BarryOVega Posted February 13 Posted February 13 On 1/20/2026 at 4:42 PM, BomberPat said: I've always felt they should do more like that, with non-wrestling members of stables, and I assume it's just the cost of paying extras that stops them doing it. When they were presenting Bray Wyatt as a "cult leader", but he only had two blokes following him, what kind of a cult is that? Would it have killed them to have paid to just have some extras in hillbilly get-up hanging around them? Same when Punk was leading the Straight Edge Society, I always felt they should have done more with that, having plants in the crowd in SES gear and shaved heads to make his influence seem more widespread. They had a few extras in their vignettes, presumably NXT trainees as they all looked to be in decent shape, seem to remember there being a brunette that people were commenting must be Sister Abigail after that became a thing Heel stables having nameless cannon fodder would remove the need for shite like Theory being added as well Quote
Dai Posted February 13 Posted February 13 Between someone here mentioning it and someone in the Puro thread mentioning it, does anyone have the short history of the Cagematch website? Is it run by some insane individual who manually enters all the data himself, or is it a Wiki were anyone can add to it? The amount of detail on the site is truly insane. Surely the greatest source of info for anything wrestling related, and has been for an age. All for free, and surely they don't make anything from the website. Someone, somewhere has entered the complete details for some random WCW C Show wrestler from the 90s, along with pretty much every wrestler you can think of. The scale of the site must be insane. How long has the website been going, and is there one person behind the whole thing? Quote
JoeManco7 Posted February 14 Posted February 14 14 hours ago, Dai said: Between someone here mentioning it and someone in the Puro thread mentioning it, does anyone have the short history of the Cagematch website? Is it run by some insane individual who manually enters all the data himself, or is it a Wiki were anyone can add to it? The amount of detail on the site is truly insane. Surely the greatest source of info for anything wrestling related, and has been for an age. All for free, and surely they don't make anything from the website. Someone, somewhere has entered the complete details for some random WCW C Show wrestler from the 90s, along with pretty much every wrestler you can think of. The scale of the site must be insane. How long has the website been going, and is there one person behind the whole thing? Quote
TibBo Posted February 15 Posted February 15 Most of the world works to the left (armlocks applied to the left arm etc) whereas Mexico traditionally works to the right I believe? I guess that’s a cultural difference? With the communication, I’m guessing it’s just ‘clothesline, legdrop, move…’ rather than a full-blown detailed sentence of conversation per spot? With the modern product, I think it is pretty obvious most matches are painfully pre-planned, to the extent where if someone misses a spot they all look confused as to what to do next, like someone has forgotten their line in the school play. Quote
CavemanLynn Posted February 15 Posted February 15 (edited) As a VERY old former weekend warrior, I expect they'll be using some universal keywords and counts; there's some basics that pop up all over the world, regardless of language. Any trainee worth their salt will know the fundamentals of where to post and balance, so even if you've not taken a particular move before, good setup and some preparation with the opponent before the bell means you're protecting yourself, and of course it's on the attacker to deliver the move safely. I didn't get further than community centre shows, but one of the reasons I finally packed it in as an aging serial trainee was the amount of move names being called for a single spot; a. there was no way I was going to remember 4 or 5 moves, especially not with the number of ducking clotheslines that were being called that tried to pass for building anticipation, b. half the time I couldn't hear them clearly anyway, and c. I should be focussing on the crowd rather than getting to your next checkpoint. This is all probably on me, and it may well be the norm. Edited February 15 by CavemanLynn Quote
Paid Members BomberPat Posted February 16 Paid Members Posted February 16 In a lot of countries, English is still the de facto language of wrestling - if you watch Japanese wrestling, you'll notice that the referees count and give calls in English even when every wrestler in the match is Japanese. So generally they would still be calling moves in English. In the old days, there were a lot of complete sequences that you could either call or just get into the right position for, and practically any wrestler you were in the ring with would know exactly what came next - if you were wrestling in Britain, Germany, or Japan, and most likely India or Pakistan, and you called for the "Tony Charles", then any opponent would know it; double knucklelock, monkey flip, bridge, break, monkey climb, monkey flip, bridge, break. Lucha Libre is trickier, as I've talked about on here before - as has been mentioned already, in Lucha you traditionally work to the right rather than the left, and this is true historically in most Central and South American countries too. And also, oddly, in France back in the day - there are some connections between French wrestling and Lucha dating back a long way. As well as working the opposite side, Luchadores bump a lot less than American wrestlers, so do take a lot of moves differently - basically, while American rings gradually became more custom-built for wrestling, and given more padding and spring-loading, most Lucha was still fought in what were essentially boxing rings, and bumping on one of those you may as well be bumping on a solid wooden floor. So instead of taking flat back bumps, they tend to come out of moves with a roll, and that's one of the things that led to Lucha being a lot more fast-paced and dynamic, because the natural progression of that is to roll back up to your feet, and then into the next move. Because of that, the psychology and match structure of Lucha is very different to most wrestling, it's all about momentum and kinetic energy rather than about heat and babyface comebacks. In terms of language, as well, luchadores are much more likely to be calling their moves in Spanish. Some of those names have made it into English speaking wrestling, so we know our topes, tijeras, quesadoras and huracanranas (even if most people get what the last one is wrong), but there's still some weird anomalies. One that I will always remember is that "Suplex" in Lucha never used to mean a vertical or snap suplex, which is what I would think if someone called it in English, it would mean what we would call an arm drag. The other thing is that Spanish is just a simpler language than English. Because English is a mongrel language with so many different linguistic roots, there's just a lot more of it, and Spanish has something like 100,000 fewer distinct words than we do. What that means for wrestling is that a Luchadore will call tírame or sácame - "throw me" or "take me out" - and it's kind of on you to guess what they actually mean, they basically just call "throw", and it's on you from there. Quote
CavemanLynn Posted February 16 Posted February 16 Non-verbal cues really feel like a lost art in pro wrestling. It's why some of my favourite matches to watch are Ric Flair vs young guys needing a shine, like Sting, Lex, Steamboat and Kerry. Entire matches where he brilliantly demonstrates the real "follow me, kid" approach, working on the backfoot to keep the youngster coming forwards, building spots around no-selling, delivering moves specifically to receive them later, and leading near-fall counters off beginner chain wrestling. There's so many instances even in WWE of guys being out of position, which should be fucking impossible, because there's only a few positions you should ever be in. I swear current training has (possibly deliberately) overcomplicated everything to the point where even basic holds and throws are treated as special cases requiring specific positioning and coordination, instead of "post off the shoulder and kick your legs up." Quote
Paid Members BomberPat Posted February 16 Paid Members Posted February 16 To be fair, it depends who's training you. I think the problem is that WWE value training for their style of TV wrestling over fundamentals - there's a reason Botchamania is constantly full of clips from NXT of matches completely falling apart the moment something goes wrong, or people making incredibly basic day one mistakes. The knock-on effect, though, is that too many training schools and training seminars focus on "this is how to wrestle if you want to make it in WWE", rather than "this is how to get good enough at wrestling that you can make a living out of it". The flipside of enjoying picking up on non-verbal cues is that it's why I just can't watch the Mankind/Rock I Quit Match. In Foley's book he talks about The Rock going too far with it, and pretty much everyone accepts that he did, but there's a specific moment where Foley is really, really clearly giving his back to The Rock, and Rock goes the long way around to still hit him square in the head with a chair instead. Absolutely insanely irresponsible and terrible wrestling instincts that if it weren't the top guy doing it, and to a guy who he could fairly safely assume wouldn't kick up a fuss about it, would have had someone if not fired on the spot, then at least absolutely buried for it. The other thing to remember in terms of communication is that it's part of the referee's job to relay messages between wrestlers, and most of the bigger companies have at least one bilingual referee on staff - Sin Cara's early matches in WWE all had a Spanish-speaking ref, most of the NJPW refs speak English, Aubrey in AEW speaks Spanish, and so on. Quote
TibBo Posted March 2 Posted March 2 Am I going mental or does 0.15 of this sound just like an old early 90s WCW theme? First thought was Doom but it’s not that help! Quote
Paid Members wandshogun09 Posted March 2 Paid Members Posted March 2 @TibBo Sounds very much like the first 35 seconds of Rick Rude’s theme off the Slam Jam CD to me. It was cut out of his actual entrance when he used it on TV but it’s in the full version of the song here… Quote
TibBo Posted March 2 Posted March 2 9 minutes ago, wandshogun09 said: @TibBo Sounds very much like the first 35 seconds of Rick Rude’s theme off the Slam Jam CD to me. It was cut out of his actual entrance when he used it on TV but it’s in the full version of the song here… God bless you @wandshogun09 and all the Chuteboxe familia! It’s been doing my head in! Annoyingly I love that Rude song, but didn’t even consider it because that opening bit is so different to the rest of the song! Thanks again matey! Quote
Kamaras-Tash Posted March 29 Posted March 29 Did Cornette ever do a shoot interview specifically covering SMW? I know bits and pieces have been brought up in separate shoots Quote
Paid Members FLips Posted April 6 Paid Members Posted April 6 Who is the most recent "master" of a move that we have? Like you think of Eddie and the Frog Splash, Ricky Steamboat's Arm Drag, Jerry Lawler's punches, etc. Who is the most recent person that does a move the best and it's widely agreed? Quote
Awards Moderator HarmonicGenerator Posted April 7 Awards Moderator Posted April 7 9 hours ago, FLips said: Who is the most recent "master" of a move that we have? Like you think of Eddie and the Frog Splash, Ricky Steamboat's Arm Drag, Jerry Lawler's punches, etc. Who is the most recent person that does a move the best and it's widely agreed? Okada’s dropkick is currently considered the best around, I think? Quote
Paid Members FLips Posted April 7 Paid Members Posted April 7 55 minutes ago, HarmonicGenerator said: Okada’s dropkick is currently considered the best around, I think? Better than Bob Holly’s? Pft, doubt it. Quote
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