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July 2022 Wrestling Discussion


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28 minutes ago, JLowe said:

Wish we had the “wow” reaction here. 

We need a Wee Bey reaction for some of the news posted here. 

220px-Wee-Bey_Brice.jpg

WCW's marketing arm was bad; Guy Evans's Nitro book really goes in-depth about how poor it was. That Bagwell tweet is on another level, though. 

 

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1 hour ago, Blue Dragon said:

I miss the nWo and their 5600987 ripoffs.

Depending on the way you feel about Bullet Club/The Elite, there are two, sometimes three promotions currently centered around one, so there's that at least. Then again, I'm also one of the rare people that really liked the visual of 20 guys walking down the aisle, as opposed to thinking it watered down the group, so what do I know.

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1 hour ago, Phantom Lord said:

I thought the LWO wasn't around long enough for them to even get a shirt. I remember them being broken up by Ric Flair like two or three weeks into the whole thing.

A bit longer than that, they formed a couple weeks before Halloween Havoc and lasted til Eddy got in that bad accident on new years, so just a couple months. I think it ended with the NWO beating them all up backstage and that was it

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4 hours ago, JLowe said:

Yep, to the point that they realized they could sell even more/keep it “fresh” with the Red-White split, and then having LWO. After the first few months NWO only existed as a brand to sell merch.

The split happened because Nash & Hogan were shoot beefing and didn't want to be part of the same angles anymore. Which is also why the civil war and direct White vs Red feud didn't happen like it logically should have. Any interaction between the two were wolfpac vs lackeys of Hollywood. Basically Hall & The Giant vs Nash & Sting. Hogan was off fucking around with DDP, Karl Malone, Rodman, Jay Leno & Ultimate Warrior in the original Codyverse after putting Goldberg over.

The nWo shirts sold well. But this was WCW. They didn't have a fully fleshed out merchandising department truly capitalizing on it. I think you guys are over valuing the shirt stuff. Along the lines of what Buff was getting at in the tweet... Hogan, Hall, & Nash made farrrrrrr more royalties off of the nWo in WWE than they ever did in WCW.

It comes down to Bischoff's infatuation with Hogan. Hogan was the first real mainstream star in wrestling. He thought that was more valuable than any current pro wrestlers in WCW or any current fans WCW already had. All he cared about was the mainstream and casual viewers. That's what he thought was driving the ratings and success, and he thought Hogan was the driving force in their interest. And in the beginning he was right. nWo was cool and new and edgy but the Hogan turn is the spark that set it off. He just didn't factor in Hogan's shelf life dropped exponentially. Him being a heel and the nWo as a whole carried them through to the Sting match at Starrcade. 1998 was still profitable. But it was lifeless because he kept going to the Hogan well after the heel novelty wore off.

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After about six months, it was clear that heel Hogan was just corny-ass face Hogan with more back rakes and a weight belt.

He was totally incongruous with Nash and Hall. Nash and Konnan are walking out in FUBU cutting then-modern promos and Hogan is still '80s-ing it up. Hogan's heel turn aged incredibly poorly because without the immediate shock value, he's obviously still shit.

IDK how Bisch could look at the competition and see what Austin and Rock were doing to toast them in 1998 and still think, "yeah, let's ride with Hogan," but Bisch was corny as hell, too, so I am not surprised that he didn't get it. I know you can't have dudes cussing and making sexual innuendo on Turner's networks, but you should look at Hogan and easily see that he's not where the business is headed by middle of '98 at the latest.

WCW Hogan is legit painful to watch, an artistic failure of staggering proportions.

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2 hours ago, Zakk_Sabbath said:

A bit longer than that, they formed a couple weeks before Halloween Havoc and lasted til Eddy got in that bad accident on new years, so just a couple months. I think it ended with the NWO beating them all up backstage and that was it

I’m not doubting you but my brain cannot currently wrap around the idea that the LWO only lasted 2 months.

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Didn’t Rey wear the LWO shirt for awhile after it ended? He had just finally accepted being a member when it was finished and tried keeping it up? Is this something I’m remembering or am I old?

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On 6/30/2022 at 11:47 PM, The Natural said:

We enter a new month and so starts the second half of the year. What are your picks for Best of the Year so far?

Mine:

Wrestler of the Year: Bryan Danielson. Honourable mention to Jon Moxley and CM Punk.

Match of the Year. Adam Page vs. Bryan Danielson

Tag Team of the Year: #FTR. Easy pick.

Card of the Year: AEW X NJPW Forbidden Door. Great top to bottom show. AEW Revolution had three better matches in Punk/MJF (*****), Moxley/Danielson and Kingston/Jericho but the former was more consistent across the board.

Promotion of the Year: AEW.

Women's Wrestler of the Year:

Wrestler Of The Year:  Eddie Kingston

Match of the Year:  Adam Page v American Dragon II

Tag Team of the Year: FTR

Card Of The Year:  I'm torn on this one.  I want to say Forbidden Door, but I'll be honest, Wrestlemania Night 1 was pretty goddamn tremendous too.  Seeing SCSA back and wrestling again was such an absolute huge moment.  Forbidden Door was a better card, but Mania Night 1 is up there for me too.

Promotion of the Year: AEW

Woman's Wrestler of the Year:  Bianca Belair.

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Wrestler Of The Year: Will Ospreay. Fantastic matches with an insane variety of opponents, and for someone who may be a bit of an idiot savant, he sure can work a lot of fans into thinking he's a total prick who isn't expertly playing a character, but is actually the monstrous result of dropping both Paul brothers and Connor McGregor into a vat of radioactive Essex.

Match Of The Year: Hangman vs Danielson II. Would have gone with the first one, but the pesky laws of linear time dictate that it happened last year, so this brutal masterpiece will have to do.

Tag Team Of The Year: Team Taz. Yeah I know, I know, FTR are on another level, but their consistent brilliance is (rightly) spotlighted constantly and therefore bores me a little, whereas every time Starkman Jones and Hobbsman Jones get to do anything is like a special treat.

Card Of The Year: Revolution. Could have been any of the AEW cards really, but looking back at the list of matches here and it's an absolute embarassment of riches, which also hit before the current spate of injuries.

Promotion Of The Year: AEW. I'm unfairly biased towards the company that is currently giving us the best era for wrestling in my lifetime.

Wrestlewoman Of The Year: Jade Cargill. It's probably Bianca, her vs Becky was a match of the year contender, but WWE weekly TV hurts me physically in a world where AEW exists, so I haven't seen enough of her matches. Jade has the character stuff nailed, Cut The Shit Tony will never get old, and now she's improving week to week at the whole business of actually wrestling, too, which is barely necessary with that much star power. Her adding Stokely to the act is like John McClane finding the machine gun.

Edited by SturmCRF
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19 hours ago, NoFistsJustFlips said:

I genuinely think Bischoff's thought process at the time was, well god damn Hulk Hogan got hot in 1984 and they prospered until 90-91 with that formula. Heel Hogan got hot in 1996 we can prosper with that formula until 02-03 with it. 

No one's going to dispute that Hogan needed to turn in WCW especially in those traditional "Flair Country" markets but I think where he went wrong with Hogan is trying to forsaking his entire locker room to meet his demands. At least Vince had a way to try to convince people most of the time to go with his ideas no matter how ridiculous it seemed in theory and even in practice and that isn't to say Vince wasn't easily influenced during different creative regimes. I think Bischoff had some good ideas and made some great decisions under his run as President of WCW but it probably would have been harder for him to get someone on the level of Hogan or even Nash to be more selfless when it came to certain booking decisions because he wasn't a Wrestling guy on the same way Vince was. Eric was way more of a wrestling guy than a Jim Heard was but for some reason he was looked at as more of a TV guy even though he'd been in the AWA previously. I don't believe Bischoff had any intention on misusing Bret Hart but I'm almost certain Hogan got to him and told him not to feature him near the top. Bischoff had a hard on for Vince at that time that he's smart enough to use the Montreal situation with Bret and use it to his advantage or atleast let Bret be a big enough star or even bigger star in WCW out of spite.

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If they’d kept Bret away from Hogan completely it would’ve been fine. When he was turned to become an associate of the NWO (but not a member, shrug) was where they started doing things with him that they couldn’t repair. Then it seemed like no matter who was in charge Bret had to turn every couple of months. 

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If you thought that spot with SLADE and Hoodfoot was nasty, you should've seen Akira chewing up and spitting out fluorescent light tube shards. I love GCW, but I'll be damned if there aren't times I think I watch it just for the wow effect. It's like - you get some damn good matches on the card with really notable names, but then you get your extreme deathmatches and... man... they have done some pretty gnarly shit that I couldn't believe. Syringes through both cheeks type stuff. That's borderline assault.

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Not trying to be a Buzz Killington, or the taste police (love what you love!) but I personally just can't do it anymore with certain deathmatch weapons. If I were chancellor of hardcore, I'd ban anything stabby. They could've had a cartoon-ass lightsaber fight and gotten a better reaction.

I'd also end the skewers and whatever that carpeting tool is called. It never looks good, and probably hurts way worse than it looks. That's a lose/lose in my book.

At least with fire, tacks, etc. it's a relatively minor flesh wound 90% of the time, and you always get the big reveal pop when you take out the sack or the lighter fluid.

 

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5 minutes ago, twiztor said:

personally, the first time i saw a wrestler attack his opponent with a weed wacker, i knew i was done with indy deathmatches. 

I've only read about that happening and as I was using a weed whacker in the garden yesterday, I was reminded of it. I have no interest in actually ever seeing any of that stuff.

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5 hours ago, (BP) said:

If they’d kept Bret away from Hogan completely it would’ve been fine. When he was turned to become an associate of the NWO (but not a member, shrug) was where they started doing things with him that they couldn’t repair. Then it seemed like no matter who was in charge Bret had to turn every couple of months. 

Hogan did the same thing with Savage when he came in to WCW. He made sure he aligned with Savage next to him to keep him from getting more over. I'm surprised Bret didn't even see joining NWO as a death sentence at that time. Unless he was going to be the new lead guy, it was no way anyone below upper mid card status would see joining NWO as a come up.

Even Hennig, for years WCW teased brining him in. Then when he did joining he turned on the horsemen and was a lower level NWO member. You'd think Bret would be smart enough to say no. 

Ironically the NWO 2000 thing was much better but Brets career was over and the reason that NWO worked for him then was because it was a much smaller group and all the members were booked as top guys. One of the few things Russo did right. He was good at booking Bret creatively in both companies I'll give him that. 

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The rule of thumb with gimmicks should be that if you're going to use them, you need to be able to use them to their logical full extent.

One of my biggest pet peeves is when the sledgehammer gets pulled out, it's something you're logically able to murder your opponent with, but you're only prepared to jab someone in the ribs with the handle? Baseball bats the same more often than not. 

At least thumbtacks, tables etc you know that they're being used to maximum effect.

Weed whackers...yeah I mentioned a couple weeks ago I saw a spot that required 4 ring crew enter the war games cage, 4-5 guys holding each other while the thing started....to achieve a passing graze with it, rather than inflict some serious damage with it. Pointless.

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Just had a horrible flashback to the RoH/CZW program when Joe got run off by someone chasing him with a weed whacker-

Not because of the spot itself but people on the message boards crying that "he got buried," like motherfucker, it was a running weed whacker, would you stand up to that?

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5 hours ago, twiztor said:

personally, the first time i saw a wrestler attack his opponent with a weed wacker, i knew i was done with indy deathmatches. 

 

3 hours ago, Ziggy said:

Hogan did the same thing with Savage when he came in to WCW.

I scrolled way too fast on this page and read Ziggy's post in reply to this. Amazing visual this would've been.

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