General Wrestling Discussion

UnKillShredDur said:
To be fair, who *isn't* a mark for themselves? I almost feel like you have to be if you want to get over, you have to be over with yourself first.
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there's being a mark for yourself to advance your career, and then there's being such a big mark for yourself to the point where its egomaniacal and it becomes a hinderance cause no one will wanna work you.
 
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trent said:
Effy pretty much killed off AEW and GCWs working relationship by saying some dumb shit about Tony on a podcast.
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The sooner Effy's demons are made public, the sooner the indie space may have a moment of recovery. Effy is apparently very active on getting people blacklisted that don't share certain political or personal opinions with him. If Allie Katch was smart, (she isn't) she'd instantly distance herself from him and do everything in her power to get a deal with IMPACT stat.
 
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Anchors-Away said:
The sooner Effy's demons are made public, the sooner the indie space may have a moment of recovery. Effy is apparently very active on getting people blacklisted that don't share certain political or personal opinions with him. If Allie Katch was smart, (she isn't) she'd instantly distance herself from him and do everything in her power to get a deal with IMPACT stat.
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she should've gotten a deal with impact a while ago.

i had the pleasure of escorting effy to a show in brooklyn from JFK with a friend. he's....okay, i don't love him nor do i hate him
 
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Well Intentioned said:
Bret Hart and Montreal I think had a lot to do with it, as he was a 'workrate' guy. Then WCW died, which seemed to be validation that the 'non-workrate' guys (Nash, Hogan, etc.) were "bad." Unfortunately, the issue wasn't 'those guys = bad' but rather too much of one thing = 'bad.'

It didn't help that WWE was pushing the narrative that guys like Jericho and the Radicalz were "misused" which helped give some legitimacy to those gripes.
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I think that wrestlers who rely on their in-ring abilities over say promo skill is not necessarily a bad thing. Bret Hart is in my top 3 personal favorite wrestlers and I think he frequently gets unfairly labeled as a Smark Darling when he clearly dislikes those types of fans, I think theres a certain balance that you need to strike between the two as a wrestler, Bret was never really that good on a mic until he turned heel in 1997 and that was his peak year imo, I think a similar example in modern WWE is Sami Zayn where hes trashed dumb smarky fans but still relies on his wrestling ability.
 
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Caddo Cobgang said:
I think that wrestlers who rely on their in-ring abilities over say promo skill is not necessarily a bad thing. Bret Hart is in my top 3 personal favorite wrestlers and I think he frequently gets unfairly labeled as a Smark Darling when he clearly dislikes those types of fans, I think theres a certain balance that you need to strike between the two as a wrestler, Bret was never really that good on a mic until he turned heel in 1997 and that was his peak year imo, I think a similar example in modern WWE is Sami Zayn where hes trashed dumb smarky fans but still relies on his wrestling ability.
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I don't think Bret is unfairly labeled, although I would say he is undeserving of it.

Smarks sort of latched onto Bret, with one fat fuck in particular, Scott Keith, really leading the charge with Bret and then later Benoit, including having written a few (poorly researched, horrible) books that would put Patrick Tomlinson's offerings to shame.

I think I've posted about this before, but Keith, along with a few other guys (like the Wrestlecrap dude) were good at popularizing certain smark sentiments, which led to guys like Hogan, Undertaker, Nash and Triple H getting disproportionately hated on.
 
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Chapalapachapa said:
hogan, taker and most of all hhh were actually good workers. nash always sucked
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I'm just stating what perceptions were from smarks. All four of them were good performers in their own right, but were generally loathed by the IWC.

All of them did have really bad/rough/lazy phases where I think they deserved some of the criticism, but smarks really blew it out of proportion. Scott Keith's rant about Undertaker (which I've shared in here before) comes to mind. But here it is, again:

Retire now, you crippled, has been, slow-moving, fried-food eating, motorcyle-riding, no-selling, tobacco-chewing, no-money-drawing, talentless piece of selfish SHIT. Kurt Angle is the future, you are NOTHING. Deal with it. And take Kane with you when you go.
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Keep in mind this was a guy who has written multiple books on wrestling saying this shit.

The review where the above was pulled from: https://411mania.com/wrestling/the-smark-retro-repost-fully-loaded-2000/ worth zipping through for a time capsule of IWC smarks from like 20 years ago.
 
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Well Intentioned said:
How so? They were all seen as being lazy/politicking wrestlers who were anti-workrate.

Yeah, attitudes have changed on Undertaker and Triple H, but they were both loathed by smarks.
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By the time I got into wrestling taker was already a universally respected elder statesman of wrestling so hearing smarks used to hate him is bizarre
Well Intentioned said:
I'm just stating what perceptions were from smarks. All four of them were good performers in their own right, but were generally loathed by the IWC.

All of them did have really bad/rough/lazy phases where I think they deserved some of the criticism, but smarks really blew it out of proportion. Scott Keith's rant about Undertaker (which I've shared in here before) comes to mind. But here it is, again:
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Lmao on angle being the future considering who stuck around longest
 
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Lol, GCW replaced Starks with Effy in the match against Cardona at their next show.

Even r/squaredcircle are laughing at this utter catastrophe. The utter fucking dipshit has done huge damage to the company and gets rewarded. NWA levels of retarded.
 
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Well Intentioned said:
I'm just stating what perceptions were from smarks. All four of them were good performers in their own right, but were generally loathed by the IWC.

All of them did have really bad/rough/lazy phases where I think they deserved some of the criticism, but smarks really blew it out of proportion. Scott Keith's rant about Undertaker (which I've shared in here before) comes to mind. But here it is, again:



Keep in mind this was a guy who has written multiple books on wrestling saying this shit.

The review where the above was pulled from: https://411mania.com/wrestling/the-smark-retro-repost-fully-loaded-2000/ worth zipping through for a time capsule of IWC smarks from like 20 years ago.
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Wasn't until his heel turn after the Invasion storyline that the IWC hate died down a bit on Undertaker. Him completely squashing Kurt Angle just after winning King of the Ring and a month before Angle would main event Summerslam was a strange decision.
 
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XYZpdq Jr. said:
what the crap are y'all smoking that Taker was a good worker
in the more existential "popped the crowd and sold tickets" sense yes, but dude barely did anything in the ring and his mic work was even less
he was a gimmick and booking beyond even Mil Muertes
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UAMFBN.gif
Play time's over, sit down and shut up. Later on tonight, there's gonna be a match for the tag team titles between the Acolytes and X-Pac & Kane, whatever whatever, it's not important. The fact of the matter is, this Sunday at Summerslam the winner of that match will come face to face with this. And to make sure that my man was right, this week I put him to the test. I had Paul Bearer call out to California - San Fernando Valley to some associates of ours at the Local 81 - Paul said we're gonna need two bikes for a ride in the desert. The guy said 'Brother Paul, now we know that the Dead Man can handle it, but I don't know about the Big Show. It's August, it's 120 degrees in the middle of Death Valley.' He says 'the only things that survive in the desert are the cold-blooded...the snakes and the lizards.' Paul said 'that's all right, and in one of those bikes that you're setting up for us, I want you the Big Show to only have enough gas to get to the middle of the desert and not get back.'

So we're on our way - we get to the middle of Death Valley - 120 degrees, the Big Show's bike runs out of gas. And I pull up next to him and I ask him this question: 'It's 120 degrees, how are you gonna survive?' He looks me straight in the eyes, without hesitation, he says 'I'm gonna wait 'til you go to sleep, I'm gonna stab you in the back, I'm gonna cut your flesh off, make a coat out of it, and I'm gonna eat YOUR flesh until I find food.' I said 'Good answer big man, but I don't sleep,' and I drove off and left him. I waited on the outskirts of the desert. Two days later, he walks out with a snake necktie and lizard boots, carryin' his Harley-Davidson on his shoulder. The point of the story is this. What used to be known as SummerSlam will now be known as Armageddon, and whoever shows up...will be hurt.
 
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XYZpdq Jr. said:
what the crap are y'all smoking that Taker was a good worker
in the more existential "popped the crowd and sold tickets" sense yes, but dude barely did anything in the ring and his mic work was even less
he was a gimmick and booking beyond even Mil Muertes
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Taker was a classic 80s/90s WWE guy insofar as he was put in matches against the actual workers so that he could hit his spots and pop the crowd.

Expecting him to lead a match was a disaster because it would be mostly dogshit looking striking and stomping on guys in the corner (see also: 90% of the top WWE guys from this era) until he could get his shit in. Pure time-filler stuff.

This style is what gave rise to the popularity of the indies and people in the West starting to pay attention to puro/lucha. US wrestling in that era was all show and very little go. There were exceptions of course. Occasionally a guy would break out of jobber status because the crowd realised he was fun as fuck to watch actually do shit but most of the top guys were good on the stick but could only do maybe 5 highly practiced moves.

The "good hands" were the ones eating the pins.
 
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XYZpdq Jr. said:
what the crap are y'all smoking that Taker was a good worker
in the more existential "popped the crowd and sold tickets" sense yes, but dude barely did anything in the ring and his mic work was even less
he was a gimmick and booking beyond even Mil Muertes
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Undertaker's career reminds me of Hulk Hogan's. The difference between the two is that instead of mashing new guys down the drain to build himself up through each era of wrestling, Undertaker used his status as a big, scary veteran to make newer guys look good. Does current era wrestling even have someone like this to maintain an old schooler reputation and give the newer guys legitimacy by contending with him?
trent said:
Expecting him to lead a match was a disaster because it would be mostly dogshit looking striking and stomping on guys in the corner (see also: 90% of the top WWE guys from this era) until he could get his shit in. Pure time-filler stuff.
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Men smaller than Rhea doing spot monkey stuff will never be respectable. Pretty much any audience would rather watch Steve Austin get his shit off, bleed and look scary to the benefit of some storyline vs. smark favorites like Malenko, Psicosis or some other literal who flying around.
 
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