BRM Reviews PWG All-Star Weekend 13: Night 2 (Zack vs. WALTER and a bunch of crap)

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BRM Reviews PWG All-Star Weekend 13: Night 2 (Zack vs. WALTER and a bunch of crap)

Post by Big Red Machine » Dec 18th, '17, 01:34

PWG All-Star Weekend 13: Night 2 (10/21/2017)- Reseda, CA

JONAH ROCK vs. ADAM BROOKS- 2.25/10
This was not good. It was your typical 2017 indy stuff like a big guy who can do all sorts of flips and random comedy with this small guy showing off his muscles against the clearly bigger, stronger man, and always blowing his advantage when he does, all combined with a bunch of random moves strung together that never felt like they were building to anything so much as it felt like they were just trying to be “exciting!” by having each guy hit a big move and get a nearfall, then have the next thing they try get reversed and back and forth what felt like forever. I also hated the spot where Brooks shoved the referee into the ropes to crotch Rock on the top because rather than claiming it was an accident like you’re supposed to, Brooks did what appears to be his signature taunt where he points to his head to say “look at how smart I am.” That’s pretty much admitting to the referee that you pushed him on purpose, which should be a DQ, so why wasn’t it one? And if you’re Adam Brooks, why would you do it?

THE YOUNG BUCKS vs. “FLASH” MORGAN WEBSTER & MARK HASKINS- DUD!
We started off with a great sequence between Nick Jackson and “Flash” Morgan Webster that ended in a perfectly executed indy stand-off spot and it was really fun and cool and exciting… and then Matt Jackson and Mark Haskins ran into the ring and did a completely cartoonish stand-off right next to them and totally killed it for me. I saw an excellent professional wrestling sequence, and these two ran into the ring and MOCKED it. For no reason other than to get a laugh.
Then they did the spot where the Bucks offer their opponents a handshake even though everyone- including the babyfaces- know that they’re just going to attack them so no one ever does it, but the Bucks always try to get them to do one anyway. The babyfaces, as usual in this situation now, respond by offering to 2 Sweet the Bucks, which of course the Bucks can’t do because of WWE legal reasons, so the Bucks get upset. This makes the Bucks look like babies for pouting all because they can’t do their stupid 1990’s rip-off shtick anymore, and yet also manages to make the babyfaces look like dicks for rubbing it in. And, of course, the fans (inexplicably) love Bullet Club’s antics, so doing this gets the babyfaces heavily booed. In other words, this pointless grinds the match to a halt in order to do something that is completely counter-productive on multiple levels.
But do you know what it does do? It keeps the idea fresh in the fans’ minds that those mean old meanies in WWE have taken Bullet Club’s shtick away from them and that’s not fair (for some reason) and therefore we should all feel sorry for Bullet Club and maybe buy ourselves one of their “Cease and Desist” t-shirts. They say Triple H and Hulk Hogan are the two greatest politicians in the history of professional wrestling, but Nick & Matt Jackson are numbers three and four.
Now Rick Knox.. THE REFEREE is 2 Sweeting the babyfaces. So we’ve shown are referee to be biased- and not only biased but biased AGAINST THE HEELS- and once again it’s all for the sake of a pop. And while that’s happening the Bucks attack the babyfaces from behind, which generates no heat because the babyfaces put themselves in that vulnerable situation by being both dicks and idiots.
The whip the babyfaces off the ropes, then the babyfaces but them in mirroring Octopus Holds and make them 2 Sweet each other. Why? Isn’t that what the Bucks want to be able to do? Why not just do the hold properly and try to win the wrestling match?
The Bucks then did their stupid “X boots” sh*t in the corner, and of course the crowd reacts to this like the Bucks are babyfaces and they play along and for the life of me I can’t understand why. It’s like CHIKARA comedy except it’s not even remotely clever. When they ran out of their own boots, Marty Scurll came out to help them. The referee made no effort to stop him. Marty spend a good fifteen seconds dancing around on the apron and making a big show of getting into position… and meanwhile Mark Haskins is just standing there on the apron and yelling rather than trying to help his partner. I want my babyfaces to obey the rules more than most people do, but when you’ve got a situation like this where things are so clearly out of hand and the referee isn’t doing a f*cking thing to stop it, you are perfectly justified in running with a f*cking tag.
Marty blatantly interfering in this match was, of course, not a DQ. They want more boots, so they drag the referee over and supposedly get him stuck in the corner so his boots are now added to the pile. Dragging the referee is also not a DQ… but Mark Haskins is still waiting there on the apron for a tag.
Webster reverses it this time, sending Jackson into all of the boots, and the fans, who had been cheering Bullet Club’s stupid bullsh*t this whole time, now cheer for their move getting reversed as well because they’re really just here to laugh and do their chants and they don’t actually care who wins or loses.
Anyway, the Bucks wind up on in the aisle after this, which is on the same side of the ring as Webster and Morgan’s corner. Webster, who they had wanted me to believe was just too injured that he couldn’t make it to his corner no matter how much time Bullet Club wasted milking the crowd in between boots spots, desperately dove over to his corner and tagged in his partner, right? Of course not! He did a f*cking dive, because “OMG GUYS HOW COOL WOULD IT BE IF INSTEAD OF MAKING THE TAG I DID A BIG DIVE FIRST?!” “Yeah! That’d be awesome! Don’t worry about psychology because it’s a Young Bucks match in a PWG ring so Uncle Dave is going to give it at least **** by default.”
Anyway, now Webster gets back into the ring (with help from Haskins because now he’s supposed to be hurt again) and makes the tag and Webster gets one of the Bucks in the ring and starts beating him up and I’m supposed to take this seriously after eight minutes of hokey cartoon bullsh*t? F*CK. OFF.
We got some serious wrestling until it was time for more goofy sh*t to happen. Webster wore a helmet and the referee did nothing to stop him. The Bucks hit Haskins with an IndyTaker but rather than just pin him they decided to roll him over and lock in a sharpshooter. Why? So that Webster could try something off the top only to get superkicked and mid-air and he would get locked into a sharpshooter to just so he and Haskins could give each other a f*cking 2 Sweet before tapping out. F*ck this stupid sh*t.
Meanwhile, Mark Meltzer (Dave’s alter-ego that comes out whenever he’s at a PWG or New Japan show) sits there thinking to himself that this utter bullsh*t that he would have buried if it took place in any other company’s ring (even NJPW, in think case, I think)- especially WWE or TNA- deserves a rating of ****1/4. After watching this match I read Dave’s review of the match in the Observer, and seeing how much bullsh*t he just totally ignores (he skips right from the end of the boots spot to the very end of the finishing sequence, ignoring, among other things, the helmet bullsh*t and a Meltzer Driver getting reversed so that one of the Bucks took it, made me physically ill.


There is a grown woman in the back row who brought her Darryl Takahashi stuffed animal to a show that Hiromu isn’t even on. She’s probably the type of jerk who chants “TEN!” when Tye Dillinger isn’t around and chants “SWEET!” after the two count of every pinfall. Oh. And she’s wearing a Bullet Club shirt. MAKE UP YOUR MIND, LADY! You can either support Hiromu by having a Darryl doll, or you can support the faction of the dastardly Bad Luck Fale who destroyed Darryl for literally no reason. Not both.

JOEY JANELA vs. MARTY SCURLL- 3.5/10
Before the match Marty accused Janela of being “nothing but a pathetic spot monkey,” which 1) is a term that doesn’t make any sense in kayfabe, and 2) is quite the criticism to throw out there after that last match.
Hitting the opponent with a chair is not a DQ in this match for some reason. Neither is pushing the referee down. In fact, everything that happened with the referee in this match was totally unnecessary, and all of it was done for the sake of getting a pop out of the referee shoving Marty into a roll-up by Janela. Because we need to put effort into getting the f*cking referee over as a babyface badass.
Stuff happened and a Package Piledriver got kicked out of because that’s a thing where randomly kicking out of in the middle of matches nowadays apparently. We got a double-down on the outside and this time we tease a count-out even though the referee didn’t count the last time they were on the outside. And all to tease a count-out that no one is going to believe anyway.
They did a spot where they put some chairs in the ring and rather than his usual finger-breaking thing, Marty put Janela’s fingers between two set-up chairs and they wanted me to believe that Janela was somehow unable to simply move his fingers before Marty cocked back and kicked the one chair into the other (which, by the way, would hurt a lot less than Marty’s usual finger-breaking spot would have).
They had one clever spot, which was Janela putting his feet on one of the chairs during a pinfall for theoretically legal additional leverage. The match ended soon thereafter when Scurll tossed Janela off the top rope, back-first onto the four set-up chairs, then made him tap out to the Crossface Chickenwing, which targets a totally part of your body, making Janela’s big bump basically meaningless, proving Marty right that he is, in fact, a spot-monkey.

ZACK SABRE JR. vs. WALTER- 9.25/10
AMAZING! There was a lot of stuff going on, but it all worked together to make a fantastic whole. The most obvious thing was that there was a definitely pride issue here, with neither man wanting to stay down and both wanting to prove that they could take the other’s best shot and stay standing, but the opening spot- they went for some basic mat wrestling and WALTER rather simply powered Zack up and just dumped him down- help to seed this little element of the size factor into that other story. It wasn’t just two guys saying “I’m not going to let this other guy get the best of me;” it was Zack saying “there’s no way I’m going to let this big guy beat me because then everyone will think that any guy who has the same wrestling skill as me but is bigger than me like WALTER or Cobb or Jack Swagger will be able to beat me because of their size” and WALTER saying “there’s no way I’m going to lose to this little pipsqueak! We’re both great wrestlers but I’m bigger than him so I should win.” While it wasn’t a big, in your face part of the story, they always did things like WALTER deadlifting Zack or powering out of his moves to remind you that size was a factor here, no matter how much Zack tried to make up for it by hitting WALTER extremely hard.
Another way they emphasized that part of the story was Zack selling WALTER’s chops much bigger than WALTER sold Zack’s. This played into the second story, which was Zack working on WALTER’s hand and wrist, which were already damaged from accidentally chopping a ringpost last night. As the match wore on, WALTER’s chops started to take more and more out of him as well as out of Zack, as each massively hard chop he threw (to keep up with the hard strikes Zack was throwing) did more and more damage to his own hand.
The third and final story was WALTER going for his Gojira Clutch, which Zack managed to avoid a few times before WALTER locked it in and that was the end for Zack. The rest of the story being what it was, I was surprised that Zack tapped out rather than passed out in the hold, but Zack is the kind of guy who seems to be okay with knowing when he is beaten and acting accordingly.

MATT SYDAL vs. REY HORUS vs. TRENT?- 6/10
So they did this spot where Sydal hit Trent? with an enzugiri and Trent? fell right into the pin on Rey Horus and the referee went down to count one, two… and the he just stopped counting and got up because Sydal wasn’t ready to hit his moonsault yet. What a wonderful little microcosm of indy wrestling (and PWG in particular) focusing so much on doing things that look cool that they have begun to totally ignore making sure that things make sense. If I’m the booker, I would have immediately fired Trent?, Rey Horus, and the referee.
Chairshots are okay in this match, too. This was a bunch of spots strung together that managed to be decently exciting by the end despite some embarrassing timing issues.

PWG WORLD TITLE MATCH: Chuck Taylor(c) vs. Ricochet- 7.5/10
The story of this match was Ricochet working on Chuck’s knee and Chuck’s continued resilience, not wanting to lose his title in his first defense after having spent so many years trying to win it. Well… mostly. I say that because there was one sort segment of the match- about four minutes out of a half-hour marathon- where it felt like we were warped into an alternate dimension and all of a sudden Chuck was the heel and Ricochet was the babyface, with Chuck taking the top rope down just so he could choke Ricochet with it (I realize that this was a callback to the Chuck vs. Zack Sabre Jr. title match, but I don’t think the spot made any sense in context).
The other thing that really bothered me in this match was the restart, which made NO SENSE. The only reason Knox would have to “overrule” the finish would be if he saw Ricochet do something illegal like using the title belt as a weapon, but if that was the case then the proper response isn’t to restart the match, it’s to change the finish a DQ victory for Chuck Taylor.
I think the reason they did the restart was to make people think there was no way Ricochet would win, in order to make it more surprising when he did. Personally, I think it was totally unnecessary because any title change in someone’s first defense- especially a beloved babyface who has just won the belt after years of questing for it- is going to be surprising, and even if it wasn’t, they should have found another way to do it (maybe have Knox award Chuck the win via DQ but have Chuck refuse and say he doesn’t want to win by DQ).
Despite not usually disliking short title reigns, I do actually like the title change here. Chuck Taylor is a guy who I think works better as a babyface when he’s chasing the belt, and winning the title after so many years just to lose it in his first defense sets up a lot of different directions you can go with him afterwards.


A mostly-terrible show from PWG saved by a FANTASTIC match between Zack and WALTER as well as an important (and well-wrestled) and main event. Hopefully the next show will have a more regular PWG crew (although I obviously wouldn’t mind WALTER coming back).
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Re: BRM Reviews PWG All-Star Weekend 13: Night 2 (Zack vs. WALTER and a bunch of crap)

Post by cero2k » Dec 18th, '17, 09:06

Big Red Machine wrote: Dec 18th, '17, 01:34
Meanwhile, Mark Meltzer (Dave’s alter-ego that comes out whenever he’s at a PWG or New Japan show) sits there thinking to himself that this utter bullsh*t that he would have buried if it took place in any other company’s ring (even NJPW, in think case, I think)- especially WWE or TNA- deserves a rating of ****1/4. After watching this match I read Dave’s review of the match in the Observer, and seeing how much bullsh*t he just totally ignores (he skips right from the end of the boots spot to the very end of the finishing sequence, ignoring, among other things, the helmet bullsh*t and a Meltzer Driver getting reversed so that one of the Bucks took it, made me physically ill.
to each their own, but i don't think anyone would go into PWG expecting WWE or NJPW. In the same way, no one should go into WWE expecting NJPW. We've had this conversation a million times, PWG has it's thing and it works for them, and it's not for everyone.
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Re: BRM Reviews PWG All-Star Weekend 13: Night 2 (Zack vs. WALTER and a bunch of crap)

Post by Big Red Machine » Dec 18th, '17, 09:14

cero2k wrote: Dec 18th, '17, 09:06
Big Red Machine wrote: Dec 18th, '17, 01:34
Meanwhile, Mark Meltzer (Dave’s alter-ego that comes out whenever he’s at a PWG or New Japan show) sits there thinking to himself that this utter bullsh*t that he would have buried if it took place in any other company’s ring (even NJPW, in think case, I think)- especially WWE or TNA- deserves a rating of ****1/4. After watching this match I read Dave’s review of the match in the Observer, and seeing how much bullsh*t he just totally ignores (he skips right from the end of the boots spot to the very end of the finishing sequence, ignoring, among other things, the helmet bullsh*t and a Meltzer Driver getting reversed so that one of the Bucks took it, made me physically ill.
to each their own, but i don't think anyone would go into PWG expecting WWE or NJPW. In the same way, no one should go into WWE expecting NJPW. We've had this conversation a million times, PWG has it's thing and it works for them, and it's not for everyone.
It just infuriates me that Dave would never extend that same line of thought to, say, a deathmatch, or to TNA when those crowds used to chant "THIS IS AWESOME!" at everything.
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Re: BRM Reviews PWG All-Star Weekend 13: Night 2 (Zack vs. WALTER and a bunch of crap)

Post by cero2k » Dec 18th, '17, 09:25

Big Red Machine wrote: Dec 18th, '17, 09:14
It just infuriates me that Dave would never extend that same line of thought to, say, a deathmatch, or to TNA when those crowds used to chant "THIS IS AWESOME!" at everything.
even when you're the most neutral journalist, there will always be small bias that you can't get out of, I find it hard to rate an actual deathmatch because I don't like them, or I think WWE sucks, but I went to one of the house shows this year and it was ok just for being live (and believe me, PWG live is a whole other monster). For all i hear, he says that Impact had some great stuff this year, he claims the Lambert vs Impact feud was some of the best storylines he saw this year, but as he says, no one talks about it and so he doesn't waste his time.

I wish he would because people sometimes take his word for gospel and could get some eyes on Impact.
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Re: BRM Reviews PWG All-Star Weekend 13: Night 2 (Zack vs. WALTER and a bunch of crap)

Post by Big Red Machine » Dec 18th, '17, 10:30

cero2k wrote: Dec 18th, '17, 09:25
Big Red Machine wrote: Dec 18th, '17, 09:14
It just infuriates me that Dave would never extend that same line of thought to, say, a deathmatch, or to TNA when those crowds used to chant "THIS IS AWESOME!" at everything.
even when you're the most neutral journalist, there will always be small bias that you can't get out of, I find it hard to rate an actual deathmatch because I don't like them, or I think WWE sucks, but I went to one of the house shows this year and it was ok just for being live (and believe me, PWG live is a whole other monster). For all i hear, he says that Impact had some great stuff this year, he claims the Lambert vs Impact feud was some of the best storylines he saw this year, but as he says, no one talks about it and so he doesn't waste his time.

I wish he would because people sometimes take his word for gospel and could get some eyes on Impact.
But as a reporter, he should be aware of his biases, and he's not, and it bugs me. Do we really think it's any coincidence that Dave's views on the argument of (as I believe you put it earlier this year) "what works vs. there is a right way to do things" start to shift the moment his favorite promotion switches from one to the other?

The thing with his PWG ratings being live is also part of the problem because, to my knowledge, PWG is the only promotion (aside from I think when he would go to Japan for stuff in the late 80s/early 90s) that he has based his ratings on the live experience. Even when he goes to Mania live he usually waits to watch the show back at home before giving out ratings. He wouldn't even give the Shawn vs. Taker matches a live rating, and 99.9% of people in those buildings came away saying that those matches had t be *****, but he'll give Zack vs. WALTER ***** even though he flat-out says "if you watch it later, it won't be."
The reason I brought up his report in the Observer is that I think it shows just how much he misses that he wouldn't with something he wouldn't be watching live and in person, that thus doesn't enter into his thinking when he is writing up the Observer and finalizing what will go down in history (and, as you point out, therefore be taken as gospel by many people).
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Re: BRM Reviews PWG All-Star Weekend 13: Night 2 (Zack vs. WALTER and a bunch of crap)

Post by Big Red Machine » Dec 18th, '17, 10:36

That fact that he thinks TNA has been doing great but doesn't talk about it because no one else does is the sort of thing that creates a tension between Opinion-Giver Dave and News Reporter Dave, and the fact that he doesn't talk about promotions that he thinks are good because they are (lacking a better term) irrelevant to the zeitgeist blurs that line by giving his reviews an air of authority via a knowledge of what is "really" important in the world of pro wrestling.
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Re: BRM Reviews PWG All-Star Weekend 13: Night 2 (Zack vs. WALTER and a bunch of crap)

Post by cero2k » Dec 18th, '17, 14:31

Big Red Machine wrote: Dec 18th, '17, 10:30 But as a reporter, he should be aware of his biases, and he's not, and it bugs me. Do we really think it's any coincidence that Dave's views on the argument of (as I believe you put it earlier this year) "what works vs. there is a right way to do things" start to shift the moment his favorite promotion switches from one to the other?

The thing with his PWG ratings being live is also part of the problem because, to my knowledge, PWG is the only promotion (aside from I think when he would go to Japan for stuff in the late 80s/early 90s) that he has based his ratings on the live experience. Even when he goes to Mania live he usually waits to watch the show back at home before giving out ratings. He wouldn't even give the Shawn vs. Taker matches a live rating, and 99.9% of people in those buildings came away saying that those matches had t be *****, but he'll give Zack vs. WALTER ***** even though he flat-out says "if you watch it later, it won't be."
The reason I brought up his report in the Observer is that I think it shows just how much he misses that he wouldn't with something he wouldn't be watching live and in person, that thus doesn't enter into his thinking when he is writing up the Observer and finalizing what will go down in history (and, as you point out, therefore be taken as gospel by many people).
I'm sure he's aware and I don't think he cares, and I definitely agree with that. if he really likes something, he should brag about it, we all do, and if fans are stupid enough to take his word as gospel, then it's their gain/loss, because the other way works too, he hates on stuff that is actually pretty cool, but since he buries it, people bury it too and miss out. It's like Robert Ebert giving Fight Club or The Usual Suspects 1.5 stars, but the movies are pretty good.

Surely we've seen more companies follow the PWG style, add a lot of the Young Bucks style, but that I wouldn't blame on him and at the end of the day, bookers will book stuff that makes the most money and if those things are making the most money, as we've seen with Ring of Honor for instance, then they're gonna keep on doing it. If people started shitting on Dalton Castle jokes and stopped going to ROH shows, I can assure you they would have stopped booking like that, but if it makes money, it's gonna keep going. That's the society we live in today, not just with wrestling, Marvel movies are all kid jokes every 5 minutes and big explosions, and people love that shit, and thus they make tons of them and the good movies get shafted from theaters because you need to have 5 different showings of the latest Marvel shit-flick.

As to the live thing, again, i don't disagree, I wouldn't judge Taker vs HBK live either because in such a huge place, it's almost impossible to really get the whole story, but in small shows it's pretty easy to get the whole thing. If not live, Dave wouldn't even watch PWG unless it's BOLA, and so I rather he reviews live than get the shafted like tons of great wrestling out there.
Big Red Machine wrote: Dec 18th, '17, 10:30 That fact that he thinks TNA has been doing great but doesn't talk about it because no one else does is the sort of thing that creates a tension between Opinion-Giver Dave and News Reporter Dave, and the fact that he doesn't talk about promotions that he thinks are good because they are (lacking a better term) irrelevant to the zeitgeist blurs that line by giving his reviews an air of authority via a knowledge of what is "really" important in the world of pro wrestling.
This is something that i actually would blame Alvarez more than Dave, he usually makes mention of stuff in the observer, but he and Alvarez don't see the point in reviewing it or rarely bringing it up on WOR. It really annoys me that they spend more time reviewing shit like 205Live and like 5 different NWA shows instead of Impact.
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Re: BRM Reviews PWG All-Star Weekend 13: Night 2 (Zack vs. WALTER and a bunch of crap)

Post by Big Red Machine » Dec 18th, '17, 16:08

cero2k wrote: Dec 18th, '17, 14:31
Big Red Machine wrote: Dec 18th, '17, 10:30 But as a reporter, he should be aware of his biases, and he's not, and it bugs me. Do we really think it's any coincidence that Dave's views on the argument of (as I believe you put it earlier this year) "what works vs. there is a right way to do things" start to shift the moment his favorite promotion switches from one to the other?

The thing with his PWG ratings being live is also part of the problem because, to my knowledge, PWG is the only promotion (aside from I think when he would go to Japan for stuff in the late 80s/early 90s) that he has based his ratings on the live experience. Even when he goes to Mania live he usually waits to watch the show back at home before giving out ratings. He wouldn't even give the Shawn vs. Taker matches a live rating, and 99.9% of people in those buildings came away saying that those matches had t be *****, but he'll give Zack vs. WALTER ***** even though he flat-out says "if you watch it later, it won't be."
The reason I brought up his report in the Observer is that I think it shows just how much he misses that he wouldn't with something he wouldn't be watching live and in person, that thus doesn't enter into his thinking when he is writing up the Observer and finalizing what will go down in history (and, as you point out, therefore be taken as gospel by many people).
I'm sure he's aware and I don't think he cares, and I definitely agree with that. if he really likes something, he should brag about it, we all do, and if fans are stupid enough to take his word as gospel, then it's their gain/loss, because the other way works too, he hates on stuff that is actually pretty cool, but since he buries it, people bury it too and miss out. It's like Robert Ebert giving Fight Club or The Usual Suspects 1.5 stars, but the movies are pretty good.
I think the companies (and the wrestlers not getting the press they deserve) suffer a lot, too, though, and Dave has a lot more influence over the opinions of most wrestling fans than any movie reviewer does over movie-goers. And I'm not even talking about people who think his opinions are right, but even just people like you or me who might be willing to check out a show or a promotion if Dave says he thinks it's been good and form our own opinions about it.
cero2k wrote: Dec 18th, '17, 14:31 Surely we've seen more companies follow the PWG style, add a lot of the Young Bucks style, but that I wouldn't blame on him and at the end of the day, bookers will book stuff that makes the most money and if those things are making the most money, as we've seen with Ring of Honor for instance, then they're gonna keep on doing it. If people started shitting on Dalton Castle jokes and stopped going to ROH shows, I can assure you they would have stopped booking like that, but if it makes money, it's gonna keep going. That's the society we live in today, not just with wrestling, Marvel movies are all kid jokes every 5 minutes and big explosions, and people love that shit, and thus they make tons of them and the good movies get shafted from theaters because you need to have 5 different showings of the latest Marvel shit-flick.
I think they'd be making just as much- if not more- money with a style that focused more on the wrestling and less on the comedy. Everyone doing the same thing will eventually turn very bad for business. Hence why there are no more dedicated deathmatch promotions. PWG has a... cult-ish sort of thing going on. The goofy comedy all over the card isn't what made PWG great. What made PWG great was the all-killer, no-filler cards with a focus on match-ups that were either unique or highly-anticipated, and a central focus on maybe one or two top stories (usually one for each belt). The comedy sh*t used to be contained to one match on the show. Then, when the Bucks start doing their 90s rip-off stuff and everyone their accepted it, so the Bucks started to do it elsewhere and fans elsewhere accepted it... but it just feels like the reason people started to accept it was because Dave put it over and Dave put the PWG crowd over. I'm not doubting that PWG has a special atmosphere in their special venue... but that doesn't exist everywhere.
Not everywhere is PWG, and the Bucks and the promoters and some of the fans are all trying to make everywhere PWG but without the comedic commentary overtones and the set-up of chairs that seems so dangerous it's almost hilarious. PWG couldn't exist in the ECW Arena with barricades set up and a non-wood floor. PWG has a low-rent charm to it that ROH doesn't, can't, and shouldn't have, but the Bucks go to ROH and try to force it and the fans try to force it because they want to be like the PWG crowd that Dave puts over so hard so they pop for all of that stuff and they don't care about the matches. Fans in ROH and these other places that are trying to be PWG fans wouldn't have reacted to the Zack vs. WALTER match the same way that the PWG crowd did (or the EVOLVE crowd, or the Beyond crowd or a wXw crowd would). And, at least to me, it feels like the reason a lot of his has happened is because Dave doesn't want to criticize the Bucks so he never calls them out for sh*t that detracts from the matches, just like he rarely calls New Japan out for their poor refereeing and Gedo's poor booking.
cero2k wrote: Dec 18th, '17, 14:31 As to the live thing, again, i don't disagree, I wouldn't judge Taker vs HBK live either because in such a huge place, it's almost impossible to really get the whole story, but in small shows it's pretty easy to get the whole thing. If not live, Dave wouldn't even watch PWG unless it's BOLA, and so I rather he reviews live than get the shafted like tons of great wrestling out there.
I greatly disagree with this. Every time I've been ringside, I find it very hard (if not impossible) to see stuff on the other side of the ring, whereas all of that is perfectly visible on DVD or TV.
cero2k wrote: Dec 18th, '17, 14:31
Big Red Machine wrote: Dec 18th, '17, 10:30 That fact that he thinks TNA has been doing great but doesn't talk about it because no one else does is the sort of thing that creates a tension between Opinion-Giver Dave and News Reporter Dave, and the fact that he doesn't talk about promotions that he thinks are good because they are (lacking a better term) irrelevant to the zeitgeist blurs that line by giving his reviews an air of authority via a knowledge of what is "really" important in the world of pro wrestling.
This is something that i actually would blame Alvarez more than Dave, he usually makes mention of stuff in the observer, but he and Alvarez don't see the point in reviewing it or rarely bringing it up on WOR. It really annoys me that they spend more time reviewing shit like 205Live and like 5 different NWA shows instead of Impact.
I treat the F4W family shows (B&V, F4D) as more of a fan-review like the DKP or Adam & Mike shows than the WON family shows (WOR, WOL), so they're entitled to watch what they want. If I remember right, they did try watching Impact again this year (Filthy was doing it for a while with Alvarez) but they had to stop because Alvarez's cable was having problems with the channel (the same reason they rarely do ROH anymore when they used to do that every week). They also put up with Impact for a LONG time, so I don't blame them for not wanting to go back to it after so many false promises of a new beginning from the millions of different new regimes TNA has had. That's how I feel, too. But I would definitely like them to focus more on some other accessible weekly indy like CWF Mid-Atlantic or even that Booker T promotion they said they really enjoyed.
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Re: BRM Reviews PWG All-Star Weekend 13: Night 2 (Zack vs. WALTER and a bunch of crap)

Post by cero2k » Dec 18th, '17, 18:18

Big Red Machine wrote: Dec 18th, '17, 16:08 I think the companies (and the wrestlers not getting the press they deserve) suffer a lot, too, though, and Dave has a lot more influence over the opinions of most wrestling fans than any movie reviewer does over movie-goers. And I'm not even talking about people who think his opinions are right, but even just people like you or me who might be willing to check out a show or a promotion if Dave says he thinks it's been good and form our own opinions about it.
I'd say it's give and take, the same way some people just follow what Dave tells them too, there are tons of people who completely hate Dave and go against everything he says just because he rated Taker vs HBK 4.5 stars 10 yrs ago. Even listening to his review of the Bucks match from Final Battle, he straight up says, 'this makes zero sense, but the fans love it, and so it works', so he's not necessarily going crazy about it nor saying it's good, but he recognizes that it works. It may just be me, but for someone with well known biases (i..e. Tokyo Dome extra star), I always thought he is good enough to give credit where credit is due and sound more like a reporter than a critic. Compare him to Alvarez who straight up shits on everything he doesn't like and constantly goes on the same rants.
cero2k wrote: Dec 18th, '17, 14:31 I think they'd be making just as much- if not more- money with a style that focused more on the wrestling and less on the comedy. Everyone doing the same thing will eventually turn very bad for business. Hence why there are no more dedicated deathmatch promotions. PWG has a... cult-ish sort of thing going on. The goofy comedy all over the card isn't what made PWG great. What made PWG great was the all-killer, no-filler cards with a focus on match-ups that were either unique or highly-anticipated, and a central focus on maybe one or two top stories (usually one for each belt). The comedy sh*t used to be contained to one match on the show. Then, when the Bucks start doing their 90s rip-off stuff and everyone their accepted it, so the Bucks started to do it elsewhere and fans elsewhere accepted it... but it just feels like the reason people started to accept it was because Dave put it over and Dave put the PWG crowd over. I'm not doubting that PWG has a special atmosphere in their special venue... but that doesn't exist everywhere.
Not everywhere is PWG, and the Bucks and the promoters and some of the fans are all trying to make everywhere PWG but without the comedic commentary overtones and the set-up of chairs that seems so dangerous it's almost hilarious. PWG couldn't exist in the ECW Arena with barricades set up and a non-wood floor. PWG has a low-rent charm to it that ROH doesn't, can't, and shouldn't have, but the Bucks go to ROH and try to force it and the fans try to force it because they want to be like the PWG crowd that Dave puts over so hard so they pop for all of that stuff and they don't care about the matches. Fans in ROH and these other places that are trying to be PWG fans wouldn't have reacted to the Zack vs. WALTER match the same way that the PWG crowd did (or the EVOLVE crowd, or the Beyond crowd or a wXw crowd would). And, at least to me, it feels like the reason a lot of his has happened is because Dave doesn't want to criticize the Bucks so he never calls them out for sh*t that detracts from the matches, just like he rarely calls New Japan out for their poor refereeing and Gedo's poor booking.
It's really hard to say where ROH would be financially if not for the Bucks/Castle/Bullet Club style of show. We saw it when Cornette tried to make ROH the Davey Richards show, a LOT of people were put off. When Elgin was on top, the workrate was great, but people were bored the hell out of ROH. It's now, with this talent and this booking that we're seeing ROH step up again, and if we want to evaluate the rest of the country, the 'serious' promotions like WWN, SHIMMER, even CHIKARA who in their own wacky universe, are somewhat of a serious promotion, none of them are thriving that much, and some of these guys have the WWE relationship.

Indeed PWG only works in PWG because it's california, because they have no VOD, because of many things, but I think it's unfair to blame Dave over why this style propagated to other promotions. I'd blame the wrestlers more because they have fun in one promotion and now want to bring that fan reaction to another place, because everyone gets good reactions in PWG and they probably think that if they do the same stuff, maybe the can get over in this other companies too, so it really comes down to the bookers, and if you ain't a smart booker, wrestling is gonna eat you alive. I don't think PWG has as many fans as ROH has, and the Observer probably has less fans that like PWG, so i have doubts on how much power would Dave's words have to really alter anything.
cero2k wrote: Dec 18th, '17, 14:31 I greatly disagree with this. Every time I've been ringside, I find it very hard (if not impossible) to see stuff on the other side of the ring, whereas all of that is perfectly visible on DVD or TV.
I guess i didn't explain it right, but that's what I said, a match like Taker vs HBK shouldn't be reviewed only by live experience, you need to the whole commentary/camera angle experience. 'weekend' indie shows don't require that experience that much, especially when there is not a lot of story to evaluate and the DVD comes out months later.
Big Red Machine wrote: Dec 18th, '17, 10:30 I treat the F4W family shows (B&V, F4D) as more of a fan-review like the DKP or Adam & Mike shows than the WON family shows (WOR, WOL), so they're entitled to watch what they want. If I remember right, they did try watching Impact again this year (Filthy was doing it for a while with Alvarez) but they had to stop because Alvarez's cable was having problems with the channel (the same reason they rarely do ROH anymore when they used to do that every week). They also put up with Impact for a LONG time, so I don't blame them for not wanting to go back to it after so many false promises of a new beginning from the millions of different new regimes TNA has had. That's how I feel, too. But I would definitely like them to focus more on some other accessible weekly indy like CWF Mid-Atlantic or even that Booker T promotion they said they really enjoyed.
Giving up on shows is something I somewhat dislike too, not just Impact, but Vinny not doing RAW and trading it for more old stuff. I think if you're getting paid to review shows, you have to do it plain and simple. You're not getting paid, so I have no argument to force you to review Joey Janela matches, but they are getting paid, and while I can even understand not overlapping shows like RAW, Impact is/was THE second biggest company in the US WITH tv and I think it needs coverage. Even now that they have the space for the thursday's popurri, they're doing shows from the 70s instead of using that time to review 1 hour of PROGRESS or EVOLVE that HAS been making noise in the last year.
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Re: BRM Reviews PWG All-Star Weekend 13: Night 2 (Zack vs. WALTER and a bunch of crap)

Post by Big Red Machine » Dec 18th, '17, 19:21

cero2k wrote: Dec 18th, '17, 18:18
Big Red Machine wrote: Dec 18th, '17, 16:08 I think the companies (and the wrestlers not getting the press they deserve) suffer a lot, too, though, and Dave has a lot more influence over the opinions of most wrestling fans than any movie reviewer does over movie-goers. And I'm not even talking about people who think his opinions are right, but even just people like you or me who might be willing to check out a show or a promotion if Dave says he thinks it's been good and form our own opinions about it.
I'd say it's give and take, the same way some people just follow what Dave tells them too, there are tons of people who completely hate Dave and go against everything he says just because he rated Taker vs HBK 4.5 stars 10 yrs ago. Even listening to his review of the Bucks match from Final Battle, he straight up says, 'this makes zero sense, but the fans love it, and so it works', so he's not necessarily going crazy about it nor saying it's good, but he recognizes that it works. It may just be me, but for someone with well known biases (i..e. Tokyo Dome extra star), I always thought he is good enough to give credit where credit is due and sound more like a reporter than a critic. Compare him to Alvarez who straight up shits on everything he doesn't like and constantly goes on the same rants.
I'm actually a lot more comfortable with Alvarez because he (and Vinny, and Craig, and Filthy, and Lance) do a much better job of explaining exactly what they like and exactly what they don't, whereas Meltzer or Sempervive or Adam Summers don't.
cero2k wrote: Dec 18th, '17, 14:31
Big Red Machine wrote: Dec 18th, '17, 16:08 I think they'd be making just as much- if not more- money with a style that focused more on the wrestling and less on the comedy. Everyone doing the same thing will eventually turn very bad for business. Hence why there are no more dedicated deathmatch promotions. PWG has a... cult-ish sort of thing going on. The goofy comedy all over the card isn't what made PWG great. What made PWG great was the all-killer, no-filler cards with a focus on match-ups that were either unique or highly-anticipated, and a central focus on maybe one or two top stories (usually one for each belt). The comedy sh*t used to be contained to one match on the show. Then, when the Bucks start doing their 90s rip-off stuff and everyone their accepted it, so the Bucks started to do it elsewhere and fans elsewhere accepted it... but it just feels like the reason people started to accept it was because Dave put it over and Dave put the PWG crowd over. I'm not doubting that PWG has a special atmosphere in their special venue... but that doesn't exist everywhere.
Not everywhere is PWG, and the Bucks and the promoters and some of the fans are all trying to make everywhere PWG but without the comedic commentary overtones and the set-up of chairs that seems so dangerous it's almost hilarious. PWG couldn't exist in the ECW Arena with barricades set up and a non-wood floor. PWG has a low-rent charm to it that ROH doesn't, can't, and shouldn't have, but the Bucks go to ROH and try to force it and the fans try to force it because they want to be like the PWG crowd that Dave puts over so hard so they pop for all of that stuff and they don't care about the matches. Fans in ROH and these other places that are trying to be PWG fans wouldn't have reacted to the Zack vs. WALTER match the same way that the PWG crowd did (or the EVOLVE crowd, or the Beyond crowd or a wXw crowd would). And, at least to me, it feels like the reason a lot of his has happened is because Dave doesn't want to criticize the Bucks so he never calls them out for sh*t that detracts from the matches, just like he rarely calls New Japan out for their poor refereeing and Gedo's poor booking.
It's really hard to say where ROH would be financially if not for the Bucks/Castle/Bullet Club style of show. We saw it when Cornette tried to make ROH the Davey Richards show, a LOT of people were put off. When Elgin was on top, the workrate was great, but people were bored the hell out of ROH. It's now, with this talent and this booking that we're seeing ROH step up again, and if we want to evaluate the rest of the country, the 'serious' promotions like WWN, SHIMMER, even CHIKARA who in their own wacky universe, are somewhat of a serious promotion, none of them are thriving that much, and some of these guys have the WWE relationship.
Obviously it's impossible to know, but the talking point has always been that being yourself/providing an alternative to what marketplace leader is good, and the fall of TNA has definitely helped prove that because no matter what timeslot SPIKE or whoever gave them or whatever big names they had- Sting, Hogan, Bischoff, RVD, Jeff Hardy, Angle, Flair- they still failed because they were too much like WWE in their booking and presentation. ROH had the closest thing anyone has had to TNA's stroke of luck when Dixie bought them (although Sinclair hasn't given them anywhere near as much money to play with, and they make rights fees money anywhere without Sinclair's say-so, which probably includes anywhere that Sinclair's ever-growing share of the US market now reaches), and now all of a sudden they've stopped being themselves and started being this terrible hybrid of WWE's booking with sh*t finishes and results not mattering and bad storytelling and terrible announcing (though Cabana and Whitmer are both good) and PWG's goofiness during the matches, which actually makes them feel more like WWE because nothing is serious. It bugs me because it's the sort of thing that everyone called TNA out for doing and TNA showed that it didn't work and yet here it is clearly happening in ROH and Dave is silent about it while others (notably the PWTorch staff) are not. Dave as been accused of giving the office line as far as ROH goes, and the more that happens, the more I believe it. It always makes me think back to something the Between The Sheets guys said: everyone thinks of Dave as the premier reporter in wrestling, but on the two biggest stories of the past 25 years (the steroid trial and the Vince buying WCW- maybe 2 of 3, depending on where you rank Benoit), the Torch as a whole and Wade in particular blew Dave's coverage out of the water... and in terms of the death of WCW, it was the Torch that was right about everything while Dave was just eating whatever Bischoff told him.

EVOLVE and SHIMMER haven't really gotten much help from WWE in terms of exposure, and WWE has been less generous to them with use of talent then they have been to PROGRESS and ICW and some of the other UK promotions they're friendly with. WWE rarely gives EVOLVE a mention, and when they do it's an article on the website about how some current guys came from there, which they actually used to do for ROH occasionally, too, even as recently as 2012.
I also don't think that comparison is quite fair for the same reason I never found it quite fair to compare ROH and TNA's attendance and buys. EVOLVE (and SHIMMER) don't have TV. ROH does, and has for years. Comparing crowds is not fair. EVOLVE should be judged on it's own growth.
EVOLVE also seems to suffer from the same misconception among casual and semi-mainstream fans (like ones that might know ROH and TNA decently well) that ROH used to suffer from back in the day and that puro has often suffered from as well, which is that they think that every match is 40 minutes of arm holds (or, for puro ,chops) and there is no story to anything, which is not close to true. We don't know how a more wrestling-focused product would do on TV. The closest we have is New Japan, which appears to be doing extremely well (Cuban says he wants more from them for AXS), but that is also the hand-selected beast matches, and is also at best several weeks behind. I think that if you gave Gabe three hours every single weekend on a channel like Fox Sports (kind of like what UFC would get) and told him to focus on that every week so that he didn't have to do any non-TV shows and you just paid him in rights fees, it would do really well. (And I think two of those hows every two weeks instead of one a week would do even better, but that's a separate issue).


SHIMMER I think kind of belongs in the PWG category of a promotion that isn't really trying to grow anymore. I think Prazak is happy running that promotion how he always has and focusing more of his "strategies for growth" energy on SHINE (which has the help of the WWN branding, which, at the very least, is a bunch of free plugs on other shows).

cero2k wrote: Dec 18th, '17, 14:31 Indeed PWG only works in PWG because it's california, because they have no VOD, because of many things, but I think it's unfair to blame Dave over why this style propagated to other promotions. I'd blame the wrestlers more because they have fun in one promotion and now want to bring that fan reaction to another place, because everyone gets good reactions in PWG and they probably think that if they do the same stuff, maybe the can get over in this other companies too, so it really comes down to the bookers, and if you ain't a smart booker, wrestling is gonna eat you alive. I don't think PWG has as many fans as ROH has, and the Observer probably has less fans that like PWG, so i have doubts on how much power would Dave's words have to really alter anything.
I think there is a segment of people within the business that Dave's words hold sway with (including Delirious) that Dave pointing this sort of thing out would have effected. But I guess you're right that it's not fair to blame him for this... although i can still blame him for his double-standard in not calling it out.
cero2k wrote: Dec 18th, '17, 14:31
Big Red Machine wrote: Dec 18th, '17, 16:08 I greatly disagree with this. Every time I've been ringside, I find it very hard (if not impossible) to see stuff on the other side of the ring, whereas all of that is perfectly visible on DVD or TV.
I guess i didn't explain it right, but that's what I said, a match like Taker vs HBK shouldn't be reviewed only by live experience, you need to the whole commentary/camera angle experience. 'weekend' indie shows don't require that experience that much, especially when there is not a lot of story to evaluate and the DVD comes out months later.
I think that if you can't see everything that happens during the match, you're not evaluating it fairly, and that often happens when you don't sit at least one level up.
cero2k wrote: Dec 18th, '17, 14:31
Big Red Machine wrote: Dec 18th, '17, 10:30 I treat the F4W family shows (B&V, F4D) as more of a fan-review like the DKP or Adam & Mike shows than the WON family shows (WOR, WOL), so they're entitled to watch what they want. If I remember right, they did try watching Impact again this year (Filthy was doing it for a while with Alvarez) but they had to stop because Alvarez's cable was having problems with the channel (the same reason they rarely do ROH anymore when they used to do that every week). They also put up with Impact for a LONG time, so I don't blame them for not wanting to go back to it after so many false promises of a new beginning from the millions of different new regimes TNA has had. That's how I feel, too. But I would definitely like them to focus more on some other accessible weekly indy like CWF Mid-Atlantic or even that Booker T promotion they said they really enjoyed.
Giving up on shows is something I somewhat dislike too, not just Impact, but Vinny not doing RAW and trading it for more old stuff. I think if you're getting paid to review shows, you have to do it plain and simple. You're not getting paid, so I have no argument to force you to review Joey Janela matches, but they are getting paid, and while I can even understand not overlapping shows like RAW, Impact is/was THE second biggest company in the US WITH tv and I think it needs coverage. Even now that they have the space for the thursday's popurri, they're doing shows from the 70s instead of using that time to review 1 hour of PROGRESS or EVOLVE that HAS been making noise in the last year.
This I agree with, and I was quite disappointed when Vinny gave up Raw. I think a lot of it has to do with what they're willing to pay for, and I don't think either of them have those services, but they do already have the Network so they watch that, or CMLL which they can get free. I think that if you put EVOLVE or PROGRESS in front of them (especially Vinny) they would love it.
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Upcoming Reviews:
FIP in 2005
ROH Validation
PWG All-Star Weekend V: Night 2
DGUSA Open the Ultimate Gate 2013
ROH/CMLL Global Wars Espectacular: Day 3

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