goc

So do a lot of the people who vote in Observer polls. There were people who had those two matches pegged as the best of the night long before the matches actually happened and would have still voted that way if the two matches were god awful and Roman vs Braun (who finished 1 & 2 for most overrated in the year end awards) had been a 5* classic.

I don't see a disconnect between them they are two sides of the same coin. If a heel is getting cheered it makes it far more likely that his babyface opponent will get booed. See: AJ Styles vs. Dean Ambrose at Backlash.

But why is a heel being cheered better than a face being booed? And why would we automatically assume this caries over when he turns back babyface again? This is what makes no sense to me. I don't get the idea of making Braun a face either. That's like 2003 babyface Brock level bad idea.

How exactly does that work when you already have Braun and Brock doing that?

You're not risking as much merch money with Roman as you are with Cena but Roman is still the biggest merchandise seller on the active roster. Who exactly is a good enough babyface to match up against Roman if he turns heel? The people who are booing him now would almost immediately start cheering him in the absence of a really over babyface to cheer for and Seth Rollins is definitely not that guy and I don't think Finn Balor is either. If Roman is a babyface getting booed and we're supposed to believe that's a Very Bad Thing why would a heel Roman getting cheered be some massive upgrade? Do you really think the people booing him now that have been saying for like 2 years "Roman would be a great heel, why won't they turn him!?" wouldn't immediately cheer him because they got their way?

Do you think they've properly utilized that data to maximize their profits? I'm gonna say yes since it's been a very long time since they've not had a profitable year.

In 2017 there are far better metrics to pay attention to than just arena crowd reactions.

I'm not sure where the "Daniel Bryan was doing killer TV numbers" thing comes from because I have pretty much never seen that anywhere. TV ratings were one of the things that were being used against giving him a bigger push. http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1687101-does-raws-low-rating-spell-trouble-for-daniel-bryans-main-event-push As far as the "Cena would have been more over as a babyface if he'd turned heel" thing I just think it's completely false. They built the boos into his character with the "Rise Above Hate" stuff I don't think you could have turned him without permanently damaging his "Never Give Up" type of appeal and as soon as he turned back the "grr Vince sucks" people would have whined about "Super Cena" being back. You can't compare modern crowds to stuff Eddie Graham had to deal with because there wasn't a sizable portion of the crowd going to shows in Florida in the 70s & 80s that were determined to be anti-whatever Eddie Graham wants to do.

Did I miss where TV ratings suddenly started going up when Cena's big push started? Because you look at a graph and it's a big downward trend since 2002.

Having thought about this for a bit today, the idea that turning Roman heel is some panacea that will inevitably end in him being a wildly cheered babyface is stupid. John Cena's rise to the top started with him as a heel and yet once he turned babyface and became The Guy in the company people turned on him. Yet the vocal detractors didn't stop him from turning into the undisputed top star in wrestling for pretty much the past decade. Would turning Cena heel in 2006 or 2007 really have made him a bigger star or helped him sell more brightly colored merchandise to angry smarks once he turned face again? "But it worked for The Rock!" ignores that The Rock was a complete and total breakaway from Rocky Maivia and also that The Rock is a special kind of talent that I'm not sure wrestling had ever seen before and we certainly haven't seen since. There also really isn't a direct comparison because people rejected Rocky Maivia from the start unlike Roman who was well liked during The Shield and even during the start of his singles run and the smarkity smarks didn't really start turning on him on until they started to think he was "stealing" Bryan's spot.

Your WWE related posts are too much like them, I think.

The NWA sale doesn't affect the site at all. Bruce already said that on his Facebook page.

Because that's what wreddit and wrestlingforum say Vince should do and he should fucking burn Titan Towers to the ground before he takes suggestions from those cesspools.

The hair thing is weird. Some dude at 411 wrote a whole article about it: http://411mania.com/wrestling/looking-at-wwes-hair-extension-revolution/

Hopefully into that dumpster that was on Raw a week ago. Bray's character is absolute fucking garbage and he needs to just go away forever.

I've got 1985 and 1987 done now. 1985 is missing almost the whole first half of the year so there are only two episodes of Southeastern on here but once it switches over to Continental the footage picks up pretty well and the rest of the year is pretty easy to follow along. 1985 playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB8FXHmaF-0oe64CuLCIJrKUuFlOwEjVe 1987 is really hard to find footage of and I did my best to put together the most complete playlist possible but it's still missing a TON. I went through and cut out whatever the weekly highlight on Pro Wrestling This Week was (for the weeks of PWTW that I actually have) but I have no idea what their criteria for the show was because they showed a lot of squash matches instead of showing a hot angle or promo. 1987 playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB8FXHmaF-0palHuCV4HA7whISnXaTZnq

I don't think the Houston footage would enter into this at all. I'm fairly sure that is owned independently by Bruce Tharpe and not by the NWA "organization" and the site is just called NWAOnDemand for marketing purposes.

To me it's not just the disconnect between the moves he does and the story of "Seth's knee is fucked" that make him so bad. It HOW he sells. Look at when he's in holds last night and trying to get to the ropes and doing the screaming and wild movements. That's how a heel sells trying to get to the ropes to break a hold. All of his facial expressions while selling make you want to see him get beat up more. He has heel promos, heel mannerisms & heel selling but has a babyface's moveset. He's not good. On twitter I said same thing stro said here, having two injured babyface selling body parts matches so close together involving Seth and Roman just completely destroyed any argument that Seth is a better choice as top babyface than Roman is. Roman was 10x better at selling his injury in his match with Braun than Seth was in his match with Samoa Joe. Overall I thought this was a very good PPV. House of Horrors was fucking awful and I didn't care for Seth/Samoa Joe but everything else met or exceeded my expectations. Bayley/Alexa especially was much better than I thought it would be and I really REALLY loved the Cesaro/Sheamus heel turn and thought the tag title match itself was damn good.

I would probably recommend this to anyone who REALLY wants to watch this stuff. Who knows if my account might end up getting taken down due to copyright strikes over music or some asshole like the guy from 70s-tv giving me a copyright strike over a 1983 Memphis upload that I know damn well he doesn't own a copyright to.

Yes it's bad, very bad, because this stuff is awesome. If I could throw one of these at you through the computer I would do it.

Just some screenshots to show how good the quality is of both the footage & the wrestlers

Anyone that wants to watch the 1986 Continental episodes that I started this thread by reviewing can now watch them all on youtube. I have 24 full episodes and parts of 11 others in this playlist and most of it is a big quality upgrade on the pics and gifs that are in this thread: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB8FXHmaF-0of2VDzgdRgXDDT26PmI01I I'm also currently working on putting everything else I have from 1985 and 1987 on youtube and will post playlists for those in this thread when I'm finished.

Duggan should have just ran with the Doogan pronunciation who gives a shit if it's not your real name, it was easy for fans to chant.

I thought using Beat The Clock as a way of making Breezeango #1 contenders without needing to have them beat Usos, American Alpha or The Colons was pretty smart. It's a way to get them a title match but not have to suddenly start having them beating the higher tier teams on Smackdown to get there. It's definitely the right call to not immediately have American Alpha chase the belts again and with New Day out until Kofi's ankle heals they needed kind of a placeholder face team for The Usos to beat.