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WWE BRAND SPLIT 2.0


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3 minutes ago, Infinit said:

 Harlem Heather 

Not breaking your balls, you just stumbled upon the greatest wrestling name not in use right now. 

It's like Fleming accidentally discovering penicillin. 

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I was thinking about the tag teams and how to have tag teams kept as a unit in the draft while keeping the ability to split them up when need be to push someone, and I remembered Dean Ambrose's comment about US Title defense paperwork from a few years back.  They could kayfabe it so where teams can elect to enter the draft as a team by submitting the appropriate paperwork.  When you're ready to split a team up, just come up with a reason why they don't submit the paperwork, and voila.  This would even let them split up the team and keep them on the same roster if they wanted to.  Say... Curtis Axel tells the rest of the Social Outcasts he'll submit the paperwork for everyone, then they realize he lied when he gets drafted to Smackdown individually.  Then Bo gets drafted to Smackdown too, and they feud over the betrayal.

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BTW - in the newest WON, Meltzer does report that the original thinking of Reigns/Rollings leading RAW and Cena/AJ leading Smackdown has changed.

This is mainly due to Reigns getting suspended and Cena having so many outside commitments who is barely working house shows (and as of right now he isn't on the Nov Europe tour hasn't been advertised for the TV that is taped in the UK)

Two blurbs from it (there is a lot more)

Quote

Between now and the end of September, Cena is only booked on six house shows, the shows this weekend on 7/16 in Glens Falls, NY and the next night in Madison Square Garden, the Australia tour in August that he’d been advertised on for some time, and the 9/10 show in Shanghai, China, which is important for the company and Cena is probably the only wrestler on the main roster who speaks Mandarin. Cena was also heavily involved in promoting in China.

Even more notable is that as of right now, Cena is not advertised for the November tour of Europe. The two European tours are the most lucrative periods for house shows all year. At this point he’s not even advertised for the TV tapings in Glasgow

Quote

One person close to the situation noted to us that some major names may have been juggled in recent weeks, without saying why, but for different reasons, questions about both Cena as the lead guy for Smackdown and Reigns as the lead guy for Raw, as originally planned, do come into play. A lot of reports are out regarding Vince McMahon’s feelings and such which may not be completely accurate, but he was very upset at Reigns about failing the drug test and it will probably play into the roster split decision making. Reigns will still be pushed as one of the top guys going forward, but whether he’ll be pushed as the top guy, particularly with the fans rejecting it so harshly, is something only he knows. And he is likely to change his mind many times.

The attempt from the vignettes on television with Rollins is the hope of turning the negative into a positive and that fans will get behind Reigns. Thus far that doesn’t seem to be working.

 

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I was thinking about how if memory serves me correct that in the first draft the nWo was picked as a group and all the tag teams were picked as indviduals, that doesn't make sense unless groups of 3 can be drafted as units, then the New Day is safe. At least there is precedent for the New Day, if they get split they need to get Otunga on the phone and have him fight it.  

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Huh. How about that. The fans aren't going for forcefully pushing Reigns as a babyface despite looking like an asshole before getting suspended and then getting suspended. I wish I knew why this wasn't successful!!!

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1 hour ago, Kropotkin's Beard said:

Can we not just have tag teams who are tag teams? I mean do people feel "gosh, we really missed out by not having Hawk & Animal split up & going solo? Is the end of the Rock & Roll Express something kids in the 80s were desperate to see? The WWE's general ambivalence to tag team wrestling bewilders me.

Much like everything else, the "but it was like this when I was a kid" argument doesn't work here. Everyone today gets more exposure and there's no territories to rotate through to keep everyone fresh. Tag teams especially run out of things to do faster today. Since each team by definition has to include two people on a finite roster, they burn through possible story combos 4 times faster than singles mathematically speaking, even before you get into all the extra tv time that needs to be filled. If the Rock and Roll Express were on national tv 2-3 times a week for years on end, people would tire of them faster no matter how nostalgic they seem now. Even a team like Breezango is getting more exposure today than RnRE got in a similar time frame.

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I dunno man, FaBreeze has only had like 5-6 matches on TV total. Most of their TV time has been the build up to them forming and they haven't really done anything of note yet as a team. Same with Enzo/Cass, they debuted in WWE in April, splitting them up in July just seems crazy.

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I think disappointed is the wrong word but I was hoping that they'd put a little more effort into the build up for the draft. We have no idea what's going on with the titles or the women's division or anything. They've had weeks to map this out for the audience and instead it's all being thrown together very quickly on this week's RAW and the draft show itself.

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45 minutes ago, Go2Sleep said:

Much like everything else, the "but it was like this when I was a kid" argument doesn't work here. Everyone today gets more exposure and there's no territories to rotate through to keep everyone fresh. Tag teams especially run out of things to do faster today. Since each team by definition has to include two people on a finite roster, they burn through possible story combos 4 times faster than singles mathematically speaking, even before you get into all the extra tv time that needs to be filled. If the Rock and Roll Express were on national tv 2-3 times a week for years on end, people would tire of them faster no matter how nostalgic they seem now. Even a team like Breezango is getting more exposure today than RnRE got in a similar time frame.

It's almost as if there is some middle ground between "split a team up who've been on the main roster less than 6 months" & "keep a team together forever".

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3 hours ago, Sublime said:

I was thinking about how if memory serves me correct that in the first draft the nWo was picked as a group and all the tag teams were picked as indviduals, that doesn't make sense unless groups of 3 can be drafted as units, then the New Day is safe. At least there is precedent for the New Day, if they get split they need to get Otunga on the phone and have him fight it.  

nWo was drafted as a group; and Billy and Chuck (w/ Rico) were drafted as a group due to having the tag titles.

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1 hour ago, Kropotkin's Beard said:

It's almost as if there is some middle ground between "split a team up who've been on the main roster less than 6 months" & "keep a team together forever".

That's why I said in my first post that it would be terrible to split up Enzo and Cass right now. In a couple years, things could be different.

Also holy shit, John Cena speaks Mandarin.

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He spoke a bit of it in the ring during the Owens feud - where Owens said he was going to turn the crowd by speaking French, and Cena responded by responding in French, then shifting to Mandarin for a bit. One of those things where I heard about it before I saw it, and I assumed that 'Cena spoke in Chinese' was code for 'Cena said "ying tong ying tong ting yong"' and was then shocked when he was actually talking proper like.

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5 hours ago, Kropotkin's Beard said:

Can we not just have tag teams who are tag teams? I mean do people feel "gosh, we really missed out by not having Hawk & Animal split up & going solo? Is the end of the Rock & Roll Express something kids in the 80s were desperate to see? The WWE's general ambivalence to tag team wrestling bewilders me.

This.  Sometimes the sum is greater than the parts.  There are wrestlers who have great chemistry and work exceptionally well as a team but don't have the tools to get over on their own.  That's not bad, it just is what it is and finding a niche is very important.  As far as keeping guys fresh goes, that's why it's important to build up new teams from time to time to give established teams fresh storylines.  In most cases, they can turn face/heel at some point and move up and down the card.  With the brand split this could potentially give more opportunity to keep people both in and out of teams fresh if it works out long term.

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Shane drafts Cass for SD since he can't run RAW.

Steph drafts Enzo for RAW, just to be a jerk.

Shane drafts HHH for SD.

Trade occurs minutes later when Heyman shows up and reminds us that HHH doesn't want to work Tuesdays.

JBL gets angry. Angrier when Enzo borrows his hat.

 

 

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My favorite part of that exchange was JBL's response when JBL/Jordan/Everyone Else In That Box watched as JBL wrote an imaginary check and they all watched it bounce like a tennis ball. 

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