The Viceland Wrestling Documentaries

[zendragon]

On 6/11/2024 at 5:22 PM, Curt McGirt said:

Relevant to nothing, but Lloyd Kaufman from Troma once said in an interview that the subtext of Forrest Gump was to never question society and blindly be led by larger powers as a way through life. I thought it was just a dull boomer nostalgia factory like "We Didn't Start the Fire", but he might have had a point.

Cody could be Forrest Gump the movie?

There's a fan theory about Forrest is represented by the feather as he just floats along , but Jenny is represented by the bird as she chooses to fly her own way but pays a price

[zendragon]

10 hours ago, Curt McGirt said:

The feeling I get is that the coverage is too thin. Every single narrative stroke needs a deep dive and they just skim over all of it. It's not enough. Think about that -- four hours (presumably) is not enough to cover this thing comprehensively. 

Since I haven't read any of the WCW books how are they/which one should I check out?

Start with The Nitro Book, I enjoyed Death of WCW even though it's probably been surpassed in quality of wrestling books out there (it's a bit LOLWCW), I think Bishoff's book really underrated for just getting his perspective on things that he gets maligned on, Flair talks alot about his issues with Bishoff and the final nitro. I don't recall Bret talking a lot about WCW but he does talk about the Goldberg incident and the aftermath 

 

8 hours ago, Cobra Commander said:

Bret in WCW would be like if the Dodgers signed Ohtani and then had no idea how to use him

Or maybe more like the Yankees and one of their older signings of the 2000s like Gary Sheffield

Granted, Bret exiting the WWF as a heel in the US and a face internationally turned out to not really help WCW much since WCW couldn't make themselves an entity in Canada and were a bit behind the WWF in Europe.

I don't know how much Sting title reign stuff they really had planned out before Starrcade 97 but there was a "Champion vs Champion" sort of thing they could have done early in 98 during the Sting title reign. Now would Goldberg/Hogan at the Georgia Dome have done huge business if Hogan wasn't the champ?

Of course this is all purely hypothetical because for as much as it seems like Nash and Bret are not attacking each other, Nash in 98/99 probably isn't helping Bret out much and the same people grumpy at the rise of Goldberg probably aren't totally thrilled with Bret either. So, they weren't just gonna put the WCW title on Bret Hart like he's 1992 Ric Flair ("The Real World Champion")

We also never really got Bret v Hogan did we?

 

11 hours ago, SirSmUgly said:

I've come around to the belief that Hogan/Goldberg on TV was fine because it got everyone hyped for a bunch of new matchups for the next six, eight, ten PPVs theoretically. The issue was how they then used Goldberg on PPV for that first title reign:

• BatB: vs. Curt Hennig (yuck, but in fairness, this was meant to be a tag match with Hennig and Giant facing Goldberg and Greene; they should have just done the tag match)
• Road Wild: in a battle royale for some reason in which he last eliminated the Giant (they only had him cleanly defeat the Giant in a title match on a Nitro a few weeks before the Giant left the company, which is insane)
• Fall Brawl: Not on the show (?!?!)
• Halloween Havoc: vs. DDP (finally a reasonable PPV matchup for Goldberg, and a great match to boot)
• World War 3: Not wrestling, just does a run-in during the WW3 Battle Royale (?!?!)
• Starrcade: vs. Kevin Nash

Six months of Goldberg proceeding to have two (2) big time matches on PPV as the champ was the issue. There was no follow-up. They did manage to give Goldberg vs. Sting for the first time away on Nitro, in case you were wondering. Yes, it was good for what it was until the inevitable nWo interference. No, they didn't make a dime off of it for the TV viewer at home. I suspect that Bischoff focuses on giving away Goldberg/Hogan on TV as a mistake because if people looked at what he did immediately after making Goldberg champ, they'd conclude that it's a thousand times worse in terms of burning potential PPV dollars. I would submit that Goldberg/Sting on the 9/14/98 Nitro is far more egregious than Goldberg/Hogan in Atlanta.

WCW still did an awful lot of that Attitude Era type of stuff, Turner S&P or no. It's a diversion IMO. The truth is that WWF booked its main eventers and its main event scene orders of magnitude better than WCW, and that's about it. 

I like Nash, but he's shifted his justification for this and for half of the nonsense booking ideas that got on television during his run on the booking team. 

You see, it was just the essence of this poor, downtrodden company that Bisch had lifted up from the muck and the mire and turned into the number one wrestling company in the world. Nothing he could do about it. 

Yes, and Bisch also talks about being in Paris, IIRC. 

No, it sounds like I (and I'm not the only one) consider Cody's inability to maintain his overness as a fiery babyface in AEW is down to his own failures, and that going back to WWE, which knows how to inculcate its crowd effectively and also shoot down dumb ideas from its workers, is what he needed to actually maintain that overness. Maybe you're a big Cody fan, so it's hard to hear that, but Cody went from cutting over fiery babyface promos against Jericho at the start of Dynamite's existence to getting shitty reactions from the crowd for someone who was supposed to be a fiery babyface. He goes back to the machine, and they present him perfectly. No one said that it's the ONLY reason he's over at all, but I certainly would submit that when left to his own devices, he failed (as he was in AEW and the Codyverse). When given the backing of a slick machine that gets fans to churn out the reactions that it wants, hey look, he's been able to sustain it! Whether you're trolling or just a big Cody fan who feels the need to defend his ultimate failure at being a long-term fiery babyface in AEW: 

 

Cody needs an editor? yes

[Curt McGirt]

Yeah I've read the Bret and Flair books. My reaction to Flair talking about the desert burial was "THEY ACTUALLY DID THAT?!"

[Technico Support]

13 hours ago, zendragon said:

There's a fan theory about Forrest is represented by the feather as he just floats along , but Jenny is represented by the bird as she chooses to fly her own way but pays a price

So the message is "be a simpleton, question nothing, go along to get along, and if you dare to try to have your own thing, you'll have a horrible life and die."  Also, don't be a liberated woman, because you'll die of an STD.  Fuck, what an absolute pile of shit that film is.  I would posit that Pulp Fiction is kinder and more hopeful. 

Edited June 13, 2024 by Technico Support

[SirSmUgly]

13 hours ago, zendragon said:

We also never really got Bret v Hogan did we?

I mean, technically, we did! 

Also technically, it ended partway through so that Bret could re-establish himself as a heel by turning on Sting. 

But Hogan did a drop toehold into an armbar, IIRC, so there's that! 

[Curt McGirt]

Not only will you die of an STD, it'll be "the qv-eer disease", as the Russian mafia boss in Eastern Promises called it. 

The National Review put it at #4 in its list of conservative movies, so no matter how apolitical it is supposed to be it's been adopted by the wrong people. They can have it.

[SirSmUgly]

Oh, and the Bret book does spend quite a bit of time talking about how poorly he's booked in WCW, especially how they keep turning him heel when he should clearly be booked as a sympathetic babyface. Most of what he says in his book, you've heard him say before, probably. He talks about coming in at a point where it was apparent to him that Nash and Hogan were having some sort of power struggle and that Bischoff was burning out, how he sort of just gave up and went out and did whatever they told him to because none of it made sense or was consistent, etc. 

The Death of WCW is one of those books that I read when it came out and was worth reading at the time before people really got to writing about the Nitro era of WCW, but in 2024, it's probably not worth anyone's time. Plus, Alvarez is a co-writer, and when I read some of the more complain-y parts of the book, I involuntarily read them in his whiny voice. Goddam, Alvarez sucks. Anyway, avoid that one, is my advice. 

Bischoff has a new-ish book from the past year or two, Grateful, I think it's called. I haven't read that and don't know if it's got anything that I can't get from Controversy Creates Cash + Evans's Nitro. 

[Stefanie Sparkleface]

1 minute ago, SirSmUgly said:

The Death of WCW is one of those books that I read when it came out and was worth reading at the time before people really got to writing about the Nitro era of WCW, but in 2024, it's probably not worth anyone's time. Plus, Alvarez is a co-writer, and when I read some of the more complain-y parts of the book, I involuntarily read them in his whiny voice. Goddam, Alvarez sucks. Anyway, avoid that one, is my advice. 

Oddly enough, I figured the more complainy parts were written by RD Reynolds as the book was written during an era when Alvarez was trying to be taken a little more seriously. And boy, am I glad the love for WrestleCrap has died out, because if folks think Alvarez is bad, that site was approximately a thousand times worse. Those guys hated literally everything.

[SirSmUgly]

6 minutes ago, Stefanie Sparkleface said:

Oddly enough, I figured the more complainy parts were written by RD Reynolds as the book was written during an era when Alvarez was trying to be taken a little more seriously. And boy, am I glad the love for WrestleCrap has died out, because if folks think Alvarez is bad, that site was approximately a thousand times worse. Those guys hated literally everything.

Yeah, WrestleCrap quickly lost its luster for me because they covered a lot of stuff that I thought was actually pretty entertaining. If you can't enjoy Thea Vidale as Shelton Benjamin's overbearing mother or the awesome hokiness of WCW Slam Jam, Vol. 1 (isn't it sad that we never got a Vol. 2), you hate pro wrestling. 

The only thing they had that I really liked was that Re-Writing the Book column with the writers who would take a wrestling storyline, alter a key moment, and then write out how it might play out from there. I remember really digging their use of Tully Blanchard in his return to WCW based on the premise that he somehow passed that drug test even though he was coked out of his mind. There was also a pretty good one premised around Bret Hart losing his SummerSlam '97 match to the Undertaker and not being allowed to wrestle in the United States, then winning the WWF Championship at One Night Only and managing to hold it hostage. That feature doesn't seem to be up anymore, though. Bummer. 

[Mister TV]

Was the "Bischoff being investigated for possibly taking a kick backs from the big contracts he signed" ever talked about before? This is the first time I've heard of it and I can totally see accountants at Turner/Time Warner thinking it was happening, but I think Bischoff was too dumb to think of doing it.

[SirSmUgly]

38 minutes ago, Mister TV said:

Was the "Bischoff being investigated for possibly taking a kick backs from the big contracts he signed" ever talked about before? This is the first time I've heard of it and I can totally see accountants at Turner/Time Warner thinking it was happening, but I think Bischoff was too dumb to think of doing it.

I'd never heard Bischoff say that. 

That seemed new, right along with the addition that he ignored it when Turner execs told him to go after the kiddie demographic and he pledged to just keep booking what he was booking and have a showdown about it later if it came to that. 

[The Green Meanie]

15 hours ago, Stefanie Sparkleface said:

And boy, am I glad the love for WrestleCrap has died out, because if folks think Alvarez is bad, that site was approximately a thousand times worse. Those guys hated literally everything.

 

Loyal Crapper and one of the 13 listeners here. When I first saw the thumbnail preview for the special I got excited cause it's a fun topic and was happy to see what my good friend RD Reynolds had to say since he co-wrote the book on the subject. I watched the episode, and although it was good, I was severely disappointed to find out 1) they never even approached RD to be in the series and 2) they used some guy I've never heard of who wrote a book I've never heard of. A bummer.

And for the record, WrestleCrap will always be one of my favorite things when it comes to wrestling.

[Stefanie Sparkleface]

4 hours ago, The Green Meanie said:

 

Loyal Crapper and one of the 13 listeners here. When I first saw the thumbnail preview for the special I got excited cause it's a fun topic and was happy to see what my good friend RD Reynolds had to say since he co-wrote the book on the subject. I watched the episode, and although it was good, I was severely disappointed to find out 1) they never even approached RD to be in the series and 2) they used some guy I've never heard of who wrote a book I've never heard of. A bummer.

And for the record, WrestleCrap will always be one of my favorite things when it comes to wrestling.

One of your favorite things in wrestling is a website where 99% of the articles is "wow, this thing that existed is stupid! Did it involve a woman? Well, she was a whore"?

Good for you, I suppose.

[hammerva]

I for one is shocked to learn that Kevin Nash was high as fuck when doing his stuff for Who Killed WCW.   He seemed so clear and lucid

[Curt McGirt]

Guess it's better than him being drunk

[Sex Machine Gun]

I stopped reading the WrestleCrap site when I was a teenager but the podcast was never missed. That was appointment listening and old episodes don't age because they'd never talk about any contemporary stuff anyway. That show was the first thing (as an adult) that made me laugh so hard I was about to piss myself. If you're wondering, it was the episode where Shane McMahon kept fighting everyone with the device alerting them looking like the SmackDown fist stage. Always marked out for Nintendo John, the Honky Tonk Mail Man, and of course ANGRY JIM ROSS.

[BloodyChamp]

This show has jumped the shark with this guys. It’s a multiepisode documentary about the 1 thing everybody wants to hear the truth about. Even the people who are sick of hearing about wHaT kIlLeD wCw would watch this show if everybody came clean, or if somebody atleast called everybody out who wouldn’t come clean. Instead we’re getting the same old crap and it’s being sold as some kind of Holy Grail documentary. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz this is more boring than Goldberg vs Lenny Lane. 

Wrestlecrap also jumped the shark IMO. They were just trying to make update after update. I don’t think they hated everything.

 

Edited June 15, 2024 by BloodyChamp

[Gorman]

I didn't expect to show up on Episode 3 of Who Killed WCW. Apparently when he was WWF champion in 1999, The Rock found the time to read my wrestling column in the Mansfield News Journal. Kudos to my eagle-eyed protege Joe Dombrowski (who announces for MLW) for spotting this. Now I have to track down this episode!

Joe Dombrowski on X: "My first mentor and broadcast colleague @JeffDGorman had a quick cameo in this week's episode of "Who Killed WCW?" https://t.co/EUQE1zrJP4" / X

[The Natural]

19 hours ago, Gorman said:

I didn't expect to show up on Episode 3 of Who Killed WCW. Apparently when he was WWF champion in 1999, The Rock found the time to read my wrestling column in the Mansfield News Journal. Kudos to my eagle-eyed protege Joe Dombrowski (who announces for MLW) for spotting this. Now I have to track down this episode!

Joe Dombrowski on X: "My first mentor and broadcast colleague @JeffDGorman had a quick cameo in this week's episode of "Who Killed WCW?" https://t.co/EUQE1zrJP4" / X

Nice!

[The Green Meanie]

On 6/14/2024 at 7:32 AM, Stefanie Sparkleface said:

One of your favorite things in wrestling is a website where 99% of the articles is "wow, this thing that existed is stupid! Did it involve a woman? Well, she was a whore"?

Most of what we do as wrestling fans is talk about how "this thing that existed is stupid!"

Wrestle Crap is much like wrestling itself, if you don't get it, no explanation will get you to understand it. I get that it's not for everyone.

Edited June 18, 2024 by The Green Meanie

[Stefanie Sparkleface]

8 hours ago, The Green Meanie said:

Most of what we do as wrestling fans is talk about how "this thing that existed is stupid!"

Wrestle Crap is much like wrestling itself, if you don't get it, no explanation will get you to understand it. I get that it's not for everyone.

You know, I already established that the site was not for me when I pointed out their treatment of women, but I can also point out the time they went out of their way to say that Eric Bischoff dressed as a vampire was "Count Fagula" if you want me to point out that as a queer person that's another way it's not for me too.

[Cobra Commander]

yeah, looking back, a certain amount of 90s internet wrestling mutant culture was not the most favorable to women.... to put it mildly

[Cobra Commander]

I only tuned into Episode 3 about 10 minutes after it started. I didn't really play close attention. I recorded it. I should probably watch it later.

But 1999/2000 Russo WCW is really like if you were diagnosed with a non-terminal cancer and decided to start smoking crystal meth instead of getting treatment.

Part Four is the finale.

[twiztor]

5 hours ago, Cobra Commander said:

yeah, looking back, a certain amount of 90s internet wrestling mutant culture was not the most favorable to women.... to put it mildly

[Cobra Commander]

yeah they weren't chanting "she's a crack whore" to spread awareness of the effects of smoking crack