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Comments that don't warrant a thread - Part 4


TravJ1979

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So I jumped on that Fite+ gimmick and have been watching some GCW shows, and I have to say this is the closest I've seen anyone recapture the vibe of prime ECW.  From the cable access aesthetics to seemingly every show having both great wrestling and violent bullshit, I half expect to see Paul E come out and cut a promo on each show. 

Another thing that stands out is the love the fans have for everyone that is on the show. I know Nick Gage isn't going to be everyone's cup of tea, but the GCW fans fucking LOVE this guy. He has such a great redemption story for pro wrestling and him doing things like doing inspirational Cameos for people and having that Eddie Kingston real-as-fuck mentality make him such a perfect avatar for the company. 

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4 hours ago, sek69 said:

Another thing that stands out is the love the fans have for everyone that is on the show. I know Nick Gage isn't going to be everyone's cup of tea, but the GCW fans fucking LOVE this guy. 

I must say, this was pretty awesome

Maybe I should try it. Too close to a wrestling burnout though, but I admit lots of GCW shows have cool stuff happening.

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Probably not worth starting its own thread, just some thoughts about how heel dynamics in wrestling have changed and not for the better. 
 

If a ‘heel’ is management or friends with management it seems they can get away with never having a payoff to their heeling. For every Vince McMahon willing to create a super over babyface in Stone Cold Steve Austin we have had several instances where the heel never faces any real consequences for their actions. 
 

The NWO mocked Arn Anderson’s retirement and the Four Horsemen in WCW, they never paid for that and gave the babyfaces a triumph. Curt Henning turned on the Horsemen in what should have been a blowoff match, and any relevance or momentum the Horsemen had remaining after Arn Anderson’s heartfelt retirement speech and passing of the torch was gone. 
 

Sting was setup as a super babyface to end the NWO’s reign of terror. Thanks to backstage politics, being friends with the boss, and general bad decisions that storyline was ruined with Sting getting an overbooked and tainted victory.

The Authority ran roughshod over WWE for years. WWE was finally pushed to put over Daniel Bryan, but once he won the title was booked terribly. Roman Reigns was the next man to try to stop the Authority, but even though he won and put an end to them he was undercut by the perception that he was handpicked by the company plus terrible booking and only really recovered in the last few years. 
 

It seems times have changed and instead of building a heel to put over the babyface it’s all cool heels that get cheered for being assholes or the company setting themselves up as heels but never really facing any consequences. There’s no satisfying payoff, no one gets over, and the corporation is the most important thing overall instead of the wrestlers or fans. It killed WCW and killed a lot of interest in WWE. It led to things like WWE reenacting the screw job every time they went to Montreal. Sure, Bret beat Vince McMahon years later in a symbolic victory, but the damage had already been done. 
 

There are probably plenty of other examples. I just don’t care for it. 

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There's also that making the company a heel, you just train the audience that even when the babyface gets a win they'll just rug-pulled because management always has final say. Vince knew that at one point, since he put in the greatest heel performance ever getting Austin over. 

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I know people bring up Hunter sandbagging Roman in their 2016 run but yeah no one believed that there was a backstage push against Roman. He was clearly the corporate choice and no one believed he was being held down like Bryan the previous couple years. That was an awful storyline that they for some reason brought back with Roman against Brock two years later.

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I dunno, bubba. Roman was supposed to win at WM31 against Lesnar and they crowned Rollins instead, and who the fuck knows where that first title reign of his would have ended if not for him trying to be overly cute with his spots.

They were way less shy to give Rollins the title than with Roman in the mid 2010s, no way of disputing that.

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On 11/24/2022 at 10:51 AM, sek69 said:

So I jumped on that Fite+ gimmick and have been watching some GCW shows, and I have to say this is the closest I've seen anyone recapture the vibe of prime ECW.  From the cable access aesthetics to seemingly every show having both great wrestling and violent bullshit, I half expect to see Paul E come out and cut a promo on each show. 

Lauderdale tries sometimes, but he's a very poor man's Paul E when it comes to that.

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On 11/25/2022 at 9:28 PM, KawadaSmile said:

I dunno, bubba. Roman was supposed to win at WM31 against Lesnar and they crowned Rollins instead, and who the fuck knows where that first title reign of his would have ended if not for him trying to be overly cute with his spots.

They were way less shy to give Rollins the title than with Roman in the mid 2010s, no way of disputing that.

Roman was getting booed out of the building everywhere he went, they were petrified of Roman winning in the main event and hit with a tsunami of boos as the fireworks went off. What’s funny is that was actually a fantastic match where Roman was totally getting over as a babyface, but they had no way of knowing that in advance. Roman didn’t really get over consistently as a baby face until he came back from his cancer hiatus.

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The thing is that while Seth was champ, Roman was feuding with people like Big Show and Bray Wyatt, with his matches being the best ones in the card and always making the crowd turn around and cheer him. Dude was a scapegoat for the crowd's frustrations of not pushing Bryan, yet made the most out of it.

Truly a man who is capable of beating all the odds.

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3 hours ago, NintendoLogic said:

Hogan in Japan is quite overrated. You watch one match and it's cool to see him actually wrestle, but when you watch more of him it becomes apparent that he just has a handful of canned mat sequences that don't go anywhere or lead to anything.

That as may be, but I will say that based on my recollection, that match Hogan had with Abdullah in New Japan in May 82 was probably one of the best matches I remember either guy having in their entire lengthy careers. As far as bloody big guy brawls go. I certainly enjoyed it more than 99% of the crap Hogan did in the WWF during the 80’s.

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17 hours ago, NintendoLogic said:

If you thought Jun Akiyama facing Eddie Kingston was crazy, that's nothing compared to this past weekend when he wrestled Joey Janela in a TLC match.

There are no words.

This is probably why Joey Janela is better off on the indies. To be able to do stuff like this. (or maybe I wanted AEW to be more of this and less of "Wardlow's World" and Bow Wow angles...)

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