Death From Above

At this point I don't watch much wrestling at all (someone links a match on social media I might watch it if there's nothing interesting on TV), but I can't really say I feel any more alienated from general wrestling fans now than at other times, because by the very nature of being a long time hardcore fan I've already been in that position since the mid-late 1990's. I mean, your average wrestling fan my age in their mid-30's legitimately thinks the Attitude Era was the absolute zenith of the WWE being an entertaining company despite the fact that 1999 has a legitimate case as the single worst year for the WWE product in history. By 1999 I had already basically turned off that product and was a few years into VHS tape trading (probably around then when we switched to DVD's and everything got cheaper to ship, praise). So it's not as if I have some long-time connection to Joe Average Wresting Fan's viewpoint on wrestling. As for the various internet tropes, honestly not much has really changed. You have the people that vastly overrate the importance of small American territories, Japan Otaku clan members, lucha zealots that see persecution everywhere, and you have people watching 100 hours of wrestling a week that "can't get into foreign wrestling because of the commentary". Nothing's really changed there it's just the numbers of each group fluctuate year to year. The only thing that's really changed is that Joe Average now has the WWE Network just so he can rewatch every Royal Rumble in a binge more easily. The point about social media is somewhat interesting as it is a somewhat dangerous thing where you can always find 100 people that Think Just Like You and discard the rest, but again I don't really see that as new, so much as it is "Things we did in the past, on steroids". It is a danger, but it's a manageable one with self-moderation. I honestly think people tend to overrate social changes, both in large scale issues and in small areas like the wrestling community. It's easy to see both the positive and negative in current scope but a lot of that same perspective about the past is easily lost. "there's lots of bad music made now, not like the 60's" because nobody has spun one of the thousands of genuinely trash psychedelic or bubblegum pop records that aren't any good in 40 years now.

This thread started in 2007 and the case was quite strong then. Has a decade (A D E C A D E) weakened or strengthened the case? I legitimately found Final Deletion hugely entertaining, but I'm not really sure it justifies, you know, everything.

Crowds were totally bored to death with him for a while at the end there. Honestly, if it wasn't for his internet rant about equal pay a while back this wouldn't even be much of a story.

Glacier's ring entrance was fucking great. WCW's unwillingness to let silliness win the day there was kind of a shame.

American Indie Wrestling tends to be vastly overrated simply for being American, which is funny because it's the exact same I Am Part Of A Very Special Club syndrome Japanese and Lucha fans have been accused of openly for 25 years. It started with Memphis but now at this point it's just "any random show south of New York state".

Incredible that Biden wasn't even the best promo last night. My one concern about them passing the torch to Hillary and... that other guy, whoever he is, is that neither of them is really an all time great on the stick the way Biden and Obama are. Both incredibly strong public speakers that know how to control an audience. Also the ex-CIA man last night was great. He looks like this nice little old man with glasses. Then he starts to talk and he's FIRED UP about the Russians and by the time he's done you're ready to do what must be done to prevent Red Dawn.

Bernie has been more like CM Punk in that he's attracted THOSE PEOPLE as fans that annoyingly hijack other perfectly good segments and they think they are "helping".

Let's also pause to remember that some poor boys had dreams of stardom in wrestling and were forced to be the Ding Dongs. Life isn't always fair. https://youtu.be/ZHcMK3a4Vj8

Truth Commission. A South African white power military activist group is a Really Not Good Content idea. I'm not even sure half the guys ever got above doing jobs on Shotgun Saturday Night either, so it's not as if the WWF even saw anything much in the idea either. Why they were even there is somewhat of a mystery. I was also going to initially answer the Stevie Ray-led nWo black and white, because goddamn. But Truth Commission was even worse.

I've been watching the convention. It's absurdist TV at it's best so far, but Trump will need to basically either be shot or shoot someone on the air to top Ted Cruz trying to steal his thunder followed by that Godfather walk-on.

There's going to have to be some degree of crossover guys, right? That can't seriously be the entirety of Smackdown's roster.

I would draft a dead person before Randy Orton in 2016 because it would create far more internet buzz but have the same effect on actual TV segment quality.

In the six month run leading into Wrestlemania I could only conclude a lot of people backstage hate Seamus and want to destroy his career. Like a good soldier he took every awful idea they had and tried his hardest to make it work. They completely killed him and I came out with way more respect for him.

I also agree the nWo rehashes totally missed the point of the nWo. It was like watching a band that got fans by being genuinely different, but then fuck, a few years and 4 albums later they realized they could sell you t-shirts. Time for a reunion tour. Which is fine for your most hardcore fans, I don't begrudge it. But it's not interesting to anyone else. Sweet, sweet t-shirt money. Who can say no? It's a very difficult, and dangerous game, to try and force nostalgia to be hip. Hell, look at Hollywood and their Fist of a Thousand Reboots. There is no exact science to what will stick and what won't.

I think it's almost become a total inevitability that the people in power want to make themselves the star. Evil Owner made it more obvious because it's where you see that shift from only applying to active wrestlers to (theoretical) non-wrestling talent. But it's not really a concept that was new with Evil Owner. Dusty Rhodes is the booker? Dusty is the star! Bill Dundee is the booker? Bill Dundee is the star! Kevin Nash is the booker? Kevin Nash is the star? Vince McMahon is the booker? Vince McMahon (and every other relative they can find) is the star! Eric Bischoff is the booker? Eric Bischoff is the star (put himself over Flair on a Starrcade)! Even good bookers did it, mostly. Riki Choshu is the booker? Riki Choshu wins a 5-on-1 handicap match as his farewell! Bill Watts is the booker? Once every few months, Bill Watts is the star! Paul Heyman owns ECW? Paul Heyman made himself the star to the point that 20 years later there are still people that actually think he was some kind of genius in ECW they got worked so hard. Evil boss shit is only part of what is now a continuous cycle that goes back about as far as we can go, just expressing what we've seen both from wrestling and non-wrestling talent. I loathe to praise Triple H at all, but *theoretically* his character transitioning from full time wrestler INTO evil boss could have been interesting. It certainly hasn't been. But it theoretically could have been. At least it was a fresh take. I can't even say Evil Boss is totally played out and can't work because Dario Cueto is right there. But there's a definite lack of variety with it in the current climate when you only have so many relevant companies and the power in the hands of Those Same People as it will be until they die.