APRIL 2018 WRESTLING DISCUSSION

[Hagan]

All good points about Cornette - I guess, just hearing how vehement he is about, shall we say, what he sees as outdated Southern politics and knowing that he did angles that were race-based, that were based on the Confederate flag (including promoting babyfaces who supported the flag) and that were based on inflaming prejudices of the fanbase, I just see it as kind of sleazy and carny if he felt that way back then but just wanted to make money out of riling up people he saw as backwards and ignorant. 

I know that's what wrestling is and certainly Cornette of 1993 may not have the same political beliefs of the Cornette of 2018 but it's kind of amazing that he laughs off stories of like the Klan coming up to him and saying that if Tracy doesn't take care of DWB for disrespecting the Southern flag or passing off Tammy as a HRC-loving liberal because that will rile up the rednecks. Even back then, those things reinforced and codified very negative and dangerous discourses about culture and politics in our society. 

And I know that he both plays heel on his podcast and is kind of a real-life asshole anyway but sometimes the derision he speaks about the people that bought tickets to see him over the years is a little oft-putting.

I'm probably making much ado about nothing and SMW was great and remains great on rewatch but the dissonance kind of struck me . 

[Hagan]

Stupid double-post.

Anyway...been on a much needed wrestling catch-up and digging into the 16 Carat tournament. Quality stuff. 

[odessasteps]

It's interesting the Tammy/Tony Atlas idea ended up getting done later with Ron Simmons. 

[Victator]

19 minutes ago, Hagan said:

All good points about Cornette - I guess, just hearing how vehement he is about, shall we say, what he sees as outdated Southern politics and knowing that he did angles that were race-based, that were based on the Confederate flag (including promoting babyfaces who supported the flag) and that were based on inflaming prejudices of the fanbase, I just see it as kind of sleazy and carny if he felt that way back then but just wanted to make money out of riling up people he saw as backwards and ignorant. 

I know that's what wrestling is and certainly Cornette of 1993 may not have the same political beliefs of the Cornette of 2018 but it's kind of amazing that he laughs off stories of like the Klan coming up to him and saying that if Tracy doesn't take care of DWB for disrespecting the Southern flag or passing off Tammy as a HRC-loving liberal because that will rile up the rednecks. Even back then, those things reinforced and codified very negative and dangerous discourses about culture and politics in our society. 

And I know that he both plays heel on his podcast and is kind of a real-life asshole anyway but sometimes the derision he speaks about the people that bought tickets to see him over the years is a little oft-putting.

I'm probably making much ado about nothing and SMW was great and remains great on rewatch but the dissonance kind of struck me . 

This is not popular and please keep in mind I have no use for the flag. But in that era the Confederate Flag was treated a bit differently than now. It had not been fully co opted by Neo Nazis and their ilk. We were not too far removed from the Dukes Of Hazzard being on TV and was still in reruns. It was easy creative short hand for a hillbilly or redneck, a good old boy, a racist and sometimes all four. Tracy Smothers character was more Dukes Of Hazzard and less David Duke. 

I will say I think the Tracy/DWB feud did feel a bit pandering to the audience at the time. But all the performers were great and the booking was sound so it does not hurt the TV. 

I watched a lot of the Gangstas stuff and I thought the promos from everyone was nuanced. More so than it had any right to be. 

[Jenalysis]

Attitudes were very different in the early 90s than today.   I also suspect Cornette might have changed in his beliefs a good bit- I want to believe that, and I believe in giving people benefit of the doubt if it's realistic- and it is.

 

I'd love to see Cornette back it up by stumping for some Dems on the campaign trail in the Smoky Mountain/JCP areas this year.

 

[Archibald]

5 hours ago, Victator said:

Pro Wrestling to work properly and time has proven this. The promotions and performers need to treat it as real. If the fans see this, they are willing to play along and invest. This creates an emotional atmosphere which makes the shows better.

I haven't listened that much to Cornette, but from what I heard I was always a bit confused on what he actually thinks about that. On some videos he basically said same thing as you did, but then in others he complains about people exposing the business and how people loved wrestling because they thought it was real. Add to that his various thoughts about fans that bought tickets back then and it doesn't really form a consistent picture for me.

[BurningBeard]

8 hours ago, Zakk_Sabbath said:

I've been getting kind of bummed out with the (pretty warranted) negativity lately with the Saudi thing and then the moolah thing before that etc

It just seems to be the way of the world these days, well in the narrow minded social media driven world at least, whereby anything you do can be spun negatively in some way shape or form while any positives are ignored

[ChesterCopperpot]

So Val Venis is ............. "something" these days

 

[EVA]

Hold on, I've got something for this...

[BurningBeard]

Bet you any money he's a flat-earth er too

[Log]

He’s wearing a hat advertising a vape company. That’s all I need to see to know he’s gone off the rails. 

[nofuture]

He lists his occupation as a "budtendor".

[John from Cincinnati]

HELLO LADIES 

[Dolfan in NYC]

2 hours ago, Log said:

He’s wearing a hat advertising a vape company. That’s all I need to see to know he’s gone off the rails. 

In 2018?   Nah, Val Venis could be about to make enough money doing things legally that he'll return to WWE as the New Million Dollar Man. 

[nate]

3 hours ago, ChesterCopperpot said:

So Val Venis is ............. "something" these days

 

Disappointed that the response to this was not to choppy-choppy his peepee.

[caley]

4 hours ago, nofuture said:

He lists his occupation as a "budtendor".

That man loves his weed...came out for a Local. show opposite an evil foreign heel draped in a Canada flag with a marijuana leaf. Then went on this great, bizarre promo after the match about believing in yourself and Val Venis' secrets of success. 

[Victator]

10 hours ago, Archibald said:

I haven't listened that much to Cornette, but from what I heard I was always a bit confused on what he actually thinks about that. On some videos he basically said same thing as you did, but then in others he complains about people exposing the business and how people loved wrestling because they thought it was real. Add to that his various thoughts about fans that bought tickets back then and it doesn't really form a consistent picture for me.

Some of this is because of the mercurial nature of wrestling. It can't be put in a neat box. 

My time is a bit after Cornette, but I lived in the same region with wrestling fans of varying generations. A lot of people would not tell you everything was real. But at the same time, you did not want to have an outsider tell you it wasn't. Cornette described how people would say "I know some of this is phony, but those guys are mad for real." 

So to me it was a game of percentages for fans. You never quite know what was real and what was not. Which guys hated each other for real. I might not be making any sense here. I'm trying. 

Basically even if you disliked being around those fans, you know they are vital to the art form. 

[Nice Guy Eddie]

Please Quack. Give us Val Venis, Rob Van Dam, and Matt Sydal for King of Trios.

[OSJ]

58 minutes ago, Victator said:

Some of this is because of the mercurial nature of wrestling. It can't be put in a neat box. 

My time is a bit after Cornette, but I lived in the same region with wrestling fans of varying generations. A lot of people would not tell you everything was real. But at the same time, you did not want to have an outsider tell you it wasn't. Cornette described how people would say "I know some of this is phony, but those guys are mad for real." 

So to me it was a game of percentages for fans. You never quite know what was real and what was not. Which guys hated each other for real. I might not be making any sense here. I'm trying. 

Basically even if you disliked being around those fans, you know they are vital to the art form. 

To put this in perspective, it was very common wisdom for the generation that preceded mine to say "Of course, wrestling is fake, but sometimes a guy hits another too hard for real and it turns into a real fight, you just have to watch for stuff like that." Now that's coming from my much older cousins, my uncle (dad's older brother, born circa 1912), and so on. Now these folks weren't uneducated, toothless hillbillies, they were smalltown USA firefighters, ex-lumberjacks, grocery store owners (back when the corner grocery store was still a viable thing), in short, pretty typical slice of the lower middle-class. 

So this type of attitude lasted well into the 1970s and was as far as I can tell, pretty universal as most of my big-city friends would echo the mantra of "Yeah, it's fake, but sometimes it gets real!" It really took the 1980s and the ridiculous excesses of the likes of Hogan and company to finally put this kind of thinking into a casket, that it survived in territories like Smokey Mountain isn't a big surprise, SMW under Cornette's leadership was absolutely great at pushing all the right buttons. Doing stuff like having Kevin Sullivan gash open whitebread hero Brian Lee was brilliant, having two black guys come out and revile the crowd as only New Jack can do wasn't just gutsy, it was brilliant. People would travel from town to town hoping to see the Gangstas defeated. It was never so much about race as it was North vs. South. Andy Kauffman had shown how to mine that mindset and Cornette doesn't miss much when he's studying what works as a heat generator. As was said earlier., back then the stars & bars was a lot more Dukes of Hazzard then it was a symbol of oppression, times have changed and that hateful symbol has been relegated to the scrap heap where it rightfully belongs, but back then it meant no more than pride in one's Southern heritage and something for the local babyface to drape himself in. I think that the first time it was actually a heelish symbol was when the Freebirds entered waving the flag in Texas prior to a match against the Von Erichs. I'd have to check the timeline, but Dick Slater as "The Rebel" was actually supposed to be a face in WWF, (yeah, like a guy with a thick Southern accent waving the stars & bars is going to appeal to fans in New England, yeah, that was a big "whoops" for ol' VKM, poor Slater had as much chance of getting over in that territory with that gimmick as a guy dressed in orange and displaying the red hand of Ulster would coming out to "God Save the Queen" in Dublin.) Anyway, as usual, I digress... Maybe I should start a podcast...

[quackhell]

I think having the belief that the fans are willingly part of the fiction and behave accordingly to varying degrees is fine. However my problem is the mentality that you are actively trying to fool and hoodwink the fans. To work them at every opportunity. To go so far as to have to win a bar fight or get fined by Bill Watts because the bizness lost. To kayfabe friends and family. That fear that if anyone got smartened up that wrestling would be dead instantly. To me killing the old idea of carny kayfabe and the con has opened up the art form tremendously. You should be able to watch and enjoy a "realistic" southern punch and kick brawl, a BattleArts style match, world of sport, lucha, strong style, comedy, Joey Ryan dick flip, Young Bucks nod and wink superkick party, Chikara wackiness etc etc. The variety and the chance to pick and choose is great. Treating it as an art and not a con opens it up to new avenues and interpretations and genres. Seeing old school guys resisting this at every turn is understandable I guess, but frustrating. 

[SirSmUgly]

I just heard Shinsuke Nakamura's remixed theme and that shit goes hard. It's so good. 

[Victator]

9 minutes ago, Smelly McUgly said:

I just heard Shinsuke Nakamura's remixed theme and that shit goes hard. It's so good. 

It is my favorite thing in the world right now. 

 

 

2 hours ago, OSJ said:

It really took the 1980s and the ridiculous excesses of the likes of Hogan and company to finally put this kind of thinking into a casket

I can tell you from my own perspective growing up people were not fully sure.  Because you would get guys like Piper and you never really know where reality began and ended. Hell go watch the boxing match with Mr.T. I am convinced Piper was trying to blow T up and embarrass him.

 

 

1 hour ago, quackhell said:

However my problem is the mentality that you are actively trying to fool and hoodwink the fans. To work them at every opportunity. To go so far as to have to win a bar fight or get fined by Bill Watts because the bizness lost. To kayfabe friends and family. That fear that if anyone got smartened up that wrestling would be dead instantly. T

I'm fine with that old mentality. I'm not going to begrudge anyone who likes it, whatever keeps you off the six o'clock news is fine. But I think Joey Ryan flipping people with his dick is absolute garbage. I dislike a lot of the actual work in Chikara, even if I like the mask aesthetic. 

To me the fans are only tricked if they got a shitty show. 

[Victator]

3 hours ago, OSJ said:

I'd have to check the timeline, but Dick Slater as "The Rebel" was actually supposed to be a face in WWF, (yeah, like a guy with a thick Southern accent waving the stars & bars is going to appeal to fans in New England, yeah, that was a big "whoops" for ol' VKM, poor Slater had as much chance of getting over in that territory with that gimmick as a guy dressed in orange and displaying the red hand of Ulster would coming out to "God Save the Queen" in Dublin.)

Slater was treated as a face. I took it as a very pandering attempt to draw in the south, the one place Vince could not do good business in. Even Hulk/Andre did poorly in Atlanta and Greensboro. 

[OSJ]

1 minute ago, Victator said:

Slater was treated as a face. I took it as a very pandering attempt to draw in the south, the one place Vince could not do good business in. Even Hulk/Andre did poorly in Atlanta and Greensboro. 

It was as you say a very pandering attempt to garner Southern fans. Screw that, Hotlanta and Greensboro are Whooo, by God, Ric Flair country now and forever!

[J.H.]

I vaguely remember Slater and Cpl. Kirshner being a team for some reason...

James