Comments that don't warrant a thread - Part 4

[NintendoLogic]

WOS matches tended to favor comedy and slick grappling because the TV audience consisted mainly of children and grannies and the concern was that anything too violent or aggressive would scare them off. With that said, matches with serious heat did sneak through on occasion. Check this out.

[KawadaSmile]

This bozo is essentially saying "That doesn't work for me, brother". He's playing the villain and is refusing to do the job!

[brockobama]

Rock did the same thing in the Fast and Furious series right? Man's a born wrestler

2 hours ago, NintendoLogic said:

WOS matches tended to favor comedy and slick grappling because the TV audience consisted mainly of children and grannies and the concern was that anything too violent or aggressive would scare them off.

Was this always the case? Like much of this WOS footage comes from later airings on some "men and movies" block that clearly caters to a very different audience. Surely cultural perspectives of British wrestling shifted around over time the same as with American wrestling.

At some point I'm just gonna have to read that John Lister book.

[KawadaSmile]

1 hour ago, brockobama said:

Rock did the same thing in the Fast and Furious series right? Man's a born wrestler

IIRC both Vin Diesel and The Rock were having huge ego trips, and worked their way into not only avoiding their characters do the job, but also have less screen time than the other. I don't remember if that also ended up applying to Jason Statham.

Makes you wonder how they got him to take the fall in Doom.

[ohtani's jacket]

1 hour ago, brockobama said:

Rock did the same thing in the Fast and Furious series right? Man's a born wrestler

Was this always the case? Like much of this WOS footage comes from later airings on some "men and movies" block that clearly caters to a very different audience. Surely cultural perspectives of British wrestling shifted around over time the same as with American wrestling.

At some point I'm just gonna have to read that John Lister book.

There were rules about what they were allowed to show on TV. In the halls, they often had blood and gimmick matches, but they weren't allowed to show these things on ITV. This type of wrestling had been prevalent before they introduced the Mountevans Rules in the late 40s/early 50s. They call it the "all in" style. Rival promoters Paul Lincoln and Brian Dixon often booked "all in" matches, billing it as the wrestling you couldn't see on television. The US worker Chris Colt had a match with Mick McMichael that they wouldn't air on ITV because it was deemed too violent, and once Dixon got his hands on Colt, he began promoting him as the man they wouldn't let you see on TV. 

What we consider classic WoS from the 70s was actually a down period for British wrestling. It had a brief shot in the arm from Daddy's popularity, but the early 70s stuff is a down period. The crowds vary from region to region, but they were always more interested in seeing the entertainers than the pure grapplers. Walton often puts over the grappling matches as matches for the purists, but if you listen carefully to Walton you can tell when he's frustrated by a wrestler's performance or a bad match. He had a subtle way of burying wrestlers when he wasn't impressed. The crowds are generally loud for the Big Daddy stuff, and for the loud mouth American heels like John Quinn. 

What's interesting about 1960s wrestling is that the crowd wear formal evening clothes. You get the impression that wrestling was so big in the 60s that it was like going to an evening show. The 70s crowds are much more casual. The uncut ITV vault footage often starts rolling the cameras pre-match and you get banter from Walton where he discusses the evening's crowd. There's one match where he talks shit about some eccentric woman who has brought some homemade gift she made for Wayne Bridges.  

[brockobama]

Were they drawing different crowds to television tapings versus untelevised shows then? Hard to tell, from the ITV match listings, how many of these events were our equivalent of touring house shows or if it was virtually all taped and there's just little surviving footage.

Fascinating to hear about guys garnering a reputation as "too hot for TV", that's classic wrestling.

[strobogo]

I've never understood the quiet Japanese crowds deal. Going back to even the JWA days are some of the hottest crowds anywhere. Maybe a more respectful crowd in terms of jeering and heckling, but not quiet.

[KawadaSmile]

Yeah, that CanAm Express vs Kobashi/Kikuchi crowd is essentially the most excited I have seen a crowd be.

[ohtani's jacket]

13 hours ago, brockobama said:

Were they drawing different crowds to television tapings versus untelevised shows then? Hard to tell, from the ITV match listings, how many of these events were our equivalent of touring house shows or if it was virtually all taped and there's just little surviving footage.

Fascinating to hear about guys garnering a reputation as "too hot for TV", that's classic wrestling.

I'm not sure if the crowds were different for tapings vs house shows. I imagine the tapings must have drawn people who didn't routinely go to the house shows, but I can't say for sure. At its peak, Joint Promotions ran around 40 shows per week. I'm not sure how the TV was scheduled. It's never been clear to me whether it was scheduled from ITV's end or from Joint Promotion's end. They filmed matches from around the country. Mostly, they were Dale Martin shows, but occasionally, they'd show matches from the other promoters as well. There's almost no continuity to the television. You occasionally see a rematch from a few weeks before, and every now and again there's a match that's announced in advance, but it's nothing like American wrestling television. The halls were a bit different. They'd set up return matches for the following week much like the US territories did, and would add stips to matches.

From memory, the wrestlers received their schedules from the Joint offices, which included TV dates. I'm not sure how the wrestlers got booked on TV. I'm not sure if you made TV because the taping date matched your travel itinerary, or because you were popular and in demand. Basically, the cards would have around 6 matches and they'd tape the entire show and split it into two broadcasts. They didn't show every match (and the matches were generally clipped), but the full shows exist in the ITV archives. There is some debate about how much footage survives, as some people claim some of the footage was destroyed in some sort of accident. I know for a fact that late 60s footage survives. There's also more 70s and 80s footage in the archives that wasn't shown on The Wrestling Channel. The hope is that someday the footage becomes cheaper and more accessible. 

[Sweet Brown Koko]

I just finished rewatching one of my sneakily favorite matches. This is the first shot in the All Japan/New Japan feud. From what I remember All Japan and New Japan did a handshake in the ring agreeing to have matches with each other and Chono didn’t think All Japan had anything to offer after the split with Misawa that caused NOAH to form.
 

Fuchi is clearly outgunned against Chono but has to defend the honor of All Japan against the outsider. Fuchi will do ANYTHING to win and Chono shows his distain for both Fuchi and All Japan.

 

Just an excellent match that didn’t overstay its welcome. 

[C.S.]

On 8/15/2022 at 3:53 PM, KawadaSmile said:

This bozo is essentially saying "That doesn't work for me, brother". He's playing the villain and is refusing to do the job!

On 8/15/2022 at 4:07 PM, brockobama said:

Rock did the same thing in the Fast and Furious series right? Man's a born wrestler

Smart business sense, for Rock and everyone else.

What makes more sense? Combining Shazam and Black Adam into one bloated movie where nothing gets time, or getting three major movies (Shazam, Black Adam, Crossover Movie) out of it.

Ditto for expanding the Fast universe. Plus, Vin Diesel is a major candy ass who's impossible to work with, so there's that.

[Embrodak]

19 hours ago, strobogo said:

I've never understood the quiet Japanese crowds deal. Going back to even the JWA days are some of the hottest crowds anywhere. Maybe a more respectful crowd in terms of jeering and heckling, but not quiet.

Seems like it’s people who got into modern Japanese wrestling, where the crowds are either inconsistently hot or poorly-mic’ed, and backfilling their preexisting cultural stereotypes. Meanwhile, I’ve rarely seen a crowd love a wrestler as much as Japan loved Terry Funk.

[strobogo]

18 minutes ago, Embrodak said:

Seems like it’s people who got into modern Japanese wrestling, where the crowds are either inconsistently hot or poorly-mic’ed, and backfilling their preexisting cultural stereotypes. Meanwhile, I’ve rarely seen a crowd love a wrestler as much as Japan loved Terry Funk.

It isn't a modern thing, though. That's been a talking point online since the late 90s/early 00s if not earlier

[NintendoLogic]

I'm pretty sure the quiet Japanese fans talking point comes from Western fans whose first exposure to puro was New Japan juniors matches. Outside of junior-centric shows like the Super J Cup, crowds did largely sit on their hands and offer little more than polite applause for those matches, particularly during the obligatory time-killing matwork in the opening minutes. That was especially true at the Tokyo Dome, which has notoriously terrible acoustics.

[El-P]

Older american wrestlers have talked about the "quiet Japanese crowds" forever in shoot interviews, and how this was odd for them at first. Of course when you watch some 80's matches from NJPW or Zenjo with crowds going batshit crazy, there's a disconnect here but then again, not every US workers who went on tour over there was able to get those kind of reactions either.

[ohtani's jacket]

Quiet Japanese crowds are real. Rowdy Japanese crowds are real too. 

[Phil Schneider]

I really got to go full Segunda Caida/DVDVR for this Ringer article. Zona 23, Fujiwara, Dundee, Black Terry, Gypsy Joe

https://www.theringer.com/2022/8/17/23308791/best-wrestling-matches-wrestlers-over-60?utm_campaign=theringer&utm_content=chorus&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter

 

[sek69]

So the digging in to Vince's payments showed he gave $5 million to Trump's org off the books, it showed that he had his people make sure it was in the WrestleMania contract that Vince couldn't say he had to shave his head even if his wrestler (Lashley) dropped dead in the ring. 

Between this and him calling the day after the "Vince explodes in his limo" angle to make sure he was okay, it seems like Trump 100% believes wrestling is real. 

[ohtani's jacket]

Bert Royal has passed away.

https://slamwrestling.net/index.php/2022/08/20/british-star-bert-royal-dies/

[KawadaSmile]

Damn, no way!

[El-P]

A fascinating tidbit from Meltz talking about Howard Brody, who just passed away, he was the guy who bought the NJPW tapes and sold those to Eurosport in the 90's. So he's the reason I was exposed pretty early on (I figured it was 93/94 or something that I first saw them, as I clearly remember Beefcake wearing his Mania 9 mask making an appearance, yeah, I know, not always the best selection) to Japanese pro-wrestling (Liger, Hase, Sasaki, Muto, Hashimoto, and those older looking guys in black tights, not a bad start) and a bunch of people that would be familiar to me when they would pop up later on in WCW and WWF (Benoit, Malenko, Eddie, Scorpio, Vader). A pretty important part of my early years as a fan, when I think about it.

[Ricky Jackson]

Just a reminder, using accents in thread titles always screws them up 

[Blehschmidt]

Has Fred Ottman or anyone involved ever actually explained what the Shockmaster gimmick was meant to be, instead of just endlessly talking about him falling down?

[leo]

1 hour ago, Ricky Jackson said:

Just a reminder, using accents in thread titles always screws them up 

Sorry about that, I wasn’t aware. I have messaged @Loss and hopefully it can be fixed.

[The Thread Killer]

11 minutes ago, leo said:

Sorry about that, I wasn’t aware. I have messaged @Loss and hopefully it can be fixed.

You might want to message @sek69 because he is here all the time. Loss is embarrassed of us and never comes around anymore.