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Fuck me, that was well produced! (Wrestling Edition)


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Tripper's 'Beautiful Day' return vignette's in 2001/02 were quality. Made you completely forget that he was a uber heel battering Lita with a chair and the like before the quad injury. 

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Some of my favourites have already been mentioned so I'll go for some alternatives :

Mention of CZW above reminded me of the first time I was able to watch proper ECW from 1996 airing on Bravo in 1998 or so and a lot of the video packages they put together struck me as blowing away what the Big 2 churned out, mostly because they used proper music that always went really well with whatever they were pushing. Obvious mention from a then-teenage male would be the Buelah "#1 Crush" video, and I'm pretty sure an ECW video may have been my first introduction to "Connection" by Elastica, but the one that stands out was the November Rain video they knocked out hyping November To Remember 96.

Yes, the card was over 18 months old to this point but I had become invested in Dreamer, Raven, Sandman, Taz, Sabu, RVD and Shane and their (often overlapping and intricate) storyline arcs that it really excited me. Buggered if I remember much of the card now (apart from Scorpio's ignominious exit) but I remember those clips from High Incident and the double jeopardy match like it was yesterday, especially Sandy hugging Tyler then Raven ("What a prick") caning his head in over the outro to what is still one of my favourite songs of all time.

Funnily enough at the same time, while the music video stuff was always rather cheesy, the WWF did some of my favourite bumpers of all time. The dueling promo bits they did for Hitman and Austin ("WAKE UP BRET") ahead of Survivors 96 were masterful and for me captured the duality of the emotions I was facing as a massive Bret Hart fan. Bret's were very "This is my hero coming home... to the GARDEN.... to resume a legacy. Then watch out Shawn, he's coming for you. This is GLORIOUS." But Stone Cold's made me feel like "This is a menace, an absolute fucking nutcase. This is dangerous. My hero can not out-FIGHT this lunatic. Fuck sake." Score and images combined to make me feel, I hope, exactly what they were meant to.

Finally, the first time I ever saw the full version of the "Hollywood" Rock entrance at No Way Out 2003 I thought it was the best wrestling telly for years. The lengthy atmospheric intro was superb, mixed with images from the exact same video I'm SURE they sped up for the Survivors 96 open, breaking into simply "......... isssss cooking" in a hushed tone (fucking subtle, that) ... then. Then Rocky marches down to heat I wouldn't have dreamed of. They let their big hero go full blown heel again and I fucking loved it. I had no idea if Nassau had been an anomaly or if the turn was going to take but I was delighted to see and hear that it had. The buzz I got from that entrance (I bought that show on VHS for fuck sake) I'm fairly sure owed a lot to the fantastic music/video combination/camerawork combination.

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Cant find footage of it, but Ric Flair arriving to the building to fight Vader at Starrcade 93 was always amazing I thought. It started at his house with his family. They all look nervous (he's off to fight a bull, so obviously.) Gene Okerlund escorts him to the limo and throughout the show they are seen chatting about his career and how the match is so import. He arrives at the arena, Gene wishes him luck and he heads off into the dressing room. Then he gets ready and heads out for his match. It dont think I've wanted to see a match more after the way they built it up as the night went on. It was like he was having his last meal before getting the chair. Oh, did I mention, Vader just showed up to the building in a Ribera Steakhouse jacket and a towel around his neck shadow boxing. No fuss. Just wanting to kill someone. It was like watching a Rocky film.

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11 hours ago, air_raid said:

 

Finally, the first time I ever saw the full version of the "Hollywood" Rock entrance at No Way Out 2003 I thought it was the best wrestling telly for years. The lengthy atmospheric intro was superb, mixed with images from the exact same video I'm SURE they sped up for the Survivors 96 open, breaking into simply "......... isssss cooking" in a hushed tone (fucking subtle, that) ... then. Then Rocky marches down to heat I wouldn't have dreamed of. They let their big hero go full blown heel again and I fucking loved it. I had no idea if Nassau had been an anomaly or if the turn was going to take but I was delighted to see and hear that it had. The buzz I got from that entrance (I bought that show on VHS for fuck sake) I'm fairly sure owed a lot to the fantastic music/video combination/camerawork combination.

At NWO 2003 The Rock has a more elaborate intro with "If ya smeeeell...If ya SMEEEELL.... IF YA SMELLLLLL LOOK AT THE TONGUE...." it settled into the much more subtle "....is cookin'" on Smackdown I think. He definitely had it by Mania.

 

Also - I always loved the intro to 2001 Survivor Series:

 

Heyman makes everything great. "Death to sports entertainment. And death to the WWF"

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This springs to mind. Absolutely condensed everything that made Goldberg amazing at that time into one video. First time I saw this on Nitro I had no idea who he was, but after a minute long video I was all in.

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35 minutes ago, rollthedice said:

Thanks for the CZW vids @Accident Prone brought back some very fond memories.  I still have both of those CODS from SMV.

I dont know how to embed videos but i always enjoyed the videos for Then and Now and Truth & Consequences.

 

 

The hype vid for High Stakes 2 was really good stuff too. Shame they shit the pan in mid-'05 and never fully recovered. They're a massive joke of a promotion now, a real shame considering they gave a lot of guys a chance and their first real exposure, Owens and Zayn being two major examples.

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The best produced WWE-related videos in recent years have been for their video games, which I understand are produced by 2K (or whoever they contracted to do them) rather than by WWE themselves. So much better than any promo WWE have done for their product. The Sting one really kickstarted it but you've had others too- the Terminator one at the bar, the Goldberg one and even the Burn It Down one. All very well produced. That Sting one was a hundred times better than anything WWE did to hype up Sting when he eventually joined them.

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1 hour ago, PunkStep said:

The best produced WWE-related videos in recent years have been for their video games, which I understand are produced by 2K (or whoever they contracted to do them) rather than by WWE themselves. So much better than any promo WWE have done for their product. The Sting one really kickstarted it but you've had others too- the Terminator one at the bar, the Goldberg one and even the Burn It Down one. All very well produced. That Sting one was a hundred times better than anything WWE did to hype up Sting when he eventually joined them.

Yeah, but did any of them fire it up for you to play then this?

 

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The FWA thread reminded me of the Music videos they did with Citizen Smith. Try and ignore that obviously they have a bit of old school YouTube compression. They are all awesome.

This one I love. When Jody Fleisch retired out the blue after Uprising 2 they put out this tribute video. I was a proper big fan of his and was gutted he'd stepped away as he and the FWA seemed like they were getting over like gangbusters. This proper got to me as it's like he died.

Excellent call on the 'I can still hear the echoes' video that still gives me goosebumps.

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