June 2022 Wrestling Discussion

[Shartnado]

1 hour ago, Octopus said:

Who are four CURRENT wrestlers that encapsulates what you enjoy as a fan? Your ~style~ of wrestling fandom derp. Not including your absolute favorite (assuming you have a living GOAT) 

This is not especially hard question, even though one would assume it was.

PAC

Buddy Matthews

Jungle Boy

Brian Cage (granted, I haven't seen anywhere near as much of his stuff as I would have liked).

And the way the question was posed, it lets me leave Bushwhacker Pete Dunne out of the list. Which is just as well, since March of this year.

Edited June 5, 2022 by Shartnado
Grammar

[(BP)]

Chihiro Hashimoto

Danielson 

Kingston 

Jamie Hayter 

Honorable Mentions:

Mr. Punk          Emi 

Darby              Comoroto 

Suzuki             JD Drake 

Hobbs             Toni Storm 

Masha             Arez

[Curt McGirt]

This question made me wonder what Timothy Thatcher is up to recently. Any sightings? 

Here's another one (though I imagine all matches take place in a tent in Mexico and are unfilmed): how about Demus? 

Edited June 5, 2022 by Curt McGirt

[The Comedian]

1 hour ago, Octopus said:

Who are four CURRENT wrestlers that encapsulates what you enjoy as a fan? Your ~style~ of wrestling fandom derp. Not including your absolute favorite (assuming you have a living GOAT) 

Miyu Yamashita

Kento Miyahara

Katsuhiko Nakajima

The Miz

Caught ya off-guard with that last one I bet ...

 

[Octopus]

Not at all, @The Comedian. A good way to round it out! Kicks and character.

[Matt D]

Let me run through this quickly. It could be different tomorrow.

In His 60s: Black Terry. He's 69 and he brings a stubborn realism to everything he does. He's able to make the age play into his matches where you expect him to keel over at any point. He shows a resilience of just driving forward with violence in a way that almost no one else in the world can match, keeping it dramatic without making it ever seem performative or hokey. What you see is what you get. You believe. You can't look away even though you wish you could. And then you come back for more.

In his 50s: Dustin Rhodes. Maybe the best babyface in America, able to work from underneath as well as anyone, and that, in his prime was always amazing because he was bigger than a lot of guys around him but now is just beyond the pale given how small everyone else is. He'll throw in one "modern" spot per match to try to stay hip, but his matches are never built around them.

In his 40s: CM Punk. I've written about it a couple of places, but it really feels like he's trying to reclaim certain elements of wrestling that have really been lost. That could be overt, like the body slam, or more covert in as how he tries to build to more simple spots that still mean as much as possible. He spent a lot of his youth being part of a revolution that deconstructed pro wrestling, showing that you didn't need to be a giant or even really an athlete to be a pro wrestler and now that the balance has tipped too far in the other direction, he's walking into a world created not by himself, but by those who were inspired by him and followed him, and is trying to reconstruct instead of deconstruct or at least recontextualize and to create something better than where he had previously left it.

In their 30s: FTR. I'd say they do something slightly different, which is marry a lot of what has always traditionally worked, elements of the southern tag that will always move a crowd and will always create drama, and then turn it up for the finishing stretch, after everything has already been earned, by overlaying the modern sensibilities. It allows them to create things like the Briscoes and Bucks matches where things get turned up to 11 but after they already worked through 1-10 and the finishing stretch never feels overbloated relative to the part the match which followed the rules and utilized them and the traditional norms of pro wrestling to build and build and build so that when things do boil over, it has impact and resonates and isn't just wowing for the sake of wowing.

In his 20s: Daniel Garcia. Garcia's a student of the game. He watches all sorts of wrestling. And he keeps it grounded in real emotion. You can feel him bursting with anticipation and energy in his matches as he charges headlong and then reacts accordingly. Then after his matches, he'll go online and give kayfabe reasons for his mistakes and why he lost. That level of thought, combined with his technique, and his aggression, and his hunger, is going to make him great and keep him great. There's never a moment where he's not in the match, where he's not living what's going on. He hasn't figured it all out yet but he's constantly examining and reexamining it.

[Octopus]

That’s 5, Matt. You have to kill off one age group.

[Matt D]

41 minutes ago, Octopus said:

That’s 5, Matt. You have to kill off one age group.

You can tell Black Terry.

[Octopus]

Just now, Matt D said:

You can tell Black Terry.

So 5 it is, sir.

[The Natural]

3 hours ago, Octopus said:

Who are four CURRENT wrestlers that encapsulates what you enjoy as a fan? Your ~style~ of wrestling fandom derp. Not including your absolute favorite (assuming you have a living GOAT) 

Bryan Danielson #1, the living GOAT then Kazuchika Okada, Hiroshi Tanahashi and #FTR. Honourable mention to Eddie Kingston.

Edited June 5, 2022 by The Natural

[The Natural]

One for @Brian Fowler and fellow fans of Mark Henry. 2011 Hall of Pain Mark Henry was the best iteration.

[twiztor]

4 hours ago, Octopus said:

Who are four CURRENT wrestlers that encapsulates what you enjoy as a fan? Your ~style~ of wrestling fandom derp.

Thunder Rosa. she brings the passion and the energy. she has a rep for not hitting everything crisp, but i actually think it works for her character's emotion. Rosa is my favorite current wrestler, full stop.

Samoa Joe. every time this dude steps foot in the ring, i buy what he's doing. the intensity. the explosiveness. he's everything i love about this sport.

FTR. self-indulgent Bret Hart BS aside, these guys are the perfect tag team. i've never seen them in a bad match. they rein in the worst tendencies of some of their peers (Young Bucks, Lucha Bros) by just making everything happen as they see fit.

**i fully acknowledge and appreciate that Bryan Danielson is the best wrestler in the world, so i didn't include him to keep this an even playing field.

[SirSmUgly]

5 hours ago, Octopus said:

Who are four CURRENT wrestlers that encapsulates what you enjoy as a fan? Your ~style~ of wrestling fandom derp. Not including your absolute favorite (assuming you have a living GOAT) 

Easy:

Danielson for being the current living embodiment of HitG.O.A.T. Hart in a lot of ways.

Zicky Dice for being one of the few people to understand how to be a scumbag heel/who actually isn't afraid to be a scumbag heel without shooty shit or having to stoop to Attitude-Era-level garbage on the regular. Heel Dice is like 1995-era DDP, the quintessential piece of shit who has zero redeeming qualities and isn't interested in developing any. 

Shit, I gotta come up with two more after that. Some people, I haven't seen in years, but can guess that they're probably still what I enjoy about pro wrestling (Sasha Banks, Bobby Lashley). Otherwise, it's rough. 

I would have listed FTR, but they have too much tribute horseshit in their most recent work that I've seen. Like, it's cool, we all love the HitG.O.A.T. too, but there's a way to work old spots into your repertoire that isn't so obvious and stilted. 

EDIT: Oh, I've seen enough clips of MVP to love him as a throwback to the days that heel managers would talk some very convincing shit that was able to justify whatever they or their charges were up to. He has a gift like Bobby Heenan did in his ability to do that, and with the degree of difficulty of having to recite modern WWE dialogue. 

Edited June 5, 2022 by SirSmellingtonofCascadia

[zendragon]

6 hours ago, Octopus said:

Who are four CURRENT wrestlers that encapsulates what you enjoy as a fan? Your ~style~ of wrestling fandom derp. Not including your absolute favorite (assuming you have a living GOAT) 

Two veterans CM Punk and Eric Young both working smart matches around basic moves like body slams, elbow drops and pile drivers.

Two young guns Danny Garcia and Wheeler Yuta both working a realistic shoot style pro wrestling.

Honorable mentions  Dustin for being a smart veteran, Jay White for being possibly the best worker in the world under 30, Amdrag, Mox, and Eddie Kingston for being mix of the two categories 

[SirSmUgly]

Kingston is a good pull too, just for being extremely believable in an era of minimal believability. 

There aren't enough wrestlers in the modern era who just look like tough dudes that got into pro wrestling because they grew up fighting and it's what they know how to do best.

I should probably watch that brawl from the last AEW PPV at some point because people are really into it, and I'm assuming that Danielson and Kingston will hold things together and paper over the flaws of the rest of the workers in the match. I'll get around to it at some point. 

[(BP)]

Kingston as a character is someone who’s hurt a lot of people and wants to be a better man, but the only thing he loves and excels at is pro wrestling. It’s so stripped down and he’s impeccable at it. 

[zendragon]

19 minutes ago, SirSmellingtonofCascadia said:

Kingston is a good pull too, just for being extremely believable in an era of minimal believability. 

There aren't enough wrestlers in the modern era who just look like tough dudes that got into pro wrestling because they grew up fighting and it's what they know how to do best.

I should probably watch that brawl from the last AEW PPV at some point because people are really into it, and I'm assuming that Danielson and Kingston will hold things together and paper over the flaws of the rest of the workers in the match. I'll get around to it at some point. 

You've mentioned AEW not being you cup of tea before. Assuming you've given it an honest try, what exact has turned you off from it?

[Unnatural]

Suzuki - Daniel Garcia- Styles - Ishii

[SirSmUgly]

21 minutes ago, zendragon said:

You've mentioned AEW not being you cup of tea before. Assuming you've given it an honest try, what exact has turned you off from it?

I definitely have, and I've checked in on it periodically/watched the occasional highly acclaimed (no pun intended) match. 

Some of it is the house style, which on TV especially tends to be heavily predicated around high-spots and 2.9s. 

Some of it is the booking, which I find inconsistent. Champs disappearing from TV is a big one. The women seem really poorly booked, almost like they're an afterthought at points outside of Britt Baker (who I think is really not very good and hasn't improved as much as the head of your division should have improved from the point she was at). I also don't get what they're doing with the tag belts, tbh. The only thing that's reasonably well-booked is the World title as far as I can tell, and Page was not a good champ and doesn't have what it takes to be a long-term main eventer. 

Some of it is just down to taste, too - I don't have interest in a company that's running with Moxley, Page, or Punk on top. If they're running with Danielson or Kingston on top, that would probably get me to at least watch more of it selectively. I get that your diehard American wrestling fan loves Punk or Cole, typically. AEW should push those guys. I can't fuckin' stand them, though. 

A lot of it is the presentation and promos. I saw the MJF shooty-work promo, and that's what happens when you get a generation of wrestlers raised on the Attitude Era and failing WCW as kids. (I think MJF is fucking awful, as an aside - I'm shocked that people earmark him for great things). Or once, I was like, "let's tune in to AEW for the first time in a few weeks because Danielson just jumped" and I turned to see not only Adam Cole doing his lame-ass schtick, but Jericho and Dan Lambert cutting dueling promos that were all "shit shit shit, you pussy, you pussy ass little shit." It was garbage of the lowest order. Great, you're on cable, guys, but put together a coherent fucking promo. Not to mention that they were feuding basically about the idea that wrestling is fake, but MMA is real, so MMA fighters will beat up the play-acting wrestlers. Why the fuck would you have Lambert cut meta-promos about the house style? What a stupid fucking idea. Thanks for reminding me how bullshit the program I'm watching actually is.

I hate that shit. 

Anyway, I genuinely wanted AEW to be something for me. NWA had gone on hiatus and the halcyon days of NXT were long past, not that I was watching any WWE programming anyway. I still want it to be something for me. It has workers that I genuinely would tune in for (Danielson, Kingston, Thunder Rosa, etc.). I enjoy Tony Schiavone immensely on commentary as well. I watched maybe for the first three or four months before falling off of it, and every time I tune in, two or three things happen in short order that lead me to turn it off again.

Tony Khan feels like the billionaire version of a kid who got a haul of wrestling figures for Christmas and is now haphazardly putting together matches in his bedroom because he thinks they'd be cool instead of feeling like an actual booker with some logic to what he's doing. This might be a leap for many people, but my guess is that he needs to hire a DoF at Fulham and just focus on pro wrestling, IMO. Doing both jobs is holding back both AEW and Fulham.

But you know, that's not AEW's problem. They have a core that loves what they do, and if that core can keep them in business and doing well for themselves, godspeed. Good for them being viable in 2022. The problem is entirely mine. I have said that pro wrestling has passed me by, and it is what it is. 

EDIT: My actual conclusion is that ECW is the worst thing to ever happen to pro wrestling. It ruined promos, it ruined brawling, and it led to the worse-in-execution Attitude Era and Russo-era WCW, which now have trickled down to influence everything about pro wrestling in America. I'm not saying that ECW itself was bad. I'm saying that ECW's influence destroyed American pro wrestling. 

Edited June 5, 2022 by SirSmellingtonofCascadia

[Eivion]

7 hours ago, Octopus said:

Who are four CURRENT wrestlers that encapsulates what you enjoy as a fan? Your ~style~ of wrestling fandom derp. Not including your absolute favorite (assuming you have a living GOAT) 

Roman Reigns, Starlight Kid, Sami Zayn, and Creed Brothers all scratch different itches for me and are who I enjoy watching the most right now be that in and out of the ring.

[Kropotkin's Beard]

8 hours ago, Octopus said:

Who are four CURRENT wrestlers that encapsulates what you enjoy as a fan? Your ~style~ of wrestling fandom derp. Not including your absolute favorite (assuming you have a living GOAT) 

This is super tough narrowing it down. 

Kenoh - I was split between Katsuhiko Nakajima & his stable leader in Kongo, similar in style, vicious kicks galore. But Kenoh has that little something extra that makes me really compelling, namely he's a petulant little punk with a chip on his shoulder the size of Everest. It's very endearing.

Jun Kasai - Death matches are a strange beast. They can be lazy walk & brawls or they can be utterly impossible to look away from, in that exciting way. And Kasai is the good kind of death match wrestler. It seems like 50% of the women's wrestlers in Japan idolise him, from comedy characters like Hyper Misao and idols like Hikari Noa to new death match stars like Suzu Suzuki. For good reason.

Takuya Nomura - no nonsense when it comes to Nomura. He just wants to kick, slap & suplex you into the next life. He's a great tag worker as one half of Astronauts, he can be great in a 10 minute sprint or a longer BJW Strong World Heavyweight Title matches against the likes of Sekimoto, Okabayashi, Nakanoue. There's not a whole lot in current Big Japan worth watching, but Nomura is why I go out of my way to do so anyway. 

Shingo Takagi - he has that Dragongate thing where everything is so smooth & that's not for everyone. But Takagi just has it all, the presence, the match quality, the charisma, if I am fantasy drafting a wrestling roster He's top of my draft board

[Octopus]

Daisuke Sekimoto - a part of me feels like a hypocrite putting him here when I’ve seen more of his 2019 work than current ad in this year, but in terms of the question being about encompassing ~style~ and having just watched a few recent matches recently, I am confident can still say I love this beautiful beefcake. I love BJW Strong division. I want muscly struggles while grappling. A fight for every suplex. Stay standing after a shoulder tackle and make faces, damn it! This is wrestling to me. Chop each other and throw clubbing clotheslines.

 

Katsuhiko Nakajima - I can’t look away from this crazed man. He is what I fell in love with Low Ki’s kicks but with a head of hair. He is so believable that he can kick down a mountain. I re-fell in love with NOAH because of him.

 

CM Punk - I want to watch him tell stories. Let him and his opponent craft a tale in the ring. It will be fun to watch but it’ll also be a treat to talk about the nuances with my internet friends. Hopefully he isn’t hurt too long and also teaches him to stop over trying wacky spots. Stay grounded, wise old turtle.

 

Eddie Kingston - Wrestling can be more than matches. It can be character work and promos. There will be promos of his in the past that I have watched on repeat more than the matches themselves. As for this year, his in-ring work has perfectly matched how he is being booked. Little things like the disbelief in his face after pinning Jericho. I want to cheer him but he’s so self destructive that I worry he’ll ruin his own success. Not just by how a company is telling his story, but how he is acting his story. He can have the subtle mannerisms of El Satanico while having the presence of an American Kawada. 

 

—-

@Kropotkin's Beard , I’m gonna hit you up soon about Jim Kasai. I was into him but haven’t watch anything recently. Just Big Japan in general! Such a special promotion. 

 

Danielson is slotted in as my current GOAT until I go hardcore research where I clear my list and have about 25 or so battle it out for a top five-ten. But that might be a while. My son is sleeping better, so I might be able to get in a few matches at night, coming up. Fingers crossed.

Edited June 5, 2022 by Octopus

[Zakk_Sabbath]

10 hours ago, Octopus said:

Who are four CURRENT wrestlers that encapsulates what you enjoy as a fan? Your ~style~ of wrestling fandom derp. Not including your absolute favorite (assuming you have a living GOAT) 

Eddie Kingston for sheer believability, Moxley for the joy of violence, Serena Deeb for doing Bret's shit just as well as FTR does, and Rey Fenix for making me feel like a kid seeing Rey, Juvi, Psicosis etc. for the first time again

[Guest Stefanie Without Stefanie]

10 hours ago, Octopus said:

Who are four CURRENT wrestlers that encapsulates what you enjoy as a fan? Your ~style~ of wrestling fandom derp. Not including your absolute favorite (assuming you have a living GOAT) 

Sakura Hirota (nothing's so serious that I can't take the time to laugh and enjoy myself), Ibuki Hoshi (C H O P!, but really, she's gotten so good over the last year or so, she's becoming the complete package), Kris Statlander (probably my favorite American wrestler at the moment, maybe not everything she does is smooth but I don't need wrestling to be smooth, and she's got POWER), and Asuka aka VENY (one of the best complete package wrestlers you'll see).

Tsukasa Fujimoto, upon return from hiatus, will probably take... uh... someone's spot. Probably Sakura Hirota's spot because she's just as good at comedy. And I think Tsukka is probably the greatest wrestler living today.

[Gordi the recovering AEW f]

"Not including your absolute favourite" is a weird criterion. Was that to prevent having most lists be "Bryan and three other wrestlers"? If so... only partly successful.

Anyway, I am reading a book called "They Just Seem a Little Weird" which is a history of Kiss, Aerosmith, Cheap Trick, and Starz. Cheap Trick were one of my first favourite bands. Live at Budokan was the second record I bought with my own money. Then I got to see Misawa headline in the Budokan, almost 40 yeas later, and think to myself "I am in the same building where that record was recorded, watching my favourite wrestler! " which was a pretty cool feeling.

Hair rocker Sebastian Bach is quoted, on his love of Kiss: "I don’t judge them: Oh, they’ve got to top that last record. I look at it, like, This person is going to be dead one day, and I want as much art from them as they can possibly give me.”

Well... Damn straight! 

That's why MiSu and Ishii both make my list. I want as much art (and violence) from them as they can possibly give me. Them touring around and playing the hits is all I need. It's sheer delight for me. And it warms my heart, deeply, to hear crowds all over going nutzoid for these guys doing their thing. 

Eddie Kingston makes my list because he's the purest distillation of what I love most about AEW: The fact that great wrestlers who have been toiling in semi-obscurity (or being used to less than their full potential elsewhere) can be given a chance to fully shine in front of a massive international audience. Kingston has made himself into a star! That's kind of amazing. All he needed was the opportunity, but we can be forgiven for having once imagined that he would never get it.

Finally, Lulu Pencil. The pure embodiment of pro wrestling love and joy. The most uniquely charming character in pro wrestling today (which is really saying something).

A wrestling world in which Suzuki and Stone Pitbull are touring to rapturous reception, The Mad King is an international TV star, and Lulu Pencil has fans all over the world is a world I can fully enjoy living in. 

Edited June 6, 2022 by Gordlow