funkdoc

oh yeah has anyone mentioned sika jobbing clean to SD jones? that was not too long after sika's title shot on SNME, i think...not significant but more of an all-time "WTF" job and fall from grace imo. just the starkest illustration of the hogan heel formula i can think of.

do people here remember when *zack ryder* was the internet's cause celebre in this regard? parv, if you think the outrage over cesaro is silly, that was easily 10 times less warranted. and yet, i still think there was a point to it all - WWE probably did cost themselves at least a bit of cash from not running with him longer. i think WWE may worry too much about hotshotting wins & titles for a flash in the pan, since they just came out of the "World Champion Jack Swagger" period. ryder was clearly a case where i think they were correct in the long run - all he had going for him was the right gimmick at the right time. problem is that makes smart fans seem like the boy who cried wolf when you have a performer with far more substance (read: cesaro) getting screwed. i think at the heart of this you have an interesting dichotomy. i suspect most fans would feel that artistically it's better to end a hot act too soon than too late, but financially it's likely better to bury them too late than too soon. smart fans typically want promotions to succeed on both levels, hence why they complain about both the former (e.g. zack ryder, the shield) and the latter (e.g. the NWO).

oh hey i remembered this thread exists so this one is going to be in the form of a question. i've been playing more arcade games in recent months, and though i knew it was really good i never fully appreciated Violent Storm before. it's a Konami beat-em-up from 1993 that feels nothing like their more famous TMNT/Simpsons/X-Men games, and it blows those completely out of the water. the best way i can summarize it is The Best Possible Final Fight - it blatantly rips off the moves and animations and general feel of that game, but improves upon it in a number of ways in my view. it also embodies early-90s cheese better than just about any other game i can think of, and i think it would be a huge hit with this forum in particular. so the stage 3 boss in this game is a wrestler you fight in a steel cage, named Drigger. i'm inclined to call him another Brody homage, but not positive...any thoughts? EDIT: oh yeah, forgot to mention that there are yet more Road Warrior clones in this game, serving as the toughest normal enemies. they even have the exact same attire unlike Abigail and some of the other homages out there.

ooh, an analogy right in my wheelhouse! there are cases in the NFL where the better player isn't given the starting job because his style of play doesn't fit coaches' outdated ideals for that position. known to happen with running backs in particular, where people fall for boom-or-bust (mostly bust) guys instead of the ones who consistently get you 3-5 yards. in other sports you're more likely to get your opportunity eventually, but the injury risk in football means plenty of deserving players get left with "what could have been" careers. you also have cases where a high draft pick gets to be the starter by fiat, and is kept in that role even after failing. sunk cost fallacy etc. etc. i definitely see situations in wrestling that are analogous to this. one that i've mentioned before is the size issue in the 80s & 90s - plenty of great smaller wrestlers just didn't get the big opportunities through no fault of their own. i'm sure a lot of others in here have plenty of other examples. as someone who grew up on bill james & sabermetrics, i tend to adjust for surrounding environment when evaluating anything of interest. if i were participating in the top 100 project i would certainly take that into account. EDIT: ok so i actually read through this whole thread. a lot of this feels like an argument over the rationality of people in power. parv very much strikes me as the representative of classical economic theory here, and i'm about as far as you can get from that. things like tradition, conventional wisdom, and bigotry often hold far too much sway in key decision-making. if anything you should expect MORE of that in wrestling than in pro sports due to less media coverage and what have you.

funny thing, sam houston actually used to get a lot of love from meltzer when he was a JTTS in late-80s WWF. basically their brad armstrong in that regard. and jim powers just completely fucking sucked, and allegedly would get so drunk before his matches that barry horowitz didn't want to work with the young stallions. possible evidence for this: roma *always* worked face-in-peril for that team...

i feel like they should be going for a bit of the goldberg vibe with reigns, i.e. "badass who barely talks but goes out there and kicks everyone's ass night after night". his look & his signature moves definitely fit that profile... he hasn't been a good promo thus far, which is a huge strike given how WWE pushes their top faces.

ooh, i like this one! having a career in the indies would be a pretty big step down from WCW on the surface, but being more accepted for who he is would have to outweigh that in the long run i imagine. also, for everyone, good call on mid-south re: mark henry. silly of me to forget about cowboy bill in that discussion!

yea this i did love d-lo's gimmick with it, though, probably my favorite thing involving that belt. "From Chicago, Illinois, but currently claiming residence in Helsinki, Finland..." i think the peak of importance for it was actually x-pac's reign prior to the shane mcmahon match. it was at least significant enough to make people go "wait, GANGREL is getting a title shot? WTF???" nowadays we don't bat an eye at anybody even WINNING a secondary title.

i think you strongly underestimate the power of 90s nostalgia for a lot of the target audience here the whole green ranger saga (heel turn -> redemption) was pretty much the peak of the power rangers craze as i recall. definitely a lot of memories there!

since i noticed a couple people suggest this, i'll put it out there: no way was warrior ready for the IC title that early in 88. his pops didn't really start picking up until sometime after mania that year, and i think summerslam was near-perfect timing. i am a big fan of turning jake heel in 1990, though. they already had piper & dusty as viable "#3" level babyfaces who could headline the C shows, with bossman potentially joining them in the not too distant future.

the issue with the first wrestlemania was that it wasn't really meant to be the kind of supercard we think of today. back then the mentality was "save it for the monthly MSG show", which explains the lack of tito vs. valentine and the squash matches. being such an unproven and risky business venture, vince wasn't going to go all-in on it, period. EDIT: oh yeah, sammartinos vs. beefcake/johnny v is also a case of saving the big match for the MSG house show. unfortunate for those of us who go back and watch WM1 now, to be sure...

yeah, i agree with US-only. not so sure about north america, as lucha adds plenty of viable candidates.

as you might expect, i mostly agree with bill here. as far as "diva" goes, my take is that pro wrestling is presented as a sporting event of sorts, and that word has long been used with a hugely negative connotation in sports; it tends to refer to male athletes who are perceived as selfish or "soft". i think women's wrestling can work, but the best chance for that would be to actually write for a female audience. that's quite a change from writing for your typical wrestling audience, given the difference in life experiences and such, so i wouldn't expect it from WWE. basically i think a women's wrestling promotion today should aim for a "modern roller derby" kind of vibe, given how successful that's become over the past decade...still have goofy gimmicks & outfits but play up your wrestlers as serious athletes and bring up elements of their lives outside of wrestling. whenever you see articles about roller derby they always mention how a team has professors & harvard-grad lawyers or what have you.

What makes you say this? What does Henry have that Butch Reed or Tony Atlas didn't? what the next couple replies said, plus the olympic cred which i figure would have mattered much more back then. in reagan's america, you know... but i think the size is particularly important. i've always had the impression that the 80s were the peak of people in the business being size marks.

yeah reigns isn't a disaster or anything, he just feels a bit underwhelming compared to his push. also a lot of internet fans probably see him as being in direct competition with ambrose for obvious reasons. i echo the comments about his promos still feeling unnatural, and he comes off awfully video-gamey in the ring.

yea, mark henry would've been the first black NWA champ in 80s crockett mike awesome was always a guy who felt like he should've been more than he was, what with his physical gifts. maybe if he stays away from garbage wrestling he becomes a poor man's don leo jonathan, who knows one of my very first posts on here was a detailed one about JW storm, but he would fall in the same category as awesome to me. wasn't motivated to stay in wrestling since he came in during an all-time low for business...think he would've been perfect for the late 90s since he had the look and could do high-flying big man stuff. here's something a bit outside the box: most black wrestlers prior to the 80s. they tended to be pigeonholed into stereotypical gimmicks (even more so than since), and i can't help but be a bit suspicious of the fact that almost all of them got stuck with the "bad worker" label. we definitely have video evidence of that for some of these guys, but somehow i have a hard time believing that every single black wrestler who ever drew money in the territories was basically konnan.

go back and watch that stuff now and you'll see loads of dull aimless matwork to fill time the doc/gordy team is very high up on my all-time least favorite wrestlers list, though i haven't seen their best AJPW work.

p. sure that dave's cosmic subs in the cleveland area is the most johnny sorrow sub shop

FWIW in an interview with a bunch of their big developmental signings, he claimed he just wanted to see if he could make it at this level. sort of a "got nothing left to prove in japan" thing.

i think there's something to parv's post. i'm a bit younger than the majority here and haven't started a family or anything, but i also left wrestling in 2003. for me, katie vick was the straw that broke the camel's back. i also couldn't stand HHH beating booker & RVD when they were crazy over. RVD in particular was *the* favorite of all my brother's friends who watched at the time, and it seemed like the time to run with him. all that being said, i think a lot of this may not have been on HHH necessarily. rather, to some degree, i'd say this was inevitable burnout after years of a hot product that was a far bigger timesink than 80s WWF. more PPVs and more meaningful TV to keep up with every week meant the boom just wasn't sustainable. right at the peak of it all, i remember bill simmons saying "I see more of the McMahon family than my own family these days!", which makes me wonder if that oversaturation didn't play a role as well. EDIT: 29 here!

others have addressed this and i can at least understand that logic for TV shows. but if you think THAT'S bad, companies are now sponsoring professional video game players and doing the same thing there. it's even happening in my old neck of the woods (fighting games), where the major tournaments get maybe 10-15,000 viewers at their peak. they do have their Wrestlemania equivalent that does way better, but even that's still only 100k viewers or so. people will jump on this stuff even if there's no money in it currently - they just have to believe there WILL be money in it eventually.

ah, thanks! sorry about that one dunno why but i feel like the attitude era should have a bunch of matches that on paper seem like they should qualify for this. in practice the whole crash TV approach probably killed the effect though.

yeah, i would put that down to online shopping becoming a bigger piece of the overall pie. smartphones have to have helped a lot in that regard...

one that would have been a huge "smart fan" upset but hardly an upset at all to the live crowd: andre beating warrior clean at a house show in italy(?), during the infamous run of 30-second jobs.

well, if one of your main-eventers works a very physically punishing style, you really want to have a "secondary ace" ready when needed. one of the major criticisms of 90s AJPW was that they didn't see this with misawa, and didn't do enough to elevate kawada & kobashi or develop new talent. i'm not sure how dangerous today's "stiff" NJPW matches are compared to that, though. my feeling is that they definitely need someone new to reach the tanahashi/okada level, but it seems like they're grooming shibata for that spot as we speak so i wouldn't worry too much yet.