Jingus

He's not wrong about the WWE's tendency of portraying "intellectual" characters as being unmanly. Whether that comes out as being weak, cowardly, effeminate, or whatever. The company's never been comfortable with the idea that brains could be equally important as pure brawn. With the notable exception of one Cerebral Assassin, naturally.

Yeah... that kinda shit happens. Just wait until you have to do rope-running drills. Trust me, you've never known pain like that.

Gimmicked guitars weren't 100% safe either. I still remember David Young showing me a gigantic splinter of wood that was embedded in his scalp after Jarrett whacked him with one of the "safe" props.

WWF did plenty of stunt falls in the next few years. Shane McMahon made a gimmick out of doing it on PPVs, not to mention the various stuff involving the Hardys/Dudleys/E&C. Even Vince took a few of those, like the big fall off the scaffold onto some kind of padding during his match with HHH. So, they didn't completely learn the lesson. But they did indeed stop fucking around with the rappelling-from-the-rafters bullshit after Owen. WCW (and TNA) kept doing it because apparently protecting Sting's gimmick is more important than showing sensitivity to one of the most infamous tragedies in wrestling history.

And on the other hand, they don't want any of their non-wrestler employees to know anything about wrestling and consider them to be a mark if they do.

That's useless for attracting non-wrestling-fans, though. They'll just say "you know they paid Brock to lose that match, it's all fake crap" and such.

I guess it got really mainstream by then, with the post-grunge scene, but in the mid-90's britpop, electro (including the absurdly named "French Touch") and trip hop were becoming the taste of the moment. Maybe it was just where I lived, but absolutely nobody was into that kind of music when I was in high school in '95. I think Raven's character especially worked since it wasn't just any grunger, but a grunger you're supposed to hate. He's a whiny self-pitying little moaning emo bitch. So I don't think it hurt him to be clinging to grunge long after Cobain was dead and buried; being married to an obsolete fad only made him more punch-able.

He had several during his feud with the Rock back in 01/02. Well, we are grading on the sliding scale of how well wrestlers can act. But I thought Punk has always been decent enough for his spot. Once again, I think it comes down to this material simply being a bad idea to write into a wrestling feud in the first place. "You are haunted by the personal demons of your immediate family!" isn't something that translates well in a storytelling medium which mostly involves one dude punching another dude.

It is weird how many people hate on Cena because "he never loses" or "he always comes back like Superman" or other similar statements. It's become a pretty solid consensus opinion in a lot of corners of the IWC. Why is that? He's nowhere near as protected as, say, Austin or Hogan were during their big runs. Cena usually does more clean jobs in a single year than those guys did in their entire championship reigns. Have modern fans just become so impatient, or so used to even-steven booking where everyone loses all the time, that they expect even the biggest stars to lose more frequently?

I'd say they're better promos than, oh, at least 95% of wrestlers in the business today. Punk can act and Jericho can cut serious promos, we've seen them do it before. I think the material is just defeating them here. This is the sort of stupid soap-opera Russo bullshit which has zero impact on the matches themselves. There's no way that "I am taunting you for you family's drug problems" can be properly expressed or articulated by two guys fighting in the ring. Everyone I've ever heard mention it in any way. It even got a Wrestlecrap induction. Most people considered everything Jake did in '96 to be pretty embarrassing.

You're literally the only person I've ever talked to who had a single kind word to say about that feud. Most people hated it, and it certainly didn't draw any money or lead to anything else down the line.

Has any angle based around substance abuse ever been any good? Every single example I can think of have all sucked, hard. It's not like he's got creative control. Maybe he had an idea for a great new character (those opening non-speaking "promos" seemed to be heading in that direction) but then it got canned. Then again, this is a guy who strongly insisted that he wasn't returning until he actually did, so it's not like he doesn't have a history of fucking with the internet.

Trusting the franchise of the company more than a guy who might flake out in a month. This, sadly, is true. Brock's well known for doing whatever Brock feels like doing, including abandoning his employer or even his profession on a whim. And we all know how Vince feels about employing people he doesn't have total control over, or at least trust to the extent that he trusts Dwayne Johnson.

The only people who use the "you know it's fake, right?" line tend to be folks who've never watched it in their entire lives. (Which, truthfully, is the majority of people.) They simply don't know shit about it, and do indeed still blindly buy into the Received Wisdom that rassling still holds tight to kayfabe. It's basically the same as, oh, anyone who denigrates the entire population of France as being cowards who surrender at the drop of a hat, because it's just a snarky way to feel superior to a large number of people. Same thing with "lol, they like wrestling, they don't know it's fake!" towards fans. A more irritating version is when you run into people who insist that wrestling is so fake that none of it could possibly hurt the performers or cause injury. And when you start telling them about all the guys who've been injured or crippled or killed in the ring, they'll start instantly spinning some kind of conspiracy theory about how all of that is faked, too.

The Dudleys/Hardys match from Rumble 2000 seemed like it invented the formula which pretty much every tables match since then has copied. It still holds up, even though in hindsight it kinda looks like they were trying to do a TLC match sans ladders.

Do you mean officially, because he's a backstage employee now (despite wrestling frequently) or the same sort of "this person doesn't fail this test, period" down-low that Taker, Cena, Batista, Edge, and HBK all (probably) enjoyed?

Rey wouldn't have been an employee in the first place without doing drugs. Steroids and/or HGH to give him enough enough bulk and size to appease McMahon's obsession with muscular mass. Steroids to help recover from injuries faster. Prescription painkillers to dull the chronic agony Oscar Gutierrez suffers in every moment of his waking life as a direct result of his flashy crowd-popping style of wrestling. Uppers and downers to wake up and go to sleep regularly in the chaotic, arbitrary, unpredictable schedule of road travel. The WWE knows all this, they've known it since the beginning. They chose to overlook it whenever Rey was in their good graces. They chose to reveal it when they're unhappy with him. Also: I personally don't give a fuck if guys do steroids or not. Personal choice, nobody held a gun to their head and forced them to become pro wrestlers in the first place. But to claim that they're as harmless as cm funk is claiming here? C'mon, man. Look at the life expectencies of wrestlers before juicing became common, and compare it to now. Is it a coincidence that so many roided-up stars from the 80s and later have dropped dead prematurely from heart attacks? Yes, recreational abuse of other drugs definitely takes its toll, but let's not pretend that the massive level of hormone injections haven't had an effect. Yeah, but it was basically a "dog ate my homework" excuse. He was speaking to a Mexican newspaper iirc, and it's not like the Mexican fans are gonna believe a gringo corporation's word over that of a guy like Mysterio who is practically a national hero. Height is really just the other side of the coin from muscular size; Vince likes guys who are big all over, period. But the hair thing is odd, because it's kinda been going away. Why do so many WWE wrestlers nowadays have such boring haircuts? That's very true. The public in general is remarkably ignorant towards steroid use by actors and other performers. Do they really think that Ben Stiller just pounded weights and ate a bunch of lean meat in order to look like he did in Tropic Thunder?

Yeah. Considering that WCW was still around and still (allegedly) competition, I don't see the problem with that.

Good idea in theory. You'd make a nice profit... for one night. Unless all the fans involved were total sycophants, sooner or later a bunch of the wrestlers would get pissed off at people dissecting their performances and either threaten to attack the fans or just walk out.

Suave's post includes one important part to help explain it: Wrestling training in the old days (at least, not in the Buzz Sawyer type of school of "two or three lessons in a back yard, immediately followed by graduation") tended to share some characteristics with military training. It's brainwashing, plain and simple. There's still some of that today, especially the majority of the "respect da bizness!" indoctrination that gets drilled into everybody's heads. But back then, the physical liberties that a trainer could take basically made him into the trainees' lord and master. You've typically got a class full of young impressionable superfans who've wanted to be wrestlers their whole lives, and now they're training under a guy who is perfectly willing and able to stretch the shit out of them on a daily basis. If a guy keeps telling you over and over again "Wrestling is real!" and he will break your fuckin' bones if you disagree, that sort of thing eventually seems like truth. Repeat any message over and over again from a position of absolute power, and eventually people will believe it whether or not it makes any damn sense. That's why dictators always post so many pictures of themselves all over their countries and encourage the masses to worship El Jefe, because enough people will actually fall for it (or, at least, not bother openly disagreeing) that it makes the tyrant's job easier and discourages rebellion. Also, trainees were essentially seen as still being marks until they'd proved themselves in the ring. And if there's one thing that old-timey rasslers hate doing, it's smartening up a mark. They didn't want any of these kids to go back home to their friends and brag about how they'd learned all of wrestling's inside secrets. You weren't allowed in the club unless you were already in the club, if you take my meaning. If a rookie could manage to make it all the way through training and show some potential in their first matches, only then would they be inducted to the next level. Masonic rituals and hierarchies are kind of run along the same lines, from what I've heard, and certainly for the same reasons. It's all about molding the rookie into someone who can be expected to follow orders, at least to an extent. Finally: don't underestimate the number of really stupid and/or really crazy people who go into wrestling. Some poor bastards are willing to believe anything. Once you've got enough of those in one business, there will inevitably be a shitload of true stories about guys who weren't smart before they wrestled. Addendum: not ALL trainers were like this, of course. Lots of guys look back with fondness upon their teachers, who treated their students with (relative) dignity and respect. But "wrestling school trainer" is the exact sort of position which would be highly appealing to sadistic personalities who enjoy bullying people.

Why is that hard to understand? There's still a sizable group of fans who like wrestling in general, are willing to go to the shows, but simply don't like Cena.

Once you've had a fan attack you, the endearment goes away in a damn hurry. And the vast majority of wrestling matches have always looked SO phony that I just can't respect the intellect of any grown adult who actually thinks this shit might be real. It's the difference between fictional (a nicer f-word than "fake") and fixed. Wrestling, even the Japanese worked-shoot style, is fictional. The crowd generally know and accept that it's all a show, and pretty much everyone knows it's not a legit sporting contest and that's okay. Fixed stuff are things that are presented as being 100% real (like those infamous Pride matches, or "name your favorite Don King screwjob here") but are secretly predetermined without the knowledge of anyone but the athletes and their cronies.

Some guys truly didn't know/understand the work until they'd had a few matches. A guy I know who trained at the USWA school told me about it; they basically taught the guys how to do moves and protect themselves on bumps, but kinda acted like it was just a part of an elaborately stylized method of combat which was designed to let guys fight every night without getting seriously hurt. Even in the dressing room, the veterans tended to kayfabe the greenest rookies. And most curtain-jerking kids were flatly told not to punch or kick, period, usually with some explanation that they had to learn good old-fashioned technical wrestling first. (Hell, this part still happens in WWE developmental to this very day!) Their opponent was either another green kid who had no idea what they were doing, leading to a clusterfuck; or a veteran who basically ate the rookie's lunch and kept him down on the mat for most of the match. It still sounds awfully weird, but I've heard it too many times from guys I trust for it to be a complete myth. "I had my first match before being smartened up" really happened; although, it might not have happened nearly as often and consistently as some back-in-my-day veterans claim. Maybe they just did it to the overly credulous, particularly markish trainees who would swallow that bullshit without asking questions.

These days? Pretty much none. I make sure to catch Mania every year; and maybe once a month I'll bother watching a random episode of TV just to see what's going on. But that's about it. (Admittedly, part of this is due to sheer poverty; if I had the money, I'd probably be a regular buyer of DVDs from Chikara and Shimmer and a few other indies.)

The difference is, MMA fights look like real fights. Most wrestling matches haven't looked like a legitimate contest ever since we've had the technology to record them. It's mind-boggling to think that any intelligent adults have even wondered if rassling was real at any point in the past fifty years.