gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Mar 31, 2016 2:06:07 GMT -5
No need for another referendum on AJ. This sucks. I like Nikki a good bit. And it healthy, she still could've been a valuable part of the division. Yup, half this forum celebrated obnoxiously when AJ retired, someone resurrected her retirement thread to re-celebrate 9 months later and got 10-plus likes, that's just as obsessive, cold and unnecessary the people trashing Nikki in this thread. And a lot of the people crying foul about people's dickish comments in this thread were the ones rejoicing and being antagonistic when AJ packed it in. There is literally no difference between how either woman is treated so arguing over who has the worst fandom or acting like one is an infallible goddess while the other is a persecuted punching bag is redundant. Both Nikki and AJ were among the most hated wrestlers in the history of the internet, just by different people, neither woman is any more an 'internet darling' than the other, despite what some would have you believe and this forum is all the proof one needs of that. Yet a lot of people treat their disdain for both as some sort of righteous crusade, it's weird as hell. Now they're both retired before their time, perhaps for good, and people are still bickering about who was better and moaning about their 'obsessed' fans. Can we finally stop and just agree that people retiring young from what they love for reasons out of their control is sad as f***?
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Mar 17, 2016 18:32:13 GMT -5
She fits in better with this generation of women who can wrestle than the catfight diva search sorts. Exactly. If anything, she was just ahead of her time. "Some say Natalya was the one who started the Divas Revolution..."
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Mar 14, 2016 18:55:43 GMT -5
My favorite Nattie moment was at the very end of her farting gimmick. She had spent the entire course of the gimmick being so embarrassed of her flatulence problem, but this time someone said something "Stinks" and Nattie says "No! THIS STINKS!" And turned around and blasted a fart with the proudest smile on her face. It was amazing. You might say that segment was the blowoff to the whole farting angle.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Mar 10, 2016 2:45:05 GMT -5
The problem is, it's not just a touring brand, it's also developmental. If true he's basically saying that no one coming through the system is able to make him money. Why sign them then? He should pay more attention to who gets recruited for NXT because it's who he'll be working with going forward if he plans to remain in charge for any length of time. That's why NXT has always surprised me, it's so un-Vince, but Vince will potentially have a roster of entirely NXT graduates if he sticks around long enough.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Mar 8, 2016 13:30:31 GMT -5
I don't hate Nikki and I certainly don't want to see her career end like this, but thanks to WWE's insistence on making everything in the Divas division revolve around the Bellas whilst giving them absolutely zero consistent character traits, only with Nikki gone and Brie's days numbered does it feel like a new day is finally dawning. Whether it's their fault or not, I'll forever associate them with 'bitches be crazy/there are no heels and faces' booking. If they can bring her back and have her play a solid character who isn't presented as a steamrolling powerhouse despite being the same size or smaller than most of her opponents, then that's cool, but I definitely don't want another 300+ days of a heel champion who unironically puts herself over as a fearless underdog while the announcers agree.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Mar 7, 2016 17:19:03 GMT -5
I'm amazed Danny Burch has been around so long doing nothing, you'd have figured he'd have been cut loose by now. He was actually released from his developmental deal way back in 2014 but has stayed in Florida working the indies. NXT just bring him back now and then as enhancement talent, I guess because they know he's a good hand. I think he even went by his indy name (Martin Stone) the first times he appeared as an unsigned jobber.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Feb 16, 2016 18:19:19 GMT -5
Vince loves him some unnecessary risk of live nudity. Paige was supposedly nude under her towel last year in the segment where the Bellas stole her gear... and Vince threatened to fire the entire crew that were shooting the scene if it fell off.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Feb 16, 2016 18:13:35 GMT -5
It's all a ruse, Trips is gonna gather together 32 of the vanilla-est midgets from around the world so he can Pedigree them all.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Feb 15, 2016 17:15:47 GMT -5
Babyface Del Rio wasn't over... when in fact it's the ONLY time he's been over in WWE.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Feb 11, 2016 16:38:05 GMT -5
WWE's in a weird position where one half of the company seems to be really progressive and aware that A. it's the 21st century and 'might is right' alpha male bullshit isn't cool anymore and B. shunning the rest of the wrestling world and the fans that follow it is actually quite silly...
...and the other half seems more determined than ever to keep things rooted in the 20th century, pushing the guy who fits their traditional vision of a star above the people the audience actually wants to see on top, writing terribly outdated characters no one in this day and age would root for or identify with, running to the big names of the Attitude Era every Wrestlemania rather than making new stars...
Things have changed and stayed the same in equal measure.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Feb 11, 2016 16:28:28 GMT -5
I think it's pretty funny he took a shot at IWC's jesus. Never stops seeming strange when someone lampoons the dreaded "IWC" on an online message board about wrestling. A lot of the supposed internet darlings are in fact the pariahs in these days of extreme IWC self-awareness. Way more people siding with Ryback than Punk in this thread (personally I think both have been way too petty on the issue to take either's 'side') and that's hardly unusual. There's definitely one negative comment for every positive one about Punk and many other 'smark favourites' these days, yet their reputation as infallible deities of the IWC persists.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Feb 10, 2016 13:51:57 GMT -5
I don't buy most of the nuclear heetz, probably just someone who has it in for her blabbing to the sheets and overexaggerating everything. But, if she is getting shit backstage, as someone who's actually been in a hit movie and 'real' showbusiness in general, and isn't living out a lifelong dream by being in WWE, I imagine she'd be less tolerant and more aware of the ludicrousness of 'dis business' bullshit. She's a beautiful, smart and talented woman with experience in multiple different fields, no reason to stay in a job where she's mocked and undermined for things out of her control... aside from the fact it IS her husband's dream to work there and staying there with him is the only way to avoid being apart for over half the year.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Feb 9, 2016 14:46:46 GMT -5
THEY'D HAD ENOUGH! Of the what you shoulda... the what you coulda...
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Feb 9, 2016 2:58:52 GMT -5
Well there was a point in time during Kaitlyn's reign where she didn't appear on Raw for about 2, maybe close to 3 months. Fix'd. Throughout the Bellas on Jerry Springer, Paige and AJ as slightly-lesbian-frenemies, nonsense gangwars to kill time on Nikki's reign, I never forgot... in February 2013 Kaitlyn and Tamina had a pay-per-view title match where the only build was a single app segment. The match lasted three minutes. The Divas have come a long way.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Feb 9, 2016 2:34:40 GMT -5
In order for it to be a fitting tribute to Bryan, they need to: get her over as a massive babyface, get a title shot where everyone is itching to hail her as the new champion only for her to be screwed, and screwed again the next month, and again the next month, then Tamina takes over her storyline and gets a title shot while Brie moves into an unrelated feud with a heel stable which she then briefly joins to the fans' bemusement, then gets screwed out of the title again, before finally at long last winning it nearly a year after the fans were ready to embrace her as champion.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Feb 9, 2016 2:23:19 GMT -5
Unless I'm missing something major, what has Punk done that's THAT wrong that most major stars in this business full of big egos haven't done at some point? Not sign autographs for fans bothering him in an airport at 6AM? Being a dick back to people who are a dick to him on Twitter? Get salty with a few interviewers (which isn't cool, but again, he's far from the first or last wrestler to do so)?
Considering most people enjoyed him to some degree as a performer, most people stopped lambasting him for walking out once they heard the full story, there's not much evidence of him being a backstage politician, refusing to do jobs etc and he carried himself professionally 90% of the time when he was on WWE's dollar, I'm astonished how so many people still resent him so much. He's up there with proven racist, liar and politicker extraordinaire Hulk Hogan in the level of no-laughing-matter-I-actually-loathe-this-person negativity he gets. I don't get it. Granted, he's no sweetheart, but to my knowledge he's not murdered anyone either and there's a fair few stories of him being decent to people.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Feb 8, 2016 18:24:42 GMT -5
Don't downplay Nikki's in ring improvements to "backstage politics". that's really disgusting. I'm doing none of that, though. I was talking about her title reign and how they forgot she had it for two months to reach a certain date. I'm talking about when Charlotte lost the first time just so Nikki could pass the record. I wasn't even referring to Nikki when bringing up backstage politics. More speculating on why they wanted to remove AJ's record in a hurry when she appeared to leave on good terms. I just guessed/hoped they wanted someone who's very much 'part of the family' to hold that record rather than the wife of the guy they're suing, a woman who'll probably never step foot in a WWE ring in any capacity while she's still married to him and he still hates them. No reason to believe it's anything more than that at this stage, but anyone who thinks it wasn't a deliberate move on WWE's part is delusional. It's not being dismissive of Nikki, undermining her ability, or accusing her of politicking her way into a spot, the decision could well have been made without her input, but it was definitely made. All of this reminds me, the Team Nikki's Reign vs Team AJ's Reign wars around the time the record was broken were a very embarrassing chapter in this forum's history; there really isn't a criticism of one reign you couldn't apply to the other and then some. Both were lazily-booked, short on memorable matches bar a few exceptions and certainly not worth getting into a heated argument over. I couldn't understand why people couldn't just say 'I liked Nikki/AJ's reign better because I like Nikki/AJ better' and move on rather than try and 'prove' their favourite had a better reign with fake stats and inaccurate memories. Weird times.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Feb 5, 2016 1:53:37 GMT -5
I don't fit in any of these I said most, you're exception sweet cheeks. Man oh man, I sure do love strawman arguments. Once again, I said most. In my experience, personally, it's usually one of those three categories. Most of us don't give enough of a f*** to actively hate someone who's half decent in the ring just because they get pushed (see Reigns, Roman). Brie and Nikki aren't entirely incompetent in the ring and they're actually, surprise, over. I love the NXT women as much as the next guy and genuinely look forward to their matches but most of those saying the Bellas need to be depushed/less focused on/fired out of a cannon are the exact same people the moan about WWE not listening to their fans. Guess what, the casual fan loves them some goddamn Bellas and the WWE has heard that. I don't hate the Bellas or anything, but re: their overness, is very much a result of their continued exposure, and particularly Total Divas winning them a huge fanbase among young women rather than anything they've done in the ring. When they first started to become the faces of the division they were still getting seagull pops and sometimes getting booed as babyfaces and most crowds shat on their feud with each other, and even now a lot of their pops seem to be 90% female and coming from somewhere up in the nosebleeds. It certainly wasn't 'hey, these girls seem popular, we better push them.' It's no slight on them, WWE has never given them a consistent character on their wrestling shows so of course they've never got over, so the only way they've been able to gain a following is sheer familiarity and their reality show where they're actually able to establish a character and show personality.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Feb 3, 2016 18:23:16 GMT -5
It helped her turn face, but holy shit did the crowd make me wonder what kind of fandom I was signed on for. I was like 14 when it happened, and I still thought that was creepy. Crowds were basically conditioned that "hot woman taking off her clothes" was a great time. Bear in mind, there was a match that took place a week before where the stipulation was that if Jerry Lawler won, The Kat could strip naked in the ring. But since Lawler did not win, she was forced into becoming a member of the Right to Censor. Whenever they try and use a woman being stripped and humiliated to generate sympathy in that era, you realise just how much the fans viewed anything of that nature as 'woohoo, puppies' and nothing more. In the Smackdown pilot, a traumatised Stephanie merely talking about the Undertaker groping and stripping her when he kidnapped her (which is an unnecessary detail in itself) gets whoops and whistles from the crowd rather than the boos or shocked silence I imagine they were going for. Dark days indeed.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Feb 3, 2016 14:08:00 GMT -5
Alberto Del Rio is a really talented performer who can get reactions in just about any role EXCEPT the one they continually insist on putting him in. So sad, and even sadder that he seems to be blamed personally for it by a lot of people.
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