Pro Wrestling fans.. Will It ever be the way it was? Good..

[JamesKurtovich]

Originally Posted by CoMaToast

WWE is just sailing

Yeah, WWE is simply existing and it sucks.

[Show spoiler]Really? Jack Swagger, Mr. MITB and World Heavyweight Champion?! I'm all for new talent, but the guy's last title was the ECW Championship.

[CoMaToast]

Originally Posted by JamesKurtovich

Yeah, WWE is simply existing and it sucks.

[Show spoiler]Really? Jack Swagger, Mr. MITB and World Heavyweight Champion?! I'm all for new talent, but the guy's last title was the ECW Championship.

nothing exciting about the guy at all.. SO he was an amateur wrestler.. big deal, he is a terrible pro wrestler and no fun to watch.. If thats what theyre trying to do , at least give the title to shelton benjamin..

[N8DOGG]

One of the many wrestling bio-books I've read. This one was just awesome, awesome, awesome! He holds absolutely nothing back. The stories of backstage antics and the treacherous travels are both humorous and shocking. I highly recommend the hardcover. The front and back inside covers have a 2 page spread of a drawing Bret did. The drawing is a compilation of wrestlers that made an impact on him during his career. It's pretty funny. It's a great read!

Hitman: My Real Life in the Cartoon World of Wrestling

[CoMaToast]

never have been a huge hart fan, well except for Owen, who had a personality... Nor do I like to read.. Is there a movie version of this?


I do like to hear about all the stuff behind the scenes , thats the only interesting part nowdays


Oh and what ever happened to Shane and Stephanie

[N8DOGG]

Originally Posted by CoMaToast

never have been a huge hart fan, well except for Owen, who had a personality... Nor do I like to read.. Is there a movie version of this?


I do like to hear about all the stuff behind the scenes , thats the only interesting part nowdays


Oh and what ever happened to Shane and Stephanie

No documentary version, but the behind-the-scenes is worth reading it alone! There's a lot of great, great stories! There might be an audio version...

[ChadFL]

Originally Posted by CoMaToast

never have been a huge hart fan, well except for Owen, who had a personality... Nor do I like to read.. Is there a movie version of this?


I do like to hear about all the stuff behind the scenes , thats the only interesting part nowdays


Oh and what ever happened to Shane and Stephanie

I agree 100%. I always considered Owen to be the superior wrestler and personality of the Hart brothers. Ashame he was so misused by the WWE. He should have been world champ at least once. His death stung me more than any other in wrestling.

[CoMaToast]

Originally Posted by ChadFL

I agree 100%. I always considered Owen to be the superior wrestler and personality of the Hart brothers. Ashame he was so misused by the WWE. He should have been world champ at least once. His death stung me more than any other in wrestling.

im VERY surprised his death wasnt caught on video or seen on the internet somewhere by now.. But I guess back then we didnt have the technology with camera/video phones and recorders the size of a credit card...

Its always one of those things I wanted to see what actually happened, because its hard to imagine it

[ChadFL]

Originally Posted by CoMaToast

im VERY surprised his death wasnt caught on video or seen on the internet somewhere by now.. But I guess back then we didnt have the technology with camera/video phones and recorders the size of a credit card...

Its always one of those things I wanted to see what actually happened, because its hard to imagine it

Ya, there were a couple things that apparently prevented it.
1. In 1999 cell phones were nowhere near as common as today and I can't recall knowing anyone who had a camera feature on their camera back then. And WWE didn't allow people to take camcorders into events.
2. There was a backstage interview taking place backstage that was shown on the WWF megatron which distracted most people in the crowd that night. Few people were aware Owen was repelling down to the ring much less watching him. Most didn't see him till he had already fallen to the ring.

Had it happened today then ya, you'd see it on YouTube from 25 different angles. Sometimes lack of technology can be a good thing.

[CoMaToast]

Originally Posted by ChadFL

Ya, there were a couple things that apparently prevented it.
1. In 1999 cell phones were nowhere near as common as today and I can't recall knowing anyone who had a camera feature on their camera back then. And WWE didn't allow people to take camcorders into events.
2. There was a backstage interview taking place backstage that was shown on the WWF megatron which distracted most people in the crowd that night. Few people were aware Owen was repelling down to the ring much less watching him. Most didn't see him till he had already fallen to the ring.

Had it happened today then ya, you'd see it on YouTube from 25 different angles. Sometimes lack of technology can be a good thing.

Very true.. Sad sad day... this is the best I got.. And he was WAY higher than 50 feet.. I work on trusses and this must be closer to 80 feet.. I dont like heights either..

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...4707600241708#

[N8DOGG]

Christopher "Kanyon" Klucsaritis suicide...

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_1...84-504083.html

R.I.P Kanyon.

[lettucenpico]

I grew up watching WWF. A lot has changed from the 90s to now. If someone turned against another, it was shocking back then, these days you kinda see it coming. There gimmicks and stories are predictable these days. My favorite show to watch was ECW. I think everyone can agree ECW revolutionized wrestling in some ways. WCW had there run also. With the NWO story..til it got overrated and over populated, Goldberg..then the era ended.

Wrestling isn't the same anymore, bring back the original ECW.

[MEHEARTJC]

Originally Posted by Rob71

There were quite a few tasteless skits. What about Dawn Marie giving Torrie Wilson's dad a heart attack on their honeymoon? Or HHH dressed as Kane humping a manniquin that was supposed to be a video of Kane and his dead girlfriend. Mae Young getting knocked up by Mark Henry and giving birth to a hand.

Forcing Jim Ross to kiss Vince's ass was pretty disgusting.

[MEHEARTJC]

Originally Posted by 500_Days_of_Night

My beef with the current wrestling product (mainly the WWE) is that they just throw all these new guys out there with no personality, no character, no ANYTHING and expect us to like them. Sure the kids eat it up, but what about the long-time fans?

Now don't get me wrong, there's still some good ones that manage to make it, but people like Sheamus, Kofi Kingston, Jack Swagger etc... I just don't care for. Now... why should I (being a fan ever since I was a kid in the 80's) want to like a person like Sheamus? He was brought up to Raw... beat up Jerry Lawler and "hurt" Jamie Noble, then they gave him the title. What's to like about that? The company is all about making money... but then they give the title to a guy who isn't over, doesn't have any sort of personality whatsoever and not one single piece of merchandise at the time.

I just don't know about it anymore. Seeing Shawn Michaels retire Monday night really put it into perspective for me. It was like part of my childhood died. That probably sounds silly, but the era he came from was what REALLY made me like wrestling. It's like they've all been wiped out and all we have left is Triple H and The Undertaker. That's freakin' sad.

That's what I said in my previous post that you people totally trashed. Jack Swagger, Cody Rhodes, Diabese, all bland, no mic skills, no character. And no wild outragerous wrestling managers anymore. what's up with that?

[Rob71]

Originally Posted by MEHEARTJC

Forcing Jim Ross to kiss Vince's ass was pretty disgusting.

I think that is a fetish for Vince, he had a few people "pucker up". I have never had a job I loved enough to do that. Of course one of the Divas..., that might be a different story.

[bandit29]

No it won't come back. Or at least not in the near future.

TNA is trying..but the old WCW/WWF has beens are holding it back. I know they are there to get people to watch..but do I really need to see Ric Flair in a wheel chair? Or the old drunk Scott Hall? He can barely stand up. At least RVD is there but he doesn't have much to work with.

WWE is just garbage right now. It hasn't been good in about 3-4 years. The younger stars have no charisma or character. Also no chair shots, no blood, no T & A, no thank you

[DetroitSportsFan]

Originally Posted by MEHEARTJC

Forcing Jim Ross to kiss Vince's ass was pretty disgusting.

The way WWE is treating Jim Ross right now is pretty disgusting.

Originally Posted by bandit29

TNA is trying..but the old WCW/WWF has beens are holding it back. I know they are there to get people to watch..but do I really need to see Ric Flair in a wheel chair? Or the old drunk Scott Hall? He can barely stand up. At least RVD is there but he doesn't have much to work with.

WWE is just garbage right now. It hasn't been good in about 3-4 years. The younger stars have no charisma or character. Also no chair shots, no blood, no T & A, no thank you

Agreed.

[ChadFL]

The Brian Pillman/Steve Austin "gun incident" was really bad. WWE got into a LOT of trouble over that one.

On the November 4, 1996 episode of Monday Night Raw, Pillman took part in the infamous "Pillman's got a gun" angle with Steve Austin. When Pillman initially arrived to the WWF, he aligned himself immediately with his longtime friend and former tag team partner Austin, serving as his lackey while he recovered. However when Pillman began noticeably favoring Austin's nemesis, Bret Hart, Austin had enough and brutally attacked him in the ring during an interview on an episode of WWF Superstars in October 1996. Austin and Pillman had been feuding for several weeks, and Austin had finally decided to take matters into his own hands and visit Pillman, whom he had already injured, at his home in Walton, Kentucky. WWF interviewer Kevin Kelly sat in Pillman's house with a camera crew and the Pillman family, while Pillman's friends surrounded the house to protect him. Austin was attacked by Pillman's friends as soon as he arrived but quickly subdued them. He then proceeded to break into Pillman's home and advance on his nemesis. Pillman responded by producing the same 9 mm Glock that he had displayed earlier and pointing it at a hesitant Austin, while Kelly and Pillman's wife Melanie screamed for help. The camera feed was then disrupted, with the scene fading to black. The on-scene director contacted commentator Vince McMahon and reported that he had heard "a couple explosions." The transmission was restored shortly before the end of Raw, and viewers witnessed Pillman's friends dragging Austin from the house while Pillman aimed the gun at him and announced his intention to "kill that son of a *****!" Pillman also slipped up by making the mistake of saying "****" on live television, which meant that it could not be edited out. The WWF (and Pillman personally) eventually apologized profusely for the entire angle, with Pillman claiming that the profanity "just slipped out".

[MEHEARTJC]

Originally Posted by bandit29

No it won't come back. Or at least not in the near future.

TNA is trying..but the old WCW/WWF has beens are holding it back. I know they are there to get people to watch..but do I really need to see Ric Flair in a wheel chair? Or the old drunk Scott Hall? He can barely stand up. At least RVD is there but he doesn't have much to work with.

WWE is just garbage right now. It hasn't been good in about 3-4 years. The younger stars have no charisma or character. Also no chair shots, no blood, no T & A, no thank you

I watched a recent episode of TNA Impact, and I have to say I was pleasantly entertained. It was fun seeing Sting back with the baseball bat and coming down from the rafters and seeing the Dudley's back in action.

The bits with Nash and Scott Hall were cringe worthy, but at least TNA has other new talent like Amazing Red. The show gave me chairs, dripping blood on Kurt Angle, T&A, and it was wild seeing Eric Biscoff get half his hair shaved off by Foley.

I think with some more polish and work, TNA can rise to give real competition to WWE. Remember that it took quite a few years for WCW to get insanely popular in the 90s.

[Cheerupemokid]

Originally Posted by styl3s

It is as good as it used to be go watch Ring of Honor

Exactly.

Honestly, I consider myself a pretty involved pro wrestling fan, for better or worse. Other than WWE PPVs, I hardly watch any WWE. And I've basically given up on TNA entirely as well. If I only had access to these two wrestling companies, I'd probably be close to done and only want to talk about "the good old days" too. But I opened myself up to the independent wrestling scene a long time ago, and that is what keeps me going.

I've seen a lot of comments in this thread of people wishing ECW were still around, or at least longing for the kind of unique environment that ECW provided. Longing for characters and storylines and great action. It is out there. You may have to pay to be a regular viewer of it, but it is out there if you want it.

CHIKARA is easily one of the most underrated wrestling promotions in the world. They run a family-friendly business, which means storylines and characters are closer to say 1980s WWF than anything else. Their top face tag team is The Colony, which is a group of ants (yes, ants) who are just plain awesome. The main storyline in the company right now revolves around a mystical "eye" that can brainwash people into following whoever has the "eye." If you like comic books, this company is for you. If you like the kind of wrestling TNA's X-Division highlights (when it is featured, rare as that may be) this company is for you. It is basically like WCW's cruiserweight division from the late '90s got their own company, but with a booker who knows how to tell a story. It is fantastic. And completely worth your attention. It is not like ECW in terms of the hardcore aspect (though Los Ice Creams are known for breaking out the sprinkles for some spots) but in terms of innovating something that nobody else is doing right now...CHIKARA is right there.

And there are tons of other companies. Ring Of Honor has a strong product that is easily accessable to most viewers (and they have a TV show on HDNET, though you can find it free on YouTube as well). Pro Wrestling Guerrilla has some fantastic in-ring work, probably the best overall on the scene. CZW is the place to go for your hardcore action. And there's tons of other companies to try. Heck I haven't even mentioned Japan or Mexico...there is so much out there.

Truth is, these aren't for everybody. I've always believed wrestling in general is meant to be a niche product. That the success of the WWF and WCW in the late 90s was an anomaly. The situation has corrected itself, and we're back to the niche groupings where WWE brings in around 3 million viewers a week, and smaller companies are considered highly successful when they have 1,000 people at a show. And that's okay. It just seems like in general there are three kinds of wrestling fans - the die-hard fans who will always watch in some capacity, the "current fad" fans who will eventually lose interest (or have lost interest) and moved on, and the "I wish things were the way they were before" fans who hate that the year 1999 (or for older fans, 1989) isn't still going strong today.

If you're not a die hard fan, you're never going to be convinced that wrestling doesn't suck today.

[Sabotage]

Originally Posted by tommyboy81

you mean because they actually wrestled?

Hahahaha don't say stuff you don't mean.