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Do wins and losses matter to you?


goodhelmet

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Nash vs. Goldberg - Goldberg was predominately made by the fact that he never lost. I'm of the mind that booking people with undefeated streaks is a dicey proposition that fails as often as it succeeds. Goldberg is obviously the best case scenario of it working ever. However, he couldn't never lose and dropping a fall to Big Kev with a metric ton of interference isn't the worse thing in the world. It was far worse what happened after that, that reset the company to before Goldberg had the belt at all which was the problem.

 

I've never understood this line of thinking, even though it is prevalent. Yes, it wouldn't last forever, but absolutely nothing in wrestling can last forever. Focus on *having* to end Goldberg's streak at some point seems analogous to focusing on Hogan's four-year title run in the 80s the same way -- by saying he has to lose at some point so why bother. The focus shouldn't have been on how they end the streak, it should have been on coming up with more scenarios and opponents to keep him red hot. I feel like *that's* the conversation I wish we had when we talked about Goldberg's what-ifs. They should have just run with the streak as long as fans would accept it, and there were no signs at all that they weren't accepting it anymore. If that's one year, five years, or another week, it's all about timing.

 

It worked for Goldberg, but it also worked for Andre for a long time. There was an era where lots of guys were protected and almost never did jobs and there were far more stars when that was the predominant way to book people who were over.

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Agreed on the Goldy situation for sure. In wrestling, you run with what's hot. Why is it that Hogan got that four year run again? Because he was fucking huge, like him or not, and that's where the money was. And they kept him hot by having him do relatively few jobs, which again makes sense with the business model at the time. So the only real reason for Goldberg having to lose to Nash was what? Nash wanted to beat Goldberg? Ridiculous.

 

As for my answer to the original question, yes they matter but there are matters of tiers to think about. I recently watched Rollins vs. Cena from December of 2013 and I thought Rollins got over HUGE in that loss. But if he goes on to lose his next five singles matches that's a big waste of a great performance by both. That's where smart booking comes in. Book him against a guy who is more even with him and have him go over clean with no help from Reigns or Ambrose. And I would agree that where you are on the card has a lot to do with it. A midcard guy being pushed to the main event can't afford too many losses. In the present WWE it doesn't seem to matter how strong somebody's win/loss record is once they get to main event level. They are generally perceived as being there once they've been around that level for a while. That's one of the reasons Cena can afford to be so generous. The problem really ends up being that the WWE's even steven booking ends up keeping 95% of the roster endlessly stuck in the midcard.

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I want to pile on in the Goldberg thing.

 

They shouldn't had even been thinking about beating Goldberg yet. He was still HOT! What the heck was the rush?

Also, there was a million opponents he could face at the time. With everyone from a DDP rematch, Sting, Bigelow, Scott Steiner, Hogan rematch, Bret Hart, etc...

 

This was such a HUGE blunder and the best case for horrible politics ruining the box office of wrestling.

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