Post of the Year 2017

[dopper]

It's been ages since I've seen Petey Staniforth mentioned or referred to, so Keith Houchen played a blinder here today:

 

https://ukff.com/topic/138027-uk-wrestlers-making-the-news-for-the-wrong-reasons/

[cobra_gordo]

+1 from me!

[mikehoncho]

I have always, always assumed, believed and maintained that Angelina Jolie smells like bins, and I don’t think a spray of Chanel Grand Extrait would do anything to cover it up.

And I also reckon when she bends over, the view of her badge would resemble that of staring into a half drank pint of Guinness.

 

This gem from the "Celebrities Who Stink" thread by Scott Malbranque ... nice one Branquey, had me chortling out loud in the IT Suite.

[HarmonicGenerator]

Harry Wiseau's 'embarrassed by wrestling' story tickled me:

 

The worst one for me was in a music class in school in 1990. that Christmas I'd been enrolled in the WWF Fanclub as a present and I don't know if any of you were in said Fan Club but if you were you'll remember that as part of the membership pack was a cassette about 10 minutes long of various wrestlers theme tunes. Aaaaanyway, it was my first year of senior school and in the first music lesson we were told that we could for the first few weeks bring in music to play in class while, so excited at the possibility of impressing my new classmates I took the WWF tape with me and gave it to the teacher. The lesson started and she staretd playing cassettes by everyone, just a song or two off each one, I seem to remember Unbelievable by EMF and Size of a Cow being amongst the songs played but I may be wrong, then she said "and this is Harry's tape" followed by a few seconds of silence in which I suddenly realised that this might not have been such a good idea then the "shooba shooba shoobafwaaaa" introduction to Superfly Jimmy Snukas theme tune started, by the third "shooba" everyone in the class was looking at me and if not laughing at least sniggering. I could feel how red my face was, through nerves I started laughing but I didn't manage to calm any of them down, it was such a horrible feeling, if my balls had dropped by this point they would have rapidly gone back inside to hide. Two minutes of that followed by two minutes of Jake the Snakes really rather dull theme tune followed with laughs and sniggers continuing throughout "it's ok" I thought not quite holding back tears but really wishing I'd been hit by a bus instead of making it to school that day "it's the Ultimate Warriors theme next, that'll get everyone on my side even if they don't like wrestling" then at the end of Jake the Snake she said "thank you for that Harry, here's Felicity fuckwits Iron Maiden cassette she has brought in for us" 

 

it was horrible. horrible, horrible, horrible, I can still see their faces now, i'll be on my deathbed wired to machines and drips and that will be the image that comes back to me before I finally am allowed to expire from this cruel, cruel life.

[HarmonicGenerator]

I know we have upvoting and downvoting of posts now, but this thread will still be taken into consideration come awards time (well, it will if I'm doing the awards again) so this is Keith Houchen responding to the idea of how Dick Dastardly from Wacky Races would be WWE's top heel:

 

44 minutes ago, Keith Houchen said:

Plus he would actually win 50% of races this time around.

[Carbomb]

Seconded on that one. Top tungsten.

[HarmonicGenerator]

6 hours ago, Gus Mears said:

Someone came up to me off the street yesterday with tears in their eyes and said  "Gus, you're the best there is, was, and ever will be. I got into the public affairs business because I watched you write a briefing for mid-level managers about the results of the local elections way back when". I just nodded, smiled and gave him my sunglasses before heading back to my hotel room which was choc-full of beautiful women. 

Me again, nominating Gus Hart in 'nice things people have said to you recently'.

[Onyx2]

I preferred Branquey's Big Tonker meself but they're both great

[John Matrix]

Not sure i've ever nominated a post in here before, but this'un by BomberPat is an absolute smasher.

Quote

The tap on the back on a clothesline is something that makes sense in Lucha, but not in any other style of wrestling. I love that wrestling is kind of cross-pollinating more than it ever has, and picking influences from all over the world, but you end up with these little anomalies where, if they're just incorporated because you've seen it done, or because that's part of the sequence, they don't make sense in a modern/North American context.

The psychology of Lucha is very different to the psychology of wrestling anywhere else in the world; whereas in American wrestling all roughly follows the three act structure, and is all about heat, lucha is about momentum. Whichever luchadore has the most momentum is the one in control of the match, but if his competitor is able to take a move and roll through into a position of strength, they can absorb the momentum of their opponent and take control of the match. That's why, in lucha, you'll see a lot of things like the "tap the wrestler on the back" spot, or wrestlers allowing their opponent to flip around on the top rope to set up an arm drag, because the more momentum their opponent has, the more they can take from them. I've probably explained that badly.

It's a similar thing when you see old World of Sport sequences incorporated into American matches - a lot of them are done because someone's seen them, thought they looked cool, and wanted to incorporate them. And that's great, because it keeps the style alive, but done without thought, it doesn't make any sense in an American context. Plenty of times you'll see someone put in a "British" hold in an American indie match, and you'll be left wondering, "why doesn't he just hit him?" - now we might know the hold, and know that it comes from the British style, and know that in Mountevans rules it's illegal to throw a punch, but the majority of the audience won't know that, and they'll be asking "why doesn't he just hit him?" even louder.

It's nice to see the odd subversion of this, though - Mike Quackenbush fought Zack Sabre Jr in CHIKARA recently, and Zack tried the Lady In The Lake spot. This one's always been a bugbear for me when it's used outside of the UK; in Mountevans rules, it makes sense, because you can't attack a grounded opponent. So, when curled up into a ball, you can't pin the man as his shoulders are off the mat, but you also can't do anything else, so you have to take his hand when it's offered, otherwise you're just at a stalemate. It's hokey, but it makes sense. In America? Well, in the Quack/Zack match, Quack just lifted him up and dropped him on his arse. Because there's nothing stopping him from doing that. I'm pretty sure there was a Bryan Danielson/Samoa Joe match where Joe responded to the Lady in the Lake by just punting Bryan in the spine, too.

It's part of a wider problem in wrestling of moves and spots being done because they've always been done, not because anyone's putting any thought into why we do them. Something that will always get a pop out of me is someone actually getting tripped up by the drop-down in the International. Most guys do the drop-down in the centre of the ring, for no reason other than because that's the spot, they've either forgotten or never known that they're supposed to be attacking the guy's legs, not just giving him an opening to hop over him and carry on running the ropes to set up the next bit. Similarly, too few people actually sell the headlock and the struggle at the start of that sequence - it's just a headlock, immediately shoved off into the ropes. If someone legitimately gets you in a headlock, are you going to try and get out of it by shoving him away from you while he's still got it locked in tight? At best, that's a recipe for a cauliflower ear.

I find myself, at training sessions, or when watching someone's match back, saying to them, "why did you do that?". My logic has always been that if you can't explain why you do something in a match, then you shouldn't be doing it. The flipside of that is that if I say, "you shouldn't have done that", and you can explain to me why you did it, then that's fine, I'm the asshole. I don't pretend to be right about everything.

I know I'm off on a tangent now, but as an aside to that, and particularly relating it back to the headlock point - I was saying to someone last week; think of it like a GCSE Maths exam, you have to show your working. It's not good enough to just get out of the headlock, the audience have to see that you've struggled and fought to get out of it, and they have to have some understanding of how. It's one of the reasons I love Johnny Saint - he doesn't just skip ahead to escaping the hold, he acts out his thought process, and tries one or two things before the one that works.

 

[Grecian]

I've not seconded one, but I will do for that. Fantastic post.

[HarmonicGenerator]

Absolutely. Thirded.

[John Matrix]

Actually, can i rescind that? I've just noticed the use of 'asshole' which takes the shine off it a tad! :-D

[Jon-Carr_92]

 May I nominate this utterly majestic wordplay from Cannibal Man on the Paige Thread? If I was able to upvote, I would.

 

[Gus Mears]

I would like to +1 Cannibal Man and also nominate this from the Benoit thread. Caveman Lynn speculating as to what would happen if we find aliens. Funny and probably accurate.

 

9 hours ago, CavemanLynn said:

The usual. Liberals will rejoice and take to social media to declare how they greet their new alien friends with open arms, probably putting a green filter on their profile pics as a show of solidarity. Meanwhile, very loud conservatives across the world will be up in arms, literally, demanding a consolidation and expansion of our nuclear weapons capacities. Survivalists continue to sit in the hills, eating beans and somehow stockpiling ammo. The East accuses the West of collusion. People go about their daily lives, while a tiny minority wonder when the next paradigm shift will come. The aliens hang around for 3 weeks, then it all gets quietly forgotten when The X Factor starts again.

 

[BomberPat]

18 hours ago, John Matrix said:

Actually, can i rescind that? I've just noticed the use of 'asshole' which takes the shine off it a tad! :-D

Sadly, my time spent listening to shoot interviews, or at seminars with Yanks, tends to see me default to American swearing when I get into talking wrestling in the abstract. That and Jim Cornette's "whatever-the-fuck", which I'm desperately trying to phase out.

I have to give a shout to the "ALBERTONLYFOOLSANDHORSES" post, though, absolute gem.