Favourite silly things in wrestling

[air_raid]

2 hours ago, Lorne Malvo said:

I'll always have a soft spot for daft finishes that still make sense. I don't think anything will ever top Big Show losing a tables match because he stepped onto a table and it fell through.

My favourite of these was when Miss Kitty won the belt in the four-corners evening gown paddling pool match by technically being the last of the four still wearing clothes.

[The Gaffer]

A thought crossed my mind today on how much stuff that died an absolute death in its day would get over now.

I can't help but look to the Ruthless Aggression era in particular and see plenty of acts that couldn't illicit even the faintest of reactions on those shows but would probably have massive smart arse crowd following in the arenas now, where the internet fans have 'won' and everything is potential meme material. 

Simon Dean on his scooter, Rene Dupree doing the French Ticker dance, Snitsky & Heidenreich being weird pulpy comedy killers. It's interesting how a crowd's mentality can bury or elevate these kind of acts.

Is it a bit too much to suggest they'd get over with, say, the AEW arena audiences each week? For me it's almost a foregone conclusion. I bet there'd be all manner of creative signs and t-shirts for some of those acts. Acts that were 'shit' then because crowds were in a weird deflated holding pattern of expecting the Attitude Era to come back any month, but that would be perceived as the good kind of silly now because something something post irony and all that bollocks. 

[Callum1993]

2 hours ago, Sheffbag said:

That's genius and needs doing 

They sort of did it at Rumble 99 didn’t they with the recording of Foley saying I Quit

[Tommy!]

4 hours ago, RalphyV2 said:

too many larger shandys and talks about walk all night 

Freudian slip? 

[Chris B]

4 hours ago, Lorne Malvo said:

I'll always have a soft spot for daft finishes that still make sense. I don't think anything will ever top Big Show losing a tables match because he stepped onto a table and it fell through.

There was a tremendous finish at Wrestle Kingdom 16 (night 1). They ran a royal rumble match where the last four would go to a match the following night. The final entrant is Toru Yano and he takes his time coming to the ring - just long enough for the last couple to be thrown out, so there are only three left in the ring. He becomes one of the winners despite never getting to the ring.

[Supremo]

2 hours ago, Gay as FOOK said:

A thought crossed my mind today on how much stuff that died an absolute death in its day would get over now.

I can't help but look to the Ruthless Aggression era in particular and see plenty of acts that couldn't illicit even the faintest of reactions on those shows but would probably have massive smart arse crowd following in the arenas now, where the internet fans have 'won' and everything is potential meme material. 

Simon Dean on his scooter, Rene Dupree doing the French Ticker dance, Snitsky & Heidenreich being weird pulpy comedy killers. It's interesting how a crowd's mentality can bury or elevate these kind of acts.

Is it a bit too much to suggest they'd get over with, say, the AEW arena audiences each week? For me it's almost a foregone conclusion. I bet there'd be all manner of creative signs and t-shirts for some of those acts. Acts that were 'shit' then because crowds were in a weird deflated holding pattern of expecting the Attitude Era to come back any month, but that would be perceived as the good kind of silly now because something something post irony and all that bollocks. 

This is a great point but I'm not convinced it's because of internet fans trying to, "win," or enjoying stuff ironically. I just think the fanbase as a whole has grown up, chilled out and admitted and accepted what pro-wrestling actually is.

Back then it felt like everyone was a, "push the cruiserweights!" moron, trying to convince everyone, including themselves, that it was a super serious medium that was at its best when guys wore black and had a very serious wrestle. Especially once the Atittude Era died off, there was a baked in sense of embarrassment for still watching it, so anything that added to that needed to be avoided at all costs. It wasn't something to laugh at, or else you'd feel silly for watching it yourself. Anyone who ever called it, "fake," had to be immediately corrected that, "actually it's predetermined."

I'm convinced somewhere along the way everyone just took a deep breath, admitted to themselves that this is the dumbest, silliest thing in the world, and thus was more comfortable watching it as such. Bring on your Orange Cassidys and Danhausens! There isn't a medium in the world more suited to stupid nonsense! That's what it is at its core!

I wonder if it was the increased popularity of geek culture and Marvel movies that meant everyone was more comfortable watching whatever the fuck they liked. Or maybe it came about on the advent of younger wrestlers coming up in the business and not viewing or treating their fans like mark idiots. I dunno. All I will say is that the audience for pro-wrestling feels a lot healthier now, where we can all be in on the joke and enjoy the daftness together. I'd fucking love for someone on one of the main shows to come up with something as funny as Snitsky and Heidenreich grunting at each other backstage. In fact, Tony should fly them in for a cameo. They can chat backstage on Dynamite about whether they still hate caskets. Danhausen would fit right in!

Edited December 12, 2022 by Supremo

[The Gaffer]

I think you've encapsulated it perfectly there. If it wasn't waiting for the Attitude Era to come back, then it was holding vigil on a week to week basis in the hopes that Vince would catch an episode of Velocity and go "You know what, Paul London Vs. Shannon Moore would be a great twenty minute WrestleMania opener at the Garden!" 

Even when it wasn't overzealously expressed every second post, that was your bread and butter internet opinion most of us had in the back of our minds. Our beloved business had been 'hurt' by half the audience moving on with their lives and it needed to be put right in some weird narrative where credibility needed to be established so the cockamamie gimmicks were counterintuitive to that. 

Jesus, remember when the ECW Zombie was the death knell for the promotion? 

Weekly highlight on Dynamite in 2022.

[Chili]

That Paul London/Akio series fucking slapped though. 

[Your Fight Site]

5 hours ago, Sheffbag said:

That's genius and needs doing 

I‘ve just watched a 2000 episode of Thunder where this happened.

Normal Smiley’s trying to get rid of the Hardcore Championship as he doesn’t want to be “hardcore” any more. He agrees with M.I. Smooth (Ice Train) to drop the belt to him in an I Quit match but is attacked by the Dark Carnival and chopped in the throat by The Great Muta. Cue match starting, and Normal can’t speak so Smooth gets frustrated, beats on Norman, angrily commands him to say “I Quit”, and the referee calls for the bell because Smooth said the words.

[RIDDUM_N_STYLE]

8 hours ago, Lorne Malvo said:

I'll always have a soft spot for daft finishes that still make sense. I don't think anything will ever top Big Show losing a tables match because he stepped onto a table and it fell through.

There was another great one involving Show where Regal knocked him out with the brass knuckles only for Show to fall on top of him winning the match while not having a Scooby what was happening 

[Chris B]

21 hours ago, Gay as FOOK said:

I can't help but look to the Ruthless Aggression era in particular and see plenty of acts that couldn't illicit even the faintest of reactions on those shows but would probably have massive smart arse crowd following in the arenas now, where the internet fans have 'won' and everything is potential meme material. 

Simon Dean on his scooter, Rene Dupree doing the French Ticker dance, Snitsky & Heidenreich being weird pulpy comedy killers. It's interesting how a crowd's mentality can bury or elevate these kind of acts.

Is it a bit too much to suggest they'd get over with, say, the AEW arena audiences each week? For me it's almost a foregone conclusion. I bet there'd be all manner of creative signs and t-shirts for some of those acts. Acts that were 'shit' then because crowds were in a weird deflated holding pattern of expecting the Attitude Era to come back any month, but that would be perceived as the good kind of silly now because something something post irony and all that bollocks. 

I don't think it's anything to do with post irony or smart-arse fans or anything like that. Comedy was appreciated throughout the Attitude era and went down a storm at times. The problem isn't that people weren't up for comedy - it's that the comedy was shit for the most part. Part of that is that, in hindsight, Vince McMahon really doesn't get humour in the way most people do - that's why so much comedy was braindead, lowest-common-denominator stuff with dislikeable babyfaces bullying and humiliating heels.

Were some of those guys capable of being funny? Sure, probably. But it generally landed terribly with Michael Cole fake-laughing his way through it. 

To be fair, even then, you got some shining lights who could do comedy well - Kurt Angle when he was so inclined, Eddie Guerrero and even Santino (at times). But they generally weren't great at being silly, or at being deadpan. It tipped over into wacky or forced too often.

Whereas, with AEW, one thing they do pretty well is the humour - it's not to everyone's taste, but it's rarely outright cringey and forced or one-note. At the very least, they're willing to go surreal or at least be patient or organic - the running gag of the Best Friends wanting to bring lethal weapons to no-DQ matches, or the Dark Order becoming the bunch of weirdoes they became. 

Simon Dean or Renee Dupree could have become organically funny, but it would have taken a type of approach I really don't think WWE were capable of at the time. To be fair, WWE has done better at other times, before and since. But that was a particularly unfunny period.

[BomberPat]

It was a combination of all of the above, really - WWE were trying to sell a more "realistic" product with your Kurts, Eddies and Benoits on top, and fans were wanting more "workrate", yet on the undercard you were seeing this creeping incursion of one-note 1995 gimmicks, all Evil Foreigner or Wrestler With A Day Job stuff, and big muscled meatheads that mostly never amounted to anything. It really felt like, now that WCW was done away with, Vince felt he could just go back to how things had been before and put the genie in the bottle at times. I don't think "comedy" was the problem, it was that they were lazy gimmicks.

Which is a shame, because Simon Dean should be great. A fitness instructor haranguing wrestling fans, managing a super-muscled tag team - there was potential there; he could have been doing the Ted DiBiase stuff of putting "fans" through humiliating challenges, but have it all be fitness-based. He was (I think) on the roster the same time as Super Porky, and they never interacted! They just never did anything with him, added confusion after One Night Stand by having him go back to being Nova sometimes, while the Push The Cruisers section of the fanbase would have always resented him not being indie-tastic move machine Nova the whole time. Could have been a solid midcard act, and that gimmick still could be with a few tweaks today - smarmy fitness influencer could be a license to print money. 

 

Ultimately, whether it's comedy or anything else, it's the WWE problem of reducing everything to the lowest possible common denominator. Whatever Rene Dupree's gimmick was, he became a bloke who did a silly dance. The worst thing you can be in WWE is organically funny, because they'll latch on to one thing you did or said and run it into the ground, rather than just allowing you to be funny on your own terms. But that's their approach to everything - break everything down into digestible, manageable chunks, and repeat well past the point of boredom.

[LaGoosh]

3 hours ago, BomberPat said:

Ultimately, whether it's comedy or anything else, it's the WWE problem of reducing everything to the lowest possible common denominator.

I remember Jon Moxley saying one of his biggest mistakes in WWE was showing them that he could do comedy because once they realized he could they wrote him nothing but insanely terrible "wacky Dean Ambrose" shit for years that he hated doing and made him look like an idiot.

[Vamp]

The WWE should have brought back the San Francisco 49ers match and had it be for the 24/7 title. I know it was terrible but I think it could make for a fun lower card match.

I'm not sure anyone would agree with me in this but I'm surprised they've never had a heel authority figure make a face WWE/World champion have to defend the title under 24/7 ruled for 1 night of TV. Feels like it'd write itself. Heel authority desperate to get the belt off the blue eyes by stacking the odds against them, couple of no hopers giving it a shot and looking like numpties, couple of big bad heels chasing the champion down as the show cuts to a commercial break, local legend in the audience who's never won the title goes for it, tag team main event where the champ could lose the title if he's pinned, few teases about whether he can trust his partners, the opponents bickering when it comes to pinfalls, other wrestlers trying to run in, champ retains at the end of the night. 

I know people will probably worry that it'll "reduce the prestige of the belt" but they've done worse. Feels like there's a bit of drama and comedy to mine there. 

[Merzbow]

Biff Wellington.

Just the name, it's class.