Velonica's World: Generations Part 2 - The Big Finish(Just a rant lol)

Now back to my point, wrestling was huge in those days but television was a lot different and there is a lot more option of not just regular programing but of wrestling too. If we had half of these advantages in the 80's, it would be a different ball park. Same thing with the 90's which did even better on cable television than the golden era and this was the era that was rising back up from the ashes left from the steroid trial. 

Mainstream is the key term because I feel like a lot of what is done between these companies is also limited by how it performs in the US, which is not bad at all. We're talking about two major wrestling promotions selling out large venues, topping the top 50 on television nearly every week and is not only selling a load of merchandise that people are buying even when they pretend that they aren't & how often the star appear in these media events, it would be silly to consider it anything less. But now that we got that out of the way, I want to compare some things that are spawned from these topics. 

First off, I have been watching a lot of current wrestling during the night and watching the older wrestling stuff through much different lenses. I never watch something more than once without looking at it differently because I always try to explore different perspectives and try to find things that I haven't seen before or haven't seen in a long time, this is what I would do on my Attitude Era rewatch a few years back when I had the network and I ended up finding that things that I enjoyed back then was not what I enjoyed now and this is an example of what I'm about to bring up. That fan that I mentioned in part 1 was right that wrestling isn't as popular as it once was but it wasn't 10 years ago when people were saying the same thing as Monday Night Raw's 1000th episode was drawing a total of 6 million viewers. And then I thought about it, the more things change, the more they remain the same. For example, lets take a look at the stuff that a lot of the fans like this enjoys. Usually when I hear stuff like this, two statements are made and those are that wrestlers aren't as good as the ones from back then or that things were a lot more realistic. Usually, I would expect something like this from the Cornette marks out there but no, this comes from people that used to watch the WWF.

Remember when I said that WWF would lose ratings on TBS because people wanted their southern style wrasslin' with Gordon Solie on commentary? Those letters are more of a physical representation of what we get on social media, it is what used to make the forums and chatrooms back in the 1990's. Wrestling fans have always voiced their displeasure about specific topics, it is just that now, our platforms for these things are much larger. But I am deviating from the topic so let me jump back into it. Promos are often said to be better than most talent now and honestly, they're right because a lot of the talent either tries to be like each other or are content with presenting themselves with all the flying around or trying to cosplay other talent and it gets on my nerves at times because it is done way too often. It is also because a lot of talent aren't comfortable on the mic and I can understand this being somewhat of a very quiet person off the site. But let's not pretend like some of the promos were just out right corny and exaggerated at times back then because they can get there.

Work rate. This one gets me because people hate all the high flying stuff and comedy, but this has existed in literally every era. Edouard Carpentier and Antonino Rocca were the "spot monkeys" of the pioneer era and for the golden era, people seem to forget that people know it was a work even before Carpentier & Rocca started. Dr. D David Schultz got fired for slapping John Stossel for trying to "expose" wrestling for being fake because these guys had zero regard for those that entered the business to make a living and during that era, it wasn't dominated by kids who grew up loving the sport, it was dominated by people that wanted to make money and that guy didn't care because his "truth" was about having no fun. But back to what I was saying, you look at the work punches and over the top theatrics, it really puts things into perspective that these people were clearly kids when they were watching and are watching this stuff with rose tainted glasses. It would be like me saying this and never going back to look over things again, there are a lot of guys that I used to like that I don't like now or guys that I didn't like who I adore now because I love how good they are at their job or even my favorites having an off night, I can go back and watch Wrestlemania VI and Ted Dibiase vs Jake Roberts weren't as good as when I used to watch on the tapes back in my grandparents house because you start to see that even though they're both great workers, whoever the agent was that put it together if there was one, they didn't do a very good job. 

That era made it easy to put the wool over people's eyes because if half of this went down now, people would lose their shit. But I will say this, in the WWF or NWA, tag team wrestling was so much better than it is now unless you watch a match with guys like The Bucks & FTR who have an idea on how to build a match through storytelling and emphasis on team work and trying to win because I feel that a lot of people are just in it for the spots or following behind others. Luckily, AEW has been working on this extensively and have been great at it. But when it comes to singles action...nah. There are more Flair, Bret, Steamboat, Savage & Arn's than Warriors, Hercules, Erik Watts & Moolahs lol. AEW in general has a better sense of actually bringing back the old school way of going about this despite what podcasters(Cornette and Brian Last) or company stooges that don't actually watch wrestling(Ryan Satin) and by that I mean look at what CM Punk, MJF & Eddie Kingston are doing, it is like it isn't even on the same planet.

I have more but I'll save that for next time since I'm tried now. I added that Tiger Mask gif because I felt like it.