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Great Match Theory Discussion


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A wrestler that has 50 good matches isn't necessarily better than a wrestler that had 38 good matches, but a wrestler who had hundreds of good matches has got to be better than the wrestler who only had 19 of them, right? Volume isn't a direct number comparison, but I think at a certain point, having good matches time and time again is the ultimate pattern you are looking for.

 

You'll note that I'm using the word "good" and not "great". Yes, Ultimate Warrior had more great matches than Brad Armstrong, but Brad Armstrong had far more good ones.

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Agreed.

 

I had a longer post pointing out that it's a concept that goes back long before hardcore wrestling fandom to sports and other forms of entertainment. Ernie Banks is a great SS? Folks would point to 1955 + 1957-60 as Great Seasons for a SS. Why did some pimp Sandy Koufax as the best left ever? Great Seasons. Jack Morris for the HOF? "Great" 90s and Great Post Season Games.

 

It's not surprising that wrestling fans, many of whom are fans of sports and other forms of entertainment where this is common, would use it in talking about work and workers.

 

In turn, sports and other forms of entertainment have exactly the same group of people on the other side who will argue:

 

Fan On A Barstool #1: "I'm telling you that Bucky Dent was a great fucking player. I ain't pointing to great seasons, since that's not what being a great player is about. It's about that home run in Game 163 in Fenway to beat the fucking Red Sox..."

 

Fan On A Barstool #2: "Fuckin' A!"

 

Fan On A Barstool #1: "... and about that 1978 World Series where he kicked that candy ass of the Dodgers."

 

Fan On A Barstool #2: "Damn straight!"

 

Fan On A Barstool #3: "Silly rubes..."

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A wrestler that has 50 good matches isn't necessarily better than a wrestler that had 38 good matches, but a wrestler who had hundreds of good matches has got to be better than the wrestler who only had 19 of them, right? Volume isn't a direct number comparison, but I think at a certain point, having good matches time and time again is the ultimate pattern you are looking for.

 

You'll note that I'm using the word "good" and not "great". Yes, Ultimate Warrior had more great matches than Brad Armstrong, but Brad Armstrong had far more good ones.

 

Good is subjective, though, because wrestling isn't stats based. It's more of an art than a sport. That's part of the problem here. You can find patterns over time on what the wrestler actually does to make the matches great, how he handles different situations, and ..

 

Again, we've done this though. let me say that people have been brandishing it like a dragon to be slayed when it's not exactly illogical, as Loss said. But it's a starting point in figuring this stuff out to me, not an end point.

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A wrestler that has 50 good matches isn't necessarily better than a wrestler that had 38 good matches, but a wrestler who had hundreds of good matches has got to be better than the wrestler who only had 19 of them, right? Volume isn't a direct number comparison, but I think at a certain point, having good matches time and time again is the ultimate pattern you are looking for.

 

You'll note that I'm using the word "good" and not "great". Yes, Ultimate Warrior had more great matches than Brad Armstrong, but Brad Armstrong had far more good ones.

 

Is that what great match theory is about? Making a case that someone with a few good matches is better than someone with a ton of good matches?

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A wrestler that has 50 good matches isn't necessarily better than a wrestler that had 38 good matches, but a wrestler who had hundreds of good matches has got to be better than the wrestler who only had 19 of them, right? Volume isn't a direct number comparison, but I think at a certain point, having good matches time and time again is the ultimate pattern you are looking for.

 

You'll note that I'm using the word "good" and not "great". Yes, Ultimate Warrior had more great matches than Brad Armstrong, but Brad Armstrong had far more good ones.

 

Is that what great match theory is about? Making a case that someone with a few good matches is better than someone with a ton of good matches?

 

 

I don't think there are any absolutes, but I think in most cases, the better wrestler has the better output. But as Matt said himself, it's a starting point, not the end of the conversation.

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Great Match Theory is okay as a theory, it just has a poncey name. Might as well go all the way and call it Auteur Theory. John Tenta was an auteur working within the confines of the WWF studio system to produce iconic works about the fat man's struggle in post-Regan America.

 

:)

 

Tenta was paying homage to the great WWF fat man storylines of such visionaries as Bundy, Monsoon and Calhoun.

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I just ran a search and it all goes back to the Bret vs Flair thread.

 

Of course it does.

 

Don't be ridiculous Matt. jdw is about to tell you they've been using the term since at least the late 80s. Heck, they were using it when he was watching a match with Meltzer and Yohe in Tokyo in 1993!

 

I jest, I jest! :D

 

 

Nah. I was joking about it in PM with Jerome after he posted, did a google search and found the same post that Matt did. We both got a chuckle out of it being in Bret vs Flair (along with Matt's alternate name of Great Match Paradigm).

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A wrestler that has 50 good matches isn't necessarily better than a wrestler that had 38 good matches, but a wrestler who had hundreds of good matches has got to be better than the wrestler who only had 19 of them, right? Volume isn't a direct number comparison, but I think at a certain point, having good matches time and time again is the ultimate pattern you are looking for.

 

You'll note that I'm using the word "good" and not "great". Yes, Ultimate Warrior had more great matches than Brad Armstrong, but Brad Armstrong had far more good ones.

 

Is that what great match theory is about? Making a case that someone with a few good matches is better than someone with a ton of good matches?

 

 

I don't think there are any absolutes, but I think in most cases, the better wrestler has the better output. But as Matt said himself, it's a starting point, not the end of the conversation.

 

 

I'm interested in seeing how other concepts or factors can fill in the gaps, but would hope output would be a pretty decisive factor. We've got no way to determine who's calling all matches, who's dragging things down unless its blatant, or so many other little things. Just not sure where any of those can overcome the output.

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I have no problem with Great Match Theory, the terminology, or the discussion about it and that comes from it. Discussing theories, applying them, testing them, rebelling against them, etc. is all a part of art appreciation. This is no different.

 

I don't have a problem with the concept, and we all coin terminology or steal it from elsewhere. As mentioned in another thread, people have been using forms of the concept for a long time. Dibiase is probably the definitive guy over the years for the concept. Suspect guys who have been around forever in these work discussions like Dylan and Childs would nod their heads that they've seen it with Ted over and over and over again.

 

Concept is interesting, and certainly has made a lot of people stop to think

 

Not putting words into El-P's mouth, but I read the comment on it being a Peeve is more in the sense that's rapidly devolved into a meme/trope that's just a quick cudgel to wack a worker or discussion over the head with.

 

That was the felling I ran into in the 1993 Wrestler of the Year discussion when it was tossed out.

 

I don't think Parv and I disagree that radically on Kobashi or Kawada in that year. I have a different top down perspective from him simply because he's watched the equiv of Best Of while I watched all of it, and have been a part of the 22+ years of people spouting off to what a wacky great year Kobashi had. I know what's behind people praising that specific year.

 

When I saw him toss out Great Match Theory as the reason people talk about that year, it hit me as a misapplied concept that was passing into tropeville.

 

It's quite likely that I wasn't as nice as possible in explaining why Kobashi's 1993 was quite the opposite of a GMT year, but admittedly I can be sharp and abrupt and assholish in response. I respect Parv for taking a step back, sifting through any sharpness of my response, and seeing what I was trying to get across. I think he better understands why people point to that year.

 

Concept is find. Coining a name for it is cool, and kind of fun. I do it to. Turning it into a cudgel? It reduces, or frankly eliminated, the value of something that could have sustained value. People see GMT tossed on and go, "Well fuck it... not going to bother with this."

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My feeling on GMT is that there's no easy answer to it:

 

1. Ring generals and the skills required to be one are underrated by the community -- see DiBiase vs. Bossman debate on this. To my way of thinking it is totally bonkers that people consider that even a debate to have. "Yeah but Bossman had better matches in WWF!" To me, that is where the output argument falls down. DiBiase might have got a formulaic in WWF, but he was at all times until he hurt his neck a "better worker" than Bossman. And I like Bossman. I just think fundmental skills should count for something.

 

2. For GWE purposes it is impossible to ignore. At some point when discussing Flair or Jumbo or Misawa or whoever, you have to bring up the laundry list. And at some point, the list becomes too significant to ignore -- this is my key argument with Dory. He was simply part of too many good, very good and great matches to ignore. Even if he had limitations as a worker, his career "output" is significant. I am a bigger fan of Dory than most. But it can work in the other direction. I am probably lower on Bob Backlund than any other person who has bothered to go back and watch that era of WWF, and his list of great matches is still impossible to ignore. Some people might say the same thing about Shawn Michaels -- I just happen to not even think those matches are "great".

 

3. Great matches are one thing, but you also have to consider what happens within each match. This is actually something people do with Dory -- they say "oh yeah, all those matches were great DESPITE Dory, it was all Terry, it all his opponent" or whatever. This is what I was trying to get at with Kobashi in 93 too. But this is something else to consider in the overall picture.

 

In short:

 

- A guy's core skills

- Their number of great matches

- What they do within matches

 

Those are three different things but all of them should come into consideration for GWE, or when comparing two guys. And I think too often the first and the third go missing.

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One thing I want to say, especially in terms of this GWE project, and just with the general level of debate that we engage with here...I'm not sure how to phrase this exactly, but as verbose as I can be about matches or wrestlers sometimes (I think I've written over 2,000 words on Cena/Owens II in the last 24 hours...), there are other times when it's like...I like something, but I have no way to articulate why.

 

I remember promising ages ago to talk about Shawn Michaels for GWE. In my defense I then went on a long hiatus from wrestling altogether, but even now that I'm posting again, I think about doing it and I just...have no idea what to say. I think Shawn is fantastic, I think he's been in boatloads of the best matches I've seen, and I think he's done millions of things to make those matches great. I could take a particular match of his and point out what I think he did well or what worked, but I have absolutely no idea how to extrapolate it into "These are the things Shawn does well in general that make him great." I just know he was.

 

And of course this is a discussion board and so the point is kind of to explain why things are good or bad, but sometimes, I just can't. I don't think that means Shawn wasn't great, and I don't think that means that he's less great than someone whom I can immediately dissect their greatness (Cena for example). It's a flaw in me, not them, if that makes sense.

 

So I guess my point in all that is that when I think of Shawn as a case, I think of all the great matches he was in, see how big that list is, and there's my evidence. That's just the easiest way for me to quantify his worth, well at least easier than trying to dissect his tools and etc. That may be Great Match Theory ™, but I don't think it's reductive or shows a lack of analysis on my part.

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It's not reductive at all. One of the challenges of talking about wrestling that I enjoy most is trying to figure out a way to put the intangibles into words. Sometimes, we succeed in doing that, and other times, we miss the mark and try again. It's sometimes not easy.

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