Pro Wrestling Talk

[timb2]

Yes I know it's fake and all but it is fun to watch. It is a Soap Opera Melodrama.,but I have to admit WWE has pretty well killed off the competition and have for the last couple of years really sucked BIG Time. McMahon's are not the total problem but I do believe that HHH has ruined a lot of storylines but trying to inflate himself bigger than he is. If he wasn't married to Stephanie HHH would be delivering pizzas for a living.... I see many mistakes that the current WWE does...

Some storylines I would create if I was there.
Here is one example I would have changed. Jinder Mahal should be better promoted and a more of an impact. I would have had him be like Zurkzees in the movie "300" claiming he was a God and have him coming to the ring being carried on a throne by 20 minions of his.Telling other wrestlers to bow down and worship him and he will spare them and have several wrestlers align with him Kind of like The Immortals......

They ruined the Bray Wyatt storyline,just selling the lights to the fans was stupid. Nothing ever makes any sense and Bray Wyatt babbling on has gotten old. They should have had a Sister Abigail and let her be a skelton post ALA Texas Chainsaw massacre.


They constantly keep putting John Cena & Randy Orton over. It's boring and they both need to go from being the top stars. I seriously think Randy Orton is very overrated. His best run was as Legacy to me.

They should bring back Cody Rhodes and that stupid Stardust gimmick was bad but what I would have done is make him turn on his brother Goldust after a misunderstanding that caused lets say a fire burn injury and I would remake Rhodes from STARDUST TO CALLING HIM ASH.His new character would be very dark kind of like a burn up Sting. grow his hair out truswting no one and hating everyone. He could fued with Goldust or The Undertaker,etc..

Maybe bring back a character that The Undertaker buried "The wrestler who played The Godfather was also Papa Shango would probably be the best choice and maybe have Shango come back from the Dead seeking his vengance.

Ryback got screwed over and have him come back and destroy everyone and hype him for a match with Brock Lesnar.


Yes WWE needs to make amends with Stone Cold Steve Austin and Austin vs The Rock match at a WrestleMania a Final match

A character similar to Bob Baklund. I would have a character like that but he took orders from a Ventriliquist dummy that he would prop at the corner of the ring. At one point that dummy comes alive during a WrestleMania match


I would bring back Ivan Koloff and have a wrestler similar to Jeff Jarrett or Shannon Miller who to me could have passed as women. I would have them wrestle as the old Soviet style women(Olga Korbitt) and refusing to take a test to prove they were female when wrestling the other females.


Some goofy ideas but what could they do to make it more entertaining?

 

[BrAinPaiNt]

At the heyday of WCW and WWF (yes before WWE)...when they had the monday night wars...when you had DGen on one copied from NWO on the other.

THAT was when wrestling was really good.

Problem with WCW is they only seemed to thrive on the older guys and could not develop some of the younger talent they had and let them go...Man alive WCW had two young guys that they never really pushed much only for them to go onto to WWF and be world wide wrestling ICONS like Stone Cold Steve Austin and the Undertaker and that does not count Mick Foley who had "some" success as Cactus Jack on occasion in WCW. I think it is fair to say that Stone Cold, Undertaker and the Rock were probably three of the biggest name wrestlers in the 90's and 00s and two of the three came from the WCW who just let them go because they had them with stunning steve in a tag team and the undertaker was billed as mean mark.

But still those were the days when wrestling was good.

After the WCW folded it did not take long for the WWE to get the guys they wanted and let some of the young talent go.
They did not have the same level of competition so I don't think they were pressured to put as good of a product out there. I also think they started to go the way of the WCW by using the older wrestlers way too much instead of promoting the younger ones. I mean good grief I know Hulk and Flair are giants in the industry but people got tired of seeing those guys wrestle. They should have just made Flair a manager or be put in just a talking role instead of having him still out there doing the same old moves.

I quit watch some years ago. Just could not continue to watch the weak product they were putting out.

However I see there are bunch of newer younger guys who have taken over since then (quit watching before Cena became big) so it looks like they learned their lesson to a degree.

I just can't imagine them being as good again as the NWO and DGenX days when monday night was a huge fight to see who was going to get more views and this was before DVRs were huge. You would have to switch between to the two channels or record one on video tape.

Ahhh the glory days.

 

[Ranching]

At the heyday of WCW and WWF (yes before WWE)...when they had the monday night wars...when you had DGen on one copied from NWO on the other.

THAT was when wrestling was really good.

Problem with WCW is they only seemed to thrive on the older guys and could not develop some of the younger talent they had and let them go...Man alive WCW had two young guys that they never really pushed much only for them to go onto to WWF and be world wide wrestling ICONS like Stone Cold Steve Austin and the Undertaker and that does not count Mick Foley who had "some" success as Cactus Jack on occasion in WCW. I think it is fair to say that Stone Cold, Undertaker and the Rock were probably three of the biggest name wrestlers in the 90's and 00s and two of the three came from the WCW who just let them go because they had them with stunning steve in a tag team and the undertaker was billed as mean mark.

But still those were the days when wrestling was good.

After the WCW folded it did not take long for the WWE to get the guys they wanted and let some of the young talent go.
They did not have the same level of competition so I don't think they were pressured to put as good of a product out there. I also think they started to go the way of the WCW by using the older wrestlers way too much instead of promoting the younger ones. I mean good grief I know Hulk and Flair are giants in the industry but people got tired of seeing those guys wrestle. They should have just made Flair a manager or be put in just a talking role instead of having him still out there doing the same old moves.

I quit watch some years ago. Just could not continue to watch the weak product they were putting out.

However I see there are bunch of newer younger guys who have taken over since then (quit watching before Cena became big) so it looks like they learned their lesson to a degree.

I just can't imagine them being as good again as the NWO and DGenX days when monday night was a huge fight to see who was going to get more views and this was before DVRs were huge. You would have to switch between to the two channels or record one on video tape.

Ahhh the glory days.

I loved WCW, those Sting vs. Flair fights were awesome. Never could get into WWE.

 

[Melonfeud]

Andre the Giant was just a pup, when my man" Dick the Bruiser " ruled the ring!
(Ohio river valley A.O.)
Sunday afternoons they had that on t.v. a half dozen or so would gather,pass the bong, a few beers and watch,,,there was an hilarious theatrically capable promoter named Jimmy Hart,he had a pretty good following amongst us.

 

[big dog cowboy]

McMahon's are not the total problem but I do believe that HHH has ruined a lot of storylines but trying to inflate himself bigger than he is. If he wasn't married to Stephanie HHH would be delivering pizzas for a living....

That simply isn't close to being true. His work in NXT is the primary reason for it's success. Just look at how many of their entertainers have moved up and the success they are experiencing. The fact is, if what he is doing with them would be allowed to transfer to the main roster, Raw and Smackdown would benefit greatly and be better. The WWE is making a lot of mistakes. But Trips doesn't deserve to have the finger of blame pointed at him.

 

[Stash]

That simply isn't close to being true. His work in NXT is the primary reason for it's success. Just look at how many of their entertainers have moved up and the success they are experiencing. The fact is, if what he is doing with them would be allowed to transfer to the main roster, Raw and Smackdown would benefit greatly and be better. The WWE is making a lot of mistakes. But Trips doesn't deserve to have the finger of blame pointed at him.

I think that this is a 'Yes and No' situation.

You're absolutely right about his work behind the scenes, and specifically with NXT. All of the expansion and development has been his good work.

That said, in front of the camera, he's always been a mediocre in-ring performer who got championship runs and wins he never earned. If he wasn't being carried in a match by better workers, the match was horrible. But 'the other guy' always got the blame for it.

His best position is the one he's in now - off camera - and not taking up a Wrestlemania spot from deserving young talent.

 

[MichaelWinicki]

Pro wrestling.

I'll watch it a little here & there but what's on TV now doesn't greatly interest me.

At one point there were probably 100 wrestling events a night being held in the US. The folks that have an interest in it now is just a small percentage of what was.

It is entertainment now and not wrestling... At least not the wrestling I grew up with.

Not only do guys not dress like wrestlers now, many don't even look like wrestlers. Most look like what they have to be in the ring– Acrobats and not wrestlers. I wouldn't be physically intimidated by most of these guys.

Every match now is a series of fake finishers with fake finishes. Guys don't win cleanly.

Instead of one superkick to win a match we've got 27 and a couple dozen 2-counts.

Jim Cornette said "Pro wrestling is dead" and he's probably right.

And to make it worse the Indy's just tried copying Vince and that was an unmitigated disaster.

"TNA" wrestling screwed up when they called it "TNA". Most networks weren't interested in that. It was just an awful production.

But it wasn't just Vince and Dixie Carter that screwed things up.

Paul Heyman ***** up ECW... Made it so no match could ever be topped. Once you've gone with barbed wire and setting guys on fire... How do you top that? He couldn't. No long-term vision.

And then you had Vince Russo who screwed up every promotion he ever worked with... Which was pretty much all of them. Clean finished went by the wayside and they (the finishes) got progressively more stupid.

Pro Wrestling needs to go away for about a decade and then come back after hitting the reset button and start from scratch.

 

[Melonfeud]

Pro wrestling.

I'll watch it a little here & there but what's on TV now doesn't greatly interest me.

At one point there were probably 100 wrestling events a night being held in the US. The folks that have an interest in it now is just a small percentage of what was.

It is entertainment now and not wrestling... At least not the wrestling I grew up with.

Not only do guys not dress like wrestlers now, many don't even look like wrestlers. Most look like what they have to be in the ring– Acrobats and not wrestlers. I wouldn't be physically intimidated by most of these guys.

Every match now is a series of fake finishers with fake finishes. Guys don't win cleanly.

Instead of one superkick to win a match we've got 27 and a couple dozen 2-counts.

Jim Cornette said "Pro wrestling is dead" and he's probably right.

And to make it worse the Indy's just tried copying Vince and that was an unmitigated disaster.

"TNA" wrestling screwed up when they called it "TNA". Most networks weren't interested in that. It was just an awful production.

But it wasn't just Vince and Dixie Carter that screwed things up.

Paul Heyman ***** up ECW... Made it so no match could ever be topped. Once you've gone with barbed wire and setting guys on fire... How do you top that? He couldn't. No long-term vision.

And then you had Vince Russo who screwed up every promotion he ever worked with... Which was pretty much all of them. Clean finished went by the wayside and they (the finishes) got progressively more stupid.

Pro Wrestling needs to go away for about a decade and then come back after hitting the reset button and start from scratch.

+5 points for injecting " barbed wire" and " lighting guys on fire" in a pro wrestling thread,,,just where the hell have I been?

 

[CyberB0b]

The last time I watched it is when I was a kid in the late 90's. Back when it was WCW vs nWo and WWF had Stone Cold Steve Austin.

 

[jrumann59]

I think when TNA came out the name was a word play because its biggest star was Jeff Jarrett and he was crass and the TNA sort of fit with all the valets they liked using. I so miss the nWo, do not get me wrong D-X was alright but they seemed like a rudderless ship bent on being hooligans whereas the nWo had "directive". The downfall of WCW was not the talents but the huge salaries and escalators that guys like Hall, Nash, Hogan, Rodman etc got.

 

[JohnnyTheFox]

Haven't really watched or got into wrestling since probably the late 80s/early90s. Saw/watched many a good card here in the OKC area back in the day with Cowboy Bill Watts/Leroy McGuirk as promoter. Wrestling has really gone down the tubes, forgettable characters, no charisma and zero skills on the mic. A lot of these bums could take a lesson{or 3} from Ernie Ladd and Jody Hamilton aka the Assassin{among others}.

 

[MichaelWinicki]

I think when TNA came out the name was a word play because its biggest star was Jeff Jarrett and he was crass and the TNA sort of fit with all the valets they liked using. I so miss the nWo, do not get me wrong D-X was alright but they seemed like a rudderless ship bent on being hooligans whereas the nWo had "directive". The downfall of WCW was not the talents but the huge salaries and escalators that guys like Hall, Nash, Hogan, Rodman etc got.

Yep, salaries were a massive problem with WCW.

The problems started with Jim Crockett Promotions. The attempt at going national vs. the WWF was too much of a financial challenge and they didn't have the roster for it. If they had kept it more regional, they had a much better chance.

The wheels really came off the cart when Turner was no longer in charge. All of a sudden the house shows that were the backbone of Jim Crockett Promotions were off the schedule in favor of supposed big shows at big venues, but they still were drawing enough to make it pay... And the smaller communities like Greensboro, which always filled the arena were left out in the cold.

 

[Stash]

I think when TNA came out the name was a word play because its biggest star was Jeff Jarrett and he was crass and the TNA sort of fit with all the valets they liked using. I so miss the nWo, do not get me wrong D-X was alright but they seemed like a rudderless ship bent on being hooligans whereas the nWo had "directive". The downfall of WCW was not the talents but the huge salaries and escalators that guys like Hall, Nash, Hogan, Rodman etc got.

The inmates ran the asylum. And the guys that you mention made huge money for little work. The in-ring stuff from all of them was terrible. Go back and watch the actual matches they were putting on and the stuff was garbage. And they also protected their 'spot' and their pay above all else. They were out for themselves and all they could get, who cared if what they did hurt the company? I'm getting mine.

WCW had one big thing going for them, the nWo, and they milked it for all it was worth until they ran it into the ground. It became so bloated that half the roster had something to do with it. And when even the scrubs can join, it loses its value.

The biggest thing to kill that company was the AOL-Time Warner deal. Once Turner sold, the new ownership wanted nothing to do with wrestling, and a wrestling company without TV is worthless. That's why McMahon bought the whole thing for peanuts. They gave it to him.

 

[MichaelWinicki]

The inmates ran the asylum. And the guys that you mention made huge money for little work. The in-ring stuff from all of them was terrible. Go back and watch the actual matches they were putting on and the stuff was garbage. And they also protected their 'spot' and their pay above all else. They were out for themselves and all they could get, who cared if what they did hurt the company? I'm getting mine.

WCW had one big thing going for them, the nWo, and they milked it for all it was worth until they ran it into the ground. It became so bloated that half the roster had something to do with it. And when even the scrubs can join, it loses its value.

The biggest thing to kill that company was the AOL-Time Warner deal. Once Turner sold, the new ownership wanted nothing to do with wrestling, and a wrestling company without TV is worthless. That's why McMahon bought the whole thing for peanuts. They gave it to him.

Great analysis!

 

[MichaelWinicki]

A couple other gripes about the current state of pro wrestling...

Due to all the high-spots, the choreography is more like Cirque du Soleil than it is professional wrestling.

They participants needs to talk an hour for a 3 minute match, when they use to talk for 3 minutes for an hour match.


And then you have the nonsense Vince pushes where you have multiple guys all wrestling in the same bout for a championship... Talk about devaluing a title (not that Vince's titles have meant anything in over 20 years).

What I'd like to see is a return to the "Best 2 out of 3 falls" main event. Then maybe guys could start losing cleanly (again).

 

[jrumann59]

A couple other gripes about the current state of pro wrestling...

Due to all the high-spots, the choreography is more like Cirque du Soleil than it is professional wrestling.

They participants needs to talk an hour for a 3 minute match, when they use to talk for 3 minutes for an hour match.


And then you have the nonsense Vince pushes where you have multiple guys all wrestling in the same bout for a championship... Talk about devaluing a title (not that Vince's titles have meant anything in over 20 years).

What I'd like to see is a return to the "Best 2 out of 3 falls" main event. Then maybe guys could start losing cleanly (again).

The sad thing is they do not have a lot of wrestlers that are good at mic work. Cena, Rollins,Wyatt, Brock...er Heyman. A lot of stars now do not become their personas, look at HHH, Michaels, Stone Cold, Hart, Hall, Nash, Savage, Hogan, Sting, Flair, etc., they all were who they portrayed, larger than life personalities that you could believe they were really like that in real life.

 

[Stash]

A couple other gripes about the current state of pro wrestling...

Due to all the high-spots, the choreography is more like Cirque du Soleil than it is professional wrestling.

They participants needs to talk an hour for a 3 minute match, when they use to talk for 3 minutes for an hour match.


And then you have the nonsense Vince pushes where you have multiple guys all wrestling in the same bout for a championship... Talk about devaluing a title (not that Vince's titles have meant anything in over 20 years).

What I'd like to see is a return to the "Best 2 out of 3 falls" main event. Then maybe guys could start losing cleanly (again).

What galls me is them making a joke out of RAW's biggest 'prop', the Universal Title. They take it from a guy who puts on great matches every night in Kevin Owens, and put it on Goldberg, a guy who obviously couldn't actually wrestle (1 minute matches, really?) only to then put it on a guy in Brock Lesnar who can wrestle, but just doesn't want to. That entire decision-making process was a colossal failure and is showing me that it might be time for the torch to be passed.

I'm honestly enjoying the in-ring work as I think it's the across the board the best it's ever been, but the creative side of wrestling has faded along with any true competition. Comfortability breeds complacency, and WWE now plays it safe. It's catered to kids and there is no edge to it like there was in years past. The Monday Night Wars were about "anything can happen", and currently, there are very few surprises.

 

[jrumann59]

What galls me is them making a joke out of RAW's biggest 'prop', the Universal Title. They take it from a guy who puts on great matches every night in Kevin Owens, and put it on Goldberg, a guy who obviously couldn't actually wrestle (1 minute matches, really?) only to then put it on a guy in Brock Lesnar who can wrestle, but just doesn't want to. That entire decision-making process was a colossal failure and is showing me that it might be time for the torch to be passed.

I'm honestly enjoying the in-ring work as I think it's the across the board the best it's ever been, but the creative side of wrestling has faded along with any true competition. Comfortability breeds complacency, and WWE now plays it safe. It's catered to kids and there is no edge to it like there was in years past. The Monday Night Wars were about "anything can happen", and currently, there are very few surprises.

It is almost like they are regressing to the pre Brett hart championship model where guys like hogan or savage would only lose a title at a major event.

 

[Yakuza Rich]

The problems started with Jim Crockett Promotions. The attempt at going national vs. the WWF was too much of a financial challenge and they didn't have the roster for it. If they had kept it more regional, they had a much better chance.

Crockett had more than enough of a roster for it. They had two different rosters that they would send out to 2 different venues on the same day and sell out both. Sometimes they would sent out 3 different rosters to 3 different venues on the same day. As far as talent goes, you had Dusty who was as big of a star as Hogan at that time (Dusty sold out MSG on numerous occasions, too), Flair, Magnum TA, the Rock N Roll Express (greatest drawing tag team of all time), Midnight Express, Sting, Nikita Koloff, Tully and Arn, Barry Windham, Jim Cornette, Rick Rude, etc.


In fact, Crockett and McMahon went head-to-head once in Philadelphia once as one group was in the Civic Center and the other was in the Spectrum on the same night and the NWA out-sold McMahon.


McMahon may have had a little more top line revenue than Crockett at the time, but it also came at greater expense given McMahon was still primarily in the Northeast with a monthly show at MSG and Crockett was primarily in the Southeast which was much cheaper to run out of.


Crockett’s big issue is that he bought a $15 million private jet that only chartered a small amount of wrestlers at Dusty’s suggestion. He also ticked off talent with either subpar pay and the questions they had with Dusty as the booker as the guy that would push himself and his friends.


Crockett also didn’t have Vince’s marketing skills and understanding of the importance of hitting the child and family market with striking deals with toy companies and apparel companies. This allowed Vince to start using no guarantee contracts that had larger upsides while Crockett started giving out fully guaranteed contracts with no or little upside.


When Crockett sold to Turner the Turner suits came along and most everybody hated Dusty. And while Dusty was a brilliant booker, booker’s do run their course over a while. That led to George Scott and Ole Anderson being the bookers and they were way past their glory days. It eventually led to Jim Herd running the company and he was completely incompetent.


How incompetent was Herd? Despite having a stacked roster and Ted Turner’s money (far greater than McMahon’s money) and having Kevin Sullivan, Terry Funk, Eddie Gilbert, Ole Anderson, Gary Hart, Ric Flair and Jim Cornette all at his disposal to help with the creative side he still completely bungled it up. And for the most part, pro wrestling was forever doomed.





YR

 

[Yakuza Rich]

There’s a lot of things wrong with wrestling. Yes, the attitudes and tastes of the fans have changed, but they have forgotten the basic principles as to what sells in wrestling and will always sell in wrestling.


Wrestling starts to sell when the fans start to doubt what is real and what is fake. Fans from yesteryear overwhelmingly knew that wrestling was a work in the end. But what drew them to it was the characters and that they didn’t have to suspend their belief that much. And when they started to doubt even more what was real and what was fake, the more money wrestling drew.


I’ll give a good example of this in the 90’s. In WCW, X-Pac cut a real life scathing promo on Ric Flair because X-Pac didn’t like Flair in real life. Then, Flair cut a real life scathing promo on X-Pac. This generated a lot of heat from the fans (until WCW screwed it up because they are WCW) because the fans felt that this was authentic (which it was). And the fans became genuinely interested in seeing XPac vs. Flair in the ring.


For the XPac fans, they thought that Flair was over the hill and needed to step aside. For the Flair fans (many more of these fans than XPac fans), they agreed with Flair and thought who was XPac to ever criticize Ric Flair?


Undoubtedly, almost all of the fans knew that if Flair and XPac got into the ring that they would not actually try to injure each other. But, they also knew that neither wanted to put the other over. And the fans of Flair didn’t want him to lose to freaking XPac while the fans for XPac wanted him to get over old man Flair. In the meantime, while they weren’t going to injure each other, there was the distinct possibility that one guy may potato the other in a match because they genuinely don’t like each other.


That’s one of the many things that wrestling lacks today. That doubt as to whether or not wrestlers are true enemies or not. The only thing ‘new’ about the XPac vs. Flair feud concept was neither was really a heel or a face. But, it was about a genuine belief that neither wrestler liked each other and neither wrestler was truly okay with doing the job and that being put over was important to them.


In today’s landscape, it’s more difficult to get over as a heel from a universal standpoint. But all it really takes is a doubt as to whether the opponents really hate each other and that it’s important to them to win the match. You combine that with some decent character development and it will sell.







YR