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gbs but from 2004 posted:sorry for seriouspost but The prevalent belief at this point is that WWE is shoring up their finances in preparation for a sale, with a lot of people thinking they're going to sell to whichever media giant wants a bunch of content for their streaming platform. They've cut a shitload of wrestlers and backstage guys in the last two years, a lot of them being people that were hired by HHH for his version of NXT. Besides losing to AEW in the Wednesday Night "War", HHH's version of NXT had long been rumored to be something Vince wasn't happy about, because HHH had a bunch of indie flippy guys and gals (many of whom could actually wrestle very well), and Vince wanted more musclemen and bikini models. Additionally, Kevin Dunn (the TV production chief who's basically the Grima Wormtongue to Vince's King Theoden) was eager to see HHH fail because it was also long rumored that when HHH took over, Dunn would be one of the first people he fired. So NXT failing to decisively beat AEW on Wednesday nights meant that HHH got all the blame and Vince's sycophants were more than eager to push him to change things. On top of all this, there's an executive working for WWE called Nick Khan who's second only to Vince now, and who has been absolutely ruthless about cutting what he considers to be "waste" and slashing budgets, including firing a bunch of wrestlers who had big money contracts, in many cases cutting workers who had recently just been repackaged and returned to TV, or who actually pretty good movers of merchandise (Bray "The Fiend" Wyatt being probably the most notable example of the latter). Khan also generally dances around the question of "is WWE going to be sold" whenever asked; my gut instinct is that it won't be sold until Vince either already has or is ready to finally shuffle off this mortal coil, because he's not ever going to just retire and sit around in his Florida mansion. Vince will keep going until his steroid-and-cocaine-addled heart finally explodes. Jamesman posted:There was that time where a wrestler was given a character that was basically Jack Sparrow and he acted like a drunk crazy pirate person and swung to the ring on a rope and people were actually kinda into it because the Pirates movies were popular at the time and the wrestler was selling the whole thing pretty hard. Then Vince was like "Who the gently caress cares about pirates? What is this poo poo?" and cut the whole thing. Let's also remember that Vince's brilliant idea to replace the "Captain Jack" gimmick was to take the wrestler in question (Paul Birchill), and pair him up with a female wrestler (Katarina Waters), as a brother and sister who were having an incestuous relationship.
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Jan 28, 2022 18:39
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Jamesman posted:Was it at least the first time they did it with people who weren't actually related? I can't remember. IIRC, they haven't done an actual incest angle with actual family members yet, but there was at least one time Vince wanted to do one where Stephanie was pregnant, and it would be revealed that he was the father of her child. When she shot that down, his brilliant counter was that it would be her brother Shane that was the baby's father.
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Jan 28, 2022 20:49
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Gavok posted:Maybe not as overt as Vince or Hogan, but yeah. Ignoring the TV stuff like when he wore blackface to make fun of the Rock or made gorilla gestures at Mark Henry, there are some backstage stories that don't make him look all that good. Regularly making fun of a writer of Indian descent to his face while doing an accent. This one time when a black wrestler was like "Hey, this design you guys made for my t-shirt is racist as gently caress and I don't like it. Please use another design or at least don't put it on a black t-shirt," and Triple H insisted on keeping it as is. Triple H had a feud with Booker T where he straight up told him "people like you don't get to be world champion" and it was pretty clear what he was inferring. You'd think that it would be leading to Booker T getting his revenge and showing Triple H that he was wrong by pinning him clean and winning the title. So of course, Triple H defeated him at the end of the feud. quote:He came back a few years ago and always wrestled in a shirt. Everyone figured he was just trying to hide what age did to his body. Then his shirt fell off during a cage match and it was this big holy poo poo moment because the dude is cut. On the flip side though, he gets blown up so quickly that at the end of whatever match he's in he's pouring sweat, and is reddened like a sausage that's being overcooked and about to explode.
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Jan 29, 2022 22:09
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Marshal Prolapse posted:If you look into Vince's childhood, oh boy is that screwed up, along with his mom, who may have been chill with Vince being sexually assaulted as a child. IIRC, per that one astonishing interview Vince did in the 1980s (I think it was with Playboy) where among other things he said he wanted to kill his stepfather, I think he all but flat-out said it was his mother who sexually abused him. Which certainly explains his obsession with running incest angles, if nothing else.
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Feb 2, 2022 23:51
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As scummy as Vince is, he was surrounded by scumbags in the industry during the 1970s and 1980s, which a lot of us rasslin' fans like to refer to as the "territory days", when the National Wrestling Alliance was the predominant wrestling brand with a ton of affiliated territories under its tent. Places like Atlanta, Charlotte, Dallas, Tampa, as well as having overseas territories in places like Japan, Mexico, and Australia. Even the WWE first started out as a territory, with Vince's dad running the WWWF in the Northeast until he decides to officially break away from the NWA. Even then, he still had "working agreements" with many of the other promoters and they'd exchange talent, largely because he had Andre the Giant pretty much locked into an exclusive deal, and Andre was a guaranteed attraction that drew big money no matter where he went. So they played nice with Vince's dad if they wanted to use him, and they'd send guys to him and also stayed out of the Northeast (and in turn, he stayed out of the other areas, an unwritten rule which Vince broke almost immediately upon taking over the company). On the one hand, the old wrestling territories produced some of the hottest feuds and biggest stars; guys like Flair, Steamboat, Piper, Sting, etc. were all products of the territory system. Legendary feuds like the Von Erichs vs. the Freebirds came out of those territories. Then on the other hand, you have locker room bullying that would put fraternity hazing to shame; promoters like Bill Watts who not only hosed guys around on pay but also liked to kick them in the ribs to remind them who was in charge; and Fritz Von Erich pushing his sons so hard that when they inevitably couldn't live up to the superhero-like status that fans in the Dallas territory held them up to, three of them (Mike, Chris, and Kerry) wound up committing suicide. And that's all just barely scratching the surface. Numerous other examples abound. Jim Ross once compared the NWA to the Mafia and the crime families across the US that ran it, and he probably wasn't too far off. Vince is still the worst, though, but that's mainly by virtue of his being the last man standing and having a longer time to cement his legacy as a scummy rear end in a top hat. It certainly wasn't for lack of competition from the other promoters back in the day.
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Feb 3, 2022 16:17
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Never forget that Al Snow once said "the greatest matches are the ones that drew the most money", which led to a fan asking him during a shoot interview "by that metric, is it fair to say you've never had a great match in your entire career"
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Feb 5, 2022 19:31
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Executives are like this in literally every industry, the only thing they hate more than a pet project tanking is someone getting successful that they can't claim credit for. In the case of WWE, though, you have to add in that Vince has the attention span of a gnat and so even if someone gets successful doing things exactly the way he wanted them to, at some point he will get bored and forget about them (if they're lucky) or will decide to revamp their gimmick (if they're unlucky).
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Feb 6, 2022 04:26
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Ghost Leviathan posted:They all do this too. True, but most big businesses move slowly and so something that gets implemented usually takes forever to un-implement. With Vince, it can happen literally 30 minutes (or less) before showtime.
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Feb 6, 2022 04:36
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Mumpy Puffinz posted:I did not read a word of that 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
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Feb 6, 2022 04:59
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Archer666 posted:His last live on screen appearance will be stepping into a time machine so 20 years from now Shane's son can wrestle as Vince against his dad. Vince McMahon in " '—All You Zombies—' "
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Feb 7, 2022 19:30
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PicklePants posted:Jericho also was super against lockdowns and mask mandates a while back, but hid behind, "Just asking questions..." I'm pretty sure I've seen him support Trump on his twitter before too. He supported Trump by donating actual money to his reelection campaign
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Feb 9, 2022 02:51
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shadow puppet of a posted:Dixie using her wrestling fed as a singles bar. The lady just liked herself some hunks and it’s hard to fault her when everything else went downhill. I remember reading a story/rumor/gossip about how, after Kurt Angle arrived in TNA and brought his wife Karen with him, she and Dixie bonded and would go out and get hosed up and of course there were usually a lot of young wrestle dudes nearby, so there would be stories of either them doing jello shots off the young dudes abs or the young dudes doing jello shots off their stomachs, I forget which. Then Kurt and Karen got divorced and she wound up marrying Jeff Jarrett after his wife passed away, and for some reason that was apparently not fine with Dixie and I think it wasn't long after that that Jarrett finally left TNA. Granted this was all years ago, and it's pretty much rumors and hearsay, so take it all with a tanker truck full of salt. 
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Feb 11, 2022 22:26
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Also WCW died in part because when AOL and Time Warner merged, it basically forced Ted Turner out of any role of authority he had, so he no longer had any say in what programming went on the networks he no longer ran. The new people in charge of TBS and TNT didn't want wrestling on their networks because it was seen as lowbrow, the Monday Night Wars were pretty much over, and WCW's ratings had declined sharply, so they decided to cancel it. None of them had any interest in keeping it around just to spite Vince like Turner would have had. Since WCW no longer had a network to air its programming on, all they had was the WCW name and tape library, which they eventually ended up selling to Vince for peanuts. So I'd say that it's arguable that WCW might had aired for a while longer had Turner not been elbowed out.
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Feb 13, 2022 03:35
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shadow puppet of a posted:Then who would you say is the Shane Douglas of politics? AchtungBaby posted:Jeb Bush Jeb Bush, after winning the presidency posted:In the tradition of Teddy Roosevelt, in the tradition of John F. Kennedy of The Kennedy Brothers, of John Adams, of John Quincy Adams, the man who will never die. As the real "Gipper" Ronnie Reagan, upstairs tonight. From the Abe Lincolns, to the George Washingtons, to the...Donald Trumps, I accept this United States Presidency. Sydney Bottocks fucked around with this message at 16:19 on Feb 15, 2022 |
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Feb 15, 2022 15:56
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roomtone posted:this comes off as an unhinged vendetta to me
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Feb 19, 2022 15:51
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FullLeatherJacket posted:a wrestler named Big Swole got "mutually" released last year, but then went on a podcast and basically implied that AEW didn't want black faces on their tv, which is kinda bullshit but as a response to that headline Khan then went on twitter and posted something to the effect of "here are a list of black wrestlers who won last week, we fired big swole because she sucked rear end, WATCH RAMPAGE TONIGHT AT 8" and while big swole definitely did suck seven kinds of rear end, that's definitely the sign of someone who isn't one mean tweet away from a PR disaster It also came out shortly afterwards that Swole was basically mad that another black female wrestler named Jade Cargill got the push Swole felt she should have got, and when Jade (who is younger, has a much more marketable look, and isn't afflicted with Crohn's disease like Swole is) very subtly called her out on it, Swole did a whole bunch of backtracking. So there's a few people who think Swole cynically used the issues some people have regarding AEW not being diverse enough in their eyes, as a way to garner sympathy and complain about her lack of a push without getting negative reactions in response. She just didn't realize that Billionaire Tony A) is terminally online and B) don't give two fucks. That all being said, Tony Khan's tweet about Swole being a bad wrestler was absolutely lovely and he should never have made it. Even if he legit thought her wrestling sucked that's still unprofessional as gently caress, no denying that.
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Feb 19, 2022 22:45
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gbs but from 2004 posted:dang Tony Khan sounds like a dork but aew is great The two are probably related, tbqh I'd rather watch a wrestling fed run by someone who's an absolute wrestling fan geek than one run by people who are not only embarrassed to be associated with wrestling but have an active contempt for it, their workers, their fans, and themselves
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Feb 19, 2022 23:45
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titties posted:Eta that I'm just making this poo poo up No, you pretty much hit the nail on the head
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Feb 20, 2022 07:13
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I find a good general of thumb is that the more of a flop any wrestler or wrestling personality was at being the head booker of a promotion or who ran their own promotion, the more they're likely to rant about how things "should be run" nowadays (and it should be noted that most of them are saying that about AEW; very few of them will rant about WWE except for the guys who burned their bridges with Vince a long time ago). Cornette, Bully/Bubba Ray, Road Dogg, guys like that who all had their heyday in the 1980s or 1990s, and who think that the way things were done then should be how they're done now, regardless of changing times and societal attitudes. They're the equivalent of once-successful comedians who nowadays whine about how "cancel culture is ruining comedy" when people don't laugh anymore at their formerly edgy jokes that made them famous like 40 years ago or whatever.
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Feb 20, 2022 17:44
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gbs but from 2004 posted:Does road dogg hate on aew then? Probably not as much now he's out of a job But I do seem to recall he made a few cracks here and there, and to be fair he did take shots at Vince and WWE when he was in TNA. He's never needed much prompting to lick the boot of whoever's employing him.
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Feb 20, 2022 17:58
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Elephant Ambush posted:That's so weird because I thought the whole point of steroids was to heal more quickly after getting injured or breaking down muscle tissue from lifting weights. It probably depends on what steroids you're taking and whether you're following the proper dosages, both factors being things that your average roided out sports entertainer (and the roided out guy who runs the biggest sports entertainment company of them all) flagrantly disregarded for much of the last 30-40 years or so
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Feb 21, 2022 01:32
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My favorite post-nWo Scott Steiner bit was when WWE wanted him to take a drug test, which he most assuredly would have failed because his piss was pure steroid juice at that point. And he replied with "sure, I'll take it as long as Triple H stands right next to me and takes one at the same time", because HHH was obviously just as much on the gas as he was. IIRC, the subject was quietly dropped and then they released him shortly afterwards.
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Feb 25, 2022 15:42
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Trollologist posted:So suck it up, he's here to stay. And by "here to stay" we mean "finally left WWE for Hollywood and is never coming back"
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Feb 27, 2022 23:00
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Cornette is really sad more than anything else, because on one hand he's actually fairly liberal (pro-gun control, pro-abortion rights, hates Republicans and Trump, disdains religion, etc.), as well as having a vast knowledge of wrestling history and a wealth of hilarious "back in the day" stories. He even refuses to be acknowledged as the "greatest wrestling manager of all time", saying he's comfortable being ranked #2 behind the late Bobby Heenan. On the other hand, he stubbornly refuses to believe that wrestling has changed since his heyday, and can't let go of grudges even when it's been to his detriment. But worst of all, he still slings around a lot of that good ol' boy-style racism, sexism, and homophobia that someone who otherwise butts heads with conservative Christian ideology should have grown out of many years ago.
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Mar 1, 2022 16:02
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FullLeatherJacket posted:you say this, but people in the wrestling forum literally said that jim cornette describing the young bucks as "sissies" made them feel "unsafe" to go to shows, and then got mad when I made fun of them and told me I was the reason chris kanyon was dead So just to be clear, your argument here is that they were afraid of people mad about old-school rasslin', and not because of Cornette's unrepentant homophobia being taken fully onboard by his more deranged listeners who put it on display at shows, right
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Mar 1, 2022 20:20
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Jonny Nox posted:I think the other reason Cornette and Ruso and even Bischoff hate the current wrestling scene so much is when these new companies started showing up they all went: "So, when are you hiring me" and go a "Hmmmm, no." in response. I remember when it looked like Tony Khan and Bischoff had smoothed things over after Bischoff got bent out of shape over comments TK had made about the end of WCW. Bischoff made some very positive comments about AEW and even made a few appearances on Dynamite. But, IIRC, WWE started making noises about hiring him again for whatever role, so he started right back in on poo poo-talking AEW and TK.
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Mar 2, 2022 05:38
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Jonny Nox posted:eh, we've already gotten to "All ex-WWE" we should hit "AEW fans can't take any criticism" by the end of the page and the derail should be about done. God willing
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Mar 4, 2022 06:04
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snoremac posted:Just wanna say again I'm loving the long reads, they really make the work day go faster, thank you. Close, it was Vince who chased one of the Brisco brothers (not the Briscoe brothers from modern ROH, but one of the old-school 1970s territory era Brisco brothers) around with his lovely underwear, after he accidentally dropped a steroid/coke/steak and ketchup wrap-laden load in his pants one night. "No wonder babies cry when they poo poo themselves, this loving stings" was something Vince said after he'd shat himself.
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Mar 4, 2022 16:19
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Ad by Khad posted:if anyone actually does this, please include hunter's "me and my friend mark" promo which has aged and continues to age absolutely beautifully Also the bit where (IIRC) Vince, Shane, Stephanie and her husband Paul Triple H are all in the ring telling the fans they're in charge and things are going to be completely different from now on, and then absolutely nothing about the WWE product changed one bit. This is important not just for the comedy value of that segment aging like fine milk, but also because (again, IIRC) it was done because they thought they'd signed The Young Bucks (and possibly Kenny Omega? My memory's a little fuzzy there) until the Bucks decided at the last minute not to take WWE's offer and wound up eventually helping start AEW instead.
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Mar 5, 2022 15:44
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Ex-military here also who absolutely loathed WWE's pandering via John Cena, that was the corniest horseshit ever
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Mar 5, 2022 20:19
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TheSwizzler posted:I think the short version is that they started scripting matches where they had a big, bad tough wrestler (a "hooker", a guy with very strong legitimate skill) who'd take open challengers from the crowd and utterly kick their rear end, and then they'd have a planted guy who would challenge him and win to make sure the crowd left on a happy note It should also be mentioned that as wrestling grew more popular and they started adding world championships and such to draw more fans in, that the guys who were given the titles were the "hookers" mentioned above, who could legit handle themselves should their opponent decide to go into business for themselves and try to change the outcome of the match (in case a promoter wanted to put the belt on their guy without approval, or if a guy thought he'd make a name for himself, for example). This basically continued all the way into the early 1980s, with probably Harley Race being the most well-known of those types of wrestlers. As the wrestling landscape started to change during the mid-1980s, the need for the champ to have to be able to legit stretch guys in the ring if needed started to subside, especially as the territories started dying off and the champs of all the various feds began to tour and defend their belts only within their company's established areas. Ric Flair started winning his various NWA titles under that same school of thought that produced Harley, but by the time he'd really started racking up his multiple title reigns, the title scene was wholly under the control of Jim Crockett Promotions (and later WCW/Turner Broadcasting).
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Mar 8, 2022 23:48
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gbs but from 2004 posted:guys im starting to think this dude may not like aew They're certainly devoted to the gimmick, I'll give 'em that
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Mar 9, 2022 09:39
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SirPhoebos posted:Because as delusional as Vince is, he knows that's the only thing that he can actually make a profit off of, which makes him hate it all the more. He's basically struck gold by tapping into the pop culture zeitgeist not once but twice with Hulkamania and the Attitude Era; and yet he still resents the knowledge that at the end of the day all he is, or will ever be, is the biggest carny on the fairgrounds
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Mar 11, 2022 22:46
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Elephant Ambush posted:He's the forums equivalent of the guy who buys a front row ticket just to hold up a poorly written sign that makes a Cornette podcast reference and doesn't actually watch the show but instead stares at the tv monitor waiting to hold his sign up every time he's on tv to try to get himself over I'm thinking more the guy who jumped the rail at that one AEW show and tried to attack Kenny Omega, then tweeted about it hoping that Cornette would be impressed and become his buddy, only to get roasted and blocked by Cornette because not even Cornette's willing to risk a lawsuit for encouraging people to attack wrestlers for real
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Mar 14, 2022 02:00
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It's what happens when a wrestler or poster forgets that they're just playing a character and starts actually living their gimmick, you hate to see it
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Mar 14, 2022 15:17
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For some reason I'd forgotten that I actually got to see Scott Hall work live once, back in 1997. I was doing some contract work in North Carolina and I ended up going to a Nitro airing, it was just after Curt Hennig had betrayed the Horsemen and joined the nWo. Here's the match I got to see Hall in, a WCW tag title defense with Hall & Nash (c) vs. Wrath & Mortis. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoH3K5YjXZA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISegp7kk-ms
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Mar 15, 2022 01:42
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Cubone posted:tbh I don't understand how the World Wildlife Fund had a leg to stand on They should have called themselves the WWWF: World Wide Wildlife Fund
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Mar 21, 2022 23:49
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16-bit Butt-Head posted:someone should do a write up of vince's failed business ventures like having his wife run for the Senate twice, losing both times, and burning $50 million of his own money
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Mar 23, 2022 00:45
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Animal-Mother posted:Wrestling promoters think a lot like pimps. Any money their workers make is daddy's money, not theirs. Verne Gagne wanted Hulk's legs broken for daring to get paid to be in Rocky 3. The version I heard was that Verne wanted Hogan to sign a deal where he'd get a run with the AWA title, but in return Verne would get a sizable "finder's fee" for any future TV and movie gigs Hogan might get. Hogan refused (partially because he didn't want to give Verne money for stuff he'd been independently offered; and partially because Verne felt legit wrestlers like himself or Bockwinkel were better suited as champions than muscular guys like Hogan, so any run Hogan might have had would've likely been a short one), Vince came in with a much more lucrative offer--including making him the top guy in the WWF--and Hogan jumped. The Iron Sheik was used as a transitional champ to get the WWF title off Bob Backlund and onto Hogan, and he claimed that after Hogan left the AWA, Verne offered him thousands of dollars (anywhere from $5000 to $25000, depending on who's telling the story) to shoot on Hogan and break his leg during their match. Sheik also claimed that he refused because that wasn't the right thing to do and informed Vince (and since Vince was already quite happily poaching guys from Verne's roster, he probably just laughed it off). This sort of thing was nothing new in the olden days of rasslin', of course. Back in the day, the Brisco Brothers (Jerry and Jack, not the current ROH guys) owned shares in Georgia Championship Wrestling, along with Ole Anderson and one or two other promoters, including rights to the timeslot that aired GCW on TBS. During a dispute with Ole, they convinced one of the other guys to sell their shares, so that GCW would go off the air and be replaced by whoever they sold them to... who just happened to be one Vince McMahon, who'd just taken over the WW(W)F from his father. Depending on which account you read, Ole was so furious that he either offered various people money to break the legs of both Jerry and Jack, or even threatened to have them whacked Goodfellas-style.
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Mar 25, 2022 03:47
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216A posted:I haven’t followed wrestling in thirty years but reading this thread had me take a couple of weeks to watch periodically. I was primed to agree with this thread but after watching/listening I really think, to my chagrin, because I hated him as a kid, Jim Cornette is right. The flip flop/ comedy show stuff sucks. CM punk is cool except for the cringe middle aged sXe stuff. MJF rules, most of the rest really is crap. Cornette's not right, he's a hypocrite, because a lot of the flippy-doo and comedy sketch poo poo he rails about nowadays existed back in his day too. He was more than happy to take a check from the WWF back in the 1990s for it. He's mad because he poo poo all over the current gen guys and when they started to get popular they wouldn't give him a job, precisely because they didn't appreciate him making GBS threads on them. He's a bitter old has-been, and I say that as someone who thinks he was legit the #2 top manager in the 1980s (#1 being Bobby Heenan, of course).
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Apr 2, 2022 23:43
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