Migs

It's interesting how universal it seems to be that 3 hours is about the most anyone wants out of a show, and yet so many promoters still put on 4 hour shows with regularity. I think it's probably just an attempt to advertise as many wrestlers as possible, and then being confronted with the reality that each match needs a decent amount of time. I mean, the last ROH show I went to was 4 hours, but it wasn't because they were being inefficient in getting matches out or because anything was overly long.

"I don't believe he's smart enough to do it" is shockingly similar to the justification for not investigating him back in the day. The man made his money playing a "dumb savage."

I actually just watched a ton of 1991 WWF. My first instinct is that, hindsight being 20/20, of course you want to drop the Gulf War angle. The only problem is what you replace it with, because the company was in a really bad position re: main eventers at that point. They could have run Hogan-Warrior II at Wrestlemania with Hogan winning, but that probably kills Warrior for good after his weak reign. (And of course, at the time they don't know he'd be leaving in four months.) They could have slotted Savage into the title shot at the Rumble and had him win the belt, and then build to Hogan-Savage one more time in Wrestlemania. That might work if you do a retirement match stip on top of it being for the belt. Then you'd slot Warrior down to face Slaughter at Wrestlemania, or do something with him v. the Undertaker to set up the summer house show run they had (which was pretty successful). I guess they could have run Warrior-Savage on top at Mania, belt v. career, but that doesn't seem like it's a strong move. Not sure what you do with Hogan in that case. Maybe a toned down version of him v. Slaughter. They really went hard at rebuilding the top of the card in the summer, bumping up Undertaker, pushing heel Roberts hard, bringing in Sid and Flair. For the most part, it makes for a really entertaining run. Flair's impact is sort of curtailed because his character isn't quite built to be a hot heel in the WWF - he's not dominant and imposing in any way, so he doesn't register as a real threat to Hogan. One way they could have fixed this was to give Flair, if not the Horsemen, then something similar. I think what really didn't work about Flair's Survivor Series team was giving him guys that were way too similar to him - Flair doesn't seem special when he's teaming with Dibiase and the Mountie. Instead you'd give him heavies - Haku and Barbarian (sent off to SWS for most of the year, but maybe you just don't do that), Warlord, Berzerker, maybe even Hercules (god, that WWF heel roster blows). Let him use those guys the way he used the Andersons early on - not to hide behind, but to augment his attack and make it seem like he was unstoppable because of the overall force he could muster. Maybe then he heats up enough that the challenge to Hogan feels more real and they get a Wrestlemania main event out of it.

And they have by changing his presentation since WrestleMania. What else are they supposed to do? Just fire a guy who is a top merchandise seller and gets the loudest reactions on every show, regardless of if it's the reaction they "want" him to get? I wouldn't change course with him either. Keep presenting him as a tweener the way they are now. I'm not sure how you could look at them pairing him against smark darlings like AJ & Rollins as anything BUT manipulating the crowd. Oh, playing him as a tweener against smark favorites is absolutely the right way to go. If they just let Reigns act like a person and react to these guys in a natural way, they're going to get enjoyable main events, they're going to get those other guys over, and they won't have to give up the Reigns merch sales by hard turning him. I think a good analogue for Reigns as a worker is 1988-1989 Sting. Good power guy, big moves that pop the crowd, can work smartly and have a great match if he has a good opponent but I wouldn't want to watch them against a stiff. Of course, I think smartly they've gotten past the stage where they'd program him with stiffs. They're not doing Reigns v. Strowman. Reigns v. Rollins is going to be really good.

Why in the world should the WWE listen to fans that are so stupid they chant "You can't wrestle" at a guy having an incredible year instead of someone who actually DOES suck like Chris Jericho? (or Dean Ambrose for that matter) Because the fact that a few fans on the internet enjoy someone's work doesn't mean that the fans in the building don't have a right to taunt Reigns. If you think their chants are bullshit, that's fine, but people can dislike Reigns for whatever reason they want. And they do. The notion that Reigns has become some amazing worker because he willingly took a beating from Sheamus and looked good in a gimmick three way in February is a little overblown, and consciously contrarian. He's spent the last two months in the ring with a guy who was arguably the wrestler of the year both of the past two years and has been having high level matches with a variety of opponents all over the world. If he couldn't have a good match with Styles, he'd be a legitimately terrible worker, which he's not. He's perfectly acceptable and does the WWE Main Event Style well enough. That would probably be fine with most fans if the booking for him hadn't been dog shit until about a month ago. But hey, it was. The way he was booked at this Rumble, supposedly a big moment for him, was so unconscionably bad if they wanted fans to get behind him. The idea of him being more of a tweener, and certainly not pandering, seems to be helping. But the two years of bad booking have left a really bad taste in my mouth. I couldn't get around to seeing the PPV until after midnight last night, and I skipped the main event because it was too late and I was too tired to be annoyed by a Reigns win. I've got a visceral negative reaction to the guy, and I'm clearly not alone.

Absolutely agree. Don't see why this isn't possible for them. They sold out NYC, so it wasn't an issue in that regard, but it still struck of poor planning.

This is probably a ridiculous request, but can you describe those? I've watched plenty of Midnight Express, but other than the Rocket Launcher and Flapjack I don't think I can name any of their finishers. Veg-o-matic was Stan grabbing a guy in a bearhug and leaning over so Bobby could hit him with the Alabama Jam. Too Cool used it a couple of times. The Double Goozle was a chop block from Lane hitting at the same time as a Bobby would land a Barry Windham-esque lariat. Don't know the Grave Digger. Grave Digger is Bobby sitting on the top rope, Lane lifting the guy up to him, and Bobby doing what was essentially a top rope spinebuster.

Funny, because my argument against long podcasts is the Lapsed Fan Starrcade death slog given the numbers theyre doing your argument doesnt hold a lot of weight You get credits for clicks/downloads, even if someone taps out partway through.

I'm doing an article, so a couple of months probably. However, between having a job, doing my own stuff and yadda yadda yadda, there might not as much time as it sounds. Thanks for the suggestions so far guys. Which show would I need to be checking out primarily if I went back to 1991? Worldwide, Saturday Night or Main Event? I'm assuming Saturday Night, but tell me if I'm wrong. The key promos are on Saturday Night. The matches are all over.

2004 and 2005 Raws are going up.

They announced the lineup for NYC about a week before the show, then changed a large chunk of it about three days before.

I'd start with Havoc '91 and watch the Rude stuff there. You want hit all the big shows (Starrcade is an exception) and watch all the relevant pieces of those. For the first few months of the TV, you only really need to hit the big angles (like Paul E's formation promo, the attacks on Sting, etc.). There's a ton of good wrestling, but it's just WCW B-show stuff. You don't NEED to see Austin/Eaton v. Pillman/Zenk, even if it's good. Picking the TV up in more depth after Superbrawl is probably the right cut off.

This comes down to pre & post production in most cases. The reason a lot of those other shows are able to keep the length down is the do a good amount of work before recording to prep for their topics and then they tend to edit down long form conversations into bite size pieces so they come across more exciting. A lot of this passion project podcasts just don't have the time or resources to do the same thus what you end up with is a much longer, raw product. Good point.

I get both sides of the discussion - but I'm curious for the people saying that the shows HAVE to be that long to properly cover the topic - why are wrestling podcasts unique in terms of needing to be long? Even really good conversations on something like the Bill Simmons Podcast tend to work best for me at 60-75 minutes, and I don't feel like anything is being underserved. Same is true of the Channel 33 podcasts (although many of them cover current issues, which is a bit different). Serial, Undisclosed, Celebration Rock... they always work at that length. Maybe it's just that those podcasts are being constrained and I'd like them just as much at an hour more, but I'm not convinced of that.

Hope this is germane to this section. This might be an unpopular opinion but - I think I would listen to a lot more of the PTB Nation podcasts if they were shorter. My tolerance for individual podcasts, unless they very deeply capture my interest, is somewhere between 60 and 75 minutes. And so I find get through a piece of a lot of the shows but don't finish them. Could I come back to them? Sure, but I listen to a bunch of podcasts and don't want wrestling podcasts to dominate my listening. Again, I might be totally alone here, which is fine. Just wanted to share my thoughts, as it might be useful feedback if a lot of people share my opinion.

Punk doesn't really strike me as a regular looking guy in the blue collar sense. Build-wise, sure. Punk looks like a regular guy if you go to punk or hard rock shows. Which is a piece of the fan base, and is blue collar in a way.

There seems to be an unwillingness within the company to strap a rocket to the guys that get over. The two most over non-New Japan and non-Bullet Club guys on the show on Saturday were Dalton Castle and Moose (in that order). They wrestled second from the bottom in a four corners match.

I went to the Terminal 5 show on Saturday night. A few thoughts: - After all the discussion of ROH not getting big wins, they did get to take the main event, pinning a New Japan guy in the process. (I actually lost a bet to my friends and bought a round of drinks because of this - I figured there was no way an NJ guy was taking the pin.) Naito-ACH and Tanahashi-Sydal were both good but anti-climactic, however. - Holy shit, Dalton Castle. What a reaction. His work lived up to the reaction, too, which was nice to see. The show really lost steam for a while after that match - the crowd was a little burnt. - It was a VERY long show - four hours including intermission. Felt like a bit of overkill, although I'm not sure what I'd cut. The Evolve show I went to a couple of months ago was a much tighter 2 1/2 hours, which is really the optimal length for a show. This was starting to feel reminiscent of the USA Pro shows I used to go to (of course, I wasn't of legal drinking age then, which didn't help). - They got a good reaction, but I can't quite get into ReDRagon. - Okada's entrance, with all the Okada bucks, was super cool in person. - Addiction getting DQed to keep the belts wasn't very ROH, but the Addiction as a whole feels so different than a lot of the roster that I think it worked for now. - Nice going away pop for Cedric Alexander.

What's the reasoning on ROH TV being so stale? Like, they ran a huge angle this week, but there's no way the TV in the next two weeks will cover it, and none of the shows this week were billed as a TV taping. That's going to hurt their momentum (how much, given their current model, I don't know). Is it just a cost thing that they tape so infrequently? You'd think a taping every three weeks would make sense.

And of course the Flair/Garvin Detroit match. The Midnights-Fantastics match (Fantastics' debut) on Pro and the US title change on Worldwide are both epic.

ECW 8/30/94 has the NWA tournament, Douglas throwing down the belt, all of the changeover - AND the Dreamer-Sandman 10 cane lashes "Please sir, may I have another" angle. It's a really defining hour.

Don't think Ambrose would have to turn. For a start, he would be a dreadful heel as a singles wrestler, doesn't have the offence to carry it off or the ability to be in control of a match for long periods. You could just run the match as it is now, since the fans who are in love with Ambrose are the types to despise Reigns. Just run it as a weird face vs face match with ambiguity. That is the beauty of Roman Reigns right now, he can work with a face or a heel because his reactions are so mixed. Reigns = an inverse mid-80s Flair? Flair being the champ who was a heel but had a lot of love from the fans, so he could feud with a face, or you could have him feud with a heel, be the babyface, and not turn him. Reigns could be a champ who is nominally a face and would get cheers against many heels, but would be booed (resoundingly) against many faces. Could be a workable dynamic, at least for a stretch.

Pretty much every Midnight Express finisher. Veg-o-Matic > Double Goozle > Gravedigger > Rocket Launcher > Flapjack.