Negativity Thread.

[BomberPat]

12 hours ago, LaGoosh said:

When wrestlers interrupt backstage promos by just sliding into the shot. Why does no one see them before this happens? Do wrestlers cease to exist when they aren't directly in a camera shot?

This is it. WWE were awful for it forever, and it pains me to see it infect AEW as much as it had. It's this logic that if something isn't on camera it doesn't exist. The amount of times WWE would reveal that someone else was in a promo segment by just panning the camera two inches to the left and revealing that Kane was stood there all along, and it would be treated as a surprise to the people in the segment, not just the viewing audience. Dismal stuff.

10 hours ago, simonworden said:

Its perhaps not as bad now as in the past but the total loss of colour and vibrancy in wrestling. Too often you've got two competitors wearing the same dark colour or outfits that are mostly black.

There was a point in the men's Rumble match that I turned to my partner and said, "I hope the next entrant is someone wearing red and black!", because there were six or seven people in the ring all just wearing some combination of those colours. I just think in terms of watching with your kid, especially if they've never seen wrestling before - "which one's your favourite?", "the one in black". You'd have to narrow it down!

Even worse when it's two people wrestling each other and they're wearing the same colours. Surely one of you has an away kit?

 

For me it's anything that gets excused as "just wrestling". People who come up with a spot that should get them disqualified, but they do it in front of the referee anyway because they need to get their shit in, and the referee who doesn't DQ them for it - doesn't matter, it's just wrestling. Stories that don't bother connecting the dots from A to B. Doesn't matter, it's just wrestling. Having someone disqualified, suspended, or otherwise punished for doing something, but then having someone else do it on the same show without incident because you haven't bothered keeping things consistent - doesn't matter, it's just wrestling. 

[simonworden]

8 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

This is it. WWE were awful for it forever, and it pains me to see it infect AEW as much as it had. It's this logic that if something isn't on camera it doesn't exist. The amount of times WWE would reveal that someone else was in a promo segment by just panning the camera two inches to the left and revealing that Kane was stood there all along, and it would be treated as a surprise to the people in the segment, not just the viewing audience. Dismal stuff.

There was a point in the men's Rumble match that I turned to my partner and said, "I hope the next entrant is someone wearing red and black!", because there were six or seven people in the ring all just wearing some combination of those colours. I just think in terms of watching with your kid, especially if they've never seen wrestling before - "which one's your favourite?", "the one in black". You'd have to narrow it down!

Even worse when it's two people wrestling each other and they're wearing the same colours. Surely one of you has an away kit?

 

For me it's anything that gets excused as "just wrestling". People who come up with a spot that should get them disqualified, but they do it in front of the referee anyway because they need to get their shit in, and the referee who doesn't DQ them for it - doesn't matter, it's just wrestling. Stories that don't bother connecting the dots from A to B. Doesn't matter, it's just wrestling. Having someone disqualified, suspended, or otherwise punished for doing something, but then having someone else do it on the same show without incident because you haven't bothered keeping things consistent - doesn't matter, it's just wrestling. 

Oh you've reminded me of another one. A bloody big one these days. Big key match spots being repeated through different matches. Repeat a DDT or a top rope suplex but we get 3 or 4 of the same big moment now. Things like announce table spots, dives out of the ring, long drawn out submissions. AEW was terrible for this last time I checked. What's most surprising is that go back to the 90s a before, it was a huge taboo to be doing that now it seems like nobody cares. 

[Snitsky's back acne]

12 hours ago, wordsfromlee said:

I take it you’re not a fan of Zack Sabre Jr and his signature move ‘Hurrah! Another Year, Surely This One Will Be Better Than the Last; The Inexorable March of Progress Will Lead Us All to Happiness’?

No. The "Cheeky Nandos" can piss the fuck off too.

[BomberPat]

yeah, that winds me up no end, good production/agenting should prevent that. AEW tend to be particularly bad for it, but WWE weren't much better the last time I watched - even at the Rumble, there was the exact same spot repeated across the women's and men's Rumbles, and that's just inexcusable.

There was a promotion I crewed and trained with years ago, who used to basically have like a sign-up sheet backstage, where you could "claim" certain spots or moments - X number of matches were allowed dives, X number of matches allowed brawling on the outside, or low blows, or whatever it might be. Start of the night, the promoter would mark off where he wanted them, then the main event got to choose anything they wanted, and then the rest of the card could work out between themselves what was left over to divide up between them. It's a particularly admin-intensive way of doing it, but it seemed to work, and that was for a little indie show - when you're a huge production and have people earning a wage for putting match layouts together, you should be able to do better than that!

[Devon Malcolm]

Just now, Snitsky's back acne said:

No. The "Cheeky Nandos" can piss the fuck off too.

Oh god no, he doesn't have a move called that, please say you're just lying. For fuck's sake.

[LaGoosh]

45 minutes ago, Lion_of_the_Midlands said:

Wrestling is 100% presented as a sport. Anyone denying that is delusional.

Even Triple H himself says that WWE is "a movie about a sport". It's presented as a sport to a point but it's definitely not a sport so it doesn't have to have all the things sports does - including relentless adverts. Does the NHL have bits where the players do live 15 minute scripted monologues before the games? I think it's entirely reasonable for fans to be annoyed by new intrusive advertising rather than just blindly accept it because sports (which WWE is not) do it.

And yes the "cheeky nandos" is the worst name for a move possibly ever. Annoys me every time I hear it. It actually takes me out the match because the name is so stupid.

Edited February 3, 2025 by LaGoosh

[TheBurningRed]

1 minute ago, Devon Malcolm said:

Oh god no, he doesn't have a move called that, please say you're just lying. For fuck's sake.

No, it was Will Ospreay. 

[Devon Malcolm]

2 minutes ago, TheBurningRed said:

No, it was Will Ospreay. 

What an absolute arsehole.

[Snitsky's back acne]

9 minutes ago, Devon Malcolm said:

Oh god no, he doesn't have a move called that, please say you're just lying. For fuck's sake.

Will Ospreay does. What's even more annoying is sites using it in their reviews like everyone knows what the fuck it is.
'Ospreay then went for the Cheeky Nando's but it was countered' - I have no idea what that is! I can understand "He missed a clothesline" but "He hit him with the Cheeky Nando's"?
Just fuck off. Never stop fucking off with that. If you even think about stopping fucking off, remember what it's called and keep fucking off.
 

Edited February 3, 2025 by Snitsky's back acne

[The Reverend]

11 hours ago, simonworden said:

Its perhaps not as bad now as in the past but the total loss of colour and vibrancy in wrestling. Too often you've got two competitors wearing the same dark colour or outfits that are mostly black. That can piss right off give me colour, neon greens, pinks I want the ring in a battle royal to look like an absolute acid trip. 

This! A few years back Mattel put out the Retro figures (same size as the Hasbros) being a sad act who collected, and still had all of the Hasbros, I wanted to add these too. I went into Smyths toys to get the first couple of series and was shocked at just how much black plastic there was. It was like buying a GI Joe SAS collection. Apart from I think the Warrior and Kane, the majority were all moulded in plain black plastic. So boring. Remembering how it was when I was a kid and seeing the sheer brightness of the original Hasbros in Woolworths, it just made me think how unexciting it must be for kids these days to go and look at them. Bad enough in a shop, but on TV too. 

Which brings me to my next rant, Finn Balor at the Rumble. I've not followed it for a while, so does he always dress like he forgot his gear? Trainers and fucking trousers. Give him a can of Carlsberg and he looked like one of those lads who hang around the park in the summer thinking they're hard cos they've got their nips out. 

[FUM]

11 hours ago, simonworden said:

 

Its perhaps not as bad now as in the past but the total loss of colour and vibrancy in wrestling. Too often you've got two competitors wearing the same dark colour or outfits that are mostly black. That can piss right off give me colour, neon greens, pinks I want the ring in a battle royal to look like an absolute acid trip. 

 

To sort of build on this point - the amount of gothic dark gimmicks in wrestling. It’s especially present among women wrestlers too. Oh you’re a bit of a mad devil worshipper are you? Big deal, who isn’t these days? 

I get everyone idolised The Undertaker gimmick but it was a one-off that hadn’t really been done - stop trying to replicate it.

And while I’m on women wrestlers, adding facepaint does not make you anymore interesting. Last years Rumble is an example of this - almost every second entrance someone had fired something on their face.

[Snitsky's back acne]

14 hours ago, 2Xtreme_lives said:

Wrestling fans thinking they are being funny and loud at events but they are just irritating as fuck with their stupid stupid chants 

Duelling chants. Get to fuck.
"Let's go...." "Let's go..."

No. All of you can fuck off - and if you are someone doing the duelling chant for BOTH wrestlers then you should be arrested and imprisoned. 

[Vamp]

The lack of C shows.

The lack of stupid gimmicks. I was thinking about this when watching the Rumble. Godfather would have been entirely unmemorable if he didn't have silly gimmicks. In 30 years time when Tyler Bate or Ilya Dragunov or Pete Dunne are sitting at the Rumble I'm going to have no fucking clue who they are. 

Look at Jey Uso at the moment. Terrible promo and nothing exciting in the ring, but he has a silly dance and glasses and says "yeet" alot which is all incredibly stupid and he's one of the most over acts in the WWE because of it. 

[Lion_of_the_Midlands]

8 minutes ago, LaGoosh said:

Even Triple H himself says that WWE is "a movie about a sport". It's presented as a sport to a point but it's definitely not a sport so it doesn't have to have all the things sports does - including relentless adverts. Does the NHL have bits where the players do live 15 minute scripted monologues before the games? I think it's entirely reasonable for fans to be annoyed by new intrusive advertising rather than just blindly accept it because sports (which WWE is not) do it.

And yes the "cheeky nandos" is the worst name for a move possibly ever. Annoys me every time I hear it. It actually takes me out the match because the name is so stupid.

You seem to be under the impression that Paul Levesque isn't delusional. They all are in wrestling. If they weren't they wouldn't be wrestlers, and Paul is a wrestler first and everything else second.

As to your other points, I know that NHL players do pre and post match interviews, but let's compare like for like and stick to UFC and Boxing because they are presented in the same way Wrestling is. 

Virtually every fighter does promos in character. Paddy The Baddie, Conor McGregor, Michael Venom Page to name but three UFC fighters. Then we have the boxers. The Gypsy King Tyson Fury would be the obvious starting point, a character so well developed that WWE brought him in. There are more but i feel that id be over egging the pudding at this point. Personality and storyline sell fights in combat sports sports the same way they do in wrestling. 

Wrestling is presented as a sport. Other sports have taken stuff from wrestling to make their sport more entertaining. I stick by my original assertion: Anyone claiming that wrestling isn't presented as a sport is 100% delusional. 

[air_raid]

1 hour ago, LaGoosh said:

Even Triple H himself says that WWE is "a movie about a sport".

Proof at last that he definitely watched Wrestling Isn't Wrestling.

1 hour ago, The Reverend said:

Finn Balor at the Rumble. I've not followed it for a while, so does he always dress like he forgot his gear? Trainers and fucking trousers. Give him a can of Carlsberg 

Ahhh, you've just reminded me of my favourite bit of the original Bullet Club run when he shouts, very broadly Oirish, "Don't waste the beer, ya dickhead" at Karl. Lovely wrestling.