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GolfHole posted:more Back in 1999, there were these two comedy wrestlers Stevie Richards and the Blue Meanie who put together a series of taped segments called the Blonde Bitch Project. It was a Blair Witch parody in a time when everything was a Blair Witch parody, presumably making fun of Sable, who had recently left the company and was unpopular backstage. Only the first segment was ever aired. Apparently, Vince had never even heard of the Blair Witch Project. So by his logic, NOBODY had ever heard of the Blair Witch Project and the whole thing was quietly scrapped.
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Jan 27, 2022 17:21
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The Blue World Order was gold, man. Though Vince had the opposite kind of reaction around 2010. It took him a couple years, but he had finally seen Dark Knight on a plane or something and suddenly Edge was acting like a blatant hybrid of the Joker and Two-Face for several months.
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Jan 27, 2022 18:06
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My favorite Vince McMahon story is the current one where after 20 years of people accepting that Triple H would be taking over WWE eventually and would rule the wrestling world, Vince made him the fall guy for AEW's success and not only practically disowned him, but burned all of his pet projects to the ground out of spite. And during all of this, Triple H had a heart attack.
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Jan 28, 2022 03:17
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gbs but from 2004 posted:sorry for seriouspost but Sydney Bottocks went over a bunch of it, but I might as well effort post it. Vince never stopped running WWE. Still, for many years, it was expected that Triple H and Stephanie McMahon would eventually get the keys once Vince... well, died, since that's the only way he's going to stop. Triple H has many problems -- he's an rear end in a top hat, a tremendous egomaniac and a racist -- but he at least seems like a comparatively sane human being and has an understanding of how wrestling has evolved. People can argue over whether it would be good, but Triple H running WWE as a whole would be a more coherent product. There are also certain Vince McMahon yes-men who were absolutely hosed the moment Triple H would ascend, especially head director Kevin Dunn. So there was that to look forward to. Triple H was in charge of the future of the company. Not only did he oversee the Performance Center (a training facility for rookie members of the roster) but NXT, the developmental brand. For a while, NXT was an hour-long show streaming on the WWE Network, taped four episodes at a time with 4-5 special PPV events a year. Not only was it a way for new wrestlers to figure themselves out on a smaller scale, but for veteran indie wrestlers to understand WWE's direction style. Triple H kept hiring popular wrestlers from the indies and other countries because it made him look good to the fans, the match quality of NXT shows went through the roof and it helped WWE deflate any chance of opposition. It was basically a variation of how Vince destroyed the territories in the 80's. He even succeeded to some extent as the UK was in the midst of a new wrestling renaissance. Triple H started up NXT UK, they scooped up all the big names and the UK wrestling scene straight-up died. They were planning on doing NXT Japan before the pandemic happened. The problem was that Vince still ran Raw and Smackdown and he never watched any NXT. That meant that when somebody had graduated from NXT and made it to the main roster with a fully-formed character and built-in fanbase, Vince didn't know what the gently caress. Triple H could tell him who they were and how great they were, but Vince made his own conclusions and their fate was a crapshoot. Sometimes Triple H was Andy at the end of Toy Story 3, telling Bonnie about how awesome and meaningful Woody is, only for him to wind up buried in the closet by the next movie. NXT wrestlers would be afraid of graduating because being a big fish in a small pond was a better fate than being booked as a loser virgin under Vince's rule. Seriously, NXT had a can't-miss prospect who went to the main roster and was constantly made fun of for being a loser and a virgin. But hey, this was temporary. One day, Triple H would be running things and NXT people would thrive on the main roster. Wrestlers Kenny Omega and the Young Bucks were getting huge buzz and WWE was trying to sign them. It seemed like such a done deal that Vince, Triple H, Stephanie and Shane cut this big promo on TV about how they were going to start listening to the fans more as a prelude to them announcing the signings. Instead, at the eleventh hour, those three guys decided to be on the ground floor of AEW and see where that could take them. Not only did Vince look stupid, but he had potential opposition for the first time in 20 years. Triple H's "sign everyone" strategy had already become moot. When AEW announced that they were getting a TV deal, WWE announced that NXT was also getting a TV deal. On the same night at the same time. They wanted to strangle this promotion in the crib. Vince and his people took more interest in NXT because they wanted their developmental show to crush the other promotion's main show. They threw everything they had and even got a couple wins here and there, but AEW dominated the Wednesday Night War. Eventually, NXT had to retreat and move to Tuesday nights. Vince was PISSED and blamed it all on Triple H. Triple H was demoted and NXT was deemed a tremendous failure. Now it's run by Vince's yes-men with less emphasis on indie darlings and more on large, muscular guys with little experience and stupid gimmicks. Like one of their most prominent characters is a dude with the gimmick of "evil woke guy." But hey, making fun of millennials works on some level because while NXT ratings are in the garbage, the people who DO watch it skew to like 65 year old on average. There was a video of Triple H at the Performance Center, talking up the changes that were going on and the dude looked just so defeated and sad. Then sometime after, he suffered some kind of heart attack. Word is that when recuperating, people were told not to call him up about anything involving the company's business. There have been very few pictures of him since and nobody seems to know what's up with him. Meanwhile, the guy who has replaced him as Vince's righthand man is Nick Khan. Nick Khan gives no shits about wrestling or who's getting pushed or what storylines are going on. He just cares about the bottom line and has gone on multiple firing sprees. A lot of his victims are Triple H's guys. For instance, Khan fired Samoa Joe. Triple H ended up rehiring him (presumably for less money) and within a few months, Khan fired him AGAIN. It's worth noting that WWE is firing all these people despite making record-breaking profits lately. It used to be that they were afraid of firing people because AEW could take them in, but now they're like, "Haha, they can't hire EVERYONE!" The spite continues into some of Triple H's favorites from NXT. He spent like a year and a half pushing this guy Karrion Kross as this generation's Triple H and had him win the NXT championship while being undefeated. Kross -- as champion -- was called up to the main roster where he debuted by losing to Jeff Hardy in 3 minutes, being forced to wear the doofiest armor, losing some more, then being fired. WWE is an utter mess right now held up by TV deals and Saudi blood money. Some say that they're maneuvering to sell. Some think they're just cutting the fat for the hell of it. If something happens to Vince, the company will probably end up in the hands of someone like Nick Khan, John Laurinaitis, Bruce Pritchard or whoever. But probably not Triple H. Not anymore. He probably would have made it a better show, but drat if it isn't great schadenfreude.
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Jan 28, 2022 23:05
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Jim Neidhart cares.
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Jan 28, 2022 23:27
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gbs but from 2004 posted:hell yeah these 2 posts was the poo poo I was looking for. Hhh is racist? Maybe not as overt as Vince or Hogan, but yeah. Ignoring the TV stuff like when he wore blackface to make fun of the Rock or made gorilla gestures at Mark Henry, there are some backstage stories that don't make him look all that good. Regularly making fun of a writer of Indian descent to his face while doing an accent. This one time when a black wrestler was like "Hey, this design you guys made for my t-shirt is racist as gently caress and I don't like it. Please use another design or at least don't put it on a black t-shirt," and Triple H insisted on keeping it as is. Panic! At The Tesco posted:i only ever watched wrestling back in the attitude era and drat, shane's looking old these days He came back a few years ago and always wrestled in a shirt. Everyone figured he was just trying to hide what age did to his body. Then his shirt fell off during a cage match and it was this big holy poo poo moment because the dude is cut.
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Jan 29, 2022 20:12
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Jamesman posted:
It's even better with context. Shane's whole deal is that he doesn't really need to be part of WWE, but does it because it's the only way he can spend any time with his workaholic father. At first, fans think of him as the most normal and down-to-earth member of the McMahon family, but then he can't help himself and he starts booking himself in situations where he's considered a top tier fighter. Like being in a competitive match against the Undertaker at WrestleMania in a Hell in a Cell and having it last a full half hour. The other day, they did the Royal Rumble PPV and the men's Rumble match is widely considered to be the worst of all the Rumble matches (of which there are over 40). It turns out that Shane was in charge of producing it and not only kept changing poo poo to the point that wrestlers didn't know when they were supposed to come out or who they were meant to eliminate, but Shane booked himself into the Rumble where he ended up in third place. So Shane was fired for either loving up the Royal Rumble to such an incredible extent or because the show was so hated that they needed a fall guy.
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Feb 2, 2022 22:33
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Shane McMahon was just let go by WWE.
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Jamesman posted:If this were 20 years ago, Shane being top-tier would sound perfectly reasonable to me. Dude was insane. The difference was that back in the day, Shane was treated as lesser than the wrestlers, but would endure punishment, cheat and do daredevil poo poo to get by. These days, he runs out, does the worst-looking boxing punches you've ever seen and his opponents have to sell it like death. quote:AEW is the new competition right? I would watch the hell out of it if Shane O' Mac came out next week and did a flying dropkick from one corner of the ring to another. Doesn't even have to be to anybody. He can just have another match with God or something like that one time on WWE. Nah, AEW already has a guy whose gimmick is that he's trying to pick a fight with God. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMVda-OB3Cs
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Feb 3, 2022 01:21
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Comfy Fleece Sweater posted:I don't follow wrestling at all and know of Vince McMahawn only as an internet meme or strange news, but this was really interesting. Just a guy named Joe Gacy who cuts promos about how he believes in inclusiveness and safe spaces, but in a way that's supposed to make him a bad guy. Most people just find him to be cringeworthy and there to make the boomer viewers laugh. Similarly, there was a pretty tone-deaf wrestling stable based on BLM recently that went nowhere. quote:What is this about saudi blood money. A few years ago, WWE started dealing with the Saudi government to do special PPVs in Jedah. WWE was being paid a shitload to do two PPVs a year that would 1) act like propaganda to how great Saudi Arabia is and 2) pretend each show is the biggest thing ever even if it wasn't. Like the first event was called The Greatest Royal Rumble because it had a 50-man Royal Rumble instead of the usual 30. The winner didn't get anything special or anything. One show was even constantly touted as being "Equal to or even better than WrestleMania!" The second show, Crown Jewel, was only weeks after the horrific murder of Jamal Khashoggi by the Saudi government. WWE wasn't sure whether or not they were going to do the show until the last minute (Vince was apparently waiting to see if Trump was going to tell him not to), but ultimately did. In the lead-up, they never outright said on TV where the show was going to be. They also figured "in for a penny, in for a pound" and used this event to bring back Hulk Hogan, who WWE had cut ties with for a couple years due to his racist sex tape scandal. While COVID slowed things down, WWE still does these shows, which is where a big chunk of their earnings come from. There was a whole situation after one show where WWE hadn't been paid in full and, due to the argument, ended up getting stuck on the runway, unable to escape the country. I mean, Vince got away in his personal jet, but the remaining roster was being held hostage until they were able to figure things out. WWE's been losing viewers more and more by the year and one of the big breaking points for a lot of them is this whole mess. quote:Vince seems like an insane person every time I hear about him. I bet WWE it's full of real life wrestling storylines The backstage stuff in wrestling is fascinating as gently caress. So many people are just insane and the weirdest poo poo goes on. I can elaborate, but some examples: - WWE putting on a tribute show for a dead wrestler WHILE finding out that he murdered his wife and son. - The time a wrestling PPV abruptly ended its main event because one of the wrestlers showed up high as hell and nobody was sure what to do. - WWE doing a real-life quasi-MMA tournament that went off the rails because none of it was predetermined. - Hulk Hogan being completely weird about protecting his spot as the top guy to the point that it sabotages whatever promotion he's performing in. - The ever-changing relationship between WWE and the Ultimate Warrior where they ended up releasing two documentaries about his career: one where he was considered a total joke of a man and one where he was the greatest person ever and a true legend. Vice has a series called Dark Side of the Ring that goes over some of the more messed up behind-the-scenes stuff. It's a good series, but some of the stuff can be really heavy.
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Feb 3, 2022 05:10
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Jamesman posted:poo poo like this is more fascinating and entertaining than WWE puts out on TV. WWE spent years being a mix of good and bad. Their problem for a while was that they were dead set on who the main eventers were with a couple being outright unbeatable (Cena, Undertaker, Batista) and if somebody became naturally popular over time, they would ultimately get fed to one of those main eventers and their careers would suffer for it. They had some talent that hit it big like Daniel Bryan, New Day, Becky Lynch and Rusev, but those are all examples of acts who got wildly popular DESPITE the WWE's efforts. Bryan's WWE career as a whole is kind of nuts. Then WWE had something going in the mid '10s with the Shield, a trio of asskickers who were nigh-unbeatable as a unit. They had a long run of six-man tag matches against all sorts of team combinations that were really good across the board. Then WWE split them up and got strongly behind Shield member Roman Reigns. He was always going to be the golden boy of the group, but they really went all-in on him and kept insisting he was the future of the company. With Cena slowing down, it was very apparent that Roman was his replacement and they kept making him the focus of nearly every WrestleMania, hoping that this time the fans would cheer for him. They also became obsessed with bringing back names from the past. For the past decade, Brock Lesnar has been paid an obscene amount of money to show up rarely to be WWE's final boss character and punk out everyone else. Goldberg had two championship runs in the past several years and he's old and broken down. He had a match against the Undertaker in Saudi Arabia that was especially sad to watch as the two were so old and winded from the heat that they nearly killed each other due to being sloppy. The writing got gradually worse and even guys who SHOULD be stars based on WWE's metrics (ie. Braun Strowman, who is like Ogre from Revenge of the Nerds mixed with the Juggernaut) are constantly used to get Roman and Brock over. They're really the only two who matter on the roster and everyone else is just having constant rematches that don't matter and never lead to anything. It's widely believed that despite the company somehow making record profits, it's absolutely the worst its ever been creatively and there are no signs it's ever going to get better.
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Feb 4, 2022 03:42
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Pope Corky the IX posted:What did he do, open a door with his head? Goldberg likes to psyche himself up pre-match by slamming his head into a locker. This has worked against him time to time, like when his head kept bleeding during a promo and he started trailing off. So Goldberg concussed himself via his pre-match ritual and had to put on a 10-minute match with the Undertaker. At one point he went for his finisher, the Jackhammer, where he holds Undertaker upside-down and is supposed to twist and slam him safely on his back. Instead, he fell over and dropped the Undertaker straight down on his head. Now the Undertaker was out of it and when he went for the Tombstone, he didn't do it safely and Goldberg's head bounced off the mat. In the end, Undertaker did a chokeslam that was more of a "choke-push" and upon getting the pin, was openly pissed off about everything that just happened.
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Feb 4, 2022 16:15
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Xotl posted:So out of the 64 worst things in a long line of worst things twitter contest, what was the worstest (with some context, because I stopped following this stuff in the late 80s). The ring boy scandal. I don't know enough of it to be an expert, because I really don't want to know more than the basics, but there was a dude who would take sexual liberties with underage employees in the 80's and Vince turned a blind eye to it.
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Feb 5, 2022 03:46
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wesleywillis posted:And lets not forget Tugboat, who came to find out that although he was whiter than bread it turns out he was of African descent. That was actually One Man Gang. Tugboat went on to become Typhoon and, much more importantly, the Shockmaster.
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Feb 5, 2022 14:58
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So more news has come out about why Shane McMahon got fired, which includes him wanting to book himself as #1 in the Royal Rumble so he could be the "iron man" of the match and last like 50 minutes before making it in third place. Nobody else wanted that, especially winner Brock Lesnar, and it got vetoed. This reminds me of another great WTF WWE moment from a few years ago. The big main event for SummerSlam was Brock Lesnar vs. Randy Orton. WWE wanted the match to have a controversial ending that made Brock look like a monster. The plan was that Brock was going to just gently caress Orton up and win by referee stoppage. Sure, fine. The problem was that WWE was vehemently against the idea of blading (for the uninitiated, blading is when you sneakily cut part of your forehead with a concealed razor to make yourself bleed). Blading was banned, but you wouldn't get in trouble for legitimately getting busted open. WWE decided to get around this in the most unsafe was as possible by having Orton accidentally-on-purpose get his head torn open. They asked Brock to do a series of elbow strikes across the head that would safely bust Orton open. Brock certainly made him bleed, but there was nothing safe about it and Orton received a nasty concussion out of it. Other wrestlers were not clued into this (wrestling promoters inexplicably think "working the boys" enhances the product in some way) and some were genuinely pissed about what looked like Brock being unprofessional. Chris Jericho was the only one pissed enough to confront Brock about it, but backstage people had to talk him down. Anyway, Shane McMahon was an on-air authority figure at the time and showed up at the end of the PPV to check up on Orton. Brock hit him with his finisher, the F5, and left. Middle-age schlub Shane almost completely shrugged off the move and angrily watched him leave. This was apparently Shane angling to set up Brock vs. Shane at WrestleMania, but there was zero follow-up because Brock absolutely wanted nothing to do with that and said that there was no chance. Orton was legit mad about the whole situation and made it publicly known that he never wanted to work with Brock again. WWE tried to make good by having Orton win the title at the next WrestleMania. He won it in a match where images of maggots and cockroaches were randomly projected onto the ring because wrestling is weird.
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Feb 6, 2022 21:06
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To bring this back to Vince, the whole "Triple H dresses as Kane and fucks a mannequin" bit was his idea and he apparently spent the whole day laughing his rear end off about it. The public's reaction was basically, "Wow, that was maybe the stupidest thing WWE's ever put on TV." A week later, Triple H -- speaking for Vince -- cut an angry promo about how people are stupid for not thinking that the Katie Vick bit wasn't the greatest poo poo ever. Similarly, Triple H cut a promo several years ago in response to something fans hated and joked about how his friend "Mark" called and told him that he was going to stop watching WWE. This was him basically laughing at how people say they'll stop watching and never do. Anyway, people go back to that clip a lot because WWE currently gets like a third of the ratings compared to that episode.
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Feb 7, 2022 05:18
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Cornwind Evil posted:Vince didn't come up with it. That's a good enough excuse for me to bring up the utter weirdness of Sting in WWE. Sting was WCW's golden boy. Even when the company was loving up left and right, at least they always had Sting to be their ace. Then WCW went under and Vince bought it. Certain top WCW wrestlers had their own special contracts (Sting, Goldberg, Kevin Nash, Scott Hall, Diamond Dallas Page, etc.) that weren't purchased in the acquisition, so if Vince wanted to do a big WWF vs. WCW storyline featuring the actual top names, he'd have to pony up more money. Vince was fine with just having WWF take on what was effectively WCW's midcard. Diamond Dallas Page was so excited about the prospect of WWF vs. WCW that he decided to forego his contract and sign with WWF. This turned out to be a big mistake as the big WWF vs. WCW feud was incredibly one-sided and made the WCW guys look like absolute jokes at nearly every turn. ESPECIALLY DDP. As it turns out, Vince was especially mad about WCW's very existence and how close they came to putting his company out of business. Instead of making a story that made the two sides look equally formidable (which is how you make money in wrestling), he just drove home how WCW was made up of losers to the point that he had WWF guys join WCW's side to even things out. After that storyline was done, the bigger names gradually started to show up. Sting wasn't interested, blaming religious reasons at the time. Instead, he went to TNA, where they mostly treated him like a king despite their own utter badness. Plus he had an infamous PPV match against a very drugged up Jeff Hardy that's a story in itself. Going into the 2010s, the one dream match that people had wanted to see for years was Undertaker vs. Sting. Both guys were getting on in years and the window for such a match was closing. Undertaker especially was down to appearing for one or two matches a year due to how broken down his body was getting. A vignette building towards the Undertaker's return was shown, but to many fans, it looked like it was WWE announcing the coming of Sting. While it turned out not to be Sting, it at least showed that there was huge interest in seeing him pop up in WWE. 2K Games signed a contract with Sting to appear as pre-order DLC in one of their WWE 2K games. On an episode of Raw, they showed a completely kickass trailer revealing Sting and you could hear the people in the crowd losing their poo poo over it. Then the logo for the game followed by thousands of people all sighing and groaning at once. Eventually, WWE did sign Sting and he made an appearance preventing Triple H from interfering in the finals of a big Survivor Series match. Constantly called "The Vigilante Sting," he would appear now and then to offset Triple H from abusing his authority. The two were immediately set to have a match at WrestleMania. Unfortunately, Vince McMahon could not let poo poo go. Triple H and Stephanie would mention that Sting has come for Triple H because he's angry that WCW lost the war so many years ago. Sting cut a promo explaining that that was very much not the case and he was there to take on Triple H's corruption. Triple H and Stephanie would continue to rant about how this was a WCW thing and the commentators would side with them. The match itself was stupid as hell. Triple H's buddies D-Generation X came out to help him and Sting was helped out by the nWo... who were his biggest enemies in WCW. But they were WCW back then, so... they're allies now? Meanwhile, one of the commentators (with Vince in his earpiece) would not shut the gently caress up about how WCW lost the war with WWF and WCW was made up of a bunch of loser assholes. Then Triple H won even though everyone agrees that that was the wrong call. They brought in Sting, called him a bitter loser, then had him lose his big match. It also didn't help that they did Sting vs. Triple H when fans wanted Sting vs. Undertaker. Sting didn't appear again for several months. He returned to feud with WWE Champion Seth Rollins (they needed the star power) and got his neck hosed up by a botched powerbomb to the corner. Afterwards, WWE wanted to profit from him, but not allow him to wrestle. They insisted that he suffered a career-ending injury and his in-ring days were finished. During the first year of COVID, wrestling went all-in on "cinematic matches." Those were basically pre-taped matches that were more like mini-movies than a regular wrestling match. These have been a mixed bag, but they're great for hiding weaknesses and going full-on crazy, even supernatural. Sting suggested that he and Undertaker (who really wanted one last good match before retiring) could easily do a cool cinematic match. WWE turned him down and instead went with Undertaker vs. AJ Styles, which was fine, but not exactly a dream match decades in the making. Annoyed, Sting signed with AEW, where he became a mentor to brooding skateboarder Darby Allin. Even though he's 62, Sting is in fantastic shape and has taken part in his share of tag matches where he's looking better than he has any right to be.
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Feb 7, 2022 07:45
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The Mark Henry/Mae Young stuff happened for the sake of making GBS threads on Mark Henry and embarrassing him. Mark Henry was representing the US in the 1996 Olympics as a weight lifter. In the lead-up, he signed with WWF and because he seemed like such a huge get at the time, the contract had him getting $10 million dollars over the course of ten years. Considering this is nearing the time WWF almost went bankrupt, that was major. They had buyer's remorse almost immediately. Henry got injured at the Olympics and didn't win any medals. Not only did he have to learn wrestling from the ground up, but being a power lifter doesn't exactly translate into wrestling that well. Sure, he was strong, but he was also an immobile cube of a man. An injury-prone one too. And they had to pay him $10 million dollars and keep him around for a decade. All they could do at that point was make constant attempts to humiliate him at every turn. Put him in a relationship with Mae Young. Have him publicly admit to loving his own sister. Anything to get him to quit so they don't have to pay up. Mark saw it through and, funny enough, got re-signed after his ten years were up as he was finally hitting his stride by then.
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Feb 7, 2022 15:54
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Big Beef City posted:e: also the milk truck thing would have been funny like, twice. But no it's WWE so run that poo poo into the ground for about a century or two. No, you're mistaken. Kurt Angle never drove a milk truck. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcv9kp0jwWY
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Feb 7, 2022 21:06
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Pennywise the Frown posted:I'm watching the AEW one on youtube (streamed to my TV) and it's mostly wrestling. I thought it was mostly just promos and talking and drama poo poo. I'm used to MMA fights where there are big breaks between each fight and this is just non-stop action. With AEW, Monday and Tuesday nights they just do YouTube streams that are mainly lesser matches. Either one-sided squashes or midcarders slumming it. Their main show is on TBS on Wednesday night and their secondary show is TNT on Friday. You'll find more promos and talking on the TV shows, but not nearly enough as you will with WWE.
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Feb 8, 2022 02:24
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Trollologist posted:Do the brawl for all next! I'm on this. I want to see a Wes Anderson movie about Brawl for All.
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Feb 9, 2022 02:17
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1998 was the year when WWF was figuring its poo poo out and was rising up to beat down WCW and regain its spot as the #1 wrestling company. They had so many hot acts at the time like Steve Austin, The Rock, D-Generation X, Mankind, Kane, and so on. There were so many great characters and ideas that it’s shocking that this was the year when Brawl for All happened. Apparently, head writer Vince Russo overheard wrestler Bradshaw boast about how tough he was backstage and, being that Bradshaw’s an rear end in a top hat who has it coming, Russo had an idea to give Bradshaw his just desserts. A 16-man quasi-MMA tournament was put together called Brawl for All. It was basically boxing with takedowns and a sketchy point system. Most importantly, it was REAL. Not predetermined or pulled punches or any of that. It was 100% entirely legit during a show where everything else was not. The winner was set to get $75,000 and a bunch of wrestlers signed up for it because they were mostly midcarders who were in danger of falling into obscurity. Notably at the time, WWF had a handful of legit MMA guys, including early UFC stars Ken Shamrock and Dan Severn. Supposedly, Shamrock was told NOT to take part in the tournament and Severn was pulled from it after winning in the first round. The main reason for this was that WWF had already handpicked their winner...despite the realness of the competition. “Dr. Death” Steve Williams was considered the favorite to the point that he was a ringer. The plan was for him to blaze through the competition, prove himself to be a true badass, and then go on to challenge Steve Austin at some point. The problem with all of this? IT WAS A LEGITIMATE COMPETITION and Steve Williams, while the kind of guy you’d like to have on your side in a barroom brawl, was not a boxer. A lot of the guys weren’t trained in boxing and there were so many injuries. There were guys who lost and advanced anyway because the winner was too hurt to show up for the next fight. Also of importance: the fans absolutely hated these segments and would chant "BORING!" regularly. Steve Williams was put in a first round match against Pierre the Quebecer, who while a total badass in real life, is also blind in one eye, so pretty limited in this kind of situation. In the second round, Williams faced Bart Gunn. Bart Gunn spent several years in a tag team the Smoking Gunns and after they split, he had absolutely nothing to do. But he was trained in boxing. The match went three rounds and after the first two, the points seemed blatantly and undeservedly skewed in Williams’ favor. If this went into a decision, Williams would absolutely win. And so, Bart Gunn knocked him the gently caress out with a left hook, messing up his jaw. Jim Ross on commentary tried to hide his anger, both because Williams was his close friend and because he knew that this was loving up the company’s plans. Not only was Williams out of the tournament, but he was also injured and would be gone for several months. Even when he came back, he was only around for a few weeks before leaving the company. Bart Gunn went on to knock out Bradshaw in the finals, at least giving us that closure. Rather than, I don’t know, ride the wave of Bart’s success and make something out of him like they were planning with Williams, they instead sidelined him. He won Brawl for All and then went off TV for a long, long time. They did bring him back for one more bad decision. WrestleMania 15 was coming up and they were putting Bart Gunn up against Butterbean in a boxing match. Maybe they were gambling on Bart Gunn’s career, figuring that he could punch his ticket to the main event if he won. Maybe this was punishment for daring to be good at the job he was asked to do. Either way, Butterbean annihilated him in 35 seconds and the entire Brawl for All experiment came off like a tremendous waste of time. That was it for Bart’s WWF career and he went off to wrestle in Japan for a while instead.
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Feb 9, 2022 02:52
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Pennywise the Frown posted:I'm watching the wrastling South Park episode. I like this one. A classic. Funny thing with that episode. When AEW is in Jacksonville (which they were for most of the pandemic), the setup of the arena is based entirely on that South Park episode's layout just because Tony Khan thought it looked awesome.
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Feb 9, 2022 04:18
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Trollologist posted:The real story about how Vince sucks rear end is the tragic tale of Zach Ryder. Zack Ryder started out as part of a generic tag team called the Major Brothers on WWE's C-tier show. Eventually, he and his partner Curt Hawkins were on the main roster for a bit as the Edgeheads, two guys who were Edge fanatics and acted as his henchmen while dressing up like him. Once that ran its course, Zack started to figure himself out as a supporting character on a comedy web series the Dirt Sheet, run by the tag team Miz and Morrison. Zack started acting like a Long Island douche bro and would randomly yell "WOO WOO WEE WOO WOO!" which later just became "WOO WOO WOO! You know it!" On TV, he was little more than a flamboyant jobber. Thing is, Zack was kind of revolutionary for the wrestling business as he was the first guy to really use social media to his advantage. He was big with Twitter before that was really a thing. He then started making his own weekly YouTube series called Z! True Long Island Story. Initially, this wasn't an official WWE show, but various wrestlers would show up on it. He really got a huge following with it to the point that people started chanting "WE WANT RYDER!" at shows. WWE was more annoyed than anything. They even did a show in Long Island, told him that they were going to do something big with him, then proceeded to not use him for anything as a joke. It's not like he didn't have support! Much of the locker room seemed to really like the guy, especially John Cena and CM Punk. It's just that Vince and the other guys in charge were mad that he got popular without their consent. Because wrestling is loving stupid sometimes. Eventually, they relented... for a bit. They gave him a brief run as United States Champion. He was so popular that when the Rock came back to wrestling for a little bit, the fans were chanting "WE WANT RYDER!" during one of his post-show promos and Rock was talking up how great (and freaking tall) Zack was. So Zack loses his championship and that's when poo poo starts to go bad. Since Cena is his friend, they do this storyline where Kane starts beating the poo poo out of Zack on a weekly basis just to piss off Cena. Not only does Zack look more and more pathetic by the week, but it leads to his love interest Eve Torres making out with Cena in front of a dejected Zack in a wheelchair. WWE also took control of his web series and closed it down. Not that it mattered, as Zack had lost his creative momentum and will to even try at that point. Zack spent years after that on the WWE roster, doing very little. At one WrestleMania they did a multi-man ladder match for the Intercontinental Championship and they very randomly had Zack win it, only to drop the title the next night. The guy went through a couple tag team pairings that ultimately went nowhere because WWE hates tag teams. Eventually, he was let go, having spent his prime sitting in catering. He showed up very briefly in AEW, but he wasn't signed. After that, he found success in GCW as an rear end in a top hat who turns his nose to the indies because he was once a WWE big shot.
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Feb 9, 2022 19:27
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Trollologist posted:Bootesta Yeah, I'll get to Vince's counter-productive use of Daniel Bryan soon enough.
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Feb 9, 2022 20:15
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Elephant Ambush posted:I've heard nothing but great things about LU. I really should check it out sometime soon. Lucha Underground is extremely good poo poo, but be wary of the fourth season. It's okay, but it's a shadow of what came before it. They taped the show months in advance and in bulk. After the first season ended on a cliffhanger, it was announced that it was being picked up for another couple seasons. They taped season 3 shortly after they wrapped on season 2. Then when they did get to season 3, they split it into two parts and took a very long break in-between. This pissed off the talent because they were under contract for seven seasons of the show and they couldn't sign with any televised wrestling promotion until then. Even those signed until season 3 couldn't do anything until AFTER that season had aired. The people behind the show decided to make a deal. If anyone wanted out of their contract, they were welcome to walk. They just had to show up for season 4 to appear for the sake of being written out. That meant season 4 was lots of storylines ending abruptly and nearly every episode had a wrestler getting literally murdered to explain their absence. Then the show ended with the biggest wet fart with their final champion and a cliffhanger that will never be resolved.
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Feb 10, 2022 04:31
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Trollologist posted:Eagerly awaiting this when you get the time I'm going to do this in two parts. In the aftermath of Vince gaining almost a monopoly over the wrestling industry, the rise of the internet led to more interest in “indie darlings,” the smaller wrestlers who gained huge followings through wrestling through the independent promotions, around the world, and usually Ring of Honor. The kind of guys who can have an entertaining match with just about anyone. The problem was that WWE was considered the goal of every wrestler and Vince McMahon loving HATES indie darlings. Not only are they too small and not muscular enough, but they have high reputations from outside WWE. To him, if someone was never in WWE, they don’t count and they ain’t worth poo poo. CM Punk and Bryan Danielson were like the Ryu and Ken of indie darlings and the two who, for a time, actually made a difference in WWE for their kind. CM Punk is a whole other can of worms for another day. Bryan Danielson is one of those once in a lifetime talents and is arguably the best wrestler in the world. In 2009, he signed with WWE, where they changed his name to Daniel Bryan. Back when he was in developmental, Bryan was having a physical issue where he kept getting staph infections from rolling around the ring. A doctor suggested moving to a vegan diet, as not digesting meat would give his immune system more strength. Something like that. He went with it and even though this was a sacrifice so he could perform and not get ill, Vince looked down at him for it because, “What kind of man doesn’t eat steak?” The original version of NXT was more of a game show. Eight rookie wrestlers would be introduced and paired with an established wrestler. This created lots of fun dynamics and one of the big pairings was Daniel Bryan forced to be the protégé of the Miz. Miz was one of the hotter heel acts in WWE and the fact that he had far less experience than his rookie made it all a hilarious troll. The rivalry wrote itself. The show featured matches and unscripted contest segments. The pros acted as judges and would gradually (and legitimately) vote people off the show. The other seven rookies were your usual WWE factory creations and didn’t have any indie notoriety to go with them. That made Bryan a target as Vince really had it in for him. So much that commentator Michael Cole was CONSTANTLY talking poo poo about Bryan and calling him a loser. Bryan was booked to lose every single match he had on the show and they wouldn’t even let him do his old finisher the Cattle Mutilation because you couldn’t see his face during it and it was therefore bad for TV. At one point, the rookies were interviewed over who should be dropped next. Bryan showed honesty and humility by saying that maybe it should be him, since he kept losing. Again, unscripted, he was then told that he was disqualified from the contest for saying that. Funny enough, he wasn’t the only victim of this decision. Fellow rookie Michael Tarver threateningly said that they should vote him off in the sense that it was the only thing that was going to protect the other wrestlers from getting their asses whupped. So he was also disqualified. God, this show was stupid. NXT Season 1 was won by Wade Barrett, a charismatic brawler from Wales with Chris Jericho as his mentor. In a stroke of brilliance, Barrett showed up on the following episode of Raw during the main event (John Cena vs. CM Punk), where he was suddenly assisted by the other NXT rookies as they stormed the ring, beat the poo poo out of everybody – ESPECIALLY Cena – and literally tore the ring apart. This included Bryan, who strangled the ring announcer with his own tie and screamed, “You are not better than me!” while kicking Cena in the head. The Nexus was born. And Daniel Bryan was fired. Apparently one of the advertisers (believed to be Mattel) did not like the whole tie-choking thing and wanted something done about it. To Vince’s credit, when he talked to Bryan about the situation, he was absolutely on his side and told him to just go make money on the independent circuit with this controversy giving him a boost, lay low, and he’d be rehired once it all blew over. Bryan’s absence certainly hurt the Nexus storyline as he was the most talented member, but he was brought back into the fold at that year’s SummerSlam as a mystery partner in a big Team John Cena vs. Nexus 7-on-7 elimination match. Unfortunately, Bryan still got poo poo on. Not only did he lose a lot, but Michael Cole kept yelling about how much he was a loser and it started to bleed into everything else. WWE in 2011-2012 is utterly unwatchable because Michael Cole was the head announcer on every show and he would not stop being an unbelievably annoying heel, constantly and loudly badmouthing everyone and everything. Well, except Cena. Not even heel commentators were allowed to badmouth Cena in any way. Bryan was put in a silly storyline about how all the women on the roster were into him. The payoff was because they heard he was a “vegan” and they were having a competition over who would be his first time. Anyway, this storyline is how he met his future wife Brie Bella, so there’s that. As WrestleMania 27, he was set to have a match against Sheamus for the United States Championship, which was potentially going to be one of the better matches of the night. Instead, it not only got thrown onto the unaired pre-show, but it somehow became a battle royal that neither guy won. In a genuine surprise, Bryan won the Money in the Bank ladder match at the Money in the Bank PPV. For those who don’t know, winning the match gets you a whole year to get a title match whenever you want. At the time of his win, Mark Henry was the dominant World Heavyweight Champion and the plan was for Bryan to be the first guy to cash in his briefcase and lose. Fate took over and Henry was wrestling injured. He needed to drop the title to rest up. At the PPV Tables, Ladders, and Chairs, Big Show defeated Henry in a chairs match for the title. Then Bryan ran out, cashed in his briefcase, and immediately defeated the exhausted and hurt Big Show. It was a decision that was so last minute that Bryan wasn’t even planned to be at the arena. He was doing an autograph signing earlier that day when he got the call to get there ASAP. After winning the title in such a cheap way, Bryan responded by celebrating like he just won the hardest fought victory every by screaming, “YES! YES! YES!” a bunch. He became a conniving heel who would somehow retain his title against guys like Big Show and Mark Henry. The payoff was obviously WrestleMania 28. Rising top face Sheamus won the Royal Rumble and was gunning for Bryan. Wrestling fans were excited to see these two go at it on the biggest stage. It was the opening match and Bryan lost in 18 seconds. Fans were pissed. It’s one thing for him to get his comeuppance, but they wanted to see the guy who’s great and performing actually perform! The very next night on Raw, the fans were loud and very pro-Bryan as they constantly chanted for him and did the “YES!” chants. This would lead to Vince McMahon reluctantly making WrestleMania 30 the last truly great WrestleMania show. More on that later.
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Feb 11, 2022 20:32
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So as we last left Daniel Bryan, he was out of the World Heavyweight Championship picture and despite being a bad guy, the crowd was absolutely going insane for him. He was involved in a three-way feud with CM Punk and Kane that led to Bryan and Kane being forced into anger management. This ended up working out great as Bryan and Kane became an odd couple tag team called Team Hell No who were constantly either at each other’s throats or begrudgingly hugging each other. It led to plenty of funny comedy sketches and great matches as they went a long time as tag champs. Around this time, WWE had the Shield as an unstoppable heel trio who were able to take down any possible combination of wrestlers the company would throw at them. This was a good way to get the belts off Kane and Bryan and it led to Bryan angrily screaming all the time that he was not the weak link, seemingly trying to convince only himself. He came out of this whole storyline smelling like roses as he was able to lead Kane and Randy Orton into giving the Shield their first loss. Shortly after, he and Kane decided to go their separate ways and be singles wrestlers. At the time, people absolutely loved Bryan and it seemed like he was on his way up the card. John Cena was WWE Champion at the time and Vince told him that he planned to do Cena vs. Bryan at the Money in the Bank PPV and have Cena win. Cena flat out told him that this was a mistake as Cena vs. Bryan was the biggest possible match on the roster and they would be wasting it on a secondary PPV. Vince was surprised by this and chose to do it Cena’s way. Money in the Bank would have Cena vs. Mark Henry. Cena vs. Bryan would be saved for SummerSlam. Vince still intended to have Cena win over Bryan. It’s just that going into the show, Cena had a rather nasty growth on his arm the size of a baseball and he absolutely needed to have that taken care of. So instead, Bryan cleanly defeated Cena with a new running knee finisher and became WWE Champion. Then...he immediately lost it. Randy Orton had the Money in the Bank briefcase at the time, so he showed up after the match to stare Bryan down. The special referee and on-air authority figure Triple H attacked Bryan out of nowhere and they had Orton cash in his briefcase and win the impromptu match. Orton's now the champion. WWE has a way of giving fans what they want via smaller, technical wrestling guys getting their big title win, only to immediately throw them to the curb. They did it with Bret Hart several times, they did it with Chris Benoit, and they were doing it with Bryan. The storyline was that management saw Bryan as a “B+ player” and wasn’t worthy to represent the company as champion. This would have been perfectly fine if it wasn’t for the fact that they had Randy Orton win the feud. They had no intention of giving Bryan an actual reign as champion. They wanted Orton to feud with Cena instead. The whole “B+ player” thing was both the storyline and how management really saw Bryan. That blew up in their face because even the casual fan saw this as Bryan being hosed over and made them want to chant for him. Speaking of chants, WWE didn't think Bryan was actually popular. Only his chant was over. Therefore, they would just have Big Show start doing the "YES!" chant and figure that fans would get behind him. It did not take. Orton and Cena were put in a match where they would unify the two top titles (WWE Championship and World Heavyweight Championship). The crowd only cared about Bryan and let them know. WWE decided to have Bryan turn heel and join the Wyatt Family, a stable of evil swamp cultists. Then they had second thoughts when they realized that Bryan’s “YES!” chant was getting popular outside of wrestling. They had Bryan turn on leader Bray Wyatt, setting up a PPV match between the two. The PPV? The Royal Rumble. This is where the backstage drama gets crazy. The original plan for the Royal Rumble was to have CM Punk win and go face Randy Orton for the unified title at WrestleMania. CM Punk’s last bucket list goal was to main event WrestleMania and he was putting up with a LOT to see this through. Bryan was intended to lose his Rumble singles match against Bray Wyatt then go on to WrestleMania to face Sheamus again. WWE constantly overestimated how much people wanted to see Sheamus around this time. Then WWE signed Batista for a comeback. Batista was gone for a few years and had that Guardians of the Galaxy movie on the way. He came back and his character was acting like kind of an unlikeable rear end, but Vince immediately saw dollar signs in a WrestleMania main event of Batista vs. Orton for the unified title with Batista as the face. Everyone seemed to think that this was a bad idea, including Batista. WWE’s like, “Eh...CM Punk can go take on Triple H at WrestleMania instead. That’s as important as the main event, right?” So Royal Rumble happens. Bryan loses on the undercard. They never did specifically say whether or not Bryan was in the Rumble match itself, but fans believed he would be. I mean, this was HIS story. If the whole road to WrestleMania wasn’t Bryan getting his big win, what were they even doing? After #29 came out, the fans were doing “YES!” chants in preparation. Then Rey Mysterio walked out at #30 and the FANS. WERE. PISSED. Lovable Rey Mysterio was received with thunderous boos because he wasn’t Bryan. Fans understood that Batista was going to win this match and turned on it. The final minutes was nothing but boos with the occasional cheering for someone like CM Punk, who would at least be an acceptable winner. But nope, Batista won and the fans poo poo on it. The PPV ended with Michael Cole telling the fans to, “Deal with it!” CM Punk spent nearly an hour in that match and suffered a concussion (amongst other injuries). The next day, he had finally had enough, chewed out Vince and Triple H, and walked off. They later fired him and made sure he got the papers on his wedding day. The Royal Rumble was his last wrestling match for 7 years. Trying to figure out what to do with Punk out of the picture, they immediately set up Bryan vs. Triple H for WrestleMania. That still wasn’t what the fans wanted as they were dead set on booing championship challenger Batista at every opportunity. The next PPV showed that they simply weren’t going to get Batista over as a top face in this situation, so they relented. The overall storyline going into WrestleMania 30 was that Bryan vs. Triple H would happen at the beginning of the night and whoever won would end up in the main event, turning Batista vs. Orton into a triple threat. Bryan got those big wins and the whole PPV was pretty drat solid overall. Then WWE was like, “Oh, you liked that? You’re happy now? Great. Let’s move away from this then.” Screw it, I’m making this a three-parter.
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Feb 11, 2022 23:24
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Jamesman posted:I realized that I don't really have much in the way of talking about The Spirit Squad in a way that connects with Vince's insanity, and the only decent clips I can find of them are on WWE.com. So it's not really a big story to tell here in this thread. Just so you know, a couple of the Spirit Squad guys made a comeback a few years ago back when Smackdown was awesome. It was part of a Ziggler vs. Miz feud. The Headbangers also made a comeback around then. It was a strange, but fun era.
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Feb 12, 2022 03:19
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Now the last part of the Bryan Danielson/Daniel Bryan in WWE thing. After main-eventing WrestleMania 30, Daniel Bryan said that his goal was to main event the PPV again. Keep that in mind. With his huge, character-defining WrestleMania story arc finished, WWE put him in a feud with Kane that pretty much everyone hated. WWE had plans for Bryan and they weren’t good. See, they finally broke up the Shield and were intent on turning Roman Reigns into the next huge star. The goal was to make Roman the top guy by WrestleMania. He just needed the perfect heel champ to defeat. Enter Brock Lesnar, who was going to completely obliterate Bryan at SummerSlam, setting up his eventual downfall at Roman’s hands. Two problems kicked in. First, Bryan’s neck was pretty messed up as breaking the glass ceiling did a number on his body. He had to drop the title and step away to recuperate. John Cena became champion afterwards and took his spot in the story. At SummerSlam, Brock crushed Cena into paste in the most shocking turn of events. Afraid that Cena looked too weak, Vince tried to help him save face by having Cena beat up the Wyatt Family single-handedly the next night, complete with Bray Wyatt crying and begging for mercy. So anyway, Roman's ascent was basically accepted by the fans at the time. That is, until he had to take several months off due to a nasty hernia. It would have been fine letting him heal up and return to cheers, but WWE was too antsy about it. They started getting too into Roman’s health updates, including interviews via satellite that added nothing. They were overselling Roman and it was getting rough. Roman and Bryan both returned from their injuries in time to hype up the 2015 Royal Rumble. To the fans, this was WWE’s chance to right last year’s wrong and have Bryan win. It seemed likely that it would go to Roman, but Bryan would surely at least make the final four or something, right? At the Royal Rumble, Bryan lasted about ten minutes before being unceremoniously dumped out of the ring. The plan was to just get the negative reaction out of the way before Roman showed up. Then Kane and Big Show would beat up all the other popular, young acts from that time (Dolph Ziggler, Bray Wyatt, Dean Ambrose) and Roman would seem like a big hero for defeating them. Then the Rock himself would show up to bask in his cousin’s success. Everyone would love Roman. The moment Bryan hit the floor, the crowd lost their poo poo and did not relent. They knew exactly what was going on and they were not having it. They booed the everloving poo poo out of the rest of the match. Even the Rock got booed! He looked so confused! This time, WWE was not going to play ball or cave in. Bryan was not going to be added to the WrestleMania main event. They gave people hope with a Bryan vs. Roman PPV match where the winner would be #1 contender, but Roman won. This was part of WWE’s never-ending desperation to get people to like Roman by having him defeat top stars, followed by them raising his hand in respect. Between this and the "hip" "badass" promos written by Vince McMahon himself (they’re loving atrocious), the fans could not take how much WWE was trying to make Roman happen. Bryan instead was entered into a ladder match for the Intercontinental Championship. He won, but after a few weeks, he had to step down yet again. This time, he had to let everyone know that his was too banged up and had to retire. It was heartbreaking. Bryan returned a few years later as the SmackDown GM during one of the show’s most entertaining stretches. He also co-hosted Talking Smack, an online post-show where wrestlers got to do unscripted interviews and show more character than they got to on TV. People really enjoyed Talking Smack...except Vince McMahon, because he didn’t have full control of it. He had the show dropped. With his contract coming up, Bryan was ready to let it lapse so he could go elsewhere and hopefully be allowed to wrestle. WWE’s doctors suddenly realized, whoa, wait! You are actually cleared to wrestle now! Turns out you didn’t need to retire after all! Sign with us for another few years and we'll let you wrestle! Bryan returned to action and was immediately put into a feud with Big Cass, a mediocre wrestler with the gimmick that he was very tall and that’s something that can’t be taught. While Bryan probably would have taken his licks in this feud, he instead won two straight PPV matches and Cass was then fired. Why? Because he did a segment with a little person dressed as Bryan and was explicitly told NOT to beat him up and did anyway. Bryan turned heel down the line and became WWE Champion. His whole persona was that he was against pollution, which of course made him a bad guy. What was awesome was that he changed his belt into one made out of hemp. He ended up losing the title to Kofi Kingston, another example of a popular, but small wrestler finally getting their big title win, only to get a lovely run afterwards. A hilarious thing to come out of this time was that Bryan’s bodyguard was former Wyatt Family member Erick Rowan. There was a segment where somebody tried to murder Roman Reigns backstage via dropping a wall on him or something like that. Random wrestler Buddy Murphy was accidentally in the shot for this, so they made it part of the story and had Roman attack him while demanding he tell him who was behind the murder attempt. Murphy claimed it was Rowan himself. Bryan and Rowan both claimed it was a lie. A couple weeks later, Bryan said he found out the truth. At the end of an episode of SmackDown, Roman was brought into a room backstage where they unmasked the assailant and it was just some unnamed guy who looked an awful lot like Rowan. The two Rowans quietly stared at each other, Roman looked confused, and Bryan tried his hardest not to crack up. This poo poo was never mentioned ever again. Bryan stuck around WWE for a few years and at least had the political sway to get himself booked against wrestlers like him on the roster like Drew Gulak and Chad Gable. In early 2021, they built up a WrestleMania main event of Edge vs. Roman Reigns for the WWE Universal Championship. Realizing that the match needed a bit more pepper, they came up with a story reason for it to be a triple threat with Bryan thrown in there. The match ended with Roman pinning both opponents at the same time. Bryan would later admit that even though he was in the main event of WWE’s biggest annual show...it felt empty. He felt nothing. His contract was coming up and he just wasn’t interested in sticking around anymore. He lost one more high-profile match to Roman and moved on. Months later, he appeared at the very end of AEW’s All Out PPV. Since then, he’s done nothing but have awesome matches against a big variety of wrestlers. It rules.
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Feb 13, 2022 04:23
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FullLeatherJacket posted:Reminder that this immediately preceded a Nitro main event of a world title match between Hulk Hogan vs Kevin Nash that had been built up for several weeks as a showdown between the Hollywood and Wolfpac factions of the nWo, and which eventually consisted of Hogan poking the champion in the chest, Nash taking a pratfall, and Hogan pinning him for the title to reset the now two-year-old nWo storyline right back to the beginning. You can pretty much circle that day as the point where the tide turned in the Monday Night War and never really came back. And it could have been even worse, as the setup was originally supposed to involve Miss Elizabeth having Goldberg arrested on a rape accusation.
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Feb 14, 2022 15:23
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Seth Pecksniff posted:what the HELL So going back a little further, Goldberg was WCW champ and was undefeated. He took on Nash at a big PPV and Nash won due to lots of ridiculous interference. The idea was that although Nash was now champ and ended Goldberg's streak, he was pissed off because it was all such a farce. The next night on Nitro, he said that he'd give Goldberg a rematch the next week. A week later, Goldberg couldn't do the match because he was arrested at the beginning of the show. Elizabeth claimed he had been harassing her and she didn't feel safe. As Goldberg was taken away, we saw Hogan backstage for the first time in like a month or so. Nash said that he knew Hogan was behind this and demanded a match against him for that night, title on the line. Then the Fingerpoke of Doom happened. Meanwhile, the police found holes in Elizabeth's story, realized her claims were unfounded and let Goldberg free a little too late. Originally, they wanted Elizabeth to straight-up say that Goldberg raped her, but Goldberg absolutely refused to go through with that plot.
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Feb 14, 2022 16:10
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Jamesman posted:Which time? Years ago, in simpler times, when you saw Trump on TV it was due to his media rivalry with Rosie O'Donnell. Vince decided to have fun with this by doing that "match." Everybody hated it. In-story, Trump was telling him it was the stupidest thing he's ever seen. Then when they did Fan Appreciation Night, Trump showed up unannounced (probably via satellite, I can't remember) and had it rain money on the fans. Vince was angry with this and it led to the WrestleMania 23 match where they fought via proxies (Umaga for Vince and Bobby Lashley for Trump) and the loser had to have his head shaved. Also, Austin was the special guest referee. As much as "Rosie" vs. "Trump" was hated, they still pulled the same bullshit a year later by doing "Obama" vs. "Hillary."
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Feb 14, 2022 20:57
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Crazy poo poo going on in the wrestling world right now is that Cody Rhodes has left AEW. For the uninitiated, here's a timeline to explain why this is nuts: - Cody spends 8 years or so in WWE, having a solid enough career as a midcarder. He's unable to break through into the main event. - He gets a new gimmick Stardust and it leads to a feud with his brother Goldust. This is supposed to lead to a high-profile WrestleMania match. The story ends abruptly and he doesn't get his match. - Cody is stuck in the Stardust gimmick, miserable. He wants to do anything else, but management won't listen. There's even a story where he was pitching ideas to a writer and the writer pretended to be typing into a powered down laptop. - Cody gets his release from WWE. He decides to prove himself in the indie scene and travels around the world, making a name for himself. He appears in TNA, ROH, New Japan, PWG, etc. - Cody joins the Bullet Club/Elite and becomes friends with Kenny Omega and the Young Bucks. - Wrestling journalist Dave Meltzer tells a fan on Twitter that a non-WWE show wouldn't be able to sell out a 10,000 person stadium. Cody decides to take him up on this bet. He and his Elite friends put together a one-shot PPV called All In, featuring matches from various non-WWE promotions. It's a huge success. - WWE wants to hire the Elite guys. Tony Khan instead gets them to sign with him and be on the ground floor for their own promotion All Elite Wrestling. Cody, Omega and the Young Bucks are all executive vice presidents. - The first AEW event has Cody take on his brother Goldust/Dustin in the match WWE refused to give him. During his entrance, he smashes up a throne with a sledgehammer, which is a big middle finger to Triple H. He does a lot of middle fingers to Triple H during his AEW run. - Not wanting to fall into the trap of being like Triple H or any other top guy who has sway in his own promotion, Cody makes sure to lose a match for the AEW Championship with the caveat that he can never challenge for said belt again. He also loses a feud against his protege MJF. - Cody starts having zero to do with the Elite on TV. Rumors circulate that he doesn't really get along with them as much backstage due to creative differences. - Cody creates the TNT Championship as kind of his own vanity title. He books himself to win the tournament and he ends up holding the belt three times. - He gets two shows on TNT: a reality show and a gameshow. - We start getting what fans call "The Codyverse." Cody's presence and storylines seem to be almost completely separate from the rest of AEW. They're all very formulaic and tend to end with him standing tall. They also come with some very questionable promos. The matches are fine, but the whole thing feels weird. - During all of this, his wife Brandi has also been working behind the scenes and outside of her pregnancy and maternity leave, she's been trying to make her own wrestling career work. A lot of the time, it hasn't been great, especially when she had her own stable the Nightmare Collective, which is considered AEW's biggest misfire. - Cody appears to be doing some kind of meta John Cena thing that only he can understand. The fans boo him and he plays it off, but playfully acknowledges it from time to time. It seems like it's going somewhere, but only Cody himself knows where. - His contract runs out and he loses the TNT title to Sammy Guevara. He brings up the news about his contract in a televised interview, but it reeks of being part of the storyline. - News comes out that he and Brandi wanted a bunch of money for their new contracts and Tony Khan wouldn't play ball. Now the two parties have split. Gradually, the whole thing is perceived as less of a storyline and more legit. Cody could very well go back to WWE, though he will absolutely get poo poo on if he does. Gavok fucked around with this message at 21:09 on Feb 15, 2022 |
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Feb 15, 2022 20:16
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Cornwind Evil posted:As 2000 began, several other wrestlers gathered together and said they also wanted to leave, tired of being in the midcard, getting no chances, or getting their legs cut out from under them by the WWF people. WCW even tried to keep one, Chris Benoit, by having him win the WCW title on their first PPV in 2000. Benoit went out, worked the match, returned backstage, gave the WCW belt to management, and walked out with his fellows, essentially quitting. Nash would say it didn’t matter; the four were just ‘vanilla midgets’ that couldn’t draw. Some context to add to this that was hilarious until it was tragic. Kevin Sullivan was an aging wrestler who for a while was one of the head bookers in WCW. This is why in the pre-nWo days, Hulk Hogan had a never-ending feud with Sullivan, who looked like if Jason Alexander started hitting the gym, but was supposed to be considered a top heel. At one point, Sullivan was feuding with Chris Benoit and part of the storyline was that Sullivan's wife Nancy was leaving him for Benoit. Kevin Sullivan wanted them to essentially LIVE THE GIMMICK to add a feeling of legitimacy to it. Benoit and Nancy would travel together, have dinner together, share hotel rooms, etc. So anyway, Nancy Sullivan left her husband for Chris Benoit for real. Kevin Sullivan booked his own divorce. Once WCW decided that Russo wasn't working out (for the first time), they put Kevin Sullivan back into the head booker position. That was bad news for Benoit, who was finally breaking through to the top of the card. He did not want his career in the hands of his very own cuck victim and was lucky to get out when he did.
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Feb 19, 2022 15:28
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Seth Pecksniff posted:Whatever happened to the Great Khali? I wasn't following wrestling much but it seemed like Vince was trying to make him A Thing and then he disappeared Khali was brought in as a big, scary heel, but there was only so much you could do with him. He was incredibly limited and only had a couple moves he could do, but they were at least able to coast on his mystique by having him feud with various top faces like Undertaker, Cena, Kane, Batista and Triple H. At one point, Edge was World Heavyweight Champion and got injured, so the title was vacated. They held a battle royal for a new winner and because 1) SmackDown had a thin main even scene and 2) it made more storyline sense for Batista to chase the title, they had Khali win it. He's considered one of the all-time worst world champions in wrestling history. After he ran his course as a major heel, he was turned into a goofy face with a manager/translator. He never won any major matches other than a WrestleMania pre-show battle royal, but he was always treated as a nigh-unbeatable threat. For a little while, he was in a tag team with Hornswoggle (of course), but he just hung around the midcard and faded into obscurity. When WWE had Jinder Mahal as WWE Champion (a story in itself), Khali showed up to interfere on his behalf at a PPV, but there was no follow-up. Physically, he was not looking so great.
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Feb 19, 2022 18:03
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Earlier in this thread, there was mention of Chikara and I figured, what the hell, let’s give this one a history effortpost. Chikara was an indie promotion that ran for nearly 20 years that dove headfirst into humor, silly gimmicks, and bizarre storytelling. While most promotions are fairly grounded in reality (er, relatively), Chikara was doing storylines that involved time travel, murder, resurrection, super powers, cloning, evil doppelgangers, hypnotism, possession, and so on. It was low-budget and needlessly destroyed itself, but when it was on, it was goddamn magic. The company was headed by Mike Quackenbush, a veteran indie wrestler who was incredibly talented in the ring, but was also a colossal dork. He can’t talk without sounding like a hammy doofus. But drat was he good at writing a long-running wrestling show. At least for the most part. Plus, for a wrestler booking his own promotion, he was remarkably competent at walking the line as a top tier threat in the ring who isn’t overly pushed. Even his biggest wins were ultimately about putting the spotlight on others. The company started as a wrestling school started by Quackenbush and a couple other guys, who would peace out sooner than later. They were training students, but where were these guys supposed to compete with an audience? And so, in 2002, Chikara was born. It took a few years for them to figure themselves out, but by 2006 or 2007, they had their own footprint in the US indies. The company was known for its “family friendly” nature and goofy gimmicks, usually involving the wrestlers to be masked. There was a group of guys dressed as ants, two clowns made of ice cream, an old timey baseball player, frog Thor, a crossing guard, breakdancers from Ancient Egypt, and so on. Quackenbush got pissed at CM Punk for no-showing some shows and ghosting him, so he had someone wrestle in a chipmunk mascot costume under the name CP Munk. DVD covers were regularly classic comic book covers redrawn to feature Chikara wrestlers. There was a running gag that the unseen authority figure was “Commissioner Bob Saget” and then one day footage of Bob Saget at his desk was shown to announce a major match. Despite the silly poo poo, the storylines were just well done in a regular wrestling sense, if a little too intricate for their own good at times. Quackenbush depicted each year as a “season,” giving him a structure for the bigger storylines. The promotion was more about tournaments and special match events than just titles. Early on, the only title was a rookie championship that was decided in an annual tournament, defended like a belt, then vacated for the next tournament with a rule that former title holders were not allowed to challenge for it ever again. It took a few years for them to introduce a tag title and it wasn’t until the end of 2011 that Chikara had a main singles championship. In early 2007, Chikara started their biggest tradition, an annual tournament called King of Trios. Over the course of three days, 16 teams of three (28 teams when they tried to go bigger in 2008) would compete in a tournament. It would include Chikara guys, wrestlers from other promotions, and wrestlers from other countries. Sometimes old wrestlers would return and reuse their older, forgotten gimmicks (Sean Waltman as the 1-2-3 Kid or Justin Credible being Aldo Montoya the Portuguese Man of War). To give the eliminated teams something to do, there was a smaller tournament over the weekend for flippy dudes and a gigantic tag team gauntlet match that acted like a celebratory parade of all the talent who made the week fun. So the company was starting to pick up steam, but they weren’t without some controversies. The 2007 season ended with a mask vs. hair match between Lince Dorado (mask) and Mitch Ryder (hair). At the very end, Lince did a flippy move off the top rope and hit the mat so hard that he went into a seizure. Ryder just kind of slid into position to be pinned and the ref counted it. As medics came out to help Lince, Quackenbush was allegedly adamant about them not removing his mask because he wanted to protect kayfabe. Then a disgruntled Ryder sat there while they shaved his head to the awkward silence, save Lince’s mother screaming in horror backstage. Even getting past how badly Quackenbush paid his talent, or how controlling he was with their outside bookings, the guy couldn’t help but burn bridges. Head trainer, top heel, and co-booker Chris Hero left at the end of 2007 and never came back. As a teacher, Quackenbush would regularly send out mass emails to the students after shows, which involved lots of poo poo-talking to non-students. That guy Mitch Ryder I mentioned a second ago saw that Quackenbush was talking poo poo about his new in-ring gear and told him off before quitting the company. Relationships with other indie promotions eroded over time. One of the funnier stories with Quackenbush clashing with talent was King of Trios 2009. One of the trios was Team Epic War, made up of Epic War representatives Austin Aries, Ryan Drago, and Tony Kozina. Quackenbush had the idea that Aries would be a face, Drago a heel, and Kozina a confused tweener to give them a unique dynamic. Aries, himself a total piece of poo poo, wasn’t happy with this because in the indies, he was a heel. Quackenbush explained, yes, sure, but for this tournament in this promotion, he would be a face. Aries acted unprofessional in the most entertaining way possible by not only acting like a face during their opening match, but by laying it on extra thick. Just the most over-the-top good guy you’ve ever seen in a wrestling match, giving everyone high fives and thumbs up with the biggest poo poo-eating grin. Then for the rest of the weekend, he was back to being a heel with commentators having to explain that he had a bad hotel experience and it set him off. Chikara hit its peak from 2010-2012. 2010 was based around their own version of the nWo called the BDK (Bruerschaft des Kreuzes), who popped up at the very end of 2009 and quickly ran roughshod over the company. The storyline was great, but not without its issues. For instance, BDK member Lince Dorado was being set up for a climactic mask vs. mask match. Then he appeared on Scott Hall’s vlog unmasked and identified himself. Quackenbush got pissed at that, Lince started no-showing events, and he was quietly removed from the roster. Plus the faction’s leader Claudio Castagnoli got signed by WWE (where he’s now Cesaro) before he could get around to losing to Chikara’s top face Eddie Kingston. Early 2011 was rough due to the tragic suicide of Chikara regular Alex Whybrow, otherwise known as “Sweet and Sour” Larry Sweeney. He was someone who was a big part of the company for the early years, fell out for a while, then was making the beginnings of a comeback. A truly charismatic performer, he had a role as manager in Ring of Honor, but rarely got to perform as a wrestler and that didn't help his mental issues. His death came just days before the 2011 King of Trios, which was treated as a big tribute show. They also showed tribute by doing a 12-person round robin tournament to crown the first ever Chikara Grand Champion in 2011. It was called the 12 Large Summit, named after Sweeney’s catchphrase of “12 Large, brother!” The tournament was won by his good friend Eddie Kingston, who was crowned champion at Chikara’s first iPPV. Eddie Kingston’s title reign was...weird. He spent the better part of a year defending against all the top heels in Chikara with few decent builds. He was supposed to drop the title twice, but real life poo poo got in the way and they kept the belt on Eddie for way longer than they should have. Soon he was beating the top faces of the company and getting booed for it, despite the storyline being that he was a face defying the heel authority figure. It was messy. Other than the Kingston stuff, Chikara was doing fantastic. 2012 gave Chikara one of its greatest King of Trios shows and the momentum kept going. Then, midway into 2013, Mike Quackenbush unleashed a truly ambitious idea for a storyline. Something so huge and out of left field that it would make everyone realize what a creative genius he really was. He was going to close down Chikara for an entire year. It was an idea so crazy it just might work. I mean, except it didn’t. At all. But I’ll get into that next time.
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Feb 21, 2022 07:58
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So continuing with Chikara, getting into the big event from mid-2013 that I left off on, some things to know about : - In-story, Chikara had been bought out by a company called WMD Corp. The owner's failson Wink Vavaseur was put in charge of the company. He was meant to be a gender-flipped parody of TNA's Dixie Carter. He gradually became more unhinged and WMD Corp was starting to seem increasingly shady. - There were events and promotions that were basically part of Chikara, but depicted as being separate. Like an annual charity show called National Pro Wrestling Day that "showcased" Chikara talent. There was a promotion called Wrestling Is Fun, which was like Chikara's developmental, but was treated as its own thing. At the beginning of 2013, more of these promotions started popping up, like Wrestling Is Cool, Wrestling Is Art, Wrestling Is Intense, etc. These were more on the regional side. - Icarus was one of the original students of the Chikara wrestling school who was a prolific heel. Fans hated him, mostly because he was completely average in the ring, but consistently pushed through the years. Also, he has the worst back tattoo known to man. It looks like absolute dogshit and the fans would boo him just over removing his shirt. Going into one of their big iPPV shows, Icarus was slowly turning face and was taking on Eddie Kingston (slowly turning heel) for the title. Halfway into the show, a referee showed up claiming he was fired for coming too close to the truth and that WMD Corp is involved in war crimes or some poo poo. Wink Vavaseur's security goons dragged him off. Then, during the main event, when Icarus was right about to win, a fed-up and insane Wink had the same security drag everyone out of the ring and tear the entire arena apart. Fans were told to get out. And... that was it! Suddenly, all the future shows were cancelled. It was this huge WTF situation. There were rumors going around that Mike Quackenbush's wife was divorcing him for fooling around with a female student and that she was going to get the rights to the Chikara name, hence him closing it down. Even those with an axe to grind with Quackenbush will say to this day that this was not true. In the end, it was just a guy who insisted that his really bad artistic idea was a really good artistic idea. Every few months, a video would appear online of Icarus trying to convince others to help him fight back or do something. Everyone else had just moved on, including Kingston, who knew that if Chikara never came back, he would be champion forever. There was other stuff involved, like an impromptu wrestling show in a park where a fan was kidnapped by WMD Corp's security and a scavenger hunt for fans to save said kidnapping victim. There were some fun moments in all of this, but the problem was that it lasted AN ENTIRE YEAR. You can't do wrestling with just story and little-to-no in-ring stuff. People just didn't care anymore and those who stuck around were like Tom Servo, screaming, "END!!" I mean, we were missing out on King of Trios due to this garbage. On the other side, at least they had the Wrestling Is shows to give the Chikara talent something to do. The problem there was that fans weren't given a reason to care for those either. They didn't have the Chikara name, nor were they directly following Chikara storylines, so nobody came to these shows. You would see like ten people in the audience to watch wrestling with no storylines. Essentially, Quackenbush created a situation where there was wrestling with no story and story with no wrestling and it just wasn't working. But then something kind of cool started happening. At these Wrestling Is shows, the promotions started getting shut down due to the actions of various anti-Chikara factions from throughout the years (anti-Chikara factions invading was a well Quackenbush went to a lot). Like, one promotion would do a tournament to crown tag champions, then a heel outsider group from years earlier would show up out of nowhere, beat up everyone in the ring, steal the belts, take the promoter's money, storm off, and the promoter would be all, "Oh no! My company is ruined!" This wasn't just a heel faction causing this. This was a bunch of heel factions bound together as a heel mega-faction. Later on, they were just called the Flood. Again, this sounds pretty rad, but this poo poo was going on in front of maybe a dozen people. This led to National Pro Wrestling Day 2014, where it all came to a head. The main event was Wrestling Is Heart having a tournament finals, the Flood came to mess it up, Icarus led an army of Chikara wrestlers to fight them off, then Chikara's return date was announced. Finally, things were going back to normal. Quackenbush tried to turn the whole storyline into a movie called Ashes of Chikara. It took the existing YouTube segments, added new scenes, some close-ups during the National Pro Wrestling Day segments, and tried to edit it into a narrative that made sense. Since they shied away from using the "Flood destroys an indie promotion with eight people in the crowd" footage, the movie's story came off as a confusing mess and the underpaid guy who filmed a lot of it feels ashamed of the situation. Plus outside of a subplot involving a time-traveling DeLorean, the whole thing was WAY too self-serious. Quackenbush did pay for advertisements for the movie to appear on the back of comic books, so that was neat. The remainder of 2014 focused on finishing off the Chikara vs. Flood storyline. At the first show back, Icarus won the title off of Eddie Kingston. Then Deucalion, the never-before-seen leader of the Flood, showed up, looking like post-apocalyptic Bane. Because the roster was absolutely overflowing during this time, the following months would have Deucalion regularly show up as this invincible monster and "murder" someone with a chokeslam/backbreaker combo. As badass as Deucalion came off, he never really wrestled. The big blow-off was Icarus vs. Deucalion in a cage at the season finale. And, um, cage matches in the indies are a very different beast in terms of assembly than in WWE. In WWE, you just lower it from the ceiling, readymade. In the indies, you have to put it together on the spot and the finished product isn't going to look so fancy. That means that after an otherwise strong iPPV undercard, the show suddenly had a half-hour intermission to prepare for one match between a guy who was okay and another guy we've never seen wrestle. And it turned out Deucalion was not very good! But he lost and he was "killed off" and they were able to move on from that story. Chikara never regained the momentum they lost from the year-long closure. But they were back, for a time. During this time, Quackenbush had a couple more unique ideas up his sleeve. Some would work, others wouldn't. And then it all came crashing down. More on that next time.
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Feb 21, 2022 21:12
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As we last left Chikara, they had just done a storyline where they closed down for a year and fans left in droves. Story means nothing if there’s no wrestling to go with it. That’s a good enough segue to Chikara: Rudo Resurrection, a video game announced via trailer back in 2010. Then for years there was nothing. Finally, it came back and was put on Indiegogo, revealed as a Final Fight clone with Chikara guys. It failed pretty badly because if people are going to pay for a Chikara game, they would probably want an actual wrestling game! Thankfully, they tried that a few years after with the announcement of Chikara Action Arcade Wrestling. Another crowd-funded game, this time it was actually wrestling and featured over-the-top poo poo like shooting lasers and lightning. This time, it hit its goal at the last minute, rumored to be the doing of Claudio Castagnoli/Cesaro. It’s just that due to there being like one whole programmer involved, it would take a long, long time. We’ll get back to that. 2015 was when Chikara tried a bloated, but promising idea called Challenge of the Immortals. Ten wrestlers would be team captains and would draft three teammates. These ten teams of four would take part in a double round robin tournament that would last the entire season. The matches could be singles, tag, trios, or four-on-four. The winning team members would each get automatic title shots whenever they wanted them. A neat idea that would make every match important in the big picture, but when only a few teams had actual storylines going on, a lot of the matches felt pointless. At least it paid off in the end when the team led by Princess Kimber Lee won at the season finale. Minutes later, the main event had Hallowicked retain the Chikara Grand Championship against challengers Icarus and Eddie Kingston. Kimber Lee came out to cash out her Challenge of the Immortals victory and won the impromptu match, giving us a woman as the company’s main champion. Hallowicked won it back months later, but still, pretty awesome. 2016’s season, otherwise known as Season 16, had this big plot about wrestlers being taken over by a malevolent psychic force. Long story. It ended with fan favorite UltraMantis Black, who had retired a year earlier, rekindling his feud with champ Hallowicked. This is where we got one of Chikara’s more inspired and unique concepts. A few months later, 2017’s first show was streamed online and there was something off. One tag wrestler had randomly become a singles wrestler with a new gimmick. A relatively new tag team was referred to as “veterans.” The final segment was an UltraMantis promo, believed to be him announcing that he was coming out of retirement to challenge for the title. Instead, he opened up his robe to reveal he was already wearing the championship belt. The ring announcer ended the show by welcoming us to Season 18 of Chikara. See, Chikara had just introduced their own streaming service. As a way to help get more people interested, they filmed a SECRET SEASON weeks earlier with a full audience. If you wanted to see Season 17 and wanted to see UltraMantis win the championship, you could only do it through Chikaratopia. Season 18 was home to one of the company’s bigger missteps. For several years, they had a guy on the roster named Juan Francisco de Coronado. While solid in the ring despite his very short stature, he was a decent midcard heel with the gimmick of “rich dude from Ecuador.” For some reason, Quackenbush decided to book him as the company’s new champion. Not only that, but he held onto the title for over a year, defeating every major face. When he did finally lose the title, he was soon booked into a face turn where he became a flag-waving American patriot. It bombed hard and he retired soon after. Oh, and he also got outed as a groomer. Good going, guys. Interesting story from around this time. At King of Trios one year, they got ECW commentator Joey Styles to commentate for the entire weekend. This was a fairly last minute get, as Joey didn’t know anything about the product. Regular commentator Leonard F. Chikarason later admitted that seeing this announcement on Twitter was how he found out that he wasn’t going to be put to work that weekend. Anyway, Joey Styles took to Chikara well and it was announced that he would be doing commentary for the Chikara video game. Then a month or so later, Joey Styles was on an indie PPV (non-Chikara) where he was specifically told not to make any Trump references as he’s a big CHUD. Midway into the PPV, he told one of the women on the show that he’d like to grab her by the pussy. He was fired and replaced before the show was over and Chikara immediately cut ties with him. Another thing hurting the product was that Quackenbush seemed to be creatively burned out. Sure, he had a couple of good storyline ideas in there, but a lot of the time they would peter out into something dull or he would only be able to write a couple ongoing stories at a time. A lot of the shows felt like filler. Hell, for three years in a row, King of Trios featured finals that were outsider team vs. outsider team (ie. three guys from the Bullet Club vs. three representatives from AAA). Really damning that Quackenbush couldn’t take his own roster seriously enough during this stretch to push them. At the end of 2019, Chikara advertised some kind of mystery show at their Wrestle Factory training facility. Fans were extremely curious about it and there was no information given about it other than the time and place. People tuned into Chikaratopia and were confused and annoyed to see nothing. The show itself was Chikara taping what appeared to be a special pilot full of squash matches with the fans told specifically who to cheer for and how to cheer for them. This never aired in any way. The belief is that the show was Quackenbush’s attempt to get Chikara on the WWE Network. Quackenbush had been dealing with the company by guest training NXT folk at the Performance Center and even being Alexa Bliss’ personal trainer. WWE was playing with the idea of putting indie companies under their wing for WWE Network content. There were even rumors of Quackenbush maybe giving up his spot in Chikara and moving to being an NXT trainer. Whatever the deal was, it never happened. Then things got worse. As the Chikara video game got released to the world, so did COVID. Chikara made due with a weekly series of shows streaming on Saturday mornings with no audience, but instead the face wrestlers would just hang out in a room together and comment on what was going on in-between matches. Named after the game, Chikara Action Arcade Series lasted for ten episodes and was set to be followed up by the season finale, Cibernetico 2020. That’s when Speaking Out kicked in. Wrestlers from all over were being called out for their horrible behavior, especially in the sense of being sexual predators and abusers. Chikara already dealt with one of their trainers, Rory Gulak, being called out months earlier over some really vile poo poo and immediately canned him. Now more names were coming out, especially in terms of trainers. Quackenbush wasn’t named as a sexual predator, but he did allegedly do some abusive stuff and turned a blind eye to what his subordinates were up to. The floodgates opened and many of the non-scummy wrestlers announced on Twitter that they were done with the company. This included champion Dasher Hatfield. Soon there was nothing left. Just a video of Quackenbush on YouTube, crying his eyes out while pleading for forgiveness in what comes off as the hammiest, fakest poo poo you’ve ever seen. Or maybe it’s from the heart. You really can’t tell with that guy. Weeks later, the taped Cibernetico 2020 finally aired on Chikaratopia. The show ended with its new top face the Whisper standing tall. The Whisper, one of the bright spots of the last few years of the company, would later lament on Twitter that he can’t feel proud of his time in Chikara as he feels like nothing more than a joke. Poor guy. Action Arcade Wrestling dropped the Chikara name and roster. Only recently did it come out for consoles. It’s completely average, but has a great create a wrestler system. As it is right now, Quackenbush still runs the Wrestle Factory and based on the website, there’s one other trainer there. A guy whose Chikara gimmick was that he was a Dickensian businessman who sneezed a lot. Wrestling! The younger wrestlers from the last years of Chikara decided to keep at it and started wrestling for a promotion called Camp Leapfrog. I should give it a look one of these days, but it already looks like the promotion’s done. Ah well. Many Chikara alumni now wrestle in AEW. A few months ago, when final Chikara champion Dasher Hatfield (now Avery Good, Professional Wrestler) showed up to be a jobber for an episode of AEW Dark, he and the other former Chikara guys took a big photo together.  Chuck Taylor’s tag partner Trent? would respond to this picture with, “I’m glad you got out of that cult.”
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Feb 22, 2022 04:16
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With Jamesman talking up how Finlay helped make WWE's women's division better, I want to talk about WWE's reluctance to make Becky Lynch one of their biggest stars next. But even before I can get into that, I'm going to have to write a thing on WWE's Women's Revolution. So I'll put that together later. My favorite Finlay story is how back in WCW, there was an incident where Juventud Guerrera got messed up on PCP or something and had a gigantic freakout in a hotel lobby. He was screaming and trying to tear his clothes off. One wrestler wasn't there, but knew that it had to be serious after finding out that Finlay had trouble holding him back. Because if Finlay holds you down, 99% of the time, you will be held the gently caress down.
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Feb 22, 2022 20:06
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RoboChrist 9000 posted:So, Cornwind Evil, I have some questions about heels and faces, if you don't mind? The thing about cool heels is that as cool as they are, you still need a balance. Vader was a badass, but Lucas and the rest never went so far as to make the heroes look like dorks in comparison. Luke and friends were still likeable heroes and we still got that moment of Luke just wailing on Vader until his hand came off. If every Vader scene was him yoinking Han's blaster away like it was nothing, then it would have been a problem. A good comparison to what I think Cornwind Evil is going for is when writers overuse and overhype the Joker. He's not afraid to die, he's not afraid to feel pain, he's not afraid to lose, etc. He always has control of the situation. So... what's the payoff? Writers will have him escape Arkham, kill a bunch of people, get punched out by Batman, go back to Arkham, and laugh it off. Sure, Batman beat him up and didn't "give in" and kill him, but when this happens like every week and Joker is an unflappable guy who has murdered thousands, Batman just looks like a total loser. nWo was a villain group who never seemed to have any meaningful defeats. WCW just looked like a bunch of geeks and the product suffered for it.
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Feb 22, 2022 20:48
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