Jump to content

Worst time for wrestling 80s or now


humanracer

Recommended Posts

  • Replies 38
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Personally for me 80s wrestling, I grew up watching it so nostalgia is obviously playing a big part here. However, I've only recently in the past 3 months got back into WWE so my opinion may change in 6 months time. I loved the whole over the top, cartoon and colourful gimmicks of the 80s. I remember buying up all the cheap NWA/WCW late 80s early 90s tapes from local newsagents and watching them all over and over again. I don't think I've watched any PPV from the last 10 years more than once, but age probably has a lot to do with that as well. I do still watch 80s wrestling though from time to time, some I've seen before and some I haven't. The dark production colours and footage is slightly off-putting in contrast to the silky smooth and vibrant WWE HD we get today, swings and roundabouts I guess. 88-94 are my favourite years as a wrestling fan, and I think a lot of the NWA/WCW stuff that was being put out at the time holds up better than the attitude era stuff, I tried watching some Raws from mid 98 the other week and turned them off after about 20 minutes as I just couldn't get into it at all. I'm not knocking Cena or Orton but more the writers of todays product, as the reason I stopped watching in 08 was because the storylines were lacklustre IMO and didn't give me a reason to care about the characters or why they were fighting each other. I think this is something that the 80s did a lot better in general, maybe not the WWF as much as NWA/WCW but in general I had more reason to care about the wrestlers and why they were fighting each other. That said, the past couple of months I've been very impressed with Cena and the whole Punk storyline as well as Orton who looks far more animated than he did the last time I saw him.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'd say a whole lot of making this selection goes into how much of ALL wrestling one saw in the Eighties. Nostalgia makes one remember the Midnight Express but forget , for example, completely atrocious AWA gimmicks and horrid female wrestlers. Same way one can recall beloved Nineties promos but forget when Herb Abrams threw a glass of water on some third-rate manager and said "I wish it was urine!" (Yes, this actually aired on national TV!)

 

Also if you were a kid, you probably didn't realize how crappy certain performers were, and as an adult, it's human nature not to want to piss all over a one-time hero.

 

And, finally, there's the matter of when you were brought up. If you weren't following wrestling/alive in a certain era, it's a lot harder to "get" the style; but it made perfect sense at the time. So, for instance, a WWE Classics house show match from the late Seventies at MSG may have a younger viewer thinking it looks like it's in slow-motion--and I wouldn't blame him--whereas someone like me would fully understand why they did a "test of strength" for five minutes. Suppose the proper word here is context.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

And, finally, there's the matter of when you were brought up. If you weren't following wrestling/alive in a certain era, it's a lot harder to "get" the style

 

This is a problem I have when watching old World of Sport wrestling. I love some of the technical shit in the bouts, and enjoy the commentator tremendously, but I can

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'd say a whole lot of making this selection goes into how much of ALL wrestling one saw in the Eighties. Nostalgia makes one remember the Midnight Express but forget , for example, completely atrocious AWA gimmicks and horrid female wrestlers. Same way one can recall beloved Nineties promos but forget when Herb Abrams threw a glass of water on some third-rate manager and said "I wish it was urine!" (Yes, this actually aired on national TV!)

 

Also if you were a kid, you probably didn't realize how crappy certain performers were, and as an adult, it's human nature not to want to piss all over a one-time hero.

 

And, finally, there's the matter of when you were brought up. If you weren't following wrestling/alive in a certain era, it's a lot harder to "get" the style; but it made perfect sense at the time. So, for instance, a WWE Classics house show match from the late Seventies at MSG may have a younger viewer thinking it looks like it's in slow-motion--and I wouldn't blame him--whereas someone like me would fully understand why they did a "test of strength" for five minutes. Suppose the proper word here is context.

 

LOL I read up on Herb Abrams recently. He really was a nutter of the highest order. Like when he paid Steve Williams to shoot on Steve Ray cause Ray owed Abrams money and he though Ray was putting it to his wife. That's fine but he runs in the ring afterwards to give him more abuse, then just pisses off.

 

On topic Wrestlers today dont seem to live by the thought process of "could get 5 or 10 minutes out of that". In the 80's they did very little but everything meant something. Now they do about three times more than they need to which results in it meaning not very much at all.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Paid Members

Fuck off, the 80s were brilliant. They were brilliant because everything MATTERED. Almost every talent made you care about what was happening to them. These days I don't really care about 60-70% of the "superstars."

 

Look at how the cards were built on PPV with matches with build, and reason for the match. Even something seemingly random like, let's say Hercules vs The Hammer at SummerSlam '89 was used to build the growing tension between Valentine and Ron Garvin. Even the matches between a superstar on the rise at the time and a JTTS like Tito or Koko were worth watching because up to that point you'd only really seen the new guy squash nobodies and they were important indicators of where that guy was on the totem pole.

 

Everything today is over-exposed or rushed. If Million Dollar Man injured Jake the Snake these days, they'd be on the next PPV as soon as Roberts was fit again and receive no build up. The Santana-Martel grudge match would be opening Backlash and forgotten by the first week of May, and so on. Mr Perfect would only have had his perfect record for about two months before losing it to fucking Santino.

 

In the 80s they did things properly. I cared about stuff they did in the 80s. I even looked forward to seeing the Red fucking Rooster get his hands on The Brain, and you can't get much more marginal than the Rooster. In comparison I had the following conversation with my mate yesterday :

 

"I don't ever want to see Kofi Kingston wrestle Swagger again. I don't ever really want to see him wrestle Ziggler ever again. Or McIntyre. Or Del Rio. In fact, I could live with never seeing Kingston wrestle ever again."

 

And there are plenty more. We've seen it all from Del Rio vs Rey, Rey vs Punk, Cena vs Miz and so on.

 

I understand why things are the way they are, and with so much TV to fill and no jobber matches, over-exposure is natural unless they have a deeper main-eventer/midcarder/JTTS divide and try and keep wrestlers from the same caste seperated until the PPVs where each effectively is wrestling for potential "promotion" for the winner - main eventers of course wrestling for the title or title shots - or unless they can produce new stars at a much quicker rate than currently. Doesn't mean I can't carp about it.

 

Much love for the 80s

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...