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Answers Me posted:Is current WWE really the company's nadir? Because I'm working my way through the Worst Gimmick Tournament thread and the mid-2000s seems way worse. Today's product is unwatchable for a lot of reasons, and even as bad as 1995 was, you still had some gems. I would watch Raw in '95 if two good workers were scheduled for a match. I wouldn't watch today's show unless it was a replay of a good show from more than 20 years ago.
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# ? Nov 27, 2020 23:43 |
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# ? May 26, 2024 21:22 |
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New Generation may be worse product wise but than the talent they had at the time was also pretty dire whereas today they have arguably one of the deepest rosters in the world and are doing nothing with it.
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# ? Nov 28, 2020 00:13 |
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also there are 15 more hours a week of it now
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# ? Nov 28, 2020 00:17 |
SatoshiMiwa posted:New Generation may be worse product wise but than the talent they had at the time was also pretty dire whereas today they have arguably one of the deepest rosters in the world and are doing nothing with it. Hey. Actively making me not care about guys who were some of my favorites may not be GOOD, but it's not NOTHING.
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# ? Nov 28, 2020 00:19 |
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Edge & Christian posted:2) The dogshit midcard booking was largely being inflicted on like The Highlanders and Deuce and Domino and Kevin Thornn and Ricky O and Kenzo Suzuki, not some of the generation's best wrestlers like it has been over the past several years. There were still tons of squandered talents in mid 2000s WWE (young and old), but it wasn't a company that you could look at on paper and credibly say has one of the greatest collections of talent any company in history has had under contract. Turning chicken salad into chicken poo poo is somehow less depressing than turning like the cure for polio into a pile of chicken poo poo. this is kinda funny in hindsight considering Kenzo Suzuki was considered the best Young Lion of his class at the time, even better than his tag team partner, some no-name kid named Hiroshi Tanahashi
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# ? Nov 28, 2020 00:24 |
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One of the things WWE 1995 had going for it is that Bret Hart was putting on ridiculously good matches basically every time out, despite how bad the rest of the company was. Every so often I'll see an old match and be reminded just how unbelievably great he was.
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# ? Nov 28, 2020 00:25 |
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Alaois posted:this is kinda funny in hindsight considering Kenzo Suzuki was considered the best Young Lion of his class at the time, even better than his tag team partner, some no-name kid named Hiroshi Tanahashi And it could of almost been Tanahashi that was sent over to WWE which is almost scary to think about (though in fairness Inoki at the time was also using Tanahashi terribly and that really didn't stop till Yukes bought the company)
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# ? Nov 28, 2020 00:29 |
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When Yujiro was a Young Lion he was considered the top prospect in his class: and I think that carried on into the early days of No Limit as a pushed team. That's one to keep in mind when you see people trying to judge future potential of rookies that are artificially limited in what they are allowed to do.
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# ? Nov 28, 2020 03:55 |
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Answers Me posted:Is current WWE really the company's nadir? Because I'm working my way through the Worst Gimmick Tournament thread and the mid-2000s seems way worse. The mid-00s suffered a lot from putting too many eggs in the Cena/Batista/Triple H baskets, but there was still a fairly heavy enough main event scene for both shows to make up for it. All the problems looked like they could be easily fixed with a couple smart decisions. Every now and then there were new guys who seemed like they could be the future like Umaga, Morrison, MVP and, yes, even Mr. Kennedy. They wouldn't make it to the top, but you could still watch it and feel like they could. There wasn't any viable competition, so all you could do was cross your fingers that WWE could figure themselves out. And like Edge and Christian pointed out, the worst gimmicks were rarely in the main event. Though World Heavyweight Champion Great Khali was pretty dire. Right now, the company is at a point where they're completely out of whack and the only thing holding them up is TV deals and blood money. There doesn't seem to be an easy fix because even the guys they want to heavily push come out looking like chumps a lot of the time. McIntyre appears to be the outlier in all of this.
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# ? Nov 28, 2020 05:02 |
Speaking of WWE Champion Khali; who would you consider the worst pushed champions of WWE/WCW? Not angles like David Arquette or Vince Russo winning but people they actually put the title on to be The Champion. Criteria can be pretty much anything as long as the wrestler was seriously pushed. Edit: Second question! Did Sting do any wrestling at all during that year or however long before he wrestled Hogan? House shows, dark matches, anything? Admiral Joeslop fucked around with this message at 09:36 on Nov 28, 2020 |
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# ? Nov 28, 2020 09:26 |
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Jinder was extremely terrible. They strapped a rocket to him and had him beat a bunch of names in about a month after a lifetime of jobbing, and then never had him win anything clean. Then when they decided they didn't need him anymore, he lost the belt and went right back to extreme jobberhood, including losing to HHH in India and bowing to him after.
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# ? Nov 28, 2020 09:45 |
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Admiral Joeslop posted:Speaking of WWE Champion Khali; who would you consider the worst pushed champions of WWE/WCW? Not angles like David Arquette or Vince Russo winning but people they actually put the title on to be The Champion. ^Yeah what that guy said. Jinder. They wanted that guy to be a star in India but still booked him as a chickenshit heel. Like... what?
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# ? Nov 28, 2020 09:45 |
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The worst pushed champion in WCW might be Booker T, because the night they went 'GONNA GIVE BOOKER T A BIG PUSH' they had him lose earlier in the evening to Kanyon, and he needed shenanigans to save his title from guys like Chuck Palumbo. He was a midcarder we were told was a main eventer carrying the top title.
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# ? Nov 28, 2020 09:51 |
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Modern WWE is the worst it's ever been because in the face of actual competition and more ways than ever to watch other wrestling companies, they're just doubling down on their shittiness and their bad decisions. Modern WWE is the only time I've actively felt like the company hates me for watching.
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# ? Nov 28, 2020 09:57 |
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Rey is the easily the most mistreated world champion of all time. A better, less racist company would have built around him (and Eddy) and made some huge loving money but Vince is a dumb bigot who booked the greatest face of the last 30 years as a joke.
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# ? Nov 28, 2020 10:12 |
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Of course this isn't WWE's nadir. Look at those profits. I hate that is a metric. I really do. I really hate that it's the metric if you're a person who is only in the business because it's your legacy and you were never able to escape it.
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# ? Nov 28, 2020 10:23 |
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Something that really stands out to me about WWE and it being garbage is all the wrestlers feel so drat phony. Yes, wrestling is fake, but the WWE talent doesn't feel like they have any kind of swagger or badass attitude. I don't get the impression even they believe in what they're doing.
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# ? Nov 28, 2020 10:24 |
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Admiral Joeslop posted:Speaking of WWE Champion Khali; who would you consider the worst pushed champions of WWE/WCW? Not angles like David Arquette or Vince Russo winning but people they actually put the title on to be The Champion. 4 time WCW Champion J-E-Double F J-A-Double R-E-Double T. His first 3 title reigns amounted to a combined 17 days as champion.
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# ? Nov 28, 2020 11:01 |
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Admiral Joeslop posted:Edit: Second question! Did Sting do any wrestling at all during that year or however long before he wrestled Hogan? House shows, dark matches, anything? Between January 3 1997 where he wrestled the Giant at a house show, and December 28 2997 where he beat Hogan for the title, Sting has 0 matches on Cagematch.
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# ? Nov 28, 2020 11:28 |
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Admiral Joeslop posted:Speaking of WWE Champion Khali; who would you consider the worst pushed champions of WWE/WCW? Not angles like David Arquette or Vince Russo winning but people they actually put the title on to be The Champion. The way Jericho was pushed as undisputed champion seemed pretty bad to me, especially considering how he won it in the first place. Going over both Austin and Rocky in the same night was a Big loving Deal, and unifying the wwf and wcw titles and being the last person to hold the wcw title was historic and cool. Then he had a 3 month title reign where he never looked very strong, and while he did defend against both Rock and Austin on ppv the matches were mostly forgettable (or at least I forgot about them) with cheap heel finishes. Then he didn't get another title run for like 6 years
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# ? Nov 28, 2020 11:29 |
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Lamuella posted:Between January 3 1997 where he wrestled the Giant at a house show, and December 28 2997 where he beat Hogan for the title, Sting has 0 matches on Cagematch.
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# ? Nov 28, 2020 13:48 |
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titties posted:The way Jericho was pushed as undisputed champion seemed pretty bad to me, especially considering how he won it in the first place. I can remember exactly two things from this title reign: - The I AM NOT A JOKE segment with The Rock. - Him walking Triple H's dog.
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# ? Nov 28, 2020 14:16 |
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Hedgehog Pie posted:I can remember exactly two things from this title reign: The I AM NOT A JOKE promo could have saved his title reign if the follow up feud with HHH wasn't so bad Its a great segment. Jericho spoke really highly of Rock as both a coworker and a man in one of his books. And they definitely had a special chemistry. El Gallinero Gros fucked around with this message at 15:44 on Nov 28, 2020 |
# ? Nov 28, 2020 15:42 |
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what was Naito's story this year? i haven't really followed since he won the titles in January
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# ? Nov 28, 2020 17:38 |
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ICHIBAHN posted:what was Naito's story this year? i haven't really followed since he won the titles in January "Finally won the big one at the big one, then beat KENTA, had many months off before an interminable feud with EVIL where he dropped the titles in his 2nd defence, won it back immediately & then his first defence of that reign was also against EVIL." Everything after New Japan came back is bad.
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# ? Nov 28, 2020 18:42 |
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forkboy84 posted:Everything after New Japan came back is bad.
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# ? Nov 28, 2020 19:09 |
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Admiral Joeslop posted:Speaking of WWE Champion Khali; who would you consider the worst pushed champions of WWE/WCW? Not angles like David Arquette or Vince Russo winning but people they actually put the title on to be The Champion. The year of Diesel was pretty goddamn bad. 1. His big win over Backlund wasn't televised. 2. They removed everything interesting about his character and made him a generic face. 3. He spent most of the year wrestling Sid, Mabel, Bulldog, and Yokozuna. Bulldog was a good wrestler, but they had little chemistry together. 4. His best match in the entire run was losing to Bret at Survivor Series, followed by his WM win over Shawn. He also had a very good match with Bret at the Rumble, but the ending loving blew. 5. Most of the year, Bret and Shawn had more compelling storylines and much better matches. Edit: And I write this as someone who likes Diesel.
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# ? Nov 28, 2020 19:17 |
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njpw has been very good since the g1, and the new Japan cup and jinguu show had a number of notable matches. in particular shingo takagi has been an all star between his g1 run and never title stuff.
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# ? Nov 28, 2020 20:18 |
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There are at least three guys in NJPW who have cases for the best overall in-ring work in the period since they came back, namely Shingo, Ishii and Suzuki.
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# ? Nov 28, 2020 20:22 |
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Did Omega and Nakamura ever have any matches of note? I do appreciate that one of the first search results of such is an article with Kenny talking about how WWE killed any energy Nakamura had on the main roster.
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# ? Nov 28, 2020 20:24 |
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FakePoet posted:Did Omega and Nakamura ever have any matches of note? They were about to feud when Nakamura left, the show where AJ got thrown out of the Bullet Club was after a 6 man where Omega pinned IC champ Nakamura. Then Nak just vacated the belt, I think? El Gallinero Gros fucked around with this message at 20:31 on Nov 28, 2020 |
# ? Nov 28, 2020 20:28 |
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they may even have announced omega vs nakamura for the ic belt and then inexplicably pulled the match, vacated the title and made it omega vs tana to decide a new champion
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# ? Nov 28, 2020 20:36 |
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forkboy84 posted:
counterpoint: literally every single thing Hiromu does is perfection
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# ? Nov 28, 2020 21:12 |
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Spuckuk posted:counterpoint: literally every single thing Hiromu does is perfection Hiromu is my favourite wrestler in the world (or maybe 2nd favourite after Ishii) but I don't think I can go that far. I not that long ago saw Hiromu vs BUSHI. The problem with New Japan isn't the wrestlers. The wrestlers are still overwhelmingly great. It's just the booking which manages to overshadow the good poo poo: I forgot that we got Hiromu vs Ishii this year & I loved it an awful lot because NJ Cup was all about the ending. And yes the G1 had lots of great stuff as usual, see every time Ishii wrestled for example, but I had completely forgotten that in the aftermath with Ibushi winning, then immediately losing the briefcase only to get a Wrestle Kingdom title shot anyway. Good booking can make a great match amazing by just heating up the crowd, bad booking can take a great match & make you completely forget it. Which is a shame because New Japan have so many of my favourite wrestlers, they reinvigorated my interest in wrestling & much like MJeff I'm getting really close to just dropping out, or at least relegating them to "will watch the big & pimped matches" like I do with Big Japan or Zero1.
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# ? Nov 28, 2020 21:29 |
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I think New Japan isn't very good right now, but I also think I'm judging them more harshly because their peak was so high and NOAH, Dragon Gate and AEW are super fun at the moment so it makes NJPW look even worse by comparison.
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# ? Nov 28, 2020 21:38 |
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Super No Vacancy posted:they may even have announced omega vs nakamura for the ic belt and then inexplicably pulled the match, vacated the title and made it omega vs tana to decide a new champion Yeah it was changed to Omega v. X, with X being eventually revealed as Tanahashi, iirc
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# ? Nov 28, 2020 21:49 |
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I’ve liked the Tekkers/Golden Ace feud, Naito/EVIL from the turn through to Jingo stadium, all the G1 basically, the formation of Diablo Loco, and Suzuki/Nagata. Even the goofy stuff like Wato and Big Match Yuj has had its own ironic charm.
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# ? Nov 29, 2020 01:36 |
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Seams posted:Big Match Yuj has had its own ironic charm.
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# ? Nov 29, 2020 03:57 |
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i think new japan is very good right now
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# ? Nov 29, 2020 08:01 |
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# ? May 26, 2024 21:22 |
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i fell off it during the pademic because new japan world drops your subscription when you get a new credit card. but i know shingo is still out there, being all beefy and poo poo
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# ? Nov 29, 2020 08:15 |