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JANUARY 2016 WRESTLING DISCUSSION


RIPPA

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I'm definitely not hating on Malenko or trying to say that he wrestled "the wrong way." As I said, he was crucial in differentiating Nitro from RAW. 

 

I just think that in retrospect, his work isn't as fun to watch because now everyone in the WWE wrestles that sort of spot-heavy go-go-go type of match. I do enjoy Malenko on my re-watch of Nitro, but certainly not as much as I did in 1995-1997, and that's almost certainly because in a broad sense his style is over-saturated now. Not really his fault. 

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I don't know that he was in my top 5, but I thought pretty highly of Dean and recall telling someone that he'd be one of my top five picks to build a promotion around back in 1997-1998, the others would have been Hennig, Benoit, La Parka, & Eddie. So, of your top two faces, one doesn't speak English and the other isn't exactly great on the stick. With Eddie and Hennig to run their mouths and Dean as the enigmatic tweener, you'd still be off to a solid start. You could roll out any five bums in there and still get nothing worse than *** matches. If your doubling up the workload to get some tag matches, you can really elevate things, as there are no combinations of these guys that wouldn't make a great tag-team.

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Do people who think Dean's stuff hasn't aged well feel the same way about Rey? I think both of their work from the mid to late 90s has aged fine. For Dean, a lot of his movez were working a body part in an interesting way or crazy pinning combos (fitting that Bryan liked him so much) so his matches usually had some story and focus on trying to win. Plus he was good at being subtly cocky as a heel and fired up as a face so he usually had a good character touch in his matches as well. Rey would be more likely to suffer from everyone copying his style, but in addition to his size and natural babyface aura giving all his matches an easy story to build around, he still did moves back then that you don't see people doing today (or at least not as well).

 

Also, it should be mentioned that the overkill style in the mid-late 90s was different than what you see in WWE today. It still benefited from the idea that guys could have multiple finishers and matches could end on other big non-fisher moves, as well as the idea that a match didn't have to be long to be good. It was fast-paced and had a lot of nearfalls, but very little if any time-padding and finisher kickouts (unless you're talking about AJPW) that make the style a drag today.

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Plus, most of Dean and Rey's best work were in 10 minute TV matches instead of 20 minute PPV matches with 8 minutes of filler. MOVEZ dudes and wacky junior/lucha style is a lot easier to enjoy when they're in short TV matches instead of long PPV matches that go nowhere.

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I'd like to point out that the "cheap seats" at NXT shows are priced higher than those of Raw or Smackdown. For general admission, standing only seats. Quite a racket you got going there, HHH.

And a burger at a high-end steakhouse will cost you more than a steak at Denny's. This does not seem unreasonable to me.

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Something to remember is that Bischoff hired Malenko/Benoit/Eddy/other cruisers to be his "human car crash segment" - it was intended for the cruisers to fly all around and do crazy shit and tons of moves in order to keep the audience's interest compared to the much slower heavyweights dominating the program.

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I'd like to point out that the "cheap seats" at NXT shows are priced higher than those of Raw or Smackdown. For general admission, standing only seats. Quite a racket you got going there, HHH.

And a burger at a high-end steakhouse will cost you more than a steak at Denny's. This does not seem unreasonable to me.

 

Those high end entrees like Blake and Murphy, Bull Dempsy, Elias Sampson, Alex Riley, Mojo, etc etc. A NXT house show should not be priced higher than Raw and Smackdown TV events.

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I'm just really fearful that with Brock wrestling Alberto a month ago and Rusev running in then, and wrestling Sheamus last night, that they're entertaining ideas of bringing back Brock for a feud with League of Nations.

 

Because that would just be a waste of Brock I think, even if it's a monthlong placeholder for the PPV between Rumble and Mania.

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