The Wrestling Thread

Put the world to rights here (off-topic discussion)
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Bearstock
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Re: The Wrestling Thread

Postby Bearstock » Thu Apr 10, 2014 9:57 pm

For all the tension, drama and story lines over the years, it's a shame that there are so many real life tragedies associated with professional wrestling.

Couldn't believe it when I found out yesterday evening upon getting home from work.

Was literally gonna have dinner and watch Raw, looking forward to see what Warrior was gonna do.

Sad news, R.I.P.
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Re: The Wrestling Thread

Postby Applecore » Fri Apr 11, 2014 6:54 am

Holy shit. Just looked up the NXT roster on wikipedia. Nobody told me Bo Dallas' older brother was Bray Wyatt.
Also holy shit. Bray Wyatt is only a year and a half older than me!
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Re: The Wrestling Thread

Postby Jobdone » Fri Apr 11, 2014 8:09 am

Applecore wrote:Holy shit. Just looked up the NXT roster on wikipedia. Nobody told me Bo Dallas' older brother was Bray Wyatt.


We keep kayfabe in this thread :lol:
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Re: The Wrestling Thread

Postby Applecore » Fri Apr 11, 2014 9:30 am

Haha, fair.

In that case, can we discuss how well Kane's face has healed after that housefire as a child? :P
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Re: The Wrestling Thread

Postby tmcgoay » Fri Apr 11, 2014 10:07 am

will Eric Young lose his title to Abyss?
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EMFA '20

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Re: The Wrestling Thread

Postby Matty_the_Emo_Slayer » Fri Apr 11, 2014 10:28 am

Applecore wrote:Holy shit. Just looked up the NXT roster on wikipedia. Nobody told me Bo Dallas' older brother was Bray Wyatt.
Also holy shit. Bray Wyatt is only a year and a half older than me!



Also, their dad was I.R.S., one of their uncles was Barry Windham of the 4 Horsemen and their grandfather was Blackjack Mulligan of the 60's tag team The Blackjacks. Great wrestling heritage they have.



Speaking of which, I've been thinking about who ought to be next for the hall of fame. By introducing Scott Hall as Razor Ramon they are probably planning on doing the NWO as a stable at some point. Hopefully when they do they'll keep it reserved to Hall, Nash, Hogan, Sixx-Pac, The Giant, Sting and maybe Bischoff.

I'd also love to see The Anoa'i family get inducted. The Wild Samoans and Yokozuna are already in there but inducting the whole first 2 generations of the family in one go with Reigns and The Usos presenting to Rikishi accepting on behalf of himself and Umaga would be cool.
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Re: The Wrestling Thread

Postby Applecore » Fri Apr 11, 2014 11:39 am

Watched the latest NXT episode, I'll be keeping an eye on that. Also getting back on ROH and figured I'd give Impact Wrestling a shot. So far so good.
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Re: The Wrestling Thread

Postby Haldamir319 » Fri Apr 11, 2014 11:57 am

From The Wrestling Observer:

"Two years ago, WrestleMania 28 was billed as “Once in a Lifetime.”

It wasn’t.

The big story at WrestleMania 30, as far as almost everyone knew as the show was going on, was the coronation on the big stage of Daniel Bryan as a somewhat unlikely WWE champion, in the sense when the plans for WrestleMania were put together late last year, nothing of the sort was supposed to happen. That did happen, but it wasn’t the big story.

A crowd of around 70,000 at the Mercedes Benz Superdome, and the millions watching around the world were watching the closing moments on what really was a poor wrestling match that was getting little reaction, even though it was supposed to be a highlight event on the show.
The crowd was so cold, maybe because the match wasn’t good, maybe because everyone knew the outcome, that when Brock Lesnar hit his first F-5, and The Undertaker kicked out, there was no reaction. Even when he did it a second time, there was very little reaction.
Then he did it a third time. Referee Chad Patton, who knew the same finish that everybody else thought they knew, hit the mat once, and then twice, and then didn’t know what to do.

He was told Undertaker was winning, but the rule every referee is told is that if the guys doesn’t kick out, you continue the count. Undertaker wasn’t kicking out. There was slight hesitation, which is why people were confused. Because he was confused. But he did his job. It was at that point that time stood still, while Lesnar whispered in Undertaker’s ear, “Thank you.” It was once in a lifetime. At least for this streak.

The most obvious pro wrestling comparison was January 18, 1971, at Madison Square Garden. Bruno Sammartino had been WWWF champion since May 17, 1963. There have been world title reigns as long, but it wasn’t the same thing. Lou Thesz had people believing he was the greatest wrestler in the world. Perhaps some thought the same of Verne Gagne. But neither was Superman. Dory Funk Jr. drew for years based on the idea that he was beatable. So did Nick Bockwinkel. Perhaps Rikidozan losing to The Destroyer in 1963 had that effect, because he was a national hero that had never lost in Japan, but fans knew he could lose. He himself said that he could never beat Karl Gotch.

Bruno was mortal, but he was also Superman, and he connected in a way that few wrestlers ever had. He had lost matches via DQ, count out, blood stoppages, but he had never been pinned cleanly. Ivan Koloff went to the top rope that night and dropped a knee on his chest. The referee counted three. The place went quiet. Then women started crying.

Nobody knew it was happening. In real life, Sammartino was beaten up and tired of the never ending schedule and just wanted to rest. He asked out. In doing so, he took a young French Canadian who idolized him, and made him one of the three biggest heels in pro wrestling for nearly another decade. I was live and saw Fedor’s winning streak end in San Jose, and Anderson Silva’s end in Las Vegas. Time absolutely stood still in the former. It wasn’t that many seconds that Fabricio Werdum had Fedor in the triangle. The clock claims the fight only went 69 seconds. I could swear he was in the triangle for minutes because time stood still. And then he tapped. The place went bananas. That was a 28 fight unbeaten streak lasting nine years, and every one of those wins were not scripted.

Anderson Silva went 16-0 against tougher competition and was the greatest of all-time. Unlike Lesnar, and unlike Werdum, and certainly unlike Koloff, we all recognized that Chris Weidman had a chance to win that night. But the way it happened threw everyone for a loop. Time didn’t stand still there at all. It was as in the time of a blink of the eye, a split second at most, to comprehend that the guy acting like he was wobbly to taunt the other guy and making fun that he couldn’t touch him, actually was knocked him out. The place went crazy.

He went seven years unbeaten in the UFC, and nobody scripted those outcomes either.

There are conflicting reports and messages on how many people knew what was going to happen when Undertaker got in the ring, possibly for the last time.
It was reported here that a few years back, when Undertaker and Lesnar first talked about doing the angle for this match at WrestleMania 27, that Undertaker had said he would want to put Lesnar over. That was likely to build for a rematch. It wasn’t set in stone. With knowledge of that, which we reported during the build-up, many figured it was Undertaker who made the call. That was not the case.

From the day the match was announced, until 3/31, at least, the finish everyone thought would happen was what was going to happen.

What happened after that was fuzzy. Only a few people knew before Sunday. If the ref himself wasn’t told before the match, that tells you it was probably Vince McMahon, who made the call, Undertaker, who had to agree, Lesnar who had to know in advance, and Paul Heyman. I would presume Stephanie McMahon and HHH knew, but it ended with that. None of the agents knew. The actual script for the show did not have a finish listed, but for this show, that wasn’t unusual, nor was it the only match like that, so there were no red flags.

Still, two major betting sites, had a late shift of money on Lesnar, so much that he went from a ridiculous 50-to-1 underdog, to an actual favorite.
As noted last week, McMahon had decreed that Undertaker would not get touched during the buildup. But the build to the match was weak and on the go-home show, Lesnar did leave Undertaker laying with an F-5.

With the benefit of hindsight, it wasn’t that McMahon was so protective of his star against a guy who was in some fans’ mind an outsider who became a star in WWE, but a superstar and super drawing card in UFC. Given McMahon’s history, that wouldn’t have been a stretch to assume that. It may have been simply McMahon knew Undertaker couldn’t take the punishment.

The Undertaker character could not be put down at WrestleMania. He was a cartoon superman, who somehow had made his scripted matches into legitimate reality for people around the world. They had been told that the streak was bigger than the Dolphins going 17-0, or DiMaggio hitting in 56 straight games. The streak actually started out inauspiciously. It wasn’t a long term plan. Many of the early matches were bad. Others were throwaways. Wins over Jake Roberts, King Kong Bundy and Jimmy Snuka on paper may look like nostalgia, but Snuka was a TV squash match and not pushed at all, the Roberts match was bad and Bundy had nothing left. The Giant Gonzalez match was worse. The Kane matches were hardly classics. But as match quality became more important in the post 2000 era, Undertaker rose to the occasion. Matches with Batista and Edge were strong WrestleMania headline matches. In the last five years, as his physical condition worsened and he was down to really doing only a few matches a year, and only one high profile one, the streak matches have been among the best matches of the year in pro wrestling. When put on the biggest stage, they become bigger and better.

Mark Calaway is a 49 year old man whose body turned on him more than a decade ago, but when he had his nights, like WrestleMania the previous several years, he simply denied the pain and became The Undertaker. I can recall having dinner with one of WWE’s biggest names, telling me how badly Calaway was hurting and that he probably only had a year or two left. That was in the early fall of 1997.

People were remarking when he came back this year how much he aged. I remember a story a few years back when the idea was brought up to him about maybe retiring at Cowboys Stadium, with the idea they’d break the Pontiac Silverdome record and he’d be the main attraction. He said he wasn’t going to last that long. The last three years, it was touch-and-go if he was going to come back, particularly last year. For some reason, this year it was always known he was coming back.

I had always figured it was a given that Undertaker would go into battle one last time, win, but this time nearly die in the process. The streak would be intact, and some kind of special effects would lead to a visual of him going to heaven, and we would never see the character again. Of course, being pro wrestling, two years later they’d try to figure out a way to bring him back. And it’s not like they didn’t already do that special effects deal with him before, and God knows how many times they killed Paul Bearer before he really died.

Lance Storm then wrote a piece. The short version of it was something that quite frankly, should have been said five years ago. It was a promo by an aging Undertaker confronting his own mortality, telling everyone that the streak would end, and he would retire when that happened. Such a thing would make the outcomes of his matches mean something. It would make WrestleMania mean something because instead of the common assumption that the guy would never lose, everyone knew he would at some point, just not when. The near falls would be bigger. People would probably have gasped and their hearts might have skipped a beat on that first and second F-5.

You could argue ending the streak was a bad idea. Or that even if it wasn’t, Brock Lesnar, a 36-year-old part-timer wasn’t the guy to do it with. And it wasn’t for Paul Heyman’s promo on Raw the next day, I’d agree with you.

Except, there was no choice. Whether Undertaker does another match or not, Vince McMahon was going on the assumption that this was his last hurrah, and he could either win, or lose. McMahon chose the idea that it was better to lose on your way out. That is the common wrestling mentality. Whether this should have been different, who knows? Lesnar happened to be the guy booked on the day McMahon came to this conclusion. Obviously, if Undertaker had told him that he was coming back next year, or argued, it may not have happened.

One person close to the situation said McMahon talked Undertaker into doing it. Another, who would also know, described it as McMahon making the call and Undertaker agreeing and that he wasn’t talked into doing something he didn’t want to do. It was not his original call, but he was in on it and never protested the call. And perhaps, like he thought in late 2010, if he was going to lose, maybe he thought this was the guy.
When it happened, fans were upset, but luckily they had the Daniel Bryan title win, which was really what everyone came to see since they all assumed Undertaker was winning and didn’t care that much about the match. If it wasn’t for that storyline, people would have probably been a lot more negative about the show. But they got a great show, and in the end, they saw two pieces of history in the same night.

At some point in the match, Mark Calaway suffered a severe concussion. The match wasn’t very heated, and it was worse because he went blank and was having to be led through. Nobody knows the exact spot, because when it was over, Calaway didn’t remember, or have any memory of most of the match. But he did know enough to not kick out at the key time.

At first, the announcers didn’t know what to do. The graphic wasn’t ready right away, nor was the music ready. The delay made fans think that maybe it was a mistake. The announcers were then given the cue by McMahon to talk about him as if this was the legendary gunfighter’s last fight, and talk of it like we’ve seen Undertaker for the final time.

The spot he got hurt in may have been when Lesnar used a high single leg takedown outside the ring and Undertaker fell backwards on the floor, hitting the back of his head. But that’s just speculation. The only thing for sure is it happened.

He also knew enough to stand there, and wait for the emotional outburst of the audience and the big standing ovation for the years of entertainment. Even if they didn’t know that this was his last performance, and again, it’s pro wrestling and it may not be, they knew that what he was best known for and what he will always be known for was over after 23 years.

The response was there. It wasn’t what I’d have imagined. There’s no way it could have been what Vince McMahon would have imagined.

Calaway legitimately was rushed to the hospital in an ambulance. Vince McMahon, even though there were two matches left in the show, including the main event, left with him to Ochshner Medical Center, where, after a CT scan, he was diagnosed with a severe concussion and kept overnight. The story that Paul Heyman told on Raw about coming close to a broken neck was just for drama, but the rest of what he said was legitimate. He was released Monday morning and was at Raw, but the decision was made not to use him. He was said to be limping bad and in rough shape.

There were many people in the company very unhappy about the call, but couldn’t say so publicly. But McMahon thought, and was probably correct, that he had no more streak matches left. And he may not have really had this one left in his body. At that point, it’s just a call. Do you end the storyline in a shocking way, or a predictable way? From a business standpoint, if he was never going to come back for a streak match, neither decision was better than the other.

The truth is, the story of every great streak includes the shock, awe, surprise and even sadness of when it ends. The most famous streaks in sports are most famous for the night they ended, or the match or game that ended it. And even in a scripted entertainment, this was no different."

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Re: The Wrestling Thread

Postby Applecore » Sat Apr 12, 2014 7:41 am

Yeah I'll keep at Impact. That was pretty cool.

Also this week's Smackdown wasn't half bad. With The Shield coming to the aid of Daniel Bryan again I'm really hoping we'll see an 8-man tag match with Daniel Bryan/The Shield vs Triple H, Kane, Orton and Batista.
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Re: The Wrestling Thread

Postby MetalBeast » Sat Apr 12, 2014 9:03 am

Just remembered about this classic Ultimate Warrior moment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qs0pyWCNEIY
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Re: The Wrestling Thread

Postby Jobdone » Sat Apr 12, 2014 9:21 am

Applecore wrote:Also this week's Smackdown wasn't half bad. With The Shield coming to the aid of Daniel Bryan again I'm really hoping we'll see an 8-man tag match with Daniel Bryan/The Shield vs Triple H, Kane, Orton and Batista.


triple h keeps talking about war.

so basically i'm calling the return of WAR GAMES.

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Re: The Wrestling Thread

Postby Applecore » Sat Apr 12, 2014 10:17 am

What the hell is that??
Because Extreme rules is coming, and that looks extreme.. :lol:
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Re: The Wrestling Thread

Postby CrappyMike » Sat Apr 12, 2014 11:01 am

I never liked wcw and its stuff like that and the battle royal with 3 rings that always put me off, so stupid :lol: you don't need more than one ring you never need more than one ring its just silly

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Re: The Wrestling Thread

Postby Matty_the_Emo_Slayer » Sat Apr 12, 2014 12:31 pm

The best thing about War Games was the staggered entry rather than the fact two rings thing. TNA and ROH adopted the idea for Lethal Lockdown and Steel Cage Warfare respectively and it can be just as good without the double cage. Although, if they are going to link it to War Games you need to put Cody and Goldust in so you can have Dusty at ringside. Maybe have it as six man teams with HHH, Kane, Orton, Batista, Gunn and Road Dogg vs Bryan, Rollins, Ambrose, Reigns, Goldy and Cody?

I think its about time I get caught up on TNA too. Glad to see Eric Young getting a main event push. Hopefully we'll see the same for Daniels soon. Easily one of the most talented wrestlers to never be a world champ.
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Re: The Wrestling Thread

Postby Haldamir319 » Sat Apr 12, 2014 7:36 pm

CrappyMike wrote:I never liked wcw and its stuff like that and the battle royal with 3 rings that always put me off, so stupid :lol: you don't need more than one ring you never need more than one ring its just silly


The three ring battle royale was World War III was it not? It's basically the rumble but with 3 rings and 60 competitors.

WarGames is an 8 or 10 man tornado tag match spread over two rings beneath a cage, whereby victory is obtained by submission. There have been a few variations on the WarGames match (there was a three team one that ended with a pinfall vitory for example), but the submission one is the traiditional one.
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