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AUG 2020 WRESTLING DISCUSSION


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1 minute ago, Craig H said:

OSJ, every time you think you're being funny, it's only you who thinks that.

Your ideas intrigue me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

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20 minutes ago, Zakk_Sabbath said:

Agree with you entirely Tech, except for one thing: the "white kid from the Midwest" part. Cleveland is like 60% black!! Dude should definitely know better. But overall, you hit the nail on the head. 

That's the thing, he's not from Cleveland, he's from Parma, which is 93% white.  He's from one of those places that exists so white people can say they are from a major city without actually ever having to deal with any black people.  It's like white people who claim to be from Baltimore, odds are those people don't live in Baltimore.  They probably never even go to Baltimore.  This country is extremely segregated.  The president is campaigning on saving the suburbs, which is basically an argument for continued segregation.  Did anyone read the Washington Post article about Ferguson that came out about a year after the Mike Brown riots?  It was basically a list of bullshit charges that the Ferguson Police Department filed against black people in Ferguson.  I remember that they arrested a dude named Michael for identifying himself as Mike.  Ferguson was pretty much the blackest part of St. Louis and it was clear that the entire police department was exploiting the citizens of Ferguson for profit.  Here's the thing, in comparison to dangerous ass St. Louis, Ferguson was a pretty nice place to live.  Ferguson used to be the place where black people who made enough money to get out of St. Louis wanted to move, and they were rewarded with a police department that arrested them for bullshit and made their lives miserable.  A large percentage of the problems that are going on in this country are based on the fact that it is always going to be an "us against them" situation because the country is so segregated.

 

4 minutes ago, Eoae said:

Is the Miz talk based on his Talking Smack segment with Big E?  Or is there more to it?  I haven't seen Talking Smack, so I'm not sure exactly what was said, but my impression was that Miz was at least partly in character.

Basing opinions on the Miz of off the Real World seems kinda flimsy.  It's debatable how "real" those shows are once the editing process is completed.  And Miz was barely 20 when he was on MTV.  I'm hoping he's not the same person now that he was in 2001.

I'm not defending Miz, per se.  I don't know him, so I'm in no position to know what he's like or how he feels about anything.

The best thing I can say about Miz is that by the end of his Real World season, he seemed to have learned a lot and all of his castmates seemed to legitimately like him.  He could have very easily just been a dick and stuck to his bullshit ass guns.

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3 minutes ago, Matt D said:

I'd like to use this wonderful opportunity to once again bring up my recently derived theory that finishing stretches should be closer to 1/6th of a match than 1/3rd. It just seems like the proper time and place.

I'd like to use this opportunity to say, there should be no hard and fast rules about what makes good wrestling.  Some matches would be better served with a closing 6th, some a closing 3rd, and others a flash finish.  Trying to establish rules would actively make wrestling worse.

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I was talking to a friend about Retribution and how it probably won't go anywhere, but I mentioned that it might be somewhat cool if when it comes time for someone to unmask themselves that the person turns out to be Wade Barrett who is the mouthpiece and leader of the group.

And then today I see that he'll be doing a one night gig announcing on NXT.

Just a funny coincidence, that's all. I'd rather see Nigel back, but I'm guessing that's not happening for awhile.

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7 minutes ago, Matt D said:

Best practices, not rules. There are exceptions certainly, but a finishing stretch should be paying off the story of the match. It's a third act. 

I disagree with this too.  I honestly think the thing that turned me off of modern wrestling is that everything felt paint by numbers.  Everyone kind of became good to great technical wrestlers, with 4 signature moves, a dive, a top rope move, and a finisher.  Every match is pretty good, but all of them feel the same.  Give me a show where every match is different, even if some of them aren't very good.  Give me a wild brawl, give me a spotfest, give me a couple guys just wrenching on holds, and then the epic main event will feel epic.  But telling people that these are the best practices are just going to give us more of the same, when what I actually want is variety.  

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1 minute ago, supremebve said:

I disagree with this too.  I honestly think the thing that turned me off of modern wrestling is that everything felt paint by numbers.  Everyone kind of became good to great technical wrestlers, with 4 signature moves, a dive, a top rope move, and a finisher.  Every match is pretty good, but all of them feel the same.  Give me a show where every match is different, even if some of them aren't very good.  Give me a wild brawl, give me a spotfest, give me a couple guys just wrenching on holds, and then the epic main event will feel epic.  But telling people that these are the best practices are just going to give us more of the same, when what I actually want is variety.  

Agreed. The less formulaic pro wrestling is, the better it is. 

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8 minutes ago, supremebve said:

I disagree with this too.  I honestly think the thing that turned me off of modern wrestling is that everything felt paint by numbers.  Everyone kind of became good to great technical wrestlers, with 4 signature moves, a dive, a top rope move, and a finisher.  Every match is pretty good, but all of them feel the same.  Give me a show where every match is different, even if some of them aren't very good.  Give me a wild brawl, give me a spotfest, give me a couple guys just wrenching on holds, and then the epic main event will feel epic.  But telling people that these are the best practices are just going to give us more of the same, when what I actually want is variety.  

Formulae work in wrestling. The problem is that modern wrestling is full of bad formulae. This is why I said it in % terms instead of time terms "No longer than ten minutes." You can have a southern tag with heavy heat and comeback and a back and forth brawl and a dozen different narratives, and I still think the rule is clear. You can't do a finishing stretch that relatively long within a match without either throwing out elements that came before or introducing brand new elements without foreshadowing. 

Now, if you personally don't care about storytelling within matches and want at least a few to entertain you for the sake of being purely entertaining, that's your prerogative as a fan, certainly. 

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The thing with formulaic matches is, the biggest promotion in the world is also the most formulaic, and so a generation of wrestling fans (and wrestlers) have grown up thinking that's the best and only way to do it. Shame.

So apparently Wikipedia has reinstated finishing moves to Wrestler's pages. But they're in italics now, because they're ironic or some shit.

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1 minute ago, Matt D said:

Formulae work in wrestling. The problem is that modern wrestling is full of bad formulae. This is why I said it in % terms instead of time terms "No longer than ten minutes." You can have a southern tag with heavy heat and comeback and a back and forth brawl and a dozen different narratives, and I still think the rule is clear. You can't do a finishing stretch that relatively long within a match without either throwing out elements that came before or introducing brand new elements without foreshadowing. 

Now, if you personally don't care about storytelling within matches and want at least a few to entertain you for the sake of being purely entertaining, that's your prerogative as a fan, certainly. 

I care about storytelling, but not everything needs to be the Odyssey.  Sure, the Odyssey is a great story, but sometimes I want a big dumb crime thriller.  Other times I want to read about a heist where I have to pay attention to every little detail or I won't understand how the ending makes sense.  I might want to read a mystery with a huge twist that I never saw coming.  All of these stories are worth telling, but you can't really use the same set of guidelines to tell these stories effectively.  The finishing sequence for every match needs to reflect the story that each match is trying to tell.  Wrestling is desperately in need of new ideas, and giving a set of best practices/guidelines/rules is the last thing we need.

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4 minutes ago, supremebve said:

I care about storytelling, but not everything needs to be the Odyssey.  Sure, the Odyssey is a great story, but sometimes I want a big dumb crime thriller.  Other times I want to read about a heist where I have to pay attention to every little detail or I won't understand how the ending makes sense.  I might want to read a mystery with a huge twist that I never saw coming.  All of these stories are worth telling, but you can't really use the same set of guidelines to tell these stories effectively.  The finishing sequence for every match needs to reflect the story that each match is trying to tell.  Wrestling is desperately in need of new ideas, and giving a set of best practices/guidelines/rules is the last thing we need.

This notion is much more about wrestling criticism when reviewing matches over the last 40 years than what I want Orton and Keith Lee to do on Sunday, certainly. Less about how I want people to wrestle tomorrow than how I think we ought to look at what they did yesterday. I don't necessarily care about what they do tomorrow. I'm probably not going to watch it. 

EDIT: Plus, your big dumb crime thriller probably follows a three-act structure pretty well and doesn't introduce a ton of new characters in the last 40 pages.

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12 minutes ago, AxB said:

Mainstream Hollywood movies are even more over-produced and homogenised than mainstream wrestling, though.

I was just thinking about how fucked it is that most scripts are the same page length and you can find the same plot devices on the same page regardless of movie or genre. I barely watch any new movies nowadays despite directors being technically very good and actors being very good. It's just so safe and boring. Wrestling in many ways is the same but there is at least some variety. I want more divergent thinking in wrestling and art as a whole.

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6 minutes ago, Jiji said:

I was just thinking about how fucked it is that most scripts are the same page length and you can find the same plot devices on the same page regardless of movie or genre. I barely watch any new movies nowadays despite directors being technically very good and actors being very good. It's just so safe and boring. Wrestling in many ways is the same but there is at least some variety. I want more divergent thinking in wrestling and art as a whole.

You guys are preaching to the choir, I'm of the opinion that creativity dies as soon as an artform becomes a capitalistic venture.  As soon as profit becomes the main consideration, it's really hard to take the kind of risks that it requires to be truly creative.  

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3 hours ago, supremebve said:

That's the thing, he's not from Cleveland, he's from Parma, which is 93% white.  He's from one of those places that exists so white people can say they are from a major city without actually ever having to deal with any black people.  It's like white people who claim to be from Baltimore, odds are those people don't live in Baltimore.  They probably never even go to Baltimore.  

No significant addition to this other than being shocked my current residence of Parma, Ohio, would ever be mentioned on DVDVR. 

Yeah, he was very 'middle class' from the school he went to all the way the specific area of town he grew up in, and, while not entirely horrible or great itself, Parma is surrounded by some of the nicest communities in Northeast Ohio, all of which are know to be somewhat intolerant, in general. Parma is diverse, but in the "Is your family originally from Poland, or are they from the Ukraine?" sort of way. 

 

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I like Jushin Liger. Is that good enough?

Absolutely a top-fifteen guy at worst.

When it comes to people who spent most of their careers in Japan, I much prefer the juniors and the women (who I have been watching a lot of lately) over the bigger-name heavyweights. 

On that note, I don't enjoy Stan Hansen. I'm a philistine.

EDIT: Actually, the mostly-Japanese-based wrestlers that I enjoy are almost fully informed by my young WCW fandom. Liger and Muta are two of my personal favorites. Even slow, crippled Muta has king-sized aura. I'd watch him slowly limp around the ring and then spit mist in someone's face any fucking day. 

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I wouldn't say art dies the moment it's made for money but it's certainly a slippery slope as soon as it becomes a consideration. There will always be formulas in art and sometimes those formulas can be taken to impressive heights, however it's great art that defies those formulas. It's a tough balance to give the fans something they want (i.e. something they expect) and keeping them engaged with new twists.

And let Smelly like and dislike whoever! I'm big into Hernandez now, so sue me.

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I never said anything about Kawada. That was @OSJ who said that, but he's old and senile now, so he's probably just got me confused with someone else. I'm fine with Kawada. Fine with Misawa, but find his shit hard to watch based on how he died. 

My favorite Japanese-based wrestlers are probably Liger, Muta, Bull Nakano, Kana/Asuka, Lioness Asuka, and Shinsuke Nakamura off the top of my head. Oh, and Ishii.

And Dr. Death, I guess, if you count him because I think MVC is an amazing tag team, but he spent too much time in the U.S. for me to think of him as Japanese-based. Same with Vader. Otherwise, they'd be on that list, too.

I just don't get Stan Hansen. I wouldn't put him on a list of great brawlers, and I am the only one who wouldn't. I think I was entirely biased by seeing his WCW run in 1991 or whatever as a kid and hating it, and I wonder if that's clouded my opinions of his work ever since then,

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Interesting discussion on narrative structure in Match Theory. I’ll try and piece my thoughts on it and ramble later. 

1 hour ago, Godfrey said:

I wouldn't say art dies the moment it's made for money but it's certainly a slippery slope as soon as it becomes a consideration. There will always be formulas in art and sometimes those formulas can be taken to impressive heights, however it's great art that defies those formulas. It's a tough balance to give the fans something they want (i.e. something they expect) and keeping them engaged with new twists.

Interesting points here and something to consider.

I tend to look at the merits of money in art to come down to what the purpose of the art is. Is it to entertain? Is it to provoke thought or emotion? Is it’s goal for you to buy more? Art has been financed for a long time now. Even the Renaissance Painters were financed by either the Catholic Church or a wealth family wanting portraits. Slippery slope indeed. As for the great religious paintings, you can either romanticize it as an advertisement/ propaganda for the church or a tribute to God. 

I wrote more but deleted it as my mumbling became less coherent. 

16 hours ago, Casey said:

Ah, wrestling elitism. You love to see it.

@Casey, I bet my favorite wrestlers could beat up your favorite wrestlers.

*sees Bull Nakano*

uh...um... they’re all busy though and I hear my mom calling. 

1 hour ago, Smelly McUgly said:

EDIT: Actually, the mostly-Japanese-based wrestlers that I enjoy are almost fully informed by my young WCW fandom. Liger and Muta are two of my personal favorites. Even slow, crippled Muta has king-sized aura. I'd watch him slowly limp around the ring and then spit mist in someone's face any fucking day. 

I love soaking in some of that King-Sized aura (gonna steal that term). Especially when you have two individuals just radiating importance and all they have to do is a stand-off. It can be over done, but when it hits I get goosebumps.

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50 minutes ago, odessasteps said:

All Smelly has to do now is say he doesn't like Blue Panther, so he can have him DVRVR card revoked. ?

That is reserved for only the gravest of violations, i.e. besmirching Bunkhouse Buck

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