If I Could Be Serious For A Moment 05.19.09: Bringing Back the Spark

Posted by Chris Lansdell on 05.19.2009

Why I almost lost my love for wrestling, how I got it back, and what it says about life. Or something.

Greetings, humanity! Welcome back to If I Could Be Serious for a Moment, your weekly dose of intelligent wrestling discourse with me, Chris Lansdell. I spent a lot of time this weekend on wrestling, trying to come up with some topics for the next few weeks. I'll be the first to admit that I've been in a slump recently, just running out of good strong topics. Last week I attempted to explain one of the reasons I believe that is happening: wrestling itself is in a slump. This week, we're going to look at something similar. Right after the...

BANNER!

Great Expectations

There are many levels of wrestling fans, from the casual observer to the hardcore fan who spends his weekends at indy shows and his week nights watching every TV show and DVD he can get his hands on. One thing they all have in common is that they all rate stuff. Whether it's as simple as "Match A is better than Match B", as opinionated as "Wrestler C sucks! Wrestler D rules!" or as in-depth as trying to justify giving Cena-Umaga from the Rumble an extra quarter star which would bring it up with Cena-Michaels from London, the desire to profess one's opinions and categorise each and every match and wrestler seems almost universal in professional wrestling. In terms of entertainment it is far more pervasive than in most professional sports, but seems about on a level with movie buffs. How does this desire to rank and rate affect our enjoyment?

I, wanna fall from the stars

This look familiar?

Are you on fucking drugs man?
The ECW title match and Cena/Show the same rating? NO.

Or this?

I don't get how a match can get 4.5 stars with that bad an ending.

If you've ever read a show report here on 411mania, you've seen comments like these. The vitriol that is spewed at the reporters for simply pressing the key above the 9 on the number pad (because seriously, who presses shift-8?) too many or too few times is really rather comical. The ubiquitous internet has made every wrestling fan with a blog into an expert who wants to rate matches, and there is nothing inherently wrong with this. It's fine to want to figure out where a match fits in your own personal hierarchy of good matches. The problem comes when you take it further than that.

The essential thing to remember when reading any report is that there never has been and never will be a definitive system for rating matches. The only thing that qualifies me, Dunn, Csonka, Meltzer or any other reviewer to rate a match is that we have a popular forum in which to express our opinions. And that's exactly what a match rating is: an opinion. Very often writers will agree on matches within a half-star or so, but on the occasions they don't it's normally down to a bias of some sort. For example, I don't like lucha. Csonka has a mental block against rating any match involving Carlito above **. As such, it's fairly asinine to argue that a reviewer "rated a match wrong" as much as it is to argue with someone who doesn't like Whoppers. Less experienced reviewers will take this criticism to heart and will start over thinking their ratings instead of going with their gut, which of course leads to others getting annoyed with the ratings system. End result: the reviewer is frustrated because nobody agrees with him, the reader is frustrated because the reviewer dares to have his own opinion, and it rubs off negatively on the match. It gets to the point that reviewers are watching the match and rating it to avoid pissing people off, and not on the strength of the match itself. It's hard to enjoy a match with that weight on your shoulders. It's also hard for people who read the recaps and determine from the ratings if they want to buy the show. If you read my reviews and know I tend to over-rate fast spotfests and under-rate lucha style or very physical matches, then you can plan your buying accordingly. If I review to avoid pissing off lucha fans, I am doing a disservice to readers who know I have under-rated the match in their minds. Ultimately, arguing over opinions is a good way to turn two people with differing thoguhts into two people with differing opinions who dislike each other.

Like you imagined when we were young

One common malady I have noticed among long-term wrestling writers is that they are very cynical. 411's own Ryan Byers, a man I consider a friend and whose wrestling knowledge is vast and varied, is a prime example of this. Byers will argue that he is not cynical, he just has very specific tastes. On the rare occasion that I convince Byers to join me for Brace for Impact, you can see in his star ratings that it takes a LOT to impress him. In some ways that makes him the perfect foil for someone like me, who naturally looks for the best in any segment and tends to over-rate things. I'll admit that the criticisms raised by Byers and other writers are valid, but they also have the unintended and insidious side-effect of damaging one's enjoyment of the wrestling you are watching. There are a lot of wrestling reviewers, and writers in general, around who cannot enjoy the matches presented in the context of today's wrestling landscape, instead preferring to belittle them for not being as good as matches from yesteryear. More than anything this is a problem with approach: if you approach a match waiting to compare it with every other match you've ever seen, it starts at a handicap. If I had a dollar for every person I hear say "wrestling is not as good as it used to be", I could retire. Wrestling is not the same as it used to be, this much is true. It has adapted to the changing tastes of its audience, or at least WWE has. That's why they are the only truly successful promotion around right now. Companies like ROH and to a lesser extent TNA are less successful because they cater to the smaller audiences (pure wrestling fans and young adult fans, respectively). If the companies have changed and the viewers don't, said viewers are going to derive less pleasure from watching. It's not exclusive to writers either, as this sentiment is often expressed in our comments sections.

It's an interesting concept. First of all, what makes a match "better"? Ring work? Crowd participation? Near falls? High spots? Blood? Weapons? Clean finish? Counters and reversals? Storytelling? Psychology? Comedy? Athleticism? All of the above? And in what proportions do we want these attributes? With so many variables, it's hard to find a group of people who can agree that one good match is better than another. Pretty much everyone can agree that Tomko vs Stevie Richards was a bad match, but you'll get a very divided room if you ask them to choose which Flair vs Steamboat match was the best. You'll also probably start a few arguments. So if we can't even agree which matches are better, how can we say that matches today are not as good as they were 10 years ago? The Attitude era was a completely different time. If we had to put up with that many non-finishes today, we'd be up in arms. Even between the Attitude Era and now, when the wrestling action was arguably at its best, we had questionable stories, a lot of dangerous spots and a lack of attention to psychology.

I'm so jaded, and you're the ones who jaded me

Like I said at the beginning, there is nothing wrong with having opinions on matches. The problem comes when you try and enforce that opinion on others. The key to reading reviews of shows is to accept that the ratings are opinion, as I have said several times so far. Same goes for reading comments on said reviews. Above all, you have to avoid caring what others think of the match, because ultimately that will ruin your enjoyment. Wrestling is also not a contest between now and 15 years ago, or now and last week. Each match should be judged on its merit, and you might just find yourself being surprised by the quality of some of what's out there right now.

Up until recently, I was afflicted with almost everything I've mentioned here. It's been a struggle at times to care enough about shows to watch them, to give performers a fair shake when watching their matches and to find a wrestling topic about which I cared enough to put down a couple thousand words. Wrestlers go out every night and risk their health to entertain me, and all I can think about is how plain it is, how nothing stands out like in match X from year Y, and how I have to give it at least two stars or the marks will tear me a new one. I was at the point where I had seen so much incredible wrestling and so much bad wrestling that I didn't appreciate anything in the middle any more. I found myself watching wrestling to tear it apart, to find the things I could harp on. Maybe it's the lawyer in me, maybe I was just aching for something to wow me.

It's funny how one week of wrestling viewing can change a person's opinion on wrestling almost 180 degrees. There were 4 segments on wrestling TV in the last 10 days that rescued my outlook on professional wrestling, each for different reasons. To save you from falling victim to the same malaise, I wrote down some advice that will hopefully freshen your outloook, along with the match from which I got it. Much like Baz Luhrmann, I will dispense this advice, now.

Taylor Wilde's blind date segment, Impact

There's an expression that goes "Once bitten, twice shy." With Vince Russo it's more like "Bugger off dog, you're not getting near me again." When they announced this blind date the previous week on Impact I was instantly terrified of what bullshit it would contain. And even though it was nothing like what I expected, I was still ready to tear into it. Then when I thought a little, I realised that it wasn't bad at all. I was blinded by the person who booked it and a preconceived expectation of what would happen, even to the point that a surprise wasn't enough to make me change my preconceived expectation. It set up a brutal match for the PPV, gave us a reason for Daffney to hate Taylor, showed us that Daffney is absolutely bonkers and kept the inevitable Daffney-Lauren explosion on a nice simmer. In fact, it even made me overlook the glaring inconsistency - Taylor has had this admirer for months, yet Daffney only had her hair cut a few weeks ago. Bottom line: preconceptions are bad.

Vladimir Kozlov on ECW (match and vignette)

It's no secret that I am a lot higher on Kozlov than almost anyone else. Most people think I AM high for liking him. The man is a tailor-made monster heel, a machine that should have been booked as such from day 1. He was to an extent, but he ran into the excavator that is HHH and was never the same after that. Watching him on ECW squashing a jobber, speaking English and explaining why he was superior, and seeing his training video reminded me of why I thought he had something from day 1. In fact I almost felt guilty for ever doubting he could be made into something. Part of my disillusionment was that some of my picks for success were being buried, and seeing this attempt to revive Kozlov in the perfect fashion helped rescue that. Bottom line: have faith and stick with the things you like, regardless of what others say.

Chris Jericho vs Rey Mysterio, Judgment Day

I have never been a fan of Rey Mysterio, even back to when he was Rey Misterio. I just don't like lucha style, I don't buy him as a credible threat to anyone over 220, and I don't like that he lost his mask and is now wearing it again. There was a time when I would have automatically dismissed his match with Jericho at the PPV, especially since I expected Jericho to draw on his vast lucha experience and turn it into that style of match. As it is I was treated to a combination of styles that really gelled for me, and ended up being very watchable. I'll admit that my rating for the match is likely to be on the low side, but that's because I still can't fully buy into the style of Mysterio. I wasn't exaggerating when I said this was my favourite Mysterio match ever, but a lot of people didn't see the distinction between "my favourite Mysterio match" and "best Mysterio match". That would have bothered me a little while ago, but now I just shrug my shoulders and realise that what I said was clear, and people misunderstanding it is beyond my control. Bottom line: Your opinion is your own . Don't let it be swayed by things in which you do not believe.

Lessons for wrestling, lessons for life. Moment over.



Recently, 411mania converted the Sports zone to the Boxing zone. One of the casualties of this conversion was the popular writer Thag the Brute. When contacted by 411mania to see if he would take another column, we got this reply:

THAG NO WRITE COMBAT SPORT NOR EMO SOUNDS. PICTURE BOX SCARE THAG. THAG NO HAVE TO WORK ANYMORE THANKS TO OBAMA…

However, due to being more familiar with barbarians I was able to secure an exclusive interview with...the GHOST OF THAG THE BRUTE!!!

JokerCat: Thanks for joining us, Ghost of Thag. Are you a wrestling fan?
Ghost of Thag: THAG NOT LIKE FAKE FIGHT! THAG LIKE REAL FIGHT! CRUSH HEAD! RARRRGGHH!!!!
JC: Calm down Thag. You can pillage and plunder later.
GoT: Thag come here do interview with freaky cat because you promise Thag VIRGINS! WHERE VIRGINS?
JC: Well there's that Hubbard guy who posts a column on Saturdays, and the Gaming Zone is over that way...
GoT: THAG BURN! THAG KILL!
*Many hours later*
GoT: Why you not tell Thag they all men?
JC: I was going to, after the interview. Now, what do you think about the destruction of Shane McMahon a few weeks ago?
GoT: He old and dance like ladyboy, but it take three strong men to crush him leg! Thag not understand. If it just Thag, he crush ladyboy with two finger and use rest to...
JC: WHOA Thag, this is a family column. What about Vladimir Kozlov?
GoT: Thag would love fight him. He big and strong and like to hurt people. Thag would win, because he only fight bear, Thag fight sabretooth tiger!
JC: Any chance you will be playing Thor?
GoT: Thag not like picture box. It steal soul. Also Thag not use puny warhammer, Thag crush head with giant maul!
JC: Rumours say that Triple H is being considered for the role. What are your thoughts?
GoT: THAG HATE MAN WITH THREE H'S! KILL! BURN! DESTROY! RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH!!!

With that the interview ended. JokerCat was last seen fleeing to Twitter, where he will be posting several updates a day. You can follow me, and him, at the link below.

Well folks, that's my creativity tapped out. I'll see you next week, same time same channel. To make sure you don't miss it, you can follow 411wrestling or me on Twitter, or of course just bookmark 411mania!

Stay Cool, Rock Hard. Lansdellicious – Out.