Since I didn't get the chance... - Page 2

~~Leo656~~ · 02-18-2004, 05:52 PM

...and since there's no one more qualified than me, I figured I'd reply to a few of the things brought up in the Wrestling thread.

-WCW's History-
Until the mid-80s, the majority of the National Wrestling Alliance was owned by Jim Crockett Promotions. In the late-80s, Crockett's family ran into financial problems and sold their territory to Ted Turner, who had showcased pro wrestling on his programs since the beginning of his SuperStation WTBS. Turner immediately renamed his product World Championship Wrestling, and for a period of several years Turner's yes-men ran WCW into the ground. In 1993, WCW named Eric Bischoff as its new Executive Producer, and he revitalized the product and made it a more "professional" product, to the point where in 1994 they were able to woo Hulk Hogan to the promotion. In 1995, Turner demanded that a live show be aired on TNT on Monday nights to compete with Vince McMahon's WWF Raw, and WCW Nitro was born. Turner and Vince had been business partners in the past, but had a falling out, and Ted always hoped to beat Vince at his own game.

Up until 1998, WCW trashed the WWF in the ratings, and, in the opinion of a lot of fans, in the actual product, offering the fans matches they had never seen before on a big stage, like Hogan vs Flair, Bret Hart vs Flair, and showcasing exciting new wrestlers from Japan, Mexico and all over the world who had never been seen before, while the WWF mostly had the "Shawn Michaels and HHH have their hands in Vince's pants, so only them and their friends ever get to look good" show. Eventually, the WWF caught the public eye again with their aggressive new marketing strategy and risque' storylines, and Bischoff was fired and replaced with former WWF writer Vince Russo. Russo is, for lack of a better word, a hack who couldn't write a decent wrestling show if his life depended on it, and thought the way to lead WCW back to the promised land was through penis jokes and making fun of Jim Ross, a WWF announcer. Many WCW wrestlers, fed up with the company's lack of direction and reluctance to push anyone as a top star except for Hogan, Kevin Nash, and Diamond Dallas Page, left for the WWF.

Around this time, Turner and Time Warner merged with AOL, and a bunch of AOL lawyers and number-crunchers were sent in to run WCW, and since lawyers and accountants have no idea about things like marketing individual talent, promotion, writing storylines, and all the stuff involved in running a wrestling show, their micro-managing ran WCW into the ground in less than a year. By 2001, WCW, which less than two years before was worth $250 million, was sold to Vince McMahon and absorbed into the WWF for less than $20 million. After teasing the fans with a "WWF vs WCW" angle, Vince returned to his normal ways of pettiness, making all the WCW wrestlers look like idiots, firing some of them and jobbing the others out to the point that their careers were left in ruin. Only Booker T managed to survive and stay relatively popular.

For a more detailed account, check out the new DVD, "The Monday Night Wars", one of the single greatest behind-the-scenes DVDs I have ever seen on the greatest period ever in wrestling history.

-RAW vs SMACKDOWN, AND WHY THEY SPLIT-
A couple years ago, the WWF (now WWE) realized that they had a ton of guys under contract, yet only a few of them were ever able to be showcased on TV. How much time a wrestler gets on TV is directly related to how popular they are, and, therefore, how much they earn. As a solution, the WWF roster was split in half, with half of the wrestlers going to RAW and half of them going to SMACKDOWN, so everybody more or less got a fair shake rather than HHH and Shawn Michaels being all over EVERY show. Believe me, it's much, MUCH better this way.

As for the differences, RAW mostly showcases "big name" stars, like HHH (the biggest politician in history and the biggest cancer in the wrestling business), Shawn Michaels and Steve Austin, while SMACKDOWN has more younger, smaller, more athletic wrestlers like Eddy Guerrero, Kurt Angle and others. Basically, people can choose between two different products. Like faster matches and younger stars? Watch Smackdown. Want to watch established veterans and more intense storylines? Watch RAW. Personally, I prefer RAW because being live, it has an atmosphere that Smackdown can never have because SD is taped, and even though some of the RAW guys are older and not as fast as the SD guys, they are more experienced and have a knack for making their angles not seem ridiculous. Case in point, even though I know it is scripted, HBK and HHH made me absolutely HATE them for the way they've held Benoit down the past few weeks on RAW; conversely, the angle with Jamie Noble on SD with his girlfriend Nidia being "blind" made me change channels in disgust because everyone involved was such a horrible actor it sucked all the drama out of the situation. Both shows have wrestlers I like and want to see, however. Bottom line for me: Smackdown has some better wrestlers, but Raw has better writers and the wrestlers are better performers overall, both in and out of the ring.

-RANDY ORTON-
In my opinion, the most overrated, over-hyped up and comer in wrestling today. His moves are sloppy and loose, his promos are stiff and sound like they're being read off of cue cards, and his finisher the RKO is an absolute insult to DDP and the Diamond Cutter, THE greatest finisher in wrestling, ever. He's the new Rock, being forced down the fans throats until they accept him, at which point he will become an uber-face. Check some tape of Rock from 1998; he and Orton even dress the same.
He still has time to impress me, however. He's young, he can get better. I hated Goldberg for a long time, but over time he grew on me, particularly because his intensity and his "prescence" more than make up for his lack of moves. HHH, on the other hand, is STILL the wrestling equivalent of NyQuil, and puts me to sleep just as frequently as he did in 1995.

-WWF to WWE-
The World Wrestling Federation lost a lawsuit to the World Wildlife Fund two years ago, and had to give up the name and inititials, so they became World Wrestling Entertainment. One joke going around these days is that since the NWA: Total Nonstop Action group is now owned by Panda Energy, if the NWA ever reaches WCW status and beats the WWE in the wrestling war, it will be the second time the WWF got beat by a Panda.

-"FAKE"-
I hate that word. It has nothing to do with wrestling. Pro wrestling is not an athletic competion, it is an exhibition, it is entertainment. People get hurt, all too often, despite popular opinion. Knees are blown out, necks broken, pretty much every kind of athletic-based injury you can imagine, except that unlike other sports, wrestlers have NO off-season, and often have to wrestle through injuries that leave pro football and baseball players on the shelf. For everyone who rags on Hulk Hogan's age and lack of mobility, keep in mind that he hasn't had a medial collateral ligament in his left knee since 1999 or so, and has endured countless surgeries just so he can have the "one last great match" that he hopes to end his career on. Same goes for Kevin Nash. Wrestlers bleed, fall, and break bones just like any other athletes. And they do it all for less money and respect than so-called "real" athletes get, for the sake of entertaining people. To these men and women, wrestling is as "real" as it can possibly get. The storylines, some interviews, and the finishes of the matches are scripted, but the pain, suffering, and blood are all too real. Particularly for the young guys breaking in, who often have to sleep in their cars as they drive all over the country to wrestle in front of 50 people for twenty bucks. Tell one of them that they're "wasting their time" on something "fake", and see how fast they break your arm and teach you the meaning of respect. I'm friends with a few indy wrestlers, and believe me, they don't tolerate disrespect. To them, there's nothing more real than what they do.

People can like or not like wrestling, I really don't care. But to those who dislike it, what point is there telling those who do why they shouldn't like it? I don't try to change anyone's opinions, but I DO try and edjucate people so that at least they can make informed opinions rather than ignorant ones. If you like wrestling, good. If you don't, fine, but don't knock people that do like it.

"That night in Greenville... I went back in the dressing room, saw you standing there and you said 'God, that's good TV'... IT WAS REAL! You think Sting would be sittin' in the back, crying in the dressing room just as bad as I was, if it wasn't real?!" -- Ric Flair, to Eric Bischoff, 1999

02-18-2004, 05:52 PM	#1
~~Leo656~~ Banned Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: nWo Country Posts: 27,703	Since I didn't get the chance... ...and since there's no one more qualified than me, I figured I'd reply to a few of the things brought up in the Wrestling thread. -WCW's History- Until the mid-80s, the majority of the National Wrestling Alliance was owned by Jim Crockett Promotions. In the late-80s, Crockett's family ran into financial problems and sold their territory to Ted Turner, who had showcased pro wrestling on his programs since the beginning of his SuperStation WTBS. Turner immediately renamed his product World Championship Wrestling, and for a period of several years Turner's yes-men ran WCW into the ground. In 1993, WCW named Eric Bischoff as its new Executive Producer, and he revitalized the product and made it a more "professional" product, to the point where in 1994 they were able to woo Hulk Hogan to the promotion. In 1995, Turner demanded that a live show be aired on TNT on Monday nights to compete with Vince McMahon's WWF Raw, and WCW Nitro was born. Turner and Vince had been business partners in the past, but had a falling out, and Ted always hoped to beat Vince at his own game. Up until 1998, WCW trashed the WWF in the ratings, and, in the opinion of a lot of fans, in the actual product, offering the fans matches they had never seen before on a big stage, like Hogan vs Flair, Bret Hart vs Flair, and showcasing exciting new wrestlers from Japan, Mexico and all over the world who had never been seen before, while the WWF mostly had the "Shawn Michaels and HHH have their hands in Vince's pants, so only them and their friends ever get to look good" show. Eventually, the WWF caught the public eye again with their aggressive new marketing strategy and risque' storylines, and Bischoff was fired and replaced with former WWF writer Vince Russo. Russo is, for lack of a better word, a hack who couldn't write a decent wrestling show if his life depended on it, and thought the way to lead WCW back to the promised land was through penis jokes and making fun of Jim Ross, a WWF announcer. Many WCW wrestlers, fed up with the company's lack of direction and reluctance to push anyone as a top star except for Hogan, Kevin Nash, and Diamond Dallas Page, left for the WWF. Around this time, Turner and Time Warner merged with AOL, and a bunch of AOL lawyers and number-crunchers were sent in to run WCW, and since lawyers and accountants have no idea about things like marketing individual talent, promotion, writing storylines, and all the stuff involved in running a wrestling show, their micro-managing ran WCW into the ground in less than a year. By 2001, WCW, which less than two years before was worth $250 million, was sold to Vince McMahon and absorbed into the WWF for less than $20 million. After teasing the fans with a "WWF vs WCW" angle, Vince returned to his normal ways of pettiness, making all the WCW wrestlers look like idiots, firing some of them and jobbing the others out to the point that their careers were left in ruin. Only Booker T managed to survive and stay relatively popular. For a more detailed account, check out the new DVD, "The Monday Night Wars", one of the single greatest behind-the-scenes DVDs I have ever seen on the greatest period ever in wrestling history. -RAW vs SMACKDOWN, AND WHY THEY SPLIT- A couple years ago, the WWF (now WWE) realized that they had a ton of guys under contract, yet only a few of them were ever able to be showcased on TV. How much time a wrestler gets on TV is directly related to how popular they are, and, therefore, how much they earn. As a solution, the WWF roster was split in half, with half of the wrestlers going to RAW and half of them going to SMACKDOWN, so everybody more or less got a fair shake rather than HHH and Shawn Michaels being all over EVERY show. Believe me, it's much, MUCH better this way. As for the differences, RAW mostly showcases "big name" stars, like HHH (the biggest politician in history and the biggest cancer in the wrestling business), Shawn Michaels and Steve Austin, while SMACKDOWN has more younger, smaller, more athletic wrestlers like Eddy Guerrero, Kurt Angle and others. Basically, people can choose between two different products. Like faster matches and younger stars? Watch Smackdown. Want to watch established veterans and more intense storylines? Watch RAW. Personally, I prefer RAW because being live, it has an atmosphere that Smackdown can never have because SD is taped, and even though some of the RAW guys are older and not as fast as the SD guys, they are more experienced and have a knack for making their angles not seem ridiculous. Case in point, even though I know it is scripted, HBK and HHH made me absolutely HATE them for the way they've held Benoit down the past few weeks on RAW; conversely, the angle with Jamie Noble on SD with his girlfriend Nidia being "blind" made me change channels in disgust because everyone involved was such a horrible actor it sucked all the drama out of the situation. Both shows have wrestlers I like and want to see, however. Bottom line for me: Smackdown has some better wrestlers, but Raw has better writers and the wrestlers are better performers overall, both in and out of the ring. -RANDY ORTON- In my opinion, the most overrated, over-hyped up and comer in wrestling today. His moves are sloppy and loose, his promos are stiff and sound like they're being read off of cue cards, and his finisher the RKO is an absolute insult to DDP and the Diamond Cutter, THE greatest finisher in wrestling, ever. He's the new Rock, being forced down the fans throats until they accept him, at which point he will become an uber-face. Check some tape of Rock from 1998; he and Orton even dress the same. He still has time to impress me, however. He's young, he can get better. I hated Goldberg for a long time, but over time he grew on me, particularly because his intensity and his "prescence" more than make up for his lack of moves. HHH, on the other hand, is STILL the wrestling equivalent of NyQuil, and puts me to sleep just as frequently as he did in 1995. -WWF to WWE- The World Wrestling Federation lost a lawsuit to the World Wildlife Fund two years ago, and had to give up the name and inititials, so they became World Wrestling Entertainment. One joke going around these days is that since the NWA: Total Nonstop Action group is now owned by Panda Energy, if the NWA ever reaches WCW status and beats the WWE in the wrestling war, it will be the second time the WWF got beat by a Panda. -"FAKE"- I hate that word. It has nothing to do with wrestling. Pro wrestling is not an athletic competion, it is an exhibition, it is entertainment. People get hurt, all too often, despite popular opinion. Knees are blown out, necks broken, pretty much every kind of athletic-based injury you can imagine, except that unlike other sports, wrestlers have NO off-season, and often have to wrestle through injuries that leave pro football and baseball players on the shelf. For everyone who rags on Hulk Hogan's age and lack of mobility, keep in mind that he hasn't had a medial collateral ligament in his left knee since 1999 or so, and has endured countless surgeries just so he can have the "one last great match" that he hopes to end his career on. Same goes for Kevin Nash. Wrestlers bleed, fall, and break bones just like any other athletes. And they do it all for less money and respect than so-called "real" athletes get, for the sake of entertaining people. To these men and women, wrestling is as "real" as it can possibly get. The storylines, some interviews, and the finishes of the matches are scripted, but the pain, suffering, and blood are all too real. Particularly for the young guys breaking in, who often have to sleep in their cars as they drive all over the country to wrestle in front of 50 people for twenty bucks. Tell one of them that they're "wasting their time" on something "fake", and see how fast they break your arm and teach you the meaning of respect. I'm friends with a few indy wrestlers, and believe me, they don't tolerate disrespect. To them, there's nothing more real than what they do. People can like or not like wrestling, I really don't care. But to those who dislike it, what point is there telling those who do why they shouldn't like it? I don't try to change anyone's opinions, but I DO try and edjucate people so that at least they can make informed opinions rather than ignorant ones. If you like wrestling, good. If you don't, fine, but don't knock people that do like it. "That night in Greenville... I went back in the dressing room, saw you standing there and you said 'God, that's good TV'... IT WAS REAL! You think Sting would be sittin' in the back, crying in the dressing room just as bad as I was, if it wasn't real?!" -- Ric Flair, to Eric Bischoff, 1999