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APRIL 2020 WRESTLING DISCUSSION


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1 hour ago, Yo-Yo's Roomie said:

I think that at least 90% of all commentators for all sports ever are terrible. Jesse Ventura is the GOAT. Heenan is overrated. Gorilla outright sucked. Tony is awesome. Lance Russell is better than almost everyone ever. Frank Bonnema is the most underrated/unheralded. Just my opinion, obviously.

I dislike most commentators too, but it must be incredibly difficult to just talk for 3 hours and be good.

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Bob Caudle and Dutch Mantel in SMW were a good announce team. Lance and Dave doing Memphis shows together we great, and Jim Ross and Jim Cornette together were always good. Cornette's OVW announcing was great as well.

I always enjoyed Don Callis and Joe Aiello calling the local promotion's television together back in the 1990s.

WWE has a good announce team between all of their shows, but they have the announcers working with people who suck. If we could have a Cole/McGuinness duo, and a Phillips/Samoa Joe duo, I would be quite happy.

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One announcer who doesn't get enough love is Gator McAllister on the earliest IWA Mid-South shows.

 

Yes, he was announcing alongside sub-human piece of shit Ian Rotten, but he was still very entertaining.  I'd love to see AEW pick Gator up to do some guest announcing.

 

 

Corey Maclin was awful in USWA.

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6 hours ago, Edwin said:


Any speak Japanese and want to chip in on what the Japanese commentators are saying? I've always wondered what the Samurai! TV, GAORA, Nippon TV, etc. commentary teams were talking about during the events. I know they do a lot of recaps at the start and end, but I'm not sure what else are they talking about. What do they say during DDT on Samurai! TV, Toryumon JAPAN on GAORA or classic All Japan on Nippon? I'm hoping someone like @gordi can chip in.

Hey @Edwin what I've done here is translate some of the commentary from the legendary Kawada vs Misawa June '94 match. My Japanese is good enough for most daily life situations, but listening to news or sports commentary at full speed is still tough for me. It's likely I've missed some of the nuances of what the announcers are saying.

 

At the top of the show:

Fukuzawa: If you're even thinking about changing the channel to our competition, fans, do not., because we've learned that at our competition, Yoshiaki Fujiwara is going to wrestle Shinya Hashimoto for their world title! Heh. That's gonna put some butts in the seats.. Hah. 

Baba: Will you stop!

Wakabayashi: Fans, we've got a great night of action here for you here on Super Power Series! Abdullah The Butcher and  Giant Kamala are here! In tag team action, we've got Kenta Kobashi & Jun Akiyama vs Akira Taue & Tamon Honda... and what a main event we've got for you this evening!

Baba: A Triple Crown Title Match.

Wakabayashi: Champion Mitsuharu Misawa takes on top contender Toshiaki Kawada. It should be a real slobber-knocker!

Fukuzawa:  Both of those ham 'n' eggers attended Ashikaga Institute of Technology in Tochigi. What do you have to do there to graduate? Milk a cow with your left hand?

Baba: Gimme a break!

Fukuzawa: It's the greatest night in the history of our sport!

 

At around the 25-minute mark, Kawada crushes Misawa, whi is bleeding from his ear, with a dangerous backdrop followed up by two folding powerbombs:

Baba: Oh! Right on the external occipital protuberance!

Wakabayashi: Will somebody stop the damned match?

Baba: Good Gawd almighty!

Wakabayashi: Buh Gawd! Count faster! Put them out of their misery!

Fukuzawa: You know what's at stake? A man'll do anything!

Wakabayashi: Pulling out all the stops, Toshiaki Kawada doing whatever necessary to hang in there.

Fukuzawa: I'd do that to my own grandmother if I had to.

Baba: I'm sure you would.

 

Misawa puts Kawada away with the tiger driver '91:

Fukuzawa: Tiger Driver '91! Tiger Driver '91! Tiger Driver '91! 

Wakabayashi: As Gawd is my witness, Kawada has been broken in half!

Baba: What a maneuver!

Wakabayashi: He gave us everything he had in him, tonight.

Baba: This was the greatest night in the history of our sport.

Fukuzawa: The pleasure was all yours, Baba.

 

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Edited by gordi
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Guest Edwin
2 minutes ago, gordi said:

Fukuzawa: If you're even thinking about changing the channel to our competition, fans, do not., because we've learned that at our competition, Yoshiaki Fujiwara is going to wrestle Shinya Hashimoto for their world title! Heh. That's gonna put some butts in the seats.. Hah.

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6 hours ago, Rehabilitated Rick said:

Brock is probably the greatest ever. On all fronts. 

I was just telling a friend the other day that Bobby Heenan has to be at least top -5 for best all-time wrestling performers. He was great at everything he did. Great worker, manager and announcer. If I was building a promotion, and could hand-pick any performers throughout wrestling history, Heenan would be at the top of my list. 

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Suplex City Brock has the worst formula in pro wrestling history. I can't think of anything else that's even in the argument. That his matches are exciting is both a testament to the current stale WWE product and the fact that if you tear down narrative rules all the time instead of following them you can have short term excitement but at a high long-term cost. It's a hell of a lot easier to tear something down than to build it up. 2003 Brock was loads better than the current version. Greatest wasted talent maybe.

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39 minutes ago, Log said:

I was just telling a friend the other day that Bobby Heenan has to be at least top -5 for best all-time wrestling performers. He was great at everything he did. Great worker, manager and announcer. If I was building a promotion, and could hand-pick any performers throughout wrestling history, Heenan would be at the top of my list. 

The hand-pick comment got me thinking. A fun project would be to get maybe 8-12 or more posters to do an all time fantasy draft. The rosters created could be really cool. Not sure how many picks but everyone in wrestling would be available. Wrestlers, announcers, refs, managers, Hell even bookers if you wanted. Or just performers if I’m being extra.

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22 minutes ago, OctopusCinema said:

The hand-pick comment got me thinking. A fun project would be to get maybe 8-12 or more posters to do an all time fantasy draft. The rosters created could be really cool. Not sure how many picks but everyone in wrestling would be available. Wrestlers, announcers, refs, managers, Hell even bookers if you wanted. Or just performers if I’m being extra.

I would be down for that.  I would consider maybe having a bit of structure where we'd have to pick a certain amount of men, women, teams, managers, etc.  But now would be as good a time as any to do this.

EDIT:  And if we go through with this means I can make good use of Fire Promoter again and use my drafted roster to see how things go.  So this would be a win-win all aorund.

Edited by NikoBaltimore
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Re: announcer talk

I grew up mostly in the tri-state area, so wherever I lived, we always got a different syndicated version of Shotgun on weekend mornings, called WWF New York. I guess to hear it toward our local market, Vince Russo (I think still as 'Vic Venom') was on commentary for a handful of these. Even as a kid, I knew he was the absolute shits. This was when they were airing the RAW magazine commercials where he was, in retrospect, poorly doing Denis Leary poorly doing Bill Hicks, and I just found him super grating - and this was a solid 3-4 years before the rest of the world was "treated" to seeing him on TV consistently. If you thought he was bad doing the lame worked shoot stuff on WCW TV... boy, you ought to hear him try and call a Papi Chulo match.

For me, Schiavone is the GOAT. @Stefanie the Human hit the nail on the head, it's actually heart warming to see and hear him on AEW TV. 

 

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39 minutes ago, OctopusCinema said:

The hand-pick comment got me thinking. A fun project would be to get maybe 8-12 or more posters to do an all time fantasy draft. The rosters created could be really cool. Not sure how many picks but everyone in wrestling would be available. Wrestlers, announcers, refs, managers, Hell even bookers if you wanted. Or just performers if I’m being extra.

I'd start with Johnny Valentine, y'all can do whatever after that.

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19 hours ago, AxB said:

Worst Announce Team: WWE's gets progressively worse as Vince adds more foibles and bans more phrases, forces people to repeat taglines over and over. Also a lot of their announcers are legitimately awful people (except Mauro). So some sort of Lawler/ Graves/ Layfield / Ranallo/ Cole combination would be the worst.

Most Underrated Announce Team: Schiavone & Ventura. Tony was really good before he became a Monday Night Wars overseller. Jesse was always good with any partner, but his WWF era partners like Gorilla and Vince were pretty annoying and not as much fun as Tony.

 

Do the weird-ass random announce teams from the 80s Coliseum Video tapes count?  When you get Mike McGuirk, Billy Graham, Pete Doherty, Rod Trongard, Ken Resnick, etc etc rotating into the booth, things get real bad real fast.

Didn't Schiavone hate working with Ventura in WCW?  Or was that Ross?  Somebody had a major complaint that Ventura did no prep and just winged it for a paycheck.

18 hours ago, Web Conn said:

As for AEW The 3 Dynamites with just Jim and Excalibur I thought Jim was in top form without Tony. Jim does batter with one other person. Tony can commentate with anyone. Excalibur too. Taz fits in better with as the third mic on Dynamite then JR does.

I like Excalibur a lot and really regret he can't be in AEW's commentary booth shaped like a table in this period of joke commentary.  If you like Jericho and Schiavone, Excalibur and Chuck Taylor or anybody else in the locker room who's slightly witty would be your thing.  Back in the days when PWG did funnier commentary (Excalibur stopped doing that because he felt it started to take away from the efforts of the guys in the ring), his stuff with Steen, Rick Knox, Chucky T, Joey Ryan, etc was amazing.

El Generico is a big boy.

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I apologize for this rambling post. 

So I have no fucking clue why, as I haven't watched any current day wrestling since AEW's second week of empty arena stuff aside from the odd bit of BTE, and haven't watched NJPW since the dome shows, BUT I had a dream where I guess my manifestation was speaking with Juice Robinson about his career. He was pissed off with the lack of traction he's had and frustrated that he hasn't been elevated. Why hasn't he? 

I never have wrestling dreams. I think it likely has to do with the depression I've found myself in just as this pandemic was starting and all this time to ruminate and introspect has gotten me into thinking about mentality an awful lot, especially self doubt. Juice Robinson, as colourful as he is, as loveable as he is, is full of self doubt as a character (from the interviews outside of wrestling he seems pretty confident). He loses a big match after putting together a string of really positive performances and he comes back and just tears himself up in the post match interviews. He doesn't fully believe in himself. Juice Robinson is human in a world of super humans. He's us. 

Now, that is something that can work in North America in 2020. We've seen it make Adam Page a star in AEW as the anxious millennial cowboy (seriously amazing). But even if Juice were Japanese I don't think it's something that Gedo and I think the majority of fans can buy from a tippy top act, much less a foreigner. Look at all of the top stars NJPW has had and they are straddling the line of cockiness to the point of arrogance. Okada? Check. Tanahashi? Check. Naito? Check. Big 'Tone Inoki? Hella check. The closest I can think of to a not cocky NJPW guy I had to go back to Nishimura, and he was never a top guy. Ibushi is perhaps there too and look at the limited success he's had relative to his peers considering his talent level and look. And he has psycho mode that sheds his polite mannerisms and beyond that has a certain level of self-assuredness though not quite on the level of the big 4. Perhaps that is what holds him back. And for foreigners? Shit, Gedo is relatively progressive in this regard compared to other Japanese promotions barring DDT, but Kenny was the first foreigner to be able to work on top as a face and achieve huge success. And Kenny lived in Japan for years and spoke the language. Devitt needed Bullet Club. AJ the same. Traditionally foreigners have been huge heels with larger than life personalities and took what they wanted. They were projections of post war America in the Japanese psyche. Now you're seeing that change with Omega and now Ospreay. Though Ospreay, while goofy as shit in a lot of ways, still has a level of arrogance. Omega, while I adore him, is never short on self belief and often times looked like he was too filled with it. I don't know if Japan is either ready (maybe ignorant to say, suggesting they aren't as progressive in this way as western nations while tons and tons of their protagonists in their art struggle with self doubt for decades) or designed to accept a hero of this ilk at least in the world of strong men in pro wrestling. 

Juice Robinson has so much to offer. He has some of the best babyface fire I've seen since Rick Martel. He cuts incredible, emotional promos. He projects so much in his matches but in a believable way. His vulnerability and selling is top notch. But I think he may need to minimize those last two strengths a bit and have some killer instinct. Perhaps a new, less awkward, more decisive finisher... But really, he needs to find a balance of vulnerability and self assurance. Maybe he can nudge Japanese fans into accepting a character like his and Hangmin Adam's as top guy material. But I don't think he can do it without evolving it just a bit more. That balance between self doubt and self belief is something I know I struggle with an awful lot. I think it's pretty much a thing millennials have as a defining feature (hooray). Juice Robinson is us in all the good and bad ways. I hope more than anything in wrestling after thinking about this that he wins the IWGP World Title even for just one day. I want him to succeed more than anything else. 

Edited by Oyaji
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28 minutes ago, Technico Support said:

Didn't Schiavone hate working with Ventura in WCW?  Or was that Ross?  Somebody had a major complaint that Ventura did no prep and just winged it for a paycheck.

I am pretty sure it's JR. I think Schiavone said he loved working with Jesse, and the only person he ever hated working with was Louie Spicolli when they let him do it on Thunder.

After Ross was taken off commentary, put into syndication sales very briefly, and had his blowup with Bill Shaw (who Ross still loathes to this day), Ross said he went on vacation to Jamaica around this time and then subsequently left WCW. Ross shortly thereafter obviously signed with WWF, did a Action Zone or Superstars taping, and then did Wrestlemania IX. Ventura, who was still with WCW, made a comment on the first PPV after Ross had left to effect of, "There is nothing worse than a fat man in a toga."

There you go.

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Jumping in on this announcer talk -

where does everyone stand on Joey Styles in ECW? At the time, he was such a breathe of fresh air and so different from a lot of other commentators. Revisiting ECW, I'm not sure it entirely holds up though he's really good at throwing to segments and in-ring interviews. 

Other revisionist takes - Schiavone was always way better and Jim Ross was always way worse than contemporary takes. 

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The lack of love for Rod Trongard and Lord James Blears makes me sad, as I thought they were very solid even if thy weren't the ideal guys for the modern era. As lonf as it wasn't a women's match thy were great to me (Lord James Blears wasa consummate horndog during women's matches). After that, I love Solie/Piper in Georgia

Even if he wasn't up on wrestling lingo, Bill Mercer was a straight ahead commentator and got the stories over. I always liked hios pause in saying "World Class... Championship Wrestling"

For me Best Announce Team of All Time is a tie between Monsoon/Ventura and Monsoon/Heenan. Heenan never quite had that kind of chemistry with any one in WCW so he seemed off and to not care.

I think David Crockett gets shit on a lot but he was a perfect babyface announcer and actually could be very good at making wait for a big move  or get over what happened in a previous match.

James

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4 hours ago, OctopusCinema said:

The hand-pick comment got me thinking. A fun project would be to get maybe 8-12 or more posters to do an all time fantasy draft. The rosters created could be really cool. Not sure how many picks but everyone in wrestling would be available. Wrestlers, announcers, refs, managers, Hell even bookers if you wanted. Or just performers if I’m being extra.

My first pick would be Baba. Beloved promoter, probably the greatest booker ever, super solid and over babyface as a champion and as a comedy mid-carder, and a distinctive and recognizable voice on colour commentary.

I'd recommend a 32-person active roster, at least 6 of whom should be women, 1 promoter, 1 booker, 1 ring announcer, 1 to 3 commentators, 2 or 3 referees, and between 2 and 12 "miscellaneous" personnel (such as managers, valets, agents, dojo training staff, corner men, ring boys, music producers, video staff, or what have you. Everyone picks 1 home arena. Total roster size: minimum 40, maximum 50. Active wrestlers limited to 32 so everyone has a chance to grab some stars and some favourites. People like Heenan or Baba can fill multiple roles while only taking up one roster spot. Everyone has a time machine and unlimited funding but once a person is picked they are totally off the board going forward. So, for example, if somebody picks Super Strong Machine then Junji Hirata, Sonny Two Rivers, Makai #1 etc are all off the board as well. 

I'd also recommend really stressing patience, as wilh everyone in different time zones you'd need a 12- to 24- hour window for making picks, so the draft would likely stretch out for weeks.

Edited by gordi
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Oyaji's post reminded me of a wrestling dream I had a couple of night's ago. I know other people's dreams are boring, but this was weird enough to share, and I had no idea why I had it, as neither one of these guys has really been on my radar lately.

So basically, there was a rumour going around (in the dream) that Teddy Hart punched out Hulk Hogan at an indie show, as revenge for something or other that Hogan had done to the Hart family. And then video actually came out of it, and basically Teddy sucker punched the Hulkster, knocking him on his back, but then mounted him and was just sort of riding him, amateur-stylie for ages, while trash talking him. And I remember watching it feeling pretty bad for Hogan that he'd been humiliated so badly by a relative nobody like Teddy. But then, I don't know how all of this was captured on video, or maybe I was magically just there now, but Hogan was chatting with Teddy afterwards, trying to patch things up, but making out that it was basically a 50/50 fight, and since they'd both kinda dealt with their issues with men, they were cool now. I don't remember if Teddy was having any of that or not, but it was typical Hulk trying to bullshit things. And that was it. 

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+1 on Schiavone/Ventura. They were great.

One thing I remember about Ventura and JR not getting along, was how much Jesse would crap on the overboard sports build up Jim would give some guys.

I recall one time when JR was going on and on about football and how Vader got a ring with the Rams from SB XIV, only for Ventura to cut him off and say something like, "Wait a minute, Ross! What do you mean Vader got a ring? The Rams lost that game. What'd he get one for being a loser?"

Ventura was awesome.

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Ventura is #1A on colour for me. As part of my friends' all time draft for TEW, I managed to get Lance Russell and Jesse for my commentary team and am stoked. Lance was so fucking great being the straight man for Lawler and all the stupid goofy shit in Memphis for decades. He'd be the perfect foil for Ventura.

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15 minutes ago, Yo-Yo's Roomie said:

Oyaji's post reminded me of a wrestling dream I had a couple of night's ago. I know other people's dreams are boring, but this was weird enough to share, and I had no idea why I had it, as neither one of these guys has really been on my radar lately.

So basically, there was a rumour going around (in the dream) that Teddy Hart punched out Hulk Hogan at an indie show, as revenge for something or other that Hogan had done to the Hart family. And then video actually came out of it, and basically Teddy sucker punched the Hulkster, knocking him on his back, but then mounted him and was just sort of riding him, amateur-stylie for ages, while trash talking him. And I remember watching it feeling pretty bad for Hogan that he'd been humiliated so badly by a relative nobody like Teddy. But then, I don't know how all of this was captured on video, or maybe I was magically just there now, but Hogan was chatting with Teddy afterwards, trying to patch things up, but making out that it was basically a 50/50 fight, and since they'd both kinda dealt with their issues with men, they were cool now. I don't remember if Teddy was having any of that or not, but it was typical Hulk trying to bullshit things. And that was it. 

I had to re-read that because initially I read that as Teddy Long and the idea of Teddy Long back mounting Hogan shouting "C'MON PLAYA!! DOLLA BILL!!" entered my head

James

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