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MisterGBH posted:To add; it's old fashioned and stupid to name your son the same name as yourself. I don't agree with this (I'm named after my dad and grandfather, different middle names though), but in the wrestling world, it doesn't really do a guy any favors. Children of famous wrestlers already have the stigma of having to fill their fathers' shoes, and having your son be the exact same name as you just adds to that pressure. Follow-up on this: how good was Rey Mysterio Sr.? Was he anywhere close to his son in terms of his in-ring prime?
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Feb 18, 2011 19:49
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| # ? Apr 28, 2024 11:48 |
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How was Curt Hennig's dad? Was he as perfect as him?
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Feb 18, 2011 19:52
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Is there any consensus on the 'Greatest of all time' wrestler. I started watching in the Bret Hart era but lost track years ago. It seems like the Rock is a clear winner, due to his combo of wrestling and mic skills. I hope I'm not opening an ugly pandora's box by asking this, bringing up GOAT in the mma threads is disastrous.
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Feb 18, 2011 19:54
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Matata posted:Is there any consensus on the 'Greatest of all time' wrestler. I started watching in the Bret Hart era but lost track years ago. It seems like the Rock is a clear winner, due to his combo of wrestling and mic skills. I hope I'm not opening an ugly pandora's box by asking this, bringing up GOAT in the mma threads is disastrous. There is a little consensus, but not much at all, since everyone has their own definition of "greatest." A few names you would hear more than others (Ric Flair and Shawn Michaels, to name two).
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Feb 18, 2011 19:56
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Matata posted:Is there any consensus on the 'Greatest of all time' wrestler. I started watching in the Bret Hart era but lost track years ago. It seems like the Rock is a clear winner, due to his combo of wrestling and mic skills. I hope I'm not opening an ugly pandora's box by asking this, bringing up GOAT in the mma threads is disastrous.
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Feb 18, 2011 20:02
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Matata posted:Is there any consensus on the 'Greatest of all time' wrestler. I started watching in the Bret Hart era but lost track years ago. It seems like the Rock is a clear winner, due to his combo of wrestling and mic skills. I hope I'm not opening an ugly pandora's box by asking this, bringing up GOAT in the mma threads is disastrous. Not really. You're going to hear Ric Flair, Steve Austin, Lou Thesz, Strangler Lewis, and Frank Gotch most often. Sometimes you'll see Bruno or Hogan or Jim Londos on one of these lists depending on how much you favor drawing cards, sometimes Shawn Michaels or Danny Hodge if you strongly favor in-ring. That's just North America, if you start throwing Japan and Mexico in things get real complicated... The Rock isn't really any sort of serious candidate because he's worse than Austin, a direct contemporary, in pretty much every conceivable category (wrestling ability, promos, match quality, drawing, overness) with a major career half as long.
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Feb 18, 2011 20:06
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Not that it's a knock against The Dwayne, but Austin was pretty much untouchable. Rock was still an absolute star in every category, Stone Cold was just better.
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Feb 18, 2011 20:42
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I'd debate with you about Austin being better than Rock on promos. Assuming both are firing on all cylinders, that is. Rock sometimes very obviously phoned it in.
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Feb 18, 2011 21:06
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I am seriously not trying to troll by saying this, but, uh, what? Stone Cold is/was awesome, do not get me wrong, but the Rock is probably the most charismatic professional wrestler ever. His matches were also generally decent at worst. But, I mean, how can we really discuss this? I can tell you anecdotes about how I know precisely zero people who ran to their televisions upon learning Stone Cold was on, whereas I and several other people I know have excitedly turned on wrestling upon learning the Rock was back. But anecdotes do not really help. Also, for the record, I would actually say Kurt Angle deserves to be seriously considered, but this is coming from someone who has seen precisely zero of his matches in TNA, so I bet this is totally wrong.
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Feb 18, 2011 21:13
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I tried to come up with a more objective way of determining the "greatest," by coming up with top tens for as many categories related to wrestling as I could (best high flyer, best talker, best technical wrestler, best look, etc etc) and whoever scored the best overall was the greatest. I ended up with a tie between HBK and Undertaker. While this process does force you to think about why someone is awesome in specifics, it's still not that accurate though, because the categories are weighted evenly. Most folks would tell you that talking is much more important than high flying, for example, and I didn't have any real system for weighing each category against each other. Still a fun exercise though. Maybe the most important determinations are "who made the most money (both for themselves and for the industry)?" and "who's the most well known wrestler in the world?" The answer to both used to be Hogan but I think Austin replaced him on the money and having crossed over so much more successfully, The Rock replaced him on being well known.
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Feb 18, 2011 21:20
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Quarex posted:But, I mean, how can we really discuss this? I can tell you anecdotes about how I know precisely zero people who ran to their televisions upon learning Stone Cold was on, whereas I and several other people I know have excitedly turned on wrestling upon learning the Rock was back. But anecdotes do not really help. The Rock left wrestling and said he was done with it for seven years. Albeit he had a few dumb video appearances and inducting his dad/grandfather in the HoF, but pretty much he was otherwise done with it. Stone Cold made pretty regular appearances since he retired from the ring. If Rocky had continued to make occasional appearances since his last match, each one would have meant a fraction of what his first actual appearance in seven years meant.
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Feb 18, 2011 21:21
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Quarex posted:I am seriously not trying to troll by saying this, but, uh, what? Stone Cold is/was awesome, do not get me wrong, but the Rock is probably the most charismatic professional wrestler ever. His matches were also generally decent at worst. And Stone Cold's weren't? I'm not sure how that refutes the idea that Stone Cold was better overall. No one is saying Rock was bad at what he does. quote:But, I mean, how can we really discuss this? This is a good question. If only we had some kind of elimination tournament, with really specific criteria like drawing power, wrestling ability, tenure, historical significance, and whether or not that wrestler ever murdered children. *cough*
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Feb 18, 2011 21:25
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Quarex posted:I am seriously not trying to troll by saying this, but, uh, what? Stone Cold is/was awesome, do not get me wrong, but the Rock is probably the most charismatic professional wrestler ever. His matches were also generally decent at worst. So let's look at the ratings if we want to look at his interest in their respective returns. When Steve Austin hosted Raw last March, the show did a 3.7 rating up .3 from the week before. The Rock's return to Raw did a 3.1, down from the week before. Austin and the Rock's key promos from each show did the same ratings, 3.9s. Austin had less time to work with, and was also going head to head with TNA which did limit his audience somewhat. (TNA got killed, but some people who watch Raw did watch TNA.) Steve Austin is also on WWE programming sporadically, but he meant exactly as much ratings wise as the Rock's first promo in a WWE ring in 7 years.
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Feb 18, 2011 21:26
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I used to religiously watch wrestling from the early 90's up until that Wrestlemania where Brock Lesnar fought Goldberg. I have only watched a little bit here and there since and have started reading the WH2K threads just recently due to the formation of PSP. Can someone explain to me the Batista's dick thing?
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Feb 18, 2011 21:28
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Quarex posted:I am seriously not trying to troll by saying this, but, uh, what? Stone Cold is/was awesome, do not get me wrong, but the Rock is probably the most charismatic professional wrestler ever. His matches were also generally decent at worst. Most charismatic and best promo aren't necessarily the same thing. Austin was a phenomenal talker. Rock was also a phenomenal talker, but his best stuff was comedy and I think that hurts him when we're talking greatest of the great. And Austin was a phenomenal talker for twice as long, of course. Comparing Rock to Austin as a worker is a joke, and this is coming from someone who likes Rock's matches more than most. Austin was one of the best workers in the world for longer than Rock's entire in-ring career. Rock was horribly, horribly green when he came into WWF and didn't get consistently good until around 2000, and barely a year after that he was already phasing out to part-time. Quarex posted:But, I mean, how can we really discuss this? I can tell you anecdotes about how I know precisely zero people who ran to their televisions upon learning Stone Cold was on, whereas I and several other people I know have excitedly turned on wrestling upon learning the Rock was back. But anecdotes do not really help. In addition to the already mentioned thing where Austin's been around a lot more and thus his returns aren't as big of a deal, Rock became a much bigger star after leaving wrestling. Austin has done some work as a character actor but mostly chills out in Texas, whereas Dwayne Johnson is a legitimate leading man in Hollywood. I don't think Rock got bigger reactions than Austin for any sustained period of time during their tenures, and the only year you can clearly point to Rock as the top face in the company is the year that Austin missed 3/4 of. Quarex posted:Also, for the record, I would actually say Kurt Angle deserves to be seriously considered, but this is coming from someone who has seen precisely zero of his matches in TNA, so I bet this is totally wrong. Angle doesn't even have an argument to be in the top 25 unless your only focus is on match quality and you absolutely love modern big matches.
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Feb 18, 2011 21:31
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MassRayPer posted:So let's look at the ratings if we want to look at his interest in their respective returns.
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Feb 18, 2011 21:39
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fawker posted:Can someone explain to me the Batista's dick thing? Everyone is just really curious.
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Feb 18, 2011 21:45
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MassRayPer posted:When Steve Austin hosted Raw last March, the show did a 3.7 rating up .3 from the week before. The Rock's return to Raw did a 3.1, down from the week before. The specifics if what you guys are bickering about aside, how can you use this in an argument with a straight face?
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Feb 18, 2011 21:47
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fawker posted:I used to religiously watch wrestling from the early 90's up until that Wrestlemania where Brock Lesnar fought Goldberg. It's an inside joke carried over from the Observer forums.
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Feb 18, 2011 21:49
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Crappy posted:The specifics if what you guys are bickering about aside, how can you use this in an argument with a straight face? yeah man how can you use facts and numbers, what's wrong with you MRP?
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Feb 18, 2011 21:55
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ADRIEN GRODYS FIFE posted:yeah man how can you use facts and numbers, what's wrong with you MRP? Because they are fairly flawed here as pointed out by Minidust.
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Feb 18, 2011 21:57
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Even if you don't care about the whole show rating, the overrun did a not-good number too. This should probably be blamed on WWE and not Rock, but the point is that it's silly to say Rock's return was really all that meaningful yet except as a cool moment because what little data we have doesn't support that conclusion.
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Feb 18, 2011 21:58
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Nobody knew the rock was going to be on the show. I didn't think this was such a complicated topic.
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Feb 18, 2011 22:01
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Crappy posted:The specifics if what you guys are bickering about aside, how can you use this in an argument with a straight face? Even as a surprise it was a foregone conclusion that Raw's rating would be up based on the long drawn out return. The Rock got 20 minutes, which is usually enough time to build up an audience. Not as much of an audience as an announced return, but it should have done huge numbers. Instead it did a lower quarter hour rating than the Raw Rumble, and the same quarter hour rating as one of the Cena/Punk matches. His contention was that people ran to their TVs for the Rock. They didn't. In the end he meant the same thing as Austin did, except Rock was in the part of the show that almost always does the best rating of the show. Given the forces both men had working with and against their appearances, it is a fair comparison. The Rock by himself made up 15% of that Raw's run time. Of the non commercial time on the show it was closer to 20%. I think it is perfectly fair to bring the overall rating into account when someone is on screen for 20% of the sports entertainment content of a show.
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Feb 18, 2011 22:02
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jeffersonlives posted:
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Feb 18, 2011 22:04
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Television ratings mean literally NOTHING in this situation. He wasn't even promoted as being on the show, so how would people know how to tune in? But you know what is interesting? The fact that over 20 of my friends who probably haven't watched wrestling since 1999 are now on the fence to purchase Wrestlemania, and are freaking out like little children on facebook just because they saw the replay of the promo on youtube. And honestly that's pretty drat meaningful. Not just a number point that really has no value other than to advertisers.
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Feb 18, 2011 22:06
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Hey guys, QUICK! Turn on RAW The Rock is back!!! Oh, what's that? You're not at home to watch the TV? You're at dinner with your girlfriend? You made other plans? You didn't read this post within 20 minutes of me making it? Turns out the Rock can't draw for poo poo!
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Feb 18, 2011 22:10
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Crappy posted:Hey guys, QUICK! Turn on RAW The Rock is back!!! Yes, let's post pointless hyperbole that doesn't answer any of the actual points that were posted. The claim was The Rock meant way more than Steve Austin. Instead, the best available evidence says they both mean pretty much the same thing. It's especially funny you use those examples since "not home" and "at dinner" on a Monday night apply more for Steve Austin's promo at 9 PM than 11 PM for the Rock.
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Feb 18, 2011 22:13
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Well to be fair, Steve Austin was announced a week beforehand, wheras The Rock wasn't. Still though, I think even if The Rock was announced a week ahead of time, the show would probably hit a 3.6-8. Plus IIRC American Idol was premiering at the same time which would probably hurt the number anyway.
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Feb 18, 2011 22:16
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I don't have a stake in the Rock vs. Austin argument any more than I want to pick a favorite between my mom and dad. I like them both, damnit. My point is similar to what everyone was talking about one page ago with the Foley and Cena quotes being taken out of context. Your entire post could be great, but the second you use the rating from Monday night's show to make any kind of argument about the Rock's drawing power your entire post loses credibility.
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Feb 18, 2011 22:16
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savinhill posted:Angle's great at promos and the comedy stuff, some of my favorite WWE moments have him involved. The problem is that in the same way that it's hard to position Rock above Austin, Angle is miles behind both of those guys and Shawn Michaels on everything, and at least arguably behind other contemporaries like Jericho, Triple H, Foley, Cena, Benoit (not counting the ending of that story), Hart, etc. Essentially with Angle you've got a short career guy that had a lot of good matches, was a negligible draw, and was a pretty good but frequently ineffective promo. He's not even a serious contender for greatest of his generation, yet alone greatest ever, unless you just absolutely love his matches and ignore everything else.
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Feb 18, 2011 22:23
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Crappy posted:I don't have a stake in the Rock vs. Austin argument any more than I want to pick a favorite between my mom and dad. I like them both, damnit. In what possible way. It is one part of a post. It is perfectly fair to compare an overall rating when one single man made up 15-20% of that rating. The important parts of that post are the 3.9s the quarters did. However, this is not the entire reason it is important to note overall ratings. You also clearly do have some stake in this because you ignore the reason the rating being down is relevant. It limits the potential audience the Rock had. It amazes me how clueless people can be. If The Rock is at the end of a show that does a 3.1, his floor is lower and thus his ceiling is likely lower. It was expected the overall rating would be up, instead it was down. The Rock didn't have the help of a higher rating, and did not help pull the rating up much. Steve Austin was limited by being in a quarter hour that is traditionally rated lower than the overrun, TNA and his frequent appearances on WWE programming and his shorter segment. The Rock was limited by the un-announced nature of his appearance. But he was aided by being in what is almost always the highest rated segment, no competition and having more than 20 minutes all to himself. So go ahead and keep ignoring what people are posting and replying with nonsense.
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Feb 18, 2011 22:27
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The problem is people are using this "I have anecdotal evidence that my friends want to see the Rock on TV more than Steve Austin" as a reason Rock is better than Austin. It's been said numerous times: Steve Austin has been sporadically involved, sometimes multiple times a year, on WWE TV. Also, it's pretty much a guarantee he won't be wrestling again, so there's no possibility of that. He's interacted with most/all of the top stars in the company already in some manner. There's not some HUGE SURPRISE for Austin to do anymore. But you know what also "means literally NOTHING"? Anecdotal evidence. It doesn't prove anything other than people you know are interested in the Rock. Because Steve Austin is hosting Tough Enough, I'm now going to make sure I watch every episode. I know a couple of other people who feel the same, and wouldn't be watching it otherwise. Does this mean anything? No, because it's me and a few people I know. Is the Rock going to draw people in for Wrestlemania? Definitely. Will he draw more people in than Austin would as host? He probably will: he's had more crossover appeal after wrestling, and his involvement is a bigger deal than Austin because it's been so rare for Rock to bother with wrestling post-2004. But does any of this mean Rock is the greatest wrestler of all time? No. He's an OK promo: he's great at funny/entertaining stuff; he's not that great at selling an angle or a match. His delivery is fantastic, and he's definitely bursting with charisma, but he's only moderately good at selling a feud, especially when compared to the top guys. His wrestling is decent to good, and he could generally have good matches with a lot of different people just based on sheer entertainment value, but if he was going to have a great match it was going to take someone really great on the other side of the ring. But seriously, we already talked about this at length in the Survivor thread, and that was only for 88-current. He's a top guy, especially of his era, but to say he's better than Austin because people are more interested in him hosting Wrestlemania than they would be for Austin is a pretty loving silly reason. If this is just an argument on draw, Rock is a bigger draw now for the reasons I just mentioned, just like Brock Lesnar would be a bigger draw now than Austin would. Doesn't mean they're bigger draws than Austin was, as a wrestler.
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Feb 18, 2011 22:27
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Ratings shmatings. I've seen/heard way more random people talking about Raw (a.k.a. The Rock) this week than I have in over a decade. I know ratings are the only non-anecdotal metric we have right now, but that doesn't change the fact that they really don't work in this case. If you really NEEEEEED proof right now then sorry, there is none. Oh well.
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Feb 18, 2011 22:31
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Sir Lemming posted:Ratings shmatings. I've seen/heard way more random people talking about Raw (a.k.a. The Rock) this week than I have in over a decade.
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Feb 18, 2011 22:33
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For the record I was never suggesting that Rock was better/more of a draw/etc. than Austin. I just believe it's silly to compare the ratings of an appearance that was heavily promoted vs. an appearance that was specifically kept secret.
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Feb 18, 2011 22:42
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jeffersonlives posted:The problem is that in the same way that it's hard to position Rock above Austin, Angle is miles behind both of those guys and Shawn Michaels on everything, and at least arguably behind other contemporaries like Jericho, Triple H, Foley, Cena, Benoit (not counting the ending of that story), Hart, etc. I wasn't trying to say Angle's one of the all time greats, I was just pointing out that he was great at promos. The reason I started liking him was that he was entertaining during promos and comedy segments, not even because of his in ring ability. He was given some absolutely stupid poo poo to work with sometimes and he could still pull it off.
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Feb 18, 2011 22:51
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El Duke posted:The problem is people are using this "I have anecdotal evidence that my friends want to see the Rock on TV more than Steve Austin" as a reason Rock is better than Austin. I think you're getting arguments twisted up. I never said The Rock was the greatest wrestler of all times, nor did I imply that my friends being drawn into the current product had anything to do with him being better than Austin. I personally think myself that Austin was the bigger star. All I was trying to say was that in this occasion, and like in many others, a television rating really doesn't mean jack poo poo. The only thing that means even less than anecdotal evidence is personal opinion, which your entire fourth paragraph is based upon. Not to mention the whole moniker of "greatest wrestler of all time". It's too subjective of a question for a HARD FACT answer. People like who they like, and if you asked me my answer would probably be Steve Blackman.
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Feb 18, 2011 23:00
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PoO3 posted:I think you're getting arguments twisted up. I never said The Rock was the greatest wrestler of all times, nor did I imply that my friends being drawn into the current product had anything to do with him being better than Austin. I personally think myself that Austin was the bigger star. All I was trying to say was that in this occasion, and like in many others, a television rating really doesn't mean jack poo poo. It was easy to get them confused when one argument said "Austin is not better than the Rock, here's my anecdotal evidence that proves it" and then someone else says "Anecdotally people are more excited about the Rock than Austin, here's why." But yeah, you were never arguing that, sorry. Though I wasn't directing it at you totally, just using some of your words. Against you. Directly. Whatever.
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Feb 18, 2011 23:11
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So what I've gathered after 50 words, and then again after a 50,000 word argument against nobody between everybody, is that The Rock was really good, and Austin was even better.
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Feb 18, 2011 23:35
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