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Raven


goodhelmet

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So, Dylan and Jerome were having their debate on Raven awhile back and it resurfaced in the bad wrestler thread. Having said that, I can't name very many great wrestling matches but I can name several feuds he was part of that were very good. I think it is to his credit that he may not have been featured on the ECW matches that much for a guy who was there that long but he is all over the extras. As a wrestler, I am in the Dylan camp that this he is extremely disappointing. Still, the Dreamer feud is still being talked about as one of the most memorable feuds ever. The Sandman feud is still talked about with fond feelings and no one I know is arguing that Sandman was a great wrestler. In WCW, the Flock vs. Saturn feud played out well with the climax at Fall Brawl 98. He was in the tag mix in 1999 but was he really responsible or the focl point of any of the great matches to come out of that time period or just a warm body? In WWF, I think he was actively bad. For someone who has about 40 hours of shoot interviews on crowd control and psychology, him and Saturn had a match wrestled in complete silence on PPV. He had the garbage match with Rhyno that got over huge. I really liked the Punk ROH feud but the matches were nothing to write home about. I don't know anything about his TNa career except he got really fat.

So... Raven

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Most of his matches sucked. A few memorable garbage affairs in ECW and some of his work with DDP & Benoit was good as well. I haven't rewatched any of it in years, but as little as he may have done in the ring, the Sandman and Dreamer feuds were awesome spectacles. Whether that was due to the performances of the wrestlers in the ring, on the mic or the production of the feuds, there was some awesome storytelling and moments presented there.

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I always liked the character a lot and the wrestler not so much. He was a great promo build/vignette guy. I'd prefer to watch his promos and angles in full and his matches in highlights just to see if the point got across. The best match he was involved in to me was the dog collar match. The Goldberg US title match was a little fun too

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For someone who has about 40 hours of shoot interviews on crowd control and psychology, him and Saturn had a match wrestled in complete silence on PPV.

If we're talking about the "flock disolves if Saturn wins the match" stuff, by the end of the match, the crowd was going apeshit. Don't let the facts got in the way of a good story when Raven is involved I guess...

 

Anyway. I never said he was a great wrestler and had great matches, that would be outrageous (well, not more outrageous than some recent claim of greatness), but he was good, and he put together the most entertaining clusterfucks of I've ever seen. Loved his character, look and promos (the first depressed wrestler ever), loved his sense of humour (make no mistake about it, *he*'s the one responsible for all those hysterical Stevie Richards impersonations and angle in ECW). Could take a beating like no one else. Not the most athletic guy ever (and he pokes fun at himself quite a bit in those 40 hours of shoot interviews), was lazy at times, but he remains one of the most fun wrestler I had the pleasure of watching. Scott Levy is everything good and fun about wrestling.

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Not to make anyone feel old, but I was 8 years old in 1997 when I started watching wrestling. I was a much bigger fan of WCW than the WWF due to the nWo and the luchadores. My parents still watch wrestling with me from time to time, but the height of their watching was in the late 90s when I was a child. Besides "Conspiracy Victim" Chris Jericho, there was no character my parents thought was more hilarious than Raven's Flock character. To this day, if one of us children starts to ask for something trivial. they will hit us with a "What about me? What about Raven?" as to mock our "whining" (Godamnit, $25 for the Steel Panther concert isnt that much! ;) ). My mom especially was a huge Flock fan and became oddly attached to Lodi and his signs. My mom was also a big Glacier fan. I don't get it.

 

So last year when I got Lodi to wish her Happy Birthday via Twitter, it ranked up there as one of her favorite present. So I thought this year I would get Raven to do it. Of course, Raven has to tweet how he gangbanged my mom with the Flock. All I wanted was a "Happy Birthday" from the shithead.

 

I am a sucker for Raven's promos and angles in ECW and WCW. I always thought they were interesting. His stuff with Cactus when Cactus turned is probably the most well-done cebereal wrestling angle I have ever seen. The Pitbulls Dog Collar is a fun clusterfuck. He seems like a funny prick, but just don't ask him to wish your mom a Happy Birthday. I guess I was asking for it.

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Awful. Not even a good character. Sat around and did nothing while being surrounded by people who knew how to get heat. Was able to hide behind his inability to get over on his own by arguing that just sitting there while more talented people cut promos for him "fit his character".

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Sat around and did nothing while being surrounded by people who knew how to get heat. Was able to hide behind his inability to get over on his own by arguing that just sitting there while more talented people cut promos for him "fit his character".

You realize that people around him got heat *because* they were around him, not the other way around ? You'll argue that Van Hammer, Billy Kidman, Saturn and Reese got Raven over in WCW ? You'll argue that Stevie Richards is the one who got Raven over and not the other way around (especially when Raven was the one coming up with pretty much all of Stevie's material and goofy stuff, a fact Richards acknowledges himself) ? Raven really needed Peaches and Blue Meanie to get heat ? Come on. I know you hate the guy, but let's at least be fair. The character may not be for everyone, but to say he sucked at it is nonsense. The one time Raven let a more talented guy cut promos for him is during the short stint Cactus Jack did with him.

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Raven took Kevin Sullivan's gimmick and brought it into the 90's and did a damn good job with it. Raven & Sullivan matches were alike as well as they worked a mostly hardcore style except Raven was able to do a lot more in ECW than Sullivan could do on TV back in the day.

 

Scott Levy as a person had better work no doubt as Scotty Anthony was one of my favorite gimmicks of the early 90's and Johnny Polo was fantastic as well.

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Above all else I think Raven was a great character. At the time I was a major Raven fan, but going back and rewatching some of his stuff I don't see what was really that great about him. His ring work wasn't anything to write about and I think he is overrated as a promo guy. I think that most of his promos end up being too long-winded and it seemed to me that he never got his point across at times. One issue I noticed with the CM Punk ROH feud is that he had promos where he would recycle lines from previous promos he gave during the feud.

 

Given all that, I will admit that his run with the Hardcore title in 2001 is underrated.

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Did Raven start the trend of not wearing proper ring gear? Feels like everyone from a certain period in the 90s wore those long half-jean short things. Is Raven to blame?

He took credit for it at least. The T-shirt wearing was to hide his flat chest.

 

Yeah... Scotty, much like Heyman, takes credit for inventing everything.

 

Posted Image

Haystacks Calhoun

 

 

John

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I've said my piece on Raven a thousand times, but after watching all the ECW under the sun there are very few wrestlers who I would rather watch less at this point than Raven.

 

As a character I am close to agreeing with Loss. I would deviate a little in the sense that I think Raven had a good look for the era and body language that fit well with what he was going for. Most of his promos I found boring when I was watching ECW in real time as a teen, and absolutely horrid watching them back years later, but I will grant that some people have an attachment to them. I agree that the guys around him added far more to his act than he added to theirs. Yes you could argue that Richards would not have "gotten over" as a big enough star without Raven (I don't really agree, but I don't think it's impossible to argue the point), but Raven wasn't making Richards more entertaining and watchable.

 

I will say that the common ECW talking point of "fun at the time, but the shit does not age well at all" did not apply to me at all for the most part, but with Raven I find it to be very true. I didn't loathe him as a kid, but I was disinterested in him. Looking back I can see the argument that he was a "timely" character, but it's not a character that plays well in 2013 at all.

 

In the ring? I can't think of any Raven ECW standout performance. This is particularly amazing when you consider how much ECW I watched. Even Lance Storm who I thought was transparently shitty had one match I can point to offhand where I thought he had a really strong performance (v. Dreamer Hardcore Heaven 99). I can think of Raven performances where he was decent, but nothing standout. I can't think of any run of really good Raven matches or even GOOD Raven matches. I can't think of a single thing Raven did particularly well in the ring. Was he as awful as your Tiger Jeet Singh's or Bob Brown's? No. Was he bad? I would say yes and he certainly was a lot worse than even I was expecting.

 

I am not really a fan of Raven in WCW, but I have argued many times about the fact that he was very over and it seemed to me that they didn't go far enough with him. I think his best run as a worker was there too though even then he just seemed like a guy who was in good situations. I still can't put to a marquee Raven performance. Maybe it exists but nothing stands out and I'd have to be convinced.

 

WWF stuff was not very good by any metric as I recall. It's possible if I went back and watched WWF b-shows my mind would change. Unlikely.

 

Oh and why Sandman wasn't a great wrestler, I think he was much better in ring than Raven

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Raven wasn't making Richards more entertaining and watchable.

If you ignore the fact he provided Richards with pretty much all the funny gimmicks and stuff he was doing at the time, maybe he wasn't... Richards had all the talent in the world to to it, but Raven came up with it. It's not like Richards did anything very notable post ECW either BTW.

 

Oh and why Sandman wasn't a great wrestler, I think he was much better in ring than Raven

That's the only thing I really agree with.

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It's strange.

 

I didn't care that much for the Raven character at the time, nor for his work. Thought he was overrated at the time, but then again... I didn't care for ECW in general at the time for reasons that are in one of the poster's signatures.

 

But if you gave me the choice between watching Scotty talk about wrestling for 40 hours or watching 40 hours of Scotty wrestling & mic work & angles, I'd take the wrestling. Scotty talking about his own brilliance was annoying back in the 90s... I really don't want to see it now.

 

John

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There's a good chunk of Raven promos on the 96 yearbook and pretty much all of them looked forced. I'm not 100% sure how you'd describe his character, but for an intelligent quasi-psychotic who was notable for promos at the time, Brian Pillman showed up in ECW and did that 15 million times better (and beat up a pencil which slides it in a hugely unfair tilt). Raven was the least interesting part of all of those pulp fiction montages and his rambling about Whatever the Shit it Was just sounded nonsensical instead of sounding like it came from an eccentric mastermind. I liked that part of a pulp fiction montage where he laughed and cackled like a serial killer, s'about it.

 

Isn't there an ULTIMATE GREAT Raven v Kaz Hayashi?

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I quite liked those shows he did breaking down what a face and what a heel does in a match. The idea of "showing ass", all of that stuff was reasonably interesting. I listened to it on a business trip to Chicago, so have an acute memory of wandering through this mall hearing him go on about fundamental match structures.

 

Those couple of shows are easily better than anything I've seen of Raven's in the ring or on the mic. I never got into ECW, but one of these days, I will check it out again with Dylan as a guide through it. It's very low priority right now though.

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