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Name Change
Oct 9, 2005


A WWE style match is getting your ringwork down to a good routine designed for a mass audience that takes at most 25 minutes to finish, and probably less than ten. Everyone has an established routine that an audience can follow along with, and there's a definite beginning, middle, and end. All matches are based on this basic framework.

Also there's a shitload of Irish whips.

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Name Change
Oct 9, 2005


Kerck Pnameless posted:

I only got back into WWE last year, and I'm noticing Raw is really sucking right now. Within this decade, what other time periods in Raw's history can compare in awfulness to this "Guest GM Era"?

John Cena Moon-Push Era, '05-'07.

2005:

Feuds with Kurt Angle. This was the start of John Cena getting terrible crowd reactions. At the time, Kurt Angle was better than John Cena any day of the week in just about every way, and everyone knew it, and yet the entire feud was Angle jobbing for Cena, who cut terrible promos in the mean-time describing how Angle was a ham sandwich.

2006:

New Year's Revolution. Second shittiest elimination chamber ever, followed by Edge winning by MITB shenanigans after TWO spears, just so no one could forget that no mortal can beat John Cena in a fair, one-on-one match.

Wrestlemania 22: WWE begins propagandizing Cena's lovely crowd reactions as "He sure is controversial!" rather than "He sure is a lovely babyface!"

After Mania, they run Edge v. Triple H v. Cena, with such brilliant angles as "We'll have one of them be a special guest referee for three different matches and do the same exact finish with different people in each role, three weeks in a row!"

DX eventually starts up again, but if you were expecting any good feuds, matches, or really anything worth remembering, well, WWE's message to you was to go gently caress yourself. DX buries absolutely everyone they step in the ring with, Triple H isn't funny at all, and they spend most of their time wrestling cheerleaders. Really. DX unofficially breaks up when Triple H blows his second quad.

ECW is re-introduced as a TV show with whatever old ECW guys left that can still walk/aren't dead/contracted to TNA. Few if any of them can really work, and Paul and Vince fight over the book, resulting in the worst WWE PPV of this decade by far, December 2 Dismember. Gradually almost all of them, including Heyman, are fired. Eventually WWE rights the ship on this, but it takes a while.

Ric Flair v. Mick Foley finally happens and it totally sucks. In fact Mick Foley in general totally sucks by this point and eventually leaves WWE to retire forever and never work anywhere else ever again.

Bobby Lashley appears! He has the mic skills of an angry ten-year old and his entire gimmick is that he's a less-entertaining Brock Lesnar. He immediately gets shoved down everyone's throat Cena-style, which is pretty horrible because Cena at this point is awful but still better than Lashley. Like almost everyone they give a god-push with less than a year in the business, he quits.

In the mean-time he gets into an angle where he's playing second banana to Donald Trump for a Wrestlemania storyline. This angle kicked off with a fake Rosie O'Donnell wrestling a fake Donald Trump that everyone watching, including the crowd, took a gigantic monster poo poo on--signaling what else was in store. Donald Trump behaves the entire time like he'd rather be asleep than on a wrestling show, and out of all the guest stars and Wrestlemania cameos they've had in the last three years, is easily the worst.

John Cena loses to Shawn Michaels at Mania 23. Oh wait, I'm sorry, that's what should have happened. Instead John Cena wins and people flood out of the building because he's terrible and they're genuinely sick of him. Then he has a bunch of lovely feuds with SEVEN FOOT TALL BAH-GAWD MONSTERS and Britney Spears' ex-boyfriend.

Chris Benoit loses his poo poo completely, etc.

WWE Wellness starts up and ravages the locker room with liver enzyme sit-outs and drug suspensions, stalling a good deal of careers. Magically, no one in the main event ever gets suspended.

WWE starts producing god-awful movies that can generally only be enjoyed ironically at best. To promote them, they run the same ads for them on Raw every thirty seconds and make sure to run ads on the wall of every backstage skit they can.

There's also a bunch of boring terrible poo poo on Smackdown but this post is about Raw, so yeah. There's probably some other unwatchable garbage I'm forgetting, especially in 2007, which was when my interest in WWE after years of being hosed with, not to mention Benoit, finally started nosediving.

Right now Randy Orton and Chris Jericho are the only halfway interesting things on the entire Raw show.

Name Change
Oct 9, 2005


Timby posted:

His first quad injury occurred right at the start of the Two-Man Power Trip, in a tag match against ... Jericho and Benoit? I remember it happening as he ran into the ring, and suddenly collapsed. That was the time he ripped it completely off the bone. :gonk:

The second was at New Year's Revolution 2007, when he ripped it during that DX/Rated RKO match.

Those are his only two major quadriceps injuries, as I recall.

Yeah if there's a third quad tear, I haven't heard of it.

quote:

This man has bored me more than ever this year.


I like him but holy poo poo I can't get into anything he does lately.

I generally only watch PPVs, if that. I enjoyed Orton at Summerslam. Only if I have friends over and we're bored do I watch Raw. What I notice when I do watch is that Randy Orton is probably the second most interesting thing going on besides Chris Jericho. I guess Orton is my favorite wrestler in general right now, that's how I'd explain it. Also, a heel that wins matches.

quote:

Excuse me but Rated RKO.

If they had started with Rated RKO right away instead of six months of garbage angles something better might have happened. I got a sense they were kinda getting to that right when Triple H went out again.

Name Change
Oct 9, 2005


quote:

Honestly, it took YEARS for people to warm up to Orton because nobody was buying him for the longest time.

He only started getting good in 2005.

quote:

Where were Batista and Randy Orton on the card upon joining Evolution? More specifically, if you had to compare them to a current wwe wrestler, who is closest to their fame/prestige/respect/pop?

Both of them were nobodies that could be fired and no one would have cared.

Name Change
Oct 9, 2005


I think the American Bash had red, white and blue ropes one year. That was pretty cool.

Name Change
Oct 9, 2005


quote:

Huh, I wouldn't've thought Jericho of all people. I mean, I know he's a good heel, but what exactly did he do that pissed someone off so much? Was it that incident where his car got rushed or something and he hit a woman?

Some mark fans (I believe in Canada) got out of control and basically tried to dogpile Jericho/his rental car. I imagine this would happen more often if the arena security was always as hapless as it was in this instance.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxM3nLleA9s

quote:

edit: Does anyone remember a promo of his, probably when he was starting out, when he was getting heavy heat and, of course, the crowd started chanting U.S.A. and he just sort of looked at them :smug:ly and said something along the lines of "I'm an American, idiots"? I might have made that up, actually, but I could swear something like that happened...

He would bring up that he was from Detroit a lot. At first it was sort of a "thinking man's gimmick" but anyone could see where it would eventually go, in the same way Jericho has become more of a subtle comedy heel as far as promos go, rather than a champion against Shawn Michaels and fan hypocrisy or whatever.

Name Change
Oct 9, 2005


quote:

Back to Hassan though, I honestly though he was just going to be a regular blue chipper when his promos started and I was disappointed in people because I thought it was the fan's racism that made them turn him. If what you're saying is right, well, I guess that's just the usual stereotyping bullshit from WWE (and really all wrestling promotions) I've grown to grudginly accept and somehow that makes me feel a bit better about how things went down... though it probably shouldn't. Still, that man was a heat magnet, he could come back now and be the number one heel in WWE in about 2 weeks and never even need to hold a major championship.

Well all I'm saying is that WWE doesn't do "thinking man's heel" unless the heel is allowed to write his own material. And within the storybook fantasyland of WWE, the heel is still the bad guy even if his argument makes sense in some measure. So rather than being persecuted, Hassan was just being a jerk and picking fights with people who didn't have any problem with him to begin with, you see! U-S-A!

Also in case you are not sped up on Hassan, the Undertaker essentially kayfabe killed him at Great American Bash '05 by Last Riding him through the stage. The guy who played him has pretty much dropped off the face of the Earth, not a peep from him that I can find since then--which suggests he either left on bad terms or decided to be a plumber or something.

Name Change
Oct 9, 2005


FishBulb posted:

No, he wasn't trying to convince anyone, he was trying to use the gimmicks again on different people. I don't remember if it was the first time they were on TV or not because its been a long time, but they had a heel JR talking up about how they 'brought back some of your favorites' or something like that.

Of course their gimmicks were just kind of 'them with funny names' so you know....

also it was a terrible idea.

So the short answer is, "Get J.R. over as a heel."

Name Change
Oct 9, 2005


Kerck Pnameless posted:

Which WCW wrestler and ECW wrestler from the Invasion/Alliance had the most success in WWE?

Probably Rob Van Dam or Booker T if you're counting only ECW/WCW guys that were used during the invasion. If not, Benoit or Jericho (and Jericho technically was an Alliance guy, since he turned).

Name Change
Oct 9, 2005


The Cosby Mysteries posted:

What's the story behind this?



As apsouthern mentions, it was a dumb Russo gimmick match with MYSTERY POLES and one of them contained a picture of Scott Hall.

Name Change
Oct 9, 2005


Rusty Shackelford posted:

Did he ever get that match? When Simmons won the title from Vader 3 weeks later, it was after Sting was injured and couldn't face Vader. Watts had a lottery in the ring and Simmons won and went on to face Vader later in the show. It definitely wasn't a planned title shot.

Reading Death of WCW at the moment, and according to that, they switched the title onto Simmons because they couldn't do the match they wanted and had been building toward with Vader (I forget if it was Vader/Sting or Vader/someone else). Because they had never had any real plans for Simmons, he did mostly nothing with the title and it went back on Vader in December.

It's kind of ironic that this was celebrated as a major coupe for black wrestlers when they inducted Bill Watts into the Hall of Fame, when it was actually a case of having no one available that they'd rather put it on.

Name Change
Oct 9, 2005


Bad News Brown didn't like Hart either.

Name Change
Oct 9, 2005


Havoc904 posted:

I don't know if I would call it disastrous at all. He was only supposed to come in for a full year, so they built him up during the first half of the year with wins over The Rock, Jericho, and a few other people. Then they put him as a viable contender for Triple H, having them trade the title a few times and letting Triple H get some wins.

Then I think the real purpose of Goldberg was to get Lesnar over at the end of his contract, which it sounded like Goldberg was completely fine with as long as he was getting paid. Then Lesnar wanted to go play football a couple of weeks before Wrestlemania, so they had no choice but to let Goldberg win but Austin go over both of them since they would both be gone the next day.

I think the Goldberg run in WWE went as well as it could have, he never got stale or overstayed his weekend. He was brought in to provide fun matches and get a couple of guys over in the process, which he would have done fine if Lesnar had stayed around.

Edit: He was never not getting big pops through out the whole year. I went to two ppvs in 2003 and a couple of Raws, and each time Goldberg came out the crowd went wild. These events were from the early Summer to the end of November, and I remember the pops on tv being pretty good as well.

He probably would have stayed longer than a year if he liked his booking. But because he thought that WCW was how booking worked, he didn't work out with WWE.

Name Change
Oct 9, 2005


ColeM posted:

How'd it end?

Goldberg dominated the poo poo out of everyone and lost to Triple H only after Flair handed Trips the sledge. Then Evolution cuffed him to the wall of the chamber and tee'd off on him.

I really doubt this is what set off Goldberg specifically. He was probably pissed he had to feud with Jericho and Christian for half of his run and let so many heels get one over on him.

Name Change fucked around with this message at 22:57 on Oct 29, 2009

Name Change
Oct 9, 2005


Captain Charisma posted:

The Goldberg run is as simple as WWE not understanding how to book Goldberg and them arrogantly thinking he could get over if he just wrestled their style.

Goldberg destroyed everyone he wrestled in WWE. Nothing was wrong with his booking. The only bad Goldberg match I saw was vs. The Rock, which was still a really good place to book Goldberg.

Goldberg hates comedy matches and doesn't really "get" wrestling, for as long as he's been in it. If he wasn't used to having his way all the time in WCW, he'd probably still be in WWE right now.

Name Change
Oct 9, 2005


Chilly McFreeze posted:

Similarly
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSZdgA0KZLs#t=3m30s

Haha. I had forgotten about this. What a great idea for a finish that was.

Name Change
Oct 9, 2005


CubsWoo posted:

Were either of them long-standing main event talent in the WWF? No, not really.


Except the whole 'but he won in the end' part. I mean, we can go back to Legacy as an example. Coming out of Summerslam, because they make Michaels tap out, they looked menacing. They looked like they could, as a team, had finally figured out and could beat DX. Legacy showed a spark of being true main-event talent because they weren't just hanging with elite stars, they were winning.

Then in between SS and HIAC they lost a few singles matches to HHH and HBK, have essentially the same plan they used at SummerSlam not work, lose their main-event match, and stay off TV for a week while DX comes back the next night, looking just fine, and win a match against the tag team champions. I'm not sure DX even mentioned Legacy.

You don't get over by having even matches with an upper-card star while losing. You become a jobber to the stars. DX had nothing to lose and Legacy had everything to gain from being able to say 'we/I killed DX.' Would Randy Orton have been as over if he were the "Legend Had-A-Good-Match-With-But-Ultimately-Lost-Guy?" Probably not!

This is all really pretty simple. If a wrestler is given real time against a guy who is high up on the card, in order to get his spots in and do his thing, while the top guy sells for him, it puts him over. This happened in all three of those tag matches. It barely matters who won. The whole point is that Legacy isn't packaged like characters that can be laughed off, like the Highlanders or the Spirit Squad. They are being given real time on cards in order to get them over as wrestlers and heels, so that people care when they are on TV, so they can write more angles for them and sell more tickets.

Not really sure when going over became the standard for getting put over around here, since that's never been the case in the entire history of wrestling. There are more hideous historical fuckups in wrestling from pushing people too hard than there are from pushing them too little.

You can methodically list HBK/HHH's win/loss record if you want, but the only things that really matters is exposure, and the questions of who needs it and how much.

Name Change fucked around with this message at 11:52 on Nov 2, 2009

Name Change
Oct 9, 2005


Jerusalem posted:

Didn't NWA actually choose to disassociate themselves from TNA? I think I recall them doing a kayfabe thing where they stripped Christian of the belt for "not meeting his challenge obligations" or something?

I thought this situation was always the NWA being upset that TNA didn't run title changes by the NWA first, as if the NWA mattered enough to merit this treatment.

Name Change
Oct 9, 2005


Oasx posted:

This gives me a good chance to ask, what is the nosebleeds when talking about seating at a ppv and where does the name come from? Based on the name alone it sounds like the best seats, but i get the impression that it is completely opposite?

Really?

It's when you're seated so high up in the stadium that your nose bleeds. It's the worst seating for seeing anything.

Name Change
Oct 9, 2005


CM Junk posted:

Wait. This whole time we've been hating on Cena's promos because he said "fart juice" in passing during a promo in 2006 when he wasn't even champion?

I hate SA so much sometimes. :ughh:

OK how about the other 110 lovely promos he's given that have made fans throughout the U.S. hate him (literally the exact opposite of their intention and what a super babyface is supposed to do)?

A lot of stuff about Cena is up for debate, but what's practically inarguable is that his promos are terrible. WWE/John Cena's idea of building heat is to put over his opponent, no matter how despicable they are, and talk about what a classic match they had, and can they do another just to please the WWE Universe, which John Cena loves unconditionally and it drives him and pander pander pander. Or if he can't muster up that, he gives a "funny" promo for six-year olds that makes a Triple H face promo seem intellectual.

As a result, virtually any heel that Cena faces, no matter how rotten they are written to be, becomes cooler, and the audience knows it. Randy Orton severely injures people and brutally attacks their families to keep them out of his way. He's also a blatant coward, and he abuses Cody and Ted (the latter of whom got a face pop just for standing in the same ring with Orton a few weeks ago).

At Hell in a Cell, despite the fact that Orton had spent the last two PPVs alternatively ducking Cena and attempting to torture him to death, Cena was practically booed out of the building.

That is the power of John Cena's shittiness. Paired off against Cena, cowardly heels become the cool badasses, because in comparison they do awesome things whenever they want and take poo poo from nobody. Meanwhile, the next night, Cena congratulates them for a job well done. :hurr: This is why, as popular as Cena is, he will never put WWE over the top like Austin or the Rock did. He's a loving dork who is booked for eight year olds.

Name Change
Oct 9, 2005


CombineThresher posted:

On paper, I can see why he would want to build up his opponents instead of dismissing them - if you, as a face, call your opponent a piece of poo poo and he beats you, you don't have anywhere else to go promo-wise. I can see your point, though, about how it's something Cena should stop doing after Orton proves time and again what a slimy heel he is.

"I want to end your career at any cost and will do anything to win" vs. "I respect you" is always a terrible storyline. It's not hard to figure out which character here is more appealing, either. This is also far from the first time Cena has done this promo/storyline setup.

quote:

But if you don't want WWE babyfaces to pander to the audience, you should maybe watch something else. They have always done that. Hogan did it, Austin did it, Rock did it, Human Muppet Commissioner Foley did it, etc. They may have been pandering to different audiences than the dorky kids who like Cena, but they were pandering all the same.

And I will go to my grave defending IMPERVIOUS TO BULLETS.

Sure there was pandering, but the popularity of guys like Austin and Rock had very little to do with what they thought of their audience. You got the feeling that Austin would beat asses no matter who didn't like it--which made you like him more--and that if Jesus floated down to the ring to guide the Rock, the Rock would talk trash to him, too. It's no coincidence that both guys got their big breaks as heels.

As a viewer I'm just not interested in how much Cena needs my love and how he wants to deliver me the great matches of the century with Triple H and Randy Orton and by golly isn't he a trooper. He doesn't come off as a genuine character in any way, which sets him apart from virtually every other main eventer in the company for the last decade or so. As FishBulb said, he's shamelessly packaged to be a substitution Rock/Austin, because that's what will make kids buy merchandise. When he does interviews outside of wrestling, it's really clear that he's not his character at all.

quote:

I say Triple H. Cena actually got some good matches out of his and if nothing else, Edge and RVD got their first title reigns in the middle. HHH's did bring us Legacy and it was ridiculously satisfying when Goldberg won it off of him and again when the reign was "ended" at WMXX, but he just got it right back off Orton that summer.

They were both bad at times, with a few good things in between, but at least you were supposed to hate Triple H--which people tend to somehow forget.

Name Change
Oct 9, 2005


Jerusalem posted:

I'm one of those who feels that the Attitude Era "ended" with Wrestlemania 17, but that it wasn't an ending full stop, but the beginning of the transitory period between the Attitude Era and whatever followed.

Yes, it was still pretty awesome up until about after Wrestlemania 19 or so.

Name Change
Oct 9, 2005


Karmine posted:

Michaels, Flair, Andre and Bruno all come close but nope.

Flair isn't exactly without enemies, but at this point they're mostly nobodies.

Name Change
Oct 9, 2005


quote:

He screwed with Vince. His contract ran out before a PPV and he had a match as the IC champ. He held Vince up for allegedly 150,000 to do the job and then jetted to WCW where he was pushed to the top.

This is Vince's fault entirely, and from what I understand was no-where near this much money. I don't remember if any exact figure was thrown out the last time I remember this coming up in the forums, but while Jeff and the WWE may not get along, the amount of bad blood is vastly overstated.

Name Change
Oct 9, 2005


battlemonk posted:

Lesnar did gently caress up an SSP once, but he's fine. Just concussed.

Unless you consider that concussion damage can be permanent, and the leading cause of major surgery for wrestlers is sustained damage to the neck, rivaled only by their knees. I wouldn't be surprised if this incident and the work schedule contributed greatly to Brock's decision to leave WWE.

After the WM 19 match in which this happened he was legitimately hosed up and really didn't know where he was or what he was doing. That isn't "dazed."

(Lesnar's current physical ailments have nothing to do with wrestling).

Name Change
Oct 9, 2005


reality_groove posted:

Althought it's wielded strangely, sledgehammer still beats tennis racket.

I'm suprised no-one's used a plastic retractable knife. Stabbings = ratings.

Triple H has used a screwdriver, which is just mean.

Name Change
Oct 9, 2005


oldpainless posted:

OK, I was wrong apparently about WWE losing money when their game is a sponsor of a PPV. The publisher ponies up the cash. But then there's something I'm still fuzzy on. Doesn't it seem counterproductive to advertise to an audience that is probably already theirs? The people buying have already seen the commercials and probably bought the game already or have decided not to. Doesn't it seem wasteful to spend more money to sponsor the PPV?

Maybe someone can explain it to me because I must be missing an obvious point or something. Does anyone know why it's a smart move finacially to do this?

Advertising a product that you get a cut of? Advertising to people who may not watch Raw religiously every week?

Name Change
Oct 9, 2005


Rusty Shackelford posted:

How many of those matches were the best of the show?

Almost all of them. Or if they weren't the best, they were really, really good and you could still have arguments about whether or not they were best.

Name Change
Oct 9, 2005


Rusty Shackelford posted:

So it sounds like he may be Mr. WrestleMania, then.

Right, he's not the best because he wins, he's the best because HE'LL TAKE YOU TO THE TOP OF THE MOUNTAIN, JOHN CENA.

Name Change
Oct 9, 2005


Beef Jerky Robot posted:

2 questions: First, when does a clothesline become a lariat?

This is the sort of distinction that only a real wrestling basement grognard is usually going to make. The difference is, in a lariat, you bend your arm forward at the elbow when you hit. In a clothesline, you don't. "Lariat" also sounds cooler than "Clothesline." Those are literally the only two differences. It's a clothesline.

Name Change
Oct 9, 2005


Angle headlined a Wrestlemania. He was and is a bigger deal than Sting.

Name Change
Oct 9, 2005


tzirean posted:

If I'm not mistaken, Starrcade '97 had a significantly higher buyrate than Wrestlemania 19.

Sid and Yokozuna headlined two Wrestlemanias. Are they bigger, besides physically, than Sting? Than Angle?

Wrestlemania 19 did a 1.4 with a month of buildup using a new face in the business, and was awesome. Starrcade '97 did a 1.9 after a year of buildup, featuring the NWO, and sucked.

Wrestlemania 19 was also a hell of a lot bigger of a deal than the Manias that Sid and Yokozuna headlined.

That's pretty much it.

Name Change
Oct 9, 2005


Mick has been on a long decline creatively, and at this point seems to attribute a little more importance to himself and his opinion than is healthy.

Name Change
Oct 9, 2005


tendrilsfor20 posted:

Orton doesn't count because his last name means something to wrestling fans.

I don't think most fans actually knew who Bob Orton was until WWE made a thing out of it, though. It might be different for the Rhodes family, but even then we're talking about viewers who weren't even born the last time Dusty was on the scene.

Name Change
Oct 9, 2005


oldpainless posted:

Foley has said that his match with Orton at Backlash '04 has replaced the Michaels match as his favorite. I dont understand the huge deal about it. Its a very good match for sure, but I never counted it among Mick's best.

Mick only has a handful of good matches.

Name Change
Oct 9, 2005


Kenny Dykstra is literally the worst WWE gimmick name I've ever heard, which is saying something. I think his one achievement was having a halfway decent TV match with Bobby Lashley, another guy with shitloads of problems, most not his own fault.

The whole Spirit Squad thing in general was some of the worst poo poo of the last five years, so whatever.

Name Change
Oct 9, 2005


CM Junk posted:

Including Bam Neely? This guy got his name MONTHS after Dykstra and they gave him ANOTHER one-letter-off sports name and it was for a much bigger hockey star than Dykstra is a baseball star.

Bam Neely is a way better name just because it evokes the kind of word association that you'd want with a wrestler.

Let's break this down:

Bam = Bazooka Kaboom
Neely: I dunno whatever it doesn't sound stupid or anything

Kenny = Sonny, Willy, Billy, all little babby names
Dykstra = Butch lesbian. Yeah I loving said it. Also a baseball player that's been retired for 10 years and you've probably never heard of because you watch wrestling. Also apparently Lenny Dykstra is a huge rear end in a top hat who's also on record as a roid user. Way to go.

Babby Lesbian. Oh by the way did I mention that he started out with the biggest jobber gimmick in years and now his entire gimmick is his terrible name?

Now go out there and make 'em love you, kid! Probably should have just fired him and saved themselves some money, since no one in their right mind ever paid to see this guy.

Name Change
Oct 9, 2005


TL posted:

He absolutely has nothing that Edge doesn't have and is, in my opinion, orders of magnitude worse than Edge. I don't hate him, but he's colossally overrated and I don't seem him as the stand-out megastar everyone else seems to think he has.

Edge matches are usually boring unless there's weapons involved, other than that the entire match is waiting for whatever colossal gently caress finish they have planned. Also, and this is no fault of Edge's, the way they've booked him over the years means that beating him essentially means nothing.

Randy is actually a pretty good wrestler and can really have a good singles match if that is what is called for. He also does his gimmick really well and all-around it's pretty fun to watch him go insane during a match.

Name Change
Oct 9, 2005


Capsaicin posted:

One of the best matches with good example of "ring psychology" I can think of is Edge/Taker from WM24. Edge had scouted out all of Taker's moves and was slipping out and avoiding them perfectly.

This is pretty much every Taker main event with an opponent who is smaller than Batista, and the whole "HE'S GOT HIM SCOUTED" thing doesn't wear well when you think about it. The guy has been wrestling for twenty years at least once a month, if you don't have him scouted by now you never will. Natural ability and skill is what it should be sold as, not Edge watching Undertaker tapes like a football coach.

quote:

Since about 1993, there hasn't been a "draw" in wrestling other than the names "WWF", "WCW", and "WWE". One could make arguments for the Rocks, Stone-Colds, DDPs and Goldbergs of the world, but I really don't see any of those guys selling out arenas by themselves.

Trying to figure out what your possible logic is here and it's just eluding me. Stone Cold and Rock pretty much defined the WWF product and if WCW wasn't retarded to the extreme they probably could have had Goldberg and DDP lifting the entire company up in just the same way. Acting like people ever paid money to see Jeff Jarrett v. Chyna and Right to Censor or something is a pretty bold claim.

Wrestling companies still need draws, for crowds and everything else. Also Cena/DX/Undertaker are easily the biggest draws on the cards, and without these guys the shows become a lot less attractive. WWE do hang their hats on several people, but nothing's really changed about the business, it's just that the writing's bad, the competition is low, and very few new major draws have been created since about 1997.

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Name Change
Oct 9, 2005


Also Bubba is a dickhead, so good riddance really.

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