August 2023 Wrestling Discussion

[Wyld Samurai]

22 hours ago, caley said:

I still maintain Dana Brooke could have worked out but her NXT stay was way too short. She was a heat magnet with that weird armpit rubbing flex she did and she's obviously ridiculously athletic (that flip thing she does (did?) in her entrance was super impressive). But she was just starting to lean into a muscular heel bully role in NXT and get a little less clumsy in the ring when they nonsensically rushed her to Raw to be Alexa Bliss's muscle. This was set up to fail as Brooke wasn't experienced enough or noteworthy enough to be seen as a big deal. Coupled with the fact that women like Charlotte and Nia Jax dwarfed her which kinda negated the muscle part. I thinking she'd been given another 6 months or so in NXT she might have turned out well. 

Evans is somewhat similar though she had more charisma than Brooke. She was pushed too far, too hard, too fast (Those endless appearances where she strutted to the ring in weird millennial updates of old-fashioned Southern clothing, while they played her annoying theme and Michael Cole repeatedly yelled "THE SASSY SOUTHERN BELLE!" haunt me!). Like when she was shoehorned into that feud with Rollins/Becky by wearing Rollins name on her tights but she had neither the stature not the ability to be at that level. But I still think the natural thing to do was just go "She's a mom, she's a vet, U-S-A! U-S-A!" and the crowd would have cheered and you could have more talented heels look down on her and basically play her as the female John Cena: cheesy but still kind of cheerable.

Dana Brooke was killer as the goofball muscle for Emma. She has some of the best comedic timing. 

Lacey Evans- I'm a little surprised they didn't try for an updated Sgt Slaughter thing. 

[Elsalvajeloco]

It's funny cause once WWF transitioned from Prime Time Wrestling to Raw, there was no real format change on Superstars and Challenge since they were syndicated. But do you call PTW the "A" show? It was basically a digest of the past week and you're getting a lot of re-aired matches (some matches were many months old) and dark matches from various venues. You're getting like pre Brooklyn Brawler Steve Lombardi doing a nine minute nothing match with S.D. Jones. You're getting Rick Rude fresh into WWF versus Scott Casey in like a pseudo tryout match. It's wild.  In 2023, that's a show you stick on YouTube.

[odessasteps]

I'd say Superstars was the A show. Same issue as Worldwide, since many many people didn't have cable in mid to late 80s. 

[Elsalvajeloco]

1 minute ago, odessasteps said:

I'd say Superstars was the A show. Same issue as Worldwide, since many many people didn't have cable in mid to late 80s. 

Thing is when did it stop being the A show? The first several months of Raw is basically Superstars except it's WACKY. You got Kim Chee chasing around Kamala around the Manhattan Center. Hulk Hogan doesn't make an appearance until 2 months in. Superstars has basically the same if not more important stuff happening.

[Hamhock]

5 minutes ago, Elsalvajeloco said:

Thing is when did it stop being the A show? The first several months of Raw is basically Superstars except it's WACKY. You got Kim Chee chasing around Kamala around the Manhattan Center. Hulk Hogan doesn't make an appearance until 2 months in. Superstars has basically the same if not more important stuff happening.

It's a blurry transition, but probably whenever the beginning/payoff of angles would occur on Raw more than on Superstars.

[Zakk_Sabbath]

12 minutes ago, Wyld Samurai said:

Dana Brooke was killer as the goofball muscle for Emma. She has some of the best comedic timing. 

There was also a period (but I cannot for the life of me remember specifically the year) where they had her in this weird group with Akira Tozawa and Titus O'Neil that I kinda liked. They had pretty good on screen chemistry for such an oddball grouping - it reminded me a lot of that Ziggler/Big E/AJ Lee faction that I liked a lot in 2011ish

[Infinit]

32 minutes ago, Wyld Samurai said:

Lacey Evans- I'm a little surprised they didn't try for an updated Sgt Slaughter thing. 

Didn't they try that at some point?

[Stefanie Sparkleface]

28 minutes ago, Elsalvajeloco said:

Thing is when did it stop being the A show? The first several months of Raw is basically Superstars except it's WACKY. You got Kim Chee chasing around Kamala around the Manhattan Center. Hulk Hogan doesn't make an appearance until 2 months in. Superstars has basically the same if not more important stuff happening.

I think you start to see that drift over as a result of two things:

- The elimination of fin-syn rules in 1993, so broadcast networks are allowed to start getting more involved in syndication

- The rise of smaller broadcast networks thanks to the dropping of those fin-syn rules, like the WB and UPN, in 1995

(That also goes without saying that Fox started to rise as a sports power in 1994. If you had a Fox station providing your WWF/WCW syndicated shows, as I did, well... those are out the window.)

Elimination of fin-syn meant the writing was on the wall and WWF (and WCW, for that matter) needed to adjust their programming more towards making the cable shows a bigger deal, so for WWF that meant Raw needed to become the A show over Superstars and WCW needed to make Saturday Night (later Nitro) the A show over Worldwide, then by the time 1995 rolled around the switch had to be complete.

You couldn't completely abandon syndication, there are people who weren't going to get cable or satellite that still relied on their local broadcast networks, which is why the Worldwides and the Shotguns of the world still existed, but by that point they definitely weren't going to be the A show.

[Dewar]

34 minutes ago, Zakk_Sabbath said:

There was also a period (but I cannot for the life of me remember specifically the year) where they had her in this weird group with Akira Tozawa and Titus O'Neil that I kinda liked. They had pretty good on screen chemistry for such an oddball grouping - it reminded me a lot of that Ziggler/Big E/AJ Lee faction that I liked a lot in 2011ish

Titus Worldwide!!!!

[Dewar]

17 minutes ago, Infinit said:

Didn't they try that at some point?

They did. Fake Marine Sarge and his family was very unhappy about it. 

I don't know why, but Evans just could not connect with the crowd. Trying to turn her face was a terrible idea as well. She was never going to be the best worker, but she was passable. 

[Eivion]

2 hours ago, Dolfan in NYC said:

Have they ever addressed this since the pandemic restrictions were lifted?  At this point, it would help so much to not see the same idiots cheering for Chase U any more.  

Not sure how often they happen, but they started doing house shows again a while ago. I wish they would do more episodes outside of the PC. I like it, but like Full Sail its better to see variety in buildings than just one place all the time. 

[AxB]

Sgt. Slaughter refused to pass the torch to Lacey Evans, because he was (and still is) intent on passing it to his actual daughter.

[Eivion]

38 minutes ago, AxB said:

Sgt. Slaughter refused to pass the torch to Lacey Evans, because he was (and still is) intent on passing it to his actual daughter.

Does his daughter wrestle? 

[Cobra Commander]

48 minutes ago, AxB said:

Sgt. Slaughter refused to pass the torch to Lacey Evans, because he was (and still is) intent on passing it to his actual daughter.

can the title of Sgt. Slaughter be passed to a female if there's any male heirs around?

[Robert S]

6 hours ago, Cobra Commander said:

Just imagine the vignettes of Shane playing basketball with at risk youths on the streets of Pittsburgh

Do you mean with guys like

 

[odessasteps]

The humor of Stolen Valor Bob Remus not wanting to pass the gimmick on to an actual Marine. 

[GuerrillaMonsoon]

Bret/Davey Boy/Bruce/Smith vs Yoko/Owen/Headshrinkers probably works at one of the Survivor Series for that time period.

Still want the Jacques Rougeau face turn by finally using the super shockstick on Yokozuna though. That's definitely getting....some sort of reaction from what's left of the crowd six hours into an eight hour Superstars taping

[Elsalvajeloco]

8 minutes ago, odessasteps said:

The humor of Stolen Valor Bob Remus not wanting to pass the gimmick on to an actual Marine. 

Somewhere DeWayne Bruce is withholding the rights to both State Patrol and Sergeant gimmicks. That motherfucker.

[odessasteps]

Just now, Elsalvajeloco said:

Somewhere DeWayne Bruce is withholding the rights to both State Patrol and Sergeant gimmicks. That motherfucker.

At least he didn't withhold the leprechaun gimmick. 

[Cobra Commander]

7 hours ago, Cobra Commander said:

Just imagine the vignettes of Shane playing basketball with at risk youths on the streets of Pittsburgh

path 1 for this gimmick: it's a satire on Bruno that goes over the wrong way

path 2 for this gimmick: "Our makin a difference guy is now a heel"

Path 2 would almost be like if you had a wrestler doing a Blind Side gimmick but had the parents be heels in reaction to recent news

[TheVileOne]

Evans had a good character and was a good heel. I maintain the problem was threefold:

1) They rushed her to the main roster and that whole group of six from NXT when they all could have used a bit more time there.

2) They immediately rushed Evans into main event feuds she wasn't ready and seasoned for when she was clearly limited with what she could do in the ring. Not to mention they had already set up Shayna Baszler as Becky Lynch's opponent but they jettisoned all that in favor of Evans. It was a bad look. Evans was not ready for this spot. 

3) After coming back from her pregnancy they couldn't make up their minds on what they wanted to do with her. First she's on SmackDown, then on Raw, back and forth. After spending months airing vignettes on her new babyface gimmick, tough marine who had a tough background, they have her start acting heel again and trashing the fans. After several roster switches, they finally have her debut over the summer as a babyface. It was sabotage and typical Vince indecisiveness. Then after Vince "retires," she's not one of the girls Triple H wants to push. Vince wanted to push her. By post-WrestleMania Raw, she was curtain-jerking and jobbing in dark matches.

Also, she didn't do herself any favors with her social media posts. But social media is a cultural cancer.

[BobbyWhioux]

3 hours ago, Dewar said:

They did. Fake Marine Sarge and his family was very unhappy about it. 

I don't know why, but Evans just could not connect with the crowd. Trying to turn her face was a terrible idea as well. She was never going to be the best worker, but she was passable. 

the now-erstwhile Lacey Evans has a natural heel charisma.  Which is quite an asset to a wrestler as long as the promoter isn't hell-bent on shoehorning them into a babyfa...

...oh.

[zendragon]

On 8/15/2023 at 5:57 AM, Zakk_Sabbath said:

And THAT is the grating part to me. Scorpions have like, 35 albums, and I'm sure 5-10 of them are pretty good - you can go with something other than Hurricane or No One once in a while.

But hey, that's our friends at iHeart or Clear channel or whatever the fuck it is. It's almost like all of broadcasting being controlled by a handful of the same entities was a poor idea

I think its no coincidence that the rise of Napster coincides with MTV playing less and less music and corporate radio sticking to the same tired format. nature abhors a vacuum and people turned to the internet to find new music

[Cobra Commander]

3 minutes ago, zendragon said:

I think its no coincidence that the rise of Napster coincides with MTV playing less and less music and corporate radio sticking to the same tired format. nature abhors a vacuum and people turned to the internet to find new music

also people turned to the internet to horde the music that they liked that wasn't being played

[elizium]

and CD's were $20-25 each