Jim Cornette on Nine Wrestling Cliches That We Could Do Away With
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- čas přidán 17. 12. 2021
- From Episode 222 of Jim Cornette's Drive Thru
Artwork by Travis Heckel!
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What use to annoy the absolute worst is during a tag match is a guy would very slowly crawl across the ring on his belly like he's in the middle of a desert like he's seconds away from dying of heat exhaustion and dehydration just inches away from an oasis to tag his partner in only to be tagged back in less than a minute fighting like a squirrel on crack.
Squirrel on crack 😂😂😂
its fine
Or the laughably slow cage climbs.
@@eamonnmaccionnaith5761 these only work after a long grueling/bloody war match
@@gregcorricello8997
Or if it’s Jeff Hardy, and he’s off his fucking tits…
Distractions: Wrestling logic is that ALL wrestlers are as easily distracted by anything as a cat is with a laser pointer.
WWE logic*
So if laser pointers come back, we can use them to make wrestlers dance around the ring?
The worst cliche for me is the aerial assault onto a group who stands there waiting to catch you. This happens in literally every multi-person match and is just absolutely embarassing.
Take two steps to the right, dingus!
@@thejkylelove Samoa Joe’s walk away 😂
The Spanish announce table should be introduced in the Hall of fame for helping breaking and making careers !
That table has put more wrestlers over than Mil Mascaras.
@@fuscinula more than 0 then.
I loved when the Spanish announcers would fall in slow motion after the table broke. Great times.
Triple h has buried it since his injury though
YES YES YES YES YES YES YES
This list could be renamed "things in wrestling that modern promotions ruined."
That's much more accurate
I was going to comment that I used to love all of these things, and there's a reason a rabid fan like I used to be was completely put off wrestling twenty years ago. But this comment pretty much sums it up.
No lies detected!!😂😂
Facts
It's funny how Jim was ready to crap all over this and the guy writing it but then basically agreed with the vast majority of the list. He does keep bring up how this guy isn't old enough to have seen it done right. But this isnt a list of "bad things" in wrestling, it's a list of "cliches" in wrestling. Doesn't matter that they used to be done right. It about them being done to death over the last 20 plus years
Number 1 most frustrating cliche for me.
The blind babyface tag and the ref intervenes. Yet, the heel blind tag working every time. The ref would look and see new heel in the ring and just go, "oh, they must have tagged." Yet, babyface does it, "hey! I didn't see it! Get back to your corner rulebreaker!!!"
"THE MOST DEVASTATING MOVE IN ALL OF SPORTS ENTERTAINMENT: THE SURPRISE ROLL UP" - Simon Miller
Almost every single womens match in WWE. it's so annoying.
@@generalgk and like half the men's.
Horrendously overdone. Needs a long hiatus before coming back.
It needs to go period
Especially if it involves grabbing the opponent's tights - which, invariably, the ref doesn't see. I f__king hate that shit!!! X-P
Having Bret be a heel in America and a face everywhere else was a great idea.
The epitome of long term storytelling
@@neilonions7798 yup, fantastic stuff, and executed perfectly. Bret getting more and more bitter and heelish, blaming the badguy-loving crowds in the US (north and northeast mostly) and aligning with his family/relatives to combat his arch nemesises Austin and Michaels...great shit
It only worked because Bret was so popular worldwide. That whole thing was way too short.
and Bret Hart went Heel in the USA by way of sharing Canadian left-wing political ideologies. Which, looking back makes it even better. Ballsy. lol. All the work put in from Steve Austin on was good shit. Holds up well.
It was no ones idea, it happened organically
Jim is so spot on here... Its not that the cliches are bad for wrestling... its just that the people who have been booking wrestling for the past 25 years don't understand why shit works, or how to make it work.
And overdone
Say what you want about foreign heels, but Rusev when he first debuted was as over as a heel can get. He actually got the crowd hot for a jack swagger match
He and his wife both played it to perfection
Who needs xenophobes with so many oikaphobes about?
But "Iron Shiek vs Megan Rapinoe" is a match I'd pay to see"
Dint happen from the get go. It reached crescendo during the Swagger feud. But he went over several opponents before him, and thosw often drew lukewarm reactions. He also got no reaction when he was doing it in NXT and Full Sail cheered for almost everyone.
How he eventually managed to go over with that gimmick all of a sudden is an interesting topic to look into
@@4zafinc It's because NXT and WWE have different fan cultures to the point that he who watches one, doesn't really watch the other. Look at most of the big stars in NXT who got buried in WWE. But sometimes, it works backwards where someone hated in NXT can get over in WWE.
A good example is Elias.
One thing I hate: a match between Wrestler A and Wrestler B happens. Wrestler A wins and they play his music. Then all of a sudden Wrestler C comes out of nowhere, beats the piss out of Wrestler A, and then they play Wrestler C's music.
And wrestler C is making a shock return after 2 years lol
Or wrestler B attacks him afterwards and they play his music like he won the match lol
@@sparknazo ok
Hahha, yeah. Whoever "wins" the segment, his music plays afterward.
I'm amazed wrestlers grouping up outside the ring while one guy takes five minutes to climb the rope and jump on them, missing half but making ten people fall down anyway isn't on this list
Because an indie mark made the list.
I thought that'd be the alternative JC was about to talk about
The Luchadores in WCW were really good at this. As an example, La Parka would be thrown outside the ring, and as he slowly stands up, Ultimo Dragon is already running inside the ring and, right as La Parka gets to his feet, Ultimo would jump over the top rope to attack him. Then, as they both slowly get to their feet, Psicosis would jump over the top rope onto both of them. They had the timing down incredibly well. They would just barely be on their feet by the time the next one jumps over. It was never obvious that they were standing there ready to catch them.
@@almightycinder Disco Inferno had a signal he'd give indicating he's ready to catch a dive. He'd get thrown out, stagger past the ring post, and slap the ring post to signal his opponent to run and dive as he'd stagger into place to catch them. Basically using selling and a signal.
If Jim made his own list it would undoubtedly be on it somewhere.
I always liked the Boogeyman gimmick. Fear, shock, and committed wrestling helps fan's stay away from the ring. A smart mark isn't gonna jump a guy who likes eating worms.
A smart mark knew they weren't worms
Babyfaces suddenly becoming weaklings or cowards, once they turn heel, always bothered me. It's the same wrestler, same abilities. Why is he or she suddenly weak? Speaking of which, the surprise rollup/schoolboy pin for the 3 count, people that can take 3 finishing moves and kick out, in the ring, but a forearm to the back wipes them out, backstage, and probably the thing that annoyed me, as a cynical child, and later, as an adult, the invincible, all-powerful babyface, who, despite lack of logic or staging, can kill almost half the roster, in one night, alone, with his bare hands, thus eliminating any potential drama, even in a big match. Guy can take 5,6,7 + finishers, some on the outside, a beatdown from the heel faction, and chairs to the face....kickout at 2, insta heal, comeback, ONE finisher, wins the match.
All that is still better than current wrestling, but it's fun to discuss tropes and cliches and how they bugged us.
Ryback went through all the jobbers and mid carders when he was a face. Turned heel and suddenyl can't beat Ziggler. Its so fucking stupid
Finishers need to go back to being protected. It was a monumental event when Goldberg kicked out of the Diamond Cutter at Halloween Havoc or when Rock kicked out of the Stunner at WM15.
And if it takes 15 of them to pin a guy….it’s not a goddamn finisher! It’s just an excuse for Michael Cole to blow his verbal wad for the 47th time that episode.
Chairs at least make sense because they are just there in an arm's reach.
@@imneveruploadinghere7180 I hear ya. Best example was Gary Young in Mid-South: Lost like a hundred matches in a row. One week he has a valet, music, blonde hair and he's Gorgeous Gary Young now. Beats the jobber easily.
Yeah I always hated the wrestler suddenly losing all ability upon a heel turn
Best quote of this commentary was, "They used to do it right, but now they don't do it anymore, because nobody is interesting!" And that's truly where there is something "larger than life" missing from professional wrestling
Something that bothers me is seeing 20 year veterans of the ring falling for reversals or tricks that are obvious to even the fans.
That was a pretty good article. I liked Jim’s comparison to the heel sports teams.
#8 was hilarious !!!
@@MrManfly A ref bump that leads to a “short coma” had me laughing lol
What is a heel sports team ?
@@jeffmac9642 Any team who isn’t the team you root for.
@@jeffmac9642 Dynasty teams that everyone is tired of seeing win. Every decade seem to have THAT team in most sports. i.e, 60s Packers, 70s Steelers (Cowboys too in this decade), 80s 49ers, 90s cowboys (again), & the last but not least great dynasty in football the Pats/Tom brady.
When Punk gets serious during his promos he will stare directly into the camera. It pulls you in and he's got you. Or when he acknowledges the crowd he will look directly at people in the crowd. It takes even an average promo and bumps it up.
He *made* the Nexus
That’s because Punk knows what he’s doing, and was taught in someplace other than the Performance Center.
On the other hand the rest of the aew roster looks into the camera way too much. I'm not talking about promos where it's fitting, but during matches they pose and look directly at the camera.
Yeah breaking the 4th** wall all the time started last year during Covid I think. It works well when you have 1 guy like Punk that does it at the right time.
Punk has to do something. Gotta hand it to the dweeb, he totally marks out for himself.
Current era clichés I hate.
1. The pass out/middle finger
in a submission. Just tap the fuck out It protects nobody
2. Lights go out scary character appears
3.Roll up finishes
4. "please welcome my guest at this time"
5. The "Can these 2 rivals coexist in a tag team" storyline.
6. First Promo after a heel Turn - "I don't owe you pepole any explanation".
7.Over use of the Kicking out of finishes
8.Heels are only friends with other heels and vice versa
That's what I like in MLW currently about cameras. They always acknowledge their existence, only exception is Cesar Duran's angles (Dario Cueto), but it's then shot like a movie to make you understand the camera is more of a narrator than an actual guy being in the room.
Yea i saw jacob fatu confrront a camera man that was "hiding" one time that was cool
I just got into watching mlw a few months ago I've obviously heard about the promotion but never watched but it's easily better than aew it's amazing the whole contra gimmick is the best thing I've seen in years since nwo first started...
@@despicablemonster the way they present they're top acts is way better than the way AEW presents theirs. Hangman is a wimpy cowboy while Hammerstone comes off as a legit champion. But MLW's sports entertainment aspects are kinda cringe.
@@zomb60 don't know enough on the topic to argue with you . I'll do my research and get back to u , something tells me. You are wrong 🤣🤣🤣🤣
The hammer fatu match is on CZcams and how fatu hasn't made the big time is beyond me. He's like a high flying umaga.
I've always kayfabed myself on strange objects under a ring by thinking a wrestler has hid it there beforehand. That actually makes sense, as long as it's something that could really do serious damage and help you win, like a sledgehammer, a baseball bat or some hard shit with barbed wire on it. I mean if you could hide anything you wanted, you probably wouldn't want a kendo stick or a tinfoil trashcan in there.
Chairs and tables under the ring make complete sense--after all, there are chairs set up for the spectators to sit in, so you you had a couple under the ring in case more chairs were needed in the audience, it would make sense that putting the under the ring might be a thing the promotion would do. Same thing with a table under the ring--it's there in case more press shows up to cover the matches than was anticipated.
Whatever the object is, it's always behind the promotion logo apron
I now honestly wonder why ECW would have Cookie Sheets involved. Other than that they don't exactly tickle when someone is walloped by one!😂🎤🍪🤼♂️B.W.
@@madbrowniac7871 or cheese graders!! 🤮🤣
The Alltime Winner, as Jethro Tull's Jon Anderson once sang, has to be the time in ECW when Tommy Dreamer and Raven involved themselves with an object that would be darn difficult to hide under the ring. One IIRC attacked the other with the Machine that dispenses Newspapers!😂🤣😂😮🎤📰🤼♂️B.W.
they forget 1 thing
when a wrestler positions itself for the next move instead of getting its body dragged towards the set-up spot
One that always bothers me is when wrestlers, usually at the start of the match, will do a series of chain wrestling spots that end in a stand off and they stand across the ring from each other and the crowd applauds. There's nothing wrong with the spot, it's actually a really good one when done right, but every time the wrestlers botch it they still do the stand-across-from-each-other-and-wait-for-the-applause thing, and it ALWAYS looks atrocious.
Hugo Savinovich and Carlos Cabrera always did an amazing job commentating matches. They always sold how dangerous is the environment in a wrestling match every time a table spot happened to them (and that time Hogan chairshoted Hugo lol).
Even scarier when the Rock stole Hugo's headset at Backlash '99 and told him to shut his candy ass up when Hugo started protesting.
Savinovich is a legend.
In TripleMania XXVIII (2020 edition), Chessman, basically the top Rudo at the time, smashed Hugo's head with a guitar. That was a violent shot.
In terms of the foreign heel, I always felt horrible for that Muhammad Hassan guy in WWE in the earlier 2000s that got removed because of the London kidnapping the same night he had "terrorists" attack the Undertaker. He was doing great, just bad timing.
It was always gonna go to shit when Vince got involved.
It started as a guy who was calling everyone racist because of legitimate anti Muslim sentiment at the time.
And then Vince turned him into a terrorist.
Mid 2000s but yeah.
@@parsath_2584
Its Vince's company. He's always been involved.
The big problem with him was that he wasn't popular backstage. I remember hearing stories about how some wrestlers, including the Undertaker, didn't like him.
Sad part is is they filmed that 2 days sooner and still aired it.
I think that if a ref is gonna play dead, they should get hit with at least something more than a punch, unless it’s Brock Lesnar throwing it or something. Like, if you got hit with a damn Van Daminator with a chair, then okay I can believe that. Perhaps you’re hit by a finisher like the Sweet Chin Music, then it makes sense. But I don’t want to see a referee get slapped by a small guy and act like they just got molly whopped by Big Show lol.
Hell AEW have a ref that might as well be knocked out all match, cause he doesn't referee shit.
I love when a guy LITERALLY bumps into a ref and the zebra sells it like death.
@@tonyjackson4078 I was going to say the same thing. A guy brushes a ref's shoulder and the ref is down for a half hour. It's so silly.
what if they got molly whopped by mighty molly?
No. 3 reminded me of the time The Big Show pulled out a Wile E. Coyote sized chair from under the ring and clonked Sheamus on the back for the win.
On big men entering a battle royal, the funniest one I ever saw was when John Nord ran down the aisle, climbed over the ropes, ran to give a kick, his foot went over the top rope and he ran out of the ring. I don't think he was in the match for even 30 seconds and he eliminated himself. Greg Valentine once refused to do some trick because "I want everything I do to look like a real fight." It's a good standard to stick to
HUSS! HUSS!
King Kong Bundy's last TV appearance (for WWF anyways) was on an October 95 Raw in 20 man battle royal that Owen Hart won. KKB lasted like 15 seconds before he was dumped by Kama and Duke the Dumpster. He smacked the apron and then swiftly walked to the back like he couldn't care less hahaha.
Or Bushwhacker Luke in the 91 Royal Rumble. He came down the aisle doing the Bushwhacker walk and climbed into the ring. Earthquake grabbed him from behind and (Bushwhacker) walked him straight across the ring. Earthquake then pitched Luke over the ropes. He landed on his feet and Bushwhacker walked back down the aisle. The only time he broke stride was when he had to go over the ropes. It was hilarious.
@@BiggieTrismegistus The Bushwhackers were a great comedy team. But before that they were the Sheepherders and a force to be reckoned with.
@@morganspector5161 I was pretty young when they came to the WWF and had no idea of their prior history. Thus, I only knew them as a goofy comedic (and VERY over) act. I was surprised when I learned what they were like before they got there.
Yes! Thank you Jim. I hate the match sequence in which all of a sudden one guy hits their big move or finisher and then that guy gets hit with the next guy’s finisher and repeat until everyone is down. While it still pops the crowd (because everyone is conditioned to expect that), it’s such a tired cliche.
Agreed. Once every 10 years is amazing, 10 times a year is boring and tiresome.
It's facinating that according to Jim "nobody cared what the Spanish team were saying" while us growing up in the Caribbean and south America had an immense amount of respect and love for those guys
I think he was referring to nobody in WWF...I could be wrong, though...
@@stinkypinkeee5085 This.
Good point about CM Punk and MJF essentially being a foreign manace storyline.
A few modern cliches I could do without are (1) the lack of rule enforcement in tag matches. It's like every modern tag match is pretty much an ECW-rules match at this point including sloppy tags. (2) Playing music when a run in is happening and I get why, but I could do without it. (3) The 'lights out', guy(s) shows up. It's already tired. (4) Spamming Dives. (5) Leg Slapping. That's just a few, I"m sure I could put together 20 things.
like traveling in the NBA
@@booknerd869 I was never a fan of smaller guys doing powerbombs, always felt that was fir guys like Sid, Diesel, Vader, ect...
I was watching a tag match from 2001 the other day, it was no DQ...yet Taker kept waiting on the outside for Kane to tag him, it was the strangest thing
@@lyricsanonymous9036 If you can find it, check out the short piledriver Warren Bockwinkel used to do back in the day. He would put the guy's head between his legs like for the piledriver everyone's used to, but then he would lean across the guy, grab the waistband of his trunks, and just sit sharply down. Bock wasn't any kind of giant, but that move looked devastating anyway.
I hate music on a run-in. Almost as bad as I hate setting up tables to crash through. And yeah, bring back the tag rope and enforce the shit out of it.
This is a good list. If they can't do it right, they need to stop doing it. I know what Jim is saying about doing things right, but it just doesn't happen anymore. The sequential big moves is literally any Young Bucks match. Last night, it was Trent who ended up on top after all of the big moves were spent.
Really enjoy Cornette's rants - 50% industry insight, 50% old man yells at cloud.
My favorite laugh moment was the flying drop kick. If it connected, the guy popped right up and continued the attack. If it missed, then the guy is curled up in agony. Love it!
I love how he just randomly goes off on Kevin Dunn every so often
I miss the Russo rants
The thing that always made me laugh was those flimsy cookie baking trays. Why would they be near a wrestling ring?
I vividly remember when Mean Gene did interviews, every once and a while, the wrestler did not look at him or the camera but instead over his shoulder. If it lasted long enough, Gene would almost do a double take and glance behind himself almost to say "yo... Look at me or the camera. You look like an idiot doing what you are doing."
I remember in the 1980s Hogan used to mostly look down the camera a lot when he was talking to Mean Gene, then he'd turn back to Gene for a few seconds, and back & forth. Ditto for Warrior, Macho Man, The Bushwhackers, etc. - nearly every superstar from back then used to switch back & forth between looking at MGO & looking at the camera.
Every year before the Royal Rumble on RAW or Smackdown, 30 dudes randomly run into the ring and start beating the shit out of each other with the announcer saying “Is this what it’s going to be like at the Royal Rumble?!” There was like a 6 year period where they did that every year.
In summary: it’s not the spot, it’s how and how often it’s used.
19:36 as much as I love AEW this one of the few things I agree with jim on 100 percent, that and that stupid spot where everyone stands around waiting for one guy to jump on everybody so they can all fall over together
They need to have more bobby Heenan style types of managers come to the ring with the wrestler's
I think lucha Underground dealt with the vignette spots incredibly.
I think Lucha Underground did _a lot_ of things incredibly. I know the show and the style of wrestling on it wasn't everyone's cup of tea but I loved it. It was really interesting to see a wrestling program's concept not be based around the idea that it's a legitimate sports league and is instead an underground fight club. With dragons, ancient astronauts, an arm-breaking ninja skeleton, a cage monster, and the personification of death.
@@BiggieTrismegistus it was like watching a Mortal Kombat promotion and that worked for me.
Ladder matches and table matches need to be put away for a while.
It is increasingly more ridiculous the way someone sets stuff up in a contrived manner, only to go through the table they have just set up.
Its how indie darlings get off. You cant take it away from them
Basic rule, whoever sets up a table, goes through it first
@@atrainn like farts
Contract signings are great. That is how I got my job. I saw a guy getting ready to sign a contract so I hit him with a chair and signed it in his place, boom now I am a full time employee!
Under the ring: kendo stick, stop sign, trash can, dump that Mr. Perfect took. 💩
What dump? 🤣 gonna Google I guess.
I mostly agree about contract signings. Even as a kid I knew this was predetermined and they were already under contract to perform. It makes sense if you’re bringing in a new/returning superstar who you can at least claim is somewhat a “free agent”, or if the match they’re signing for is a new or particularly dangerous match or stipulation like retirement that “isn’t covered” by standard contracts. Otherwise it’s just a waste of time and a stale, obvious table spot.
I agree.
I like them when done right like the Andre and Hogan contract signing for example
Batista and Triple H had a good one
Jim so upset that he doesn’t realize he agrees with the writer until the 6th cliche. Lol. The writer can’t sell the headline 9 things wrestling use to do well but are done horrible now.
A few clichés I can think of that need to go are
-The Hulk Hogan baby face format in its entirety.
-Watching a television monitor over your shoulder while pouting. A.k.a, watching TV RAW style.
-The surprise roll up. Overdone to the point that it isn't a surprise and the 67 finishers beforehand telegraphs it.
-The athletic big man who either gets told to work like a giant and works slow and flat footed (Hogan politics to The Giant about working like a giant), or the athletic big man who works like Luchasaurus and it comes off sloppily.
-Goof gimmicks that completely destroy suspension of belief like Pockets, Jimmy Havoc, Sonny Kiss and Marko Stunt
-Ridiculous weapons like invisible hand grenades, pizza cutters, stop signs, baking trays, swords, dildos, and sledgehammers. These don't belong under any ring once rational thinking takes hold.
-Oversaturated factions, and factions who overstay their welcome. See any of the 592,604 iterations of the NWO Russo and Bischoff booked in WCW and TNA. Factions don't need 17 midcard guys to be stooges for 1 chicken heel, nor do they need to last 5 years. It's why the Shield and The New Day kept to 3 guys.
-The Young Bucks acting like tough guys. I'm 206lbs and probably outweigh them combined. They're also 5'8 and look like balding bearded 5th graders. If you don't look intimidating, don't act like Stone Cold Steve Austin or the Undertaker, because you'll be mocked for it.
-The arguments over small guys in wrestling. As long as you look like an adult athlete, you can get away with being undersized (Brian Danielson). If you're a 5'4 105lb wire, you learn to cut promos (unless you can already talk), and you can always be a manager or mascot. If you have a unique look and believable offense, you can use that to compensate for being small like Darby Allin or Kevin Sullivan.
Vince McMahon always trying to book poop related angles.
So true about the battle royal😂.
Omos should win but he will eliminate 5 or 6 guys and then everyone will gang up and throw him out of the ring😂.
I mean, that at least makes sense. If you were in the ring trying to win a contest with a bunch of other guys and a big dude like Omos, you telling me you wouldn't try to get the other guys to team up at least long enough to get the giant who could eliminate any of you singularly?
My number one thing is the Indy bullshit going on nowadays, a bunch of skinny dudes that look like they work at 7 eleven with no charisma just doing a bunch flips, high spots, no selling, and 20 false finishes every match
I got 1 for the fans, to stop chanting this is awesome over every crappy move,
What's worse is when the crowd chanted "We are awesome" back when NXT was in Full Sail. What a bunch of idiots
I’ve got one for the fans: stop wanting to chant as much period. Organized chants didn’t happen all that often before. Sure, you’d hear the crowd repeat catch phrases, but it didn’t last for that long.
One of the worst things ever was when Ricochet was about to grab the money in the bank suitcase and just froze for about a minute, while Brock Lesnar music played. Ha.
It’s wwe logic that influenced the current generation we have now. I always hated that, just grab the goddamn case. Or when you have a group of heels beating up a baby face and they stop when they hear music. why are you stopping? You can easily hit him before he gets to the ring
That was the funniest thing ever, he was literally just sitting there waiting for him lol
Im pretty sure that was Mustafa Ali
@@yayaman5718 oh yeah. These indie wrestlers all look alike.
Ha.
I wish they'd bring back more stereotypes in wrestling. Who doesn't like the snooty white guy character or the hip hop black wrestler. Who gives a shit if it's stereotyped. The best comedies use over exaggerated stereotypes
An old idea of mine for a foreign heel: an evil Swiss wrestler. But because he’s Swiss, and do is both neutral and rich, doesn’t actually wrestle his matches-he pays other wrestlers to do it for him. And he pulls a swerve to get all his losses invalidated but instead of sone rule book he uses the Geneva Accords.
And representation matters
Claudio Castagnoli in his ROH days would've been ideal for just such a presentation. The Swiss native who went to NXT then The WWE Main Roster and morphed into Cesaro.🤔🎤🤼♂️B.W.
backstage wrestler watching TV standing with his head cranked 180 degrees instead of just watching it normally
A fart was enough to knock Earl Hebner out for ten minutes and Corny looks like a heel version of the Monopoly man.
To me, the stuff that should no longer be done would be:
1) Kicking out of finishers. Protect your finishing moves. If Arn Anderson hits a spine buster, it's over. Undertaker hits a Tombstone, it's over. If there's a kick out from a finisher, it should be logical; i.e. it took too long to actually get to the cover (because they were selling having their ass kicked the whole match, distracted by manager/partner, etc) and it should be done sparingly. If the entire crowd does not shit themselves when a finisher kick out happens, you suck, you should never be allowed to book a match again. Having to hit 30 F5's and 50 spears just devalues and ruins those moves, and turns them into boring filler like a hammerlock.
2) Standing around like an idiot waiting on someone to jump on you. Seriously, stop that shit. It looks bad. Whether it's 1 or 10 guys standing there waiting on that flip off the top rope, it looks stupid. It breaks the flow of the match entirely. A good match flows logically, and breaking that flow will always look terrible. If you need to take time to let someone get into position, sell it. Stumble, fall, get back up and stagger around while buying time and positioning yourself.
3) No selling offense. While it can be done for short periods (some stuff on this list can be done if done right, and sparingly) 99.99999% of offense should be sold as if it hurt. Even Hulk Hogan sold most of the attacks against him, until the big comeback later in the match. The wrestlers should be getting in progressively worse condition as the match goes on, and if a period of no selling happens, it happens near the end, when the strap comes down and the finger gets shook in their opponent's face. This goes down to continually selling apparent damage to body parts as the match goes on as well. If Buddy Rogers is working on your leg, you sell that that leg is injured the entire match, down to when you leave the arena to go to the back. No selling shit should be cause for an immediate real fight, and the idiot who refused to sell should have their ass beat until they quit wrestling forever.
4) Bad Hardcore. Tables, chairs, etc... don't do that every five seconds. And make it make sense when you do do it. There's no reason for baseball bats, kendo sticks, and barbed wire to be under the mat. Spare tables and chairs, yes. But don't do it constantly; like many things if you do it every night it just becomes filler. If you can't get over without that stuff, you suck. Get out of wrestling. Good hardcore is like the brutal beatdowns by Fritz Von Erich or the Tupelo Concession Stand Brawl; spontaneous, brutal, believable, which means still fucking logical. If weapons are used, they're grabbing whats at hand, or otherwise just throwing everything they have at each other. The exceptions being in cases where the wrestler carries the weapon around with them, see Sandman with his Kendo stick or Sting carrying a baseball bat in his coat like he's the Highlander. Because that's their thing, and there's a reason they have that stuff, versus it randomly spawning under the mat like a terrible video game. Again, it should be logical, and make some sense. Otherwise you just break the immersion needed for people to get into wrestling (just like any other action media), and you end up with a quarter of your prior audience and slowly shrinking as time wears on.
1. Most of the time. In rare occasions it should be done, but it may not be the sort of thing that happens anymore (that first Undertaker/Kane was somewhere I thought it worked, but it should be very rare circumstances like that).
@@suchiuomizu Exactly. That instance with Kane kicking out was a perfect example of kicking out of a finisher being done well. Done rarely, and with reason (Kane is a monster), it can be great. Done repeatedly in match after match (Lesnar, Reigns, Young Bucks), it sucks.
I was born in 1986. I remember watching the raw and nitros from the late 90's. I asked my dad one time, "do the guys who work on the road store all of their shit under the ring?" I was legitimately confused haha. Dad just laughed. He understood it was a work
Every time that I saw a kitchen sink and pluming pipes coming out of the ring I became dumb struck. Now I know I was not the only one.
i dont get ref bumps. You have cameras a multiple people at ringside. The good damn timekeeper could tell the ref "yeah, he used a chair"
This looks like Baron von Raschke mixed with Superstar Billy Graham Karate Gimmick
#3: This is why I didn't understand people queefing over the Omega vs. Moxley match with rhe Bed O' Barbwire....of all the gimmicks I have seen, this was the worst...so many questions on just the logistics of that thing...I have never laughed so hard during a match, nor have I been more embarrassed to be a fan...
Iv only recently seen that, watched it my young kids. Daughter saw the " explosion" at the end and laughed. She's 7.
"I knew it was just pretend daddy".
Says it all really.
Dr. Mindbender? My god, he was the foreign heel of GI Joe!
Who was your fave cobra member?…mine was Destro..he’d tell Commander what was going on and CC would totally go against it in bullheaded fashion and Mah man would just be like “fugginnidiot” 🤦🏽♂️
@@tobiasfarragut292 the Commanddr himself on the old Sunbow cartoon
He always had the most entertaining dialogue LOL
Being voiced by Chris "Latta" Collins, a stand up comic by trade, I always wondered if he ever tweaked/ad libbed his own dialogue with material from his stand up routine being they didn't actually have to animate his dialogue as he was wearing a mask all the time
@@shooter7734 the writers for the cartoon have said they truly found CC’s personality when they stopped trying to make him a menacing villain and started modeling him after Yosemite Sam
Here's one: 250lb. dude jumps out of the ring onto 6 guys of the same size and all six fall like bowling pins.
You dont even have to be 250 lbs.! It can be Finn Balor jumping on top of 3 guys , each bigger than him, and "Timberrrrrr".
Or AEW where 135lb pockets bowls over multiple guys the size of Billy Gunn, Wardlow, Jake Hager, and Lance Archer. All guys north of 250lbs.
Beyond burnt out on politics. Went back to one of my childhood loves -- wrestling. Then I discovered shoot interviews. Then I discovered this guy. Mr. Cornette has saved me from the endless psychotic merry go round of modern politics and social media. Thank you. Being a southerner myself, I find his style of storytelling to be quite familiar and endearing, not to mention entertaining, and his knowledge is truly remarkable.
You've missed Cornette at his most ignorant then. Give it time
There's a generation of wrestling fans that think the rings come with tables ladders chairs trash cans & a sledgehammer under them
one cliche i hate is when a tagteam who have clearly been around for a while and know each other inside and out have one loss or one bad chairshot and despite being freinds for years and if this happened for real most people would assume it was accidental or try to start apoligizing but instead take it personally and beat each other up over a misunderstandiing.
But that's how life really is. One little thing can ruin a long relationship. Happens
One cliche that always bothered me was how law enforcement would be utilized in storylines and angles. Heels could do so many dastardly things such as kidnapping, forced imprisonment and even attempted murder, only for them to get a slap on the wrist. But if babyfaces so much as violated a restraining order or accidently knock down a backstage worker, they're hauled off to jail. It's like letting off a guy who robbed a bank or set someone's house on fire while arresting someone for accidentally littering or jaywalking. I know something like that is supposed to build heat for the heels and sympathy for the babyfaces, but what logical sense does that make?
Another cliche that bothers me is whenever a heel is a special guest referee. If the babyface knows anything about wrestling, he should know damn well that the heel ref is going to try and screw him over. He should know that the heel ref is not going to count any pinfall attempt or will get in his path when he tries to do a certain maneuver. Yet they complain and wonder why this is happening. It's very hard to get behind a dumb babyface.
6 = That was wrestling's fucking bread and butter for several decades! Those foreign heels were some of my favorite wrestlers.
Noow Americans hate America...
So fighting your family/friends is all the rage but don't you DARE dislike "Johnny Foreigner".
“When an Oklahoma team comes into Texas, Texans aren’t going to meet on the state line and beat the hell out of them” actually…. that isn’t entirely accurate. 😡
Anything with The Ref needs to go! What drives me nuts now,they do this for a ludicrous amount of time in AEW. Someone jumping up on the apron to distract a referee. 3 Seconds at most. Just enough time to stop the ref from seeing a low blow or whatever. One time Luke Gallows was distracting a referee in AEW. I timed it out of curiosity,90 seconds. He was up on the apron as long as some Mike Tyson fights back in the day. Ridiculous. Also distractions. People jumping into the ring and the match not ending. "He Didn't Make Contact With Anyone" NO The second that guy steps foot in the ring the match ends,disqualification.
The problem, as Jim Cornette points out, isn’t with these cliches being done, it’s with them being overdone. And that’s the problem with the modern wrestling business in general. The DDT and the Superkick used to be finishers. Putting someone through a table was reserved for heated feuds and the victim would sell the injury for weeks, not mere seconds. They’ve done everything that seemed believable to death, and now all that’s left to top them are things that can only be done by performers clearly working together.
In aew it's the kick out at 2 after a move that would normally put someone out for months. In wwe the fact that Champions getting pinned every week but not losing their belts are my top ones
Jesus Christ do I hate WWE champs eating pin after pin after pin in non-title matches. And the related "defeat the champ in a non-title match to become the number one contender". *Why in the hell would bookers do that?* We're watching the match you're building towards!
Number 4 - When Jim says, when the music plays and the babyface comes to make the save. The heel stands there in shock when he could still kick the shit out of the guy in the ring. I thought that this week with Roman Reigns and Heyman! He had the chair... All he had to do in reality was smash his head in. An still could of turned to face Lesnar.
Sports Entertainment, pal!
I think having weapons like kendo sticks and guitars being under the ring is only justifiable if it's a hardcore match - weapons are encouraged and they have been secured by the company and placed there in advance.
You have unwittingly explained why hardcore matches are dumb, nonsensical affairs...cheers!
@@stinkypinkeee5085 they're great now and then as the culmination of blood feuds. But they are overdone
That was the whole appeal of hardcore matches: they were supposed to be spontaneous and “anything goes”. Instead, all they’ve become are the same scripted, bland sports entertainment bullshit, only with more accessories.
@@zlinedavid 100% agree...I'll take The Tupelo Concession Stand Brawl all day long over what passes for "hardcore" today...
@@justoneguy2487 If it stayed more "Bunkhouse Brawl" and less of a spot-filled gimmick fest they would be better...
The whole thing about referees being knocked out for minutes by a punch or something else that wouldn't barely faze a wrestler is just one of things...while it doesn't really make sense in reality, I've come to accept it as a part of wrestling logic, lol
I remember when I was a kid In Venezuela Whenever I could Catch WWF at 5 AM on Saturdays Hugo and Carlos not only were not announcing the match in Spanish but also "Tried" to Translated the Promos on the spot, They missed A lot of stuff, they could barely catch up of what they were saying, and then tried to filled in the backstory why the 2 wrestlers didn't like each other during the entrances
That's cool to know. I always wondered how they dealt with the promos on the foreign language broadcasts.
I lived between Puerto Rico & New York City for most of childhood and teenaged years. I'm in my late 20s now and have settled in New York. But I can never forget Hugo and Carlos. They are forever imbedded in my heart. I, at some point, ofc didn't need the translation but I still enjoyed listening to them. They hardly missed a beat and when they did, they caught up to it later. They were so enthusiastic while still selling and really made it as exciting as good ol JR & Jerry Lawler did while sometimes being part of the action and taking bumps like champs. Untold heroes haha
@@c_5nco Unfortunately the WWE released Carlos Cabrera a couple of weeks ago. I'm a native English speaker and don't speak Spanish so I never listened to him and Hugo, but I'm going to miss just seeing him at the Spanish announce table. When Carlos y Hugo were there at that second table it meant I was watching a big, important show.
"Someday a wrestler will go to look under the ring for a weapon, and there won't be anything under there, and they won't know what to do."
One thing I can't stand is the long, drawn-out and inconsistent counting by the ref when the wrestlers are outside the ring. I was watching AEW when two guys were fighting outside (imagine that). After over a minute of this, I was wondering why no one was counted out. Finally, they showed a shot of the wrestlers with ref Paul Turner in the ring saying, "siiiiiiiixxxx". New Japan does this correctly. They initiate a 20-count and it's done by the PA announcer for the crowd to hear, and it's consistent with "1-2-3..." Once he gets to fifteen, his voice gets louder and goes up an octave to build drama, but the cadence is the same. My favorite finish was in 2019 during the Bad Luck Fale/Zack Sabre Jr G1 match. In the G1, a loss is a loss and a count out means as much as a pinfall victory. Fale was pounding on Sabre while the count was going on until Sabre locked on a submission. Realizing the count, Sabre released the hold, hauled tail to the ring and slid in. Fale, being larger and slower as well as selling the submission, didn't make it in time. The crowd popped huge due to the protected rarity of this type of win.
The one that bothers me a lot is when people kick out of finishing moves like they do in WWE now. What's the point of a finisher of your going to beat it? Signature moves basically give a distinction to that character.
i couldn't agree more with Cornette. Foreign heels don't always have to mean someone of a different race. Even then it can just overall be someone who thinks they are better than us. But that doesn't mean that we hate all people from that country, race, or team.
sure some people will certainly hate some of them because of just pure hatred. But for many of us. its just that we want them to lose. But overall still live happy lives outside of it.
My biggest one is "false finishes.". They are called finishers for a reason. Otherwise they aren't finishers. You don't kick out of them unless it's a really BIG match i.e. world title, career ending match.
NewJack and others came with a Shopping Cart of weapons! That made sense!
A computer keyboard, kitchen ware, a guitar, flimsy trash can lid. I loved every second of it.
I would like to see a today's version of a young Freddie Blassie.
He’d be nothing more than a Pencil Necked Geek…..😒
#10: wrestlers ignoring the fact that there are thousands of fans in the arena and only talk to the camera.
That’s a wwe troupe
The Travis Heckel caricature looks like Baron Von Raschke as Charlie Brown. The World famous one by Charles M. Schulz not the guy that Jimmy Valiant impersonated.🤔😂🎤⚾️🤼♂️B.W.
In defense of referee bumps--a wrestling ring has a very small surface area when compared to the playing areas of other pro sports. When you've got three people moving around in such a small space (five people in a tag match), it would be far more unbelievable if a ref was *never* bumped. Heck, even in the NFL, you occasionally see an official collide with a player or with a thrown pass (usually the umpire)...and a football field is much, much bigger than a wrestling ring. In defense of "evil foreigners", it's natural for people to automatically root against people from another country or another culture...after all, isn't that nearly the entire reason that people watch the Olympics? To watch the Americans beat everybody else? It's far better to put foreigners on the heels side, where people will naturally boo them and where you have a great starting point from which to develop them, than to try to make them babyfaces where you have to overcome language barriers and cultural differences. People come to wrestling matches to have a good time and to yell, scream, and act a fool...they *do not* come to wrestling matches to have their cultural horizons "broadened".
These wrestling cliches, became cliches in the first place because, they worked... But, now that everything has been over done, it's not effective.
The law of diminishing returns...
Pretty good list, I totally agree with the invisible camera. I hate that so much.
Wedding ceremony in wrestling. We know how it ends up a brawl or interrupted by another wrestler. Macho and Eliz is the only one that had neither.
Dexter Lumis and Indi Hartwell got through it unscathed.
I can't agree more with the ref gimmick. Even as a kid I cringed when it happened. The most recent was Lesnar vs Reigns. Remember, Lesnar sets Roman up for the F5, AND Roman's legs barely clips the ref and suddenly he's knocked out for ten fucking minutes.
no camera should be anywhere behind the curtain UNLESS it is part of an angle where a babyface gets carried out on a stretcher and the camera follows him out to the ambulance for example.
Sorry Jim but you’re wrong. I’m from Oklahoma and we’ll absolutely meet the Texans south of Lawton at the red river to fight lol
I miss the whole “hiding the foreign object”. Slaughter was the master of that thing.
How about in a multi man match when someone is litterally on camera just crouched next to the apron waiting for their next spot. Sometimes without even properly being thrown from the ring first, like some guys will litterally hit a move and roll out of the ring for no reason other than its not their turn to be in the ring. If you're going to be doing this, at least find a better spot to wait than right where the hard camera can see you
God, I hate that "spot"! Like dude, if you're supposed to be down, be down! Don't be peeking into the ring.
I think the camera/interview thing is spot on. One of my fondest memories was the interaction between wrestlers and the audience in the studio interviews. Like Ric Flair had one where a woman yelled and he says “honey if I wanted to hear from you I’d put you over my knee” now there is no improv like that it’s just a script that no one cares about.
This is the exact kinda topic I’ve wanted Cornette to cover
Yay Jimmy!!! Lawton/Ft. Sill,OK. gets a mention!!! Bless You, Corny... USA FA appreciates you.
If Ivan Drago in Rocky 4 was John Smitty from Cleveland, no one would have cared. You need a modern angle with a modern nemesis which Rocky 4 delivered. Wrestling plots are no different. You need a modern angle with a modern nemesis.
So someone from China?
Heck why not portray John Cena as a pro Chinese, cash in on the Jiang Xina meme.
Today we'd get a baby face "Drago" movie about hiw he was oppressed and abused hy the cruel Russian Federation, and that Rocky was the "par timer" stealing his "main event" spoy
@@darrengordon-hill You could make a babyface Drago movie without changing anything, except have him talk. He was being controlled by his wife and manager, being pumped full of steroids by them, and pretty clearly had PTSD from his stint in the military. You could easily portray Drago as a victim.
Weddings. Please stop wrestling weddings and ESPECIALLY if there is a cake involved. We know someone is going in that cake, it may and I stress may just be a matter of who, but we all know it and it’s almost a relief when it finally happens.