August 2024 Wrestling Discussion

[SovietShooter]

1 hour ago, Ziggy said:

Yes he seems to be in the same boat as Lashley or MVP where they just aren’t HHH guys.

Hmmm... what do those guys have in common?  Maybe people like them don’t deserve to be World Champions?

[Ziggy]

3 hours ago, SovietShooter said:

Hmmm... what do those guys have in common?  Maybe people like them don’t deserve to be World Champions?

I didn’t want to contribute to that narrative but I wouldn’t blame anyone if they went there. I just remember back when Hunter was getting much more power as COO and Alberto Del Rio got released the first time and he was doing shoot interviews talking about how Hunter had his guys and Vince had his guys and how he was a Vince guy and even in the mid 2010s there was an internal power struggle. It seems even a decade before sometimes it benefited guys being Vince guys and other times Hunter was able to win people over with Vince. I think now it’s just guys that Hunter wasn’t solid on

[username]

12 hours ago, SovietShooter said:

Hmmm... what do those guys have in common?  Maybe people like them don’t deserve to be World Champions?

This is gonna sound dumb but while I assume the average "old school" promoter was more likely to be... well outright racist really, especially compared to your Tony and Hunters, they were also due to the realities of running a promotion back then keenly aware that they needed a pushed black or latino act or two in order to get more fans through the door and hence more money in their pockets (I wish I could tell Bill Watts he did a DEI just to see if his head would explode >_> ).

I think both AEW and WWE at this point are run by people less likely to be like that yet based on watching both they also don't really consider it nearly as much, so you get stretches where everyone who falls out of favor just happens to be black or the early AEW run highlighted by the whole Swole deal.

[hammerva]

It is equally strange in the WWE because you have NXT run by Shawn Michaels where they are embracing black excellence on a weekly basis. I mean they brought in Sexxy Red a couple times for Christ sakes.   It will be interesting to see what happens on the main roster to guys like Oba Femi, Wes Lee, and Trick Williams.  

[Ramo2653]

I always got the feeling that HHH just wanted new toys to play with than anything else and I say that as a black guy who works in the corporate world so I've seen my fair share of nonsense over the years.

With that said, Profits are getting a tag title match this week, Melo has been in a program with Andrade and featured as a player on the roster and they are sticking Bianca and Naomi with Jade to bring her along since they can't stick her in NXT to work out the kinks. Lashley was hurt so it explains his absence from TV.

On the other hand, New Day were just drifting out there, but you had periods where Woods or Kofi were hurt the last year and a half. They're doing something now and Odyssey Jones escaped catering.

But it's something to keep an eye on.

[odessasteps]

Given we approaching the New Day 10th anniversary, you do wonder how to keep them fresh? Is possible breaking them up and/or changing members something long overdue? 

[username]

I hate to say it but New Day without Big E has just been lacking a spark, I don't think he was necessarily the most important member but the magic was all three of them bouncing off each other. Greedily I'd love for him to be back as their manager if all else fails, although I'm not sure that's what he'd want.

[just drew]

On 8/18/2024 at 10:43 AM, SovietShooter said:

Hmmm... what do those guys have in common?  Maybe people like them don’t deserve to be World Champions?

It took me a long time to get this reference, but i'll be damned... It certainly isn't great optics on the main roster at the moment...

[Ramo2653]

11 hours ago, username said:

I hate to say it but New Day without Big E has just been lacking a spark, I don't think he was necessarily the most important member but the magic was all three of them bouncing off each other. Greedily I'd love for him to be back as their manager if all else fails, although I'm not sure that's what he'd want.

I think it's due to Big E being so jacked and absurd at the same time which made the group work on a different level.

[FourPostMassacre]

On 8/18/2024 at 10:43 AM, SovietShooter said:

Hmmm... what do those guys have in common?  Maybe people like them don’t deserve to be World Champions?

So are you saying HHH doesn’t push these guys because they are black? 

[just drew]

3 minutes ago, FourPostMassacre said:

So are you saying HHH doesn’t push these guys because they are black? 

It is an idea that has gained some traction in various corners of social media. 

[Technico Support]

31 minutes ago, FourPostMassacre said:

So are you saying HHH doesn’t push these guys because they are black? 

 

27 minutes ago, just drew said:

It is an idea that has gained some traction in various corners of social media. 

If it keeps getting traction, look for Mark Henry to issue a statement to the contrary any day now.

[HumanChessgame]

Hasn't MVP been done as an in-ring competitor for a few years now?

[Ziggy]

34 minutes ago, HumanChessgame said:

Hasn't MVP been done as an in-ring competitor for a few years now?

Yes but he's been doing Stem cells and rehabbing his injury and been working to get a few more matches in.

He was an interesting case when he came back. He was working matches being a mouthpiece for guys and I believe doing agent work until they told him he had to choose one.

We're never going to have another Paul Heyman but I think MVP was doing well as the Heyman of the Hurt Business. I can see why Vince put him with Omos.

His racism inferences are a bit of a reach but you can't really blame him for feeling a certain type of way about them not letting them put the Hurt Business back together. When you look back and see how the Bloodline turned out or even Judgement Day considering they were put together before both of them. Where would the Hurt Business be if they never split up and even how some of things the Bloodline were doing were similar to the Hurt Business so you can't blame MVP for thinking Hurt Business might be a threat to those other groups. It also kinda sucks for Lashley and he to sit back and even watch the Women's division is starting to add units which is definitely a good thing.

[Ramo2653]

It's something that would have to be fleshed out in a long article or something but I can't think of a writer that could take it on that also wouldn't want to lose access to the WWE if they didn't take kindly to it. Even the people rumbling about it online aren't thinking about card placement in whole roster perspective and that's before you go into wondering if they're actually bringing this up in good faith or not. You could make arguments one way or the other for a lot of the talent on the roster. I mean we haven't even gotten into the Latino Wrestler Feud Vortex! 

[Eivion]

1 hour ago, Ziggy said:

He was an interesting case when he came back. He was working matches being a mouthpiece for guys and I believe doing agent work until they told him he had to choose one.

He was hired as an agent but eventually given the Hurt Business angle to work with alongside the agent job. It ended up saving his job since so many agents were fired or furloughed during the pandemic.

[username]

To be completely fair (and like... *gestures at sig*) MVP looked baaaaad in ring when he first came back. He eventually looked passable in some 6 man tags and such but he's probably best as a mouthpiece who can bump than anything else at this point.

[Just Adam Bay Bay]

So for the people claiming Triple H isn’t pushing a certain group of people then why is Carmelo Hayes getting weekly time on Smackdown including a win over Andrade last week? Also aren’t Bianca and Jade Cargill still both getting pushes even without the women’s tag title belts? New Day keeps getting tv time (and wins lately) plus Odyssey Jones being added to their act.  Heck looking at the roster the only people that fit that criteria that don’t get regular TV time are Cedric Alexander and Apollo Crews. And Apollo hasn’t been well pushed in years.

[Eivion]

58 minutes ago, Just Adam Bay Bay said:

Heck looking at the roster the only people that fit that criteria that don’t get regular TV time are Cedric Alexander and Apollo Crews. And Apollo hasn’t been well pushed in years.

Cedric moved to NXT 6-8 weeks back alongside his tag partner Ashante. Apollo actually has gotten an ok amount of tv time the past few months and is teaming up with Corbin regularly. They are a shockingly good team.

[EVA]

9 hours ago, Just Adam Bay Bay said:

So for the people claiming Triple H isn’t pushing a certain group of people then why is Carmelo Hayes getting weekly time on Smackdown including a win over Andrade last week? Also aren’t Bianca and Jade Cargill still both getting pushes even without the women’s tag title belts? New Day keeps getting tv time (and wins lately) plus Odyssey Jones being added to their act.  Heck looking at the roster the only people that fit that criteria that don’t get regular TV time are Cedric Alexander and Apollo Crews. And Apollo hasn’t been well pushed in years.

WWE main roster has 5 hours of TV time per week, not even taking into account whatever they do on Twitter these days and Main Event. That’s a lot of TV time to fill. Being called upon to fill it isn’t necessarily that significant of an indicator that the office is behind you.

Andrade wasn’t even getting booked until the Internet embarrassed HHH over it. Carmelo going over on him means nothing in the grand scheme of things. (In fairness to HHH, Carmelo isn’t any good, and I wouldn’t be doing anything meaningful with him either.)

I often had problems with the way Vince booked Bianca week to week, but he was always clear in presenting her as THE new big female star, the leader of the post-4HW generation of women. I don’t see how being relegated to babysitting Jade can be seen as anything other than a demotion for her. That’s the job you give to a “good hand,” not your top star.

Edited August 21 by EVA

[SovietShooter]

10 hours ago, Just Adam Bay Bay said:

So for the people claiming Triple H isn’t pushing a certain group of people then why

Show me the Black wrestler HHH is currently pushing as a main event star.  Not a wrestler he called up from NXT, or is working steady in the mid card. Which Black wrestlers have headlined a PPV or won one of the pseudo-world championships when HHH had the book?

"People like you don't get to be Champion."

 

[EVA]

I certainly understand how one might raise an eyebrow at some of HHH’s recent booking practices—the sheer volume of identity-based, often racially segregated groups being created; the number of Black wrestlers who’ve seen their positioning in the company diminished since HHH came to power; how we’ve just had a major PPV without a single Black wrestler booked in a match; etc.

And how one might connect those practices to HHH’s previous racially insensitive behavior (e.g., the blackface, the whole Booker T thing, the affection for iconography that walks right up to the line of saying, “Nazis were cool”).

And how, taking all of that into account, one might think to themselves, “Hmmm. This all seems very questionable.”

[FourPostMassacre]

They just need to start telling these dudes in nxt that it would greatly benefit their push when they got to the main roster if they became metal heads first. 
 

Maybe start an hour or so session a day at the performance center where they just sit the class down to watch headbanger’s ball to get them ready. 

[twiztor]

8 minutes ago, FourPostMassacre said:

Maybe start an hour or so session a day [...] where they just sit [...] down to watch headbanger’s ball. 

i can see many benefits for society if we did this more often.

 

[Zakk_Sabbath]

1 hour ago, twiztor said:

i can see many benefits for society if we did this more often.

 

I'm an AEW guy, but I feel like I was born to teach this class at the PC