So like how does Pro Wrestling work?

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Pop-O-Matic said:
Also the exact same writing style. The arcs of an average DBZ villain and a traditional wrestling monster heel are remarkably similar.
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Do wrestlers get powered up and get stronger out of the blue?

I can never run away from the cheese of DBZ. It was simultaneously this awesome thing in the 90's that was mega popular, and yet also very underground because I was watching subtitled real media files downloaded from servers in 1999. Lol
 
Krejlooc said:
Do wrestlers get powered up and get stronger out of the blue?

I can never run away from the cheese of DBZ. It was simultaneously this awesome thing in the 90's that was mega popular, and yet also very underground because I was watching subtitled real media files downloaded from servers in 1999. Lol
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That's pretty much the calling card of wrestlers like Hogan and Cena
 
Man, thinking about it, Krejlooc has probably learned so much in this thread, and yet there's still so much to be discovered. I don't think anyone's even mentioned stuff like Vince Russo, the man largely responsible for both WWF's most popular era in history and WCW's eventual demise. Or TNA, the closest thing WWE had to "competition" for a very long time until it was ruined by essentially the very same things that killed WCW.
 
Krejlooc said:
Do wrestlers get powered up and get stronger out of the blue?

I can never run away from the cheese of DBZ. It was simultaneously this awesome thing in the 90's that was mega popular, and yet also very underground because I was watching subtitled real media files downloaded from servers in 1999. Lol
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A couple of top wrestlers have a routine like that. The most famous is Hogan, after getting beaten half to death, slowly feeding off the cheers of the fans to get back up, shrugging off whatever the heel is throwing at him, and regaining the energy to win the match.

But what I was speaking about specifically was how they book a traditional big, tough scary monster villain in pro wrestling. They'll have him show up and start defeating no-names brutally before moving on to the wrestlers the audience actually care about and similarly defeating them before they face the top guy, who, with rare exception, manages to beat the villain and put them in their place.
 
Pop-O-Matic said:
A couple of top wrestlers have a routine like that. The most famous is Hogan, after getting beaten half to death, slowly feeding off the cheers of the fans to get back up, shrugging off whatever the heel is throwing at him, and regaining the energy to win the match.
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"Everybody! Raise your hands and give Goku Hulk Hogan your energy!"
 
Pro-wrestling at its core is theater... Generally poorly acted theater but theater none the less.

Krejlooc said:
the first one you linked, I'm reading comments - the guy fucking died? Holy shit
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He died years later from a motorcycle accident if I remember correctly.

Nope, he died of complications from gastric bypass surgery
GavinGT said:
He owns the company (which he inherited from his father) and sometimes wrestles too. It's his real name.
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He didn't exactly inherit it, Vince formed Titan Sports and bought his father out a few years later and has said for years that had his father known what he was going to do he probably would've never sold it to him. Vince started raiding talent from the territories to turn the company into a national touring attraction opposed to the old territory system which Vince eventually killed. That put a lot of financial strain on the company and pretty much everything eventually rode on WrestleMania being a success but Vince's father didn't live long enough to see it or the success that would follow.

Vince didn't even know his father until he was 12 and left his mother, an abusive stepfather and the trailer park they were living in North Carolina the first chance he got after finding out. Vince at least some years ago from his Playboy interview seemed to have wished the stepfather would've lived long enough for him to kill the guy himself. In some ways Vince kind of had the stereotypical porn star quality childhood and it left a very big chip on his shoulder and probably where a lot of his drive came from.

Nilaul said:
The Olympic version is real and professional. The one in America filled with actors; a show where nearly (if not) everything is staged.
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You realize pro-wrestling isn't just an American thing right? Never mind that most of the guys on the roster have legitimate athletic backgrounds, especially in real wrestling.

There's zero money in "real wrestling" because it's boring as sin to watch and that's pretty much the reason why pro-wrestling exists in the first place and then evolved into the over the top theater it became in the 50s due to television.
 
Seraphis Cain said:
Man, thinking about it, Krejlooc has probably learned so much in this thread, and yet there's still so much to be discovered. I don't think anyone's even mentioned stuff like Vince Russo, the man largely responsible for both WWF's most popular era in history and WCW's eventual demise. Or TNA, the closest thing WWE had to "competition" for a very long time until it was ruined by essentially the very same things that killed WCW.
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Not to ruin anybody's parade, but I'm merely curious. I'm not going to go back and watch old wrestling (can you even do that these days?) - I don't even really watch much TV anymore because I find it too time consuming.

But as someone who saw wrestling become this huge cultural phenomenon when I was in highschool but never got into it, this has been an interesting topic. A lot of these questions I've wondered for decades.
 
Seraphis Cain said:
Man, thinking about it, Krejlooc has probably learned so much in this thread, and yet there's still so much to be discovered. I don't think anyone's even mentioned stuff like Vince Russo, the man largely responsible for both WWF's most popular era in history and WCW's eventual demise. Or TNA, the closest thing WWE had to "competition" for a very long time until it was ruined by essentially the very same things that killed WCW.
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I always thought Vince purposely sent Russo in there to destroy the company. Simply genius.
 
Seraphis Cain said:
You really don't think someone could assume that wrestling's target audience is 12-15 year olds based on WWE's current product?
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I've seen them go to one ad for a toy compared to a multitude of more adult content that they're producing on the WWE network. So yes. I don't think that someone would assume that if they were even remotely curious.

Krejlooc said:
I don't even know if you think I'm trolling because I'm asking things which are so obviously true, or asking things which are so obviously false. As in, with regard to the question about the rock, is the answer "duh, of course" or "duh, of course not"?
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People are giving you lengthy answers and you're responding with one sentence responses. There's no reciprocation or appreciation. You're just moving onto the next question. You might be genuine, and if you are I apologize for my aggressiveness. But right now? The way I interpret your tone and your questions come off as someone smirking to the camera as they try to come across as sincere.
 
Krejlooc said:
Not to ruin anybody's parade, but I'm merely curious. I'm not going to go back and watch old wrestling (can you even do that these days?) - I don't even really watch much TV anymore because I find it too time consuming.

But as someone who saw wrestling become this huge cultural phenomenon when I was in highschool but never got into it, this has been an interesting topic. A lot of these questions I've wondered for decades.
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Yeah, you can. WWE has the WWE Network, which is essentially Netflix for wrestling. Tons and tons of old and current WWF/E and old WCW and ECW shows and PPVs and such.

RiccochetJ said:
I've seen them go to one ad for a toy compared to a multitude of more adult content that they're producing on the WWE network. So yes. I don't think that someone would assume that if they were even remotely curious.
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And how familiar do you think someone like Krejlooc would be with the stuff they're doing for the Network? People who don't watch wrestling don't even know the Network exists.
 
Krejlooc said:
Not to ruin anybody's parade, but I'm merely curious. I'm not going to go back and watch old wrestling (can you even do that these days?) - I don't even really watch much TV anymore because I find it too time consuming.

But as someone who saw wrestling become this huge cultural phenomenon when I was in highschool but never got into it, this has been an interesting topic. A lot of these questions I've wondered for decades.
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If you want to watch old wrestling, WWE has a streaming service called the WWE Network where they have loads of old vault content, including nearly every PPV they have in their archives.
 
RiccochetJ said:
People are giving you lengthy answers and you're responding with one sentence responses. There's no reciprocation or appreciation. You're just moving onto the next question. You might be genuine, and if you are I apologize for my aggressiveness. But right now? The way I interpret your tone and your questions come off as someone smirking to the camera as they try to come across as sincere.
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I'm sitting here talking about how I love the cheese of dragonball Z. I don't think I'm passing judgement on anybody in this topic.
 
Krejlooc said:
Not to ruin anybody's parade, but I'm merely curious. I'm not going to go back and watch old wrestling (can you even do that these days?) - I don't even really watch much TV anymore because I find it too time consuming.

But as someone who saw wrestling become this huge cultural phenomenon when I was in highschool but never got into it, this has been an interesting topic. A lot of these questions I've wondered for decades.
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wwe network has essentially everything WWE ever, since Vince had the foresight to record and keep everything.
 
Seraphis Cain said:
And how familiar do you think someone like Krejlooc would be with the stuff they're doing for the Network? People who don't watch wrestling don't even know the Network exists.
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I honestly had no idea there was a WWE network, but I guess it makes sense if there is a Big Ten Network, and SEC Network, and even a Longhorn Network. That's just the trend in modern media these days since scarcity of bandwidth really isn't a thing anymore.
 
Krejlooc said:
Tell me about this Russo guy - when was the golden era or whatever of the WWF, and who were its stars? I'm guessing thats the old Hulk Hogan days?
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Nah, the Attitude Era. Stone Cold, The Rock, D-Generation X, Mankind, etc. Russo was largely responsible for WWF's shift to more adult-oriented themes. Which led WWF to it's biggest period of mainstream acceptance ever, arguably bigger than even the Hulk Hogan glory days. Eventually Russo parted ways with WWF and ended up in WCW as their head writer. He attempted to do the same thing there, but with little success for various reasons. For example, he put WCW's World Title on an actor, David Arquette, as promotion for Ready 2 Rumble, a wrestling movie WCW had a large part in. It's widely regarded today as one of the dumbest storylines in wrestling history (even Arquette didn't want to do it at the time, being a huge wrestling fan and realizing it was awful).
 
Krejlooc said:
Tell me about this Russo guy - when was the golden era or whatever of the WWF, and who were its stars? I'm guessing thats the old Hulk Hogan days?
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Vince Russo was a driving creative force behind the Attitude Era of the late 90s in WWF (Stone Cold, The Rock, etc.). He took the company in a more mature, edgy direction and made the show less cartoony.

He eventually left for WCW where he was promised pretty much total creative control in an attempt to stave off the WWF's climb in the TV ratings, but he pretty much caused WCW to crash and burn because he didn't have someone like Vince McMahon to reign him in.

So then you should probably know how you're coming across with the tone of how you're posting.
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He's coming off just fine. No need to tone police.
 
RiccochetJ said:
So then you should probably know how you're coming across with the tone of how you're posting.
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I don't think I have a tone - this is how I talk in basically every thread. I don't think anyone in this topic has one. I think you're being extremely defensive for no reason, however. And you're shifting the conversation away from question and answer about pro wrestling, to... I dunno what.
 
Seraphis Cain said:
Nah, the Attitude Era. Stone Cold, The Rock, D-Generation X, Mankind, etc. Russo was largely responsible for WWF's shift to more adult-oriented themes. Which led WWF to it's biggest period of mainstream acceptance ever, arguably bigger than even the Hulk Hogan glory days. Eventually Russo parted ways with WWF and ended up in WCW as their head writer. He attempted to do the same thing there, but with little success for various reasons. For example, he put WCW's World Title on an actor, David Arquette, as promotion for Ready 2 Rumble, a wrestling movie WCW had a large part in. It's widely regarded today as one of the dumbest storylines in wrestling history (even Arquette didn't want to do it at the time, being a huge wrestling fan and realizing it was awful).
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So is this the dude who also wrote Hogan turning bad for the WCW?

Does that movie Ready 2 Rumble have anything to do with the boxing game from midway of the time? I loved that game lol
 
Seraphis Cain said:
And how familiar do you think someone like Krejlooc would be with the stuff they're doing for the Network? People who don't watch wrestling don't even know the Network exists.
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If they're interested enough to ask the question, I'm going to assume that they have at some point been completely blasted in the face with the fact that there's a network out there.
 
Krejlooc said:
Tell me about this Russo guy
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He was the head writer for WWF around '97-'99, and was one of the main driving forces behind the more "adult" presentation they took at the time, loading the program with sex, violence, 4th wall breaking acknowledgements of wrestling's fakeness and gimmick matches. This move brought big business back to the WWF when they needed it the most, but, when WWF launched the Smackdown show, the prospect of having to write for another 2 hours of TV lead to him jumping ship to WCW, where it was revealed that the only reason his stuff was so good was because Vince McMahon acted as a shit filter. He basically turned WCW into a completely nonsensical program where characters changed alignment on an hourly basis, matches regularly went off the rails because characters "weren't following the script" (as in, them going off script was part of the written storyline), and where people like David Arquette and Vince Russo himself could become World Heavyweight Wrestling champions, and, because of that, he is basically synonymous with bad wrestling booking and the death of WCW
 
Krejlooc said:
So is this the dude who also wrote Hogan turning bad for the WCW?

Does that movie Ready 2 Rumble have anything to do with the boxing game from midway of the time? I loved that game lol
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No, and no. Hogan turned bad around '95, Russo didn't make it to WCW until several years later.

Anyway, it's like 3:30 AM here so I'm going to go to bed. I'll check back in during the day when I imagine we'll be waist deep in explaining how ECW even happened.
 
Krejlooc said:
So is this the dude who also wrote Hogan turning bad for the WCW?

Does that movie Ready 2 Rumble have anything to do with the boxing game from midway of the time? I loved that game lol
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Nah, Hogan going heel was way before Russo's time in WCW. Hogan went heel in 1996 and Russo didn't show up in WCW until 1999.

And no, nothing to do with the game, haha.
 
Krejlooc said:
How many hours a week of storyline are there usually in wrestling? Is this still a thing where there are two shows telling one story?
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In theory, yes, but things have kind of devolved to the point where anything that happens on Smackdown is basically of no consequence.
 
Krejlooc said:
Tell me about this Russo guy - when was the golden era or whatever of the WWF, and who were its stars? I'm guessing thats the old Hulk Hogan days?
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He was the head writer for WWE. He along with Vince and others came up characters like The Rock, Stone Cold, DX, etc. The biggest guys pretty much in WWE during the late 90s. Albeit they were just amplified versions of their real life personas. Storylines as well.

He left WWE in 99 supposedly over some argument about too much work. He went over to WCW and became their writer. And he produced mountains of shit and some of the worst storylines of all time. My theory is he was sent over there by Vince McMahon to sabotage the company which pretty much ended up happening.

Umm... wrestling was pretty huge in the late 80s with Hogan at the top. He is pretty much the face of wrestling. He left around 92 and WWE focused more on younger talent. The early 90s were a terrible time. They slowly started picking up steam again around 97 with guys like Stone Cold and The Rock coming up. Dubbed the Attitude Era. Which was mostly aimed at teens and young adults. A lot of tits, alcohol, and swearing during the time. It was basically like Jerry Springer.

WCW at the same time were huge cause of Hogan being a bad guy and leading the NWO (a group) but eventually shit the bed in 2000/2001.

IMO 97-99 was the golden age.

2000-2006 was tolerable but bad.

Today's product is shit so don't even bother.
 
Pop-O-Matic said:
In theory, yes, but things have kind of devolved to the point where anything that happens on Smackdown is basically of no consequence.
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Smackdown is the show title I know, haha. Whats the main show called?

Another question - do fans of wrestling know the names of the moves being used? Like, are there actual recognizable moves? I know there is a stone cold stunner, but is that just his signature move or does everybody use it? Or is it kind of like football where everybody knows the statue of liberty, but every team calls it a different move.
 
I remember, in higschool, people wearing those NWO shirts all the time. They were so huge. First they were white and black, then they became red and black. Was that a different group, or did they just change their colors?
 
Krejlooc said:
I might head to bed here in a bit too, but I'm still curious. ECW was a competitor to WCW and WWF?
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They were more the Minor Leagues to WCW and WWF's majors. They operated mainly out of a converted bingo hall in Philly and would feature up and coming talent, foreign talent, individuals who had no chance in the top promotions and guys from WWF or WCW waiting out their 3 month no-compete clauses before jumping to the other company. They drew due to the quality of matches from the young/foreign talent, the focus on more adult storytelling years before WWF did the same an hardcore matches filled with brutal weapon spots and blood. They tried to move to a national level around 2000, but a terrible deal with Spike TV basically sent them into bankruptcy.
 
Krejlooc said:
How many hours a week of storyline are there usually in wrestling? Is this still a thing where there are two shows telling one story?
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For WWE, there's three hours of Raw and two hours of Smackdown a week, as well as multiple hours of lower-tier shows like Superstars and Main Event, but nothing that happens on those affects storylines. There's also NXT, the show dedicated to WWE's developmental division featuring rookies and people signed from the indie feds, and sometimes storylines from Raw bleed over into that, but not terribly often.

Krejlooc said:
I might head to bed here in a bit too, but I'm still curious. ECW was a competitor to WCW and WWF?
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ECW was originally Eastern Championship Wrestling, a part of the NWA (National Wrestling Alliance, at one time the largest governing body in wrestling comprising many, many independent territories; McMahon basically killed it). They decided they no longer wanted to be part of the NWA, and rechristened themselves Extreme Championship Wrestling, taking the more adult-oriented approach years before McMahon ever did. Which basically catapulted them from near-obscurity to the #3 promotion in the business. They did rather well for a good while, even getting a nationally broadcast TV show on TNN. However their owner, Paul Heyman, was notoriously bad with money, and eventually ECW met the same fate as WCW, being bought out by McMahon in 2001.
 
Pop-O-Matic said:
They were more the Minor Leagues to WCW and WWF's majors. They operated mainly out of a converted bingo hall in Philly and would feature up and coming talent, foreign talent, individuals who had no chance in the top promotions and guys from WWF or WCW waiting out their 3 month no-compete clauses before jumping to the other company. They drew due to the quality of matches from the young/foreign talent, the focus on more adult storytelling years before WWF did the same an hardcore matches filled with brutal weapon spots and blood. They tried to move to a national level around 2000, but a terrible deal with Spike TV basically sent them into bankruptcy.
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I assume they were bought by the WWF?
 
Krejlooc said:
Smackdown is the show title I know, haha. Whats the main show called?

Another question - do fans of wrestling know the names of the moves being used? Like, are there actual recognizable moves? I know there is a stone cold stunner, but is that just his signature move or does everybody use it? Or is it kind of like football where everybody knows the statue of liberty, but every team calls it a different move.
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Raw is the main one.

And fans know the moves of at least the most popular wrestlers and their favorites. A lot of signature moves are just fancy names for regular techniques though.
 
Seraphis Cain said:
ECW was originally Eastern Championship Wrestling, a part of the NWA (National Wrestling Alliance, at one time the largest governing body in wrestling comprising many, many independent territories; McMahon basically killed it). They decided they no longer wanted to be part of the NWA, and rechristened themselves Extreme Championship Wrestling, taking the more adult-oriented approach years before McMahon ever did. Which basically catapulted them from near-obscurity to the #3 promotion in the business. They did rather well for a good while, even getting a nationally broadcast TV show on TNN. However their owner, Paul Heyman, was notoriously bad with money, and eventually ECW met the same fate as WCW, being bought out by McMahon in 2001.
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Anybody from ECW that an average person would remember?
 
Krejlooc said:
Smackdown is the show title I know, haha. Whats the main show called?
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Raw.

Krejlooc said:
I remember, in higschool, people wearing those NWO shirts all the time. They were so huge. First they were white and black, then they became red and black. Was that a different group, or did they just change their colors?
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Basically the nWo got so big they took up half the roster, and a lot of people had started cheering for them at that point, so they split it off into two factions, the heel nWo Hollywood (which retained the black and white color scheme) and the babyface nWo Wolfpac (which was the black and red faction). There was also the Latino World Order (unrelated besides name) and the Blue World Order (ECW's parody of the nWo).

Krejlooc said:
Anybody from ECW that an average person would remember?
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Mick Foley (aka Cactus Jack, Mankind or Dude Love), Eddie Guerrero, Rey Mysterio, Chris Benoit, Chris Jericho, Raven, The Dudley Boyz
 
Krejlooc said:
Anybody from ECW that an average person would remember?
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Hm. I don't think so. I mean, Stone Cold did have a brief stint in ECW before he showed up in WWF, but he had already been an established star in WCW before that. No "ECW original" ever hit the same level of popularity as Stone Cold or The Rock or anything.
 
"How do we make more boys and men like Telenovelas?"
"We have to have adults beating the living shit out of each other."
"OK."
 
Seraphis Cain said:
Hm. I don't think so. I mean, Stone Cold did have a brief stint in ECW before he showed up in WWF, but he had already been an established star in WCW before that. No "ECW original" ever hit the same level of popularity as Stone Cold or The Rock or anything.
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Mick Foley? Right up there with Rock/Austin during the Attitude era. And he actually had a legit run with ECW.
 
Pop-O-Matic said:
Basically the nWo got so big they took up half the roster, and a lot of people had started cheering for them at that point, so they split it off into two factions, the heel nWo Hollywood (which retained the black and white color scheme) and the babyface nWo Wolfpac (which was the black and red faction). There was also the Latino World Order (unrelated besides name) and the Blue World Order (ECW's parody of the nWo).
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This sounds an awful lot like the concept of Network Rot - where specialty TV channels cultivate an audience, then grow beyond their niche, and basically dillute it out into smaller subgroups to try and maintain a big fanbase, and wind up alienating everyone in the process.

Posterboy examples of network rot - MTV and Cartoon Network. MTV stopped showing music decades ago, then spawned MTV2, then MTV3 to eventually try and pacify that crowd. And Cartoon Network started as a classic 24/7 cartoon network, then got some original programming, then started showing live action shows, and had to spin off networks like boomerang.
 
knkng said:
Mick Foley? Right up there with Rock/Austin during the Attitude era. And he actually had a legit run with ECW.
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True enough, Foley did become pretty well-known in ECW, but just like Austin, he'd been an established star in WCW before he ever went to ECW (even if his WCW storylines were utter shit).

I will admit that Foley's time in ECW is far, far more well-known than Austin's though, yeah.
 
Seraphis Cain said:
Hm. I don't think so. I mean, Stone Cold did have a brief stint in ECW before he showed up in WWF, but he had already been an established star in WCW before that. No "ECW original" ever hit the same level of popularity as Stone Cold or The Rock or anything.
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Wait, so WWF star Stone Cold Steve Austin began on the WCW? Was he there when Hulk Hogan was around?
 
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