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funkdoc

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Everything posted by funkdoc

  1. i've had a theory about terry taylor for a while now. they bring in him & hennig at the same time, have the mr. perfect & red rooster gimmicks all set, and decide to give them to those two... i strongly suspect there was one thing above all else that screwed taylor: his southern accent! we all know how vince feels about that, and i don't recall many guys with one getting a long-term run during hulkamania. it's a total guess on my part, but one that i think is quite reasonable.
  2. funkdoc

    Current WWE

    re: ziggler, i get that complaining about his push is part of his gimmick...but he's also publicly complained about storylines that have nothing to do with him. i'm not sure it's all kayfabed, and it is strange that his role is so small as over as he is.
  3. yep, great catch! btw, if you think about it from the perspective of booking at the time...gonzalez really should have won at mania, shouldn't he? if they were going to drag out the feud through the summer then he really needed the cred. makes me wonder if that was originally meant to be another one-and-done mania program. it's interesting when you look at how clear-cut the undertaker's other early WM matches (i.e. before WWF realized The Streak was a thing) were. he fought guys on their way out of the company (jake, diesel), totally washed-up hulkamania stars (snuka, bundy, bossman), a heel champ who wasn't drawing flies (sid)...there was no way they could have reasonably booked him to lose any of those. it's just funny to me that with some of those big names during this period, the only two guys who would have made any sense beating him were kane and giant freakin' gonzalez. well, i forget if they were acknowledging the streak for the first HHH match, so if they weren't then he would definitely fit as well. i guess they saw him as a special attraction due to his gimmick and felt he couldn't do jobs, but that's still a pretty nice streak of luck considering there were a couple matches he could and arguably should have lost!
  4. there needs to be a large cultural change within WWE if they really want to get women over. for starters, the typical "first name only" presentation is tacky as hell and needs to be dropped ASAP. historically, a lot of the problem has been the demographic involved with WWF/E's creative team. it's largely tended to be ex-wrestlers or real-life Comic Book Guys, and those aren't exactly the best groups to write multi-dimensional female characters. the most prominent creative figure who didn't fit either of those categories was Russo, and he treated women worse than anyone in his booking - remember the "abuse of women" tally in El-P's thread? i think to really do a serious women's division properly, you would need more women in creative. the best you could realistically do with the current bunch are "male characters with boobs", which is a phenomenon that's been widely criticized in other forms of entertainment; the Charlotte vs. Natalya match could arguably fit into this category, though you could also say that's not really a context that needs more women-specific issues. thanks to history and our existing power structures, the real life experiences of men & women tend to be vastly different, and you should take this into account if you want to create female characters who will resonate with women. here's an article that touches on some of what i mean here: http://www.overthinkingit.com/2008/08/18/why-strong-female-characters-are-bad-for-women/ . there are other issues not really touched upon there, but this is well worth reading to understand some of the common pitfalls male writers fall into.
  5. Class. Never thought of this before. You'd have to tread carefully not to make 1992 Undertaker look like an idiot though. My dream scenario is that this would have been more in the late 90's, though it would have worked around the time the character debuted too. A more fiendish less cartoon-y Doink versus the ultra-gothy Taker could have worked well. definitely agree with this. as great as it already was, i feel like heel doink was one of the gimmicks that suffered the most in a PG-rated show. "DOINK, BRAH, YOU'RE MAKIN' KIDS CRY BRAH!!!" isn't exactly the most dramatic hook, ya know?
  6. i'm younger than most of this board, haven't started a family of my own, yet i still probably watch less wrestling atm than anyone else in this thread. i am a case of someone with too damn many interests, and wrestling will be about the first to fall to the wayside. when i have time and don't feel like doing anything else, i'll check out random old matches or watch stuff on the /wooo/ stream (some of those image macros are a guilty pleasure of mine!) i tend to be drawn to actively doing things more than watching, which is why the vast majority of my wrestling-related time consists of posting on here. i'm fascinated by the notion that wrestling may finally be reaching a point that music did a couple decades ago - debunking all sorts of conventional wisdom and thinking of new ways to evaluate and appreciate work. video games are still going through this now, but i'm much more interested in this since the surrounding culture is far more hostile to treating wrestling in this manner.
  7. The difference is I don't think anyone else is having the discussion but the thirty or so of us? yep, whereas practically the entire modern indie game scene is a response to that infamous ebert piece mentioned above. there are a number of self-conscious Art Games that don't even try to be fun to play, and i'm not sure how i feel about that. i'm also with childs - treating commercial vs. artistic success as a dichotomy is intellectual laziness. it often seems to come from older folks who don't "get" modern pop culture and the wider trends that developed its values. complaining about autotune really isn't different from the way a previous generation would say ONLY REAL INSTRUMENTS = REAL MUSIC, for example.
  8. it's surprising me how fresh this conversation feels here, considering how beyond worn out it's become with video games i suspect the same will happen here a few years from now or so
  9. the WWF actually did give van hammer a brief tryout on house shows in early '93, never led to anything though.
  10. dylan nails a lot of things i had felt but hadn't articulated well enough to write about yet. there's a lot of mythmaking involved in who's a draw, just as there is in the rest of history. here's an interesting one that i've had on my mind: the MSG house show where wendi richter won the women's title from moolah. i watched that whole show a little while back, and it really felt to me like the women's match was the main event even though it was in the middle of the card. hogan vs. greg valentine didn't really strike me as a top-shelf matchup, you know? yes, i know valentine was a lot higher on the totem pole back then, but i recall that match not being worked or sold like he was much of a threat. dunno, but that really seemed to be an example of women drawing money in the US even if it was about cyndi lauper. there really is an art to this stuff the more you look into it. reminds me of how complicated it's become to interpret football stats as more advanced stuff comes out...
  11. i am pretty much on the opposite end of the spectrum from matt farmer & el-p, as much as i respect both of them and can sympathize with them. i just think we NEED to move more in the direction of "wrestling as art" (hate phrasing it this way, just referencing what has already been said in this thread) if we want it to have any chance of relevance anymore. kayfabe is dead, it's never coming back, and nobody cares about "real sports" stuff when even real sports aren't "real sports" anymore. i mean, what gets the strongest heel reactions in WWE nowadays? HHH's meta trolling! the guy can't draw heat to save his life as an actual wrestler, but that stuff is nuclear. the entire bad news barrett gimmick is basically "i'm an asshole smark", and that's become one of their strongest acts. i think a more postmodern approach is the future, and i also think that WWE won't fully grasp this until some indie promotion realizes it and gets hot (think ECW). chikara probably comes the closest currently, but it's a bit TOO wacky & comic-book-nerdy...
  12. oh man, i was waiting for dylan to pop in here and he didn't disappoint! i want to sleep but can't atm, so i'll try and address some of this... i don't particularly disagree with point 1 at all. i just don't have a personal interest in that side of things and don't see a reason it *has* to be an interest for anyone. my years of sports fandom have given me all the "GOAT" debates i need for ten lifetimes, and it's even more aggravating to me when we can't make statistics the core argument like we often can in sports. i do admit to an interest in the *worst* wrestlers of all time by all relevant metrics, including crowd response, and i like seeing conventional wisdom get debunked wrt drawing power. that's about it anymore! point 2 is definitely the meatiest one for me here, and i'll answer a bit of point 4 here as well. in all my arguments here, i've used "drawing" to mean "breaking through to a more mainstream audience" as this is what i am used to that term meaning. this was definitely a mistake on my part, so thanks for pointing that out! in my other posts i talk about the value of celebrities in helping a promotion accomplish this, and i would argue that hogan in WCW was a smaller version of the mr. t/mike tyson effect. the other examples mentioned by you and others are trickier, but i tend to see those as pulling in lapsed fans who are still kinda in the bubble or had just recently been in the bubble. it's definitely a different phenomenon from the major booms that i've tended to focus on, and something i have not thought about nearly as much - those are cases where i can see individual talent mattering more, since everything is on a smaller scale. to finish point 2...again, i think my last post sheds more light on why down periods don't last forever. i tend to see updating your "feel" to fit your era as a bigger piece than any star wrestler, though wrestlers can of course be a part of this. sting in the "superhero ace" role stood out as such a terrible actor even in wrestling that i could see him turning away some potential fans - i just think the structural issues and cultural atmosphere were bigger problems. i realize that i probably implied i didn't think sting was *a* problem at all, which was not what i meant. apologies if that is the case! as for point 3, this is also something i address in my last post. basically i think guys on top in the hottest periods are inevitably overrated to some degree. not to say that hogan & austin weren't great draws, as i still believe both were the best guys for their respective jobs, but there is no way i buy them being the ONLY guys who could have pulled it off. i talk about this specifically with hogan vs. slaughter in the 80s, complete with an easy sports analogy. it's not that it doesn't matter at all who's on top, it's that you don't necessarily need the best possible guy - you need a well-rounded enough performer who can be trusted to show up every night and not cause PR problems for the company. i find it interesting that the latter seems to be the rarer skill in wrestling... also regarding point 3, i absolutely agree with you on which matches can be draws. in fact, in my last post here i harp on the fans who blindly assume that only main-eventers draw money! guys like the hardys in the attitude era are what i tend to think of here - midcard acts attracting an audience who doesn't normally watch wrestling. your examples wouldn't necessarily fit into that but are sound in their own way! i don't think there is a whole ton left to discuss for point 4 since we've covered a lot of this ground already. i happen to know a bit about your political views, and i suspect that our respective worldviews heavily color this part of it. i tend to see damn near every societal issue or scandal as the product of power structures and sheer chance far more than individuals. shouldn't need to say too much more about where this would lead and what a deep rabbit hole this would be for a wrestling forum! OK i am getting tired so this will be it for tonight. thank you all once again for the discussion here! =)
  13. the other recent funny thing from there that i remember: someone needs scott keith reviews and won't read anyone else's for a given show...because he absolutely must have his precious star ratings and his brain can't process letter grades or any other method of reviewing. no joke, dude went on about this for quite a while to the point that even the rest of the posters there made it a running joke.
  14. don't agree on the can-am connection at all, mostly because the WWF had no goddamn clue how to book pretty-boy wrestlers. i've always suspected they would have ended up in the role strike force got anyway - patsy transitional champs to demolition.
  15. i'm too lazy to rewrite my posts from the 92 WCW vs. WWF thread right now, but basically i think there can be value in looking at someone's drawing power if they were in a position to draw during a hot period. if there is a drastic dropoff that can't easily be explained elsewhere, you may have something to look into. that doesn't happen all that often, though. even before i discovered this place, i tended to have a problem with the way most online fans would just repeat the meltzer dogma of main-eventers being the only guys who draw money. for years, it seemed to me that there were multiple ways someone could be a draw, and fans would only fixate on the most obvious one. merchandise is a good angle that i would be interested in if we had solid numbers, and i also think there is a lot to be said for midcard acts that appeal to audiences who don't normally watch wrestling. i always thought the hardys were a draw going by the latter point, but nobody ever seemed to acknowledge them as such because "midcarders don't draw". and as i also discussed in that thread, i think drawing is largely out of the power of individual wrestlers anyway. vader & bret have been brought up here, but i would argue that transplanting stone cold steve austin into those promotions wouldn't have moved the needle long-term either. US wrestling needed years for the stench of all the sex & drug scandals to disappear, and needed to freshen up its overall "feel". ECW provided the template for wrestling in the 90s, the nWo and WWF Attitude took that to a national level, and dennis rodman/karl malone/mike tyson made the mainstream media take a look at this New Wrestling. stone cold was still key, but i would argue more for *keeping* those new viewers than for drawing them in. and i would argue that more people than just austin could have fulfilled that role, though WCW had most of the good candidates then and the WWF roster was awfully thin in 97-early 98. really, the most successful drawing formula seems to be: total change in presentation to match the aesthetics of the decade + involvement from relevant celebrities + charismatic star to keep people watching. that's a whole lot that doesn't have to do with any particular wrestler! heck, 80s WWF fit this to a tee as well...do you think for a second that they get on SNL and sell those mania tickets without mr. t? to get to perhaps my most controversial point in all of this, let's continue with the 80s WWF theme. i genuinely believe that if the WWF hadn't signed hogan and gone with sgt. slaughter as the face of the company, they would have done 80-90% as well and the general wrestling boom would have happened anyway. you need a main-event guy who can entertain people in the ring and with his character, while (most importantly) being reliable and staying out of trouble. though hogan was the best man for the job, what made him uniquely important wasn't his talent so much as the fact that most of the other really charismatic babyfaces they had or considered signing (junkyard dog, jimmy snuka, kerry von erich) had major drug problems and would absolutely have flamed out in that kind of spotlight. slaughter was the one exception and was capable of all of this himself, which is why i highlight him in this hypothetical. basically, i think there are so many factors in play that it's too hard to solidly judge an individual wrestler's drawing power. if the promotion as a whole is weak and stagnant, no individual wrestler can save it. and when all the other pieces are in place, you don't need your ace to be peyton manning - in my view, a matt ryan will more than suffice. heck, i might argue that 97 sting was a "matt ryan", and we know how that worked out...
  16. yeah, sorry for the derail everyone and thanks to Loss for making that new thread! as far as PPVs go...WWF had a much higher batting average in 92. survivor series was the only downer in my view, and even that at least had some nice moments (big pop for the savage-flair tag, the main event being a preview of the future). the rumble match is still my #1, and WM8 is a top 10 mania for me (though i haven't seen a lot of the post-attitude era ones). 92 WWF was what got me into wrestling, so this could be a good bit of nostalgia talking even though i've seen all this stuff not too long ago. no WWF show that year touches superbrawl II...but on the other end, no WWF show that year touches GAB92. seriously, i have to dock WCW a bunch of points for that whole doc/gordy run in 92 - i genuinely hate it almost as much as 2014 RVD. aimless matwork being shilled as "greatness" is at least as obnoxious to me as spot monkeys who haven't learned any new spots in 15 years. the PPVs mirror the promotions overall for this year, i think. to use bill james's terminology, WCW wins on "peak value" while WWF wins on "career value".
  17. thebrainfollower, i don't entirely agree with your position either though i definitely understand it if you treat wrestling as entertainment, as basically everyone on this board seems to, then why can't we have work that's brilliant even if it flops financially? i think wrestling fans too often take promoters & wrestlers at their word on what constitutes a good worker, the purpose of pro wrestling, etc...and that's a lot of what fuels this. people are stuck at "the whole point of wrestling is to draw money" because that's what the insiders say; aside from this board, wrestling fandom has yet to experience its Death Of The Author moment where people say "screw the insiders, there's more shit that matters". that's one of the main things i love about this place, actually! "not drawing" really means "couldn't interest a particular audience at a particular point in time", and i don't think that in itself should be a negative. it can be a useful *indicator* of other issues at times, mainly if something didn't draw during a hot period for business (see the mr. perfect example from before), but i think it's drastically overused as a metric when dealing with overall down periods. this is why i think there is value in performances that remain entertaining & compelling 20 years after the fact, even if they didn't draw a dime at the time! and this could be a thread in itself, but i think the impact of specific top stars on drawing power is huuuuuuuugely overrated. it reflects the same thought process as the whole Great Man conception of history, which has countless holes if you examine it in depth. you do need a main-eventer who can reach a certain baseline in various traits (look, personality, etc.), but i think wider cultural trends and the presentation of the overall product are bigger factors in a promotion's mainstream success. basically i don't think sting & vader, or even ron simmons, were the problem for WCW - the problem was a culture hostile to pro wrestling and (key difference from the WWF) a show with a very low-rent/"southern" feel to it. during a time when power rangers & mortal kombat ruled the world, most kids wouldn't be caught dead watching "that redneck shit" or the 80s cartoon style of the WWF. man, i really *should* make a separate thread for that topic...
  18. someone asked him a question about the last good matches from "shitty workers" and lawler & tenta were included in that group. i think there was at least one other good one in that bunch too maybe. keith said he couldn't think of a good tenta match, while for lawler he obviously went with a 93 bret match he also picked summerslam 96 as vader's last good match lollllllllllll also i never noticed that keith finally stopped letting caliber winfield post stuff on his blog. that guy was amazing for all the wrong reasons. let me give a basic rundown: caliber winfield was a hack who tried to make it big on the internet by aping maddox's entire writing style, years after maddox himself had ceased to be relevant. for those lucky enough not to have been exposed to The Best Page In The Universe back in its heyday, i basically mean I'M SO FUCKING AWESOME LOOK AT HOW AWESOME I AM RAAGH MANLINESS RAAGH EXPLOSIONS RAAGH TITS RAAGH BACON. it's done in an over-the-top manner but he's pretty much serious about it all. so this caliber fellow shows up on scott keith's blog to write wrestling reviews with such gems as "that was so fucking good, I popped two boners." he expands from there to movies (according to him, scream is a top 10 all-time film because of its inventiveness or something) and even a piece on dating that triggered a flood of Nice Guy™ bullshit from the commentariat there. he wrote a book called, surprise surprise, The Man Movie Encyclopedia, and i guess he & scott had a mutual plugging agreement going on. caliber then got caught stealing jokes, either for a cracked.com article or from a cracked.com article (don't know details but it was referenced a ton on the blog), yet he STILL stuck around afterward. last i had seen, he was there shilling his new e-book on (i shit you not) how to safely download torrents. i guess scott finally had a falling out with him somewhere along the line... so yes, as bad as we may think scott is, he has an eye for even worse talent!
  19. i've long believed that a lot of this was just inevitable burnout following the hogan/flair days, with wrestling becoming old news. all the sex & drug scandals in the early 90s had to hurt a bunch, too. even if that was mostly WWF-related, people just think "wrestling" when they see that. my last thought for now: i think 92 (or maybe late 91) was the beginning of The Spiritual 90s (as opposed to the chronological 90s). feel like the hair-metal bands getting booed in favor of nirvana at the MTV awards was a big moment in that regard. so this was when wrestling became horribly out of step with pop culture...i mean, hell, just look at the timing of the van hammer gimmick! this does a lot to explain future flops like Made In The USA Lex Luger, as well. to get back to the direct topic, the main argument i could see for WWF over WCW was that it was much more consistent over the course of the year. 92 WCW was an awesome one-side album with a second side that you wouldn't listen to more than once, while 92 WWF was 3/5 good on both sides. i'd take the former myself, but i know plenty of people who value top-to-bottom strength more. EDIT: OK, one last thing. i think talking about drawing can be useful even if you don't necessarily care about the business aspect. i'm thinking of mr. perfect here: people wondered why he was hogan's lowest-drawing opponent during his big run, and that led them to discover a lot of his weaknesses that had gone largely unnoticed with smarks. this is likely the exception, granted, but it's there!
  20. you know who i'm really glad HASN'T been mentioned in this thread? one of the main guys who tends to pop up in this discussion with smarks... early 90s scott steiner thank you, everyone, and god bless
  21. lol samoa joe has a twitch stream http://www.twitch.tv/samoajoegames hes actually on atm, playing watch_dogs
  22. funny little game here - you get $15 to build your survivor series dream team. i'm sure some of you will have a field day with these dollar values! https://scontent-a-sea.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xpa1/t1.0-9/10433749_10203167295117705_1780872667249550042_n.jpg
  23. i think matt hardy's rep with most people got destroyed by all the non-wrestling stuff - the generally crappy promos (recall the matt vs. jeff feud in particular being seen as a huge bust relative to expectations), the irl meltdowns, the weight gain, you name it not surprised at all that he wouldn't get any love on stuff like this, even if that may be wrong
  24. neat! the title made me think this would be about Green Lantern Fan & Hat Guy lol David Arquette obviously fits in here. he was a fan and didn't want the WCW title since he knew the fans would shit on it, and IIRC he ended up donating his money from that run to Droz & the Pillman family i remember some big wrestler saying that Burt Reynolds was the most excited to be there out of all the Wrestlemania celebrities... it feels like there are a lot more celebrities who are openly wrestling fans nowadays. like even during the attitude era it seemed like a lot of people were hiding it; i remember hearing how huge the Rock was with pro athletes since he was saying the stuff they wished they could on interviews, but not a lot of people mentioned it themselves.
  25. seconding all the "artificial" comments so hard i said this elsewhere on here but it's funny when i see meltzer say that orton is one of the few in WWE who comes off like a star - to me he comes off as a guy TRYING to come off as a star i could see more appreciation for his matches after he retires, though. he's definitely a guy who's had a lot of non-wrestling strikes against him with smarks, and it would be naive to think that doesn't factor into opinions of him...
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