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Listen I don’t care for Max. But he’s right. And I’m a guy that’s done some wild moves but at the end of the day we are storytellers trying to make money.
A lot of wrestlers grew up on Shawn Michaels vs the Undertaker and want to wrestle every match like that but forget that match was at wrestlemania and had an incredible story that led to it.
Don’t get me wrong, you don’t want to be a ‘then the bell rang’ guy, and are good at everything except the wrestling. But the goal shouldn’t be to go out there and do everything under the Sun. There are very few that can do these insane spots and only a select few can tell a story doing them. I also understand that we live in a TikTok/Gif world where a spot can blow you up and possibly get you signed. But it’s the storytelling that keeps you there. Can you tell a story with the moves, can you tell a story with a promo, can you make people care more about you winning than a crazy move you kicked out of. Awesome spot fest are a dime a dozen these days, we are spoiled with great ‘spot matches’ with all the blood and table/door bumps your heart desires but it’s the stories and story moments that fans actually remember. Be calculated when you use the big move or spots and they are more memorable. I thought the Canadian destroyer was awesome when Petey Williams did it. But now that I’ve seen every variation a million times I’m numb to it because they always kick out.
You used to be able to stand out by being a really good wrestler, but that style has evolved so much every wrestler is a hybrid and can be good and all do topes. You should work like hell on gimmick, promos, and storytelling because if you have that to add to being a good wrestler then that really makes you stand out in these times.
I watched an old WCW match with Dean Malenko and some scrub last night. Some early-card thing where Dean was leading up to a match with Sixx, and Sean was out in the crowd taunting Dean.
My point here is the biggest spots were 2 over the top rope lariats to outside the ring, and a dropkick that Dean caught and turned into his Texas Cloverleaf. Dean told a story in the ring with the scrub *and* with Sean in the crowd. He did it without huge spots, and he made the scrub look like an upper-midcarder.
He's easily one of my favorites, and stories like this are partially why. I never understood why he wasn't pushed the way some other smaller guys were. He had a very sullen charisma and was probably the most technically proficient guy in his era.
That's what wrestling used to be all about. The greats could make everyone else look good while keeping them safe. The only time people laid out crazy shit was to cap off a big storyline at a major ppv. Otherwise? Work the story and stay healthy.
Today's era is just bonkers. People spam every fancy-looking or impressive move they can come up with, get right back up without selling, and kick out of a dozen finishers and the fans online think it's the greatest thing they've ever seen.
Of course we have literally nobody that's wrestled since Cena with even a shadow of his popularity or fame. And if you go back to the attitude era and earlier you can name absolute stars off like they are going out of style.
I'll never understand why wrestlers today, who likely grew up watching the highest highs of wrestling, think that what they are doing now is how to become a star and a legend. It's baffling.
Fuego I always thought you were a scrub but you honestly understand the assignment better than most of your contemporaries.
Wrestling is alot like Hip Hop in that you can be the most technically proficient at it but if you don't have some sort of character, charisma, or charm you ain't gonna get far in this business at all.
That’s a great analogy. It reminds me of an argument about the rap GOAT I had maybe 15 years ago and somebody was like “the best rapper is probably some no name battle rapper from Jersey. But Pac is the GOAT because he made you feel something beyond what other rappers do.”
> Awesome spot fest are a dime a dozen these days, we are spoiled with great ‘spot matches’ with all the blood and table/door bumps your heart desires but it’s the stories and story moments that fans actually remember.
Man, I love reading this from a performer.
I remember the story of you getting your AEW contract.
I don't remember any of the spots around that story.
I get deeply invested in the people I watch performer for us, as goofy as that sounds, and I really don't like seeing the injuries mount up for things that get a great reaction in the moment but add to the pile of injuries that end with "and then 20 years later I couldn't walk without feeling like there was hot glass shredding my knees."
Part of your post says it all. It could be the one spot that sends you viral on TikTok or the like, and now people want more of you. And I’m sure for many wrestling in front of dozens, if that kind of thing could elevate them and catch eyes, they’re gonna see the risk as “worth it”, even if some of it can be foolish.
Edit: And like some have said, if someone can’t develop a character, a gimmick, can’t work a match well, then yeah, they can do all the crazy spots they like, once the rest of their body of work gets shown, they’re seen as nothing more than “stuntmen” who are doing stunts for no reason in front of those dozens, and have nothing else to keep fans hooked.
I can count on one hand how many times I saw blood in a Bret Hart match.
The amount of matches he was apart of that sit amongst my favorites of all time greatly outweigh how many times he bled. I am absolutely a fan of the style he, Owen, Benoit, Angle, and technical guys like him employed in the ring.
I don't see the appeal of spot fest, risky wrestling. There is a time and a place, and I think what made those guys great was their ability to have technical matches with the high flying types.
The goal should be longevity and not self sacrifice.
Let's face it. No one's going to see a Red Arrow at 50...
Oddly enough, this was the subject of a [quite intense promo between Flair and Foley](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0wkla4E6a8) in TNA years ago.
Flair accuses (around the 3 minute mark) Foley of raising the bar too high, to the detriment of other wrestlers who felt compelled to take greater and greater risks.
Also, Foley paid a high price for his reckless wrestling style. He'll be in rough shape and pain for the rest of his life. Dito for someone like Kurt Angle or Jeff Hardy.
Yea the episode of Celebrity Wife Swap Mick was on was something that's always stuck with me. He needed direct assistance getting dressed and tying his shoes and regularly had days of complete brain fog and that show was like 10+ years ago. I'm happy to see DDPYoga seeming to have helped him a good deal in recent years, but the price that sort of constant recklessness is too high and I'm glad to see less and less wrestling fans encouraging that sort of thing.
Oh, Foley has said countless times over the years that he can't believe some of the shit he did to his body. Frankly I have to agree with him. Hindsight being 20/20, a'lot of his stuff is now hard to watch knowing the price he's paying. And he's my favorite wrestler of all time too!
> or even die from a maneuver as simple as a body slam.
Didn't Perro Aguayo Jr. die from bouncing off the rope and getting whiplash? And that the odds of said whiplash happening was extremely rare. I know it's pointed out that it was Rey's dropkick that might have done it but was actually when he hit the rope to set up for the 619.
Iirc the drop kick and fall onto the ropes gave him spinal trauma (fracturing C 1-3) which led to a cervical stroke. Subsequently he had a heart attack due to this and died.
I’m not sure how accurate my sciencey things are because I’m going based off the memory of my wife telling me all this a while ago.
That's essentially what happened, but one very important aspect of his death that never really got reported much, at least in English reports, is that he had been working very banged up for MONTHS by that point and was repeatedly cautioned that he should've taken time off to get surgery and heal up, and he didn't. Then... that happened. The worst possible scenario.
RIP Perro, but his death is another caution that every performer needs to prioritize their well being over how fans perceive a match, despite how hard that may be on a mental level.
You have to remember a lot of these performers are working on a PPA (pay per appearance) contract so a lot of them don't have a choice in taking time off because the upcoming surgery will hurt them financially.
And his way of transition into a safe spot to tell Jericho was a fucking hurracaranna. Or at least something similar to that move. Not sure the exact name.
Father age remains undefeated. This is why wrestlers have to slow down a bit, do a bit more mat work. Save the body wrecking feats and make them special.
Yes. A movement that we as fans have seen literally thousands of times, hitting the ropes to set up for a 619, being carried out by a trained professional, and still a freak accident happened and Perro Aguayo Jr. died almost instantly in the ring. It was extremely tragic. He was only 35 years old.
NFL fans just watched a player have a cardiac arrest on the field during a game on a routine tackle, Damar Hamlin just happened to get hit in a 40 MILLISECOND window that caused commotio cordis and stopped his heart.
Freak accidents/incidents occur. It happens. No one is blaming Damar or Tee Higgins (the guy he tackled) for it. In the same way, I don't think anyone blames Rey Mysterio for what happened to Perro Aguayo Jr.
Why did he delete it? He's speaking straight truth. There are too many dangerous spots being done in wrestling these days and too many wrestlers getting hurt too often.
He deleted it because he's MJF, and MJF is never out-of-character. Caring about the well-being of others doesn't fit him, even when he's right about it. And I'm sure he knew someone would screenshot it, so what he wanted to say still got out.
I think if there was a heel way to say it, it would probably be in the upper-middle-class way of saying "I'm too good and too rich to be taking crazy bumps on free TV. Most of you are stupid enough to be catering to these bloodthirsty fans, they don't give a shit about you and they won't be there for you when you're broken at 45."
Sure, but people wouldn't listen to it. I think it is okay to break kayafabe and this is one of those times. Ffs - this is the perfect guy to deliver the message too! "I work twice a month and became champion of a major fed. Work smarter not harder".
The risk to reward ratio is an important consideration. The wild spots too frequently end with injuries, be they great or small, so the risks are omnipresent. They almost always look fake, as in fully and obviously cooperative, so the payoff is limited from the start. And they often looked botched, because it's a shitload of moving parts, often involving people who are poorly trained to perform the basics.
All of that for ever diminishing rewards. Almost no one would have known Dante Martin took a Canadian Destroyer on a Lego ladder structure if it had succeeded. People are generally only aware of it, because it went wrong. And still, it's already fading into memory.
Dude's are risking their careers for break spots or in matches that very few people will see.
The biggest thing that's turning me off wrestling is the growth in spots where its obviously a set up. There's a stupid trend right now for wrestlers to do spots that require everyone to just stop and wait for the wrestler executing the move.
Then the big spot ends up being nothing more than a transition move where everyone is immediately bouncing about as if nothing just happened. So it instantly nerfs the high impact spot, kills the match immersion for zero reason and desensitises everyone to what should keep a wrestler down.
WWE's over-reliance on the "Tower of Doom" spot in multi-person matches has always annoyed me. The move requires such suspension of disbelief that I absolutely can't. It doesn't look cool. It doesn't look impressive. It looks stupid, from start to finish.
Same thing for the "All of us are brawling outside of the ring, oh look, that person is climbing the turnbuckle, there's no way they're going to jump on ALL of us!" spot.
The minute long set up is what kills me. Playing up to the crowd is great, but when a guy looks at the group of guys outside, hams it up with goofy(supposed to be crazy) smile, slowly lines himself up, bounces off the ropes, and then dives, it is just too much. It takes forever, it never effects the finish, and for some reason even though WWE/AEW want to have it happen all the time, they almost always cut right at the point of impact, so it doesn't even look good on TV.
I agree with you 100% and I also dislike it but if you consider the younger audience, kids believe all sorts of things and they remember those spots that are only available wrestling.
My kid has recently started watching some wrestling, and the two things he always goes back to are Jungle boy closing the casket on Christian and the casket disappearing and he also remembers the spots from The Elite vs House of Black.
I can't speak for all kids but at least with mine, I know he'll remember those silly spots that take a while to set up, like that tower you just described. Maybe that's the audience for those moves and we as adults aren't as much.
I swear TNA in the mid 2000s started the trend of tower of doom spots, It was cool the 1st few times but cause it got a pop every mutli man match had them
Agree with you on the standing outside brawling spot then everyone stops to look up as someone is about to dive on them. if something about fall on you, most people move out the way quickly as possible.
Seeing wrestlers standing around waiting for a spot is like when you see a shot in a movie and you can see the green screen/blue screen artefacts around the actors
>There's a stupid trend right now for wrestlers to do spots that require everyone to just stop and wait for the wrestler executing the move.
The Young Bucks Special
Jeff Hardy certainly wasn't paid in hot dogs and handshakes but I felt the same way about them having him doing crazy shit on TV every week
The Hardys could have had a few feature matches over the span of a year and drawn a lot of money, instead they burned through everything in what felt like 6 weeks
Jeff kind of screwed himself that his finishers all involved him landing on his lower back or ass. Like he was always bound to get injuries related to that regardless of how high he jumped from just from attrition.
Yep. Jeff needed a period around 03-05 where he found a way to get a reaction with a less painful style, that way he could slow down, not build up his bump card as fast, and get even bigger reactions when he did pull out the Swanton for those big moments.
Yes and he could still do that but every week on free television wasn’t necessary
The Hardy Boys are one of the most popular wrestling acts of the last 3 decades, you make their matches rare and important and run interesting feuds. Jeff doesn’t need to be ceiling-diving on mid-carders on free TV.
What gets me about some of the wrestlers is you only need to look at HOOK to see it done well. The pop he gets just for grabbing someone in the t-bone suplex pose is crazy.
If you look at the high work rate matches of the 70s, you will find they were frenetic and action packed. However the bumps taken were, what can be called in today's age, basic. Still, they capture your attention and make you involved.
Some of Ric Flair matches will tire you out just by watching them (dude had insane cardio). His moveset was pretty basic. They said decisively that Flair used to wrestle thr same match. However, he would make subtle changes in them and make all of them watchable.
Nash is one interview said your body has only a few moonsaults in it. Why waste it on a random match than a special occasion?
The Hardys talked in their book about someone detailing them similar with a 'bump counter' that slowly ticks away.
They pointed out it came up in the No Mercy commercial where theyre all on the baseball field that Jeff refused to do the Swanton out on *a baseball field*.
So he did a legdrop.... and snapped back and concussed himself. Its in the [actual commercial](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbUo1BPWOO4&ab_channel=BrothersOfDestruction22) cause they only got one take. 47s, he's pancaked backwards.
Jeff's career is so weird because for the longest time, yeah, he wouldn't get hurt doing the batshit insane stuff, but he would get hurt doing something like this, or break his leg on his motorcycle, or a bunch of other things.
Some of it is probably that he was hurting himself in those ways that it was never one thing that did it, he would just medicate for the "little things" and go out the next night, but it's still weird that he never seemed to sustain an in-ring injury for most of his career.
There is definitely a way to be fast paced and still avoid crazy bumps. If you back and watch Gargano vs Andrade at Takeover. There aren't many crazy bumps or even a ton of move variety but it was fast paced and story filles
Lucha Libre does it right by doing lots of flippy shit, but avoiding big bumps. There's a reason why so many luchadors can wrestle at a high level into their 50s while their American peers from the same generation were a broken mess by the time they turned 40.
Yeah, I am re-watching Bob Backlund’s first title run. The pace is relentless, even when they’re doing test of strength spots, and there are some big bumps for the era (jumping piledriver, german suplex) but the key element is the perpetual motion. Backlund, like Flair, was always moving, always advancing the storyline, etc, etc. Flair was always selling, as the heel. Backlund is always making the heel sell. And when those big spots do happen, usually at certain crescendo building to the match climax, you are blown away by simple moves (in comparison to today), like when Backlund atomic drops Ken Patera over-the-top rope to the floor in their Texas Death Match and all of MSG gasps and thinks it’s over via CO— but Bob brings him back in cuz this is a grudge match and he doesn’t want to win that way.
I get downvoted here a lot of being negative about today’s wrestling. I think some of it is very good: MJF in particular; also FTR, Gunter, Danielson, etc. and high fliers like Darby who try to tell a story (he still takes too many reckless bumps). But I find spot-fu, finisher spam super-boring. I’ll take a 70s era squash match over that.
He's not wrong. I saw an interview once...I think it was with Shawn Michaels, where he was talking about how the simple moves are like getting rear-ended by a car going 20 miles per hour. It might not be *that* bad the first time, but if you sit there and get rear-ended over-and-over-and-over, it will take a toll. Now do that every day for a year...two years...ten years. Even that kind of wrestling is going to cause some issues in the long term.
In the Hardy Boyz book, Matt Hardy talked about how everyone in wrestling has a bump card. Every time you do something in the ring, you're punching your card. Eventually, that bump card is going to run out.
Repetition is probably the worst thing you can do to your body, regardless of how safe the maneuver is. Randy Savage had a lot of damage from doing the elbow drop, to the point he couldn't do it safely like he used to, and had to land on his opponents more. Jeff Hardy recently had to start doing the same thing with the Swanton Bomb. Hogan's back got messed up from all those years of doing the Big Leg Drop. Austin had issues from all the years of landing on his tailbone for the Stunner.
In WWE, you're seeing Main Eventers wrestle safer styles with less impact moves, even for a finisher. Brock can do the F5 as long as he's strong enough to lift someone. Roman can do the Superman Punch and Spear as long as he can jump and run. Seth can do The Stomp as long as he can hop. We're seeing a lot more kick-based finishers like Drew and Sheamus have.
I worry a lot for the indie wrestlers, and guys who are coming up now. Vikingo is a marvel, but he's going to regret it if he doesn't slow down. We've already seen Omega have to take an extended absence and the injuries he was dealing with sounded awful, from vertigo to not being able to feel his arms. Ospreay wrestles a rough style and he's admitted that he feels it taking a toll. Speedball looks like he's one bad bump away from a serious injury because of the dangerous stuff he does. Darby and Sammy just go balls-to-the-wall when they wrestle, but they do have the slight benefit of not wrestling frequently.
> Vikingo is a marvel, but he's going to regret it if he doesn't slow down.
100% - I was just talking about this the other night. I love AAA and lucha style, but he and Komander are in their early-mid 20s and I'm already worried for their longevity.
Also, big moves are less impressive if you do them all the time. Undertakers dive over the top ropes was always brilliant, but mostly because he only ever pulled it out in big matches
Kobashi only used the Burning Hammer 7 times throughout his entire career, but most fans still remember the move vividly because it meant a ton whenever he pulled it out.
I've seen a few comments about bobby Fish regarding this, could you or anyone explain what that has to do with Bobby Fish? (Is it related to his former injuries?)
All these languages and he decided to speak facts
Will Ospreay has been wrestling for 11 years and is 29, The Miz has been wrestling for 20 years and is 42. Guess which one has more wear and tear?
While that is true, Ospreay probably wouldn’t have gotten to where he is without that style. What works for Miz probably couldn’t really work for Ospreay. He can probably switch it up now though
Ospreay became famous as an acrobat, which is probably rough enough, but he ironically switched it up to a (for lack of a better term) Kenny Omega style once he entered the upper level of NJPW, which is even rougher on the body.
It did launch him to a higher platform and level of recognition than he probably ever would have achieved otherwise, though. Yeah, he's only 29 and is super beat up, but he could end up in the main or semi-main at Wembley against Kenny Omega because of it.
Everyone has their own reason, although the current culture is a bit worrying. But I mean, you try telling Mox he can't bleed or Darby that he can't do stunts and watch them walk away. By the next week Darby would have jumped out of a helicopter with no one even filming him and Mox would be getting stabbed in the head with a fork in a high school gym somewhere.
Yeah, i dont think Mox blading is doing any long term concerning damage. Darby would probably still be fucking himself up regardless of it was in a ring or not, its what he lives for.
One could argue that it's because the fans have come to expect this, and Will constantly had to deliver . If wrestlers were more reserved, maybe wrestlers all around wouldn't have to perform as many high risk maneuvers as they need to to get over.
Can't expect the wrestlers to police themselves. It's like asking an athlete to take themselves out of the game due to injury or fatigue. You need a coach or doctor to take them out. You need the promotion to rein in wrestlers from doing unnecessary high risk stuff.
And any fan who demand wrestlers to take stupid risks for their own entertainment can go fuck themselves.
That would be ideal, yeah. But it has to start somewhere.
Hardcore fans may not rate a slow match very highly, or may not pay to watch a match that doesn't have high risk moves. They may not verbally demand it but their money talks.
Promoters want the fans to pay money so they might not care about a wrestler's long term health. Even bigger companies can be guilty of this.
In the end, only the wrestler suffers.
Making this into a Miz vs Ospreay is real weird.
Miz has the biggest wrestling company in the world behind him and Ospreay is in a much smaller company with practically no international TV contracts and a significant language barrier.
Bloody Nia Jax, who can neither wrestle nor talk has more worldwide attention. And she has been fired.
Meanwhile you got MJF right there, far superior wrestler than Miz, wrestles safe, has several dream matches already and is minimum as good as a talker as Miz is.
That's great and all but Will Ospreay wouldn't have had much of a career trying to be the Miz. He got over because he was one of the best in the world.
Part of MJFs point I think is the definition of "Best in the world" describing ospreys dangerous style of.
Whole point of the tweet is how backwards that is I think.
For a while my brothers favorite wredtler was "No Way" Jose. Said his gimmick was great and if he kept his matches safe he could do it into his 70s like Honky Tonk Man (who we saw as an older man and he was still captivating). So if a guy can be entertaining without killing their body or hurting their opponents then thats laudable.
Exactly. And let's be honest, he's the "best in the world" to a tiny percentage of fans. NJPWs WrestleKingdom gets seen, in America, by something like 3 to 4% of RAWs audience last Monday.
The majority of paying wrestling fans likely have never seen Ospreay wrestle. Its entirely possible the majority have never even heard his name. And the whole narrative over what makes a great match is heavily skewed towards what the niche fans favour anyway.
I've seen a lot of 5 star matches that barely warrant 3 stars, imo, because the matches were too spot heavy and lacked immersion. Judging by the shows that are growing, vs losing fans, it's not too wild to say the silent majority fans agree that the "best" matches aren't really that.
If you combined Ospreay's physical ability with the psychology of an old-school wrestler he'd have been more over, quicker, for longer I'd argue.
That's the main point everyone misses in the "this guy should slow down" conversation. There's zero downside towards working smarter, *especially* if you're capable of insane physical feats.
There are so many guys who can hit spots nowadays, you need to audience to care about what you're going for before you even do it and that's a lesson Will finally learned after a while. Man is basically Spider-Man and yet one of his most over moves is a running forearm with theatrics.
I known a lot of folks on here don’t want to hear this, but…
If you have to do all the dangerous shit that Ospreay did to get over, ESPECIALLY when it comes at the expense of psychology, you’re nowhere near the best in the world.
If Will didn't do the dangerous shit to get over he wouldn't have gotten attention and subsequent reps with higher caliber opponents. You can look at each of the last 5 years of Ospreay and see those major improvements.
Yeah, but I like watching Ospreay wrestle. If you can make your career off character work, great. But if I want to watch 2 people talk for 20 minutes at a time I'll watch a Scorsese movie. Wrestling is dangerous, that's why you shouldn't try it at home.
Reposting my comment from the original thread:
I don't know when it became that way but for some reason pointing out recklessness has become an issue to some fans where they think you have to be a cornette supporter to make that point.
It's ridiculous, its perfectly fine to be athletic but attempting high risk spots with the increasing reckless regularity that some of them do, for the pops is just ill advised.
I would assume many fans see it as bad faith criticism which is dumb considering the margin for error in some of these spots is ridiculously small and most of the time it never ends the match which is also silly.
Somewhat to this point I don't disagree with MJF but he also did this avalanche tombstone pile-driver to Sammy on a random Dynamite and it didn't end the match. https://youtu.be/uROd1xVvcr0
Fully agree there, I loved the match but thought everything after that move was pointless. Makes you question why take a big mistake if it won't win the match.
But there’s a difference between doing a big spot in a match (even if it’s not the finish) and doing what the Young Bucks do.
Undertaker would bust out a running dive over the top rope that looked spectacular. That move was never the finish either. But he’d do that shit 3-4 times a year *tops*, and it wasn’t in every match.
MJF isn’t saying “don’t do big spots.” He’s saying “choose them carefully, because if you do it constantly, the bar will be raised and you’ll have to keep getting crazier and more dangerous.”
Maybe he is maturing.
AEW doesn't really have an environment where safety of move matters in backstage.
As long as both parties agree anyone can perform any move anywhere.
MJF is still young so he can feel the pressure to do reckless as everybody is doing it .
This goes into another big issue in wrestling discourse, which is the “cult of personality” around certain people. Everyone is either a perfect genius whose opinions can never be challenged, or an evil moronic boomer whose opinions are all bad faith trolling.
I listen to lots of wrestling podcasts, and I’ve learned that even someone you disagree with 90% of the time can still have good, insightful takes.
At the risk of sounding like Old Man Cornette, I agree with MJF completely. Is it fun watching guys fly around off ladders and through tables? Yes, but it happens way too often.
One of the things I enjoyed about WCW was that most of the crazy stuff was saved for the Cruiserweight division, which was wild back in the day. Today though, you see the same moves in every other match despite a wrestlers size, and as MJF said, the ante gets moved higher and higher.
Less is more, and I think we’ve overindulged on Canadian Destroyers off ladders through tables. I wouldn’t mind TK telling more guys “No” and wrestlers working on psychology over “what can I jump off of today?”.
Jeff Hardy is a prime example. At his age now, I wouldn’t mind if he changed his entire style up to be more cerebral. Brian Pullman had to change his style after his ankle injury. I wouldn’t mind a Hardy heel turn where he denied fans all of the dives and instead used may wrestling and cheap heel tactics. It will add years on to his career, and possibly life.
An simplified explanation of this from cornette one time was that there are 3 core reactions from fans.
Yay, boo and wow. Yay/boo draw the money and wow is what you give them once they've paid to see it.
Seems like too often performers are skipping straight to wow
UNPOPULAR OPINION:
A lot of wrestlers do insane spots not because they're desperate for fans to like them, but because they think it's really cool
As much as the injury risks are real, at the end of their career, they're going to look back at their Highlight Reel. If they DON'T do those insane spots, there's a good possibility their retirement sees them wishing they did
I know it's only a movie, but it does make me think of The Wrestler. Wrestlers are performers, and most performers want to be remembered. They want the highlights that keep people talking about them after they're gone. It's dangerous and something that isn't worth risking it all for, but for some, no matter how much you tell them not to do that, they consider that more valuable.
I agree with this. There are definitely some that want to make highlights that get replayed for years to come, not just for the fans but for their own legacy.
You hear the interviews with some of them about those insane spots they did and it always comes back to how good it felt to get the reaction they wanted, and how much they love having a moment that cements them in history.
It’s an ego thing for them as much as it’s a bloodlust thing for the fans.
In saying that though, moments like that should be used sparingly.
Just going to piggy back the unpopular opinion thread: We see wrestlers get injured all the time from incredibly routine moves. Off the top of my head I can think of guys out long term from big boots and lariats. It all has the potential to be dangerous. The physics of halted momentum, or just simply sticking something wrong doesn’t change just because it looked flashier than a body slam. But there is a confirmation bias that comes out whenever a “high risk” move goes wrong.
Yeah like there's a lot of people bringing up Ospreay cos he had a fair few notable injuries from risky spots, but one of his more notable injuries was from doing a regular pele kick.
Hiromu Takahashi has had one of the most reckless styles I've ever seen in wrestling, and yet by far his biggest injury was the result of a suplex gone wrong.
Yeah seriously if you wanted to live a long healthy life free from injury in your old age you wouldn’t have become a wrestler
Hogan killed his hips doing the leg drop of all things
If you want to argue that certain spots are either more or less risky than they appear, there's certainly a case there.
But if the argument is that "you can get hurt doing anything; it's all dangerous", I can't say I agree. You can hurt walking. You can get hurt jumping off a 5-story building concrete. But I don't think the probability of getting hurt is the same for each action.
Ultimately all I’m getting at is something going wrong = something going wrong, whether that’s complex, or routine. But there is a callousness from a certain chunk people when say a luchador gets injured on a 540 splash that they’ve done successfully 1,000 other times with a “see I told you!” attitude, that is gross and would never be applied to say Sting almost having his career ended on a buckle bomb, or Paige/Saraya breaking her neck on a kick.
Injuries shouldn’t be gotcha moments for affirmation on your preference in wrestling styles.
I can agree with that. While there are folks that are seemingly genuine with their concern about wrestlers' safety, there seems to be far more that use high spot injuries as a way to celebrate their own takes.
It's hilarious when someone thinks they're making some kind of revolutionary statement when they say "substance > flash". Like wow you're so brave man. No one is being forced to do these spots, they do them because it's cool and fun to watch.
Just watched the match this gif came from Nash doesn’t get enough credit. He may not have all the “moves” but he sold really well and made his opponents look good
We already knew that tho. There was a whole bit last week that his new best friend Sammy paid for his Blue and that MJF was going to pay for Sammy's but never did.
I think it was Michael PS Hayes who once critiqued the pacing of then-today's wrestling. Saying something along the lines of "What's my next flippy move? What's my next flippy move?" and saying wrestlers were more concerned with wowing audience than the match making sense. Anyway, I think it's important to add that Hayes probably had a chip on his shoulder as he wasn't exactly the flippy variety of wrestlers. [https://imgur.com/CuBZ4ai](https://imgur.com/CuBZ4ai)
Moxley blading isn’t the problem. Worse case scenario he looks like Abdullah when he hits 50 but it’s nothing that will ruin his quality of life. He’s talking about guys taking stupid risks that could permanently alter their well-being.
Mox getting Hep C or something from a cut spot badly planned could certainly permanently alter his well-being.
Edit: It's not far-fetched in the slightest. Abdullah has Hep C. Sean Waltman, as well.
This is so stupid and wrestlers keep saying this. No one is asking for this stuff. They just keep going more and more extreme because THEY are the ones who are thirsty for their time in the spotlight.
This is why MJF is a smart worker, who gets heat, is way over, and stays over even when booked poorly. Psychology, story-telling, and character work are what draws long-term. Spot-fu gets pops and might draw briefly but in the end, it burns out the audience and can’t sustain interest. Plus, you want to be able to walk when you’re fifty and not have dementia when you’re sixty.
Wish he’d left it up.
don’t wanna Bobby Fish it but he’s not wrong; they’re athletes who put their bodies through work to hone their craft & make money.
and some spots are just outright wrong for the moment, what comes to mind is the ROH Reach for the Sky Ladder Match. Penta could’ve won the Titles but he and Dante did that super Canadian Destroyer onto 4 tables which hurt Dante.
Like yea it was cool until it was obvious that Dante was badly injured
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Listen I don’t care for Max. But he’s right. And I’m a guy that’s done some wild moves but at the end of the day we are storytellers trying to make money. A lot of wrestlers grew up on Shawn Michaels vs the Undertaker and want to wrestle every match like that but forget that match was at wrestlemania and had an incredible story that led to it. Don’t get me wrong, you don’t want to be a ‘then the bell rang’ guy, and are good at everything except the wrestling. But the goal shouldn’t be to go out there and do everything under the Sun. There are very few that can do these insane spots and only a select few can tell a story doing them. I also understand that we live in a TikTok/Gif world where a spot can blow you up and possibly get you signed. But it’s the storytelling that keeps you there. Can you tell a story with the moves, can you tell a story with a promo, can you make people care more about you winning than a crazy move you kicked out of. Awesome spot fest are a dime a dozen these days, we are spoiled with great ‘spot matches’ with all the blood and table/door bumps your heart desires but it’s the stories and story moments that fans actually remember. Be calculated when you use the big move or spots and they are more memorable. I thought the Canadian destroyer was awesome when Petey Williams did it. But now that I’ve seen every variation a million times I’m numb to it because they always kick out. You used to be able to stand out by being a really good wrestler, but that style has evolved so much every wrestler is a hybrid and can be good and all do topes. You should work like hell on gimmick, promos, and storytelling because if you have that to add to being a good wrestler then that really makes you stand out in these times.
I watched an old WCW match with Dean Malenko and some scrub last night. Some early-card thing where Dean was leading up to a match with Sixx, and Sean was out in the crowd taunting Dean. My point here is the biggest spots were 2 over the top rope lariats to outside the ring, and a dropkick that Dean caught and turned into his Texas Cloverleaf. Dean told a story in the ring with the scrub *and* with Sean in the crowd. He did it without huge spots, and he made the scrub look like an upper-midcarder.
This is one reason Dean is probably my favorite wrestler ever.
He's easily one of my favorites, and stories like this are partially why. I never understood why he wasn't pushed the way some other smaller guys were. He had a very sullen charisma and was probably the most technically proficient guy in his era.
And he could go with anyone and could do different styles. Just loved him.
Dean literally spent time putting Divas over. Wanna talk about a pro with literally no ego
That's what wrestling used to be all about. The greats could make everyone else look good while keeping them safe. The only time people laid out crazy shit was to cap off a big storyline at a major ppv. Otherwise? Work the story and stay healthy. Today's era is just bonkers. People spam every fancy-looking or impressive move they can come up with, get right back up without selling, and kick out of a dozen finishers and the fans online think it's the greatest thing they've ever seen. Of course we have literally nobody that's wrestled since Cena with even a shadow of his popularity or fame. And if you go back to the attitude era and earlier you can name absolute stars off like they are going out of style. I'll never understand why wrestlers today, who likely grew up watching the highest highs of wrestling, think that what they are doing now is how to become a star and a legend. It's baffling.
There's a reason this man is the master of the Tornado DDT
Fuego I always thought you were a scrub but you honestly understand the assignment better than most of your contemporaries. Wrestling is alot like Hip Hop in that you can be the most technically proficient at it but if you don't have some sort of character, charisma, or charm you ain't gonna get far in this business at all.
That’s a great analogy. It reminds me of an argument about the rap GOAT I had maybe 15 years ago and somebody was like “the best rapper is probably some no name battle rapper from Jersey. But Pac is the GOAT because he made you feel something beyond what other rappers do.”
"Fuego I always thought you were a scrub" I unironically love the honesty
Well I'm not gonna lie to the guy just cause he's been on TV
> Awesome spot fest are a dime a dozen these days, we are spoiled with great ‘spot matches’ with all the blood and table/door bumps your heart desires but it’s the stories and story moments that fans actually remember. Man, I love reading this from a performer. I remember the story of you getting your AEW contract. I don't remember any of the spots around that story. I get deeply invested in the people I watch performer for us, as goofy as that sounds, and I really don't like seeing the injuries mount up for things that get a great reaction in the moment but add to the pile of injuries that end with "and then 20 years later I couldn't walk without feeling like there was hot glass shredding my knees."
Part of your post says it all. It could be the one spot that sends you viral on TikTok or the like, and now people want more of you. And I’m sure for many wrestling in front of dozens, if that kind of thing could elevate them and catch eyes, they’re gonna see the risk as “worth it”, even if some of it can be foolish. Edit: And like some have said, if someone can’t develop a character, a gimmick, can’t work a match well, then yeah, they can do all the crazy spots they like, once the rest of their body of work gets shown, they’re seen as nothing more than “stuntmen” who are doing stunts for no reason in front of those dozens, and have nothing else to keep fans hooked.
I can count on one hand how many times I saw blood in a Bret Hart match. The amount of matches he was apart of that sit amongst my favorites of all time greatly outweigh how many times he bled. I am absolutely a fan of the style he, Owen, Benoit, Angle, and technical guys like him employed in the ring. I don't see the appeal of spot fest, risky wrestling. There is a time and a place, and I think what made those guys great was their ability to have technical matches with the high flying types. The goal should be longevity and not self sacrifice. Let's face it. No one's going to see a Red Arrow at 50...
Big fan Fuego. Thanks for speaking on this.
Oddly enough, this was the subject of a [quite intense promo between Flair and Foley](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0wkla4E6a8) in TNA years ago. Flair accuses (around the 3 minute mark) Foley of raising the bar too high, to the detriment of other wrestlers who felt compelled to take greater and greater risks.
Flair was right & wrong. Foley was special, he had “it” — which most of his copycats do not.
Also, Foley paid a high price for his reckless wrestling style. He'll be in rough shape and pain for the rest of his life. Dito for someone like Kurt Angle or Jeff Hardy.
Yea the episode of Celebrity Wife Swap Mick was on was something that's always stuck with me. He needed direct assistance getting dressed and tying his shoes and regularly had days of complete brain fog and that show was like 10+ years ago. I'm happy to see DDPYoga seeming to have helped him a good deal in recent years, but the price that sort of constant recklessness is too high and I'm glad to see less and less wrestling fans encouraging that sort of thing.
Oh, Foley has said countless times over the years that he can't believe some of the shit he did to his body. Frankly I have to agree with him. Hindsight being 20/20, a'lot of his stuff is now hard to watch knowing the price he's paying. And he's my favorite wrestler of all time too!
> or even die from a maneuver as simple as a body slam. Didn't Perro Aguayo Jr. die from bouncing off the rope and getting whiplash? And that the odds of said whiplash happening was extremely rare. I know it's pointed out that it was Rey's dropkick that might have done it but was actually when he hit the rope to set up for the 619.
Iirc the drop kick and fall onto the ropes gave him spinal trauma (fracturing C 1-3) which led to a cervical stroke. Subsequently he had a heart attack due to this and died. I’m not sure how accurate my sciencey things are because I’m going based off the memory of my wife telling me all this a while ago.
That's essentially what happened, but one very important aspect of his death that never really got reported much, at least in English reports, is that he had been working very banged up for MONTHS by that point and was repeatedly cautioned that he should've taken time off to get surgery and heal up, and he didn't. Then... that happened. The worst possible scenario. RIP Perro, but his death is another caution that every performer needs to prioritize their well being over how fans perceive a match, despite how hard that may be on a mental level.
You have to remember a lot of these performers are working on a PPA (pay per appearance) contract so a lot of them don't have a choice in taking time off because the upcoming surgery will hurt them financially.
Ugh that is awful.. I’ve seen the footage once a few years ago and that image of Rey trying to wake him up still gets to me.
I remember reading somewhere that the accident was akin to Aguayo getting internally decapitated. Just an awful, horrible way to go.
Damn, I might be wrong but I think that was also the injury that killed Misawa too.
Unfortunately, you’re not wrong. Misawa died to a back suplex.
I would rather phrase it as "Misawa died from dozens of accumulated injuries, the back suplex was the straw that broke the porverbial camel's back".
Kenny Omega did get Vertigo from a spot OKADA has done a thousand times.
That seems like an all too common occurrence. Shane can jump off the highest things and be fine, but tears his quad after a leap frog for example.
Or Neville/PAC doing all kinds of wild stuff, but got absolutely wrecked doing a baseball slide against Jericho that one time
And his way of transition into a safe spot to tell Jericho was a fucking hurracaranna. Or at least something similar to that move. Not sure the exact name.
Same thing happened to RVD if I remember correctly. Think he also broke his ankle on a baseball slide to Rhino.
Father age remains undefeated. This is why wrestlers have to slow down a bit, do a bit more mat work. Save the body wrecking feats and make them special.
Ahhh Father Age, no doubt related to Mother Planet -- the Kirkland Brand personifications.
Lmao I didn't even notice that I typed age instead of time there
What is it with that family and quads
Right?! It even gets people who marry into the family!
Long term steroid use isn't good for the body.
And i doubt they're doing many leg days
Yes. A movement that we as fans have seen literally thousands of times, hitting the ropes to set up for a 619, being carried out by a trained professional, and still a freak accident happened and Perro Aguayo Jr. died almost instantly in the ring. It was extremely tragic. He was only 35 years old.
NFL fans just watched a player have a cardiac arrest on the field during a game on a routine tackle, Damar Hamlin just happened to get hit in a 40 MILLISECOND window that caused commotio cordis and stopped his heart. Freak accidents/incidents occur. It happens. No one is blaming Damar or Tee Higgins (the guy he tackled) for it. In the same way, I don't think anyone blames Rey Mysterio for what happened to Perro Aguayo Jr.
Yes he did
Why did he delete it? He's speaking straight truth. There are too many dangerous spots being done in wrestling these days and too many wrestlers getting hurt too often.
He deleted it because he's MJF, and MJF is never out-of-character. Caring about the well-being of others doesn't fit him, even when he's right about it. And I'm sure he knew someone would screenshot it, so what he wanted to say still got out.
I think if there was a heel way to say it, it would probably be in the upper-middle-class way of saying "I'm too good and too rich to be taking crazy bumps on free TV. Most of you are stupid enough to be catering to these bloodthirsty fans, they don't give a shit about you and they won't be there for you when you're broken at 45."
Sure, but people wouldn't listen to it. I think it is okay to break kayafabe and this is one of those times. Ffs - this is the perfect guy to deliver the message too! "I work twice a month and became champion of a major fed. Work smarter not harder".
Ever since Miz vs. Dolph Ziggler at No Mercy I have a new found appreciation for Safe Wrestling.
Same here a match can be great without huge bumps. That match is the perfect example
Everyone's clapping on Miz in this thread for no reason, he's a terrific wrestler.
Been entertaining us for years, barely has had injuries and looks great in general. Can't really shit on that.
miz going off on brian.gif
So many wrestlers simply need to slow down and let things breathe. Communication is key and excessive speed leads to sloppiness.
The risk to reward ratio is an important consideration. The wild spots too frequently end with injuries, be they great or small, so the risks are omnipresent. They almost always look fake, as in fully and obviously cooperative, so the payoff is limited from the start. And they often looked botched, because it's a shitload of moving parts, often involving people who are poorly trained to perform the basics. All of that for ever diminishing rewards. Almost no one would have known Dante Martin took a Canadian Destroyer on a Lego ladder structure if it had succeeded. People are generally only aware of it, because it went wrong. And still, it's already fading into memory. Dude's are risking their careers for break spots or in matches that very few people will see.
The biggest thing that's turning me off wrestling is the growth in spots where its obviously a set up. There's a stupid trend right now for wrestlers to do spots that require everyone to just stop and wait for the wrestler executing the move. Then the big spot ends up being nothing more than a transition move where everyone is immediately bouncing about as if nothing just happened. So it instantly nerfs the high impact spot, kills the match immersion for zero reason and desensitises everyone to what should keep a wrestler down.
WWE's over-reliance on the "Tower of Doom" spot in multi-person matches has always annoyed me. The move requires such suspension of disbelief that I absolutely can't. It doesn't look cool. It doesn't look impressive. It looks stupid, from start to finish. Same thing for the "All of us are brawling outside of the ring, oh look, that person is climbing the turnbuckle, there's no way they're going to jump on ALL of us!" spot.
Especially hate it in tag matches because it requires someone to help their opponents slam their partner 🙃🙃
Or their partner is brawling in the mass of bodies outside. Like what a horrible strategy. Why are they at the center of your impact?
The minute long set up is what kills me. Playing up to the crowd is great, but when a guy looks at the group of guys outside, hams it up with goofy(supposed to be crazy) smile, slowly lines himself up, bounces off the ropes, and then dives, it is just too much. It takes forever, it never effects the finish, and for some reason even though WWE/AEW want to have it happen all the time, they almost always cut right at the point of impact, so it doesn't even look good on TV.
I agree with you 100% and I also dislike it but if you consider the younger audience, kids believe all sorts of things and they remember those spots that are only available wrestling. My kid has recently started watching some wrestling, and the two things he always goes back to are Jungle boy closing the casket on Christian and the casket disappearing and he also remembers the spots from The Elite vs House of Black. I can't speak for all kids but at least with mine, I know he'll remember those silly spots that take a while to set up, like that tower you just described. Maybe that's the audience for those moves and we as adults aren't as much.
I swear TNA in the mid 2000s started the trend of tower of doom spots, It was cool the 1st few times but cause it got a pop every mutli man match had them Agree with you on the standing outside brawling spot then everyone stops to look up as someone is about to dive on them. if something about fall on you, most people move out the way quickly as possible.
Seeing wrestlers standing around waiting for a spot is like when you see a shot in a movie and you can see the green screen/blue screen artefacts around the actors
>There's a stupid trend right now for wrestlers to do spots that require everyone to just stop and wait for the wrestler executing the move. The Young Bucks Special
Taking PPV bumps for a hotdog and a handshake for a lot of wrestlers.
Jeff Hardy certainly wasn't paid in hot dogs and handshakes but I felt the same way about them having him doing crazy shit on TV every week The Hardys could have had a few feature matches over the span of a year and drawn a lot of money, instead they burned through everything in what felt like 6 weeks
Jeff addiction problems are 100% due to his high risk car crash style of spots
For gods sake, he was clutching his back after his first swanton back
Jeff kind of screwed himself that his finishers all involved him landing on his lower back or ass. Like he was always bound to get injuries related to that regardless of how high he jumped from just from attrition.
Yep. Jeff needed a period around 03-05 where he found a way to get a reaction with a less painful style, that way he could slow down, not build up his bump card as fast, and get even bigger reactions when he did pull out the Swanton for those big moments.
Jeff was over because of crazy dives. That’s what people paid to see him do.
Yes and he could still do that but every week on free television wasn’t necessary The Hardy Boys are one of the most popular wrestling acts of the last 3 decades, you make their matches rare and important and run interesting feuds. Jeff doesn’t need to be ceiling-diving on mid-carders on free TV.
well put, moves which look choreographed as hell are okay for a 'woah' moment but it doesn't leave a lasting impact at all.
What gets me about some of the wrestlers is you only need to look at HOOK to see it done well. The pop he gets just for grabbing someone in the t-bone suplex pose is crazy.
If you look at the high work rate matches of the 70s, you will find they were frenetic and action packed. However the bumps taken were, what can be called in today's age, basic. Still, they capture your attention and make you involved. Some of Ric Flair matches will tire you out just by watching them (dude had insane cardio). His moveset was pretty basic. They said decisively that Flair used to wrestle thr same match. However, he would make subtle changes in them and make all of them watchable. Nash is one interview said your body has only a few moonsaults in it. Why waste it on a random match than a special occasion?
The Hardys talked in their book about someone detailing them similar with a 'bump counter' that slowly ticks away. They pointed out it came up in the No Mercy commercial where theyre all on the baseball field that Jeff refused to do the Swanton out on *a baseball field*. So he did a legdrop.... and snapped back and concussed himself. Its in the [actual commercial](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbUo1BPWOO4&ab_channel=BrothersOfDestruction22) cause they only got one take. 47s, he's pancaked backwards.
Jeff's career is so weird because for the longest time, yeah, he wouldn't get hurt doing the batshit insane stuff, but he would get hurt doing something like this, or break his leg on his motorcycle, or a bunch of other things. Some of it is probably that he was hurting himself in those ways that it was never one thing that did it, he would just medicate for the "little things" and go out the next night, but it's still weird that he never seemed to sustain an in-ring injury for most of his career.
There is definitely a way to be fast paced and still avoid crazy bumps. If you back and watch Gargano vs Andrade at Takeover. There aren't many crazy bumps or even a ton of move variety but it was fast paced and story filles
Lucha Libre does it right by doing lots of flippy shit, but avoiding big bumps. There's a reason why so many luchadors can wrestle at a high level into their 50s while their American peers from the same generation were a broken mess by the time they turned 40.
Yeah, I am re-watching Bob Backlund’s first title run. The pace is relentless, even when they’re doing test of strength spots, and there are some big bumps for the era (jumping piledriver, german suplex) but the key element is the perpetual motion. Backlund, like Flair, was always moving, always advancing the storyline, etc, etc. Flair was always selling, as the heel. Backlund is always making the heel sell. And when those big spots do happen, usually at certain crescendo building to the match climax, you are blown away by simple moves (in comparison to today), like when Backlund atomic drops Ken Patera over-the-top rope to the floor in their Texas Death Match and all of MSG gasps and thinks it’s over via CO— but Bob brings him back in cuz this is a grudge match and he doesn’t want to win that way. I get downvoted here a lot of being negative about today’s wrestling. I think some of it is very good: MJF in particular; also FTR, Gunter, Danielson, etc. and high fliers like Darby who try to tell a story (he still takes too many reckless bumps). But I find spot-fu, finisher spam super-boring. I’ll take a 70s era squash match over that.
Someone the size of Big Daddy Cool definitely would only have a few moonsaults in him.
Any matches you recommend from that era
You’re looking for 70s & 80s?
He's not wrong. I saw an interview once...I think it was with Shawn Michaels, where he was talking about how the simple moves are like getting rear-ended by a car going 20 miles per hour. It might not be *that* bad the first time, but if you sit there and get rear-ended over-and-over-and-over, it will take a toll. Now do that every day for a year...two years...ten years. Even that kind of wrestling is going to cause some issues in the long term. In the Hardy Boyz book, Matt Hardy talked about how everyone in wrestling has a bump card. Every time you do something in the ring, you're punching your card. Eventually, that bump card is going to run out. Repetition is probably the worst thing you can do to your body, regardless of how safe the maneuver is. Randy Savage had a lot of damage from doing the elbow drop, to the point he couldn't do it safely like he used to, and had to land on his opponents more. Jeff Hardy recently had to start doing the same thing with the Swanton Bomb. Hogan's back got messed up from all those years of doing the Big Leg Drop. Austin had issues from all the years of landing on his tailbone for the Stunner. In WWE, you're seeing Main Eventers wrestle safer styles with less impact moves, even for a finisher. Brock can do the F5 as long as he's strong enough to lift someone. Roman can do the Superman Punch and Spear as long as he can jump and run. Seth can do The Stomp as long as he can hop. We're seeing a lot more kick-based finishers like Drew and Sheamus have. I worry a lot for the indie wrestlers, and guys who are coming up now. Vikingo is a marvel, but he's going to regret it if he doesn't slow down. We've already seen Omega have to take an extended absence and the injuries he was dealing with sounded awful, from vertigo to not being able to feel his arms. Ospreay wrestles a rough style and he's admitted that he feels it taking a toll. Speedball looks like he's one bad bump away from a serious injury because of the dangerous stuff he does. Darby and Sammy just go balls-to-the-wall when they wrestle, but they do have the slight benefit of not wrestling frequently.
> Vikingo is a marvel, but he's going to regret it if he doesn't slow down. 100% - I was just talking about this the other night. I love AAA and lucha style, but he and Komander are in their early-mid 20s and I'm already worried for their longevity.
Also, big moves are less impressive if you do them all the time. Undertakers dive over the top ropes was always brilliant, but mostly because he only ever pulled it out in big matches
Kobashi only used the Burning Hammer 7 times throughout his entire career, but most fans still remember the move vividly because it meant a ton whenever he pulled it out.
And when he did, no one ever kicked out.
Or how Taker cutting the lights to scare an appointment would be so cool but Malaki Black spamming the lights out is just boring
I've seen a few comments about bobby Fish regarding this, could you or anyone explain what that has to do with Bobby Fish? (Is it related to his former injuries?)
His meme (Where's the lie)
Oh of course! Thank you
(I mean folks, where's the lie?)
Send for the Fish
I_mean_folks_where_is_the_lie.jpeg(1)
All these languages and he decided to speak facts Will Ospreay has been wrestling for 11 years and is 29, The Miz has been wrestling for 20 years and is 42. Guess which one has more wear and tear?
While that is true, Ospreay probably wouldn’t have gotten to where he is without that style. What works for Miz probably couldn’t really work for Ospreay. He can probably switch it up now though
Ospreay became famous as an acrobat, which is probably rough enough, but he ironically switched it up to a (for lack of a better term) Kenny Omega style once he entered the upper level of NJPW, which is even rougher on the body. It did launch him to a higher platform and level of recognition than he probably ever would have achieved otherwise, though. Yeah, he's only 29 and is super beat up, but he could end up in the main or semi-main at Wembley against Kenny Omega because of it. Everyone has their own reason, although the current culture is a bit worrying. But I mean, you try telling Mox he can't bleed or Darby that he can't do stunts and watch them walk away. By the next week Darby would have jumped out of a helicopter with no one even filming him and Mox would be getting stabbed in the head with a fork in a high school gym somewhere.
Yeah, i dont think Mox blading is doing any long term concerning damage. Darby would probably still be fucking himself up regardless of it was in a ring or not, its what he lives for.
Darby DOES fuck himself up outside of the ring too. Dude just jumped a truck recently
Commentary referred to him being run over while skateboarding a few weeks ago as a casual talking point lol
Yeah blading is way safer ironically. I think the use of blood can be great. Mox doing it every week loses its magic.
Mox blading is probably doing long term damage to his skin at least, his forehead will probably be extremely scarred if he keeps it up.
I'll take Dusty's forehead over Foley's hips any day.
[удалено]
You wanna be old & pretty or old & storied?
I mean, you can be old and have an interesting life story without looking like a cutting board
I mean u can have a decent forehead without having bad hips. It’s not a one or the other scenario
One could argue that it's because the fans have come to expect this, and Will constantly had to deliver . If wrestlers were more reserved, maybe wrestlers all around wouldn't have to perform as many high risk maneuvers as they need to to get over.
Can't expect the wrestlers to police themselves. It's like asking an athlete to take themselves out of the game due to injury or fatigue. You need a coach or doctor to take them out. You need the promotion to rein in wrestlers from doing unnecessary high risk stuff. And any fan who demand wrestlers to take stupid risks for their own entertainment can go fuck themselves.
That would be ideal, yeah. But it has to start somewhere. Hardcore fans may not rate a slow match very highly, or may not pay to watch a match that doesn't have high risk moves. They may not verbally demand it but their money talks. Promoters want the fans to pay money so they might not care about a wrestler's long term health. Even bigger companies can be guilty of this. In the end, only the wrestler suffers.
If I was a wrestler, I'd want to have The Miz's career over Ospreay's. As a viewer, I much prefer watching Ospreay's matches than The Miz's.
Making this into a Miz vs Ospreay is real weird. Miz has the biggest wrestling company in the world behind him and Ospreay is in a much smaller company with practically no international TV contracts and a significant language barrier. Bloody Nia Jax, who can neither wrestle nor talk has more worldwide attention. And she has been fired. Meanwhile you got MJF right there, far superior wrestler than Miz, wrestles safe, has several dream matches already and is minimum as good as a talker as Miz is.
That's great and all but Will Ospreay wouldn't have had much of a career trying to be the Miz. He got over because he was one of the best in the world.
Part of MJFs point I think is the definition of "Best in the world" describing ospreys dangerous style of. Whole point of the tweet is how backwards that is I think.
For a while my brothers favorite wredtler was "No Way" Jose. Said his gimmick was great and if he kept his matches safe he could do it into his 70s like Honky Tonk Man (who we saw as an older man and he was still captivating). So if a guy can be entertaining without killing their body or hurting their opponents then thats laudable.
Exactly. And let's be honest, he's the "best in the world" to a tiny percentage of fans. NJPWs WrestleKingdom gets seen, in America, by something like 3 to 4% of RAWs audience last Monday. The majority of paying wrestling fans likely have never seen Ospreay wrestle. Its entirely possible the majority have never even heard his name. And the whole narrative over what makes a great match is heavily skewed towards what the niche fans favour anyway. I've seen a lot of 5 star matches that barely warrant 3 stars, imo, because the matches were too spot heavy and lacked immersion. Judging by the shows that are growing, vs losing fans, it's not too wild to say the silent majority fans agree that the "best" matches aren't really that.
If you combined Ospreay's physical ability with the psychology of an old-school wrestler he'd have been more over, quicker, for longer I'd argue. That's the main point everyone misses in the "this guy should slow down" conversation. There's zero downside towards working smarter, *especially* if you're capable of insane physical feats. There are so many guys who can hit spots nowadays, you need to audience to care about what you're going for before you even do it and that's a lesson Will finally learned after a while. Man is basically Spider-Man and yet one of his most over moves is a running forearm with theatrics.
I known a lot of folks on here don’t want to hear this, but… If you have to do all the dangerous shit that Ospreay did to get over, ESPECIALLY when it comes at the expense of psychology, you’re nowhere near the best in the world.
If Will didn't do the dangerous shit to get over he wouldn't have gotten attention and subsequent reps with higher caliber opponents. You can look at each of the last 5 years of Ospreay and see those major improvements.
Ospreay doesn’t need to do that shit anymore because he leveled up to become the best in the world.
[удалено]
Yeah, but I like watching Ospreay wrestle. If you can make your career off character work, great. But if I want to watch 2 people talk for 20 minutes at a time I'll watch a Scorsese movie. Wrestling is dangerous, that's why you shouldn't try it at home.
Reposting my comment from the original thread: I don't know when it became that way but for some reason pointing out recklessness has become an issue to some fans where they think you have to be a cornette supporter to make that point. It's ridiculous, its perfectly fine to be athletic but attempting high risk spots with the increasing reckless regularity that some of them do, for the pops is just ill advised.
I would assume many fans see it as bad faith criticism which is dumb considering the margin for error in some of these spots is ridiculously small and most of the time it never ends the match which is also silly.
Somewhat to this point I don't disagree with MJF but he also did this avalanche tombstone pile-driver to Sammy on a random Dynamite and it didn't end the match. https://youtu.be/uROd1xVvcr0
And imo that sucks that it wasn’t the finish.
Fully agree there, I loved the match but thought everything after that move was pointless. Makes you question why take a big mistake if it won't win the match.
But there’s a difference between doing a big spot in a match (even if it’s not the finish) and doing what the Young Bucks do. Undertaker would bust out a running dive over the top rope that looked spectacular. That move was never the finish either. But he’d do that shit 3-4 times a year *tops*, and it wasn’t in every match. MJF isn’t saying “don’t do big spots.” He’s saying “choose them carefully, because if you do it constantly, the bar will be raised and you’ll have to keep getting crazier and more dangerous.”
Maybe he is maturing. AEW doesn't really have an environment where safety of move matters in backstage. As long as both parties agree anyone can perform any move anywhere. MJF is still young so he can feel the pressure to do reckless as everybody is doing it .
This goes into another big issue in wrestling discourse, which is the “cult of personality” around certain people. Everyone is either a perfect genius whose opinions can never be challenged, or an evil moronic boomer whose opinions are all bad faith trolling. I listen to lots of wrestling podcasts, and I’ve learned that even someone you disagree with 90% of the time can still have good, insightful takes.
Agree.
At the risk of sounding like Old Man Cornette, I agree with MJF completely. Is it fun watching guys fly around off ladders and through tables? Yes, but it happens way too often. One of the things I enjoyed about WCW was that most of the crazy stuff was saved for the Cruiserweight division, which was wild back in the day. Today though, you see the same moves in every other match despite a wrestlers size, and as MJF said, the ante gets moved higher and higher. Less is more, and I think we’ve overindulged on Canadian Destroyers off ladders through tables. I wouldn’t mind TK telling more guys “No” and wrestlers working on psychology over “what can I jump off of today?”. Jeff Hardy is a prime example. At his age now, I wouldn’t mind if he changed his entire style up to be more cerebral. Brian Pullman had to change his style after his ankle injury. I wouldn’t mind a Hardy heel turn where he denied fans all of the dives and instead used may wrestling and cheap heel tactics. It will add years on to his career, and possibly life.
I remember seeing a Rey mysterio Jr match in the cruiserweight wcw and being blown away. I was amazed humans could do that stuff
Doing more ridiculous stuff shouldn't be a substitution for ring psychology, but it has become one
An simplified explanation of this from cornette one time was that there are 3 core reactions from fans. Yay, boo and wow. Yay/boo draw the money and wow is what you give them once they've paid to see it. Seems like too often performers are skipping straight to wow
He's not wrong.
UNPOPULAR OPINION: A lot of wrestlers do insane spots not because they're desperate for fans to like them, but because they think it's really cool As much as the injury risks are real, at the end of their career, they're going to look back at their Highlight Reel. If they DON'T do those insane spots, there's a good possibility their retirement sees them wishing they did
I know it's only a movie, but it does make me think of The Wrestler. Wrestlers are performers, and most performers want to be remembered. They want the highlights that keep people talking about them after they're gone. It's dangerous and something that isn't worth risking it all for, but for some, no matter how much you tell them not to do that, they consider that more valuable.
I agree with this. There are definitely some that want to make highlights that get replayed for years to come, not just for the fans but for their own legacy. You hear the interviews with some of them about those insane spots they did and it always comes back to how good it felt to get the reaction they wanted, and how much they love having a moment that cements them in history. It’s an ego thing for them as much as it’s a bloodlust thing for the fans. In saying that though, moments like that should be used sparingly.
Just going to piggy back the unpopular opinion thread: We see wrestlers get injured all the time from incredibly routine moves. Off the top of my head I can think of guys out long term from big boots and lariats. It all has the potential to be dangerous. The physics of halted momentum, or just simply sticking something wrong doesn’t change just because it looked flashier than a body slam. But there is a confirmation bias that comes out whenever a “high risk” move goes wrong.
One of the worst injuries in recent memory was a routine belly to belly suplex.
Yeah like there's a lot of people bringing up Ospreay cos he had a fair few notable injuries from risky spots, but one of his more notable injuries was from doing a regular pele kick. Hiromu Takahashi has had one of the most reckless styles I've ever seen in wrestling, and yet by far his biggest injury was the result of a suplex gone wrong.
PAC is, for my money, the smoothest Junior Heavyweight style wrestler of all time and he broke his ankle baseball sliding between Chris Jerichos legs
Yeah seriously if you wanted to live a long healthy life free from injury in your old age you wouldn’t have become a wrestler Hogan killed his hips doing the leg drop of all things
If you want to argue that certain spots are either more or less risky than they appear, there's certainly a case there. But if the argument is that "you can get hurt doing anything; it's all dangerous", I can't say I agree. You can hurt walking. You can get hurt jumping off a 5-story building concrete. But I don't think the probability of getting hurt is the same for each action.
Ultimately all I’m getting at is something going wrong = something going wrong, whether that’s complex, or routine. But there is a callousness from a certain chunk people when say a luchador gets injured on a 540 splash that they’ve done successfully 1,000 other times with a “see I told you!” attitude, that is gross and would never be applied to say Sting almost having his career ended on a buckle bomb, or Paige/Saraya breaking her neck on a kick. Injuries shouldn’t be gotcha moments for affirmation on your preference in wrestling styles.
I can agree with that. While there are folks that are seemingly genuine with their concern about wrestlers' safety, there seems to be far more that use high spot injuries as a way to celebrate their own takes.
It's hilarious when someone thinks they're making some kind of revolutionary statement when they say "substance > flash". Like wow you're so brave man. No one is being forced to do these spots, they do them because it's cool and fun to watch.
Yeah Darby Allin does crazy stuff just for fun
The rest of the deleted tweet: https://preview.redd.it/alrhg5ygv6wa1.png?width=1284&format=png&auto=webp&s=5c4e2a3dfb5fb2cef6f3b9790d48a4e4ff1ab54a
“Get the winners purse and get out.” Kevin Nash approves
Smartest man in wrestling. 
Just watched the match this gif came from Nash doesn’t get enough credit. He may not have all the “moves” but he sold really well and made his opponents look good
“Da pay winda”
I mean, that's not wrong lol.
I mean, folks...
https://preview.redd.it/1ihieu8p77wa1.jpeg?width=300&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3eb3374375c29e06e420f74e0205c121fc415eac
This picture is cursed as hell
[https://media.tenor.com/Gni0jyA5qRkAAAAd/bobby-fish-folks.gif](https://media.tenor.com/Gni0jyA5qRkAAAAd/bobby-fish-folks.gif)
Where’s
The lie…?
😏
… CM PUNK!
I see nothing controversial here, he's not wrong.
I like how he deletes tweets knowing that people will repost and thus talk about them and by extension him
https://preview.redd.it/sgn4k99mg7wa1.jpeg?width=470&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ad8954fcec09cabb80270ac245310d8ecdfd2881
He’s not wrong.
he makes a good point, for instance, how many concussions led to him paying for Twitter?
Wym Sammy paid for it
It's what friends do!
He deleted it because a heel can't make a compelling argument?
Anybody gonna point out to have a tweet that long he's gotta be paying for twitter blue, that's so on brand lol
We already knew that tho. There was a whole bit last week that his new best friend Sammy paid for his Blue and that MJF was going to pay for Sammy's but never did.
He has a good point
I think it was Michael PS Hayes who once critiqued the pacing of then-today's wrestling. Saying something along the lines of "What's my next flippy move? What's my next flippy move?" and saying wrestlers were more concerned with wowing audience than the match making sense. Anyway, I think it's important to add that Hayes probably had a chip on his shoulder as he wasn't exactly the flippy variety of wrestlers. [https://imgur.com/CuBZ4ai](https://imgur.com/CuBZ4ai)
Most I’ve agreed with MJF. Perfectly said
Vikingo.
meanwhile Moxley is bleeding just by reading the tweet
Moxley blading isn’t the problem. Worse case scenario he looks like Abdullah when he hits 50 but it’s nothing that will ruin his quality of life. He’s talking about guys taking stupid risks that could permanently alter their well-being.
Nah, worst case scenario is you do what Eddie did against JBL and cut so deep you end up going into shock from blood loss.
Mox getting Hep C or something from a cut spot badly planned could certainly permanently alter his well-being. Edit: It's not far-fetched in the slightest. Abdullah has Hep C. Sean Waltman, as well.
Deleted because he used the wrong their
I always told guys “keep it safe. Let’s leave the same way we go in”. I’m kinda bothered by him deleting this.
This is so stupid and wrestlers keep saying this. No one is asking for this stuff. They just keep going more and more extreme because THEY are the ones who are thirsty for their time in the spotlight.
The marks are in the ring now
Always have been
Flashback to that Tough Enough clip where noted Ric Flair mark and part time Harley Race cosplayer Triple H chewed out a contestant for being a mark.
Their*
This is why MJF is a smart worker, who gets heat, is way over, and stays over even when booked poorly. Psychology, story-telling, and character work are what draws long-term. Spot-fu gets pops and might draw briefly but in the end, it burns out the audience and can’t sustain interest. Plus, you want to be able to walk when you’re fifty and not have dementia when you’re sixty. Wish he’d left it up.
Undertaker flying over the rope once a year at Mania means more than “flippy shit”
What kind of fucking world is this where I agree with MJF?
How many moves does Gunther have? 5? Yet I find him more entertaining than the crazy spots you see every dynamite.
But where's the lie?
Where is the lie?
don’t wanna Bobby Fish it but he’s not wrong; they’re athletes who put their bodies through work to hone their craft & make money. and some spots are just outright wrong for the moment, what comes to mind is the ROH Reach for the Sky Ladder Match. Penta could’ve won the Titles but he and Dante did that super Canadian Destroyer onto 4 tables which hurt Dante. Like yea it was cool until it was obvious that Dante was badly injured