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Your wrestling HOT TAKES


A.M.B.

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1 hour ago, Eivion said:

When did Michaels promote a good match narrative above winning? I don't recall him taking his losses in great matches well.

The most obvious thing was when he promoted himself as "Mr. Wrestlemania" when he was sub .500 on the stage. It was obviously in reference to him stealing the show and having good matches.  I would say Michaels was a lot more careful about it in his day and people are not careful now but that's true of everything. Wrestling is a follow the leader business where the lower lights try to copy the frontiersmen and usually fail at understanding why it worked originally. 

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Yeah I always saw Michaels Mr Wrestlemania thing (in it's early days at least) not about him being dominant at Mania but more that he would always put extra effort into his Mania matches from both a kayfabe and shoot perspective. He would give his opponents the hardest fight and put the most effort in when the lights were on bright

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I usually like factions.  I mean, more often than not, it's about a cowardly heel realizing the babyface will probably beat his face in in a fair fight, and finding some friends and like-minded individuals (toadies work too) to tilt the odds in his favor.  Gets the leader more over as a heel, gives the babyface bigger odds to overcome, and gives the supporting heels in the group something to do.

IMO. a good babyface faction grows out of the heels forming a group and the babyface being smart enough to realize that he needs to even out the numbers if he's going to get one over on the heel (Sting obviously didn't learn this lesson even after the 741st gang attack by the Horsemen).

Of course, it's like anything else.  If you're booking your promotion badly, you're probably going to book your factions badly.

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19 hours ago, supremebve said:

Someone earlier said something similar about All Japan in the 90s too, and I agree with both. I love both, and still think they've done more harm than good.

I was about to make the same point.  I think 90s AJPW did far worse for wrestling than Shawn Michaels.  Changing the focus to "let's have a great match" is in no universe worse than "the best way to make this fake sport look good is to essentially do some of it for real even after one of the main guys pushing for this approach dies of an internal decapitation."  

11 hours ago, odessasteps said:

Faction is rapidly becoming one of the wwe buzzwords I hate the most. 

"Stable" is too Southern Rasslin!

Am I remembering incorrectly or did WWE actually combine "faction" and "regime" into "FAC-GIME" one time?

Edited by Technico Support
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Here's a fucking HOT TAKE for you:

Good factions: Four Horsemen, Dangerous Alliance, Stud Stable I guess. 

Bad factions: All the rest. 

EDIT: Okay La Faccion Ingobernables gets an honorary since I am part of the Death Valley Driver contingent

Edited by Curt McGirt
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14 minutes ago, Technico Support said:

I was about to make the same point.  I think 90s AJPW did far worse for wrestling than Shawn Michaels.  Changing the focus to "let's have a great match" is in no universe worse than "the best way to make this fake sport look good is to essentially do some of it for real even after one of the main guys pushing for this approach dies of an internal decapitation."

This is a big part of it,  don't get me wrong,  but the thing that I think is most pervasive is how little of the context came with the bigger, more dangerous,  main event style. All Japan was great,  mostly because of how much context was woven into every bit of every match.  The reason why the move got so dangerous was that in order for any of these guys and,  especially Misawa, to lose was to damn near kill them. Once a powerbomb or a brainbuster turns into just another spot,  you can only do more dangerous moves. 

The issue is that current wrestling doesn't have that kind of context woven through it,  so there is absolutely no reason to go to those lengths to win a match. For the last 15-20 years the biggest stars in the states have used a neutered DVD, a cutter, and a spear to finish their matches so they shouldn't have to go to this lengths to build a credible finish. But they still put their undercard guys in crazy ladder matches, which are needlessly shortening careers without the context All Japan was built upon. 

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The problem with All Japans influence is also we had the 2000s Indy style being created by a bunch of workers who were influenced by what they saw of the promotion and wrestlers without all of the context. And that style became really ingrained in the US scene all the way to the WWE so we have an idea of these highly dangerous spots and moves being what is good rather than stories that build to the need of those spots

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57 minutes ago, Sublime said:

The problem with All Japans influence is also we had the 2000s Indy style being created by a bunch of workers who were influenced by what they saw of the promotion and wrestlers without all of the context. And that style became really ingrained in the US scene all the way to the WWE so we have an idea of these highly dangerous spots and moves being what is good rather than stories that build to the need of those spots

100%. With that said if you start in January of 1990 and watch the All Japan main event scene until the NOAH break,  I don't think you'll find anything better in the history of wrestling.  Watching it in order shows exactly how much thought was out into every little thing. I think they waited too long to put Kawada over Misawa, and that is kind of what caused everything that came after,  but it's incredible to watch... even though it's a bit sad knowing what happened to Misawa. 

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I think putting some constraints in is good for creativity. Working within set limits forces you to do things differently.

I wasn't a fan at the time but I can't imagine those who were expecting ladder matches to evolve into what they are now while watching Michaels-Ramon at Wrestlemania X. Watching the Escobar-Devlin ladder match last night, I am shocked how most of the bigger moves in that match have been done to death, some almost quite literally over the years. A superplex off a ladder has become rote. The escalation and expectation that comes with that stipulation now just doesn't seem worth it. Some things come back around, Great-O-Khan in NJPW and the Von Erichs in MLW are using the claw as a finish. The genie cannot go back in the bottle on some things though. "How do you learn to fall off a twenty foot ladder"? I wish the less is more mindset would return to wrestling.

I have been trying to watch good matches along side some more mediocre matches lately. That is to say, I watched a Tsuruta-Misawa match from 4/18/91 and then a middling Misawa-Honda match from the late 90s. The latter was not anything worth tracking down but helped shape my appreciation for the bigger matches. No one watching AJPW tapes that influenced the Indy style that has influenced NXT/modern NJPW/etc was watching with the understanding that a Tiger Driver wasn't an every match move. Less is more. 

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34 minutes ago, Spontaneous said:

 

I have been trying to watch good matches along side some more mediocre matches lately. That is to say, I watched a Tsuruta-Misawa match from 4/18/91 and then a middling Misawa-Honda match from the late 90s. The latter was not anything worth tracking down but helped shape my appreciation for the bigger matches. No one watching AJPW tapes that influenced the Indy style that has influenced NXT/modern NJPW/etc was watching with the understanding that a Tiger Driver wasn't an every match move. Less is more.

That's the context part. It took pretty much a decade for the style to go into head drop overkill, because those moves evolved in big time main event matches,  which weren't happening every week. I like NXT, but I'm too the point where I really wish they'd go back to an hour and have a couple goofs like Bull Dempsey running around. 

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4 hours ago, Curt McGirt said:

Here's a fucking HOT TAKE for you:

Good factions: Four Horsemen, Dangerous Alliance, Stud Stable I guess. 

Bad factions: All the rest. 

EDIT: Okay La Faccion Ingobernables gets an honorary since I am part of the Death Valley Driver contingent

Hennan Family, Jimmy Hart First Family, Devastation Inc, the GCW Legion of Doom.

Funny that you three have a certain man in common. 

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1 hour ago, Spontaneous said:

I think putting some constraints in is good for creativity. Working within set limits forces you to do things differently.

I wasn't a fan at the time but I can't imagine those who were expecting ladder matches to evolve into what they are now while watching Michaels-Ramon at Wrestlemania X. Watching the Escobar-Devlin ladder match last night, I am shocked how most of the bigger moves in that match have been done to death, some almost quite literally over the years. A superplex off a ladder has become rote. The escalation and expectation that comes with that stipulation now just doesn't seem worth it. Some things come back around, Great-O-Khan in NJPW and the Von Erichs in MLW are using the claw as a finish. The genie cannot go back in the bottle on some things though. "How do you learn to fall off a twenty foot ladder"? I wish the less is more mindset would return to wrestling.

I have been trying to watch good matches along side some more mediocre matches lately. That is to say, I watched a Tsuruta-Misawa match from 4/18/91 and then a middling Misawa-Honda match from the late 90s. The latter was not anything worth tracking down but helped shape my appreciation for the bigger matches. No one watching AJPW tapes that influenced the Indy style that has influenced NXT/modern NJPW/etc was watching with the understanding that a Tiger Driver wasn't an every match move. Less is more. 

Misawa also won a lot of big matches with incredibly basic moves like elbow strikes and a face-lock, for what its worth

 

The problem with the current scene is the guys who are getting the most time are the guys who were the worst indy guys of the last generation or so - Cole, Gargano, et al. Granted I think a lot of them have gotten better in WWE, but that generation isn't half as good as the generation of guys before them - Danielson, Joe, Ki, Aries, Nigel, etc. 

 

Also, the WWE is massively to blame for a lot of matches being stale and gimmicks being meaningless. It used to be a TNA trope to run gimmick PPVs, but WWE have taken that and amplified to the extreme. There are only so many spots you can do with a ladder, let alone when you are running them almost once a month. Why did Devlin vs Escobar need to be a ladder match? You combine WWE's staleness with a bunch of mediocre indy guys who are have to get their shit in every match and it creates a pretty tedious product. I'm not saying anything new though.

 

I realise this is more a 'old man yelling at cloud' post than a Hot Take, but there we are. You think this is bad, wait until the guys who are influenced by the Young Bucks and Motor City Machine Guns start working half hour matches. 

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5 hours ago, Eoae said:

IMO. a good babyface faction grows out of the heels forming a group and the babyface being smart enough to realize that he needs to even out the numbers if he's going to get one over on the heel (Sting obviously didn't learn this lesson even after the 741st gang attack by the Horsemen).

You've clearly forgotten the Dudes with Attitudes.

4 hours ago, Technico Support said:

Am I remembering incorrectly or did WWE actually combine "faction" and "regime" into "FAC-GIME" one time?

Sort of. It was a joke by Edge and Christian once.

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The Young Bucks ARE influenced by the Motor City Machine Guns. Not only that, Gargano on the indies was basically Nise Alex Shelley anyway.

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14 minutes ago, killsteve said:

I realise this is more a 'old man yelling at cloud' post than a Hot Take, but there we are. You think this is bad, wait until the guys who are influenced by the Young Bucks and Motor City Machine Guns start working half hour matches. 

Please, no, God no. I'll be the Jim Cornette of my day, minus the racism and sexism.

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The best thing about the Dudes with Attitudes is that they weren't "the Dudes with Attitude". Because clearly they all didn't have the same attitude. Presumably one was the surly one, one the friendly one, etc.

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1 hour ago, tbarrie said:

The best thing about the Dudes with Attitudes is that they weren't "the Dudes with Attitude". Because clearly they all didn't have the same attitude. Presumably one was the surly one, one the friendly one, etc.

Is that why Mr Wonderful didn’t give a shit and walked off during Sting’s celebration at Bash 90?

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6 hours ago, odessasteps said:

Hennan Family, Jimmy Hart First Family, Devastation Inc, the GCW Legion of Doom.

Funny that you three have a certain man in common. 

Freebirds and I hate it but the NWO for a year and a half. The Army of Darkness. And Sullivan’s Slaughterhouse ftw.

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9 hours ago, odessasteps said:

Hennan Family, Jimmy Hart First Family, Devastation Inc, the GCW Legion of Doom.

Funny that you three have a certain man in common. 

I ain't counting any stable that had ten or more members that came and went. That sucks. I guess Paul Jones' Army counts too then? 

Just don't like stables/factions, and that's the HOT TAKE baby

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