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APRIL 2020 WRESTLING DISCUSSION


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I love wrestling for what it is, to me personally, an escape. Chikara and its ants and invisible grenades crack me tf up. Wcw with the hotly contested cruiserweight matches, the squash matches on syndicated weekend shows, that was my jam. Jake the Snake scaring wrestlers shitless with Damian, Warriors crazy over the top promos. That countdown before the next buzzer as your next Royal Rumble entrant walks out from behind the back. ECW and the crazy Awesome Bombs or the tazmissions, Whipwreck and Tajiri, the giant killer Spike Dudley, 3d's for everyone, TOTAL ELIMINATION, all that. AAA with its Hell Brothers and six man tags, Verano de Escandalo, NJPW with the G1 tournament and the crazy fighting spirit never say die battles. 

Tldr I don't watch every last thing, I barely follow weekly shows unless something is heavily pimped with highlights recapped on YouTube, y'know? But for me, as an 80s kid, wrestling is just a getaway from the mundane every day. I love the random matches of recent crowdless shows that remind me of being a kid and sitting back grinning ear to ear at the comedy or being blown away by the athleticism and spectacle.

If I'm going anywhere with this, my question would be- What drew you in when you got into following wrestling weekly, that you had to watch and just couldn't miss the next week? 

I remember it was a Saturday morning for me, and Jake the Snake had just done his short arm clothesline to set up a journeyman guy for the DDT. I was blown away seeing him wipe out the guy, like "Damn, he just killed him on tv and all those fans are cheering for him." That was my 'I don't wanna miss out next week' moment. Just curious what yours might be, is all.

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Shoot, I can't even remember. I had a Hulkamania shirt when I was four and watched it then, but I don't remember ever not being aware of pro wrestling or of not liking it. 

I bet my grandma had something to do with it. She's from the South, so she was more an NWA fan while I watched mostly WWF. Still, she would watch any wrestling. I remember watching AWA on ESPN with her as a very young child (I also remember that my first wrestling figures were AWA figures - I had Shawn Michaels, Marty Janetty, Larry Z, and Nick Bockwinkel, so I ran endless Midnight Rockers vs. Zbyszko and Bock tag matches. I even had a ring, but I can't remember if it was an AWA ring or no). 

I will say that I can remember when I really took notice of NWA/WCW for the first time - when I saw that Sting/Flair Clash match. I remember being blown away by that match as a little kid. 

 

Edited by Smelly McUgly
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Watching the Nick Gage Invitational from 2015 on IWTV. Masada at the end cuts a promo where he uses an anti-gay slur about 37 times (Talking about Roderick Strong and Jimmy Jacobs, two guys who he isn't 1/1000th as talented as) and brags about how the death match stuff is real and how what they do is fake. Hey dummy, the point of wrestling is to simulate getting hurt and not actually to get hurt. I mean I can enjoy this stuff for what it is but I mean don't cut a promo like that. And the crowd at one point in the show doing a chant for Guy Who Killed His Family And Then Killed Himself By Playing Hangman With a Lat Machine, yeah...

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I almost think Hogan was the patriarch of the HHH style. I know discussing Hogan is a sensitive subject here. It makes me sick that he destroyed everything when those tapes were released, and there's no excuse for it and I'd rather not discuss him at all. But yeah. Hoganism is very much the precursor to Triple H. 

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I snuck up late one night while staying at my uncle & aunt's place.

I had heard about wrestling but never really watched it. Anyway I stumbled across an episode of Shotgun Saturday Night that was recapping the 98 Survivor Series. That was it, I was hooked. I was 9.

The following weekend I rented half a dozen tapes form the local blockbuster and sat on the couch watching stuff from the early/mid 90's WWF.

Edited by L_W_P
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1 hour ago, Hayabusa said:

If I'm going anywhere with this, my question would be- What drew you in when you got into following wrestling weekly, that you had to watch and just couldn't miss the next week? 

Kent Walton always signed the shows off by saying "Have a good week, til next week". So you had to watch every week or the good wishes would expire.

Little kids love Masked Wrestlers, don't they? When I was five, my favourite Wrestler was Kendo Nagasaki.

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3 hours ago, L_W_P said:

I really like Triple H but I think timing was his biggest enemy.

He ran as a long term heel champion, trying to pull off the old school NWA touring style, right at the peak of indy awareness in the wrestling world. More and more of us were seeing clips of Japan, Lucha, ROH, CZW etc and this opened up our concept of what a "good" wrestler was. This was also immediately after hotshotting things around in the late 90's and the massive appeal of seeing the top stars of WCW/ECW come into the WWE. The demand for this long term, dominant heel, who finally gets beaten by the underdog hero just wasn't there. Not until Benoit won the Rumble anyway and even then, we didn't think he was facing Triple H at Mania when he won.

They sort of tried again with Rollins but he's just not that guy. He's Dolph Ziggler with a push.

In a vacuum Hunter's run was very good but in the grand scheme of wrestling at the time it just wasn't what people wanted.

Honestly, if you use timing as a problem for Triple H, I'd go so far as to say that the fact timing was his biggest enemy has led to his rebirth as a promoter/talent scout. If you use all of those things, then you also have to come to the realization that it likely directly led to NXT.

Of course Triple H would be the executive who scouts all the top indie and international stars and gives them the opportunity to be signed by WWE and try to build his promotion around him, He spent 2002 all the way to 2011 when he became a executive first, wrestler second getting market research, week after week after week, with arenas full of angry fans telling him "wrestlers like you are not what we want anymore. We want this style of wrestling instead!", and when he got the power to do something about it- he took all of that and realized "this is what the modern fan wants? Then this is what they will get."

 

3 hours ago, West Newbury Bad Boy said:

Comedic timing is one thing. It also helps that his position allows him to say stuff nobody else could get away with. Easy to be le edgy badass and wink at the audience when you’re in the family. 

Also, taking out the cultural implications or whatever, I find the DX stuff deeply unfunny. 

Even beyond the cultural implications of the DX stuff, it doesn't change the way Shawn and HHH play off of each other. Like, even not being DX and just inducting people in the Hall of Fame together, just seeing how they work could be completely innocuous stuff (like, their timing and banter would make it so that WWE Films could probably cast Shawn Michaels and Triple H in a classic Bob Hope/Bing Crosby "Road to..." movie and it'd probably be FANTASTIC.) 

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I remember seeing Sting on WCW Pro on a Saturday morning after my cartoons and was intrigued.  

The following week I caught a USWA show on some random channel and saw Nightmare Danny Davis and assumed all wrestlers wore face paint. I was hooked. Shortly thereafter I discovered WWF and watched as much WCW and WWF as I could from that point on.
 

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11 hours ago, Godfrey said:

HHH is an overachieving midcarder. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a match of his that made me think, “Shit, this dude HAS to be champion/in the main event.”

I’d probably agree with this and it seems I like him a lot more than most. I still maintain he’s the most naturally gifted heel since Rick Rude 

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31 minutes ago, Ultimo Necro said:

I remember seeing Sting on WCW Pro on a Saturday morning after my cartoons and was intrigued.  

The following week I caught a USWA show on some random channel and saw Nightmare Danny Davis and assumed all wrestlers wore face paint. I was hooked. Shortly thereafter I discovered WWF and watched as much WCW and WWF as I could from that point on.
 

Face paint was definitely something that caught my eye as a kid. It never bugged me when it was clear wrestlers were duplicating gimmicks from other performers. It was just like the comics, and I didn’t mind. It was weird when I’d see one wrestler on another program, and recognizing them as another character from the other company. The first I remember that happening for me was Diamond Studd, and Razor. I think my local WCW syndicated package was running behind, because I remember seeing Razor, before Studd.

Edited by LoneWolf&Subs
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40 minutes ago, LoneWolf&Subs said:

Face paint was definitely something that caught my eye as a kid. It never bugged me when it was clear wrestlers were duplicating gimmicks from other performers. It was just like the comics, and I didn’t mind. It was weird when I’d see one wrestler on another program, and recognizing them as another character from the other company. The first I remember that happening for me was Diamond Studd, and Razor. I think my local WCW syndicated package was running behind, because I remember seeing Razor, before Studd.

Yeah, I think that’s something that must be weird for kids today as it’s never really happened for years.  People jumping and being repackaged.  The closest in recent times would be watching AEW and seeing a repackaged Luke Harper. That must be kind of a trip if you are a kid.

I was 11 when Flair went to WWF and literally until the day he showed up on TV I thought Heenan was full of crap.  Flair and Sting were the 2 guys I was sure would never leave WCW.  I was also shocked when Luger moved over and joined the WBF. That really blew my tiny mind and that was before his WCW return which was even more insane!

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8 hours ago, SorceressKnight said:

Of course Triple H would be the executive who scouts all the top indie and international stars and gives them the opportunity to be signed by WWE

2 hours ago, BurningBeard said:

That’s William Regal 


It's extraordinarily petty how wrestling fans target wrestling personalities they don't like and try to strip away any possible credit they could be given for literally anything.

Triple H worked very hard to build NXT, and performed the miracle of keeping Vince from ruining it in the process. No one deserves more credit for NXT than Triple H. You don't have to like his matches or the way the BASTARD just WOULDN'T PUT RVD OVER for this to be true.

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2000s WWF was fucking amazing, and Triple H was a big part of that, I don't care what anyone says. Yeah, he was in there with people like Jericho and Benoit and Foley etc etc. But he more than held up his end of those matches. Besides the WrestleMania 2000 fatal four-way, I think I pretty much love every PPV match he had that year. Shit, I even really like that six-man tag from King Of The Ring.

Like, I don't know if "wrestling comfort food" is a thing that exists, but if it does, anything WWF from 2000 makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside.

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11 hours ago, Hayabusa said:

I love wrestling for what it is, to me personally, an escape. Chikara and its ants and invisible grenades crack me tf up. Wcw with the hotly contested cruiserweight matches, the squash matches on syndicated weekend shows, that was my jam. Jake the Snake scaring wrestlers shitless with Damian, Warriors crazy over the top promos. That countdown before the next buzzer as your next Royal Rumble entrant walks out from behind the back. ECW and the crazy Awesome Bombs or the tazmissions, Whipwreck and Tajiri, the giant killer Spike Dudley, 3d's for everyone, TOTAL ELIMINATION, all that. AAA with its Hell Brothers and six man tags, Verano de Escandalo, NJPW with the G1 tournament and the crazy fighting spirit never say die battles. 

Tldr I don't watch every last thing, I barely follow weekly shows unless something is heavily pimped with highlights recapped on YouTube, y'know? But for me, as an 80s kid, wrestling is just a getaway from the mundane every day. I love the random matches of recent crowdless shows that remind me of being a kid and sitting back grinning ear to ear at the comedy or being blown away by the athleticism and spectacle.

If I'm going anywhere with this, my question would be- What drew you in when you got into following wrestling weekly, that you had to watch and just couldn't miss the next week? 

I remember it was a Saturday morning for me, and Jake the Snake had just done his short arm clothesline to set up a journeyman guy for the DDT. I was blown away seeing him wipe out the guy, like "Damn, he just killed him on tv and all those fans are cheering for him." That was my 'I don't wanna miss out next week' moment. Just curious what yours might be, is all.

 

Just the crazy violence.  I got to see a lot of late-era World Class, UWF in addition to Crockett, so I got my share of ultraviolence.  I hated WWF style as a kid, I watched but I even liked the AWA stuff more than I liked WWF.

 

I could appreciate a good technician, I remember liking Rick Martal and Mr.Perfect on the WWF side, and Bret made WWF watchable for me (never liked Shaun that much).   I can also appreciate comedy in the aspect of folks still trying to win, or if it's an all-comedy fed like how I see CHIKARA.   That said, give me Darby having his throat rammed into his own skateboard, or good Midnights/Vader squashes (those are my two favorite squash guys/teams)  over anything WWE does these days.

Edited by alstein
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4 hours ago, MORELOCK said:

Triple H worked very hard to build NXT, and performed the miracle of keeping Vince from ruining it in the process. 

But then he let Cole, Gargano, and Ciampa happen. He ended up doing it himself.

Edited by LoneWolf&Subs
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10 hours ago, sabremike said:

Watching the Nick Gage Invitational from 2015 on IWTV. Masada at the end cuts a promo where he uses an anti-gay slur about 37 times (Talking about Roderick Strong and Jimmy Jacobs, two guys who he isn't 1/1000th as talented as) and brags about how the death match stuff is real and how what they do is fake. Hey dummy, the point of wrestling is to simulate getting hurt and not actually to get hurt. I mean I can enjoy this stuff for what it is but I mean don't cut a promo like that. And the crowd at one point in the show doing a chant for Guy Who Killed His Family And Then Killed Himself By Playing Hangman With a Lat Machine, yeah...

Reason number 47 why it's usually pretty hard to watch/enjoy indy stuff like this. This is the show promoted around Nick Gage—who couldn't show up because he was in jail for violating his parole the day of the show.

Roderick Strong likely made more money in 2019 than Masada made in his 18 years. Judging by how many dates he's worked since then, guessing no one really wants to deal with someone who uses derogatory slurs and has minimal talent to begin with, and doesn't really understand the basic concept of pro wrestling. 

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1 hour ago, EricG said:

Judging by how many dates he's worked since then, guessing no one really wants to deal with someone who uses derogatory slurs and has minimal talent to begin with, and doesn't really understand the basic concept of pro wrestling. 

You really think one of the reasons MASADA isn't getting booked is because he uses derogatory slurs? Promoters don't really care about any of that, they just act like they do.

And not to open that can of worms, but that same company books folks who've done far worse than that on a regular level and who are much less talented than MASADA and with an even more limited understanding of the basic concepts of pro-wrestling so yeah, no.

Edited by Edwin
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5 hours ago, MORELOCK said:


It's extraordinarily petty how wrestling fans target wrestling personalities they don't like and try to strip away any possible credit they could be given for literally anything.

Triple H worked very hard to build NXT, and performed the miracle of keeping Vince from ruining it in the process. No one deserves more credit for NXT than Triple H. You don't have to like his matches or the way the BASTARD just WOULDN'T PUT RVD OVER for this to be true.

Going further for that, the example for RVD is possibly the worst of the "bu-but I WANNA see my favorite with the title and Triple H wouldn't let me...he BERRIEDED my favorite!" misfires of that era even beyond it. 

Some of Triple H's "graveyard" is things that he genuinely gets a bad rap on (for example, people claiming "but HHH buried Edge!"...uh, Edge wasn't on the same show as Triple H in 2002, he was injured in all of 2003, Triple H wasn't the champion for most of 2004 before Edge turned heel, and when Edge turned heel in 2005 it was off to the races.  Triple H had nothing to do with Edge not being World Champion as a face beforehand). Some of them are things that were fishy but ultimately you can make a case for it. Some, like Benoit, no one could have seen coming for the problems.

RVD, on the other hand, is the one time that WWE didn't give someone the World Title, who made it clear to everyone exactly why he wouldn't be a good World Champion, made it a plot point why he wouldn't be a good choice- hell, the reason he's popular with fans was in why he'd probably be a bad choice as World Champion, and it was completely ignored. "Oh, you mean this guy who has sold for a decade how much he loves smoking marijuana, and is very popular for telling people how much he loves smoking marijuana, and made us want him to be World Champion because of how he tells us he loves smoking marijuana, finally won the World Title and two weeks later gave WWE a huge black eye by being pulled over by police and charged with possession of marijuana that he presumably was planning to smoke? YOU DON'T SAY!"

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15 hours ago, Hayabusa said:

If I'm going anywhere with this, my question would be- What drew you in when you got into following wrestling weekly, that you had to watch and just couldn't miss the next week? 

I remember staying over a friend's house who was into wrestling and watching Saturday Night's Main Event and being way, way into the Big Boss Man.

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