AUG 2020 WRESTLING DISCUSSION

[ohtani's jacket]

AJPW is the only place where Hansen could have remained great. He would have petered out in any other promotion. He deserves credit for adapting to Baba's new wrestling philosophies, though. 

[SirSmUgly]

39 minutes ago, OSJ said:

Great list despite your snarky comment. If you are going by 1991 Stan Hansen, you've missed a LOT of great stuff. By the time he came back for an abortive run in WCW, he was far past his prime.

It's just jokes, bruh. 

Edited August 26, 2020 by Smelly McUgly

[Kang]

1 hour ago, L_W_P said:

InB4 Goldberg wins the title from the Fiend so that Vince can finally run the Goldberg v Reigns match he wanted at Mania.

Sounds good. 

[Casey]

8 hours ago, OSJ said:

Oh, settle the fuck down. I was being funny, sorry it flew over that pointed object that you call a head.

Okay boomer.

[Jiji]

OMFG.

[Dolfan in NYC]

9 hours ago, OSJ said:

Oh, settle the fuck down. I was being funny, sorry it flew over that pointed object that you call a head.

See you in two days.  

[RRR]

53 minutes ago, Casey said:

Okay boomer.

Whoa whoa we don’t accept this kind of hip speak around here PAL. 

[AxB]

How WWE investigates when their Independent Contractors are accused of criminal activity: Ask them if they did it. NO WAY anyone who was actually guilty would deny it and claim to be innocent.

Jack Gallagher must be kicking himself.

ALSO: Bar Wrestling has announced that they're uploading their entire video archive to YouTube starting Sep 1st. It should be noted that Bar Wrestling is owned and has always been owned by (accused) serial rapist Joey Ryan, and that therefore any YT ad revenue from these shows and matches will be going straight in his pockets. Can we adopt a 'No Bar Wrestling videos' policy for the various matches threads? @RIPPA

Edited August 27, 2020 by AxB

[Eivion]

1 hour ago, Jiji said:

OMFG.

I knew this would happen the second Dream came back. The fact that its to NXT and not Raw that makes me think even more that this is on HHH more than anyone else. He needs to give up/give in already and pull both off of NXT. Supposedly even the roster are pissed about Dream. I imagine it will be the same with Theory.

Edited August 27, 2020 by Eivion

[thee Reverend Axl Future]

8 hours ago, supremebve said:

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.  

Is wrestling art(form)? Debatable, but there is an art to doing it well (as in craft). It is, and always has been, a capitalist venture. Profit was always the motive. It's carny. Is wrestling that doesn't make money still pro wrestling? I have heard oldtimers argue about this. Part of the fascination of rassling for me is this frisson between the formulaic profit-driven business and the beauty & elegance that can be created therein. You have to get the people to buy the tickets, and you do this by giving them what they want and what they expect, as well as by shocking and surprising them. Innovation sometimes, balanced with creativity and tradition, y'all. There has to be a pay-off, and a new hook, to put asses in seats.

"Such a precise finality demands that wrestling should be exactly what the public expects of it. Wrestlers, who are very experienced, know perfectly how to direct the spontaneous episodes of the fight so as to make them conform to the image which the public has of the great legendary themes of its mythology. A wrestler can irritate or disgust, he never disappoints, for he always accomplishes completely, by a progressive solidification of signs, what the public expects of him." - my main bonhomme Roland Barthes

- RAF

[Death From Above]

2 hours ago, AxB said:

How WWE investigates when their Independent Contractors are accused of criminal activity: Ask them if they did it. NO WAY anyone who was actually guilty would deny it and claim to be innocent.

Jack Gallagher must be kicking himself.

ALSO: Bar Wrestling has announced that they're uploading their entire video archive to YouTube starting Sep 1st. It should be noted that Bar Wrestling is owned and has always been owned by (accused) serial rapist Joey Ryan, and that therefore any YT ad revenue from these shows and matches will be going straight in his pockets. Can we adopt a 'No Bar Wrestling videos' policy for the various matches threads? @RIPPA

I'll certainly do my best to avoid any of that, though honestly from me that's probably a token gesture because "Joey Ryan is involved in this" seems pretty incongruent with why I am watching wrestling anyway, even if he wasn't complete scum in day to day life.

[The Natural]

2020 has fucking sucked big time with the coronavirus pandemic. One of the few good things from it, some of the best wrestling documentaries of all time. Dark Side of the Ring's: Benoit Part One and Two. The Final Days of Owen Hart. WWE's Undertaker: The Last Ride and Untold: Bayley and Sasha Take Over Brooklyn. The aforementioned Dark Side of the Ring documentaries are both upsetting and very difficult to watch. Getting chills thinking about them.

Edited August 27, 2020 by The Natural

[supremebve]

7 hours ago, thee Reverend Axl Future said:

Is wrestling art(form)? Debatable, but there is an art to doing it well (as in craft). It is, and always has been, a capitalist venture. Profit was always the motive. It's carny. Is wrestling that doesn't make money still pro wrestling? I have heard oldtimers argue about this. Part of the fascination of rassling for me is this frisson between the formulaic profit-driven business and the beauty & elegance that can be created therein. You have to get the people to buy the tickets, and you do this by giving them what they want and what they expect, as well as by shocking and surprising them. Innovation sometimes, balanced with creativity and tradition, y'all. There has to be a pay-off, and a new hook, to put asses in seats.

"Such a precise finality demands that wrestling should be exactly what the public expects of it. Wrestlers, who are very experienced, know perfectly how to direct the spontaneous episodes of the fight so as to make them conform to the image which the public has of the great legendary themes of its mythology. A wrestler can irritate or disgust, he never disappoints, for he always accomplishes completely, by a progressive solidification of signs, what the public expects of him." - my main bonhomme Roland Barthes

- RAF

I don't think I'd call wrestling art.  I'm not trying to diminish wrestling in any way, but you kind of illustrated why I don't consider it art.  I think that a wrestler could be an artist.  If a wrestler was wrestling matches that are strictly an exercise in creativity, but that generally isn't the case.  Wrestlers are limited by their spot on the show, their opponent, the show they're on, the booking, etc.  I think wrestlers are like musicians that perform in an orchestra that plays nothing but Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, etc.  Sure, they are very talented musicians, but are you an artist if you never create anything of your own?

[AxB]

You do know most famous artists don't actually paint their paintings, right? Like Damien Hirst designs how the painting is going to look, but he gets other people to actually physically apply the paint to the canvas.

[EVA]

I don’t think that really representative of “most” famous artists at all.

Guys getting rich making pop art?  Sure.  But those hucksters have a lot more in common with pro wrestling than Picasso.

Edited August 27, 2020 by EVA

[Technico Support]

Re: creativity and profit.  I think wrestling allows for creativity outside of WWE.  I heard, I think it was TJP, talking about how matches are now laid out meticulously to take into account the cameras, production, etc., down to what spot is done when and how, I mean holy fuck, that's not even professional wrestling anymore.  They might as well quit doing it live and just tape everything in front of a studio audience and do retakes whenever necessary.

Other promotions at least let different people work different styles.  Great point about guys still being limited to their spot on the card, but they can still do what they can within those limits.  

Anyway, this is to say I don't think profit always kills art, but it certainly does a lot of the time. 

I've been thinking about this a lot lately as it relates to music.  As soon as a musician hits a certain level of success, they just become a product to be sold, where the label tells them to stop trying to be creative and just go ahead and keep making more of that thing that sold in the first place.  We see that in wrestling, too.  WCW got great ratings at first with the NWO, so instead of innovating, they just kept riding that horse until it died.  And that's the problem with the "profits over art" mentality.  The greedy people in charge milk the cash cow to death, never learning that things change and the goose can't lay those golden eggs forever.

Anyway, here's a great article I always fall back on regarding the commodification of music.  It reminds me of WWE's approach to matches. 

Edited August 27, 2020 by Technico Support

[supremebve]

9 minutes ago, AxB said:

You do know most famous artists don't actually paint their paintings, right? Like Damien Hirst designs how the painting is going to look, but he gets other people to actually physically apply the paint to the canvas.

I'd probably argue against that being art as well.  I think art is an exercise in creativity.  Once you start mass producing "art" to be sold, or designing things for someone else to paint, or limiting your creative process to appeal to more people you are no longer producing true art.  You can be a painter, or a musician, or a sculptor, and you can create high quality work, but that isn't what I would consider art.  

 

18 minutes ago, Technico Support said:

I've been thinking about this a lot lately as it relates to music.  As soon as a musician hits a certain level of success, they just become a product to be sold, where the label tells them to stop trying to be creative and just go ahead and keep making more of that thing that sold in the first place.  We see that in wrestling, too.  WCW got great ratings at first with the NWO, so instead of innovating, they just kept riding that horse until it died.  And that's the problem with the "profits over art" mentality.  The greedy people in charge milk the cash cow to death, never learning that things change and the goose can't lay those golden eggs forever.

 

I developed my opinion about what I consider art based on being a huge hip-hop fan.  I was thinking about how pretty much every rapper's best work is their first album, which is generally work they created before it became a career.  Then I started thinking about how the best rap music was created between about 1989 and 1998, a period of time where hip-hop was a big enough cultural phenomenon to inspire a bunch of people to try it, but it wasn't exactly something did thinking they'd be multi-millionaires.  After 1998, being a rapper is something that was seen as a lucrative career choice, as much as an artistic endeavor and you can kind of hear it in the music.  There was a podcast about the 2pac/Biggie beef, and one of the main themes that kept coming up is how broke 2pac was at the time.  He was the biggest rap star in the world, but between legal issues and record label bullshit, he never had any money.  A big reason that he was recording so much is that he had bills that he couldn't pay.  I think Me Against the World is by far his best work, but I like his Death Row stuff too.  You know what I don't like?  All the bullshit that came out after he died...like the thousands of mass produced, uninspired songs he wrote trying to get out of debt.  He was not creating that music to express himself artistically, he was trying to make a buck and it isn't any good. 

Another example is Master P.  Did anyone watch the No Limit documentary?  It is very apparent that his motivation to rap was to make as much money as possible.  In the entire 5 part documentary, there is only one moment when it seems like he wrote a song because he heard the beat and was inspired to write something.  I bet you can guess what song it was...here's a hint, it's the No Limit song that holds up the best right now.  Master P was ready to quit rapping, went back to New Orleans to visit family and heard the "Bout it Bout it" beat, wrote the song and it set the world on fire.  Pretty much everything else he put out was pretty much mass produced to make a profit.  He's unapologetic about it.  Rap is something he did as a business venture, he made a whole bunch of songs, and made a whole bunch of money, but he's not an artist.  

[The Natural]

Such a cursed match with injuries and fuckups. Poor Wade Barrett.

Edited August 27, 2020 by The Natural

[Zakk_Sabbath]

Minor Dynamite spoiler:

Excalibur is back! Hell yeah man.

[AxB]

To say all successful musicians are no longer artists is to discount all the very successful ones who chose to neither repeat themselves ad nauseum nor chase trends for popularity, like Dave Bowie or Prince. Or the ones who would love to change styles but aren't talented enough to diversify, like those Oasis lads.

Abs there's also the "You have twenty three years to write your first album and three months to write your second" factor to consider.

[Godfrey]

I would say that some artists (and I include the odd wrestler in here) have moments when they are making true art AND being properly compensated but those moments are few and far between and many who claim to be artists never have one. Music is the easiest analogy, a band can make an amazing, progressive album and it can be a smash hit but very rarely can they do that twice. I think a band like Queen was trying to really push the art form while being a massive touring band, others will disagree. It will ultimately come down to what you consider art and that's maybe the most subjective subject there is.

[supremebve]

Just now, Godfrey said:

I would say that some artists (and I include the odd wrestler in here) have moments when they are making true art AND being properly compensated but those moments are few and far between and many who claim to be artists never have one. Music is the easiest analogy, a band can make an amazing, progressive album and it can be a smash hit but very rarely can they do that twice. I think a band like Queen was trying to really push the art form while being a massive touring band, others will disagree. It will ultimately come down to what you consider art and that's maybe the most subjective subject there is.

I don't think every successful artist ceases to be an artist.  I think every artists who lets the pursuit of profit to overtake the pursuit of manifesting their creativity ceases to be an artist.  It doesn't even have to be a permanent change, there are plenty of artists who put out a couple trash albums to feed the kids only to come back and produce something truly inspired.  My point is art is a creative endeavor not a financial endeavor.  That is not to say that there aren't any good to great financial endeavors, there are plenty, but that's a different conversation.  Creating a factory isn't a useless endeavor, but working in a factory doesn't make you an artist.

[AxB]

Plenty of people think of "Here, my Dear" as their favourite Marvin Gaye album. He made it to pay for his divorce, with all the royalties going to his ex-Wife, hence the title.

[Shartnado]

11 hours ago, thee Reverend Axl Future said:

my main bonhomme Roland Barthes

- RAF

No offense to RAF intended, but I remember doing a paper on pro wrestling in the university back in the late 90's (I think it was on the broader subject of subcultures) and Barthes was indeed pretty much the only academic material available even considering pro wrestling as worthy of any kind of analysis.

Anyway, having just discovered the Internet and all the insider wrestling information, I had a pretty big "South Park "-moment, while pretty much yelling "Stop reading shit into things that aren't there!" at the book, while reading his analysis.

I was like "stop trying to make this relatively simple thing sound like something complicated." But hey, that's probably why I have not much use of my bachelor's degree.

So yeah, he won in the end.

Carry on. ..

[Zakk_Sabbath]

For anyone wondering whether Dynamite will be happening tonight with the protests going on in legit sports, it's being reported by Ian Rappaport that the Jags are practicing today after having a 2 hour meeting so I feel like it's safe to assume the show's going on.