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MAY 2019 WRESTLING TALK


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They should just give everyone a trophy if this is going to be a issue. WWE just seems to hate any success they can't take credit for. It's all rumor and speculation but time and time again we've seen this is how the company thinks and behaves.

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If they make her win a "Did you know" in the next few weeks, that would be a positive. If she ends up leaving the company soon, that would look bad (unless it's clear she's getting a better gig, like being a head writer or showrunner or something).

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5 hours ago, Technico Support said:

@OSJ mentioned Dunn claiming that they're not making "a wrestling show."  That's a huge part of the issue.  The company is lead by Vince and Dunn, two guys who are deep-down ashamed of being involved in "rasslin" so they do all they can to make it not feel like wrestling.  The problem is that people like wrestling.  You take away all the conventional stuff and replace it with bullshit and it's no wonder fans are tuning out in droves.  Instead of making a good wrestling show, they're trying to make a piss poor comedy/drama/variety show.  I can get far better programs in all those categories literally anywhere else. 

Honestly, even the piss poor comedy/drama/variety show ties to another problem with wrestling, and this is one thing the fans are guilty of:

The fans care so much about backstage issues that it's turned WWE television into the one show on television where absolutely nothing you see on television matters. None of it.

The fans went from "I like wrestling", to "I KNOW wrestling", to "who cares what we see on TV? The real story is backstage"...and as a result, it's impossible for WWE to ever make a good story because the story the fans want to hear about is all the backstage rumors and innuendos, the gossip behind the scenes.

WWE tried to adjust in 2011 and turn Raw from a TV show to a show where the stuff going on behind the scenes matters- but ultimately that tries to serve all masters and serves none. Casual fans don't give a damn about what's going on behind the scenes, and the smarks think it's bullshit anyway and want to know the REAL stuff behind the scenes that you're hiding from them.

This whole thing also hurts WWE, because when the fans refuse to accept any storylines that WWE give them, and replace them all with one overarching story of "WWE programming is the story of [insert smark favorite here], a plucky young aspiring wrestler who has to navigate all the backstage politics of WWE for the ultimate goal of winning the WWE Championship/Women's Championship". That leads to a bigger problem than this because it's not just "WWE makes bad storylines", but more specifically "even if WWE made the best storylines in the world, it ultimately wouldn't matter because the fanbase rejected their reality and substituted their own."  

Ultimately, WWE needs to write better storylines, but at the same time, the fans need to be willing to BUY INTO those storylines in order for them to work as well- even if that storyline won't lead to your favorite dancing around with a pretty belt that has their logo on it and everything.

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16 minutes ago, Matt D said:

That's been true for decades.

WMXX was "Are they really going to put Chris Benoit over?" Likewise WMXXX with Bryan. 

Not exactly what I mean.

In Wrestlemania 20 and 30, the storyline was "Are they really going to put Chris Benoit/Daniel Bryan over?"...but the storyline on TV reflected that.  The story to smarks was "they're not really going to put Benoit over, are they?", but the story on TV was "...it's Triple H and Shawn Michaels fighting for the title. They're not really going to have Benoit actually beat them, are they?"  

Likewise with Daniel Bryan, compare Wrestlemania 30 to Fastlane 2015 and you see a world of difference:

Mania 30: The fans were unhappy Bryan didn't even get a chance to fight for the title. In kayfabe, Bryan had to fight for a chance to get Triple H, and if he beat him, THEN he could get in the main event of Wrestlemania. 

Mania 31: Daniel Bryan was in the Royal Rumble and summarily eliminated cleanly with no fanfare. Roman Reigns wins the Royal Rumble, in a "controversial finish" where Kane and Big Show summarily eliminated Ryback, Dolph Ziggler, Dean Ambrose, and Bray Wyatt. WWE makes Roman defend against...Daniel Bryan. No, he didn't really have a claim to the controversial finish of the Rumble, but the smarks really, REALLY wanted him to win and he lost and that's sooooo unfair so we'll give him the shot. 

If smarks reject your reality and substitute their own, Roman Reigns has to defend the shot against Daniel Bryan. 

If the show on television mattered, you could easily rework it: Roman Reigns has to defend his shot in the Elimination Chamber against Ryback, Dolph Ziggler, Dean Ambrose, Bray Wyatt (the four guys who were dispatched in this controversial finish), and...hell, we need a sixth guy in the match and the sixth person in a 6-pack challenge is always kind of goofy anyway, throw Curtis Axel (the guy who was beaten up before he entered and claims he's still in the Rumble) in there.

 

4 minutes ago, Technico Support said:

@SorceressKnight no offense intended but I think you're overrating the size and impact of the smark audience.  I think every form of entertainment has a segment of fans that are very much into the interior machinations. 

That's the whole problem. Before, the size and impact of the smark audience was negligible, I agree.

However, as the ratings dwindle, it's the casual fans who are the ones who walk away- and as a result, the smark audience grows in size and impact. By this time, it's not unfair to argue the smarks have become a majority of the audience, and because they have it's a show that cannot keep casual fans interested because this majority will whine you're not catering to them and only them.

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I have never cared about backstage politics when the on screen matches/stories/feuds were entertaining. When you have things like the original build up to Wrestlemania 30 people lose interest. When there's no good storytelling being done and I can no longer be immersed I question why. Though I should probably look in the mirror as a wrestling fan. 

WWE has a team like The Revival I just want to see wrestle, like they did in NXT. But instead their trying to wipe IcyHot off their junk. Why the hell is that?

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I'm sure that there are some sites that publish backstage rumours about how things are going at some big movie filming and how actors are socialising with each other and who hates who and all that. But vast majority of people who watch, for example, Avengers probably don't care about any of it and I personally have never seen or heard anything about it either. I just assume that it should exist.

Contrast it with wrestling where backstage news and rumours are dominant. I'm not sure if there is any English wrestling forum where you won't run into what Dave (or someone else) said about someone getting a push.

And I doubt that it really has that much to do with shows being bad. RoH/NJPW MSG show was very good with few missteps in undercard. Yet those missteps received 90% of the attention, not because they were very meaningful, but because it involved backstage politics. Heck, even main event got lots of talk about how "It was supposed to be Omega" instead of focusing on actual story of Okada getting back his mojo and finally beating White.

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The companies pushed their own backstage politics by the mid-90s. WCW did it, WWF did it (that's how we got Vince McMahon, all-time-great heel, after all), and on top of that, both companies booked with obliviousness or hostility toward fans at numerous times. Combine those two things happening for a couple of decades now, and that's why you get fans who are more concerned with backstage goings-on than anything on screen...though the on-screen stuff is also still bad, I guess?

 

I mean, I say this as someone who enjoys @SorceressKnight and their posting and who likes that SK will put forth reasoning behind their stances, but I'm arguing that SK's focus on "oh, it's the smarks, they've really sort of forced the company to go in directions where they acknowledge the backstage stuff" is really not fair. It's the other way around.

 

And I argue that when the booking is hot AND focused on the ring action, fans are very quick to get sucked into that because most wrestling fans enjoy that more than anything. I go back to 2014-2016 NXT as my example. Didn't matter whether you had a lengthy NJPW run or if you were pretty much unknown before your NXT run, you could get over and make people believe in you in no time. The booking and focus on the in-front-of-the-curtains action got everyone over who could hang. It rehabilitated Tyson Kidd as a character, it got the big signings over from the American indies or from Japan, it got people over with minimal pre-NXT buzz like Tyler Breeze and Bayley, and it even got over the prototypical Vince McMahon signings like Charlotte. 

 

I will never find it fair to blame the fans for what the company is doing on screen because there are plentiful examples - and especially an example from the same fucking company - where they were able to re-focus the fans and get them to invest in the in-ring stuff and the promos and not what the booking team was doing. And NXT didn't treat its fans like they were the enemy! Faces actually got big wins! If you got over with the fans, you got a push commensurate with that overness! That approach allowed the fans to trust the company and that the company wouldn't pull the rug out from under them or troll them, and look what they got: An immensely popular show with a number of big shows/PPVs that people will talk about as classics years down the road. 

 

I don't believe that most smarks even like being the wrestling fan equivalent of Comic Book Guy, and I think it's easy to prove because you get a building full of smarks at Full Sail in 2015 or the ECW Arena in 1995 or wherever, and the booking and the storylines have emotional payoff, and they lose themselves in the show just like the purest-hearted kid fans do. 

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@Archibald I was at the NJPW/ROH MSG show and we had a great time.  I loved seeing Ospreay/Cobb,  Okada/White and Ibushi/Naito live.  Seeing Suzuki do his full entrance was awesome,  seeing Muta/Liger in the ring together was awesome,  little stuff like PCO's entrance I thought was very entertaining..  

I was saddened to see that most of the focus after the show was on the shit that sucked and the Enzo/Cass run-in and all the ROH poor booking but that's how it goes. The bad is always going to receive most of the attention and ROH put out a lot of bad.  If I was NJPW I'd be pissed that ROH shit the bed like that at MSG. 

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Screw anyone blaming the fans. Hell, smarks are willing to forgive minor transgressions on the undercard if the main event programs are hot, and sometimes even vice versa. 

Attitude era smarks were willing to forgive Vader getting castrated and a subpar tag team scene and other "square peg in round hole" transgressions because the main event scene and storylines was fucking hot. And vice versa, smarks were able to forgive multiple WCW main events not having satisfying payoffs as long as the undercard still kicked ass. WCW didn't really start to fall off the rails until the entire show from start to finish started stinking. 

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50 minutes ago, Smelly McUgly said:

The companies pushed their own backstage politics by the mid-90s. WCW did it, WWF did it (that's how we got Vince McMahon, all-time-great heel, after all), and on top of that, both companies booked with obliviousness or hostility toward fans at numerous times. Combine those two things happening for a couple of decades now, and that's why you get fans who are more concerned with backstage goings-on than anything on screen...though the on-screen stuff is also still bad, I guess?

 

I mean, I say this as someone who enjoys @SorceressKnight and their posting and who likes that SK will put forth reasoning behind their stances, but I'm arguing that SK's focus on "oh, it's the smarks, they've really sort of forced the company to go in directions where they acknowledge the backstage stuff" is really not fair. It's the other way around.

 

And I argue that when the booking is hot AND focused on the ring action, fans are very quick to get sucked into that because most wrestling fans enjoy that more than anything. I go back to 2014-2016 NXT as my example. Didn't matter whether you had a lengthy NJPW run or if you were pretty much unknown before your NXT run, you could get over and make people believe in you in no time. The booking and focus on the in-front-of-the-curtains action got everyone over who could hang. It rehabilitated Tyson Kidd as a character, it got the big signings over from the American indies or from Japan, it got people over with minimal pre-NXT buzz like Tyler Breeze and Bayley, and it even got over the prototypical Vince McMahon signings like Charlotte. 

 

I will never find it fair to blame the fans for what the company is doing on screen because there are plentiful examples - and especially an example from the same fucking company - where they were able to re-focus the fans and get them to invest in the in-ring stuff and the promos and not what the booking team was doing. And NXT didn't treat its fans like they were the enemy! Faces actually got big wins! If you got over with the fans, you got a push commensurate with that overness! That approach allowed the fans to trust the company and that the company wouldn't pull the rug out from under them or troll them, and look what they got: An immensely popular show with a number of big shows/PPVs that people will talk about as classics years down the road. 

 

I don't believe that most smarks even like being the wrestling fan equivalent of Comic Book Guy, and I think it's easy to prove because you get a building full of smarks at Full Sail in 2015 or the ECW Arena in 1995 or wherever, and the booking and the storylines have emotional payoff, and they lose themselves in the show just like the purest-hearted kid fans do. 

That reminds me of a guy in the old Lariat years ago who noted that ECW was the one promotion where he cheered the faces and booed the heels. There's a heck of a lot of truth to that.

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I'm a lot happier just watching old W*ING than I ever would be watching Raw, maybe some of you should jump ship and be W*ING homies for life as well.

I was just watching Victor Quinones yell SCRAPE HIM LIKE A LETTUCE in a cage match and thinking about how being a good manager with horrible English is really a lost art form, and if I were a manager I'd rip off everything from Quinones (other than the whole trying to put his dick in you when you're asleep thing) and it'd probably get over with the irony loving smarks these days and probably get me a Pit Viper sponsorship like Janela. 

Edited by Tromatagon
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After the opening segment with Vince lasted two commercial breaks, I said fuck it and watched the Tessa Blanchard/Mercedes Martinez 75 minute Iron Woman match on YouTube that RISE was showing on their channel.

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There is enough wrestling to basically watch whatever you actually like without touching a bad company that you now watch out of habit to be sure.

I basically watch random WoS and Stampede matches and shows online and old New Japan shows on AXS nowadays, and that pretty much covers any of my wrestling needs. 

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I've had the Network since Day 1, cancelled a few times since 2014 (mainly because I don't use it as much as Hulu or Netflix), and just now was the first time I've ever been offered a free month instead of cancelling right now. Not saying it's related to ratings or subscription numbers, but I've seen other people online that were Day 1 subscribers say they've never been offered this, or the discounts in the WWEShop, etc. Weird timing. I went with the free month, because I like ladder matches and Becky Lynch wrestling twice at MITB makes me happy, but after that... probably won't keep it.

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1 hour ago, Tromatagon said:

I was just watching Victor Quinones yell SCRAPE HIM LIKE A LETTUCE in a cage match and thinking about how being a good manager with horrible English is really a lost art form

I'd steal from Chicky Starr and yell "FINISH WITH HIM" all the time.

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