CavemanLynn

Does the change to vouchers mean that they've gifted a load of money to particular companies, which then needs to be claimed?

4 hours ago, CL Punk said:

I guess Jack Perry and The Bucks will be fired for putting their hands on The Boss.

This angle would mobilise half of this forum into storming Rancho Cucamunga.

I actually prefer them missing it. More guys should be going for Hail Marys and failing - I like my wrestlers larger than life, but to be people not overpowered superheroes. In fact, I'm more annoyed at Hayes, popping up like hurling yourself 15 feet through the air onto the canvas doesn't hurt like hell, whereas Cody actually sold.

I lost my dad last year due to complications following a surgical amputation of his leg. He'd had crappie blood flow for years after getting a DVT, and it had got to the point where he was on a ton of pain meds, antibiotics,  and multiple weekly nurse visits just to change dressings as his foot and lower leg died. He lost his middle toes on his left foot. He managed to get a doctor to sign him off for the amputation, as a last hail Mary, but unfortunately, despite initially looking good after getting his leg lopped off to above the knee, his system slowly shut down in the weeks after.

The day after he died, my wife took me out to a pub on the seafront to decompress. It was a chilly but blue skied Sunday lunchtime, but the picnic tables were pretty clear so we were having a nice quiet time. While she was talking with her mum, a salt and pepper styled grey tit landed on the table opposite me. It was missing its middle toes on its left foot. It looked at me, hoiked its left leg up so just above the knee was shown, then flew away.

I think Cena's ability to build a WWE main event and work the crowd into a frenzy in the ring and on the mic is undeniable, but, much like Hogan before him, I always found his work and style far too clunky and rehearsed. Even on his rope running, it looks like he's counting his steps. The fact they called him The Prototype in OVW was bang on - he was (and still is, IMO) like they built their perfect wrestler in a lab, and just needed to get him through his on-screen nerves to strap a rocket to him. For all the talk they were going to fire him in the early days, I feel sure they'd have found a spot for him to tick over in. Or it might just be revisionism by me, unable to unsee Cena, Batista, Lesnar and Orton as the definitions of that era. It's the notorious incidents of no-selling that really do it for me in terms of being unable to put him on any kind of Mt Rushmore - in recent interviews, I've seen Cena talk about not pitching your own ideas but working to make the writers' ideas work (another example of his droid-like manner), the Nexus multi-man and the post-Lesnar promo both stank of a guy on his own reign of terror, his own Hogan-handing-the-belt-to-Warriors.

@no user name Re: your reference to the Oku match, was he working face? If so, the balance you described sounds about right to me, from a classic match structure viewpoint, i.e. the face takes a beating from the heel, selling more than bumping, getting the crowd on side, building up the heat for bumping the heel later. I've not seen much of Oku - just what's on YT - and I've heard decent things, but bear in mind I don't rate many of today's lot; many tout Oku's psychology as excellent, which from what I've seen boils down to repeatedly going for his finisher, which is a no-brainer, but then again, he'll work the leg for a bit then send the guy off the ropes like a fxxxing idiot. But if he was doing his job, but you were looking mainly at the workrate, I can see why it might look unbalanced.

45 minutes ago, JLM said:

a reliable in-ring performer but doesn’t have any sort of character going. 

This unfortunately sums up a lot of hires. It's not like they have the scene out there where they're running three house shows a night needing dozens of enhancement talent to fill out the cards between draws. If you've been wrestling for 5+ years and still don't have a discernible let alone marketable persona, then you're always going to have a ceiling and be that much more disposable.

Good god. When Dalton wins them back, he's going to need to spend weeks showing the Men how to be Boys.

THIS IS PRO WRESTLING.

The more I see of Mone, the more I think she must've been agented to fxxx in NXT, because every time she's stretched athletically or seemingly been allowed to have her own input, she ends up nearly breaking herself in two on suicide dives, or concocting awkward, overcomplicated yet unspectacular manouevres like that Gory DDT. Her promos are stilted WWE checklisters, and she has a tweener persona that immediately kills any heat let alone fire (mind you, being a middle-aged white bloke, maybe I'm out of touch and the smug "bad bitch" thing is a face gimmick). For all the industry hype and bells and whistles, I've never seen what she brought to the table apart from confidence, earned or not.

12 minutes ago, Statto said:

Red hurts more than black. 

Red goes faster.

52 minutes ago, Daaaaaad! said:

The moment he turns the stereo on is gold. Pure gold. 

"DM HUNK, baby!"

Outstanding.

It might be that the average wrestler these days comes from a very different background to those pre-2000, but I think they have to go through the same transition as wrestling nerds to actually get good - you start trying to be a bigger character than you are, then you start learning the inner workings and turn into a movez nerd, then you get the confidence to pick the movez you want, then you finally uncover the final form of the bigger character you originally tried to be. Regardless of what the attitude seems to be among a lot of modern workers, most family crowds I witness want the characters; that requires confidence that only experience can provide.

I assume most of the guys in your list pre-2000 were also working a helluva lot more frequently than today's lot, both on the indies and your weekend warriors, so they simply made that transition loads faster. They didn't have libraries of matches on Youtube to cadge spots from, bloat their movesets and diminish their crowd work; almost every thing they learned was on the road, either watching other matches on the card or travelling with actual vets who'd made the transition. There's a seminar by Raven where he counts three matches as one week's wrestling experience, so with lower schedules, it makes sense that the current lot have comparatively longer careers.

My main issue with guys wrestling for ages is the lack of variety and change. It's been noted on here at least how homogenous the WWE 'eras' have become where the last 20 years feels like one stale format, whereas there felt like distinct personalities for the 80s, early- to mid-90s, millennium, and so on. I also worry about "the love of the game" causing a worker-bee mentality, when I would prefer wrestlers maximised their value, made their money as quick as possible, and got out healthy and happy to mentor the developmental crews and indies.

17 minutes ago, Vamp said:

In the moments when I don't think Rollins is just a bit shite, I wonder if he just lacks self confidence. The endless nicknames and gimmicks, his moveset approach to wrestling, the obnoxious clothes and the over the top acting just makes me think he has 0 belief in himself as a performer. 

This is how I feel about most Britwres at the mo, to be honest. "Obnoxious twat who you like" and "obnoxious twat who you hate" appears to be the new face/heel divide.

8 hours ago, RIDDUM_N_STYLE said:

Because he was simply the coolest of the male Glads, tough but super nice. Don’t think Sara had a cross word at any point, he was definitely my favourite back in the day to the point I had his action figure

Same here. Rose-tinted specs fully on, but it definitely felt like they were given names and "gimmicks" that better fit their real personalities than any lot since, at least on the lads' side. Then again, maybe what coke and steroids did for wrestling in terms of bringing out inner confidence and willingness to ham it up worked then.

@BomberPat I was going to comment on the Bret vs Flair comparison but couldn't articulate myself, but I think you're dead-on here. Although Flair obviously had no trouble when it came to performing for the camera, his in-ring work was still very much in the vein of a touring champion working the crowd at hand, where broader strokes were OK to stick to, whereas Bret had the complexity of execution as well as the layers of additional meaning across weeks/months of TV build that stood up on the small screen. Two different approaches, that had decent but not spectacular results when combined (I've heard Bret thinks Flair sabotaged their matches, but I'm more inclined to think it was Flair trying to stick to his strengths and ease up on Bret's harder-working/bumping style).

With Flair, you have to consider what he was tasked with doing as NWA champion to properly appreciate him - he had to tour the territories and get their local guy over without weeks of feeler matches or planning. His skill was in walking his opponent around the ring, leading him through holds and heat, teaching the guy how to get the most out of the least while still having a dramatic main event level match. It's why I actually prefer watching his matches with young Sting, Luger, and Kerry von Erich to the bigger, 'better' names. Loads of heels have liked to say "follow me, kid", but Flair is the only one I've seen to actually do that.

21 minutes ago, DavidB6937 said:

I don't think Bret likes Bill Goldberg.

 

 

I mean, he's not wrong...

I joked in the past about Punk possibly exploding into dust if he ever faced Rollins, but this is the third time he's pushed himself in a big match since his return to wrestling and wound up with a serious injury. The heart might be willing but the body might be saying no. I don't think he did anything particular gruelling in the match, but if the little he did in a multiman schmozz was still enough to break something and put him out, I think he may need to consider if he wants to stay in wrestling to help the future generations in a training/mentor capacity, or try to eke out a few more years railing against his age to satisfy something inside him.

Another brilliant review/post. I've a RetroBOSS sitting in my office intimidating me with its 36k-odd games, but I'll be busting it out this weekend and rattling through these recommendations.

3 hours ago, Merzbow said:

I'm watching Victor's short pro career after seeing this tweet and there was genuine potential to be a great there, like Kurt Angle potential but for some reason he never fully transitioned and left completely after this short UWFi return. At least he got a small shot in WCW.

 

There's no better natural SFX in wrestling than the Japanese "UWAAA." It sounds like an echoing aftershock out of an anime.

Okada in WWE is way more interesting than AEW or TNA, because in either of those he'll be wrestling the way he has for years, but the WWE style is so distinctive and more restrictive that it'll be fascinating seeing how well he adapts and how well he is presented.

Take their last few Japanese men's purchases - KENTA/Itami, Nakamura, Tozawa and Kushida, and it's telling which one adapted the fastest, and how the rest ended up going. You can argue that KENTA got hamstrung by one of their subtle-as-a-brick namechange angles, but he looked badass sitting on a chair in the middle of the ring, egging on the Ascension to have a go. Injury curtailed what could've been. Tozawa has seemingly hung around long enough to fall into the Tajiri-esque "quirky foreigner" slot, while Kushida just couldn't translate his talent and look into something substantial for US storylines.

You'd think Okada would come in, pissing stoic, arrogant charisma, with a ripoff to his established Rainmaker entrance, but whether he can adapt to working 5-15 minutes (typically half the time he takes to even get going, like a Japanese Greg Valentine) AND offer the character and promo skills to afford him a real top-line successful run in WWE is where the intrigue is.

31 minutes ago, d-d-d-dAz said:

Whilst I don't presume to say you're wrong, the NY Mag is a Liberal paper, fairly closely aligned with the Democrat establishment and you're calling them right wing, childish, toxic, bigoted and sociopathic.

That, via the back door, suggests to me there's something to the thesis that the ideological left is going to struggle to rally around Biden at a time when Trump panic had faded.

The US has always struggled with this, as they don't really have a left wing. Not in the mainstream, and not with any natural electoral base. You can see that in how effective the Republicans have been in casting Biden as a socialist Marxist, when in reality Biden is several clicks right of even our current Labour Party.

I think my post was badly written then - my first sentence referred to the article, but "It" thereafter was intended to be "the Right." Does this clarify/change things?

2 hours ago, d-d-d-dAz said:

This is pretty good if you have a long commute or tricky toilet planned, and want to read about America's fatigue-ridden backsliding into a Trump sequel; https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/can-joe-biden-win-2024-presidential-election-anti-trump-coalition.html

That article covers the main tactic the Right consistently deploy over the Left - shout baseless insanity into the world, then watch the Left spend more time and effort trying to disprove than present their own case. It attempts to show the Left as feckless appeasers and the Right as principled doers. I also think, in America, it essentially weaponises the accepted norms of political debate against itself; Trump's success is based in his disregard for political procedures and his disrespect for his opponents, deliberately antagonising through accusation and interruption, then childishly shrugging. It works, makes good copy and gets clicks, but it's toxic, bigoted, and sociopathic.

The Bucks' obvious strengths unfortunately are weaknesses for what I enjoy in my wrestling.

They're so self-aware that I always feel like they're one moment away from stopping to wink at the camera, but it'll be in an "ain't we great" way after a complex athletic spot, rather than at a point of nasty heel dominance.

I know that's a perception thing on my part, but it stems from the biggest issue I have with them, which others have already stated is what they like about them, which is that they do so fucking much in their matches that I just don't care anymore. I got told by an old pro on the UK circuit that, at best, an audience will remember two or three moments from a two to three hour show, so the best you can do is try to be one of those moments, and choose what type of thing you want that moment to be. If you're doing 101 things in a single match, like I feel the Bucks do, how the fuck am I supposed to remember it, and if it doesn't get a pinfall or something else match-shiftingly critical, why should I care? Their fans can point out how great they are pacing and escalation, but the best pacing they ever showed me was the first Stadium Stampede where they literally cut away from them once they had done their next bit.

16 minutes ago, air_raid said:

Ha! I watched it on mute initially so didnt notice this. Can't remember the last fancam match I watched unmuted for this very reason. Even when you're lucky enough that those recording aren't doing hammy commentary thinking they're hilarious, there's always the danger of nearby bellends.

It's one of the reasons I love the Doink vs 123 Kid fancam so much - the kid with his dad starts off all too-cool-for-school, but then the match goes on and he starts whooping and marking out like the rest of us. Different eras and all that, I suppose.

1 hour ago, air_raid said:

It's funny - both these guys are pretty divisive, but this match is definitely worth a watch. I really enjoyed it.

I know you meant Nakamura and Ziggler, but I had to mute the two smark douchebags sniping throughout. Although it did have the unexpected effect of getting me into the match when Ziggler hit a neckbreaker after dickhead #2 was oooh-so sure it was getting reversed. "Let's Go Home Now." Yes. Fuxk off.