November 2023 Wrestling Talk

[Elsalvajeloco]

14 minutes ago, odessasteps said:

Here’s a fun one …

what if alleged wrestling fan Prince had played at Wrestle Rock  86 in Minneapolis? 

A Prince produced WrestleRock Rumble would have been a jam for one.

I am still BAFFLED that the IFL got Jazze Pha to produce the IFL fight league rap back when Jazze Pha was a legit hot producer in rap. He must have had an alimony payment to make.

It's also probably one of the reasons they lost a bunch of money.

I will never unhear Matt Lindland "rapping".

 

[caley]

2 hours ago, SirSmUgly said:

Sorry for the double-post, but Buff was indeed a dreadful heel worker as a singles. You could hide him in a tag team as a heel, but not in singles. 

I do think there's something to fiery babyface Bagwell in the ring, but the guy was never a face again after he became Buff. I think if WCW turns him face after he comes back from that neck injury instead of teasing it and just having him be a heel instead, he would have been in a better place from an in-ring standpoint. 

With the stupid hat with his face on it, that skipping pose into the double-bicep flex, and the catchphrases and passable (for the shouting catchphrase era) promos, I think Buff would have been over huge for a little while as a face, the crowd REALLY wanted to cheer him, he could've maybe been a toned-down WCW version of Val Venis . I also think there's a good chance his babyface run would be interrupted by an upcoming heel just SHREDDING him in a promo (say, Jericho...as he's one of the few young heels who got promo time...I could see him unintentionally stopping Buff's face run with a good mocking promo/nickname) or the crowd tiring of him in a "So this guy is good-looking, girls like him, and he kinda sucks, why are we cheering for him" kind of way.

[caley]

6 hours ago, Elsalvajeloco said:

Would it have been that big of a deal?

1. Foley was talented and unique to the point where he would gotten at least a portion of it over.

2. They would always be able to pivot away from the name like they've done with countless others. Thus, it would probably be a Kane the Undertaker thing where he's only Mason the Mutilator working a dark match versus Spark Plugg Bob Holly or Aldo Montoya and the name never makes TV. 

01. True but Foley is also a guy who has to believe in what he's doing (Witness when he said if the best they had for him was a match with Marc Mero then he'd rather not be on the Wrestlemania card at all) and he was so excited about his ECW run and had been warned off WWF by the recently dumped Shane Douglas that he might not have tried too hard to get it over. 

02. Definitely also a possibility, especially with JR and Cornette going to bat for him. I actually wish it had made TV just to hear Vince's pronunciation of "Mewwww-ti-lator!" as Foley described it. 

[Cobra Commander]

I wonder if the wrestlers who grew up in the northeast/WWF+WWWF turf fared better at finessing Vince than the wrestlers who grew up in other regions (the South) who weren't that good at it

On one hand, you have guys like HHH and Mick Foley who grew up in that part of the country. I don't know if Tommy Dreamer beat expectations for sticking around the WWE. Paul Heyman going way back put him on a different plane than some others in the 2000s/2010s WWE.

Would NYC native Taz go down as a success story for being a commentator for years in the WWE after his in-ring career ended?

For whatever reason, Kevin Sullivan never ever came back to the WWF after he established himself in Florida. If any such opportunities existed before Sullivan's WCW adversaries ended up in the WWF.

On the other hand, DDP is from Jersey and might have watched some old WWWF stuff and then he quickly ran into problems in the WWF in 2001.

[Ramo2653]

11 hours ago, Cobra Commander said:

Batista’s last name causing some fans to think he was Hispanic when he’s actually Filipino (same colonizer, different part of the world) was a fun little “fans misinterpreting things” moment.

Theres a swath of the world where you can pretty much mix up one ethnicity for another.

I have a friend that's from Puerto Rico and she loves Batista and used to think he was from the island until Guardians of the Galaxy came out. 

5 hours ago, Cobra Commander said:

The vignette of Scott Steiner talking about all the trophies he has that Rick doesn’t have from the summer of 98 was an amazing segment too.

Having watched Flair/Garvin from Starrcade 87 today, I initially fantasybooked Ronnie Garvin vs Gunther. Then I somehow thought “what if prime Ric Flair faced Low Ki” which would be an amazing clusterfuck of a match.

Mid 90s Flair vs. Low Ki on WCWSN or Worldwide would have been amazing. There also would have been one spot that went comically wrong too. Imagine Flair locking in the figure 4 and getting leverage from Woman or Elizabeth on the outside. Or Woman hitting Ki with her heel to give Ric an advantage.

[Cobra Commander]

14 minutes ago, Ramo2653 said:

Mid 90s Flair vs. Low Ki on WCWSN or Worldwide would have been amazing. There also would have been one spot that went comically wrong too. Imagine Flair locking in the figure 4 and getting leverage from Woman or Elizabeth on the outside. Or Woman hitting Ki with her heel to give Ric an advantage.

Ki getting into serious heat because he tried to shootkick Flair during a Flair Flop

I forget which Flair matchup it was (I wanna say Lawler or Koko) where the part of the Flair formula of "throw Ric Flair off the top rope" was hindered by the opponent being too short to pull off that move without it looking weird. I'm very confident that Low Ki is not tall enough to slam Flair off the top

[twiztor]

5 hours ago, Elsalvajeloco said:

I am still BAFFLED that the IFL got Jazze Pha to produce the IFL fight league rap back when Jazze Pha was a legit hot producer in rap. He must have had an alimony payment to make.

It's also probably one of the reasons they lost a bunch of money.

I will never unhear Matt Lindland "rapping".

well that is just amazing. i watched all the IFL events a couple years back but had never seen this. it sucks and i hate it and yet also love it. thank you.

 

edited to add:
in this thread, twiztor reveals that he has horrendous taste in music. first the Macho Man rap album, now the IFL rap. what's next, the SuperBowl Shuffle?

Edited November 15, 2023 by twiztor

[Elsalvajeloco]

The underrated part of that is the CEO looking like he would rather be anywhere but that studio. He looks absolutely miserable.

Also, I like how they didn't trust anyone to do more than A bar. Singular. They had more people on the track than a Wu Tang single and still hitting below the Mendoza line on anything that could be considered half decent.

[GuerrillaMonsoon]

Bagwell was gaining momentum in 1999. The Piper/Flair feud was never ending and pretty pretty fucking awful, but they were using him, Benoit and Malenko in main events so people tolerated it because it was something new.

Then Russo came in, and he did this weird fake shooty thing pretending he was the Chosen One, which set up the Jarrett debut, but instead of any lengthy program that went anywhere, he spent the next few weeks laying down for La Parka. Then that even lamer feud with DDP over Kimberley. And then the tag team with Douglas, and got lost in the shuffle. 

Totally Buff was pretty good NGL.

[cwoy2j]

8 hours ago, Cobra Commander said:

Ki getting into serious heat because he tried to shootkick Flair during a Flair Flop

I forget which Flair matchup it was (I wanna say Lawler or Koko) where the part of the Flair formula of "throw Ric Flair off the top rope" was hindered by the opponent being too short to pull off that move without it looking weird. I'm very confident that Low Ki is not tall enough to slam Flair off the top

That reminds me of Foley's story about his loser leaves WCW match with Sullivan. He told Sullivan to slam him off the top to the floor and Sullivan was like, "do I stand on the ring apron or the floor to slam you?" Foley said something like, "I took a look at the 5'6 Gamesmaster and said, "ummm, maybe the apron Kevin."

[odessasteps]

7 hours ago, twiztor said:

well that is just amazing. i watched all the IFL events a couple years back but had never seen this. it sucks and i hate it and yet also love it. thank you.

 

edited to add:
in this thread, twiztor reveals that he has horrendous taste in music. first the Macho Man rap album, now the IFL rap. what's next, the SuperBowl Shuffle?

 

[Curt McGirt]

There's a small hardcore punk distro/label I order from, Beach Impediment Records, and they have Be A Man and the Hulk Rules album for sale, along with OSTs of The Evil Dead and The Shining, and those are the only other non-punk records. It makes no sense and gives me a chuckle whenever I see that. 

[Octopus]

Still thinking about Terry Funk.

[Zakk_Sabbath]

4 minutes ago, Octopus said:

Still thinking about Terry Funk.

Same. I'm not an action figure guy (I know a lot of you collect, no hate) but I have two on my shelf next to me as I work, and one of them is the Funker, replete with branding iron - makes me smile during the day.

[Dewar]

On 11/14/2023 at 10:09 AM, FourPostMassacre said:

Thank you for the correction and I’ll add that you know Vince came up with that line and probably laughed about it for days.

We are still laughing at it decades later. This actually was the good shit, pal. 

[Elsalvajeloco]

Okay, this is an interesting What If right here:

If Dwayne takes advantage of the kakutougi boom of the late 1990s and doesn't come back from his injury to join the NOD, poor Bob Sapp would have not made all the money and reap the benefits he eventually got.

[Cobra Commander]

turns out that the People's Elbow was a legit MMA move

[odessasteps]

Speaking of bob sap, we just passed the anniversary of this televised gold

 

[Elsalvajeloco]

Had that not been WCW in 2000 where likely 75% of the staff and personnel are on autopilot, on a taped show, someone yells "Cut!" after the first 15-30 seconds of that. Also, who produces a stand up like that at almost four minutes in length? Those things went about 90 seconds if that and then back to the ring.

[caley]

Also, was that a Laura Dern character interviewing him?

[John from Cincinnati]

If anyone’s interested, Becky Lynch will be on Celebrity Jeopardy! tonight. 

[Cobra Commander]

1 hour ago, odessasteps said:

Speaking of bob sap, we just passed the anniversary of this televised gold

 

she got her own chapter in the Nitro Book (Chapter 51) which talked about her part in plans about selling the company and how she was put on TV there in order to ward off questions about why she was under contract because there were people thinking she was fucking Brad Siegel.

[ka-to]

7 hours ago, Octopus said:

Still thinking about Terry Funk.

I'm thinking of Terry Funk singing I Hate School due to the bad wrestling music discussion.

[Cobra Commander]

just thought of a potentially logically dumb wrestling move: the jumping clawhold. Meaning you jump off of something towards your opponent and put them in the claw on the way down. My original idea would have had the opponent on the mat and the attacker jumping onto them and putting the law on that way.

Hey, if Iron Claw actually makes some money, somebody's gotta try using that hold again.

[John from Cincinnati]

4 hours ago, John from Cincinnati said:

If anyone’s interested, Becky Lynch will be on Celebrity Jeopardy! tonight. 

Tragic update: Becky was cursed with a terrible lack of buzzer game. When they have Kofi or whoever do this in the future, they need to bring in James Holzhauer to train them. James is a WWE fan, this is doable!