Your Wrestling Pet Peeves/Utter Hatreds

[The Gaffer]

Okay, doesn't happen much, but in light of Sami's recent t-shirt I hate t-shirts that are older things crossed/blotted out. The absolute worst example of making wrestling merch look like it's for kids. 

That and aping the nWo logo. Put it to bed. 

[Cheapheat]

I always thought not having finishes from those multiple roll up/near falls is silly. If the company (or wrestler) could  established that could be the finish it would be hot as hell. Otherwise it's a lot of people enjoying counting to 2. 

[CavemanLynn]

22 minutes ago, Cheapheat said:

I always thought not having finishes from those multiple roll up/near falls is silly. If the company (or wrestler) could  established that could be the finish it would be hot as hell. Otherwise it's a lot of people enjoying counting to 2. 

100% agreed. Unless it's your finish, a surprise/cheated rollup, or a best-of-X, it's just a bloke slapping the canvas. I'm sure this stems from some training I've heard, where the two-count supposedly synchronises with the audience's heartbeat and artificially accelerates it, generating 'excitement.' This sounds like someone getting excited by a much better match, and trying to manufacture that same reaction robotically.

Just a couple of pins from non-finishing moves would be nice. Bret was, obviously, the master of this, saving the Sharpshooter for the real feud-enders, but Ricky the Dragon was also great at it too. A personal fave of mine is a throwaway match from one of the minor WCW TV shows - it's Barry Windham vs Larry Zbysko, where Barry was feuding with the Enforcers. The match is a load of nothing, with Larry doing loads of stalling (Barry in shoots says Larry really wasn't up for taking a single bump at this point). Barry's used sunset flips in loads of matches in the past, but as soon as Arn Anderson comes through the curtain to do the slow, intimidating heel interference walk, Barry spots him, immediately dives over Larry for a tight sunset flip pinfall, and rolls out of the ring with a smile on his face. A huge pop for the surprise finish, and made the face look smart and super-competent.

[BomberPat]

I love matches where something that's normally a throwaway spot actually achieves what it's meant to do - any time a drop-down in the International spot actually trips someone up is a guaranteed huge pop out of me. I'd love to see a match where one of those constant reversals of pins into other pins eventually actually got the match won, I think it would work really well.

As Chris Hero once put it, if everything you do is a "false finish", then nothing is, they're just moves. It's part of the problem with WWE - everyone has a dozen signature moves, but they never win matches, because matches will only end after a finisher, so you never believe that Sami Zayn's winning after the Blue Thunder Bomb, or Edge after the Edge-o-Matic or whatever.

[Lorne Malvo]

9 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

 

As Chris Hero once put it, if everything you do is a "false finish", then nothing is, they're just moves. It's part of the problem with WWE - everyone has a dozen signature moves, but they never win matches, because matches will only end after a finisher, so you never believe that Sami Zayn's winning after the Blue Thunder Bomb, or Edge after the Edge-o-Matic or whatever.

It's one thing I really like about AEW, to be honest. A lot of acts have multiple ways they can win the match. The Coffin Drop doesn't always get the job done but the Last Supper might. Danielson won his first 5/6 AEW matches with different moves. Then even lower-rung guys like Chuck Taylor have moves like the Awful Waffle which you hardly see but are really well-protected.

[CavemanLynn]

3 minutes ago, Lorne Malvo said:

It's one thing I really like about AEW, to be honest. A lot of acts have multiple ways they can win the match. The Coffin Drop doesn't always get the job done but the Last Supper might. Danielson won his first 5/6 AEW matches with different moves. Then even lower-rung guys like Chuck Taylor have moves like the Awful Waffle which you hardly see but are really well-protected.

That's a good point, from the perspective of wrestlers' signature moves, but I'd like to see the fundamentals getting a look-in for finishes. An Awful Waffle might devastate an opponent in terms of "energy bar" wrestling, but a locked-in small package would get the three count too.

[Loki]

An excerpt from an upcoming rant about the Death Match at the PPV, but...

I absolutely loathe the "you hit me, I hit you, you hit me, I hit you" spot that is now in every AEW match.  I know it's come from strong style, or King's Road, or whatever it is, and is meant to show fighting spirit, but nothing takes me out of the suspension of disbelief like this.   Mox and Hangman did it, which makes no sense in a street fight scenario.  Mox talking about who'd walk out of that dark alley, not the bloke saying "go on, chop me", that's for certain.

And then Danielson and MJF traded hitting each other's injured limbs.  In the context of an actual fight, why would do let your opponent do that?

It's a small thing but there's a good way of doing this, which is how Joe and Wardlow did it.  Joe just absorbed Wardlow's blows as he wanted to get his strikes in.  He wasn't waiting to be hit, he just ignored them because he's a tough bastard.  That works for me.

Edited March 6, 2023 by Loki

[Carbomb]

20 minutes ago, Loki said:

An excerpt from an upcoming rant about the Death Match at the PPV, but...

I absolutely loathe the "you hit me, I hit you, you hit me, I hit you" spot that is now in every AEW match.  I know it's come from strong style, or King's Road, or whatever it is, and is meant to show fighting spirit, but nothing takes me out of the suspension of disbelief like this.   Mox and Hangman did it, which makes no sense in a street fight scenario.  Mox talking about who'd walk out of that dark alley, not the bloke saying "go on, chop me", that's for certain.

And then Danielson and MJF traded hitting each other's injured limbs.  In the context of an actual fight, why would do let your opponent do that?

It's a small thing but there's a good way of doing this, which is how Joe and Wardlow did it.  Joe just absorbed Wardlow's blows as he wanted to get his strikes in.  He wasn't waiting to be hit, he just ignored them because he's a tough bastard.  That works for me.

There's a lot of that in modern wrestling, spots being overused and rendered meaningless because the wrestlers in question don't understand that said spots are meant to be used in a specific context. 

Case in point: the indy stand-off, where flip-floppy wrestlers do lots of pins and kickouts, and then face off with each other. That spot was originally only ever meant to be used in matches that had been built up for some time between two rivals, usually two faces, whose speciality was high-flying. Now every "cruiser" does it just to get a brief pop.

The chop/strike exchange was meant to be a similar thing: two big bastards or company aces, who people have wanted to see face off for some time, attempting to assert superiority by not only hitting harder, but trying to show they're tougher as well.

EDIT: Also, the other context to the strike exchange is that the two wrestlers in question have signature strikes that the crowd know, and want to see whose is better, so it makes sense for, say, Kobashi and Misawa to exchange chops and elbows, or Vader and Hansen to exchange massive punches.

Edited March 6, 2023 by Carbomb

[Vamp]

Wrestlers have basically chin locked the strike exchange into nothingness. Knackered? Can't remember what's next? Strike exchange. Which is fine  but if you're doing it all the time and not using it to actually mean anything then people just become more and more aware of how stupid it is. 

Still, it's not as bad as when wrestlers take it in turns to German suplex each other over and over again. 

[CavemanLynn]

The icing on the strike exchange cake is when one of the little guys decides to end it with three strikes in a row, grabbing the other guy's neck so he can't sell and not moving his feet so he has to lean in and club him in the throat from too far away. And then running away to the ropes while the opponent is looking right at him.

So your strikes couldn't knock him down AND you're an idiot? JFC. 

[WyattSheepMask]

3 hours ago, Loki said:

An excerpt from an upcoming rant about the Death Match at the PPV, but...

I absolutely loathe the "you hit me, I hit you, you hit me, I hit you" spot that is now in every AEW match.  I know it's come from strong style, or King's Road, or whatever it is, and is meant to show fighting spirit, but nothing takes me out of the suspension of disbelief like this.   Mox and Hangman did it, which makes no sense in a street fight scenario.  Mox talking about who'd walk out of that dark alley, not the bloke saying "go on, chop me", that's for certain.

I’ll see yours and raise when they grab a couple of chairs and have a sitdown strike back & forth 

[Joe Blog]

Add in the swipe the legs and pin, kick out, other wrestler swipes the legs and pins, kick out, stare down. 

[Lion_of_the_Midlands]

7 hours ago, BomberPat said:

I love matches where something that's normally a throwaway spot actually achieves what it's meant to do - any time a drop-down in the International spot actually trips someone up is a guaranteed huge pop out of me.

The first time I saw Doug Williams wrestle his opponent dropped down and Doug came off the ropes, stopped, dropped an elbow across his shoulders and then applied a side headlock as his opponent lay on the mat. Stood out as different straight away. 

[Carbomb]

Another variant of that that I enjoyed was the original Ebessan vs. Jushin Liger - as Liger drops to the canvas, Ebessan comes off the ropes, stops, and toe kicks him in the face, yelling "Don't be stupid". Liger returns the favour shortly afterwards in a similar spot.

[Merzbow]

1 hour ago, WyattSheepMask said:

I’ll see yours and raise when they grab a couple of chairs and have a sitdown strike back & forth 

I'll say that actually worked when Necro Butcher did it, it was his spot and he seemed like the kind of daft old bastard to do it.