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"Anti-workrate"


JerryvonKramer

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1) Steamboat is "workrate". See his execution, desire to present himself as an athlete, layout of his matches, and lack of character beyond "upstanding citizen/father".

 

2) Steamboat is "anti-workrate". See the ravenous fans of late 70s Mid-Atlantic who gave him the loudest pops I've heard any wrestler receive, and who viewed him as their own local Bruce Lee, who every man wanted to be and who ever woman wanted to be with. See also: working a months-long angle around getting your larynx crushed by a Randy Savage elbow onto the guardrail, getting mugged by Terry Funk at the '89 Clash, and spitting literal fire while dressed as a fantastical dragon throughout the early 90s.

 

In short, like most attempts to classify all of wrestling into This or That, it's boring, short-sighted, and pedantic. El Dandy is workrate. BattlARTS/FUTEN is workrate. Damien Demento is anti-workrate. Right to Censor is anti-workrate. Both sides have their place. Both sides have had instance of greatness/dullards.

 

And in spite of it all, Tenta and Demolition still suck.

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To start, I'd say that the argument I've been making over the last few years is one of "working hard" vs "working smart" with the former generally what I consider the traditional Meltzerian definition of workrate to be.

 

I think the words that we're gravitating towards instead of logic are narrative and storytelling.

 

1. Can you find the throughline of a narrative within a match?

2. Is that narrative compelling?

3. Is that narrative consistent? If not, does that inconsistency lead to an eroding of the overall narrative? (Do moves have meaning? Are they sold appropriately? etc.)

4. Do the wrestlers contribute to that narrative utilizing various character and tone-driven decisions on pacing, crowd control, reactions, etc? If not...

5. Are the moves within the match executed so as to enhance the narrative? If not...

 

So there are what I would consider workrate elements in 2, because boring isn't compelling, but a match can not be worked particularly hard and still have a compelling narrative if the effort is put in through selling and creating perceived meaning.

 

For me, that last element is the primary workrate one, though, and it's really the last element, the least important one, though, of course, still important, as all of them are.

 

I think people think it's an argument of 3 vs 5, though, consistency for the sake of consistency vs action for the sake of action or execution for the sake of execution. That's not the case at all.

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I think the biggest problem with this entire argument is that workrate doesn't really have a definition. I think the only real reason to think that Malenko has more workrate than Tenta is that Malenko is smaller. It isn't like guys like Tenta and Vader weren't working just as hard as someone like Malenko or Guerrero, they are just working differently. Malenko couldn't credibly work Tenta's style any more than Tenta could work his. We should judge these guys based on what they're trying to accomplish, not against some random concept that doesn't really apply to everyone. I don't know if that means I'm anit-workrate or if I'm just anti-arbitrary grading systems. It is kind of like grading Wayne Gretzky's hockey skills with football stats. He doesn't look like he's that great of an athlete, because you decided on a grading scale that doesn't fit his skills.

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Vader and Blackwell were both working harder than Tenta. I don't understand why there would be any debate about that or why Vader and Tenta would be bracketed together in that way. Tenta didn't bump around, Vader and Blackwell did. They had a higher workrate.

 

Are these definitions really so unknown to us?

 

This argument has gone completely off the rails if you are at this point just defining workrate isn't the point of this debate not about what workrate is but rather if it is an important or a valuable attribute for a wrestler to have?

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Oh not I understand where you were coming from it just seems insane to go down that road of conversation as it seems to leading to the dreaded "You don't know anything if you haven't done it" fallacy by questioning what is a pretty basic and easy to understand concept. We can all see that clearly Vader works harder than Tenta but, to me the bigger picture is that how hard you have to work due to an inherit physical limitation shouldn't be a plus for you as a worker. Workrate is I guess some what important but it say it is a parameter that is very very low on my list.

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Sid almost never worked hard and got huge reactions. He's definitely anti-workrate. He had an indy match about 6 years ago that might be the all time anti workrate bout I saw live. He took no bumps at all and his only offense was 3 elbows to the ribs to break out of a chinlock and the rollup he won with.

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Vader and Blackwell were both working harder than Tenta. I don't understand why there would be any debate about that or why Vader and Tenta would be bracketed together in that way. Tenta didn't bump around, Vader and Blackwell did. They had a higher workrate.

 

Are these definitions really so unknown to us?

Do you think Tenta didn't have a high workrate? Vader was probably the best super heavyweight ever, and Blackwell is also an outlier when it comes to big guys. That doesn't mean that Tenta was just a fat dude wobbling around the ring. He was working his ass off. His most high profile run was against a Hogan, who was basically the definition of anti-workrate at the time. That didn't stop Tenta from going out there and working his ass off. He could have worked an easier style, but he went out there and busted his ass every night. I'm not saying that workrate isn't an important measure, but the definition of workrate seems to be limiting to guys like Tenta who was clearly working his ass off.

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Workrate is a sliding scale everyone is some where on it. I've always thought of an easy way to look at it as workrate is judged by the amount of moves done in a set amount of time if there are a lot of moves it's high workrate if it's less then low workrate. The point is more that clearly you can to either too high or too low but to me being too high can hurt matches more than being too low and, in the macro workrate all together is fair less important than other attributes.

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Sid almost never worked hard and got huge reactions. He's definitely anti-workrate. He had an indy match about 6 years ago that might be the all time anti workrate bout I saw live. He took no bumps at all and his only offense was 3 elbows to the ribs to break out of a chinlock and the rollup he won with.

Sid is an awful worker and I'd be shocked if he makes anyone's top 100
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For me he is a guy who shouldn't be anywhere near the list.

 

Not only mechanically awful, but also bad at mostly all aspects of the performance but also at key times in his career was over as a baby face when booked as a heel and does nothing to cut off those pops. Yet failed to draw when pushed in babyface positions.

 

Also egregiously unprofessional in the sense that he just didn't do his job.

 

I don't see any case at all, that's the truth.

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I've always thought of an easy way to look at it as workrate is judged by the amount of moves done in a set amount of time if there are a lot of moves it's high workrate if it's less then low workrate.

 

Don't agree with this at all. Not when you have guys like Jake "The Snake" Roberts and Scott Hall - both good workers, no? - preaching that it's better to have only five moves if those five moves are all massively over with the audience.

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Mechanically in what sense? I like the fact he looks dangerous, it's what makes his squashes so super duper in my eyes. The way he works and acts matches up with how he looks, and that's what gets me hard. I suppose returning back to what you were looking for at the start of the thread. That and he's cool as fuck. The main metric for a wrestler is how cool and awesome they are, because awesome things are things worth watching. They can be cool and awesome for one of many reasons, Stan Hansen's cool as all shit as he's a super duper hoss, some are cool because of out of this world things they can do, Lex Luger's cool as fuck as a heel because of the fact he's just SUCH A SHIT, and Sid's coolness is that weird charisma he had. That's why he always ended up getting those babyface pops. Because Sid's cool.

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