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Monday, July 21, 2008

Disco Inferno has once again put his thoughts out there for all to see via his internet blog and has decided to attack the ROH faithful’s “best wrestler in the world.” The blog has gotten the ROH faithful’s panties in a bun on the ROH message board, so I felt inclined to inject my thoughts on the matter via the internet juggernaut that this blog is becoming (please note the sarcasm).

My gripes with this blog really center around his severe contradiction of himself from paragraph to paragraph as well as the evidence of the sheer ineptness of the TNA staff when it comes to studying data to gauge what fans are interested in.

Text done in italics are Disco’s direct quotes.

In regards to Bryan Danielson’s work after watching a match on rohvideos.com (the repository for all ROH classic matches):

No offense to him, but I didn't think he was the "best wrestler in the business" from what I saw. He was decent for the style that he worked, but unfortunately that style caters to a very small niche audience.

I agree with Disco somewhat on this point regarding Danielson, only in the fact that he is not tested in any other wrestling context other than ROH and there is no telling what would happen if he was transplanted into the WWE or TNA environment. Assumptions made either way are only based on speculation and hold no weight. However, I would argue that he is more than decent and one could make the argument that, with the exception of Shawn Michaels, that he has had the best last two years of anyone in the business and I would not disagree. Another unmentioned fact and something that was the rumor after his WWE is that his appeal goes far beyond his in-ring work in the sense that he has a unique charisma and star power while he is in the ring and is very underrated on the microphone. His promo on last year’s “Man Up” PPV was one of the top promos of the year from an emotional and believability standpoint. My advice for Disco would be to search out more Danielson footage from some of his high profile matches in ROH in order to form a more complete opinion.

Continuing his criticism of Danielson’s style, Disco states” Most people watch professional wrestling because it's professional wrestling. I would profess that there is zero chance that you're going to draw from the MMA crowd by doing fake MMA. I think most MMA fans would be more entertained by the Disco inferno vs. the Honky Tonk Man, because at least they know they're watching a pro wrestling match and not some hybrid ridiculous let's do the MMA moves and pretend that the moves hurt and insult my intelligence style.”

As has been said about the TNA staff, there is really no awareness of today’s wrestling landscape and this quote really gets to the heart of it. Disco, please tell me what drew the largest buyrate of any PPV this year or maybe in TNA’s history? What was the style and build-up based off of? You may not draw in MMA fans with that style, but most MMA fans aren’t going to be pro wrestling fans anyways so that is not the group that you are going after. Your target group is pro wrestling fans (anything else is a bonus). Impact has millions of eyes (i.e pro wrestling fans) watching each week and the goal of the TV program is to make those viewers into paying customers, something that TNA has been largely unsuccessful in doing, and the only success has been the style of which you are so critical.

Moving on the main gripe of the blog, is where Disco, in his criticism of the MMA style, states (in a worked MMA style match, the mindset is) “let's do the MMA moves and pretend that the moves hurt and insult my intelligence style.” Isolated, that comment doesn’t hold any water, and coupled with his later comments regarding selling, it is a direct contradiction. The contradiction occurs when Disco states, ” There's something to say about the art of selling, which isn't really being taught to the up 'n comers. It makes matches so much more dramatic. It's what causes the fans to suspend the disbelief to a higher level, because now they become emotionally involved subconsciously when a wrestler can convey suffering and despair to them.”

Selling makes matches more dramatic? Of course it does, so then why do you earlier in your blog that selling a hold (of whatever style it is) is insulting to your intelligence. The purpose of selling is to get whatever hold over in the sense that it hurts. If anything, a pro wrestling hold (figure-four, sharpshooter, etc.) that is not used in a MMA environment would be more insulting when sold because we have never seen it used in a real fight scenario. How then is that not intelligence insulting to you, Mr Gilberti? Selling, I agree, is a lost art in a lot of today’s matches, but to say the selling of pro wrestling holds will allow viewers to suspend disbelief while the selling of MMA holds (that are used in real matches) is intelligence insulting is ridiculous.

In your blog, you claim to know exactly what pro wrestling fans want. In general, wrestling fans speak with their wallet and the main goal of any wrestling promoter is to increase share of wallet with their television viewers. TNA’s Lockdown PPV drew considerably more buys than any PPV in the last 12 months, but the formula that was so successful was soon ditched in favor of the formula that has been setting the PPV market on fire to the tune of 15-25,000 buys monthly. Please let me know the reasoning for this and then I will truly believe that you have your finger on the pulse of what wrestling fans want. “You’ve never worked in this business, what do you know?” does not qualify as a valid answer either.

Any comments, questions, or opinions can be sent over to torchparker@gmail.com. Do you agree with Disco’s opinions? Does your opinion differ from my assessment?

Justin can be heard on the ROH Audio Series with James Caldwell and Sean Radican, and will be updating this blog periodically to discuss all the hot topics in today’s wrestling landscape.

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