torontonyr Posted March 31, 2015 Share Posted March 31, 2015 Just going to leave this here: Get over it. (and I mean that in the nicest of ways) He knew what he was getting into when he signed that contract, and if he didn't he's naive. Still, that doesn't take away from one of the best WM, and as a byproduct one of the best wrestling events, of all time. Sting is 11 years older than HHH, and it makes sense that HHH would win - the fact that Sting put up a fight of any effect is spectacular treatment alone. As for the NWO - yeah, it doesn't make all that much sense as they were there to disrupt the WCW; but there's still an "us against them" angle there that makes sense. I may fight with my brothers, but if you pick a fight with them - I'm coming after you. It's not quite as bad as you're making it sound. Did it live up to your, likely unattainable, standards? Probably not. Those have been inflated by almost three decades of dreams, but at this point in Sting's career - it was still a decent match. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil Posted March 31, 2015 Author Share Posted March 31, 2015 I have no context to know if it was good or bad. I know only what I saw, which was another WCW guy getting jobbed out to a WWE guy with company men dick heads like JBL spitting on the wound after with "and the right company won again". But I won't get over it. Ever. They not only put my favorite company out of business, but shit on all that talent that ended up in WWE. I consider Vince McMahon one of the best and worst things to ever happen to pro wrestling. What he was able to build is incredible. How he built it is unforgivable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
twentyseven Posted March 31, 2015 Share Posted March 31, 2015 On a new note. When the fans at WM started chanting this it was hilarious, 76k fans chanting this in unison is awesome. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
torontonyr Posted March 31, 2015 Share Posted March 31, 2015 I have no context to know if it was good or bad. I know only what I saw, which was another WCW guy getting jobbed out to a WWE guy with company men dick heads like JBL spitting on the wound after with "and the right company won again". But I won't get over it. Ever. They not only put my favorite company out of business, but shit on all that talent that ended up in WWE. I consider Vince McMahon one of the best and worst things to ever happen to pro wrestling. What he was able to build is incredible. How he built it is unforgivable. You're being hyperbolic and judging a match largely by one bit of commentary. Yes, that comment was distasteful, but JBL is an idiot and actually plays a heel commentator - so it's to be expected. Sting himself was rather proud of the match and can be heard verbally praising it at the end face to face with HHH. Nobody got jobbed, and it was done respectfully. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil Posted March 31, 2015 Author Share Posted March 31, 2015 You're being hyperbolic and judging a match largely by one bit of commentary. Yes, that comment was distasteful, but JBL is an idiot and actually plays a heel commentator - so it's to be expected. Sting himself was rather proud of the match and can be heard verbally praising it at the end face to face with HHH. Nobody got jobbed, and it was done respectfully. I never used the term "jobbed". I'm happy for Sting he got his Wrestlemania moment. I just think it's stupid it was in a loss to a guy renowned, rightfully or not, for refusing to put over "inferior" talent. I'm not judging the match by that line of commentary either. I'm judging the company. The same company I've judged for years for acting and behaving in the way they do. That comment was a microcosm of why I find them so unpalatable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
torontonyr Posted March 31, 2015 Share Posted March 31, 2015 I never used the term "jobbed". I'm happy for Sting he got his Wrestlemania moment. I just think it's stupid it was in a loss to a guy renowned, rightfully or not, for refusing to put over "inferior" talent. I'm not judging the match by that line of commentary either. I'm judging the company. The same company I've judged for years for acting and behaving in the way they do. That comment was a microcosm of why I find them so unpalatable. I know you never did, but you've implied that he was buried in the match and that it was some sort of tragic occurrence - it wasn't. In terms of narrative, this is exactly what HHH is supposed to do. He's an insecure cheat and thief, who needed to call upon no less than 4 of his buddies to take out a guy who's more than 10 years his senior. Not only that, it took the infinitely more talented Shawn Michaels to close the deal. Frankly, if Sting won despite all of those odds my suspension of disbelief would have flown right out of the window. Personal feelings aside, the match was well done. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil Posted March 31, 2015 Author Share Posted March 31, 2015 I'm looking at him being "buried" in the sense that he's a fucking icon. HHH isn't. Even if he wants to be. HHH is to Sting in the annals of pro wrestling history as Sean Avery is to Henrik Lundqvist in the annals of New York Rangers history. Popular? Sure. Successful? Yup, for a time. Legendary? Nope. If this was all part of some story line I'm unaware of, and I am unaware, fine, I get it, kind of. But I just can't get past the concept of Wrestlemania... HHH versus STING, and Sting loses. It just doesn't compute. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
torontonyr Posted March 31, 2015 Share Posted March 31, 2015 I'm looking at him being "buried" in the sense that he's a fucking icon. HHH isn't. Even if he wants to be. HHH is to Sting in the annals of pro wrestling history as Sean Avery is to Henrik Lundqvist in the annals of New York Rangers history. Popular? Sure. Successful? Yup, for a time. Legendary? Nope. If this was all part of some story line I'm unaware of, and I am unaware, fine, I get it, kind of. But I just can't get past the concept of Wrestlemania... HHH versus STING, and Sting loses. It just doesn't compute. It wasn't HHH, it was HHH and DX. Moreover, how believable is it that a senior citizen can beat a middle-aged man in an unfair fight? And to that point, when has HHH as a character ever played fair in the first place? The match went exactly as kayfabe would/should dictate. I know you're sore about it because of your allegiances, but that just proves that they did their job. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil Posted March 31, 2015 Author Share Posted March 31, 2015 Like I said, Sting is a legend. HHH is not. My allegiances are to Sting in front of and behind the kayfabe walls. As a fan, I can understand why he'd lose in terms of story. But it still turns me off because of the history of the man who pinned him consistently being criticized for doing things just like this his entire career, regardless of age. Add JBL's comment on top, and I think you're smart enough to see why I'd be upset. If WWE/TNA were a hockey game, the score with about 1:12 left in the third period at this point is like 8-1 WWE. JBL's comment is like watching Ovechkin do his stick-on-fire dance after they score their 9th. Have some fucking class. A little humility goes a long way. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
torontonyr Posted March 31, 2015 Share Posted March 31, 2015 Like I said, Sting is a legend. HHH is not. My allegiances are to Sting in front of and behind the kayfabe walls. As a fan, I can understand why he'd lose in terms of story. But it still turns me off because of the history of the man who pinned him consistently being criticized for doing things just like this his entire career, regardless of age. Add JBL's comment on top, and I think you're smart enough to see why I'd be upset. If WWE/TNA were a hockey game, the score with about 1:12 left in the third period at this point is like 8-1 WWE. JBL's comment is like watching Ovechkin do his stick-on-fire dance after they score their 9th. Have some fucking class. A little humility goes a long way. I get why you're upset, and I get that JBL's comment only makes that worse - but in terms of that match, that night, that Wrestlemania: it was the right thing for the story. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil Posted March 31, 2015 Author Share Posted March 31, 2015 Fair enough. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil Posted March 31, 2015 Author Share Posted March 31, 2015 On a related note, TNA has some really great mid-card feuds going on right now. Magnus/Bram, EY/Roode and Hardy (both)/Storm are great. Jeff Hardy/Storm from the main event of IMPACT this past Friday was amazing. Six Sides of Steel match, and the entrance to start the match alone was money with Storm going face-to-face with Hardy with the cage between them. Not sure if TNA puts whole matches up on YouTube (at least matches like that), but if you haven't seen it, check it out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
torontonyr Posted March 31, 2015 Share Posted March 31, 2015 EC3 is like my favourite part of TNA right now, I'm blown away that WWE didn't feel he had the "it" factor. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil Posted March 31, 2015 Author Share Posted March 31, 2015 Oh, him too. I'm really, really, really hoping this is the year they get him pushed to the main event. I can't think of a better guy to put him over (by masking his deficiencies, since he isn't the best wrestler out there) than Kurt Angle. I know a lot of people were irked when Angle won the title considering his age, thinking of him as a new Sting, but I thought it made perfect sense, because you can't have Lashley turn face again just to go up against ECIII, and Lashley also can't talk his way out of a parking ticket, so it hurts the program if he's going up against a guy like Carter who needs his mic skill to carry the weight of the feud. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NYRangerFan Posted March 31, 2015 Share Posted March 31, 2015 I loved wrestling when the WWE was the WWF and a few years after but it just seems like everything is so different now. The wrestlers just don't seem the same and the camera angles zoom in on the moves and you clearly see that they don't even hit each other. Just seems bland Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil Posted March 31, 2015 Author Share Posted March 31, 2015 I loved wrestling when the WWE was the WWF and a few years after but it just seems like everything is so different now. The wrestlers just don't seem the same and the camera angles zoom in on the moves and you clearly see that they don't even hit each other. Just seems bland It's probably different because you're smart to it. Most people fall in love with wrestling as kids when suspension of disbelief is a lot easier. Growing up, I really thought that Mr. Perfect was evil. I thought he was going to kill Bret Hart. I thought Sting was the ultimate good guy. I thought Ric Flair was such a cheater, and I'd get vocally angry when he cheated and the ref didn't see it. HD certainly didn't help matters either, because it required guys to work that much snugger to maintain kayfabe and the illusion of contact with a lot of moves. I mean, you can see guys verbally direct/choreograph matches these days with ease if you're looking for it. The characters aren't the same, sure, because the super hero stuff you probably grew up watching (not sure your age, so I can't really answer this yet) like The Undertaker and Hulk Hogan have been replaced with realer life versions of the main eventers of today who tend to just go by a first name and last name. The bland thing is different. That's on the talent. I actually agree that a lot of the talent in WWE is bland. It's part of the reason I stopped watching. My issues with the men behind the curtain running the show aside, I just had a terrible time finding much to care about with so much of the rsoter, and so many of the segments that I eventually began recording RAW to watch on delay so I could fast-forward through everything I hated, to one day actually fast-forwarding through the entire episode right to the end, watching maybe three minutes of a two-hour show (they were still two hours when I was watching), and then making the conscious decision to just give up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NYRangerFan Posted March 31, 2015 Share Posted March 31, 2015 Good post. 21 btw. Another thing i find weird is the first and last name characters like you said. I'm used to almost every wrestler on a RAW or Smackdown roster being made up. Triple H, Undertaker, The Rock, Stone Cold, Mankind,/Dude Love Hardcore Holly, Big Show, The Blue Meanie, Goldust, Rhino, Test, Big Bossman and many more. Just seems like the wrestlers are really acting and not portraying an image like the old wrestlers used to do. I remember when Triple H and Austin went at it in 3 stages of hell at No Way Out in 01 or 02 and it was fuckin sick. People actually hated HHH back then and Austin was like the underdog, it just feels different now. Or in 99 i think it was when The Rock beat Mankind for the WWE title and hit him with a chair about 20 times and split his head open in front of his wife and kids and Vince said the fans love it and The Rock was hated. Or how about the Stone Cold-McMahon saga? Kane and Shane? TLC with the Hardys, Dudleys and Edge and Christian? Goldberg? They just don't have those guys that would put it on the line anymore. I can still watch a match from the 90s-early 2000s and cheer because it seemed so real and passionate. Don't get me started on ECW from the 90s, not the stupid one night stand bullshit they have. Terry Funk and the barbed wire matches? I barely see blood anymore. These characters are just so boring and when i see guys like Kane and Big Show running around with them, it just makes it worse. Where the hell is the passion? They actually brought back Lesnar and Heyman? I mean, what the hell? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil Posted March 31, 2015 Author Share Posted March 31, 2015 Well, a lot of the guys you mentioned worked or came from the same era when guys came in as names, not cartoon characters. Triple H wasn't Triple H, he was Hunter Hearst Helmsley. The Rock wasn't the Rock, he was Rocky Maivia. Even Stone Cold was the Ringmaster, and then Steve Austin. The "Stone Cold" aspect of it came into play as the Stone Cold character itself evolved. Mankind/Dude love was still Mick Foley, etc. A lot of what you are pointing to (Test, Bossman, Hardcore Holly, Big Show, etc) I wasn't really watching closely, if at all. I grew up a WCW fan, so my time was invested there throughout the Monday Night wars. I watched late 80's and early WWF prior to the rise of WCW and all the defections to it, moved to WCW almost exclusively sans a few weeks of channel-surfing back-and-forth during the Wars, quit watching wrestling at all after WCW went under in '01 (I didn't watch the Invasion angle until years after it was finished), and then kind of came back to WWE again around 2004 or 2005 for a bit when TNA had pulled me back into being a wrestling fan again when they got their one-hour block on SpikeTV, only to quit on WWE again around I think '07 or '08? I don't really remember the exact time, because like I explained earlier, I'd already begun tuning out for a while. The decision to stop watching WWE wasn't an overnight call. I've watched sporadically here and there since (came back for like a month or longer during the Summer of Punk), but I've been a consistent TNA viewer since day one. Haven't missed a single episode since their cable launch. Have you actually tried watching either company — WWE or TNA — lately, for more than just a fleeting moment? Like have you actually given full episodes a watch, or even watched for a few weeks to acclimate yourself to the running stories? I find it hard to believe that anyone who grew up a fan couldn't still find some value in either show. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NYRangerFan Posted March 31, 2015 Share Posted March 31, 2015 Well, a lot of the guys you mentioned worked or came from the same era when guys came in as names, not cartoon characters. Triple H wasn't Triple H, he was Hunter Hearst Helmsley. The Rock wasn't the Rock, he was Rocky Maivia. Even Stone Cold was the Ringmaster, and then Steve Austin. The "Stone Cold" aspect of it came into play as the Stone Cold character itself evolved. Mankind/Dude love was still Mick Foley, etc. A lot of what you are pointing to (Test, Bossman, Hardcore Holly, Big Show, etc) I wasn't really watching closely, if at all. I grew up a WCW fan, so my time was invested there throughout the Monday Night wars. I watched late 80's and early WWF prior to the rise of WCW and all the defections to it, moved to WCW almost exclusively sans a few weeks of channel-surfing back-and-forth during the Wars, quit watching wrestling at all after WCW went under in '01 (I didn't watch the Invasion angle until years after it was finished), and then kind of came back to WWE again around 2004 or 2005 for a bit when TNA had pulled me back into being a wrestling fan again when they got their one-hour block on SpikeTV, only to quit on WWE again around I think '07 or '08? I don't really remember the exact time, because like I explained earlier, I'd already begun tuning out for a while. The decision to stop watching WWE wasn't an overnight call. I've watched sporadically here and there since (came back for like a month or longer during the Summer of Punk), but I've been a consistent TNA viewer since day one. Haven't missed a single episode since their cable launch. Have you actually tried watching either company — WWE or TNA — lately, for more than just a fleeting moment? Like have you actually given full episodes a watch, or even watched for a few weeks to acclimate yourself to the running stories? I find it hard to believe that anyone who grew up a fan couldn't still find some value in either show. Yeah but you know what i mean, you can actually love and hate those guys and the storylines were excellent and seemed real. I liked WCW too and i watched TNA a few times and i find it pretty entertaining. A lot of WWE wrestlers went there and they did pretty well imo. It helped out because they were all good characters. I watched WWE for a few weeks now but mostly the ending since i work nights. All i see is Lesnar, Reigns, Big Show, Kane and Daniel Bryant. I always catch the ending or towards the ending but i just can't get into it Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil Posted March 31, 2015 Author Share Posted March 31, 2015 Well, we share the same frustrations regarding WWE. Even when I put aside the fact I detest who run their show, the actual talent they own to me is vastly overrated. The best way I can explain this is by saying that were many of them in TNA, ROH, or elsewhere instead of WWE, the fanfare surrounding them would be significantly less than it is. WWE sells a legacy brand to me, similar to why people buy Campbell's soup. Not because it's good, but because for fifty years, it's what they bought when they wanted soup at home. It tastes good enough, it's pretty cheap and it's filling when you eat it, even if there are vastly superior soups to be eaten elsewhere if you'd just take the time to try them. It's to the point where the last time I was asked about who I don't like, I actually though it easier to explain who I do, but why they aren't enough to keep me on a consistent basis. It's a really short list. But that's a problem exclusive to WWE, that's compounded by the fact I detest who run their show. That company, for me, has to overwhelmingly exceed expectations to win me back as a fan — something I can admit is probably never going to happen (though it came close with the Summer of Punk). His first "pipe bomb" promo had me hook, line and sinker ready to return. Even though his "best in the world" line was something he yanked from Chris Jericho just a few years prior. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NYRangerFan Posted April 1, 2015 Share Posted April 1, 2015 I agree Rome. I don't think i can ever become a fan again, i just can't dedicate my time to their shows on the nights they are on, the storylines just don't draw me in and the divas are worse than ever too. They were always sort of pointless imo but now when they come on it becomes a 5 minute soda/snack break or bathroom break if i happen to catch them or just change the channel completely. The most interesting WWE character right now is Randy Orton because he actually looks like a sneaky bastard but it's just not enough. For me, nothing will top wrestling from the 90s to early 2000s, there was just so many interesting characters and sometimes you thought it was a TV show and not a wrestling event because the storylines were so good and the moves actually looked real and guys were more creative. Jericho was one of my favorite wrestlers tho Successful companies usually get too gassed up and then there is no fixing it since people will buy it anyway, just like EA sports or your soup comparison. What happened to the ring in TNA tho? It was awesome with the 6 sided ring Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil Posted April 1, 2015 Author Share Posted April 1, 2015 Funny enough, we agree on Orton. He's a guy I was hoping WWE would fire after what was believed to be his third strike in terms of substance abuse so TNA could pick him up. Never happened unfortunately. There are others I still enjoy there as well — Barrett and Bray Wyatt are both money. But generally speaking, it's a really weak roster that IMO gets by on being a legacy brand, not because it's actually good. TNA went back to the six-sided ring. You should check to see if you get Destination America (it's part of the Discovery Communications/Discovery Channel family) with your cable package and check out IMPACT this Friday. I think you might dig it. Character-wise, they've got a strong product. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vodka Drunkenski Posted April 1, 2015 Share Posted April 1, 2015 Legacy brand is why I think they will fall out of the sky, the name can only carry you so long imo. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil Posted April 1, 2015 Author Share Posted April 1, 2015 Legacy brand is why they'll never fall out of the sky. It's why the Leafs will never collapse. It's why the Rangers will never collapse. It's why the Yankees will never collapse. You can have years and years and years of shit that you sell as sugar, and it won't matter. Even if your fans slowly, kind of stop caring or coming, not enough of them will for your business to ever go under. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vodka Drunkenski Posted April 1, 2015 Share Posted April 1, 2015 I think those sports are much different that wrestling. Those sports aren't scripted, I think the scripted ideas are too bland now and don't see anything idea that they can recover with. I don't see a type of Hogan heel turn that with redefine the industry. They may not go completely under but I do see them dwindling down in venues Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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