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MORELOCK

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Posts posted by MORELOCK

  1.  

    The current WWE gets guys over. Guys like Hardy, Edge, Punk and Bryan now have had moments where they've about been as over as anyone in the history of the company. It's just a matter of going from over with WWE fans to over with the general public who aren't true wrestling fans to get them interested. No amount of Crash TV or great booking in the midcard or 4+ matches is going to change that. It's not a problem with bad booking or a "stagnant creative process". It's just a lack of larger than live moments, but ultimately those have the be at least semi-organic and have alot to do with luck cause otherwise people will just shit on them. That's why they try to make "classic Cena moments" almost every PPV and he still gets shitted on. Cause they never feel the least bit organic or anything more than just another wrestling. It's also why stuff like Lauper/Piper and Mr. T and Tyson/Austin saved the WWF while Rodman/Malone and Leno and every celebrity WCW ever brought in came off awful. WWF stuff came off as epic and organic, WCW stuff came off as publicity stunts that were super cheesy.

     

    And why doesn't the current WWE stuff come off as organic? Do you really not think it's because of the creative team? The fact that you had to reach back over 2 years to wrestlers that no longer work for the company to find half your examples of recent wrestlers that have gotten over is pretty damning evidence. There's a reason there aren't many larger-than-life moments now as compared to the boom period: the fans no longer have any incentive to care about the wrestlers and their manufactured moments because the booking has sucked for years. If anything the two you mentioned that are still with the company got to the point they are at in spite of the creative process.

     

     Anyway, I think WCW had better booking in the midcard than WWE does if you compare '96-'97 WCW to today's WWE. Wasn't the popular thing to say about WCW was that all the shows were fantastic right up until the main events?

    Mid-90's WCW was light years ahead of current WWE in regards to getting their wrestlers over and making fans care - the reason that people kept tuning in throughout 1997 was to see if the heels would get their comeuppance. When they didn't, people started tuning out.

    • Like 1
  2. Comparing today's WWE to any of the other boom periods in wrestling (WCW 1996-1998, Attitude Era, Rock and Roll Era, etc.), there isn't anything stand out that make them actually BETTER.<snip>Honestly right now, nobody feels like there missing out on anything the WWE has to offer, not because of any lack of quality, but because nothing iconic is going on. It's strange, pretty much true main stream star in wrestling history has been made the same way, yet it's as if the WWE hasn't figured it out. The first stage is getting them over enough to make sure whatever they do on TV comes off as a big fucking deal, and then the second is once they have, give them a moment that truly comes off as though it transcends wrestling.

    The inability to pull this off is directly related to the stagnant creative process that you insist is just as strong as the boom period's. You are wrong.
  3. I want to be told a story, and much of the Batman stuff I checked out as well as Final Crisis require the reader to basically fill in the story so Morrison can squeeze in a bunch of cool stuff. Morrison seems to come across as a writer like he is above the material - he's telling his masterpiece with these stupid little superheroes, and why should he have to play in anyone else's sandbox, etc. The direction Morrison and Johns were taking essentially chased me away from DC well before the Reboot.

  4.  

    Miz is awful, but still much more credible than Sabin.

     

    No, because Sabin is a guy who dedicated his life to Wrestling, and didn't let people telling him he was too small stop him, didn't let career threatening injuries stop him, overcame the odds at every turn, et cetera.

     

    Miz is a guy who was a geek on the Real World, and made it to WWE because Vince marks out for mainstream exposure. The only advantage he has over Sabin is height.

     

    And look and charisma and mic skills.

     

    This is like Evan Bourne coming back all of the sudden and winning the WHC - yeah, he's decent enough, but he's been gone so long all his momentum is gone, and shouldn't World Champions be in a class of their own? The reasons the titles meant more 20 years ago is they didn't pass them around to every worker who might have had a couple of good matches. Sabin's "dedicated life to wrestling" story is the rule, not the exception - the same story could be told with nearly everyone on the roster. Nothing stands out about Sabin at all.

    • Like 2
  5.  

    That Ryback bullies backstage guys at the catering table was funny, but why exactly was someone filming random guys eating?!

     

    Also funny...........from different guys I've known who had tryouts or dark matches, etc, WWE has AMAZING catering......just tons of great food.  But when portrayed on TV, it's a small table with a loaf of bread and some mayo and cold cuts. 

     

    Yeah, the company that handles WWE's catering is how I've managed to get backstage for a couple of events, and I got a good laugh out of this.

     

    They have to be ribbing Ryback. Does everything he is involved in have to revolve around food?

  6. The World is a Beautiful Place and Now I'm Not Afraid To Die's Whenever, If Ever is indie pop genius.  Really enjoying it right now.

     

    7. "The Stand-In" by Caitlin Rose - Probably the purest "album" on my list, in that "The Stand-In" feels like a dozen pages in a growing, impressive songbook, which is everything it aspires to be.

     

    Of the new stuff I have listened to, the only thing I feel certain about is that Wakin On a Pretty Daze by Kurt Vile is the best album I've listened to.

     

    All of these seconded. Great stuff.

  7.  

    I don't think anyone really cares that the faces are bullies (it's an old problem), it's more that the entire anti-bullying Be A Star campaign is thrown onto WWE TV when professional wrestling at its core is essentially a bunch of grown men bullying each other.

    Yeah but those kids at the Be A Star get togethers seem to understand that the guys there talking seriously about bullying being a bad thing are just play acting on TV far more than grown men on the internet do.

     

    And that is an enormous problem - kayfabe being broken right in the middle of a segment on Raw. Why should we invest ourselves in something they constantly tell us is fake? Suspension of disbelief is gone.

     

     

    That nothing really means anything any more.Why do I care if someone wins a belt? They don't mean anything, no-one's really worked their way up for one, and they'll just lose it a few months later.Who do I care if this guy beats this other guy? They're bound to trade a million wins eachCharacter motivation and consistency is lacking, even when most characters are that generic that they are interchangeable between several others on the roster.

    Yeah. Is that really the answer to the question being asked? People who aren't watching can't have complaints about what they aren't watching.

     

    Yes? When they stopped watching for those reasons? I took 4 years off from watching from 07-11 for these specific reasons: they weren't making me care anymore. And they're still terrible at it - the only ones that can get you to care do so in spite of the writing, not because of it.

     

     

    If I were to predict that Raw is going to end with somebody's music playing as they stand on the ramp staring down someone in the ring for an incredibly long and awkward amount of time, how likely is it that I'll be wrong? The writing is awful. It's shocking that the ratings are still as high as they are.

     

    Looking at what draws and what doesn't, on TV in general, I don't think ratings have a lot to do with quality.

     

     

    The best critcism of modern wrestling came from South Park, where they saw "wrestling" as people standing around and talking, not actually wrestling.

     

    Which is a trite, worn out criticism usually made by non-fans who wouldn't enjoy it either way, whether there was more talk than wrestling (which there isn't) or whether WWE was some kind of promo-less environment and all programming was just entrances and matches.

     

    Fantastic way of sidestepping both points and saying nothing at all.

  8. Well with the recent trend of hell freezing over (Warrior, Bruno back in the WWE), I think if Eddie lived he would have made it to the WWE eventually to at least get a legends deal from them. Have him come out and do the stuff they won't have Lawler do anymore in Memphis and Nashville.

    Eddie was great, but thinking he'd come anywhere near doing Legend stuff on WWE TV is grossly overstating his importance to the modern WWE audience.

  9. Albums I've loved this year:

     

    Smith Westerns - Soft Will: Retro-ish band drops most of earlier garage sound to make a more classic sounding album influenced by Pink Floyd and The Kinks.

    Queens Of The Stone Age - ...Like Clockwork: Homme sounds bluesy and sinister, and wisely doesn't try to recapture Songs For The Deaf.

    Wavves - Afraid Of Heights: Catchy slacker-rock that could be right out of the early-mid 90's.

    California X - California X: Non stop rock possible. Sounds like Dinosaur Jr. circa You're Living All Over Me.

    Pity Sex - Feast Of Love: Dueling male/female vocals over music somewhere between classic Weezer and late-era Jawbreaker.

    The National - Trouble Will Find Me: Sad, slow affair after Boxer and High Violet seemed more upbeat, but just as good as either of those albums.

    FIDLAR - FIDLAR: Drug and alcohol fueled energetic punk-rock.

     

    Some songs I've dug outside of those records:

    Caitlin Rose - "Waitin'" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHdsJAGBscE

    Toro Y Moi - "So Many Details" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDntT7SFKmg

    Austra - "Forgive Me" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lop5rTEzm9E

    Empire Of The Sun - "Alive" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPKAwJKGSDc

    The Strokes - "One Way Trigger" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JV9JWDd3Kp8

  10. Everything has been stagnant and boring for years and it is entirely the fault of the creative team. Promos should not be scripted and that is probably the biggest problem.

     

     

    There is a place in wrestling for comedy, but it should be the exception, not the rule. The only full-time worker that I can think of that they haven't cut off at the knees by making them a joke is Mark Henry (and of course, he started out doing the comedy stuff). Constant "nudge nudge wink wink we know you know wrestling is fake" bullshit undermines the entire product.

     

    I don't blame former fans for not watching - they aren't masochists. Every time I've gotten a former "casual" fan to sit and watch anything with me, I have to go into defensive mode because of Vickie Guerrero still being on television despite literally nobody being interested in watching her, face Del Rio dumping paint on Big Show and face Del Rio in general, Zeb Colter, Big Show having a yearly personality transplant because they don't know what else to do with him, everything involving the Divas, constant turns that make little sense (for what reason am I supposed to be cheering Cody Rhodes now and just what the fuck have they been thinking with Ryback?), a decade of start-stop pushes that kill the heat of every worker, MizTV and talk show segments in general, general overexposure of everyone because they won't use half the roster (6 hours of prime time TV a week and no brand split), etc etc etc etc 

     

    The people that are interested in watching wrestling for the ring work are already watching. They could run a year long Bryan-Cesaro feud and not a single new viewer would be gained, because the fans that stopped watching didn't stop watching because the ring work sucked - they don't care. They stopped watching because WWE stopped making them care about the wrestlers. If everyone is a start-stop push away from being replaced by new generic male model, why should anyone watch?

    • Like 5
  11. Dr Death and Terry Gordy vs The O'Days - Clash of the Champions XIX

    A simple, great spot from this match that I loved is right at the beginning, when Gordy bounces the elder O'Day off the ropes to try to get out of a side headlock, and O'Day ACTUALLY HANGS ONTO IT, then Gordy has to kidney punch and try again. So simple and subtle, but does so much.

  12. Kaitlyn has the upper body definition to pull off looking like she's actually tackling all of the divas. The reason Hardy was one of the only ones the spear ever looked good on is because that was the only person Edge looked like he could actually take down in such a way. Looking good once or twice doesn't make it a good spot - think of how many stupid and contrived times Rey has hit the 619 or Orton has hit the draping DDT and everyone was thinking "Why did he just land there awkwardly in perfect position for his opponent's signature spot despite the opponent making no real effort to put him there?"

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