funkdoc

wasn't dynamite out of commission by then? don't think you could use the bulldogs in this timeframe... also, didn't strike force already break up or was mania later than i thought that year?

i think part of the draw of reality tv is simply exposing people to worlds they had no idea about my parents sneer at almost all reality tv but they go *nuts* for pawn stars, simply because they're so fascinated with the history behind the items that are bought and sold. shows like deadliest catch and even honey boo boo provide a window into a part of america that millions never encounter IRL. as for celebrities, well, those in the know have forever said that celebrities really aren't more interesting people than anyone else...yet people believe they are because they're constantly TOLD that they're interesting.

another problem with the whole tensai character that i rarely see mentioned: making him a heel, when a significant chunk of the live WWE audience these days are japan fanboys themselves! you have to remember that anime & manga now have their own sections in best buy and barnes & noble - japanese pop culture is not nearly as niche a thing now as it was even in the 90s, much less before then. among nerds that stuff is absolutely "mainstream", and wrestling audiences are a hell of a lot nerdier now than they've ever been. add it all up, and i think tensai was a natural *babyface* character if anything. push him as an asskicker with a sense of humor, have him act like he's going super saiyan before he does his finisher, and you might have had something there. so yes, count me in with the folks who think rusev's current gimmick & push have no chance today.

i would argue that wasn't because of hogan so much as becoming a direct TV competitor before nitro, wcw & wwf occupied different niches so there wasn't much of a need to trash talk each other. nitro meant that there was a real fight between them now, so there was incentive to spoil match results and do skits mocking the competition's owner and biggest stars!

Not singles but I was at a house show in 98 that had DX vs Vader/LOD/Droz. Always remember the big vs little spot where Waltman goes to pin Vader and Vader launches him off across the ring. lol they really must have wanted the older guys to look lame to those crowds interesting that you mention waltman but not nash, considering nash spent a fair amount of time in WCW when vader was around...

i know hall did a clean job to vader on his way out of the wwf, but don't recall nash or waltman ever crossing paths with him...

blackholesun, you seem to be newer here. this lurker can tell you a couple things! see, compared to a lot of other sites, this place reeeeaaaaally does not look that kindly upon ROH or other modern indies. even prime ROH gets its fair share of hate - i've seen at least one poster call joe/kobashi "the cosplay match" and talk about how badly joe was pretending to be one of the all japan big 4. in general, emulating 90s puro is one of the quickest ways to land on people's shit lists around these parts (paging davey richards...) bix's post above is a very good summary of this sort of thing. these days, WWE's booking and presentation are seen as their big weaknesses, not the wrestling itself! generally, here are some things the regulars here tend to hate far more than your typical smarks do: lack of credible offense (see: mr. perfect), lack of match structure, BIG MOVEZ that lack meaning, not adjusting your ring work to the crowd (see: dean malenko), selling too much when it doesn't fit your character & position on the card (see: 80s flair in some of his jobber matches), and pointlessly risky stuff like head drops. i could also mention working a body part when that doesn't factor into the finish at all, but that one is a bit more divisive. additionally, people here tend not to believe nearly as much in "workrate" as its own unique thing separate from the rest of a wrestler's performance. people focus more on the overall package when evaluating workers, so you may be surprised at some of the guys who get a lot of love around these parts! i'd say to just hang back and read some stuff in the microscope to get a feel for this forum. in particular, i suspect dylan waco's thread listing wrestlers better than HHH would be a nice jolt! =)

you are talking to a lifelong clevelander who only recently moved out of ohio. *we* definitely always thought rose was an asshole for it, but i don't recall the national media ever really caring much after the initial hype died down. by the time the big red machine came into being it was back to gushing over rose 24/7, and that never really stopped until the gambling stuff started coming out. my point here was that sports fandom is a vastly different culture from cartoons/comic books/etc. and while nowadays it's largely the latter types who still watch wrestling as adults, a backlund type worked back then since it was much more of a sports kinda crowd who would appreciate that style. thanks for all of this, btw. my favorite discussions happen when people go in depth on WHY they like or don't like a given wrestler...leads to a lot of interesting angles.

unfortunately i haven't seen much memphis at all, heard he was awesome there i always suspected his HOF induction was mainly for Piledriver, representing the last peak of rock 'n wrestling in a sense he's also a strong example of how some guys can stay over even if they lose all the time. in his case he had a very memorable gimmick that was a lot of fun for the kids, so they'd always be into his matches just from that alone.

I think it's pretty simple: for the same reason stuff like Ninja Scroll was among the first anime to really be promoted in the US. Simply put, 90s audiences wanted blood, swearing, and tits. There was a huge backlash against "kiddie" pop culture of all sorts, and with that came a demand for this sort of "adult" material. There's also the idea that people want stuff from foreign countries to be "exotic", to offer a completely different experience from anything their own mainstream culture has...deathmatches and Super J Cups certainly fit that bill, don't they?

wasn't apter getting money from WCW or is that just another old scott keith chestnut?

omfg this x 1000 i suspect something of an age gap going on here, perhaps. i'm probably younger than the norm for this forum and more often than not my generation tends to see the batista or prime HHH-type bodies as downright creepy. competitive bodybuilding has been completely irrelevant in mainstream culture ever since arnold went hollywood, and there's been a backlash against some of the old ideals of masculinity that came out of that world. from personal experience, women around my age or younger tend to be most commonly attracted to "men's health cover model" bodies or straight-up skinny dudes (though this one relies much more on hair/skin/fashion sense). at the very least, those are the bodies that get marketed as attractive today. there's also the fact that MMA has shown millions of people that you don't need to be 250 pounds with six-pack abs to be a legitimate tough guy. i've long suspected part of the appeal of punk & bryan is that they look more like MMA fighters than your typical WWE guys do, and that in a way this makes them more believable.

seeing jerry's posts about backlund and not liking his kind of selling makes me think he's missing important elements of his appeal at the time. i'm a big american sports guy, so i think i can explain this... first off, when you look at wrestling in this era, i think it's far more productive to compare it to sports than to cartoons or comic books since it presented itself as a sport before hulkamania. even when fans knew it was fake, they were still looking for the same kinds of stories and moral lessons you would get from sports. see, people see sports as a tremendous influence on their kids, a morality play where wins and losses should serve the same purpose as aesop's fables. hard work should beat natural talent that doesn't work at it, a team that's friends with each other should beat a team where everyone hates each other, etc. WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN is arguably the biggest reason everyone gets so up in arms over issues like steroids today. so when you look at it from this angle, i don't think it should be hard to see why scrappiness is HUUUUUUUUUUGE in sports. it is one of the absolute most important qualities in the eyes of the fans, period, as always trying your hardest and never, ever giving up is supposed to get you ahead in society; in short, people want their kids to grow up to be scrappy-doo! there's another interesting bit of context here regarding backlund...during the time he first became a major player in wrestling, pete rose was still one of the best players in major-league baseball. you probably know pete rose from his wrestlemania appearances at least, but he's far more famous for his all-time great baseball career. most relevantly to this discussion, pete rose was basically scrappy-doo IRL; his nickname was Charlie Hustle, as he would always run hard even when it was pointless and give maximum effort all around. i am not exaggerating when i say that pete rose may have received more gushing praise from sportswriters during his career than any athlete in history - in their eyes this was THE one guy in all of sports who Played The Right Way. this has been somewhat forgotten today since we learned he was hanging around drug dealers and gambling on his own team, but back then you would be hard-pressed to find a public figure people would rather have as their child's role model. hell, pete rose once ran right over a catcher to score in a completely meaningless exhibition game. the catcher in question (ray fosse) suffered a nasty injury that singlehandedly ruined a potential hall of fame career. you think anyone cared? heck no, that was just how Charlie Hustle did things, gosh darnit! it's really hard to understand today but people ate this shit UP. between all of this, and the wrestling-as-sport idea that dominated back then, i think it would be reasonable to argue that backlund came off to many as wrestling's Charlie Hustle and that this was an important part of his drawing power. what doesn't work in cartoons can go over huge in other contexts...

up there with the harris brothers as one of the absolute most boring all-around tag teams to me, minus the neo-nazism. didn't find them fun even in WCW but i haven't rewatched much of theirs.

something worth considering here that i rarely see brought up in these conversations: while there is obviously a huge public stigma surrounding steroids, HGH has actually gained a sort of respectability at least among the rich & famous. over the last decade or so there has been a major trend of doctors promoting HGH as an anti-aging therapy, and it's caught on pretty well despite the lack of actual scientific evidence. have any of you seen those ads in the airplane magazines with the creepy before & after photos of old dudes? that's exactly what i'm talking about here. i remember during one of the big busts on a clinic selling PEDs to athletes, it came out that tyler perry & mary j. blige were also among this place's clientele. people had a big "WTF" reaction but it's obvious they were in it for the whole anti-aging HGH thing. basically what i'm saying is that HGH use isn't something that world would bat an eye at anymore since people think it's a legitimate medical treatment, so i figure that's the main thing wrestlers use anymore. one last thought: in general, i am highly skeptical of guys who consistently maintain sub-10% bodyfat with a lot of muscle. good trainers will tell you that diet is 75-80% of the equation for achieving that kind of look, and that just goes by the wayside too easily when you live on the road.

under the "people forget this" category, nobody saw honky tonk man beating jake at the time. that match was really what put honky on the map

how has nobody mentioned ludvig borga getting elected with the true finns also i recently learned lash leroux is a conservative political cartoonist now...

i took a cursory glance at his blog and a bunch of people in the comments seriously think taker called an audible in that match ahahahahahaha this is why im awfully glad my friend told me about this place

oh yeah re: the discussion of cancelled mania matches from the last page... that actually happened 3 years in a row during the early 90s. WM8 had bulldog vs. berserker (which was still advertised on the coliseum video box L O L) as well as owen-skinner being cut down to like a minute - i think the savage-flair stuff was the main culprit there. then WM9 bigelow-kamala as mentioned, then WM10 had to axe a 10-man tag with all the random midcarders (kid/jannetty, jarrett, etc...actually don't remember who all was supposed to be in it) supposedly because the ladder match ran long. that may also explain earthquake-adam bomb getting the same treatment as owen-skinner... and BP, 91 WCW doesn't get a whole lot better. a lot of the cartoon characters stuck around the entire year, lex sucked, etc. there's a PPV with a boring lex-simmons main event that features some of jim ross's biggest shilling ever if you're a fan of that, though!

here's a quasi-fantasy booking thought for yall what if WCW did the mortal kombat gimmick BUT: 1. in '93 instead of '96, when MK was at its peak 2. with RVD, since he was with them at that point am i being wacky or couldn't that have gotten crazy over? RVD already had the moveset for that sort of thing and even wore a gi to the ring back then. wouldn't even need a mask either (though that would have also been fine i think), could have just cast him as Totally Not Johnny Cage man, it's real interesting to look back on '93 WCW and see all the random indie guys who got a cup of coffee there... EDIT: one last thought related to Robbie V - has the split-legged moonsault ever NOT looked like total crap? i don't really watch puro so i'm sure there's someone there

i've long felt like a big part of mero's rep came from him being 100% about the money and viewing wrestling as beneath him on some level. yall know how many of the boys are marks for Respecting The Business, and a lot of the biggest marks used to be the most respected voices among smarks sooooooooo and don't forget that he was one of the most prominent figures calling out WWE in the national media following the benoit murders. that absolutely sealed it! the WWF could've had something with mero in 96, it was ridiculous that the shooting star press wasn't the finish in his summerslam match with goldust. but with the injuries killing the high-flying stuff i don't know if he had much of a chance in the long run oh yeah, was it true that he was supposed to beat rocky for the IC title at WM13? this is one of those scott keith chestnuts so i assume not - i know they did face vs. face quite a bit back then but seems weird for the IC belt.

sup yall, a friend told me about this place very recently and i've been devouring a bunch of the big threads here in my spare time. heard about your new registration system and figured i'll give it a go! i'm in my late 20s, started watching WWF in mid-92. loved bret's whole Respectful Fighting Champion deal, was scared to death of papa shango & nailz. went to a house show late that year, watched summerslam & survivor series. stayed in it for a bit after that...was REALLY into the johnny b. badd-maxx payne feud for some reason, and even saw the beach blast mini-movie when i was way too young to appreciate the brilliance. drifted away after that (vaguely remembered leslie nielsen in the WWF but not why he was there), got back into it around king of the ring 98, was on the internet by then and discovered the world of smarks. i was the exact target age for attitude era, so i was all-in up until 03 - best live show memory was being at the nitro when they started the WHO DROVE THE HUMMER angle that never got paid off. HHH's reign of terror and katie vick in particular turned me away, and i haven't been a regular fan since (though i'll watch royal rumble & wrestlemania sometimes). today i just tend to appreciate the earnest silliness of earlier times, and am fascinated with the evolution of what people consider good & bad wrestling. i especially dig the willingness to question conventional wisdom - i'm a sports fan who grew up on the likes of bill james, so the meltzer worship always struck me as a major blind spot with this community. i also read way, way too much scott keith in those days, so i appreciate this place in more ways than one! have way too many interests outside of wrestling, which is why i'm not sure i'll ever delve into puro or lucha as much as i may like. have gone to fighting game tournaments for 10+ years, gotten a bunch of speedrun records and done live speedruns for charity, enjoy a rather wide variety of music (likely going from skinny puppy to french house in the same session), work at an autism research center (hoping to go into neuroscience research), still keep up with my cleveland browns (though i've given up on anything meaningful until haslam goes to prison), love me some hiking/biking/swimming, and recently discovered euro board games (power grid supremacy!!!!!!!) see yall around =)