A " total is greater than the sum of his parts" wrestlers

[Judy Bagwell]

The Rock

mediocre offence, over the top selling

possibly the biggest star/draw ever

[El-P]

Sure it is part of his appeal. He's a little reckless. He's rough around the edges. He's more dangerous for it.

 

Certainly not to me. When he drops one of these horrible looking enzuigiri, I don't find it cool and he doesn't look more dangerous for it. It just looks terrible and I'm just brushing it off like "Well, that's Tenryu for you...". Same thing for the powerbomb. What makes Tenryu great is what he's great at (which are many many things).

[jdw]

It's kind of funny that no one back in the day talked about the greatness of Tenryu's sloppiness as a great part of his character and work. It was only invented after people started pointing that the Tenzuguri was sloppy that people wandered off to come up with an explanation for why it was still great. One wishes it was the other way around.

 

Now someone out there may say that the only way to come up with an explanation/justification/excuse for the Tenzuguri is for it first to be criticized.

 

I'd call bullshit on that. Specifically as someone who talked about the choppiness/sloppiness/lack of perfect execution of Dream Rush before other folks did, and talked about why I felt it "worked" in the match, even if unintentional: it was an interpromotional match, the first time with this pairing, and it makes sense / feels right given the context. That said, I'd be fine if someone didn't see it that way.

 

In contrast, the Grand Tenryu Unified Sloppiness Theory only came about because... well... we can never admit our favorites might be kind of shitty at something. So we have to make shit up to cover for it.

 

I don't know about anyone else, but Revolution No. 9 is a drizzingly piece of doped up shit. Not the only piece of shit from that recording sessions of that band. Doesn't mean I don't still love the hell out of the band, or love the better moments of that recording session.

 

For a group of elitist wrestling fans, a lot of us need to do a better job of admitting that the shit of our favorites does in fact stink.

[Loss]

You could at least refer to me directly. Done with this thread.

[PeteF3]

They may not have said it about Tenryu specifically, but the DVDVR guys were rather famously saying, "It isn't math, it's a fucking fight", and that was 15-some years ago. The backlash against the Chris Coeys of the review world isn't new, either.

[gordi]

 

there is a pretty strong tendency on line, in general, to focus on ring work above all else... in such cases, I think it could be reasonable to list wrestlers like The Road Warriors, Dump Matsumoto, and Abdullah the Butcher as being better wrestlers than you might think, given their in-ring limitations.

 

even here on PWO, I think it's not unfair to say that a wrestler's look and the relation of look to character, and the way that both connect to said wrestler's ring work can sometimes be undervalued in comparison to finer points such as punches and selling. So, maybe a guy like Jake or a guy like Rude - both of whom have that look/character/work connection perfected - such a wrestler might reasonably be seen by some as "greater" than their punching and selling (which are only above-average).

 

I know that you qualified this, but I think in this regard, look is a tool just like moves or blood or southern tag tricks or spots or weapons or whatever else. A lot of the discussion we have is split into a couple of categories. 1.) How good are the tools? 2.) How well does a wrestler use the tools he has?

 

In this regard, when it comes to look, I think we do a pretty good job hitting #2 a lot of the time. Maybe not enough focus is given to #1 when it comes to "look." Wrestlers have to work extremely hard to get a good body just like they have to in order to hit moves smoothly and what not. It's not a big issue to me because I care about #2 a hundred times more and I'll factor that in just as much as I will anything else. That means that if Mike Shaw was able to utilize his look extremely well to have good matches, I'd value that as much as Scott Steiner doing the same, all other things equal.

 

 

 

To clarify: I am not suggesting in any way that a leaner, more muscular body (or a handsome face or a nice hair-do or interesting ring gear) in and of itself makes for a "better" pro wrestler. I agree with you wholeheartedly that what is important with Mike Shaw and Scott Steiner is not how good they look, but how they use their look.

 

 

Young Scott Steiner had a typical late-80s power wrestler physique when he first showed up in JCP... but he wore a stylized amateur-wrestler singlet. So... is this guy gonna mix power moves with technique? Maybe toss guys around with innovative suplexes? Yes he is! Boom! You have got a nice synergy with look and ring work. And wow! A guy that big and muscular doing a hurricanrana!?!?! Here you have a great example of juxtaposition of looks/expectations vs. execution that worked like a charm. If Steiner had the look and build of the kind of guy who you'd normally expect to pull of that kind of move, then the Frankensteiner likely never would have got so over. Then, later in his career, after turning heel, the guy changed his look from "boyishly handsome, muscular jock" to "overly muscled preening jerk" and was able to get himself even more over as a loud-mouth strutting bully. What's important for me (and, I expect, for you as well - and for most of us here) is not how he was built or how he dressed taken in isolation, but in the synergy he created by having a character and look that went well together, and a ring style that matched up with both of those things.

 

Similarly: Mike Shaw, who could not have looked more different from Steiner, got over like Grover with the Makhan Singh gimmick in Stampede. However, he never managed to get over in the WWF or in WCW. Was that because he had a bad body and wasn't conventionally handsome? Hell no, of course not. I suppose you could argue that in a better world Norman the Lunatic and Bastion Booger could have been characters that suited Shaw's look... but something in the way those gimmicks were set up kept that all-important magic from happening. My best guess is that Shaw's in-ring style just wasn't suited to playing up an over the top gimmick, and also perhaps audiences at that time were looking for more realistic characters. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure Yokozuna was well over as a heel in 1993, and he had a pretty goofy look and gimmick... but somehow with him it all clicked. Synergy. Magic.

 

Was Rodney Agatupu Anoaʻi simply a better wrestler than Mike Shaw? Or was it just a better match of wrestler and character at that time?

 

In a lot of ways, this is what I think makes a "better than the sum of their parts" wrestler. That's what synergy means. The right combo of look, character, and ring style creates synergy.

 

It also ties in with GOTNW's new character/execution thread.

 

The element that I think is missing in a lot of the online discussions I get involved in is the importance of look as it relates to character and execution. It's really really important. It doesn't get talked about nearly enough.

[jdw]

You could at least refer to me directly. Done with this thread.

 

Were you the first person to come up with a reason why Tenryu's sloppiness was actually great after people pointed out that it was, well, sloppy?

 

I don't think so.

[jdw]

They may not have said it about Tenryu specifically, but the DVDVR guys were rather famously saying, "It isn't math, it's a fucking fight", and that was 15-some years ago.

 

Which always was a cute, funny line. The reason a lot of us hipped to wrestling being fake fighting is because it didn't look like real fighting, but instead like fake fighting. Tenryu airballing or going "neighborhood play" on the Tenzuguri doesn't really help protect the "fight" aspect.

 

 

The backlash against the Chris Coeys of the review world isn't new, either.

 

 

The backlash against "elitist reviewers" predates Coey or me or Jewett. People were busting Dave's balls before that. It would be a hoot to read them obsess in places like The Lariat (and it's predecessor that I'm forgetting) and on RSPW about Dave's star ratings and snobishness. And of course "Why does it get good" was a running joke among that crew when I got online.

 

The irony is that the anti-elitist are just as elitist. We've all sat with regular fans or kids and see how they watch and enjoy the matches. They sure as hell aren't talking about it or breaking it down like we do with Jumbo and Flair and Kawada and Lawler and Fujiwara and the rest of them.

 

There are 27000+ posts in the GWE forum, and this one is over 3500+ though Loss has culled a lot of older discussions into the forum. "Backlash" against Coeyism is a bit like Stalinism vs Lenin.

[C.S.]

Was Rodney Agatupu Anoaʻi simply a better wrestler than Mike Shaw? Or was it just a better match of wrestler and character at that time?

 

The simple and obvious answer, to me, is that Yokozuna was pushed as a serious threat and got wins when wins still meant something. Bastion Booger, on the other hand, was portrayed as a fat comedy jobber who mostly lost when losses still meant something.

 

[Rock_Of_Jericho]

Booker T comes to mind for me. He's good at pretty much everything, but great at nothing, really.

[Loss]

That would make him less than the sum of the parts.

[Rock_Of_Jericho]

I guess I was saying that, in terms of his career, where he won so many titles and had longevity, his accomplishments are greater than his talent. Still a talented and solid wrestler, but 6 world titles and winning almost every title in two different companies, I feel was surprising for a man who's just "good".

[GOTNW]

And that would be a fine discussion on its own. Everyone can start a thread.