Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Dec 22, 2019 12:33:52 GMT -5
My favorite era of wrestling was the New Generation.
That was the era that got me into wrestling. So my first impression was wrestling garbage men, wrestling farmers, wrestling clowns and wrestling dentists. And I was HOOKED.
I wish there was more of this. Bray Wyatt, Velveteen Dream and The Viking Raiders have kinda brought it back.
But it annoys me that so many guys on the roster are just “normal guys”... and the majority of them look the same. I mean take a look at the NXT UK roster.
If I was running things, I’d have a wrestling magician, a wrestling scientist, a Myth buster gimmick, etc. You name it. I love vignettes and promos and individuality. It doesn’t matter how silly it is because it’s WRESTLING. And the silly stuff usually catches on the most anyway.
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Post by Fade is a CodyCryBaby on Dec 22, 2019 12:53:26 GMT -5
During the Attitude Era, I always saw workrate (being technically/physically sound in the ring) as icing on the cake. The Jericho’s, Eddies, Benoit’s, Angles. But I also cared about their characters. And preferred the Rock and Austin for their incredible characters and incredible showmanship.
Conversely however, I started to get into ROH and TNA in the early-whatever 2000s because of their incredible workrate (especially compared with WWE at the time) and cared a lil for their characters...but not enough for me to stick around long-term.
Now it’s one of the major turn offs of WWE/NXT for me. Incredible wrestling, yeah..but I barely care bout anybody. And it’s lots of dudes I’ve cared about elsewhere so, one can’t help thinking it’s how their characters are or aren’t being utilized. It’s this weird “Shawn Michaels effect” as I like to call it, where it seems a lot of today’s generation were inspired by Shawn’s in-ring game, but lack a lot of character. Not gonna lie, I kinda hope the next generation is more heavily inspired by performers like Austin & The Rock.
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Malcolm
Grimlock
Wanted something done about the color of his ring.
Eternally Confused
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Post by Malcolm on Dec 22, 2019 13:12:49 GMT -5
If I was running things, I’d have a wrestling magician, a wrestling scientist, a Myth buster gimmick, etc. You name it. I love vignettes and promos and individuality. It doesn’t matter how silly it is because it’s WRESTLING. And the silly stuff usually catches on the most anyway. At first I thought the idea of a wrestling magician would seem too silly ala Phantasio, but then I realized a ring houdini that can escape any submission hold is actually a pretty cool and badass idea.
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Bub (BLM)
Patti Mayonnaise
advocates duck on rodent violence
Fed. Up.
Posts: 37,742
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Post by Bub (BLM) on Dec 22, 2019 15:13:59 GMT -5
Workrate matters a ton, people just have a poor understanding of what it is. It's not flips and holds, it's about being able to have entertaining matches without getting gassed. Back in the 80's, Ric Flair was the king of workrate. You think he'd be just as popular today if his matches with Dusty and Steamboat had sucked?
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Dec 22, 2019 15:15:56 GMT -5
I just want to be emotionally invested in matches. Doesn't happen much these days.
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Post by "Evil Brood" Jackson Vanik on Dec 22, 2019 15:17:32 GMT -5
You need a mixture of both. I think guys like Elias are good characters but aren't great in the ring and that isn't because he doesn't do flashy moves. He just struggles with getting the crowd involved and pacing a match.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Dec 22, 2019 15:22:18 GMT -5
If I was running things, I’d have a wrestling magician, a wrestling scientist, a Myth buster gimmick, etc. You name it. I love vignettes and promos and individuality. It doesn’t matter how silly it is because it’s WRESTLING. And the silly stuff usually catches on the most anyway. At first I thought the idea of a wrestling magician would seem too silly ala Phantasio, but then I realized a ring houdini that can escape any submission hold is actually a pretty cool and badass idea. I was actually thinking a stable of guys similar to “Now You See Me”... the vignettes would be doing card tricks and illusions etc. Damien Priest would’ve been great for it. A female in the group would be good too.
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Post by Cyno on Dec 22, 2019 15:23:50 GMT -5
Workrate is a nebulous term. For me, it's not about great matches for the sake of having great matches, but being able to tell a story through your matches that engages the crowd. If you'd ask me who the best workrate wrestlers are on WWE's roster, I'd say Kofi Kingston and Daniel Bryan. Both are technically proficient (if anything, Bryan is one of the best technical wrestlers ever), but they have a way of connecting with the audience that few wrestlers do anymore.
If anything, I think WWE is a very poor workrate promotion because the wrestlers don't engage the audience through their character work or matches while NXT at least has the matches going for it and is building up its characters slowly but surely.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Dec 22, 2019 16:06:34 GMT -5
Just more things like this in wrestling would be awesome it really sets the scene for who these characters are.
A simple scene that lets us in on any alliances and tells us who the characters are and lets us know what they are about and it does not even have to have dislogue or very very little as above.
all goes hand in hand with needing more actual characters and not just wrestler A and wrestler B.
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Post by carp (SPC, Itoh Respect Army) on Dec 22, 2019 16:08:55 GMT -5
Workrate isn't a very useful idea outside the context of the 90s. It was fine when we wanted to compare the good wrestlers to whatever the hell Lex Luger and Kevin Nash were doing, but there aren't any Lex Lugers or Kevin Nashes anymore.
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Post by Perpetual Nirvana on Dec 22, 2019 17:20:23 GMT -5
Something Mick Foley said in one of his books always sticks with me, that the Undertaker gets a bigger response from diving over the top rope once a year than Taka Michinoku does from doing it every week.
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ssdrivin
ALF
Claims to be squishy, has yet to be proven.
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Post by ssdrivin on Dec 22, 2019 17:48:21 GMT -5
This is something that Triple H believes in, I think—workrate over character. Look at his version of 205 Live. Look at this week’s NXT, which people are saying is the best ever. In a lot of cases, some guys have a few character traits and that’s it. Pete Dunne is essentially a phenomenal wrestler and a permanent scowl. In a lot of cases, they insist on falling back on real life stories which is why someone like Ember Moon still doesn’t have a character. Workrate NXT was fine when the weekly shows were squashes, with maybe a few solid matches. It made the Takeover epics really seem epic. Now, every other match has to be near four stars and it’s a little like… ‘WTF? Slow down.’ This approach may come back to bite them. I do think Triple H has good booking instincts, and I definitely don’t think the main roster’s approach to most characters is the answer, but look at the episode of Smackdown he helped to book: Ciampa worked with Miz. Cole worked with Bryan. Both are established, largely identifiable characters. There’s something to that.
I've not watched in a while, but from what I've seen of Pete Dunne in NXT I was pleasantly surprised that he did have a character, one that I could identify as a British person, he struck me as "that hard kid in school who acted like thought he was going toe to toe with the headmaster". That smug, arrogant, give-no-shits attitude that's so cock sure, but... different to how American wrestlers play it. A different flavour of physical psychology, though I'm not sure quite how I'd describe how it's different in great detail. It just feels different; more mischievous, juvenile in a way, but not so much that he comes across as being an intolerably immature dick. Especially with Regal acting like the teacher who really wants to help him be someone, but Dunne just can't stop trying to rebel, and Regal desperately trying to keep him on track despite Dunne's sabotage. He was perhaps the only one who stood out to me in that way during the UK Championship debut era for that reason.
But generally, yeah, I agree with most of what's been said. If "workrate" is purely athleticism, ability to perform moves, etc, then no, I don't particularly care. I mean, I appreciate it on a technical level, it's highly impressive, it takes a lot of training and it takes a lot of physical ability, I wouldn't put anybody down for having put that effort in. It doesn't make me a fan of a wrestler though, it's an incomplete package. I like pie, but if you serve me a plate of empty pastry I'm gonna be pretty disappointed, even if the pastry is world class. I don't watch wrestling just purely for physical ability, if I did then I'd watch UFC, or Olympic wrestling, or some other real combat sport or martial art. Except I don't, because that's not why I'm here.
So if "workrate" is instead the ability to hook people in, to "be" your character, to portray with nuance and depth who you're trying to be, to convince the viewer to side with/against you and suspend disbelief, then WWE absolutely lacks that right now and has done for years. I don't think it's (necessarily or all) the talent's fault, obviously there's a huge writing/booking element that's failed very badly. Regardless of who's fault it is or isn't, if the benchmark for success is having me, the viewer, clamouring to watch the show because I desperately want to know what happens to my favourite (or least favourite) guy next week*, then they crashed and burned, and someone keeps pouring petrol on the flaming wreckage. Even when they do attempt to write characters, they're either too shallow, inconsistent, constantly repackaged, or there's no character development to the point where it's not going to matter next week, let alone next year.
If it means bringing back totally dumb gimmicks, so be it. As a few people mentioned in this thread, the Attitude Era's wrestling might've stunk a lot of the time, but at least it felt like it was full of interesting and unique characters. Do that again if you have to, I'd sacrifice "pure wrestling ability" for visible personality and distinct identifiable characters/traits. Just have them be consistent. Let them be something, anything, just let me connect with something. Until that happens, I don't see any reason to resume watching WWE on anything less than a once-yearly basis, and I don't even know if I care to do that right now.
* Edit: Or, in Attitude style, anybody else. I didn't necessarily know that I'd see Kaientai get murdered or some random midcarder try to hire the APA and have it go wrong, but when I did see that I was usually entertained. It's not exclusively why I tuned in, I probably tuned in to see The Rock, or HHH, or Austin, or Foley, but all those other side acts were still unique and entertaining enough that I was glad to see them too.
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Post by One-Armed Drummer of Defrebel on Dec 22, 2019 18:10:16 GMT -5
If we're defining workrate by "wrestles good" then
Workrate means nothing to me without character but also character means nothing to me if they look terrible in ring.
Like, in theory workrate means nothing to me, but in practice workrate absolutely does end up meaning a fair bit to me when I see someone like Eli Drake or Elias cutting super awesome promos and then having matches where the viewing experience is like pissing a dick in realtime. I'm a simple girl and I need both.
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Post by Duke Cameron on Dec 22, 2019 18:15:03 GMT -5
I grew up only caring about character but eventually started caring more about work rate as I got older. Nowadays, I can’t enjoy someone if they can’t work. It tops character for me.
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Post by thegame415 on Dec 22, 2019 19:56:14 GMT -5
I’ll take a good storyline and character over workrate any day.
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Post by BatPunk on Dec 22, 2019 20:07:11 GMT -5
I love characters. I also love good wrestling. However, over the past 30+ years I’ve been watching wrestling, it’s only the storyline and the payoff I care about now.
I’ll watch a match with wrestlers who aren’t known for their wotkratez and their characters aren’t larger than life, if the story is great and the pay off is worth it.
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Dub H
Crow T. Robot
Captain Pixel: the Game Master
I ❤ Aniki
Posts: 47,826
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Post by Dub H on Dec 22, 2019 21:58:46 GMT -5
I care about both,I need both,simply put.
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nate5054
Hank Scorpio
Lucky to be alive in the Chris Jericho Era
Posts: 7,011
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Post by nate5054 on Dec 22, 2019 22:33:15 GMT -5
Yes, I love a good technical match, but i mainly love wrestling for the stories and characters. The WWE has the best wrestlers it ever has, but at the same time, there are just so few characters anymore. I am not saying my preference is superior at all, but I care more about "why" guys are fighting, as opposed to seeing two guys having a good match for the sake of it, which seems to be 90% of the WWE now. Yup. The wrestling is about at the bottom of the list as to why I like wrestling. But to each their own. The rare times I see a great match I see why people like it, but WWE matches are so much the same that it's like going to McDonald's and being shocked at how good the batch of fries you just ordered was.
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repomark
Unicron
For Mash Get Smash
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Post by repomark on Dec 22, 2019 22:43:28 GMT -5
To me, you need to be able to go in the ring. However, there needs to be some character work. A great example is that my first real clear wrestling memory is Jake and Randy Savage with the snake bite angle. Both of these guys were good to great in the ring (Savage more than Jake obviously) but their characters were so great and they were both really, really great workers. If you can find a better program than those two in 1991 - 92, I'd like to debate that. Others have touched on this - but seriously tell me one match Jake and Randy had that was any good? I love that feud but the original post is spot on in that it wasn’t a tremendous match that made it memorable.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Dec 22, 2019 22:44:20 GMT -5
MOAR of this type of stuff please 2020 wrestling world.
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