Leaderboard

When I did my re-watch of the Manias, I wanted to see things from matches I hadn't seen/noticed before. So, to that end, I'd never realized Paul Orndorff is the MVP of the Mania 1 main event. He has to walk a literal first-timer through a heat segment, sell for everyone, do the job, AND do a post-match angle that would eventually lead to his face turn -- all amid the absolute chaos that was that match. Oh, right, and the company's entire future depended on this match. You can see how good a professional he was, because you never doubted any of it for a second. I think that's about as good a tribute as I can say for the man. RIP Mr. #1derful.

That sucks! I do assume you mean the actual monetary cost of the tickets, transport etc., not the potential cost to your young daughter's psyche of attending Smackdown in Cleveland?

An amazing stooge job from Paul here. RIP.

Shida cosplayed as Cody's boots?

this could go in the "wrestling tropes" thread but I'm sick of overly long entrances. Unless its WrestleMania not everyone needs an overly long elaborate entrance. Another area where wrestling in general could be helped by dialing back

I think a fair thing to acknowledge about the entrances too is that they don't take as long as the WWE's does. Just rewatched some entrances from SD, Dark, and Dynamite this past week for reference AEW Fuego Del Sol + Mark Stunt = 37 seconds (AEW DARK MATCH) Blade + Bunny = 39 seconds OC + Statlander = 1 minute (song kept playing, but after that it was Aubrey checking Blade for weapons) FTR + Wardlows entrance on Dynamite = 28 seconds Young Bucks = 1 minute 44 seconds (by far the longest) WWE Roman Reigns entrance to start SmackDown Friday? 3 minutes and 16 seconds. Nakamura - 1 minute and 30 seconds Cesaro? 1 minute and 10 seconds Edges entrance to end SD? - 1 minute and 7 seconds (cut to commercial) Reigns entrance to start SD was 26 seconds slower than Blade/Bunny + OC/Statlander + FTR/Wardlow + Young Bucks. That's kind of wild just how short AEW's entrances usually are.

BOOGIEDRIVE ELBOW, BITCHES.

Paul's elbow is the best version of the People's Elbow / Worm / Five Knuckle Shuffle / whatever

My first live wrestling show was main evented by Hogan/Orndorff. The ring was pelted with trash the whole time. It was so chaotic and it hooked me on wrestling. RIP Mr. Wonderful.

We all wish we could look this cool.

It’s a BOY! Jasmyne and I did a gender reveal and got blue confetti. Can’t wait for him to come in November!

Excellent point. The value in Konnan teaching a whole generation of suburban white kids about eating strawberries and tossing salads can't be undersold.

So you’re admitting WWE has outsold them so far? [/WWEBubble]

Paul Orndorff was arguably the first wrestler to be the focal point in school for me back in the day. His turning on Hulk Hogan was the talk of the sixth grade for at least two days. Simply great at what he did, both as a heel and babyface. Part of me wished he had some sort of title run in the WWF (either World or IC), but he didn't need it. He was that over. Dolfan makes a great point about Orndorff being the MVP of the WM1 main event. He's the forgotten man in some sorts (and, depending on who you hear it from, may not have been in the match in the first place if David Schulz wasn't fired), but he was the glue that kept the match together and did a great job carrying Mr. T (who, to his credit, was not a slouch) into an acceptable match.

AKA the day after payday sonnnnn. I've been waiting for this since Blood and Guts in Newark was cancelled at the start of the pandemic. Cannot overstate my excitement.

I was a big fan of Mr Wonderful in the 90's. I thought he was a legit badass in my pre-internet days. He even made me like Paul Roma! His whole look was excellent. His robe was on par with Valentine & Flair's. He would have made a badass Horseman.

boothisman.gif ?

I impulsively bought (nice) tickets to this show about half an hour before bell time and it worked out great. The show breezed right by, felt real good to be back in there. Proper writeup in a day or two but the big takeaways are that Lethal/King ruled more than a few shades of ass & Rush is a fucking awesome professional wrestler.

One of the great things about Eddie and Funk is that in addition to working any style they’re guys who you could put anywhere on the card, face or heel, and they would fill their role perfectly. They’re true pros who would do the job asked of them and do it well.

Oh no. Oh. No.

BTW, if you want to see what complete psychopaths professional athletes are: I get about caring what you put into your body, but Jesus Harold Christ.

I want to say my earliest wrestling/WWF memory is when Orndorff turned on Hogan. RIP Mr Wonderful.

Damn. I'll always remember him as being one of the top guys in the mix in the WWF when I first started watching wrestling. I saw so much of him of those early WWF PPVs and Coliseum Video tapes. Always an awesome worker. RIP and thanks, Mr. Wonderful.

I thought it was funny, but my impression was that they were probably all drinking, someone mentioned a giant incest space baby, and they just wrote around that gag.

Random thought here, but I've been watching a ton of Terry Funk lately given his recent news and I'm more convinced than ever that he's the most talented pro wrestler who ever lived. He could do absolutely anything at a level that I think only Eddie Guerrero can rival historically. MOTDC's across multiple decades in a variety of styles, in a variety of roles, against a variety of opponents at various levels of the card, all while drawing money. It's always hard to say "best", but I'm going to say he's the most talented. Dude can truly do anything at an elite level and make whoever he's working for money while doing it.

1994 Courtroom drawing depicting Vince McMahon and Hulk Hogan:

I feel like Fertitta is the kind of guy who keeps wondering why the "wallet inspector" never gives him his wallet back.

Sometimes it takes that long for the song to kick in. Did he come out to "Simply the Best" ?

They go on sale July 16th.

Again not trying to fight your opinion here. Just trying to relay that yes it would be a problem and yes it would cause an uproar. I've been on tiny events in horse barns where I've seen guys complain about stuff like this. Hell one of the shit heads I broke into the business with once said "My people pay to hear my music so I'm not going out until my song has been playing for at least a minute". This was a dude I knew since high school who I was wrestling in a street fight for that night. But he waited over a minute to come out. Everyone in this business is a mark for themselves. And the second you treat them as less than a star it's going to rock the boat for some people. The Janela thing was just an example. But I'll keep rolling with that. He gets what, one Dynamite match every six months? So you're advocating for 95% of all his entrances be cut (since he mainly works Dark & Elevation only). So the dude gets one entrance every six months or so? How does that not relay to the guy that no one cares about him? How does that help him feel like a valued member of the team? Part of the job of a good promoter is to make all of your talent feel valued. Not everyone is gonna be put in a meaningful spot. But you can still treat them as an important part of the team. Cutting entrances is not how you demonstrate that. You save 8 minutes on an internet TV show that only 25% of your audience even watches but potentially alienate your talent confidence in the process... it's just not worth it.

So there's this racist as fuck England fan on the internet who posted a racist as fuck tweet on the internet before deleting it but not before a bunch of people on the internet took a screenshot of it and about 3 seconds later starting tweeting his employers on the internet because said racist fuck had his full name, job title, employer and a convenient selfie posted on the internet and now his employers are looking into it and he could lose his job. Point being, he's on the fucking internet. Not very bright these racist fucks. Some of the other stuff I've been hearing about since last night is just depressing too and it is, of course, only a small minority, the vast majority have come out in support of young lads who had the guts to step up and take a penalty. I love football as much as the next guy but it is only football.

I thought Punk did a pretty good job when he was on the Raw announce team

Pillman's another guy who could've had a tremendous run as an announcer, manager or authority figure. He'd already knocked it out of the park as a white meat babyface and as a crazy heel. In a perfect world, he'd have realized that his ankle was too messed up for him to go at the level he was used to and transitioned into the modern Jesse the Body role that JR tried to convince him to do and we're talking about him in the same way we talk about how Heenan was great at everything.

“That was the character Hulk Hogan sticking needles into his ass cheeks, not Terry.”

We all have different sensibilities when it comes to what we like out of wrestling. But some of these suggestions clearly would never make it past the wrestling bubble filter. Like cutting contracted talent's entrances? Yeah explain that to the worker and see how that works out lol. There's certain cues wrestling uses to demonstrate unspoken norms. Such as, if you get no entrance you are not important. Did anyone think QT Marshall was beating Cody when he had no entrance this week? Nah. Cutting the contracted wrestler's entrances off of Dark & Elevation would communicate to them that no one in the company cares about them. Cut Joey Janela's entrance and see how long it takes for him to publicly vent on twitter and ask for his release because the company is disrespecting him.

The show wouldn’t be as entertaining without Taz & Excalibur messing around. Otherwise you’d get Show & Tony on Dark Elevation. I mean you’re watching Dark to see their stars beating the piss out of nobody’s, and looking good. Both talking heads clowning on ugly ham & eggers adds to it.

I see that too, including Sam Houston, and Kendall Windham. He’s the prototypical wrestler southern promoters were looking to make into their top country fried white meat babyface.

@Jiji Hook gang rise up

My favorite thing about Harbour's performance is that there's really barely any silver lining. With Drax, you get him saying "oh you're not really hideous." With Tony, you see the moments of heroism and bravery and humility. Rocket's a big softy in the end. Pym is cranky but lovable. With Red Guardian though, he's just a complete waste, just 100% lacking in every meaningful way, and because you can understand and admit that, you learn to not expect anything meaningful from him and can just appreciate the positives for what they are when they come.

It would have been better that way but I consider "to Orndorff someone" is to turn heel by attacking your partner/friend while you are shaking their hand or more precisely raise their hand in victory Usually when I look for that it is because the person getting turned on frankly deserves it. Like Hogan did

I'm two episodes in and lack the urge to go back.

Are you living the Cornette experience?

I think there’s a pretty short list of people who were successful in every role they attempted in wrestling. Funk and Eddie are two of them. I’d add Heenan and Lawler (I don’t care for Lawler as an announcer, but he’s definitely been successful in that role).

My crowning achievement on the internet/in wrestling: we were having a "Re-examining John Cena" discussion in the omnibus thread, and I posted the music video for Cinderella's "Don't Know What You Got (Til It's Gone)" only to have it show up in the Hangman/Kenny video package shortly thereafter. Again, could be a total coincidence, but who would think of that one in 2020?!

Now this is definitely something that a mask wearing commentator who also wrestled in the past SHOULD say! Good one! And I'm sure there would be a super offensive joke about JR in there somewhere, but I will not be touching that one.

Yeah, it really was pretty pathetic how she carried Smackdown for three quarters of the pandemic and then they didn't have shit for her to do at Mania. I hope she gets well, and I hope better things come for her upon her return. If I were her I'd be asking myself if I really thought WWE was ever gonna treat me the way they treat the other Horsewomen, and what companies might be willing to treat me that way....

Everyone knows that rednecks engineer the best explosions.