JULY 2016 WRESTLING DISCUSSION THREAD

[J.H.]

No no no... Vince shipping Roman off to Middle Kingdom Wrestling would be the greatest thing ever, if nothing else it sets up Roman v. Ho Ho Lun!

James

[evilwaldo]

He should do some crossfit videos with Rollins and then tell Rollins to 'f this'.  Next shot is Reigns power lifting with Big E making fun of crossfit.

Face turn complete.

[Burgundy LaRue]

Sorry, Vader.  I wasn't clear.  I was saying S2 of LU sounds like it wasn't very good, not if it actually took place.

[Jenalysis]

5 hours ago, Burgundy LaRue said:

I don't keep up with LU enough to actually know, but is it setting the world on fire these days?  Most opinions make Season 2 sound pretty iffy.

I like it.   Some mediocre eps but that and the Hardy stuff is pretty much what I want out of pro wrestling these days.

 

[Ultimo Necro]

I'm about halfway through LU S2 and think they are on a par with the end of S1 which was really up there for me.

Def worth a watch. You can watch a series in the same space as like 6 Raws.

[Matt D]

It being shorter lessens some of the build though. 

[HumanChessgame]

I think season 2 of LU is a lot better than the first, though I think a lot of that is I don't find the vignettes anywhere near as corny as the first seasons.  The lesser fanfare is possibly due to the concept not being as novel this time around but the in ring stuff is every bit as good.

[Casey]

On 7/9/2016 at 1:15 PM, SorceressKnight said:

But that is still the problem. Even the "turn Roman heel" contingent needs to remember that the fact Roman was shoved down the fans' throats was so blatant that even a Roman Reigns heel turn probably wouldn't salvage Roman anymore- but rather, have the people who already hate Roman for being shoved down their throats go "Oh, they're only turning him heel because they think we'll all cheer him if he's a heel and make us love him! We see through your game- screw you WWE, I won't love Roman and YOU CAN'T MAKE ME!" 

The fact Roman was THAT shoved down people's throats, for that long, makes it likely the only hope of Roman ever getting popular again would be if Roman leaves the company, tears up Japan or EVOLVE, and THEN comes back to the WWE.

It's really cute that you think all that Reigns needs is a run in Japan or the indies and that'll fix his character. I'm glad to see you're continuing that mindset you've always had towards wrestlers with that background, like that makes them more or less inclined to "get over" with the audience in WWE these days.

Yeah, the people that think Roman should turn heel needs to remember that he's so hated that he's one of the only people that'll get over as an actual heel AND GET BOOED LIKE HEELS ARE SUPPOSED TO. Remember that, guys.

[Raziel]

Now, I like Roman,

 

But the only way he gets out of this limbo he's in is 2 minutes into the fans giving him massive shit during his "redemption" promo, he snaps, Spears Ambrose, Rollins, and several local indy guys dressed as officials through every vertical and some horizontal surfaces available, then cut the Pillman "I'm going piss in the middle of this ring" ECW promo and go full on heel.  

Anything else is never happening and wouldn't work.

[(BP)]

I'm getting the vibe that this is a more divisive position than I thought it was, but I think Roman is very good. More importantly, he's a quick study who went from having virtually no singles experience a couple of years ago to having maybe MOTY for WWE 2015. I think with time he could succeed anywhere. His problems are almost completely public perception and the possibility of the apocryphal Political Hit.

[Casey]

The problem with Roman Reigns is the fans didn't pick him, and the fans want to be able to pick someone as their guy. I think that line of thinking has always existed, but it really took off with CM Punk, and hit it's peak with Daniel Bryan. We've had a few discussions on here about this idea, and some (most?) people think it isn't up to the fans, they just pay for the ticket and shouldn't be able to "use their voice" in picking who goes where on the card. It's usually the same people that think the crowds that "chant weird things" like the Bayley song and whatnot are trying to get themselves over, instead of seeing it as a vehicle to show appreciation or love for a character.

Roman would be the world's biggest babyface if, like we've discussed numerous times, he was the one that turned on The Shield instead of Seth Rollins and followed that career trajectory that Rollins was headed for before he got injured. It's essentially the same storyline that Batista had with Evolution and Triple H, and it would have worked so much better this way. But WWE can't see the forest for the trees half of the time, and have to blow their load completely too early almost all of the time.

[Burgundy LaRue]

Thing is, based on the reactions he was getting just before the Shield broke up, pushing Reigns wasn't wrong.  All 3 guys were hot, but Reigns was basically on fire.  The idea that he wasn't ever liked is revisionist history.

The problem wasn't with pushing him, but rather not scaling back after he returned from his hernia surgery in December 2014.  They still could have had him slotted for his spot, he just would have gotten there a bit later. Then we had the Bryan/Royal Rumble lead balloon and it all went to pot.

There's no problem with a group of fans wanting to see a certain guy succeed, but there's also nothing wrong with the company choosing who they want.  Why can't both guys get pushes and see where things go?  (I know why, that's a theoretical question.) Everyone gets what they want, and the stories going into it could be high theater.

It's a perfect example of picking the right guy based on solid reasoning, but misreading everything else about the situation.

[Eivion]

45 minutes ago, Casey said:

Yeah, the people that think Roman should turn heel needs to remember that he's so hated that he's one of the only people that'll get over as an actual heel AND GET BOOED LIKE HEELS ARE SUPPOSED TO. Remember that, guys.

This, so much this. He would probably get cheered eventually, but it would be a decent while.

Quote

The problem with Roman Reigns is the fans didn't pick him, like we've discussed numerous times, he was the one that turned on The Shield instead of Seth Rollins and followed that career trajectory that Rollins was headed for before he got injured. It's essentially the same storyline that Batista had with Evolution and Triple H, and it would have worked so much better this way. But WWE can't see the forest for the trees half of the time, and have to blow their load completely too early almost all of the time.

Semi-false, semi-true. Reigns was the most over Shield member by a fairly large margin. It made sense to push him, just not the direction they took after the breakup. When it became obvious they were going to rush him to the belt fans began to slowly turn. Then Bryan returned for the RR and that just made things worse exponentially. Also the story your describing isn't quite the same as Batista/Evolution. Batista was a guy clearly brought in to be the muscle until he realized HHH wasn't much w/o him and that he could be so much more. Rollins turned on his best friends to get an easy pass to the title.

[PetrolCB]

So, this is a thing... 

https://miketenay.bandcamp.com

[SorceressKnight]

1 hour ago, Casey said:

The problem with Roman Reigns is the fans didn't pick him, and the fans want to be able to pick someone as their guy. I think that line of thinking has always existed, but it really took off with CM Punk, and hit it's peak with Daniel Bryan. We've had a few discussions on here about this idea, and some (most?) people think it isn't up to the fans, they just pay for the ticket and shouldn't be able to "use their voice" in picking who goes where on the card. It's usually the same people that think the crowds that "chant weird things" like the Bayley song and whatnot are trying to get themselves over, instead of seeing it as a vehicle to show appreciation or love for a character.

Roman would be the world's biggest babyface if, like we've discussed numerous times, he was the one that turned on The Shield instead of Seth Rollins and followed that career trajectory that Rollins was headed for before he got injured. It's essentially the same storyline that Batista had with Evolution and Triple H, and it would have worked so much better this way. But WWE can't see the forest for the trees half of the time, and have to blow their load completely too early almost all of the time.

But this is why your first comment to me was so wrong. Yes, the fans want to be able to pick someone as their guy and they didn't pick Roman Reigns.

The only problem is that fans have already picked someone as their guy from their time on the indies or Japan- and it DOES tie to to the "get themselves over  by chanting weird things" because it's less "I want to see [x] be a star" and more  "I saw that guy wrestle in front of 25 people in a VFW hall, and now he's WWE World Champion! I LIKED HIM BEFORE HE WAS COOL! I am officially a BETTER FAN than YOU ARE! WORSHIP ME!"

[Jenalysis]

The amount of guys cheering like that for Bryan were maybe 5% of the people cheering.  It was a lot more than the  guys in the VFW cheering him on. 

 

Bryan and Punk also got decent early pushes which helped- neither of them ever really got buried the way most non-chosen guys do.  The Brand split really helped both of them early.

 

 

 

[Casey]

1 hour ago, SorceressKnight said:

But this is why your first comment to me was so wrong. Yes, the fans want to be able to pick someone as their guy and they didn't pick Roman Reigns.

The only problem is that fans have already picked someone as their guy from their time on the indies or Japan- and it DOES tie to to the "get themselves over  by chanting weird things" because it's less "I want to see [x] be a star" and more  "I saw that guy wrestle in front of 25 people in a VFW hall, and now he's WWE World Champion! I LIKED HIM BEFORE HE WAS COOL! I am officially a BETTER FAN than YOU ARE! WORSHIP ME!"

I guess the fans in NXT are latching onto No Way Jose because of that huge, career defining run he had in CWF Mid-Atlantic, huh? Give me a fucking break. The VAST majority of the WWE audience (main roster, anyway) are the types of fans that won't even go to an indy show if they know it's in their town. They're WWE fans, it's a separate entity from other wrestling. If what your saying was true, then people like CM Punk and Daniel Bryan would have came into the company with bigger audience receptions than what they initially had. But, since what I said earlier is most definitely true, a majority of the audience didn't know who they were and it took YEARS for them to get to the level where the fans wanted them as "their guy". Cesaro didn't even come fresh out of FCW/NXT and immediately get a good reaction. It's still debatable if he gets good reactions from the crowd half of the time.

Your entire argument is based off a personal grudge you hold towards wrestlers with that background and their perceived "loyalty" from the crowd, which simply isn't there right away when they debut. It's... just not. At all. And you, or anyone, will never be able to convince me that something like the Bayley song was created, on the fly, by members of a crowd, to get themselves over, when the entire point of the fuckin' song is showing love and admiration towards her. Feels like you want it to be something negative because you just don't like the crowd chanting things besides "This Is Awesome" or whatever other chant is "acceptable".

[mattdangerously]

1 hour ago, alstein said:

Bryan and Punk also got decent early pushes which helped- neither of them ever really got buried the way most non-chosen guys do.  

 

 

Are we counting that first season of NXT?  They buried Bryan hard then.  And they kept him off TV completely for several weeks when he was the Money in the Bank holder.  They buried him a little.

[caley]

Does every discussion on here end up being about Daniel Bryan?!

BTW, in case anyone didn't know, The Fight Network in Canada is now showing some of the NJPW stuff for AXS.  Last Saturday they showed three hours, including Okada-Tanahashi from January 2013, Okada-Goto from March 2013, and Okada-Tanahashi from April 2013.  It has been very Okada-heavy.

[Go2Sleep]

5 hours ago, SorceressKnight said:

 "I saw that guy wrestle in front of 25 people in a VFW hall, and now he's WWE World Champion! I LIKED HIM BEFORE HE WAS COOL! I am officially a BETTER FAN than YOU ARE! WORSHIP ME!"

Isn't it more likely that wrestlers who go from 100-seat indies to getting noticed by WWE just have a lot of talent and/or charisma that translates into getting over in front of bigger and bigger audiences? WWE isn't selling 30,000+ tickets a week to hipsters.

[peterien]

7 hours ago, Eivion said:

This, so much this. He would probably get cheered eventually, but it would be a decent while.

Semi-false, semi-true. Reigns was the most over Shield member by a fairly large margin. It made sense to push him, just not the direction they took after the breakup. When it became obvious they were going to rush him to the belt fans began to slowly turn. Then Bryan returned for the RR and that just made things worse exponentially. Also the story your describing isn't quite the same as Batista/Evolution. Batista was a guy clearly brought in to be the muscle until he realized HHH wasn't much w/o him and that he could be so much more. Rollins turned on his best friends to get an easy pass to the title.

Definitely. Roman was by far the most over member of The Shield at the end. That said, i was watching Shield clips (vs Wyatts,Authority,Evolution) on YouTube lately and the difference between that Roman and 2015 Roman is night and day. Having him cut long wordy promos instead of being a snarling badass hurt him a great deal imo.

[Spritenaut 32]

Interesting.  I"m watching the Mike and Mike show on ESPN2 and they just had ESPN business reporter Darren Rovell on to discuss the just-announced sale of UFC for $4 billion.  Rovell mentioned that Vince looked into buying the UFC years ago, but walked away in part because he couldn't wrap his head around the idea that he wouldn't be able to control the outcomes of the fights. 

If that's accurate, lol.  Lol lol lol lol.  I don't doubt that Vince is a very good businessman, but he's had his share of misses (World Bodybuilding, XFL, etc.)

[muhammedboehm]

I would guess that was when Zuff took over. 

[Lamp, broken circa 1988]

darren rovell is kind of an idiot tho so don't hold out hope.

[ivpvideos]

43 minutes ago, muhammedboehm said:

I would guess that was when Zuff took over. 

If it was when Zuffa took over, Vince probably made the right call. The company was a money pit and wasn't legal in a ton of states. If he bought it then, people would immediately be crying that fights were fixed and it would have never taken off like it did. It was just a bad fit.