The General Wrestling Thread

[LiquidLarry2GhostWF]

The WWE needs purchase the rights to use Final Countdown.

 

[JimLeavy59]

 

 

[Warner2BruceTD]

Interesting how Gabe Sapolsky basically admitted that he peaked as a booker around 2006, which is something we've discussed here. I exchanged some messages with him earlier today, looks like he'll be coming back on the VSN podcast soon.

 

[Bigpapa42]

The good stuff was awesome. The bad stuff was a lot more frequent than people remember it.

Agree all the way around, Larry. That period was my heyday as a fan and I look back on it with a lot of nostalgia. But going back and watching... a lot of it doesn't hold up. We remember the good stuff, but seem to have forgotten the not-so-good. There was a lot of crap wrestling. I mean the DOA, Los Barriquous, Steve Blackman, a lot of the WCW main event matches... Blackman might have been believable as a badass but he sucked as a wrestler. And there was plenty of shit angles, too. They managed to do into overkill mode on stuff like Austin-McMahon and some DX stuff, but there was outright crap like the Hawk's a drunk storyline.

I think some of the "it was all awesome" nostalgia comes from fans who didn't really watch through that era. There seem to be a lot of wrestling fans online who watched through it only as little kids (so their perspective is kinda skewed) or who didn't watch at all. Some go back and watch pieces, but its not like watching show by show to see the week to week booking.

Personally I don't think WCW stuff holds up any better. There was a lot of crap going on during any WCW period, and that's true right back to '89 when you had awesome main events with Flair, Steamboat, Funk, and so on. The midcard during the mid 90s was amazing but there was tons of crap. Stupid and pointless angles, guys who got hyped to hell and then disappeared, and the never-ending run of the New World Order.

I never want to discourage any fans from liking what they want to like. But anyone who tries to say that the Attitude era was a true "golden period" or without its flaws isn't being realistic.

 

[Warner2BruceTD]

I have to put my elitist hat on here, but do you know what holds up better than anything else?

Early 90's All Japan. Those matches are just as awesome now through 2012 eyes.

And the best storyline is always "this young rising guy has never beaten this superstar established veteran guy, and when will it finally happen?". All Japan got more mileage out of that basic, simple story, and for some reason NOBODY uses it anymore.

 

[LiquidLarry2GhostWF]

End of 97?

No sir...end of '96.

You had the Bash and everything that led up to that...awesome.
Then you get to Fall Brawl and you got the whole Sting / Fake Sting program...good stuff with a purpose.

After Fall Brawl, the nWo, super hot, starts adding new guys...Ted Dibiase, then the Giant, X-Pac joined, then you started getting Virgil involved, the nWo referee...alright, not awful yet.

Then Piper shows up, I believe it was at Halloween Havoc or the Nitro before it and the rest of the month was basically leading up to Bischoff's turn to join the nWo...from here, I didn't really dig it as much, especially in hindsight. Piper and Hogan would wrestle at Starrcade and right after Starrcade is when you started getting a shit load of members...Scott Norton, Buff Bagwell, Big Bossman, nWo Japan, Kyle Petty and the nWo NASCAR lololol...it became brutal.

 

[LiquidLarry2GhostWF]

Agree all the way around, Larry. That period was my heyday as a fan and I look back on it with a lot of nostalgia. But going back and watching... a lot of it doesn't hold up. We remember the good stuff, but seem to have forgotten the not-so-good. There was a lot of crap wrestling. I mean the DOA, Los Barriquous, Steve Blackman, a lot of the WCW main event matches... Blackman might have been believable as a badass but he sucked as a wrestler. And there was plenty of shit angles, too. They managed to do into overkill mode on stuff like Austin-McMahon and some DX stuff, but there was outright crap like the Hawk's a drunk storyline.

I think some of the "it was all awesome" nostalgia comes from fans who didn't really watch through that era. There seem to be a lot of wrestling fans online who watched through it only as little kids (so their perspective is kinda skewed) or who didn't watch at all. Some go back and watch pieces, but its not like watching show by show to see the week to week booking.

Personally I don't think WCW stuff holds up any better. There was a lot of crap going on during any WCW period, and that's true right back to '89 when you had awesome main events with Flair, Steamboat, Funk, and so on. The midcard during the mid 90s was amazing but there was tons of crap. Stupid and pointless angles, guys who got hyped to hell and then disappeared, and the never-ending run of the New World Order.

I never want to discourage any fans from liking what they want to like. But anyone who tries to say that the Attitude era was a true "golden period" or without its flaws isn't being realistic.

I think what killed a lot of the epicness of the Attitude Era in hindsight was the wrestlers wrestling a million times. You had The Rock and Austin wrestle every month and have confrontations every week. Some of it cool, and hell, I still love the Austin-Rock WrestleMania matches, but you had Rock-Austin, Austin-H's, H's-Rock, Foley-Rock, and every shade of grey in between over and over and over again. In WCW, you had Hogan v. Piper, Nash v. Goldberg, Savage v. Flair, throw in Lex Luger, DDP, and Scott Hall in random mix-ups over and over again...it was weekly, it was constant...

Overkill.

 

[Bigpapa42]

I have to put my elitist hat on here, but do you know what holds up better than anything else?

Early 90's All Japan. Those matches are just as awesome now through 2012 eyes.

And the best storyline is always "this young rising guy has never beaten this superstar established veteran guy, and when will it finally happen?". All Japan got more mileage out of that basic, simple story, and for some reason NOBODY uses it anymore.

Simple and effective booking, great workers, amazing fucking matches. Yeah, pretty much epic all the way around. Probably my favorite period of any promotion. I dig tag action and there were so many great tags through the whole 90s in All Japan but especially in the first 5 years.

I think what killed a lot of the epicness of the Attitude Era in hindsight was the wrestlers wrestling a million times. You had The Rock and Austin wrestle every month and have confrontations every week. Some of it cool, and hell, I still love the Austin-Rock WrestleMania matches, but you had Rock-Austin, Austin-H's, H's-Rock, Foley-Rock, and every shade of grey in between over and over and over again. In WCW, you had Hogan v. Piper, Nash v. Goldberg, Savage v. Flair, throw in Lex Luger, DDP, and Scott Hall in random mix-ups over and over again...it was weekly, it was constant...

Overkill.

Very much overkill. Vince was ALL OVER some of those '98 Raw's. Guys like Hogan, Bischoff, and Nash were in endless and multiple segments on some Nitro episodes, especially after they went to 3 hours. Watching through the IYH PPVs up to mid-97 made me realize how many fucking times they had Undertaker versus Foley in a 2 year period. Unreal.

 

[JimLeavy59]

 

[SHOGUN]

My favorite aspect of the Attitude Era was the WCW cruiserweight division. The first hour of Nitro was more often than not the best part of the show week-to-week.

 

[EmpireWF]

I'm looking forward to Impact.

mg:

I am.

 

[Warner2BruceTD]

TNA should not win "Worst Promotion of the Year" this year.

I'm not sure who should, but not TNA for once.

Maybe ROH. iPPV debacles, dumb angles, letting Kenny King jump to TNA as a champion, overall boring product.

AAA has been pretty shitty, but I haven't seen enough of it to be fair about it.

No truly terrible promotion this year. NOAH will get votes, but that's not really fair. Boring, but have had their moments for sure.

 

[LiquidLarry2GhostWF]

You can't be the WOAT promotion when you've had the best match of the year.

ROH is boring, but its not offensive.

AAA has been pretty bad.

Jarrett title reign IMO was a flop and the Jarrett-L.A. Park program stunk with the only redeeming quality was hearing the Spanish Announcers yell out EL KABOOOOOOONG when Jarrett did his guitar spot.

 

[Warner2BruceTD]

ROH, while being on national TV and owned by a media conglomerate, has actually gone backwards in relevance, botched four (FOUR!) iPPV's with technical difficulties (did I mention they are owned by a MEDIA company?), and basically went from running semi full time to running one or two shows per month.

To my knowledge, they are the only "major league" promotion that has cancelled shows this year for business reasons, and they suffered the embarrassment of having a champion walk out on them because they didn't have him under contract. iPPV buys are way down, thanks to a boring product and lack of consumer confidence due to several badly produced shows loaded with technical issues.

All told, through August, ROH is quite easily my pick for Worst Promotion.

 

[JimLeavy59]

Its really hard to watch their show its nothing but recaps and bad backstage promos.

 

[FedEx227]

I 100% agree that ROH should be Worst Promotion of the Year. Not that it's THAT awful, but it's certainly worse than TNA at this point and has had a horrible business year.

 

[LiquidLarry2GhostWF]

ROH, while being on national TV and owned by a media conglomerate, has actually gone backwards in relevance, botched four (FOUR!) iPPV's with technical difficulties (did I mention they are owned by a MEDIA company?), and basically went from running semi full time to running one or two shows per month.

To my knowledge, they are the only "major league" promotion that has cancelled shows this year for business reasons, and they suffered the embarrassment of having a champion walk out on them because they didn't have him under contract. iPPV buys are way down, thanks to a boring product and lack of consumer confidence due to several badly produced shows loaded with technical issues.

All told, through August, ROH is quite easily my pick for Worst Promotion.

The UFC.

 

[Warner2BruceTD]

The UFC.

Boom!

Funny you bring that up. Meltzer combines MMA & wrestling for best/worst promotion, and UFC has won best promotion every year since I think '05. If it beats New Japan this year, it will be a travesty.

 

[FedEx227]

There's no way it could win, no way.

 

[LiquidLarry2GhostWF]

Boom!

Funny you bring that up. Meltzer combines MMA & wrestling for best/worst promotion, and UFC has won best promotion every year since I think '05. If it beats New Japan this year, it will be a travesty.

But for real...AAA probably wins worst promotion of the year. Was really bad.