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SMACKDOWN LIVE IS BAD HAIR VS. WORSE


piranesi

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I kinda feel like they were both right.

Like, Miz's character has never really been a stand-up guy. He has always been a coward, and for a while after his last return, his gimmick was literally trying to avoid getting hit in the face.

But at the same time, if you're going to retire when you DO have the option to leave and go wrestle elsewhere*, it's not really fair for you to keep playing the "I love wrestling the most" card.

They both had valid points of view, and they were both kinda dicks about it. That's why it was so compelling.

 

 

 

*Even though it's 100% the right life decision.

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1 hour ago, Reed said:

Not even kidding, scripted or not, I think that Bryan/Miz exchange got to a root of a key problem in the wrestling business.

"You should be willing to entirely destroy your body and brain for the business and its fans!"

"But, um, what if I don't want to?"

 

If you don't want to you will probably be left behind. Today's style is very athletic and wrestlers take many unnecessary risks. I could fault them for it, but honestly, I haven't sat through a Miz match in probably three years. I hate the way he wrestles and get annoyed whenever anyone I like has to sell for him. 

What made the promo work is the whole thing was presented as kayfabe. Bryan is saying he doesn't like how Miz wrestles. Miz is saying, "I win matches, I don't get hurt, how dare you judge me."
 

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Loved the Miz-DB exchange.  Sure, it's a worked shoot deal, but both guys came off as kinda passionate, so there was probably a little bit of truth/hurt feelings in there. 

I do wonder where they go from here (I wonder that a lot about WWE storylines).  Bryan, at best, comes off as sort of clueless for even hinting he'd get back in the ring if the WWE or whoever would let him.  And, if they go the kinda obvious route, and Bryan brings in one of his indy buddies - Samoa Joe - to teach Miz a lesson, eh, that's not a very babyface-ish thing to do.  Granted, that probably totally means they're going that route.

The idea that Miz works a soft style because he doesn't take career-threatening bumps or head trauma is ridiculous revisionist history.  I don't recall Santino taking a lot of horrid bumps or having to go all out in big matches. 

WWE seemingly starting to build Shane-Brock makes me glad the match won't happen before i stop watching WWE for the fall (until after football season, at least).  Takes some work to generate more apathy from me than the prospect of Roman or Seth winning the RAW world title again, but watching Broclk sell for Shane's silliness would definitely do it.

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8 minutes ago, Vader does my taxes! said:

WWE seemingly starting to build Shane-Brock makes me glad the match won't happen before i stop watching WWE for the fall (until after football season, at least).  Takes some work to generate more apathy from me than the prospect of Roman or Seth winning the RAW world title again, but watching Broclk sell for Shane's silliness would definitely do it.

I'm actually... pleased about this direction? Not because I'm excited for the match--I won't watch it--but because, at this point, I've accepted no one is coming out of a feud with Lesnar looking better than when they entered. As long as that remains the case, I'd rather he stay away from anyone with a future. 

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8 hours ago, DreamBroken said:

Hyped for Shane/Brock if it's happening, hope they let it be a long spectacle like Shane/Taker instead of a shorter Brock squash like most recent Brock matches. 

Nah, Shane vs Brock should be like Hulk vs Loki from the first Avengers movie.  

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1 hour ago, JohnnyJ said:

If you don't want to you will probably be left behind. Today's style is very athletic and wrestlers take many unnecessary risks. I could fault them for it, but honestly, I haven't sat through a Miz match in probably three years. 

I thought that was Miz's whole point, though.

Yeah, he could do stunts. He could take all these risks. He could do table bumps. He could have 50 concussions. All for cheap pops and to be remembered on some low-level WWE DVD in 20 years.

But he's not going to bother.  .

Because, at the end of the day: He has a beautiful wife. They might have kids.  He has a career in (admittedly, silly) but lucrative action B movies. He has a happy life going for him. He wants to be healthy enough to enjoy it.

In that respect, Miz's intelligence, canniness and sheer self-preservation stood out in that scene, like a beacon.  

He's sharper than Bryan. He always was.

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20 minutes ago, Reed said:

Because, at the end of the day: He has a beautiful wife. They might have kids.  He has a career in (admittedly, silly) but lucrative action B movies. He has a happy life going for him. He wants to be healthy enough to enjoy it.

In that respect, Miz's intelligence, canniness and sheer self-preservation stood out in that scene, like a beacon.  

He's sharper than Bryan. He always was.

Plus despite all Bryan's criticisms, Miz is also still IC champ, despite having had to defend against Cesaro, Zayn and Owens (and to a lesser extent Crews, Young and Ryder) since winning the title. He's still an in-ring success doing it his own way.

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He's an entertainer, not a worker, and somehow Bryan, a guy who worked hard his whole professional life and took his job seriously is a moron and Miz, who was a quasi-reality star, who would get drunk and turn into his imaginary character, and who's life ambition was just to be famous....he's the smart one just because he'll do whatever wwe asks, no matter how degrading it is and because he has a semi-attractive wife.

Am I wrong in my summation?

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3 minutes ago, MADCAP said:

He's an entertainer, not a worker, and somehow Bryan, a guy who worked hard his whole professional life and took his job seriously is a moron and Miz, who was a quasi-reality star, who would get drunk and turn into his imaginary character, and who's life ambition was just to be famous....he's the smart one just because he'll do whatever wwe asks, no matter how degrading it is and because he has a semi-attractive wife.

Am I wrong in my summation?

This, exactly.  There's a big difference between suggesting someone should take headdrops and dive into the crowd on a nightly basis and pointing out that their ringwork has consistently looked mediocre at best.  I wonder if there's animosity on Bryan's part going back to the first NXT season?  At that point Bryan had been wrestling for a decade and was one of the better people in the US, and he was supposed to be tutored by a reality tv guy who was pushed far beyond what his talent dictated.  Granted it was all a work, but I'd feel a bit put out in Bryan's situation as well.  Did Miz has a point that Bryan took more unnecessary risks than he probably should?  Sure, but that doesn't change the fact that what Bryan said about him being marginally talented wasn't true.

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I think the discomfort regarding the promo stems from the fact that it is, on some level, fundamentally an indictment of us, and the industry, more than Bryan specifically. He did what he had to do to make it; and in the end, he did make it. Maybe not for as long as he'd like; but given the offer, over and over, I imagine he takes it. But he wouldn't have made it, without his savage matches in ROH, or his sometimes reckless intensity in WWE. Maybe he never gets signed in the first place. If he does, he doesn't have the goodwill among smark crowds that buoyed him through creative apathy; and he never captures the broader audience. So yes, Bryan loved wrestling. But for it--and us--to love him back, we demanded a lot from him, and pounds of flesh from everyone who performs. There's no great way to make peace with the fact that we're ultimately complicit, and that we don't really want to stop. 

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Just now, Oyaji said:

Agree to an extent that fans were partially complicit but I don't think many people were clamoring for Bryan to headbutt a ring post. Not a lot of art in that.

No. But they sure as hell popped for it, bought the DVDs, and remember it even now. 

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God I think it's so beautiful that The Miz of all people with one moment of abandon mixed with, let's face it, a nearly unmatched ability won through hard work to turn that anger into a powerful promo and not just a stuttering mess (how many guys today could "lose it" and still make it work like that?), has managed to open a clearly important debate about a fundamental issue in current wrestling.  It's an issue that evolved from the Foley problem but was somewhat obscured by the fact that guys aren't doing "extreme" garbage spots even though almost everyone is hurting themselves constantly:

On some level we all know that the Daniel Bryan style of "real worker"ism is so destructive and yet we still hold him up as a standard.  We beg Big E to stop diving and Sasha to stop trying so hard to impress us, but we chant Sasha's name and she knows what got her there.  But at the same no one wants to see guys work like The Miz and  it would be very hard to turn the industry back to a safer style, either from the fans or from the workers who grew up with now with this style.

What do we want and can we justify it?

It makes it all the more poignant that in this incident both sides are represented by people who, for different reasons were held down and ridiculed at the WWE level and succeeded through sheer work ethic and diligence and yet neither can recognize or respect the parallel version of themselves in the other guy.

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3 minutes ago, Cristobal said:

I was gonna point out that Miz and Bryan have both said they're friends and that there's no animosity, this is just a work, but screw it, instead let's stir the pot some.

Yeah - I think on more than one occasion Miz and Bryan have talked about how they have a unique friendship because of the circumstances that brought them together. But I also think they have kinda that Foley/Snow thing where they constantly mock each other.

In this case - someone (maybe just them) had the idea to try and too something with it

Remember - if this is something the WWE didn't want out there, the video wouldn't still be up on Youtube. (Poor poor Joey Styles)

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Dammit pira, edit that post and replace it with some story about how Dean Ambrose thought he got that giant foam hat by beating Paul Bunyan working a cowboy gimmick in a best of seven match when what actually happened was he attacked the clerk at the casino gift shop so I can maintain the proper hatred of you as a Cardinals fan.

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I don't know what the precise criteria would be for dividing the roster into entertainers or workers. And if we're measuring success by its most common definition, Bryan found way more of it once he became an entertainer. Since this is a work and they actually like and respect each other, this is really a litmus test for what wrestling fans value in a performer. 

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22 minutes ago, Beech27 said:

I think the discomfort regarding the promo stems from the fact that it is, on some level, fundamentally an indictment of us, and the industry, more than Bryan specifically. He did what he had to do to make it; and in the end, he did make it. Maybe not for as long as he'd like; but given the offer, over and over, I imagine he takes it. But he wouldn't have made it, without his savage matches in ROH, or his sometimes reckless intensity in WWE. Maybe he never gets signed in the first place. If he does, he doesn't have the goodwill among smark crowds that buoyed him through creative apathy; and he never captures the broader audience. So yes, Bryan loved wrestling. But for it--and us--to love him back, we demanded a lot from him, and pounds of flesh from everyone who performs. There's no great way to make peace with the fact that we're ultimately complicit, and that we don't really want to stop. 

Absolutely, but  Miz should not be the poster child for working a safe style because he's not a particularly smart or interesting worker. You can be safe, smart and interesting.

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