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eat the turkey or you arent going over
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Apr 25, 2022 02:27
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Oh no, are you talking about the Titus O'Neil barf match? 
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Apr 25, 2022 05:10
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16-bit Butt-Head posted:eat the turkey or you arent going over  "HE'S GONNA EAT! HE'S GONNA EAT! HE'S GONNA EAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT!!!"
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Apr 25, 2022 05:32
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Big Bad Voodoo Lou posted:It is astounding how you hardly hear about any backstage drama, politics, and out-of-control egos out of AEW, even with Cody's departure. There's been some backstage drama at AEW (the main thing that jumps to mind is the beef that was between Thunder Rosa and Ivelisse) but for the most part it seems like everyone is trying to make the company a more welcoming, inviting place for each other instead of trying to raise drama and cause fights. They know what happens when egos get out of control, the older wrestlers have lived through it and the younger ones have heard stories about it, and they don't want that happening if they can help it.
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Apr 25, 2022 05:49
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Vandar posted:There's been some backstage drama at AEW (the main thing that jumps to mind is the beef that was between Thunder Rosa and Ivelisse) but for the most part it seems like everyone is trying to make the company a more welcoming, inviting place for each other instead of trying to raise drama and cause fights. They know what happens when egos get out of control, the older wrestlers have lived through it and the younger ones have heard stories about it, and they don't want that happening if they can help it. thats boring they should hire hulk hogan and give him full creative control imo
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Apr 25, 2022 06:09
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Kinda wonder when Triple H heads over to AEW...
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Apr 25, 2022 06:23
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Maybe he'll call himself Heart Attack Helmsley
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Apr 25, 2022 06:25
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Bogus Adventure posted:Kinda wonder when Triple H heads over to AEW... triple h is dead
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Apr 25, 2022 06:26
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16-bit Butt-Head posted:triple h is dead That's right, dead serious about opening at AEW!
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Apr 25, 2022 07:06
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Vandar posted:There's been some backstage drama at AEW (the main thing that jumps to mind is the beef that was between Thunder Rosa and Ivelisse) but for the most part it seems like everyone is trying to make the company a more welcoming, inviting place for each other instead of trying to raise drama and cause fights. They know what happens when egos get out of control, the older wrestlers have lived through it and the younger ones have heard stories about it, and they don't want that happening if they can help it. That's why I'm somewhat curious about the upcoming Hangman vs. CM Punk match, as Colt Cabana is one of Hangman's Dark Order buddies and Punk and Colt had a major real life falling out.
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Apr 25, 2022 13:55
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Gavok posted:That's why I'm somewhat curious about the upcoming Hangman vs. CM Punk match, as Colt Cabana is one of Hangman's Dark Order buddies and Punk and Colt had a major real life falling out. Have they referenced him being in the Dark Order on AEW TV recently? Colt was on the recent ROH PPV and (other than him doing the DO hand claw thing to no response from the crowd, IIRC) they made zero reference to him being in DO and he wasn't wearing DO ring gear or anything. I think they're just going to quietly remove him from that faction and have him be more in ROH once TK gets that up and running.
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Apr 25, 2022 14:09
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lol https://twitter.com/WrestlePurists/status/1518553898612666370?s=20&t=wE0yo2-VUhN5DVwbmzc0oA lmao
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Apr 25, 2022 16:26
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Elephant Ambush posted:lol Wrestlers will be in a perpetual state of turning, face/heel alignments will cease to exist, as everyone settles into a nice neutral "tweener" gray area, all because their rich old employer's brain has turned completely into mush
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Apr 25, 2022 16:29
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Oh hey, inexplicable turns for no reason? A PERFECT TIME! As this ended up really delayed. When I started on this, it seemed like a fair time. But I ended up having a lot of trouble putting it into any sort of proper analysis. But hey, like wrestling, sometimes you throw poo poo at the wall and see what sticks. So then. What’s my (belated) opinion on Vince Russo?  Well, since I LOVE my analogies, I remember when I first discovered Iron Chef, what REALLY impressed me was just how drat creative the contestants could be with their ingredients. Well, yes, that was the whole point of the show, but it’s one thing to say, make several interesting dishes with tomatoes (which they did, four times), and another to somehow use shark fins to make ice cream, or drain the blood out of a duck to somehow create a salad dressing that’s not only palatable, but incredibly tasty. And as Iron Chef was quite popular in the 00’s, starting with dubs of the original Japanese show and then following that with a long running American version, also long running comedy show Saturday Night Live decided to take a poke at it, on what I believe was the first January 2001 episode which also featured Charlie Sheen’s sole time as a host. In said show, Sheen portrayed “American Bachelor Chef”, who proceeded to use the show’s ingredient of ‘shark heads’ to make items like ‘Pizza with a Shark Head On It’ and “Shark Head With Pillsbury Cookies Baked Out Of A Tube”. My point? Sometimes, very rarely, Russo was akin to an actual Iron Chef. Nearly ALL of the time, however, he was Iron Chef American Bachelor. Though maybe, as much as he’s disparaged (if not far worse) now, maybe even THEN he was still on to something. After all, in the sketch, the American Bachelor Iron Chef won. — As has been noted by many, Russo was not a traditional wrestling fan, in the sense that Russo really didn’t care for the ‘wrestling’ part at all. Instead, Russo was akin to Quentin Tarantino, a video store owner who probably had a wall of strange oddball films like Blood Freak, The Loved One, or any of Peter Jackson’s first films he made in New Zealand. He was a fan of oddball concepts and above all else, the soap opera drama that wrestling often produced. When Blockbuster drove his store out of business, Vince started up a local New York radio show with a fellow “wrestling fan”, John Arezzi. This is the first story I ever got on how Vince ultimately ended up in the WWE: John was supposedly an absolutely merciless critic of Vince and the McMahons, especially with the steroids trials, and he was just so drat VICIOUS in his criticism that Vince basically hired Russo to retool the program and make it WWE focused. Yes, this Arezzi was so bad, Vince paid someone else off to (non lethally) shut him up, and when the show ended, Russo was rewarded for stopping the deluge by being hired to be the editor of WWF Magazine. But as juicy as this is, it seems to be hearsay of SOME degree (quite possibly a very large degree), as other accounts say that Vince’s partnership with John didn’t work out, and that Russo then started his own radio wrestling show, which lasted a year and apparently basically shut down because it was getting too many crank phone calls (as well as costing too much), and that Russo apparently wrote a letter to Linda asking her for ‘a chance’, which somehow got her attention, and she was the one who hired him to work for WWF Magazine, which he became editor of later. Which of these is true, or more true? I have no idea. I suspect I’d have to ask Russo himself, and for all I know he’d lie to me.  Vince’s influence on WWF Magazine is debatable; I actually own a lot of the ones where he was editor and wrote a column under the pen name of ‘Vic Venom’, who was basically the classic heel color commentator insulting the faces and praising the heels, but they’re locked up in a box buried under a bunch of stuff in storage, so I can’t pull them out and take a renewed look with any degree of ease. I specifically remember one after Summerslam 1996 where he claimed that (in storyline), Jim Cornette was killing Vader’s career, and that the proof was that in Summerslam Vader won the match twice (countout and DQ) which should have guaranteed him a near instant rematch, but Cornette demanded the match restart and hence Shawn outlasted Vader, Russo explicitly bringing up Vader being blown up (ie, sucking wind and clearly exhausted, something that tends to happen a lot to wrestlers who gain too much weight or are out of practice, like Rock and Batista during their 2010's based returns). Between what we know about Vince and Cornette now, and just how Shawn Michaels acted in that match and in general, it rankles, to say the least. One account was that Russo brought ‘a weird insider edge’ to the magazine, but I still remember articles like Triple H trying to teach Mantaur how to eat like a gentlemen (spoiler: he failed), so it might be in the margins. Eventually, Russo revealed ‘the man’ behind the pen name and wrote the columns under his own name; not sure if he stopped before he left or if it only stopped then. As accounts say, with the WWF business in the toilet, whether by initiative, invitation, or just knowing who to speak to or to suck up to, Russo managed to finagle a position on the WWE creative team. The assessment is pretty well trod. The general upside of Russo helping with the Attitude Era was that he tried to give everyone on the card something to do…and that was about it. Everything else can be debated until the cows come home how much Russo really accomplished, and how much of it was short term fire at the cost of long term fuel depletion, or something. Russo likes to claim he helped create (to some degree) everything from “Stone Cold” Steve Austin to DX to Mick Foley’s face pushes. Leaving aside the group effort and luck involved in such things (No Curtain Call, no Austin as KOTR replacement winner, and possibly no Austin 3:16 promo, which was heavily dependant on the fact he faced Jake Roberts doing a religious gimmick in the fina), that claim is as good as any made by Austin and the actual people doing the gimmicks, to Vince McMahon, to other people on the creative team. Everything else? Well, the Attitude Era has aged very poorly, at best; the short term ‘GET ATTENTION NOW’ means the whole thing is shot through with regrettable then and REALLY regrettable now moments, like the Gang Warz (nee the Battle Of Racial Conflicts), Mark Henry being tricked by a trans man (or trans woman, which one is where a male is pretending to be a female but still has male genitalia? Legit asking) into sexual favors and basically reacting like a mini Ace Ventura when he found out, and of course, one of his shining ideas of ‘I really want this to get on air’...being a male wrestler and his female manager playing mother and son and the whole thing being a literally incestuous riff on Leave It To Beaver with double enterdres so constantly bad (and gross) that you’d swear it would cause ‘cancel culture’ to retroactively spawn in the late 90’s just to yell about it (Russo claims nowadays that the 'point' of the idea was something along the lines of "This is clearly a grown man and a woman of close to the same age, she is clearly not actually his mother, but their behaviour would disturb other wrestlers and the male wrestler could take advantage, Goldust mind games style...which totally does not reek of decades later rewriting of history, nope nope, we just didn't 'get the gimmick'.). And those are the obvious ones; there’s the less obvious ones of things needing to be constantly GOING that resulted in a lot of product that was scattershot at best and incomprehensible at worst, often lacking a proper ascending build. You could even argue his ‘give everyone something to do’ aspect was just another part of his ADHD attention span issues, but then again, you could further argue that it’s better to have constant nonsense stuff that starts and stops possibly at random as it is generic matches between the same people for no reason to try and fill out a three hour show. On the other hand… Jim Cornette’s sheer lunatic HATE of the man honestly reflects far worse on Cornette, in my opinion. I get where the man is coming from; his rants and rage about how Russo exposed the business, drove away all the ‘true fans’ for short term big crowds, presented things as ‘This is fake and if you think otherwise you are stupid’, then turned around and tried to play ‘Okay it’s all fake but THIS IS REAL’, didn’t understand the business, didn’t care about the business, etc etc…I get it. But just like police are supposed to be taken off cases where they have personal aspects involved, or juries, or judges, Cornette’s coming from a place of too close-ness, a deep desire that pulls him away from seeing the forest for the trees and ramming his face into one to assess the individual bark grooves. And a chunk of it, the part I think is valid, is that Russo did seem to play games and talk poo poo behind Cornette’s back; whether it was personal or ‘just business’, doesn’t really matter.  (Strangely, as seen here, he at least put on a front of respecting the man at one point) But let’s face a few facts. Cornette’s idea of wrestling, his true blue concept of the business…well, just look at Smoky Mountain Wrestling. If it could still carry a small company, then while it might not be around today, it probably would have lasted more than three years. Cornette rages that Russo hosed and killed ‘the business’, but really, Russo might have just been the face on the wider shifting general change. And what wasn’t working for SMW, was the same not working for the WWE. There were a mix of issues, but one running through the whole thing was that the way Things Were Done was worn out and used up; it needed, at least, some time to go away, rest, and re-assess. So I can’t wholly condemn Russo ‘not knowing the business’: the business as ‘it was known’ just wasn’t working any more. Yeah, maybe Russo made it worse, but again, sometimes you have to give yourself syphilis to cure malaria…or something like that. But Cornette’s too close to see it. And how he reacts from being too close, up to claiming he wants to outlive Russo so he can piss on his grave…I’m sorry Jim, but you are giving the man far too much power over you. He’s not worth it, no matter how you see it. Of course, in a better world, Vince Russo himself would have learned. But he promptly fell prey to the same thing that Cornette did: thinking that because at one time something worked like gangbusters, it would always work; you just needed to find the right mix of aspects of it. I don’t blame him for jumping to WCW, if how one way it was told (Russo saying he hardly ever got to see his kids, and getting a reply that he made enough to hire a nanny) is true. Hell, I can’t even blame him for presenting himself as the sole reason WWF turned it around; lying is just part of the business. Heck, even noted wrestling ‘good guy’ Mick Foley recounted in his first book how, when auditioning for a commercial with hot 90’s star Jerry Seinfeld that would feature wrestling, he told them he could do anything in the ring perfectly fine, even dropkick (which he’d joked about once or twice as being something he was so bad at doing, that high flyers would treat his name as the equivalent of play actors performing Macbeth). The commercial ultimately ended up not being made, and was mainly the source of a funny story about how Mick asked Peter “Taz(z)” Senerchia how he did and Taz basically said “Man, I told them I couldn’t GUARANTEE Jerry’s safety; if he gets in the ring with me for any reason, he’s kind of taking his chances” while seeming confused that he didn’t get a call back for the commercial. Cornette criticizes Russo for basically quitting over the phone instead of in person, but again, it’s Cornette. And hell, maybe we can’t even blame him for being left with no editor or filter like the one he’d had in the WWE. As I recounted, WCW was so poorly run that that was pretty much inevitable. It probably would have been improved if he HAD had some sort of overseer who told him ‘No.’, but again, Russo’s core issue was that he refused to learn, adapt, or change his style. And as Cody Rhodes shows, maybe no one in this business, if offered an ‘open book’, can resist using it. Still, this is where the real criticism of Russo comes into play. Maybe one can forgive all the Russo-ness in the writing in his tenure, but despite saying that he wouldn’t put himself on air as a character, he ended up doing it within weeks. After two months of getting nowhere and being sent home, and then brought back, you’d think he would have learned. Instead, he got worse.  One tends to focus, in terms of its events, on the infamous ‘Bash Hogan Betrayal Shoot’ at Bash At the Beach 2000, where Jarrett (then WCW Champion) came out, then laid down for Hogan, who said on a mike that “This is why this company is failing, Russo!” before pinning him, before Vince came out a little later and cut a promo where he legitimately ripped Hogan apart, and then arranged a new title match after saying Hogan could take the belt he won and go home but it wasn’t the WCW Title Belt, and we’re gonna give a title shot to someone who actually deserves it (Booker T). There’s the fact that this had been somewhat planned, but Russo legitimately betrayed Hogan by going off script and listing all of Hogan’s actual RL issues, to the point where Hogan legit stormed out of the arena, never returning to WCW and filing a defamation lawsuit against the man (and as devoted to kayfabe as wrestling can be, they don’t take it into courtrooms, because of that little ‘perjury’ thing and the severe punishments you can get if people feel you are wasting the court’s time with nonsense), and the fact that it partially seemed to stem from Hogan invoking his creative control again and insisting on becoming champion once more…but as Jarrett himself pointed out, even if those two factors were removed, the whole thing was pointless because it was about pushing a feud between a wrestler and one of the writers. You’d think that after the David Arquette disaster just a mere two months earlier, that concept would be wholly denied by EVERYONE by instinct. That’s just not how wrestling works: you’re paying to see two men fight who in theory can both fight, and if one can’t, it requires careful execution, which Russo was not exactly equipped to provide. And of course, he went and made himself WCW Champion a few months later.  Then gave it up without ever defending it. I guess the only thing you could say about that in defense of it is “Well, McMahon did it first.” But yes, while even a perfectly behaved and at his best Vince Russo likely wouldn’t have saved WCW, his actions meant he had to take a chunk of the blame for its failure. And of course, then he was hired by TNA. But there’s actually a funny story in that regard. WCW had stupidly signed Vince to a guarenteed contract, so AOL Time Warner had to keep paying him even when the wrestling company was gone, but he wanted to write for the starting up TNA. But to do that, he would either have to wait out his contract, or TNA would have to buy it out, neither of which seemed to be an option. So what did Russo do? He found some magic schmoozing words to go to the WWE and get re-hired…and then immediately proposed the absolute worst storyline he could as an opening (supposedly wanting to redo the whole WCW Invasion with people like Goldberg and Bret Hart), which apparently was so outside the scope of what he was expected to do that the WWE promptly fired him as soon as they had re-hired him…which had required them to buy out the AOL Time Warner contract…which meant Russo was now free to write for TNA. Considering what we’ve assessed about the power players in WWE, there’s still some smirks to be had in Russo getting such a thing over on McMahon and co. He, of course, pissed it all away by not changing at all in TNA, putting himself on TV with a gigantic stable he dubbed S.E.X.(Sports Entertainment Xtreme), doing enough dumb stuff that the crowds would chant “Fire Russo” (something they didn’t even do in WCW, I THINK: could be wrong there). This is probably where Cornette’s hatred of Russo turned molten, as they had to work together again, and while Cornette supposedly tried to let bygones be bygones, Russo responded by still being Russo and supposedly talking behind Cornette’s back and playing politics, either because he didn’t believe Cornette or he was just that much of an rear end in a top hat. And of course, there was his final sin before he finally, seemingly, got booted from the business entirely: so effectively sweet talking and manipulating Dixie Carter that despite Spike TV telling TNA to fire him, the company did, then secretly rehired him, and when Spike found out, they booted TNA from their channel slot, which means once again, Russo grabs onto some of the blame for the eventual death of a wrestling company when he could have avoided such a thing. And his autobiography supposedly has him playing the born again Christian card and saying the business wronged him far more than he wronged it, but again, it’s pretty clear that nothing is going to change the viewpoints of Vince Russo. So what was the point of this extended ramble? Well, I guess, when one’s being wholly fair, it’s best to remember that things have layers, nuance, and shades of gray, and that often there’s no real pure good guy or bad guy. But that also means in a sense, there’s no right or wrong answer; there’s so much arbitrary in it that it cannot be assessed like 2 + 2 = 4, or ‘lead in paint is a bad thing’ or ‘those new spiral lightbulbs last so much longer than the old bulb ones’. So yeah. Did Russo kill the business? I don’t think so. Did he do more damage than benefit to the business? In a complete picture, yeah. Is a lot of this hindsight bias? Yes. Would I hire him to write for a wrestling company? Hell no. And I would probably at least be sorely tempted to hire Cornette, so I guess in the end, he wins out over Russo. But as shown, neither man really wins anything in this regard. Ain’t that wrestling, in the end? Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. 
Cornwind Evil fucked around with this message at 18:28 on Mar 1, 2024 |
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Apr 25, 2022 16:37
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Elephant Ambush posted:lol why is he... signing money in that pic?
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Apr 25, 2022 21:52
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he's marking the mark with a marker.... next level stuff... you wouldnt understand
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Apr 25, 2022 21:54
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GolfHole posted:next level stuff... you wouldnt understand
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Apr 25, 2022 22:04
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Thanks for the effortpost, Cornwind. Given how much he has come up in that post alone, can you do a similar effort post on Jim Cornette?
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Apr 25, 2022 22:18
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Yeah I'd love to see a write up like that about Jim Cornette
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Apr 25, 2022 22:44
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Bogus Adventure posted:Would you not? primo avatar material
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Apr 25, 2022 22:47
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Hollismason posted:Yeah I'd love to see a write up like that about Jim Cornette Someone already did one but it certainly leaves room to expound upon: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?noseen=0&threadid=3991949&pagenumber=35&perpage=40#post521828624
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Apr 25, 2022 23:09
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Sydney Bottocks posted:Have they referenced him being in the Dark Order on AEW TV recently? Colt was on the recent ROH PPV and (other than him doing the DO hand claw thing to no response from the crowd, IIRC) they made zero reference to him being in DO and he wasn't wearing DO ring gear or anything. I think they're just going to quietly remove him from that faction and have him be more in ROH once TK gets that up and running. I think the ROH thing was mostly because that's who he was in ROH, not that he isn't in DO. He's been with the group during recent BTE segments too.
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Apr 25, 2022 23:10
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Somebody suggested a write-up on the original NXT a while back and for good reason because it’s quite a trip. An intriguing idea for a wrestling show, the initial season was laced with Vince McMahon’s pettiness and even transformed Michael Cole into something that made the entire product nearly unwatchable for several years, but it also gave us a couple big names and a big SummerSlam main event. As the series went on, it became less important and went in some weird directions. Then by the final season, the show just became a Lord of the Flies situation where nobody important was keeping tabs on what was going on and it became loving bonkers in the best way possible. So let’s take a look at NXT: The Game Show Era. NXT: SEASON ONE It was early 2010. WWE’s ECW on SyFy had been around for several years, but despite it being a solid show, it had run its course and with Tommy Dreamer leaving, it had lost its final tether to the original ECW. WWE still had a developmental promotion in Florida Championship Wrestling, but there was no intent to put it on TV. Instead, they replaced ECW with NXT, which stands for absolutely nothing. NXT was a half-real/half-kayfabe show that was a smarter take on Tough Enough. The thing about Tough Enough was that once somebody won, there was only so much they could do. Being a good wrestler takes time. When someone like Maven wins, he becomes decent at the basics, but that’s as far as he goes. NXT was made up of eight guys who had experience, but were virtual unknowns to the viewers. In their attempts to earn their way onto the main roster, they already had the foundations ready. Each of these “Rookies” would be paired with a “Pro,” or established wrestler. This allowed matches that weren’t dedicated strictly to green wrestlers and played with the Pro/Rookie dynamics. While the matches were just as predetermined as any other wrestling show, the Pros would legit vote on which Rookies would be eliminated. That explained why Daniel Bryan would lose matches all the time, yet he was always ranked at the top. The wrestlers who knew what they were doing knew that he was a drat wrestling genius. Our eight contestants are as follows: Daniel Bryan (Pro: The Miz): I went into far more detail earlier in the thread, but the gist is this: Bryan Danielson pissed off Vince McMahon due to 1) being popular outside of WWE and 2) putting himself through a vegan diet that was prescribed to him in order to stave off staph infections. Bryan lost every NXT match he had while being poo poo on by Miz and commentator Michael Cole. Wade Barrett (Pro: Chris Jericho): Barrett came off as a can’t-miss prospect. He was huge, charismatic, and had a booming Welsh voice that made you want to see him record an audio book. Being paired with heel champ Chris Jericho only helped him out, building him up to the big storyline that would follow NXT. David Otunga (Pro: R-Truth): Otunga was the opposite of Daniel Bryan. He was dogshit in the ring, but because he was jacked as hell and engaged to Jennifer Hudson, management decided that he had “The It Factor.” They would bring that up all the time, insisting that Otunga was the future of the business. Justin Gabriel (Pro: Matt Hardy): Justin Gabriel was capable of doing a 450 splash off the top rope. He wasn’t a high-flyer or anything. He was actually pretty generic, all things considered. But he did a 450 splash. That was his thing. Heath Slater (Pro: Christian): A smiling, redhead himbo, Slater was being treated as a future star in NXT Season 1. They even had him get a win over Jericho, I believe. The rest of his career would not reflect that start, unfortunately. Darren Young (Pro: CM Punk): When Darren Young first showed up, everyone was taken aback because he looked exactly like John Cena in blackface. It was disturbingly uncanny.With CM Punk being in the middle of his Straight Edge Savior gimmick, Young made for a perfect foil, as he was supposed to be something of a party boy who wanted Punk’s guidance, but not at the cost of his identity. Skip Sheffield (Pro: William Regal): “The Cornfed Meathead” was a pet project of Stephanie McMahon. While very limited in the ring, there was something charming about this overly-jacked doofus in a tiny cowboy hat. He would find much more success after the fact...for a while. But more on that later. Michael Tarver (Pro: Carlito): Wearing a facemask years before it was the social norm, Tarver had the intensity, but little else. His biggest uphill battle was trying to push himself as a knockout artist. WWE already had Big Show punching people out and a lot of people already criticized that for being lame. Other than matches, the show featured a lot of ridiculous contests. Like who could sell the most programs or obstacle course races that involved wrestlers having to stop and drink soda for a minute. Lot of stupid poo poo. The first elimination was set for the twelfth week. The previous week ended with the contestants cutting promos on who should be the first voted off. Bryan showed humility and suggested himself due to his bad win-loss record. Tarver also suggested himself as kind of a ticking time bomb “I’m too dangerous” way. Well, WWE decided to legitimately DQ them both for these promos! Then they voted off Skip Sheffield anyway. Also, at some point, Carlito was let go from the company, so he stopped having anything to do with the show. Week 15 was the finale, where the final three were Wade Barrett, David Otunga, and Justin Gabriel. Gabriel was eliminated first, leading to a promo battle where Barrett completely eviscerated Otunga. It was pretty amazing. Barrett won the contest and with it came not only a WWE contract, but a title shot. THE AFTERMATH On an episode of Raw, Wade Barrett cut a promo about how the “winds of change” were coming. During the main event, Cena vs. CM Punk, Barrett showed up on the top of the ramp. Then Tarver was shown in the crowd. Then Slater jumped over the barrier. Next thing you know, all eight NXT Rookies were swarming the ring, mainly focusing on John Cena. It was shocking and awesome. They just tore the place apart and there was no commentary because Michael Cole ran for the hills and Jerry Lawler got his rear end kicked. UNFORTUNATELY... one of WWE’s sponsors didn’t like Daniel Bryan choking out the ring announcer with a tie and Bryan was fired. This was really unfortunate, as he was easily the workhorse of the team. Barrett’s Nexus became the big threat in WWE for the next few months and while it didn’t work out in the end, it at least shows what the nWo would have been like if nobody in the group had ANY political pull. As the group showed up like locusts from week to week, the company would go back and forth between making good decisions and bad decisions in terms of the writing. Regardless, this led to a big 7-on-7 elimination tag match at SummerSlam where the Nexus took on a team led by Cena. Cena was always going to win, but he went a little too ham with it, making Barrett and Gabriel look like complete chumps in the final minute. Even Cena realized he made the wrong call immediately after. The Nexus continued to chug along, including with a storyline where Cena lost a match with the rules saying he now had to join the team. He for some reason never wore the Nexus t-shirt and when he refused to help Barrett win a title match against Randy Orton, Barrett fired him. Then Cena just came back minutes later and spent the next couple weeks beating up the Nexus anyway. Haha! Nothing matters! Cena got his big win over Barrett in a Chairs Match, ending with him literally burying the man in chairs. Then CM Punk became the leader of the Nexus and Barrett started a forgotten offshoot called the Corre. Other than a brawl during the 2011 Royal Rumble, the New Nexus and the Corre never really did anything against each other and they eventually just faded away. So what became of our contestants? I’ve discussed Bryan ad nauseum. Enough about that. Barrett was always on the cusp of being a big deal, but he was very injury prone and that always got in his way. He struck gold when he became Bad News Barrett, constantly telling the fans bad news while on a 30-foot-high podium with a gavel. Unfortunately, WWE didn’t want a heel with a catchphrase that fans could chant along with, so they dropped it. Barrett joined the League of Nations stable, which went absolutely nowhere and he finally just left the company. While he made appearances in other promotions, he never wrestled again. Now he does commentary for NXT. David Otunga had a forgettable in-ring career, but ended up becoming more of an on-air authority flunky, tying into his real life experience as a lawyer. Apparently, the dude loves coffee and is an expert at making the perfect cup. Justin Gabriel remained in WWE for years, albeit in obscurity. When eccentric party enthusiast Adam Rose was introduced with a gigantic entourage of colorful weirdos, the most notable member was a guy in a rabbit costume who was capable of doing high-flying moves. That turned out to be Gabriel under the mask, who in actuality wanted it to be canonically revealed that the Bunny was Vince in disguise. Gabriel left WWE out of disgust that they kept having him show up despite never having anything for him to do. He’s since shown up in IMPACT, Lucha Underground, NWA, and ROH. He’s also an anti-vaxxer or something equally stupid. I forget which dumbass thing he’s talked up on social media. Heath Slater became a professional joke of a wrestler. He spent years ending up in various stables based around him being an absolute doofus, including Three Man Band (where the other two would go on to become world champions) and the Social Outcasts. Slater did actually have some huge success when WWE brought back the brand extension and gave Raw and SmackDown separate rosters. When they drafted everyone, Slater was ignored completely and spent weeks begging either show to hire him, constantly bringing up how many kids he had to feed (which seemed to grow in number with each begging). He ended up joining the tournament to crown tag champs for SmackDown and won with Rhyno as his partner. It was one of the funniest and most likeable pairings in years. Currently, Slater is on IMPACT, where he and Rhyno are still portrayed as good buddies. Michael Tarver was fired shortly after the SummerSlam Nexus match and occasionally shows up in the indies. Darren Young’s NXT story isn’t over quite yet, so I’ll get back to him later. Even though Skip Sheffield was treated as an absolute monster in his Nexus days, he had a severe leg injury that kept him off TV for a long, long time. He was repackaged as Goldberg knockoff Ryback and spent months taking on 1-3 jobbers at a time while constantly screaming, “FEED! ME! MORE!” This got him over huge and he was quickly propelled into the main event. Unfortunately, WrestleMania’s Cena vs. Rock title match main event was written in stone, so they couldn’t pull the trigger on Ryback. They kept finding excuses for Ryback to lose title matches, killing his heat. He turned heel and went after John Cena, but that didn’t help him out either. He became a worthless midcarder and tried turning face again, but that went nowhere. After wrestling the pre-show of WrestleMania, he quit the company and started sharing some... unique opinions online about how the wrestling business should work. Up next: The Genesis of McGillicutty
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Apr 26, 2022 02:44
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Elephant Ambush posted:lol Do Vince and Matt Gaetz have the same suit guy?
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Apr 26, 2022 02:46
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I don't know quite as much about Cornette, but I'll give it a try. I'll also be taking a crack at Andy Kaufman's time in wrestling.
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Apr 26, 2022 04:09
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im saint germain posted:why is he... signing money in that pic? Trying to figure out why vince does anything seems like a fast route to madness
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Apr 26, 2022 04:20
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When the thread writers enter the office to give Gavok the next post for the night Gavok flicks through it and demands "Am I loving going over?" (Thank you for the write-ups).
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Apr 26, 2022 05:37
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Going to request again anything about pro wrestling pre 80s. US, Mexico, Japan, whatever. I know we have some of the best wrestling experts around on this site but there seems to be a real lack of knowledge of anything before WWE took over the territories in the 80s across the entire internet, partly due to WWE intentionally wanting people to forget anything before that.
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Apr 26, 2022 08:48
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Another breakdown I would like to see is what makes a good heel commentator, and how most attempts gently caress it up.
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Apr 26, 2022 12:57
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GokuGoesSSJ3 posted:Going to request again anything about pro wrestling pre 80s. US, Mexico, Japan, whatever. I know we have some of the best wrestling experts around on this site but there seems to be a real lack of knowledge of anything before WWE took over the territories in the 80s across the entire internet, partly due to WWE intentionally wanting people to forget anything before that. I wasn't watching wrestling for much of the pre-1980s/WWF expansion era, but I read a shitload of old wrestling magazines my uncle used to have when I was a kid, so I can give it a try  Basically, prior to Vince's expansion of the WWF in the 1980s, there were three main companies that ran wrestling in North America: the WWWF (owned by Vince's father), the AWA (owned by Verne Gagne), and the NWA. When most people refer to "the territories" from the 1980s and before, what they generally mean is the territories that were under the NWA's umbrella. They were authorized by the NWA to use their name, branding, and to book their champion(s) as being "NWA (name of whatever title) champion". So for example, in World Class wrestling out of Texas, their champion was the American champion. He wasn't referred to as "the World Class American champion", but rather "the NWA American champion". As well, the NWA World champion was often a guy who was deemed to be popular enough to be a big draw across the various territories, so the title was usually given to someone who had that particular trait, and one other: they had to be able to take care of themselves in the ring. The last thing the NWA wanted was a promoter or wrestler to think they could get away with going into business for themselves, so the NWA world champ was often a "shooter": someone who, if the need arose, could shoot (meaning legitimately) fight and stretch a guy who was trying to change the finish of a match. If you ever wondered why Harley Race--one of the toughest shooters to ever have laced up a pair of boots--was a multi-time NWA world champ, well there's your explanation. There were occasionally title runs given to guys in territories that were more a favor to their particular promoter, such as when Kerry Von Erich was given a short run as NWA champ, after the death of his brother David. The NWA had been planning to put the title on David, who had all the qualities they were looking for. Kerry, by contrast, had already begun to start attracting notoriety for his various drug habits, and he was generally viewed as an "airhead" or a "flake" by the NWA board, even if he was otherwise staggeringly popular in Dallas (like all the Von Erich boys were). But, Fritz was their dad, so they decided to do Fritz a favor, and gave Kerry a short run. For the most part, though, the NWA world champ was a guy who could both draw money and also handle in-ring business if the need arose. This arrangement had existed largely since the 1940s, and all the various promoters that operated with the NWA's blessing had a mostly love-hate relationship with each other. On the one hand they had no problem stabbing each other in the back to get a wrestler they wanted; one famous example was when Jim Cornette and the Midnight Express were getting ready to leave Bill Watts' Mid-South territory; although Jim Crockett Promotions was eager to sign them to work in the Carolinas, through shenanigans and maneuvering they ended up going to work for Fritz Von Erich in World Class for six months instead. When Cornette told Crockett what had happened, he said Crockett replied with a sigh "That's not the first time Fritz or Bill have hosed me." On the flip side, though, when it became necessary, the NWA's promoters had no problem putting on a unified front. There's a reason Jim Ross called them "the non-violent Mafia" (and depending on what stories you believe, they probably weren't all that non-violent, either); if a worker became difficult or tried to go into business for themselves, the NWA's promoters would band together and effectively blacklist them. If a wrestler became blacklisted from the NWA, then the only places they could hope to work (at least in the US) were for Verne, or for Vince (both of whom still maintained cordial relations with the NWA guys, so good luck with that), or in what Cornette refers to as "outlaw mud shows", i.e. wrestling shows that took place without the authorization or blessing of the NWA (and that often weren't nearly as profitable or lucrative). Roddy Piper relayed an example of how the NWA promoters would handle things, using a (likely) hypothetical example of a guy who'd be working for Don Owen in Portland, would start thinking they're a big shot, and then started telling Owen what he would or wouldn't do. Owen would then talk to the other promoters, and (for example) Bob Geigel in Kansas City would talk to the worker, ask them when their contract was coming up, tell them to give the appropriate amount of notice (two weeks for jobbers, four weeks for midcard guys, and six weeks if they were main eventing), and then have them come out to Geigel's territory. He said a guy would get a house, pack up the family, get the kids started in school, and relocate from Portland to KC...and then never get booked. And in those days, if you didn't get booked, you didn't get paid. And the NWA didn't just run wrestling in the US; they had territories in Canada, Mexico, Japan, Australia, and many other places. So if you got blacklisted in one, you got blacklisted in them all. There were some exceptions, of course; certain territories had both a large enough audience and enough money (and local/regional political power, in some cases) behind them to basically put on their shows regardless of what the NWA wanted. The WWWF and AWA had that type of power, due to their promoters basically having a stranglehold on their respective regions. Another, smaller, example of this would be the CWA, also known as "the Memphis territory", which was run by Jerry Jarrett and which also broke away from the NWA at some point, and which was hugely popular in that particular region due to their having Jerry "the King" Lawler under contract (IIRC, Lawler and Andy Kaufman did their whole "feud" during Lawler's time in CWA). Memphis wasn't necessarily a massive powerhouse territory in the sense that Vince Sr.'s WWWF or Verne's AWA was, but if you wanted to wrestle in Tennessee, you were going to have to talk to Jerry Jarrett at some point. That's how the NWA basically controlled pro wrestling for something like close to 40 years. It was a powerhouse of an organization; the current NWA that's being run by Billy Corgan isn't even a shadow of its' former self. I mentioned two other companies, the WWWF run by Vince's dad, and the AWA, run by Verne Gagne. Both of them have similar origins: they were initially NWA territories run by the main promoters in their respective areas. Vince Sr. ran the Northeast, and Wally Karbo ran wrestling in and around Minnesota. Both broke away from the NWA at some point because they wanted their top guy (Bruno Sammartino for Vince, Verne Gagne for Karbo) to be the NWA champ, and when the NWA refused, they simply came up with a way to award their guys a new "World" championship. Vince Sr. did quietly rejoin the NWA at the start of the 1970s, likely because he was the only promoter in the US who had Andre the Giant locked down on contract. Andre was a massive draw for audiences in the 1970s, so if Vince was interested in bringing a guy up from Texas or Florida to do some shows, the promoters usually got to have Andre for a few weeks in return. Given Andre's drawing power, they were more than happy to oblige Vince Sr. And when Verne eventually took over the AWA, he did maintain cordial relations with NWA promoters, which led to the occasional supercard here and there featuring both NWA and AWA wrestlers. By and large, all the promoters in the various NWA territories, Verne in the AWA, and Vince Sr. in the WWWF, respected each others' territorial boundaries and wouldn't do shows in another promoter's territory without permission. It was a "gentleman's agreement", even if the promoters running the shows weren't exactly gentlemen themselves. Many stories abound of workers who were deemed "difficult" or whatever not just being blacklisted, but often jumped outside or backstage, or legit injured in the ring, at the direction of the promoter. Guys just starting out often got gently caress-all for pay their first few weeks or months. And there were promoters who were themselves former (or in some cases, even still active) wrestlers like Fritz or Bill Watts, who had no problems trying to physically intimidate or beat up guys who complained. The one upside to the way the territories were run was, as Ole Anderson (a notorious bully himself) once said, if a guy was smart and stayed on the promoters' good side, he could literally pick and choose where he wanted to work. But when the Vince McMahon we know today finally took over the WWF (one of the first things he did was shorten it from World Wide Wrestling Federation to just World Wrestling Federation), all that began to change, and change a lot more rapidly than anyone could have foreseen. (Edited for some inaccuracies/clarity of text) Sydney Bottocks fucked around with this message at 14:41 on Apr 26, 2022 |
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Apr 26, 2022 13:51
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https://twitter.com/PuroresuFlow/status/1518639269635629059
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Apr 26, 2022 13:52
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SirPhoebos posted:Another breakdown I would like to see is what makes a good heel commentator, and how most attempts gently caress it up. The commentary from MadWorld suddenly comes to mind.
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Apr 26, 2022 14:24
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Has this thread had an effort post about British wrestling in the 70s and 80s (not offering but would like to read)
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Apr 27, 2022 10:30
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spaceblancmange posted:Has this thread had an effort post about British wrestling in the 70s and 80s (not offering but would like to read) seconding this, its remarkable how wrestling just...died in the UK for the longest time
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Apr 27, 2022 23:49
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Spuckuk posted:seconding this, its remarkable how wrestling just...died in the UK for the longest time Televised snooker.
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Apr 27, 2022 23:55
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Beeswax posted:Stan Hansen taking guys' heads off Stan wasn't an rear end in a top hat or trying to take liberties or anything like that. He just couldn't see very well without his glasses and wanted to make sure every move looked like it was connecting.
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Apr 28, 2022 00:36
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Szyznyk posted:Televised snooker. *insert Mitchell and Webb gif*
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Apr 28, 2022 01:46
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NXT: SEASON 2 By the time we got to the second season of NXT, all eyes were on the property. After all, not only did Wade Barrett just win the week prior, but the following Raw ended with the Nexus tearing the place apart. A day later and it was time for eight new Rookies. This time, half of the results came from the Pros voting among themselves while the other half came from fans voting online or via texting. All in all, we got a much more interesting crop than the first season. Alex Riley (Pro: The Miz): After doing a season of Miz being stuck with a face who was his opposite, they gave him a varsity jock rear end in a top hat as a Rookie. It was the perfect pairing and it would carry on long after this show. Titus O’Neil (Pro: Zack Ryder): The tall and muscular Titus would go on to have a rather long career in WWE, which is pretty surprising because of how much of a disaster he was on NXT Season 2. Not only was he laughably bad in an obstacle course, but he was so bad in the ring that he was considered a liability. Remember how the first season waited about 12 weeks before doing their first elimination? Titus was so bad that they had to vote him off by the fourth episode. Kaval (Pros: Layla and Michelle McCool): Taking the Daniel Bryan spot was Kaval, known in the indies as Low-Ki. Despite his booming, deep voice, Kaval was short and popular elsewhere, so obviously he had a target on his back. An interesting situation, since Low-Ki is known for taking himself far too seriously and was not going to take this poo poo for too long. He had the heel co-women’s champions LayCool as his Pros, where they treated him like their adorable little brother. Michael McGillicutty (Pro: Kofi Kingston): Imagine having the son of Mr. Perfect on your roster but not capitalizing on that at all. Joe Hennig was renamed Michael McGillicutty for no real reason, especially since they didn’t hide his real identity. They tried to explain that McGillicutty was his mother’s maiden name, but that wasn’t true. Regardless, he seemed to have a handle on the competition, especially in terms of charisma. Then it all came crashing down. Husky Harris (Pro: Cody Rhodes): The son of “The IRS Man,” Husky would find more success down the line as a demon clown and hillbilly cultist. Husky’s deal was that he was a fat dude who could move quickly. That led to the constant description that he was “an army tank with a Ferrari engine.” As Cody was in the middle of his Dashing gimmick, Cody would insult Husky’s appearance and Husky would just shrug it off. Eli Cottonwood (Pro: John Morrison): Cottonwood, who doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page, was a very tall at a supposed 7 feet. While he had the height and a psychotic-looking face at times, he didn’t really have the mass to go with it. He was in shape, but not bulky, instead making him look like the awkward guy in an improv troupe. Due to the way the show worked, he wasn’t allowed to be much of a monster and instead did mostly basic moves. Percy Watson (Pro: MVP): Percy was a real fan favorite with contagious energy and the personality of an Eddie Murphy character on steroids. He was extremely funny and had real potential, so it was sad to see his inability to catch on. Plus John Cena publicly talked poo poo about him for some reason. I never understood that. Lucky Cannon (Pro: Mark Henry): Lucky Cannon had the most generic white meat babyface look and would have been a big deal in the territory days. There might have been some intent to treat him as a heartthrob underdog in WWE, but he ultimately didn’t do so great here. With this season, there are three moments that truly stick out. Well, four if you count Titus doing the obstacle course. First off, there was a time when the Nexus decided to visit the show and watch from the top of the ramp. A confrontation between Percy Watson and MVP led to all the male wrestlers to appear in the ring, causing Barrett to announce that all the Pros (outside of LayCool), Rookies, and the Nexus were going to have a battle royal. All the Rookies were eliminated first, then the Pros were unable to work together in any capacity, leading to the Nexus standing tall. They then announced it would be a 7-way tie. Second, one of the contests of the show was a “promo challenge.” Each Rookie would be given a word and they had a limited amount of time to cut a promo around said word off the top of their head. When it came time for Eli Cottonwood, he got the word “mustache.” His embarrassing attempt to menacingly talk about mustaches basically killed his chances at winning, but it did get him a spot on E!'s the Soup. His Pro John Morrison was shown covering his face with a clipboard over how embarrassing it was. Third, the loving amazing final episode. The final three were McGillicutty, Riley, and Kaval. Riley was dropped early in the show, leaving Kaval vs. McGillicutty. The two were told to cut promos on each other. Kaval did quite good for himself. McGillicutty... not so much. He offered to breastfeed Kaval, told him that the wrestling ring is not a swimming pool, and that his name means flute. It was rough. Kaval was voted the winner. Afterwards, McGillicutty got to cut a promo and... oof. Here’s the quote: “And starting this moment... from now on... from this moment on... this will be the moment... starting now... of the genesis of McGillicutty.” It didn’t really mean anything. It’s not like he started his own version of the Nexus. Kaval and LayCool celebrated in the ring and rightfully so. He won the drat thing. Word is that Vince was watching backstage and he did not like how much Kaval was celebrating, so he told the Rookies to all rush the ring and attack Kaval. Which they did. MVP thought it was only natural that he and the other Pros rush the ring to protect Kaval and brawl with the Rookies. He would later get yelled at for this. This huge impromptu brawl was a gigantic mess. Titus O’Neil completely no-sold one of MVP’s biggest moves. The Pros briefly cleared the ring of everyone but Husky Harris, who was beating up Kaval without anyone stopping him. Alex Riley hit his finisher on Percy Watson even though they were on the same side. This was ignored as all the non-Kaval Rookies stood tall together as the show ended. There was zero follow-up, naturally. THE AFTERMATH Kaval joined the main roster and used his free title shot to challenge for the Intercontinental Championship, of all titles. Then he lost. Soon after, he was dropped by WWE and went back to being an rear end in a top hat in the indies, burning bridge after bridge. Titus O’Neil and Lucky Cannon would return for the infamous Season 5. Husky Harris would join the Nexus, get written off TV, then go back to FCW and be repackaged as Bray Wyatt. He got over huge in FCW/regular NXT and came to the roster where his success was hit or miss. As the Fiend, he became a major merch hit for WWE, but they let him go for creative differences. That he never showed up in AEW is still rather shocking. Eli Cottonwood was initially Bray Wyatt’s muscle. Then he quietly vanished and was replaced by Erick Rowan and Luke Harper. Percy Watson became an obscure part of the WWE roster for several years, including showing up on NXT Season 5, but not as a contestant. He was just there. He later became a commentator for a while, but has since left WWE for good. Alex Riley was Miz’s loyal sidekick for a long time, though his career suffered from being rather unlikeable behind the scenes. John Cena especially hated the guy. Riley turned on Miz, getting what could be called “Virgil heat” where people are super psyched to see you turn on your heel boss, but it then becomes apparent that the only reason you got over in the first place was that the heel boss was really talented. Nobody cared about Riley after he stopped having anything to do with the Miz and he went back to NXT when it became an actual developmental show. Kevin Owens humiliated the poo poo out of him and it was hilarious. Riley would later go on to play a wrestler in Netflix’s GLOW. Michael McGillicutty had a lengthy run in WWE, but was never given much of a chance to be anyone. At one point they had him change his name to Curtis Axel, which was a mix between his father’s name (Curt Hennig) and his grandfather’s nickname (The Axe). Probably his biggest moment was being put in a match against Triple H where Triple H acted all concussed so they could end the show with Triple H’s loved ones acting all scared for his wellbeing, all the while Axel had simply vanished. Axel found a new lease on his career for a few months when he was supposed to enter the Royal Rumble, but got jumped and his spot was taken by Erick Rowan. Axel started complaining that he was never eliminated from the Royal Rumble and week after week, he would keep a tally on how long he has been competing in said match. This translated into him screaming about Axelmania running wild, but then the Hogan racist sex tape happened and he went off TV. Axel was eventually released during the pandemic. Up next: Attack of the 50 Foot Woman
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Apr 28, 2022 03:39
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Gavok posted:Second, one of the contests of the show was a “promo challenge.” Each Rookie would be given a word and they had a limited amount of time to cut a promo around said word off the top of their head. When it came time for Eli Cottonwood, he got the word “mustache.” His embarrassing attempt to menacingly talk about mustaches basically killed his chances at winning, but it did get him a spot on E!'s the Soup. His Pro John Morrison was shown covering his face with a clipboard over how embarrassing it was. To be fair, I doubt the best promo men in the business could have done much of anything with "mustache".
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Apr 28, 2022 04:25
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here's a fun challenge: come up with a decent wrestling gimmick in tyool 2022
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Apr 28, 2022 05:11
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