Comments that don't warrant a thread - Part 4

[The Thread Killer]

Ricky Johnson was a staple of the independent wrestling scene in the Toronto area back in the 90s when I used to go to shows. I knew that he and Rocky Johnson (or he and “Sweet Ebony Diamond”) had been a team in the Toronto territory back in the day and he used to bill himself as “The Rock’s Uncle” at shows, but I always assumed that Rocky and Ricky were brothers in the same way the Valiants or Graham’s were brothers. I met him once, and he was a super nice guy. It was nice to read this article and see that not only was he really Rocky Johnson’s brother, but it sounds like he really is a nice guy, trying to be a family member to all those displaced kids his brother ignored.

[Blehschmidt]

Season 4 of Young Rock just got way more interesting.

[sek69]

11 minutes ago, Blehschmidt said:

Season 4 of Young Rock just got way more interesting.

My thought was "looks like Rock has more people to buy houses for now".

[funkdoc]

One of my friends' favorite wrestlers just put out a highlight reel:

i'm impressed for someone so new to the business (and who's already received enough toxic harassment over being transgender that she considered retirement recently)!  Someone i'll definitely be rooting for going forward

[Al]

Bandit caught my eye at the Pride and Vice weekend. They definitely seem like someone fun to watch.

[KawadaSmile]

After sadly watching two fuckers stabbing each other's arms with broken lighttubes - as in, a stabbing duel - with full fucking force, clicking away before the obvious outcome, aka a huge, massive no-no, I am this close to thinking deathmatch wrestling might be the dumbest fucking thing ever and I think less of BJW, Onita and FMW for going batshit crazy with their ideas.

[sek69]

Amazing, Abe Lincoln cut a promo on George Washington and it's not really much different than one you'd hear today 

[Johnny Sorrow]

8 hours ago, KawadaSmile said:

After sadly watching two fuckers stabbing each other's arms with broken lighttubes - as in, a stabbing duel - with full fucking force, clicking away before the obvious outcome, aka a huge, massive no-no, I am this close to thinking deathmatch wrestling might be the dumbest fucking thing ever and I think less of BJW, Onita and FMW for going batshit crazy with their ideas.

Of course it's fucking dumb. But wrestling is fucking dumb. You can't blame Onita and company for some assholes taking this shit too far. 
I don't blame Yes for creating Radiohead. 

[El-P]

1 hour ago, Johnny Sorrow said:

I don't blame Radiohead for creating Codplay & Muse.

I stand corrected.

But yeah, what deathmatch workers do now, and have done since about more than 20 years now, is far removed from the ideas of Onita. The US indy sleaze scene from the early 00's is much more to blame. Well, and Great Kojika I guess.

[sek69]

It was always interesting how the guys you could say pioneered the deathmatch style where people like Abdullah and the Sheik, both of whom worked well into their senior years with minimal decline. Their style seemed like a "safer" style, as weird as that sounds. Makes you wonder if having forehead scars you could lose a quarter in was a better side effect of bein a pro wrestler than what a lot of guys deal with now. 

[El-P]

Don't you wish pro-wrestler had seasons ? I actually liked that about Lucha Underground. I'm at the point I would gladly take a month off and benefit from the anticipation of the beginning of a new season, with a fresh mindset.

[pmo]

2 hours ago, El-P said:

Don't you wish pro-wrestler had seasons ? I actually liked that about Lucha Underground. I'm at the point I would gladly take a month off and benefit from the anticipation of the beginning of a new season, with a fresh mindset.

Oh God yes.  The WWE should have done this years ago.  They could stagger the off-season between brands with like Raw taking September, SmackDown December, and NXT May. This way you can book with a beginning and a climax.  Season finale for Raw would be SummerSlam, Smackdown survivor series, and NXT backlash.  This allows you to avoid MNF for Raw, Christmas for Smackdown, and NXT gets the left overs.  In between the other brands can do takeovers and/or run a tournament like KOR that can be a separate thing.  This way you give wrestlers time off and more importantly give the booking teams time to recharge while letting the other brands get extra time to build out angles and such.

[KawadaSmile]

7 hours ago, Johnny Sorrow said:

I don't blame Yes for creating Radiohead. 

Fucking lol

You're right, but it was more in jest.

6 hours ago, El-P said:

The US indy sleaze scene from the early 00's is much more to blame. Well, and Great Kojika I guess.

Ian Rotten's fucked up legacy lives on

5 hours ago, sek69 said:

It was always interesting how the guys you could say pioneered the deathmatch style where people like Abdullah and the Sheik, both of whom worked well into their senior years with minimal decline. Their style seemed like a "safer" style, as weird as that sounds. Makes you wonder if having forehead scars you could lose a quarter in was a better side effect of bein a pro wrestler than what a lot of guys deal with now. 

I've seen clips of Abdullah working his ass off and being really fucking athletic in the 70s. As much shit as they get, both really knew how to draw money and be stars without killing themselves or their opponents. 

[El-P]

8 minutes ago, KawadaSmile said:

As much shit as they get, both really knew how to draw money and be stars without killing themselves or their opponents. 

Abdullah dropping the infamous greco-roman hepatitis on his opponents wasn't exactly the safest spot either.

It was also a very different context where "freaks" were still drawing people. I mean, Abby was actually a good worker, but the Sheik was a perennial novelty act.

[The Thread Killer]

On 6/22/2022 at 7:21 PM, Alucard said:

with the new date of July 9th, lots of changes....  Adam Scherr/braun strowman is off the card and replaced by Moose. this is the new updated lineup

 

WES World Championship: Moose (replacing Adam Scherr) vs. former UFC Star, Alistair Overeem

WES Womens Championship: Lina Fanene (nia jax) vs. CJ Perry (lana)

WES Tag Team Championships: The Legion of Pain (AOP) vs. BT Gunn & Kez Evans (replacing wesley blake & steve maclin)

WES Womens Tag Team Championships: Anastasia & Steph de Lander vs. The She Wolves.  (replaced original match of The Influence vs  Deonna/Chelsea)

Samuray Del Sol vs. Lince Dorado (removing Killer Kross & Jonah)

Dean Muhtadi (mojo rawley) vs. Damo Mackle (big damo/killian dain)

preshow:

Eric Young vs. Zac Zodiac (replacing Mike Bennett vs. Biff Busick)

Levis Valenzuela Jr. (no way jose) vs. Jody Fleisch (replacing Dirty Dango)

 

So, to the absolute surprise of no one, it sounds like this show is going to turn out to be a fiasco. The former Aiden English went on a bit of a Twitter rant today, complaining that he cancelled a booking in order to work on the show, but never got his deposit and now the guys running the show are ghosting him. 

[WingedEagle]

Are there any Cagematch-style MMA sites where people UFC fights?

[Al]

51 minutes ago, WingedEagle said:

Are there any Cagematch-style MMA sites where people UFC fights?

Sherdog?

[The Thread Killer]

2 hours ago, WingedEagle said:

Are there any Cagematch-style MMA sites where people UFC fights?

Most major MMA fighters have a detailed breakdown of their Won/Loss record as part of their Wikipedia pages too…which of course is only helpful if they are a big enough name to warrant their own Wikipedia page. But for last night’s UFC show for example, I was able to find the W-L record with details on Wikipedia, including who they had fought, and when. I found that helpful.

But Al is also correct, Sherdog was also a great resource, although I haven’t used it in years…but from what I recall you’ll need a good pop-up and ad blocker.

[Dale Wolfe]

3 hours ago, WingedEagle said:

Are there any Cagematch-style MMA sites where people UFC fights?

Assuming you mean where people rate/rank fights, Tapology is the closest you'll get to Cagematch 

https://www.tapology.com/rankings/4498-2022-mma-fights-of-the-year

It does skew very heavily to UFC on the whole, though 

[WingedEagle]

2 hours ago, Dale Wolfe said:

Assuming you mean where people rate/rank fights, Tapology is the closest you'll get to Cagematch 

https://www.tapology.com/rankings/4498-2022-mma-fights-of-the-year

It does skew very heavily to UFC on the whole, though 

Perfect, thanks.  That is indeed what I meant.  Would help not to post before coffee!

[Embrodak]

Let’s be real, The Sheik worked because he was basically the only guy doing that shit on a regular basis and came up in an era where guys had more charisma and Star power on average.

[The Thread Killer]

On 7/2/2022 at 1:53 PM, The Thread Killer said:

So, to the absolute surprise of no one, it sounds like this WES show is going to turn out to be a fiasco. The former Aiden English went on a bit of a Twitter rant today, complaining that he cancelled a booking in order to work on the show, but never got his deposit and now the guys running the show are ghosting him. 

The unravelling continues.  The former Nia Jax has now tweeted that she is not happy these guys are continuing to promote her as appearing on this show, as she will not be. So this is turning out pretty much exactly like everybody predicted it would.  It is perversely entertaining to observe from a distance, if not a little sad.

[NintendoLogic]

Didn't Sheik nearly burn to death in FMW?

Regardless, I have noticed a strong correlation, albeit an imperfect one, between the decline in forehead blading in wrestling and the dramatic increase in high-risk spots and bumps. It's probably something that warrants exploring in greater detail. By the way, Radiohead is a far superior band to Yes.

[El-P]

57 minutes ago, NintendoLogic said:

Didn't Sheik nearly burn to death in FMW?

Yes. 

57 minutes ago, NintendoLogic said:

Regardless, I have noticed a strong correlation, albeit an imperfect one, between the decline in forehead blading in wrestling and the dramatic increase in high-risk spots and bumps. It's probably something that warrants exploring in greater detail.

Yeah, I thought about this before. But not only correlation doesn't equal causality (obviously), in the end the correlation also doesn't work that well I thought. For instance, AEW is by far the bloodiest mainstream pro-wrestling promotion since JCP (or WWF during the early Attitude Era), and it's also the heaviest ever in term of high-risks and crazy bumps. Blading really stopped in the US mainstream not because it was replaced in term of producing a spectacular visual (or because the average athletic level got better, or the influence of guys like Micheals, or the influence of lucha-libre in WCW) but because of WWE going public and looking for big time advertisers. It's also notable the style of WWE wrestling at the time was also much tamer in term of high-risks spots and bumps than it has been a few years earlier (Attitude Era and the following years) and than what was happening in ROH or TNA (which also had the bloody Abyss style matches, as one way to be an alternative). There are really a multitude of factors playing in, a lot of which have really nothing to do with actual in-ring style tendencies, but rather political and economical. There also are cultural factors (VIH and hepatitis awareness) and yes indeed, certainly a switch toward a style more impressive in term of moves (aka a much more real demonstration of actual physical skills) also played a part for sure in why some old tricks were seen as less needed. 

Interestingly enough, the latest cage matches in STARDOM worked wonders without the use of blood, and it's not like joshi doesn't have a history of bloody matches, but the politics of the promotion probably plays a big part in why this was worked the way it was (let's not kid ourselves, looks play a big part in that company and how they promote their talent, which doesn't detracts anything from their in-ring talent). And they really did a great use of the cage gimmick, much better actually than plenty bloody matches which have blood only because cage = blood (and much better than WWE ever did in term of escape cage match rules).

[strobogo]

The bloodiest time in WWE was post going public, though. The Ruthless Aggression era right up to the Benoit murders had some of the most insane blade jobs outside of a deathmatch promotion.