[Mr. Nerfect]

Originally Posted by Damian Rey 2.0 No, I'm not. In saying that when Cornette talks he does so in a way that favors 80s rasslin as if it was the right way to do things. I'm sure he likes modern stuff. I'm not saying he doesn't. What I'm saying is he has a clear bias when all but one of the matches he considers 5 stars were in the 80s. It's obvious he favors the era and that his wrestling.

Fair enough. I just wanted to get your point clear. To be fair, the matches that he lists as five stars happened in the 80's because that's when they happened. I mean, can you think of too many North American matches that were five stars that are not those glaring examples (HBK/Taker and Bret/Austin) in the 90's? It wasn't the era for that sort of stuff. It was a hot product and compelling in different ways, but I don't think Cornette is overlooking anything glaringly obvious.

I think you're right in that he thinks the pre-sports entertainment branding is an era that Cornette is nostalgic for. He'd admit as much himself. He frequently talks about how the business, in general, was a lot healthier back then before the hot-shotting of the Attitude era. He's kind of been proven right on that.

Originally Posted by Damian Rey 2.0 The Interaction is fine. The shitting on him as a wrestler based on seeing him 10 years ago when he was apparently green as fuck and watching two comedy bits is ridiculous. Think about that. Cornette is holding onto an opinion that's a decade old with zero idea, seemingly, of how good an in ring performer the guy is.

I can get that people want to give Omega more chances because he was young and dumb and whatever. To keep it on Cornette, he does a wonderful little piece on whether or not it's actually the fault of the young guys today for thinking that the goofy shit is how to get themselves over. That being said, Cornette himself got into the business young and holds people who get into wrestling for a paycheck or to fuck around in general contempt. You can look down on how seriously he takes it, but in Corny's eyes, Omega committed a cardinal sin after dogging Delirious in ROH. Was he young and dumb? Sure. But the generational issues that a lot of the younger guys on the indy scene have where they think their way of handling stuff is automatically better seems to stick with them too. Has Omega ever said that was the wrong way to go about things? Has he given Corny a reason to update his opinion on him?

Hearing Omega's side of the stuff he did in Japan, it sounds like a lot of it went around him and he didn't plan for it to go viral and actually be filmed. I doubt some of that. A lot of it, actually. Given the legitimate risks of wrestling, working with a 9 year old girl shows a lot of the dude's arrogance and disregard for anyone but himself to be honest. He really sounds like a piece of shit. That's not to say the dude isn't a great wrestler now or grown as a person, but it's hard to sweep that stuff under a rug for some people, and I think that is fair enough.

It doesn't matter to Corny how good Omega is now. That's the bit people don't really seem to get. Weirdly enough, I think it is the bit that has the most credence. Times do change people and Omega probably is a lot better now and is a more decent human being. The Miz is also a better wrestler than he was when he started. But Corny isn't really as interested in that as he is Omega's personal decisions. Should he be more forgiving? Yeah, I could probably concede that, but I can't say he's wrong if he wants to take wrestling seriously.

Originally Posted by Damian Rey 2.0 He made 3 nice comments on a match even the guy he's doing the show with loved and admitted to getting into. Just because he tosses in a few compliments doesn't negate the other nonsense he's going on about, like the ultimate warrior comparison. He literally nit picked the whole thing. They over sold, they laid around a lot, it was just a match with moves, etc. Granted I'm sure he hasv zero idea of what's going on in the promotion. But that makes him look sillier as he's trying to critique something He has no idea of outside of it being a match.

I legitimately don't really get your point here, man. Did he compliment the match for its athleticism or not? I'm sorry he didn't give it an endless stream of positive adjectives? He mentioned Ultimate Warrior because Omega used to remind him of Warrior in certain ways. He also found him to be a jerk and reckless and ultimately shit for the wrestling business. Corny actually knows both guys, by the way. To say that you don't see the similarities is robbing him of his own anecdotal experiences.

He nit-picked it because analyzing the match was the point of the entire exercise? As for not understanding it outside the context of the match -- firstly, that is what he is analyzing -- the match. Most of the people gushing over it don't understand it outside the context of it being just a match. Do you really think everyone talking about how great it was is a subscriber to New Japan World? Come on now.

Maybe I'm missing something, but I'm struggling to find sense in your complaints here. He watched the match, said it wasn't that great and explained why. You don't have to like his opinion, but to say "Well, he was negative about the things he didn't like and he probably doesn't watch all of Omega's stuff" isn't really a good logical rebuke of it. Analyzing a match as he has is something people do all the time, and outside of its context is how most people have taken it.

Originally Posted by Damian Rey 2.0 I think expectations are higher. It takes more nowadays to suck people in. If expectations were low, you and I would be on the WWE bandwagon praising everything they do, much like CyNick. We don't. Because we expect better and when we don't get it we walk away.

This is a fair point. I would just disagree in the sense that I don't expect better, although I would like it. I'd like things to make sense, be simpler, set face/heel dynamics, and be organized in a way to make money. That's actually a very Cornette way of thinking, haha. I say I think expectations are lower because look at what passes as a star these days. Look at how short the rises to the top are. Look at how every match is the same and people still chant "This is awesome!" a few minutes before the match ends right on cue.

I think people want more, but I don't think their expectations are higher. I think they are just conditioned to accept mediocrity as excellence in this era. Goldberg provides a really good context for this. The dude comes out in 2016 and is INSTANTLY the biggest star they have, despite being 50 and, frankly, extremely limited in the ring. His promos carried more energy than almost anything else on the show. A Goldberg promo would wake people up. Think about that.

Originally Posted by Damian Rey 2.0 This match had two year long stories meeting in a culmination of character growth and development. The fans were into it. You could tell with how they responded to the final 4 matches that the in ring performances enhanced stories that had been building up over time. It's part of what made them great for those who have followed NJPW enough to know what was going on.

This is a really good point. I'm sure there was a story there. I'm vaguely aware of Okada taking the reigns and now ruling NJPW and the rise of Kenny Omega. I'm not as compelled by the Omega story (it feels like he was pushed mainly in the absence of AJ Styles and Nakamura and that quite a few years of development were squeezed into one, but maybe the pacing was truly excellent). That being said, again, that is not really what Cornette is responding to. He's not saying that Omega isn't the top gaijin in Japan -- he's just saying that he doesn't fucking care for him and he's not as fucking good as everyone is raving about. Honestly, I'd agree with that.

But it worked in front of that audience. I don't think you can call the main event portion of the show a flop by any sense of the word. It got people on their feet and in the current climate that is what you want. It's just a shame that people are conditioned to mark out for Superkick Parties as opposed to switching their minds off and getting invested in good psychology. And that is why The Revival are an infinitely better team to me than The Young Bucks.

But yes, to the question "Did the match work?", the answer is clearly "Yes." That's pretty much it. But that doesn't mean that it was perfect or a five star classic or anything. Subjectively, I'm fine with people calling it a classic and I think just the emotion it stirs up in people is going to keep people going back to it even if it's not technically the best worked or most impressive physical contest in 2017.

This is an Academy Award nominee for sure, but that doesn't necessarily mean it will win the award or that it's Citizen Kane. It still conforms to some terrible tropes of modern cinema. Loud noises and explosions in lieu of character development. It was another action blockbuster, but it is probably one of the very best action blockbusters in a long, long while. Hell, it might even be The Matrix of action blockbusters.

Originally Posted by Damian Rey 2.0 I think the basics of wrestling storytelling still works. How it is presented is way changes. What worked for Vince in the 80s didn't work in the 90s, and so on and so forth. I agree with the guys breaking their bodies for nobody, but that has more to do with the stories behind the matches, or lack thereof. I urge you to follow NJPW, Noid. I think we have similar tastes in wrestling. I love what they're producing. It has direction, long term booking, character development and great in ring matches. I think you'd love it.

I agree with this, but sometimes I wonder if things had to change so drastically. Just because something works doesn't mean it's the only way to do things. This is why I sometimes question the streak of The Undertaker. People will often point out to what a successful tool it has been in the modern evolution of WrestleMania, and it's a fair point, but sometimes I wonder if people get turned off by a dude who is in year 26 of his character's run still hanging around. I wonder which stars could have been created if focus wasn't on a winning streak of a guy that can no longer go full-time, and honestly was involved in a lot of dross and was never the #1 guy even when he was. That's not to disrespect the dedication and legendary status of The Undertaker, but rather just to point out that I don't think he needed the streak and that everything might have been generally healthier if it wasn't such a big priority (among other things).

The basics of wrestling still work, but that doesn't mean you need to go back to the days of an atomic drop as a finisher. To steer this back to Jim Cornette, one of the modern matches he praises is Seth Rollins vs. Davey Richards from ROH Border Wars. Now, I have not seen this match, but from what I have been told it had a lot of MMA influence. Pacing-wise, general story-wise, I can see that some people may not see the difference between it and Okada/Omega -- but what Cornette praises about it, in addition to the athleticism he praises in Omega/Okada -- is the lack of obvious cooperation. As I said though, I have not seen it. But my point there is that Corny isn't calling for a regression of wrestling -- and this is often the biggest straw-man thrown at him when he is labeled out of touch. He regularly says that the best wrestling promotion in the world is the UFC.

But I have been thoroughly considering getting into New Japan, because I want to support something that isn't WWE, and for the most part I find the main event stuff there fascinating. I didn't hate Okada/Omega. I am conditioned to accepting that as the modern style, dragon superplexes and all. But I don't find my views that dissimilar to Cornette's in that, no, I wouldn't give the match five stars, let alone six. I would go as high as four and a half, and I think that is perfectly wonderful praise.

Originally Posted by Damian Rey 2.0 Him saying that's what people want to see is not accepting it. It's just acknowledging an obvious fact. Maybe he hasv accepted it but I'm not buying it based on how he presents his views on things.

There's a good bit Cornette does on wrestling being dead. It's worth a listen to. He talks about how you can't put the toothpaste back in the tube. You don't need to tell Corny that kayfabe is dead. Oh, he knows. He's just making money off its corpse at this point. That being said, given that "everybody knows it is fake" and yet how many people think that wrestlers have always used fake blood, or how easy it is to work people (remember people thinking Bryan/Miz was real just recently), and how stirred up I see Joe Citizen get about a UFC fighter being cocky and wanting to go down to the pub to see him get his lights knocked out, I actually don't think I'd agree with him on that. Political analysts would have never expected Trump to become President. People are extremely easy to work these days.