Wrestling and Rockism

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Scott Keith is obviously a wrestling rockist. What do you consider to be the main features of wrestling rockism? Surely it boils down solely to the elevation of "sports" over "entertainment", so-called "workrate freaks"?

― Dom Passantino (Dom Passantino), Tuesday, 2 November 2004 22:16 (twenty years ago)

This makes Keith's worship of the Rock a bit incongruous though, no? I'd say Rock is a very non-rockist wrestler in that his wrestling skill is solid at best (I'd say he's better than a lot of people make out, though) and 70% of his appeal is in his ability to ad-lib gleeful abuse like no other. And his tendency to oversell is borderline hilarious cf. every post-WM15 Stunner he's ever taken.

Are we doing a list for the tenets of wrestling rockism? I'd say being a stickler for proper selling is one, eg 'DAMMIT HE WORKED THE WRONG LEG FOR THE FIGURE FOUR'.

I think my opinions differ from wrestling rockists a lot less than they do from music rockists. I mean y'know, Benoit pretty much IS god.

― M1chael Ph1lip Ph1lip Ph1lip Ph1lip Ph1lip Ann0yman (Ferg), Wednesday, 3 November 2004 04:38 (twenty years ago)

Yeah, we have to define "wrestling rockism" ... I was thinking more like a Bill Watts or Jim Cornette, who favour "classic southern wrestling", simple "I hate you, let's fight" feuds, mat wrestling, etc.

― MindInRewind (Barry Bruner), Friday, 5 November 2004 01:10 (twenty years ago)

angle is god

― lukey (Lukey G), Friday, 5 November 2004 14:10 (twenty years ago)

No, Eddy Guerrero is God. But I am willing to accept polytheism in this case.

I'm thinking that rockist wrestling includes a disdain for highspots and garbage/hardcore wrestling, too.

― MC Transmaniacon (natepatrin), Friday, 5 November 2004 19:53 (twenty years ago)

Definitely, re: the highspots and garbage wrestling. When Watts ran WCW he banned all moves from the top rope (Foley talks about it in his first book).

― MindInRewind (Barry Bruner), Friday, 5 November 2004 22:10 (twenty years ago)

Where does the ILW massive stand on garbage wrestling anyway? I think there's a proper way to do it (New Jack with a shopping trolley pulling stupid faces and hitting people in the crotch with Dreamcast controllers) and a wrong way to do it (Zandig and Wifebeater stabbing each other in the eyes with sharkfish, or whatever).

This thread puts me in mind of the famous James E Cornette quote: "A wrestling show where wrestling fans come to watch wrestlers wrestle".

― Dom Passantino (Dom Passantino), Friday, 5 November 2004 22:27 (twenty years ago)

I'm not a big fan of it, but I'm a bit squeamish and I generally prefer matches that are more psychology-based, which is normally not the case for garbage matches.

As a slight aside: I've seen the Hayabusa-Onita match from '95, which was a barbed wire electric cage exploding ring match. This was one of Onita's many retirement matches and the one which made Hayabusa into a big star. Usually I'm not interested in such matches, but there's some surprisingly awesome move-countermove psychology with each guy trying to whip the other into the ropes or cage. The match has a great build and some super near falls. But Japanese wrestling is usually stronger with psychology after all.

New Jack in ECW was great because his thing was so different from what even the other garbage wrestlers in that company were doing. Having his music play for the entire match was pure genius though. But the problem with New Jack is you never know if he's going to fuck up and get someone seriously hurt (the blown spot with him and Vic Grimes falling from the shaky scaffolding was particularly fucked up and both guys are probably lucky that they're still able to walk).

― MindInRewind (Barry Bruner), Saturday, 6 November 2004 06:15 (twenty years ago)

Ryuji Yamakawa and Tomoaki Honma had a really great garbage match sometime around 6/99 where the moves were centered around a struggle to avoid/force the opponent into the series of carefully-placed plywood-and-barbed-wire/light-tubes deathmatch props. It's just as great for the shots they just avoid and the bumps they don't take than it is for the facebuster-onto-broken-glass moments. Plus Yamakawa's entrance theme is Journey's "Separate Ways" (which plays over the post-match carnage). Steve Perry never sounded so badass.

― MC Transmaniacon (natepatrin), Monday, 8 November 2004 01:56 (twenty years ago)

It's just as great for the shots they just avoid and the bumps they don't take than it is for the facebuster-onto-broken-glass moments.
Hayabusa-Onita was full of stuff like that too. If only all hardcore/garbage matches had more of these moments.

― MindInRewind (Barry Bruner), Monday, 8 November 2004 05:02 (twenty years ago)

one month passes...

Herb Kunze is the ultimate rockist. The Death Valley Driver guys are like the noise board. An equivalent of the mp3 bloggers is just waiting to happen. Scott Keith might actually be closer to pop-ism than most due to his "overrating" matches (y'know, when he re-adjusts his ratings in hindsight) due to hot finishes despite a poor body portion, and giving props to wrestlers due to sheer ~AWESOMENESS not always necessarily related to workrate (Batista is a recent example, Rock being the ultimate one). Dave Meltzer, of course, is the dean of American pro wrestling criticism.

― alex in montreal, Thursday, 6 January 2005 21:05 (twenty years ago)

Wrestling Rockism:

The Ricky Morton tag team formula (extended heel beatdown --> hot tag)
Flair/Steamboat-style pin reversal sequence
Throwing good punches
Clean finishes
Blow-off matches to end a blood feud
Logic (in booking and in matches)
No match gimmicks except for steel cages and I Quit matches
Selling (as mentioned before)

― alex in montreal, Thursday, 6 January 2005 21:15 (twenty years ago)

Uh ... most of those things aren't rockist, they're fundamental elements of wrestling. Saying that logic in booking and blow-off matches are rockist is like saying that chords are rockist.

― MindInRewind (Barry Bruner), Thursday, 6 January 2005 22:04 (twenty years ago)

But saying that it has a high impact on your enjoyment of a match/feud and that their absence ruins it for you is rockist. Blow-off matches aren't as fundamental as they used to be (chords are way more crucial), especially given RAW and the huge numbers of PPVs in a year, and complaining that they didn't blow off this feud or that feud like the way they used to is kinda rockist, no?

As for logic, I meant more nitpicking the (lack) of logic in booking.

― alex in montreal, Thursday, 6 January 2005 22:20 (twenty years ago)

Blow-off matches aren't as fundamental as they used to be

Yikes, no!

When you don't have blow-off feuds (read: at the end of the feud there is a clear winner and a clear loser) then you've got the 50-50 booking that plagued everyone in the WWE who wasn't named HHH in 2002-3. With HHH it was win/win/win/win, and with everyone else it was win/lose/win/lose. Nobody got elevated, and you had HHH untouchable on top with a bunch of interchangeable midcarders underneath. (although strictly speaking, there were still blow-off matches -- HHH won them all, which is what kept him on top and everyone else in the midcard trading wins and losses).

Alex, you're really not making any sense -- here, you're saying that complaining about the lack of logic and continuity in booking is rockist, but on another thread you're complaining that we don't see enough continuity in big matches and effective stories being told in the ring.

― MindInRewind (Barry Bruner), Thursday, 6 January 2005 22:53 (twenty years ago)

Death Valley Driver- where a bunch of guys obsess of minutae of independant and Japanese wrestling matches, and then criticise other guys for... obsessing over minutae of independant and Japanese wrestling matches.

― Dom Passantino (Dom Passantino), Thursday, 6 January 2005 23:29 (twenty years ago)

I think we can all agree that garbage wrestling is anathema to the wrestling rockist, but we just need to define "rockism in wrestling", perhaps not from a position of what it stands for, but what it stands against?

Wrestling rockists are always quick to praise Bruiser Brody though, in the same way that music rockist will always have "It Takes A Nation of Millions" or "Toxic" to fall back on.

― Dom Passantino (Dom Passantino), Thursday, 6 January 2005 23:31 (twenty years ago)

here, you're saying that complaining about the lack of logic and continuity in booking is rockist, but on another thread you're complaining that we don't see enough continuity in big matches and effective stories being told in the ring.

Yes, I complained about not enough continuity in big matches, but I wouldn't say I'm *complaining* about the lack of logic in booking is rockist, just categorizing it as such (perhaps my comprehension of the term is at the core of our disagreement).

As for the blow-off match, it's the traditional and arguably successful way money-wise to end a feud. However, WWE hasn't done it as often (Benoit/Triple H, Angle/Eddie, JBL/Eddie) and though that's not the way I preferred it and probably bad business-wise, it hasn't stopped me from *enjoying* the feuds personally anyway, which is the perspective I'm coming from. Maybe 'cause I don't really care as much as I used to about elevating stars and such; I'll just kinda watch every week no matter what.

― alex in montreal, Friday, 7 January 2005 05:04 (twenty years ago)

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