JRH

Yeah, most fans of "legitimate" sports look down on pro wrestling, and vice versa.

Heck, if you have a Cricket phone account (no, I'm not shilling for the company, just stating facts), you get HBO MAX free with your membership (ironic, since Cricket is one of WWE's sponsors).

To be fair, occasionally I'll just decide to watch one of Brian Zane's reviews of PPV matches as opposed to watching the full match, especially if time is a consideration.

Hogan's death got me thinking about this, how will future generations of fans see guys like Hogan, Savage, Andre, Flair, the Von Erichs, Austin, Rock, Goldberg, etc? Will they still be considered legends, or will they eventually go the route of guys like Thesz, Verne Gagne, and Bruno, where they're known to be big stars, but the fans have never seen their matches (though the fact that all those guys have much more available and higher quality footage than Thesz, Verne, and Bruno does help)? As for wrestlers, will we see wrestlers influenced by them (even if just partially), or will they be more influenced by the guys of the 2000s on up?

During the Santino/Page match last night a random shot from Joe Hendry's entrance vid came on the screen for a few seconds. It must have been an error in the production truck, but I still found it funny.

I'd actually think that the cruiserweights, at least the more high-flying ones, would actually be MORE appealing to American fans for doing something new. When I first saw clips of Jushin Liger in 1991 I was blown away. Of course, now that pretty much every company has a good number of high flyers, it may have suffered from too much of the same thing.

Apparently the singer had no problem with this, so this is actually a non-story.

WCW would also have the cruiserweights wrestle "normal" size (and bigger) wrestlers.

While Hogan was undeniably popular with children, wasnt the WWF already starting to market to them as early as Backlund? We've all seen the Championship Wrestling intro with those kids storming the ring after a Backlund win (something they didnt do during the reigns of Hogan or any other champ since to be honest).

Mike Awesome definitely should have stayed in ECW. Sure, they still would have gone under, but without the baggage of the comedic WCW gimmicks he had, he could have at least have had a better reputation as a power guy who also had surprising agility, as he was, he was damaged goods and never went anywhere in the WWF. Going back even farther, even though he was successful in WCW, Hacksaw Duggan would have been better in more of an ambassador role for WWF, only wrestling occasionally, being a hype man for shows (the guy could capture an audience pretty well), doing commentary, working backstage, etc. Maybe Lex Luger's superpatriot gimmick would have worked better if he had some loose alliance with Duggan, maybe even doing some pass the torch thing.

As someone who started watching in 1990, 1995 being "old school" makes me feel kind of older than I already am.

Now, I dont really mean tag matches, but all of these matches with 3,4, or more wrestlers at once. It was a good novelty when it started, and there have been matches where that format works, but it's gotten way too overused now, plus it seems like a way to protect certain guys (while also making the guy who gets pinned essentially a third wheel). If anything, they should at least save them for PPV/PLE and leave them off weekly tv.

I get the feeling that Gene and Bobby were let go since they wanted a "younger" look for their announcers, and those two did look kind of "old".

I have no interest in Goldberg vs Gunther, but I have to admit that retrospective music video was pretty epic.

It also made it to the Hart and Soul dvd set.

What was WCW Cyber Ring anyway?

To be fair, you could say the same about the 90s boom. Sure, Austin, Rock, Goldberg, Foley, and maybe Chyna got mainstream recognition, but it's not like anyone outside of the fanbase knew about Undertaker, Kane, DX, The Hardy Boyz, Edge and Christian, The Dudley Boyz, Chris Jericho, Eddie Guerrero, Kevin Nash, Rey Mysterio, Ric Flair, DDP, or any of the other top stars of that era.

I think it's just because wrestling is now more accepted as a legit form of entertainment as opposed to just "that fake stuff". I'd argue it has to do with the whole superhero boom as well, since wrestling has always essentially been a live-action comic book (though WWE still hasnt completely embraced the whole "shared universe" concept, something that AEW does do), so the wrestlers are now seen as the equivalent of Marvel or DC heroes or villains.

Oh it dates back long before then, they'd actually show kids dancing to Jive Soul Bro back in the late 80s/early 90s (though it was so funky it's kind of hard not to dance), despite Slick and his guys being heels.

Being on a free service also gives it an advantage over AEW (HBO Max) and RAW (Netflix).

While this is kind of referring to another forum, I might as well ask since its an important part of IWC culture, is there a complete archive of the Death Valley Driver Video Review out there? The forum main page doesnt have nearly enough, and it was a good way to discover obscure stuff and even different takes on well known stuff.

Wow, now this is obscure:

Well. I guess we're finally getting the serious R-Truth, er, Ron Killings, we all wanted in the WWE.

It's been done, Brock had the Jimmy John's logo on his tights, and before that, Randy Savage had Slim Jim-themed tights.

I've said it elsewhere, but the amount of advertising around the arena and even on props like the MITB briefcase is getting to be way too exceessive. It's almost as if WWE has become the live-action equivalent of a merchandise-based cartoon, only much less subtle.