AUGUST WRESTLING DISCUSSION THREAD

[PuroresuFan]

The Undertaker out of character on Triple H's latest DVD, three seconds in:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08rVRKq7gKY

 

Long time since that happened on a WWF/E DVD release.

 

 

For me, that trailer is like a food challenge on Fear Factor. See if you can make it to the end without puking.

[Dank]

Why so much Terry Taylor?

[Cristobal]

 

 

Now that Martin Stone is working a football hooligan gimmick on NXT, I'd love to see him paired up with Wade Barratt in some form of bruising Brits tagteam.

Wasnt that his gimmick in the UK? When they came to King of Trios, the cartel wore flat caps and came to the ring to Vindaloo.

Sort of, he pretty much always worked as "the Guv'nor" as a London hardman. However on NXT, he went from "here's Danny Burch from the UK" to "here's Danny Burch, West Ham football hooligan. He says a pint and a fight is a good night" so they're pushing that side of his character a bit more.

 

So, a rekindling of the historic alliance between West Ham and Preston North End?

[Matt D]

Why so much Terry Taylor?

 

In some ways, Terry Taylor is the PERFECT guy to talk about HHH.

[nate]

The Undertaker out of character on Triple H's latest DVD, three seconds in:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08rVRKq7gKYLong time since that happened on a WWF/E DVD release.

For me, that trailer is like a food challenge on Fear Factor. See if you can make it to the end without puking.

Do dry heaves count? If so ... didn't.

[Reggie20x6]

I miss Hyatte, since we're talking about writers influencing hacks who cop their style.

 

I still remember that online novel, he hyped for what felt like years, which basically amounted to Scott Keith kidnapping/anal-raping HHH so that Chris Benoit could win the world title.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[cool arrow]

Oh, wonderful.  Now I can't get the picture of Scott Keith buttsexing HHH up out of my head.

 

Thanks so much for that.

[Ace]

Are you not aroused?

[Greggulator]

The amount of Grantland writers who come from prep school/rich kid backgrounds is staggering. Simmons went to a boarding school. The truly awful Katie Baker is landed gentry who worked at Goldman Sachs before she made the "brave" decision to become a sportswriter (and paid zero dues). Jay Caspian Kang's parents were both professors and he's written about how he spent time in Southeast Asia to understand humanity or some such (and I'm sure he paid for it). Chris Ryan did a whole Philly thing about Silver Linings Playbook and talked about the $30,000 a year Quaker school he went to.Also, the amount of dumb writer's photos on that thing is telling. Rembert Browne might be the worst of the lot. His picture says it all -- all style, no substance, nothing real. Same with a whole bunch of others.

 

I also wonder if Michael Weinreb popped champagne the first days the Sandusky scandal broke since he's from State College. How quickly did that dude get on the phone to NPR?There are a few good dudes at that site. I don't want to slag on everyone. Uhm, isn't Barnwell one of us? My online buddy Dave Hill writes about horse writing for them time-to-time and rules. Zach Lowe is the best sportswriter alive today -- he combines basketball statistical analysis and access to teams and players magnificently well and explains it so simply. He's also legitimately funny and not "REMEMBER ALF!" funny.

[odessasteps]

Id say Keri and Phillips are the two best regular writers on there, with Charley Pierce only a guest star.

The only ithing i could not do without is the men in blazers podcast.

[Reggie20x6]

Oh, wonderful.  Now I can't get the picture of Scott Keith buttsexing HHH up out of my head.

 

Thanks so much for that.

 

BUT IT WAS FOR BENOIT!!!

 

Poor HHH.

 

I'm pretty sure the story ends with HHH making it back to RAW in the nick of time to Pedigree Benoit, and Keith shoots himself. Don't quote me on that - I only read it once.

 

And that was one time too many.

[jstout]

I love Zach Lowe's stuff. I think Rembert Browne's turned a corner with that "Rembert Explains America" series - it's not all been good, but some of it's been fantastic. I really enjoy odd things from time to time, like the profile of a rapper I've never heard of before, Action Bronson. Hey, it's free reading on the Internet - my expectations are low, so they're met. And I may be the only human on earth who likes Bill Simmons.

[cool arrow]

Are you not aroused?

I'm only human.

 

Say, is that Bryan's dog?

[Niners Fan in CT]

I still like Simmons and I still read certain articles on Grantland but the amount of douchebags on the site is something else. I don't mind Chris Ryan discussing Breaking Bad but when he starts in with A$AP Ferg's "Trap Lord" it's like alright this guy is clearly trying way too hard to be cool.

[RazorbladeKiss87]

IIRC, i think i wrote a political science paper as an undergrad about how wrestling villains reflect the cultural zeitgeist of the era (nazis, russians, arabs, etc).I also got to the Bowling Green popular culture department the year after Ted Hobgood was there, who did a bunch of academic writing on wrestling.

Not to hijack the thread but were you a student at BGSU or a teacher?

[RonL21]

I remember reading in the old Raw Magazine that Jim Cornette was the person came up with the idea for the Hell in a Cell match.  Then I got to wondering, who is the legit mastermind behind other matches.  Jericho is given kayfabe credit for MITB, but who really came up with it? Bischoff "created" the Elimination Chamber, but who's idea was it really?

[Ace]

I remember reading in the old Raw Magazine that Jim Cornette was the person came up with the idea for the Hell in a Cell match.  Then I got to wondering, who is the legit mastermind behind other matches.  Jericho is given kayfabe credit for MITB, but who really came up with it? Bischoff "created" the Elimination Chamber, but who's idea was it really?

 

Chamber was based off of Trips wanting to do WarGames, according to Jericho.

[bink_winkleman]

So I'm going to defend The Masked Man. 

 

Curious though, are there any lib arts/humanities/social science academics or folks with that graduate academic background on the thread other than myself?  I'm assuming there are?

 

Because in relation to academe, you'll be hard pressed to find someone that hates shit like this in the social sciences more than me.  But, having been around people putting theses together over, say, Project Runway and seeing the absurd content of those documents, I don't get the impression that The Masked Man is trying to do anything like that.  His columns, like the rest of Grantland, do come off a bit too pseudo-New Yorker, but they remind me more of the kind of conversation you'd have in a grad seminar on pop culture, or at the bar afterward.  And as someone who enjoys that type of casual interaction, I actually enjoy this style of writing.  It's conversational, it's light hearted, and it's fun.  "Post-modern chair shot" is a ridiculous thing to say, but hearing something like that in relation to wrestling makes me laugh and I appreciate the effort.  His CM Punk fandom is another thing that I like about his writing and about Grantland in general - there's plenty of fanboys there.  Be it Simmons and Boston, Rembrendt and the Falcons, or Shoemaker and Punk.  It adds to the site and gives it that vibe of a bunch of friends overthinking their hobbies with you. 

 

I do agree with some of the other criticism leveraged at the site - it's got some really annoying cats up in there, and the way that the whole thing is subsidized by ESPN to give them some long form cred is kind of terrible.  But I think the Masked Man catches way too much shit on these boards.  And as for Dead Wrestler of the Week, it's bar none the best wrestling column on the Internet.  You can tell that Shoemaker does love pro wrestling and is a huge nerd for the business.  That's the reason that so many casual fans follow his work. 

 

As for Deadspin in general, talk about Simmons and his ilk all you want, at least they're trying, unlike Drew Magary.  What a one trick pony annoying motherfucker that dude is.  Give me nerdy dudes using big words they don't quite understand over some obnoxious slob showing off how creative he is at cussing.

[Stuttsy]

I remember reading in the old Raw Magazine that Jim Cornette was the person came up with the idea for the Hell in a Cell match.  Then I got to wondering, who is the legit mastermind behind other matches.  Jericho is given kayfabe credit for MITB, but who really came up with it? Bischoff "created" the Elimination Chamber, but who's idea was it really?

 

Supposedly Brian Gerwitz & Jericho came up with the Money in the Bank. The original concept was the "Hollywood Dream Match" (since that was 'Mania 21, the year they were in LA and did all the parody movie trailers) and the winner would get one "wish" granted by the benevolent Mr. McMahon. The original concept was Van Dam would win the first one and his "wish" would be the first One Night Stand. Van Dam gets hurt right around Royal Rumble so plans change and the end result is the Money in the Bank ladder match.

 

Also the Punjabi Prison was originally supposed to be more of a "Cell" design and not the bamboo cage until Vince and Kevin Dunn got hold of it.

 

 

Court Bauer on the creation of the Punjabi Prison Match:

I thought it’d be kind of interesting to introduce a death match with the exploding ring, and try to do it in an arena where you could deal with the explosions and the pyro and all this stuff. I was thinking WrestleMania 2007, knowing that we were going to be in Detroit, would be big enough to handle it. Of course, when you think that long term in wrestling, it always gets sped up, and before you knew it we were talking about doing it at the Great American Bash. I think it was late Spring, Vince signs off; we’re gonna do the first ever exploding death match in WWE history.

He (Kevin Dunn) was going to be taking care of the concept of the exploding death match, and taking care of the logistics. I said, “I can help, I can get you in touch with people over in Japan that were involved with this. Even Terry Funk can explain it fully, explain what goes into this, and try to make this as safe as possible but also succeed so it’s not a bust,” and I never heard anything from them.

A few weeks pass, and we finally get the mock-up artwork for the exploding death match, and instead of it being anything like what we had laid out, or what I had pitched, it is what would become known as the Punjabi Prison match. It was bamboo; it looked like bamboo furniture gone awry, and made into a prison. We’re just looking at this, and we’re baffled. I mean like, my heart sunk; this to me was going to be a big thing, I was really excited as a fan, and in terms of my career I thought I was going to introduce something to WWE that could be really cool. And if it was bad, it would be memorably bad.

This had none of my DNA on it. It didn’t have anything I pitched. There was nothing exploding, it was just bamboo. There was even, at one point, leaves and stuff. It looked like a playground or something. I asked Steph (McMahon), “Is it okay if I give some feedback” and they said, “Well, um, Kevin’s already built it.”

[nate]

Are you not aroused?

I'm only human.

Say, is that Bryan's dog?

No, that's Bella.

[Curt McGirt]

That comment from Nash in the trailer is hilarious. JR being the A #1 shill is pretty puke inducing though.

[prboyle]

So I'm going to defend The Masked Man. 

 

Curious though, are there any lib arts/humanities/social science academics or folks with that graduate academic background on the thread other than myself?  I'm assuming there are?

 

Because in relation to academe, you'll be hard pressed to find someone that hates shit like this in the social sciences more than me.  But, having been around people putting theses together over, say, Project Runway and seeing the absurd content of those documents, I don't get the impression that The Masked Man is trying to do anything like that.  His columns, like the rest of Grantland, do come off a bit too pseudo-New Yorker, but they remind me more of the kind of conversation you'd have in a grad seminar on pop culture, or at the bar afterward.  And as someone who enjoys that type of casual interaction, I actually enjoy this style of writing.  It's conversational, it's light hearted, and it's fun.  "Post-modern chair shot" is a ridiculous thing to say, but hearing something like that in relation to wrestling makes me laugh and I appreciate the effort.  His CM Punk fandom is another thing that I like about his writing and about Grantland in general - there's plenty of fanboys there.  Be it Simmons and Boston, Rembrendt and the Falcons, or Shoemaker and Punk.  It adds to the site and gives it that vibe of a bunch of a bunch of friends overthinking their hobbies with you. 

 

I do agree with some of the other criticism leveraged at the site - it's got some really annoying cats up in there, and the way that the whole thing is subsidized by ESPN to give them some long form cred is kind of terrible.  But I think the Masked Man catches way too much shit on these boards.  And as for Dead Wrestler of the Week, it's bar none the best wrestling column on the Internet.  You can tell that Shoemaker does love pro wrestling and is a huge nerd for the business.  That's the reason that so many casual fans follow his work. 

 

As for Deadspin in general, talk about Simmons and his ilk all you want, at least they're trying, unlike Drew Magary.  What a one trick pony annoying motherfucker that dude is.  Give me nerdy dudes using big words they don't quite understand over some obnoxious slob showing off how creative he is at cussing.

 

I think it is the "fanboy" sensibility that irritates me the most. Heather Levi could probably show you an incredible mask collection in her apartment (or house), but you wont find any "OMG Atlantis rules" nerdom in her writing on Lucha Libre. There are other ways to show enthusiasm and passion towards a subject. I rather have someone take pop culture too seriously than to exhibit the "look how educated I am, but I keep it real through liking working-class entertainment" sentiments of Grantland.

[Overly Critical Man]

Man, fuck an exploding death match. The Punjabi Prison rules.

[nate]

I had a moment teaching last night, where I referred to professional wrestling - the R Truth "Fa-gs are evil" incident - in a lecture point about culture norms. Most every student was like, "Wrestling?" akin to how AJ Styles recoils, "The gay community?!??!" And I just emphatically clarified, "Professional wrestling, yes, 'wrestling?'" Dunno if that was "wrestling is stupid" or "you're a professor and you watch wrestling ... pretty cool."

[Victator]

 

Are you not aroused?

I'm only human.

 

Say, is that Bryan's dog?

 

That Boston Terrier is fucking adorable. 

Now generating real tears thinking of dead dog