Is it true that big daddy killed the British wrestling scene or is the blame misplaced?
the only match ever that deserved more than 5 stars was flair vs steamboat in the entire list not to mention the suspiciously large amount of 5 stars disproportionately awarded to Japanese promotions
Laurie I think is mostly just there because it’s an easy paycheque at this point, especially with how much the rest of them were congratulating him on having a kid relatively recently. To paraphrase a quote from up thread, “You take Oli’s money, you deal with Oli’s bullshit”
from what I've seen Big Daddy was more a symptom than the problem, like random big fat guy #234235 in the early 90s USA scene
He had a cat too? I thought he just had the orange tabby.
Are you talking about the guy who teamed with and later feuded with Haystacks? People loved the guy. Haystacks however was the guy who was shit in America.
I realize now I might be mixing up my bald Wrestletubers - might’ve been Luke who had the kid, not Laurie.
Laurie is El Fakeador. Luke is the Oli sycophant. Pretty sure Luke will follow Oli when Wrestletalk falls. Which given the fact they started hiring women and they still have Adam on the payroll it's only a matter of time.
Jesus H they buckbroke Nash hard. He's eaten the Jew schlong and is begging for more.
Partially misplaced. Shirley 'Big Daddy' Crabtree was the most popular man in British wrestling, but he kept his spot protected well past his prime. What killed British Wrestling was the loss of ITV (even though wrestling was still more popular than the rest of World of Sport) as well as WWF selling their own TV for cheap to drive their competitors off.
This opinion is going to be likely unpopular but before they sold their soul to Trips and got raided, ICW was the absolute best the UK had to offer.
Just a reminder that Sedqwick works for Whatculture and has written countless FED BAD scripts for Whatculture, a book back in 2017 that painted NXT as an absolute hellscape, and a book about the rise of AEW (but shockingly no mention of it's ratings plateau or other issues it's had since its conception).
I can't remember where I heard this from, maybe on a youshoot video, but Hall was asked why he never was the Heavyweight champ, and he said he never envisioned himself as THE guy, nor did he care. He was just happy to go out there and wrestle. Also something about pressure to lead the company and his demons.
Hall definitely had the least ego of the three. Hogan's ego speaks for itself, and Nash will often play victim by describing how hard his booking position was...which somehow justifies why he was the guy to break Goldberg's streak within a month of him being booker?
I remember being super hyped for that event but couldn't watch it live because of committments, I didn't know who won but I heard literally all of my wrestling smark friends saying "bro you have to watch this, this might honestly be the greatest match in wrestling history". I unironically think the 6 star Misawa Kawada match is actually as good as people say it is so at the time I still took Meltzer's opinions fairly seriously.
I know right?
I went to a bunch of ICW shows during its prime and also ICW Fear and Loathing IX (at the Hydro), I remember being so hyped for the Hydro show because this was their chance to finally try and go bigger than they've ever been before and I couldn't wait to hear a stadium full of fans singing along to Like A Prayer. Except this was the show where ICW changed all the copyrighted music (so no Like a Prayer) and had Finn Balor show up to interfere in the main event. I walked out of that show knowing for a fact that ICW as I knew it was fucking dead and all of the sweary, fun, borderline illegal underground feel of it had seen its balls cut off. Sure enough, straight after that the roster was completely gutted as WWE signed tons of guys for the British tournament and that was that. I don't think I paid a single drop of attention to any ICW shows following that until after Lionheart killed himself.
It was a bubble just about to pop. I was worried when I saw the whole World of Sport thing coming because I knew once ITV actually tried to compete with the WWE that all the fun independant nature of the British indie scene would die. The moment World of Sport tries to get people to sign contracts, WWE signs people to other contracts and the whole underground "Everyone is facing everyone in every promotion" died because now promotions were aligned to big companies and the big companies had certain rules for how talent was booked. You wouldn't get Grado beating Trent Seven anymore, you wouldn't get Will Ospreay in a WWE aligned indie anymore, everything was now super complicated and not fun. Discovering that a decent chunk of the British scene were sex abusers too kinda ruined it too (covid completely finished it) and I think El Ligero getting caught was far bigger than the other guys simply because he was working nearly 150 shows a year across the entire country and suddenly wasn't anymore.
