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Hollismason
Jun 30, 2007


Get Ready for Price Time , Bitch



16-bit Butt-Head posted:

david arquette was warned by nick gage what would happen so thats all david arquette's fault for deciding to participate in a hardcore deathmatch with nick gage imo

new jack got away with trying to legitimately murder someone in the ring three times

That's loving crazy he tried to murder someone 3 times

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Mumpy Puffinz
Aug 11, 2008
Nap Ghost

16-bit Butt-Head posted:

david arquette was warned by nick gage what would happen so thats all david arquette's fault for deciding to participate in a hardcore deathmatch with nick gage imo

new jack got away with trying to legitimately murder someone in the ring three times

three times. did he ever get the job done?

Trollologist
Mar 3, 2010

by Fluffdaddy
^^^^^^^^Not that's provable in a court of law^^^^^^^^^

Hollismason posted:

I was just wondering why he looks so bloody , sure that cannot all be from blading and some of it is fake blood.

Okay, so I went and found some match highlights at a sketchy russian youtube TBH, it's really something. I get why WWE draws a PPV.

Alright. Let's get to it. Yes. as Butthead posted the blood mixes with sweat and can look worse. Also, head injuries just bleed a lot in general: Here's a whole article about it.

In Wrestling, there are generally 2 ways to start bleeding. Either you gig (have a little razor blade bit hidden and cut yourself a bit), or you bleed the Hard Way (an actual head injury).

It would appear that in the 2005 match (where mr bleedy there is pictured), John got busted open the hard way from an unprotected chair shot. His opponent JBL, would also start bleeding later in the match but whether or not he gigged is unclear to me. Regardless that match is a loving Hazardous spill zone no matter how you look at and everyone was all bleedy by the end. I'd wager that Cena needed a few stitches or staples after the match to close up that actual head wound.

So, he (most likely) didn't blade, JBL maybe did, Lotta blood from both men and sweat maybe making it look worse. Also, since it's a show they weren't cleaning up or even wiping their faces, so it's just all the blood on them the whole time. (like imagine you got a bloody nose and just let it leak on your face and clothes, it would look like you were about to die)

Jonny Nox
Apr 26, 2008




16-bit Butt-Head posted:

david arquette was warned by nick gage what would happen so thats all david arquette's fault for deciding to participate in a hardcore deathmatch with nick gage imo

new jack got away with trying to legitimately murder someone in the ring three times

Here's Peter avalon talking about (not) training Arquette for the match:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seE-urThKuQ&t=1775s


edit:

2 more points re: blading.

1) Sometimes the wrestler hits an artery or goes to deep. See the Cody vs Dustin fight for a good example. Cody basically had to cary Dustin through the second half of the match because his big brother was getting woozy.
2) Wrestlers will sometimes take Aspirin to thin their blood if they know they are going to blade. Makes it look better.

Jonny Nox fucked around with this message at 07:26 on Feb 28, 2022

Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.
Given Sesame Street came up before, the Cena comparison suddenly reminds me of complaints that most of Sesame Street is perfectly fine to watch for everyone including the parents who have to put up with it every day, except for the Elmo parts, which feel like they keep growing to the point of taking over the show.

Though given the comparisons of wrestling to comic books, complete with descending into edge in the 90s and never really recovering, Cena strikes me as WWE begrudgingly learning that there actually is a market for wrestling outside of edgelords who are all about blood and yelling and everyone wearing black, and unlike comic books they actually want to make money so they lean into it. While comic books are good at squandering all the popularity they get from the cartoons and movies so the crusty nerds who write them can get back bedgrudgingly introducing and then killing off new characters as they go back to what they really want to write; all the personality-less bland white guys they grew up with.

FullLeatherJacket
Dec 30, 2004

Chiunque può essere Luther Blissett, semplicemente adottando il nome Luther Blissett

remember that when you go give blood they take like a pint of the stuff, and they could probably take two if they could find someone to stop you from driving

since we're doing dodgy russian website, I've said before that the worst I've ever seen outside of actual attempted murder was eddie guerrero against jbl, and that I was watching in a bar that all immediately went quiet when it cut to that first shot on the video

eddie then proceeds to donate two pints of blood to himself, jbl and most of the ring canvas

Gavok
Oct 10, 2005

Brock! Oh, man, I'm sorry about your...

...tooth?


Trollologist posted:

(If there was a Bray / Roman feud I'm curious how it was received)

There were mainly two. First was just Wyatt Family vs. Shield. At the time, it was insinuated that the Wyatt Family was working for the Authority, much like the Shield, but the two factions kept getting in each other's way. Finally, we got a heel vs. heel six-man tag match between the two teams that is considered one of the best WWE matches in the past decade. They had a couple rematches, also fantastic, but the story was more about the Shield breaking apart and then banding back together.

After Roman's first failed attempt at Brock, Bray Wyatt targeted him with a meta catch phrase of, "Anyone but you, Roman." I don't remember too much about it other than the two having a pretty good Hell in a Cell match.

This does remind me of this one point about a year later when they were trying to turn the Wyatt Family face. At the time, WWE had a stable called the League of Nations, made up of foreign heels (Sheamus, Alberto Del Rio, Rusev, Wade Barrett) and for whatever reason, Wyatt started a feud with them. We got a Raw main event of Roman and Wyatt vs. Sheamus and Del Rio. The match ended with the raddest visual of Wyatt pinning Del Rio as Sheamus tried to run in and break the pin. Wyatt put his hand up like a gun pointed at Sheamus and an instant later, Roman came out of nowhere and speared Sheamus.

Unfortunately, Wyatt got injured a day or so later. By the time he came back, the League of Nations had split up and there were no heel teams to oppose, so the Wyatt Family went back to being heels.

Archer666
Dec 27, 2008
The best part of John Cena is that he showed up in a King of Fighters video game looking for a BTS concert

Cornwind Evil
Dec 14, 2004


The undisputed world champion of wrestling effortposting
I’d like to weigh in on the John Cena finer points myself, but since it seems to have gotten derailed, I’ll hold off for now.

Speaking of weight…



Yet another divergence that is somewhat needed. This is Solofa Fatu Jr.



Nee Fatu of the 90’s tag team the Headshrinkers, nee “Making A Difference” Fatu, which was basically if you injected the man with the essence of after school specials, nee The Sultan, hiding the fact that he was Samoan and the same guy who’d been in the WWE for years under a mask. Father of current WWE stars Jey and Jimmy Uso, and part of the extended A’noai wrestling family: also-famous tag team the Wild Samoans Aka and Sika are his uncles (and trained him to wrestle), the late Umaga/Edward Fatu was his brother, and Yokuzuna, Rosey/Matthew A’noai, The Rock, and Roman Reigns are, or were, his cousins, as the first two have passed on as well. Beginning his career in 1985, once the Sultan failed he disappeared for a time, doing some extra training under Dory Funk at his wrestling school, during which he put on some extra weight. He carried it well though, and so when he returned in late 1999, he was given a sumo wrestler esque gimmick.

Whose first name was supposedly “Summo Sami”. Or “Sami Summo”. Whether he actually used that name on a house show or two or it’s just a story, when he debuted on Raw he was Rikishi Fatu, which later became Phatu, and later just Rikishi. By himself he was nothing special, but…



This is the late Brian Christopher Lawler and Scott Garland, nee Grandmaster Sexay and Scotty 2 Hotty. After a not very successful run as a ‘we claim to be ladies’ men, but we're actually very homoerotic' tag team and a knee injury taking Lawler out of the ring for several months, they returned with a new gimmick as dancing club party kids, more or less. Harmless, until they happened to bump into Rikishi, who came to their defense one show at the very end of 1999. Where they offered him some shades, and…well, something clicked.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKjNze6zKEk

You wouldn’t think that two so hip to be square manchildren dancing with a large-butted Samoan man could get over huge, but it did. And it transferred to Rikishi, who, like Kevin Nash, got over huge in the 2000 Royal Rumble, both for doing well and for when him and his two friends stopping fighting so they could do their dance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0VjyQBWlXE&t=162s

Not shown in this video, but if you find one of the full Rumble, listen to the crowd when the man gets eliminated; they’re PISSED. Had a thing or two gone differently, Rikishi could have shot up into the main event and stayed there.

If you’re thinking “But Hunter ruined it”, no. Rikishi sort of followed Diesel’s path in that regard as well, getting the IC title in the summer and staying around upper midcard. The most memorable moment of his reign was facing the heel-turned Val Venis in a cage match, where both men took a great risk with Rikishi doing a diving splash off the side of the cage.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9xxGuri6Rg

I bring this trio up for reasons that will become clear in a bit.

2000 was set up to be an exceptional year, being the turn of the millennium and all. And for Hunter, it seemed like it was a massive bolt of lightning. But what channelled that would be his opponent, Mick Foley.

Now, when Mick Foley began in the WWE, he was wrestling under the gimmick of Mankind, presented as a deranged savage who didn’t feel pain and would happily maim himself to get at his opponent. Eventually, that gimmick fell by the wayside and more and more of the real Mick Foley began showing through, culminating in an interview in mid 1997 where he revealed his real life history involving his ‘home movies’ about him being a wrestling champion named Dude Love and going to see a very famous Jimmy Snuka match which several wrestlers claim to have seen in some way and been inspired by. Shortly afterwards, Mick was talked into introducing a new facet of his gimmick, that being reviving Dude Love. It was presented as almost alternate personalities: Mankind was wacko and weird, and Dude Love was ‘gentler’ and more social and fun. And since Mick now had two ‘personalities’ why not a third?

You might remember that I said that Triple H’s first real good match was his King of the Ring final against Mick Foley as Mankind. (Only video I could find, it's in German) That win kicked off a summer feud where Mick faced off against Hunter as both Mankind and Dude Love, each one scoring a win. To end the feud, Mick decided to bring back his original gimmick name as a third personality: Cactus Jack, presented as a psychopathic brawler who not only didn’t much care about himself, but was ‘smarter’ than Mankind and above all else, wanted to hurt you as badly as possible and as needed to win his matches. These would be dubbed “The Three Faces of Foley”, and for a time Mick would alternate between them as he pleased. He even entered the 1998 Royal Rumble as all of them: Cactus came out at No 1, was eliminated, Mankind came out in the mid teens, was eliminated, and Dude Love came out at 28 or so, but was also eliminated. I do not know what they would have done in regards to the fact that Mick Foley got three chances to win the Rumble where everyone else got one, but eh, that’s wrestling.

By the time 2000 was beginning though, the Three Faces of Foley was more or less done. Cactus Jack had ‘retired’ after disappointment over how fans reacted to something, and when Mick immediately returned as Dude Love and turned heel as Vince McMahon’s first warrior against the newly crowned world champion Steve Austin, they had a pair of great PPV matches, but Dude Love came up short both times, even the second, which had ridiculous odds stacked against Austin. Furious, McMahon blamed ‘Dude Love’ and fired him, but on the same show Mick Foley ran out as Mankind and saved him from a beating, and so while ‘Dude Love’ and ‘Cactus Jack’ were gone, Mankind remained.

However, this was not the same Mankind who had been a dominant heel in 1996. This Mankind, while still a ‘hardcore legend’, was much goofier then before, even if he still took giant crazy bumps. Hunter backstage supposedly dubbed Mick a ‘human muppet’, which is as apt as anything; one moment Mick would be cramming a dirty sock into someone’s mouth or doing a “This Is Your Life” segment with the Rock, and the next he’d be getting thrown off the stage onto a graveyard set or diving off the top of a cage to deliver an elbow. Perhaps the biggest sign that this was not the old Mankind was that when Mick returned as Mankind, the character was now inexplicably wearing an office shirt and tie over his old outfit of brown pants, shirt, and mask, a look Mankind would keep until the end of the gimmick and the occasional revivals. Now, at the tail end of 1999, Hunter and Stephanie decided for whatever reason they didn’t like Mick and made his life hell, kayfabe firing him, hiring an impersonator to embarrass him, and beating him up when Mick got kayfabe rehired. So Mick, sounding defeated, said on another early 2000 show that while he had managed to get a title match with Hunter at the 2000 Royal Rumble, and a No Holds Barred Street Fight at that, Mankind, and Mick Foley, was not ready to face Hunter in such a match.

But another guy was. Cactus Jack.

It’s hard to put into words how much this worked being due to Hunter. After all, all Mick did was pull off his mask and take off his shirt to reveal his Cactus Jack shirt. Hunter, however, acted like Mick had been possessed by a legion of demons that were all marching down to the ring to consume his soul. He was terrified of this man, this face of Foley.

And hence, when they had their match at the Royal Rumble, it was not even better than their King of the Ring final, it was just plain amazing; Hunter did a memorable bladejob to really sell how dangerous this man was, and took all of Cactus’ brutal moves and gave back just as much. Ultimately, Hunter would nail Mick with a second Pedigree onto a pile of thumbtacks to claim the win, Mick putting Hunter over clean and strong.

This was the match that MADE Triple H, main event heel and top star. Before he’d just been a guy people were residually mad at because of something his ‘wife’ did; now he was a badass machine who just bested, even beat the poo poo out of the Hardcore Legend in his own match. It would mark the start of the trend of 2000, as Triple H was on fire for most of it. Most importantly, he gave large amounts of himself in each match to make it work; look no further than a match he had with undercard wrestler Taka Michinoku. In years to come, this would have been a squash, or at best, a fluke win that got Taka nothing, but early 2000 Hunter actually put himself in several spots where it actually appeared there was a CHANCE that Taka could beat him and win the title, concluding with a ‘beat up outside by other tag team, hit by Taka’s friend with a chair, and Taka then landing a moonsault’ spot for a super close 3 count. It would truly show how bad Hunter would become in the future, because if he’d done the exact same thing three years later, he wouldn’t have gotten anywhere near the response, because no one would have believed for a moment Taka had any chance whatsoever of beating Hunter. But early 2000 Hunter made them believe there was a chance.

If Hunter had managed to keep his career going at one-fifth this degree of effort and understanding, he would have become a true legend of the business.

He would anyway. But for the wrong reasons.

Cornwind Evil fucked around with this message at 18:51 on Feb 28, 2022

ZogrimAteMyHamster
Dec 8, 2015

Loving these effortposts, I'd sorta got back into watching WWF around 1999/2000 after some six or so years out so reading these is just :allears:

X JAKK
Sep 1, 2000

We eat the pig then together we BURN

quote:

The most memorable moment of his reign was facing the heel-turned Val Venis in a cage match, where both men took a great risk with Rikishi doing a diving splash off the side of the cage.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9xxGuri6Rg

I was at that show, way up in the balconies being a dork.

Trollologist
Mar 3, 2010

by Fluffdaddy

FullLeatherJacket posted:

since we're doing dodgy russian website, I've said before that the worst I've ever seen outside of actual attempted murder was eddie guerrero against jbl, and that I was watching in a bar that all immediately went quiet when it cut to that first shot on the video


What is it with JBL and unprotected chair shots at judgement day? In 04 he blasted Eddie and in 05 he got Cena.

Elephant Ambush
Nov 13, 2012

...We sholde spenden more time together. What sayest thou?
Nap Ghost

Trollologist posted:

What is it with JBL and unprotected chair shots at judgement day? In 04 he blasted Eddie and in 05 he got Cena.

He's a huge piece of poo poo bully who thinks he's a legit IRL badass tough guy despite being a hilariously insecure weenie.

Cornwind Evil
Dec 14, 2004


The undisputed world champion of wrestling effortposting
You'd think Paul Levesque would be a believer in karma, considering how good karma seemed to be to him in 2000. He expended great effort in his matches, put some thought into his offense via pulling out neat little tricks with it every now and then, a far cry from him a mere four years ago when it was said that he only knew four moves and three of them involved using his knee (a leaping knee strike, a knee drop, and a face crusher involving his knee. To this day, I instinctively go with treacled sarcasm "HE USES THE KNEE!" like a good up my own butt smark when I see him do one of said moves)

And in turn, karma seemed to reward him in. Mick Foley would face him again at the February PPV, with his career as a full time wrestler on the line: Triple H won again, ‘retiring’ Mick and getting a fresh rub. He was put in a four way main event match for Wrestlemania 16/2000, and shocked everyone by becoming the first heel to actually win in the main event; every other Wrestlemania before that had a face standing tall in the ring when the show closed. He then had a pair of great matches with Rock at the April and May PPVs, losing and regaining the World Title to him, with the May one being a 60 minute Iron Man match that made people nervous, as the previous Iron Man match between the two (which had only been 30 minutes) had been a plodding, dull affair. But Rock and Hunter showed just what a difference two years could make and managed to put together a very well performed and entertaining Iron Man match, in which the Hunter character, who by now had been given the nom de plume titles of “The Game” and “The Cerebral Assassin”, supposedly touting his great intelligence, actually lived up to them in unconventional spots such as

1) The match was set up so that if a ‘point’ was scored (via pinfall, submission, count out, DQ, etc), there would be a thirty second rest period before the match restarted. Rock scored the first point, but Hunter came back, nailing his finisher for 1 point. Then as soon as the 30 seconds passed, he immediately rolled a still dazed Rock into a small package rollup pin, to gain a 2nd point.

2) Later, with the score 3-2 in Hunter’s favor, Hunter smashed Rock with a chair. He gets DQ’d, it’s now 3-3. Thirty seconds pass. Rock’s still out. Hunter calmly pins him for 4-3.

3) Rock is still groggy, so Hunter goes for a sleeper hold. Such holds are almost always used as rallying points where the wrestler in the hold has their arm lifted and dropped three times; if it drops three times, it counts as a loss/surrender. Almost always, the face’s arm will start falling the third time then flare up as the face gets a burst of energy. But in this case? IT WORKED, and Hunter was up 5-3. You could argue this match was more influenced by shockingly clever writing than Hunter’s efforts, but he and the Rock still had to go out and do the things to make them more than words on a page.

While he’d lose his belt to Rock again in June, it was through the screwy rules of a six man tag match, and at the time, he didn’t even really need the belt, as a separate storyline had been building of the relatively-recently debuted Kurt Angle (end of 1999) crushing on Stephanie, Stephanie not exactly rejecting him, and Hunter being rather pissed off about the whole situation. It was basic soap opera, but it clicked with fans (you'll notice I keep saying that), probably because of the male pair’s then talents in the ring and Kurt’s entertainingly dorky, clueless character. After having another great match with Chris Jericho for the July PPV, things seemed to be coming to a boil around Summerslam 2000 in regards to the Angle/Hunter/Stephanie love triangle, though a botched spot in the main event of said match caused Angle to get a severe concussion and basically turned the match from a triple threat between him, Hunter, and Rock back into a one on one for the most part interrupted whatever storyline twist resolution that was going to happen there.

The first rumbling of what was to come was likely how the triangle was resolved, with a sort of sudden ‘Choose me or him!’/Stephanie kicks Angle in the balls/Hunter pins him and gives Stephanie a weird bloody kiss as he’d bladed in the match at either the September or October PPV, I forget which. Still, shortly thereafter Angle would become storyline managed by Stephanie and it seemed like he was going to try moving in on her again from a quieter, more subtle way. And Hunter, as the fall went on, was starting to become a face, slipping more into his entertaining DX ways then his super serious dangerous man heel that he’d been since he turned at Wrestlemania 15.

The second rumbling was Steve Austin’s return from neck surgery. You might recall I mentioned it in my Big Boss Man writeup, and how he was taken off TV by having someone run him over with a car. Well, as of September Austin had rehabbed enough to return to the ring, and thus began a storyline of ‘Who ran over Austin’? Which was led by Mick Foley, now the on air commissioner (and he was one of the best; I still have fondness for the random office setups he would have every week on Raw), which gave out bits of info like ‘the driver, according to witnesses, had blonde hair’. However, as the evidence mounted up, it all seemed to be pointing to…The Rock. Who doesn’t have blonde hair. Instead, in a Hercule Poirot esque confrontation in the ring, Foley turned the finger of accusation…onto Rikishi. Who did have blonde (dyed) hair. He also hadn’t even debuted on the main TV shows when Survivor Series happened and as far as I know, it had never been mentioned that he was related to Rock through extended family. And why did Rikishi do this?

Because the WWE was always turning to ‘the great white hope’, ie all their top guys were Caucasian, and Rikishi wanted to insure his cousin, of mixed black and Samoan ancestry, didn’t get his chances crippled by racism.

Yeah.

To only the WWF’s surprise, this did NOT get Rikishi over as the fresh monster heel they wanted him to become. Sadly, just like Triple H’s initial turn time, without his dancing buddies, the crowd didn’t really have any interest in him at all. More sadly, unlike HHH, he didn't manage to find something else to actually catch fire. As a result, his blood feud with Stone Cold was cut short, with it being blown off with Austin kicking his rear end in a steel cage match on a Raw in late October (which, admittedly, did draw the final ‘super big rating’ of the Monday Night Wars, a 7.2 or so) and it being rewritten that Rikishi had been working for someone instead of running over Austin to prevent his whiteness from handicapping Rock’s time at the top. Or something.

Said mastermind was, of course, Triple H, forcibly swinging him back to full rear end in a top hat heel when the fans had been wanting to cheer him. Not the best choice, and the match he and Austin had at Survivor Series didn’t help either, being considered subpar to poor, though when I watched it at a bar the bar had a great time with it, so maybe the circumstances you experience a match in will greatly affect your rating of it. I should know, I was there live for Rock vs Hogan at Wrestlemania 18. This turn also more or less finished the whole Stephanie/Kurt/Hunter triangle story as it was dropped; while the two would fight again in January 2001, Stephanie would now be firmly in her husband's corner.

Still, after all the great matches and juicy story Hunter had provided for the first two thirds of 2000, maybe he was allowed to have an off day or two. And WWE was far from the first, last, or only company who failed to stick the landing of a story. Hunter's quality did zig zag some more, as 2001 rolled around and, as mentioned, Hunter had an okay at best match with Angle, then WWF Champion, mostly notable for Stephanie and Trish Stratus getting into a massive catfight outside the ring which not only drew 10x the heat of the actual match, but actually yanked the CAMERA’S focus off said match for something like three or four minutes before they were broken up, the whole ‘match for the world title’ being essentially forgotten because two pretty women were clawing at each other. However, Hunter seemed to bounce back in February, having another great match with Austin at the February PPV, which he actually ended up winning. Which, since the feud basically ended there (and even more to come), meant that Austin never really got a final revenge on Hunter for trying to have Rikishi more or less murder him.

Since the big focus was Rock vs Austin II at Wrestlemania 17, considered the ‘end’ of the Attitude Era, Hunter got into a quickie feud with the Undertaker to set up a match between them at the same show. The match was decent, mainly notable for what in any other match circumstance would have been the finish; Undertaker went for his new powerbomb finisher, only for Triple H to have his sledgehammer and smash Undertaker in the face with it on the way up in mid move. But, this being Wrestlemania, Undertaker kicked out, and promptly finished Hunter off with his old finisher, the Tombstone, instead. As “The Streak” wouldn’t really start to be brought front and center to the Undertaker’s Wrestlemania matches until the next year, Wrestlemania 18 (which I attended) when he’d make it 10-0, one does feel that a bullet was dodged in killing Undertaker’s most famous accomplishment before it could really enter into it’s own.

But, in the main event of said Wrestlemania, Austin turned heel and sided with his mortal enemy Vince McMahon. It was not a well explained turn, and while some liked the new direction Austin took with his character, presenting himself as someone who’d lived on the edge for so long it had frayed his sanity and he was now clinging to ANYTHING to keep him from falling off, even if that included the boss he’d been trying to destroy in one way or another for the last three years. Or, as it turned out, that also included the man who had tried to kill him, Triple H, as the two joined forces shortly after Wrestlemania as “The Two Man Power Trip”, the pair claiming all of the major belts in the promotion for a brief time.

The fans, however, just didn’t like it. They didn’t think hellraiser beer drinking Austin was stale, and they didn’t like this new Austin who seemed to be both mildly insane and constantly on the edge of a nervous breakdown. And while it led to some very funny backstage segments with Austin, Vince, and Kurt Angle, and also let some new faces into the main event, that being Chris Jericho and Chris Benoit as opponents to the Two Man Power Trip, the final fateful event would soon play out. On a Raw in May, in a tag match, Hunter would do a basic run into the ring to save Austin from a hold…

He stepped a certain way, and his right quadriceps muscle, weakened by 'who knows what' (you know full well what) finally ripped like cheesecloth, coming completely off the bone and, according to Hunter, flapping up inside his leg like a window shutter being pulled up. Hunter, to his credit, managed to limp through the last part of the match, but that was it. He would need surgery and months of rehab and recovery, and would end up completely missing the entire WWF vs Alliance angle, already discussed. As 2002 came around, the WWE began hyping Hunter’s return, playing vignettes for weeks of video packages set to U2’s “Beautiful Day”. It made sense. Hunter had more hits than misses in the 18 months since 2000 began and the lightning bolt hit. Who wouldn’t want that Hunter back?

But…we would not be getting that Hunter. That Hunter, sadly, would vanish into the mists of regrets wrestling fans have over possibilities. It probably should have been obvious from the moment Hunter returned.

This was Hunter at the tail end of 1998.



This was Hunter at the start of 2000 and his glory times.



And this, more or less, was Hunter when he returned in 2002.



After rehabbing an injury caused almost certainly by overuse of steroids, he had decided the solution was...to use even more steroids. It wasn’t just the muscles. Note how his hair had gone from long and thick to thinner and stringier, another sign of steroid overuse. But that was just physical, and while it played a role, slowing Hunter down and him adapting a more power based offence that just wasn’t quite as polished as before, the main issue was mental.

What had happened to Paul Levesque between that injury and his return? Maybe his rehab was extremely hard and he drew the wrong conclusions. Maybe he got some bad advice he took to heart that he felt worked out for him. Maybe people just change.

Or maybe, with his relationship to Stephanie seemingly now rock solid, serious, and potentially capable of going all the way…maybe Paul Levesque saw an opportunity that even his friend Shawn or the politicker supreme before him, Hulk Hogan, never had. Hogan had pull because for years he drew insane money for a time. Shawn had pull because he was the best the WWE had at its worst time and he knew it. But Hunter…he could become FAMILY. He could have a cushion unlike any other. As long as the relationship remained stable, between that and his muscled frame (when it came to Vince's vices) and what he’d learned at the feet of the Clique…

As I keep saying. I don’t know. But we went through all this just to get to the reign of terror, and unfortunately, it ended up going much, much longer than any glory days Hunter ever had.

Cornwind Evil fucked around with this message at 04:55 on Mar 1, 2022

Seth Pecksniff
May 27, 2004

can't believe shrek is fucking dead. rip to a real one.

Elephant Ambush posted:

Cena the person seems like a pretty cool dude but Cena the character sucked. Not because he wasn't edgy but because first of all he was a terrible white rapper. Then he was all ARE TROOP OORAH USA #1 SUPPORT OUR WARMONGERS. But mostly it was that all his matches were exactly the same and they were loving BORING. It was the exact same Hulk Hogan formula. He gets his rear end kicked for 10 minutes then powers up, Five Moves of Doom, win. Every time. And he was unbeatable. It seemed like he never lost for the longest time.

Tons of fans, myself included, wanted him to turn heel just to see something different. It wasn't so a bunch of kids would be sad, but because WWE shows would be more interesting to watch. For literally years it seemed like there was no reason to ever watch a Cena match because you know he'd probably win and if he lost it was always going to be because of cheating and all we wanted, at the very least, was to see him lose clean. Cena's unstoppable streak was the #1 thing that made me stop watching WWE until Punk came around and it actually seemed like Punk might actually have a chance of winning.

When Punk finally beat Cena and ran off with the WWE championship, that might be the happiest I've ever been while watching wrestling. Someone I really liked and who was super talented and totally deserved it finally beat the unstoppable babyface. The counter culture representative was allowed to succeed and anything else good that happened after was gravy. Vince had finally made a very good decision for once in his miserable despicable life.

I remember beating the poo poo out of Cena in the WWE games, and that he was just so bad as a wrestler in those games. He was like a low carder, if even that. Then I see him explode and become an actor and actually kind of a likeable guy, all things considered.

16-bit Butt-Head
Dec 25, 2014
Probation
Can't post for 2 hours!
john cena has granted more wishes for the make a wish foundation than any other person so no matter how stale his wrestling character gets johna cena will still own

Ad by Khad
Jul 25, 2007

Human Garbage
Watch me try to laugh this title off like the dickbag I am.

I also hang out with racists.
John Cena was The Marine The All-American Never Give Up Hustle Loyalty Respect who broke the news to the WWE Universe that Osama had been compromised to a permanent end

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIhqugVuSV4

Now John is the one compromised. By bing chilling.

Trollologist
Mar 3, 2010

by Fluffdaddy

16-bit Butt-Head posted:

john cena has granted more wishes for the make a wish foundation than any other person so no matter how stale his wrestling character gets johna cena will still own

He also gave them 15 MILLION frequent flyer miles. But I don't know what that's worth...like 1free checked bag?

ZogrimAteMyHamster
Dec 8, 2015

Elephant Ambush posted:

Cena the person seems like a pretty cool dude but Cena the character sucked. Not because he wasn't edgy but because first of all he was a terrible white rapper. Then he was all ARE TROOP OORAH USA #1 SUPPORT OUR WARMONGERS. But mostly it was that all his matches were exactly the same and they were loving BORING. It was the exact same Hulk Hogan formula. He gets his rear end kicked for 10 minutes then powers up, Five Moves of Doom, win. Every time. And he was unbeatable. It seemed like he never lost for the longest time.

Tons of fans, myself included, wanted him to turn heel just to see something different. It wasn't so a bunch of kids would be sad, but because WWE shows would be more interesting to watch. For literally years it seemed like there was no reason to ever watch a Cena match because you know he'd probably win and if he lost it was always going to be because of cheating and all we wanted, at the very least, was to see him lose clean. Cena's unstoppable streak was the #1 thing that made me stop watching WWE until Punk came around and it actually seemed like Punk might actually have a chance of winning.

When Punk finally beat Cena and ran off with the WWE championship, that might be the happiest I've ever been while watching wrestling. Someone I really liked and who was super talented and totally deserved it finally beat the unstoppable babyface. The counter culture representative was allowed to succeed and anything else good that happened after was gravy. Vince had finally made a very good decision for once in his miserable despicable life.
Ditto, at least for the first part. I fell off and stopped watching at some point during the seemingly-endless back-and-forth between Cena and Edge, where the loving pair of them seemed to be passing the belt across every Monday like some sort of loving timeshare.

Cena's a cool guy for sure and I have nothing against the man (I have nothing but respect for him, really) but that "Super Cena" era was some garbage-tier absolute loving tedious dogshit when it came to keeping the show interesting to watch.


Seth Pecksniff posted:

I remember beating the poo poo out of Cena in the WWE games, and that he was just so bad as a wrestler in those games. He was like a low carder, if even that. Then I see him explode and become an actor and actually kind of a likeable guy, all things considered.
Due to his push/popularity/being the then-champ, he had a ludicrously high Overall Rating (up there with Undertaker, Triple H and Kurt Angle ffs!) but my god was he just not any fun to use. His "five knuckle shuffle" move in SDvRAW 2006 used to send a mate of mine absolutely spare because it was pathetically weak and took so long to play out.

Said mate also absolutely hates Doink, so needless to say I made a CAW Doink, cloned him a couple of times, and every single one of his moves on a grounded opponent was Five Knuckle Shuffle. We'd have a tag-team match and I'd just sit there pissing myself laughing at this seething ball of rage on the opposite couch everytime one of the Doinks got some shots in. Man I miss those weekends sometimes.

wesleywillis
Dec 30, 2016

SUCK A MALE CAMEL'S DICK WITH MIRACLE WHIP!!
Who the poo poo is JBL number one, and number two, was the one hour match between Micheals and Brett Hart really not as good as I'd hoped it would be?
I was in to wrestling back then, and though I'd usually see a lot of the PPVs at the time, for reasons which I can't recall, I never saw that one.

Elephant Ambush
Nov 13, 2012

...We sholde spenden more time together. What sayest thou?
Nap Ghost

wesleywillis posted:

Who the poo poo is JBL number one, and number two, was the one hour match between Micheals and Brett Hart really not as good as I'd hoped it would be?
I was in to wrestling back then, and though I'd usually see a lot of the PPVs at the time, for reasons which I can't recall, I never saw that one.

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.

JBL stood for John "Bradshaw" Layfield which I'm pretty sure is his real name. Gavok made a post a couple pages back that explains more:

Gavok posted:

JBL became a thing out of necessity. WrestleMania 20 just happened and in the direct aftermath, Brock Lesnar was suddenly gone and they did a storyline to write off Kurt Angle and Big Show so they could heal up from nagging injuries. They had Eddie Guerrero as the fresh champion, but no heels for him to defend against. Booker T had been a bland face for a while, so it was easy to turn him. The APA act had grown tired and Faarooq was too old and broken down to continue, so they had GM Paul Heyman get rid of Faarooq and tell Bradshaw to get his poo poo together. Bradshaw rebranded himself with the rich rear end in a top hat gimmick and immediately jumped into the main event because there was really no other options at the time.

Eddie's championship run wasn't doing great ratings and it was bad for Eddie's mental health, so he dropped the title to JBL. With so many top faces on the roster, it was easy for JBL to coast on that until it was finally time to pull the trigger on Cena.

Idiot Kicker
Jun 13, 2007
Brian Lawler was worth it alone for Jim Ross calling him "Grandmaster Sexay" in the most awkward way possible.

Trollologist
Mar 3, 2010

by Fluffdaddy
I know that Cornwind is doing his oral history of Triple H right now, but If I may make a request of our other effort posters:

The Undertaker's Dark Ministry.

Or the time that the Undertaker died cannonically and then just, came back later.

Gavok
Oct 10, 2005

Brock! Oh, man, I'm sorry about your...

...tooth?


wesleywillis posted:

Who the poo poo is JBL number one, and number two, was the one hour match between Micheals and Brett Hart really not as good as I'd hoped it would be?
I was in to wrestling back then, and though I'd usually see a lot of the PPVs at the time, for reasons which I can't recall, I never saw that one.

Opinion differs on that match, but I kind of hate it. It's a boring match where the two guys pace themselves, but don't really do anything until the very end.

Trollologist posted:

Or the time that the Undertaker died cannonically and then just, came back later.

I got this one. It's part of just the strangest long-term storyline in wrestling history. It involves everything from Undertaker delivering pizzas, Undertaker fighting his evil double, and various celebrity appearances.

FilthyImp
Sep 30, 2002

Anime Deviant
Undertaker was, canonically, a zombie wizard. I dint think death was supposed to mean much.

16-bit Butt-Head
Dec 25, 2014
Probation
Can't post for 2 hours!
few wrestlers have been involved in as many stupid storylines as kane and the undertaker and it owns lol

Trollologist
Mar 3, 2010

by Fluffdaddy

FilthyImp posted:

Undertaker was, canonically, a zombie wizard. I dint think death was supposed to mean much.

At first he was like, a spooky guy. Much like the wrestling accountant and dentist and junk yard.....owner? He was a wrestler, whose occupation was undertaker. In the beginning he made the caskets for his casket matches (in story) since his trade was casket making.

Then....I think he died? But for a while he was just like, a biker. Then he died again? AND THEN he was a zombie wizard.


But gavok should clear this all up

shadow puppet of a
Jan 10, 2007

NO TENGO SCORPIO


FilthyImp posted:

Undertaker was, canonically, a zombie wizard. I dint think death was supposed to mean much.

Zombie wizard biker pure striker.

Was his full class description.

Trollologist
Mar 3, 2010

by Fluffdaddy

shadow puppet of a posted:

Zombie wizard biker pure striker.

Was his full class description.

Hey, tacoize those wrestlers you dork!

FilthyImp
Sep 30, 2002

Anime Deviant

Trollologist posted:

Hey, tacoize those wrestlers you dork!
The Undertaker is a twice-fried al pastor chimichanga that is served wet with salsa Roja and a side of habañero queso fundido with heritage tortilla chips (colorful).

Gavok
Oct 10, 2005

Brock! Oh, man, I'm sorry about your...

...tooth?


Back in 1993, the top feud in WWF was all-American hero Lex Luger vs. America-hating champ and Samoan-pretending-to-be-Japanese Yokozuna. Survivor Series was on the way and it was going to be Luger and his American friends vs. Yokozuna and his evil foreigner friends. It was going to be Luger, Tatanka, and the Steiner Brothers vs. Yokozuna, Ludvig Borga, and the Quebecers. Then tragedy struck as the undefeated Tatanka lost to Borga and Yokozuna made sure to put him on the shelf with multiple Banzai Drops.

Luger needed a new partner at the last minute. Luckily, he got one in the most unexpected form. The Undertaker appeared (fresh off of finishing his feud with a tall, naked man), trying to come up with a vague explanation for how he was patriotic. As he ended his promo with, “LET FREEDOM RIIIIIIING!” he opened his jacket to reveal a 1776 flag was stitched into its insides. This zombie ate brains for Uncle Sam!

At the PPV, Undertaker showed to at least be on Yokozuna's level and shrugged off all of his attacks. The two ended up being counted out during their brawl, leaving Luger to defeat Borga and win the match. Soon after, Undertaker started to target Yokozuna and a match was set for the 1994 Royal Rumble PPV: Undertaker vs. Yokozuna for the title in a casket match. First to shove the other guy into a casket and close the lid won.

Undertaker made an extra large casket to fit Yokozuna’s gigantic rear end. Undertaker seemed to have the match well in hand, but then Yokozuna’s buddy Crush interfered and started attacking the Undertaker. More and more heels from the back ran out, all working for Yokozuna. Apparently, none of the faces gave a poo poo and let it all happen. Overcome by about 12-to-1 odds, Undertaker’s body finally gave out. It probably didn’t help that the heels also opened up Paul Bearer’s urn and poured out its contents.

The beaten Undertaker was thrown into the casket and it was shut. As it was wheeled up the ramp, the Titantron started to wild out. A mystical camera showed the Undertaker from inside the casket, cutting a promo about how he was the fire that could not be extinguished. He would never rest in peace. Then, as the image of the Undertaker rose up the giant screen, it took the form of the Undertaker (or Marty Jannetty dressed as the Undertaker) on wires, lifted into the heavens.

Then they had to follow that up with a goddamn Royal Rumble match.

In the months that followed, Paul Bearer had nothing to go on. “The trail went cold.” Ted Dibiase, on the other hand, claimed to have found the Undertaker. This was interesting continuity as the Undertaker debuted as Dibiase’s mystery partner at the 1990 Survivor Series. Dibiase introduced a new Undertaker who looked plenty like the original, but was controlled by money instead of the urn.

After a few weeks of this new Undertaker beating jobbers, a SummerSlam main event was announced: Undertaker vs. Undertaker. But...how could this be? Even though they made the match official, the higher ups didn’t know how an Undertaker mirror match was possible. They needed somebody to get to the bottom of this.

And so, they hired Leslie Nielsen to investigate the mystery. He appeared in a series of Naked Gun-style vignettes where he tried to make heads or tails of the situation. As the PPV was sponsored by Dominos Pizza, one of the segments involved the Undertaker delivering a pizza to Nielsen without Nielsen noticing who it was.

At the PPV, Nielsen was joined by Naked Gun co-star George Kennedy to do more schtick. The main event had the real Undertaker (now wearing purple gloves) defeat the Underfaker via a series of Tombstones. He pinned his doppelganger and dumped him into a casket. Later on, Nielsen and Kennedy opened the casket backstage to find it empty.

But Vince was tired of the storyline already, so it was never mentioned again.

Undertaker went right back after Yokozuna, who had lost the championship months earlier to Bret Hart. The two would have another casket match, this time at Survivor Series 1994. To make sure that there would be no interference from a heel army again, they hired Chuck Norris to be the special enforcer. When Jeff Jarrett tried to make his way to the ring, Chuck kicked him like 20 feet.

Undertaker won the match and Yokozuna went missing for months, presumed dead. As WrestleMania 11 was based around bringing in as many celebrities as possible, this included NYPD Blue’s Nick Turturro. To hype up the show, they had a segment where Turturro questioned Paul Bearer (dressed in drag in an attempt to hide from the law) about Yokozuna’s disappearance while Mr. Fuji cackled nearby. Undertaker shut off the lights, had Paul and Fuji switch clothes, and for some reason Turturro decided to let Paul off free.

Yokozuna did return at WrestleMania to be Owen Hart’s mystery partner and win the tag titles off the Smoking Gunns. Undertaker continued feuding with Ted Dibiase’s stable, culminating in a boring-rear end match with Kama the Supreme Fighting Machine. Undertaker was mad because Kama stole his urn, melted it, and turned it into a gold chain to wear around his neck.

The Undertaker would be murdered again about nine years later, but as that storyline involved Vince McMahon screaming on TV that he wanted to see a biker gang rape the Undertaker's wife, I just don't have the strength to talk about it right now.

shadow puppet of a
Jan 10, 2007

NO TENGO SCORPIO


Trollologist posted:

Hey, tacoize those wrestlers you dork!

I would but when I went looking through the WCW alumni section of WWE.com I noticed none of the no limit soldiers were included and I got upset over the lack of 4x4 and Big Swole and uh, that other guy. Heck they didnt even have the no limits soldiers arch nemesis Bobby Duncam Jr. gently caress man, when you own the rights to "Rap is Crap" you don't sleep on such an evergreen angle. Shame how that great feud got consigned to the dustbin of wwe history.

Someone make with the writeup on the time when Master P made 'em say Hooty Hoo.

titties
May 10, 2012

They're like two suicide notes stuffed into a glitter bra

Cornwind Evil posted:

when Mick returned as Mankind, the character was now inexplicably wearing an office shirt and tie over his old outfit of brown pants, shirt, and mask

My memory isn't that great but I'm pretty sure it was explicitly stated that Mankind started wearing the shirt and tie to prove to Vince that he, unlike Stone Cold, was a team player who was willing to put on a suit and tie in order to fit in with the Corporation. It may have been during the period where Mankind was calling Vince "dad"

An early point of contention in the feud between Austin and Vince was Austin's refusal to wear a suit and act in a manner Vince thought was befitting his world champion.

Why mankind's idea of corporate dress included sneaks and brown sweat pants is a mystery

Cornwind Evil
Dec 14, 2004


The undisputed world champion of wrestling effortposting

Trollologist posted:

I know that Cornwind is doing his oral history of Triple H right now.

-cracks fingers-



---

So, before we actually begin...

There was one more thing that Hunter had going for him around the time he returned in 2002. You might recall I talked about the excellent writing (for wrestling) that had done well by him, in stuff like the Iron Man match and Kurt Angle, er…angle. Unfortunately, to the likes of Vince and the other extreme carnys, the people in charge of this writing were not to be lauded or appreciated, but mocked as nerds and probably-still-virgins. And a thing the likes of Vince also believed in? Nepotism, for joining the writing team around this time would be Stephanie McMahon.

This was a problem for two reasons. One was that Stephanie was not a writer and couldn’t exactly ‘fake it’ well, producing watered down ‘bad soap opera’ (instead of classic soap opera like the 2000 Angle Triangle angle…angle angle). The other was that while the buck always stopped with Vince and everyone was vulnerable to him having a whim and having him throw out everything they’d worked out and demand they start over, Stephanie was his daughter, and you can bet drat well that her net was much holier than anyone else in the writing room.

And Hunter was her boyfriend. Then fiance. Then husband. Do the math.

At this point, we can stop going over Hunter’s career in detail, as it basically became the same story writ over and over; the lyrics changed but the song remained the same. So we’ll just bullet points all his most egregious actions over the next two decades.

-Upon returning, Triple H would promptly win the 2002 Royal Rumble and challenge Chris Jericho for the title at Wrestlemania 18. The whole feud had Jericho being treated as an afterthought, as the real focus was on the storyline disintegration of Hunter and Stephanie’s marriage. Instead of seeming a dangerous foe, Jericho was reduced to doing stuff like looking after Stephanie’s dog that she’d taken from Hunter in the divorce and getting terrified when he accidentally injured it because of how mad Hunter would be. Needless to say, there was no surprise when he dropped the belt to Hunter in WM 18’s main event; if it hadn’t been for the famous Rock vs Hogan match it would have capped off a general dud of a show with one last dud. Of course, that’s the lone WWE PPV I’ve ever attended live. Well, at least I got Rock vs Hogan.

-Shawn’s seeming full retirement would end in the summer of 2002, when Hunter would convince him to rejoin him as DX, and then turn on him, setting up a match between the two at Summerslam 2002. It was theorized this would be Shawn’s last match; as it turned out, it ended up being the first of the second half of his career. Shawn, who supposedly had found religion in the years between 1998 and 2002, as well as having a full spinal fusion surgery IIRC, credits God for letting his recovery go so well that he was able to return to the ring and wrestle for another eight years before he did fully retire in 2010. Some less charitable sorts have suggested that Shawn’s back injury was either not as severe as he made it out to be, or had healed better than he was presenting it as, and that he’d pretended otherwise so Vince would keep his guaranteed contract going under the danger that if he broke it, Shawn would jump to WCW. Except by when 2002 rolled around, there was no more WCW. So Shawn had to get back in the ring to keep being paid by Vince. Unless you’re a time traveling spine doctor who can go back and x-ray and look at Shawn’s spine over those years, we’ll never know. Exactly how much Shawn changed is also a bit debatable; he kicked his drug habit, it seemed, and came to realize what an utter POS he’d been, but to me, he never quite seemed to cross over to full genuine repayment, still often winning his matches when it would have been better served if he lost and put the person over. Again, your mileage may vary. Wait, wasn’t this about HHH?

-Anyway, him and Hunter would have a pretty drat good match at Summerslam, primarily based around 1) Hunter attacking Shawn’s back, with his well known real life injury making such moves have 10x as much storyline impact as they would otherwise, and 2) Hunter, as one person put it, once again “moved rear end and showed rear end’ as he’d been doing in 2000. Something he’d stopped doing, unless he was, say, wrestling his good friend from the Clique. Unfortunately, the match would end up setting off an on again off again feud that went on for the next three years (!) where Shawn and Hunter would have more matches that weren’t as entertaining before DX reformed for real in mid 2006 and all the bad blood and attempted cripplings were forgotten and the pair were best friends to the end once more. But again, moral consistency in wrestling is a loose guideline at best.

-In 2002, the WWE decided to do the first of their ‘Brand Splits’, where their Raw and Smackdown shows would have separate rosters and champions. The world champion, called the Undisputed Champion as the WWF and WCW belts had merged at the very end of 2001, would compete on both shows, and if the wrestler holding the title lost the belt, they’d compete on the show of the wrestler that beat them. But after Summerslam 2002, Smackdown show runner Stephanie McMahon would announce that new champion Brock Lesner would only compete for Smackdown. In response, Raw General Manager Eric Bischoff declared he was recreating the World Title. So what did they do? Have a tournament for it? Maybe a fatal four way or six way dance? Hell, have a battle royale? Nope, he just handed it to Triple H. Triple H just deserved to be champion THAT MUCH.

-Hunter then got involved in the beyond infamous Katie Vick angle. Need I say more?

-All right. It’s been talked about in this thread before, but the “Katie Vick” angle involved Hunter coming out at the end of one Raw and accusing Kane of being a murderer. This was followed by claiming that Kane’s first relationship had ended when he had crashed the car he was driving and killed his girlfriend, Katie Vick. Never mind that before that Kane had been presented as a scarred freak who had been raised in isolation by storyline father Paul Bearer until he finally brought him to the WWF to get Undertaker. Hunter then followed it by claiming that Kane was so desperate that despite Katie Vick being dead, he might have ‘consummated’ the relationship anyway. And THAT was followed by a video clip that went on far, far, FAR too long where Triple H, dressed up as Kane (ie wearing a Kane mask and nothing else. Er, I mean, he had clothes on, but the only disguise was the mask), basically got TV naked (so much for the clothes on part), jumped in a casket, molested a mannequin, and ended with him holding up a handful of cow brains while saying “I SCREWED YOUR BRAINS OUT!”

Why did this happen? Because Vince McMahon, normal as he was, thought that final line about screwing the brains out was absolutely gut busting hilarious. Really. The whole angle was solely because he found that punchline so drat funny. So he forced it on his TV audience. And when they properly rejected it entirely, and then rejected the reasoning that WWE was trying to do ‘controversial, mature storytelling in the vein of Six Feet Under’ on the basis that it doesn’t matter how well a five year old replicates a great painting with crayons, it’s still a replica with crayons done by a five year old, Vince went out and spoke through Hunter in a promo where he basically went “You’re all just too stupid and backward to get it!” In all honesty, maybe for surviving Katie Vick, Hunter did deserve more slack than I’m cutting him.

Oh yeah, and this ended with Hunter and Kane having a match for the World title where if Kane lost, he’d have to unmask. Kane lost. Supposedly, the WWF did try and make him up with burn makeup under the mask before the match, but such a makeup job has no place being done only to be put under another mask and then subjected to a wrestling match, and when Kane did remove the mask the makeup had completely fallen apart and just left black smears on Kane’s face, forcing the WWE to say that Kane had only ‘imagined’ the scars. Which, considering when Kane debuted with his outfit covering nearly his whole body and the claims it was just as burn-scarred as his face, only for his outfit to go through gradual changes that exposed more and more clearly unburned skin, did make an odd sort of sense.

-Hunter, still World Champion and the Undisputed Title now just called the WWE Title (expect me to possibly mix up exactly which Hunter was chasing or holding from now on), would feud with and have a TERRIBLE match with Scott Steiner at Royal Rumble 2003, though this can more be laid at the feet of an out of shape Steiner getting blown up (severely winded and tired) almost immediately and how someone who had abused steroids as much as Steiner was affected by that (answer: REAL drat BAD). More notable was the skits Hunter and Steiner did leading up to the match; since they couldn’t fight, they had competitions based around the fact both were jacked to the gills; arm wrestling, weight lifting, and a posedown. Thing is, as I’ve mentioned, Paul Levesque is/was a big fan of bodybuilding competitions and hence knew the ins and outs of such things, so while to the average observer it was just “Hunter flexes, but STEINER’S MUSCLES ARE BIGGER OH MY”, to people who know the finer points of such displays Hunter arranged it so he outclassed Steiner in presentation in every way. Once again showing just how a person generally acts and performs will determine how some things are interpreted, if Hunter had still been performing at his 2000 level, or near it, we fans likely would have just shaken our heads with a smirk and gone “Oh, that wacky Hunter.” Instead, it just became another grain of sand in our oyster.

-Hunter would then have one of, if not the most infamous moment of his ‘reign of terror’ at Wrestlemania 19, where he was matched up with Booker T, and spent the lead in saying stuff like “People like YOU don’t get to be champion.”; supposedly it meant stuff like ‘Booker Huffman had a criminal record and he meant ex-cons”, but it was bleeding ears dog whistle what Hunter REALLY meant. But that could have all been forgiven had the most obvious, logical, NORMAL, EXPECTED end of such things had happened: Booker avenging himself and beating Hunter for the title at Wrestlemania. Not only did Booker NOT do that, but Hunter would botch the finish involving his Pedigree, and hence Booker would lay on the mat for nearly 30 SECONDS before Hunter managed to cover him for the 1-2-3. You’d think someone who fancied himself a ring general like Hunter does/did would have told him to kick out and then quickly improvised a follow up finish that didn’t make Booker look utterly pathetic. He didn’t, and Booker’s credibility was utterly destroyed; it took him over four years to get back into being accepted as a main event world champion…at which point Hunter returned from his SECOND quad tear and beat him AGAIN, with Booker shortly thereafter leaving the WWE entirely. Are the two related? Or was it just coincidence; Booker claimed he was burned out in general. Again, how you act can color what people perceive.

-He would then work a program with returned-to-the-WWF Clique friend Kevin Nash. Booker T got one PPV title shot: Nash got THREE. And this was worn down very lazy Nash vs post 2002 Hunter. It was, in general, bowling show ugly. Even Hunter being willing to 'move rear end and show rear end' could only go so far there.

-While Goldberg’s entrance into the WWE had already been squandered by bad booking and writing by the time of the summer, Hunter put an exclamation point on it and ensured Goldberg wouldn’t draw a dime by pinning him in the main event of Summerslam 2003 (it was a six man match, and he used a sledgehammer, but still), and while Goldberg would beat him in a singles match the next month in September to win the title, storyline logic says that such a win should have happened on one of WWE’s Big Four PPVs, ie, THAT SUMMERSLAM, instead of one of their ‘lesser’ ones. Hunter would promptly get the belt back in December, beating Goldberg and Kane in a Triple Threat match by beating Kane. Did I mention that he was wrestling injured (I believe he had severe hematoma bruising?) but he still had the title put back on himself? Goldberg would be gone by Wrestlemania 20, seemingly for good...and then...well, that's another story,

-Okay, I’ll give credit where credit is due. When it seemed like Hunter and Shawn were just going to cram their feud into the world title shot Chris Benoit won and leave him an afterthought, the three would manage an excellent main event which ended with Hunter tapping out to Benoit right in the center of the ring, which considering no one trusted him to actually let Benoit win the title, was even sweeter. Of course, Benoit didn’t get to do much with the belt, and of course, there was how the Benoit story ended, but at least Hunter every now and then did something right.

-He promptly followed it up by doing crap wrong as he got into a program with Nick Dinsmore, a newly debuting wrestler…who was presented as Eric Bischoff’s nephew, Eugene. Who was mentally retarded, in the medical sense. Eugene was; Nick Dinsmore was not. Yeah, you can see how well this would go in the WWE’s hands. Surprisingly, Eugene actually got over, based on Nick’s commitment to the role and that Eugene was presented as a sort of wrestling savant who could and would mimick other wrestlers. He could have just been a fun undercard act, unfortunate implications aside, but in universe Eugene was presented as being a gigantic fan of Triple H, and Hunter, evil bastard heel that he was, promptly took advantage of that to use Eugene as a pawn for a scheme or two, then beat him up. When Eugene revenged himself by costing Triple H a title match with Benoit in July, Hunter kicked his rear end at the July PPV, and then basically buried him afterwards with a “You are not in my league” promo. While the Eugene gimmick was never going to be world champion, it could have potentially drawn some money and given disabled kids a hero to look up to. Hunter killed that chance stone dead just to get a little extra heat, like a vampire sucking blood. Eugene would end up a pale shadow that probably also killed Nick Dinsmore's career as well.

-Early in 2003, Hunter had officially formed a stable, Evolution, the point of which beyond letting Hunter pretend he was leading the Four Horsemen was to groom newcomer Randy Orton for the top of the cards. But the WWE misfired, pushing Orton into the main event too soon, as Orton won the world title from Benoit at Summerslam 2004 and was immediately turned on by a jealous Hunter and kicked out of Evolution. The idea would be a long burn program that would culminate at Wrestlemania 21, but between Orton proving to still be a touch too green, the fans becoming more interested in the other Evolution member, Dave Batista, and ESPECIALLY Hunter taking the title back at the VERY NEXT PPV in September kneecapped the program; What was likely planned to be a big story of redemption and title regaining at Wrestlemania for Orton was scrapped, and the‘big blowoff’ would happen at January in the Rumble, and Orton would lose there too. In a way, the way these months played out has weighed down Orton his whole career, the man never quite breaking through all the way as he seemed poised to do. Or, if you use a less generous term, he went from moving upwards to failing upwards.

-As said, Batista would end up catching the fan’s interest and would end up in the spot Orton was planned to have for Wrestlemania 21. While Hunter would again lose in the main event of the show, he gave himself a MUCH cooler entrance...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REPUFq0u-ik

(Even though Lemmy clearly couldn't really remember the lyrics for the song)

...and by now his 2000 level of working match skill was ancient history. He would then face Batista in two more rematches, and while he put him over both times, the matches were filled with little things that you’d probably only register subconsciously that undermined Batista. A strong example would be during the build to the first rematch, where Hunter would claim that as long as he hit the Pedigree, the title would return to his waist. During the match, the ref got knocked out, Hunter hit the Pedigree, and made a visual pin on Batista, with only the disabled ref saving him from losing the title. Hence presenting the message “I actually won the match, circumstances just went against me.” The whole point of putting someone over is to ACTUALLY MAKE THEM LOOK STRONG, instead of lucky.

-After taking a few months off to heal a neck issue, Hunter would return, teaming with his last remaining Evolution member, Ric Flair…and turning on him, beating him bloody and saying that he was ‘taking the horse behind the barn and shooting him’. Hunter would then beat Flair at the October and November PPVs on top of that. While at this point Flair was indeed well past his prime, the execution and the fact that Flair didn’t retire made the whole thing pointless.

-Hunter was set up to challenge John Cena for the WWE Title at Wrestlemania 22. In the lead in, his promos revolved around Cena’s supposed complete lack of wrestling skill. Cena promptly made it, and the greater problems attached to him that were becoming very apparent around this time, worse by admitting Hunter was right. It seemed like Hunter would book himself to beat Cena, but surprisingly, he didn’t, instead tapping out to Cena to give him the win. It didn’t help Cena; the super smark crowd booed Cena out of the building and cheered Hunter instead, for reasons that are another story. Just, once again, Hunter could have potentially improved the situation beyond losing, and he didn’t, and that made it worse, part of a curse that would follow Cena virtually his whole career as a top guy.

Also, around this time Hunter gave himself another nom de plume title, the “King of Kings”. And this was his entrance at Wrestlemania 22.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zh-kmws3Gx4

I’d also like to note that despite Hunter still retaining his ‘Cerebral Assassin’ name, at this point, and hell, ever since the end of 2000, all of Hunter’s brilliant plans ended up being, more or less, ‘lure opponent to ring’, ‘hit opponent with sledgehammer’.

-Hunter would turn face and reform DX a few months later, feuding with the also mentioned in this thread stable The Spirit Squad. While the Squad had never been presented all that seriously, the fact that there were five of them to Hunter and Shawn’s 2 should have meant something. Instead, the pair repeatedly embarrassed the Squad and made them look like nothing, and ended with them beating them all in a 5 on 2 handicap match, dragging them all backstage, stuffing them in a big box, slapping “TO OVW” on it (Ohio Valley Wrestling, WWE’s then developmental territory), and having the box taken away. This more or less destroyed any chance of any of the Squad having any sort of credible career, with the only escapee being Nick, who would need to be completely repackaged as ‘Dolph Ziggler’ to do it. They’d then proceed to do their best to kneecap the new top heel tag team of Edge and Randy Orton, ie Rated RKO, before Hunter’s second quad tear in January 2007.

-Upon returning, Hunter was booked to win the title at the October 2007 PPV, then defend it against another wrestler, then defend it AGAIN against the same wrestler he’d beaten for the title that very night. He lost it back, meaning that Hunter booked himself to have a title reign for approximately one PPV. Now, when I say "Hunter booked himself", I don't explicitly KNOW that. But at this point, the man's credibility is as dead as Hunter doing his bow.

-Hunter would get the World Title AGAIN in April 2008, and would defend it until November. Then he won the WWE Title in February 2009. At this point it just seemed inevitable that sooner or later Hunter would want a top title and he’d get it. As part of the new/latest storyline with Randy Orton, he admitted on air to his actual, real life marriage to Stephanie, which was used as part of the feud. Not that it helped, as the pair had another dull match for the main event of Wrestlemania 25, wholly outshone by orders of magnitude by the Shawn Michaels/Undertaker match earlier on the card.

-Hunter and Shawn reformed DX a second time in the Summer of 2009 to snarl the pushes of more wrestlers. Most notable was that by this time, the WWE had gone PG, so DX couldn’t even do their trademark rude, sexual humor, instead resorting to childish pranks that you’d probably see on one of those Disney sitcoms. And they still won more often than they lost, including getting the tag titles and being on the cover of WWE 2009, the video game.

-At the end of 2009, newly debuted wrestler Sheamus shocked the world when he won a battle royale for a chance at John Cena’s WWE Title and then actually BEAT Cena to become the champion…in a tables match, so Cena didn’t get pinned. Sheamus would hold onto the title through SHENANIGANS for a few months before losing it in the February PPV match the Elimination Chamber, a six man match that happened inside a specially prepared cage. Enraged, he attacked Hunter, the man who eliminated him, but failed to win the title himself, setting up a match between him and Hunter at Wrestlemania 26. Beating Hunter would give Sheamus some good credibility. Take a wild guess who won.

-It was Triple H.

-Sheamus would attack Hunter the next night though, as Hunter was saying goodbye to his friend Shawn Michaels, who had lost again to the Undertaker in a Wrestlemania rematch and hence had to retire (which he actually did), and beat him in a rematch at the next PPV. Hunter would disappear from WWE TV for the rest of 2010, again letting nagging injuries heal. When Hunter returned in February 2011, he did so for another reason, and the next week beat the crap out of Sheamus who had supposedly put him on the shelf for nearly a year as an afterthought.

-So why had Hunter returned? Well, Undertaker had also returned from a long period away, and HHH returned to challenge him at Wrestlemania 27, partly to avenge his friend Shawn, and partly because he wanted to break the Streak. Which he promoted by saying ‘I have nothing left in the business to accomplish’, basically burying everyone in the back as not worth his time. While Hunter would lose to Undertaker, he did it in the wrong kind of nail biting match; instead of getting into the story of ‘Is this the end of the Streak’?, the very smarky crowd Wrestlemania tended to attract was instead worried “Is Hunter so drat up his own rear end that he’d give himself the Streak”? Either as miscalculated drama, or just to troll the smarks, Hunter hit Undertaker with more than one Pedigree, and then when those failed to get a pin, used the Undertaker’s own finishing move, the Tombstone, on him, even mimicking the Undertaker’s pin in a heart stopping “YOU WOULDN’T DARE” bit that Undertaker thankfully kicked out of, before getting Hunter in his Hell’s Gate submission hold. After one final scare of Hunter grabbing up his sledgehammer before weakening and dropping it before tapping out, Undertaker ‘won’...but he was presented as so exhausted and broken that he had to be carried out of the arena, whereas Hunter walked out under his own power. It’s hard to explain why this was the wrong kind of drama and relief; I guess it could be phrased that instead of satisfaction, you were more left with relief that it was over and you didn’t have to risk the immense sour taste in your mouth if the expect-the-worst- happened. At least Hunter had another awesome entrance.

Thing is, the original entrance used a Metallica song, but it wasn't licensed in perpetuity, so if you find this clip from official WWE sources they've replaced it with generic replacement music. You gotta have the original!

-When ‘The Summer of Punk’ happened later in 2011, Hunter returned as a storyline (and I think also in real life) authority figure, who promptly ruined the angle by forcing Kevin Nash (who was by now so past his prime he…was really past it, I can’t think of an analogy) and himself into it. And then beating Punk at the September PPV. And then fighting and beating Nash at the December PPV in what was basically Nash’s retirement match, flushing away all the insane heat Punk had managed to get. You ever wonder why Punk quit and left the business for years, look no further than Paul Levesque.

-Hunter would also challenge Undertaker the NEXT year at Wrestlemania 28 (okay, technically Undertaker challenged HIM, but semantics). Things were less worrisome this time, as Undertaker winning would put him at 20-0 and it seemed near impossible that the WWE would deny their most loyal employee that. And they didn’t. The only issue I can raise is that the match was just passable, and Hunter inserted a ‘OH NO UNDERTAKER HAS LOST’/kickout spot too early in the match’s last half, leaving what happened afterwards as a letdown.

-Hunter would then fight the returned from MMA Brock Lesner at Summerslam 2012. Brock would win, storyline breaking Hunter’s arm. Hunter would come out the next night and tease retirement, clearly hoping to get a classic “Thank you (Wrestler X!)” and “Please don’t go!” chant. He didn’t. So Hunter would rematch Brock at Wrestlemania 29, and win this time. However, considering that his entrance hosed up, spraying Hunter with dry ice and forcing him to do the whole match with extensive second degree burns over his torso, and Lesner concussed himself early into the match and basically went on autopilot, I’ll cut him a little slack. I thought for a time that Lesner getting his bell rung during that match was what made him think doing this was in any way intimidating.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmA2-mw3FBY

No, turns out, he’ll do that CAAWWWWWWWWW even if his brain is fine and dandy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZcxUlhW8oY

Maybe it’s a hunting thing. Lesner is supposedly very fond of hunting.

Due to a last minute change of plans, Hunter would face and lose to Brock again in an April 2013 PPV steel cage match, giving Brock the overall rubber match. And at least this happened before Brock broke the Undertaker’s Streak the next year and then annihilated Cena in the most one sided rear end kicking Cena had ever gotten in his whole career after a decade of SuperCena, turning Brock into the nigh unbeatable final boss of WWE which WWE would promptly start beating into the ground to this very day.

-Hunter would face real life son of Curt Hennig, Joseph Hennig, wrestling under the name of Curtis Axel (named after his father and grandfather, Larry “The Axe” Hennig). While in 2000 he gave Taka an amazing match that made the fans believe, in 2013 he gave Hennig nothing and then lost to a fluke count out, making Hennig look even worse than if he’d just beaten him normally.

-As outlined by Gavok, Triple H was heavily involved in the Daniel Bryan mess over the last part of 2013 and leading into 2014’s Wrestlemania 30, denying him the title, criticizing him as “A B+ Player”, and generally giving the whole thing a sour undertone for the same reasons that tainted the Undertaker WM 27 match. Look no further than at the end of December, when the two world titles were set to be united again, and the ring on the show before it was filled with everyone who had held either title. Stephanie verbally fellated her husband, saying he was the greatest of all time; you can see CM Punk (one of said former champions) just sort of bitterly chuckle and shake his head at that, while the crowd chanted for Daniel Bryan. While Hunter ultimately would put himself in a match with Daniel Bryan at Wrestlemania 30, be defeated by him, and get involved in the main event still trying to screw over Bryan, only for Bryan to thwart him, defy all the odds, and win in perhaps the last great moment WWE will ever have, ie he did the right thing, it had the same sour undertone. The wrong kind of involvement in a story. The kind that spoke of people deciding things out of ego and politics instead of what fans clearly wanted. This also marked the start of Hunter and Stephanie being on air authority figures again, called…The Authority. Which went way way past the point where it got old; the Authority basically ran the show until March 2016. I will note that this is around when NXT began to really take shape as what we know it as today (at least until recently), and HHH had been involved with NXT since Day 1, so this was when his personal project really began to take shape. It would be a sharp contrast, the man trying to build the next generations of wrestlers and signing top talent from around the world, while doing his best to keep in the spotlight and win where he shouldn’t.

-As mentioned before, Hunter would face Sting at Wrestlemania 31. In a match that was rewritten to be “WCW seeks revenge”, likely by Vince. Which Hunter won. He also decided to make an entrance that tied into the upcoming Terminator film, Genisys, which I assured you, aged perfectly fine when that film was a big hit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCKLFxuDh5U&t=193s

-After getting mad at Roman Reigns at the end of 2015 for not respecting his...job for running the show, and being thwarted in having Reigns lose his WWE Title to Sheamus, only for Reigns to regain it, Hunter booked Reigns at No 1 of the 2016 Royal Rumble and said he would be defending his title in it; if Reigns was eliminated, then whoever won the Rumble was the champion. Hunter then entered at 30. And eliminated Reigns. And won the Rumble, making him WWE Champion for the 14th time. This whole point was so Reigns to get his epic crowning by beating Hunter at Wrestlemania 32, which he did, but as Gavok explained, the WWF had completely botched that whole thing by then and it did nothing for Reigns. Also his entrance was even dumber than the previous year's.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCKLFxuDh5U&t=153s

(Not an accidental repost, this links earlier in the video)

-After that, Hunter did sort of fade into semi-retirement from rear end in a top hat power play moves. He would put over Seth Rollins at Wrestlemania 33, allowing Rollins to be dubbed “The Kingslayer”, and would let Rhoda Rousey in her wrestling debut basically beat him up and embarrass him in a mixed tag match at Wrestlemania 34, a match Hunter was said to have laid out and personally booked. However…

-One last mess would result from HHH returning to wrestle on the first of the Saudi Arabia propaganda blood money shows; he would face and lose to John Cena at the first one, and then challenge the Undertaker (again) for a real deal last time ever match at an Australian ‘super show’/mini PPV, in which Hunter would win and the match was generally bad from decades of accumulated injuries. After the match, Hunter and Shawn Michaels, who was in his corner, shook hands with Undertaker and Kane (also in a corner, Undertaker’s)...and then Undertaker and Kane would attack them. This would prompt Shawn to declare that while he’d stayed retired for eight years out of respect, he felt the respect had been returned and it clearly wasn’t, so he came out of retirement at the second Saudi blood money show to face Undertaker and Kane with Hunter in a tag match. Which was utterly terrible, pissed on Shawn’s great final matches, and had Hunter get injured in the process. But hey, who needs integrity and morality when you have tens of millions of dollars in oil money so sheik manchildren can have wrestlers they remember from their youth show up and nearly kill themselves because they’re not young any more?

That was essentially it for Hunter: besides beating Batista in a vanity match at Wrestlemania 35, it seemed like all his focus was on running NXT. And then AEW came along. And it beat NXT in ratings. And karma seemingly finally reached down and smashed Hunter with a sledgehammer the size of a building, as Vince would basically tear down NXT in response and rebuild it as he wished, while Hunter seemingly suffered a very severe heart attack or cardiac effect of some sort and nearly died, his legacy being destroyed as he was forced out of power (maybe?) while he convalesced in hospital. The man who seemingly was poised to one day take over WWE had, and has, seemingly found out that NO ONE ever is spared from the broken, twisted mind of Vince McMahon. That’s the thing about psychopaths. There’s no what’s right. Only what’s left when an arbitrary switch is flipped.



So, what have we learned?

Paul Levesque had many a time expressed admiration for Ric Flair. He, in a way, wanted to be Ric Flair. Hell, as said, he formed his own stable, Evolution, which included Ric Flair, with Hunter in the ‘Ric Flair’ position of the Horsemen, ie everyone else made sure he kept his title. And for a time, it did seem like he COULD be the next Ric Flair. Or the first Triple H, because really, trying to be ‘the next X’ in wrestling is almost always a fool’s errand that will hamstring your career far more often than it will help. See John Cena trying to be the next Rock. Or Roman Reigns trying to be the next John Cena.

But for whatever his reasons were, Hunter ended up being the anti Ric Flair. Yeah, Flair was the top guy with sixteen world titles, but the thing about Ric Flair was that he gave as much as he got. Hell, for visual proof, look no further than his trademark bump, the Flair Flop.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyXBn-bvHC4

(And they smartly open with what I feel is the best 'Flair Flop' of all time)

Can you see Hunter having a trademark bump that's meant to show he got smacked down hard? Flair did. It worked for him, because he worked at it, and worked with others. He got to stay on top because he was just ‘that drat good’ as Hunter liked to address himself as being in one of his catchphrases. Hell, Flair’s issue is debatably he gave too MUCH, letting himself be pushed around and used by the likes of Jim Herd, Eric Bischoff, and Hulk Hogan when he would have been better off standing his ground and telling them what was going to happen, like it or lump it. Flair did sometimes have backstage power and booking authority, but for the most part he never used it for himself. Hell, in one of wrestling’s great what ifs, Flair’s original battles with Sting had been planned for Flair to invite him into the Four Horsemen, turn on him, have a title match, and put him over clean before he booked Sting’s every move…before Sting blew out his knee and the whole thing fell apart, never to be put back together in that original planned way and lesser for it.

Hunter, on the other hand, had power that very few in wrestling ever had. And he never hesitated to use it.

Maybe in some ways, Hunter was damned by changing times. When Ric Flair was on top, the only real knowledge of backstage stuff was very limited in scope ‘dirt rags’ and ‘zines’. It was very hard to know the inner workings of the business unless you worked in it yourself, and the ability to share this knowledge was even harder. But when Hunter was getting to the top, that time was long gone. The Internet was extensive and would only get more so, and kayfabe was dead, never to return. How much of Hunter’s criticisms came from the fact that so many fans knew that he had backstage power and could alter storylines, matches, and events to suit his own desires, rather than him winning because it was ‘part of the story’? Or “a badly told story’ (not every telling is going to be great). Except, as shown, for a year and change he was the man. Then he decided he’d rather be the showrunner. How much money was lost and how many stars were either destroyed, lessened, or generally negatively affected is hard to calculate. And once again, HHH’s ‘baby’ NXT showed that he seemed to get certain things that he never let play out in the main show. Hell, as mentioned, when one of the WWE video games were gearing up for release one year, a memo was revealed that said that in marketing for the game, Triple H could not be shown “in a vulnerable or weak position”. Hunter promptly got introduced to the Streisand Effect, as this just made sure there were many, MANY pictures of Hunter in a ‘vulnerable or weak position’. Now, did Hunter send that memo? Maybe someone else did, like Stephanie, or Vince. It’s possible. But one thing above all else over Hunter’s past two decades is that all that has occurred has more or less destroyed any and all credibility he has. Maybe he’s innocent, but we won’t believe him. Maybe more of all I listened was just him listening to the office, but even if that’s true, we won’t buy it. Like Hogan, his career is an iceberg, with the underside being all the scumfuck poo poo he got up greatly outsizing what we see above the water, a ‘legend’ and ‘great man’, but a ‘great man’ in how podcast historian Dan Carlin assesses it, a man who changes things even if that change is nothing but breaking and harming stuff on a scale most humans could never reach.

The final irony is, Chris Jericho once commented that he could always return to WWE, because once you were in, you were in, like the Mafia. The Mafia ruled the crime roost for decades, but as the latter decades of the 20th century started coming up, they began being undercut by other foreign crime outfits, like the Mafiya, the Triads, the Yakuza, the Yardies, and others. The general reason why was that the Mafia had gotten up its own butt about stuff like ‘honor’ (even if it was all a lie, they sure held tight onto the image of it) and stuff like not wanting to deal drugs. The new crime outfits didn’t have those scruples; they would do anything, commit any atrocity, no matter what, to get what they wanted. The Mafia had become outclassed by a new breed of even worse predators, though I am no organized crime expert and could be totally talking out of my rear end here.

And so it happened to Hunter, as in the last few years a new executive came into the WWE, someone named Nick Khan, who seems to have risen up and taken Hunter’s place. Hunter played politics, but it seems like even he was overcome by the pure jet black corporate shark psychopath Nick Khan seems to be; while Hunter still cares about the business, Khan solely cares about making the shareholders happy, and he’ll rip the guts out of everything he can to ensure it. As said, many say that it looks like Khan, through all his firings and budget cuts, is getting ready to have the WWE sold. Which means he might be so drat good, and so drat merciless, that he’s even outmaneuvered Vince McMahon, who everyone was utterly sure of for DECADES would NEVER sell ‘his’ company, that he would hold onto being on top of it until he died.

In the end, I guess, Hunter took the easy route. And its methods ultimately ended up catching him, chewing him up and as of this writing, spitting him out. As Thomas the Rhymer said

“O see ye not yon narrow road
So thick beset with thorns and briars?
That is the path of righteousness,
Tho' after it but few enquires.
“And see ye not that braid, braid road
That lies across that lily leven?
That is the path of wickedness,
Tho' some ca' it the road to heaven.”


But, again, I don’t know. Just a bunch of assumptions, recollections, personal assessments, and wiki checks. I can’t say if this is the end of Hunter or just a big setback. Hell, maybe like his best friend Michaels, he’ll have a come to Jesus moment.
Still…Hunter called himself The Game. He could have been Deus Ex. Skyrim. Metroid Dread, or if you want to go classic and even further, Super Metroid.

Instead, he ended up Cyberpunk 2077. Or maybe, if we don’t want to be any way kind, Daikatana.

And in the end, until life and time proves otherwise, he ended up the bitch.

Cornwind Evil fucked around with this message at 08:23 on Mar 1, 2022

FilthyImp
Sep 30, 2002

Anime Deviant
:golfclap:

Goddamn what a read. Someone get Jeffrey to put this up on the frontpage.

X JAKK
Sep 1, 2000

We eat the pig then together we BURN
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMvLoCVY1ko&t=156s

Trollologist
Mar 3, 2010

by Fluffdaddy
Cornwind evil's oral history of pro wrestling is a book I'm going to buy.

kntfkr
Feb 11, 2019

GOOSE FUCKER

FilthyImp posted:

:golfclap:

Goddamn what a read. Someone get Jeffrey to put this up on the frontpage.

This is actually a good idea.

Cornwind Evil
Dec 14, 2004


The undisputed world champion of wrestling effortposting

Various people posted:

Nice things

Thanks. Thing is, even if Jeffrey were inclined to, it's best he didn't, as I am lifting a fair chunk of my posts from memory of several others sources that I read, mainly the book Death of WCW (Which you should buy instead), various accounts, some in book form, of ultrasmark Scott Keith, who I agree with on SOME levels (hence I'm recalling what he wrote for the history), but ultimately see as a pure distilled version of the kind of fan that people were talking about in regards to the John Cena issue of kids vs 'real fans' (and that's really not a compliment. I cannot recommend buying his books), and some stuff from Jim Cornette's podcasts, patching it together with some research and memory of my own. It's not wholly original and heck could even get the site in trouble for all I know.

Though the next few (somewhat shorter) things I want to talk about do more or less come fully from my own analysis.

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The Last Call
Sep 9, 2011

Rehabilitating sinner
I spent the last three or so hours simply reading this thread and listening to music, it may be my favourite thread on all SA.

Little bit about Hunter, after he got involved with Stephanie he began doing something that was not allowed for working talent, he began to sit in on meetings that basically decided how things would go, not only for his matches but other wrestlers. His reign of terror was supposedly part of this.

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.

Hunter has always wanted to be one of the greats. As previously talked about Stephanie even said he was the greatest of all time in the ring with many other champions behind him, one of the things you'll notice when she says this Hunter kind of looks at the crowd as if to see if they agreed with it or not. All he's done in the ring, the championships, the power, it's always been tied to dating and marrying Stephanie. How much would he have accomplished if not for that? That's the eternal question. The question cast a shadow over all he's done. To some degree it's probably a nagging thought in the back of his own mind, not that he'd ever admit to it.

It's pretty crazy to see Hunter have a fall, he was for the last decade plus expected to be the guy in charge of the WWE once Vince jacked off to his last muscle man and died. Being married to Stephanie made any other thought that Hunter wouldn't be in charge impossible to conceive, hell he was getting
NXT up and going, making deals with other countries and seemed to be aiming for higher heights if that was even possible. He was the chosen one, even above Vince's own son, a fact that made Shane quit and leave to do his own thing for years. Then AEW came and NXT was put against it to cripple the new company and failed.
Failed bad. Being Hunter's show it pretty much all fell on him. His heart issues likely occurring due to all the pressure and stress along with whatever politics going on behind the scenes. Does anyone think Triple H wants the WWE sold? gently caress no, it was suppose to be his. Now everything he did has been taken away and he's struggling to deal with his physical issues. Some would call it karama.

He had accumulated enough bad over the years. Not that anyone ever expected him to ever be on the receiving end. If the concept of too big to fail could be applied to a person, it was Hunter.

Anyways, here's Becky Lynch when she was a dancing Irish girl being very Irish:


You know she's Irish because not only does she do a little jig but her clothing is green.

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