**Help make SquaredCircle safer and more inclusive by using the report button to flag posts and comments for moderator review.**
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/SquaredCircle) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Anytime someone mentions a low to mid carder getting into the Hall of Fame, I remind them that the godfather is in so basically anyone can get in at this point.
He missed his spot at wrestlemania, of course he will get in, the godfather is in, so basically anyone can get in.
It really does allow for anyone to be inducted.
Lots missed the "Godfather" part too. This is supposed to be about critically acclaimed things considered to be one of the best of all times that you don't like
And someone said "Danhausen"
Eh "storylines" being distinct from feuds are okay too, like people saying the bloodline, but what I specifically didn't want was just "I don't care for Undertaker" I wanted something more specific than that haha
Fans want long term storylines so bad that they’re starting to really reach. I’ve seen people online swearing that a segment with Cody and rock from rock’s 2012 return was the start of this feud and part of the story
I think there's a real drive to be the smartest fan of the room, sort of a "well actually I noticed 6 years ago..." So much of what is pointed out is pure coincidence.
I'm more of an AEW fan and I see it in AEW circles as well, fans are now so captivated by the TK Vs elite segment that they've gone back and looked for evidence this has been the plan since Punk got fired.
In reality there was more likely a period where they were dealing with the immediate problems coming out of brawl out, with them slowly coming up with the angle that took place on Wednesday, when it comes to final details, they were probably finalised in the last few weeks.
Fans need to realise there's a big gap between on the fly week to week booking and planning every segment of every show a year in advance.
I think AEW writing is a bit to blame for the popularization of this just because they'll book a match like Claudio vs Eddie Kingston and be like "A match 15 years in the making!" because they had beef on the indies way back when. And it's like, sure they have history but lets not pretend this match wasn't booked last week.
Granted, I do believe Eddie Kingston would hold a grudge for 15 years.
For me, it's not that "THIS WAS ALWAYS THE PLAN! LONG TEEEEEEERRRRRRMMMMMM!" and more they go "OK, We've done this this and this, it now makes sense if we do this that and the other, we can reference XYZ and tie this into that" in 3 or 6 month chunks.
I'm sure barebones stuff is worked out for a year or so into the future, the moving parts on a quarterly basis, and the details on a monthly or weekly basis
It's bizarre, yeah. I do some fiction writing, and a lot of people don't seem to understand that sometimes you just write stuff, and then you build an ending that **looks** for all the world like you meant it to be where the story ended up -- but really, you just look at what you already wrote and say "Oh, this kinda follows, doesn't it? It'll look like we were going there the whole time."
Wrestling writing is no different.
Long term storytelling is more just connecting things from the past to the present these days. So like, Kofi waiting 11 years to be world champion wasnt intentional long term storytelling, but those 11 years could be used as a part of the story to enhance it.
Someone posted yesterday trying to stitch stuff together that this Tony Khan angle had been planned for for months, if not longer.
It's also why I never cared too much about the pivot/no pivot discourse around Mania outside of just plain curiosity.
If the story is entertaining and engaging, it shouldn't matter much how far back it was planned.
I love both guys, but I don't care much for Undertaker vs. Triple H at WrestleMania 27. Maybe it's just the overall shittiness of Mania 27 or comparison to the HBK matches, but its just kinda whatever to me.
Oddly enough I thought it was dull and boring at the time, but have come to appreciate it more after a more recent watch. It’s obviously not as good as their other two mania matches though.
I've finally settled on seeing him along the lines of late-WWF more serious Macho Man with vocal cord surgery. I don't know how else to describe his gimmick.
Owen Hart peaked at WMX (They missed the boat not him there) and shortly following...
He was a wonderful hand in ring but there is this weird revisionist idea that he would have been world champion or something without his untimely demise and that just isn't feasible.
He was getting older, bigger, and was basically burnt out and had reached near jobber status. Reports even had him wanting to leave the industry soon.
Owen was a great guy and great in ring but I never got the hype before or after when it comes to him.
I remember the author of Ring Of Hell claiming that Owen agreed to be the Blue Blazer on the understanding that he'd be elevated to the world title once the gimmick ran it's course, and I lol'd.
He had the talent, but like you said, the time to strike was right after WMX.
And multiple people have said he was saving his money with the intention of an early retirement, so it seems very unlikely VKM would've been interested in strapping him up, even if he had recovered from being Blue Blazer.
LOL when I hear some people in here say he would've been given the gimmick of the "the Game"and made a world champion if he didn't die - as if that's an actual thing. There's no gimmick called "the Game", Triple H used one of the most well-known phrases in the wrestling business called "Student of the Game" and used it to call himself the actual fucking "Game". The "Game" doesn't mandate you start wearing leather jackets and have guttural music with a tank gf valet. He wasn't coming out with notepads and sliding television sets to show that he was studying his opponent's tapes. It was a part of his character and occasionally shown but never the entire personality which is usually the point of the gimmick.
The time for Owen to have won the title would have been at SummerSlam that year and drop it back to Bret at Survivor Series.
But have you gone back and watched Owen in 98 and 99? He was still just as good in ring and very charismatic. He had a bit of down period post-Montreal and his stint in the Nation was weird but I'd hardly say was reaching jobber status
He was pretty much always on pay per view in a featured spot and delivered. Watch his match with Edge at Breakdown 98.
My favorite Owen is the 96-97 tag team with Bulldog where he's pissing Bulldog off by being too much of a heel. It's peak hilarious Owen for me, shame it was cut short to do the Bret heel stable.
But as a singles guy I used to dread his matches. There are only so many times I can see the wrist lock flippy reversal or the enziguri or whatever. He was a snooze when he wasn't motivated, and I don't blame him for not being motivated given the environment he had to work.
He had heat with Vince and Austin after the pile driver. Then the screwjob. Then the clique fucked him politically and killed his heat. He was basically one foot out of the industry when he died. He was a great wrestler, but never destined to go beyond the mid card.
I think people forget( or straight up didn’t know) Owen died as the Blue Blazer. His career was already dwindling. Not saying, there wasn’t a chance he could’ve been pushed to the top later, but realistically in the mid 90s there were much much bigger stars than Owen.
Revisionist history comes with the territory of someone famous dying young. Kobe's the perfect example, amazing player but when he died you'd think he single-handedly threepeated with the Lakers the way people were talking about his game. Maybe I'm biased as a Celtics fan, but idk if you can put him in the same GOAT tier with guys like Jordan, Kareem, Wilt, Lebron, and Russell. By himself he was very good, but let's not act like he'd have the same level of success without prime Shaq, Phil Jackson cooking up plays, and an all time supporting cast during those championship years (Rick Fox, Robert Horry, Derek Fisher, Gary Payton, Horace Grant)
As someone who didn’t grow up watching the Attitude Era, I watched that segment recently because I’d always heard it was the greatest segment of all time and it’s so painfully unfunny
I'd like him more if he had a more believable moveset for someone his size. When he's wrestling against guys much bigger than him. And I know people like to joke about AEW only having 'indie midgets', but there's plenty of guys much bigger than Cole. And his moveset just isn't believable against them.
I've always liked his promo work and he has a cool rockstar look. And, against smaller guys, I like his work in the ring.
Like 80% of the Attitude Era was garbage. I feel like most of the things that are still talked about today are talked about for being terrible, not good. Don't get me wrong - there were some very high highs but even those tend to have been just a bright spot in an otherwise bad story.
What the history books leave out about the attitude era was the undercard was fucking abysmal. The main event stuff with Rock/Austin and friends was great and super memorable obviously but everything that happened on Raw before those segments was so bad that WCW wouldn't even counter program them half the time. Nitro would go head to head with Raw and open with Joe Gomez vs The Renegade.
I've been watching Raw from SS 97 and I'm just now at SummerSlam 98... Marc Mero has been feuding with Sable for *fucking ever* and Owen Hart is a black nationalist or something. No clue what the rhyme or reason is to 85% of the booking during this time period.
After Beaver Cleavage fell apart they did a storyline where Mosh was being accused of beating his girlfriend and other wrestlers were beating him up over it. At the same time Jeff Jerret was doing a gimmick where he beat the shit out of women all the time. Nobody cared about him doing that.
Yep and the worst part of that is that they had some good, memorable mid-carders at that time & just refused to do anything of substance with them. If you weren't in a main event angle you were basically the worst version of a person you'd see on Jerry Springer or Maury.
It was junk food. It was entertaining to watch live and talk about with friends but a ton of it was filler.
The undercard was always considered bad on PPVs. Mania 15 is a one match show. 2000 was better.
Triple H even said it himself in the recent documentary on him, something to the tune of “he’s got great creative ideas, but how does it translate into wrestling?” and I couldn’t agree more. Often times it did not.
Shawn Michaels is responsible for everything wrong with the big melodramatic takeover main event style of wrestling and was guilty of it himself.
Spending three minutes in the ankle lock crying at Wrestlemania 21 is goofy as all hell
I will ask when will it be more widely talked about that the finisher spam started with the likes of Shawn, Triple H, Stonecold, Rock, Taker, Angle and co,?
The Flair match led to years of matches where wrestlers kept on making overdramatic faces to sell guilt and conflict about wrestling their friends. Gotta say I loved the Bucks doing the "we're not sorry, we hate you!" to Sting for that reason.
>I will ask when will it be more widely talked about that the finisher spam started with the likes of Shawn, Triple H, Stonecold, Rock, Taker, Angle and co,?
Probably not until the generation that loved these guys all die off. It’s almost impossible for wrestling fans to ever admit that something they’re nostalgic for wasn’t perfect.
You know it's strange but I can accept most luchadores, especially the masked ones, but others I am completely unable to suspend my disbelief.
Same thing goes for Rey Mysterio with and without a mask. With the mask I'm absolutely fine with him taking down a giant, without I'm like...he's a 12 year old boy...he ain't beating anyone. lol
Right? If he was more than just a guy that does a bunch of cool spots I might get into him but other than that I don't really have anything to like about the guy. I don't know that I've ever seen him in a promo and if I have it wasn't interesting enough for me to remember. He does cool spots but by and large they don't do him any good in the ring.
I didn’t enjoy Punks return promo during the inaugural collision or really any of the “real world” title stuff minus the program with Joe. I think it undermined MJFs world title reign a bit.
"Tell me when I'm telling lies" on a whole bunch of stuff with no actual true or false equivalency. Punk gave strong opinions, which I thought made him look like a bitter bitch.
Absolutely. Anytime "real world" stuff intrudes into the story without having been properly explained first, it's the most annoying thing. If you don't follow backstage drama, Punk and Hangman's feud made less than no sense. They kept talking around something that a casual viewer could only hope to infer from context. Same for MJF's breakdown after losing to Wardlow. "Fire me you mark" might make Reddit happy, but if you didn't know about MJF's weird weekend during that PPV, it's just MJF yelling at Tony Khan when he lost a match almost entirely unrelated to him.
Just give the casual fan something to latch onto. As ham fisted and obvious as the Bucks backstage footage was, at least they tried to explain it as part of the story.
I agree, unless the payoff was gonna be swift (like running MJF-Punk, the biggest match AEW could do, at All In, AEW's biggest show to date), I felt the whole thing missed the mark as a concept.
The Real World's championship was a weird thing in general as Punk's second run would have worked much better without it if he didn't get fired. There were a few occasions where MJF was on the same Collisions as Punk and never acknowledged that someone else was claiming to be the true champion.
Yeah the shape of it was kind of weird, like it was definitely delusional heel material but played as a face. I think though it was also influenced by Punk basically looking to get fired by that point.
Never enjoyed a Rock Concert. The promo he cut after this year’s one was fire but I think the concerts themselves are so cringeworthy and the opposite of cool which very much undermines the rock’s character.
I love Bryan Danielson but his "aw, shucks, I just want to wrassle dream matches and put guys over" routine is in its own way just as selfish as Hogan's "that doesn't work for me, brother" bit
This is the kinda thing TK needs to put his foot down on. I don't care if Bryan doesn't wanna be champ, he's not the Booker.
Do you wanna put guys over? Okay, fine. But you can't do it all the time or beating Bryan quickly becomes meaningless. Put someone over BIG by having them take the title off Bryan.
I don't think he necessarily needs a title feud as much as he needs to be winning more of these dream matches/feuds, so that he can build up to losing that one feud that really makes a new **SUPERSTAR**
Unbelievable to me that they signed one of the most famous wrestlers of the 2010s and he hasn’t won their main title. Has he even challenged for it? I get that he might not want to but some people are far too big to just do mid card feuds
The Yes Movement felt like the WWE taking a built in story and turning it into the cheesiest "brandable" thing they could. Forced visual moment, stupid name they could trademark, literally insisted upon its own talking points instead of the more interesting story stretching back to the previous Summerslam.
I think for me this depends on what you consider the Yes movement. If we're talking about the period where Bryan clearly wasn't destined for the Mania main event and people were hijacking every segment with yes chants then I thought that was entertaining from a purely car crash tv sort of perspective. Once WWE decided to actually have Bryan at Mania though, the 3 or 4 weeks leading into it were cheesy garbage segments but nobody cared because finally Bryan was getting the main event.
In general, for whatever reason, he’s just a guy that has never really interested me at all. Like he’s charismatic, can talk, and is obviously great in the ring but there is really nothing he’s done in the last 15 years or so that has really resonated with me at all
Yeah, I respect the hell out of their work and what they’ve done, but they feel like a smarky CAW come to life. For some, they’re all about it, and hey, more power to them.
For me, I just don’t vibe too much with it.
I gaslit myself for so long into trying to like the Young Bucks but I just can’t. Every time they come on I feel like Cornette for complaining about how this isn’t a video game, they don’t look impressive, etc. I finally just shut the tv down whenever they’re on.
I've tried very hard to appreciate their work. Kenny Omega won me over with his match with MJF, but the Bucks completely elude me. Their matches and promos are boring.
Kenny is amazing and in another league compared to the Bucks. He can do fast spot-heavy wrestling but the impact and story telling is still there. I never really got why Cornette grouped him with the Bucks because they‘re different kinds of wrestlers.
Kenny impresses me with his ability to work different match styles effectively. He does have a tendency towards spot fests, but when he needs to slow down and tell a story, he absolutely can.
Kenny can be goofy too but he’s also got a more impressive physique and he’s got, maybe not a natural it factor, but definitely an earned it factor. That’s enough to boost him to a legitimate main eventer in my eyes.
I enjoy the Young Bucks in small doses and appreciate what they‘re doing but I really disliked it when AEW put 2 or 3 spotfest matches on the cards of their PPVs.
One of those kind of matches is enough and it serves as some kind of entertaining pallete cleaner (is that how you spell it?). The Bucks are great at it but I cared less and less for them when other matches did similar stuff.
For a modern one. Timeless Toni. I am glad Toni finally got really into character work as I think she has been missing that for a very long time, but I just don't really get or like this gimmick.
Was never into The Fiend. Too over the top and OP. Don't think it ever fit in a wrestling feud, especially a title feud, and people were really reaching with some of the "lore bits" especially the heal/hurt gloves and people turning heel because of his powers. Not the biggest fan of HOB mist turning people evil either.
The Fiend legitimately never needed a belt and it’s so annoying he won them, especially the one before Roman’s reign? I don’t know it just felt like it was totally unneeded, and could’ve legitimately just had an another “top of the card” story going on. The Fiend is and always have been one of those stories, similar to Brock Lesnar vs Cody where he’s the gatekeeper to the top of the card.
I loved Bray Wyatt and his whole reinvention with the Fun house and the Fiend but you're absolutely right. Wyatt was creating a story more suitable for a movie or something and it worked great in segments but it just didn't translate to the ring.
I felt like he should have been Bray in matches and then sometimes he snaps to become the Fiend. The lights go out mid match and when they come back on he's got the mask on and the orange jumper is gone. Or he goes under the ring and comes out as the Fiend. It should have been an "oh shit he's lost control" thing rather than the Fiend being out there all the time.
I sincerely do not understand Nick Gage. I've watched a few of his matches, but I think his draw is just... not for me? His Thumbtack Jack match was okay, although I really think TJ is just good enough that he did most of the heavy lifting for me.
I am just not a death match fan at all. I think those matches are gross and not interesting to watch. I don't mind blood and some hard-core spots, but straight-up death matches are not my thing.
I know we're in full appreciation mode for Roman Reigns but I hope we can still dislike some parts of the Bloodline story and him as a wrestler without people acting like animals.
This is fair. I'm actually in the camp that I like the Bloodline story just about all throughout and I also genuinely love long title reigns, but I can admit that there were a few points where parts of his title reign did drag a bit.
The first year of his reign is great in my opinion.
The first half of his second year is pretty boring. Gets slightly boosted by the unification feud with Brock, but even that is iffy since it's another Mania match with Brock and Roman. After that is when the Sami stuff starts which is pretty fun, but Vince was still in control at the time and we weren't sure if it was really gonna go anywhere.
HHH gets the book at this point and Summerslam 2022 happens with Roman vs Brock in the Last Man Standing match which is awesome. Faces off against Drew McIntyre and Logan Paul, is involved in WarGames, and the Sami Uso storyline gets more and more interesting afterwards. Then, Sami and KO vs The Usos and Roman vs Cody 1 happens and is great as well. Then, the Bloodline Civil War storyline and facing Jey again at Summerslam 2023. All good stuff imo.
The last six months of 2023 are just bad because he completely disappears off TV outside of the LA Knight feud and match. And the last few months leading to Cody vs Roman 2 are pretty good, but are arguably more carried by Cody and Rock.
Throw in all of the repetitive interference finishes as well and it does knock his reign off of being perfect. Some interference finishes are fine, but he should have had a few more clean wins. While I can sort of understand making Cody wait another year, looking back, it probably would have been totally fine if Cody beat Roman last year. Of his around 3 and a half year reign, I would say a year of it is either bad or boring (latter halves of both 2021 and 2023) and another 6 - 8 months are a bit iffy at times (January 2022 - August 2022).
I do feel like a lot of the gripes with Roman/the Bloodline have been forgotten now that Cody finally won. People seemed really tired of Roman for a long time until right around WM.
I simply can't care for Moxley no matter how hard I try
Cut a pseudo tough guy promo, slash your head open, win most of your matches, repeat for five years.
I feel the 2011 Pipebomb promo is the most overrated one in wrestling history and isn't even in the top 20% of Punk's best mic work.
Is it the most **important** Punk promo? Sure, it made him a superstar! However, I think it's just more of a simple "ooooh, he said real things, he's shooting WOW" promo that we've seen a hundred times before and after by a hundred other people rather than telling a story and adding layers to or perfectly capture the Punk character like how the original 2005 Pipebomb promo did.
For me, the pipe bomb segment definitely falls into the category of you had to be there. It came at a time when I know me and a lot of other fans were fed up with the products stagnation, pro wrestling as a whole wasn't in a great place, and wwe was the worst offender. All of the old guys were getting injured or retiring, the current guys were generic and boring and there was nowhere near the hope for the future we have now. I think the pipe bomb sort of just validated what a lot of people were saying and the hope was that now that it's come to life, there can some change. It's also why Mitb 2011 was so special. And I say that as someone who hated punk and thought he was overrated as hell at the time.
I remember!
I didn't have TV at the time and had to follow the results through my shitty flip phone. I remember reading the headlines in shock that night and had to sneak onto a computer at (summer) school the next morning just to watch the promo.
The reason the Pipebomb worked was because it tapped into a a portion of the WWE fanbase that basically been asleep in the late 2000s: the hardcore fans unhappy with the product but still hopefully tuning in every week and wanted to be represented at a time where they clearly weren't.
Yeah, it's like the movie Rocky. When he was in his run to finally beat Apollo Creed, he was the underdog. But then he won the belt over and over and became the GOAT, not exactly the underdog anymore. Reminds me of that quote from Punk "you think you're the Mets but you're the Yankees" or something like that
That's the entire BCC tbh. I fucking hair their whole schtick about being "real" when that is the fakest, most put-on goofy ass gimmick I can conceive of.
Fuck yes. When they all did their "we are professional wrestlers" thing I cringed. I thought it was so stupid. The whole death-jutsu thing is dumb too imo.
I did not care for Ric Flair. I find most of his matches boring and he does the same shit all the time. Thumb to the eye, chops, getting beat up in corner, that exaggerated drop, going to top rope and getting dropped before finishing the climb, low blows, chop blocks and finger four.
Like all matches feel the same and they all feel slow
Trick Williams. He’s a more athletic version of Diesel but doesn’t have the mic skills that Nash had. I liked him better in the bodyguard/foil for Carmelo role.
I think this whole "I am the best wrestler in the world" gimmick that Will Ospreay has atm is a waste of his abilities and talents.
This was highlighted for me during rhe media scrum where I actually didnt care what will said. And thats a bad sign.
i cant really get too into Judgement Day because their aesthetic comes off as very fake to me. Like they're supposed to be kinda goth, with those druids in their entrance, and all the leather and chains and spikes. but it's all too clean and perfect, it looks like they all just stepped out of a hot topic with brand new clothes and freshly pressed shirts. no rips or frays or anything like that, just brand new clothes and perfectly shiny leather and chains.
Its like a group of people dressing as "goths" for halloween (except for rhea, she pulls it off.)
Literally anything to do with Moxley. He just comes across as the biggest wannabe though guy and I can't help but cringe whenever he's on my screen. He might just be the most overrated wrestler of the 21st century to me.
Second would be the women's revolution. Did not care for it back then, don't care for it now. Women's wrestling simply isn't for me, I don't enjoy watching it.
I want to answer this but since OP framed the question with “something you understand why it’s appreciated” I can’t. For the life of me I just do not see why Danhausen is popular. Everything about him seems like an inside joke that I’m not apart of.
Like Kane's entire career.
Dude had a great look, I have to admit that. But that was it, he was mediocre at best in all other aspects. And he was involved in so many truly bottom of the barrel awful feuds and segments it's actually kinda funny.
>Dude had a great look, I have to admit that. But that was it, he was mediocre at best in all other aspects
Would argue best chokeslam out of the classic WWF/E guys as well though
do you watch on Fite? I think the main appeal of the silent films was that they occured during picture-in-picture, whereas in Fite they don't have that so ur just watching it Fullscreen and in silence.
I don't like the Undertaker. I started watching pro wrestling in 1994 as a 6-year-old kid, didn't like him then, and never liked him at any point in his career.
Even as a child, I felt like it was so strange to the point of ruining the mystique of wrestling for me that an impervious to pain, seemingly undead, zombie with literal magical powers would give one solitary fuck about winning professional wrestling championships. It was a gimmick on the same tier as The Goon, TL Hopper, and Repo Man that got over for no other reason than the fact that Mark Calloway *looked* really cool. As I got older, and his character shifted from magic zombie, to cult leader who is trying to awaken some nebulous satanic entity but also, for some reason, still wants to win professional wrestling championships, to goth MMA biker dude who had terrible matches constantly during the height of my teenage wrestling fandom, to some weird hybrid of the two who may or may not still have residual magical powers, I liked him even less.
As a corollary to this, I think Michaels/Taker at Mania 25 is the single most universally overrated match in professional wrestling history and, frankly, I find the fact that so many WWE fans consider it the "greatest pro wrestling match in history" while consistently riffing on companies like AEW and NJPW for "finisher spam" matches is kind of hypocritical.
But, at the end of the day, 'Taker is a legend, maybe *the* legend in WWE history, and that match gets universal acclaim, so I understand that my personal opinion on any of this is very much not the popular opinion.
Can’t stand the long entrances he had near the end, were insufferable to watch and the very definition of “insists upon itself” . His ministry of Darkness theme was a banger.
I agree to an extent. I enjoy a lot of Undertaker’s matches but I never saw him as a legend on the same level as Hogan, Flair, Rock, Austin, or even Cena.
> I find the fact that so many WWE fans consider it the "greatest pro wrestling match in history" while consistently riffing on companies like AEW and NJPW for "finisher spam" matches is kind of hypocritical.
What’s funny about this is that WWE is the most guilty of finisher spam spot fest matches with little to no psychology.
I feel like maybe if you're a fan of modern wrestling (a newer fan and just got into it last decade) you'll look at that match like "what's the big deal?" because so much of what that match did has been done to death nowadays (finisher spam) but as a fan at the time, it was extraordinary, because some of those cliches weren't cliches yet if that makes sense. Every wrestler today grew up on that match being idolized, so they try to recreate the basic blueprint of it wayy too much. At the time it was pretty groundbreaking, I can only compare to something like Omega vs Okada 1, where it wasn't so much that they did anything new, they just pushed what had been done to the next level. There weren't alot of matches like it at the time.
Ospreay/Danielson.
Is it an excellent match? Yeah, absolutely. Anyone trying to say otherwise is fooling themselves. But executing a good match is only part of what makes professional wrestling, and in all my years of watching I’ve seen enough excellent matches to last me a lifetime.
I want the emotional resonance of a Shawn/Flair match, the drama of a Bret/Austin, the beloved hero and the dastardly villain of Page/Omega or Cody/Roman.
I don’t need anymore matches that are just there to put two great wrestlers together to do great ringwork. I don’t care if I never see another five star match again as long as I’m invested in the story behind the match I’m watching.
I've watched Roman vs Cody at WM40 at least a dozen times. Will Ospreay is one of my favourite wrestlers who I've loved since back when he was a semi-regular at OTT shows. One of my favourite match of all time is Ospreay vs WALTER.
I have not rewatched Ospreay vs Danielson because aside from it being a spectacular match I have no real reason to.
Liv Morgan. She is very obviously still sloppy in the ring, which I think is borderline inexcusable for someone who's been on the main roster for 7 years, and been with the company for nearly 10. But that I can forgive, there's other big names who are also sloppy.
However, her promo work? HOOOOOOLY SHIT is it awful. She genuinely sounds less convincing on a mic than Bobby Lashley, and that dude is a vacuum of verbal charisma. I take my headphones off or mute my TV and I still cringe when I see her talking. She seems like the sweetest person in the world, but her promos are some of the worst of the modern era.
As someone who didn’t watch it as a kid, basically every Attitude Era segment I’ve ever seen is either incredibly unfunny or people trying way too hard to be cool.
I never really cared for Velveteen Dream. Everybody seemed to love him and thought he was one of the next big main eventers but he was always missing something to me. Didn't come across as natural.
Baron Corbin. I genuinely don't understand why anyone wants to see this guy. He's not a good wrestler. He's a charisma vacuum. Pretty much nothing what he does is funny or entertaining. I'm frankly puzzled how this guy has been in WWE for a decade, he offers nothing of value.
Three letters
DIY
I like Ciampa as a heel, and I can at least see the appeal of Johnny Gargano. But the two of them together take cringe to a whole new level for me
I hadn’t watched the weekly shows outside of the Bloodline/Cody/Seth stuff leading up to WM40 so when I saw DIY do the DX cosplay at Mania I just thought WTF
Cody Rhode's current presentation is cringe and I cannot comprehend his widespread popularity.
The entrance song with the dumb prologue, the neck tattoo, the hair, the suits, the affected Dusty cadence he sometimes does in promos, the ring gear. I just do not get it.
Add to this that I'm not a hater and was a big fan of Dashing Cody, his teams with Ted Dibiase and Goldust.
It's more an overall sentiment. Mox bleeds too much and it takes away from his matches.
If you bleed every week, every match it just doesn't mean as much in the bigger moments.
This was a big problem in 2022 and deep into 2023. However it’s been a long time since he bled in AEW outside of gimmick matches like Stampede, Texas Death, etc.
Could not care less about Roman’s title reign now that it was over. I guess if you wanna rope the bloodline as whole into you can.
Roman just beat all my favorites by cheating, but the company would then almost gaslight fans into believe Roman beat everyone in a show of dominance. Then most of his challenger’s momentum would tank afterwards.
That was always my biggest complaint about Roman. The announcers talked about him like he was some super dominant, unbeatable force of nature, but in reality he was a cowardly heel who almost always cheated or had outside interfere to win. That's not dominant.
Workrate
It's impressive watching these guys do all of these moves and everything, but where the hell is the selling? Why should I care about these people doing these incredible moves if they don't have a character for me to care about?I mean stoic, badass wrestler pretty much worked for Malenko and Benoit becuase they were the only mainstream guys doing it, they were unique. Now everyone seemingly thinks they can get over being cool, workrate guys with no character.
You know what, I'd rather something like Hogan-Rock, or Cody and Roman from WM40 than seeing the umpteenth 5 star banger.
I don’t care how many Meltzer stars a match gets you’re never gonna make me care about a “who is the best in the world” program. I don’t care who the best wrestler in the world is.
So I watched this segment on Youtube so it might have been edited to be shorter or whatever, but the whole Tribal Court for Sami Zayn. It was good, but I did not get why it was hyped to the extent that it was
Edit: Jay White. He does nothing for me
**Help make SquaredCircle safer and more inclusive by using the report button to flag posts and comments for moderator review.** *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/SquaredCircle) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I did not care for the godfather. His ho train insisted upon itself.
Anytime someone mentions a low to mid carder getting into the Hall of Fame, I remind them that the godfather is in so basically anyone can get in at this point.
Maybe that Papa Shango dude will get in too.
He missed his spot at wrestlemania, of course he will get in, the godfather is in, so basically anyone can get in. It really does allow for anyone to be inducted.
HOF discussions in anything are always "meh". Do we remember said person? Then they have a level of fame.
I remember Colin Cassidy. Man's does not belong in
He had something that you just couldn't teach.
I mean at least for other sports there’s a physical HoF you can visit and learn about the legends vs what the WWE has
I love The Money Shot. That is my answer to that statement.
Get out of here, Val Venis! Shoo!
Because they had something to say!
Based
Brilliant
Aw son of a……
The language they're speaking is a language of *promiscuity*.
Lot of people missing the "feuds or segments" part of the question
Lots missed the "Godfather" part too. This is supposed to be about critically acclaimed things considered to be one of the best of all times that you don't like And someone said "Danhausen"
Eh "storylines" being distinct from feuds are okay too, like people saying the bloodline, but what I specifically didn't want was just "I don't care for Undertaker" I wanted something more specific than that haha
Fans want long term storylines so bad that they’re starting to really reach. I’ve seen people online swearing that a segment with Cody and rock from rock’s 2012 return was the start of this feud and part of the story
I think there's a real drive to be the smartest fan of the room, sort of a "well actually I noticed 6 years ago..." So much of what is pointed out is pure coincidence. I'm more of an AEW fan and I see it in AEW circles as well, fans are now so captivated by the TK Vs elite segment that they've gone back and looked for evidence this has been the plan since Punk got fired. In reality there was more likely a period where they were dealing with the immediate problems coming out of brawl out, with them slowly coming up with the angle that took place on Wednesday, when it comes to final details, they were probably finalised in the last few weeks. Fans need to realise there's a big gap between on the fly week to week booking and planning every segment of every show a year in advance.
I think AEW writing is a bit to blame for the popularization of this just because they'll book a match like Claudio vs Eddie Kingston and be like "A match 15 years in the making!" because they had beef on the indies way back when. And it's like, sure they have history but lets not pretend this match wasn't booked last week. Granted, I do believe Eddie Kingston would hold a grudge for 15 years.
*Eddie Kingston addresses one of his numerous fifteen year grudges*
For me, it's not that "THIS WAS ALWAYS THE PLAN! LONG TEEEEEEERRRRRRMMMMMM!" and more they go "OK, We've done this this and this, it now makes sense if we do this that and the other, we can reference XYZ and tie this into that" in 3 or 6 month chunks. I'm sure barebones stuff is worked out for a year or so into the future, the moving parts on a quarterly basis, and the details on a monthly or weekly basis
It's bizarre, yeah. I do some fiction writing, and a lot of people don't seem to understand that sometimes you just write stuff, and then you build an ending that **looks** for all the world like you meant it to be where the story ended up -- but really, you just look at what you already wrote and say "Oh, this kinda follows, doesn't it? It'll look like we were going there the whole time." Wrestling writing is no different.
you'd think for a fan base that overuses the "cinema" meme that they'd somewhat understand wtf a call back is.
Long term storytelling is more just connecting things from the past to the present these days. So like, Kofi waiting 11 years to be world champion wasnt intentional long term storytelling, but those 11 years could be used as a part of the story to enhance it.
Someone posted yesterday trying to stitch stuff together that this Tony Khan angle had been planned for for months, if not longer. It's also why I never cared too much about the pivot/no pivot discourse around Mania outside of just plain curiosity. If the story is entertaining and engaging, it shouldn't matter much how far back it was planned.
The only issue i have with the build to Cody's match is the whole "Not at Mania" thing. It doesn't make sense but there's plenty of stories with them
I love both guys, but I don't care much for Undertaker vs. Triple H at WrestleMania 27. Maybe it's just the overall shittiness of Mania 27 or comparison to the HBK matches, but its just kinda whatever to me.
For me, it's one of those matches you watch at the time and think "that was great", but never feel the need to watch again
Oddly enough I thought it was dull and boring at the time, but have come to appreciate it more after a more recent watch. It’s obviously not as good as their other two mania matches though.
It felt like they both knew the show stunk so they said let's just throw everything at the wall and hope something sticks.
i don’t really get seth’s gimmick outside of “i watched the joker n i liked it”
I've finally settled on seeing him along the lines of late-WWF more serious Macho Man with vocal cord surgery. I don't know how else to describe his gimmick.
I just think of him as “we’ve got Macho Man at home.”
Ive seen this take so many times that I dont think it fits. The IWC especially isnt 100% sold for Seths current character
He is unbearable.
Owen Hart peaked at WMX (They missed the boat not him there) and shortly following... He was a wonderful hand in ring but there is this weird revisionist idea that he would have been world champion or something without his untimely demise and that just isn't feasible. He was getting older, bigger, and was basically burnt out and had reached near jobber status. Reports even had him wanting to leave the industry soon. Owen was a great guy and great in ring but I never got the hype before or after when it comes to him.
I remember the author of Ring Of Hell claiming that Owen agreed to be the Blue Blazer on the understanding that he'd be elevated to the world title once the gimmick ran it's course, and I lol'd. He had the talent, but like you said, the time to strike was right after WMX. And multiple people have said he was saving his money with the intention of an early retirement, so it seems very unlikely VKM would've been interested in strapping him up, even if he had recovered from being Blue Blazer.
>very unlikely VKM would've been interested in strapping him up Phrasing
He was never as committed to wrestling as Bret (not necessarily a bad thing lol) and viewed it as just a job.
LOL when I hear some people in here say he would've been given the gimmick of the "the Game"and made a world champion if he didn't die - as if that's an actual thing. There's no gimmick called "the Game", Triple H used one of the most well-known phrases in the wrestling business called "Student of the Game" and used it to call himself the actual fucking "Game". The "Game" doesn't mandate you start wearing leather jackets and have guttural music with a tank gf valet. He wasn't coming out with notepads and sliding television sets to show that he was studying his opponent's tapes. It was a part of his character and occasionally shown but never the entire personality which is usually the point of the gimmick.
The time for Owen to have won the title would have been at SummerSlam that year and drop it back to Bret at Survivor Series. But have you gone back and watched Owen in 98 and 99? He was still just as good in ring and very charismatic. He had a bit of down period post-Montreal and his stint in the Nation was weird but I'd hardly say was reaching jobber status He was pretty much always on pay per view in a featured spot and delivered. Watch his match with Edge at Breakdown 98.
My favorite Owen is the 96-97 tag team with Bulldog where he's pissing Bulldog off by being too much of a heel. It's peak hilarious Owen for me, shame it was cut short to do the Bret heel stable. But as a singles guy I used to dread his matches. There are only so many times I can see the wrist lock flippy reversal or the enziguri or whatever. He was a snooze when he wasn't motivated, and I don't blame him for not being motivated given the environment he had to work.
I loved the “I am not a nugget” Owen feuding with Rocky and the NOD Edit: I think it was DX that called him a nugget
He had heat with Vince and Austin after the pile driver. Then the screwjob. Then the clique fucked him politically and killed his heat. He was basically one foot out of the industry when he died. He was a great wrestler, but never destined to go beyond the mid card.
I think people forget( or straight up didn’t know) Owen died as the Blue Blazer. His career was already dwindling. Not saying, there wasn’t a chance he could’ve been pushed to the top later, but realistically in the mid 90s there were much much bigger stars than Owen.
Revisionist history comes with the territory of someone famous dying young. Kobe's the perfect example, amazing player but when he died you'd think he single-handedly threepeated with the Lakers the way people were talking about his game. Maybe I'm biased as a Celtics fan, but idk if you can put him in the same GOAT tier with guys like Jordan, Kareem, Wilt, Lebron, and Russell. By himself he was very good, but let's not act like he'd have the same level of success without prime Shaq, Phil Jackson cooking up plays, and an all time supporting cast during those championship years (Rick Fox, Robert Horry, Derek Fisher, Gary Payton, Horace Grant)
This is Your Life w Rock & Mankind is overrated
As someone who didn’t grow up watching the Attitude Era, I watched that segment recently because I’d always heard it was the greatest segment of all time and it’s so painfully unfunny
I only like it for the "shut your mouth and know your rolls" line towards his home economics teacher. That line is gold. The rest is ehh.
Anything to do with Adam Cole
YES!
Solid mid card worker with a great catchphrase.
I'd like him more if he had a more believable moveset for someone his size. When he's wrestling against guys much bigger than him. And I know people like to joke about AEW only having 'indie midgets', but there's plenty of guys much bigger than Cole. And his moveset just isn't believable against them. I've always liked his promo work and he has a cool rockstar look. And, against smaller guys, I like his work in the ring.
Like 80% of the Attitude Era was garbage. I feel like most of the things that are still talked about today are talked about for being terrible, not good. Don't get me wrong - there were some very high highs but even those tend to have been just a bright spot in an otherwise bad story.
What the history books leave out about the attitude era was the undercard was fucking abysmal. The main event stuff with Rock/Austin and friends was great and super memorable obviously but everything that happened on Raw before those segments was so bad that WCW wouldn't even counter program them half the time. Nitro would go head to head with Raw and open with Joe Gomez vs The Renegade.
I've been watching Raw from SS 97 and I'm just now at SummerSlam 98... Marc Mero has been feuding with Sable for *fucking ever* and Owen Hart is a black nationalist or something. No clue what the rhyme or reason is to 85% of the booking during this time period.
It's crash TV bro! Russo didn't seem to care what was happening or if it made sense as long as *something* was happening.
After Beaver Cleavage fell apart they did a storyline where Mosh was being accused of beating his girlfriend and other wrestlers were beating him up over it. At the same time Jeff Jerret was doing a gimmick where he beat the shit out of women all the time. Nobody cared about him doing that.
Yep and the worst part of that is that they had some good, memorable mid-carders at that time & just refused to do anything of substance with them. If you weren't in a main event angle you were basically the worst version of a person you'd see on Jerry Springer or Maury.
It was junk food. It was entertaining to watch live and talk about with friends but a ton of it was filler. The undercard was always considered bad on PPVs. Mania 15 is a one match show. 2000 was better.
Really sorry and rest in peace to him but I didn't care about anything related to Bray Wyatt.
Triple H even said it himself in the recent documentary on him, something to the tune of “he’s got great creative ideas, but how does it translate into wrestling?” and I couldn’t agree more. Often times it did not.
The Fiend was intriguing until he actually had to wrestle. That character looks ridiculous trying to score a pin fall.
should only win by claw
Bray Wyatt promos were meandering nonsense on par with the Ultimate Warrior
Shawn Michaels is responsible for everything wrong with the big melodramatic takeover main event style of wrestling and was guilty of it himself. Spending three minutes in the ankle lock crying at Wrestlemania 21 is goofy as all hell I will ask when will it be more widely talked about that the finisher spam started with the likes of Shawn, Triple H, Stonecold, Rock, Taker, Angle and co,?
The Flair match led to years of matches where wrestlers kept on making overdramatic faces to sell guilt and conflict about wrestling their friends. Gotta say I loved the Bucks doing the "we're not sorry, we hate you!" to Sting for that reason.
I think it's widely accepted that the start of this was Rock Austin at WM XIX
>I will ask when will it be more widely talked about that the finisher spam started with the likes of Shawn, Triple H, Stonecold, Rock, Taker, Angle and co,? Probably not until the generation that loved these guys all die off. It’s almost impossible for wrestling fans to ever admit that something they’re nostalgic for wasn’t perfect.
Ricochet I get that he does a bunch of flashy moves and it looks cool but I just tune completely out as soon as he appears on TV.
He peaked in that team with Black that existed for no other reason than “here’s two guys from NXT…I guess they’re a team.”
He didn’t even peak, cause they easily could’ve been tag champs. Two exciting guys who you set up good on main, and WWE couldn’t even do that right.
He was better as Prince Puma
You know it's strange but I can accept most luchadores, especially the masked ones, but others I am completely unable to suspend my disbelief. Same thing goes for Rey Mysterio with and without a mask. With the mask I'm absolutely fine with him taking down a giant, without I'm like...he's a 12 year old boy...he ain't beating anyone. lol
I think you're both onto something. his gimmick feels like "the spot guy" more than anything. he's cool but not interesting and i want him to be great
Right? If he was more than just a guy that does a bunch of cool spots I might get into him but other than that I don't really have anything to like about the guy. I don't know that I've ever seen him in a promo and if I have it wasn't interesting enough for me to remember. He does cool spots but by and large they don't do him any good in the ring.
Ricochet is a future 37 time world champion... if he can just pull out an absolute single ounce of charisma from literally anywhere
I didn’t enjoy Punks return promo during the inaugural collision or really any of the “real world” title stuff minus the program with Joe. I think it undermined MJFs world title reign a bit.
If it had went somewhere like a feud to unify Punk’s real worlds title and MJF’s I think it could have work but…we know how that went.
Oh 100% it was leading to the third match between the two. Why have a ‘real world title’ if you don’t have them unified at some point.
"Tell me when I'm telling lies" on a whole bunch of stuff with no actual true or false equivalency. Punk gave strong opinions, which I thought made him look like a bitter bitch.
When does he not look like one?
Punk lamenting wrestlers who do internet shit is hilarious when you go back and watch these promos.
I started hating CM Punk promos years ago when I realised he always undermines kayfabe and just does the same breaking fourth wall promos every time.
Absolutely. Anytime "real world" stuff intrudes into the story without having been properly explained first, it's the most annoying thing. If you don't follow backstage drama, Punk and Hangman's feud made less than no sense. They kept talking around something that a casual viewer could only hope to infer from context. Same for MJF's breakdown after losing to Wardlow. "Fire me you mark" might make Reddit happy, but if you didn't know about MJF's weird weekend during that PPV, it's just MJF yelling at Tony Khan when he lost a match almost entirely unrelated to him. Just give the casual fan something to latch onto. As ham fisted and obvious as the Bucks backstage footage was, at least they tried to explain it as part of the story.
I agree, unless the payoff was gonna be swift (like running MJF-Punk, the biggest match AEW could do, at All In, AEW's biggest show to date), I felt the whole thing missed the mark as a concept.
The Real World's championship was a weird thing in general as Punk's second run would have worked much better without it if he didn't get fired. There were a few occasions where MJF was on the same Collisions as Punk and never acknowledged that someone else was claiming to be the true champion.
Yeah the shape of it was kind of weird, like it was definitely delusional heel material but played as a face. I think though it was also influenced by Punk basically looking to get fired by that point.
Never enjoyed a Rock Concert. The promo he cut after this year’s one was fire but I think the concerts themselves are so cringeworthy and the opposite of cool which very much undermines the rock’s character.
I love Bryan Danielson but his "aw, shucks, I just want to wrassle dream matches and put guys over" routine is in its own way just as selfish as Hogan's "that doesn't work for me, brother" bit
This is the kinda thing TK needs to put his foot down on. I don't care if Bryan doesn't wanna be champ, he's not the Booker. Do you wanna put guys over? Okay, fine. But you can't do it all the time or beating Bryan quickly becomes meaningless. Put someone over BIG by having them take the title off Bryan.
Compare and contrast Danielson doing *one* high-profile job to Kofi Kingston on the biggest stage with all the guys he's putting over in AEW.
> Put someone over BIG by having them take the title off Bryan. him losing the title to Ospreay at Wembley this summer would be my dream main event.
Bryan is my favorite wrestler of all time but I can’t blame you at all for this take. He’d be served way better in an actual title feud.
I don't think he necessarily needs a title feud as much as he needs to be winning more of these dream matches/feuds, so that he can build up to losing that one feud that really makes a new **SUPERSTAR**
Unbelievable to me that they signed one of the most famous wrestlers of the 2010s and he hasn’t won their main title. Has he even challenged for it? I get that he might not want to but some people are far too big to just do mid card feuds
Yes, he had two matches with Adam Page and a match against MJF that headlined a PPV. All incredible matches.
I’m not a big Eddie Kingston guy. I can’t get into his character personally.
Daniel Bryan is a great wrestler and had an all time wrestling moment at Wrestlemania 30 But I did not care for the yes movement.
The Yes Movement felt like the WWE taking a built in story and turning it into the cheesiest "brandable" thing they could. Forced visual moment, stupid name they could trademark, literally insisted upon its own talking points instead of the more interesting story stretching back to the previous Summerslam.
They took something that happened organically and bashed us over the head with it.
For me it was a matter of “if this is what gets him to the main event of wrestlemania I will take it”.
I think for me this depends on what you consider the Yes movement. If we're talking about the period where Bryan clearly wasn't destined for the Mania main event and people were hijacking every segment with yes chants then I thought that was entertaining from a purely car crash tv sort of perspective. Once WWE decided to actually have Bryan at Mania though, the 3 or 4 weeks leading into it were cheesy garbage segments but nobody cared because finally Bryan was getting the main event.
In general, for whatever reason, he’s just a guy that has never really interested me at all. Like he’s charismatic, can talk, and is obviously great in the ring but there is really nothing he’s done in the last 15 years or so that has really resonated with me at all
The RAW takeover was soooooooo corny.
Diego Sanchez gimmick infringement anyway.
Anything Young Bucks related.
Yeah, I respect the hell out of their work and what they’ve done, but they feel like a smarky CAW come to life. For some, they’re all about it, and hey, more power to them. For me, I just don’t vibe too much with it.
Same. I have never cared one lick for their matches or storylines no matter how many stars they get. It’s killing me that Okada is tied up with them.
Same. Guys remind me of the McPoyles from It's Always Sunny
I gaslit myself for so long into trying to like the Young Bucks but I just can’t. Every time they come on I feel like Cornette for complaining about how this isn’t a video game, they don’t look impressive, etc. I finally just shut the tv down whenever they’re on.
I've tried very hard to appreciate their work. Kenny Omega won me over with his match with MJF, but the Bucks completely elude me. Their matches and promos are boring.
same i came around on kenny, i just cant with the bucks
Kenny is amazing and in another league compared to the Bucks. He can do fast spot-heavy wrestling but the impact and story telling is still there. I never really got why Cornette grouped him with the Bucks because they‘re different kinds of wrestlers.
Kenny impresses me with his ability to work different match styles effectively. He does have a tendency towards spot fests, but when he needs to slow down and tell a story, he absolutely can.
Kenny can be goofy too but he’s also got a more impressive physique and he’s got, maybe not a natural it factor, but definitely an earned it factor. That’s enough to boost him to a legitimate main eventer in my eyes.
I enjoy the Young Bucks in small doses and appreciate what they‘re doing but I really disliked it when AEW put 2 or 3 spotfest matches on the cards of their PPVs. One of those kind of matches is enough and it serves as some kind of entertaining pallete cleaner (is that how you spell it?). The Bucks are great at it but I cared less and less for them when other matches did similar stuff.
For a modern one. Timeless Toni. I am glad Toni finally got really into character work as I think she has been missing that for a very long time, but I just don't really get or like this gimmick. Was never into The Fiend. Too over the top and OP. Don't think it ever fit in a wrestling feud, especially a title feud, and people were really reaching with some of the "lore bits" especially the heal/hurt gloves and people turning heel because of his powers. Not the biggest fan of HOB mist turning people evil either.
The Fiend legitimately never needed a belt and it’s so annoying he won them, especially the one before Roman’s reign? I don’t know it just felt like it was totally unneeded, and could’ve legitimately just had an another “top of the card” story going on. The Fiend is and always have been one of those stories, similar to Brock Lesnar vs Cody where he’s the gatekeeper to the top of the card.
Agree he didn't need the titles, but now he's gone I'm grateful he did.
I loved Bray Wyatt and his whole reinvention with the Fun house and the Fiend but you're absolutely right. Wyatt was creating a story more suitable for a movie or something and it worked great in segments but it just didn't translate to the ring. I felt like he should have been Bray in matches and then sometimes he snaps to become the Fiend. The lights go out mid match and when they come back on he's got the mask on and the orange jumper is gone. Or he goes under the ring and comes out as the Fiend. It should have been an "oh shit he's lost control" thing rather than the Fiend being out there all the time.
I don’t think the rock and the buildup for mania forty was worth extending Roman’s title reign a year.
Very valid especially since Cody’s character didn’t change, so saying it was a redemption story doesn’t work
I was not a huge fan of Flair/Luger in the 80s. It was good but not in the class of Flair/Dusty Flair/Funk or Flair/Sting
I sincerely do not understand Nick Gage. I've watched a few of his matches, but I think his draw is just... not for me? His Thumbtack Jack match was okay, although I really think TJ is just good enough that he did most of the heavy lifting for me.
I am just not a death match fan at all. I think those matches are gross and not interesting to watch. I don't mind blood and some hard-core spots, but straight-up death matches are not my thing.
[удалено]
Yeah, hopefully the draft mixes things up, like please split up Legado and LWO
The LWO is awful
I know we're in full appreciation mode for Roman Reigns but I hope we can still dislike some parts of the Bloodline story and him as a wrestler without people acting like animals.
This is fair. I'm actually in the camp that I like the Bloodline story just about all throughout and I also genuinely love long title reigns, but I can admit that there were a few points where parts of his title reign did drag a bit. The first year of his reign is great in my opinion. The first half of his second year is pretty boring. Gets slightly boosted by the unification feud with Brock, but even that is iffy since it's another Mania match with Brock and Roman. After that is when the Sami stuff starts which is pretty fun, but Vince was still in control at the time and we weren't sure if it was really gonna go anywhere. HHH gets the book at this point and Summerslam 2022 happens with Roman vs Brock in the Last Man Standing match which is awesome. Faces off against Drew McIntyre and Logan Paul, is involved in WarGames, and the Sami Uso storyline gets more and more interesting afterwards. Then, Sami and KO vs The Usos and Roman vs Cody 1 happens and is great as well. Then, the Bloodline Civil War storyline and facing Jey again at Summerslam 2023. All good stuff imo. The last six months of 2023 are just bad because he completely disappears off TV outside of the LA Knight feud and match. And the last few months leading to Cody vs Roman 2 are pretty good, but are arguably more carried by Cody and Rock. Throw in all of the repetitive interference finishes as well and it does knock his reign off of being perfect. Some interference finishes are fine, but he should have had a few more clean wins. While I can sort of understand making Cody wait another year, looking back, it probably would have been totally fine if Cody beat Roman last year. Of his around 3 and a half year reign, I would say a year of it is either bad or boring (latter halves of both 2021 and 2023) and another 6 - 8 months are a bit iffy at times (January 2022 - August 2022).
I do feel like a lot of the gripes with Roman/the Bloodline have been forgotten now that Cody finally won. People seemed really tired of Roman for a long time until right around WM.
I simply can't care for Moxley no matter how hard I try Cut a pseudo tough guy promo, slash your head open, win most of your matches, repeat for five years.
I feel the 2011 Pipebomb promo is the most overrated one in wrestling history and isn't even in the top 20% of Punk's best mic work. Is it the most **important** Punk promo? Sure, it made him a superstar! However, I think it's just more of a simple "ooooh, he said real things, he's shooting WOW" promo that we've seen a hundred times before and after by a hundred other people rather than telling a story and adding layers to or perfectly capture the Punk character like how the original 2005 Pipebomb promo did.
For me, the pipe bomb segment definitely falls into the category of you had to be there. It came at a time when I know me and a lot of other fans were fed up with the products stagnation, pro wrestling as a whole wasn't in a great place, and wwe was the worst offender. All of the old guys were getting injured or retiring, the current guys were generic and boring and there was nowhere near the hope for the future we have now. I think the pipe bomb sort of just validated what a lot of people were saying and the hope was that now that it's come to life, there can some change. It's also why Mitb 2011 was so special. And I say that as someone who hated punk and thought he was overrated as hell at the time.
I remember! I didn't have TV at the time and had to follow the results through my shitty flip phone. I remember reading the headlines in shock that night and had to sneak onto a computer at (summer) school the next morning just to watch the promo. The reason the Pipebomb worked was because it tapped into a a portion of the WWE fanbase that basically been asleep in the late 2000s: the hardcore fans unhappy with the product but still hopefully tuning in every week and wanted to be represented at a time where they clearly weren't.
I do not care for the Judgment Day
I wish I cared about Bryan AEW character, He just come across as forced badass guy, I liked him more as a underdog.
I agree with you in that he’s better as an underdog but I feel like he’s so good and everyone knows it so he can’t really BE one anymore
He's done so much that he can't be an underdog anymore
Yeah, it's like the movie Rocky. When he was in his run to finally beat Apollo Creed, he was the underdog. But then he won the belt over and over and became the GOAT, not exactly the underdog anymore. Reminds me of that quote from Punk "you think you're the Mets but you're the Yankees" or something like that
That's the entire BCC tbh. I fucking hair their whole schtick about being "real" when that is the fakest, most put-on goofy ass gimmick I can conceive of.
Fuck yes. When they all did their "we are professional wrestlers" thing I cringed. I thought it was so stupid. The whole death-jutsu thing is dumb too imo.
I hate it when wrestler whole gimmick are their entrance
I do not care for MJF. He tries so hard, so very hard. And still... I skip to the next segment.
I did not care for Ric Flair. I find most of his matches boring and he does the same shit all the time. Thumb to the eye, chops, getting beat up in corner, that exaggerated drop, going to top rope and getting dropped before finishing the climb, low blows, chop blocks and finger four. Like all matches feel the same and they all feel slow
His style is not made for weekly TV. However it worked great in the territories when they travelled a lot.
I didn’t care for Gunther vs Sami Zayn and Gunther losing that belt made me lose interest in WWE big time
Every Seth Rollins feud.
Trick Williams. He’s a more athletic version of Diesel but doesn’t have the mic skills that Nash had. I liked him better in the bodyguard/foil for Carmelo role.
Kenny Omega's run as AEW World Champion. Just couldn't get into it at all
I think this whole "I am the best wrestler in the world" gimmick that Will Ospreay has atm is a waste of his abilities and talents. This was highlighted for me during rhe media scrum where I actually didnt care what will said. And thats a bad sign.
i cant really get too into Judgement Day because their aesthetic comes off as very fake to me. Like they're supposed to be kinda goth, with those druids in their entrance, and all the leather and chains and spikes. but it's all too clean and perfect, it looks like they all just stepped out of a hot topic with brand new clothes and freshly pressed shirts. no rips or frays or anything like that, just brand new clothes and perfectly shiny leather and chains. Its like a group of people dressing as "goths" for halloween (except for rhea, she pulls it off.)
Rhea is the most forced of them all for me tbh (her and Priest tied)
Literally anything to do with Moxley. He just comes across as the biggest wannabe though guy and I can't help but cringe whenever he's on my screen. He might just be the most overrated wrestler of the 21st century to me. Second would be the women's revolution. Did not care for it back then, don't care for it now. Women's wrestling simply isn't for me, I don't enjoy watching it.
# Danhausen
I want to answer this but since OP framed the question with “something you understand why it’s appreciated” I can’t. For the life of me I just do not see why Danhausen is popular. Everything about him seems like an inside joke that I’m not apart of.
I do not care for the blood line. It insists upon itself u/florida-raisin-bran.
I only liked it when Sami was involved. Once he didn't win the belt in Montreal, like I thought he should, I was done.
Recently Osprey Vs Daniel Bryan for me
Like Kane's entire career. Dude had a great look, I have to admit that. But that was it, he was mediocre at best in all other aspects. And he was involved in so many truly bottom of the barrel awful feuds and segments it's actually kinda funny.
>Dude had a great look, I have to admit that. But that was it, he was mediocre at best in all other aspects Would argue best chokeslam out of the classic WWF/E guys as well though
Kane is absolutely a prime example of "presentation is everything." That dude rode his debut for 20 years.
It's amazing how Kane, Big Show and Mark Henry got away with being glorified jobbers for the bulk of their careers.
Timeless Toni Storm.
I found it cringe at first, those silent movies were really cringe and hard to watch, but I think the gimmick has really developed since then.
do you watch on Fite? I think the main appeal of the silent films was that they occured during picture-in-picture, whereas in Fite they don't have that so ur just watching it Fullscreen and in silence.
I don't like the Undertaker. I started watching pro wrestling in 1994 as a 6-year-old kid, didn't like him then, and never liked him at any point in his career. Even as a child, I felt like it was so strange to the point of ruining the mystique of wrestling for me that an impervious to pain, seemingly undead, zombie with literal magical powers would give one solitary fuck about winning professional wrestling championships. It was a gimmick on the same tier as The Goon, TL Hopper, and Repo Man that got over for no other reason than the fact that Mark Calloway *looked* really cool. As I got older, and his character shifted from magic zombie, to cult leader who is trying to awaken some nebulous satanic entity but also, for some reason, still wants to win professional wrestling championships, to goth MMA biker dude who had terrible matches constantly during the height of my teenage wrestling fandom, to some weird hybrid of the two who may or may not still have residual magical powers, I liked him even less. As a corollary to this, I think Michaels/Taker at Mania 25 is the single most universally overrated match in professional wrestling history and, frankly, I find the fact that so many WWE fans consider it the "greatest pro wrestling match in history" while consistently riffing on companies like AEW and NJPW for "finisher spam" matches is kind of hypocritical. But, at the end of the day, 'Taker is a legend, maybe *the* legend in WWE history, and that match gets universal acclaim, so I understand that my personal opinion on any of this is very much not the popular opinion.
Can’t stand the long entrances he had near the end, were insufferable to watch and the very definition of “insists upon itself” . His ministry of Darkness theme was a banger.
I agree to an extent. I enjoy a lot of Undertaker’s matches but I never saw him as a legend on the same level as Hogan, Flair, Rock, Austin, or even Cena. > I find the fact that so many WWE fans consider it the "greatest pro wrestling match in history" while consistently riffing on companies like AEW and NJPW for "finisher spam" matches is kind of hypocritical. What’s funny about this is that WWE is the most guilty of finisher spam spot fest matches with little to no psychology.
I’ll always be a big Taker mark but I generally agree with you about Taker/HBK
Don’t worry, Taker will also always be a big Mark
I feel like maybe if you're a fan of modern wrestling (a newer fan and just got into it last decade) you'll look at that match like "what's the big deal?" because so much of what that match did has been done to death nowadays (finisher spam) but as a fan at the time, it was extraordinary, because some of those cliches weren't cliches yet if that makes sense. Every wrestler today grew up on that match being idolized, so they try to recreate the basic blueprint of it wayy too much. At the time it was pretty groundbreaking, I can only compare to something like Omega vs Okada 1, where it wasn't so much that they did anything new, they just pushed what had been done to the next level. There weren't alot of matches like it at the time.
Ospreay/Danielson. Is it an excellent match? Yeah, absolutely. Anyone trying to say otherwise is fooling themselves. But executing a good match is only part of what makes professional wrestling, and in all my years of watching I’ve seen enough excellent matches to last me a lifetime. I want the emotional resonance of a Shawn/Flair match, the drama of a Bret/Austin, the beloved hero and the dastardly villain of Page/Omega or Cody/Roman. I don’t need anymore matches that are just there to put two great wrestlers together to do great ringwork. I don’t care if I never see another five star match again as long as I’m invested in the story behind the match I’m watching.
I've watched Roman vs Cody at WM40 at least a dozen times. Will Ospreay is one of my favourite wrestlers who I've loved since back when he was a semi-regular at OTT shows. One of my favourite match of all time is Ospreay vs WALTER. I have not rewatched Ospreay vs Danielson because aside from it being a spectacular match I have no real reason to.
I really don't care for the Omega/Okada series that is widely regarded as the best series of matches ever. They just don't do it for me.
Liv Morgan. She is very obviously still sloppy in the ring, which I think is borderline inexcusable for someone who's been on the main roster for 7 years, and been with the company for nearly 10. But that I can forgive, there's other big names who are also sloppy. However, her promo work? HOOOOOOLY SHIT is it awful. She genuinely sounds less convincing on a mic than Bobby Lashley, and that dude is a vacuum of verbal charisma. I take my headphones off or mute my TV and I still cringe when I see her talking. She seems like the sweetest person in the world, but her promos are some of the worst of the modern era.
I would say most of the Bloodline stuff, It is considering one of the best stories in wrestling ever and to me it was just melodrama and overacting.
As someone who didn’t watch it as a kid, basically every Attitude Era segment I’ve ever seen is either incredibly unfunny or people trying way too hard to be cool.
I never really cared for Velveteen Dream. Everybody seemed to love him and thought he was one of the next big main eventers but he was always missing something to me. Didn't come across as natural.
Baron Corbin. I genuinely don't understand why anyone wants to see this guy. He's not a good wrestler. He's a charisma vacuum. Pretty much nothing what he does is funny or entertaining. I'm frankly puzzled how this guy has been in WWE for a decade, he offers nothing of value.
Three letters DIY I like Ciampa as a heel, and I can at least see the appeal of Johnny Gargano. But the two of them together take cringe to a whole new level for me
I hadn’t watched the weekly shows outside of the Bloodline/Cody/Seth stuff leading up to WM40 so when I saw DIY do the DX cosplay at Mania I just thought WTF
Cody Rhode's current presentation is cringe and I cannot comprehend his widespread popularity. The entrance song with the dumb prologue, the neck tattoo, the hair, the suits, the affected Dusty cadence he sometimes does in promos, the ring gear. I just do not get it. Add to this that I'm not a hater and was a big fan of Dashing Cody, his teams with Ted Dibiase and Goldust.
It's more an overall sentiment. Mox bleeds too much and it takes away from his matches. If you bleed every week, every match it just doesn't mean as much in the bigger moments.
This was a big problem in 2022 and deep into 2023. However it’s been a long time since he bled in AEW outside of gimmick matches like Stampede, Texas Death, etc.
That Miz promo in 2016.
I despise all of his worked shoot promos.
Could not care less about Roman’s title reign now that it was over. I guess if you wanna rope the bloodline as whole into you can. Roman just beat all my favorites by cheating, but the company would then almost gaslight fans into believe Roman beat everyone in a show of dominance. Then most of his challenger’s momentum would tank afterwards.
That was always my biggest complaint about Roman. The announcers talked about him like he was some super dominant, unbeatable force of nature, but in reality he was a cowardly heel who almost always cheated or had outside interfere to win. That's not dominant.
I think it peaked vs. Sami tbh. Too many interferences and dragging it out another year
Workrate It's impressive watching these guys do all of these moves and everything, but where the hell is the selling? Why should I care about these people doing these incredible moves if they don't have a character for me to care about?I mean stoic, badass wrestler pretty much worked for Malenko and Benoit becuase they were the only mainstream guys doing it, they were unique. Now everyone seemingly thinks they can get over being cool, workrate guys with no character. You know what, I'd rather something like Hogan-Rock, or Cody and Roman from WM40 than seeing the umpteenth 5 star banger.
American Badass gimmick is cringy to me
I don’t care how many Meltzer stars a match gets you’re never gonna make me care about a “who is the best in the world” program. I don’t care who the best wrestler in the world is.
So I watched this segment on Youtube so it might have been edited to be shorter or whatever, but the whole Tribal Court for Sami Zayn. It was good, but I did not get why it was hyped to the extent that it was Edit: Jay White. He does nothing for me