El-P

Both basically, The Foley debacle was quite disgusting and the fact it ended it a gimmicky shit finish annoyed me a lot (what's the point of going through this massacre ?), and Vince winning the Rumble effectively killed 10 years of being a WWF fan. It was all complete bullshit to me, nothing was remotely believable to me anymore.

Yes. Royal Rumble 1999. Killed my WWF fandom for ever. The few following months of Russoesque TV coupled with Owen's death drove me away for good.

Agreed. At first all you see are the freaky vignettes and the awesome entrance. But then, he was quickly exposed during the Cena feud, as being a character with nothing substantial to say despite cutting long-ass promos with a bunch of gibberish and nothing in terms of what he really wants to accomplish. The crowds loved to sing-along (despite him being a heel, which is always an issue in those cases). That doesn't constitute a strong main event act.

So, Fandango's new gimmick is that he's a dancer with a dance partner who can't dance worth a damn. Cute.

Considering she worked in Jd' in its later days, yeah, that's more than likely. Too bad, she had some potential as a worker (in the Takako mode), but damn did she take another route...

But you'd rather see her make no money working indies for your own little enjoyment since you mentionned you wished WWE would release her. Nice.

Never heard a CM Punk interview before, and for all the talk about him being an asshole, he came off pretty great to me. I can totally relate to this guy's attitude. Nothing earth shatering about the WWE that we didn't knew before (Hunter being a douche really isn't a revelation, likewise the overall pettiness of the company) but the staph infection story is still quite amazing in itself.

Kazama has been doing porn for a while now. Not much of a change though, she always sucked. Shark's new career is pretty WTF indeed. Maybe she's trying to seek forgiveness for all those horrible pro-wrestling matches.

He said he was the happiest he's been in years. So no, it's not disturbing. Good for him. Whatever works.

And yet, I love Kevin Sullivan's squashes. Go figure. Right you are. That's the one I was trying to remember. I like Godly though. But I actually like him in competitive matches better. With more time, he could have developped into something more than he ended up being. The evidences are there that he could be one cool big match worker. But there isn't enough meat in his body of work, although it's not his fault, really.

I can think of Regal, Steiner (and I'm felling quite generous calling these two "really good"), DDP, Raven… hum… is there a Sting match somewhere that was any good ? I don't remember despite spending the last few years going through this stuff. I never cared for Goldy's squashes to be honest, no matter how great looking some of his spots were. Maybe he had more in the WWF, although I kinda doubt it.

Retromania. But yeah, really good.

Three to five really good matches (always carried by his opponent) over a bunch of years.

It's not that they take a gun and shoot at each others. Wait, Brian Pillman actually pulled a gun on Austin. We know how well that was recieved. Anway, I agree that the focus shifted, but we are still talking about guys whose profession is supposed to be "professionnal fighers in a ring competing for an eventual World Title". They are not office guys or factory workers or students all of a sudden settling all their differences in street fights. Personalized, of course, but in a particular fighting sport context to begin with. And most fight sports actually don't promote violence as a way of settling differences in your everyday life.

That's a good point. After all, the basic reason why heels had heat, is because they were cheaters. They cheat to win. Nobody likes a cheater. Then you can add layers, but that was basically it.

You said the magic word here : heels. Of course I think even looking back that Colonel DeBeers was just pushing it too far, but really, I have no problem with a heel being a disgusting human being. He should be. Of course a heel can bully a woman like Jake Roberts did with Liz (if he finally gets his at the end of course). Of course a heel can provoke the crowd on nationalistic issues (although this is tricky and most of the time plays on the crowd's xenophobic nature) etc... My issue is when a babyface is acting like an asshole and is cheered for it, or is being put in position of abuse and gets cheered for it, like Sarge this past Monday. I thought this was cringeworthy and just as bad as anything Russo was doing in WCW (not to mention it made Rusev look like a balless idiot). edit : well, since Charles removed his sentence about politically correct, I also remove my reply so there's no confusion. But yeah, I approve.

The premise of the business is that it was supposed to be a *fighting sport*, not a bad sitcom with people settling their real-life issues through violence. I guess that indeed became a problem when the actual *pro-wrestling match* isn't the focus anymore...

Sure. We need more racist gimmick, chauvinist pig slapping women around and some Adrian Adonis-like character to make fun of gay people too. Right. It would be much better actually. Hum, no. There's nothing kitsch about a guy (especially a babyface) abusing a woman, or a gay-bashing gimmick, or jingoist babyface making xenophobic promos while getting huge cheers because they are drapped in the US flag. It sucks. It sucked then. It sucks even more now that society has progressed (not much, but still somewhat thankfully). Quite frankly I was embarrassed of watching WWF during the Iraki War feud when I was 14. And I didn't like Sherri being slapped around by babyface Hulk Hogan. It has nothing to do with PC either.

Yeah. Was I the only one to think that this segment was awful ? I mean, Slaughter could only act that way because he had the power on his side, otherwise Rusev would have killed him without blinking. In this situation, Slaughter was absolutely portrayed as being a total *institutionnal* bully, and he was supposed to be a babyface ! The fact that he focused on the woman instead of the big guy was even more disturbing. Lana's acting and funny faces kinda saved it, but really, the whole thing was totally ass-backward. It's like Jake Roberts threatening to slap Liz after Savage had been KOed at Tuesday in Texas. Same dynamic exactly.

Yeah, pushing things even further, a feminist character talking about gender theory and rape culture would be a big time heel in WWE, really.

Awful comedy. Rusev's balls being cut out. Really, he couldn't beat the shit out of Sarge (who came off like a total bully BTW, but he's a patriot so I guess it's ok) ? The only good thing about this segment was Lana's facials, which were pretty funny. The anonymous GM. What a horrible show following the "hot" Sting debut the previous night.

That's saying too much or not enough, really.

Agreed. Dean Ambrose doesn't look like a star at all. I do think it's much better now that it was a few years ago in the 00's during the reign of metrosexual short hair/short shorts/tribal tatoo big dudes era. The themes are still mostly awfully generic indeed though.

John Tenta and Big Bubba were from all acounts really good dudes. One of the oddest and cutest pro-wrestling friendship story to me is Terri Runnels telling how Traylor was her "best girlfriend" on the road.

Sting won't become relevant. And if I understood Meltz well, the core TV audience of the WWE is above 40 years old at this point. There's a reason why Mania is built on nostalgia each year.