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That time he just let people say whatever right after 9/11 and his daughter compared the terrorist attacks to the government prosecuting him for steroids and a future fox news contributor said it was time to turn the middle east into a parking lot
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Feb 11, 2022 05:20
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dangerstepp posted:And don't forget to mention the time he killed Miss Elizabeth. Ya I read he force fed her all those drugs
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Feb 11, 2022 05:21
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That time he appeared on his show in spite of not being involved in any storyline to just drop the N word and leave
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Feb 11, 2022 05:22
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Vince McMahon once wrote a storyline where his wife, Linda was in a coma and so he wheeled her comatose rear end out to the ring and then in front of his wife and god and 20,000 people and a 3.2 cable rating, just started making out with women's wrestler Trish Stratus. I don't know who that plotline serves other than maybe Vince's ego. Around this time he would start a club called the "kiss my rear end club". He would have grown adult men literally kiss his rear end on television.
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Feb 11, 2022 05:28
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dangerstepp posted:And don't forget to mention the time he killed Miss Elizabeth. 
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Feb 11, 2022 05:30
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stratdax posted:How's Billy Corgan's wrestling thing going they finally took the title off that bucket of cold water named Magnus but they didn't give it back to Tim Storm so no one cares
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Feb 11, 2022 05:55
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stratdax posted:How's Billy Corgan's wrestling thing going He's the current owner of the NWA lol
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Feb 11, 2022 07:27
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Right, so now we're at the 90's, and WCW is officially WCW. And I'm going to bring up another analogy, in this case the famous black satire book Catch-22, and the movie made of it in 1970. There's several lines going through the piece, and while 'Catch-22' has become shorthand for 'two bad choices where there is no winner' (which is inaccurate, but again, Play it again Sam, while you beam me up Scotty), one of the other things is how the army allows certain goings on because they're the means that justify the ends, but by allowing it, the means gradually grow more and more cancerous until not only are they not justifying the end, they're actively working against it and creating a new, much worse end. This is primarily demonstrated with the Milo character, who starts off doing some black market egg trading, which the army allows because why not, only for it to be taken to the logical extreme by the end of the story where he's having his own side's planes bomb their own base because he bought up all the Egyptian cotton in the world, can't unload it, and the Germans agreed to take it if he blew up his own base, his 'businesses' having become so grotesquely grand that he's now actively killing his own side's troops just to keep it going, and in the book, he gets off from doing it because all the money he made lets him hire a super expensive lawyer which basically uses the logic of "He was a great capitalist, America was built on capitalism, America is the greatest country in the world, ergo what he did was actually good. Also look at how much money he made." And as part of the satire, the army basically shrugs its shoulders and agrees. The point of this won't become clear until later when it comes to WCW and by extent, TNA. So the first half of the 90's wasn't good for either company. The Hulkamania boom had ended, and Vince's attempts to find a new muscle-god kept coming up short, not helped by Hogan himself (more on that later). Then the steroid scandal hit (a tempest in a teapot situation if there ever was one...well, maybe a tea SET), and hence Vince basically had to clean out all the steroids from his company, shrinking some of his wrestlers so much that people thought they'd been replaced by a new person (the Ultimate Warrior) and also ensuring his bodybuilding federation died even if business wasn't already killing it and forcing him to focus on smaller, more natural sized (albeit still large men) wrestlers. Except parts of the fanbase that had stuck around had been conditioned to think big=best, and all it really did was make more fans drop the product, even as the actual WRESTLING improved a great deal (this was my personal favorite, Bret Hart, 's glory days). Now handcuffed by the fact that having every other man be one large mass of ham would be an admission of guilt, plus, you know, actually being on trial, and topped off by Hogan going on the Arsenio Hall show and saying he never used steroids (he was not believed), only to take that back and testify at Vince's trial that yes, he did, and Vince just could not find his new lightning in the bottle, combined with the fact that the fans who HAD stuck around were telling him they were fine with the average sized (for a wrestler, especially in the world Vince made), average at best talker but phenomenal wrestler Bret Hart as the top guy, but oh no, Vince had to have his giants, so he tried to push first very well musculed Lex Luger to the moon, and when that failed, he saw that the very tall Kevin Nash was getting over and made him leapfrog several steps of growth and tried to push him to the moon, which backfired even worse. And all the while, the WWE just kept pumping out the cartoon gimmicks, because it was all they knew. The fans told them they wanted something else? gently caress 'em, Vince said, what would fans know? In any case, the steroids trial turned into a giant bust, with the government presenting a case so full of holes and hearsay and other issues that it was an easy walk for Vince. However, that didn't help the business. Over in WCW, they had their own set of issues. Now owned by Turner Broadcasting, they had a large pool of funds to dip into, but they also had executives and other businessfolk getting involved, often knowing exactly jack and crap about the business. The people who helped kill WCW like to hoist all the blame on these types, and they played their part, but it wasn't entirely their fault. But, as said, they played their part. The first to take the reigns was Jim Herd, who among other things, told Ric Flair, their top draw, that he was too old and that he should shave his hair, get an earring, and go by the name Sparticus, and he wanted to create a tag team called the Hunchbacks based around the fact that their humps would keep them from being pressed firmly to the mat by their shoulders and hence they could never be pinned, and in general had a massive ego and wouldn't take no for an answer. Eventually he was tossed, and a guy called Kip Frye took over for a bit; while he 'got' that giving wrestlers motivation to perform well would get that, he didn't have anyone who could book or come up with compelling storylines. So WCW promptly went too far in the opposite direction and hired Bill Watts, a super old school guy who knew wrestling very well (and had had large drawing shows and highly rated syndicated TV shows in the past to prove it)...but only knew wrestling HIS way. Things changed, he refused to. Which meant he promptly did stuff like pulling away the safety mats around the ring so...it would make the wrestlers look tougher if/when they took bumps on it, even while he was also doing stuff like banning jumping off the top rope, or throwing your opponents over the top rope, which crippled one of the unique things WCW did have, their lightweight high flying wrestlers, because to Watts, that wasn't wrestling and he wasn't going to have it, even if fans liked it. What Watts liked, and wanted was old school super tough men, and while he wasn't wholly wrong (this was when Leon White, best known as Big Van Vader, or just Vader, came into WCW as part of becoming one of the biggest and best monster heels in US wrestling history), it was wholly a case of 'too much water, you drown'. In a perfect world, Watts could have balanced his preferences with what had shown to be popular, but as you might have guessed, the people in this business who get put in charge tend to be stubborn, at the very very least. Also, Watts was an old school southern man. Which meant he was a racist and after giving an interview where he basically said "If I run a business and I don't want to serve a black man, I should be allowed to not serve them." and that immediately got back to the corporate environment of Time Warner, who had on their higher staff Hank Aaron, the baseball home run champion. As this was 1993 and not, well, these days, Watts was swiftly ashcanned, which meant the job was open. People thought it would go to a guy called Tony Schivone, a color commentator and someone who'd spent a fair amount of time in the business. How well would he have done? We'll never know. Instead, it went to Eric Bischoff, who was a third string announcer in WCW and was basically one or two steps up from being a coffee boy. It came as a surprise to many, but Eric was the definition of slick corporate hustle, and after the headache of 'Bill Watts, way too much wrasslin man", Turner wanted to go with someone who had more of a foot in their world than the wrasslin one, and Eric had gone around schmozing and butt kissing to the right people as Watts was on his way out, all the way up to telling Turner that he had surefire ways for WCW to beat the WWE. As it turned out, those ideas were "take the stars that were made in the WWE and have them perform for WCW instead". Eric's solution was that they needed the Nintendos, namely, Hulk Hogan, instead of all these southern wrestlers that only the devoted fans knew, after all, they'd be there no matter what, right? And since Eric pressed on just how important Hogan was, Hogan got a truly ridiculous contract, part of which included complete creative control. Which meant that he would only do stuff like lose if he wanted to. This was, as you might have guessed, a VERY BAD IDEA. Though that fact wouldn't really become clear until things were far too late, but we're getting ahead of ourselves. Worse, it didn't even pay immediate dividends. Hogan was brought in and hailed as the greatest thing ever, but the WCW fans didn't buy it. Hogan promptly crushing Ric Flair, telling Eric that the best thing to do was hire all his buddies with their own great contracts, who promptly began beating up all of WCW's homegrown talents (perhaps most infamously, after having a great feud with Ricky Steamboat, also an amazing wrestler, Steve Austin was beaten by Hacksaw Jim Duggan for his United States title in less than a minute and failed in both attempts to regain it. While Hacksaw had been a very popular midcarder in the 80's, had charisma, and was a decent wrestler, at best he was already past his prime in 1994, so...) and taking all the big paydays, best shown with Starrcade, where, after spending the latter half of 1994 beating Ric Flair to a pulp in every match they had, arranged a storyline so he could wrestle his best friend Ed Leslie in the main event of it. Leslie was an average wrestler at best, Hogan was Hogan, and this was a PPV series whose main events had included matches like Harley Race vs Ric Flair, so, needless to say, it went over as well as a lead balloon. Hogan, not being done, turned to killing Vader's credibility (part of which was doing his no-selling schtick for Vader's powerbomb, which was renowned as being utterly devastating, to the point where Vader had actually, albeit accidentally, broken an undercarder's back with it. The powerbomb, in the wrestling world perception, was LETHAL, if he hit it you were DONE. Hogan promptly popped right up, and just like that all of Vader's heat was gone) and then, resorting to ye old cartoon nonsense, had WCW put together the 'Dungeon of Doom', which was full of terrible gimmicks (albeit hilarious ones nowadays), most of which were played by Hogan's friends. And all the while, Eric (and Hogan) were spending Turner's money hand over fist. And not getting results. So in early 1995, Turner eventually went "We brought in Hogan and all these WWF people, why are we not beating the WWF?" Eric, put on the spot, said "We need prime time TV", thinking there was no way he'd get it. WCW was syndication, that was where it belonged. Turner instead gave Eric two hours on his TNT network. On Monday Night. Right across the same time slot as the WWF's prime show, Monday Night Raw. Eric was now semi cornered, and had to put up or shut up. In the end, he just looked at what he did, realized it was more or less part of what Vince had done in the 80's with the territories, and basically went "gently caress it, I'll steal the rest of his playbook and then some." And so he did. When Nitro began, Bischoff proceeded to do some very good counter programming, if not outright amazing. First of all, Nitro was all 'wrestlers fighting other wrestlers', whereas before that was generally saved for PPVs - WWF shows were either all 'wrestlers fighting no name jobbers' or at best, wrestlers fighting the lowcarders: the names only fought on PPV. Eric said nope, we have wrestler vs wrestler matches all the time. He did stuff like hire away Lex Luger without Vince finding out and having him show up on Nitro the night after Luger had appeared on a WWE PPV. He would do commentary and keep a TV under his desk to keep an eye on Raw, and counter program via doing things like making sure his show was on air during Raw's commercial breaks, or even rewriting the show on the fly to respond to what happened to Raw. And he then took it one step further. See, Nitro was always live. Raw was live one week, taped the next. So Eric just found out the taped results, and then when his show came on the air first, as it was two hours to Raw's one, he gave away the results of the taping. Why watch if you knew what was going to happen? Nitro was live, you never knew what was going to happen. This was probably Part 2 of why Vince ended up irrationally loathing WCW so much, but if he knew what Part 3 would be, he probably would have been happy with Eric breaking this 'inviolate rule'. Even still...it didn't help them beat the WWF. At best, it was going back and forth in the ratings. But "ATM Eric" wasn't done yet. So he made overtures to hire away more WWF people, namely two of their biggest stars, Scott Hall and Kevin Nash. Offering them more money for less working dates AND creative control. How could the men resist? But that wasn't all. Eric looked at the two, and decided, forget repackaging them, or even introducing them, people know who they are. I'll use THAT. So one night in May 1996, Scott Hall just walked out on Nitro, grabbed a mike, and went "Hey where's all the competition? I'm here for a war." Eric had committed his last and greatest theft of WWF, his biggest opera rewriting. He would take the two big WWE stars, and act like they were still working for WWE. That they were invading, to actively destroy WCW. Oh, he legally covered his rear end by having them state on air they did NOT work for WWE, but things were in motion. It was the Marvel Cinematic Universe of its day. And the final piece came into play when these two 'Outsiders' fought on the July PPV against three of WCW's headline stars, saying that they would be aided by an unknown third man...who ended up being Hulk Hogan. Having only been appearing sporadically for the last several months, Hogan legit shocked the wrestling world by joining the two men and becoming a bad guy for the first time in 12 years, as he'd been the heroic golden god for every day of his rise to being 'the Nintendo', and hence 97 percent of wrestling fans had never seen him play a heel. The NWO was born. And WCW finally had their rocket and they reaped the benefits. Just like the army reaped the benefits of Milo's black market business dealing. And we know how that ended. With him bombing his own base. But that was yet to come. Cornwind Evil fucked around with this message at 09:52 on Feb 11, 2022 |
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Feb 11, 2022 09:37
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Do any of these long posts cover the time Vince stole an NBC executive’s shoes when they went bowling? Left the man shoeless. Then went and probably helper cover up stone cold beating up his wife again or something. Still the shoe thing is pretty bad. But nobody ever seems to care about stone colds wife and will do his podcast in a heartbeat. Maybe Debra should start a podcast about getting frequently beat up by stone cold. Doubt she’d be able to get guests though.
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Feb 11, 2022 12:16
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Cornwind Evil posted:Lots of stuff Been loving catching up on these man, keep it up. When it comes to the WWE the least interesting things is what they do on TV, etc the most interesting things is what really goes on behind the scenes. AEW came and ate their lunch after WWE basically pissed and poo poo all over their fans for so drat long. AEW at least likes their audience.
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Feb 11, 2022 14:03
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kane seems like the type of libertarian who is born out of just being naive as poo poo. in everything ive ever heard about him hes a great guy, but he just has these fuckin dog brained politics. covid managed to shake the libertarianism out of even loving penn jilette but kane is still truckin
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Feb 11, 2022 15:05
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also twelve million blows to the head
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Feb 11, 2022 15:29
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stratdax posted:How's Billy Corgan's wrestling thing going So, my friend got me into NWA Powerrr when it launched in October 2019 and I really enjoyed it until the wheels started to come off, towards the end of the second season / beginning of the pandemic. Jim Cornette was kinda great on commentary but by the time he got racist, I was very over him as an announcer and was happy to see him replaced. The wrestling was pretty fun because everyone was in on the campiness of it all. It was everyone pretending they were in a 1980s studio wrestling show and it worked pretty drat well for the most part. But then the pandemic hit and one of the VPs was found out to have been a sex pest/maybe worse, I forget, and everything completely fell apart. They were already doing some questionable booking, like the whole Rock'n'Roll Express thing, but man Eddie Kingston, Eli Drake, Aron Stevens, Nick Aldis... these guys cut some great 80s camp promos. Idk if they still have season 1 and 2 up on YouTube, but if they do, it's worth a watch imo. I don't follow the NWA anymore because it's really obvious that it's duct taped together with sex pests and 60 year old tag teams and if one thread gets pulled, the whole thing collapses. Why devote time to that when AEW exists? also I hope that's not a poo poo wrestling opinion, I don't really talk to anyone else who watches wrestling since most of my friends don't enjoy it that much
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Feb 11, 2022 15:50
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I did hear fun things about Chikara but then it apparently exploded with #MeToo. Also, the Scooby-Doo WWE crossovers are lol
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Feb 11, 2022 16:09
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Ghost Leviathan posted:I did hear fun things about Chikara but then it apparently exploded with #MeToo.
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Feb 11, 2022 16:18
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Cornwind Evil posted:wall o text These are awesome, thanks for posting them!!!
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Feb 11, 2022 17:07
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SilvergunSuperman posted:Ya I read he force fed her all those drugs So you haven't heard the 911 call.
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Feb 11, 2022 18:12
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GolfHole posted:also twelve million blows to the head It should surprise you (but it won't), that getting concussions is so common in Pro Wrestling that it has a cute terminology back stage: Getting your bell wrung. "Oh, did you get your bell wrung? Lol let's go get a beer" Men who have decades long careers of being concussed weekly have ascended to leadership positions in billion dollar companies.
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Feb 11, 2022 18:33
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I wish all headbutts in wrestling were done away with, having lived through the whole Chris Benoit situation (he use to do a lot of headbutts, especially leaping from the turnbuckle to do them) and I don't want to see anything remotely like that happen again. Every time I see Danielson do one I instinctively cringe. For those who don't know once his brain was examined after the murder events it was found that he had the brain of a man aged 80 or older with "very severe" Alzheimer's disease.
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Feb 11, 2022 19:30
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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'd love to read about the madness of the Attitude Era more. Like I imagine many in this thread, my big issue with wrestling is all the wrestling. While the athleticism is incredible for what it is and I can see the appeal, for me it's uninteresting. Ridiculous and tasteless drama? Hell yeah, sign me up. Got links to the old reviews? I have archives so not an issue.
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Feb 11, 2022 19:37
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Vince helped Superfly Snuka cover up the murder of his girlfriend.
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Feb 11, 2022 20:03
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There was that time with the quasi hostage situation when there was some kind of pay dispute with Saudi Arabia and the roster wasn't allowed to leave until it was resolved
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Feb 11, 2022 20:17
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man that like 2009 era TNA, before the hogan and bischoff poo poo, that was good. they had such an amazing roster and for a while seemed to get a whole lot of potential out of guys who had sucked in the WWE, and seemed less racist too. jay lethal and elijah burke were super over, AJ Styles got to have a persona that wasn't some dumb hick guy like he 100% would have been saddled with in the WWE because of his accent, you had a fantastic womens division who got a good amount of screen time then they got hogan and bischoff involved and while it gave us some amazing moments like the jay lethal vs ric flair promo, it just tanked the fuckin show and turned it into some weird fusing of the worst parts of WWE and late era WCW. i stopped watching it when they introduced a heel character who was just 'gay black man' and he would just do 'gay' poo poo for heat. it was very depressing and also happened just before chris kanyon's suicide. chris kanyon was a guy whose story is overwhelmingly tragic and i can't really do it justice, but he basically just faced a shitload of discrimination and mockery for being openly gay, because in wrestling it's only acceptable to be some kind of weird deeply closeted type of gay who gets their desires out in extremely weird business practices. before he died he had been shopping around a pitch for a persona of just an openly gay face character and got rejected. i feel like TNA coming out with a complete homophobic hate character just after he'd been pitching that can't have been good for him. i havent watched AEW cause i have been out of wrestling for a long time but it seems like its what i had hoped TNA was going to be like 12 years ago. more athleticism, more fun, less hateful weird poo poo. it would be nice to hear commentary that is about what is happening in the match again too, instead of the commentators just recapping or hyping up whatever was going to or had just happened
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Feb 11, 2022 20:21
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My memory's hazy but I didn't watch TNA but didn't they literally run a storyline where they basically threatened to hire Hoganfare recipient Brian Knobbs because Hogan showed up and it was rightly portrayed as a bad thing? They hired Brian Knobbs for this story.
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Feb 11, 2022 20:26
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Ghost Leviathan posted:I did hear fun things about Chikara but then it apparently exploded with #MeToo. Chikara is all the best elements about "wrestling is basically comic books" (crazy characters, insane plots, bizarre supernatural elements, ongoing continuity, plots that go places) mixed with the worst elements from actual comic books (dense lore, hard to get caught up if you miss an issue, back issues are tricky to find, plot from chikara could happen outside chikara, so now you have to keep up on that) But what I was able to gleem then was glorious. They had to walk so Lucha Underground could run
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Feb 11, 2022 20:28
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TheSwizzler posted:My memory's hazy but I didn't watch TNA but didn't they literally run a storyline where they basically threatened to hire Hoganfare recipient Brian Knobbs because Hogan showed up and it was rightly portrayed as a bad thing? My favorite TNA story is that after years of fans chanting "Fire Russo", the executives at Spike mandated that TNA fire Vince Russo. So they did. But then TNA hired him back secretly and when Spike found out they cancelled TNA's show. Trollologist fucked around with this message at 20:37 on Feb 11, 2022 |
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Feb 11, 2022 20:31
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Trollologist posted:Eagerly awaiting this when you get the time I'm going to do this in two parts. In the aftermath of Vince gaining almost a monopoly over the wrestling industry, the rise of the internet led to more interest in “indie darlings,” the smaller wrestlers who gained huge followings through wrestling through the independent promotions, around the world, and usually Ring of Honor. The kind of guys who can have an entertaining match with just about anyone. The problem was that WWE was considered the goal of every wrestler and Vince McMahon loving HATES indie darlings. Not only are they too small and not muscular enough, but they have high reputations from outside WWE. To him, if someone was never in WWE, they don’t count and they ain’t worth poo poo. CM Punk and Bryan Danielson were like the Ryu and Ken of indie darlings and the two who, for a time, actually made a difference in WWE for their kind. CM Punk is a whole other can of worms for another day. Bryan Danielson is one of those once in a lifetime talents and is arguably the best wrestler in the world. In 2009, he signed with WWE, where they changed his name to Daniel Bryan. Back when he was in developmental, Bryan was having a physical issue where he kept getting staph infections from rolling around the ring. A doctor suggested moving to a vegan diet, as not digesting meat would give his immune system more strength. Something like that. He went with it and even though this was a sacrifice so he could perform and not get ill, Vince looked down at him for it because, “What kind of man doesn’t eat steak?” The original version of NXT was more of a game show. Eight rookie wrestlers would be introduced and paired with an established wrestler. This created lots of fun dynamics and one of the big pairings was Daniel Bryan forced to be the protégé of the Miz. Miz was one of the hotter heel acts in WWE and the fact that he had far less experience than his rookie made it all a hilarious troll. The rivalry wrote itself. The show featured matches and unscripted contest segments. The pros acted as judges and would gradually (and legitimately) vote people off the show. The other seven rookies were your usual WWE factory creations and didn’t have any indie notoriety to go with them. That made Bryan a target as Vince really had it in for him. So much that commentator Michael Cole was CONSTANTLY talking poo poo about Bryan and calling him a loser. Bryan was booked to lose every single match he had on the show and they wouldn’t even let him do his old finisher the Cattle Mutilation because you couldn’t see his face during it and it was therefore bad for TV. At one point, the rookies were interviewed over who should be dropped next. Bryan showed honesty and humility by saying that maybe it should be him, since he kept losing. Again, unscripted, he was then told that he was disqualified from the contest for saying that. Funny enough, he wasn’t the only victim of this decision. Fellow rookie Michael Tarver threateningly said that they should vote him off in the sense that it was the only thing that was going to protect the other wrestlers from getting their asses whupped. So he was also disqualified. God, this show was stupid. NXT Season 1 was won by Wade Barrett, a charismatic brawler from Wales with Chris Jericho as his mentor. In a stroke of brilliance, Barrett showed up on the following episode of Raw during the main event (John Cena vs. CM Punk), where he was suddenly assisted by the other NXT rookies as they stormed the ring, beat the poo poo out of everybody – ESPECIALLY Cena – and literally tore the ring apart. This included Bryan, who strangled the ring announcer with his own tie and screamed, “You are not better than me!” while kicking Cena in the head. The Nexus was born. And Daniel Bryan was fired. Apparently one of the advertisers (believed to be Mattel) did not like the whole tie-choking thing and wanted something done about it. To Vince’s credit, when he talked to Bryan about the situation, he was absolutely on his side and told him to just go make money on the independent circuit with this controversy giving him a boost, lay low, and he’d be rehired once it all blew over. Bryan’s absence certainly hurt the Nexus storyline as he was the most talented member, but he was brought back into the fold at that year’s SummerSlam as a mystery partner in a big Team John Cena vs. Nexus 7-on-7 elimination match. Unfortunately, Bryan still got poo poo on. Not only did he lose a lot, but Michael Cole kept yelling about how much he was a loser and it started to bleed into everything else. WWE in 2011-2012 is utterly unwatchable because Michael Cole was the head announcer on every show and he would not stop being an unbelievably annoying heel, constantly and loudly badmouthing everyone and everything. Well, except Cena. Not even heel commentators were allowed to badmouth Cena in any way. Bryan was put in a silly storyline about how all the women on the roster were into him. The payoff was because they heard he was a “vegan” and they were having a competition over who would be his first time. Anyway, this storyline is how he met his future wife Brie Bella, so there’s that. As WrestleMania 27, he was set to have a match against Sheamus for the United States Championship, which was potentially going to be one of the better matches of the night. Instead, it not only got thrown onto the unaired pre-show, but it somehow became a battle royal that neither guy won. In a genuine surprise, Bryan won the Money in the Bank ladder match at the Money in the Bank PPV. For those who don’t know, winning the match gets you a whole year to get a title match whenever you want. At the time of his win, Mark Henry was the dominant World Heavyweight Champion and the plan was for Bryan to be the first guy to cash in his briefcase and lose. Fate took over and Henry was wrestling injured. He needed to drop the title to rest up. At the PPV Tables, Ladders, and Chairs, Big Show defeated Henry in a chairs match for the title. Then Bryan ran out, cashed in his briefcase, and immediately defeated the exhausted and hurt Big Show. It was a decision that was so last minute that Bryan wasn’t even planned to be at the arena. He was doing an autograph signing earlier that day when he got the call to get there ASAP. After winning the title in such a cheap way, Bryan responded by celebrating like he just won the hardest fought victory every by screaming, “YES! YES! YES!” a bunch. He became a conniving heel who would somehow retain his title against guys like Big Show and Mark Henry. The payoff was obviously WrestleMania 28. Rising top face Sheamus won the Royal Rumble and was gunning for Bryan. Wrestling fans were excited to see these two go at it on the biggest stage. It was the opening match and Bryan lost in 18 seconds. Fans were pissed. It’s one thing for him to get his comeuppance, but they wanted to see the guy who’s great and performing actually perform! The very next night on Raw, the fans were loud and very pro-Bryan as they constantly chanted for him and did the “YES!” chants. This would lead to Vince McMahon reluctantly making WrestleMania 30 the last truly great WrestleMania show. More on that later.
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Feb 11, 2022 20:32
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say, mister or ms juggalo baby coffin, are you familiar with the in-ring career of one Sonny Kiss? You might be pleasantly surprised (or less so because you might agree with me that we need more of the Concrete Rose on our tv screens) overall, I’d say that professional wrestling outside of Vince’s poisoned little garden is less uncomfortable with its lgbtq+ aspects than it’s been in my whole lifetime. that’s not to brag about how perfect it all is now or anything; but when I was a little spring onion, the standard was Goldust at the gimmick’s most uncomfortable and gay-panic flavored 
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Feb 11, 2022 20:35
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Trollologist posted:Chikara is all the best elements about "wrestling is basically comic books" (crazy characters, insane plots, bizarre supernatural elements, ongoing continuity, plots that go places) mixed with the worst elements from actual comic books (dense lore, hard to get caught up if you miss an issue, back issues are tricky to find, plot from chikara could happen outside chikara, so now you have to keep up on that) Anyone who is interested in Chikara should just go watch all the King of Trios tournaments and not worry about the lore or backstories or any of that. Just go watch awesome trios matches and have fun.
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Feb 11, 2022 20:35
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Elephant Ambush posted:Anyone who is interested in Chikara should just go watch all the King of Trios tournaments and not worry about the lore or backstories or any of that. Just go watch awesome trios matches and have fun. This man speaks the truth
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Feb 11, 2022 20:43
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SatansOnion posted:say, mister or ms juggalo baby coffin, are you familiar with the in-ring career of one Sonny Kiss? You might be pleasantly surprised (or less so because you might agree with me that we need more of the Concrete Rose on our tv screens) tbh the difference between Goldust and Sonny Kiss says it all Here's an article on Sonny that kinda cuts right to the "Huh, that's cool" core: https://www.ringsidenews.com/2021/12/28/sonny-kiss-uses-aew-womens-rosters-locker-room/
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Feb 11, 2022 20:48
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SatansOnion posted:say, mister or ms juggalo baby coffin, are you familiar with the in-ring career of one Sonny Kiss? You might be pleasantly surprised (or less so because you might agree with me that we need more of the Concrete Rose on our tv screens) Not to mention Nyla Rose, a transgender woman, was the second AEW Women's Champion and the entire fambase told Racist Uncle Jim to gently caress off when he suggested AEW should make a storyline around that fact.
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Feb 11, 2022 21:04
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Trollologist posted:My favorite TNA story is Dixie using her wrestling fed as a singles bar. The lady just liked herself some hunks and it’s hard to fault her when everything else went downhill.
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Feb 11, 2022 21:15
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Infidel Castro posted:Not to mention Nyla Rose, a transgender woman, was the second AEW Women's Champion and the entire fambase told Racist Uncle Jim to gently caress off when he suggested AEW should make a storyline around that fact. AEW also banned a fan for life who held up an offensive sign when she came to wrestle a match.
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Feb 11, 2022 21:25
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Infidel Castro posted:Not to mention Nyla Rose... 
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Feb 11, 2022 22:17
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Wondering what Brutus The Barber Beefcake's up to...quote:In February 2004, Leslie caused an anthrax scare at one of Boston's MBTA stations, Downtown Crossing, where he was working at the time. He had left a bag of cocaine in his booth, which a subway rider spotted and assumed to be anthrax. The building was evacuated as a precaution. Leslie checked into a drug rehabilitation facility after admitting that the cocaine was his.[15]
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Feb 11, 2022 22:20
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shadow puppet of a posted:Dixie using her wrestling fed as a singles bar. The lady just liked herself some hunks and it’s hard to fault her when everything else went downhill. I remember reading a story/rumor/gossip about how, after Kurt Angle arrived in TNA and brought his wife Karen with him, she and Dixie bonded and would go out and get hosed up and of course there were usually a lot of young wrestle dudes nearby, so there would be stories of either them doing jello shots off the young dudes abs or the young dudes doing jello shots off their stomachs, I forget which. Then Kurt and Karen got divorced and she wound up marrying Jeff Jarrett after his wife passed away, and for some reason that was apparently not fine with Dixie and I think it wasn't long after that that Jarrett finally left TNA. Granted this was all years ago, and it's pretty much rumors and hearsay, so take it all with a tanker truck full of salt. 
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Feb 11, 2022 22:26
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Vince McMahon is like a psychopathic space alien who’s obsessed with really big muscly white dudes Also: TheSwizzler posted:Wondering what Brutus The Barber Beefcake's up to... I loving love this
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Feb 11, 2022 22:49
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So as we last left Daniel Bryan, he was out of the World Heavyweight Championship picture and despite being a bad guy, the crowd was absolutely going insane for him. He was involved in a three-way feud with CM Punk and Kane that led to Bryan and Kane being forced into anger management. This ended up working out great as Bryan and Kane became an odd couple tag team called Team Hell No who were constantly either at each other’s throats or begrudgingly hugging each other. It led to plenty of funny comedy sketches and great matches as they went a long time as tag champs. Around this time, WWE had the Shield as an unstoppable heel trio who were able to take down any possible combination of wrestlers the company would throw at them. This was a good way to get the belts off Kane and Bryan and it led to Bryan angrily screaming all the time that he was not the weak link, seemingly trying to convince only himself. He came out of this whole storyline smelling like roses as he was able to lead Kane and Randy Orton into giving the Shield their first loss. Shortly after, he and Kane decided to go their separate ways and be singles wrestlers. At the time, people absolutely loved Bryan and it seemed like he was on his way up the card. John Cena was WWE Champion at the time and Vince told him that he planned to do Cena vs. Bryan at the Money in the Bank PPV and have Cena win. Cena flat out told him that this was a mistake as Cena vs. Bryan was the biggest possible match on the roster and they would be wasting it on a secondary PPV. Vince was surprised by this and chose to do it Cena’s way. Money in the Bank would have Cena vs. Mark Henry. Cena vs. Bryan would be saved for SummerSlam. Vince still intended to have Cena win over Bryan. It’s just that going into the show, Cena had a rather nasty growth on his arm the size of a baseball and he absolutely needed to have that taken care of. So instead, Bryan cleanly defeated Cena with a new running knee finisher and became WWE Champion. Then...he immediately lost it. Randy Orton had the Money in the Bank briefcase at the time, so he showed up after the match to stare Bryan down. The special referee and on-air authority figure Triple H attacked Bryan out of nowhere and they had Orton cash in his briefcase and win the impromptu match. Orton's now the champion. WWE has a way of giving fans what they want via smaller, technical wrestling guys getting their big title win, only to immediately throw them to the curb. They did it with Bret Hart several times, they did it with Chris Benoit, and they were doing it with Bryan. The storyline was that management saw Bryan as a “B+ player” and wasn’t worthy to represent the company as champion. This would have been perfectly fine if it wasn’t for the fact that they had Randy Orton win the feud. They had no intention of giving Bryan an actual reign as champion. They wanted Orton to feud with Cena instead. The whole “B+ player” thing was both the storyline and how management really saw Bryan. That blew up in their face because even the casual fan saw this as Bryan being hosed over and made them want to chant for him. Speaking of chants, WWE didn't think Bryan was actually popular. Only his chant was over. Therefore, they would just have Big Show start doing the "YES!" chant and figure that fans would get behind him. It did not take. Orton and Cena were put in a match where they would unify the two top titles (WWE Championship and World Heavyweight Championship). The crowd only cared about Bryan and let them know. WWE decided to have Bryan turn heel and join the Wyatt Family, a stable of evil swamp cultists. Then they had second thoughts when they realized that Bryan’s “YES!” chant was getting popular outside of wrestling. They had Bryan turn on leader Bray Wyatt, setting up a PPV match between the two. The PPV? The Royal Rumble. This is where the backstage drama gets crazy. The original plan for the Royal Rumble was to have CM Punk win and go face Randy Orton for the unified title at WrestleMania. CM Punk’s last bucket list goal was to main event WrestleMania and he was putting up with a LOT to see this through. Bryan was intended to lose his Rumble singles match against Bray Wyatt then go on to WrestleMania to face Sheamus again. WWE constantly overestimated how much people wanted to see Sheamus around this time. Then WWE signed Batista for a comeback. Batista was gone for a few years and had that Guardians of the Galaxy movie on the way. He came back and his character was acting like kind of an unlikeable rear end, but Vince immediately saw dollar signs in a WrestleMania main event of Batista vs. Orton for the unified title with Batista as the face. Everyone seemed to think that this was a bad idea, including Batista. WWE’s like, “Eh...CM Punk can go take on Triple H at WrestleMania instead. That’s as important as the main event, right?” So Royal Rumble happens. Bryan loses on the undercard. They never did specifically say whether or not Bryan was in the Rumble match itself, but fans believed he would be. I mean, this was HIS story. If the whole road to WrestleMania wasn’t Bryan getting his big win, what were they even doing? After #29 came out, the fans were doing “YES!” chants in preparation. Then Rey Mysterio walked out at #30 and the FANS. WERE. PISSED. Lovable Rey Mysterio was received with thunderous boos because he wasn’t Bryan. Fans understood that Batista was going to win this match and turned on it. The final minutes was nothing but boos with the occasional cheering for someone like CM Punk, who would at least be an acceptable winner. But nope, Batista won and the fans poo poo on it. The PPV ended with Michael Cole telling the fans to, “Deal with it!” CM Punk spent nearly an hour in that match and suffered a concussion (amongst other injuries). The next day, he had finally had enough, chewed out Vince and Triple H, and walked off. They later fired him and made sure he got the papers on his wedding day. The Royal Rumble was his last wrestling match for 7 years. Trying to figure out what to do with Punk out of the picture, they immediately set up Bryan vs. Triple H for WrestleMania. That still wasn’t what the fans wanted as they were dead set on booing championship challenger Batista at every opportunity. The next PPV showed that they simply weren’t going to get Batista over as a top face in this situation, so they relented. The overall storyline going into WrestleMania 30 was that Bryan vs. Triple H would happen at the beginning of the night and whoever won would end up in the main event, turning Batista vs. Orton into a triple threat. Bryan got those big wins and the whole PPV was pretty drat solid overall. Then WWE was like, “Oh, you liked that? You’re happy now? Great. Let’s move away from this then.” Screw it, I’m making this a three-parter.
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Feb 11, 2022 23:24
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After reading all this it just blows my mind that after Bryan Danielson joined AEW he made sure to say multiple times in interviews and in a blog article he wrote that he enjoyed his time in WWE. And I have no reason not to believe him because it's not like him to lie or work people that way.
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Feb 12, 2022 00:50
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