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Your most "Against The Grain" thought on wrestling?


Liam O'Rourke

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I don't give a shit how bad his heel turn was for business in the long run, comedy Steve Austin was some of the best fun I have ever had watching wrestling.

 

Tazz: What does my watch say?

Austin: I don't know it's speaking Spanish.

 

Wonderful.

Absolutely. I've bummed Austin's 2001 heel run a few times on here. The show long angle with Spike Dudley on an episode of Smackdown was great fun. As was his original use of 'What?', before twats went mad with it.

 

Austin: Who whipped your ass last week?

Raven: Saturn.

Austin: He's got a sexual relationship with a stick with a damn mop on the end of it, and he whipped your ass? You make me sick.

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I don't care for him much after 2002 either. That fucking "acting". Him selling a broken arm is the worst thing I've ever seen in my entire life, well 2nd to his cringeworthy "I'm sorry, I love you".

His hammy acting is awful, and IMO got worse as his career went on. But his matches, pre or post '02, speak for themselves. I even think the ladder match was Razor has stood the test of time as a classic, even after all that has happened since.

I've never dug him much. I've been pushed even further away by WWE's self driven narrative of him being some kind of wrestling jesus greater than any other to enter the ring in history. To be honest I probably prefer his superb stuff with Jannetty vs Rose and Somers than I do any of his singles WWF stuff. Actually, I'd say I rate him far more in tags than singles. I love the Rockers, but him on his own has never done too much for me. Just found him "solid".

Fair enough, I too love The Rockers, but I think my favourite run for them both was when they were wrestling each other. Almost every match they had was killer, I think they may have had one on PPV that was a letdown. I'm not sure. But yeah, great feud

Royal Rumble 93 that what have been. Yeah, horrid. Cost Jannetty his job because Michaels blamed him for it saying he was fucked up

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I relly disliked Stone Cold Steve Austin in his run in 1998-1999 and was constantly wishing that Vince would one-up the Texas Rattlesnake. I have always been one for the rules and for respecting authority so for me to have a guy that run roughshod over the boss in the biggest feud of 1998 make me feel nauseated! I was also a mega Undertaker fan in 1997-1999 and whenever Austin one upped Taker I would want to boot the TV across the room.

 

I was, however, thoroughly impressed with Austin's heel turn in 2001 and the subsequent work he did in the Invasion angle. I really enjoyed the invasion storyline too and I know a lot of people really thought they missed the boat with that one.

 

I loved WrestleMania 13 for the whole show (including the main event) not just the submission match. It was my first WrestleMania as a young teen and I was hooked on the WWF at the time. The Chicago Street Fight is still one of my favourite 'hardcore' style matches, the Rock vs Sultan is terrible but I love it just as much as I love Goldust vs HHH.

 

Finally I have always held the belief that Ric Flair is one of the most over-rated performers in the past forty years. I have watched a huge number of his matches from NWA all the way through to his WWE stint and whilst he was ahead of his time he had the same match over and over again with little variation at all. He was a brilliant talker (he and MIchaels were the reason I bought WM24) but there are many that could do his MOVEZ better and his matches were often very predictable. He was before my era of watching but I can still sit back and love Savage vs Steamboat of that era so I don't believe it is that I am a 90s fan and that is that.

I love Wrestlemania 13 too. Mind you, I have always been a ridiculous Undertaker fanboy. His 1997 kicked all kinds of arse, and him winning the title in the main event of Wrestlemania made 16 year old me ridiculously happy.

 

Also, I still get mad when I see the end of that title reign, with Michaels costing Undertaker and counting Bret to victory. Infuriating.

 

Thinking about it, I wanted Undertaker to get a decent victory over Austin in 1999 as well - but the one time he beat him for the title was on the show where Owen Hart died, and it was very rarely shown, then Austin won the belt back in no time. Boo.

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Not sure how 'against the grain' this is on here, but it definitely is amongst the general 'smart mark' wrestling community - Roman Reigns is the best performer out of the Shield. 

 

I love guys who have believable offence, and his punches, spears, powerbombs and clotheslines look the business. Meanwhile Ambrose has some horrible punches and a dodgy swinging clothesline that often looks shite, and Rollins has some of the weakest looking offence in the company with that soft as shite flying knee and pathetic forearms. He's effortlessly cool, pretty much every one of his PPV matches has that 'big fight feel' and he's shown glimpses that given the chance, he could be a phenomenal heel. I'd even say he's a better promo than Rollins as he doesn't do a shitty cackling laugh every week.

 

Saying that, I love Rollins and Ambrose too! Reigns is just better.

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Marty Jannetty for me, he blew (amongst other things) chance after chance with the WWE. However, I generally think if he got his shit together he could have returned to the WWE after the Charles Austin court case and become a upper mid card talent.

 

Instead we got a version of Marty who could not get said shit together, looked half arsed, worn the same outfits time and time again and seemed to work the majority of his matches at a lot slower rate. But every now and again he would show us something that proved the old Marty was still there somewhere.

 

With fantasy booking playing its part, I would have loved to have seen a further little programme between Jannetty and Michaels,just after Shawn won the world championship in 1996, in which Jannetty turned heel after he became jealous of Shawn, due to hearing the fans cheering for him and believing that the fans should be cheering for him all while making reference to the barber shop incident in an attempt to gain sympathy. Given the fact that the WWE was short on upper card talent at the time, I think this would have been ideal to main event one of the In Your House PPV's.

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Not sure how 'against the grain' this is on here, but it definitely is amongst the general 'smart mark' wrestling community - Roman Reigns is the best performer out of the Shield.

 

I love guys who have believable offence, and his punches, spears, powerbombs and clotheslines look the business. Meanwhile Ambrose has some horrible punches and a dodgy swinging clothesline that often looks shite, and Rollins has some of the weakest looking offence in the company with that soft as shite flying knee and pathetic forearms. He's effortlessly cool, pretty much every one of his PPV matches has that 'big fight feel' and he's shown glimpses that given the chance, he could be a phenomenal heel. I'd even say he's a better promo than Rollins as he doesn't do a shitty cackling laugh every week.

 

Saying that, I love Rollins and Ambrose too! Reigns is just better.

I really like Reigns. A lot of my mates don't understand it, but I think he's doing a great job. The issue is the writing, not him.

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Another from me.

 

HUSTLE was amazing. I don't speak Japanese but I can easily sit through full HUSTLE shows and not skip anything.

 

Well the first few shows stink but from about the first HUSTLE House onwards it was just the best kind of stupid and everyone seemed to be having a blast. Thankfully though someone eventuality told Takada to stop doing Nazi salutes.

 

It also gave the World singing Toshiaki Kawada.

 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jlH7gs7iMgA

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I relly disliked Stone Cold Steve Austin in his run in 1998-1999 and was constantly wishing that Vince would one-up the Texas Rattlesnake. I have always been one for the rules and for respecting authority so for me to have a guy that run roughshod over the boss in the biggest feud of 1998 make me feel nauseated! I was also a mega Undertaker fan in 1997-1999 and whenever Austin one upped Taker I would want to boot the TV across the room.

 

I was, however, thoroughly impressed with Austin's heel turn in 2001 and the subsequent work he did in the Invasion angle. I really enjoyed the invasion storyline too and I know a lot of people really thought they missed the boat with that one.

I'm with you. I know it goes against the grain of the oaken table and all who sit at her, but the only Stone Cold I ever liked was during his heel run in 2001.

 

I can't dispute his importance, his star power, or anything like that. SCG's timeline shows make it even clearer how huge and definitive Austin was. I just don't like him. It might be because I started watching properly again in 2000, so I never saw his rise up the card, or the stuff he did at his height at the time, but whenever I saw matches, segments or anything involving classic face Austin he just came across as a horrible, bullying twat to me. He took everything way too far and I just wasn't into the character in the slightest. Vince was thoroughly justified in everything he did, in my view!

 

(I wasn't that into brawls either - they've always been one of the most embarrassing kind of matches when I was young, you can get away with 'see, it's like the proper ITV wrestling' if your dad walks in on a technical match, or 'see, they're pretty athletic' for a high flying one, but brawls and women's matches are a much harder sell - so Austin was never someone whose stuff I wanted to see.)

 

Austin kind of ruined 2000 for me, too. I loved (almost) everything about the 2000 roster from top to bottom and then Austin comes back in September and acts the utter twat again, running in on matches left right and centre for no reason as far as I was concerned. Plus he tried to murder Triple H at Survivor Series and I've still not let that go.

 

2001 and the heel turn came, and as someone with no attachment to the Austin everyone else loved, I found him an absolute riot. So much more entertaining in every single thing he did - and I actually started enjoying his matches! Rock, Spike, Benoit, Angle... Then he turned face again and that was that, sadly. Back to being a bully and Stunning women for no reason (poor Stacy). No thanks.

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Not sure how 'against the grain' this is on here, but it definitely is amongst the general 'smart mark' wrestling community - Roman Reigns is the best performer out of the Shield. 

 

I love guys who have believable offence, and his punches, spears, powerbombs and clotheslines look the business. Meanwhile Ambrose has some horrible punches and a dodgy swinging clothesline that often looks shite, and Rollins has some of the weakest looking offence in the company with that soft as shite flying knee and pathetic forearms. He's effortlessly cool, pretty much every one of his PPV matches has that 'big fight feel' and he's shown glimpses that given the chance, he could be a phenomenal heel. I'd even say he's a better promo than Rollins as he doesn't do a shitty cackling laugh every week.

 

Saying that, I love Rollins and Ambrose too! Reigns is just better.

 

Cena's nose disagrees.

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I really like Shane McMahon. Not just in his latest run, but in 2001 when he was basically a big spot monkey. I didn't care! I just wanted to see him jump off stuff and generally take massive bumps in the name of being a big ol' daredevil.

 

I even liked SOME parts of his feud with Randy Orton...

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WCW 2000 is one of my all time favourite eras of wrestling. 

 

It was swerve after swerve after swerve, stories making no sense whatsoever. It was the ultimate in car crash tv, I used to rush home from uni on a Friday to catch Worldwide. (I was a poor student, couldn't afford satellite). 

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WCW 2000 is one of my all time favourite eras of wrestling.

 

It was swerve after swerve after swerve, stories making no sense whatsoever. It was the ultimate in car crash tv, I used to rush home from uni on a Friday to catch Worldwide. (I was a poor student, couldn't afford satellite).

Was this when Mike Tenay was doing heel commentary exclusive to Worldwide, pretending to pull the strings live on air during matches that were blatantly taken from Nitro days earlier?

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I relly disliked Stone Cold Steve Austin in his run in 1998-1999 and was constantly wishing that Vince would one-up the Texas Rattlesnake. I have always been one for the rules and for respecting authority so for me to have a guy that run roughshod over the boss in the biggest feud of 1998 make me feel nauseated! I was also a mega Undertaker fan in 1997-1999 and whenever Austin one upped Taker I would want to boot the TV across the room.

 

 

 

I think you identified with Vince because you are an evil boss that's wants to shit on his employees and get away with firing them for nothing and pay them fuck all.

 

I have loved the Big Show throughout the entire time I have been watching wrestling. He's always been one of my favourites. He's great at comedy, and can do being a legit threat when they want him to as well. Sometimes a terrifying combination of both, like the time he smashed up a car whilst crying and shouting 'why doesn't anybody like me?!'.

 

Can anyone remember when it was that he had a surprise return after being off for a while and he chokeslammed about 20 people? One of my favourite things ever, but I can't remember when it happened. I'd love to see it again.

 

Other fond memories include his feud with Eddie where he was fed laxatives and sprayed with sewage (he walked off wet and crying, again).

 

He seems like a really good guy, too.

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Was that a SmackDown in the lead up to his match with Shane at Backlash 2001? I'm sure he steamrollered through loads of people on one segment then.

 

I've always liked Big Show too, even last year when I was generally a bit sick of him he was having fantastic matches with Reigns. One of my favourite Show periods was his ECW run in 2006, he was tremendous during his time as champion, best match of the show pretty much every week and he was really working hard to make that title seem worth fighting for.

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Was that a SmackDown in the lead up to his match with Shane at Backlash 2001? I'm sure he steamrollered through loads of people on one segment then .

I think it was when he returned in 2004 during the fued with Angle after Angle fired him when he was GM. If I remember, Show stalked Torrie, threw her car then chokslammed Angle of a balcony, leading to the shot of him lying down with his leg the wrong way as a result.

 

Side note - thought Shows hair looked awesome when he returned and was gutted when it was cut off weeks later

 

Edit - was this it?

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