May 2023 Wrestling Talk

[SirSmUgly]

I think my problem with AEW is that I wanted WCW in 1992 or 1996 or even the promise of what might be in 2001, and I didn't get it. And that's okay! That's a problem with me! 

But even if it's not for me, there's no reason to make countless posts about how it's obviously failing because it's not what I want. I guess the same is true of WWE for that matter.

But man, when some billionaire money mark watches 1992 WCW on Peacock and decides that they want more of that in the 2020s, I'll be there, dammit. 

[Dog]

To me, AEW is a hybrid of 1992 WCW and PWG, which is pretty fine by me. Swap PWG for 2004 ROH and it's perfect. 

[Elsalvajeloco]

41 minutes ago, SirSmUgly said:

But man, when some billionaire money mark watches 1992 WCW on Peacock and decides that they want more of that in the 2020s, I'll be there, dammit. 

If that person is billionaire and they see WCW didn't make money in 1992, they're not going to do it.

1992 WCW had the advantage of a bunch of young talent and talent who had never had that opportunity seeing that Flair was no longer around and trying to grab the brass ring. However, if you take off the rose colored glasses, one of the biggest problems is they had a whole bunch of talent but no big star to elevate the younger guys eventually. It was a hell of a conundrum. 

Add in the fact that it's evident in the part he was running WCW that Watts hadn't watched wrestling in years. There was a ton of good stuff but there was also a lot of bad stuff. If you remove Sting vs. Vader from GAB 1992, it is perhaps the worst PPV of all time. Even with Sting vs. Vader, it is one of the most boring PPVs of all time. He was trying to grab an audience that was no longer there. 

When you think about 1992 WCW was perhaps one of the most of the more disappointing years by a promotion of all time just cause they had all that talent there and squandered cause the booking was so bad or inept. The talent just did fine in spite of the booking. Moreover, it exposed that (1) Bill Watts wasn't the genius a lot of people thought he was and (2) WCW was as poorly run on the Turner exec side and on the wrestling operations side with Watts as the Herd regime and before that George Scott.

1989-1991 WCW created a gaping hole in the boat. 1992-93 is when the boat started to capsize.

I love plenty of stuff in WCW 1992 from an in ring perspective and some of the aesthetics, but ain't a soul about to make a promotion based around that. 

[SirSmUgly]

12 minutes ago, Elsalvajeloco said:

If that person is billionaire and they see WCW didn't make money in 1992, they're not going to do it.

1992 WCW had the advantage of a bunch of young talent and talent who had never had that opportunity seeing that Flair was no longer around and trying to grab the brass ring. However, if you take off the rose colored glasses, one of the biggest problems is they had a whole bunch of talent but no big star to elevate the younger guys eventually. It was a hell of a conundrum. 

Add in the fact that it's evident in the part he was running WCW that Watts hadn't watched wrestling in years. There was a ton of good stuff but there was also a lot of bad stuff. If you remove Sting vs. Vader from GAB 1992, it is perhaps the worst PPV of all time. Even with Sting vs. Vader, it is one of the most boring PPVs of all time. He was trying to grab an audience that was no longer there. 

When you think about 1992 WCW was perhaps one of the most of the more disappointing years by a promotion of all time just cause they had all that talent there and squandered cause the booking was so bad or inept. The talent just did fine in spite of the booking. Moreover, it exposed that (1) Bill Watts wasn't the genius a lot of people thought he was and (2) WCW was as poorly run on the Turner exec side and on the wrestling operations side with Watts as the Herd regime and before that George Scott.

1989-1991 WCW created a gaping hole in the boat. 1992-93 is when the boat started to capsize.

I love plenty of stuff in WCW 1992 from an in ring perspective and some of the aesthetics, but ain't a soul about to make a promotion based around that. 

Just wait until I win Powerball, pal. 

(Seriously, Watts was certainly out-of-touch in more ways than one, but the in-ring product is so good, and there are so many memorable moments that came from that year, that I think even with Watts making a series of booking mistakes, that's an amazing year aesthetically. But let me revise that to wanting AEW to be 1982 Mid-South or 1984 JCP instead.)

[zendragon]

Like WWE hasn’t had years where they just threw mud against the wall and pushed guys like Jack Swagger or Alberto Del Rio to the title

[SirSmUgly]

Del Rio is on the Mount Rushmore of wrestlers with presentations so good that people were fooled into thinking they'd be viable main eventers someday. 

[Elsalvajeloco]

2 hours ago, SirSmUgly said:

Just wait until I win Powerball, pal. 

(Seriously, Watts was certainly out-of-touch in more ways than one, but the in-ring product is so good, and there are so many memorable moments that came from that year, that I think even with Watts making a series of booking mistakes, that's an amazing year aesthetically. But let me revise that to wanting AEW to be 1982 Mid-South or 1984 JCP instead.)

This is one of the issues I had with Brian Last when he thought AEW should have been that in 2019 back when I was still listening to Cornette's two shows. You know the only way that could have happened? It still be the 1980s and more importantly, before Vince's expansion and he didn't have most of the big stars. That's the only way. In 2019, it was silly. In 2023, it's even more ludicrous.

Vince (and to be fair, Bischoff for a few years) put running a wrestling promotion far out of reach for the regular person funding a venture like that. On the production side, you cannot do a stripped down production where you basically doing everything off 1-3 cameras. From a visual standpoint, everything is going to be WWE-lite or a even poorer imitation. On the financial side, everyone is going to be on restrictive, guaranteed contracts. AEW at least allows people to work indies through office approval and you can get approval to work with their Mexican partner (AAA depending on when Konnan and TK are on speaking terms) and New Japan. Otherwise, you're not going to have the luxury of having talent swaps and bringing new guys in who are already stars elsewhere. Add in that most of the people you bring in now (even if you get some guy or gal who was on WWE TV for years) aren't going to be the same caliber of stars you had back in the territory days.

One of the greater issues no one looks at is fundamentally, a lot of the territories are working off of 10-15 talents as your core. Now that 10-15 is mostly name guys, but that's who you're working around at a given time. Some territories had more, but once you get past 7-10 guys honestly, it's a group of interchangeable talents. Go through your favorite territories and their best or your favorite year of critical/commercial success. Some years are going to be more stacked than others (especially the stronger territories), but most times, it's top heavy than a motherfucker in terms of the roster. In a lot of years/eras, you get where there are some name guys but they aren't in at the exact same time. In an era where most of the non-televised cards are only 7 or 8 matches tops and the TV shows are basically 44-50 minutes of content (not counting Georgia which for a long time was 2 hrs and Memphis being 90 minutes), there is the likelihood that you don't have time to build around 5 or 6 big stars and then have an absolutely loaded roster underneath. If a guy is working Mid-South and Memphis or Mid-South and World Class, he ain't going to really be showing up on Georgia or Mid-Atlantic TV anymore. He's working those towns pretty regularly and showing up on those TV shows. Then, when his time is done, that's it. On to the next.

We've had to endure already two going on three months of bitching about a brand split in AEW. As much as I personally don't care about it one way or another (cause I am watching both), people want to see their favorite wrestlers all the time against their other favorite wrestlers. Even though technically, before national expansion and a bunch of places ceased to exist, you were always watching basically brand split pro wrestling. You just didn't give a fuck cause WWF/E didn't have a name for it yet, and you only cared about the show you were able to watch.

Also, add in the fact, those two (JCP and Mid-South) weren't on the national level really. So you only have to focus on your principal cities and the few other towns you were running. You weren't really looking to build an audience past that. As long as you had strong penetration in your key markets and a pretty loyal local fanbase, you were good as gold. What happened when they either tried to expand or that "loyal" fanbase went away? I just watched the infamous Dirty White Boy and Tom Prichard hanging from a post/fake domestic abuse angle from Continental this past weekend. For all that was great about it (minus the alleged domestic abuse part), it happened in front of maybe 300 people in an arena. Keep in mind, that's a territory in front of their supposed hardcore fans who only care about that particular brand of wrestling. A year or so later, they were out of business. Vince McMahon made it where you cannot go backwards. People have to get it through their skulls. 

[SirSmUgly]

Yeah, I love the perspective that brand splits are essentially what the territory system was. It's easy to jump from that to "the issue is how poorly WWE always handled brand splits, not the idea of brand splits themselves." 

I accept that my aesthetic preferences w/r/t pro wrestling are almost completely left unreflected in the modern pro wrestling scene, but that's why old stuff exists. I do miss watching new wrestling, though, especially watching new wrestling that many other people are watching. The communal aspect of watching pro wrestling is half of what makes it fun. 

[The Idiot King]

I think as far as historical years to base your company around, you could do a lot worse than 1997 WWF. I'm not sure if it's something you could create self-consciously, but it was still a "down period" (for WWE at least), there weren't a host of hot new stars "showing up unexpectedly," and there were definitely huge chunks of it that sucked as bad as anything I've ever watched, but overall it felt really alive and unpredictable in a way that would become more standardized and rote through the boom period of what was properly "The Attitude Era." There was just so much stuff being thrown at the wall, mostly utilizing by-then established WWE guys, that everything felt like it was always on the verge of exploding or going off the rails. Sometimes it was raggedy but it was usually compelling, and the undercard was so, so much weaker than what AEW has to play with right now.  I'm not suggesting that the cure for AEW's (relatively minor, I think) woes is to let Sammy Guevara start saying fuck on TV or by going on all in on a Sid/Undertaker-calibre main event and just hope someone magically becomes Stone Cold, but I do think that there's something to be said for kind of messing around a little and making mistakes and seeing if something doesn't just happen to catch fire. It's an advantage AEW has over WWE, so why not use it? 

[Elsalvajeloco]

1 hour ago, SirSmUgly said:

Yeah, I love the perspective that brand splits are essentially what the territory system was. It's easy to jump from that to "the issue is how poorly WWE always handled brand splits, not the idea of brand splits themselves." 

I accept that my aesthetic preferences w/r/t pro wrestling are almost completely left unreflected in the modern pro wrestling scene, but that's why old stuff exists. I do miss watching new wrestling, though, especially watching new wrestling that many other people are watching. The communal aspect of watching pro wrestling is half of what makes it fun. 

I do think there is a place for those who do love old school wrestling with none of that sports entertainment aspect or those who feel their wrestling is still unrepresented. However, people are going to have to accept it's not going to be in front of packed arenas every week (or this day and age, 60-85% filled arenas sometimes scaled down for production reasons) or have the same fervor as the kayfabe days.

Here's where I feel Corgan missed the boat. He had a chance to be the solid, entrenched number 3 (especially with ROH's rapid decline) who could have been the fan favorite promotion that wasn't AEW or WWE especially among the old school fans. There was also a wealth of talent out there that wasn't signed to a major promotion yet and needed a place to be seasoned before that and exposure before they go to the big show. He chose to be neither and booked his promotion out of spite against old school fans.

You don't need a money mark who has some of the same likes or dislikes when it comes to wrestling. You just need someone who isn't that incompetent or shallow as the above example who doesn't mind that he will lose money or probably barely break even for the sake of good, serious, adequately booked pro wrestling. Problem is there aren't many if any that start a business with the hope of barely breaking even when they already have money to begin with. Moreover, the people who do have the funds don't have the booking/creative experience or the connections to someone who can book or have enough creative experience is extremely small if not non-existent. Tony Khan's safety net may be his VPs, but it appears it doesn't have much effect on the final product. Corgan's was probably Lagana, but once Speaking Out happened, that safety net was gone and you get what you have now.

[Dog]

1 hour ago, SirSmUgly said:

Yeah, I love the perspective that brand splits are essentially what the territory system was. It's easy to jump from that to "the issue is how poorly WWE always handled brand splits, not the idea of brand splits themselves." 

I accept that my aesthetic preferences w/r/t pro wrestling are almost completely left unreflected in the modern pro wrestling scene, but that's why old stuff exists. I do miss watching new wrestling, though, especially watching new wrestling that many other people are watching. The communal aspect of watching pro wrestling is half of what makes it fun. 

Curious -- if you could make specific changes to AEW that would hew more toward your taste, what would they be? 

[zendragon]

1 hour ago, Elsalvajeloco said:

This is one of the issues I had with Brian Last when he thought AEW should have been that in 2019 back when I was still listening to Cornette's two shows. You know the only way that could have happened? It still be the 1980s and more importantly, before Vince's expansion and he didn't have most of the big stars. That's the only way. In 2019, it was silly. In 2023, it's even more ludicrous.

Vince (and to be fair, Bischoff for a few years) put running a wrestling promotion far out of reach for the regular person funding a venture like that. On the production side, you cannot do a stripped down production where you basically doing everything off 1-3 cameras. From a visual standpoint, everything is going to be WWE-lite or a even poorer imitation. On the financial side, everyone is going to be on restrictive, guaranteed contracts. AEW at least allows people to work indies through office approval and you can get approval to work with their Mexican partner (AAA depending on when Konnan and TK are on speaking terms) and New Japan. Otherwise, you're not going to have the luxury of having talent swaps and bringing new guys in who are already stars elsewhere. Add in that most of the people you bring in now (even if you get some guy or gal who was on WWE TV for years) aren't going to be the same caliber of stars you had back in the territory dayOne of the greater issues no one looks at is fundamentally, a lot of the territories are working off of 10-15 talents as your core. Now that 10-15 is mostly name guys, but that's who you're working around at a given time. Some territories had more, but once you get past 7-10 guys honestly, it's a group of interchangeable talents. Go through your favorite territories and their best or your favorite year of critical/commercial success. Some years are going to be more stacked than others (especially the stronger territories), but most times, it's top heavy than a motherfucker in terms of the roster. In a lot of years/eras, you get where there are some name guys but they aren't in at the exact same time. In an era where most of the non-televised cards are only 7 or 8 matches tops and the TV shows are basically 44-50 minutes of content (not counting Georgia which for a long time was 2 hrs and Memphis being 90 minutes), there is the likelihood that you don't have time to build around 5 or 6 big stars and then have an absolutely loaded roster underneath. If a guy is working Mid-South and Memphis or Mid-South and World Class, he ain't going to really be showing up on Georgia or Mid-Atlantic TV anymore. He's working those towns pretty regularly and showing up on those TV shows. Then, when his time is done, that's

This is why I think the Lucha Underground model could be viable going forward

Its essentially a modern take on studio wrestling. All these streaming services are affiliated with studios, get a warehouse or a sound stage to build a set in. You have your studio to provide production. Build around 10-15 guys let them work Japan/Mexico/Indy’s when your not taping put the whole thing up on paramount plus or Netflix. Maybe instead of the theme being super natural luchadors (although I do think there is room for a Lucha centric promotion if AEW doesn’t continue to trend in that direction) cater to the undeserved old school audience 

[Stefanie Sparkleface]

2 hours ago, SirSmUgly said:

Just wait until I win Powerball, pal. 

(Seriously, Watts was certainly out-of-touch in more ways than one, but the in-ring product is so good, and there are so many memorable moments that came from that year, that I think even with Watts making a series of booking mistakes, that's an amazing year aesthetically. But let me revise that to wanting AEW to be 1982 Mid-South or 1984 JCP instead.)

Watts-era WCW is one of the best arguments that great wrestling cannot save you if you don't have compelling story/a rooting interest to go along with it. If you watch it in a vacuum, like in a best-of compilation, the moments can stand out and make you think that things are great, but actually watching the TV from that time period with nothing trimmed out... whew. The 15-20% was so good that it makes one forget how rough the 80-85% that just didn't work was.

[zendragon]

One thing I’ve been feeling about ARW lately is that they have been relying on stunt booking (this weeks Big Guest Star is Jeff Cobb) at the expense of overall storytelling 

[SirSmUgly]

11 minutes ago, Sparkleface said:

Watts-era WCW is one of the best arguments that great wrestling cannot save you if you don't have compelling story/a rooting interest to go along with it. If you watch it in a vacuum, like in a best-of compilation, the moments can stand out and make you think that things are great, but actually watching the TV from that time period with nothing trimmed out... whew. The 15-20% was so good that it makes one forget how rough the 80-85% that just didn't work was.

I very much wanted Ron Simmons to win everything and Rick Rude to get beaten all the time. Pretty badly, too! I don't connect with the idea that the weekly TV was hard to watch or that there were to rooting interests at all. Pretty much the opposite!

Edited May 1, 2023 by SirSmUgly

[Stefanie Sparkleface]

8 minutes ago, SirSmUgly said:

I very much wanted Ron Simmons to win everything and Rick Rude to get beaten all the time. Pretty badly, too! I don't connect with the idea that the weekly TV was hard to watch or that there were to rooting interests at all. Pretty much the opposite!

Which is fair for you, yet what if those two weren't connecting with you? There's a whole lot of green Marcus Alexander Bagwell and Z-Man & Johnny Gunn trying to recapture the heartthrob tag team trend of the 1980s to sit through on the weekly TV. Or Erik Watts (who I thought wasn't nearly as bad as people make him out to be but he was not ready for national TV).

That's what I mean by the memorable moments are very memorable, but when folks think of 1992 WCW, they aren't really rushing to put on the Van Hammer classics.

Edited May 1, 2023 by Sparkleface

[Elsalvajeloco]

I will try to be concise when I say what @The Idiot King and @Sparkleface mention kinda go hand and hand. People tend to overrate great wrestling or sometime great booking and believing that it automatically leads to commercial success. WWF 1997 has some stuff that in retrospect that doesn't age well at all and TBH wasn't that great when I watched it originally. WWF in 1998-1999 when the tide of the wrestling war was turning and then the turn of completed has a whole bunch of stuff that doesn't age well. However, if you have 2-3 guys on a team or in a promotion who are averaging the pro wrestling equivalent of 40 points, 25 rebounds, 15 assists with 5 blocks or steals and a 31 +/- everytime they step on the court, whatever happens outside of that is negligible.

We're at a point where we're so far removed from what made us love pro wrestling for each specific person that what folks want OR willing to accept as the baseline is going to vastly different with some similarities and overlap. The only clear connecting link is star power. However, based on how this thread started off and whenever you visited various threads on this forum, people have some different definitions and very narrow views on what a star can be. Having lived through the time twenty-five years ago, I can say people did have some of the same viewpoints and talking points on that. At the same time, what helped as time passed was people even if not likeminded were still a bit more open minded.

If you already categorized someone and someone pushes that person above that station, you're probably going a bit of bias going forward about the booking. Now people have to basically overperform to meet sometimes unrealistic expectations. "Be entertaining" doesn't sound unrealistic on paper, but if you have different interpretations of what entertainment can be, it can sometimes be unrealistic especially in an era of pro wrestling where the talent came into the business at a much different time (less live events to work out and format their matches, much more censorship, less day-to-day guidance/mentorship, and more and sometimes unnecessary choreography at the behest of creative/producers/road agents)

[Stefanie Sparkleface]

18 minutes ago, Elsalvajeloco said:

We're at a point where we're so far removed from what made us love pro wrestling for each specific person that what folks want OR willing to accept as the baseline is going to vastly different with some similarities and overlap. The only clear connecting link is star power. However, based on how this thread started off and whenever you visited various threads on this forum, people have some different definitions and very narrow views on what a star can be.

"Being unable to separate one's personal taste from what will work for the masses is what craters so many artistic endeavors", she says as she sadly mopes that Scott Norton and the Barbarian were never World Champions in the United States.

[Elsalvajeloco]

12 minutes ago, Sparkleface said:

"Being unable to separate one's personal taste from what will work for the masses is what craters so many artistic endeavors", she says as she sadly mopes that Scott Norton and the Barbarian were never World Champions in the United States.

Interesting that you bring up Barb because I watched a squash match he had with (of all people) Super Calo from WCW SN over the weekend. He was a heel and the fans popped big when he did his top rope overhead belly to belly suplex. Two things:

1. It being Super Calo in WCW, that could have ended nasty. He could have javelin'd himself into the mat trying to rotate over, and I wouldn't have been surprised one bit.

2. That should have been the finish but he had to end it with his lame ass kick of fear or whatever the hell it was called. If you're the agent for the match, how do you fuck that up?

[odessasteps]

I think history likely shows the best business often coincides with the worst on-screen product, at least in the modern era. A weird inverse bell curve. 

[Niners Fan in CT]

Forget the AEW vs. WWE discussion for a minute.   If you haven't watched Stardom All-Star Grand Queendom, go do that.  Then get ready for NJPW Best of the Super Juniors 30.  Then get ready for NJPW Resurgence in a few weeks. 

[SirSmUgly]

1 hour ago, Sparkleface said:

Which is fair for you, yet what if those two weren't connecting with you? There's a whole lot of green Marcus Alexander Bagwell and Z-Man & Johnny Gunn trying to recapture the heartthrob tag team trend of the 1980s to sit through on the weekly TV. Or Erik Watts (who I thought wasn't nearly as bad as people make him out to be but he was not ready for national TV).

That's what I mean by the memorable moments are very memorable, but when folks think of 1992 WCW, they aren't really rushing to put on the Van Hammer classics.

If those two weren't connecting with you, there was Vader and Sting and Cactus Jack and Ricky Steamboat and Scorpio and even a couple of Liger appearances, if I remember, and a great Steiners vs. Miracle Violence Connection feud.

I mean, if we're going to reduce a company to its lamest parts, then was any wrestling ever good anywhere?

(Though I freely admit to liking green Marcus Bagwell, heaven help me.)

Edited May 1, 2023 by SirSmUgly

[Dog]

My most nonsensical opinion is that, yes, there has been very little wrestling that's actually good, and we're maybe 15-20 years away from when pro wrestling finally meets the potential of what it actually can be.

I will not elaborate on that.

[Elsalvajeloco]

17 minutes ago, odessasteps said:

I think history likely shows the best business often coincides with the worst on-screen product, at least in the modern era. A weird inverse bell curve. 

Rewatching the latter now, 2000 WWF when they were white hot is much, much better on screen than 1993-1995 WWF when they were out here doing TV in high school gyms and struggling. You can probably compare 2000 WWF to now, but you also have to consider the star power and factor in that had TV rights fees been what they are now WWF in 1999-2001 would have been sitting pretty on a similar financial level if not better. Also, if they didn't try to cannibalize their PPV business via the brand split and then starting their own network/streaming platform.

[Cobra Commander]

4 hours ago, Elsalvajeloco said:

If that person is billionaire and they see WCW didn't make money in 1992, they're not going to do it.

there's always the "these people didn't know what they're doing, but I do, and i'll do it right" people who will go in on an idea, and then lose money on it