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BG Thinks: Answer Me This
By Brad Garoon | April 25, 2008
From WWE Divas to ROH fans there are certain things in wrestling I just don’t understand.
I’m sure many of you are like me in that you go through cycles as a wrestling fan. You have days, maybe even weeks or months, when you can’t stand to turn on RAW, pop in a Ring of Honor DVD or sit at your computer to catch some Japanese wrestling on YouTube. If that’s true and you still consider yourself a fan then you also have days, and hopefully weeks or months, when you want to rush home to make sure you don’t miss a minute of RAW, when you buy a whole bundle of ROH DVDs and when you surf the Internet for hours looking for a puroresu fix.
Thankfully I’m currently going through the latter half of my wrestling fandom cycle. I’m burning through ROH show after ROH show, watching as much puro as possible and genuinely enjoying WWE television week to week. However, being that I am a wrestling nerd in every regard, even now I have problems with what I see going on in the wrestling world. As such I need a few questions answered, and I hope that those of you reading this can help me out.
Just how much revenue do the WWE Divas bring in?
I hope it’s a lot. In two days WWE is holding their annual Backlash PPV. Whereas WrestleMania is considered the end of the wrestling year in WWE, Backlash is both WrestleMania’s epilogue and the following year’s prologue. As such I can’t begin to understand why twelve WWE Divas are in a scheduled match but potential World title contenders CM Punk and William Regal don’t have the same luxury.
I can only imagine that through merchandise and a deal with Playboy that these ladies are lining Vince McMahon’s pockets with more money than I’ll ever see in my lifetime. Less than half of the dozen women wrestling on PPV deserve to even step into a wrestling ring, and the ones who do are hardly interesting enough to your average WWE fan. Meanwhile not only do Punk and Regal both have legitimate claims at being contenders for either the WWE or World Championship but they also have a perfectly good reason to fight each other! This is a match that was excellent in the brief time it was given on RAW and one that fans are actually eager to see stretched out from bell to bell.
Hopefully by the time Backlash is over a match between Punk and Regal will have occurred and we’ll have a solid feud going into Regal’s coronation the following night on RAW and into Judgment Day. Sadly it’s far more likely that at Backlash we’ll be treated to another WMOTYC. That’s Worst Match of the Year Candidate for those of you who aren’t up on your IWC acronyms. Oh and that’s Internet Wrestling Community for those of you who are really new to the game.
Did the Larry Sweeney/Bobby Dempsey/Allison Danger segment really upset you that much?
I think the fact that wrestling fans are for the most part looked down upon by mainstream society has left us wanting for an issue that forces us to jump on our high horses. I recently watched the ROH segment in which Larry Sweeney encouraged Bobby Dempsey to take advantage of an unconscious Allison Danger. ROH fans were up in arms over the segment, but watching the DVD I found it to be quite tame. In the end Danger was knocked out and Dempsey refused Sweeney’s (almost tongue in cheek) suggestion. The segment ended with the comical visual of the mammoth Dempsey knocked out on top of Danger.
Why was this so much more offensive than anything Human Tornado has done in PWG in the last year? For so long he beat the crap out of his female valet. For months after she left him he humiliated her at every turn. On different occasions he simulated Chris Benoit and threatened her with forced oral sex (or water sports, depending on who you talk to). PWG fans didn’t lambaste the PWG message board with pleas to have these segments removed from the DVD. Why were ROH fans, many of whom double as PWG fans, so eager to keep the Sweet N’ Sour segment from reaching their television screens?
Will I ever get into lucha libre?
It didn’t take me long to acclimate myself to Japanese wrestling. Once I sunk my teeth in there was no way I’d be able to get them out again. So why is it that Mexican wrestling, which is more accessible at least by proximity, seems completely out of reach to me? I actually speak Spanish yet I have no desire to watch those guys flip around the ring.
The craziest part of my hesitance to even try to watch lucha is that I thoroughly enjoy the Japanese wrestling companies whose roots are in the very same style. Someone please give me a primer on AAA or CMLL or whatever the successful company down there is right now. Tell me whose matches I should go out of my way to see. All I was able to find was a torneo cibernetico match on Daily Motion and had no desire to watch more than two minutes. I need some help in this area.
These aren’t rhetorical questions. I’m in a good place as a wrestling fan but could always learn to love this crazy business more. I need your help. Hook it up.
Topics: BG Thinks |
April 25th, 2008 at 12:50 am
What was funny about the supposed “rape” angle, was fans kept changing the reason they were upset over it. A lot agreed that it was because there were fans cheering on, but in the dvd it was obvious that most people were booing.
I always feel like a lot of the lucha guys are wrestling in slow motion. While the puro scene isn’t exactly at it’s peak, most of the lucha I’ve seen within the last year or so has been almost unwatchable.
April 25th, 2008 at 9:35 am
For the record Sean, while I wasn’t there I heard fan reaction was heavily modified on DVD. A “Man Up” chant was removed, and tons of boos were supposedly piped in to overwhelm the cheers.
April 25th, 2008 at 2:39 pm
I was there and I can and will confirm that ALOT of stuff was left off the cutting room floor, which infuriates me.
April 25th, 2008 at 3:24 pm
I’ve talked about this before with Sean, I’ve got my own theory on the Sweeney angle. ROH was coming off a pretty bad streak of bad luck. Weather causing big booking changes in shows, Nigel being banged up, their PPVs not having the desired effect, Gabe’s email being leaked, and them having to make cutbacks.
Gabe shoots the angle, knowing it will offend people and cause an uproar. Gabe then announces he’s not including it to make those fans happy (and also keeps the angle alive by doing the newswire and blaming Sweeney). Then, when the rohbot types want to see it, he announces that it will be included so that fans can see it for themselves. Everyone is talking about ROH, and Gabe looks like a fair booker, by giving in and including it.
Maybe I’m just too damn cynical.
April 25th, 2008 at 8:15 pm
You over-thought the crap out of that one. They just buckled again and again.