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APRIL 2017 WRESTLING DISCUSSION


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11 minutes ago, ReiseReise said:

I think WWE has messed up up-and-comers and the speciality of them winning the big one quite a lot over the last decade or so. The last big Mania title win for a new guy was Batista. Since Money in the bank they mostly rely on having the "excitement". VERY often they give MITB guys weird depushes, having them loose matches in their build up and such.

Reigns is the only new guy I can think of who didn't get a weird depush. He looses once in a while and Strowman beat him up in glorious fashion recently. But he was groomed for superstardom from Day 1 during the SHIELD days. Yet they even managed to ruin his "moment".

 

And they've ruined his moment so many times.

1) His Rumble win, why announce the most over guy in the company is going to be in the Rumble, which would signal to most if not all of your audience the built in story of the champ who never lost his title trying to get it back when it was suppose to be used to get Roman over. 

2) His 1st Mania main event, he goes out there goes toe-to-toe with the man who ended the Streak and mauled John Cena looks like an bad ass in the match and......Seth wins and carries the belt for way to long.

3) Survivor Series he gets the belt again and Sheamus (who had done nothing other than win MITB since coming back) boots him and takes the belt. Which lead to his renewed friendship with Ambrose that did help he start getting face reactions for a bit but then when the Rumble comes down to HHH and Dean Roman sits on the floor pouting instead of helping his friend stick to the guy he hates.

4) He retires the Undertaker.......that was never going to make someone more popular.

Roman has his faults but the writing has done so very little to help him. Plus the general booking  is like anti-Heyman ECW logic these days, accentuate the negatives and hide the positives 

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If rumors are to be believed, Roman/Taker rehearsed two possible finishes with Vince making the final choice on WM Saturday. My guess is that Vince kept trying to get Taker to come back for WM 34 but was continually told to fuck off by the Deadman. So I can sort of see why that may not had as much build. They didn't know what to expect until the last night before.

But when they have cases like that or Brock, you'd think they would know how to plan for that by now.  How hard is it to get Brock/Heyman to fly into Stamford one day and film 2-3 vignettes that can be used in their absence? If Brock would allow it, send a video crew to his compound and show him training. This doesn't seem hard to do.

We can talk all day about stale characters, weird career stalls, and all that.  But so much comes down to Creative.  If they don't put performers in the right place and then allow them some freedom to self-create, then we're just talking in circles.

 

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Anybody ever read the Vonnegut short story "Harrison Bergeron?"  It's about a future where everyone is finally equal because nobody is allowed to be exceptional (ballerinas wear masks and weights so they're not pretty or graceful, etc).  That's how WWE booking feels to me.  The longer people are around, the more almost everybody gravitates to a clogged-up midcard where nobody gives two shits about you.  All WWE Superstars (tm) are equal in their mediocrity.  

Look at Sami Zayn, who was incredible on the indies.  Great worker, charisma for days.  Now he's a lower midcard joke.  Bayley was the most over act in NXT, a can't miss, mass appeal face.  Now she's on the main roster getting booed.  People thought she'd be the female John Cena for fuck's sake.  Guys like the aforementioned Dean Ambrose who were over like crazy a short time ago now play to crickets.  The longer you're on TV, to more their bland booking machine pushes you to mediocrity.  What's the cause?

  1. Plain old overexposure makes fans like you less and less until they're just apathetic?
  2. Really shitty writers who absolutely lack the ability to get someone over?
  3. They're doing it on purpose because getting someone over like Hogan or Austin was means that person is bigger than the brand and we can't have that?
  4. Vince has the attention span of a gnat and tires of new people very quickly, so strong pushes just die as he moves his attention to something new?

And then the only guy they do push can't get over to save his life.  Among other reasons, probably because we've been trained not to invest in anybody since they'll be trading meaningless wins with the rest of the roster before long.  I can't wait for Nakamura to join the .500 club.  I give it six months and that's being generous.

 

 

 

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It's all of the above, but #3 is crucial.

We have to remember we live in the Brand Era.  WWE as a brand is more important than building actual superstars.  Because Vince's way of thinking is that if someone develops their own unique brand within his system, they won't want to be part of his system for long or will make demands that he doesn't want to give into anymore.  He doesn't want anyone to become that important these days.

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10 minutes ago, Technico Support said:

Look at Sami Zayn, who was incredible on the indies.  Great worker, charisma for days.  Now he's a lower midcard joke.  

 

Vince has the attention span of a gnat and tires of new people very quickly, so strong pushes just die as he moves his attention to something new?

 

 

 

 

If Vince is half the weird, crazy, volatile, sneeze hating, big man fetishist that we perceive him to be thanks to a million posts and comments, can you really see him letting Zayn, who injured himself in his ring entrance prior to that "star making potential" Cena match, be the proverbial big dog? For all we know, Vince may think he's doing the guy a favor by not just sticking him on 205 Live every week.

 

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21 minutes ago, Dolfan in NYC said:

God fucking damn it. 

 

What the hell! And Dawson just showed off the Monday Night Revival shirt. This blows. I suppose if there's a silver lining to this, maybe it's that Dawson can further rehab his knee.

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38 minutes ago, Craig H said:

What the hell! And Dawson just showed off the Monday Night Revival shirt. This blows. I suppose if there's a silver lining to this, maybe it's that Dawson can further rehab his knee.

Now is the time for Dawson to go out and find himself a Tully until Dash comes back.  Love the act, but both guys want to be Arn.

I guess, as a stopgap, they could bring in an old, bitter, out-of-touch ex-carnie to be the Ole, but i don't think Cornette wants to work for Vince again.

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2 hours ago, Ultimo Necro said:

We're lucky Vince doesn't rename it 305 Live and create a hoss division.

Actually, take that back, would watch.

 

No hour-long time format, just endless hoss matches with increasingly larger guys until they do the superplex imploding ring spot. Every week. 

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32 minutes ago, Horton Hears a Wooo!!! said:

Now is the time for Dawson to go out and find himself a Tully until Dash comes back.  Love the act, but both guys want to be Arn.

I guess, as a stopgap, they could bring in an old, bitter, out-of-touch ex-carnie to be the Ole, but i don't think Cornette wants to work for Vince again.

While I would love them to use this to help debut The Drifter, I feel like they would run a series of comedy bits with Scott Dawson being forced to tag with Titus O'Neill.

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32 minutes ago, Horton Hears a Wooo!!! said:

Now is the time for Dawson to go out and find himself a Tully until Dash comes back.  Love the act, but both guys want to be Arn.

I guess, as a stopgap, they could bring in an old, bitter, out-of-touch ex-carnie to be the Ole, but i don't think Cornette wants to work for Vince again.

The problem is that he has never really been a singles guy in NXT.   He has always been in a group setting whether it was the Revival or that thing with Sylvester Lefort and Russev before it.   When he was doing singles stuff, it was in a jobber role.  So it will be a challenge.   

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Man...Jerry Lawler might be the most underrated wrestler of all-time.

When you speak to "casual" (typically meaning used to be) wrestling fans, he's just a tubby clown who did commentary for WWF. You don't have to have a great body or be a champion for Vince to be a great wrestler. It's like some of these "wrestling" fans don't even know what wrestling is.

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59 minutes ago, brandonr4s said:

Man...Jerry Lawler might be the most underrated wrestler of all-time.

When you speak to "casual" (typically meaning used to be) wrestling fans, he's just a tubby clown who did commentary for WWF. You don't have to have a great body or be a champion for Vince to be a great wrestler. It's like some of these "wrestling" fans don't even know what wrestling is.

Considering how many people I know consider Lawler to be the greatest of all time - using the word "underrated" with him seems wrong.

However - I do understand what you are trying to say.

It is very much a generational thing as the "casual" fans (ie: us old people) would know Lawler at least from the Andy Kauffman stuff.

I happened to be thinking about a similar concept today in regards to Sgt Slaughter as you are getting to the point where there are fans who don't even remember him from being a Vince stooge/random commissioner 

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When they cycled back in guys like Sarge and Rude during the late 90s as onscreen characters they did excellent career retrospective video packages reintroducing them to the new audience. That's how I became familiar with them initially and it felt like a big deal that they were back in some capacity. I don't know if they've ever done anything like that to get across Lawler's importance (maybe during the Cole feud?) 

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it was interesting to hear on the Schiavone pod this week that Flair and Rude had heat. Flair's side (told by Conrad) is that Rude thought Flair was holding down his push and Flair didn't like working with Rude due to his "demons" (aka drug issues).

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Being fair, it's now really two full generations of wrestling fans that, unless they had USWA on their cable package in 90's, likely never really saw Lawler as anything but the announcer who occasionally wrestled.

He started commentating for Vince in what, '93?

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5 hours ago, Technico Support said:

 

  1. Plain old overexposure makes fans like you less and less until they're just apathetic?

I believe this to be true and it got me thinking about guys that would have been better back in the territory days. Kane is a guy that immediately pops into my mind for a guy that is versatile for many different characters and could be scary as hell, but after so many turns and changes to one audience, it just becomes "meh". The crown gets kind of sick of him and there's not much else people want to see without a "uhg, Kane" reaction. If the guy could have rotated in and out during his career, it wouldn't have gotten nearly as stale. 

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