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thee Reverend Axl Future

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Everything posted by thee Reverend Axl Future

  1. I don't know nuthin' about how other HoFs work but the WON HoF voting system is very elegant from what I recall. Almost all of what I know of Bearcat Wright is from Meltzer, WrestlingClassics and the Blassie book (which is a fun read). Is an element of his induction based on his possibility/potentiality of headlining more places than he did but he was held back? Because then, as unfair as that is (to put it mildly) would that not open up the "what if" factor? - as say, in the example of Tully Blanchard "well he would have gone farther if he was taller". TB's run (w/JJDillion) as TV Champ is a textbook series of ring psychology and heel workmanship. Given a few more years together the Dynamic Duo (TB & Gino Hernandez) would have been an elite tag team on the level of the best. Again, Arn Anderson was no slouch but Blanchard's highs were better than his (not a yeyo joke). - RAF
  2. I forgets how the voting system works, but if there is almost no footage of Bearcat Wright, even if the vet worker bloc votes for him 100% BUT no one else votes for him (his alleged bad rep and lack of visibility) is it even possible for him to get in? Arn/Tully is interesting as each one's strengths are different but there is a lot of career overlap. I am certainly on the AA Bandwagon all the way, but man, Tully was a great great storyteller and genius heel, so good at getting his opponent over while keeping his heat. He made moves and punches look effective and could do some genius cartoony and/or serious selling. His size worked against him in that era, but nothing would have prevented him from have runs at the top now. He could sell tickets with his promos as well. His shortened career really hurts him HoF-wise. And he decided to make moneys off of Jeebus instead, and that always irks me. = RAF
  3. Bischoff really believes that working someone (the public, another worker, the boys, the person making his coffee, his lawyer) makes him smart even when the target sees through the work. The man is not unintelligent, but overexposure to Hogan has flummoxed his perceptions. Every time he (EB) does something that makes me realize he is aware of his position in the Business and the workings thereof, he follows it up with a ham-fisted condescending falsehood that you know if he was questioned on it , his explanation would involved the word "work" five or six times in the middle and end in "brother". Even when he admits that his actions took down WCW he doesn't really get it. The less ATM Eric there is in today's mediasphere, the happier I am. Ugh, the word "jabroni" was made for him... - RAF
  4. My goofy relationship with the interWeb is that I am mostly a lurker/consumer, with no desire to debate or share with strangers, and even here in thee confines of DVDVRbbs I still prefer to absorb others observations opinions and views, and I often feel like putting in my $.02 could skew the discussion and also I am lazy. However, OSJ has just gone above and beyond with this topic (and the SMIchaels marks have moved on (trigger warning: SM vs. Flair retirement match is in my top 25, I am a complex man), so I feel moved to add several disjointed but sagacious thoughts into this here mix. The WON HoF is really really good, mostly because of all the hard work put into it, as well as the transparency of it's voting process. Rassling is a difficult subject to be objective about, and a HoF brings this right up to thee surface: - Meltzer has a really heavy influence on his readers, both (overtly) in his opinions and (subliminally) in what gets featured. My first WON was the Bruiser Brody death issue. I remember wrapping in $5 bills in notebook paper, the ink feathered with beer drips like some damned Bukowski/nerd lowlife, limericks about DC Drake adjacent to my latest address and requests for "more Cactus Jack coverage, less Lucha spot show results, be nicer to Dusty". Oy. Thee mighty ChokeHold zine (Lance Levine was/is such a smartie) once ran a piece on how to read the WON ("skip over the MMA section, scan the totally worked results parts for indy shows you were at and laugh at the attendance figure that DM dutifully printed..."). Even reading the soberest , most centrist journalism requires knowledge of the context and an active filter on the part of the reader, and DM, Giant Baba bless his heart, is no journalist. Pro wrestling newsletters are no place for journalists, RASSLING IS ABOUT EMOTION and that means opinion and prejudices and imprinting from when you were a shaver watching with your grandma/seeing your first Japanese third-gen ladies VHS tape/getting worked for drinks by Sandman (and loving it). - So you are a smartsmartysmart mark and maybe even have taken some college courses or read some Sontag or McLuhan or GMarcus or even RICHARD Meltzer (very applicable to this here thread) so you can decode the palimpsest of thee holy WON itself and be unswayed, and you can parse your own emotional attachments/revulsions (this is why grown menfolk defend the ringwork of The Anabolic Warrior, I guess) nevertheless you are still hampered by what wrestling you have access to. Back in the day (see $5 humblebrag anecdote, above) you had an excuse even if you were the most dedicated of tape traders AND lived in a major (but not too urban/e area) AND had the right cable TV, but even today's YouTubez/streaming/digital/restored/thee Vault of Vince era can merely make one realize what is missing. I dig how Melzer is trying to slice up the votes to give weight to thee nonAmerikan promotions and the historical figures of the past, but c'mon if you haven't actually sought it out AND watched it and liked it, you are not voting for it. - Thee crazy wrestlings is loco, there are so many factors involved that even an intelligent litmus like the Gordy Test cannot take it all in. Workers are in thrall to bookers who are getting paid by a promotion, you can get de-pushed these days because you aren't using the InstaSnapChatGramTwit as well as some other goon, or maybe the announcers have a hard-on for football players, or maybe you are getting over with the gimmick that was supposed to sink you... Your veteran voters are marks for tough guys, yeah, but some like the hookers and some like the shooters and some like the barfighters. You are a vet and that fellow that you knew in the lockerroom who always paid for the first case of beer is up for a vote but maybe to the wrestling journalist (ecch) he's just a carpenter who never put enuff asses in seats. - Remember those super big year end WON editions, like portrait legal size paper with these gnarly staples and pastel covers that the HoF results used to get published in? They really need to get collected, there was some random stuff in them, and pictures! In fact, some modern archivist & scholar needs to do a history and analysis of all the years of thee WON HoF (OSJ, I am looking at you), NOT DM (the syntax, yow), work with him and reprint the old results and such, and add some commentary and hindsight and perspective, now there's a history of thee (modern) biz and the fandom surrounding it. The hard work of tabulation is done, so an overview would be fabulous. - Here is an intriguing exercise: pick your own favorite as-of-yet-unenshrined wrestler, and justify to why s/he deserves to be in, work backwards if you will. Use your emotional responses, or try to be coldly analytical about it. Maybe you have similar-minded friends who will tolerate your viewpoint, and augment it or even debate you in a civil manner. Or, you could post your opinion on the interWeb and watch your hatred for humanity grow. - RAF (for thee kids) --- tl;dr - nice job, OSJohn!
  5. Hey now, Lio Rush may be all those other things and a heel as well, but let's not take it too far. There's good heat and then there is outright revulsion. - RAF
  6. At this point, it seems that they are going to trot out the Undertaker for any "big" event, to pop a rating or to satisfy the curiosity of any pasha or ego of any vet. Soon he will be like a giant bunraku puppet, bone grinding on bone, held together with cortisone as the rassling more completely sheds kay fabe and transforms totally to spectacle and symbolism. Never mind those black clad druids in the ring with sticks! - RAF
  7. I still don't understand what her gimmick is supposed to be. - RAF
  8. Bring this up waaay after the pre-WM hub-bub about the Battle Royale FKA Fabulous Moolah, here is an article wherein some of the actual workers voice their memories, experiences and opinions. http://slam.canoe.com/Slam/Wrestling/2018/05/10/22777921.html And this clip, very sad: - The interWeb giveth, the interWeb taketh away... RAF
  9. That Mustafa/Buddy match was so very outstanding. Lots of backstory added nuance and drama. Ali always gives 100%. Buddy Murphy is a great talent and I think he would do well anywhere, especially back in the right tag team. - RAF
  10. It's like you guys have never seen Raging Bull*. stupid, RAF *not Manny Fernandez, the movie I mean.
  11. Workrate is an aspect of the match, a means to an end, and ideally in service to the story. Spotfests are silly but can be enjoyed, just as a a smart worker can make a headlock-only match fun or a passionless display of holds and counterholds emotional, or even a storyline-driven "match" with no moves at all compelling. An ideal card has it all even if a promotion emphasizes some parts over others. Part of the strangeness is the viewing of these matches on tape, spliced and sometimes diced, in stead as part of a whole, on the cold medium of video instead of hot/live. - RAF
  12. "The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom." - William Blake You are both correct, of course. TM/DK was a revelation, a distillation of the most exciting parts of a match concentrated into a sugar-rush, like the freedom of having an ice cream sundae for breakfast. There was was, in hindsight, a sacrifice of story-telling and pacing, but the context was ideal: that time, place, participants and type of match (New Japan Juniors) and -here is the most important factor- the whole goddamn card wasn't like that. It takes the headlong overkill of youth and new ideas to swing the pendulum and steal the influence away from the tenured lumbering oldsters of the era who have not updated a style for more modern times. Will that dessert-for-breakfast lead later promoters to serve nothing but sugar (excitement) and providing not real nutrition (emotion, stories)? Well, of course, and there is a small audience for that too, but the the resulting sugar crash made a lot of folks appreciate the other aspects of thee Craft of Rasslin. Moral: eat balanced meals, kids, maybe not every meal but certainly on a day-to-day basis. Moderation tempered with indulgence, I say. - RAF
  13. It's a sold show, people - paid for by a king. WWE is not paying for the stage set-up, nor seeing any money from the tickets, or deciding about the seating of single males and families or the royal bloodline. VKM & WWE had little to say about who got booked, and it certainly affected the booking and results of WrestleMania. If it tickles the fancy of the Saudis expect a yearly out-of-continuity major show with the same restrictions and arbitrary match-ups. It's like Collision In Korea but with less sports emphasis and more sports entertainment. - RAF
  14. I already posted this in a non-twitting form many pages ago, but it is my pleasure to restate my HOUSE OF HUMPERDINK MEETS RODDY'S HOUSE OF HEPATITIS joke. Really, what are the odds? life is a funny thing, RAF
  15. ...therefore VKM should be the Generalissimo Anarchist-in-charge of this faction. - RAF
  16. I am blissfully ignorant of the background of this jape; please allow me to remain so. - RAF
  17. TakeOver was unarguably worlds better than WrestleMania, and there is no excuse for that. There are dozens of reasons but no excuse. I am a much bigger fan of NXT than RAW/SDL but the feature shows should be at least as good as the AAA fed. Admittedly WM made 200x the money that TO did, but think of the impact and long-term if the cards were equally as good. The set was way cool. - RAF
  18. There needs to be a merch commercial with Papa Shango as Baron Samedi: That will move those NOLAWM shirts... - RAF
  19. I had a booking ideer based on a odd rassling dream I had: The Velveteen Dream has renewed his campaign of psychological and physical assault upon Aleister Black. This time AB is out-classed, and losing his edge. Commish Steven Regal suggests that Black call in his father, to which AB reacts with much uncharacteristic anger. VDream uses this emotional state to his advantage and ambushes AB, daring the mystery father to show up, thereby increasing the torment and drama for Black either way. Next week on TV, VD’s in-ring promo is interrupted by Aleister Black, who quickly gets the tables turned upon him and is taking a vicious beating. Suddenly, the sounds of The Manhattan Transfer blare out- “talkin’ ‘bout that boy from New York City” - and a grizzled Boogie Woogie Man Jimmy Valiant dances onto the ramp and faces off with a nonplussed Velveteen Dream. Instead of a soupbone or sleeper, Valiant delivers a big smooch on VDream, who is certainly polymorphously perverse and Prince-like but is no Wrinkle Queen. This just sets up for a recovered Black to land a Black Mass and scuttle VD out of the ring. The Magus of thee Street People hugs his son, and we see a lone tear go down Aleister’s cheek, “Oh Vader, ik schaam me zo…”, he is heard to whisper. Father and son go on to learn about each other in a series of vignettes, and celebrate the differences and similarities in their music, tattoos and magick styles. This, of course, sets up Valiant/Black v. Dream/The Boogie Man tags, and the eventual Black/Valiant/Dream v. The Undisputed Era. As above, so below. - I book only for myself, RAF
  20. I guess that means no Women's RR match. At best, one ladies match w/both totally covered like The Spider Lady which will be hailed as "revolutionary", and certainly no lines at half of the washrooms. The money of petrol potentates is very carny indeed. Call Inoki for a booking at the next Sports and Peace festival. - RAF
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