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[SEPT 2019] WRESTLING DISCUSSION


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7 minutes ago, AxB said:

I'm never sure when SKnight says 'the fans' which particular fans he's talking about. If his argument is that the members of the WWE universe who attend tv events are to blame, that's one thing. But if he means all Wrestling fans, I'm not sure how watching Impact on 5Star every week whilst ignoring Raw, Smackdown and NXT's existence has me contributing to Vince's bad booking.

I usually assume WWE.

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The problem with saying "WWE Booking is bad because the fans won't let it be good" is, what about when it is good? Take the Festival of Friendship angle. That was good. It had logic, it moved at the right pace, you could see where it was going, if not automatically when it was going there. But it was a good angle. Did the fans let it be a good angle? Or was it just that Jericho persuaded Vince to leave it alone and let it develop naturally?

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4 minutes ago, AxB said:

The problem with saying "WWE Booking is bad because the fans won't let it be good" is, what about when it is good? Take the Festival of Friendship angle. That was good. It had logic, it moved at the right pace, you could see where it was going, if not automatically when it was going there. But it was a good angle. Did the fans let it be a good angle? Or was it just that Jericho persuaded Vince to leave it alone and let it develop naturally?

It’s a shame that was the peak of that story. The actual match itself felt tame, and didn’t feel like the blow off it was built up as.

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I think one example of a decent story that was pretty unfairly shitted on was the King of the Ring.  It was a great tournament, Baron Corbin had a great tournament,  it had a lot of great matches in there and Corbin was probably the right guy to take on the moniker or at least one of the right guys...   Maybe you can argue Samoa Joe but Corbin wasn't the worst guy. 

The problem on WWE's end is everyone was already tired of Corbin by this point.  So now it comes off as shoving a guy that was overexposed down the fan's throat instead of it being a simple and effective story.   I mean if they hadn't run Corbin into the ground over the last year+ it'd be way more effective. 

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7 hours ago, Matt D said:

I can say this with a straight face: the fans are the problem. The difference isn't in suspension of disbelief but instead what fans in 1983 wanted relative to fans in 2019. Wrestlers react accordingly.

I don’t know if this is what Matt means, but  I interpret this as meaning fans aren’t paying to watch a baby get revenge on a dastardly heel, they’re paying to see their favorites pushed, regardless of heel/face alignment. Fans don’t really want heels, because when they’re given actual true heels, the response is either to turn them face or say how they suck and make people not want to watch.

Baron Corbin is a pretty good true heel. He was over-pushed, but the reaction these days is to change the channel instead of paying to see him get his comeuppance. He’s hated, but hate these days seems to be a turnoff rather than a draw.

One of the best storylines they’ve done in a long time was Jinder’s title run. Before his win, they pushed that he was a long shot, but anyone could get lucky on a given night. That was one of the most “pure sports build” things they’ve ever done. Then he actually pulled off the upset, got backup, and became a classic chicken shit heel. He was even a new, fresh face that they pushed, but instead of any heel heat, people cynically bitched about how he was just pushed because of India expansion and complained that he wasn’t “really” Indian since he was born in Canada. Now was Jinder amazing in the ring? No, but he was perfectly adequate and his character wasn’t supposed to be amazing in the ring either; he was a chickenshit heel who was built up during the title match as “well, maybe he’ll get lucky!” 

So the problem is, fans don’t really want true heels, but promotions and fans still seem to be stuck in the face/heel mindset. 

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In truth, I'm having a bit of a lark, and of course one major problem is WWE booking over the last, oh, fifteen(?), years. That said, I also think excess and escalation (especially as it pertains to choreography) are issues, sure. 

But I'm not totally facetious here. There are genres in this world that get broken by history or developments. I really like ERB's John Carter of Mars pulps, but part of what made them operate was scientific ignorance and what we've learned since prevents new iterations of that sort of Sci Fi. I'm not going to 100% say that it was 100% "hard" sci fi in 1912, but it was driven very much by what the public did not know about science and what they could simply imagine. You could write something similar today but the perception would be so different that you'd almost certain be doing a pastiche or parody or something to be winked at instead of something more earnest and genuine. Most likely, you just wouldn't write something that takes so much for granted and as matter-of-fact. That genre, in its initial form, is impossible and unreachable a hundred years later. 

Part of me really thinks that there are primal, necessary elements of pro wrestling that just can't exist anymore in 2019. Wrestling is a medium and not a genre (as we elaborated on at length in the beloved AEW thread) but so much of it is now inward looking and navel-gazing. Some of that is by design (that's WWE for you) and some of it is by the sheer fact that almost anyone who gets into the wrestling business in this day and age is a fan, and increasingly so, a fan of people who themselves were fans. You see it in other mediums/genres as well (you almost can't write a superhero comic that isn't about the entire history of superhero comics right now), but I think wrestling, more so than a lot of other mediums (except for maybe the circus and stage magic?) relied upon a distance between spectator and creator. With that so thoroughly bridged, something innate and primal is broken. 

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35 minutes ago, AxB said:

The problem with saying "WWE Booking is bad because the fans won't let it be good" is, what about when it is good? Take the Festival of Friendship angle. That was good. It had logic, it moved at the right pace, you could see where it was going, if not automatically when it was going there. But it was a good angle. Did the fans let it be a good angle? Or was it just that Jericho persuaded Vince to leave it alone and let it develop naturally?

If you actually read my response instead of dismissed it solely because I wrote it, then you would have seen I DID respond to "What about when it is good?"

The whole answer is...there's many many times that the booking is fairly good- but too many fans ignore it when it's good booking because the person who benefitted from that booking isn't their platonic ideal and personal favorite wrestler. As @Niners Fan in CT said, the King of the Ring was a good example. It was a good tournament, Baron Corbin was doing some of his best wrestling since his run in NXT during it, and the fact Corbin bombed this year and was so overexposed actually helped Corbin, putting Corbin in just the right place where "he should be in the upper card, but his gimmick desperately needs retooling" that makes a perfect King of the Ring.  Didn't matter, because the guy they hate beat the guy they liked so it sucked! 

That's the whole point. If you're so dedicated to dwelling on how any specific wrestler is treated, you'll never notice when the show is truly good because you'll only be looking on the lens of "well, my favorite wrestler isn't prancing around with a pretty belt that has their logo on it and everything, so they're a loser...and if they're a loser, must be a loser for liking them! This show sucks!" or "My favorite's the champion! This show is awesome!"

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I don't disagree with most of that but my thing is more that WWE creative is more of the blame and reason for why fans react to things the way they do.   A guy like MJF is a great heel and is booed by the AEW fans,  he's getting the right reaction.  I don't feel he's met with indifference.  That could change as time goes on but I think the face/heel dynamic works when fans TRUST the booking..   

Yes,  it's a weird thing to think about.  Why should fans even care about the booking,  but they've been taught to care about what's going on behind the scenes more than what they see on screen.  

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Actually,  guys like Meltzer and Alvarez are part of this too.  Critics/journalists have bigger followings now than previous eras so when they are constantly hammering home that this guy is being buried or this guy is being mistreated it plays into how fans respond.   Now the big thing this week is Cedric is being buried. It's an offhand remark from Dave that was picked up by other sites and everyone treats it as fact.  So now whether its true or not Cedric is going to be labeled as a guy that Vince hates.  

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Just now, Niners Fan in CT said:

Actually,  guys like Meltzer and Alvarez are part of this too.  Critics/journalists have bigger followings now than previous eras so when they are constantly hammering home that this guy is being buried or this guy is being mistreated it plays into how fans respond.   Now the big thing this week is Cedric is being buried. It's an offhand remark from Dave that was picked up by other sites and everyone treats it as fact.  So now whether its true or not Cedric is going to be labeled as a guy that Vince hates.  

In addition, the fact that Meltzer and Alvarez have such a big following has changed over how wrestling has evolved as well.

 The more critics you have, the better. Looking at movie critics- if one critic doesn't match your tastes, find someone who does have a better grasp on the movies you like and you'll get a good idea...and no one critic has so much power it can change the style of movies.

On the other hand, the amount of top wrestling critics is so small...and they have so much of a following, that it's impossible not for that to play a role in the development of wrestling...because they're basically telling so many fans what "good" wrestling entails. The readers then want wrestling that would be good in the eyes of this critic, and wrestlers (who know the value of these critics) inevitably engineer their style to what the critics like.  It's not the fault of wrestling or the fans, any more than it would be the fault of a serious actor to take a role in an Oscar Bait movie just to get a chance at winning the Oscar. 

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28 minutes ago, Niners Fan in CT said:

A guy like MJF is a great heel and is booed by the AEW fans,  he's getting the right reaction.  I don't feel he's met with indifference. 

I disagree with this. And I'm so happy you brought him up, because his weak shit is on my mind a lot.

There's a lot that's lost in my view when a critical mass of the audience is in on the joke and playing along in a singy-songy way at a show. Among AEW's fanbase, I see no real disdain for MJF. There's a lot of "Oh, he's a national treasure," or "Wow, what a great heel!" I see more of that than actual heat. And if the audience is willing to play along with you and trust the process, I guess that has its merits --  it's far preferable to indifference. But you lose something visceral there. On that score, I can't really see this great heel so much as I see people tripping over themselves to identify him as such. 

I think Matt's onto something when he talks about the distance between creator and spectator being broken. When people think their reaction to a good heel is "oooo" rather than "booo," something's broken. And I don't know if there's a clear fix to it. You can't turn back that clock. 

Maybe I'm misreading people's reaction. I think MJF is playing it right in that he clearly wants the heat. I just think he needs to go a little farther to really get it.

Blessedly, I think there are ways to play with fans feelings about "booking" or whatever and some companies have done a good job with that lately. Corbin's turning into something, even if he is overexposed by the way they do TV. Charlotte's a great heel because I actually believe a large part of that audience dislikes her. I guess I'd like to throw Sami Callihan on the list of real heels I buy nobody liking, but it's hard to judge when he's on shows nobody watches. 

If we're lucky, Jay White will be a double champion on January 5th. 

At least we have Contra Unit, who are just wild as hell and don't make me stop and think about post-modern heel theory or whatnot.

Jericho might be on my effective heel list at this point. But I can't tell if he's a shrewd drunk has-been or just a drunk has-been. 

Edited by West Newbury Bad Boy
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10 minutes ago, West Newbury Bad Boy said:

Charlotte's a great heel because I actually believe a large part of that audience dislikes her.

That's going to be a problem because she's now a babyface again.   On MJF,   I disagree.  I think there are a lot of people here saying he's a great heel for sure but that's what we are here to do,  we are here to point out things like that..  When I was watching the Fyter Fest show I thought MJF got the exact kind of heat he was looking for and it wasn't in a "oh what a great heeI!" way.  I could see people in the audience who were legit pissed off at this guy who was calling them video game nerds and they can't get women, etc..   

Maybe I read it wrong but those people especially up front looked pissed off because maybe some of what MJF was saying hit home.  

Edited by Niners Fan in CT
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All of that ties into one other problem with why wrestling has these problems: Ultimately, it's not cool to be a mark.

As a result, you get all of these problems. Top heels can't be seen as evil, but rather "We respect your good work as a heel. We're giving you boos because that is what we are supposed to do, but we know you don't hate us. You can't- we're GOOD fans, not like these MARKS.

The problem with the critics? "We have to watch what these critics tell us to. They're true smarks. They know what good wrestling is. If we watch something else...we, we could be seen as MARKS!"

Problem with the writing in WWE and not liking it? "Fuck you, old man! You can't tell me what to like anymore! I'm a REAL fan, I already know what I like and you can't change my mind! I'm not some MARK!"

All of those things have the same thing- to be a mark connotes being a kid, being a mentally disabled person, to think it's real. The carny term itself is for a sucker who'll shill out for your con.

That may be true...but by that end, the smark is somehow worse than that. If the mark is a sucker who'll shill out for your con, then the smark is the guy who goes up to the con man and says "Wow. You're so talented at this grift, I saw how you screwed over those marks. Here...take my money, I want to tell my friends how I got grifted by a master!"

Sounds similar to the heel example on the other side...but somehow, the smark is even more pathetic than the mark: They still lost their money to the con man, and they didn't even get the same amount of fun the mark got when they got grifted because they had to be sooo cool and so above the action they couldn't truly GIVE themselves to the grift. They're not some super-special fan...they're a hipster ironically liking these things, and it hurts the show outright. They turn the heels who are good at their job to the heels seen as inept, making the show worse.

Worst of all...focusing on one wrestler's success as how good the show is? It's basically saying "I don't care about anything but this worker getting their success. You can make a shitty show, just don't forget about MY boy/MY girl." That is literally being more of a mark than the 6 year old cheering Roman Reigns next to you who asks if Undertaker and Kane are really brothers.

 

 

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While I agree that the fan base as a whole causes issues you have to admit that WWE burn us more often than not.

Why bring Bryan back at the 2015 Royal Rumble? Let Roman have his big win and bring Bryan back closer to Mania for a match. Putting Bryan in there only teased the fan base who were going to reject anyone else once he entered.

Why call up so many popular NXT stars if you have no mid-long term plan and you are just going to job them into irrelevance?

Why not take advantage of super hot acts like Internet Champion Ryder, King of Swing Cesaro or the entire run of fucking Rusev Day?!?

The fans are told the cheer and boo who they like but in the end it doesn't mean anything outside of the Jan-April window when WWE need to ramp up fan interest in Mania.

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I'm not going all in on SK's last diatribe, but i think there's a lot of self-loathing and desperation for social acceptance with wrestling fans in general. It's easy to say "What, no? I don't like Hulk Hogan (John Cena, Roman Reigns). I like Dynamite Kid and Tiger Mask (Chris Benoit and Dean Malenko, Cesaro and Daniel Bryan, etc.)." Or Misawa or whatever. It's a lot easier to downplay the folk art element for the prog rock element, or what have you. I mean, we're all guilty to it to a degree. Not a lot of people I deal with on a daily basis know I'm into wrestling. It's just more headache than it's worth. 

Edited by Matt D
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1 minute ago, Niners Fan in CT said:

That's going to be a problem because she's now a babyface again.   

She's just like her father in that both have some babyface work that I absolutely love, but they clearly work better heel and can't turn back quick enough. 

Quote

On MJF,   I disagree.  I think there are a lot of people here saying he's a great heel for sure but that's what we are here to do,  we are here to point out things like that..  When I was watching the Fyter Fest show I thought MJF got the exact kind of heat he was looking for and it wasn't in a "oh what a great heel way!"  I could see people in the audience who were legit pissed off at this guy who was calling them video game nerds and they can't get women, etc..   

Maybe I read it wrong but those people especially up front looked pissed off because maybe some of what MJF was saying hit home.  

I read his heat the same way I read Ciampa's, when everyone on the internet (fairly representative of NXT's more niche audience) spent months playing the "bald motherfucker" game after every single tweet. How am I supposed to buy singy-songy, over-enthusiastic heat when people have spent months playing hating Ciampa as a meme and praising his great heeling?

Jury's out on MJF. If he can make most of AEW's audience feel personally responsible for the meteoric rise in popularity of incest porn, he'll have my vote. Right now, I just see a lameoid with lazy insults pretending to be a millionaire on an MLW budget while being showered with unearned praise. I hate him. I'd like to believe others do as well, but I'm not there yet.

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25 minutes ago, SorceressKnight said:

All of that ties into one other problem with why wrestling has these problems: Ultimately, it's not cool to be a mark.

As a result, you get all of these problems. Top heels can't be seen as evil, but rather "We respect your good work as a heel. We're giving you boos because that is what we are supposed to do, but we know you don't hate us. You can't- we're GOOD fans, not like these MARKS.

You're not wrong but again to me this goes back to WWE creative again because they have made it a point to call their audience stupid on air for being a "mark".  None of this would have happened if WWE didn't draw attention to it.  

But WWE was creatively bankrupt after Johnny Ace and the PG era tanked so their big idea was "let's cater to the internet crowd... but let's also shit on them because we don't like that we have to now cater to them."   WWE creative tried to play both sides and it bit them.  

That's really what the whole Daniel Bryan "YES" movement was all about too.  "You marks! We'll tell you what to like!" and it was brilliant in a way because it did play on the fans emotions but the problem is WWE creative and Vince also managed to work themselves.  

They tried to hit a reset with Roman because they still didn't see Bryan as a top act and you saw what happened..   

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34 minutes ago, L_W_P said:

Why call up so many popular NXT stars if you have no mid-long term plan and you are just going to job them into irrelevance?

Why not take advantage of super hot acts like Internet Champion Ryder, King of Swing Cesaro or the entire run of fucking Rusev Day?!?

The fans are told the cheer and boo who they like but in the end it doesn't mean anything outside of the Jan-April window when WWE need to ramp up fan interest in Mania.

This is the problem- some of them are not wrong, but these examples are part of the whole problem. 

Not EVERYONE can be the World Champion, at the end of the day. Pro wrestling is the one art form where for one person to succeed, another person has to agree to fail. One person wins, another person loses. One person makes it to the top of the mountain, another person has to fall short. Success for one wrestler can only happen if others are willing to fail so that they can succeed. 

This is the whole point. Internet Champion Zack Ryder and Rusev Day were lowcard gimmicks. They just were. Hell, Rusev getting a World Title match on PPV was a rousing success story for that gimmick.Same for Cesaro- people don't like hearing the Too Swiss thing, but ultimately cutting promos is a very big part of getting over in America and Cesaro's...just not a good promo, so there's a peak for him. Ditto for the NXT superstars...NXT is calling up people to fill positions up and down the card, and it's not just everyone being called up to be a main eventer immediately.

This, however, does have a bigger problem than just the WWE's writing- the WWE's insistence on putting the lower-tier title belts on main event caliber performers. It'd be a lot easier to take, say, Zack Ryder's run as "Okay. Maybe Zack Ryder just doesn't GET to be the World Champion. Great. Throw him the IC or US Title. He's just fine there." If you have a good act like Rusev Day...sure, maybe Rusev doesn't get to be WWE Champ? Fine. Give him and Aiden English the tag titles.  Shit, the 24/7 title has been one of the best things about Raw, and a large portion is "everyone has something to do and a title to fight for"...and it's more obvious when Elias's 24/7 reigns have been the worst thing about the show because...well, Elias is good enough to deserve a US or even a WWE Title opportunity.

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39 minutes ago, L_W_P said:

While I agree that the fan base as a whole causes issues you have to admit that WWE burn us more often than not.


This is just the thing that makes this conversation go in circles every time it comes up - *no one is disagreeing with this*. No one is saying WWE has flawless booking, or that they don't have a two-decades-stale product, or that they didn't invite an enormous amount of problems upon themselves with the authority figure booking. No one EVER said ANY of that. Not even SK. It's just that WWE isn't the only entity that bears responsibility for the current status quo of professional wrestling. And people seem to have a *lot* of trouble admitting that wrestling fans have had any kind of effect at all on the evolution of the business. To the point of pulling out the message board equivalent of putting their fingers in the ears and saying "I'm not listening" when anyone goes in that conversational direction. It's hard to make any kind of headway in a discussion when people are stunned that anyone would suggest that Vince McMahon isn't 100% responsible for every negative thing happening in wrestling.

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