The Wrestling Thread

[Gamerforlife]

Epic promo by AJ Lee on Raw. My first thought was "pipe bomb", and looking at some reactions online others thought the same thing. She's the best female on their roster, Bellas be damned (they do play great heels though, but AJ is the total package)

Speaking of the Bellas, someone should have slapped them during AJ's promo. They would not SHUT UP. You could actually hear them over AJ's voice and Aj had a GODDAMN MIC.

[Menegrothx]

It's such a shame how RVD has overshadowed Lynn so much.

I think Lynn is still working the independent circuit. He did appear on TNA Impact not too long ago when they had some ex-TNA Star X-Division match.

He retired this year
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1578 ... inneapolis

Heavy on Wrestling is putting on the “The Last F’n Show” at the Minneapolis Convention Center with a 6:00 p.m. bell time on Saturday, March 23. The show is a pretty loaded one for an independent promotion. The card includes Rhino, Perry Saturn, Al Snow and ECW originals Tommy Dreamer, Blue Meanie and Sabu. The main event being advertised is a tag match with Jerry Lynn and Horace the Psychopath taking on JB Trask and X-Pac.

[TheSegaSaturnGuy]

Epic promo by AJ Lee on Raw. My first thought was "pipe bomb", and looking at some reactions online others thought the same thing. She's the best female on their roster, Bellas be damned (they do play great heels though, but AJ is the total package)

Speaking of the Bellas, someone should have slapped them during AJ's promo. They would not SHUT UP. You could actually hear them over AJ's voice and Aj had a GODDAMN MIC.

When I was watching that promo I was thinking "What the heck? Is AJ turning the entire Divas division into faces at one time?" haha. Also is anyone seeing that they are just rehashing the same story that they did a while back between Orton and Kofi? They even used the same color paint to ruin the car!

[Gamerforlife]

Epic promo by AJ Lee on Raw. My first thought was "pipe bomb", and looking at some reactions online others thought the same thing. She's the best female on their roster, Bellas be damned (they do play great heels though, but AJ is the total package)

Speaking of the Bellas, someone should have slapped them during AJ's promo. They would not SHUT UP. You could actually hear them over AJ's voice and Aj had a GODDAMN MIC.

When I was watching that promo I was thinking "What the heck? Is AJ turning the entire Divas division into faces at one time?" haha. Also is anyone seeing that they are just rehashing the same story that they did a while back between Orton and Kofi? They even used the same color paint to ruin the car!

Depends on your point of view. I know AJ is technically a heel, but for me she was doing a CM Punk-like babyface pipe bomb against a group of useless divas who might as well be heels because they are so easy to hate (even Natalia, whose TV character has been crap for ages now).

I think WWE is doing a LOT of rehashing right now, which has drawn criticism from some people (the guys on the PWTorch podcast have been particularly whiny and bitchy lately). In my eyes, WWE is rehashing GOOD stuff. So I'm fine with it. They're falling back on things that have worked in the past and I have absolutely no problem with that. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Right now, they are running a heel dominant program, which I love. I'm thoroughly enjoying seeing The Shield, Orton, Heyman, and Triple H running things. It makes it much easier for marks to get invested in the faces when they are the ones fighting against the odds and creates better TV.

[Menegrothx]

[Gamerforlife]

Chris Benoit was never one of the best. He was just a good wrestler, but he had no charisma and was crap on the mic. Punk and Bryan are the total package. They've built great characters full of charisma who can bring it on the mic, and they are also providing some of the best matches in the WWE. Punk and Bryan are leagues better than Benoit ever was

Eddie on the other hand, he was awesome. Far more talented than Benoit. He was the real deal.

[Rurouni_Fencer]

Chris Benoit was never one of the best. He was just a good wrestler, but he had no charisma and was crap on the mic. Punk and Bryan are the total package. They've built great characters full of charisma who can bring it on the mic, and they are also providing some of the best matches in the WWE. Punk and Bryan are leagues better than Benoit ever was

Eddie on the other hand, he was awesome. Far more talented than Benoit. He was the real deal.

^ THIS all fucking day! I miss Eddie so much...

[flex wood]

I don't watch wrestling but I figured I'd post here because I just ran into Batista in the locker room at my gym. I'm pretty sure the other 4 guys he was with were also wrestlers but he was the only one I recognized. I was surprised because he really wasn't all that big compared to a few of my friends.

[Menegrothx]

WWE (and formerly WWF&WCW) exaggerates the height and weight of its wrestlers, even small ones. And chances are that since he quit wrestling, he also quit using steroids.

[Menegrothx]

I was just watching Unforgiven 2001 which has one of the greatest endings to a PPV ever imo

And upon checking it on youtube, I noticed how people talked how they made Stone Cold look weak etc.
Now that's one thing that has always bugged me about the "sports entertainment" side of wrestling, that's more apparent in the big federations. Why the heel always has to be made look so weak etc? It's utter bullshit imo when wrestlers like Stone Cold, Rock, Christian, Y2J, Bret Hart etc are made look weak and cowardly because they're heels at the moment. I've read that WWE actually permits heels from using "cool looking" moves so the audience wouldn't cheer them. I like the concept that even though the winner is predetermined, there can still be an athlethic "the better man shall win" thing going on, with no hard feelings and a handshake after the match. Stuff you see in cruiserweight matches, and some of the matches Kurt Angle and Chris Benoit had. There was no need for a good guy vs bad guy setting, the amazing technical wrestling was enough to keep the audience satisfied. In fact you could say that who won and who lost was almost irrelevant (though thats' something that's quite common in wrestling)
Why should WWE or TNA decide for me who to cheer?

Now I'm not saying that there's no need for heels and faces at all. I just don't like it when the roster is so artificially divided into guys you're not supposed to like and guys you're supposed to support. The fact that when it comes to face/heel turns and remembering what happened in the past, most pro wrestling federations are very inconsistent. The one thing that original ECW did well is keeping track of history and staying consistent.

It's great to have characters that every one despises and that will make you to pay money to see them getting beat up (Vince McMahon, William Regal, Muhamad Hassan, Dudley Boys in ECW etc).
2000 is my favorite year in WWF/WWE and (un)coincidentally that's when Edge&Christian and Kurt Angle were doing their thing. Edge and Christian were heels but still you just couldn't help but love them, they were such charismatic and fun goofballs, and they were basically faces despite being heels.

Kurt Angle is such a complex character. He would cheat and use dirty tricks and mock the audience and other wrestlers in a heelish fashion. He had a superiority complex and he'd make ridiculous excuses every time he lost. But he was also an amazing athlete, and he had such charisma and microphone skills and he was just so funny that when he did all that stuff, it made you like him because he was so funny and entertaining. And then audience, despite admiring his talents, would chant him you suck, What? etc to make him mad, and he'd get frustrated, which was always a blast. Not to forget his goofy/dorky side, like wearing the mini cowboy hat, the king of the ring outfit, parodying stone cold with the milk truck etc.
He's just such a lovable and entertaining character, and also defies the classic good guy/bad guy paradigm in my opinion.

And then there's guys like Eddie Guerrero that were most lovable when they were being lying, cheating bastards.
That's what I'd like to see more of. All kinds of diverse characters. There's still a market and need for those cowardly, weak characters, but I don't think there should be just black and white, because obviously turning some characters into cowardly heels or save the day faces just doesn't fit them at all and ruins them.

The heel turns of Stone Cold and Y2J in 2001 did a lot of damage to their careers imo. I think you could same the same thing about Rikishi in 2000. People didn't want to see Stone Cold as a cowardly weakling (and it was kind jarring, as SCSA had been like Superman for years before aligning himself with Vince). It's the same thing with Y2J. He was the third most popular guy in the company behind Rock and Stone Cold and was massively popular and on his way to greatness. He was turned heel, and eventhough he became the first Undispited champion, it was largely meaningless. His career took a downturn and for a long time he wasn't very entertaining in the role of a whiny heel. People simply didn't want to see that character, they'd rather cheer the old version, they weren't intrested at all in the heel. You could argue that due to health problems Austin wasn't going to be a main event scene guy anymore by that point anyways, but Y2J could've been the next big thing, but instead he was fairly irrelevant midcad guy in 2002-2005.
Who do we have to thank for this? My guess is


Rock's heel turn in 2003 was great on the other hand. It depends on the person and on the character whether something like that works. The roles of heels and faces shouldn't be black and white. The Y2J and Stone Cold heel turns could've worked if they could've played different kinds of characters, they still could've been heel, just not "archetype heels".