Robert S
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Posts posted by Robert S
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I am not sure if I buy the versatility argument. Both knew how to work face and heel, though did it very differently. Both had relatively fixed styles of how they worked their roles and changed it only slighty over the years (I mean when Owen wrestled as face in 97 against Vader, he apparently did basically the same match that he did with Makhan Singh a decade earlier). I guess Bret's heel and face did not differ that much as it did for Owen, but I am not sure if I would call that "versatility". I guess the best argument you could make here is that Owen had a more prolific run in Japan than Bret did.
Anyway: my answer to the posed question would have to be Kurt Angle and Homicide. I think everyone knows the arguments against Angle and regarding Homicide, I think he wrestled too long self-trained that by the time he got proper training it was too late to get rid of a lot of things that he did wrong. Anyway, a lot of this stuff just looked off execution wise, like you see things being done on backyard clips not as being done by a properly trained professional. He got how to do matches psychology wise and knew how to portray his character in the ring, but his execution was always a dealbreaker for me.
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9 hours ago, No Point Stance said:
For some reason I always had it in my head that Johnny Rotten was Mark Hildreth, AKA Van Hammer. I remember the Apter mags around 1991 touting him as 'the next Sid Vicious'.
There were multiple people wrestling under the name Johnny Rotten at one point or another, cagematch lists five different wrestlers you did at least one match as "Johnny Rotten" (though Van Hammer is not on that list).
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Reg. the latest crossword puzzle: The name of Mongo McMichael's chihuahua has to be the most useless fact that I seem to know (remember).
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2 hours ago, Sex Machine Gun said:
WWE goes to a country that speaks a language I can understand a bit but I didn't know what the crowd was saying besides the two counts and what I think was a song where the chorus was "all is beautiful/good."
(...)
The crowd did a couple of generic chants during the main event. The chant they repeated three times is basically the "this is awesome" of German football (i.e. being that annoying and unimaginative). The chant goes something like "Oh, wie ist das schön. (:) So was hat man lange nicht gesehen, so schön (:).", approx. translation: "Oh, how great is that. Something like that didn't happen for quite some time, so great." When Gunther was selling they did once a "Auf geht's Gunther, kämpfen und siegen." chant - "Let's go Gunther, fight and win." (also a generic football chant) At the start they chanted "Auf die Fresse" - "(hit him) in the face" (I think that's a wXw chant).
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The worst offender:
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3 hours ago, Cobra Commander said:
Psicosis Sid would have been a solid "Charlie Brown from Outta Town" equivalent for Sid if he lost a stip match and came back under a mask
sadly(?) we never got Sid vs Boogie Woogie Man Jimmy Valiant, which would have been a very Memphis sort of JCP match
I just clicked a bit through cagematch to confirm that Sid really never faced Handsome and stumbled over the following match:
https://www.cagematch.net/?id=1&nr=185061
"Johnny Rotten besiegt Sid Vicious durch DQ". I would assume that this is not Johnny Grunge but another guy using the Johnny Rotten name.
Cagematch also has them team twice (once in 93 GWF against the future Harlem Heat and the other time in 96 USWA against Bill & Jamie Dundee).
(just for those who don't get what makes this funny: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_Pistols)
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1 hour ago, odessasteps said:
Hoping teaming with 2000s BTS indy favorite Ron Mysterio.
I thought it was Dave Mysterio?
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Man, the Mendoza's don't seem to have the genes to get old. I realize that wrestlers have a lower life expectancy but none of the brothers (so far - IV is still 11 years off) have made it to 70.
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7 hours ago, ReiseReise said:
I always thought Bam Bam appeared softer after switching babyface and for whatever reason, they didn't go with the logical thing of him bulldozing over the lower tier Million Dollar Corp (IRS, Volkoff, Kama) guys until he clashes with Sid or maybe former Tag Team partner Tatanka. Instead he was a 400 lbs Face in Peril in the one match I remember him having with DiBiases Crew.
I just watched that KOTR 95 tag match (Nash & Bigelow vs. Sid & Tatanka) a couple of days ago. Bigelow actually was the FIP twice in that match because they blew a false hot-tag: Sid had Bigelow in a headlock and Bigelow was slowly pushing Sid towards his own corner, you know that spot. Anyway, when Tatanka entered the ring to distract ref Hebner, Hebner reacted to late and looked straight at Bigelow tagging out. Nash covered up the screw up pretty well by throwing an elbow drop and selling that arm (the story was that Nash injured his elbow against Sid at the first In your House and had surgery on that elbow a couple of week before the tag match) and tagging out. Bigelow went almost straight back to selling.
In general Bigelow felt lost after the turn. They did nothing with him besides giving him new entrance gear that shot lame looking pyro. HBK turned basically at the same time and the whole focus went to him. WWF was creatively at a low anyway. They have started to bring in a lot of new guys since the beginning of 95 (without order just looking at some random house shows in the middle of the year: the Harris twins, PCO as "Jean-Pierre Lafitte", Ronda Singh as "Bertha Faye", Hakushi, Kama, Man Mountain Rock, Chris Candido as "Skip", Louie Spicolli as "Rad Radford", HHH, Henry Godwin, Mantaur, Sid, Danny Spivey as "Waylon Mercy", Road Dogg), including quite some people that should have had potential, but barely did anything with them (that seems to be typical for WWF at that time, there is *some* talent there, but they either didn't care or didn't know how to use them better). I guess that was a bit the MO of the "New Generation" era - bring in people, just book them on random matches on house shows, at best give them a single interview on a King's Court.
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40 minutes ago, JLSigman said:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIL88ZqQurQ
Suikoden I and II remastered FINALLY has a release date of March 6, 2025. Was beginning to think this was vaporware...
Apros pos Suikoden: has anyone else here played Eiyuden Chronicles: Rising? I thought that was a very underwhelming experience (I quit that game maybe 10 hours in).
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14 minutes ago, Mister TV said:
What was the timeframe of the big contract Henry had that Vince totally wanted out of?
It was a 10-year-contract and in this case it seems to have been a real binding contract (unless most contracts in wrestling history where people can be cut at seemingly any time).
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1 hour ago, The Natural said:
Forgot to mention Sid's one of the few to main event both WrestleMania and Starrcade. Top of my head, I can only think of Hogan, Justice/Vicious and Bret Hart.
plus Piper (Wrestlemania I & Starrcade 96) and Savage (Wrestlemania IV & V & Starrcade 95)
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On 8/25/2024 at 8:20 PM, ka-to said:
Yaguchi has been following Onita around for years. He was even part of the deal when Onita came to the US. 55 year old Mr. Pogo is Shadow WX doing a tribute to the original Pogo who died a few years ago.
I knew something felt wrong when I typed that Mr. Pogo part.
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13 hours ago, Ziggy said:
Part of it is because wrestling culture has always been no matter what you go through don't sell it. You're consider guys/girls if you succeed with and forget about all the "rites of passages " along the way. In other sports some of the stuff Henry was rumored to go through would be unacceptable anywhere else, especially for an Olympian but Wrestling is it's on universe everyone is expected to humble themselves in. Henry even at his age now could kill multiple people with his bare hands with is another reason they probably made him go through alot.
I'm not sure, hazing is a "time honored tradition" in a lot of sports. There are stories I have read over the years that I don't even want to think about right now because, well, "don't stare too deeply into the abyss or it will stare back".
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7 hours ago, odessasteps said:
Thankfully, Dory appears to have come out of the Onita tag match unscathed.
What a main event, Onita (66) & Raijin Yaguchi (61 - I have to admit, I have never heard of that guy, he seems to be an early Animal Hamaguchi trainee who started on indy scum shows before settling for some time with slightly less scummy SPWF & early BJPW; in the aughts he wrestled basically everywhere) vs. Dory Funk Jr. (83) & Osamu Nishimura (52, who is fighting cancer again). The undercard had guys like Tiger Toguchi (Kim Duk, 76), Mr. Pogo (55), Ricky Fuji (58), Masahiko Takasugi (69) and everbodies favorite zombie Onyro (53).
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11 minutes ago, Ramo2653 said:
Well finally finished Kingdom Hearts 1 from the collection and as with all Square RPGs, if you try to do all of the bonus fights, the actual final boss is a cakewalk. Felt good finishing off Sephiroth though. And the Xemnas fight they added in was cool too. Ending is still some somber stuff. Going to give Chain of Memories a shot. I remember not liking it at all when I had it for the Gameboy Advance.
I tried to play (Re:)Chain of Memories a couple of years back but that is just not a very good game. Even for a JRPG, there is a lot of text without saying anything to just click through while getting more and more bored, all stages are just cheap reuses from Kingdom Hearts 1, and the gameplay itself is nothing to write home about. If you want to try a non-mainline game in the collection, give Birth by Sleep a chance. It has an interesting fighting system, mostly new stages and a pretty interesting story ark.
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6 hours ago, BobbyWhioux said:
the old "heel manager in a neckbrace" bit suddenly ain't "too Southern Rasslin'" for Vince now, I see...
Vince was wearing a neckbrace during the steroid trial. Here are two pictures from a courtroom sketch artist that I found via Googling:
I suppose the following picture is him leaving the courthouse after sentencing:
Vince got real neck surgery around that time, but the timing still seems conspicuous.
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14 hours ago, NikoBaltimore said:
I just had a good chuckle imagining a gymnastic equestrian event. Seeing a gymnast doing that while the horse is jumping over fences would make me want to for once check out an equestrian event.
Let me introduce you to
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22 hours ago, SirSmUgly said:
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Super Mario Bros. 2 (USA) - I remember how disappointed I was when I played this game as a kid. Learning that it was another game entirely with the Mario cast plonked into it made a lot of sense because at that point in time, 2D Mario games didn't stink, and this game stunk bad. It still does. At least it gave us Birdo, Mouser, Wart, and playable Peach and Toad! And I guess it gave us the trope that Luigi can jump farther, but is a bit harder to control, which really became fun in the 3D games (clearing Galaxy with Luigi is the most fun that that game ever gets). But otherwise, what a stinkfest.
(...)
The Luigi having longer jumps while being sluggish to control started with Lost Levels (which came on the market two years before SMB2 in the US did).
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1 hour ago, ohtani's jacket said:
Well, New Zealand had a record 10 gold medal haul, and Japan had its best overseas Olympics, so Paris 2024 was bountiful. Time to count our booty. Shame on you LA for not including Breaking.
The games were also quite fine for Austria, 2 gold medals (both in sailing) and 3 bronze medals (one in Judo and two in sports climbing) is a bit above the average - even though the games again have shown the lack of talent depth in summer sports over here. Well, we will always have the winter games, I guess.
And as the 2026 games were mentioned: while I skipped Paris (even though the games were in sensible range from here (8 to 9 hours by car)) I will try to catch the 2026 Games in person (all locations are within 4.5 hours by car; though I still hope that the Italian plans to build their own luge (+ bobsleigh + skeleton) track will fail (which I think is pretty likely, they have only decided to do so this February and I can't image that they will finish that project in well under two years) which will mean that they likely have to switch to Innsbruck (Innsbruck is a chill two our train ride away)).
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13 hours ago, Cobra Commander said:
if Vince was still around, we would be getting a Japanese breakdancer gimmick within a month of these Olympics
Within a month + 15 years; also it would not be a real Japanese but Matt Bloom using his Tensai gimmick.
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The prize for "most stupid decision" at this Olympics has to go to French handball player Dika Mem. France was up 29-28 with 6 seconds to go and had ball possession. Mem got the ball with 5 seconds left to play and could have done literally anything like just held the ball for a couple of seconds or thrown the ball anywhere. He tried to go for a pass with three German players standing between him and his target. Somehow Germany managed to score within the three seconds that were left to play. An honorable mention goes to the French coach who called a timeout with 6 seconds to go and apparently failed to give his players instructions how to safely survive those six seconds. Germany went on to win in overtime BTW.
I assume the video in the tweet below might work for the US-based people here (it's geoblocked for me):
I can't find a non-geoblocked video on youtube right now.
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6 hours ago, Boydy said:
Dave has always interupted people. Even his so called best mate Garrett. He has a high opinion of himself and he feels like his opinion matters the most.
I prefer listening to other wrestling podcasts but I do still listen to the Observer Radio as Dave is a good historian.
I also always enjoy the Bryan, Vinny, Granny and Craig shows as well.
Granny is still alive and even still doing podcasts? She has got to be in her mid 90ies by now (94, I think if my memory serves me right).
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7 hours ago, odessasteps said:
I remember decathlon being the big along with the 100m dash as the big track and field events, since it crowned “the best all around athlete” and the US had seemingly been the most successful in the event, including Bob Mathias winning twice, Rafer Johnson and Bruce Jenner in 1976.
and then you had Daley Thompson win twice and then Dan and Dave at Atlanta.
The problem for decathletes is that they can maybe do three or at most four events a year (plus a heptathlon or two indoor). One of this events likely will be Olympics or World Championships. That leaves them with two events to win prize money, present themselves for sponsors etc. And the events are on the smaller side - especially compared to the Diamond League. The biggest combined event meeting by far each year takes in Austria (actually very close to my hometown), and there you have maybe 5.000 to 6.000 people in attendance. So if you are a young athlete and are looking into either going for decathlon (or heptathlon for women) or specializing, 9/10 people will take the second option. On the women side, you have actually a lot of people, who start as heptathletes and switch to a single disciplin after a couple of years (e.g. Daphne Schippers going for 100 m & 200 m, Nadine Visser specializing at the 100 m hurdles, Tia Hellebaut doing the high jump or Carolina Klüft switching to the triple jump). I am surprised that Swiss athlete Simon Ehammer - one of the top long jumpers at the moment - has not yet dropped the decathlon.
Looking at this year's decathlon, it was some kind of elimination race. Current world record holder Kevin Mayer (France) had to cancel the event as did Pierce LePage (the number one athlete of 2023; Canada). The number one of this year, German Leo Neugebauer underperformed (my guess would be because he already did two decathlons this year) and ended up with silver. Veteran Damian Warner (Canada) and Norwegian Sander Skotheim were on track for gold and silver but both did not manage to clear a single height at the pole vault. The Norwegian youngster Markus Rooth improved his PB by something like 150 points and ended up at the top. Bronze went to veteran Lindon Victor from Grenada, who improved a lot the last couple of years (improving his PB by 200 points last year, advancing from a top 10 candidate to someone who can fight for medals).
What always fascinates me about decathlon is the difference in strenghts that often sum up to similar scores. E.g. Warner is a guy who has run the 100 m in 10.12 s, the 110 m hurdles in 10.36 s and has a long jump PB of 8.28 m, he can do decent throws but in pole vault, he has never cleared the 5 m (Kevin Mayer's PB is 5.60 m, which is the other side of that spectrum). Lindon Victor one the other hand is very strong at the throws but who struggles when it comes to running events besides the 100 m (no matter if it's the hurdles, the 400 m or the 1500 m). Than you have a guy like Niklas Kaul (Germany) who spent almost the whole decathlon outside of the top 10 but threw over 77 m in the javelin and had by far the best time over the 1500 m.
The Wall Street Journal Vince McMahon Thread.
in The PROFESSIONAL WRESTLING
Posted
With Hogan, Cena, Rock, Austin, HHH and Jimmy Hart as talking heads, I am sure they will cover wrestling history completely unbiased.