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Defenestrategy posted:On the flip side Japan had some pretty cool stuff going on. Megumi Kudo, Manami Toyota, and Bull Nakano had some bangers in the 90s. In my memory banks the only women that stand out in the 90s was Blaze / Medusa. I don’t remember Moolah or Mae Young at all.
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Dec 24, 2021 23:15
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Defenestrategy posted:On the flip side Japan had some pretty cool stuff going on. Megumi Kudo, Manami Toyota, and Bull Nakano had some bangers in the 90s. lol "pretty cool stuff going on" in Japan for inarguably the work rate peak of women's wrestling and the biggest events ever catch some Big Egg and Dream Slam https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lb3gCa9B1vU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6M7Len45H3M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QohWe8uCWlA
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Dec 25, 2021 00:12
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Kosmo Gallion posted:What was US Women's wrestling (outside of WWF and WCW) like in the 90s? It was really poor. The best women went to Japan because that was really the only place they could make a living.
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Dec 25, 2021 06:46
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Has Tyler Breeze done any wrestling since getting released? I took a quick look at his Twitter and he hasn’t plugged any matches, and Wikipedia doesn’t have any career updates since his release.
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Dec 25, 2021 15:57
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CopywrightMMXI posted:Has Tyler Breeze done any wrestling since getting released? I took a quick look at his Twitter and he hasn’t plugged any matches, and Wikipedia doesn’t have any career updates since his release. He’s taking time off to heal up I think, he’s said he’s not in a great rush to get back in the ring on a couple of interviews. He runs a school with Shawn Spears too which probably scratches the itch for now.
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Dec 25, 2021 16:09
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Jaqueline was a good women’s sports entertainer in the 90s, don’t forget her. But everyone knows the best was Sable. Never heard of these Japanese gals.
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Dec 25, 2021 16:25
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MassRafTer posted:It was really poor. The best women went to Japan because that was really the only place they could make a living. Even then in the 90s you didn't have that many Americans in Japan and most of them were there for a short burst and left. Madusa from 89-91 left to go to WCW to primarily be a manager (and would obviously become the face of the WWF women's division in the mid 90s before the bin incident); Debbie Malenko worked a handful of matches before going to AJW and she retired when her Japan run ended because there was basically nothing happening in America (she's doing an indie comeback now which are literally her first American dates in 34 years or something silly); Reggie Bennett has nothing in America marked on cagematch but she (and the person that she trained and brought in as her kayfabe sister in Arsion) never did anything bigger than scattered indie dates in America. Tori (who was Terri Powers at the time) worked AJW in the early 90s (was on the first Dream Slam) but I think that its literally her and Madusa for women that toured Japan in the early/mid 90s that ended up working for the major US promotions at some point. Before them you had the Moolah crew that would work Japan semi-regularly until the late 80s (Leilani Kai worked AJW in 1989 and I think that's the last one) and they had something with GLOW which is hilarious; and then afterwards Joshi began to fall apart which meant that the money to bring people in wasn't there as much but that's balanced by the fact that you had more promotions and more US indie wrestlers around so you'll see that a lot of the 2000s names have sometimes really random Japan dates: NEO flying them in for one tour or Becky Lynch working THE WOMAN and a bunch of dark age-era Indies. The thing with AJW at that point and why people didn't stay for longer than they did was that it was not exactly an easy schedule: they were running a lot of shows (records are incomplete so its hard to say for sure; cagematch lists 247 shows in 1995, 265 in 1996 and 266 in 1997 and from what Meltzer has said they were 300+ in the 80s into the early 90s) and the expectation was that you'd work pretty close to all out at them all - you see stories of people that did Japan trips at that time and they'd go to random AJW spot shows that weren't big and you didn't have people taking it easy. The fact that they were effectively a monopoly at that point (you had JWP, LLPW etc but they were significantly smaller and couldn't really compete for talent) meant that they could keep pay low as well plus the foreigners they brought in were full time so also were expected to train and stuff on top of this. Add in the problems with being away from home for so long and I think it makes sense why it was a handful of people; especially since you couldn't sell it to yourself as getting experience that would help in the US since there was basically nothing there. A lot of people romanticise Joshi in this period and while I understand why from the fan perspective (matches are great; a roster that's top to bottom with stars, the emotional component of all women's companies running those buildings and sometimes showing up the men's promotions) when you look under the surface it wasn't set up to be great for the talent and that's why when things stopped being good a lot of people were out the door immediately. Now things are totally different; no one is working anything like as many shows (Ice Ribbon always do the most and topped out at 114 in 2019, a lot of which were three match dojo shows with a fraction of the roster); the in-ring expectations seem to be more realistic and the people that go have that goal of the bigger American promotions in mind usually so they'll take the issues that exist in the short term.
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Dec 25, 2021 16:45
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History Comes Inside! posted:He’s taking time off to heal up I think, he’s said he’s not in a great rush to get back in the ring on a couple of interviews. He runs a school with Shawn Spears too which probably scratches the itch for now. That’s good to hear, I was worried he has quit altogether.
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Dec 25, 2021 16:51
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Sandman McMahon posted:Jaqueline was a good women’s sports entertainer in the 90s, don’t forget her. She was also the first woman ever to be ranked in the PWI 500
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Dec 25, 2021 17:59
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Kosmo Gallion posted:Are there any wrestlers currently so deeply entrenched in their current alignment you can't imagine them making the switch? MJF is probably the obvious answer because I can only imagine cheering him if they did a double turn when wrestles Cody again. I cannot imagine Rey Mysterio ever being an effective bad guy
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Dec 25, 2021 21:11
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SirDippingSauce posted:I cannot imagine Rey Mysterio ever being an effective bad guy I don't think he ever was. (I don't count his maskless Filthy Animals run as being heel, because of bullshit Russo "Shades of Grey" stuff, and even if it was supposed to be a heel group, it was never really over as such.)
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Dec 26, 2021 01:04
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BrigadierSensible posted:I don't think he ever was. I literally didn't know the Animals were supposed to be heels until posting in PSP.
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Dec 26, 2021 01:10
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Gaz-L posted:I literally didn't know the Animals were supposed to be heels until posting in PSP. Watch any footage of them. I still hold they may be one of the worst factions of all time, not in late stage WCw not in WCW, in any fed ever. This is driven by that as a four man unit three of their members are legit Hall of Famers and they were god awful.
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Dec 26, 2021 01:24
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Lid posted:Watch any footage of them. I still hold they may be one of the worst factions of all time, not in late stage WCw not in WCW, in any fed ever. This is driven by that as a four man unit three of their members are legit Hall of Famers and they were god awful. I watched WCW at the end. I have seen them. I still didn't know they were meant to be heels.
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Dec 26, 2021 01:52
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The worst part of The Filthy Animals were Rey's glued on devil horns.
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Dec 26, 2021 02:48
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Top 10? 1) Kenny Omega 2) Mick Foley 3) CM Punk 4) Samoa Joe 5) The Young Bucks whom I will include as a unit. 6) Brian Danielson 7) Ricky Steamboat (8 year old me's favorite) After 7 it gets murky.
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Dec 26, 2021 04:15
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ChrisBTY posted:Top 10? Are we talking best or favorites?
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Dec 26, 2021 04:25
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*snipping most of this this excellent post to add a few things*IceAgeComing posted:Even then in the 90s you didn't have that many Americans in Japan and most of them were there for a short burst and left. Madusa from 89-91 left to go to WCW to primarily be a manager (and would obviously become the face of the WWF women's division in the mid 90s before the bin incident) quote:Reggie Bennett has nothing in America marked on cagematch but she (and the person that she trained and brought in as her kayfabe sister in Arsion) never did anything bigger than scattered indie dates in America. quote:Tori (who was Terri Powers at the time) worked AJW in the early 90s (was on the first Dream Slam) but I think that its literally her and Madusa for women that toured Japan in the early/mid 90s that ended up working for the major US promotions at some point. Before them you had the Moolah crew that would work Japan semi-regularly until the late 80s (Leilani Kai worked AJW in 1989 and I think that's the last one) and they had something with GLOW which is hilarious quote:A lot of people romanticise Joshi in this period and while I understand why from the fan perspective (matches are great; a roster that's top to bottom with stars, the emotional component of all women's companies running those buildings and sometimes showing up the men's promotions) when you look under the surface it wasn't set up to be great for the talent and that's why when things stopped being good a lot of people were out the door immediately.
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Dec 26, 2021 05:05
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Nehru the Damaja posted:Are we talking best or favorites? Yes.
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Dec 26, 2021 07:19
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Did Minoru Suzuki always use rain imagery in his graphics or did that start after the Draw in the Downpour?
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Dec 26, 2021 08:09
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What has caused this insane ‘us vs them’ mentality between AEW and WWE fans? Some of the things I see posted border mental illness I get people are passionate but not to this level :/
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Dec 26, 2021 11:07
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Manwithastick posted:What has caused this insane ‘us vs them’ mentality between AEW and WWE fans? Some of the things I see posted border mental illness Let''s not draw false equivalencies here, because the really insane poo poo is mostly coming from the hardcore WWE stans. My personal theory is that they've invested so much of themselves into the WWE brand and WWE being the only place that matters that a viable and successful competitor that actually cares about its fanbase and where the fans are clearly having a great time has just broken their brains completely because they can't just dismiss AEW as some little league bingo hall promotion. Or to put it in this way, I forget where I first read it, but there's this theory that for a truly toxic fan mentality to develop the fans have to in some way realize that the thing they're a fan of is actually bad on some level. If the thing you like just unambiguously good and someone criticizes it then you can just argue against it or ignore it as false, but if you know deep down that the criticism is true but you're so invested that you can't just stop being a fan then the only means left to you are irrational ones like denial or open hostility. And WWE is objectively real bad and has been for a long-rear end time now, and the fans sure as hell know it. E: I mean, I'm sure you can find some unhinged AEW fans, but since AEW is good most of us are just having a good time and only care about WWE inasmuch as making fun of how much of a garbage trash fire it is. Cerebral Bore fucked around with this message at 11:38 on Dec 26, 2021 |
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Dec 26, 2021 11:31
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Cerebral Bore posted:Let''s not draw false equivalencies here, because the really insane poo poo is mostly coming from the hardcore WWE stans. My personal theory is that they've invested so much of themselves into the WWE brand and WWE being the only place that matters that a viable and successful competitor that actually cares about its fanbase and where the fans are clearly having a great time has just broken their brains completely because they can't just dismiss AEW as some little league bingo hall promotion.
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Dec 26, 2021 11:48
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Manwithastick posted:What has caused this insane ‘us vs them’ mentality between AEW and WWE fans? Some of the things I see posted border mental illness You make it sound like the split is weighted equally, but it's almost always someone #standingupforwwe. WWE is an awful company in many different ways, has actively groomed an audience of only the most dogmatically loyal followers, and anyone with any taste had stopped following it consistently by the time AEW started. AEW fans were pre-disposed to not like WWE. Remaining WWE fans were brand loyalty maniacs who would take anything thrown to them. The very existence and potential success of AEW threatened the narrative WWE had been constructing through its documentaries and programming. AEW acknowledges the entire wrestling world and is reasonably cooperative with a wide range of promotions. WWE desperately wants to be the only game in town and has at every opportunity tried to present itself as embattled and the underdog now and in the past which is a recipe for devoted, defensive fans. Check out David Bixenspan's recent tweets about the WWE fan reaction to the Owen Cup announcement for a good example. Combine this with AEW talent openly speaking about how horrible the experience of working at WWE and very embedded tradition of being smarky in the early days thanks to the Bucks, Kenny, and Cody, caused the dumbest, most aggro fans of WWE to get real wound up about the new promotion. Jim Cornette. while not liking WWE, was throwing plenty of wood on to the fire with his brand of hate for the EVPs, the women wrestlers, and the more unconventional AEW stars. His followers consistently harassed those wrestlers on social media. It intensified when WWE went from airing NXT on the WWE Network to putting it up against AEW's announced time slot on TNT. The presence of head to head competition created a pressure cooker for the emergence of the most unhinged accounts and AEW's increasing accessibility and drawing power meant that it was starting to attract idiots, simps, and pond dwelling fans of its own. But really the most unhinged stuff was still coming from the Cult of Cornette and the contrarian troll reddit squaredcirclejerk, most notably the AEW botches account on twitter. Anyway, that's all blended together to form the tribalism that exists today. fez_machine fucked around with this message at 12:06 on Dec 26, 2021 |
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Dec 26, 2021 11:59
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its not any different from coke vs pepsi cola wars except one is a deleterious sugar cocktail and one is literal poo poo from an rear end
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Dec 26, 2021 12:24
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As much as we joke about all WWE fans being 50+ years old white guys, all the really crazy WWE twitter people seem to be younger guys that grew watching wrestling when WWE was the only thing going on TV. WWE has been so successful at building this image in the US of "this is the way wrestling is and nothing else exists" that when a competitor comes along and does well it must be because they're cheating somehow or copying WWE, it certainly can't be because WWE is doing something wrong. And thats how you get those insane takes about how they don't actually want wrestling from their wrestling shows.
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Dec 26, 2021 12:55
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fez_machine posted:Did Minoru Suzuki always use rain imagery in his graphics or did that start after the Draw in the Downpour? Yeah, he debuted the new version of the theme for that match and his current entrance video was first used in his first NJPW matches with that theme with the photos included.
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Dec 26, 2021 15:48
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MrBling posted:As much as we joke about all WWE fans being 50+ years old white guys, all the really crazy WWE twitter people seem to be younger guys that grew watching wrestling when WWE was the only thing going on TV. The craziest WWE twitter person is the 48 year old WWE WWF Junkie.
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Dec 26, 2021 15:52
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Lol there are people that stan wwe? I can sorta see in a twisted round about way not liking the AEW product if their kinda booking isn't your thing, but how do you look at current day WWE product and go "yes this is the product that should be the choice of the generation" even if the wrestling was near perfect and wwe didn't have a history of problematic things, the camera work is so objectively bad the constant cuts give me motion sickness if I watch a match too long.
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Dec 26, 2021 17:40
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Defenestrategy posted:Lol there are people that stan wwe? The WWE Discussion thread in this forum has 42,000 posts. The AEW Discussion thread has less than 1,000. People are much more excited about WWE and uninterested in stale AEW.
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Dec 26, 2021 17:44
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Us vs Them runs back a few decades too. If you buy into what WWE tells you, which many still do, they would have you believe that their victory in the Monday Night Wars was this massive underdog victory over the Turner empire and that all their competition didn't deserve to exist because of how badly they were handled (while ignoring their own pitfalls). So after the WCW & ECW buyouts, any other WWE competition springing up was deemed the enemy and/or a joke. ROH was great but looked budget as hell. TNA was LOLTNA. Other indies never really came close, but people still wanted something else, so more niche feds like PWG and Evolve showed up. Into the 2010s when WWE was still the only game in town for most people, old NXT was satiating a lot of US indies fans just enough to keep watching a WWE product while still hating the main roster. But being #1 for so long, WWE got super lazy, kept focusing only on one person, and "the brand" became the draw so they didn't have to build anyone up. Of course there are loyalists, but a LOT of fans were desperate for anything else. Then AEW springs up and it's a breath of fresh air. Ex-WWE fans leave for AEW in droves because there's finally a product that treats wrestling the way they've always wanted to see it. Newer WWE stans like the pageantry and drama and flashy lights more than the wrestling because they don't really like pro wrestling, so AEW is a turnoff for them. Older WWE holdouts were trained to hate indies/competition and dislike change, and have already long hitched their wagons to WWE, so the slightest threat is already a joke (and simultaneously the enemy). Which of course is backed by the WWE propaganda machine, despite genericizing everything and running it like a corporation. So if you used to like WWE and now like AEW, you're a "traitor". If you still like WWE and refuse to get into AEW, you're a simpleton sheep. In reality it's a matter of preference, but there's a reason AEW promotes itself as pro wrestling and WWE still calls itself sports entertainment.
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Dec 26, 2021 19:35
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Manwithastick posted:What has caused this insane ‘us vs them’ mentality between AEW and WWE fans? Some of the things I see posted border mental illness I mean, this happens everywhere. Video game consoles, sports teams, comics, Film Twitter (just as a group), there's the desire to join a group + the internet's tendency to magnify differences of opinion to stands of principle + a need for conflict + look I'm not a sociologist. Anyways for near abouts 20 years WWE enjoyed an effective monopoly on American pro wrestling and now there's something like competition again so some people get weird about it.
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Dec 26, 2021 22:39
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sticklefifer posted:So if you used to like WWE and now like AEW, you're a "traitor". If you still like WWE and refuse to get into AEW, you're a simpleton sheep. In reality it's a matter of preference, but there's a reason AEW promotes itself as pro wrestling and WWE still calls itself sports entertainment. This is the real crux, and the main reason people in the forum act so disbelieving that AEW can generate the same shittiness is that, honestly, the forum is overwhelmingly (and largely sincerely) pro-AEW. But think about how any mild criticism of AEW booking gets poo poo on as 'brokebrain WWE thinking'. It is absolutely something that goes both ways, even if being on the AEW side means most people here give that side a pass.
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Dec 26, 2021 23:20
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I think I’ve come to realise through my diving into wrestling that something I get really attached to is charisma or character work. Iinspiration and Maki Itoh spring to mind as wrestlers who don’t have the best in ring skills but have hilarious or compelling characters. Are there other wrestlers like that whom I should be aware of?
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Dec 26, 2021 23:46
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Gaz-L posted:This is the real crux, and the main reason people in the forum act so disbelieving that AEW can generate the same shittiness is that, honestly, the forum is overwhelmingly (and largely sincerely) pro-AEW. But think about how any mild criticism of AEW booking gets poo poo on as 'brokebrain WWE thinking'. It is absolutely something that goes both ways, even if being on the AEW side means most people here give that side a pass. It's because if you look at actual engagement on the subject matter on twitter you see an overwhelming negative response by WWE fans to AEW ratings news and the like, with a fraction of that from AEW fans to WWE news. It's not even close and it's not just because this forum likes AEW.
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Dec 26, 2021 23:48
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MrBling posted:As much as we joke about all WWE fans being 50+ years old white guys, all the really crazy WWE twitter people seem to be younger guys that grew watching wrestling when WWE was the only thing going on TV. Back in the mid-late-00s, I had a guy in his 30s working for me who was super, unironically into John Cena, at the first peak of the Cena-as-"polarizing" run. Dude would order WWE PPVs to watch alone, wear HLR gear to work, let everyone know how Cena conquered the latest big baddie. I ended up having to fire him because he thought it would be a laff riot to tell racist jokes at work. He was super online back then, so I assume he's amongst the StandUpForWWE crowd.
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Dec 26, 2021 23:57
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Personally I'm at a point where I treat the WWE thread like the bad takes thread. Not out of some weird superiority or because I dislike the discourse, but I want enjoyment from my hobby and following either for any real length is just poison. I go into both once in a while out of curiosity.
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Dec 26, 2021 23:57
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jimmydalad posted:I think I’ve come to realise through my diving into wrestling that something I get really attached to is charisma or character work. Iinspiration and Maki Itoh spring to mind as wrestlers who don’t have the best in ring skills but have hilarious or compelling characters. Orange Cassidy. Someone post the ladder gif.
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Dec 27, 2021 00:03
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jimmydalad posted:I think I’ve come to realise through my diving into wrestling that something I get really attached to is charisma or character work. Iinspiration and Maki Itoh spring to mind as wrestlers who don’t have the best in ring skills but have hilarious or compelling characters. Pretty much everyone in TJPW is this, the amount of people that'd fit into a more workrate orientated promotion like Stardome or SEAdLINNG are few, but it's just so fun to watch because everyone's a character. Hyper Misao is a superhero that fights for love and justice despite choosing the cheating option every single time. Yuka Sakazaki is all smiles and sunshine but is a vicious bully just for the hell of it, especially to poor Nodoka Tenma. Miyu Yamashita is a hyper badass and will headkick you until you stop moving, but she also get's nervous when she has to do promos by herself to end the show. What i'm saying is TJPW is the best.
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Dec 27, 2021 00:07
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jimmydalad posted:I think I’ve come to realise through my diving into wrestling that something I get really attached to is charisma or character work. Iinspiration and Maki Itoh spring to mind as wrestlers who don’t have the best in ring skills but have hilarious or compelling characters. Brother, it's time you met Lulu Pencil freelance writer/pro-wrestler. The match against Mei Saruga (also insanely charismatic) in ProWrestling Eve that first got her international attention is always a good start: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dseG3SYnevI Then there's her iconic feuds with Chris Brookes. Watch list in the first reply here: https://www.reddit.com/r/SquaredCircle/comments/pdjl6f/the_saga_of_lulu_pencil_watchlist/ Summary videos, although they miss some of the finer detail and the result of her MOTYC iron man match, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HkhHFQLDXw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SCR64AiAPU In general, Sakuraist Joshi (TJPW, Ice Ribbon, Gatoh Move/ChocoPro, Colors, Gake no Fuchi, any match with Kaori Yoneyama) should be right up your alley. fez_machine fucked around with this message at 00:18 on Dec 27, 2021 |
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Dec 27, 2021 00:11
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