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Hagan

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Everything posted by Hagan

  1. I kind of don't get GCW's identity anymore. Like, they're hot popularity wise but the whole promotion is now being built around tongue-in-cheek booking of old acts. Is this what that fanbase wants?
  2. Anyone watch Taichi vs Douki yet? It has a shockingly high rating on Cagematch and apparently a very wholesome birthday party for Miho Abe follows.
  3. Man - after some well received WK shows. This cards ain't it, main event aside.
  4. So the Wendy Choo gimmick kinda works! I mean, I feel like it would have gotten over as a meme character on the indies a few years ago. It’s totally dead end as an actual main roster star but I think I loved it.
  5. Question: do some of you downgrade a match based on knowing that someone get legitimately injured? Seeing takes that the tag match was a "mess" or was "ruined" because Fenix got injured. I get that logic in that I can see the enjoyment of a match being diminished knowing someone got seriously hurt (no different than any other sport) but I was wondering if people saw an injury as an artistic demerit in match evaluation?
  6. Man - a banger series of matches since the start of 2022: - Usos vs New Day - Five way for the WWE belt - Kiyomiya vs Kenou - Shiozaki vs Nakajima - Ito vs Noa - Yamashita vs Mizuki - Four-way on Raw - an over-delivered NXT show - Shingo vs Okada - Will vs Okada - Tana vs Kenta - Shibata vs Narita - Despy vs Hiromu - Page vs Danielson. Just an awesome start to the year.
  7. Holy fuck was that Yamashita and Mizuki match good. That was fucking unreal. So, I parachuted into joshi really for the first time ever (except for like the super famous shit) in the last month. Been digging the fuck out of Stardom and Tokyo Joshi Pro. It's amazing how much better the work and atmosphere in the pandemic era both companies are compared to most of the male companies.
  8. General rule of thumb though is when you lose/change a main event you give the fans the go-home, big babyface win. Very similar to Becky at SummerSlam
  9. At the end of the day, Brock is a real star (both in their eyes and, let’s be honest, to the general WWE fan) over the other guys and thus treated as such. When Wrestlemania season starts this always happens. The real stars get pushed and the midcarders go back into the midcard.
  10. This is a super interesting take. TV ratings/box office numbers are interesting to follow and, certainly, a movie star that has a string of box office failures sees their career take a downward turn. In regards to TV, a low-rated show is likely to be cancelled and low-rated but critically adored shows having fans and critics campaign for it to stay alive has been a thing forever. Looking at the popularity of a TV show has long been a part of fandom. It's not necessarily a comment on quality but a show like Seinfeld and Friends were big deals because EVERYONE watched them. They were wildly, wildly popular. If Seinfeld's rating had continued to plummet year after year and creatively the show was seen as having gone downhill, it would have been a huge talking point. Shows that make creatively bad choices and lose ratings or hang around long past their expiration date and run off fans or alienate fans in some way generate a lot of talking points, especially when there's long-time fans. Look at the Star Wars franchises, which have had the last few movies underperform or look at Doctor Who who has seen ratings dip to series low as fans grumble about the direction of the show. So, no, it's not simply a weird wrestling quirk at all. As far as "real" sports, it's not fans checking ratings breathlessly it's the fact that stars who get high ratings get featured spots. There's a reason the Lakers are on TV more than the Utah Jazz. Sports ratings are regularly blasted across by journalists all the time and it does say something about the popularity of teams/athletes. In regards to wrestling though, this idea that ratings/crowd attendance/business metrics don't matter is asinine. If Big E was scoring record high ratings and packing in 10,000 people every week he'd be assured of a long-run, big time matches and his fans would be happy for him and we'd see him as a big success. As it is, he's a failing champion who's gonna lose the belt and drop back down to the mid-card eventually. If you're a Hangman fan and Dynamites ratings drop 30 percent in the next month, he won't be staying champion much longer after that. Wrestling stardom, like boxing and now MMA, is inextricably tied to how popular someone is and, therefore, how much business they draw. It's been that way since they were all invented. I mean, it would be like if we compare Diesel and Stone Cold as WWF champion. You are more than welcome to say that you preferred Diesel's run because he had a good feud with Shawn and the Bret match was great but Diesel was the lowest drawing WWF champion at the time in history. It mattered. One guy is remembered as the biggest star in the business and the other is seen as a failed experiment. To watch wrestling and be completely indifferent to how business metrics influence everything we see onscreen is missing a huge part of the picture.
  11. Well, if ya built a sports entertainer up from the ground floor, Maggle…
  12. At this point would be better to figure out who genuinely is safe from being fired. As far as full-timers: - Roman - Orton - Lynch - Sasha - Rollins, I think - The New Day - maybe the Usos while this current storyline is going - maybe Charlotte but the clock may be ticking on her at this rate I honestly think every other person could be randomly cut if the number gets drawn. addendum: and while I think they really like Rollins, Lynch is far more valuable so, like the Usos, I think he's safe because of her.
  13. Jim Ross's most famous era was him calling the Attitude Era. Of course, we all remember his famous calls during those Steve Austin main events *Austin and Rock brawling into the crowd as 20,000 people scream their heads off* JR: "why isn't the damn ref counting? How long they gonna be out there? What's the point of rules?" or, of course, who can forget those great Jeff Hardy ladder match calls: "This just doesn't make sense, King. Why is he doing that swanton off the ladder when he needs to be focused on winning the match." But, good on Jim Ross outside of WWE for having the the canonical "Rulebook of Wrestling" handy. AEW doesn't do DQs and countouts. Neither did ECW, except for the rare heel contrivance with Fonzie. Imagine ECW if Joey Styles had spent the hour bitching about the refs not calling the rules.
  14. My fave Top Dolla moment was when he did an interview saying he’d have no problem putting over Roman Reigns. I’m sure the Tribal Chief was touched. None of these cuts terribly surprising but I also see people doing the ‘blame Nick Khan.’ It’s literally just Vince. If he thought any of these people were worth a shit they’d still be there.
  15. A wrestling commentator is a part of the show. The job is to sell what they’re seeing not continually undercut what the company is presenting. It’s not Joe Buck calling an NFL game. I don’t recall Lance Russell in Memphis doing shit like that. What does Ross’s ‘credibility’ even mean? I’m sure Kevin Kelly doesn’t agree with NJPW booking but he manages to not bitch about their house style.
  16. Top Dolla assured me that unlike others that failed they could promo so would be fine…
  17. At the end of the day, Jim Ross secretly thinks that the WWE is the big leagues and the shit he called in NJPW and AEW is the minor league. It's really as simple as that. He doesn't care because he sees his job as slumming from the majors. He just has zero passion or interest in what he calls except for the occasional moment when he's actually invested or likes what he's seeing.
  18. Late thoughts: - Hayter is such a great base for flying wrestlers. Maybe the best women wrestler in the country at that. Thunder Rosa is basically in that Hangman spot from a year ago that the fans are starting to clamor for it so when they decide to take her all the way she's going to be over huge. Her beating Baker should be the next big destination event for the company. - MJF vs Allin was a bit of a modern classic. That's an all-time opener. - I hated the FTR finish. Like some, I'm over the FTR Mid-Atlantic cosplay stuff. They're not nearly as good at what they do as they think they are and it leads to a ton of dumb stuff. - Danielson vs Miro was a little disappointing but it was just a different style than what AEW usually does. Was surprised Danielson won. - Six-man was egregiously long but all in all a pretty epic match. Would have probably hit better as the opener or if the other three matches hadn't gotten so much time. I'm not sure the "Christian wants Jungle Boy to be a killer" story had really been explained well before this match, though. I like the idea, though. Actually, my head canon is that basically Christian wants Jungle Boy to be more like Edge. Also, I know Christian does get a lot of respect as a worker but he is really, really good. Just an all-time performer. When has Christian ever had a BAD match? - The Cody tag was a mess. It was a tough spot but if these guys were more over or more into the story the fans would have been into it. It felt like four guys fighting over who Vince secretly loved more and would have pushed if it wasn't for [insert whatever person they blame for their WWE failures]. The "can they co-exist" story is something that the WWE has abused into the ground and I have zero desire to see it. - Baker and Tay had an iffy start and I was afraid Conti was gonna kill herself. By the end of it, though, the crowd was into it and there was some good stuff. - Punk vs Kingston was exactly what it needed to be and is what AEW needs a LOT more of. Short, violent, emotional brawls. Punk's in-ring stuff has been so much better than anticipated. - ATT tag was a ton of fun. I kind of think it should have been saved for TV, though. - Hangman vs Omega was a classic. Hit all the beats of the classic babyface win. I mean, it won't be a top 15 Omega match of all-time but he played his role perfectly. Page was great. All the tropes they did worked (the ref bumps, false finishes). It was just a real rollercoaster. It's not the best match this two could have had but it was the best story they could tell in a match. I'm going to rewatch some matches because I'm sure in a vacuum a few I didn't like are better but this was a truly great PPV.
  19. Mox's book is not the best wrestling book ever but it may be the best book written by a wrestler, if that makes sense. Just a bonkers rambling stream of consciousness from a very unique, interesting guy.
  20. Eddie Kingston - Player's Tribune This is fantastic.
  21. B-Fab had that horrible match on NXT a few weeks back so that probably was an issue despite the call-up and, I mean, that act was never gonna be allowed to work on the main roster. Top Dolla is gonna be dancing and smiling in a few months and Swerve and the other dude will be a team on Main Event against Cedric and Shelton for the next year.
  22. Another thing - some takes are veering into ‘how will these people feed their families without a WWE contract?’ territory. I dunno - I think Jessie Kamea (who I actually am high on) is gonna survive without her shitty NXT contract. Shit - once they get their Twitch streams and shit back they’ll be making more. Losing a WWE paycheck sucks a lot but most of these people are talented enough that they’ll be more than fine if they want to stick with it.
  23. Metallik, Lee and probably Lorcan locks for AEW. Assume most of the women get tryouts at least because why not? Best case is as the indies keep cranking up and Mexico, Britain and Japan open back up in the next year there’s going to be no shortage of hungry name talent.
  24. On one hand, AEW doesn't have room to sign everyone but on the other hand it's not the worst strategy to be able walk into a negotiation with a tv station and list all of the top stars (including a ton of guys who are just coming of WWE TV) you have. Inevitably, if this roster keeps growing you'll see more content on TV, which is good financially if not so great creatively.
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