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DECEMBER 2019 WRESTLING CHAT.


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5 hours ago, SorceressKnight said:

It's so interesting that "this person had all the tools to be a big star, but WWE developmental turned them into a shitty worker , even though the bookers pushed them like they were something special and made them the World Champ" is somehow not an indictment about developmental, and yet "this person had went through training and developed into into a pretty good worker and ended up becoming pretty talented as a performer, but the big mean bookers didn't let them be World Champion because they were so mean to them" is somehow indicting about developmental failing.

So in your mind, Swagger holds no responsibilty for his WWE career, even though he was fairly lazy and made bad decisions? I guess we should be happy you're not trying to blame the fans, at least.

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9 hours ago, AxB said:

Well, Mick Foley got over - eventually - thanks to his taking of death bumps in WWE. One death bump in particular. And they've been trying really hard to follow that blueprint to make Shane McMahon (of all people) a legend for quite some time. Isn't really taking. Randy Orton did ONE thumbtack bump, and it got him over as a tough guy rather than the prettyboy image he had had before. Whereas Shane, even after the Angle match at KotR 01, and all the stunt bumps since, he's never really got over as being good at deathmatches.

Put it this way. Who would you rather see work Necro Butcher - Shane McMahon or Darby Allin?

I'll take "None of the Above!" for $200, Alex!

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13 hours ago, Infinit said:

When was the last time The Ascension wrestled a match or was on tv?


April
 

13 hours ago, Ziggy said:

Ryan Satin felt the need to state that he was not employed by WWE but FOX only. It dont care either way whether or not he's employed by WWE but I see tons of people giving him shit for softening up on WWE in the past few months. What's does he have to prove to these sharks on Wrestling Twitter when he is nicely employed my bc one of the top tv networks. He may not the a WWE employee but he's assigned to a show that is closely associated with the WWE. What should people expect and why should he care what these guys this.


There are people that will accept nothing less than him actively trying to destroy the company.

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6 hours ago, SorceressKnight said:

It's so interesting that "this person had all the tools to be a big star, but WWE developmental turned them into a shitty worker , even though the bookers pushed them like they were something special and made them the World Champ" is somehow not an indictment about developmental, and yet "this person had went through training and developed into into a pretty good worker and ended up becoming pretty talented as a performer, but the big mean bookers didn't let them be World Champion because they were so mean to them" is somehow indicting about developmental failing.

Hmmm... English is my first language, but I'm having a bit of difficulty trying to extract what you're getting at here. If your contention is that the WWE braintrust (such as it is) turned Hager into a shitty worker, I have to disagree, he has ALWAYS been a shitty worker and a channel-changer when he talks. If your contention is that developmental failed by not pushing CODY to the moon, I couldn't disagree more. He needed to find himself away from the VKM circus and he did so. WWE developmental fails far more often than they get it right because a certain crazy old man has a fixed idea of what a wrestler ought to be. 

Can you imagine Jungle Boy and Luchasaurus in today's WWE? No, probably not and they are a fucking license to print money, everyone from eight to eighty loves the storyline of a "a boy and his dinosaur". 

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12 hours ago, OSJ said:

Yes, the series is ending... I see Arnell is fishing for his next gig already.

He already has a "next gig" after Arrow. It's called Heels on Starz - hour long drama about independent wrestling.

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Some wrestlers just need to find their niche to succeed. Someone like Sanada should be a top leading man wrestler of a promotion, but he’s not home grown, and Gedo isn’t going to push Okada out of that spot for quite sometime. So he either stays put, or finds somewhere else that could use a leading man. That’s how I see most spots on a wrestling roster. You fit a criteria, and you can fill it, but if it’s already filled, then find another place that might need it. With Cody he had to find it outside the system because they weren’t looking for his type. But it’s funny since NXT took off its like Triple H has been trying to have a character like what Cody has been doing since he left(The heel act, not the face act).

Edited by LoneWolf&Subs
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2 hours ago, OSJ said:

 

Can you imagine Jungle Boy and Luchasaurus in today's WWE? No, probably not and they are a fucking license to print money, everyone from eight to eighty loves the storyline of a "a boy and his dinosaur". 

WWE HAD (the guy who plays) Luchasaurus in developmental for a couple of years. Couldn't think of how to use him. It took Lucha Underground to do that, by mistake (he was supposed to be in some Snake Mask cult, but he wanted to try a mask that would let his hair and beard hang free, and the fans thought he looked like a Dinosaur). Jungle Boy had a try out there too. They told him to try to gain some muscle and come back in a year.

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1 hour ago, AxB said:

WWE HAD (the guy who plays) Luchasaurus in developmental for a couple of years. Couldn't think of how to use him. It took Lucha Underground to do that, by mistake (he was supposed to be in some Snake Mask cult, but he wanted to try a mask that would let his hair and beard hang free, and the fans thought he looked like a Dinosaur). Jungle Boy had a try out there too. They told him to try to gain some muscle and come back in a year.

Luchasaurus was also the main guy who went very public with Bill DeMott's hazing/mistreatment of trainees

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13 hours ago, RolandTHTG said:

I can't remember the last time a guy went from channel changer in one promotion to must see with me in another quite like Cody Rhodes has.

Plenty have done the opposite, but his stuff in WWE was pretty much terrible throughout an entire decade. I find that baffling.

Enjoyed the Dashing Cody Rhodes stuff. The Rhodes bros tag team. Legacy was cool for maybe a few months. I wanted more from Stardust but it didn't really go anywhere. Now he's pretty much the only guy capable of convincing or selling me on a blood feud.

 

So you're saying he went from undesirable to undeniable?

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This may be a hot take but I REALLY REALLY hate the parody throwback shows that Impact just did and that PROGRESS does every year. There is literally nothing on-screen that exposes kayfabe like having a bunch of wrestlers play dress-up and perform a variety show as different characters. Like, how can that possibly be reconciled with the illusion that guys and gals are competing in a match  filled with violence and with stakes?

 

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11 minutes ago, Hagan said:

This may be a hot take but I REALLY REALLY hate the parody throwback shows that Impact just did and that PROGRESS does every year. There is literally nothing on-screen that exposes kayfabe like having a bunch of wrestlers play dress-up and perform a variety show as different characters. Like, how can that possibly be reconciled with the illusion that guys and gals are competing in a match  filled with violence and with stakes?

 

I'd generally agree with this... and it's a bit moot now that NWA POWERR exists. 

That said- IPWF is an infinitely more legitimate name for a wrestling promotion. 

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35 minutes ago, Hagan said:

This may be a hot take but I REALLY REALLY hate the parody throwback shows that Impact just did and that PROGRESS does every year. There is literally nothing on-screen that exposes kayfabe like having a bunch of wrestlers play dress-up and perform a variety show as different characters. Like, how can that possibly be reconciled with the illusion that guys and gals are competing in a match  filled with violence and with stakes?

 

I think I’m more bothered by these guys, and gals coming off better in that presentation, than in the current presentation.

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55 minutes ago, Wyld Samurai said:

I'd generally agree with this... and it's a bit moot now that NWA POWERR exists. 

That said- IPWF is an infinitely more legitimate name for a wrestling promotion. 

yeah, at least with Powerr it's a throwback presentation but the guys aren't literally pretending to be from a different time. These shows are basically end of summer camp plays. It's utterly asinine. It's GLOW-level camp 

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6 hours ago, OSJ said:

Hmmm... English is my first language, but I'm having a bit of difficulty trying to extract what you're getting at here. If your contention is that the WWE braintrust (such as it is) turned Hager into a shitty worker, I have to disagree, he has ALWAYS been a shitty worker and a channel-changer when he talks. If your contention is that developmental failed by not pushing CODY to the moon, I couldn't disagree more. He needed to find himself away from the VKM circus and he did so. WWE developmental fails far more often than they get it right because a certain crazy old man has a fixed idea of what a wrestler ought to be. 

My contention is: Developmental and Creative are two entirely different things, and this is the whole problem.

Jack Swagger had all the tools to be a good worker on paper before going to WWE developmental. He ended up a shitty worker and a channel-changer when he talks. That is an indictment on developmental.

Jack Swagger also happened to be booked like a superstar by Creative even when it was obvious he just didn't have it as a worker. That is a separate indictment on Creative, but it's not related to developmental failing there.

Cody Rhodes ended up a very good worker through developmental, and even in WWE he was always a very good worker. That's actually a success for developmental, because he ended up a good worker (and it's not like Cody suddenly learned to wrestle the day he put a Bullet Club shirt on either-even in WWE, he was ALWAYS pretty good.) 

Cody Rhodes not getting the big push in WWE is not an indictment on developmental failing him. It had nothing to do with developmental. And honestly, given the timing Cody Rhodes had when he was realistically good enough to be a World Champion, it wasn't even that much of an indictment on Creative (Cody was good, but there was always someone just a little BETTER above him on the totem pole. Again, you can't really point to one moment that Cody deserved to be the World Champion above the person who was the champion.) 

Creative and Developmental are two different things, 

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1 hour ago, Hagan said:

This may be a hot take but I REALLY REALLY hate the parody throwback shows that Impact just did and that PROGRESS does every year. There is literally nothing on-screen that exposes kayfabe like having a bunch of wrestlers play dress-up and perform a variety show as different characters. Like, how can that possibly be reconciled with the illusion that guys and gals are competing in a match  filled with violence and with stakes?

 

I've used this before and it fits here: did the Zucker Brothers parody films kill the film industry?  And the idea that kayfabe means anything in 2019 is preposterous.

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I try to think of Wrestling primarily as a television show which guides when I think breaking kayfabe is appropriate.

On a television show, they might do a wacky one off when the characters aren't in their normal roles.  The alternative history episodes of Friends or Community or Treehouse of Horror with the Simpsons.

But they don't normally stop in the middle of the show and say, "I, the real Jerry Seinfeld, think this joke sucks and if the writers are holding me down."  Or break the internal consistency of the show by having Buffy the Vampire Slayer suddenly turn invisible for no reason.

That's my nonsensical rule.

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9 minutes ago, sabremike said:

I've used this before and it fits here: did the Zucker Brothers parody films kill the film industry?  And the idea that kayfabe means anything in 2019 is preposterous.

I'm okay with the idea that a wrestling promotion can exist in its own universe. Like, I can accept that Lucha Underground existed in a universe of time travelers and monsters eating people. That universe they built allowed that to be logical. If New Japan randomly had Taichi being eaten, it would be discordant especially if it was just random one-week one-off. 

The Zucker Brother comparison would be apt only if like, you watch Breaking Bad for years and then one week all the characters have all agreed to dress up and pretend to be other people from a different time and that week is divorced from ongoing stories and it has all of a sudden become a slapstick comedy.

And kayfabe still does exist in the week-to-week presentation of wrestling. Like, with the exception of Russo-esque stuff that sometimes pops up, no one tells you it's fake or tell you they're playing a character or that everyone is just acting.  This parody shows do EXACTLY that.

It's a stage play, unless we're supposed to pretend that all of the wrestlers got the memo for the throwback show but everyone was still trying to win and what happened during the show stays in canon. 

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2 hours ago, Hagan said:

This may be a hot take but I REALLY REALLY hate the parody throwback shows that Impact just did and that PROGRESS does every year. There is literally nothing on-screen that exposes kayfabe like having a bunch of wrestlers play dress-up and perform a variety show as different characters. Like, how can that possibly be reconciled with the illusion that guys and gals are competing in a match  filled with violence and with stakes?

 

That's assuming you come into that with major stakes. WWE basically forsakes kayfabe in favor of theme PPVs like Survivor Series with more farcical stakes that won't matter 48 to 72 hours after the PPV. If you're doing a major blood feud, yeah, it would be a major no-no but that is extremely rare anyway. But it's a chicken and egg scenario which I was why I kinda agree with your assessment. If this one thing doesn't matter, it's going to be pretty hard to get people to care about the other stuff that you're turning into a priority.

1 hour ago, LoneWolf&Subs said:

I think I’m more bothered by these guys, and gals coming off better in that presentation, than in the current presentation.

Therein lies the problem. It's essentially saying, "We're in need of a mini reset button. Can we make one?" If everything was fine, you wouldn't be doing it.

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13 minutes ago, Goodear said:

I try to think of Wrestling primarily as a television show which guides when I think breaking kayfabe is appropriate.

On a television show, they might do a wacky one off when the characters aren't in their normal roles.  The alternative history episodes of Friends or Community or Treehouse of Horror with the Simpsons.

But they don't normally stop in the middle of the show and say, "I, the real Jerry Seinfeld, think this joke sucks and if the writers are holding me down."  Or break the internal consistency of the show by having Buffy the Vampire Slayer suddenly turn invisible for no reason.

That's my nonsensical rule.

I respect your take but come at it from the opposite direction. I still view it as a sports presentation where, yeah, everyone is "trying to put smiles on faces" but the end goal is still to win titles, make money and take out your enemies. 

Edited by Hagan
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26 minutes ago, Hagan said:

And kayfabe still does exist in the week-to-week presentation of wrestling. Like, with the exception of Russo-esque stuff that sometimes pops up, no one tells you it's fake or tell you they're playing a character or that everyone is just acting.  This parody shows do EXACTLY that.

It's a stage play, unless we're supposed to pretend that all of the wrestlers got the memo for the throwback show but everyone was still trying to win and what happened during the show stays in canon. 

These are the reasons that Southpaw Regional Wrestling worked for the same problem with IPWF: With Southpaw, they did the same thing IPWF did, but they never made any overtures to it being a real show. It was just a bunch of the wrestlers putting on costumes and making a particularly fun set of commercials for WWE sponsors...which somehow works a bit better than if you got an actual payoff in-ring.

IPWF also had the same problem that they had managed to try and claim the wrestlers got the memo for a throwback show where they played different characters, but also had their actual people play a role in it...for instance, using the same "you could never get a girl like her" joke for the character Josh Mathews played about the character Madison Rayne played...and in the process using the same "ha ha, they're married in real life" joke Impact would normally use for the characters. It explained a bigger problem- if IPWF is such an in-depth one night joke the World Champion of the promotion can play a generic manager, and yet somehow the announcer can't make you forget who they are in real life, you're inherently saying "the announcer is a more important cog on the show than our World Champion.". 

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I'd have no problem with it if it was like one of those RAW goes old school episodes where everything is normal except it's the old set and oh look Bret's here, or even like NWA Power where it's just that type of show, but what's being described about Impact doesn't seem like my cup of tea, in the same way some of the BTE stuff isn't my thing. If Southpaw got an hour every week it would be garbage 

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3 hours ago, Hagan said:

I respect your take but come at it from the opposite direction. I still view it as a sports presentation where, yeah, everyone is "trying to put smiles on faces" but the end goal is still to win titles, make money and take out your enemies. 

So would you then say a show like the throwback one is like a charity game where no one really cares enough to play defense?  Or NFL players playing pick up basketball?

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