Remembering Ready To Rumble

[Liam O'Rourke]

Not trying to teach granny to suck eggs, but i think it'd be great if you done a podcast on wrestling films, instead of just Ready to Rumble, why not include Bodyslam and No Holds Barred.

That was the idea at first, but I think that could lead to an enormous show, so just trying it out in this format first to see how it flows really.

[tiger_rick]

 

 

Dont make the fans feel like their idiots.

 

Yes you're quite correct there, pointing out my incorrect grammar. In my haste of writing this I let this mistake slip.

 

Anyway, to show you I am not all bad, let me demonstrate this to you in the form of the next paragraph.

 

Nobody likes a grammar Nazi, I am sure that there are few people who like this. However, it is annoying and unfunny, especially to someone who is dyslexic. Which, makes you over there sir, a prick.

 

 

Don't be so fucking childish. Clearly just pointing out the irony and he has no idea if you do or do not have dyslexia.

 

On topic, I've seen Ready To Rumble and genuinely can barely remember anything about it. I recall the criticisms from the Death of WCW far more readily than the actual film but I won't try and pass them off as my own opinion.

 

I was hugely disappointed with it, as everyone probably was, because PowerSlam had made it sound quite interesting and, despite the Arquette farce, the triple cage was cool. The guy playing Jimmy King, Oliver Platt, is a good actor but an abysmal bit of casting as a pro-wrestler.

 

I do sometimes wonder if, with time, it might be a guilty pleasure. Obviously there's the WCW nostalgia plus absolutely no expectation now. I never fancy wasting two hours to find out though!

[Pinc]

 

 

Dont make the fans feel like their idiots.

 

Yes you're quite correct there, pointing out my incorrect grammar. In my haste of writing this I let this mistake slip.

 

Anyway, to show you I am not all bad, let me demonstrate this to you in the form of the next paragraph.

 

Nobody likes a grammar Nazi, I am sure that there are few people who like this. However, it is annoying and unfunny, especially to someone who is dyslexic. Which, makes you over there sir, a prick.

 

 

It wasn't the grammar per se, it was the irony of a wrestling fan making a grammatical error in a sentence imploring others not to depict wrestling fans as idiots. That is funny enough to warrant a post.

 

I hadn't realised you were dyslexic. Sorry if it seemed insensitive.

[HarmonicGenerator]

I fancy wasting two hours finding out, I've never seen it before. But where would I procure such a film? Suggestions to my inbox!

[Scott Malbranque]

Scott Caans' bulge is what I remembered most.

Looked like someone was trying to train with battle ropes in his undercrackers.

[Nick Soapdish]

 

 

 

Dont make the fans feel like their idiots.

 

Yes you're quite correct there, pointing out my incorrect grammar. In my haste of writing this I let this mistake slip.

 

Anyway, to show you I am not all bad, let me demonstrate this to you in the form of the next paragraph.

 

Nobody likes a grammar Nazi, I am sure that there are few people who like this. However, it is annoying and unfunny, especially to someone who is dyslexic. Which, makes you over there sir, a prick.

 

 

It wasn't the grammar per se, it was the irony of a wrestling fan making a grammatical error in a sentence imploring others not to depict wrestling fans as idiots. That is funny enough to warrant a post.

 

I hadn't realised you were dyslexic. Sorry if it seemed insensitive.

 

Don't worry. I can take a fucking joke at the best of times. Just a bad time for me. I'll stop acting like a vagina

[WyattSheepMask]

Just fucking terrible on every conceivable level, and not in a 'so bad it's good' sort of way.

First off, Bischoff came up with the idea of doing the movie in October 99, and it was released in April 2000. Six bloody months! It was thrown together quicker than my hastily rushed "fuck it, that'll do" home works from secondary school.

From the off, they do all they can to show that wrestling fans are either a bit thick or in the case of Arquette's character, full on retard. They get verbally abused for being wrestling fans by the guy who works in the fucking kwik- e-mart, i.e wrestlings fans are below the guy who can only get work down the local garage, and they just take it like a pair of right chumps. In the same scene, a copper (fresh after molesting one of the main characters) says "wrestling is for little boys, dirtbags and lillypickers"...and this was made by a wrestling company! Arquette then screams "wrestlings not fake" in his best 'kid with Aspergers' voice.

Utterly ridiculous beyond all comprehension, you're made to feel like either a loser or a total simpleton for liking wrestling...and that's only in the first bloody scene

[pitseleh]

'Ready To Rumble' is The Room of wrestling movies. It's utterly terrible and lacks any artistic merit yet I am completely in love with it. We all have a handful of films that we know are objectively atrocious yet we still enjoy them. 'Ready To Rumble' ranks right up there with the lesser-loved Roger Moore Bond films for me.

I first saw the movie not too long after WCW went under. I was no more than 10 years old. I was shocked when I first came online and saw how much it was hated by most fans. Sure, I didn't watch WCW when it was around, so I wasn't aware of the movie resulted with David Arquette winning the big gold belt and how it contributed to the demise of WCW, so my opinion might be invalid. I wouldn't dream of recommending this to anyone who isn't a wrestling fan, but it's a great nostalgia ride and is it really as terrible as some of the other teen comedies that came out after the success of American Pie? Probably, but this has wrestlers in it, so it beats the others by default. Even if they put more effort into the making of the film, it sure as hell wasn't going to give Citizen Kane a run for it's money. So turn your mind off and enjoy it.

[Nick Soapdish]

Even if they put more effort into the making of the film, it sure as hell wasn't going to give Citizen Kane a run for it's money. So turn your mind off and enjoy it.

It barely gives Citizen Khan a run for its money, let alone Kane!

[King Pitcos]

I had Sky hooked up into my room vua a cable, but the only way I could switch channels was through the main box in the living room. As this awful abomination of movie was happening, I was hoping and praying my mother would keep it on to Eastenders and Brookside, and not catch wind of me watching Ready To Rumble in fear that this is what all wrestling fans were like; men in their thirties still not giving up the ghost that pro wrestling was a pre-determined sport, and just acting like the type of clowns who have never had a night out in their lives (unless it was at the wrasslin)

How old were you at the time? It seems mad that you were worried about your mother having her opinion of wrestling fans tainted by it.

[bAzTNM#1]

"Grunt! : The Wrestling Movie" is the best grappling film. Really good film. Bischoff must have been watching it just before the nWo kicked in because the quick cuts and lighting scenes when the nWo had their vignette interviews were fucking knicked from the film. I love the ending to the film where the guy bursts in on a motorbike. Whoever it was looked like a star.

 

[chardcore]

Ready to Rumble was a film I was excited by after reading about it in WCW magazine in the run up to its release. Tenay had written a column about the filming in an arena in California I believe.

 

Anyway when I finally got to see it in 2004 I thought it was farcical. Jimmy King had been champion for ages and I just couldn't understand why. His little rap when in the ring? Who did that in 2000? It would have come off as phoney and rubbish at the time in any federation and did so in the film. 

 

This films saving grace, for me, is DDP's performance which I believe was perfectly fine from an acting point of view. He got what he was supposed to do and just got on with it.

 

Also the Shermanator being in this film talking about what his Dad says just cracked me up at 18 years old because it was just so stupid. That is what I take away from the film is that it is totally ridiculous and silly but there are nuggets of fun. OK maybe not nuggets but flakes of fun to be found.

[The Gaffer]

I only saw it the once on a movie channel (it might actually have been TCM?) around late 00/early 01 and like tiger_rick I can't remember a thing about it other than the fact that Eric Bischoff's name was Sinclaire and I equated him to being a cross between a wrestling promoter and Elliot Carver from Tomorrow Never Dies because of the whole silver fox media mogul thing.

 

I was 9 or 10 at the time, had never watched WCW prior and was mired in kayfabe so I found a lot of it puzzling whilst still discerning that WCW - at least at the time - must have been an absolute fucking hump of a promotion to let this thing see the light of day.

 

Mental to think there was only five years between Ready To Rumble and the first slew of WWE Films releases which have now been going for ten years. When's the last time they gave a WWE film any sort of worthwhile promotion outside one or two adverts and a carboard sign hanging in the Authority's office? I assume by now the 12 Round franchise is up to 17 films and the latest one stars Fandango and Mila Jolovich's stunt double from Resident Evil.

[PowerButchi]

The bit when the ginger one said "A diamond upside down is a pussy!" to DDP made me piss myself when I was 15.

[mim731]

I have a very specific memory of Ready to Rumble. I won a competition on a national talk radio station (yep, the one you are thinking of) to go to the Sports Cafe in Haymarket in London for a meet and greet with 'several top WCW stars' before an advanced screening of the film. I was very excited, as you would be aged 14. I was totally psyched up about possibly meeting Sting, Goldberg, Hulk Hogan, or even a Lex Luger. Any one of the company's top stars.

 

However, on arrival I was stunned to meet the awesome line-up of...Buff Bagwell, Nitro girls Baby and Fyre, and Doug Dillinger. Top stars indeed. Buff was particularly entertaining, absolutely off his tits to the point where he asked me to repeat my first name several times while trying to sign an 8x10 and had to ditch two attempts which he signed for 'Jeff'. My first name is Tom.

 

After that debacle we went to see the film, which at the time I loved. It was campy, and stupid. It certainly doesn't hold up very well years later, but very few wrestling films do.