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Post by A Platypus Rave on Aug 12, 2019 23:51:28 GMT -5
Nice, OC is a fantastic worker. His slacker gimmick makes him one of the smartest in wrestling due to not having to bust his ass constantly. and he's shown that in his Fire Ant gimmick he can forth and be well for lack of a better term a fiery babyface in regular match ups too. This seems like pretty fallacious logic that "newer = better." The Marvel movies are better than Batman Forever because they're better movies. In fact, Batman Forever and especially Batman & Robin have a lot in common with modern-day WWE: The "it's just comic books, so who cares about quality control?" attitude on the part of the filmmakers. Humor fit for 6-year olds but ostensibly directed towards adults, with a hint of wink-at-the-camera self-consciously goofy BS (the Bat Credit Card, "Holy rusted metal, Batman!"). While the Marvel movies were successful in actually treating their audience like adults who can follow a story, even if it's "just" comic book stuff. Edit: This is two posts now today where the quoted portion simply disappears even though I see it in the Reply box. I've fought with these for minutes on end so people are just going to have to figure out what I'm referring to on their own. My point isn't that newer is better so much as it was about addressing the idea that 'we want it like it was 30 years ago' is a prevalent attitude across everywhere. But also, my point is that wrestling seems like there's a lot of people who try to hold it back to ideas and views from a long time ago that refuse to let it advance. Believability is not defined by what wrestling was, it is defined by what wrestling is within the show it is presented in. Hell, the entire conceit of why Orange Cassidy works as a comedy act is because he is taken seriously as a professional wrestler having an actual professional wrestling match, where his offense is seen as actually capable and his opponents grow frustrated trying to work their standard style against him. He's not taken as a wink-wink burial of what the business is supposed to be. Why your "if Jon Snow had a cell phone" example--and I swear like twenty different users have singled that one out I f***ing loathe it--doesn't work is that Game of Thrones set itself up as a show without technology, so him abruptly having technology would be nonsensical. It's not just inherently the idea of an anachronism--see the third greatest movie ever made, A Knight's Tale, for proof of that--but the way that the universe is structured and presented. The Irish Whip is still absurd, it just became accepted because the world built around it said "Yep this sure is a real fighting technique" and it became ingrained into the storytelling of the genre. Insane, ludicrous gimmicks like The Undertaker were insane but seen as acceptable because they got over and were treated with gravitas. In so many ways the only difference with Orange Cassidy is generally a movement within pro wrestling circles who have drawn a hard line and decide everything past that line is wrong, so because he hasn't had his day yet to be grandfathered in he's seen as somehow an atrocity. Therefore, to circle back to how my point was supposed to be understood: wrestling has trouble growing and moving on into other things and other stories to tell. Just going to say Labyrinth better be on that list of greatest movies ever made or we will have words... -_-
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Post by This Player Hating Mothman on Aug 12, 2019 23:59:02 GMT -5
Except that in wrestling, unlike with comic book movies, the business was demonstrably and objectively far more financially successful 30 years ago--worldwide--than it is now. Which is an indication, if not proof, that maybe the people booking 30 years ago had it right. Even in just the early '90s, booking his territory the same way he did in the '80s led to business falling. Like, the other huge boom for wrestling since then found its legs being an entirely different product, an old '80s style promotion wouldn't have worked. In so many ways wrestling's problems come down to a myriad of complicated factors and WWE's overall failure to modernize or change with the times, not because they've strayed from the playbook of the '80s. Presenting it as hard, intense realism is neither a major issue with mainstream wrestling--WWE really has bigger problems going on--and as I've said previously, MMA has kind of shit the bed for wrestling to ever try and present itself with that sort of intense push for realism a major, mainstream stage again. Present a product from 30 years ago as it was thirty years ago today, not even in wrestling but in general, and at best you succeed in being a curious, well-made throwback. The independent wrestling crowd connects with this, it makes them money, AEW is very much an indie on a big stage and everything else it's growing into is yet to come because they're still building a sense of what they are. But the business can't grow unless it can evolve, experiment, and change. The people booking 30 years ago knew what people 30 years ago wanted and everything down the line of storytelling and media studies will tell you that you can't just plop what worked then down onto people now and expect it to take. Like, I loved The Love Witch, it was an amazing visual tribute to '60s horror and to the era, but its plot was so much more than a throwback and without all that modern stuff it would have just been a cinematographic novelty.
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chazraps
Wade Wilson
Better have my money when I come-a collect!
Posts: 27,955
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Post by chazraps on Aug 13, 2019 0:01:18 GMT -5
Wrestling might be the only medium or genre where there is so strong a sense that the whole thing should be limited and frozen in amber under a specific perception of 'the way it used to be' and 'what people were doing with it thirty years ago'. Hip-hop
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Post by This Player Hating Mothman on Aug 13, 2019 0:02:30 GMT -5
Wrestling might be the only medium or genre where there is so strong a sense that the whole thing should be limited and frozen in amber under a specific perception of 'the way it used to be' and 'what people were doing with it thirty years ago'. Hip-hop Shit you're right, I wasn't thinking music genres but that's a whole big f***ing thing isn't it.
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chazraps
Wade Wilson
Better have my money when I come-a collect!
Posts: 27,955
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Post by chazraps on Aug 13, 2019 0:10:22 GMT -5
Shit you're right, I wasn't thinking music genres but that's a whole big f***ing thing isn't it. Yeah, and - like wrestling - it's become cyclical with every generation. You go back to 1989 and you have Melle Mel saying KRS-ONE was ruining hip-hop and going to kill the genre. All the love and respect in the world for Melle Mel, but imagine anyone at that point really thinking that, and flash-forward to 2019 and imagine someone saying today that KRS-ONE was the exact point hip-hop fell off. It's weird, you have it with every generation. But it's predictable, which is partially why hip-hop has always remained such a vibrant youth culture - there's always some teenager doing the next out-of-nowhere thing that much of the guard isn't ready for, and even if that particular teen isn't creating a classic - he's undoubtedly influencing the rapper after him who will. nobody ever gets complacent, everything remains regionally influenced because so many different cultures have so much different impact, and the next wave is always coming. There's also the parallel in that everyone's favorite era of hip-hop is when they were in middle school/high school. I theorize it's the music being the soundtrack to so much self-discovery and major milestone, that you could obsess over that happiness a lot more. Same with wrestling. You may absolutely love things happening now or that have happened since those points, but those eras for an individual just hit different. It's a very specific comfort food that's different for everyone.
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petef3
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,783
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Post by petef3 on Aug 13, 2019 0:11:52 GMT -5
Sure wrestling peaked then. So did comics peak in the past,things peak with age that is normal. But even then Wrestling is a much bigger world-wide thing than it was back then No, it absolutely is not. Neither of the two Mexican promotions are as strong as they were at their peak, New Japan still isn't anywhere close to where it was in the mid-'90s when it was selling out 5 Dome shows in one year, Europe is far off from its peak, Australia and New Zealand have no national scenes like they once did, and of course there's less money and fewer viewers and paying customers for American wrestling than there was at any time in the territory days.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
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Post by Deleted on Aug 13, 2019 0:12:31 GMT -5
I approve of the signing. I don’t approve of the utter waste of delicious juice.
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Post by This Player Hating Mothman on Aug 13, 2019 0:16:37 GMT -5
Shit you're right, I wasn't thinking music genres but that's a whole big f***ing thing isn't it. Yeah, and - like wrestling - it's become cyclical with every generation. You go back to 1989 and you have Melle Mel saying KRS-ONE was ruining hip-hop and going to kill the genre. All the love and respect in the world for Melle Mel, but imagine anyone at that point really thinking that, and flash-forward to 2019 and imagine someone saying today that KRS-ONE was the exact point hip-hop fell off. It's weird, you have it with every generation. But it's predictable, which is partially why hip-hop has always remained such a vibrant youth culture - there's always some teenager doing the next out-of-nowhere thing that much of the guard isn't ready for, and even if that particular teen isn't creating a classic - he's undoubtedly influencing the rapper after him who will. nobody ever gets complacent, everything remains regionally influenced because so many different cultures have so much different impact, and the next wave is always coming. There's also the parallel in that everyone's favorite era of hip-hop is when they were in middle school/high school. I theorize it's the music being the soundtrack to so much self-discovery and major milestone, that you could obsess over that happiness a lot more. Same with wrestling. You may absolutely love things happening now or that have happened since those points, but those eras for an individual just hit different. It's a very specific comfort food that's different for everyone. I guess where it's really interesting in the cycle is just the way it ends up being such a strong position in those communities. Like, I see people all "comics were better in (X) year" too or "shooters all suck today, where is Halo 3" or whatever. But those are all sort of minority positions in those circles and they feel more like nostalgia and a little dash of "old man yells at cloud" rather than the strange obsession I see with like one specific era and its ideals that consistently are returned to and heralded and everything outside of it is seen as an eternal pariah again and again. Like there's nothing cyclical about this; it's a very static point in time and a very strict sensibility, it's never just in response to shitting on the new vogue. Turnover is to be expected, this is like an old anchor that occasionally screams "Outlaw mudshow bullshit". Alongside the hip-hop examples I can't give because I'm too much a metal kid dipping sparsely into hip-hop on faint occasion to know like the exact markers that people herald.
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petef3
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,783
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Post by petef3 on Aug 13, 2019 0:21:06 GMT -5
Except that in wrestling, unlike with comic book movies, the business was demonstrably and objectively far more financially successful 30 years ago--worldwide--than it is now. Which is an indication, if not proof, that maybe the people booking 30 years ago had it right. Even in just the early '90s, booking his territory the same way he did in the '80s led to business falling. Like, the other huge boom for wrestling since then found its legs being an entirely different product, an old '80s style promotion wouldn't have worked. It was "different" for that audience...I'd hesitate to call it new. It was at its peak essentially a big-budget version of Memphis studio wrestling with heavy influence from Cornette--up until September of '97, as much influence on the product as Russo, in fact. There is no real "'80s style." Wrestling was actually far more versatile then than it is now, both in the U.S. and worldwide.
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r.
Bill S. Preston, Esq.
Bye
Posts: 16,456
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Post by r. on Aug 13, 2019 0:25:57 GMT -5
Sweet. More reason to avoid AEW I feel like you've been looking for reasons to not watch it. Just don't then. No need to arbitrarily add a why to the thing you knew in advance you never liked. OC (Someone is getting sued) is secretly great, I've seen him go and it's fun, This is from someone [RE: Me] who really dislikes the invisible wrestling stuff. Tangent (Repeating myself) I'm giving him and AEW one full year no matter who they book or what matches because for decades I allowed WWE to splurg out its warm watery rice soup diarrhea into my livingroom. I gave TNA a year and it did great...until it suddenly didn't and never recovered. I owe it to AEW to reserve judgment until it's had enough time for me to make a fair assent.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Aug 13, 2019 1:24:03 GMT -5
Okay, so first off I'm speaking to the Cornette mindset at large rather than someone specifically here, given petef3 specifically stated that they're fine with places like Chikara existing and that isn't the problem for them. The thing that gets me in all of the people talking about how wrestling must be done a certain way is that it's basically trying to handcuff an entire medium. I mean, sure, I get it on a smaller scale - something like WWE has its general tone pretty set at this point. Mostly tries to pass itself off as a weird sports / soap opera mish-mash where every now and then there's outright magic, but it's usually portrayed in a dark and spooky, mysterious way, so Hornswoggle painting a tunnel on a wall like Looney Tunes is just too far past the point of absurdity. I get it. But a lot of the people making this complaint (again, I'm speaking directly toward a broad viewpoint) seem to think every wrestling company everywhere has to be one specific thing and that anyone not doing that is reflecting poorly on the entire business which is just insane to me. Yes, people are perfectly allowed to like and dislike whatever - I think the Librarians and some of their awkward attempts to shout out to memes aside AEW's comedy largely works but if someone doesn't like Nakazawa, I get it - but the people who insist that these sorts of acts are an embarrassment to the industry at large just comes off like a bunch of elitist gatekeeping to me. So let's talk about the comic Tarot: Witch of the Black Rose. You know, "You have to get out of here, your vagina is haunted!", that one. It's one thing to dislike it, based on what I know about it most people who've actually read it probably do, but the whole, "Joey Ryan is an embarrassment and it's disgusting that people are giving him money to ruin the industry!" viewpoint to me just registers like if rather than just making fun of the stupid vagina line, people were looking at that comic and complaining that it's ruining the entire comics industry because comic books are supposed to be about wholesome clean cut superheroes fighting crime in the 1940s, with no room at all for allegedly sexy witches with horrifically shaped spines showing their boobs constantly. Mediums change and evolve, and even if something maybe doesn't work very well in a specific format, there's not any harm in trying and maybe it'll find a fanbase with someone or other anyway. Here's a less, "I spend the entire time talking about it shitting on it," example, visual novels. They and things like them have pretty much been a thing in some form as long as video games themselves have, but even then a ton of people constantly bash the things and talk about how they aren't real games and that's just insane to me. Steins;Gate has absolutely nothing in the way of actually playing it - there are no puzzles, there are no minigames, there is no walking around. You listen to conversations, fiddle with your phone, and every few hours make a choice that affects where the plot goes. But it isn't invalid as a game for that, nor could it work in any other medium - the closest thing would be a choose your own adventure novel but the sheer length of the narrative and its reliance on using (albeit pretty limited) pictures to communicate events while the vast majority of the actual text is dialogue would render it completely impossible to actually make it function as one. Same thing for someone like an Orange Cassidy, him standing around with his hands in his pockets lazily kicking people in the shin is pretty far removed from the idea of what wrestling is "supposed to be", but it's not like you could just transplant this character to an anime and have him work exactly the same without alteration because it's an idea that requires the framework of wrestling to function.
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Post by Deputy Muscle on Aug 13, 2019 1:33:30 GMT -5
I'm not sure why this has got so many people worked up. From the offset AEW has always said it's not going to be tied down to one style of wrestling. You want authentic hard hitting matches, you've got Kenny. You want tag team wrestling, they've got a stacked division. Why can't they have someone like OC or luchasaurus and make it work? Not everything has to be the same on every show. Cast a wide net and you give yourself more chance of catching some new fans.
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Post by Oh Cry Me a Screwball on Aug 13, 2019 1:56:31 GMT -5
Can I just say that Orange Cassidy deserves a multi-million dollar contract just for being responsible for this.
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chazraps
Wade Wilson
Better have my money when I come-a collect!
Posts: 27,955
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Post by chazraps on Aug 13, 2019 3:09:14 GMT -5
Yeah, and - like wrestling - it's become cyclical with every generation. You go back to 1989 and you have Melle Mel saying KRS-ONE was ruining hip-hop and going to kill the genre. All the love and respect in the world for Melle Mel, but imagine anyone at that point really thinking that, and flash-forward to 2019 and imagine someone saying today that KRS-ONE was the exact point hip-hop fell off. It's weird, you have it with every generation. But it's predictable, which is partially why hip-hop has always remained such a vibrant youth culture - there's always some teenager doing the next out-of-nowhere thing that much of the guard isn't ready for, and even if that particular teen isn't creating a classic - he's undoubtedly influencing the rapper after him who will. nobody ever gets complacent, everything remains regionally influenced because so many different cultures have so much different impact, and the next wave is always coming. There's also the parallel in that everyone's favorite era of hip-hop is when they were in middle school/high school. I theorize it's the music being the soundtrack to so much self-discovery and major milestone, that you could obsess over that happiness a lot more. Same with wrestling. You may absolutely love things happening now or that have happened since those points, but those eras for an individual just hit different. It's a very specific comfort food that's different for everyone. I guess where it's really interesting in the cycle is just the way it ends up being such a strong position in those communities. Like, I see people all "comics were better in (X) year" too or "shooters all suck today, where is Halo 3" or whatever. But those are all sort of minority positions in those circles and they feel more like nostalgia and a little dash of "old man yells at cloud" rather than the strange obsession I see with like one specific era and its ideals that consistently are returned to and heralded and everything outside of it is seen as an eternal pariah again and again. Like there's nothing cyclical about this; it's a very static point in time and a very strict sensibility, it's never just in response to shitting on the new vogue. Turnover is to be expected, this is like an old anchor that occasionally screams "Outlaw mudshow bullshit". Alongside the hip-hop examples I can't give because I'm too much a metal kid dipping sparsely into hip-hop on faint occasion to know like the exact markers that people herald. The big year for hip-hop is 1994. Since 2001 or so, "bringin' it back to 94" or "sounds like that 94 style" is the big marker you'll hear echoed. It was perhaps the best single year for rap (Nas' 'Illmatic,' Biggie's 'Ready to Die,' Scarface's 'The Diary') and on top of that it was when every major label had rap releases with substantial marketing dollars behind them, so there was a desireable aesthetic from the ground up. The counter to that is 1988 as it was when hip-hop had both 1) its to-that-point biggest mainstream exposure along with 2) no sample laws or significant label interference so hyper-creative projects were given maximum free reign and resources. It's really the only year 'It Takes A Nation of Millions,' 'Long Live the Kane,' 'The Great Adventures of Slick Rick,' 'Straight Outta Compton' 'Follow the Leader,' 'By ANy Means Necessary' and 'Critical Beatdown' could all, not just exist, but co-exist.
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Post by eJm on Aug 13, 2019 4:21:45 GMT -5
This is a problem in a lot of industries that people keep chasing the casual fan or those who remember when Saturday Morning TV was a thing or whatever the case may be and aren't trying to build its own niche or try new things. There's a reason the film industry right now is so hesitant to go outside its comfort zone because either it failed a couple of times and lost money or a bunch of 50+ year old executives thought it wouldn't relate to the 18-34 mostly white male demographic that buys Marvel t-shirts so it's underpromoted and made to seem unimportant. Not even just film, does Broadway need another version of Gigi or West Side Story? Does Nickelodeon really need to bring Rugrats back when other networks are doing fine off original cartoons for the most part?
And that's not to say nostalgia isn't a powerful tool and there isn't stuff to take from the past but it gets boring when wrestling companies try to replicate the formula of "Me Bad GM but also run company for real, Me make life living hell for everyone even though I could just fire them, Ugg" like as though the Stone Cold character came from just making some dude a badass who hates his boss. The industry did a good job exposing itself to its audience and laid itself open several times open that it always feels weird when those same people are the ones to be like "How dare fans know so much about the business?!" when it's like...more people watched Jeff Jarrett have a shoot interview, an actual shoot interview, on Raw then there are people watching Raw right now.
My point really is that the industry is relying on a group of people that, let's be honest, aren't coming back. They had their fill and moved on a LONG time ago and outside of a few things, the industry's done jack to get them back. This isn't even me saying OC will get those people back or will change wrestling history but this year, outside of things that rhyme with Davengers Sendgame, sequels have seen deminishing returns then they have before. New ideas are needed and not to be filtered through a creaky ecosystem where very few are able to get out from that. WWE doesn't even have that, it has an entire plant that's tested and modified to the point people think the best roster in decades is a bunch of uncharismatic, untalented smucks. And like others have said, they aren't drawing WWE numbers but they are drawing. Session Moth Martina has this year gone to the UK, America and Australia (Freaking Australia) off the back of a gimmick where she drinks a lot, has apparently 45,000 kids and wears leopard skin gear. It's absurd but it's getting places to the point where WWE was chasing her at one point. There's something you can do with it and it might not work but wouldn't the industry benefit a bit if you at least tried?
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Post by Session Moth is over on Aug 13, 2019 6:45:21 GMT -5
I don't know why ye all get up in arms so much about what sort of wrestling people like lmao.
If ye like comedy wrestling then great that's cool.
If you don't like comedy wrestling or other types well then just as awesome.
But please don't reply with the whole well 'there's Irish whips in wrestling and they make no sense so you should accept every other unrealistic thing in wrestling'
People accept some things and don't accept other things. And that's fine. Some won't.
I will happily accept Broken Matt and Irish whips but won't accept invisible grenades and stopping time in matches.
No one is right or wrong. Don't attack others for what they do or don't like.
I'm not sure yet if AEW will or won't be my thing but I hope it's a massive success.
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Allie Kitsune
Crow T. Robot
Always Feelin' Foxy.
Celestial Princess in Exile.
Posts: 46,076
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Post by Allie Kitsune on Aug 13, 2019 6:53:34 GMT -5
People equate "would this draw" way too hard with "would this draw in WWE" and I'm excited for that to hopefully lessen after October. Gonna stomp on about this until the day I die now but the Jebailey/Nakazawa match, for all a lot of people hated it, was the last straw to get several friends of mine who were in to fighting games just like 100% plugged in to pro wrestling and they've gone on to enjoy now what people would call "good matches" because they watched something that spoke their language to them and hooked them in. Nobody in the room cared about it being a simulation of a realistic, gritty fight; in the universe of the match, Justin Wong handing over his fight stick was the coolest f***ing thing and they lost their minds. It's all about the crowd you're looking for and not crossing your wires on tone and when the time for what is. I don't think it's even "would this draw in WWE" but "would this draw in 1980s Memphis" and that's a really narrow view of everything to take. Not gonna lie, I'm starting to actively feel like a bad, evil person because AEW's not connecting with me at all.
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Post by eJm on Aug 13, 2019 6:59:50 GMT -5
I don't know why ye all get up in arms so much about what sort of wrestling people like lmao. If ye like comedy wrestling then great that's cool. If you don't like comedy wrestling or other types well then just as awesome. I don't think anyone is attacking anyone for not liking what they like. But this bizarre idea that doing (insert thing here) will ruin wrestling is ridiculous when the business has inflicted worse self wounds on itself. If people actually said "Man, I don't like this guy", they'd be a bit of a bozo for doing it in a thread about said guy (my opinion anyway) but as long as they aren't threatening the dude's life or saying he's the reason wrestling's on a downturn then I'm grand. Gonna stomp on about this until the day I die now but the Jebailey/Nakazawa match, for all a lot of people hated it, was the last straw to get several friends of mine who were in to fighting games just like 100% plugged in to pro wrestling and they've gone on to enjoy now what people would call "good matches" because they watched something that spoke their language to them and hooked them in. Nobody in the room cared about it being a simulation of a realistic, gritty fight; in the universe of the match, Justin Wong handing over his fight stick was the coolest f***ing thing and they lost their minds. It's all about the crowd you're looking for and not crossing your wires on tone and when the time for what is. I don't think it's even "would this draw in WWE" but "would this draw in 1980s Memphis" and that's a really narrow view of everything to take. Not gonna lie, I'm starting to actively feel like a bad, evil person because AEW's not connecting with me at all. I will assure you with 100% confidence, hell, 1,000,000% confidence that not a single human being on Earth thinks you're a bad, evil person for not connecting with AEW.
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Post by Session Moth is over on Aug 13, 2019 7:49:32 GMT -5
I don't know why ye all get up in arms so much about what sort of wrestling people like lmao. If ye like comedy wrestling then great that's cool. If you don't like comedy wrestling or other types well then just as awesome. I don't think anyone is attacking anyone for not liking what they like. But this bizarre idea that doing (insert thing here) will ruin wrestling is ridiculous when the business has inflicted worse self wounds on itself. If people actually said "Man, I don't like this guy", they'd be a bit of a bozo for doing it in a thread about said guy (my opinion anyway) but as long as they aren't threatening the dude's life or saying he's the reason wrestling's on a downturn then I'm grand. Not gonna lie, I'm starting to actively feel like a bad, evil person because AEW's not connecting with me at all. I will assure you with 100% confidence, hell, 1,000,000% confidence that not a single human being on Earth thinks you're a bad, evil person for not connecting with AEW. Im on phone here so sorry for quoting the whole thing. I think it's ok coming into a thread to say you don't like a guy especially if it's in connection to a company you are interested in. Like I'm ok with people here going 'man I'm not a fan of him at all, I really hope he is not doing his comedy shtick in AEW'. I think that's an opinion and shouldn't be ridiculed. Nor should people be shooting back with 'well Irish whips don't make sense so you should just accept Orange Cassidy's gimmick.' I think that's different and acceptable to post and is different to someone saying 'Man this sort of crap is ruining wrestling and ye are idiots for liking this stuff'. That's 100% not acceptable. Again I'm hoping AEW really become a great alternitave to WWE.
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Post by HMARK Center on Aug 13, 2019 10:35:04 GMT -5
My body is ready for the Freshly Squeezed (tm) carnage coming to AEW. BRING ON THE BLOOD JUICE BATH.
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