The Steve Austin Show

[Patrick B.]

 

Why isn't laughing at people in Swiss?

 

Just out of curiousity, how do you laugh at someone in different languages???

 

 

If he had The It Factor and The Intangibles, he'd know how, dammit.

[jstout]

Wrestlers have to be larger than life, but you can't be larger than life all by yourself. When you're ready to move up a rung on the ladder, the WWE has to allow you to climb. Cesaro was ready to move up a rung during the giant swing/Zeb stuff and WWE wouldn't let him climb. And for all the talk Vince made about "listening to his audience," the audience was dying to cheer for Cesaro and Vince wouldn't turn him.

 

Vince needs as many stars as he can build. If a PPV is filled with people that fans care about, they're more likely to subscribe to the network to get it. He needs to keep building stars to see if he can build another mega-star that can help lift his business again. Will he ever find another Rock or Stone Cold? Maybe not, but you surely won't find one if you don't try.

[Playa Shunna Ver 3.0]

The best thing for Cesaro was Austin and Vince talking about him last night.  I think it is a any press is good press situation.  The owner of the company is discussing you, and not so terribly.  He didn't talk about 94% of the roster, but he talked about Cesaro.  I don't think it's that bad.  

[Matt D]

Obviously they need to do another one of these and have Cesaro come out and bash Vince with a chair. 

 

Like this:

 

[Eivion]

 

I think people are being too hard on Vince's comments about Ceasaro. Like what is the guy's character? They've given him several modes to use and he didn't make any of them work.

 

 

It worked at the beginning of this year. Then they took the swing away from him, used him as a cog to build up other feuds (though not as bad as Axel a few years ago) and cooled him off, even when they let Bray keep the singing. The WON reported that they cooled him off because they felt they could only push one guy (Reigns) at a time and that they wanted to have Cesaro waiting in the wings for later or in case something happened. By the time that something DID happen, Cesaro was so cooled off that Ambrose was the natural person to push. He was on the rise while Cesaro was on the decline.

 

You can believe that rumor or not, but I think your statement is pretty disingenuous considering what's actually happened. 

 

Pretty sure it was stated by Cesaro himself that he decided to stop doing the swing all the time.

 

 

[evilwaldo]

Sandow was thought to be buried until he started imitating Miz on the apron.  Sometimes you have to make the most of what you have and Mizdow is doing that right now.

[jstout]

Sandow was thought to be buried until he started imitating Miz on the apron.  Sometimes you have to make the most of what you have and Mizdow is doing that right now.

MIzdow's a prime example of making chicken salad out of chicken shit. I hope they don't find a way to screw him up.

[Zheroen]

 

Why isn't laughing at people in Swiss?

 

Just out of curiousity, how do you laugh at someone in different languages???

 

 

Please stay on topic.

[Playa Shunna Ver 3.0]

 

Sandow was thought to be buried until he started imitating Miz on the apron.  Sometimes you have to make the most of what you have and Mizdow is doing that right now.

MIzdow's a prime example of making chicken salad out of chicken shit. I hope they don't find a way to screw him up.

 

True, but he will be dead in the water when they break him off from the Miz.  Both guys will be.  They don't have the patience to let the act breathe and not be rushed to a break up before 3 months.  

[Big Fresh]

Obviously they need to do another one of these and have Cesaro come out and bash Vince with a chair.

Like this:

You joke, but if Raw starts next week with a video recap of the interview (including making it look like Vince buried Cesaro) and then Cesaro gives Vince the swing, he's a made man.

[SirSmUgly]

I'm going back through and watching the whole thing, and yeah, I think I just have a different philosophy than Vince on this stuff. He says that there needs to be a promo hook at the beginning to get you to care about the guys wrestling, or they're just wrestling for wrestling's sake. First of all, no you don't, and actually, long and tiresome talky openings can make me care less about a guy and get me fatigued on them to start the show. Second of all, people can get over just wrestling for wrestling's sake, but even so, the idea isn't that they're "wrestling for wrestling's sake," but that they want to win and move up in the ranks and get title shots. It's like that whole concept - guys wrestling because they want to impress the matchmakers in the back and become champ - isn't even in Vince's mind. 

 

I'll tell you what's really weird for me about this interview; it's the final realization that I'm not the wrestling fan that WWE focuses on. I'm not part of the target audience. For a guy that has watched WWF/E since I was four and grew up with it (and sometimes still feels kinda like that four-year-old little guy when getting into wrestling in the moment), that's something that I guess I kinda knew subconsciously. This interview has made me realize it pretty clearly, though.

 

I also think Vince's Millennial talk is silly. Lots of start-ups and small businesses being created by Millennials, for example. They're no more or less daring or hard-working than any other generation. 

[Matt D]

The issue with the promo hook is that Vince makes it seem like every episode of Raw is most people's first or something. I get that he doesn't think his viewers can follow what happens from week to week because he can't, but most of them can or else they wouldn't still be so hooked. 

[jstout]

The guys in your main event should be over enough to sell the main event without a 20-minute promo to set it up. They should just be able to say "John Cena and Seth Rollins in the main event" and people say "that's all I need to know, can't wait for that."

[Technico Support]

Calling a match without a promo "wrestling for wrestling's sake" shows how out of touch Vince really is or just how far he wants to get away from pro wrestling.  Even without a promo, a match has a purpose: to get guys over.  When I started watching this stuff, we got WWF Superstars or Wrestling Challenge and there were 3-4 squashes and that was it.  Demolition didn't need a fucking soliloquy before destroying Ricky Ataki for us to understand that killing these jobbers meant that they were serious contenders to the belts.

 

Matches mean nothing today because of the way they book storylines and finishes, not because matches inherently are meaningless without a 15 minute diatribe to build them.

[Charlie M.]

The Cesaro stuff is great now that it's come directly from Vince's mouth. Maybe now people can stop pretending it's just "dirt sheet bs" and that they're really high on Cesaro despite the crap booking?

[Brysynner]

So what I understand from this is from a lot of people on this board and others is you're okay with Vince's version of WWE and will continue to watch or now that you've heard what Vince's vision is, straight from Vince, you don't agree with him, but will continue to watch and bitch and moan that it's not like what you want WWE to be?

[jstout]

WWE has been a lot worse than it is now, but it could be better. It's like being fans of a sports team - you always know what's best for them to make them better. It's part of being a fan. Add into that the wrestling fan's tendency to Internet book anyway (it's fun, dammit! Everybody wants to try their hand at booking, admit it) and there's a lot of second-guessing going on.

 

What's funny about promos is the guys who need them the least get the most of them, and they guys who need to get their characters and personalities over never get them. They have done a good job with Bray Wyatt in that regard.

[Greggulator]

Still haven't watched this yet. But, yes, you absolutely have to write every episode of television with potential new viewers in mind. That's TV writing 101. That's how you capture new viewers and grow your audience. And you have to keep that in mind throughout the entire show, since people might tune in from the football game or elsewhere, not know what's going on, and then see a commercial replay from what they missed. That's why they have the format they have.

I think a lot of the IWC really forgets that Vince knows this stuff better than anyone, ever. We all have our differences in tastes and what we'd like to see, but the guy is the most successful wrestling promoter of all-time and it's not even close. A lot is due to his business ruthlessness. But a lot is because he's pretty great at knowing how to develop characters, what people want to see, how to tell wrestling storylines, etc. And he has oversight over a live TV production that is so complex and hard to make yet is almost always completely flawless.
 

[evilwaldo]

 

 

Sandow was thought to be buried until he started imitating Miz on the apron.  Sometimes you have to make the most of what you have and Mizdow is doing that right now.

MIzdow's a prime example of making chicken salad out of chicken shit. I hope they don't find a way to screw him up.

 

True, but he will be dead in the water when they break him off from the Miz.  Both guys will be.  They don't have the patience to let the act breathe and not be rushed to a break up before 3 months.  

 

But you don't know that.  If the fans keep pushing for Sandow he may be the one that gets the huge push after the breakup.

[SirSmUgly]

So what I understand from this is from a lot of people on this board and others is you're okay with Vince's version of WWE and will continue to watch or now that you've heard what Vince's vision is, straight from Vince, you don't agree with him, but will continue to watch and bitch and moan that it's not like what you want WWE to be?

 

I still enjoy some of it, definitely. There are things that they do well. I don't think that not liking some of the philosophies that the company seems to take on wrestling eliminates me from being a fan, and of course as a fan of some guys, I'm going to be vocal about how much I want them to succeed.

 

I don't think that's an unreasonable way to act.

 

 

 the guy is the most successful wrestling promoter of all-time and it's not even close. A lot is due to his business ruthlessness. But a lot is because he's pretty great at knowing how to develop characters, what people want to see, how to tell wrestling storylines, etc. And he has oversight over a live TV production that is so complex and hard to make yet is almost always completely flawless.

 

 

Sure, I can definitely agree that Vince is where he is for a reason from a creative standpoint, but artists often age and run creatively amiss all the time. Look at some musicians or movie directors that just seem to lose it when they get out of touch. I think there's a possibility that this is happening to near-seventy-year-old Vince McMahon.

[evilwaldo]

 

So what I understand from this is from a lot of people on this board and others is you're okay with Vince's version of WWE and will continue to watch or now that you've heard what Vince's vision is, straight from Vince, you don't agree with him, but will continue to watch and bitch and moan that it's not like what you want WWE to be?

 

I still enjoy some of it, definitely. There are things that they do well. I don't think that not liking some of the philosophies that the company seems to take on wrestling eliminates me from being a fan, and of course as a fan of some guys, I'm going to be vocal about how much I want them to succeed.

 

I don't think that's an unreasonable way to act.

 

 

That is the way I feel as well.  We all have different people to support and I will watch.

 

My gripe about the opening promos have been that they should be used to get over the wrestlers not have HHH/Steph whine about themselves which does nothing for the talent.  

 

I loved last night's opening promo.  It helped push the storylines forward and the talent was front and center.  I feel that GM's should be there to support rather than be front and center.

[The Comedian]

Yeah, Vince's comments about JR struck me as hinting out a bit more than just losing control of an interview. Makes you wonder if Vince thinks or knows that JR may have been doing a bit of day drinking himself. JR has gone on record denying this and seems a bit defensive about it. 

 

Do people really speculate about this? JR seemed completely hammered when I watched video of that event...

[Matt D]

So what I understand from this is from a lot of people on this board and others is you're okay with Vince's version of WWE and will continue to watch or now that you've heard what Vince's vision is, straight from Vince, you don't agree with him, but will continue to watch and bitch and moan that it's not like what you want WWE to be?

 

It's not so cut and dry. Hunter has his opinions. NXT is right there. Steph has hers. The lead writer of Smackdown generally puts together a show that feels different than Raw. People might like watching Titus on Main Event. Maybe people just want to watch the big matches on PPV.

 

I really think that in 2014, if you're watching Raw at 8:00 on Monday night, by yourself, you're doing it wrong. Catch what you want to see on youtube in bits and pieces later in the week. 

 

They're not going to give you everything you want? Fine. Don't watch the show the way they want to present it to you. At least watch it how you want and maybe that's on 2x speed or maybe that's just skipping to the matches you care about. I have a lot less time than I used to, but I'm happier watching WWE now than I was when I actually had time to watch the entire show when it aired.

[Brysynner]

BTW I think this has been noted but Vince mentioned Wyatt, Ambrose, Reigns, Rollins all by name. If Cesaro ever gets "it" as Vince was talking about those 5 will be constantly in the main event in the post-Cena era.

 

I am looking forward to the post-Cena era now

[caley]

I'm going back through and watching the whole thing, and yeah, I think I just have a different philosophy than Vince on this stuff. He says that there needs to be a promo hook at the beginning to get you to care about the guys wrestling, or they're just wrestling for wrestling's sake. First of all, no you don't, and actually, long and tiresome talky openings can make me care less about a guy and get me fatigued on them to start the show. Second of all, people can get over just wrestling for wrestling's sake, but even so, the idea isn't that they're "wrestling for wrestling's sake," but that they want to win and move up in the ranks and get title shots. It's like that whole concept - guys wrestling because they want to impress the matchmakers in the back and become champ - isn't even in Vince's mind. 

 

I think this speaks to Vince McMahon believing he's making an action TV show and not a wrestling program.  I mean, some TV shows open with a wild action scene followed by explanation, but it's usually background/narrative first then an action scene.  The idea of just opening with two guys wrestling without backstory, or just announcing a match, is more in line with sports programming than narrative TV.

I'm not saying it's right, but I'm saying I think that's where Vince is coming from: he's not producing sports TV, he's making live action narrative TV.

 

Still haven't watched this yet. But, yes, you absolutely have to write every episode of television with potential new viewers in mind. That's TV writing 101

 

Eh, I don't really fully buy into this.  It's not like 'Big Bang Theory' opens with a 5-10 minute feature with the two leads where they go "Some remember last week when Bernadette got mad at Wallace because he forgot his birthday because he was buying comic books?  Well, this week he's going to win her back by doing some shit or other" (Okay, I do not watch BBT but you get the idea) or 'Seinfeld' opening up with Jerry doing a monologue about what's been going on in his life that takes up the first five minutes of the show EVERY week.  I get the new viewers thing, and you can toss off a line or two saying "Hey, remember last week I forgot your birthday?" or "I'm getting married and I don't like my wife" but to take up the first half hour, or 1/6th of every episode recapping what happened last week (Especially when you have a network, website, and tons of other other programs dedicated to recapping what happened last week) is just poor writing.  There's a way of moving your story forward, while still getting new viewers up-to-date, without opening 1/6th of your program almost EVERY week with a recap to induct new viewers.