Comments that don't warrant a thread

[rovert]

I guess he will be on Raw next week wrestling Santino/earning his job.

[Guest Slickster]

Or possibly pinning his former NXT mentor The Miz to win the US title?

[Resident Evil]

Or possibly pinning his former NXT mentor The Miz to win the US title?

 

Yeah, that's what I was thinking too. It's be awesome to see Bret say something to the effect of yeah this Danielson guy is the new generation Bret Hart and pass the torch to him in some way. The only problem is that Ontario will want to see Bret with the tilte especially after being promised a Bret vs Miz match. I wouldn't want there to be some kind of backlash to Danielson right off the start. Ontario in a unique fan baSe so it will be interesting to see how things turn out. Bret's a smart guy though so if he wanted to he can figure out a way to really help DANIELSON.

[Resident Evil]

Is it overly cynical to think NXT was created solely to build up and then bury Danielson?

It's certainly possible but to me there's too many indicators that the WWE really likes him and from what I heard once Vince too. Maybe it was some kind of test to see if he could handle being buried and if he could still be over after that?

 

Or maybe they're just getting too cute booking or a little bit of everything. Who knows?

[kjh]

I'll admit, I have no idea where they're going with the Daniel Bryan/Bryan Danielson thing, but the pseudo-shoot promo he cut where he pretty much admitted Daniel Bryan was booked to be a loser has me intrigued, and I usually hate "OK, this is actually REAL, but everything else on the show is fake" nonsense.

Has this gimmick ever worked? I can't recall any time the "my old gimmick was phony crap, now you're getting to see the real me" storyline actually working when the wrestler is still working for the same promotion, in the same environment. Jeff Jarrett buried the Double J gimmick only to be back working the gimmick in 6 months. Dustin Runnels went to that well several times and it didn't work for him either. The less said about Shawn Stasiak and Chaz Warrington the better. If history is anything to go by, then Bryan will be lost in the shuffle and forgotten about within a month.

[Sean Liska]

It seems like much of the internet thinks that Danielson needs to be a main eventer for his WWE run to be a success. To me, even if he has a Regal or Finlay type role for the next 5-10 years, it's a big success for the guy. It's amazing someone with his look has made it to TV in the first place.

[S.L.L.]

OK, two lines of thought coming out of this....

 

1. "Scotty Goldman" was a jobber. "Evan Bourne" has fared better, but really got lost in the shuffle after he left ECW. C.M. Punk has had forward momentum pretty much ever since his debut, and is now a credible main event player. It seems to me that if they care enough to use the name you got indy famous with, they probably want to actually use you in a meaningful way.

 

2. Regardless of what the future holds for Danielson (I, for one, am being cautiously optimistic), this whole angle was moronic, and really feels like the last nail in the coffin of the NXT concept. It was a promising idea, but fuck this, I want my ECW back.

[El-P]

Never watched NXT, but by what I read about it, it really sounds retarded.

[KrisZ]

I hate linking to PWInsider but this is phenomenal. Duggan & Matt Borne having a shoot in the ring in New York in 2010.

 

http://www.pwinsider.com/ViewArticle.php?id=47497

[Bix]

Make sure you use AdBlock Plus and an antivirus w/ active protection!

[CodySave]

RF already has a teaser video out of the match. Unfortunately it only shows up to the first tie-up:

 

Also - I have no idea what gimmick Borne is trying to work in thisnow. I think it's supposed to be a modern version of his old "Re-Borne" gimmick, but really he just looks like a country drunk that did just enough to pass as the Joker for the local bar's Halloween party.

[Boondocks Kernoodle]

http://slam.canoe.ca/Slam/Wrestling/2010/04/10/13537671.html

 

An article about Borne's new gimmick.

[tigerpride]

I almost went to that show too, piss. It sucks I missed that

[BruiserBrody]

Duggan/Bourne looks like a work to me

[tomk]

He's got the right connections politically (he was trained by not one but two Friends of Hunter)

Lance Cade

Paul London

Bryan Kendrick

[Guest Slickster]

Well, WWE DID debut Evan Bourne as Matt Sydal for one week before giving him his new name.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMdhsKOBog8

[sek69]

He's got the right connections politically (he was trained by not one but two Friends of Hunter)

Lance Cade

Paul London

Bryan Kendrick

 

 

....and of that list Kendrick (allegedly) was one of the guys who kept getting pot failures on Wellness tests, London had his shit eating grin during Vince's death march, and Cade had the incident on a plane that wasn't at all an OD that led to his endeavoring.

 

So as long as Danielson doesn't pull a Jimmy Fallon during a serious skit or OD on a plane he should be alright.

[kjh]

Shawn's retired. Regal has no real pull. So yeah, Danielson's WWE career could go either way. If Paul Heyman was still around, then he'd have a better chance, as he would see Danielson's talent and potential star appeal. Who on the current WWE creative team would really go to bat for him? He doesn't fit the mould of the type of guy Vince, Hunter, Steph, Gerwirtz or Hayes likes to push.

[rovert]

Shawn's retired. Regal has no real pull. So yeah, Danielson's WWE career could go either way. If Paul Heyman was still around, then he'd have a better chance, as he would see Danielson's talent and potential star appeal. Who on the current WWE creative team would really go to bat for him? He doesn't fit the mould of the type of guy Vince, Hunter, Steph, Gerwirtz or Hayes likes to push.

But still it is hard to actively hate Bryan it seems, bar his occasional corpsing.

[WrestlingPower]

The best line I've heard on the Danielson thing is on the new Bryan & Vinny show, Vinny said that the NXT concept was such a failure that they basically rescued Danielson from it so the stench of winning it wouldn't follow him around.

[Loss]

I was on an airplane today for six hours, so I was reading some '89 WONs, specifically the NWA sections because I wanted to kinda track the thought process and success (or lack thereof) they were having. Anyway, Jim Herd often gets made fun of for the hunchback gimmick idea, and for the Ding Dongs gimmick idea. But he had an idea that was much worse than either of those that I've never really heard discussed much.

 

He wanted to have the wrestlers do a costume battle royal, where they all wrestled in disguise so anyone could attack anyone, and also so the fans wouldn't know who was who. Think about that for five seconds and all the inherent problems in that idea.

 

After the Turner buyout in the WONs I'm recapping, I'm going to start a thread of WON quotes just about WCW being WCW. There's the DVDVR thread that focuses on the latter years, but there needs to be something compiled over time of everything from 1988 onward.

 

Really, Bryan Alvarez's book should have included stories like this from early on -- things like them airing the wrong episode of TV by mistake on TBS, or sending 300 posters to a local promoter hyping a Sting vs Terry Fox main event. Just a heads up, in spite of the wrestling content being really, really good in '89, there are some epic blunders that will shock you when we finally get to '89. It's kind of a sad story -- a company doing everything right in terms of good wrestling and good presentation, trying new things, bringing in new stars, and almost none of it working. Good booking and good wrestling, with terrible promoting. At that time, Vince really proved that if you were great at hype, TV production, doing the right results on the right shows, and creating a buzz, it almost didn't matter how good or bad the content was.

 

Anyway, I don't want to get too much into this now because there is going to be plenty of opportunity to discuss this as we go through '89. It's motivating me to finish up '88 quickly.

[Strummer]

man what was with Herd trying to bring Sports Entertainment into a traditional wrestling company? Did he have a WWF hang up? Did he even watch his own promotion?

 

things like them airing the wrong episode of TV by mistake on TBS

what!? When did this happen?

 

sending 300 posters to a local promoter hyping a Sting vs Terry Fox main event

did it take place in Altanta?

[Guest Slickster]

Glad to see someone else who remembers the letterhead story.

[Al]

It's sad that Sting vs. Terry Fox would probably have drawn good money.

[S.L.L.]

I was on an airplane today for six hours, so I was reading some '89 WONs, specifically the NWA sections because I wanted to kinda track the thought process and success (or lack thereof) they were having. Anyway, Jim Herd often gets made fun of for the hunchback gimmick idea, and for the Ding Dongs gimmick idea. But he had an idea that was much worse than either of those that I've never really heard discussed much.

 

He wanted to have the wrestlers do a costume battle royal, where they all wrestled in disguise so anyone could attack anyone, and also so the fans wouldn't know who was who. Think about that for five seconds and all the inherent problems in that idea.

Was it Memphis Power Pro that ran the one night tournament on Halloween where everyone was in costume and (at least supposed to be) unrecognizable until they lost a match, and had to have their identities revealed? Jim Herd presaging Randy Hales is pretty amusing.

 

Truth be told, I always thought it would be fun if a wrestling promotion ran Halloween specials where everyone worked in costume...but it would be kinda dependent on the fans being able to tell who was who. Imagine how wrestling would look today if the fans weren't supposed to know that that guy dressed up as Vanilla Ice in '02 was John Cena.

 

After the Turner buyout in the WONs I'm recapping, I'm going to start a thread of WON quotes just about WCW being WCW. There's the DVDVR thread that focuses on the latter years, but there needs to be something compiled over time of everything from 1988 onward.

 

Really, Bryan Alvarez's book should have included stories like this from early on -- things like them airing the wrong episode of TV by mistake on TBS, or sending 300 posters to a local promoter hyping a Sting vs Terry Fox main event. Just a heads up, in spite of the wrestling content being really, really good in '89, there are some epic blunders that will shock you when we finally get to '89. It's kind of a sad story -- a company doing everything right in terms of good wrestling and good presentation, trying new things, bringing in new stars, and almost none of it working. Good booking and good wrestling, with terrible promoting. At that time, Vince really proved that if you were great at hype, TV production, doing the right results on the right shows, and creating a buzz, it almost didn't matter how good or bad the content was.

I tend to believe that the best way to sell a product (not to be confused with "the product") is to create something that people would want, and then just market the hell out of it. If WCW's failure to do the latter was the cause of their inability to capitalize on their awesome '89 run, that explains a lot to me (although you could also chalk it up to the WWF being that big of a wrestling powerhouse at that time, not to mention Flair eventually getting worn out from being the company's booker and top star at the same time).