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BiggerBoat posted:So if I'm reading it all right the soap opera behind the soap opera is more real than anything and dealing with all these Monsters is probably harder than pulling off a show?
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Mar 19, 2022 04:34
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the crowd response to sufferin succotash was great it was like "woo- ...oo?  "because Roman did... like, I guess as good of a job as anybody could be expected to? it really seems like he's about to say something cool, and then it takes a second to sink in, and then they chant for him anyway and he looks as surprised as anyone https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRFWb4Ia3r0&t=110s the promo as written is just SO bad quote:Brother? I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt. Yeah, yeah- nah, I'm not sorry. But look at you, you're just so full of yourself now. Actually, you're full of something else. You are a sniveling little suck-up sell-out full of suffering succotash, son! Yeah, I know, that was not easy to say. My brother here, my so-called brother here, he's got donkey dung for brains. What I'm trying to say is, I'm gonna kick your rear end.  imagine anybody trying to get this over imagine Sir Lawrence Olivier trying to get this over I mean, The Rock could do it, but
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Mar 19, 2022 04:46
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The Rock knows better than to bother to try with that. He'd put a loving twist on it or ad-lib half the words and when the crowd cheered him into the rafters and he ascended into the night sky on a cloud of pure love there wouldn't be anything Vince could do. Because just as he would get mad about it, he'd get the merch report and forget all about it. Xotl posted:One thing I'm curious about is the storywriting team for this thing. I've seen a few head writers mentioned, but is this one person writing every storyline? Seems like a lot of work, but if not, who are all the other people and how does their job work? For WWE writing, probably the most interesting fun fact is that Both Patrice O'neil and Freddie Prinze Jr have not only been on the writing staff, but spoken at length about it. Freddie even has a podcast where he blathers on forever about it: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/wrestling-with-freddie/id1593422280 It does not sound like a positive work environment. SirPhoebos posted:Speaking of writers, I'd like someone to do a breakdown of the one and only, Best I can do is this post of mine about heels: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?noseen=0&threadid=3991949&pagenumber=27&perpage=40#post521649964 I can't breakdown Russo without honestly going to bat for the man a bunch because for as much dumb, stupid, pointless, meandering, low brow drek he's penned over the years, if you ever listen to interviews about what he's trying to accomplish with his writing, he's bang on target about it. His idea was the brawl for all. And it happened exactly like he wanted, and to hear him, it's compelling TV. To talk about Russo, you have to talk about what the gently caress wrestling writing even is. Like, conceptually. gently caress it. If no one gets meta-textual about the concepts of story telling and how they apply in wrestling and then how Russo fits into that, I'll effort post on it tomorrow. It's late here and I need sleep.
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Mar 19, 2022 05:46
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The thing with AEW’s process is we don’t really know what it is. We know that people who can get their ideas over get more TV time, we know that Tony has ideas then works with the workers to get them on TV. But we also get stories like Brodie Lee being the person who added Alan Angels and Preston Vance to the Dark Order, and Abbadon’s debut being a Kenny Omega written story line, and The Wingmen being created by one of the backstage guys (maybe CD? Don’t remember) But that’s the weird thing about AEW, someone mentioned that the EVPs have worked to create a reduced bullshit environment backstage, but the flip side of that is a new Kayfabe where if the locker room decides no one needs to know about something, they just don’t talk about it. Anna Jay’s squash debut: (I had totally forgotten she was doing the Zatana thing at this point) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgzsECb5_Ws
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Mar 19, 2022 06:04
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As we last left Sid, he was annoyed with having to deal with the Ultimate Warrior and left WWF. It didn’t take long for him to return to WCW. BEACH BLAST: THE MOVIE During this era of WCW, they went in a rather odd direction to promote their PPV main events. As this was a Ted Turner-owned company and came with Ted Turner money, it also came with the idea of tying in with Ted Turner’s love of movies. Why build up a big PPV match with interviews and highlight reels that tell their own story? Why not simply make a movie? They are some of the hammiest and most unbelievable things to watch. There’s the time Sting and Jake Roberts had a showdown in a secret tavern that ended with them shooting lightning out of their eyes at each other. Sting once received an invitation from Big Van Vader to ride a helicopter and meet him in his elusive White Castle of Fear. Speaking of Vader, Sid aligned himself with the round monster and they became the Masters of the Powerbomb. Going into Beach Blast, they were set to face Sting and the British Bulldog. Naturally, this got its own mini-movie to hype it up. It’s a hell of a thing. Sid, Vader, and their managers Col. Parker and Harley Race are on one of those D-Day landing crafts, on their way to confront Sting and Bulldog, who are busy hanging out on an island, playing volleyball with randos. As the heels offer to pay for the faces’ retirement ventures if they call off the match, Col. Parker secretly sends a one-eyed dwarf dressed as a shark named Cheetum to sneak a bomb onto Sting and Bulldog’s boat. The fact that Space Ghost is the announcer at the end is just the cherry on top. THE SHOCKMASTER As wrestlers jumped back and forth between WWF and WCW, it was easy enough when they wrestled with their real names or names that they legally owned. If they mainly wrestled under a cartoony gimmick, then they had to be repackaged, because their previous employer owned the concept. Sid was lucky as he only had to change his last name depending on where he wrestled. Fred Ottman, on the other hand, needed an overhaul. Ottman wrestled for several years in WWF. First, he was called Tugboat, which I can best describe as “what if Bluto from Popeye was a good guy.” Then he turned heel and joined his rival Earthquake, changing his name to Typhoon as they became the Natural Disasters. Now that I think of it, his gimmick was literally the Chris Farley "El Nino" SNL sketch. After a long enough run, Ottman left WWF for WCW. WCW actually had big plans for the guy and intended to make him one of their top faces. Another War Games match was being set up. It was going to be Sting, British Bulldog, Dustin Rhodes, and a mystery partner vs. Sid, Vader, and the tag team Harlem Heat. On a live edition of Clash of the Champions, Ric Flair hosted his own interview segment, where he had on several of the wrestlers who were going to be involved in that match. As the two parties argued about the upcoming War Games match, Sting finally decided to announce their mystery partner. “Our partner is going to shock the world because he is none other than the Shockmaster!” This was Ottman’s cue. He was supposed to burst through the wall and intimidate the heels. In time, he would get the decisive win at War Games. From there, he would be accepted as a major name in WCW. It did not work out that way. First off, Shockmaster’s appearance was laughable. He was wearing a pair of jeans, a black, puffy vest, and a literal Star Wars stormtrooper helmet covered in glitter. More importantly, when the pyro went off, the Shockmaster broke through the wall, but he tripped on a plank. On live TV, he fell flat on his face in what was supposed to be his big, badass debut moment as his stormtrooper helmet fell off. He crawled over, put the helmet back on, and tried to act like none of that actually happened. All the while, you could vaguely hear the other wrestlers’ reactions. Lots of variations of, “OH GOD,” including Bulldog straight-up saying, “He fell on his loving arse!” Instead of having the Shockmaster conduct his own promos, they had former wrestler Ole Anderson do a Dr. Claw voice over the speakers while the Shockmaster pointed and mimed. This was extra funny because when Sid started screaming, “I don’t care who you are!” at Shockmaster, Ottman thought that was Ole and started pointing and acting like Sid was talking for him. They knew they hosed up. Even though Shockmaster still got the decisive win at War Games, they changed him up immediately and turned him into a clumsy dumbass who wore a construction helmet instead of a stormtrooper one. His career never recovered. WWE did release a limited edition Shockmaster figure a few years ago, where he’s shown upside down in the package. SCISSORS AND THE PHANTOM CHAMPIONSHIP The WCW guys were put on a rather hectic European tour that saw lots of traveling and performing, but very, very little in terms of rest. When they did get some slight reprieve, various wrestlers hung out in a hotel bar, getting drunk as gently caress. As the guys discussed what was going wrong with WCW and why they couldn’t catch up to WWF, Sid put some of the blame on Ric Flair. Flair’s buddy Arn Anderson did not like this and the two got in a big confrontation. They were separated and went to their rooms. Sid couldn’t sleep and was too pissed off to let it slide. With a chair leg in hand, he went to Arn’s room and knocked on the door. At first there was no answer and Sid decided to just drop it. He threw the chair leg away and started walking off. That’s when Arn opened the door and lunged at him. Having seen the chair leg, Arn armed himself with a pair of scissors and stabbed Sid with them four times, including a deep wound in the stomach. Sid yanked the scissors from Arn’s hands and lost his poo poo, stabbing him over a dozen times before finally snapping out of it and stumbling off. Blood was everywhere and if not for the help of Too Cold Scorpio and Vader getting involved, at least one of them would have died. The two were stitched up and neither wanted to press charges. Sid took the brunt of the punishment and was fired. Over time, the two would reconcile. In the wrestling sense, another thing that makes this interesting is how it ruined some major plans in a unique way. During this time, WCW’s weekly show was WCW Worldwide, which was taped in bulk at Universal Studios. Maybe a month of shows at a time. In other words, they would tape episodes taking place AFTER a PPV weeks in advance. One of the storylines going on was that Sid turned face and was feuding with Vader over the championship. Sid was supposed to defeat Vader at Starrcade for the belt. Obviously, that was no longer the case. So even though the main event of Starrcade ended up being Ric Flair vs. Vader, there was taped (albeit unaired) footage of Sid showing up on Worldwide as WCW Champion. IT’S LIVE PAL Sid went back to WWF and redebuted at WrestleMania 11. Immediately, he ended up in a feud with WWF Champion Diesel and soon joined Ted Dibiase’s Million Dollar Corporation. This led to one of the funnier botches in wrestling history where nobody got hurt. During the PPV pre-show, we saw Sid and Dibiase being interviewed by Jim Ross. Ross asked Sid about how he compared to Diesel and Sid started ranting, only to immediately trip over his words, apologize and ask if they could try that again. Ross noted, “It’s live, pal!” and Sid tried to mumble himself into coherency. Sid was active as a heel for the rest of 1995, before having to take time off due to neck injury. MSG FANS BREAK VINCE In 1996, the Ultimate Warrior had another run with WWF that really didn’t go anywhere. After a big falling out with Vince due to no-shows, Warrior was written off TV. It’s just that he was supposed to be part of a big six-man tag match where he’d team with Shawn Michaels and Ahmed Johnson. With Warrior gone, they simply brought Sid back in (now calling himself Sycho Sid) and made him a huge face. Sid was crazy popular during this time. Fans couldn’t get enough of this large psychopath coming to the ring, fist-bumping everyone, and then powerbombing the poo poo out of his enemies. They spent months pushing him as Michaels’ ally, including having Michaels help him win a #1 contender’s match. Keep in mind, Michaels was the champ at the time. Michaels vs. Sid was the main event of Survivor Series 1996 and both went into it as faces. This was at Madison Square Garden, which has a big fanbase of hardcore fans and they were pretty tired of how overpushed Michaels was at the time. When the climax of the match had Sid turn heel by picking up a camera, slamming it into Michaels’ elderly manager/mentor Jose Lothario and later using it on Michaels (who gave up his chance of pinning Sid in order to check up on Jose), the crowd didn’t show sympathy for Michaels. Instead, they went completely nuts for Sid and cheered the hell out of him for powerbombing Michaels and winning the WWF Championship. You have to understand that Vince McMahon absolutely LOVED Shawn Michaels to the point that this reaction made him feel personally insulted. Prior to the Montreal Screwjob a year later, it was never too apparent on TV that Vince actually owned the company. He was simply a host and a commentator. But man, having all those fans loudly boo Michaels and cheer Sid’s dastardly win broke something in Vince. The next night on Raw, he was near tears, doing a monologue about how he was so disappointed in the fans for being so mean to the guy who was trying to save his manager’s life. I swear, it’s like an origin story for how Vince booked Roman Reigns. Meanwhile, Sid would go onto get his own Christmas carol. Up next: 22 is the magic number.
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Mar 19, 2022 19:41
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TWENTY TWO?!?!?!?!
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Mar 19, 2022 20:14
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Gavok posted:...  it is, indeed, a hell of a thing, and I cannot overemphasize how pro a click this is.  <- but the tears are of joy
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Mar 19, 2022 20:56
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Gavok posted:
The reason he tripped was because the wall was supposed to just break away, but it wasn't constructed properly and the bottom portion didn't break as intended. It also didn't help that he couldn't really see where he was going because of the dumb mask. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fahljd_0xjA empty baggie fucked around with this message at 21:27 on Mar 19, 2022 |
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Mar 19, 2022 21:21
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Shockmaster is top 10 all time promos, possibly even better than Steiner
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Mar 19, 2022 21:26
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How did I miss all this Sid stuff??? This is exactly when I was watching wrestling the most back in the day
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Mar 19, 2022 22:02
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Sid is the best promo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rh8O7zJi9nY
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Mar 19, 2022 23:09
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Speaking of (in)famous promos, I'd like a deep breakdown of what Lex Luger was talking about while he was wrestling his own shirt.
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Mar 19, 2022 23:22
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Gavok posted:Michaels vs. Sid was the main event of Survivor Series 1996 and both went into it as faces. This was at Madison Square Garden, which has a big fanbase of hardcore fans and they were pretty tired of how overpushed Michaels was at the time. When the climax of the match had Sid turn heel by picking up a camera, slamming it into Michaels’ elderly manager/mentor Jose Lothario and later using it on Michaels (who gave up his chance of pinning Sid in order to check up on Jose), the crowd didn’t show sympathy for Michaels. Instead, they went completely nuts for Sid and cheered the hell out of him for powerbombing Michaels and winning the WWF Championship. What's even more ironic is if you believe Trollologist's favourite wrestling personality Jim Cornette, Michaels in reality could give less than a gently caress about Jose Lothario and basically ignored him in the ring unless he had to. Jose could have been replaced with a scarecrow with Jose's face taped to it and 9 times out of 10 Shawn wouldn't have even noticed. Which meant that him pretending to care about Jose being smacked and losing the title because of it and Vince being SO UPSET OVER THOSE CRUEL FANS is even funnier. SirPhoebos posted:Speaking of (in)famous promos, I'd like a deep breakdown of what Lex Luger was talking about while he was wrestling his own shirt. Nothing ultra deep: This was post WCW's closing, where Lex was fired on air and not brought back in any form, hence forcing him to work in the indies if he wanted work (before TNA), and he was working for one where he was just clearly not expecting to be interviewed (and might have been distracted by something), so he proceeded to ramble out some nonsense where he forgot the show's name (Superbrawl Saturday), tried to babble out some "heel who thinks he's too good for the position he's in" by criticizing the showrunner ("Can he even afford to pay me? I DON'T KNOOWWW!"), tried to take off his shirt to show off how he was the 'total package' by taking off said shirt, but since this wasn't planned the shirt wasn't pre-cut and was very tight so he had trouble removing it, and embarrassed, Luger sputtered out "And your shirts are too tight! Oh, I'm pissed now!" and walked off camera as the interviewer struggled not to corpse, and then as he tried to throw back to someone else, you could hear Luger offscreen going "AND THE drat DOOR'S LOCKED TOO!" as he tried to leave the hallway/the building. Cornwind Evil fucked around with this message at 23:57 on Mar 19, 2022 |
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Mar 19, 2022 23:44
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OKAY LET'S GET META: What is Wrestling, conceptually? Or, how  is the Nic Cage of pro wrestling If someone were to ask you what genre of story is Wrestling, how would you answer? Is it a Drama, Thriller, Romance, Action, Sci-fi, Horror, Adventure? Is it just a contained story or episodic? Do you need context or continuity to understand what's going on, or can you pick it up at any moment? The answer to this is: Yes. Pro Wrestling is a Medium through which you tell stories. And even then it's not really that. Wrestling is a scam remember? Or is it a spectacle? You don't need to hire a writing team for Monster Jam, but you could. If you wanted to fix shows and force compelling outcomes at the expense of your credibility. It's hard to pin all this down because there isn't like a "flashpoint" where Wrestling became a production and a medium and stopped being just a scam designed to trick audiences. It happened little by little from one promotion to the other over decades. Then one day, somewhere, a promoter had an idea: Booking a show and getting a good plot is hard, what if I got someone that knows how to write stories to help me out? (if Cornwind, or Gavok, can pinpoint this, I'd LOVE to know) and from there, no matter how much Kayfabe they wanted to inject into their promotion, they were no longer a complete con, their promotion was now 1 part theater, even if they'd never admit it. Sometime after that, Vince Russo was hired by the WWE. And legends were born. When you're in a writing room and collaborating with others it can be a little hard to pinpoint who wrote what. Maybe you penned this idea, but maybe you got the inspiration from this other guy's idea and you cleaned it up? Maybe you shotgunned 50 ideas and like, 2 of them were solid gold. I can't tell you for sure how much of any angle or story line Russo was involved in, other than Brawl for All. Since, either out of shame from others or pride in himself, Vince Russo is allowed to lay sole claim to it. What you need to know is that he was both on the team and head writer for: Austin, Rock, Foley, HHH, Undertaker v Kane, and DX. How much of that was him and how much of that was filter or input from wrestlers? No one can say for sure (and if they try to tell you they can, they're lying, or have pretty solid proof). Why wouldn't WCW want to hire him? And, this is where things get little fucky. See, during this time his booking got a little more.....notably odd. He was a fan of the Wacky stipulation, the never saw it coming plot twist, moving titles when you'd least expect it (often seemingly for no reason, and onto people that weren't even wrestlers.) And, A Quick Aside posted:Remember that title that was talked about earlier that has changed hands like 300 times in 5 years and has been held by books and ladders and once changed hands in a dream? Ask yourself, why is it amazing to read that and want to see a promotion where titles change hands that way, but if it were to be done with like, the WWE US title, fans would revolt? Answer this without explaining how the US title is somehow above that treatment. most famously, blurring the lines between what is fiction and what is fact. Responding to the world waking up to works and shoots by just, pushing Kayfabe backstage and having wrestlers talk about interpersonal drama and work issues and airing their grievances loudly in front of everybody. He referred to his tools as "Car Crash TV" "The Swerve" and "The Worked Shoot" And while I'm sure our thread champs could list 200 times he did this and it was poorly received or stupid or it "exposed the business" It's a little important to remember: Vince Russo helped pour the foundation for what has become modern-day wrestling story telling. Real Names, Pipe Bombs, Worked Shoots, Surprise title changes (Money in Bank), he was doing it first, and like a decade before Marks slurped it up while posting about how Russo can't Write. But wait, aren't his shows like, total trash? Yes. They are. But they were never meant for you to enjoy watching. Buckle up because here comes the loving Rug Pull: Until about 2010, Wrestling was a marketing gimmick designed to get you to come back next week, not care about the show you're watching. Every Nitro was supposed to get you to watch Thunder, which built for the next Nitro which just marketed the next PPV which just built for the Nitro because "What will Sting do now?!?" There wasn't streaming, or libraries or seasons for purchase on DVD. There was just the next show. That you HAD to watch, you HAD to buy a ticket to, you HAD to get on PPV. And the booking only needed to accomplish that. It doesn't matter if the Judy Bagwell on a pole match is good. Just that your mark rear end tuned in to see it. And if it was a complete laughing stock poo poo show? Well, maybe you'll tune in to see the next one because, Ratings don't care why you watch, it's all about getting you to tune in. In that regard, Russo wrote compelling TV, I'll give him that. But times change, and needs change, and often times, people rarely do. So, Vince Russo has always booked pretty much the same way no matter what fed he was working with, and in the age of streaming and archived videos, it doesn't hold up. Now to REALLY come to Russo's defense, I'm about to say something a little controversial. The loving writing environment he had to deal with while in WCW is insane and it's a miracle he was able to do anything. The talent was contracted with massive creative control so he couldn't write a compelling loss less Hogan "not want to job, brother" and then decide a different finish, which needed some kind of fuckery or to just put Hogan over anyway. And more than Hogan had deals like this. He was also tasked with growing ratings that could make the company profitable, despite a growing roster of highly-paid has-beens and never-weres. All while looming on the horizon was the monster he built rising to crush him. And he just kept being told "book better than that" with worse tools. I also bet he was told (probably a lot) to build this angle or that because it was hot and making money so, he did. After a while, I'd write dumb poo poo too. In TNA, he was writing for YEARS, when the company was an unknown. Before Hogan and Bishoff and the NWO and all his cronies came back and made it WCW again. When there was a lot of hot talent and neat ideas and actual kind of interesting stories. But then Hogan came back, and brought the same clauses as before, and the same people, too. and then another Monday night war, and the same pressures. So, you get that same crap. HEY! I was promised a Nic Cage Analogy! Is Nic Cage a good actor? Depends on the movie. He's been in a lot of poo poo. But he's also won an Oscar. People forget about that when they meme his crazy screaming and intense performances. Face/Off and National Treasure both star Oscar award winner Nicholas Cage. For every Primal or Jiu Jitsu, There's a Mandy or a Pig. He's a good actor that often put is bad movies because they know who he is. But sometimes, people know who they have and use it. Just like Russo. Trollologist fucked around with this message at 03:46 on Mar 20, 2022 |
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Mar 20, 2022 03:40
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Russo was actually extremely awful sorry dude
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Mar 20, 2022 06:27
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Eh, I'd say it's a fair take. I have my own, I'll post it when I'm done with Montreal. Though isn't Cage's problem that he was so irresponsible with money that he ended up with such a giant back tax problem that he has to take just about any role offered so he can pay his bills?
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Mar 20, 2022 08:22
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Trollologist posted:OKAY LET'S GET META: What is Wrestling, conceptually? Or, how I think you may be a stupid person
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Mar 20, 2022 08:31
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vince russo is trash and a very lovely person but its funny watching jim cornette lose his poo poo and threaten to murder him and his family every week lol
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Mar 20, 2022 09:51
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Trollologist posted:In TNA, he was writing for YEARS, when the company was an unknown. Before Hogan and Bishoff and the NWO and all his cronies came back and made it WCW again. When there was a lot of hot talent and neat ideas and actual kind of interesting stories. i'm not reading this whole thing but i will point out as strongly as possible that some of russo's grossest, worst poo poo ever was in this period, when he was pushing the harris brothers and ruining athena's career i dont think you know anything about the Sports Entertainment Xtreme era of tna with a take like that
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Mar 20, 2022 09:57
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Who told him to book a piñata on a pole match between Mexicans?
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Mar 20, 2022 09:58
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vince russo is the shittiest parts of reality tv and jerry springer and hes not interested in writing a good story or "entertaining" the audiance he wants to subvert your expectations with lovely "stories" like what if leave it to beaver was about incest and lovely gimmick matches with screwy endings that piss you off because the ending and story made no sense
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Mar 20, 2022 09:58
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beaver cleavage was also so awful that vince mcmahon himself told him to get that poo poo off the air and russo left for WCW not too long after lmao
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Mar 20, 2022 10:01
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Ward, you went a little hard on the Beaver last night
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Mar 20, 2022 10:07
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16-bit Butt-Head posted:vince russo is the shittiest parts of reality tv and jerry springer and hes not interested in writing a good story or "entertaining" the audiance he wants to subvert your expectations with lovely "stories" like what if leave it to beaver was about incest and lovely gimmick matches with screwy endings that piss you off because the ending and story made no sense ah, the star wars sequels
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Mar 20, 2022 12:10
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ARMBAR A COP posted:a piñata on a pole match between Mexicans 
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Mar 20, 2022 14:48
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Ad by Khad posted:i'm not reading this whole thing but i will point out as strongly as possible that some of russo's grossest, worst poo poo ever was in this period, when he was pushing the harris brothers and ruining athena's career SEX, I get it! God, that's good poo poo. He really just doesn't get enough respect.
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Mar 20, 2022 15:33
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Cornwind Evil posted:Though isn't Cage's problem that he was so irresponsible with money that he ended up with such a giant back tax problem that he has to take just about any role offered so he can pay his bills? Yes. Nic Cage did take just about any script offered to him due to tax reasons, but in the big bucket of movies he's done since then, there isn't a lot of talk about him having insane or noteworthy performances. He's just in a bunch of poo poo. Except when it shines. Seriously, Mandy may be one of my favorite movies he's ever made, but I like weird trash. Everyone posted:Russo Bad I never said he was a good writer. Just he tried to write TV that you would tune into, and there was a time when his style of Wrestling was popular. And that he may have been involved in some good stuff early on. Also, having been in a bullpen with owners, ugh. I can only imagine what stories get received well in a place that had a tag team dressed up like penises called "the Johnsons" on their FIRST show. I doubt Russo could write a compelling long form story with a satisfying pay off. But I would also never hire him if that's what I wanted.
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Mar 20, 2022 15:37
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16-bit Butt-Head posted:vince russo is the shittiest parts of reality tv and jerry springer and hes not interested in writing a good story or "entertaining" the audiance he wants to subvert your expectations with lovely "stories" like what if leave it to beaver was about incest and lovely gimmick matches with screwy endings that piss you off because the ending and story made no sense Yes. He is this. Fox routinely ran the special "When animals attack" which was just footage of people getting like, bitten by bears at the circus and whatever. That show is just about getting you to watch right then, that week, just tune in to see the bear bite that guy. And for a time, it was over in the US. When Russo was at WWE and WCW his writing style only needed to be compelling, not award winning. If you hire Vince Russo and expect him to create a new attitude era on his own, you're the fool. With the benefit of hindsight, I think he becomes the scapegoat, maybe 20-30% more than he should be. But that doesn't mean his writing is good. Just that it was the style at the time for a brief moment, and as times changed, he didn't.
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Mar 20, 2022 15:54
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Russo is still around and trying to stay relevant with a podcast and a twitter account where he is STILL insisting that nobody cares about good wrestling matches, and that anyone can wrestle, and that promos and skits are what people REALLY want to see. Just last week he tried, once again, to pretend that his stupid This is Your Life bit with Rock and Mankind had the highest tv ratings during the Monday Night Wars when the truth is that there are multiple wrestling matches that had higher ratings. He's a lying fraudulent scumbag and also the least believable born again christian ever. Sorry Russo nobody buys that after all the gross poo poo you did for a decade+.
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Mar 20, 2022 15:57
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Elephant Ambush posted:He's a lying fraudulent scumbag and also the least believable born again christian ever. Sorry Russo nobody buys that after all the gross poo poo you did for a decade+. This is all born again christian types, the whole point is to launder white male privilege with a token concession
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Mar 20, 2022 16:34
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Ghost Leviathan posted:This is all born again christian types, the whole point is to launder white male privilege with a token concession A vast majority yeah but not all. Sting is some kind of born again but I'm not sure he'd call it that. Since that happened 20+ years ago he's been clean and sober and is a genuinely good dude.
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Mar 20, 2022 16:43
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There was one thing Russo did that worked, and it's really unfortunate that it hasn't become a standard practice in booking: the idea of giving everyone on the show something to do. Now that can be done well (Wrestlemania 2000 build) or poorly (Jerry Flynn has inexplicably decided to take over basement hallways on Monday Nitro), but on the whole the concept is a good one
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Mar 20, 2022 16:51
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Mumpy Puffinz posted:I think you may be a stupid person Sure, but this thread is quoting the poo poo out of me. So who's more relevant here? This is how it works
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Mar 20, 2022 16:54
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TheSwizzler posted:There was one thing Russo did that worked, and it's really unfortunate that it hasn't become a standard practice in booking: the idea of giving everyone on the show something to do. Now that can be done well (Wrestlemania 2000 build) or poorly (Jerry Flynn has inexplicably decided to take over basement hallways on Monday Nitro), but on the whole the concept is a good one Yes and no. Making sure nobody is left out is a good thing on paper, but when every match is 3 minutes long and there are a million backstage segments on the same show it sacrifices quality for quantity. That's how you get car crash tv. A good way to do it is to sort of rotate who's on tv every week. WWE and WCW both had this incredibly stupid idea that if someone is not on tv every week they've ceased to exist and nobody will remember them. It's fine to not do that.
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Mar 20, 2022 17:06
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Incredibly dumb considering the pops you get when someone's out for rehab then get back in play.
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Mar 20, 2022 17:09
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Elephant Ambush posted:Yes and no. Making sure nobody is left out is a good thing on paper, but when every match is 3 minutes long and there are a million backstage segments on the same show it sacrifices quality for quantity. That's how you get car crash tv. Or don't have a bloated cast of over 100 people? But then you'd have to focus on the stories you have and get to build things. But every week someone kicks in your door screaming and waving papers everywhere, shouting about how they just signed the next Steve Austin! Quick! Put him on TV, get I'm a title run! We're already making toys! WCW was managed poorly.
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Mar 20, 2022 17:10
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BiggerBoat was asking about how ‘real’ pro wrestling is. The answer is messy. Remove all the miscellania, and it is wholly pre-planned. They know who’s winning, and while the hows and how long it takes might be up in the air, every match is predetermined. It just works better this way. The WWE experimented with an ‘online voting’ PPV for a few years, called Taboo Tuesday/Cyber Sunday, where fans could vote on who would face other wrestlers, match stipulations, and so on. The results, as far as I know, were legit, which meant that wrestlers didn’t know the exact structure of their match (including, in some cases, their opponent) until just before they had it. This resulted in, among other things, a funny story from Chris Jericho, who was set up to have no less than TWENTY possible opponents per a large poll. The winner, which was expected to be Batista, instead turned out to be rising (until repeatedly cut off at the knees) star Shelton Benjamin, who Jericho was told would be winning. So Jericho, basically having to wrestle one of twenty possible men (well, more like four or so, the rest were never going to have a chance of getting enough votes) and only finding out which one right before the bell rang, tried to ask Shelton in ring what his finisher was. Shelton’s finisher at the time was the T-Bone Suplex, but either he mumbled the name, Jericho didn’t hear it correctly, or both, because to Jericho, all he heard was “Breeboo Crawshanks”. He ultimately basically went “Okay, I’m gonna go run to the corner, run up the ropes, turn and jump, and hope that this move is something that Shelton can grab me and do.” Which, fortunately, it was. The messy bits? Well, first of all, there’s stuff like ‘working stiff’. Truly ‘worked’ punches will barely glance whoever you’re pretending to strike. “Stiff” punches WILL hit the opponent, potentially quite hard. This is not to be confused with “potatoeing”, which is hitting an opponent hard by ACCIDENT, rather than just trying to make sure the punches look good by, you know, actually doing more actual punching impact. As mentioned by someone, Leon “Vader” White was infamous for this, Mick Foley described it as “His stuff looked like it hurt, and it did.” However, this came down solely due to strike-esque attacks. Ric Flair, in his book, said that while when Vader punched him, it hurt, when he did more complicated moves like a top rope suplex, he was careful to protect Flair. In essence, it seemed, Vader expected to be given as good as he gave out, having been brought up in Japan where 1) Stiff work was almost the norm in those days, and maybe even today, and 2) In one match Vader got thunked on the side of the head by legendarily stiff worker Stan Hanson (partially, according to Mick Foley’s first book, because he was virtually blind without his glasses and he couldn’t wrestle with said glasses on) so hard that one of Vader’s eyes popped out of its socket. Vader’s response was to push the eye back in, letting the swelling combined with his mask hold it in place, finish the match, and then go to a hospital for proper medical care. As said, I do not know what would have happened if you had politely asked Leon White, said to be an actual nice guy for real, to try to not work stiff. But yeah, work stiff = hit people for real to a degree rather than not. Potato = accidental strike that hits for real. Then there’s just how matches are arranged. Generally, the average match will have the winner planned, and maybe one or two moves that the wrestlers want to do, or the office wants them to do, and the rest will be decided in the actual ring. It’s generally believed that matches work best if they’re not excessively scripted, and true ‘ring generals’ can basically improvise a good to great match where all they know is who’s winning and how much time they have. There HAVE been wrestlers who go the opposite way, wanting to literally make a flowchart of EVERYTHING that’s due to happen in the match: Randy Savage was infamous for this, as was Diamond Dallas Page, though he at least had the excuse of getting started in the business very late (he decided to become a wrestler proper after doing stuff like managing for years when he was 35) and was compensating. And such planning could result in amazing matches: the legendary Randy Savage/Ricky Steamboat match at Wrestlemania 3 was basically practiced in a dozen house shows and planned out to the letter beforehand, and Goldberg’s greatest match is considered to be his Halloween Havoc 1998 match against Page, who also planned it all out to the letter. Still, most matches are generally “Know a few things, make up the rest.” If the match is considered ‘big’, they might set up or talk about several more things in advance, but again, the rest is called in the ring. This ties into something else that wrestling marks love: “Psychology”. Which is basically ‘Everything flows and makes sense’. If a wrestler has a submission move based around the arm, then they do moves that attack the arm, ‘weakening’ it and in the logic of the ring, making it so that when the named finisher move is applied, it will hurt more and make the wrestler give up faster/give up before they escape. This is still my next post on the Screwjob, so I'll bring up that Bret had a bunch of moves that he’d break out in many of his matches to attack his opponent’s knee to ‘weaken’ it for his Sharpshooter leglock: dropping an elbow on it, using a flipping jump to twist it in the ‘wrong way’, putting the leg on the rope and ‘butt stomping’ on the side of the knee, and so on. Bad psychology is basically moves that lead to nothing, like attacking the legs for several minutes and then just finishing off an opponent with a sleeper hold without any indication that this wasn't 'planned', ie you wanted to do a leg lock to finish but couldn't, so you went to a backup, or something like that. Psychology is something that cannot be taught, it has to be learned through experience, preferably with as many different opponents as possible. The more limited your pool, the harder it can be to get it down. And of course, there was certain things back in decades past, when wrestling matches were ‘more real’, in the sense that with the territories and exactly how the likes of the WWWF (as the WWE was called at first, the World Wide Wrestling Federation) and the AWA broke off from the larger NWA, it was best to have the top belt on someone who was legitimately tough and could actually wrestle in both classic olympic catch-as-catch-can style and dirtier ‘hooker’ style in case someone decided they wanted to try a sudden pin and run off with the title, ie, legit ‘shooting’ and going against the planned finish of the match. There are stories of days in the 20’s where one wrestler was supposed to win a two out of three falls match 2-1, only for him to lose it swiftly 2-0, and afterwards say he was certain his opponent had not only coated himself with something slippery so he couldn't get a grip on him, but he’d put it on his hands to rub into his face so he’d be partially blinded. However, this sort of thing had more or less died out by the 80’s. So yes, it is a choreographed dance, albeit with numerous facets to make it more varied. And of course, in a video game, that’s just how it works. Attack body parts, be more likely to get pins or submissions based on that. But that only counts for my VGCW post. Now, a show is best executed if the showrunner and the wrestlers are all on the same page. If they’re not, problems arise. This gets worse if the wrestlers are in a position where they can run the show themselves, because between the general personality types and the ‘spotlight fix’, you just get too tempted to indulge, and keep doing it more and more. Even Bret was tempted: he said when he saw how large his Wrestlemania 9 paycheck was (where he main evented against Yokuzuna), he said he wanted to grab onto ‘that teat’ and never let go. And that’s just financial aspects; for many, it’s the ego aspects. People being people, sometimes things need to be corralled, people need to suck up their dislike and be professional, and sometimes even the showrunner needs to be told that the people performing the show don’t like it and have suggestions. In essence, giving a wrestler creative control is probably not a good idea unless it only applies under certain conditions. For Bret, it did. It only applied to his last thirty days in the company. He had to agree to just how he would have his last matches, and in this case, lose the WWE Title. And Bret would not lose it to Shawn Michaels, in Canada. No. Matter. What. — Note the wording there. Bret was completely unwilling to lose the title to SHAWN MICHAELS, in CANADA. Bret has repeatedly said (and no one’s ever questioned this claim as far as I know) that he was willing to drop the title to anyone else. He’d drop it to Vader, he’d drop it to Mankind, he’d drop it to Undertaker, he’d drop it to the newly debuted Kane, he would have surely offered to drop it to Austin if Austin’s Summerslam neck injury hadn’t put his possible future career still up in the air at the time, hell, he’d drop it to the Brooklyn Brawler, anyone, anywhere else. Hell, he might have even waived the ‘in Canada’ part for all these suggestions. Just not Shawn Michaels, in Canada. Vince didn’t want it to happen on a random house show? Fine. The way his contract ending in WWF and starting in WCW shook out, Bret could stay in the company up until early December, where he could drop it in a 4-way match in the United States on the December PPV. Or hell, he could just come out one night, hand the title over, say goodbye and see you later to his fans, and that would be that. All Bret wanted was to leave with his head held high…and not to leave with his last match as champion being losing the belt to Shawn Michaels, in Canada. Or losing to Shawn Michaels at all, but ESPECIALLY in Canada. If Shawn Michaels was in this theorized four way, fine, Bret would just make sure it ended by someone else pinning him or Shawn pinning someone else. But he would not, no matter what, lose to Shawn Michaels in a one on one match, in Canada. Okay, a bit of a hassle, but light years away from the sort of nonsense Hulk Hogan used to pull. So why didn’t Vince accept? Well, personal failings aside, two reasons spring to mind. Let’s backtrack through a few years. When Turner Broadcasting purchased the main body of the NWA just as the 80's were ending, turning it into WCW, they brought in corporate oversight to oversee the product, which was generally considered “a bad idea” because these suits had no clue how the business worked and would try to fit square pegs in round holes because that was how it worked in the ‘real’ world. The first of these was Jim Herd, who I mentioned before and is generally considered a complete idiot and tool who had all the downsides of wrestlers and wrestling showrunners (ego, refusal to change) without any possible benefits (knowing how to run a show, give fans what they want). He infamously suggested that Ric Flair was too old (ironic considering the future, yes, but he wasn’t exactly WRONG: Ric was 41 or so at the time and had been on top one way or another for a good 15 years; thing is, he was still very over and hence his argument was invalid, more or less) and that he should, in response, cut his hair, get an earring, and rename himself “Spartacus”. He managed to get one of the three, as Flair did, or was forced to, cut his shoulder length platinum blonde hair in 1990 to the semi moptop he’d have for the next several years of his career (and based on how Flair described it in his book, he really didn’t want to do that). However, another thing Herd wanted to cut was Flair’s contract, the biggest in the company. Because he was too old and being paid too much. Flair, quite understandably, refused. Herd threatened to bury him. Flair shot back by threatening to quit. Herd decided to call Flair’s bluff and fire him outright. Terrible, terrible mistake. Not only did WCW crowds rebel and chant “WE WANT FLAIR!” for months (it was the CM Punk chant of its day), but they further rebelled by stopping showing up, and by the end of 1991, Herd was out on his rear end after months of the new champion he'd picked performing in nearly empty arenas. But perhaps the biggest obvious headache was Flair’s response to “All right, in the NWA I put down a $25,000 down payment every time I won the World Title, if I lost it (as in, 'lost and found' lost it) that money was gone, when I lost in in the ring I got my money back, but I won the title back so often that I just let them hang onto my original payment for several years instead of constantly paying and taking it back, and there’s been inflation, so please send me a $25,000 adjusted for inflation amount.” Herd’s response? “gently caress you.” Flair’s response? “Well I guess I technically own the belt then.” Flair promptly signed with the WWF and sent them the NWA World Title to be used as a prop on their shows...  ...which probably nearly gave the more old school long timers heart attacks when they saw it. It prompted lawsuits and various nonsense like “Flair wears a different title and it is blurred on WWF TV because it is ‘unofficial’ to hide it wasn’t the original title” until Flair finally got his payment and the “Big Gold Belt” was returned to WCW. Also, due to this, the new champion for a while had to use a repurposed tag team belt from a random indy as their world title. Yeah, apparently in those days, replicating those belts was drat hard work, unlike today, where you can purchase replicas of just about any title if you have several hundred dollars to burn. The point being, a wrestling company’s world title showing up as a prop in another company is Not Good Optics In Any Way. But you know what’s worse? — The WWF’s Women’s division, spoken of by Gavok, was a very stop-start part of WWE for decades. They first tried it in the 80’s, not only having a woman’s title but a woman’s tag title; indeed, the other main part of ‘Rock and Wrestling’ was Cyndi Lauper backing up female wrestler Wendi Ritcher to dethrone woman’s champion Lelaini Kai.  No, I don’t know who the guy on the right with the sunglasses is. Maybe he’s a fan who somehow snuck into the ring, for all I know. Also, the woman’s tag titles were barely used and primarily used as a prop for a Japanese female team who had one of the best tag team names I ever heard: The Jumping Bomb Angels. (Edit: Apparently I misremembered and it was a tag team called the Glamour Girls that had the titles for the longest time, with two reigns combining for a total of 1,157 days, or three years and change. Oh yeah, and you know how many teams held the belts? Four. It turns out the Angels had the SHORTEST reign at 136 days. The other two teams held it for 574 and 237 days respectively, and since two of those four teams had the same wrestler, it was basically three and a half teams that held the belts for the little under six years the belts existed) Which reminds me: I spoke of Bill Watts’ failed attempt to run WCW and his preference for big, tough men; well, he brought in two of his favorites, Terry Gordy and “Dr. Death” Steve Williams (he of the infamous Brawl for All debacle) and basically immediately made them tag champs. Their unofficial name? “The Miracle Violence Connection”. Anyway, both women’s titles basically vanished at the end of the 80’s. The WWF would take another crack at a woman’s title at the end of 1993, where newly debuted from WCW Debrah Ann Miceil, whose most famous wrestling handle was “Madusa” (which was a portmanteau of “Made In The USA” rather than any reference to a snake haired woman), but would wrestle in the WWF under the name of “Alundra Blayze” (Side note: Alundra for the Playstation 1 is a great game but ohhhhhhhhh gently caress a certain switch puzzle) won a supposed tournament (I thought it might be a Rio de Janeiro situation, which was a long ago in joke in wrestling that if a wrestler was just given a belt, usually a newly created one, they ‘won a tournament in Rio De Janeiro’ to claim it. The most famous case of this being Pat Patterson as the first WWF Intercontinental champion. But no, in this case, it seems like it was legit), if you consider a setup with four female wrestlers a ‘tournament’ with none of the matches actually happening on TV. The problem quickly became apparent: it was more the WWF WoMAN’s Division. As in, the matches would be Debrah as Alundra wrestling some random woman for her title; otherwise, there were zero women’s matches. Perhaps best noted was how at Wrestlemania X, Alundra wrestled Leilani Kai. Yes, the same woman who Ritcher had beaten a decade before. You’d think this would be played up as some sort of generational thing, but no, it was just more or less a random match. Even moreso, WWF’s official magazine said that Alundra would be facing someone else, one Debbie Combs, only for her to be replaced by Kai for zero reason. So yeah. Needless to say, the WWF had little interest in women’s wrestling. It was still better than the third shot at it, starting in late 1998 as a vanity project around Rena “Sable” Mero/Lesner, made worse by the fact that Rena didn’t even want to learn how to wrestle, and the title being a prop for Playboy shoots, catfights, pudding matches, pillow matches, and so on for years and years until Stephanie had some daughters and realized “Hey I don’t want this for my kids, in any way.” and reworked the WWE’s Woman’s Division in the mid 2010's to actually be a serious wrestling one. NXT having already had a great woman’s division since its start helped there (and some would say they did all the work and Stephanie did a smidgeon and then acted like she'd overseen the whole thing). But back to Debrah in 1994: with the U.S woman’s scene more or less a wasteland, Debrah told Vince and co that what they needed to do was bring in female wrestlers from Japan. So they did. Mainly, they brought over then big female star Keiko Aoki, nee Bull Nakano.  It was a fair get. Nakano was a 10 year veteran, having started in the business when she was fifteen, she had a unique look with hair styled to be pointing straight up, and her bulky form (she would be what kids these days would call “Thicc”, I believe) let her do convincing power moves and she had enough agility to do top rope legdrops (and sometimes, spinning flip legdrops as a ‘super finisher’). In essence, she was probably considerably more talented than Debrah, who was in general just “Good to pseudo great”. The pair managed some good matches, with Alundra winning at Summerslam 1994, then losing the title in a rare outside of WWE title defense in Japan in November, at a female wrestling/”joshi” showcase event called “Big Egg Wrestling Universe”. People complain that Wrestlemania is overlong these days: Big Egg lasted for ten hours (!) on one singular show (!!) and had 23 matches on it, so yeah, there’s always forerunners. It seemed like they were building to a rematch at Wrestlemania 11, where Alundra would regain her title. It didn’t happen. For whatever reason, the match never made it on the show. God knows that the Allied Powers match with a random tag team called the Blu Brothers (ie the Nazi Harris twins) had to go on, but not an established feud between two women that had went for nearly a year. Instead, Alundra would regain the belt on the next night’s Raw. It was a symbol of what was to come; shortly thereafter, another Japan get, Rhonda Singh.  Who was a FIFTEEN year veteran for Stampede Wrestling and Japan, where she wrestled as “Monster Ripper”, debuted and kayfabe broke Debrah’s nose. The idea, it seemed, was that Singh would feud with Nakano while Debrah took time off, supposedly, to get some plastic surgery. Except Nakato was shortly thereafter caught with cocaine in her bags and fired. That was bad enough. What was worse was that Vince saw the very large and bulky (some fat, some stout) Singh and decided nah, she shouldn’t be a scary equivalent of Vader tearing smaller opponents to shreds. She should be Bertha Faye, Queen of the Trailer Parks.  And in a relationship with longtime manager and general WWE character Harvey Whippleman. Who would sing her theme music. And ironically, in real life they didn’t get along at all. I have heard that Singh had self-loathing problems due to her weight; I’m sure this helped. Debrah returned to lose the title to Singh at Summerslam 1995, but regained it less than two months later at another Raw. The next step in their ‘feud’ was to bring in several other female joshi wrestlers to serve as each other’s teams on a Survivor Series match. That match (and some other matches between the two foursomes on TV shows before and after), as it turned out, was really something, as the much more seriously trained Japanese female wrestlers proceeded to make most of the people on the WWE roster look like utter amateur twits who could barely perform a basic move. Perhaps nowhere was this demonstrated in a match where two of said wrestlers, also-big brutish monster heel Aja Kong (who had one of the best theme musics in all of wrestling history…) and Chapirita Asari on a Raw, where Kong broke out a PACKAGE PILEDRIVER, in 1995, IN A WOMAN’S MATCH, AS A NON FINISHER. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgt1ayddrLI It would be Kong who won the Survivor Series match, pinning Blayze and being set up as her next challenger. Except, as said, the WWF was currently in real bad financial straits. Depending on who you ask, the WWE either tried to renegotiate Debrah’s contract to a lower amount, or just decided to shutter the Women’s Division entirely and release Debrah. However it happened, it seemed she was deeply, DEEPLY insulted, as she ended up contacting and immediately signing with WCW, making a debut on a late December Nitro…where she did this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrLwrBLV-lo Yeah. Maybe that was what the WWF had already metaphorically done, but Debrah made it personal by using ‘official WWE property’ as a prop to dismiss and degrade the competition. It would have knock-on effects, as well as getting Debrah blackballed from the WWF for nearly 20 years before she was finally ‘forgiven’ and invited to their Hall of Fame in 2015. So we had Ric Flair using the WCW Title as a prop in WWE in 1991, and Alundra Blayze throwing her WWE Woman’s Title in the trash in WCW in late 1995. I guess, if you want to be kind, you can see Vince’s fear. What if Bret Hart showed up on WCW with the WWE Title and did something in that vein? It would kill WWF stone dead. Remember, no one knew that the second WWF boom period was around the corner. WCW had already been crushing the WWF for over a year now based on talent signed away from WWF. If their CHAMPION showed up, that would be it. The fan audience would dismiss WWF as a hollow shell that would never reform into anything worthwhile and keep turning to WCW, and the descent would continue until it hit the ground. But hey, you say. There’s a lot of differences here. Bret Hart wouldn’t do that. He never wanted to leave. And I agree. Bret was a loyal man. Even being forced out, he never would have pulled a stunt like Flair and Blayze did. Still not good enough. Even if Bret never went anywhere near WCW with the belt on him, if Bischoff went on TV and just basically SAID he’d signed away the WWF World Champion, it would be a similarly potential mortal blow. Fine, Bret said. He would contact Eric and basically go “Do NOT give ANY official notice or performance or press conferences or anything like that until I have officially left the WWF entirely having lost the title.” This is where it gets a little fuzzy: some accounts say that Bret couldn’t get ahold of Bischoff as Bischoff was off on a hunting trip and it was November 1997: cell phones were nowhere near ubiquitous yet. Hell, the previous year’s big horror film Scream had a ‘red herring’ on who the killer was by the person dropping a cell phone, which at the end of 1996 was very rare, but nowadays most people wouldn’t even register it as a seeming clue that this guy could be the killer (Spoiler: He was). I suspect even if Bret had managed to contact Bischoff and extracted promises from him, though, it wouldn’t have been enough for Vince. When I’m not being kind in my assessments of the man, I call him a psychopath, and psychopaths have no ability to trust. To Vince, per this assessment, Bret would do it, because that’s what VINCE would have done in Bret’s shoes. He couldn’t allow it. But Bret would. Not. Budge. He would not lose the belt to Shawn Michaels, in Canada. You’d think that they’d just have him drop the title and rework plans. After all, it wasn’t like Shawn had ‘earned’ that title shot in the way a normal sports person would. It had been written as such. Pre-arranged. Absolutely nothing said that Shawn and Bret HAD to wrestle each other in Montreal for the WWF World Title. Some people, unfortunately, thought differently. And so as the event closed in, meetings began to be had behind closed doors. Meetings that didn’t include Bret, and whose people did their best to make sure he didn’t hear of them. As said. I don’t think the Screwjob was planned from the moment Bret re-signed. Vince ain’t that smart; psychopaths in reality never are. But they can manage when they feel backed into a corner. And Vince, I suspect, sure did. Cornwind Evil fucked around with this message at 17:38 on Mar 20, 2022 |
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Mar 20, 2022 17:26
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Cornwind Evil posted:So they did. Mainly, they brought over then big female star Keiko Aoki, nee Bull Nakano. Holy poo poo. A real life Rob Liefeld drawing
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Mar 20, 2022 17:56
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Russo wrote some lovely poo poo but it's good that he tried really hard to make sure everyone had something to do so they could be on tv and get paid, something that wwe has not made any effort to do since. Also he was always a supporter of Chyna after wwe turned their backs and advocated for her when she was struggling. He had her on his podcast right before she died, apparently she had been living in Japan trying to hide from her commitment to Vivid to shoot the final porn film in her contract. Who would have guessed that Vince Russo would be pro women and anti pornography
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Mar 20, 2022 18:01
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The thread’s been talking about Vince Russo, and by extension that brings up his mortal enemy and Trollologist’s favorite guy, Jim Cornette. How much did Vince Russo have to do with Montreal? Very little, if anything, based on general reports. Cornette? Well, as Trollologist mocked, the wrestling business was about to change irrevocably. Human beings are odd, in the sense that some can have very accurate instincts and bad feelings that warn them of danger, and then you have people like the significant others of Denis Radar and Randy Kraft, who lived with utterly inhumanly brutal serial killers for years if not decades and never had a single clue of just who their partners really were. There’s a thin line between properly assessed wariness and baseless paranoia, a lot of the time, so you’ll forgive Bret for not sussing out what was going to happen. And it wasn’t like he didn’t have ANY indication. The secret meetings HAD been noticed by other wrestlers, if mostly subconsciously, and combined with Bret and Vince basically devolving into yelling at each other over how the finish would go as the time limit ticked down, various wrestlers had begun to have their suspicions. Finally, an agreement was seemingly reached. Bret and Shawn would wrestle in Montreal, with their groups interfering at the end of the match for a giant brawl and the match being thrown out, and Bret would come out the next night, surrender the title, and move on. Shawn, outside of raising the point that he didn’t see the logic in him putting over a soon to be WCW guy, lurked mostly in the background during this; not that it mattered, as the damage was long done. It was a sour note to go out on, but it was what had come to be. At least Bret thought so. Some of his friends and fellow wrestlers didn’t, and in the days before the show, Bret was repeatedly told by them that they had a bad feeling, and that he should take some precautions, like kicking out of every pinfall at one instead of two, and not to be put in any submission holds. Bret noted the warnings, but (and I don’t blame him) he assessed that like I said, it was the 90’s, not the 20’s. This wasn’t the time when Mafia-connected promoters would literally send in a ringer to cripple for real a wrestler who was making trouble, the days of his father where you needed to be legit tough and good JUST IN CASE. Yes, he’d been what could be considered ‘unreasonable’, but all of it was in response to others; he’d initiated none of it. Surely it wouldn’t be asking THAT much to get what he’d requested, especially considering all his other offers had been refused? Surely, nothing fucky was going to happen. Bret was NOT so blind, however, to not try and take ONE precaution; he sought out the planned referee for the match, Earl Hebner, and asked him, man to man, to not screw him over. Hebner promised, on his children’s heads, that he would not. To Bret, that was enough. Unfortunately, either after that, or even before that, Hebner had been approached by Gerald Brisco, speaking for McMahon, and he superseded Bret’s request. He would do as McMahon told him, or he’d be fired. So yes, it’s very possible that Hebner lied to Bret’s face; I like to think he hated to do it, but felt he had no choice. Bret wasn’t going to be able to guarantee him another job if he decided to throw away his WWE one for Bret’s sake. His family came first. At least, I like to think so. I don’t know what went on, or still goes on, in the man’s head. The PPV began, and backstage, Bret and Shawn managed to be professional as they drew up a framework for their match. Bret, in a terrible in hindsight blind spot, suggested a sequence where Shawn would put him in his own Sharpshooter near the end of the match, which Bret would reverse, shortly followed by the schnozz finish. Someone ‘in the know’ passed this information on to Vince, and the trap was fully formed. There’s also sorts of little weird things about the PPV that only become clear in hindsight, but the biggest one is that that night, Vince was absent his usual position at the commentary desk, and he more or less never returned to it. The PPV itself was average, carried by the hot Montreal crowd, and everything seemed normal when the Bret vs Shawn match began. Shawn repeatedly insulted (maybe a better term would be ‘molested’) the Canadian flag just to drive home that yeah, he was the heel here, Bret beat on him through the crowd for a few minutes so people could see Shawn ‘get his’, and then they headed back in the ring…as Vince, for some reason, made his way ringside. In the back, per instructions given that he didn’t fully understand until later, Bruce Prichard began yelling for extra security. Bret’s fellow wrestlers didn’t clue in at first that this had been for THEIR presence, so that they couldn’t run out and interfere in the match in any way. In the ring, Earl Hebner was ‘knocked out’, Bret went down, and Shawn slipped on the Sharpshooter. Bret sold it for a few seconds before he started snaking his hand back around to grab Shawn’s ankle to reverse it…  Then Vince yelled something, and Earl sprang up from his ‘unconscious state’ to stand in front of Bret, and Vince immediately screamed at the timekeeper “RING THE BELL! RING THE loving BELL!” The bell was rung. Earl Hebner fled the ring back to his hotel to avoid Bret’s possible wrath. People around the ring shoved the belt into Shawn’s hands and basically shoved him in turn backstage as he began his act that he wasn’t in on what had just happened. And as what tends to occur in the insanely rare cases where an actual shoot happens, the PPV abruptly ended with a confused Bret and the announcers barely mumbling that he had lost. To the audience watching at home, it was an incredibly strange and bizarre ending, like the PPV had suddenly ran out of time out of nowhere. In the ring, it finally dawned on Bret what had happened. For all his efforts, for just the small request to let him leave with his head held high…it was still too much. He’d been double crossed. Or, as the terminology would incline to insist on, screwed. And while the live feed had been cut, the cameras were still rolling. This was something I later discovered the WWE basically does for insurance purposes. Which meant that there were plenty of cameras filming when Bret spat on Vince outside the ring, getting him pretty good, before he tried to recover what dignity he could by playing to the also-confused live crowd and drawing the letters W, C, W in the air. It didn’t help, and Bret’s anger finally came exploding fully through him, as he left the ring and began legitimately smashing nearby ring equipment in a rage. Backstage, the mood was equally enraged. Shawn, to his acting credit, kept putting on the act that he hadn’t been in on the Screwjob (Mick Foley’s account had him going “THERE IS NO WAY I AM ACCEPTING HIS loving BELT LIKE THIS! THIS IS BULLSHIT!) and Undertaker swiftly made his way to Vince’s office. It’s a bit vague on just what was said, beyond “You go and apologize to Bret right now, or you won’t have a company tomorrow. And Vince, I might be your truest company guy, but even I am resisting the urge to beat the poo poo out of you.” Whatever WAS said, it was enough to make Vince leave his office and indeed do this more-or-less pointless gesture, as it wasn’t even going to begin to make up for the betrayal. Bret, stripping out of his gear when Vince and his comrades entered, only told the man that he was going to take a shower, and if Vince was still there when he came back out, he would punch Vince in the loving mouth. Vince stayed. If you believe his story, Bret re-emerged, Vince offered him a free shot, Bret took it, Vince fell backwards into Gerald Brisco’s arms, and the man in the process of keeping Vince from falling accidentally stepped on his ankle and broke it. If you believe Bret (and I do), Bret emerged and laid out Vince with one shot before Vince could do more than stutter out a word, and Vince puppet with strings cut fell so badly he broke his ankle in the process. There’s video of a dazed Vince being escorted from the locker room, likely clueless just how many bullets he was in the process of dodging. The WWF locker room was completely and utterly furious, and all it would have taken would have been one firebrand speaking up to get them to rebel completely. In the end, Vince lucked out: Davey Boy Smith, Jim Neidhart, and Rick Rude left the company for WCW in protest, and Mick Foley intentionally skipped the next night’s Raw in the same protest before being talked around by Jim Ross. With Vince leaving, and other wrestlers having cleared off for various reasons, Shawn Michaels suddenly realized that he was more or less alone. His lone ally, Triple H, wasn’t around, and neither were other wrestlers…except Davey Boy, Neidhart, Owen Hart, and Bret himself. He was alone. It was very possible the wrestlers did this intentionally. And so, according to one story, Bret then approached Shawn. He offered a hand, saying “Thanks for the match.” Now, at the time, Bret didn’t know Shawn was in on it, and he says if he did, he would have kicked Shawn’s head off. But he didn’t. Even in his likely blackest of black moods, when it would be so easy to assume Shawn was part of the conspiracy, especially with all the poo poo he’d pulled in the past, Bret gave him the benefit of the doubt, and their last contact for over a decade was Bret trying to be the bigger man and exit with a little bit of class. That’s the sort of man I really feel and hope that Bret Hart was, always, at his core. And so, went the Montreal Screwjob. — Of course, it didn’t end there. Because the WWF, in full swing of the ‘burn it all and piss on the ashes’ mindset of the Attitude Era, would alternate between erasing Bret’s legacy or bringing up variants on the Screwjob to rub it in his face. The very next year, The Rock would win his first world title by putting Mick Foley in the Sharpshooter, having Vince command the bell be rung, and Rock celebrating his heel turn with the boss. Hell, it even followed Bret to WCW, where he won a match with Goldberg when Roddy Piper did something in the same vein, albeit both times it was planned story. In all honesty, what Vince deserved was probably his company shattering and falling apart. Or the wrestlers mutinying together and doing something like forcing Vince to let them form a union lest they quit en masse and wholly kill his company. Vince, by the old luck of the devil, avoided all that. Even so, it did seem like all his attempts to avoid a mortal blow to his company had failed. People knew, and with WCW claiming Bret Hart’s services and Vince seemingly having nothing else, it was just a matter of time. Except, as I’ve said in the WCW/TNA breakdown…the sheer controversy brought a lot of attention. Attention that the WWE managed to keep. And build on. Within six months, Nitro’s endless winning streak was over. Within three years and some change, WCW was dead and buried. Vince had told Bret that WCW would have no idea what to do with him, and he was right. With the organization fully strangled by the usual suspects, none of whom wanting anyone, especially like Bret, threatening their spots, Bret would spend three drifting years never finding his feet until his career abruptly came to an end with a still-too-green Bill Goldberg botching a superkick and kicking Bret legit so hard that he gave him a severe concussion which compounded itself and ultimately forced Bret into early retirement. Which would be followed a few years later by a sudden stroke that Bret also had to work hard to come back from. Even today, any in ring appearances Bret made had it utterly forbidden for him to take any sort of bump, because his insurance both won’t let him, and he’s just at that big a risk from the concussion compounding even decades later. It would mean more, maybe, if Bret had chosen to go to WCW. But this was not a Lebron/Cleveland situation. As I have said, Bret was fine where he was. He was loyal. He trusted Vince. Karma, it seemed, would punish Shawn Michaels; within two months he would take a bad bump that would royally gently caress up his lower back, and would end up dropping the World Title to Steve Austin at Wrestlemania before seemingly having to go into retirement. Except, however it happened, Shawn’s back healed up well enough from the spinal surgery he elected to get that he was able to return in the summer of 2002 and continue wrestling for another 9 and a half years, having a bunch more drat great matches in the process. And Vince? Well, after seeing just how intense the negative attention the Bret Hart situation caused, he decided to lean into it and make it part of the storyline. Vince McMahon, doofus announcer, was gone. MR. McMahon, evil boss of the WWF who would screw over his biggest star without blinking an eye, was born. In essence, to save the WWF, and bring about the Attitude Era, Bret’s career was sacrificed, like Vince and co were that Indiana Jones villain who somehow magically pulled hearts out of chests. I mentioned Jim Cornette at the start for some reason. Why? Because as he says it, as the years went on and he did his own recollections, he realized that he might very well have been the match to the fuse. Because while they were all trying to figure out how to get the belt off Bret, he suggested that maybe they should just ignore his creative control and his ‘deluded’ idea of being a hero and use a screw finish to say he lost it. Because this was a business, and Bret had forgotten that, and so he’d forced their hand. Except this would trigger the full shift of wrestling into the ‘yank the curtain back, make it more obvious it’s a show, and kill the certain magic spot where suspension of disbelief thrived the best and hence more or less kill what wrestling’s heart was, never to find a proper replacement’. It wasn’t just the business changing irrevocably. It was a change that Cornette himself might have helped set in motion. I doubt he appreciates the black irony of it. --- Next Post/Conclusion: So just who IS the most to blame for the Screwjob?
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Mar 20, 2022 19:10
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