Jerome Cusson and Justin Houston are here to get your week started right with a show discussing a hodge podge of issues. With no real indy shows to discuss, the duo enters the wrestler of the year but comes to no real conclusion BECAUSE IT’S ALL SUBJECTIVE! They also preview the upcoming Ring of Honor television tapings and why they’re both generally unenthusiastic about them. Then it’s time to talk about a show ICP is putting on. Swear to God. If you really can;t stand ICP, blame Jerome for bringing this up. As a bonus on this program, Justin makes a pop culture reference, fails to get a Team America reference, and doesn’t know what Heroes of Wrestling is. A fun way to kill time at work. Do it.
No, no, no, no……tell us how you REALLY feel about Davey Richards! Hate much?
I agree whole-heartedly with the TNA ban on this site, I’d like to suggest a “Justin-Only Davey Richards Discussion Ban” now as well. Holy overkill Batman.
As someone who is knowledgeable about the sport of professional wrestling, surely you know about suspension of disbelief. How is it possible he can have his arm destroyed, then do moves with that very same arm? Hmmm, how about that month of intense training provided his body with an exceptional ability to resist damage and granted him a remarkable ability to heal quickly. Done. You can enjoy a Dasher Hatfield baseball sequence in the middle of match (which is one of the greatest things I’ve ever seen), but no-selling an arm sends you into convulsions of rage? Get peace with suspension of disbelief my friend, your migraines will decrease significantly.
I’m not the president of the Davey Richards fan club, but I am a fan of his work. No storytelling? Well, how about the split up of the American Wolves? How about the decision to retire at the end of 2010, then changing his mind to become the embodiment of a true ROH champion? Inspiration from the real life death of his grandparents and the divorce from his wife? How about the match at Final Battle where he and Roddy destroyed each other to the point of literally losing consciousness to lose the match? He’s a fighter, that’s his character. He lives, sleeps, breathes, eats, walks and talks fighting.
It’s a matter of personal preference. You clearly don’t enjoy watching super intense guys like Davey or Sami Callaghan. Many other people do. I personally like that little-white-Mike-Tyson-ball-of-rage-killing-machine going in there and putting on a clinic of his kind of wrestling, an MMA style if you will. I also enjoy watching Ice Cream Jr of Los Ice Creams crying in the middle of a Chikara match. I love El Generico, but I don’t see him as the Heavyweight Champion in ROH. It’s just not that kind of company. Davey Richard though, following in the footsteps of Samoa Joe, is an ass kicker who doesn’t back down from a challenge and will fight through pain to get his victory. He is the perfect champion for Ring of Honor.
No more Davey Richards bash podcast please. We get it.
From what I have heard this is the only podcast where Davey Richards has been bashed Bartoloco.
Bartoloco: For starters, thank you VERY MUCH for commenting and listening! I’ll tackle a bunch of your comments as best I can, but I want to assure that I’m not usually the guy who decides what we discuss on podcasts and you are probably not alone in that ban recommendation! Now I’m sure with him being ROH Champeen and all, Davey will come up again and I’ll probably be in a position to voice my opinion. However, I will try and keep my future critiques of Richards related solely to himself and not the embodiment of a certain style of wrestling that I fear will one day engulf the entire independent scene. Notice I said “try”…
“How is it possible he can have his arm destroyed, then do moves with that very same arm? Hmmm, how about that month of intense training provided his body with an exceptional ability to resist damage and granted him a remarkable ability to heal quickly.”
I consider wrestling a form of storytelling. If a guy’s not there to spin us a violent, visceral tale, then he’s just a shiny man in a Speedo rolling around with a fellow Speedo enthusiast. So if a guy gets his arm ABSOLUTELY THRASHED at the beginning of a match, I expect it will have an end result…that it will mean something. Are you telling me that the action at the start of a match can have ZERO bearing on the rest? Then why have all that limb work at all? To show off what Davey learned at his “real” MMA dojo last Wednesday? If your answer is that it builds drama and heat, I must protest. You wanna know why indy crowds are getting worse and worse? One big reason is that they are beginning to understand that guys like Edwards and Strong don’t do a single thing at the beginning of a match that remains relevant by the end. Only the finish matters, so only the finish gets a pop. It’s honestly that simple. Also, the “exceptional ability to resist damage” line can be applied to any wrestler, at anytime, for all eternity, so long as he’s not a fat sack. That means that work at the beginning is just…killing time. For all their physical prowess, that seems rather…lazy.
No storytelling? Well, how about the split up of the American Wolves? How about the decision to retire at the end of 2010, then changing his mind to become the embodiment of a true ROH champion? Inspiration from the real life death of his grandparents and the divorce from his wife?
Those are storylines, not storytelling.
How about the match at Final Battle where he and Roddy destroyed each other to the point of literally losing consciousness to lose the match?
That is absolutely a form of storytelling. It was an awfully-executed piece of storytelling in my opinion, but it counts. It’s also not exactly what I’m referring to. Here’s basically what I’m referring to: Eddie works over every inch of Davey’s body with all manner of painful submissions but never manages to keep a hold of a leg. Finish comes when both men are beat down, but Davey’s legs are unscathed. Knowing this, Davey murders Eddie with kicks, just like in the actual finish to their match. That’s paying off early work and making the finish mean something on a deeper level. The Davey/Roddy finish was also a plot to further Davey’s storyline about being someone who “lives, sleeps, breathes, eats, walks and talks fighting”. It was a big moment that was completely orchestrated by the creative heads for their future angle. This wasn’t about telling a compelling, self-contained story. It served a larger purpose. Now…find me a single Davey match with storytelling since. You can’t, because he can’t do it on his own. He doesn’t know how, he forgot or he doesn’t care. I’ve read people surmise Davey/Eddie was about how Richards was truly top dog, but they’re reaching. Eddie never lost control for more than about four minutes. Nothing in that match meant a damn thing.
You clearly don’t enjoy watching super intense guys like Davey or Sami Callaghan.
Those guys aren’t intense. They’re angry…VERY angry, but still just angry. Nothing about either guy fumes further than their own flesh. I’d cite intense workers from NJPW, NOAH & DG but going to Japan for intensity would be kind of cheating on my part. American indy guys like Eddie Kingston, Chris Hero and Kevin Steen are intense without resorting to scrunched faces and no-selling because they don’t try to be intense…they just ARE intense. In fact, all three guys understand the value of selling and are absolute professionals at it. Davey & Sami just yell and run a lot. It’s all superficial.
I love El Generico, but I don’t see him as the Heavyweight Champion in ROH. Davey Richard though, following in the footsteps of Samoa Joe, is an ass kicker who doesn’t back down from a challenge and will fight through pain to get his victory. He is the perfect champion for Ring of Honor.
Any comparisons between Joe & Davey are laughable. Joe’s got six inches and seventy-five pounds on Davey, so he could actually carry himself as a monster badass. It also goes back to performance once again: Joe IS intense, Davey ACTS intense. It’s like comparing Roger Moore and Sean Connery because they both played James Bond. You can say, “Well Davey’s MMA is legit”…but Joe won a Cali Judo Title in high school.
Bottom line: I don’t buy much of what Davey & Sami do. No matter how hard belief is suspended, I can’t ignore a guy NEVER selling his ribs after eating a double stomp through a table. That’s just asking too much. The difference between those guys is that I used to like Davey. I miss that dude who would hang people in the Tree of Woe just to run, stop and flick them in the nutsack. I believed that guy and his devilish ways. Now he seems, for lack of a better term, fake.
Thanks again for commenting! Sorry about any typos or weird errors that make it hard to read. I wrote this very late.
As far as entire podcasts go, yes, this is the only one. But it’s the same talking points consistently on the podcasts from certain commentators. I don’t think they are capable of objectively viewing a Davey Richards match. I respect the strong points of view, I just think everything that needs to be expressed has been.
That said, nothing makes me happier than seeing a new PWP podcast loading up in iTunes. Love the site, the reviews, and the podcasts. Thank you guys for everything you do.
My full intention is to avoid Davey Richards conversation with Justin from here on out unless there’s some sort of news value to having that conversation. I felt it was really important to address this wrestler of the year conversation on the show, so that’s the reason we talked about Davey Richards at all. Justin obviously dislikes Davey passionately, and I think a lot of his points are legitimate, especially with a lot of his own recent matches and actions outside of the ring.
Points well taken!
I’m a huge fan of you guys, and get a ton of enjoyment out of the podcasts and reviews. I do see your perspective on Davey, it just seemed like it was driven into the ground that particular day, or maybe that’s just what I was focused on.
I have grown a little bored with ROH over the last year, but I attribute a lot of that to the loss of the HDNet show. I ordered Best In The World, but was having difficulties with the internet feed or computer, so I haven’t seen the Davey Richards title win. So to be honest, I haven’t seen any Davey Richards matches from 2011.
I personally have shifted gears over to Chikara and have been on a tear of their 2010 shows. I usually go nuts on ROH Black Friday deals then play catch up a year behind.
Nothing personal obviously, I really do enjoy your work Justin. I was absolutely cracking up at your angry Wrestlemania stuff where you refused to go. I completely agree with your assessment Justin that Chris Hero is the #1 guy in ROH. Too bad they may not be able to capitalize on him in time.
Thanks again for addressing these points!
Glad you enjoy our podcasts man. Leave us a good review on iTunes. Thanks 🙂
Thank you, Justin, for saying every fucking thing I’ve said about Richards for years now. His matches are incoherent, and he doesn’t seem to understand that MMA DOES NOT=wrestling.
Wow, I had missed that whole Davey interview somehow.
I don’t want to accuse Davey of being like Vince McMahon and being ‘ashamed’ of being a wrestler, or whatever the Cornette line about Vince is… but, man, there’s an undeniable irony there about going COMPLETELY the other way in terms of seriousness of presentation and risking coming off the same way. The increasing MMA influence over wrestling does bug me, when it’s done artificially or blatantly. So maybe I’m seeing too much in it. But that Kevin Kelly line about “training like a fighter”, as if being a “fighter” is somehow better is what irked me. Does Davey think he’d get more respect if people saw him as a fighter than a professional wrestler? Is it better because that’s what’s popular now? I don’t know. But it risks coming off that way.
I don’t hate Davey. I’ve actually liked some of his ‘MMA influenced’ matches a lot this year, like the TJP one. I’ve seen him do ‘fake stuff’, so to speak, like be a cowardly heel in the NRC or throw on Tenzan horns in PWG, so it’s not like he’s incapable of being a fun pro wrestler. But there’s definitely something about that interview that’s a bit bothersome, as far as how he sees himself or wants to be seen.
Davey’s promos also have that tinge of wanting to not be considered a wrestler when he always drops the “this isn’t wrestling, this is real” line and sometimes does it condescendingly. And it’s weird how he straddles the line by talking about the “pretend wrestling” and how he’s a real athlete on one hand while touting he’s the ROH champ on the other. Can’t really have it both ways.
Davey as a wrestler doesn’t enrage me like others but I always find that with other guys I can watch their matches back-to-back, I never can do that with Davey because I feel burned out midway through the second one.
Graet podcast just like all the rest. It’s great to see fans who love pro wrestling show that, yet not be afraid to speak their mind. Great work to all involved.