... ...Holm???

Compare Moicano's promo to the crickets Bobby Green got. You're going to get more of this feeling tonight, I gurantee it. The UFC, and I'm not trying to be hyperbolic, is an actively facist entity. Joe Rogan is a huge component.