Xxcjb01xX [PIECE OF: SH-]
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Writer, Lover of all things Wrestling. Analytical, Critical, Lovable (hopefully). Lets all have fun!
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Post by Xxcjb01xX [PIECE OF: SH-] on Dec 16, 2022 17:59:41 GMT -5
I watched Dynamite with my 17 year old brother and sister a couple weeks ago. You know who they thought looked cool? Orange Cassidy, Darby Allin, and the Acclaimed Said it before but my friend enjoys stories, arcs, and character more than anything that has to do with size, and that's why her favorite AEW wrestlers are the likes of Orange Cassidy, Eddie Kingston, and Hangman Adam Page She also loves technical wrestling the most, but likes how every style can tell a story So in short, everyone's different, and thinking wrestling can only and should only be one specific way to be enjoyed is just setting yourself up for disappointment tbh.
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Post by Cyno on Dec 16, 2022 18:05:40 GMT -5
Bruno Sammartino was also only about 5'10" and while he was billed at 265 lbs, he didn't exactly have an amazing looking physique with great muscle definition. He was kinda pudgy-looking, actually. He also didn't shave his body hair which added to that look. But he was also booked as a strongman and he made it work. But his look wouldn't have worked at all in the modern day, much less the 80's and 90's. Vince K McMahon would've thought he was too short and fat to be a powerhouse, and Bruno was vehemently against the steroid use that ran rampant during those days.
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Moppy
Samurai Cop
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Post by Moppy on Dec 16, 2022 18:08:23 GMT -5
Hmmm I’m gonna need to hear what the Casual Fan thinks of all this
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Post by Rumble McSkirmish on Dec 16, 2022 18:36:33 GMT -5
I'm seeing double: Nine Ospreays!!!
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Dub H
Crow T. Robot
Captain Pixel: the Game Master
I ❤ Aniki
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Post by Dub H on Dec 16, 2022 18:57:07 GMT -5
Hmmm I’m gonna need to hear what the Casual Fan thinks of all this What about the Casual Air Conditioner?
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ppl591
ALF
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Post by ppl591 on Dec 16, 2022 18:59:05 GMT -5
My contribution isn't about sizes or spots. I don't care how big a wrestler is. And I like a good spot fest too. But to me what's missing is just simply characters. Not that I'm saying Andretti needs a race car gimmick or something. Just some more characters and variety would be good imo. And being a good wrestler only works for a few people
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Post by This Player Hating Mothman on Dec 16, 2022 18:59:11 GMT -5
I watched Dynamite with my 17 year old brother and sister a couple weeks ago. You know who they thought looked cool? Orange Cassidy, Darby Allin, and the Acclaimed My go-to is always when my friend Dave kind of ended up at a Fyter Fest watch party having seen some of Double or Nothing a month earlier just kind of by force of a bunch of wrestling fans showing it to him, and the moment wherein he 'understood' wrestling was when Jebailey fought Michael Nakazawa. A match maligned as a doofus comedy match by a ton of talking heads and old timers, but which featured Street Fighter pro Justin Wong lending his fight stick in as a weapon. It was clunky. It was actually by any real consideration a bad match, wherein a Twitch Emote Guy had a comedy match. But to a guy who likes fighting games, it was a moment of connection where he felt excited in ways a lot of the more inside baseball stuff did not. He enjoyed a lot of other stuff too, and obviously the main event where they came out in Street Fighter cosplay helped a lot too, but it was a moment where someone felt like they were being explicitly brought in to the fold and encouraged to watch more. It was a wildly unspectacular match on the pre-show for a free PPV and notable here only for how much it accidentally made a fan who now comes to all our AEW PPV watch parties, just by playing to the crowd of a fighting game tournament. That's the sort of shit you can't predict or make a simple accusation of. In a way, that silly comedy pander match drew interest and converted someone to being a fan, and it is in no way the typical sort of thing you'd expect to see do that. How many more situations do you think there are like that? How many guys written off as 'boring' or 'niche' end up being the exact right person to create a connection and create interest? On a personal level, there are so many different ways somebody can be appealed to, and there is no easy, one-size-fits-all answer to give. That is in fact a strength of wrestling, and I think a lot of what gets lost in a lot of the idea of 'this is what hooked me in' was that even back in the day, it wasn't universal. Even if tastes never changed, people were drawn in and interested by the likes of Bret Hart, too. By the luchadors in WCW. By guys like the Hardyz. Oh my god, the Hardyz. If you weren't around the right kind of person you might never know how some fans were for Jeff Hardy in the mid '00s. There's people who derided him as just a flashy spot monkey with nothing of value who couldn't draw. Too skinny. Too weird. But he was the hook for so many people. The best you can do is speculate and try to make sense of it, but there's really no way to do that. There's so many people out there who have their own wants and I think it's actually really narrow-minded to write off everyone who connects with something in AEW as just being a hardcore smark who's too up their own ass. Like I said a few pages ago that the Action Andretti match doesn't need to be 'for' someone who stumbles onto wrestling for the first time because it's inherently built on the rules of wrestling and that's okay, but if someone watches and sees a crowd losing their mind for some no-hope guy who's taking on a serious big deal star and eels some connection to the underdog story, then I can't stop that and I won't pretend it's impossible. People are complicated. What they like are complicated. Nobody is going to universally fall into lockstep with one single idea, and people finding their own roads in to wrestling is frankly part of what makes wrestling great.
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Dr. Bolty, Disaster Enby
Grimlock
Blanket burrito season is back, and I never left the blankets
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Post by Dr. Bolty, Disaster Enby on Dec 16, 2022 19:21:08 GMT -5
I watched Dynamite with my 17 year old brother and sister a couple weeks ago. You know who they thought looked cool? Orange Cassidy, Darby Allin, and the Acclaimed My go-to is always when my friend Dave kind of ended up at a Fyter Fest watch party having seen some of Double or Nothing a month earlier just kind of by force of a bunch of wrestling fans showing it to him, and the moment wherein he 'understood' wrestling was when Jebailey fought Michael Nakazawa. A match maligned as a doofus comedy match by a ton of talking heads and old timers, but which featured Street Fighter pro Justin Wong lending his fight stick in as a weapon. It was clunky. It was actually by any real consideration a bad match, wherein a Twitch Emote Guy had a comedy match. But to a guy who likes fighting games, it was a moment of connection where he felt excited in ways a lot of the more inside baseball stuff did not. He enjoyed a lot of other stuff too, and obviously the main event where they came out in Street Fighter cosplay helped a lot too, but it was a moment where someone felt like they were being explicitly brought in to the fold and encouraged to watch more. It was a wildly unspectacular match on the pre-show for a free PPV and notable here only for how much it accidentally made a fan who now comes to all our AEW PPV watch parties, just by playing to the crowd of a fighting game tournament. That's the sort of shit you can't predict or make a simple accusation of. In a way, that silly comedy pander match drew interest and converted someone to being a fan, and it is in no way the typical sort of thing you'd expect to see do that. How many more situations do you think there are like that? How many guys written off as 'boring' or 'niche' end up being the exact right person to create a connection and create interest? On a personal level, there are so many different ways somebody can be appealed to, and there is no easy, one-size-fits-all answer to give. That is in fact a strength of wrestling, and I think a lot of what gets lost in a lot of the idea of 'this is what hooked me in' was that even back in the day, it wasn't universal. Even if tastes never changed, people were drawn in and interested by the likes of Bret Hart, too. By the luchadors in WCW. By guys like the Hardyz. Oh my god, the Hardyz. If you weren't around the right kind of person you might never know how some fans were for Jeff Hardy in the mid '00s. There's people who derided him as just a flashy spot monkey with nothing of value who couldn't draw. Too skinny. Too weird. But he was the hook for so many people. The best you can do is speculate and try to make sense of it, but there's really no way to do that. There's so many people out there who have their own wants and I think it's actually really narrow-minded to write off everyone who connects with something in AEW as just being a hardcore smark who's too up their own ass. Like I said a few pages ago that the Action Andretti match doesn't need to be 'for' someone who stumbles onto wrestling for the first time because it's inherently built on the rules of wrestling and that's okay, but if someone watches and sees a crowd losing their mind for some no-hope guy who's taking on a serious big deal star and eels some connection to the underdog story, then I can't stop that and I won't pretend it's impossible. People are complicated. What they like are complicated. Nobody is going to universally fall into lockstep with one single idea, and people finding their own roads in to wrestling is frankly part of what makes wrestling great. This is all extremely good and I'm going to ride the sentiment to say: I feel like when I engage in this ever-recurring debate, I sound like someone who doesn't want big wrestlers around. That's not the case. I think that big guys are an essential element...but I also think the definition of "big guy" is flexible and that they don't make sense unless there are average and small guys. Like, Miu Watanabe is not big. She's an average looking woman. And then she does a giant swing or a body slam with two opponents at once and y'know what, she's big now. She can do that, she gets to be treated as big. And maybe there's some trickery I'm not seeing with those, and certainly she's doing these things on fairly light wrestlers most of the time, but that's it, the story is that Miu Watanabe is big and powerful and the fact that she's a cute average-sized woman is also part of that story. Also part of that story is that she isn't surrounded by other people doing the same thing - she's doing this routine on people who are bigger than her, on people who are smaller than her, on people who are the same size but don't do giant swings and body slams on two opponents. It doesn't actually matter how big Miu Watanabe is. What matters is that she plays a role, and that her particular characteristics help her play that role. Hook and Jungle Boy and Wardlow and Satnam Singh and Will Hobbs and Dante Martin and Ricky Starks and Keith Lee and Bandido and Swerve Strickland are all good, important types of wrestler. Some of them are spectacular acrobats. Some of them are huge. Some of them are stunningly attractive. Some of them can do feats of strength that belie their size. Some of them can do feats of agility that belie their size. But all of them can play valid and interesting roles in a story, and that's ultimately what wrestling is about. EDIT: Wow that got away from me and ended up being not entirely related to what I quoted, sorry about that.
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Post by eJm on Dec 16, 2022 20:33:30 GMT -5
And even when we talk about characters…what do we mean by characters? Because at the end of the day, they’re trained athletes who are competing for wins, money, power and titles. There’s only so many characters you can come up with those concepts in mind.
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The Ichi
Patti Mayonnaise
AGGRESSIVE Executive Janitor of the Third Floor Manager's Bathroom
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Post by The Ichi on Dec 16, 2022 20:55:09 GMT -5
Hmmm I’m gonna need to hear what the Casual Fan thinks of all this I think Action Andretti is a cool guy. He looks like Will Ospreay and doesn't afraid of anything.
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SneakMan
Don Corleone
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Post by SneakMan on Dec 16, 2022 21:02:38 GMT -5
Jesus f***ing Christ of course I skip to the end of the thread and it's Negan ONCE AGAIN insisting that he speaks for the casual fans, like the IWC's Lorax.
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Xxcjb01xX [PIECE OF: SH-]
FANatic
Writer, Lover of all things Wrestling. Analytical, Critical, Lovable (hopefully). Lets all have fun!
Posts: 236,089
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Post by Xxcjb01xX [PIECE OF: SH-] on Dec 16, 2022 21:53:01 GMT -5
Jesus f***ing Christ of course I skip to the end of the thread and it's Negan ONCE AGAIN insisting that he speaks for the casual fans, like the IWC's Lorax. Negan trying to hijack another thread and speak for everyone on what wrestling should be and what does and doesn't work like:
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Post by Cyno on Dec 16, 2022 22:08:18 GMT -5
Jesus f***ing Christ of course I skip to the end of the thread and it's Negan ONCE AGAIN insisting that he speaks for the casual fans, like the IWC's Lorax. Negan trying to hijack another thread and speak for everyone on what wrestling should be and what does and doesn't work like: That's gotta be in the next Botchamania.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Dec 16, 2022 22:49:08 GMT -5
Bruno Sammartino was also only about 5'10" and while he was billed at 265 lbs, he didn't exactly have an amazing looking physique with great muscle definition. He was kinda pudgy-looking, actually. He also didn't shave his body hair which added to that look. But he was also booked as a strongman and he made it work. But his look wouldn't have worked at all in the modern day, much less the 80's and 90's. Vince K McMahon would've thought he was too short and fat to be a powerhouse, and Bruno was vehemently against the steroid use that ran rampant during those days.
I'm not saying Vince wouldn't see him as anything but a short fat schlub, but wasn't Bruno a legit powerlifter?
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Post by This Player Hating Mothman on Dec 16, 2022 23:25:04 GMT -5
Jesus f***ing Christ of course I skip to the end of the thread and it's Negan ONCE AGAIN insisting that he speaks for the casual fans, like the IWC's Lorax. Negan trying to hijack another thread and speak for everyone on what wrestling should be and what does and doesn't work like: THEY CHOSE THIS GUY AS THE STAR OVER SWERVE.
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Post by Mid-Carder on Dec 17, 2022 6:47:23 GMT -5
Jesus f***ing Christ of course I skip to the end of the thread and it's Negan ONCE AGAIN insisting that he speaks for the casual fans, like the IWC's Lorax. Negan trying to hijack another thread and speak for everyone on what wrestling should be and what does and doesn't work like: "I guess there's a reason he doesn't do that often" is BRUTAL
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Post by Super Duper Dragunov on Dec 17, 2022 7:13:13 GMT -5
Sigh. Another regular guy with short hair, in tights and kickpads. Basically no different to Dante Martin and Will Osperay for example. How many months did you spend in the gym to obtain his body I'm still waiting on my damn pics from the last thread this happened in! (or was it the one before...or the one before.......or the one before......)Honestly, I wrote down in my notes: "Looks like Dante Martin and Will Ospreay when the camera doesn't zoom in." It just was my first association. Yeah the man definitely looks like Dante and Will had a love child that inherited their talent.
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Toates Madhackrviper
King Koopa
Is owed an Admin life-debt.
This avatar is so far out of date I might as well stick with it forever now.
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Post by Toates Madhackrviper on Dec 17, 2022 7:39:35 GMT -5
Me, innocently: Huh, why is this at 9 pages?
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xxshoyuweeniexx
King Koopa
Going Big and Saying That
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Post by xxshoyuweeniexx on Dec 17, 2022 9:03:10 GMT -5
I can’t believe we went an extra six pages about Andretti winning an open challenge makes him not a star to casuals or whatever, like John f***ing Cena didn’t debut the same way as a no name in plain ass trunks and boots losing to Kurt Angle. Or Sean Waltman doing the same thing but actually winning.
Like time will tell if the dude will become a star on either of their levels, but to write him off cause he does flips or and isn’t 7’2 or whatever is f***ing stupid.
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Post by Citizen Snips Has Left on Dec 18, 2022 8:49:18 GMT -5
Bruno Sammartino was also only about 5'10" and while he was billed at 265 lbs, he didn't exactly have an amazing looking physique with great muscle definition. He was kinda pudgy-looking, actually. He also didn't shave his body hair which added to that look. But he was also booked as a strongman and he made it work. But his look wouldn't have worked at all in the modern day, much less the 80's and 90's. Vince K McMahon would've thought he was too short and fat to be a powerhouse, and Bruno was vehemently against the steroid use that ran rampant during those days. I'm not saying Vince wouldn't see him as anything but a short fat schlub, but wasn't Bruno a legit powerlifter?
He was indeed. He set a benchpress record for pressing 565 lbs with no wrist/elbow supports. Bruno had a powerlifter’s build as opposed to a bodybuilder look and was in amazing shape all his life. The “pudgy” comment was a bit much.
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