caley
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Everything posted by caley
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I'v been flipping through Jericho's book again and laughed really hard at the part where Jericho goes back on his word and tells Bischoff he's not re-signing (Right after the Goldberg angle gets kiboshed) and after initially cursing him out and promising to make life hard on Jericho, Bischoff decides on a different tact and starts being nice to Jericho and gets others to ask him to reconsider, including DDP, Kevin Nash and...Jason Hervey...which of course reminded me of this thread! -
I just have to say this thread has become part of my morning routine: (weather permitting), I like to take a cup of coffee, some sort of breakfast deal (Bagel, Costco chocolate muffin, even once a bowl of watermelon), out to the patio with my tablet and hope to read one of these reviews before the sun gets above the treeline and incinerates me. So thanks again for this thread!
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If people have to defend their lives, Albert Brooks-style, there are going to be a lot of producers with a lot to answer for! Last night I was rewatching an episode of Hells Kitchen and during the teaser at the end, they showed two women fighting and the voiceover said something along the lines of "But will their fighting awaken a slumbering giant" and cut to one of the larger ladies in bed and added kind of a rumbling/hellbeast growling noise to the scene. Terrible influence that I am, I not only got my younger brother into wrestling but my wonderful sister into it, for a while, too. I think this may have been the episode where she quit. But for years afterward, whenever any of us experienced a minor frustration, it would often result in us raising our arms to the heavens and shouting "GOLDBERG!"
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Um I believe you mean 'Jiggly Jiggly Jewish space lazers'! I was just reading the part where Bischoff brought Jericho in and said he saw him as becoming their version of Shawn Michaels then how he was really excited to feud him with Brad Armstrong. Apparently Armstrong was rejected for debuting (or re-debuting) wtestlers.
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The one great thing about AEW (which I admittedly run hot and cold on) is that it gave Schiavone a nice little run where he can just be enthused about wrestling again without looking as much like a doofus. I do think he genuinely LOVES wrestling and he can just gush about it now without having to worry about the other BS (That is, when Taz isn't needling him which doesn't always feel playful IMO). I thought the WTR lasted about as long as the NLS so I'm baffled that they're still around. This is the definition of a late WCW match: two fairly heatless heel teams wrestling for no reason. WCW fans are never going to cheer for Regal so I thought maybe they were turning the WTR face but then they cheat to win so...no, I guess? My shameful WCW apology: when they were first a team, I didn't realize there was much difference between Booker T. When they first split them up and have Booker T go on a run, I was baffled then even more baffled when he was really good. Somehow in my mind, I thought HH offence was 50/50. Then when I started seeing Stevie solo matches, the truth dawned on me. Now I think back and the idea of Stevie doing a Harlem Hangover or even an Axe Kick tickles me greatly. My only possible explanation is we didn't really get WCW up here until well into the NWO era so I kinda missed the Harlem Heat golden era! Reading through these reviews gives me such an appreciation for how little WCW really did with Eddy. In my head, he started the LWO, had his accident and jumped to WWE. I didn't realize he had so many months in between where WCW did absolutely nothing with him. I mean, you have a stable of guys whining for opportunities, why not run a series of matches with them trying to win the US title off the friends and stablemates? A whole summer of some combination of Guerrero, Benoit, Rey and even Malenko, Douglas and Konnan trading wins trying to control the US title would be so much better than whatever the actual Revolution was (and even worse, what it becomes).
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According to Lane's Wikipedia the gimmick was inspired by SNL's Ambiguously Gay Duo so it could also be a reference to that. The late 90s were a haven for "I have seen a popular TV show, have you also seen said popular TV show" references in wrestling I'm a big fan of the early 2000s cringe-comedy Ricky Gervais/Stephen Merchant did, few things make me laugh as hard as the general awkwardness of a good cringe moment on.one of those shows. So in the spirit of that, I often think about and laugh about how terribly awkward the Revolution leaving en masse from WCW must have been. I can just imagine these respected workhorse-type guys standing up and walking out to the admiration of their peers, Douglas maybe making some of inspirational statement about being kept down. Then WWE going "Nuh uh" to Douglas and him coming back to WCW going "Oh you thought I was leaving? No those guys were my ride, I was always staying here. This place is my home and it can still be...good?"
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You know ever since Bobby Heenan called him "Horrible-witz" every time I see the name 'Horowitz' in any other media, the first thing I think of is "Horrible-witz" I REALLY wanted this Juvy dressed as Kidman segment to just be he and Kidman standing in the ring trying to powerbomb each other and being countered endlessly for a few minutes. Wait...what?! So this made me google The Maestro...or 'Stro as he is now named...and I did not remember him being managed by Symphony who was previously Ryan Shamrock (I always remember it the other way around, WCW then WWE but I was wrong) and eventually she ended up in TNA with this amazing TNA wiki summary "Webb began to appear as a talent scout, appearing on the ramp and accepting money from various different wrestlers. The storyline did not go anywhere"
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I think I (probably 'we' but i don't want to speak for everyone here) maybe greatly underestimated just how much wrestling audiences were affected by Bray's death and how much they needed closure to his and Brodies death (AEW did a great job on the latter but I increasingly think that there's less crossover of WWE fans watching other wrestling than I used to!) based on last night's reaction. Counterpoint: I don't think the Bucks have ever got someone over as strongly as Rollins did last night. Like he just got DESTROYED. He didn't look cool, he didn't look tough, he just gave everything to Bronson. Most guys would have had a comeback, a defiant middle finger, a challenge but Rollins just got nuked. Im sure he'll get his heat back eventually but that was some of the most selfless put-overing I've EVER seen.
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I would love to be a fly on the wall in WCW creative where they discuss whether or not homosexuals love Christmas. Though to be honest, Lane's Wikipedia pretty much says the entire angle was his and Lodi's idea so most likely he found a bow laying around and just put it on there. He could've at least bought some glittery stickers for it!
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After the Oilers hired Stan Bowman a week or two back (Former Blackhawks GM who swept one of his own players being raped by the video coach under the rug so as to not distract from their pursuit of another Cup, AND recommending said coach for a job at a HS where he assaulted someone else!), I think that's the consensus about the Oil right now (and I say this as a lifelong Oilers fan!).
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I feel like this is probably what it's like to hang out with DDP, good and bad. By all accounts he seems to be an exceedingly nice guy who has helped a lot of people amid also corny as hell. I remember Foley in his book saying that Abdullah the Butcher said Page would make it because he lives his gimmick. Foley also said Page would answer waitresses who asked how he was doing with lines like "I'm doing so good, I'd have to be twins to handle it all!" The heel DDP run here would probably be more worthwhile if DDP really LEANED into the corniness but Page, himself, has NO idea that it's corny. I watched a few minutes of a WWE biography of Goldberg on A&E last night (Man imagine going back to late 90s me and repeating that sentence: "Why is WWE doing a biography show? Why is WWE doing a show about Goldberg? Wait why is ANY of this on the Arts & Entertainment channel?!" ) and it was so infuriatingly giving Hogan praise that I lasted about five minutes. From Bischoff and Goldberg basically giving Hogan all the credit for Goldberg winning the title to Hogan saying that he needed Goldberg to become "another Hulk Hogan" to that annoying talking head WWE always uses talking about Hogan being involved in the greatest matches of alltime! Goldberg praises Hogan for saying "We'll call it in the ring!" , how when you're a young guy you just follow Hogan's lead out there...yeah...That's why the match is something like 80% Hogan controlled! Ugh. Hogan is the WORST. (Editors note: am typing this on my fire tablet that has the most frustrating spellchecker (Routinely changing WCW to EVE; once changed the Edmonton Oilers to the Edmonton Toilets!) But even if understands how terrible Hulk is as I typed that last part out, I typed it out normal and my spellchecker decided to allcaps the word 'worst'!) WCW 's weird inconsistent push is really baffling. Is he Bischoff's karate buddy or something?! I know there's one more push for him coming where he fights "in the blocks". He's just so...Jerry Flynn. There had to be dozens of guys with martial arts backgrounds with better looks and more charisma but WCW keeps coming back to him! By the way, the recap of this show reads like a fever dream or what would happen if you asked AI to create a Nitro script. The pointless undercard matches, the repeated promo segments, the muddled character motivations. It MIGHT be the bottom of the barrel, honestly. Russo, for all his many, many unforgivable faults, would never trot out a Mike Enos-Evan Karagias match!
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Wait...wait wait...WHAT happened with Britt?
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So iirc a few pages backstory tried to come up with an obligatory ringside brawl theme and since that point every time I read the phrase, I hear it in my head being sung by William Hung, like the "Mock Trial with J.Reinhold" theme from Arrested Development And in another tv reference, this sounds like the time Alan Partridge was sucking up to the head of the BBC by saying "I liked your quote: Revolution not Evolution" and he responded "No it was the opposite, Evolution not Revolution" and Partridge just shrugs it off because it makes no difference to him, he's just sucking up. He then says It suits him because "I evolve but I dont...revolve" which could have been the group's catchphrase as well. It makes me wonder how long WCW creative argued whether they should be Evolution or Revolution and which one aligned closer with the group's kayfabe concerns
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AEW TV - 7/31 - 8/6/2024 - You Are The Last American Dragon
caley replied to Dolfan in NYC's topic in ALL ELITE WRESTLING
It's dreadful. And without getting too political here, it's going to continue to flounder because a good chunk of a wrestling audience sees a flag and hypnotically beings to chant "U-S-A" no matter who's in the ring. In his WCW thread, SirSmUgly talks about a late 90s WCW match with the group of Steven Regal, Dave Taylor and Fit Finlay (heels) versus Rey Mysterio and Konnan (Faces) and the crowd starts the "USA" chant AGAINST the one who is from the US and for the guys who are from England/Ireland. So while, on paper, you could think it would be really funny to flip the tables and have a pro-America heel be the villain, there's always going to be a good chunk of the audience who just sees the American flag and goes "America? Good!" It doesn't hurt that Max CAN be funny (I mean, he hasn't really been funny in a while but the capacity is there) and you couple that with the flag and pro-US/xenophobic comments and it's not hard to get those fans to cheer for the one who they're supposed to be cheering against. -
BTW, this may interest no one but me, but, as I'm a huge, huge dork, I recently discovered that Tubi has a big chunk of Gordon Ramsey's Hell's Kitchen and I've been watching it through for the third time and got to Season 6 and one of my favourite contestants, Van. Van is just this charismatic, ripped, dumb, prototypical Texan who's always shouting standard gym phrases ("Come on now!" "Get some!") and almost getting into fights with the Maitre'd. So I looked him up tonight to see what he's doing and found out his mother is Luna Vachon! Here is the aforementioned fight with the Maitre'd https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaSSLUYroKg
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Haha now I feel even worse for the guy! Reminds me of the time my parents went to see Bob Dylan (mid 2000s incoherent Bob but still!) and some guy spent half the night lecturing them about how after the fourth song (or whichever) all his fans rush the stage and my parents looked at each other with a silent understanding that they were not, under any circumstances, rushing the stage. So the specific song comes, it ends, and this guy furiously rushes the stage and no. other. single. person. rushes that stage with him. So sad! But I can't lie and say I'm more jealous that my parents got to witness than even more than seeing Dylan! Also how crazy is it that ICP appeared in WCW, WWE, ECW and TNA?!
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I know I'm super immature but that's actually kind of hilarious to me. Raven's return to ECW as Tommy Dreamer's partner with the tag titles is one of my faveourite 'partners who don't trust each other' storylines because whenever Raven helps Dreamer, the crowd goes nuts and whenever he mistreats him they're so angry. And the majority of the crowd is just waiting for him to turn on Dreamer and every time he doesn't, they're so happy. And then it just peters out and he does turn on him and it's clear Raven's treading water and ready to jump again but that first stretch was so much fun "You gotta see this inappropriate stuff and also I'd like to apologize for some other inappropriate stuff!" When my brother, cousin and I went to Nitro in my hometown (which i will prattle on endlessly about when you get there), there was a guy next to my cousin who told him that if you chant for "ICP" all night, they will come out and give you candy so he spent the whole night chanting for them, and I can't remember if they were even in the show. Either way, he got no candy and I wonder if he went home, washed the facepaint off and was like "Man, if I can't believe in these bizarro, facepainted, rapping, Santa Claus-like clowns, then what can I believe in!?" I feel like this was Hogan's response after his racist tirade, subsequent suspension and eventual "apology" when one of the New Day members (I think it was Big E) was like 'he didn't really apologize just talked about being careful not to get caught talking on tape so I can't really accept his apology'. "Why can't Big E just fall in line?"
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I also forgot just how much Ron and Don Harris you've got coming up! I, uh, I don't envy you there...
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This is amazing. Not only is a completely tired worn-out catchphrase by 1999 but he's not even really using it right. Somehow I did not remember Hogan coming back and winning the title. I know I was still watching but apparently this period was so dire that I had mentally blocked most of it out (Case in point, I've seen the Kidman SSP botch but had no idea of happened here and not say earlier in his career! I would say you're in the WCW endgame but you've got several periods left -The Bischoff doldrums where he both sucks up to internet fans (there's a stable of relatively old young guys fighting back against being held down) while also booking against them and a lot of older guys (Hogan, Savage, Piper?) just kind of shuffle off for a while, even Nash just kind of stops wrestling IIRC -The first Russo era where it gets really shoot-y then quickly ends -The weird Sullivan-booked treading water era where they try to turn The Wall into a mega superstar -The Russo/Bischoff era which just...sucks -The Russo solo era which might be a bit of an upgrade -The Let's Build Some Homegrown stars whoops too late era which is definitely an upgrade
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And after typing that, I see that SirSmUgly used the exact same term above!
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I think the biggest thing is you can name quite a few matches/moments/spectacles with the other guys but as much as the show was often built around Douglas, are any of his matches really that highly rated? Any big promos that stand out? Even the big moments usually feature him but don't "star" him. He was, to use a sports metaphor, maybe more of a "glue guy" who kept things together but even when he was the star, he never really "starred".
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Now I get along great with my dad, we've grown to basically just be friends; go to movies together, hockey games etc. He's the best. So a few weeks back I was watching Raw and Rey Mysterio sommersaulted off the top, landing crotch-first right in his sons face then basically repeated the move off the apron to the floor and I thought "I love my dad but we do not have that kind of relationship. I can think of no scenario where either of us would be happy where his crotch area were to come into contact with my face." Anyways the above times one million applies to the quotes text. Our hero, ladies and gentlemen, threatening to murder his opponent's abducted girlfriend! I saw a tweet yesterday where some guy basically said "My cousin got shot but don't wish him well cuz I owe him $700" and I like to imagine he's the same guy shouting at Bret here just completely obliviously focused on himself. That's amazing. Kudos. Is this the one that starts with George saying "What up Mach?" followed by the " Oohhh yeah"? I used to amuse and annoy my brother by imitating it and drawing "Oooh" for way too long and way too guttural. It's no wonder that he stopped watching wrestling with me within about two years of this time period.
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I actually didn't think Billy and Chuck were all that bad (With the caveat that I haven't seen it since it aired and maybe I just didn't see or get a lot of the badness at the time), but IIRC they were kinda gay, then they were slightly gayer and the audience kind of begrudgingly got behind them which was staggering in the early aughts WWE, then they pulled the ripcord on it. So it wasn't, you know, great but it was sorta mid-level in terms of effectiveness and offensiveness. Unlike, say, the Chris Kanyon thing which served no purpose other than to punish the homosexual wrestler (violently, I might add) and was basically a straight guy's viewpoint of what a gay person acts like straight out of the 1960s...maybe even more old-fashioned and outdated than that. I'm now trying to think what the most awful/offensive and pointless LBTQ angle in big wrestling was...I'm thinking it might be the HLA of the Bischoff era which was particularly grotesquely homophobic AND misogynistic. I'm sure there's worse...but I can't think of any (Googling Lane, I see that he tagged as part of the Rainbow Express in TNA and I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that COULD be the answer). Anyways, I'm just trying to create a scale, so that I can put the Lenny/Lodi characters near the bottom of it.
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More like put=upon 90s sitcom older daughter, really. Somewhat like Kristen Ritter but not as cynical. He's basically normal now but the other day is having problems now but we're more mentally prepared for that because he's 19 years old! Not to mention The Fat Chick Thriller, Mighty Heidi (because she's plus size!), Kwee Wee, and the thing that still haunts my nightmares: "Snootchie Bootchies, Tony, Snootchy Biotchies!"
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AEW TV - 7/17 - 7/23/2024 - Guess What... It's Gonna Be May!
caley replied to Dolfan in NYC's topic in ALL ELITE WRESTLING
That WAS great It kind of speaks volumes about how valuable AEW considers ROH when Briscoe has allied with Team AEW to take down the power-mad EVPs who have used their influence and pull to get the Tag Titles, the TNT Title, and the Continental Title, and the EVPs haven't even bothered to try to screw Briscoe out of his ROH Title. Briscoe: "I bet they're going to come for my title now for going after them!" Bucks: "No that's okay, we don't want it!" Briscoe: "But it's a World Title!" Bucks: "Sure it is, that's okay" Briscoe: "You know Hangman's the only guy who doesn't have a title..." Bucks: "Hangman says he doesn't want it!"
