Jesus, @Vaderbomb. I'm knackered just looking at your response and that's coming from me.
VaderBomb wrote:I usually try reserve the tiny amount of hatred that I'm capable of projecting for something that actually matters. Hating a wrestling match is pretty silly, especially one that isn't offensive and is as entertaining and important as the main event of ROH Unified. Lot's of people love this match and to tear it apart as if it's some hardcore shit-show is smug as all shit. Unless your agenda from the get go was to tear this match apart, then I really don't see how you can be so passionately against this match as if it's on the level of Nazi propaganda. I find it to be one of the more entertaining matches of the 00s and I don't really understand the hostility, especially considering that I disagree with almost all of your points.
You're taking this personally right from the get go. I said I "kinda hated" a wrestling match. No I don't think it's as bad as Nazi propaganda. That's childish. If you see yourself stooping to shit like this when you argue, then just don't bother. And no, I didn't intend on ripping it from the start. I said some positive stuff about the match, because I found it entertaining for the first few minutes and didn't start to "hate" it until the last five.
And fair enough, maybe hate is a strong word, but that's such a semantic argument. I won't give this match much thought from now on, so I probably can't say that I "hate it" with 100% honesty, but we all use language like this all the time. It's a needlessly pedantic road to go down.
VaderBomb wrote:If you're going into a smaller promotion expecting audio and video as slick and highly produced as WWE, you've got some bad expectations. The camerawork is totally tolerable and no where near as shoddy as you make it seem to be. All of the shots are clear and there's no examples of "submissions where you couldn't see exactly where the pressure was being applied". What the fuck does that even mean? There are also no examples of "punches that we could see weren't landing". Were you watching a Hogan match? All of the strikes within this match were tight, stiff and full of energy.
I think the submission line is pretty clear. The example I can remember was when Danielson had McGuinness in a hold on the top turnbuckle. We could only see the move side profile and it wasn't clear if it was a choke or what exactly was happening. Maybe Danielson used to use that move a bunch so you know what was happening, but that doesn't mean everyone else would.
And yeah, most of the shots were stiff. That's the kind of thing that actually annoyed me about the match. But some of them weren't Some of them barely connected, and the camera made it more clear than it might otherwise have been.
I already said in another post though, the camerawork was something I could accept. It's not what pissed me off about the match. It's Ring of Honor, I'm not expecting WWE levels of production.
VaderBomb wrote:There just aren't any truly contrived spots. There's some impressive chain wrestling near the beginning of this match and every big move afterwards is confident and impactful. You state that one of them stands waiting to take a move. That happens in 98% of wrestling matches. These guys are humans, not perfect specimens. How can you expect them to be 100% in the right place at the right time at all times? With that question out of the way, this claim is just not apparent within this particular match. These two really have their shit together and neither man makes any big, prevalent mistakes that could potentially detract from the match.
Maybe wrestlers standing there waiting to take a move does happen in 98% of wrestling matches. Maybe we should only be considering that other 2% the greatest matches of all time. There were just a couple of times here where it was really obvious, and saying "other matches do it too" is a lame defense. And the spot where McGuinness stood on his head on the turnbuckle, Danielson looked at him and then ran under him just so he could take a spot looked very contrived to me. The bashing his head spot looked similar.
VaderBomb wrote:You mention how they stop for awhile on the top rope, but fail to mention how Bryan had Nigel locked into a chicken-wing submission hold which disallowed him from easily escaping the grasp of Dragon. Bad stomps are also just not there. Bryan does some killer stomps on Nigel, including one where he bends Nigel's forearm backwards and vertical and stomps on his hand, driving the radius of his arm into the mat. It looked beyond excellent.
No, you're thinking of a different spot. There was a time when they were both standing on the top rope, probably for 10 seconds before Brian did a suplex on Nigel (I think ... it might have been the other way around). It looked really weird. And there were some lame stomps early on. Before they had settled into the match and started bringing the stiff shots.
Vaderbomb wrote:The ring post spot didn't look terrible at all. It was absolutely barbarous but it looks legit because it was. Nigel cut himself the hard way? Big fucking deal. I've seen guys get busted open with more ferocity than that spot, and I probably like Nigel's more. You claim that he leans into each shot, but I already tore that false claim apart while quoting Kirbi. Bryan was holding onto both of Nigel's arms and using leverage to drive him forward. There's no way he'd realistically be able to get out of that predicament. This is not wrestling at it's ugliest. Try watching some stupid backyard shit or some Japanese exploding death-matches. Even ECW had stuff that was far more tasteless and brutal.
Fair enough, you thought it looked good. But it really didn't from my perspective. It looked so fake. There were a bunch of ways he could have tried to avoid hitting himself off post, but he didn't. He just clearly tensed up his face and took the shots until he started bleeding. It was dangerous
and it didn't look good. It seemed like a spot that fans were supposed to cheer for just because it was barbaric, not because it looked impressive or reliable.
Vaderbomb wrote:You chose Mankind vs Undertaker from KOTR 1998 for this tournament as one of your top 20 matches of all time. Isn't that like, really, really hypocritical?
It includes some super-famous, classic spots off of the Cell and onto the tacks but in the end it's hardly a wrestling match. It's more unnecessarily brutal than this match ever even comes close to being. Yet I don't go around acting as if I'm better than Taker and Mankind for pushing the limits of what a pro-wrestling match is, which is what you've been doing in this post a lot.
I'll give you this, I can see how you'd think it's hypocritical. But it's not quite the same for me. For starters, @SlightlyJames covered a big part of it already: these spots were huge and memorable and very impressive, while the post spot looked pretty stupid. It's not nearly as memorable, and I thought it looked pretty bad. And I'm obviously not alone here.
Plus, I feel like the spectacle was the selling point there. The big falls looked amazing. It wasn't the violence that sold people on the match. These were dangerous spots. But in Danielson/McGuinness they took safe spots and made them dangerous. Not just dangerous but kinda gory? Not sure that's the word I'm looking for. But I can't enjoy that post spot maybe for the same reason that I can't enjoy the movie
Hostel: it just doesn't connect with me, it's not the kind of wrestling I like to watch.
Vaderbomb wrote:The psychology was not killed, but heightened by their headbutt battle.
A guy with a head wound chose not to sell it and instead started a headbutt battle. No, I can't agree that added to the psychology. He was basically no-selling. Also, I just don't like those spots (I felt the same with Ziggler/Danielson recently). I don't think they look realistic enough.
Vaderbomb wrote:Hah. Dutch Mantel's quote is a straw man argument if I've ever seen one and a misrepresentation of the current state of pro-wrestling.
I don't really think so. An exaggeration certainly, but it definitely shows in matches like this one. And in a bunch of matches since the 90s. In fairness it applies to Mankind/Undertaker match too, although at least that one had the advantage of people thinking parts of it might have been "real".
Vaderbomb wrote:While Nigel/Bryan at Unified is one of Bryan's most famous and important matches from ROH, PWG, Japan etc. He's had much more technical clinics that you should check out and would likely prefer.
Look, you could be right. Honestly, I've talked on the forum before that I've never seen Danielson as one of the very best wrestlers ever. He's good without a doubt. Great even. I was one of the few that chose his match with Sheamus against Angles vs Michaels in the other thread. I just never saw him as one of the very best. I figured that it was his ROH matches that were supposed to make the difference. If this was the best of them then my opinion of him would remain the same.
I wouldn't be surprised if he had other ROH matches I liked better, but I'm hoping they're not generally as willfully violent as this. I know from WWE that Brian can have very good matches without stiffing the shit out of his opponent.