[Remedial Wrestling] #1: Misawa/Kawada and Friends

[Matt D]

12/3/93

 

An really awesome 17 minute match and a very frustrating 30 minute match all in one! 

 

Seriously, this one was more egregious than the last in losing me. I really sort of loved it right until the hot tag to Misawa and Kobashi fighting back and what not. The match should have ended there, or maybe i guess gone into a second FIP or something, like in AWA matches. Instead, they just hit things in and out of giant moments and by the missed Kobashi moonsault I was done. It's really frustrating too because there are so many great little moments and really clever bits and very strong selling and facial expressions and the stuff just looks so good, but when half the match is this back and forth big bomb finishing sequence where they've given up on working any sort of tag team match after spending the first half of the match working a really great tag team match, I just get desensitized. 

 

I sort of love each guy in his role. Taue as a big man bully asshole is really great. Kawada is the surliest wrestler ever and a stubborn idiot to boot. Kobashi is a good FIP with these fiery moments of really quick offense and MIsawa is one of the best hot tags ever because his execution and the energy and emotion he's able to put behind it is just so iconic. You really get the feeling that this person is a PROFESSIONAL WRESTLER and not just someone pretending to be one. 

 

That said, everything just fizzles apart for me. My gut tells me that everything's come to a head and that they should bring the match to a conclusion and you know what? Fifteen minutes later they do.

 

-Taue going for the atomic drop and Misawa no selling it sort of represents these matches in a nutshell.

-Misawa doing the crazy flip elbow of doom so early is nuts. That was such a meaningful move in the last match and it's just a thing here.

-Taue is good at knowing when to give and when to sell and how to use his body language. he uses his size really well too. I've recently read that Taue doesn't really wrestle like a big man but in these matches he absolutely did.

-Misawa is so explosive. Execution is usually not a big thing to me, so it's impressive how his execution which is tied to performance elements, moves me.

-Kobashi is super emotive in his selling.

-Taue belly to back throw, and then the build to the chokeslam this time! Miasawa breaks it up and then he hits it. 

-Kawada is such a surly dick that I hate when he hiuts the rapid fire stuff. It just seems really gimmicky and unnecessary to me. When Kobashi does it it seems fiery. 

-WEll, there's the transition shot to the leg. I didn't notice him selling it at all after the initial stumble. Goodear first noticed it a ton and then not nearly as much. I would have liked more foreshadowing maybe, but everything is fairly decompressed in these matches due to the length. They don't hit you over the head with anything (except for chops and kicks(. 

-Kobashi's rapid fire punches is exactly what I'm talking about. Kawada is a stubborn jackass for going with a move that uses the part that's hurting him.

-TAUE knocks Misawa off the apron! God southern heel stuff is effective but then they don't milk it! God dammit. It's called a hope spot for a reason.

-Taue is the glue. Kawada is just a stubborn force of nature. Taue's jackass way of just dumping everyone over the top. He's awesome. 

-The double chokeslam/backdrop was cool (and broken up by Kobashi so I'm cool with it). but they have to be in the finishing segment here. If they restart I'll be pissed. Misawa was fresher so he could eat the powerbomb ok.

-Great comeback from Misawa. Hyper Kobashi slaps. Let's take it home!

-HA revenge spot on Taue by Kobashi with the clothesline on the top rope. Pretty moonsault, but come on guys.

-Kawada selling the leg on the outside. 

-Kobashi tried to do too much punishment instead of going for the win? Taue is the sort of guy who you buy cutting off a babyface like this but come on. 

-Yep, we're in back drop land and they lost me again. Wait, was the transition there that Kobashi got his foot in to nail Kawada as a backdrop counter? That was clever. 

-The leg selling messing up the german bridge was great too but as a narrative whole I was done a few minutes ago. 

-Stretch Plums and a nice moment with Kobashi escaping to break it up. I would have liked that more the first time. We already saw it didn't get teh job done. And there is 10 minutes left on this video apparently.

-Misawa's flip through on the powerbomb was cool too. There is a ton of cool, clever stuff here, but I just can't get used to the gear shifting in the middle of these matches. 

-Cloverleaf is nice. This should end it. It's a parallel spot but working over a really well sold bodypart. I guess they couldn't allow for that. It had to be tit for tat escapes to save face or something.

-Yeah, so I didn't care too much about the second moonsault. He already had hit one. They do so much stuff in these matches that they're just repeating things they've done with diminishing results.

-It's strange. I get the predictability of modern us wrestling. You know some things won't finish it. Maybe my problem here is that I'm not used to this stuff so I think about half the things they should do have enough build to finish things and then they go back into a segment of stuff that looks great but that doesn't feel like it has a chance in hell to finish it, so that's why it bugs me. In modern WWE main event style, for instance, and really every other style I've seen, once they kick out that first finisher they don't dial it back down. It's almost like AWa matches how they'd work a hold and do spots in and out of it. Here they work finishers and then work slightly smaller spots in and out of those. It's really jarring. 

-The tandem Germans are nice and the heat is huge but I'm just well past the point of caring. I'm writing about AWA match struture while the announce is losing his voice screaming.

-And yeah, why did that backdrop end the match instead of one of the twelve thousand other things?

[Goodear]

I think if we look at these matches as a whole at this point, their major downside for me is the extended finishing stretches and a tendency to bloat matches to 30+ minutes when getting it down to 17-20 would have been more appropriate.  I get the impression multiple times that if the matches just ended on particular notes with no alteration that the matches would have been better for it.  Just literally end the first tag match on the first moonsault or the Kobashi rolling powerbomb and the match would be better for it.  Like there is a fatigue factor to watching these that comes simply from them being almost a third too long.  I feel full after watching one as opposed to wanting more.

[Matt D]

One point you've made in a couple of these matches so far that ties into this that I agree with is that the finish doesn't necessarily seem any different from the twelve other moves they did before it. There's nothing in a narrative sense that says that this particular back drop driver is what should finish the match as opposed to something else that just happened. There's none of that final, inevitable momentum and build, which would make the long finishing stretches feel like more of a build. There's no real answer to the question of "why did this work when the last one didn't?"

[Goodear]

The style seems sort of wrestling with a life-bar that Kawada can take so much punishment and then he is 'dead' so a -30 life point elbow leads gets him to 5 life points left so the -20 backdrop driver can get to the finish.  Which would be fine but there just isn't any way of knowing how big that life bar is at a given time.  Leading up to the finish of the singles match when Kawada threw that kick and then was out of energy, it gets to be really jarring from a 'wait you had the energy to jump in the air and hit a beautiful kick, but that's it?' perspective.  

[Matt D]

Is it just me or does the crowd seem to get it though? There does seem to be a bigger pop for the last killer move, though maybe that just means that there'd be an even bigger pop for the next one?

[Ramsey]

There is a bit of a cultural gap here I'm sure. It's the same mentality that (stay with me here) would tolerate a Dragon Ball Z battle that takes four episodes to end. The huge "power ups" and giganto finishers of the AJPW main event matches of the 90's seem to tickle that same spot.

[Tim Cooke]

 

 

And to me strategy is what these matches lack from a macro level.  What is Misawa trying to do to win?  What is his game plan?  Because it seems like he is there to do his thing and that's that.  This isn't 'grab a wristlock and work to an arm bar' either because I don't know what Kawada is trying to do either.  It just feels like the only way anyone wins these matches is because they out-willed the other guy that night.  But there is no reason demonstrated reason why the one guy's will was higher other than they got the last series of moves.

 

This is the problem with taking a small sampling of matches and watching them without the bigger picture and without the surrounding matches for context.  Generally, I think matches should be able to be viewed individually but in some cases, specifically All Japan, you benefit much more from watching matches chronologically and not just the big matches.  Back stories, hierarchy of wrestlers, and individual motivations are much more apparent when watching like this.

 

This isn't the most accurate comparison, but you can't just jump into a season 3 episode of a show like The Wire, Deadwood, etc. and expect to understand the big picture, none the less the subtleties of what is going on with these shows.  I'm not saying that any wrestling comes close to that level of story telling but the general point remains the same. 

 

 

[Matt D]

Well, maybe it'll make more sense to us by the end. We're watching a series of matches after all. The entire point of this project on one level is to build up to that final tag that Phil says is the best of all time instead of just trying to watch that match on its own. As enjoyable of some of the small surprises, clever moments, and characters on the table are, and I can't speak for Goodear on this, but it does feel a bit like work to get through even one of these matches. Adding to the number we're already watching doesn't seem entirely reasonable at this point.

[Goodear]

I think if you recognize that the last match in the series takes place nearly a year after the closest match on the list, you are, of course, going to lose some of the context you might otherwise have.  It wouldn't be fair of us to say, "How can Kawada do X when it didn't work last time" when we are talking a year later.  By the same token, I really do think some people are really adding their own stories to these matches in the 'clearly you have thought more about this than the people making it' kind of way.  Which is fine!  Its part of the fun of wrestling to do that sort of thing during matches.  I think in this series, the matches don't seem to bear out that there is some sort of overreaching plan between the guys involved.  I mean if you want to say that you need to watch another 15 matches to get the full flavor of what is going on, I'm going to say the story has become over bloated where like season 9 of the X-Files, it collapses in on itself with unneeded mythology.

[Curt McGirt]

I just watched the final tag by itself with only the match I reviewed previously as backup and man, you don't really need any backstory, they've got all the story there for you. Will wait for you guys to watch to chip in my two cents. 

[OSJ]

Thanks to Matt for starting this thread and of course a big "thank you" to jdw fourteen years after the fact for all the thought he put into his ballot. As much fun as it is to cherry pick and just watch the top stuff, it's akin to watching a comp of a favorite wrestler with the key difference that with a comp, you've probably seen all the lesser stuff that was eliminated from the comp. With something like AJPW, you're at the disadvantage of not seeing the slow build of context that culminates in these great matches. In a great match, every move means something. In a great promotion, (which AJPW certainly was), every match means something and it is the culmination of events that leads to many of the "big matches". Not to say that you can't have a ***** on the way to the payoff, but the crowd heat and the pomp and circumstance (streamers, flowers, etc.) just adds to the sense that you are seeing something special in the "big matches".

 

Few people have the time to sit and watch a decade's worth of wrestling to get caught up, so viewing like this is probably as good as it gets for most of us.

[Jingus]

Is it just me or does the crowd seem to get it though? There does seem to be a bigger pop for the last killer move, though maybe that just means that there'd be an even bigger pop for the next one?

More or less, yeah. Although there are less-classic matches which aren't on the list, where you can tell the crowd has already cum and now they're just sitting there cranky and wishing the bitch would shut up and leave already. (To put it in THE crudest terms possible, cuz that's what sort of fuckin' mood I'm in right now.)

As for the Which Finisher part, I think this is just one bit where Japanese psychology fundamentally differs from the American style. In America, it's all about your finisher. (Usually just one, occasionally two or three for the better workers or long-established top guys.) Hit your finisher and win, the end. How many pinfalls did Stone Cold ever get without using a Stunner right beforehand? Yes there are exceptions, but that's the general rule.

In Japan (especially 90s AJPW), part of the fun for the audience is they're never sure WHICH move will be the finish. (Mostly. There are exceptions: see Hansen, Stan.) Misawa had like five thousand different finishers, basically, because at some point or another he'd pinned someone important with practically every single hold in his arsenal. The fanbase has a ridiculously long collective memory, they remember that shit, so they treat every big move as a possible finish.

As for using the same move multiple times, even if you already hit it and they kicked out: my personal theory is that in Japan, they subconsciously view the wrestlers' stamina as working similarly to Hit Points in a role-playing game. While fighting the big boss, it's usually some kind of nigh-apocalyptic magic hellfire attack that finally takes him down; but every once in a while, he's already on his last legs and your fighter just stabs him for the thousandth time and down he goes. It works much more by war-of-attrition rules than modern American psychology does, where sometimes the guy who won is just the guy who still had energy to keep punching when his opponent happened to run out of gas.

[Matt D]

From my point of view, I don't necessarily see that as compelling a narrative than a move or moment that was built to in order to create the best possible story, or even a mostly coherent one. What wrestling has over real sports is the ability to tell a story and not just have a story imposed after the fact. It feels somehow less satisfying for a match to just sort of end as opposed to building to the best possible key moment, etc, no matter how good the action is. Wrestling is wondrously, gloriously fake and this stuff doesn't seem to be making the most of the inherent advantages of that. It's strange to me because they use it so many other ways in the matches.

[Jingus]

Well, yeah, but nobody's perfect. Also: remember how long they're out there, how hard they're working, and HOW GODDAMN HARD THEY'RE HITTING EACH OTHER. I wouldn't be surprised if they're all in exhausted brain-damaged amnesiac fogs by the end of a long hard match. If Kawada kicked you in the head fifty times in a row, would ya remember the finish? And that's if they even planned a specific finish. I have no idea how they called their matches over there, how much scripting in the back versus how much improvisation in the ring they tended to do. Some wrestlers really do prefer to go out to the ring without even a finish planned, beyond "guy #1 wins" and they pretty much make it up from there (Gypsy Joe usually worked like that, for just one example).

[Matt D]

I try keep it in mind, but frankly, I probably would have enjoyed their matches more if they worked smarter and not as hard than what we got? 

[Jingus]

Point taken, but then you run into "but the fans in attendance expected X". Kinda hard to get around that one, most of the time. That's why poor Sabu is still forced to do moonsaults and go through tables even on the shittiest and littlest indy shows. He doesn't WANT to do it, but that's what he was booked to do and what all 50 fans showed up to see. Along semi-similar lines, clearly the AJPW finishes were what the AJPW fans wanted to see, considering the thunderous reaction their whole big-bomb/kickout-at-2.99/Spirit~! style consistently received. One could argue that maybe the wrestlers shouldn't have trained the fans to WANT that style in the first place (and considering what the fuck eventually happened to Misawa, that's a hard argument to refute) but I don't think any of them were looking that far ahead in the first place.

[Matt D]

That's very fair, of course, and I think it's all important in understanding and analyzing the match. You really need to think about why the match was worked how it was worked and the crowd there. That's true with those Sabu matches and it's true with Davey Richards matches or Special K scramble matches from 2004 or whatever. 

 

That said, it's only half of it. When Phil brings forth concepts like "greatest tag match of all time," at that point he sort of opens it up to comparative analysis between it and every other tag match that's ever happened. When you look at it that way, you have to compare it to not the audience it was worked in front of, but your own subjective opinion and all the other matches you've ever seen. That's the most important thing when it comes to deciding when you, personally, think a match is good or not, and what I've seen so far is good but could have been so much better if they utilized a bit more restraint and called upon some of the most basic tools of pro wrestling narrative a little more. 

[odessasteps]

Matt appears to be channeling JR

"Slow down and sell more"

[Goodear]

Hey everyone, its the Tiger Driver '94 match~!  WHOOO!

 

So... lets talk about that shall we?  

 

The move that Misawa had to actually invent in order to finally beat Kawada when nothing else would!

 

...

 

It's kind of bullshit.

 

It doesn't make any sense that Misawa had to do that to beat Kawada.  If Kawada had come up with the new move, it would make perfect sense because he's never beaten Misawa.  Why does Misawa need a death move to beat a guy he's already beat who knows how many times?  And don't tell me that the tiger suplex wasn't enough this time when he needed to use it twice the first time!  Just do the same move again, that's internally consistent for the All Japan style.  Don't tell me he was desperate when he was knocking the shit out of Kawada with elbow's leading up to the TD'94 and Kawada was out on his feet.  He didn't even go for a bunch of covers off the elbows to get over that this time he would have to kill the other guy!  This is a cool move that a guy came up with that they decided to use.  The story explanations don't make sense from the context we've already seen.

 

So with that out of the way, that's get on to the rest of the story.

 

Again it seems like someone got accidentally hurt early on as Misawa dumps Kawada with a backdrop driver and they have to work around Kawada recovering for an extended period.  They slow things down a bunch here and it makes sense to give the guy a chance to shake it off but this is the downside to this hard-hitting style.  Maybe Lance Storm was right all along and protecting each other rather than being as stiff as possible is the better course.  The strangeness continues when Kawada kicks Misawa in the nose and Misawa has to roll out of the ring before getting back in and getting taken down with a rear naked choke.  The timing and pacing here is so weird like they just couldn't get on the same page for an extended period.  Until Misawa went to Kawada's legs, which led to a whole nother problem.

 

Limb work in All Japan is worthless.  It's a waste of all of our time like the first two falls of a CMLL match up.  Kawada sells the heck out of his leg while its actually getting beaten on and he will flex it in the short term, but it don't mean nothing when we get to the home stretch.  Selling to me doesn't just mean you go "Ow this hurts" and keep doing your thing.  It should effect you and what you do in some way these matches lack that strength.  Again, I love me some limb work but this is half the story you could be getting.

 

Somewhere around minute 20 the match lost me completely, which you can see in my notes.  It just became a battle of who got to hit their spots last and although you cannot find fault with their execution in any way, the storytelling of kick, elbow, kick, kick, kick, german, backdrop just became a moves exhibition and failed to connect with me on an emotional level.  Like Kawada's big move is the powerbomb and he hits like 3 of them and I'm bored okay?  Bored.

 

NOTES (I like this as the way to get to play-by-play, glad Matt thought of it)

 

 Stare down,  muted by being from across the ring, good subtle stuff.  Air of actual competition.

Nice parity start with kawada stopping short on a whip and trying for big boot, but Misawa is aware and stays away from it.

Kawada comes back with a boot but Misawa tries to bounce off rope only to get caught with a pivot kick.

Back drop and Kawada looks like he got jammed up.  Misawa lets him recover.  I don’t like these breaks in the action.  Kawada takes a bump and they reset.  Action not flowing.  One thing to reset when you don’t have an advantage.  Allowing someone to reset when you do takes away from the sporting nature of the match.

Kawada to the left arm.  seems like a stall tactic to me.

Kawada looks really out of it even while performing stuff on the outside.  Seems like a time to slow shit down which they do.  Makes sense from a perspective of trying to let him recover, but this is like the 3rd time someone seems to have legitimately hurt themselves early and they’ve had to scramble to cover.

Kawada gets a crossface to kill time.  Seems like filler to me.  Misawa is letting himself get worked over more here than I’ve seen.  Again, seems like a delaying tactic.  It just doesn’t fit with the back and forth we normally see.

Kawada kicks Misawa in the nose and he has to roll out of the ring to recover.  This all seems so psuedo shoot to me that its weird.  Misawa gets back in the ring and Kawada goes right to a naked choke.  The pace of this is so strange.

Misawa just starts leg kicking Kawada to the mat and from a kayfabe perspective, you would think Kawada would have legs like granite.  Not so here.  Misawa goes to the half crab but Kawada manages to kick him away.  Step over  toe hold from Misawa.

15 minutes in the video.

Leg kick from Kawada and Kawada goes down.  Nice leg selling here from Kawada as Misawa goes to work on it.  Kawada tries to push out of it with his foot but Misawa shakes him off.  Nice leg selling continues as they break and Kawada flexes in the ropes.  Misawa kicks his leg out again and Kawada goes down in a heap.

Kawada comes back but Misawa cuts him off with an elbow.  Misawa hits a dropkick but Kawada doesn’t go down, falls into the ropes and rebounds with a kick to the face.  Jumping high kick but when he goes to cover, Misawa is a wet noodle.  Cover for 2

Powerbomb nope.

Kneedrop from the second rope is a murder attempt.  Limp is gone.  10 minutes well spent.

Neck chops in bunches.  Blech.

Reverse inziguri from Misawa who is bleeding from the ear.

This is less compelling because the strategy is gone.  All bomb throwing all the time.

Jumping high kick blocked.  Basement dropkick.

Tiger driver.

mounted crossface.

Notice how I’ve gone to just saying moves?  Did the match lose me that fast?

25 minutes

high kick counter to a top rope elbow strike

Powerbomb nope.

Powerbomb nope.  Elbow yes.

Kawada slugs away but 1 elbow from Misawa = 3 of his.

Boot.  Backdrop driver.  

Powerbomb for 2

jumping high kick.  Stuff stuff stuff.  Where is the why?

German release and Misawa rolls to the outside.  Smart use of wrestling conventions to get a break but Kawada goes outside to get him.

Powerbomb for another 2 but now Kawada is spent.

Powerbomb nope but stretch plum.

30 minutes.

releases to make a cover for 2

Misawa pops up with a elbow and Kawada kicks back.

Elbow again.

diving lariat

German release.Tiger suplex for 2

adjust elbow pad  

German blocked

rolling koppo kick (new wrinkle?)

35 minutes

Rolling koppo again and Misawa falls out of the ring again.

Stare down from the outside

Elbow blocked with headbuts and kicks but Misawa fired back with elbow, rolling elbow.  Elbows times a billions!

Tiger driver… nope pushed back.

Tiger Driver ‘94 is enough.

[GOTNW]

It's the Tiger Driver '91. Because he used it for the first time in 1991 against Taue.

[PeteF3]

Misawa had to bust out *two* new (you know what I mean) wrinkles to beat Kawada in that match: Kawada's knee had been hurt since the previous Tag League and became a recurring story thereafter, but Misawa had never specifically targeted it until that match. Then of course, bringing out a move he hadn't done in 3 years. I thought the fact that Misawa even needed to utilize either one of those weapons at *all* was enough to put Kawada over, in a way. AJPW specialized in getting guys over through losses a la Austin and Bret, better than any promotion probably ever on a consistent basis. 

[RIPPA]

I might as well say this now because I didn't say it originally and just figured I wouldn't bother but the "I Never Saw Star Wars" Thread rekindled the thought in my head.

 

I am interested in how much the passage of time AND hype effects these matches negatively.

 

The reason I mentioned the Stars Wars thread is because in there I mention that I have never seen the Godfather movies.

 

If I watched them now - I don't think there is anyway they could live up to the hype that surrounds them and thus when I don't love them as much as someone else (because I could easily see a scenario where I enjoy them but wouldn't think they were even the best movie released in their respective years).

 

I feel like introducing these matches (or other things of a similar variety) are subject to the same scenarios.

 

Why do I bring this up? Just because I think it is a matter of perspective that some folks might forget when someone in this project doesn't think they are good (like for example - Goodear. Who I am only naming because he seems to be the furthest along.)

 

To me personally - I have no issue if folks don't like the matches. Maybe that makes me wacky in these days of the internet. I mean I will never agree with Matt if he still says that that one Demolition match is the Greatest of All Time (since I am old and stupid - I can't remember the opponents).

 

But the point is that folks will actually watch the stuff. I think they are important enough that a wrestling fan should watch... which again is the point of this whole project in the first place. It might not end up with thinking Misawa vs. Kawada is great but someone might suddenly be all "Shit - that Taue dude is aces." And when the fuck did we all stop caring about discovery?

 

Don't ask me why I am getting all preemptively overprotective on the concept of discussion but here we are.

[Matt D]

I am not going to call any Demolition match the greatest of all time (did I do that? It'd be funny if I did that. I think Bill Eadie was great at forcing a logic onto a lot of matches that would have been frustrating and they bucked the 80s WWF heel-in-peril trend, and that project was very useful for me in getting out of a workrate mode and into something else. I love a lot of those matches still, but I won't say the best of all time. Maybe some of the most logical of all time, but that's not enough, despite what people think of me). 

 

Adding on to what Phil said, from the inside, I think Goodear and I haven't agreed on everything here, though we have on some common trends, and one of those trends has been just how enjoyable a lot of the aspects of these matches have been, to the surprise of both of us. I'm not just talking Taue either, even if I do think he's aces. That we show a certain amount of frustration is, I think, not because everyone else says that these matches are the greatest of all time, but instead because there's a lot to like and a lot more that we WANT to like, so we're invested in how good these matches are for our own sake, and there are elements that jump up to drag them down for us. We don't want them dragged down. There have been points in both of the two tags I've seen so far where I was really engaged, where the match had me drawn in completely, and then something happened to frustrate me or disappoint me in a way where other matches that I've never seen from the 80s or 90s that I now see, don't.

 

I'd never seen a match from the AWA, not one, before I started the 80s project. There were matches I loved, absolutely loved, and my #1 on that set was the 60 minute Hennig/Bockwinkel match, which was also the most hyped match on the set coming in. 

 

I understand people's concerns in this, but I do think we're being pretty fair with this stuff, or at least consistent with how we look at everything else? (Though I can't speak fully with Goodear because while he's been a great companion in this note, I'm not really familiar with his previous writing/analysis). I fully believe what people say about context between YEARS worth of matches though. I get that. We can't watch all that stuff, and hopefully by seeing the matches we do, we'll see enough to get a real feel for some of it at least. 

[Goodear]

I'm sure my writing is coming off as down on these matches and I'm prepared to deal with that but its not so much my intent to just bury everything there.  There is a ton of stuff to like but it pops up in every match and I feel as though so many people have expanded on those good sections of the matches while they overlook performance issues.  Like there is only so much I can marvel at how well Misawa throws an elbow.  But Holy Hannah can the guy throw one heck of an elbow.  I can keep saying that the fighting spirit stuff comes off way better than I ever could have hoped it would.  I think the interesting points to talk about are the ones where we aren't all in lock step.

 

By the same token, I'm open to discussion about what I'm not seeing and why I'm a big dumb dumb head.  I like spirited discussion!  And I don't think anyone has taken this down a road that has become in any way, uncivil.

 

Matt and I seem to look at wrestling at very similar ways with narrative structure being really key to our enjoyment of the form.  The 'why is this happening' instead of the 'what happened next'.  We also seem to look at long term trends more than how many great matches a guy has.  I'm oddly enough also a fan of Demolition since they love them some ring positioning and that scratches my wrestling itch.  I get the same from Arn Anderson tags for the record but he isn't the divining rod the Demos are.  Not that Matt and I are on a team or anything and now have logo t-shirts on order, but I think its safe to say we have similarities.

[Jingus]

Regardless of differing opinions, you guys are doing a damn fine job of explaining why you feel the way you do. You're pretty exhaustively re-analyzing and poking at the most sacred of IWC cows, and backing up everything you say with a ton of thought. That's all I ever really want from a thread like this anyway. Yeoman's work, sirs.