Maybe we should take a second on timelessness actually. I was having a talk with Loss earlier and as part of the tweets over the last few days, he pointed out to me that Dave said this:
"First time I saw them in PWG I realized they had excellent psychology and that was years ago. But I'm a lot more open minded on that, in that I was taught by Terry Funk you play to your audience on that night, not adhere to specific rules. -- Dave on the Young Bucks"
Loss wasn't taking a position on it, but he knew it was something that would interest me. We went around with it a bit (including talking about burning out crowds or leading crowds/killing the golden goose/creating unsustainable escalation) but where I ended up was with this:
"I also think we criticize art in different ways than it was intended often. I imagine portrait artists in the 1600s were very focused on pleasing their audience. We don't judge their art on how big a commission they got or how happy their patrons were, do we?"
There are interactive elements in wrestling but I think, in general, it's the notion I stick to. I think it's possible to judge wrestling (even specific matches) on how successful they were financially, on how successful they were for the crowd that they were in front of, AND for some general, comparative artistic value. You can rate/judge/compare/criticize wrestling on any of those axes. It's fine so long as you admit what you're doing and try to admit your biases.
It's when people start to argue with one another across those lines that you get the unsolvable problems.