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Post by BlackoutCreature on Jan 8, 2023 10:06:27 GMT -5
It's so easy to go ballistic on wrestling creatives and their flops but you know what's not so easy? Coming up with ideas that stick regardless of how stupid or illogical they are. For every idea that sticks you probably have dozen of Beaver Cleavage and Red Roosters because you can't turn roster of 30 plus people into shoot fighters who just want to win matches. That's super boring and super stupid at the same time. We can laugh at the Repo Man, Dumpster Duke, Bastion Booger all day long and talk crap how stupid these gimmicks were but without them there would have been no IRS, no Bossman, no Undertaker, no gigolo Shawn Michaels, no Razor Ramon, no Johnny B Badd and countless other classic gimmicks that just happened to work even though they really shouldn't have. You can't say oh Undertaker worked because Mark was so talented. That's BS. You wanna tell me Charles was not talented and that's why Papa Shango flopped? Papa Shango was even cooler than Undertakes if you ask me but afterall some stuff sticks and some dont for whatever reason. If it was just him coming out and saying "Yeah, it was stupid, but sometimes stupid works. Here's what I was thinking and here's where I wanted to go with it" then people might be more forgiving of him. I mean, Dusty Rhodes, pro wrestling's patron saint of bad ideas before Russo came along, did it all the time and he died a hero to most wrestling fans. The problem is, as has been said, Russo arrogantly insists that every idea he had was absolutely brilliant and only failed because somebody else sabotaged it or the fans weren't enlightened enough to understand it. There's no "Welp, I tried, it failed, I moved on", there's only this never ending insistence on re-litigating every one of his ample failures. |
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Post by Alice Syndrome on Jan 8, 2023 10:57:54 GMT -5
Chaz Warrington was literally an OG indy darling, dude deserves more love lmao It tickles me greatly that, should I ever end up doing 1999 WWF for my points rankings (and I’ve at least already started laying the twigs and branches for 2002, so it’s in sight), Mosh will end up in the system as “Mosh/Chaz/Harry Cleavage” because he had at least one televised match in the gimmick. And someone will have “lost to Cleavage” on their record. EDIT: It was actually Christian who lost to Beaver Cleavage in the only televised match in the gimmick, on a RAW taped two days after Owen Hart died. What a cursed time. Wanna know how embarrassed WWE is about it? In the international version of the network, that's listed something like "A new superstar debuts" on the timeline instead of actually listing his name. |
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Post by Deleted on Jan 8, 2023 11:37:07 GMT -5
Plenty you can criticise Russo for but bringing skin colour into a discussion is needless. Have you seen the pinatta on a pole match? Have you heard the interview where he says that as an American he has no interest in any wrestler from Japan or Mexico?Even if I was to drop the race aspect, there is still how he writes every single woman as an unhinged skank? American: building up the feud, creating heat for the characters, having a story to follow along with. Mexican/Japanese (at least from back then when he said this): zero stories, car-crash cruiserweights, no selling the moves, how many flips and dives can you do in meaningless matches. He's said the exact same thing recently about today's wrestling/hunter's booking (just replace "mexican/japanese" with "today's style", and it's saying the same thing), about how the general public wants actual characters to latch onto and want to see win, where "today's wrestling fan" just wants "moves" with no rhyme or reason for anything that's happening. Just put bodies in a ring doing moves and that counts as wrestling, with no backstory for the actual match or anyone to root for. When he made that statement, it was in reaction to the cruiserweights in wcw, and the wwf doing it in return for awhile. If they're mexican/japanese, they couldn't cut promos or do interviews to build up the card, they were being used as "go send out the highfliers to wake up the crowd with a car crash to break up the show" in between the actual stories. Watch his recaps of stuff that he wrote/videos of him going over stuff that he wrote from twenty years ago, he wants lines being said, and promos, and "where's the heat in the story", not "there's no story, just go have a match and do moves". That's not race or skin color, that's style of show that you prefer. "the japanese/mexican style" vs "american style", which in today's world, has become "no stories/all workrate/only moves" vs "actual feuds and good guys/bad guys to root for" edit: from the same time period, think of chris jericho and lance storm working japan as a 100 miles an hour pure sport/doing moves style, and then coming to smoky mountain after that and having to learn how to slow down and work the crowd/"working american". That's what he's talking about. |
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Post by An Dog On An Skateboard on Jan 8, 2023 12:06:05 GMT -5
Have you seen the pinatta on a pole match? Have you heard the interview where he says that as an American he has no interest in any wrestler from Japan or Mexico?Even if I was to drop the race aspect, there is still how he writes every single woman as an unhinged skank? American: building up the feud, creating heat for the characters, having a story to follow along with. Mexican/Japanese (at least from back then when he said this): zero stories, car-crash cruiserweights, no selling the moves, how many flips and dives can you do in meaningless matches. He's said the exact same thing recently about today's wrestling/hunter's booking (just replace "mexican/japanese" with "today's style", and it's saying the same thing), about how the general public wants actual characters to latch onto and want to see win, where "today's wrestling fan" just wants "moves" with no rhyme or reason for anything that's happening. Just put bodies in a ring doing moves and that counts as wrestling, with no backstory for the actual match or anyone to root for. When he made that statement, it was in reaction to the cruiserweights in wcw, and the wwf doing it in return for awhile. If they're mexican/japanese, they couldn't cut promos or do interviews to build up the card, they were being used as "go send out the highfliers to wake up the crowd with a car crash to break up the show" in between the actual stories. Watch his recaps of stuff that he wrote/videos of him going over stuff that he wrote from twenty years ago, he wants lines being said, and promos, and "where's the heat in the story", not "there's no story, just go have a match and do moves". That's not race or skin color, that's style of show that you prefer. "the japanese/mexican style" vs "american style", which in today's world, has become "no stories/all workrate/only moves" vs "actual feuds and good guys/bad guys to root for" edit: from the same time period, think of chris jericho and lance storm working japan as a 100 miles an hour pure sport/doing moves style, and then coming to smoky mountain after that and having to learn how to slow down and work the crowd/"working american". That's what he's talking about. Even when he made those comments, this wasn't actually the case, it's just what people thought who had never really watched any.
He didn't mention style though, he said pretty much verbatim that as an American he didn't give a shit about Mexican or Japanese wrestlers, he only wanted to see American ones. And as well as just saying xenophobic shit he also booked xenophobic shit, which was probably a bigger part of those wrestlers not getting over than the fact that they were "foreign". So I'm not sure I buy that it was just a reaction. |
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Post by "Gizzark" Mike Wronglevenay on Jan 8, 2023 13:13:37 GMT -5
Have you seen the pinatta on a pole match? Have you heard the interview where he says that as an American he has no interest in any wrestler from Japan or Mexico?Even if I was to drop the race aspect, there is still how he writes every single woman as an unhinged skank? American: building up the feud, creating heat for the characters, having a story to follow along with. Mexican/Japanese (at least from back then when he said this): zero stories, car-crash cruiserweights, no selling the moves, how many flips and dives can you do in meaningless matches. He's said the exact same thing recently about today's wrestling/hunter's booking (just replace "mexican/japanese" with "today's style", and it's saying the same thing), about how the general public wants actual characters to latch onto and want to see win, where "today's wrestling fan" just wants "moves" with no rhyme or reason for anything that's happening. Just put bodies in a ring doing moves and that counts as wrestling, with no backstory for the actual match or anyone to root for. When he made that statement, it was in reaction to the cruiserweights in wcw, and the wwf doing it in return for awhile. If they're mexican/japanese, they couldn't cut promos or do interviews to build up the card, they were being used as "go send out the highfliers to wake up the crowd with a car crash to break up the show" in between the actual stories. Watch his recaps of stuff that he wrote/videos of him going over stuff that he wrote from twenty years ago, he wants lines being said, and promos, and "where's the heat in the story", not "there's no story, just go have a match and do moves". That's not race or skin color, that's style of show that you prefer. "the japanese/mexican style" vs "american style", which in today's world, has become "no stories/all workrate/only moves" vs "actual feuds and good guys/bad guys to root for" edit: from the same time period, think of chris jericho and lance storm working japan as a 100 miles an hour pure sport/doing moves style, and then coming to smoky mountain after that and having to learn how to slow down and work the crowd/"working american". That's what he's talking about. Even if you were right - which you aren't, he said specifically that as an American he has no interest in seeing a luchador or a Japanese guy Firstly, any comment on the pinatta on a pole match? And secondly, if you're right about Russo not being racist, cool. How about the fact that his writing absolutely hates women? You're actually trying to die on the hill of 'the sexist guy is not that racist'? |
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Post by Feargus McReddit on Jan 8, 2023 13:16:13 GMT -5
It's so easy to go ballistic on wrestling creatives and their flops but you know what's not so easy? Coming up with ideas that stick regardless of how stupid or illogical they are. For every idea that sticks you probably have dozen of Beaver Cleavage and Red Roosters because you can't turn roster of 30 plus people into shoot fighters who just want to win matches. That's super boring and super stupid at the same time. We can laugh at the Repo Man, Dumpster Duke, Bastion Booger all day long and talk crap how stupid these gimmicks were but without them there would have been no IRS, no Bossman, no Undertaker, no gigolo Shawn Michaels, no Razor Ramon, no Johnny B Badd and countless other classic gimmicks that just happened to work even though they really shouldn't have. You can't say oh Undertaker worked because Mark was so talented. That's BS. You wanna tell me Charles was not talented and that's why Papa Shango flopped? Papa Shango was even cooler than Undertakes if you ask me but afterall some stuff sticks and some dont for whatever reason. If it was just him coming out and saying "Yeah, it was stupid, but sometimes stupid works. Here's what I was thinking and here's where I wanted to go with it" then people might be more forgiving of him. I mean, Dusty Rhodes, pro wrestling's patron saint of bad ideas before Russo came along, did it all the time and he died a hero to most wrestling fans. The problem is, as has been said, Russo arrogantly insists that every idea he had was absolutely brilliant and only failed because somebody else sabotaged it or the fans weren't enlightened enough to understand it. There's no "Welp, I tried, it failed, I moved on", there's only this never ending insistence on re-litigating every one of his ample failures. Honestly, your first point would make for a more fascinating column. The thought process behind the bad gimmicks where you could at least try and see where he was coming from instead of the buzzwords of “The front office/Standards and Practices/The boys in the back” or whatever he comes up with this week as a blame. |
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Post by Deleted on Jan 8, 2023 13:25:19 GMT -5
American: building up the feud, creating heat for the characters, having a story to follow along with. Mexican/Japanese (at least from back then when he said this): zero stories, car-crash cruiserweights, no selling the moves, how many flips and dives can you do in meaningless matches. He's said the exact same thing recently about today's wrestling/hunter's booking (just replace "mexican/japanese" with "today's style", and it's saying the same thing), about how the general public wants actual characters to latch onto and want to see win, where "today's wrestling fan" just wants "moves" with no rhyme or reason for anything that's happening. Just put bodies in a ring doing moves and that counts as wrestling, with no backstory for the actual match or anyone to root for. When he made that statement, it was in reaction to the cruiserweights in wcw, and the wwf doing it in return for awhile. If they're mexican/japanese, they couldn't cut promos or do interviews to build up the card, they were being used as "go send out the highfliers to wake up the crowd with a car crash to break up the show" in between the actual stories. Watch his recaps of stuff that he wrote/videos of him going over stuff that he wrote from twenty years ago, he wants lines being said, and promos, and "where's the heat in the story", not "there's no story, just go have a match and do moves". That's not race or skin color, that's style of show that you prefer. "the japanese/mexican style" vs "american style", which in today's world, has become "no stories/all workrate/only moves" vs "actual feuds and good guys/bad guys to root for" edit: from the same time period, think of chris jericho and lance storm working japan as a 100 miles an hour pure sport/doing moves style, and then coming to smoky mountain after that and having to learn how to slow down and work the crowd/"working american". That's what he's talking about. Even when he made those comments, this wasn't actually the case, it's just what people thought who had never really watched any.
He didn't mention style though, he said pretty much verbatim that as an American he didn't give a shit about Mexican or Japanese wrestlers, he only wanted to see American ones. And as well as just saying xenophobic shit he also booked xenophobic shit, which was probably a bigger part of those wrestlers not getting over than the fact that they were "foreign". So I'm not sure I buy that it was just a reaction. He's talking about mexican and japnese wrestlers in america (meaning on wwf and wcw television, that he was involved with), not the mexican wrestling in mexico and japanese wrestling in japan. He's not talking about sitting and watching AAA or njpw and seeing what is happening on that, he's talking about tom in nebraska turning on wrestling, and seeing circus tumblers who can't talk instead of a bar fights and heated interviews. The guy that's been watching hulk hogan and ric flair for the last ten years, is suddenly seeing guys who can't talk do flips and tricks to make the crowd ooo and awe rather than punching and clotheslines, and is wondering "what happened to the feuds and stories?". He said that in 1999 when he was coming into wcw, before that, he had been writing stories for wwf characters. The wwf's attempt at a cruiserweight division, hector garza and the other mexican guys, and kaientie/the other japanese guys in 97, had zero promos or interviews or feuds. He was writing lines for sable and austin to say to get the point of the match over with the audience. He was the guy writing lines and words for people to say, and didn't care about any of the actual wrestling in the ring. "I'll set the match up for the audience, and then you guys figure out the actual in ring stuff that you want to do". So his focus is on "who can speak the language the best" to say the words that he wants. So he's coming in to wcw, and the only mexican guys that have said a word is konan, rey mysterio, and eddie guerrero, and the only japan guy that has spoken is sonny ono, that is the manager for all of the japanese guys and does all of the talking for them. So as the guy writing the words for people to say to get the stories over with the audience, who is he going to naturally gravitate towards? It's like tajiri in ecw, when he turned heel, he had to have steve corino do the interviews for the audience, or asuka/shinsuke in wwe today, they can't do interviews, so whoever they are fighting has to do the set up for the audience first before the match. Super crazy and la parka never spoke, they got over on their moves. And (at least back then, things have fallen off a cliff today and everyone just does the same thing), just mentioning a location, meant "the style". the wwf style, memphis style. That was the build up on television of bret vs shawn for wm 12. Bret has a hard hitting submission canadian-leaning japanese style, and shawn (as said by bret on regis) "was trained by a mexican", meaning the mexican faster paced flying lucha style, and the build up was how would those two different styles work together and who would win using their particular strengths. "Working southern style" meant something different than "working mexican style". These days, everyone does the same thing and acts the same way, so you wouldn't know the difference where people were from. That was the beauty about wcw's giant roster in the 90s, the mix of all the different styles. You'd have european vs philly style, etc. "japanese vs mexican" meant two different styles. I'm not sure how "xenophobic" is supposed to be an insult. I'm an american, if I go to japan, I expect the local japanese guy that the fans are familiar with to be the hero and them to look at me as "who is this outsider guy coming in?". If a guy from california goes to texas, the opponent that's actually in texas that the fans are familiar with already is the good guy. That's "home" and "Away" in every sports game. If a guy from texas goes to california, then a guy locally in california is going to have to do an interview for the audience first, saying "it's okay, I can vouch for him, he's on our side" in order for him to be accepted on the good guy team. So, an american audience, watching american television, is going to be more familiar with the american guys on the show, that speak the same language, rather than people who can't speak the language, who need someone to talk for them or will get over on their moves (muta and liger for japan and la parka for mexico in wcw). The local audience is going to consider the local guy as the good guy, and the guy that's coming in from somewhere else is the bad guy. That's how it works everywhere. When he's talking about "american mainstream audience will never accept mexican/japanese wrestling", he's talking about guys who can talk/characters and the matches are punching kicking vs guys who can't speak the language/don't talk at all, and just do nine million moves in matches where no one hates each other. He says the exact same thing today, just "mexican/japanese" is replaced with "today's style" vs "how it used to be" when he says it, because that's what happened. the younger audience saw the cruiserweights in wcw and shawn michaels matches in wwf, Ooo'd and awe'd at them while saying the rest of the show is bad, so the next generation's shows are all cruiserweight and shawn michaels style matches, without the rest of the show there to create a contrast to balance it out and to create realism. Watch 80s and 90s wrestling, and then focus in on 96/7/8 when he was writing the words for people, and see what the americans were doing, and what the mexican and japanese wrestlers were doing. The japanese were foreign heels who couldn't talk and had no feuds, whose focus was in ring matches, and the mexicans were car crash filler matches to break up the show who had no feuds, while the americans had the interviews and feuds (the stuff that he was writing). |
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Post by One of the Cooler, Candid TOKs on Jan 8, 2023 13:42:47 GMT -5
If it was just him coming out and saying "Yeah, it was stupid, but sometimes stupid works. Here's what I was thinking and here's where I wanted to go with it" then people might be more forgiving of him. I mean, Dusty Rhodes, pro wrestling's patron saint of bad ideas before Russo came along, did it all the time and he died a hero to most wrestling fans. The problem is, as has been said, Russo arrogantly insists that every idea he had was absolutely brilliant and only failed because somebody else sabotaged it or the fans weren't enlightened enough to understand it. There's no "Welp, I tried, it failed, I moved on", there's only this never ending insistence on re-litigating every one of his ample failures. Honestly, your first point would make for a more fascinating column. The thought process behind the bad gimmicks where you could at least try and see where he was coming from instead of the buzzwords of “The front office/Standards and Practices/The boys in the back” or whatever he comes up with this week as a blame. That'd require Russo to actually have a creative process, and not just be a regurgitation machine of old Opie and Anthony bits |
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Post by An Dog On An Skateboard on Jan 8, 2023 14:56:50 GMT -5
Even when he made those comments, this wasn't actually the case, it's just what people thought who had never really watched any.
He didn't mention style though, he said pretty much verbatim that as an American he didn't give a shit about Mexican or Japanese wrestlers, he only wanted to see American ones. And as well as just saying xenophobic shit he also booked xenophobic shit, which was probably a bigger part of those wrestlers not getting over than the fact that they were "foreign". So I'm not sure I buy that it was just a reaction. He's talking about mexican and japnese wrestlers in america (meaning on wwf and wcw television, that he was involved with), not the mexican wrestling in mexico and japanese wrestling in japan. He's not talking about sitting and watching AAA or njpw and seeing what is happening on that, he's talking about tom in nebraska turning on wrestling, and seeing circus tumblers who can't talk instead of a bar fights and heated interviews. The guy that's been watching hulk hogan and ric flair for the last ten years, is suddenly seeing guys who can't talk do flips and tricks to make the crowd ooo and awe rather than punching and clotheslines, and is wondering "what happened to the feuds and stories?". He said that in 1999 when he was coming into wcw, before that, he had been writing stories for wwf characters. The wwf's attempt at a cruiserweight division, hector garza and the other mexican guys, and kaientie/the other japanese guys in 97, had zero promos or interviews or feuds. He was writing lines for sable and austin to say to get the point of the match over with the audience. He was the guy writing lines and words for people to say, and didn't care about any of the actual wrestling in the ring. "I'll set the match up for the audience, and then you guys figure out the actual in ring stuff that you want to do". So his focus is on "who can speak the language the best" to say the words that he wants. So he's coming in to wcw, and the only mexican guys that have said a word is konan, rey mysterio, and eddie guerrero, and the only japan guy that has spoken is sonny ono, that is the manager for all of the japanese guys and does all of the talking for them. So as the guy writing the words for people to say to get the stories over with the audience, who is he going to naturally gravitate towards? It's like tajiri in ecw, when he turned heel, he had to have steve corino do the interviews for the audience, or asuka/shinsuke in wwe today, they can't do interviews, so whoever they are fighting has to do the set up for the audience first before the match. Super crazy and la parka never spoke, they got over on their moves. And (at least back then, things have fallen off a cliff today and everyone just does the same thing), just mentioning a location, meant "the style". the wwf style, memphis style. That was the build up on television of bret vs shawn for wm 12. Bret has a hard hitting submission canadian-leaning japanese style, and shawn (as said by bret on regis) "was trained by a mexican", meaning the mexican faster paced flying lucha style, and the build up was how would those two different styles work together and who would win using their particular strengths. "Working southern style" meant something different than "working mexican style". These days, everyone does the same thing and acts the same way, so you wouldn't know the difference where people were from. That was the beauty about wcw's giant roster in the 90s, the mix of all the different styles. You'd have european vs philly style, etc. "japanese vs mexican" meant two different styles. I'm not sure how "xenophobic" is supposed to be an insult. I'm an american, if I go to japan, I expect the local japanese guy that the fans are familiar with to be the hero and them to look at me as "who is this outsider guy coming in?". If a guy from california goes to texas, the opponent that's actually in texas that the fans are familiar with already is the good guy. That's "home" and "Away" in every sports game. If a guy from texas goes to california, then a guy locally in california is going to have to do an interview for the audience first, saying "it's okay, I can vouch for him, he's on our side" in order for him to be accepted on the good guy team. So, an american audience, watching american television, is going to be more familiar with the american guys on the show, that speak the same language, rather than people who can't speak the language, who need someone to talk for them or will get over on their moves (muta and liger for japan and la parka for mexico in wcw). The local audience is going to consider the local guy as the good guy, and the guy that's coming in from somewhere else is the bad guy. That's how it works everywhere. When he's talking about "american mainstream audience will never accept mexican/japanese wrestling", he's talking about guys who can talk/characters and the matches are punching kicking vs guys who can't speak the language/don't talk at all, and just do nine million moves in matches where no one hates each other. He says the exact same thing today, just "mexican/japanese" is replaced with "today's style" vs "how it used to be" when he says it, because that's what happened. the younger audience saw the cruiserweights in wcw and shawn michaels matches in wwf, Ooo'd and awe'd at them while saying the rest of the show is bad, so the next generation's shows are all cruiserweight and shawn michaels style matches, without the rest of the show there to create a contrast to balance it out and to create realism. Watch 80s and 90s wrestling, and then focus in on 96/7/8 when he was writing the words for people, and see what the americans were doing, and what the mexican and japanese wrestlers were doing. The japanese were foreign heels who couldn't talk and had no feuds, whose focus was in ring matches, and the mexicans were car crash filler matches to break up the show who had no feuds, while the americans had the interviews and feuds (the stuff that he was writing). But the lack of storylines involving those wrestlers or how they're used is on the booker, not the wrestlers. Russo can piss and complain about the style and language barriers and whatever else, but his efforts at getting those wrestlers over were laughable. That he lacked the creativity to even try to get these wrestlers over without resorting to offensive and racist gimmicks is on him, not them. And that's what I'm talking about when I mention xenophobia, reliance on lazy and offensive stereotypes, which absolutely is a bad thing.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 8, 2023 15:22:32 GMT -5
American: building up the feud, creating heat for the characters, having a story to follow along with. Mexican/Japanese (at least from back then when he said this): zero stories, car-crash cruiserweights, no selling the moves, how many flips and dives can you do in meaningless matches. He's said the exact same thing recently about today's wrestling/hunter's booking (just replace "mexican/japanese" with "today's style", and it's saying the same thing), about how the general public wants actual characters to latch onto and want to see win, where "today's wrestling fan" just wants "moves" with no rhyme or reason for anything that's happening. Just put bodies in a ring doing moves and that counts as wrestling, with no backstory for the actual match or anyone to root for. When he made that statement, it was in reaction to the cruiserweights in wcw, and the wwf doing it in return for awhile. If they're mexican/japanese, they couldn't cut promos or do interviews to build up the card, they were being used as "go send out the highfliers to wake up the crowd with a car crash to break up the show" in between the actual stories. Watch his recaps of stuff that he wrote/videos of him going over stuff that he wrote from twenty years ago, he wants lines being said, and promos, and "where's the heat in the story", not "there's no story, just go have a match and do moves". That's not race or skin color, that's style of show that you prefer. "the japanese/mexican style" vs "american style", which in today's world, has become "no stories/all workrate/only moves" vs "actual feuds and good guys/bad guys to root for" edit: from the same time period, think of chris jericho and lance storm working japan as a 100 miles an hour pure sport/doing moves style, and then coming to smoky mountain after that and having to learn how to slow down and work the crowd/"working american". That's what he's talking about. Even if you were right - which you aren't, he said specifically that as an American he has no interest in seeing a luchador or a Japanese guy Firstly, any comment on the pinatta on a pole match? And secondly, if you're right about Russo not being racist, cool. How about the fact that his writing absolutely hates women? You're actually trying to die on the hill of 'the sexist guy is not that racist'? First off, I don't know russo personally, I have never met him or have had anything to do with him other than seeing him on my television and internet, so if he turns out to be a murderer on his day off, don't tie me to him. I'm just translating what he said with what was happening at the time he said it. into today's words, because you can't understand it apparently. He's a writer writing words for people to say, he has no interest in any of the in ring wrestling. Why would he care about luchadors or japanese guys who can't do promos and feuds, and their focus is on their in ring action. Russo's whole thing was "I'll set up the reason for the match for the audience, someone else/you guys will have to figure out what to do in the actual match itself/any of the actual wrestling". So his focus is going to be on the guys that can talk. His statement was "the american mainstream audience", meaning the general public to gain an audience, not "the wrestling fan that's interested in every possible move that someone can do". At the time he said that, mexican and japanese guys didn't say a word and did ten millions moves, vs the american guys of hulk and savage on wcw and austin/rocky/undertaker on wwf. Who is going to give the audience a catchphrase to say, build up an "I hate you" feud to latch on to, vs moves between guys no one has any emotional connection to. He has said the exact same thing recently on youtube, if you change the words "mexican and japanese" into "today's wrestling", about why the general public doesn't care about wrestling today and that the audience for each show stays at the same number and doesn't move/why they can't grow an audience back up. Pinata on a pole match: Stick all of the mexican guys in a mexican themed match. Did that need an explanation? Same as undertaker having death themed matches, cowboys/hillbilly characters having country whipping/coal miner matches, jake the snake has the snake pit match, ken shamrock had the lion's den match, mankind in the wwf's specialty was brawling no-dq style, yokozuna had the sumo match with earthquake, etc. This is wrestling, the guy's character is going to have their own themed match based off of whatever their character is. The wcw mexican guys had zero feuds or stories between them up until that point (in other words, super calo hadn't attacked psychosis, so now they needed a cage match to settle their feud, etc), their only defining character was "mexican guy in a mask" in matches that meant absolutely nothing emotionally, so if they were all going to be thrown into a match, then they were going to be put in a mexican themed match. So as the guy in charge of writing the show, you can fault him for not writing the mexican guys into actual feuds with each other over personal issues to explain why they need to have their matches. That's not racist to base a match off of their defining character. Throw all the managers into a manager's match, the midgets into a midget match, country guys into a bunkhouse/jeans and boots match, japanese guys throw rice and do karate, jimmy snuka is an island tree climber guy, so his specialty is jumping off the top rope like he's jumping out of trees, slaughter's boot camp match, indian strap match for the indian guys, etc. These days, no one has a character to speak of, and the 5 foot hundred pound girls are doing the same moves as the 7 foot 5 hundred pound guys. Southern feds would have bull rope, coal miner style matches, because that's what the local audience knows. The bodybuilding guys have pose offs with their bodies, the strong guys have weight lifting contests, dancers have dance offs, boxers have boxing matches, amateur style wrestlers have straight wrestling matches, etc. But sticking characterless non-feuding mexican guys into a mexican themed match is different and racist. (just looked at the actual match on youtube) There was a money prize inside of the pinata, so this is the "10,000 dollars for the winner battle royal" but mexican themed since it's all mexican guys in the match. How is this any different than the last fifty years of wrestling? the set up onscreen: "midcarders don't make a lot of money, so here's a ten thousand dollar check for the winner, and since juventude is carrying around a pinata, we'll put the check in the pinata, and all of you get sticks to beat each other with to get to the pinata to open it to get the check.". A defined reason for having the match, makes sense for the rules and how you win, and it's themed for the participants involved and the object that one of them was holding when the match was made. What's bad about it? It's not the height of wrestling or anything, but as something to fill that week's three hour show, it made sense within the show, and didn't expose the show as fake or anything, so I don't know what the supposed problem is. The only mexican stuff in the match was the pinata, that was onscreen owned by juventude, and the stick to hit the pinata. They didn't come out in mariachi outfits with sombreros and serapes and go over the top with it. The wwf did worse by making them lawn mowers in 2005. There was a defined reason for why the match was happening, which is more than we ever got under bischoff for the mexican cruiserweights, a story that started and ended within two commercial breaks/two segments in a row, that made sense within the rules. There were no good guys/bad guys who didn't like each other involved, they were all friends hanging out together, so you needed a reason for a match where they were all friends, but needed an incentive to want to win. It's the same as "10,000 dollars for the winner of this match" battle royal, to throw guys into a match, where they don't hate each other and don't want to fight each other, but need a reason to want to have a match and incentive to win. On screen, Juventude brought the pinata, russo saw it and said "hey, we'll use that for the match!". If you take out the pinata that is physically holding the money, and the stick to hit the pinata to open it to get the money to win the match, it's the same match that wrestling has had for decades. I don't know if he's racist or not, I don't know him personally, you go ask him yourself if you're so concerned. But this specific match wasn't. Wrestling died in 1997 when it became about "what was this week's rating" rather than "Was our show good". They do the same thing today that they did back then. They don't want to "lose" the ratings war for a week, so instead of saying "we're going to lose the ratings for the next couple of weeks, because we're building something up that will happen in two weeks that will get a larger audience on that show", they need something to hook you into staying around individually each week for that week's rating, so they end up sacrificing continuity between the shows and building stories up, in favor of "wow, did you see that!?" to get eyes on the show that moment. So starting from there onwards, you're going to get a lot of "why is this happening? This doesn't make sense", but this match makes more sense than any of the other cruiserweight matches that were happening at the time for no reason, and the majority of all wwe/aew matches for the last few years. How does his writing hate women? The beautiful people in tna, angelina and velvet, both love him and regularly praise him. I'm not dying on any hill, I'm explaining what words mean,instead of understanding what the words that he said meant in the context that he was saying them. He said he wanted feuds and stories, with the matches being fights like normal people, rather than no characters or feuds with endless moves being done, and that gets turned into "RACIST!". In this instance, you can blame him for not writing actual feuds and stories for the mexican and japanese guys, to fix the problem. If the problem is that they don't have feuds or stories, and are just having meaningless matches for reason, and you're in charge writing the show, write them some actual feuds and stories to solve the problem. Fault him for that. |
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jan 8, 2023 15:28:58 GMT -5
He's talking about mexican and japnese wrestlers in america (meaning on wwf and wcw television, that he was involved with), not the mexican wrestling in mexico and japanese wrestling in japan. He's not talking about sitting and watching AAA or njpw and seeing what is happening on that, he's talking about tom in nebraska turning on wrestling, and seeing circus tumblers who can't talk instead of a bar fights and heated interviews. The guy that's been watching hulk hogan and ric flair for the last ten years, is suddenly seeing guys who can't talk do flips and tricks to make the crowd ooo and awe rather than punching and clotheslines, and is wondering "what happened to the feuds and stories?". He said that in 1999 when he was coming into wcw, before that, he had been writing stories for wwf characters. The wwf's attempt at a cruiserweight division, hector garza and the other mexican guys, and kaientie/the other japanese guys in 97, had zero promos or interviews or feuds. He was writing lines for sable and austin to say to get the point of the match over with the audience. He was the guy writing lines and words for people to say, and didn't care about any of the actual wrestling in the ring. "I'll set the match up for the audience, and then you guys figure out the actual in ring stuff that you want to do". So his focus is on "who can speak the language the best" to say the words that he wants. So he's coming in to wcw, and the only mexican guys that have said a word is konan, rey mysterio, and eddie guerrero, and the only japan guy that has spoken is sonny ono, that is the manager for all of the japanese guys and does all of the talking for them. So as the guy writing the words for people to say to get the stories over with the audience, who is he going to naturally gravitate towards? It's like tajiri in ecw, when he turned heel, he had to have steve corino do the interviews for the audience, or asuka/shinsuke in wwe today, they can't do interviews, so whoever they are fighting has to do the set up for the audience first before the match. Super crazy and la parka never spoke, they got over on their moves. And (at least back then, things have fallen off a cliff today and everyone just does the same thing), just mentioning a location, meant "the style". the wwf style, memphis style. That was the build up on television of bret vs shawn for wm 12. Bret has a hard hitting submission canadian-leaning japanese style, and shawn (as said by bret on regis) "was trained by a mexican", meaning the mexican faster paced flying lucha style, and the build up was how would those two different styles work together and who would win using their particular strengths. "Working southern style" meant something different than "working mexican style". These days, everyone does the same thing and acts the same way, so you wouldn't know the difference where people were from. That was the beauty about wcw's giant roster in the 90s, the mix of all the different styles. You'd have european vs philly style, etc. "japanese vs mexican" meant two different styles. I'm not sure how "xenophobic" is supposed to be an insult. I'm an american, if I go to japan, I expect the local japanese guy that the fans are familiar with to be the hero and them to look at me as "who is this outsider guy coming in?". If a guy from california goes to texas, the opponent that's actually in texas that the fans are familiar with already is the good guy. That's "home" and "Away" in every sports game. If a guy from texas goes to california, then a guy locally in california is going to have to do an interview for the audience first, saying "it's okay, I can vouch for him, he's on our side" in order for him to be accepted on the good guy team. So, an american audience, watching american television, is going to be more familiar with the american guys on the show, that speak the same language, rather than people who can't speak the language, who need someone to talk for them or will get over on their moves (muta and liger for japan and la parka for mexico in wcw). The local audience is going to consider the local guy as the good guy, and the guy that's coming in from somewhere else is the bad guy. That's how it works everywhere. When he's talking about "american mainstream audience will never accept mexican/japanese wrestling", he's talking about guys who can talk/characters and the matches are punching kicking vs guys who can't speak the language/don't talk at all, and just do nine million moves in matches where no one hates each other. He says the exact same thing today, just "mexican/japanese" is replaced with "today's style" vs "how it used to be" when he says it, because that's what happened. the younger audience saw the cruiserweights in wcw and shawn michaels matches in wwf, Ooo'd and awe'd at them while saying the rest of the show is bad, so the next generation's shows are all cruiserweight and shawn michaels style matches, without the rest of the show there to create a contrast to balance it out and to create realism. Watch 80s and 90s wrestling, and then focus in on 96/7/8 when he was writing the words for people, and see what the americans were doing, and what the mexican and japanese wrestlers were doing. The japanese were foreign heels who couldn't talk and had no feuds, whose focus was in ring matches, and the mexicans were car crash filler matches to break up the show who had no feuds, while the americans had the interviews and feuds (the stuff that he was writing). But the lack of storylines involving those wrestlers or how they're used is on the booker, not the wrestlers. Russo can piss and complain about the style and language barriers and whatever else, but his efforts at getting those wrestlers over were laughable. That he lacked the creativity to even try to get these wrestlers over without resorting to offensive and racist gimmicks is on him, not them. And that's what I'm talking about when I mention xenophobia, reliance on lazy and offensive stereotypes, which absolutely is a bad thing.
I Just wrote on my response to the other guy this same thing. If you want to fault him for something, that's the thing you can fault him for. He made that statement when he was coming into wcw in 1999, so he's saying it in reaction to everything that had happened up until that point. After he's in charge writing the show, if that's the problem, just write them feuds and stories and fix the problem. Instead, it was like he said "this is how they've been used so far, and this is where they'll stay!", instead of fixing the problem once he had writing control. We agree on this *thumbs up* |
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jan 8, 2023 15:33:22 GMT -5
If it was just him coming out and saying "Yeah, it was stupid, but sometimes stupid works. Here's what I was thinking and here's where I wanted to go with it" then people might be more forgiving of him. I mean, Dusty Rhodes, pro wrestling's patron saint of bad ideas before Russo came along, did it all the time and he died a hero to most wrestling fans. The problem is, as has been said, Russo arrogantly insists that every idea he had was absolutely brilliant and only failed because somebody else sabotaged it or the fans weren't enlightened enough to understand it. There's no "Welp, I tried, it failed, I moved on", there's only this never ending insistence on re-litigating every one of his ample failures. Honestly, your first point would make for a more fascinating column. The thought process behind the bad gimmicks where you could at least try and see where he was coming from instead of the buzzwords of “The front office/Standards and Practices/The boys in the back” or whatever he comes up with this week as a blame. A "it didn't work, but at least I tried" piece on stuff would be fun, and laying out the thought process and how they thought that stuff would work and go show to show, but the audience just didn't go for it so we had to drop it, backstage type of stuff would be nice. |
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Post by Feargus McReddit on Jan 8, 2023 15:33:42 GMT -5
Honestly, your first point would make for a more fascinating column. The thought process behind the bad gimmicks where you could at least try and see where he was coming from instead of the buzzwords of “The front office/Standards and Practices/The boys in the back” or whatever he comes up with this week as a blame. That'd require Russo to actually have a creative process, and not just be a regurgitation machine of old Opie and Anthony bits Or had any kind of self awareness about mistakes. |
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chazraps
Wade Wilson
Better have my money when I come-a collect!
Posts: 28,322 
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Post by chazraps on Jan 8, 2023 15:38:54 GMT -5
Cool, what does that have to do with literally anything, extremely bad faith replier? Plenty you can criticise Russo for but bringing skin colour into a discussion is needless. No, it's very needful. Vince Russo is a dumb out of touch racist. Also, a sexist homophobe and transphobe. |
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XIII
Bill S. Preston, Esq.
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Post by XIII on Jan 8, 2023 15:49:20 GMT -5
The thing with Russo is that even if you look past all of the terrible things that he espouses he’s also a garbage wrestling booker. Not sure why we continue to give this dude the time of day.
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Post by "Gizzark" Mike Wronglevenay on Jan 8, 2023 15:54:15 GMT -5
I am peacing out. You guys have fun though.
So glad chaz joined the thread to drop a classic!
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Post by jason1980s on Jan 8, 2023 16:41:58 GMT -5
I only got a few minutes into the RD/Eric panel but it's pretty similar to the Larry King Bruno/Vince showdown where Bruno fumbles through some things he's heard from people who heard from some people about Vince and WWF and Vince takes him out in just a few seconds. Like someone else said, there's a reason Eric keeps getting hired.
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Gawk Rivers
Ozymandius
MAMMA MIA! CRUISERLICIOUS!
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Post by Gawk Rivers on Jan 8, 2023 16:57:03 GMT -5
That Bischoff vs RD debate is hilarious and I couldn't get more than a few minutes in cause it's so brutal to watch Eric just rip this dude apart so bad.
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Post by kingoftheindies on Jan 8, 2023 21:47:43 GMT -5
That Bischoff vs RD debate is hilarious and I couldn't get more than a few minutes in cause it's so brutal to watch Eric just rip this dude apart so bad. I think what also hurt was RD real early tried to go for comedy and it just... didn't get a reaction. So he was DOA |
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Post by The Captain on Jan 8, 2023 22:14:40 GMT -5
It's the year of our lord 2023 and people are trying to defend Vince Russo being a bigot.
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