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I've already professed my love for Alexa Bliss based on the few things I've seen of her and read about her in this thread, but I also don't doubt that WWE would take ideas that are Most Definitely My poo poo and somehow make them very bad. My question is do you see a universe where these gimmicks would have been fun and interesting, or am I just broken brained to think that at least the ideas were solid on paper and just needed a better stage to use them on?
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Mar 9, 2022 22:50
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Here's the first part of a look at CM Punk in WWE. His beginnings and initial run to the top. Phil Brooks/CM Punk signed with WWE in 2005. As he was in Ring of Honor at the time, CM Punk took part in an innovative storyline where he was the company’s heel champion and relished in how he was selling out. He made a big deal about how he was going to go to WWE as ROH Champion and even signed his WWE contract over his title belt. Of course, he dropped the title in his final match, a four-way, and broke down immediately as beloved fans buried him in streamers. WWE is usually demanding about wrestlers changing their names when signing. They want to own your identity so you can't make as much money outside of the company. You could be called General Johnny Chainsaw or Silas Skullcrusher in the indies, but the moment you’re in WWE developmental, you’re Theodore Utah or Jerry Spice. Paul Heyman, who was part of creative at the time, was very adamant that CM Punk could continue to be CM Punk. After some time in WWE’s then-developmental league OVW, Punk was introduced in WWE’s incarnation of ECW. He did well for himself and was built up as a future star. Luckily, the ECW audience was made of the kind of people who knew him from ROH and cheered the hell out of him. Philadelphia had the same kind of audience and when CM Punk was part of a Survivor Series team with Triple H, Shawn Michaels, Jeff Hardy, and Matt Hardy, the ovation was over-the-top. Triple H had Punk do the D-Generation X intro with him to capitalize on it and some fans speculated that Triple H was legit annoyed that this C-show rando was stealing his thunder. It would be a silly assessment if it wasn’t for... *gestures at Triple H’s history* A week later was ECW’s December to Dismember PPV that went so, so badly. Paul Heyman wanted Punk to get a big push out of the six-man main event by eliminating Big Show by himself, but it was vetoed and Punk was the first eliminated. Heyman was fired soon after and Punk lost his biggest political cheerleader. It didn’t help that he was popular for stuff that happened outside of WWE. Vince hates that poo poo and other guys in charge wanted Punk humbled for his popularity. The only thing keeping him from being buried was Shawn Michaels, who spoke up on his behalf and told the old men in charge to try working WITH him instead of against him. Punk remained in ECW for a couple years, notably being a footnote in the Chris Benoit double-murder/suicide. He eventually did get to be ECW Champion and had a fairly decent reign, but it was nothing too special. In 2008, Punk won the Money in the Bank match at WrestleMania. At the same event, Kane won the ECW Championship. The two were played as allies who were constantly side-eying each other, but there was no betrayal in the end. Instead, when WWE did one of their draft episodes and Edge boasted that he was leaving Raw with the World Heavyweight Championship, Batista beat Edge half to death and left him in a heap. Seconds later, Punk ran out, cashed in his briefcase, and became World Heavyweight Champ. Not the most honorable way to do it, but the fans enjoyed Edge getting his comeuppance. Punk’s title reign was not handled well. At all. He immediately feuded with JBL, which wasn’t great, but was better than what followed. They put him in a match against mega-face Batista (double DQ finish), which was a bad idea, considering Punk hadn’t built up enough of a following to counter Batista’s popularity. Then when WWE did the PPV Unforgiven, a show based around the short-lived 5-man Scramble match*, Punk was attacked backstage by Randy Orton and deemed too injured to compete. * I’m going to need to do a Mike Adamle post one of these days. Orton wasn’t even in the Scramble match. They just wrote Punk out of the title match for the sake of giving the title picture a clean slate. Afterwards, Punk moved to the midcard and had some success as a tag champ with Kofi Kingston and then Intercontinental Champion. At WrestleMania 25, he once again won Money in the Bank. It should be noted that he was not initially intended to win the Money in the Bank ladder match. Jeff Hardy had been getting extremely popular around this time and although he couldn’t quite reach the main event just yet, he was the obvious winner for the Money in the Bank match to propel him into the title picture. It’s just that once again, Jeff Hardy got caught with his hand in the drug jar and was suspended long enough to completely miss WrestleMania. Punk became a two-time winner instead and his second cash-in was far more interesting. As Jeff Hardy finally defeated Edge for the World Heavyweight Championship, Punk came out and cashed in. He quickly beat Jeff and won the title. He played it innocent at first. Why were fans on his side when he cashed in against a hurt Edge, but not a hurt Jeff? When he defended against Jeff and punched the referee to get himself disqualified, he admitted that his vision was messed up and he thought he was punching Jeff. Eventually, Punk went full heel, took his drug-free mantra, and used it to make himself into a gigantic rear end in a top hat. Jeff was an addict who was only going to fall into that pit again and again. Fans loved Jeff, but Jeff existed for no reason but to disappoint everyone. As the two traded the belt back and forth, a special cage match was put together with the stipulation that whoever lost would leave WWE. Jeff’s contract was coming up and while he did intend to re-sign, he simply wanted some time off. The plan was that Punk would win and Jeff would return down the line to pick up where they left off. Punk did indeed retain the title and Jeff left WWE, but about a week later, Jeff Hardy was arrested due to drug trafficking. WWE did not want anything to do with him after that. That’s right, due to Jeff Hardy’s personal screw-ups, CM Punk not only ended up winning that feud decisively, but he was deemed 100% correct despite being a heel about it. On the next episode of SmackDown, Jeff Hardy’s theme played and Punk came out dressed as Jeff, including facepaint. It took a few moments, but gradually, the fans started to understand what was going on and they were SO MAD it was great. Now the champion on SmackDown, Punk was set to feud with the Undertaker. Unfortunately, the Undertaker genuinely did not get along with Punk backstage and Punk was going to pay for it...
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Mar 9, 2022 23:03
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Thank you for confirming the 6000 word write up for: The rise and adamle of Mike Adamle
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Mar 9, 2022 23:16
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Jamesman posted:I've already professed my love for Alexa Bliss based on the few things I've seen of her and read about her in this thread, but I also don't doubt that WWE would take ideas that are Most Definitely My poo poo and somehow make them very bad. It would probably have worked in something like Lucha Underground, where everyone has magic talismans with other people's souls in them and Pentagon fights sexy evil ninjas (Kairi Sane, Mayu Iwatami and Io Shirai) and just ragdolls them around for twenty minutes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vPHs_Vgumo you kinda have to commit to a world where either sexy evil ninjas exist or they don't, otherwise it turns into that bond movie where he has an invisible car
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Mar 9, 2022 23:39
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Jamesman posted:My question is do you see a universe where these gimmicks would have been fun and interesting, or am I just broken brained to think that at least the ideas were solid on paper and just needed a better stage to use them on? better booking coulda made alexa's gimmick much better and coulda made bray wyatt's stuff outright good but there's no doubt that the booking was absolutely wretched and there were plenty of moments that were so bad they won awards for being bad (bray beating moxley because of mox's exploding TV, the box-like structure, everything to do with lily) and its way too late now (bray got fired, alexa goes on twitter saying she herself has no idea what the gently caress is going on)
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Mar 9, 2022 23:43
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Gavok posted:Jeff’s contract was coming up and while he did intend to re-sign, he simply wanted some time off. The plan was that Punk would win and Jeff would return down the line to pick up where they left off. Punk did indeed retain the title and Jeff left WWE, but about a week later, Jeff Hardy was arrested due to drug trafficking. WWE did not want anything to do with him after that. The video for this needs to be seen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weUC61ToNBw Punk was a menace as a heel
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Mar 9, 2022 23:56
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Elephant Ambush posted:The video for this needs to be seen: lmfao
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Mar 10, 2022 00:17
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FullLeatherJacket posted:It would probably have worked in something like Lucha Underground, where everyone has magic talismans with other people's souls in them and Pentagon fights sexy evil ninjas (Kairi Sane, Mayu Iwatami and Io Shirai) and just ragdolls them around for twenty minutes It's just that, WWE is already a place where dead men and fire monsters and leprechauns roam the halls, and maybe that's why I look at something like Alexa Bliss and I'm on board with the idea, because I feel like it's just an extension of that. What's the difference between a magic doll and a magic urn? What's the difference between Alexa setting Orton on fire and Kane setting everyone on fire? In premise, I'm totally on board. Ad by Khad posted:better booking coulda made alexa's gimmick much better and coulda made bray wyatt's stuff outright good But yeah, it's not surprising to me at all that WWE would gently caress it all up, especially WWE now. But I do wonder about something. Why is it things like Kane and the Undertaker worked and have stood strong for decades, but other, similar characters are short-lived? Are they just seen as Undertaker/Kane knock-offs and don't stand on their own? Would Undertaker and Kane even be things if those characters showed up in the last ten years?
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Mar 10, 2022 00:33
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It's been like 12 years and I'm still mad at NXT for those stupid loving names. Husky Harris. Eli Cottonwood. Skip Sheffield wasn't AS bad but it didn't fit Ryback at all. That name should have gone to a wiry cruiserweight.
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Mar 10, 2022 03:57
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I miss ryback it was such a great part of wrestling to have this weird giant baby-shaped muscleman hanging around, lifting weights and demanding to be fed he had such a weird voice and face and head shape and he called himself "da BIG guyyy  "I love him  me on the left
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Mar 10, 2022 04:25
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Thank you very much for all the effort posts, it's been wonderful to read.
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Mar 10, 2022 04:33
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Jamesman posted:It's just that, WWE is already a place where dead men and fire monsters and leprechauns roam the halls, and maybe that's why I look at something like Alexa Bliss and I'm on board with the idea, because I feel like it's just an extension of that. What's the difference between a magic doll and a magic urn? What's the difference between Alexa setting Orton on fire and Kane setting everyone on fire? In premise, I'm totally on board. I think what separates them is focus. The stuff with Undertaker has never been well-defined in any way. It also tends to exist in the background of the character. He doesn't shoot lightning bolts during matches. It's theatrics for promos or post-match stuff. He'd constantly get up, but that seemed to blur the line between supernatural and just being a tough bastard. With Fiend and Alexa, the weird poo poo was too in your face to ignore. Not only is it all unexplained, but it's also inconsistent. The Fiend is invincible from ridiculous weapon beatdowns/finisher spam, but gets taken down by a couple Goldberg spears. Something that comes to mind is this storyline where after a big PPV loss, the Undertaker was randomly attacked by the Wyatt Family, who beat him down and dragged him off. That's how the show ended. Sometime after, they did the same to Kane. Bray Wyatt started cackling about how he had stolen the Undertaker and Kane's powers somehow. Then a week or so before Survivor Series 2015 (the 25 year anniversary of Undertaker's first appearance), Undertaker and Kane simply walked out and started fighting the Wyatt Family. This led to a 2-on-4 tag match at Survivor Series, which Undertaker and Kane won. At no point did they explain the kidnapping, stolen powers, or anything else. Silly stuff happened and they moved on.
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Mar 10, 2022 04:37
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Gavok posted:I think what separates them is focus. The stuff with Undertaker has never been well-defined in any way. It also tends to exist in the background of the character. He doesn't shoot lightning bolts during matches. It's theatrics for promos or post-match stuff. He'd constantly get up, but that seemed to blur the line between supernatural and just being a tough bastard. Do you think the emphasis on theatrics was related to the pandemic in any way? The lack of a live audience and them trying to adjust leading to playing too much with the style of the show? As for the Goldberg thing, what I looked at said this was one of those Saudi Blood Money events, so WWE deliberately tanked Wyatt's character in favor of Goldberg doing Goldberg things to appease those princes. But would you mark this as the beginning of the end for him, the final nail in the coffin, or just something in the middle of a clusterfuck?
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Mar 10, 2022 04:58
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Jamesman posted:Do you think the emphasis on theatrics was related to the pandemic in any way? The lack of a live audience and them trying to adjust leading to playing too much with the style of the show? I wouldn't say so. Everything up to the Goldberg loss was pre-COVID. quote:As for the Goldberg thing, what I looked at said this was one of those Saudi Blood Money events, so WWE deliberately tanked Wyatt's character in favor of Goldberg doing Goldberg things to appease those princes. But would you mark this as the beginning of the end for him, the final nail in the coffin, or just something in the middle of a clusterfuck? I think it was more that Vince realized that Goldberg vs. Roman was a better money match, so he changed his mind on the Fiend's direction. It was a head-scratching moment, but they made good on it by having the Fiend/Cena match shortly after. It was the Braun and Orton feuds that really started to hurt the Fiend, especially because that's when Wyatt and the company started butting heads. The Fiend was making them a LOT of merch money, so it had to mean something that they cut him loose. Wyatt knew that if he could come back from being set on fire, he probably shouldn't be getting pinned from RKOs and that made him a problem.
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Mar 10, 2022 05:23
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It boggles my mind a little bit that Goldberg is still a thing in 2022. Like dude has been involved with wrestling for more than 20 years. You would think they'd come up with something new or somebody new but no they still drag out Goldberg.
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Mar 10, 2022 05:27
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Hollismason posted:It boggles my mind a little bit that Goldberg is still a thing in 2022. Like dude has been involved with wrestling for more than 20 years. You would think they'd come up with something new or somebody new but no they still drag out Goldberg. WWE tried to remake Goldberg with their own creation Ryback, but they refused to commit to him, so he ended up being damaged goods. By the time he was finally let go, the company was only a few months from bringing Goldberg back for the first time. Yeah, Ryback is another guy who will need an effortpost down the line. But at the very least, he'll be part of what I'm writing on CM Punk.
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Mar 10, 2022 05:34
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At this pace I look forward to AEW in 7 months time going through the old Tough Enough contestant rosters to find a rich vein of ex-wwe guys to plunder. ZZ Loupe vs Lee Moriarty and Pete Tornatore vs The Blade will be epic.
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Mar 10, 2022 05:36
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AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT Or THIS BUSINESS IS CURSED TO HAVE UNBELIEVABLE NONSENSE FOLLOW IT NO MATTER WHERE IT GOES (Or "I had a 24 hour flu with a fever and this seemed like a good idea at the time") You might have heard of the WWE 2K game series. Probably because the most recent one ended up such a disaster it ended the series as a yearly release. And sadly, that was the one that got Becky Lynch to be on the cover. It didn’t start off as “WWE 2K” though. It began as “WWE Smackdown.” Then after several years, it became “Smackdown vs Raw”, the first of which had a pretty cool opening. Then, after several more years, it was just “WWE (Last Two Year Digits)”. Right away, the series had what would be known as “Create a Wrestler”, which would only grow more elaborate as time went on. It would take about ten installments, however, to add in a ‘Create A Storyline’ mode. Now you could write your own promos, arrange your own matches, and make the WWE resemble your vision. And sometimes you could even design your own arenas, rings, and belts to go with it. Fun stuff, I suppose, if you’re the type who likes Minecraft, but considering that even in the Internet age, you’d basically be putting together these shows solely for yourself (so I guess you are Vince, in the end). But, around 2011, a new video service called Twitch began, which allowed people to stream their video game playing directly to the Internet in a way that was, at least, more convenient than methods that had come before. And in late 2012, a random Twitch streamer named Bazza87 decided, with WWE2K13 just released in Europe, he’d go online, grab a whole bunch of “CAWS”, and run a Twitch show where they fought each other, just for his own amusement and whichever small group of people happened to discover it. Fittingly, since it was a video game, his decided theme was “Shows featuring characters from video games and the occasional video game adjacent person.” And thus was born VGCW.  Which you might have heard of. It was featured in an article on this very site, after all. Now, you wouldn’t think that someone letting a game play itself as replicated characters from video games fought each other would be all that entertaining; indeed, I feel like at first Bazza was primarily just amusing himself. Even “VGCW” wasn’t super accurate, as at first there were characters like The Incredible Hulk and the Red Power Ranger, and while those characters have at least appeared in video games, the same could not be said for people like then-president Barack Obama and Adolf Hitler(!). Likewise, there was little involvement in the game besides getting the CAWS, making a “VGCW Belt”, and then setting up matches: in the early days Bazza would sometimes stream for 5 or 6 hours, having multiple Royal Rumbles, Title Matches, King of the Ring tournaments, and such. Like any good wrestling development, the change to VGCW being more than that happened when a six man “Money In The Bank” ladder match happened, only for bad AI pathing (and oh boy we’ll get to THAT) to cause the match to end in less than a minute, the winner being Russian wrestler Zangief from the Street Fighter series. Bazza felt this was a disappointment, and redid the match, the winner this time being Punch Out’s Little Mac. The small Twitch crowd played with this by proclaiming that “Baz McMahon” had “screwed” Zangief, and Bazza, struck by something in the joshing, turned his head to WWE2K13’s Create A Storyline mode. As said, before now he just did random matches for hours, with nothing behind them. But hey, if they were saying that, why not use more of the game? This was more or less the birth of the ‘true’ VGCW, as from there the ‘show’ would feature actual storylines, feuds, and general reasons for why Groose from Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword was having a severe disagreement with Mike Haggar from Final Fight. Bazza would run the ‘show’ for ten ‘seasons’ (moving the game from WWE2K13 to 2K14 in the process) before stepping down, at which point one of his co-workers, a guy by the name of “The TOH”, would take over and arrange the ‘seasons’ for the final three it had. With WWE2K15 being released on the next generation of systems exclusively (then Playstation 4) and as a result being more bare bones and hence without a Create A Storyline mode, and with WWE2K14’s servers due to shut down because of it, TOH made the choice to end it there. It wasn’t much of a decline: heck, my personal favorite season is Season 11, whose overarching plot had the “Game Shark” ‘glitching reality”, which meant at the start of every match something random would happen, which could be anything from two wrestlers wearing red now both wearing blue, to the commentary being replaced by a segment of a radio play of Casablanca. What made all this this perhaps more interesting than WWE and other wrestling was exactly how it was set up. The game allowed for AI vs AI play, and so Bazza would just let the computer decide who won and continue the storylines based on those results. This meant nothing was guaranteed. A would-be hero fighting against evil could well lose every match he had. A tag team could lose five or six matches in a row, then win a title shot, win the belts, and then win even more matches in a row, until Bazza was literally throwing together random wrestlers to make new tag teams because the tag champions had already beaten all the established teams and having a title shot for said tag titles on every show because while the dominant champs WERE liked, Bazza had previous experience in how that could go bad (which we'll get to). Or there could be a Rumble where tag team partners constantly threw each other out (as in, there were multiple tag teams and ‘one eliminates the other’ spots kept happening), leading to it being dubbed the “EVERYONE EXPLODES” Rumble. Or it could lead to the ridiculous nonsense I actually want to talk about, but to really understand the whys of it, we need to get into the hows. The Background: “THQuality”. WWE2K was a yearly series. Video games, these days, take a lot of work. As a result, it’s pretty well known that those ‘yearly’ games, like Madden, or MLB, tend to be full of amusing graphical glitches and probably not as amusing camera and gameplay glitches. Fun when you’re playing for fun with friends, maybe not so fun if you’re playing online for some form of internet penis points. But the general thing about all such yearly games is that they were primarily meant to be played with other people. If you didn’t have anyone at the time, or at all, you could play against the computer. And just to speed things up in certain gameplay modes, you could have the computer play itself. But that was just an option for convenience; it wasn’t meant to be the bedrock of the game. It turned out that when you forced a game like WWE2K13 to solely play against itself, the results could be…interesting. First of all, the AI was full of flaws and quirks. Characters would leave the ring, then immediately slide back inside, then leave, then slide back in, etc (The VGCW fanbase would dub this "Mind games"!). They’d go to the ring, try and grab a weapon (even if the other AI was right there, meaning they were wide open to being attacked and interrupted), fail repeatedly (because of being attacked and interrupted), finally succeed, and then immediately drop the weapon. The pathing was subpar, which led to the whole “VGCW gets a plot” where all the other wrestlers in the six man match couldn’t properly get to the ladder and hence Zangief just climbed up unopposed, as well as more common things like referees getting in the way of wrestlers trying to tag their partners, or getting in the way of wrestlers trying to break up pins, or getting grabbed by the AI by accident and having moves done on them, which would led to a DQ, or the referee getting in the way of a wrestler who had tagged out, keeping him from leaving the ring, and then DQing that team because both wrestlers were in the ring at the same time (eventually Bazza had to disable DQs entirely for tag matches because this sort of thing was so common). That wasn’t even counting the game’s unique quirks, such as the fact that every other match, the AI would decide it had to break the Spanish Annoucer’s table, no matter what was actually happening. Or it would execute jumping or diving moves when the opponent was nowhere near them, leading to them falling (usually literally) on their faces. Or the fact that with the AI’s computer reflexes meaning that succeeding on prompts basically ran on RNG instead of reflexes, you could get pins that would be reversed, then reversed again, and then reversed AGAIN, sometimes going on for more than a minute straight. (Which, since this was first seen in the final match Obama had before he was removed, made the VGCW audience dub it “The Obamaroll.”) Oh yes, and while the WWE talked about just how many lines that commentators Michael Cole and Jerry Lawler had recorded for their games, a lot of those lines were related to the established wrestlers. In matches that solely included CAWS, that left the commentary pool a LOT more limited. You would hear the same lines. A lot. A lot lot lot. This wasn’t even getting into the gameplay flaws and quirks. Both WWE2K13 and 2K14, which it eventually migrated to, had some moves among the many, many accessible that did no damage. In two cases, there were moves that did damage to the person performing them, instead of suffering them. Or how that every wrestler could have a once-a-match move called a Comeback, which if successfully performed, would automatically grant the wrestler their ‘Signature’ move (which if performed, would grant the wrestler access to whatever move was set as their Finisher); there were a variety of ‘Comeback’ setups (Hulk Hogan’s hulking up, pointing, punches, leg, and then legdrop being one of them. It becomes quite funny when someone like Phoenix Wright from Ace Attorney is doing it. Because of the pointing, you see), but if you gave a wrestler the Comeback option and then didn’t actually give them a Comeback sequence in the move list, the wrestler would just immediately gain a Signature. Why would that be a problem? We’ll get to that. Or the time two wrestlers were fighting in a First Blood match, and one executed a move, which the other countered, the counter move drawing blood…and the game deciding to stop ‘counting’ after the initial move, which meant that it decided that the countered person had actually inflicted the blood-drawing match ender, and the aftermath bit showing the now inexplicably bloody-faced ‘loser’ who had actually won the match. Or how in WWE2K13, any pinfall that reached 2 would 19 times out of 20 always get to 3, which meant that virtually all kickouts were at 1, which gave a spoiler (or a great surprise) that a match was over if a count reached 2. Or how sometimes the AI just wouldn’t want to follow a match’s scripting, and would not get up on the very first 10 count in a Last Man Standing match, making the loser look very weak entirely by accident. Or perhaps the biggest in VGCW’s early days; the “Glitch Bomb”, a certain move (which was not actually any sort of powerbomb move, it was actually a sort of ‘run up and splash down on your opponent’ move) which would cause 100 percent damage to all of your opponent’s limbs, which rendered them so weak that 29 times out of 30, it would be an automatic pin and win. Its most infamous effect was an iron man match where one wrestler had it and the other didn't, and the score for a 30 minute match ended up a ridiculously lopsided 32-5. And just showing how VGCW was wholly fair, when this was revealed, a rematch was scheduled. The same guy won, by a score to 8-7. Because that's how it shook out with the AI. Oddly, despite videos of other WWE2K games being the norm in that regard, VGCW rarely suffered graphical and visual glitches, like distorted wrestlers, ring ropes that broke reality, and crowd members phasing into the ring. Not that it didn’t have a few. Like how due to how certain CAWS were set up, if a wrestler was ‘bloodied’, the blood textures might not be applied correctly. So it might, for example, end up on the wrestler’s pants instead (which led to one wrestler ‘retiring’ because of ‘destroyed knees’). Or how the create a storyline feature wasn't super smooth, which could lead to, among other things, teams coming out with the entrance of other teams. Which meant that one time, the supposed to be serious team of Scorpion from Mortal Kombat and Donkey Kong from, well, Donkey Kong glitched into this entrance.  (What made this even funnier at the time was that Bazza, who was a few seconds ahead of the Twitch video stream, typed OH NO! before it happened, before he cancelled the intro. But again, delay meant we got several seconds of it) And that was just with the game in general. You’d sometimes get even more specific things that would snowball into each other, which leads me to my actual story… The Story: THE SAGA OF CHARLES BARKLEY, THE UNASSUMING. THEN THE UNLIKELY. THEN THE UNWANTED. THEN THE UNLUCKY. This is Charles Barkley.  He was a basketball player. He was in Space Jam. Maybe he was in Space Jam 2, I haven’t seen it. This was the lone video game to bear his name.  But that’s not what got him into VGCW. Rather, it was this homebrew RPG ‘based’ on the original game...  ...which has a plot so lunatic that if you don’t know about it it has to be seen to be believed (basically, if these forums were called upon to make an RPG and were told they had to use Barkley’s lone game as a basis, Shut Up And Jam Gaiden would probably be the result). Barkley was more justified then some of the long term characters of VGCW, which included James “The Angry Video Game Nerd” Rolfe, “Chief” Shinya Arino of the Japanese game series GameCenter CX, famous Sega mascot Segata Sanshiro, Vegeta and Nappa from Dragon Ball Z (with Nappa’s personality heavily based on his DBZ Abridged series one), and even Gabe Newell, head of Valve and Steam, who would actually be a focal character for most of VGCW’s existence. Said existence, as you may have gathered, went through a few incarnations to get right. First was going from random matches to actual storylines. The next was “The Great CAW Correction”, which took a few ‘Seasons’ to really hammer out. WWE 2K13 had a limit of 50 CAWS that could be created for a single game file, which limited just how many characters that Bazza could use, and as a result, there were more than a few CAWS that made or two appearances, then vanished, and even later CAWS that debuted, but didn’t catch on. A good example was a CAW of Sagat, also from Street Fighter, which was an extremely accurate recreation of the character, but ultimately, Sagat was judged as ‘boring’ and would be storyline fired and removed from the CAW pool. The key word there was ‘extremely accurate’, as Sagat had been specifically and carefully created for VGCW. But when it began, Bazza would just download CAWS off the internet. This caused more problems than one would expect. Some CAWS were just plain ugly, and hence would swiftly be disposed of (and a few would even come back later with a ‘hard work’ recreation, like Sonic the Hedgehog). And even the ones that looked good had a problem that wasn’t obvious at first glance. Namely, the movesets they were programmed with. Many times, the whole point of the CAWs Bazza downloaded was to recreate the character, and maybe give them an appropriate Finisher and Signature, and the rest of the moves were slapdash and tossed in just to fill the slots. Not necessarily a problem if you were going to play the character yourself, but if the CAWS were solely being used for AI vs AI matches… Well, as already examined. The AI had its quirks. This resulted in numerous issues. Primarily, it didn’t matter how high the CAW’s stats were; what mattered was their moveset. If the moves were all over the place on what they targeted, the AI would use them at random. If they damaged a body part, the AI would zero in on the body part, even if they had one or two moves at most that could target it. If their Comeback was more complicated than some of the options, such as “must throw opponent into corner and then run at them” instead of ‘grab them’, the bad pathing and lack of direction could easily make the AI character’s Comeback timer run out and waste it, which meant some characters had advantages over others. Ditto if their moves, Signature, and Finisher didn’t sync or focus on a specific body part: in one title match, one wrestler hit Three Finishers and Two Signatures, and failed to get a pin partly because one targeted the head (Package Piledriver) and one targeted the body (World’s Strongest Slam), while his opponent, a reworked CAW that had an offense primarily focused on attacking the Head, hit one Finisher and won. It would take a few seasons for nearly all the CAWS to be reworked so that certain ones didn't have advantages over others. Movesets would be corrected and directed. Custom finishers would be removed because they always did less damage then normal in the game moves set as Finishers. Everyone would be given a proper Comeback move so they didn't just immediately gain a Signature. And so on. But as said, this took several months. As a result, certain patterns emerged in early VGCW. A downloaded CAW of Ganondorf when the show 'started', by chance or design, actually had a well developed moveset, and hence would win many matches and was the first to actually defend a title instead of losing it in the first match after gaining it, while Vegeta, whose CAW had very high stats, always lost in the first Seasons because his moveset was all over the place and his Finisher required him to get behind his opponent, which the AI had difficulty doing. The early fandom ran with this, dubbing Ganondorf’s several victories “The Thousand Years of Darkness” and Vegeta the “Legendary Super Jobber”, and hence establishing their VGCW personalities; Ganondorf would basically end up the Brock Lesner of the show’s run (with the added benefit that since it was purely AI vs AI chance, even HE'D lose every now and then), while Vegeta would be seen as ‘the loveable loser’ even once his CAW had been altered so he was more effective and would be put in comedy situations often, like how, after he FINALLY won a match, his CAW’s clothing was altered to the yellow pants and pink shirt that read “BAD MAN” briefly seen in the anime, and his theme song was replaced by an altered version of John Cena’s “Bad Bad Man” single (because said shirt had "Bad Man" on it). Or how he spent the entirety of Season 11 (which took place on a beach) wrestling entirely in a thong speedo. Just because. But you know fandoms. The intense silliness and devotion can easily turn sour and up your own rear end. Really, I think the term ‘Brony’ set a world record for how fast it went from generally meaning “older male fan of a certain cartoon show” to “utter creep”. And so it happened with Charles Barkley. As said, there were a lot of wrestlers who were removed for one reason or another, and Barkley was at risk of just being another one of them. He had nothing super special about him, except one thing; he’d end up being the one who actually lost to Vegeta for his first win. Not exactly a shining recommendation. This prompted a ‘feud’ with Vegeta, which Vegeta actually won, in the sense they had three matches and Vegeta won 2 of them. It seemed like that would be it for Barkley, but on the same ‘show’ that he lost the rubber match, there was a Royal Rumble that Barkley entered near last in, and managed to win, earning him a title shot. VGCW fans likely thought he’d just be someone new for then-champion Ganondorf to crush, but between Seasons 2 and 3, Barkley got a redesign. He was made generally ‘better looking’, his moveset was altered to be less basic (though his stats were unaltered), and as an in joke, he was given a ‘weak left leg’ to mirror the real life knee injury that forced the actual Barkley to retire. As in, while most wrestlers started matches with all of their body parts ‘strong’, Barkley’s left leg had one ‘unit’ of damage on it. This ended up having much more of an impact than the CAW maker and showrunner realized. Because, as said 1) It didn’t really matter what the CAW’s stats were, mainly its moveset. 2) If a body part got weakened, the AI would focus on it. Even if that meant using the same two moves over and over, and mainly 3) A deep flaw in 2K13’s gameplay was, unless a CAW explicitly had a submission move set as their finisher, you would never get a win off a submission. Ever. The AI would ALWAYS hit the RNG to break out of the submission, something that was fixed in WWE2K14. The end result would be Barkley’s opponent’s focusing on the left leg, with no way to get a win off of attacking it, while Barkley would do a more general moveset, wear down his opponent better, and win by attrition. And so, when the redone Barkley debuted against Ganondorf, he shocked everyone by winning the match and the title. Then, at the next show, when popular ‘wrestler’ Nappa cashed in the Money In The Bank contract after another (non title) Barkley match (which automatically starts a match where the cashed-in-on is weakened and the casher-in starts with a Signature), Barkley won again. Considering his biggest achievement before that was losing a feud to Vegeta, this just struck the audience as wrong. It was Kevin Nash beating Bob Backlund in nine seconds at a house show all over again, except even worse, because as said, none of this was pre-planned like that was. Then Barkley would lose the title…to Donkey Kong. Except shortly thereafter, the showrunners discovered the existence of “The Glitch Bomb”, which Donkey Kong’s CAW had and hence was given an unfair advantage. The title was hence stripped from him and put up in a Fatal Four Way match that included Barkley. Who still had his weak left leg. Which helped him to win, again, making him the only two-time champion besides Ganondorf. And the grumblings grew worse. Then, in his next match, Barkley lost the title again. To Vegeta. But, as VGCW now had ‘storylines’, Vegeta would swiftly be briefly removed from the ‘roster’ and the title vacated, again. Except before that, Barkley took part in his own MITB ladder match…and won. This sudden rise to extreme prominence was now causing a backlash, even though, again, it was pure chance, and the accidental fact that Barkley’s weak left leg had ended up an advantage rather than a drawback. With the VGCW Title again up for grabs, a King of the Ring tournament was set up, with Barkley one of the 16 entrants. He won his first match, in less than two minutes. Then he won his second match. The online Twitch crowd was now getting hostile. Then he won his third, again in two minutes. He was in the finals, and if he won he would have both the VGCW AND the Money In The Bank contract. His final opponent? Donkey Kong, once again. And as the match went on, the comments began. “Who’s who?” “A monkey is fighting a monkey!” “Who knew Donkey Kong could play basketball?” Yeah, the stupid hostility that only devoted fans can muster with its sheer inappropriate pointlessness had reared its head in full ugly display and gone right into racism. And lo and behold, Barkley did win, making him the first ever three time VGCW champion, and spawning even MORE racist comments that finally made Bazza snap, shut the game and stream down abruptly, and then post tweets that he was considering ending the show entirely for such disgusting behaviour. It was nonsense that could only happen in something attached to pro wrestling. Though it was nothing to be proud of, and perhaps heralded the worsening issues in that field to come in the 2010’s. Bazza ultimately did not cancel VGCW, and to be fair, that was the first and only time a VGCW audience drifted into that ugly territory. To address it, Bazza would have Barkley come out on the next show (using the create a storyline ability to have wrestlers cut promos), where he basically went “So you’re telling me I should lose? gently caress you, you loving babies! Go to hell! I will do everything I can to win, and if you don’t like it, go screw!” It actually won him some fans back (he was dubbed “CM Dunk” due to people comparing it to Punk’s Pipe Bomb speech). Unfortunately for Barkley, the sheer hostility that his third title win had prompted had caused the showrunners to examine Barkley’s CAW to see if there was anything that would give him an unfair advantage. And hence, his weak left leg was removed; he would now have all his limbs start at normal strength. That was it for Barkley’s reign of glory, or terror. He lost his VGCW title in his next match. Then the law of averages kicked in, and he lost every single match he had after that. And then, when he finally did cash in his MITB contract (which, again, starts one wrestler off weakened and the other with a Signature)...Barkley lost again. And then in his next match, he lost. Ultimately, it seemed like even fortune had decided that Barkley had had it way too good, and he ended up losing 8 out of 10 of the matches after his ‘Pipe Bomb’. In the end, such a terrible loss record after such heights resulted in Barkley being put in a ‘retirement match’ with another VGCW star. …which he won. So at least he got a win on his way out the door. This ended the saga of Charles Barkley, VGCW competitor. It was very very stupid. But so was VGCW, but at least 96 percent of the time, it was stupid in a good enjoyable way. Trust me, to someone who doesn’t know anything about such a show, this makes no sense at all… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5i8JZ2jvXio But to those who watched the show, it was one of the greatest moments of triumph in the show’s history. It made us mark out. And isn’t that the whole purpose, whatever shape it takes, of wrestling in the end? --- Edit Bonus: A promo for EDBW, which was basically VGCW's 'developmental' and had its own storylines and belts (like NXT), having its second season finale. Barkley got 'work' there after being 'released' from VGCW. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDY8n5_ljOc Cornwind Evil fucked around with this message at 06:09 on Mar 10, 2022 |
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Mar 10, 2022 05:43
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Just checked out some recent AEW and while it was neat to see that Sting is actually still active and prominent I was mostly sad because dude needs a new haircut so bad. Someone please cut the Stinger's hair and figure out what to do about that situation. Maybe a spooky hat or something I dunno
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Mar 10, 2022 06:06
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Elephant Ambush posted:The video for this needs to be seen:  This kid's face says it all 
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Mar 10, 2022 06:15
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Also, I want to live in a wrestling universe where the Broken/Woken Matt Hardy and evil Alexa Bliss are par for the course in wrestling. Just let it be real life anime where people do crazy poo poo, you have sentai-like tag teams, and can enjoy ridiculously over the top promos that troll the gently caress out of the audience. Like, how can you not love this?  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxz1dBFWJHI
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Mar 10, 2022 06:27
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CM Punk was fresh into his second reign as World Heavyweight Champion and was thrust into a feud with the Undertaker. Having a gimmick of “I’m straight edge and therefore better than you” is great when you’re up against a recovering addict, but doesn’t really work when you’re challenged by a zombie wizard. It didn’t help that the Undertaker wasn’t a fan of Punk’s attitude backstage. Like how WWE wanted its wrestlers to show up to the arena wearing suits all the time and Punk was both reluctant and questioned why the Undertaker was exempt. After Punk retained the title at one PPV due to bullshit, he faced Undertaker at Hell in a Cell. This was part of WWE’s unfortunate decision to start making PPVs out of match types. Sure, it works with Royal Rumble, but not for grudge match stuff. You end up with guys doing Hell in a Cell matches, not because they want to annihilate each other after months of hatred, but because there’s a show called Hell in a Cell coming up. Punk ended up losing the title to Undertaker at that show, in what was the opening match and went about ten minutes. Punk rebounded by going full-on crazy Jesus in his rants about the straight edge lifestyle. He started a faction called the Straight Edge Society, made up of his followers. At one point, he lost a mask vs. hair match to Rey Mysterio and followed it up with his own sinister luchador mask to cover his shaved head. It was pretty cool. He remained in the upper midcard during all of this until the SES wore out its welcome. Then Punk went and led the New Nexus in that faction’s last attempt to hold onto relevance. It didn’t work and ended with Punk losing to Randy Orton at WrestleMania. At least it did give us a segment where Punk beat up Orton with Orton’s “wife” watching from behind a locked bus door. Punk blew her a kiss and instead of looking horrified and/or angry, the actress came off as incredibly horny. Punk’s contract was coming up and at the time, he was ready to leave. As WWE was running out of good challengers for Cena (R-Truth of all people main-evented a PPV against him), it made sense to feed Punk to him as Punk was on his way out the door. Punk won a #1 contender’s match and at the end of one Raw, he distracted Cena so that R-Truth could take advantage and put Cena through a table. Punk went on a rant later called the Pipebomb. He made it known that he was leaving WWE, that he resented Cena's status in the company, resented the fans, and especially resented the people in charge. The whole thing was planned, but it was filled with so much stuff that was surprising for him to get away with. For instance, bringing up Paul Heyman and Brock Lesnar, who were long gone from the company at that point. The show ended with Punk’s mic being cut off and him screaming at the camera. This got major buzz. Cena was still the good guy, but he was also the handpicked winner because Vince was afraid of Punk winning the WWE Championship and leaving with it. Fans loved Punk for being so outspoken and calling Vince and his underling John Laurinaitis out on being out of touch morons. One of the cooler moments was when Vince offered a new contract to sign and Punk started going on about his demands. One demand was for them to bring back the old WWE ice cream bars. The crowd went nuts and started chanting, “WE WANT ICE CREAM!” Vince angrily growled, “I don’t care what you want!” and Punk immediately followed with, “And that’s the problem!” He became known as the Voice of the Voiceless. Punk vs. Cena was to happen at the Money in the Bank PPV in Punk’s hometown of Chicago. Wrestling fans did not know what to expect. Punk claimed he was leaving with the title, attempting to remake his classic ROH storyline from yesteryear. Cena was told that if Punk did so, Cena would be fired. There was also the x-factor of there being a new Money in the Bank winner that night, who could conceivably ambush the winner regardless. Money in the Bank 2011 is considered one of the all-time best PPVs. Even matches like Big Show vs. Mark Henry were absolute bangers. The main event of Punk vs. Cena delivered and while Punk’s victory wasn’t 100% clean, he did defeat Cena and become WWE Champion. Vince called out Money in the Bank winner Alberto Del Rio, but Punk took him out with one kick to the temple. Punk looked to Vince, blew him a kiss, and escaped into the crowd with belt in hand. It loving ruled. In actuality, Punk had signed a new contract. It was the most exciting thing in wrestling for years. We even got social media stuff of Punk keeping his title belt in the fridge. They would have to go out of their way to screw this up. So. How did WWE screw this up? Vince decided to put together an eight-man tournament to crown a new WWE Champion on the next Raw. At the end of the show, he was going to publicly fire Cena, but then Triple H showed up to explain that the Board of Directors couldn’t allow that and were instead forcing Vince to step down. Raw ended weird with a crying Vince slowly convincing the fans to chant, “THANK YOU, VINCE!” For a time, this was supposed to be Vince retiring the Mr. McMahon character and moving on, as he felt that he was too old to be on TV. The next week, Raw started with the tournament finals of Rey Mysterio vs. the Miz. Mysterio won and was announced for a title defense against Cena that very night. Remember, Cena hadn’t wrestled in eight days and Mysterio was going to be facing him as double duty. This could have been a PPV main event, but whatever. Cena won and suddenly “Cult of Personality” by Living Color started playing. It was Punk’s theme from his days in the indies. Punk showed up with his WWE Championship and compared it to Cena’s version. SummerSlam was only a few weeks away and WWE wanted this rematch immediately. They rushed Punk’s storyline and killed the mystique, but whatever. Also, Triple H made himself the special referee. Punk won the rematch due to Triple H not seeing that Cena’s foot was on the rope during a pin. After the match, Kevin Nash of all people stepped into the ring and rushed Punk. He powerbombed Punk and allowed Alberto Del Rio to take advantage by cashing in his Money in the Bank and beating Punk in an impromptu title match. Um... so... CM Punk vs. Kevin Nash? That was certainly a direction, but okay. Nash claimed that Triple H texted him to take out the winner. Punk didn’t trust Triple H to begin with, so he was okay with that explanation. Triple H insisted he was innocent. This ridiculous mystery got really stupid and it ended up being that Nash broke into Triple H’s office, picked up Triple H’s cell, texted directions to Nash’s phone, and then played along. FOR REASONS. How was Punk vs. Nash? Well, it never happened. Nash bowed out, claiming health issues and there was no match. Instead, we got Punk vs. Triple H. Triple H won the match cleanly. Yes, Triple H put himself over the hottest act they had in years for zero reason and Punk was suddenly treating him as a friend afterwards. Triple H ended up getting the match with Nash instead, which he won. In review, CM Punk’s hot storyline was tripped up when Kevin Nash screwed him out of the title for unclear reasons. In the follow-up, Triple H beat up both guys. Punk got his rematch against Del Rio at Survivor Series. There, Punk regained the WWE Championship. This happened to be in the undercard, though. The main event was John Cena and the Rock taking on the Miz and R-Truth in a very one-sided match. You see, ever since the previous WrestleMania, it had been written in stone that Cena vs. the Rock was going to be the main event of the next one. That sucked for Punk. The one last bucket list thing he wanted in his WWE career was to main event WrestleMania. Even as champion, he would be stuck in the undercard. The good news was that Punk was about to start an impressively long run as champion. The bad news was that WWE still wouldn’t treat him as the top guy.
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Mar 10, 2022 07:36
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shadow puppet of a posted:At this pace I look forward to AEW in 7 months time going through the old Tough Enough contestant rosters to find a rich vein of ex-wwe guys to plunder. ZZ Loupe vs Lee Moriarty and Pete Tornatore vs The Blade will be epic. what about me what about maven
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Mar 10, 2022 09:01
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Gavok posted:WWE tried to remake Goldberg with their own creation Gilberg. FTFY
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Mar 10, 2022 12:30
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They really missed a chance by naming him Gillborg. He could have had a thing like WMA Masters' Hakeem "The Machine" Alston, where he would show up in bespoke cybernetic gear. Only he'd spear someone or get Pedigreed and have it fly off. Bonus point if they use glitter or tin foil.
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Mar 10, 2022 13:49
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This next CM Punk post is all over the place, so bear with me. With CM Punk climbing back to the title picture, it's worth noting one of the more unique, if utterly dumb storylines WWE did around that time. To paint the picture, Triple H was supposed to be the cool face authority figure. The Miz and R-Truth were rebellious and anarchist heels who believed there was a conspiracy against them. They were enough of a threat to get a PPV main event against John Cena and the Rock, even though Cena was already shown to be capable of beating them up on his own. Third, Occupy Wall Street was going on and WWE decided to capitalize on that in their own confusing way. The roster whined about how unsafe they all felt under Triple H's rule due to Miz and R-Truth existing and an episode of Raw ended with everyone walking out, including commentators and camera men. A week later, Triple H cut a promo about how everyone on strike was a cowardly loser. So as not to paint everyone as a weenie, Cena, Sheamus, and Punk were the only ones who didn't walk out. Despite the last year, Punk stuck with Triple H and acted like going on strike was wrong. After a few minutes of Punk and the rest kissing Triple H's rear end, Vince made his big return to take Triple H off TV, welcome back all the wrestlers, and introduce John Laurinaitis as the new authority figure. While I'm sick and tired of the whole heel authority figure trope, Laurinaitis was a perfect foil for Punk. He was a total square and crusty old dean type. Now, the good news was that in an era where title runs would last a few months at most, Punk got to be WWE Champion for well over a year. That was a huge deal. The problem was that Punk was still constantly in Cena's shadow throughout all of this. After winning the title back, he main-evented the next PPV because Cena wasn't on it. In the many months that followed, as long as he was a face, Punk never got to be in the main event. That was saved for Cena vs. Kane matches or whatever. To compound on why this was bullshit, after losing to the Rock at WrestleMania, Cena was supposed to be going through the worst year of his career for the sake of redemption. Said worst year meant winning a bunch of PPV main events because Vince was afraid of having him actually look bad. They even moved Laurinaitis to Cena's corner just so Cena could be the one to take him down, robbing Punk of the conclusion to that story. But you know who did really like Punk? 2K Games. They were putting together WWE '13 and they wanted to center the marketing and cover art around Punk. WWE was infamously reluctant to go through with this and kept insisting to the company, "No, you want Sheamus!" They went with Punk anyway. Speaking of insisting on Sheamus, there were these weird avant-garde videos that were showing up on Raw about a child prophesizing the end of the world. People rightfully suspected them to be about reintroducing Chris Jericho. Jericho came back and things continued to be weird as he'd walk out in a light-up jacket, soak up all the cheers, rile up the fans, then leave without actually saying anything. He was being really enigmatic and interesting and the belief was that he was going to win the Royal Rumble and have a readymade WrestleMania feud with Punk. Instead, it was decided at the last minute that Jericho winning was just too obvious. So Vince had Sheamus win for the sake of challenging for Daniel Bryan's World Heavyweight Championship. Jericho was still penciled in as Punk's WrestleMania opponent, but they had to build the feud from the ground up and throw away all the crazy poo poo he was doing for his return. What were those "end of the world" videos about? Who knows! Anyway, Punk spent many months going through various heels and constantly defending his title. He eventually turned heel and brought back Paul Heyman to be his manager. He started acting like a total chickenshit and escaped various matches with Cena as champion. As they got ready for another PPV match, Cena had to step down due to injury. Enter Ryback. Ryback was an attempt for WWE to recreate the magic of Goldberg. He was this beefy dude in a Rob Van Dam singlet who was constantly talking up how hungry he was. He was definitely popular and WWE decided to throw him into a main event feud with Punk. There were two problems when it came to Ryback: 1) WrestleMania was already planning on doing a Cena vs. Rock rematch, this time for the title. That meant there was no room for pulling the trigger on Ryback and having him become champ. Having him constantly fail against Punk killed his momentum in turn and he never fully recovered. 2) Ryback was not very safe in the ring. Punk had been accumulating damage this whole run, but Ryback matches were like a multiplier. Punk told the story years later that after being thrown through a table badly, Punk screamed at Ryback and wanted to know if he was doing this out of malice or if he was just dumb as gently caress. "…….I'm dumb as gently caress." Punk eventually dropped the title to the Rock and lost the subsequent rematch. Cena won the Royal Rumble, setting up his WrestleMania rematch with the Rock. He did put his #1 contender spot on the line against Punk in a match on Raw and retained. It's considered possibly Cena's best singles match ever. Punk went on to be the Undertaker's next victim at WrestleMania 29. Sadly, Paul Bearer died during the lead-up and Punk was able to capitalize on that by being the hilarious WORST during this. Like telling Undertaker that it was a good thing because Bearer would not live to see the WrestleMania streak end ("You will always be perfect in his eyes."). Or beating Undertaker with Bearer's urn and dumping Bearer's remains onto the Undertaker's head. In the following months, Punk started to become a face again. This led to a falling out with Paul Heyman, who had Brock Lesnar destroy Punk. Punk lost the big match against Lesnar (which was exceptional), but went on to continue the feud by going up against Heyman's other clients: Curtis Axel and... *sigh* ...Ryback. Punk was very banged up around this time. So much that when something snapped in his wrist, he said he was happy because it meant he could take time off and recover. Vince was always able to talk him into coming back early, swearing, "I'll owe you one!" After getting his revenge on Heyman, Punk was put into a feud against Triple H (now a heel authority figure), Corporate Kane, and the Shield. He was tired and broken down both physically and mentally. He had some kind of painful growth in his lower back the size of a baseball. Rather than deal with it in any meaningful way, WWE's doctors just gave him a z-pack. Due to this, Punk literally poo poo himself during a match on SmackDown and used Twitter to invite everyone to tune in and check it out! For real, you could see the referee flick a turd nugget out of the ring. There was still a light at the end of the tunnel. He was penciled in to win the Royal Rumble and face Randy Orton for the title at WrestleMania 30. He was finally going to get that WrestleMania main event! Or, he was, until WWE brought back Batista. Now all Vince could see was Batista vs. Orton as his big money match. Punk was entered into the Rumble at #1 and stayed until nearly the end. Early on, he received a concussion and was loopy throughout. As the fans realized that Daniel Bryan was inexplicably not in the Rumble match, Punk was seen as the most acceptable alternative. And so, once Corporate Kane reached into the ring, pulled Punk out, and chokeslammed him through a table, fans lost hope. Batista won to a chorus of boos, despite him being a face. Punk was instead going to be facing Triple H somewhere on the WrestleMania 30 undercard, which Triple H insisted was a very big deal. Daniel Bryan was going to go take on Sheamus. Of course. Those plans fell through too. The next day, before Raw, Punk was still feeling the effects of his concussion. Doctors told him to just run the ropes for a bit and shake it off. Furious, Punk had finally had enough. Completely fed up, he yelled at Triple H and Vince for a bit before walking out of the arena and going home. Between this and the fans making GBS threads on Batista's Rumble push, WrestleMania 30 ended up being a very different show, culminating in Daniel Bryan winning the title in the main event. Up next: the aftermath, featuring a broken friendship, the biggest wet fart of a return, and CM Punk's butt being treated like the Kennedy assassination.
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Mar 10, 2022 19:59
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VGCW loving owned so hard lol
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Mar 10, 2022 20:08
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WoodrowSkillson posted:VGCW loving owned so hard lol I only caught some of it, and never often enough, but it was the loving best. Some of the wackiest poo poo would happen, and the fact that it was all random made it so much better.
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Mar 10, 2022 21:11
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late, but I'm watching AEW Revolution and I know it makes me a huge mark but I actually stood up and got chills when william regal walked out to broker peace between mox and danielson loving perfect despite it being really close and kind of anyone's game and just happening to tip one way (which is a great way to book it when it's part of an angle to set up a team) they still had me sold on the "not over yet" vibe n the immediate aftermath and regal legit mentored both of them, but I somehow didn't see it coming at all great stuff
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Mar 10, 2022 23:46
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What is a z pack and is making GBS threads a normal side effect of it? I couldn’t imagine what would have happened if Punk had a quick case of diarrhea.
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Mar 10, 2022 23:57
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A Z-pack is a prepackaged five-day course of the antibiotic Azithromycin, lazy doctors like to throw one at every thing that looks like an infection whether there's a better treatment or not, and yes, it can give you the shits.
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Mar 11, 2022 00:08
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from what i remember of the court case, it was established that punk was being a little overdramatic that he was days away from having his entire rear end fall off due to mrsa but wwe also spent enormous sums of money to establish in open court that: - cm punk is not a doctor - cm punk did poo poo and poop himself - it is difficult to sue for slander against someone who doesn't directly name you - also if you state openly that you suffered no material loss and your feelings are hurt - also if what the person says is substantively true - cm punk's other doctor *does* look like patrick bateman - the rear end bone is connected to the back bone - the cm stands for chick magnet
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Mar 11, 2022 00:50
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And we found out that colt cabana can go gently caress himself.
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Mar 11, 2022 01:03
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Jerry Lawler, long time commentator for WWE, is also the long time promoter of a tiny, sort of pocket universe wrestling promotion in Memphis. At some point, prior to the famous "Attitude Era," Vince McMahon dropped by to test out the heel character he'd later portray. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oI_1cW-1xZc https://i.imgur.com/DeU0geZ.mp4
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Mar 11, 2022 01:10
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FilthyImp posted:They really missed a chance by naming him Gillborg. He could have had a thing like WMA Masters' Hakeem "The Machine" Alston, where he would show up in bespoke cybernetic gear. Only he'd spear someone or get Pedigreed and have it fly off. Bonus point if they use glitter or tin foil. They just need to get Hideo Kojima to write for them. ...I say that but the Metal Gear games are all extremely pro wrestling. Especially MGS3 onwards that specifically introduce fancy military wrestling moves.
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Mar 11, 2022 11:33
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shadow puppet of a posted:And we found out that colt cabana can go gently caress himself. Colt Cabana told my brother he could make it to the WWE, which maybe was intended as an encouraging white lie but instead ruined any credibility he had as a trainer and they parted ways soon after.
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Mar 11, 2022 12:25
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Even though CM Punk walked out of WWE like Scarface in Half-Baked, he claims that he was just blowing off steam and was planning to come back. He was even in contact with Triple H over it. Regardless, they fired him in June. I'm not going to blame them on that one, as he did basically quit to begin with, but to have the documents delivered on the day of his wedding? That's cold. How did Punk's disappearance affect the main WWE product? Outside of WrestleMania 30 being radically changed, not too much. Fans would chant "CM PUNK!" for years, especially at Chicago shows, but it was either because his wife AJ Lee was wrestling or because they were trying to flip off the promotion. Punk's absence was seen across different kinds of WWE media, though. - WWE did a documentary on the Ultimate Warrior's final days. For those who don't know, after years of being on the outs with the company, Warrior was brought back as the head of the WWE Hall of Fame Class of 2014. Over a weekend of making amends with Vince and Hogan, Warrior was inducted on Saturday, appeared at WrestleMania on Sunday, cut an inspirational promo on Monday's Raw, then keeled over on Tuesday. Anyway, there was a part where you could see a framed 2014 Royal Rumble poster in the background. Noticeably, there was a yellow post-it note obscuring Punk's face for the sake of pettiness. - WWE 2K15 had a special Showcase mode that had you play through the entire Cena vs. Punk rivalry. The wheels were in motion already so they couldn't cancel that part of the game, but this was also a year where they were scanning everyone's faces for visual accuracy. While Cena looked fantastic, Punk and (for some reason) Vince looked hilariously off. - WWE was doing animated movies with Hanna-Barbera properties. Over the years, we got two Scooby-Doo movies, one Flintstones movie, and one Jetsons. The main villain of the Flintstones one was CM Punkrock and WWE told the HB people to fully remove him from the movie. HB rolled their eyes and ignored the order. Unfortunately, the second Scooby movie was going to feature a lot of Hulk Hogan and THAT one they had to do a lot of editing on after his video got leaked. - Punk was going to be a major part of the animated series Camp WWE, so that got reworked. Presumably, Hogan was initially going to be a camp counselor on the show, so that was done away with too. - A publisher called Papercutz was doing WWE comics co-written by Mick Foley. The first issue came out around Punk's departure. The first two arcs (8 issues) heavily featured Punk. At the end of the eighth issue, there was an abrupt scene of Daniel Bryan talking up all of Punk's accomplishments and wishing him well as Punk walked off, waving goodbye. After months of silence, Punk finally told his story on his best friend Colt Cabana's podcast. One big reveal was that after leaving WWE, he went to a real doctor and found out that the growth on his lower back was a nasty MRSA. Had he continued wrestling with it, it could have gotten really bad for him. WWE responded in a most bizarre way at first. A video was put online of CM Punk performing at the 2014 Rumble. There was no audio whatsoever. It was just slow-motion zoom-ins of Punk's rear end for several minutes, as if asking the fans, "Do YOU see a nasty growth the size of a baseball on his rear end? Do you?!" Soon after, Punk and Colt were sued by WWE's Dr. Amann for defamation. It was very much just WWE suing him by proxy to piss Punk off and make him bleed money. Even though Punk won, WWE got what they wanted out of it. More than just screwing with Punk's money, it ruined his relationship with Colt. I don't know the full details, but the belief is that Punk told Colt that he would take care of Colt's legal bills. Then Colt was seen chilling backstage at a WWE event, hanging out with the talent there. Punk felt betrayed and rescinded his offer, killing their friendship. Punk spent the next few years writing comic books, getting destroyed in MMA fights, and starring in horror B-movies. Apparently, Tony Khan came to him years ago about his plans for AEW. Punk didn't think much of the offer at first, but did watch AEW when it started up and it started to reignite his interest in the business. Enough that he went to a Chicago ice cream place and warned them ahead of time that at one point he's going to be ordering thousands of wrapped ice creams for a big event. The funny thing is, CM Punk actually did get rehired by WWE... sort of. A couple years ago, WWE had a show on FS1 called WWE Backstage. It was an unnecessary and not very popular show about people just discussing what's going on in WWE. Fox hired Punk to appear on the show for several episodes. In other words, Punk's great return to WWE was just him walking onto the set of a show nobody watched unannounced. Nothing much happened with that. Seth Rollins tried to call him out in a promo, but it led to nothing. Punk remained very critical of WWE on Backstage. It should be noted that even though it was a WWE show, Punk was working as an employee of Fox. Once the show was cancelled, he was gone. Punk's interest in returning grew the more he watched AEW to the point that he was hyping up various midcarders on Twitter as guys he'd like to wrestle IF he ever came back. The thing he claims put it over the top was their treatment of Brodie Lee, especially in terms of keeping his lengthy hospitalization under wraps. Punk showing up on AEW became an open secret, especially when they announced a near-impromptu episode of Rampage at Chicago. Fox was furious at WWE, wondering why they didn't at least TRY to hire him away. And so, Punk showed up on AEW Rampage. And he brought ice cream for everyone. Nobody knows how things are between him and Colt, who is also part of the AEW locker room, but otherwise, Punk has been making the most of his new lease on life.
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Mar 11, 2022 16:46
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this was Punk last Sunday. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Thw8aAjNyz0
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Mar 11, 2022 17:04
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That was like just two hours before he went back to shouting at fans online for not knowing his old music. Guy is so bipolar and will always indulge his negative side Can’t wait till he turns his ever-frothing inner bile on aew once the honeymoon is over and things starting to be their fault in his eyes.
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Mar 11, 2022 17:10
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| # ? Apr 27, 2024 03:53 |
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I can't wait!
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Mar 11, 2022 17:33
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