Styles (not AJ or Joey)

[Vamp]

Remember the days when wrestling had clearly defined styles?

There was the Memphis style (which involved getting a tetanus shot and then brawling in a very dirty ring), the cruiserweight style (see most heavyweights today), the attitude style (which was Memphis with an added anal fixation), the British style (which was proper wrestling your dad watched), llave style (which is that thing that Angelico doesn't do), and others. 

Nowadays it's easier to watch wrestling from all over the world. Which is great. It also means that wrestlers have incorporated different styles into their own style (sometimes with very little regard for context but that's another argument). 

But, what definable and distinct different styles of wrestling exist today? Which country or promotion can you see it in? Who's the biggest example of that particular style? 

Is there anyone that you watch and go "corr, he's a bit different like?" 

Suzuki is probably the first one that pops to my mind but that feels like a bit of a boring answer.

[PowerButchi]

I don't know if styles is so easy to put in boxes. Or at least to our eyes. 

 

For example, people say "lucha" and there's an easily discernable difference between say IWRG and CMLL.

 

One of my biggest bugbears is when people say "80s southern style". It's absolute shite. Memphis wasn't like Mid South which wasn't like Crockett, which wasn't like Alabama which wasn't like Central States which wasn't like Dallas. 

 

But all of them would occasionally have things which would go against type. 

 

I think probably the only stuff which had a dyed in the wool permanent style was the worked shoot stuff lie UWF,  UWFI, RINGS and Pancrase? 

 

[BomberPat]

Just now, PowerButchi said:

 

I think probably the only stuff which had a dyed in the wool permanent style was the worked shoot stuff lie UWF,  UWFI, RINGS and Pancrase? 

 

I think it's more prevalent in Japan, because there's a sense of recognising different ideological approaches - a lot of the worked shoot stuff growing out of NJPW and then gradually getting distilled into other forms meant that each new iteration really had to explain and justify its position.

Often it's less about style and more about ethos - I wrote something ages ago about the ECW/USWA feud, and how you'd struggle to make that work today, because those promotions had clearly different approaches to wrestling, and the story was in how they interacted. Wrestling in general has become more homogenised as fewer scenes are as isolated as they used to be, and anyone anywhere can watch wrestling from anywhere else.