funkdoc

rock was popular because he was seen as "being real" in an era when that was highly valued. the guy who said all the stuff pro athletes would say if they didn't have to care about the media, basically. also i actually think brock is a really good interview, but not a good "promo".

hello, figured i'd try my hand at a normal wrestling thread for once! this one occurred to me because of how often i see guys like steamboat get bashed for having "no charisma" by people raised on WWF/E. that sounds obviously silly to those who've seen his crowd reactions at his peak & heard how those within the business viewed him, but he really wasn't a good WWF-style promo and that's what most fans seem to think that term means anymore. so, PWO, who else would you point to as interesting examples? i think tito is similar to steamboat in this regard. he gave fine fired-up babyface promos earlier in the 80s, but hulkamania killed that entire style and he was a fish out of water when he had to do the more cartoony promos. jimmy snuka might be the all-time champ from available footage though. just a downright brutal talker, far worse than the others mentioned, but you can see how electric he was in an era when not every wrestler was expected to talk. i expect you guys will come up with better examples, though!

very good point! actually, a significant portion of the people i'm talking about would fit that aside from the "rural" part. affording college is a struggle yo! but a lot of this is about attracting audiences that are outside that tradition, and why i think that is possible. that is still something worth talking about for sure, though.

a blog post may be necessary anyway just because there's such a wide range of crap involved with this, and there's a lot of 101 stuff you have to cover for the unfamiliar. trying to explain 4chan to a 40-year-old may be a blog post in itself...

Words. i guess i shouldn't be surprised that history buffs wouldn't be so interested in understanding the dynamics of the present, but i think there's just so much there and hardly anyone in this fandom is bringing it up. seems like this isn't the forum to do it, though, which is a shame to me because there could be so much potential given the knowledge you guys have. maybe i should do a blog post about this topic and link it in that subforum?

i remember the common narrative being that cutting costs was why they brought in a bunch of older guys for the dudes with attitude stuff in 1990, but i could totally buy that still being a thing in 92

97 has a good number of hidden gems...wasn't until late in the year that russo started getting pull IIRC

the point is that stories like that can easily spread and before you know it, the legend becomes fact and it permanently affects a person's reputation. the internet may have made the game of telephone more powerful than ever before anyway, the eva marie thing is a great point and something i touched upon a couple times before. it seems like one of the few remaining ways to make fans genuinely hate you is to be bad at your job, and i think there's value in pushing people specifically for that reason. or there's having a background people hate, being perceived as stealing a spot from the people who bust their asses on the indies; i think the miz's heat is and will always be tied to the fact that he was on reality TV before getting into wrestling. people just hate the very *idea* of the miz. as for the muhammad hassan point, there's a key problem with that: hassan was around before Web 2.0 was fully established. there was no twitter or tumblr, or at least they weren't relevant yet. trying a gimmick like that nowadays would make you look like a total joke among some of the most culturally influential groups. you'd have prominent social-justice activists trashing your company and getting thousands upon thousands of retweets from allies, and eventually one of the gawker network sites will pick up the story and shit will snowball even further from there. this should be a separate thread in itself, but Web 2.0 has made "cultural influence" more important than ever. only a select few phenomena can dominate the entire country anymore, so for everyone else the path to relevance is to be considered cool by online influencers. among this generation, i would roughly categorize the influencers into two ideologically opposed sides: 1. activists & writers on twitter/tumblr (who often but not always belong to marginalized groups), their fans, and twentysomethings living in seattle/portland/san fran/brooklyn/etc. (what many would call "hipsters", much as i loathe that term). heavily liberal, basically the backbone of the bernie sanders campaign. 2. reddit & 4chan (which i am using as shorthand for "all english message boards with 'chan' in their name"). these are more likely to be part of the "One Punch Man crew", as obsession with anime & all things japanese is 4chan's entire raison d'etre. strongly libertarian, these sites don't exactly like each other, but will form an uneasy alliance to fight the "social justice warriors" in group 1. to give you a quick example of each group's importance to a niche fandom: comic books have enjoyed a notable uptick in business & relevance by catering heavily to group 1 (e.g. female thor, muslim ms. marvel). and TwitchTV, a site where people watch other people play video games, relies on group 2 as almost its entire core audience - it was bought by amazon for close to $1 billion, and hadn't even been around for 5 years! anyway, i think wrestling's problem now is not appealing all that strongly to either group. its best chance of getting buzz again is to accept that they'll never be as big as they were in the 90s, and just go hard for one of those groups. new japan has picked up a little steam among group 2 (remember, they're japan fanboys!), but its ceiling with english-speaking audiences is low unless they get better TV here. WWE has already moved a little in the "group 1" direction with the NXT women and stephanie's "TED Talks feminism" public persona (thanks, parties!), so that would be the more natural direction to go. the problem is that the core ideals of the wrestling bubble are anathema to group 1; i think it would take someone outside the bubble seeing potential and starting their own promotion.

i promise i'll have something more focused when i get home from work, but for now i'll just point this out. i glanced at my facebook feed like 5 minutes ago and saw someone linking a story on john cena granting 500 wishes for make-a-wish. one of the very first responses to that post? "He's a great human being until you learn he left his cancer-stricken wife to fuck with a Bella twin." shit like this is what makes the classic wrestling formula virtually impossible, i'm tellin ya. we all live under skynet, everyone remembers everything.

the yao ming of wrestling, always judged on what he was supposed to be

thanks everyone, i have more to say when i have the time but i'll just do a quick response to this one racial issues may be a bigger part of the american cultural zeitgeist than they've been since the 60s-early 70s, and this particular super bowl matchup really highlighted that. smartphones and social media have made the internet more accessible and interesting to people outside the traditional white nerd demographic, and that's had a huge effect on a lot of the major conversations. remember, black lives matter didn't even exist the last time manning was in the super bowl! so now you get people of color bringing up manning's skeletons as a response to the treatment of their own, as with shaun king (the BLM activist i referenced in my first post). there's also white people publicly siding with them, either because they genuinely sympathize with the cause or because they realize it's a great way to build their own brand; i suspect deadspin is a bit of both. and then there's patriots fans, of course, but boston's weird persecution complex isn't really relevant to the wider topic at hand here! for someone like loss whose head is spinning right about now, i'll try something more concise: you can kinda compare peyton manning to bret hart. not just because they came from famous families and won multiple world championships, but because of their public persona vs. the stories some of us hear. if bret were doing his thing today instead of in the 90s, i guarantee you someone would leak his steroid use and marital infidelity to the internet and a vocal minority would be putting him on fucking blast. and that opinion would spread to some of the majority, and he would get a mixture of boos and cheers at major shows. we live in an era where angry nerd teens can find your phone number and sic SWAT teams on you if they don't like your opinions on the gender binary - you just can't hide stuff for decades at a time anymore. i wonder if another part of the problem here isn't that wrestling's traditional vision of good & evil seems like such small fry anymore. when you keep hearing about the people shot by police who DON'T make the TV news, it's hard to get outraged over pulling the tights, ya know? and it may well be outdated to cast playing by the rules as a babyface trait, given that millennials are less likely to trust traditional sources of authority and conventional wisdom than any previous generation. man, i always end up all over the place with this! there's still plenty more i could talk about, but definitely not for now. maybe this would be better suited for some sort of podcast? i just keep free-flowing on this topic and i guess that works better there than on forums...

so i wrote this post in that big roman reigns thread and it got lost in the shuffle, probably because the thread had been going on for a while. i think there's a really important discussion to be had in there, so i'll repost it here: "i have something to add re: the recent argument on babyfaces getting booed... i think this is one of those areas where the modern internet has changed everything for good. it's damn near impossible to be a pure babyface or heel anymore, because it's easier for the minority opinion to make itself known thanks to social media. football writer mike tanier had this to say about the recent allegations of peyton manning using HGH: on my own facebook feed, i see this every day with browns fans *still* arguing over johnny manziel. no matter how many times he gets drunk and acts a fool in public, plenty of people still bust out the "he's only a kid!" defense. he's a classic heel, but in an era where people will overlook your flaws and band together with others who feel the same way. this is why i think, unlike in 1998, the entire concept of "faces" and "heels" is genuinely on the wane. seeing how people react to the big stories of the day now, i think the future of the business will lie in creating characters who draw equally strong but different reactions from different segments of the fanbase." the manziel comments are a bit outdated now after his latest episode and the browns already saying they're getting rid of him, but i think an even more illuminating example is the post-super bowl conversation on the two quarterbacks in that game. i'll try to break this down for non-football fans! in any previous generation, peyton manning would be one of the all-time great babyfaces and cam newton would be a top heel. manning is a white guy who comes from football's equivalent to the hart family and has an aw-shucks southern likeability about him. he doesn't get into legal trouble, has broken all kinds of performance records, and is seen as one of the classiest men in the sport. newton, on the other hand, is a black guy who had highly-publicized criminal incidents in college and performs elaborate dances whenever he scores a touchdown. the mainstream media narratives in the wake of the super bowl fit this description, with manning being congratulated for winning the title and newton being bashed for visibly showing his frustration at losing ("not being a leader"). however, if you go online, it's much more complicated than that... cam newton does lots of charity work in his team's community and hasn't had legal issues since college, so he gets plenty of support for that. there's also a very common feeling that the media's scrutiny of him is rooted in unconscious racism, especially when white stars don't have their negative body language or stuff from their past brought up nearly as often. peyton manning is a case in point here, as he was accused of some serious sexual harassment (groping etc.) in college and tried to intimidate the plaintiff when a lawsuit was filed against him. that story has always been buried by your ESPNs and such, so there's a noticeable backlash against him now. deadspin (one of the biggest sports websites) has been massively pro-newton and anti-manning, and one of the biggest names in the black lives matter movement just brought up the harassment suit recently. in short, i think vince's prediction from that famous promo has finally come true: we now live in a world of shades of grey, more than ever. outside of sports you can look at bill cosby (where you see a lot of the same arguments from the newton-manning discussion) or even martin shkreli (who is depressingly popular among reddit & 4chan). a universal "heel" is one in a billion anymore, and universal "faces" are still possible (e.g. daniel bryan) but far rarer than they used to be. if i were to play bill simmons and use a pithy phrase to describe this, i would go with "The Debate Era". everything and everyone is up for debate now, no matter the popular perception. so what does this have to do with wrestling? i think it means that wrestling can become cool & culturally relevant again, but it will require a paradigm shift both from the promotions and from the relevant critical voices. it requires us realizing it's not a bad thing for a cena or reigns to get booed, as long as they get some kind of strong reaction and still have their loyal fans. it requires promotions to think outside the booking box that wrestling has operated in for its entire history, and realize that dividing the crowd will generate a lot more buzz than trying to unify them would. it requires the promotions to tap into the social & cultural issues that are relevant today, and it requires the fans & critics to be in touch with those issues. a major obstacle to this, in my view, is the "THOSE DAMN MILLENNIALS!" sentiment that permeates the promotions *and* communities like ours. that's what i was trying to say with my post that derailed parv's review thread, and i'll explain that position a bit further here. i would argue that the beatles & bob dylan would not be nearly as well-remembered today if they weren't so strongly associated with the hot social movements of their time: anti-war, free love, the more relaxed attitude toward drugs, and so on. they would maintain a similar standing among music nerds, sure, but not the mainstream media or general public. i would also argue that the audience plays a crucial role in the artistic success of wrestling, in a way that it doesn't for music or film, so cultural relevance becomes far more important here. so in order to produce something historically great nowadays, i think you have to connect with the millennials rather than see them as a nuisance. people like dave meltzer going "you know how women are" isn't exactly a great look in that regard, to say nothing of vince & HHH. i've tried to discuss things along these lines a number of times, such as when i'd bring up comic books' recent mini-revival as a potential model for wrestling to follow. it's never seemed to get that much conversation, so i figured i'd try making a separate thread here and laying out my arguments in more detail. i really think there's a lot to go with this, and i've offered plenty of opinions that i expect people to disagree strongly with, so have at it!

Just a difference in philosophy, but a lot of folks on this board have a very narrow and rigid view of wrestling IMO because they place 100% importance on "being a worker" and zero importance on all of the other factors that go into creating a complete wrestler. It's a viewpoint I can't imagine anyone in the wrestling business subscribing to, because someone who is a "great worker" and has nothing else going for him will be a jobber, period. Look at Brad Armstrong (who I loved, BTW, but let's not pretend he was able to display any kind of charisma or compelling character work). eh i'm not really buying this. if anything i feel like this board places more emphasis on in-ring character work than most smart fans do, and thinks more highly of guys like hogan & dusty. heck, where else is jerry lawler a GOAT candidate? and brad armstrong is something of a whipping boy around these parts, a poster child for guys way overrated by meltzer back in the day; terry taylor is a higher-profile example in the same boat. i suspect you may be thinking mainly of the GWE project with that statement, but that's a whole different beast. GWE has to be in-ring-only because that's the only way to give a remotely fair shake to japan & mexico; i don't think it truly reflects most people's views of the overall package. the in-ring aspect gets the most discussion because it's the most open to debate, since you can answer questions on charisma etc. by pointing to drawing numbers.

a NFL player could easily get suspended 1-2 games or something for that kind of thing, v. authoritarian culture there i do think there's something to the notion that the WWE culture has changed since even the mid-2000s, but this is pretty silly yea

that's been an issue outside of bryan for a while now. sleeze, i know he's your boy, but this is legitimately part of why sheamus can't have nice things. see also: RVD not getting pushed more when he was the most over guy in the company because he would do things like break somebody's nose (jericho IIRC?)

JvK, the issue is that the established canon is so exalted & privileged that you simply *have* to drag it down somewhat for others to be on a level playing field why do you think the concept of "rockism" was created? because rock critics have automatically been treated as the most important voices in popular music criticism for a long, long time. there's no way to push anything else to that same level since a lot of it is based on history, so the more reasonable solution is to argue that nobody should be treated as sacred cows to that degree. i think this is an even bigger issue in wrestling since meltzer has controlled so much of the discourse. his influence is only now starting to wane, and only incrementally so.

everybody forgets about bobby lashley in the "top stars leaving the company" discussion. he was clearly being built up for that

backlund's book has some interesting info on his cage match vs. hansen, the one that IIRC got hit pretty hard on titans for backlund's lack of selling. turns out that was payback for hansen's backstage politics wrt this program!

surprised at all the kandori love, she seemed to take a back seat to a lot of those other names during the 90s

olympic lifting shouldn't be the problem if properly done, i think buuuuuuuut if they were doing something more like crossfit that would explain *a lot*. and considering that's by far the most popular form of "olympic lifting" these days, i could see that being the case. for those who don't know, the big issue that makes crossfit really easy to fuck up is that it emphasizes speed. i.e. how many reps of X you can do in Y minutes. this is even the case with olympic lifts, which are technique-heavy movements that are meant to be performed slowly. that's why crossfit has developed quite a reputation for injuries - search "crossfit + rhabdo" if you want to be scared.

i feel like NXT's point of no return was when they started touring and signing known names in the indie scene to headline those shows or do one-shots. e.g. joe, kana, liger

an occasional poster here once mentioned to me that when he was trading tapes, he got a lottttttttt of scott putski requests from that crowd makes perfect sense, and it's weirdly impressive that he's pulled off that kind of appeal in 2 different ways: as a ridiculously lean 8-pack-abs guy in the WWF, then as a big ol' musclebear in WCW

i have something to add re: the recent argument between goc and JvK on babyfaces getting booed... i think this is one of those areas where the modern internet has changed everything for good. it's damn near impossible to be a pure babyface or heel anymore, because it's easier for the minority opinion to make itself known thanks to social media. football writer mike tanier had this to say about the recent allegations of peyton manning using HGH: on my own facebook feed, i see this every day with browns fans *still* arguing over johnny manziel. no matter how many times he gets drunk and acts a fool in public, plenty of people still bust out the "he's only a kid!" defense. he's a classic heel, but in an era where people will overlook your flaws and band together with others who feel the same way. this is why i think, unlike in 1998, the entire concept of "faces" and "heels" is genuinely on the wane. seeing how people react to the big stories of the day now, i think the future of the business will lie in creating characters who draw equally strong but different reactions from different segments of the fanbase.

the guy who could lift the most & go the longest & have a natural lifespan. that's my answer i'll again post my obligatory reminder that ripped abs have fuck-all to do with athletic ability and we have a totally warped idea of "athletic bodies"

He was entertaining and he could have been a bigger star than he was but it's no different to Wrath in WCW. Giant athletic charismatic dude squashing jobbers is a formula that usually works. He did way too many silly WWE video game style mannerisms to start a chant and/or a Pavlovian reaction and the little walk before the finisher was really annoying. This is more an indictment of the style than him as a wrestler to be fair. fun fact: that was the exact same finisher saba simba had, down to the high-stepping. first thing i noticed about him