Gimmicks you'd like to see developed

[Loss]

Adrian Street is the exact opposite of what I'm thinking. I'm thinking a Steve Austin or Rock type who gets the exact same push, but just happens to be gay and it gets mentioned once in a blue moon.

[Mad Dog]

Ah gotcha. I think WCW would've been the best bet for developing that kind of gimmick eventually. I don't think the WWE could control themselves with that kind of character for very long.

[Loss]

My reasons for thinking this would be cool, by the way, is that positive role models for gay teens are rare. So it was entirely based on that, and not anything business related or even that I think would work, although it would be interesting to see how the audience would respond.

[Mad Dog]

I think it could work in the context that I think you could get that character over and get the fans to cheer it. There's been several gay characters introduced into comic books over the last 30ish years and the well thought out, well written ones have been well accepted by readers. Kevin Keller didn't create much controversy in Archie Comics either. I think you would just need a younger generation of writers and bookers to come in and for Vince and HHH to not get involved.

[NintendoLogic]

And I don't think wrestling does currently have an affluent audience.

It doesn't, at all. According to the most recent TVN study of sports fans over the age of 12, not only is the percentage of fans with no interest in wrestling higher than it's ever been, the ones who call themselves avid fans are disproportionately poor and uneducated.

 

But I would be interested in seeing just what would happen if a wrestling promotion made an earnest attempt to appeal to urban, college-educated liberals between 25 and 49 years old. It may have disastrous results.

Bryan Alvarez actually made a pretty good point along those lines. Cirque du Soleil is regarded as high-class entertainment that appeals to affluent audiences. But when you get right down to it, it's just the circus. I don't know that wrestling couldn't do something similar.

[El-P]

And I don't think wrestling does currently have an affluent audience.

It doesn't, at all. According to the most recent TVN study of sports fans over the age of 12, not only is the percentage of fans with no interest in wrestling higher than it's ever been, the ones who call themselves avid fans are disproportionately poor and uneducated.

I just watched Danny Doring & Roadkill vs Nova & Jazz, and now I'm gonna read a Samuel Beckett play. I feel like a total schizoïd freak....

 

Bryan Alvarez actually made a pretty good point along those lines. Cirque du Soleil is regarded as high-class entertainment that appeals to affluent audiences. But when you get right down to it, it's just the circus. I don't know that wrestling couldn't do something similar.

Maybe. But it's something that just doesn't exist today, and is to invent.

One can argue ECW was by some aspect the first post-modern wrestling promotion, although it mostly appealed to young male metalheads who wanted blood and nekkid girls I believe.

Roh is another post-modern wrestling company in that it's been self-consciously trying to get snowflakes (which doesn't quite work). And appealed to geeks, I guess.

So, we're not there quite yet.

[Dylan Waco]

Ask Dylan.

Although you'll have to suffer through way too much bad Dudley stuff, including that annoying freak Spike, and probably won't get enough Raven goodness, but that's subjectivity for you (I guess, I haven't seen the match list, but I know Dylan's tastes). Outside of that, I think you'll be fine with the set if you don't want to subject yourself to watch everything (which I wouldn't recommand to anyone unless you've got way too much time on your hands like I did. ECW had tons of really good and fun stuff, but quite a bit of really terrible shit too). Well, the yearly sets do have the best of ECW thus far from what I've seen.

You still don't grasp how these sets are made do you?

[Ricky Jackson]

Wrestling, WWE, must have a significant middle-class audience. Who buys the PPV's every month, the tickets to the house shows and big shows, the merch ($75 fucking dollars for a Sin Cara mask), all the crap that makes Vince millions every year? That shit isn't cheap.

[Marty]

Has there been a celebutante/famousque heel gimmick done in wrestling yet?

 

I'm not sure if it'd necessarily work (talk about something that's almost a given for X-Pac heat) but it was something that came to mind wrt this topic.

[Jingus]

I agree with Loss on wrestling badly needing some "just happens to be gay, not a central part of his gimmick" characters. Hell, I wrote one of those when I was doing some fantasy booking way back in 1999. The funny part is, there's plenty of wrestlers who are secretly gay or bi or pan or whatever in their personal life, but it's never ever mentioned during the course of the show. And the vast majority of all the gay gimmicks in wrestling tended to be played by straight dudes.

 

The gist of the plot is trying to get a wrestling promoter to present an Indian character as something other than an A-rab or mystic, etc.

Sonjay Dutt. He's occasionally been dressed in wacky Bollywood clothing, but mostly he's portrayed as a generic flippy cruiserweight who just happens to not be white.

 

But I would be interested in seeing just what would happen if a wrestling promotion made an earnest attempt to appeal to urban, college-educated liberals between 25 and 49 years old. It may have disastrous results.

Bryan Alvarez actually made a pretty good point along those lines. Cirque du Soleil is regarded as high-class entertainment that appeals to affluent audiences. But when you get right down to it, it's just the circus. I don't know that wrestling couldn't do something similar.

 

Chikara kinda-sorta does this at times. It's true that a lot of their stuff tends to be aimed at a family audience; but there's a strong sense of ironic hipsterism in a lot of their stuff. All the gimmicks based around old video games, the 80s/90s throwback special guest stars, and especially all of the self-mocking spots where they deconstruct various tropes and cliches. Plus the convoluted angles which require the audience to pay attention to the long-term storylines, which some have derisively knocked as "graphic novel booking". Their relative financial success in today's wrestling world tends to suggest that they've made at least a few steps in attracting that sort of audience.

 

PWG and a few others lean in that direction sometimes, just not quite as far. Kaiju Big Battel might've attracted a Cirque Du Soleil-ish crowd (by wrestling standards), but that company's erratic schedule ended up with them never being more than an underground phenomenon. Wrestle Society X tried to go for the MTV audience, but the first few shows were very poorly advertised and it was aborted long before it could've achieved any sort of future success.

 

Wrestling, WWE, must have a significant middle-class audience. Who buys the PPV's every month, the tickets to the house shows and big shows, the merch ($75 fucking dollars for a Sin Cara mask), all the crap that makes Vince millions every year? That shit isn't cheap.

The audience must be out there, but in my experience wrestling does tend to skew towards lower class audiences. Especially on the indy level. For whatever reason, you can often draw a bigger crowd in middle-of-nowhere hick towns than you can in a big city. Some of NWA Wildside's worst houses happened when they tried to run in downtown Atlanta; and that was a promotion which certainly tried to present a somewhat more sophisticated, less insulting-to-your-intelligence sort of product than most companies do. And at all the shows I ever worked, the trailer park demographic was pretty overwhelming in the crowd's makeup.

 

Has there been a celebutante/famousque heel gimmick done in wrestling yet?

 

I'm not sure if it'd necessarily work (talk about something that's almost a given for X-Pac heat) but it was something that came to mind wrt this topic.

What do you mean, exactly? There have been non-wrestling celebrities who got involved and did heelish stuff, especially with the run of guest Raw GMs over the past few years. Plus Dennis Rodman, Kevin Federline, David Arquette (after his nonsensical turn), etcetera.

[Loss]

Has there been a celebutante/famousque heel gimmick done in wrestling yet?

 

I'm not sure if it'd necessarily work (talk about something that's almost a given for X-Pac heat) but it was something that came to mind wrt this topic.

I don't know if MNM counts or not.

[Dooley]

Wrestling, WWE, must have a significant middle-class audience. Who buys the PPV's every month, the tickets to the house shows and big shows, the merch ($75 fucking dollars for a Sin Cara mask), all the crap that makes Vince millions every year? That shit isn't cheap.

I would venture to say it's parents just suffering along because their kids like it, rather than being actual "fans".

[Chess Knight]

I want to see a chicken-shit heel who always needs to win matches by cheating morph into a psychopathic murderous blackheart who isn't afraid of anything, while still being a heel. The shame is, a lot of wretling companies have shitty writers and would have no idea how to do it. I'll take a minute to think it up.

 

-----

 

Part 1- Chickenshit cocky cheating heel loses matches because he's shitty.

Part 2- Chickenshit cocky cheating heel starts cheating, only winning matches by count-out every now and then.

Part 3- Chickenshit cocky cheating heel eventually wins with pinfalls and submissions. Still, of course, cheating.

Part 4- Chickenshit cocky cheating heel eventually becomes IC or US Champion.

Part 5- Chickenshit cocky cheating heel is put in a match with an upper-card (why not an alledged "psycho") like Randy Orton. Loses, but does surprisingly well and brags.

Part 6- Chickenshit cocky cheating heel gets a re-match with Orton, say, if he wins, he gets a shot at Orton's World Title. He "walks away from the match" down the ramp, only for Orton to follow him. He kicks Orton in the head and wins by count-out. That cheatin' bastard.

Part 7- Chickenshit cocky cheating heel v Randy Orton for a World Title on PPV. General Manager makes it No count-out/DQ. Chickenshit cocky cheating heel doesn't act cocky, doesn't cheat, or doesn't act chickenshit to everyone's surprise. Chickenshit cocky cheating heel gradually becomes evil psychotic killer and wins Title with a new gimmick.

Part 8- Chickenshit cocky cheating heel cuts a promo next TV taping. Something along the lines of "This is the real me" or "I fooled you all."

 

That has a ton of flaws, but can be touched up with some real thought and it's probably better than Sheamus talking about winning the Royal Rumble only for Cody Rhodes to come down and say "nah they'll remember I eliminated 6 guys" out of fucking nowhere. Seriously, the amount of feuds that begin in random interruptions nowadays is bullshit.

 

------

Also, in a slightly different scenario, I'd like for a "fluke" World Champion to get in over his head, then lose the Title, and then go nuts with psychopath rage because he didn't realise how important the title was to him, and that he took it for granted.

 

 

 

 

 

I like psychopath heel gimmicks.

[Marty]

Has there been a celebutante/famousque heel gimmick done in wrestling yet?

 

I'm not sure if it'd necessarily work (talk about something that's almost a given for X-Pac heat) but it was something that came to mind wrt this topic.

What do you mean, exactly? There have been non-wrestling celebrities who got involved and did heelish stuff, especially with the run of guest Raw GMs over the past few years. Plus Dennis Rodman, Kevin Federline, David Arquette (after his nonsensical turn), etcetera.

 

Celebutante/famousque basically means someone who got famous for not real reason at all. K-Fed would fall under this category for sure. But what I mean is if wrestling ever tried developing someone's character like this, especially from day one of that person's character. So what it would involve is that person, at the very least, being nothing overly special, but getting every opportunity in the book. To some extent, Drew McIntyre's early character was like this ("handpicked by Vince McMahon as his next champion", having some power over Teddy Long due to Vince liking him, etc.) but I'm not sure fully if that's what I'm going for, since Drew even then had some upside (of course now, he's really, really good in the ring, IMO). I also thought, with wrestling crowds being lowest common denominator audiences and celebutante/famousque people being generally hated, it'd be something they'd try. Of course, for all the reasons listed, it could turn people off, which is why I wasn't sure myself if this was a gimmick I'd like to see developed.

 

Loss mentioned MNM. I'd need to rewatch a lot of their stuff, as I stopped watching mostly from 2004 to 2007. I've seen a few of their really good tags with the Hardys and Rey/Batista, but I'm not sure how effective they were as characters under what I described. I remember the entrance, but I'm not sure if the entrance got that much heat. Remember some online friends of mine thinking it was cool more than anything else.

[Loss]

I see what you're saying. Someone who basically just coasts along and is somehow successful without doing anything, and that's central to their presentation. The Kardashians are the biggest heels in pop culture, so that's not a bad idea.

[JerryvonKramer]

I don't know if you guys have ever seen Jeremy Kyle ... this man:

 

 

He presents a trash day-time talk show here in the UK, but I've heard rumours that he has a show in the US now too.

 

It's essentially a bit like Jerry Springer only his gimmick is that he shouts disgustedly at the guests, casting moral judgement on their lives, telling them to "get off their backsides" and so on. His whole deal is to berate the deparved people he gets on the show. It can be funny to watch, but it's also quite disturbing.

 

I don't know how it would translate, but Kyle would be a natural heel in wrestling.

 

Remember how IRS would come out lambasting all the tax cheats in the crowd or how Rude would call them fat slobs etc? A Jeremy Kyle-type character could do that.

 

Has there ever been a heel who specifically targets the trailer trash element in the crowd? Not in a class-based gimmick, but more of a "look at the way you people live your lives" sort of way.

[Loss]

The Bodydonnas sort of did that, but I see what you're saying.

 

I think so much of any gimmick idea is also dependent upon the general tone and setting of the promotion. That gimmick would be very different in a PG promotion than a more risque one.

[S.L.L.]

Ask Dylan.

Although you'll have to suffer through way too much bad Dudley stuff, including that annoying freak Spike, and probably won't get enough Raven goodness, but that's subjectivity for you (I guess, I haven't seen the match list, but I know Dylan's tastes). Outside of that, I think you'll be fine with the set if you don't want to subject yourself to watch everything (which I wouldn't recommand to anyone unless you've got way too much time on your hands like I did. ECW had tons of really good and fun stuff, but quite a bit of really terrible shit too). Well, the yearly sets do have the best of ECW thus far from what I've seen.

You still don't grasp how these sets are made do you?

 

Even putting aside that, he's complaining about how awful the Dudley Boys were, and especially Spike, and how excess focus on them squeezed out focus on more deserving wrestlers like...Raven? First complaining about people not liking Nobuhiko Takada, now sticking up for goddamn Raven?

 

Anyway, more to the actual point of the thread...Loss, are you familiar with Lazz? Quote Pete Stein from an old DVDVR Road Report:

 

If you got it, flaunt it. Number One And The Best about this match was this: Here you are in rural the-South-shall-rise-again North Carolina, and a male wrestler who does a Britney Spears gimmick and lap-dances a security guard during his entrance is the most over BABYFACE on the first half of the show. Unbe-fucking-lievable.

Obviously, that's not what you're talking about, I would need one of the guys who was actually there to tell me how representative, say, OMEGA crowds were of the general population of the south, but it does give one hope. I mean, it's wrestling. You gotta have your Bobo Brazils and whatnot before you can have The Rock. You can't throw them into tolerance and expect them to adapt easily. They need those baby steps away from "boo the evil stereotype" to "cheer the likeable stereotype" before we can get to "the trait we usually stereotype is completely incidental to this character". I'm inclined to think that they'd be able to get there with gay wrestlers, though it seems unlikely at the moment that they'll try.

[Loss]

Yeah, and I'm not even sure the time is right to try. Wrestling is behind the rest of society, and there aren't exactly a huge number of openly gay pro athletes. When football players can be out of the closet and it's just mentioned matter-of-factly in video packages, wrestling will follow suit ... about 15 years later.

[Loss]

Also, I've seen various examples mentioned here. Even Lazz. To me, those aren't gay gimmicks. Those are flamboyant gimmicks. The announcers never said "Adrian Street is gay". Even in WWE, they would never say Billy and Chuck were gay. TNA two years ago wouldn't use the word with Orlando Jordan when he was doing whatever he was doing. So until someone actually says the words "I'm gay" as part of their gimmick, I consider it uncharted territory.

[Slasher]

Thing is, why does it even matter? If you are talking about the gay character trait being low key, to the point it's only mentioned in passing, then what is the point of bringing it up? Acknowledging the gimmick puts a spotlight on the character, and that seems to be something you don't want, am I mistaken in this assumption?

[El-P]

Even putting aside that, he's complaining about how awful the Dudley Boys were, and especially Spike, and how excess focus on them squeezed out focus on more deserving wrestlers like...Raven? First complaining about people not liking Nobuhiko Takada, now sticking up for goddamn Raven?

Yep. I enjoy Raven a lot.

 

EDIT : and Dylan (among others) doesn't always get my dry humour.

[Loss]

Thing is, why does it even matter? If you are talking about the gay character trait being low key, to the point it's only mentioned in passing, then what is the point of bringing it up? Acknowledging the gimmick puts a spotlight on the character, and that seems to be something you don't want, am I mistaken in this assumption?

Because it's a big deal that it's not a big deal. It's a sign of wrestling's maturity that they can just have someone on their roster that happens to be gay where they don't go to it for cheap heat. Similar to using a black wrestler and not race baiting.

[Log]

Thing is, why does it even matter? If you are talking about the gay character trait being low key, to the point it's only mentioned in passing, then what is the point of bringing it up? Acknowledging the gimmick puts a spotlight on the character, and that seems to be something you don't want, am I mistaken in this assumption?

Not to speak for Loss, but I think he'd like to see it as something that's not weird. Just, the guy is gay. He's a wrestler by profession, who is a homosexual. Kinda like if you were an accountant. If there was a gay guy who worked in your office, would he be a gay accountant? He'd just be an accountant.

[Slasher]

That's what I mean, Log. If he's just a wrestler who happens to be gay, then he is just a wrestler. I do understand the whole concept of being progressive enough to accept a character for being gay without going trailer trash homophobic on them, but at the same time, it is an easy heat grab. When DX was scheduled to do a parody of the N.O.D., they actually had to establish character quirks for it to work. Wrestling has proved to me time and time again that their level of thought process is very much so shallow. I imagine that lesser talented heels would pick on that trait just for cheap heat, and that's not what you want, right?