Comments on: Cornette again

By: TjM

TjM — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 18:35:22 +0000

Yeah but after the filming of Episode 1 Ray Park (Maul) and Ewin could go have a beer together and no one would care

By: Knighthawk

Knighthawk — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 02:32:17 +0000

Totally agree with what has mostly been said here.

Football is silly. I love football, but it’s silly. Grown men on a field essentially playing “smear the queer.”

The thing is, the NFL would never, assuming the Commissioner was in his right mind, admit or allow someone else to admit that football was a silly endeavour on TV or in a newspaper article, or on the Internet. Could you imagine Tom Brady or Tony Romo going live on ESPN and treating football in general, and the NFL in particular, like a joke? They’d be fined out the ass before they knew what hit them.

Wrestling has got to be the only form of sports or entertainment that allows themselves to be treated as a joke, by treating themselves as a joke! I know Vince has his insecurities about being a mere “rasslin promoter,” but maybe if he allowed wrestling to be taken a little more seriously on his own TV shows, other media would treat the WWE a little more respectfully.

By: Knighthawk

Knighthawk — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 02:17:51 +0000

Not only that, but Rock also took acting lessons, didn’t he?

Turned out pretty good for him.

By: Knighthawk

Knighthawk — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 02:08:51 +0000

TNA doesn’t sell tickets. They give them away for free at an amusement park (and sometimes in mid-sized arenas across the country — seriously, they couldn’t sell half the seats in the Sovereign Bank Arena in Trenton last summer?!)

By: MadmanJack

MadmanJack — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 00:49:45 +0000

Now if that’s Jimmy’s primary point, then I do have to agree — crap, I actually remember (of all matches)DDP versus Goldberg at Havoc ‘98 as being a match that made me forget that no way in hell is Bischoff going to have Goldberg lose his streak before Starrcade … when DDP reversed the Jackhammer into a Diamond Cutter, the shout of “PIN HIM!” was beyond stereo in my living room. (I wonder how many people consider that Page AND Bill’s best match ever?)
He just keeps on about the old conditions so long that I’m not sure if he realizes what it was about the old days that actually works today. Like I said, call it showbiz left right and center, except from 9 to 11, where you focus on TWO GUYS FIGHTING for a reason WE CAN UNDERSTAND with RULES we can understand, and all of us will be tuning in. But Vince and Vince aren’t doing that.

By: thebeast

thebeast — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 15:01:38 +0000

Re the restholds, I don’t mind if a headlock or chinlock is applied after a few minutes but the most important thing is that it’s sold as painful hold. When wrestlers do it now, it does look like they’re just having a break. Bret-Bulldog did LOTS of chinlocks at Summerslam 92 but they both used facial expressions to show it was hurting and so you really believed they were being worn down. I remember watching an MVP match a while ago where he was in a headlock but he was kicking his feet and wriggling because it hurt so much. In that case, ‘restholds’ are fine.

By: Johnny C

Johnny C — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 07:44:44 +0000

I agree that Cornette does go a bit overboard, but nonetheless, the gist of what he said is true. yes, we know it’s a work. But for the whole show to be tongue-in-cheek kills off any interest many people had.

I disagree with Cornette about all the people being total marks back in the day. Even as a kid I knew it wasn’t “on the level”, but watched religiously as the wrestlers, managers, anouncers etc. all acted like it was 100% legit. When “Attitude” came in, and people kept making “winkwink” comments, it was fun at first, but has been disastrous in the long run.

I think someone on the Observer wrote a great article a few years ago. One point was that when we watch say a horror movie, we know that the werewolf isn’t real, but if the movie’s properly made, we can suspend disbelief and for that moment it is real. However, if we keep seeing how fake it is, we laugh at it. In wrestling, ANYTHING can be made to be real if the people involved in the making act like it is so. But these days WWE go out of their way to tell us how fake and silly it all is. So why should we watch?

By: bignasty96

bignasty96 — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 20:22:52 +0000

The stuff about what wrestlers call aspects of wrestling doesn’t matter to the business. You can call it backstage, dressing room, locker room, whatever…it doesn’t affect how you draw. The kayfabe stuff outside of the arena…I think that’s already out of the bag…its not like seeing a heel and a face in an IHOP is going to prevent you from being a fan.

But Cornette did hit the nail on the head with my biggest gripe with pro wrestling today…the product needs to be presented as a shoot during the show. Kayfabe should be alive when the WWE is on TV…they want to break it on WWE.com or in newspaper articles…fine…but they should present it as a shoot during the show. Thats the thing thats annoyed me about wrestling for the past 10 years, bring the real life into things, shooting, blah blah blah, it ruins the belief.

Cornette brought up Rocky…well as you’re watching the fight scenes, you get into it, you believe that fight is actually happening and you want Rocky to win. It doesn’t matter in 20 minutes you’ll be saying…man Stallone is awesome…in the moment, its Rocky. That’s what the WWE & TNA have lost….there are very few times that I get lost in matches. On the flip side…thanks to the strict adherance to kayfabe, I can still get into wrestling matches on 24/7 from the 80s and early 90s even if I know way too much of the backstory because its presented as a shoot.

That’s pro wrestling’s biggest problem. Not whether the guys have gimmicks or characters. Note to Jim: They’re the same damn thing.

By: pure_dynamite

pure_dynamite — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 20:10:31 +0000

Cornette sounds like an old man refusing to embrace a changing business. Not that there’s anything wrong in that.

By: Lerxst Pratt

Lerxst Pratt — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 17:19:12 +0000

No, I read it and I’ve re-read it. My point is that Cornette contradicts himself a number of times, and really in the end he’s picking nits. It reminds me of Buck in Boogie Nights: “I’m not a porn star, I’m an actor!!!”

And seriously, re: the whole “heels and faces never socialized in public” thing: That might work on a local level, but since wrestling is international now, you’d basically be forcing wrestlers to live the “gimmick” 24/7, lest someone, somewhere see something they shouldn’t.

Cornettte expresses what many of us probably feel, that wrestling truly is “a unique…artform,” but you can only control so much of it. Jeff Jarrett’s wonderful quote “For those who believe, no explanation is necessary, and for those who don’t believe, no explanation is good enough” sums everything up perfectly. It’s all about suspension of disbelief. In this day and age, you can’t force it on anyone, and like I said, while I respect Cornette on a lot of levels, he takes the idea too far (at least in terms of how he presents it).

And in the big picture, here’s a guy who has strong beliefs about the sanctity of kayfabe, how when outsiders are exposed to it it loses its luster and can be bastardized, and how it needs to be treated as legitimate….openly writing about “the business” (not “the sport”) on the internet, for all outsiders to see.

Irony, so damn ironic, etc etc etc.