WWE TV 01/09 - 01/15 Dollar Store Capitol Invasion

[El-P]

Bray Wyatt's in-ring work is the definition of mid, dull, there, whatever you want to call it. And it was obvious since the start. He was put in that big match with Big Match John Cena and the result was meh. He got that big Mania Taker match (granted, never a guarantee but certainly an opportunity to shine) and it was meh as fuck. 

The thing that's undersold because he's been so big with the characters, is that Bray is basically a product of black hole era of WWE, late-00's dullard with shitty tribal tatooes. Look at the guys in NEXUS with him. Apart from that Daniel Bryan fellow which came from "the indies where they don't know how to work", no one amounted to anything in there. Mason Ryan ? Ry-fucking-Back the Shittiest Goldy ever ? Even Heath, who by WWE standard was considered a really good worker, well, look at him today in IMPACT and he totally looks like " a good worker by 2010 WWE standard" (see also Cardona for instance, although he did much better as a pure character especially in GCW, but his in-ring work is what it is). WWE was so behind the times stylistically, and it would take the Shield which consisted of two hyped indy guys to carry greenhorn Roman and then the next mentality of NXT (and signing of AJ Styles and such), thanks to the gates opened by Punk & Danielson, for WWE to catch up to some degree. Bray is a product of this era, but the Wyatt stuff at first was so well produced and fresh that it kept the illusion, especially in 6 men tags where you had some great guys (from the indies, mostly, with Brodie Lee on Wyatt's side too) to carry the load of the work. And unlike other WWE-bred guys like guys Cody or Lashley, Bray never went away to get better.

Under the lore galore and all the production tricks, he's still a dated, dull worker with shitty tribal tatoos from a previous era. And really, really shitty creative ideas which are the equivalent of the most ridiculous pseudo-deep "elevated horror" (what a laughable term) shit that's in vogue today. From what I've seen, this Uncle Howdy stuff is by FAR the worst shit he ever did. The Fiend at least was kinda funny. The clown hammer, ya know.

[Ricky Jackson]

Man, I completely erased Husky Harris from my brain and had to Google that. Whatever happened to Eli Cottonwood?

[strobogo]

Husky Harris is a deep part of the lore, bro

[NintendoLogic]

Is the genesis of McGillicutty part of the lore?

[strobogo]

It would have to be

[Strummer]

Apparently there is another "all hands on deck" meeting at Raw today.

[KawadaSmile]

That fucking Huskus the Piggy Boy from the Firefly Funhouse got its name from Bray Wyatt's Husky Harris gimmick! I just hate everything about that sentence I typed!

[SirEdger]

45 minutes ago, Strummer said:

Apparently there is another "all hands on deck" meeting at Raw today.

Only fair that if Triple H spoke to Smackdown talents on Friday, he'd do the same for Raw talents.

[El-P]

"Nothing is changing, Vince is not gonna run creative ever again, everything is fine, it's great for the company, all of you matter a lot, don't be worry, WWE Universe is then, now, forever, together"

And then...

[SirEdger]

I mean, realistically, I don't think there's anyone on this board who buys that Vince won't oust Triple H from creative and let him do his thing. Vince is too much of an egomaniac and will protect his alpha male persona as much as he can. The question that remains is that as much as we've heard about a possible uproar from the WWE roster if Vince would resume his creative duties, how many of them would actually follow through with that vs tucking their tail between their legs and not do anything.

[El-P]

No one would do anything. That's the pretty pathetic reality of it. And that's including all the women on the roster. I may be wrong, but I'm most probably right.

[NintendoLogic]

I could see Vince pulling a Hogan and taking over after the end of football season so he can take credit for the natural uptick in ratings.

[El-P]

He already has taken over, really. It's just a game of pretending he has not.

[strobogo]

You'll know Vince is back when Cole stops name dropping other promotions and wrestlers

[Coffey]

On 1/16/2023 at 8:08 AM, El-P said:

Bray is basically a product of black hole era of WWE, late-00's dullard with shitty tribal tatooes. Look at the guys in NEXUS with him. Apart from that Daniel Bryan fellow which came from "the indies where they don't know how to work", no one amounted to anything in there. Mason Ryan ? Ry-fucking-Back the Shittiest Goldy ever ? Even Heath, who by WWE standard was considered a really good worker, well, look at him today in IMPACT and he totally looks like " a good worker by 2010 WWE standard" (see also Cardona for instance, although he did much better as a pure character especially in GCW, but his in-ring work is what it is). WWE was so behind the times stylistically, and it would take the Shield which consisted of two hyped indy guys to carry greenhorn Roman and then the next mentality of NXT (and signing of AJ Styles and such), thanks to the gates opened by Punk & Danielson, for WWE to catch up to some degree.

Man, not pertaining to just Bray but just this subject as a whole would be a great topic of conversation. It does definitely get overlooked but is very obviously a problem. 

[Embrodak]

2 hours ago, Coffey said:

Man, not pertaining to just Bray but just this subject as a whole would be a great topic of conversation. It does definitely get overlooked but is very obviously a problem. 

It was a dim time for in-ring competence, but it really can’t be forgotten that in the wake of the Benoit situation, WWE had a lot of incentive to train guys to work the safest, most boring, least legally incriminating style they could get away with.

[strobogo]

That was already going into effect a couple of years before Benoit Benoit'd. Things started slowing down around 2005, probably to coincide with Batista and Cena taking over.

[Strummer]

I think it was 2004 when they mandated a slower, safer style. The Orton/Edge match at I think Vengeance 04 was used as the model of the new style.

[El-P]

There would be a lot to say about how the Benoit murders has affected the mentality of a part fo the pro-wrestling fandom (what I have called half-jokingly "Post Benoit workrate guilt" in the past), but WWE absolutely had developed a dullard style before it happened.

The thing with Benoit, and it's even more apparent today, is that it really has nothing to do with pro-wrestling and taking hard bumps and everything to do with systemic patriarchal violence (men killing their wife along with the family when they want to go away is something that happens a whole lot). The entire discourse about "safe work" (aka "smart work", which really said nothing of the work itself but was a sign of distinction for those who had said discourse) that got really in vogue after that point had a bizarre pro-wrestling bubble pseudo moral stance (when you think it led to the massive rehabilitations of guys like Lawler and Invader I in our circles, what a joke, really) doubled with a heavy dose of gatekeeping, which to some degree is still in effect today in term of prescriptive views of what pro-wrestling "should" be.

All of this happened at a time when there was not the same perceptions of violence either, Benoit not only was revered as the GOAT (as they would say today about a dozen guys) but also a great human being in a sleazy business, ignoring some of what would be considered red flags today (in term of backstage hazing for instance, during the wonderful days of JBL and Taker running the locker room, and of course, domestic violence).

But anyway, I just drifted. As far as WWE style went, it would take a stylistic study to see when the dull style got really prevalent and with which workers, and probably there's something to be said about them not feeding themselves into other sources because, well, there were none anymore (none that they would touch for a while at least) after they had dried up the territories and WCW/ECW (which basically were the remains of the territories) days. The style evolved past that point when they got interested in other sources again. Bray Wyatt, to get back to him, is a product of the former period.

[Embrodak]

There’s a lot to be said about patriarchal violence, but Benoit had as much brain degradation as an advanced Alzheimer’s patient when he died. I don’t think it’s weird or bad that people started to look at some of the stupid, unnecessary risks that were taken in the Attitude Era and post-WCW closure era and wonder whether all of that was really necessary when guys got over without that stuff for decades. I think we’re probably going to see someone like Darby or Sammy using a Walker at a young age in like 10-15 years and wonder something similar about the current working zeitgeist, tbh. Julia Hart almost got her neck broken doing an unnecessarily risky spot in a nothing angle, Big E got his neck actually broken (in a spot that could have left him a quadriplegic if it’d been worse) doing a Belly to Belly on the floor in a random TV match, Cody put himself through a burning table in a random, juiceless TV main event, it’s just so ridiculous.

[NintendoLogic]

This is far from a new talking point. Dave was writing in the Observer that the business was getting out of hand as far back as 1996.

If you're looking for the trifecta of having exciting matches while working a safe style and being a relatively decent human being, there's one man who fits the bill

Truly the HitGOAT.

[El-P]

2 hours ago, Embrodak said:

I don’t think it’s weird or bad that people started to look at some of the stupid, unnecessary risks that were taken in the Attitude Era and post-WCW closure era and wonder whether all of that was really necessary when guys got over without that stuff for decades.

We were talking about stupid shit like the chairshots to the head in the late 90's already. I hated Mick Foley doing the HITC jump and to this day considers it one of the worst thing that happened in term of influencial spot in modern pro-wrestling. It did not take Benoit murdering his family for people to actually think about these kind of issues 10 years before. I mean, this :

1 hour ago, NintendoLogic said:

This is far from a new talking point. Dave was writing in the Observer that the business was getting out of hand as far back as 1996.

As far as WWE style evolving into a duller style, it has everything to do with them going public and choosing advertisers for the entire family as opposed to protecting their workers. The 00's and early 10's was also a period of Money in the Bank every year, ladder matches galore, HITC becoming a staple of the promotion.

The debate of "safe vs unsafe" is something that has a place of course. But it doesn't equal the issues of stylistic evolutions. Tanahashi and then Okada for instance, have clearly taken the Japanese (well, NJPW) style into a direction that is a whole lot safer than the previous peaks of NOAH and AJPW, while having arguably even greater matches. Also, safe is a matter of controlled risk and personal tolerance for what you can do. What is risky for some ain't so much for others. Some terrible injuries (or worse) happen doing pretty mundane shit (Perro Aguayo Jr.), or stuff you've done hundreds and hundreds of time (Hayabusa). 

In the end, pro-wrestling isn't safe. Roddy Piper had no hip left at the end. Roddy Piper.

[KawadaSmile]

Shinya Hashimoto was working safe, short, great matches in the early 90s. That's my NJPW GOAT.

 

Actually I'd argue WWE started having shades of their current style as early as '09. Sheamus was already in the scene working great TV, Christian was the ECW GOAT, Sydal was having a great fun run, Jericho was having the last of his great matches in WWE against Rey... In regards to the product having a slower pace, I would argue that the biggest offender wasn't Batista or Cena, but Triple H. Easily the worst main eventer WWE has had from an in-ring perspective, and to think he was having Wrestlemania Main Events as recently as 2016 is baffling. It was baffling then, it is baffling now.

Having Bryan Danielson helped accelerate the process to a more workrate-centric style, closer to what they have now, but it seems to me that some of the talent there (Ziggler, Kofi, Sheamus) would already take the scene, at least the midcard scene, in that direction.

[El-P]

12 minutes ago, KawadaSmile said:

In regards to the product having a slower pace, I would argue that the biggest offender wasn't Batista or Cena, but Triple H.

Agreed. Him getting the perennial main event spot and working a bad NWA cosplay style certainly played a part in that evolution (see what I did there ?).

[Strummer]

When Batista came back from injury in 06 he was painfully slow in the ring. He got better but it was rough for awhile