Scouting Report Returns!

[Goodear]

Welcome to the Bride of The Scouting Report!  As you may or may not have seen, I did a slightly in depth report of the talent roster of the AEW roster for the last few months and managed to keep it mostly open with only a single fatality. Now, as I am an egoist and want to make everything about me, I figured we could continue with the same brand of report for other wrestlers from other promotions throughout time and spaaaaaace. So if you aren't familiar with it, the Scouting Report is a broad spectrum analysis of a wrestler's strengths and weaknesses in a holistic manner rather than being a history lesson. So I am far more likely to talk about trends in a wrestler's performance than I am about pointing out particular matches because I suck at dates and pulling out the best matches in someone's career doesn't always paint the most accurate picture. We're looking for lines, not data points.

So who are we scouting? That's an interesting question and I don't really have an interesting answer. @Matt Dsuggested 1993 in WWE but it's difficult to slice out someone from a particular year and ignore everything that came afterward. So while I promise Damien Demento coverage, I'm not sure how useful talking about Scott Steiner in 1993 would be since we know the outcome. I would prefer eras such as WWF Scott Steiner or Big Poppa Pump Scott Steiner or that sort of angle personally. I'm thinking about doing a reverse engineering style slog through characters that didn't work and why they failed.

I'm open to suggestions! Direct message me any requests and I'll see about giving it a shot but I will warn you of my biases up front. 

I hate everything.

[Goodear]

Damian Demento (WWF Circa 1993)

Nothing like a world beater to really get us firing off hot. Demento was one of the guys hyped up pretty hard by the Apter mags on the indies as Mondo Kleen before getting a shot at the WWF and flaming out almost immediately. Damian got no feuds and no entrance music which was odd for the time before quickly getting shown the door. This was mostly due to him sucking eggs as a wrestler to the point that he couldn't get covered by his gimmick and gear (something that did work for a guy like Papa Shango). Damian actually did a decent enough job staring into the void and talking to himself with a far off look in his eye, but he was also in competition with other psycho heels like Matt Bornes' Doink The Clown and he wasn't going to win that battle. Demento moved like he had lead in his boots, didn't have anything other than very basic offense to offer (finish was a pretty standard knee drop) and was lackluster in all respects.

This doesn't mean he didn't have good points. I liked the concept of a person who hears voices and the entrance gear (reminiscent of a gaping maw around Demento's head) actually worked. The issue was he had to take that off in order to work a match. The name Damian Demento also makes it sound like he's about to play some top 80's hits on 107.6 The Home of ROCK. So what we have is a concept and gear for that concept and what we needed was a better worker in the role with a better name. It sort of feels like something that would have worked in the Dungeon of Doom or something a Buzz Sawyer would be able to work with in a grittier environment. It's something built for low lighting and not the very bright WWF.

[Goodear]

Big Josh (WCW Circa 1991)

Big Josh was Matt Borne just before Matt Borne moved to the WWF to become Doink the Clown. Now some of you may remember Doink as being a really interesting and nuanced character that would make for a facistinating discussion. But most people don't think about Borne's prior gimmick of the lumberjack Big Josh in WCW which was met with a lot less positive response. So by talking more about Big Josh, it makes Doink all the more interesting.

First thing first. The way I remember Big Josh was being this sort of silly, happy go lucky character who did a wacky log rolling spot and the earthquake splash. Going back to look at some of his matches as a refesher, it struck me just how much my memory had shifted. Josh kicked the shit out of people. I was struck by the weight of his strikes and just how surly he was beating the stuffing out job guys. The funny thing was that he was so strike focused with big old punches and chops. This was a stark comparison to his style as Doink which was markedly based around taking people down and wearing their asses out with holds and grapples. Some moves went across the gimmicks (the sit down splash that became the whoopie cushion, a belly-to-belly suplex and a powerslam). 

So why did Josh not succeed where Doink did? Why was a lumberjack a worse chracter than an Evil Clown? Well, when was the last time you met a lumberjack? Never? Well there you go. IT was one thing when lumberjacks were a larger part of the cultural landscape but it wasn't in 1991 anymore. And so the character didn't have stll have the relevance to connect to people. Much like when people laugh at the coal miner's glove match because they don't mine coal for the most part and don't realize that a coal miner's glove has goddman steel in it. Oddly enough, evil clowns have pretty much universal appeal forever. 

[tbarrie]

I remember my brother being convinced that "Big Josh" must have brought his gimmick with him from a smaller local territory, because it was conceivable that he'd actually be considered "Big" in such a territory. In early 90s WCW? Not so much.

[Goodear]

TL Hopper (WWF 1996)

The evil wrestling plumber sounds like a bad idea almost entirely because it is. This didn't work for a whole number of reasons divorced from Tony Anthony (best known as Dirty White Boy in Smokey Mountain) who honestly just didn't look like he belonged on super bright WWF television. If there was ever a wrestler made for dim lighting and a harder atmosphere, is was Tony Anthony. Just a really solid brawler who honestly look like he trained though heavy drinking, Anthony just didn't fit into the WWF machine and I've got no issues with him (although his performance was pretty hammy).

The issue I really have is with the gimmick. In looking at the wrestling job gimmicks, there is a vast disparity of the ones that work and the ones that do not. One of my internal checklists include 2 things when it comes to these sorts of gimmicks. First off: What does the gimmick make us feel? In the case of say, The Million Dollar Man, we have feelings about rich people that translate. Britt Baker does this with dentists. I'm not sure that plumbers bring about the same feelings. Sure, some people have run into bad tradespeople, but I don't think it is a universal. Secondly. does the gimmick inform the work? How in the world would a plumber wrestle? Shit, I don't know. So it doesn't help Hopper to have the gimmick that doesn't provide him any direction. Compare this with say, The Goon, who at least had the hockey fighter influence to draw on (THAT failed for other reasons). So we have a gimmick that fails on both ends.

I've thought about this a whole lot (you know, for not thinking about it a lot) and I don't think I've come up with a blue collar heel gimmick that actually worked. I guess you could put The Big Bossman there as a correctional officer but their is still a huge power discrepancy there between them and the general population as law enforcement. I think the occupational gimmicks for heels only really work if it entails power or entitlement. It's very difficult to engender those feelings on blue collar workers so you are left with the positions of privilege in order to draw heat.

 

[AxB]

If they'd waited until 2008 and had someone do a Joe the Plumber gimmick, that might have gotten heat. But Vince's political beliefs would make him think it was a babyface gimmick.

Maybe the Plumber = Heel thing was yet another rib on Dusty Rhodes? Vince had a strange obsession with doing that...

[Goodear]

Cody Rhodes (WWE 2007-2016)

Before he became one of the principle faces of AEW, Cody was in WWE for nearly a decade before moving on to greener pastures pretty much everywhere else before settling into a promotion he helps run and operate. Much is made of WWE not using Cody properly with Stardust being the most glaring example being brought to the fore. I however think Cody suffered from overexposure rather than misuse. Let me explain...

Cody's WWE run was basically defined by the radical shifts in his character and presentation. Looking at his developmental cycle, you can point to no less than seven very distinct eras in his character (Rookie, Legacy, Dashing, Masked Cody, Rhodes Scholars, Brotherhood, Stardust). Now while you may look at those as Rhodes trying to find something that worked and evolving but I believe there is a limit to character changes you can make before you burn through your chances. Obviously, there is also the opposite problem where guys like Dolph Ziggler either never change or their changes get quickly rejected to get them put back to square one. But do the opposite and the crowd will no longer believe in you as a person and assume you are playing characters. This is why no one liked The Big Show turning heel and face so often. People want to believe the character is consistent and Cody never found that until he went out on his own.

Cody also suffered because his reinventions came one right after the other on the same television show rather than moving to another promotion (which who can blame him when there are no other promotions to jump to?).  He basically had to create his own competitor in order to work his current gimmick as a main eventer. WWE really couldn't reinvent him again and push him the same way as the crowd had been conditioned to his entire professional development. Also they'd have to push their main eventers out of the way in order to do so and that was a risk they understandably wouldn't want to take.

In conclusion, I don't think either party is really to blame for Cody only reaching IC Title range in WWE. It took Cody a long time to find his own voice and he needed to move promotions to do it. WWE obviously wasn't going to take the chance of putting his current gimmick on him because that gimmick requires a significant main event push behind it. 

[Matt D]

On 1/13/2021 at 8:13 PM, Goodear said:

Big Josh (WCW Circa 1991)

Big Josh was Matt Borne just before Matt Borne moved to the WWF to become Doink the Clown. Now some of you may remember Doink as being a really interesting and nuanced character that would make for a facistinating discussion. But most people don't think about Borne's prior gimmick of the lumberjack Big Josh in WCW which was met with a lot less positive response. So by talking more about Big Josh, it makes Doink all the more interesting.

First thing first. The way I remember Big Josh was being this sort of silly, happy go lucky character who did a wacky log rolling spot and the earthquake splash. Going back to look at some of his matches as a refesher, it struck me just how much my memory had shifted. Josh kicked the shit out of people. I was struck by the weight of his strikes and just how surly he was beating the stuffing out job guys. The funny thing was that he was so strike focused with big old punches and chops. This was a stark comparison to his style as Doink which was markedly based around taking people down and wearing their asses out with holds and grapples. Some moves went across the gimmicks (the sit down splash that became the whoopie cushion, a belly-to-belly suplex and a powerslam). 

So why did Josh not succeed where Doink did? Why was a lumberjack a worse chracter than an Evil Clown? Well, when was the last time you met a lumberjack? Never? Well there you go. IT was one thing when lumberjacks were a larger part of the cultural landscape but it wasn't in 1991 anymore. And so the character didn't have stll have the relevance to connect to people. Much like when people laugh at the coal miner's glove match because they don't mine coal for the most part and don't realize that a coal miner's glove has goddman steel in it. Oddly enough, evil clowns have pretty much universal appeal forever. 

Thoughts here:

1. Big Josh was Borne getting a job from Dusty because he'd been good to Dustin in Texas.
2. It's actually actively tricky for a ten year + vet like Borne to work a gimmick where he basically didn't know how to wrestle.
3. Probably the highlight of the character would be the 2/3 falls match with Arn, right? Or the crazy "Why is this on the main event!" thundercage six man with Dustin/Zenk/Josh vs the York Foundation.
4. I like the fact that one of the year-long storylines of 91 was Rich and Josh being friends and then Rich selling out and Josh having to fight his former friend. There were a lot of fun character-driven moments of Rich begging off in the actual matches.

[Ace]

16 minutes ago, Matt D said:

Probably the highlight of the character would be the 2/3 falls match with Arn, right? Or the crazy "Why is this on the main event!" thundercage six man with Dustin/Zenk/Josh vs the York Foundation.

WCW always pulled weird shit like that. I recently rewatched the match from 1990 when Arn beats Muta for the TV title, and even back then I wondered "Why the fuck is this on Power Hour?"

 

[Rocco]

Power Hour was an important show at one point.  

[Eivion]

3 hours ago, Goodear said:

Looking at his developmental cycle, you can point to no less than seven very distinct eras in his character (Rookie, Legacy, Dashing, Masked Cody, Rhodes Scholars, Brotherhood, Stardust).

Never liked the Masked Cody gimmick partially because I always felt he rushed into it. Dashing  needed to last a good year or two before going off into the Dr. Doom Masked Cody.

[PetrolCB]

14 hours ago, Eivion said:

Never liked the Masked Cody gimmick partially because I always felt he rushed into it. Dashing  needed to last a good year or two before going off into the Dr. Doom Masked Cody.

I dunno if he was rushed into it. Wasn't the mask a result of a broken nose and they just decided to incorporate that?

[Kev]

I generally like Cody but masked and Stardust were two of my least favourite gimmicks, just really cringey stuff.

Some of those gimmick tweaks were done quite naturally (rookie>Legacy, Dashing>masked) but some were slightly out of nowhere (the Dashing gimmick was very much him switching brands, going solo and suddenly having a new character).

I would put some blame on WWE though for him maybe not being able to reach a higher ceiling. It’s a bit symptomatic of the short-termism of a lot of their booking, guys can be around for a long time but it rarely feels like there’s any long term story arcs or natural character progression, so despite all these gimmick tweaks Cody felt stale because he was largely around the same level no matter what he was doing.

 

[Goodear]

On 1/18/2021 at 7:26 PM, Matt D said:

Thoughts here:

1. It's actually actively tricky for a ten year + vet like Borne to work a gimmick where he basically didn't know how to wrestle.

Those of you that have paid attention to me over the course of my time here probably have a pretty good idea what's coming next... You guessed it!

Bunkhouse Buck (WCW 1994)

According to Wikipedia, Jimmy Golden started wrestling in 1969, making him a 25 year veteran at the time he followed long term partner and cousin Robert Fuller to WCW. And coming into WCW at the time, Buck took on the gimmick as a ranch hand who had personal enmity against the Rhodes Family. According to the Apter mags, pancakes were involved but I don't think that ever really became cannon. Regardless, Buck took on a gimmick of a guy who never wrestled before but was in a whole lot of fights. And so, he wrestled like that. Now I cannot honestly say that I've seen a lot of Jimmy Golden prior to coming to WCW, but here we have someone with tons of experience deliberately working like he just came off the ranch. Buck was built around nothing more complicated than a punch to the mouth. So with that in mind, Buck had to get the most out of what his character actually could do. You can get a lot out of brawling if you pay attention to the options. One thing for sure, Buck didn't throw lame forearm exchanges. He had an anti-moveset.

Honestly, Buck was a bit of a mixed bag in WCW. He had a really good series against Dustin Rhodes and a fairly good tag run with Dick Slater highlighted by the Sister Sherri/Col Parker angles. WCW was in a bit of a transition period at the time and Buck really didn't fit for long with Hulk Hogan changing the landscape. Stud Stable out and Dungeon of Doom in. Buck also suffered when he didn't have an angle with some heat on it and was pushed aside for newer Stable members like Arn Anderson and Terry Funk to continue the Rhodes feud. Buck could get a little cartoonish with his bumps as well as he leaned into the awkwardness. Anyway, Buck is an interesting case of a guy who knew how to wrestle, acting like he didn't.

 

[NikoBaltimore]

I almost feel like we need to tag @BEN!on this one with how much he's talked about Bunkhouse.  I always had a soft spot for the guy as even as a kid he was so wacky it was hard to hate him.

[twiztor]

@Goodearis this still a thing? i very much enjoy reading your take(s) on random wrestlers