hifigator
Platinum Hoya (over 5000 posts)
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Post by hifigator on Mar 22, 2010 21:39:32 GMT -5
Yeah, I know, I am sure that I will catch a bit of grief from some ... but what else is new. I know that there are at least a few casual wrestling fans, and a couple/few more who used to be. Since the "poll" option is no more, I will do my best to offer an alternative.
The "plot/schtick" -- not even sure if that is how you spell it, as I have said it many times, but I have never written it ... not ever sure if I have ever read it -- is this:
The Undertaker has never lost at Wrestlemania. The WWE's (formerly, the WWF's) biggest pay-per-view of the year. He is something like 17-0. Now since it is scripted, that, in and of itself, means little. But as I tell all those who point that out, James Bond is scripted as well. Somehow both he and his fans have managed to survive some nearly 50 years, and with continuing support. In any case, the point is that the Undertaker has never lost at the biggest event.
HBK -- The Heartbreak Kid, for those not "in the know" -- has taken this challenge on as his "coup de gras." Hell, I hope I spelled that right, but since neither of them can, I will give it a whirl.
It isn't really an important topic, but some of us might have some fun with it. Others will likely laugh at us for doing so. No matter ...
What do you think will happen?
1. HBK wins in a great individual effort and no outside interference.
2. The Undertaker wins in a great individual effort and no outside interference.
3. Either one of them wins, but through universally accepted as questionable tactics. (No, I'm not talking about the closed fist or grabbing the tights. This option must involve no other entertainers and must finish with a "standard" pin count/submission/countout.
4. Either side wins with outside interference.
5. The ending is ... to use a political term ... "taken to the Supreme Court." In other words, there isn't a clear outcome.
Note: for this poll, ignore the option that even though HBK will "retire" if he loses, coming back in a few weeks/month as a manager or the sort is irrelevant.
Try to have fun, the 2 or 3 of you who care.
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PhillyHoya
Golden Hoya (over 1000 posts)
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Post by PhillyHoya on Mar 23, 2010 13:15:07 GMT -5
HBK will win through either 3 or 4.
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Post by jerseyhoya34 on Mar 23, 2010 13:30:46 GMT -5
I agree with that. HBK, I think, has the ear of management more than the Undertaker, and Vince would be crazy to write him out of the company/active roster given his continued popularity with fans. It is annoying, just as it is annoying with HHH, but it is what it is.
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PhillyHoya
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Post by PhillyHoya on Mar 23, 2010 17:26:50 GMT -5
Besides, HBK winning will just set up another match at next year's Wrestlemania.
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Boz
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Post by Boz on Mar 23, 2010 17:48:27 GMT -5
What this Wrestlemania matchup tells me is that the WWE is in dire need of some new talent.
Clearly, John Cena does not have the star quality of a Rock or Stone Cold. Or even a Mick Foley/Mankind.
Cena vs. Batista? Really? They might as well just grunt at each other for a half hour.
(Edge & Jericho is a little better. Those guys got character and some panache. )
So HBK and Undertaker is the matchup everyone wants to talk about. It might have been a great one in 1999 or so.
Undertaker stopped being a believable wrestler about a decade ago. And HD is not Shawn Michaels' friend.
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PhillyHoya
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Post by PhillyHoya on Mar 23, 2010 17:56:29 GMT -5
Undertaker stopped being a believable wrestler about a decade ago. And HD is not Shawn Michaels' friend. Which spurs a related side debate: worse in HD - HBK, Undertaker or Triple H?
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hoyarooter
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Post by hoyarooter on Mar 23, 2010 20:13:03 GMT -5
And here we are at Wrastlemania fifty-five Can The Undertaker keep his streak alive?
Enough already. HBK And agree with Boz - isn't this match about a decade too late?
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Post by jerseyhoya34 on Mar 23, 2010 20:33:17 GMT -5
I am not sure there is any less talent now in the WWE. My problem is that it is spread thin, and the writers create crappy angles. The Raw/Smackdown/ECW brand junk just basically gives wrestling fans what they had already but in diluted form IMO - compare the old ECW of Paul Heyman or whatever his name is to the ECW of Vince McMahon, and you'll find yourself laughing. Tune in on Monday night, and you really have no credible alternative when that inevitable bathroom break match comes up during the show. Ten years ago, you had Nitro, and you had the most brilliant angle in the history of wrestling in the nWo. Why anybody would want to watch Sheamus (whoever he is) at WM is beyond me.
The other problem is that the average wrestling fan is looking for a risky angle, and most of what the WWE is churning out has already been churned out 20 years ago. There isn't the Stone Cold angle that shook up the WWE or anything else that has a character of its own. Bret Hart is a case in point.
Vince has not developed the young talent well. Edge has some of the better mic skills in the company, and he seems to be in a holding pattern. The Hardy Boys produced some of the better matches in the last 5-10 years, and it seems like they got jerked around. All while we were treated to what turned into a glorified legends program, with Ric Flair, Ricky Steamboat, Shawn Michaels, Bret Hart, Steven Regal, Jerry Lawler, and the like. If we wanted that, we would have rented WM1.
Vince also mismanaged the WCW takeover. By the end of the WCW, there was still incredible talent on their roster (and I'm not referencing Goldberg who sucked). You had the Booker T's, Hall/Nash, Konnan, Sting, et al. More importantly, you had Bischoff. Now, most of those guys are gone - can't think of a WCWer left in the WWE outside of Jericho.
Other thing that needs to happen is the elimination of lucha libre.
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Boz
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Post by Boz on Mar 23, 2010 21:08:07 GMT -5
compare the old ECW of Paul Heyman or whatever his name is to the ECW of Vince McMahon, and you'll find yourself laughing. I miss Joey Styles.
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RBHoya
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Post by RBHoya on Mar 23, 2010 21:43:34 GMT -5
I've got Undertaker winning via Triple H heel turn. They've built up the Undertaker streak for many years now. If he loses, it'll be the biggest honor they can give to anyone, way bigger than a title reign. To me, doesn't make sense to put Michaels over in that way, since he's only got another year or two of active competition at the most. If he was going against somebody younger I could see it, but not Michaels.
I think Triple H will screw Shawn, end the whole DX thing and go back to being a heel. Shawn will have a retirement like Macho Man's after he lost his "career match" to Warrior at WM7--he'll stay a while, and then just as Triple H takes the title and seems unbeatable, some GM or somebody will re-instate Shawn for one last run.
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quickplay
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Post by quickplay on Mar 24, 2010 8:46:40 GMT -5
I really like that last idea with the Triple H heel turn. Last year's match was great and ended cleanly, I can definitely see them switching it up. Undertaker winning is as close to a sure bet as you can get, but they need to do it in a way that seems a little less than legit, so they can justify Shawn Michaels not completely retiring.
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hifigator
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Post by hifigator on Mar 24, 2010 10:53:10 GMT -5
RBHoya wrote:
I've got Undertaker winning via Triple H heel turn. They've built up the Undertaker streak for many years now. If he loses, it'll be the biggest honor they can give to anyone, way bigger than a title reign. To me, doesn't make sense to put Michaels over in that way, since he's only got another year or two of active competition at the most. If he was going against somebody younger I could see it, but not Michaels.
I think Triple H will screw Shawn, end the whole DX thing and go back to being a heel. Shawn will have a retirement like Macho Man's after he lost his "career match" to Warrior at WM7--he'll stay a while, and then just as Triple H takes the title and seems unbeatable, some GM or somebody will re-instate Shawn for one last run.
That is pretty much exactly what I"m thinking. I just don't see much benefit to endind the vaunted streak in such a manner. It would do little for Shawn's box office pop. He's already pretty well liked. They did mention the Undertaker's "brother" again last night -- Kane. I haven't heard them mention that in quite a while. They had kind of let that schtick die off. I wonder if there could be some reason there. Undertaker getting all the glory ... Kane trapped hiding in his shadows ... etc.. I could see maybe interference by Kane, causing HBK to win. That would give them a new party line to follow that they could probably milk until next wrestlemania. If HBK is going to actually "ride into the sunset" -- wrestling term for "retire" meaning a few weeks vacation followed by an entirely different role -- like being a manager or something. Then I could see a hard faught match with Taker finally pinning him after 2 or maybe 3 tombstone pile drivers.
As for the talent pool, I'm not sure if it is dramatically different or if we are merely seeing more of it on televiosn. IN the very early days, we would only see one or two compelling matches. Everything was geared towards generating ticket sales for the live shows., Then we started seeing more and more headliners matched up against each other. Now that we havc so many different shows to fill up with matches and since we have grown accustomed to real matches like that, there's no room for the "journeyman nice guy, who is merely the lamb being led to the slaughter."
As for Joey Styles, isn't that the same as "A. J. Stlyes" If so, then he is on TNA, which features a lot of the "has beens," most recently adding Ric Flair and Hulk Hogan as partial owners. It's still kind of interesting though sometimes. But I agree that they have oversaturated the market, similar to what UFC has done. I still enjoy UFC, but it is really hard to connect with a lot of the individuals because they change so much and bounce around from organization to organization.
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Boz
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Post by Boz on Mar 24, 2010 11:00:54 GMT -5
You call yourself a wrestling fan and you don't know who Joey Styles is???
I have only three words for that:
"Oh! My! GOD!!!!!!!"
;D
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hoyarooter
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Post by hoyarooter on Mar 24, 2010 11:47:11 GMT -5
HHH a heel? I don't follow wrastling any more. Are Shawn and The Undertaker both considered good guys now? If Shawn and HHH are back together and HHH might do a heel turn, that means Shawn must be a good guy. And I don't think Taker has been a heel since the 20th Century. A Wrastlemania feature match with two good guys would be somewhat surprising.
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hifigator
Platinum Hoya (over 5000 posts)
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Post by hifigator on Mar 25, 2010 15:59:31 GMT -5
You call yourself a wrestling fan and you don't know who Joey Styles is??? I have only three words for that: "Oh! My! GOD!!!!!!!" ;D I honestly can't place him, but I do recognize the name. Was he one of the Mean Street Posse -- who were nothing but preppy friends of Shane O'Mac from Stamford Ct.
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Boz
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Post by Boz on Mar 25, 2010 16:09:18 GMT -5
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Post by jerseyhoya34 on Mar 28, 2010 16:28:52 GMT -5
It looks like ChannelSurfing and JustinTV have some feeds set up for this evening. It sounds as though the Taker/HBK match will be the main event.
On Edit: Here's another possible outcome - Bret Hart screws Michaels and the streak stays in tact.
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Post by jerseyhoya34 on Mar 28, 2010 21:58:25 GMT -5
We're all wrong. #2 it is. Unbelievable match that could have been over at 5 different times. Good send-off for HBK - they didn't leave much room for him to come back, but stranger things have happened. He seemed to sell retirement at the end there.
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hoya95
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Post by hoya95 on Mar 28, 2010 22:17:07 GMT -5
Nobody ever believes a retirement angle for good reason, but it sure looked like Michaels believes he is retired now. Check back in a year of course. Really good last hour saved an otherwise mediocre show. I was still probably ripped off for buying it, but it could have been worse.
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hifigator
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Post by hifigator on Mar 30, 2010 10:49:15 GMT -5
I was planning on watching the show on my daughter's pc, which is way beyond my archaic relics, but ended up staying at the lake, so I missed the show entirely. I did watch Raw last night though, and everyone is right, in that they/he sure sold the retirement angle. I'd be very surprised if he doesn't show up at least in cameos in the future, but I do think his day to day wrestling career is over. Of course, I thought that about Mick Foley at least 3 or 4 times. In his case, I think HE actually thought it was over more than once, but was coerced out of "retirement." In the "fake" world of wrestling, you never know for sure, but this was the whole reason I started this thread when I did. It had a different feel to me. Again, maybe I am just drinking the koolaid, but I had a hunch that this might actually be a farewell encore for the showstopper -- at least on a consistent basis. If so, then farewell Shawn. Thanks for the memories. P.S. Marty Jennety owes you big time!
For those who watched the PPV, how was it overall? How was the Taker-HBK match in particular?
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