What's Wrong With The Current Generation Of Wrestlers?

Blackjack

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I was watching a documentary on Harley Race and it occurred to me that there isn't an active pro wrestler today as tough as Harley Race. He probably was the toughest wrestler of his generation but there were several other extremely tough guys in that generation, including Terry Funk who is also in that documentary: Harley Race: The Greatest Wrestler On God's Green Earth. Can you think of any wrestler born after 1980 who has the toughness of guys like Harley Race and Terry Funk? It's as if something just went wrong with that whole generation of guys born after 1980.

It's apparent in society as a whole too - not just pro wrestling. Everything seems watered down. Society has become diluted. Maybe it's that PC reform mentality that has infected our society which is to blame for men not being as tough or as rugged as the men of previous generations were. if it's not that, then what is to blame for this phenomenon?
 
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White men have been taught through movies and media to be skinny, weak, feminine, nervous pansies.. And if you're not, you might get treated bad at the office by the women; besides the ones you're banging.
 
The business is different now. In the old days, wrestlers had to maintain their image since it wasn't public knowledge that it was scripted. If you got into a fight, you'd damn sure better win it. The current generation is guys that grew up knowing it was staged and perform for an audience thats aware as well.
 
We used to pretend to hurt each other and the crowd thought it was real.

Now we really do hurt each other but the crowd knows it's fake.
 
Let's be honest, a lot of these old timey tough guys got their reputation from beating up drunks in a bar.

"I was in the corner drinking an orange juice minding my own business. Suddenly eight 6'4 off duty marines walked in, and for no reason at all racially abused me. I was going to let it go, but then one of them cracked me over the head with a lead pipe. Within two minutes, 3 were dead, 2 had their eyes bitten out, 1 had his dick pulled off and 1 had his arm ripped off and shoved up his rectum. I let the 8th go as a sign of mercy and humility. I never looked for violence and I actually deplore it. It always just happened to come my way." - Random tough guy wrestler from the 70s/80s.
 
The business is different now. In the old days, wrestlers had to maintain their image since it wasn't public knowledge that it was scripted. If you got into a fight, you'd damn sure better win it. The current generation is guys that grew up knowing it was staged and perform for an audience thats aware as well.

That's true. I recently watched an interview with Mike Graham who was the son of Eddie Graham - the legendary promoter and booker who ran Championshipp Wrestling From Florida. Eddie Graham was considered by his peers to be the booker with the best finishes of any booker in the business!

In the interiew I watched (conducted by Sean Oliver), Mike Graham talked about how his father told his wrestlers the same thing you just said about if a wrestler got in a fight. Mike Graham said that his father told his wrestlers that if they got into a fight in public they had to win or they'd be fired. He told them not only did they have to win but they had to leave a mark on the man they beat whether it was a broken nose, a broken arm, or a heavily bruised, swollen face so that people would be shocked or at least concerned enough about his appearance that they'd ask "What happened to you" and when the man replied "I got into a fight with a wrestler" the reaction would be something like "Damn, I sure don't want to ever have to fight one of those wrestlers"!
 
Let's be honest, a lot of these old timey tough guys got their reputation from beating up drunks in a bar.

There may be some truth to that. I don't think they purposely went looking for fights with the intention of building their reputations though. Bill Watts, the owner, promoter and booker of Mid-South Wrestling discouraged his wrestlers from getting into fights in public. He preferred that they stay out of trouble. If they did happen to get into a fight in public though, they had to win the fight or they got fired.

I know this is getting away from the topic somewhat but Bill Watts had an unusual policy regarding locker room fights. If two of his wrestlers started fighting each other in his locker room, Watts's policy was to NOT break up the fight. If two guys were so mad at each other that they wanted to fight, Watts said it was better that they fight, settle the issue and get the animosity out of their systems, "otherwise it just festers." I see a lot of good common sense in that policy, yet in today's culture, finding a man less than 40 years old with that philosophy and policy would be like finding a needle in a haystack.
 
There may be some truth to that. I don't think they purposely went looking for fights with the intention of building their reputations though. Bill Watts, the owner, promoter and booker of Mid-South Wrestling discouraged his wrestlers from getting into fights in public. He preferred that they stay out of trouble. If they did happen to get into a fight in public though, they had to win the fight or they got fired.

I know this is getting away from the topic somewhat but Bill Watts had an unusual policy regarding locker room fights. If two of his wrestlers started fighting each other in his locker room, Watts's policy was to NOT break up the fight. If two guys were so mad at each other that they wanted to fight, Watts said it was better that they fight, settle the issue and get the animosity out of their systems, "otherwise it just festers." I see a lot of good common sense in that policy, yet in today's culture, finding a man less than 40 years old with that philosophy and policy would be like finding a needle in a haystack.


I remember reading that Rick Rude would literally go out looking for fights. Think it was Paul Bearer who said RR would leave his girl sitting at the bar alone and wait for a random guy to approach her so he could start something. Pretty odd behaviour.


When you read on youtube videos that prime Haku would destroy any MMA HW you have to roll your eyes. There's levels to these things.
 
Not enough cocaine and steroids. That and kayfabe is dead.
 
There are no territories to learn the craft in. You get trained by WWE go to NXT then go to WWE. So everyone has the same bullshit style and everything is micromanaged killing all creativity.
 
Back in the 60's,70's, and 80's once you failed at legit sports, wrestling was the only option. Today there are other choices.
When you read on youtube videos that prime Haku would destroy any MMA HW you have to roll your eyes. There's levels to these things.
Bro, Haku would kill all MMA fighters with Tongan Deathgrip, a bunch of pro wrestlers say so and I've never known pro wrestlers to be liars.
 
I think the Haku thing is more that he's deranged and would do things like bite people and gouge their eyes out.

Not so much that he's the best fighter in the world but more that he will take it places no one else will.
 
Back in the 60's,70's, and 80's once you failed at legit sports, wrestling was the only option. Today there are other choices.

Do you know what the average salary was in The NFL in the 60s? There was more money to be made in pro wrestling, if you had the talent for it. Not all football players could do it because it requires a greater variety of attributes which football doesn't. Both wrestling and football required athletic ability in the 60s but wrestling required good public speaking ability as well. There were pro football players who could barely speak their own native language. I don't know how someone grows up in this country and fails to even speak English well because in most civilized, developed countries, people speak two or three languages. Then pro wrestling required a lot of charisma to make it to the high paying level and most football players don;t have that either. If you had all those things like Ernie Ladd and Wahoo McDaniel did, you quit The NFL so you could make more money in pro wrestling.
 
I think the Haku thing is more that he's deranged and would do things like bite people and gouge their eyes out.

Not so much that he's the best fighter in the world but more that he will take it places no one else will.

Michael Hayes talked about it in an episiode of "Legends of Wrestling". He was talking about the bar fights, and said "People think they're the toughest guy in the bars because when they fight, it's "Put up your dukes!", but then they fight a wrestler, and he's putting his thumb in your eye, and he's trying to pull your nuts out, and he's biting you, and he's making things bend the way they shouldn't be bending because that's a fight, it's trying to hurt somebody has quickly as possible."
 
I think the Haku thing is more that he's deranged and would do things like bite people and gouge their eyes out.

Not so much that he's the best fighter in the world but more that he will take it places no one else will.

He might be able to get away with that against drunk bums and other pro wrestlers, but he ain't against a trained fighter, is the point.
 
White men have been taught through movies and media to be skinny, weak, feminine, nervous pansies.. And if you're not, you might get treated bad at the office by the women; besides the ones you're banging.
I think you've been watching the wrong movies.
 
He might be able to get away with that against drunk bums and other pro wrestlers, but he ain't against a trained fighter, is the point.

I dunno. A 200lbs trained fighter might find himself on the ground pretty fast with a 300+lbs Samoan on top of him and there's not much you can do when pinned to the ground and a guy jams his thumbs in your eye sockets.
 
I dunno. A 200lbs trained fighter might find himself on the ground pretty fast with a 300+lbs Samoan on top of him and there's not much you can do when pinned to the ground and a guy jams his thumbs in your eye sockets.

:rolleyes:
 
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