Insane Championship Wrestling

[King Pitcos]

Oh it was undoubtedly. Just it had more of an edge to it which appealed to a more adult audience. Certainly compared to today at least.

So what is it that makes ICW real wrestling rather than WWF style sports entertainment? The blood?

 

 

The babes?

 

 

The high flying?

 

 

The general insanity?

 

 

 

 

[IANdrewDiceClay]

Oh it was undoubtedly. Just it had more of an edge to it which appealed to a more adult audience. Certainly compared to today at least.

"Appealed to adults"? You're 22 aren't you? The Attitude era was about 13 year ago. Your opinion holds absolutely no credibility if you didn't wank over Sable in 1998. Are you taking your opinions of those Best of RAW VHS tapes which made it look like everything was class at the time?

[Up Chuck]

I've skimmed this thread, so sorry if I've missed it, but SURELY someone wants to pull up the OP for arguing that a promotion not being able to draw outside its home venue makes it LESS like ECW.

[martyngnr]

There's no denying that selling out 1000 tickets anywhere is damn impressive - has anyone done that in the past few years since 1PW/FWA?

Yes, WrestleZone had a crowd of over 1000 people in the Beach Ballroom in Aberdeen earlier this year.

[David]

Whiplash came out and attacked Jester. He gave him a piledriver on an overturned guardrail that looked nasty.

Ah, okay. Cheers!

[Vamp]

Oh it was undoubtedly. Just it had more of an edge to it which appealed to a more adult audience. Certainly compared to today at least.

"Appealed to adults"? You're 22 aren't you? The Attitude era was about 13 year ago. Your opinion holds absolutely no credibility if you didn't wank over Sable in 1998. Are you taking your opinions of those Best of RAW VHS tapes which made it look like everything was class at the time?

 

I always struggle to take the WWF Attitude was for adults stuff seriously. Its not really is it. I think the ideal age for it is about sixteen really. The storylines the WWE do now are more mature than some of the things they did back then.

 

But then most people mean "has tits in, giggle" when they say 'adult'. I'm never really sure about that. Same with the swearing. I'd say the Attitude era was 'teenagery' not adult.

[d-d-d-dAz]

It was never an adult product.

 

It was a product for kids who wanted to be adults, but didn't have a clue what that meant.

 

Sure, there were some folks in the 20-34 range who watched then, but there is now too. There's still tonnes of cussing like 'sons of bitch', 'ass' and 'pissed off' in promos, contrary to popular belief, the stories have hardly changed (its wrestling, they never do) and the quality of matches is as high as it has ever been.

 

All there is to miss is the chair shots to the head bullshit, which belongs in the past anyway. Oh, and maybe the occasional flash from a diva. But, there's porn if you need to unload...you little pervs.

[IANdrewDiceClay]

It just reset the business. It was so out of the box and completely different to the pretty dull wrestling we'd seen for years that people latched onto it. Pop culture in the late 90s seemed to be centered around teenagers being all naughty and watching the 10 minute freeview. It was at the height of South Park and Mike Tyson returning from prison and Celebrity Death Match and Marilyn Manson and Nu Mental dorks swearing and being rebellious and Howard Stern releasing his movie and stuff like that. The reason it was popular was because the culture was so mental at the time. WWF Attitude was so of its time, that it cant work today. There was so much faux rebellion back in the late 90s and early 2000s that people are bored with that shit.

 

BritPop isn't coming back. Neither is the Attitude era.

[Guest]

People who pine for the attitude era, have in my experience only seen highlight packages of the attitude era. It's like when you hear of players being signed based on YouTube highlight reels. Just as you don't see the players air kick at a two yard tap in, attitude era highlight videos don't show you Too Much vs al snow and a shampoo bottle on a ppv. There was a hell of a lot of dross from late 97-2001, and I'm quite glad no ones eating dogs, getting blowjobs from transvestites and getting rock bottomed on a tray of dog poo these days.

[PowerButchi]

Attitude wasn't for adults. It was for hormonal teens. People who could wank over someone in a bikini as they were yet to get one away, and those who thought saying "shit" had edge. It definitely wasn't for grown ups. As grown ups swear enough, and can put their own penises in real vaginas enough.

 

Let's look at it honestly. It was mainly weak workers going 3 minutes on TV, so it wasn't "wrestling". It was esstentially nuts magazine in TV form. Bikinis, mild swearing, and showing off. Just look on this forum as an example. The people who were in the attitude catchment at the time aren't in it now. That's because we're grown ups now. The people who do like it now, weren't in it at the time.

 

It says a lot when the people who were the target market during ECW and Attitude are the people who now say "It was shit in all fairness". They were the people who used to watch the massive hours worth of original programming per week from the big three and can look back and go "it was shit really". It's the people who didn't have to sit through it all at the time, and don't have the power of hindsight, and didn't have to see that massive misogyny that was a bit shit, and not see a bout never go more than 5 minutes on Raw every week (even though "it was wrestling" back then), who can talk about how great it was and that's how it should be.

 

When they watch Flash Flanagan and Chris Daniels or El Pantera botch everywhere at 11am on a Saturday Morning on Shotgun Challenge against a great worker like Brian Christopher, they can moan.

[air_raid]

People who pine for the attitude era, have in my experience only seen highlight packages of the attitude era.

 

People who pine for the content have definitely missed the point.

 

Having been a teenager/young adult through it myself, the thing I pine for is the atmosphere. Huge slices of the roster were incredibly over and the crowds were hot, so everything seemed important, so you cared more. Undercard guys routinely got the kind of pops reserved for only a couple of the top stars now. People were "jumping up and down" crazy for their favourite guys. Music hits, place goes mad, wrestler comes out wearing t-shirt you want to buy, says catchphrase. Short match that doesn't burn you out. Lather, rinse, repeat. You went to a show with a big list of guys you were looking forward to seeing, and went mad when they all came out in turn. That excitement came through the TV screen.

[PowerButchi]

Yeah, but watching it now, there's 8 matches about 3 minutes long with too much happening. Shit got hotshot everywhere. If the Main Event Talent wasn't so strong at the time it'd never have worked. It was a Zeitgeist kind of thing. Right place, right time. It certainly wasn't good. ADHD booking. If it didn't hit Pop Culture, it'd be talked about artistically like it was 1995. Only, 1995 had better matches. It had PCO, Sean Waltman, Sean Waltman, and Sean Waltman given time.

 

Honestly, there was nothing worse in 1999 than hearing the music go "DUN DUN DUN DUNNNNNN!" and fucking Mideon, Viscera or the fucking Acolytes would come out. The APA were awesome, but the Acolytes were the shits. Anyone who says The Ministry were awesome never had to sit through them. Even as a 14 year old I'd nip off to make a cup of tea when they were on.

[Vamp]

You say its cool for people who didn't watch it at the time, but I didn't watch it at the time (it was WCW only for me). I caught the tail end of the Attitude era. I've still never thought it was some kind of holy grail of greatness. Its like ECW, I'd imagine there's quite a few people on here who didn't really watch it much in context, and when you look back at it now it's mostly terrible. Joey Styles is one of the most embarassing things in wrestling. Fuck what people say about him, he's terrible. I'm nostalgic for the times I never had. I'm nostalgic for the Memphis stuff. I shouldn't be but I am. I'm not in the remotest bit nostalgic for 98.

 

Of course I'd imagine what people really want is it being cool to talk about wrestling with their mates again. In which case the solution is pretty much for you to spend all your time on here, get better mates, get better interests or shun people altogether and get a frozen dog as company. Personally I'm scared of dogs.

[Maverick]

WCW 96-97 is much better than anything from the attitude era, the storylines, wrestling, promos, star power etc were great. Not all of it was great obviously but if you didn't like Hogan you had Benoit, Jericho etc. I'm not a big fan of Mexican, Japanese or Cruiserweight wrestling but having one match of each sometimes on Nitro was great. You could watch Nitro and you'd have a Hogan promo, Steiners v Chono and Muta, Sting in the rafters, Flair v DDP, Jericho v Rey Jr., a mexican 6 man, The Outsiders v Harlem Heat etc etc. Nitro during that period was amazing.

[CTXRussomark]

One of my assistants came in to work today talking about this "Insane Wrestling" she had heard about on the radio . I assume this is what she was talking about? Apparently there was some Real Radio presenter at the show who was talking about it on this mornings show, including a mention of a wrestler getting thrown into the shutters at the local Tesco? Said the atmosphere was crazy, but in a good way. Definitely sounded like a nice bit of publicity.