Protecting Our Boys: Part 1 in a series.

There are few things that chill my bones, and send a lightning bolt of fear through me, as fast as the rapidly-growing fetishization of men’s incapability and brokenness to serve the agenda that women are, of course, far more suited to everything from political office, culture, and even changing the way sexual politics may occur.

Look around the cultural landscape. Tell me the last pro-male thing you saw. The last unabashedly pro-male book, film, or television series you saw that celebrated men for the good they do, and the good and decent men they are.

Contrast that with the common way in which men are portrayed on television, films, and in other forms of popular culture. Men have been told, time and again, that they need to be reformed, to be fixed to fit the new model of masculinity. Our greatest examples of fatherhood on television are Homer Simpson or Phil Dunphy, joking simpletons who rely on their long-suffering and intelligent wives to fix every mess they make. Advertising tells us that men can’t be trusted to handle the hard work, to do the things women do every day, and eventually it’s started to be believed.

So, on this edition of the Rationalist, we discuss it. We discuss, in clear painstaking detail, if men are actually broken. And if they are, what we can do to fix the problem.

The Rationalist: A Primer On How To Think, Pt. 1

There are things about political discourse in 2017 that are right, perfect, and wonderful.

For instance, we now have more ability than ever before to know what our ideological allies and opponents are using as the underpinnings of their research. This is vital, as eliminating bad ideas and finding good ones is key to an increasingly educated citizenry capable of handling, and properly understanding, the detailed and complicated problems of both foreign and domestic scope that define the world in 2017, and for years to come. 

In fact, if you were so inclined, you could watch full-length debates between some of the world’s sharpest minds discussing truly complicated issues.

All of this, every bit of it, is wonderful.

The trouble with all that knowledge, all those educated thinkers being a literal fingertip away, is that no one tells you how to tell the truth from the fiction. In fact, there are men, and women, who will speak the language of the intelligent, of the well-read and well-educated, to fool you with ideas that are not researched to rigorous completion.

Finding them is easy. Pointing out the mistakes so you don’t fall into the same trap so many others, your humble scribe included, have already fallen into once or twice? Well, that’s the noble thing. Noble is valuable and vital.  So, it’s with that standard in mind that we begin this edition of the Rationalist.

The Rationalist: Why I'm A Men's Rights Activist

In the last edition of the Rationalist, I explained to you in detail what my problems were with feminist orthodoxy in the modern age. My fear in doing that, however, is that I may very well have ended up giving you only half of my political ideology. Here is the other half: I am a men’s rights supporter.

I know. Shock and awe and those very well may be the kind emotions right now, are coming from your computer. There are few things worse that you could declare yourself to be on the internet. I don’t even really know why this is.

Maybe it’s the idea that Elliot Rodger, the psychotic mass murderer, has long been believed to be part of the movement. Maybe it’s RooshV, the noted “pickup artist” who is supposed to be part of the movement as well,  and his frankly backwards understanding of sexual consent. But whatever it is, saying you’re a men’s rights activist appears to be the end of any discussion.  

So on this edition of the Rationalist, we’ll look how I got here and saw if I can’t help dispel, one myth and one step at a time, how it is that I repudiated feminism and became a men’s right activist.

New Star Navigation: Why We Need More Stars In Boxing, And Why The Keith Thurman-Shawn Porter Fight Is So Vital

For the past decade or so, boxing has been in an interesting place. Everyone imagines that the sport is healthiest when there is a dominant heavyweight champion who everyone has to aspire to defeat, and yet the presence of that exact archetype in Wladimir Klitschko seemed to make things less compelling slightly instead of more. The truth is that, for the last decade or so, the real excitement of the sport has been in the lower weight classes. Hell, the proof of this can even be found in the two most recent boxing movies, Creed, and Southpaw. Were the protagonists, or the antagonists, in the heavyweight division? No.
In the world of boxing that is not defined by celluloid, things look equally impressive. We have good-to-great fighters, and the potential for exciting fights, all throughout just about every division. However, bubbling just below the surface is an ugly truth of things, and it is the time to address it. Every one of those fights you could think of, with one or two exceptions, aren’t between American stars.
Canelo-GGG, Gonzalez-Inoue, Lomachenko-Salido are just a few examples. I am sure I could come up with more if I tried.
In fact, as you look further, where exactly are the American stars? This article seeks to find them.

________________________________________



Before we go too much further, a quick word on the graybeards who you may have thought of as soon as you saw the title of this article.
Hanging over the head of the sport of boxing like a sword of Damocles is, of course, Floyd Mayweather Jr. While his defensive acumen appears to remain sharp the rest of it is an open question. Does he want to box anymore? Can you find an opponent who will A: bring the best out of Floyd as an offensive fighter, and B: be someone we want to see him fight?

The 1st part of that equation might never happen. It’s sad to say, but the Floyd Mayweather who blended sterling defense with crisp combination punching died somewhere after the Oscar De La Hoya fight. If you seek to find the reason why so many people who criticize his "fighting" do so, his unwillingness to let his hands go is it. Not because we want everyone to fight in a blood-and-guts style like Arturo Gatti, because as hard as this might be to believe, that would get boring just as quickly. What we want, though, is for people who have the potential to be great to show the full depth and breadth of all of their skills.

As for the 2nd, that's equally difficult to find. You see, Floyd Mayweather has served boxing with distinction and glory. But, because he's done that for so long, people are tired of him. They're tired of the cars and the act and everything that comes with putting down your hard-earned money to see him.

And as long as that's true, you can't count on him anymore.

And that leaves us with the other graybeard, Andre Ward. Simply put, Andre doesn't fight enough. He has fought four times in 4 years, and against the sort of gallingly bad competition that the "Demographic" would draw and quarter Gennady Golovkin for. (And yes, before you ask, I will get to the demographic in an upcoming article. Suffice it to say; I disagree with their opinions.)
So now with the graybeards out of the way, it is time to move on to the younger generation of those who might be considered stars,
Terrence Crawford, Keith Thurman, Shawn Porter, and Errol Spence Jr. . 2 out of that foursome in the person of Keith Thurman and Shawn Porter will be fighting each other this Saturday night, in Brooklyn, for one of the small flotilla of belts that can be found in the welterweight division.
(Author's Note: This article was written before Thurman-Porter took place.)

To a man, the 4 of them are all still waiting for the fight that takes them from a star amongst boxing fans to just a flat-out STAR. It might be that Thurman-Porter, even after the postponement, gives us the kind of all-action and high-skill fight we don't get to see too much of anymore. Or it might be another one of those fights that look exciting on paper but turns around to be terrifically stultifying and one-sided in practice. No one will know, least of all the two fighters, until they meet each other in the middle of the ring at the Barclays Center.

The reasons for this gulf between talent and acclaim are myriad. But the most simple, the most basic to understand, are these two.

1: They don't fight enough.

Gone, perhaps for good, are the days when fighters fought more than twice a year. It is, as a result, harder than it should be for a young fighter to endear himself to the hearts and minds of casual sports fans when you aren't fighting enough to show them what you can do, and who you are. It also means that it's far harder to build demand for the sort of super fight that used to make stars, even ones that ended as more of a coronation than anything else. (See Roy Jones vs James Toney for an example of what I mean.) ¹
Couple this with the idea that there are few fighters now willing to risk their undefeated records for a real challenge, and we end up with a situation where no one moves past potential and what-ifs.

But that, to my way of thinking, isn't the real problem. This is the real problem.

2: USA Boxing is broken and in the late stages of dry-rot.

It used to be that we developed stars at the Olympic Games.

This will not be a referendum on which was the better team, the 1976 unit of Montreal or the 1984 Los Angeles contingent. Both teams gave us all-time greats, Sugar Ray Leonard and Michael Spinks in 1976 and Pernell Whitaker and Evander Holyfield in 1984. The argument over which team was better will go on as long as there is a combination of beer and people to discuss it.

Rather, the point is that even without those two supernova teams, the Olympics is always where our best and brightest have been found. Names like Ali, Foreman, De La Hoya, Jones Jr., Mayweather just to name a few.

But now? Now we're being forced to hope and wish that our guys get into position to medal. Gone are the days of our top amateurs coming home with gold medals and polished reputations where people expected a lot from them.

So, with that in mind, I have a useful solution to solve this problem.

Hey, Top Rank, throw some money at USA Boxing. You too, Golden Boy, Main Events, and hell the PBC. You want to be in a position to sign the next superstars, the next Ray Leonard, and Roy Jones? Easy. Build the infrastructure that allows it to happen.

Hopefully, it works. And hopefully by 2020, we have what we need to be elite again.

Video Footnotes:

---

One: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WFNxRhldoQ^↩

My Home Away From My Other Homes....

Hi there. You might know me from my work on The Wrestling Blog or The Starting Five.

If that's true, and you liked in any shape, form, or fashion anything I ever wrote, there's probably one thing you've always wondered to yourself.

"Why doesn't he write more?"

This is where that will be from now on.

Please, continue to follow me on twitter.

But also, start reading me here.

I promise one thing, and one thing only: I will not waste your time.

What I'm Watching: Mitsuharu Misawa vs Kenta Kobashi

Misawa vs Kobashi: Just as fun as Misawa vs Kawada, but for entirely different reasons. 

Part of the fun of being a wrestling fan, at least for me, is watching EVERYTHING. Some stuff you watch once or twice and then get tired of except for something really transcendent (shoot-style fits this for me, with the transcendency exception being Volk Han.) And then, there is some stuff that you can watch again and again with no hesitancy whatsoever. The 4 Corners of Heaven era of All Japan is one of these eras for me. Kawada, Kobashi, Misawa, Taue. Those 4 names, and the endless iteration of matches they produced, are some of the best and most fun heavyweight matches I have ever seen. 

And quite frankly, while everyone talks about the Misawa-Kawada rivalry and how important it was, there is one I enjoy just as much, because it has a slightly different aesthetic to it. Misawa vs Kawada is largely a battle of two stoics, and while that is fun, it can get tiresome (the exception of course being 6-3-94, which is as perfect a match as anything that has happened anywhere.) Kobashi is a lot of things, but a stoic is not one of them. He bursts free with energy, excitement, and charisma. And with Misawa vs Kobashi, you get someone who seems to have no emotion versus someone who defines all of his successes on it. It's a fascinating counterpoint. What I am watching now is their best match together, a match so good that Jushin "Thunder" Liger and Shinjiro Ohtani patterned their own classic of February 9th, 1997 after it. 

This is one of the matches that young wrestlers should be watching, and studying. Don't just watch the MOVEZ~!, although those are plentiful. Watch how the crowd cares. You can make that work, people in wrestling school. Just try a little harder. 

Why I'm happy for Darren Young

Darren Young: Sexuality be damned, he's an excellent heel.

With Summerslam a few days away, noted bottom-of-the-barrel "journalism" site TMZ decided that they would ambush a pro wrestler to see if they could get them to make some silly statement to run on their equally silly website. Instead, Darren Young did something cool. Darren Young came out of the closet.

Now, to be honest, there have been gay wrestlers before. Kanyon was gay, as was Pat Patterson. (Side Note: If you really want to put the lie to the "gay guys can't be tough" meme, show someone Pat Patterson vs Sgt. Slaughter from MSG. That was a war.) This is the first time we're doing it in a more forgiving climate. I, for one, can't wait to see how the WWE handles this. My hope? Nothing changes. Darren Young is still a jerk and a giant heel you want to see punched in the face all the time. My fear? They turn him into some caricature of the worst homosexual stereotypes just to make their jockish male audience smile and laugh.

The New Japan Juniors 1990-1999 Pt. 1: Jushin "Thunder" Liger

If you're going to write a multi-part tribute to the finest era of junior heavyweight wrestling that has existed anywhere in the world, which was 1990-to-2000 in New Japan, there really isn't a better place for anyone to start than with the man who was, and still remains this in some ways now, the personification of what the junior heavyweight ace is supposed to be. We're starting with the king, the gold standard, the guy who is to junior heavyweight wrestling what the 4 Corners of Heaven are to heavyweight wrestling: Jushin "Thunder" Liger.

Now to be fair, the title up there and the first paragraph might very well give you a very real expectation that somehow the junior heavyweight division of New Japan just sort of went into thin air in 2000. It didn't. Right now, Prince Devitt is doing some good work as is matinee-idol in training Kota Ibushi and a lot of other people. But when I, and the people who love this era, talk about the New Japan Juniors we mean the Liger, Kanemoto, El Samurai, Pegasus Kid, Shinjiro Ohtani, and Great Sasuke era. That's the era everyone means, and that's the era I'm talking about here.

Bad Mood Championship Wrestling.

http://parkersbighead.tumblr.com/post/48208673428/ladies-and-gentlemen-my-name-is-richard

In 2014, a new wrestling promotion is going to appear out of the mind of the guy who ran Arena Door Bus Trips, and is currently running Taking Back Queens. I hope to have a role in this promotion in some way, even if it's something as simple as just providing them with free publicity here on the Majesty of Wrestling. Watch this space.

What I'm watching: Mike Quackenbush vs Johnny Saint

I admit this freely. I am a huge junkie for top-notch technical wrestling. But here's the problem: So much of what people understand as top-notch technical wrestling really isn't. It's not just knowing a billion million holds. It's knowing how to apply them. It's being slick and artistic without having it look forced, and making your trademarks look like you were smart to get your opponent in that position rather than you and your opponent both were playing off of the same script. This is harder than it seems. And two of the masters of this style are perhaps best known as partners, but I'm watching one of their matches when they were as opponents. The only trouble with this is that I can't find this match, and I'm not about to send you off to torrent it. I like the people at Chikara too much for that. So what I would suggest is google Mike Quackenbush vs Johnny Saint and then buy the match. It's worth it. It really is. To whet your appetite, here is a video of Johnny Saint doing what he does followed by a video of Mike Quackenbush doing what he does.

Why I stopped watching WWE, and why I am still a wrestling fan anyway

In the interest of full disclosure, I have not spent nearly as much time watching WWE or televised wrestling as so many of the people with whom i have some sense of kinship in the wrestling blogosphere with. But I'm still a wrestling fan regardless, and the reason for that is simple: Corporate wrestling no longer speaks to me.

To be sure, I'm not overly precious about this. I'm not saying that you should never watch Raw if that's what you like. I'm not saying that if you are enthralled by the majesty of the Undertaker, or captivated by every promo CM Punk has ever done, that you're a bad wrestling fan or a bad person. The first one doesn't really exist, and you'd have to do a whole hell of a lot worse than like the Undertaker or CM Punk to make you a bad person.

But what I am saying is that for me, WWE no longer gives me what I want. And rather than watching them with all of the love gone and nothing but hate in my heart, I think it's better for me to move on.

To be sure, there was a time when it did. I am still a Rockers completist, constantly looking for the matches they had that made me believe they were the team of the 1990's. Bret Hart was my gateway drug into all of that high-end, slick without seeming forced, technical wrestling that has grown to be the thing I absolutely love more than anything else. And Randy Savage was explosive and kinetic in a way that few wrestlers NOW could ever dream of being, much less when he was at his possibly cocaine-addled apex having great matches.

But those days are gone. Instead, I find the things I love in other places (with the exception of Randy Savage. He was as Sui Generis as any wrestler could ever be. There will never be another like him.)

If now I want to watch tag team artistry at its highest level, I can watch the Young Bucks ply their trade in PWG. I can also go in my DVD's from the not too recent past and see Mike Quackenbush and Jigsaw, or watch the Colony or the Canadian Ninjas. Tag team work, of the kind perfected by the Midnight Express and the Rock N' Roll Express, is no longer practiced on your TV in the same way as it was during even the Monday Night Wars, much less that period when WWF Superstars and WCW Saturday Night was all that you got and you liked it.

Technical wrestling is a different matter. The trouble with technical wrestling now is that too many people Malenko-ize it. (Which is to say, nothing ever looks like it was particularly hard to get. Also, occasionally brainless.) The masters make slickness never seem forced. That old wrestling announcer cliche about how they never waste a move? That's what Mike Quackenbush does, and what Colt Cabana does, and what KANA does.

So to sum up, just because I no longer watch televised wrestling doesn't make me any less of a wrestling fan than someone who still does. it just means we're different.

The Indies and You: Why going to a smaller show is the best way to see the sport.

In the shadow of Wrestlemania, and the Raw after Wrestlemania, some of you might have been wondering where to go to see wrestling. I mean, big box corporate wrestling may or may not be coming to your town in the future. And even if it does, there's a very real chance that it's going to be in a crowded arena and you'll have the kind of seats that make you think you are watching two specks wrestle each other.

Instead, what I'm going to recommend instead for you to try is something that feels counter-intuitive. Don't go and see John Cena. Instead, go and see a smaller indy show in your town. The reasons to do this instead of putting your money in Vince McMahon's pockets are innumerable.

A: You see the stars before they become stars.

You know that guy CM Punk that people fawn over, and proclaim him to be the "Best in the World"? Well, before he was the WWE's big deal, he was wrestling on smaller shows. Same thing with Rey Mysterio and Alberto Del Rio in Mexico, and look at how important they are to the WWE now. The indies are where kids, of both genders, fresh out of wrestling school refine their craft. Right now, at the show being held at your local armory or church, there may very well be someone who could be a big deal in a couple of years. And you're seeing him when he was just starting out, rife with potential. Does that honestly sound like something that you want to miss.

B: We are in a bumper crop right now.

With the Wrestling Is.... projects, the Dual Anarchies in St. Louis and Texas, PWG on the West Coast, AAW, Shimmer, AIW in the Midwest, Chikara traveling the country, and the south becoming a breeding ground for awesomeness, there's really no good reason for anyone to say with a straight face that they can't find an indy show that's good. But if you can't find something near you, or if you're the sort who needs to know what you're getting into before you head out, this should help you find what you're looking for.

Also, believe me when I say that the talent level is as good as it's been in a while. This is a generation of wrestlers schooled on all different styles. There are too many good wrestlers right now for me to name them all. But believe me when I tell you, they're out there. All you have to do is go find them.

C: You are a part of the Show.

It's a simple thing. Might not seem like much. But I can guarantee you: It is a lot harder to feel a part of the show in an arena packed to the brim with people with pyro and propane going off every 20 seconds than it is in a hotel ballroom with 1000 people. When you cheer or boo at one of those big-box corporate shows, the chances that the object of your words hears it? Pretty small. You become part of a low keen at that point.

But on an indy show? This can happen. So can this:

Go. Be entertained. Honestly.

And that's that. Thank you for reading, and go and support your local indy.

Flyin' Brian: A Gushing Appreciation

Flyin' Brian: My Favorite Junior Heavyweight Ever.

If, by some minor fluke, you listened to this you may have discovered that I sincerely love 1992-era WCW. And above all else, there was one reason I enjoyed that era of WCW (shortly before Bill Watts came in and it all went to hell in a handbasket). It was Flyin' Brian. And believe me when i tell you, because this is the absolute truth, we are never going to see his like again. No matter how hard you may want it, no matter how good it may be for wrestling as a whole, the cold hard fact is that it will never happen.

The Dream Match To End All Dream Matches, Or Discussion Of Them

KANA. 1\2 of the greatest dream match ever.

(Full disclosure: I root passionately, unabashedly, and shamelessly for both KANA and her opponent in this match. I don't think that will change the way I write this match, but I needed to clear that up before I kept going in this piece.)

One of the beautiful things about this blog is that I get the chance to spitball ideas for this blog of mine on Twitter. For some reason, my mind and my heart has been drawing me to discuss dream matches. For whatever reason, they've always captivated me. The idea that 2 wrestlers who are clearly stars coming together to figure out which one of the 2 is the better has always interested me. And when I think about what dream matches are left, there's really one left. And it's so beautiful that I had to talk about it, write about it, and hopefully do my small part to make it happen.

It's not Working: Jim Cornette & ROH

I know a lot of people who would argue vociferously that somehow everything from the current era of wrestling is superior than what came before. But that isn't true all the time. Yes, in terms of innovative offense, 2012 has it all over 1988. But are the workers better, smarter, more capable now than then? Depending on who you ask, you'll get a different answer.

Jim Cornette is one of those people. He has argued, in the multitude of shoots that he's done, that wrestlers today are less qualified, less skilled, than their peers from eras past. Combine this with his admitted obsession with making pro wrestling more like MMA, and you have a very strange booking philosophy. How do you fix it? And what are the problems?

A Welcome, and something new on the agenda

Firstly, before I write the rest of this, a big thanks to Thomas Holzerman, Brandon Stroud, and Dirty Dirty Sheets for being nice enough to RT the Team Texas article I posted earlier today. I really do appreciate it, because for a long while, this blog lay dormant and fallow. I didn't post enough, and that's my fault. But that ends. There's enough cool wrestling, both past and present to get lots of cool topics out of. Which actually is the subject of my article today.

The Daily Liger: One of His Classics

The fun thing about doing this Daily Liger post is to see the classics that I remember as a kid, and reminisce about them. I don't have much to say about this.   Just watch Liger vs Samurai.

The Daily Liger: Another gaijin into the breach

 The funny thing, and the sad thing too, about the WWF in the 1990's was that unless you fit a very narrow box you probably weren't going to get the kind of shot commensurate with your abilities. Proof in point: Owen Hart. Clearly he had the skills to be an important part of the WWF, as evidenced by the fact that he was around for the spectacular Brother vs Brother angle just a few years later. But here, he's not doing that. here he's in the ring with a man who was almost peerless athletically during this time frame. Watch and enjoy.

The Daily Liger #3: The Break-Out

For many of us, we discovered Liger when he came to the United States to face Brian Pillman which i covered in this post: http://themajestyofwrestling.blogspot.com/2012/02/daily-liger-1-introduction-and-20th.html . But in actuality his true breakout, the one that proved to fans all over the world that this was a Jr. Heavyweight worth watching, came against Naoki Sano. Sano has had a really interesting career in that he was sort of the gatekeeper to Liger's junior title runs, and then went on to a career competing in shoot-style indies before giving up the ghost altogether and becoming a MMA artist before going back to pro wrestling with a run in NOAH. Here, watch Liger vs Sano.

The Daily Liger #1: An Introduction and a 20th Anniversary

Because I am the sort who likes to create new content for this blog, here we go. Every morning I'll post a match from the man, who for my money, is the best junior heavyweight to ever lace up a pair of boots.

We'll start with this video:

And i know what you're thinking. We need a match here right? Easy. We'll start with the best match to really introduce this man to American fans. It's not nearly enough for it to be a good match. WHat you need is someone that the fans can get behind, someone that the fans can care about. This match is that time. Liger was coming in to WCW presented as the foreign menace, out to keep the World Light Heavyweight Championship from WCW's all-american phenom Flyin' Brian. Even now, 20 years after it happened, the match is still compelling. The way they structured it still works.


Brian Pillman vs. Jushin Liger 2/29/92 by Hook_Line_and_Sinker