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MARCH 2021 Discussion of Wrestling.


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41 minutes ago, Dog said:

Problem is, a lot of times the good guys were doing bad things and being cheered for it (Piper, DX in the Nation sketch, etc.), and the bad guys were hated for doing things we consider pretty normal now (e.g. Goldust).

And as for who draws the line, that's already been answered in this thread -- whoever owns or distributes the content. The same way the heirs of Dr. Seuss aren't forced to publish books they're no longer comfortable with.

To put a somewhat ironic twist on this, I was listening to the STW episode covering Wrestlemania 13. Research shows it was recorded in 2017 back before Bruce went back to WWE.

Now I knew something crazy happened in the Chicago Street Fight. I didn't know exactly what it was, but I just knew something happened. So when Bruce and Conrad get to that match towards the tail end of the episode, I'm expecting Bruce to just dance around what happened and try to paint a rosy picture. Much to my surprise, Bruce had a very straightforward and poignant response talking about how shocking and wrong it was to have noose in a match involving black wrestlers. He even pointed out how it's crazy that two fat white guys from the South know how fucking wrong that is. I must admit I was on the floor laughing when Bruce said as soon as he saw the noose, the first thing that came into his head was the Lost in Space, "DANGER! WILL ROBINSON! DANGER!"

If we were to FF to 2021 when Bruce now works for WWE, I don't expect his response to be any different. If the most loyal motherfucker in WWF/E history (besides Jim Ross cause he got fired a bajillion times too and kept coming back) can see how terrible those things are, it should not be lost on people why change is absolutely necessary. Stuff like that is bad for business and bad for society in general. If there is some churn cause people are too stupid and bull-headed to understand it, there is nothing that can be done about it. 

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1 hour ago, Elsalvajeloco said:

You don't get to tell people when they should go all the way OR even judge if it is going all the way.


Fair enough. But you're smart enough to see that's what you're also doing in here as well.
 

1 hour ago, Elsalvajeloco said:

Second, I can be mad about racism and still understand WWE and NBC are running a business. I understand what comes with that. I also understand what comes with being a customer.

I disagree with you giving yourself an out for that being okay just because they are running a business. That's a little intellectually dishonest in my opinion. But that's okay we're allowed to have different points of view. But to me it's hard to accept someone's forceful tone in telling me I'm wrong when you're doing a version of the exact same thing. (You used the word racism, but I'm assuming that also extends to racism / trans-phopia / jingoistic views / a general catch all for the sleazy actions we've been talking about. I'm certainly not trying to tell you how to feel about racism specifically). It's still the same dude that used the N word on TV running the place. It's still the same company taking your money that keeps repeating these sleazy actions. And that's okay you're allowed to like what you like. But in the some breath you're also chastising me for not being as forceful as you are for the depth of stuff I think needs to be erased. Surely you can see how that comes off as you having your cake and eating it too?
 

45 minutes ago, AxB said:

Santina Marella was in the Women's Royal Rumble LAST YEAR. Would anyone like to try and claim that that gimmick is anything other than massively transphobic?

Good point. It's still the same sleazy people repeating the same sleazy shit. I think we should be far more mad about this in context, something that happened in 2020, vs something like Adrian Adonis in 1987. But that's just me.
 

29 minutes ago, Dog said:

Problem is, a lot of times the good guys were doing bad things and being cheered for it (Piper, DX in the Nation sketch, etc.), and the bad guys were hated for doing things we consider pretty normal now (e.g. Goldust).

This is true and a fair point. But again this stuff is scripted. Wrestling is in this grey area where we want to treat it like it's real. But it's not. It's a play that plays out in a ring. Case in point the babyface in Revenge of The Nerds totally rapes a chick (pretends he's someone else with a mask and has sex with her without consent) and was cheered for it. Unfortunately that's how things were in the 80s & 90s. No one is saying that's how things should still be presented tho.
 

23 minutes ago, Infinit said:

I bet Vince thinks it's OK for Apollo to have a spear, because Drew comes out with a sword.

"WHAT'S THE GODDAMN DIFFERENCE, PAL????"

Again good point. It's still the same sleazy people repeating the same sleazy shit.

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4 hours ago, Hagan said:

So, show of hands: if Peacock decides to just nerf the archive or put up shows that are so heavily edited as to be basically old VHS clip jobs, are you okay with that? I can certainly accept that maybe it's a better overall for a lot of reasons but it's not bad faith to suggest that that's what we're ending up with AT BEST. . 

nuke it all. If cutting out all racist/sexist/etc segments makes MNW-era Raws last 15 minutes, what's the point of keeping any of it?
if it results in PPVs that run 1hr and half of that has the audio cut, why bother?

what brings the views is current stuff (even if i'll never understand why...) and Specials/documentaries. Both of those can continue.

yes, i'll lament that we'll never get 80s weekly AWA (most of that is unavailable through other means) or 90s WCW B and C Shows, but we were unlikely to ever see most of that stuff anyway. "Hidden Gems" was my favorite part and they killed that off a couple years ago. 

2 hours ago, DEAN said:

People need to realize how sleazy and horrible wrestling was and is.

We all know WWE (and pro wrestling as a whole) is sleazy and horrible and has been forever. But i feel like this argument is dangerously close to "we need the Confederacy statues to remind us of what not to do" which is just silly. There's no shortage of examples that show just how goddamn shitty this business 

 

sorry to whoever this was, but i'm not digging through multiple pages of responses any more. Somebody suggested a sit down introduction to problematic segments, discussing what the issue was, what the context was, and why it needs this warning. I think this is the best take yet. Deleting streaming video that's been widely available for years will never erase it. Forcing viewers to confront the issue at least brings attention to it.

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1 minute ago, NoFistsJustFlips said:


Fair enough. But you're smart enough to see that's what you're also doing in here as well.

Yep, making sound and rational arguments. 

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I disagree with you giving yourself an out for that being okay just because they are running a business. That's a little intellectually dishonest in my opinion.

Not really. I used to work for Walmart Corporate on the .com ecommerce side and just started working for JB Hunt corporate. If I came in here and said "mmmkay businesses are bad", I would have absolutely no leg to stand on. That's not my bag. However, I will call out shit that I know is incredibly abhorrent. That's not giving myself an out. That's understanding how businesses operate and knowing how the machine runs. Moreover, it has nothing to do with removing this or that when you can do one thing and not affect everything else. 

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But to me it's hard to accept someone's forceful tone in telling me I'm wrong when you're doing a version of the exact same thing. 

It only comes off as forceful because you have no way to defend yourself. It's a natural defense mechanism. No matter how hard you try, you cannot make it right. Internally, if that makes you feel funny and not know how to react, that's probably when you break out the notebook and start taking notes. Like I said, I had my own learning experiences here. Shit, you live and you learn.

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Surely you can see how that comes off as you having your cake and eating it too?

This sounds exactly like, "I can't believe black people can control the N word and get to say it too!". Goddamn buddy, I hate when marginalized groups get to have a little power too!

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14 minutes ago, twiztor said:

sorry to whoever this was, but i'm not digging through multiple pages of responses any more.

You should probably do that if you plan on getting it right.

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Forcing viewers to confront the issue at least brings attention to it.

You can't force viewers to confront stuff when WWE itself never has. Well...until now several years after the fact.

Hell, one of the issues might be that people have been forced to confront it due to its availability. As a black person, I can say that it hasn't done a tremendous job of educating people as is.

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4 minutes ago, Elsalvajeloco said:

This sounds exactly like, "I can't believe black people can control the N word and get to say it too!". Goddamn buddy, I hate when marginalized groups get to have a little power too!

This is some bullshit. How do you extrapolate that? Yo can we get a moderator for when the moderator steps out of bounds? I never said anything remotely close to anything that could be rationalized as that.

Yeah man this is where I tap out.

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5 minutes ago, NoFistsJustFlips said:

This is some bullshit. How do you extrapolate that?

Your own words. Crazy, right?

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Yeah man this is where I tap out.

....Based on your performance, you should have tapped out a LONG time ago. Now your arm is on backwards. 

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Guest Stefanie Without Stefanie

The reason I chimed in is because I felt I could provide perspective from how a lot of this content resonated with me, regarding WWE's incredibly poor record when it comes to LGBTQ presentation (and especially with trans matters).

I no longer watch, because their content has hurt me enough. Does that mean they should get a free pass to continue hurting others like me? Should that hurt continue on because of "historical context"?

Can I ask why people feel the need to vehemently defend the "historical context" of trash?

Frankly, I don't care what they do with said trash. Cut it out, wrap it with contextualization bumpers, air it as is, I don't care because I won't watch it. But I do think deep down, folks need to ask why they feel it matters to hold onto these things that they admit are at best blatantly offensive, and at worst harmful, degrading, and dehumanizing.

There's other ways to learn how to be an asshole than watching 30 year old pro wrestling.

Edited by Stefanie the Human
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On 3/24/2021 at 6:20 PM, DreamBroken said:

Sid and Luger remain my top 2 most wanted for the HOF. Mick Foley just wrote a blog about how Lex deserves to be in. Rewatched those two recent Sid shoots not long ago, both great. 

The first Wrestling show I watched was WrestleMania 8. My older brother had in on tape from my neighbor, I'd watched parts of the show several times before I even became a fan. Sid he was one of those guys who was just unexplainably over. When I actually became a fan at 8 years old he came back to WWF as a babyface and got over probably better than Shawn. Me and my brothers could probably recite his promos from WrestleMania 8. And a few years later we went to my next door neighbors house a watched our first ECW show Living Dangerously because he was on the commercial. It's sorta funny how people like Luger and Sid who at one point both from an aesthetic point of view fit what Vince could ever dream in a Wrestler are looked at as just muscle heads that couldn't get over. I always enjoyed Sids promos, I don't really remember him botching promos outside of the ones that have become memes. He always seemed to make sense even if he fumbled a word or two. Luger, I think most of us can agree that he was a better wrestler than people give him credit for especially in different points in his career. 

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Because there's no way of knowing what people will consider to be "trash" in the future and once the precedent has been set, people will use it to justify all kinds of things. 

It happened, removing it from Peacock doesn't mean  it didn't happen. 

I have a real problem with the removal of the  Piper/Bad News match from WM6. Say Bad News' grandchildren want to watch their grandfathers highest profile match, in front of (I think) the biggest crowd he ever worked in front of, in his home country. Only now they can't because of people 31 years in the future taking offense to something his opponent did. It's ridiculous and serves no purpose at all. This NBC deal is a real poison chalice for the WWE, yes they're making a crazy amount of money but it's going to deal with standards and practices more stringent than anything at Turner in the 90s. It's going to become the most bland, anodyne wrestling product of all time. How on earth do you have heels if no-one is allowed to anything that might be offensive to someone, somewhere in the world?

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Best hot tag? Three way tie between John Silver/Cesaro/Violent J*

It may not happen but I'd love Cesare and Silver on opposite sides of a tag just to see them try and out do each other on the hot tag sequence hahaha. Stick them in stables and send them into a mini feud where they always upgrade the hot tag sequence over time until it gives the "killing the business" grogs something to cry about lmao

 

 

*J being the best hot tag in the game was a long running joke among my cousins and me when we'd watch the JCW tapes hahaha. Someone would hit the tag and he'd do the hip toss/hip toss/leg drop and we'd all yell DANGEROUS!!!!! (like that early RoH announcer, Sapolsky maybe?) and laugh our fucking dumb asses off

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10 minutes ago, Happ Hazzard said:

Because there's no way of knowing what people will consider to be "trash" in the future and once the precedent has been set, people will use it to justify all kinds of things. 

It happened, removing it from Peacock doesn't mean  it didn't happen. 

I have a real problem with the removal of the  Piper/Bad News match from WM6. Say Bad News' grandchildren want to watch their grandfathers highest profile match, in front of (I think) the biggest crowd he ever worked in front of, in his home country. Only now they can't because of people 31 years in the future taking offense to something his opponent did. It's ridiculous and serves no purpose at all. This NBC deal is a real poison chalice for the WWE, yes they're making a crazy amount of money but it's going to deal with standards and practices more stringent than anything at Turner in the 90s. It's going to become the most bland, anodyne wrestling product of all time. How on earth do you have heels if no-one is allowed to anything that might be offensive to someone, somewhere in the world?

This, in a nutshell, is why trying to have a reasonable discussion on these topics is a waste of time.

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40 minutes ago, Happ Hazzard said:

Only now they can't because of people 31 years in the future taking offense to something his opponent did. 

Let me put you up on game my friend...black people don't look forward to racism. Second, you can't speak for his grandchildren and their concerns. You don't even know if he had grandchildren. Hell, if he had children that HAD children, they wouldn't want anything to do with the wrestling business. Matter of fact, if that's the best thing he was associated with his career (and it wasn't THANK GOD), that would be a sad note for his family to see.

I am not even going to touch how silly it is that people cannot track down anything beyond one source in 2021. Bad News Brown died how many years ago? I'm pretty sure they saw it already and in no hurry to see it again if they do exist.

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How on earth do you have heels if no-one is allowed to anything that might be offensive to someone, somewhere in the world?

That's not a question you wanna be asking my friend. No one is asking heels to not be heels. We're asking folks to not be irredeemable pieces of shit in the process. And Piper wasn't even a heel. He was the babyface in that feud. So apparently, you need to be tracking down Piper vs. Bad News and not BNB's imaginary grandkids you have sympathy for cause they cannot have a traumatic racial experience. 

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8 minutes ago, Burgundy LaRue said:

This, in a nutshell, is why trying to have a reasonable discussion on these topics is a waste of time.

Clearly, The Comedian set a tone for this thread we could not return from. ?

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I'm just genuinely disappointed that a black person is in here telling you why blackface shit should be off the Network, a position that I would guess most black folks will hold (speaking as one), and some of y'all want to argue with him. 

"Think of Bad News's kids!"

"But it'll be lost to history."

Folks, Bad News's kids or grandkids or whatever have plenty of footage available out there in which he isn't wrestling a racist dude in half-blackface to watch. 

And if some of y'all are worried about history being lost, well, the Germans banned Nazi paraphernalia post-WW2, but every German knows about them in 2021. That comparison is not, in any way, meant to be anything but an example of how banning something from the arena of casual entertainment does not erase it from historical consciousness in any way. 

If that blackface or Vince taking Cena's goofy white guy rapper gimmick to what is an unfortunate conclusion in real life for most goofy white guy rappers is put into a historical context - say a documentary in which the racism of wrestling is closely discussed and analyzed by experts - that's one thing. But "it's on the Network to enjoy freely" is not a context in which this stuff is necessary.

I'm going to be honest, "I didn't enjoy the blackface BUT" sounds a lot like a special version of "I'm not racist BUT" wherein a) you actually did enjoy the blackface, just admit it to yourself and deal with what that means for you, or b) you value having a complete show with nothing edited out over respect for the dignity of your fellow humans. And no, there is no "but let's look at the other side here!" You know the history of blackface in media in this country. You know how it has traditionally been used to portray black people. You are making a deliberate choice about valuing something else over the decency of not having that stuff free to consume as pure entertainment outside of any educational context. 

Which is what it is, but this is why I usually don't talk about stuff like this - you can't change people's values or make them consider The Other. They have to come to that consideration themselves. 

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2 hours ago, Smelly McUgly said:

 

I'm going to be honest, "I didn't enjoy the blackface BUT" sounds a lot like a special version of "I'm not racist BUT"

I also agree with @Technico Support that the language people use to frame their arguments can give a pretty damned good clue w/r/t who is really just a garbage person.

In addition to his excellent examples, I'd add "triggered" "safe space" "rent free" "You are amusingly passive aggressive. Very 'beta' personality, I think." and "Maybe Free Will and Self-Expression Through Creativity are Good Things."

 

If the continued existence of hateful bullshit from pro wrestling's often-shameful past is hurting good people, and obviously it is, then let it all die a painful death. If some garbage people lose their shit along the way, so much the better.

 

And with all due respect, if you have a "throwing the baby out with the bathwater" or "we need to keep it around to teach people what not to do" or "their feeling don't outweigh my right to watch whatever I want" or "who watches the watchmen?" or "slippery slope" or any other type of argument to make about that, you can take your opinion, shine it up real nice, turn that sumbitch sideways and stick it straight up your candy ass.

Spoiler

 

If anyone wants something to enjoy in place of hateful racist homophobic misogynistic misty faded memories from our favourite thing's past, may I suggest trying the NJPW Collection game that they are always advertising during their streams? 

Its a complete f'ing waste of time. All you can do is collect, organize, and trade cards, and every time you "draft" new cards its all doubles of the one star Yoshi-Hashi card you already have. I'm loving it. Mostly, i am enjoying aggressively trading for cards of wrestlers i actually like.

Spoiler

163773738_234917628324266_93297359056228

163195199_1706712206196187_3277683157084

 

If anybody else is playing, I'll trade you all my Taichi for all your MiSu, even if we disagree politically.

Edited by El Gran Gordi
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31 minutes ago, El Gran Gordi said:

 

 

   If anybody else is playing, I'll trade you all my Taichi for all your MiSu, even if we disagree politically.

Also, accidental double posts from pressing "quote" instead of "edit" can give a pretty damned good clue w/r/t who is really just a f'ing dumbass.

Since I'm posting anyway:

Spoiler

163579918_309270253964292_20508414600158

163446657_301656564656513_82150303191782

163934627_475476516994048_82588086424045

165048768_461602798300510_39982807536791

163209133_717481938932294_85779254127248

Seriously, anyone want to trade? I can't be the only person here who is a big enough nerd to have downloaded that.

Also, here I am modeling the "forbidden door" collection at work: 

 

Spoiler

163212423_200769144754345_25867804399703

163540975_167788108518728_39633242394166

Edit: Apologies to @Hayabusa for gumming up your crappy countryside internet connection with so many pics.

Edit: Right! Spoiler boxes. Hat tip to @Elsalvajeloco

Edited by El Gran Gordi
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This NJPW game looks neat

Thank you Gran Gordi and Elsavaje ? sincerely 

Good to hear about Silver, someone joked about the Dark Order claw causing all these shoulder injuries and I'm going to be pumped for his return and Anna's 

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2 hours ago, Hayabusa said:

Best hot tag? Three way tie between John Silver/Cesaro/Violent J*

It may not happen but I'd love Cesare and Silver on opposite sides of a tag just to see them try and out do each other on the hot tag sequence hahaha. Stick them in stables and send them into a mini feud where they always upgrade the hot tag sequence over time until it gives the "killing the business" grogs something to cry about lmao

 

 

*J being the best hot tag in the game was a long running joke among my cousins and me when we'd watch the JCW tapes hahaha. Someone would hit the tag and he'd do the hip toss/hip toss/leg drop and we'd all yell DANGEROUS!!!!! (like that early RoH announcer, Sapolsky maybe?) and laugh our fucking dumb asses off

I think Stu Grayson should be part of the "best hot tag" conversation too

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