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nasboat posted:now that I think about it, though, it turned me into one bitter son of a bitch when it came to wrestling. No wonder I hated so much stuff that WWE and WCW put out there. I think the internet in general will do that to whatever you enjoy. People in the games forum bitch about games, the movie forum bitches about movies, comics about comics, etc. It's a double edged sword. The comics forum helped me discover & get back into comics after being out of it for so long, but now I'm reading everyone pick apart & dissect stuff and I can feel myself getting more jaded.
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Jun 18, 2012 16:13
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Skinty McEdger posted:Who was the columnist who really needed to start taking his meds and called Rock Flex all the time? I think it was Eric S. at 411, I can't remember his last name, but it was Polish.
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Jun 18, 2012 16:16
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I know this has been discussed, but I feel that I will never understand Goldberg and why he was ever over with anybody. Wow, he looks like an overgrown MMA Steve Austin! Oh no, he beat Disco Inferno, Barry Darsow, and Glacier? This beast is unstoppable! Like, if you could get a guy over just by spending a bunch of money to tell the fans "This guy is amazing, you should really be impressed with this guy" then why did Lex Luger flop?
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Jun 18, 2012 16:31
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Halloween Jack posted:I know this has been discussed, but I feel that I will never understand Goldberg and why he was ever over with anybody. Wow, he looks like an overgrown MMA Steve Austin! Oh no, he beat Disco Inferno, Barry Darsow, and Glacier? This beast is unstoppable! It was a different time. People loved wrestling, the fanbase wasn't so jaded and smarky. Goldberg was a big guy. He ran through opponents that were more real than Ryback's job squad. He had a fairly steady build through the midcard, the US title, to the World title. His peak coincided with the crowd's hatred of Hogan, leading to a great moment where he beat him for the title.
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Jun 18, 2012 16:33
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Halloween Jack posted:I know this has been discussed, but I feel that I will never understand Goldberg and why he was ever over with anybody. Wow, he looks like an overgrown MMA Steve Austin! Oh no, he beat Disco Inferno, Barry Darsow, and Glacier? This beast is unstoppable! Luger had competitive matches with jobbers where he got beat up for the most of it, then won with his comeback. Savage did the same for most of his WCW run. What made Goldberg work was that he was different. He didn't have competitive matches, he just destroyed whoever was in front of him. If someone wins enough matches in a comphrehensive manner, particularly against guys who get offense in against most of the other guys on the card, then he's going to get over. If Goldberg had been given a 50/50 push then nothing would've come of it. Also the entrance helped a lot.
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Jun 18, 2012 16:35
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CopywrightMMXI posted:I think it was Eric S. at 411, I can't remember his last name, but it was Polish. Szulczewski or something like that. He was definitely crazy.
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Jun 18, 2012 16:35
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Halloween Jack posted:I know this has been discussed, but I feel that I will never understand Goldberg and why he was ever over with anybody. Wow, he looks like an overgrown MMA Steve Austin! Oh no, he beat Disco Inferno, Barry Darsow, and Glacier? This beast is unstoppable! Goldberg's build was done pretty well, and one of the biggest points about his push (that was discussed during a Legends of Wrestling) is that he didn't have to be the focus while he was being built. He could come out, do a three minute hour one Nitro match with a couple of cool moves, and leave. No one thought, "well that was a crap match!" They thought it was new and different and wanted to see more, but didn't care that it was only three minutes because oh hey, here comes the nWo. There were plenty of other things going on around him that he didn't have to be amazing, he just had to be exciting. And he was. Every few matches he'd bust out some new move whose whole purpose was to look cool and made you want to see what else he could do. He was almost always dominant and exciting, and for the longest time had no real entrance, wouldn't do interviews, and just looked intimidating. The streak felt organic at first, because suddenly this guy is up to fifty straight wins? Then it just kept going and you wondered who would be next and when it was going to stop. Goldberg had a great look, a decent amount of charisma, and wasn't inept at doing his four or five moves. When it came time for him to be an actual main eventer and when they finally had to end the streak came the trouble. But one of the biggest things about it was he didn't have to put the entire company on his back, he could just do his schtick and leave. Everything around him was so hot that the energy transferred to him. An idea like Goldberg is hard to make work if the business isn't on fire, because something like that takes a little while to catch on, and needs already built enthusiasm in the fans to drive it higher.
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Jun 18, 2012 16:52
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El Duke Silver posted:Goldberg's build was done pretty well, and one of the biggest points about his push (that was discussed during a Legends of Wrestling) is that he didn't have to be the focus while he was being built. He could come out, do a three minute hour one Nitro match with a couple of cool moves, and leave. No one thought, "well that was a crap match!" They thought it was new and different and wanted to see more, but didn't care that it was only three minutes because oh hey, here comes the nWo. There were plenty of other things going on around him that he didn't have to be amazing, he just had to be exciting. quote:Goldberg had a great look, a decent amount of charisma, and wasn't inept at doing his four or five moves.
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Jun 18, 2012 17:01
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Skinty McEdger posted:Also the entrance helped a lot. This was a big part of it. The whole being escorted to the ring by security while ominous gladiator music played made the match feel more like an execution than a competition. Another thing is that WCW had so many people under contract that they could feed him tons of lower level and mid level guys without having to use no name local jobbers. So by the time he got to face Hogan, he had been murdering people on TV and PPV for almost a year straight.
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Jun 18, 2012 17:08
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Grant DaNasty posted:This was a big part of it. The whole being escorted to the ring by security while ominous gladiator music played made the match feel more like an execution than a competition. Those jobbers names were Jerry Flynn and Hugh Morris.
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Jun 18, 2012 17:09
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bobkatt013 posted:Those jobbers names were Jerry Flynn and Hugh Morris. I'd like to think if wrestling was real, Jerry Flynn threw a poo poo fit every time he showed up to the arena to find out he had to wrestle Goldberg for the 5th time in a month.
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Jun 18, 2012 17:12
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Halloween Jack posted:I know this has been discussed, but I feel that I will never understand Goldberg and why he was ever over with anybody. Wow, he looks like an overgrown MMA Steve Austin! Oh no, he beat Disco Inferno, Barry Darsow, and Glacier? This beast is unstoppable! Goldberg seemed like a legitimate force of nature. He seemed completely different than anything else in wrestling at the time and he was. The Steve Austin comparisons came up, but anyone who watched knew Goldberg wasn't anything like Austin and didn't look like him other than the trunks and bald head.
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Jun 18, 2012 17:13
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Grant DaNasty posted:I'd like to think if wrestling was real, Jerry Flynn threw a poo poo fit every time he showed up to the arena to find out he had to wrestle Goldberg for the 5th time in a month. Or when anyone had to face Meng who according to a bunch of shoots he legitimately is the toughest guy in wrestling. It is also a match in which you risked your nose.
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Jun 18, 2012 17:16
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One thing to remember as well is a lot of criticisms of of some WCW talent were shaped by WWE's rewriting of history. Luger's run in WCW wasn't as bad as legends roundtables would suggest, he was a big star for parts of it and was the only guy outside of Sting that the fans would buy as beating Hogan at one point. He looked like poo poo at the end of his time in WCW, but then again everyone had been booked into the ground by then and looked like poo poo.
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Jun 18, 2012 17:20
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Grant DaNasty posted:This was a big part of it. The whole being escorted to the ring by security while ominous gladiator music played made the match feel more like an execution than a competition. Goldberg was a winner and people like winners. He was very no nonsense, some people knew his NFL background and he seemed to be the perfect hybrid style wrestler. He had good size, he could some acrobatic stuff, some huge power stuff and also had some martial arts looking kicks and strikes. He made wrestling feel real again in a way. It was like this guy came out of nowhere and he's tearing through all of these wrestlers who could never move up the food chain. It also helped that when most heels lost to him, they lost and that was it. It wasn't like that next week they were going to get their win back by cheating. You became a statistic in his winning streak and moved on. Goldberg was easily one of the biggest wrestling stars during the Monday Night Wars but you still have to wonder how much it would have meant for them to hold off on his World Title win until Starrcade 98.
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Jun 18, 2012 17:22
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Skinty McEdger posted:One thing to remember as well is a lot of criticisms of of some WCW talent were shaped by WWE's rewriting of history. Luger's run in WCW wasn't as bad as legends roundtables would suggest, he was a big star for parts of it and was the only guy outside of Sting that the fans would buy as beating Hogan at one point. He still got poo poo on when he won the title in 91. He also was always pushed and the crowd was looking for anyone to beat Hogan and it really did not matter who it was.
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Jun 18, 2012 17:22
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Grant DaNasty posted:Another thing is that WCW had so many people under contract that they could feed him tons of lower level and mid level guys without having to use no name local jobbers. So by the time he got to face Hogan, he had been murdering people on TV and PPV for almost a year straight. the other aspect about this that helped him was that WCW was so flooded with talent at that point that it wasn't too out of the ordinary for some new guy to just randomly appear on Nitro. What WAS strange was seeing this guy absolutely destroy the other lower-carders and mid-carders that he seemingly was also supposed to be. You weren't introduced to Goldberg in vignettes, he didn't come out of the gate being presented as a main eventer: he seemed like just another face in the huge WCW crowd, which made his wins and dominance that much more exciting and shocking when it happened. It's hard to explain without having seen it firsthand, and being in that... Nitro watching mode. Tons of stuff was being thrown at the wall to the point where you'd just be casually watching, not expecting anything too exciting to happen if it wasn't the nWo, a cruiserweight, or the Horsemen on the screen. Then suddenly here's this guy destroying everyone, and you barely paid attention as he was coming to the ring. A lot about Goldberg was the time, and because of that it's hard to explain it if you weren't watching at that point.
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Jun 18, 2012 17:23
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The other thing about Goldberg is that, at that time, winning in wrestling still meant something. At least, it meant a hell of a lot more than it does now. Or maybe I was just a young mark, I'm not sure. Maybe the adults were just as jaded then as we are now.
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Jun 18, 2012 17:25
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triplexpac posted:The other thing about Goldberg is that, at that time, winning in wrestling still meant something. At least, it meant a hell of a lot more than it does now.
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Jun 18, 2012 17:36
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triplexpac posted:Maybe the adults were just as jaded then as we are now. There were plenty of people who were jaded throughout the Monday Night Wars. It goes back to your point about the internet, and how it generally gives a voice to those who want to complain. There was tons of complaining about wrestling, even back then in a huge boom period like the Monday Night Wars were. I think one of the key points in the Goldberg discussion, which has been noted previously, is there was so much stuff going on that it didn't have to be the big thing in WCW. Whoever noted the part about sticking a Goldberg match on in the first hour and not thinking much of it hit the nail on the head. They went months with just having Goldberg in a three-minute segment sometime in the first 30-45 minutes, without much fanfare other than winning his squash match. It was a good slow build.
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Jun 18, 2012 17:58
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgVNscmCXHk I dunno, I think that whole deal is good. I think it holds up even today. Pretty much what everyone said. Business was hot, WCW was hot, and then you bring in a guy with incredible physical charisma, that could only do five things, but did them really well, and you give him a winning streak. And, as everyone said, he was completely different to everything out there. Also, Bill Goldberg was one of the great guys in wrestling. 
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Jun 18, 2012 18:21
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Oh man, the part where the fans force Raven back into the match was awesome. I forgot about that.
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Jun 18, 2012 19:17
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triplexpac posted:The other thing about Goldberg is that, at that time, winning in wrestling still meant something. At least, it meant a hell of a lot more than it does now. Winning didn't really mean all that much in WCW generally by that point, but if you have a guy win literally a hundred squashes in a row over increasingly nameworthy competition, you're going to have created a pretty big star. I mean, hell, WCW didn't book Goldberg perfectly or anything, but they got the key component right, which was that the guy has to win constantly and almost always look great doing so. Compare that to TNA's booking of Crimson and Christian's winning streaks, where they were losing matches but not the fall in tags and multimans constantly and generally did not look great in winning.
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Jun 18, 2012 19:31
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I think the announce team did a great job of selling Goldberg. I can recall his first three appearences in my head, and I remember the announce team better than the actual match. They made Bill sound like he was going to the NEXT BIG THING for those three minutes he was out there.
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Jun 18, 2012 19:54
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drat it. WWE should have stuff like this before their title matches on RAW.
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Jun 18, 2012 19:57
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Die Laughing posted:I think the announce team did a great job of selling Goldberg. I can recall his first three appearences in my head, and I remember the announce team better than the actual match. They made Bill sound like he was going to the NEXT BIG THING for those three minutes he was out there. it also helped that they sounded as shocked that he was doing what he was doing as the audience was. They sold like he'd come out of nowhere and just wasn't supposed to be doing this.
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Jun 18, 2012 20:29
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jeffersonlives posted:Szulczewski or something like that. He was definitely crazy. Yep, Szulczewski was the one who lost his gig at one of those sites (was it Keith's?) when he said that the only good thing about 9/11 was that conservative commentator Barbara Olson got "smeared across the Pentagon" or something like that. He was at least half-lunatic, prone to rant about the smallest things, and he harbored a weird and ridiculously fierce hatred for Rock as a face. Dude was a huge Tom & Jerry fan, though, so not all bad. v  v
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Jun 18, 2012 22:53
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El Duke Silver posted:
There was a shoot interview that mentioned Goldberg would train with Sting and try to broaden his moveset but Hogan or Bischoff told him to stop for some reason. (I can't remember who was interviewed.)
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Jun 18, 2012 22:57
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thesteelhellion posted:There was a shoot interview that mentioned Goldberg would train with Sting and try to broaden his moveset but Hogan or Bischoff told him to stop for some reason. (I can't remember who was interviewed.) Wasn't it Nash and Hall who told Goldberg to stop, because he didn't need to put in that kind of effort?
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Jun 18, 2012 22:58
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Timby posted:Wasn't it Nash and Hall who told Goldberg to stop, because he didn't need to put in that kind of effort? Could've been. It was years ago. Wonder how his career would have ended up if he kept putting his heart into it like he did that early on.
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Jun 18, 2012 23:11
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Timby posted:Wasn't it Nash and Hall who told Goldberg to stop, because he didn't need to put in that kind of effort? I could be wrong, but I remember it being both; Bischoff telling him to take it easy, Hogan telling him to take it easy, and finally he asks Hall and Nash why he's hearing that and they just tell him "you're too big a star to have to work."
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Jun 18, 2012 23:14
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thesteelhellion posted:Could've been. It was years ago. Wonder how his career would have ended up if he kept putting his heart into it like he did that early on. I agree. Any interviews I've seen with Goldberg, he seems like a nice down-to-earth guy who's very appreciative of everything he's been involved with. And when it comes to the whole "you don't need to learn/work so hard" deal, he seemed to do whatever he was told with little complaint because he felt "these guys have been doing this all their lives, they know better" There's even an interview somewhere about Nash booking himself to end the streak and Goldberg says "So was it time for the streak to end? Well, that's not my decision"
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Jun 18, 2012 23:24
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Pope Corky the IX posted:I agree. Any interviews I've seen with Goldberg, he seems like a nice down-to-earth guy who's very appreciative of everything he's been involved with. And when it comes to the whole "you don't need to learn/work so hard" deal, he seemed to do whatever he was told with little complaint because he felt "these guys have been doing this all their lives, they know better" There's even an interview somewhere about Nash booking himself to end the streak and Goldberg says "So was it time for the streak to end? Well, that's not my decision" Yeah, I never really got why he had so much heat when he came into the WWE. Goldberg doesn't seem like he's the politicking type.
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Jun 18, 2012 23:54
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thesteelhellion posted:Yeah, I never really got why he had so much heat when he came into the WWE. Goldberg doesn't seem like he's the politicking type. That's why he had so much heat. He believed what anyone told him since he didn't know he was being played by Nash, HHH, etc.
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Jun 18, 2012 23:58
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Frot Lesnar posted:That's why he had so much heat. He believed what anyone told him since he didn't know he was being played by Nash, HHH, etc. Ahh gotcha. That makes sense.
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Jun 19, 2012 00:13
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What's even funnier is they briefly considered having Mongo go over Goldberg at Starrcade in 97.
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Jun 19, 2012 00:26
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BAN DICKEYE posted:What's even funnier is they briefly considered having Mongo go over Goldberg at Starrcade in 97. Never mind that poo poo...
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Jun 19, 2012 01:03
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thesteelhellion posted:Yeah, I never really got why he had so much heat when he came into the WWE. Goldberg doesn't seem like he's the politicking type. Oh no he had heat because he was getting Brock Lesnar amounts of money for not many dates and the "boys" in the back got bitter that he wasn't doing the house shows and such. Pretty much the same as Rock and Brock coming back really.
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Jun 19, 2012 03:31
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This ~1999 Internet Wrestling chat is amazing. I am not going to say I blocked out that period of my life, but it is funny to think back to the days when I watched every wrestling product available, even sometimes stooping to Thunder levels. I read everything posted on Online Onslaught/Wrestleline. I even read 1Wrestling on those days I felt underinformed. But I do not think I ever felt underinformed enough to read 411Mania. OH MAN SCOOPTHIS.COM I also just thought about how these conversations sound to new wrestling fans like the "territory" talk sounded to me when I started watching wrestling. "Oh, Memphis and Calgary were really important to wrestling, huh ... IF YA SMELLLLLLLLL WOOOOOOOOO YAAAAAAY THE ROCK!!!" triplexpac posted:I think the internet in general will do that to whatever you enjoy. People in the games forum bitch about games, the movie forum bitches about movies, comics about comics, etc.  (I have one, not hatin', just relatin')
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Jun 19, 2012 04:04
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Frot Lesnar posted:This is the Scott Keith is fat thread for those with archives. Would there be any interest in an "This month in Wrestlehut history" thread? We could call it WH2K classics on demand.
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Jun 20, 2012 00:56
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