jdw Posted July 10, 2012 Report Share Posted July 10, 2012 He could have fit into UWF 2.0, UWFi or PWFG equally as well... given some of his theatricality, perhaps even better. Well, okay, any other non shoot style setting I should say. But then really what's the point? Misawa and Kawada and Onita couldn't have worked in the WWF or WCW in the 90s. Onita wouldn't have been able to work in All Japan in the 90s. Does it mean they weren't great at what they did within the style they excelled? Han did certain things great in UWF-style work. Who really cares if he could have worked Starcade '96 with Hogan. I mean... Kawada couldn't have either. On the other points: I think by watching largely just Opponents vs Han, you're not getting a good idea of the quality of the Opponents, especially the lesser one. On the time, I still go back to: Rings variation UWF-style tended to be shorter than say UWFi and certainly UWF 2.0 and UWF 1.0. That was up and down the card. I think if we took a yearly average of the promotions, and ran Fujiwara, Yamazaki, Takada, Maeda and Han vs the annual average * 100 (where over 100 is Above Average and below 100 would be below average), Han probably could come out very well. Toss out the gimmick matches, and run Rings through say 1996 because 1997 starts getting hard to track. John Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coffey Posted July 10, 2012 Report Share Posted July 10, 2012 Not only did Maxine and the Bellas leave, Kelly Kelly is on that Stacy Keibler-esque long term leave that doesn't appear she'll ever come back from anytime soon. Yeah and don't forget, in addition to women you listed Maria, Maryse, Tiffany & Michelle McCool all left too, for one reason or another. Plus Mickie James went to TNA. Which, when you think about it, Maria was voted Diva of the Year, Maryse was a former Women's Champ, Tiffany was a G.M. and McCool was a Women's Champ. So they all got TV time & were built-up. I'm not sure what the circumstances surrounding each of them leaving is, but whatever. It seems like the women now are a lot more open to the idea of finding work elsewhere. Trish is doing yoga now and Lita is doing some crappy band shit. I think a lot of it has to do with WWE being stubborn and not wanting to let the women pursue other things besides wrestling while still being employed. I remember that Mickie James wanted to sing (despite being terrible) and Maria wanted a clothing line or something. Both are still involved in wrestling, so I assume they weren't looking to leave the industry. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cox Posted July 10, 2012 Report Share Posted July 10, 2012 I think Maria had planned to get out of wrestling but her follow up to her appearance on Celebrity Apprentice was botched horribly and she wound up back in wrestling. And yeah, it was only Celebrity Apprentice, but that show is watched by a decent-sized audience and you'd think she could have wound up as a C-list celebrity on shows on VH1 or Bravo or whatever and carved out a decent career. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cm funk Posted July 11, 2012 Report Share Posted July 11, 2012 Another one is Gail Kim who left to go back to TNA after WWE did absolutely nothing with her. I think her highest profile push was as Daniel Bryan's girlfriend. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FLIK Posted July 11, 2012 Report Share Posted July 11, 2012 But then really what's the point? Misawa and Kawada and Onita couldn't have worked in the WWF or WCW in the 90s. Onita wouldn't have been able to work in All Japan in the 90s. Does it mean they weren't great at what they did within the style they excelled? Han did certain things great in UWF-style work. Who really cares if he could have worked Starcade '96 with Hogan. I mean... Kawada couldn't have either. I had a longer response written but meh, to sum up my point. Han was absolutely great when he was on and could do his style which he was one of the best ever at but he just didn't do it often enough for me to consider him an all time great the way others do. He's talked about as this magical wrestling angel who floats in the sky and shits 5 star matches from the heavens but...yeah...for every Tamura match there's a lot of not so hot Volk Han matches out thear too and when you only wrestled like 60-70 matches in your entire career to begin with, that's something to consider. Yeah and don't forget, in addition to women you listed Maria, Maryse, Tiffany & Michelle McCool all left too, for one reason or another Maria was fired, forget why, she's said she would have stayed otherwise tho. Maryse just got sick of it & quit. Tiffany was aparently nuts and got fired, killed Drew McIntyres push since they're married. McCool left because Taker wanted her at home to take care of him, she'd have probably stuck around if they weren't married otherwise. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cm funk Posted July 11, 2012 Report Share Posted July 11, 2012 I believe the Maria firing was tied to her doing Celebrity Apprentice, which makes NO sense considering their ties to NBC and Trump, but that's what Meltzer was saying at the time Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marty Posted July 11, 2012 Report Share Posted July 11, 2012 My understanding of Maria's firing was that it was more related to her then-burgeoning music career, getting stuff on iTunes and the WWE wanting rights to it. Many disagreements over that led to her getting released. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jingus Posted July 11, 2012 Report Share Posted July 11, 2012 Funny how the women get fired or quit more often because they're making their own secondary careers. I wonder why that is? Also, they sure do seem to be on the receiving end of a LOT more backstage reports about "Superstar X has heat because of their bad attitude and/or ego", which happens to the women so often that one must assume it springs mostly out of sexism and misogyny on the part of the company and its employees. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FLIK Posted July 11, 2012 Report Share Posted July 11, 2012 Funny how the women get fired or quit more often because they're making their own secondary careers. It's a pretty similar thing that comes up with the male talent too. Maybe not 2nd careers but WWE preventing their talent from doing side projects is something i've heard Chavo, MVP & John Morrison complain about when talking about why they left. If i'm remembering correctly that's a big reason why Flair left too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tigerpride Posted July 11, 2012 Report Share Posted July 11, 2012 thear whear Can you explain this, FLIK? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rovert Posted July 11, 2012 Report Share Posted July 11, 2012 Mike Johnson clears things up on Finlay: Several months back, over Wrestlemania weekend, I reported that Finlay was returning to WWE as a producer. Finlay denied the reports publicly but that weekend, he was working as a producer and named as one during the WWE Hall of Fame ceremonies. This week, with his independent bookings finished, Finlay officially returned on the road for WWE. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeCampbell Posted July 12, 2012 Report Share Posted July 12, 2012 I think I'm officially on the Davey Richards hate bandwagon after watching his ROH Pure Wrestling Rules match with Christopher Daniels. Daniels is trying to play off the rules and do submissions in the ropes, while Davey is doing stupid things like a giant superplex and then rolling through it just to do a regular vertical suplex. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
goodhelmet Posted July 12, 2012 Report Share Posted July 12, 2012 Lita is doing some crappy band shit. Just curious, is she actually in a crappy band or you just not a fan of punk or whatever music she is playing? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sek69 Posted July 12, 2012 Report Share Posted July 12, 2012 I can't speak for the man's music tastes, but I've never heard anyone speak of Lita's band as anything worth listening to. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
goodhelmet Posted July 12, 2012 Report Share Posted July 12, 2012 I've never heard anyone say anything about Lita's band. I want quotes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coffey Posted July 12, 2012 Report Share Posted July 12, 2012 Last I heard she was in the punk bank The Luchagors. I don't dislike punk music in general, I've listened to several punk bands over the years. I wouldn't say it's my favorite thing in the world as I tend to lean more toward things like Tom Waits, but yeah, they're not good. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFavmGJVqBI Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FLIK Posted July 12, 2012 Report Share Posted July 12, 2012 Random thought, it's really weird to think Michael Hayes has been employed by the WWE for 17 years.....and not been fired. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mad Dog Posted July 12, 2012 Report Share Posted July 12, 2012 Another one is Gail Kim who left to go back to TNA after WWE did absolutely nothing with her. I think her highest profile push was as Daniel Bryan's girlfriend. Which I don't get. TNA has made her look like a star during both of her runs with the company. I don't see why the WWE has never been able to do anything worthwhile with her. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim Evans Posted July 13, 2012 Report Share Posted July 13, 2012 This whole Kharma story is crazy. Someone put her on the webiste in the Alumni section but then changed it. The real story should be interesting. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tim Posted July 13, 2012 Report Share Posted July 13, 2012 I took the early bus today that went by the Prison around 6:30am and a group of guys who looked like they had just posted bail got on, towards the end of the ride they started talking about UFC and wrestling, including just randomly saying the names of 80s managers(Mr. Fuji, Bobby Hennan!) and one inexplicably said "What UFC needs is someone like Ms. Elizabeth." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NintendoLogic Posted July 13, 2012 Report Share Posted July 13, 2012 According to Dave, they were planning on releasing Kharma on Friday, but it got out a day early. WWE hates it when stuff gets out, so it'd be pretty funny if she ended up keeping her job as a result. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rovert Posted July 13, 2012 Report Share Posted July 13, 2012 I think WWE just fulfilled their obligations to her as an employer (they seem to have treated her so far as an employee instead of an independent contractor) when July rolled round. Now it is time for them to part ways. God bless her for everything she has gone though but I think she isn't made for WWE. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FLIK Posted July 13, 2012 Report Share Posted July 13, 2012 If they are getting rid of her it'll be real interesting to know the reason why. If she's still not ready to come back because of personal issues then I think it's good for WWE to probably cut ties cause at this point they've keept her employed for like 14-15 months and only gotten to use her once in that span. If it's the other way around and she is capable & willing to return but "creative has nothing for her" then i'd say that's pretty stupid because I thought she was getting over really well in the limited amount of time she was in WWE and could have been a big success for them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rovert Posted July 13, 2012 Report Share Posted July 13, 2012 If she's still not ready to come back because of personal issues then I think it's good for WWE to probably cut ties cause at this point they've keept her employed for like 14-15 months and only gotten to use her once in that span. I think they have been both fair and legally prudent given what happened with Dawn Marie. I don't know guys. For lay person facing the outside world after suffering a still birth is hard enough. But her pregnancy was announced on WWE and then the outcome of it was on TMZ & everywhere else. Even before all this happened we spoke about how firey/passionate she is given what happened to her in TNA. Now imagine some prick Wrestling fan saying something cruel to her at a show about her pregnancy. Law of the street says the guy should get his ass handed to him but this isn't the street it is a Public Company run by a family with political aspirations. Even if she turns in the other direction when harassed those sorts of comments would really hurt anyone's feelings let alone someone of a vulnerable disposition. The situation really sucks and there isn't really a handbook for it given how specific of an industry wrestling is and the confluence of factors here: being a celebrity, social media, misogyny in Wrestling, mental health in an unhealthy business etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KrisZ Posted July 13, 2012 Report Share Posted July 13, 2012 She hasn't done herself a lot favors either especially recently when they were getting ready to bring her back with a push and she flaked out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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