Jump to content
DVDVR Message Board

Technico Support

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    9,932

  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    62

 Content Type 

Posts posted by Technico Support

    NFL Stupidity in 2015

    in FOOTBALL

    Posted

    I'm not sure about the "taping is legal/illegal" thing.  Isn't there a distinction in the rule regarding where you can tape from and wasn't taping signals specifically forbidden?  Anyway, if it was perfectly legal, why were the Pats' camera people disguising themselves and why were they coached on what lies to tell if caught?

     

    Also, Occam's Razor and all.  What's more likely: the Patriots cheated or the NFL is out to get them because they're just so darn good and are a paragon of virtue?  FFS.

    WRESTLER OF THE DAY: LEX LUGER

    in ...OF THE DAY

    Posted

     

    Most underrated wrestler of all time?

     

    Could be.

     

    I actually really quite like the GAB match as it was an impossible match and its flaws have nothing to do with Lex as a performer. I've written about it before.

     

    The first match on the docket is Lex Luger vs Barry Windham, in a cage, for the vacant WCW World Heavyweight Championship. It’s a fascinating match, especially for the sake of this exploration, because in so many ways, it was an extraordinary match for all the wrong reasons. What Lex and Barry, two talented wrestlers with a definite connection to the crowd, were asked to do was contradictory at best and impossible at worst, and it leaned far closer to worst than best.
     
    Everyone knows the context. Ric Flair refused contract negotiations. Ric Flair refused to drop the title to Luger. Ric Flair offered to drop it to Windham but Herd balked on the entire situation. Ric Flair left for Titan and they ended up here, with a build towards Luger finally winning the title but with no champion for him to vanquish, with Barry pulled from the mixed tag as the only viable opponent for Lex, and with a crowd who was openly hostile to the company and it’s main event, which wasn’t even a main event since it was the second to last match on the card.
     
    What they were trying to accomplish was a mishmash of epic proportions. Lex Luger had to be established as a champion. More than that, though, he had to leave the match looking strong as a potential heel champion. There needed to be some slight question about how he won. He couldn’t wrestle the match as a heel, though. One of the few things WCW had going for them here was that a large portion of the crowd had followed him for years and wanted him to win the title. They couldn’t take that moment away from him. He couldn’t appear to look weak throughout the match, as well. Of secondary importance, Barry couldn’t look too fiendish. He was going to be one of the company’s top babyfaces in the fall. Finally, they needed to wrestle a match that at least partially would make the crowd forget about the specter of Ric Flair that was hanging over the entire event. They had to combat the “We Want Flair” chants, and as part of a live PPV, even in the best circumstances, production alone couldn’t be counted upon to manage that. It wasn’t the best circumstances, anyway, it was WCW, where they spent fifteen seconds panning over excited front row fans, or at least fans that were excited to chant “We Want Flair!” The wrestlers were very much on their own.
     
    Let’s look at this again, because a lot of this deserves reiteration. They had to wrestle a main event caliber match, in a cage, without having any real, recent reason to be feuding, for a vacant title, in front of a hostile crowd. They couldn’t use a lot of the usual tools at their disposal. There was no real impetus for blood or hate-filled brawling. Windham couldn’t work a long heat segment on Luger, because the end goal of the match wasn’t about Luger garnering sympathy or overcoming adversity. In the end, he had to win because Harley Race and Mr. Hughes came out to refocus him/distract his opponent. At the same time, they couldn’t do a heavy double-turn within the match because there was no context for it and, more importantly, because they needed the crowd to be able to revel in the finish, even if they were, perhaps, a bit bewildered in it. WCW needed to give them this moment or else they’d turn on the night even more. Really, though, the wrestlers couldn’t even work a spotfest, which might have drawn in the crowd given the setting, because it had to feel like a legitimate NWA/WCW World Heavyweight Championship match to reestablish the title and lineage considering how Flair left with it. It had to feel legitimate in pacing and scope, but without many of the tools that previous such matches could utilize.
     
    Ultimately and unsurprisingly, the match failed when it came to keeping the crowd and having them forget Flair. It did have some things going for it and may have succeeded in other ways. I think the fans were ready for Luger to win and they did seem to pop for it. It was his time, or at least it would have been had things gone differently. It’s impossible to know how a babyface Luger victory, with Flair still in the picture, would have gone. The announcers did a very good job protecting an artificial feel of importance to the pre-match (though the live crowd wouldn’t get to see that), bringing up the wrestlers’ respective past as teammates and rivals. At least the people at home could pretend. Barry used the cage in interesting ways, mainly as a way to steady himself for top rope moves (a flying clothesline and later a flying kick that led towards the finish) and most interestingly, as a counter to torture rack, where he used his height to push off the cage and flip out of it. They obviously had the intrigue of Race and Hughes coming down, a surprise which took the fans’ mind off of Flair, at least temporarily. Windham exited the match fairly well protected and probably a little elevated from when he came in. Luger had gained a layer of doubt (could he have won without Race coming down?) but also had a new management team, a new attitude, and a new, immediately over finisher. The fans could refocus some of their resentment in Flair being forced out (or the illusion of such) to Luger robbing them of their moment of celebration by using a shortcut and going heel.
     
    While it may have accomplished some of WCW’s longer-term goals, at least in a watered-down manner, it was still a bit of an albatross in the moment. They worked a more measured title match style, each wrestler being careful not to make a mistake, but without a strong face/heel dynamic, the fans were restless. With every break in the action, they chants began anew. Alternatively, anytime they started to pick up the pace, they seemed to fade, but the match didn’t call for much of that faster pace. Windham tried, and the big spots were fun, but it made for an almost experimental feel. The cage ended up feeling like a goofy prop and in fact, I can’t think of another cage match where the cage had less meaning either as an imposing structure to create mood or as a tool to be used in the narrative, even in the era of WWE PG. Having Race and Hughes come down was very smart, but there was no reason they couldn’t have added drama by arriving earlier in the match. This crowd needed every distraction it could get. Frankly, there was no fooling this crowd into thinking they were witnessing history, so they should have gone all out in order to keep them engaged and entertained.
     
    Still, Luger turned and while business was down into the fall of 1991, the heel machine this match christened in him looked pretty good on paper, at least. Barry’s babyface turn, drawn out for a few more weeks on the weekend shows, was a bit more successful, and he helped give a rub to first Ron Simmons and then Dustin Rhodes along the way. I don’t think the title would feel truly significant again until Vader took it the following year, but then there was almost no way this match could have accomplished that, even if they went sixty minutes and bled buckets and started a riot (for good reasons, not bad). This was a case of a two wrestlers put in an impossible situation, drawn into the middle of a forced storyline reset not of their making, and basically sent out there to die in front of a crowd who wanted very little to do with what they were seeing. In the face of that, they did a competent, and in Barry’s case, slightly inspired, job but one that was ultimately forgettable. The next day all anyone would remember would be Harley Race and Ric Flair; not an auspicious start to yet another new WCW era.

     

     

    Really good writeup.  I was there and, man, the crowd was crazy.  Looking back, I have no idea why they didn't just change up the entire card and book a one  night tournament.  Sting and Koloff were right there and were wasted in a "touch all corners" chain match (the worst kind of chain match).  Instead we get a meaningless macth with the heir apparent vs a midcarder back when such distinctions meant something and it was so terribly flat.

    SEPTEMBER 2015 ANIMATED GIFS

    in The PROFESSIONAL WRESTLING

    Posted

    Fuck Sting,  Seth got backup.

     

    tumblr_nuc80fPtM51u1ljrzo1_500.gif

     

    This is a great example of how much wrestling has changed from the old days.  Even 10 years ago, this fan would have been demolished.  If not by a wrestler, then by the referee.  I remember a fan hitting the ring on Nitro and Randy Anderson, the smallest guy in the ring, just beating the living shit out of the dude.  I remember a ladder match on Raw where a fan jumped in and Eddy punched him square in the mush like it wasn't even a thing. Today, the world champion sees this shit and sort of gingerly side steps away. 

    MR. ROBOT

    in MOVIES & TV

    Posted

    I don't care much about how the scene was shot.  I care about wasting my time on something that aimed high, only to land in a gross melange of disgruntled  high school Holden Caufield/Tyler Durden cliches.  The world is phony, and run by corporations.  Wow so edgy.

     

    Also, the winking references like "you knew all along, didn't you" and playing "where is my mind" should not deflect how hackneyed this shit was.  Being lame and unoriginal and then acting like you meant to do it all along?  What is this, The Room?

    Jimmy "Superfly" Snuka to be charged with murder

    in The PROFESSIONAL WRESTLING

    Posted

     

    As for the SJW labeling. I was calling no one here that name, nor referring to anyone else who would have been offended by a brutal murder. But, lets face it, considering the amount of death that has occurred in wrestling, for Vince to face consequences for actions that may or may not have taken place during a police interview thirty plus years ago it going to take a lot more than just disgruntled fans to light that fire. It would take an internet firestorm caused by people usually labeled "SJW" or other terms. Again I was lazy invoking the term, and if I offended anyone I apologize.

    No one took issue because you were personally attacking them or because you were lazy. The term "SJW" itself is a term of derision that mocks people that care about issues like racism and sexism. The term itself is bullshit. It's nothing like the damn Tea Party - they named themselves.

     

     

    The term goes beyond deriding people who care about these things.  It accuses these people of disingenuousness; calling someone a "SJW" is accusing them of just taking a stance for attention or validation and not really caring about the issue at hand.  Accusing someone you disagree with of being fake in their beliefs is just the worst, most lazy cop-out.

    • Like 1

    MR. ROBOT

    in MOVIES & TV

    Posted

    This shit jumped the shark with Slater's 3-minute junior high rant on the nature of society.  For a second there I was wondering if they just had him redo some monologue from Pump Up The Volume. 

     

    It's the mark of bad writers who aren't confident that they're getting the message and subtext across that they have to essentially have a main character look right into the camera and spell it out for you.  The whole deal sounded like a schoolboy who read too much of that hack Chuck Palaniuk.  OMG everybody did you know corporations rule the world now?  Truth to power~!  I'm old enough to have seen this "mind blowing" message spewed so many times that packaging it in a different wrapper did nothing to make it any more interesting than the previous thousand times I've heard it.

     

    This show started off pretty well, then went the way of hackneyed plot twists and then turned straight into high school navel gazing bullshit.  USA Network is trying hard to go "gritty" but this is not the way to do it, with a show that takes a handful of original ideas and dresses them up trying to pass them off as something new. 

    SEPT 2015 WRESTLING DISCUSSION

    in The PROFESSIONAL WRESTLING

    Posted

    I've done a tiny bit of trademark/copyright stuff but I'm a lowly middle manager and not a lawyer...if Rousey et al can prove use in commerce (did they make and sell merch or was it just a cute name Rousey and her friends used?) before WWE trademarked it, they could fight it.

     

    Of course, it being based off an old wrestling trademark muddies the waters some. 

    NXT 2015 THREAD

    in WWE PROGRAMMING

    Posted

    They have GOT to do something about these Regal segments where he looks so much bigger than the talent.  Have him stand in a pit.  Have them stand on phonebooks.  Do the whole thing sitting down.  SOMETHING.  Fuck.

     

    Capture.jpg

     

    So you're the new team working a Hobbit gimmick then?

    • Like 3
×
×
  • Create New...