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RCBH928
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Re: The Wrestling Thread

by RCBH928 Wed Sep 15, 2021 3:41 pm

Reprise wrote:I rewatch Attitude Era PPVs quite often, but it's really a struggle to get through any pre-2000 PPV. They often made some really bizarre decisions prior to 2000, like giving fucking Billy Gunn of all people a major push out of no where in 1999 and putting him in a feud with the Rock.


Thats because WWE didn't know what they were doing, Vince is dead scared to lose his company to billionaire Ted who can buy his whole roster out right. They were in a weird position that they still had top tier stars like Taker and Mankind, and thanks to his lucky stars it just happened that The Ringmaster and Rocky Miavia turned into Stone Cold Steve Austin and The Rock, otherwise there was a huge gap. They actually had to rely on Hunter Hearst Helmsley and cowboy Billy Gunn along with Jeff Jarrett wannabe side kick The Roadie to create a pact that opposes the nWo that had Hogan, Macho Man, Kevin Nash and Scott Hall to name a few :lol: thats one of the most desperate thing I have seen in pro wrestling history.

They just made random stuff and wished for the best, nude girls, showing people the finger, doing the X chop thing which they shamelessly copy from Scott Hall, act childish, beg for the 1-2-3 kid to come back and since Billy Gunn is the corporate boy they decided to give him a push I guess maybe they thought he too would turn out something great like The Rock.

But out of memory I recall great matches which I am not sure if they consider attitude era or not but Taker vs Kane, Steve Austin vs Bret Hart, Bret Hart vs Shawn Michaels (screwjob) , Taker vs Mankind steel cage match. so I do not know about having troubling going through any PPVs pre-2000s but WCW PPVs were general bad so much so imo the weekly Nitro is more exciting.

Reprise wrote:
Sload Soap wrote:I have a fondness for the early Smackdown games as those were the ones my brothers and I would slap each other around in. Warzone wasn't great I'll admit.


Yeah, I can get that. I do too. My friends and I put in hours and hours into both Smackdown 1 and 2 back in the day. I remember when the second game came out, we all slept over a friend of mine's house and we pulled an all nighter playing through the season mode trying to unlock all the match types and wrestlers.

If you're into that fast paced arcade style though, they definitely perfected it on the fourth game, Shut Your Mouth in my opinion. There were so many match types, things to do and wrestlers to choose from, and the season mode was insane (I think it's also the longest one, with it lasting two years - yes I know 1 and 2's season technically lasts forever, but they're just randomly generated, repeated stories after a while).

Here Comes the Pain is my personal favourite and most people agree, but that slowed things down a bit and became a touch more of simulation style, playing like a mixture between Smackdown and No Mercy.


I enjoyed N64 wrestling games but for the most part weren't they just the same AKI one with improvements and added features? You speak of WWF games, but there were also WCW games. What made No Mercy so special other than it was the last one so it was the most feature full one obviously? I also know they consider Smackdown series different but I just do not know what is specifically different, I think it had more storylines and seasons mode?


Raging Justice wrote:There are people at Fox angry that WWE couldn't sign him. Punk has value. And again, numbers don't lie. AEW got a huge ratings boost from both him and Daniel Bryan. They actually beat WWE's Monday Night Raw in every demographic last week for the first time EVER.

Also, I actually read an article on a wrestling website calling All Out the best wrestling PPV ever and Punk certainly was a big part of that. Now, granted, best ever might be a bit of an exaggeration, but it speaks volumes that this pay per view has entered the conversation for a lot of people

And on the topic of video games, I personally feel that no video game has every truly captured what makes wrestling work, and I've played all of the popular ones from the N64 ones, to the Fire Pro Wrestling series, to the Yukes Smackdown games. I actually would rather play something that doesn't try to accurately mimic how wrestling works (because no video game can) and instead just does something silly and over the top with it like WWF Wrestlemania: The Arcade Game did


-Beat every demographic ever? like even when WCW was around? this also means AEW beat the total rating of the WWE correct? which didn't happen since 1999 I think.

-I played 2007 RvsSD to death, it had everything even a manager mode. What you think is missing? I felt I was in the real thing.
Last edited by RCBH928 on Wed Sep 15, 2021 4:48 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: The Wrestling Thread

by RCBH928 Wed Sep 15, 2021 4:23 pm

Raging Justice wrote:You're cherry picking an example, and a silly one as what you showed is something that is so fundamental that you can't NOT do it. Face calls out heel, face gets beat down by heel's friends, than other faces come out to help him. I mean, that's like saying you're tired of seeing a hero get beaten by a villain in a movie and then triumph over him later. That's basic story telling. Tropes are tropes because they work and are time tested

Also, you say wrestling is the same thing over and over again, yet have you tried New Japan Pro Wrestling? Have you ever watched Lucha Underground? Heck, even some of the stuff Broken Matt Hardy did...or the era of "cinematic wrestling" that flourished during the covid pandemic is very different from typical pro wrestling. I'll even give WWE some credit with the Bray Wyatt/Fiend stuff or R Truth/Drake Maverick winning the 24/7 title multiples times over a series of very funny youtube and TV skits. To not try watching any of that stuff is like when a video game reviewer says a game is too easy, but never played it on hard mode or tried getting any of its trophies or achievements. It's too easy because he MADE it too easy. And you can't ignore so much of what's out there in pro wrestling then say that it's always the same.


-I am not cherry picking, I can do this all day long I just didn't want to spam this thread with examples like "we have to be completely shocked and jump in excitement when we see the wrestlers move towards the announcers' tables"

-For the most part I am only talking about WWE. I do not comment on NJPW as I have never watched that. TNA concentrated more in what I call the martial arts or the cruiser weights but thats about it. I remember how they tried to be different.

Never saw Lucha Underground but it was short lived and I think it was supposed to be like tv episode. I think CZW is supposed to be just a bloodshed idk, I heard of ROH and GPW but I do not see anything more than school gym wrestling level and hobbyists wanting to do what they enjoy. I seriously doubt than any of them has wrestling has his main profession as in PRO wrestling. I watched random clips of AEW and while its obvious it has a bit of different formula and more adult oriented over the comic New Day circus over at WWE I saw a lot of the same tactics and same sketches being repeated even of the in ring action. You say their latest PPV is the greatest ever in PW , maybe things are getting better as new organizations takes time until they find their place and identity.

If you want different, while I can't take it as seriouse pro-wrestling, I would still tune in to watch this over any RAW or WWE PPV in recent history :lol: Thats entertainment on a different level.
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Re: The Wrestling Thread

by Reprise Wed Sep 15, 2021 7:39 pm

RCBH928 wrote:Thats because WWE didn't know what they were doing, Vince is dead scared to lose his company to billionaire Ted who can buy his whole roster out right.


I'm not so sure about that. It was just Russo being Russo, if I remember correctly. It was Vince who stopped Gunn's main event push and said it was stupid.

RCBH928 wrote:They actually had to rely on Hunter Hearst Helmsley and cowboy Billy Gunn along with Jeff Jarrett wannabe side kick The Roadie to create a pact that opposes the nWo that had Hogan, Macho Man, Kevin Nash and Scott Hall to name a few :lol: thats one of the most desperate thing I have seen in pro wrestling history.

They just made random stuff and wished for the best, nude girls, showing people the finger, doing the X chop thing which they shamelessly copy from Scott Hall, act childish, beg for the 1-2-3 kid to come back and since Billy Gunn is the corporate boy they decided to give him a push I guess maybe they thought he too would turn out something great like The Rock.


Really don't get your DX hate to be honest (and I'd rather watch those guys wrestle than Hogan, Hall and Nash). They were cool in their own right and at least seemed to adapt, unlike the nWo who just got really stale and lame really quickly. By the time they split into two factions, with Wolfpac, and had a face and heel version of the nWo it just became a joke. It's ironic, because I feel nWo was what made WCW a real competitor to WWF, but also feel it's what ultimately ended up killing WCW.

RCBH928 wrote:But out of memory I recall great matches which I am not sure if they consider attitude era or not but Taker vs Kane, Steve Austin vs Bret Hart, Bret Hart vs Shawn Michaels (screwjob) , Taker vs Mankind steel cage match. so I do not know about having troubling going through any PPVs pre-2000s but WCW PPVs were general bad so much so imo the weekly Nitro is more exciting.


Well I wouldn't call all of those great matches. Taker vs Kane was a spectacle and amazing storyline for sure, but great match? Nah, it was boring to watch. Taker vs Mankind is iconic, but it's ultimately a spotfest. Sure, those spots are historic and I loved it the first time I saw it, so I'd give it a pass, but ultimately, other than those two incredible spots, there wasn't much to it. Bret vs Michaels at Survivor Series 97 also wasn't a particularly great match, they had better matches prior to the Attitude Era. Austin vs Hart I'll give you though, it's one of the greatest matches of all time.

As a broad generalisation, I always felt like WCW had the better weekly show (Nitro), but poor PPVs, and WWF had the better PPVs, but Raw wasn't such a good show. But why I struggle with pre-2000 WWF PPVs is because they just didn't have a strong card in the mid-late 90s. Their mid card and lower card was awful compared to WCW and nearly ever PPV was a one or two card show with a bunch matches that could have easily been on Raw.

Like you mention Austin vs Hart, which was at WM13. Well what else was on the card? The main event was The Undertaker vs Psycho Sid of all people and was a dire match. The rest of card was also crap.

By 2000, Russo was gone and WWF was actually utilising its talent, had absorbed loads of WCW and ECW guys and was actually giving main event pushes to guys who deserved it, like Angle, Jericho and Benoit. The tag division was on fire, with the Hardyz, Dudleyz, Edge and Christian, Radicalz, Too Cool etc all putting on fantastic matches. PPVs were slowly actually putting on must-see matches every single month and not just one great match and then a load of crap, but there was consistent quality throughout each card.

RCBH928 wrote:I enjoyed N64 wrestling games but for the most part weren't they just the same AKI one with improvements and added features? You speak of WWF games, but there were also WCW games. What made No Mercy so special other than it was the last one so it was the most feature full one obviously? I also know they consider Smackdown series different but I just do not know what is specifically different, I think it had more storylines and seasons mode?


I've got all the AKI games on N64, but No Mercy is quite easily the best. The core gameplay was the best it had been, the Championship mode and the amount of unlockables are so vast and deep, that I still haven't unlocked everything two decades later. The roster was insane, it had loads of match types and options and it's just a fantastic game. Obviously all the AKI games are amazing, but the only reason why I play Revenge (the last WCW AKI game) is for the amazing WCW roster. Otherwise, if it wasn't for that, No Mercy would render it obsolete.

The Smackdown games were very arcadey and fast paced. They weren't much like real wrestling, because of how fast they were and there was no selling at all. You could be The Rock and Rock Bottom and People's Elbow Al Snow 40 times and toss him off the top of the Hell in a Cell 50 times and he'd still get up instantly every single time.

They slowed down the gameplay considerable, added more realistic grappling mechanics and changed the engine considerably on Here Comes The Pain. The Smackdown vs Raw games then took things much further and went in a more realistic simulation-lite direction. Then for some bizarre reason, 2K games took over and took that even further to the extreme where they ultimately removed all the fun out of the games all together.
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Re: The Wrestling Thread

by RCBH928 Thu Sep 16, 2021 9:15 pm

@Reprise

-Russo could be Russo but I doubt Vince stopped it simply because I think at that time Vince was watching every detail in the WWE like a hawk. I think Vince kept an eye on the WWE while sleeping. It was in the middle of battle to death with WCW. I don't know facts I am assuming. Speaking of Russo, I forgive this guy. While I don't like what he did, in one youtube video he explained that they wanted higher tv ratings and I did stuff that made the ratings high. Can't argue with that, during the attitude era ratings were crazy high. I think he also argued when he worked in TNA the numbers got higher too, i didn't double check. So I see what he is saying.

-I loathe the DX, they are a Chinese copy of the nWo. They tried to attract attention in any way and their childish acts (cringe) didn't impress me all I saw was desparation. The whole group doesn't work together imo, Billy Gun with Roadie with Hunter and Chyna... idk. But you enjoy whatever you like, personally I like the nWo act as they seem to be the "cool" guys meanwhile the DX seem to be the ones trying to be the cool guys. Although I don't find them humorous themselves, I give huge credit to the desperate WWF to show an attack on WCW HQ like that. Good stuff! I understand nWo later on became stale and all the fun was sucked out of it.

-I do not know how you define a great match. I see the show, if I was entertained and liked it then its a great match(or event) for me. I do not care about in ring actions&tactics, I just see the thing over all. Screwjob was extremely entertaining and shocking ending for me so I consider that great match. I agree with everything else you said about WCW and WWE show quality. IYH PPVs seemed more like a "super" RAW card than a PPV(and more on the silly and comic side) which was only a response to the crazy-at the time-idea of Bischoff to make a monthly PPV.

The Smackdown games were very arcadey and fast paced. They weren't much like real wrestling, because of how fast they were and there was no selling at all. You could be The Rock and Rock Bottom and People's Elbow Al Snow 40 times and toss him off the top of the Hell in a Cell 50 times and he'd still get up instantly every single time.


I really hate when a game does this. Given its a wrestling game you should only be able to do some sort of a comeback once or a weaker one twice, but should be closer to fighting games as you life meter goes down you go down with it too.
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Re: The Wrestling Thread

by PretentiousHipster Fri Sep 17, 2021 7:54 am

I actually have access to tons of wrestling stuff now. I ended up getting all the raw 1993 episodes. Gonna be a fun ride lol
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Re: The Wrestling Thread

by RCBH928 Fri Sep 17, 2021 9:08 pm

PretentiousHipster wrote:I actually have access to tons of wrestling stuff now. I ended up getting all the raw 1993 episodes. Gonna be a fun ride lol


if you watch a few I would like to hear of your perspective between back then and now between the RAW episodes and styles.
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Re: The Wrestling Thread

by Raging Justice Fri Sep 24, 2021 12:15 am

AEW just had their biggest crowd ever in New York this week. Supposedly there were outselling WWE's New York shows in ticket sales too and I heard some people in WWE were not liking that. New York is a big market for them. This week AEW's been essentially giving us a free pay per view between Wednesday's awesome two hour show and Friday's two hour special. Lots of big matches on both shows, like Kenny Omega vs Bryan Danielson - a dream match, and Minoru Suzuki and Lance Archer vs Jon Moxley and Eddie Kingston in a Light's Out match. The Omega/Danielson match lived up to the hype

No excuse not to be watching AEW this week

Anyway, they're drawing over a million viewers now and have been the number one show on cable for Wedsneday nights for like five weeks.

They may not ever get as big as WCW, but they are doing quite well for themselves. Makes me happy. Lots of great stuff this week too with the G1 Climax from NJPW and I even checked out MLW for the first time. I like what I saw. They are nowhere near AEW's level, but they are getting some good buzz. If AEW is my big WWE alternative the way WCW was for people years ago, I guess MLW can become that smaller but also cool alternative for me like ECW was back in the day. I noticed their show this week was in Philadelphia. Plus, I love the former Lucha Underground people showing up there and can't wait for that Azteca Underground show MLW is teasing

I probably won't post much more in this thread. I'll be too busy enjoying wrestling LOL. It's exciting right now. It's refreshing to have crowds back post covid. Even just watching from home, it makes the shows sooooo much better
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Re: The Wrestling Thread

by RCBH928 Fri Sep 24, 2021 3:32 am

Raging Justice wrote:Anyway, they're drawing over a million viewers now and have been the number one show on cable for Wedsneday nights for like five weeks.

They may not ever get as big as WCW, but they are doing quite well for themselves. Makes me happy. Lots of great stuff this week too with the G1 Climax from NJPW and I even checked out MLW for the first time. I like what I saw. They are nowhere near AEW's level, but they are getting some good buzz. If AEW is my big WWE alternative the way WCW was for people years ago, I guess MLW can become that smaller but also cool alternative for me like ECW was back in the day. I noticed their show this week was in Philadelphia. Plus, I love the former Lucha Underground people showing up there and can't wait for that Azteca Underground show MLW is teasing


-Isn't WWE numbers like 2.8 millions viewers? I think AEW has potential to surpass WCW simply because its so much easier to advertise now days and people are fed up for WWE circus show imo. They want something different not John Cena for the millionth time.

-Why was Lcuha Underground canceled I heard it was popular?

-What do you think of Impact wrestling?
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Re: The Wrestling Thread

by Raging Justice Fri Sep 24, 2021 4:46 pm

RCBH928 wrote:
Raging Justice wrote:Anyway, they're drawing over a million viewers now and have been the number one show on cable for Wedsneday nights for like five weeks.

They may not ever get as big as WCW, but they are doing quite well for themselves. Makes me happy. Lots of great stuff this week too with the G1 Climax from NJPW and I even checked out MLW for the first time. I like what I saw. They are nowhere near AEW's level, but they are getting some good buzz. If AEW is my big WWE alternative the way WCW was for people years ago, I guess MLW can become that smaller but also cool alternative for me like ECW was back in the day. I noticed their show this week was in Philadelphia. Plus, I love the former Lucha Underground people showing up there and can't wait for that Azteca Underground show MLW is teasing


-Isn't WWE numbers like 2.8 millions viewers? I think AEW has potential to surpass WCW simply because its so much easier to advertise now days and people are fed up for WWE circus show imo. They want something different not John Cena for the millionth time.

-Why was Lcuha Underground canceled I heard it was popular?

-What do you think of Impact wrestling?


I hear people say Impact is pretty good right now, but I still don't watch it. One thing I don't like is how small time they feel. It seems like they are always in small venues with small crowds. You'd expect better considering how long they've been around. MLW by comparison, which as I said I watched for the first time this week, had a fairly large crowd for a smaller promotion and they made a lot of noise

WWE's main shows Raw and Smackdown still draw more viewers than AEW, but AEW is hitting numbers people once didn't think possible. With the return of crowds in arenas and the debuts of Punk, Bryan and others, it feels like there are more eyes on the product. At the very least, they can brag about having outdone WWE's best product, which was NXT. For the past 2 weeks, NXT has been completely revamped as a result, and some people are even gossiping that Triple H is in the dog house so to speak with Vince McMahon for not beating AEW head to head on Wednesday nights

There's lots of opinions on why Lucha Underground came to an end, but I think the number one reason was that they got into a lot of legal battles with talent over their very restrictive contracts. Because Lucha Underground had seasons like a TV series, wrestlers wanted to wrestle in other companies during the off season when the show wasn't taping new episodes. Eventually they lost the majority of their roster over this. MLW is going to do a show called Azteca Underground as a spiritual successor to Lucha Underground. They are scooping up whatever former talent they can, but a lot of Lucha Underground's wrestlers are now in other places like AEW, NJPW, and WWE. They have managed to get some major Lucha Underground players though like Dario Cueto, who was like the Vince McMahon of Lucha Underground, and Mil Muertes who was Lucha Underground's version of The Undertaker and their top heel act. I think they got Lucha Underground's former head of creative too Chris DeJoseph

Lucha Underground did a lot for some people's careers. Some of AEW's most popular acts like the current tag champs the Lucha Bros. first reached international stardom in Lucha Underground. Every time you hear a crowd chant Ciero Miedo for Pentagon, that chant originally caught fire in Lucha Underground where Pentagon was arguably the most popular character. Lucha Underground felt like ECW in some ways. A small arena in a specific location that was always re-used until it just felt like part of the show, Passionate fans, and LOTS of blood, guts, and violence. I literally saw flesh come off a man's back in one of their matches. While WWE will push products like Mountain Dew and Subway on their shows, Lucha Underground showed people at the announce table drinking beers. They even dropped an F bomb in one episode, just a more adult themed wrestling show.

Lucha Underground also did a lot of very non-traditional things though that some people loved and some people hated. They presented their shows like a TV series rather than a wrestling product, with actors, and more involved story lines than you'd expect from pro wrestling. Film director Robert Rodriguez was involved with it and had a lot of his cinematic influences in the show. Many of their characters were supernatural in nature similar to WWE characters like Kane and Undertaker. Plus, they featured many inter gender matches with was always controversial. There was no women's division. You have to understand though, they had a universe they created that was similar to comic books or video games so a man and woman fighting each other was like seeing Kitana fight Liu Kang in Mortal Kombat or Chun Li versus Ryu in Street Fighter. Early on, I remember fans in the crowd didn't know how to react to this, but by later seasons they were unphased and were cheering just as loudly for intergender matches as they did man vs man or woman vs woman matches. Probably the best intergender match was Pentagon Dark vs The Black Lotus Triad. The story line revolved around a Lucha Underground character that was like a fusion of Uma Therman's Kill Bill character and Oren Ishii, having a vendetta against Pentagon, so she basically sends three female assassins after him. Two of the women featured in the match would later get scooped up be WWE, most notably Io Shirai

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zD-nGhN_YmI
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Re: The Wrestling Thread

by RCBH928 Sat Sep 25, 2021 2:55 am

Sounds like Lucha was a lot of fun and I missed on it. I like when things are done out of passion and not based on what an excel sheet tells them whats going to be most profitable to them. It actually did something different and a new take on prowrestling. The cheesy stuff in this case actually adds to the fun of it. 4 seasons not bad for something that is supposed to be a tv series after all.

As for characters, they could have told the wrestlers they can wrestle else where with a different persona, kind of like how tv show characters do movies too.
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