Bill Demott is not a good human Thread

[Matt Farmer]

Some of the best trainers in the world were never top draws. In fact in many cases top guys have a hard time transferring their talents over to thing like commentary or training where the goal is to put something over besides themselves.

 

Ric Flair was a great wrestler, does not mean he would be a good trainer. And I think he has even mentioned that before.

 

A great wrestling trainer is able to properly train you in fundamentals, timing, execution, placement in the ring and the right and wrong ways to conduct yourself. Teaching a trainee phycology is almost too much too soon, and really should not even be attempted to a certain point. It will go over most peoples heads and they won't even get it for another 5 years or more of working consistently.

 

Look at guys like Diablo Velasco, Stu Hart, Rip Rogers, Danny Davis and Brad Rheingans. Those guys weren't top draws but turned into very successful trainers, and in the case of Stu Hart the period where he produced a lot of great talent his trainers were journey men Japanese guys who had great training in their dojo's.

[Loss]

Has Stan Lane ever talked about Ric Flair's training?

[artDDP]

Why does WWE in 2015 think they need a drill sergeant trainer? The only people they get behind are fast-tracked pretty boys or genetic freaks. Is it really worth the abuse just to wind up floundering around the midcard like everyone else?

[DMJ]

I don't want to re-open the discussion but I'm gonna kinda re-open the discussion.  

I've been going through the WCW PPVs from 92' to the end and I'm in the final 4-5 months.

Bill Demott - as General Rection - is consistently not good. He has matches against Lance Storm and Shane Douglas around this time and its just clear that "Rection" is just as generic and milquetoast and lazy as they come. Just not good at all. 

And, in 95'/96', when he first came on the scene in WCW, he was a worker that made me, as a kid, turn my head. The No Laughing Matter was great. I liked the Chris Farley-as-the-Riddler-on-mushrooms bizarreness of his Dungeon of Doom gimmick. It was unique and, in ring, he was doing some cool stuff for a big guy.

But a few years later, as his "gimmickless self," basically just Bill Demott with a goofy name, his promos are unremarkable and unhip. His in-ring work is bad. He is unable to garner any sort of crowd reaction and is considerably slower and less fun to watch. 

So, why again was this dude a head trainer? What friends did he have in high places? Is it also one of those things where, because he was doing good work for like 18 months in the mid-90s, he had a reputation as being a "good hand" despite him becoming utter shit by 99'?

[C.S.]

To be fair, he was probably beaten down and broken by '99 - like the majority of the WCW roster at the time. Plus, his name was General Hugh G. Rection - what's the fucking point of putting in any effort when your career and push are DOA anyway with a name like that?

Not that I'm the Bill DeMott defense force - far from it. His training methods were exposed as nothing short of awful. Even on worked/kayfabed shows like Tough Enough, he came across pretty poorly. 

Part of is "this is how rasslin' used to be" *spits tobacco* and he didn't/couldn't change with the times, wasn't able to realize that the paradigm had shifted, and was ultimately used as a scapegoat by a front office that willingly encouraged his behavior or at least willfully looked the other way for many years. Not that I'm absolving him of his sins - he was a pretty shitty trainer and person by all accounts, and who knows how many future main eventers he drove away with his bullshit. (Kenny Omega?)

[El-P]

40 minutes ago, DMJ said:

Bill Demott - as General Rection - is consistently not good. He has matches against Lance Storm and Shane Douglas around this time and its just clear that "Rection" is just as generic and milquetoast and lazy as they come. Just not good at all. 

Yeah, that struck me too when I was doing the WCW Highway to Hell. There was this idea at one time that the Morrus push had been long overdue and that he was finally getting a shot and that his stuff was some of the only good in-ring work of WCW at the time. And really.... No. Storm was having good matches with everyone. A way past his prime, banged up Douglas was making chicken salad out of chicken shit most of the time. And yet Demott could not have a good match with either of the two. He sucked as a promo. It's a clear case of "This guy was underrated" when infact he wasn't. At his best, Morrus was a decent big guy with a moonsault. Good use of him as a JTTS and doing tag matches in the undercard. As far as training goes, no fucking clue why.

[The Thread Killer]

The greatest contribution Hugh Morris ever made to wrestling was being on the receiving end of, what I believe to be, the very first "What" promo by Stone Cold Steve Austin.

"Your name is Hugh Morris. What?  Is that supposed to be humorous? What?"

[sek69]

He did a season of Tough Enough, and somehow that was sufficent for WWE to think "well that guy should be a full time trainer". Personally I think it a little of the old school mentality where you have a hard ass weed out the folks not cut out for this rasslin' stuff.  

[Alucard]

I also remember it seeming like in his later days WCW US title push, that it was treated like a feel good this hard worker guy deserves this push kind of thing but I haven't rewatched any of that since so it sounds like it certainly doesn't hold up well.

[sek69]

The thing about WCW in that time period is there was so much Hogan/Nash fuckery going on, that anyone who was a decent wrestler stuck in the lower midcard got lumped in the "this guy deserves better" category.