King Pitcos

On 5/23/2020 at 6:57 PM, Frankie Crisp said:

The Benoit one isn’t on there, but instead of having no episode listed, they’ve got a highlight show of Wrestlemania matches against the date.

No doubt so they can continue to demonstrate the whole longest running weekly episodic shite without them referencing Benoit. They’re absolutely mental.

As said above, that WrestleMania thing is what they aired in the replay slots that week. In terms of the weekly episodic thing, I think there are a couple of weeks missing over the years anyway, from when Raw wasn’t on because of the dog show or whatever. 

30 minutes ago, Little Johnny said:

Veering dangerously close to "getting outraged on other people's behalf" territory there.

It’s 2020, this is what we do.

3 hours ago, gmoney said:

Nice of Taker to nick the "I'm not as good as I once was..." phrase from Toby Keith and not only not credit him, but clearly make his wife think it's his. 

I’m fairly sure that was used years ago by someone in WWE as well. Possibly Ric Flair before WrestleMania 24.

It's a difficult one now, that story. I'd say the disgusting misogyny trumps the "Haku was a hard case ladzladzladz" element these days.

Luke Harper - NJPW. He was my favourite in the Wyatt Family and I always wanted WWE to use him more, and was looking forward to him going to AEW, but he's completely shown himself up. As an overall performer, he's rotten. Shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a speaking role. In New Japan, his weaknesses wouldn't be so front and centre and he could get further on the "big workrate man" stuff. They'd probably add some bells and whistles to his presentation that'd work better, too.

On 5/22/2020 at 12:54 PM, BomberPat said:

"He just loves to have fun!" - well who doesn't? Surely that's the definition of fun?

We could fill this thread with WWE-isms. Even watching 70s stuff on the Network, Vince can't speak like a human being - he strikes me as like one of those pricks who thinks that using a lot of big words will make him sound smarter, only the sportscaster equivalent of that.

His steadfast refusal to use (or let anyone else use) pronouns on commentary leaves him saying things like, "that certain individual, being one Mr. Fred Blassie".

I reckon there were various WWF commentary catchphrases that I heard as a kid and assumed were commonly-used phrases. I vaguely remember describing everything as a miscarriage of justice for a bit.

A quirk I have along the same lines, but even more niche, is spotting wrestling fans who were big into Power Slam during their formative reading/writing years, because Fin Martin had his own wrestle-vocabulary. The most egregious of these is using the nicknames "Undi'" and "Tripper" but there are various other telltale signs of it that hit me right in the nostalgia. Supremo, for example, used one of Fin's superlatives ("blistering") to describe a match the other day and it instantly took me back to reading the magazine. I'm always paranoid that my own use of brackets is a bad habit I picked up from that mag as well.

On 5/21/2020 at 2:53 PM, GeronimoJacksBeard said:

Triple H went through a phase of using 'industry' during his clean shaven colourful trunks phase, i'm sure.

What he really overuses though is - "Here's the thing..." Doesn't annoy me, but i've always found it a bit of an odd turn of phrase. He loves it.

Yes! There was a point when that really started to wind me up. He was doing it every week on Raw. Dave Meltzer uses it all the time as well, I wonder if one of them got it from the other.

Fair play to Slapnut, the Hornswaggle thing is a huge annoyance for me.

Until all the outrage over this Dominic Cummings thing, I genuinely thought people had been staying in because they didn't want to get/spread the virus.

3 hours ago, PunkStep said:

I reckon Pitcos screaming at her that she's not his real dad would've sealed the deal.

I COULD HAVE CUT HIS HAIR BETTER THAN SHE EVER DID, HOW THE FUCK HAS SHE BEEN A HAIRDRESSER FOR YEARS WHEN SHE DOESN'T EVEN KNOW HOW TO CUT HAIR, I LIKE REAL HAIRCUTS NOT THIS 'FOLLICLE-SHEARING' BULLSHIT

15 minutes ago, ElCece said:

They could actually have some verval interactions as well. Would be majestic. 

It’d be a bittersweet symphony.

I missed the mentions of it earlier in the thread, but I watched all of Dave over a few days this week. Completely took me by surprise how good it was. It’s rare that a show finds itself so quickly. I found it pretty hilarious, and very touching. Absolutely loved it. Never heard of Lil Dicky before this, but I’d buy a ticket to go see him if concerts ever come back. And the GaTa episode is just superb.

Also, I much prefer the What We Do in the Shadows TV show to the movie. It takes me ages to finish an episode because I keep rewinding and rewatching scenes, and particularly Matt Berry’s delivery of some lines.

I heartily recommend Upload!

Work will be weird without the office culture permanently. The camaraderie that comes from being imprisoned with people for 8 hours a day won’t really be there anymore. There are people I sit near in the office that I get on well with, but not enough to talk to much outside of work and our roles don’t involve frequent contact while wfh. New starters may not even meet their own teammates until the Christmas do, if they’re still going to be a thing. Leaving speeches will be even more awkward.

On the equipment frontI’ve been using my own laptop to work during lockdown. It’s scary because I’m using MS Teams via web browser outside of the work virtual machine, so whenever I have to share my screen I have to broadcast a couple of seconds of my real life computer before clicking into Citrix. So I end up having to close tabs of porn/wrestling/song lyrics. Also my laptop is a bit knackered, some of the keys are wonky and the webcam only works sometimes and never well. My manager told me the other day she’s made up a lie to our director that I’ve been borrowing a broken laptop from my housemate so far but I need to give it back, and ordered me that I’m to go along with the lie so that work will give me a laptop.

Whenever they do reopen my office in the next few weeks, it’ll be with the standard measures in place - half capacity, distancing, sanitiser etc. But I still don’t want to go in. It takes absolutely ages on public transport and I cannot be fucked with commuting for hours a day rather than just rolling over in bed. In my favour, I’m a bit of an at-risk because I am a big fat cunt with sleep apnea (untreated - got diagnosed in Feb and my follow-up appointment has been postponed several times and now cancelled, I guess because Covid has taken all the lung unit slots), and I wouldn’t be surprised if I’ve got undiagnosed diabetes. Also, the computers at work don’t have cameras, so the office is less equipped for meetings than my shitty laptop is. BUT, I am definitely the kind of workshy waster that Chris B referenced. At least one or two days this week, I snoozed through the afternoon.

Do they have to let me keep wfh if I’m not comfortable going in to the office?

1 hour ago, Cod Eye said:

Just on the subject of most of his work being owed by the WWE. I've no idea if it would work in the same way with wrestling, but in the US there is a law that means any work that has been produced for a production company/distributor(in the movies and music for sure) can be claimed back by the contents creator after 35 years. Two high profile cases that have been set in motion fairly recently is the rights to the first Friday the 13th film, where writer Victor Miller has won his case to take back the rights to the title and characters, and the family of Wes Craven trying the same with the Elm St franchise. 

Could this apply to wrestlers and their work too(as is, could they get the rights to their matches back after 35)? I know the WWE would claim the matches were on a "work for hire" basis, but as we know they only sign talent as Independent Contractors(the same argument Miller successfully made regarding his work on Friday the 13th). It's not important in the grand scheme of things, but I was thinking on the lines of Martha Hart claiming the rights to sell and market Owens body of work in benefit of the Owen Hart Foundation?

Victor Miller hasn’t won the distribution rights for the existing film, presumably? There’s a world of difference between owning a script you wrote and owning footage of a wrestling match that features your likeness and that of at least two other people (the opponent and the ref), music produced by someone else entirely, the creative direction of the performance being at least partly dictated by other people, and was filmed by one or more other people. There’s nothing/very little in Owen Hart’s wrestling career that could be seriously considered an authored work by Owen Hart.

Even if we pretend that WWE broadcasts fall out of their ownership after 35 years, why would the WrestleMania 5 Blue Blazer vs Mr Perfect match become the property of Owen Hart’s estate rather than Curt Hennig’s?

11 hours ago, tiger_rick said:

Not going to rewrite history about Cryme Tyme because it wasn't great but was always surprised a guy as big as Shad didn't get another go, especially when JTG was around for yonks after. Kept waiting for him to pop up again.

JTG wrote two booklets about this. Shad was constantly getting them into trouble with the locker room and making them pariahs.

I was hoping they’d come back when the brands split in 2016, especially when WWE brought back the Headbangers and Spirit Squad. 

Their dance with Regal that one year at (I think) SummerSlam was a highlight. Really enjoyed their match with Jerishow too.

1 hour ago, The King Of Swing said:

It's a minor miracle really that there are not a bunch of stories out there about him having his face smashed in by someone he's gobbed off to.

I can’t imagine anyone who would gain anything from it. He’s an old man ranting about the world passing him by. Nobody gains any Big Boy Points by battering him, and he’s mates with loads of the old-timers who are still about — you’d not get a warm welcome from Undertaker and Jericho if you’d beaten up Jim Cornette.

Plus, most of his targets don’t take wrestling seriously anyway, so they’re not going to get SHOOT RAGE over him. And if they did, he’d just sue them. He even mentions that in his rants, that he wouldn’t be scared to say all the same shit to Braun Strowman face to face, because if he got a kicking for it he’d be quids in.

If they can get Dustin Hoffman to shuffle onto the stage at the end and say "seven and a half stars, definitely seven and a half stars" I'll buy the DVD.

https://www.wwe.com/shows/backlash/edge-vs-orton-greatest-wrestling-match-ever

Yes, they’re going with it!

8 minutes ago, tiger_rick said:

Why does there have to be a good guy? It's one cunt calling out other cunts for being cunts. Just like politics.

What the fuck? The red shirts are goodies!

I haven’t read the thread yet, but Raw brought one of my wrestling annoyances to the surface. I hate when wrestlers say “this business” in their speeches, like “I am the best thing going in this business today” or “I have loved this business since I was five years old.”

I don’t even know what I’d replace it with. “This sport” would be even worse, and I hated that when Edge used it in his speech this week. I guess “wrestling” or “WWE” are what I’d go with, but even they sound odd. “This business” is atrocious though, it’s too brotherbrother to be in the TV characters’ vocabulary.

If Cornette’s the heel now, doesn’t that mean Kevin Dunn is the babyface? Bucky Beaver Motherfucker was the original Kenny Olivier, killing the business by moving it further away from Jimmy’s southern style.

Who has battered him during lockdown?

Just now, mrtrickio said:

Small piece on the wrestling in Florida situation on John Oliver last night. Only as part of a bigger piece on bringing back sports in the US and not the expose it might have otherwise been though

We stopped caring about that sort of thing many weeks ago, and we weren't even serious about it at the time. Oliver's way behind the curve here - if anything, we've now flipped to wishing that WWE would bring even more wrestlers into the venue for these shows.

33 minutes ago, AVM said:

I’ve got to be honest, I’ve never understood Cornette’s cult-like status.

He was one of the loudest and most prominent voice on shoot interviews when they started coming out. The shoot interview scene was basically Jim Cornette and a bunch of junkies from ECW. He'd also started his gimmick while he was still in the WWF and they used to let him do his rants on Raw. At the time as well, Jim had been on WWF creative and wasn't really noted as the sort of fuck-up who can't keep a job. His reputation was as a true protector of real wrestling, who couldn't co-exist with the Hollywood phonies in wrestling who are ruining the sport. He was always given preferential treatment by Meltzer.

In the post-WCW world, Cornette was fairly in tune with the average Internet wrestling fan's opinion - Fed Bad, Russo Bad, Territories Good, Kevin Dunn Bad, Our Great Sport is Serious Business, Workrate Good, Gimmicky Stuff Bad, etc.The Russo obsession, and its overlap with hating modern wrestling, created his cult. He became the voice of the angry Internet fan, able to express the bizarre level of rage that the fan couldn't put into words. Didn't give two shits about burning bridges and happy to rant about anything, he made his mark as a rent-a-Gob.

He fucked it up a bit for himself over the years though, through TNA and ROH. And then particularly when AEW came along and he wasn't drinking the Kool-Aid, he was fucked. Then the pandemic came along and he's had huge meltdowns about everything. Currently, his Internet stock is absolutely volatile. It'll drop like a stone after he slates Dynamite, then it'll pick up if he reviews SmackDown, and then it'll go super high when he rages after a WWE PPV or Raw, up until he reviews the next Dynamite.

Some extra footage of Undertaker doing cryotherapy, and referencing his hatred of cucumbers!!