Comments that don't warrant a thread - Part 4

[KawadaSmile]

2 hours ago, Steenalized said:

I just saw something on twitter about how the new NCAA NIL rules can be a huge boon to the WWE - maybe AEW too - and ties directly to this. Find a college kid with a good look, interest in wrestling, and isn't going pro in the sport, take a chance on building a bridge while they're in school then come over after graduation.

I think the influx of talent we'll have in the next 5-10 years is going to be massive. We have very young guys in AEW and NXT, and some still to debut like Gable Stevenson. If everything turns out fine, the future looks bright.

[Steenalized]

11 minutes ago, KawadaSmile said:

I think the influx of talent we'll have in the next 5-10 years is going to be massive. We have very young guys in AEW and NXT, and some still to debut like Gable Stevenson. If everything turns out fine, the future looks bright.

It's also why the "haha Triple H sure dropped the ball" thing is funny but I don't think Vince is wrong per se to go back to seeking specific body types and ages. I get why fans groan about it but wrestling has decades of getting recently graduated football players, basketball players, wrestlers, etc. to transfer over and I'd trust Vince (okay, I don't trust Vince but hear me out) to use that system better than trying to be The Super Indy. Tony Khan's got the latter one figured out better now anyway.

[El-P]

Considering the track record of the Performance Center and the booking in the last 10 years, I have no idea why anyone is thinking this change is gonna make any difference. Their training system sucks and their booking is godawful. The future is surely bright for pro-wrestling in general, once the pandemic finally ends. WWE ? Haven't we learned anything from the last decade ? They have to rethink *everything*, especially in the wake of AEW becoming the hot promotion that delivers to its audience what they actually want and allows the workers to express themselves. Recruiting star college athletes won't change things when you can't train worth a shit and you can't book a damn and still thinks guys from 20 years ago are the real stars. Mick Foley said it, they have a problem and even *Booker T* agreed. When Booker T of all people is not simply playing to corporate bullshit card, you've got an issue. It's not like it's new, but now the chickens have come back to roost. They can thank the TV rights bubble and the Saudi blood money that make them idiot proof seemingly "forever". They would be *so fucked* if they did not have those.

[strobogo]

Larry Zbyzsko in the Nitro era has to be the most unlikable commentator that wasn't an explicitly heel commentator meant to intentionally annoy the shit out of you (like 2011 Cole, later stage JBL, Corey Graves at various times, Mark Madden). It's not even that he's constantly putting himself over and very often outright burying talent for no apparent reason, but he's just such an asshole all the time. There's the questionable commentary that frequently had racist, sexist, homophobic, or once in a while even transphobic statements even nominally being a face or at least neutral commentator. I'm not even talking about that stuff. I'm talking about the constant talk of the virtue of MANLINESS and being a real tough guy, yet when The Outsiders come to the booth to fuck with him and Tony, he never defends Tony, even when Nash more or less threatens to break Tony's neck just so his kids won't have their dad be able to pick them up the rest of their lives. And when Tony says fuck this shit and leaves the set, Larry spends the rest of the hour calling Tony unprofessional and unmanly for leaving. 

Now, Larry was a former world champion wrestler, a multiple times black belt in various martial arts. Tony is just an announcer, never been a wrestler or combat athlete. Larry just stands by and lets them threaten his partner like that and then calls the guy a pussy for not wanting to be out there anymore. And then like a week later, Lee Marshall actually does get attacked by wrestlers at WW3, and Larry just stands by and lets it happen, then talks shit about him shortly after. I have no idea how this guy, at that stage in his career as an announcer, got so over with the crowds. Because he said New World ODOR and ED WOOD Hogan 85 times an hour? Dude is significantly more unlikable as a neutral to face announcer than he was as the ultimate chickenshit stooge heel wrestler.

[KawadaSmile]

14 minutes ago, El-P said:

Considering the track record of the Performance Center and the booking in the last 10 years, I have no idea why anyone is thinking this change is gonna make any difference. Their training system sucks and their booking is godawful. The future is surely bright for pro-wrestling in general, once the pandemic finally ends. WWE ? Haven't we learned anything from the last decade ? They have to rethink *everything*, especially in the wake of AEW becoming the hot promotion that delivers to its audience what they actually want and allows the workers to express themselves. Recruiting star college athletes won't change things when you can't train worth a shit and you can't book a damn and still thinks guys from 20 years ago are the real stars. Mick Foley said it, they have a problem and even *Booker T* agreed. When Booker T of all people is not simply playing to corporate bullshit card, you've got an issue. It's not like it's new, but now the chickens have come back to roost. They can thank the TV right bubble and the Saudi blood money that make them idiot proof. They would be *so fucked* if they did not have those.

The biggest issue is that NXT fucked up badly by trying to be a developmental AND a super indy. They got lesser known names such as Bayley, Sasha and to a certain extent, Becky herself, and turned them into mega stars. PAC was also super fucking great, the Wyatt Family was an over act, and the Shield was just the best. Most of the people there were the B to C tier of indy talent. They turned out fine.

I think what changed the game for them was Finn Balor. He was their biggest signing for a while, and around that same time came KO, Joe, Nakamura, and then fucking Robert Roode, Drew Mc, Adam Cole... shit became this weird super indie/TNA combination and completely lost sight of what made it such an engaging product.

If they dial back and focus on the task of actually preparing wrestlers, perfect. They managed to have success recently with the Street Profits and have a huge star in Bianca Belair. It's totally fair to criticize their awful culture with assholes like Bill DeMott, but at the same time I see it as a fixable issue.

[El-P]

1 hour ago, KawadaSmile said:

The biggest issue is that NXT fucked up badly by trying to be a developmental AND a super indy.

Agreed that was an issue. But that was not the biggest issue. The biggest issue is that they fucked up pretty much everyone in the main roster, making NXT irrelevant in the grand scheme of things and uncool to its audience because there is no "I can't wait until he/she graduates to the main roster". When it began running in circle, that's when things really went awry to me and that's much later than the Finn Balor era. We're talking late Gargano/Ciampa/Cole stuff.

1 hour ago, KawadaSmile said:

If they dial back and focus on the task of actually preparing wrestlers, perfect. They managed to have success recently with the Street Profits and have a huge star in Bianca Belair. It's totally fair to criticize their awful culture with assholes like Bill DeMott, but at the same time I see it as a fixable issue.

They already have damaged Bianca BeLair by treating her like a joke, making the investment building up to Mania as a waste of time. Not to say she won't bounce back, but still that booking was the stupidest shit imaginable.

Bill Demott has been removed a long time ago. The new regime is apparently as inept in term of training talent. Tay Conti showed up in AEW with years at the Performance Center looking like she was a 6 months rookie. Sure, some super talented people like BeLair may slip through the cracks, but the evidence is there in term of this Performance Center being a failure (which is not surprising, pro-wrestling is not about doing calisthenics until you hurt yourself) and the WWE star making machine has been broken since about 2005, and the last few years are basically the nadir of the promotion on that respect. There's no unfixable issue, but as long as they have the same mentality as they do now, they won't fix anything at all. Vince is thrashed. And as long as Vince is alive, he's gonna run the show. And after he dies, I could see non-wrestling people taking over and we know what it means (either they don't care, either they don't get it). Sell to Disney and do fan service shows forever at this point (which really is already the selling point of Mania, has been for years now). 

Or maybe Jeff Jarrett will get the book once Vince (and Kevin Dunn, who's maybe the worst guy in the company, really) is gone.  I mean, that guy slithered his entire career, that would be an amazing sight considering his father was supposed to take over if Vince went to jail (despite what Brucie says).

[Kadaveri]

13 hours ago, El-P said:

Yeah, there's something odd about Tessa. Either there's *much more* to it than what is public knowledge (which are basically backstage hearsays, not to say it's not true), either it's an odd case of absolute fear of Twitter outrage.

I don't think it's even 1 big thing with Tessa, there's just a load of little bits of evidence for years that she is very disliked by other wrestlers even before the racist stuff came out. As early as January 2016 Meltzer was wondering why WWE hadn't signed Tessa and got tweets like this. I remember this tweet from Victoria for example complaining about her attitude. We had the weird Stardom incident when Isla Dawn left in the middle of a tour with rumours that she ran away from Tessa, and then in Tessa's last Stardom match Kagetsu no-sold her offense and stiffed the fuck outta her. And there was an incident in WWR where Tessa seemed to get into a shoot fight with Deonna Purrazzo in the middle of a battle royal.

This isn't stuff you can ever really prove as it's mostly rumours, but if I had to guess with WWE/AEW won't sign her it's because they get so many reports from wrestlers in their lockerroom that she'd be a very toxic presence and she's just not worth the trouble.

[sek69]

Yeah Tessa seems to rub everyone around her the wrong way, so all the racist stuff became a convenient cover for people to pass on her without having to say it's because she's an asshole who pisses everyone off. 

 

3 hours ago, El-P said:

he biggest issue is that they fucked up pretty much everyone in the main roster,

The PC is a flop because it produced wrestlers for NXT and not the main roster. All those NXT people we like flopped because they spent all their time working to be the ideal of Hunter's Private Indy Fed and then Vince would see them on his show and be like "wtf is this bullshit?". Of course things designed to appeal to hardcores in NXT instead of appealing to the old man running the big show aren't going work. All those folks being set up to fail should be a war crime. 

[NintendoLogic]

Honestly, the PC wasn't even a success at producing wrestlers for NXT. After all, how many NXT stars got their start there? It just feels like Hunter became enamored of the Power Plant model of training for some reason and refused to change course even in the overwhelming face of lack of results.

[Dale Wolfe]

Takeover New Orleans was the death of NXT even if it didnt seem like it at the time necessarily. Two Meltzer 5*s and then as said upthread it just ends up repeating itself forever as a super-indy

Funny that it ended up exposing HHH as a mark for Meltzer and ruined his chances of ever taking over really, even in the moment that seemed like a great achievement. 

[Jimmy Redman]

15 minutes ago, Dale Wolfe said:

Takeover New Orleans was the death of NXT even if it didnt seem like it at the time necessarily. Two Meltzer 5*s and then as said upthread it just ends up repeating itself forever as a super-indy

Funny that it ended up exposing HHH as a mark for Meltzer and ruined his chances of ever taking over really, even in the moment that seemed like a great achievement. 

I remember saying to I think Loss on Twitter, when people started eulogizing NXT, that you can treat Takeover Nola as the series finale for the Golden Age of NXT that began in 2013 or so and it's a hell of a five year run of wrestling television.

If Gargano and Ciampa had graduated to the main roster after that and the cycle continued maybe NXT could have kept on trucking as Hunter's Super Indy for a while longer (at least until they tried to put it against AEW). A lot of their issues pre-AEW stemmed from those guys not getting off the train and causing the talent backlog. But then that's ultimately the fault of Vince and Creative for making the main shows so bad that talent actually preferred to stay in developmental forever rather than work Wrestlemania.

[Coffey]

I also want to say that the loss of Dusty Rhodes should not be ignored. I know he passed away in mid 2015 but the impact he had on the people when he was around certainly can't be denied. Definitely seemed to leave a big lasting impression on a lot of the talents & several of the women that went on to prominent main roster roles. 

[Dav'oh]

12 hours ago, Steenalized said:

It's also why the "haha Triple H sure dropped the ball" thing is funny

Triple H can't even get credit for falling in love and getting a beautiful woman to fall in love with him and raise a family with him. He was "wily enough to marry the boss' daughter", it was "a political move", which also devolves Steph into a clueless pawn just pumping out babies for a guy who doesn't love her. 

[Al]

The first two Gargano/Ciampa matches were great. But by the end of the second one it was apparent I didn’t need to see it again. That spawned an era of 30-40 minute main events where it would hit 10:40 with a match left and I’d say “fuck it, my kid’s gonna wake me up at 6am, I don’t have the patience for this.” So I’ll share my distaste for Adam Cole with the caveat that I didn’t even see him work half the time.

You hear about promotions getting burned out because of blood or violence. I think Gargano/Ciampa burned out their style on the audience.

[Zoo Enthusiast]

16 hours ago, Jimmy Redman said:

I remember saying to I think Loss on Twitter, when people started eulogizing NXT, that you can treat Takeover Nola as the series finale for the Golden Age of NXT that began in 2013 or so and it's a hell of a five year run of wrestling television.

If Gargano and Ciampa had graduated to the main roster after that and the cycle continued maybe NXT could have kept on trucking as Hunter's Super Indy for a while longer (at least until they tried to put it against AEW). A lot of their issues pre-AEW stemmed from those guys not getting off the train and causing the talent backlog. But then that's ultimately the fault of Vince and Creative for making the main shows so bad that talent actually preferred to stay in developmental forever rather than work Wrestlemania.

To me the peak was the Philly Takeover.  NOLA was the residue from that and everything since has been pretty steady decline.

[sek69]

So Ciampa has been vocal about not wanting to move to the main roster since his repaired neck probably wouldn't be able to take the abuse (and he's probably not wrong), but why has Gargano been around so long? 

[C.S.]

I'll give Gargano credit. A year ago, he was at his absolute stalest. He has since successfully reinvented himself with The Way and his goofy heel antics. Ciampa remains tired though. 

[KawadaSmile]

Ciampa had one match against Sheamus and said "fuck that"

[NintendoLogic]

It didn't help that Gargano and Ciampa looked like children standing next to Sheamus and Cesaro.

[Rah]

11 hours ago, sek69 said:

So Ciampa has been vocal about not wanting to move to the main roster since his repaired neck probably wouldn't be able to take the abuse (and he's probably not wrong), but why has Gargano been around so long? 

 

 

[Laz]

It's also a wise career move, because there's literally nothing about his look, presence, or in-ring work that would make him anything but a job guy on the main roster. He at least gets to show he can "go" in NXT, in the event that he isn't offered a new deal when his current one expires, while a main show run would result in a lot of travel for nothing, and that helps future bookings elsewhere.

[sek69]

I'm guessing Gargano is going to have to make some hard choices soon, since pretty much everything in his tweet as changed since that time. The office is different, the product he believes in just got mercy killed, and Candice is pregnant so he won't be working with her for a bit. Plus the one time he appeared on Raw he looked like a lucha mini in there with the main roster guys. 

[Dale Wolfe]

I really do think bringing weight classes into wrestling could help so many of these weird situations that develop around supposed midgets or whatever 

[Ricky Jackson]

It's really not that hard: book a wrestler like they matter, and if they are charismatic the fans will accept them (AEW) But when you have soooooo many rules and restrictions on how you book talent, most wrestlers have zero chance getting over (WWE) 

[sek69]

It really only seems to work in Japan, and even then  being a junior is something you graduate from if you have any  star potential. In US wrestling having weight classes turns into a way to marginalize smaller guys and show they aren't good enough to hang with the big guys since we had 40 years of WWF/E teaching fans that you have to be a big guy to be a star. In theory it works in Mexico, but there's not really much size disparity in lucha. You have big folks and everyone else is pretty close in weight/size. Plus it's really only CMLL that has weight classes and part of that is because That's The Way It's Always Been Done and they forget about half the weight class championships they have unless someone holding one of them quits the company.