Your wrestling HOT TAKES

[supremebve]

I'm sure this has been discusses elsewhere on the board, but I'm so happy that Hulk Hogan is finally getting his comeuppance for being such a legendary piece of shit for his entire life.

[zendragon]

6 hours ago, twiztor said:

Hell, in NWA/WCW even Sting and the Road Warriors had a version where they would no-sell something and (usually) hit a pose behind their opponent's back. 

I kinda feel this all goes back to Lawler's Memphis Comeback (which Hogan would have seen working Memphis before his big superhero push)

[zendragon]

3 hours ago, supremebve said:

 

Now that I say that, I have a legitimate Hot Take.  The Main Event at Wrestlemania is not where we should be doing cameos and other bullshit.  I don't think all wrestling needs to be super serious and treated like a legitimate sport.  I actually think the exact opposite.  With that said, the Main Event of Wrestlemania is the place I would argue needs to have some sort of gravitas.  If the match that you theorectically spent an entire year building can't hold the crowd's attention without bringing in random retired wrestlers for no real reason, you're basically admitting that you did a terrible job building the match.  When wrestling is done right, you really don't need anything but the two top guys in the company standing across from each other in a ring.  

This is how the NWA booked the title matches before Flair, even in the WWF both of Bruno's title loses where clean. It was like after all the other BS on the card its time to get serious.

[supremebve]

5 minutes ago, zendragon said:

This is how the NWA booked the title matches before Flair, even in the WWF both of Bruno's title loses where clean. It was like after all the other BS on the card its time to get serious.

It's how pretty much all wrestling has been booked before pretty recently.  Think back to the most legendary matches and tell me which one has a retired wrestler pop up for no good reason to affect the finish.  It isn't like the Undertaker cameo started a long-term storyline.  He popped up everybody cheered and he went away again.  It had nothing to do with the story they were telling leading up to the match or in the aftermath of the match.  It was just the cheapest possible pop.  

[zendragon]

How recent is recent? I mean the attitude era featured tons of run ins and gaga in the main events

[BobbyWhioux]

3 hours ago, zendragon said:

I kinda feel this all goes back to Lawler's Memphis Comeback (which Hogan would have seen working Memphis before his big superhero push)

yep. pulling the strap down as the evolutionary ancestor of the hulk up works for me, honestly.

[Johnny Sorrow]

3 hours ago, BobbyWhioux said:

yep. pulling the strap down as the evolutionary ancestor of the hulk up works for me, honestly.

It's one of my favorite ones. I know Bruno had one I loved. Was it bending over and slapping the mat before kicking the shit out of someone? 
If you search "Sammartino hulk up" you just get lots of Bruno shitting on Hogan. I just went down a 20 minute long rabbit hole of the Living Legend shitting on that asshole while typing this.

 

Edited January 11, 2025 by Johnny Sorrow

[Shartnado]

On 1/9/2025 at 10:36 PM, zendragon said:

Made by people who understood writing a television show and wrestling

Kinda like Cobra Kai.

[SirSmUgly]

Here are some WCW music tier lists that you may or may not agree with. Some of these takes are clearly hot based on what I said in the general thread:

TIERS FOR WCW SLAM JAM THEMES:

S-tier: Ron Simmons, Rick Rude, Sting

A-tier: Steiner Brothers

B-Tier: Johnny B. Badd, Cactus Jack

C-Tier: Dustin Rhodes, Jake Roberts

D-Tier: Ricky Steamboat, Barry Windham

F-Tier: The Fabulous Freebirds

 

I am working on a tier list for Jimmy Hart/Howard Helm knockoff themes, but I will say that the Cat and Jeff Jarrett are S-tier and the knockoffs for "American Made" and "Common Man Boogie" are F-tier. I have to see if that last theme made WCW television in the last couple months of their existence under Turner, but I was personally offended by it when I listened to it a few weeks ago. "Common Man Boogie" has my favorite hook of any WWF theme ever; child me popped HUGE for AMEEEERRRRR ICAAAAAAAAHN...DREEEEEEEEEEAMMMMMM and the follow-up cowbell. The knockoff is an abomination. 

Here's another hot take: I much prefer the Steiner Brothers' WWF theme (and I guess Alex "the Pug" Porteau's theme, come to think of it) to "Steinerized."

My hottest take of all though is that I like Jim Johnston's "Also Sprach" more than I like "Thus Sprach," which I can actually admit is the wrong way to like things. 

 

[J.H.]

The lack of love for 2 Cold Scorio's WCW theme hurts my funky white boy soul

James

[SirSmUgly]

19 minutes ago, J.H. said:

The lack of love for 2 Cold Scorio's WCW theme hurts my funky white boy soul

James

It wasn't on Slam Jam, but it's a great theme! 

Edited January 17, 2025 by SirSmUgly

[BobbyWhioux]

oh if we start ranking WCW's Jimmy Hart knockoff collection I'll be here all day

[Stefanie Sparkleface]

1 hour ago, BobbyWhioux said:

oh if we start ranking WCW's Jimmy Hart knockoff collection I'll be here all day

Shane Helms' solo theme was a very respectable effort at "Shimmy Shimmy Ya", as far as I'm concerned.

[Cliff Hanger]

And Shane Douglas's "Perfect Strangers" knockoff was at least A-tier.

[BloodyChamp]

Jimmy Hart themes 

Those things made watching WCW feel like you were in a school assembly watching whoever was on stage fail at sounding cool. It was more embarrassing than it was simply unenjoyable. 

Slam Jam and the other these by that house band or whatever it was weren’t terrible. They never really broke the glass standard wrestling ceiling though.

The sounds library was the best collection of themes IMO. The best ones just got ran into the ground, then they started using previously rejected ones. I mean that had to be what happened for somebody to put some of those themes out even though I can’t prove it. 

[ka-to]

11 hours ago, J.H. said:

The lack of love for 2 Cold Scorio's WCW theme hurts my funky white boy soul

James

We're gonna step!

[twiztor]

DDP's Nirvana soundalike will never not be my #1.

Raven's Pearl Jam swap is also a banger

[The Great ML]

Steamboat’s Family Man theme was such garbage. It made me want to boo his wife and kid who weren’t even on television at that point.

[Stefanie Sparkleface]

2 hours ago, The Great ML said:

Steamboat’s Family Man theme was such garbage. It made me want to boo his wife and kid who weren’t even on television at that point.

It was funny, though, when Shane Douglas would use it as a single while he was partnered with Steamboat. No wonder the audience thought he was a nerd, he was coming to the ring to a song about what a wife guy his teammate was.

[BloodyChamp]

I’ll stretch the boundaries here and add this hot take - He Stopped Loving Her Today is the dumbest song ever for similar reasons. 

[zendragon]

Hey its about him not loving his wife cause he's dead

[BloodyChamp]

Nu uh 

[Raziel]

Having been watching a lot of 88-91 Memphis/Dallas lately...

Jeff Jarrett was an amazing white meat babyface.

[Stefanie Sparkleface]

13 minutes ago, Raziel said:

Having been watching a lot of 88-91 Memphis/Dallas lately...

Jeff Jarrett was an amazing white meat babyface.

I've said it before, but if Jeff Jarrett had come along ten years earlier, he would have been a perfect territory babyface. Same if he comes along in like... 2004, he would have been a star as a babyface because that was right around when the antihero mentality started dying out and actual babyfaces started popping back up. Anyone judging him from his WCW or WWF runs should really give his time in Memphis a shot, because he was fantastic as the "smiles and handshakes until you push him just far enough, then watch out" kind of babyface.

[SirSmUgly]

Agreed that he's an awesome babyface. My favorite iteration of Jarrett was after he'd lost his first wife and used that experience on television to portray himself as "struggling widower dad of daughters" babyface Jarrett. He just had these hangdog facial expressions that made me feel so badly for him. 

Actually, I think in general his facial and bodily expressions are underrated.