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WWE TV 02/11 - 02/17 *space up for sale*


KawadaSmile

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1 hour ago, El-P said:

Because it's all about DA BRAND. Crying about going to live a Mania Moment and point at sign once a year. What else ? They have the money from Fox and the Saudis. They don't need to do anything else anymore, and they don't want to make anyone special because they could leave, those ingrates. It's all about the McMahons and the Brand, and being happy to work for the McMahons and the Brand. 

If you said this 5 months ago,  you'd be correct but they've potential serious complication with the emerging AEW if it's true that they are offering raises and putting more effort into keeping talent from leaving then eventually they'll have to stop being complacent with the on screen product. Alot of talent isn't going to be happy to just work fir the Mcmahons and they'll have leverage for the first time since WCW was sold. Guys are already vocal about being unhappy which is smoke to the fire. Is WWE going to continue to punish talent for being vocal about their unhappiness or bury someone for getting over on their own? They are going to be forced to change especially is talent starts to be more vocal about how they are booked.

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1 hour ago, ZThomas said:

If you said this 5 months ago,  you'd be correct but they've potential serious complication with the emerging AEW if it's true that they are offering raises and putting more effort into keeping talent from leaving then eventually they'll have to stop being complacent with the on screen product. Alot of talent isn't going to be happy to just work fir the Mcmahons and they'll have leverage for the first time since WCW was sold. Guys are already vocal about being unhappy which is smoke to the fire. Is WWE going to continue to punish talent for being vocal about their unhappiness or bury someone for getting over on their own? They are going to be forced to change especially is talent starts to be more vocal about how they are booked.

Rusev says hi.

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I always kind of suspected that Rusev never gets pushed because Lana seems to rub a lot of people the wrong way. Lana herself kind of confirmed that by her reaction to being removed from Total Divas on Lilian Garcia's podcast where she went on a rant about how no one likes her. 

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4 hours ago, KawadaSmile said:

The Revival just became Tag Champs after voicing their discontent, guys. Maybe the problem is not that clear cut?

I mean, the actual truth of the matter is their non-top of the card booking is so pointless they can insert anybody in there within a few weeks and "give them a push" if it'll keep them happier, but the truth is, outside of a dozen folks, at the end of the day, the WWE will say, "good luck in AEW or NJPW, but we've got 50 other people at the Performance Center who will be just as over as you are within a few months who can also put on "good matches." 

The wrestlers really have no leverage, because the truth is, the people wanting folks to jump to AEW are going to watch AEW anyway and nobody is changing the channel if The Revival or Rusev aren't on their TV anymore. 

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19 hours ago, SomethingSavage said:

At 30 years old, I probably sound like the world's oldest, angriest man yelling at a cloud. And sometimes WWE's shitty booking *does* have me question if it's possible I've finally outgrown my wrestling fandom.

But then I see a wrestling show that's actually, ya know, GOOD. And I know nothing could be further from the truth.

So yeah. I guess that's just it. The action is great, and some of the matches are top shelf. But their booking is so fucking god awful.

Modern WWE, if you just watch a few of the Big PPVs a year, is easily digestible. When you try to follow the TV though, it's impossible. I never watch RAW or Smackdown anymore, not even the condensed Hulu version. There's no need to. When you watch a PPV, they'll run down everything that happened on TV before the match anyway. WWE have a fucking replay fetish. If you took the three hour RAW & removed the replays & commercials from it, it would be like an hour & fifteen minutes long. Not to mention feuds never die, so if you see a PPV one month & then skip a couple of monthly shows, when you turn it on again, odds are that match will still be on the card you return to.

I watch the NXT TakeOver shows. I watched Royal Rumble. I'll probably watch Elimination Chamber on Sunday & I know I'll watch Wrestlemania but the days of me watching all of the shows are gone. Even a lot of the PPVs I skip. New Japan Wrestle Kingdom was super good. And I plan on following AEW. Hell, I'm only about a third of the way through the third season of Lucha Underground. At this point I don't know if I'll ever get back to it.

I get my wrestling fix nowadays from the WWE Network & watching old stuff. I've been working my way through 1992 WWF SuperStars right now. Before that, I was watching WCW Saturday Night. After SuperStars, I might switch over to WCW Thunder. Even if I've seen it all before, it's been so long that I don't remember most of it. Even with most of the matches being jobber squashes, it's just so much more interesting & compelling to me. It feels fresh. The characters feel larger-than-life. The wrestlers themselves don't just seem like normal people off of the street. Finishers actually finish matches! It's crazy. No one in modern WWE feels like a star. Back in the early 90s, most of them felt like stars. It's not just rose-colored glasses or nostalgia, either. They were just presented better. 

Of course, not all of them are good. Virgil is trash. I'm not convinced Nailz was ever even trained. Shit like that. But at least their matches don't go 15 minutes with a commercial break & give their opponent 50% of the match, like they do on RAW.

I only really have one buddy anymore to watch wrestling with & he's pretty busy so I only see him about once every two weeks. When we comes over, we watch wrestling together & just sit around & joke about old shows & shit. That's still fun to me, at thirty-seven years old. My girlfriend isn't really a wrestling fan but sometimes she'll watch with me just to humor me, but she loses interest pretty quickly. She was a big fan of Asuka when she was still down in NXT but she never really watches the main show stuff.

I'll never "outgrow" professional wrestling. It's been a big part of my life for thirty years. Outside of video games & pizza, it's one of the only constants that remains in my life. I myself however, have quite a bit of free time. So when I have an itch that only wrestling can scratch, I live tweet random shows because it helps me enjoy them more. Taking & posting screenshots & talking about the random angles & stuff of the time. It makes it feel... I don't know, not as lonely? Because I would go crazy if I were just sitting & watching wrestling alone just to pass time. At that point, I would rather just Netflix a new show or something. 

Modern WWE, like you acknowledged, just doesn't have the draw. Like I hinted at, they don't really have any stars. When someone does start to organically get over, WWE usually tends to ignore their audience. Now they're doing troll booking & using social media to try to get heat & it just all feels so silly. Yeah, they have some guys that can go out there & do a bunch of spots until the crowd chants "this is awesome" but do they have anyone that captivates the audience to where they want to buy a ticket or a t-shirt because of that person? Do they have anyone that they want to watch win or watch lose? No. It's just a bunch of interchangeable, faceless people. The crowd pops for the first few notes of their theme song because "Oh, I know this one!" and then the match starts & the crowd dies until the finish when they can pop for the next entrance theme. 

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10 hours ago, NintendoLogic said:

The optics of talent fleeing to a startup promotion en masse being terrible for WWE gives them leverage.

 

Dave actually  mentioned this in today's WO show as the reason Brock keeps getting money to stay, Vince doesn't want to be seen as losing top stars. 

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13 hours ago, NintendoLogic said:

The optics of talent fleeing to a startup promotion en masse being terrible for WWE gives them leverage.

 

To a certain extent, yes. OTOH, giving the Revival a tag title win or whatever is one thing. But, if The Revival continue to push for more or some other young guy who thinks he's the next Cody really pushes for a bigger push than they think somebody warrants? Then they'll happily let him go. I also think it's highly unlikely we're going to get much fleeing talent, because frankly, most of the talent is actually perfectly happy, even if they don't think everything's 100% A-OK. 

Let's see how many WWE folks happily Instagram their new cars or new houses they buy with their Wrestlemania payoffs before we start acting like it's a sinking ship. Obviously, Vince'll overpay for Brock or people on the next tier down like Bryan or Style. OTOH, Sami Zayn? I could easily see him being quietly released. 

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2 hours ago, Jesse Ewiak said:

Obviously, Vince'll overpay for Brock or people on the next tier down like Bryan or Style. OTOH, Sami Zayn? I could easily see him being quietly released. 

Sami would be seen as a bigger fit for AEW than Ambrose Honestly, other than Dean being the bigger star. Maybe The Revival might not be seen as a bigger value than they believe they are but , you know with the Young Bucks in charge they know in the back of their mind that AEW is going to be a Tag team heavy company to the level of JCP in the 80's. The Revival would be valued like a Main Event act if they came in. In WWE they would have to have a strong run of matches the gets over with a number of teams the same way The Duddleys , Hardy and E & C did in the early 00s and as over as those teams were, they got over on their own. The Uso's or any other true tag team could have way more leverage based on the fact that WWE is historically not a Tagteam centric promotion which could force WWE to put more focus on the division.

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Somewhere in these threads there was a back and forth about Daniel Bryan having creative control. Well, right now he pretty much does. There's no merchandise. No green Eco-triangle t shirts with "Daniel Bryan" worked into it along with a WWE logo that makes you say, " Man, I'd wear that if it didn't have a fucking WWE logo on it."

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If there were ever a case of anything resembling creative control in recent WWE, I think there's a more viable argument for Jericho.

Dude did the same deal by expressly stating how he wanted no merchandise as a heel. Plus he had a lot of sway with Jimmy Jacobs and the writers, taking care to craft his own stories and angles with the Festival of Friendship & all the JeriKO stuff.

I could see this being a fairly similar deal. It's not creative control, but it's not too far off. The more interesting story would be in HOW it got to this point.

Good for Bryan, either way. Seems like the guy has won some real trust & faith from those in power.

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52 minutes ago, SomethingSavage said:

If there were ever a case of anything resembling creative control in recent WWE, I think there's a more viable argument for Jericho.

Dude did the same deal by expressly stating how he wanted no merchandise as a heel. Plus he had a lot of sway with Jimmy Jacobs and the writers, taking care to craft his own stories and angles with the Festival of Friendship & all the JeriKO stuff.

Well he kinda worked the fans to buy Y2AJ shirts that one time...

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Well, Rousey has *not* moved the ratings, which are steadily going down. She also hasn't brought her MMA fanbase along with her. And the women audience apparently doesn't give a flying fuck about her since they are seemingly leaving in droves. I know Rousey is now the new darling around here, and I have loved her work in the ring, but she isn't the golden goose (unless you consider the Fox deal is only do to her, in which case, all the rest doesn't matter).

As far as Lana goes, I dunno, why would she drop the corporate line if her and her hsuband are miserable here anyway ? Would love to see what they could do in a different context.

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On the Bryan/Creative Control thing, I agree that its a team effort. Bryan's got a good rep backstage as a creative thinker and is well-liked (meaning collaboration with the producers/agents/writers is likely more fruitful). He's proven he can get over. The company also invested in him with what was probably a lucrative deal so there is incentive in keeping him happy. Plus, he's on SmackDown - the show Vince cares less about and has historically been less controlling over - and his heel turn came at the exact right time when the title scene needed freshening up (after AJ/Nak and AJ/Joe). But does this same run happen on Raw? With all the "trimmings" like Ali and Almas getting more exposure? I don't think it would.

I like the phrases "loosening the reins" and "more creative input," but Vince has the pencil. We know bigger stars do have more input than others about who they want to work with and even sometimes who they want to put over (Austin's beef w/ Jarrett, the Cena/Nexus SummerSlam thing, Brock and Braun seeming to clash), but ultimately, Vince is in charge. If Vince wakes up tomorrow and decides Bryan is going to drop the title to Corbin, its going to happen - even if it would be the dumbest booking ever and Bryan presented his case against it. Isn't that essentially what happened with Austin and Brock? Vince wanted one thing, wouldn't budge about his plans, and his top star disagreed so vehemently that he breached his contract. Neither side wants to get to that point so, hey, why not let Bryan wrestle some 205 guy on the B-show if that keeps him happy?

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