anarchistxx

The talent might be fresh but the booking, presentation, promos, style and overall aesthetic are stale as fuck. It might be new faces but they are saying the same things, in angles booked exactly the same way, with segments that we have seen a million times before just with different people acting them out this time. Wrestling isn't like rock music where everything has been done before, there are still a myriad of new scenarios and angles they could play out if they were creative enough. Right now I would even settle for the latest War On Drugs record, unoriginal as it is - the same tropes played out just with better production and the sheen of quality musicianship and songwriting nous. We don't even get that. We get an even shitter version of Coldplay.

Had no idea Sydal was back working the indies. Might have to check out a couple of shows, always thought he should have been a major star in WWE, he has everything they look for.

Are the ROH PPVs remotely profitable? Who is buying these things? I'm really out of touch, have they actually got any talent left or exciting guys coming through? Amazing the promotion has lasted this long at this level, they were reportedly losing money even with strong DVD sales and decent gates from 2004-2006. Who is keeping them afloat and why? Anyone think there might be a market for ROH to launch an On Demand service with their old events? Especially considering all the future stars on the early shows. These aren't rhetorical questions, I'm genuinely interested.

His in ring work has been largely disappointing as well, considering he has been put in the position to have great matches. Everything he does is too long and contrived, from the repetitive, never ending promos to the entrance that quickly became tedious and elongated stare-downs and 'mind games' and boring matches. He had some cool visuals, but in the end he had no coherent motivations and his feuds just followed the trope of heels randomly attacking a face and then trading wins at PPVs for two or three months straight repeating the same segments on television every week ad infinitum. To me he has always looked like someone playing a character, no real believability there.

Interesting the level of coverage this has got. Pretty sure Rolling Stone, Complex and other publications don't routinely cover wrestling. Is there anywhere to download it? Thought he was quite fair. Cesaro does have limitations as a talker and a character. The attempts to persevere with him show that they are fans of the guy. I agree that Cesaro was badly mismanaged in the months after he got really hot earlier in the year though. There is no way the majority of the fanbase is going to buy Daniel Bryan beating Undertaker. He would suffer a major backlash. Aren't all the signs that Vince really likes Punk? It makes sense that he does, because reports are that HHH and Stephanie absolutely despise him - at which point he must have had some strong backing high up in the company to stay at the top of the card as long as he did.

He was always a novelty character with a limited shelf life. Reductionist to just blame the booking.

I wrote a long post on this a few years ago when the same topic cropped up. basically, to compete with WWE you need a totally different aesthetic, unique presentation and unique style. Use as few former WWE guys as you can. Have an easily identifiable image, get on board with modern trends, make it into a type of brand, a lifestyle. market it to a specific group of people. Get the alternatives on board at first, make it a sort of cool, underground niche and progress from that into the mass consumption. Play up the reality show aspects, while at the same time having long, believable storylines with lots of twists and turns and things at stake that go beyond the typical, lazily booked wrestling feud. As Paul Heyman used to stress, accentuate the positives. Do the things WWE can't or won't do: athletic, high risk wrestling, edgy story lines, blood and violence when it matters [i.e. at the end of huge feuds], interesting music and collaboration with underground artists. WWE is so laughably off the pulse when they try to engage with culture of humor or be modern - this is an area where you can murder them hands down. Hard to achieve without a fair amount of money, talent and nous. And even then you may just form a niche in the market.

Don't think it made much of a difference really. His style didn't change after the injury, although his quality of opponent declined dramatically at one stage, since most of the roster workhorses were on Smackdown after the brand split. He is still in a position to book himself in lengthy matches and long feuds where he gets hugely disproportionate amounts of screen time. He still wants to play at being NWA Champion Ric Flair. He still wants to go through all the ex-WCW guys convincingly whilst paradoxically playing the cowardly, over confident heel. He is still the focal point of the promotion for years on end indulging himself.

He doesn't have a single great match that doesn't involve a ton of props, a load of overbooking and some talented opponents. It is hard to make a case for him when he never carried anyone or had a classic without gimmicks attached.

Feel like CM Punk is somewhat deluded, either that or he is someone who can never be satisfied. A decade ago he was a skinny kid in baggy red shorts with bleached hair, wrestling for very little money for ROH. He didn't exactly scream superstar [even though he had a lot of potential], and the assumption once he was signed was that he would appear on Velocity a lot, feature predominantly on the undercard and get released a few years later. Fast forward and he is given a 1 Year + title reign, appears in countless main events, gets to wrestle The Rock and then The Undertaker in two huge matches. Sure, he earned a lot of that himself but he was also lucky in a lot of factors, not least the focus on smaller, cleaner guys in the wake of all the high profile scandals. He could easily right now be working a reduced schedule on decent money. If he really does hate wrestling and has saved his money then fair play to him, he will be a rare success story in the industry. But he should maybe appreciate more those that gave him the opportunity and not simply focus on the negatives.

Once Evolution forms he is in quite a few good multi man tag matches on television, though this doesn't have too much to do with him. 2003 he continues to be terrible, Chris Benoit drags him to decent matches in the first half of 2004 which you may want to avoid for obvious reasons. The Eugene program was fantastic as an angle but nothing special in ring. He goes about forty minutes with Randy Orton in fall 2004 in one of the worst main events in history. In 2005 he has a decent program with Batista and takes him to some watchable matches, the Hell In The Cell being particularly decent if I remember rightly. But other than the Evolution six man and eight man tags I wouldn't be seeking out too much stuff from that era, it is very much the same unathletic, repetitive, self indulgent rubbish you've been sitting through already.

As a character he was much more interesting as a heel. In the ring he could pretty much only excel as a face: almost all his great matches are as a face, except for gimmick matches where the props take away any kind of conventional structure or role playing. He doesn't have the offense to be a heel, can't control matches long enough to keep it interesting or believable or meaningful. All his big spots are face spots i.e. dives, desperation moves, flash offense. His best heel matches were when he just pinballed for The Undertaker, playing the desperate underdog heel instead of the desperate underdog face, just with cowardice and arrogance added to the character.

They have been running shows through that model for so long that I'm not sure they would know how to book a show without an authority figure.

Not sure about that - most of the new stars WWE has had on top in the last five years started out on the indies. What is interesting is that Daniel Bryan & CM Punk had a lot more staying power on top than WWE created stars such as Jack Swagger, Sheamus and The Miz who faded very quickly after their initial pushes. Which sort of backs up your point that territories are better at creating talent than the current in house model. But there is still a steady stream of talent coming from the local independent federations who have replaced the territories on a small scale. Seth Rollins has been pushed more than anyone this year and he made his name in ROH. Cesaro, Dean Ambrose and Luke Harper have also had pushes. I agree with the point made above, that what WWE is really missing is the random people who would find their way into the industry, strip club managers or bouncers or just people who used to hang out at the gym and met someone connected to the industry. This isn't a problem solely with wrestling either - look at sports like soccer, tennis, cricket and even motor racing, that lack the charismatic mavericks that used to grace them. That is because of academies, sports science, a more technical, clinical approach to sport which means that you can't have James Hunt smoking and drinking and womanizing and still expecting to compete at top level sport. Most soccer players now have spent their childhood and life being mothered through academies - they don't know real life or real experience, so end up being blank and homogeneous and lacking a personality of their own. It is a well worn point, but the fact that everything is so micro managed and overscripted in WWE really hurts their attempts to create new stars. Even John Cena, the last major star they made, got popular by a rap gimmick he invented himself and raps he wrote on his own. He got a backlash when the writers started giving him lame, awkward comedy to spout.

Also, on the hip hop analogy: guys who rap merely about fucking bitches don't tend to last very long these days, certainly not unless they have someone outrageously talented behind the production desk. The rap records that get commercial success and critical acclaim these days usually have a little more substance - storytelling concept albums like Good Kid MAAD City, or sonic masterpieces like Yeezus, or politically aware records like R.A.P Music, or albums about the complexities of fame and love like Take Care, or humurous conscious backpack rap like Acid Rap. Even those who continue to rap about the age old topics of fucking women and murdering men do it in a semi-ironic way or as a shock tactic like Tyler the Creator, and have more strings to their repertoire. The age of gangster rap albums ruling the roost and long gone. As should the days be of treating wrestling so simplistically and not holding it up to the standards of both moral analysis and quality expectation that we judge other art on.

The problem with this particular scenario is the audiences. The rational and progressive minded woman would be getting heat, whereas the misogynistic woman beating lunatic would be getting widely cheered for shutting the feminist up and/or humiliating her. It would be the faces being controversial and offensive. The WWE audience has been shown to be pretty misogynistic at times and certainly dismissive of female wrestling. They also have a habit of cheering for the antihero. So it makes no sense going down the path of angles about current social and cultural issues because the fanbase and through them the company will seem like a backwards, hick organisation. The way to get heel heat now [at least in mainstream US wrestling] is to be a bland nice guy, or a poor, boring worker. The old tropes like tedious authority figures and foreign heels work to a certain extent, but their promos are no more or less offensive than those of the 'good guys' who are getting cheered. It has very little to do with being pushed as a stereotypical villain, because the audience likes to go against the status quo. A heel in 2014 can be nice, friendly, rational and offend nobody. It really makes no difference, except possibly to the young audience. Look at Sheamus - pushed as a smiling, happy go lucky face and the fans shit all over him and he gets loud boos at most venues.

Entertaining in all the wrong ways probably. WWE already struggles with the idea that the only adults they appeal to are misogynistic, misanthropic, backwards, socially awkward nerds. Having an angle where a liberal, progressive minded young woman gets booed for talking about institutionalized sexism in the wrestling industry would only contribute to that perception. WWE still hasn't had a gay character where their homosexuality wasn't used for comedy value or as a brow for commentators and performers to snidely insult them over. Even an openly effeminate character like Fandango has to be accompanied by a woman to prevent any suggestion he is 'that way inclined'. That is a problem with all male sports, not just wrestling - but it is a lot easier for WWE to do something about it rather than soccer, as it controls the product.

Only last night Sgt Slaughter was enthusiastically cheered for verbally abusing a woman by screaming in her face and using threatening, intimidating body language towards her. Don't think the introduction of third wave feminism into an angle would have any positive consequences at all, except for creating an extremely hated heel and having the WWE audience baying for Randy Orton to RKO her after she cut a promo on victim blaming and gender role stereotyping.

WWE failing to capitalize on something hot. Who would have thought it?!

Don't know what you are getting at here. Because this was not be a good idea at all. The male dominated WWE audience would boo a woman out of the building for such a promo, if she started talking about equal pay and how women are treated as sex objects to be gaped at for their tits rather than admired for their wrestling ability. It would be pretty embarrassing to WWE that their fans are exposed as sexist misogynists with archaic attitudes, and probably damaging in terms of advertisers.

Looking at PPV cards from 2007-2011 is really strange, the amount of obscure guys who fought in major matches. Maybe they weren't so obscure if you were watching at the time, but it does underline the criticism of their booking where they go all out on a guy from the off, push him to the moon and then once they go off him he is jobbing every week a few months down the line. Then he is placed in a comedy role, then future endeavored. I'm in the minority these days in that I much prefer early Rey in WWE. Thought he was incredible in 2002/2003, spectacular offence, selling was great, he had a great charisma and aura, the athleticism was still there. He got stale for me after that, especially with all the matches revolving around the 619, but he is still a top fifty worker of the last decade without question, been in so many good matches and they are usually smartly worked.

Ziggler's triumph and his undoing is that he remains over regardless of the booking. Under normal circumstances this would lead to him getting pushed to the moon, but in actuality it just makes WWE really complacent and feel they can do whatever with him to help get other people over and it doesn't matter. Someone who is as over as he is shouldn't be jobbing every other week in meaningless matches. Instead of running Cena/Lesnar once again they should be feeding the likes of Ziggler to Brock. he is the perfect opponent in terms of the bumps he can take, how over he is and his dynamic, desperate offence. Under ideal circumstances you run Lesnar against Ziggler, Ryback and Orton before he jobs on the way out to Daniel Bryan/Roman Reigns at Wrestlemania. Might as well get fresh, money matches out of him if he is going.

If he was bothered about any of those things why didn't he just got to WWE years ago? Why spend over a decade in mediocrity performing to nobody when he had offers to perform in front of 50,000 people and be treated like a star?

He won't even be relevant in three weeks. Certainly not with WWE booking. He looks lank and pasty and out of shape - he doesn't look like star, he looks washed up. Added to that he isn't exactly known for cutting incredible promos or being particularly compelling on the mic, so he isn't going to be over as a face authority figure for longer than a few weeks before the novelty wears off. There is a difference between a one time pop and managing to stay over when you are on TV every week and any sense of freshness wears off. Look at Vince: he gets a reception like a megastar when he comes out now after being gone for months, but when he was on television every week nobody gave a fuck.

I agree with this in principle - the best WWE matches are usually the ones with a lot of booking, that focus on character and motivation rather than just a 'pure' wrestling match. That is why they can have Cesaro constantly wrestling really good fifteen minute matches on television every week and it bores me to tears - without a decent story and some compelling booking and a good angle, these matches become meaningless. And with three hours to fill there are usually two or three of these matches every week. At least with, for instance, Smackdown Six booking the television matches were always situated in some greater feud and there was an aim and purpose and forward motion to it all, rather than just picking a random face and heel and having them wrestle to fill twenty minutes after The Authority does a twenty minute promo and before Adam Rose comes and does his thing. My only issue is that a lot of the booking for that match was either predictable [Rusev] or plain bad [big Show], and I felt the match was without momentum for quite a while. They definitely sucked me in for the stretch though, and the overbooking worked well in the context.