Slasher

His work with NXT does look good but I am not sure if it was just him doing that. As far as I know, Triple H utilizes the trainers and the agents that are down there in Florida so I think NXT is really a colloboration of different guys and that he ties it together with his vision. He deserves a lot of credit for NXT but he even admitted himself that booking NXT and booking WWE is different and that it is more challenging to do good work for main roster tv. And one of the biggest factors is the fact his wife is the one who will be running WWE and she is the one who prefers to rely on soap operatic sort of vision. She is the one who wanted all those television writers involved. Then there is that rumor that the WWE does not want people who were or are wrestling fans. She wants to eradicate people that has enough understanding to call them out on bullshit booking decisions. She wants people who trusts her and her husband and father's vision with no frame of reference in which to draw from when comparing to today's product. So yeah so many things are in the way of this supposed utopian WWE led by Triple H. But hey I could always be wrong on that but I am going by their history in this assumption.

He didn't write it but he sure as hell had a hand in booking it. I doubt the creative team forced these angles on him and he was just the dutiful soldier carrying it out. Again, he refuses to show weakness as the authority figure. Why would Vince book Triple H so differently than he did himself? Answer: he didn't, and this is a Triple H/Stephanie deal. So yes you can judge his booking ability based on the part time wrestler/non wrestling run he's had the last few years alone but I think it is accurate to include his time as a main eventer after 2000 when he clearly gained quite the political power over the show anx his own character. And none of it is good.

Why? Vince might have final say over the product but I am willing to bet Triple H has a ton of input over tbe main shows and it's...not that good? Stephanie also isn't going to let her husband turn it into 1980s NWA if that is what you're thinking. She is just as big a part of the problem as Vince is. It is easy to do an one hour show weekly with little to no interference from networks. I wouldn't be quick to anoint him the savior of WWE just yet. He is proven at making his losers still look strong and important You mean the same guy who had his wife slap around one of their very few bonafide stars (Batista)? Or do you mean when he cut a promo designed to completely undercut John Cena before their match at Wrestlemania? Or the time he did a racist angle with Booker T...then went over after a delayed pin to prove he was right all? Or the fact he rarely if ever shows his ass for anyone as an authority figure when showing ass has been the one thing Vince has always understood to be a necessity? You're right. He's gonna be so awesome! I am not saying he can't be good. I am saying none of the evidence supports that idea and that it is quite the leap of faith IMO.

Well I meant shit on as in stop caring about the whole thing and it goes back to being an insignificant part of the show but yeah sure why not?

You don't have to wait for him to get injured. You do know it can be worked, right? It can just be a storyline. Tell Reigns to take a vacation and write him off for a bit. It's not like his merchandise is a big seller or that he is a ratings draw or anything like that so you can sacrifice a few months for the sake of the storyline. It doesn't even have to be an injury either. But I fail to see a good storyline that enables them to re-write the character after already establishing him as what he is currently. Their best chance to do it was right after Mania where they sell on the idea Reigns took Lesnar's best shots and kept coming at him. Now that opportunity has passed and they are either going tp have to wait for another to fall in their laps or they have to create one. As things stand, I have zero faith in them that they can do the latter.

There is a big difference in introducing Ryback as a squash match monster and rebooting a character that already existed in midst of his run on the main roster to be a squash monster. The people would rightfully see through it as a transparent attempt to push Reigns harder against their wishes. I don't mind if they rebooted him that way but it needs to come as a result of a significant event like an injury that takes him out for a few months and returning as a refocused monster that destroys all that wronged him or something like that. Simply waking up one morning and deciding to be dominant isn't a good story to tell.

Oh boy. The crowds will shit on the whole revolution the minute they realize its all been about providing Charlotte a star making platform at the expense of Sasha Banks.

Why? Vince might have final say over the product but I am willing to bet Triple H has a ton of input over tbe main shows and it's...not that good? Stephanie also isn't going to let her husband turn it into 1980s NWA if that is what you're thinking. She is just as big a part of the problem as Vince is. It is easy to do an one hour show weekly with little to no interference from networks. I wouldn't be quick to anoint him the savior of WWE just yet.

Nah. Nearly isn't enough. They have to basically strip down everything about him that resembles a main eventer. Don't put him in programs with big names. He would be booked on Smackdown and Main Events mostly. He jobs on Raw to a guy like Wade Barrett. He is even forced to do NXT stuff. Basically reboot him from the completely bottom up. Don't do the backstage rumors but make it clear to the fans he isn't a priority anymore. Obviously that might not work but by then you'll know if its really a lost cause or not. I am not seriously advocating the idea by the way, but it is something that could take the edge off the fans' resentment for his push and could possibly turn him into an underdog in his own way. Especially if he works hard and makes people around him look good. He is still quite young in WWE years that they could punt him down the card and really rebuild him...then by the time he is ready for the main event again he would still only be like 32 or 33 years old and you get a decade of him on top again. This is essentially what you talked about before...WWE manipulating the fans into wanting it.

The extreme and counterproductive solution is to have him lose every feud he is involved in for six months to a year and the fans realize he has been depushed severely. That could turn him into a sympathetic figure. Then rip off a Mark Henry circa Hall of Pain run type resurgence. Edit- of course the critical component of this is he needs to keep proving himself a good wrestler. If he regress to say, Heidenreich level terrible it won't work.

This made me laugh. Pretty much the easiest way to get certain segments of the crowd behind a guy is for there to be stories about how the company is holding them down. Look at how over Ziggler is despite not being very good at anything except being a Billy Gunn tribute act. Both of these posts made me laugh. Ziggler is terrible but people still keep comparing him to Curt Hennig. It's somewhat funny how the crowds are the "smartest" they have ever been, or so they think, but they can still be worked easily. Just look at HHH's reactions on NXT. This is no different than Sid in ECW back in the day. I 100% agree with this if the audience was as smart as people think they'd realize Reigns has improved a ton and is worthy of a push as the top guy. Though the crowd still boos him like he's the heir apparent. He's one of the only guys believable enough to work Brock to boot.That is a terrible misread on the situation. Again, the fans are not upset with Reigns directly. They are upset with the WWE and have picked out Reigns as the outlet for that frustration. And I am telling y'all...Sting/Luger. He'll get back on track within a year or two. This could be the Team Hell No period for him like it was for Bryan before his big singles push in 2013-2014. They are upset with the WWE. With Reigns though the fans anger is residual from the company picking him over DB at Rumble. The fans haven't been able to let go and recognize how much Reigns has grown as a performer. Plus the fans are used to booing him now. That is the thing though. I think they know how much he has improved. That was never the issue. Everything the fans have disliked about him is boiled down to the booking of the character and the push he has received. He was popular in the Shield and his workrate was never the issue then. Yes I know he could hide in the tag team and trios but he played his part very effectively and if they booked him to be the same asskicker he was with the Shield and not a Cena-lite, he would have gotten more of the benefit of doubt but not much more because it was never about him to begin with.

Flair's purpose was basically to give Cena his seal of approval for when he does get his 16th championship and possibly even 17th. Jon Stewart was the representation of what the WWE thinks the hardcore fans feel about the idea of Cena breaking their wrestling god's records and Flair was there to basically say "Shut up and sit down fat boy!" at all of them.

This made me laugh. Pretty much the easiest way to get certain segments of the crowd behind a guy is for there to be stories about how the company is holding them down. Look at how over Ziggler is despite not being very good at anything except being a Billy Gunn tribute act. Both of these posts made me laugh. Ziggler is terrible but people still keep comparing him to Curt Hennig. It's somewhat funny how the crowds are the "smartest" they have ever been, or so they think, but they can still be worked easily. Just look at HHH's reactions on NXT. This is no different than Sid in ECW back in the day. I 100% agree with this if the audience was as smart as people think they'd realize Reigns has improved a ton and is worthy of a push as the top guy. Though the crowd still boos him like he's the heir apparent. He's one of the only guys believable enough to work Brock to boot. That is a terrible misread on the situation. Again, the fans are not upset with Reigns directly. They are upset with the WWE and have picked out Reigns as the outlet for that frustration. And I am telling y'all...Sting/Luger. He'll get back on track within a year or two. This could be the Team Hell No period for him like it was for Bryan before his big singles push in 2013-2014.

According to most ex-WWE wrestlers, you have to improvise about half the time on Raw because your time is constantly getting cut. "You've got eight minutes including entrances. No, wait, five minutes. No, wait, your entrance is during the commercial break and now your match can't go more than ninety seconds." Apparently that happens all the damn time. I would imagine that's one major reason why the Divas matches tend to feel so rushed and disjointed when they're short, because they had been planning something much longer and then suddenly had to edit it down to practically nothing.And if they're not ready to call it in the ring: that's on the company, not the wrestlers. They should be training their rookies how to call it on the fly, every competent wrestling school does that. I'm sure Sara Del Ray knows how to do that shit, let alone a thousand-year international veteran like Finlay. If they're not passing it on to the trainees, it's because the office is actively telling them not to do that, for whatever dumbfuck reason. And if the problem is simply that the girls are too green and don't have enough experience to improvise a match on their own (which is why most first-year rookies are either matched against veterans who can carry them, or fellow trainees whom they've practiced with for months and have a collection of shared spots) then the company shouldn't be putting them on TV yet. I don't disagree with a single word of this. It is my perception as well. I wasn't laying the blame at the girls' feet. I was just saying I don't think they can improvise yet. There is no evidence of it. But it doesn't mean they can't do it in the future when they log enough live wrestling hours on the main roster and build on each match they have.

Prove themselves capable of working in whatever circumstances the company provides. 20 minute PPV? No problem. 12 minute Smackdown main event? Nailed it. 6 minute Raw sprint? Popcorn fun. If they can do all of that, I can believe that they can work on the fly if called for it because they would have shown the ability to get what it takes to make a match good regardless of platform. Right now they only proved they can have great matches with a few weeks of prep, that is cool but not exactly a good indicator of their overall wrestling ability. I need to see more.

The backstage tidbits won't work IMO. I suspect plenty of people think that Reigns was mishandled and I am pretty sure they also recognize that the vitriol for him isn't really about him. They boo because they hate that the company discarded Bryan like yesterday's trash the minute he returned. They hate that the company insists on telling people what to think. Until the WWE regains some trust from the fans by giving them what they want sometimes then they will go along with a renewed focused push for him. But as long as 1. The Authority exists, 2. they don't push guys like Ambrose or Ziggler or whoever they like with conviction, 3. keep booking Reigns in poorly conceived and poorly constructed storylines and against opponents that doesn't spark interest-it will never change.

Really? What are you basing that on? The fact they have been booked in horrible shit over the last month? Is that really a fair statement. It may be true, but to assert that now is ridiculous. Give them a fair chance with booking and then we could tell. What does booking have to do with in ring quality and/or their ability to wrestle on the fly. They have not done it yet as far as I know. Is it really that unreasonable to think they are not ready for that kind of responsibility?

They should do the Sting/Luger angle where Reigns is a babyface by association with Ambrose in shared segments but a unrepentant shithead in his singles ventures.

A big part of the practice thing is that it also instills confidence in the workers to be more convincing in what they do. Throw them out on live TV though? Plenty of good wrestlers have wilted under that spotlight. Having a road agent go over it with you for 15 minutes before showtime is nothing really to help the nerves. I think Sasha is someone who could handle it. None of the other girls are.

With how the network has sort of cannibalized a lot of the Mania revenue with the cheap memberships, I can see them changing the model of how Mania is to be sold on to the public. They will not see value in bringing in the big expensive stars if they know they won't make that money back. What they do, I don't know, but it will be interesting to find out.

I heard Lesnar vs Bo Dallas will be on there too. It is odd how the last two network special house shows features Lesnar against a guy much further below his station. Maybe we can quickly rush Bo into the Wyatt Family so we can have Lesnar throwing them all around like he did New Day. He does need to get his heat back after all :-P

Wait, are they really playing up the shoplifting thing for Emma?

Well there is the ability to go back and watch the tape of your work to see where you can tighten up in certain sequences. House shows are for the fans though. So you are likely getting a different match live than you would at a taping. On tv you might see Rusev destroy Dolph Ziggler but at a house show you are more likely to see Dolph clown on Rusev for the fans' entertainment. So you're not necessarily going to be able to rehearse the exact match you want to do at a big special event. But you do get to work out certain spots for sure. Granted this was a long time ago but I saw Goldberg/Giant work a match on a house show on a Saturday and they worked almost the exact same match on Nitro that Monday. Not only was that "long time ago" but it isn't even the same company we are talking about here. I don't doubt that there are some matchups that play to house crowds as it does on tv but I am just saying that isn't always the case so we can't take for granted how little time some guys actually have to practice matches. Vince himself likes to send house crowds home happy because who gives a fuck if their protected golden boy gets pinned by some fan favorite if no one sees it on tv? So he is more willing to run outcomes that he wouldn't for the sake of the storyline if done on TV. Edit: for instance, a few years ago when they had the brand split, I went to a Raw house show held in San Diego. They booked Rey (a SD guy) to wrestle Triple H in the main event. Triple H stooged so much for Rey and looked like a bumbling moron while Rey was flying all around like an invincible superhero. Think that shit would ever happen on TV?

Well there is the ability to go back and watch the tape of your work to see where you can tighten up in certain sequences. House shows are for the fans though. So you are likely getting a different match live than you would at a taping. On tv you might see Rusev destroy Dolph Ziggler but at a house show you are more likely to see Dolph clown on Rusev for the fans' entertainment. So you're not necessarily going to be able to rehearse the exact match you want to do at a big special event. But you do get to work out certain spots for sure.

I didn't say anything about Bill being hypocritical. I said the attitude that he used in this thread is the sort of attitude I don't want to have, ever. Just to clarify, I don't know Bill and I am not charging him with a crime here. It might have been unfair if it sounds like I am singling Bill out here. That isn't my intent. It was just an example of a disturbingly prevalent attitude that I see people having with wrestling. Another thing is just because she turned out okay as far as we know doesn't mean anything to me. People never know the extent of the damage they incur until they wake up in 5 years and realize they can't feel their fingertips. But to me, that is a milder form of the same excuse people use, "Yeah I drove home drunk but nothing bad happened so it turned out ok". No, no it isn't. I do know people have to assume responsibility for their career choices but I look at it this way- Hulk Hogan chose to be a pro wrestler. So did Dynamite Kid. But only one can walk today. There is differences in how you CAN choose your career within the general concept of choosing to be a pro wrestler as your given profession. Like a few others said, Sasha did not need that bump. She didn't HAVE to do it. Like Brock Lesnar learned, he doesn't need to do a SSP to be the Brock Lesnar he is. Just where I stand on this.