Comments that don't warrant a thread - Part 3

[Bierschwale]

Evolution-Shield had a "HOLY SHIT!" chant.

 

There was a "THIS IS AWESOME!" chant for the first round match in the IC #1 Contender tournament between Barrett and Ziggler. If it hadn't been played out before that, it sure as hell was after.

[SomethingSavage]

'Nother random comment:

Do we credit Zack Ryder with smartening up WWE on the influence and possibilities of social media?

Sure seemed like they picked up the trend and ran HARD with it after his whole popularity fiasco took off without permission. Before then, I don't recall them having much of a clue.

[PeteF3]

 

There's absolutely no sense of "wink wink this isn't really real".

 

Really? Guys who wear masks or face paint, or are savages from distant islands or jungles, or evil foreigners who compete strictly to spite America (or wherever you're from), or glamour boys who insist on the ring being sprayed with perfume before competing....who ALL magically seem to bounce off the ropes, all of that screams real to you?

 

Pro wrestling's always been kind of absurd, That's half the fun of it.

 

 

That doesn't address JVK's point. Even the most absurd stuff was *generally* presented without irony. You didn't have JBL around to tell us that gee, Kamala looks a lot like that Sugar Bear Harris guy, or making Minnesota references when Nikita Koloff was out. You can even look at JVK's favorite, IRS--as absurd as it was, at no point was he ever portrayed as a legitimate IRS agent who was out to beat up wrestlers for not paying their taxes.

 

Now, in the 1950's you *did* have a lot of goofball announcers like Russ Davis who would chuckle their way through the matches before Gordon Solie came along and changed the rules, so it did exist. But they were generally employees of the arena or the TV station and not directly working with the promoter, and using them even if they were harmful to the product was the cost of doing business.

[JerryvonKramer]

I think in the early 90s the cartoon levels ramp up a bit and wrestling was already half-way towards being totally controlled by Vince anyway.

 

What I really had in mind were the 1970s and the bulk the 1980s.

 

Yes, it's true you got the vestiges of wrestling's carny / side-show roots in acts like the Zambuie Express, but even the likes of them and Kamala were presented as being a legit threat -- at least in the early 80s (and most here know my views on Kamala). The Samoans eating chicken bones, or acts like Abdullah the Butcher or The Orginal Sheik might appear to be really goofy from our vantage point, but some fans were legit terrified of them at the time. With no internet, people were less exposed to things in general. And ... while I don't really want to be reductive or derogatory about wrestling fans "back then", there'll have been a fair share who took those sort of acts straight up. As the 80s progressed, Vince kept turning the dial of absurdity up a few notches. We go from Chief Jay Strongbow, one of the more gimmick-y acts of the 1970s, to the likes of Akeem the African Dream and Hillbilly Jim in the space of a few years. Vince wasn't like the other promoters, he always loved his nonsense, and as soon as he took over dialed that shit up to 11.

 

HOWEVER, before 1984, you'll seldom see promoters giving BELTS to the more side-show attractions. So whle your undercard might have had a few monsters or evil foreigners on them in the 1970s, the main event was Dory Jr vs. Jack Brisco straight-up legit wrestling.

 

Sam Muchnik's philosophy had a lot to do with it, of course. And some territories (traditionally Memphis and Detroit, for example) were considered more geared towards comedy or sideshow "carniness" than others. But I think the dominant mode from the 1960s to the early 1980s was legitness and protecting kayfabe at all costs. No "winking", not even Memphis or Detroit.

[funkdoc]

i'm 100% with dooley re: fan behavior

 

if the product doesn't want fans to act a certain way, then the people in charge need to change the product. people should be able to respond however they want to what they see, as long as it doesn't tip over into outright bigotry or such (as allegedly happened with the WCW road wild crowds).

 

makes me wonder how a lot of yall feel about the audience traditions that developed with rocky horror, or any number of other examples of crowd participation/"meta" stuff.

 

also, i find it funny that people still cling to this idea that you can bring kayfabe back somehow. sorry, but that genie's never going back in the bottle. even with kids, you're forgetting something major: the internet & especially social media

 

that has been a total game-changer in so many arenas. for example, in US sports, the conventional wisdom was that you had to play in a top-tier media market (east coast, CA, chicago) to become a national superstar. nowadays, if you really like an athlete, you can find youtube highlights and follow their twitter & instagram to keep up with their daily goings-on and become even more attached. hence kevin durant can become a national superstar while playing in oklahoma city, something that would absolutely not have happened a generation or two ago.

 

smartphones have been an important part of this transformation as well, by allowing you to access the internet anywhere at any time without requiring any tech savvy. tons of teens and even some younger kids have one these days, further contributing to the above.

 

so with pro wrestling, nobody will ever be able to scare kids for long (like papa shango did to me) when you can find out their real name and past gimmicks in a minute. having more of a window into wrestlers' everyday lives will also inevitably ruin some of the magic, if it was ever there to begin with. kayfabe was fundamentally reliant on hiding basic information, which goes against the entire ethos of our modern world.

 

that is why i take the opposite position of many in this thread and say that wrestling simply MUST learn how to live in a post-kayfabe world. period.

[JerryvonKramer]

In my view, in that case, wrestling is broken and destined to become less and less relevant / more and more up it's own arse.

 

Doesn't bother me too much, I don't watch much if any wrestling produced in the past 15 years.

 

But kayfabe is as important to good wrestling as verismilitue might be to a good film, perhaps even more so.

 

El-P said it best, post-modern wrestling doesn't work. If that means wrestling can't work in a world with the internet in it, so be it, wrestling no longer works.

[Loss]

It was Dave Meltzer himself who once said that any business that can't survive the truth doesn't deserve to survive at all.

[JerryvonKramer]

There's two ways of taking that quotation though, Charles.

 

Apply it to the movie industry.

 

Does "truth" in that context mean "the real lives of the real actors" or "the truth and authenticity of their performances"?

 

Is kayfabe merely "hiding the truth" or is it maintaining the 4th wall and creating the suspension of disbelief in the way a film or tv show might?

[JerryvonKramer]

In other words, everyone knows The Godfather is "a work" too, but people seldom dismiss the film as being "lies" or because of something Marlon Brando might have done in his life.

 

We buy into the illusion of reality The Godfather creates.

 

Do you know what The Godfather doesn't do though? It doesn't constantly draw attention to its own artificiality, to the lines of its own construction. There's no "winking" at the camera from Pacino "I'm playing Michael Corleone but *wink wink* we all know I'm big Al". The film would fail if that shit went down.

 

So it is with wrestling. This is my argument.

[khawk20]

In other words, everyone knows The Godfather is "a work" too, but people seldom dismiss the film as being "lies" or because of something Marlon Brando might have done in his life.

 

We buy into the illusion of reality The Godfather creates.

 

Do you know what The Godfather doesn't do though? It doesn't constantly draw attention to its own artificiality, to the lines of its own construction. There's no "winking" at the camera from Pacino "I'm playing Michael Corleone but *wink wink* we all know I'm big Al". The film would fail if that shit went down.

 

So it is with wrestling. This is my argument.

 

Only problem I have with this is that a film can edit out/remove anything that would act as a *wink* to the audience before it gets sent out to the theatre. Mistakes/missed spots happen all the time in wrestling, live, and as such can bring the viewer back to the reality of things in an instant.

 

In the case of wrestling, a mistake/blown spot is a wink all it's own that movies don't have to contend with.

[JerryvonKramer]

I guess the better analogy would be to theatre Khawk, and then it just comes down to performance.

 

If an actor blows or fumbles his lines and brings the audience out of it, he'll get bad reviews. Same for the wrestler.

 

The point is that wrestling can take itself and treat its workers seriously. Act like the angles are important and real, even if everyone knows they aren't. If the promotion itself isn't buying into the reality of an angle then what hope in hell does the audience have?

 

The post-modern self-awareness is a problem with the presentation not the fans. Treat the thing with gravity and people will buy into it like they buy into anything else. All I'm saying.

[El-P]

If that means wrestling can't work in a world with the internet in it, so be it, wrestling no longer works.

 

It does no longer works as what pro-wrestling was in the past. And as an "entertainment product" you put side by side with other fictionnal TV shows, it's really the bottom of the barrel, as the vomit angle showed today.

 

Is kayfabe merely "hiding the truth" or is it maintaining the 4th wall and creating the suspension of disbelief in the way a film or tv show might?

 

Kayfabe was really hiding the truth. Pro-wrestling was marketed mostly toward the uneducated and then towards the childrens. Pro-wrestling indeed was a hustle as it's been said in the "drawing power" thread. It needed an gullible audience to work like "in the good old days". It's been broken and it will never come back as it was.

[Loss]

In other words, everyone knows The Godfather is "a work" too, but people seldom dismiss the film as being "lies" or because of something Marlon Brando might have done in his life.

 

We buy into the illusion of reality The Godfather creates.

 

Do you know what The Godfather doesn't do though? It doesn't constantly draw attention to its own artificiality, to the lines of its own construction. There's no "winking" at the camera from Pacino "I'm playing Michael Corleone but *wink wink* we all know I'm big Al". The film would fail if that shit went down.

 

So it is with wrestling. This is my argument.

 

Wrestling is often dismissed as a lie because even in the 1980s, guys like Randy Savage, Rick Rude and the Ultimate Warrior would go on Arsenio Hall or make other media appearances fully in character. That's probably not something Marlon Brando would have ever done. It's those types of things that I think make people go from "I'm watching something scripted" to "I'm watching something deceitful".

[Ricky Jackson]

I had no idea footage of the JYD-Freebirds blinding angle from 1980 Mid South existed until stumbling upon it today buried in the middle of a bunch of Georgia footage from 1981 (JYD was in in the studio and he brought footage of the angle with him to play on TBS to explain his past history with the Birds)

[Eduardo]

This has been going around tumblr, sweet Cena story.

 

http://pharrfromheaven.tumblr.com/post/89149434792/angryblackman-theheadstrongprincess

[Fantastic]

This has been going around tumblr, sweet Cena story.

 

http://pharrfromheaven.tumblr.com/post/89149434792/angryblackman-theheadstrongprincess

 

I think it's amazing he goes out of his way to do these things in his own time. It's not even a PR agenda, he legitimately seems to care massively about his younger fans, especially those battling conditions such as the girl profiled in that link. Cena basically lives to work, yet in the precious few hours he has to himself each week, he's off doing stuff like this.

 

I've heard that he does a lot more than is actively made public. I think Dave Meltzer hinted that Cena basically bought up a toy shop out of his own pocket and gave a load of gifts to a children's hospital at a recent Christmas. Despite his generosity, he seems pretty adamant about keeping some of this stuff on the down low, perhaps he's trying to avoid being typecast as "too" nice.

[Sean Liska]

When is WWE overly self-aware regarding their product? It's not like the Attitude Era where guys were shooting and complaining about gimmicks. They generally play it pretty straight.

 

I hate when people bemoan the fact that fans no longer believe it's real and buy into kayfabe and all that stuff. What you're really bemoaning is the lack of really, really stupid people. Lets be honest - the fans that wouldn't let the Horsemen out of the cage after they all turned on Dusty because of how mad they were - those people were exceedingly dumb. The emotional investment that today's fans had in Daniel Bryan at Mania is much healthier.

[Loss]

Then what is the job of a heel, if not to anger an audience?

 

As for fans of the past, they got sucked into the story. Have you never been in a movie theater where people cheer because the bad guy received his comeuppance? Those people didn't think the movie was real.

 

We can't return to that, and I am not even sure we should. And it's a dilemma. If you dim the lights where people can't be seen on TV, the heat for the matches improves most likely. However, for some people, you probably also kill a big part of the appeal of going to a live event that is televised.

[Sean Liska]

You can still have great emotional investment from the audience in the modern setting. I was at the "Hijack" RAW in Chicago earlier this year and at Mania, I've seen how it can still work in person. The emotion surrounding the Bryan-HHH stuff was great. I was at Payback in Chicago and saw the crowd passionately divided in their support of Wyatt and Cena, and it creating a great atmosphere for the story they were telling. I was there for the genuine emotional response to the Taker's streak ending. I'm just saying it's odd to lament people no longer thinking that Daniel Bryan and HHH are having a real fight together.

[Ricky Jackson]

Maybe it's just me, but I'd rather have the type of wrestling that has the potential to start a riot

[tlk23]

Duncan Birmingham ‏@DuncanBirm

Don't miss MARON tomorrow with @CMPunk in the garage. I know nothing about sports other than he was very cool and I dig his avatar

[funkdoc]

i actually agree with el-p more than he would probably suspect. he's right that wrestling as it currently exists is broken and does not hold up compared to other scripted entertainment at all.

 

that said, that doesn't mean it's an impossible goal altogether! i just think wrestling needs someone to come along who has no connection to the carny days and rethinks its entire storytelling from the ground up. i think pro wrestling has the potential to tell more compelling stories than the sports-movie fare that has made up practically its entire history, but it would take someone unique to pull it off and establish it...

 

until then, yes, wrestling is broken. but i think older wrestling holds up poorly as well if you look at it from the same viewpoint.

 

EDIT: one last thought - i think guys complaining about their push in promos can actually work without breaking the fourth wall. pro sports coverage these days tends to focus a lot more on "marketability" and drama manufactured by social media or the networks themselves, rather than how good a player is or how much his team wins. there is sometimes a major divide between the best players and the most famous ones, and the former can definitely get jealous of the latter. you could build a wrestling storyline around that, and some of the "worked shoot" type of material would fit in a context of guys wanting to win; i wouldn't expect it from WWE, but the idea isn't inherently ludicrous.

[Ricky Jackson]

The problem is wrestling became scripted and tried to be Hollywood. Before, wrestling was wrestling-that weird, crazy, fun type of entertainment that was unlike anything else and that you only get in glimpses anymore.

[TheTagRope]

Have scoured the Internet trying to find an answer for this with no luck, maybe you guys could help me out, it's for an article I'm writing.

 

In the 1994 Super J Cup, was there any particular reason given as to why Wild Pegasus and Great Sasuke received first-round byes?

[JerryvonKramer]

until then, yes, wrestling is broken. but i think older wrestling holds up poorly as well if you look at it from the same viewpoint.

Can you elaborate on this?