funkdoc

ehrmmmmmm, no. way short on asians & latinos - the cultures associated with those ethnicities are huge in significant portions of the US. put it to you this way: i live in southern california now. whenever people want to go out for a decent-priced meal with friends here, it hardly ever seems to be burgers & fries or what have you. feels like it's almost always carne asada or ramen or pho or korean BBQ or bubble tea. that's a cross-section of america that isn't really represented in these shows. also seconding comments about portrayal of people of color as the bigger issue. i actually like the usos' whole act a lot for some reason, i guess just because you never see samoan wrestlers presented as basically normal dudes like that. even the war dance feels like the exact kind of pregame ritual you could see in a NFL locker room. that's what i'd like to see more of, personally.

yeah WM5 was pretty much the peak of the hulkamania period, with a genuine dream match that had a well executed year-long build. 6 beat it in all the live elements (especially crowd heat, dear lord was the trump plaza a black hole) but not by enough to make up for the PPV revenues. 6 was hurt by the build, which is something you never hear about in the standard narrative. people typically assume it was great because they've only seen the big hogan-warrior staredown at the royal rumble...but that happens to be the only great part of the entire build to that match. the 1990 yearbook shows that otherwise they did a downright awful job hyping the match, with warrior being the usual space case on promos and hogan sinking to his level of whacked-out egomania. it was a babyface match where neither guy acted like a babyface going into it. i also think warrior was in kind of a similar spot to roman reigns' current one. he was just about as over as hogan when he was doing his thing with the IC title, but lost that when he got pushed too hard too soon. hard to fault vince for running that match when he did, though, considering their original plan was zeus and the heel side of the roster was paper-thin in the early 90s. you had mr. perfect bombing in his house-show program with hogan, and a bunch of guys who already had their main-event run (dibiase) or weren't ready for it yet (rick rude) or just screamed "midcarder for life" (rick martel w/ the model gimmick). how else do you think dino bravo became part of the WWF's top feud later that year?

i think the problem there is that 2000s puro was the dark days, so it might not be something people want to remember. then again, sting/shawn/bret were the embodiment of the dark days in america and they all got various nostalgia runs, so who knows

the WM6 jake promo is the one i always show to non-wrestling fans if they're interested in trying to "get" it. on the other end, one i often show people to represent the corny side of wrestling is the legion of doom WM7 promo. the one that goes "Power & Glory...that's your name before the match. After the match, it'll be SOUR.........and GORY." you also need to look at the stomper's famous promo on bad news allen, considering how often scott keith & other canadian fans cite that as the greatest ever. that's about all i've got.

here's another criminally underrated Konami beat-em-up with blatant copyright infringement: Vendetta! just check out the heroes of this game... yep, you guys know who two of those are! the other two main heroes are often assumed to be Mike Tyson & Jean-Claude Van Damme, but there isn't much of a resemblance there beyond "black boxer" and "blonde martial artist". there's also yet another boss who reminds one of Bruiser Brody, and much more obviously so than that guy from Violent Storm i posted before. and his name? seems like Brody could have fit into that gimmick, now that i think about it...

loss: again, al wilson wasn't remotely close to a main-event angle. apples & oranges there! that said, you are right in noting that there were some other smaller examples of this popping up here and there. you could even argue the HHH-stephanie wedding as falling into that category. it may have been more a matter of it all adding up over time, with katie vick being the last straw for a portion of the fanbase. the surrounding context with HHH's godawful title reign was obviously a major part of that as well, and i'm not overlooking that if that's what you're suggesting. i really think you're underplaying the "oh god STEPHANIE'S writing the shows now!!!" panic that smart fans had at that time, and suspect that her recent improvement as a performer may be leading people to forget the old perceptions of her. women getting into positions of power in a male-dominated business & fandom...same thing video games are going through right now, and comics and so on. always ugly for the first few years after it gets noticed, at minimum.

the thing with katie vick, for many, was that for all the talk about wrestling being a "male soap opera"...it didn't really tell the same types of stories that soap operas did. katie vick was the first main-event angle of our generation that felt like it belonged in a soap opera. we could deal with the mark henry bullshit when it was just midcard comic relief, and love triangles had been a part of wrestling long before HHH/angle/stephanie, but this was different. the whole thing just felt so out of character for both HHH & kane, and i think many longtime fans just couldn't buy into the whole premise from the start. for the more hardcore fans like me at the time, this also seemed obviously connected to stephanie joining creative. we thought that this woman who didn't know wrestling was the one behind it all, and that katie vick represented the future of the company. untrue and sexist in hindsight, yes, but that perception was definitely there for a segment of the core fanbase. add it all together and you have a bona fide "jump the shark" moment not even a year after their last one! EDIT: i see will made the exact same point while i was writing this post, haha. and yeah, undertaker's various supernatural angles were probably just as dumb...but they were a uniquely pro wrestling brand of dumb, and that gave them some charm with fans. pushing "soap opera dumb" with wrestling fans was the big mistake.

it's funny that this thread already mentioned the exact two angles i most often see cited by attitude era fans as the reason they quit watching: the invasion & katie vick you know, figuring out moments like that for every era of every notable promotion could make a neat thread in itself. papa shango would be the hulkamania equivalent, i imagine... anyway, i haven't given WWE my money or TV viewership since katie vick and it will remain that way. in the spirit of Pro Wrestling Only i will just say that i very strongly disagree with fantastic's rationale re: benoit and leave it at that. i'll watch a stream when they're doing something my friends are talking about, as with the bryan stuff over the past year+, but that's about it. it's hard to imagine this changing since WWE is already awfully low on my list of priorities - i mostly hang out here for the broader discussions!

cesaro: from hanging with cena and winning the battle royal to matches based on total divas storylines

i would think bruiser brody fits into the category of "gave up a lot of money to avoid doing jobs", although it was more of a long-term practice than any particular program there.

in fairness, at least he was working PPVs also thanks for the correction, lister! didn't know that actually

nah, he hit his finisher. i suspect his issue was that it didn't win the match, and frankly i'd agree if that were the case. that was the first time an american did the shooting star press, for cryin out loud!

As part of that crowd, I think that's way off base (though I don't disagree with pol's initial post in some ways. I think this just took things in a slightly different direction). People there knew what they were doing. They were vocally expressing their displeasure with what they knew were creative decisions. I think people were more offended that WWE thought they could pull this off than anything else. They didn't pay to leave. They did pay to be able to cheer if they liked what they saw and boo if they didn't, and it was a hell of a time shitting on what was presented and I'm SURE they would sell out in Philly next time as well. I bought my ticket knowing that there was a really good chance that WWE would present something that the crowd would absolutely hate and how energized it would be and how fun it'd be to witness that first hand. I'm not wildly emotionally invested in this stuff like I was ten years ago. So I'm going to maximize the amount of fun I have at a show. It was a hugely informed crowd. And most of those people had an absolute blast and Philly would sell out in a situation like this again in a heartbeat. I said it in my road report, but leaving that building actually felt like a positive experience, a sort of sense of community, and outside of 2 overly gleeful "You fucked up" chants that I wish didn't happen (though weren't ALL that widespread), I thought the crowd was mostly constructive in its negativity. I will say that on some level, instead of booing an anti-russian heel in 1984 that's insulting them by saying that they're weak and foolish and whatever, they were instead booing the company that doesn't have the same creative priorities that they have and is saying that they're dumb and foolish and just need to be fed what they're given. It's not all that different. In both cases the fans know what they're paying for tickets to do, really. That's totally cool, man. Keep selling out the buildings and keep getting what you're paying for. Why would you expect anything different? i kinda suspect the point is that he's not expecting anything different, but that it's more entertaining this way than it would be with vince's idea of a "good" show going off without any hitches. i can't say for sure but that's the impression i got.

Weird overreaction. I saw a lot of AAs and not a lot else. Do we know that Vince is booking this? It doesn't seem like it to me at all. Because through all his years as a promoter, one thing you can say about Vince is that he never tried to get cutesy. The booking of the Rumble match was truly baffling to me, to a point where I it's hard to believe Vince was directly involved with it. If he was responsible for laying out that match, or even the bullet points - Build Bray early - Bryan enters when Bray is there - Bryan gets eliminated almost incidentally - Bray gets eliminated almost incidentally - Blah blah - Kane - Blah - Big Show - Blah - Rusev - Blah - Roman - Rock If Vince thought that was a good idea, and man-managed it himself, then yes he's lost it totally. RE: cena stuff, as others have said it's just the house style and not a cena thing. kinda like how you can't single out anyone in new japan for those crappy strike exchanges. as for the rest... like i said before, reigns is 100% vince's guy. i imagine he definitely had a strong hand in this at least. and there IS definitely precedent in vince's booking for this sort of thing: HHH's title reign in 2003. nobody wanted to see him as champ during that time, so they proceeded to job out & bury a succession of babyfaces who organically connected with the crowd (e.g. booker t, RVD). and with booker they even did a racism angle as part of the mania buildup, only to have the racist decisively win in the end. i'd say that counts as "cutesy", no? and katie vick, the angle that forever ended my every-week viewing of pro wrestling, was pure vince down to the sense of humor. oh yeah and when business was declining during all this, vince blamed the fans for not getting behind HHH! sound familiar? face it parv, vince has been like this for a decade+ now...

this is what we've been trying to tell you a hundred times before in other threads so congratulations, you finally understand the modern WWE experience! vince was personally scripting reigns' recent godawful promos that helped put him in this position, too.

i think they're trying way too hard to do the tongue-in-cheek thing with these shill segments. you missed a really "good" new age outlaws network promo on the preshow...

pillman was a legitimate #1 pick in a wrestler death pool by the time he came to the WWF. his early WCW career definitely fits this though! alex wright is an intriguing one, as i think the berlyn gimmick was actually pretty timely. his look made people think of american history x, just without the blatant neo-nazism. he seemed to get screwed by other wrestlers more than the promotion though...

very strongly disagree the issue as i see it was that the streak had become TOO big to make a new star. doesn't seem like that makes any sense at first...but do you really think the fans would buy a roman reigns or even daniel bryan being the one to end it? giving that honor to a newer guy puts way too much pressure on him - he can't ever job again without it seeming ridiculous, basically, and you don't know whether he'll work out as a top star in the long run. the problem with continuing a winning streak this long is that you leave yourself with almost no credible ways of ending it. a "special attraction" type like brock (or andre in his prime, etc. etc.) is really the only good option there, as you at least know what you're getting with those guys and they haven't been as deeply mired in the 50/50 booking as the rest of the roster has. the only alternative i see an argument for is never ending the streak, which is honestly what i was expecting.

matt d's classic example, and likely my pick as well: WCW babyface randy savage so many matchups that sound intriguing on paper, wrestling against guys like finlay...and those matches always turn out to be "savage gets beat up the entire time, lands bodyslam, elbow, pin"

No. But you might in say The Guardian, whereas now the majority of content in that paper is click-bait nonsense. see i feel like the guardian would've been exposed as dull if we had the access back then that we do now i'm just rarely interested in the thoughts of white people with money no matter how good the writing is, and that was almost all you ever got from the "classic" journalistic outlets. i don't care one bit if the guardian or rolling stone sinks into total irrelevance, as they've been dead to me for a long time now.

there was no way i would have ever heard of ali abunimah back in the 60s so i'm going to side with childs on this one

i always wondered if there was some workrate nerd picking some of those matches for the coliseum tapes it's rather odd to me that there are so many singles matches with bret & shawn while they were still tag-team guys...

i'm with OJ et al. on this i really think it's harder to appreciate stuff when you don't have a clear overall narrative of the business, and you often don't for something as it's happening. the framework typically develops over the next decade or two, and that lets everyone place the matches in a greater context and appreciate them more.

SLL: i just mean that the emphasis on GAMES JOURNALISM in that whole mess may have gotten internet folks to notice these issues in other fields. that said, i forgot that most of this forum probably wouldn't be familiar with it all anyway haha

i wonder if this discussion would have blown up the way it did without gamergate happening...definitely notice a hyper-sensitivity to this kind of stuff as part of the fallout there. not that that's a bad thing, necessarily. i've seen these debates extend to the idea of journalists developing any kind of relationship at all with the people they cover, but the actual journalists i've seen discuss this wrt gamergate have said that's just not practical. the same seems to be true here, since we all know & don't care about meltzer's friendships with brian pillman or jim ross or paul heyman. basically i think i'm with childs on this.