Go2Sleep

WCW from Memorial Day 96 to Fall Brawl 96 was some of the absolute best-booked wrestling to ever get on tv. It was very heel-centric, but that was very fresh and novel idea at the time, in addition to being well executed. That is how you get some heels over. Like others have said, the problems didn't start until the writers decided to make the faces look like buffoons except for crow Sting. Sting being made to look like a buffoon at Starrcade was the nail in the coffin. And while the Nitro quality started to drop off by the end of 1996, the ppv quality was still top notch through 1997. If you're gonna compare modern WWE to the attitude era, the biggest difference is no rotating main event quality guys. When Austin was there, he was on top, but the depth they had meant he never had to rush back from injuries. They could cycle Rock, HHH, Foley, and Taker between the main events and upper midcard programs from 99-02. Austin was more of rotational guy too after the invasion concluded. It kept everybody fresh and helped the midcarders on the rise (Angle, Jericho, Benoit) immensely because they didn't have to tread water waiting for their turn to fight "the man." There was always someone credible to feud with outside of the main event scene.

Yeah, I thought this was gonna be a much different story. Can't believe Orton no-sold the ball-shot like that, though. Have some professionalism, Randy.

That's gotta be BS. Not only has Cena already had several classic matches (including one each of the last 2 years), why would Vince care about that? When was the last time a "5* match" was a big part of someone's character in WWE? Bret or Shawn?

The most logical person for Orton to cash it in on would be Bryan. The whole "weak link" stuff seemed to be building towards someone out of Bryan/Kane/Orton winning MITB and cashing it in on another of the group. It doesn't have to be at Summerslam. If the storyline is Orton needing the briefcase then ducking a rematch because he can't win a fair fight, then Bryan having previously beaten Orton just adds to that. (But they've actually traded wins between Payback and Money in the Bank.) Oh, it makes plenty of sense, but it's just a step back for Bryan at this point. A corporate heel turn for Orton would require a fairly long run as champ to be effective, but there's way less value in Orton at the top and bringing Vince/HHH to the forefront instead of letting Bryan just do his thing. I like Orton more than most here, but this is just a bad situation for him. It's definitely in WWE's best interest right now to go full throttle with Bryan and see if he can draw. Orton is who he is at this point and his push can be postponed indefinitely without consequence. As I much as I hate to suggest this, the best way out might be to have Orton cash in and HHH costs him the match as part of the ongoing power struggle with Vince. This should not happen at Summer Slam, btw.

The card looks like PPV-of-the-Decade material on paper, but I don't wanna get my hopes up that much. The top two matches are the most intriguing ones WWE has run in a long time, then you've got ADR/Christian and probably a Shield 6-man which would both have MOTN potential on most shows. Cody/Sandow and Ziggler/Langston should both be solid and Kaitlyn and AJ have had surprisingly decent matches at the last 2 ppvs and I don't see anything else getting the potential diva spot here. Kane/Wyatt is the only match that looks subpar, but even that has a good story with a hot new faction and lot of potential creative directions to go. I really hope they find something good for Orton to do because I really don't wanna see a MITB cash-in here. The whole "Orton as a corporate champ" thing would be good in most situations, but Bryan is too hot right now to mess with. Plus Bryan has already beat Orton and it doesn't make sense to have Bryan go back and chase him. Now if they could find a way to get the MITB case into Lesnar's hands, then they could be onto something.

Punk's initial "pipebomb" promo and leaving with the title were the only things I've seen that got former/non fans talking about wrestling since Brock Lesnar's first run. Well... And Benoit too, but obviously I mean for the right reasons.

When I read over this, I thought it sounded pretty apt, but then I watched Raw this week and it was built around 4 people talking about whether or not the most universally liked wrestler in the company was good for business and how they should market him... It's not too often I'm just watching show and think "God damn, that DVDVR post I read a couple days ago was spot fucking on," but here we are.

I'm digging savvy veteran Christian. He could have a good feud with Del Rio. Daniel Bryan's corporate makeover could be hilarious. Or it could be a disaster, but I'm trying to be optimistic. Bryan and HHH are funny guys, it depends how much Vince hams it up and what Steph does during the segment.

Best: Ric Flair vs. Mick Foley I Quit (Summer Slam 06) Worst: James Storm vs. Chris Harris blindfold/cage (Lockdown 07) or "Rosie" vs. "Donald" on Raw (1/8/07 I think)

I thought she came across as bitter and whiny. I mean, she does have some good reasons to be bitter, but it doesn't seem like a good idea to make her the main character if that's the case. Trinity/Naomi came across as the real winner to me. The Bellas seemed nice and cool when they were at home, but they really looked like they were living the gimmick on the road. I'm sure there are plenty of people who think that's a good thing, though. Bryan and Brie were really cute together, but that whole Cena thing looks like it could end real bad for Nikki. Agreed that Ariane/Cameron seemed crazy, and that dude she's with seemed like a real loser. I kinda wanted Brodus to beat him up. Jojo didn't get much time this week, but Eva did stand out. Had she not been on Raw with her flaming red hair last week, I would've guessed she'd be fired for not going blonde. It did give some pretty good insight as to why character development for new talent is often shite, though. "We think you need to be blonde." *Does something completely different* "That's... actually a lot better... But don't do that shit again!" Alright show. It's pretty much your standard over-produced "reality" tv affair, but with characters I'm already somewhat interested in and cameos from characters I'm very interested in. I'm sure I'll stick it out to the bitter end.

The biggest thing about "boom eras" or "glory days" in wrestling is having multiple generational talents in their prime on the roster at the same time (aka luck). The initial 80s boom in the WWF had Hogan, Savage, and Piper. 90s AJ had Misawa, Kawada, and Kobashi. The attitude era had Austin, Rock, Foley, and Taker. 96 WCW was really the only company to kind of escape this rule by virtue of Hogan and Sting being past their primes at the time. Looking at WWE from 2003 on, when have they had more than one prime, generational talent on the roster? As big of a hit as Cena has been, there has been no one on his level since like 2006. Bad luck definitely played a part in that with Lesnar leaving and Eddie Guerrero dying. Eddie was capturing a new audience and Brock really should've been the defining star of the era (and almost certainly would've been had he not left). The problem isn't that Cena isn't good, it's that he isn't enough by himself. He has no foils, no one that can fill his spot so he can change his character, and there's no one else in a prominent position for fans to care about. Think about it, unless your favorite wrestler is Cena, your favorite guy is an upper midcarder at best and that's unlikely to change. Hence, stale writing and declining interest for the last decade. Barring injury, Cena's still got a lot left in the tank, so there's time for someone else to step in and help him out. I still maintain that they missed the boat big time with Punk circa MITB 2011. Bryan has a lot going for him right now, but it remains to be seen if he can displace Cena, even for a little bit. If he proves to be a legit draw, WWE is in great shape going forward because they have a lot of potential break-out talent under contract, but they need more than one credible guy to work with. It's also tough to gauge Bryan's outside appeal at this point, but if you could get casual/ex/new fans to sit down and watch his matches, he would probably get their attention.

If you're reading this thread and the title of this video doesn't interest you, I don't know what to say... A good effort from Finlay in WCW:

Goldberg tossing Brad Armstrong around like a ragdoll: The quintessential Vader squash:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-sVl95KI2c I've also been trying to find some more stuff from Japan. How about Vader in UWFi? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTY3uwRV6OEYoung Kawada paying some dues against Stan Hansen:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maJFrSUreZQ Young Ogawa vs. Abdullah the Butcher goes like you'd expect. JIP at the important part. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0szZNHo4WRc

A couple more for tonight... Hey, remember when Ken Anderson looked like he was gonna be a star? Maybe Funaki gets a hair too much offense here to be considered a pure squash, but the way he sells the Green Bay Plunge makes up for it. And how about a rare "little guy squashes a big guy" match? Of course, this is what it was building to, so there went that trend.

I love this thread so much... Here's a classic. The match that put the Acolytes on the map as a team... The chair shots Bradshaw was dishing out were sick. Speaking of Bradshaw, here he is in the JBL days warming up for the I Quit match with Cena by making his own rules against Scotty 2 Hotty. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xejsz1_sd-19-05-05-jbl-vs-scotty-2-hotty_sport?search_algo=2#.Ue-kdlPkBD0 Here's another Brock match, this time against someone who went on to a little more success than most of the victims in this thread. Not as violent as the Spanky and Gowan matches, but Brock still brings the pain throughout the match including one of the better F5's of his career. How could we forget this one? A young, athletic HHH schools some jobber, prances around, and then the finish...

Oh, and I don't know if this counts because, technically, the squasher loses by DQ, but just watch it... Don't be fooled by the length, this includes the setup with Kendrick mouthing off to Vince, a video package, and some ridiculous post-match violence. You kinda forget how nasty pre-PG WWE could be. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwzDeLbRe-A And just for fun, here's the following week where Lesnar destroys Zach Gowan in front of Zach's mom. Similar situation with some backstage stuff, video packages, and the aftermath. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nJu2YmawAY

An early Goldberg match. First time using the spear, carelessly tosses Riggs onto the guardrail, and really sticks the jackhammer for the win.

Riley as Maddox's yes-man is almost too perfect. It might actually be somewhat redundant since Maddox is a trained wrestler who can bump, but I guess if they wanna keep him out of action for whatever reason, Riley is the best guy on the roster to throw in as the sidekick. Brad Maddox might be my favorite GM ever, though. When it comes to subtlety as a heel, that man gets it. The in-ring action was pretty good tonight too. Sheamus and Del Rio had a very nice match built around that grossly discolored leg. It was also great to see a non-WWE champ win a non-title match against an upper midcarder. Still waiting for Del Rio's next real challenger, though. Was anyone else annoyed at Heyman talking to "Brock Lesnar" off-camera? It would've been fine if the camera panned to him at some point just to look mean or do literally anything, or if he attacked Punk in the ring, but as it was, it was just so obvious he wasn't there and made Heyman look kind of stupid. Oh, and Daniel Bryan was pretty good again too. "Oh, let me just work in this little MOTYC as the second leg of my 40-minute gauntlet match..." My only complaint was they should've gone to the finish of the Ryback match faster if that's how it was gonna end. They were getting diminishing returns on Bryan "surviving the odds" and Ryback looked terrible following Cesaro. And no one could be too surprised Ryback was gassed after 10 minutes and botched that catch. Looked sick, sure, but do we really need to be jeopardizing Bryan's health like that?

Eh, psychics tell people what they want to hear. There's always a market for that. Apparently I just miss all the crazies, though. I've been to WWE shows, TNA shows, and shit-level indy shows, and I've never met anyone who thought it was all real, outside of maybe a couple really young kids. I mean, I've seen some huge party-line marks who like every face and hate every heel without exception, but that's no different than liking every protagonist in any other movie/tv series and never liking a movie/tv series villian. Not even they thought it was real life. Maybe we just live in alternate realities.

I don't doubt that some "it's still real to me damn it" people do exist, but it has to be a very small fraction of the total wrestling fanbase. I've been to lots of shows in several different areas and never found anyone like you described. Most of the casuals or non-net savvy fans I meet at WWE live events watch wrestling the same way we do. They like some heels and some faces, and they just want to see fun matches and storylines.

My dad made sure to squash kayfabe for me after a couple weeks of watching wrestling. I think he just didn't want me trying to do moves with my friends or on my then 4yo brother. It didn't hinder my enjoyment (or me trying to do moves), though. As for if you can still believe it with knowing results are predetermined, the answer is a resounding, 2012-Daniel-Bryan-esque NO. You'd have to some serial-killer level cognitive dissonance going on to think the results were predetermined but everything leading up to the rigged match and/or the moves being applied during the rigged match were real. I'd assume anyone on a dedicated pro-wrestling message board like this one who claimed to still buy into kayfabe was either trying to make wrestling feel like it was when they were a kid or trying to avoid getting a reputation of being "too smarky." Only the youngest/newest fans can truly experience kayfabe, and even then it's not usually for very long. Really, pretty much everyone (including non-net savvy fans), watches wrestling like a movie or any other tv series. We don't need to see it as real, we just need to be entertained.

No way. Orton may have motivational issues from time to time, but he's a damn good wrestler when he wants to be. He definitely carried his weight in the Christian and Bryan matches, as well as the underrated Cena series in 09. He's also really good working with lower-ranked guys. He's had good tv matches with Cody, Ted Jr, Kofi, Ziggler, Swagger, and Otunga, who are all varying degrees of less-talented than Orton.

Yeah, no way on HHH. He's been responsible for some bad matches, but he's also been responsible for some really good ones.

Kurt Angle was the first guy who came to mind for me. He's a tremendous athlete and always gives it 100%, but he does tend to get out of control if he's leading the match. His best matches were all against better wrestlers (Austin, Benoit, Rey, Taker). I guess it depends how highly you rate his work against early Cena and his more recent TNA work. He was clearly carrying the surprisingly good Mr. Anderson feud, so he does that going for him. Vince McMahon is another one who might fit the bill. He definitely understands how to work a match with his character, even though he's very limited athletically. He has more good matches than you'd think, even though the opponent is always doing the heavy lifting. The one good match he had where he might have had a skill advantage was the match with Shane at Mania 17. As for the other guys listed, I agree DDP definitely doesn't belong. The Rock depends on how you rate his skill against peak HHH, since that iron man is the only Rock match I think belongs on the tier of his work with Foley and Austin. I guess you could compare his skill to Jericho too if you think those matches are among Rocky's best, but I don't. Edit: Actually, given that The Rock did most of the work in the Mania 19 match with Austin, I have to exclude him as well. He was tremendous in that.

Terry hit his legs on the guardrail every time he did the Asai moonsault during his 1998 run. I couldn't believe he kept doing the spot to the side of the ring instead of towards the entrance way. The Henry match was definitely on Raw, though. It was a KOTR tournament match. If you want a surprisingly decent Mark Henry attitude match, check out him vs. Owen from, I wanna say, February 98.