funkdoc

i think part of it is that people's normal expectations for women's wrestling have been so low that they get blown away by anything competent in WWE. you obviously see that in the reactions to NXT's matches nowadays, but this has been around a long time - heck, it's what made trish & lita's reputations! if anything i think the women's roster is much stronger now than it was in those "glory days"...they're easily more deserving of airtime than the likes of cody or kofi or the miz (once mizdow's gone) or plenty of other guys out there. with the smart-fan crowd, i suspect the ongoing change in wider internet culture has gotten people more attuned to these things as well. discussion of misogyny/sexism is everywhere online these days, as nerd spheres dominated by white dudes have seen an influx of people who don't fit that description. i think this type of fan is much more likely to be sympathetic to those causes than they were 10 years ago, and when WWE's treatment of women looks even worse than video games'... also to respond to MJH a bit more, i would say WWE *could* have a deep women's division if they were ever willing to use the indie talent out there. but nope, no lufisto or cheerleader melissa or sara del rey (yes i know about her trainer gig or whatever) in the ring. i think it's a bit disingenuous to claim they don't have the talent when they could have a bunch of talent if not for their non-wrestling hangups.

blowing off selling to do your video-game taunt is just part & parcel of the modern WWE style. i tend to just assume stuff like that & the finisher spam is forced on the wrestlers. i do agree with the critics re: cena's facial expressions, and can't understand why people here like his selling. i swear whenever he's working from underneath he makes me think of

I'm with this. He isn't actively ruining threads, it's the people constantly jumping on him who are. And maybe we should let the mods do the moderating. i genuinely like doctor (from one doc to another, i guess!) yea he's on a completely different planet from the rest of this forum but not in a malicious way. heck, thanks to him i learned that somebody actually found the DX reunion funny! worth the price of admission imo

LOL. Well, in addition to your post, I was talking about PWO threads in general when it comes to Rusev. After Rusev/Sheamus, people here were calling that a MOTY contender. I was like "really?!" Fun match, yeah, but come on now. to get a bit more general than what dylan just said, i think it's perfectly reasonable to view rusev as a top worker in WWE. i don't care if someone doesn't have a lot of moves as long as their moves actually look like they hurt, and he's one of the best for that. his timing and long-term selling also stand out, and he's great if you're big on a wrestler's actions in the ring fitting their character. and his look & general presence/charisma are fantastic for what he does. he's just much more clearly defined and believable as a pro wrestler than dolph ziggler or any number of other guys on the roster. that said, i could see his 80s throwback gimmick taking someone out of his matches, similar to why sheamus never got more credit than he did as a worker...

yea i was getting a bit mixed up there. thinking of how the tag titles would be roughly equal to the top singles title in some places back in the day. i thought the argument was over more than one singles title being placed at that level, though. like what new japan's done within the past year or whatever

well the other part of this that barely gets any media play is that "fat and fit" is very much a real thing as well. society's definition of "athletic" is rather narrow, to the point that you'll see superheavyweight olympic lifters dismissed as "not REAL athletes" because they don't have abs or whatever. mark rippetoe (famous weightlifting coach) has said a lot of interesting things about this, even if he can be an annoying jackass in other ways. there was a fascinating case where he took a skinny couch potato and trained him to the point where he could squat over 400 pounds. he published shirtless before & after pictures of the guy, and they showed someone growing a noticeable pot belly with no visible muscle definition anywhere...yet he was an infinitely better athlete in that "flabby" photo than he was in the "skinny" one. quite a clever inversion of the usual before-and-after fitness narrative, in my view! many of the health issues commonly tied to being overweight are more likely the result of no exercise, eating lots of junk, and/or eating way too much even if it's "healthy" food (the sneakiest one). it is definitely possible to avoid all of those pitfalls and still be "chunky" or bigger. if you're eating 8000+ calories a day like NFL linemen or bull nakano during her wrestling career, then yeah you need to make some changes eventually...but it's ridiculous to assume that's everyone's situation. that said, a case like big show would likely fall into the "legit health reasons" category. again, joints & bones...that's the main problem that you CAN directly tie to weight.

yeah but was the IC title ever actually pushed at that level beyond some token lip service? maybe during the time of pedro & patera, but even that awesome tito-valentine feud didn't feel like A-show main event material. i guess warrior's reign would be a point in your favor though. mind you, i'm comparing this to some of the older territories where tag matches were main events and every top singles wrestler had a regular tag partner. maybe that's not quite fair? dunno

see i actually like top guys having those belts, if they treat those belts as meaningful. i think that's one of the best ways to elevate a title and get it over as a big deal. the main example that gets brought up here is flair challenging for the US title after dropping the world title to sting, where his promos really explained the importance of the US title. WWF/E isn't exactly known for pulling off something that nuanced, though. look at the entire history of their tag division - they have hardly ever understood how to make anything besides the world title not seem like second fiddle.

i feel like you have more "thick/compact" guys in WWE these days than a few years ago, actually. thinking of the wyatt family, steen (yeah he's lost weight but still), rusev, et al. guys who would still get called fat by internet nerds even though they're clearly in shape, basically. i think mid-2000s joe wouldn't look out of place there anymore. honestly that's a trend i really love, because those are the kinds of bodies you're more likely to see with actual strong dudes. the jacked-up six-pack look tends to be a sign of weakness if anything, due to the extreme dieting normally required to achieve that. now if only they would start applying that open-mindedness to the women... EDIT: yep, similar points made above while i forgot to post this haha. we talked about corbin in another thread but i'm not going to assume he was a case of WWE forcing someone to get skinnier - football players who are that heavy usually want to lose weight themselves once their careers are over. there's "thick/compact" and then there's "heavy to the point of stressing your joints & bones".

i definitely think belts that represent different wrestling styles with different rules are the way to go if you want to have a bunch of titles. i guess that would be the answer to my argument in my last post - cruiserweight/hardcore titles definitely fit that. even the TV title filled a niche in its earlier days when long title matches were the norm, though i still think it was rather pointless once we got into the WCW days.

yeah what fantastic said, stuff is so widespread nowadays. it's especially hilarious to see sportswriters & talk radio guys bash athletes for using PEDs while they themselves are on "hormone replacement therapy" and their shows/newspapers take ad money from the clinics that provide it...

yeah, i am pretty sure 80s crockett also had more belts relative to roster size than WWE does currently. the classic 3 singles titles, world & US tag titles, the central states title that sam houston had on their shows...the 6-man tag title was only a thing in the early 90s though, right? i *do* think that was too many belts, to be fair. having 6 or 7 "champions" just sounds inherently silly to people who follow sports and such. i especially have never understood the need for a 3rd-tier singles title, in any context. but that's not something that's going to kill a promotion.

that one always had the rumor of bill watts telling the japanese guys not to have too good of a match or however he put it. never entirely bought that but you can't just write that one off as Lazy Muta so i really don't know

lawler's definitely got a ton of skeletons in his closet - they just happen to be of the non-wrestling variety. see his love for underage girls... also probably the stuff surrounding the USWA going under

parv, it's interesting that you got so into this particular point when grimmas has shown himself to be an outlier here on multiple occasions. he'll probably be the high vote on bret for the GWE poll, and IIRC he was also the one who said he'd put goldberg in his top 100. he just tends to have a unique take on things, it seems - a well-thought out and interesting one, though!

ah. i just meant that gimmick in particular but thanks! really it's the combination of that look with the level of push they got in NXT that makes the whole thing so corny for me. i can't help but compare them to LOD and such.

eh, a lot of these guys do it (or try to do it) on their own accord once they leave football. many never wanted to be that big in the first place and just see it as one of the annoying parts of the job, since it tends to require force-feeding oneself to an unnatural size. a lot like bull nakano's case, really.

the ascension were HHH's baby, no? that's a godawful act on almost every conceivable level. not good in the ring and they look like random kratos cosplayers he hired from comic-con. soooooooo yea i share the skepticism of some in this thread

yeah i was just about to say that fishman has the ken patera problem - his low point was also by far his most visible period. in his case, it's mid-90s AAA which seemed to be the peak of americans caring about lucha.

yeah, i unknowingly attended a speech from NWO sting's brother a year ago. he's a doctor who's built hospitals in countries like haiti and done all sorts of neat things, and he mentioned his brother was a pro wrestler. i looked it up and found out who he was, and the photos of thunder & lightning got a nice laugh from my work colleagues at dinner

yeah, zoo enthusiast's point has been more about the people who still subscribe to the network and go to shows even as they complain about the booking. in fairness though, that's not exactly different from sports fandom. if anything i'd say negativity is even more at the core of that world - chuck klosterman (yeah i know) once made the argument that one of the main reasons people become sports fans is so they can have something in their lives to bitch about. as someone who lived in the cleveland area for almost his whole life, i can definitely relate to that! shit, my NFL team is run by a racist who thinks he knows football and singlehandedly forced them to draft johnny manziel, while ripping off customers from his other business to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. yet i'd probably still be going to the games if i lived there, because there's an element of community and bonding with family/friends that outweighs the countless failures. i'd still complain about those failures, though! well, i guess you could argue that sports provide non-economic pressure to put out a quality product and entertainment doesn't...

yeah parv, long-time consensus holds that kobashi was the best in the world in 1993. and that means a ton to the typical voter for this thing, as the early-mid 90s is often seen as the all-time pinnacle of in-ring action throughout the world. kobashi doesn't really shine as much as you'd expect on the '93 yearbook though, as he didn't have the peak matches of a couple other guys. apparently he was more of a consistently great week-to-week guy, like a better arn anderson i guess? if i had to guess i would say kobashi's peak would be from '93 to the january '97 match with misawa, but others here can give a much more informed opinion.

steenalized: i feel like we were kinda talking past each other there, as i wasn't all that clear. suspect you get what i mean though - you're looking at it with the overall statistics, i'm looking at it from the perspective of the highest-population areas as those often tend to be seen as "representing america" or whatever you want to call it. good points though! it would also be interesting to compare WWE with various sports in this regard. i always felt that the lack of black champions was one of the most business-exposing things about the older days, given the popular perception of black people as athletes in america. since the samoan point was brought up earlier, i'm just going to say that i wouldn't be surprised if the NFL was comparable to WWE there by this point (though obviously other major sports wouldn't be close at all). and WWE sure as heck looks lily-white if you watch baseball or basketball at all. that said, i do think wrestling comes off much better if you compare it to hollywood and its whitewashing adaptations. my personal favorite example is the movie about the MIT blackjack team that had white people in the main roles, when its source material specifically went into detail on why the team *did not* want white people actually playing at the tables.

maybe it's not a thing in the UK?

doctor, hogan-warrior as this great dream match is WWE revisionist history. at the time it wasn't felt to be at nearly the same level as hogan-andre or hogan-savage, and it had the additional problem of being a babyface match and dividing the crowd. i think that's borne out by the PPV numbers - the live gate simply came from the wrestlemania name, as tickets were sold before any main event was announced.