
kjh
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Everything posted by kjh
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"WWE mark" is the perfect description of someone who regularly criticises WWE booking, who has called Triple H "the great Satan", who broke the news that WWE told Rey Mysterio that they wouldn't pay for any future surgeries of his if he returned to work, who watches more non-WWE wrestling than 99% of fans, etc. I mean if you're going to throw insults around at least try to make them accurate. As long as Vince McMahon promotes WWE, there will always be dated ethnic stereotypes and jingoistic storylines all over WWE programming, which at this point I think is ridiculous to get too offended about unless they cross the line from crass to completely insensitive. That said, there is a question of how wise this strategy really is for an international promotion in 2015, where wrestling is more popular with African Americans and Hispanics in their home market. Telling an unsophisticated American morality tale was fine in the mid 1980s when Vince ran nationally. It's a bit shortsighted in 2015 when half your business comes from other countries.
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Are general discussion threads like "WWE in April 2015" allowed?
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It won't be a complete game changer because the match doesn't involve a rising star. There's no Hogan or Austin or even Lashley who become bigger mainstream stars out of this angle. It will do huge business on the night, but then everything will go back to normal as all the part-timers go back home for another year. I'm not sure WWE should be patted on the back for choosing the least worst option (given that they clearly wanted to keep Reigns a babyface and they didn't want to keep their top title iced till the summer) at their disposal, but lets not mistake this for great booking. The "surprise" Money In The Bank cash-in is a tired trope that makes new champions look weak. Reigns did lose, still looked like a chump and still got booed out of the building despite taking his beating like a man. They've got a direction that people won't care about till Brock gets back. It was a palatable finish, but didn't solve their big picture problems.
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The problem with the booking of Cena, since his Royal Rumble win in 2008, is that he often wins at the wrong time and loses at the wrong time (and to the wrong person). He's been beaten so much that just beating him once doesn't mean all that much other than extending a program, so to get someone new over in a feud with Cena they really have to beat him twice in a row. Rusev was a good person to give such a push to because he's been protected up to this point and could build to even bigger matches with Roman Reigns or Brock Lesnar.
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I've said this on Twitter but there's a decent chance this will be Sting's longest high profile singles match in over two decades. Unless there's a match I'm forgetting, Sting hasn't had an 18 and a half minute singles match on pay-per-view since 1994. Even against bad or limited opponents (Nash, Steiner, etc), Hunter's matches tend to go that long.
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Dave Meltzer actually thinks Triple H is a ring general, Will.
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The reality is Daniel Bryan would have been squashed by Brock Lesnar at SummerSlam and Roman Reigns would have still been groomed for a top slot if he hadn't gotten hurt. The uncertainty about his future didn't help, but at the end of the day Vince doesn't see him as a big enough star to call an audible and change the card around. Even if the midcard was protected better, Bryan would still have been in the sixth most important match on the card. And the exact same thing will happen next year, even if Bryan stays completely healthy, because WWE views him at a tier below the stars of the past and doesn't have the long-term potential of the rising stars on the roster.
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I totally agree with this, but I think it's more likely that next year will be built around even more legend vs. legend matches because they want to legitimately sellout Cowboys Stadium and don't have confidence in today's generation of stars to do the job. I mean there's a very good chance that we'll be seeing both Rock vs. Brock and Undertaker vs. Sting (perhaps both men's retirement match) in Dallas and when you throw in the requisite big matches for John Cena, Triple H and Randy Orton that really doesn't leave much wiggle room to push many new guys.
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This isn't a viable option for someone who WWE will pay $5 million for three matches a year.
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The problem with WWE re-signing Brock Lesnar is that they've booked their regular roster into oblivion over the past year and used up most of the dream legend matches already that they really haven't got enough money feuds to make his contract pay off.
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That's if Lesnar has re-signed with WWE. If he hasn't, do you still shoot the angle hoping that he eventually does? If Lesnar hasn't re-signed, turning Reigns heel and setting up Reigns vs. Rock for WrestleMania 32 is an obvious move.
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I really think the strength of this podcast was the thoroughness in covering everything that could be considered as falling under the developmental prism (including ECW, ECW v2.0, original NXT, etc). Very good overview of WWE's developmental history! One Paul Heyman guy you really should have mentioned (unless I switched off) is Santino Marella. I know Dylan touched on the irony of Heyman taking over from Cornette in OVW, but the cherry on top of the ice cream sundae of that story is how Paul E turned Jimbo's slapping boy into heavily pushed faux Russian shootfighter Boris Alexiev, a gimmick copied on the main roster for Vladimir Kozlov and later Rusev. I think they kept the HWA onboard after buying WCW mainly because Lawler was persona non grata after he walked out of WWE when they fired his wife Miss Kitty (so they ditched MCW as a developmental territory) and also a place for all the (mainly ex-WCW) talent to go that they were doing nothing with. OVW lasted longer than most because Danny Davis didn't rock the boat and their attempt to set-up a replacement backfired royally the first time. It's ironic that the spawn of the great Satan, Batista, burying his OVW training to his masters likely was the first nail in OVW's coffin, but it took a long time for WWE to hammer down the lid due to their own incompetence. I think what a mess Deep South was undersold. It wasn't just that Bill DeMott was an abusive trainer. He was also a divisive figure as I think he quickly formed opinions on the talent and looked after the guys he liked, whilst held grudges against those he didn't. But a bigger part of the problem from WWE's perspective was likely Jody Hamilton being unwilling to spend a dime on the place so the facilities were terrible and not wanting to run a local house show circuit because the shows would lose money (more understandable - partially WWE's fault for wanting developmental on the cheap). It didn't help that old school Hamilton wouldn't write a TV script in the format Stephanie wanted it, which at least Paul Heyman knew how to do. I suppose at least WWE learnt the lesson from DSW that if they wanted it done their way that they at least needed someone who knew the WWE system in charge.
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Regarding The Rock, part of the falling out was Vince getting pissy over him playing a gay man in Be Cool.
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Too much modern product bashing, not enough old school
kjh replied to JerryvonKramer's topic in Forums Feedback
I find a wee bit of irony about Parv complaining about board negativity given his recent "Who is your least favourite person associated with wrestling period?" thread, which promoted negative discussion about people within the wrestling business. I agree with Dylan and Kris, find the right topic and people will discuss old school wrestling more. It's also partially the natural ebb and flow of discussion. Usually historical discussion peaks in the late summer/autumn with the Observer Hall Of Fame voting. There's always more modern day WWE talk in the first quarter of the year with WrestleMania. -
I don't deal in WWE shares, but follow its value pretty closely. It's currently trading at $16.75. I think there will likely be a bump up in price when they announce the WM numbers, perhaps up to $20 a share, but I'm not 100% confident of that. It depends upon what investors think is a good number for WM, as they're starting to catch onto the idea that there will be greater churn in subscribers after the event. The best time to buy would have been just before the Rumble when the stock was approaching pre-Network hype levels.
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The problem is that Sinclair really doesn't want to spend money on ROH. Joe Koff went cap in hand to the Sinclair execs at the turn of the year and came up empty. They're not going to get into a bidding war with WWE for any talent. Plus, I could see Sinclair quickly souring on ROH if they start racking up losses because NXT is regularly running against them, and wanting to cash out by selling the ROH tape library to WWE.
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Maybe not as soon as Triple H wanted though. For years Dave Meltzer has said how upset WWE was at the indies piggybacking off the success of WrestleMania by holding house shows the same weekend in the same place, because they believed that money should be theirs and theirs alone. Ring Of Honor was most guilty of this. Plus, like El-P and KrisZ said, this is all about Triple H following in his father-in-law's footsteps and proving his chops as a promoter. What better way than beating the indies at their own game?
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At the end of the day, these two shows, albeit important due to the direction shift of the NXT brand, were just house shows that weren't aired live on the WWE Network (although some matches were taped for later editions of NXT). Dave covered them in greater depth than he would most WWE house show events and it wasn't a negative write-up. He also said in the write-up of the Columbus show: "This was not a local crowd, but people who came in from other places, whether for the Arnold Expo or just for NXT. But it was an all-WWE Network crowd that it was clear watched NXT weekly and were into hating Raw. It's really clever because WWE is now marketing the alternative to themselves. The general reaction to this show is something like ROH is going to be in trouble because you'll have a company trying for the same fan base by using the stars of ROH, with better production values and more money to spend.... Everyone was raving about the show." The big PWG write-up was because he attended the show live. If WWE had announced their WrestleMania weekend NXT show more than three weeks in advance, maybe they too could have gotten a glowing review from Dave.
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NXT is also going to run on the Friday night of WrestleMania weekend at the San Jose University Event Center.
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Mike Johnson is reporting that "NXT has a hold with the 2300 (formerly ECW) Arena in Philadelphia, PA for two dates, Friday 5/15 and Saturday 5/16" and noted that "the timing of the NXT shows would make the Arena the capital for professional wrestling that week as New Japan Pro Wrestling and Ring of Honor are running the venue on Tuesday 5/12 and Wednesday 5/13".
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Does Dave *really* hate Triple H? He thinks very highly of him as a worker. I thought Triple H got off very lightly in his Bill DeMott resignation coverage. I mean everything you needed to know was there, but you had to fill in the dots yourself. It certainly makes sense to attempt to monetise the cult following NXT has. But, Hunter is in a no-lose position, because if NXT touring loses money, then it can simply be written off as a developmental expense. There's really not that much money to be made from chasing the indy dollar. ECW touring wasn't profitable in the latter half of 2006 drawing crowds the size NXT would be expected to get. I'm sure talent costs for NXT will be lower than ECW, but this isn't a big money proposition. The real story is that Triple H needs to convince Wall Street that he's the right successor to Vince McMahon. Being able to follow in Vince's footsteps and nationally expand his own brand would be strong evidence that WWE investors should trust him to take over the keys to the castle. Given that NXT's financial losses can be covered up by clever accounting, more nebulous indicators of success like social media buzz and trending stats can be touted in Hunter's favour. Regarding Hunter's relationship with Internet fans, clearly he sees us as whiny children: easy to manipulate, but stomp our feet when we don't get what we want. So, of course, he's going to use us to his own advantage where it suits him best and play to our whims with NXT where it doesn't really matter.
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Dave Meltzer confirmed a lot of what we've been speculating here in this week's Observer (only quoting the most relevant sentences of the paragraph):
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Who is your least favourite person associated with wrestling period?
kjh replied to JerryvonKramer's topic in Pro Wrestling
I'm not sure this quite gels with the history. Part of the reason local TV stations started expecting to get paid to air wrestling is because Vince went to many of them offering them his programming with a weekly check to get his territorial rivals kicked off the air. -
WWE is really set up now where there are no money programs, and more important is the overall hotness of the brand as a whole. But even with weak WresleMania build and cold audiences, WWE knows that this year they will still be able to tout a record number of subs for their Network come the end of the month, which leads to a degree of arrogance and complacency in the company. So WWE will do whatever they damn well please, until they get to a quarter where it looks like they have to report a drop in WWE Network subscribers and panic sets in again. I strongly believe we'll have to sit through a Roman Reigns vs. Big Show feud purely for the sins of the fans in Philly, because Vince needs to show them all who's boss.
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The Jim Ross Is A Grouchy Hateful Vile Human Being thread
kjh replied to Loss's topic in Megathread archive
On Sirius XM, Jim Ross noted that "the kids of the last ten years have changed" and openly wondered: "You have to wonder what the future leaders of the country will be like if they can't take rejection or they feel like they are entitled to something they haven't earned."