MoS

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.

I'm just glad they are not reaching out to Russo for creative salvation. Dude almost ruined the Greatest Rivalries DVD when he presented Austin v. McMahon.

I agree Corny sounds way off his rocker when he goes on those kind of rants. Although parts of me thinks Corny is just cutting a promo, because that's what these old-school guy always do. If he really is cutting a promo, then Russo is right: Corny is using him to get over. Goddamn it, fuck you Cornette for making me take fucking Russo's side, no matter how superficially.