blueminister

This post is all over the place but my short reply is: yes, strictly in the terms of the "should RAW be stopped" argument Lawler collapsing deserves more consideration than a hypothetical stagehand for reasons which would be apparent if you thought about it for, like, just a minute.

Also sports are legitimate competitive events between independently operated parties whose scheduling effects myriad economies and wrestling is essentially a dramatic simulation of a sporting event utilizing traveling troupes of performers that could and have run virtually the same show every night.

With Vince I don't think keeping shows going is the product of any old-school "show must go on" sentiment as it is the outcome of an lightning speed cost-benefit analysis that runs through his bizarre carnie moral prism. Frankly, I don't have any reason to believe Vince cares enough about any of his performers where any "checking out" is necessary (with a few possible exceptions that are blood relatives or are married into the family, and even with Hunter I think it's more of a matter of overestimating his value as a commodity than any real warm feelings.) Even in theater "the show must go on" is a maxim that applies more to the lead being locked up for drunk driving the evening of a performance and less to Falstaff collapsing of a heart attack in full view of the audience in the middle of the third act.

Then the situation is very different? If you honestly can't discern how those scenarios represent vastly different degrees of severity to the audience and the performers you should probably think about this more. Like, you call out the idea that the show should be stopped and finished with prepared footage and health updates as "crass" as opposed to, uh, having visibly shaken pro wrestlers go out and perform a skit immediately after learning their friend is within inches of death?

Wrestling is in its modern incarnation is basically a light comedic cooperative performance art and there was no assurance at the time that the incident was non-fatal. I think of this as one of many scenarios that may or may not have been appropriate grounds for cancellation of something like a sport event but are 100% grounds for calling off the rest of a prowres show.

Or maybe it just looks better in an era where Brian Pillman is dead, there's no real tag teams and half of the midcard wrestlers have losing streak gimmicks, whatever.

In Bischoff's defense he had like 2-3 years of bold leadership, shrewd decision-making and mostly clever promotional schemes before it was discovered that he was a complete mark whose personality was incompatible with success. There was a weird transition circa 1999 where he went from being a corporatist clown by the standards of bitter sheet-readers to being a corporatist clown by actual real world standards. WCW immediately pre-nWo is underappreciated.

Yeah, I meant bleeding and some of the more hardcore (not ECW Hardcore, but still more "brutal") style as well as getting more risqué, which was really taking over in the late 90's (see WWF 98 - 2001). Things like DDP and Raven's feud...I think with the same freedom WWF had at the time, things like this could have gotten really "ugly" and more "believable" I don't think bleeding and hardcore matches were necessarily what the people making S&P complaints were thinking about. With the possible exception of Kevin Sullivan I think the moderate approach you're seem to be getting at in the first part of your statement was beyond the intellectual capacity of the people running late-era WCW. The second part of your statement ("risque") is exactly what I'm talking about, and the risque elements we did get in late-era WCW suggests that there were no brilliant envelope-pushing cultural experiments just beyond that locked door. Even the raunchy WWF stuff was disastrous in the long term and founded on a fundamental misunderstanding among the WWF higher-ups of what was making the boom.

turner S&P never seemed to be a barrier to them doing lots of stupid and tasteless shit (well, not enough of a barrier) and if you think that stuff ever attracted a meaningful number of people to pro wrestling you're being worked

i mean at least when they cut away to the nwo attacking backstage they had a reason for the wrestling tv show episode to still be on

the layout of the last thirty minutes of RAW was so weird, it was like "hmmmm and with our last segment done we seem to have run out of content, let's improvise a post-Raw discussion with our panelists Big Sh-- WOOOAH SHIT SHAWN MICHAELS IS EXPERIENCING DIFFICULTIES GETTING HIS CAR OUT OF THE PARKING DECK LET US TAKE YOU TO OUR MAN ON THE SCENE"

wincing at the pun botch here

Even more odd considering they were never presented as fake brothers! They didn't in 85-86, but in 90 when Ole rejoined the Horsemen they did call them brothers. oh word? my apologies badlittlekitten, it turns out that was a thing that was said at least once

Even more odd considering they were never presented as fake brothers!

I'm guessing that's really more like the second thing that casuals note.

prowres bullshit aside I wonder if that guy realizes he just literally admitted to theft/fraud.

The psychology of Angle matches sometimes ventures into schizoid territory. There was a match months ago with James Storm where the announcers kept railing on about how Storm would have to beat Angle with brawling and power and not get tricked into playing the pure wrestling game with the Olympic wrestling champion. While this is being said Storm shoots in on Angle, jockeys, outwrestles Angle and catches him in a grounded hammerlock that forces a rope break. Angle makes his comeback with brawling. The guy is playing some sort of 13-dimensional chess in his head in regards to molding a match to defy expectations when in actuality there's hardly ever any reason to go beyond tic-tac-toe.

King being all "I agreed to it; then I thought about it, desired not to have agreed to it, and proceeded thus" is great.

You should perhaps consider the unique goals that Cuba was able to achieve by nuclear proliferation and how little sense special criticism of a figure for merely talking about the possibility of nuking the only country with the distinction of actually using nuclear weapons against non-military targets to achieve a political end makes. And I'm certainly bothered by all the jackboots, rapists and thugs he executed. Liberals, man.

I don't mean to derail the thread either, but sometimes you stumble over a rhetorical tact that's so bizarre and loaded with irl political weight that you just have to gawk at it.

He's admired by people because he was a son of privilege that dedicated his short life to third world freedom struggles, which yeah is pretty far from a wrestler purposely falling on his head a bunch and then killing his family or a cowardly thug with several mini-Holocausts under his belt like Kissinger. It's nothing I expect an American liberal (read "rightist" to most of the world) that lobs ineffectual pejoratives at people who operated under circumstances of genuine adversity to understand.

Well, that was certainly a very awkward way to shoehorn a rightist political crack into a wrestling discussion.

ROH fails at a fundamental level because they're trying to peddle a brand based on incestuous indie wrestling Great Match Theory that there is no demand for. I can't actually think of a time in ROH's existence when this hasn't been true.

Even without those factors Cena is still an awkward-moving dude. Awkward in general, really.

Yeah, while this may be true of how people talk/are percieved irl I don't think most people care about how old Rock is or are overly concerned with him not referring to himself in the third person enough or whatever. I think the online perception of Rock as outclassed or evenly matched on the stick has very little to do with him having lost a step and everything to do with Cena being an internet cause celebre whose exposure at being terrible at a fundamental part of the game like cutting promos is causing brains to short circuit given how badly it gels with the wrestling geek narrative of the past eight years.