Comments that don't warrant a thread - Part 3

[Ronnie]

 

[Matt D]

we live in a world where Vince probably knows who Rob Naylor is. A strange strange world indeed.

[Victator]

This is apropos of nothing, but reading yet another political Facebook post by Eric Bischoff where he comes across as so Republican it veers into Stephen Colbert parody realm. Then I realized he's made the most money in his career working for wrestling companies that were basically welfare queens. You'd think someone so fervent in his beliefs would be offended to be employed by someone who takes and takes and gives nothing in return.

Bischoff always comes across as a vile human being. Vince seems like a JR Ewing type of villain. He does bad things, but deep down he has some good in him. Bischoff seems like Jeremy Wendell. A creep they brought on the show to out creep JR.

 

I love how hard he pushes his kid, after the way he ragged on Eric Watts.

[goodhelmet]

This is apropos of nothing, but reading yet another political Facebook post by Eric Bischoff where he comes across as so Republican it veers into Stephen Colbert parody realm. Then I realized he's made the most money in his career working for wrestling companies that were basically welfare queens. You'd think someone so fervent in his beliefs would be offended to be employed by someone who takes and takes and gives nothing in return.

Bischoff always comes across as a vile human being. Vince seems like a JR Ewing type of villain. He does bad things, but deep down he has some good in him. Bischoff seems like Jeremy Wendell. A creep they brought on the show to out creep JR.

 

I love how hard he pushes his kid, after the way he ragged on Eric Watts.

 

Dallas references... Awesome

[KrisZ]

This is a fantastic article about WWE and embracing the Anti-Hero again.

 

http://theclassical.org/articles/down-goes-the-good-guy

[jdw]

So Mr. Schemer rips Wade for an interview Wade did with Russo. Wade points out that Scherer is only 180 degrees removed from reality:

 

Not really. He should have checked with me to get his facts straight. He has my email.

 

Russo didn't restrict me from asking anything. I initiated the invite to be part of our WrestleMania themed-interviews during the month of March and *I* asked him to stay away from TNA talk because I didn't want to get bogged down in that 48 hours before WrestleMania. I said maybe some day he could come on and do a live show on TNA. He did say he didn't want to talk about TNA, either, but he never said I *couldn't* ask him about TNA. He asked how I could stop callers from going off-topic, and I told him I'd ask callers to stick to our theme and he said that was fine with him.

 

Scherer painted it like Russo limited topics I could ask him about, and that's true only if you believe the complete opposite of something is the same as something. :-)

 

I didn't want to talk about TNA and would have gone with a different guest if Russo wanted to do a TNA-themed show. Chris DeJoseph actually asked to do that show, but I put him off a week since we had talked the 2000s so much already this month, but not the late 1990s WrestleManias. The only reason we covered TNA at all is because Russo brought it up deep into the interview, which went longer than I anticipated. Had Russo restricted me from talking about TNA, I doubt he would have brought it up on his own a few times. By then, the interview was going so long and we were long past the live part of the show discussing WrestleMania, and that's when I asked if he minded going into one TNA topic a little. I didn't want to violate my word that I wanted to stick to the WM theme. As I noted several days ago in another Russo thread before Scherer commented on this situation, I didn't want to come across as a hypocrite for telling Russo I wanted to do a WM show and them start asking about TNA. Russo put no restrictions on me; I came to him with a focused topic for discussion. As I noted days ago in that other thread, I did the same thing with Greg Gagne the day "The Wrestler" movie was showing at a theater in Minneapolis. I approached him and asked if he'd talk about "The Wrestler." If I'm going to do an all-encompassing interview with Russo, it'd be a Torch Talk setting, not a live daily one-hour live podcast two days before WrestleMania.

 

It's a little amusing to get lectured by him all things considered. He went off with bad assumptions and should have checked with me before his rants about this. I'm not even sure why he's choosing to talk about us, although it's not the first time he's been our watchdog, so to speak, and gotten his facts wrong. I'm not sure "competitors" should be policing each other like this as the conflict of interest or lack of objectivity gets in the way quickly, as was obviously the case here.

Poster later in the thread toss up this, which is a fucking hoot:

 

I went to PWInsider to find out what all the fuss was about and was greeted by this:

 

 

I still can't find the article but I'm going to try it again later with 3D glasses.

You have to love that Bang A Different Broad Every Day pop up.

 

John

[El-P]

I've been watching quite a bit of post-ECW promotions, mostly to check out guys like Funk, Sabu, Raven, Douglas, Lynn, Corino, Candido mixing up with a few newer guys from the indies. It strikes me that 2 out of 3 were backed up by pornographers, XPW by Rob Black & Lizzy Borden, and 3PW by Jasmine Saint Clair. Interesting when you think about what kind of image ECW projected as far as women goes.

 

MLW was by far the most fun of the 3 promotion and had the less amount of crap, although Steve Williams was disheartning to watch in 2002. XPW was by far the worst, with shitload of retarded garbage stuff that I didn't even watched (life is short).

In the bunch, some really IWA Japan like Terry Funk matches with Corino and Sabu, one cool Funk vs Jerry Lawler match, one "Funk loses his mind and slaughters his arm" match with Douglas, all in all Funk was clearly still the icon of these post-ECW promotions. Douglas could still go, working especially hard on occasions and being a much better heel than HHH still at this point despite his age and limitations (Douglas was obviously very banged up). He was however overplaying his character pretty badly on promos. Sabu was still Sabu, working better in MLW than in 3PW or XPW for some reasons. Found out that Joey Matthews was working a fun heel character at the time, which was much better than the Hardy-like flying babyface from late ECW. You can see Candido and Tammy's bodies decline in the span of two years, amazing what drugs can do to you. In 2000 Tammy was still looking great, by 2002 she had put on quite a bit of weight, while Candido probably stopped the roids and got a bit fat around the waist. Dark years for these two, although their work was still really good.

All those guys really suffered from the closing down of WCW, as they were too good to work in shitholes like XPW with terrible garbage bleeders or in ECW tributes shows (what basically 3PW was) before a few hundred people at Viking Hall.

[Victator]

After watching some Mike Jackson matches last night, I wrote an entry about him on my blog, along with a video tribute.

 

http://drvictatorpresents.blogspot.com/201...on-tribute.html

[FLIK]

So what're ppls opinions on Lord Tensai so far?

 

I know Meltzer & Alvarez have been down on him and don't think he's gotten over yet but I don't really trust their opinions on this.

 

I watched his debut match on youtube just now, in ring I thought he looked really good (been a Bernard fan for years so no surprise to me thear) but the gimmick is ridiculous.

 

Let's have a giant white guy pretend to be Japanese only since this is the WWE their warped perception of being Japanese = a bunch of random asian wrestler stereotypes from the 80's & early 90's thrown together. Oriental music, silk robe, Great Muta style ninja mask, little slitent mini man servant throwing salt & bowing, mist spiting, Hakushi style tattos, nerve pinch hold of some sort (claw in this case). I'm surprised they didn't have him come out in wooden shoes, wrestle bare foot and throwing judo kicks & karate chops too.

[Matt D]

I think the general consensus is that he needs some more time to get the gimmick down.

 

Personally, I wish they would let him go crazy with his moveset. I NEVER think that Movez is the answer, but this is probably the exception. Right now Henry is doing the power stuff so much more impressively on the same show and over on smackdown Skip is bringing the crazy intensity. Tensai is sort of stuck in the middle with only the senton to see him through.

 

Really, he needs to be on the opposite show of Henry though.

[sek69]

I think the gimmick is odd, they really haven't explained why Albert suddenly returned after all these years and is now the world's largest Great Muta cosplayer. He's certainly not over, but then there's no reason he should be since they just threw him out there with this 80s style gimmick and expected people to care. What also hurt is that when he was signed, he was supposed to come in as Johnny Ace's hired asskicker, which at least would have given some explanation to why he's around. However they ended up getting Brock to sign and that role seems to have gone to him (which is a far better person to have that role, but it still sucks for Tensai).

[Victator]

He wants to win the big belt. That is all the motivation any wrestler needs.

[NintendoLogic]

I think the fact that Ryback is doing the same thing and looks cooler doing it does him no favors.

[FLIK]

they really haven't explained why Albert suddenly returned after all these years and is now the world's largest Great Muta cosplayer.

Almost 40, just had a kid, needs a big payday

[Loss]

It's ridiculous to expect the gimmick to already be over. It hasn't had enough time. I'd be curious how fast Umaga got over if we looked back at his 2006 matches. When I saw the gimmick, my first thought was that it was a pretty okay idea that needed time to work. It's going to take a few months, although there should be some difference after getting a win over Cena (which is a match they did WAAAAYY too soon).

[Matt D]

Vic's noted that Umaga had a lot of time to work dark matches and get the gimmick down first, and I think that Albert probably needed that. The hand motions are pretty embarrassing.

[FLIK]

When I saw the gimmick, my first thought was that it was a pretty okay idea that needed time to work.

In Japan all his best matches were vs smaller fast guys or ppl who'd slug it out with him in brawls. In his first WWE run he was pretty mediocure working as guy named after a penis pearcing or wrestling as the Hip Hop Hippo.

 

Outlandish gimmick & slow paced squashes just don't play to any of his strengths.

 

Course, things could always be worse, just had a flash back to Dr Death Steve Williams debut in the karate gi & kabuki mask....shudder...

[Victator]

He was pretty good as soon as 2001. But slow paced matches are not his forte. He does best in fast paced train wrecks. They also neutered his move set.

 

Umaga did not start getting really over til summer. Then he went thru HHH, Shawn and Cena in three weeks. After that they put him with Kane and went into the big Cena feud.

[sek69]

It's ridiculous to expect the gimmick to already be over. It hasn't had enough time. I'd be curious how fast Umaga got over if we looked back at his 2006 matches. When I saw the gimmick, my first thought was that it was a pretty okay idea that needed time to work. It's going to take a few months, although there should be some difference after getting a win over Cena (which is a match they did WAAAAYY too soon).

 

I don't how they would expect it to be over at all based on how there was, what...one or two weeks of videos building his debut (which did nothing to tell people anything about him)? Then they just threw him out there in a ridiculous getup to have a squash match where he worked a style that seemed to almost be done on purpose to make people aggressively not care about him. Don't get me wrong, I don't think it's not anything that can't be fixed, but having him beat Cena that soon came off as a huge kneejerk reaction to him not setting the world on fire out of the box.

[cm funk]

I think the gimmick is odd, they really haven't explained why Albert suddenly returned after all these years and is now the world's largest Great Muta cosplayer. He's certainly not over, but then there's no reason he should be since they just threw him out there with this 80s style gimmick and expected people to care. What also hurt is that when he was signed, he was supposed to come in as Johnny Ace's hired asskicker, which at least would have given some explanation to why he's around. However they ended up getting Brock to sign and that role seems to have gone to him (which is a far better person to have that role, but it still sucks for Tensai).

They need to play up that Ace brought him in and explain the Japan connection there. The gimmick also needs some tweaking. I like the idea, I like Sakamoto, I like the mist and claw, but some aspects of it just aren't clicking yet. The Umaga gimmick took a while to really start working and get over, so I'm hoping that's the case here too, because I think Bloom deserves to have a good run in the states.

[cm funk]

He wants to win the big belt. That is all the motivation any wrestler needs.

That isn't anything that's been expressed on television. If he wants the belt why hasn't he targeted or called out CM Punk?

[Victator]

Why else is he there? Jesus any wrestler on TV wants two things.

 

1. The Title

 

2. Money

 

Neither of these things needs to be said outright.

[sek69]

Why else is he there? Jesus any wrestler on TV wants two things.

 

1. The Title

 

2. Money

 

Neither of these things needs to be said outright.

 

There's a reason "what's my motivation" is the classic actor stereotype. The audience needs to know why they should give two shits about someone. If they're a hired gun by the boss to take out the annoying babyface who foils his plans, then say so. If he wants to be world champion, say so. Leaving things up to the fans to figure out is lazy booking at best and at worst you damage your promotion by not giving your fans a reason to be emotionally invested in anything.

[Matt D]

Traditionally do people outside the top echelon of WWE get motivations?

 

Tensai is pretty easy to me.

 

He was a former WWE wrestler. He went to Japan. He destroyed a bunch of guys there. Now he's back to destroy a bunch of guys here.... also he has a worshipper.

[Victator]

Why else is he there? Jesus any wrestler on TV wants two things.

 

1. The Title

 

2. Money

 

Neither of these things needs to be said outright.

 

There's a reason "what's my motivation" is the classic actor stereotype. The audience needs to know why they should give two shits about someone. If they're a hired gun by the boss to take out the annoying babyface who foils his plans, then say so. If he wants to be world champion, say so. Leaving things up to the fans to figure out is lazy booking at best and at worst you damage your promotion by not giving your fans a reason to be emotionally invested in anything.

 

He is a wrestler in a wrestling promotion. His motivation goes without saying.