Wrestlemania 30 Plans?

[headshrinker 26]

Wrestlezone:

 

WWE and Hulk Hogan are still negotiating a deal, reports PWInsider, and the two are said to be close to a deal. Creative is working on many different match and storyline scenarios for Hogan at WrestleMania 30.

 

The most recent talk had Hulk Hogan teaming or aligning with John Cena in some way. Hogan being in Cena's corner or Hogan and Cena vs The Real Americans are both possibilities being discussed.

 

It's also being reported that Roddy Piper might be brought in for WrestleMania 30. Hulk Hogan vs Roddy Piper is one of the only singles matches being talked about for Hogan. Other ideas being thrown around for Piper at Mania include Hogan and Cena vs Piper and another heel or Hogan and Piper tagging together to face Swagger and Cesaro.

 

Nothing is official regarding a Hogan return, but WWE seems to be operating on the idea that a deal will most likely be done in time for WrestleMania 30.

[Guest The Beltster]

Hogan vs Piper would be f*cking wretched man. If WWE go with that, they must hate both guys so much that they are going out of their way to embarrass them in front of the biggest audience possible.

[GENE 86]

Yeah, Hogan vs Piper in 1996 was horrible imagine would it be like now.

[Maxximus 353]

They should be champions for two other guys and make it a tag match. Give Hogan and Piper some pops and limelight and give two guys who need it the rub. Team Hogan with Big E and Piper with Ambrose or something like that.

[Guest The Beltster]

Yeah, Hogan vs Piper in 1996 was horrible imagine would it be like now.

Hogan vs Piper in 1985 was horrible, Piper has always been awful in the ring outside of a few good matches.

[King 277]

Piper's best match was in 1983 at Starrcade, says it all really about him.

 

Personally I'd love to see Hogan at WMXXX, even just to see him ripping his shirt off and coming down to Real American.

[Guest The Beltster]

The only good Piper matches I can think of off the top of my head (and keep in mind, we have like 30 years of matches to choose from) are the dog collar match with Valentine (which is a miracle seeing as Greg was also the shits), vs Goldust at WMXII and vs Bret at WMVII. He was carried by Hart and they used weapons and shortcuts in the other 2. Piper sucked. He was a massively overrated promo for me too, I always thought he sounded terrible.

[Evil Gringo 279]

Piper is the definition of pro-wrestling in the 80's. Personality and image allied to hype always won over actual in ring talent because you can be as talented as anything like a Dean Malenko for instance (I know he's not a wrestler from the 80's but he's a good example) but they don't put backsides in seats.

 

Piper, Honkey Tonk and people like that made people hate them, they made people want to see them lose and that is what they tuned if for - didn't matter that the matches were dross, people didn't care if they were fifteen minute brawls with little thought, they wanted to see him get beaten up.

 

Personally I don't want to see Hogan in the ring at WM30 - but I would hope he is there to be recognised for what he did for the WWE and the event.

[dsrchris 190]

Last Roddy piper match I remember enjoying was his Hollywood Parking Lot Brawl with Goldust. Although I haven't seen that since it originally aired, so I have no idea how well it holds up these days?

[Evil Gringo 279]

The chase scene which seems to parody the OJ Simpson case doesn't hold up and the rest of it seems like a standard brawl, common place in the Attitude era and ECW but at the time it wasn't something you saw everyday on WWE television which helped it standout.

[Guest The Beltster]

Its still a fun match now but thats about it. Watching Piper shoot punch Goldust in the face for seemingly no reason still makes me laugh.

[Guest Jimmy Redman]

Piper is the definition of pro-wrestling in the 80's. Personality and image allied to hype always won over actual in ring talent because you can be as talented as anything like a Dean Malenko for instance (I know he's not a wrestler from the 80's but he's a good example) but they don't put backsides in seats.

 

This has nothing to do with 80s wrestling and everything to do with...wrestling.

[Evil Gringo 279]

Yes and no. In the past it helped if you had a good personality and could click with the fans but to reach the top you also had to be a good worker. It dwindled over the years in terms of the ratio required but in the 1980's the ratio just seemed to tip completely in the favour of personality and the ability to talk completely given the mainstream explosion the sport encountered.

 

Look at Hogan, Warrior and Piper - some of the biggest draws on the 80's and all of them were average to pap but they made you care about them, you invested in them or you wanted to see them beaten to a pulp in some cases as they made themselves larger then life.

 

Granted you had Savage, Flair and others who hold both ends up but they are few and far between in the 80's.

[Guest The Beltster]

Hogan and Warrior are underrated as wrestlers in big match situations. I can't remember Warrior having a bad match on PPV from 1989 - 1992 and infact, I remember him having some all time classics. Warrior/Rude, all of them were great, Warrior/Hogan, Warror/Savage at WMVII and SS92 were great. His match with Sarge at Rumble 91 wasn't much cop but I lay the blame for that on Sarge being crud. Warrior also had some crackers on SNME over that same 3-year span.

[Evil Gringo 279]

Yeah, Warrior in his prime was an average worker who with the right guy in there with him could raise his game and put on a good match. Same with Hogan, he had some duff matches with duff opponents but with the right guy, the right atmosphere and the right chemistry he could also put on some good matches as well. Piper though, was almost universally pap but could get you involved in the fight with his actions and promos.

[Guest Jimmy Redman]

Yes and no. In the past it helped if you had a good personality and could click with the fans but to reach the top you also had to be a good worker. It dwindled over the years in terms of the ratio required but in the 1980's the ratio just seemed to tip completely in the favour of personality and the ability to talk completely given the mainstream explosion the sport encountered.

 

Look at Hogan, Warrior and Piper - some of the biggest draws on the 80's and all of them were average to pap but they made you care about them, you invested in them or you wanted to see them beaten to a pulp in some cases as they made themselves larger then life.

 

Granted you had Savage, Flair and others who hold both ends up but they are few and far between in the 80's.

 

I don't think the 80s are really any more different than any other era in that regard. Personality drawing over "workrate" is the way wrestling is and always has been.

 

One of the biggest draws of the 90s was Hogan in WCW, who was rubbish in the ring at that point. The nWo largely stunk it up in the ring. Austin and Rock were over for reasons that had nothing to do with their workrate.

 

Bruno Sammartino was a gigantic draw and by most accounts wasn't much cop in the ring. The Sheik was an institution as a draw, same deal. Ditto Pedro Morales. Superstar Graham. The biggest draws in Mexico during the early 90s boom period were rubbish in the ring: Konnan, Vampiro, Cien Caras. Giant Baba was immobile for a large period of his career and he was always a draw. Mil Mascaras is a running joke for how bad he was in the ring while being a gigantic draw for decades. And so on and so on.

 

There has never been a link between being good in the ring and being a huge draw. Never ever. Even if you go back to the early 20th century, there doesn't seem to be any evidence that you had to be a great in-ring worker to draw. There was a time when maybe you had to have ability as a shooter to hold a world title just for insurance, but that is a different thing to having good matches. Guys stunk out the joint on top back then just as they do now. They still put the title on lousy workers who could draw. Gus Sonnenberg being one of them I believe, off the top of my head, who was basically Goldberg 70 years before Goldberg.

[Evil Gringo 279]

A good match doesn't need good work or fancy moves or holds - it needs to draw you in and be heated and make you care and some of those names below did that. Baba worked around his limitations to do that, Rikodozan and Lou Thesz did that together and with other opponents too, Bruno did as well. Austin was a great worker but was limited in showing that by the style of the Attitude era and of course his neck issues after the Hart incident and Rock got better and better but when he started yeah, he was a bit of a greenhorn.

 

My point is, a lot of what people used to do to draw people in and make them a draw was in their ring work and making it matter, no matter how limited they were but in the 80's when the sport went mainstream, when the style changed to a more accessible form of entertainment the ring almost didn't seem to matter. People didn't care about the match as much anymore and the heat wasn't built in tag matches and build up matches like it was in the day over the course of a tour but with the microphone, with segments and promos instead. Your voice and your image became your calling card and your weapon when it came to drawing and yeah, its stayed that way ever since.

 

Look how feuds and rivalries are built in Japan for instance, a country that hasn't changed to use the Sport Entertainment model full scale. It is based on rank, on gradual build through their touring system, the heat is built on a slow burn in the ring with a shower of hype added here and there by the company or maybe one or two promos at the end of a show. That is more like what it used to be in the US before the 80's. Sure matches helped a little bit to create angles that were then explored and exploded off screen but as time went on run in's and interference became the way to do that more then a match.

[Guest Jayfunk]

Hogan and Warrior are underrated as wrestlers in big match situations. I can't remember Warrior having a bad match on PPV from 1989 - 1992 and infact, I remember him having some all time classics. Warrior/Rude, all of them were great, Warrior/Hogan, Warror/Savage at WMVII and SS92 were great. His match with Sarge at Rumble 91 wasn't much cop but I lay the blame for that on Sarge being crud. Warrior also had some crackers on SNME over that same 3-year span.

 

Really you blame sarge? look at all the matches he had and with whom, Warrior's best matches were with workers who could carry him through the match, on many shoots outside WWE people complained about warriors average working, and him believing he knew everything and actually knew nothing. Great story with a match with him and Andre, during the match Warrior kept doing a move wrong and Andre kept telling him that but Warrior knew best, so when he tried it again Andre put his hand up and warrior ran into his fist, he never did the move wrong again. He doesn't have any respect in the industry largely his own fault, especially if you compare if to Sting who started at the same time with similar built and gimmicks and Sting is hugely respected.

[Guest The Beltster]

Gotta say bro, I dont agree with you on this. In the 80's it was only the WWF that didn't push in-ring as hard as the NWA etc, but they still got their feuds over in the ring and even though Hogan on top didn't produce 'Flair matches', there were plenty of wrestlers packing out the cards underneath like Savage, Steamboat, Rude, Hart Foundation, Bulldogs, Rockers, Orndorf, Orton, DiBiase, Perfect etc to carry the work rate load. The vast majority of big time feuds in the 80's were started in the ring with guys turning on each other or doing run ins or whatever. They then built through promos and the occasional tag match, but the magic in the final run up to the matches was in the fact that they kept them apart, didn't let them touch. It would still work if they would do it today, remember how the kept HHH and Batista apart before WM21, made me want to see that match and I'm not a fan of either of them.

[Evil Gringo 279]

My point is though it was run in's not an actual event in the match more often then not that started feuds or some backstage diss or comment. If it was a tag team breaking up then the in-ring stuff took more of a front seat in the establishment of the angle because it made sense and it was right there as the optimum tool to be used.

 

Plus a lot of keeping them apart compared to today was due to the fact that their was less TV to fill then now, which helps build the tension so much more I agree. Its like they made a big deal of Punk 'finally' getting his hands on Heyman after the Cell match despite the fact I had seen him batter him during the Summerslam match and lands some pot shots on TV as well. In the old days it would have been a much bigger pay off and drawn out a lot more because a three month feud then didn't have a PPV every month to fill or two TV shows a week as well.

 

Yeah there were also work rate guys in the undercard of the WWF back in the day who kept that end up, like they did in 90's WCW as well but again, they were workhorses, not the stars of the show. They could hope for the IC belt maybe but the big bucks at the top of the card they generally missed because they didn't have the IT factor outside of the ring that those guys did.

 

The main point is that since the 80's the sport has been more media and mainstream driven then ever before as part of the evolution of the sport in general. Those who are able to use that to their advantage more then being able to do 1000 holds get ahead even quicker now then they did back in the day and people like Piper, Hogan, Warrior and others were able to do that as well as Rock in the 90's and Cena to a certain degree in the 00's. Hell its even worse now with social media.