MoS

The Bret-Austin I Quit match has captivated every first-time viewer I have shown it to.

Discovered this thread. My two personal favourite "Western" musical acts are The Beatles and Bill Simmons. Close to them would basically be every song Supernatural has ever featured. "Knocking on Heaven's Door", "Smoke on the water", "renegade", and for some inexplicable reason, "Heartbreaker", by Pat Benatar. But I wanted to post this because, while it never surprises me, it does rather make me sad that most hugely passionate and knowledgeable music fans have never heard or know anything about Indian music. I think, to most Americans, Indian music would be "that song in SLumdog Millionaire". And probably Khali's entrance theme, if you're a modern day wrestling fan. India has a tradition of music as diverse and rich as America, I would argue, although of course, it hasn't necessarily touched the peaks of American/British greats.

I would say John Cena. He is not a particularly good bumper, can be very inconsistent with selling, has facial expressions that range from comical to embarrassing, and is far from being a snug worker. He is very fit, but also rather clunky. However, somehow, especially on big-match occasions, things seem to click and get placed together in a way which seems impossible. Whether it is because of his immense physical charisma, which smooths over a lot of flaws, or that connection with the audience he has, or because through sheer attrition, he almost wills the match quality above what it should be, but he has a list of excellent matches which he almost had no right to have.

Another thing to consider is the double turn at WM 13, with J.R yelling "Austin passed out! He did not submit, he did not give up, but he passed out!" That image of Austin, face covered in blood, screaming in agony might be the most iconic wrestling image ever. Unlike the Austin 3:16 moment, where in retrospect you realise it was a game-changer, but at that time was basically considered just a strong promo, you sort of knew after the doublt-turn that this would be a famous moment. Along the same lines is Hogan turning heel and fans pelting the ring with garbage. I think that is the most outraged wrestling fans have been in modern wrestling. Bischoff often says that the Turner offices were inundated with angry letters from fans.

He said in the Daniel Bryan radio show linked above that something very bad happened to Nick Bockwinkel in his last years; something like "I don't want to talk about it right now, but everyone knows, and it is very sad". What is he talking about? I did not even know Nick was suffering a lot in his ifnal years, although in hindsight I should have realised he was going to, seeing how he wrestled full-time well into his 50s.

Edge got inducted a year later, but he announced his reitrement after the HoF ceremony. Flair got inducted the same year, but it was obvious that they had been building the entire storyline to culminate in an induction. So, no precedent to speak of.

I do not exactly get what "cerebral assassin" means as well. He does what, play mind games to psychologically beat you and make you doubt yourself? I have a hard time believing that the "dick joke, dick joke, something something ass, homophobic slur, claim that I am going to beat you and destroy you, 4-on-1 Horsemen style beatdowns" template is the best way to show psychological mastery.

To talk about something no one has in this thread, I do not get the "Ambulance" match and the stretcher match gimmicks. What is the point of them, apart from making the nhb concept unnecessarily contrived? Where, instead of being brutal with chairs and stuff, you just keep trying to gently wheel someone on a stretcher past the yellow line. Or try to throw them in the ambulance. Disclaimer - I have only watched the stretcher matches in WWE in the last decade and a half. Brock-Show and Edge-Kane are the ones I remember the most. It is entirely possible that other promotions have held brilliant stretcher matches.

Brain, I dislike HHH too, but credit where it is due, he performed brilliantly in the Foley street fight. It was the first time he had done anything of that sort, and he absolutely came through. It was not your typical "HHH main event heel performance in a self-bloated so-called epic" that he has done to death in such a way that he makes me cry every time he as much as shows up on TV. Same with the D-Bry match. Bryan of course was the better wrestler, but Hunter more than carried his share of the load. That said, the list involving HHH that I am interested in is not this one, since he would not make my top 500, but that infamous list Dylan made of "100 wrestlers who had a better 2000 than Triple H". I heard about it for the first time on an HHH podcast where he participated, along with Will (I think) and a couple of others, and have since then tried a lot to find it somewhere on the internet, but no luck.

Owen's outrage at the end was priceless haha.

Don't think there is too much of late 96-mid 97, which is when he was truly finding his feet and exploring his character. Most of the stuff on YT is the greatest hits compilation when he became the biggest star on Earth.

So many things that Austin did were so innovative at that time for modern WWF, you have to give him a lot of credit for going out there and seizing his opportunity with both hands and making it count. I remember when he was once cutting a promo, and the mic went out, and he made what would have been an embarrassing gaffe of production into a great scene when he just straight-up turned and said "You're gonna give me a piece of equipment that works, son, or do I need to come down and whoop your ass?" Going back and watching him find himself and his character week by week has been a really fun experience.

I was at Mania 13. I remember Austin's promo during the pre-show, when he said, "Bret, you keep talking about getting screwed, well I'm not bringing a condom to the ring, just a can of whoop-ass", or something like that. The buzz from the crowd after that was so great. That, the pop when he unwrapped the chair from his ankle and hit Bret with it, and the drama of the final sharpshooter were the moments where I really realized WWE had something special. Unrelated, but how vicious was the audience hate for Rock? Bret has claimed in his book that all the boos and "Die Rocky Die" chants were done by a handful of ECW supporters who used to travel to every show and boo him. Of course, Chicago has a reputation now, but I do not know if it was considered a smark city in 97 as well.

Yeah, pretty much. No one in their right mind thinks that he is De Niro in acting skill and talent - ironically, his movies are actually better than many of De Niro's recent flicks - and no one really even wants him to do something different. That said, action heroes have in the past at least tried to do something different; more intimate, more emotional. The Rock did sort of do that with Pain and Gain and his bit role in Be Cool, and they were not very successful, so I do not see him trying to break the mould too much, at least not in the near future.

HHH might hate Rock, but Rock is a genuine Hollywood superstar at a time when star-power in Hollywood is at an all-time low, and is also extremely loved in internet circles for stuff like lip-sync battles. Meanwhile, even HHH is not deluded enough to not realise that WWE might be the lowest they have been in popularity and buzz since the dark days of mid-90s. He will be begging Rock to come visit as much as he can. Really, how many times Rock turns up will be on Rock.

Jingus, this is off-topic, but what book is that? World War 1 and the propaganda around it fascinates me; it is never discussed as much as WW2, but in many ways, it was the more miserable, more terrible war.

Well they didn't really have to do much on that because Batista was more than willing to try. I thought they didn't break up after that? I seem to recall reading that it was why Morrison's push was aborted; Vince lost respect for him because he thought a "real man" would have fought Batista for that instead of just forgiving his girlfriend.

Jesus, that's probably more than Austin did in his best year. Is Cena actually outselling Austin at his peak in merchandise?

Has there ever been a case of the company trying to break up a real-life couple? I recall they were not too happy with John Morrison and Melina, but I don't think they tried to break them up.

It would have been more okay if commentators and the presentation in general had emphasised that it was pretty disgusting, the way JR used to be outraged when Shawn Michaels used to be [a word I cannot remember] of his dignity". They actually used the words: low, desperate, disgusting. Yeah, but I felt that the presentation of it was still that of a comedy spot. and Michael Cole being a shitty commentator doesn't help. I could be wrong, of course.

It would have been more okay if commentators and the presentation in general had emphasised that it was pretty disgusting, the way JR used to be outraged when Shawn Michaels used to be [a word I cannot remember] of his dignity".

Isn't much of wrestling the portrayal of attempted murder? Technically, in sanctioned matches at least, the participants accept that they might die. That is why unsanctioned matches are considered such a big deal, and all participants participate in them knowing fully well they might die. Although I am not going to even try to defend Hogan's vehicular assault on Rock before WM 18. I just think this one is worse because it was basically played for laughs. On an unrelated note, WWE's standard contracts after Owen died make for quite interesting reading.

Well, because of PG restrictions, Flair obviously couldn't do that, but, if you ask for my personal opinion, I would argue that a heel sneakily physically attacking a face is less offensive than what happened. My reasoning for that is because sexual assault is a different nature of crime; one in which, as Sek said, women are treated as nothing more than objects for sexual gratification, and are essentialised and reduced from being human beings to pleasure-giving robots. On the other hand, Flair low-blowing Becky would have meant that he recognised that Lynch was not only a person, but a dangerous competitor who needed to be weakened if his daughter had any hopes of winning. So, yeah. Just my two cents

So was Roman spearing his boss. Well then, might as well have people using n-words freely and freely raping women. because most things that happen in wrestling are criminal offences. There is a place for tasteless shit in wrestling, but in my opinion, sexual assault being used as a comedy spot is not one of them. Roman spearing his boss was treated as a huge deal, so even in wrestling terms, the treatment of both was different. If the announcers had talked about how despicable and horrible Flair was for doing that to Lynch, and how he should be put into jail for that, then it wouldn't be much of a problem.

In kayfabe terms, obviously. Point being that a scripted case of sexual assault should not be used as a comedy spot.