BomberPat

I do think Mistico got a bad rap in WWE, but he was the absolute poster-child for why people are sent to developmental to learn "WWE style" regardless of how much experience they've had elsewhere. 

He wasn't a bad signing on paper, though - biggest box office draw in Mexico in forever, perfectly positioned to be the next Rey Mysterio. Problem is that WWE had no idea what made Rey Mysterio the first Rey Mysterio, and didn't know how to present Sin Cara in a way to replicate that. At one point they were looking at bringing in Averno to feud with him, and absolutely should have done - the same way Rey first got noticed by wrestling Psicosis everywhere before transitioning into matches with American opponents, and the same way they tried to get Great Sasuke over by giving him TAKA to work with, they should have had Mistico working matches with people he was comfortable with, and not throwing him into matches with the likes of Jack Swagger and Sheamus right from the off. 

7 hours ago, King Pitcos said:

If modern WWE had that level of star willing to wrestle every week, they wouldn't be saving it for PPV - they'd run the same thing on Raw every week for six months until nobody had any excitement to watch them fight each other.

I disagree. Because that's not how they book the people they see as the real stars. The Triple Hs, Undertakers and Brock Lesnars of the world aren't wrestling on TV every week. Even Bray Wyatt, once they decided he was the next pet project, hasn't been doing TV matches.

I understand some of the reasons for not holding off on those matches, but The Rock was still around until Summerslam, Hogan was written off TV earlier that month so could almost definitely have stuck around in some capacity for a week or two longer. If they had kept the NWO angle going a little longer, Austin might not have walked out over the Lesnar programme and creative ideas - especially if there was huge money on the table. Admittedly by that point Hall was gone and Nash was injured, so they wouldn't have been able to save that match for Summerslam, but that there wasn't even any effort made in that direction is shocking. And though Hall and Nash were out of the picture, Shawn Michaels was back, and briefly had an nWo stint, and teased inviting Triple H to join. They could have pivoted toward Rock and Austin vs. an nWo/DX hybrid, or Rock, Austin & Hogan against Triple H, Shawn Michaels and X-Pac, or any other variant involving those top guys. 

It's a shame because he was one of the first, and only, NXT debuts to really subvert the usual "hey, it's that guy you know!" indie signing. He came in with all the usual "hottest free agent in the world" hype, and within the space of a single promo turned himself heel in fantastic fashion. Given that they've turned Sami Zayn into a manager, which I doubt anyone could have really predicted, I'd wager that maybe the best use of Roode would be something similar. 

Recent photo of some of the WWE production crew;

Matches being laid out by Abyss, Sonjay Dutt, Jason Jordan and Pat Buck, absolutely guaranteed to be star-makers. 

It was said a while back that Hager specifically wasn't wrestling while in training for his next Bellator fight. That he hasn't fought since either makes him seem like an even worse "major" signing than he did in the first place. 

Drew Gulak should be a utility player par excellence - he's genuinely one of the funniest people I've met in wrestling, while also being an absolutely superb technical wrestler, and hard hitting. He's someone that should be easy to slot in anywhere on the card, in a tag team, as an enforcer, or just a reliable good hand to help people on the way up. But looking on Cagematch he's lucky to get two TV matches a month, and most of them don't go five minutes.

Big E should have been a world champion by now.

Goldsmith the same - lost his seat, but will be entering the House of Lords to remain in the cabinet. 

Thank fuck we're not going to be governed by unelected, unaccountable elitists, eh?

Talking up "everything Margaret Thatcher achieved" isn't doing a lot to prove the "I'm not a Tory" argument, either.

I heard he's not doing panto this year. He did Aladdin a few years back and never heard the end of it.

13 minutes ago, Lion_of_the_Midlands said:

The thing about the social media advertising I saw Pat, was that the Labour message seemed to be aimed at people who already agreed with them, whereas the Tory ads went after Labour voters who voted to Leave, but had never voted Tory before. 

The Tories were just better switched on in the campaign overall and their social media marketing in particular. As much as the Left laugh at Cummings this is his area and he obliterated them. 

I think you're probably right. Labour put considerably more money into social media, but every ad I saw was very much preaching to the converted, or trying to encourage young people to vote for the first time. There wasn't really anything in there designed to appeal to a broader demographic. 

Having said that, though, the frustrating thing about social media is that it's a series of silos and echo chambers. So I only ever saw the ads that were targeted towards me in the first place. Maybe there were other Labour ads out there that I'm just not seeing! 

And that's what makes me wonder about the efficacy of social media advertising - if it's only reaching people that some SEO algorithm decides would be interested in seeing it, are you really reaching the right people for it to have a significant effect? And, actually, is it strictly speaking "advertising" in the traditional sense that's making a difference on social media, or is it the paid accounts posting "personal" stories and takes on news events in favour of their chosen party? I'm thinking specifically of the Tory sock-puppets posting about the hospital bed scandal, but that's just one that got caught out - how much more of that was going on, that would have bypassed all sorts of rules against political advertising?

Yeah, aside from Brexit, I'd argue that was the biggest thing to lose Labour this election - Corbyn's complete failure to control the narrative, and he has always struggled with that. How many times have we seen PMQs and been pulling our hair out that he's not taking the government to task over their latest gaffe or ghoulish policy, instead choosing to plough on with important, but less urgent headline-grabbing, issues? 

I'm saying this with the benefit of hindsight - ahead of time, I thought he was doing the right thing in not fighting a Brexit election. But it terms out that a broad, ambitious manifesto wasn't the right choice in what was still, for many people, a single issue election. That he wasn't able to control the narrative on Brexit, on the NHS, on "terrorist sympathiser", on antisemitism or anything else is what leads to a position where people could basically project whatever vision of him they wanted on to him - if they wanted to look to him as an ineffectual doddering old man, they'd find evidence, but if they wanted to see him as a power-hungry control freak Stalinist palling around with terrorists, they'd find support for that too, but what they'd never find was him, or the machinery of the Labour Party, rebuking any of those views in strong enough terms. He was always, admirably, trying to put those issues to bed and use his time to talk about something more genuinely important. But it meant he never managed to shake the stink of any of those headlines or allegations the way he might have done. Ultimately Labour were trying to play clean in an election that could only be won by playing dirty.

What's worrying is that for all the spending on social media, all the disinformation campaigns from the Tories and all the memes and videos from Labour, none of it seems to have meant a single fucking thing. Which is another thing I'd have been spectacularly wrong about without hindsight. Any future Labour Party leader will need to contest with media hostility and bias - without the alternative of reaching people through social media, what hope do they have? Or is social media still the answer, but we've not been using it properly?

11 minutes ago, Accident Prone said:

 I wouldn't class Shlak as anywhere near a star or draw though, even on the deathmatch scene so his booking is always questionable. 

This is the thing that always gets me about Shlak and so many other wrong'uns on the scene. In the grand scheme of things, who the fuck is Shlak? Is there anyone out there buying a ticket based on Shlak being on the card? I'd understand making concessions to book bastards if they were simultaneously major draws, or elite level workers, but more often than not they're absolute shitarses in the ring as well. Aside from the boy's club mentality, why bother?

As for Janela himself - he's had some matches I've really enjoyed, though I've not seen many. I don't think he has a bad look or gimmick at all, but it would lend itself better to being a scuzzy, sleazy heel. The most interesting stuff he's done has been around Spring Break which, before the concept was diluted by everyone and their dog trying to do "ironic" wrestling shows at 'Mania weekend, was some of the most genuinely exciting stuff happening on the indies over the past couple of years. He definitely brings a lot to the table as an "outside the box" ideas guy.

He absolutely wasn't in WCW in 98-99. His only run there was '91. Handful of TV matches, and the plan to team him and Pillman together, but it was over in a month and he never signed a contract.

I think there's a lot behind the "London-centric" criticism - some of it is valid, some of it is perception, particularly when in an area where an awful lot of people don't feel that the Labour Party stand up for them enough. But, yes, a lot of it is a bit of a byword for ethnics, Jews and gays. 

As I mentioned before, there's a lot of people saying that Labour got too fixated on "diversity" - the "Blue Labour" group in particular - and I really want someone to hold them to account and say, "what exactly do you mean by diversity?", and then for them explain why that's a bad thing.

There's also a conversation that's honestly too broad-reaching for much of how our politics functions, that needs to be had, about the language we use and what it means. When we talk about Labour losing working class support - are the voters of Bethnal Green not working class? Are the young people, the second-generation immigrants, and the black and asian people statistically far more likely to fall into the lowest income brackets not working class? 

Along similar lines, talking up areas of the north as "Labour heartlands" is meaningless if we can't define what Labour means to them. It was frustrating - and again, I would argue London-centric - to hear so many key seats referred to as "former mining towns". In some of these towns we're three generations away from when the mines were closed. There are people of voting age who have never seen a working mine. We shouldn't be taking their support for granted for something that happened a literal lifetime ago for some people. We shouldn't be talking about "former mining towns" so much as about current towns propped up by zero hour contracts, warehouse work and call centre shift jobs. 

17 minutes ago, CavemanLynn said:

Christ, if today's promoters think this, no wonder things are all to cock. Stone Cold worked at 100% a face's pace, with tons of fire and always showing out.

In fairness, there was a point where he started getting cheers while still more explicitly working heel, but you're absolutely right.

Too many people today view "face and heel" as whether the crowd are cheering or booing, rather than explicit roles within the structure of a wrestling match. It worries me when Triple H or Cody Rhodes talk about how the face and heel roles don't really exist any more - Triple H once said that people should stop calling for Roman Reigns to turn heel because if they're booing him, then he's already a heel to them, and even as a corporate non-answer I just found it infuriating. 

6 minutes ago, Lion_of_the_Midlands said:

It won't be key for 65 year old plus white people, it isn't them who are getting stabbed. 

For an awful lot of people not getting stabbed, knife crime is an obsessive concern, because it allows them license to demonise the young black and immigrant youths they imagine are solely responsible for it, and it allows them to paint London under Sadiq Khan as a '70s New York style lawless hell hole (when it's not also a haven of latte drinking champagne socialists, obvs). 

5 minutes ago, LaGoosh said:

How long has Roman been punching a cushion in his entrance? 

This has to be a euphemism, but I'm not sure for what.

That sort of thing does really annoy me. The show I was at on Saturday had people doing dueling chants in a match with a clear face/heel divide, either because that's how crowds behave these days, or because they were cheering for the one they recognised, irrelevant of her work in the match itself. 

I've had this conversation with promoters, and they tend to follow the line that punters can, and should, cheer or boo for whoever they want, and that if you try and dictate it to them, you're closing off opportunities for yourself - that Steve Austin was never supposed to be cheered, and so on. But I think there's a difference between a groundswell of support for a performer, and crowds/individuals being contrarian and cheering for someone who's clearly working heel. That said, a better class of heel would know how to turn even that crowd against them.

It's harder on the indies, though. Most heels still want to be able to sell merch after the show, so they can't make the crowd genuinely hate them. There might be inconsistencies in whether the wrestler in general works face or heel in different promotions - I remember at the first Wrestle Queendom, Charlie Morgan being the obvious babyface hero in the main event, but initially getting a smattering of boos from a section of the audience because she worked heel in PROGRESS. There's also the thing with indie wrestling where people are as likely to go because their favourite wrestler is booked as because they follow that promotion specifically - and if you've traveled to a show to see one wrestler, you're probably going to cheer for them even if they're working heel.

It's annoying, because honestly booing a great heel is so much more fun than cheering for them anyway. It's just such an over the top panto reaction, and great fun to indulge in.

6 minutes ago, Accident Prone said:

Another weird one; I think the first person to perform a shooting star press on a WWF PPV was Shane McMahon (vs Kurt Angle at KOTR '01). He's definitely the first person to perform a Van Terminator on WWF PPV.

I'm pretty sure he also hit the Van Daminator before RVD came to the WWF as well!

Though he's not the first person to have hit a Shooting Star - Marc Mero hit it on an In Your House PPV at least once.

1 hour ago, Loki said:

All of this is true.  However, what classifies as conservatism also changes over time.

I'm fairly sure my parents generation in the 60s thought they were ushering in endless peace and tolerance in a generational shift.  Homosexuality was no longer illegal, the pill arrived, women's liberation really kicked in.

But the parameters of what was considered liberal kept developing, whereas a lot of people just become fixed in the morality of their youth.  So despite being lifelong liberals, and having some very close friends who are gay, my parents were opposed to gay marriage.

Similarly my generation that grew up with gay and black jokes in the schoolyard have lived through this change where homophobia and racism is no longer generally tolerated, gay marriage and so on.  BUT we're now faced with the potential social upset of the transgender movement, and even for many liberal people it's just a bit too confusing and too sudden, and people are struggling with it.

So perhaps it's not that people get more conservative as they get older, it's more that the Conservative party tends to represent a world view that is 20/30 years more traditional, and so people find themselves more aligned with those values as society continues to change.

Yeah, this is a really good point, and the Conservatives in recent years have done a good job of appearing more socially liberal too. You see it often even in activist circles, that those who might have been at the forefront 20-30 years ago aren't necessarily up with the most recent advances, and end up saying something that's seen as no longer acceptable. Times change.

And also, there's the argument that socially liberal factors don't really play much of a part in UK elections. It comes down to the economy and, increasingly, to immigration and security. But I still think there's a real danger to go down the "Blue Labour" route, of seeing that a focus on "minority" issues is what lost Labour support - forgetting that an awful lot of those "minorities" are dependent on the likes of the Labour party to look out for them, and that they're voters too.

Ultimately, in an awful lot of ways, what the result of this election shows is that until the Brexit mess is dealt with, Left/Right aren't particularly useful terms in a political environment where whole demographics are voting on Leave/Remain grounds instead - and it needs to be recognised that Left & Right don't map to Remain & Leave as neatly as an awful lot of well-meaning liberals would like it too.

The idea of it cementing The Rock is very strange, too, considering that he was done as a full-timer by Summerslam, and only had one more two month run in him. He was a made man long before.

The way Hogan worked that match felt very much like the end of Hogan/Warrior. There was a clear story to be told, and Hogan figured out the best way to insert himself into the parts of the story that fundamentally weren't about him, so that the conversation after the fact was at least as much about him as it was about the guy who just beat him. 

I think the problem wasn't just that it opened the doors to nostalgia, but that it was at the height of WWE thinking they were untouchable. They could basically fuck up the NWO angle in favour of a Hogan face run that, while it resulted in some good matches, also resulted in dross like his title match with Triple H, and could throw huge matches together at a moment's notice, because why not? Why bother with long-term build when you're no longer competing with anyone?

I've mentioned this countless times before, but they didn't wait until Wrestlemania to do Hogan's return match, or even his first match with The Rock. They did Hogan, Nash & Hall vs. Steve Austin & The Rock on RAW before Wrestlemania. After Hogan turned face, they did Hogan & Rock vs. Nash & Hall the night after Wrestlemania. That's several months worth of potential PPV headlining matches pissed away in a week. They did variations of it with X-Pac and Kane thrown in the mix for the next two or three weeks as well. 

They had Hulk Hogan and Steve Austin in the same match, for the first and only time ever, and it was a sub-10 minute match no one remembers on a go-home episode of RAW. The entire way they booked Austin against the NWO was a fundamental failure to grasp that they had the two hottest acts of the Monday Night Wars in the same programme, and it was just booked like any latter day Steve Austin feud. 

They would kill to have the level of star power now that they had in those throwaway tag team matches, and you'd get at least six months of PPV main events out of it. And they burned through it all in under a month, because why not?

It's a difficult one - do you actually get more conservative as you get older, or is it generational? Is it age, or is it being born at a certain time?

While the old adage is that you get more conservative as you get older, there has to be an element of generational shift - young people are growing up in a more socially liberal and open world than older generations, and have a different set of values as a result. They don't remember homosexuality being illegal, most 18 year olds probably have no real memory of a time before civil partnerships, and they've grown up in a culturally and ethnically much more diverse country, and a much more "politically correct" one too. They're also far more likely to have a university education than older generations, which could be argued means they have a greater degree of critical thinking, and also means they've likely encountered a broader range of views, and people from different backgrounds. I think the extent of generational shift probably counteracts the "get more right wing as you get older" effect.

All of this plays into why I think Labour abandoning the left, and the youth vote, amid talk of them having lost because they "became fixated on diversity", is potentially disastrous, as it would be at best short-termist, and risk alienating what will become a predominantly socially liberal population - and alienating the minorities that the logic "became fixated on diversity" suggests are little more than talking points or bargaining chips, rather than human beings (and voters!).

Liger would likely have been the first Shooting Star Press on US TV, if he was doing it in WCW in 1991. He invented the move before he was Jushin Liger, so it was already in his repertoire, and I'd be surprised if he didn't use it in WCW.

The only other thing I can think of that might come close, and maybe be enough to create a false memory of Warrior doing it if you're squinting through the mists of time, would be Tom Magee effectively doing one as a flashy entrance;

Though that would require having seen one of the very few Magee TV matches.

I had no idea this was happening, saw someone post the card this morning, figured it looked awful but maybe they'll add something last minute, only to find that the show had already happened. I saw someone post a photo of Daniel Bryan, and thought maybe he came back on Smackdown. No, it was the PPV, last night, and nobody gave a shit. 

The final PPV of the decade. And this is what they manage.

Seth Rollins not even being on the card is hilarious, but for WWE, surely pretty inexcusable. 

There's a lot of things WWE get wrong these days, but how often they do a "mystery opponent" match only for the opponent to be an obvious midcard choice baffles me. It's a stipulation that builds intrigue and excitement, when they must know that it just being a regular team like The OC is going to piss people off when they've been guessing at something else. Even Authors of Pain would have been a better reveal, because at least they have an angle behind them now. 

16 hours ago, HarmonicGenerator said:

PAC is the only heel who makes his flips and dives feel heelish. There’s a sense of him ... not showing off, exactly, but demonstrating that he’s bloody athletic and you’re all twats for not considering him the best in the world. And that he’s trying to hurt his opponent with them - Black Arrow, as impressive as it is (it’s been over a decade and my brain still can’t process how he twists and flips like that), into the submission, looks painful to be on the other end of. He’s a bastard, in other words, and the best heel they have.

With PAC a lot of the time it's as simple as slowing down. He rarely hits a big flippy move "out of nowhere". He takes his time standing up on the top rope, allowing any positive crowd reaction to dissipate, then hits it. 

Someone said, a long time ago, that the only difference between working face and working heel is that a face speeds up while a heel slows down. It's about controlling the pace of the match, and PAC does it better than anyone. That he does it without letting his level of ability effectively turn him face is a testament to how good he is.