wesleywillis posted:

Wasn't Rikishi the fat guy that would rub his rear end in someone's face as his finishing move?

Cornwind Evil posted:

Vince has always succeeded in spite of himself rather than because of it.

(But yes, expect a massive amount of armchair psychology here)

People have already mentioned that there is a strong indication that Vince's family life was abusive: his stepfather might have been physically abusive and his mother MIGHT have sexually abused him, but there was a third story in a book called "Sex, Lies, and Headlocks" that stuck to me even moreso and I think crystallized the exact shape of Vince's trauma, wrath, and curse. Supposedly, he and his older brother Jesse were being raised in a classic Southern hick town, trailer park, nothing to do, a very "Day They Missed The Horror Show" type of place (note: Do not read "Day They Missed The Horror Show" unless you have some steel, it's BRUTAL) and then the U.S built a military base near the town. So the 'thing to do' amongst the teenage and young adult male youth was to go and try and pick fights with the black marines that came there to train. And while part of this little gang racism boredom, supposedly, Jesse innately got respect, he was a genuine article that people would listen to, admire, and so on. Vince supposedly tried to be the same way and got nowhere: not only did he want it and not get it, he was seen as probably the worst thing he could think of: a wannabe. A tryhard. Not worthy and never will be.

And why was he in this messed up situation? Because his dad abandoned the family to go run WRASSLIN' in New York and the Northeast.

I would bet money that Vince, among all other things, has never left that little gang of punk racists mentally. Between it and the extreme desire for control a physically and sexually abusive upbringing can implant, Vince (again, all theorizing) when he grew up didn't go to join up with the family business. He went with the long term goal of DESTROYING the family business, using it as a springboard to 'better things' in 'proper' entertainment, like how people can core out companies with stuff like junk bonds and leave their shell to collapse while they skip away with the money. Vince hates 'wrestling' as someone like Jim Cornette would define it (and while the man has his own severe GET OFF MY LAWN and "Too close to wholly accurately assess" issues, there's few others who could assess things as well as Cornette could about the concept of 'wrestling') and he hates, hates, HATES 'wrasslin', the idea that wrestling is solely for brain dead toothless hicks who only drive rusty pickup trucks and gently caress their sisters. Of course, 'wrasslin' being the majority if not near absolute of the wrestling audience has always been an incorrect and prejudiced based concept: wrestling can and has drawn an audience from just about any sort. A very good example was (mainly big in the 80's territories) wrestler Ricky Morton, who drew large gates of teenage girls who would shriek for him like the Beatles, and was so good at getting 'sympathy heat' (getting beat up repeatedly by the bad guys until, after a false hope or two or three, he finally tagged in his tougher tag team partner to clean house) that he would sometimes risk mobs of these girls being one step away from jumping into the ring to save their precious Ricky from the big bad dastardly heels (one term for doing this as part of a match in some online circles is 'playing Ricky Morton', that's how much he defined it). But again, this is all coming from pain and rage.

Vince succeeded because he broke all the rules and got very lucky. When he started, he refused to play ball and went around doing stuff like stealing other promotion's stars, running shows in their territories, and getting high quality production companies to videotape his shows and then go to local networks that ran, or would pay for, local wrestling, and offer to pay THEM to put his (looking much better in terms of visuals, lighting, camerawork, etc) shows on the air in their place. He basically bluffed all his competition in a game of chicken where his 'side' was mostly made up of potential future earnings, and no one called it: if some people had decided to, odds are Vince would have flamed out and been a cautionary tale these days about not rocking the boat. But at the same time, Vince did everything to drive out 'wrestling and wrasslin' and rework the business to his ideas. Larger than life characters, gimmicks, spectacle, forget all the actual WRESTLING, and in fact many of these sorts couldn't wrestle well at all, but Vince was in charge and he would tell people what they wanted, and once again, luck served him and for a time, it was. (Hulk Hogan, Rock N' Wrestling)

Thing is, Vince never changed while his audience did. I'm sure that he didn't intend to be around for when the bottom dropped out, though. He'd succeeded in revenging himself on his hated father (joining the company, leveraging him out of it) and rebuilding the business in his own image (which is sort of like saying Alexander the Great conquered the whole world). Now he would use it to actually get into proper circles of entertainment. If he had to burn the WWF to the ground to do so, fine. He wasn't a wrestling promoter, he sure as gently caress wasn't a WRASSLIN' promoter, and this business could go hang for the 'wrongs' it did him.

Except, much like his so-called friend Donald Trump, it was a futile gesture. Just like Trump would always been seen as a wannabe upstart by the minted rich he wanted so badly to be a part of, even before it became clear just how vastly that understated just what a failure he was, the larger entertainment world would never see Vince as anything but a wrestling promoter. This would be made clear when everything he tried outside of wrestling according to his vision failed. He tried bodybuilding with the WBF: it failed. He tried the XFL; it utterly failed, and at the tail end of the WWE's biggest hot streak ever, which really says it all (and it probably would have failed a second time if COVID hadn't strangled it in his crib). His wife tried running for senate: failed repeatedly. WWE Studios didn't exactly FAIL, but it hardly set the world on fire and that's what Vince would have wanted. Time and time and time again, the world told Vince: you're a wrestling promoter. That's all you will ever be.

That's why Vince never stops, I think. He thinks if he does, his chance to finally break through will slip him by. It also means that he needs absolute control over everything and will never accept anything less. He's so determined that sometimes it even manifests in good or impressive things, like being willing to be destroyed on his own show (something that Triple H and Stephanie never really, wholly learned, to their and the product's detriment) or the whole 'blew out his quads, walked backstage anyway' thing, which has a follow up: twin muscle tears like that usually take a good six to eight months to fully rehab so you can walk properly again. Vince was utterly determined to be able to walk out at Wrestlemania, which was about 2 1/2 months away, and rehabbed so hard and thoroughly that he did just that. People say the writing at WWE is terrible and has been for years if not decades: I think it's less that it's terrible and more that anyone who works in that field eventually gives up and just goes through the motions because you never know when Vince is just going to show up and tear everything up and demand something brand new: would you feel like trying if that was constantly happening with no rhyme or reason to it? It's why I take any rumors of sale with several grains of salt: the WWE's is Vince's, no matter how much he subconsciously hates it, and no one is going to take it from him. He will never, EVER again feel like he's not in control.

In all honesty, Vince would probably have had a happier life if his efforts had flamed out in the mid 80's. Maybe, MAYBE he would have been forced to do some self-introspection: I think he had that possibility, unlike Trump. As it is, this is a man running on a hamster wheel with his fingers in his ears and his eyes on a hallucination of a brass ring, thinking that soon, very soon, he'll show them he's not just some wrasslin' promoter. And much like 'everyone' knows Aquaman is lame and talks to fish, or anyone who likes Star Trek and D&D is a pimpled, bespectacled virgin failure at life, it won't ever work. He will die as he lived: a wrestling promoter.

Sydney Bottocks posted:

The tl;dr is that Vince, like Trump, is a crass lout who thought having money meant you were automatically part of high society, only to get repeatedly reminded that he's just the biggest carny on the fairgrounds and that's all he's ever gonna be, and it's driven him completely insane

Elephant Ambush posted:

People who say this don't know what it means lol

RoboChrist 9000 posted:

I don't know too much about Vince or Donnie's parents; all joking aside what's this now about them possibly being brothers by blood and not 'creepy assholes who want to gently caress their daughters and are monsters to everyone.'

Gavok posted:

Continuing with Roman Reigns’ face push, it’s important to talk about his rival Braun Strowman. Braun was originally introduced as a member of the Wyatt Family and practically got to skip NXT and developmental completely due to his impressive size. He got better over time, as good as someone his size can get, really. He started going as a solo act where he was like a cross between Ogre from Revenge of the Nerds and the Juggernaut. To WWE, they wanted him to be this overpowered beast...but they never wanted to make him a top guy.

It was weird, since he had everything you’d presume Vince wanted, but Braun always seemed to be just loving around during WrestleMania season year after year. At WrestleMania 33, he was thrown into the Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal and didn’t even last all that long.

A week or so after WrestleMania, where Roman had seemingly beaten the Undertaker into retirement, Roman was being interviewed backstage at Raw. Braun – who had been feuding with Roman before the Undertaker thing overshadowed it – ran out of nowhere and brutalized Roman while screaming, “I’M NOT FINISHED WITH YOU!” So began one of the funniest bits in recent memory where you’d see medical personnel putting Roman on a stretcher, only for Braun to reappear and fling Roman off a platform. Later still, Roman would be placed in an ambulance. Braun would once again show up, repeating, “I’M NOT FINISHED WITH YOU!” and repeatedly clobbered the half-dead Roman before exiting the ambulance and FLIPPING IT ONTO ITS SIDE.

Through that summer, they appeared to be cooling down on Roman quite a bit. He and Braun would trade wins while Universal Champion Brock Lesnar would power through any and all challengers. In the fall, the PPV No Mercy had Roman vs. John Cena as well as Brock vs. Braun. Cena absolutely annihilated Roman on the mic throughout the build-up too. It was kind of sad. Some felt that these matches should have been saved for WrestleMania, but by looking at the two matchups, you could see what Vince really saw as the one true WrestleMania main event. Roman defeated Cena (who also hyped up Roman post-loss) and Brock crushed Braun.

That’s right, get ready for the WrestleMania rematch.

Roman spent several months focused on a Shield reunion and a forgettable Intercontinental Championship run. Once that started to wind down a little, he got second place in the Royal Rumble and won the Elimination Chamber. Going with the theme of how Braun was being treated, Braun eliminated everyone in that Chamber match until it was down to him and Roman. Then he beat up Roman after he lost. Braun would go on to compete at WrestleMania in a joke match where he and a random child became Raw tag champs.

WrestleMania 34 was another lengthy show and it ended with Brock vs. Roman. The crowd would have been against Roman if they had any energy left. It was just pure apathy and since Vince wanted Roman’s big win over Brock to mean something, he changed his mind last minute on the ending. The match was just Brock hitting the F5 over and over and over again until the bloody Roman was finally just done. The end.

They had a rematch in Saudi Arabia in a steel cage. As even the crowd over there didn’t care for Roman, Vince still held back on Roman’s coronation. The ending had Roman spear Brock through the cage and Brock was deemed the winner due to escaping first (note: Roman absolutely touched the ground first).

Roman built himself back up over the next several months, beating guys like Jinder Mahal, Bobby Lashley, and Samoa Joe. Roman vs. Joe was the main event of a PPV and the moment Roman got the pin, the camera showed people just walking out in droves. Roman earned the right to challenge Brock YET AGAIN at SummerSlam.

Meanwhile, Braun won the Money in the Bank briefcase and successfully defended it at SummerSlam. He appeared before the main event to state his intentions of cashing it in. So now the crowd was PUMPED for this match! Except it was a ruse. Brock attacked Braun and threw his briefcase up the ramp. Then as he reentered the ring, Roman speared him and got the win. Roman was the champ and there would be no cash-in.

Braun made another attempt at a cash-in on Raw, but Roman’s Shield buddies kept him at bay. That was followed by Braun turning heel (the worst idea) and getting Drew McIntyre and Dolph Ziggler to be his counter to the Shield. Braun also announced that he would cash in his Money in the Bank briefcase to take on Roman in a Hell in a Cell match. The match itself was an absolute disaster that focused on their allies beating each other up and doing the crazy stunts while Roman and Braun remained unconscious in the ring for like ten minutes at a time. Then Brock showed up, tore the door off, and gave both guys F5s. The match was considered a no-contest.

Somehow it was better than the next year’s Hell in a Cell, but that’s another story.

At the Saudi show Crown Jewel, it was going to be Roman vs. Brock vs. Braun. In the lead-up, Roman announced on Raw that he had leukemia and that he had to step down. He vacated the title and it was decided that Crown Jewel would have Brock vs. Braun to decide a new Universal Champion. Braun started a new feud with Baron Corbin, who jumped Braun right before the match and Brock took advantage. The entire match was just Brock hitting F5s, Braun getting up, repeat until Brock won.

Brock vs. Braun was going to happen at Royal Rumble, but Braun was pulled due to story reasons. In actuality, Vince didn’t want Braun as champion, but wanted him to seem like he could be champion. So he didn’t want Braun to win, but he didn’t want Braun to lose either. Braun instead got second place at the Royal Rumble and spent the build of WrestleMania trying to murder the Weekend Update guys from Saturday Night Live.

Roman returned in February of 2019 with the fans’ sympathy due to being in remission. Roman moved to SmackDown and spent the year away from the title situation. He faced Drew McIntyre in the midcard of WrestleMania, which set the stage for the rest of the year. He spent much of his time feuding with Baron Corbin, another wrestler that Vince was very insistent on pushing. The feud was centered around the two dumping dog food onto each other.

While all this was happening, WWE’s new top heel was Bray Wyatt as the Fiend, his invincible final form. They went all-in on making this demon clown gimmick look like the Undertaker with a Super Mario invincibility star. Guys like Rollins and Daniel Bryan would do anything and everything, but could not stop him and nothing worked. It was suggested that there was a special secret to taking down the Fiend and all signs pointed to Fiend vs. Roman at WrestleMania. If anyone could figure out the secret to defeating the Fiend, it would be him.

Then at some point the Fiend vs. Goldberg was signed for the Saudi PPV Super ShowDown (two years ago to the day!). While this was a throwaway dream matchup to make the prince happy, Vince looked at the implications and changed his plans. Goldberg took down the Fiend with a handful of spears and pinned him in three minutes to become the new Universal Champion. Screw all the build and planning, Goldberg vs. Roman was the real money match.

On the following SmackDown, Roman simply stepped out and challenged Goldberg for a WrestleMania title match. Goldberg shrugged because who needs build up?

Then Covid kicked in.

WrestleMania 36 had no crowd, so they taped it in advance. Apparently, the Miz showed up with some cold symptoms and Roman completely lost his poo poo over it. The man who had recently survived a bout with leukemia rightfully walked out on the WrestleMania tapings. WWE replaced him with Braun Strowman, who had nothing going on around that time despite him being Braun Strowman. Since Goldberg didn’t want to do any more matches and absolutely had to drop his title, Braun became the Universal Champion at WrestleMania.

Braun went on to feud with the Fiend in a loving weird series of events that I can’t even get into. Finally, Roman returned as a heel and took on Braun and the Fiend in a triple threat match for the title. Roman won and has been ruling SmackDown since.

FilthyImp posted:

My biggest WWE mysteries are how tf JBL was a thing and how Cena went from Wrestling Marky Mark to a legit talent.

I don't think Hard Drinkin, Stunning Steve would have been believable as a manager or producer to the fans. I'd love him on color commentary but he's got Tom Waits voice.

Trollologist posted:

(his raps.....were at least tolerable).

wesleywillis posted:

I gotta tell ya, me and my friends were telling people to suck it, and doing the "crotch chops" for years before DX started doing that poo poo.

shadow puppet of a posted:

The whole Cena era was the best thing ever to happen to a generation of developmentally disadvantaged kids that loved him with all their hearts and beardy wrestlefan adult weenises still can’t get over it.

shadow puppet of a posted:

You never went to a single show in his time then. The joy on those kids and adults faces when cena came out for his entrance is something unforgettable. They were all head to toe in “never give up” gear too

Cubone posted:

jesus christ who gives a poo poo

BiggerBoat posted:

Yeah we need to knuckle down and treat pro wrestling with the seriousness that it deserves.

Everyone quit being stupid, ridiculous and acting silly in the god damned wrestling thread.

Show some loving respect.

Prof. Crocodile posted:

Mabel

Animal-Mother posted:

He was baptized into the main event.

Prof. Crocodile posted:

Well it was a great run of insightful effortposts, but this thread has devolved into arguments about fast food, like all GBS threads eventually do.

16-bit Butt-Head posted:

johna cena ftw

16-bit Butt-Head posted:

New Jack stabbed another wrestler 14 times in the ring and got away with it because he convinced the other wrestler to drop the charges and use the stabbing to get heat and boost his career. the moment the charges were dropped New Jack packed his bags and left Florida and never returned

16-bit Butt-Head posted:

david arquette was warned by nick gage what would happen so thats all david arquette's fault for deciding to participate in a hardcore deathmatch with nick gage imo

new jack got away with trying to legitimately murder someone in the ring three times

Trollologist posted:

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,

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.

Gavok posted:

He's singing "Blurred Lines."

16-bit Butt-Head posted:

he has to betray sting one final time

Animal-Mother posted:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironman_Heavymetalweight_Championship

Notable champions

As of November 2022, there have been over 1,500 title changes for the belt, which has been won by numerous male and female wrestlers and non-wrestlers, including children, animals, entire audiences and inanimate objects.

Animals

Yatchan - A monkey
Cocolo - A miniature Dachshund dog
Bunny - A cat

Inanimate objects

Ladder - a steel ladder. Would fall on the champion and a pinfall was counted. Ladder successfully defended the title by not being pinned during the time limit battle royal matches. Ladder was a three-time champion and the first inanimate object to win the title.
Kitty-Chan - a stuffed 'Hello Kitty' doll
Mah-Kun - another stuffed doll, who defeated 'Kitty-Chan' for the belt
A baseball bat - lost the belt after being broken in half as a 'KO' decision
Chiririn - a chicken doll
Mr. Kasai - a stuffed Jun Kasai doll. Mr. Kasai has won the belt twice
A Pro Wrestling Wave poster
Big Japan Pro Wrestling ring truck
Ice Ribbon ringside mat
A pint of beer
Three different sticks of yakitori
Two different steel chairs
"Kōmyō", a calligraphy by actor Akihiro Miwa
The title belt itself
The IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship belt
Yoshihiko - An inflatable 'love doll' and the supposed brother of Akihiro. Wrestlers treat it as if it actually was an active wrestler, and actually sell moves "done" by him/her, mostly high flying moves. For some moves, like outside dives, Yoshihiko is helped by one or more assistants, who throw him out of the ring, pull his foot on the ropes, etc. Opposing wrestlers act as if those assistants are not there and are part of Yoshihiko. The original Yoshihiko was "killed" by an Antonio Honda knee drop, which caused its head to burst open, and was replaced by a second Yoshihiko, who was also a 'love doll', only modified to resemble the Great Muta. The second Yoshihiko was killed by Kenny Omega by a giant swing that sent Yoshihiko out of the ring, thus splitting his head open and revealing cotton stuffing. Later on in that match however, a third Yoshihiko came out resembling The Undertaker's old American Bad rear end gimmick, even using the same theme music. Following that match, the third Yoshihiko was shot to death by Antonio Honda. A fourth Yoshihiko, resembling Hulk Hogan, debuted shortly afterwards.
Akihiro, another inflatable 'love doll'. Made its debut on August 18, 2013.
Vince McMahon's Hollywood Walk of Fame star
A bus
TV Tokyo camera crane
Pork bun
A kotatsu table
A trash bin
Pair of chopsticks
RN: Konyamoanokodenuitarou - A printed E-mail
Beer Can - Champion Yukio Sakaguchi drank from the can and fell backwards with the can on top of him. The referee counted the pin. The can lost the belt after Yuki Ueno drank its remaining contents.
An apple
A christmas tree
Stefan the Dinosaur - Unagi Sayaka’s Stuffed Dinosaur
Maya Yukihi's Whip

Non-existent

Arnold Skeskejanaker - An "invisible wrestler" i.e. non-existent. Opponents sell moves of a wrestler who isn't there, and the title is held by nothing and no-one but the wrestlers and referees act as if they can see and pin the "invisible wrestler". Muscle Sakai "won" the title from this "invisible wrestler" by using a "ray gun" and "infrared visor" to shoot the "invisible wrestler", winning the belt on a KO decision.
The Invisible Man - Another "invisible wrestler"

Collective champions

Three elementary school girls (Airi Ueda, Shiori Takahashi and Minami Tanabe)
The Addiction (later known as SoCal Uncensored) (Christopher Daniels and Frankie Kazarian)
The entire audience of Beyond Wrestling's Americanrana '16
The Young Bucks (Matt Jackson and Nick Jackson). Their autobiography, Killing the Business, was also an inanimate object champion.
Hiroshi Yamato and Toru Owashi
Mizuki Watase, Antonio Honda, Danshoku Dino and Yukio Naya
The 100,000 subscribers to DDT's official YouTube channel

Mumpy Puffinz posted:

Samoa Joe is at least 50 years old

AlmightyBob posted:

luther looks so weird in a suit and bowtie lol

AlmightyBob posted:

AlmightyBob posted:

he used to post on some wrestling forum years ago right?

Jamesman posted:

Sorry to encourage more superhero movie chat, but another big takeaway from Man of Steel was the amount of destruction Superman caused. It wasn't just about killing Zod, but that the fight with Zod had immense collateral damage that Superman appeared to have no regard for. It was so heavily criticized that it absolutely influenced the plot of Batman v Superman and may have also influenced Age of Ultron.

WB had an idea of building a universe around Zack Snyder's vision, whether he would be involved in future projects or not. These movies were all going to exist in the world he created, and it was a dismal and cynical world, and the general audience was not receiving that very well. I don't fault WB for wanting to differentiate their style from what Marvel was doing, and maybe even thinking they'd have a tone similar to the Burton Batman films that people liked so much, but they dropped the ball in choosing Zack Snyder to lead all of this.

In 2014, Marvel had sold the world on Guardians of the Galaxy. Many people speculated this film would be a huge misstep for Marvel/Disney, trying to get people to take an interest in a solo film about characters nobody had ever heard of before. But Marvel had built up a lot of good will with moviegoers by this point, and then it had some good trailers that introduced the characters and the tone of the movie and had a talking raccoon shooting people while hanging out with Chris Pratt and a tree person. People were interested. People went to see the movie. People loved the money and the characters. James Gunn was being eyed as the person would would oversee the direction of Marvel's galactic side of things (before being fired because of pressure from chuds digging up old tweets). Like, it was a pretty huge win for Marvel.

Now we talk about Deadpool. Ryan Reynolds had been signed on for the character and showed up in X-Men Origins: Wolverine as a horribly butchered version, but he wanted to pursue the character further and provide a more comic-accurate version in a film. Things had moved forward at Fox for a while, before they canned the whole idea. Eventually, the proof of concept video made it to the internet, and got people talking and wanting to see THIS Deadpool in a movie. The response was positive and loud enough, that Fox picked it back up and went on to make the highest-grossing R-rated movie of all time, released in early 2016.

What does any of this have to do with WB? Everything.

If you watch the trailers one after another, Suicide Squad is being presented in a very similar way to how Guardians of the Galaxy was introduced to people, and seems to be right in line with that and Deadpool. And that's not exactly a bad thing... except that the trailer was apparently extremely misleading. This had been a tone created in editing by the people who made the trailer, either because they thought it should be like this, or because WB did. But either way, people LIKED the trailer. People were looking forward to another movie like Guardians or even Deadpool. The problem was that WB didn't have this movie, and they started panicking. They took the movie away from David Ayer, did extensive reshoots, and gave editing to the people that made the trailer, in a desperate attempt to make something people were expecting.

And it was a complete mess. Financially, it did well enough, but the backlash for the movie and for WB/DC put it into more of a "Fool me once..." kinda situation, and WB knew they had some really big problems, especially because Wonder Woman and Justice League were on the horizon and would shift the tone wildly back toward Snyder's world after this detour. If you were WB, you could maybe say this would be a "return to form," except the "form" was something people already didn't like, so it wasn't a strong selling point.

In short, they had a huge crisis of faith AND identity happening. This would lead to Joss Whedon coming in to Avengers-ify Justice League after Snyder had to step away.

The take-away from all of this, though, is that WB had no idea what they were doing or how to fix it. When they stepped in to have a stronger hand in things, it made things worse, so they... stopped doing that. They let directors have a bit more freedom in what they wanted to do again, and because none of them were Zack Snyder, it kinda worked. Aquaman, Shazam, Birds of Prey, and Wonder Woman 84 were all regarded, at the time as "Not Bad" and it almost looked like the ship could be righted. Hey, let's just keep giving people freedom to make stuff how they want! Hey, Disney dropped James Gunn, so let's grab him up and get him to make a new Suicide Squad! Hey, people really liked that movie, so let's just tap him to be the head of rebooting all of this (eventually, after we clear out our backlog of stuff we already had in the pipeline)!

Hey, The Rock has a vision for Black Adam!

That's not to say that WB was completely hands-off or anything (It was their decision to have a Black Adam movie as a separate vehicle for Johnson in the first place), but I definitely think the state of things at the time really let him flex his muscle and experience a great deal of control over the production. That's a big part of why he lost his poo poo when the movie wasn't a huge success, because it really was "his project." There wasn't anybody else to really deflect to. THIS was The Rock being let off the leash. THIS is what he had to show us for his efforts.

Obviously, there were signs of his attitude and weird behaviors prior to this (that's how we got here in the first place), but I think post-Black Adam, The Rock has just kinda given up. "gently caress it, I'm just gonna show up to filming late and piss in bottles because none of this matters. Make me into a CGI scorpion again. Whatever."

Edit; tl;dr The Rock is probably really loving miserable right now.

Animal-Mother posted:

Wouldn't anybody in the real world just say, "Hey, nice Watchmen costumes."?

Seth Pecksniff posted:

I still can't get over the fact that Trump believed Vince blew up in that limo