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Episode 116: Cinematic Wrestling w/ The Curtain Jerks
62 Plays5 years ago
This week the boys are joined by Chris and Fax from The Best There Ever Was podcast to discuss cinematic wrestling!
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Transcript
Derek's DoorDash Dilemma
00:00:36
Speaker
Hey everybody, welcome to Predetermined. I'm your host, Garrett Callender. I'm your other host, Derek Halpin. And I'm coming to this episode a little upset, Gartet. What? What happened, Derek? Why are you upset?
00:00:49
Speaker
Well, we were recording this right around dinner time. And a couple hours ago, I was supposed to have a meal delivered to me from Buffalo Wild Wings, but DoorDash managed to fuck that one up. And I'll post the pictures for everyone. It's fine. It's fine. I came packing with some booze to the official drink of this podcast. I came with some white clothes to kind of tide me over in the meantime. But I'm pretty upset. I got a nice image of my food order hanging
00:01:18
Speaker
on the door to the front of our apartment building that I got 30 minutes too late before somebody stole it. And I am not happy. I stuffed a sandwich down my mouth before this recording session, so. Contactless delivery, man. I'm hoping. You gotta watch on that app. Contactless delivery might, they can still be away from me to call my phone. They can still reach out. They don't have to touch me. Contactless. No contact. I would prefer if they didn't touch me.
00:01:47
Speaker
I'm a little mad myself.
COVID-19's Impact on Wrestling
00:01:50
Speaker
Did you know WWE isn't testing anybody? Everybody's positive. Everybody's running around dying. I am actually pretty upset now that I have found out that Renee Young has tested positive for COVID-19. That's why Dean Ambrose isn't on AEW right now? That would probably make sense. I will. Here comes the claw. Yes. You starting early? Ah, fucking, I'll start with you.
00:02:17
Speaker
here what what are you what are you drinking I got a watermelon same these dude same these so we're on the same page this is this is this is a good start oh yeah I got a mango myself I'm working on black cherry what hey guys how is this
00:02:41
Speaker
You know us. It's facts, Chris. The curtain jerks. Best there ever was. The curtain jerks. Yeah. I love the curtain jerks. Yeah, guys, we said we were going to talk about cinematic wrestling. You
Cinematic Wrestling's Pandemic Rise
00:02:54
Speaker
guys are being such downers. We figured there's been some good shit in the wrestling world. It's not all shitty. We got the cinematic wrestling, right? Let's talk about that. So you're invading our podcast to talk about cinematic wrestling.
00:03:09
Speaker
I mean, think about a year ago, how much of an offense this would have been. I mean, I mean, I think referencing an invasion and wrestling is pretty offensive as it is. I mean, I think I'm ECW and faxes WCW here. All I can say is you guys know who I am, but you don't know why I'm here. Actually, no, wait, Chris, Chris said we were here to talk about cinematic. Yeah, we know. I guess you you know exactly why I'm here.
00:03:35
Speaker
Well, this is exciting. I'm excited to have you guys here. We haven't spoken in a nature like this for a couple of years.
00:03:42
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And we figured it all made sense because we like to talk about the great wrestling of yesteryear. You guys tend to stay a little bit more on the contemporary beat, but we figured we're kind of living through history history and wrestling history right now. It's true. So it kind of feels like a melding of the minds just felt appropriate. Plus, we've never gotten to record with Garrett once he's found White Claws.
00:04:09
Speaker
That's true. That's true. I'm a brand new man. It's a different time for everybody right now. Now, this is exciting. I'm excited to have you guys here. So obviously, we've all been affected by the current events in some form or fashion. Some of us don't have food. It was taken because of COVID. Right. Yeah. If you didn't pick that up, yes, I am still very angry at the fact that I don't have my boneless wings in my belly right now. But that's OK.
00:04:37
Speaker
that taking care of later. Right now what I'd like to focus on is, hey, you guys came here to invade our podcast on a mission and where would you like to begin this discussion if we're going to be talking about the current state of professional wrestling?
00:04:50
Speaker
Yeah, so I mean, we were just saying the real hot thing that's going on is cinematic wrestling. And I think the most surprising thing for me personally is it hasn't been totally shitty, which I'm shocked. Chris, what are your thoughts? Well, I mean, I think it's been kind of fascinating, right? Because one of the fundamental things that makes wrestling a unique art form is that
00:05:17
Speaker
It's episodic storytelling in front of people, right? Obviously, you have plays and things like that, but that's not episodic storytelling and bands and they go around, but again, they're not doing that. So you have fans that are sort of giving back to the show. And so you've completely taken that away. And wrestling's had to innovate. And that's been kind of fascinating. Some of it's been very good. Some of it's been money in the bank. So
00:05:48
Speaker
Yeah, I would add on to that and say that I've been uniquely surprised at both the combination of quality cinematic wrestling that I've seen and then on my own personal time making a point in the last couple of months to go back and watch some recent past cinematic wrestling and then also some distant cinematic wrestling and
00:06:12
Speaker
I don't think it's ever been more clear, as you put it, that the audience is an important part of the experience at a show. And I know that there's a lot of... Like, how many amongst us absolutely hate the what chant? Oh, it's terrible. Worst. Although I think one too sweet might be the one I hate most. You hate that one the most? I hate it so much, just because it happens 7,000 times per match.
00:06:42
Speaker
So you believe in, like, you think that the concept of the audience hijacking the show is like a real thing. I think it's more that the audience can be unfun, right? I mean, hijacking is, I feel like that's like a negative term, but the audience can suck. I mean, you know. Yeah, it would be like I could go to like a concert that's awesome, and I'll be like, that concert was awesome.
00:07:08
Speaker
But I really don't know why I brought Greg. He's such a downer. He's fucking making all the worst jokes. The concert was still a lot of fun. It would have been more fun if fucking Greg wasn't there. But you don't mind people singing along with Shinsuke Nakamura's old ring music. That didn't bug you.
00:07:28
Speaker
No, no, I think that I think that the two things I don't like is when it's just ad nauseam. That's why I don't like the one too sweet. It's just like we got it. Very clever once. And then the other thing is when they they ruined chance that were once cool like fight forever was a really
00:07:51
Speaker
Awesome chant once upon a time I remember the first time I was in a full-throated fight forever chant myself at a probably a Hammerstein ring of honor show however many years ago and I was like these guys fucking earned this chant and then now it's just like some Randy Orton match that 15 minutes, right
00:08:13
Speaker
It's like, it's not earned anymore. And it's like, who's co-signing on this chant? So there's that side of the equation, which is the audience can be like a negative factor on the show if it feels too forced. But then there's also the situation, go back.
00:08:29
Speaker
What would that have been? Seven, six years ago? The whole Daniel Bryan Yes movement thing, which is its own organic thing where the audience essentially taking over the show or hijacking the show is an important part of the story. Is that fair to say? Yeah. Well, and it's also just about response and the way that pushes it forward, right? The way someone is responding to the character. You can tell the story and evolve the story based on what responses you're getting.
00:08:56
Speaker
Right, which when you lose that is a lot of the grounding is lost, right? That like, I don't know if people are excited to see Drew McIntyre be champion for three months because we can't hear them. Yeah, right. It's going to be interesting coming out of this point in time too because there's a lot of stuff that has happened since the audience hasn't been allowed in the building. And like you said, are they going to be excited to see Drew McIntyre as the champion? Are they going to react as if though it's the first time?
00:09:25
Speaker
Or they can react like they've been watching on TV for months. What I would say is, whether it's Raw, it's AEW, whatever, when they have that first show, and God knows when that'll be, but that first show with an actual arena full of fans, or even half of an arena or a third of an arena, whoever opens up that show in that first segment is a made man or woman.
00:09:47
Speaker
like if it's Drew McIntyre and goes out there the Roman coming back from cancer is nothing compared to because it's like we're all we all thought you'd say that we all have cancer with with them right now right it's because it's uh it's it's not just hey there's Drew McIntyre it's I we are all liberated and we're finally here in the building and we're seeing live wrestling it's gonna be
WWE vs AEW: Pandemic Show Strategies
00:10:11
Speaker
So fucking awesome. They could put literally anyone out there. Well, I'm sure WWE will fuck it up. But in that case, yeah, it's going to be Shane McMahon. Which is funny considering how his music starts, which is, you know.
00:10:26
Speaker
Here comes the money. If you got people back in the building. Merch sales, ladies and gentlemen. Oh, I was going to say that's what WWE says to its investors, even during a pandemic. Or even if reporters are being murdered overseas.
00:10:42
Speaker
But talking about the fans in the seats during this quarantine wrestling, I feel like that was also an essential difference between those first few weeks of AEW versus WWE, right? I mean, WWE, when they had literally no one in the performance center, you could hear a needle drop. It just felt weird. And AEW, even just having those couple of people at ringside making some noise, made a world of difference.
00:11:09
Speaker
I think there's a debate to be had about who, I mean there's the artistic and the, I don't know, the perception of the product changes, but there's an argument to be made that WWE had the more sterile environment, both negatively and positively. Like the risk of people who are five feet away from each other contracting the virus if nobody's there.
00:11:33
Speaker
Like, that's completely mitigated on the WWE side of things. It took them, what, a month and a half to figure out that they could have people in the building? I think it was more. It was almost two. Yeah. Well, I think part of that, too, is they didn't want to be seen as copying, quite frankly. So that's my own personal pet theory. Eventually, at a certain point, they're like, fuck, it's just better with some people here. When have they ever given a shit about copying? Like, coming up, we have Fighter Fest. And they're doing Great American Bash on the same day.
00:12:04
Speaker
Yeah, it's a good point. But that's more of a fuck you to the Rhodes family, I think, you know. OK, well, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, AEW definitely their shows during those early days were far more watchable than any raw or Smackdown. That's to me, that's not even up for debate. I remember watching was it was Smackdown? I think Smackdown was the first one to have like no fans in attendance, right?
00:12:30
Speaker
Yeah, because it was literally that Wednesday that they did the last Dynamite and the last NXT. That was literally the day the NBA pulled everyone the day before in the middle of the game and baseball canceled spring training. It literally was between the Wednesday that Dynamite was and the Friday of SmackDown. So yeah, it was literally that.
00:12:52
Speaker
Like quickly that it was definitely yeah smackdown was the first covid era show Yeah, and I think one of the reasons why I think they end up having to everyone's starting to make changes is that again? It was watching that first one you very much realized that Without sound the way you look wrestling is like worked normally is very creepy like there's just like that lack is very
00:13:15
Speaker
Yeah. It felt very empty, and so there were two solutions. Either you have to find a way to add the noise so that people could hear that response and it felt like you were watching wrestling like normal, or you had to do something like cinematic wrestling where you took it out of the context where the silence was weird and into a new context where there wasn't something you were expecting to hear. Usually a Metallica song.
00:13:44
Speaker
Um, we also know for a fact that that very concept probably got Vince McMahon rock hard too, because what's what's the whole company slogan? We make movies. Isn't that like his big thing? Well, there's opportunity to do that. But I was curious. I mean, it's interesting, though, because he's someone who
00:14:01
Speaker
you know, had Matt Hardy under contract when he was, when he had done all of like the broken Hardy stuff and impact and was like, Oh, let's not, I mean, let's not do what you were doing that people actually liked. Even if it was like a low card thing, it was, uh, let's make you and Jeff just wrestle average tag team matches for some reason.
00:14:22
Speaker
So I don't know what Vince wants. Well, they did that Halloween special they put on the network with the boogeyman. I mean, not really cinematic wrestling, just kind of a weird 20 minute comedy sketch, but.
00:14:35
Speaker
I know anytime I hear, and I don't want this to just turn into a fucking tirade about how WWE handles everything, though it could be. Let's do that. Why don't we do that instead? There aren't enough podcasts that do that. There just aren't enough.
00:14:52
Speaker
But I sort of roll my eyes anytime I hear some story from a past worker say, oh, Vince, if the money is right, you know, he'll work with anybody and he'll always do what's right for making money. And I always think about like, man, how much stuff does he leave on the table when there's an opportunity there to do something really cool that people are going to like, especially if it wasn't his idea. You talked about him copying things. Yeah, but
00:15:17
Speaker
he freaked the fuck out when he brought the NWO in in like 2002 and they were more over than Rock and Austin and he killed that within a month because it wasn't his baby. But getting back to the topic at hand, so they're presented with these really difficult circumstances where they can't do their shows in front of a live audience anymore, but they still
00:15:39
Speaker
feel obligated. They're an essential business. WWE is essential to society, is what I found out in the last couple of years. The Florida government has told them that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, who's to question anything coming out of Florida?
00:15:51
Speaker
Well, and then I think, you know, you add on top of that that so they're doing these shows every week, you know, and they're doing them with no fans. But for the pay-per-views, they kind of got to do something special because it's like, why am I paying money for this, right? It's like, I'm not going to just pay for the same empty arena show I'm already getting every week.
00:16:10
Speaker
I know when I'm so in the bag for AEW, but when they were like, we're doing double or nothing, and me and Chris, I remember talking about it. We were like, there's no way they're charging full price for this, right? And we're like, well, maybe they'll charge full price, but they'll donate a bunch of it to COVID stuff. And then that didn't happen. And then they had to come up for a reason. WrestleMania is another great example.
00:16:34
Speaker
they had to do something to make it feel more like WrestleMania. And I think that's where the genesis of coming back to these cinematic matches are, is cinematic wrestling is what you get for your extra hard-earned dollar come pay-per-view time. Impact had to find a way to make Rebellion special. When Ken Shamrock and Sammy Callahan wandered out of the building and into a darkly lit parking lot,
00:17:04
Speaker
I knew that I'd made a good choice to continue to DVR impact for some reason.
00:17:10
Speaker
We are going to have a whole bunch of examples of matches in the next hour or so of things that we want to talk about. I do think one thing we need to focus on before we get into that, you were talking about how double or nothing was maybe overpriced given the circumstances.
WWE's Subscription Model Success
00:17:26
Speaker
WWE had kind of inoculated themselves from that problem altogether because everyone's been paying $9.99 a month for their service, regardless of the quality of the pay-per-views. And they know that. They have all the other stuff that's thrown in with the network to sort of like
00:17:40
Speaker
buy off your criticism to be like, well, maybe you didn't, maybe you didn't like, maybe you didn't like WWE stomping grounds from Kansas city or whatever the hell they were fucking doing that show from. But you still have the entire back catalog. I think if you want to talk about things that really things that have changed and we'll get into this later is when they took NXT,
00:18:03
Speaker
off of the network, which is something that people, it was one of the few things that you knew people still watching WWE were willing to pay out of pocket for, was paying $9.99 to watch NXT every week, and they put that on cable. That was maybe the biggest game changer in the last year, as far as between AEW and WWE.
00:18:27
Speaker
Yeah, no, I think you're right. But I think, though, that the other thing is, whether it's network or pay-per-view, it's just fandom, right? You have to keep the fans somewhat happy. And it's kind of like particularly...
00:18:40
Speaker
like if you're watching five plus hours of WWE programming a week that's like straight up eating nothing but lima beans all month just because at the end of the month you know Papa Vince is going to give you a big sloppy Sunday fucking chocolate sauce fucking whipped cream cherries maybe you don't
00:19:00
Speaker
That's a bit maybe. He's going to make you a son. It might be a shit Sunday. Yeah. But but you're going to get some shit Sunday. You're going to be something that's presented as the reason you've bothered spending.
00:19:13
Speaker
you know, 20 hours of your month eating lima beans, eating lima beans off of a dirty COVID infested sidewalk. How do we get from a point where, you know, even like a year ago or two years ago when we first met you guys in the hotel lobby of the Hyatt Regency in Schomburg, Illinois, if I had said, hey, we got recording time, guys, let's talk about cinematic wrestling. Let's talk about
00:19:40
Speaker
uh stuff that happens outside of the ring where they basically film two guys fighting in a setting that is not in front of fans and has some intricate backdrop uh i feel like you guys would have blown off that idea because it's typically been considered wrestle crap is that fair to say
00:19:55
Speaker
Yeah, and I think the lack of fans has kind of changed that, and it's part of the equation, right? Because I've been at shows where, you know, the guys fight to the backstage and things go up on the screen, and it's like, there's nothing more deflating for a live crowd than having the wrestlers taken away from you, essentially, right? But now, there's no crowd to disappoint, right? So you may as well just put on whatever you think the best and most interesting thing is.
00:20:22
Speaker
And there's no one who's going to be like, oh, why'd they go backstage? Well, I think it also brings up an interesting question of like, what exactly is like what constitutes cinematic wrestling? I wanted to make sure we asked that question, too, because I think we may have different parameters for that. Yeah, because I don't think we all agree. Like if you go back to like
00:20:44
Speaker
Terry Funk versus Jerry Lawler in the empty arena. Is that cinematic wrestling because it was taped ahead of time with no fans? I don't think so in my mind, but like even I feel like it's like the definition of pornography. I know it when I see it. It's right. It's it's halftime heat, cinematic wrestling. Well, and halftime heat is empty arena, but it was definitely more edited like.
00:21:10
Speaker
I don't know where where exactly is the boiler room. Right. I think if you have to make cuts and have redos of moves, it becomes cinematic wrestling because you're trying to get this perfect match that you wouldn't have had otherwise.
00:21:25
Speaker
Well, and I think the argument when you and I were talking about this the other day, Garrett, I said is that for years, SmackDown was a taped show. And because it was a taped show, it was often considered the easier show to work on, because if you flubbed your promo, you could literally just start over. And when it would air on UPN, they would edit it so that it didn't look like you fucked up. And I'm sure it was the exact same for when you botched a move, too. You could just do it again. So are you are you saying that cinematic wrestling is to blame for why the Rockers are not recognized as a tag team championship holder?
00:21:56
Speaker
Marty Gennady's been deprived that all these years. Cinematic wrestling can be blamed for a lot of things, but that might just be on Marty. I do actually kind of want to hear Marty Gennady cut an angry, incoherent promo about cinematic wrestling. That actually sounds amazing. You know, if it wasn't for his hatred of that because of that match, you know, he was going to be very prominently featured on Lucha Underground. But as soon as he heard there was editing, he was out.
00:22:23
Speaker
He was going to play Dario Cueto. I think what's interesting is some of the stuff we've seen lately...
00:22:32
Speaker
By definition, doesn't even follow the standard protocol for what a match is. There doesn't have to be a pinfall. There doesn't have to be a bell that starts the match. It's just stuff that kind of has a fight that kind of happens in front of the camera. And then in the case of the Firefly Funhouse match, you could argue there wasn't even necessarily a fight. Right. I'm not sure that was a wrestling match. I'm not.
00:22:58
Speaker
That's interesting things, right? I think there's a lot of conversations and we can have almost any of these matches about like the boundaries of how you sort of judge them, right? Because they're just not on the same standards in a lot of different ways. And so it's very hard to compare it to a wrestling match that took place in a ring with a crowd.
00:23:18
Speaker
Well, and I think Firefly, I think is almost beyond a question, was not a wrestling match, yet I feel like it was definitely cinematic wrestling.
Firefly Funhouse: Storytelling Innovation
00:23:29
Speaker
And I can't really explain that in a way that makes any sense, other than it was on a wrestling show and it was cinematic, therefore it's cinematic wrestling. Yes. I guess the definition would be there's cinematic wrestling and then there's cinematic wrestling matches. I think that's a fair distinction.
00:23:49
Speaker
So I think roughly then the spectrum is Firefly on one side, where it's not even really a match, but it's cinematic wrestling and it's kind of pure storytelling.
00:24:02
Speaker
And then I think on the other side of the spectrum is probably the greatest match ever, where it's basically just a really edited wrestling match. And there's really nothing cinematic about it, other than they made some edits, they added some sound effects, but it's in a wrestling ring, it's lit like a wrestling ring. There are fans that are cheering like a wrestling match.
00:24:25
Speaker
They're not presenting it, they're presenting it as the greatest wrestling match ever. And they don't even tell you if you don't read the internet, you didn't know otherwise, you might not have any idea that that was edited.
00:24:40
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's and I think it's a completely different question about how legitimate it is. Again, it's pro wrestling. It's an art form and it's open to interpretation. And if there's no fans there, I guess.
00:24:56
Speaker
They're under no obligation to stay loyal to any kind of process, right? Like they can do whatever they want now that nobody's in the building. Experimentation is good. Right. I think where everyone raises their eyebrows. And I'll tell you this story, because we got to eventually start diving into specific matches to kind of get our thoughts on that. But I do want to point out, I had, because of all of the Saudi shows, I had really kind of tuned out
00:25:25
Speaker
And I, in the build up to this year's mania, didn't know a lot of stuff that was, how would you say, I didn't know the build to a lot of these different matches. And I can tell you for certain, I didn't know until just a few days ago when I watched the final chapter of Undertaker, The Last Ride on the network, I had no idea that he had cut a promo prior to the match as the American Badass.
00:25:52
Speaker
and basically advertising what that match was going to be. I had no idea what a Boneyard match was and what it was going to look like until that segment started at Mania. I'm still not entirely sure what a Boneyard match is, and I've seen the match. But yeah, I mean, I get what you're saying. Fax, if I had challenged you to a fight in a graveyard, would you have been up for that?
00:26:18
Speaker
specifically if I'd been like we've got some personal issues you like you like mango white claws I like watermelon let's go deal with this in front of corpses I mean before I saw the way you react to a driver of your delivery
00:26:34
Speaker
I would have said maybe. But now that I've seen this side of you and we are and we are on video. So we're looking eye to eye. I mean, I saw the veins popping. He was he was cutting. Derek here was cutting a full blown Roddy Piper promo on that delivery guy before we started recording. Yeah.
00:26:56
Speaker
So I'll tell you this, and I think we can all agree to this to some extent because we were exchanging some text messages earlier. At WrestleMania, as is the case with many shows, I had had a few things to drink. And after a few drinks, I'm kind of down for whatever when they start
00:27:13
Speaker
running the show so when i saw that i was going to be presented with cinematic wrestling and the taker styles match i think my first gut reaction was oh man this is going to be total shit and fine let the fucking train wreck happen at mania i give it to me well well and i think especially because the same exact creative people two different wrestlers but a lot of the same people did the house of horrors
00:27:41
Speaker
with Randy Orton and Bray Wyatt not that long ago. And they had just as much time to prepare. And it was just a steaming pile of shit. When was the last time y'all watched that?
00:27:54
Speaker
I watched, uh, I watched clips of it this week because they never, I watched it today. Yeah, same. And how, how did it stack up the current batch? Oh boy. Uh, the house of horrors is really just a filthy house.
00:28:13
Speaker
Could it have been good, Garrett, in your opinion? Could it have been good? I remember when they were doing it saying, if boogeyman doesn't show up in this house of horrors, this is dog shit.
00:28:30
Speaker
Well, why don't we just start talking about the matches starting with the mania ones, right? Because I think those were the first ones, right? So I think night one was the boneyard. So I think we're right on track here. Well, that's what I'm curious. I'm curious about that.
00:28:45
Speaker
I thought it was interesting. I sort of liked the way it was put together. I also had had a few drinks the first time I saw it and was having a good time. But even in watching back, I'm curious from someone who actually watches movies. So Garrett, is this a well shot Western slash horror movie, or are we just grading on a wrestling curve?
00:29:07
Speaker
I think that it is actually a good western kind of action movie. After watching it again today, I mean, they spent a lot of time on it. They shot it well. Yeah, I would say it was actually a well-done action movie.
00:29:23
Speaker
Well, and I think that it established that I would say the Boneyard is one of the most pure examples of cinematic wrestling, that there's no argument of what it was, right? And I think that one of the things that caught me right off the bat with it, there's no commentary, right?
00:29:41
Speaker
There is some music at times, right? Including Metallica, of course. And there's dialogue, right? And it's like cheesy 80s action hero dialogue where Taker's like, we got to do this or what? Yeah. And you can hear Taker's kayfabe voice, which is weird. It's weird that he's supposed to be tough Taker and he's not doing Deadman voice at all. He's just he sounded like, which he is, a guy with red hair.
00:30:14
Speaker
But here's the thing I think what's so awesome is to even like the styles like if you just if you're watching it for the first time you like in the way it's set up in the whole casket entrance for styles that was funny to me again upon rewatching it because of how enthusiastic he was about duping the audience and the thinking that was taker and
00:30:35
Speaker
And then when Taker shows up and they do that, I mean, they fully commit to the whole I'm a bad motherfucker arriving on a motorcycle thing to the point where Undertaker, when he gets off his bike and they do the cinematic shot from his feet up to his fucking face, that's how you want your character in a video game to be debuted. They throw the nameplate up there and then they immediately start shit talking each other, which I have said repeatedly on our show. Wrestlers need to do more of. I feel like shit talking
00:31:03
Speaker
Helps mask any spot calling because if they've been talking to each other the whole time Of course, he's gonna lean down and whisper that you're a piece of shit before he takes you over like I I don't know I just I thought that like them actually doing the whole old man like I buried your I dug your grave He's a you dug your own grave son like the shit talking got me excited watching it sober because I knew what was about I
00:31:30
Speaker
Hearing AJ Styles say the line, you're just an old broken down bitch, really popped me. Well, it's a really interesting match, because watching it a second time, it really struck me that almost the entire, quote unquote, match, there's almost no moves other than punches. It's basically just them punching each other. So it actually kind of reminded me, obviously, without the shot.
00:31:58
Speaker
If you've ever watched Magnum TA against Tully Blanchard from Starrcade 85, people love that match. And I like it less than others. But it's kind of similar in that they have this house mic, right? And so you can hear them going, I hate you, and just punching each other. And that's also something about wrestling where that works. They needed to do literally nothing else from a physical perspective other than punches. Obviously, there's explosions and shit and druids and things like that. So it's a little bit different than Magnum and Tully.
00:32:28
Speaker
That idea of just like all you have to do is get the hate across. And that's wrestling. That's where I agree. I completely agree. By the way, did you put in a qualifier if we had seen Magnum TA and Tully Blanchard? Not every listener may have heard have seen Magnum and Tully, which if you haven't, you should watch it. I thought you were saying the four of us. I'm like, I feel pretty confident. We're four for four on this one. Yeah.
00:32:56
Speaker
We did a whole episode on it. We did. And that was pretty bloody, if I recall. He's very bloody. He tries to stick him with a spike. Are you suggesting to me that seven flips and a head scissors takeover doesn't convey I hate you the way bashing a headstone over somebody's skull and tackling him through a wall does?
00:33:19
Speaker
Well, I mean, I think it's not even just the action, too. Like, at one point, AJ gives a full-blown monologue, right? Like, there's weird, like, boat horns going off during it. It's kind of strange. Again, I get what Garrett's saying about it being, like, well-edited. But I do think that's really on the curve of a wrestling show. It's very kind of second-year film student. Like, they're doing more interesting stuff
00:33:47
Speaker
than like dynamite but you know they had a little bit of money to do like i don't know it it was it was good it was interesting i tend to think the bone yards a little overrated in my mind relative to some of the later matches that i i like a lot better because
00:34:08
Speaker
It was, it felt more groundbreaking. And again, because of, I think, all the dialogue, they told a really good just story, like, outside of the wrestling match. Like, the climax isn't the end of the match. It's near the end of the match. It's AJ's apology, right? Like, that's like, don't bury me. Don't bury me. I'm sorry. That's the fucking climax. Not a tombstone.
00:34:36
Speaker
It's true. Actually, the hug and the, I ain't going to bear you. You put up a hell of a fight, son. A lot of people didn't give me that fight. You ain't Rusev. I ain't going to do that to you. And then the turn and then the, ah, fuck you, Carl, Carl Anderson and Luke gals are out of here.
00:34:57
Speaker
I just that this match, though, is going to really age poorly if AJ Styles dies from Covid from going to the performance center record shows. Well, that's actually I mean, we can talk generally about these matches as they age, but like I had a friend the day after a couple of days after WrestleMania be like, these two matches are listen and the five of us, these two matches are classic. They make this one of the greatest WrestleMania's ever. And I'm like, I don't know if you're going to agree with that opinion a year from now.
00:35:27
Speaker
Well, now that we know that it's Undertaker's last match, does that change that? Yeah, it kind of does. I think it helps. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I'll agree with that. So I actually did not watch this live because I was still, this was kind of the beginning of social distancing. And I was still kind of really depressed about it. And I'm kind of like, I'm not going to watch WrestleMania by myself.
00:35:50
Speaker
Like, you know, I can't get my wife to watch it. So I'm like, you know what? I'll just watch it on Monday. Like, I'll see what everyone says, and I'll kind of sample it. And I got to say, that night, I get all kinds of text messages from people that were like, I couldn't tell whether they were fucking with me or not. That they were like, the boneyard was the most amazing thing. You got to see the boneyard. Watch it tonight. Don't wait. I'm telling you the boneyard. And I don't know. I get it.
00:36:18
Speaker
Do you think that if you had been watching it live, your perception would be different of it now?
00:36:23
Speaker
I think so, because I think when we were even talking about it, I didn't have it as this oasis from watching all of these empty arena shows that they're calling WrestleMania, right? So I did skip straight to the match when I watched, I did watch it that night or maybe early the next day, but I skipped straight to that match. And again, I liked it, I liked it a lot, but I definitely didn't think it was,
00:36:50
Speaker
like this game changer, the way that a lot of people did it. But I also hadn't watched three hours of matches that weren't even, for the most part, the announced WrestleMania matches before that.
00:37:03
Speaker
Well, that's interesting, because that's kind of how I felt. I had an experience. I didn't watch the Firefly Funhouse Live, because Edge and Orton had physically put me to sleep.
Edge vs. Orton: The 'Greatest Match Ever'?
00:37:13
Speaker
Like I was watching it. Which also, that qualifies as cinematic wrestling too, right? Just so you know, today as I was rewatching that match, I actually fell asleep on the couch. The WrestleMania match. No, the Edge and Orton WrestleMania match. The greatest match. No, not the greatest. Yeah, yeah.
00:37:33
Speaker
Well, but here's the thing I was wondering, right? So obviously, they had this idea of calling it the greatest match ever, even before they recorded it. So it's not like they recorded it, then say, we're going to call it the greatest match ever, and then do it. Like, before they even recorded it, they were calling it that. So I'm wondering, was it Vince or somebody else? Did they actually see that WrestleMania match and go, man, Edge versus Orton, if we just gave them a second take and edited the best of both of those together,
00:38:00
Speaker
This was, that's all it needed. That was all it was keeping it from being the greatest match ever, the WrestleMania one. I'm convinced that that was Edge's idea and that he put the pressure on himself. Like, because it was his first, like, I don't know where the idea, I mean, I don't know if we'll ever get the answer to who labeled it that way. And I don't know if that's ever a good idea because as soon as you hear that, you start thinking against it. Like, I've seen a lot of good wrestling matches. How dare you tell me in advance, especially- I don't know.
00:38:28
Speaker
I think it was because it was so triggering to people that are like, have a Kenny Omega tattoo on their ass cheek. And they're just so triggered. They're like, wait, WWE said they're the greatest match ever. And Randy Orton's in it? Yeah, it's edgy against who? Daniel Bryan, AJ Styles. And then they literally start drinking a white claw.
00:38:54
Speaker
just so that when you say Randy Orton is... Bullshit! The Kenny Omega thing is funny too though because if we're on transition we don't have to like go linearly like if we want to talk about the greatest match ever right I mean we all can agree right that's WWE doing a New Japan match
00:39:13
Speaker
I mean the structure is a Tokyo domain event. Yeah, I thought so too. It's just that WWE normally can't do that because they don't have fans who would sit through the first 15 minutes without without just starting random chance.
00:39:34
Speaker
I don't know though. I think the, I think one of the big disconnects from I see, I don't know if I agree with that because I think one of the big disconnects WWE has is that their audience is literally demanding a new product. Yeah. And they don't get it. And I think Garrett, did you say that's when we started first recording, you said NXT is essentially WWE saying we want a show like ring of honor. And I don't think it would be a stretch to say that WWE did a ring of honor show with NXT better than ring of honor did.
00:40:04
Speaker
Oh, yeah. I mean, they went out and got all the best any talent. And yeah. So I would say there's no doubt NXT has been a better ring of honor than Ring of Honor for a long time. Right. For years at this point. Yeah. So so at least somebody down there knows what the fans want. And you can't you can't ignore like
00:40:26
Speaker
I don't want to turn into fucking Meltzer right now, but you can't ignore dwindling ratings and house show attendance. And, and like, I don't understand the disconnect there. Again, I don't want this to turn into a bash WWE product, but part of the reason I think people approach cinematic wrestling with such a skeptical eye is because they've seen WWE do this kind of thing in the past and completely fuck it up.
00:40:46
Speaker
but I think the circumstances were such you asked if this was being graded on a curve it absolutely is being graded on a curve it's because you've been for months watching them try to run out the same HD no sound product that isn't resonating with anybody and so the moment they saw something that was different that was mildly good of course it's going to get a warm reception
00:41:12
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And it's interesting, too, that one of the first things I thought of when I even heard the greatest match ever, too, is that it was also a fuck you to the Saudi prince, where they're like, no matter what you think, and now he's going to have to up the budget, and we'll do a greatest, greatest match ever. And that, it'll have the budget of Avatar. It'll just be like CGI iron chic versus like Abraham Lincoln.
00:41:41
Speaker
What was that, what was that Hugh Jackman movie where he was like an ex-boxer, but they had like Rock'em Sock'em Robot, like, robot steel. Real steel. Real steel. Good movie. That's the future of pro wrestling, is that you have, it's like BattleBots, but you have the actual wrestlers in like a suit that controls the robot. That's where the greatest wrestling match ever is gonna take place. Somehow though, they'll still get CTE.
00:42:11
Speaker
They'll have a feedback. The fans can enjoy it unless there's at least a little bit of CTE danger.
00:42:20
Speaker
We talked about these two kind of back to back. So if we're going to say that Firefly Funhouse is not a wrestling match, it's a cinematic wrestling segment. Experience. Yeah. It's an experience. Sure. And then Randy Orton versus Edge in the greatest wrestling match ever. It's a match. It's a full fledged match. It's definitely a match, I would say, for sure. It's a match during which Byron Saxton utters the words fighting spirit.
00:42:49
Speaker
That just blew me away. I was like, man, that's pretty on the nose, Byron. Well, and again, it's the only one they just presented as a match. There may be some listeners right now that are like, why the fuck are these guys putting that Edge versus Orton match in the list of cinematic wrestling? So can one of you guys just spell it out with why? Because I agree that it's in the conversation, but let's just be really explicit here for the really slow listeners. So for the people who don't understand why Edge versus Randy Orton
00:43:19
Speaker
with a backlash is considered cinematic wrestling to make at least amongst the four of us it was pre-recorded supposedly they went through it just one time they did get some like some what some freaky camera angles from underneath that you definitely couldn't get during a live match
00:43:39
Speaker
And are they claiming they only went through it once? So Edge clarified they only went through the match one time. And what they did is that a couple spots that they did off the top rope, they went back and re-shot those to get either a different angle or a different take on it. So they didn't run it through it two or three times to make sure they got it.
00:44:02
Speaker
Uh, because I mean, I, I think that was, we talked about that even on the podcast. I think we reported that that was like what the official word was. Um, but that's not true. Apparently, apparently they only did it once and then redid a couple of spots. And I'd still argue that as long as they're editing and getting those camera angles, which apparently the camera angles that they did like underneath, like during the lockup and everything, that was edges idea.
00:44:27
Speaker
And then when they went back and saw it in post, Ed said, oh, that looks horrible. Don't do that. And Vince was like, bullshit. That looks awesome. Use it.
00:44:36
Speaker
So of course, as usual, the garbage parts that nobody else likes Vince has a fucking heart on for, and the people who actually will care about the wrestling part are like, ugh. Yeah, I just have a literal note in my pants. Like, the close up in the DDT is weird, man. It just looked weird. Yeah. Strange. Yeah. Well, so that's interesting to know, because I actually just, just now, I found out that they did it in one go and just redid some spots. Because one of my first reactions were,
00:45:04
Speaker
So they used editing to make the match longer. This match is so fucking long. And why? If you give cinema and you can use editing, why is the first 20 minutes of this such hot dog shit?
00:45:22
Speaker
Because I think it's a solid match, but the first 20 minutes, you literally miss almost nothing. So I think Edge answered this, too. He said he's not coming back to do a couple things. He said he didn't want to come back and do the Brock Lesnar-Goldberg two-minute match. And he also said he wants to bring back
00:45:43
Speaker
What i guess he considers like pure pro wrestling which is a lot of headlocks and downtime building like a slow build like a new japan yes yeah like he wants to bring that back cuz he knows he can do that style it doesn't involve jumping off of a fucking ladder to get your pop. So i guess i get the logic but again.
00:46:07
Speaker
How is it bringing it back when we all acknowledge that that's what New Japan does? Well, it's bringing it back to WWE. It's bringing it back. It's literally the opposite of the current main event style. I'm with you, but I think that the New Japan, when they have these 45-minute matches, which is every main event, it's the crowd, too. You get them in. That's why you do the slow build.
00:46:28
Speaker
I have zero interest at home in my bed watching a pre-taped edited match with a canned crowd in watching 10 minutes of headlocks.
00:46:43
Speaker
Look, I think the fans do want something different. I don't know if fans cared enough about Edge and Randy Orton to be on the edge of their seat through the first 10 minutes, something like this. And that's where I think a lot of the editing came in of, like, you can hear the crowd and there's a response. But, like, Kenny Omega and Okada earned the crowd being like, ooh, they just touched, like, ooh, they just, no one earned, ooh, they just touched it, Edge and Orton, right? And that's, that's a sort of weird
00:47:08
Speaker
Sort of comparison aspect of it like otherwise you can just kind of compare the matches well And here's the other thing though too when we're going for the greatest ever When you look at the Okada Omega matches even when you look at Ricky Steamboat and Ric Flair from fucking 30 years ago Those matches are very fast paced and high energy right from the offset so
Match Pacing in Wrestling Styles
00:47:28
Speaker
Yes, I get why people think of a New Japan main event as a slower thing, and some are, but not the ones that you put in the list of the greatest matches ever, right? You watch Kenny and Okada, they are doing very fast-paced, very hard-hitting, kind of batshit crazy stuff right at the beginning, and they keep the pace up the entire time.
00:47:54
Speaker
Now again, I don't think any of us necessarily thought this was the greatest match ever. But again, I don't want to seem like I'm shitting on it. This was a very good match. I enjoyed it. Yeah, I mean, I'm not shitting on it. It was a very good match. I think it would be kind of shitty to just completely grade taker and styles on a curve and say, well, they were allowed to get away with that because of the circumstances. But then when they're presenting a wrestling match and they want to manipulate it a little bit to make it better, saying that that's foul.
00:48:23
Speaker
No, no. That's not what I'm saying. I think you're missing my point. My point is they didn't make it better. I really don't think that any of the editing made anything better. There's nothing that I'd say was good about that. But do you know what they edited? No. So that's fair. It could have been worse, but things I would associate with editing
00:48:45
Speaker
weren't there. They had 20 fucking minutes of headlocks at the beginning. And it wasn't 10, it was 20. Well, it's still a Randy Orton match. I know, because I was on my fucking phone. I was on my phone within minutes. So I was looking at the time. Well, it's also part of it again is that.
00:49:03
Speaker
the boneyard match, and some of the other things we'll talk about, really change the context in a way where you're not thinking about this as relative to other things. And the whole point of the Edge and Orton match is to think about it relative to other things. And so small bowels, I think, I'm supposed to nitpick the greatest matches ever. That's the point, it's hard, you have to try to distinguish them, right? As opposed to what am I gonna nitpick about the boneyard match? Like what's, you know, what details
00:49:32
Speaker
Does it matter if it's just this thing that exists outside of itself? Not enough gallows. Why did they have to put all the members of Bullet Club in cloaked hoods to attack Undertaker? Why did they have to throw... Oh, because no one wants to watch Chase Owens.
00:49:53
Speaker
So that's who that was. That was Ishimori and all those guys. Yeah, it's all those guys. They just got them gigs. I mean, they're just whoever was hanging out in Georgia, you know, Chase is back on the East Coast. And Taker squashed them in a matter of seconds, too. Let's be clear. That's how much better Taker is than anybody in New Japan. Even at the ripe old age of 50 billion.
00:50:15
Speaker
I don't know, I don't remember watching the Orton Edge match and the headlock thing. I honest to God was expecting and I guarantee you Garrett feels the same way. Garrett probably went into the Edge Randy Orton match thinking they're gonna present to me a typical WWE style match.
00:50:35
Speaker
like the way Orton and Edge would 10 years ago. And they didn't do that. And I guess what you're saying is, due to circumstances right now where there's no audience, did it warrant that style of match? Well, and you know what? A fair point is, too, with you guys thinking that is, again, did you guys watch it live? Or, well, you know what I mean? Did you watch it that night? I did, yeah.
00:51:02
Speaker
So I didn't. And again, so I have the time marker at the bottom of the screen. So I saw, and it seared into my head. So I know that there was 54 minutes of program left when Randy Orton's entrance music hit. So in my mind, knowing that, I just went, oh, fuck.
00:51:24
Speaker
So there might be a self-fulfilling prophecy on my side. Yeah, that didn't bug me as much. Like the headlock thing really didn't bug me. And maybe it's because like I said, I'm used to watching something like that in New Japan. I mean, it felt different. I definitely felt like this is something WWE doesn't do. And that's a good thing.
00:51:45
Speaker
I could see that, I could see that, but I think, I watch pretty much every minute of New Japan, and at no point was I thinking, this is like New Japan. I get why you would say that. I get that, it is meticulous. What else would you compare it to? I would compare it to a really shitty, boring 20 minutes, followed by a good 25 minute match. You would compare it to that part in the movie Open Water where the people are waiting to be eaten by sharks?
00:52:18
Speaker
and you wait the whole time and then they finally, it does happen, but you have to wait a long time to get there. Exactly, exactly.
00:52:27
Speaker
It felt like, you know, it felt a little bit like indie matches that have gone long, like, you know, Samoa Joe versus CM Punk, which is like a really good match, but like, it's just kind of aiming for distance a little bit. Which is funny, because of course Joe was ringside. And actually one of my favorite parts of the match was when they started exchanging chops with each other, you could see, like there was a shot where you could kind of see the smile on Samoa Joe's face.
00:52:53
Speaker
I was just like, ah, they're really hitting. I like this. It just made him happy. He's like, it's not as good as Kobashi, but you know, this is this is my work environment. It's almost like I would I would liken it to like in New Japan, but it's like a Nagata versus Kojima match or something where it is. It's like a three star New Japan match.
00:53:17
Speaker
that goes a little longer that needs to and slower. Now, admittedly, the second half of the match far better than just some random Kojima match against another one of the old timers. So I'm not going to say that it was just a three-star match or anything like that. Again, the second half of the match I thought was very, very good. I just, I really found the first half.
00:53:34
Speaker
Can we at least come to the agreement that it would be nice if they were going to try to do a match like this in the future if it was two young guys that need to be made? For sure. Because I'm getting really sick of these kinds of unique opportunities being given to people that are already established. It would be really cool to see two new guys that the audience needs to develop a relationship with get a chance to win people over by going this long and doing something like this.
00:54:04
Speaker
Go ahead. Or do some of the guys on your roster like Daniel Bryan and AJ Styles that are legitimately some of the greatest wrestlers in the world right this minute, right? As opposed to Randy Orton who never really was. I don't think he's a bad wrestler, but he's never been on anybody's best wrestlers ever list. And Edge who, you know, this is his second match in nine years.
00:54:28
Speaker
Well, it's interesting to me, though, because they did have one of these matches that gave people that kind of opportunity, which was the Money in the Bank match. And that had a lot of people in it who don't normally get that shine. But of course, I think that was by far the worst of the cinematic matches.
00:54:46
Speaker
It was a lot of bad gags and didn't really hang together, didn't really make good use of the setting. I don't know, just the whole thing didn't work, which I felt bad because I was like, all of these people are getting opportunities, but they're being made to mostly look like fools in the service of crappy comedy.
Comedic Approaches in Wrestling Matches
00:55:06
Speaker
like poor Dana Brooke grabbing the briefcase in the boardroom. Oh, didn't you know that was the money in the bank boardroom? No, what the fuck is the money in the bank boardroom? Why should she know that? Why would that be a thing? I was like, who cares? And in that same moment, then Stephanie McMahon says, also, Nia Jax is gross.
00:55:26
Speaker
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, literally all of the cameos were just somebody showing up to show up, except for the Stephanie McMahon one. That was actually the one that was most in service of the story. The rest of them were just like, oh, here's Johnny wrestling. Or that's Johnny Gargano now, I suppose.
00:55:46
Speaker
Or here's Bruce Pritchard, his brother Love. Or even here's some random guy I didn't recognize. But is he Doink? Because it's clearly not Doink. The guy didn't look anything like Doink. It was some guy dressed as a clown. Contextually, I'm going to assume it was the clown that used to be on WWE shows 25 years ago.
00:56:13
Speaker
Because that somehow is the most plausible explanation for why someone thought it was a good idea. Yeah, why force the Doink cameo if you can't get, what's his name, Matt? Well, Matt Bourne's dead. Matt Bourne, yeah. I mean, he's dead, but a lot of other people played Doink you could get.
00:56:31
Speaker
Well, but that's what I'm saying. But that's what I'm saying is that they could have had any number of cameos, but they chose to go with one that would just be like, that's not the right guy. And that doesn't that's weird. We're in quarantine, man. But couldn't you put somebody at least in like a cane mask? That way it's a little bit more iconic, a little bit more recent. Well, they also say maybe it's more funny. You have like Gilberg come in. Yeah. You know, you could work with Cain, I think a little more.
00:56:56
Speaker
Well they also sell out the characters right because there's a moment where where jizz is like sees John Lauren I got the ultimate honor high Yeah, are my characters wasting pie Why listen to your podcast for those of you who are listening to our podcast that's Otis
00:57:17
Speaker
You don't understand that was that was that was like watching your baby boy grow up. No you see the predetermined guys call call Tucker Otis and Otis jizz it's very it makes a lot of sense Do you do you understand that he was trolling us for like a year after we started calling him that right now?
00:57:42
Speaker
I can't believe
00:57:58
Speaker
We pushed him to the moon, man. Producer Kent, can you see if you can get Otis or Jizz, whichever he's going by today, see if you can get him for the next one of these. He's a nice Christian man that we are calling Jizz, so I don't know if that's going to happen. But don't go to the internet and type in WWE wrestler Jizz. I don't think that'll work out well for you.
00:58:23
Speaker
It didn't work out well for, you know what, I'm not gonna mention it. It did work out well for him at Money in the Bank, though, because I will tell you, I popped for the end of the match, because I didn't expect Otis to walk away with the fucking briefcase. To me, it's like the end of my grandmother's funeral. I don't remember it, I know that it was over at some point, and that I was sadder afterwards than when it started.
00:58:53
Speaker
I will say, one of the only things I liked was seeing Vince's office be exactly as you'd expect it. There's literally a dinosaur head and a picture of the troops. Wait, wait, wait. Is that not the best metaphor for Vince McMahon's booking philosophy? That you couldn't see a computer in his office, but there's literally a fucking fossil. No computer.
00:59:17
Speaker
Giant fossil what I also liked is that it's styles and Brian that he kicks out of the office And you know that that exact meeting happened in 2004 where they walked into his office He saw how short they were and he was like get out
00:59:38
Speaker
so money in the bank didn't resonate right like that that's considered the flop of the cinematic wrestling group yeah but but I do kind of like that what they were going for like it had a couple good like I like that actually my favorite part of the match other than Vince's office
00:59:54
Speaker
was when AJ gets like a flashback that the lights go out and they show the flashback to the WrestleMania Boneyard match, and he thinks the taker's there, where I'm like, that's good, that's like something they do on a TV show. That furthers the story in a way that they couldn't have done. I kind of enjoyed that, but I think overall, they played almost the entire thing for comedy, which isn't what you want, really, ever, in your main event of a pay-per-view.
01:00:21
Speaker
Well, but I think though it's it's not just comedy. It's comedy that doesn't sort of play to the characters and sells out the characters because like BT 200 has a lot of comedy and a lot of jokes and parody things but nothing sells out who the characters are and it's all
01:00:41
Speaker
Because of that it can sort of the comedy can hang with the seriousness and as in Stadium Stampede to also has a lot of comedy in it But if you don't sell out the characters you can make it all fit together Well, and I would say that the story of both of those matches is not a comedy story There's there's bits in there, but it's not a comedy story. Whereas that's all money in the bank was was a bunch of just a non sequitur
01:01:08
Speaker
just a mosaic of non sequitur jokes well the comedy was playing to an audience of one anyway let's be clear about that the comedy was playing to Vince and he's got a long history and the joint are you guys telling me that you don't think that Alistair black has a future in comedy
01:01:26
Speaker
Was he in the match? Can we for can we for a minute because this you can almost tie this in the cinematic wrestling to a certain extent which is I remember We were in Garrett you were here in Chicago. This was a few months back We were on our way to freelance wrestling when you got the news that they had changed Was it buddy Murphy's name to just to just yeah, well, it's there's this weird like like presentation
01:01:54
Speaker
Uh, uh, and like the fucking paranoia of like, there's a talent and Vince looks at him and goes, ah, this isn't going to work on the main roster unless we tweak this. And so you have war Raiders go to the, what were they? Viking experience, Viking experience. And then the Viking Raiders.
01:02:13
Speaker
And then you have Alistair Black who had been doing great in NXT and then he gets to the main roster and somebody had to go, well, when he does the whole Nosferatu vampire lift thing, we got to put the crypt noise for when he rises up from the ground. Like these, these, oh, Ricochet, we got to add a bullet noise to it. Like, like the weird tweaks of like, this won't work here unless we add this, this, uh, element to it. Like,
01:02:41
Speaker
Vince overproduces so much shit and that's why he's probably loving this to a certain extent right now.
01:02:50
Speaker
So you know what? So I think that's a good transition point to the most overproduced thing that we touched on, but we haven't talked about is the Firefly Fun House, right?
Creative Storytelling in Wrestling
01:02:59
Speaker
Because we didn't really get into it at all, but that's entirely produced. And I think generally I liked it. I watched it again today. I loved it even more the second time than I did the first time.
01:03:16
Speaker
And again, and that's me conceding to you. No, it does not probably count as a match. But as far as wrestling storytelling goes, I know that I was listening and not that I'm a big wrestling observer guy. I know Brian Alvarez said this recently and it was in compliments to AEW.
01:03:32
Speaker
And he said, wrestling fans love it when the company that's booking pays attention to details that pay off in the long term. So if you've been a pro wrestling fan over the last 20 years, and specifically if you had followed that John Cena Bray Wyatt thing for the last six, that match was just a treasure trove of details.
01:03:56
Speaker
and little things. And even the stuff with the Vince puppet once again dropping the, this is such good shit. I mean, fuck, I didn't notice today. They threw CM Punk in the middle of that. Did you notice that? I don't think I caught that. I just watched it again myself this week. When they were doing the flashback of all of John Cena's big moments and failures throughout the history of the company, they showed Punk blowing the kiss to Vince McMahon and leaving with the title.
01:04:23
Speaker
And I thought, oh my god, the balls to actually request they throw that segment in right now. And I wonder who did. I think Cena was probably had to.
01:04:34
Speaker
be involved in this to some degree, right? There's no way they could have done all this stuff on Cena without Cena being a very active participant. I mean, obviously he doesn't have to do the match anymore, right, where he is in his career. Yeah. So, I mean, he obviously agreed to do it, but I almost feel like he must have been the one pushing them to, no, no, no, don't leave anything behind.
01:04:57
Speaker
I also think, by the way, part of what made this so much fun, and relative to some of the other things, I like the Boneyard a lot, but Undertaker in particular, not much of an actor, whereas I think Bray Wyatt and John Cena are probably the two best actors
01:05:16
Speaker
on either roster. Right. I think that they're both really good legitimately. Like obviously John Cena is making a career as an actor right now. And I think Bray Wyatt totally could. Like I think they're both really. I think Hangman page is probably the only other one I'd put in that category that like legitimately could could be an actor. I'd throw Cody in there.
01:05:39
Speaker
Oh, you know, that's that's fair. I also think that from the beginning of it, just a little bit unrelated because he's playing a little bit of a horror character. But I bet Bray Wyatt's just a really fun dad. Oh, guaranteed. Those are some real lucky kids.
01:05:56
Speaker
I can't help but smile every time I see him doing the Saturday Night's Main Event style promo with the cage and everything. And when Cena comes into the shot with him pumping the fucking dumbbells, like the enthusiasm in Cena's face for that segment, like you can tell he gets what they're doing.
01:06:15
Speaker
And he fully committed to that whole thing. They both did. They both just committed to it. And I think that that's what made it winning that again, I can't really rate it to the rest of them because it's the only one that in my mind is unequivocally not a match. But I think if you are a wrestling fan, it's worth the 15 or 20 minutes a year of your time for sure. I mean, it's David Lynch meets like an adult swim sketch meets WWE.
01:06:43
Speaker
Yeah. Perfectly said, Garrett. But it's also super weird because it's one of the weird times where they've, if we call it a match, which I know we're not, but they addressed the concept of booking something incorrectly in a segment, right? The whole theme of that match is, you stole my moment from me at WrestleMania 36 years ago.
01:07:08
Speaker
or whatever the fuck it was. And they build the whole idea of, like, Cena's had all these moments where he failed, and he's been given opportunity after opportunity after opportunity, and he came back and became this huge star. And Bray's had to do the same thing, but he hasn't walked away with nearly as much success.
01:07:28
Speaker
Which is also interesting because Bray was coming off of the highest success of his career right before this, which by all accounts was with this character that he did with the Firefly Funhouse stuff, which by all accounts was all him. Yes. He thought it all up. He was the one writing this stuff. It was all him. He had to make his own opportunity. And that's when he actually became a huge star. But his previous character was his creation too.
01:08:00
Speaker
Yeah, but they fucked it up by giving him a stable. Did they? I. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe that's we don't walk away with like like those like in 2013, those shield Wyatt family matches were really good. And that was the first good stable war I had seen in a long time.
01:08:21
Speaker
And as stupid as we thought the Daniel Bryan joining the Wyatt's thing was at the time for obvious reasons, because we thought this is the culmination of he's definitely not getting WrestleMania. When he does turn on Bray during that Raw, that was apeshit crazy. I guess now that I'm thinking about it, the Wyatt's actually were always one of the highlights.
01:08:45
Speaker
of WWE in my recollection of that period. They were kind of in my gateway into coming back into wrestling.
01:08:54
Speaker
Yeah. Were the Wyatt's? Yeah. I mean, I started coming back in like around the Daniel Bryan time, but going back and watching some of that stuff really pulled me back in. Especially the, I loved the John Cena Bray Wyatt stuff, especially when, you know, we get to WrestleMania and he's doing the hit me with the chair, like this Joker. Which was addressed in the Firefly Funhouse match too. That was a big thing.
01:09:20
Speaker
But I think though, didn't he lost, Wyatt lost to Taker the year before he lost to Cena, right? Or was that the year after? It was the year after at 31 where he lost to Taker.
01:09:29
Speaker
OK, yeah, so the mystique was definitely gone by then. So I think, yeah, there's that's that was the story was that I remember at the time I knew that that was the story of the Firefly Fun House. I guess I just never really I again, I just watched it of like, this is cool. I don't care whether that's the real story or not. Like, you know, like that's just it's cool. I didn't actually think about how close I think I'm going to like it a lot more when I watch it again as soon as we finish recording here.
01:09:56
Speaker
go back and watch it, I think it really rewards you on another viewing. And I think I remember watching that for the first time, because I remember being fully committed to thinking that that, because so much gets talked about from WrestleMania 30, because that's the night the streak ended, and that's the night Daniel Bryan closed the main event by winning the title, and everyone left happy. They did drop the ball, in my opinion at the time, because remember the thing that Cena was fighting for in that match was his legacy.
01:10:24
Speaker
Nothing real like nothing tangible not a title not retirement He was just fighting for his legacy And I remember thinking like look at how over Bray Wyatt is is the character like he needs this and the fact that they utilize that all these years later um
01:10:41
Speaker
I don't know. I really enjoy, again, even to the point where when they had him redo the chair spot from WrestleMania 30 and they had him attempt to turn heel and crush Wyatt with the chair and then it immediately transitions into the NWO John Cena. He finally turned heel, which is what everyone wanted him to do all those years. And they made a mockery out of that. Yeah, that was probably my favorite part is just given the fans what they want. NWO Cena.
01:11:08
Speaker
Do you think anyone as a wrestler has been as much more interesting than their dad than Bray Wyatt?
01:11:14
Speaker
Because Bray Wyatt's dad might be the most boring wrestler of all time, at least one of the top five or so. I mean, Orton's had a way more successful career than his dad. Yeah, but Bob was pretty good. I think the part of the problem with Bob is that a lot of it was just the good parts of his career were pre-national wrestling. He had a good career. He was in the main event of the first WrestleMania. He was an interesting character. Mike Rotunda's.
01:11:41
Speaker
Boring a shit. I think I think Tamina Snook is a way better person than her dad. The bar is pretty low. Yeah. Do you I guess this is a weird question to ask. Do you think David Benoit ever makes it? No, no, I don't I don't think he ever really makes a serious try. Because he was interested. That was the last thing I'd heard was that. Yeah, I don't.
01:12:11
Speaker
Did I take this down a dark road at a time where you didn't want? Oh, I apologize Sometimes the sins of the father really just yeah hard to overcome See yes, we always have a good time and then Derek brings up Benoit Yeah
01:12:27
Speaker
God damn, I'm going to crack another claw. And all right, why don't why don't we just because we're not doing chronological. Why don't we finish out the last WWE one, I think, on our list, which is the most recent, I think. And another one that I thought was not good. The NXT takeover in your house match.
01:12:48
Speaker
between Velveteen Dream and Adam Cole, Bay Bay, which was also another one that I think stretched that it was a cinematic wrestling match.
01:13:00
Speaker
I think that it was well filmed, but again, they didn't really present it. It was all in one contiguous thing that all took place either in or directly outside a wrestling ring. There was lots of lens flare from the car lights. But otherwise, it's not something that would have felt out of place at a random in-your-house show in 1998.
01:13:29
Speaker
It felt to me like they just gave us a street fighter level. Yes. That was just the background for this match. Yeah, like it didn't seem like was it? I don't even know. Was it edited? It didn't seem like it was. They obviously could have, but.
01:13:47
Speaker
I would have been way, I think that speaks to how I feel about this match. I just wanted to know who were in the cars surrounded. That's all I was thinking. I wanted to know that some of the other guys on the roster were in the cars heckling the guys working. Well that was the weirdest thing about like the greatest match ever was they focus on certain fans and one of them was Santana Garrett and I'm like we know who Santana Garrett is like we've all, at least if you've watched enough wrestling you've seen her work and it's like it's just very strange to watch her like
01:14:16
Speaker
wearing a Bailey shirt and cheering for Edge. It was very strange. And actually, that reminds me of another thing about Edge versus Orton, why it is another match too, is there's commentary. And I think that's another thing. Firefly, no commentary. Boneyard, no commentary. I think that they had established cinematic wrestling is no commentary. You might get some music. You will get some dialogue.
01:14:38
Speaker
And I think that that's a huge differentiator. And my recollection is I think the in your house match, I think had commentary. Oh, it had commentary. I think you'd improve. I think you improve that match by at least 20 percent if you just erase the commentary track.
01:14:55
Speaker
See, I don't have any notes about the commentary positive or negative, so I guess I didn't feel as strongly. What was so bad about the commentary? I particularly enjoyed the part where Morrow rhymed rain with rain, but rain as in drops of rain and Adam Cole's title rain. And then immediately said Cole's rain might be circling the drain.
01:15:22
Speaker
They should get Lanny Pafo to help him out. Yeah, they really should. Multiple times, one of the commentators said, I'm getting these ex, whatever, filled in vibes. I'm getting Eddie Guerrero vibes. I don't know what gave them any Guerrero vibes. What? Also, at some point at the end, someone said, I can't remember if it was Morrow or not. It probably was, because it's a terrible line, that the match gets a chef's kiss for its brutality. What? Chef's kiss?
01:15:52
Speaker
That's a thing someone said. They used that line in so many GCW paper views. I thought it was disappointing. And I think the only thing that positive I'm going to walk away from thinking, I always enjoy when there's a stipulation like, he never gets another shot of the title again. And then that actually happens.
01:16:18
Speaker
Cuz you're like, oh shit. Yeah, that sucks although although again in NXT It's a little bit lame duck because it's just like everyone knows losing the title match means you might be coming up to the main roster Particularly with a step like that So I think that I agree with you, but I think that it lands a little flatter with NXT Well, here's a better question to ask in the middle of this cinematic wrestling discussion is NXT the third brand or are they still developmental? I
01:16:44
Speaker
I mean, in reality, they're the third brand, but it's still positioned in kayfabe as developmental. Really? I almost feel like it's the opposite.
01:16:57
Speaker
Like, I feel like they're actually developmental, but their position is the third brand. I'm going to go back to the reason that I think it's that way is that, again, a lot of the smarts love NXT. We I've always loved NXT far more than the main main show. I'm the definition of a mark. And and yet the Saudi Prince wouldn't wipe his ass with Adam Cole.
01:17:20
Speaker
You know, like I love him, but the Saudi prince is my barometer for what Vince considers a star. Well, he's probably the goddamn reason the warrior. He asked he asked for Yoko Zuna, who's been dead for like 15 years. Yeah. Is he the reason that Ricochet isn't on TV anymore? Yeah. Yeah, it's him.
01:17:48
Speaker
Here's a weird question. Do you consider before the quarantine stuff like the the Fiend versus Seth Rollins at Hell in a Cell? Was that cinematic wrestling? That was in front of a live crowd. No edits. So are we for sure saying that cinematic wrestling has to be taped and edited?
01:18:12
Speaker
I think so. I mean, cinema, right? I mean, if we're using the concept of cinema, cinema is fundamentally an edited form, right? It's just so ironic. It's like there's such a thing with like 1918 where it's like, there are no cuts. And yet that's like the height of, that's a Christopher Nolan movie. It was so cinematic. But yet I agree with you guys. I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm just saying it's interesting is all.
01:18:39
Speaker
Yeah, I wasn't asked. I was just curious. Like there's definitely a different presentation to it where they try to add. Like I even thought them making the Hell in a Cell cage read was an attempt at dressing up the show. Yeah, I think so. I think it just needs to be.
01:18:58
Speaker
It's almost like a mindset, too, that it's something that they're not attempting to really present as a wrestling match in my mind, which is why, again, I think it's 1917. Kent says I got the movie title wrong. Yeah. You're off. You're thinking about the pandemic. I am thinking about the pandemic. It's a little more front of my mind than the third to last movie I saw in the cinemas before.
01:19:27
Speaker
The last movie I saw in the cinema before COVID-19 hit was Sonic the Hedgehog. I saw Invisible Man. That was my last movie in the cinema. Birds of Prey for like a third time.
Wrestling and Pop Culture Crossovers
01:19:40
Speaker
I thought you were going to just say Hobbs and Shaw. I was hoping you would. Speaking of Hobbs and Shaw. No, I'm just kidding. Yeah, I was going to say, that's actually a really good transition. That's a great one. Can we talk? It's a BTE 200, which is the number of times that Eric has seen Hobbs and Shaw.
BTE and AEW: Different Story Worlds
01:19:59
Speaker
Yeah, let's talk about that. Either AEW cinematic presentation.
01:20:05
Speaker
Well, I mean, BTE is not technically AEW, right? It's free on YouTube. So I feel like of all of them, this actually might be the one match that people haven't seen. Because I think, again, a lot of people follow being the elite on YouTube. It's obviously readily available. But I think there's a good amount of people that watch AEW that don't watch BTE and might not even know really what BTE is.
01:20:32
Speaker
I made this point to Garrett shortly after AEW started and I think I offended him. Is that fair to say? I was hurt. I said that he was like, well, they're continuing angles on BTE. And I was like, I don't think everybody that's watching AEW on TNT is watching BTE. I think they kind of have to do that in front of the camera every Wednesday.
01:20:54
Speaker
Well, and I think that they've kind of demonstrated that, right? Like right now there's like a big Colt Cabana Kenny Omega thing going on in BTE that they are not remotely acknowledging on the TV show. They've completely separate. They're not mentioned in BTE that Colt may or may not be in the dark order. You know, like I think they're just parallel realities.
01:21:13
Speaker
They never mentioned BT on the show. And at first, I think it was just kind of like an inside thing, like they don't want to alienate anyone that's not watching it. But I think as time goes by, they're very clearly not connected. And I'm guessing they have some data to back that up. And they know that Marx like us will eat both up. So, you know, I don't know. Yeah, just alternate reality like comic books.
01:21:37
Speaker
Exactly. It's the ultimate universe of the elite. And Tony Khan doesn't get a cut of the t-shirts. So set the stage for BTE 200 for somebody who hasn't watched it to this point.
01:21:52
Speaker
All right, I'll take the lead on this because I think I told you guys that I was the one that when we talked about this earlier had the most disproportionate. I love to be T200. I personally think it's my favorite of the cinematic wrestling experiences. So obviously the quarantine started. I think most people listening to this podcast know that AEW and WWE both continue doing shows in Florida and AEW does some in Georgia.
01:22:19
Speaker
But travel was obviously locked up. So AW has a lot of people on the West Coast, including the Young Bucks, right? So on BTE, they had been kind of building up that they're having this kind of separate West Coast thing going on with like the Bucks, SCU, Peter Avalon, people like that.
01:22:38
Speaker
of course, and they started just filming matches and putting matches on BT, but just straight wrestling matches, just in a wrestling ring, on a tennis court behind Nick Jackson's house. A tennis court behind Nick Jackson. A tennis slash basketball court. Cut to the chase. Behind, yeah.
01:22:58
Speaker
And then, so it became that Nick's coming back from his injury and that he, I forget, it was a game of horse, I believe, that the winner of the game of horse got to choose the match. What was the challenge? It was a battle royal that Nick won.
01:23:14
Speaker
It was a battle royale. You're right. To get to be in the main event of BTE 200. It happened on BTE 199. And you get to pick your match. So Nick wins. He wants to go against his brother Matt in a no holds bar, pins count anywhere.
01:23:29
Speaker
match on BTE 200 to say if if he wins the match he's back and he can go back to the show. This is of course after the injury angle with the inner circle that had hurt him. Right exactly and also his in real life his child had been born.
01:23:45
Speaker
Most recent child. So I love the shit out of this because it was so surprising to me that because all of the matches in BTA from the tennis court had been straight wrestling matches.
Sibling Rivalries and Wrestling Dynamics
01:23:57
Speaker
They have their brother in a referee outfit. They've been straight wrestling matches. And then this is this weird. It's kind of this 90s false count anywhere.
01:24:05
Speaker
all around the compound thing and that's fun. They did some straight wrestling moves and like young bucks moves like flips and stuff, but off of unconventional things. And then they got real cinematic with stuff at certain points too. And it was all in the effort of telling the story of like Nick trying to channel this killer instinct.
01:24:27
Speaker
to prove that he's back, and Matt being like, what the fuck, you're trying to kill me? This is a match, and I'm your real life brother, and you're literally trying to murder me. Well, that's actually one of your thoughts on those facts, because I only have a sister. So I have never had a fight like this with my brother that's both intense and hilarious.
01:24:52
Speaker
I mean, you have many brothers. I don't know about Garrett and Derek, how many brothers you guys have. I don't know, because I was like, it feels like it's real, it made sense to me, but I don't know if it rang true to you.
01:25:05
Speaker
Oh, it did so much. And that's where, and even as an adult, like I haven't gotten into a fistfight with any of my brothers in like six or seven years, but I'm 37. So that means I was still over 30 having fistfights with my brothers.
01:25:25
Speaker
and I think the brother that I fist fought was over 40 when that happened so like it's it's it resolved and even the way that at one point Matt my single favorite thing is Matt just goes after the pool thing where Nick tries to drown him in the pool and he just goes
01:25:44
Speaker
Did you just try to kill me? Did you just try to kill your own brother? And I was just laughing because also that's something that just for the record when over 30 year old facts wrestles over 40 year old facts, the fight was broken up by our 60 something year old mother.
01:26:06
Speaker
So, and I have no doubt that somebody was saying something like, were you trying to kill me? Trying to be an asshole? Like, I just. So you really felt that is what you're saying. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I did. It resonated. But I think it's but I think it's also great storytelling. Like when they did the barbershop segment in there and both of them have talked about their anxieties about obviously we all know every tag team gets split up at some point.
01:26:34
Speaker
And traditionally, you know, the Shawn Michaels thing is real. Often one guy becomes the star and the other one doesn't become it. And the fact that they're actually brothers and they're so close, I think brings that extra element that they've dealt with their entire careers of like at some point.
01:26:49
Speaker
whether it's this fucker Tony Khan now or somebody when they were generation me in the past, like that's going to split them up. And I think there is that interesting storytelling of the how they're the same and yet they're different, but they have these shared anxieties and it was just kind of beautiful to me.
01:27:07
Speaker
I thought it was amazing, too. I got way more out of that than I expected to. I remember kind of just unceremoniously starting that up. And then when I realized, oh, shit, they're going to cover the whole fucking compound, I got a lot. I thought the match was really great. And I will say, and I meant to say this a minute ago, but to this day, there's something hilarious about seeing somebody in their wrestling gear away from an arena.
The Humor of Ring Gear in Public
01:27:35
Speaker
Oh, yeah. And with the music. And well, and here's the other thing. And I thought I think this, but I want to kind of kick it out to you three for your thoughts is I thought of everything. So let's say, hypothetically, blue skies scenario wrestling goes back to normal.
01:27:53
Speaker
by the end of the year, okay? And then we never get another big outbreak. It goes back to normal and stays that way for good. I feel like BT200 is the one thing, especially since it is a celebration of BT, which is so about the young bucks, it's the one thing that I feel like you just go back and watch, oh yeah, of course that's what they did for the milestone 200th BTE. That makes perfect sense and you don't even need to have the context of coronavirus. Yeah. Yeah, no, I totally think that works.
01:28:22
Speaker
The question is, will they do that on TV in AEW ever, especially if they ever do get split up? I just don't think they want to do that with each other. I think it's something I think in within BTE where they can tell the story absolutely in the way they want to.
Commentary Bias and Perceptions
01:28:39
Speaker
I think that's kind of what made it work for them, is that they will be like, this is our thing. And so we can tell this sort of funny and sort of moving brother story, but we would never let other people sort of have that, you know?
01:28:52
Speaker
Maybe I'm paranoid. I just know that when I watch AEW, there's times where I listened to Jim Ross's commentary where I feel like he's actively trying to break up certain tag teams because he just, he just fucking fills his pants when Ray Phoenix is on the, on his monitor. And it's the same with Scorpio sky. And it's the same with Nick Jackson. There's clearly people when there's a tag team out there, he's like, I just want to let everyone at home know that guy's the fucking star.
01:29:19
Speaker
Is that just me, or does anybody else notice that? I have never noticed that. Jim Roth clearly favors one guy in every tag team. When you say the Scorpio Sky thing, I completely get that. Every time I feel he's like, look at his vertical leap. He's such an athlete.
01:29:40
Speaker
He does love Scorpio Sky the most, that is true. But he fucking loves Nick Jackson too. Like he makes such a point about like what an athlete Nick Jackson is. He is. Or how incredible Ray Phoenix is.
01:29:52
Speaker
I mean, I think luckily for them, I think the Jacksons have a little more booking clout than JR does with AEW. I'm sure. But perception is reality, too. And he's telling the story for the audience at home. Well, it's also interesting that the way that they present it often, and I've thought about this for a while, is that so Matt wins this match, right? So Nick is trying to bring out the killer in him. And he ends up bringing out the killer in Matt.
01:30:18
Speaker
And Matt almost murders his brother, but then wins the match. And then frequently, Matt's the one that makes the Superman comebacks. Matt's the one that typically wins all the matches. It is kind of an interesting thing that you noticed JR putting Nick moreover, whereas I've very actively noticed that Matt's almost always the one that gets the pinfall. He's almost always the one that makes
01:30:37
Speaker
the big comeback, even when he was playing Ricky Morton, that from a purely kayfabe perspective, I feel like Matt's always in AEW been presented as the quote unquote better wrestler. I agree. I think I feel like that's how I.
01:30:53
Speaker
I think Matt is is at least presented or or it's perceived a lot of times as the the more vocal leader of the two. But I think Nick is seen as the guy who does all the crazy flippy shit that people pop for and the current wrestling product. I mean sort of Bobby Eaton.
01:31:15
Speaker
Right? I mean, they're the two best tag teams of all time. Nick's Bobby Eaton, and Matt's just way better than either Stan Lane or Dennis Condrey. But either way, he's the emotional core. I mean, Matt's the one cutting. Matt is, and that's part of the thing, Matt's also, this is a weird, but Matt's also Jim Cornette, if you're comparing them to the Midnight Express, because Matt's the one almost always cutting the promo.
01:31:38
Speaker
He's the heart of it. And Nick is the sort of, I mean, he talks in this match. I mean, Nick is quite funny and I don't want to make Nick sound like as silent as Bobby Eaton, who I think said like three words in 20 years. But I think that's sort of the comparison there and Nick is the athlete. I mean, and so was Bobby. There's a handsome one and there's an athlete.
01:32:01
Speaker
The handsome one gets to talk more. So here's where this comparison gets interesting. I remember during the late 90s and early 2000s, I remember feeling the exact same way about the Hardys. I remember actually thinking that Matt Hardy was the presented leader of the Hardy boys and he was like the face, but it was always Jeff who was doing the crazy spots that got everybody's attention.
01:32:28
Speaker
Both younger brothers too. I mean, I feel like the dynamic is very similar.
01:32:33
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and it's also like Matt Jackson, not Hardy, um, also has this weird, like Triple H like quality of being overly serious and like nobody, he doesn't seem to have a self-awareness about how cheesy it comes off sometimes, but I don't hate it. I don't hate it with Triple H either, by the way. But even like the thing they do at the end of BT, like, Oh, where do you think you're going? I don't think that's funny. I don't think that was meant to be a joke. I think he's just like,
01:33:03
Speaker
I'm gonna do Wolverine voice and I think I could totally pull it off. I miss the old drone shot at the end of the episode. There is an awesome drone shot in that match of the suplexes. It's interesting because there is some similarities of this and Stadium Stampede where you can see that the same people put it together at times.
01:33:26
Speaker
Yeah, well and I think one of the commonalities here is that I think this was also probably the best example of that hybrid of Cinematic wrestling and a match like this was undeniably cinematic wrestling. They did the barbershop window stuff, which was a dream sequence, right? That's very cinematic yet. There's a referee they talk back to the referee a lot which I love who's by the way is their brother Who definitely got the lesser of the hair
01:33:51
Speaker
Yes, yes And they have replays and but there's no commentary and then they do a lot of stuff and I think Stadium Stampede did some similar stuff where it was very much cinematic wrestling It was clearly peach pre-taped and edited but they also still presented it as a wrestling match too as opposed to obviously Firefly flood house, which is not at all a wrestling match and even the boneyard which
Cinematic Wrestling's Narrative Power
01:34:16
Speaker
you know, technically had a winner, but other than that wasn't really a wrestling match. I mean, you could argue there's lots of other wrestling matches that aren't wrestling matches, but now we're getting meta. Right. But they both do the thing that I love about, I think, the Young Bucks, which is that they find a way to keep the comedy and the seriousness, like, up against each other, and it's OK. Like, that life is funny. Like, there are serious things that are happening, and jokes will happen along the way, too. Right.
01:34:44
Speaker
Right. Which and again, they are brothers and like they're not trying to murder. I mean, they are trying to murder each other, but not in the way that AJ and Taker are. Right. And that I think that they're also their dialogue was it definitely was scripted to some degree. They didn't just improv all that. Or I'd be surprised if they improved all of the dialogue in the moment. But it felt less cheesy. It just felt more organic to me.
01:35:10
Speaker
But they've also probably been having backyard matches for 20 plus years. Yeah. Well, plus when you work with your brother for that long, you know exactly what they want to do and what's going to make them look good. But.
01:35:25
Speaker
If we're transitioning out of BTE 200 into this, I don't even know where to begin because this is going to be kind of the standard bearer for the future, right? Stadium Stampede? Yeah, well, why don't we start with this? That I think that BTE is the start of it, that when we're talking about all these cinematic matches in WWE, I don't think there's a single one we talked about that features the same guy.
AEW's Strategic Event Planning
01:35:48
Speaker
Right. Whereas the Young Bucks did BT 200. And then about two weeks before Double or Nothing, there was this like no holds barred Falls Count Anywhere match with Guevara and Jericho against I think Matt Hardy and Kenny Omega. Yeah. That's where they did the first golf cart spot. LAX comeback. They did all kinds of crazy shit. And well, it was more of a traditional TV show.
01:36:17
Speaker
hardcore match. It was a little bit of a dress rehearsal for stuff that they were going to do later, where it's mostly serious, a little bit funny. So it's kind of interesting that I feel like they tried it a couple of times to test the waters. And that was clearly intentional, right? Because the end of that match walks them over to the football stadium. Yep. Right. It's literally sort of opening up the world.
01:36:42
Speaker
I do think I can't even imagine how interesting the conversation would have been when they were discussing what they were going to do now that they couldn't allow fans to be at shows. And it had to come up at some point where it's just like, Tony, you and your dad have a football team.
01:36:59
Speaker
And you have a stadium that we could pretty much do whatever we wanted. If you give us some time, we can put together a nice long segment. Well, and again, they were going to do Blood and Guts, right, that me and Chris were supposed to go to. Why'd you mention it again, Fax?
01:37:18
Speaker
So Blood and Guts was supposed to be the war games match five on five.
Logistics of AEW's Stadium Events
01:37:22
Speaker
And it's the exact same teams with the exception of they basically swapped out. Nick Jackson is back in, but now Cody's out, right? Because originally Cody was going to be in, but Nick Jackson was out. Matt Hardy was always the fifth guy. So you know that they were thinking about, well, we need to have this big five on five blowout for the elite plus Hardy versus the inner circle and Jericho.
01:37:48
Speaker
And they definitely like I feel like at some point they're like okay we need to do something big for the ppv we need to really blow off this big gimmick that's now gone on even an additional six weeks than we originally planned. And again they could keep going back all day long but.
01:38:05
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know when they just somebody literally was just like looking over and go. Oh, use it. Yeah, because Vince has to rent those out like that's that's the crazy thing is that Vince rents out a football stadium for WrestleMania and they literally just have access to one every Wednesday.
01:38:22
Speaker
So, actually, you know what's crazy? I was reading about it. So, the cons do not own the stadium. The town of Jacksonville does, or the county, or whatever it is. But they lease it out, and apparently they had to go through all of the unions and stuff like that through the county. So, those cheerleaders, the people that did the lighting, they had to pay fucking everybody like it was a Sunday NFL game.
01:38:45
Speaker
Oh shit. Yeah, that cost a lot of money to put that on. That's why you got charged $50 for your fucking pay-per-view. Well worth it. And I heard on your guys' podcast, I will say I legitimately did end up paying the $50. And honestly, it was worth every penny.
01:39:08
Speaker
It was, I mean, they ended up giving us, what, like, I would say almost the Avengers endgame of pro wrestling.
Stadium Stampede: Broad Appeal
01:39:17
Speaker
It's a great comparison. Garrett, has there ever been a match you've gone back and watched this many times in a short period of time? Because you've seen it what now? Six times? I think after today, this was my seventh time seeing the match. Because I just keep wanting to show it to people. Because this is, I don't know, to me, this is one of the most accessible wrestling matches.
01:39:38
Speaker
I know for me, I watched it once. I watched it the first time. And I was away for that weekend with my wife. So I literally told all my friends. I wasn't looking at Twitter. I was looking at my text messages. As soon as I got home, I watched it once.
01:39:55
Speaker
Then I excitedly told my wife, I go, listen, I know you hate wrestling. But I'm telling you, you'll enjoy this. And then she goes, not interested. So then as she starts to make dinner, I just put it on anyway. And then I just go, just don't put your headphones on and listen to a podcast. Just humor me here.
01:40:21
Speaker
Then surely enough she stayed in the room for about 15 minutes of it then left had no interest, but I still watched it again I Will say this was one of the first times like I have a two-year-old daughter we watch a lot of wrestling together because She doesn't know how to control the television yet
01:40:45
Speaker
Eventually, she'll figure it out. But I don't generally push it on her. If I'm watching wrestling, she'll watch with me, but I'm not. This was maybe one of the first times where I watched the match, and then next day I was like, I'm gonna show this to my little one. She likes the elite. She likes the Young Bucks children's book a lot. And she was pretty into it, I think. I think she liked the horse, mostly.
01:41:12
Speaker
I think that's why I keep returning. The horse is amazing.
01:41:19
Speaker
I will say that I have only seen this, only seen this four times. And I have to say that the thing that gets better with each viewing is Ortiz's performance. Yes. He's my MVP in this match. My favorite part, and again, it's a homicide thing, so maybe this is just me, is after the pool bit with Matt Hardy, with LAX, or Pride and Powerful,
01:41:46
Speaker
Drowning him, he goes to the rep, or he goes to the rep and goes, he's dead! Count that! And he's just like, I just love that. He's bragging about murdering a man in cold blood on
Character Highlights in Stadium Stampede
01:42:00
Speaker
camera. Which was perfectly allowed in a stadium stampede match. Of course. It was the clearest day. No jury in the world would convict them. Also, his reaction to getting into the pool was fantastic. Like, really. That whole pool segment was fantastic.
01:42:17
Speaker
I think the pool and of course I mean we're gonna get it the bar. Yes is obviously the other the bar the whole bar thing the whole thing I mean You could you could I think you could make an argument for for hangman being the other MVP of this one Yeah, for sure. I think my daughter calls him hangman. Oh Gary who's your MVP after seven viewings? Honestly, LAX might be I
01:42:44
Speaker
Kind of giving it collectively to LAX. They were in so much of that match.
01:42:51
Speaker
I don't know, something about the referees and Jericho getting mad and challenging the fucking call and then the throwing of the penalty flag. Well, I think that's the key difference between money in the bank and this, is that all of the money in the bank were just these non-sequiturs that made no fucking sense. Whereas here, so much of the comedy was central to the whole concept. And the whole thing had a very good theme. It was this big,
01:43:17
Speaker
football theme from the beginning which was great when you had the inner circle coming out in the football pads and the jerseys with the numbers to the very end after the pinfall where the elite does a Gatorade bath. They keep the football theme up the entire time and that's what a lot of the humor goes back to and it totally works. Yeah and I think part of it with that is particularly with the challenge thing I noted like
01:43:39
Speaker
they just kind of go with it, where it felt like, especially watching this right after Money in the Bank, I feel like WWE would have been like, you can't challenge Jericho, you're stupid. This is a wrestling match. And it's like, no, no, no, we go with it, we follow out what's the logic of a challenge in a wrestling match, and we do it, and we see it, and it's funny.
Future of Cinematic Wrestling
01:43:59
Speaker
I also think, I will say one of the things I really like about this match and one of the things I think it might be the best is that it starts in the ring and the world expands out. Like they all meet in the middle. There's this moment and there's like a base of wrestling that then sort of expands. And I think that to me,
01:44:16
Speaker
Really worked. Well, let's not discard the fact that it does start much like a Braveheart style with them on opposite opposite sides of the football field charging each other and you see Kenny Omega What is he holding a rake a broom?
01:44:31
Speaker
Is it a broom room being the cleaner? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like you see a fucking grown man in wrestling tights charging like it's, it's, it's every shitty backyard match you've ever seen in your head playing out, but then turning into the greatest wrestling match. Yes. It was like, and then they were like, Oh shit, there's a wrestling ring here. Let's do what we get paid to do.
01:44:56
Speaker
I love my favorite part of that because Jared because JR loves talking about football so much That like the fact the inner circle came out in the helmets and had numbers and he's like let me start telling you about these numbers and then Tony Tony this is why Tony Schiavone and JR are friends because Tony Schiavone says
01:45:14
Speaker
Didn't Jake Hager play football at OU? And Jim Ross like, uh-huh, uh-huh, let me tell you about football at the suitors. Boomer suitor, boomer suitor. Have you ever heard about Chris Jericho? You ever heard about Dr. Jesse Williams? Number one in our hearts. I also just love that, you know, between this and Money in the Bank, they take all of this expense to have a wrestling ring on top of
01:45:40
Speaker
Titan towers and then in a football stadium respectively cost a lot of money. And I would say that between the two, there was a grand total of 90 seconds of actual in-ring action. Well, I think I made that comment on our podcast a few weeks back. I was like, it's funny. Somebody actually had to set up that fucking ring and the time it took to set up the ring was definitely longer than it, than the time spent in the ring. Oh, no doubt about it.
01:46:11
Speaker
That's just hilarious. So this is gonna be the talk for a while, right? Like I said earlier, this is gonna be the standard bearer. Well, it's the only one that had an Alex Wright dance in it. Well, again, I think it makes some of the best use of the cinematic aspect because it's a team match. They can sort of cut away and do these different vignettes in a way that flows
01:46:41
Speaker
And that, to me, is one of the best uses of the cinematic wrestling, right? That you have this option where you can say, yeah, we can just forget about these other guys for a while because our expectations are different. It's not like they're just laying outside the ring. And then allow them to do these things and have all of these interesting interactions that kind of hold together. Yeah, I think it's going to be the standard bearer because it's a lot of fun.
01:47:05
Speaker
Well, I hope it's not, because I hope it gets even better from here. Yeah, I was going to ask two things. Number one, did you have a moment when this match was starting? Was there ever a point where you were like, oh, fuck, this is going to be AEW's fucking king of the road match? I mean, was there a point where you were worried like there there's no way they're going to pull this off? And when it was over, now do you sit there and hope that there's another one?
01:47:34
Speaker
I would say before the match happened, I absolutely was petrified of that and kind of expected that to be honest. And I will say literally from the inner circles entrance on, I never had that concern for one second once the match started. It was a long match, but there's so much different stuff that happened and I loved every second of it.
01:47:54
Speaker
And I absolutely, I hope they do it again, but I hope they don't do it again soon and they wait until they have a good story and good ideas to do it again. So if they want to do it again next year.
01:48:04
Speaker
I would love that. Uh, they can't do it next pay-per-view. Oh, for sure. I don't even know if you can do it again next year. This was, and that's sort of where I get to take another dig at WWE. You can't do hell in a cell every year just because that time of the month has rolled. Like, you know what I mean? Like it's like, it's, it's, you can't do stadium stampede once a year just for the sake of doing it.
01:48:27
Speaker
Well, even more games, right? I mean, they did war games every year, but they had a reason to do it every year. And then in the later Bischoff years, they just kept doing it every year because it was on the calendar. And those ones, it went from being consistently the best match of the year to shit like instantly. Yeah.
01:48:46
Speaker
I also think there's something to the idea that they'll never replicate in terms of, I don't know about you guys, but I felt like Memorial Day weekend was like my like quarantine nadir. I was like, man, this sucks guys. This is like, and then so I was feeling kind of down. I'm enjoying the show and then I'm like, they got to this match and this was amazing. And I was like, that was like somehow exactly what I
Future Podcast Plans
01:49:12
Speaker
needed. Like I really needed this to be awesome.
01:49:17
Speaker
Well, it definitely surpassed all expectations. And guys, I'm going to be honest with you. I would love to that. I mean, that's like the most recent major AEW event. But I would love to just spend a whole episode with you guys talking about the first year of AEW. I mean, I'm free next week. You got anything going on? I think we should totally do that. I got time.
01:49:47
Speaker
Yeah, my calendar is shockingly open. Shockingly. Yeah. Surprisingly, there's not much going on out there. Yeah, I mean, I could talk about, I mean, all of the W's first year. Well, you remember this tag team match ever happened during the first year. I mean, I was penciling in watching every NJPW big show of 2013, but I could squeeze this into.
01:50:11
Speaker
Well, how about here's the thing. You guys don't have to crash our podcast next time. If you want to come have a discussion with us about wrestling, you can we can just schedule that and we can hang out. You don't have to, you know, interrupt us. I appreciate that you showed up with White Claw at least. Yeah, that's quite a few. We do listen to your show. We know that if we're going to be welcome. White Claw is the way to go. I think next time I might have a few like maybe one or two less white claws.
01:50:40
Speaker
I'm on my fifth if that makes anybody feel better. It does make me feel a little better on the deal. This has been fun guys. We've we've got a lot of things that we guys could all of us could team up and talk about. There's a lot of things we do.
01:51:00
Speaker
This is, uh, so if you guys like it, let us know. Uh, we are on Twitter, the curtain jerks curtain underscore jerks. Again, the best there ever was. And where can our listeners find you guys on social media? You want to take this one? Yeah. We're at predetermined podcast on Instagram. We're at wrestle hangout on Twitter. All right. So again, fans.
01:51:25
Speaker
Let us know if you're feeling this, if you've enjoyed it. We're going to do it again, even if you hated it. But you know, like, like cinematic wrestling, you know, we're going to get better at it because we have to now, right? Because that's the way the world is.
01:51:40
Speaker
I would love to get feedback from anybody who listened to this because I'd say I'd say we're we're on track to do several episodes of a podcast together with you guys. Yeah. And maybe by the time we get to through two or three more, maybe we want to hear from the people who've listened to it and see if they want to have something that we bring up like a like a recommendation.
01:52:05
Speaker
I would love that and I think also they should weigh in on next time should Garrett drink more or less white claws. Let's let them decide, Garrett. Don't deprive them if they want you on more white claws. That's true. That's true. Who am I to decide? I will offer that we will take questions and give romantic advice and we will not suggest anyone gets beat up when we give that romantic advice.
01:52:28
Speaker
That's true. Just so you know, the listener that we gave that advice to has never reached out to us again. So I... That's not true. That's not true. I have heard from the from the person who submitted their relationship question and they were deeply appreciative. See, I was wrong. Okay, that makes me feel better. I was worried that we ran them off.
01:52:52
Speaker
No, no, totally. I will actually share that with you momentarily. Jim, Chris, this has been awesome. You guys are fun to talk wrestling with. It's fun to talk wrestling with YouTube. Yeah. And normally we don't drink white claws during our podcast. So this was a refreshing change of pace that I enjoyed.
01:53:18
Speaker
Well, I'm glad you popped in and I'll see you guys next week. All right. Adios. See you. Hit our goddamn music. Maybe. Hit someone's goddamn music.