Pro Wrestling

If anybody is planning on treating wrestling as art I think we'd do well to introduce some of these phrases into our vocabulary. It would be easy to be condescending when taking these approaches. That's really not what I'm going for. -Wrestling will never be seen as establishment/highbrow art. That's why people are often so visceral in their dismissal of any argument based around "wrestling as art" because to most people that is what art means. At the same time, most people have no problem seeing middlebrow popular art as an art form. To me, defining what is and isn't art is completely arbitrary and it is not what I'm planning on doing in this thread. -Not to impl…

More than a Politics-N-Wrestling folder, I see this primarily as a wonk folder where we keep ourselves open to everything if we really want to do a deep dive. However, I was chatting with someone who saw it primarily as a safe spot to discuss how how sociopolitical issues intersect with pro wrestling. So how do you see it? This is brand new, so I figured we can define it and flesh that out together. This came up because I'd like to move the criteria topics from GWE here so they can be bumped, since eventually GWE will become a read-only archive. However, if this is meant to be more about pro wrestling as it relates to sociopolitical issues, that's not really as clear …

stole this idea from WTBBP I have to nominate Rude and Jake from WM4, given both guys talents this match had no right to suck as much air out of the Trump plaza as it did. any other nominations?

Whereas the Cheesy Journey focuses on prime post-84 Vince-led WWF TV cheddar, in this thread, I'm going to be watching footage from around the territories from before 84. I'm mainly going to focus on 4 different promotions, what I'd call "the big boys" in the 1970s and early 80s: Georgia Championship Wrestling, Championship Wrestling from Florida, Mid-Atlantic and The AWA. However, I may take in occassional stuff from elsewhere. The aim of this thread it to try to get a real feel for how each promotion presented its product on TV. For my first sitting, I'm going to be watching GCW from November 20th 1982 to January 1st 1983, the footage is a bit jumbled up taken from…

I think the company really did a good with the 1st 2 shows. I think WK10 had a show with some great matches. New Year Dash had really good wrestling too, but had some killer angles to boot. So I can see people liking either show better. 2016 has a lot of change going on. One thing for sure is when Ibushi gets healthy he will have a feud with Omega. They planted that seed in 2015. I assume we'll see some different talent in the promotion. Maybe elevate the jr singles title. Blow up the jr tag belt. The jr teams are good enough to work the heavyweight belts. Bottom line I have to wait and see.

I wanted to learn more about the Mighty Atlas the other day, so I did a search and found this. https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1499&dat=19510914&id=disaAAAAIBAJ&sjid=riMEAAAAIBAJ&pg=4626%2C6118466&hl=en That made me wonder how much wrestling was covered in the Journal and I browsed a bit and found this as well: https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=HulQAAAAIBAJ&sjid=HiQEAAAAIBAJ&pg=6006%2C2080846 I don't have time to dig too much but that one was really timely for me as I'd just read about Verne in Capitol Revolution. I'm not sure how many other newspapers from the territory days are online but there could be a lot of int…

I have given this a lot of thought, because while I do like the idea of this forum, there are two factors that are of utmost importance to me: (1) Pro Wrestling Only remains Pro Wrestling Only (2) It's equally easy to engage in these topics and avoid them altogether So I ask that you keep all such talk in this folder only. If you see something in another folder that you think intersects with this folder's purpose, rather than respond there, please start a new thread here. You are pretty much free to talk about whatever you want and fully engage each other, as long as the core focus of each topic and post remains pro wrestling. Also, if you have an opinion…

A rare critique of pro wrestling as an industry from a structural perspective. https://libcom.org/library/political-economy-professional-wrestling-capital-unions-spandex

I'm inspired by Dylan here to start this thread. There may be older threads similar to this but I'm not looking for them. I think it's unfortunate a lot of posters here don't keep up with modern wrestling. I understand it to a degree. Wrestling & it's landscape have indeed changed. I get the criticisms for finisher spamming & self-awareness in wresting today when it comes to the in-ring work but I think it's overblown. Stuff like production value & presentation I don't care about as much. Booking & promos I agree have fallen on the wayside but even the criticisms for these I believe are a bit overzealous. I'm also not a fan of the modern WWE discussio…

I wanted to have a crack at this outside of the confines of the GWE. I don't think it is necessarily a GWE topic, but it is quite interesting. Similar things have occurred to me. I've jokingly asked Matt D a few times if Nick Bockwinkel's gimmick of being the smartest guy in the room actually contributes to our view of him as a "smart" worker? I don't see Jim Duggan being described as a smart worker very often. His gimmick was, for a very long time, "patriotic idiot". Backlund and Bret Hart -- their gimmick was "fighting champion" and "best wrestler around". Misawa and Jumbo -- their gimmick was "ace", top dog of the hierarchy Tenryu and Kawad…

When I first saw Marufuji Superkicks, Chris Hero elbows etc. I thought they were the greatest thing ever. I mean how could they not be they made this great sound! It had to rule right? Eventually I started noticing they'd slap their thigh when in many cases there would be no reason to do so and the magic was quickly gone. In the case of someone like Hero it even annoyed me he would do that when his elbows would look perfectly good without the sound effect. This me brings me to my point-pro wrestling is about creating an illusion of competition. A thigh slap gets a pop, but it also looks really stupid when a Chris Hero punch missed its mark by a foot and makes a sound like…

A 1988 video from the United Association of Wrestling Fans gathering featuring names like Dennis Coralluzo, Paul Heyman, Dave Meltzer, Lance Russell, Eddie Gilbert, and Missy Hyatt has been posted on youtube. Watching it now, pretty interesting for the novelty of seeing these people in a non-TV setting.

I'm starting this thread because I just saw MiB touch on the "silent majority" phrase as a conservative dogwhistle, which outside of this project it is. I saw Dylan make a post on how social justice impacts the way we look at wrestlers, and he's also talked about the difficulties of wrestlers receiving their due that are not products of American imperialism. And funkdoc ties everything back to this for the most part. In my mind, I separate my political worldview and how we view wrestlers entirely, but I'm willing to have that challenged because it's possible I have a blind spot. I'm starting this thread just to listen to the other side and try to understand where this com…

http://www.billburr.com/podcast/thursday-afternoon-monday-morning-podcast-4-29-16 Bill Burr talks about some of the craziest works turned shoots

I don't remember where I saw a thread like this, but it was really entertaining. When I say "everything", I mean it. Other wrestling angles, TV show season endings, movies, life, world wars, Biblical stories, historical events, anything. Michael Corleone goes to a meeting with Virgil Solozzo, secretly intending to kipp jim. But when he goes to the bathroom, there is no gun. *SWERVE* Clemenza is a traitor! He turns behind to see the Turk smiling at him. "You thought you coild double-cross me, kid?" He draws out a knife, intending to make a statement out of Mikey. But he is shot from behind bynthe crooked police captain, who *SWERVE* is not just on the Corleone family'…

Listened to the Blue Meanie podcast from Talk is Jericho this morning as I have a soft spot for all things ECW, and he opens up with this long story where (long story short) he makes out he is a big rock star sitting on the cool kids table, subtly implying he is on the level of Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley, Alice Cooper and co. It was strange. I've noticed a few of these self aggrandising tendencies over the years and it's actually quite depressing to realise despite all of his legit fame in wrestling it would appear he is insecure about his place in the world. For years I was of the opinion he was a level headed guy who knew the score. What went wrong?

So what's up with All Japan doing a tag team championship switch in KC apparently in an AWA ring between Jumbo & Yatsu vs Hansen & Gordy? According to comments this was when Bulldogs wrestled RNRs, which may make sense since Bulldogs were in AJPW. This was February 2, 1989. So who was running KC in the late 1980s? Geigel? AWA? Whats the connection here?

I don't remember where I saw a thread like this, but it was really entertaining. When I say "everything", I mean it. Other wrestling angles, TV show season endings, movies, life, world wars, Biblical stories, historical events, anything. Michael Corleone goes to a meeting with Virgil Solozzo, secretly intending to kill him. But when he goes to the bathroom, there is no gun. *SWERVE* Clemenza is a traitor! He turns behind to see The Turk smiling at him. "You thought you coild double-cross me, kid?" He draws out a knife, intending to make a statement out of Mikey. But he is shot from behind by the crooked police captain, who *SWERVE* is not just on the Corleone family'…

Two parts to this post: 1. What's your favorite wrestling T-shirt that you own? Mine is probably the below Outsiders shirt I purchased at a Monday Nitro around 1998. We had an old car full of 17-year-olds heading to the show, and it broke down on a major highway. We didn't want to miss the show, so we just left it on the side of the road and called someone else to come get us and take us to Nitro. Managed to make it for the second half of the show. Took care of the car the next day (for some reason, the cops just let it sit on the shoulder overnight). A few weeks after purchasing said Outsiders shirt, I was carrying in groceries for my mom. A bottle of bleach star…

The business we all know and love is undoubtedly the carniest, and it is awesome most of the times. What are your favourite blatant exaggerations spawned by wrestling promoters? One thing that strikes me first is "Bruno sold the MSG 197 times" talking point. I think the real number is close to 60. I do not even know how or why they settled on the 197 number. Might have made it an even 200.

So, I'm bored and it's late, so let me write this up as I'm kind of amused by it. Also this might be Pro Wrestling Mostly. For those of you don't know, for whatever reason (probably the fact they're 20 to 30-ish year old dorks), a lot of video game jounalists and developers are fans of the pro wrestling. As a result of this, at PAX East, a video game convention, two years ago, there was a panel where 30 of them had a PAX Rumble to crown the inagural PAX Video Game Wrestling Champion, using the Wrestlemania 2000 N64 game. Now, that'd be just a silly panel to watch on the Internet, except people actually shot promo videos and there were angles at panels before the show…

TMZ just confirmed, she was 45. Found in her home just a few hours ago. http://www.tmz.com/2016/04/20/chyna-dead-wwe-legend-dies/ Statement posted on her official Twitter as well by her management team: https://twitter.com/ChynaJoanLaurer/status/723002666834497536

Completely new to 90's WWE. Figured I might as well blog about it. I'll try and review/rate every single WWE match that happened in '93. Can't be bothered to summarize promos/non-wrestling segments, though. RAW 01 January 11, 1993 Manhatten Center New York City, NY 1. Koko B. Ware v. Yokozuna [with Mr. Fuji]: Koko manages to stagger Yokozuna with a couple of dropkicks after multiple failed attempts at trying to knock him off his feet, but it’s all for naught. Yokozuna squashes Koko with the Banzai Drop. Rating: * 2. Steiner Brothers v. Executioners: Scott Steiner's hair is glorious. I grew up watching him as Big Poppa Pump, so this iteration of him …

I will leave people to make lists. I will simply picture some contenders here.

This is the debate I want to see. Fuck it, we know both guys are going to finish super high in GWE, more nitpicking will ensue, we might as well get it out of the way. Work your magic old men of PWO.