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FEBRUARY WRESTLING DISCUSSION


RIPPA

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It's worth mentioning, because it hasn't come up (I don't think?) that RAW is considered a major deal to wrestlers in the company.  To fans, it's just another week, another RAW, but the wrestlers hold it in pretty high regard.  I don't think Punk would actually be so ungrateful to a company that has been so good to him that he would walk out on them hours before their flagship show.  On that basis alone, I figure this has to be a work.

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I really hope they are able to turn things around a bit at Elimination Chamber, because this is shaping up to be one terrible Wrestlemania.

 

Think about all the matches that were being speculated about since last year's Wrestlemania:

 

Brock Lesnar vs. The Rock

Daniel Bryan vs. Shawn Michaels

CM Punk vs. Steve Austin

John Cena vs. The Undertaker

Brock Lesnar vs. The Undertaker

CM Punk vs. Triple H

CM Punk & Daniel Bryan vs. Triple H & HBK

Ryback vs. Goldberg

 

And what are we getting now?

Randy Orton vs. Batista and John Cena vs. Bray Wyatt! May god have mercy on us all!

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I really hope they are able to turn things around a bit at Elimination Chamber, because this is shaping up to be one terrible Wrestlemania.

 

Think about all the matches that were being speculated about since last year's Wrestlemania:

 

Brock Lesnar vs. The Rock

Daniel Bryan vs. Shawn Michaels

CM Punk vs. Steve Austin

John Cena vs. The Undertaker

Brock Lesnar vs. The Undertaker

CM Punk vs. Triple H

CM Punk & Daniel Bryan vs. Triple H & HBK

Ryback vs. Goldberg

 

And what are we getting now?

Randy Orton vs. Batista and John Cena vs. Bray Wyatt! May god have mercy on us all!

 

Not to mention the Hulk Hogan speculation.

 

Yeah, I think we all hyped the event up way too much. 

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Remember when CM Punk said that there were too many part timers coming in and taking spots?  Your 'matches to get hyped about' all have part timers in them,  It's not our fault though.  WWE did this to themselves by have the last 3 or 4 'Manias being reminders about how "great" things were years ago and not focusing on the now.  When 4 or 5 guys come back every year and immediately get put in featured matches and main events, the current roster looks weaker in comparison.

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Man I dug that Ziggler promo, I liked the unbalanced vibe to it.  After I finished it I found myself coming up with a storyline where a crazed and desperate for validation Ziggler gets used by the Authority to take out anyone in their way.

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I like the idea of Ziggler getting fired up.

 

I have a problem with the content of what he said. It's not really about winning and losing, it's about performing. He loses a lot, yet his stance is that he's a great PERFORMER. He says people are in his ear about not going out there and being so good, which is, again, a reference to the performance of wrestling - not the competition of wrestling. This goes back to my basic problem with current wrestling(it's not just a WWE problem), where the goal of wrestlers, as is being stated to fans, to provide moments - not win matches in order to make money or gain prestige. If the characters aren't investing in the matches as real competitions in which the outcomes matter and determine their legacy, then it's hard for me to. 

 

This doesn't mean it has to move away from storylines and crazy characters into some kind of faux-MMA serious business; wrestling never had to really do that in the past, in order to get that spirit of competition across. 

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I totally get Jae's point and it is a good one.  The promo does however work with Ziggler's established character of being a show off who is about putting on a performance more than going out and winning as quickly as possible.  

 

Obviously there is a bunch of worked shoot garbage in there but you could spin it more like, "John Cena (to pick a name) told me that I should stop doing sit ups during matches, stop doing head stands,  stop being me.  Well not being me has taken away my edge and I'm not winning anymore.  I used to be this guy who could blow everyone away but I was told I needed to be more humble.  Well being humble sucks." 

 

Most characters should be about winning.  But their are exceptions, like The Wyatts shouldn't be at all concerned with titles unless it advances their agenda.  Ziggler has some wiggle room.

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Remember when CM Punk said that there were too many part timers coming in and taking spots?  Your 'matches to get hyped about' all have part timers in them,  It's not our fault though.  WWE did this to themselves by have the last 3 or 4 'Manias being reminders about how "great" things were years ago and not focusing on the now.  When 4 or 5 guys come back every year and immediately get put in featured matches and main events, the current roster looks weaker in comparison.

 

 

Well, how many of the current roster get to work with dudes of yesterday at 'Mania? Cena, The Miz and Punk?

 

 

 

And I wish people would quit bullshitting themselves into think Ziggles has charisma or anything resembling star power. There's a reason he is the bump bitch and not the one bumpin' bitches.

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I totally get Jae's point and it is a good one.  The promo does however work with Ziggler's established character of being a show off who is about putting on a performance more than going out and winning as quickly as possible.  

 

Obviously there is a bunch of worked shoot garbage in there but you could spin it more like, "John Cena (to pick a name) told me that I should stop doing sit ups during matches, stop doing head stands,  stop being me.  Well not being me has taken away my edge and I'm not winning anymore.  I used to be this guy who could blow everyone away but I was told I needed to be more humble.  Well being humble sucks." 

 

Most characters should be about winning.  But their are exceptions, like The Wyatts shouldn't be at all concerned with titles unless it advances their agenda.  Ziggler has some wiggle room.

Right, he can make that idea work as a character. Shawn Michaels did it quite well. "I'm the Showstopper. The Main Event. When you get me in the ring, you know you're going to see something you've never seen before." The difference being that Shawn was talking about his winning technique - "I win and I win in style." Ziggler's character basically thinks "I tell better stories in the ring than everyone else, and I make others look really good." 

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Also I wonder if  this "Performance Motivated Philosophy" is the reason WWE is in the bind they're in with fans wanting Daniel Bryan and CM Punk. They've displaced the emphasis on winners/losers, so that now fans have to find other reasons to get into characters - and in some cases it's become non-storyline reasons. Punk, for example, speaks his mind and talks about the reality of the company's problems. He's an okay worker, a great talker, and he sees what we see. So he gets rallied behind. Daniel Bryan is a great worker, and a genuinely decent human being in real life, and the more fans perceive him as being held back by Triple H or Vince the more they rally behind him. To be more clear, the reactions fans had weren't The Authority kept Daniel Bryan out of the match, it was that Triple H/Vince/Stephanie kept him out, not as characters, but as booker/writers. They're not wanting him to beat the characters of The Authority, they want him to beat the system of the WWE. It's a troublesome road, and the WWE only has themselves to blame for not putting more care into stories and characters and not listening to fans. Now the fans have to create their own drama to invest in, and they've decided it will be the Fans vs. the WWE.

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I don't know if bind is the right word Jae.  The fans actually seem invested in Daniel Bryan winning and if creative could (if they aren't actually manipulating this now) capture that emotion and harness it, they get a more over Daniel Bryan out of the deal.  When was the last time you really got the feeling the crowd cared who won or lost?  I think the performance motivated philosophy is based a lot on the fans not caring who won or lost as long as they got a spectacle.  Austin got over in a losing effort to Bret Hart.  Shawn got over losing to Razor in a ladder match.  Foley got over losing to everyone but getting throwing off stuff in the process.  

 

This weird deal with Daniel has brought out a desire in the crowd to see him win since we've already gotten the spectacle.  Is the WWE manipulating that desire and the drama the 'fans are creating'?  Maybe?  

 

Conversely people only seem interested in CM Punk when he's mad at the company.  There is no winning there for the WWE unless they are again playing a meta game where he pretends to be mad and they work with it.  

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Remember when CM Punk said that there were too many part timers coming in and taking spots? Your 'matches to get hyped about' all have part timers in them, It's not our fault though. WWE did this to themselves by have the last 3 or 4 'Manias being reminders about how "great" things were years ago and not focusing on the now. When 4 or 5 guys come back every year and immediately get put in featured matches and main events, the current roster looks weaker in comparison.

Well, how many of the current roster get to work with dudes of yesterday at 'Mania? Cena, The Miz and Punk?

And I wish people would quit bullshitting themselves into think Ziggles has charisma or anything resembling star power. There's a reason he is the bump bitch and not the one bumpin' bitches.

Craziness.

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Maybe you're right. I just want the WWE to care who wins or loses, so that it can at least mean something to me. It could be the fan's fault. With our 5 star matches and workrate debates. Wrestling feels like it's gotten too "meta", to where the characters are aware that fans want a good match, and so the character motivation is getting a five star review in the Observer.

 

It's like wrestling has become sentient and my relationship with it now feels like Dave and HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey..

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It also helps that people are frustrated from the big story of the summer fizzling out. The Nexus, Summer of Punk, Punk's reign, and now The Authority angle have all petered out. The Nexus lost the big matches, Summer of Punk somehow ended with HHH-Nash, The Rock returned and beat Punk and now we have been expected to cheer for Batista to return and defeat Orton.

 

A lot of people got into Bryan and never got a even decent conclusion to his chase of the title. I think a lot of the people who booed Cena-Orton out of the gate at the RR were tired of seeing the same time and time again, nothing new ever bubbling up. I have no reason to care for anything else and the feuds I am supposed to really care about, I don't. What did it matter who won the match?

 

I'm also disappointed about how they bring along younger stars. I know little about Big E's motivation, I had hoped they'd have given him a minute to cut a promo after beating Curtis Axel, "Three is not good enough." But nope. Instead each moment must be carefully manufactured so only what we intend to be memorable happens.

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