APRIL 2018 ANIMATED WRESTLING GIF THREAD

[OSJ]

2 hours ago, Matt D said:

Sure, I guess. Or you can decide it had a wildly negative influence on wrestling. 

Yipes! Give me a choice between watching a TM/DK "spot fest" or watching Dory Funk jr. lumber around with ten minute headlocks and I know what I prefer to see. To imply that this in any way was a negative influence kind of baffles me. Did guys that came later take the crazy spots too far? Certainly. Can that be blamed on Billington and Sayama? I don't think that's any more fair than blaming Lawler and the Sheik throwing fire for the insanity that Onita, Pogo and company unleashed in FMW.

[Matt D]

It doesn’t have to be extremes, John. It’s not either TM vs DK or Dory Funk. The joy of wrestling is in value, of getting the most out of as little as possible, or at the very least getting as much as possible out of everything. If Dory couldn’t do that consistently then he’s no better than anyone who can’t do that now. But lots of wrestlers could do that brilliantly in the 70s. We have the footage to prove it. Nothing has damaged the overall quality of wrestling more than the idea that workrate is the most important metric, except for maybe the death of stakes. It’s great when someone can both work hard and work smart, but in the end, working smart is actually performing and understanding human behavior and working hard is just doing a lot of stuff with great effort.

[OSJ]

6 minutes ago, Matt D said:

It doesn’t have to be extremes, John. It’s not either TM vs DK or Dory Funk. The joy of wrestling is in value, of getting the most out of as little as possible, or at the very least getting as much as possible out of everything. If Dory couldn’t do that consistently then he’s no better than anyone who can’t do that now. But lots of wrestlers could do that brilliantly in the 70s. We have the footage to prove it. Nothing has damaged the overall quality of wrestling more than the idea that workrate is the most important metric, except for maybe the death of stakes.

My friend, I know we are both proponents of "less is more", but I feel that "workrate" has morphed into a term to apply to silly excess as opposed to its original meaning. Let me illustrate, of today's performers, Pete Dunne, has rapidly joined Naito as my favorite to watch because of his "workrate". Everything makes sense, every move MEANS something. You have to go back a few years to the heyday of AJPW which unfairly gets written off as just head-dropping spots, but actually every match and every SERIES of matches helped tell a story in the ring. Even those of us that didn't speak a word of Japanese could pick on the tale. That's wrestling at its best, telling compelling stories. How you tell the story is the most important thing. I think we're agreeing more than disagreeing, for me, Sayama and DK, did tell great stories, later on, Liger and El Samurai as much as I love them put on spectacles and forgot to tell more than "we're going to kick each other's asses for twenty minutes and then somebody wins."

[Matt D]

It’s the “rate of work,” John. I get that it was a push back against 70-early 80s minimalism, laziness, and aging main eventers, but it’s right in the name. It has nothing to do with storytelling and it never did.

[thee Reverend Axl Future]

43 minutes ago, OSJ said:

Yipes! Give me a choice between watching a TM/DK "spot fest" or watching Dory Funk jr. lumber around with ten minute headlocks and I know what I prefer to see. To imply that this in any way was a negative influence kind of baffles me. Did guys that came later take the crazy spots too far? Certainly. Can that be blamed on Billington and Sayama? I don't think that's any more fair than blaming Lawler and the Sheik throwing fire for the insanity that Onita, Pogo and company unleashed in FMW.

 

34 minutes ago, Matt D said:

It doesn’t have to be extremes, John. It’s not either TM vs DK or Dory Funk. The joy of wrestling is in value, of getting the most out of as little as possible, or at the very least getting as much as possible out of everything. If Dory couldn’t do that consistently then he’s no better than anyone who can’t do that now. But lots of wrestlers could do that brilliantly in the 70s. We have the footage to prove it. Nothing has damaged the overall quality of wrestling more than the idea that workrate is the most important metric, except for maybe the death of stakes.

 "The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom." - William Blake

You are both correct, of course. TM/DK was a revelation, a distillation of the most exciting parts of a match concentrated into a sugar-rush, like the freedom of having an ice cream sundae for breakfast. There was was, in hindsight, a sacrifice of story-telling and pacing, but the context was ideal: that time, place, participants and type of match (New Japan Juniors) and -here is the most important factor- the whole goddamn card wasn't like that. It takes the headlong overkill of youth and new ideas to swing the pendulum and steal the influence away from the tenured lumbering oldsters of the era who have not updated a style for more modern times. Will that dessert-for-breakfast lead later promoters to serve nothing but sugar (excitement) and providing not real nutrition (emotion, stories)? Well, of course, and there is a small audience for that too, but the the resulting sugar crash made a lot of folks appreciate the other aspects of thee Craft of Rasslin.

Moral: eat balanced meals, kids, maybe not every meal but certainly on a day-to-day basis. Moderation tempered with indulgence, I say.

- RAF

[thee Reverend Axl Future]

44 minutes ago, Matt D said:

It’s the “rate of work,” John. I get that it was a push back against 70-early 80s minimalism, laziness, and aging main eventers, but it’s right in the name. It has nothing to do with storytelling and it never did.

Workrate is an aspect of the match, a means to an end, and ideally in service to the story. Spotfests are silly but can be enjoyed, just as a a smart worker can make a headlock-only match fun or a passionless display of holds and counterholds emotional, or even a storyline-driven "match" with no moves at all compelling. An ideal card has it all even if a promotion emphasizes some parts over others. Part of the strangeness is the viewing of these matches on tape, spliced and sometimes diced, in stead as part of a whole, on the cold medium of video instead of hot/live.

- RAF

[Technico Support]

34 minutes ago, Matt D said:

It doesn’t have to be extremes, John. It’s not either TM vs DK or Dory Funk. The joy of wrestling is in value, of getting the most out of as little as possible, or at the very least getting as much as possible out of everything. If Dory couldn’t do that consistently then he’s no better than anyone who can’t do that now. But lots of wrestlers could do that brilliantly in the 70s. We have the footage to prove it. Nothing has damaged the overall quality of wrestling more than the idea that workrate is the most important metric, except for maybe the death of stakes. It’s grear when someone can both work hard and work smart, but in the end, working smart is actually performing abd understanding human behavior and working hard is just doing a lot of stuff with great effort.

So the only valid form of pro wrestling is that in which the workers are getting the most reaction out of the least amount of effort?  Is there an acceptable ratio written down someplace?  I'm more in line with @thee Reverend Axl Future.  Maybe sometimes, this "efficient ratio" style is fun to watch, and sometimes I just want to see some guys go balls to the wall.  Who cares?

Wrestling is a continuum with plenty of middle ground between "50s style wrestling with old guys rolling around in their drawers doing nothing" and "bad workers doing painful stuff to each other that doesn't even look good."

[Guest Edwin]

Or maybe we can just enjoy pro-wrestling without having to dissect every single instance of a match?

Also, beautifully put @thee Reverend Axl Future.

[OSJ]

The RAF is a wise man, one of the main things that gets lost in these discussions is that we are watching these matches in a vacuum as opposed to seeing them as part of an overall card. As an editor and writer I liken it a lot to the criticism Seabury Quinn gets these days for his Jules de Grandin stories in Weird Tales, yes, they are formulaic as hell, the worst thing I can imagine doing is reading a whole book of them at once. However, mixed in with a Lovecraft yarn, a Robert E. Howard Conan or Solomon Kane tale, and Edmond Hamilton space story, etc. they become very enjoyable. It's a matter of the variety of the entire thing. Same is true in wrestling.

[Matt D]

22 minutes ago, thee Reverend Axl Future said:

 

 "The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom." - William Blake

You are both correct, of course. TM/DK was a revelation, a distillation of the most exciting parts of a match concentrated into a sugar-rush, like the freedom of having an ice cream sundae for breakfast. There was was, in hindsight, a sacrifice of story-telling and pacing, but the context was ideal: that time, place, participants and type of match (New Japan Juniors) and -here is the most important factor- the whole goddamn card wasn't like that. It takes the headlong overkill of youth and new ideas to swing the pendulum and steal the influence away from the tenured lumbering oldsters of the time who have not updated a style for more modern times. Will that dessert-for-breakfast lead later promoters to serve nothing but sugar (excitement) and providing not real nutrition (emotion, stories)? Well, of course, and there is a small audience for that too, but the the resulting sugar crash made a lot of folks appreciate the other aspects of thee Craft of Rasslin.

Moral: eat balanced meals, kids, maybe not every meal but certainly on a day-to-day basis. Moderation tempered with indulgence, I say.

- RAF

There are arguments I could make about things that bug me that won't get much traction. I agree that context needs to be understood. I also agree that it's frustrating that NJPW doesn't put more of the matches on the DVDVR list easily available for people. We do see things out of context, but at the same time, they're generally praised out of context (of their own cards as opposed to a broader historical trend) as well.

I guess the most pertinent argument is that there were other junior matches that happened in the same promotion, at the same time, with some of the same participants, that accomplished much of what DK vs TM were doing, if not all, often time with more coherence and less sloppiness. That there were better examples at the time that just didn't get the same historical traction but that we can look back on now.

17 minutes ago, thee Reverend Axl Future said:

Workrate is an aspect of the match, a means to an end, and ideally in service to the story. Spotfests are silly but can be enjoyed, just as a a smart worker can make a headlock-only match fun or a passionless display of holds and counterholds emotional, or even a storyline-driven "match" with no moves at all compelling. An ideal card has it all even if a promotion emphasizes some parts over others. Part of the starangeness is the viewing of these matches on tape, splaced and sometimes diced, in stead as part of a whole, on the cold medium of video instead of hot/live.

- RAF

Again, let's go back to the Citizen Kane argument. Or the idea of Van Gogh vs someone guy of middling quality who created portraits for patrons. The former wasn't appreciated at the time. The latter absolutely accomplished what he set out to do and pleased his audience and popped the rich family he made look good. We don't give more credence historically to the latter, even though he was far successful and considered far more successful in his time. What we have is footage. We can judge one match against another, both in its own era and across eras. Should we try to figure out historical context? Absolutely. Should we be a slave to only judging matches for the crowds that they were in front of? Absolutely not. That's nuts and wouldn't apply to any other art form being criticized. We have footage. We judge footage. It has its flaws, but it's what we got. 

10 minutes ago, Edwin said:

Or maybe we can just enjoy pro-wrestling without having to dissect every single instance of a match?

Also, beautifully put @thee Reverend Axl Future.

That is how I enjoy wrestling. If I didn't have fun, I wouldn't be here. I don't know about the rest of you guys, but I have a blast. I'm up for four days of arguing about this. Who's with me?

[Pete]

This last page in my head:

[Matt D]

I also have thoughts about 80s Bruiser Brody. 

[odessasteps]

5 hours ago, Matt D said:

Sure, I guess. Or you can decide it had a wildly negative influence on wrestling. 

So, they are the Frank Miller & Alan Moore of wrestling? 

[RIPPA]

I have thoughts about Holden Albright attempting a moonsault

 

[supremebve]

9 minutes ago, RIPPA said:

I have thoughts about Holden Albright attempting a moonsault

 

Just replace "Shot" with "Moonsault"

[Log]

I’m dead. 

[Peck]

13 minutes ago, Log said:

I’m dead. 

Not pictured: Sasha ecstatic that this will forever replace her “I’m Jobbing Sulky-Face” meme.

[Wyld Samurai]

... we are supposed to hate TM vs DK now?

I hate the internet.

[Matt D]

http://wrestlingclassics.com/.ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=118650;p=1

Maybe for ten years since people actually revisited the footage for the 80s project instead of just accepting dogma?

Pogo Pete posts goofy gifs, truly the Peter Pan of the Playas (and more power to him). Pete F, on the other hand, buys awesome uncovered 80s and 90s AJPW and NJPW handhelds off of Japanese auction sites and shares them with the community (Be like Pete F).

He also made a pretty strong case back in 2011 in the thread I linked above.

He’s mostly contested by people who stomp and say they hate the internet.

[Wyld Samurai]

Something tells me 20 years from now that Dean y Rey is going to be shat on because of some revisionist history conducted by people that weren't there at the time. 

[Beech27]

Replying to a years old thread on another message board with text in a gifs thread is... well, it’s something, but I’m going to do it anyway. 

The problem with the “consider the context” argument as a debate ender is twofold: 1) As others have said, I don’t think it’s as good a series as contemporaneous juniors matches; 2) More importantly, “state of the art” as a sales tactic rarely ages well, because there will always be newer, faster, higher, etc. Story is (mostly) ageless (though sometimes the medium changes and you need to translate), on the other hand. So the very things that made the series revolutionary at the time—and inarguably influential—I think make it hold up less well compared to other work from the same era and current athletic showcases.

I don’t think this is revisionist history—or rather, I think history is always necessarily revisionist. I can only write this post from 2018, with whatever perspective I may have. 

[FireThunder]

Who is your favorite wrestler and why is it Pete Dunne?

 

[OSJ]

6 minutes ago, FireThunder said:

Who is your favorite wrestler and why is it Pete Dunne?

 

Word.

["Stone Cold" Steve Austin]

[Guest Edwin]

5 hours ago, Log said:

I’m dead.