The Jim Ross Is A Grouchy Hateful Vile Human Being thread

[hammerva]

The latest one from Ross that really confuses me is the idea that closed fist punches should be significantly reduced because they are exposing of the business. I mean the 10 punches in the turnbuckle gimmick has been around for decades and now it is a problem <_ . are we supposed to believe that when duggan was doing the punch in mid south opponent knocked out and pinned most of time i can tell if he wants people just chop uppercut all or shoot head because it makes more sense.>

[Loss]

10 punches in the corner isn't even used that much anymore, so it's weird that he complains about that, yeah. That's a spot directly from his era.

[Matt D]

I said it before but I LOVE 10 count corner punches. In this day and age, it's so much more important to get the fans involved in some sort of interactive way in the match than it is to make them think it's real. Wrestling is symbolic, but in a lot of ways, the crowd wants to be part of the show more than ever and so few guys call out to them in any meaningful manner.

[sek69]

Wasn't one of the weird Vince directives for guys to intentionally not play to the crowd?

[dexstar]

Why is it so wacky and wrong for a heel to play to the fans who like him? Flair used to acknowledge the guys in suits who loved the Horsemen who were at the TBS tapings. What's the difference ?

Bill Laimbeer and the Pistons would acknowledge the fans who liked them.

 

I like this comment a lot. I prefer the idea of wrestlers essentially playing to their "home team" rather than mystic face/heel divide. Barrett's super over with the smarks, let him keep playing on that. In the crowd live, that kind of friction between the fans helps up the heat in a match too. You've got the drunk 20somethings who love Barrett battling with the more traditional fans, and that creates atmosphere. I think it's a necessary shift because there's like 5 people in the audience who think wrestling is real. Instead of focusing on making everyone boo one guy, focus on building a fanbase that matches that character and then matching up the opposites. Guys like Bryan that end up appealing to everyone end up on top, guys like Cena that are either loved or hated end up there, etc.

 

That's not to say it's the end of being a face or a heel, it's just with such a wide audience of fans from very small children and up, I feel like it's going to be virtually impossible to create many characters that elicit the same reaction from everyone at a WWE show. Might as well figure out how to embrace, and monetize, that dynamic.

[SomethingSavage]

Excellent points made by both Sorrow and Dexstar here. Totally agreed, too. Playing to your fans is a different beast altogether than setting out to be a "cool" heel though.

 

You guys are right about the fun atmosphere it creates though. It's like other sporting events, with divided crowds, home team fans, etc.

 

And isn't it at least KINDA that dynamic that brought about the big shift in the 90's anyway? The nWo had their fans, the Horsemen had their fans, Austin had his fans LONG before everyone boarded the bandwagon, Bret had his loyalists (which eventually led to the awesome Canada/USA angle), etc.

 

And all those fans kinda got acknowledged and brought into the show with interactions. That brought about more merch, the overuse of taunts and gestures, and the abundance of catchphrases for each character to let their specific fans play sing-along, and so on.

[Matt D]

I was watching the last Clash the other night. It was from Nashville and Jarrett was getting booed all over the place vs Mongo and for some reason, I just couldn't imagine that now. I think the 2014 crowd would have been heavily pro-Jarrett, no matter what he did, save for maybe some really cheap heat generation device.

[Loss]

People hated Jarrett's strut, outfit and speaking voice.

[SomethingSavage]

I remember HATING Jeff's entire act at the time. It was more of a pop culture thing, I think - as I was all about the cool heels or over babyfaces at the time, and Jarrett had NO cool factor going for him at all during that run. Same can be said for his return to the Double J routine with Tennessee Lee, and looking back now? I love that stuff.

 

Same thing here though. Jarrett's pro-Horseman campaign was a neat little angle in itself. Perhaps it suffered from starts & stops in the booking & the way some of the elements were handled, but it was still an okay story. Jeff wanted in, but the way they had him going back & forth with Debra as the manipulator/manipulated was weird and hard to follow at times. Flair's injury and time away kept him weaving in & out of the angle, which didn't help either.

 

Mongo as the big, dumb jock and suspicious husband definitely resonated though. And Benoit was kept attached by way of the nifty little rivalry they ALWAYS kept going between Nancy and Debra. Just fun stuff there, with Debra as the southern belle, always-entitled beauty queen. And Nancy playing polar opposite as the devious diva type - heck, she even lured Miss Elizabeth to the dark side!

Ultimately, I think it's another one of those things that went by under the radar of the WCW mid-card. A lot of good stuff actually started well enough and fell off the rails during this span. Maybe I'm alone in thinking this deserves to be lumped into that category, but hey. I dug it. Jeff as the out of place, redneck southern throwback trying to weasel his way into Horsemen lore worked with me.

 

Far as Jeff's actual matches go, meh. They were hit or miss. He had a few good ones with the obvious candidates - Malenko, Benoit, and even Mongo occasionally. But he had a fair share of misfires, too. I still think his better work was always as the fiery babyface. And it's even evident in some of his matches against The Giant from this stint.

[BillThompson]

As much as I generally dislike Ross, I thought he was pretty good in his appearance on the most recent LAW. His point about needing variety in the Performance Center is spot on. That is something that worries me going forward, if the WWE turns too much into a "everyone here wrestles the same exact style" sort of fed. The Performance Center is a great thing, don't get me wrong, but I wish they would maybe play into the strengths of the wrestlers more and try to produce different types of workers instead of ones that are simply conforming to the WWE style wholesale.

[El-P]

Same thing here though. Jarrett's pro-Horseman campaign was a neat little angle in itself. Perhaps it suffered from starts & stops in the booking & the way some of the elements were handled, but it was still an okay story. Jeff wanted in, but the way they had him going back & forth with Debra as the manipulator/manipulated was weird and hard to follow at times. Flair's injury and time away kept him weaving in & out of the angle, which didn't help either.

 

Mongo as the big, dumb jock and suspicious husband definitely resonated though. And Benoit was kept attached by way of the nifty little rivalry they ALWAYS kept going between Nancy and Debra. Just fun stuff there, with Debra as the southern belle, always-entitled beauty queen. And Nancy playing polar opposite as the devious diva type - heck, she even lured Miss Elizabeth to the dark side!

 

I love this angle. This sort of stuff is why I loved Sullivan's booking of Nitro before he got burned out.

[SomethingSavage]

Yup. Sullivan was actually doing a LOT of other things, aside from just the standard nWo invasion angle that most people remember. Been going back and watching plenty of late '96 and all '97 Nitro recently. Really good stuff all up and down the cards, even if some of the cruiserweight stuff doesn't hold up as much as I'd hoped. It's all good. The action was up to par on most nights, the main events weren't YET so bad that they took away from the rest of the show, the angles were HOT, and the stars were freaking OVER. Massively over.

 

Say what ya will about all the stuff WCW did wrong, there for a couple of strong years under Sully's watch - they got it right. Really right. And you can easily see why they were several notches above almost everything the WWF was trying at the time.

[BigBadMick]

Yup. Sullivan was actually doing a LOT of other things, aside from just the standard nWo invasion angle that most people remember. Been going back and watching plenty of late '96 and all '97 Nitro recently. Really good stuff all up and down the cards, even if some of the cruiserweight stuff doesn't hold up as much as I'd hoped. It's all good. The action was up to par on most nights, the main events weren't YET so bad that they took away from the rest of the show, the angles were HOT, and the stars were freaking OVER. Massively over.

 

Say what ya will about all the stuff WCW did wrong, there for a couple of strong years under Sully's watch - they got it right. Really right. And you can easily see why they were several notches above almost everything the WWF was trying at the time.

Loved 97 WCW. Reminds me how Hogan told Bischoff (I think) that when you're hot you can make mistakes and get away with it. And WCW was SMOKIN'!

BTW I meant to explain, in Ireland, something savage can mean 'very much' ie those two were arguing something savage yesterday.

[BigBadMick]

As much as I generally dislike Ross, I thought he was pretty good in his appearance on the most recent LAW. His point about needing variety in the Performance Center is spot on. That is something that worries me going forward, if the WWE turns too much into a "everyone here wrestles the same exact style" sort of fed. The Performance Center is a great thing, don't get me wrong, but I wish they would maybe play into the strengths of the wrestlers more and try to produce different types of workers instead of ones that are simply conforming to the WWE style wholesale.

He spoke at length about this with Keller recently. It all makes sense to me too.

[SomethingSavage]

BTW I meant to explain, in Ireland, something savage can mean 'very much' ie those two were arguing something savage yesterday.

 

 

Well there ya go. Always a'learning!

[Petey]

As much as I generally dislike Ross, I thought he was pretty good in his appearance on the most recent LAW. His point about needing variety in the Performance Center is spot on. That is something that worries me going forward, if the WWE turns too much into a "everyone here wrestles the same exact style" sort of fed. The Performance Center is a great thing, don't get me wrong, but I wish they would maybe play into the strengths of the wrestlers more and try to produce different types of workers instead of ones that are simply conforming to the WWE style wholesale.

Do we know for a fact that they're training everyone the same exact style and that they're not playing into the individual wrestlers' strengths? I know that had been a criticism for years, but I don't know if it's still the case since the Performance Center opened.

[Steenalized]

We'll see going forward, but I can't see Kalisto and Mojo Rawley wrestling the same style.

[anarchistxx]

I actually think the WWE style has diversified rapidly in recent years, although a lot of the matches still follow the same basic pattern and mechanics. A few years ago main events tended to be indistinguishable from show to show, whereas now there is a definite difference between a Cesaro match and a Bray Wyatt match and a Seth Rollins match.

 

They are hurt by an inability to do the hardcore blood feud stuff, and don't have the talent to have pure technical matches on a regular basis, but in the constraints of their style things are way more creative in ring than they used to be. Or maybe it's because I don't watch much indy wrestling anymore so don't realise when spots are being copied and dripping through the the big leagues. Either way the overriding point about increased variety still stands.

[cm funk]

They've also made a noticeable effort to make developmental talent distinguishable in look and gimmick. Dusty Rhodes talked about this during his podcasts with Austin, how he works with the talent down there on finding their voice and developing their own character that they feel comfortable in the skin of.

 

There's also the trend now where the gimmicks from developmental are carried over to the main roster. Once they find the right gimmick for someone they hone it down in NXT, and bring them up to the main roster with it. It's a far cry from the OVW/FCW days where guys would have a certain gimmick they played in developmental, and then the WWE writers would come up with a gimmick idea and developmental talent would be plugged into it with no real rhyme or reason (and it practically always flopped). There was also the big problem where a guy would be working heel in developmental and then be called up as a face, and vice versa. For years developmental and WWE were never in alignment on this sort of stuff. Cornette has ranted endlessly about the lack of communication and the writers in Stamford who didn't even watch their tapes.

 

Like someone else said, Ross' criticisms seem behind the times. Yes, there was a time where developmental and the main roster were both very cookie cutter.....it hasn't been like that in a while.

[BillThompson]

I don't know if I agree with all that. Outside of maybe Bray, I feel like everyone coming up from NXT is cutting the same promos. It's not really their fault as WWE clearly wants the promos to be homogenized and fell like they are coming from the company as opposed to the company.

 

As for the work in the ring, I think Kalisto is an outlier, and maybe Cesaro as well. They are so inherently unique that their strengths have to be played too. Meanwhile I feel like a lot of the other guys are working the crowds in the same ways, hitting a lot of the same spots, and producing matches that rely on the same basic structure. It's not a problem right now, but in the future I can definitely see it being a big problem.

[SomethingSavage]

I don't get the sense that we're hearing the same voices in the promos though. Maybe I'm alone in that, but I just don't hear it. When I listen to a Sami Zayn, for instance, I'm blown away by how grounded & down-to-earth the guy seems in his speaking pattern & tone. There's nothing overly stereotypical or anything that shouts, "PRO RASSLIN" when he talks. He comes across as really genuine, and yet his mic work is astoundingly stellar for someone that spent the majority of their career under a hood and... well, NOT doing interviews. Especially in the traditional sense.

 

But ya move over from a Sami interview to a guy like Aiden English. He postures and pronounces his words in a manner that distinctly fits his character. It's perfect that personality he's meant to convey out there, but it's an entirely different breed of promo.

 

Same thing applies to the Enzo Amore/Big Cass duo, and I could go on. I think they've done a great job in not only streamlining the characters - but their qualities, traits, and yes - even their interview skills lately. There's a defining line drawn between MOST - maybe not all - of their acts.

[C.S.]

The characters are different now (which wasn't really the case for a few years), but nothing else is:

 

- The way the matches are worked are all the same. I'll exclude Extreme Rules from this, because the various stips allowed for more creativity. But every big match at this year's WrestleMania followed the same exact scenario: "intense" brawling, kicking out of finishers, etc. You know the "formula" I'm talking about, so I don't need to go into detail. I've defended the Cena/Wyatt feud, because - for better or worse - it's not the same cookie cutter match outline we always see. No matter what you may think of it, they're at least going way outside the box.

 

- The promos, as someone mentioned, are pretty bland and homogenized 90% of the time - unless you get a character like Wyatt who seems to be doing his own thing. Not enough people fall into that category.

 

To be fair though, it's definitely better now than it was a few years ago - both character- and promo-wise. There was a time where everything felt the same, and they're at least slowly breaking out of that bland mold now.

 

Edit: I'm referring to the main WWE shows, not NXT. It all begins at NXT, but I get the sense that people have more freedom to experiment there - probably because they aren't nearly as micro-managed by Vince.

[rovert]

Jim Ross is very direct here

 

[Bix]

Someone might want to tell Jim that Reid Fliehr died the week before WrestleMania, not the SummerSlam panel.

[rovert]

Someone might want to tell Jim that Reid Fliehr died the week before WrestleMania, not the SummerSlam panel.

 

I think he was just speaking socially on that one rather than being completely literal.