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The Last Call posted:Triple H going over. For all the words typed about Hunter's career, And even a pretty good video summary by sex pest Max Landis, it's worth noting that you could fill a thousand books with stories about "muscle guy that just never made it". There's a million guys out there that looked about as good, or had about as good a gimmick but just, didn't click at the right time, or never got the right gimmick, or didn't have the in with Vince or never got all the chances he did. The question forever will be; could he have earned it without it being handed to him? Would Hunter Hearst Helmsly ever transitioned into Triple H if Paul hadn't hung around The Clique? How many title reigns would Triple H have had if he was never married to Stephanie Mcmahon? Is he a grade A heel that earned the audience's ire with a career of heelery or just a dope that got how ever many chances he needed to fail upwards and was reviled for his position in the company and obvious favoritism? In wrestling terms, I'd call Trips Career a "worked shoot". There is a chance that when he does get inducted into the Hall of Fame, he may be the only wrestler to be booed over it. But you guys have inspired me to try and get long form. Unless someone beats me to it, I'm going to tackle my favorite wrestling personality: Jim Cornette Trollologist fucked around with this message at 09:14 on Mar 1, 2022 |
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Mar 1, 2022 09:03
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Trollologist posted:Unless someone beats me to it, I'm going to tackle my favorite wrestling personality: Jim Cornette Sorry, I beat you to it. Jim lost a tooth in the process and I have a court date on the 7th
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Mar 1, 2022 09:20
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im saint germain posted:Sorry, I beat you to it. Jim lost a tooth in the process and I have a court date on the 7th Godspeed. Jim had it coming.
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Mar 1, 2022 09:21
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I myself will next do a shorter bit on what I consider is both the best match and the worst match in WWE history. Yes, they're the same match. Here's a hint: it happened in 1998 and it's a minor miracle that one of the participants didn't die that night.
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Mar 1, 2022 10:32
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The Last Call posted:One infamous story goes someone was bringing him the script one day and Hunter simply asked "Am I going over"? The guy bringing him the script promptly looked over it and said no. Naturally that wouldn't do, the result got changed. What match was it, who could say but it's easily believable. full quote because it's incredible quote:One traumatized writer gave Powerslam writer Matthew Randazzo the following account of one of his earlier meetings with Triple H a few years ago: Hefty Leftist fucked around with this message at 12:02 on Mar 1, 2022 |
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Mar 1, 2022 11:59
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There's no way Hunter becomes The Game without Stephanie. The times he's been on ice due to injuries? The WWE would move on and he'd be relegated to "hey I remember that guy" the way that Flair, Hogan, and Goldust are treated. Hunter needed other people to really shine.
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Mar 1, 2022 14:39
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Triple H stabbed so many people in the back and buried so much talent to get to the top only for Vince to get mad at him over something petty and then tried to murder him with stress induced heart attacks lmao
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Mar 1, 2022 14:46
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My brother was a big Triple H fan growing up and he was the one wrestler we never saw eye to eye on. He loved it all - the promos the shirts the over the top entrances. I never got the appeal and felt like he was pretty bland in the ring and the reign of terror was intensely boring to watch. He just sucked all the energy and pacing out of the room. As someone sat across from my brother in a Y2J t-shirt for WMX8 being a big mark it was pretty unbearable.
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Mar 1, 2022 14:53
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16-bit Butt-Head posted:Triple H stabbed so many people in the back and buried so much talent to get to the top only for Vince to get mad at him over something petty and then tried to murder him with stress induced heart attacks lmao It's a classic tale. Really, it's a pattern I've seen a lot of trying to appease a narcissist, only not to realise that narcissists don't have the human sense of gratitude (though they sure as gently caress can carry grudges to the ends of the earth) and while they may see you as useful, they take that for granted and it's easily overridden by their whims. You can work for years to please them and make sure to be the focus of their attention, but then they have a bad day or don't like your tone or the colour of your shirt and suddenly you become their new hobby to destroy any any means possible. Ghost Leviathan fucked around with this message at 15:04 on Mar 1, 2022 |
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Mar 1, 2022 14:55
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The most apt Triple H analogy I've heard: He was a 7 pushed as a 10, which made him look like a 6.
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Mar 1, 2022 15:19
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HHH was a good wrestler and a good heel. He's a skilled performer but there is no way in hell he would have gotten where he did if it wasn't for Stephanie and Shawn. No way. There were always people better than him. He's a loving scumbag and he can use the old Hogan excuse of "that's just the business and anyone else would have done the same to me" but it's an obvious bullshit lie because look at all the people who got to the top without backstabbing or politicking or burying other people.
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Mar 1, 2022 15:24
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Trollologist posted:I'm going to tackle my favorite wrestling personality: Jim Cornette
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Mar 1, 2022 15:49
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Cornette is really sad more than anything else, because on one hand he's actually fairly liberal (pro-gun control, pro-abortion rights, hates Republicans and Trump, disdains religion, etc.), as well as having a vast knowledge of wrestling history and a wealth of hilarious "back in the day" stories. He even refuses to be acknowledged as the "greatest wrestling manager of all time", saying he's comfortable being ranked #2 behind the late Bobby Heenan. On the other hand, he stubbornly refuses to believe that wrestling has changed since his heyday, and can't let go of grudges even when it's been to his detriment. But worst of all, he still slings around a lot of that good ol' boy-style racism, sexism, and homophobia that someone who otherwise butts heads with conservative Christian ideology should have grown out of many years ago.
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Mar 1, 2022 16:02
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jim cornette worked himself into a shoot and has become brain poisoned by pro wrestling
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Mar 1, 2022 16:07
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Cornett and ddp really should have formed a stable or faction bound by their shared affection for being cuckolded and wanting to see their wives under as many wrestlers as possible. They could have feuded with the likes of Chris candido and John Morrison who were angry heel involuntary cuckolds. It would culminate with the hatching of the Cuckoldy-Cucker at survivor series or whatever.
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Mar 1, 2022 16:19
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Thanks to this thread, I wound up going down a bit of a YT rabbit hole on weird wrestling stories. Was it ever confirmed exactly what Jeff Hardy was on during that infamous match against Sting? Heroin seems like it would just render him unable to even make it into the ring. Coke, speed, meth or freebase would just make him spastic and unpredictable, but not incapable of wrestling. Thinking about it, maybe it was acid, Ketamine or PCP I guess or maybe some weird combination of booze and painkillers? Benzos? The TNA guy who tried to intervene (Biskoff or something?) said that Hardy would show up for check in at the arena and then "go hide", which would suggest crack, coke or heroin to me. If he was just drinking, I'm having a hard time picturing him holed up in a closet somewhere doing shots. But watching the match, booze seems like the main culprit even though he didn't seem to be staggering a lot really. I couldn't find anything definitive on it.
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Mar 1, 2022 16:19
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16-bit Butt-Head posted:jim cornette worked himself into a shoot and has become brain poisoned by pro wrestling This pretty much sums it up. Cornette really is a land of contrasts. I obviously don't agree with any of his lovely opinions but when he stops talking about race and gender and just talks about the business itself I learn a lot and it's really interesting. He's also still a worker though. He knows that controversy sells and he obviously has a rabid fanbase that loves his "I wish things were like they were when I was a kid" bullshit and he definitely plays to that audience. Only his audience isn't clamoring for the days of the territories in the 70s, they want ECW back. And while I loved ECW as an edgy college grad I accept that things change and I moved on but like someone else said there's this incredibly annoying smarky internet crowd that's just toxic and really stupid and can't grow up and that's Cornette's target audience.
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Mar 1, 2022 16:21
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quickest way to get Jim to block you on twitter is to tell him he acts like trump https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGx5hiveIKI this is the kind of dogshit he considers the golden age of wrestling. he does Truth Martini worse than Truth Martini did
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Mar 1, 2022 16:22
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Right, this next bit will be shorter, as I’m going to focus on one specific thing instead of a whole career or company lifetime or stable lifetime. I’m going to talk about what is simultaneously the greatest and the worst match in WWF, if not wrestling history. But as always, we need some background. We’ll start with someone I mentioned in the latter half of my Triple H bit. This is Mick Foley.  Well, that’s TECHNICALLY Cactus Jack, sometime in the mid 90’s. Not sure if that’s a WCW or WWF picture. THIS is Mick Foley.  Not exactly the face of a ‘hardcore legend’, does it seem? And if we go back to one of his very first matches on WWE TV in 1986 as a no name jobber…  Yeah. The story of how wrestlers get into the business tends to follow one of two tracks. One is they deliberately wanted to become a pro wrestler and took steps to live that dream; these lot include Shawn Michaels, John Cena, and Mick Foley. Others basically sidestep or fall into it, finding it a mode of work that suits them and they end up succeeding in; examples of this include Hulk Hogan, Ric Flair, Bill Goldberg, and Roman Reigns. The latter tend to be given a side stink eye half the time, because they don’t ‘love the business’. Goldberg is often held up as an example; he saw his job as a wrestler as just that, a job, instead of a calling. How valid that criticism is, you tell me. In the late 90’s, Mick Foley wrote the first of several autobiographies, which covered the majority of his life. In it, he recounted some bitter experience in 1993 or so where Ric Flair yelled at him after a match in WCW, said that just because the commentators said he was over, he thought people cared, but no one actually cared about him, that he would be in a wheelchair by the time he was thirty, and no one was going to care. Flair was wrong, for better or for worse, but Flair also took offence with the presentation of the account, and in his own book released several years later, he gave Mick a receipt (his words), saying that, among other things, he didn’t care how many heights he fell off of, how many hard things he landed on, and how many sharp things he poked himself with, he was not a ‘wrestler’, like Flair, he was ‘little more than a glorified stuntman’. Now, as Flair said, he was having his own deep problems at the time, and expecting him to see Mick’s potential was asking way too much. But Flair also recounted his own harsh training, at the hands of Verne Gagne, which he flunked out of three times before finally passing, which consisted of (among other things) intense, constant exercise that Flair basically said Foley, with his body type and athletic type, could never have completed. He would have washed out and gotten nowhere near a ring. Just how much slack you want to cut Foley and Flair really depends on you, but a few details, to me, turn me to Mick’s side. One is that Mick Foley was a ‘calling’ person. He got into wrestling because he wanted to. Flair, on the other hand, got into wrestling because he happened to met another wrestler while bouncing at a club, and ended up getting into the business because it would allow him to combine several of his life’s passions: athleticism, showmanship, partying, and sleeping with as many women as possible and then going back for seconds, thirds, and etc etc. Now, I am not questioning the devotion to the business Flair did develop. He failed that intense training camp three times before passing, after all. A mere few years into his career, he was involved in an airplane accident that broke his back; informed he needed to retire and that he might have trouble walking for the rest of his life, Flair beat the odds and not only returned to wrestling to become one of its biggest stars, but went on to wrestle for nearly FORTY MORE YEARS. (You can see that back injury’s effect in every Flair match. Watch how he takes a bump if he’s given a back body drop, or does his trademark spot where he’d climb up the corner of the ring, get caught, and get tossed down: he always, ALWAYS lands on his side, instead of flat on his back) And Flair was, is indeed one of the very best heels in wrestling history. BUT… I really get the sense of a purist here. A “you didn’t do it my way, you couldn’t have done it my way, ergo you never became what I am, and I think you are lesser for it.” attitude. Flair’s not wrong, in a sense. Mick never became what he (Flair) was, because he wasn’t Ric Flair. He was Mick Foley. He didn’t have Flair’s classic good looks, hair that gave itself well to bleach blonde perming, or Flair’s more traditional wide shoulders and trunk body, instead being wide in the hips and the rear end, limiting what he could do in terms of strength moves. But Mick had a dream that Flair never had, at least not until he’d already slipped into the business. To say Mick shouldn’t have tried to pursue it is arrogance, and dismissing how he chose to do it is also elitism. Yes, garbage wrestling is just that for the most part, but you can still potentially make fertilizer out of poo poo, and Foley, lacking the traditional wrestler aspects, instead turned his weaknesses into strengths and went his own way. In Foley’s case, his own way was learning how to talk just as well, if not better, as Flair, and using his ‘suited for bumping’ body to do just that. Bump. And bump like a motherfucking lunatic. I brought up before that Shawn Michaels was an excellent ‘bumper’, and he was, but he also had the slim athletic build that helped him do it a certain way and also allowed him more options when it came to the rest of working. Foley didn’t have that, so he worked with what he did have. And one thing he had a big bug up his big butt about was that he wanted fans to get their money’s worth. Even if it meant he had to do stupid things like the Nestea Plunge. What was that? Well, Mick was working a match with ‘Mexican legend’ Mil Mascaras, who supposedly is on par with El Santo in terms of luchadore icons in Mexico. Mascaras might also be the only man in the business more selfish than Hulk Hogan, and by the 80’s he was so up his own rear end huffing his own farts in regards to his greatness that he would never give anyone ANYTHING in ANY match, expecting them to do everything he wanted and for him to go over. Last Call and Hefty Leftist bring up the “Am I going over” story in regards to HHH: if it’s apocryphal, it could just as easily apply to Mascaras. Jim Cornette's assessment of the man was that was fine; virtually any match with Mascaras would suck, but working with him was quick and safe, he'd usually be over based on reputation, and the rest was just unnecessary. Mick didn’t want to just have a quick, lovely as gently caress match. So he had Mascaras dropkick him while he was outside the ring and took this bump, later dubbed “The Nestea Plunge.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXGgMUsBycM&t=171s So yeah. He threw himself backwards onto a non-padded concrete floor, solely so the fans would have at least ONE moment from the match that was memorable. On one hand, thanks Mick, I appreciate it. On the other hand, Mick, no. Just no. As I’ve mentioned before (how many times am I going to say that? Well, wrestling is also repetitive so, even more), even if you do everything ‘right’ when it comes to the business, you are still tossing yourself and letting yourself be tossed onto firm surfaces hundreds if not thousands of times a year. It grinds the body down. This doesn’t even begin to cover the damage that some (too many) wrestlers will do to themselves for virtually no money or attention. Jonathan Good, nee Jon Moxley/Dean Ambrose, is an example of an exception to the rule, in that he managed to put himself through endless poo poo and still claw his way up to the top and make all the pain and injuries at least semi worth it (and may the future never prove me wrong). Though being an exceptionally strong talker also helped a lot; thing is, Good could have done less to himself. Ie, all that death match poo poo, it was his choice, for the most part. Too often, it’s a bad choice. Good’s an extreme outlier in terms of success. Too many will destroy themselves for either little, nothing, or in such a way that whatever they get doesn’t match whatever they lost. Look no further then Tom Billington, the Dynamite Kid, wrestler extraordinaire, pioneer of modern style wrestling with extreme athletics, inspirer of many in his wake, who started by doing whatever he felt he needed to do to get attention because he was small for a wrestler, like doing diving headbutts outside the ring, missing, and landing on minimally padded or non padded concrete or wood floors, for YEARS, in front of crowds of less than five hundred people on average and that's probably a high number. By the time he finally hit the big time in the early to mid 80's, his body was such a wreck that he barely managed to spend any time there before his back gave out, and Billington would end up spending the last third of his life in a wheelchair. Or one of those inspired-by-Billington people, Chris Benoit, who also used the diving headbutt. We know how that ended. And the fact that when they performed an autopsy on Benoit, they found his brain was so degraded from who knows how many ignored concussions and other impacts that it looked like that of an 80 year old man with Alzheimer’s. I really really wish Bryan Danielson would retire his use of the drat move; Harley Race, who invented it for wrestling, outright said he regretted it for what it helped cause. In any case, in that regard, I can see where Ric Flair is coming from. But, again, on the other, Mick Foley had a dream, and he made it his way, and there’s really no point comparing the two and asking for which is better. This isn’t stale bread and croissants, it’s apples and oranges; which is BETTER? And hell, if you want to drag in real life actions, choices, and all that, Flair, the ‘pure true wrestler’...well, he’s the one with terrible finances, multiple destroyed marriages, and alcoholism from letting his gimmick utterly consume him and his life, while Mick’s money issues seem stable and his lone marriage to his wife Collette is still going strong 30 years on (and again, may I never be proven wrong on my assessment). Still, the point of all this is, even so, Mick Foley isn’t exactly known for making what could be considered SMART decisions in terms of his in ring work. He felt he had to work around his handicaps, and he did it through taking crazy bumps and fighting in insane matches like bed of nails matches, no rope barbed fire exploding ring matches, and so on. And doing stuff like the Nestea Plunge. Or the time when after a night of death matches, feeling the need to top them all, a match with him ended when Mick legitimately got so tangled up in barbed wire he couldn’t get out of it. Or when he tried to end his career by having Vader squash him between his weight and a hard wooden ramp (long story, he was basically in a bad mental way, he tried to have Vader do a spot that he was sure would break something in him so he could basically commit a form of insurance fraud, but his body managed to take it anyway, so he had no choice but to get up and keep going, both in the match and his wrestling career). Or what I’m about to discuss. But again, another sideline. --- This is Terry Funk.  Not quite sure when this picture was taken. I will assume it is a few years after his debut, in 1965. And here is a picture taken of Terry Funk’s last match (as of now).  IN 2017.  WHEN THE MAN WAS 73 YEARS OLD. Terry Funk’s career reminds me a lot of the late Leslie Neilson, in that it has two parts. Neilson was a serious actor before having that fact used for comedy in Airplane!, at which point he switched solely to comedic roles until his death. Funk’s first part of his career was of a serious, Ric Flair style wrestler, and much like Flair, it seemed that no matter what Funk did or tried, he just couldn’t resist the lure of coming back to the ring. Heck, I heard he had a memorable retirement tour in Japan…in 1980. That’s a year before I was BORN. And so, as Funk aged, and unable to leave the business, it seemed, he entered the second part of his career: that of the lunatic old man. It started small, in Funk being a savage nutcase who would do crazy stuff like piledrive men through tables (in the late 80’s, that was the equivalent of being one degree short of just shooting the man in terms of what you could do to them in a wrestling ring), and then as Funk got even older he got even crazier, participating in Japanese death match tournaments and the early days of ECW, doing poo poo like doing moonsaults off balconies because…well, he was middle aged and crazy. And then later aged and crazy. And as said, then lunatic and old. The man retired and unretired so many times you’d think he tried to punch Gold Experience Requiem (ha ha, it is a Jojo reference). Like Flair, it seemed like he couldn’t function as a normal man and wanted to die in the ring. How he managed to make it to TYOOL 2022 is something of a small miracle, and we’re not even counting Funk’s close calls. Like the time in late WCW when Funk was on the roster and ended up fighting a younger wrestler in an out of the ring brawl that somehow ended up in a HORSE BARN. And Funk went into a horse stable so he could hit his opponent with some move, I think it was a piledriver. And the horse, who was, you know, a horse and had no idea what these two crazy hairless monkeys were doing, got scared and bucked, and Funk lucked out by only being glanced by the horse’s leg instead of taking a firm shot that could have well killed or crippled him. His response to this? “YOU loving HORSE! I’LL KICK YOUR rear end!” (As Death of WCW notes, it is surprising that end stage WCW didn’t try to follow this up by booking Funk against the horse in a grudge match). In 1998, however, Terry Funk…was not in the WWF. Chainsaw Charlie was.  Yes, for some reason, when Mick Foley, who had become lifelong friends with Funk over their shared hardcore match experience, brought Funk in to be Cactus Jack’s tag team partner, Funk decided that instead of being his usual self, he’d be this odd Leatherface knockoff. Like I said. Middle aged and crazy. Also, I remember hearing a radio ad for a local house show of the WWF during this time and the radio announcer got the name reversed and called him “Charlie Chainsaw.” I don’t know which one sounds better. What do you think? But in 1998, both men were in the WWE. — One of the staples of pro wrestling gimmick matches is the steel cage match. Something so well worn will inevitably spawn alternates and modifications. And so in late 1997, the WWF created one of their own. This is the Hell In A Cell specialized steel cage.  Traditional cage matches have the cage right up against the ring, and just have the cage consist of four walls; one of the defined ways to win a cage match is to climb out of it. As you can see (hopefully), the HIAC cage is larger, allowing some space outside the ring to be free, and has a rooftop. And is more clearly composed of multiple segments, while traditional cages seem to be more in the vein of ‘four big walls’, though there’s probably more pieces than it appears. So why was this match created? Well, because in late 1997, Shawn Michaels had so badly pissed off the Undertaker in kayfabe that he needed something brand new to utterly destroy the man, something the fans were fully behind, as Shawn’s heel turn managed to rub a LOT of people the wrong way (in kayfabe terms, probably in real life as well though, it’s Shawn). Hence was created Hell In A Cell, with Shawn and Undertaker having the first match in such a cage ever in October 1997. If you ever wanted to find a singular match to show someone to demonstrate the precise blend of athletics, spectacle, showmanship, and gimmicks that composes pro wrestling at its best, you can’t go wrong with Hell In A Cell I. https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3bdw92 It’s a match that stands the test of time, and features one of the very best ‘heel reaps what he sows’ punishments at the end of it, where after all Shawn has done to put the Undertaker down has failed and he takes advantage of circumstances to flee the supposed-to-be-inescapable cage, the Undertaker, in pure “I HAVE HAD IT AND I AM GOING TO MURDER YOU” mode, gives chase, (putting the rest in spoilers in case someone doesn't know and actually wants to watch the match and see it for themselves, so remember, this is the finishing segment of the match) catches Shawn, throws him into the cage (Shawn doing an expertly done blade job in pure magician misdirection in the process of the setup), grinds his face into it, follows Shawn as he tries to flee from Undertaker up the cage, catches Shawn as he tries climbing down the other side, knocks Shawn off the side from halfway down the cage through a table, drags him back into the ring, puts him on the top rope and chokeslams him off of it (more than enough for a pin), procures a chair and smashes Shawn with an unprotected chairshot right to the face (at this point Michaels is essentially legally dead), and then calls for the Tombstone on top of THAT, before the match is interrupted by story. It’s a drat good match, is what I’m saying, setting one heck of a standard for whatever match would use the Hell In A Cell cage next. Unfortunately. — This is classic Mankind.  Or rather, this is Mick Foley when he debuted in the WWF in 1996 under the gimmick of ‘Mankind’. There’s some interesting stories about the character: McMahon had wanted to call him ‘Mason The Mutilator’ (which Mick hated; he talked Vince into changing the name to ‘Mankind the Mutilator’, and WWE ended up dropping The Mutilator part entirely, perhaps before another crazy man came after them with a sword, or a pick, or an axe). And what was Mankind (the character)'s story? Well, see, he was an award winning child piano prodigy, but his parents were basically insane narcissists whose standards Mankind could never match, and one day over his ‘failings’ they slammed the piano cover down on his fingers and sent him into the sewers to live with the rats. Where, in pure comic book logic, he grew up a functional adult who was insane and didn’t feel pain and wanted to be a wrestler. That’s why Mick’s finisher was having his bound together right hand fingers (supposedly healed wrong) perform the ‘Mandible Claw’, where he supposedly pressed down on the underside of one’s tongue to activate nerve endings there (try it, it actually does hurt a LOT) and why he had two pieces of music for the first two years of his career, one for his entrance, and one for when he won matches that was a wholly different piano piece. So what should a mask wearing friend of rats sewer dwelling crazy man do? Why, feud with the undead wizard man, of course. So Mankind debuted attacking the Undertaker and smashing him with his trademark “Cactus Jack ringside elbow drop”, which would be a part of WWF highlight packages for years to come, and we were off to the races. In more than one way. You see, shortly after turning face in early 1992, Mark Calloway had found himself as the WWF’s official ‘monster slayer’, or ‘freak facer’; in general, he kept working feuds with wrestlers who were either generally not good workers (Yokuzuna by the time Undertaker worked with him, Brian Adams as the Underfaker, Kama), didn’t sync well with him (Irwin R. Shyster/IRS-Mike Rotunda), or were just plain terrible in the ring (Kamala, Giant Gonzalez, King Kong Bundy, Mabel). Calloway had spent so long having bad matches that it was easy to not see that the man could work, he just didn’t have anything nine-tenths of the time to work WITH. But Mick Foley COULD work, and hence Undertaker would have a career renaissance and one of his most memorable feuds, as Mick would bring in his hardcore aspects to not only have memorable, if not great matches, but actually be a dominant heel; Undertaker had an aura of invincibiblity and Mankind smashed right through it. But all feuds must end, and Undertaker and Mankind’s constant battles did as 1996 ended, barring the first PPV after Undertaker won the world title at Wrestlemania 13 and Mankind was selected as the first No 1 contender for his victories over Undertaker in the past, allowing them to have one more brutal match that Undertaker won. A year later, things had changed, a LOT. Mick had introduced and gone through the Three Faces of Foley gimmick, Undertaker was starting to show more aspects of the real life Mark Calloway, like speaking with his natural accent instead of putting on a monotone, and the man on top was Steve Austin, feuding with Vince McMahon. As mentioned, McMahon picked Mick as Dude Love as his first attempt to dethrone Austin, and in their second match, had stacked the deck as much as possible, appointing himself as the referee and his two prime stooges Gerald Brisco and the late Pat Patterson as guest timekeeper and ring announcer (the latter of which gave Patterson the magic power solely seen in this show to change the match’s type on the fly- “This is a reminder that this is a no disqualification match!” “This is a reminder, this is a falls count anywhere match!”). The lone advantage Austin managed to wrangle was having Undertaker as the ‘special guest enforcer’, and he ended up playing a big role in Austin winning that night. As mentioned, McMahon fired Dude Love, Mankind came back to help, and to punish Undertaker for his interference, McMahon decreed that Undertaker would face Mankind again, at the June PPV, King of the Ring, in the second ever HELL IN A CELL match. …problem. Mick was not Shawn Michaels. And Undertaker, around this time, broke a bone in his foot, severely limiting his mobility. But Mick looked at how well the very first Hell In A Cell had gone, and he couldn’t live with the idea of the follow up being generic, or subpar, or worst of all, lovely. He needed to think of SOMETHING that would live up to that well crafted masterpiece of a match. And he says his biggest mistake and regret on thinking on what he should do in that regard was to ask also-in-the-WWE-at-the-time Terry Funk for any ideas he had. Funk’s reply? “Start on top of the cage.” Cornwind Evil fucked around with this message at 10:14 on Mar 3, 2022 |
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Mar 1, 2022 17:39
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Elephant Ambush posted:JBL was Bradshaw, who was one of Undertaker's Acolytes during the Dark Ministry storyline. When that was over those guys had nothing to do so they just became the APA as a tag team. that quote does miss the specific origin of the JBL character, though, which was that he got a recurring gig with fox news where he'd pick stocks for their stock channel or whatever the gently caress since he's legit into that sort of thing so he stopped being a texan cowboy bully and started being a rich new york bully he would eventually get cut from the fox news gig after wwe did a show in germany and he tried to get heat by doing a straight-arm salute and goose-stepping around the ring to mock the crowd, which got what might be called in the business "the wrong kind of heat" (it was 2006 or so, so fox news at that point was still broadly anti-nazi) 16-bit Butt-Head posted:jim cornette worked himself into a shoot and has become brain poisoned by pro wrestling yep - he spent 40+ years being as mean as possible to people and doubling down as a job, and now he can't argue with people without wishing that they get four kinds of cancer otoh I return again to the point where new jack tried to cripple or murder at least three other wrestlers and that wasn't an issue for anyone, but jim cornette has a podcast that you're under no obligation to listen to where he says mean words about orange cassidy and about how every match needs a leapfrog-doubledown-hot tag spot, and suddenly people start shaking and saying they won't go to wrestling shows in case someone there has heard the hurtful words of old territory man
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Mar 1, 2022 19:05
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BiggerBoat posted:Was it ever confirmed exactly what Jeff Hardy was on during that infamous match against Sting? Heroin seems like it would just render him unable to even make it into the ring. Coke, speed, meth or freebase would just make him spastic and unpredictable, but not incapable of wrestling. Thinking about it, maybe it was acid, Ketamine or PCP I guess or maybe some weird combination of booze and painkillers? Benzos? I don't think he's said officially, when he got arrested in 2009 he had 262 vicodin and 180 somas in his house, so probably not IV heroin but rather a bunch of pill opiates and other painkillers
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Mar 1, 2022 19:18
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professional wrestling is very harmful for your mental health even if you havent suffered multiple concussions in the ring
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Mar 1, 2022 19:20
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FullLeatherJacket posted:otoh I return again to the point where new jack tried to cripple or murder at least three other wrestlers and that wasn't an issue for anyone, but jim cornette has a podcast that you're under no obligation to listen to where he says mean words about orange cassidy and about how every match needs a leapfrog-doubledown-hot tag spot, and suddenly people start shaking and saying they won't go to wrestling shows in case someone there has heard the hurtful words of old territory man Nobody does this or says this lmao what the gently caress are you talking about
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Mar 1, 2022 19:20
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jim cornette is your racist uncle you wish would just stick to telling cool stories but instead all he wants to talk about is racist or sexist poo poo and accuse people of being pedophiles without evidence or threatening to violently murder vince russo and his family
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Mar 1, 2022 19:21
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Elephant Ambush posted:Nobody does this or says this lmao what the gently caress are you talking about you say this, but people in the wrestling forum literally said that jim cornette describing the young bucks as "sissies" made them feel "unsafe" to go to shows, and then got mad when I made fun of them and told me I was the reason chris kanyon was dead I can't say I would want to be trapped in a car with jim cornette for four hours while he repeats old race jokes from the 80s, but lol at the idea that you can't go to a wrestling show in tyool 2022 without some west side story gang of people in jimmy del rey shirts (one of whom is actually ricky morton) cornering you outside and demanding that you admit the superkick should only be used as a finisher
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Mar 1, 2022 19:53
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Aren’t the youngest bucks really right wing in that smirk and deny Chris Pratt style of invisible right wingery of the Jesus believers? Shame on them for hurting the feelings of our wrestling forum by being such sissies.
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Mar 1, 2022 19:58
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aj styles is a flat earther
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Mar 1, 2022 20:04
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of course, for his lot in life is to be wronk.
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Mar 1, 2022 20:06
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wow, not going to wrestling shows because jim cornette might be christian is like if you went to taco bell and john cena was a lovely taco
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Mar 1, 2022 20:10
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almost every wrestler is a stupid crazy rear end in a top hat with questionable beliefs that has done hosed up poo poo because if they were a normal well adjusted person they would have never chosen to be a professional wrestler in the first place
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Mar 1, 2022 20:13
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I imagine that if you slam your head against the mat enough times, it becomes easier to accept absolutely anything as the truth. No matter if its bullshit or not.
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Mar 1, 2022 20:17
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The going rate in the PNW for gorilla men to give each other concussions is $35. Or was when I was last in the bullpen. It takes a special kind of person to agree to be given a concussion for $35. Wrestlers are those kinds of people.
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Mar 1, 2022 20:17
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shadow puppet of a posted:Aren’t the youngest bucks really right wing in that smirk and deny Chris Pratt style of invisible right wingery of the Jesus believers? Shame on them for hurting the feelings of our wrestling forum by being such sissies. lmao I have some really bad news for you about the number of Jesus Believer wrestlers that you've unknowingly been a fan of in the past And if the Bucks are chuds they do a great job of hiding it considering they're EVPs for a company that employs and prominently features numerous LGBTQ wrestlers
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Mar 1, 2022 20:19
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FullLeatherJacket posted:you say this, but people in the wrestling forum literally said that jim cornette describing the young bucks as "sissies" made them feel "unsafe" to go to shows, and then got mad when I made fun of them and told me I was the reason chris kanyon was dead So just to be clear, your argument here is that they were afraid of people mad about old-school rasslin', and not because of Cornette's unrepentant homophobia being taken fully onboard by his more deranged listeners who put it on display at shows, right
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Mar 1, 2022 20:20
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The thing that sticks with me with Cornette is his whole deal with this guy Brian Zane. Zane is a fairly level-headed wrestling YouTube host who also does stuff with ROH. He also happens to look a LOT like a young Jim Cornette, so Cornette would occasionally pop up on his YouTube show to play up the running gag that he's Zane's long-lost father. Then one day, Cornette was ranting about Orange Cassidy or comedy wrestling in general on Twitter. Zane calmly disagreed with what he said and believes that there's room for all kinds of wrestling in the business. So Cornette blocked him and cut ties. Dude just goes 0 to 60.
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Mar 1, 2022 20:21
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Gavok posted:The thing that sticks with me with Cornette is his whole deal with this guy Brian Zane. Zane is a fairly level-headed wrestling YouTube host who also does stuff with ROH. He also happens to look a LOT like a young Jim Cornette, so Cornette would occasionally pop up on his YouTube show to play up the running gag that he's Zane's long-lost father. he did the the same thing to dave meltzer where he destroyed a friendship and business relationship that stretched back decades all because meltzer said he liked comedy wrestlers and compared jim cornette's tennis racket carrying heel manager character to the comedy wrestlers cornette hates so much which really pissed him off lmao 16-bit Butt-Head fucked around with this message at 20:27 on Mar 1, 2022 |
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Mar 1, 2022 20:24
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Nobody outside of Bryan Alvarez can withstand Dave’s repugnant speech patterns so I can’t fault connette for finding any reason to sever all ties as a way to get off the voicemail train full of endless “like”, “you know” and total inability to ever finish a single sentence properly. I used to listen to Dave daily in the eyada.com era and his declining faculties would piss anyone off. It can’t be all about the bad comedy on both sides of the ring
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Mar 1, 2022 20:32
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16-bit Butt-Head posted:he did the the same thing to dave meltzer where he destroyed a friendship and business relationship that stretched back decades all because meltzer said he liked comedy wrestlers and compared jim cornette's tennis racket carrying heel manager character to the comedy wrestlers cornette hates so much which really pissed him off lmao Dave's sorta right but I can see why that would annoy Cornette because the tennis racket thing came from his original heel manager gimmick which was that he was a rich kid whose mom would buy him anything he wanted. Of course as all poor rednecks know, only rich people play tennis, so Cornette got the tennis racket as a reminder to fans that he was rich. At one point early in his career, a babyface threatened to beat him up so Cornette kayfabe claimed that he started loading a horseshoe into the racket sleeve so that he could bonk the babyface with it in self defense. This led to his legendary run as a manager who would cheat like crazy by bonking babyfaces with the racket while the ref wasn't looking to get wins for the guys he managed. So the tennis racket thing wasn't intended to be comical but I can totally see how people would look at it that way if you didn't know the origins. Not that it really matters all that much. It's funny that Cornette got mad enough at that that he severed from Meltzer though.
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Mar 1, 2022 20:42
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Sydney Bottocks posted:So just to be clear, your argument here is that they were afraid of people mad about old-school rasslin', and not because of Cornette's unrepentant homophobia being taken fully onboard by his more deranged listeners who put it on display at shows, right yes, have you seen jimmy del rey work? but no, seriously, I have zero desire to relitigate stupid internet arguments from years ago, but the point was more about people being selectively offended by certain things that cornette says about two straight men, yet are somehow fine with paying to see aj styles and the undertaker because they do cool moves, it feels pretty disingenuous when modern pro wrestling is probably about as safe as any sport in the west for queer people to show up at shadow puppet of a posted:Nobody outside of Bryan Alvarez can withstand Dave’s repugnant speech patterns so I can’t fault connette for finding any reason to sever all ties as a way to get off the voicemail train full of endless “like”, “you know” and total inability to ever finish a single sentence properly. counterpoint: Dave Meltzer has not changed in ten years or more this man is the leading resource for the last fifty years of professional wrestling https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pb5ZhWOITQ
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Mar 1, 2022 20:54
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bit of a oval office as well (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Mar 1, 2022 21:38
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