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Pinstripe Hourglass posted:He is so blatantly, disgustingly homophobic. I don’t know how anyone can look past this.  Jim Cornette is a 58-year-old man who's now pretty out of touch with what's a marketable product in 2019 and who is convinced that NXT (audience age > 50) is going to beat AEW in the long run, but if you feel genuinely unsafe based on the idea that he somehow is secretly homophobic against two married men doing spot matches I would maybe suggest that going outside for some air would be in order
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Oct 30, 2019 12:15
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Venomous posted:thanks for telling queer folks what they should and shouldn't be scared of, cishet If you're worried about going outside because you saw on the internet that Jim Cornette said that the Young Bucks were bad and that their matches are bad, yes, you legitimately need professional help. I'm sorry to break that news.
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Oct 30, 2019 12:45
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Venomous posted:you're being a disingenuous asshat here but w/e ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Just to be clear, as far as I'm aware, the collated evidence against Jim Cornette here is: - referred to Sonny Kiss (who came to the ring in full makeup and rammed Tommy Dreamer's face into his taint) as a "drag act" as part of an unrelated point - suggested that Nyla Rose be... pushed hard as a monster heel and not lose to 90lb girls - thinks Kenny Omega is stagey and does a lot of "jazz hands" bullshit - doesn't like the Young Bucks(?) - is an old and his pants are full of poop Like, there are lots of reasons that you can think Jim Cornette's opinions are silly and hyperbolic, but he's now "clearly" an irredeemable homophobe and transphobe because... other people on the internet have said he is and we must show our support, to the extent that you're now talking about people being scared to go to wrestling shows because someone there might agree with Jim Cornette? And if you dare to suggest that might be completely insane, you're now part of the problem. Yeah, that sucks. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Oct 30, 2019 13:17
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Von Linus posted:What I find odd about him criticising Sonny Kiss (who I don't rate but that's neither here nor there) is that Gorgeous George was going down to the ring and spraying it with perfume in the 50s, and leaning in hard to stereotypes that would be reacted to even more strongly then than a male male kiss would now. At least that's how I would have thought it. Adrian Adonis I believe was giving dudes pecks on the cheek and at various points looking like a leather daddy. Cornette seems super keen on anyone who can "work", which in his parlance has essentially nothing to do with knowing a bunch of moves or being able to do them well, and everything to do with getting an emotional response from the crowd. Basically, if you're good at the stuff that Jim Cornette and his teams did, he loves you (he thinks MJF is the best thing since Sliced Bread #2, for context), and if you're trying to get over any other way then it's stupid video game bullshit and you're ruining the business for everyone else. So my suspicion with those guys (who, truth be told, were fairly unpleasant gay panic gimmicks that probably shouldn't be looked back on with any nostalgia) is that they'd be fine at the time for Cornette because the entire point is for them to get the crowd baying for a "real" tough guy to come and beat the crap out of them. But Sonny Kiss is weird, because he's now doing the same gay panic gimmick, except it's... ironic, I guess, so it's a comedy pop for smarks when 90% of wrestling is already a comedy pop for smarks. As I say, though, the only thing I remember Cornette getting into trouble for regarding Kiss wasn't specifically really aimed at him - it was Cornette giving out about the fact that the first ever thing AEW ran on TV was the Casino Battle Royale, which featured at various points: The Fat Ghost Of Tommy Dreamer, a man with no legs, a man painted entirely yellow, a man lathering himself in baby oil mid-match, a morbidly obese man, Tiny Child Marko Stunt, a man in a dinosaur mask, a man with his hands in his pockets doing pretend kicks, and a man in "drag". Most of these people had never been on television before (and most haven't since), came out in packs of five so weren't introduced at all, but yet were fighting for a shot at becoming #1 Contender for the World Championship. The point was that having a comedy jobber battle royale as your first presentation as a company was really dumb (and everyone in hindsight now pretty much agrees), but it then got weirdly morphed into "Jim Cornette hates gay people" by people who were upset about being called comedy jobbers, and now that's just therefore canon.
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Oct 31, 2019 17:46
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WatermelonGun posted:this post sucks brooo. as a gay man I guarantee sonny’s appeal doesn’t rely on “comedy pops for smarks” you fuckin butthead. His big spot in that match was to literally grab Tommy Dreamer's head and ram it repeatedly into his rear end and taint. In what possible world is that a positive or groundbreaking depiction of a gay man, except one where you assume the audience has seen 20+ years of pro wrestling and is entirely in on the joke?
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Oct 31, 2019 18:33
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Low Desert Punk posted:how is it a negative depiction? it isn't sonny's responsibility to think in advance how boomers are going to react to his every action and reduce him down to his sexuality I'm not sure how to explain in detail how a gay man who comes down to the ring and sexually touches other competitors without their consent as a comedy spot might not be in great taste or do wonders for young gay men watching at home, but you're welcome to your opinion on it. For what it's worth, he's not done that spot since in AEW, so at least someone in the back has told him that maybe it's not a great visual.
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Oct 31, 2019 18:52
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Lumbermouth posted:Also Cornette doesn't give a poo poo about how a crowd reacts because the Elite dudes get insane crowd reactions and he still hates them. It's about getting the ~right~ crowd reaction, which can only be achieved in a Georgia television studio in the 80s. Well, yes, also this. Specifically it seems to revolve around cutting heel promos and that every match should have a ten-minute build to a hot tag. How exactly you run a weekly tv show where every tag match has to have a flying hot tag and the babyface runs wild without it getting stale after three weeks, I couldn't possibly tell you, but apparently it's the secret to all wrestling
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Oct 31, 2019 19:10
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Mulaney Power Move posted:i should clarify what i think i meant by novelty. a gimmick that doesn't take itself seriously, or "winks at the audience" as cornette says would be a novelty. i think a man who thinks he is a rooster is a dumb gimmick all around, for instance, but i like it better when it is done in earnest. i don't like orange cassidy because his gimmick is basically anti-wrestling. In fairness, Undertaker hasn't used the "actual deadman" gimmick in a long time - at some point it just turned into Octagon Gothdad but with occasional lightning bolts. But yeah, there's a specific kind of indy comedy and indy comedy gimmick that essentially requires you to have watched wrestling for a couple of decades in order to get the joke, and because you guys are all smart to the business, we're going to do all of the matches standing on our heads tonight. I think at one point CHIKARA had a character who was a time-traveler, and he'd feud with the evil future version of himself. Or PWG had a recurring match which would end every year with someone putting their thumb up another wrestler's rear end, which then led to the gimmick of Jushin Liger showing up and everyone in the match trying to stop a legend from being involved in their Cornette-bait. Is that killing the business? No, that genie is already out of the bottle, and that sort of stuff is targeted at exactly the people who go to see CHIKARA or PWG and want to have fun doing so. And if I was wrestling, I'd rather get over doing the floss dance than taking stupid bumps in front of 50 people. But I'd absolutely agree that you can't do it on a "proper" show if you have an intention to attract a new audience and create mainstream stars. You can't have your product essentially be a parody of itself.
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Nov 3, 2019 02:06
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Gaz-L posted:And here's the thing: His gimmick only 'exposes the business' if the other guy sells the lazy kicks. Which hasn't been happening in AEW. Guys only sell when he does real moves. So the gimmick in AEW is 'OC mocks the heels by doing fake strikes, heel gets mad, OC then does a dropkick or dive and the heel looks like a fool for getting mad and giving him an opening'. And I think that's fine. There's plenty they can do with him as an ancillary character who comes in and does a spot, but what they can't do is have him wrestle actual matches with his hands in his pockets (unless he's going to do his one spot and then lose). I'm sure you'd get a pop from an AEW crowd having him be a full-time wrestler, but it also makes it a send-up of what you're trying to sell and removes all suspension of disbelief, which is what you're going to need if you want to attract people who don't watch wrestling to get emotionally invested in something like Cody vs Jericho.
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Nov 3, 2019 02:42
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Gaz-L posted:I'm not even sure he's seen a single comedy wrestler. Not Santino Marella, not Colt Cabana, not Toru Yano or Rysuke Taguchi or Kikutaro. Of course you can do comedy in wrestling. Catweazle was doing comedy matches back in the 70s. Grado was the most over guy in the country coming out with a fanny pack to Like A Prayer. That's not new at all. But the comedy you do needs to be in the context of the show, and not just a guy yelling "freeze frame" and going to get a hot dog while the other wrestlers stand still. There's a threshold of believability beyond which you're just being wacky for the sake of it, which is a niche product that goes nowhere and takes away from what you're trying to do in terms of having people care about your characters. The point is that they need to keep him on the right side of that line.
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Nov 3, 2019 03:12
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Ok, so for the purposes of the thread, I went and looked up some of his indy stuff and you're right that it's not quite what I was expecting from what he's been billed as. But there's a match with Kylie Rae where they joke around for a bit and then have a normal match, which is fine... and then there's a match with Joey Janela where they come out dressed in the same gear, do shoulder blocks on each other at half walking pace for about five minutes, and then spit orange juice in each other's eyes while the crowd chant "you sick fucks", which is pretty much the specific kind of indy comedy that relies on the audience knowing what to expect from a pro wrestling match and them doing a parody of it. If AEW are just going to have him be like Taguchi or Grado or whoever else and do comedy then be good at wrestling, then I agree that isn't a problem at all, but he'll definitely have to dial back some of the gimmick to make it work on TV.
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Nov 3, 2019 05:00
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The_Rob posted:Watch his championship match against David Starr at Beyond. This was a good recommendation, and I at least enjoyed it. I did get exactly the same impression from his AEW stuff as Mulaney though, so perhaps it's not an unfair take. On looking back at his stuff, I suspect that All Out didn't help him at all if you didn't know who he was beforehand. He enters the match, does the fake kicks to Dreamer (which the commentators sell like they're in on the joke), does a kip-up, and then gets immediately thrown out still with his hands in his pockets (at which point the commentators point out that he doesn't seem to care about losing). That comes off less like the gimmick is that he's Double Tranquilo and goading his opponent into losing their focus, and more like he's some kind of post-ironic shoegaze wrestler who woke up one day and was the only one that realized it's all a work. The gimmick should absolutely not be that he doesn't care, and I think that's how it comes off right now.
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Nov 3, 2019 10:39
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Jerusalem posted:I wish I could remember which old wrestler it was who told a story on an old podcast about showing up to some territory on the day of a show as a complete nobody, being big and imposing looking enough that everybody assumed he was just a wrestler. He managed to walk his way into a creative meeting where Bruiser Brody was ready to throw down in a fight with him until one of the bookers bullshitted a,"Oh we were supposed to meet 30 minutes from now!" and escorted him out of the room, told him not to make a fuss and he'd get him on the show that night, and it basically launched his entire career. It might be a different guy, but that sounds a lot like the story Vader told of how he got into the business, which if I recall did involve showing up at an event and barging into the locker room to demand a job - at which point someone there was quick-witted enough to pretend that he had a pre-existing appointment with the 450lb man who just showed up before punches were exchanged.
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Nov 9, 2019 11:25
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