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Hollismason posted:What was the UWF? It was a promotion that had talent that WWF and WCW didn't want, didn't really make any money and was run by a guy who snorted ALL THE COKE.
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Mar 16, 2022 22:08
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In WWE, for a time, they made all the kayfabe bad guys travel together in the "bad guy bus" And yes, this meant there was also a "good guys bus" I have no idea why this would be necessary in any context
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Mar 16, 2022 22:10
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Trollologist posted:In WWE, for a time, they made all the kayfabe bad guys travel together in the "bad guy bus" faces and heels traveling separately was how things were in the territory days. heels also got a hotel and faces got a different hotel and neither were supposed to be seen hanging out with each other outside of wrestling matches it was insane lol 16-bit Butt-Head fucked around with this message at 22:16 on Mar 16, 2022 |
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Mar 16, 2022 22:11
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most people knew or suspected wrestling was a work and the insane lengths that wrestlers and promotions went to protect kayfabe was incredibly stupid and a giant waste of money lol. it owned
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Mar 16, 2022 22:15
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Trollologist posted:In WWE, for a time, they made all the kayfabe bad guys travel together in the "bad guy bus" It was to preserve kayfabe and I think WWE still enforces it. I can see how it was a thing back in the old days but the internet killed kayfabe 25 years ago so it's kinda dumb to keep doing it in modern times
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Mar 16, 2022 22:16
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Elephant Ambush posted:It was to preserve kayfabe and I think WWE still enforces it. I can see how it was a thing back in the old days but the internet killed kayfabe 25 years ago so it's kinda dumb to keep doing it in modern times No you don't understand, if they expose the business then the marks will stop buying and you gotta close up shop. No one believes the smarks or the dirtsheets anyway! QUICK have someone go drop a pipe bomb on raw and put butts back in those seats! Where's my steak wrap? Moderately Vince related but an open forum: does anyone want to hear about my zlist booking experiences with delusional maniacs charging $35 to get concussed? Trollologist fucked around with this message at 22:21 on Mar 16, 2022 |
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Mar 16, 2022 22:19
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ted diabase and ric flair are millionaire playboys... so they need to always fly first class and stay in five-star hotels to protect the business.
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Mar 16, 2022 22:23
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Trollologist posted:
How is that even a question!?! 
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Mar 16, 2022 22:48
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Hollismason posted:What was the UWF? It's largely a footnote in history that literally nobody would remember if it wasn't in Mick Foley's book and if it wasn't attached to funny Herb Abrams cocaine stories, which ostensibly lasted from 1990 to 1994 (the show, not Herb Abrams cocaine problem). One of the problems with pro wrestling is that it has a pretty high barrier to entry for anyone that wants to make television. Name-brand stars are expensive (I think before he went back to WWE you could book Rey Mysterio for your kids' party for $20k plus expenses), and large arenas also have no-fucka-you pricing. I think it was quoted somewhere that AEW Dynamite costs $500k per episode just to make, before anyone on the show even gets paid. It's not a co-incidence that the two people who've meaningfully done it in the last 30 years are Ted Turner and the Khan family, who could both eat losses for five years signing on big stars and building a fanbase. Of course, there a bunch of shows like Ring Of Honor and Chikara that started out working out of high-school basketball courts offering $50 per appearance and slowly progressed to working out of bingo halls and offering $75 per appearance, but that kind of restricts you to having the same hundred unwashed fans show up every time and for your wrestlers to having to sell DVDs and autographed lingerie 8x10s in the parking lot in order to be able to afford food. But every once in a while someone will come up from a really, really big line and decide to go all-in on making a big important wrestling show funded by money that they found somewhere, possibly the mob. This is almost always a catastrophic failure that manages to miss the mark on either appealing to a mass market audience or appealing to people who buy lingerie photos in parking lots, but does provide a great deal of fodder for later Youtube reviewers. UWF was one of those. I also mentioned earlier the World Of Sport reboot that WWE actively maneuvered against and needn't have bothered. Plus I think I still have all of the episodes of Wrestling Society X on a DVD-R somewhere in the room I keep exclusively for boxes of stupid trash that I won't throw away. But I'm down to one room, now. I'll basically just link the Wrestling With Wregret show on the UWF, as there's basically no-one at this point that actually remembers the show unless they were physically booked on it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lkjnUCA7tA Herb Abrams would eventually, and famously, die of a cocaine-induced heart attack after being arrested naked and covered in baby oil while chasing a prostitute with a baseball bat. As Mick Foley said in his book, it's probably how he would have wanted to go. FullLeatherJacket fucked around with this message at 23:57 on Mar 16, 2022 |
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Mar 16, 2022 23:54
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Minus the violence against a sex worker part, not a bad way to go out
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Mar 16, 2022 23:59
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FullLeatherJacket posted:Plus I think I still have all of the episodes of Wrestling Society X on a DVD-R somewhere in the room I keep exclusively for boxes of stupid trash that I won't throw away. Instead of doing an effortpost in this thread about MTV's Wrestling Society X, I'm just going to link to the article about it I wrote five years ago.
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Mar 17, 2022 01:00
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FullLeatherJacket posted:and for your wrestlers to having to sell DVDs and autographed lingerie 8x10s in the parking lot in order to be able to afford food. There's always gay for pay.
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Mar 17, 2022 01:03
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Tokyo Sexwale posted:it has Piper and Owen but it's missing Canada's true wrestling superstar, IRON MIKE SHARPE FTFY. Is there a site somewhere that lists WWF events that took place in the past, dates, who wrestled, who won etc? Just wondering about a house show I went to in Toronto in 1997.
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Mar 17, 2022 01:05
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wesleywillis posted:FTFY. Cagematch.net has a pretty ridiculously comprehensive list of matches that took place pretty much everywhere at any point. For example, this is all the matches they have listed for WWF house shows in Toronto in 1997.
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Mar 17, 2022 01:14
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Mal-3 posted:Cagematch.net has a pretty ridiculously comprehensive list of matches that took place pretty much everywhere at any point. poo poo yeah!! Thanks goon! The house show was during the week, but there was a teachers strike so we had a 2 week vacation and a bunch of friends and I went to see the show.
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Mar 17, 2022 01:22
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Trollologist posted:In WWE, for a time, they made all the kayfabe bad guys travel together in the "bad guy bus" Cue 9 year-oldish JS sitting down at the counter at his grandparents' restaurant for afterschool grilled chee and opening up the local newspaper to a story about how... ...wait, what the gently caress, this is impossible, it can't be... Hacksaw Jim Duggan and the Iron Sheik got arrested for driving around smoking weed together? But Hacksaw is an all-American, and the loving Sheik, well we all know what an Ayatollah-loving piece of poo poo he is? What were they doing together? I was legit in confused anguish until it started slowly dawning on me that everyone was right about wrestling.
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Mar 17, 2022 02:07
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JonathonSpectre posted:Cue 9 year-oldish JS sitting down at the counter at his grandparents' restaurant for afterschool grilled chee and opening up the local newspaper to a story about how... If the Iron Sheik had stayed a bodyguard the Pahlavi Dynasty would still hold the Persian throne.
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Mar 17, 2022 02:47
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Trollologist posted:
I wish this could be the thread title
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Mar 17, 2022 02:59
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I grew up in the Mid South region of Wrestling and remember fondly going to the arena and seeing a wrestling match where the main even was like this super tall guy El Gigantor. Junkyard Dog was also there.
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Mar 17, 2022 03:12
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If you would like to vicariously experience the Lex Express, the relevant Raw Reports are https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3957699&userid=132339&perpage=40&pagenumber=6#post515149878 https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3957699&userid=132339&perpage=40&pagenumber=7#post516440447
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Mar 17, 2022 04:04
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Elephant Ambush posted:I wish this could be the thread title Longest the forums will accept is: Jim Cornette is a stupid fat Mark and I hate him and I hate his dumb ideas Which also works as a thread title.
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Mar 17, 2022 04:17
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FilthyImp posted:Lol that Hall is so tall he's just like "gonna bend a bit and I'll spring back like on a tramampoline" As someone who didn't watch much wrestling at that time, I didn't realize how tall he was. I guess I always mentally picture him near Kevin Nash which is... not a fair comparison. I think it's hard for me to tell in general how big most of them are, since I only ever see them in a featureless ring next to other guys who are also very large. I thought Bray Wyatt was like, ~5'-10" for quite a while. Turns out he's 'huge' and he was just always standing next to other dudes who happen to be 'loving huge'.
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Mar 17, 2022 13:26
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With the NWO being so prominent on WCW shows, it looked to me like the ring was more claustrophobic and the wrestlers were bigger compared to the WWF shows I was more familiar with. It was always weird seeing g WCW footage because of that.
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Mar 17, 2022 14:29
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FilthyImp posted:With the NWO being so prominent on WCW shows, it looked to me like the ring was more claustrophobic and the wrestlers were bigger compared to the WWF shows I was more familiar with. It's even weirder when you're at an event and Big Show is in the ring. It looks loving tiny.
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Mar 17, 2022 15:27
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There are plenty of failings in the history of business, but there’s only a few that if you speak them, virtually all people will recognize, even if they have zero idea of the context. And one of those, I believe, is “New Coke”. What was New Coke? Well, in the 80’s, Pepsi-Cola made a commercial showing that in a taste test, people preferred their product to their main rival, Coca-Cola. Eh, just the usual business nonsense…except when Coke repeated the testing, they got the same result. People preferred Pepsi’s taste. Fine. Except it seemed like Coke was also losing market share to Pepsi. Oh dear. As it turned out, the testing was flawed, or rather, incomplete. It was based around what people said after the INITIAL taste of the soda. So when they cracked the can open and drank the first time, the first taste was better, but in terms of the ‘whole experience’, it got a lot more even, or possibly even swung in Coke’s favor. Unfortunately, executives are not very good at following up and are much better at panicking and doing stupid knee jerk decisions. Or taking a great deal of cocaine (fitting, considering how Coke started out with using just that!) and getting ‘brilliant’ ideas. This was the 80’s, you can guess what happened. Coca-Cola decided they’d rework Coke’s formula (not inherently a bad idea)...and wholly replace the Coke that had existed for decades with it. Not so good an idea. In fact, a truly disastrous idea. New Coke was before my time, so I was never able to taste test it, Coke 1, and Pepsi to see which one I prefered. But as said, Coke did a huge ceremony about this “New Coke”, and, well, it bombed. People rebelled. It was the whole “taking away the old formula entirely” that did it. Some people even guarded stockpiles of the stuff, like it was Prohibition liquor. I don’t know how much money it cost Coke, but it had an interesting snowball effect. Coke swiftly brought back their old formula, labeled as “Coca-Cola Classic” (remember when the drink was called that? If you do, you’re of a certain age!) and actually kept selling New Coke for several years afterwards under the new name of “Coke II”. It would eventually be discontinued entirely though, and within two years of the whole mess exploding, Coke was once again the No 1 selling soft drink in the United States, if not the world. When asked if the whole New Coke thing had been one gigantic marketing scheme to make people want Coke more and get back on top, one executive said of it “We’re not that smart, and we’re not that stupid.” I bring this up because it’s easy for hindsight bias to cloud assessment of decisions made. Of course New Coke would fail. Of course bringing back OG Coke would succeed. It’s so obvious. Cutting the executives a lot more slack then they probably deserve, they didn’t know that. They had to make decisions based on what they knew at the time. Then again, decisions are never best made when they’re running on faulty information. — As said. By the time 1996 rolled around, Bret had developed a fair enmity with the Clique. Then again, so did the whole locker room, but Bret, being the guy on top before they’d politicked their way to power, was one of the few, if only, ones that they couldn’t push around. I will admit, some of Bret’s dislike of the group came from old school viewpoints, such as being very cross when Michaels and Nash, scheduled to work against each other at Wrestlemania 11, sat next to each other at a press conference promoting the event, which Bret felt was throwing it in the fans’ faces that it was ‘all a show’. Michaels’ drug addiction (Somas, mostly), an issue the sadly newly late Scott Hall shared, didn’t make things any better; while Bret had his own moral failing and vice (women), his vice didn’t potentially put the show or other wrestlers at risk. Perhaps the biggest example of the Clique turning its members into wholly up their own rear end ungrateful pricks was when Nash dropped the belt back to Bret in November; the Diesel character flipped out, nailed Bret with two (sloppy, according to Bret) powerbombs, then dumped the belt on his chest while saying “Don’t forget who did you the loving favor.” Considering Bret had tried to help Nash out when he was rising up and a freshly face WWF Champion, it was clear that the Clique had very short memories on whose hands had helped bring them to the top. With Bret taking time off (in the West; he agreed to work dates in other countries as he was often very popular in those markets), and with “ATM” Eric Bischoff in full swing grabbing up WWF talent, with Hall and Nash having just been signed away, it was no surprise that Bret was also approached with offers. Some have said that he might have been the original third man of the NWO, but this is incorrect: Bret didn’t actually meet with Eric to even begin discussing contract agreements until weeks after Hogan made his turn. Bret was made an offer of 2.8 million per year for three years, a truly staggering sum, which did tempt him, but in the end, he felt loyalty to Vince, who had basically ‘made him’ as a top star. With the WWF in bad financial straits due to the terrible 1995 and 1996 years, there was no way that Vince could match the contract offer. Instead, he offered an alternative; the same lump sum, except spread out over twenty years. Bret would remain in the WWF after he retired from daily in ring work as a sort of ‘lieutenant booker’ that would answer solely to Vince. Considering what we know about Vince, this probably sets off massive alarm bells; Vince McMahon, cede ANY sort of control? Then again, maybe I’m being too hard on him. There are road agents, match arrangers, and other of those sort in wrestling even today, and Bret probably would have made a pretty good overseer of all of them. But again, I’m biased. Around this time, Bret claims, in his book, that he happened to be put on a plane by chance across from Shawn. As said, by now Bret really didn’t much care for the man (he specifically mentioned that the scene of young male fans coming into the ring to mimic Shawn’s ‘Chippendale stripper dance’ bothered him; yes, young fans dressed as their wrestling idols had happened before, but it was doing stuff in THAT vein that bugged him), but he was willing to acknowledge that being champion put Shawn under a lot of pressure, which didn’t help his drug and personality problems. According to Bret, he laid out a rough plan for his possible future: they would have a rematch, which Bret would win, taking the belt back, and after that they’d have a rubber match where Bret agreed he would put Shawn over clean and shake his hand afterwards, giving him the rub in a way that their Wrestlemania 12 match lacked. While Shawn frowned at losing the title, he did, according to Bret, agree to the gist of it. The thing that makes me arch an eyebrow, and didn’t do Bret any favors for later events and theories, is that he and Shawn agreed to keep this meeting between them private, even from other wrestlers. If literally everyone, including the boys, thought they hated each other, they could get some true emotion from their matches. On one hand, I see the possibility. On the other, be careful who you pretend to be, because you are who you pretend to be. After the sudden, tragic death of one of Bret’s nephews (theorized to have been caused by him catching necrotizing bacteria from a dirty ring, as in, a wrestling ring), Bret no longer had any doubt, and agreed to Vince’s deal. It seemed like Bret, now re-signed for twenty years, would be in the WWF his whole life. As said, Bret would make his triumphant return, beating Steve Austin at Survivor Series. Which did have some odd reactions, what with the traditional hero Bret being disparaged and the ‘cool, badass’ Austin being cheered. As said. Some people think that Vince had some concept of what would become the Montreal Screwjob planned months, if not a year or more, in advance. I say, no. Psychopaths are not good planners: they lack the patience and the impulse control. The concept of the villain with the master plan more or less solely belongs to fiction. Psychopaths, however, do tend towards reading the immediate room and reacting accordingly, and that was what promptly happened in the months to come. Bret would get a world title shot at the December PPV, losing because of Shawn’s interference. Then he would throw Austin out of the Royal Rumble, only for the refs to miss it, and Austin to sneak back in and toss Bret out to ‘win’ the Rumble. Then Bret would win the title at the February PPV (more on that in a bit), only to lose it the next night to Austin interference. And then when he got a rematch a few weeks before Wrestlemania, interference cost him that chance as well. In purely fair terms, Bret the character was wholly in the right to not be happy about this. It was the HOW of it that made the difference; Bret was booked to basically act like a crybaby throwing a tantrum over not getting his way, while Austin was presented as the cool badass, never mind that he was a cheater, a sore loser, and generally an rear end in a top hat. Vince, it seemed, saw Austin’s growing popularity, and thought it would be best if Bret turned heel to help him rise. Bret didn’t like the idea of being a heel, but he was always willing to work with people and try and help them make money, so ultimately, he agreed. On one condition. Sure, he’d turn heel…in the United States only. Everywhere else, he would be allowed to act as the face, as the crowds would treat him as such, ESPECIALLY in Canada. Also, he wanted his family members to be raised up to be part of the top heel stable as well. And so it was. Bret and Austin had their famous ‘double turn’ match at Wrestlemania 13, where Austin actually got to show off the part of him that DID make him a ‘cool badass’ by refusing to submit to Bret’s Sharpshooter, resulting in the famous image of Austin screaming in pain while blood poured down his face, before he passed out from said ‘pain’ and Bret won by decision. Austin’s ability to back up his poo poo now well proven, Bret proceeded after the match to keep attacking Austin, fully triggering the turn. The ironic thing is, Bret really was fully justified here, and it wasn’t exactly out of character or “a fall from grace” for the Hitman. Austin had repeatedly screwed him over, and while Bret’s character was generally a hero and good guy, he had shown in the past to have quite a nasty edge if you really pushed him, and Austin definitely had. Of course, these are finer points of examination at best and excuses at worst, and it made Bret ‘the bad guy’ in basic terms, which Bret solidified by showing up at WM 13’s main event, complaining, and then interfering with the match later when main eventer Sid kicked him out of the ring for said initial complaints. But wait, you say. What happened to the whole plan of Shawn dropping the belt back to Bret, so he could win a rubber match? Well, as I examined in my Clique posts, Shawn was unfortunately just not reliable and trustworthy. He’d veto’d the idea to drop the title to Vader to give the man heel credibility, instead dropping it to Sid Eudy, who he considered a friend, and then regaining it in his home state (home town as well?) at the January 1997 Royal Rumble. It seemed set for Bret and Shawn to be programmed into the rematch for Wrestlemania 13… Except Shawn showed up the week before the February PPV, claiming to have suffered a knee injury, and forfeited the belt in an in ring interview where he infamously said that another reason he felt he had to give up the belt was that he’d ‘lost his smile’. Said knee was, at best, nowhere as severe as he presented it. More likely, it seemed, Shawn had drunk too much Clique-Aid and didn’t want to ‘return the job’ to Bret, and literally threw away the three match plan to protect his fragile ego over the idea of losing. Hence, the February PPV match that would have decided Shawn’s opponent was changed to a match for the title, which set up the changed plans of Austin vs Bret and Sid as Champion vs Undertaker (in a match that was not only very boring, but allegedly had Sid lose control of his bowels and crap his briefs during said match, if you believe one story). Ironically, Bret himself would suffer a minor (legit) knee injury shortly after Wrestlemania, forcing him to basically play manager to the newly reformed Hart Foundation while in a wheelchair.  (Which led to a hilarious bit where Steve Austin got in the ring with his own wheelchair, sat in it, and said “WHO WANTS TO SEE A WHEELCHAIR MATCH?” Because in those months Austin just couldn’t live a day without trying to beat up Bret Hart, it seems) Being in said wheelchair seemed to annoy the fans even more: when Shawn confronted him and superkicked him over Bret’s heel promo of the show, it got him a babyface reaction. Bret’s mike skills had always been average, but once he turned heel, he finally found a vein of gold of mine…in that he basically just told the truth. He rarely resorted to outright insults; he just talked about the flaws of the United States as compared to Canada. Such as Canada’s universal health care, and a generally better social security net. True, he was being a jackass about it, but he wasn’t wrong. Hell, if anything, today shows he was even more right then he realized. Unfortunately, while Shawn was getting the babyface reaction in the ring, he sure as poo poo wasn’t getting it in the back, with his lost smile knee injury seemingly healing in record time and his backstage poo poo disturbing getting even worse. It culminated in Shawn, on air, saying that Bret had been having some “Sunny days” lately. As in, he was inside referencing a rumor (and giving it fuel) that Bret was having an affair with then WWF talent and WWF's first "Attitude sex symbol" Tammy “Sunny” Synch. What makes this extra galling is, to this day, everyone involved had denied this happened. Bret has, Tammy has, various people backstage have, the whole kit and kaboodle. Like I said, Bret did have a weakness for women, but he didn’t believe in making GBS threads where he ate. As far as we know, the Bret/Sunny affair was wholly false. But you know who DID basically seduce Tammy away from her real life boyfriend, resulting in him quitting the promotion, before they supposedly ‘got bored’ and ‘moved on’ from the relationship? Shawn Michaels. Sunny/Tammy HAS confirmed that she DID sleep with him, and that at the time, he was one of the only two men she had, the other being her late lover, Chris Candido. So Shawn was basically projecting his own sin onto Bret. Which caused his fraying marriage to get even worse. Over something Bret had not actually done, though he had done it ‘in spirit’ with other nameless women on the road. Between that, Bret being deeply uncertain if a planned June PPV match with Shawn would see Shawn in a good enough headspace from his Soma abuse to protect Bret’s still-healing and at risk knee, and Shawn being a general utter rear end in a top hat, finally resulted in a legit backstage fight between the pair in which Bret managed to rip out a huge chunk of Shawn’s hair, before Shawn stormed out screaming that he was quitting due to the ‘unsafe work environment’ and going to WCW. He wasn’t, of course: he was like any rear end in a top hat who had been called on his poo poo and was pitching a fit over it. The match between Bret and Shawn was called off, changed to a Steve Austin vs Shawn match instead, and Bret and Shawn were kept well away from each other. Oh wait, did I say that? I meant “Shawn was put into the Bret/Undertaker world title main event Summerslam 1997 match as the special referee, where his interference would accidentally cost Undertaker the title and take the spotlight away from Bret’s record sharing fifth world title reign”. In this regard, however, I look much more to Vince, who might well have been playing his own head games and stirring the pot. Which might well have culminated in fall of that year. Vince called Bret up and said that the WWF was in dire financial straits, and that in the end, he just couldn’t afford Bret’s contract and he would be intentionally breaching it, and that Bret should turn back to WCW and see if he could get the same offer he’d been offered a year before. In essence, Vince was ‘firing’ Bret under the guise that he couldn’t fulfill his obligations to him. If you want to be kind to Vince, this is why I brought up the “New Coke helps Coke Classic become No 1 again indirectly” example: Vince had no idea that a second gigantic boom period that would erase all of WWE’s financial woes was more or less right around the corner. He was making a decision based on business. If you DON’T want to be kind… Vince had never planned on keeping the contract. He had used it to get another year out of Bret at a reduced rate, and now he wanted to get rid of him and just use Shawn (and later Austin) as the top guy. Loyalty? Nonsense. This was business, and business is always classified as a psychopath, and a psychopath has no loyalty. And if Bret hadn’t realized this by now, then that was his own drat fault. He should have ‘grown up’. Some people say it was for the best. That Bret simply wouldn’t have fit into the developing “Attitude Era”, that he was too ‘milk and cookies’ for an audience that wanted a shot of hard whiskey with some bacon and eggs instead. After all, if he was so bothered by Shawn Michaels’ dances, he probably would have been appalled at all the crap D-Generation X and Vince Russo would get up to. It would have been oil and water. Except the very first promo for what would become the “Attitude Era” HAD Bret in them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEQ1tbHFlyg And when Vince overhauled Monday Night Raw in 1997 to be the louder, harsher, RAW IS WAR in response to WCW’s rating dominance, Bret was right there in the opening... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISMTPxCLmfg ...and singing in the theme song. (Sort of. There were two pieces of original music the WWF created that Bret, along with several other wrestlers, contributed to. You can listen to them here and here.) Maybe Bret would have been unhappy, but he always prided himself on never denying anyone a chance to make money, unlike some. And hell, if Kurt Angle found a niche in the latter half of the era, I think Bret could have, as well. But it was not to be. Vince had basically told Bret he couldn’t keep him on, and Bret should go sign with WCW. Which Bret, more or less against his will, did. He was fine where he was. He didn’t WANT to go. But he would now have to. Except…he was still the world champion. Fine… Except Shawn Michaels’ red hot Undertaker feud, briefly culminating in the discussed and shown off in early posts Hell In A Cell I, had resulted in Shawn winning and getting the next world title shot. And Shawn, long gone down the rabbit hole of his ego, drug addiction, power tripping, poo poo disturbing, and all those things spoken of time and time again, was saying that he would not be doing jobs for anyone else in the company any more. And that included Bret. And Bret’s contract, whether it had been put in there by Bret or others, included a creative control clause for the last thirty days of his employment. He couldn’t just lose to whoever his boss wanted and that was that. He had to agree with it. Vince had, whether by choice or oversight, given Bret that right. And the match was set for November, 1997. In Montreal, Quebec. Except Bret finally had enough. Shawn had pushed and pushed and pushed, and Bret was pushing back. He would not lose the title to Shawn, in Montreal, and by extension, Canada. Ever. He would not budge on this. And so the stage was set. Cornwind Evil fucked around with this message at 17:58 on Mar 17, 2022 |
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Mar 17, 2022 17:55
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Saint Freak posted:As someone who didn't watch much wrestling at that time, I didn't realize how tall he was. I guess I always mentally picture him near Kevin Nash which is... not a fair comparison. In fairness, there's a lot of "Tinder" heights going on in wrestling: if you're under 6' you just round up because i say this like it's a fun ol' time to have a 6'9" person come to your home and smash around it with their stupid wacky wailing limbs like it's a loving hobbit house According to Meltzer, Eddie Guerrero was legit 5'7" in his boots, and Benoit was about an inch taller. And I don't think it was a coincidence (in an industry where Hogan supposedly wouldn't drop the belt to Bret Hart because he was 'too small') that they then went down the road of never taking a break and getting huge-as-gently caress, both of which ended up leading to their deaths.
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Mar 17, 2022 18:44
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FullLeatherJacket posted:In fairness, there's a lot of "Tinder" heights going on in wrestling: adam cole bay bay
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Mar 17, 2022 18:49
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Cornwind Evil posted:There are plenty of failings in the history of business, but there’s only a few that if you speak them, virtually all people will recognize, even if they have zero idea of the context. And one of those, I believe, is “New Coke”. I find this hilarious because last night I was writing an article on WWE 2K22 where I took a second to describe WWE 2K20 as the New Coke of wrestling games.
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Mar 17, 2022 18:54
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The Montreal Screw Job is good stuff. I didn't know all that about Bret and the women, I always thought of him as a fairly on the narrows type of guy.
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Mar 17, 2022 19:12
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Gavok posted:WWE 2K20
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Mar 17, 2022 19:13
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I once heard a story that Shawn Michaels was supposed to return at Wrestlemania X-7. But like a week before the show, Chris Jericho attacked William Regal while disguised as Doink. And Shawn was so blitzed that he thought they were giving the Doink gimmick to Chris and kept saying that it was a terrible idea even after people backstage had explained it was just a one-off thing. So they nixxed the plan to have him run in on the Undertaker vs HHH match. (I actually rewatched WM X-7 recently after hearing that story and I was suddenly aware of a whole bunch of time-wasting in that match that I hadn't noticed before.)
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Mar 17, 2022 19:21
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SirPhoebos posted:I once heard a story that Shawn Michaels was supposed to return at Wrestlemania X-7. But like a week before the show, Chris Jericho attacked William Regal while disguised as Doink. And Shawn was so blitzed that he thought they were giving the Doink gimmick to Chris and kept saying that it was a terrible idea even after people backstage had explained it was just a one-off thing. So they nixxed the plan to have him run in on the Undertaker vs HHH match. Yeah, Triple H was supposed to win that match, but since he vouched for Michaels and Michaels was zonked out, he lost as punishment. The Streak wouldn't have been a thing if not for that. Which should be my next effortpost: the Undertaker at WrestleMania or a bunch of goofy-rear end stories involving Sycho Sid? I swear, that dude was like the Forrest Gump of wrestling history mixed with a Will Ferrell character.
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Mar 17, 2022 19:43
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I was at an ECW match where Sid slapped Tommy Dreamer so hard, Tommy's spit flew out of the ring and onto my shirt.
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Mar 17, 2022 19:52
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Gavok posted:Yeah, Triple H was supposed to win that match, but since he vouched for Michaels and Michaels was zonked out, he lost as punishment. The Streak wouldn't have been a thing if not for that. SID
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Mar 17, 2022 20:00
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Gavok posted:Yeah, Triple H was supposed to win that match, but since he vouched for Michaels and Michaels was zonked out, he lost as punishment. The Streak wouldn't have been a thing if not for that. I wanna hear about the Sycho Sid , because I've never heard of him
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Mar 17, 2022 20:05
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I always thought he was better known as Sid Vicious, but he also went by Sid Justice as well as Sycho Sid.
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Mar 17, 2022 20:10
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The master (and ruler) of the world:
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Mar 17, 2022 20:27
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Sid stories are always weird as hell but here's a few of the well known ones (accuracy debatable) -Got in a fight with Arn Anderson, ended up stabbing him with scissors leading to some serious hand injuries -Got in a fight with Brian Pillman, started losing and ran around looking for a weapon, eventually brandishing a squeegee -Received multiple groin injuries from putting a squirrel down his pants -Was punished by WCW for malingering so he could take time off to play softball -Complained to Vince that fans booed him for the 1992 Royal Rumble elimination of Hogan that resulted in his heel turn -Got annoyed by a child Windham Rotunda (Bray Wyatt) playing in the locker room and being noisy, broke his Rocketeer action figure Then there's the horrible broken leg incident where he tried to do a big boot off the top rope, ended up shattering his tibia live on PPV. The clip is widely available online but is  as hell, his leg just folds over halfway up his shin
TheSwizzler fucked around with this message at 20:43 on Mar 17, 2022 |
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Mar 17, 2022 20:38
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| # ? May 28, 2024 13:44 |
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TheSwizzler posted:Sid stories are always weird as hell but here's a few of the well known ones (accuracy debatable) I'm sorry he did what to a squirrel?
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Mar 17, 2022 20:43
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