funkdoc

Apparently Mox is about to become a dad so that's likely why

god Jade is going to be money

Yes, but i think the tide is turning a bit the other way now. As mentioned before Shawn's agenting is likely a big part of that - i would especially point to that Edge-Orton shitshow at last year's Mania. Likely to hold up as one of the most painful matches of the decade and was widely despised even as it was happening.

One of my group chats talked about this and made an interesting point: Nick Khan just might save WWE from itself if he can last until Vince croaks...but do we really want a stronger WWE? Imagine most of us would say no, myself included...though at least i think the worldwide landscape would be better equipped to deal with that now than it has been in a long time.

the Cody promo was the worst thing i've seen since i started watching this MURCA is a heel move in 2021 Darby rules on every level though, even love his theme to say nothing of those dives!

It's interesting how well-regarded he still tends to be among e.g. the OSW Review kinda audiences who know their old WWF - think that suggests there's more to it than "omg flips". If i had to wager a guess, i'd say a major factor in his rep is the LT match - that still gets brought up among the best celebrity matches ever. Though i know the Mayweather match is widely preferred on this board, that seems to be a minority opinion elsewhere. And, well, you can't get much brighter of a "carrying a broomstick" feather in your cap than that! Folks just don't go in enough to see the lack of depth with a guy like Bammer...

i wonder if Ki's voice is part of what makes him more believable as a badass. It's seriously amazing, to the point that i've seen a bunch of people assume he must be a great promo just because of that

Hi all, i've made this point recently but here's an example of particular relevance to this board - it also explains the basic concept for those not familiar with vtubers: https://www.wired.com/story/brennan-williams-mace-jibo-wwe-vtubing/ At work now but have plenty more thoughts on this later...

That's a classic Facebook Boomer posting style. That & typing EVERY other WORD in ALL-CAPS

Hello everyone, this is a topic that's been on my mind lately and i don't really see it covered much on here. Figured the rollout of GWE 2026 might be a good time for it! Over the past few months i've been involved in a series of old wrestling watch parties in a particular Discord server, and it's interesting to see the reactions. The core group there has a lot of lapsed Attitude Era or newer fans, the sort who've only vaguely heard of Bruno Sammartino & Chief Jay Strongbow and never knew there was another Funk besides Terry. Also noteworthy is that it's a very social-justice-minded bunch, with a good portion of them being transgender/nonbinary. This results in some interesting dynamics that i figured may be useful to note in case any of you might be interested in similar things... - Said this one on Twitter already, but it's so hard for these kinds of fans to believe that Scott was the boring one of the Steiner Brothers. Big Poppa Pump is an absolutely legendary figure among the Youtube generation - would easily belong on a Mt. Rushmore of Botchamania. Seeing him as a dry suplex-bot is jarring for those who didn't grow up with the team. - Some of these people come in with assumptions about 80s US wrestlers that would rankle a lot of the regulars here. You can, again, thank Youtube for this; a popular channel like OSW Review, for instance, has spent years dunking on Tito Santana/Greg Valentine/Ronnie Garvin as laughably bad because they couldn't cut Hulkamania cartoon promos & stuck to the ground in their matches. - This sort of fan tends not to be as invested in stiffness or credibility, because wrestling is fake and we all know almost any of these folks would get waxed by the lowliest UFC scrub anyway. Knowledge of MMA also makes it harder to buy into traditional NWA-style mat work, though good limb selling can still get over here. - This may be obvious given the above, but there's a lot more interest in the complexity and execution of moves compared to this board. In my experience this does extend to basic strikes as well, with people being able to appreciate those alongside the flips if done really well. Bad punches aren't a deal-breaker at all though. - There's always going to be an air of silliness in the atmosphere. Wrestling relies heavily on all sorts of spots that wouldn't make sense if you think about them for more than 2 seconds - I've referenced the Irish whip in a post here before. Between that and the characters and the costumes...well, y'know. You have to be peak Jake Roberts-level evil to temporarily break through that. - All of the above being said, if you can give historical context to the matches i've found people are much better able to appreciate old wrestling for what it is. You can throw in juicy IRL stories about the wrestlers, while also explaining what was considered important for being a great worker back then. For instance, a lot of non-boomer fans don't realize how heavily improvised wrestling used to be, and will be much more impressed upon realizing they weren't planning every big spot in advance. It still helps if there's some athleticism for them to grab onto...for instance, our group really liked Bossman vs. Barbarian from Royal Rumble '91 and popped big-time for the Bossman enzuigiri in that match! - Wrestlers' IRL behavior actively cuts into their enjoyment of their work in the more notable or extreme cases. Hogan, Warrior, Snuka & Lawler have go-away heat with a bunch of our Discord. Even just "oh this guy turned out to be pro-Trump" may be brought up, though that fits so many people that you can't get too worked up over all of those just from sheer fatigue. - Women's matches are given much more of a chance than they were at the time, though it helps that our older WWF watch parties included the Jumping Bomb Angels and such. i helped get Judy Martin over a bit there too! - A lot of these people, as we discussed in another thread a while back, have a huge background in Japanese pop culture so they'll pop for the characters & outfits that give off those kind of vibes. Maki Itoh being Exhibit A...our group actually started doing watch parties of current Tokyo Joshi Pro Wrestling because of her! - This might be a whole other thread unto itself, but i've noticed that joshi can powerfully connect with some transfeminine people. One way i've heard it described to me is: when you've only recently come out as trans or if you're still early in your transition, it can be hard to really feel "feminine" particularly if you're not skinny and you still maintain a lot of stereotypically "masculine" interests. Joshi has always tended to feature a wider variety of body types and overall looks compared to American women's wrestling, and it blends a culturally "masculine" activity with all these different versions of femininity. Think of it this way: has WWE ever main-evented any women nearly as "butch" as Aja Kong or Shinobu Kandori or even Chigusa Nagayo? That can be a source of inspiration for people trying to piece together their own femininity! Got a bunch of stuff to do today so that's all for now, but i figured this could be an interesting thread on others' experiences trying to bridge wrestling generations gaps! Feel free to share any thoughts or your own findings.

Aries legit helped make the Internet think TNA was a better weekly show than WWE at one point - remember a lot of buzz around the time he was copying the Summer of Punk angle Gotta be worth something at least

Kimura is a legend more for his promos, maybe the GOAT in Japan in that regard? i remember one of my buddies from some years back had learned Japanese and did a bunch of wrestling searching on places like Nicovideo (Japanese Youtube, basically) - the only promo compilation he found on there at all was for Rusher.

One part of all this that requires deeper examination outside of wrestling: where do you draw the line? For most people things like murder, rape & pederasty cross a line that even, say, "faking a heart attack to draw money" doesn't. Racism as well though this gets trickier to work out...i find it feels different when people are self-avowed white nationalists or members of such organizations (cf. Dick Murdoch, Harris Bros., Ludvig Borga). i also think that the amount of power someone wields within the business matters for things like that - Hogan's racism hits folks a lot harder than any number of equivalent examples you could point to throughout wrestling history. But then even someone like Andre doesn't get nearly the same effect despite the stories out there...probably because you have to dig into shoot interviews to hear about it whereas Hogan was a national news story. At the end of the day, it's probably subjective to some degree - but couldn't you say the same thing about this entire project?

the closest i can think of in recent years was WM30, though the poor followup means a lot of that has been forgotten over time (cf. Cesaro winning the battle royal to a huge pop)

Don't think i saw this mentioned here so: Taker's first WM opponent was originally supposed to be Tugboat, believe it or not! They'd been working TVs as a lot of us here know, so it made some sense in that they'd be familiar with each other. Ultimately i think they backed off that plan once they realized Taker wouldn't be able to Tombstone him - i know they ran Gonzalez & Bundy after that, but that match was specifically supposed to be a showcase for him. Honestly as blah as the Snuka match was, that switch might've been for the better lol

Oh hey, re: my earlier "vtubers are the new pro wrestling" point:

One thing i wanted to add that ties into the aging of fans thread on here: When people online were talking about the Sonic the Hedgehog ring in the ladder match, the reactions were a neat illustration of that exact generation gap we've been talking about. It was either "yep, glad i haven't watched this shit in 20 years" or "omg that's dope!!!" with pretty much nothing in between.

good line from the Discord where we're watching this: "Moxley's got the Doomguy at 5% health face"

Well, it's being a "tag-team guy" in combination with his world title run just feeling like a token lifetime achievement award since it didn't last very long.

the point is that tag-team wrestling has always been a midcard ghetto ever since the territories died. Bischoff hated it just as much as Vince (both of them) did. decades of that has colored people's perceptions, regardless of whether we feel that's right

NintendoLogic's always had this visceral reaction to deathmatch wrestling. To me it seems inconsistent to gush over 90s AJPW with all its head drops then get like this, but it's probably more an aesthetic thing. To some folks making weapons & environmental hazards the main focus means it's not wrestling anymore, and i can understand that on some level.

Seconding no tag-team poll, that just ended up being a boomer vote since everyone else got so burned out on the main ballot Also reminder that the guy who watched the most matches for 2016 ended up being the high vote on...the Ultimate Warrior. If he felt no shame, neither should you!

yea, Rocky was quite a big deal in the territories and even overseas (cf. the Jumbo thread on here, Rocky comes up as one of the foreign wrestlers whom Japanese fans most wanted to see during his heyday). Most people just know him as a tag-team guy in the WWF but that was the twilight of his career.

As the Titans of Wrestling crew have noted, Vince Sr. would only book one or two actual angles a year for the most part. It's just that those angles were money far more often than not - the Cobra Clutch Challenge, breaking Andre's leg, etc. i actually think Vince Jr. has been very smart in one way with giants: using the old giant to put over the new giant. Andre put over the Natural Disasters, who in turn put over Yoko, who in turn put over Vader, who in turn put over Kane & Mark Henry... Actually, before that phase the giant almost always seems to get shifted to the tag division first and get a title run there. Don't think that's too bad either, honestly, given that overexposure makes the classic Andre booking impossible. The trend of giving giants dancing comedy gimmicks to close out their run, on the other hand...

There is a pro wrestling that’s pulling in young fans now, but it’s not actually pro wrestling: it’s vtubers. For the unfamiliar, vtubers (short for “Virtual Youtubers”) are people who do live streams and videos in the guise of a fictional character, using motion-tracking software so the character will mimic their movements and facial expressions. The concept originated from Japan, so most vtubers use anime character designs and tend to be anime/manga nerds themselves. One vtuber agency in particular, Hololive, has grown enormously over the past year+ because they saw the potential they had with the English-speaking audience and ran with it. They have around 10 members who’ve surpassed 1 million Youtube subscribers to this point, with one of their English vtubers already at over 2 million in less than 6 months. I call vtubers the pro wrestling for this generation because it’s also an art form that leans on gimmicks and kayfabe mixed with the performer’s real self. Interestingly the biggest stars in this world are overwhelmingly women - the concept provides some protection from doxing, which is a far greater threat to women than men online, and gives them the freedom to talk about more personal things than they normally would on a live stream. This leads to quite the debate over whether one should mention the real people behind the characters at all - there’s a “protect the business” impulse among fans that also combines with the desire not to see lives ruined over private information being exposed. One major difference with wrestling is that you don’t have to watch live shows. There’s a whole community devoted to translating the most entertaining clips from the Japanese vtubers’ streams, and that’s how most people experience them. Figure this kinda ties into the discussion above re: being choosers of content, as you don’t need to invest a lot of time at once here. There’s plenty more i could say but you probably get the main idea by now!