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March 2022 Wrestling Discussion


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20 minutes ago, John from Cincinnati said:

Your willingness to always give potential bad actors the benefit of the doubt and take them at their word offers cover to real bad actors. People who are playing his dumb game know better than to admit what they're doing. At a minimum, he's an edgelord who understands what he's courting. 

Okay.  Thanks for your thoughtful analysis of the situation and my character.  Is it fair for you to call somebody else an 'Edgelord (a person who affects a provocative or extreme persona, especially online)'? 

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9 minutes ago, StuntmanCrowley said:

I just read through the last few pages of the new closed "Wrestlers Leaving" thread.  Only thing I want to say is, It's pretty sad how much people need to trash someone elses body art.  I don't think any of us have the right to judge a tattoo on someone else just because we don't like it, but that's just mean.  I have Godzilla dressed as god (Get it, GODzilla) tattooed on my foot.  I'm not going to sit in a glass house and throw stones just because something doesn't fit my own aesthetic.

I would like an exception for Paige VanZant's husband.

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15 minutes ago, Matt D said:

I find myself tempted to eulogize Hunter already. It's such an interesting arc. The designated driver for the clique who found his way into production meetings, married the boss' daughter,  watched all of his peers eclipse him in mainstream fame, ended up with a gift basket from the audience that had reviled him, and finally fell in just about every way possible.

There are countless wrestlers with better and worse careers, but I don't know how many people have had more interesting careers than HHH.  By interesting,  I'm not taking about any of the stuff that happens onscreen,  but all the conversations that we've  had about everything outside of the ring.  Whether he was unfairly punished for the curtain call,  or his behind the scenes politicking, or turning NXT into something that made us had hope for the future of WWE, he's been fascinating to talk about for 25 years. 

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I think the CYN thing is tricky, because if you are an Extremely Online person then it's really clear that they are running the exact same rhetorical playbook as various shitty far-right internet chud groups.  It's all the same phrases and winks and nods and not saying exactly what you mean.

But I can also see it just scanning as eccentric weirdness if you're not already familiar with that milieu.

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Yeah, I'm tempted to start a thread so we can hash out HHH"s career. I mean, he's not dead but if this is REALLY it probably a good time to start evaluating his career. He's both been unfairly maligned and overrated at various times in his career. Hard to believe there was a time when he kinda felt like the guy who over-achieved and broke through a glass ceiling. 

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5 minutes ago, Zimbra said:

I think the CYN thing is tricky, because if you are an Extremely Online person then it's really clear that they are running the exact same rhetorical playbook as various shitty far-right internet chud groups.  It's all the same phrases and winks and nods and not saying exactly what you mean.

But I can also see it just scanning as eccentric weirdness if you're not already familiar with that milieu.

100%. We don't have to give the benefit of the doubt to people who do not earn it.  The game stops working when we stop playing along with it. None of these people have any ability to not tell on themselves if you ask them a single follow up question. It's all bullshit and you don't have to tolerate it. 

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1 hour ago, HarryArchieGus said:

This whole EC3 CYN thing is a bit baffling.  I'd love for somebody to set aside their like/dislike of his in ring work and character and fairly breakdown this story.  I read his AMA responses as honest, but as I said I'm not up on this.  Facing critics directly is also hard not to read as kinda admirable.  The Austin Aries involvement is certainly not going to gain any promotion (how ya doing Pumpkin Billy?) any good will.  So, no sympathy for the questions that raises.  I'm thankful for knowledge of the number 88's hateful connotation - I don't find it hard to believe somebody else was unaware.  So is this more than a witch hunt by ppl who think EC3 is an idiot and an asshole? 

EC3 gives off a lot of Zenk/Roma/Bagwell/Ryback crybaby energy. You know, "The fact that I lifted for cut means I should've been a huge star!"

As far as politics go, I'm sure that EC3 is like a lot of conservatives in the business right on up to VKM himself who pine for the days when wrestling drew a conservative working class/jock fanbase as opposed to the nerd culture fanbase it's become, nerd culture of course being extremely leftist. But hell both parties right now are pretty much held hostage by their extremes, and both extremes are very eager for you to see anyone who disagrees with them as an evil bogeyman. There's plenty of people here who'd label me a bigot in various ways for things I believe, but then again I go to conservative sites and get called a pussy cuckservative because I'm not interested in helping Jesse Kelly reform the Confederacy for Civil War 2. I've said it before, but 20-odd years of internet agitprop ain't really done anyone any good.

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1 hour ago, John from Cincinnati said:

Your willingness to always give potential bad actors the benefit of the doubt and take them at their word offers cover to real bad actors. People who are playing his dumb game know better than to admit what they're doing. At a minimum, he's an edgelord who understands what he's courting. 

Word.  The guy literally said "I'll give you 88% off a MyPillow," which is two far right dogwhistles in one.  He knows exactly what he's doing. 

He also whiffed when asked if he understood the underlying theme of Fight Club.  ?

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43 minutes ago, Hagan said:

Yeah, I'm tempted to start a thread so we can hash out HHH"s career. I mean, he's not dead but if this is REALLY it probably a good time to start evaluating his career. He's both been unfairly maligned and overrated at various times in his career. Hard to believe there was a time when he kinda felt like the guy who over-achieved and broke through a glass ceiling. 

i'd be interested in the discussions about this. Jeez, with this guy's career, you could almost go year-by-year and have huge shifts almost every time. 

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2 hours ago, HarryArchieGus said:

This whole EC3 CYN thing is a bit baffling.  I'd love for somebody to set aside their like/dislike of his in ring work and character and fairly breakdown this story.  I read his AMA responses as honest, but as I said I'm not up on this.  Facing critics directly is also hard not to read as kinda admirable.  The Austin Aries involvement is certainly not going to gain any promotion (how ya doing Pumpkin Billy?) any good will.  So, no sympathy for the questions that raises.  I'm thankful for knowledge of the number 88's hateful connotation - I don't find it hard to believe somebody else was unaware.  So is this more than a witch hunt by ppl who think EC3 is an idiot and an asshole? 

Before all this CYN shit, I actually had a pretty positive opinion of EC3.  I only knew of him what I'd seen on tv, and I thought he was a guy that WWE really missed the boat on.

He is CLEARLY trying to promote to hateful people.  I'm sure he and others involved with this promotion saw that there's a market for that, because, sadly, there is.  They've thrown dog whistle after dog whistle into everything about this. Just because you don't know the connotation behind all of those things, it doesn't mean it's not there.  The whole point of dog whistles is that they're easily deniable.  "Oh, no.  I was just making an 'ok' sign."  "Oh, no, 88 was just a random number I picked."  There is no doubt in my mind that he's trying to appeal to that audience.

This is 100% NOT a witch hunt.  Like I said, as far as I know, EC3 didn't have an Aries or Low Ki-like reputation before all of this.  I know my opinion of CYN is based solely on what I've seen of it.  

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1 hour ago, HarryArchieGus said:

Okay.  Thanks for your thoughtful analysis of the situation and my character.  Is it fair for you to call somebody else an 'Edgelord (a person who affects a provocative or extreme persona, especially online)'? 

I don't think anything I said was directed at your character, so I'm sorry you took it as such. But I'm definitely responding to a pattern of behaviour where you express a willingness to let guys off the hook for speech that ranges from questionable to vile and present people unwilling to be so forgiving as unreasonable. As an example: Your frequent insistence that people should be over Jay Briscoe's vile and violent talk in the past (note: Please do not take this as an invitation to re-litigate Briscoe shit, because I'm not interested in engaging; I only bring it up to demonstrate a pattern of behaviour). Your willingness to take people at their word and offer the benefit of the doubt in situations such as these is clear and consistent. That it offers cover for real bad actors isn't something I think you actively wish to bring about, so don't take it as me accusing you of trying to offer cover. But functionally, it's an inevitable end result of letting people's bullshit slide so easily. Do with that what you will. 

As for analysis of the situation, here's a video timestamped to just before the relevant "joke":

So the joke that he thinks people might take out of context is that he has a My Pillow promo code for 88% off. But he claims not to know what 88 might mean in some circles. So he expects people to believe he came to this conversation, knowing what he's accused of, and made a promo code joke where he came up with 88 as a number cold off the dome. 88 specifically. As a discount that makes sense in a promo code, he just made that up cold? When there's 25% or 50% or a bunch of other numbers that would make more sense for a person speaking extemporaneously to reach for, he chose 88 and doesn't know what he's winking at? I don't believe him (and am insulted on behalf of everyone he thinks is that stupid). And that's without touching on his shit-eating "whoops, had no idea, wink" energy.

Having established that I don't believe that he doesn't know what 88 is winking at, why lie? I could see a person making that shitty joke and nobody taking it to mean they're a Nazi. Isn't the joke that you're getting 88% off because people think Lindell is a Nazi? There's a way to try to carry this horseshit off without feigning ignorance. So why lie? I see two possible explanations.

1) He secretly harbours some really shitty beliefs, has learned to shield them by denying any knowledge of those things, and the denial of Hitler stuff is a kneejerk instinct. That's deeply uncharitable and I don't know enough about Michael Hutter to say one way or the other, so I'm not going to. That leaves us with

2) He's trying to wind people up by being edgy and then denying he knows what this stuff is like so many others. "What do you mean that's a white power symbol? You people are crazy!" 

That is being an edgelord and it's more than fair to call it such. And it's the most charitable reading I can give to the situation because I don't know enough to hang the first possibility on him. 

Given how many vile and dangerous beliefs that have been mainstreamed in recent years by people fucking around and being edgy online, I'm not sure how easily people should let this stuff pass. You'll make your own judgements on that. But there's your analysis. 

Edited by John from Cincinnati
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It's reductive, but "second banana positioned constantly as a top banana" really describes the bulk of HHH's career. Popular, sure, but not as popular as X (where "X" is Rock, Austin, Cena, etc.). Decent worker when he would work to his strengths, but never the best worker (his '00 is both his best year and IMO quite heavily overrated, and I'd like to talk about whether he had a top-ten '00 worldwide, even) and rarely worked to his strengths. Made a babyface territory into a heel-dominated one and since he wasn't a touring champ, it sort of killed the company in ways that it still hasn't come back from.

He has a peak as an executive that holds up artistically('14 - '16 NXT) much more than whatever you'd argue his in-ring peak was.

I think his best analog in-ring is Edge. Decent enough, but not particularly good unless there's a bunch of plundah in the ring with him. 

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1 hour ago, StuntmanCrowley said:

EDIT: Not going to kick a hornet's nest and start something that was ended with a thread closing.

I'm also glad it got quoted before deleted because I absolutely agree: the constantly shitting on somebody's chosen body art, which in zero way impacts your life, is weak at best. The "but his neck tattoo" takes are redundant and basically a boring meme and hack as helllllllll. 

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2 minutes ago, christopher.annino said:

I'm also glad it got quoted before deleted because I absolutely agree: the constantly shitting on somebody's chosen body art, which in zero way impacts your life, is weak at best. The "but his neck tattoo" takes are redundant and basically a boring meme and hack as helllllllll. 

I agree in general, but in the world of wrestling, your body art becomes part of your presentation. I think the tattoo is at least a small part of the Cody Rhodes production that caused him to turn heel for the crowd inadvertently. In that context specifically, it's fair to point out that it didn't help Cody continue to be a face (in combination with other things, like hearting a "Sami Zayn leave America" tweet and the rah-rah America stuff that would have worked for dad in front of an '80s JCP crowd, but not a new-'20s AEW crowd). In that specific context (which might feel icky, but is also part of the thing and maybe shouldn't be? I don't know, that's a conversation worth having, but probably not in this thread), I think it's fair game.

Outside of that context, though, yes I understand the consternation about shitting on his neck tattoo and agree with you. 

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15 minutes ago, John from Cincinnati said:

I don't think anything I said was directed at your character, so I'm sorry you took it as such. But I'm definitely responding to a pattern of behaviour where you express a willingness to let guys off the hook for speech that ranges from questionable to vile and present people unwilling to be so forgiving as unreasonable. As an example: Your frequent insistence that people should be over Jay Briscoe's vile and violent talk in the past (note: Please do not take this as an invitation to re-litigate Briscoe shit, because I'm not interested in engaging; I only bring it up to demonstrate a pattern of behaviour). Your willingness to take people at their word and offer the benefit of the doubt in situations such as these is clear and consistent. That it offers cover for real bad actors isn't something I think you actively wish to bring about, so don't take it as me accusing you of trying to offer cover. But functionally, it's an inevitable end result of letting people's bullshit slide so easily. Do with that what you will. 

As for analysis of the situation, here's a video timestamped to just before the relevant "joke":

So the joke that he thinks people might be taken out of context is that he has a My Pillow promo code for 88% off. But he claims not to know what 88 might mean in some circles. So he expects people to believe he came to this conversation, knowing what he's accused of, and made a promo code joke where he came up with 88 as a number cold off the dome. 88 specifically. As a discount that makes sense in a promo code, he just made that up cold? When there's 25% or 50% or a bunch of other numbers that would make more sense for a person speaking extemporaneously to reach for, he chose 88 and doesn't know what he's winking at? I don't believe him (and am insulted on behalf of everyone he thinks is that stupid). And that's without touching on his shit-eating "whoops, had no idea, wink" energy.

Having established that I don't believe that he doesn't know what 88 is winking at, why lie? I could see a person making that shitty joke and nobody taking it to mean they're a Nazi. Isn't the joke that you're getting 88% off because people think Lindell is a Nazi? There's a way to try to carry this horseshit off without feigning ignorance. So why lie? I see two possible explanations.

1) He secretly harbours some really shitty beliefs, has learned to shield them by denying any knowledge of those things, and the denial of Hitler stuff is a kneejerk instinct. That's deeply uncharitable and I don't know enough about Michael Hutter to say one way or the other, so I'm not going to say. That leaves us with

2) He's trying to wind people up by being edgy and then denying he knows what this stuff is like so many others. "What do you mean that's a white power symbol? You people are crazy!" 

That is being an edgelord and it's more than fair to call it such. And it's the most charitable reading I can give to the situation because I don't know enough about him to hang the first possibility on him. 

Given how many vile and dangerous beliefs that have been mainstreamed in recent years by people fucking around and being edgy online, I'm not sure how easily people should give this stuff pass. You'll make your own judgements on that. But there's your analysis. 

A better understanding of where this CYN hate was/is coming from was my aim with asking as much.  I appreciate you taking the time to lay out the facts of the matter.  Between your comments and @Log's I very much appreciate the info.  Suggesting thinking Jay Briscoe is perhaps deserved of forgiveness is not the same thing.  Suggesting a pattern of behaviour from that and an interest in knowing what's up with CYN is pretty presumptuous and awfully righteous.  Yeah, that felt like an attack.  Regardless, thanks again for taking the time to inform on CYN.  

Edited by HarryArchieGus
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13 minutes ago, John from Cincinnati said:

The tweets from the generation that came to Hunter in NXT and didn't work with him in his prime are heartening. For anything else people want to say about him and what goes on in that organization, he seems to have helped a lot of people in his second act. 

Yeah,  he seems like someone who is terrible to work with,  but great to work for,  which has to be an extremely small percentage of the population, especially in the wrestling business. 

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1 hour ago, Technico Support said:

Word.  The guy literally said "I'll give you 88% off a MyPillow," which is two far right dogwhistles in one.  He knows exactly what he's doing. 

He also whiffed when asked if he understood the underlying theme of Fight Club.  ?

Well, Joe did say EC3 was a smart fellow. ?

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I think that whatever came over him due to his role as Papa HHH in NXT helped him give a last little nudge to Danielson at WM 30 (which I will stand by as also HHH's best match by a fairly significant margin). He was a net-positive for Bryan, especially in the last couple months of that feud.

I'm an outlier on this point, but I think that while it's admirable that he put Batista over strongly, Batista was never any good. He was decent enough at a couple of points (specifically tagging with Mysterio), but my love for Big Dave is almost purely based on everything AFTER his wrestling career was over. Like, my favorite thing he's done in a wrestling ring was actually his last (waving goodbye to HHH because he signed up to be World Champ, not to get his ass whipped by the punk kids in the Shield). 

But even if you see Batista as an unqualified success, which hey, most people would agree with you, I think it's undeniable that he took to his role in NXT and was a huge net-positive in developing talent that can go. 

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3 hours ago, supremebve said:

There are countless wrestlers with better and worse careers, but I don't know how many people have had more interesting careers than HHH.  By interesting,  I'm not taking about any of the stuff that happens onscreen,  but all the conversations that we've  had about everything outside of the ring.  Whether he was unfairly punished for the curtain call,  or his behind the scenes politicking, or turning NXT into something that made us had hope for the future of WWE, he's been fascinating to talk about for 25 years. 

In my upcoming WWF history book (spoiler alert!), I said that if the WWF were Survivor, HHH would be the last man on the island, holding the check for $1 million.

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