Death From Above

At this point I don't watch much wrestling at all (someone links a match on social media I might watch it if there's nothing interesting on TV), but I can't really say I feel any more alienated from general wrestling fans now than at other times, because by the very nature of being a long time hardcore fan I've already been in that position since the mid-late 1990's. I mean, your average wrestling fan my age in their mid-30's legitimately thinks the Attitude Era was the absolute zenith of the WWE being an entertaining company despite the fact that 1999 has a legitimate case as the single worst year for the WWE product in history. By 1999 I had already basically turned off that product and was a few years into VHS tape trading (probably around then when we switched to DVD's and everything got cheaper to ship, praise). So it's not as if I have some long-time connection to Joe Average Wresting Fan's viewpoint on wrestling. As for the various internet tropes, honestly not much has really changed. You have the people that vastly overrate the importance of small American territories, Japan Otaku clan members, lucha zealots that see persecution everywhere, and you have people watching 100 hours of wrestling a week that "can't get into foreign wrestling because of the commentary". Nothing's really changed there it's just the numbers of each group fluctuate year to year. The only thing that's really changed is that Joe Average now has the WWE Network just so he can rewatch every Royal Rumble in a binge more easily. The point about social media is somewhat interesting as it is a somewhat dangerous thing where you can always find 100 people that Think Just Like You and discard the rest, but again I don't really see that as new, so much as it is "Things we did in the past, on steroids". It is a danger, but it's a manageable one with self-moderation. I honestly think people tend to overrate social changes, both in large scale issues and in small areas like the wrestling community. It's easy to see both the positive and negative in current scope but a lot of that same perspective about the past is easily lost. "there's lots of bad music made now, not like the 60's" because nobody has spun one of the thousands of genuinely trash psychedelic or bubblegum pop records that aren't any good in 40 years now.

This thread started in 2007 and the case was quite strong then. Has a decade (A D E C A D E) weakened or strengthened the case? I legitimately found Final Deletion hugely entertaining, but I'm not really sure it justifies, you know, everything.

Crowds were totally bored to death with him for a while at the end there. Honestly, if it wasn't for his internet rant about equal pay a while back this wouldn't even be much of a story.

Glacier's ring entrance was fucking great. WCW's unwillingness to let silliness win the day there was kind of a shame.

American Indie Wrestling tends to be vastly overrated simply for being American, which is funny because it's the exact same I Am Part Of A Very Special Club syndrome Japanese and Lucha fans have been accused of openly for 25 years. It started with Memphis but now at this point it's just "any random show south of New York state".

Incredible that Biden wasn't even the best promo last night. My one concern about them passing the torch to Hillary and... that other guy, whoever he is, is that neither of them is really an all time great on the stick the way Biden and Obama are. Both incredibly strong public speakers that know how to control an audience. Also the ex-CIA man last night was great. He looks like this nice little old man with glasses. Then he starts to talk and he's FIRED UP about the Russians and by the time he's done you're ready to do what must be done to prevent Red Dawn.

Bernie has been more like CM Punk in that he's attracted THOSE PEOPLE as fans that annoyingly hijack other perfectly good segments and they think they are "helping".

Let's also pause to remember that some poor boys had dreams of stardom in wrestling and were forced to be the Ding Dongs. Life isn't always fair. https://youtu.be/ZHcMK3a4Vj8

Truth Commission. A South African white power military activist group is a Really Not Good Content idea. I'm not even sure half the guys ever got above doing jobs on Shotgun Saturday Night either, so it's not as if the WWF even saw anything much in the idea either. Why they were even there is somewhat of a mystery. I was also going to initially answer the Stevie Ray-led nWo black and white, because goddamn. But Truth Commission was even worse.

I've been watching the convention. It's absurdist TV at it's best so far, but Trump will need to basically either be shot or shoot someone on the air to top Ted Cruz trying to steal his thunder followed by that Godfather walk-on.

There's going to have to be some degree of crossover guys, right? That can't seriously be the entirety of Smackdown's roster.

I would draft a dead person before Randy Orton in 2016 because it would create far more internet buzz but have the same effect on actual TV segment quality.

In the six month run leading into Wrestlemania I could only conclude a lot of people backstage hate Seamus and want to destroy his career. Like a good soldier he took every awful idea they had and tried his hardest to make it work. They completely killed him and I came out with way more respect for him.

I also agree the nWo rehashes totally missed the point of the nWo. It was like watching a band that got fans by being genuinely different, but then fuck, a few years and 4 albums later they realized they could sell you t-shirts. Time for a reunion tour. Which is fine for your most hardcore fans, I don't begrudge it. But it's not interesting to anyone else. Sweet, sweet t-shirt money. Who can say no? It's a very difficult, and dangerous game, to try and force nostalgia to be hip. Hell, look at Hollywood and their Fist of a Thousand Reboots. There is no exact science to what will stick and what won't.

I think it's almost become a total inevitability that the people in power want to make themselves the star. Evil Owner made it more obvious because it's where you see that shift from only applying to active wrestlers to (theoretical) non-wrestling talent. But it's not really a concept that was new with Evil Owner. Dusty Rhodes is the booker? Dusty is the star! Bill Dundee is the booker? Bill Dundee is the star! Kevin Nash is the booker? Kevin Nash is the star? Vince McMahon is the booker? Vince McMahon (and every other relative they can find) is the star! Eric Bischoff is the booker? Eric Bischoff is the star (put himself over Flair on a Starrcade)! Even good bookers did it, mostly. Riki Choshu is the booker? Riki Choshu wins a 5-on-1 handicap match as his farewell! Bill Watts is the booker? Once every few months, Bill Watts is the star! Paul Heyman owns ECW? Paul Heyman made himself the star to the point that 20 years later there are still people that actually think he was some kind of genius in ECW they got worked so hard. Evil boss shit is only part of what is now a continuous cycle that goes back about as far as we can go, just expressing what we've seen both from wrestling and non-wrestling talent. I loathe to praise Triple H at all, but *theoretically* his character transitioning from full time wrestler INTO evil boss could have been interesting. It certainly hasn't been. But it theoretically could have been. At least it was a fresh take. I can't even say Evil Boss is totally played out and can't work because Dario Cueto is right there. But there's a definite lack of variety with it in the current climate when you only have so many relevant companies and the power in the hands of Those Same People as it will be until they die.

Putting aside that he has a lot of just bad ideas, Russo's biggest most fatal flaw is his lack of understanding that making money is more important than popping ratings (which even then is something he's struggled with on his own).

It's already up on Youtube just look for TNA Final Deletion Director's Cut. Join us.

I just watched it and I feel like I've seen the likes of something that will never come again. What a time to be alive. We have passed into a completely new dimension of existence.

Roy Hodgson is that guy that isn't happy unless he's trying to eat soup with a knife.

I think "everything is wrestling" in the sense that almost any field has people that are trying to sell you chicken shit and call it chicken salad, and there are cons everywhere. I guess that sort of goes back to Foley's book where he wrote about wrestling being more honest than many other things because at least with wrestling we know it's all a con and we just don't care. Contrasted against things like, say, doctors that were last in their graduating class in medical school hyping diet pills, politicians who think anyone believes you can "defeat terror", bankers that want to extend your line of credit to help you slip further into debt for their own ends, car companies trying to convince people we need computerized motion sensor activated windshield wipers or your car isn't cool, oil industry lawyer global warming truthers, people that hide bigotry behind religion, tv companies justifying rate hikes to pay executives, etc... maybe wrestling's con isn't so bad after all. "Everything is wrestling" only in the sense a lot of people are trying to bullshit a lot of other people, and often do so in very over the top ways. We often know those ways are nonsense but can't really do much about it. In that sense I think it's a pretty defensible statement. If that's a short hand term that describes it well for you, sure, why not.

I watched it and I feel like Principal Skinner. "It is possible I'm out of touch? No. It's the CHILDREN who are wrong."

I have never listened to a podcast longer than 90 minutes and I cannot even conceive of what you are doing with your day that makes doing so feasible.

That weird thing in so many lucha matches where two guys shoulder bump then one guy starts running the ropes for no discernible reason. It leads to all sorts of cool shit but it's the dumbest, laziest, most non-sensical way to get to that cool shit I can imagine.

Forgot to throw in at the end there, even if you look at guys that would be "rebels" and fight against Vince McMahon's power, when you look at guys like The Rock or Shane McMahon, even their end goals have changed. It's no longer about rebellion by tearing down the system. It's about wanting to be able to goof off at work but still get promoted to the point you get a company car and the 100th floor office with a private staff. The Rock's image of coolness is him being a jerk that says jerk things yet somehow he became a movie star wearing suits that cost thousands of dollars. Shane McMahon is the prodigal son that rebels by wearing tennis shoes to the office and goofs off in front of his father, but someday wants to inherit a billion dollars. He's a real modern rebel. This really bears no resemblance to the apparent end goals of a hero like Dusty Rhodes. Does it reflect well on people as a whole? Probably not. Even wrestling heroes now are corporate cynics that want to hold all the cards for themselves.

I do remember that action figure. I liked him because you could put him together like 10 different ways. The cartoon wasn't worth shit but Masters of the Universe toys were awesome. Sorry, don't mean to take this topic into a toy discussion. This is actually a really fascinating thread, I'm just not sure where to start with it. I do think that there is something to the shift away from manufacturing/factory work in the US, the diminishing numbers in the lower-middle class and a lack of relate-able heroes. There's still plenty of people struggling but there tends to be a bigger gap to jump to get to your suburbia now where those people look more towards white collar careers, and people don't find anything heroic about white collar. We've also seen this in film over the decades where America has slowly over time moved away from your John Wayne type (who in a sense was both an everyman, yet a giant of a figure), towards a comic book fueled world of Captain Americas and Batmans. Wayne goes way far back obviously but over time I think you see this shift towards less relate-able more imaginary fantasy to appeal to a crowd with more free time to use their imagination. The 70's was a decade of conflict there where you still had a very popular character like Dirty Harry but then Star Wars comes out near the end and we see a shift towards escapist fantasy like ET, Raiders of the Lost Arc, Terminator etc in the 1980's. Now in the 2010's escapist fantasy has become one of the most corporate, tightly controlled money making industries there is. I'm skipping over a ton of stuff in there but I think it's follow-able. In many ways I feel the 90's was the last decade wrestling was actually decent at capitalizing on cultural trends. 90's was a very "fight the power (but not too hard)" kind of decade. ECW was about that (on the outside). Steve Austin was about that. The Rock was about that. Wrestling hasn't really come close to producing a star like Austin or The Rock since because I think they've really struggled to connect to just what is it people want out of a hero and it's been easier to just lean on nostalgia acts. That might make you some money but nostalgia acts usually aren't cool unless you luck into something like Ozzy Osbourne's family having a random hit TV show. The fact there are people in their late 30's/early 40's that pop on Twitter, when The Rock and Shane McMahon show up sure it's great you have their attention, but you're also damning yourself to looking uncool to their kids.