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APRIL 2022 WRESTLING DISCUSSION


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16 hours ago, Craig H said:

Well, that sucks. Hopefully they found something more lucrative to do. I'll miss their comedy act.

Yea I will miss them too. I enjoyed their foolishness with the Influence. As Tenille's long time friends, I know they were all having a ball. At least they are leaving on their own terms and the door is always open. 

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3 hours ago, Technico Support said:

What a show to come back for.  And you stayed a fan after that show?  Damn.

 

1 hour ago, The Natural said:

Still pisses me off. Fuck Eric Bischoff/Hulk Hogan for that.

I just finally read NITRO over last weekend, so all of this is really fresh in my brain. I was largely aware of everything written in the book (with a few exceptions) but man, reading it all compiled together in such a way is a massive exercise in frustration. Highly recommend.

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6 minutes ago, Zakk_Sabbath said:

 

I just finally read NITRO over last weekend, so all of this is really fresh in my brain. I was largely aware of everything written in the book (with a few exceptions) but man, reading it all compiled together in such a way is a massive exercise in frustration. Highly recommend.

That's definitely on my list.  Is it out of print or something?  It's $30 on Amazon, which is kinda high.

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1 hour ago, Technico Support said:

That's definitely on my list.  Is it out of print or something?  It's $30 on Amazon, which is kinda high.

No idea, but I can tell you that immediately after ordering it I found out on Twitter that there's an expanded edition coming, so if you havent read it yet I might hold out for that

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6 hours ago, NoFistsJustFlips said:

No worries, I don't take it as a shot at all lol.

It was definitely not as good as what WCW was doing at the time. But dude it was fucking worlds better than the warmed over shit WWE had been doing. The land of garbage men and plumbers and whatever the fuck a Portuguese Man of War was supposed to be. One week Bret tearing apart the United States in promos and getting booed out of the building then the next week they'd be in Canada or Europe and he'd be the  biggest star in the world. It was so cutting edge and soooooo much better than what the main event scene had been doing.

The boyhood dream Shawn Michaels shit. Bulldog's wife fake sexual assault thing. Cowboy Shawn beating Sid. Sid vs Undertaker as a panic backup plan when Shawn didn't want to job and forgot how to smile. The US vs Canada angle was soooo much better than all of this. Plus it lead to killlerrrrr matches like the Canadian Stampede ten man tags. I get that sometimes stuff just doesn't click with certain people for whatever reason. But I think you had the minority view on that at the time. Austin was in and out of the story doing cool Austin shit. The Bret / Shawn promos & Sunny Days. The only part of the angle I will concede is The Patriot getting shoe horned into it. That didn't fit the aesthetic of what WWE was becoming at all. But that was a short period of an 8 month run of legitimate great stuff.

It kind of blows my mind people could find this story lame and cringe but not the stuff WWE was doing in 1995 & 1996. Really? lol

Even in 1997, Austin's rise did have hype, as did the Austin/Bret feud. That and DX were the two WWF things everyone talked about at school. Then, shortly after that, Chyna and NAO and after that The Rock. 

We definitely didn't find it corny in my SSS of school acquaintances that watched. Well, except for the Patriot, which was corny as hell. Good matches, though! But yeah, Del Wilkes in a USA mask in 1997 was completely out of step with everything else that was going on in the company at that time. 

(Was Miss Jackie beating the shit out of dudes outside the ring in WCW a reaction to Chyna or did they just happen at the same time?)

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I believe the Jackie thing was perhaps more to embarrass Disco Inferno (later in the year) but her beating up random jobbers when she first came in was likely influenced by Chyna. That's too much of a coincidence.

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4 hours ago, Technico Support said:

That's definitely on my list.  Is it out of print or something?  It's $30 on Amazon, which is kinda high.

Its worth it. Lots of very interesting inside baseball stuff about what was going on at Turner at the time.

As for the USA v. Canada stuff just look at how the audience was reacting to it. Look at the reaction to Austin attacking The Hart Foundation during the Canadian National Anthem 

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55 minutes ago, Elsalvajeloco said:

I believe the Jackie thing was perhaps more to embarrass Disco Inferno (later in the year) but her beating up random jobbers when she first came in was likely influenced by Chyna. That's too much of a coincidence.

There probably was some Chyna influence but Jackie was already doing that for years in USWA and Smokey Mountain before going mainstream. I believe that's how she caught the eye of WCW finally. 

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4 hours ago, Technico Support said:

That's definitely on my list.  Is it out of print or something?  It's $30 on Amazon, which is kinda high.

The front office at Turner info makes it worth it. You will know the in-ring and backstage stuff, but the book has upper-mgmt memos and TNT marketing directives and other interesting stuff that was new to me, at least.

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12 minutes ago, Jamal said:

There probably was some Chyna influence but Jackie was already doing that for years in USWA and Smokey Mountain before going mainstream. I believe that's how she caught the eye of WCW finally. 

As someone who grew up watching Memphis TV in the Mississippi Delta, I definitely remember Miss Texas. However, she was around for AWHILE before she got to WCW. Like she randomly shows up in one of "Double J" Jeff Jarrett's first WWF vignettes that Bruce Prichard produced in 1993 as Jeff's "assistant".  It definitely wasn't as blatant as Asya after Chyna had already become a star and had all the plastic surgery and breast augmentations, but I think WCW felt they needed a counterpart to that. They could have brought her anytime before that and didn't. I mean after she breaks from Sullivan, she replaces Sherri as Harlem Heat's valet after Sherri got fired. There wasn't as much intergender stuff until she broke away from Harlem Heat and start feuding with Disco Inferno. 

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20 hours ago, username said:

 

I want to touch on this briefly because... this is one of those internet wrestling takes that is so removed from how I experienced its reception in real life at the time that I legitimately have no feel for if I'm crazy or others are. I just started college around this time, wrestling was generally pretty hot thanks to the NWO and... the thought that Stone Cold was cool but the US vs Canada feud was lame was if not universal then very widespread. You know how people here feel about WWE now? The only time I've seen wrestling fans like that towards WWF before was this very time, I know Mr. ratings guy there is making some iffy arguments but I think there is a real divide between how some people look back at this period (which legit did have the beginnings of one of the greatest wrestling characters and draws of all time in Austin) and the fact that at the time most everyone else thought that it was by far the weaker big angle of the two.

Bingo. Brett was (is?) always a very earnest character from the very start .. and contemporary fandom widely speaking is as earnest at the moment as it has been in living memory. This lends a hyperbolic treatment to him in the memory (the non-stop fawning of late with in ring tributes, for example, is nothing I can remember attributable to any other major star, ever) - but the fact remains that while he was certainly a big player in the 90s, romance aside he was left-behind both in the WWF and the WCW zeniths consecutively. The big run was built on the ashes of the Screwjob, commercially speaking probably the biggest legacy he left the Fed (sad as it is to say) as there was very very little harking back to him in the years that followed otherwise.

Edited by A_K
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Jackie / Chyna stuff was interesting parallel .. I'd always presumed that Jackie beating Disco had been in response to Chyna too, but did Chyna have any significant pinfall wins over male talent prior to Jackie beating Disco in October '97? The significant stuff with Jarrett would come some time later.

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3 hours ago, A_K said:

Jackie / Chyna stuff was interesting parallel .. I'd always presumed that Jackie beating Disco had been in response to Chyna too, but did Chyna have any significant pinfall wins over male talent prior to Jackie beating Disco in October '97? The significant stuff with Jarrett would come some time later.

Chyna didn't have an official match in WWF until September 1998. She had a handful of matches in Kowalski's independent promotion and that was the extent of her in ring career prior to that. They went out of their way to protect her sans the stunner at No Way Out 98 which I would argue did no damage because it was Austin and a first time instance of male-on-female violence in WWF (I know there was Jake slapping Liz, but I mean in the Attitude era). She literally spent a year and a half (from February 1997 to September 1998) beating folks up and no one besides Austin getting any real offense on her. Shit, I cannot remember even a male wrestler getting that type of protection. 

That said, not wrestling for two years probably hurt any chance of her getting decent in the ring and not selling for anyone likely swelled her ego something fierce.

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1 hour ago, Jamal said:

There probably was some Chyna influence but Jackie was already doing that for years in USWA and Smokey Mountain before going mainstream. I believe that's how she caught the eye of WCW finally. 

What trips me out the most is she says Sullivan had no clue she could actually work until she started doing spots on guys during his matches which I would this was on the fly. Kinda how Shawn Michaels talked about how Sherri would beat up guys during his matches for not selling for him.

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14 minutes ago, Ziggy said:

What trips me out the most is she says Sullivan had no clue she could actually work until she started doing spots on guys during his matches which I would this was on the fly. Kinda how Shawn Michaels talked about how Sherri would beat up guys during his matches for not selling for him.

Sherri Martel was so fucking awesome.

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1 minute ago, A_K said:

Given the reticence of Jarrett to job to Chyna in '99, Disco probably deserves a fair amount of dues for giving Jackie the rub then as early as '97. Jackie went over soundly at the time.

Wasn't the Jarrett thing more of a money issue? On his podcast, Jeff said he had no issue jobbing to Chyna. Maybe he's just saying that in hindsight, but Jeff has appeared to be pretty damn truthful so far. With Disco, he got fired and the ultimatum was to lose to Jackie if he wanted to get his job back. He didn't have much of a choice.

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Wasn't Disco the TV Champion literally a few weeks before dropping the fall to Jackie? Why was he fired (work or real)? RE: Jarrett -- not so much the gimmick thing, I'd always just understood that he'd considered loosing to Chyna as being bad for his 'brand', and therefore he was reluctant to do it unless he was especially compensated (that may tie back into the money issue element .. could be conflation of stories).

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14 minutes ago, A_K said:

Wasn't Disco the TV Champion literally a few weeks before dropping the fall to Jackie? Why was he fired (work or real)?

He didn't want to do the job to Jackie per Bischoff. 

Quote

“There’s not a lot to talk about – he didn’t want to do it [lose to Jacqueline]. He drew a line in the sand, that doesn’t usually work with me and I fired him. There’s nothing more to it than that – there’s no more drama to it than that behind the scenes. Y’know looking back now, Disco’s a good friend, a friend of the show. I love doing his show and Konnan’s show every once in a while when they call and ask. We all have a great relationship, I would hope at least Disco looks back at that and realises that that was probably a mistake on his part. Disco didn’t have a serious character; Disco was comedy relief. Disco was a heel, that thought he was somebody else all of the time – that was his character. So I didn’t quite understand why Disco couldn’t see the opportunity to go out there and have fun with it. It’s not like anyone took Disco Inferno seriously to begin with as a performer. I mean as a legitimate wrestler, they took him seriously as a character, he was a great character – he was funny, he was fun to watch. For the life of me I couldn’t understand why a comedic character couldn’t see the fun to be had and the business to be made by going out there and having a match with Jacqueline – it’s just incomprehensible to me.”

The insiders reported at the time that Disco thought they were trying to make an ass out of him (which I thought and Eric as well apparently was his gimmick already), which is why he didn't want to do it. By the time he won the TV title, it didn't mean jackshit. By 1997, they kept flipping the TV title and cruiserweight belts like crazy so it's likely Disco winning was a title change just to do a title change.

Quote

I'd always just understood that he'd considered loosing to Chyna as being bad for his 'brand', and therefore he was reluctant to do it unless he was especially compensated (that may tie back into the money issue element .. could be conflation of stories).

Based on what Jeff said on My World, that's about 5% truth to that and it was mostly just about money:

1) He understood that Chyna was one of the most over acts in WWF at the time.

2) Considering how he came up in the business, he was really into the intergender stuff and getting that over (which is why it continued in WCW after he left WWF in 1999).

3) He knew he had WWF over the proverbial barrel by the way his contract situation was handled.

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I thought the Disco timeline was that he got asked to put over Jackie, refused, got fired, worked indies for a few months, attempted to squeeze his way into the WWF (no idea how close this was to actually happening but the big RUMORZ from folks like SCOOPS was that he was going to be the protégé brought into WWF by Honky Tonk Man that ended up being Billy Gunn in the "RockaBILLY" gimmick), and then ended up crawling back to WCW who gave him the ultimatum of fulfilling the original request of jobbing to Jackie when he came back. 

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