Cook: Can’t Blame Divers For Diving

I have claimed to be a man with both new & old school sensibilities for a long time now. I still believe that is true, and nothing that has happened since I started writing for The Chairshot can dissuade me from that. I love watching AEW Dynamite, yet I can still listen to Jim Cornette clips on YouTube and understand where he’s coming from. Not on every level, since ol’ JC has a certain bias against certain folks I can’t adhere to.

We also know that ol’ JR has a certain bias against certain things. Which is a little more consequential since Jim Ross is a commentator on AEW Dynamite while Jim Cornette hosts a podcast that leeches off of AEW Dynamite. JC bashes the show for people that want to listen to his podcast for that reason. JR bashes the show for…well, I’m not sure who. I guess the same fans that watch baseball games while announcers crap on the product or offer slur words.

At the same time, I don’t want to bash JR too much for it. It’s not like JR didn’t bash certain parts of  WWE’s product while calling their action. It’s always been something he’s done, and I don’t want to curt tail free speech. Some fans, whether they’re representing AEW or WWE or whoever are big fans of curtailing free speech, and I would never want to do that.

The big debate this week is this:

JR got mad about dives with people standing around to catch them. This has been a common talking point with old schoolers for awhle. In fact, I remember Randy Orton whining about it during 2019. He hates people doing dives, and many of his old school friends agree.

There are a couple of problems here.

First of all. The first time I saw one of these dive sequences that the likes of RKO, JR & JC complain about today? 1995, when WCW brought in the luchadores. Maybe those folks think that US fans never should have seen Mexican wrestlers, I wouldn’t be shocked if that was their opinion, but I remember a lot of WCW lucha matches where people stood around for dives.

I also remember a lot of indie shows in the early 2000s where people stood around for dives. I know for a fact that CZW fans only popped for two things: hardcore shit & dives. That’s why CZW emphasized those things. FANS WANTED TO SEE THEM.

That bled through to every young wrestler that grew up watching indies like CZW, or wrestlers that worked there. People want to see dives! People pop for them! As much as the old school folks like Jim Ross & Jim Cornette hate it, that’s what wrestling fans want to see.

Would I like to see them set up better than people randomly drifting in a direction? Sure! But I’m not going to get mad at wrestlers delivering spots that people actually want to see. This might be the ultimate difference between the old school & the new.

People like Jim Cornette & Randy Orton want to feed people things they don’t want, like chinlocks or hokey segments where people get set on fire. The newer folks are trying to actually please the people. So they do dives! Ultimately, it’s a matter of disagreement between the old & new school.

The old school thinks they know how wrestling should be done. They will feed wrestling fans that way until they can’t take it anymore.

The new school listens to what the fans want. Fans want dives. They want hardcore shit. Maybe that’s not what they should want in the eyes of Jim Cornette or Randy Orton, but that’s what they want.

It’ll be interesting to see where things go, and it won’t be decided by quarter hour or demo ratings.