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FEBRUARY 2018 WRESTLING DISCUSSION.


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32 minutes ago, Michael Sweetser said:

I think this match was *better* than the KOPW 2012 match.  I just watched it a month ago and did love that there was only one pin attempt; however, there were multiple times in the match where they would've normally gone for pins and didn't (High Fly Flows by Tanahashi, for instance) which made it seem more of a gimmick than it should.  

Bray Wyatt has been utterly fucked by the stupid angles and terrible 50/50 booking.  I maintain he could've become the new Undertaker - perhaps not in ring work but in aura - and they threw it away, repeatedly.   I'm not sure he can be salvaged at this point.

Undertaker wasn't very good beyond character work in-ring until the mankind feud six or so years into his WWF career. Bret had some good matches with him but that's saying nothing of Undertaker. I feel like in this regard, he's always been somebody a little overrated in that there aren't a lot of examples of him elevating talent below his level. He needed the right partner and right circumstances to have good or great matches. I guess the Batista series is his closest carry jobs but Big Dave was pretty good around that point in time. 

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6 minutes ago, RIPPA said:

Morgan Stanley predicted that the WWE will get $243 million for their rights fees.(The last deal was $140 million)

That is inline with what a lot of other folks said.

Meltzer said that a lot of that prediction is based on the idea that since UFC got an offer for $200 million the WWE will get more.

The Boy Who Cried TV Rights. 

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Oh my new favorite story

Quote

MMA Tonight on Sirius XM booked the wrong Dave Meltzer to come on and talk about Ronda Rousey signing with WWE.

Dave talked about this further on the radio show.

Basically he knows the "other" Dave Meltzer and the guy knows sports business so he actually did a decent job during the interview (though he was a little confused when they wanted to talk to him about MMA and WWE). But I guess people called the show and told them they had the wrong Dave Meltzer so they called the "right" one and proceeded to ask him all the same questions. (Dave said he did his best to give different answers)

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Did the other Meltzer have one leg?

One of my favorite recent tidbits (from the E+C podcast) is that apparently when they signed Sam Adonis to developmental, they really meant to sign Graves and they had the wrong brother for a couple of weeks.

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1 minute ago, EVA said:

I was watching Undertaker's debut at Survivor Series last week, and I was amused that the first ever Tomstone was done facing away from the hard camera.

If only NXT had been around back then.

Sure. If he'd made the mistake of delivering the move facing away from the hardcam, he'd at least be well-coached enough to rotate his victim before making a cover. 

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A couple days of reflection got me to thinking: 

was Gargano/Almas the best successful heel title defense in WWE history? So many iconic moments/matches in WWE, especially in regards to titles, have the babyface going over. A lot of Bret's classic like the Owen cage or most of Shawn's run saw them going over. By and large, heels don't win classic matches. 

I *guess* you can go back to Hunter and Cactus in 2000 as the last example of a heel winning MOTY-level matches, but does anything else jump to mind? 

 

Edit: a quick check shows that Jericho retained against Shawn in the ladder match in 2008 in a MOTY, but I'd put Gargano/Almas as better than it, especially since it was a clean-ish pinfall win. 

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1 hour ago, Oyaji said:

Undertaker wasn't very good beyond character work in-ring until the mankind feud six or so years into his WWF career. Bret had some good matches with him but that's saying nothing of Undertaker. I feel like in this regard, he's always been somebody a little overrated in that there aren't a lot of examples of him elevating talent below his level. He needed the right partner and right circumstances to have good or great matches. I guess the Batista series is his closest carry jobs but Big Dave was pretty good around that point in time. 

As an enormous Undertaker fan, I completely agree with this.  

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14 minutes ago, Hagan said:

A couple days of reflection got me to thinking: 

was Gargano/Almas the best successful heel title defense in WWE history?

Thanks. I'll spend an inordinate amount of time today thinking about this question. 

Opening bid:

kurt-angle_benoit-1691774.jpg

And it may not be super memorable to most fans these days, but I'll take a couple screwy Austin 2001 title defenses over Gargano-Almas. 

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3 minutes ago, Michael Sweetser said:

As an enormous Undertaker fan, I completely agree with this.  

Who doesn't love him? He's still an all-time great but in terms of a guy who could really carry less experienced or effective wrestlers, he was never top shelf. He certainly had plenty of opportunities in his initial babyface run and then much later as one of the aces of Smackdown. There were some God awful matches in that SD run before becoming a part-timer.

It's interesting though that there are some extremely talented wrestlers in WWE right now that are prioritizing character work and old-school storytelling over having a great match. Kevin Owens is certainly the glaring candidate. He came in as someone who a lot of people thought was too much of a spot monkey in ROH/PWG. Now he's gone completely the other way. Look to his disappointing series of matches with AJ last year for evidence. Even the handicap match this past weekend was very good but considering that the match had 3 of the very best wrestlers on the planet, you'd expect something more. Rusev is almost all character work in his matches and he hasn't quite figured out how to keep that and also have great matches. I love the guy to bits but when his best matches are probably the Jack Swagger series or the Big E IC match from his first year on the main roster, something is off. Obviously, in an ideal world, they'd marry the two and be able to have a great match with movez and such that are enhanced by the character work. 

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27 minutes ago, Hagan said:

A couple days of reflection got me to thinking: 

was Gargano/Almas the best successful heel title defense in WWE history?

Going through a few lists of different championship reigns, I'm struck by the notion that some of the best matches with successful heel title defences come on television against guys one or more rungs lower on the depth chart while PPV title defences are often mired in bullshit which spoils our perception of it (whether it should or not). And great television matches aren't as fondly or vividly remembered as great PPV matches, which handicaps your Austin-Benoit and Lesnar-Benoit type matches. 

Almas-Gargano has a decent case. Maybe it's the recency bias of Raw 25 lists, but Miz-Morrison falls count anywhere is one of the better examples I can conjure up. It's good, but it's not that good. 

Wild question, man. 

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1 minute ago, Mickie Zeidler said:

Wasn't everyone predicting high rights fees for WWE the last time around, and then suddenly USA basically took control of the company for a bargain basement price?

Yes. Stock value spiked and then fell off a cliff. It's at its highest number in 18 years according to Meltzer and the estimates range from $200m-400m. How can people honestly think it would be anywhere near the latter figure? 

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Just now, Mickie Zeidler said:

Wasn't everyone predicting high rights fees for WWE the last time around, and then suddenly USA basically took control of the company for a bargain basement price?

Extremely unrealistic ones. As well as overly large network subscription numbers at the time. WWE isn't getting 400 million.

There'll be more of a bidding war, and a lot will depend on where UFC goes. WME/IMG is doing negotiations for both companies.

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Just now, odessasteps said:

With no research, my first gut answer would be an IC defense by Muraco, Valentine and maybe Savage. 

You should know I'm taking this as a suggestion as to why the TV rights will be higher than expected.

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2 minutes ago, Oyaji said:

Yes. Stock value spiked and then fell off a cliff. It's at its highest number in 18 years according to Meltzer and the estimates range from $200m-400m. How can people honestly think it would be anywhere near the latter figure? 

I think the key is entirely whether or not there is more than one bidder. Maybe people are thinking that more places will be shopping for content. The last time it was just USA, and that is a problem for WWE if that happens again.

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As for best heel title defences, I thought HBK was champ in the first HIAC match and that would've been the obvious answer but it was for the #1 contender for the shot at Survivor Series, so duh. HHH/Foley at Rumble 2000 is a strong candidate. 

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