BomberPat

hadn't considered women's Rumbles, tbf.

It's indicative of the rubbish wrestling fan mentality of "if it's not a surprise, it's bad" - how often has the number 30 spot ever been given to a true surprise entrant? 

Nia Jax this year, arguably Triple H in 2016, and then you're looking as far back as Cena in 2008, and nothing before that. It's rarely even a big babyface spot.

I'm still amazed they've never had a heel troll people with "Cult of Personality", maybe this will finally be the year.

I've worked a few shows were guys did double duty - working one match unmasked, one in a masked gimmick later on. I've done it myself - refereeing a show, then entering the Rumble later on under a mask.

Early on, a few of the guys involved were convinced that people in the crowd would be spending all their time trying to work out who was under what mask. But they don't. Because when "casual" fans see someone on a wrestling show under a mask, they don't say, "I wonder if the guy in the mask is the same guy who worked the opening match, or the bloke who took our tickets on the door", they just think, "oh, he's wearing a wrestling mask, because that's what wrestlers do".

I don't think the distinction of him not being a wrestler any more matters in the slightest. He's still a character on a wrestling show. It's no weirder than having the mild-mannered, suit-wearing babyface announcer use the name "Gorilla Monsoon" from when he'd worked a wild-man gimmick twenty years earlier that none of the contemporary audience had seen, or Jerry Lawler sitting at ringside in a singlet and crown even when he hadn't wrestled on TV in months or even years. 

If someone's going to get turned off a wrestling show the moment they see someone dressed weird, they're not going to last very long. 

The idea that it's "embarrassing" suggests that someone is embarrassed by it. Why, what for, and on who's behalf? 

59 minutes ago, Mr Butternut Squash said:

Excalibur should have removed the mask already. It’s embarrassing.

I've seen this argument before, and never really grasped it. Why is it embarrassing? Who is supposed to be embarrassed by it?

Is it this idea that some hypothetical first-time viewer would tune in to a wrestling show, be perfectly fine with everything else going on, but somehow find a commentator in a wrestling mask beyond the pale? I don't get it.

Just now, Grecian said:

The Heenan Family? Started in the 80's, but I can't remember when it finished.

Wiki has the WWF iteration as '84 - '93, but that's basically saying that everyone ever managed by Heenan would class as a member of the "Family", so it's not really a faction in the same sense. I wouldn't consider his run with Flair, or with the Narcissist, as being an extension of the Heenan Family at all, so maybe you could make the argument that they lasted from '84 - '90/'91, but it would still be a stretch to consider them a true faction.

4 minutes ago, jazzygeofferz said:

I was wondering whether we'd end up seeing Johnny Powerrr turning up to feud with James Storm after Melina turned up in the NWA, or maybe Johnny Dynamite in AEW, but will take JoMo back in WWE.

Melina and Morrison aren't together any more, and I think other than her one-and-done in Lucha Underground before being replaced by the new Mrs. Morrison, I don't think they've have had any subsequent interaction.

Let's hope he feuds with Johnny Gargano over the gimmick of being called Johnny Any Given Noun.

I like Jimmy, but he's been massively exposed in a lot of ways in AEW.

And after his first promo there, someone said he just sounded like Naboo from the Mighty Boosh, and I can't shake that.

11 hours ago, Otto Dem Wanz said:

Ignoring the ridiculous lies and bigoted spirit of that meme, what really stands out is "FREE benefits"... isn't it kind of the point that the welfare system doesn't charge anyone who needs benefits? 

My favourite was the 6-8 children planning to go on benefits. 

Yeah, that's been going around for a few years, and there's a mid-90s shoot interview where he defends his use of it in SMW. The man has previous.

Anyway, now the NWA have done a big "Thank You" video to Cornette for all he's done for them, which is 100% the best way of dealing with someone you had to fire for doing a bad racism, obviously.

It mostly comes down to no one defining what "For Sale" means, so like so many things, either side can willfully misconstrue the argument of the other, and get away with being not technically wrong.

14 hours ago, Kaz Hayashi said:

If I dig deep, I imagine I could find some terrible stuff linked to AEW/Kahn.

This is another Cornette thing actually, and the main reason I dislike him - it's not that he slags off Omega or Ryan or the Bucks or whoever, because they're big enough and ugly enough to stand up for themselves, and because there's an awful lot of valid criticisms to be made of them - it's that he's, shamelessly, unapologetically, an enormous goalpost-shifting hypocrite. 

On this, it's that he started criticising Tony Khan because his father donated to the Trump campaign, and anything with a whiff of Donald Trump on it is anathema to Jim Cornette.

Except, of course, that he last worked for the WWE in 2017, after WWE Hall of Famer Donald Trump was elected, after the McMahon Family donated considerable sums to his campaign, and after Linda McMahon became a member of his administration. And that, at the time of him attacking Khan on those grounds, he was working for Trump supporting recurring InfoWars guest Billy Corgan.

49 minutes ago, IANdrewDiceClay said:

50/50 booking and a shit womens division wasnt what was promised at the start of this venture. Man for man/woman for woman, NXT probably has the better roster as well. Take Jericho out of AEW, and who else is there on his level? I like Cody's character, but he doesnt dominate the show like Jericho has the ability to do. They really should have spent that 8 months looking for talent, rather than looking for their best friends Grandad's mate from the pub who wants a job.

While I completely agree with @tiger_rick that the lack of talent is absolutely not an issue, I would say there's a truth to them not spending enough time looking for talent.

The most exciting thing from the first press conference, for me, was the announcement that they would be partnered with OWE and AAA, and having PAC show up with a Dragon Gate belt. It all pointed to them working with other promotions, and a broad range of talent, that put me in mind of WCW bringing in cruiserweights from Japan and Mexico at a time when the US audience had never really seen that. That, coupled with a lot of the hype around them poaching WWE talent, created an idea of AEW as a place where absolutely anybody could show up, and you'd get a real diverse range of styles.

Instead, the AAA partnership amounted to one tag title match, then never being mentioned again, never having AAA talent appear on AEW TV (despite AEW talent working AAA shows), and the OWE partnership meant we got CIMA and sometimes T-Hawk, but none of the cool exciting new trainees. The Dragon Gate thing amounted to nothing. The WWE names ended up being, after the initial excitement of Jon Moxley, just Jake Hager, who's yet to even wrestle.

I think they've done well to manage expectations and not have people thinking that Randy Orton might jump ship or anything like that, but it does feel like we just see the same people every week. And not just at the main event level where you'd expect that, but it feels like we're seeing the same select few midcarders wrestle all the time, with not enough mixing it up, and definitely not enough promos.

Even with the shit women's division, I'd say the problem is almost entirely booking - and, again, that lack of diverse talent. When they did the Women's Battle Royal, they brought in Jazz and Mercedes Martinez, they had representation from Mexico, and a range of indie wrestlers we've not seen since, whereas on TV we get to see Britt Baker every week. They teased an Awesome Kong vs. Aja Kong match, and then never mentioned it again. I don't think you can call a women's division that has talent like Emi Sakura, Awesome Kong, Kris Stadtlander, Hikaru Shida and Shanna in it, and where even the worst of the regularly featured lot aren't as bad as the worst on NXT, but the complete lack of direction kills it.

1 hour ago, WyattSheepMask said:

You should see my twitter feed. Apparently “viewership doesn’t matter” so long as you do better in the 18-49. It’s amazing how much people have learned about viewing demographics in the last 9 weeks. One guy even told me that the numbers were wrong, but stopped short of telling if that had been a 2 week phenomena or if the 7 previous weeks were wrong also

Most of this logic has been people parroting Meltzer, without actually having understood what he said. It's not that viewership doesn't matter, but that ratings aren't the only - and in many ways, not the most important - metric. If the advertisers that are running commercials on AEW programming are wanting to appeal to the 18-49 demographic, then AEW "winning" in that key area is still significant, as it means the network are likely to be happy with the amount of money they're bringing in, which means they're likely to continue to be well supported by TNT, which bodes well for them in the long-term.

It's only the gibbering fanboys that have managed to turn that into "the numbers don't matter, AEW are winning even when they're not", but at the same time, absolute numbers don't tell the whole story if people are trying to frame this as a "war".

26 minutes ago, Nostalgia Nonce said:

A terrorist attack foiled by someone grabbing the nearest narwhal tusk and impaling them with it is straight out of Monty Python.

yeah, I hate people saying that something is "beyond satire", because it tends to massively misunderstand how satire actually functions, but if Chris Morris had written, "man foils terrorist attack using purloined narwhal tusk" as a Day Today headline, you'd think he was over-reaching a bit.

I have a blanket policy of blocking/muting/deleting people from my social media circles if they unironically use the phrase "false flag", but I love the idea of someone scripting a staged terrorist attack to include "and then they get chased by a man with a narwhal tusk". 

Yeah, my watchlist has become full of little yellow boxed titles to work through!

40 minutes ago, Snitsky's back acne said:

See but this 'I would have had a different reaction based on how much I like the person' stuff annoys me. I get it, it's human nature, you already don't like someone so 'any stick to beat them with' and all that - but essentially excusing one while condemning the other for the same act is just... hypocritical, in my opinion. Cornette is not the only one with his hands dirty here. Yes, he said it, so that responsibility is on him [and he did apologise to those who were genuinely offended by his comments] but the levels, and selective nature of, 'outrage' in these situations is blatant.

Cody joins in with a homophobic chant in Mexico. 'I'm disappointed but I like him and don't believe he meant any offense so I forgive him'.
Omega books a known paedophile on a show 'Damn, that was really out of line.. but I still love Kenny Omega so I forgive him and hope he has learnt from this.'
Ospreay openly shames women on Twitter for flying home to attend their relatives funeral or because they have accused his mate of rape 'Ospreay's a dick isn't he! lol. I'll still watch his matches though because I like him!'

Certain people are allowed to get away with things because we like them, they do cool moves and like video games/are vegan etc. and other people aren't because they say things we don't agree with about the people we like etc. It's just how it is I guess. 
 

Honestly, I think we're both arguing with an imagined other person, because this doesn't really address anything I said.

My point with having a different reaction based on who they are isn't about allowing it from one and not from another - it would be worse if I heard it from Terry Funk, because I'd be disappointed in him. Whereas with Cornette it was just a matter of time, so the reaction is more one of exasperation. To say that to hold two people to different standards of response is hypocritical is kind of missing the point - I would expect Nigel Farage or Donald Trump to say something racist, and I'd find it offensive, but if I heard the same thing from a public figure I liked - I don't know, let's say it was Sandi Toksvig for argument's sake - my reaction would be completely different, because it would be one of disappointment, of feeling let down by someone you didn't expect to have those views.

I think what you're interpreting as people only attacking Cornette for it because it's Cornette is more people hearing that Cornette said it and thinking, "well, it was only a matter of time". Other than the most blinkered of his followers, there's not one person that would have seen the headline "Jim Cornette uses racist joke on commentary" and was surprised. 

The other stuff you've mentioned is much of a muchness. The fact that the Cody and Omega examples you even mentioned that there was some attempt at apology or remorse, honest or otherwise, is a step above Cornette, whose response to the situation was to do a three hour podcast accepting no fault in himself and blaming everyone else - up to and including AEW fans and Donald Trump supporters.

and I think Ospreay's a bit of a wanker, and Joey Ryan isn't funny, for the record.

I can't speak for how other people took it, but I can't really see how a "starving African running after a bucket of fried chicken" joke would have somehow been less offensive coming from someone else. That it came from Cornette, more than anything, just gave it a sense of crushing inevitability - everyone knows that if you build your brand on "OH SORRY, DID I OFFEND YOU, SNOWFLAKE?" type baiting is sooner or later going too far.

If it had been said by someone I like more than Cornette, say, by Terry Funk, the reaction would be more one of disappointment - less, "for fuck's sake, Jim", and more, "fucking hell, I expected better from you".

Three pages in and no mention of the narwhal tusk?

I find Cannibal Holocaust quite interesting, because it's completely not the sort of film you'd expect from the title. It's quite a slow burner. I agree that the story behind the film is far more interesting than the film itself, though the soundtrack is surprisingly lovely.

I haven't watched it in a long time, though, and probably never will again, because the animal cruelty aspect is horrific.

On 11/30/2019 at 2:17 AM, kidzero said:

Isn't mjf married to an indy wrestler called that. 

No - he and Allie Kat/Stray Kat were an item, she moved halfway across the country to be with him, and then he almost immediately broke up with her and left her completely fucked over and basically homeless. 

On 11/30/2019 at 4:59 PM, Philjax said:

Who is responsible for training Bea Priestley? It's rhetorical as I assume nobody did. One of the all time worst. Stadtlander on the other hand has bags of potential. She was good on Dark the other week too.

Travis Banks and Will Ospreay trained her. Her biggest problem is that she'd probably be fine if she kept things simple, but she reaches for more ambitious things than she's comfortably capable of, and fairly consistently fucks them up. Throw in unprofessional shit like sandbagging Sadie Gibbs in the Battle Royal, and a reputation for working stiff for no reason, and I can't see any reason to keep her as a main focal point of the division unless it's purely as a bargaining chip for when Ospreay's contract comes up. She also has no real character to speak of, and always feels like she's playing a part, doing what she thinks A Heel Wrestler would do that in situation, rather than feeling like an actual human being. That they've had Jamie Hayter on the show, when she's basically everything Bea does but done better, yet still persist with pushing Priestley is infuriating.

Stadtlander is great, though, and the tag match on Dynamite left me wanting to see her and Emi Sakura in a singles match, rather than Emi being dragged down by Bea. 

2 minutes ago, HarmonicGenerator said:

2000 is the key year. The Official PlayStation Magazine has on its monthly demo disc a demo of WWF SmackDown, where you can play a singles match as The Rock, Stone Cold Triple H or The Undertaker (or was it Mankind). I play that demo for hours, and hours, and hours, and play it so much I just have to get the full game to play all the other matches and find out who all the other characters are. I do, and I get to know X-Pac, Kane, Al Snow, Road Dogg, Steve Blackman, Jeff and Matt Hardy, and the rest of the 32-strong roster.

That's exactly what did it for me. Endless playing of that demo.

Just now, Snitsky's back acne said:

Nice to see that your outrage about the 'demonstrably racist joke' hasn't stopped you watching the product though, that's good.

I haven't watched any NWA stuff in weeks, but sure. 

It's not about a competition, just that when you're saying "most of the people offended were white", basically you're saying "it's not that racist, it's just paternalist white liberals getting offended on behalf of black people", and it's demonstrably not the case. Mark Henry put on a decent statement about it, talking about how disappointed he was, and wanting an apology from Cornette. 

I have a very clear memory of buying a Legion of Doom pin badge at a jumble sale at the village hall in maybe '92/'93?, and I'm pretty sure I wasn't anything more than notionally aware of the WWF before that. Not long after, we got Sky, and I must have just caught bits and pieces here and there, and was watching reasonably regularly by '94/'95, with early favourites being Duke Droese and Bret Hart. I had a vivid memory of Bull Nakano's look, and of "The Undertaker" being managed by Ted DiBiase rather than Paul Bearer, so that would put those vague early memories around the build to Summerslam '94. I probably never saw a PPV, and probably not even RAW or Superstars, just highlight shows. My obsession with wrestling as an idea was completely unrelated to the probably very small amount of content I actually watched - I think for me it fell in line with Power Rangers and seeing the "real" Mortal Kombat characters showing up on Gamesmaster as a sort of real life superhero thing.

I don't ever really remember seeing Hogan wrestle as a kid, as I never watched WCW back then, and by the time I was properly following the WWF, Hogan had jumped ship. But he was still enough of a pop culture figure for me to know who he was. Because my old hand-me-down Beano annuals referenced Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks quite often, I sort of assumed that other wrestling outside of the WWF existed, and that Hogan, Daddy and Haystacks all wrestled there.

My older brother and my dad hated wrestling, and while I remember playing wrestling with my twin brother - basically making up characters and then fighting on top of a bunkbed - I don't really recall him having had as much interest in it as me at the time. I don't think I ever owned any wrestling action figures or videos.

I fell out of watching it probably around mid-'97 at the latest - I remember seeing replays of Shawn Michaels superkicking Bret Hart in his wheel chair, and remember being really freaked out by early Goldust promos. I gave up on it when my brother constantly telling me it was fake properly sank in, and didn't start watching again until mid-2000.

9 minutes ago, Snitsky's back acne said:

Yeah it's ridiculous how none of the people editing the show found it racist or offensive enough to delete it from broadcast before a few people on Twitter kicked up a stick about it and they felt compelled to act. It's also ridiculous how all the 'offended' people who publicly expressed their 'outrage' about it seemed to be of the white or non-black persuasion.....

It's a demonstrably racist joke. And "other people didn't notice it in editing" is a piss poor argument in Cornette's favour, it just means other people were culpable. InfoWars darling Billy Corgan not taking action against racism? I'm shocked.

Plenty of black people have spoken out about it, so if the only people you've seen on Twitter complaining have been scare-quote 'offended' white people, then it just sounds like you're not following too many black fans or talent on Twitter. 

Anyway, I will always mark for Great Muta, even when he can barely walk, let alone moonsault. But a match with Nick Aldis is probably the least interesting proposition for any wrestler.