Negro Suave

Johnny Saint v Steve Grey Johnny Saint v Jim Breaks Johnny Saint v Fit Finaly I am a huge Johnny Saint fan. Big Daddy is like the Hulk Hogan of world of sport not great but a spectacle and nothing wrong with it in the context of he was the one getting everyone in their seats to see some of the great wresting action

If you take OJ's arguments in a vacuum they are quite correct. But to put into context it becomes a bit flimsier. If you take Hogan's body of work and compare it to what people are doing now and how wrestling has progresssed you begin to wonder what the big deal is. It is the same as any other entertainer or any other athelete really. We have yet to and may never again see another wrestler with the star caliber of Hogan. Old white guys with money know who Hogan is which is why he STILL gets jobs and more money. It's why Sylvester Stallone Arnold S and every other action star can be easily called some of thegreatest movie stars of all time but no where near the greatest actors of all time. What they do is forumlaic and objectively kind of stupid but it will always get eaten up because it is what is.

Hmmm when you talk about midcard stables i dont know how you can ignore the gang wars era of WWF programming. Nation of Domination, Boricuas, DoA I think they were all awful until the Rock led Nation of Domination broke out and feuded with DX. DoA were the defacto faces in attitude era with Boricuas as Tweeners and NoD as heels... yeah all sorts of implications with that one.

Its an interesting question. A lot of the differences between them lie in the attitude. Hulk Hogan has always acted as if he knew that he was the face of wrestling and worked accordingly, whereas John Cena has always acted like I have been MADE the face of WWE and has acted accordingly. Wrestling wise they are both near the bottom of the technical pool when placed nexted to their contemporaries int that they are not the worst but no where near the best. The one thing that Hogan has managed to do that always fascinated me, is that in any match, he could get the crowd going just by stopping and looking at them. I haven't seen Cena able to pull that off believably. Objectively however I'd go with Cena, as he's been more a facillitator rather than a gatekeeper in the main event picture

Count me in the group of people who don't hate Brodus as a worker. He fills a niche. He is visually different and his character works different;y than everyone elses. I do get tired of everyone taking themselves so damn seriously. Other than Santino pretty much every other wrestler is so serious all the time. People like to say comedy ruins wrestling, heck even Cornette had this long rant about it, but even he is looking at it a little flawed. As an entertainment form, wrestling needs points where you can laugh, as much as it needs places where you can cry big manly tears, and places where you can cheer. It's about evoking emotions. I really wish they would have gotten behind his character and just let him be the funksaurus, they seem to be trying to give him a fued. I would have just kept him as the happy babyface that talks smack in the ring and frustrates heels.

I myself hated the Ultimate Warrior and everything about him, but that was when I was going through my "I'm 19 now and wrestling has gotten really stupid and I'm going to college/ following the Grateful Dead around the country" period. I still can't watch a Warrior match, I hated him so much. But I'd imagine that there's a ton of people who were kids during Warrior's run who thought he was fucking awesome and still have nostalgic feelings. Ultimate Warrior def didn't age very well for me at least. I think part of it was him tapping into the short attention span of children here was a guy who moved at 50 million miles an hour, shook the ropes, and acted like every sugar addled 6-10 year old boy. That's what i remembered, heck i even remember playin the video games and those took the bloom off the rose as far as the warrior was concerned. He just wasn't that great. I dont have this huge nostalgia for him.

To be fair JYD didn't exactly get over with it either. Probably the reason he was never World Champ. Ok maybe just ONE of the reasons.

I don't understand why the punch was used in that context. It seemed a little off to me. = Good The punch was bad and you all should feel bad. = Bad

It's interesting that the Demos always come up in this discussion and for good reason. Demos are a team that I loved when I was a kid. I wasn't big on the Road Warriors because they were more of the same to me. As an adult looking back I feel like I felt they weren't as good at storytelling beyond "We are big and bad and going to beat you up!" I watch a demolition match and I see a lot mroe give and take than I realized, and a lot more focus on telling a story. Demolition made their opponents look good while LOD looked good at the expense of their opponents. And its easy to forget that Demolition was a pretty big deal for a while. They had an Ice Cream likeness AND they were on cereal box insert posters. That's pretty big I think at the Time Hogan and Macho Man were the other two selections. I'm a little foggy on the details but they were insanely popular for a while.

I really think this shows that it doesnt matter what the gimmick is. The gimmick gets you into the door and gives you the ability to make something of it. But really there isn't a whole lot new under the sun as far as wrestling gimmickry. Some of our most revered entertainers were derivative of someone else and they are happy to talk about it. Just seems like wrestlers hold on to it a bit longer instead of branching out. Partially because once you become CW anderson the only thing a promoter is going to ask you to do is "hey you do that Anderson gimmick? Keep doing that!" It's a lot like hollywood in that regard in that the people who have money don't want something new.. they want something safe and proven so they can make money.

To me Cena over Brock makes perfect business sense if you are trying to get more interest in your product. The underlying story here to me is a WWE guy went over someone who is now considered a UFC fighter. Holy crap you mean the UFC isn't as tough as the WWE by golly we should watch more WWE! For better or worse WWE has to compete with MMA in general in getting young people interested as well as for the talents of many a man and woman who would otherwise be trainining for MMA.

I think you are being needlessly high and mighty on this one. It is very easy to look at things in 2012 and say how gosh darn blatantly obvious it is that there is mroe "working" as opposed to "wrestling". However you are taking things way out of context when you you just can't understand how people couldnt see that it was "fake" even the boys. Pro wrestling carnies was all about making money. Until you proved yourself you were just a mark. So they beat up and stretched the hopefuls and which ever ones were stupid enough to keep at it got actual training. And thinking that it's all fake is the worst mindset for a professional wrestler to have so if you scare the shit out of a kid and make him beieve that everythign is real you'll either get a tough as nails kid out the other side who can keep that image alive, or you get a kid who runs back home and tells everyone that he couldnt do it because it was too real.

RE: FIP on the indys It's pretty much neccessary and it's just a univeral entertainment spot. I don't understand the hate for it really. Doesn't matter how it is done, the cheating heels just working up a firey baby face on the outside, dominant heels out matching the plucky faces, it's all good. RE: Ref made of glass I would hate to see this change, the idea that the guys in the ring are beating the snot out of each other at full force would be lost if the ref didn't bump off of a glance.... some refs take it to extremes. And getting away with dirty play is a constant in all sports so why not wrestling? I hate the respect stand off or the "indy standoff" as it is sometimes called. To me you are showing a bit to much of the "this is a show" hand. it's almsot as if you are just begging for a reaction instead of getting one.

If I could find the tape... there is a match between me and Brodie Lee where he had to work face. It happened up in Booton and small crowd so he went around the ring and shook everyones hand and basically played an 80's baby face... it was quite hillarious

Punching and kicking with the toe of the boot have always been illegal just not oft enforced in american wrestling. I have generally likened lucha to duels of honor as if they were victorian men duelling with rapiers where in the object wasn't to neccesarily just defeat your opponent, the objective is to either humilate them or make them think twice for slighting you. When you look at the matches not as a contest to see who is stronger, better, faster, but as a way to show dominance by virtue of their athletic acumen be it on the mat or through the air.

You're really going to make me go in-depth on the Dungeon of Doom? I love gimmicks also, but there's a fine line between a gimmick and just plain stupid. Obviously, everyone's line is different and the Dungeon of Doom crossed my line. Why? I think because even though I enjoy gimmicks, I still need the gimmick to be somewhat beileveable. Casting spells on people and having mummies wander into the ring isn't remotely believeable and, to me, was just stupid. As stupid as gimmicks like American-hating Sgt. Slaughter or Brutus the Barber Beefcake might have been, they didn't bother me because they were somewhat believeable. In my young brain, an Iraqi-sympathizer trying to beat up Hulk Hogan or some juiced up dude in mesh pants cutting a guy's hair after he beats him up made sense to me, at least a little bit. When the Dungeon of Doom came around, nothing made sense and all I saw was stupidity. But like I said in my original post, I'm sure there were other factors. I was getting older, wrestling wasn't "cool" at the time, etc. I'm still a huge wrestling fan -- my closet is full of 80s and early 90s footage -- but ever since the Dungeon, I haven't paid much attention to the modern product. Maybe it's not completely fair to blame most of my disinterest in modern wrestling on the Dungeon of Doom, but that's the time period and storyline that stick in my head as the one that drove me away. I can understand where you are going there, having a paper thin veneer of a story can make something that seems ridiculous work much much better. I wholeheartedly believe that is why some gimmicks fail completely is that their story doesnt even pass a glance test. I have often wondered for somethign like the yeti if they had taken some time to establish that they were forcing some big oaf to become this mummy via Kevin Sullivan's control of the black arts leading to this crazed monster who had been brainwashed into thinking he was a mummy? That would have been awesome to me.

I'd like to hear more about what about the Dungeon of Doom you didn't like. More so elaborate on what about it pushed you over the edge. Just saying that it was bad doesn't really invite discussion as you are assuming that everyone agress with you. Which, while that may be true, isn't a great discussion. Now onto the question, my mindset towards wrestling is severely warped because I have been a part of the business for so long. I don't know if I have a point where I will say nope I am no longer interested. But on the flip side, I am always far more interested in seeing guys I have known wrestling and having their chance to shine more so than their gimmicks. I am however a huge fan of over the top and ridiculous gimmicks, theatrics, and the like so personally I always dug the Dungeon of Doom because I appreciated the theatrics and the over the top memorable nature of the ridiculous characters they came out with. Bottom line is that I can probably remember more dungeon of doom members than I can ROH wrestlers because they all look the same to me. So... there is my rambling response

It's all about money, as far as I have been told and It works both ways really. If you get signed to an 'E deal they want to own your name if they can so they can continue to make money on it and make money on you using it if they have to. Since being signed to the WWE is no longer a sure fire gravy train ticket it is a good idea for just about anyone that get's signed to not use their own gimmick name because if and when you get cut, you can easily go back to the old gimmick name and have some recognition with that AND recognition from being on TV. Also if you don't pan out in development, you dont have people saying that you sucked and sullying your reputation in outside circles. As far as the bland naming I blame kayfabe being dead. People just won't take Chest "The Boulder" Rockchin seriously and the legit tough guys people relate to are just using regular names.

I think the most difficult part of some of these ideas is that these are all great angles that would work for a television show or something like that. Unfortunately I think that wrestling down plays a lot of the tension that these kinds of angles would bring in simply for the fact that people just can go fight it out, it's pretty primal in that regard might makes right and so on. But back to it I would love to see them do more of a fight camp thing with each of the various camps fighting for dominance and fighting within each other for overall dominance. Recruiting away members people going rogue by themselves, alliances made and broken. It's all very romance of the three kingdoms in my head.

Buried under a mountain of 80's lucha, which is not the worst place to be if you're a wrestling fan, but it kinda forces me to shift around my priorities. But I'm not that far behind. The Pirate vs. The Spartan will be watched! That makes it sound like an episode of Deadliest Warrior when you put it that way.

It's a more a matter of making sure you don't see the same spot a million times on a card which happens all too often on the indy circuit (im guilty of this as well) To a point it makes sense, we don't need to have 3000 moonsaults on a card Especially if you have a guy who's big spot is a moonsault. On the flip side at least on the Indy's you have a bunch of guys who are trying to stand out among a field of hundreds in their area in order to hopefully make a buck so these things get tossed by the wayside. In a bigger promotion it really depends on who it is. The Pedigree is super protected as was the Sweet Chin Music (Balls Mahoney told me of a time where he wasn't thinking and did a superkick as a non finishing move and the Undertaker warned him 'Don't do that to Shawn') but really its generally up to the wrestlers and road agents to police themselves. Either way finishers have generally been shared especially the simpler ones. *EDIT* I figured I should actually LIST some overused finishers and signature moves Shining Wizard (guilty) Super Kick Enziguri (also Guilty) Leg Lariat Lungblower(Also guilty... geez) Spear Ace Crusher(including stunner variants) Standing Moonsaults That's all I can think about off the top of my head

S.L.L. needs to recap us again where you at homey!

Eh It doesn't bother me what is aired really thats just a match i was hoping for more from. I hope to get another chance to work against bravo

Not my favorite match of me

Bobo was an amazing performer indeed. I have only got to see bits and pieces and clips of what he did. But he was definately a door opener. I don't think anyone can gloss that over, highly influential and groundbreaking but that doesn't necessarily mean best,