WrestlingPower

I listened to Dave's WOR and he's not oblivious to most of the talking points around here. He agrees that Lucha is the most heavily stacked category & someone needs to go in to free up some room for someone to stand out. He claims that since the category has so many worthy candidates, "no one stands out". Mexico is also one of the lowest voting pools, not sure what can be done to get more lucha voters. Something is clearly wrong as it seems anyone with any kind of buzz for a couple years in US or Japan goes in really easily but no one from Mexico ever gets in. He also seems to be sensible in thinking Omega & Naito will be better revisited in 5 years. I don't think he realizes that's a good argument for waiting to put people on. I think I kind of agree with Matt Farmer saying that Rick Martel is a marginal candidate and him going in would open it up to like 100 more people being worthy. I thought we had this discussion with Masa Saito. Maybe the Japanese bar is lower now? I would assume Omega goes on under the Japan section. How come the Hardys haven't made it on yet? I have advocated for the yes/no/abstain thing too but at this point I think some of the blame is on the votership. I seriously doubt Dave reviews ballots with a critical eye & ever cuts people out of voting once they get a ballot once. I realize current wrestlers may be skewing things as far as "low information" voters but appreciate the need for the perspective for those in the business to have the influence votes. But just as an example, Vampiro got 16 votes, I doubt he has much influence, so I'd seriously consider not sending a ballot to those 16 people again. I'm not sure about lifting the 10 votes thing. Dave's specific instructions have always been "vote for the 10 best guys", ignoring the math of how that works against other candidates in a region & in relation to the 15/50 rule. But I think he's painted himself into a corner now with all these parameters and isn't very likely at all to change any of them.

How does this Twitch thing work? I added the Roku channel last night & all I saw was a bunch of gaming stuff. Is there a AAA "section"?

So Jim Cornette has invited Meltzer to come on his podcast next week to debate, among other things, PWG, Young Bucks & Kenny Omega, Chuck Taylor's grenade spot, Joey Ryan's dick spot, and quite possibly now the star ratings stuff. I'm sure Cornette's take will continue to be that his style of wrestling & the wrestling of his day was more successful and therefore the "right" definition of what pro wrestling is. Meltzer will likely counter with the need to evolve with the times and that these elements are the kind of thing that are "over" with the current audience and therefore have changed the definition of what modern pro wrestling is. It should be interesting listening nonetheless even though we already know both guys' talking points. I guess you could argue that it is ironically comedic that 2 mid-50s guys are going to argue over whether what is "hip" is a good thing or not in their genre.

I agree that he was probably being figurative, but why not use 6*+, there were All Japan and AJW matches in the 90s that he listed as *****+ or *****++. I guess this is his new 6*. I agree going with 6 1/4* does kind of take it to the next level of rendering the scale useless. And for those saying he's not taking his ratings seriously, that's not the case as this is a guy that used to routinely write numerical analysis pieces where his whole formula of ranking who the best workers were was based on what match ratings he gave them. I always figured if you're going to present yourself as the foremost authority and your ratings are the gospel, may as well go all the way with it and treat your * ratings the same as you would attendance figures or whatever. For those that have followed the Meltzer bubble for all these years it wasn't all that surprising that he would think this way.

I enjoyed the show. Nothing blow away but I'd say it met my expectations which seemed higher than most on here. Miz/Ambrose was shockingly good and the 2nd best match. I've probably only seen a handful of Miz matches ever and he seems pretty passable now, doesn't seem unworthy of his spot. I really like the characterizations of Bayley & Alexa but the match wasn't good. I was actually surprised Meltzer agreed as lots seemed to like their last match better than I did. Tag match I thought had a creative finish but thought the match was just average. I enjoyed Neville/Aries. Main event was excellent. I was quite surprised Joe won. I figured they would go with Bray or Rollins since those guys vs. Brock wouldn't be "giving away a money match". I figured if they ever did Joe vs. Brock it would be a longer build. At least it should be the focus of the show though as it should be. So they've got me thru that show at least. I thought all the matches were booked toward their stips which made sense psychologically (and was a pleasant surprise) but on the other hand I thought all the matches would have been better without the stip. One thing I've noticed in watching this, part of Backlash, and most of Payback is that WWE seems to be presenting the right mix of workrate, characterization & story. The selfish me is a bit disappointed that it seems to be a rarity that many matches get above the *** level but then I think that's just me being pretentious because the story is such that as long as the work is "good enough" why would I want people to risk self-preservation for "better" matches. It seems the fanbase at the shows is happy with it so they must be doing it right. A couple minor network complaints (and I've only had it for a couple months so maybe these are known issues): > Is the pre-show only available live? I FF'ed up to the Kalisto match to watch later & the show was just gone. > Is there no "resume" option for live shows? My feed froze at some point & my only options were start from the beginning & FF or watch live.

Some might find this good or bad but I think it's a very good thing that it appears the days of the "shindy" are largely over. Even in the most rural of areas people are connected enough to the internet, etc. that people are aware of and/or watching actual good wrestling and also word would get out of "outlaw" shindy type shows that were previously underground. Although some may say that wrestling is losing touch with its tradition by this level of stuff going away, I think it's for the better than the carny/con man level stuff be eliminated from the business. It's not like there was any money being made at that level anyway, it was more like glorified backyard stuff. We have a local "shindy" that just started up recently and even they are bringing in a couple matches worth of actual decent talent per card instead of the old days where you would see a bunch of barely trained guys putting on a card worth of 1/2* matches. Also I think becoming a wrestling fan nowadays is increasingly harder. I guess it's easy to latch onto WWE due to their exposure level but being a wrestling fan now is kind of a daunting task. To me it's unlike even mainstream sports where the deeper you get in you realize that even if you let it totally consume your life, there's just no way to keep up with everything. It's an embarrassment of riches. There's so much availability of footage from all over, both current and older, that it's virtually impossible to keep up with. Not even to mention the subculture stuff like podcasts, online discussion, social media, etc. that it's literally a rabbit hole that could be so daunting that it will chase off people after a while because there comes a point where you need to actually have a life. So I fear that we are in an age of stagnant growth just because people that get invested for a few years are so bombarded with content from all sides that they will get burnt out & move onto other things in short order. A few other points: > I think women's wrestling has reached a saturation point. With what WWE & NXT are presenting, products that never really took off anyway like Shimmer & Shine seem even more irrelevant. > I agree that ROH & TNA have dropped the ball in making themselves more relevant. TNA due to all the management turmoil & ROH just out of stubbornness I guess and the desire to grow slowly.

I liked Corino as an announcer, my issue with him was he & Kelly got so comfortable with each other that their on-air style got too much into "2 guys on the couch trying to pop each other" than actually calling a match.

I totally see what Stomper is saying. Not sure if NJ or ROH is to blame. Ideally if they really are "partners", NJ should have gone thru ROH to book the English announcers. It's always seemed weird to me that they treat the AXS show completely separate from NJ World shows. If ROH is their primary entrée into the US, either NJ should have booked Kelly & Corino thru them or ROH should have insisted that be brought in line somehow. I can see how it would create confusion if the exact same announce team is doing both ROH & NJPW but yet officially it wasn't part of the working relationship.

I've long thought that ROH didn't have enough TV time to keep the live events in the scope of the show. They almost need a 2nd hour that's more of a magazine style show to show highlights of live shows & hype future ones. I've never been clear on if they are just "lazy" & prefer to post produce shows 3-4 at a time or whether there's a turnaround issue that prevents them from going to the effort of trying to update the episodes to be more than just what was done at the tapings. At the very least they could try to drive more people to watch their youtube updates. For example could it be that hard to produce 55 minute shows and then tack on a 5 minute update to the end of each with more fresh clips? I'd like to get more clarity on the Kevin Kelly situation. It seems like no one is being very specific in their reporting on how often he will continue to be used. Like are they going to replace him or will he continue to do all the TV and that's it? I'd also be curious to hear whether there really was heat with Delirious or if some office person made demands over his workload & desire to work for NJPW. You would think if ROH & NJPW had a great relationship he should be able to do both.

There are definitely more tragic things than Cedric Alexander in ROH. But even though it seems we disagree about who ROH should push, there's definitely a lack of forward momentum for a lot of guys. It's way too easy to ignore ROH for six months and come back to find one angle has happened, and everyone is in the place they were before. ROH is in a very weird place as "corporate" indy wrestling, particularly as WWE has embraced some stylistic similarities in the ring. They can't let the top of the card turn over constantly, so I understand the idea of relying on guys who are loyal, and frankly, guys who (for different reasons) have almost no shot of going to WWE. You don't want to shoot someone up the card and then have them signed away as they're ascending. But that unwillingness to change up the top of the card and move angles forward quickly essentially puts a company in the position ECW was in towards the end. (Pulling the trigger on Taz too late = pulling the trigger on O'Reilly too late? I don't enjoy O'Reilly that much, but they got very little out of crowning him, similar to how ECW got very little out of crowning Taz.) The booking is stale and you're basically relying on people enjoying the style in the ring. But the thing is - ECW, with a better financial base, could have gone for a long time. They drew great crowds, even at the end, because people liked the style and had fun at the shows. Even with WWE co-opting parts of ECW's style and draining the uniqueness (just like has happened to ROH), they still had a loyal following who enjoyed the product. The booking was (almost) irrelevant. Of course, the company had a ceiling, but if the ceiling is profitable, the owners won't care. ROH is pretty smart about their touring - they don't burn out any city, which allows them to come back a couple of times a year to places and draw crowds that are there to enjoy the wrestling card (even if they might complain about the booking and not watch the TV). I guess what I'm saying is that there's not much motivation for ROH to be creative. They do fine, and probably as well as they can do given the constraints. That it disappoints people who remember it's glory days isn't something that's going to change. Totally agree with this and good point about ECW. I've kind of thought this for like 5 years now, it's a fun show but unless they bring in New Japan guys, nothing worth travelling to see or spending a bunch of money on. Even on occassion when I do make it to a show I wouldn't pay for anything better than like the $35 seats.

I guess the homoerotic undertones (overtones?) is a turn off to me but maybe that's not 100% what he's going for. I guess he's more Lanny Poffo turned up a few notches. I will totally admit that he's over and that Lord knows ROH needed someone fresh, over-the-top, and more charismatic than the majority of their roster when he came along but his version of "over the top" just doesn't appeal to me I guess. And despite these feelings as to whether I "get" what he's going for or not I guess I'm a bit surprised how over he's gotten with the fanbase. I still don't necessarily see him as someone they should headline with given the history of guys they've had in the title picture.

Enjoying the show so far. One thing I wanted to mention when you talk about down time for NOVA Pro. Since VA is a commission state, January is historically an extremely dead month for local indies as for years most promotions take that month off to allow time to get their licensing stuff straight.

So I assume some here have seen the following article: http://wrestlingwithwords.com/roh-deforestation/ I wanted to comment on it. First I don't consider ROH a "poor product" by any means. Stagnant, homogenized, maybe but not poor. "Atrocious" front office, I'm not one to say but this seems a bit harsh. Yes their booking has been questionable for years now, but at least seems to have stabilized since Jim Cornette left. Given that the front office and the booker in question seem non-negotiable issues for the company, to me we should be done with wasting energy complaining about these items. They are what they are, they aren't our decisions to make, so either support them or don't. Has ROH lost its purpose? I'd argue the purpose has changed. Have they lost what made them unique? Most definitely. At this point aside from giving guys a good number of well paid bookings, access to good opponents, and a possible entrée into Japan and a higher profile for other indies, their purpose seems to be to generate a profit for the parent company. They leverage their Japan connections and have ramped up their merch business etc. as avenues to a profit. So the purpose changed from one with heart & drive to a more business model. I agree with what this guy wrote about O'Reilly 100%. To me though ACH & Cedric had a certain ceiling. There's no doubt they were massively misused but I never thought they were above like TV title level anyway. You could argue the bookers missed the boat on making that title like it's own division but now with the UK guys in and being in the title picture right away, maybe they have rectified that situation. To me the most prophetic statement in this article is "Young, exciting, talented performers leaving the company in waves, while the same guys we’ve watched for years continue to do the same thing for years." THIS! This hits the nail right on the head. It seems the booking philosophy has been based on the Japanese hierarchical system where guys have to work their way up. Whether that works in this day & age where performers have higher aspirations is probably a big no. In the early 2000s guys built their names on the indies over like 5-10 years and would go to ROH to stay there for years & build a career. Nowadays once a guy gets a little buzz on him, he's looking to go to WWE within like 5 years of his debut. ROH just isn't going to have hot guys for more than a couple years. To me the bigger issue though is ROH may have been loyal to a fault to some guys. If they had been more willing to do more frequent house cleaning of talent, all these guys would have had more opportunities to possibly be used better in their short time frames. It's just totally not set up for something like that to work.

I would much prefer a Daniels title win than Castle. Daniels in a way seems kind of old news but he doesn't seem to have the "go away" heat that Jerry Lynn had when they put the belt on him. I'm heavily considering going to the ROH show while in Orlando but Castle is a big turn off for me and just the chance that he might win the belt there is enough to where I will most likely walk out rather than watch that match if it's the main event.