We all watch a fairly wide range of wrestling, so across all your favourite/usual promotions:
Who is that one wrestler above all others that you just can’t get into?
Do you hate their wrestling style? Is their character boring? Do they just not do anything for you? Hate the performer (keep it civil)? Was there some angle that soured you on them? Let us know! (and obviously do feel free to mention multiple people if needed lol).
Bray Wyatt
I don’t understand why people find him so captivating.
I think this is valid. The only version of Wyatt I liked, hell I loved, was Swamp Preacher Wyatt, when he would sit in the rocking chair and give a revival speech about the devil’s coming for you, run… some of the early supernatural stuff wasn’t horrible, but Swamp Cult Wyatt was great to me. After that, it wasn’t appealing.
I think I agree on this one. The swamp cult was hot shit and I loved it, still remember the night after he won the title and came out with it with the fireflys, loved it.
Nothing about the fiend ever appealed to me, almost from the moment i saw him walking out in pink and black striped clown pants. Everything else could be perfect (and I get it, blah blah funhouse), but that 1 goofy ass fucking thing just made me go ‘huh?’ and never recovered lol.
Well this is gonna be fun.
In AEW, it’s Sammy. Irl, while he seems to have his heart mostly in the right place, he’s just a bit of a tool and can’t resist cringey shit. Proposing in the ring, regardless of how that ended, is cringe. Announcing a pregnancy on national TV is cringe. Doing a gender reveal is cringe. Etc etc etc.
I don’t believe that this is all character work any more given how he continues to be positioned as a face. The only time recently I’ve been interested in what he’s doing was when he was friends with MJF. The guy is better as a heel, and all of the above works much better as a deluded heel who thinks people care, rather than an ernest face, in my opinion.
In WWE, I never got the appeal of Ronda Rousey. Her being an literal piece of shit is something I only found out about later, but her matches were bad - actual judo throws aside - she can’t talk, and her holding the belt was clearly for marketing purposes only. Shayna is infinitely better.
All I wanna do is see Sammy wrestle. Nothing else. No promos, title cards, interviews. Just wrestle and fuck off.
Rousey can just fuck off without the wrestling.
I can’t even bring aew into this, the whole company is a shit show and terrible. Anyone who is brought and in is halfway decent, gets tossed into the mid card within a month and any storylines they had just vanish. Now they’re acting like bringing in Sasha banks is gonna be a game changer. They can’t even bring in new viewers with Copeland or Joe, how the fuck is banks gonna make a difference?? Lol
That place is run by a bunch of narcissistic mid carders, and it’s all paid for by a rich idiot pretending he’s playing a fantasy wrestling league
Dude, chill.
Why are you in this discussion if you don’t care about wrestling?
Dude, again, chill.
We have a good place for discussion about wrestling as a whole here, including negative feeling against AEW, but personal attacks and factional screaming are not welcome.
Dislike AEW as much as you want, but have it be substantive and not vitriolic.
Aew has no substance. Aew also doesn’t have feelings, stop white Knighting for it.
John Cena killed my interest in wrestling. It had less to do with him and more the way they booked him. I had no interest in watching him at the top of the card for years so I stopped watching entirely.
I have respect for him now but he was a big reason why I’m a lapsed fan instead of an, uh, unlapsed fan…lol.
That was Brock for me. Basically everything they were pushing in the early to mid 2000s was just bleh to me.
Wow are you me? I was a big fan of wwf from around 91, and I left cause I just couldn’t deal with John Cena and his whole thug life, nerd shit and how he became the top guy. I hated him, but listening to him now, turns out he agrees and accepts that he was a cocky, nerd in those days.
I’ll load up on a few now that I’ve had a mediocre sleep:
Punk: Overvalued. When he was in his prime he was hot shit. Now post-prime, he’s smoldering shit but we’re supposed to think he’s the BeSt In ThE WoRlD lol.
Anthony Ogogo I just cannot give a fuck about. I care more about my bowl of popcorn than I do about Anthony Ogogo and I just don’t get it.
FTR is my current AEW piss break. I liked em as the Revival. I liked em when they showed up in AEW and started off. Then Dax decided to do the whole ‘piss people off with my podcast comments and then 24-72h later play it off like I didn’t say stupid crap’ bullshit and Cash is just dumber than a tit under an cruise ship.
Deaner/Maclin/Edwards in TNA. Zero interest, none of em do anything for me.
Nanae Takahashi. The second I see any wrestler in Stardom booked in a singles match with Nanane ‘That don’t work for me, sister’ Takahashi I know the next 11 mins are best spent making a sandwich and packing a bowl.
And if I can be allowed an honourable mention for a promotion as a whole: Sukeban, just fuck off lol.
What’s wrong with Sukeban? It seems like an interesting idea, no?
Just my own opinion of course:
- Poor production. Last show I watched (I’ve seen 2, I forget if they’ve done more than 2) was shit. Soon as a 3-count hit fucking bright strobing lights went off around the ring into the cameras.
- The commentary is hot garbage (but because of the product imo).
- The ‘characters’. I have no problem with Legally Distinct Wrestler™. Edge came to AEW. He can’t be Edge. We have Legally Distinct Edge™ Adam Copeland. Sukeban went the extreme route and made up personas (which imo are shit but thats fully subjective) which are unrelated as a whole to the people portraying them, but in the same breath acknowledges their real life accomplishments as the characters own, breaking the line between the two. Is Lady Antoinette this weird old-French-style (idk lol) woman who we have never seen before come to Sukeban with her Dangerous Liaisons team? She can’t be, she has Risa Sera’s exact title wins listed! She can’t be this new person, Lady Antoinette never won shite. Pick a lane, they’re either portraying new characters for the promotion to keep them separate from their existing ring personas, or they aren’t.
- The title belt. It looks like a wonderful piece of art that would be presented as a trophy, or a big special occasion gift like on a retirement or something. It looks like a piss poor title belt for a wrestling promotion.
- The outfits are basically half cheap fetish gear, half random good-will clothing. Dangerous Liaisons and the Harijuku Girls are basically wearing vinyl, leather/pleather. I’ve said it a dozen times but in the event first
Saori Anousorry sorry 'Countess Saori’s tits almost fell out at least 3-4x during her match, all of which is because they are supposedly a (for lack of a better term) ‘front’ for a fashion designer (who co-incidently works in vinyl, leather and pleather lmao) to show off clothing and outfits they make.
Edit: And to be clear - No complaints about the wrestling. All of these women are world class wrestlers and they know how to do their job well. It’s just…I like cosplay in my wrestling but this is straight up cosplay.
Yeah I can see the problems lol. I only saw the first show (yes there were only 2 as far as I know) and I didn’t know that they did this “different characters but performer’s accolades” thing, that sounds stupid as fuck, pick one.
Shame cause the idea of a promotion set in its own pocket universe where the performers could be reinvented as their own separate versions, with Bull Nakano as commissioner no less, sounded pretty fucking rad.
Lack of commitment to the vision it seems.
Yeah like the overall aesthetic and how they’re doing things just…isn’t for me even as a joshi puroresu fan but if they at least stuck to it fully and didn’t list Stardom, TJPW, Ice Ribbon etc title wins for everyone on their site and talking about it during commentary then I’d at least give it a passing grade.
I’m also not a fan of that outfit Bull Nakano was wearing but she’s Bull fucking Nakano she can wear what she wants lol.
Edwards in TNA
his “evolution” to hardcore style in 2018 was actually so well done, check out that if you haven’t seen it.
Last time I enjoyed him lol
Kaya Toribami of TJPW: She’s just so… meh. Make Serpentico extremely boring and switch his gender, and you have Kaya. Masked wrestlers have to work harder to show emotion than unmasked wrestlers do. But Kaya doesn’t even try to do that. She needs a character rework something fierce. Especially in a promotion that already has Hyper Misao.
Prefacing that I like Kaya, I think her problem is that she’s using the mask as a way to hide, instead of a character tool.
Every time she’s on camera she seems extremely shy, and while I do like where her moveset is going (2 years of experience is not a lot for a high flyer and on top of that TJPW emphasizes strong fundamentals as a prerequisite for being allowed to do high spots) it’s clear that already setting up the highflying masked wrestler gimmick when she can’t actually use the accompanying moveset was putting the cart before the horse.
She should have had a normal start as a rookie and only switched to this gimmick when she had the skillset to match, IMO.
I will ask you to please put away the pitchforks, but I don’t care for Kenny Omega. I can enjoy his matches but I don’t think he’s the bee’s knees let alone the greatest ever.
If we are doing somebody in another company… I’m going to call out L.A. Knight, just like Kenny I can enjoy what he does, but most of the time I don’t see how he’s so over… Yeah!
Again, I can enjoy these people’s work, but I don’t get why they are in the positions they are because I don’t see them as that great. Assuming we are talking just their characters and such. If we are talking don’t like them at all not even a little bit, the first name that came to mind… Darby Allin. He is the one I don’t like at all and his being tied to Sting’s retirement really sucks for me. And if you wrestlers are vanity searching your names, sorry, I just don’t buy the hype in you.
you’re ok to say kenny.
the pitchforks only come out if you say yuka sakazaki (jk!)
I love Omega, but to second hellothere, his post-NJPW work has definitely been lacking most of the time. I also do expect it to cause who the fuck wants to be NJPW-Omega every week, fucker would die lmao but I get it.
Have you seen Omega’s matches against Okada in NJPW? If not, I’d highly recommend them. I think they are probably the best work he’s done.
gunther. there i said it. he’s so boring and bland.
cody. he’s just so cringe and embarrassing.
I used to not get Moxley, like who is this second rate Steve Austin impersonator? I was so god damn wrong!
lol I was in the same boat when AEW started. Now I think he’s the ace of the company.
Same.
@GeekFTW For me it is CM Punk. I wasn’t watching wrestling at the time of his peak with WWE. But in AEW or current WWE I really don’t care for him. He seems to actually think he is the best in the world.
@tekdrudge @GeekFTW Seconded. His entrance music is the only thing I enjoy and he has nothing to do with creating it. I get that he has a cult following though. I am just not a believer.
I enjoy(ed) Punk at times. I’ll watch that Miseria Cantare entrance against MJF a thousand times and love it.
Don’t think I’ve ever cared about Punk as a performer like some do tho. He was never the be-all-end-all wrestler.
@GeekFTW I don’t understand the appeal of Shotzi. Idk, I don’t vibe with her performances.
I haven’t watched wrestling since the rise of Cena. I was a big fan for decades before that.
I jumped back into the rumble this past month and checked out what WWE was up to, so it gave me a great, blind view where I could judge all these wrestlers I don’t know, solely on their performances and natural charisma.
Here’s a couple I don’t get that jumped out at me just now:
-Nia Jax, she’s garbage and sloppy, how is she famous? Cause she fat?
-liv Morgan, she is so bad and unimpressive
-the Usos, what is all this nonsense? I heard so much about these guys and they are just boring and cringe. Jay Uso spent the entire rumble on the mat.
-nakamura, what is with this guy? Putting your feet on your opponent and shaking like a goof is an attack?
-the Viking people, so terrible and sloppy and bleh
A few people I never knew but impressed me:
-bianca Belair
-Jordyn grace
-dom Mysterio, what a great heel
-kaiser and Gunther
-drew McIntire
-Cody (first time I’ve seen him in action)
-bron brakker (the moment I saw him I thought, “oh shit this guy reminds me of the Steiners!” Without knowing who he was)
