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Watching Raw and Nitro back to back through '98 has been a good time and it's the first time I've really done it as an adult, it's incredible how hard the nWo is dragging these shows down. I'm in the Warrior run and that just all sucks, exploiting Scott Hall's alcoholism is really gross, and having two different nWo groups. But then Goldberg is hot, the Raven and Saturn feud has been good, Four Horsemen are back, even the Rick and Scott Steiner program is compelling outside of Buff faking an injury. The Raw feuds in comparison don't just seem nearly as good.
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Jan 22, 2021 11:03
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Vagabundo posted:Quite possible. Apparently he's a fairly accomplished musician in his own right. He had a pretty big hit as part of The Gentrys. Doesn't Jimmy own a barbeque spot in Memphis, because I'd like to go kick it with him if he's still over that ways?
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Jan 22, 2021 11:48
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TheKingslayer posted:Watching Raw and Nitro back to back through '98 has been a good time and it's the first time I've really done it as an adult, it's incredible how hard the nWo is dragging these shows down. I'm in the Warrior run and that just all sucks, exploiting Scott Hall's alcoholism is really gross, and having two different nWo groups. But then Goldberg is hot, the Raven and Saturn feud has been good, Four Horsemen are back, even the Rick and Scott Steiner program is compelling outside of Buff faking an injury. Had WCW gone all-in with Goldberg (as in, keep his streak going for a while longer), and started promoting Raven, Saturn and Benoit, and put more emphasis on the Horsemen as a worthy foil to a fractured nWo, who knows what shape they'd have been in come 1999. At the point where you're watching, WCW was still consistently pipping Raw in the ratings, but they'd inevitably piss it all away to placate the egos of a bunch of part-timer geriatrics at the expense of their younger talent (doesn't this just sound familiar?). In an ideal world, the Goldberg Streak probably could have gone on until well into 1999, like Bash at the Beach, and could have been used to build up someone that the crowd was behind like DDP (poo poo, they could have even built on the excellent match they'd have at Halloween Havoc down the line), and use an event like Starrcade 98 to put a definitive end to the nWo - like maybe the Horsemen challenging them to a War Games match where the losing side needs to disband (in my retrospective fantasy booking, it would be Flair, Benoit and Malenko alongside Windham and Sting against Hogan, Hall, Nash, Savage and Hennig, with the match ending with Savage betraying the nWo as WCW's mole in the organisation - which would also be a pay-off to the fact that him joining the nWo to begin with never really made sense).
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Jan 22, 2021 11:49
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TheKingslayer posted:Buff faking an injury. OH YEA, I thought that was real, I remember Rick Steiner doing the bulldog move off the top turnbuckle on Buff very distinctly, I know they played it up but that looked really real.
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Jan 22, 2021 11:51
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Cheese Thief posted:Doesn't Jimmy own a barbeque spot in Memphis, because I'd like to go kick it with him if he's still over that ways? tampa based now
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Jan 22, 2021 11:51
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Miss Elizabeth looks completely miserable walking to the ring with Bischoff.
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Jan 22, 2021 12:10
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Cheese Thief posted:OH YEA, I thought that was real, I remember Rick Steiner doing the bulldog move off the top turnbuckle on Buff very distinctly, I know they played it up but that looked really real. The fake injury angle came a few months later, after Buff had recovered. DMorbid fucked around with this message at 12:28 on Jan 22, 2021 |
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Jan 22, 2021 12:26
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Doc M posted:That was real. Buff had multiple damaged vertebrae and suffered spinal shock, and it could've been a lot worse. The concern from the announcers is genuine because they think they just saw a man die in the ring. Yeah the second incident is the one I watched a bit ago at Fall Brawl 98
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Jan 22, 2021 12:50
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TheKingslayer posted:Miss Elizabeth looks completely miserable walking to the ring with Bischoff. Wait until she's forced into an angle with Vince Russo!
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Jan 22, 2021 12:55
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During a very early NWO appearance when it was just the Big Three, I remember going "wait a minute" because the people who went out to defend WCW's honor with the Steiners, Barbarian, Meng and Arn. They didn't run in and start brawling. Just sort of milled around the ring. Some of the toughest guys in the company just kinda hanging out while Hogan and friends took over.
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Jan 22, 2021 16:37
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Fantasy booking: Sting wins the title at Starrcade 97 and moves away from the NWO to feud with Bret Hart. NWO splits into two factions, with Wolfpac putting away Hollywood at Wargames and dropping the NWO name. Goldberg remains undefeated and wins his first world title from either Bret or Sting. Goldberg beats all comers Hogan, DDP, Nash, a returning Savage, Flair backed by a reformed Horsemen and eventually moves into a feud with Scott Steiner. There, I fixed your crappy company Bischoff.
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Jan 22, 2021 17:20
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Not sure what's worse: turning Hall's alcoholism into an angle or Buff faking a legit injury from earlier in the year for the sake of an angle. The latter is just gross to me.
FUCKFACE MORON fucked around with this message at 19:33 on Jan 22, 2021 |
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Jan 22, 2021 19:23
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I think the alcoholism storyline is way grosser. Maybe it's just wrestling breaking my brain and making a gross thing seem normal, but someone faking an injury after a big comeback from the same injury is standard wrestling stuff.
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Jan 22, 2021 20:12
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Ganso Bomb posted:I think the alcoholism storyline is way grosser. Maybe it's just wrestling breaking my brain and making a gross thing seem normal, but someone faking an injury after a big comeback from the same injury is standard wrestling stuff. Agreed. If you want a gross fake affliction story, I'm reminded of Jim Duggan faking cancer. Why didn't they just say he was hurt?
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Jan 22, 2021 20:34
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rujasu posted:Agreed. If you want a gross fake affliction story, I'm reminded of Jim Duggan faking cancer. Why didn't they just say he was hurt?
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Jan 22, 2021 20:37
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davidbix posted:...what?!? He *did* have cancer. Well poo poo, I clearly remembered believing he had cancer, then finding out years later it was actually an injury. I would say Mandela Effect but maybe I'm the only one who thought that?
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Jan 22, 2021 20:49
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Ganso Bomb posted:I think the alcoholism storyline is way grosser. Maybe it's just wrestling breaking my brain and making a gross thing seem normal, but someone faking an injury after a big comeback from the same injury is standard wrestling stuff. I'd be surprised if playing off the injury of a living and otherwise healthy man cracked the top 100 grossest times a company tried to turn real-life issues into a storyline
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Jan 22, 2021 21:02
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I suppose injury angles are gross when they play it up on live television like somebody really got hurt. But on the whole, fake injuries have gotta be part of the storylines of a fake sport. Substance abuse may be common in sports and entertainment but that doesn't make it a good or necessary angle. I think part of it is that people in your audience have painful life experience with substance abuse, or other issues e.g. domestic violence, that they don't with career-ending sports injuries.
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Jan 22, 2021 21:04
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Ganso Bomb posted:I think the alcoholism storyline is way grosser. Maybe it's just wrestling breaking my brain and making a gross thing seem normal, but someone faking an injury after a big comeback from the same injury is standard wrestling stuff. Shane Douglas shaking whichever Pitbull's halo brace in ECW got big heat.
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Jan 22, 2021 21:05
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RC and Moon Pie posted:Shane Douglas shaking whichever Pitbull's halo brace in ECW got big heat. That hosed me up as a kid. I was probably like 13 or so when I saw that and bought into the whole thing. Hearing about it now, Pitbull had recovered by that point and was cleared to stop wearing the halo but Paul E convinced him to wear it for like another month or something so they could do that angle. poo poo was wild.
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Jan 22, 2021 21:14
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rujasu posted:Well poo poo, I clearly remembered believing he had cancer, then finding out years later it was actually an injury. I would say Mandela Effect but maybe I'm the only one who thought that? I have never heard any conspiracy theories about him faking cancer so it might just be you. There have been enough wrestlers who faked various things that you may have conflated him with someone else since you probably don't think about Jim Duggan much.
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Jan 22, 2021 23:05
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Probably confusing Duggan with Roman Reigns
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Jan 22, 2021 23:08
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MassRafTer posted:I have never heard any conspiracy theories about him faking cancer so it might just be you. There have been enough wrestlers who faked various things that you may have conflated him with someone else since you probably don't think about Jim Duggan much. I'm sure it was Duggan because I remember watching him talk about having cancer on Thunder (?) and then being gone for about a year, and thinking, "drat, hope he comes out OK" and then a couple of years later "finding out" it was actually just a ruse to keep him off TV for a while and being kinda upset they'd have him fake cancer like that. I was a stupid teenager and probably heard it from some other stupid teenager on one of the wrestling forums I was on back then, and it just stuck with me for a while. Big Dave posted:Probably confusing Duggan with Roman Reigns Nah, Reigns was well after I stopped watching WWE.
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Jan 22, 2021 23:19
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The streak should have been ended by either Scott Steiner or a heel Bret Hart sometime in 1999, probably at Bash at the Beach.
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Jan 23, 2021 00:05
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The thing is that Buff's injury in particular threatened his career and ability to walk, if not his life. To redo that injury again only to have it be a ruse was tasteless, but I suppose not as tasteless as exploiting Hall's real life problems.
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Jan 23, 2021 00:15
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Nick Jr. Face posted:The thing is that Buff's injury in particular threatened his career and ability to walk, if not his life. To redo that injury again only to have it be a ruse was tasteless, but I suppose not as tasteless as exploiting Hall's real life problems. If it was supposed to be Buff Bagwell the character taking advantage of people's basic empathy I think that's one thing. But if they did the Owen voice and had the announcers go "oh no this is NOT in the script, people!" like they probably did, that's a different thing
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Jan 23, 2021 00:29
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The lovely thing about the Buff angle is it killed Buff's chances of being a big babyface after a terrible injury. It was a tasteless angle but it was just an angle. In the case of the alcoholism angle Hall's entire life was a wreck and that angle only made it worse.
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Jan 23, 2021 00:41
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MassRafTer posted:The lovely thing about the Buff angle is it killed Buff's chances of being a big babyface after a terrible injury. It was a tasteless angle but it was just an angle. And if I remember corectly, it was kinda just returning to form for Bagwell. He was a weaselly rear end in a top hat before, he remained a weaselly rear end in a top hat after.
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Jan 23, 2021 01:17
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Defiance Industries posted:If it was supposed to be Buff Bagwell the character taking advantage of people's basic empathy I think that's one thing. But if they did the Owen voice and had the announcers go "oh no this is NOT in the script, people!" like they probably did, that's a different thing This is absolutely what they did. The funnier part was the crowd wasn't buying it at all.
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Jan 23, 2021 02:07
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TheKingslayer posted:This is absolutely what they did. The funnier part was the crowd wasn't buying it at all. I feel like Hogan tipped over his wheelchair, and the crowd half booed, and the other half realized it was fake (did I remember this correctly?). That could’ve been a huge heat-getter for a rising heel with a competent angle, but, well, you know.
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Jan 23, 2021 02:33
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The other problem with the Bagwell angle is that it set up him and Scott Steiner as weasely heels. Scott Steiner. Weasely heel. Let that roll off your brain.
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Jan 23, 2021 02:58
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WCW booking, watching a jacked and angry bull just fuckin’ ruining a china shop: that definitely looks like a weasel to me. this is what subtlety, cunning and duplicity look like, imnsho
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Jan 23, 2021 03:27
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The Big Poppa Pump we know and are fascinated by was a process. In the first year or so of the gimmick he really wasn't that. His feud with Rick was dragged out and the premise was 'Scott is afraid of his big brother'. I don't think they actually wrestled 1 on 1 either. I think it was blown off when Rick beat The Giant and Scott Steiner in a handicap match that featured the Giant doing a top rope missile dropkick.
ChrisBTY fucked around with this message at 04:45 on Jan 23, 2021 |
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Jan 23, 2021 04:43
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I like the idea of Scott being scared of Rick. But like you said, they strung it out too drat long.
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Jan 23, 2021 04:49
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2000 WCW did a lot wrong, including this very example in places, but I think that they actually did a good job of building Scott Steiner up as this crazy jacked bastard who will wreck you. This may have been because he would've actually wrecked the bookers otherwise.
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Jan 23, 2021 06:14
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SuperBrawl Revenge in 2001 was an absolute farce though, and was pretty clearly designed to undermine their big monster heel champion. "Here's our big monster heel champion who's been going around wrecking everyone, but look at all the help he needs to beat Kevin Nash, who's just too tough for him!"
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Jan 23, 2021 06:30
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I wish the era of the cinematic match had been in the late 90's so Rick Steiner could have actually wrestled the Chucky doll. EDIT Sweet Jesus. Just watched British Bulldog cut this stinker of a promo. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eG0FOmsj18 TheKingslayer fucked around with this message at 09:31 on Jan 23, 2021 |
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Jan 23, 2021 09:16
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Hey so in March it will have been 20 years since the final Nitro. I miss it more every day.
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Jan 23, 2021 10:28
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TheKingslayer posted:EDIT Man, that's not even funny bad, just drugs bad.
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Jan 23, 2021 12:22
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The first year of heel Scott Steiner also taught me that Scott really needed the sunglasses to complete the persona because without them he has a bit of a babyface. It just doesn't look right.
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Jan 23, 2021 12:59
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