MoS

Sorry for the really long post above haha. Also, just found this cool article on a prominent Indian news channel website about the two Undertakers storyline. http://www.indiatvnews.com/entertainment/hollywood-the-story-of-two-the-undertakers-brian-lee-and-mark-callaway-375481

I have been to America, on exchange for a semester. It was in Alabama. It was overall a beautiful place and I had a lot of fun, and it was a great semester, although I certainly met a few people with..highly interesting views. I had also visited NYC and LA as a kid, but this was before 9/11 so it was a completely different place. India is a tough country to visit if you are American. Whenever American friends and colleagues I know come here, I advise them to pack as much snacks as possible and to eat nothing but plain sandwiches for the first couple of days to ease themselves here haha. C.S, Jinder does get coverage here; in fact, WWE gets coverage here probably because unlike the USA, wrestling is not taboo here (well, not as much) so PPVs get a mention and report in pretty "mainstream" papers, at least for their web edition. As far as Jinder is perceived, although I do not regularly follow the Hindi shows, from what I have seen, his very heelish actions are decried and considered unfortunate, but he is not treated as a full-blown heel. There is definitely some buzz about there being an Indian-origin WWE champion, but it's not nearly as much as you would expect, because Jinder was a jobber for like, a decade before this push. Stuff like him celebrating Independence day in the ring did get a lot of mentions, which helps because WWE's prime source of revenue here is TV rights. They earn a fuckload through rights here. I do not think he has a huge demand here, because the official WWE merchandising partner has just one t-shirt and no other gear listed for him, and very few other merchandise, mostly phone covers, so clearly there is not a lot of demand to watch the Maharaja. (For those interested, their website is - https://www.thesouledstore.com/wwe ) Also, while he speaks Punjabi, Hindi and Punjabi are close enough to understand what he says, unlike other Indian languages like Tamil, Malayalam, Bengali, etc. If I had to make a guess, Khali is much, much more well-known and famous and popular than Jinder. He has appeared on so many news channels, and was even a part of the Indian version of Big Brother. This seems strange because Khali is probably a shittier wrestler than Jinder, but while I am now hoping the Jinder experiment dies quickly and quietly, I will always defend Khali getting a cup of coffee with SD's world title. It was covered on various news channels in a manner that was literally unprecedented. Fuck, I remember them even doing a profile on his potential opponents like "the HIGHLY dangerous Undertaker" It helped that he made his debut against Taker and went over, because for the previous generation of fans, Taker WAS WWE. Massively popular and well-known, "Undertaker" even appeared in a Bollywood movie where he was a pro wrestler and an evil henchman. Brian Lee played him, and he had a wrestling "match" with Crush, who was uncredited. (Wrestling trivia - Undertaker won the match by killing Crush and putting him in the casket) Debuting against him and then going over helped with his buzz tremendously, and I would say the massive increase in WWE rights fees (and demand for more WWE content) is linked to Khali getting over massively. 13 years ago, Raw and SD would air 2 weeks later, and would often be pre-empted by other programs. Now it airs live, including in Hindi on one channel, and has plenty of Indian talk shows and review episodes, which undoubtedly result in a lot of cash for WWE, and I really believe they have Khali to thank for that. With Jinder it is not the same because not only is he not the first (or even Indian), he is also, unlike Khali, not a giant or a freak of nature. He is just a normal looking dude who got an inexplicably big push after being a jobber for a decade. His promos are entertaining, particularly when he is trolling American fans, but he is more dull than bad, and that is worse. He has also not had a super-worker like 2007 Cena carry him to surprisingly great matches. Nothing about him jumps out apart from his ugly acne, so it is understandable why he has not taken the country by storm. Perhaps a more talented worker could have done the "ordinary Indian making his way to the top in America much to the hatred of some" gimmick, which could have made him a face here and a heel elsewhere, but Jinder is not that guy. And honestly, his constantly dull matches are now boring the fuck out of me. Having bad matches with Orton is one thing, but a bad match with Nakamura a couple of weeks after Nak tore down the house with Cena? Urgh. tl;dr - Not a fan, really, and I would wager if Cena was carrying the belt instead of Jinder, it would not have made a particularly significantly difference as far as business in India is concerned.

Yeah, born, raised, and living here!

The current Indian government is actually really conducive to foreign companies and deals, and has eased multiple regulations for ease of business, which is why it's surprising to me. Perhaps it is more about logistics and other international tours WWE is doing? I do not think Cena came last time, and he is easily the biggest draw here, so they would want Cena headlining here. As far as walkup business is concerned, it depends on the event and the demographic. For movies, there is still a lot of walkup, since movies are watched by most people, of different demos and income groups. A WWE live even would be different I think, since the primary demo would beurban middle-class youngsters, so most of it will be advanced booking. They have been sending guys on publicity tours quite a lot (one of my most surreal moments as both a cricket fan and a wrestling fan was watching The New Day in the studio during an Indian premier League cricket match - I never thought the twain shall meet) but the specific dates and publicity for them might be an issue if they go on sale on short notice. That said, because most of the targeted customers are on the Internet and have also probably "liked" WWE on Facebook, and because WWE is massively popular in India and we got zero events for 13 years, they will probably eventually sell out. Hell, compared to house shows in America, tickets were ridiculously expensive - the cheapest tickets, when taking into account price differential and cost of living, cost an equivalent of around $100 - and they still sold out anyway.

It's tentatively scheduled for the 2nd part of September, but yeah, nothing official. Cricket matches do not happen in the stadium they ran last time, and there is no football in September (and I do not think they run that stadium either) so I really don't know why they have not reached an official deal. Must be some contractual hurdles with the government (the stadium they ran in is under a government authority.)

Even I am now beginning to wish the Jinder experiment dies quickly and quietly and is never mentioned again, and I am reasonably fond of some of his trolling promos.

One of the reasons I love Authors of Pain, apart from them being a good hoss tag team, is because Akam being of Indian descent means we finally have an Indian-origin wrestler in WWE who is not shitty (although I will always have a soft spot for the Great Khali simply for him awkwardly trying to do bhangra in his babyface run.)

Watched this right now and it was excellent. Asuka is so bloody cool. It was an entertaining show that made fans happy at the end of it ("put smiles on their faces") and really, what else do you want from pro wrestling?

The WWE Network would be more successful here if, like Netflix, Amazon Prime, even Fight Pass, they simply had the option of accepting domestic cards which have international transactions enabled. Instead, they seem to want multi-currency/global cards, which very, very few people have. I myself am not subscribed to the Network because of this, and I have a subscription to all the three other OTT services I mentioned. Jinder has been getting some publicity, but not as much as you would expect, and the fact that he was (deservedly) a jobber for the last several years is one of the main reasons why. His push came out of nowhere and just seems inorganic.

I also absolutely loved Mark Henry coming out to Three 6 Mafia's Some bodies gonna get it. Mark Henry is a cool, badass motherfucker, and when he would come out as "Somebody gon get their ass kicked" would blare over the P.A system, he seemed even cooler and more badass.

The broken glass sound and the original music was absolutely perfect for Austin. I do not know how they got the idea to use that sound for him, but it was a perfect match. It just seemed right. Pomp and Circumstance was also great, and an excellent fit for Savage. Props to WCW for getting Voodoo Child rights as well, although the Hendrix estate revoked the rights to WWE later, if I remember correctly.

Being "passionate" in a negative way has always seemed really unhealthy to me and it is a cinema obsession I have never understood. I just hope no one gets seriously hurt.

The time zone issue might be too much to hold a PPV/TV show here, but their house shows a couple of years back were really profitable. And while most Indian fans certainly do not read Meltzer or come to sites like PWO (their loss, for I have learned so much here) to say they wouldn't know a good match from an awful one is being pretty ignorant and really, downright stupid. The most popular stars in India in the last 15 years have been Cena and Mysterio. It is not that big a co-incidence that they are also excellent wrestlers. It is really not too different from non-smarky/"hardcore" Ameridan wrestling towns.

They do not treat Jinder as a face when he cheats or does heel shit, but they do not treat him as a dastardly heel either. "Ooh he cheated, that is unfortunate, should not have done that. But hey, Jinder wins!!" for example. I guess they are looking at how huge Khali got over in India and want to replicate it. Except Khali getting over was due to a wide variety of reasons, none of which Jinfer can replicate. When presented properly, he looked like a physical marvel, was booked really strong when he won the title, including a clean victory over Taker, on a PPV, etc. Also, he was actually Indian. WWE does not really need to have an Indian champ to sell out arenas here while touring. Wrestling is huge here and they will do so anyway. I remember John Cena being stunned at how many people turned up and how much they were cheering for him when he came here for a promotional tour in 2005, and this was when the backlash against him had firmly become a thing. When they came here last time, they sold out their shows while charging prices for tickets up to 4-5 times that of a normal American house show, if we look at price differential and in real value terms. Jinder has got some traction on the news channels and everything, and mainstream newspapers reported the title change. But these papers also report other major events that happen in WWE. A face champ would be better perhaps, but I genuinely do not think they would book a face Indian world champ to have a multiple-month title reign. I admit though: I do enjoy it when he trolls American viewers by saying shit like "Now, I will speak to my people, IN PUNJABI!!" It also sounds really entertaining when you are high.

They are denying it, fwiw https://www.bloodyelbow.com/2017/7/19/16001738/ufc-brock-lesnar-usada-testing-pool-novitzky-wwe-mma-news

I agree Rock's promos were often empty; it was his charisma that made them entertaining or over. Without his charisma they would have stopped meaning anything in 6 months, and indeed when he came back, they mostly did not mean anything. The atmosphere and the setting of WWE now is different and his promos sounded as hollow as they could. I firmly believe he was comfortably outpromo'd by Cena and Punk because that kind of promo style was always going to have a limited shelf life; it is just that Rock's charisma ensured his shelf life was longer. I guess many wrestlers took the wrong lesson from his success, and thought just having tons of catchphrases and many sing-a-long promos would get you over. I remember Meltzer once saying that it is often foolish to look at what Rock did and what worked for him as precedent or justification for your booking, because he was the exception to the rule. If you had a roster full of Rocks, of course you could get away with doing anything. But you don't, and you most likely never will. I think Dave was bang-on with that. Coming back to Enzo and Cas, I thought Enzo did a tremendous job in their squash match playing a wrestler who was game and wanted to fight and prove his "toughness" but was ultimately completely outmatched. His facial expressions when he was taking a beating and when he was trying to make a comeback, only to fail, were excellent.

Both Rock and the NAO relied on using catchphrases a ton, but the Rock was infinitely more charismatic so got exponentially more over and drew a lot more money, so I can see them being jealous of Rock. In his prime, Rock was one of those people whose interview could be billed as the main event of the card and it would sell out the arena. Pity he was so awful in his comeback run, although I guess his material was never going to age well.

I didn't know about this. When did Rock call out Dogg? This is also interesting because I thought there was also heat between NAO and Hunter for the longest time.

I look at how Goldberg was booked in the first month or so of his return and I think if Reigns is booked like that (obviously not identically but in the same vein) he wouldn't have the mixed reaction issue, at least not to the same extent. Goldberg in his opening promo came across as a bigger ass-kicking cool badass babyface than Reigns and all his "I am THE guy" promos. So I guess the company does know how to book babyfaces and make them look badass instead of geeks or losers who cannot hang with the evil heels, but..they choose not to do that with Reigns and co.? I dunno, it is very weird. I really like Goldberg, but Reigns is a significantly better worker than he is, and yet he has never looked as good as Goldberg was booked to look, even without the surprise squashes.

Does Christian count? He was the ace for WWECW for a year and had a cup of coffee with their secondary world title a couple of times, but apart from that he never had a big singles run as a top star.

It's the whole Benoit debate again (and so close to the ten years' anniversary of that tragedy) where we have to ask ourselves if wrestling for so many years and taking so many bumps played a role in the tragedy. I do not know a lot of details of this incident and Breaks's mental state, and in any case I do not have any appetite for having that entire debate again, but I do not think it is something that can be discounted.

Hopefully this dude gets perma-banned soon.

We know that wrestling is full of awful people, but stuff like this really jarres you out of a stoic acceptance of that. Awful, awful stuff and again makes me really question myself for being a wrestling fan.

What exactly was Global Force Wrestling? I was not keeping track of it; did it run any shows? Or was it essentially a talent agency which contracted wrestlers and made deals for them to appear on various promotions' shows?

But that's part of the bullshit Russo narrative. Cornette hating Russo has plenty to do with Russo politicking him out of his WWE booking job and later doing the same to get him fired as a TNA road agent. He also hates Russo for the damage that he feels Russo inflicted on the business, but it's not the whole thing. I do think it's possible at this point that Russo has deluded himself into thinking Cornette only hates him because of what he booked, but he's also a compulsive liar so who really knows? Either way, the whole "Bro, why would you wanna kill somebody over FAKE WREST-A-LING?!?!" shtick is a fabrication. Fair enough. Depriving someone of their livelihood and a job in a profession they love to death while doing almost irreparable damage to that profession is much more justifiable. I was going through 1999 WWF a few days back, Russo's last few months with the company, and dear Lord it is terrible. Absolutely awful. Forget about the well-documented horrible mid-card stuff, even the main event scene is terrible. That entire Austin-HHH-McMahon angle is so utterly boring, the only reason Austin survived that was because he was teflon by that time. Even then, I felt that Russo had started to actually damage Austin's character and his overness due to consistent terrible segments and booking, a feat almost admirable because of how impossible it seemed. Really, Austin survived a lot of awful shit booking like the Satanic Undertaker angle, being embalmed and crucified and whatever, and it might have led to a drastic decline in WWE's business shortly after becuse, as I said, the constant horrible booking had started to damage the company's top draw. WWE dodged an arguably fatal bullet when Russo departed. Chris Kreski might very well be the most underrated booker of all-time. His seamless, inter-connected, logically consistent angles in 2000 up and down the card led to arguably the greatest year in company history.