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Random Thoughts III.


PowerButchi

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On 7/29/2020 at 4:13 PM, The Dart said:

That Flash Funk match might be from beforeĀ Summerslam 1997.Ā  Ā They had 2 matches, one in July and one in September.

The piledriver was from the match in September. It happened on Shotgun, and Owen won the match with that piledriver as part of the Austin feud.

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Not particularly appropriate to this thread, but as 'minor news' has been scrapped... I only recently learned that current Wonder of STARDOM Champion, Giulia was born in England, to Japanese/Italian parents. Any chance of a new thread for miscellaneous/random stuff?..that isn't thread-worthy in itself.

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I was wondering to myself last night what would have become of World of Sport Wrestling had it been allowed to continue post-1988.

I'm a massive fan of the latter days of the show when it actually had some ring music/entrances (albeit the same for every wrestler) and some pre-match promos. In all honesty I find it much easier to watch than the 70's and early 80's stuff.Ā  (Here's Kendo challenging Hulk Hogan to a match)

I wonder if it would have gone further down the line with the American glitz and glamour as the 90's rolled in?

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Edited by garynysmon
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I actually hate the latter days of WoS for those exact reasons. The rock'n'wrestling trappings worked for the Americans because they were coked and roided up to comic proportions and playing to raucous crowds of tens of thousands. It just didn't translate to the quieter Saturday afternoon UK audience, especially when the in-ring talent were slightly portly older gentlemen or slim technicians. You had talentless thugs like Skull Murphy stomping around calling himself a Road Warrior, when the real thing was on the other channel. It was the same old faces, just in fancy dress. It was a classic case of copying the look of what was over rather than understanding why it was over. The last WoS match, Pat RoachĀ vs Caswell Martin, and it's depressing- tiny, darkly-lit crowds, with the start of that holiday camp oikiness of kids running about the place. You can see Roach's heart breaking as they make the final fall and he says goodbye on the mic to the live and TV audience.

It was also a case of the chickens coming home to roost. After a decade of telling audiences nobody couldĀ beat his fat brother, Crabtree had no next generation that either the audience believed could carry the sport or that wanted to hang around. The younger faces had been beaten to a pulp too regularly, and didn't have the personality or on-screen camaraderie to capture TV viewers' attention.

If it had somehow lasted a few more years, maybe it could have caught the start of the Gladiators-era 90s spark. It would have had to shift the emphasis to younger, fitter wrestlers, and invested a lot in ring gear to distance itself a little from the plain trunks of yesteryear. But they would have needed to have confidence in British wrestling, presenting athletic contests with down-to-earth characters, and not drown it in the colours of WWF. WoS couldn't compete for presentation, but WWF couldn't touchĀ it for wrestling prowess and accessibility.

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Part of the appeal of the WWF at the time was the sheerĀ American-nessĀ of it all. I don't think that can be overstated, and is perhaps one of the hardest things to remember looking back on that time period - well into the '90s, anything American feltĀ inherentlyĀ bigger and more exciting than anything English, there was still a real sense of exoticism around it.Ā 

I think if World of Sport had triedĀ moreĀ to emulate the WWF, it would only have got worse, not better. Because they wouldn't have had the budget, they wouldn't have had that sense of the new and the exotic, and it would have been all the old faces. It would have only ever looked like a cheap knock-off.

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Wasn't itĀ fucked from the second they started showingĀ WWF matches on World of Sport though? If they hadn't have at least tried to introduce some of the showbiz elements, then surely it would have come across as even more fuddy duddy?

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Edited by garynysmon
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On 8/3/2020 at 3:18 PM, CavemanLynn said:

@BomberPat Which is exactly what the new WoS did, and one of the reasons I think it failed.

Yep - my "review" of the first episode came up in my Facebook memories the other day, and it's exactly what I said at the time, and even moreso about the pilot. The moment they opened the show with an in-ring promo, it was fucked. Any time I end up talking to older blokes about the wrestling, or when my Granddad used to talk to me about it, they wouldĀ alwaysĀ say that the Americans talked too much. And any time you try and make a British show look like WWE, it always ends up feeling like low-rent holiday camp stuff.Ā 

On 8/3/2020 at 5:31 PM, garynysmon said:

Wasn't itĀ fucked from the second they started showingĀ WWF matches on World of Sport though? If they hadn't have at least tried to introduce some of the showbiz elements, then surely it would have come across as even more fuddy duddy?

You're probably right, the whole thing was inevitable. Sharing the timeslot meant the comparison was even more unavoidable than if they had just been airing on different channels. The changing of timeslots and general fucking with it by Dyke et al meant this is all pretty much immaterial anyway - they didn't want wrestling on TV, and that was that.

I suppose the question is whether a British wrestling show would have been more palatable to one of the other channels, post-ITV, if they had been able to successfully reinvent themselves.Ā 

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The timing was probably unfortunate. ItsĀ likely thatĀ that had World of Sport survived on ITV into, say 1991 or 1992, due to the Premier League there were enough established SatelliteĀ channels and subscribers by then to make it a feasible pickup (especially given how popular the WWF on Sky had become by then).

I know Screensport dabbled in it, but its hard to fathom that one of the more established channels wouldn'tĀ have taken a punt on a show that still pulled in big ratings, or even fast forwarding a few years, Channel 5.

Channel 4 has always viewed itself as arty and pretty high brow, I can't see how it would have been a suitable home back then. Anything wrestling-related would have been "ironic".

I just about remember the dying embers of WOS as a 4 year old in 1988 and my grandfather watching a wrestling show around lunchtime, but that's all I can recall. My dad has never been a fan but certainly has more time for WOS than the WWF stuff, but always used to say that the WWF wrestlers and their physiques just made the UK guys look ridiculous in comparison.

You'd have to think that was a mindset shared by a huge chunk of the casual audience at least.

My taidĀ (grandad), meanwhile happily watched the WWF for the remaining 12 years of his life but always had a bugbear about one fall matches and how shit they were and that three falls were fairer.

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Edited by garynysmon
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Iā€™m almost embarrassed to ask this. What was the deal with wrestling on World of Sport? I know it carried footage from Joint Promotions and All-Star Wrestling, but what was the actual commercial deal? Did those promotions have deals with ITV to record shows for broadcast? Or did ITV just turn up at shows and record them for a magazine-style show?

Basically, were ITV completely independent and recorded the shows they wanted to? Or did Joint/All-Star have obligations to provide content?

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