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And I guess to just lighten things up, late WCW really sucked...HOWEVER...

My friends and I fucking LOVED Kanyon. I think we were only watching Nitro and Thunder together specifically just waiting to see who he would Kanyon Cutter. I forget the episode, but there was a shot outside because someone got attacked and the camera was just still shooting. We're like, it would be hilarious if that guy out there got Kanyon Cuttered. All of sudden, BANG, Kanyon Cutter. The most random fucking thing and it killed us.

The second best one was a backstage segment with Kanyon, Above Average Mike Sanders, and someone else. Kanyon would keep putting his hands up and Mike Sanders would turn to him and say, "Hey! What are you doing?!" So dumb and yet so good.

Kanyon was the absolute best part of Nitro and Thunder back then to me and my friends. I'll hear no arguments stating otherwise.

So thank you Kanyon for giving us a ton of joy and being a part of our lives that we still reference today.

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1 hour ago, Greggulator said:

I didn't finish this episode yet but it's really personal to me. My brother (who used to host the aftershows for DSOTR) is also bipolar and has a HBO special about his mental health issues. It's a fucking nightmare to see the person I'm closest with in the world go through these difficulties and struggles. He's better now, but it's not like it goes away even with a good treatment plan. 

Bipolar is such a misunderstood disease. I'm also bipolar. There are a few different levels of bipolar. Bipolar 1 is the kind Kanyon had or what you see in TV movies -- the really wild manic swings and lengthy depressive episodes. I'm Bipolar II, which is different. I don't want to say "milder" but it doesn't come with suicide ideation or the manic episodes that last for a few weeks. It's a lot quicker, where I can get depressed for a few weeks at a time (the pandemic rules for that!) or hypomania, which is essentially an elevated mood with a lot of energy and irritability and makes me really hard to deal with. If you see some lengthy screed written on here at like 3 AM EST, that's why. The initial burst of hypomania is actually pretty helpful because I'm really productive and creative but then it becomes completely overwhelming very quickly. 

Anyways, I am very honest about my struggles with mental health. The stuff with Kanyon was awful because he felt like he had to hide his sexual identity on top of having his mental health issues. I learned going through what I go through that being honest about it helps me. And hopefully being honest and open about it makes the stigma of mental health issues slowly go away and makes it easier for people to get the help they need. 

If anyone on here needs to talk things through or find ways to get help, do not hesitate to reach out. I completely mean that. 

 

Edited by The Natural
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2 minutes ago, Mister TV said:

Timeline wise was the Kanyon-Undertaker thing really when Kanyon was coming back after an injury? That was around the time I would only watch occasionally so I never saw it before.

Yes, it was. IIRC, it was his first appearance back. 

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What I recall about the Undertaker thing is they were doing those mystery present angles, and it just seemed like they needed a somewhat familiar face for Undertaker to destroy. I recall Kanyon was briefly involved with the DDP/Undertaker/Sara feud in 2001. Didn't Brother Love make a cameo appearance around this time during this storyline and also get beat up by Undertaker?

What I also recall is that about Kanyon's WWE tenure was that Kanyon was another guy from WCW that WWE just didn't know or understand how to use. Also in 2003, it seemed like WWE was mostly using Kanyon in jobber slot roles before getting phased out.

Found this match he had with Ultimo Dragon on Sunday Night Heat the night of WWE Vengeance 2003. It's available on WWE's official YouTube channel.

Edited by TheVileOne
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1 hour ago, Mister TV said:

Timeline wise was the Kanyon-Undertaker thing really when Kanyon was coming back after an injury? That was around the time I would only watch occasionally so I never saw it before.

a timeline with dates

October 28th, 2001: Kanyon works a house show in Evansville, IN. His last match on Cagematch for 7 months. Wikipedia has Kanyon tearing his ACL against Randy Orton on 10/29/2001.

May 22nd, 2002: Kanyon works against Prototype (John Cena) in OVW.

May and July, 2002: Kanyon works matches in OVW and HWA, he injures his shoulder. Then he has even more health problems at the end of July

October 30th, 2002: after a 3 months out, Kanyon starts working OVW again.

February 13th, 2003: Kanyon/Undertaker angle on Smackdown

Kanyon's last WWE match in Cagematch was December 2003. There were a handful of Mortis WWE matches from August to October 2003.

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Okay Mitchell really needs to be on more episodes

And just like that, there goes any goodwill Cena might have built up over the years. Like man, f that guy.

Was cool to see Cage and the Bucks talk about what an influence Kanyon was on them. Kind of second that as bad as WCW got, Kanyon was one of the bright spots. I think we can all point to him Kanyon Cutter-ing the dude in the parking lot like waaaaaaaaaay in the background as an awesome moment. 

Even if WWE was a no go for him, it's too bad is issues kept him from making a decent life for himself on the indies or hell even as an "elder statesmen" in mid 2000s Ring of Honor. I feel for the dude feeling like he had to live that secret for so long but thankfully was surrounded by supportive people later.

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The two Mitchell (who I kinda instinctively refer to as Vandenberg) quotes that were really interesting were the one at the end that people noticed (asking people to help friends who might be going through this sort of thing) and another one about the concept of Kanyon possibly being a "unreliable self-narrator" due to everything going on that were obviously causing a lot of turbulence in his life.

The documentary didn't have any family (which really isn't a huge shock and not a failing by the producers) and I don't think it had any non-wrestling industry friends, which either gives you a narrow view of things, or tells you that his interests were so locked in on wrestling after a certain point.

With all of that, I suspect some people might have been close to him whose approach to being around Kanyon during his bad times was to just try and find ways to not be around Kanyon. Which is something that I can understand if they don't want to admit to that on TV, and also something that tells you the people who didn't run in the other direction were true friends in the scheme of things.

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A lot of people in WWE at the time would have closed ranks like Cena if they were in his position in 2006. It’s shitty behavior, but it’s also a reflection of the moral rot in their company culture. 

Besides Flair’s other flaws as a person, he has a weird cognitive dissonance about criticizing others’ work. He’s from a generation where saying someone was the shits in-ring wasn’t supposed to be taken as a judgement about their value as a person, which is a lot healthier than the way it’s been looked at for the last twenty or so years. The problem is he has no qualms about arbitrarily shitting on people who value his opinion because he doesn’t consider it a personal insult. And I think now more than ever the Flair is an Idiot Savant theory has traction, so his opinions have proved pretty worthless. 

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I don't know if we have any evidence of Flair as booker without the constraints of Herd above him in the chain of command.

I don't think he booked Knoxville, as he was NWA champ and rarely there in person.  (Beau said it was Sullivan booking.)

Edited by odessasteps
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Some people are not very self-aware, so it's possible someone else could have a Tommy Dreamer performance on DSOTR in the future.

Not sure which episode of this half-season is gonna be the 'lightest' between FMW or Johnny K-9/Bruiser Bedlam. Somehow the episodes that'll involve a lot of organized crime are gonna be more light-hearted compared to issues of sex perverts, mental health, and every other awful thing that could come up in the next few weeks.

Two Flair things

1) he probably has his share of issues, which was sorta apparent in his 30 for 30.

2) didn't Flair book or have more creative power than his norm for part of 1994 in the leadup to Hogan coming in?

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My understanding is that Flair was a figurehead booker who would take credit for anything that was over and pass the buck on anything that wasn’t. He only really cared about the world title picture, and once Hogan and Savage were brought in they kneecapped him on that too. The only thing I’m aware of that he demonstrably was responsible for was Alex Wright’s initial push. 

Edited by (BP)
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This episode was really sad.  With that said, the gay porn pinata, and Mitchell deciding that if Kanyon wouldn't show up for his own sex tape he's going to make his own sex tape are about as hilarious of situations that could possibly exist.  Seriously, my biggest question is why the hell did the two of them sit down to watch it afterwards?  TANGENT ALERT!!!!!!! Spoilered for Strong Sexual Content

Spoiler

Ok, so this reminds me a story a coworker told a group of us at happy hour.  So, this coworker, who we affectionately called Perv, because she had the most perverted mind of our friend group.  When I say she had the most perverted mind in the group, this group includes a dude named Willy who once described tossing salads in graphic detail to a senior citizen, and when she stared at him horrified, he looked and her, shrugged, and said, "You just have to catch them fresh out the shower."  So, Perv was divorced, and no one really knew the story about how her marriage ended, until the great truth serum called alcohol came into play.  She told us that her and her husband used to make sex tapes, and Perv being Perv, they were quite involved.  So, one day she comes home from work and her husband and his dad are there hanging out watching TV on the couch.  She walks over to see what they are watching, and sees that her husband is sitting on the couch, WITH HIS FUCKING DAD, watching their sex tape.  She sat at the table at happy hour, looked at us and asked, "How the fuck am I supposed to go to Thanksgiving dinner after my husband's dad watched him put his dick in my asshole?"  That is one of the most valid questions, I personally, have ever been asked.  God, that dude was an idiot.  

 

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The Flair/Cena comments are shitty because there's no way there weren't 10+ guys on the roster who were easily worse than Kanyon at any point he was in WWE. Like we all saw Kanyon's career in WCW and Invasion era WWE. He wasn't prime Flair or Cena, but the dude was a solid midcarder who always found ways to get over and stand out to the point even lapsed fans can still point out fond memories of him. Those two acting like he was Joe Gomez or somebody who couldn't hack it in a time when Sylvain Grenier and Kenzo Suzuki held gold is so fucking disingenuous and disrespectful. It'd be nice if maybe someone from WWE took some ownership for why maybe someone wouldn't want to come out in that environment, not that it would be the guy whose rise to fame started with an endless string of rhyming homophobic jokes.

Edited by Go2Sleep
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I found Mortis' stuff very exciting matches-wise. Plus Mortis and Wrath had a bunch of really exciting tag matches, I remember liking their PPV match against Meng and Barbarian in '97. Based on those Kanyon could have done way more in the ring than his character allowed, which is kinda dumb, because he was "Innovator of offence", right? Then how come you didn't let him do all the cool shit he did as Mortis? He was grossly missused in WWF, but that goes for so many others at the time, so it's not like he would have been the only one. However, any and all talk about him being anything less than "good" in the ring is absolute bullshit! And Cena and Flair, how many moonsaults did you do? Right. So shut up!

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Flair doing it is worse, though. Kanyon was a Flair mark, he got into the business because he wanted to be like Flair. He TRAINED David Flair for wrestling. And he had a good relationship with Ric backstage at WCW (although apparently Flair was nice to almost every one of the underneath workers at WCW - to their faces, anyway). And then Flair calls into Stern and says that. Tells him he sucked as a worker, talks about his sexuality as a lifestyle choice. Fucking disgraceful.

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On 9/25/2021 at 7:31 AM, Control said:

Has anyone seen the show where Kanyon came out? Because wow the clips made it look awkward as hell.

It’s from a 2006 PPV called World Wrestling Legends The 605 Reunion

Dark Match: Johnny B. Badd and Russ Rollins defeated The Blue Meanie and Norman Smiley

Jim Duggan defeated Nikolai Volkoff (with The Iron Sheik)

Rick Steiner defeated Virgil

Koko B. Ware defeated Disco Inferno

Jimmy Snuka defeated Greg Valentine (with Jimmy Hart) by DQ

Vampiro  defeated Eddie Colón (with Carlos Colon)

Jake Roberts defeated Kamala by DQ

Dory Funk, Jr. and Mike Graham (with Bruno Sammartino) defeated Tully Blanchard and David Flair (with J.J. Dillon)

DDP defeated Kanyon

Brad Armstrong, Scott Armstrong, and Bob Armstrong (with Bobby Heenan) defeated The Midnight Express(Dennis Condrey, Bobby Eaton, and Stan Lane) (with Jim Cornette)

Scott Steiner defeated Buff Bagwell

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On 9/25/2021 at 7:31 AM, Control said:

Has anyone seen the show where Kanyon came out? Because wow the clips made it look awkward as hell.

11 hours ago, elizium said:

Who here has seen the Armstrongs/MX match?

13 hours ago, The Great ML said:

It’s from a 2006 PPV called World Wrestling Legends The 605 Reunion

i watched this back when it was semi-current. the event as a whole is fine. i don't remember the Armstrongs/MX match being anything to write home about. i have a burned dvd of the event, maybe i should rewatch it.

the Kanyon thing is awkward, but it was already widely known that he was gay, so came off really weird. I remember some interview where DDP said that it meant a lot to Kanyon to do it live in front of an audience. it's what it is i suppose.

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