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Another Attempt at a MARCH Wrestling Thread


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19 minutes ago, Oyaji said:

Roman isn't The Rock now nor will he be The Rock if he were to turn heel. He's robotic on the stick and doesn't have a star presence that The Rock had at this point of Rocky's career. You can channel the boos by turning him heel and I'm sure he'd love to open up on the fans with a promo but I just don't see him, even as a heel being anything more than Randy Orton, which is a great spot. Roman is a better in-ring worker than The Rock though, I'll give him that.

I can't believe I hadn't seen the Randy Orton comparisons until now. He's nowhere near as smooth or mechanically perfect like Orton is but they're so similar in their look is right down Vince's alley, they're dry as hell on the mic, and are very good in the ring.

Roman's a lot better in more natural settings. I'm not sure if it's "Better enough," but Bryan wasn't exactly a whiz on the mic. He developed traits as a heel that got him hugely over as a face though. It's a pretty time tested formula.

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Has it gotten to the point where Finn Balor is now underrated around here?  He has the look, he has physical charisma..  he's not a god in the ring but he can put on a good match and especially the kind of 20-minute main event style match WWE likes to do.  He was tremendously over when he beat Roman Reigns..    I don't love him but I don't get what's so awful about him either.

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10 minutes ago, Cristobal said:

No. He gardens.

I thought it was taken as a given that Bryan basically being the nerdy kid who somehow ended up as the best wrestler in the world was a huge part of his appeal?

And Balor's a very poor man's version of that. He hits his spots, but it's cold, dark and empty. He's better at cosplaying a heel than a face, mind you. The very worst is how he paints up as the demon and then wrestles exactly the same way, because it's pretty much the only way he can imagine how to. There were a thousand things that were entirely organic with Bryan, some of which I didn't even like but I couldn't help but admire, that Balor can't even understand, let alone manage. His gimmick is a one trick pony and he doesn't even know how to ride it.

Compare Bryan's earnest grin on that Seattle Raw where the crowd was rebelling for him, the "hey, it's not my fault but this is great, huh?" genuineness to Balor's slackjawed gape that he seems to manage everywhere. Balor is the actual wrestler equivalent of the guy who takes photos of wrestlers of restaurants and then brags about it as if it was the best thing ever. "Huh? Huh? Right?"

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I know it'll never happen, but while we're speculating about people to possibly be "the face of the WWE," what about Sami Zayn? He could at least buy them some time until they get the Roman situation figured out or find a new Sure Thing to run into the ground.

In fact, now that I think about it, a series of title matches pitting underdog face Zayn vs. monster heel Reigns would probably do a lot for both of them.

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12 minutes ago, The Idiot King said:

In fact, now that I think about it, a series of title matches pitting underdog face Zayn vs. monster heel Reigns would probably do a lot for both of them.

It would pad Reigns' win total very nicely.

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Sami Zayn just hasn't had the same groundswell as we saw with Daniel Bryan where the live audiences refuse to see him toil in mediocrity. I don't think we will see something like Daniel Bryan again because for the most part all the dudes on the roster, most of the ones being pushed anyway are guys who did come into WWE with big indy pedigrees. When Sami is losing to Rollins and Jericho and Owens it's difficult to say "he's being held down" in favor of what Vince wants or what the office wants.  Triple H has changed the landscape with his recent signings. The creative still sucks sometimes but the guys on top outside of Reigns are the guys most people including hardcores want to see.

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What's with all this Balor hate? He's not even back on TV yet. I don't watch NXT so my exposure to the guy is his 3 weeks on Raw pre injury and his awesome New Japan run and I still think Finn is cool and strong and doesn't afraid of anything.

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6 hours ago, Matt D said:

One, a heel turn. People want it not because they want him to be a heel forever but because persistence didn't work to get Rocky (or Bryan for that matter or Cena) over as the biggest face in the industry but something else did.

But that's the problem. 

Best case, Roman Reigns has already gotten to that John Cena level, where their detractors had been begging for a Cena heel turn for so long, and so loudly, so adamantly- that it crossed past an event horizon and made it so a heel turn would paradoxically be the biggest FACE move they could do to those fans, and remaining a face like they had been all along would be the most heelish thing they could possibly do for them.

Worst case, the well is so poisoned that Reigns detractors would just see a Roman Reigns heel turn as "Oh, whatever. You're only turning Reigns heel because you want us to eventually like him! Well, screw you! We won't like Reigns and YOU CAN'T MAKE US!", and then it'll just dissipate as worthless as well.

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Balor is genuine and likeable. And while everyone's definition of "good look" is subjective, he has actor good looks. He comes off as a guy who dudes want to have beers with and who women want to have drinks with. Reigns comes off as a Jason Momoa cosplayer. Balor is going to be the future and it won't take three years and being shoved down people's throats to happen.

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11 minutes ago, KidNatural said:

Balor is genuine and likeable. And while everyone's definition of "good look" is subjective, he has actor good looks. He comes off as a guy who dudes want to have beers with and who women want to have drinks with. Reigns comes off as a Jason Momoa cosplayer. Balor is going to be the future and it won't take three years and being shoved down people's throats to happen.

But Balor is also that guy who begs you to help him out in making his DIY superhero movies using his dad's VHS camera and makes you sneak you parents VCR out of the living room over to his house so he can make cool edits and jump cuts and then when it's done makes everyone watch it and it's pretty embarrassing but everyone pretends it's cool and it was when you were 12 but now you're 16 and the you wish he would just stop and get a job at Blockbuster like every other nerd.

Reigns is that guy who you assume his dad is in some sort of Polynesian mafia because somehow he shows up at school the day of his 16th birthday driving a brand new truck and you know he doesn't deserve it and you're working at Chick Fil-A just to save up the $800 your uncle said he would sell you his 82 Datsun for and so FUCK ROMAN REIGNS!

Which is worse? Balor takes up more of your time. But he does have a kickass collection of Tristar dubs at home including the LEGEND OF BILLIE JEAN but you can only watch it as his house because he has a no lending policy.

In other words, he's a mixed blessing.

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I like Finn but his matches are so soulless, Matt hit the nail on the head. The one time I saw genuine emotions in his ring work was during the first few Joe matches before that petered out too. He's gotten better on the mic, but I don't think to the point where he can pull off the garbage WWE has their top babyface spew. He'd still be a welcome change from Roman as Poochie though, even if it's just a temporary distraction.

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13 hours ago, Wyld Samurai said:

But, AJ Styles isn't that 15-20 year guy eother. He's great as a 3-5 year guy due to his age... but really, every talent should be looked at in that kind of window. Project the next 3-5 years and see where they are and tske it from there.

 

This is a great point.  They're just not going to get a 15-20 year guy.  The last two booms were led by Hogan and Austin, 8 years and 7 years, respectively, though both runs should have ended before they did.  5 years is about right but this is what happens when you have a company whose management never changes.  If people are worried about AJ's "bump card," I'm sure he could tone down his style a bit and be just fine.

12 hours ago, Craig H said:

I still say the person with the best chance of being the guy and doing all of this publicity work and so on is Finn Balor. The dude has got "it."

Finn will never be the guy as long as he's under 6' and under 200lbs.  GOD DAMMIT PAL HE'S SO SKINNY.  

12 hours ago, Brysynner said:

The thing with Roman is, he's getting all the praise that people gave the Rock when he first started. 

 

Aside from Samoan lineage, sweet pecs and dreamy eyes you could lose yourself in, who in the fuck looked at Leeakee in FCW and thought the same things they did when they saw the Rock on day one?  Because those people are idiots.

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5 hours ago, Oyaji said:

I like Finn but his matches are so soulless, Matt hit the nail on the head. The one time I saw genuine emotions in his ring work was during the first few Joe matches before that petered out too.

The very worst was the one where Joe got broken open and was rampaging like a pissed off King Kong and Finn did everything in his power to squash and squander that energy and bring them back to their rote, planned match.

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6 hours ago, KidNatural said:

Balor is genuine and likeable. And while everyone's definition of "good look" is subjective, he has actor good looks. He comes off as a guy who dudes want to have beers with and who women want to have drinks with. Reigns comes off as a Jason Momoa cosplayer. Balor is going to be the future and it won't take three years and being shoved down people's throats to happen.

^ This. While he does have some annoying traits in his in-ring performance, (the same sort of mechanical, technically fine wrestling that lacks a little spontaneity ala Randy Orton.) He's definitely got "it" and the complaints about his size are ridiculous, it's much easier to book a smaller guy as the underdog champion than it is to keep coming up with "Monster Heel of the Month" as they were forced to in the Hogan era. You had to keep rolling out guys like Bundy, Studd, and non-wrestling freaks like Zeus due to Hogan being so physically imposing that no one was going to buy a Paul Orndorff, Roddy Piper, or Bob Orton jr as having a chance of beating him without tons of interference. Conversely, you had a guys like Brett Hart and Shawn Michaels, smaller than many of their opponents, but sold properly to the audience as technically a level above and able to overcome any size disadvantages based on superior skill. More recently we've seen the same thing with Daniel Bryan and C.M. Punk. No, Finn isn't the wrestler that HBK or Hart were, but he's perfectly capable of working a very good to great match with a wide variety of opponents. His mic work isn't brilliant, but he gets his talking points across and most importantly, he's believable. 

Talk of a 15-20 year guy is really pretty absurd, the only time we've really seen anything like that is with Randy Orton, the reality is that a company is lucky to find a 5-10 year guy, Finn fits that profile and really, all of this talk of putting Styles out to pasture because he's about to turn 40 is pretty silly, there's really no reason that he can't have another 5-10 productive years; (granted, at the high end of that range he may need to modify his style somewhat), same with Nakamura (if he hasn't already soured on the US experiment.) There are far, far worse things that WWE could do than to give the ball to Finn and let him run with it. 

Sort of ironic, but what @KidNatural said about Balor is practically word for word what I said about Roman when the Shield first showed up, the WWE has done an awful lot to ruin Roman since then, but wrestling fans have short memories, so he still might overcome all of the bad booking and dreadful scripted promos. Finn has as much natural charisma as anyone in the business today and his ability to appeal to fans across the board cannot be overstated. Hell, stick him in a feud with the Miz, it would be a license to print money, revisit the feud with Joe, that was some of the best David/Goliath booking we've seen in recent years. The upside to Finn Balor is just incredible, hopefully WWE sees it.

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3 hours ago, Brandon-E said:

Someone told me that Jeff Jarrett's push in 2000 WCW wasn't as forced as the Roman Reigns push because he was a heel and had more credibility at the time. 

It's not that he had more credibility so much as that people had stopped giving a shit about WCW by 2000.

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