Pinc

4 hours ago, unfitfinlay said:

Plus, creatively, is there anything that Lesnar could do for AEW that someone like Lance Archer, Brian Cage or even Wardlow couldn't do adequately well for a fraction of the price? Obviously it's night and day in terms of name value and sheer talent but, if you book any of those three the way you'd book Lesnar, then they'd still get over. Anyone would really.

Na Brock walked into UFC and became their heavyweight champion, after already effectively being a superworker within pro wrestling. He has a credibility in both worlds that will probably never be matched by anyone. Sure booking big hosses strong will get them over, but Lesnar is a really special case.

Lesnar going to AEW to do jobs for their cruiserweight jabrones to prompt Vince to up his offer lest he completely job himself out would be great.

36 minutes ago, Supremo said:

For a group of supposed anti-WWE characters, this might be the most WWE-style promo I’ve ever heard. The language they use is absolutely ridiculous.

If Vince didn’t write that promo I’m Handsome Jimmy Valiant.

It was always just snarky, smarky nit-picking. Heenan's line was fine. Perfectly in keeping with character. If anything it added to the moment because you were mentally like '*eye roll*... Heenan having a go at Hogan without warrant again... oh fuck!'

What do people think about Everton signing James Rodriguez then (Telegraph saying its a done deal as of last night)? Its basically the player-equivalent of hiring Carlo Ancelotti as Everton manager in 2020. The pros and cons as I see it are:

Pros: talented player, apparently cut-price, has worked with Ancelotti before, something to prove, statement signing (i.e. may keep Richarlison a year longer), one of the most famous sportspeople on the planet.

Cons: 29 years old, will he be motivated, possibly the Colombian Theo Walcott, wages presumably sky-high.

I think taking him while he's available is a no-brainer as hiring Ancelotti has given us a brief grace period to make some Galacticos signings which might not even sustain into his second window once the Ancelotti-at-Everton novelty has worn off. If he can stay injury free he's a big upgrade on Sigurdsson in the number 10 role which tends to be pivotal to Ancelotti's favoured diamond formation. The received wisdom about him is that he hasn't done anything since the 2014 World Cup, but a look at his Wikipedia shows he's scored a good number of goals for a midfield when he has been given games (though he was never able to hold down a starting role at either Real or Bayern for long).

All that said, it could go really, really badly if his injury woes continue and he becomes an expensive sicknote. And this is Everton we're talking about.

37 minutes ago, DavidB6937 said:

I still think the perception of how he is would put off a lot of the AEW guys from wanting to work with him. They don't need him.

They’d all bend over backwards to bring him in, come on now.

The bigger impediment to Brock thriving in AEW would be the lack of legitimate heavyweights in their main event scene. Some of Brock’s best work tends to come against smaller guys but not sure the booking works without at least the threat of a Strowman/Joe/Reigns/Goldberg type.

Watching the end of SummerSlam it occured that the biggest thing that could happen in wrestling in 2020 is an inter-promotional angle between Reigns and Moxley.

8 minutes ago, neil said:

And I guess that is where we differ, I see those awards as ridicule.

There’s a difference between conversational ridicule where both sides can reply to eachother and a democratic vote on who the biggest tit is.

6 minutes ago, neil said:

Because I can see the difference between [...]

This is a massive overreaction to what I said mate, and in my post I already said I’m not calling for an end to disagreement or even ridicule. There’s no point trying to remove those things as they’re just human nature. And often the best parts of the forum!

But a vote on Dolt of the Year isn’t human nature and it can go without anyone’s enjoyment of the forum being effected.

On 8/18/2020 at 1:44 PM, neil said:

Are negative awards potentially harmful for some people? Yes I could see that. But I'd say that the internet is not a safe place for you to be if you're that much at risk of self-harm to be honest.

I don't understand how you can concede that the negative awards could be harmful but not support getting rid of them. Why take the risk? Who finds the negative awards so amusing to risk causing harm? Vulnerable people often aren't the best placed to work out whether the internet is a safe place for them. Why put that decision on them? When the consequences could be dire?

Note I'm not mentioning a clique because I think all that talk is silly, and the apparent clique members just read like a list of the best posters. And I'm also not saying people shouldn't be allowed to disagree or even ridicule eachother. The piss taking is often the best part of the forum and I never see it spill over into anything pathological (these days), but nominating and voting people as dolts seems really unkind and like its had its day.

52 minutes ago, Cod Eye said:

I think the point here though is that someone want's a long standing, user favourite feature scrapping to help their needs. It's similar to the poster who gets arsey with people if a "fact" is not 100% accurate in a post, then blames it on their Asperger's when challenged. If an online forum or fake "award" can trigger your condition, then maybe an online forum isn't for you until you gets things under control?

Bloody hell what a terrible take.

On 8/15/2020 at 11:20 AM, The King Of Swing said:

The genre of professional wrestling.

Who even talks like that?

John Cena.

RedRooster’s posts are spot on and its disappointing to see push back against them. Surely no one is so amused by the Dolt of the year poll that they’d want it to remain at the expense of someone’s health?

12 minutes ago, LaGoosh said:

Also Austin's character was the perfect foil for Vince's character. Everyone else just seemed shit in comparison.

Punk was briefly fantastic opposite Vince ahead of MITB 2011, in that he had believable gripes with Vince that were grounded in the genuine frustrations of a section of the fanbase, but they switched to Triple H for some reason and then allowed the angle to completely fall apart.

Wouldn’t disagree with any of that, but I don’t think anyone was saying they relied entirely on nostalgia from then on. More that Rock/Hogan was a watershed moment after which the general presentation stopped evolving in any meaningful way, relying more and more on pastiche of things that had worked in the past. Rock/Hogan was wrestling’s equivalent of the ‘End of History’.

1 hour ago, Gay as FOOK said:

Stuff*

Really great post that mate with lots of truth to it. There’s an essay to be written about wrestling and hauntology, which is the term coined by Simon Reynolds for (among other things) when musical genres cease to be able to produce new forms and instead become about recombination and pastiche of old ones.

I forgot who it was (maybe you?) but there was a post on here a while ago which pinpointed Rock/Hogan at Mania X8 as the moment WWE stopped being forward looking and became a nostalgia show. Its hard to dispute, and the gradual decoupling of their general profitability from their TV ratings seems to confirm that the current product isn’t the big money spinner anymore. The idea they could have their most profitable quarter ever at the same time that Raw is achieving record low ratings would’ve been unthinkable ‘when it was good’.

Hasn't it been reported over the years that they thought they'd have a returning Shawn Michaels to step into the top babyface spot in Rock's absence, but that he showed up pilled off his nut in the weeks before X7 and so his comeback was called off?

8 hours ago, andrew "the ref" coyne said:

But he didn't NEED Vince help to do it, so him joining Vince made no sense. It didn't benefit him in anyway.

Its true, but I think its implied that Austin knows he'll get preferential treatment as champion with Vince as an ally. It doesn't take too much of a leap to understand his reasons.

Having watched the four TVs straight after Mania X7 recently, they really don't explain why Vince was bothered about aligning with Austin. He doesn't seem to really get anything out of the deal other than trolling the audience and getting to bully JR. So I do like your fantasy booking above in that it would much better explain why Vince was bothering.

Its also worth a note that it was always kind of implied that the reason Vince didn't just fire Austin over the years was that he couldn't risk his biggest drawing card going to WCW. With WCW closed the week of Mania X7 they could maybe have added that to the story. Vince is now the only game in town and so it doesn't make sense for Austin to be the rebel he used to be.

I'm watching through the few weeks of TV immediately following Mania X7 and on a re-watch it looks an awful lot like Austin's heel turn was effectively ruined by the WCW buy-out more than anything else. Or rather, the decision to cast one side of the invasion as heels and the others as faces.

Austin and Vince play an absolute blinder getting the crowds to boo Austin in the weeks following Mania. There's none of the cheering that we all remember from the actual night of the turn, even the following evening when they're still in Texas. Also - Austin's performances are superb. He's absolutely despisable every time he's on screen, and the motivation for the turn is clear - he wanted the boss in his pocket as an insurance policy lest he could no longer dominate the Fed after his surgery. It rings true and it makes sense. Its also clear that the original plan is to build Austin as untouchable for a few months before The Rock comes back for his revenge, which would've been absolutely stellar as the main event for SummerSlam '01.

Instead they have the WCW sale fall into their lap a few weeks earlier and Austin's story ceases to be the central thrust of the shows after a couple of months. Becoming part of this larger narrative that derails his character development and crowds the main event scene with new guys like Booker T, meaning the route back to the Austin/Rock re-match is completely lost.

If they hadn't bought WCW the proper narrative of Austin's heel turn could've played out, the shows wouldn't have become a bloated mess with everyone's face/heel alignment a product of the faction they're aligned to rather the character development they'd gotten really good at in the preceding year, and I think we might have seen the Attitude boom period extended for at least another year. The WWF could do no wrong going into Mania X7 and left to their own devices I think they'd have continued that roll for a good while longer.

Hang about - does he openly say he doesn't ever want to be called up to the top shows? That seems absolutely barmy. Barmy that he'd say it, and barmy that they'd push him as one of the top NXT guys for years if they know that's his ceiling.

Boutros Boutros-Ghali.

Perversely I think their unsavoury practices actually keep me coming back, rather than the other way around. I'm only in one WhatsApp group that ever discusses wrestling, and these days we discuss crazy Vince stories, the insane Saudi deal or Taker turning out to be an All Lives Matter twonk far more often than we discuss the actual product. I'm not sure any of us could give two shiney shites about Drew McIntyre, but Vince being a lunatic is always good conversation fodder.

In the same way a lot of people are avid Trump-watchers despite (or in fact partly because of) thinking him a terrible human being, I'm more of a Vince-watcher than an actual consumer of his product these days.

25 minutes ago, wandshogun09 said:

Whenever my Dad would see Rocco he’d always wonder out loud why he was nicknamed after a pen. 

And you were amplifying this dodgy Facebook stuff because?

53 minutes ago, Doog said:

Mcintyre/Orton is pretty much the biggest match they could do at the moment so it’s a decent main event for SummerSlam.

WHAT YEAR IS IT?! WHO'S THE PRESIDENT?!