/pw/ - Professional Wrestling » Thread #19096826

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Anonymous Mon 20 Oct 2025 06:03:31 No.19096826 View View Reply Original Report

Quoted By: >>19097005 >>19097015

Alright, for the love of god, can an AEW or New Japan fan on this board that's not a drooling retard explain and defend modern psychology to me? I listen to Cornette rip them apart and while some of his critiques make sense to me a lot of it comes down to personal taste (aesthetics, is someone believable based on look alone?, etc.) Outside of the athleticism being impressive what makes it interesting on a deeper level?

Take Will Ospreay or Kenny Omega for example. It's obvious all the shit they do takes great coordination/precision/endurance/etc., but when Meltzer throats their dicks to the base is there a deeper reason or is it just, wow they flip around really well? I'm wondering the same with the Japanese guys. Help me out here.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 20 Oct 2025 06:04:22 No.19096830 Report

Quoted By: >>19096836

not reading all that shit

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 20 Oct 2025 06:07:01 No.19096836 Report

Quoted By:

>>19096830
Braindead zoomer that's hardly any text

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 20 Oct 2025 06:36:42 No.19096899 Report

Quoted By: >>19096903 >>19096921 >>19097010

When NJPW had a resurgence and Indies got hot there was a void in that WWE was seriously coldshotting everything and dripfeeding actual noteworthy moments as well as focusing on not letting everyone go all out in matches or step on other matches. So NJPW and indie shit really stood out and you werr getting stuff you didn't always see in WWE. WWE started shifting their content with the guys brought through NXT and additions to the main roster like AJ etc. while AEW was novel at first but then novelty wore off, the indies were severely depleted of talent and fan interest, NJPW cooled down, most of their guys are broken down and their aura was damaged by being on American tv and not seen as 'superior' anymore. WWE on average provided more professionalism, much better presentation, much better storylines to invest in and then Cody returning set up a new babyface for mega fans and families alike to invest in and the last missing piece of 'people can actually move up the card and shit can change' kicked in and WWE went into a boom. For some people there is a sunk cost fallacy and they still insist simply doing more movez or flipz or longer matches is real wrestling or whatever but then you see those same people praise modern Okada matches or remember that during the first year of AEW they claimed Kenny was building to an 'epic redemption run' where he would become 'The Cleaner' again then that never happened so they just started pretending current Kenny was still the best, and it became clear this was more of a tribalism thing than actually preferring something and almost all of them all watch WWE anyways. Meltzer's narrative was built on 'NJPW and PWG style can be big in America if someone invests in it' so he kind of has to stick to that line and many of them are his friends and sources anyway.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 20 Oct 2025 06:38:05 No.19096903 Report

Quoted By:

>>19096899
Thanks, chatgpt

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 20 Oct 2025 06:48:51 No.19096921 Report

Quoted By: >>19096936

>>19096899
Thanks for the breakdown but I'm looking for someone actually defending that NJPW style or simply explaining what makes it so good.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 20 Oct 2025 06:53:03 No.19096936 Report

Quoted By:

>>19096921
No one watches NJPW for the psychology. We watch it because we like to see guys hurt each other for real.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 20 Oct 2025 07:08:59 No.19096973 Report

Quoted By: >>19097010 >>19097016

New Japan has been aping the all Japan style of psychology for decades. Which is basically American southern psychology but you replace all the flash pins with knock out blows and increasingly bombastic moves.
AEW is just the reheated nachos of the indies from 20 years ago. Guys trying work backwards from something they liked. They end up copying the most base level spots with much understanding of why anyone liked them to begin. For instance Moxley is suppose to be what Tony liked about death match vhs tapes he traded for, so you get them attempting to do an explosion match and a piranha tank minus the piranha. Because to them death match wrestling is just the hardware and not Onita being an all time great babyface who sells his ass off and can cut promos so emotional they transcend the language barrier. Likewise a lot of them want to do dragon gate matches, but don’t want to put in the reps required to be that in sync and coordinated.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 20 Oct 2025 07:23:35 No.19097005 Report

Quoted By:

>>19096826
Maybe if I drank a can of paint thinner I could.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 20 Oct 2025 07:28:04 No.19097010 Report

Quoted By: >>19097016

>>19096899
>>19096973
This and this, one last thing that is the overarching theme and problem with gayEW is that none of these fuckers take prfessional wrestling seriously and therefore are complete unable and completely unwilling to make any sort of truly emotional moment happen
These faggots take everything ironically, nothing is ever truly serious. They think the narrative devices of wrestling exist for fun at best and to be mocked at worst.
The reason being that they're all a bunch of spoiled brats larping on a billionaire's dime.
They think they recreate ECW or NJPW or whatever when they're copying the surface level flips, and have none of what makes these believable. The hunger and true desire to stand out, reach technical excellence and break new ground, because no matter what they do, they're handsomely paid multiples of what their "models" broke their bodies to earn. Not to mention the creative spirit and actual dedication that made those places what they were. These guys show up to work whenever they feel like it and then do whatever they feel like doing.
and they live in their bot-friendly IWC echo chamber where every new show is better than all the previous ones combined no matter how much retarded shit and botches they put on
tl;dr wrestling psychology starts and ends with taking this shit seriously

Anonymous

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Anonymous Mon 20 Oct 2025 07:32:15 No.19097015 Report

Quoted By: >>19097028

>>19096826
i only watch WWE, but i can tell you there is no psychology. i assume that AEW is the same, but worse. the only difference probably being that WWE waits a few more seconds before the next spot. very rarely is there a match that tells a story of targeting a limb or anything like that. it's just doing general damage to your opponent until you get enough stamina to do a signature move which stores 1x finisher. AEW might be different, I don't know.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 20 Oct 2025 07:32:38 No.19097016 Report

Quoted By:

>>19096973
>>19097010
Thanks, good analysis.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 20 Oct 2025 07:39:40 No.19097028 Report

Quoted By: >>19097042

>>19097015
the story is never "he repeatedly targeted a bodypart until it reached low HP"
when it is, it's already a fucking failure because that's just videogame combat logic, who cares
The psychology is always about making the crowd feel the struggle through pacing and selling, who is the crowd gonna side with and at which point because they feel he earned it. the big moves are really only here to set this up elegantly
Most WWE wrestlers can't properly sell nor pace a good match that alternates who's on top, why and how, when the audience's adrenaline rushes, when you let them breathe in suspension, and when you finally get to the payoff.
The best ones can and do it really well and pretty much everybody who's actually over once the bell rings is at least competent in those areas

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 20 Oct 2025 07:42:43 No.19097042 Report

Quoted By: >>19097053

>>19097028
Targeting a limb makes sense. What almost all of them do does not.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 20 Oct 2025 07:48:14 No.19097053 Report

Quoted By: >>19097059

>>19097042
Yeah that's my point, should have made the limb more clear, but it takes effort to actually make good spots with a limb, most matches today that include limb spots are so fuckign rehearsed that the guys are so focused remembering what the fuck they're supposed to do next to remember to sell it for more than 10 seconds, or even put on a facial expression at all most of the time, especially in gayEW, it's a fcking epidemic
But point being, when Bret targets Austin's knee at mania 13, it's done very well and sold appropriately for half the match until the momentary comeback, but it's not the story at play in the match, just one part of it

Anonymous

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Anonymous Mon 20 Oct 2025 07:53:02 No.19097059 Report

Quoted By: >>19097112

>>19097053
okay, I misunderstood. I don't think that'd be so bad, if they were at least actually working and responding to a crowd in any significant fashion, but they're not. They're just getting their shit in before the next commercial. So I still don't think there's any psychology because they're just gonna go out there and do whatever they had planned to do.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 20 Oct 2025 08:16:05 No.19097112 Report

Quoted By: >>19097149

>>19097059
I mean, one of the big problems is that when they're going for a narrative spot of any kind, it's always a reference to something else that they copy surface-level, expect the smark crowd to remember and hope to use the emotional response it had the first time without setting up the circumstances, and it falls flat every single time
To keep the Bret-Austin example, they use the knee spot to make the audience think "Bret never acted like that with anybody before, he's always chivalrous, he must really be pissed at Austin, but... we like Austin better" and it starts instantly setting up the double turn, no words needed, just ring work, that's wrestling psychology. Not saying there's much of that in WWE either but still, at least some.
in gayEW, it's "oh remember when that happened in a better match" and then there's no pay off and everybody acts like it didn't happen on the next episode (and half the people involved won't be seen again for another six months for some reason)

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 20 Oct 2025 08:30:56 No.19097149 Report

Quoted By:

>>19097112
the only time i watched AEW, MJF did a musical number, while the crowd sucked him off. I had been lead to believe he was the best heel in the business.

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