This is totally irrelevant to the point you initially made, which was to assert that Muchnick's and Thesz's careers weren't intertwined. Were they or weren't they?
What I actually said:
Muchnick was a promoter, whose career lasted into the 1970s and the other two are 10 and 20 years younger than Thesz respectively, putting them in a later era.
I said Muchnick's career lasted a lot longer, which it did. That is a categorical fact.
And this actually weakens your arguments about Thesz's innovation. By your own admission, there's only so much that can be done in a wrestling ring. So, it's not ingenuity, but rather primacy, that apparently makes Thesz so great.
There is only so much, yet Thesz is the one who acheived it.
But, you are using wikipedia for the majority of your arguments. Also, I'm not seeing shit for this match with him against Rikidozan in Korakuen Stadium. Oh, wait, I did find it. Wait...what does this say?
The match only drew 30,000 people? Wait, didn't you tell me that the Tokyo Dome was built on the same spot as Korakuen Stadium? I give you props here, as you only partially prevaricated; however, Korakuen Stadium is only half the size of the Tokyo Dome.
What arenas were there in Thesz's time that held wrestling that were bigger? None to my knowledge. Second, as you want to compare two radically different times, has Misawa ever drawn a television rating of 87.0? I'm going to say no.
Source for 87.0 rating:
http://www.wrestling101.com/101/article/trs/967/
The "source: wikipedia" refers to the quote at the top.
No, I'm not wrong. All your statement does is allow us to come to the conclusion that wrestling was shown on DuMont 5 years before Gagne debuted (and even this is questionable, as it only says on his wiki that he won the Chicago version of the NWA US Championship in 1953; if the golden age of television began in 1953, then we can come to the conclusion that that's when Gagne debuted).
Yes, you are wrong. The first cards on Dumont were put on in 1948. That's a fact. Thesz and Buddy Rogers headlined the shows early on, then Gagne became their focal point a few years later. I said 1953 before, but I don't actually remember but it may have been a year or two earlier.
Source:
Did Thesz ever overhaul his style in all of his years of wrestling? It may have been a very adaptable style, but this doesn't make him thus more prepared to deal with Misawa.
It does not, per se, mean that Thesz can deal with Misawa, but the fact that he was adaptable wold mean that Misawa shouldn't be seen to win immediately because he's modern.
Also, YOU stated that Thesz was way better than his contemporaries, while I stated that this was not the case with Misawa. Stiff competition is extremely relevant here, as it works to Misawa's advantage (who will be more alert and prepared: someone who is never guaranteed a victory or someone who could beat the opponents he has faced thus far with a hand tied behind his back).
Did you not say that Thesz was better than all of his competition? I am telling you right now that Misawa faced much stiffer competition than Thesz, and I've based this conclusion based on your own admissions.
Oh, I see your point here. I'm not so sure that Thesz didn't have quality opponents, he was just better than them. Guys that Thesz faced have included Sammartino, Rodgers, Gagne, Kinski, etc. These people are considered pretty highly in any general history of wrestling.
Thesz was much better than his contemporaries, but I don't think his contemporaries were poor. Furthermore, I don't think Thesz ever had a squash match, it just wasn't the way. Thesz may have always been good enough to get the win, but he was still pushed. You may contend that means that he wasn't
vastly better then, as I contended earlier, but I'd say that beating your opponents consistently implies your much better than them.
No, I'm not. If you want to get into epistemological arguments here, then, even with the stance of extreme skepticism, it can be said that a significant consensus of people that have seen Misawa's matches agree that there's more to them than just the physical motions Misawa and his opponent go through. Also, this is not a poorly defined subjective quality. Storytelling is a quality that all of rely on at some point in time to explain what makes a particular wrestler brilliant beyond just simple mechanics.
I'd say that it is subjective there. A lot of people think Misawa has great matches, but a lot of people also think that spot fests with zero storytelling are the greatest matches of all time. I really don't think that storytelling is something that everyone considers all the time. If they did, Rob Van Dam wouldn't be considered a good wrestler by anyone, but he is. The enjoyment one extracts from a match is completely reliant on the subject.
No, you said that Thesz finished off wrestlers with either a piledriver or an STF. I said it takes multiple attempts to pin Misawa.
What you're doing now is confusing one part of our argument with another. You seem to think that the moves that Thesz invented somehow get him points in a match-up against Misawa. I, on the other hand, think that these moves are very basic and that they were crudely performed by Thesz. Given how much more graceful Misawa is and how he had built on the foundations Thesz supplied, it seems to me that Misawa would beat Thesz in a match.
I see what you are saying. Given the fact that this match is scheduled for 20 minutes, I think it would actually be a draw. However, that's too boring an argument to make, so I shall discuss it as if it were a time-limit free match. Those moves may be primative, though I don't think the submission holds of the modern era are hypothetically anymore painful.
Thesz, in my opinion, would wear down Misawa and eventually force him to submit. Misawa has lost by submission before. You may argue that there is no way Thesz could deal with Misawa's more advance moves, but I think that his Do I think this will be an easy win for Thesz? No. Do I think he'd get there in the end? Yes.
He got pinned once in a majority of his three-fall matches. Unfortunately, I was talking about pin attempts, not actual pins. Also, how does three falls rule out the possibility that Thesz's matches weren't filled with rest holds?
The concept of a rest hold is a relatively new one. Thesz matches do have a lot of holds, but they were for the purpose of wearing people down, not resting.
You know, I should. Wait, scratch that; I'll look up everything that YOU say:
Sorry for not knowing about the minutiae of a light bulb.
Don't pretend that you do, and you won't need to apologise.
No, how Thesz changed the business was something that was inevitable. It's like saying that amazon.com has revolutionized the publishing industry by coming out with the kindle. Thesz may have been the first to perform certain moves, but what he did was not inconceivable for other people. Misawa, on the other hand, well, his maneuvers are something that he could have gotten patents if they existed for wrestling moves.
Everything in hindsight seems inevitable though doesn't it? Thesz might have been doing something obvious to us, but the question that has to be asked is why didn't anyone else come up with it? What is your evidence that it was inevitable? Pro wrestling had been scripted for almost 20 years before Thesz started to do the things he did.
Correction: Misawa sold out venues that were anywhere from two to six times bigger than the venues Thesz sold out.
Thesz was a consistent draw for many years, I'll get to this point later
A quality that you said didn't exist? I think it exists, so:
I said it was poorly defined.
Good for him; Misawa was drawing consistent crowds that were bigger than those that Thesz drew.
I've never once lied about Misawa.
No, but you have about Thesz. You have the audacity to say that you don't know what I'm talking about, but you have portrayed Thesz as being something he never was.
+1 to Tastycles. I was misinformed about Thesz's venues. His shoot-fighting, though, well, I wasn't mistaken about that.
1) His "hooking" style influenced the likes of Karl Gotch and Antonio Inoki.
2) Thesz himself saw his "hooking" abilities as something that could legitimately take someone down should he feel the need to (e.g., should someone want to take the belt off of him even though the match's predetermined finish has Thesz coming out on top).
He has shoot fighting qualities, you implied that's all he had, which isn't true.
No, I hardly ever use wikipedia, except for basic facts, precisely because of people like you. Let's count the ways that you have erred in this debate:
1) You tried to pass off Thesz being something more than a modest to somewhat good drawer by mentioning how he consistently drew numbers in different continents. What you failed to mention was that these numbers were the equivalent of what the WWF was seeing during The New Generation Era. Misawa's numbers were much more volatile, but they were on average just as good, and his highest gates overshadow Thesz's.
They were better numbers than anyone elses at the time, though, which makes him a pretty big deal. Thesz was wrestling multiple times a week in front of 10,000 people. If we looked at the total numbers, Thesz would be right near the top. Misawa has never drawn anything outside of Japan, and this match is outside of Japan.
Secondly, even within Japan, Misawa may have drawn big numbers in the Tokyo Dome on occasion, more than Thesz ever could in the smaller arenas that existed during his life, but judging by the figures you have presented, he spent far more of his time in 2,000 seater venues. Consistentcy of draw gives it to Thesz.
2) You have brought up the DuMont network in this debate in order to discuss how certain wrestlers helped popularize wrestling. I still have no clue what this program was called, and I also have no clue if Thesz was even on it. However, in addition to being vague, you tried to accuse me of not processing facts correctly on Gagne's wiki page, when it seems that this is precisely what you did. Yes, I based my conclusions regarding his popularity on something said on his wikipedia, but you tried to prove me wrong by acting as if one date listed in the initial sentence of a paragraph applied to all of the events listed in the paragraph.
No, I based my knowledge of the show on the aforementioned book, which talks about the show. It just calls it the show on the Dumont Network, so presumably it didn't have a name, or it was called "Wrestling from Chicago". I can also tell you that Thesz used to wrestle on a show called Wrestling from Hollywood, which existed in the late 40s. I can't remember that
3) You told me that Edison invented the light bulb, and then attempted to "own" me by saying that all of the components I listed weren't part of Edison's light bulb; there were instead parts of modern light-bulbs, which, in comparison to Edison's original invention, seem to be an improvement on Edison's original product. Ironically, we can apply this comparison to Thesz and Misawa; Thesz may have invented some moves, but Misawa delivered a much, much package.
I said that Edison invented the light bulb, because he did. I pointed out it was a relatively simplistic invention, because it was. You then attempted to show me up by making out that the light bulb was complicated. I showed you why this wasn't the case. The only improvement I noted was the tungsten fillament, which did make superficially better bulbs than those of Edison.
They do make for a nice analogy though, in terms of significance, you're right. How many people know Edison invented the light bulb? How many people know Coolidge invented the tungsten filament? Thesz is the more important.
Obviously, the debate is over, and my side has lost, but your post is completely disrespectful. You say I've relied on wiki, yet I have repeatedly given sources to the contrary, and that not one of my posts in this thread have contained information solely reaped from wiki, and if you want to contest that, prove it.
To be honest, even if I had come into this argument furnished with nothing but a wikipedia understanding of Thesz, it's more than you did, and yet you have the audacity to try and accuse me of being lazy, and of saying some shit about Inoki that was completely irrelevant even if I had said it, but I didn't.
I don't need to justify myself to you, but my knowledge of Thesz is partly second hand from Gelgarin, partly from various internet sources and partly from wrestling books. I'm a paid researcher in my other life, so to be honest, even if I was going to talk out of my arse about something I didn't know antything about, I'd look a bit deeper than wikipedia. As for the minutae of the light bulb, somebody in my History of Electrics class, which was interactive, did it so I know a fair bit about it.
I would like to apologise for continually using objective and subjective the wrong way round. I'd like to blame dyspraxia, but it's probably just tiredness.
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