Would he be over with you today? (Warrior)
 

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So let's say a wrestler debuts in NXT that is a complete amalgamation of mid/ late 80s professional wrestling. The guy has boundless energy, over the top charisma, rambling shouty promos, basic high impact moves and let's just say is questionable when it comes to "Wellness Violations". It wouldn't be presented as a joke or shot like (Macho Mandow/ Axlemania), this guy was a true to life anachronism in professional wrestling today. Would this wrestler be over with you?

He’d be over with a lot of people. That kind of charisma is uncommon these days.

Yes. Dude had charisma and there is a lot more knowledge and better teachers on how to wrestle now.

I would agree, no matter how dumb a character might seem, if the guy has off the chart charisma, it is gonna work on some level.

Now of course it would depend completely on the guy and not the gimmick. Look at Velveteen Dream, a weird rip off of Prince, who himself was a 1980's wrestling gimmick in real life, and yet Patrick from Tough Enough is one of the most OVER guys with both the fans and other wrestlers.

It's cause of his charisma and fully embracing it.

My point is not if someone like Brian Cage can be over in the WWE (where he'd fit in easily physically with Hogan or the Road Warriors) I'm asking if someone whose offense is tackle, line, slam, sell for a bit, then punch, punch do his finisher 1,2,3. Someone who the "smarks" would hate because the Almighty Meltzer wouldn't like because he doesn't do 15 finishers and 4 dives a match (if that makes sense) Would someone like that be over with you, personally?

Yeah, man, he would get over.

Braun Strowman doesn't exactly have an extensive moveset, nor does Brock Lesnar anymore.

Does he still get to use steroids while everyone else looks like they do? Then yes he would still get over.

Ryback

Ryback, THE

I feel like anyone with a physique and a promo can get over in any era, including today.

Cocaine isn't as prevalent today compared with the 80's so neither the talent nor the audience will have the kind of energy needed to sustain this character.

To be fair, guys like Sting, Ultimate Warrior and Hogan all went to Ryback for advice on their gimmicks respectively :shifty:

They went to him for PEDs. You know Ryback had a whole gym bag like that guy in the locker room in the Wrestler.

He's a cunt and he'd be called out to being on quicker. Fuck him. No. Wished cancer on Bobby Heenan. No! Fuck him!

There's the charisma argument. It's always nice to have a man in the house. That being said, I do think the context around that charisma would be seen through a different lens. He wasn't remarkable in the ring, and he would be called out on that far more frequently. Hell, a lot of people criticized Warrior in his time. His personality also came with controversy, which you just can't ignore about someone in 2018.

As it's a personal question, and I've never been a giant fan of the Warrior, I would say no -- not with me.

I pretty much agree with Noid here.

Now I know you referenced the Macho Mandow parody in the op, but seriously, if someone debuted nowadays that was basically Macho Man (sans parody) they would get super over imo.

Ryback was over. Until they moved him into main event jobber and completely mishandled his booking. So yes, I think Warrior would get over. Then get sabotaged by shitty creative decisions and constantly losing in big moments.

Abso-fucking-lutely. He’d be massively over until WWE jobbed him out to Elias in 3 minutes on an episode of Raw.

Ryback is a weird dude, but yeah he was over big time.

That is classic WWE though, they build somebody up with the plan being to cut their knees out by having them job to the already established gyys.

Had they pulled the trigger and truly put Ryback over as a dominating champ, he would probably still be a big time player for them today.

Instead they jobbed him out to Mark Henry, turned him heel for no reason, jobbed him out to Cena, and stuck him in a go nowhere tag team.

Why they waste all that time building somebody up just to job them is beyond me, just throwing money away.

You had such amazing heels during Rybacks prime too. People wanted the Shield to get crushed. Everyone wanted Punk to get his. You had the Wyatt Family peaking. It was all so perfect for WWE to have this massive face come save the day. He was going to be set for a year at least with the people mentioned above alone.

And no..... fuck WWE.


Mark fucking Henry.

Nope. Too hokey of a gimmick.

You guys are acting like Ryback was something amazing. He got pushed and dropped the ball with his lack of skills and charisma. He was an undersized roided up meathead. The fucking Renegade was way better of a Warrior than Ryback. Ryback sucked and I said it all along his run. I guarantee he’d still be in the WWE if he was half as good as made out to be, instead he’s where? Doing what?

If Warrior came in now booked how he was he’d be over. The energy and charisma he brought hasn’t been duplicated. If that music hit now and a juiced up beast sprinted to the ring destroying jobbers, the crowd would go nuts.

Lol He dropped the ball? He was over as fuck and they responded by jobbing him out. Before that, he was a megastar waiting to happen. That night he got his hands on Punk is probably the closest thing we’ll get to an attitude era atmosphere ever again.

One of the reasons Reigns wasn’t accepted was that he looked like a badass and was booked like an underdog. No one wants to see that. Ryback came off as a badass and he was booked accordingly. And like Ruien said, there were so many good heels people wanted to see their shit kicked in at the time. Ryback was the guy the crowd could get behind and say “Aww shit. You’re fucked now!”. Hence the monster reaction when he got his hands on Punk. Then they jobbed him out. Killed his aura instantly. It was the dumbest fucking booking imaginable.

It's just not believable. Why would they expect folks to be sympathetic?

I'm somewhere in between on Ryback. I really don't get the absolute fucking love for him. He was never anywhere near as charismatic or intense as, say, Goldberg. He was kind of just a boring guy playing a meat-head to me. And he never had the skill to supplement that lack of charisma. Like, I get why Johnny fucking Curtis should be given more, but I couldn't have cared less when WWE dropped the ball on Ryback, because it honestly felt like The Shield guys were instantly more interesting the moment they showed up.

The thing I didn't like was when he lost to Mark Henry. But he never felt like a genuine star, even in these moments that he was allegedly "white hot." He was hotter than Braun, for example, but not anywhere near a genuine thing where I felt like the ball was going to drop. Just to mixed ball-drop metaphors.

As it is with a lot of guys -- in different measures -- it's partly the office's fault, but it's also the talent. This dude did nothing to save himself.

Re: Reigns:

People could see the push. They hate that now. What used to work when kayfabe was still a factor, or charisma could be implied and implanted, doesn't now. People see the strings and they think "It's bullshit this guy is getting this push over *insert wrestler that doesn't have the machine behind them*." It doesn't help that WWE, as a company, have heeled themselves constantly, so that when a guy gets a special entrance they feel like they are being jammed down your throat (see: Cena, Royal Rumble 2006). And WWE educated people in 2004 to accept the narrative that hard work and talent in professional wrestling are more important than star-power or kayfabe results (Chris Benoit and Eddie Guerrero's heroic stories as journeymen). You can't have a guy waltz into that environment without stripes and start killing people and have people buy it. It's all about the performance quality now.

Reigns was also presented in a way where he was coddled and preserved. Not protected, in terms of booking, but he kept The Shield aesthetic -- the look and the music. The other guys had it stripped away and had to either sink or swim, but you could tell they wanted to keep what was over and chain it to Reigns as much as possible. It was a safe play, but one that subconsciously came off as one when you are supposed to be taking a major chance with the guy. It'd be like if The Rock kept his Nation of Domination vibe, and maybe even the music, after leaving the group and getting a push on his own, because they were too scared of him not connecting with anything "new."

At least you can admit he was white hot unlike some people.

If Braun was in Rybacks spot he would have been white hot also. You just needed some huge ass dude that was a face to propel himself over all the amazing geeks that were around. It was the one time all you needed was a monster face and he would end up being the face of the company.

Ryback had charisma but even if he didnt he did not need it. EVERY heel and heel stable could do the talking. As I said before, Punk, Wyatt Family at their peak, SHIELD, pretty sure Evolution was around again. That was the era of heels and heel groups that were fuxking amazing.

No because he never got over with me initially when I was a child and I hate "beast" type wrestlers that just come in and destroy everyone without showing any vulnerability.

Warrior got away with far too much.

beast characters must be few and far between so it actually means something.

Ryback debuts and starts destroying jobbers in handicap matches. Starts getting his schtick over. Destroys the Miz. Looks primedfor a US title run.

Gets trusted into the main event when Cena gets hurt. Gets the shaft in the title match. Gets the shaft in another title match. Fails miserably to defeat the shield. Loses to Mark Henry for no reason at mania.

Turns heel randomly. Gets repeatedly jobbed to Cena. Gets paired with Axel and Heyman as essentially a lackey to be fed to Punk.

Then turned into an after thought tag team as Rybaxel. Gets hurt. Leaves. Comes back. Never regains the momentum he initially had and has a forgettable midcard run before leaving after his contract is up.

Yep. Ryback sure did drop the ball.

Maybe Ryback turns into nothing. But they booked him into oblivion. He went from a wrecking machine murking people to a glorified jobber within months. Idgaf who you are. Your character is unlikely to survive that kind of writing.

The only two guys I can think of who survived failing on a consistent basis but managed to maintain or increase their popularity was the Rock and Daniel Bryan. And those are rare exceptions.

Losing to Mark Henry was sure weird, and the heel turn I thought could turn things around.... And I didn't mind him losing to John Cena either.... It was only how he was handled after the Cena feud that I thought "ok, this guy is done"

He never won anything. He lost pretty much every feud he was in. At some point he had to get comeuppance or fans will lose interest.

As soon as he started cutting promos about the The Secret, he was done. Nobody is gonna take an Oprah book club subscriber seriously.

That was when he turned back into a face, right? No idea why anyone would think that would be a good idea and get people to like him......

Ryback was also pretty bad in the ring so that has a lot to do with it. He could barely pick guys up for his finisher. Warrior on the other hand shoulder pressed fuckers with ease.

Well, I may have exaggerated. White hot is a bit extreme. He was hot, but I don't know how sincerely over he was or how invested people genuinely were. It felt like they were just getting into a guy with a catchphrase who won squash matches. It's a fine starting platform, but as I said, I don't think he had the charisma to segue it into something more like Goldberg did. I'm not saying he had none, I'm saying that I don't think he had enough. I think people who like him act like there was a fucking revolution swelling, where I remember just thinking "Ok."

That's true, but who would you have really liked to see him get comeuppance against? Punk? I remember Punk being a lot more interesting, and retroactively I can admit that Punk's reign was kind of boring at parts. The Shield were so much more interesting than Ryback too. They were Powerbombing Rock and Taker and looking like a breath of fresh air. Would you have really liked to have seen Ryback tossing them around like a bunch of NXT jobbers? People complained when The Rock beat CM Punk -- how do you think they would have felt if Ryback had done it?

That's a good point. People blame the company for that, but how do we know that's not him? The dude seems like a big fucking weirdo. It's not just about on-air with guys. It's who they are and how they carry themselves out there in the real world too. More so than ever before since we have access to their weird ranting and such.

If Ryback had beaten Punk for the WWE Title, he might have flopped harder even faster.