MoS

I disagree that fans did not care if Rock lost or not. Fans were pelting the ring with garbage after WM 2000 ended, something which happened rarely in WWF. The pop he received for everything he did at Backlash one month after was also incredible, especially when Austin's music hit and they realised Rock was going to win. Rock had a weird trajectory. Only man in 1998 apart from Austin and Taker to pin Kane. However, in December 1999, he jobbed to Big Bossman and Al fucking Snow. I think that what is more important, however, is his Corporate heel run, where he was ruthless against Mankind and others. It gave the impression that he might talk trash a lot, but in the big matches, he got shit done.

Agreed with OJ on Bret's opponents. Bret has himself said his matches with Taker are some of his favourites. And the match with Waltman might be the most famous Raw match of the early years. I would like to see Parv rate the Attitude main-eventers. I know he dislikes the era, so he won't be nearly as high on Austin and Rock as I am. The only ones I would argue is if Austin and Rock do not get a 10 in intangibles. Hunter might as well get a zero in that. His lack of charisma compared to the level of his push is staggering.

Since there is no "Comments that don't warrant a thread" thread anymore.... I had actually never seen this before. I had heard a lot about it though. Rock was great in it, but my personal favourite was Big Show's 3 lines. That dude has a really good comic timing. Triple H.....well, he tried, like he always does. I know he likes to pretend that he could have easily been the Hollywood superstar that Rock is, but chose wrestling over movies, but he just doesn't have it. I would actually argue that Austin has a much better and more entertaining personality and comic timing, even though in his prime, he almost never cracked jokes on-screen. Anyway, since I did not even know what the internet was in 2000 - I was 7, but I am Indian - how was this received online and the wrestling journalists like Meltzer? Was it considered a seminal moment in wrestling being mainstream? Or were people rather wary of it, since wrestling may have been mainstream in the Attitude Era, but to my understanding, it was as well respected in America as the Kardashians are now. How was it received in the wider media? I know everyone connected to wrestling thinks The Rock absolutely nailed it, but for what it is worth, some YouTube comments (I know, I know) were very critical about this. As an aside, it must have hurt Triple H that Rock was the main focus here, despite Hunter being the champ and scheduled to win the WM main event. I mean, they were not exactly in character: they did not break kayfabe, but they were pretty open about it.

I like Trish quite a lot, but I would like to see an argument for why she deserves to be in the Top 100 and Triple h doesn't. I know their contextual circumstances were not at all similar, but I don't think this project is the place to right historical wrongs.

Yay everyone, some dude (wait, who the hell are you?) is here to insult me for no goddamn reason whatsoever! For your information: I've talked with Si in the chat about "serious" academic analysis of all kinds of wacky pop culture, my post here was an extension of those conversations. And my post didn't mention a single thing about my time "in DA BZNSS", I was referencing the fact that I'd just spent the last few years as an English major and have written countless citations just like the ones Si did here. It's an in-joke that you're on the outside of, so take your assumptions and shove off.

Yay everyone, Jingus is here to contribute nothing to the topic but pour scorn and snark over the people discussing it, smugly self-satisfied in his ivory tower of elitism, which he gained access to because he was "in DA BZNSS"! Rejoice! I loved, loved, loved the article. My mindset is diametrically opposite to Parv's; I hate the racist, misogynistic, xenophobic, homophobic (ad idem.) elements in professional wrestling, and it shocks me that wrestling manages to get away with it even in 2015, purely because of its status as low-brow entertainment. I am radically left-wing and a feminist, so you can argue that wrestling is not for me; to some extent, I have learned to embrace the disgusting elements in wrestling, but that does not mean I like to see such elements being celebrated.

Have at it. Serena Williams - Ric Flair. Excellent from the beginning and amazing longevity. There were others better at their peak, but no one has had the kind of longevity she has enjoyed. Steffi Graf - Toshiaki Kawada, most probably. Not as long a career as Williams, but when she was at her peak, there was no one better, except for Monica Seles, who was threatening to spoil the party before a lunatic stabbed her. Martina Navratilova - Jerry Lawler. Great at singles, great at tags, great on so many levels. Margaret Court - Hmm.... probably Ray Stevens? Not enough footage exists, and competition was easier in her time, but was dominant in a huge way. Suzanne Lenglen/ Helen Wills - Jim Londos. The first superstars, and amazing talents.

Not speaking spanish at all, that totally went over my head. However, I did learn what "tossing your salad" meant while listening to Konnan, and for that, I'm forever grateful. And peeling my potatoes... Funny how Konnan used to be able to get away with using prison/street/hip hop slang because nobody running the show was young or hip enough to know what was going on. I'm not even sure they had anybody aware of what was hip and cool other than Hall, Nash, Konnan, Rey, Jericho and a couple others. On the Spanish slang, to be fair to WCW, WWE is not censoring it either. I saw somebody (perhaps Alberto) using Spanish swear words fairly recently (2012 or after) that he would probably be fired over if they were in English on live TV. This makes me think of Dave Chappelle having a big laugh about white people finding out what "skeet skeet" meant after allowing it to play all over the radio. Oh, and for something wrestling related, when Khali had Runjin Singh as a translator apparently Khali was saying really nasty stuff in Punjab. I remember someone saying one of his promos on Cena was talking about raping Cena's mother and shit like that. Khali said "maa chodh doonga" which literally translates to "I will fuck your mom". It is a very common way of colloquially insulting someone in India, although that, of course, is no justification. He also called Batista "kutte", which means "dog", which is again a common insult in India. Different culture.

See, that is something I just do not understand. A bunch of oh-so-masculine-and-macho jocks dissing gay people in a casual environment is literally the embodiment of homophobia. Same with wrestlers using the n-word. Words can never be divested from their context or their historical use. When I was in Alabama for my law school semester exchange program, there was this charming dude who kept on calling me "Paki". His roommate tried to justify it by saying that he was not a xenophobe; he just did not know the right "PC" word for Indians. It makes no sense.

^ A case of account hacking? Fair play if you want to be a douche, but why the need to be a homophobic douche?

Also, the Divas Revolution crap was just a smokescreen to push Charlotte without her getting Reignsed, it seems. After giving an all-time performance last Saturday, here is Sasha being almost beaten by Paige in less than 1 minute 20 seconds. Utter nonsense.

Speaking as an Indian, where swastikas are found on the doors of literally every house, and from where Hitler poached and perverted its design, I have to say it is not a traditional Hindu swastika. It is very much a Nazi memorabilia. Hindu swastika - Hitler's perversion of it -

Think he meant the Survivor Series Austin-Bret match.

Yeah, the Attitude Era apologists loved this talking point. Wasn't it unfortunately also parroted by Meltzer? We know that WWE promos are all scripted ahead of time and that the guys have to sit there and wait for the other guy to finish before it's their turn to talk, so I was always confused by the idea of anyone getting destroyed unless they were scripted to get destroyed. Unless people meant he was getting destroyed in terms of delivery or emotion or whatever. Rock has always scripted his own promos, so I don't think Creative was writing his promos for him this time around. Pretty sure he wrote them himself. THe content fell absolutely flat. And I had a problem with the delivery as well. There seemed no charisma in his delivery. He wasn't Randy Orton, exactly, but he sure as hell wasn't the lively charismatic Rock.

Yeah, the Attitude Era apologists loved this talking point. Wasn't it unfortunately also parroted by Meltzer?

I would be more interested in their comparison as promos. Rock was more consistently good, and was better on average, but I am not sure his peak beats Cena at his best. Plus, he did not realise just how outdated his stuff was, which resulted in Cena destroying him in their verbal altercations on a daily basis when they were feuding.

Before I joined the internet wrestling community, I always thought of Austin as a much better wrestler than Shawn Michaels, to the point where it was not even close. However, prior to joining PWO in around 2011, my wrestling fix was sated solely by LoP, and there, Shawn was considered a much better wrestler than Austin, so much so that it was not even an opinion; it was just a fact, and you were a rube if you thought otherwise. They had an unexpected supporter in Steve Austin himself, who has gone on record saying that he does not consider himself as good a wrestler as Shawn Michaels. Well, I am a rube then, because I disagree, and I do so vehemently. I think Austin is better on offense; I think Austin is a better seller; Austin times his comebacks and his hope spots much more ffecively; Austin is much better at garnerng sympathy and then working the crowd to a molten hot lava point with his comebacks; Austin's WWE-trademarked Hulk-style comeback is much better than Michaels's kip-up stretch. Really, I cannot think of one area where Michaels is better than Austin except in displays of athleticism, and because that is well down the list of what I look for in a wrestler, I consider that largely irrelevant. What do the good people here think? Agree? Disagree? I am off my rocker?

That is absolutely sickening. I have no time for Foley and his "Aw shucks!" routine, but I do hope he publicly condemned it. What happened finally in the poll?

I have no idea about this. What happened?

^From an American perspective, yes. But watching as a child in other countries, I guess a lot of kids might have felt really upset and sad that people who looked like the adults in their families were denigrated and mocked. I have friends of Middle-Eastern origin who used to feel mad about how things like headscarves and other cultural artifacts were portrayed. It is something which a lot of Americans do not understand; because American pop-culture and the entertainment industry are so ubiquitous and self-sufficient, they do not really need to look at other countries and their entertainment options; ergo, American kids do not feel upset or offended at the mocking and dissing of America in other countries, which is plentiful and as inexcusable as stereotyping other cultures in wrestling. I confess I have no real stake in this. Somehow, WWE has never focused on India and Indian gimmicks too much beyond Khali, despite India being WWE's third largest market. And I am not going to be hating on the Punjabi Playboy; although it did cause a modicum of outrage here, it is on account of cultural differences and ignorance, and I know WWE were not intentionally causing offence. I thought that gimmick was fucking entertaining, and the Bhangra entrance music was an added bonus haha.

My understanding is that it was NOT a sideshow attraction prior to Moolah. She was the one primarily responsible for turning it into one. And I have watched enough midget matches to know that midget matches are awesome. A sideshow attraction match on wrestling cards does not have to be realistic, yes, but it needs to be entertaining and good.

For her to satisfy the trifecta of Hall of Fame, her "impact" and her performance needs to be good. For her to not be the most cancerous sore on the wrestling industry, her impact needs to be not be the most alarmingly destructive the industry has never seen. She fails on both accounts. As a performer, she made El Gigante look like Toshiaki Kawada. That bled over to her training: all Moolah proteges wrestled in the same hair-pulling, screaming shitty style that she used. As a booker of women's wrestling, not only did she use her power to hold back talent for 30 fucking years, she also was directly responsible in the devolution of women's wrestling from a reasonably respectable style of wrestling to a pathetic sideshow carnival; bearded women in circuses had more respect than women's wrestling did in her reign of terror. Mildred Burke was not the draw Jim Londos was in her time, but she was good enough to fill out arenas as a performer. No woman in the U.S.A drew a single dime after Moolah took over until horny teenagers started buying Sable merchandise. That is how destructive she was. She killed an entire sub-genre of wrestling, and was greedy enough to pocket most of the money the women did make. If you are going to measure impact in that way, then Jamie Kellner and Vince Russo should also be in the Hall of Fame. I honestly don't fault Moolah for training that style. After we've seen the effects of a harsh working style on some wrestlers, who am I to fault women wrestlers for working safe? I see and understand your point completely, but there has to be a balance, no? It has to be physical enough to at least give the impression that it is a legitimate, athletic struggle, and not some hair-pulling cafeteria fight.

Federer was a brat too, although that was in his junior days. I am not sure the Lendl comparison works; Lendl was stoic and impassive, while Djokovic is highly emotional and wears his heart on his sleeve. And not in a dour, unpleasant way like Murray either.

So you are saying that one of the biggest reasons Fed is much more popular than Djokovic is that he is much better at projecting a fake image? I don't think either Federer or Djokovi are two-faced or fake. Federer is a much more successful ambassador for sport than either of the two because of a few inherent, ascriptive, structural differences: he comes from a more affluent and prosperous country than the other two; he can speak English fluently, which always helps, unfortunately; he is a lot more articulate in the eyes of big companies, partly because of the last one; so on and so forth. That also explains why he gets a lot more sponsors than Nadal or Djokovic. But that has not stopped Nadal from being beloved and hugely respected; Djokovic does not even seem to get the respect. I do agree that Nadal is the nicest of the three by far.

Kris, by Cena, do you mean Cena of 2005 or Cena of 2015? If it is the latter, I am not sure if I agree. Cena is objectively more accomplished than Bret and HBK, in as much as wrestling can be objective. And, frankly in my opinion, he is better than Shawn in the subjective art of in-ring performance as well. There might come a time when we can say the same about Djokovic vis-a-vis Federer and Nadal, but that time has not come yet.