BobbyWhioux

“Chicago will have a pope before it has a hall of fame QB” would’ve been a great one of those comical “pigs fly” metaphors. Alas, it’s time has come

Cornette’s old description of Heyman as someone who would rather climb a tree to tell you a lie than stand on the ground and tell the truth is doing a couple laps around my head right now.

there is such a thing as being too unselfish, after all...

after a long enough stretch of no rules/no enforcement, the babyfaces just look dumb for not breaking them themselves. Robert Gibson should've just started high fiving himself and coming in. (and again, getting back to "heat" in real sports, this might even work even better if the ref catches the babyfaces but not the heels. "the other team is holding/traveling on every play but they call it on us? BULLSHIT!") And it's funny, because babyfaces do reach this conclusion routinely with closed fists, but not with anything else.

WWE Films presents a Citizen Kane remake starring CM Punk wherein "Rosebud" is a crate of Superstar Ice Cream Bars instead of a sled.

"odd couple" tag teams that look like they should be the "teammates who hate each other" team but actually get along fine and have great team chemistry is one of my favorite tag team setups and Whipwreck/Tajiri are definitely among my favorite iterations thereof.

because the other hand must be holding the tag rope [and both feet on the apron] in order to it to count as being "in his corner" [hence my unending call for parodying NFL replay bullshit about getting both feet in for a catch of making a football/wrestling move while maintaining possession of the tag rope, naturally]

Top Secret! was formative for me. And still Laugh Out Loud Funny all these years later. RIP.

and in inverse of the standby match, if there's ever a match you end up not having time for, or it turns out somebody's too hurt to actually work, have the referee actually find something during the frisk, and disqualify a guy during pre-bout instructions. Even have the announcer mention that because it's pre-bout, it's technically a forfeit and the guy doesn't get any money (again, so the loser can be mad about losing and the crowd doesn't view it as a copout). Not very often. Just once every couple years or so, so people know it can happen. Having someone actually win during the commercial break of a live show, too.

the answer to all similar questions is "yes if the company actually made a roster-wide commitment to establishing it, but they probably wouldn't." Cheating absolutely can draw heat and still does in real sports: just look how mad people get when someone gets away with a hold or a travel, or the phantom DPI/RTP call. But we get mad because in real sports those rules really do exist and most of the time there are consequences to breaking them. So you gotta be willing to cut matches short here and there by having the ref actually catch guys and actually DQ them and most importantly of all get in the habit of treating DQ losses like real losses so the fans will get out of the habit of viewing DQ losses as inherent ripoffs/copouts. So they'll be mad the guy didn't get DQed instead of meta-relieved he wasn't because they wanted to see him actually lose, anyway. But yeah, any time you want to elevate an underneath guy the most effective way to lampshade "oh, he's good now" is to give him a secret weapon finishing hold and protect it (the Diamond Cutter got over and took DDP along for the ride with it). And having that secret weapon be an illegal shortcut is always going to be the most logically easy to accept. "Huh? Why is this loser suddenly winning a bunch? Oh he's CHEATING! Okay, that makes sense." It would also help if finishers, across the board, are more protected. And if they got in the habit of having the loaded [whatever] spot happen "early" and have the match end at unexpected, awkward, "wrong" moments so that the crowd notices the break from the usual flow and formula, and realizes something's up. Everybody knows that first pin attempt never succee--wait what? He won already? What happened? Then you have the victim oversell. That was a flash pin, he shouldn't be laid out. But the ref is helping him to the back all of a sudden? So, yeah you might be able to get a loaded gear spot over but the wrestler in question can't on their own and the support they'd need probably isn't coming. Which is too bad. I'd love to see it and it really could work again. [After all, AEW tried this a couple years back when Tully Blanchard was managing Shawn Spears. And Blanchard did all the proper subterfuge to hide the metal slug that loaded Spears' black glove, and it was all well and good. Except they'd be doing it in between two other matches where chairs and bats and thumbtacks were being used in full view of a ref who didn't do anything about it, so it didn't mean anything, because why was Tully even bothering to hide the thing? There clearly wouldn't have been any consequences if he'd been caught.]

Calo and Blitzkrieg had a knack for ending their planchas about four rows deep into the audience, and it often felt like any given episode of Nitro didn't really start until at least one of them had.

Also, Sable was a babyface and I cannot overstate how much of a personal kiss of death Wrestlemania 12 was to the entire babyface side of the WWF's roster for at least the rest of 1996. Every one of them was Guilty By Association.

the mere fact that WWF/Vince's presentation told me I was supposed to find Sable "the hottest" immediately prompted me to have a reaction of "Nuh-uh" part of that, I'm sure, was my own adolescent thought process, both about sexuality in general ["celebrity crushes" were just a more extreme and more ridiculous version of getting worked up over the "it girls" at school that all the other boys wouldn't shut up about, who were never going to give me a second look regardless, so what was the point of my drooling like an idiot over them?] and the healthy head start I'd already gotten on being a Cynical Old Man in general. the other part of that was WWF/Vince also told me I should root for HBK over Bret and if they could be so obviously wrong and stupid about that then they were probably that obviously wrong and stupid about a bunch of other stuff, too. Including but not limited to girls.

Oh hell yeah Eat Shit Manfred

I'd also have accepted the psychological attack of displaying that level of dominance/power superiority over your opponent (especially when Steiner adopted the move). Stunting on your opponent to humiliate them, like high stepping the last five yards into the endzone. (Or the first incarnation of The People's Elbow, really). But I don't recall hearing anyone take that angle with it. Alas.

So...anyone still wanna talk about Davey Boy's suplex and what the actual point of him holding someone up there for so long was? (Monsoon & Ventura would put effort into establishing the idea that being upside down/bloodflow rushing to the brain was extra disorienting and uncomfortable and made the eventual landing rougher. So there was at least an attempt to rationalize the flourish)

Not that there's ever been any shortage of evidence that The Funker was the best to ever do it, but, man, The Funker was the best to ever do it.

Preaching to the converted. Every time I take down the Christmas lights is another time I have that moment of realization of just how fucking dangerous and stupid jumping off would be, and there goes any will to watch another Ladder Match.

Saying no to ladder matches? Well that just makes Warlord and Barbarian two of the smartest wrestlers you’ll ever hear about. Which beggars the question of when&how did people start saying yes to scaffold matches? They seem like they’d be more at home if they’d evolved during the “extreme” years rather than when they did.

Sad to say it may have been more of an indictment of Warlord

to be fair, that is pretty long-running on the Vince scale...

Never getting to properly thump Martel for walking out/turning on him at Wrestlemania 5 probably prevented Tito having a second life/doomed him to JTTS everafter. Which would be forgivable if Martel really took off HBK style, but they never quite gave Martel all they could've, either. Alas.

Tito had the other Wrestlemania Streak, unfortunately

a great grift to run if you already have inside knowledge you aren't getting a team.

but not pressuring Fuck John Fisher at any point in the last 10 years of his intentional mismanagement. I Hate These People. Will hate them slightly less if this somehow (i.e. Joe Lacob) leads to The Oakland Rays (the late great Ray Fosse's silhouette can be the new logo) but they're still all hateworthy pieces of shit.