24/7 Roundtable Thread

[JerryvonKramer]

What's Arnie upto these days?

[Dooley]

The point of the "Get It?" campaign was that not liking wrestling because it's fake misses the point that it's still an enjoyable form of entertainment. I thought that was obvious.

I don't think it was the point.

Then you didn't "get it"

 

What's Arnie upto these days

Just finished filming The Expendables 2 and rumoured to be inducting Guns N' Roses into the Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame in April.

[JerryvonKramer]

Reckon an Arnie angle would be money. Things that could happen:

 

1. He uses all his old catch phrases.

 

2. Get in Ventura for a "heavyweight debate"

 

3. Possible feud with Vince, possible feud with Triple H

[artDDP]

Reckon an Arnie angle would be money. Things that could happen:

 

1. He uses all his old catch phrases.

 

2. Get in Ventura for a "heavyweight debate"

 

3. Possible feud with Vince, possible feud with Triple H

Considering Triple H's undying love of pro bodybuilding he might actually put Arnie over. Maybe.

[Bob Morris]

More threads where I'm trying to catch up on stuff after being gone a while

 

* On Cyndi Lauper, what I suspect makes it popular for WWE to put her down is because her popularity as a singer didn't last beyond the 1980s. In other words, she's just associated with one era in particular. If Madonna had taken on that role, there's no way WWE buries her because Madonna -- even though she has her faults -- has remained popular through the years.

 

It's easier to associate yourself with somebody who has held up as a celebrity for many years than it is to associate yourself with somebody whose popularity was brief.

 

With that being said, Lauper was hot at the time so, as with Mr. T, it was justifiable to have her involved. WWE just needs to be a little more honest and say "she was big at the time, so why wouldn't you get her involved?"

 

They do that to an extent with Mr. T, for example, even as more people try to bury him to this day.

 

But there's nothing wrong with associating yourself with somebody who was hot at the time, even if he or she is no longer that big of a deal. They do it all the time with such folks guest starring on TV shows, making movie cameos or showing up on the sidelines of a certain NFL team.

 

And yeah, there might be something to the Bill Watts thing. But if Lauper was still big in the mainstream today, WWE would just ignore Watts… Jim Ross, given that he's still close with Watts, might try to get in a word or two, but it's likely WWE would want it swept under the rug.

 

* While Piper's hatred for Mr. T tends to go overboard, he does have some valid points he raises on his WWE DVD. I completely understand why he wanted to keep everything in an "amateur wrestling" sense when he was wrestling Mr. T because you don't necessarily want Mr. T to instantly look like he can be a pro wrestler right in his first match. You don't want Mr. T to look helpless but you don't want to look like he's immediately on the level of Piper and Orndoff, either. It's a tricky balance but you do want to make sure any stuff with Mr. T is kept simple because then it looks better, doesn't bury Mr. T while, at the same time, making it clear enough to the fans that Mr. T isn't instantly ready to be at the level of every pro wrestler on the card.

 

* As far as celebrities today go who could instantly draw attention to WWE, Tim Tebow, Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga are obvious examples. I don't know if Kim Kardashian could draw enough attention, but she seems to be the current example of the celebrity everybody loves to hate.

 

That being said, I don't think current WWE Creative would have a clue how to capitalize on any celebrity's popularity.

 

* On the 1999 Royal Rumble, I have far less issues with Vince McMahon winning than I do with how the entire match got booked. The match should have been booked around these concepts:

 

- Steve Austin wants to get his hands on Vince McMahon.

 

- Vince McMahon wants Austin eliminated and has put up the bounty as a result.

 

- The Corporation is more than happy to do Austin's bidding.

 

- DX has an issue with The Corporation, to the point that they show zero interest in the bounty on Austin and just want to take out The Corporation, thereby upsetting Vince McMahon.

 

Take those four concepts and it's pretty easy to book the match, where early on, wrestlers are trying to claim the bounty but to no avail, until Corporation cronies start coming out and Austin's having more difficulty keeping himself in the match given how long he's been out there. All this time, McMahon has been the only one to jump through the ropes, thus technically not eliminated, and spends all his time doing commentary. DX comes out toward the end and now Vince is up in arms about why DX won't get the bounty. Comes down to Austin vs. Corporation member, Austin sends Corp guy out, throws Vince back in, Rock comes out and assists Vince in eliminating Austin.

 

Granted, it may not be a booking outcome that is popular among everyone, but it makes for a match that has a far better storyline.

 

Instead, we had Russo wanting to do other stuff, such as Viscera joining the Ministry of Darkness and Kane getting chased out by the orderlies, leading to multiple spurts in which it's pretty clear wrestlers are just being sent out so a big man can toss them out, then we do an angle that adds nothing to the match and results in somebody coming out and just waiting around -- all the while with Austin not being out there for half the match.

 

So… it's not really the end result of that Rumble that bothers me, but the flow of the match as a whole. Keep your focus on Austin-Vince-Corporation-DX and now you are getting somewhere, and do your other stuff some other time.

[Al]

The problem I had with that '99 Rumble match (well, one of many) is that Vince spent so much time outside the ring. Not that he should of wrestled an hour, Vince was obviously too limited for that. But it ruins the concept of an endurance match when you establish that a competitor can legally sit outside the ring for 45 minutes. I mean, why doesn't everyone try that?

[Victator]

Lawler did try it in 96. Guys usually get dragged back in, but in this case only Austin cared as everyone else wanted the bounty. I would have assumed Vince would of eliminated himself if it got down to him and a bounty hunter.

[Mad Dog]

Didn't Road Dogg try just holding onto the bottom rope for as long as possible in the 2000 or 2001 Rumble?

[Bix]

Maria managed to win while having Aunt Flo from Red Bank show up while wearing white pants. That's great and who cares at the same time.

I want to believe that's what happened, as opposed to the more obvious and ugly alternative everybody thought last night.

 

She got Eve's makeup on her gear.

[goc]

How the fuck is it not like that?

Because it's the Divas division and WWE makes it brutally obvious they don't care about it and no one can really figure out why they haven't killed it yet.

[Victator]

I put it here because it was connected to the celebrity discussion on the last episode.

[Guest DWS]

But it ruins the concept of an endurance match when you establish that a competitor can legally sit outside the ring for 45 minutes. I mean, why doesn't everyone try that?

Not to be smart-alecky, but Jimmy Hart and Jerry Lawler tried it, in the past.

 

I seem to remember something recently with Santino, too.

 

It's just a battle royale loophole that can be exploited, if desired. Such as the whole "both feet never touched the ground" thing.

[JerryvonKramer]

Just found out there's a new one with Road Dogg. Anyone seen it?

[Mini Bennett]

Just found out there's a new one with Road Dogg. Anyone seen it?

You wouldn't happen to be talking about the Royal Rumble from earlier this year? Yeah, it was pretty fun. The end portion of the match was almost entirely filled up with mid-card/upper mid-card heels though and it felt really congested. The commentary totally missed a ton of important shit (Miz and Cody Rhodes finally getting eliminated after lasting the whole match, Big Show being single handily thrown out) and unfortunately the crowd was pretty dead for a really strong finishing stretch between Sheamus and Chris Jericho.

 

I don't know. There were pros and cons, but it was one of the weaker Rumbles in recent memory, IMO.

 

 

Edit: And now I've just figured out you were talking about the Legends of Wrestling Round table. I hadn't read the thread the entire way through and saw discussion about past Rumbles and figured that was the current topic. Regardless, not a great way of starting on a forum.

 

Anyway, yeah. The discussion that's there is pretty interesting, but it's easily the most heavily edited show they've ever done.

[BackToBionic]

I watched it too, and yeah, it was edited a bit differently than past ones. Plus it was "the history of Raw" but the most interesting parts of it were when they were talking about the Monday night wars so all it served to do was highlight how much worse Raw is without competition.

[JerryvonKramer]

I watched it last night and it's probably the weakest roundtable I can remember, aside from perhaps one of the ones with Flair being a dick on it. Highlights for me were Gene Okerlund taking exception to generalizations made about WCW at the time.

[MikeCampbell]

The new one about "Hardcore" is pretty good. Patterson talks about how much he hates hat style of wrestling and Hayes calls him out for how proud he is of that Alley Fight he and Slaughter had in '81.

[JerryvonKramer]

Wow, there's a new one?! Already?

[hammerva]

Yeah it was funny when Pat when on about how real wrestlers like Austin and Michaels didn't need hardcore to be the best to which they immediately talk about Austin vs Bret at WM 13 and then talk about the first Hell of the Cell Match

 

If you like blood there is a bunch of it on the show and not the gray screen either. It was also cool to see some FMW footage with Onita vs Tanaka that was shown on the ECW TV show in early 1998.

 

I will say I was surprised that there are people who still believe that that reason ECW failed is because we tired of the hardcore bloody style. I mean yeah lets not forget them losing money like water through a faucet and then losing their TV deal to the WWF.

[Mini Bennett]

Hardcore wrestling obviously has it's place, but ECW basing it's entire entity on that style absolutely had a huge part to play in it's failure. It just isn't sustainable to a wider audience over a long period of time. When your whole brand is based completely on shock value, people get desensitized to it pretty quickly.

[JerryvonKramer]

To what extent do people think that the film The Wrestler pretty much killed hardcore wrestling? Or at least acted as the final nail in the coffin.

 

Seems to me that mainstream media coverage of wrestling from the mid-90s on always honed in on the hardcore aspect.

[Victator]

ECW basing it's entire entity on that style absolutely had a huge part to play in it's failure.

Not true at all. ECW had a cash flow and ownership issue. The style of the promotion was commercially viable.

[Jingus]

How long would it remain viable, though? The entire "EXTREEEEEEEEME" fad was something that was heavily centered in the 90s, and was pretty much dead and buried by the time the hipsters and emo kids started dominating modern young society. And let's not ignore the fact that ECW in 2000 was a hell of a lot less extreme or hardcore than ECW in 1995. They attempted to make the product rather more mainstream during the TNN run (note the lack of barbed wire matches, even on PPV) with mixed results. ECW On TNN spent more time on Impact Players promos than it did on blood.

 

As for The Wrestler, I don't think it had much effect. Probably less than Beyond the Mat did. If any one factor is to be blamed (praised?) for killing hardcore, it's all the worrisome stuff about the wrestlers' health, especially regarding brain damage.

[Victator]

ROH and CZW have managed to limp along for a decade now. If ECW had been better managed, it would have been fine.

 

A bigger thing that killed ECW was losing most of its main eventers in the span of a year. They lost Sabu, Taz, Shane Douglas and the Dudleys. Then Mike Awesome walked out. That gets over looked in the things that killed ECW.

[Al]

I thought the Roundtable was fairly poor. Patterson was so curmudgeonly on the product that he shouldn't have been there in the first place. I thought the most interesting comment was Road Dogg saying that now that he's older, he's not so certain that he'd be comfortable doing the Outlaws' most edgy material again.