WCW ongoing thread

[Loss]

They should have made a grunge character in 1991 ... and a rave character in 1995 (which we sort of got in Alex Wright, but they didn't really exploit the annoying raver stereotypes with him until 1997, which admittedly was still a relevant thing to do at that time.)

[El-P]

Hey, we got PN News in 91, and it was pretty much still the Golden Age of Hip-Hop. Ok, Neu wasn't exactly Rakim, but at least WCW registered than hip-hop was the new popular thing to come... Well, for a while. I don't think we got another MC in WCW before, gasp, Konnan.

Then we got... Men on a Mission who didn't capitalize on G-Funk at all... Mabel should have been given a Biggie gimmick... Then we got Salt'n Pepa at WM 11. In 1995.

Well, hip-hop and rasslin' don't mesh very mell (don't give me Cena, please).

Was the rave scene really still strong in 95 ? I got a kick out of Wright because his music did sound very european techno, that was suprisingly in touch.

[ohtani's jacket]

I can just picture Mabel tweaking into a whole new era.

 

AFAIR, grunge was still quite prevelant in 1995. I went to an all boys high school and that year literally every guy in my grade had long hair.

[El-P]

AFAIR, grunge was still quite prevelant in 1995. I went to an all boys high school and that year literally every guy in my grade had long hair.

I guess it got really mainstream by then, with the post-grunge scene, but in the mid-90's britpop, electro (including the absurdly named "French Touch") and trip hop were becoming the taste of the moment. Why didn't we get some lounge wrestling character in 97/98 ?

It also makes the idea that "ECW was the Nirvana of wrestling" quite ridiculous on every level (I don't think this idea came up before the ECW DVD anyway, so it's really revisionnist history anyway).

[El-P]

I can just picture Mabel tweaking into a whole new era.

[ohtani's jacket]

AFAIR, grunge was still quite prevelant in 1995. I went to an all boys high school and that year literally every guy in my grade had long hair.

I guess it got really mainstream by then, with the post-grunge scene, but in the mid-90's britpop, electro (including the absurdly named "French Touch") and trip hop were becoming the taste of the moment. Why didn't we get some lounge wrestling character in 97/98 ?

It also makes the idea that "ECW was the Nirvana of wrestling" quite ridiculous on every level (I don't think this idea came up before the ECW DVD anyway, so it's really revisionnist history anyway).

 

My recollection is that the Nirvana Unplugged album was a big deal at the end of 1994 and then Vitalogy was released a few weeks later. I remember Pearl Jam in March 1995 was the first major concert I went to. I guess my memories of it are more about touring than any major album releases after those two. Britpop and US alternative rock always existed side by side in NZ much like British and US TV did, but looking at the albums released that year it was a huge year for britpop.

[Loss]

Grunge was still big in 1995, but was on the way out. You still had people into it, just like you still had a decent-sized hair metal crowd after grunge took off. But they were slowly fading away.

[Jingus]

AFAIR, grunge was still quite prevelant in 1995. I went to an all boys high school and that year literally every guy in my grade had long hair.

I guess it got really mainstream by then, with the post-grunge scene, but in the mid-90's britpop, electro (including the absurdly named "French Touch") and trip hop were becoming the taste of the moment.

 

Maybe it was just where I lived, but absolutely nobody was into that kind of music when I was in high school in '95.

 

I think Raven's character especially worked since it wasn't just any grunger, but a grunger you're supposed to hate. He's a whiny self-pitying little moaning emo bitch. So I don't think it hurt him to be clinging to grunge long after Cobain was dead and buried; being married to an obsolete fad only made him more punch-able.

[Loss]

I think it was partially a regional thing and was probably bigger in some places than others, but groups like Tricky and Massive Attack definitely had a following with some kids when I was in high school, and Blur's "Girls and Boys", which was kind of a parody of this whole culture, was a fairly big hit.

[El-P]

I wish we would have had Steven Regal coming out to Oasis and play a regular beer drinking lad (which he is) loudly badmouthing everyone. That would have been awesome.

I wish we would have had 2 Cold Scorpio coming out to Tricky's Black Steel and fuck people up while looking paranoid as hell.

[Dylan Waco]

Scorpio should have come out to Poor Righteous Teachers. Scorp as a god would have been great.

[El-P]

From Halloween Havoc/ Clash 17, WCW quickly gets really good, with the implement of Rick Rude and Steamboat adding workrate + star power.

But if there's one stain on the product at this point, it's the Patriots vs Young Pistols feud. Bad matches every week on TV. And it's not like it's all Patriots sucking, which they do, it's also the Young Pistols not being very good in this role. Smothers was always better than Armstrong and he shows that he can be a good heel there, but from the awesome Southern Boys matches in late 1990 to this, it's a huge drop in the work of both guys. Obviously opposing a good team it wouldn't be so flagrant, but still, they stall way too much and don't deliver half as fun offense as they did as faces. Really, Larry Zbyszko in the Enforcers stalls less and brings work stuff to the table in terms of movez. Sometime Smothers bothered me with the stalling in ECW too (although the FBI gimmick made it a lot more tolerable as he was funny), and here it's getting really annoying against uninteresting faces like the Patriots. Loosing the Southern Boy identity already hurt them quite a bit, but the heel turn really killed them dead.

[Johnny Guitar]

I wish we would have had Steven Regal coming out to Oasis and play a regular beer drinking lad (which he is) loudly badmouthing everyone. That would have been awesome.

 

I wish we would have had 2 Cold Scorpio coming out to Tricky's Black Steel and fuck people up while looking paranoid as hell.

That would have been great! I always hoped they would go that direction with him.

 

There was a brief period around Spring 97 where Regal briefly dropped the Lord moniker and WCW tried to down play his snobbish character.

 

I think it was supposed to tie into the whole renegade horseman/apocalypse angle, which according to Jericho is an idea Pillman had pitched a couple of years before.

[Blehschmidt]

I think it was supposed to tie into the whole renegade horseman/apocalypse angle, which according to Jericho is an idea Pillman had pitched a couple of years before.

I remember hearing of this, but what were the details on that.

[Johnny Guitar]

I think it was supposed to tie into the whole renegade horseman/apocalypse angle, which according to Jericho is an idea Pillman had pitched a couple of years before.

I remember hearing of this, but what were the details on that.

 

Jericho mentioned in his first book that Pillman had pitched an idea of forming his own version of the Horsemen with Benoit, Eddy & Jericho called either "The Horsemen of the Apocalypse" or "The Generation X Horsemen". Presumedly after an angle where he and Benoit were either kicked out or turned on Ric & Arn.

 

They kind of teased it on TV, but it all fell through when Pillman left. It got teased again briefly a year or so later. Supposedly this time it would've been Benoit, Malenko, Eddy & Regal. I guess politics got in the way that time.

[cm funk]

It would be hilarious to think Corny in freaking SMW was more in tune with pop culture.

He also created the Gangstas, so it might be fair to say he was. It was probably as simple as turning on the TV or picking up a magazine once in a while. Time had cover storys on both grunge and gangsta rap, you had to be living under a rock to be unaware of those cultural zeitgeists.

 

WWF had some relevant ideas in the 90's, but the execution was too cartoonish,; Men on a Mission, Rad Radford, Man Mountain Rock all came off as bad parodies of those scenes.

 

I would say Goldust was pretty relevant for it's time, and the start of WWF being more in tune with popular culture leading into the attitude era

[artDDP]

It would be hilarious to think Corny in freaking SMW was more in tune with pop culture.

He also created the Gangstas, so it might be fair to say he was. It was probably as simple as turning on the TV or picking up a magazine once in a while. Time had cover storys on both grunge and gangsta rap, you had to be living under a rock to be unaware of those cultural zeitgeists.

 

WWF had some relevant ideas in the 90's, but the execution was too cartoonish,; Men on a Mission, Rad Radford, Man Mountain Rock all came off as bad parodies of those scenes.

 

I would say Goldust was pretty relevant for it's time, and the start of WWF being more in tune with popular culture leading into the attitude era

 

I was a wide-eyed teenager during those years and I remember how both the WWF and WCW seemed to exist in their own parallel universe at the time. Aside from a President Clinton impersonator a time or two and some NFL references both leagues were completely detached from anything happening in the world. This was a time when films like Clerks and Clueless were becoming cultural milestones and the wrestling business was still giving us John Hughes kids stuff.

[flyonthewall2983]

I thought it was a bit darkly funny they gave Ed Leslie the Zodiac gimmick, considering that Brutus Beefcake's gimmick hometown was San Francisco.

[Victator]

Trying to be contemporary and relevant is a dead end. You are going to look dated even faster doing that. You should be aiming for things that are timeless.

[Guest Paul Kersey]

Sounds like this Renegade Horsemen gimmick was the Revolution before Vince Russo got ahold of it.

[artDDP]

I thought it was a bit darkly funny they gave Ed Leslie the Zodiac gimmick, considering that Brutus Beefcake's gimmick hometown was San Francisco.

I never thought of that. Leslie wore the face paint and outfit during the opening scene of "Mr. Nanny", where Hulk has a dream of being attacked in the ring by a gang of heels. I always wondered if that was were WCW got the Dungeon of Doom idea.

[El-P]

The first few months of 1992 are pretty great as far as TV matches go. The Dangerous Alliance really was the über workrate heel group. Madusa had the oddest fashion sense ever however. I know it fot her character as being a bit of a loon, but some of those outfit just hurt the eyes.

I'm loving Greg Valentine teaming with Terry Taylor. Taylor has been one of the most consistent worker on TV since he turned heel, and Valentine just doesn't age. Good stuff with the US belts, although I'm fearing the matches with the Freebirds, who just reached a new point of unwatchability with their new theme song and look.

Fun to witness the humble beginnings of Marcus Bagwell. Strange to think they waited so long before turning him heel, because you already wants to slap the fuck out of his pretty boy mouth.

JYD and Nikita Koloff coming back isn't good.

The Light heavyweight division is sad, but it's pretty funny to hear JR blabber the same crap he used to do in WWF in 97/98 about a light heavyweight division that should get more and more exciting names and should grow in the very near future. Yeah, when you get Johnny B. Badd and Brad Armstrong as "light heavyweight", you feel the difference with a usual match.

It's pretty shocking to see Scott Levy so young and healthy looking. He was already a fun promo though.

[JerryvonKramer]

Was he the Taylor Made Man at this point? Legit contender for second worst Taylor gimmick ever. Valentine in WCW in the 90s always comes off as odd to me for some reason.

[JerryvonKramer]

Also, this is as good a time as any to mention the fact that I HATTTEEE the US tag titles. I really hate them. Most pointless tag belts of all time. Hate the NWA National Tag titles too.

[JerryvonKramer]

Also, this is as good a time as any to mention the fact that I HATTTEEE the US tag titles. I really hate them. Most pointless tag belts of all time. Hate the NWA National Tag titles too.