sek69 Posted January 22, 2006 Report Share Posted January 22, 2006 The way WWE currently is booked sets the young talent up to fail. If they aren't given a dead-end gimmick they're expected to cut promos and very few people have the charisma to not look like a doofus the first time they are handed a live mic on TV. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Bruiser Chong Posted January 22, 2006 Report Share Posted January 22, 2006 That's another thing. There were some awful gimmicks back then, but the ones now are usually tasteless and show what a terrible "sense of humor" Vince has. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sek69 Posted January 22, 2006 Report Share Posted January 22, 2006 When guys had a bad gimmick in the 80s they usually had a manager to help them talk. Even the Red Rooster had Bobby Heenan for chrissakes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Jack D. Ripper Posted January 22, 2006 Report Share Posted January 22, 2006 In the 80's, The IC always seemed more important than the HW. When talking about the great feuds of the 80's, the majority mentioned would probably be IC or Tag. I was of the Hulkamaniac age, but looking back the IC was where all the good action was. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sek69 Posted January 22, 2006 Report Share Posted January 22, 2006 The 80s WWF seemed to have something for everyone: there was usually an entertaining opener, maybe even featuring one of their famous jobbers like Pete Doherty or Iron Mike Sharpe (who had more personality than most of the OVW callups of late), an entertaining mid card match featuring someone like Tito Santana, and depending on which tour came to your town either a Hogan match to send the kids home happy or an IC match that usually featured the best workers in the company. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coffey Posted January 22, 2006 Report Share Posted January 22, 2006 I mean there are guys that have been in the company for 15+ years like the Undertaker and Shawn Michaels who haven't put anyone over during their entire stays. To be fair, HBK did give a pretty big rub to Steve Austin at Wrestlemania XIV. Austin was pretty popular at the time already but it certainly helped. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Bruiser Chong Posted January 22, 2006 Report Share Posted January 22, 2006 Except he wanted to back out at the last minute and only went through with it because the Undertaker threatened him with bodily harm. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marty Posted January 22, 2006 Report Share Posted January 22, 2006 I mean there are guys that have been in the company for 15+ years like the Undertaker and Shawn Michaels who haven't put anyone over during their entire stays.To be fair, HBK did give a pretty big rub to Steve Austin at Wrestlemania XIV. Austin was pretty popular at the time already but it certainly helped. Disagree about Undertaker, at least regarding the Brock Lesnar feud in 2002. I thought Brock should've beaten Taker in September, but the Hell In A Cell match really helped make Lesnar, and it was probably Lesnar's best match at that point too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coffey Posted January 22, 2006 Report Share Posted January 22, 2006 Except he wanted to back out at the last minute and only went through with it because the Undertaker threatened him with bodily harm. I've heard the Undertaker part was disproven? That's where he supposedly "stared while taping his fists" right? Regardless, HBK still went through with it, so the point stands. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Loss Posted January 22, 2006 Report Share Posted January 22, 2006 Shawn did put Austin over convincingly in that match, but 8 years later, who's retired and who's still a top star in the company? Weird how that works. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coffey Posted January 22, 2006 Report Share Posted January 22, 2006 Austin is in worse shape physically and has had multiple fallouts with the creative. It sucks because I'm not going to lie and act like I didn't wish he was still around. He's still damn entertaining to me and I didn't have a huge problem with him hitting the Stunner on "younger talent." I was, at the very least, hoping he'd become a color commentator one day. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Loss Posted January 22, 2006 Report Share Posted January 22, 2006 I didn't have a problem with it either until he started doing it to heels they were trying to put in fairly high-profile positions, namely Chris Jericho, Christian and Randy Orton. With Jericho especially, they built like they were going to have a major match at some point and I think they got people sort of wanting to see it, realized that's what fans were starting to expect and immediately stopped because they knew they couldn't deliver. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest DylanWaco Posted January 22, 2006 Report Share Posted January 22, 2006 Just to be clear, I liked the fact that the tag divisiion was much deeper and more respectable in the 80's. I also liked that titles meant more. But if you are seriously going to try and tell me that the average WWF match in the 80's is better than the average WWE match now I'm gonna need more than what I'm getting. I know no one is trying to convince anyone of anything, but I'm really sort of surprised that people are pimping 80's WWF at all as it has generally been regarded as the weakest periiod for them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Strummer Posted January 22, 2006 Author Report Share Posted January 22, 2006 Yup,the build up to Survivor Series 03 was perplexing as they had built up the Jericho/Austin stuff up since September and then it was quickly forgotten about a couple of weeks before the PPV. I think they just wanted Jericho to be the random heel to get over the GM firing story and they had no idea the two were going to get that much heat together. Jericho was basically the MCGuffin. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Loss Posted January 22, 2006 Report Share Posted January 22, 2006 I think the content was worse, but the presentation was better. Perhaps I didn't make that clear. The matches may not have been as good as a lot of the matches now, but they seemed more important and weren't nearly as repetitive because the talent wasn't getting burned out as fast with monthly PPVs and four hours of primetime TV every week. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coffey Posted January 22, 2006 Report Share Posted January 22, 2006 But if you are seriously going to try and tell me that the average WWF match in the 80's is better than the average WWE match now I'm gonna need more than what I'm getting.To be fair, the internet wasn't around and a lot of us were A LOT younger and more markish then. It didn't matter how good a match was to me back then, if the heel lost and the face won, I was happy. Going back and rewatching the stuff nowadays, it's not the same. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest DylanWaco Posted January 22, 2006 Report Share Posted January 22, 2006 Growing up in SC I was an NWA kid anyhow. I liked the WWF and watched every show they had, but NWA is where my heart was and I always thought they put on a much better product than the WWF. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Loss Posted January 22, 2006 Report Share Posted January 22, 2006 They did, I think. The NWA (and PWI magazine) is where I learned how to be a wrestling fan. Every fan is "trained", so to speak, on how to understand wrestling by the promotion and at that time the Apter mags when they're starting out. And while I agree with Meltzer that lots of JCP stuff has been overly romanticized, the best stuff still looks great today. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coffey Posted January 22, 2006 Report Share Posted January 22, 2006 We just had 2, 10 & 38 as channels when I was young because we couldn't afford cable. So the only wrestling I got to see was Main Event on NBC on Sat. nights. So it's all I knew until we got cable and TBS. I'd never even heard of Ric Flair until I was probably eight or nine years old. That's when I started watching NWA and watching Nikita Koloff, Michael Hayes and The Great Muta. Until then, it was all about Hogan. We used to order the Survivor Series every year since all the family was over for Thanksgiving. My brother and cousin watched the show with me and we just tried to stay awake until the main event so that we could see Hogan. The Ultimate Warrior was the only other wrestler we really cared about back then. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Strummer Posted January 22, 2006 Author Report Share Posted January 22, 2006 I've mentioned this before but I did not have TBS until 1996. The only NWA/WCW I ever saw was Worldwide on WSBK out of Boston which aired on Saturday Mornings and then Late Friday Night/Early Saturday Mornings (3:00AM) later on. I grew up on the WWF. There was so much of it on. Superstars on Saturday Evenings, then a possible SNME, Challenge on Sunday Mornings, then All American at noon on USA, Spotlight on Sunday afternoon, then Prime Time on Monday Nights. It was 3 days of wall to wall wrestling and it shaped me on how I viewed and understood wrestling. That didn't really change until 1997 when I got on the net. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mad Dog Posted January 22, 2006 Report Share Posted January 22, 2006 The 80s matches haven't aged really well but I'll be honest and say stuff from 20 years ago has held up better than any of the Attitude era stuff has. The Attitude era is almost embarassing to watch now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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