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Unpopular Wrestling Opinions

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Not sure if this qualifies as unpopular but the Attitude Era kicked off officially at KOTR 1996. The response to the NWO angle with a more edgy WWF product that pushed the envelope was immediate. Like within weeks immediate. Nash and Hall were on Nitro in late May breaking ground in reality and carnage in a way never seen before. And by the end of June WWF was already experimenting with what would become a more permanent formula. Whether it was the birth of the Austin 3:16 meme or especially Undertaker and Mankind beating the holy hell out of each other in such a way that compared to the 2020 product, it looks like a full-scale ECW match. Granted it was relatively tame, it's still more extreme than 2020 gets and is more extreme than the product ever had been before. Special shoutout to the boiler room brawl a mere few weeks later at Summer Slam. But enough on that. Sure it didn't happen all at once. The changes came on gradually as 1996 wore on. But less than a month after Hall and Nash hit Nitro, all you're missing is different colored ropes and ring and a WWF scratch logo and you could barely tell the difference between then and what would follow 3 years later.


When Bret Hart is popping off screaming "THIS IS BULLSHIT!" on a brand new rustic Monday Night Raw set in March 1997, you are in full scale Attitude Era with the product simply just not having a name for it yet and people simply more interested in WCW for the time being because they were running the GOAT angle of all GOAT angles.
 
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Oh yeah and WWE product has been absolutely horrible since about 2005 -which was the beginning of the end. When you start pushing shit like the "Who's your Papi" angle the Boogeyman and Juniors division you have nowhere to go but down and by 2006 it reached full-scale meltdown. I'm quite frankly amazed I have lasted as long as I have to even still think about the product
 
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KingHollywood said:
Much like WWE, I see very little in Aleister Black.
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Black could be great but in this era when you know everything about him he's a Hot Topic model/looks like he plays in Killswitch Engage.

If he stayed off social media and it was not acknowledged that he's married to Thea Trindad, there would be this mystique.

You make him a demonic character who might be into dark magic and you have a winner.
 
GlitchMarner said:
The Invasion angle essentially brought about the end of the best period in wrestling history. I'm not a huge Attitude Era mark or anything (I don't think the WWE was all that great from '98 to mid-'99)......
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I still think 85-92 is the best era of wrestling. The entire WWF build up and JCP being super hot. Even promotions like World Class and Memphis while they were fading, they had good stuff.

1990 is still my absolute favorite year in wrestling. I don't think anything touches that year.

1998 WWF was fun because it was so edgy and WCW had enough juice leftover from 96 and 97. 98 WWF also still had some decent actual wrestling. There was a lot of "what will happen next" or "who is going to show up on the program?" type moments.

I love when X-Pac came back and trashed Hogan, and when Bossman came back.

I agree on 1999 stinking. Other than Foley winning the belt the rest of the year was just bleh. I hated the Ministry and Corporate Ministry, and DX was stale. I liked X-Pac/Kane more than DX. I also didn't like Rock as the main babyface. His matches were all so one dimensional. Punch one thousand times.

I've said it before, I actually think Rock become a better work post-Hollywood because his arsenal wasn't so predictable.

Also WM XV to me was a huge bore.
 
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Roo Returns said:
Black could be great but in this era when you know everything about him he's a Hot Topic model/looks like he plays in Killswitch Engage.

If he stayed off social media and it was not acknowledged that he's married to Thea Trindad, there would be this mystique.

You make him a demonic character who might be into dark magic and you have a winner.
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My issue with Black is that he is overplayed to me. A decent wrestler who doesn't cut promos often, has a beard and tattoos and kicks. Most likely contributing to WWE's opinion on him is that he isn't at all special or stands out with who's on their roster overall. NXT booked him really well and knew how to showcase him Putting him in the midst of the Gargano/Ciampa feud wasn't a bad idea.

Ultimately, he falls flat for me. Great entrance though.
 
330px-Excalibur_holding_the_PWG_World_Championship_2009.jpg

thrillermiller89 said:
Chris Jericho and the Undertaker are the only 2 people in the conversation for greatest of all time
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No, Excalibur is the G.O.A.T! ;)
 
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Roo Returns said:
Black could be great but in this era when you know everything about him he's a Hot Topic model/looks like he plays in Killswitch Engage.

If he stayed off social media and it was not acknowledged that he's married to Thea Trindad, there would be this mystique.

You make him a demonic character who might be into dark magic and you have a winner.
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Kayfaybe has been dead for at least two decades now. Everyone knows these wrestlers have real lives outside the ring, so Black being married to Vega shouldn't really impact what WWE does with his character inside the ring.
 
JackSlater said:
Regarding Black, I've never seen much in him. I hate his look and his in ring work doesn't impress me. I can't remember any promo he's ever cut.

Regarding Raw, the terrible part in my eyes is that it's three hours of crap. At least during the early era of Raw crap it was only one or two hours. It only hurts things further when you've got so many other hours of crap throughout the week if you intended to follow all WWE programming.
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Just watch the RAW and Smackdown five minute highlight videos they post on the WWE YouTube page. You'll get the basic idea of what's going on in each feud but instead of wasting five hours of your life each week, you only need like ten minutes.
 
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Islesfan2019 said:
Just watch the RAW and Smackdown five minute highlight videos they post on the WWE YouTube page. You'll get the basic idea of what's going on in each feud but instead of wasting five hours of your life each week, you only need like ten minutes.
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No body has he endurance to sit through 5 hours or more wwe every week lol. The highlight videos can be hard to get through tbh.
 
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So another unpopular opinion. Watching through 1998 and I'm in April. The shit with DX and Chyna interfering with HHH's matches went way too far for way too long-Especially with the European Championship defenses. I didn't think it was possible to outdo JBL's title reign and apparently I was wrong. The shit has lasted an entire year now. Chyna is in a league of her own when it comes to the amount of cosmic bullshit they had to manufacture in finishes and the product is unwatchable. I could at least fathom JBL crawling his ass out of a broken ring in the barbed-wire steel cage match he had with Big Show. I am an enormous fan of heel champions but this just at another level. Why do I get the feeling this is going to continue and get even worse? I feel like I can remember Right To Censor being this bad when I was a kid but we'll find out one day.


Fully expecting an Owen heel turn any day now because he can't get over as a babyface due to the golden shovel.



Edit: And the f***er goes heel the next night on Raw. L O L! Not only does it not make any sense half the time it's predictable. This is following my feeling that Unforgiven 1998 might've been one of the worst PPV's I have ever seen. Small kudos to trying an Inferno match but that's just Russo being Russo.
 
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-Face/heel hasn't been a binary in like 30 years. Certain guys are still pure (2014 Daniel Bryan as a babyface, for example) but it stopped meaning that much longer ago than people would like to admit.

-Depends on how we wanna define "mic skills" and the guy certainly had charisma, over catchphrases, and was funny, but the Rock couldn't tell a story if you gave him a picture book. Bray Wyatt always got flack for never actually saying anything of substance (absolutely true) but Rock was in the same boat and never really got criticized for it.

-The Attitude Era had its strengths. The talent was loaded, Austin was a megastar, and for my differences with him, so was the Rock. But how good it was is heavily romanticized. On more than one occasion I've heard the Attitude Era referred to as a more serious product. Are you kidding me? I must have lost "serious" somewhere between the tit jokes, the casual homophobia in every other segment, and the hangings/crucifixions. Some good storylines and phenomenal moments to be had for sure, but a lot of it just doesn't hold up when you watch it at 30. I will say this, it beats the pants off of 2002-2007 Raw which kept right on with the frat boy humor without any of the good parts. Ruthless Aggression Smackdown, on the other hand, I re-watch a lot more than the Attitude Era.

-Give me the book and still have Cena go over Wyatt at WM30. Hear me out: he cheats to win and it consumes him in the following weeks. It's not a heel turn per se (I gave you my thoughts on that) but it adds a dimension to his character and being the "corrupter" does more for Wyatt than beating Cena clean at the start of the feud. That's the story they were telling and they just abandoned it on the night-of. Let Bray play with Cena's demons for a bit. At the end of the feud, Cena commits himself to "I'm gonna do it my way, hustle, loyalty, respect, etc." and that's where Wyatt goes over clean as a whistle.

-NJPW is my current favorite promotion and I respect Meltzer's dedication to the business, but let's be honest, if you had two Japanese guys play checkers, Meltzer would give it 5.25 stars.

-Speaking of NJPW Okada vs Omega 1 > Okada vs Omega 4. I thought #4 was overhyped. We got like a full 30 minutes of "neither man can stand" and it got agonizing to watch. Don't get me wrong, it's a 5-star match, it's one of the all-time greats, it is probably is a top 3 feud ever. It's not a "7-star" THE preeminent match in wrestling history. The two men have had better matches and they had a better match with each other.

-Punk shouldn't come back full-time. He did what he did and history should preserve it as such. I'd be into one more match to get proper closure (not that I think he cares about that) but that's it.
 
Machinehead said:
-Depends on how we wanna define "mic skills" and the guy certainly had charisma, over catchphrases, and was funny, but the Rock couldn't tell a story if you gave him a picture book. Bray Wyatt always got flack for never actually saying anything of substance (absolutely true) but Rock was in the same boat and never really got criticized for it.
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I have to agree with this for the most part. The content of The Rock's promos is generally pretty poor. I was a big fan of his, and he's still probably my number four wrestler ever, but his charisma masked a lot. This is especially true early on. I always preferred Rock to Austin, and I still do, but I eventually had to realize that Austin was the better wrestler in the ring and on the mic. Austin did get a bit catchphrase heavy later on himself though.
 
I thought Leo Kruger was a sweet gimmick that should have gotten main roster run, I hated the switch to Adam Rose
 
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