Discuss the Career #1: Val Venis
 

As it was pointed out in another thread about Noid booking Val to win the World Title, I figure we could have weekly debates about certain wrestlers. Debate their careers, what they contributed, etc.

For this week, we can look at the career of Val Venis.

He was pushed pretty strongly when he debuted in WWE, but it seemed as time went on his career fizzled out. When he was put in Right To Censor, it seemed like he was destined for a career in the Midcard.

Your thoughts?

I’ll play even though this is a pretty pathetic attempt by a pretty pathetic poster to put me down, because hey — I’m the best actual discussion here.

Sean Morley was a decent talent. He had a good look and potential when he started. The gimmick fit the trash of the 90s. People are going to react to “SEX!”. They’re not going to emotionally invest or get behind the porn star turned wrestler though. And none of the boys really want to sell for the guy whose gimmick is his dick’s bigger than everyone and he gets to use it more.

In retrospect, he was really just “there” as a talent. Watching old clips, I think he used to die too much as a face and never presented himself as bad-ass enough in the ring. When it was time for his heel turn, the gimmick was too much in his past to move on from smoothly. His best shot was actually probably as Chief Morley. They could have maybe down more with him in 2001 post-Right to Censor or given the heel turn in 2000 more thought. I do wonder how history would be different if Sean Morley & Adam Copeland were brought in as a heel team in 1998, possibly with Jim Cornette as a manager.

He had a reputable run as a player/coach during his Heat days. This is where he became good enough at selling to actually kind of warrant a push, but by then there were younger, better options who hadn’t started to resemble a “Big Valbowski” themselves.

He then revealed himself to be a giant piece of shit human, making any contributions he could potentially have a trainer, agent or even a manager or whatever moot.

There it is. The open and closed book on Sean Motley’s pro-wrestling career. Now fuck you.

Few guys could sell as well as he did

Legacy wise? He doesnt really have one. Midcard act that despite being pushed pretty strongly on two or three seperate occasions failed to get over beyond shock value.

The problem with Val Venis was that we just looked at him. Yeah, he was never a sight to see. We just looked at him and the whole damn world didn't want to look like him. But they did. So we just looked at him.

Yeah thats a great point. We did look at him.

He's a relic of the time. It's not necessarily his fault, but where is one supposed to go after 'male porn star'? Even with the Chief Morley gimmick, he was always overshadowed by more talented workers and people who were able to grow and evolve their personality in a gripping way. What use do you have for a guy like that when you're receiving refugees from the WCW exodus?

Val Venis is really just a mid-card Rick Rude, right down to the repeat initials.

I think he was underrated as a worker. He was athletic and had a great look. I think the time to push him was RTC. He was in the background, but he should have been front and center. Maybe painting him as guilt ridden and extremist and causing fractions in the group would have been a cool story and could have given him an edge that he always seemed to lack.

A reformed, radical heel with a chip on his shoulder could have been an interesting character direction for him.

Right character at the right time. He was able to keep his job long after that character and get a chance to try other things like RTC and Chief Morley because he got over once before.

He was never gonna get past the porn star gimmick


I did enjoy his brief pairing in 2000 with Trish and his IC feud with Rikishi

He had a great match/build with foley in 99. Def his most memorable for me

White tights Val Venis was solid

Good Midcard/tag guy.

No guy. It had nothing to do with you. Do you notice how I said that I thought it could be a weekly thing? Check your ego at the door and realize that not everything is about you.

Nice try. :y:

The truth, as usual, lies somewhere in the middle.

I don’t think this thread is in any way an attempt to “put you down”. Splaya isn’t GD.

However, the concept germinated in another thread where the mention of Venis was most definitely invoked to try and provoke a reaction from you.

They actually could've gone that way with both Val and Godfather and it would've been neat.

A little tag team feud between those two and Steven Richards/Bull Buchanan with Ivory trying to keep the group together and "work toward the common goal" may have worked well for everyone.

(If they did try this, I don't remember how it went lol)

I could have made Val Venis the fifth career person we looked at and he still would have had the same response.

Splaya’s done a weird turn since I said the Edge debut in AEW sucked. Added me to his sig and started quoting all my posts. It’s VERY GDish.

I don’t want Splaya to like me. We just don’t need anymore GD antics in the forum.

You don't have to worry about that. I think you act like a know-it-all asshole who disrespects the majority of the forum. So trust me, I'm good.

In terms of surprisingly great match from absolutely out of nowhere, that cage match with Rikishi was a banger. And props to him for agreeing to take a top of the cage splash from a 400 pounder. I think you can count on one hand the amount of guys in that lockerroom who would do that.

Little kid me enjoyed Val Venis. He played his part and seemed like a solid enough mid card talent.

There are certain gimmicks that are hard to get over. Being a pornstar is one of them.

The Big Valbowski was indeed.... *breath heavily* solid enough.... and got over even with his...... *breath heavily* hard gimmick

A team of Godfather and Val named Supply & Demand.

I'd like to thank y'all for the inspiration for this awful, awful meme

https://i.ibb.co/wwwF3t2/Picsart-23-...-35-16-742.jpg

May I suggest pulling the names out at random from a container of sorts? I hear there's a weekly feature over on the video games forum that does that. :shifty:































RIGHT HERE...ON TPWW!!!

https://cdn0.sbnation.com/imported_a...520wwe_png.jpg

I think that's the way that we will go. Gonna make a list of of like 10 more wrestlers, managers, announcers, etc and release it to you guys. Could be Midcard guys. Could be main eventers.

That way if you don't know about the person or want to do more research that's fine. Just trying to get some perspective from you guys about certain people in the industry. That's all.

If you cut it out from this point forward, that would be good. :y:

On topic: The cage match with Rkishi isn’t really that good. It’s got the splash spot, but when you go back and watch it, it kind of plods. I’m struggling to think of a memorable Val Venis match, to be honest.

Anyone got any good ones?

I thought D'lo Brown versus Val Venis Summerslam 1998 was a great match. Good wrestling, had a storyline subplot (whether D'lo using a chest protector gave him an unfair advantage in the match), and the match delivered. Good opener for a pretty great PPV in terms of storyline telling (this as we know featured the infamous Rock/HHH Ladder Match)

RTC Val challenging The Rock for the WWF Championship on a smackdown was a pretty great match.

SummerSlam ‘98 is the closest thing that came to mind. You can tell they had been watching their puro. Crowd was more into D’Lo if I recall.

Haven’t seen that Rock/Val match.

Speaking of, I was a big fan of the D'lo chest protector gimmick.

Some say his chest is still injured to this day.

There may be hope for Sean Morley to get another run with the TNA rebrand. Everyone remembers “Your Feature Presentation” beating Chris Daniels. Does D’Lo Brown still work there? Do Chest Protector D’Lo vs. Morley for the TNA Legends Title.

It left me feeling semi-flaccid at the end.

Weren't we supposed to be doing one of these every week?

Yeah, funny that.