Is ranking wrestlers political?

[ohtani's jacket]

I actually think the most interesting thing about the post-war period is that the Supreme Commander Allied Powers didn't seem to mind the portrayal of Japan vs. the West that every man in the street was aware of because the SCAP actively tried to disseminate nationalistic ideologies during the post-war recovery period. Much like the police didn't seem to mind how riled up the throngs of people got crowded around street corners, it seems the SCAP saw pro-wrestling as a positive distraction from the post-war hardships.

 

This part is irrelevant as the SCAP post no longer existed after the peace treaty was signed in 1952 and MacArthur was fired by Truman in 1951 anyway four months before Rikidozan and pro-wrestling made their debut on Japanese shores. So while pro-wrestling may have been cultural imperialism it was entirely post-occupation cultural imperialism. See, it's a big topic.

[Bierschwale]

I want to add that one reason I want to keep an open mind in this is that I have seen an impact on music criticism. Pitchfork did their top 200 tracks of the 80s recently and ranked songs by Mtume, Al B. Sure and Frankie Knuckles. It's an interesting contrast to their 500 track list less than a decade ago which was more focused on traditional college rock and indie acts during that time.

 

I didn't like the majority of that, which is not related to the music, it's just that I'm not a huge fan of non-pop electronic. I'm a headphone listener. That, along with instrumental post-rock and a few other things, don't feel right on a list of songs, they feel like their own thing (How very GWE).

 

At least I can claim these as my top ten albums from '75-'84, otherwise known as the Loss Decade:

 

10) Broken English by Marianne Faithfull. (1979)

9) Blondie by Blondie. (1976)

8) Pretenders by Pretenders. (1980)

7) The Dreaming by Kate Bush. (1982)

6) Rumours by Fleetwood Mac. (1977)

5) Marquee Moon by Television. (1977)

4) Another Green World by Brian Eno. (1975)

3) Purple Rain by Prince and the Revolution. (1984)

2) Remain in Light by Talking Heads. (1980)

1) Parallel Lines by Blondie. (1978)

[Herodes]

The main point is that the narrative of Japanese wrestling is a direct reaction to America, it's evolution and style is heavily influenced by the west and there was always major western presence throughout its entire history giving it an easy accessibility to the western fan. While more conservative in its nature, it developed in the western tradition. Whereas Mexico, while a geographical neighbor, developed independently and its tropes, characters, rhythms and style consigns it to being "the other" as it explicitly rejected the American influence and became its own entity and mythology. We are still at the stage where the majority struggle to "get it" as seen through the prism of western influence but there is nothing inherently difficult about the style unless we seek to judge it solely on western standards which lead to wholesale dismissals of no psychology, no selling, looks fake etc. But those criticisms carry no weight if the fan refuses to engage with it except by American standards thereby ignoring the context and failing to understand that it has its own cultural identity. We see our first Japanese tapes and see many familiar faces and a familiar style and narrative, whereas we see lucha for the first time and see what appears to be chaos that lacks familiar conventions. The old Mexican lady at arena colisseo "gets it" which means it is valid.

[ohtani's jacket]

That strikes me as something different from cultural imperialism. If anything it's purely economic since foreign wrestlers have always been paid a handsome sum to wrestle in Japan, which is not the case in Mexico. I'm not sure I agree that lucha developed independently of the US. It's roots are in American wrestling the same as Japan. Lutteroth brought wrestling to Mexico from El Paso and used plenty of foreign talent in the early years of EMLL before developing Mexican stars. The first wrestler to wear a mask in Mexico was the American worker, Cyclone Mackey, and that was an idea that was brought over from the states.

[Herodes]

Strongly disagree. The tradition of the mask has nothing to do with cyclone Mackey and I think that's obvious and willfully ignored the sociological/anthropological aspect of lucha as relates to the cultural heritage and Latin notions of pride and machismo, Aztec tradition etc. Lucha is explicitly different and the cultural exchange with the US is insignificant as compared to Japan and again tries to reinforce the hegemony by stating that is is lack of economic incentive with the the US rather the its own strong and independent cultural voice that determined its path. Let's not claim "cyclone Mackey" has any relevance to the discourse. After suffering horrifically at the hands of America, Japan was a cuckolded nation trying to use wrestling as a device to overcome its shame; its story is entirely different from Mexico.

[JerryvonKramer]

I think it's a concept worth exploring. Similar arguments are raised when the traditional white, western canon of literature is challenged by a new voice championing for example previously unknown (to Western readers) African literature; the establishment is willing to indulge discussion of "token" entries as a curiosity, but ultimately will close ranks if it poses any threat to the canon of Western literature. Any legitimate threat or opposing voice will be dismissed as a contrarian opinion and the fundamental status quo isn't allowed to be challenged beyond an orientalist rejection of the attempt to change the canon as a "niche" voice and any proponents as fetshistic (it's no surprise for example to learn that Parv is a Shakespeare scholar and unwilling to give much thought to "contrarian/niche" other than token picks based on a cherry-picked sampling, however enduring the consensus remains unchallenged). I have been part of literary debates where the Shahnameh (the great classical work of Persian literature) has been presented by some as not only deserving to be in the canon but also not to be perceived as a fetishistic pick but any serious challenge was quickly shut down as soon as the notion of it being considered alongside the great works of western literature - very much in the same manner Parv has done (in a passive aggressive manner) by ultimately disregarding opinions that challenge the consensus.

Yeah, sorry, much of this (as it pertains to me personally) is bollocks. I've spent my entire career challenging "the consensus view" in my discipline. On my two main podcasts: I've championed (on WTBBP) people like Ron Garvin and Lex Luger -- still derided in most corners of the fandom -- and (on Titans) I've spent hours looking at one of the most shit-on eras and promotions (WWF in the late 1970s and early 1980s) and championed completely not-talked-about-at-all people like Mr. Fuji, while trying to give an honest assessment of guys like Bob Backlund. I have a long thread reviewing dozens of matches of Dory Funk Jr -- a guy who a lot of the people on this board think is a synonym for "boring". Every single "contrarian" #1 contender I talked about in the essay was in my top 15. It's just completely not true that I dismiss niches, alternative voices and so on and so forth. A complete mischaracterisation. I just like to see balance and fairness. I don't think Jumbo needs to be knocked down to build Tenryu up. I don't think Flair needs to be pulled down to build Lawler up. I often think "revisionism goes too far". I'm moderate. Not conservative, but moderate.

 

I'm done with GWE, but I wasn't going to let this slide. It's just not correct.

[ohtani's jacket]

Strongly disagree. The tradition of the mask has nothing to do with cyclone Mackey and I think that's obvious and willfully ignored the sociological/anthropological aspect of lucha as relates to the cultural heritage and Latin notions of pride and machismo, Aztec tradition etc. Lucha is explicitly different and the cultural exchange with the US is insignificant as compared to Japan and again tries to reinforce the hegemony by stating that is is lack of economic incentive with the the US rather the its own strong and independent cultural voice that determined its path. Let's not claim "cyclone Mackey" has any relevance to the discourse. After suffering horrifically at the hands of America, Japan was a cuckolded nation trying to use wrestling as a device to overcome its shame; its story is entirely different from Mexico.

 

Cyclone Mackey is enough of a footnote in lucha history that lucha historians care about him. There is some debate over whether he was the first masked wrestler or another American from Chicago, but Mackey is generally credited as being the first wrestler to popularise the mask and there's even debate over who made it for him with saddler Antonio Martínez, who made the wrestlers' footwear, usually receiving the credit. The mask was a gimmick and first and no-one had the Aztecs in mind or even rural customs. El Murcielago Enmascarado was another of the important early masked wrestlers who was in the first mask vs. hair match and was, I believe, the first luchador to unmask. That clearly started a tradition and then Santo made the mask a staple. What you're saying about cultural heritage etc. may play a part in lucha's popularity, but from what I've read the appeal of lucha wasn't much different from the appeal of professional wrestling in post-war Japan. After the Mexican revolution, impoverished villagers moved to Mexico City in the hope of a better life. Those who could afford entertainment flocked to the movie palaces and the sports arenas just as Japanese people did during their post-WW II malaise. Lucha was a new form of entertainment imported from the USA just as it was in Japan. A Mexican brought wrestling to Mexico just as Japanese brought wrestling to Japan.

 

I've read the arguments that the US remade Japan in its image during the occupation. There is undoubtedly some truth to that, but Japanese wrestling wasn't exactly Coca Cola, i.e. as American as apple pie. You can't talk about Mexico having an independent cultural voice and not acknowledge the traditionally "Japanese" aspects of Japanese pro-wrestling. How often are these overlooked because people can't recognise them? It's easy to spot the familiar US influences in Japanese wrestling but how often do people fail to notice the Japanese aspects because they're unfamiliar with Japanese culture? Was Rikidozan was a traditional Japanese hero or a transplanted American babyface? Did Kimura or Yamaguchi behave like Americans? I could go on and on. I tried thinking of examples of what makes lucha libre unique from American wrestling but for every example I could think of a counter example from Japan. And I think over time, the idea of cultural imperialism also falls apart. When Japanese wrestling made its resurgence in the early 80s three of the leading figures (Choshu, Fujinami and Sayama) had all been heavily influenced by Mexico not the United States. Similarly, let's not pretend that Mexico was closed off the rest of the world. There was plenty of cross-cultural exchange with the California and Texas territories. Lucha by all rights comes from Texas.

 

Like I said, we're dealing with blanket statements. People have written dissertations and books on these subjects. If online posters want to take this political stuff seriously they ought to do plenty of research otherwise it seems like grandstanding to me.

[JerryvonKramer]

When Dory Funk Jr taught Jumbo Tsuruta how to do a butterfly suplex was he oppressing him with American cultural imperialism? Was there a West Texas conspiracy to dominate Japan through the use of the lariat ... One way, literally, through Stan Hansen, and another way, ideologically, through its appropriation by Jumbo Tsuruta?

 

Was Billy Robinson latently working for the last vestiages of the British Empire when people copied his tilt-a-whirl backbreaker?

 

This might sound like I'm reducing the discussion to banalities, but if we aren't talking about that, what exactly are we talking about? I must say, I don't really get it.

[ohtani's jacket]

It's worth debating. Why was the "God of Wrestling" and the spiritual father of the biggest promotion in Japanese history a European and not an American imperialist? Why was Inoki infatuated with Mixed Martial Arts and not promos, TV squashes and Southern style tags? Baba, I think, was more infatuated with America. I can imagine him holidaying in Hawaii and buying American-made.

[donsem43]

I would buy Baba being influenced by American corporate imperialism not cultural.

[Herodes]

It's a question of influence, origins and development. There's no doubt that there was always heavy Western involvement in Japanese wrestling as compared to Mexico and explicitly were part of the system in a way that wasn't present in Mexico to any significant degree. Americans would constantly tour and easily fit in to Japan which makes it more accessible to western audiences unlike Mexico.

[pol]

I guess this is the place to bring up the readiness with which people dismiss joshi due to stylistic elements that were a response to sexism. There's even the old Meltzer talking point of "women will only get over if they're better than the men." "Better" in Meltzerese meaning "do more stuff than".

[Matt D]

This discussion, and the run-up to it, really did sort of make me look at how the contemporary 90s AAAs love was almost completely workrate-driven in a different light. It had been giving me some conceptual troubles.

[jdw]

I'm not going to reject out of hand the Puroresu = "product of American cultural imperialism" concept. That's even while admitting that when seeing Dylan toss it in the "Me" post that my first thought was, "Dylan's talking wacky nonsense here". It's certainly something worth giving more thought to. I'd also hate to see that the "giving more thought to" aspect is *just* a bunch of gaijin, even those living over there or folks who have been watching it for decades, hashing out what someone else's wrestling is. There would be more value in it if we had the modern equivs of Hisa, and several of them, joining the discussion. I'm not sure how we'd get that lucky, though.

 

That said...

 

The concept of Puroresu = "product of American cultural imperialism" = Puroresu Super Accessable is, for anyone who has been around puroresu discussions over the past several decades, an interesting one... odd one... not sure what to make of it one.

 

Dylan has been around long enough to see "Puro Snobs" tossed at folks who would talk about puroresu (and also talk about US and Lucha as well) but the mainstream likes of Keller or Mitchell, or even folks on message boards. My experiance was that a high percentage of those folks really never found puroresu to be as accessible as some might think. The reasons could be several, from the lack of "angles" to the "it's a different language" to "they're not the guys I grew up watching" to... whatever. But there was resistance to it just as the Anti-American Cultural Imperialism folks might think there is for Lucha. To as high of a degree as there is resistance for Lucha? I would agree "not to that degree", but certainly enough to be noticeable.

 

I'd go further and point to another think that Dylan was around to see at the time: ECW & ECW Fans. You were around to see those hardcore sheet fans / online fans say things such as "Japan and Lucha are Dave's discoveries... but ECW is ours". I wouldn't say it was a rejection of Japan or Lucha, but a differentiation and a vastly more accessible love they had for their own ECW product. Which of course anyone who knows anything about ECW also finds ironic since Paul was kind of asking Dave who he should bring in, and some of those Japan and Lucha based guys like Benoit, Eddy, Rey and Psic were among the folks. And of course ECW Fans loved them when they came to do their shit in the Bingo Hall.

 

So while I believe it's worth thinking a good deal about the aspects of Puroresu = "product of American cultural imperialism", I do think we need to recall that's it's not like USA = 100, Puro = 95, Joshi = 80, British = 10 and Lucha = 1 on the 1-100 scale of accessibility. When Dave was taking crap for covering MMA in the mid-90s, he would joke about having taken the same crap for devoting space to Japanese wrestling in the 80s and early 90s... let along that Mexican stuff. If it's more accessible in the middle of the last decade and now, it wasa long rolling of the ball up the hill when we get outside our little niches within a niche of a niche.

 

Any of us who have been around a long time recall discussions on Puro with non-puro fans back then that aren't terribly different than what folks have with non-Lucha fans.

[Loss]

So what should we call this new folder? I'm looking for a play on words that also at least makes vaguely clear what the purpose of the folder is. I'm not happy with any of my ideas so far:

 

- Dumber Slam

- Wonk If You Love Wrestling (I could tolerate this one, but I don't love it)

 

And one so bad that I hate to even share it, but I *must*. I'm proud of its horror:

 

- Council on Gore and Relations

 

Anyway, I'm opening up suggestions. As soon as we can get a name, we can start the folder.

[Loss]

Military Industrial Suplex!

[jdw]

This discussion, and the run-up to it, really did sort of make me look at how the contemporary 90s AAAs love was almost completely workrate-driven in a different light. It had been giving me some conceptual troubles.

 

That's a concept that goes back to the middle of the last decade:

 

20. El Hijo Del Santo

32. Blue Panther

38. Negro Casas

67. El Dandy

89. Satanico

92. Psicosis

94. Atlantis

 

If you'd done the same poll in 1999, I'm not sure if any of those guys finish above Psic. Maybe Santito. Maybe you get lucky and have enough people like CubsFan and Jose participating super actively in 1999 discussion threads to put people over. By 2006, the conversation had radically changed. AAA was taking major hits, and Panther got points for being the "mat" guy of AAA, not one of the spot workers.

 

Just think about how far the conversation had come by 2006 that not just Dandy > Psic, but Satanico > Psic. Those other guys above him have quite a bit more accessibility for folks getting into Lucha, while Satanico-luv is usually a sign of someone who has gone whole hog for Lucha. Now some of that was Dandy & Satanico being joined a bit at the hip due to their classic feud. But still...

 

For all the shit the 2006 list took, it really did give a lot of evidence of where some discussions were headed, and where it already had been. My guess is that we'll look back at this one the same way: there's a lot of shit folks can (and certainly already have) slung at it, but it does reflect where the discussion has gone over the past decade, and some we'll see that it reflects where it's going on some things.

[Ricky Jackson]

Meet the Thesz Press

[jdw]

The Mark Nulty Memorial Forum

 

[Ship Canal]

Military Industrial Suplex!

 

 

Love this!!!

 

 

[Bierschwale]

Baba, I think, was more infatuated with America. I can imagine him holidaying in Hawaii and buying American-made.

 

Isn't the old King's Road line "the ultimate form of WWF style wrestling"? Of course, it was more clearly the ultimate AWA in what we think of it.

[ohtani's jacket]

It's a question of influence, origins and development. There's no doubt that there was always heavy Western involvement in Japanese wrestling as compared to Mexico and explicitly were part of the system in a way that wasn't present in Mexico to any significant degree. Americans would constantly tour and easily fit in to Japan which makes it more accessible to western audiences unlike Mexico.

 

Perhaps I'm being willfully obtuse, but I'm really struggling with this. What is so overtly political about these influences, origins and development? Do people think professional wrestling in Japan would have developed differently in Japan if not for this Western influence, or not at all as more likely the case? Dylan was specifically referring to American cultural imperialism. From all accounts, MacArthur was a law until himself in Japan and often butted heads with the state to department. He was nicknamed the "Emperor of Japan" for good reason as he had full control over the country during the immediate post war years. So perhaps this imperialism is more accurately a type of MacArthurism. Since MacArthur didn't directly impose professional wrestling upon the people of Japan, you can perhaps argue that his reforms led to its development. One of MacArthur's reforms was to remove martial arts from Japan's physical education curriculum and dissolve the central regulatory authority for martial arts, which led to years of confusion over what was legal and what wasn't. Now I don't think MacArthur intended to eradicate traditional Japanese martial arts and replace them with good old American pro-wrestling, but you can certainly argue that the years judo spent trying to cleanse itself of its militaristic colour and the failure of professional judo to establish itself as a newly reformed sport paved the way for pro-wrestling (and boxing) as an alternative to traditional Japanese combat sports even if professional judo fell apart because of the same mismanagement and financial problems that plague most upstart wrestling promotions. It's drawing a longbow, but I'm trying to make this political.

 

Since we know the main power brokers behind early pro-wrestling were the wrestler-promoters, the TV executives and the yakuza, and not US promoters per se then the argument becomes whether the content reflected American cultural hegemony. Here, the argument has always been that it reflected the Japanese post-war inferiority complex. Perhaps the American workers were showing ass for the Japanese from the comfort of their culturally superior position or perhaps they were just working the audience and putting on a form of (lowbrow) entertainment. Perhaps they imported the traditional US narrative of the "good" American wrestler vs. the "evil" foreigner and flipped it for the Japanese audience and thus the narratives were culturally imperialist, but in terms of entertaining the masses how is tecnico vs. rudo any different? Rudos were meant to represent the corruption Mexican fans faced every single day in Mexico City. Rikidozan defeating Americans in hand-to-hand combat obviously meant something different to a country that had lost a war to those same opponents but it's still tapping the same vein. And frankly it evolved from there as has been well documented.

 

So does it boil down to the working style? Japanese wrestling is closer to American wrestling, they work a different style down in Mexico, from left to right, etc.? I still maintain that lucha libre didn't develop in a bubble cut off from the outside world. From what lucha historians have said, the Phantom comic strip (American) was hugely popular in Mexico City in the late 30s and had a huge influence on the look of Mexican luchadores, and El Santo is said to have been directly inspired by Dumas' The Man in the Iron Mask (French), which was also extremely popular in Mexico during the 30s. An untold number of foreigners have passed through Mexico over the years. Look at how many foreigners worked the UWA during its heyday. Territories close to the US border were more heavily influenced by the US style of wrestling than in the capital, but aspects of those territories filtered their way through to every strand of lucha libre as workers moved around the country. Yes, there are elements of lucha that are distinctly Mexican just as there are aspects of Japanese wrestling that are distinctly Japanese, moreso than people realise given the language barrier and lack of access to the media, insider info and cultural understanding.

 

Are there more distinct elements in lucha? Perhaps, but you could just as easily argue that Meltzer and the early tape traders embracing Japanese had just as much impact on the way we perceive it as US cultural imperialism. Perhaps that was because it was easier for them to understand than lucha and more readily available on tape. Perhaps it was because the major US stars worked there in the 80s so it was easy for them to identify with. Perhaps it's the flipside to cultural imperialism which was the exoticism regarding Japanese culture that occurred after the war. Perhaps the political aspect here is that people have always looked down on lucha libre while extolling the virtues of Japanese pro-wrestling. But I honestly do not see the difference between Japanese fans' interest in professional wrestling post-war and golf, or dating, or baseball as a national past time. They imported all those things from the US as well. Are those cultural evils? They were big on jazz as well, Parv Wrestling in Japan in the 50s and early 60s had its feet in the black market and all of the corruption that surrounded the post-war rebuild, but on the surface it was considered something that uplifted the spirits of the depressed and lethargic Japanese populace. It was uniformly seen as a positive at the time and still remembered that way despite its fragile underbelly where its number one star was actually a member of a race that most Japanese despised. But that's pro-wrestling for you.

 

That's all I've got.

[Cross Face Chicken Wing]

So what should we call this new folder? I'm looking for a play on words that also at least makes vaguely clear what the purpose of the folder is. I'm not happy with any of my ideas so far:

 

- Dumber Slam

- Wonk If You Love Wrestling (I could tolerate this one, but I don't love it)

 

And one so bad that I hate to even share it, but I *must*. I'm proud of its horror:

 

- Council on Gore and Relations

 

Anyway, I'm opening up suggestions. As soon as we can get a name, we can start the folder.

What is Discussed in this Folder is Making Verne Gagne Turn in his Grave

 

Too long?

[JerryvonKramer]

So what should we call this new folder? I'm looking for a play on words that also at least makes vaguely clear what the purpose of the folder is. I'm not happy with any of my ideas so far:

 

- Dumber Slam

- Wonk If You Love Wrestling (I could tolerate this one, but I don't love it)

 

And one so bad that I hate to even share it, but I *must*. I'm proud of its horror:

 

- Council on Gore and Relations

 

Anyway, I'm opening up suggestions. As soon as we can get a name, we can start the folder.

It is clear to me that there can be only one name for such a sub-forum ...

 

"Political hit"

[Ricky Jackson]

Yeah, that's it