Pretty much anyone who sneers at professional wrestling demonstrates their lack of information and understanding about it. Of course it’s not for everyone, but most people who know anything about it respect it even if they don’t personally care for it.
This goes triple double anyone who sneers at (oldschool) ECW, which would look hep even to people who think they’re too hep for wrestling. I hear that is no longer the case, sadly, with this revamp. Which seems fine on SCI-FI mainly because A. The programmer director of SCI-FI hates actual science fiction and 2. Where else could it go? Spike is currently running Star Trek or wrestling about 28 hours per day.
Good grief, that was for real? When I was scanning the channel guide I thought maybe it was a mistake that I saw ECW listed on the SciFi channel. Sad, very sad.
It’s bad enough that my BF watches wrestling all the damn time as it is, but now they’re infiltrating scifi too?
I am a wrestling fan who loved ECW back from when Shane Douglas threw the NWA title in the trash and gave birth to ECW. Hopefully, they can find up and coming talent to mix with mis- and underused veterans, like they previously did, and give Paul Heyman a free creative hand. Heyman’s ECW gave wrestling fans a fresh, updated retelling of the same wrestling stories that have been used for decades. At that time, the big two were telling the same stories, yet hadn’t figured out how to make them fresh and appealing and different enough to engage new and old fans alike.
Anyway, Sci-Fi had a prank show (or at least, I think that was what Shannon Dougherty was doing), real-life “ghost hunters”, and a cold-reading psychic scam artist. Yet Farscape got cancelled, and now I’ll only turn on the channel for Battlestar Galactica (Mrs. D_Odds watches Doctor Who; I’ll watch sometimes with her, but I don’t seek it out). Why complain about wrestling? Is Tremors 56: Mr Keaton Needs a Hip Replacement a better use of the time?
I have plenty of info about professional ‘wrestling’ and understand it perfectly. I still think it sucks and openly sneer at it.
It’s a soap opera for rednecks with a little action thrown in. Even my BF, one of the biggest fans of professional wrestling out there, and who has auditioned for several of the companies agrees with me on this. Why he still loves it I have no idea. How a little gay club kid becomes a pro wrestling fan I’ll never know.
Word on the street is that the ECW Sci-Fi debut was lackluster to say the least. It’s essentially WWF version of THUNDER (if you remember the lackluster 2nd stringer show WCW used to put on) A bunch of nonames and also-rans except for Sabu and Big Show.
IMHO, Vince McMahon is doing his damdest to give those who sneer more ammunition than they need. Personally, I think the performers do the best they can in and outside the ring given the weak, insipid writing and the mis-booked matches. Sadly, ECW may have too much of McMahon’s hand in it.
SciFi channel was running the Poseidan Adventure the other night. The only science fiction that I remember in the movie is that Shelly Winters could actually swim distances under water.
It’s one thing to sneer at the silly plots, but quite another to fail to recognize the difficulty of the art/sport, in which one must not only take great physical abuse (remember, just because it’s choreographed and scripted doesn’t mean it’s easy or painless) but also put on a show. While not every wrestler is skilled, most are in fact athletes, and those moves aren’t just a bunch of no-contact limb-waves. It requires discipline, a ton of hard work, and probably takes an even harder toll physically than football. To have to command the attention of an audience, memorize lines and play a character at the same time as executing the routine with a partner who might screw everything up at every moment by slightly missing his mark…I dunno. I don’t sneer at it.
I think it’s as worthy of respect as the ballet (which also has silly plots and costumes, of course), but rich people in fancy clothes like the ballet, so it’s considered classy. Poor people in mullets and plaid flannel like wrestling, so its merits are more often overlooked.
Yet, somehow, ECW’s biggest cities were Philadelphia and New York. Guaranteed sellouts, SRO. Having attended several shows at the “Madhouse of Extreme” in Elmhurst, Queens, NY and one at the Hammersmith in Manhattan, I can assure you that rednecks were few and far between, if any.
Personally, I can’t stand Amer. Idol, Survivor, or any of their offspring. I think they suck. I don’t sneer at them though. And I can guaran-fucking-tee you that when those shows are gone and forgotten, relegated to TV Land or Fox Reality Channel, wrestling will still be selling out arenas worldwide. So step of the damned pedestal; not liking wrestling does not make you better than those who do. Thinking that not liking wrestling makes you better, however, actually puts you a wrung below.
The problem is that they’re trying to tape it at Smackdown, which is a decidedly non-ECW crowd, because Vince doesn’t want to run an extra day of TV tapings.
What I think they should do (and I’ve heard suggested) is to use the old Raw taping schedule: book the Hammerstein (or the ECW Arena, or any of the other traditional ECW haunts) and tape 2 shows a night twice a month. That way, you get a real ECW crowd, it’ll look like ECW production values and you’ve got the opportunity to edit what you need.
Sci-Fi basically forced them to send Joey Styles out before the taping last night to request that they keep the chants a little more family friendly (apparently they were scared by the “You suck dick” and “Cena swallows” chants at One Night Stand,) and as a result I didn’t hear a single ECDub chant last night, even when Sandman starting caning the hell out of “The Zombie.”
On this I can agree with you. It’s mostly the incredibly stupid story lines, the phony ‘rivalries’, the posturing, blah blah blah that I really can’t stand.
If they stripped it back down to the way it used to be, where it was more wrestling and less drama I may feel differently.
On second thought, I do see how a gay club kid could like it. Some of those guys are HOT!
Hardly. In my office, which is a computer company in San Francisco, almost everyone loves pro wrestling. Even the British guys from the home office are into it. It’s not a regional- or class-based entertainment: inside of the 18 to 35 year old male demographic, it cuts across pretty much every line and division.
ECW might be of some interest to you, then (at least the old ECW would have been.) While you always had some sort of story driving the confrontations, it was usually about workrate and keeping the audience engaged during the match. The motivations of characters were very realistic and the story was never more important than the match.
TNA is a bit like that now. It has more story than ECW of old did, but it’s not a ton. And it doesn’t have the WWE-style backstage segments that are apparently supposed to be a direct look into what’s happening backstage without the participants being aware that they’re being filmed.
And ROH is all matches and no story, but it doesn’t have a TV deal, so it’s not exactly easy to find for casual fans.
I was a decent fan of the old school ECW, but I don’t have a lot of expectations for this version. I think it’ll end up another RAW/Smackdown with lesser names (and I like RAW well enough, but I can already watch it), because the WWE isn’t interested in putting on an actual hardcore type show.
The matches from last night… Well, Sandman vs The Zombie was silly, but it was clearly supposed to be, and was mocking the idea that they’d have sci-fi gimmicks just because of what channel it was on, so I can’t say too much bad about it. But Angle vs Justin Credible? What was the point of have Angle squash Credible? To get over? Surely Angle is way over and has been for a long time. And Credible was a decently big name in old ECW for a time, and (I thought) the type of guy they should be pushing so that they can have some decent mid-card workers on the show. Instead we get a boring, one-sided match to show that Angle is really dangerious. As if that wasn’t established 10 years ago. And the only other thing I remember was the battle royal. Seems like there should have been more than just 3 matches, but unless I’m forgetting something, that was it. Two squashes (even if one was kinda funny) and a fairly typical battle royal? It didn’t exactly excite me on their first show.
The only answer I have for Angle is that Heyman’s booking him as Taz with a more legit background (and Vince and Kevin Dunn demanding that they put him over.) Squashing Credible, though, was a bad choice. Also a bad choice: not spending the money to get “Enter Sandman,” “Man in the Box” and “Snap Your Fingers, Snap Your Neck.” I’m ok with RVD using “One of a Kind” over “Walk” because it’s been a while since he’s come out to Pantera.
Vince and Dunn rewrote half the show, apparently, and Heyman reportedly thought that last night’s show was a bomb (which it pretty much was.) If this is going to work, they’re going to have to let Heyman be Heyman and get them in front of a crowd that won’t sit on their hands. Last night really felt like when Vince tried to do WCW matches on Raw: someone else’s name pasted onto a WWE production. There’s a certain look and style that has to be there, and that was not it. I hope changes will be made before next week.
TNA is barely watchable. It’s late-90s WCW, complete with Jeff Jarrett running wild, Scott Steiner’s immobile steroid-riddled body and Kevin Nash squashing young talent.
