Matt D
DVDVR 80s Project
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Everything posted by Matt D
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My brother explained this one pretty well. If you wait for Cena or Lesnar to win they will be on rough, but competitive shape, but costing Cena the match when Brock is on the verge of losing is much, much smarter play than waiting for the match to end. Still fucking stupid finish No it wasn't. In no way shape or form was it. Why? 1.) You're cashing in on Brock instead of Cena. No matter what happens Brock will come back and kill you (this will happen). 2.) There's a chance that Cena might take offense because you caused a DQ when he was about to win (this happened). -
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Greatness is going to be decided by democratic vote. After the vote's over, you can tell me that I was wrong, as it pertains to the quasi-objective results of the poll. In the meantime, however, I don't go around and tell you that your criteria is faulty. I only explain how I feel, because it's my right, and in part because I do think it adds SOMETHING to the discussion and because I feel strongly about it. I honestly appreciate that you go to such lengths to try to understand me. In the meantime, I'll still rank Flair very highly, because he does a number of things well, and because, on a lesser level, he has great matches. I might even rank him #1. I don't know yet. That's why he's my #1 priority. I don't ignore those matches. I try to understand them and see if the reasons they're so highly considered match up with my criteria or not. I try to understand back. I just don't always agree.
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Personally, I'm going to absolutely look at Terry Funk when he gets old. I'm going to look at how he understood and modified his act for the Philadelphia Crowd or for the crazy stuff in Japan he was doing at the time and if he as able to continue to have good matches despite and because of that. I'm going to look to see what happened to him when he was in 00 indies and couldn't quite do some of the stuff that allowed for his post-prime career, and I think he had a match with Lawler a couple of years ago and I'm really interested to see what I can learn from that, pro or con. Likewise Ricky Morton. I don't get why people don't think there's something to learn in how a wrestler adapts to not being able to use the same tools that they once did. I just really don't get that. It's not about giving or taking away points, it's about understanding a wrestler and how well they understand their craft and thereby how well they potentially understood it when they were younger and how that understanding shaped every match of their career and how it developed or didn't develop over the years. How is this not interesting to you guys? When I watch wrestlers I look for clues in almost everything they do. How else am I going to figure out whether they're good or not. You look for patterns and how they handle different situations. I get that not everyone does it that way, but there's so much to learn about a wrestler in almost every match. That's what makes a project like this so great. To be fair, when I'm done looking at everything, what I might come up with is that Flair not being able to adapt just paints a new and different light on how well he DID know how to the tools that he had when he was younger. I don't know yet. It's not about penalizing or giving points. It's about figuring things out.
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A lot of this goes back to what I value, and again that is different than what is my favorite, though it does inform it. I value a style were physical tools aren't the most important and so long as I am honest and open and consistent about this, then I don't see what the problem is if I use the tools that I have available to make the decisions I need to make.
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It's about getting data points for evidence. You use them to plot a map of a wrestler. It's better to have them scattered throughout the career. With Bock basically all we have is his late career. It's not better for Lawler if he retired in 95. It might have been better for Flair. That's the whole point. Figuring out how or why and what it means. You figure out ability through body of work and more diverse primary sources you have in type and role and situation, the easier it is to work this out. I think you learn something from a wrestler's ability to adapt to different situations, including the loss of physical gifts.
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That's why this discussion will not get resolved. I think that statement is as baseless and incomplete as saying that wrestling is pure sport and not art. There are fortunately elements of both on display to varying degrees every time out. There is an athletic element but it's more like a narratively-driven improv dance than like Michael Jordan. Maybe I'd be more apt to liken it to folk music duets, where you need to tell a story, have the physical skills and training, and know your range while working with someone else, than anything else, and that's so far off it's not even funny. It's very much it's own animal, which is in part why we love it so much. That said, differences of opinions make the world go round, though "Baseless" might be a little harsh.
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Wrestling is art, not sport. Brando is punished for his late career. Metallica is. It's not a 100% comparison but I don't think it's an entirely outlandish idea either. One aspect of being a good pro wrestler is understanding and working around your limitations, whether you are twenty or sixty. I won't penalize someone for having a less athletic match later in their career. I might penalize someone for trying to have one later in their career and failing. I think a lot of times you can use data from those matches to go back and better understand their earlier matches.
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I'll take a look at what's online if I can find it.