Old Guys and a Double Standard

[klunderbunker]

Hulk Hogan: comes back every now and again to have these big matches and is usually said he's hogging the spotlight and needs to just retire.

Ric Flair: same thing but even more of a running joke than Hogan.

Bret Hart: it's a cool thing to see him come back and he even wins a title. Everything's cool.

Jerry Lawler: wrestles once or twice a year on Raw and on occasion not even in Memphis and he's never told he's too old or needs to stay out of the ring.

Lawler and Hart likely wrestle more often than Hogan and Flair do, and yet we tell Hogan and Flair to sit down and quit taking up the spotlight. Why is this the case? Why are we telling guys of comparable ages (Flair - 61, Hogan - 57, Hart - 53, Lawler - 60) two completely different things? Why is there a certain set of standards for one set of people and a different one for others? There are other older guys that do this, so I don't just mean these four. In general, why are some legends held to a different standard than others?

 

[X]

...Do my eyes deceive me? Is this some sort of pro-TNA thread by KB? Nonsense, such a thing does not exist!

But I'm with you man. Personally I really don't mind seeing Flair or Hogan get in the ring once every few months or years, it's not like they're having giant programs built around them and their matches or something, I thought Flair had a surprisingly good match with Jay Lethal and Hogan has been perfectly acceptable in the one or two tag matches he's wrestled in for TNA, which were just quick brawls.

Bret on the other hand...I love the guy, but I hate seeing him in the ring because to me he's even more painful to watch than Hogan and Flair combined. Atleast Hogan and Flair can still execute some moves, Bret on the other hand is just awful in the ring at his age and can't deliver more than a few punches and a scoop slam, that's about it.

There's definitely a double standard though KB, and it's one you often hear me bring up relating to hardcore WWE marks who shit on everything TNA does while praising the WWE when they do the exact same thing---like bring in Bret Hart for several matches on PPV and TV.

 

[harrythem]

I think, in Lawler's case at least, he's kinda under the radar because, even when he wrestles, it's normally nothing more then card filler involving a new "up and comer" kicking the crap out of him (such as Muhammed Hassan, Santino, Nexus, Sheamus, etc). If Lawler was working the higher end of the card, he would probably get the same abuse as Hogan and Flair.

As for Hart, when he came back to fight Vince at Mania it was like when Hogan returned to WWE, something you'd waited years for but never dreamed it'd happen. He's annoyed the fuck out of me since, with his hanging around the top end of the card and taking up valuable space someone else could fill and the Hart backlash seems to have finally begun because of this.

With Hogan I think it's mainly because it's clear the man's turned into a walking laughing stock. From his make-believe books to his crazy tv shows, the man has tarnished the memories most of us had of him growing up and, for me at least, those memories were a lot more cherished then my memories of Bret Hart.

As for Flair, he was once the best in the world, but then he got old (around Rumble 92) and the magic became rarer and rarer. To see him rolling around in thumb-tacks while using interview time to hog the glory from the talent he's there to promote, breads resentment. Throw in that he threw away the best tribute in history with his return from retirement and, again, you can see why people dislike Flair.

Mind you, I still can't stand all those clamouring for the return of Jim Ross. The guy clearly gave up remembering wrestler names etc years ago and seems to have spent his final few years in WWE coasting by on catch-phrases and past glories.

 

[Davi323]

There is a huge difference between the reappearance of Hart, and the occasional twice a year "return" of Lawler with what Flair and Hogan do.

Bret Hart really isn't an active competitor, and his "matches" have all been scripted to put the vast majority of the workload on the other people in the match. Bret Hart is not expected to put on wrestling clinics. Further, he is not part of any major storyline for anything longer than a few weeks at a time. Hart is a special attraction, not someone who is there every week as a performer. Hogan and Flair are full time weekly performers. Not always wrestling (which is a great thing) but, they are there, on TV all the time, as much as anyone else.

Nobody bitches about Lawler, because you already know he is going to be jobbed out to someone. Lawler wrestles twice a year...but when was his last win? When was the last time he was actually used in ANY capacity (barring his announcing duties, obviously), other than to serve as fodder for some up and coming heel?

Lawler gets in ring, Lawler gets his ass kicked, Lawler goes back to announce table for another 6 months. Repeat. At no point is Lawler the focus of any storyline. Even with the "warmup" match for Summerslam, he was on team WWE with other scrubs. Not the A team, not the B team, but the C team. If Lawler were getting midcard title shots? Hells to the yes people would be bitching, and rightly so. Lawler isn't taking any spotlight away from anyone else, so nobody complains. He understands his role.

 

[It's Damn Real!]

Absolutely there is a double-standard, but that same double-standard is prevalent in a slew of other aspects when you juxtapose the companies as it is, so it doesn't shock me in the slightest when it affects something like this as well.

Just look at the praise RAW gets for putting on shitfests every Monday, or the level of praise various performers receive despite actually being quite mediocre in the longview. Same can't be said of TNA, because TNA is shit on entirely, regardless of who is performing there.

Another fantastic double-standard is the concept of the "WWE Reject" – that is to say, anyone who at any point in time worked for WWE now working for TNA is a cast-off and shunned as a result, whereas anyone who worked for TNA who now works for the WWE, or anyone who worked for WCW who now works for WWE are heralded for their fine craftsmanship and handiwork – why? Because, the WWE is the "bar", which means whatever they do is acceptable, and not only acceptable, but required to be lifted beyond if a rival intends to compete.

It's nonsense, but it's the way of the gun here.

 

[Schizophrenic]

Absolutely. I agree with fearbefore when he said that as much cpmplainin and moaning people have given about Flair and Hogan they have pretty much stayed out of the ring with Flair having an occasional match and it actually being quite fun to watch. Grantit it does involve him getting his ass shown, bleeding a bit and ding his typical spots but as around 60 does anyone really expect him to still be doing marathons and pulling out new things? I sure don't. I expect classic Flair stuff and some comedy. Anyone who is expecting much more than that are just kidding themselves.

With Bret it seemed like from the start when Bret's name was mentioned people had an orgasm for the guy just because of who he is. However for many the nostalgia wore off. Sure I enjoyed watching Mania with Bret/Vince. I never expected it to be like 94 when Bret was at his peak. I knew it wasn't going to happen and neither did most people. But why is it ok that Bret goes out there and does little to no work and gets cheered for it and priased while the guy is a stroke victim and is lucky to be able to walk and talk while a guy like Flair is older than Bret, is still wrestling decades after he was involved in a plane crash yet gets shit on? It just makes no sense to me, and the only thing I see it as is it has to be the moronic WWE vs TNA thing that alot of people seem to have going. Sometimes I sti and wonder if Flair was still with Vince would he get the amount of crap he does now or would he still be considered by most WWE fans to be the greatest of all time and not a joke.

 

[Jack-Hammer]

I wouldn't necessarily call it a double standard as the four wrestlers have been used in completely different ways. Now, I have little to no real enthusiasm at the prospect of Bret Hart or Jerry Lawler involved in actual wrestling matches. In Bret Hart's case, he's just not physically able to do it and I understand that. He's booked quite differently than Hogan or Flair have been in TNA as Bret's matches have consisted of beating up Vince McMahon at WM, wrestling The Miz with half the locker room interfering in the match and taking part in a 7 on 7 elimination match at SS in which his participation was practically nil. That being said, I don't want to see Bret Hart particpate in wrestling matches anymore because he can't do it. Everyone knows that he can't do it, so it's just best to avoid the situation altogether. As for Jerry Lawler, Lawler is used only as an occassional jobber. You know he's not going to win and he's going to go back to being a commentator for the rest of the year after he loses. It wouldn't bother me at all if Lawler never wrestled again, nor is it anything I get excited about because we all know what the outcome is going to be.

When it comes to Hulk Hogan and Ric Flair, nobody can seriously deny that even though they're in the same age group as Hart and Lawler, they've been used quite differently in TNA. For the first several months of his debut with TNA, Hogan was the center of the TNA universe. He was out in every other segment, the shows were weaved around whatever Hogan happened to be involved in and he'd regularly beat up talent. That's all pretty much stopped, however, over the past few months and that's a good thing. Hogan is no longer the center of attention on iMPACT!, he no longer gets involved in any brawls and his wrestling days are pretty much over at this point due to his back. When it comes to Ric Flair, he's certainly closer to being considered an "active wrestler" than Hogan, Hart or Lawler combined. Flair has matches on a semi-regular level and participates in brawls and/or beatdowns. Not that long ago on iMPACT!, he wrestled against Jay Lethal in a street fight and spent the majority of his time running around in his underwear. It was humiliating quite frankly, at least in my view, to watch. Watching a 61 year old man in his underwear in a wrestling match against someone 35 years younger than he is just made Ric Flair look pathetic. TNA often books Flair as a serious wrestling competitor on the same level as anyone else on the roster and that's just something I won't overlook. If Flair wants to do it, that's great. More power to him, but it's not realistic to expect most people to be into it. There does come a time in which wrestlers should get out of the ring before they become little more than a parody of themselves and that's what I see from Ric Flair right now.

 

[The Best At What I Do]

I don't think it's a double standard at all. I think it has to do with their time in the spotlight. Ric Flair and Hulk Hogan has both spent decades in the main event scene of pro-wrestling. Bret Hart and Jerry Lawler hasn't been nearly as overexposed. Now I know The King is technically a 50+ time world champion but the majority of today's wrestling fans are unaware of his work outside WWE since it is never brought up.

Now let's take a look at their current roles:

Bret Hart - "wrestles" a big time match about once every month or two since WrestleMania.

Jerry Lawler - color commentator who rarely gets in the ring only to teach an up and comer a lesson in what is usually a losing effort.

Ric Flair - the leader of the top stable and the mouthpiece behind the main angle in the company but also rarely gets in the ring.

Hulk Hogan - some yet-to-be-determined-or-fully-explained position of power within the company who is involved in every single angle going on. However, he manages to wrestle the least out of the four.

My point is that they all rarely lace up the boots (thank God) but the two that happen to be in TNA are still playing central roles after decades of overexposure. Now I will gladly admit Bret had no business anywhere near the US Title, much less winning it, and even though it was a feel-good moment for him I still found it totally unwarranted.

 

[Rayne]

To be fair, a lot of us were sick of seeing Hulk Hogan wrestle in the 90's.

It's not a TNA thing, it's a "I am tired of your catch phrases and you bring nothing to the ring anymore" thing. Here's the difference between the Hogans and Flairs and the Harts and Lawlers- we've been watching the ongoing Hulk Hogan comeback tour for ten years now. He is, for what he can currently bring to the wrestling ring, horribly overexposed. For most of this year, he was trying to play the role of a Top Guy. He is not a Top Guy anymore. Ric Flair.... I still like watching him, as NO ONE cuts a better promo in the business. (Maybe Jericho. Maybe.) But the same issue applies; we have seen an awful lot of him for a wrestler at his age. I don't disagree with it in Flair's case, but I can see the point.

With Hart- at the beginning of this year, he was a guy we hadn't seen in almost ten years. His was a story fans had been waiting for ever since Montreal. And, up until Wrestlemania, we didn't know how bad he was in the ring today. He's had his glorious comeback, and I wish he'd step back while still looking good; but he's a "new" old attraction. We've seen lots of Hogan and Flair over the past ten years.

Lawler barely wrestles anymore, and when he does, it's never near the top of a RAW card. He's somewhere in the first hour, either as part of a comedy match, or taking a ferocious beating from a heel trying to get over. No plot is wrapped around Jerry Lawler; the fans are not asked to make a lasting investment in him as a wrestler.

It's not a double standard; the old folks are being used in different fashions. Now if we had the way back machine and could get people's actual opinions about Hogan's last WWE run, instead of the time-adjusted saving-face versions, we could have a conversation.

 

[ABMorales787]

Hulk Hogan: comes back every now and again to have these big matches and is usually said he's hogging the spotlight and needs to just retire.

Ric Flair: same thing but even more of a running joke than Hogan.

Bret Hart: it's a cool thing to see him come back and he even wins a title. Everything's cool.

Jerry Lawler: wrestles once or twice a year on Raw and on occasion not even in Memphis and he's never told he's too old or needs to stay out of the ring.

Lawler and Hart likely wrestle more often than Hogan and Flair do, and yet we tell Hogan and Flair to sit down and quit taking up the spotlight. Why is this the case? Why are we telling guys of comparable ages (Flair - 61, Hogan - 57, Hart - 53, Lawler - 60) two completely different things? Why is there a certain set of standards for one set of people and a different one for others? There are other older guys that do this, so I don't just mean these four. In general, why are some legends held to a different standard than others?

Even if I'm a TNA fan, I gotta disagree. At least with this example. Every time Jerry Lawler is wrestling, he's always just about nothing before it. The only time he had a lengthy to go with was with Santino and is was more for comic relief. With Bret, there the case that the man never had the closure he deserved in WWE. He was out for 12 years and after such a long time, he finally comes back. Even if he's in worse shape than Hogan.

Every time Hulk and Flair wrestle, its a huge deal by itself. However it seems inevitable. I mean they are basically the godfathers of pro wrestling. Flair can still go. Hulk, well, he never really started. Today's wrestling is centered around realism. Hulk Hogan's moveset, isn't only limited by age, but by the huge lack of realism in it. Triple H beaten by a Hulk Up? The Rock? AJ Styles? Randy Orton. Do I need to bring HBK's lampshading of this?

However when you talk about someone like Kevin Nash or Scott Steiner, then we have something to with. Kevin wrestles sporadically in TNA, but can still be very entertaining. Not to mention that he's 7 feet tall in a company where your standard athlete weighs about 210 in 6 feet. Scott may not have the ability he had in the early '90's but, he can damn sure work a mic. Even if it's all accidental. I loved his feud with Bobby Lashley. They can still offer a lot and cover any base that may be left unprotected. TNA wasn't exactly mic strong back in '07, Scott was there to give some very "entertaining" mic work. TNA's biggest guy is Abyss. The resident "monster heel". Nash can be considered the "really big guy". Like WWE's Big Show.

 

[Tastycles]

It's not a double standard, it's two completely different things. Lawler is a commentator, who occasionally gets beaten up to further a feud, and Bret Hart has had, on average, about two segments a month since January and maybe 4 matches, only one of which was he the focus in, and that was at WrestleMania in a match that people wanted to see.


By contrast, Hogan and Flair dominate TNA broadcasts. Admittedly, if this trend has changed since last month, I won't have seen it, but at that point it wasn't unusual to see 5-6 segments featuring Hogan on a typical episode of iMPACT!, which is ridiculous. People get annoyed about TNA because where Hart and Lawler are brief nostalgia sideshows, TNA is built around Hogan and Flair. It's further exaceratred by the fact that Flair has never really left our screens, so there's not even a nostalgia factor.

 

[Miko]

No double standard, Bret Hart - Hart had barely been seen on WWE TV since he was screwed or whatever at montreal, he comes back and has closure with Vince, then gets made GM, then gets involved in Nexus angle. It's a lot of involvement over quite a long period sure, during which time he's only wrestled like 3 times (dont give me a list or anything proving me wrong, I dont give a shit and it's bound to be less than 10). Most of Bret's time has been spent putting over Nexus and the Hart Dynasty.

Jerry Lawler - Lawler gets the crap kicked out of him every now and again, not such a great involvement. Usually making people hated in the process.

Ric Flair - Flair was wrestling regularly in WWE until quite recently when he was already in his 60's, got a massive send off during which he blubbed heriocally and got a great retirement, one which he probably wouldnt have had if it werent for the WWE. Then he goes to TNA, and starts putting exactly the same show on in there that he did for WWE, saggy old man gets beat up a lot but still cheats to win, WHOO! Problem with Flair? He never really retired, and unlike Bret he's been around forever, sick of him? Pretty much.

Hulk Hogan - I've got more time for the Hulkster, he wrestle's less than Flair. Sure he was heavily involved in everything TNA early on, but I think he genuinely thought his constant presence would increase ratings, he now has relegated himself to the role of (one of) the authority figures. That general lack of in ring involvement to be honest puts Hogan in the same category as Hart and Lawler for me, someone who we recognise as an old face, but doesnt really hover around the way Flair does

 

[Lionshare]

Just because hogan is "quieter" now doesnt mean that he didnt do anything when he came to TNA to "save" them and to knock out the competition (WWE), remember a few month ago this was the guy who single-handedly destroyed all of the flair stable with those lame ass punches even though he could barely walk. Lawler hasnt been an active wreslter in the wwe in decades and hart is just an atraction.

But you have Flair who is the mouthpiece of the Fortune stable, and hogan who is in a feud with a couple of old timers in order to give the spotlight to the next generation, hogging airtime, when you could have your own stars competing in great matches with the likes of joe, MCMG and beer money.

So i dont think is double standard is reality.