Johnny Sorrow Posted July 19, 2011 Report Share Posted July 19, 2011 Really my biggest issue with the whole episode tonight is that in the world of pro wrestling, where the Heavyweight title is the goal everyone is fighting for, the finals of a title tournament for the most important prize in the company was pushed aside for "more important business." - one night after the belt was made to look like the absolute most important thing in the company. Nothing should be presented as more important than the top championship. Makes the tourny, title and eventual winner look totally unimportant, even if the real champion was sitting at the Cubs game tonight. So, I really, really disliked how unimportant the whole tournament came off as a result. They made a championship tournament just look like filler programming before the final segment and Rey Mysterio had to just "aw shucks" his way out of the ring after McMahon played down his huge opportunity. And Vince's decision to bump the match was an example of his "bad ideas" that led to him getting "canned". So, we the fans along with Rey, are rightfully angry that there was no match. The man who made that call has been "deposed". It makes sense. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smkelly Posted July 19, 2011 Report Share Posted July 19, 2011 Agreed. Being a hardcore fan like Alvarez, I love the way it has been going, and the cities the events have been held in (Chicago and Boston) have reacted positively. If the casual fans don't like the path this has taken then they can go back to boring land.How far out in advance do they book venues? Really my biggest issue with the whole episode tonight is that in the world of pro wrestling, where the Heavyweight title is the goal everyone is fighting for, the finals of a title tournament for the most important prize in the company was pushed aside for "more important business." - one night after the belt was made to look like the absolute most important thing in the company.That is a reoccurring theme for the WWE writers. They make beautiful fiction but ruin it with inconsistencies that change as often as the wind blows. Had they booked the show differently, as in, instead of having a "one" night tournament, do two matches tonight, followed by two next week, so on and so forth until the next PPV comes for the final match to be determined. Having a vacant championship while trying to fill it is certainly better than what they have subsequently done after the excellent performances on the PPV and the weeks leading up to it. This is where daytime soap opera writers fail miserably. They're used to mostly women viewers, not fans like us. Because if I were in that crowd, I would have gotten a "Bullshit!" chant going the moment HHH got into the ring. If Dave ends up being wrong about the Vince/HHH thing signaling the real transition then he will pretty much lose all remaining credibility, right?No trollin', but do you hate Meltzer from a competitive aspect or simply because you hate him? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bix Posted July 19, 2011 Report Share Posted July 19, 2011 If Dave didn't mean to imply it meant the transition was underway he should've been less vague and dropped the tease. So is the storyline that ended Raw tonight, which at least to an extent mirrored real life since HHH has been groomed all year to be taking over for Vince to head the company. That seems like a pretty clear delineation between the storyline and real life to me. The headline 'Vince fired, HHH takes over' was a tease to get clicks, but in the article itself Dave made explicit the difference between kayfabe and shoot. "Which to at least an extent mirrored real life" sounded to me (and many others I was talking to/following online) like "obviously the board didn't actually fire Vince," not "this isn't signalling a big move in the real transition." Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Loss Posted July 19, 2011 Report Share Posted July 19, 2011 In a weird way, I thought the HHH/Vince segment was way more inside-y and catered to hardcores than the Punk stuff has been. * HHH being at a Board of Directors meeting. Obviously, we know the guy wields power in the company, but why would the HHH character be there? The HHH character was not an authority figure in WWE until last night. * Assumption that everyone saw the PPV. This rang more true throughout the night, not just in the ending segment. Vince not saying Punk's name hurt it, because he needed to acknowledge that he won the match and left with the belt. It was implied, but WWE's typical nature is to spell things out, and that's what their fans are conditioned to expect. Not to mention that Cena was thankful for the great match and not upset about losing the belt. That's more catering to hardcores. Why would he be thankful to the guy who beat him, took his title and left without granting him a rematch or anything? * Do casual fans understand that this is more significant than past McMahon family power struggles? I'm not sure this felt different than THE CONSORTIUM WAS ME or Shane and Stephanie's various feuds with their father. We have seen the "end" of Vince McMahon time and time again the past few years. I thought the Bret match at Wrestlemania was supposed to be the complete end of the character, for example. He has come back many times since then. I have no reason to think this is different. I wasn't a fan of it, not because I think the angle is now off the rails and can't be saved (although that may be the case), but because board of directors meetings and executive leadership are waaaay more topics catered to hardcore fans than what Punk was doing. The focus should be on Punk leaving the company with the title. It may end up getting back there next week, but last night doesn't give me hope. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt D Posted July 19, 2011 Report Share Posted July 19, 2011 This is pessimistic. I feel like I know Hunter. Obviously I don't, but from things people have said in interviews and books and shoots and what I've seen over the years and years, I feel like I know the guy who got his way onto the writing team in 97 and never really looked back. Part of me really does think that he's presenting this as the birth of the character that's going to carry the WWE for the next 5 years, Mr. H (or whatever), as Vince has for years, and in order to properly birth the character, he is going to claim that there needs to be a sacrificial lamb in the same way that Bret had been for the Mr. McMahon character, and that is going to be Punk here and now. He devours Punk's heat and then moves on to his "real" feud next year vs Cena or Orton or whoever. So yes, if we're talking the Inside Baseball HARDCORE FAN sort of appeal this angle has as opposed to the wider WWE UNIVERSE appeal it might have had a few days ago, I'm buying into it. They weren't working me before but hey, maybe they are now. Good for them except for I don't think it's going to draw them much. Hell I feel like it's all more "real" now and I'm a lot less excited than when I didn't feel that at all. Anyway, I agree with the post above. It's just gotten a lot shootier. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hollinger. Posted July 19, 2011 Author Report Share Posted July 19, 2011 I guess my assumption is that Trips will be trying to play peacemaker, not instigate a feud with Punk. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Loss Posted July 19, 2011 Report Share Posted July 19, 2011 It's possible. All things are possible. HHH may be different as a character now than he would be as an active wrestler. He may be more giving. I don't think he will, and I think Matt's scenario is absolutely possible. If anything gives me hope, it's that Punk has some degree of leverage right now and would probably be willing to speak up if this turns into an HHH program. I don't know how much doing so would accomplish, but I don't see Punk sitting back and allowing a burial without putting up a fight. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Boondocks Kernoodle Posted July 19, 2011 Report Share Posted July 19, 2011 Dave said on Observer Radio that this is just an angle but that the Vince-HHH transition is planned sooner than later. Bryan said that he had heard that the switchover was originally planned fro next year's Mania, but Dave said he doesn't know that there's an exact time. But it is being discussed as something that's going to happen rather than a theoretical situation as it had been in the past. Dave also mentioned that Vince gets more easily tired than before and that he needs a full day of rest every week to keep up his 4 hour a night sleeping schedule on workdays. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdw Posted July 19, 2011 Report Share Posted July 19, 2011 I don't think this is inside baseball at all. We also all know that the WWE is so lost in the punch of Owner/GM/Boss/Authority Figure(s) after 14 years that they have no other concept of how to write a TV show without those characters. Christ, even when they don't have a clear Authority Figure on Raw, it's such a core crutch of their philosophy that they create a phantom one with Cole as his/her/its mouthpiece. They literally know of no other way to write. It's like a coach who only knows the Wish Bone offense and wouldn't know a forward pass based offense if his life depended on it. We also all know that WWE Creative is stacked with Lackies who are quite smart in understanding that a key part of retaining their jobs is stroking off The Family. We all knew that Trip has long been so wildly egocentric in his place/role in the company that he was going to keep an on-air character even after "retiring" to the front office. Ergo... Trip was always going to move into an on-air Authority Figure role once he retired. This was pretty predictable. Either Trip was going to get shipped off to anchor SD! as the Authority Figure, or... well, fuck it... we all know that Raw is the show they care about, and Trip's ego is too big *not* to evolve quickly into the Authority Figure on Raw. Putting on the Casandra hat, I'd point out that Trip historically for the past decade has rarely been as over as he, the Family and the Lackies think he has been. He's also been weaker on the mic than they think, and generally been poor in getting *others* over. For all we want to throw as Vince of being a gigantic egocentric bastard, we need to remember that: * he sold/stooge/bitched the living fuck out of himself to get over Stone Cold * for all the "hell" he put Mick's characters through back in the late 90s / early 00s, he again sold the shit out of Mick's wackiness to help get it over. Think Mr. Socko in the hospital, where even "angry" Mr. McMahon got over that Mick's comedy was funny as hell for WWF Fans. * everyone forgets that Vince sold his ass off to lunch the major push that finally got Trip over: Vince --> Mick --> Rock and off went trip. Vince sold it by getting his ass kicked and having his own daughter turn on him. * We could also go back and find a fair number of things where Mr. McMahon helped sell Rock as a top star. While everyone probably would point to stuff like the Beer Truck and the Hospital Show as definative examples of Mr. McMahon stooging his ass off for Stone Cold, I'd point almost as equally to the Rumble / St. Valentine's Day Massacre run where Mr. McMahon "won" the Rumble in a pretty damn creative fashion only to set up Stone Cold kicking the shit out of him in the Cage including the Foley-esque bump of doom. Vince totally sold out for Austin for that run heading into Mania, while Foley was over in the also hot feud with Rock. Does anyone see Trip being Vince-esque in getting over the talent? That's going to be an issue in any long term authority role for Trip on camera. John Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sek69 Posted July 19, 2011 Report Share Posted July 19, 2011 This is what I was afraid of when watching Raw, H coming back in any form or fashion will just get the audience they are aiming for with this "real" stuff instead turn to discussing how Hunter is going to ruin the angle for his own nefarious purposes. Never mind that since his rise to his current level of power, his only real TV time has been the feud with Undertaker which he put over as just barely surviving before disappearing again. I would also dispute the idea that he's not as over as the company/family wants us to believe he is. Yes it did take a long time for him to finally get over as a top guy in the eyes of the fans (which I would say was more a result of all the time he spent as the second banana in DX than anything else), but once he got there he was most certainly seen as one of the top guys in the company. His return from the quad tear was huge, the DX Revival was big (despite being booked amazingly one sided at times), there really hasn't been any point in the last 5-6 years at least where you could say he isn't looked at by the fans at the level the company sees him at. It seems like the hardcores are still salty over the methods he used to get to the top and the people he threw under the bus. Once he takes over for good, he could go on a booking run better than anyone's ever seen and return things to the old school rasslin' everyone loves and people would still complain he's the guy who buried Booker T. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rovert Posted July 19, 2011 Report Share Posted July 19, 2011 The guys on the Formerly Creative podcast were pretty emphatic about Hunter needing to strip away all his old mannerisms as well as his ring music to make this work. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt D Posted July 19, 2011 Report Share Posted July 19, 2011 Obviously Trips needs to cut his hair. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sek69 Posted July 19, 2011 Report Share Posted July 19, 2011 Is Corporate Hunter coming out to his wrestling theme them any more/less ridiculous than nearly 66 year old Vince still coming out to his Corporation music from 1998 or so? Especially considering Vince has aged considerably ever since the hair vs hair match at WM? Who knew the famous Vince hair helmet was his fountain of youth. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Loss Posted July 19, 2011 Report Share Posted July 19, 2011 If HHH is good in this role, I'll be able to balance my view of him. Maybe his post-wrestling career will be different. But he's supplied no evidence that would make me think that it would be. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeCampbell Posted July 19, 2011 Report Share Posted July 19, 2011 Is Corporate Hunter coming out to his wrestling theme them any more/less ridiculous than nearly 66 year old Vince still coming out to his Corporation music from 1998 or so? Especially considering Vince has aged considerably ever since the hair vs hair match at WM? Who knew the famous Vince hair helmet was his fountain of youth. I don't think it's any more ridiculous and silly than having Tony Schivone and Jim Ross refer to the WCW Executive VP as "Cowboy" Bill Watts. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shawmic Posted July 19, 2011 Report Share Posted July 19, 2011 Alvarez with the huge scoop today: -- Vince will be at SummerSlam in LA in a few weeks, though not necessarily in front of the camera. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bix Posted July 19, 2011 Report Share Posted July 19, 2011 If Dave ends up being wrong about the Vince/HHH thing signaling the real transition then he will pretty much lose all remaining credibility, right?No trollin', but do you hate Meltzer from a competitive aspect or simply because you hate him? I don't want to get in a stupid argument, but Dave is a nice guy who has been seemingly exploiting ridiculously vague headlines as well as never labelling members only posts as such and assigning the status at random (all of which he even did for stuff like Joe Higuchi's death) to get more page views/ad impressions for the last year+. And, as was noted in...maybe this thread, he's been suffering as a wrestling reporter (especially with regards to WWE) over the last couple years especially compared to someone I personally dislike in Mike Johnson. Dave has always been nice to me except for a very odd misunderstanding a couple years ago that we've gotten over. Bryan...who the hell knows. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hollinger. Posted July 19, 2011 Author Report Share Posted July 19, 2011 I've always figured that crap was Bryan. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bix Posted July 19, 2011 Report Share Posted July 19, 2011 Bryan has sworn to me that it's Dave, to the point that the second time I talked to him about it (Joe Higuchi's death, Epic Beard Man was the first time) he seemed actively pissed off that I thought it was him. It does make sense to me, Dave seems a lot more likely to paywall things so randomly (house show results! TV reports! BABINSACK!) than Bryan. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hollinger. Posted July 19, 2011 Author Report Share Posted July 19, 2011 True. Probably a consequence of Dave not knowing how to use a computer. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smkelly Posted July 19, 2011 Report Share Posted July 19, 2011 If Dave ends up being wrong about the Vince/HHH thing signaling the real transition then he will pretty much lose all remaining credibility, right?No trollin', but do you hate Meltzer from a competitive aspect or simply because you hate him? I don't want to get in a stupid argument, but Dave is a nice guy who has been seemingly exploiting ridiculously vague headlines as well as never labelling members only posts as such and assigning the status at random (all of which he even did for stuff like Joe Higuchi's death) to get more page views/ad impressions for the last year+. And, as was noted in...maybe this thread, he's been suffering as a wrestling reporter (especially with regards to WWE) over the last couple years especially compared to someone I personally dislike in Mike Johnson. Dave has always been nice to me except for a very odd misunderstanding a couple years ago that we've gotten over. Bryan...who the hell knows. Thanks. I wasn't looking for an argument When was Meltzer at his best, or when does he do his best work? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdw Posted July 19, 2011 Report Share Posted July 19, 2011 I would also dispute the idea that he's not as over as the company/family wants us to believe he is. Yes it did take a long time for him to finally get over as a top guy in the eyes of the fans (which I would say was more a result of all the time he spent as the second banana in DX than anything else), but once he got there he was most certainly seen as one of the top guys in the company. As pointed out, winning feuds with Mr. McMahon, Foley and Rock at the very height of each of their popularities in six months will do that for you. His return from the quad tear was huge, My thought would be to pop in that Mania again. Compare the crowd reaction to Hogan-Rock and Trip-Jericho. Close? A "huge" comeback doesn't fizzle out in two months if it truly is huge. the DX Revival was big (despite being booked amazingly one sided at times), Trip running through Vince-Foley-Rock was 12/99 through 05/00: 12/12/99 Armageddon: Hunter Hearst Helmsley pinned Vince McMahon (29:45) in a "no holds barred" match 01/23/00 Rumble: Triple H pinned Cactus Jack (26:51) in a "street fight" match 02/27/00 No Way Out: Triple H pinned Cactus Jack (23:59) in a "hell in a cell" match 04/02/00 Mania: Triple H beat The Rock & Mick Foley & The Big Show (36:28) in a "four corners" match * Rock pinned Big Show (4:41) * Triple H pinned Foley (19:41) * Triple H pinned Rock (36:28) 04/30/00 Backlash: The Rock pinned Triple H (19:24) 05/21/00 Judgment Day: Triple H beat The Rock (60:08) in an "ironman" match The next thing you point to is a January 2002 return that meant nothing by Feb and Mar 2002. Then you jump foward to a DX reunion that happened in 2006. That side steps his role on top as the company's business went south over the course of four years. there really hasn't been any point in the last 5-6 years at least where you could say he isn't looked at by the fans at the level the company sees him at. He has been the primary main event Wrestlemania wrestler since roughly 2002. Business has gone done in that period, yet they still build entire years around setting him up for Mania. It's a bit like Carson Palmer being the main event QB in Cincy: that was fine back before the major playoff injury, but time passed him by since that point and if Cincy really wants to be a serious playoff contender, they need to kick his ass to the curb. That's been the WWE. They're lucky that there isn't a real competitor with something fresh or they would have been as exposed as WCW was one Austin and Rock took off and fans found Hogan and Flair & Co stale as all shit. It seems like the hardcores are still salty over the methods he used to get to the top and the people he threw under the bus. Once he takes over for good, he could go on a booking run better than anyone's ever seen and return things to the old school rasslin' everyone loves and people would still complain he's the guy who buried Booker T. From a business standpoint, I'm less concerned about whether he brings back the wrestling we all love. I can pop in one of several hundred DVD's in the den to see some of that. I'm also less concerned about him delivering some of that new fangled stuff that people creame their jeans about: I'll go see some of that at PWG this Saturday. What I'm more concerned about is taking it as an article of faith that Trip will be an improvement from Vince and WWE Creative over the past decade. After all... other than Vince, Trip has been the central figure in WWE Creative for that decade. John Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hollinger. Posted July 19, 2011 Author Report Share Posted July 19, 2011 Dave was amazing before MMA became profitable. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt D Posted July 19, 2011 Report Share Posted July 19, 2011 His return from the quad tear was huge, My thought would be to pop in that Mania again. Compare the crowd reaction to Hogan-Rock and Trip-Jericho. Close? A "huge" comeback doesn't fizzle out in two months if it truly is huge. Jericho cleaning up after Steph's dog. I don't know what point I'm trying to make with that. I'm just raising it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Loss Posted July 19, 2011 Report Share Posted July 19, 2011 It is true that 2002-2006 is the second lowest period in company history (after 1992-1996), and during this time, it's hard to argue that HHH's overpush didn't turn people off. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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