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darkarfs · 3 years

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the worst movie tie-ins in the history of wrestling

Wrestling is stupid, and will show its ass at the mere mention of cross-promotion, especially when it comes to movies, which is it's cooler older brother that can get away with a lot more. Hell, the 2nd ever SummerSlam's main event, in 1989, was Hulk Hogan facing the main villain, Tiny Lister as Zeus (RIP), from the film they were both in, No Holds Barred. So wrestling's always wanted a piece of that. So... - Army of the Dead Let's just get this one out of the way. Here's the thing; I thought the WrestleMania Backlash's card was fucking perfect...except for this weird business. WMB MIGHT've been the best show of the pandemic (hot take) were it not for making sure we sell Big Dave's big zombie heist movie. If they had just kept some of the guys in zombie makeup on the Thunderdome's webcam footage, that would have been borderline charming. But instead, the Miz (who was WWE champion 3 months ago, don't forget) and Damien Priest (who they're making WWE's pop-culture liaison so far on the main roster, for some reason) had to sell for zombies in a lumberjack match. If this was the first ever wrestling show you watched with a loved one who had never watched wrestling or hadn't since like, the end of the Attitude Era, would you for a second want them to stick around after Miz and Morrison get, for all intents and purposes, kayfabe killed and eaten, and then watch Damien Priest shoot the logo at the ceiling? My money's on "no." - Shaft Speaking of the Attitude Era, anytime someone tells you that wrestling was cooler in that 3-year time frame, point them to the June 15th of 2000 episode of SmackDown, where a storyline that ran throughout the show followed Patterson and Briscoe through New York City to find Crash Holly and his Hardcore Title. Now, I admit parts of this are kinda funny, like Briscoe just wanting to give up and find a "gen-yoo-WINE New York hot dawg!" That's fun! And who does Crash Holly run into but none other than Shaft, and his woman, the only one who understands this complicated man, John Shaft. So, we have real Samuel L. Jackson, playing fake John Shaft, talking to real/fictional Crash Holly, and man is it weird. Anyway, Shaft agrees to be Crash's bodyguard for the night, and he slaps around Patterson and Briscoe in a nightclub. After all, what better way to get across how cool and badass a character is than having him knock around the fucking Stooges? - The Wrestler Well, this is complicated. The Wrestler, starring ancient wooden lion Mickey Rourke, is a somber tale about an industry that, in its heyday, left people physically spent, washed-up and addicted to adrenaline at best, and dead at worst. It famously moved Roddy Piper to tears because he recognized what destruction and brokenness the industry once left in its wake. Which is why it's super-weird that WWE jumped at the chance to promote maybe the bleakest possible look at their world in 2009, and did so by having Chris Jericho smack the shit out of three old wrestlers at WrestleMania 25, including Roddy Piper. And then have Rourke jump into the ring, wearing his "do you want to take peyote in the desert?" starter kit and bring out his amateur boxing chops. Tonally, it's just really bleak. Like if the creator of Super Size Me screened the premiere at the world's biggest McDonald's. - Bride of Chucky Poor Rick Steiner. You didn't deserve this. You're the sane Steiner. They shouldn't have made you talk to the puppet. So, WCW was heading into Halloween Havoc 1998, and after years of stomping all over the WWF in the ratings, the wheels had come off, and dramatically. Like, all at once. Like the car in the Blues Brothers. To boost PPV buys, they spent a fortune bringing in the Ultimate Warrior to rekindle a feud with Hulk Hogan, mostly by hiding in his fucking mirror. And the Steiner Brothers, one of the best teams of the early 90s, had been feuding with one another since Scott turned on his at SuperBrawl. What was the best way to build hype around this match at Halloween Havoc? Why, to have Rick get into a war of words - and lose - to Chucky. Yes.

Serial killer doll voiced by Brad Dourif, and it's so sad. Chucky cusses Rick out while Rick challenges the fucking doll to a fight, which is promptly ignored (Chucky's video segment is pre-recorded, and you can tell because he starts talking about 3 times in 3 minutes while Rick's mid-promo and missing his cues to stop) and then is made fun of. And all the while, people were probably wondering "what's going on on Vince's show?" and the answer is...that was the episode of Raw where Austin fills Vince's Corvette with cement, which is slightly more badass than being teased by a puppet. - The Goods Here's the thing: Raw is, right now, a bad show. It is bad TV. It's been bad for a while now. And as bad as it is right now, it's still not as fuck-awful as it was in 2009, aka the Age of the Guest Hosts (which, in kayfabe, was given to us by Donald J. Trump, so blame that ambulatory Nazi scrotum for one more thing, he's certainly earned it). For those of you fortunate enough to not be watching what was objectively unwatchable at the time - and hell, I sure as shit wasn't checking in very often - from mid-2009 to around mid-2010, a celebrity would be the special guest host of Monday Night Raw, often to promote a TV show or movie, and it was nearly all horribly-written, cheesy wank. Imagine if every week was the week of the zombie attack at Backlash. That's what it was like. Bob Barker was funny. The Muppets were good. And THAT'S the end of the list. MacGruber coming out to blow up R-Truth made me want to fall on a knife. The A-Team coming out to beat up Virgil was fucking awful. Go straight to fucking HELL, the Three Stooges, Dennis Miller, the reverend Al Sharpton, the 2010 Pittsburgh Steelers, Don Johnson and Jon Heder, the poor entire cast of Hot Tub Time Machine...and then there's Piven. Jeremy Piven. He showed up with Ken Jeong to promote a movie no one remembers...called the Goods. He stunk up several segments, infamously called SummerSlam "the Summer Fest" and then got roughed up by John Cena. Wrestling's the worst. Stop watching. And many did. For a looooooong time. - Robocop 2 This one's infamous, so I'll keep it brief. Robocop 2 came out in 1990, and goddamn, I don't know how much money the producers threw at WCW, but it was enough for them to rebrand an entire PPV "Capitol Combat: the Return of Robocop" and marketed the entire thing around the fancy metallic gentleman. The branding really made it seem like Robert Cop was old friends with the promotion, and indeed, old friends with Sting. Makes sense; two big, heroic idiots running on BASIC. He had been feuding with the Four Horsemen, who locked him in a cage at ringside. Out comes Robocop, called completely straight by Jim Ross, who rips the cage door off his hinges, and then leaves. An accumulated 85 seconds of screen time. Totally worth being the centerpiece of this PPV! But a little context as to why WCW fans hated it so much: 1989, the year before, was regarded by WCW fans as one of the best in company history. The era that gave us stuff like Chi-Town Rumble and the still-very-much-lauded peak of the Steamboat/Flair feud. To go from that to Robocop was seen as a bit of a slap in the face, because WCW was always seen as the more traditional "wrasslin'" company and was never into cheesy pop-culture crossovers, which is why the last one...is all the funnier.

- Ready To Rumble First of all, those dumbasses at Turner had to give Michael Buffer - who they still had on retainer - around $350,000 just to use that title, because he owns the trademark to that phrase. Strike 127 million, capitalism, that a guy gets to own a phrase and gets paid an obscene amount when he or anyone else uses it. Secondly, I initially wasn't going to do movies where the promotion itself is producing the movie, or oh holy HELL would See No Evil and the infamous May 19 shit be on here. But unlike See No Evil, this had a hand in killing a decades-old wrestling promotion, so it feels weird to not include it. On April 7th, 2000, bad movie Ready To Rumble was released, a film about two hapless dorks trying to help Oilver Platt, aka the lawyer from the West Wing, become WCW World Heavyweight Champion. Two weeks later, to promote the movie, they made David Arquette, the lead actor in the movie, the WCW World Heavyweight Champion. He pinned Eric Bischoff, who wasn't the champion, of course, in a match where he was teamed with Diamond Dallas Page, his best pal and the company's top babyface at the time, but who is also one of the villains in the film to make it extra confusing for the mainstream casual audience the movie was made to attract. And, to be fair, Arquette didn't want to do it, NO ONE really wanted to do it, and it tanked viewership for WCW once and for all. At the very least, David took his payday from the wrestling appearances and the film and gave it to the families of Owen Hart, Brian Pillman and to Darren Drozdov, who had been paralyzed from the neck down in a wrestling match the previous year.

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placetobenation · 5 years

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Welcome to the first ever “This Week in the WWE” with yours truly. Before we get into the historic week that was in sports entertainment, let me give you a blurb about me. I am an avid pro wrestling fan dating back to seeing Jimmy Snuka vs. Don Muraco (and yes, Pete Doherty) at the old Boston Garden in Boston and the epic King of the Ring series in Providence. But, not only was I a watcher of then WWF, but also Georgia Championship Wrestling, World Class Championship Wrestling, the NWA, Mid-South, WCW and yes, even Southwest Championship Wrestling. So, yes, we’ve seen the industry weave in and out of many different forks in the road. I’m a huge HBK fan (who isn’t?!) and since I’ve worked in tv & radio for 30 years, I love thinking outside the box and creativity. But, enough about me. Now, it’s onto the 2019 scene and beyond.

Before we get into the specific shows, let’s look at the landscape. Any wrestling fan with his or her head not buried in the sand knows how huge a week this was for not only WWE, but also the upstart All Elite Wrestling league as well as the entire industry. For the first time since 2001 and the Monday Night Wars between RAW and WCW’s Nitro, there would be a live competitor on TNT to WWE in the form of AEW’s Dynamite vs. WWE’s NXT on Wednesday night. In addition, for the first time EVER, the WWE would return to broadcast TV on FOX with Friday Night Smackdown, meaning a new gateway to mainstream fans is open should WWE take advantage of it. For comparison sake, a really good show on cable TV can do two million viewers. That same really good show on broadcast TV would expect to double that many viewers in order to be successful. The number one show on broadcast TV, Sunday Night Football on NBC, just did 15 million viewers with the Cowboys vs. Saints last Sunday night.

Competition is good for EVERYONE and especially the fans! We get to watch and enjoy it all! Don’t get sucked into you have to “be” with one side of the other. Watch it all. WWE, AEW, Ring of Honor, New Japan, MLW, House of Hardcore and any number of your favorite indy promotions! It will only make the individual companies strive to get better or get out of the game. The strong will survive but along the way, we should get many, many, MANY memorable moments.

So, let’s get to it. I’m not going to give you “five star (or any star) ratings.” That’s not my thing. I will tell you what I think they got right and what went off the deep end as well.

Monday Night RAW – Season premiere on USA Network

Results: Sasha Banks defeated Alexa Bliss Raw Tag Team Title Match: Champions Robert Roode & Dolph Ziggler defeated Heavy Machinery The Viking Raiders defeated The Good Brothers Ricochet defeated Cesaro US Title Match: Champion AJ Styles defeated Cedric Alexander Lacey Evans defeated Natalya Universal Title Match: Champion Seth Rollins vs. Rusev went to a no contest What we loved: An absolute epic destruction of Rey Mysterio, JR and his son Dominic by Brock Lesnar to start the show. Lesnar’s heel stock soars! Tag teams! Loving the chemistry with Roode & Ziggler. Heavy Machinery is downright entertaining, I’m digging the AOP vignettes too. There better be more than a one week payoff there when they debut in the ring! One question though, do Gallows and Anderson really need to lose every week?

The Fiend! What’s not to love about Bray Wyatt’s alter ego. I would love to see him start terrorizing more than just babyfaces and legends though. Be more arbitrary. After all, that would make more sense as to why he gets a Universal Title Shot at Hell in the Cell PPV without ever having a tv match, wouldn’t it?

What we hated: Where was Seth Rollins during that beatdown? The company’s supposed #1 babyface doesn’t come out to save Rey and his son? Makes too much sense, doesn’t it? Talk about your missed opportunity!

While we always enjoy a dose of the Southern Belle, Lacey Evans, I don’t need a weekly diet of Natalya in a match we’ve seen three or four times over now. Put them in different settings, different opponents if you want to continue the feud. They both have it in them. Ditto for Ricochet vs. Cesaro. All four deserve more creativity.

Bobby Lashley & Lana? Seriously! I’m all for pushing the TV-14 envelope, but that lengthy make out session that renders Rusev useless during a Championship match was a tinge long even for Vincent Kennedy McMahon’s teenage tendencies! You knew it was just a fork in the road en route to The Fiend getting to Rollins to end the show. Which begs the question, why wouldn’t Rusev save Rollins again after doing it earlier in the night? He’s already out there! I know, I know. Too much common sense.

MEH: Team Flair vs. Team Hogan on MIZ TV. Sure, it’s a way to pay off some legends of the past for the Saudi Prince on Halloween night with a 10-man tag match featuring captains Randy Orton and Seth Rollins, but haven’t we seen this one before in TNA? I hope they find a way to showcase a few seldom used stars as part of the five-man teams to give them the rub to catapult them after the event. Let’s hope no physicality with the legend captain however! We don’t need to see that!

NXT on USA Network

Results:

NXT Championship: Adam Cole defeats Matt Riddle Io Shirai pins Mia Yam Johnny Gargano wins over Shane Thorne NXT Women’s Championship: Shayna Baszler taps out Candice LeRae Pete Dunne defeats Danny Burch NXT Tag Team Championship: The Undisputed Era pins Street Profits

Bravo! For its Virgin Excursion, live for two hours on the USA Network, the men and women of NXT blew the doors down on a night in which it went head-to-head with the debuting AEW Dynamite on TNT. Sure, the rating/viewer numbers show that AEW won the battle (1.4 million viewers vs. 891,000 viewers according to Nielsen), the pure enjoyment and success showed through.

From Adam Cole retaining his NXT Championship against Matt Riddle, despite a fractured wrist, to Shayna Baszler winning a back-and-forth-balls-to-the wall war over Candice LeRae to the Undisputed ERA staving off the Street Profits in the NXT Tag Team Championship main event, the effort, pacing and sheer athleticism was there.

What we loved: All of it! No down time, no mic time fillers and a few surprises to boot!

Finn Balor IS NXT! A nice surprise as the former NXT Champion returns to Full Sail to challenge Cole. It’s time for Ballor Club to shine again instead of getting lost in the main roster shuffle.

Tommaso Ciampa returns. Yes, Mr. Cole has a lot of his plate. Can you imagine a future tag team match with Ciampa, Balor, Johnny Gargano & more facing the Undisputed ERA? Sign me up NOW!

What we hated:

Nothing. Although in today’s age, perception is reality. While I love NXT’s Full Sail crowd, a mainstream audience vs. AEW’s larger arena crowd may make some think of NXT as small-time. Trust me, it’s not.

Friday Night Smackdown – Season premiere on FOX

Results:

Charlotte & Becky Lynch defeated Bayley & Sasha Banks via submission Non-Title Match: Seth Rollins vs. Shinsuke Nakamura went to a no contest Career vs. Career Ladder Match: Kevin Owens defeated Shane McMahon 8-man tag team match: Braun Strowman, The Miz, & Heavy Machinery defeated AJ Styles, Robert Roode, Dolph Ziggler, & Randy Orton Lumberjack Match: Roman Reigns defeated Erick Rowan WWE Title Match: Brock Lesnar defeated Champion Kofi Kingston

What we loved:

Amazing set! Best of the Smackdown series with a nod to the arches from yesteryear!

Kevin Owens and a ladder = success. If we don’t have to see Shane McMahon sweat his way through a WWE event anytime soon, it will be a blessing!

Daniel Bryan. Is it me or do I see a swerve coming Sunday at HIAC? I don’t want a babyface Bryan just yet! Give me a Survivor Series with Team Bryan vs. Team Reigns.

The “non-PG” Rock with The Man. C’mon, how could you not love a double dose of calling King Corbin the “Super Tough Dude” to get an STD chant. Priceless!

What we hated:

The quickness of the end to Kofi Kingston’s title reign. 10 seconds? Seriously?! He deserved better. I agree with putting the title back on Lesnar now that Smackdown is on FOX, he’s more mainstream and can attract more eyeballs, especially if he’s actually going to appear more often. But, to just dismiss Kofi to get to the surprise of Cain Velazquez coming out with Rey Mysterio, JR. to challenge Lesnar to pay off Monday’s attack is wrong. The question now is can they get mainstream fans to care about a Lesnar-Velasquez feud after their “real” encounter in MMA in which Lesnar got his ass handed to him.

Did you really think we were going to get something good out of the champion vs. champion match other than The Fiend showing up to attack Rollins? Clear as day, my friends. At least give me something before the expected comes. And yes, I know you have to build up to the PPV match, but again, don’

An 8-man tag for less than 3 minutes? Why bother. Sometimes less is more and yes, jamming 8 stars with nothing to do in order to kick off a Strowman-Tyson Fury incident seems a stretch. I applaud trying to get the boxing audience to cross over, but there are better ways to do it. Especially, if the now pay off comes next on RAW on the USA Network. I guess the split won’t actually occur until the Draft starting October 11th on FOX.

Bonus what we loved: The 24/7 Championship! The twists and turns continue as Marshmello (yes, the DJ!) wins and loses the Title in a WWE.com exclusive. Someday soon, I can see FOX and former Steelers QB Terry Bradshaw winning it on FOX! The Truth and Carmella are brilliant with the comedy that I hope continues with this Championship. It’s OK to have some fun in sports entertainment!

Thanks for letting us share our thoughts! Shoot me an email at [email protected]. We’d love to hear you comments and suggestions! You can also check out my blog, The Crowe’s Nest as we delve into more pro wrestling, sports entertainment and the World of Sports. My apologies ahead of time – I AM a Patriots and Red Sox fan! If you’re not down with that, I’ve got TWO WORDS for you…. NEW ENGLAND!

#IFTTT #Place to Be Nation

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