-
Posts
1049 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Blogs
Everything posted by funkdoc
-
Someone i know has looked into this some, though he’s busier now so not sure about this. He’s mentioned that from his research Rusher Kimura was one of the only JP wrestlers he found a promo compilation for. Also recall people on here mentioning Takada as an all-time great promo and Kobashi as a terrible one.
-
From what i've seen, the people who actually use "Ruthless Aggression Era" mostly seem to treat it as 2003-ish through the rest of that decade. For example, Wrestling With Wregret's video on forgotten RA Era wrestlers includes guys who debuted in 2009 (like Kizarny) or even lasted into 2010 (like Mike Knox). Guess it depends on whether you consider that period to be defined more by edgelord content or by its pre-NXT developmental system...
-
Thank you Loss!!! Think we have to blame the Attitude Era for making people try to define other periods by their marketing slogans. Shit you not, i’ve seen someone call late-80s WWF the “What the World is Watching Era”. But really i always thought “Ruthless Aggression Era” was meant to describe that period where Cena actually was Super Cena, we got all those cup-of-coffee randos like the Dicks and Kizarny and Braden Walker, and the Internet was trying to talk itself into Mr. Kennedy and Ted DiBiase Jr. as the future of wrestling. Feel like Punk & Bryan breaking into the main event scene marked the end of this period, with WWE realizing they could just mine the indies & Japan.
-
god i love how much mileage bryan was able to get out of a simple waistlock. what a damn match
-
LA Park vs. Masato Tanaka was my fav match of this weekend so far
-
r u all hype for ROH World Champion Enzo Amore
-
don’t get too bent out of shape if you can’t convince the person who thought a hacker gimmick was money in like 2015
-
wow yea, ridiculous that Lauper still isn't in. she seems to be on good terms w/ them so don't think there's a deeper story there either
-
some other seemingly obvious guys have taken forever to get in, but i have another theory... possibly overreacting, but he's had sexual harassment accusations against him and Prichard's podcast talked a good bit on how he fancied himself a ladies' man and often got handsy with them. wonder if they'd be scared of that in this climate, considering other recent events like the backlash to Nolan Bushnell winning an award
-
don't forget the racism - IIRC he was the first person to publicly out Choshu as Korean or getting bodied in early UFC EDIT: re: the Yokozuna title, apparently that was a dark period for sumo talent and they picked a young guy who they felt had a lot of athletic potential
-
Think a big reason the WM X-7 build is remembered so fondly is that video package - probably the best use of Limp Bizkit in any piece of media ever, and also arguably WWE’s best video package ever. It’s similar to WM6, where the build was actually godawful but people only remember the staredown at the Rumble. Two of the worst, i think...
-
wrestling is basically a video game to most modern fans, and we all know about the history of intergender fighting in that realm plus with heavy weightlifting becoming more and more popular with women thanks to crossfit and the like, people are getting more used to the idea of women who can lift your average male wrestler
-
Meltzer types will become largely irrelevant eventually, but we’re not there yet. The Tumblrization of wrestling fandom still has a ways to go...
-
shocked we made it this far with no mention of Bash ‘91 tbh always remember that being considered the gold standard of bad PPVs, or at least major PPVs after Heroes of Wrestling happened hey, speaking of shows i expected to be mentioned on here...
-
hi everyone, i recently got this silly idea in my head to comb over the rosters of wrestling video games and calculate the average GWE score of their rosters. here's what i've put into a Google doc that you can freely edit: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1h0mqkVWyPcE4MTQsksUFLL4K9iMfQZ2f3A0tXdtQdZY/edit?usp=sharing one thing to note is that for the AKI games, i counted all the fictional characters who are clearly meant to be specific IRL wrestlers. i didn't count Joe Bruiser in World Tour because he's Muhammad Ali. i tried not to count non-wrestlers period, which makes things real tricky for some of those late-90s games. i counted Bischoff & Russo as wrestlers since they had high-profile matches in WCW, and Heenan since he actually got GWE votes; on the other hand i didn't count the likes of Mean Gene or Sonny Onoo or Jimmy Hart. i also count the Major Gunns/Stacy Keibler types since they have a decent number of matches. this has been more annoying to figure out than i anticipated, which is why i didn't get to WCW Nitro or Thunder - a lot of these borderline cases are hidden characters in those games. i *do* count unplayable "boss" wrestlers in a game's score, as long as they're IRL wrestlers. this includes Andre/DiBiase in the arcade WWF Superstars, for instance. i didn't count the "WCW Master" in the NES WCW game, even though it's obviously Andre under a mask; they can't call him Andre so i won't. so going into this, i expected WCW Superbrawl to notch the highest average of any game for the American promotions; it's a small roster that includes GWE beasts like Flair, Steamboat, Vader, Windham, Dustin, Pillman & Rude. as it turned out i was...almost right. it's one of only 2 games on the current list with an average score above 5,000 - its average wrestler ranks above Aja Kong in the GWE poll! however, it was beaten out by a throwaway port of a throwaway early-90s WWF game. specifically, the Sega Game Gear & Master System versions of WWF Wrestlemania: Steel Cage Challenge! the Sega and NES versions share a bunch of GWE top-100 finishers: Hogan, Savage, Bret, Undertaker, & DiBiase. there were some roster differences between Nintendo & Sega here, though, and that massively benefits Sega from an in-ring standpoint. while the NES version had Piper/Sid/Jake/Mountie as its unique wrestlers, the Sega ports had Tatanka & Papa Shango...but also Shawn & Flair. those last 2 bump the average score over 5,500, which would rank in between Harley Race & Tully Blanchard on the poll. Steel Cage Challenge simply had a bit less "fat" on its roster than Superbrawl, having only 10 wrestlers compared to 12. i also found it interesting that the New Generation WWF games didn't score much higher than the Hulkamania ones. not that i'd want to rehash this debate, but i think all the GWE voters from outside the core PWO circle played a big part in this...look at the rankings for Hogan or Andre or DiBiase. the GWE poll was also lower than Internet consensus on Shawn and especially the Undertaker, so that does a lot to drop the averages for those games. i think i'm done with my contributions, but yall can have fun and throw in other games if you want! one note if you're going to add joshi games: the master rankings have a typo in Aja Kong's score! it should be 5085. think that's it. hope someone out there enjoys this dumb lil weekend project~
-
i went to an anime convention recently to hang with friends in that area, and they had a whole panel on NJPW! mostly covered the current promotion with a little bit of history, and it was actually real good for that kind of audience. there was a *ton* of focus on the wrestlers' personality quirks seen on social media, which is neat to me given how Japanese wrestling is usually characterized in the west. we all watched Okada-Omega at the end, too, and it reminded me how much i enjoy watching wrestling when it's a social experience. Loss: i oversimplified for sure in my last post - surprised nobody brought up Game of Thrones in response to me! i should have said that most things only have appeal to hardcores, and i do agree with you that an individual personality offers the best chance of breaking out of that. the NFL is actually fairly similar to WWE in that regard, too...
-
decline in cultural relevance is far from just a wrestling thing, which makes me think it doesn't have much to do with quality or lack thereof. entertainment in general is so splintered these days that almost nothing can gain the sort of hold that, say, Saturday Night Live did in the 70s. one of the most oft-reported stories in football this past year has been the significant drop in TV ratings, for both NFL and college football. this past NFL season also had the least buzz around it that i can remember - pundits mostly talked about how bad and unwatchable it is, and so many people i know have completely stopped caring about it. hell, i get waaaayyyy more response when i talk about wrestling on Twitter or my Twitch stream than i do when i try to talk football! even with the NFL, this has been ongoing throughout the 2000s. remember Dennis Miller on commentary for Monday Night Football? that was a desperate attempt to make that show a Cultural Event like it used to be, and they eventually realized that was impossible. too much else had changed even by then, much less now. i harp on this particular example so much because the NFL was long seen as the Teflon sport and the most consistent presence in American pop culture...and yet its story isn't turning out so differently. i think economics play an important role in this as well, and that's not talked about nearly enough. is it merely an accident that wrestling's all-time business peak roughly coincides with the all-time peak period for album sales, or is that a function of the 90s economy yielding more disposable income for the middle and upper-middle class? this also ties into the heavy reliance on 90s nostalgia acts, which isn't just a wrestling thing either; U2 & Metallica & the Chili Peppers are still some of the biggest live draws in rock music, in no small part because their fans have a hell of a lot more money to spend than younger folks do. my point in all this? i don't think it's worthwhile to define a "Golden Age" by anything other than appeal to hardcores anymore, since appeal to hardcores is all anything has these days.
-
IIRC, college football and the NFL have both experienced over a 10% drop in ratings this year. the rest of the sports world has to be scared shitless at that, considering football has been the Teflon sport in the US for decades.
-
i feel like individual losses are more likely to kill a territory than a wrestler's career. think of the Road Warriors screwjob at Starrcade, or JYD vs. Mr. Wrestling II. the guys with undefeated streaks are probably the best examples for the thread topic. makes it so much tougher to recover when your whole identity is based around always winning. i'm also pleasantly surprised nobody mentioned Bigelow vs. LT - that gets brought up a lot, but the WCW fans sure bought Bam Bam as a threat to Goldberg years later! i think there are many more cases where losing can kill a guy's career, rather than a single loss. Luger is perfect for this...you have the Maryland State Athletic Commission, Wrestle War '90, Summerslam '93 (not a loss but come on), and that cup of coffee with the belt in '97.
-
i believe it was PeteF3 who brought up Jason Giambi using the NWO Wolfpac theme every time he went to bat, for practically his entire major-league career. that theme outlived WCW as a promotion!
-
also re: JYD, i think the argument for him as a great draw should be a "value above replacement level" argument. that's the line i favor in general, and he does very well by that standard. that's something wrestling fandom hasn't looked enough into, imo
-
Exactly. And work is subjective. Another thing people tend to forget about is that the "work" is not only there to entertain. Above all else the "work" is there to get the largest number of people to part with their money and pay for the product. Of course a lot more goes into making money than just ones work. However what they do in the ring, how they project themselves to the audience (the "work") and how they are marketed (today) is the true barometer of someone's work. Work is subjective. This is absolutely true. The problem I have, is I feel some people disregard work because it's subjective, when the voting criteria clearly states that it is to be considered. i'd say there's more to it than that. the reason i've long considered in-ring work much less important than the other criteria is that it's a *far* smaller part of the average wrestling fan experience. sure, we're now in an era when the crowds at RAW and PPVs care about good matches more than anything else. but prior to that, workrate was largely irrelevant to the paying crowds in wrestling's most successful periods. i absolutely think that should be factored into HOF considerations. to put it in perspective, i would never have voted Benoit for a HOF even before the murders. Tiger Mask would be an easy pick because he had real drawing power and influence, and I don't mind Dynamite being in the Hall because of his own influence on future generations. Eddie would be similar to Dynamite in my mind, because of his success in drawing Latino audiences to WWE. Bryan & Punk could very well have that kind of impact in the long run. but Benoit? naaaahhhh just figured that's a point that rarely gets brought up when this argument happens!
-
so Dave busted out his "the n-word was Wrestling Lingo" line on Twitter again today and got roasted even worse than he did the last time, or for the Honma stuff wrestling bubble etc. etc.
-
6:05 Superpodcast Episode #24: House of Gullen
funkdoc replied to Bix's topic in Publications and Podcasts
yea, this show is precisely the sort of thing i imagine getting over a lot more on social media than sites like these. it's weird because a lot of the content itself is total old-school stuff, but it's also a show that "gets" modern internet meme culture and uses it to its advantage. i love it because this is the kind of stuff i can show my friends; they will never care about the meaning of "heat segment", but show them Glen Goza and they'll want more. what i'm mainly thankful for is that this show fills a couple unique niches: - providing a wrestling equivalent to the Japanese "kusoge" culture in video games. that is, digging for the truly obscure & wacky garbage instead of stopping at your garden-variety Shockmasters. - preserving the history of the 90s smart-fan scene, especially the regulars at conventions and the like. there's also the interviews with people nobody else would consider. Polish Joe was *tremendous*, for instance.