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Outpost22 posted:What was the story with the guy who fell out of their harness from the rafters? Didn't he die? Ugh. Yeah, that was Owen Hart, who I talked about before. But there's nothing funny about that story. Basically, when Owen first appeared in the WWE at the turn of the 90's, he was dressed up in a mask as "The Blue Blazer". After 1997 and the 'Montreal Screwjob', he was the 'last man standing' of the heel stable that his brother Bret had put together; Bret and his (and Owen's) brothers in law Davey Boy Smith and Jim Neidhart broke their contracts with WWE and went with him, and the fifth member had tragically died the previous month. He'd be used semi decently over the next 18 months, compared to how some had and would be used, but in mid 1999, they decided to resurrect the Blue Blazer and have him portrayed as an out of touch goofball lame-o who did stuff like tell kids to drink their milk. Since this was now the ever so adult Attitude Era, this was lame and he was a heel. But he was a comically entertaining heel, something Owen was very good at in general, and it became a joke that "Owen is not the Blue Blazer" despite being unmasked as the Blue Blazer by having his tag team partner (Jeff Jarrett) and at one point, D'Lo Brown, who is black, dress up the Blazer to prove he wasn't the Blazer. Never mind he'd already been unmasked as the Blazer, but at least in this case it was part of the joke. In a sick tragedy, that joke got Owen killed. Owen got a title shot at the May PPV, and to continue the "The Blue Blazer is a superhero and lame" joke, Owen was scheduled to be hooked into a harness and 'fly' down to the ring from the rafters, only for him to pratfall and fall on his face just before he touched down. Ha ha. The problem is, normal harnesses did not, would not, allow this. Wrestlers had been rappelled down to the ring before, in fact over in WCW it had become Sting's trademark to do so, and Shawn Michaels and Undertaker had done it to make big entrances at PPVs, but if you watch them, especially Sting, after they landed, they had to take the time to unhook the main harness and the backup harness. This sort of thing would become very obvious with Sting, who would make his harness entrance often into a ring filled with heels, who would all just stand there yelling and pointing while Sting removed the harness, only attacking him when it was off. To do a pratfall, Owen would need a specialized harness with a quick release mechanism. Since normal harnesses didn't have that nor could they be altered for that, Owen was strapped into a juryrigged harness that normally was used for air surfing on sailboats. So not only was it not being used like it was intended, it had a quick release mechanism, and as a result, not as strong a clasp as a normal harness would. Owen was hesitant, but he was a good company man, and that just extended to him apparently doing one trial 'flight' down before the show and declining to do a second. But on the show, something went wrong, we'll never know just what, maybe he hit the mechanism by mistake, or the first practice run warped it, but while they were playing a video package to promote the match and Owen was hanging ready to 'fly' down and then make his superhero pratfall, the harness broke, and Owen fell 70 feet to his death right in front of the audience, and had it been a little later, would have been right in front of the PPV audience as well. Then in a moment of supreme psychopathy, Vince decided to continue the show. And the wrestlers were, for the most part, just too in shock to process what had happened and went on autopilot and did just that. We could argue they should have walked out en masse, quit for this sheer callousness, beaten Vince to a pulp, but who knows just what was going through their heads? Some say Owen would have wanted the show to continue, but we'll never know. It was pretty much the darkest day in wrestling history until the Chris Benoit murder-suicide. At least Owen, as his last act, yelled for the referee to look out before he landed, hence at least lessening the chance someone else would be harmed by this. Which was just Owen, and the world, wrestling and in itself, is poorer for his absence. Edit: Well that was one heck of a snipe. Here's Big Show dressed up as the New Year's Baby dancing. 
Cornwind Evil fucked around with this message at 03:31 on Mar 17, 2022 |
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Feb 10, 2022 06:46
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Time_pants posted:Apparently The Big Show has gone back and forth between being a face and heel 34 times in his almost 25-year career. That doesn't so much show his range as a performer as it does suggest that his character has undiagnosed bipolar disorder and someone desperately needs to get him some help. How many of his face turns were super-patriotic (or maybe just "patriotic" by wrestling standards)? I feel like I've seen promo footage of him over the years with nods "to the troops" to varying degrees ever since he became Paul Wight (which I usually found amusing in its cringiness), but with 34 flips under his belt, it's hard to track each one without using Excel.
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Feb 10, 2022 06:47
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I feel bad for everyone involved in this.
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Feb 10, 2022 07:11
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PeterCat posted:I feel bad for everyone involved in this. On the Contrary, this is the greatest Promo in Wrestling History. Or close to it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SobD560-9ZQ&t=55s
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Feb 10, 2022 07:21
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Cornwind Evil posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_Fs0pk3bjk I mean that monster truck sumo match it opens with is relevant as hell. Then at the end holy poo poo a mummy and hes the biggest guy in the ring!
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Feb 10, 2022 07:37
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https://twitter.com/landofthe80s/status/1491759617793310724?t=CdftT6iZ4yrNueQiJfIKqA&s=19
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Feb 10, 2022 15:50
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Trollologist posted:On the Contrary, this is the greatest Promo in Wrestling History. Or close to it. Hahahahahaha this is the funniest thing, I have a whole new respect for Jay Lethal
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Feb 10, 2022 17:07
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tombstone piledriver 
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Feb 10, 2022 20:32
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Cubone posted:tombstone piledriver My fiancee heard me going nuts for Wardlow's powerbomb and she thought I was saying "power bottom" and came in to see what the gently caress I was hootin and hollerin about
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Feb 10, 2022 20:49
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HonorableTB posted:My fiancee heard me going nuts for Wardlow's powerbomb and she thought I was saying "power bottom" and came in to see what the gently caress I was hootin and hollerin about kinda not wrong
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Feb 10, 2022 20:51
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bagmonkey posted:Hahahahahaha this is the funniest thing, I have a whole new respect for Jay Lethal You could write a massive encyclopedia about TNA called "how to burn money and waste potential" I mean the loving Depths of talent they had prime access to and just butchered it with grotesque mismanagement and terrible decisions. People think Vince was or is a genius but really it's just because his competition is just some of the dumbest people.
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Feb 10, 2022 20:57
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Speaking of which, wasn’t there some dude who won the lottery and then tried to start his own wrestling league? Am I remembering that correctly?
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Feb 10, 2022 21:00
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TNA was the "then as farce" for WCW But WCW was also a farce so it's pretty much farce all the way down
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Feb 10, 2022 21:01
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I don't want to make a huge TNA derail (but gently caress if it isn't a hell of a story) but the following people that would go on to be massive draws or had storied histories all spent a good deal of time in TNA and were just hosed with trash writing that never used them: CM Punk AJ Styles Samoa Joe Awesome Kong Gail Kim Kurt Angle Jeff Hardy (fresh off his WWE title run) Bobby Rude Ec3 Rob Van Dam Mick Foley Tommy Dreamer I'd love to like hear a write up on them if someone could be assed. https://www.bing.com/images/search?...sj_1d4F25CwAAAA Just....top notch writing. Trollologist fucked around with this message at 21:39 on Feb 10, 2022 |
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Feb 10, 2022 21:06
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Prof. Crocodile posted:Speaking of which, wasn’t there some dude who won the lottery and then tried to start his own wrestling league? Am I remembering that correctly? That was Wrestlicious. And the musical jimmy heart into video is absolutlely must watch as you can mentally tally up the guys money getting drained (he later went bankrupt off a $32.5 million powerball win) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzUZwd9yC3I Trying to find the right video. The full version ,It’s incredibly long, dozens of corny gimmicks. Jimmy heart put out a press release praising lottery guys financial acumen when it was announced. Probably hasn’t stopped spending his money earned off that to this day. shadow puppet of a fucked around with this message at 21:33 on Feb 10, 2022 |
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Feb 10, 2022 21:14
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Trollologist posted:I'd love to like hear a write up on them if someone could be assed. I would loooooooove this, I totally missed TNA as Attitude Era WWE's tail end kinda turned me off to wrestling for a while
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Feb 10, 2022 21:39
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shadow puppet of a posted:That was Wrestlicious. And the musical jimmy heart into video is absolutlely must watch as you can mentally tally up the guys money getting drained (he later went bankrupt off a $32.5 million powerball win) Holy poo poo.
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Feb 10, 2022 22:52
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shadow puppet of a posted:That was Wrestlicious. And the musical jimmy heart into video is absolutlely must watch as you can mentally tally up the guys money getting drained (he later went bankrupt off a $32.5 million powerball win) This is better than I could have hoped for--right down to Jimmy Hart. Thanks!
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Feb 10, 2022 23:20
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I used to do reviews of old Raws and was thinking of starting up again. Cool if I post them here?
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Feb 11, 2022 00:03
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Eclipse12 posted:I used to do reviews of old Raws and was thinking of starting up again. Cool if I post them here? Yes. Pick up where you left off. I need more Lex Express.
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Feb 11, 2022 00:07
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Wrestlicious, baby!
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Feb 11, 2022 00:40
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Eclipse12 posted:I used to do reviews of old Raws and was thinking of starting up again. Cool if I post them here? I enjoyed reading them tbh so yes
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Feb 11, 2022 00:41
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Eclipse12 posted:I used to do reviews of old Raws and was thinking of starting up again. Cool if I post them here? Yes please
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Feb 11, 2022 00:52
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Leg Sex Press
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Feb 11, 2022 01:07
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At some point in the late 90's, someone informed Vince McMahon of the idea of "rear end men," men who prefer a nice rear end over nice titties. Judging by the women Vince preferred to hire and showcase, I think it's safe to say the concept was alien to him. Perhaps sensing opportunity to expand into a new niche in the market, Vince decided a wrestler should be "The rear end Man." The network had a problem with this, on a technicality. They were okay with Steve Austin saying he would whup rear end, they were okay with the Rock saying he would shove things straight up candy asses, but they would not allow a character to be named The rear end Man. Something legalistic about profanity in the credits, I don't know. I would imagine Vince thought something along the lines of, "That's ridiculous. Some guys are named Dick, what's the problem? Hey, wait a minute..." And thus, Mr. rear end was born. It's not profanity, you see, it's his last name. Just like some people have the last name Cox, or Balls, or Porn. Evidently, the network did not take issue with his entrance music lyrics declaring that he is, indeed, an rear end man. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGye1pK2ysQ
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Feb 11, 2022 01:15
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I think a mod should rename this thread to: "Vince McMahon is insane".
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Feb 11, 2022 01:39
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Eclipse12 posted:I used to do reviews of old Raws and was thinking of starting up again. Cool if I post them here? 
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Feb 11, 2022 01:46
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Do you ever just sit around and marvel at how incredible of a name "The Total Package" Lex Luger is?
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Feb 11, 2022 02:46
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Stealth Tiger posted:Do you ever just sit around and marvel at how incredible of a name "The Total Package" Lex Luger is? He jobbed to a shirt once https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHTj7qfnTak
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Feb 11, 2022 02:49
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shadow puppet of a posted:Jimmy heart put out a press release praising lottery guys financial acumen when it was announced. Correction it was Johnny Cafarella who had the gall to praise JV Rich's acumen. Hart apparently had some sense of shame left in him. quote:19 YEAR OLD WON 35 MILLION POWERBALL,
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Feb 11, 2022 03:38
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Honestly "getting into business with Jimmy Hart and Brian Knobbs" is about as winning a proposition as buying NFTs but with a way more entertaining slide into destitution.
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Feb 11, 2022 03:44
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How's Billy Corgan's wrestling thing going
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Feb 11, 2022 03:48
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the ring is a vampire
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Feb 11, 2022 04:10
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Its kind of fascinating to read all this about Vince McMahon who is apparently a total psycho and that does not surprise me in the least.
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Feb 11, 2022 04:42
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I don't have an effortpost in me but "Stand up for WWE" was a pretty low point if anyone effortposting
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Feb 11, 2022 04:48
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Gavok posted:Yeah, I'll get to Vince's counter-productive use of Daniel Bryan soon enough. Eagerly awaiting this when you get the time
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Feb 11, 2022 04:54
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bagmonkey posted:I would loooooooove this, I totally missed TNA as Attitude Era WWE's tail end kinda turned me off to wrestling for a while Ho boy. To really understand TNA, you need to understand WCW. And to understand WCW, you need to understand this thread's title man, Vince McMahon. And also, for an allegory, opera. Specifically, the operas of Richard Wagner. Wagner, once he hit his stride, wrote his operas according to his concept of "Gesamtkunstwerk", or "Total work of art", which "he sought to synthesize the poetic, visual, musical and dramatic arts, with music subsidiary to drama." In other words, he added a poo poo-ton of exaggeration and bombast to his works and hence to opera: if you picture opera as a fat woman in a horned helmet singing so loud she shatters glass, you're picturing Wagner. Wagner's critics, however, called his operas boring, all style, no substance, all sizzle, no steak. His fellow opera writers would often agree...and then they started writing their new operas more in how he did so anyway. Because in the end, artistic integrity is almost always tossed aside for money, and Wagner drew the crowds and got the attention. It almost spoke of an inferiority complex, of men too afraid to chance failure by trying to let their works stand on their own merits. They say history is written by the winners, but Vince didn't even wait for history to really happen before he started rewriting it. If you heard him tell it, wrestling was damned to be in smoky bars and high school gymnasiums forever until he came along and 'made it big'. Like 'wrasslin', this is nonsense. Even if we ignore the original boom periods of wrestling in the 1920's and in the 1950's, when it was one of the first big draws at the start of the television era, wrestling was still drawing sold out crowds in large areas in the decades since. Hell, the super big star in the then WWWF before Hogan, Bruno Sammartino, sold out shows wherever he went in the States, and wrestling could sell out arenas in Canada, Japan, the UK, and elsewhere. It was just quieter, lesser known to the world at large. But it existed: look no further than heroes of Texas the Von Erich family, specifically Kerry Von Erich, selling out the 45,000 seat Texas stadium a mere three months after Hogan won his first WWF title and kicked off the era of 'Hulkamania'. And as said, Vince hated, and hates, wrestling. And many 'wrestling' fans equally disliked (and that could be mild) Vince's vision, seeing it as a slow, clumsy, freakshow of men who should not have been that muscled, who even if they could wrestle, were discouraged not to. Rather than collect the fans under his banner the same way he was collecting wrestlers and territories, Vince's success came a lot from creating new fans, who were drawn to the way he did things. It was the 80's, and excess and bombast ruled the day. It affected all of entertainment; look at what happened to the Rocky and Rambo films, or the Death Wish films, or heck, even Star Wars (You don't like the idea of the Empire being beaten by hordes of teddy bears with spears? That's part of the 80's as much as anything else). Vince caught lightning, and hence attention, and hence he was free to tell the story as he wanted to do it, and that story was he was the golden god who had raised wrestling from its wretched roots and hence his vision was the pinnacle of the sport-performance. Yeah, maybe the likes of Dusty Rhodes and Ric Flair and Giant Baba and the Freebirds and the Harts had been selling out stadiums before Vince had even started drawing up his plans for conquest, and had Vince been hit by a car in 1981 and died, they would have continued to sell them out, but what 'mattered' was that Hulk Hogan was a household name, just like even now, those not in the know will refer to any video game system as "a Nintendo". So, much like Wagner's fellows, the NWA, which eventually became WCW, even as much as they disparaged Vince's take on wrestling, started trying to write their shows like his instead of just presenting their own version of the product and letting the cards fall where they might. There was even validity in letting their product speak for themselves and that getting them places; in the mid 80's, Vince did a sneaky end run around an arrangement the NWA-WCW had to product a Saturday evening wrestling show and got his show inserted in its place. It was a disaster; as said, the NWA fans poured in letters and calls telling the station to get Vince's 'crap' off the air, and when said station arranged for another NWA show to air on the same channel and it got great ratings, it ultimately forced Vince to swallow his pride and sell the TV slot back, lest it just get taken away from him due to low ratings. That was likely the first part of why Vince would come to hate WCW so much, but despite this initial setback, the ball was still in his court. Vince, you see, had gotten in first with the fledgling market of PPV, which really allowed wrestling to reach a wide audience. Before PPV, there was 'closed circuit TV', which was basically 'put a big projector in a very small arena and people pay to come in and watch it". Which served, but nothing could get you numbers and eyeballs if you could do stuff in the comfort of your own home. He promptly used the fact that he had been first and had used it well (Wrestlemania 3 had been purchased by a staggering 10 percent of the then-available PPV audience: even in the Attitude Era it was considered an insane success if 1 percent purchased a show) to gently caress with and gently caress over NWA-WCW. NWA-WCW had a Thanksgiving tradition super show, Starrcade; when they decided to finally put it on PPV, Vince created his own Thanksgiving event, Survivor Series, and told the PPV carriers that they could either carry Starrcade or Survivor Series, and if you picked Starrcade, you didn't get to also air Survivor Series (so no putting one show on in the afternoon and one in the evening and having the PPV companies make bank by having wrestling fans purchase them both and spend half the day watching wrestling) and you ALSO didn't get to air the next Wrestlemania either; the PPV companies mostly went with the established business and Starrcade on PPV the first time was such a disaster that WCW was forced to move it to December the next year and from then on to avoid competition (which, considering it was a Thanksgiving tradition for THEM, made it extra humiliating). When WCW tried a standalone PPV the next January, the WWE countered it with a free show on their cable channel, the very first Royal Rumble. WCW did learn from these dirty tricks however, and countered by having their own free show on cable on the night of Wrestlemania, the Clash of Champions. The fact that the PPV still sold well and Clash got a very high rating was more or less proof there was room for both visions in wrestling... But like I said. Hogan was the Nintendo. The number of businessmen who can be content with a devoted market that products decent profit is very low; they'll always see the already overcrowded bigger market and say ME TOO. So WCW tried to ape the WWE, in both booking and business, to try and get some of said success. As the saying goes, do not argue with an idiot, they will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience. Worse, by the time they really started trying this, the bottom was falling out of the first WWE boom; Vince might have created many new fans, but most were the type who would eventually want something new and move on, whereas the long term permanents had been completely driven away. It would have been a good time for WCW to play 'well stocked for the winter"...if they hadn't already burned through craptons of money doing stuff like buying private jets and trying to get over their own stupid cartoon gimmicks like the Ding Dongs. Heck, there's a fair argument that for all the extra attention and solidification of wrestling Vince managed to do in the popular zeitgeist, he ended up doing worse long term damage to wrestling in the process: he drove away the legions who had been selling out the stadiums beforehand by taking over all those territories, and the new legions didn't stay. But, despite that, and Vince flushing a bunch of money away with his first attempt to succeed outside wrestling, the WBF, the WWE still endured on its own merits, whereas the NWA-WCW had to be purchased by Turner Broadcasting (and by Ted Turner personally) to save it from completely dissolving from all the money wasted trying to ape the WWF. Supposedly, after doing so, Ted called up Vince and (bombastically) said "Hey Vince! I'm in the wrasslin' business!" Vince, as he tells it, replied "That's great Ted. I'm in the entertainment business." And what he probably didn't say or indicate was the seething hot rage that fell over his vision hearing that word. Once again, that drive would help propel the business, in time, to amazing heights once again...but in the long term, would do even more damage. But we'll get to that. --- Animal-Mother posted:Evidently, the network did not take issue with his entrance music lyrics declaring that he is, indeed, an rear end man. What's really funny is that this gimmick spun out of the fact that ol' Monty Sopp was performing under the ring name of "The Bad rear end" Billy Gunn, who was part of the tag team The New Age Outlaws, who got folded into DX, who were big on juvenile sex nonsense that was adult and edgy, and that if you listen to the song and watch how Sopp performed, it was less about a man who really appreciated a good (female only? Unknown) derriere and more about a man who was completely obsessed with his own rear end. --- stratdax posted:How's Billy Corgan's wrestling thing going You know how there are bands that have a one hit wonder, and then 20 years later, you're shocked to discover they're still together and still doing shows, even if it's just in tiny venues, and are still releasing music, even though you 'haven't heard a thing' about them ever since that lone hit? Just somehow eeking on when you think they should have dissolved a long time ago? It's going like that. Edit: Actually, a better analogy might be Coolio. Who went from Gangsta's Paradise and making cameoes in sitcoms to rapping about Pornhub. We're at the rapping about Pornhub stage. Cornwind Evil fucked around with this message at 08:54 on Feb 18, 2022 |
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Feb 11, 2022 04:54
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That time he tanked the stock by running a storyline that he sold the WWE to Donald Trump
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Feb 11, 2022 05:13
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HonorableTB posted:He jobbed to a shirt once And don't forget to mention the time he killed Miss Elizabeth.
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Feb 11, 2022 05:18
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I'm pretty sure he got the Mr. rear end gimmick because Road Dogg got mad one time and said "you do not call him billy, you will address me as Mr. Dogg and you will address him as Mr. rear end" and the next week the crowd was full of "Mr. rear end" signs
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Feb 11, 2022 05:18
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