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2021 The WWE Purge, Part 2


Pete

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3 minutes ago, Jiji said:

Like I said.

At best, I'd like to assume Kenny's alleged "passive-aggressive" tweets are just him being the winking, smark-pandering douche I know him to be. But perhaps they represent sincerely-held beliefs. You're the Kenny whisperer, I leave it to you to read the tea leaves of his delusions. 

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9 hours ago, John from Cincinnati said:

Needlessly prioritizing homegrown stars while eschewing outside talent continues to be a mindset that makes no sense. 

Oh, don't snap them all up, only eight? I don't see how what you're suggesting is all that different from anything Impact ever did. Especially in a company that's already got Jericho, Christian, Sting, Miro, FTR, Dustin, Mox, Hager, etc. floating around.

Impact's use of talent who had established themselves elsewhere is long since due for a widespread re-evaluation. 

I advocated for 7 names. Black is the only male star I would sign with any intention of using in a prominent/regular role. Joe as a special attraction only. Lana and Thea are managers. Riott, Royce & Billie Kay bolster what is, to me anyway, a fairly shallow women's division.

Given AEW just brought in all of Big Show, Mark Henry and Christian they run the risk of looking like they will sign any former WWE name they can. I would much prefer they bring in more indy/overseas talent and be very, very selective with who they grab from WWE. Guys like Cardona/Ryder or Wes Blake or Kalisto showing up regularly would be a massive mistake IMO. Even Miro started out on rocky ground with his TNA 2005 "Im gonna show those guys I used to work for how good I can be without being held down!" promo. 

Bryan is an exception. Every promotion in the world should be chasing his signature.

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7 minutes ago, AxB said:

The entire WWE Women's roster:

Image

That's enough for an entire show just featuring female talent.

Also: No Lacey Evans?

Edited by nate
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WWE should be calling up about ten men and ten women minimum, it would instantly freshen up all three of their main rosters. It wouldn't solve the general wretchedness of Raw in particular, but it'd make me and a lot of people at least tune in for a few weeks to see something new.

AEW should absolutely sign Andrade, Joe, Murphy, Tommy End, Kalisto. Obviously Bryan too but I can't quite see it happening. The thing they're maybe best at is not running anything into the ground, creating genuine anticipation for matches between pushed acts, I don't see how they don't get huge benefits from bringing in a bunch  of world class wrestlers, all of whom were misused and underutilised where they were. Roster size is less of an issue because you can trust AEW to rotate someone off TV for a few weeks without making everyone assume they've given up on or forgotten about them. A Samoa Joe can cut a killer promo one week, batter Trent or someone backstage the next, and build to a match that'll have people foaming at the mouth. In WWE they'd have him wrestling Jeff Hardy three weeks in a row and consider it storytelling to build from a DQ to a countout to a pinfall.

As far as their women's division, yeah, give anyone they've released a shot. My opinion on Ruby Riott is currently clouded by that embarrassing wheelbarrow double team botch last week, but that might have been Liv's fault, and I hear she was great on the indies, so sure, put her in the mix.

I don't really want anyone to go to New Japan at the moment, because they can barely run shows as it is. Sure, Murphy in the G1 sounds fantastic, but I didn't have that much patience for how slow they are to push newcomers even before the pandemic, let alone now they know they can't rely on their ability to get in and out of the country easily.

Edited by SturmCRF
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Man, when it comes right down to it, this all just makes me sad. I used to enjoy watching Raw and Smackdown, now the only enjoyment they can provide is salivating where all the released talent will actually be able to go and wrestle. I feel bad for all the wrestlers who got released and now have to figure out where they fit in while the pandemic still has Japan, Mexico and Europe barely running shows. 

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2 hours ago, AxB said:

The entire WWE Women's roster:

Image

That's almost insulting seeing the ratio of main roster women compared to NXT.  I can see at least five or six women that could get called up and crush it.  For SD in particular with the right additions they could easily have the women's version of the SD six if they chose to.  Plus by having those callups it would allow more growth to happen for those still on NXT.

But then again it seems that the brands will be done once they tour again so they're pretty fucked either way.

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2 hours ago, AxB said:

The entire WWE Women's roster:

Image

To me this shows how shitty the WWE booking philosophy is cos I’m seeing a pretty big roster there. Get rid of a couple of the unnecessary titles, cycle the women round, mix up the matches more (plus I’m sure there’s PC women they could be using as jobbers) and that really shouldn’t be considered a small roster.

Its also a mostly really good roster as well, but I have little desire to seek out matches because so many of the combos feel totally played out (mostly on the main roster).

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11 hours ago, TheVileOne said:

OK, so are we to just call Aleister Black Tommy End? Everyone seems to be going all in with Tommy End now.

Aleister Black is a WWE copyright, so yeah, Tommy End he is.

If I were AEW, I'd sign Ruby just because it couldn't hurt to have a solid female worker in that division and I'd sign Lana as a goodwill gesture to Miro and I'd book her with her man.  The pop when she comes out to ringside with him would be incredible.

If I were Braun, I'd brush up on my Japanese and get used to wearing Bullet Club colors.

Why release Buddy Murphy?  Why not just see if he will take a slight pay cut and ship him off to NXT UK?

Edited by J.T.
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As far as the women's rosters now go on Raw/Smackdown: They have unfortunately have been able to feature more than just a handful of women on the shows at the same time. This is pretty unfortunate, and I know three hours is a lot of time to fill, but there are a lot of things they have to hit on each show for the various plots. There's the "A-story" (Roman/Usos) that usually commands an interview segment at the start of the show to set up what's coming at the end of the night and in-between there are one or two segments sprinkled (the secondary characters with some backstage plotting/a retort interview from whoever is the challenger/etc.) throughout to continue that plot that results in the main event match or big finale (like a contract signing). Then there a the other stories and segments they have to add in -- matches, a few other interviews, promos of new wrestlers, etc. That's the formula for every serial drama on television, which is exactly what Raw and Smackdown are. 

I don't know how many total segments they have on Raw or Smackdown (and I should count.) But let's say there are 15 for Raw and 12 for Smackdown. Three will be dedicated to the A-Plot and those will also take up the most amount of time. That leaves 12 more segments for Raw and nine for Smackdown. There's just no way to include everyone on the roster in that limited amount of time every single week. But, unfortunately, you need to have the people in the stories you are building on TV every single week, so the non-featured talent are either used as the dreaded enhancement talent or just not on. And, unfortunately, most of the time the women are going to get the short-shrift on top of that. They've gotten a lot of the A-story plots since The Four Horsewomen etc. arrived (Becky's run to the title, Sasha/Bayley this year, etc.). But they only have had room for one or two other women's stories on the shows most of the time. 

It's unfortunate because The Iiconics and The Riot Squad are so friggin' talented and entertaining.

The WWE has too big of a roster for what they're able to produce with the limited TV time they have per week. (And, yes, it's limited. It's five hours (less considering commercials) per week of Raw/Smackdown and 45 minutes or so of Main Event.) Who knows what is going to happen with live events, which is where having a big secondary roster with a lot of depth helps. 

I think that explains the roster cuts more than Vince wanting to sell or in response to a poor rating on the first holiday where Americans have been able to actually do stuff or travel in over a year. Most of the people cut were given a lot of TV time over the years. Some either likely wanted out to chase greener pastures like AEW. For others, they thought they invested a lot of time into telling stories with those characters and decided there wasn't anymore pay off and cut them from the program. And that's also part of the formula of a serial drama.

 

 

 

 

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1 minute ago, Greggulator said:

The WWE has too big of a roster for what they're able to produce with the limited TV time they have per week. (And, yes, it's limited. It's five hours (less considering commercials) per week of Raw/Smackdown and 45 minutes or so of Main Event.) Who knows what is going to happen with live events, which is where having a big secondary roster with a lot of depth helps. 

That begs the question why isn't the WWE taking advantage of alternate platforms like YouTube like AEW has?  I am personally surprised that they haven't revived their old B-Shows like WWE Superstars and made them YouTube only in order to exploit their deep roster.

WWE is spending too much money on something they want to continue spending money on if all they can think to do is trim the roster.

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I also think if I were AEW I would absolutely snatch up Lana first and Ruby Riot second. I'd sign both immediately.

Ruby's great. She's really good in the ring. She's a great talker. She has an awesome and unique look. Maybe she'll be a huge main event-caliber person in AEW. At the very least, she'll be able to chew up a lot of quality time on their program.

I think Lana has arguably been the most misused and miscast performer on the entire roster. Her early stuff with Rusev as the evil Russian manager was absolutely gold. They got molten heat and were one of the most acts of the company while playing foreign invading heels in the modern era. It's as stock a character as you can get but the whole act worked, and it's because her and Rusev are just awesome performers. I was even fine with them trying a dopey angle like her dating Dolph, because it's fucking wrestling and there should always be dopey storylines. But she's not a wrestler by any stretch. Trying to make her a wrestler didn't work. And it was even worse to try her out as a sympathetic, overmatched babyface. She doesn't have the chops to pull it off, and that's a hard transition to make for everyone in wrestling. (Alexa Bliss pulled it off with her pairing with Nikki, which shows just how talented she is.) But, most importantly, Lana's ridiculously attractive and has an outside-the-ring social media influencer persona and is really smart. NONE of that makes her sympathetic to an audience still largely filled with lonely nerds.

But she's a terrific villain. And, uhm, ridiculously attractive. 

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2 minutes ago, J.T. said:

That begs the question why isn't the WWE taking advantage of alternate platforms like YouTube like AEW has?  I am personally surprised that they haven't revived their old B-Shows like WWE Superstars and made them YouTube only in order to exploit their deep roster.

WWE is spending too much money on something they want to continue spending money on if all they can think to do is trim the roster.

Yeah, that boggles my mind also. They have all sorts of ways to use the secondary talent and get eyeballs on everyone.  

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1 minute ago, Greggulator said:

Yeah, that boggles my mind also. They have all sorts of ways to use the secondary talent and get eyeballs on everyone.  

WWE could revive Saturday Night Main Event on YouTube as well and give it a retro aesthetic with the intro and have it have a combination of NXT wrestlers, Performance Center trainees and 205 Live wrestlers with an occasional main roster wrestler fighting in the main event.

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