efrim

Perhaps not hardcore by PWO standards. But there is nothing casual about a fan who regularly goes to wrestling news sites. I considered myself among the most hardcore until I started posting here. Now I consider myself a padawan at best.

With the erratic, unpredictable booking and the sloppy, dangerous ring work I got really hooked on the idea that the brawl for all was legit back in 1998. Stupid in retrospect - I mean nobody would be dumb enough to imperil the health and image of fake fighters in a real and completely off-the-cuff toughman contest!

Harper is way too good to give him the dreaded "generic big man" tag. Some of his work with Bryan has been superb. Rowan is pretty mundane, but he has a good look and he's big enough that some of his offense just looks nasty - plus you can hide him easily enough in a 6 man.

Yeah, I'm enjoying it pretty well too. I think it'll succeed somewhat in spite of clumsy booking. WWE booking heel/heel doesn't exactly fill me with confidence. Still, these are just two very dynamic, interesting squads and it mostly takes care of itself. I can recall a Raw a while back where they almost came to blows and it got an awesome reaction from the crowd - the kind of organically surprised and excited reaction you don't get much. Shame there won't be more time to tell the story with the writing on the wall for the breakup of The Shield.

I don't think it really matters if he has enough for life right now or not. He could easily parlay his stardom in to some media/commentary role, be it for mma or wrestling or nerd culture or whatever. Not to mention appearances/signings, speaking engagements. I'm sure he has enough for several years and he claims to have spent very little of his money beyond his home purchase. Plus he collects rent from his bottom floor tenants. Unless he develops more expensive tastes in the boredom of retirement, he should be fine not having to return to wrestling.

I think Ryback might be ready to rebuild as a singles competitor, its kind of slight, but his twitter trolling has been fun and I'd like to see them flesh that out somehow. Axel doesn't have much to recommend him imo, but I think he'd look solid as a real American next to Swagger. The Aryan master race look of the two would be right for a crypto-racist outfit.

This is my thinking precisely. The fact that Bryan just fills a massive amount of TV time is not insignificant - But without star booking it doesn't mean so much in the end. In some ways I feel like he's getting an upgraded version of contemporary Chris Jericho booking. He's booked seriously most of the time, but ultimately clears out or makes somebody else look good.

I mean if you buy the notion that they're doing this stealth top-guy booking, then that entire thing hinges on Daniel Bryan being held down unjustly because he is too pure and beautiful for this world. Such a guy has no business just taking a clean loss in the blow off match of a major feud. That is demonstrably a guy that is not rising above his station.

The way Raw played out and the Bryan worked tweets hitting after the wrap-up of the Rumble have gotten some people clucking about what a bunch of marks everyone is. Their criticism of the "omg what a burial" doom-sayers is justified, but I don't think that necessarily means that they know what they've got and this is all carefully orchestrated. I think what people haven't mentioned as much (and maybe didn't even consciously realize) is that the crowd jumped to the assumption that Bryan was in the Rumble because of the booking of the rest of the show. Bryan loses clean to Wyatt and the same night Wyatt is rolled up at the undisputed top of the totem poll guy in Cena. So you've got Bryan decisively losing a big feud and immediately being portrayed as the small fish next to Cena. After it went down like that I immediately figured Bryan would get to save face by a win or at least a great showing in the rumble. Fans are conditioned, "smart" or not, and everybody knows that faces don't just eat shit like that unless they're Kofi or The Big Show or something. If you had Bryan getting the win earlier, or at least not eating the loss so hard, I'm not sure you get the insane reaction during the rumble for a guy that was clearly not stated or hinted to be a part of it. So for me, the Wyatt loss says a lot more than the lack of a rumble win. If that's a top 3 or so guy for you heading in to Wrestlemania and your head spun around by the top of the cage moment, I can't believe you would go out and make him look so weak and secondary at the exact time he needs to be hitting high gear.

Yeah, that match was hot garbage.

Particularly this year, and I imagine in years to come, people are going to sign up for the network just in time to see Wrestlemania. Considering that they'll want to keep such subscribers hooked the whole year, could this mean a bump in prominence for the October PPV that would be just out of reach for somebody that signed up in April with a 6 month contract? Would be interesting as its usually a time WWE is usually in low gear.

I saw Owen/Bret cage match live when I was nine years old. One of only two shows I got to go to as a kid. I'll never be able to see it with adult eyes. I tried to re-watch it objectively last year, but I can't do it. All I think is ZOMG AWESOME.

This was my thought. I'm in Illinois, so I've seen both a few times for AAW.

Thought of this today when I saw that Elgin vs Richards from 2012 is a 5-star match. Haven't watched it, but I quite dislike Elgin and am not that fond of Richards either.

Poor 1994 Meltzer, he had no idea how much worse it would get in a few years.

Man, in addition to everything else, the network is going to have a documentary mini-series on the life and career of William Regal. shutup and take my money already.

Had the pleasure of going to a really nice house show in Chicago last night. Highlight of the night was easily a six-man tornado tag between Uso's/D Bry and The Wyatt's. Escape was the only victory method, which made for an interesting dynamic with escapees helping their team while also putting them at a one man disadvantage. Can't recall seeing such a match type in the past, was a refreshing surprise for a house show.

Whole match was a masterpiece. Regal's selling was perfect and a real showcase for that aspect of his game. Impossible not to feel sympathy for his cause.

Thanks for the thoughts and the vote of support. I'll try to check in occasionally with this thread and speak on my progress/solicit further brainstorming.

I've tried out TEW some as well. The scope and consideration was very impressive, but I found that as a game it just became too slow paced and laborious. I'm not sure I have the talent to pull this off, but what I'm kind of shooting for is EWR's speed of play with a level of accuracy closer to TEW.

Yeah, my notion is that certain wrestlers would have an impressive laundry list of skills and that others would be more focused "specialists", just as it really is. I want to make a wrestling simulation that actually rewards smart booking and using guys in roles that accentuate their positives. Ideally, it would be impossible to stock your roster with a bunch of Ric Flair's, because they would command too much money...you'd have to balance a few top guys like that with less expensive guys that can succeed within a more narrow role. Actually, I think a really fun mechanic for the game would be little insurrection's if you have too many uber-talented alpha dogs on your roster that you can only give mid-card slots to. I had a lot of fun with EWR, but the way its coded will reward you hand over fist if you just stock the roster exclusively with workrate machines. EWR really lacked an effective way to convey why a guy like The Undertaker or Andre the Giant or Hulk Hogan works as a top level star. I'd like my game to have a better system for defining the full range of what actually succeeds in wrestling.

Exactly what I'm talking about. I think Austin has referred to this as a "mechanic" on his podcast. You hear these kind of traits get mentioned all the time, whether or not they have a catchy name for it.

I'm working on a wrestling simulation game in the vein of EWR as a hobby horse project to help myself learn additional coding. Having a background in RPG video games and D&D, I'm thinking at this point about the "character sheet" of a pro wrestler. EWR has the simple system of a 1-100 scale in technical/high flying/brawling plus another 1-100 scale in charisma for mic skills. It then has a few additional "attributes" such as "superstar look" or "high spots" that unlock additional options or gimmicks. Its not a bad basic system, but it creates all kinds of issues that bug me like the inability of a great high flyer to have a good match with a great brawling big man that understands David and Goliath psychology. There's also no way to express things like "this guy sucks by any measure of technical skill, but what he does he does extremely well." It comes down to a lot of aspects in wrestling not boiling down to a 1-100 scale of skill, but rather to how a guy can perform in a particular situation. I'm working on making a list of these kind of traits/exceptions to the rule that a wrestler can have and I thought this would be an awesome place to toss the idea around since so many of you are really fine observers of pro wrestling nuance. This is the kind of thing I'm talking about and looking for: Nurse Maid - This wrestler is great at bringing along green wrestlers, a green wrestler will always do well against this wrestler and will have better chances to grow his skills (example: William Regal) Natural Monster - This wrestler is at his most compelling when booked in a highly dominant fashion, dominant booking greatly increases his base skills and crowd appeal (example: Goldberg, Road Warriors) Tag Specialist - in addition to any chemistry with a particular partner, this wrestler is generally at his best in tag matches (example: Billy Gunn) Solid Base - This wrestler may not be a high flyer himself, but he understands working with them and uses his size and strength as an asset in such matches (example: Antonio Cesaro) This is a "feat" for a D&D character, which is how this kind of thing applies when fleshed out in a game setting: Opportunity Shot [General, Fighter] You shoot so fast that you can make ranged attacks of opportunity at point-blank range. Benefit When armed with a ranged weapon that is ready for use, you have an effective reach of 30 ft. (up to the range of your weapon) and can make ranged attacks of opportunity in any area out to this range. You may not make ranged attacks of opportunity if you are standing in an area threatened by an opponent. Normal Ranged weapons normally can't make attacks of opportunity, and you have no threatened area when using them.

Does anyone know where the bland yet bizarre quality of NXT names comes from? I'm really curious who comes up with these.

yeah, but its like +1 interesting for the title unification possibility and -100 interesting for being Cena/Orton