General Wrestling Discussion

[XYZpdq]

regarding the UK scene I will say I liked Local Hero guy and his song.

 

[Anonymus Fluhre]

For me I think hearing about Dave meltzer giving a match 6 stars was the point when I realized how obnoxious and blatantly biased the average smark is and how not actually good and one note a lot of the smark favorites were (omega, young bucks and the like)

Meltzer would give out his first 6 star rating in 1994. Kenny was 11 at the time. He wouldn't give another one until 2017, 23 years after his first. Not the first time a match has gotten that either. The guy he adopted the rating system from also gave out a few back in his day too (something like 36 years ago or something).

From what little I know, the short version is that British Wrestling had it’s own Indie Boom, then NXT UK was set up basically to gobble up the entire indie scene. It reminds me of the one joke from early AEW - how Cody went to the UK during the height of their Indie Boom, and all he brought back was Kip Sabian.

British Wrestling Youtubers, meanwhile, are about what you’d expect - look, I tolerate Wrestletalk for the 5 Minute Reviews, but it’s telling that the one person there I don’t find annoying is the fucking Canadian. The Cultaholic lads are fine in small doses, and if you watch anything from WhatCulture Wrestling that isn’t Simon, the one person there who actually seems to give a shit, then I don’t know what to tell you.

Laurie isn't bad (or however you spell his name). I think that's because it seems like he really doesn't want to be there. Tempest is a Leaf's fan. There is no redemption for him. Like come on now, look how badly they did this season.

 

[King Ghidorah]

After a 30 year drought following the death of World of Sport

Is it true that big daddy killed the British wrestling scene or is the blame misplaced?

Meltzer would give out his first 6 star rating in 1994. Kenny was 11 at the time. He wouldn't give another one until 2017, 23 years after his first. Not the first time a match has gotten that either. The guy he adopted the rating system from also gave out a few back in his day too (something like 36 years ago or something).

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

 

[Leaf Wage Slave]

Laurie isn't bad (or however you spell his name). I think that's because it seems like he really doesn't want to be there. Tempest is a Leaf's fan. There is no redemption for him. Like come on now, look how badly they did this season.

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”

Tempest might be a Leafs Fan, but it could be worse - he could be a Golden Knights fan. He’s still the most tolerable of the WrestleTalk crew, likely because outside of the occasional list (or that one time he covered an Impact PPV) he gets relegated the NXT and Rampage reviews where you can see him slowly die inside watching NXT 2.0 - honestly being a Leafs fan he might just be used to disappointment…

 

[XYZpdq]

Is it true that big daddy killed the British wrestling scene or is the blame misplaced?

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
unless there's some specific "some exec saw Big Daddy and threw a spaz" story I'm unaware of

 

[Anonymus Fluhre]

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”

Tempest might be a Leafs Fan, but it could be worse - he could be a Golden Knights fan. He’s still the most tolerable of the WrestleTalk crew, likely because outside of the occasional list (or that one time he covered an Impact PPV) he gets relegated the NXT and Rampage reviews where you can see him slowly die inside watching NXT 2.0 - honestly being a Leafs fan he might just be used to disappointment…

He had a cat too? I thought he just had the orange tabby.

The Golden Showers are better despite being a vanity project by the Mafia.
They put two black guys on to NXT 2.0 so none of the main "cast" have to deal with the show. He likes watching Rampage. It's his only ray of sunshine after having to watch Smackdown. and having to work at 8am on a Saturday.

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
unless there's some specific "some exec saw Big Daddy and threw a spaz" story I'm unaware of

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.

 

[Leaf Wage Slave]

He had a cat too? I thought he just had the orange tabby.

I realize now I might be mixing up my bald Wrestletubers - might’ve been Luke who had the kid, not Laurie.

Doesn’t change the whole “Clearly just there for a paycheque” part though.

 

[Anonymus Fluhre]

I realize now I might be mixing up my bald Wrestletubers - might’ve been Luke who had the kid, not Laurie.

Doesn’t change the whole “Clearly just there for a paycheque” part though.

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.

 

[Ita Mori]

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MJF has a based moment but then ends up bending the knee to a fucking troon

Jesus H they buckbroke Nash hard. He's eaten the Jew schlong and is begging for more.
Apologizing for a fucking picture and pleading for people to get brainwashed... I hope his career dies.
Old timers wouldn't have apologized for shit and would've taken a dump on an Israeli flag rocking a Hitler stache just to piss you off even more.

MJF bowing to trannies and acting like a stereotypical Jew... what a way to kill your character.

 

[Pentex]

Is it true that big daddy killed the British wrestling scene or is the blame misplaced?

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.

The Crabtrees didn't kill the British indies so much as the British indies were too chicken shit to try and draw without him until it was too late to build new stars. And since Vince had TV sewn up, it wasn't profitable to try and compete.

 

[Auntie Fester]

MJF defending Nash Carter makes me like MJF even more.

Oh lord, I spoke too soon. I spoke way, WAY too soon.

Trannies ruin everything.

 

[Big Scumfuck]

regarding the UK scene I will say I liked Local Hero guy and his song.

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.
People should unironically remember Late 00s-Mid 10's ICW on par with ECWs glory years.
Hell, they managed to find Scottish Dusty Rhodes in Grado.
There was a reason why a documentary was made about the company, because for a solid while, it was just that damn good.

 

[captkrisma]

if you watch anything from WhatCulture Wrestling that isn’t Simon, the one person there who actually seems to give a shit, then I don’t know what to tell you.

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).

He's someone that would shill Tony's shit for an eighth of what Tony is paying Dave.

 

[Shipping Steel]

On a similar track since hall was clearly the janetty of the "core" NWO why did he never get a single world title reign despite being clearly the best worker of the 3? Was it really something as simple as Hogan and nash wouldn't allow it as long as they were around? Or was it something else?

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.

 

[Anchors-Away]

Reflecting on the topic of the British wrestling scene, I'd argue that it was already in a on the brink of collapse before WWE came along and gutted it. RevPro was following the ROH textbook of having it's core talent fed to whatever NJPW names they utilised; with diminishing returns from it's own academy down in Portsmouth. ICW was certainly hot in Scotland, yet the "speaking out" movement highlighted a fair number of names involved in the allegations. Progress also seemed to follow the ROH textbook of not knowing when to strike hot and move on from a title reign. Travis Banks and Pete Dunne's reigns seemingly dragged on forever. Cara Noir's reign also ended on a wet-fart.

Oh and Covid. Covid basically put the breaks on the scene.

 

[Auntie Fester]

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 think if Hall were more active during the ridiculous title trading in 2000, he would have gotten at least one run.

 

[Tom Nook's Gloryhole]

For me I think hearing about Dave meltzer giving a match 6 stars was the point when I realized how obnoxious and blatantly biased the average smark is and how not actually good and one note a lot of the smark favorites were (omega, young bucks and the like)

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.

So I watch it, and I wait for the magic to happen... and it just doesn't deliver at all for me. There was a good 20 minutes of 'feeling out' at the beginning that straight up kills the match and makes repeat viewings a complete chore. It eventually picks up but by then it's too late, it goes too long, some of the spots were straight up retarded and could have seriously injured one another and it just straight up felt like a choreographed "epic (tm) match" without any natural flow to it. Maybe I'm being dishonest here but it really felt like a 30 minute Triple H wrestlemania borefest with some cool moves sandwiched between them.

The insane thing is that Tanahashi - Naito before it was significantly better, to the point where it felt like Omega-Okada starting slow was simply to cool down the insane reaction the previous match got. It really did feel like Meltzer was rating it because of how he thought the match should have been rather than how the match went, with his favourite NJPW star facing an aquaintance of him that he likes.

And of course, because Meltzer broke his scale with this match, it meant that if Omega - Okada had a better match than this then the rating would have to go even higher (I think one of their matches was rated 6.5 stars in the end), it was absolute chaos and made all the niggly autistic moments that stopped certain WWE matches from hitting 5 stars become absolutely irrelevent. How exactly can you deny Shawn - Taker is 5 stars if Omega - Okada is 6? It just completely exposed that Dave has different criteria for different promotions and his bias completely shone through.

 

[Never Scored]

And of course, because Meltzer broke his scale with this match, it meant that if Omega - Okada had a better match than this then the rating would have to go even higher (I think one of their matches was rated 6.5 stars in the end), it was absolute chaos and made all the niggly autistic moments that stopped certain WWE matches from hitting 5 stars become absolutely irrelevent. How exactly can you deny Shawn - Taker is 5 stars if Omega - Okada is 6? It just completely exposed that Dave has different criteria for different promotions and his bias completely shone through.

I know right?

My all time favourite match is the Bret Hart/Steve Austin submission match. The idea that Okada/Omega is a full star better is laughable.

 

[Tom Nook's Gloryhole]

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.
People should unironically remember Late 00s-Mid 10's ICW on par with ECWs glory years.
Hell, they managed to find Scottish Dusty Rhodes in Grado.
There was a reason why a documentary was made about the company, because for a solid while, it was just that damn good.

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.

Reflecting on the topic of the British wrestling scene, I'd argue that it was already in a on the brink of collapse before WWE came along and gutted it. RevPro was following the ROH textbook of having it's core talent fed to whatever NJPW names they utilised; with diminishing returns from it's own academy down in Portsmouth. ICW was certainly hot in Scotland, yet the "speaking out" movement highlighted a fair number of names involved in the allegations. Progress also seemed to follow the ROH textbook of not knowing when to strike hot and move on from a title reign. Travis Banks and Pete Dunne's reigns seemingly dragged on forever. Cara Noir's reign also ended on a wet-fart.

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.

 

[IDanceonTrannyGraves]

This is pretty good.