APRIL 2022 WRESTLING DISCUSSION

[Hagan]

33 minutes ago, John from Cincinnati said:

Sure, but it's not clear how much of the credit for the unevenness should be attributed to those writers when the entire process is filtered through the head honcho. There may be a better context and setting through which outside-the-industry writers could put together a good wrestling product. 

True. Well, would LU or Wrestling Society X qualify as evidence? Both were created/produced by non-wrestling people/companies and despite interesting starts and premises both failed pretty spectacularly. LU went off the rails the more it went from traditional wrestling and more into being a supernatural TV show. With the exception of really '99 WWF* any major deviations from just a more-or-less traditional professional wrestling presentation tends to fail. 

 

*and '99 WWF is basically unwatchable when you go back to it and there's probably an interesting discussion on how much credit Russo actually gets because he was fortunate to luck into two generational superstars and a stacked supporting cast. Like, didn't the success of the WWF in 2000 kinda prove that the company would have been better off not doing Crash TV in '99? 

[Hagan]

Quote

“The numbers force us to be more regimented,” Levesque said. “We used to be like, ‘Well, he’s only been here a year, let’s give him more time, see if he picks it up.’ Now we know there’s a six-month coming in the door of adapt, get rolling and then we’re looking at your aptitude for this. We know in that six months — and some won’t make it that long.”

 

I wonder how ol' Terra Ryzing looked in his first six months as a wrestler? 

[Technico Support]

5 hours ago, Mister TV said:

Cobra Kai proves there's "Hollywood" types out there that know pro wrestling booking, the issue is someone coming in from the outside has to deal with micro-managing owners, pro wrestler ego's, carny's dong carny shit and so on, that's either going to drive them away or basically neuter anything truly creative they want to do.

I'm not so sure I understand your logic.  Hollywood isn't a writer's utopia.  Every bad thing you described a writer having to contend with in wrestling has an analogue in Hollywood.  For every Vince McMahon in wrestling demanding a certain amount of overdone verbiage, tits, and toilet humor, you have a coked up producer in Hollywood demanding a robot spider where it makes zero sense.  I'm not sure how many wrestlers could give the average star actor a run for their money in the ego department.  Raw being torn up and rewritten at 7:30pm Monday?  Well shit, lots of films start shooting without a finished scrip.  And every profession has carnies.

Edited April 18, 2022 by Technico Support

[SirSmUgly]

8 minutes ago, Hagan said:

 

I wonder how ol' Terra Ryzing looked in his first six months as a wrestler? 

Without over-quoting the article, HHH said (paraphrasing) that their system would miss on people who get cut early/who they're not interested in because they don't have the look or background WWE wants, but it was fine because if they hit it big, they'd want to come back and work for a premier company like WWE eventually anyway. 

[NoFistsJustFlips]

5 minutes ago, Hagan said:

I wonder how ol' Terra Ryzing looked in his first six months as a wrestler? 

I would say his fundamentals were rock solid, being a Kowalski guy and all.

I see both sides of this argument. There are absolutely some shindy ass trainers out there that should not be allowed to run wrestling schools. Teaching guys the wrong way to lock up or dumb shit I've seen like a hot tag that lead into a lockup that led into a DDT out of the lockup. So there is some merit to this line of thinking. Especially with how specific WWE is about what they allow / don't allow in their style.

But it's also pretty dumb because the recruiting parameters were already pretty strict. They weren't allowing t-shirt wearing shindys into the tryouts to begin with. You have to be pretty good to get invited. So I'm not sure this point means as much as they think it does.

[Hagan]

Yeah - but the implication of that statement is unless you have the nebulous "I can see him or her headlining a Wrestlemania" thing then you don't have "it." It doesn't seem like he's talking about fundamentals but more like charisma and aptitude.  Six months a short window to tell whether or not someone is going to be a star. Shit - how many guys in the NJPW dojo train for years? 

I mean, I know it's Hunter just speaking the corporate line so I shouldn't be overly parsing it but we know how this ends up. They pass on a ton of guys and girls who end up developing down the line and they end up trying to bring them back one day. 

[Infinit]

The wrestling world suffered alot of loss on this day. RIP to these legends.

 

[A_K]

Brock, Angle, Rock, Cena, Roman, Goldberg .. hell even Austin had some college football experience before the knee injuries. The biggest WWE/F draws of the past 20 years have almost unanimously come from some sort of athletic background .. makes a lot of sense why they’ve gone back to that well at a time of company lethargy 

Edited April 18, 2022 by A_K

[odessasteps]

14 minutes ago, Infinit said:

The wrestling world suffered alot of loss on this day. RIP to these legends.

 

At least the 4th July "curse" can be partially attributed to deaths in traffic accidents when traffic is at its highest. 

[Technico Support]

1 hour ago, NoFistsJustFlips said:

But it's also pretty dumb because the recruiting parameters were already pretty strict. They weren't allowing t-shirt wearing shindys into the tryouts to begin with. You have to be pretty good to get invited. So I'm not sure this point means as much as they think it does.

Exactly.  The kind of Indy guys who get WWE tryouts aren’t the kind of guys who are going to have terrible fundamentals. HHH’s whole argument is disingenuous but we all know he’s just towing the company line.  In what world is it easier to teach a NFL washout how to be a good wrestler from square one than it is to teach an experienced, solid Indy wrestler how to get away from some aspects of their style they don’t like?  

They want wrestlers of a certain size and age.  I’m guessing the idea that these youngsters are also naive to the wrestling business and easier to con than an experienced worker would be may also be a factor.  

Edited April 18, 2022 by Technico Support

[Go2Sleep]

51 minutes ago, A_K said:

Brock, Angle, Rock, Cena, Roman, Goldberg .. hell even Austin had some college football experience before the knee injuries. The biggest WWE/F draws of the past 20 years have almost unanimously come from some sort of athletic background .. makes a lot of sense why they’ve gone back to that well at a time of company lethargy 

I don't think this proves much beyond "big athletic guys often try their hand at football, the most prestigious sport in America." You need to some degree of athleticism to be a pro wrestler, and high schools and colleges don't have pro-wrestling teams, so naturally these young athletes will pursue options available to them.

[Cobra Commander]

Kinda tells you the difficulty of getting lightning in a bottle with a guy like Hogan if he's easily the top big guy in wrestling with no team sports/athletics background and the 2nd is.... Warrior?

Keeping in mind that The Undertaker was an NAIA basketball player. I'm sure there's someone obvious i'm forgetting here out of the people who got big WWF/WWE pushes.

But the guys who are pushed guys without some of organized team sport background skew smaller. Or were in Wrestling families from the start.

[GuerrillaMonsoon]

2 minutes ago, Cobra Commander said:

Kinda tells you the difficulty of getting lightning in a bottle with a guy like Hogan if he's easily the top big guy in wrestling with no team sports/athletics background and the 2nd is.... Warrior?

Keeping in mind that The Undertaker was an NAIA basketball player. I'm sure there's someone obvious i'm forgetting here out of the people who got big WWF/WWE pushes.

But the guys who are pushed guys without some of organized team sport background skew smaller. Or were in Wrestling families from the start.

Depends what you consider the bar is here?

Shawn and Flair both played stuff in high school, but weren't in college that long?

[zendragon]

7 minutes ago, Cobra Commander said:

Kinda tells you the difficulty of getting lightning in a bottle with a guy like Hogan if he's easily the top big guy in wrestling with no team sports/athletics background and the 2nd is.... Warrior?

Keeping in mind that The Undertaker was an NAIA basketball player. I'm sure there's someone obvious i'm forgetting here out of the people who got big WWF/WWE pushes.

But the guys who are pushed guys without some of organized team sport background skew smaller. Or were in Wrestling families from the start.

The obvious answer is Andre but I don't know how popular Rugby or Basketball would have been in France in the 60's and 70's

[A_K]

1 hour ago, Go2Sleep said:

I don't think this proves much beyond "big athletic guys often try their hand at football, the most prestigious sport in America." You need to some degree of athleticism to be a pro wrestler, and high schools and colleges don't have pro-wrestling teams, so naturally these young athletes will pursue options available to them.

Well, it proves that the tried-and-tested formula for the mega draws over past 2 and some decades (emphasis on mega draws, of whom there have been very very few) has been to recruit from athletic background at v young age direct into WWF/E farm system. E.g Brock, Rock, Cena, Goldberg (for WCW), Roman. Which is .. the path they seem to want to return to, which they strayed from (probably since OVW declined if being honest?).
 

There were a lot of “theoretic” draws they were going to uncover from the indys but .. yeah .. not really much tried-and-tested proof of that working out. Some contemporary draws have obv. come from those non-athletic indy backgrounds (Punk; Danielson), but not really industry-defining draws (at least, for any sizeable amount of time) & certainly not WWF/E farm products (hence, perhaps, the messy divorces and contract disputes) they can build a generation of the business around. A guy like Bronn Breakker (for example) is really just them going back to what worked so exceptionally well commercially for them before.

Contrast Bronn, Brock & Roman (for example) who were stud-athletes taken direct into the farm system with a guy like Brian Cage (for example) who while being a “big guy” has to my knowledge no discernible athletic pedigree and went straight to the Indys. Levels to the game.

Edited April 18, 2022 by A_K

[Cobra Commander]

18 minutes ago, GuerrillaMonsoon said:

Depends what you consider the bar is here?

Shawn and Flair both played stuff in high school, but weren't in college that long?

although in the land of the WWF, both Shawn and Flair are on the smaller side.

even if they might be a bit taller than some of the guys around these days

I suspect some of the "team sports guys" focus is a reflection on the people handling talent (Jim Ross) and some is the idea that people used to working on a team could be more reliable in a wrestling promotion?

[Elsalvajeloco]

3 hours ago, NoFistsJustFlips said:

I would say his fundamentals were rock solid, being a Kowalski guy and all.

I see both sides of this argument. There are absolutely some shindy ass trainers out there that should not be allowed to run wrestling schools. Teaching guys the wrong way to lock up or dumb shit I've seen like a hot tag that lead into a lockup that led into a DDT out of the lockup. So there is some merit to this line of thinking. Especially with how specific WWE is about what they allow / don't allow in their style.

But it's also pretty dumb because the recruiting parameters were already pretty strict. They weren't allowing t-shirt wearing shindys into the tryouts to begin with. You have to be pretty good to get invited. So I'm not sure this point means as much as they think it does.

I saw his WWE debut not too long ago. Granted it was 1995 and the roster was at it's all time worst, but he was legitimate better than at least a full third of the roster. Keep in mind, this was like a three minute match against an enhancement talent. Now, Hunter doing the diamond cutter or whatever the hell his first finisher was I can live without. However, everyone's first finisher back then was pretty goddamn random. You can tell though all he needed was just more time in the ring. Since the roster was so putrid and he had the right look obviously, that eventually was going to happen sooner than later. He also had the luxury of traveling on the road to learn the business (as people have clearly pointed out, he was the designated driver for the Kliq).

Now, a guy like that doesn't have those opportunities. The two biggest companies have too much talent, and house shows/live events don't happen every other day. It's pretty much the weekends and still fairly infrequent. In addition, outside of maybe a Randy Orton or Bryan Danielson or maybe a handful of other people (including producers/agents), who are you learning the business from? The guy or gal you're learning the business from or under the wing of is probably a "creative doesn't have anything for you" speech away from chilling in catering along with you. 

[odessasteps]

Also, athletes would be used to dealing with a coach likely similar in demands and temperament like Watts, Gagne, Graham, Fritz, ...

[A_K]

It’s also worth noting that someone like Flair came into the business in the mid-70s, where the point is that in the 90s/00s the industry as a whole became a lot more athletic, and that’s really where you see the homegrown mega draws for them starting to come almost exclusively from stud-athletic backgrounds. You line up Cena, Rock, Brock, Roman, Angle all coming in at a similar age from a similar(ish) path on a similar(ish) route of development and analyse the commercial impact they had relative to the other way and .. yeah .. why wouldn’t you go back to that way of working?

[Elsalvajeloco]

29 minutes ago, odessasteps said:

Also, athletes would be used to dealing with a coach likely similar in demands and temperament like Watts, Gagne, Graham, Fritz, ...

That is if you have real power. When Watts was running Mid-South and having folks drive countless miles between shows, they put up with his nonsense just because he was THE guy in charge much like a true head coach. It was almost the same way in WCW when (according to Arn at least) he had grown ass men with wives and kids eating bagged lunches like fifth graders going on a field trip at a museum just so he can come in and save the company money.

When was Watts in WWF for that three to six weeks in 1995 with basically no power, the boys REFUSED to put up with that bullshit. So technically, comparing it to actual team sports, he wasn't even like an assistant coach or a coordinator. He was the film study guy, and all the wrestlers let him know that.

So to me, when scouting, that kinda probably did or does play a role. However, that ain't how Vince is. IMO it's less about dealing with temperament as much as will you do unquestionably whatever the hell we need you to do without any back talk. So yeah, a Jim Hellwig is probably going to be a huge pain in the ass because at no point in his upbringing had to do with the sort of puppetry that goes along with being in pro wrestling or something close to being collaborative.

[Ziggy]

2 hours ago, Technico Support said:

HHH’s whole argument is disingenuous but we all know he’s just towing the company line.  In what world is it easier to teach a NFL washout how to be a good wrestler from square one than it is to teach an experienced, solid Indy wrestler how to get away from some aspects of their style they don’t like?  

 

We all know that it's not his call at all given how NXT was run the previous 6 to 8 years before the shift to 2.0. Denise Salcedo interviewed Shawn Michaels before one of their first big shows after the change and he was honest about how the change came out of nowhere and he doing what he was told. With the political shift and his recent health issues, Hunter is basically the male equivalent of his wife now. He's mainly just a spokesperson and articulator of Vince McMahon and Nick Kahn's direction of the company. 

I'm not opposed to athletes with no wrestling background coming in and learning to possibly be one of the next big star. It's certainly better than scouting a bunch of bikini models but still it's a risk signing a bunch of people with no passion for it. The issue to me the ratio of inexperienced guys to the experienced guys, that's going to be an issue. Randy Orton even admitted that alot of the new call ups don't know what they are doing. That statement made me think who he could be talking about or could it be a generation gap of him being an OVW guy.

[Cobra Commander]

would Watts be sorta in the realm of college football head coaches who tried to do their thing in the NFL and lost their locker rooms quick?

[Dog]

2 hours ago, Technico Support said:

They want wrestlers of a certain size and age.  I’m guessing the idea that these youngsters are also naive to the wrestling business and easier to con than an experienced worker would be may also be a factor.  

It seems a lot of the "attitude" issues get overlooked in these discussions. For better or worse, a lot of (most?) indy workers now see wrestling as a calling and not just a job. Barry Darsow made any dumbshit gimmick work as long as the checks cleared. Franky Kickpads might not be so amenable. College athletes who don't give a shit about wrestling probably won't kvetch as much when you change their name to Cayenne Calamari, or whatever.

I'm not saying this is necessarily a good thing for the people watching the show, but Vince is probably sick of hearing artistes bitch about booking decisions.

Edited April 18, 2022 by Dog

[Elsalvajeloco]

19 minutes ago, Cobra Commander said:

would Watts be sorta in the realm of college football head coaches who tried to do their thing in the NFL and lost their locker rooms quick?

Yeah, he's basically Urban Meyer. And not even like, "hey, at least this guy won recently."

The heyday of Mid South was when? Someone had the bright idea (maybe one of the Jims in creative) that he could contribute a full decade plus after his best years when he outside of maybe 1992 (keep in mind, only because he had to) stopped following pro wrestling altogether. It would be the equivalent of if Urban didn't even do analyst work, was just hanging at his house, and someone hired him in the year 2026 to be a NFL HC.

[A_K]

Especially when the artistes don't make him any money. By far the most consistently successful product from their prior-format NXT system was the women, who were performing basically completely without precedent and have been epoch defining in their own right.