Jesse Ewiak

I'm only half way through this to the presentation part, so if this comes up, forgive me. But, here's my elevator pitch. "Instead of aiming for the people (or 9 year olds) watching Knight Rider & The A-Team, this Vince'd NWA would target the people (or 12 year olds) watching Hill Street Blues, Miami Vice, & Dallas."

I've said it before. AJ Styles is what would happen if Sting was actually a great worker, but stuck in a company even more screwy and self-destructive so that no one wants to wade through the shit booking and storylines to get to the matches.

You'd be surprised how many fans of news sites don't actually know more than the bare minimum about other promotions than WWE. Over on Reddit, their pro wrestling subreddits has tens of thousands of subscribers, and it's 98% WWE-related posts. Places like here, DVDVR, or even the F4W board are the exception, not the rule. The difference between Kong and Harris is that Kharma had a storyline, was pushed, and was a focus of shows enough that people would actually remember her WWE run. That totally eclipses whatever drawing power she had in TNA, because well, it's TNA. Braden Walker was little more than a jobber for a few months.

Most likely, Danielson and Low-Ki were known quantities. Gulak and Busick aren't. Most people who are fans of any kind of entertainment give creators they like more rope than people they have no idea.

I think this is where you and I disagree. In a lot of PWG-ish type crowd, not singling them out, but they're the ones I think of off the top of my head, if a wrestler came out and acted like an asshole, they'd cheer him ironically, especially he say, pulled the Foley "anti-hardcore" gimmick and only did headlocks and snap mares or something like that. The PWG fans aren't coming out to boo bad guys and cheer good guys, largely. They're coming out for good matches, with little care for who wins and who loses. I'm not saying you can't get booed, but if you're getting booed, it's not for typical wrestling reasons, it's for out of kayfabe reason. I mean, if you don't like it, don't watch it. I'm not saying anybody should. But, by the same token, not every crowd has to be the same way. There can be smarky crowds chanting bullshit, hardcore kid dominated crowds booing the good guys and cheering the good guys, or even a mixture.

It's not a get off my lawn situation, because era or age has nothing to do with it from my end. They're also still fans, just not fans I really want to associate with because they would ruin my enjoyment of the wrestling we're watching. It's no different than the idiots at baseball games who hurl personal insults at the players, they're still fans, but my hubris comes over the fact that they are only interested in making the event all about them. But, this is the exact opposite of "hurling insults." This is showering praise on the wrestlers. I bet you every football, basketball, and baseball player in the world would love it if the crowds would chant "This is Awesome" after a home run, amazing catch, or whatever. But, if that's your audience, why not react to it? I mean, for all the talking about "bad crowd," I've never seen a crowd at a PWG show that's been less than pretty hot while I've seen plenty of supposedly great Southern indy matches from wrestlers who can supposedly really work as opposed to those spot monkeys over at PWG, that are indeed, pretty good, being done in front of a dead crowd that doesn't seem to care all that much. I mean, should Adrian Adonis not worked to various anti-gay chants just because anti-gay chants aren't the best thing in the world? Again, yeah, if it's a dead crowd aside from the chants, I can see the issue, but as other people have noted, the hottest crowds even in recent WWE history have been chant heavy. Maybe the sad truth is that the only wrestling fans who actually care are the chant-heavy smarks, since at least they're reacting to people who aren't named Cena, Orton, or Lesnar.

Don't worry, Parv. I'm well aware you have low opinions of all types of wrestling crowds of all shapes, sizes, nationalities, and time periods. It's a part of your charm.

Sorry, this is another "kids get off my lawn" thread that is basically implying fans who don't act like it's still 1987 aren't real fans. Give me a PWG show where there are silly chants, but the fans are actually into almost every one of the wrestlers over a RAW show where only four guys are over, but nobody else gets a reaction, but hey, at least the 20% of the crowd that actually is paying attention is "reacting correctly." Anybody who ever cheered or booed The Ultimate Warrior was in a way, incentivizing bad work. We don't call those people bad fans, simply because they cheered a style of wrestling you didn't personally like.

If anybody has an Observer subscription, listen to the Todd Martin show with Bryan, even if you don't normally. They're going through old '82 Observer's starting about half an hour in, and there's highlights like Dave's star ratings for various promotions, the top TV shows for '82, Jim Duggan being rated a better wrestler than Ted DiBiase, and somebody writing in complaining that there's too many Japanese & Mexican wrestlers on the Dave's top 150 wrestlers list (Spoiler Alert - No Backlund on the list at all! Sweet Justice for Parv!), and somebody else (I think) also complaining that Gagne & Brunzell was only ranked #75 and #81 - maybe it's Dylan writing in via time travel!

Speaking purely, I guess, as somebody who really couldn't afford the DVD's via normal means, but still cared about staying up with ROH storylines to stay up with the shows I did manage to acquire, I really stopped caring about checking DVDVR to get live reports/results somewhere in the end of Nigel's reign. Whether it was too many shows, no connection to the newer guys, or a dearth of good booking, it simply didn't matter to me anymore.

TNA's like KMart. It used to be important under different ownership a couple of decades ago, but now it's kind of sad and filled with investors trying to live off past glory (Sears). Oh, and KMart buildings are never more than 10% full either.

That Stomper list makes me want to steal it and post it over on Reddit to shut up the people who said Rey has sucked for years.

I probably wouldn't put Jericho over Cena (even though they'd be in the same range for me), but if I was making the argument, it'd likely due to a working at a variety of places (ie. WAR/ECW/Mexico/WCW), preferring Jericho's mic work over Cena's, and preferring Jericho's style of work (more cruiserweight-style than Cena) over Cena. Remember, a lot of people don't like the WWE style, and still think there are no good Cena matches. I see plenty of people on places like Reddit grudgingly say Cena is a good wrestler, but only "when he's with awesome workers" or something like that.

What OJ said. You have to remember, NJPW and AJPW were competing promotions, not two separate territories. So, they both ran everywhere, but Tokyo was always more important, because it is such a large percentage of the country.

I realize you don't like Lesnar as a HOFer Dylan (I wouldn't vote for him either), but that's a completely unfair comparison. Lesnar was an actual star and drew hundreds of thousands of buys multiple times for UFC. Lashley's on a second-rate promotion that's on the air because the media company owns the company.

Moxley was getting buzz for his promos and CZW (I think?) work about six months before he got picked up by the WWE. If I remember the timeline, right. Basically, he never got the Ring of Honor/PWG/etc. run that other people got, because he got plucked just as he was about to replace guys like Rollins who also got picked up by the WWE in the timeframe. Of course, I could be completely off.

Not being part of either side, I could just as easily say one side also comes off as old men yelling about kids with their loud guitars and hippity-hop music ruining "real" music. Also, as far as generating emotion, at least in the US, when was the last time there was a riot in reaction to a negative result in a sporting event? Vancouver a few years back in the Stanley Cup, but then before that, I really can't think of anything. Plus, the US in general is a far less violent place than it was during the 70's and 80's by all measures. Even if kayfabe was still viable, it's far less likely the same crowd, even in places like the rural US would get violent like they did back in the good ole' days anyway. EDIT: Jesus, I totally missed funkdoc's post saying basically the same thing I did. Go read his post, then maybe come back to mine.

While I don't think it's a "great" feud because it only lasted a few months, you can make an argument for HHH/Foley being a very, very, very good feud.

The majority of the "IWC" is made up of WWF/WWE Fans. They're perfectly happy with the structure of the WWF/WWE matches, could give a shit about Crockett, don't know what AJPW is, will never watch Euro, couldn't be paid to watch Inoki, and are pefectly fine watching Hogan lock up with Paul Orndorff or the Big Bossman. It's a myth that the posters here, or similar ones elsewhere, represent anything in the "IWC" other than a niche within a niche within a niche. For once, I agree with jdw fully. Go look at r/squaredcircle, for example. I mean, let's be blunt here. The most popular wrestling podcast is likely Grantland's Cheap Heat.

I'd argue that the general opinion KENTA is "awful" is basically limited to this forum and a few others associated with it. Nothing personal against the people who feel that way, but out there in the wider Internet, Kurt Angle & Shawn Michaels are still the best of all-time. Any downgrade of KENTA's place within the general feel of the larger IWC is more due to the fact that NOAH has become a glorified indy instead of the #1 Japanese promotion.

So, they can fire the people they currently have hired to do that job and instead, get paid by WB?

It's probably far more likely they see zero chance of KENTA going to TNA or GFW (if that exists) at any point. If he flames out in WWE, he'll quietly go back to NOAH or another promotion if NOAH falls apart.

For the same reason Earthquake, The Nasty Boys, Honky Tonk Man, and so on were offered deals?

I think the funniest thing is people who actually believe that Dave isn't getting Bryan's humor.

Basically, what Dylan said. A promotion with Nash, Hogan, and other types such as themselves was always going to self destruct. At least we got one good angle out of it before the implosion.