Posts Tagged ‘The Wrestler’

Michael’s Impact Review

Tuesday, April 27th, 2010

Michael's Impact Review #17

April 26, 2010

The Impact Zone - Orlando, Florida

-  Sorry this took a while.  I was finishing up with the Chicago Blackhawks and the Nashville Predators.  I can't wait for the Chicago-Vancouver series.  Last year when they met in the quarterfinals, it was pretty physical.  Even Luongo came out of the net for some fisticuffs.  Let's cross the line.

-  We begin with a video package showing all of the big things poppin' from last week.  Plus some post match comments of RVD talking about being World Champion, again.

"MR. MONDAY NIGHT"

(more...)

Wrestlemania Main Events: Wrestlemania 23

Wednesday, March 10th, 2010

Back-to-back Wrestlemanias without Roman Numerals.

Super hot stadium crowd in Detroit and a fresh matchup in the main event that wasn't the original plan but was far more acceptable to the IWC and wrestling fans in general. However, HBK-Cena was in a fight for match of the night honors.

Enjoy

(more...)

The Returning Pop

Monday, March 1st, 2010

These days, whenever a popular wrestler returns after a prolonged absence due to an injury or whatever, said wrestler tends to receive a sizable welcome-back pop. It doesn't usually even matter whether the wrestler in question was a heel when he left; absence makes the heart grow fonder, and fans appreciate these performers, and there's no clearer sign of that than the welcome-back pop. Triple-H received one of the most overwhelming welcome-back pops of all time when he returned after an injury a few years ago, for example. And though Jericho was a heel when he left a few years ago, he was greeted as a face upon his return.

But consider this: if Ravishing Rick Rude or Bad News Brown had been injured during their respective WWF peaks and returned a year later, there's no way in hell they'd have been cheered. Fans woulda been like, "Oh, right, this guy. I remember him. Total dick."

What caused this change? Does it have to do with the fall of kayfabe? Is it the simple fact that fans are "allowed" to recognize the talents of heels now?

Also, are you ever going to comment on Bret Hart's return? I'm not implying that you owe it to anyone, I'm just surprised that you haven't really said a word about it. For my part, I think they should have kept his return top-secret, and the entire program should have been Vince interfering in some match at Mania, Bret's music hits, he comes out and beats the crap outta Vince, leaves to disbelieving cheers, then visits Raw the next night to do the confrontation with Shawn pretty much exactly as it happened. Ah well, hindsight is twenty-twenty; I'm just sad for Bret that he waited so long to return that a majority of the fanbase had moved on. Worse still, what would theoretically be the most amazing program ever (Bret returns to confront Vince!) has been limp and uninspired, and overshadowed by (among other things) Shawn Michaels's latest program; that's gotta hurt.

 

I think that the “welcome back pop” became a thing in wrestling around the same time that storylines started going by the wayside in favor of characters being all obsessed about their legacies.  I think it also has to do with the mentality from the Monday Night Wars, where fans become conditioned to equate surprise with excitement and so someone coming back means that it’s time to cheer.  X-Pac got a monster reaction in 1998, for instance, despite clearly playing a heel character and in fact being one of the most universally despised wrestlers on either show.  And since we no longer have rival promotions to draw true heat from (oh, except for TNA….BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA, sorry, couldn’t write that with a straight face) and you’re not going to see UFC guys suddenly popping up and going “I went three rounds with Shogun Rua and now I’m here to make the WWE tap out, brother!”, the injury return is really all we’ve got.

As for the second point, I haven’t commented because I ceased giving a shit about following weekly TV outside of internet recaps many years back now.  I don’t mind watching the occasional PPV, but the product just doesn’t make me want to go out of my way to watch it now.  It’s too much material to follow anyway; I much prefer the UFC model of one show per month with countdown specials in between.  As for Bret, I don’t think he’ll get what he needs out of this, but if he wants to try then more power to him.

Princess Picks: Shawn Michaels

Monday, January 11th, 2010

I did one on Bret, I figured I'd do one on Shawn before he got mad at me. Maybe I'll do others laters.

With this four-pack, I wanted to get four different eras of the wrestler from his early tag days to his initial singles run, to his 1997 comeback and finally his more recent stuff. No need to go into my thoughts on Shawn, I've made it clear many times before that I am a major fan.

So we're off.

(more...)

Retro Repost: Bret Hart DVD

Tuesday, December 29th, 2009

(Apparently this Bret Hart guy is all the rage right now among the kids, so here’s a repost of the DVD rant from 2004, with some formatting and spelling errors fixed)

The SmarK DVD Rant for Bret Hart: The Best There Is, The Best There Was, and The Best There Ever Will Be.

So here's how this is gonna work -- I've of course been hit by endless requests for this DVD, but didn't get the DVD until recently. I managed to watch the documentary portion previously and posted thoughts to the blog, but everyone wanted rants for the matches included, too, and I didn't really feel like going back to take notes on the documentary portion to do the entire DVD set. So the documentary portion is going to be a guest rant by longtime blog contributor and friend of mine Princess, who covered most of what I would have written about it anyway, and then we'll hit the matches with fresh rants for stuff I haven't done before or haven't done in a long time. For time reasons and for reasons of efficiency, I copied stuff where my opinions haven't changed or where an updated version wasn't going to be different enough to warrant a redo.

(more...)

Dangerous Comedy!

Saturday, November 28th, 2009

The SmarK DVD Rant - Dangerous Comedy!

"Dying is easy. Comedy is hard."

- The Joker

I think that one of the reasons that safe and predictable pop culture junk like the Night At The Museum movies or the (Noun) Movie series keep getting made is that truly cutting-edge comedy isn't always funny. Yes, Monty Python was routinely brilliant, but for every Dead Parrot Sketch there are a million misses within the same show. I personally find it easier to deal with a swing for the fences that misses rather than a tepid ground out to first, because at least there was the potential for gold in one of them. Sandra Bullock mugging for the camera makes $100 million because you know exactly what you're getting and it doesn't scare people off. The Hangover made nearly $300 million domestically because it was an easy-to-understand concept pulled off spectacularly well.

And then there's Bruno and Funny People, released around the same time earlier this year…

(more...)

Time honored traditions

Wednesday, October 14th, 2009

Hi Scott,
I don't want to re-start the old debate about Montreal, but recent events at Breaking Point and rumours of a Bret Hart return got me thinking. Should anyone who criticises Bret for not following the "time honored tradition" also criticise Ric Flair for taking the NWA title to the WWF in 1991? Unless I'm mistaken, Flair seems to get a free pass for this and I'm not sure why. Taking your company's world title to a rival organisation seems like a pretty big insult to everyone he worked with. I know the circumstances were very different and Flair was owed his $25,000 deposit, but he could have held onto the belt without putting it on WWF TV.

 

Well, here’s the thing:  Vince McMahon is full of shit.  There are no “time honored traditions” in wrestling because it’s a business founded by con men who will say whatever they need to (like “time honored tradition” or “wellness policy”) to put asses in the seats.  Flair was hardly the first person to screw over a promoter and of course he was far from the last, and there’s just as many cases of guys leaving with their heads high as there are of guys doing the job on the way out.  Even at the time (1997, I’m talking) people saw right through Vince’s speech and realized that it was just him spinning the situation to not make himself look paranoid, but over time it’s somehow morphed into an honest plea from a great lover of wrestling tradition.  Shit happens, I guess. 

Either way, I side fully with the wrestlers in both cases.  If Jim Herd was too stupid to get the belt off Flair before screwing him over, then it’s own fault. 

Top Ten Heel Turn Explanations

Thursday, September 24th, 2009

From longtime reader Joe Petrow…

 

Hi Scott.  Your comment on Crush's heel turn got me going on yet another list...Top Ten Explanations For a Heel Turn!  Actually, these are explanations that are _too_ good, as they result in fans empathizing with the heel.  Not surprisingly, a lot of them involve Hogan, since it's so easy to understand siding against him.  I admit that it is very slanted towards 20th century WWF, but great explanations from WCW/NWA (Ron Garvin's "I will do anything for money"?  Pez Whatley going off because of an offhand remark that he's black?  The flavor-of-the-week joining the nWo "just because"?) or anytime in this decade (Steve Austin's "You don't deserve an explanation?"  Goldberg's...what the heck _was_ the reason for him turning heel anyway?) were hard to come by.  Anyhow...here ya go.

(more...)

Music List

Friday, August 7th, 2009

Whew, finally a list where someone else is doing the work.

Hi Scott.  I notice we haven't seen a good 'ole "rasslin' list" in a long time, and my mind somehow drifted to thinking about the greatest WWE produced songs of all time, so I put the two together for your edification.  Feel free to use it if you feel it worthy of publication.

(more...)

UFC 4

Tuesday, July 21st, 2009

I got a copy of UFC 4 (Revenge of the Warriors!) as a stocking stuffer this past Christmas, and after watching the superb UFC 100 this past week, I thought it would be a neat contrast to go back and watch something from closer to the beginning.  I used to watch these with my roommate back in the day as a weekly ritual, and I don’t really remember much about the early ones outside of “Kenpo Karate always loses” and a lot of Royce Gracie.

- Immediately the atmosphere is way different, with a smaller venue in Tulsa and a more redneck and bloodthirsty crowd than you’d see now.  The hosts are Bruce Beck and Joe Brown (a former football player) and they REALLY make you long for Mike Goldberg.  The soundbites from each fighter are also a far cry from the slicker production values presented today on Spike TV, to say the least.   “Hi, I’m Steve Jennum, and I’m here to defend my title.”  There’s no Tito Ortiz here, lemme tell you.

(more...)