APRIL 2022 WRESTLING DISCUSSION

[A_K]

Yeesh - Brock’s never drawn in PW, Roman’s not a draw period, and Kevin Owens - not Steve Austin - was the highlight of the main event. Twilight zone.

Edited April 19, 2022 by A_K

[(BP)]

54 minutes ago, Matt D said:

I think Brock/Rousey helped with the Fox deal more so than anyone else.

I imagine Jericho and JR helped with AEW's first TV deal as much as anyone.

Who knows who or what a draw is anymore?

Yes, there aren’t draws anymore as much as there are human equivalents of existing IP. 

[Technico Support]

20 minutes ago, A_K said:

Yeesh - Brock’s never drawn in PW, Roman’s not a draw period, and Kevin Owens - not Steve Austin - was the highlight of the main event. Twilight zone.

I don't think I said any of that but let me go back and check my post just in case I maybe had some sort of break and my other personality did it.

 

 

Nope.

 

 

My point is they're making a big show out of saying indy guys are too hard to work with or whatever, while the indiest of the indy guys from the last generation of indy geeks, two guys that super duper traditionalist Jim Cornette said had no future in wrestling, were the ones trusted to carry a movie/TV guy and an aging veteran who hadn't wrestled in decades.

NXT flopped against AEW.  Vince likes big muscular dudes and that's always his fallback when things stop working.  Making a showy, drastic change is easier than trying to really figure out a real solution.  Everything else is just a story they're telling to justify it.  Nothing else to say.

 

[RIPPA]

11 hours ago, Blue Dragon said:

He probably will end up wrestling in NJPW again. 

Meltzer says this is the case

[Hagan]

39 minutes ago, Technico Support said:

I don't think I said any of that but let me go back and check my post just in case I maybe had some sort of break and my other personality did it.

 

 

Nope.

 

 

My point is they're making a big show out of saying indy guys are too hard to work with or whatever, while the indiest of the indy guys from the last generation of indy geeks, two guys that super duper traditionalist Jim Cornette said had no future in wrestling, were the ones trusted to carry a movie/TV guy and an aging veteran who hadn't wrestled in decades.

NXT flopped against AEW.  Vince likes big muscular dudes and that's always his fallback when things stop working.  Making a showy, drastic change is easier than trying to really figure out a real solution.  Everything else is just a story they're telling to justify it.  Nothing else to say.

 

Right and someone being dismissive of Chris Jericho and Rey as draws is just silly. Both them and Brock are all Hall of Fame level drawing stars. All have headlined big, big shows. In fact, someone with more time on their hands can probably argue that Rey Mysterio has been a bigger career draw than Roman. 

[For Great Justice]

I’m not sure what the disagreement is here. It’s completely within the WWE’s right to revert to the formula of training sports athletes rather than poaching indies. It’s worked for them in the past and is a step up from underwear models of the mid aughts. 

There have always been and will always be veteran Indy-born guys on the card like Steamboat, Goldust, Rude regardless. I think it makes sense to target your developmental recruiting on the athlete types moreso than the Indy types. 

I unabashedly prefer NXT 2.0 over the Gargano/Cole/Ciampa era NXT though. Vince was 100% right that they product stunk and was contributing nothing to the main roster.

[Technico Support]

19 minutes ago, For Great Justice said:

I’m not sure what the disagreement is here. It’s completely within the WWE’s right to revert to the formula of training sports athletes rather than poaching indies. It’s worked for them in the past and is a step up from underwear models of the mid aughts. 

There have always been and will always be veteran Indy-born guys on the card like Steamboat, Goldust, Rude regardless. I think it makes sense to target your developmental recruiting on the athlete types moreso than the Indy types. 

I unabashedly prefer NXT 2.0 over the Gargano/Cole/Ciampa era NXT though. Vince was 100% right that they product stunk and was contributing nothing to the main roster.

Oh absolutely.  They can train guys any way they please.  I'm just arguing that it's laughable how they did the same old same old "let's go back to big guys" thing and then, after the fact, painted it like it was some strategic masterstroke.  They made an impulsive move based on Vince's prejudices and then created a story around it.  The saddest part is making a broken down wrestler who actually loves in-ring wrestling go out there and be the point man to sell the tale of how it's bad for a wrestling company to hire wrestlers.

Re: Gargano/Cole/Ciampa NXT: the point of that NXT was never to bolster the main roster.  The point of that was the blockade the indies by creating their own super indy.  Nobody who understands Vince's preferences is looking at those three and saying "oh yeah, that's a Mania main eventer."  That's what really killed me about Vince and company blaming HHH for NXT's lack of main roster ready stars.  NXT started as developmental, then they changed its purpose, then they bitched when it was no longer developmental.  That's like buying a Prius, swapping its engine for one from a Ford F-950 or whatever, then complaining that it's using more gas than it was supposed to.

[(BP)]

Does it really matter if their props are tiny kickpad wrestling nerds or charismatic juiceheads if it’s the same lame show regardless? 

[Hagan]

And as Meltzer pointed out today, WWE pretending that they invented recruiting outside athletes to be pro wrestlers is ahistorical. It's been going on since the beginning of the industry. 

I think the big issue is, as smart people point out, is that you don't have to be hard and fast on ANY rule. Eric Bischoff famously told Steve Austin "“you know Steve, you might need to find something else to do for a living or somewhere else to go. Maybe New Japan or ECW, because you go out there in those black trunks and black boots and there’s not a whole lot of ways for me to market that.”

I feel that Steve Austin and Bill Goldberg did pretty well with black trunks and black boots. 

Eddy Guerrero was a big money drawing star. So was the Undertaker. Daniel Bryan and Jeff Hardy were bigger stars than Mason Ryan and Ezekiel Jackson by a million fold. What is silly is that WWE flip-flops on these pronouncements based on Vince's whims every so often and people bend over backwards to justify it as opposed to just dismissing it as Vince being Vince. 

I mean, when Kevin Owens came in and pinned Cena, or Nakamura debuted against Zayn at Dallas, or Takeovers were selling out arenas, or former ROH champion Seth Rollins was hot not many were ranting and raving about how broken their developmental system was. It was only when AEW debuted* that a large portion of their fans/co-opted pundits had to justify that indie/foreign wrestling was the wrong kind of wrestling.

 

edit: *it kind of started when New Japan got hot where people couldn't accept the praise the Okada Era was getting.   

Edited April 19, 2022 by Hagan

[supremebve]

27 minutes ago, Technico Support said:

Re: Gargano/Cole/Ciampa NXT: the point of that NXT was never to bolster the main roster.  The point of that was the blockade the indies by creating their own super indy.  Nobody who understands Vince's preferences is looking at those three and saying "oh yeah, that's a Mania main eventer."  That's what really killed me about Vince and company blaming HHH for NXT's lack of main roster ready stars.  NXT started as developmental, then they changed its purpose, then they bitched when it was no longer developmental.  That's like buying a Prius, swapping its engine for one from a Ford F-950 or whatever, then complaining that it's using more gas than it was supposed to.

The problem with the Ciampa/Gargano/Cole NXT was that they were the best students in class,  but somehow never graduated. NXT at its best was always about building guys up until they left for bigger and better things.  It worked because it was a never ending line of workers who we met as freshman and graduate as seniors. Those guys were seniors for so long that no freshman really felt like they had a chance. This 3 guys are really good pro wrestlers,  but if the WWE wasn't going to elevate them they were just shooting themselves in the foot.

[Eivion]

50 minutes ago, Technico Support said:

Re: Gargano/Cole/Ciampa NXT: the point of that NXT was never to bolster the main roster.  The point of that was the blockade the indies by creating their own super indy.  Nobody who understands Vince's preferences is looking at those three and saying "oh yeah, that's a Mania main eventer."  That's what really killed me about Vince and company blaming HHH for NXT's lack of main roster ready stars.  NXT started as developmental, then they changed its purpose, then they bitched when it was no longer developmental.  That's like buying a Prius, swapping its engine for one from a Ford F-950 or whatever, then complaining that it's using more gas than it was supposed to.

NXT never stopped being a developmental. Not sure how that purpose ever changed with people moving up regularly every year. HHH was the one who added the super indy aspect into it, and that had a more to do with wanting to show his booking skills being able to draw. I'm not even sure where you pulled the idea of them trying to block a super indy from rising. That just makes absolutely no sense.

Edited April 19, 2022 by Eivion

[JohnnyJ]

Wasn't the point of the Performance Center always to bring in former athletes and train them? That's what is comical about WWEs "new" vision for developmental. I would love to know how many former collegiate athletes have been in and out of that place. The question for WWE should be what makes this time different. 

It seems like the problem WWE keeps on having is the indies are the closest thing wrestling has to a meritocracy. If you sign up top indy names chances are they will have certain qualities which will separate them from the pack. So if you mix them in with untrained performers with size, you're going to get a roster of Johnny Garganos. 

[Sublime]

Wasn't one of the reasons WWE started signing up indy guys who didn't really fit their usual mold is because they didn't like the indy's using Mania weekend as a time to put on shows and get more money (that should be Vince's in his eyes) 

[Eivion]

13 minutes ago, Sublime said:

Wasn't one of the reasons WWE started signing up indy guys who didn't really fit their usual mold is because they didn't like the indy's using Mania weekend as a time to put on shows and get more money (that should be Vince's in his eyes) 

That was always more fan theory than anything else and made little sense since it would do nothing to curbed that action with how many indy wrestlers are out there.

 

 

I always find this situation and the reactions to it to be odd. Not saying it does happen so often, but it feels like we hear this edict coming into play every few years. And every time it does they don't actually stop bringing in indy talent. At best they limit it to a degree. Beyond that the reaction to it from fans always strikes me as weird since the biggest proponents against it are the ones who don't watch, and much of the time hate, WWE. If anything you would think they would be happy there is less of a chance of their favorites being scooped up. 

[NoFistsJustFlips]

40 minutes ago, Eivion said:

NXT never stopped being a developmental. Not sure how that purpose ever changed with people moving up regularly every year. HHH was the one who added the super indy aspect into it, and that had a more to do with wanting to show his booking skills being able to draw. I'm not even sure where you pulled the idea of them trying to block a super indy from rising. That just makes absolutely no sense.

Let me try this example to see if you change your mind.

Say I run a nightclub. It's making money and most people are happy coming there. But then I decide I also want my nightclub to be a competitor to H&R Block and we do tax prep. We start renovating and shifting around the bar location & dance floor so we can fit in desks for our CPAs. It's also too loud so we turn the music way down. We still have music. We still serve drinks. So it's still a nightclub. But our focus has shifted to making sure we stop H&R Block from being able do tax prep. Our top goal is to take them out.

NXT was still a developmental, just like in this example it's still a nightclub. But the developmental component took a backseat. The primary focus was trying to cock block AEW and make sure Warner didn't want to continue on with them once the first deal ran out. It muddied the waters. They didn't fully commit to building those Sami / Finn / Bayley kind of stars. That took a backseat to trying to out workrate the workrate company. So you get Ciampa & Gargano & Cole overload. Those guys weren't developmental guys. They were super indys. They weren't being groomed to succeed on the main roster. They were being groomed to have matches good enough people picked watching NXT over AEW.

The truth is the big loud showy announcement and NIL focus is the 'you can't fire me, I quit' move. It's to change the narrative in the news cycle. It's no longer WWE hired a bunch of guys they can't make stars out of to try and take a bite out of AEW. It's oh wow WWE decided to do this new thing now. How dumb is this new thing now. It's purely a PR move.

[A_K]

2 hours ago, Technico Support said:

I don't think I said any of that but let me go back and check my post just in case I maybe had some sort of break and my other personality did it.

 

 

Nope.

 

 

My point is they're making a big show out of saying indy guys are too hard to work with or whatever, while the indiest of the indy guys from the last generation of indy geeks, two guys that super duper traditionalist Jim Cornette said had no future in wrestling, were the ones trusted to carry a movie/TV guy and an aging veteran who hadn't wrestled in decades.

NXT flopped against AEW.  Vince likes big muscular dudes and that's always his fallback when things stop working.  Making a showy, drastic change is easier than trying to really figure out a real solution.  Everything else is just a story they're telling to justify it.  Nothing else to say.

 

I didn’t say you did - in fact, I didn’t even quote you. Don’t worry, you’re not the only one who shares the sentiment - hence the collective twilight zone. For the guy who’s suggesting Chris Jericho/ Brock Lesnar are same ballpark of draws - I’ll have whatever you’re smoking. 

AEW has occupied a very clear niche, and absorbed practically every viable Indy-origin talent on the market. Since the Punk/Danielson summer debut pair (absolute apex of that talent-type), ratings have only gone backwards, and last week show was actually a YOY fall despite the hurrah about how good the TV output is. For all they’ve added, the number of eyes on the product aren’t a million miles away from when the original batch of talent were running the screen & they’re back to 50% less views than SD! (led by a guy who can’t draw - figure that one out). So, commercially, it probably remains to be seen as to whether that is really the commercial ‘solution’ for Connecticut at all. They’ve been in a malaise, that’s for certain, but no proof yet the development talent alteration adds to it.

 

[Eivion]

5 minutes ago, NoFistsJustFlips said:

Say I run a nightclub. It's making money and most people are happy coming there. But then I decide I also want my nightclub to be a competitor to H&R Block and we do tax prep. We start renovating and shifting around the bar location & dance floor so we can fit in desks for our CPAs. It's also too loud so we turn the music way down. We still have music. We still serve drinks. So it's still a nightclub. But our focus has shifted to making sure we stop H&R Block from being able do tax prep. Our top goal is to take them out.

NXT was still a developmental, just like in this example it's still a nightclub. But the developmental component took a backseat. The primary focus was trying to cock block AEW and make sure Warner didn't want to continue on with them once the first deal ran out. It muddied the waters. They didn't fully commit to building those Sami / Finn / Bayley kind of stars. That took a backseat to trying to out workrate the workrate company. So you get Ciampa & Gargano & Cole overload. Those guys weren't developmental guys. They were super indys. They weren't being groomed to succeed on the main roster. They were being groomed to have matches good enough people picked watching NXT over AEW.

The problem with this is the super indy stuff started a good 2-3 years before AEW was a thing.

7 minutes ago, NoFistsJustFlips said:

The truth is the big loud showy announcement and NIL focus is the 'you can't fire me, I quit' move. It's to change the narrative in the news cycle. It's no longer WWE hired a bunch of guys they can't make stars out of to try and take a bite out of AEW. It's oh wow WWE decided to do this new thing now. How dumb is this new thing now. It's purely a PR move.

I do agree its about altering the narrative.

[The Natural]

 

[JohnnyJ]

I think the better example would be if you brought a bunch AAA ballplayers who werent major league material to play for the A ball team. At first, it's exciting that you are dominating your opponents. However, over time, by filling up your roster with a bunch of ringers with limited upside potential you are hurting the major league roster. 

[Go2Sleep]

43 minutes ago, A_K said:

I didn’t say you did - in fact, I didn’t even quote you. Don’t worry, you’re not the only one who shares the sentiment - hence the collective twilight zone. For the guy who’s suggesting Chris Jericho/ Brock Lesnar are same ballpark of draws - I’ll have whatever you’re smoking.

 

You keep asserting that Brock is a monster draw if it's a law of physics, but is there any actual proof that Brock adds to WWE's core audience, which has been generally shrinking over the last decade? Jericho was the centerpiece of a brand new promotion getting a national tv deal, dismissing that as drawing power is crazy. Yes AEW has lower ratings than WWE, but getting eyes on a new company is a lot harder than getting eyes on a company that has been the premier name in wrestling for 40 years.

[Hagan]

Yeah - WWE, which is doing perfectly fine, is still down in like every single metric over the last several years. By what measure is Roman (and Brock for that matter) lighting the world on fire? The whole premise of the company is it's the brand that draws and not the performers. Roman has been a massive failure up until this last monster push. Let's not pretend he's Bruno on a 7 year hot streak. Brock is a massive, massive star but not like the TV shows are doing monster ratings or show are drawing as well as they've done in other times.   

Brock was a phenomenal draw in UFC and is obviously a difference maker but the dude isn't prime Steve Austin either. Roman isn't even prime Cena. Jericho very rarely got an ace position but dude was a main eventer when the company was a LOT more popular. 

[Swift]

This Letterboxd account surely belongs to someone here - https://letterboxd.com/vincemale/film/porky-the-wrestler/

[SirSmUgly]

In WWE, the brand is the draw. WM will draw 50K+ regardless of who is on top. WWE is a machine that can build anyone they want to build and present them as a star to a general audience that checks in once a year. 

Jericho is certainly a draw to an exec that was a fan growing up in the '90s, I'd assume. I'll give Punk and Bryan "draw" status as well; they both broke through into the mainstream to some degree in their WWE runs. 

Brock at least has a Q rating, and probably you can argue that he's a draw based on his first run and his UFC history. 

Roman is a dud. Actually, The Shield is the best argument for creating and elevating a trios division. Three guys who aren't legit main event draws on their own, but who are a trios draw when put together. And there's nothing wrong with that, either!

[Eivion]

I'm curious what metric people are using to argue someone in the modern era is or isn't a draw because by whatever criteria people are currently using for WWE no one can or will ever be a draw again because its all brand based. Curious how much people for instance are taking in the continue gradually fall of tv in general into account.

[SirSmUgly]

1 minute ago, Eivion said:

I'm curious what metric people are using to argue someone in the modern era is or isn't a draw because by whatever criteria people are currently using for WWE no one can or will ever be a draw again because its all brand based. Curious how much people for instance are taking in the continue gradually fall of tv in general into account.

This is a fair point. I almost noted that we have to consider a) the fragmentation of the audience and b) WWE's brand-first strategy.

Maybe we can come at this theoretically. If Steve Austin or The Rock show up in 2022 WWE and are allowed to be themselves + given a push like Roman or Brock where they never lose, do they draw a bigger crowd than Roman or Brock if all else remains (recycled feuds, good matches with unremarkable builds across the card, etc.).