JANUARY 2021 Discussion of Wrestling

[The Natural]

54 minutes ago, Burgundy LaRue said:

Because many of us who talked about WWE regularly were called sheeple who stay on our knees for Vince. And constantly questioned if we know any other wrestling exists. At some point, someone like me had to take a break from the berating.

It's improved based on what I've seen lately, and that's great. But some around here were all in on questioning others' viewing habits and opinions for a while. It's all wresting. And 95% of it is stupid and geeky.

If I've done that, I want to say sorry to you.

[The Natural]

Stone Cold Stunner Sells.

[Burgundy LaRue]

I didn't say that to make anyone feel bad. Rather, just pointing out how this is an open forum for all fans.

I don't think Dynamite is nearly as good as many here. I've enjoyed some of what they've done, and thought some stuff was pretty awful. I may call what I see on my TV stupid. But I wouldn't say that of anyone over a wrestling show. 

And that's the point. There's room to agree and disagree, to have a dialogue. But if we have to validate our opinion by invalidating someone else, it's a problem. Wrestling isn't real life, where being on a certain side shows legitimately bad intentions. 

It's just play fighting. Enjoy what you like, take recommendations to watch something new from your friends, and have a few laughs along the way.

[Log]

3 hours ago, Matt D said:

I'm not going to quote myself, but what I was trying to say at the top of the page and didn't quite get to, is that because of the change in incentive structure, it's not just that pro wrestling has changed or modernized since the mid 80s, or even that it's now a different genre within the medium. It's that it's a different medium.

Do you feel like it has something to do with the focus going from solely making money to being having a good match and hopefully making some money?

[odessasteps]

14 hours ago, zendragon said:

I think Lucha Underground was the best shot wresting promotion in recent memory

Because it was a TV show featuring wrestling and not a wrestling show on TV ? 

[Eivion]

2 hours ago, Technico Support said:

I read the same story the other day but it was said to have happened during the filming of Rocky 3, which sounds right as post-Rocky Stallone at the height of his fame and power dressing down the crew for making fun of a wrestler makes more sense than Paradise Alley Stallone fresh off that porno having the power to give anyone a hard time.

It was Paradise Alley. 

Who knows maybe he had to do again during Rocky III.

[Matt D]

29 minutes ago, Log said:

Do you feel like it has something to do with the focus going from solely making money to being having a good match and hopefully making some money?

There's actually a lot to unpack there. There are maybe three different strands. Also note, I'm most interested in how wrestling matches are worked but the overall presentation and how angles operate are important too.

1. Wrestlers being fans of wrestling who are in it because they are fans as opposed to people mainly trying to make a living.
2. Current wrestlers growing up on post 1990 (or even post-2000) wrestling as opposed to older wrestling.
3. The different incentives re: the fans and what draws.

1. is very similar to things we see in other mediums, be it genre writing or comics or animation or whatever else. Almost every stream of entertainment right now is "Fan fiction" to a degree in a way that it really wasn't in 1980 or whenever.

3 is mainly what I'm focused on however. Let's minimize the idea that people are wrestling for the sake of wrestling or having great matches for the sake of having great matches. In some ways, that'd be pulling wrestling even further away from the medium it once was and into something else. Let's assume that the point of pro wrestling is still to make money and as such, to get fans to spend money on a product.

The way this was done changed over the years from just buying regular tickets to local shows, to buying tickets to more occasional nationally touring shows and merch, to paying for PPVs, to buying DVDs, to signing up for streaming. And that's important and it's also connected to the change, but I think we should be focusing on what drives fans to give up their money now relative to thirty years ago.

In that regard the change is making money by creating heat and stoking emotions vs making money by supplying a stream of qualitatively, socially agreed upon, good matches.

Edited January 8, 2021 by Matt D

[odessasteps]

Paradise Alley was in 78, after Rocky and FIST and before Rocky II. 

[Gordi the recovering AEW f]

@Matt D

It's also now, I strongly believe, about creating a sense of community. I mean, I watch AEW and NJPW at least in part so I can engage in conversation, both IRL and online, with friends who also watch AEW and NJPW. I mean, I still exchange Happy New Year messages with several Osaka Pro fans and wrestlers because they were damned near a second family to me for a few years. I mean, waiting for my friend outside of Osaka Jo Hall and seeing so so many people in Ingobernables gear and making the "round eye" gesture at them and getting smiles and feeling a sense of connection and belonging. I mean singing along to Judas. I mean, being in on the joke with Ebessan or Gentleman Jervis or Orange Cassidy or Yano and sharing that joy with strangers who aren't so much strangers any more because we are sharing an inside joke, which is something friends do. I mean someone talking to me or buying me a drink because I'm wearing my All Japan warm-up jacket. 

You know what I mean.

We are not so much united by our racial or cultural background, which is a thing pro wrestling used to have a symbiotic relationship with. We are not so much united in our desire to see the good guy win and the bad guy lose. We are not caught up in a larger sweeping mainstream cultural movement. We are part of a subculture, enjoying our special thing with like-minded people.

Edited January 8, 2021 by El Gran Gordi

[NikoBaltimore]

I definitely agree with that notion.  It's one thing to see a Bullet Club shirt as there's been plenty of times where I'd see a person wearing it who didn't know or care much about the people behind it.  But then you get somebody at a brewery wearing an LIJ shirt and we're talking New Japan and other things for some time.  Good times can be had for sure.  Heck, the main reason I'm good friends with this one dude is because I wore an ROH shirt to a comedy show.  We got to talking and have been friends for damn near 13 years.

[caley]

On 1/6/2021 at 6:10 PM, Yo-Yo's Roomie said:

I continued watching for many years after I stopped enjoying it, and even then it was only really the shitty business practices/[b]moral bankruptcy[/b] of the company that got me to stop. What kept me doing it for so long was primarily habit, the fact that the WWF was the promotion that got me into wrestling so it always felt like my 'home' promotion, the hope that it would get better, wanting to support the wrestlers I like/d (of which there are still many) and the fact that my real life wrestling fan friends watched so it was something for us to connect over. Oh, and because I hate myself. Can't forget that one.

So I do get the hate watching, I get watching even though you know it's bad. It took me a long time to finally say enough is enough.

That's what finally killed me off. I was actually still moderately enjoying the show, but I got to a point where I just couldn't justify it anymore. The first thing I really noticed was just how much free time I've added to my week. About 2-2.5 hours for Raw (It was basically impossible to watch it live with a TON of fast-forwarding); 2 hours of Smackdown, 1 hour of NXT (In Canada, we just get an abridged version) that suddenly I've got an extra 5-6 hours a week that I have NOT replaced with more wrestling.

16 hours ago, zendragon said:

I think Lucha Underground was the best shot wresting promotion in recent memory

The thing that drove me BANANAS about LU was how rarely they showed replays. You'd get some insane dive over the top, and Matthews and Vampiro would lose their minds over it, and they wouldn't replay it.

[Ultimo Necro]

5 hours ago, El Gran Gordi said:

@Matt D

It's also now, I strongly believe, about creating a sense of community. I mean, I watch AEW and NJPW at least in part so I can engage in conversation, both IRL and online, with friends who also watch AEW and NJPW. I mean, I still exchange Happy New Year messages with several Osaka Pro fans and wrestlers because they were damned near a second family to me for a few years. I mean, waiting for my friend outside of Osaka Jo Hall and seeing so so many people in Ingobernables gear and making the "round eye" gesture at them and getting smiles and feeling a sense of connection and belonging. I mean singing along to Judas. I mean, being in on the joke with Ebessan or Gentleman Jervis or Orange Cassidy or Yano and sharing that joy with strangers who aren't so much strangers any more because we are sharing an inside joke, which is something friends do. I mean someone talking to me or buying me a drink because I'm wearing my All Japan warm-up jacket. 

You know what I mean.

We are not so much united by our racial or cultural background, which is a thing pro wrestling used to have a symbiotic relationship with. We are not so much united in our desire to see the good guy win and the bad guy lose. We are not caught up in a larger sweeping mainstream cultural movement. We are part of a subculture, enjoying our special thing with like-minded people.

This is the DVDVR version of the Eddie Kingston speech on BTE but it really nails the community aspect of wrestling fandom.  Well said!

I had to find a new Barber about 6 months ago. On my first visit to the new place I was wearing a Janela Spring Break shirt.  My new barber saw the shirt and then wanted to chat about nothing other than the 2000-03 Philly Indy scene, old school CZW, Zandig, Ruckus, 3PW and Jersey All Pro, all that kind of stuff that I traded tapes of many years ago.  I had never met the guy before but the kinship was there straight away.

I was, however, very worried that the dude cutting my hair with clippers, had just spent way too long talking about the Nick Mondo weedwacker spot. 

[SirSmUgly]

I still think that wrestling really does operate on making money and stoking emotions, though, and that the major companies in the U.S. don't always realize that. You look at the Daniel Bryan push, and that was as much about Bryan being a millennial who was being blocked from his opportunity by Boomers and old Gen-Xers who wouldn't move out of the way and give him that opportunity as anything. That it was both storyline about this and meta re: the way the company works doesn't change that those fans ultimately didn't get behind Bryan to that extent because he's a top-five wrestler all time or whatever, but because the character and the person behind the character was living out a direct societal struggle that a lot of their audience identified with.

The same is true of Sasha and Bayley in NXT. That feud was hot precisely because of the broad personalities being portrayed. The characters and story were founded in human emotions and in basic archetypes of the same type you'd see on an episode of DeGrassi. You have your friendly, naïve girl who gets picked on and underestimated up against the former friend who turned on her and started treating her like shit in order to shield herself from bullying and to project self-confidence that wasn't really there.

I know we talk about the matches attached to those feuds, and we should, but I don't actually think the product that the audience wants is that different, or rather, the narrative and character structure that exists to build hype to the workrate-based matches isn't that different. 

Edited January 9, 2021 by Smelly McUgly

[Matt D]

31 minutes ago, Smelly McUgly said:

I still think that wrestling really does operate on making money and stoking emotions, though, and that the major companies in the U.S. don't always realize that. You look at the Daniel Bryan push, and that was as much about Bryan being a millennial who was being blocked from his opportunity by Boomers and old Gen-Xers who wouldn't move out of the way and give him that opportunity as anything. That it was both storyline about this and meta re: the way the company works doesn't change that those fans ultimately didn't get behind Bryan to that extent because he's a top-five wrestler all time or whatever, but because the character and the person behind the character was living out a direct societal struggle that a lot of their audience identified with.

The same is true of Sasha and Bayley in NXT. That feud was hot precisely because of the broad personalities being portrayed. The characters and story were founded in human emotions and in basic archetypes of the same type you'd see on an episode of DeGrassi. You have your friendly, naïve girl who gets picked on and underestimated up against the former friend who turned on her and started treating her like shit in order to shield herself from bullying and to project self-confidence that wasn't really there.

I know we talk about the matches attached to those feuds, and we should, but I don't actually think the product that the audience wants is that different, or rather, the narrative and character structure that exists to build hype to the workrate-based matches isn't that different. 

With Bryan, the Authority was almost an annoyance. Did anyone really care about Orton as a heel for the sake of Orton? It wasn't even really about Steph and Triple H. It was about Vince and his preconceived notion at what a wrestler could or should be. It was about the fan getting a voice, not helping a babyface defeat a heel for cheering for him but instead trying to force the company to listen to them. Not one of us was thinking "How the hell is Bryan going to beat TWO GUYS at once after he already beat Triple H?!" or "Is he going to beat the shit out of the bad guys?" We were all thinking "Is the company really going to put him over?" It stokes emotions, but the incentives are completely different. It wasn't about watching the Von Erichs getting their hands on the Freebirds or Hulk Hogan finally getting the belt off of Nick Bockwinkel.

[SirSmUgly]

25 minutes ago, Matt D said:

With Bryan, the Authority was almost an annoyance. Did anyone really care about Orton as a heel for the sake of Orton? It wasn't even really about Steph and Triple H. It was about Vince and his preconceived notion at what a wrestler could or should be. It was about the fan getting a voice, not helping a babyface defeat a heel for cheering for him but instead trying to force the company to listen to them. Not one of us was thinking "How the hell is Bryan going to beat TWO GUYS at once after he already beat Triple H?!" or "Is he going to beat the shit out of the bad guys?" We were all thinking "Is the company really going to put him over?" It stokes emotions, but the incentives are completely different. It wasn't about watching the Von Erichs getting their hands on the Freebirds or Hulk Hogan finally getting the belt off of Nick Bockwinkel.

Oh, absolutely. The meta was more important than the storyline, which was based on the meta, after all.

It doesn't change the fact that what made either of them click is Bryan being a millennial that a bunch of boomers and Gen-Xers were seemingly dismissive of. 

[Ziggy]

26 minutes ago, Matt D said:

With Bryan, the Authority was almost an annoyance. Did anyone really care about Orton as a heel for the sake of Orton? It wasn't even really about Steph and Triple H. It was about Vince and his preconceived notion at what a wrestler could or should be. It was about the fan getting a voice, not helping a babyface defeat a heel for cheering for him but instead trying to force the company to listen to them. Not one of us was thinking "How the hell is Bryan going to beat TWO GUYS at once after he already beat Triple H?!" or "Is he going to beat the shit out of the bad guys?" We were all thinking "Is the company really going to put him over?" It stokes emotions, but the incentives are completely different. It wasn't about watching the Von Erichs getting their hands on the Freebirds or Hulk Hogan finally getting the belt off of Nick Bockwinkel.

After they completely ruined the Summer of Punk run with HHH sabotaging him people were completely tired of HHH basically being Vince. They did tease Shawn Michaels being apart of the angle by screwing Bryan out of the title once. At the time I thought it would have been cool if they played off the fact Shawn trained Bryan.

[bobholly138]

On 1/6/2021 at 7:18 PM, odessasteps said:

The Freebirds? Or do The Blackbirds? 

Kanasas Jayhawks?

[bobholly138]

I pretty much gave up on WWE back in 2010 or so. Would still watch the Rumble each year and WM. This year will be the first year in forever I'm not watching Rumble or WM.

 

But for weekly wrestling....

Mondays ROH on FITE

Wednesdays MLW on Youtube and Limitless Wrestling the Road on IWTV.

Saturdays CWFH on either Youtube or Zliving.

Between those 4 shows all ,3 of which are free to watch,I get my weekly wrestling fix.

 

 

[Gordi the recovering AEW f]

9 hours ago, Matt D said:

In that regard the change is making money by creating heat and stoking emotions vs making money by supplying a stream of qualitatively, socially agreed upon, good matches.

I want to write 10,000 words on the role of false connoisseurship and curated list-making in pro wrestling (and elsewhere), but I'll try to be (my version of) succinct.

I love classical music. I got really into it during my seven years living in the Czech Republic where it is absolutely ingrained in the culture. Smetana, Dvořák, and Janáček are among the great, beloved Czech composers, and every Czech person seems to be well aware, and proud, of the connection Mozart felt to the people of Prague.

So, I expressed an interest to some students and got a Dvořák's 9th/Smetana's Má vlast CD from a student, a great CD that was a common souvenir or gift for a foreign friend at that time (and possibly still is). The question then became: Where to go next? There are a bewildering number of classical music CDs, so many composers and compositions and orchestras and conductors and performers.

For me, at least, this was where curated lists started to become very useful. By sheer good luck, while back in Canada on vacation, I stumbled across a copy of The Insiders Guide to Classical Recordings in a used book shop. The writer, Jim Svejda, is funny and opinionated and vastly knowledgeable. I used his book as a guide and bought a ton of Mozart CDs, and a lot of Dvořák, and some Janáček. I loved almost all of it, and understood why he loved the stuff that I didn't care for so much. I started to get a feel for certain conductors and musicians and what made them stand out in a very crowded field. 

Sadly, I went through a years-long stage where I kind of turned my nose up at anything that wasn't specifically mentioned in his book. That was insane. He specifically advises against doing that. I think it's all but unavoidable, though. It's a stage a lot of us have to go through when developing our own tastes. 

For me, that is what false connoisseurship means. 

But, I eventually took the training wheels off. I could buy records by musicians and composers that I had learned about from Svejda, even if he hadn't recommended those particular records. And, organically, it grew from there.  

I wouldn't go so far as to call myself a true connoisseur, but i have developed my own sense of what I love about Classical Music and it has made my life richer and more enjoyable and has played a big role in creating many great friendships and one wonderful marriage. I don't know if I ever would have arrived here without the help of a curated list, like Svejda's book or the many other books and websites I've devoured over the years.

I could tell a much longer version of that story, and I could tell similar stories about wine, Japanese sake, craft beer, action movies, 20th Century French art, post-bop jazz, RPGs... Some of those stories would be more about finding a flesh and blood mentor to guide me than about finding a book or whatever. 

But the point is that, I think for a ton of people, curated lists and false connoisseurship are incredibly useful and perhaps necessary stages in developing a sense of what we personally love about our special thing(s). Those lists can function like keys to allow us insight into a community we'd like to be a part of (rather than apart from).  

And the internet makes it so easy now to find both curated lists and to find a community to try and join. 

I feel lucky that my curated pro wrestling list leaned more toward DVDVR issue #100 rather than, say, Meltzer's ***** match list. I think that helped me to discover some pretty interesting corners of the pro wrestling world. It may have been Scott Keith, of all possible people, who guided me toward DVDVR back in the day. I'm pretty sure it was playing Extreme Warfare Revenge or a similar booking game that guided me toward Scott Keith. And so it goes.

I think that anyone who has participated in a GWE or GME type of project will tell you that trying to curate a list is a great way to expand and refine your own tastes.

And the truly great thing about hobbies/obsessions like jazz, wine, or pro wrestling is that once we graduate from false connoisseurship into having our own ideas, we discover that our hobbies/obsessions are virtually endless, that we can go our entire lives without experiencing everything and there will always be more to discover (e.g. the fine work being done w/r/t French Catch these days).

 

 

Edited January 9, 2021 by El Gran Gordi

[Ace]

12 hours ago, The Natural said:

Loved Molly Holly since I first saw her as a 14 year old in WCW (1999) as Miss Madness/Mona. Good knowing that she's a sweetheart as a person outside of wrestling. Molly Holly for the WWE Hall of Fame 2021. Molly should be in already as should Christian and Cyndi Lauper. So wrong.

I've told this story before; but back when I worked for UPW (while it was WWE developmental), they sent Molly here to wrestle Victoria before she got called up. After the show, she went and helped take down the ring. Even the UPW wrestlers didn't take down the ring.

 

[Matt D]

13 minutes ago, El Gran Gordi said:

Sadly, I went through a years-long stage where I kind of turned my nose up at anything that wasn't specifically mentioned in his book. That was insane. He specifically advises against doing that. I think it's all but unavoidable, though. It's a stage a lot of us have to go through when developing our own tastes. 

For me, that is what false connoisseurship means. 

 

Two points:

First, I'm not trying to make the argument that wrestling in 1985 is better than in 2020. I have my biases of course, but that's not the point. I'm trying to express that the medium is completely different. That because of the changes (chemical instead of physical), most especially in how money is made and how that drives the product(framistan not needed), they're actually two different things in a way that something like MLB games between those two years aren't.

Ok, that out of the way. I'll make this quick. I got out of wrestling after Benoit, for family reasons (I moved in with my wife to be and my stepson to be the same month Benoit died) as much as that, but because that too. I got back into it in 09 and I went back off the beaten trail. I just started picking comfort food but watching everything, not just the hyped/classic matches. I watched TV. I watched house shows. I watched PPVs and specials, but all the matches. I won't go in depth about what I learned, but I didn't know what i didn't know. And I learned, through watching it all, to appreciate so much more than I knew was there to appreciate. I'm not saying I'm a sage or anything now, but i was a blind man touching an elephant then. Maybe now i can smell it and hear it too; who knows?

That's not to say lists and projects aren't great, they are. But it should be the starting point, not the end point.

[zendragon]

7 hours ago, caley said:

 

The thing that drove me BANANAS about LU was how rarely they showed replays. You'd get some insane dive over the top, and Matthews and Vampiro would lose their minds over it, and they wouldn't replay it.

I totally agree on that. At least on Tubi I can rewind the show. I also feel that the reason the show looked so good was that they had experienced TV people shooting/directing it.

[Gordi the recovering AEW f]

8 minutes ago, Matt D said:

 

That's not to say lists and projects aren't great, they are. But it should be the starting point, not the end point.

That is exactly what I am saying: Relying on lists is a stage a lot of us have to go through to get to the point where we understand our own tastes.

I feel like you think we are in disagreement here, but I don't believe we are.

Edit: Or maybe you think I'm accusing you of being a false connoisseur? That is absolutely not my intention. It's also not the case. You, my friend, are a certified pro wrestling taste-maker in my opinion. 

I also think that false connoisseurship is just a stage, it's neutral (hopefully moving toward positive) to me rather than negative. So even if I think someone is in that stage, it's an observation rather than an accusation. Most of us have been there.

Edited January 9, 2021 by El Gran Gordi

[Matt D]

5 minutes ago, El Gran Gordi said:

That is exactly what I am saying: Relying on lists is a stage a lot of us have to go through to get to the point where we understand our own tastes.

I feel like you think we are in disagreement here, but I don't believe we are.

No, we're good. Or at least, we're selectively good and passing like ships in the night elsewhere.

There is a part where I go back and get a tad hostile for people who underappreciated Demolition or refuse to watch the 5 minutes at the start of every John Studd match that are awesome before you get into the 15 that aren't and realize that there's something amazing to be found there or miss the beauty of the attitudes and character portrayals in lucha because all they care about are the armdrags and the dives and that can't possibly believe that Big Bossman has a better portfolio of matches in WWF than Dibiase does, actually, even if Dibiase was a "ring general" or that won't go on the Buddy Rose journey with me where you have to watch him week to week instead of just going for the big matches to see how he worked the same arena crowd against a range of opponents and.. I could go on, but that's not the point here. Because we're not going there. I'm lucky, very lucky, that I learned to see what I have and can enjoy what I can, and I'm always glad when someone else figures it out or helps me figure out something else I hadn't realized or encountered previously. Five years ago, I was quicker to bloody my internet knuckles with arguments like the above. The kids coming up aren't as entrapped in the same canonical quagmire and it makes things both easier and harder.

But on the points we're engaging on? We're definitely good and saying similar things. I was trying to support if anything.

[Gordi the recovering AEW f]

1 hour ago, Matt D said:

I go back and get a tad hostile ...

I get like that with people who insist on buying and drinking only the most expensive sake. The best wines are often (but not always) more expensive, but with sake higher price means more refined rice was used, which often makes for a less tasty and/or aromatic sake. The most delicious sakes are often very reasonably priced. It can get me all riled up when people refuse to consider that.

So it's totally off topic but all I'm trying to say is I get where you are coming from. 

It is a special kind of delightful, though, when someone does listen and you can share the joy you find in Kaze no Mori combining fruity with dry or Big John Studd combining giant with chickenshit.

Edited January 9, 2021 by El Gran Gordi