Matt D

Look, here's my background. In my senior year of college, I was in a BA/MA program. It meant I had to write a Master's thesis that year. I was getting a degree in Comparative History. The problem was this: in 2003, history had been ravaged by post-modernism. You couldn't do history with women unless you were a woman. You couldn't do history about Africa unless you were African. You had to use literary theory to examine the unspoken biases in sources. It no longer mattered what happened but how it affected movie posters twenty years later. Cultural History was basically everything. Most of that was well and good, except for two things. First, they were all initially deconstructionist and then ultimately reductionist. It became about just one of those theories or another. Really, they should have been integrating all of this back into conventional history to make a strong whole but no one was doing it. Second, I was a medievalist. I literally could not do medieval history based on those new rules and focuses because we were lacking sources. In many ways, they all sprung up because we had too many sources for modern history; we knew too much and academics had to find other ways at getting at what they already knew. I had the opposite problem. I did my research on the naval aspects of the Hundred Years' War. I didn't lead with a theory, but instead took the T to ye olde catholic institution, Boston College and sat in the basement of their library manually going through 200 year old reproductions of 700 year old "Rolls" that the king had sent out to issue fines, patents, gifts, etc. From there, I noted any time a ship or the sea came up and by the end of it, I had a pretty good sense of how Edward III raised his navy. It wasn't exactly what I was looking to find, but it was where the evidence took me. I tend to look at wrestlers and matches the same way. If we continuously get run sheets which let us know the agents, great. That's a good thing, not a bad one. It gives us one more piece of data we can churn through the machine and now we can take a look at how Seth Rollins operates differently in a TJ Wilson agented match than a Jamie Noble one. Over time, we can see patterns there and we can learn something about Rollins as a wrestler. We can take what we learn there and use it as a lens to examine and analyze other matches in his career. It's not that we shouldn't listen to wrestlers when they talk about one another. It gives us other things we can look for. For instance, with Rollins, I'm going to continue to suggest he has agency and interest in putting together his matches even in a heavily agented environment. Why? A few reasons, some indirect like his indy background and long-term interest in wrestling, but also because I know from an Orton interview that it was Rollins who came up with their Wrestlemania finish and talked Orton into trying it. In that same interview, Orton talked about how generally conservative he was in the ring, which is something that we can go back and look for in his matches; and also the reason behind, for instance, his babyface jumping jacks, which gives us another piece of the puzzle, both in working out those matches in specific and him as a whole wrestler. We're never going to get a complete picture, but I do think we can get an ever-more complete one, and most certainly we can get an informed, meaningful, worthwhile one. I find the entire exercise far more worthwhile than just taking a match at it's bare minimum. We can do so much more than that.

We define it and give it meaning. One could argue that the current WWE environment actually has led to the death of truth, and I think people in this thread have occasionally done just that, but I think the discussions we have here all the time about specific matches and wrestlers say otherwise.

CHIKARA Street Fight.

I respectfully disagree with Loss and fxnj but not along lines that would necessarily lead to constructive discussion. Footage is our god and we, possessors of context and learning, its profits, able to interpret it to discern the truth within.

Maybe if he beats Rousey?

I think it's more that people had talked themselves into believing they'd get all the dream matches if/when Bryan came back, and instead WWE is booking him exactly how you'd expect them to. So far:High profile Mania tag vs Zayn/Owens Singles vs AJ Tag with AJ vs Rusev Day Nakamura dark match Rumble Record Singles win vs Cass on PPV Loss to Rusev House show tag w/Tye vs Miz/Cass Looks good to me. Variety of opponents/settings/types of matches.

Will there be other secondary shows that pop up that weekend?

Way, way too soon to put Ronda anywhere near the title picture. She could have done a tag with Nattie against Mickie/someone and then a singles match against Mickie, and then have Nattie turn on her, and done another 6 months of programs with gaps in between while she was training without losing any momentum or getting exposed. I'm hoping they just have Nattie turn on her here and don't put the belt on her already.

I'd be curious about the advertising. They had the TV but I'm not sure about other things they did. Or maybe about running the same stuff in different towns over different weeks. There had to be people who talked to one another, just over the phone, even in a pre-internet age.

I will say that my firewall does not love the other board when I've popped in.

I think we're veering slightly, but I heavily value writers over artists in comics too and screenwriting over cinematography, so at least I'm consistent? (I'd also argue about specific Demolition performances, and I think you're higher on their heel work in general layout/energy aside, but that's not for here). Some of this goes into "Calling in the ring" vs "Planning things out." too. Also the idea of intent. There's a lot to unpack here. I think one thing which really doesn't matter for this argument, however, is what other wrestlers feel unless we can make a connection between those feelings and the footage, positive or negative. Do we care whether Lance Storm was a light touch with a chair if the chair shot looked terrible and took away from the match? I don't blame him for not wanting to hurt someone but I do blame himself for letting himself be talked into doing a spot that he can't actually execute both safely and while looking good. Do we care if wrestlers liked working with Brody because he never got winded when the stuff he was doing with that wind was often crummy both in layout AND execution? On the other hand, if someone's a light touch but his stuff looks great or if he has amazing cardio and does amazing things with it, I think maybe those could be useful things to know. If someone's a heavy touch and his stuff looks good? Well, maybe that's good to know too. But it's how WE use it to judge; that's the point. As viewers, we don't inherently judge wrestling/value skills of wrestlers the same way other wrestlers do and nor should we. We are judging something very specific. It goes without saying. We're not judging "this is the best wrestler ever" so much as "this is the best wrestler ever based on footage and the elements we can discern and that we value." Does footwork matter? Only in as it leads to the final product. Now, maybe it does and you just need to watch five hundred matches with a specific wrestler to figure out exactly how (or some sort of comparative experiment). For instance: I've watched enough wrestling to know that Cass' wavy-armed selling of Daniel Bryan's kicks is probably ineffective and distracting relative to how other people might sell those. That's an out there example, and I couldn't tell you the first thing about Cass' foot positioning, but I know guys like Edge and Christian and Austin have talked about how it's the first thing they watch in a wrestler (Well, Austin watches lockups, and maybe because of that I've come to pay attention to the initial lock up in a match a lot more than I used to). There's a lot of stuff to unpack. There are inputs and there's an overall output and you can work out a lot of those inputs and the effect/output they generate/lead to, though absolutely not all, by watching enough wrestling closely. It's part of why wrestling is so great to analyze. To me, great matches were the starting point, not the ending point. You come out of a great match and then think "Ok, I felt like this was a great match. Why?" (Sorry for all the edits)

Working with Lawler as booker vs Dundee as booker would be great. And negotiating with Verne for years about potentially getting the AWA belt.

They would be making a colossal mistake not having Cody win.

Married. I've got a 16 year old stepson (he came along young. We're only 36), and a 5 (almost 6) year old daughter and a 7 and a half month old daughter. Factor in work and the long commute in and out of DC and life is fairly exhausting these days.

Short answer: I factor in everything we know at all times. But we work off of incomplete information. All we can do is look for patterns.

I project manage the creation of online courses for a big international organization to train government employees of developing countries around the world. It's pretty enjoyable work, as all my co-workers are experts from all around the world.

I'm kind of curious what everyone does for a living.

I like it when Jerome gets his comeuppance.

McGann (Primarily from the audios). 1990-92 WWF (give or take two years either way) and 1991-2 WCW. 1991 GWF. 1998 WCW. Those are my nostalgia sweet spots, and 09 WWECW. 79-80 Portland. The NWAonDemand run of Houston, 79-81 Memphis. 80s AWA. Those are probably my areas of specialty for older stuff before my time. The modern promotion I associate with the most now is probably CMLL, for good or ill.

1. Modern wrestling kind of stinks when you put it that way. 2. I feel like what I've always been missing in my rants is a white board for crazy conspiracy theories. We should be able to upgrade the message board to implement one.

There are no wrong answers here but this one.

You can't blame WWE for being conservative with him to a degree. They should really look at him as an attraction/bonus to cards/programs instead of someone to build around.

I give extra credit for his two PPV main events.

Is that Funk match readily available? I uploaded it to YT as I couldn't see it online; Thanks a lot for posting that. It's so interesting to watch that match vs the 1991 Dustin run and see how differently he was presented. For all the talk about Dustin being shoved down people's throats in 1991, he really wasn't. Funk did everything he could to help make Dustin there, bells and whistles (and plants with triple stacked signs) included. I like how Dustin's shine was basically just dropkicking Humperdink at the start of the match. That meant immediately as much if not more than a five minute in-and-out headlock exchange that he was on top of and it let Funk ambush him (babyfaces should always be punished for that sort of hubris) and start the heat right from the get go. Funk pulled out all the stops. When Dustin kicked out at two early on, Funk made sure to go flying out of the ring. Likewise on Dustin's whip reverse into the corner. Page, despite being the heel on commentary, made sure to put over Dustin's small package hope spot. And so on and so on. Dustin had SOMETHING, connecting to the crowd, showing some energy, selling, I think, quite well for his experience level, but this was the Terry Funk show, from mead ground-charge headbutts to strategically bumping himself through the ropes so that Dustin couldn't punch him to playing hide the tape with Dustin and Humperdink. Glad I got to see it. Thanks.

I may actually end up watching that thing.