WWE TV 11/11 - 11/17 Dark days indeed

[sek69]

5 minutes ago, jiraffejustin said:

Have they ever done a good job explaining why Raw would want to compete with Smackdown? I get that it's sort of like the Pro Bowl, but the players really don't give a shit about that game. 

BRAND SUPREMACY!!!!

 

Not that anyone either on the show or watching it at home could give any level of a shit about that, it's what's Survivor Series is all about now.

[Cowboy Hats 4.0]

It’s where fantasy warfare gets real.

[Coffey]

1 hour ago, El-P said:

And so, Scarlett Bordeaux first appearance on NXT is some random backstage segment. Nice. Anyways. I wonder how they are gonna fuck that one up. She's got everything WWE should love : super hot blonde, she can work, she can be funny. I wish she would have ended up in AEW instead but hey... IMPACT did fuck that up big time, and I would guess Kross is next. I will probably check it out whenever she does her real debut though.

I don't anticipate her hair staying blonde. Not in WWE. Green or pink maybe. WWE love wacky color & hair extensions. 

Kross would be a big pick up for any promotion. Curious what Tom Lawlor is going to do too but he's not exactly a spring chicken.

[El-P]

19 minutes ago, Coffey said:

I don't anticipate her hair staying blonde. Not in WWE. Green or pink maybe. WWE love wacky color & hair extensions. 

Do you think it's because they.... trademark hair colors ???? 

Just joking, but yeah, I wondered why every girl had to have crazy ass hair extensions. And I think Britt has some too. And Brandi. And Tessa now (I think, not sure). Is that the equivalent of every guy in the 80's doing the bleached blonde thing and every guy in the 00's getting awful tribal tatoos ?

[FMKK]

43 minutes ago, El-P said:

Do you think it's because they.... trademark hair colors ???? 

Just joking, but yeah, I wondered why every girl had to have crazy ass hair extensions. And I think Britt has some too. And Brandi. And Tessa now (I think, not sure). Is that the equivalent of every guy in the 80's doing the bleached blonde thing and every guy in the 00's getting awful tribal tatoos ?

If I was a woman in AEW I'd be getting hair extensions too because with Kong and Brandi's new gimmick, I wouldn't want them cutting my actual hair.

Literally saw one GIF of Baron Corbin coming to the ring with the full king gimmick and immediately any interest I may have had in Smackdown is evaporated. It just looks like the lamest shit imaginable.

[FMKK]

And that's before I even saw this bollocks. Fox must be asking for a refund.

 

[Strummer]

My God they are actually going to do a dog collar match with Corbin and Roman

[FMKK]

That's weird. Dave randomly mentioned that Cody and MJF could do dog collar as a gimmick on WOR, which is the first I'd heard of dog collar matches in years. And now WWE are possibly actually planning one.

[sek69]

If someone tried to tell me WWE is trying to do some "The Producers" type shit to intentionally make a bad show, I wouldn't immediately discount the theory.

[MoS]

The NXT invasion is the best thing going on in WWE right now. Why then are NXT men and women losing so much on the main roster shows when they should be being built up as much as possible? If the logic is "Well they are developmental guys just being competitive with the main roster is good enough" then they should not be running an invasion angle, because "A bunch of rookies keep attacking but often losing to the main stars cuz they want to prove themselves" is not a great angle. Especially given how badly WWE botched the Nexus angle years ago. 

Thankfully Riddle is doing his own thing now with Balor which is great cuz Riddle is amazing.

[sek69]

Smackdown just posted it's lowest rating since moving to Fox (the week on FS1 doesn't count).

[SirEdger]

17 hours ago, MoS said:

The NXT invasion is the best thing going on in WWE right now. Why then are NXT men and women losing so much on the main roster shows when they should be being built up as much as possible? If the logic is "Well they are developmental guys just being competitive with the main roster is good enough" then they should not be running an invasion angle, because "A bunch of rookies keep attacking but often losing to the main stars cuz they want to prove themselves" is not a great angle. Especially given how badly WWE botched the Nexus angle years ago. 

Thankfully Riddle is doing his own thing now with Balor which is great cuz Riddle is amazing.

Although Dakota Kai taking the pin on Smackdown last night in the 8-Women tag can still sustain the theory in NXT storylines that Ripley perceives Dakota as a weak link and doesn't want her on her team at War Games.

[Coffey]

On 11/14/2019 at 4:47 AM, El-P said:

Honestly, [Mauro] wouldn't bother me that much if he would just talk less and stop yelling. The constant pop-culture references are annoying as hell, but you can shut someone off if he's not literally screaming in your face non-stop for two hours.

I can sum up my disdain for Mauro Ranallo fairly simply. He's guilty of the ultimate sin of being a professional wrestling commentator: he cares about getting himself over more than the talent. 

Why does he have a catch phrase? Why is he yelling? Why does he talk over the other commentators? Why is he making those ridiculous, over-the-top pop culture references? Because he's trying to get himself, not the other talent, over.

[sek69]

So are we supposed to think it was Bayley killing everyone on NXT or is this still some sort of seed for a Dakota Kai heel turn? 

[SirEdger]

48 minutes ago, Coffey said:

I can sum up my disdain for Mauro Ranallo fairly simply. He's guilty of the ultimate sin of being a professional wrestling commentator: he cares about getting himself over more than the talent. 

Why does he have a catch phrase? Why is he yelling? Why does he talk over the other commentators? Why is he making those ridiculous, over-the-top pop culture references? Because he's trying to get himself, not the other talent, over.

You must've hated Joey Styles as well then.

Quote

So are we supposed to think it was Bayley killing everyone on NXT or is this still some sort of seed for a Dakota Kai heel turn? 

I'm starting to think it's a mix of both.

[El-P]

58 minutes ago, Coffey said:

I can sum up my disdain for Mauro Ranallo fairly simply. He's guilty of the ultimate sin of being a professional wrestling commentator: he cares about getting himself over more than the talent. 

Why does he have a catch phrase? Why is he yelling? Why does he talk over the other commentators? Why is he making those ridiculous, over-the-top pop culture references? Because he's trying to get himself, not the other talent, over.

I agree 100%. That's absolutely the issue.

10 minutes ago, SirEdger said:

You must've hated Joey Styles as well then.

I disagree 100%. Joey Styles was  absolutely a big part of getting the ECW talent over. He wasn't screaming at the top of his lungs all the time. He had the smarky smart-ass references but these were cool and different in the 90's context. He also was alone doing announcing for most of his stint (especially for the best years of ECW), so he had to carry the excitement by himself (and yet, he knew when to amp it up and when to just talk normally). But he knew how to work with a color guy and play off of them, he never buried anyone under constant yelling. Yeah, "Oh my god !" became synonymous with Styles and eventually kinda turned into a gimmick, but it's a simple exclamation, not something that is in essence totally gimmicky like Mauro's annoying "Mamma Mia" or his out of nowhere barrage of pop culture reference. Mauro is a vocal Twitter feed of memes. NXT talent never needed Mauro to get over and he doesn't help. Styles definitely knew how to get people and angles over.

[Log]

When Styles was commenting by himself, it’s actually surprising to go back and hear how much he didn’t talk. He’s not one of my favorites, but he knew when to let thing breath a bit. Mauro has one speed. 

[C.S.]

Newsflash: J.R. had catchphrases too.

He knew how to get himself and the talent over.

Mauro does the same. 

[Coffey]

1 hour ago, SirEdger said:

You must've hated Joey Styles as well then.

Very much so. He was super overrated. 

One of my biggest pet peeves of his is when he would break the fourth wall in the name of making a joke at WWE or WCW's expense. It always came off as super cornball. I know ECW referenced them a lot & it was a big part of their counter culture stuff but it always came off as super lame on commentary.

EDIT: Also want to point out that when I first got internet, I went by the name theECWfan1 because I was a mega mark. And back then I would defend anything & everything ECW but when trying to go back & watch it now, Joey Styles really annoys me.

[sek69]

Mauro absolutely doesn't know how to get the talent over, there's been countless times where something happens and Mauro ends up stepping all over the other announcers just to get his shit in. 

Hell, maybe that's the problem. Maybe Mauro should be alone in the booth so that the others don't have to yell the entire show to get a word in edgewise and he's have more room to get all his references in. 

[El-P]

6 minutes ago, C.S. said:

Newsflash: J.R. had catchphrases too.

Yeah, that's why he was so annoying at times too.

[C.S.]

15 minutes ago, El-P said:

Yeah, that's why he was so annoying at times too.

J.R. one of the best of all time, period, even if PWO does sometimes like to shit on sacred cows to seem more "intellectual." 

Joey Styles was great during the heyday of ECW, but I honestly have no idea how well his shtick would age with a re-watch. 

I like the idea @sek69 posted about Mauro having the entire booth to himself. Three-person booths don't work, even when it's the great Mauro leading them.

Even the AEW booth is too crowded IMO.

[sek69]

Even just Mauro and Nigel would be a vast improvement. Nigel seems to know how to work with Mauro and when to get out of the way,  while Beth is out there just yelling random phrases. 

[El-P]

6 minutes ago, C.S. said:

J.R. one of the best of all time, period, even if PWO does sometimes like to shit on sacred cows to seem more "intellectual." 

Come on man, you know better than this. I was calling JR overrated 20 years ago (fuck me I sound old). He was downright insufferable at times, like during the UWF days when it seems like he was on coke. His best stuff was his WWF work in the mid 90's (up until let's say 98 ? I was downright poor as early as the early 00's), Mid-South before it became UWF and times in WCW whenever Watts was NOT in charge. He's not been good at all in AEW thus far, and actually is getting worse and worse.

[C.S.]

1 minute ago, sek69 said:

Even just Mauro and Nigel would be a vast improvement. Nigel seems to know how to work with Mauro and when to get out of the way,  while Beth is out there just yelling random phrases. 

Agreed. I get that they want to be inclusive and have a woman (or person of color, or whatever it is), and that's great and I agree, but forcing three people in a booth to do it is not the answer.

Just now, El-P said:

Come on man, you know better than this. I was calling JR overrated 20 years ago.  

You realize I didn't know you 20 years ago, right?

And that part of my post wasn't directed at you specifically (even if I was quoting you) - just more toward a trend I see sometimes on PWO.