funkdoc

RVD had that 02-03 window with legit ace potential, but between the weed and his tendency to hurt guys and being an even worse promo than sting...i'm going to say "no" on that one. no way he would have held up long-term even if he did get the belt when he was hot. i actually don't think ahmed johnson ranks all that far behind RVD as far as this goes. a lot of the same weaknesses to an even more extreme degree, but he had the same kind of appeal goldberg did: an aura of intensity in a period where that was lacking. the guy was absolutely over enough to get the belt in mid-96, but in retrospect it was for the better that they didn't hotshot it onto him. i don't think guys like this are what this thread was meant for. don't think anyone mentioned kerry von erich here, which is kinda surprising. allegedly he was vince's plan B for hulkamania...again though, i don't think that one works out long-term. if anything, i think an in-shape junkyard dog is a more interesting "what if" in that role, though i doubt a national promotion was ready for a black ace then. heck, advertisers were leery of michael jordan at first! honestly, out of anybody who could have conceivably gotten hogan's spot, the only one i could see working and not flaming out would have been slaughter. pretty much any other top babyface was either deep into drugs (kerry, JYD, snuka) or too bland of a persona to be a national ace (backlund, tito). i'm not sure if slaughter had some bigger issue with the company that would have driven him out anyway - otherwise, i think he would be an interesting answer for this.

was supposed to be at summerslam 89 but Martel was injured. then they just stopped caring seemingly, as Tito had reached Koko B. Ware status by then and they came up with other angles for Martel in spite of all that, you could argue that they actually DID have a blowoff match: the SNME one in late 1990. probably wasn't sold as such on commentary but hey!

regarding the drug issue, i suspect that what people had a problem with was guys wrestling while fucked up. between sandman and RVD that was practically a tradition in ECW, and i could easily see that scaring away green indie guys

I couldn't disagree with this post more the Shield, imo, had run it's course. Yeah, they had a fun babyface run, but what then? Where does a 3 man group go from there? If they kept the group together, who would they work with? There's nobody. This is way more interesting than keeping the Shield around as a babyface trio, imo. And I think Rollins will knock this out of the park. And it's major heat on Ambrose and Reigns. I love it. WWE has a proven formula for "aces" and i think they could have successfully adapted it to a trios group. have them wrestle more and more singles matches over time, while staying together and saving the 6-man format for the biggest matches. this is probably too much to ask realistically though, given how many times they ran shield-wyatts on free TV... but more than that, i strongly agree with the people who didn't want a "breakup". have them do their own thing but stay close to each other, knowing that at any time the band could get back together. THAT is what wrestling doesn't do nearly enough of, i think. maybe i'm weird but i felt like the shield had the best chance of anyone atm to be this generation's hogan/austin/what have you. they just hit a lot more notes with a lot more audiences than even bryan does. i suspect they're a victim of the idea that only one guy can be the Ace...

yea, just very babyfaced and bland and not overly muscular. not a great fit for the 90s

they just can't let anything breathe anymore the shield were getting incredibly over as babyfaces, and had even become the new sex symbols for the company. they had a ton of mileage left as a face act and could have been something truly special. but noooooooooo gotta swerve the internet fans~ also given how meta this company has become anymore, i am fully expecting rollins's reasoning to be some form of "reigns was going to be the star and i didn't want to get buried in the midcard"

yea i feel ya, it's just that this is the sort of thing that comes off much much differently when women do it vs men. i have learned this the hard way myself not too long ago, context is everything...

i've had a theory regarding meltzer's spot-heavy tastes for a while now. no idea how true it may be but i'm curious, so here goes: from what i've read of dave, it seems like he was heavily invested in coming up with an answer to everyone who would ask "if you know that stuff is fake then why do you watch it?" that is, he wanted to make the case for pro wrestling as a worthy form of entertainment in its own right. the problem here was that hanging your hat on the storylines or characters or acting would get you laughed out of a conversation with anybody exposed to decent film or TV. thus, i think dave found athleticism and cool moves to be the easiest hook for NORMAL PEOPLE (tm warrior) to understand. and frankly, for that purpose, he was right! during the peak years of my fandom, my parents consistently sneered at wrestling (while loving things like twister and limp bizkit, mind you), but they enjoyed rey mysterio and others of his ilk. i think the high-flying stuff is what stands out to most people as cool and unique and respectable about wrestling, especially considering it doesn't have those scary homoerotic overtones that mat work does... there's obviously a lot more to dave than this, but i'm just wondering if there wasn't a pragmatic element to all this as well.

someone non-ironically linked icycalm articles, on a wrestling forum, in 2014 that just may be the best part of this thread really though, I think part of the problem here is that Joe's basic point doesn't leave a whole lot of room for discussion so people end up reading more into it. that and it's not terribly relevant to the way a lot of people here enjoy wrestling. I'm a baby on here though so I'll just sit back and enjoy!

this and the following post are funny, given the big internet myth about this guy - that nash ended his career with a botched powerbomb that messed up his back. complete BS but you'll still see it in youtube comments for waylon mercy matches

here's something related i was thinking about... for anyone who knows about OSW Review, one of them made comments during their WM3 video that seemed awfully facepalm-worthy to me: during Savage-Steamboat he kept going on about how standards are so much higher nowadays, this would be nowhere near a 5-star match, and "Christian vs. Orton from Over the Limit[?] is 10 times the match this was." granted, these guys are far more blatant movez marks than Meltzer, but it's still interesting to see how often hardcore fans buy into this sort of thinking. i personally think that if you see changes over time as inherently positive, you aren't looking hard enough for the strengths of older styles and/or the weaknesses of current ones, or you only care about personal enjoyment and not the wider context of the work (which i can respect a lot more than the former, nothing wrong with being into something for fun and not wanting to think about it too much!). also Matt D, i don't want to derail this thread but i think you misconstrue postmodernist positions a bit. from following many different social movements, the impression i get is more "you can't wholly understand the struggle if you benefit from the power structures we're struggling against." postmodernism is about recognizing that no matter how much you fetishize "rationality" you are going to carry countless subtle biases that color your fundamental view of the world. but this would be a massive conversation in itself so i'll leave it at that =)

good links, everyone! if nowinski goes in hard on soccer then my previous statement would be wrong, most likely. in the national consciousness, he is basically woodward & bernstein combined on this issue. i was going off the fact that US media coverage of concussions in sport is something like 90% focused on football. and the remaining ~10% is split between a bunch of sports - hockey definitely seems to get the 2nd most attention thanks to sidney crosby, and i would say even pro wrestling has more of a stigma than soccer atm because of benoit. plus all of these sports (or "sports") had reputations for violence already, so parents relying on "common sense" wouldn't see how soccer is anywhere near their league. whether it remains this way depends on the direction the media & advocates go...

glad to see there are plenty of others chiming in! nobody cares about "workrate" or "real sport" stuff unless they're already in the bubble, let's be real here you need wackiness, particularly with this generation. taking yourself too seriously makes you more of a joke than having a sense of humor about yourself does anymore, though you can't get TOO over the top (which chikara probably is if you watch it regularly). wanna know what the fastest-growing sport in the US is with educated people my age & younger, at least in terms of percentages? women's roller derby! that had very much the same roots as pro wrestling, and it's kinda unique in how it evolved. decades ago it was a worked TV sport with gimmicks and angles, and in the early 2000s there was an ~ironic hipster~ nostalgia revival. it just happened to catch on really well, and it became a real sport. here's what i think really runs counter to the arguments some have made ITT: even as derby has attracted increasingly talented athletes who are more likely to celebrate wins with protein shakes than beer, the stockings and fishnets and gimmick names (Kill Basa, anyone?) are still the defining aspect of the sport. that hasn't made it seem any less "real" to people like us, it just gives much-needed character to an audience that realizes sports are fundamentally silly anyway. another aspect of derby that has some relevance here is its strong connection to feminism, to the point that i've heard it described as "the first truly feminist sport". discussions of racial/gender/queer issues have become a huge part of many nerd subcultures in recent years as minority voices have made themselves more visible, and the results of this have gradually shown up in the mainstream. many of the most famous indie video games of recent years deal with stuff like this - look up Gone Home, which got a ton of love in major outlets' end-of-the-year awards, or Dys4ia, which earned its creator an article in the new york times. it's also happening in comics...marvel recently got a whole bunch of press for the new miss marvel, who is a teen muslim girl, and one of DC's most respected writers is an outspoken feminist who doesn't shy away from these themes in her work. i could also talk about the atheist movement and plenty of other examples, but you get the idea! i think angles touching on these issues could be huge for drawing in women and other minority & educated audiences, but wrestling doesn't have anywhere close to the right people or the right mentality to pull it off currently. to go back to that miss marvel comic, it's written by a muslim woman, when even a generation ago it more likely would have been a white guy in that spot. then you look at wrestling's track record with people of color in creative...ranjan chhibber, anyone? tl;dr there are a ton of ways for pro wrestling to tap into the preferences and issues of the current generation, but that would require radical changes that will never happen as long as mcmahons are involved

i can actually buy into that re: soccer now, for a specific reason that didn't exist before with what we've learned about brain injuries in recent years, i see lots of parents not allowing their kids to play football in future generations. and where do you think those kids will go? i expect soccer to be the biggest beneficiary here...

i actually think stuff like bray wyatt would help a lot...if it were executed properly as an overall package. my parents saw the wyatts' entrance and thought that & their look was rad as heck, and the concept sounds cool on paper, but i know they would roll their eyes if they ever saw one of bray's promos. if you gave him a real motivation that has meaningful connections with the audience, he could absolutely appeal to people who watch shows like the walking dead...but given that this is WWE that ain't happening. we'll be stuck with acts that have some of the pieces of a great character but lack the cohesive whole. really, a lot of the fundamental problems here boil down to the fact that WWE has never been able or willing to attract good writers. their best stuff is still "booked" rather than "written" if you will, and only hardcore audiences appreciate great booking. for example, the awful comedy segments are about the best repellent to "the normal human being" (tm Jim Ross) you could possibly come up with, which is a shame since a more comic tone could help if done well. i think nowadays people really want the spirit of unabashed goofy fun in their entertainment, while wrestling is still somewhat stuck in the 90s habit of taking itself waaaaayyyyy too seriously. focusing on kids hurts a lot in this regard as well, along with the man they picked to do that job. i remember a few years ago, someone on deadspin(?) said something like "I always wondered why hipsters don't watch wrestling, it seems like such a natural fit. I mean, you get to NAME YOUR FINISHING MOVE, who wouldn't love that? Then I remembered that the face of the company is a shitty white rapper in jorts who makes farty poopy gay-bashing jokes, and it all makes sense." says a lot in a couple sentences, doesn't it? furthermore, as i have discussed elsewhere on here before, the bodybuilding look is downright creepy to most people and doesn't suggest toughness at all. i laugh when i see meltzer say randy orton carries himself like a star - to me he carries himself like a guy TRYING to carry himself like a star, if that makes sense. guys like him & batista make me think of all the obnoxious bros with crappy tattoos and tapout shirts who would never win a real fight, and i am far from the only one who feels that way. MMA has shown millions of people that you don't need to be 250 pounds with six-pack abs to be a legitimate badass, so it's a shame that cooler heads haven't prevailed over the mcmahon fetishes yet. i think more guys like punk & bryan are who you need to attract a different crowd. they look like relatable human beings and tend to act like relatable human beings (more than others in WWE, at least). being interesting on social media is a huge, huge plus in this day & age, which is why i still think big e could be a monster if he ever got to show that part of himself on TV... there's also the lack of long-term planning on multiple fronts. the funkasaurus character had started catching on with friends of mine who would fit the description in this thread (remember what i said about the spirit of fun?), but they got bored with him doing the exact same squash match every week and weren't surprised to hear that he was turned into another random loser. summer of punk is a much more significant example, of course, and it makes it hard to stay invested. the sheer amount of content is impossible to keep up with if you have a life, too, and makes it far too easy for viewers to get burned out. this has been a major problem ever since smackdown was added, and they have yet to learn. even if this superficially makes money, i suspect there would be more buzz around the WWE if they only had 1 "main" show and 1 "shorter, good, but not essential" show per week (raw & main event, basically). along similar lines, i think it could also do them well to have brief "offseason" periods. people talk about how WWE always sucks in may & the fall (post-WM and post-SS p. much) and their business dips then, so why not use those times to give everyone a much-needed break? part of what keeps interest high in pro sports is the fact that they're only on during part of the year...though WWE may need some sort of non-wrestling event a la the draft to keep the hardcore fans talking. this was pretty all over the place and i apologize for that! just wanted to give the perspective of someone who's younger than most on this board and knows plenty of the people we're talking about here =)

i would mainly blame the fact that the WWF had him try to buy the world title before actually wrestling a main-event program. great way to make a "top" guy look weak right off the bat!

El-P is French IIRC, so not surprising. FYI, Michael Sam is the first American football player to come out as gay while playing. He just got drafted into the NFL, and celebrated by kissing his boyfriend on camera. It's a huge media frenzy in America, hence that angle!

omg this x 1000 i actually think 18 Seconds was their way of trying to make fans buy into all these mania nearfalls, but it's going to take more than just 1 match. and like you talked about, that was still a finisher that did the job!

yeah, i remember hearing that graham was strictly a road agent in 1990 if not before. the company making cuts was why he wrestled again in '91, which gave us one of the all-time classic "only in WCW" matches: DDP/mike graham vs. jushin liger/bill kazmaier at starrcade

someone on here posted before that it seemed like WCW's scouting department consisted of a subscription to PWI. there's something to that, as a lot of these guys you mentioned were indie wrestlers whose names kept showing up in the apter mags. you even left out a bunch who fit this mold! e.g. slazenger/pierce, the equalizer, the blackhearts, the colossal kongs, big sky, the mongolian mauler and thanks, wagner! =) i would say JW storm was more a case of a carny attracted to wrestling. people mentioned that he didn't last in college football because of maturity and other issues, and he was playing up the jesus thing while his boxing career was getting exposed if you're interested, this stuff came from a couple articles which have a lot more details - http://www.hack-man.com/Wrestling/NewsArticles/20000319-ShadowBoxer.html & http://www.myfoxtwincities.com/story/21121306/edwards-continues-boxing-career-under-massive-shadow

just noticed this when looking through the thread since i almost never see JW storm brought up here. he didn't have nearly enough of a wrestling career to merit a microscope thread but he's an awfully fascinating character, so i figured i'd write something here since this thread isn't extremely active anyway. WARNING: long post ahead!!! i don't think he sucked so much as he was just reeeeaaaally green, with a ton of potential. he had a great look and even showed some flashes of high flying - if he'd stuck around into the ECW/attitude era, i could easily see him having a big role as a mike awesome type with power moves & highspots. watching 1990 TV makes it clear WCW felt the same way, as he got quite a big push for a new guy. he went undefeated for months and the commentators kept bringing that up...until out of nowhere he jobbed clean to brad armstrong (THE CANDYMAN, no less) in his one PPV appearance and was never seen on TV again. turns out that he had been secretly negotiating a deal with the WWF, and WCW found out and turfed him. the WWF didn't sign him then either, so maybe that cost him 2 jobs. he did get a cup of coffee with the WWF in early '92, largely doing house-show jobs to rick martel (e.g. this one from MSG). they were going to give him a long-term spot, as they taped a TV segment with jimmy hart debuting him as his newest signing, but he left before it could air. he later admitted that the money wasn't there for him, which makes sense given the business decline of the early 90s. the most interesting part of his life is what happened after wrestling, though. he became a pro boxer and attracted investors with the same raw potential that drew in WCW & the WWF; people were paying tens of thousands apiece (and over $100k in at least one case) for a stake in the next great white hope. he actually had a couple fights during his wrestling career but really focused on boxing after he retired, and built up a 13-1 record. he continued to go undefeated afterward as there was talk of fights with mike tyson & george foreman...but he kept dodging real fights and the boxing commissions investigated him. the end result was one of boxing's bigger scandals, as it was found that many of his fights were fixed and many of his opponents were jobbers handpicked by his people. he would fight other wrestlers, which is why you can find some familiar names with only one pro fight. he even had multiple fights with the same guy plucked from a homeless shelter, who used a different name each time and made $50-200 to lose. humorously enough, "Tony Rich" and "Terry Taylor" were among these pseudonyms! it all came crashing down and he never did get that big money fight everyone hoped for...so he became a pastor. not the mellow type you normally think of, but one of those guys who breaks blocks with his forehead and performs other feats of strength to show the power of jesus. he also got back into boxing in recent years, this time as the trainer of a former NFL player named ray edwards. in 2012 he was sentenced to 3 years probation for intent to distribute steroids, and more recently there has been talk that edwards's fights may also have been fixed... definitely enough of a carny for pro wrestling, but i guess he found more profitable avenues!

the impression i get from youtube clips i've seen is that he's basically a smark, which would be perfect nowadays there was a smackdown last year where he shows up during miz vs. brodus clay, calls it one of the worst matches ever, and leads the crowd in a "THIS IS AWFUL *clap-clap clap-clap-clap*" chant

the wyatts actually remind me a lot of heel doink, weird as that may sound. both are "creepy" gimmicks that work for the kids and can be entertaining in other ways for the adults...but they would be 10x more effective with the latter if it weren't for the whole PG thing. i think doink gets more of a pass around here because he turned out to be the sort of hidden great worker yall go ga-ga for, but i feel the same way about that gimmick as el-p and i do about the wyatts. both are clearly toned-down versions of infamous pop cultural figures: wyatts = charles manson + deliverance, doink = it

i think pre-97 being so heavily favored is a reflection of the core posters' age here i suspect there will be some sort of paradigm shift in wrestling eventually that will lead future generations to see these sacred cows in a much less flattering light. with 90s all japan for instance, i can easily imagine an even greater backlash against "epics" and head drops developing. basically i think of the current unquestioned love for this stuff as equivalent to "rockism" in music criticism, if anyone here is familiar with that concept (with the WON being rolling stone, obv). there are an increasing number of hardcore music fans today saying "no, we don't *HAVE* to accept the beatles as part of the GOAT discussion" and rejecting a lot of ideas the rockists took for granted (e.g. music without ~real instruments~ being lower art). maybe the same will happen with wrestling sooner or later...

i'd go post-1997 just because there's no telling what will come in the future i feel like pro wrestling is still struggling to figure out how much it should present itself as entertainment and how much it should present itself as sport, and if anyone ever gets it right we could see some stuff that blows away anything from the 90s...