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El Gallinero Gros posted:That's pretty accurate. IRS is a good worker, he went balls deep to make the character work, but was still a wrestling accountant. Which is patently absurd. I think that gimmick was pretty much lifted from The Simpsons, too, or at least the chronology makes it plausible.
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Aug 19, 2021 17:38
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CommonShore posted:I think that gimmick was pretty much lifted from The Simpsons, too, or at least the chronology makes it plausible. If it was during the period where Vince employed writers that'd be likely true, but if memory serves it was Vince being petty over the actual IRS looking at his books and finding some irregularities.
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Aug 19, 2021 17:40
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Gavok posted:I recall even in the early years of Wrestlecrap, they noted that IRS was a beloved heel gimmick that was performed to perfection and was overall good, but it's still absolutely a Wrestlecrap gimmick no matter how you look at it.
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Aug 19, 2021 17:40
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El Gallinero Gros posted:If it was during the period where Vince employed writers that'd be likely true, but if memory serves it was Vince being petty over the actual IRS looking at his books and finding some irregularities. yeah, it was very much a Parents TV Council complaints about WWE leading to the creation of Right To Censor situation.
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Aug 19, 2021 18:07
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Mad Magazine used to do parodies of magazine covers back in the day, and they eventually did one for the WWF Magazine. They came up with the wrestling accountant character long before IRS made his debut. Also the look was really similar
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Aug 19, 2021 18:08
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Davros1 posted:Mad Magazine used to do parodies of magazine covers back in the day, and they eventually did one for the WWF Magazine. They came up with the wrestling accountant character long before IRS made his debut. Also the look was really similar One of the Twitch streams I follow(ed) that streamed 90s WWF stuff (and seems to have disappeared now) aired a show that had some very early IRS stuff. He wore brown-ish tights instead of slacks so this is even closer than it appears on the surface. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hc2RdtmW4ng
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Aug 19, 2021 18:51
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You probably could of had Steve Austin turn heel and not kill business if he didn't team up with Vince McMahon but the minute he shook hands with Vince that pretty much killed business
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Aug 19, 2021 18:55
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At the same time, the way Attitude Era morality worked, teaming up with Vince was pretty much the only way to express "has turned heel".
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Aug 19, 2021 18:56
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Maxwell Lord posted:At the same time, the way Attitude Era morality worked, teaming up with Vince was pretty much the only way to express "has turned heel". The crowd was openly cheering him while he trying to puddinize the Rock's kidneys with a chair, I don't think they realized he'd turned heel until the handshake. So you're probably right.
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Aug 19, 2021 19:33
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Mark Henry isn’t an all time great but he looks a lot better in retrospect. I think personally I probably shamefully got suckered by the typical racist Vince writing.
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Aug 19, 2021 19:49
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Austin hugging Vince and having that crazy  on his face was probably the thing I remember most from that whole interaction.
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Aug 19, 2021 19:54
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Thanlis posted:Mark Henry isn’t an all time great but he looks a lot better in retrospect. I think personally I probably shamefully got suckered by the typical racist Vince writing. They also put him on TV before he was ready, and WWE has traditionally sucked koala dick when it comes to writing compelling stories for black wrestlers. Their initial thought for Henry was black Hogan knockoff, which seems extra awful knowing what we now do about Hulk. sticklefifer posted:Austin hugging Vince and having that crazy It's a bummer him turning heel did disappointing business because Austin did great work as a paranoid top heel. El Gallinero Gros fucked around with this message at 20:01 on Aug 19, 2021 |
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Aug 19, 2021 19:56
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It's funny to think about WWE games back when the main selling point wasn't having 300 people on the roster. Since they could only fit 8-10 per game, anyone who made the cut was OVER in my mind. IRS is in this game? He must be really loving important and a badass.
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Aug 19, 2021 21:36
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CommonShore posted:I think that gimmick was pretty much lifted from The Simpsons, too, or at least the chronology makes it plausible.
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Aug 19, 2021 22:21
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Tato posted:It's funny to think about WWE games back when the main selling point wasn't having 300 people on the roster. Since they could only fit 8-10 per game, anyone who made the cut was OVER in my mind. IRS is in this game? He must be really loving important and a badass. It still blows my mind that Raw for 32X treats Kwang like he's Akuma from Street Fighter.
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Aug 19, 2021 22:24
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Maxwell Lord posted:At the same time, the way Attitude Era morality worked, teaming up with Vince was pretty much the only way to express "has turned heel". Hindsight is definitely 20/20 but Austin has since said that, in retrospect, he'd wished he'd called an audible and hit Vince with a stunner after he got the pin.
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Aug 19, 2021 23:09
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Edge & Christian posted:If you're talking about The Iron Yuppie, that was from a March 1993 episode of the Simpsons, which was nearly two years after IRS debuted the gimmick in WWF. When the episode aired, IRS/Ted Dibiase were reigning tag champions and poised to defend their belts against Hulk Hogan and Brutus Beefcake in three weeks. Even Money Inc was weird. IRS was not, in fact, Ted's personal accountant or possibly bent IRS inside man but just 'also rich.'
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Aug 20, 2021 01:58
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Dawgstar posted:Even Money Inc was weird. IRS was not, in fact, Ted's personal accountant or possibly bent IRS inside man but just 'also rich.' It's the weird broke brained mentality that tax people want your (read rich people's) money to make themselves personally rich and not, y'know, to pay for roads and schools and (ideally in a sane world) hospitals.
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Aug 20, 2021 02:22
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I think it was probably just IRS and DiBiase had money-themed gimmicks.
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Aug 20, 2021 03:33
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Austin's heel turn broke the golden rule of turns, which is that you do them after the character is already getting the new reaction. The whole point of his original face turn was that people were already cheering for him while he was heel.
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Aug 20, 2021 03:54
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Edge & Christian posted:If you're talking about The Iron Yuppie, that was from a March 1993 episode of the Simpsons, which was nearly two years after IRS debuted the gimmick in WWF. When the episode aired, IRS/Ted Dibiase were reigning tag champions and poised to defend their belts against Hulk Hogan and Brutus Beefcake in three weeks. Ah I got it mixed up with the wrestling appearance in "Bart the Daredevil" which was from 1990
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Aug 20, 2021 04:01
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Stealth Tiger posted:Austin's heel turn broke the golden rule of turns, which is that you do them after the character is already getting the new reaction. The whole point of his original face turn was that people were already cheering for him while he was heel. Vince was still trying to keep him heel for way too long despite Austin being cheered. But then, Vince thought that he himself was the babyface in the crowd's eyes wrt the Bret Hart montreal screwjob, and when Austin first stunnered Vince he still thought he was the babyface in that and it took him a few weeks to realize he wasn't.
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Aug 20, 2021 04:03
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re: IRS The Road Warriors held four World Tag Team Titles (1 x AWA, 1 x NWA, 2 x WWF). They lost two of them to teams that included Mike Rotundo/IRS.
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Aug 20, 2021 04:05
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Another problem with the Austin turn was that, initially, he was playing fourth wheel to HHH, Vince AND Stephanie, despite being world champion and the company's top star. It's like they saw that people weren't interested in booing him so they didn't trust him to perform. It wasn't until HHH got injured and Stephanie took some time off to be with him that he got to shine. Also, with Rock gone there was a distinct lack of top faces for him to feud with. There was Undertaker and Kane, but Taker was in Limp Bizkit biker mode, and when they tried to elevate Benoit and Jericho that initially didn't work out either. A lot of things went wrong with that run, some of which weren't even anyone's fault.
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Aug 20, 2021 11:38
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Hedgehog Pie posted:Another problem with the Austin turn was that, initially, he was playing fourth wheel to HHH, Vince AND Stephanie, despite being world champion and the company's top star. It's like they saw that people weren't interested in booing him so they didn't trust him to perform. It wasn't until HHH got injured and Stephanie took some time off to be with him that he got to shine. Also, with Rock gone there was a distinct lack of top faces for him to feud with. There was Undertaker and Kane, but Taker was in Limp Bizkit biker mode, and when they tried to elevate Benoit and Jericho that initially didn't work out either. A lot of things went wrong with that run, some of which weren't even anyone's fault. HHH getting the win over Austin before WrestleMania to set up him as a face challenger, then deciding he would just stay heel instead is one of his funniest moves. Can't imagine why people get so much joy out of watching his political maneuverings fall apart!
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Aug 20, 2021 15:06
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Hedgehog Pie posted:Another problem with the Austin turn was that, initially, he was playing fourth wheel to HHH, Vince AND Stephanie, despite being world champion and the company's top star. It's like they saw that people weren't interested in booing him so they didn't trust him to perform. It wasn't until HHH got injured and Stephanie took some time off to be with him that he got to shine. Also, with Rock gone there was a distinct lack of top faces for him to feud with. There was Undertaker and Kane, but Taker was in Limp Bizkit biker mode, and when they tried to elevate Benoit and Jericho that initially didn't work out either. A lot of things went wrong with that run, some of which weren't even anyone's fault. Tried with Jericho might need quotation marks around it. He's the first unified champ and still playing gofer to Stephanie. (This is not nitpicking what you said, more shaking my head at the angle of the time.)
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Aug 20, 2021 15:24
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Dawgstar posted:Tried with Jericho might need quotation marks around it. He's the first unified champ and still playing gofer to Stephanie. (This is not nitpicking what you said, more shaking my head at the angle of the time.) I said it before, and I'll say it again: If HHH hadn't been out with his quad injury, no way would Jericho have been the first Unified Champ over him.
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Aug 20, 2021 15:47
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Are there any wrestlers of note that had a wizard gimmick? Not just users of magic but an out-and-out loving *wizard*. (And not Grand Wizard Ernie Roth.) Bonus points if you have photos, videos, or even stories.
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Aug 21, 2021 06:56
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Nehru the Damaja posted:Are there any wrestlers of note that had a wizard gimmick? Not just users of magic but an out-and-out loving *wizard*. (And not Grand Wizard Ernie Roth.) Bonus points if you have photos, videos, or even stories. Kevin Nash as Oz 
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Aug 21, 2021 06:57
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Lid posted:Kevin Nash as Oz I just watched a match. What the gently caress. Why would you take a giant brute and package him as a loving wizard
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Aug 21, 2021 07:01
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Warner Media owned both WCW and a large collection of films and it was the idea of someone in charge of WCW to leverage Warner's film connection to create a bunch of wrestlers to reference classic films that warner had the rights to.
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Aug 21, 2021 07:04
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AEW is going to debut a wrestler called The Accountant
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Aug 21, 2021 07:07
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karmicknight posted:Warner Media owned both WCW and a large collection of films and it was the idea of someone in charge of WCW to leverage Warner's film connection to create a bunch of wrestlers to reference classic films that warner had the rights to. God they really did a Space Jam 2 to him. Wow. Were there other wrestling wizards? Any that wrestled maybe a little wizardly/cerebrally? Like when I think of a wrestling wizard I think of maybe The Genius with less gay panic and maybe some Phantasio-style gimmicks.
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Aug 21, 2021 07:08
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Nehru the Damaja posted:God they really did a Space Jam 2 to him. Wow. There was The Grand Wizard but he was a manager. Also the Shining Wizard which is a move. Orin Veidt is witch/wizard/warlock adjacent in terms of a modern gimmick that isn't trying to be silly.
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Aug 21, 2021 07:10
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karmicknight posted:Warner Media owned both WCW and a large collection of films and it was the idea of someone in charge of WCW to leverage Warner's film connection to create a bunch of wrestlers to reference classic films that warner had the rights to. Turner. Not Time Warner, he wouldn’t merge with TW until 1996. Because Ted had bought the majority of the pre-80s MGM catalog for broadcast on Turner networks in 1986 and had also bought Jim Crockett Promotions two years later, they figured it was a natural combination, using this valuable intellectual property like The Wizard of Oz to bolster pro wrestler gimmicks and maybe draw crowds that wouldn’t “normally” attend a wrestling show. Also note that this is why then-WWF wrestler Hulk Hogan appears in Warner Bros. movie Gremlins 2 - with the title belt! - without it being a conflict of interest: that movie was five years before the owner of JCP sat on the board of Time Warner.
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Aug 21, 2021 07:27
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gently caress, yeah, I was specifically thinking of the MGM library and the eventual Turner Classic Movies.
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Aug 21, 2021 07:31
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If someone were to have come up to you in the summer of 2016 and described the current state of play in US and international pro wrestling, what would have been the most surprising thing to you? (apart from the pandemic of course)
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Aug 21, 2021 21:23
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Lamuella posted:If someone were to have come up to you in the summer of 2016 and described the current state of play in US and international pro wrestling, what would have been the most surprising thing to you? NJPW is in a steep steep steep decline despite having the same booker. TNA is more respected than RoH.
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Aug 21, 2021 21:32
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Lamuella posted:If someone were to have come up to you in the summer of 2016 and described the current state of play in US and international pro wrestling, what would have been the most surprising thing to you? Probably Ultimo Dragon's return to DG and that Shingo is now IWGP champion. Never thought I'd see that in a million years. Though if someone told me there's now a viable US alternative to WWE that has Omega, Young Bucks, PAC, Tommy End, Penta, Fenix, Matt Hardy and Christian, I'd probably either think you were bullshitting me, or that Impact got a lot bigger. Even more if you said "And they also have CM Punk, and Bryan Danielson is coming soon!" Like come the gently caress on dude, you're making that up.
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Aug 21, 2021 21:38
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Lamuella posted:If someone were to have come up to you in the summer of 2016 and described the current state of play in US and international pro wrestling, what would have been the most surprising thing to you? That AEW as doing 5,000+ fans on average and was going to do 4 10,000+ crowds (one maybe at 20,000!) in a 6 week span. If you told me they were averaging a million viewers per week I wouldn't be shocked, in 2016 a million viewers per week didn't seem out of reach for a well funded #2, but regular big crowds seemed crazy. No one had managed that since WCW. Seemed impossible. When the first AEW rumors popped up 3 years ago I wondered why a network would want to put a show on national TV with just 1,000 people in the building! No way they could fill arenas even with the success of All In.
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Aug 21, 2021 21:42
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