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16 hours ago, JohnnyJ said:

As a kid I remember never buying Slaughter. I was accustomed to seeing these enormous musclemen fighting. Slaughter looked like a middle aged dad. 

Couldn't you argue Zeus in 89 and  Warrior in 90 turned off the adults and Slaughter in 91 turned off the kids. 

Don't forget that Sarge's G.I. Joe action figure and cartoon character was a dirty goddamned lie because of this; granted  Sarge's G.I. Joe likeness wasn't as big of a misrepresentation as Refrigerator Perry's.

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9 hours ago, RolandTHTG said:

I'd have been up for them trying to compete with WCW bringing in Robocop, with the big reveal that Jake Roberts was the Cobra Commander. 

Verne really missed the boat by not having heels loosely based on Cobra characters to feud with Sarge in the AWA, bring in Rip Morgan and Jack Victory and make them Dreadnoks, cut Shaun and Steve Simpson's hair and make them Tomax and Xamot, since he sucked in the ring but had the look Ox Baker managing the heels as Doctor Mindbender. That would have been a thousand times better than the endless Col. DeBeers feud.

 

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8 hours ago, happjack said:

 That would have been a thousand times better than the endless Col. DeBeers feud.

 

Most things in wrestling were better than anything involving Col. DeBeers.

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23 hours ago, zev said:

Most things in wrestling were better than anything involving Col. DeBeers.

Sadly, most people remember the Col. DeBeers gimmick and how badly it sucked and they wind up sleeping on the fact that Ed Wiskowski was a hell of a talent. Probably one of the best examples of destroying an excellent worker's credibility by saddling them with a gimmick that consists of marching around the ring and pulling one's mustache. There are some levels of horribly stupid booking/characterization that even an excellent worker isn't going to be able to overcome, 

See, one of the things with almost any heel is that sooner or later the booker is going to run the redemption angle and turn the heel face, this is true of almost every heel not named "Kevin Sullivan". The problem here is how on Earth do you make a guy whose whole gimmick is being a racist prick from South Africa a face? Remember, it's all about willing suspension of disbelief, and some gimmicks are just too tasteless to be spun off with "now he's seen the light!" type nonsense. There just was no way to do anything to change or evolve the DeBeers character in any way. I had the same problem with Eddie Sullivan in Dean Silverstone's outlaw fed in Seattle. Here you have a guy supposedly from the Deep South (Alabama IIRC), coming on TV to announce that this very weekend he's going to "whip Armen Hussian like the black dog that he is!" 

I was like 15 or 16 at the time and absolutely shocked that a wrestler could get away with saying this on TV (or anywhere else for that matter); and was even more shocked when Sullivan turned face with little or no explanation and not even a nod to any sort of redemption angle. I liked Dean's fed a great deal as it was so accessible to me, but having a guy that talked like the Grand Dragon of the KKK one week and then come out as a pleasant and gracious Southern gentleman who was doing everything fot the wonderful fans the next week didn't just strain willing suspension of disbelief, it stretched it to the point of snapping and made no sense whatsoever; it was as ridiculous as it would have been for Jimmy Snuka getting cast as "the Genius" instead of Lanny Poffo.

 

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This probably goes back to Slaughter as a turn coat but some heels just feel like bullshit. Like its clearly someone trying to get a negative reaction and a lot of the fans, even true believers get the attitude of "Oh fuck this shit." 

Slaughter was getting that reaction at Survivor Series 90 when he cuts this promo on the armed forces network. Its such a blatant attempt at "Please boo me" and the only thing saving it is Piper going berserk on commentary. I don't think it gained any traction until Slaughter won the title, because at least then you have a tangible issue people believed in. Then Gene Okerland says Slaughter might be burning the flag. Which I'm not one for flag worship, but that reeks of desperation. 

Later Vince tries to get Slaughter (who title or no has been a good sport thru this) burn the flag on TV, to which Slaughter swiftly refuses. So he burns a Hogan shirt, which burns alarmingly fast. This was smarter because ethics aside, story wise it puts back to Slaughter vs Hogan. 

Now I don't know how many of you who watch Continental/South Eastern, but there was a fella named Boomer T. Lynch. Who naturally had a racist gimmick. He was suppose to be from South Africa but had a southern accent. He makes DeBeers and Iraq Traitor Sgt.Slaughter look like the apex of restraint in dignity. 

Now old Boomer had the misfortune of being matched against black wrestlers every week.  In one promo he said "And have you ever noticed how bad black people smell." camera cuts to a black kid in the audience with a "Oh fuck this" look on his face.  

People can use the term "marks" or whatever, but nothing is worse than a desperate heel. 

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On ‎6‎/‎9‎/‎2017 at 3:46 PM, Nice Guy Eddie said:

Shouldn't Jake be Serpentor?

Never mind that shit for a second. Are there two distinct voices more opposite than Jake The Snake and Cobra Commander? Did the rent-a-Robocop that WCW trotted out actually speak and sound like PeeWee Herman?

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7 minutes ago, FluffSnackwell said:

Never mind that shit for a second. Are there two distinct voices more opposite than Jake The Snake and Cobra Commander? Did the rent-a-Robocop that WCW trotted out actually speak and sound like PeeWee Herman?

Havent people said it was actually Peter Weller as Robocop in wcw? 

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Just now, odessasteps said:

Havent people said it was actually Peter Weller as Robocop in wcw? 

I did actually see some documentary about Robocop where Weller talked about how long and painstaking it was for him to develop a robotic style of movement. Maybe he didn't want some hack out there undoing all his hard work

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14 hours ago, Victator said:

This probably goes back to Slaughter as a turn coat but some heels just feel like bullshit. Like its clearly someone trying to get a negative reaction and a lot of the fans, even true believers get the attitude of "Oh fuck this shit." 

Slaughter was getting that reaction at Survivor Series 90 when he cuts this promo on the armed forces network. Its such a blatant attempt at "Please boo me" and the only thing saving it is Piper going berserk on commentary. I don't think it gained any traction until Slaughter won the title, because at least then you have a tangible issue people believed in. Then Gene Okerland says Slaughter might be burning the flag. Which I'm not one for flag worship, but that reeks of desperation. 

Later Vince tries to get Slaughter (who title or no has been a good sport thru this) burn the flag on TV, to which Slaughter swiftly refuses. So he burns a Hogan shirt, which burns alarmingly fast. This was smarter because ethics aside, story wise it puts back to Slaughter vs Hogan. 

Now I don't know how many of you who watch Continental/South Eastern, but there was a fella named Boomer T. Lynch. Who naturally had a racist gimmick. He was suppose to be from South Africa but had a southern accent. He makes DeBeers and Iraq Traitor Sgt.Slaughter look like the apex of restraint in dignity. 

Now old Boomer had the misfortune of being matched against black wrestlers every week.  In one promo he said "And have you ever noticed how bad black people smell." camera cuts to a black kid in the audience with a "Oh fuck this" look on his face.  

People can use the term "marks" or whatever, but nothing is worse than a desperate heel. 

Slaughter has talked about Vince requesting him to burn the flag. He refused b/c he said he didn't want that level of heat. 

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18 hours ago, OSJ said:

Sadly, most people remember the Col. DeBeers gimmick and how badly it sucked and they wind up sleeping on the fact that Ed Wiskowski was a hell of a talent. Probably one of the best examples of destroying an excellent worker's credibility by saddling them with a gimmick that consists of marching around the ring and pulling one's mustache. There are some levels of horribly stupid booking/characterization that even an excellent worker isn't going to be able to overcome, 

See, one of the things with almost any heel is that sooner or later the booker is going to run the redemption angle and turn the heel face, this is true of almost every heel not named "Kevin Sullivan". The problem here is how on Earth do you make a guy whose whole gimmick is being a racist prick from South Africa a face? Remember, it's all about willing suspension of disbelief, and some gimmicks are just too tasteless to be spun off with "now he's seen the light!" type nonsense. There just was no way to do anything to change or evolve the DeBeers character in any way. I had the same problem with Eddie Sullivan in Dean Silverstone's outlaw fed in Seattle. Here you have a guy supposedly from the Deep South (Alabama IIRC), coming on TV to announce that this very weekend he's going to "whip Armen Hussian like the black dog that he is!" 

I was like 15 or 16 at the time and absolutely shocked that a wrestler could get away with saying this on TV (or anywhere else for that matter); and was even more shocked when Sullivan turned face with little or no explanation and not even a nod to any sort of redemption angle. I liked Dean's fed a great deal as it was so accessible to me, but having a guy that talked like the Grand Dragon of the KKK one week and then come out as a pleasant and gracious Southern gentleman who was doing everything fot the wonderful fans the next week didn't just strain willing suspension of disbelief, it stretched it to the point of snapping and made no sense whatsoever; it was as ridiculous as it would have been for Jimmy Snuka getting cast as "the Genius" instead of Lanny Poffo.

 

I agree with all of this but my medulla oblongata just focuses on the part with Snuka with The Genius gimmick, which I really wish I could have seen.

- RAF (what do you expect from someone who learned all the parts of the brain from Capt. Lou promos?)

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On ‎6‎/‎11‎/‎2017 at 6:10 AM, RolandTHTG said:

THIS. 

So many poems written that end with brutha. 

He could've written Ice Ice Baby.

Word to your mutha.

 

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On 5/6/2017 at 4:20 PM, Sasha said:

I was looking at results from Bob Backlund's run as WWF Champion, and there were an awful lot of defenses where Backlund lost due to blood loss and a referee stoppage. It seems strange to me that while you can only win the title by pinfall or submission, you could beat someone so badly that they cannot continue due to blood loss and still not win their title. Was that something that was common back in the 1970s/1980s or was that just a weird WWF thing, like being able to win a cage match by escaping?

EDIT TO ADD: This was in relation to a champion putting over an opponent as strong. Beating the champ to a bloody pulp is pretty strong.

I think it's a weird WWF thing, as Super Clash III did the blood loss thing to let Lawler win.

 

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7 hours ago, alstein said:

I think it's a weird WWF thing, as Super Clash III did the blood loss thing to let Lawler win.

 

With the WWF it sounds like some bullshit way to keep a heel strong without changing the title. 

I finally saw the full Super Clash 3 show and it was interesting how they did build to it. After Manny Fernandez and Wahoo had a bloodbath. Stanley Blackburn said he did not want any more excess bloodshed in the title match. So it seems they knew it was bullshit and wanted to explain it early. 

Though post match Kerry made it sound a conspiracy. I wonder what would have have happened if Verne had not screwed every promoter who helped him. 

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9 hours ago, Victator said:

 

Um, can someone explain this?  I assume it's from a King of the Hill episode, but I didn't watch King of the Hill all that much.  Did the show regularly center around supervillans dressed as pigs and murder by processing plant?  'Cause that might get me to watch the show more.

 

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4 minutes ago, Horton Hears a Wooo!!! said:

Um, can someone explain this?  I assume it's from a King of the Hill episode, but I didn't watch King of the Hill all that much.  Did the show regularly center around supervillans dressed as pigs and murder by processing plant?  'Cause that might get me to watch the show more.

 

No it was the most bizarre episode the show ever did. I was going to describe it. Its called Pigmalion and well worth watching. 

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2 hours ago, Victator said:

With the WWF it sounds like some bullshit way to keep a heel strong without changing the title. 

I finally saw the full Super Clash 3 show and it was interesting how they did build to it. After Manny Fernandez and Wahoo had a bloodbath. Stanley Blackburn said he did not want any more excess bloodshed in the title match. So it seems they knew it was bullshit and wanted to explain it early. 

Though post match Kerry made it sound a conspiracy. I wonder what would have have happened if Verne had not screwed every promoter who helped him. 

How could Verne screw anyone when the show didn't make any money? The other side of the story was Verne paid Jerry Jarrett a booking fee for his talent and that money never made it down to the Memphis\Dallas guys, that's just as plausible as Verne keeping it all for himself. That whole mess was bound to fail, everyone was looking out for their own interests and neither Lawler or Kerry were big enough stars to get people to buy PPV's.

 

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