|
I think by April 2001 they would be very aware.
|
#
?
Sep 13, 2021 23:05
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 6, 2024 17:54 |
|
|
I was an avid WWF fan with limited internet access in 2000-01, and I got the impression WCW was in deep, deep trouble. When I heard Vince bought the company, I was surprised, but not shocked.
|
|
#
?
Sep 13, 2021 23:11
|
|
|
The product was so bad in the 2000's that casual watcher would know the show is bad and probably be near cancelation
|
|
#
?
Sep 14, 2021 00:14
|
|
|
Low Desert Punk posted:How aware would the casual wrestling fan have been about how dire WCW's situation was in the early 2000s? I'm pretty sure they knew because they were the ones tuning out in droves. By 2001 it was only the diehard sickos still hanging around.
|
|
#
?
Sep 14, 2021 01:56
|
|
|
Low Desert Punk posted:How aware would the casual wrestling fan have been about how dire WCW's situation was in the early 2000s? When WCW did that stupid rebirth thing, they canceled about a month of house shows. I had tickets to one of them*. I was very online and solely watched WCW, so I knew the situation, but casual fans would have probably noticed the big talent turnover at the end of 2000 and Time Warner's interest in selling the company was mainstream news by the end of that year. Some newspapers ran syndicated wrestling news pages. The pages were mostly horribly done, but usually contained semi-reliable inside news. If they read any news, the average fan would have likely known by Novemberish 2000. * I had front row tickets. It wasn't a hotbed of a town, but that was pretty dire to so easily get front row tickets.
|
|
#
?
Sep 14, 2021 02:02
|
|
|
fez_machine posted:Okay, I'll bite. I'm going to be inconsistent and drawing a long bow for an already stretched analogy. Measuring the success of an entire industry based on a subset of a subset of a subset of a subset of a distribution model is like saying that because Pay Per Views or the WWE Network went away, wrestling is dying. Never mind anything else, that's not really wrestling, it's something different. You seem to be looking at "Western Comic Books" as ONLY superhero comics and ONLY superhero comics sold in monthly installment and ONLY superhero comics sold physically and ONLY via the direct market, then sure, that model of sales is in decline by some metrics though even that is something people have been declaring the imminent death of for somewhere between thirty and forty years. And all of the metrics that show that things are sustainable or even growing don't count, because who gives a poo poo about DVR numbers or iPPVs or streaming engagement, back in the good old days [we'd get 5,000 people in Memphis every Friday night and they believed it was real / people bought half a million copies of Superman comics every month for a brief period in the mid 1950s!], that's how you measure success, not this outlaw mudshow digital trade paperback nonsense. If you widen the spectrum in either direction ("not just superheroes" or "not just superheroes in monthly comic books physically sold via one sales channel") you can either look at the complete cultural hegemony of superheroes in movies, television, toys, merchandising, etc. etc. If you just look at "comics" as people creating/reading stories with words and pictures, then it's everywhere. If Dave Batista and Andy Kaufman started their own wrestling tour and were some of the best-selling authors/box office draws of the 2010s, would 'wrestling fans' worry that it wasn't drawing enough viewers to NXT? This isn't even getting into the comparison of NJPW to manga or whatever the hell that was. Edge & Christian fucked around with this message at 03:48 on Sep 14, 2021 |
|
#
?
Sep 14, 2021 03:45
|
|
|
I think you invented a guy in your head. I've never implied that anyone reading Y.A./bookstore comics is a fake comics fan. But I don't think they turn into people who read comics regularly for a sustained period of time, i.e. the type of people you need to establish a thriving infrastructure of consumption. Rather they read select authors and select subjects that just happen to be in comics form. The vast majority of people who watch action movies aren't turning up to film festivals. (Manga fans are different but that relies on a much healthier infrastructure in Japan to provide the content). Comics exist everywhere but fewer and fewer people are able to live off making comics. I've never mentioned any super hero comics, in fact I listed a bunch of comics authors who aren't superhero, but rely on traditional distribution and infrastructure to make money. English language comics publishing is in a pretty dire state. Fantagraphics relies on its Disney and Peanuts licenses to exist. Drawn and Quarterly is funded by government grants. Short Box and Koyama press have shut up shop. There's also a tonne of the equivalent of money mark publishers who pop up for a few years pay a few big names money to make stuff and then disappear, just look at the entirety of Garth Ennis's post-Punisher career. My point is the decline of traditional comic book stores/comic book conventions and alt-festivals = the decline of professional wrestling outside WWE in a world where AEW doesn't exist. Sure there'll be hobbyists and exciting small promotions, maybe there'll be some breakout stars that go into a completely alternative revenue stream, but nobody outside the mega-corp will be making truly sustainable money. Think about Women's Wrestling in the United States as it existed a decade ago for what a world where only a steadily declining WWE exists without stable competition would look like. It's not if Dave Bautista started his own wrestling company would movie fans attend, it's do Dave Bautista's movie fans go and see WWE except when he turns up? Or even will they go to a GCW event or their local indie? The big bucks gigs don't matter if the grass roots aren't growing. Doesn't matter how many people go to wrestling school, if there's no audience to pay and support them after they graduate. also check this out: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3976364#post517694283 fez_machine fucked around with this message at 06:35 on Sep 14, 2021 |
|
#
?
Sep 14, 2021 06:11
|
|
|
The casual fan in 2000 probably would have known WCW was dying because the angle on screen was that the company sucked and was dying and was on like the third attempt of someone new in management coming in to save the sinking ship.
|
|
#
?
Sep 14, 2021 06:55
|
|
|
Social media seems to be alive with a meme/joke about the Suzuki incident. Would anyone be able to point me in the right direction as to learning why this is funny? I hate not getting jokes.
|
|
#
?
Sep 14, 2021 11:05
|
|
|
britishbornandbread posted:Social media seems to be alive with a meme/joke about the Suzuki incident. Would anyone be able to point me in the right direction as to learning why this is funny? I hate not getting jokes. Minoru Suzuki comes out to Kaze ni Nare, a really cool song that peaks when the singer goes KAZE NI NARE! Fans love singing along with that part. On an AEW episode they didn't let the song get far enough. That's the Suzuki Incident. I found it funny until they started calling it the Suzuki incident. But the truth is it's not really that funny. The joke is exaggerating the significance of the fans not being allowed to sing Kaze ni Nare. Clearly AEW is dying (because Suzuki will murder them, not because business is bad.)
|
|
#
?
Sep 14, 2021 11:13
|
|
|
It's called the Suzuki Incident because of this (serious, not part of the joke) tweet. https://twitter.com/NJPWFanClubNA/status/1436729037116755971?s=19
|
|
#
?
Sep 14, 2021 11:15
|
|
|
GEORGE W BUSHI posted:It's called the Suzuki Incident because of this (serious, not part of the joke) tweet. holy poo poo, this is unbelievably funny.
|
|
#
?
Sep 14, 2021 11:39
|
|
|
Thank you for the explanation. That is quite funny to be fair.
|
|
#
?
Sep 14, 2021 11:41
|
|
|
fez_machine posted:I think you invented a guy in your head. quote:Comics exist everywhere but fewer and fewer people are able to live off making comics. quote:English language comics publishing is in a pretty dire state. Fantagraphics relies on its Disney and Peanuts licenses to exist. Drawn and Quarterly is funded by government grants. Short Box and Koyama press have shut up shop. There's also a tonne of the equivalent of money mark publishers who pop up for a few years pay a few big names money to make stuff and then disappear, just look at the entirety of Garth Ennis's post-Punisher career. Garth Ennis has in the past decade or so put out books via Avatar Press (1996-present), Dynamite (2004-present), Aftershock (2015-present), and TKO Comics (2017-present). I realize none of these four companies has risen to a WWE/Marvel level and sure, call them money marks, but ROH was run by a money mark, people call Tony Khan a money mark, everyone's a money mark but if they stay in business and pay everyone I don't know what the issue is. quote:My point is the decline of traditional comic book stores/comic book conventions and alt-festivals = the decline of professional wrestling outside WWE in a world where AEW doesn't exist. I don't have a ton of charts and graphs but if year over year more people are buying comics (just not floppies from a comic shop) and more comics are being published (just not floppies from a comic shop) and more people are making a living making comics (just not floppies from a comic shop) then maybe the thing that is dying/falling apart are floppies from a comic shop, maybe comic shops, but definitely not comics? Comics don't stop being comics just because they're published by book publishers or "a money mark" or are self-published or etc.
|
|
#
?
Sep 14, 2021 12:47
|
|
|
The Suzuki Incident was my least favorite Guns N Roses album.
|
|
#
?
Sep 14, 2021 20:58
|
|
|
I went to a Nitro in March 1999 at the Dean Dome in Chapel Hill, NC. Place was packed, atmosphere was wild. Main event was Buff and Scott Steiner versus Goldberg and Rick Steiner. It's easy to say the Fingerpoke killed the company and Goldberg in particular, but he was still crazy over that night. I watched a Nitro later that September from the same building, and it was half-full and just dead. Main event was heel champ Sting and Luger versus face red-and-yellow Hogan and Bret Hart and....nobody cared. I think it was that night when I went from "Raw is better than Nitro all the time now" to "Nitro might seriously be in trouble." But that was largely because the product was uninteresting instead of the fever dream of the next year, though. D.N. Nation fucked around with this message at 21:12 on Sep 14, 2021 |
|
#
?
Sep 14, 2021 21:10
|
|
|
Is Nick Aldis bad at wrestling/being a decent human being? Honest question because he seems to get dunked on often in this forum. I've only seen like the first episode of NWA Powerrr and that's about it.
|
|
#
?
Sep 15, 2021 03:16
|
|
|
Lily Catts posted:Is Nick Aldis bad at wrestling/being a decent human being? Honest question because he seems to get dunked on often in this forum. I've only seen like the first episode of NWA Powerrr and that's about it. He's not very good and has a rep as being a bit of prick
|
|
#
?
Sep 15, 2021 03:28
|
|
|
El Gallinero Gros posted:He's not very good and has a rep as being a bit of prick I assumed worse, but I see. Wonder why he got such a padded reign though.
|
|
#
?
Sep 15, 2021 03:36
|
|
|
Lily Catts posted:I assumed worse, but I see. Wonder why he got such a padded reign though. The NWA has one guy under contract.
|
|
#
?
Sep 15, 2021 03:38
|
|
|
Lily Catts posted:Is Nick Aldis bad at wrestling/being a decent human being? Honest question because he seems to get dunked on often in this forum. I've only seen like the first episode of NWA Powerrr and that's about it. I would describe him as aggressively mediocre.
|
|
#
?
Sep 15, 2021 10:20
|
|
|
Would the TLC matches have been better or worse if instead of the Dudley Boyz, it was The Acolytes?
|
|
#
?
Sep 15, 2021 11:22
|
|
|
Kosmo Gallion posted:Would the TLC matches have been better or worse if instead of the Dudley Boyz, it was The Acolytes? Now there's a good question. Back then me and my group of mates loved The Acolytes. Just these two rough brawlers taking no crap. For me, I'd have loved to have seen them in place of The Dudleys in the TLC matches of the time. Whether it would have been better I don't know, but it would have been hell of a lot of fun.
|
|
#
?
Sep 15, 2021 11:31
|
|
|
Did either of them even have a ladder match? I don't know if they would be willing to take the same kind of bumps.
|
|
#
?
Sep 15, 2021 12:40
|
|
|
I also feel like Bradshaw would be looking for a reason to change the shape of someone's head with a chair.
|
|
#
?
Sep 15, 2021 12:52
|
|
|
Much worse. Farooq was a wreck by 2000, Bradshaw wasn’t going to be taking stupid ladder bumps either, and they probably would have ended up winning the matches as well
|
|
#
?
Sep 15, 2021 13:14
|
|
|
Kosmo Gallion posted:Would the TLC matches have been better or worse if instead of the Dudley Boyz, it was The Acolytes? Worse, the Dudleyz get a bad rap but they were as a tag team one of the longest tenured and decent teams for over a decade. They were where they needed to be and could work a match playing to the cheap seats. The APA were big meaty men but they didn't play well with others and Bradshaw especially in anything longer than like 7 minutes got exposed, his JBL reign of terror is one of the worst periods of early 2000 WWE.
|
|
#
?
Sep 15, 2021 13:25
|
|
|
Kosmo Gallion posted:Would the TLC matches have been better or worse if instead of the Dudley Boyz, it was The Acolytes? worse. i think it would’ve gone like their match with public enemy https://youtu.be/dFLuGQrC48M 13 year old me would’ve been into it though.
|
|
#
?
Sep 15, 2021 15:18
|
|
|
Kosmo Gallion posted:Would the TLC matches have been better or worse if instead of the Dudley Boyz, it was The Acolytes? Absolutely worse. The Dudleys, for all of their problems, had a history of working with other teams and smaller guys to put on fun matches back to their ECW days. And they were no strangers to doing dumb bullshit and taking risky bumps. We would have gotten some fun Clotheslines From Hell and maybe a Dominator off of a ladder or something but overall, The Acolytes weren't as mobile or giving as The Dudleys. Teen me who was huge into The Acolytes and The Ministry would have probably loved them being in the match at the time, but it wouldn't have been as fun in retrospect. Ganso Bomb fucked around with this message at 19:20 on Sep 15, 2021 |
|
#
?
Sep 15, 2021 15:28
|
|
|
What's wrong with the Dudleys? The Dudleys were loving awesome, unless there's something about them I don't know.
|
|
#
?
Sep 15, 2021 15:32
|
|
|
CommonShore posted:What's wrong with the Dudleys? The Dudleys were loving awesome, unless there's something about them I don't know. Outside of like a two year period in the early 2000s they were mostly really boring in the ring and got stale very quickly in WWE and TNA. Bully Ray is a really annoying guy in real life and a lot of their entertainment value in ECW has not aged well! They were really good in spotfests and not really great otherwise which is funny because Bully Ray pretends to be a psychology thought leader now. The act was very entertaining in ECW, but a lot of that was Gertner. Their matches were not the most exciting brawls. They didn't have the charisma of a New Jack or the lack of care for their own bodies as a Sabu or a Foley to really do cool stuff. MassRafTer fucked around with this message at 15:38 on Sep 15, 2021 |
|
#
?
Sep 15, 2021 15:35
|
|
|
People act as though Bubba Ray was some sort of genius on the mic but it wasn't that hard to get a reaction out of a lively Philly crowd in the 90s by calling them homophobic slurs and threatening to rape their minor children.
|
|
#
?
Sep 15, 2021 15:37
|
|
|
CommonShore posted:What's wrong with the Dudleys? The Dudleys were loving awesome, unless there's something about them I don't know. They both seem like self-important dinks in real life, and D-Von had some thing this year where he came out as gay "as a joke" or some dumb poo poo to see if the dirtsheets (brother!) would cover it. They just seem like assholes and/or idiots.
|
|
#
?
Sep 15, 2021 15:39
|
|
|
Ah ok. I only know them from that short period in the early 2000s where they were loving awesome, it seems.
|
|
#
?
Sep 15, 2021 18:09
|
|
|
Okay, they might be muppets but the idea that JBL and Faarooq would've been better in TLC...
|
|
#
?
Sep 15, 2021 19:11
|
|
|
I guess there's something to be said about the fact that the Dudleys are the only bunch out of the OG TLCs without any significant sustained success as singles wrestlers.
|
|
#
?
Sep 15, 2021 19:41
|
|
|
Yeah, Bubba ended up with a few months after being revealed as the leader of Aces & 8s but that's about it.
|
|
#
?
Sep 15, 2021 19:53
|
|
|
edogawa rando posted:I guess there's something to be said about the fact that the Dudleys are the only bunch out of the OG TLCs without any significant sustained success as singles wrestlers. Bully was Impact champion, just like Samoa Joe, Kurt Angle, Kenny Omega and Christian Cage! 
|
|
#
?
Sep 15, 2021 19:53
|
|
|
Pope Corky the IX posted:People act as though Bubba Ray was some sort of genius on the mic but it wasn't that hard to get a reaction out of a lively Philly crowd in the 90s by calling them homophobic slurs and threatening to rape their minor children. And nobody acts like Bubba was a genius on the mic more than Bubba.
|
|
#
?
Sep 15, 2021 20:53
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 6, 2024 17:54 |
|
|
Gaz-L posted:Bully was Impact champion, just like Samoa Joe, Kurt Angle, Kenny Omega and Christian Cage! Unironically, that did occur to me, but like, it's TNA, you know?
|
|
#
?
Sep 15, 2021 21:06
|
|