Do we have an index of “good canonical wrestling clips” for educational purposes? Suppose you have someone sitting down who is generally familiar with wrestling and buys into the idea, but maybe hasn’t watched something in years.
Good clips to have:
* this is a great promo, and it’s a face being a face
* this is a great promo, and it’s a heel being a heel
* here is a bit of a match, and you’re seeing in-ring story-telling
* here is a bit of the flow of a tag team match
* oh look, an interruption
Maybe that’s a lot to ask! If we are building such a list, YouTube clips are probably most accessible.
Well, here’s an example of a legendary promo — but it’s a very unusual one, where Austin is demolishing the fourth wall in a shoot promo, in a precursor to the Monday Night Wars.
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x69oew_steve-austin-ecw-promo_sport
.
(Another perhaps difficult constraint: trying to deliver this visual info in a short amount of time – perhaps no more than 10 minutes of time sitting and watching clips. YEY CONSTRAINTS.)
I think it’s a great idea but I’m not sure how the best way to archive it would be. I could make a post like the AP report post and pin it to the community, but then the “front page” of the community becomes static (and I like seeing activity, y’know?)
Maybe an open-access google doc with links and short explanations of what game-stuff each link is relevant to?
That sounds good! A community doc, and if it gets good, perhaps we could link it as a Resource on the WWW site (but not take up any more space in the community).
Play nice! https://docs.google.com/document/d/1g0lP-xSmGVhI0vaSpmbXOWGoZaLKi8f53vQ8E_B548g/edit?usp=sharing
what a mensh!
A few are addded! I’m debating whether I should link the “Great Antonio vs. Antonio Inoki” clusterfunk as a counter-example – maybe a downer, but maybe a good example of how things can go wrong (which is in fact, something you want on the table in a WWW RPG game).
I can’t wait till I’m in front of a computer to share!
Examples of botches are good, I think.
This is my favorite video promo:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cMGD8QHRBbQ
sub-mission
Here’s a good list of some legendary matches that people can research for material — a compilation of all the matches that Dave Meltzer of Wrestling Observer has given the coveted Five-Star rating to:
http://starratingslist.blogspot.com/2009/09/wrestling-observer-5-star-ratings-list.html
This is the greatest promo ever delivered.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9py4aMK3aIU
The promo that kicked off The Summer Of Punk, 2011, and built up to a match that got the first five-star rating that WWE had ever gotten out of Dave Meltzer since Shawn Michaels vs. Razor Ramon in 1997:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OS9wZGb_3g
(A really great thing about getting into wrestling so late, without a encyclopedic knowledge base, is that I get to see amazing stuff like “Hard Times” for the first time.)
I’ve written two essays at least partially about Hard Times. My goal is to do at least three more
If you want the heel corollary, Flair about why he’s better than Dusty.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oRWMgLHgJY
What I love about Hard Times is that it reinforces the “Blue Blood vs. Blue Collar” storyline that Flair and Rhodes had going. I remember at the time that I ignored Rhodes (I was ALL about Hulk Hogan as a kid in the 80’s), but the more I go and look back at his work, the more impressed I am. He had crowds eating out of his hand, and made it look so easy.
Same. I was a Flair guy. Still am. But I go back and my god, I get why the adults were so into Rhodes when I was a kid. I watched grown men and women cry during Rhodes promos.
Here’s another thing: If you’re a new wrestling fan, it can be understandable to dismiss 95% of WWE women’s (“diva’s”) matches out of hand, and thus form the impression that women just don’t put on good matches on average overall.
You could not be more wrong.
If you ever need proof of just how awesome women’s matches can be, go look up Japanese women’s wrestling, where they take things deadly seriously, and care just as much about the end product. Here’s another match that earned Dave Meltzer’s rare five-star rating — Manami Toyota vs. Aja Kong, from 1994. Manami Toyota is perhaps Japan’s greatest female wrestler of all time, and Aja Kong is one of Japan’s greatest Monster Heels of any gender, and you don’t need to know a word of Japanese to enjoy this match. The only time that WWE ever came close to this level was at the height of the Trish Stratus / Lita feud in the early 2000’s, and even that fell short of Japan’s amazing work with women wrestlers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieWAJ9heBvE
Let’s not forget!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MISUHTo2NDs
Poor Jumpin Jim