Uh Oh, It's The Big O Wrestling Thread

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[quote name='neocisco']don't tell tsel. They'll just screw up his order 3 ways to sunday.[/quote]

LMAO. Touche.
 
[quote name='HydroX']Are you kidding me? Booker T is the glue that keeps Smackdown together.

"Look at the eyes of Sin Cara!"[/QUOTE]

That's a dandy, although it is still going to have to bow down to Schiavone's "a look of frustration across the mask of Rey Mysterio Jr."
 
For those of you that have watched long enough to remember....

Better commentator:

Booker T or Stevie Ray?

WHO YA GOT?!
 
I must've not heard the recent Booker T commentary. I sort of liked his stuff when he initially started out. He's no JBL but it's nice to have a wrestler on commentary.
 
The difference between JBL and Booker T is pretty simple to get. JBL was an old school wrestler who understood the importance of getting people over. Booker T is just out there having fun. A lot of the stuff he says is him trying to get a laugh out of Cole and Matthews. If you can get a glimpse of the commentary table, you can see Cole a lot times trying to stifle his laughter. It's not commentary you're meant to take with any gravitas. It's basically like B-Movie tongue-in-cheek commentary. Enjoy it the same way you would enjoy Troll 2.

Oh, by the way, did anyone notice just how hard they're pushing Daniel Bryan? He's basically become the fifth top guy on the active roster behind Lesnar, Cena, Punk, and Sheamus. You could even argue he is the fourth top guy in the WWE since he is feuding over the WWE belt.
 
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The difference between JBL and Booker T is pretty simple to get. JBL was an old school wrestler who understood the importance of getting people over. Booker T is just out there having fun. A lot of the stuff he says is him trying to get a laugh out of Cole and Matthews. If you can get a glimpse of the commentary table, you can see Cole a lot times trying to stifle his laughter. It's not commentary you're meant to take with any gravitas. It's basically like B-Movie tongue-in-cheek commentary. Enjoy it the same way you would enjoy Troll 2.

Oh, by the way, did anyone notice just how hard they're pushing Daniel Bryan? He's basically become the fifth top guy on the active roster behind Lesnar, Cena, Punk, and Sheamus. You could even argue he is ahead of Sheamus since he got placed in a feud over the WWE belt against Punk. Maybe even third if you consider Lesnar to be part-time like HHH and Undertaker.
 
Santino is over enough to have a throwaway ppv match with Punk. They would have to put the comedy act on the shelf for 3 weeks and have him straight up wrestle, but it could be done.

They haven't done shit with Miz for a while...
 
[quote name='mykevermin']Who else could you have put Punk against, short term?[/QUOTE]

The easy choice is Randy Orton.

However as revenge for the attack Punk laid on him, Christian can fit the bill. He looks to be coming back soon although I don't know if he can be ready by the PPV. The Miz offers good name value but beyond that he's just a pretty face. The match would be terrible.

Other people that could be moved up: Ziggler and Rhodes. Ziggler's the better worker but Rhodes is the better talker. A ladder match against Ziggler would sell itself if the build to the match showcases how physical and innovative it could be. Ziggler doesn't have the same presence on the mic in front of a live crowd that he does talking on Ryder's show. So any promos between Punk and Ziggler would have cover for Ziggler by keeping the interaction away from the live audience and moving them backstage where they could be filmed and edited to play to Ziggler's strengths.

Rhodes could be billed as Champion vs. Champion and they could really push that a long way if they tried. Punk could mention that Rhodes lost his belt to Show at Wrestlemania and only won it back on a fluke. Rhodes could throw out that Punk lost his mask to Show in return. And they could do a weekly thing where one week Show faces Rhodes and the other Punk. I'd give both victories to Show however but keep the PPV match to just Punk and Rhodes. By doing so, we'd make a contender out of all three parties for the belt. And then I'd run Bryan/Jericho on the PPV instead.

At this point I'm fantasy booking, but the point is they did have other options than Bryan. Giving him the nod only weeks after losing the other big belt shows the company has big plans for him. Conversely, it also shows they don't have very many plans for anyone else.
 
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Walmart stores will be carrying an exclusive edition of WWE's Best of WCW Clash of the Champions DVD that comes out on May 22nd, according to WWEDVDNews. The store exclusive will feature The Midnight Express vs. The Fantastics from the March 27, 1988 Clash of the Champions plus Hulk Hogan vs. Ric Flair from the August 15th, 1996 Clash of the Champions.

- According to an updated listing for the ECW Unreleased Volume 1 DVD that comes out on June 6th, Chris Jericho vs. 2 Cold Scorpio from The Doctor Is In on August 3rd, 1996 has been added to Disc 1 of the set while Jerry Lynn vs. Christian York from Hardcore TV on December 30th, 2000 has been added to Disc 3.

It also appears that the Psicosis vs. Rey Mysterio match has been pulled from the DVD listing but remains on the Blu-ray.
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Speaking of WWE DVDs, I found an original copy of the WWF Invasion DVD today!!! Super excited.
 
I remember selling my friend's old DVDs and VHS tapes. We ended up making $1000 net in total. The most expensive one was the original WrestleMania 17. Mentioning Invasion made me remember, and I think that one sold for a pretty good price too.
 
Quite a few WWE movies will be expiring on Netflix Instant in the next couple of weeks including:

Ricky Steamboat: The Life Story of the Dragon
Bobby the Brain Heenan
The True Story of WrestleMania
Top 50 Superstars of All-Time
Twist of Fate: The Matt & Jeff Hardy Story
The Rise and Fall of WCW
 
[quote name='Scorch']WWE just signed a nice partnership with Netflix, they will all be renewed and I expect more to be added soon.[/QUOTE]

Where'd you see this? Not doubting you, I just think that's awesome and wanna read it for myself.
 
[quote name='Golden Idol']So I heard HHH walked out with Mayweather no-selling his broken arm.[/QUOTE]

Oh, I bet they stop writing him into the storylines for that...oh wait.

Best Buy has a bunch of 5.99/6.99 WWE DVDs and a few 7.99 Blus online. Some in stock, some backordered 7-30 days.

DVDs
5.99
Andre the Giant
Biggest Knuckleheads
Blood Sport ECW - The Most Violent Matches
Bloodbath - Wrestling's Most Incredible Steel Cage Matches
Born to Controversy - The Roddy Piper Story
Bragging Rights 2009
Bragging Rights 2010
Cheating Death, Stealing Life - The Eddie Guerrero Story
Edge - A Decade of Decadence
Elimination Chamber 2011
Extreme Rules 2009
From the Vault - Shawn Michaels
Hell in a Cell 2009
Hell in a Cell 2010
History Of Intercontinental Championship
Hulk Hogan - The Ultimate Anthology
Jake "The Snake" Roberts - Pick Your Poison
John Morrison - Rock Star
McMahon
Mick Foley's Greatest Hits and Misses - A Life in Wrestling
Nature Boy Ric Flair - The Definitive Collection
Night of Champions 2008
Night of Champions 2009
No Way Out 2008
No Way Out 2009
Raw Tenth Anniversary
Ric Flair & The Four Horsemen
Road Warriors - The Life and Death of Wrestling's Most Dominant Tag Team
Rob Van Dam - One of a Kind
Royal Rumble 2005
Royal Rumble 2006
Royal Rumble 2007
Royal Rumble 2008
Royal Rumble 2009
Royal Rumble 2011
Shawn Michaels - Boyhood Dream
Summerslam 2008
Summerslam 2009
Survivor Series 2008
Survivor Series 2009
The Best of Intercontinental Championship
The Greatest Superstars of Wrestlemania
The Life and Times of Mr. Perfect
The Rise + Fall of ECW
The Spectacular Legacy of the AWA
The Stone Cold Truth
The Triumph and Tragedy of World Class Championship Wrestling
The Twisted, Disturbed Life of Kane
The Ultimate Ric Flair Collection
TLC - Tables, Ladders and Chairs 2010
Twist of Fate - The Matt and Jeff Hardy Story
Undertaker - He Buries Them Alive
Undertaker 15-0
Vengeance 2005
Vengeance 2006
Vengeance 2007
Viva La Raza - The Legacy of Eddie Guerrero
Wrestlemania 23
Wrestlemania XIX

6.99
Brock Lesnar - Here Comes the Pain
John Cena - Wordlife
Rey Mysterio 619
The Monday Night War
Trish Stratus - 100% Stratusfaction Guarantee

7.99 Blus
John Cena Experience
Royal Rumble 2012
Smackdown Best of 2009-2010
Wrestlemania 25
Wrestlemania 26
 
A couple of pics of it I found on wrestlingforum.com. And yeah, that's Justin Bieber in there also. Maybe Merriweather wanted to look tougher for his upcoming prison tour by having the weakest looking white guy he could possibly find standing next to him.

This was after wwe.com tried to explain that he still had an arm injury in this pic from Friday night with Criss Angel and Stephanie. Great fucking job HHH. If I'm Brock, I'm tearing shit up.

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hfnfra.jpg
 
If Triple H is openly breaking kayfabe, and he's not currently goofy "DX" Triple H, then it's either one giant rib, or they're trying to get Lesnar to quit out of frustration.

Wrestling is enjoyable because it blurs the lines b/w fiction and reality. HHH, WWE, or whomever can try to rationalize it all they want by thinking that a fan being upset by HHH no-selling an armbreak on tv is like a fan being upset because Robert Downey, Jr isn't Iron Man when he's interviewed on Regis and Kathie Lee (wow, I'm old!). But that neglects some huge points.

1) wrestlers play one person, actors dozens/hundreds
2) the perpetual serial nature of wrestling compared with series television and one-off films
3) it's pro wrestling - it has always had fans insomuch as fans believed some legitimacy in what they were seeing (i.e., Undertaker isn't really dead, sure, but Yokozuna really put him on the shelf for a long time when he was thrown in the casket at the Royal Rumble)
4) WWE's current semi-emphasis on taking storylines off the air and onto social media shows that they know they need to work hard to re-establish #3 above by going back to blurring those lines b/w fiction and reality.

Maybe I shouldn't rant. But Triple H being on tv during that match is incredibly disrespectful, and certainly deliberately so. I say deliberate because any pro wrestler should know better, let alone one whose knowledge helped land them a position of power and influence in the company, a place at the booking table - they should know better than to fuck up a huge, front-page-of-wwe-dot-com storyline, by ignoring it in a very public fashion on a highly popular boxing event. This takes Duggan and Shiek's marijuana faux pas to a whole new level (they weren't punished for weed or b/c they were arrested, mind).
 
Ah look at that HHH really is his father in law's protege. fucking over the talent just like Good Ol Pop would...
 
Splitting hairs; he has an arm brace on, when's the last time that you saw someone with just a brace on after having their arm broken?
 
If it's a fake sport, who cares who wins or loses? If it's a fake sport, then who cares if HHH pretends his arm is broken outside of RAW?

Brock Lesnar's hubris has set him up for the best trolling in the world.
 
[quote name='davo1224']If it's a fake sport, then who cares if HHH pretends his arm is broken outside of RAW?[/QUOTE]
Gotta agree at this point. Getting worked up over something that no one has thought of as "real" except that fat guy at the convention since the mid 80's or so is fucking stupid. Why wasn't Undertaker acting like a zombie when he confronted Brock? Why isn't Miz heeling on the kids when they do their anti-bullying presentations?

It doesn't matter, and it doesn't change anyone's perception of the show one bit despite people trying to convince themselves that it does. As long as no one is blatantly and insultingly going against what is seen on television (ie if Triple H suddenly dropped and started doing pushups in the ring after Mayweather's intro), stop wasting your time complaining about something so irrelevant.

At this point we're almost 40 years removed from Mr. Wrestling II walking out of the hospital just to make sure people didn't know he was in the plane crash with heels. Get over it.
 
[quote name='RedvsBlue']Splitting hairs; he has an arm brace on, when's the last time that you saw someone with just a brace on after having their arm broken?[/QUOTE]

Splitting more hairs, it would be in a sling if he sold severe elbow and shoulder ligament damage like the Kimura is primarily intended to put pressure on rather than going straight to broken arm.
 
[quote name='KaneRobot']Gotta agree at this point. Getting worked up over something that no one has thought of as "real" except that fat guy at the convention since the mid 80's or so is fucking stupid. Why wasn't Undertaker acting like a zombie when he confronted Brock? Why isn't Miz heeling on the kids when they do their anti-bullying presentations?

It doesn't matter, and it doesn't change anyone's perception of the show one bit despite people trying to convince themselves that it does. As long as no one is blatantly and insultingly going against what is seen on television (ie if Triple H suddenly dropped and started doing pushups in the ring after Mayweather's intro), stop wasting your time complaining about something so irrelevant.

At this point we're almost 40 years removed from Mr. Wrestling II walking out of the hospital just to make sure people didn't know he was in the plane crash with heels. Get over it.[/QUOTE]

It was the original Mr. Wrestling that was in the crash.
 
[quote name='KaneRobot']As long as no one is blatantly and insultingly going against what is seen on television (ie if Triple H suddenly dropped and started doing pushups in the ring after Mayweather's intro), stop wasting your time complaining about something so irrelevant.[/QUOTE]

So in your complaining about a moment like this, you admit that there is a need for a certain decorum for protecting the business - so you don't disagree as you claim, but you merely acknowledge it's a matter of degrees.

But protecting the business, or the failure to, actually hurts the enjoyment of the business on a pretty significant level.
 
Real or fake isn't the issue, the issue is HHH doing everything to sell the business that he will be taking over in the near future. If he can't be troubled to put just a little bit more effort into kayfabe, particularly as someone who has had to put in his dues himself, then clearly he isn't interested in putting forth the best product possible.

If this were a one-off incident then yeah sure I get it, but the fact that it's coming fresh on the heels of Cena effectively no-selling his beating at Extreme Rules means it's amplified.

So yeah, it's fake, we all know it's fake but that shouldn't be the escape clause of HHH being lazy. If that were the case you could say the same about just about any piece of fiction based media. "They screwed up that scene" "Eh, it doesn't matter, it's fake anyway" "That wasn't very funny" "Who cares, its fake."

The simple fact is that wrestling, as an entertainment platform, is something that extends beyond the ring, beyond the TV cameras. WWE knows that, and even uses it as a sales tool, see: Summer of Punk and streets of Chicago, San Diego Comic Con, etc.
 
If this were a one-off incident then yeah sure I get it, but the fact that it's coming fresh on the heels of Cena effectively no-selling his beating at Extreme Rules means it's amplified.
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There's a huge difference between something like Cena no selling a "horrible beating" immediately after the beating was administered - on the same program you just witnessed it on - and Triple H wearing a sling on his arm while appearing on a broadcast that exists completely outside the wrestling bubble.

The simple fact is that wrestling, as an entertainment platform, is something that extends beyond the ring, beyond the TV cameras.
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No it doesn't, and that is why that TNA idea that's been floating around about fans filming the wrestlers everywhere is so fucking stupid. An "extension" of the show that just so happens to take place at an external location (ie Comic Con) is not equal to something that exists outside the fantasy world of WWE (like the Mayweather appearance does).

Sure you get your occasional Matt Hardys who are too fucked up to realize where the line is anymore, but that's on them.

[quote name='mykevermin']So in your complaining about a moment like this, you admit that there is a need for a certain decorum for protecting the business - so you don't disagree as you claim, but you merely acknowledge it's a matter of degrees.[/QUOTE]

Shrug. However you want to slice it. My example of what I wouldn't want to see was so ridiculous that you'd never see anything like it anyway...not from a guy with any name value, at least. If that extreme of an example is a "degree" then you are correct.

Point remains - this idea of strict adherence to kayfabe in 2012 is nonsense. The people up in arms about this strike me as the kind of people who would feel weirded out when they see Carl Weathers walking around since the dude was killed in a boxing match in 1985.
 
Carl Weathers was also killed by a predator a few years later, and...well, actually, I forget what happened at the end of "Action Jackson."

The 'wrestler = actor' parallel sorely neglects so much of what is inherently different between actors and professional wrestlers so as to, IMO, disrespect the business.

In a related question, are you okay with John Cena no-selling Lesnar's annihilation of him to address the crowd post match and request that the crowd "get home safe"? Would Triple H/Undertaker II I have ended the same way (or felt the same) if Undertaker came to the stage after being wheeled off and did a bow while holding Triple H's hand, as if they were Raoul and Christine in "The Phantom of the Opera"?

Yes, I get it, it's fake. I do feel, however, that being reminded it is fake is more insulting (i.e., you think I didn't know or couldn't tell?) than pretending that it isn't. I enjoy it because when the business pretends, I can pretend, too.
 
[quote name='mykevermin']In a related question, are you okay with John Cena no-selling Lesnar's annihilation of him to address the crowd post match and request that the crowd "get home safe"?[/QUOTE]
Like I said above - big difference between being insulted by the program you're watching while you're watching it (ie Cena's speech) and seeing a guy on a non-WWE show not going out of his way to sell a fake injury.

Losing yourself in the story is fine - I get at least a little enjoyment out of stuff that would normally be pretty terrible if I were not able to do that (ie Undertaker getting blown up or buried once a year, Austin murdering Triple H and Triple H being fine the next day), but I can't fathom how people in this day and age still think that anything is being "ruined" just because of stuff like HHH appearing at a boxing match only kinda-sorta selling an arm injury, and would only be happy if they played footage on Raw this Monday of Bieber and Mayweather signing his cast, while HHH heroically grimaces through his pain.
 
It's because I'd hold HHH to a higher standard than others. If Primo, or Carlito, or whatever the fuck his name is wants to no-sell an injury when he's dining at Outback, or bitch about not being pushed on twitter, or whatever kind of childish nonsense low-to-midcarders do, fine, I get that. They're young, immature, and are willing to wreck the business to get ahead.

But HHH is a "locker room leader," or "tested veteran," or some other term to be used here. He should know better. If this doesn't bother you, then bully for you - it means you find more inherent enjoyment in the product than I do. Yet, part of why I really dig pro wrestling is because of the elements that it presents, the way it doesn't differentiate between the person portraying the wrestler and the person itself - its uniqueness is its draw. If it's no longer going to be that, what is left to offer of interest? It's not like these people are good actors, otherwise they'd be in Hollywood. And if they take away that, and they diminish the emphasis on in-ring action, what is left in pro wrestling to like? It become a community theater troupe in an athletic ring.

I would say "agree to disagree," but the more you strip away from pro wrestling that which is unique to pro wrestling, the less reason there is to enjoy it - because it's no longer pro wrestling.
 
Sandman blindness angle. That's how you sell a story.

And then the Sandman, to his credit, stayed at home for a month. So that nobody saw him around town. So that you didn't say "Yeah, they're doing this thing, with the Sandman blind." He stayed at home. He never left his house, he never answered his door. His wife answered the door. It was unheard of back then for somebody to-to stick to the storyline to this degree.
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It blurred the lines between fiction and reality. Us smarts love that, because we expect everything to be a work. So when something, like the Punk angle from last summer or the initial Nexus invasion before that, has us wondering if that was really supposed to happen, that's when we get all excited and start becoming marks, instead of smarts. And remember, not every wrestling fan out there is a smart. There are people, look at Triple H's facebook page for instance and the people wishing him a speedy recovery from his injury, that still see this as real. Or the people who called Jericho a jerk for pouring beer on Punk. We, on the other hand, love and appreciate the heel work. But, you ruin that illusion for them, they may walk away.
 
Loving the discussion about kayfabe in modern-day WWE. I'm gonna try to keep my thoughts short and sweet.

[quote name='mykevermin'] . . . Wrestling is enjoyable because it blurs the lines b/w fiction and reality . . . [/QUOTE]


This sums up my feelings about wrasslin. I recognize that WWE has had to evolve into an entertainment company to keep relative a dying industry to modern-day eyes—but I still think kayfabe is important.

I'd keep the updated kayfabe model. Suits instead of spandex for interviews, toning down gimmicks in public, and being more professional. But, I think injuries should still be sold, and heels should be real-world versions of their personas.

While I applaud Miz for doing all those press junkets, he should still play a heel—even if watered-down. If he wants to be a funny, friendly guy then he should get WWE to turn him face on TV.

And really, as a WWE wrassler, who is probably trying to parlay their WWE career into acting, what better way to get an acting gig than to show that they can method-act?
 
[quote name='bhk']I learned today that Tony Schiavone now does play by play for the Gwinnett Braves.[/QUOTE]

Welcome fans, to the greatest minor league game in the history of our sport.
 
If you take away kayfabe from wrestling you've taken away one of its few unique points in entertainment. At that point it's watering down its uniqueness as a conveyance of fiction.
 
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