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NXT to WWE main roster: The hits and misses.


The Natural

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Backlund is a good point, he wasn't exactly lighting the world on fire and he was champ for years. I don't know enough about that era to offer an alternative. Would Superstar have worked as a face?

Also, a second after I posted above I remembered that since he's been an obstinate old man blah blah, his company is bigger than ever. Their main babyfaces have been soundly booed for over a decade leading to billion dollar TV deals. So what do I know? (A: Not much.)

Edit: Damn new page. See previous page for context.

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13 hours ago, evilwaldo said:

There is also ageism in WWE.  If you are not Rousey, you don't get that main event push until you are over 40.

Gotta love how y'all just make this stuff up as you go along. I guess you didn't happen to notice that the biggest main event pushes of the past 5 years went to Roman and Charlotte?

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3 hours ago, Johnny Sorrow said:

Bob Backlund was super over during his reign. He only started cooling off a bit right at the end. 

Yeah, anyone who says Backlund wasn't over during his WWF salad days is kidding himself. FFS, he was mega-over as a babyface against Sgt Slaughter in PHILADELPHIA of all places.

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And when it came time for Bob to drop the belt, it was Vince Sr. who took him aside and told him. It's all in Bob's book, which is great. I used to do a podcast about WWF from 1979- 83, and we acquired a ton of footage from MSG and Philly. Like Pete said, Bob was red hot and the crowds adored him. There's nothing better than hearing Kal Rudman lose his shit over Backlund.

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4 minutes ago, Johnny Sorrow said:

And when it came time for Bob to drop the belt, it was Vince Sr. who took him aside and told him. It's all in Bob's book, which is great. I used to do a podcast about WWF from 1979- 83, and we acquired a ton of footage from MSG and Philly. Like Pete said, Bob was red hot and the crowds adored him. There's nothing better than hearing Kal Rudman lose his shit over Backlund.

God, Kal was the worst. But those crowds were white-hot for Bob. Vince Sr had that babyface champ template down pat between Bruno, Pedro and Bob: smiling beefy dudes who weren't necessarily the greatest talkers, but once they got FIRED UP in a match they had you every step of the way. Wrestling charisma, daddy.

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Bayley ran into a big problem called Alexa Bliss who emerged as one of the best performers in the WWE.  Alexa found her voice and footing right when Bayley was winning the big one but stumbling in speaking. Someone in the back said: “Let’s push that awesome heel and run a bunch of angles off of her.” It is a very understandable decision.

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On 11/12/2018 at 4:55 PM, evilwaldo said:

There is also ageism in WWE.  If you are not Rousey, you don't get that main event push until you are over 40.  They need to learn to strike while the iron is hot with workers like Bayley and Braun.  It is not a matter of doing what the fans want but maximizing returns on the product.  Bayley hits the young girls market and if you want to attract new viewers you push that person while they still fit that mold.  Bayley in her mid-30's becomes Mary Jane.  It is just lost opportunities all round.

If you have someone that appeals to an untapped market and is over, you run with it.  Plain and simple.  Push it to the moon and rake in the cash.

Uh, Daniel Bryan is 37, Seth Rollins and Roman are considerably younger than that. While I don't disagree at all that they totally missed the money machine that Bayley could've been, the idea that you must be forty to get a main event push is ridiculous.

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8 hours ago, D.Z said:

Something to note, is that not all gimmicks will work on the main roster.

NXT and WWE also have structural differences which mean that feuds have to be constructed differently, and in turn this requires a different skill set. You can have a great feud in NXT with virtually nothing but matches and in-ring storytelling, but a great WWE feud needs more. I take the recent Becky/Charlotte feud as evidence of this--its been very widely acclaimed, but one part that's been less mentioned is that it was a three-month feud where outside the PPVs they only had one TV match. After Becky's turn they didn't do tag matches or 6-woman matches or anything like that against each other to move things along, they used a variety of segment formats to keep its momentum going instead, from talking segments to post-match beatdowns to creative segments like the Performance Center speech/brawl.

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Without even starting with the issues with the storytelling, nxt has a few big things in its favor.

1. Limited tv: The ideal fed has 1 hour of A-show a week. With five hours, every full time talent is overexposed.

2. Smaller arenas: The major shows should be in front of large audience (i.e. Takeovers), but on a week to week basis, getting angles/matches over in front of 10,000 plus is very difficult.  Getting new talent over is almost impossible. 

3. New talents:  It's fun watching new talents debut and develop. As a fan, you are going along for the ride.  By the time nxt talents show up on the main roster, they've already had their defining story arc.  

 

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NXT also benefits from rarely having to deal with the "...and then what?" stage of a talent's career.  For their most successful wrestlers it generally goes build them up through a title reign, and then when the reign is over they basically wrap things up and move on to the main roster.  They generally don't have to deal with moving someone back down the card and finding something else for them to do.  This also frees up a good amount of space and time for the new people coming and and being built up.

 

As backwards as this seems, if you go back a few years and leave like Balor, Owens and Joe in NXT it probably makes the show worse as you can't have those guys around and not feature them.  They'll likely put in good work but now fewer good new people get a shot, or one of those three ends up missing more shows than one would think is wise and NXT gets sucked into the whole "they don't know how to use their roster" talk many other places have to deal with.

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Also, NXT doesn't have to worry about appealing to a broader audience. They get to aim directly at the hardcore superfan set, they don't have to turn a profit (nor should they have to, developmental is the exact kind of thing you have operate at a loss with the idea that it'll pay off later.)

It's on WWE's own network, so it also never has to worry about USA or whoever asking it to feature the McMahons more, or add an extra hour, or improve it's performance with a specific demographic. They get to just run a fucking a wrestling show, that appeals to wrestling fans.

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1 minute ago, Brian Fowler said:

Also, NXT doesn't have to worry about appealing to a broader audience. They get to aim directly at the hardcore superfan set, they don't have to turn a profit (nor should they have to, developmental is the exact kind of thing you have operate at a loss with the idea that it'll pay off later.)

It's on WWE's own network, so it also never has to worry about USA or whoever asking it to feature the McMahons more, or add an extra hour, or improve it's performance with a specific demographic. They get to just run a fucking a wrestling show, that appeals to wrestling fans.

I have a suspicion this may change as the NXT concept expands and may be presented as q full fledged third brand. With waning revenue from live events, and the new tier system, they're bound to at least shop NXT for rights, be it online or on TV. As that happens, expect that to likely dilute the concept A LOT.

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47 minutes ago, Casey said:

Wasn't there talk of NXT being on Fox Sports 1 or something come next year when Smackdown goes to NXT? I swear I read that, maybe from Meltzer.

I remember speculation WWE might try to sell it, but I don't remember it ever being reported that they were actually doing it.

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