Against the grain wrestling opinions

[Arch Stanton]

I'm looking forward to seeing Chris Jericho return to WWE.

[LaGoosh]

53 minutes ago, boshealecta said:

Bret Hart matches are boring. They are overly long and technical and don’t have any of the fun elements of wrestling. 

Bret had some great brawls too if that's your bag. Against Austin at WM13 and HBK at SS97 are two of the best brawls you'll see.

[Chris B]

1 hour ago, Arch Stanton said:

I'm looking forward to seeing Chris Jericho return to WWE.

As an AEW fan, so am I.

[Arch Stanton]

25 minutes ago, Chris B said:

As an AEW fan, so am I.

Yeah, I guess 'against the grain' depends on what perspective you're taking! Your opinion there is obviously very much 'with the grain'. I think a lot of fans in general have had enough of him, so I might be in a minority in thinking it would be cool to have him back in WWE for his last run.

Edited November 3, 2025 by Arch Stanton

[Carbomb]

For such a highly-trained martial artist, RVD's kicks are surprisingly sloppy. 

Venturing to guess the sloppiness is from him trying to be careful with his opponent.

[Merzbow]

1 hour ago, Carbomb said:

trying to be careful with his opponent

Then breaking their nose anyway, I'd imagine those kinds of kicks are some of the hardest strikes to pull back on without looking goofy.

[LaGoosh]

1 hour ago, Carbomb said:

For such a highly-trained martial artist, RVD's kicks are surprisingly sloppy. 

I'm pretty sure RVD has no formal martial arts training. Likewise X-Pac as his "educated feet" as JR always called them.

[Carbomb]

33 minutes ago, LaGoosh said:

I'm pretty sure RVD has no formal martial arts training. Likewise X-Pac as his "educated feet" as JR always called them.

Being a pro-wrestler, it's best to take such things with a pinch of salt, but his wiki says he's had a fair bit of training:

 

Quote

 

Training

Szatkowski is a trained kickboxer and martial artist. Growing up in Battle Creek, Michigan, Szatkowski studied martial arts at two local dojos. He received instruction in Karate, Taekwondo, Aikido, Kickboxing and Kajukenbo.^[321] In 1990, he placed second in the Kalamazoo Heavyweight Toughman Contest.

 

 

[Arch Stanton]

Yeah, he pretty obviously had a lot of formal training, you can see that from watching about thirty seconds of him working. Not that it necessarily means you're any good.

[JLM]

I am a big fan of RVD but it is odd that I can’t recall him claiming to have achieved any belts in any specific  martial arts. Usually if a wrestler has a legit black belt in something you’d hear about it constantly. It’s always “trained in” or “received instruction” for Rob. 

He studied the Bloodsport DVD extensively, could totally kick his little brother’s ass, he can do all the kicks the Green Ranger does on TV AND he can do the splits. He can also roundhouse kick a man’s head clean off but he promised his sensei he would never do it again. 

Edited November 3, 2025 by JLM

[LaGoosh]

3 hours ago, Carbomb said:

Being a pro-wrestler, it's best to take such things with a pinch of salt, but his wiki says he's had a fair bit of training:

Indeed! Just look at Wade Barrett's!

Absolute bullshit!

[Supremo]

I reckon a high percentage of pro-wrestler Wikipedia pages are filled in by the wrestlers themselves. No greater marks.

Not that I’d say it to their faces, though. They’d have all won belts in the UFC if they were younger, don’t you know. Three time black belts in Rex Kwon Do.

[FLips]

Joe Hendry is rubbish. Crap gimmick, crap generic look, crap entrance music, smug face. When his entrance stops being over there is nothing left there to carry on. 
Compare him to a Santino or Orange Cassidy and he’s so far away from them it’s laughable. Even if you compare him to Bobby Roode’s NXT run for only being over because of their entrance he’s not even at that level and that was a massive downgrade to Roode.

 

 

[BomberPat]

I was once in the car on a long drive to a show, with a couple of wrestlers in the back seat. Conversation dried up, and we were all quiet for a few minutes, and then one of the wrestlers turned to the others, sighed, and asked, "so....ever had a good match with Joe Hendry?"

[Arch Stanton]

2 minutes ago, FLips said:

Joe Hendry is rubbish. Crap gimmick, crap generic look, crap entrance music, smug face. When his entrance stops being over there is nothing left there to carry on. 
Compare him to a Santino or Orange Cassidy and he’s so far away from them it’s laughable. Even if you compare him to Bobby Roode’s NXT run for only being over because of their entrance he’s not even at that level and that was a massive downgrade to Roode.

 

 

A one-note joke that wasn't even funny the first time, at least in terms of how he's been presented on TV. I gather that the character originally got over by writing songs about his opponents and his music (not just the theme tune) played the biggest part in his success, but you wouldn't know that if you've only seen the NXT version. I raise my cap to the lad for hustling himself into such a decent run though, he even got to work Randy Orton at Wrestlemania. Fair play to him.