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Your Wrestling Pet Peeves/Utter Hatreds


JaymeFuture

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This one has been driving me insane lately: Armchair Doctors.

 

Every fan these days seems to know what's best for the wrestlers. These fans know what bumps they should or shouldn't take, what injuries they should or shouldn't come back from, when they need to retire, what style of wrestling they should use, etc.

 

Despite knowing nothing about bumping besides what they've seen on Tough Enough or heard in shoot interviews.

Despite (probably) not having a sports medicine background.

Despite (probably) not having an athletic background.

 

Drives me nuts.

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Yeah, that too. Especially how they lump all of "hardcore" wrestling together into one group, like it's all equally bad for your long-term health. People don't seem to understand that a long WWF-style main event with a hundred back-bumps is actually worse for your body and your brain than the vast majority of stabbing-the-forehead deathmatches.

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Secondly, Bill, if you think Sasha is in the same stratosphere as Neville or Finn technically you're out of your mind. I get preferring her as an act (she's a better character, certainly, and I'm no particular fan of either of those guys as overall professional wrestlers), but those guys are crisp as anything; she simply isn't at their level when it comes to actual technique. Neville in particular, for all the negatives one could toss his way, is unreal-crisp.

 

I think she's easily just as technically proficient and crisp as either one of them, yes. There really isn't anything special about either Balor or Neville when it comes to crispness or technique though, so it's not really saying all that much to say she's better than them.

 

100% agreed. Sasha blows those two out of the water. Heck even Becky is way better.

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"Utter hatred" is way too strong but I do have a pet peeve: I dislike when all tag team matches are worked with the same formulaic "face in peril" style. Some of the best tag matches I've ever seen have been worked that way but I like to see different stories play out in the ring too, ya know?

 

Even in throwaway 5-8 minute tag matches, WWE tries to do this. To this day. It's crazy.

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The term "grapplefuck." Sounds like the hardcore section on jobberuniverse.com

 

I have no idea what that means, but I imagine it would either be hilarious or horrifying based on context.

 

It's a term some people use for the Timothy Thatcher/Biff Busick/Drew Gulak stuff.

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"Utter hatred" is way too strong but I do have a pet peeve: I dislike when all tag team matches are worked with the same formulaic "face in peril" style. Some of the best tag matches I've ever seen have been worked that way but I like to see different stories play out in the ring too, ya know?

 

Tito Santana would disagree. ;)

 

But yeah. People often gush about "storytelling" in wrestling, but the truth is, not that many stories are told. Not that much variations, which is too bad.

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"Utter hatred" is way too strong but I do have a pet peeve: I dislike when all tag team matches are worked with the same formulaic "face in peril" style. Some of the best tag matches I've ever seen have been worked that way but I like to see different stories play out in the ring too, ya know?

 

Even in throwaway 5-8 minute tag matches, WWE tries to do this. To this day. It's crazy.

Along those lines, I dislike that nearly all American matches have to have a "BIG FINISH!" Nobody ever loses because of a gradual accumulation of punishment - one more move after a 2-3/4 count, for example. It's always gotta be something big. That's just one of the (million) things I like about 1990s All Japan - great climax finishes that aren't just "MAJOR MOVE ENDS IT ALL". Kobashi kicks out after a big move, Misawa hits a couple elbows, it's over. Much more logical.

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That's what I loved about, what was it...I think that Rusev/Cesaro/Owens match on Raw a couple weeks ago. Rusev and Cesaro had been throwing bombs at each other forever, and in the end, Cesaro barely survived something and then copped a kick to the face and just...died. No finisher, just the final bomb that he couldn't get up from.

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It's all about accumulative selling which, as I've written/ranted about before, is nowhere near good enough in 99% of "BIG FINISH!" runs. Similarly, they're almost-religiously back and forth and all too frequently ditch whatever "story" was going on for the first half. The drama in the great AJ matches came from being the opposite of the above.

 

On that note, 12/6/96: sometimes evil just prevails. Shakespeare's tragedies are performed considerably more often than his histories/comedies.

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Apparently, no we cannot. When I was still working shows in Tennessee, I couldn't BEGIN to guess how many times some out-of-shape indy worker told me that Memphis-style bullshit was "what the people want to see", at shows where there were typically less than a hundred people in the crowd.

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That formula has evolved over the years, though. The heat really was the finishing stretch in the old days, because the match would usually end within a minute of the hot tag. At some point, that changed and the hot tag became the beginning of the finishing stretch. I'm sure there were others before this, but Midnight Express-Southern Boys at the 1990 Great American Bash was one of the first high-profile matches worked that way.

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Yea I don't know exactly what El-P's post is referring to. Is it talking about tag matches? Booking? The "walk and talk" Memphis style of limited guys stalling and not doing much? There is a lot of things that could fit under the umbrella of "Southern style" although I don't really see anyone holding it up as a great standard anywhere other than maybe tag matches.

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I hate the super rehearsed gimmicky WWE entrances. A guy like Ryback does the same little moves, the same screams, the same looks at the camera, the same poses, every single time. I'm using him as an example but really this applies to 90% of the WWE roster. Their entrances are exactly like a video game entrance.

 

People like Hogan and Goldberg it as well, but I never found it fake or scripted looking.

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I hate the super rehearsed gimmicky WWE entrances. A guy like Ryback does the same little moves, the same screams, the same looks at the camera, the same poses, every single time. I'm using him as an example but really this applies to 90% of the WWE roster. Their entrances are exactly like a video game entrance.

 

This 1000%. It's so annoying and devoid of any personnality. Then we they get to the ring, they do exactly the same movements/screams too. And when they get to the second rope to do a pose, it looks like a fucking animatronic (cf Randy Orton, king of void). No intent or "character work" , just a pre-planned routine that they'll do every fucking time the same fucking way.

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Actually, the "Southern Tag" name might be a good peeve.

 

Does anyone really think the style was invented in the South? Perfected in the South? Or... anything in the South, other than just worked like it was elsewhere?

 

Here are the Millers and Kagaroos going right into FIP and Southern Style by the 3:00 of the clip, with double teams, distractions of the rough, standard work by the "guy on the apron", falls tag attempts, and finally the hot tag.

 

 

The AWA had tag matches back to the beginning. Think they weren't working "Southern Tag" matches?

 

We could probably read clippings of early tag matches once the standard form of working them got down pat and see the makings of a Southern Tag match right there from the start.

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