Jump to content

garynysmon

Paid Members
  • Posts

    4,635
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by garynysmon

  1. 44 minutes ago, boshealecta said:

    Bret Hart for me. I got into wrestling because of Hogan, Demolition, Beefcake and they were colourful and larger than life. Bret at the time did nothing for me. I used to love Summerslam 91 and watch it over and over but would often fast forward the Bret vs Perfect match.

    Personally I was a Bret fan from a young age, but I think it was more down to thinking he was cool as fuck rather than buying into the 'excellence of execution' in-ring stuff. But totally get what you mean about the characters.

    WWF Superstars/Challenge were the perfect shows for me as a kid really. You got the wrestlers making their entrances, a quick 2 min match and you got to see their usually cool finisher. Rinse and repeat, very little wastage.

    I seemed to skip my teenage workrate period altogether. And while pay per views were great as culminations for feuds, truth be told, I usually found a lot of matches to be a bit long for my liking.

    There have certainly been periods when I've questioned if I'm a fan of the actual wrestling at all, or simply the characters, pageantry and bollocks surrounding it.

  2. Oh christ, I have so many against the grain opinions!

    There are several guys I was just never able to accept as main eventers as they just screamed midcard to me. The ‘Ruthless Aggression’ era was terrible for this as they scrambled to fill the void after the proper stars had retired/gone to Hollywood.

    The Guerrero/Benoit Wrestlemania ending made me lose so much interest. What a drop off… I could never buy any as a world title threat, let alone holders. With Guerrero I could at least appreciate that outside of the ropes he had a rounded skillset and was versatile. But fucking Benoit (other than being a scummy piece of shit), a personality vaccum so lacking any mic skills that he had no business being anything other than a solid midcarder.

    I’m tempted to say Razor Ramon/Scott Hall as, again, he was a fine IC champion but seems to have been retrospectively given this mythical main event status he never achieved when active.

    I’ve never understood why his ‘punches’ are so universally beloved and thought they were just open handed slaps that looked shit. Decent Scarface rip off but was a bit one dimensional for me and his career obviously stuttered due to his substance issues.

    But Edge, I mean… solid enough hand and I enjoyed the Brood when he first popped up. A career built on good timing or what?! Decent tag team act but never main even calibre for me, let alone building a cumulative 15 year run on top or thereabouts. Was never sure what he was meant to be good at.

  3. 3 minutes ago, Nick James said:

    Rocky Romero is their main envoy for the NJPW deal, isn't he? If giving him the odd showcase match on Rampage against outside talent continues on that relationship, then give him the main event every week. 

    Yup. Its the exact same reason he pops up on Impact every now and then. Just keeping the envoy sweet.

  4. 17 minutes ago, d-d-d-dAz said:

    For a man who talks so frequently about wanting everyone to get along and to be the friendly place for everyone to come and have a smile and a slam, he hasn’t half got an edge when he’s got the hump.

    He reminds me a lot of Jurgen Klopp in that regard. Klopp likes playing the nice guy but the mask slips very often.

    That said, a cursory glance at the NXT promotion and I fail to see how it is ‘stacked’ iapparently. A load of your usual NXT guys most will never have heard of with a couple of old guys standing around the ring like spare parts.

  5. 14 minutes ago, Lion_of_the_Midlands said:

    Wrestling promoters have more digs than Time Team, but they are usually more sly about it. TK is just on full charge because they've moved Dynamite opposite NXT and he doesn't know how his current EWR save can process that. 

    This being the same Tony Khan that has coincidentally programmed a Battle of the Belts special up against Bound for Glory for the third year in a row btw.

  6. 1 hour ago, air_raid said:

    The irony being that treating the modern wrestling landscape as a "war" where there's winners and losers and that "alls fair in war" is a concept that should have been left in the 90s.

    To be fair, a large part of the tribal fanbases now wanting a re-run of the late 90s 'wars' are ether trying to relive their childhood/teenage years or started watching wrestling just after the fact and want to experience a re-run, feeling they missed out.

    I'd include Tony Khan in that and Triple "lol remember the Nitro tank" H has always been partial to a dig.

     

  7. I love this one. Always thought that it suited a badass wrestler more than a commentator/GM.

     

    3 hours ago, FelatioLips said:

    Always loved The Oddities theme. An instance where the theme is much greater than the stable

    In the same way, I always used to find it funny that long after the Brood had split up, and Gangrel had been relegated to Heat, they were still having to rig out the entranceway so that he could rise up slowly to the ramp.

    Imagine that now? They can’t even be bothered getting a unique set for anything that isn’t Wrestlemania.

  8. Going to the World Cup last November.

    Yes we were shite and stank up the tournament, but Wales qualifying for anything was a mere pipe dream when I was a kid in the 90's and naughties. So to get there at all and experience a true global event was a bucket list item for sure.

    Qatar wouldn't have been my choice to host the WC clearly, but it was what it was and there was more than enough to enjoy.

  9. Impact have a good rep for rejuvenating careers after being let go by WWE, with Steve Maclin immediately springing to mind.

    I was never a fan of Callihan so I’d be more than happy to see his and PCO’s departure open up some budget to go towards a hungry and fresh face with something to prove, or a big-ish name.

    Dolph Ziggler has pedigree as a former world champ but if he plans to stay in wrestling at all, I suspect he’d follow his brother to AEW, get that big initial pop then tumble down the card. 

    I’m still not totally discounting CM Punk showing up to do something, not a strong chance, but his close relationship with Lou D’Angeli would be the ‘in’ if there ever was one
     

  10. Sami Callihan and PCO may be on the way out according to reports.

    I like PCO but the bloke’s 55 years old. His character did seem to cycle in and out so who knows, may not have seen the last of him if he’s going down the free agency route. Surely AEW or WWE aren’t looking to tie him down?

    Personally I assumed Sami Callihan was a bit of an Impact lifer, so it’ll be surprising if he leaves. Never have been a fan of the act and he’s put on a lot of timber over recent years. We’ll see what happens there.

  11. I was expecting the usual rollcall of middle/lower card guys/girls which I’d never even heard of as I haven’t watched WWE tv for about 12 years now.

    But given I know of at least 4 of them, its an indicator they have decent tenure or are at least big enough names.

  12. On 9/16/2023 at 11:10 PM, Butch2000 said:

    TEAM OVER FOR LIFE

     

    Not digging Shelley turning tho

    Always been a bit of a tweener hasn’t he? I thought Shelley would have a short transitional run but I think he’s been great and really grown into the position.

    I’d love to see him retain as another long Josh Alexander reign is a little too predictable for me.

    Chris Sabin main eventing the first and 1000th episodes of Impact felt so apt and surely there won’t be a better TV match in any promotion this month than his X-Division clash against Llio Rush on Thursday? 

  13. 16 hours ago, Gay as FOOK said:

    Really looking forward to seeing what this increased production budget brings next year. Hopefully it's a full on soft relaunch. We've known how good it's been now for ages, but with the perception and fiscals pointing to wrestling more or less being in another apparent boom period of sorts, Impact really should be solidly positioning itself as distant-third-but-definitely-third in the way ECW was in the late 90s. 

    Sometimes in wrestling the actual in ring product or the booking has to catch up to the fan momentum. With Impact it seems at times like they have everything but the energy it deserves surrounding it. It ought to be able to tap into that little-engine-that-can type fan fervour but the brand just became a total flat tire from years and years of lolTNA burnout and downscale. 

    I’d agree with pretty much all of that.

    Ironically I didn’t see anything at all wrong with the production of Victory Road and Impact 1,000 and it was a well lit and good looking show in front of a hot crowd. It’ll be interesting to see what these proposed improvements will involve.

    Probably a bit biased but I think Impact is already clearly ahead of NWA and MLW on pretty much every imaginable metric. GCW isn’t really a traditional promotion per-se so I wouldn’t even consider it in the equation. 

    Because of Impact’s slow build approach its hard to make a major splash, but the momentum does seem to be growing on a slow but steady basis.

  14. Replying to myself again but really enjoyed Impact 1000. A nice mix of stars of yesteryear, a lot of Knockouts stuff and a truly belting main event between Savin and Llio Rush to finish it off.

    Nice to see Team 3D again too, D-von’s looking better than I thought he would given his health issues.

    The slightly bigger venue and a hot and well lit crowd also helped.

     

  15. 8 hours ago, WyattSheepMask said:

    Apparently they’re running a BOGOF for Grand Slam next week to try and fill it. Only 6,000 sold so far according to WrestleTix.

    Its fucking mad how not even 3 weeks ago they stuck 81,000 in Wembley (now being touted as 72,000, but I digress), but watching the show it’s like it never even happened 

    Seen a few WWE drones revelling at the swathes of empty seats at Wednesday’s Dynamite but I feel its just a case of some markets just being oversaturated at present.

    Its one thing going to Wembley for a first ever show in Europe, which was obviously going to raise comparisons with the iconic Summerslam 92, and having a potential audience of tens of millions being a realistic train/car/short haul flight away on a Bank Holiday Weekend.

    Its another matter altogether when you visit a city for maybe the 3rd or 4th time in a year for a midweek TV taping when you have a competitor also doing a regular rotation.

    I know AEW aren’t in New York often so may not apply in this particular case, but I definitely see a situation where Chicago will have become oversaturated soon.

    You book 2,000-3,000 seat venues you’re guaranteed to fill and you’re called bush league, yet people will take the piss when you can’t fill proper arenas.

    Yes the wrestling fans that we have now will travel further and spend more on wrestling than years past, but they still only take up one seat at a time (as a rule anyway!).

  16. Just now, Nick James said:

    Can't wait to see Punk at Crown Jewel in the Goldberg spot. No way if he goes back is he turning down that sweet payday, blood-soaked Saudi money or not. 

    Didn't the Saudis stop watching WWF in 2001, at the same time as most normal people? Asking for Yokozuna and all sorts.

×
×
  • Create New...