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S.L.L.

DVDVR 80s Project
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Everything posted by S.L.L.

  1. S.L.L.

    Current WWE

    This is the kind of living the gimmick I approve of. The Hulkster is slacking.
  2. S.L.L.

    Punk to UFC

    There's only one man for this job - bring in Yuji Nagata.
  3. You know, I've said it before, and I'll say it again - I think WWE Films missed a huge opportunity by not making movies about their babyfaces fighting vampires or aliens or what have you. And by "huge", I mean "probably not that huge, but it would've been more entertaining than The Condemned at least".
  4. Hey, guys! Wow, the place looks fantastic! Anyway, I'm not new here, strictly speaking, but as I haven't posted anything anywhere on the internet in upwards of eight months because I've been busy with actual racism health problems that made extended internet shenanigan participation impossible (though I have at least been able to pop in and keep up with the goings around here pretty regularly...top 100 wrestlers of all time, eh....), I thought I'd use this thread to re-introduce myself as a wrestling fan. I don't really consciously remember when I first became a fan, because my earliest memory of watching wrestling involves remembering that I had watched it before and thought that it was was pretty cool. Go figure. Anyway, this happened right after I turned seven and was during the build-up to Wrestlemania VII. Typical of me - I was getting into it while everyone else was bailing out. I went to my first live show later that same year, a house show at Nassau Coliseum headlined by the Ultimate Warrior vs. The Undertaker. The Warrior, somewhat oddly, was my first favorite wrestler, and after his departure, face-turned Taker would replace him. Again, go figure. I was a strictly WWF man growing up. All of my friends were, though my closest childhood friend watched enough WCW to become a really big Patriot fan. But, to paraphrase Tsiolkovsky, WWF is the cradle of early-90's wrestling fandom, but one cannot live in a cradle forever, especially not when one comes from a family of early adopters who introduce you to something called an "internet" in 1995, which in turn leads you to a "usenet" and a "rec.sport.pro-wrestling", where everyone seems to be talking about wrestling like it was some kinda artform. Which, I guess it kinda was, though, at eleven, it was basically impossible to fully comprehend or articulate an intelligent aesthetic critical viewpoint on wrestling (actually, in many respects, an eleven year old is far better suited to that than an adult, but that's beside the point). In any case, I became enamored with this new take on wrestling. And, of course, '95 was the year Nitro hit the airwaves, and I saw these guys starting to gravitate more towards WCW with all of the fresh new additions to their roster, so I finally started watching WCW regularly. And hey, there's this weird ECW thing they're talking up, too, and scanning my local listings, I see that has a late night slot on MSG. Better set up the VCR, because my wrestling world just expanded like crazy! Time passed. There were highs. There were lows. And then there was 1999. 1999 was a shitty year. It was certainly a shitty year for me personally - both of my paternal grandparents died within five weeks of each other, by beloved great aunt was killed in the EgyptAir plane crash, and I was hospitalized twice for a lung that wouldn't stop collapsing, because apparently, that's a thing that just happens when you're a really lanky dude like me. But it was also a shit year for American pro wrestling with the three promotions of note all feeling like directionless nightmares with a severe dropoff in quality across the board. I know Loss said he was pleasantly surprised when he did the '99 Yearbook, so maybe I would be too if I rewatched it, but all I can tell you is that at the time, for the most part, this stuff felt like hot garbage. So, time to give up? Fuck no! Time to expand my horizons yet again! I knew there was more good wrestling out there. There were corners of the internet where people talked about foreign wrestling and independent wrestling and wrestling from the eighties...there was a ton of stuff out there I hadn't touched on at all. And since I had already dipped my toes into tape trading when I bought Scott Keith's "Netcop Busts" tape, I figured, "why stop now" and bought a whole bunch of puro from Jack Epstein. Around that same time, I read something SKeith wrote where he talked about his influences, including one Dean Rasmussen. I knew who he was, but for a largely puro-illiterate kid, the DVDVR was kinda impenetrable before. Now, I felt like it was a must read. And, of course, the Schneider Comps soon became a must buy. Throughout all of this, I mostly lurked and learned on usenet groups and message boards. I made several abortive attempts at active participation, but none of them really stuck until 2004 when I became a regular at Happy Wrestling Land. After they went belly up, I followed most of the survivors to the DVDVR board, where I apparently became so well-regarded that no less than Phil Schneider offered me a spot writing for Segunda Caida, which I have continued to fill irregularly with great pride ever since. In addition, Mike over at Wrestling KO has welcomed me there and allowed me to run the annual WKO 100 for the last few years, which I look forward to doing again this coming year. And no less than Dave Bixenspan had me as a guest on a few of his podcasts, invited me aboard for some of his writing projects (which I unfortunately had to abandon due to time constraints...BELATED APOLOGY TO BIX!), and convinced me to check out a certain awesome little wrestling board by the name of Pro Wrestling Only. And PWO was awesome to me as well, as I got the thumbs up from Will to take part in the 80's Project, exercising my terrible, terrible judgement on the Texas and Lucha sets. Hell, Cox even let me be his personal consultant for the indy fed he worked for (though, again, time contrainsts ultimately sidelined that...APOLOGIZE TO COX!). That was pretty damn cool. Unfortunately, life pulled a variety of fast ones on me over the last few years that made internet wrestling fun time a much lesser priority for me than usual. And then came this year, where a vague and mysterious health problem made any kind of extended computer use a no-go, so once I finished up this year's WKO 100, I quietly dropped out of sight to valiantly battle whatever the fuck was wrong with me, which turned out to be...migraines?! Oh, what the fuck?! That's it?! Doctor after doctor who couldn't solve my problem, treatment after treatment, medication after medication, and even an invasive surgical procedure that we were sure would do the trick but did nothing...fucking migraines?! Oh, sure, they were really bad migraines, and I probably shouldn't have been rooting to have had cancer or anything, but I can't help but feel like a bit of a tool after all of that. Oh, well. The important thing is, we found at what it was, and we found out how to treat it effectively. Combine that with the fact that I'm in a much better place personally now than I was before I left, and it all adds up to one thing: I'm back, baby! My favorite things in wrestling: Randy Savage, Jerry Lawler, lucha brawls, BattlArts, Lance Russell, southern tags, Mark Henry, Negro Casas, El Hijo del Santo, Jushin Liger, Ric Flair, coke-fueled lunatics rambling on the mic, fat dudes, Eddie Guerrero, William Regal, Fit Finlay, those increasingly rare moments when I still get emotionally invested in what I'm watching
  5. This, in and of itself, would be a great discussion. There was a time when everyone in WWE looked pretty much the same not too long ago: frat boys, super tan with tribal tattoos (Batista, Orton, Jindrak, O'Haire, etc) and the people that stood out where those that DIDN'T look like that. You may have inadvertently hit on that earlier when you said this: In 1981, when Rocky III was in production, the biggest drawing card in American wrestling was Bob Backlund. The biggest "star" in American wrestling was probably Andre the Giant. Ranked underneath those two, you'll see names like Ric Flair, Harley Race, Don Muraco, Tommy Rich, Junk Yard Dog, Nick Bockwinkel, and Dusty Rhodes. Whatever 1981's idea of a wrestler was, Hogan benefited from being different from it. Of course, whenever you have that kind of success in wrestling, you have a ton of people who learn the wrong lesson from it and figure that if one guy like that was big business, then a billion guys like that will make business a billion times bigger. Instead, it just devalues the traits that made the first guy big in the first place. That's why I wanted to know what you meant when you said that Bryan's size matters. The fact is, a wrestler being big has been a wholly unremarkable trait for over 20 years now. Bryan is clearly not affected by it in terms of fan acceptance, and if anything, it plays in his favor by setting him apart. Also, if you're going to complain about how you can't book a top guy as a constant underdog, you probably shouldn't defer to the wisdom of the people who made the Rocky sequels.
  6. Explain.
  7. S.L.L.

    Current WWE

    Maybe their failure to set up credible heel challengers for the hot new champion is part of how they're paying tribute to the Warrior.
  8. He must have liked it well enough, because he more or less kept it going with The Quebecers when neither of them really needed to be "mounties" at all. But they weren't mounties. Their theme music explicitly said so!
  9. I get what Parv is saying, and it makes sense to me, but I think "we need to book Bryan like previous ace X" is the wrong way to look at it. They need to book Daniel Bryan like Daniel Bryan, they just need to figure out how that works in a company ace context.
  10. Continue to admire the no nonsense moderation of a forum that lives up to the name "pro wrestling only" Indeed. One can make the argument that Warrior's willingness to freely express increasingly unpopular sociopolitical opinions is "courageous", but being "courageous" and being "an asshole" are not mutually exclusive, and there is nothing admirable about courageously showing off what an asshole you are. I wish for Warrior the same thing that I wished when Fred Phelps died - that he find the peace in death that he obviously could not find in life.
  11. My first favorite wrestler. I guess this really is the end of an era.
  12. We know that she had to have a role on the booking team and on-screen if they sold, but do we know what that had to entail? Like, could Jarrett and Keith make her a part of the booking team but not actually listen to any of her ideas? Could her screen time be spent in a dunk tank? If you shame her into quitting, is the agreed upon deal still met? They were fine with giving her a face-saving figurehead role. When the Carters said she needed to still be an on-screen character, Jarrett and Keith balked because that was dictating creative. I was just curious if it was possible - provided Jarrett and Keith had actually thought it through that far - to buy the company and give Dixie the same deal that Vic Mackey got in the last episode of The Shield. She gets to be part of the creative team and an on-screen character, but she doesn't get to actually do any of the things that made her want those positions in the first place. I don't know if the Carters stipulated that her ideas had to be listened to or that her on-screen character had to be presented as important and/or respectable. If not, and you're willing to take on her salary, it seems like this was something they could've exploited rather than letting it be a dealbreaker.
  13. We know that she had to have a role on the booking team and on-screen if they sold, but do we know what that had to entail? Like, could Jarrett and Keith make her a part of the booking team but not actually listen to any of her ideas? Could her screen time be spent in a dunk tank? If you shame her into quitting, is the agreed upon deal still met?
  14. So I was thinking about responding to Loss saying that the Elimination Chamber match was a top three match in W/WWF/E history by asking how many other EC matches he's seen, since he's followed the current product only sparingly for a while now up until pretty recently. If he had said "not many" or something along those lines, I would have then recommended he check some out, since they tend to be pretty good - sometimes great - matches, and I would've especially pointed to any of the ones Rey was in. I would've illustrated that point by saying Rey was the master of the Elimination Chamber, that he had perfected the gimmick like...and then I found I couldn't finish the analogy, which seems weird. I'm having trouble thinking of guys who were consistently really good working certain types of gimmick matches other than Rey in the Chamber. Like, I'm sure there are a ton of really obvious ones that I'm just airballing on. But as long as it's on my mind, I'm starting a thread on the subject - who mastered working a type of gimmick match the way Rey mastered the Chamber? The kneejerk answer is, of course, Shawn Michaels and the ladder match, but that feels like old smarkthink that might have to be reconsidered. It may still be right, but it feels like something I'd actually have to think about now rather than something I automatically accept as the truth. Does Bill Dundee have any other scaffold matches on tape?
  15. I seem to recall I reviewed this match back when it happened. Yeah, I don't know that we share the same standards of "great"...but at the same time, there are plenty of good-great TNA matches that I can think of that you didn't list, like the Storm/Harris Texas Death Match or some of the better Jarrett/Angle matches or the Flair/Foley Last Man Standing Match or Bully Ray/AJ Styles or Austin Aries' great run two years ago. Really, if you want to argue a 1:4 good/bad ratio for TNA over their history, that's an argument I'd listen to. It's also an argument I think would've helped TNA a lot more if they had the decency to go out of business after a year/a few years like every other promotion competing with them for this dubious honor. I think the AWF might have had a 1:4 good/bad ratio, too, and I've read a few people look back at them semi-fondly. I can't imagine them maintaining that over nearly 12 years without ever really getting any better and people still thinking fondly of them. TNA has a problem unique to "worst wrestling promotion ever" contenders, and on the one hand, it gives them room to add positives to their case that other contenders don't have, but on the other hand, it makes their consistent badness all that more glaring and offensive. TNA producing 80% bad wrestling throughout their history means they produced more bad wrestling than WOW produced any wrestling by a very large margin. Let me put it to you this way...I've seen more than a few good-great Kane matches. Quite a number that I've genuinely enjoyed. The London street fight with MVP, for example, that's a match I really liked, and there are others, but most of the time...man, is that guy horrible. Still, he's had good matches, and that's more than I can say for Jenna Morasca. But Jenna Morasca was a barely trained non-wrestler who had a whopping one - admittedly terrible - match. In the grand scheme of things, she's so inconsequential that I can't imagine mustering the outrage necessary to call her the worst wrestler ever, or even one of the worst wrestlers ever. Kane? I probably wouldn't call him the worst, but seems like a much more worthy contender for that title with 20+ years of consistent badness under his belt than Morasca does with a single match.
  16. Only when KENTA goes to the WWE Hall of Fame.
  17. As others have pointed out in this thread - and many others in the past - if Cena, Rock, and Batista are the guys you're going to point to as the best examples of people meaningfully put over by HHH, it just demonstrates how bad his track record really is. That, and that 15 years of this nonsense has worked out for WWE in at least one way - they have successfully trained a portion of their fans to settle for less. Hell, by this point, "less" is probably all that a lot of their fans have ever known.
  18. But no one thought that. Not one human fucking being went "Well, HHH is right." Which is probably true, but means nothing until Bryan actually proves HHH wrong. I mean, I'm sure there were lots of WCW fans who didn't think the nWo was really "better", but when the nWo kept making the WCW guys look like chumps, eventually, regardless of what you really believe, you lose your will to invest yourself as a fan. More than the specifics of what he's said or the booking moves that have been made, that's why we're all so down in the mouth about this - Triple H has spent the last 15 years establishing himself as a one-man nWo. Why should we think WCW is going to win now?
  19. It's easy for Batista to move numbers when he hasn't been around week to week (or at all, really) in many years. What will the numbers with Batista look like after he's been around 4-5 weeks? I understand that once Batista's return drew a huge number that it meant that WWE was going to lock into their Wrestlemania plans, Daniel Bryan be damned, but using that as their primary reason to continue Batista's push without a larger sample size just shows confirmation bias on their end. One thing that crossed my mind - after the things crossing my mind stopped being incoherent screaming - was that with WWE being so reliant on big name stars from the past drawing their biggest shows because they go out of their way not to maximize the value of anyone on their regular roster, what happens when the "past" that they draw big name stars from catches up with the "it's the brand, not the wrestlers, so let's not make stars" era that seemed to start in...oh, shit, 2005, when Batista was first established as a main eventer. I know Cena is the guy I always point to when I talk about this, but let's not forget that Batista was right there with him, and was no less of a victim of the booking apathy that has come to characterize WWE ever since. Yeah, he's been off TV for a long time, and when he was on TV, he was a guy who moved the needle more than the vast majority of his peers on this era...but he's still of this era. He's still a contemporary of the guys the WWE didn't want to make the most out of because capitalizing on a wrestler's popularity is so 1998. And now he's the big star of the good old days they want to prop up Mania. I can't until Bryan wins the Rumble in 2021 so he can remind the fans of how much better wrestling was in 2013. This is sad.
  20. The Doomsday Cage Match from Uncensored '96. So much wrong. I don't know if it's actually the worst, but it's probably the one most audacious in it's badness.
  21. Of all the guys I was expecting to share a significant problem with New Jack, Flair was not one of them. Maybe they should join forces.
  22. For whatever it's worth - and I'd have to go back and watch to get really specific - I used to think Devitt was pretty good. I liked his team with Ryusuke Taguchi. Really liked their match with Dick Togo and Ikuto Hidaka in '09, and for singles, I really liked his match against Kanemoto in the finals of that year's BOSJ tournament. As memory serves, he was an impressively slick and flashy dude who didn't really fuck things up. He started going downhill for me when he began focusing on his singles career, but he was still mostly alright, save for yelling "DANGEROUS!" before doing his top rope double stomp, which is some weird Western fetishization of puro coming full circle shit. By the time the Bullet Club stuff started, I thought he had fallen off a lot, though, and nowadays, I think he's unbearable.
  23. More specifically, seriously digging into the stack of 80's Joshi I've left laying for over three years. And once that operation is running smoothly, maybe the return of SLL's All-Request Friday Nights on Segunda Caida.
  24. He didn't know how to do it with Hogan after that point, either.
  25. -Actually start writing about the professional wrestling on a regular basis again.
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