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Your wrestling HOT TAKES


A.M.B.

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I know he did because I remember him standing in the background wearing his tux looking like redneck Lurch but it never really seemed like Sid interacted much with the rest of the Horsemen.  He was doing tag matches with Hansen and had that weird heel feud with Big Cat and Night Stalker.  And I don't remember any kind of story to his becoming a Horsemen.  Luger, Windham, and Sting all joined as part of angles.  Sid got hurt as a Skyscraper and when he returned, there was just some stuff on commentary about the Horsemen going with youth so Sid was now a Horsemen.

I'm not sure I've got the timeline straight but what would've been good is if Ole had said he stole Sid from Teddy Long because Sid's got the potential to be a future Horsemen.  So Ole'd be managing Sid and the Minnesota Wrecking Crew II separate from the other 3 Horsemen but stealing Sid from Peanut Head would've added some additional fuel to the Doom/Horsemen feud and the MWCII could've been used as cannon fodder for Doom as well.  Then turn Sid face cause he was already one of the most cheered guys in the company.

Then the Horsemen fire Ole and bring in Harley Race for the JJ role and he brings Luger back to the Horsemen to capture the WHC from Sting.  So your Four Horsemen are Arn, Windham, Flair, Luger, and manager Race and WCW's top faces would be Sting, the Steiners, and Sid Vicious.

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On 4/28/2021 at 10:44 PM, BloodyChamp said:

That’s pretty old for a rassler concerning ring work 

I disagree. Murdoch could still go. His cardio was still strong, and his ring generalship and psychology were top notch. Rhodes, Hansen, Lawler and Flair were a similar age, and Hogan and Steamboat not far behind. Sure, too old to be considered for a long-term top spot in a national federation even back then, but he had many years of great matches left in Japan and maybe another short top heel run in the U.S. I have never seen a match were Murdoch phoned it in or took shortcuts, let alone wasn't in contention to be the top guy in that ring..Pshaw, I say with politeness and conviction.

- smoldering fury,

RAF

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I don't get the attitude era. Seems like Jerry Springer on steroids. Bad wrestling, trashy storylines. I guess you had to be there but I have enjoyed looking back on other eras and appreciating them for what they are. It's a big part of why I'm embarrassed to be a wrestling fan. I hate mentioning I like pro wrestling because the late 90s WWF is what 99.99% of the population thinks of.

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9 hours ago, Spontaneous said:

I don't get the attitude era. Seems like Jerry Springer on steroids. Bad wrestling, trashy storylines. I guess you had to be there but I have enjoyed looking back on other eras and appreciating them for what they are. It's a big part of why I'm embarrassed to be a wrestling fan. I hate mentioning I like pro wrestling because the late 90s WWF is what 99.99% of the population thinks of.

It was an incredibly stupid heap of bubblegum pop, which stuck because that kind of thing had never been done in wrestling. Every promo ended with somebody telling somebody they were going to stick something up the other’s ass, topping the plateau of 1 telling the other that they were going to whoop their ass. Then The Rock came along and hooked the sideways phrase onto it HAW MAN I NEVER SEEN ANYTHING LIKE IT is what the average fan then thought.

Of course when you compare it to Starrcade 97 which had been built towards for all those months it was...ah you know lol!

Edited by BloodyChamp
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There's a decent amount of attitude ear stuff that has simply not aged well. For everything great Austin -McMahon storyline, you get some real garbage, plus the whole "not enough wrestling on the wrestling shows" complain that was true.

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I’m not saying this in hindsight. I always hated it like I hated the cheesy crap that was Hulkamania. Now before I sound holier than thou I will admit that being a lifelong, at that time out of control WCW fan helped me deflect anything good I saw on WWF TV. Obviously there was 1997 which was great before Vince Russo went plain crazy. HBK, Bret, Owen, etc in the years before that. Then even when it became unwatchable by 1998 there was still Foley and Austin, who was the worst 1 about that “ass” stuff but at the same time there was no denying how he held everybody by their heartstrings through the whole thing. The guy was their God.

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I grew up on late 70s/ early 80s World of Sport. The 80s WWF stuff was comedy wrestling to me, when I first saw it. All the babyfaces were idiots who chased the heel's second around the ring for ne reason whatsoever. And nobody knew any holds at all.

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3 hours ago, AxB said:

I grew up on late 70s/ early 80s World of Sport. The 80s WWF stuff was comedy wrestling to me, when I first saw it. All the babyfaces were idiots who chased the heel's second around the ring for ne reason whatsoever. And nobody knew any holds at all.

Big Daddy falling on top of someone with an Irish name and Catweazel wasn't comedy wrestling? 

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1 hour ago, Mister TV said:

Big Daddy falling on top of someone with an Irish name and Catweazel wasn't comedy wrestling? 

Is this a hot take? Les Kellett is the greatest comedic wrestler of all time.

Maybe this is a hot take: Kellett and Ebessan/Kikutaro are not merely great comedic wrestlers, both rank pretty highly among the greatest pro wrestlers of all time.

In AxB's defense, Kellett's comedy was certainly more subtle and witty than what we generally saw on American wrestling programs in the '80s.

Big Daddy on the other hand...

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

Maybe this is a hot take: Kellett and Ebessan/Kikutaro are not merely great comedic wrestlers, both rank pretty highly among the greatest pro wrestlers of all time.

There is a fairly decent number of comic actors who wound up being good dramatic actors, so I think this one might belong in a "sensible statements" thread, instead of this thread of utter bollocks.

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It's harder to do great comedy than great drama because of how precisely comedy has to be timed in order to hit, and also because pleasing a broad audience who likely has different comedic tastes is harder than nailing the universal emotions involved in drama. I've read countless actors say that comedy is harder to do. That seems like it applies in wrestling as well. 

Les Kellett is fucking great, so I'm on board with Gordi here. 

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I'd start a best comedic wrestlers thread but not sure how much interest it'll draw. The Jun Akiyama-Danshoku Dino match got me thinking about just how difficult it is to make it as a primarily comedy wrestler you still buy as a threat. Yano is another one but he was serious previously.

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26 minutes ago, John from Cincinnati said:

The Tessa cancel culture gimmick pitch in the AEW thread got me thinking about the worst possible outcomes, and I'm brought back to a common thought: Almost every "the heel is actually in the right!" take is god awful.

Heels should think they are in the right, they shouldn't BE right. Otherwise they aren't heels. 

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But what about some where that might be the case like with Savage and Hogan?  Savage was territorial but Hogan was getting friendly with Elizabeth?  Unless one thinks that cancels out I see Savage as being in the right on that one.  So what would that make it then in regards to Savage as a heel?

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2 hours ago, Mister TV said:

Big Daddy falling on top of someone with an Irish name and Catweazel wasn't comedy wrestling? 

I'm not saying there wasn't clowning in WoS wrestling; There was. But the thing is... like three quarters of the wrestlers on WoS were babyface technicians. Face vs Heel matches were a special attraction, the standard match was a sporting contest between straightforward professionals. A context that is probably lost on people watching selected matches thirty years later, rather than the actual full broadcasts when they aired live.

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As far as The Heel is Right gimmicks, Vince McMahon's bizarrely aligned moral compass has a lot to answer for. A lot of times there, the Babyface was presented as being morally upstanding  simply because they were a babyface, rather than because they actually behaved in a noble or sportsmanlike way.

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10 minutes ago, John from Cincinnati said:

This is why I hedged by including the word "almost." Because there are a couple especially egregious examples I know normally come up. 

FWIW I'll admit this "triggered" me into responding and didn't see the almost part of the sentence at first.  Whoops.

I don't really have hot takes as even my furthest point might not be that hot anyway.  But I guess my main thing is with the empty arena shows going on WWE should try and put in a lot more shit talking in matches.  No need to do super-complicated sequences or moves that don't look right and if you can cut half that shit out for more story-based stuf fthen that'd be alright by me.  Looking back that's why I generally loved the Roman/Uso feud so much due to all the shit-talking that was going on.

Edited by NikoBaltimore
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1 minute ago, AxB said:

As far as The Heel is Right gimmicks, Vince McMahon's bizarrely aligned moral compass has a lot to answer for. A lot of times there, the Babyface was presented as being morally upstanding  simply because they were a babyface, rather than because they actually behaved in a noble or sportsmanlike way.

While this is right, I often see people take "the babyface is a bit of a shithead" and take that to a point where in their mind they decide the shithead babyface's villainous adversary is actually a good guy. Which is just hard for me to wrap my mind around. 

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10 minutes ago, AxB said:

I'm not saying there wasn't clowning in WoS wrestling; There was. But the thing is... like three quarters of the wrestlers on WoS were babyface technicians. Face vs Heel matches were a special attraction, the standard match was a sporting contest between straightforward professionals. A context that is probably lost on people watching selected matches thirty years later, rather than the actual full broadcasts when they aired live.

My hot take is that the modern UK wrestling scene pissed their amazing legacy of unique, brilliant, technical, personality-driven wrestling away for a attention-starved, entitled, spotty, smarky, self-conscious, cookie cutter style.

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That WoS revival was dire, but in fairness, they just followed the dwindling base of increasingly hardcore fans. 

Is it even possible to re-train an audience to appreciate a different in-ring style or cadence to a show anymore? I don't know that I feel confident that the modern UK wrestling scene could pull it off if they tried. 

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The thing there is, WoS was cancelled in 1988 (and had been declining before that) The UK scene was basically dead from that point, and with the American stuff being what was on TV, that's by and large what was emulated by the the handful of UK workers through the 90s and beyond. By the time Britwres indie was returning to prominence, the previous peak was 30 years in the past. There wasn't really anyone to provide the continuity to the old style (and the yarders who became the new stars were never WoS fans anyway).

In his early days, Doug Williams was a Rocco Rock clone. He got better when he started aping Regal instead.

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1 hour ago, NikoBaltimore said:

But what about some where that might be the case like with Savage and Hogan?  Savage was territorial but Hogan was getting friendly with Elizabeth?  Unless one thinks that cancels out I see Savage as being in the right on that one.  So what would that make it then in regards to Savage as a heel?

In continuity, Hogan was just being a friend to Elizabeth and actually saw her as a person with value and her own agency. Savage came to treat her as a posession (clearly a throwback to his initial heel run) and became so insanely jealous of Elizabeth having a friend that he insanely thought there must have been something romantically happening between Hulk and Liz because he couldn't understand the alternative. 

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