Wrestling unpopular opinions

[The Gaffer]

1999 is the king. It's got the perfect blend of on fire stars, Attitude Era goonies, funny commentary, salacious storylines, hot crowds and endless memorable entrance theme riffs. It doesn't have match quality, but we're talking serious nostalgia making it my favourite year, here, and I'm alright with that. 2000 is technically where it's at, but I find it far duller to watch back. It's a bit too clean. 99 is like reading The Dirt. It is dirt with most fans now, though. It's gone over the years from being considered one of the top years to one of the worst. It probably deservedly takes the heat for people's retrospective moral and creative reassessment of the Attitude Era and Russo's booking. 

There's some good PPVs scattered throughout 95-96 and the long term booking at the top of the card was solid. The title always felt like a huge deal. But the TV is embarrassing even taken within the context of its era. Seeing shit like Xanta Clause, Barry Horowitz, the gawky merchandise shill spots, all that goofy music and primary colours everywhere - and more often than not in a high school gymnasium. It's a tough sell. 

Mrs. FOOK's favourite match ever is the 99 Rumble, because it's just mental and literally anybody could sit down and follow that amazing Austin/McMahon history package then focus on the narrative of Austin trying to win the thing with Vince trying to screw him around.  

Edited August 10, 2020 by Gay as FOOK

[garynysmon]

2 hours ago, Gay as FOOK said:

1999 is the king. It's got the perfect blend of on fire stars, Attitude Era goonies, funny commentary, salacious storylines, hot crowds and endless memorable entrance theme riffs. It doesn't have match quality, but we're talking serious nostalgia making it my favourite year, here, and I'm alright with that. 2000 is technically where it's at, but I find it far duller to watch back. It's a bit too clean. 99 is like reading The Dirt. It is dirt with most fans now, though. It's gone over the years from being considered one of the top years to one of the worst. It probably deservedly takes the heat for people's retrospective moral and creative reassessment of the Attitude Era and Russo's booking. 

I actually prefer 1997 and 1998 over 1999, but agree that 2000 is a bit "too clean." (Basically, nothing will top 1997 in my mind and it all went gradually downhill from there.)

I know that people prefer 2000 for the match quality, as Angle, Benoit, Guerrero etc were on the card by then. But I've always loved short TV matches and see no reason why most shouldn't be 5-7 mins tops. I have to be really in the mood to enjoy an actual good wresting match so it ranks very low in my enjoyment of a product.

Not too long ago (before I moved in with the mrs and had time to do such things) I watched back the 1995/96 RAWs in their entirety. I must say that it was must better than I remembered, or had been programmed to remember since the advent of the internet. The single worst thing they did was to cut off Diesel's legs underneath him and turn him into a cookie cutter smiling babyface, whereas before and after his title run he was superb.

That period from Dec 95 to May 96 before his jump to WCW was some of Kevin Nash's best ever work.

Edited August 10, 2020 by garynysmon

[LaGoosh]

Post Summerslam 2000 the general quality starts to go down. There's not as many good midcard storylines, Stone Cold comes back and is generally miserable, Triple H and Undertaker start getting stale and most the fun midcard acts that held up the show for the past few years are running on fumes.

98 to early 2000 is easily my favourite time period. Match quality isn't great but I've never been a big match pervert type. TV matches should rarely be longer than 8 minutes to me, 10 minute + matches is what PPVs are for. The top angles were consistently very strong, the shows were filled to the brim with over characters and there's loads of stories and good promos.

 

Edited August 10, 2020 by LaGoosh

[WeeAl]

One thing that strikes me from this discussion, is how easy it is for us all to differentiate all these years from one another. 1996, 1997, 98, 99, 2000, 2001 etc are all so clearly different. Off the top of our heads I'm sure we could all name five things in a quick fire quiz round that happened in each year, and not get the year wrong on any of them. For myself, I'd say that could be the case up until about only 2005. After that, lots of it blends together - and that's from somebody that didn't take a break from watching! God knows if I had stopped for a handful of years. 

As it goes on from 2006, sure some things will stand out as from a certain year (Rumble winners, Mania main events etc) but other than those I'm just as likely to say something happened in 2015 when it'll have really happened in 2012. 

Do we think this is just nostalgia? We all had VHS recordings that we watched until they wore out? Or is it also that things rarely did change enough in the last decade or so, to make separating them very difficult?

[garynysmon]

1 hour ago, WeeAl said:

One thing that strikes me from this discussion, is how easy it is for us all to differentiate all these years from one another. 1996, 1997, 98, 99, 2000, 2001 etc are all so clearly different. Off the top of our heads I'm sure we could all name five things in a quick fire quiz round that happened in each year, and not get the year wrong on any of them. For myself, I'd say that could be the case up until about only 2005. After that, lots of it blends together - and that's from somebody that didn't take a break from watching! God knows if I had stopped for a handful of years. 

I've often wondered if this was the case for a lot of people or just those around my age, as a lot seem to pinpoint the mid 2000's for when this started.

Personally everything after about 2002 starts to blend into one, but I've often put that down to starting University in the summer of that year and just not being in the loop as I was too busy drinking and trying to cop off with girls didn't have access to Sky.

A lot of its to do with age and priorities in life, as well as the novelty of PPV's back then. The ever rotating roster of the 80's and 90's is also a factor, I'm sure that I could watch a single episode of Superstars and pinpoint the year (probably to the month) it took place.

I'm sure that I've watched Wrestlemania 9 about 50 times and Summerslam 92,93 etc about 20 times easily. Yet I don't think I've watched a single show from the past 20 years more than twice.

Edited August 10, 2020 by garynysmon

[LaGoosh]

1 hour ago, WeeAl said:

One thing that strikes me from this discussion, is how easy it is for us all to differentiate all these years from one another. 1996, 1997, 98, 99, 2000, 2001 etc are all so clearly different. Off the top of our heads I'm sure we could all name five things in a quick fire quiz round that happened in each year, and not get the year wrong on any of them. For myself, I'd say that could be the case up until about only 2005. After that, lots of it blends together - and that's from somebody that didn't take a break from watching! God knows if I had stopped for a handful of years. 

As it goes on from 2006, sure some things will stand out as from a certain year (Rumble winners, Mania main events etc) but other than those I'm just as likely to say something happened in 2015 when it'll have really happened in 2012. 

Do we think this is just nostalgia? We all had VHS recordings that we watched until they wore out? Or is it also that things rarely did change enough in the last decade or so, to make separating them very difficult?

I think it's all of those reasons but also I think the clearest way to differentiate years is by the headliners. And from 2005 til about 2015 it was basically the John Cena show with him on top the vast majority of that time. Also the midcard used to change massively pretty rapidly every 1-2 years while these days people hang about for ages with the same gimmicks and it feels like nothing changes.

I can certainly remember stuff from throughout this period but it's spread out and I couldn't tell you what year any of it was from off my head.

[The Gaffer]

The shows also went through a very linear, rapid aesthetic evolution during the Monday Night Wars. The sets, packages, cameras and even the volume mixing all improved every few months. Realistically that sort of thing is bound to peak at some point - which it did around the time they went to HD - and all they've been doing since is adding bells and whistles that the general consensus feels makes the product feel too overproduced. 

The other big thing they can't help quite as much is how much history and content is behind them, now. The gimmick matches are an easy way to illustrate this. It's no problem remembering the first few Hell in a Cell matches. Then everyone gets one for their Undertaker blow off. Or ladder matches. Nobody's going to be naming all of them in historical order anymore. Most of us could probably have a fair shake at naming all the big title changes from the Hulkamania era to 2002. Then they had two titles, then one, now two again.

So yeah, separating years is nigh on impossible unless you're really into it. You can do it around WrestleMania which goes to show how it's the only part of the year they properly define. Broadly I'd consider WrestleMania XXX the start of the current era. The streak ending, the Network launching, and the whole formulaic progression of the NXT call ups being set in stone. That was six years ago, though! 

Mind you something similar is repeated across other forms of media, particularly music. It's like we spent a few decades coming up with all the various styles and sounds and now we're just mixing them up and reinventing. Before that if you wanted you could wrap 5-10 year blocks into handy eras of new sounds and subcultures. If I say to you '1996' you're going to see Keith Flint, the Gallaghers and the Spice Girls. What if I say '2018'? We're also not as sucked in by massive stars. The idea of looking up is a bit passe. We want them on our level, responding to our Tweets and shit. 

[Pinc]

1 hour ago, Gay as FOOK said:

Stuff*

Really great post that mate with lots of truth to it. There’s an essay to be written about wrestling and hauntology, which is the term coined by Simon Reynolds for (among other things) when musical genres cease to be able to produce new forms and instead become about recombination and pastiche of old ones.

I forgot who it was (maybe you?) but there was a post on here a while ago which pinpointed Rock/Hogan at Mania X8 as the moment WWE stopped being forward looking and became a nostalgia show. Its hard to dispute, and the gradual decoupling of their general profitability from their TV ratings seems to confirm that the current product isn’t the big money spinner anymore. The idea they could have their most profitable quarter ever at the same time that Raw is achieving record low ratings would’ve been unthinkable ‘when it was good’.

[Liam O'Rourke]

33 minutes ago, Pinc said:

I forgot who it was (maybe you?) but there was a post on here a while ago which pinpointed Rock/Hogan at Mania X8 as the moment WWE stopped being forward looking and became a nostalgia show. Its hard to dispute, and the gradual decoupling of their general profitability from their TV ratings seems to confirm that the current product isn’t the big money spinner anymore. The idea they could have their most profitable quarter ever at the same time that Raw is achieving record low ratings would’ve been unthinkable ‘when it was good’.

May have been me, its certainly my opinion. HATED that match when it happened, magic as it was, for what it represented in the context of the era, and we are still paying the price for it. The idea that it was okay to seek that reaction, a reaction that promotes past over present, was so contrary to WWF's successful mentality previously. And they did it because they were struggling and they knew it was an easy, lazy reaction to seek. And they are still seeking it when they can't make the present work. Lazy and counterproductive. I could write an essay on the WWF losing their grip on the audience and the role that match had on it.

Edited August 11, 2020 by Liam O'Rourke

[Otto Dem Wanz]

13 minutes ago, Liam O'Rourke said:

May have been me, its certainly my opinion. HATED that match when it happened, magic as it was, for what it represented in the context of the era, and we are still paying the price for it. The idea that it was okay to seek that reaction, a reaction that promotes past over present, was so contrary to WWF's successful mentality previously. And they did it because they were struggling and they knew it was an easy, lazy reaction to seek. And they are still seeking it when they can't make the present work. Lazy and counterproductive. I could write an essay on the WWF losing their grip on the audience and the role that match had on it.

If you did, I would definitely read it!

[LaGoosh]

45 minutes ago, Liam O'Rourke said:

May have been me, its certainly my opinion. HATED that match when it happened, magic as it was, for what it represented in the context of the era, and we are still paying the price for it. The idea that it was okay to seek that reaction, a reaction that promotes past over present, was so contrary to WWF's successful mentality previously. And they did it because they were struggling and they knew it was an easy, lazy reaction to seek. And they are still seeking it when they can't make the present work. Lazy and counterproductive. I could write an essay on the WWF losing their grip on the audience and the role that match had on it.

Agree completely. I think this match and the HBK/Undertaker matches were probably the worst thing to happen to WWE long term for me. It made the company focus on nostalgia and forced moments, and turned the match style into endless forced finisher spamming "epics".

[BomberPat]

Finisher spams were on their way sooner - I remember that used to be a major criticism of Kurt Angle's big matches. I think that likely came in with Johnny Ace in 2001 - he had a reputation as a good "finish guy", and he brought a lot of AJPW influence in terms of seeing matches escalate in terms of big moves. The problem is that WWE has always been built around wrestlers having one or two big finishes, whereas in '80s and '90s AJPW one of the hallmarks of the style was that each wrestler had basically a whole range of signature moves, each one a viable match-ender. Rather than re-educate the WWE audience to think that more moves could feasibly end matches, the only way to replicate that kind of heated exchange of near falls was to go the opposite route and start devaluing finishers by having people kick out of them more often.

Hogan/Rock was definitely a turning point - it fell in the middle of WWE throwing shit at the wall and hoping that one of the WCW guys they were signing might be the magic bullet to win over the lapsed WCW audience, but was a real turning point towards WWE realising that with no competition, they now had complete control over their own history. It didn't matter that barely five years earlier they'd been mocking Hulk Hogan for being old and washed up, now he was champion again. Roddy Piper's back, but his entire history has been distilled to "remember that time he hit Snuka with a coconut?". WWE "legends" from that point onward were destined to either be booked as if they were just as good as they were in their prime - contrast to guys like Backlund and Jake in the '90s, where "have they still got what it takes?" was a real element of their character - or reduced to one-note caricatures who are all best mates, and will dance around backstage in gear they haven't worn for thirty years, then Ron Simmons pulls a face. Ricky Steamboat showing up in backstage segments in his sodding karate gi. One way or another, they started booking to their history, rather than their present - the top stars of today are never as important as someone who main evented in 1998, and never will be. 

I actually saw someone on Twitter say that so many of WWE's problems stem from the fact that they are absolutely convinced that they got wrestling absolutely right between 1998-2000, and have never considered moving beyond that model - it shows in their presentation, but also in how they present the stars of respective eras. 

 

The other turning point for me was Michaels/Flair - not so much the match itself, but other people's attempts to capture it. Every Triple H match for about three years after that felt like it had a crowbarred in "dramatic moment" that was clearly him reaching for his "I'm sorry, I love you" moment. His match with Kevin Nash during the CM Punk feud had Kevin Nash trying to give him the "Two Sweet" gesture, and Triple H responding with a crotch chop, presented as if it was the most amazingly symbolic thing ever. Same sort of thing in all of his Undertaker matches. 

The more I look back on it, the more I think "I'm sorry I love you" is the pinnacle of WWE getting "show, don't tell" wrong. A wrestler's whole job is to tell a story with their body language and physicality, yet they don't trust Shawn Michaels and Ric Flair - of all people - to actually do that, and have Shawn Michaels just flat out tell you the story they're trying to tell instead. It would be like Bret Hart in the middle of his Wrestlemania match with Steve Austin shouting "I'M THE BAD GUY NOW". 

[GeronimoJacksBeard]

I'd certainly agree on the affect of that HBK/Taker match and i also hated Hogan/Rock and what it represented in a mentality shift from the previous few very successful years. But i don't think you can pinpoint that as the moment they just went all nostalgia and told you anything new wasn't as good. The very next night Brock Lesnar debuted. He was brand new there, but he's their only real genuine name star today, some 18 years later so it definitely happened much later on. They spent the entire remainder of that year cementing him and in doing so, making a point of putting him over very strong over stars of previous eras. Made him their youngest ever World champion at the time. That same year Randy Orton, John Cena and Batista were brought to the main roster. It wasn't long before all three were pushed as their headliners and biggest stars and remained around for much of the next 18 years. They certainly didn't entirely abandon forward and future thinking by any stretch in 2002.

Vince has always gone back to stars from the past in every era, the only short exception being when the biggest competition took most of them, so he was forced to take a different approach. Even then he still flirted with the idea and did as soon as he could.

[Pinc]

Wouldn’t disagree with any of that, but I don’t think anyone was saying they relied entirely on nostalgia from then on. More that Rock/Hogan was a watershed moment after which the general presentation stopped evolving in any meaningful way, relying more and more on pastiche of things that had worked in the past. Rock/Hogan was wrestling’s equivalent of the ‘End of History’.

[BomberPat]

One thing I will say for Hogan/Rock is that they still had the balls to book Rock as a heel when he returned for the rematch, whereas shy of Batista I can't really think of a returning top star being "allowed" to work heel in recent years, let alone one as bankable as The Rock, and even in Big Dave's case their hand was forced.

There was still some sense of the show as being dynamic, whereas now everything feels so static and lacking any sense of urgency, and heel turns get cheered just because something happened for once.