I Haven't Watched Wrestling in Over Ten Years

[Mistah Na1m4rk]

Tell me why I should bother to watch anything new when I was driven away from the modern product by its "sports entertainment" emphasis some time ago.  I'll occasionally linger on a WWE broadcast for a few minutes but I'm inevitably insulted by something before long, and of course I don't recognize much of anybody.  

 

I have endless access to the wonders of YouTube and its archive of vintage material from the pre-sports entertainment era.  I've seen more of Bob Backlund, Adrian Adonis, Buddy Rose, Rick Rude, Steve Williams, and Harley Race than I ever thought I could, and there's plenty more left to dig up.  Tell me why I should bother following anything contemporary in our modern era of sniggering at kayfabe.

[The Natural]

WWE's 2013 and so far 2014 are two of the best in the history of the company. You can't go wrong with them. For 2013: Daniel Bryan and The Shield. For 2014: Daniel Bryan, The Shield and The Wyatt Family.

[Playa Shunna Ver 3.0]

There is this guy.....Davey Richards....

[odessasteps]

Well, bell to bell, there is lots of quality to see.

Btw, on this week's podcast, cornette has a lengthy discussion about pro wrestling vs sports entertainment abd the definitions of each.

[Mistah Na1m4rk]

"The Shield" I know are the guys who wrestle in body armor.  That seems less justifiable than allowing a mental patient to wrestle.

[The Natural]

There is this guy.....Davey Richards....

 

Haw Haw. As is tradition:

 

[The Nature Boy]

"The Shield" I know are the guys who wrestle in body armor.  That seems less justifiable than allowing a mental patient to wrestle.

 

Was this guy implausible to you?

 

 

[BillThompson]

"The Shield" I know are the guys who wrestle in body armor.  That seems less justifiable than allowing a mental patient to wrestle.

 

Kind of like allowing a guy to wrestle with a taped fist, or a loaded glove, and so on and so forth?

[Playa Shunna Ver 3.0]

I'm much more offended by a guy wearing jean shorts while wrestling than guys wearing riot gear.

[offspring515]

I'd say don't bother. If you're "insulted" while channel surfing it's probably not your thing. Nothing worse than being someone who watches it but hates it. Then we'd have to pack you into a big crate that says "ship to Wrestling Classics" on the side.

[cool arrow]

A fate worse than death!

[Fat Spanish Waiter]

If you decided pro wres is beneath you once, nothing has changed and its not for you.

[The Man Known as Dan]

Watch SHIELD/Wyatts from Elimination Chamber. If you don't like it, you shouldn't watch wrestling.

[scraylo187]

I'll put together a Rellik comp for you. 

 

Honestly, not sure what the point of this thread is. If you're still a guy that goes 'Sports Entertainment ain't rasslin!' and does crotch chops at 'that PG crap!' than what do you want, exactly? You said yourself you've got youtube. Go do your homework. 

[RandomAct]

I'd say don't bother. If you're "insulted" while channel surfing it's probably not your thing. Nothing worse than being someone who watches it but hates it. Then we'd have to pack you into a big crate that says "ship to Wrestling Classics" on the side.

This is the answer to this thread.  I'm not quite in the position of the original poster, but I'm someone who has no desire to watch anything current.  Instead of watching it and complaining, I just don't watch it.  I don't understand why wrestling fans do this to themselves.  If you don't like any other TV show, you stop watching.

[Greggulator]

Tell me why I should bother to watch anything new when I was driven away from the modern product by its "sports entertainment" emphasis some time ago.  I'll occasionally linger on a WWE broadcast for a few minutes but I'm inevitably insulted by something before long, and of course I don't recognize much of anybody.  

 

I have endless access to the wonders of YouTube and its archive of vintage material from the pre-sports entertainment era.  I've seen more of Bob Backlund, Adrian Adonis, Buddy Rose, Rick Rude, Steve Williams, and Harley Race than I ever thought I could, and there's plenty more left to dig up.  Tell me why I should bother following anything contemporary in our modern era of sniggering at kayfabe.

 

1) The in-ring quality from the past two years has been absolutely fantastic. You can probably start off at Summerslam 2013, which is when the big arching story we're in now started. That's when Daniel Bryan defeated John Cena, which led to HHH costing him the belt via the Money In The Bank Briefcase deus-ex-machina and giving it to Randy Orton.

 

If you can focus out the noise of the news sites and rumblings and other such, then you'll see a ridiculously well-done, intricately told story that took several months from start-to-finish. And along the way there are a ton of amazing moments and matches. The Rhodes Brothers stuff is right up your alley in terms of an angle, if you like 80s type of stuff. It was a great angle that had two really high-end matches.

2) There has been a terrific paradigm shift over that time period where a lot of new characters have debuted and really made their claim. The Shield came in before SummerSlam but cemented themselves as The Authority's henchmen afterwards. Roman Reigns became the next big thing and an awesome power guy. Eventually, personal jealousies among The Shield threatened to tear them apart. But that led to each member really developing their personalities. Thankfully, they stayed together and just cemented an awesome face turn a few months in the making.

3) The best new characters are The Wyatt Family. They're a backwoods religious cult come to see the world burn. Their leader is Bray Wyatt, the real life son of Mike Rotunda. There are very few people who have absolutely nailed a character as well as he has right from the bat. He's the best mic worker in the company. If you follow baseball, someone on here hailed him as the Mike Trout of wrestling. If that doesn't do a thing for you, think of it as this -- he's 26-years-old and already a fantastic promo and character. He has "next Jake The Snake" or "Undertaker" potential. He also looks like someone you'd see back in the day, as he's not some bodybuilder -- he's a short-ish fat dude. But he can really work and has been in some fantastic matches. His match against Daniel Bryan is one of the five best matches of the year.

What's even crazier, he might not even be the best wrestler in his stable. His minion Luke Harper is a ridiculously talented monster big man who plays the hypnotized follower to perfection. Their other wrestler, Erik Rowan, started off pretty green and is now another legitimately great monster who has the added benefit of wearing this creepy sheep mask.

A lot of smarks were pissed about the Bryan/Bray feud, because it took Bryan away from the title chase and he was being "buried" or what have you. If you can ignore that (and, really, everyone should) then you'll see it as a great diversion angle during Bryan's quest. Along the way, Bryan joined the Wyatt Family in the wrestling equivalent of the end of The Empire Strikes Back before revealing it was a plot to get Bray one-on-one that ended in the biggest pop in a decade. It was a fantastic, all-time great moment.

4) The Shield and The Wyatt Family teased a rivalry in the fall that had everyone bugging out. Things finally happened between the two stables starting in the winter, when The Wyatts attacked John Cena (Bray's opponent at WM) but cost The Shield a chance to win the World Title at The Elimination Chamber. Their feud was just super simple stuff -- both stables cutting promos on each other (Dean Ambrose in The Shield is so friggin' awesome and his partners in Roman and Seth Rollins have become great, too) and having stand-offs. But the charisma and fantastic characters involved made this the best feud of the decade.

Their first match was at the Elimination Chamber PPV and is an all-time classic match. Legitimately, if you don't like that match then there's nothing that can be done for you. It's a lot of people's Match Of The Decade. They had a rematch on Raw two weeks later that was nearly as great. And their third rematch was on WWE Main Event this week and was also fantastic. All three matches are completely different from each other, too.

The WWE has really become a great place for tag team and six-man wrestling. It's so much like the NWA in that way.

5) Another amazing young star is Cesaro. Cesaro is just a ridiculously talented strength-based wrestler. His feats of strength are just unreal. He's also been in a ton of fantastic, amazing matches. He's a total throwback to guys from back in the day. He's had five matches within the past calendar year -- Two on NXT vs. Sami Zayn, one on NXT against Steven Regal, one against John Cena on Raw and one against Randy Orton on Smackdown -- that are fantastic.

6) What's NXT, you ask? It's the WWE's minor league. It's a total throwback to old syndicated wrestling shows. Their one hour long and filled with some really fun characters and some very good matches. Most of the performers aren't as polished as their big show counterparts but are fantastic.

7) The Usos are the next great Samoans, which any old wrestling fan should love. They're the best tag team in the league right now, in a world that includes The Shield and The Wyatts and a bunch of other fun pairings. They're somehow both really strong and can also fly. They also have a ridiculously great entrance and produce non-stop quality matches.

8) Paul Heyman is an amazing manager.

I know I'm probably forgetting a ton. But I think the WWE has been better than it ever has been right now.

[jaedmc]

It's the internet age which means it's the age of cherry picking. No need to sit through 3 hours of Raw anymore. Just youtube the matches, and angles where something awesome happened(Bryan turning on Wyatt, Shield/Wyatt standoff). Then I'll watch the PPVs because the match to shit ratio is better. 

 

Basically the WWE provides something like 10 hours of content a week. You can use youtube and playlist one really good 2 hour show out of it that would be worth your time. There'e so much content you can pretty much create your own WWE out of it to fit your needs.

[The Natural]

Great post Greggulator.

[Ramsey]

Great post Greggulator.

Agreed.

 

I too was driven away YEARS ago by the sheer dopeyness of it all. My interest was piqued again by a certain pipe bomb in 2011 but 2013 brought me back to the fold full time. The next 10 years of the WWE could be fucking amazing wrestling...like "next golden era" good.

[scraylo187]

Gregg you are a much nicer person than me.

[RandomAct]

In a clear sign tha the business has passed me by, I found Wyatts/Shield to be fun, but didn't really see where the "all time classic" talk was coming from.  It's that moment that I realized that much of how one rates a WWE match usually hinges on how much you care or invest in the angles and characters.  If you aren't invested, you won't get nearly as much out of these matches as others.  I watched none of the build to that match, and really only like 3 of the people in it.  By the time I got around to the match, by no means did I dislike it, I just didn't rate it nearly as high as anyone else.  I had the same problem with Taker/HBK at Mania 25.

[Greggulator]

Also, the Network and other stuff also adds all of these awesome bells-and-whistles to the content. All of the Michael Cole fireside chats and the Raw Backstage stuff really adds so much to the content. Like Paige crying backstage as all the other divas hug her after she won the title and The Shield's awesome "Triple Double" argument when Renee interviewed them at WrestleMania are so great. And then there's stuff like the JBL and Cole Show, too.

They've really figured out a perfect way to boost the regular programming with extra stuff.

The Network is a total game changer. I was talking with someone who doesn't know a thing about wrestling but is a total media nerd. I told him about all of the programming -- every PPV ever, new PPVs, other shows -- and his mind was blown. No one has ever controlled both the content and distribution of a product like this before. And at the same time, they have a live TV product as a sort of loss leader (although it might end up getting hundreds of millions in a contract).

It's seriously just an amazing time to be a wrestling fan. There's so much awesome talent anchored by a crop of young guys who are just tremendous.

[drshowtime]

Has it not always been like that though?

 

There are a ton of matches that aren't one of the best ever in isolation, but adding the surrounding story and characters that led to the match it all enhances it.

[Greggulator]

In a clear sign tha the business has passed me by, I found Wyatts/Shield to be fun, but didn't really see where the "all time classic" talk was coming from.  It's that moment that I realized that much of how one rates a WWE match usually hinges on how much you care or invest in the angles and characters.  If you aren't invested, you won't get nearly as much out of these matches as others.  I watched none of the build to that match, and really only like 3 of the people in it.  By the time I got around to the match, by no means did I dislike it, I just didn't rate it nearly as high as anyone else.  I had the same problem with Taker/HBK at Mania 25.

Knowing the characters and the like really does help in that match. I thought it was a really great Three Act Play as a wrestling match. The first part ended as a draw between both teams, with everyone showing their stuff perfectly. The second act saw the violence heightened (started by Seth Rollins, the "architect" of The Shield who knows what has to get done to win matches) and end with a really great table spot. The third act was Roman Reigns, who set the record for most eliminations at The Royal Rumble and took our four dudes at Survivor Series and has been pinned only once in his career, finally succumb to the odds of a more powerful entity.

If you watch that match in a vacuum it's not like WOAH! But we don't really live in those days any more. I used to love a Rey vs. Dean match on Nitro or something like that where they had these awesome matches just to have them but without a lot of purpose. Or I used to watch some random Japan stuff without knowing any of the backstory. But that stuff now -- it's still great and fun but there's a way to have awesome stories AND awesome matches. But knowing the story is pretty key to enjoying the match.

I think the announcers can do a better job filling in those dots to explain things away. I don't hate the announce team nearly as much as everyone else (aside from Jerry Lawler, who is beyond useless) but they need to tell the stories in a better fashion to explain what's going on to newer fans.

 

[Greggulator]

Has it not always been like that though?

 

There are a ton of matches that aren't one of the best ever in isolation, but adding the surrounding story and characters that led to the match it all enhances it.

I think Eddy/Art Barr vs. Santo/Octagon would be perfectly fine in isolation. But if you understand the backstory -- Eddy and Santo's father, Art Barr being a scumbag, etc. -- then it all of a sudden becomes arguably the greatest match of all-time