Is the empire crumbling before our eyes?

[El-P]

6 minutes ago, Mad Dog said:

Bray Wyatt as well. I don't think he would have found himself if not for WWE.

That's hard to say when the guy never worked anywhere else. And he's been a proven failure on top, hurting everyone he ever worked against, having awful matches after awful matches, so yeah, he "found himself", but whatever he found hasn't been very good. He's still young enough that it would be interesting to watch him try his hands elsewhere. Until then, he's pretty much this generation's Randy Orton, a black hole (except he had a cool character on the surface).

[Mad Dog]

I think he's kind of in that Braun spot of they fucked him over at a couple of key points. The Fiend was dumb from the start. People got way too excited for that and it would have been fine as a special attraction for PPVs but they made him a central character which it wasn't suited for.

[MoS]

7 minutes ago, Mad Dog said:

Bray Wyatt as well. I don't think he would have found himself if not for WWE.

I was thinking this as well. All his ideas seem to be executable only with WWE's production and general aesthetic.

[El-P]

6 minutes ago, Mad Dog said:

I think he's kind of in that Braun spot of they fucked him over at a couple of key points. 

Does that goes back to not being able to beat Cena at Mania 30 ? Then it seems it was all a downward spiral, with him being just a victim to post-streak Taker in a heatless match, the infamous "worm on the floor" match with Orton and awful cinematic match very poorly mimicking what Broken Matt Hardy was doing in IMPACT at the same time. Speaking of which

5 minutes ago, MoS said:

All his ideas seem to be executable only with WWE's production and general aesthetic.

Nah. IMPACT was doing fucked up cinematic shit better than WWE before they even tried. Bray Wyatt could show up in IMPACT's Undead Realm tomorrow and no one would blink. WWE's production is way overrated, people have been doing much more fun stuff with less budget. I won't even go into LU territory. But Bray seems like a WWE lifer, so it's a moot point.

 

[Mad Dog]

I think the difference is other promotions don't have the endless amount of TV time to give segments like that though.

[MoS]

Perhaps a better answer is someone who benefits from scripted promos and having a house style that ensures a baseline of quality. I cannot immediately think of a name though. 

[FMKK]

1 hour ago, Mad Dog said:

Randy Orton, Baron Corbin, Charlotte are easy ones. I think guys like R-Truth benefit from the niche they have and getting a big paycheck to not get beat up. I would also argue super limited talent like Elias benefit from being there. I don't think the list is long but I do think they are the best place for people and NXT did polish some guys up really well.

Shit workers, nepotism cases or people who can do Vince comedy.

I mean, Charlotte isn't a pure nepotism case in that the quality of her performances more than justify a place on the roster and a strong push but being Ric's daughters means she'll always be afforded that extra bit of protection that someone like Sasha Banks would never get.

[FMKK]

1 hour ago, MoS said:

Perhaps a better answer is someone who benefits from scripted promos and having a house style that ensures a baseline of quality. I cannot immediately think of a name though. 

Guys who are pure WWE products like Curtis Axel or Heath Slater or whoever are the types you wouldn't expect to do much outside of WWE because they were essentially bred to give you a dependable ** WWE TV match complete with a reverse chinlock and a commercial break when someone falls out of the ring. But with the last few years of international signing sprees, it's hard for that kind of pure WWE guy to even find a place on their roster. Heath is cut now obviously but I could see him being a decent little act on NWA Powerrr and getting more exposure there than on WWE TV for the last few years.

[Loss]

The Miz is a great promo and I think his wrestling is underrated, but his mentality about wrestling tells me WWE is where he should always be. He could probably get over as a sports entertainment heel somewhere like AEW, but it would have a shelf life.

Also worth noting that there has always been a huge difference in how effective Miz is when Maryse is around as his second vs when she isn't around. I see him as a borderline top guy or maybe even top guy when Maryse is with him, and a strong midcarder when she's not.

[cm funk]

Miz has always been better with a heater.  Him and Maryse were dynamite together because the chemistry between them is real.  I still remember back when they first became a couple IRL and were teased on TV a few times and everyone saw the chemistry immediately and they put her with DiBiase Jr. instead lol

I haven't seen any of the current Miz & Morrison stuff, but they were a fun act back in the oughts

Heck, Miz & Mizdow got over big.  I wasn't the biggest fan of it, but it definitely worked

And hell, it wasn't as good as JeriShow, but I dug ShowMiz

So my conclusion on Miz is stick him with someone good to play off of and he's great.  On his own he's dire

[MoS]

I like Miz's promos but I despise his facial expressions. 

[FMKK]

6 hours ago, Loss said:

The Miz is a great promo and I think his wrestling is underrated, but his mentality about wrestling tells me WWE is where he should always be. He could probably get over as a sports entertainment heel somewhere like AEW, but it would have a shelf life.

Also worth noting that there has always been a huge difference in how effective Miz is when Maryse is around as his second vs when she isn't around. I see him as a borderline top guy or maybe even top guy when Maryse is with him, and a strong midcarder when she's not.

Yeah, Miz is the perfect WWE guy. There was definitely a period a couple of years ago when they could've pushed him into main events again, even just for a B level PPV programme. Not doing that again after 2011 has probably typecast him as a forever midcarder as opposed to someone like Jericho who could move up and down the card when he was there.

But I really can't imagine him anywhere else. His promos and his work were built for WWE. And, while he's become decent and sometimes even good in the ring, I don't think he'd be up to the working standard of AEW, let alone New Japan. I know MJF is in some ways similar and isn't a great worker but at least at his age there's an implicit sense that he'll be improving for a long time. Current Miz would probably get a TNA world title run if they were still at around the level they were when they signed Christian and Kurt Angle.

I wonder do people think Dolph Ziggler fits into this category. He's the kind of guy that some people thought was a super worker like ten years ago. I don't know whether he lost that status because the standards changed with all the indy guys coming in or whether he's just been so overexposed to the point that no one could care about him anymore.

[El-P]

How could I forget about the Miz ? well, pretty easy infact, but yes, him, of course. Total WWE product that would probably not translate elsewhere at all. 

43 minutes ago, FMKK said:

I don't know whether he lost that status because the standards changed with all the indy guys coming in or whether he's just been so overexposed to the point that no one could care about him anymore.

This. With the monopoly of the last 20 years, it seems like time has stood still. Some of the guys on TV today has been there FOREVER at this point, without ever going away and doing other things. It would be very hard for those kind of guys to feel fresh ever again. It's no wonder why NXT was seen as hot and cool with all these guys from different background and hype to them showing up regularly. Dolph Ziggler can take a one year hiatus if he wants to. He's still gonna be Dolph Ziggler. He was on WWE TV in 2006 already.

BTW, John Morrison being settled back with the Miz is truly a sign of the creative bankruptcy of this company. With all this guy did in-between, coming back as a much better promo and worker and it's straight back to 2007. Selfishly I really hope Taya never gets to WWE, what a gigantic waste that would be (considering they would look at her as "too old" anyway). She appears regularly on BTE lately, maybe she's tight with some of the boys there (from LU I guess), she would be a terrific addition to their roster once she's done with IMPACT (she really became a star there BTW, for those who are not watching, she's the total package at this point).

[MoS]

Dolph is interesting. I don't think his promos are good and his selling is what it is, but I can imagine him getting over as part of some heel tag team in NJPW. 

[FMKK]

There are so many guys there that I think are better suited to being in tag teams but because the division isn't taken that seriously, they're only ever briefly in them. Rollins and Ziggler are prime examples. They would make a good sleezy gaijin team in New Japan, although they haven't exactly taken tag teams that seriously until recently either.

[Dav'oh]

Bray can always go back to seconding Baba...

[Coffey]

I think too much emphasis as a whole is put on ring work nowadays but especially in WWE. They need stronger characters & angles & not having that is why the show sucks shit - because no one stands out. It's also why something like the Boneyard Match at Wrestlemania stands out, because it felt different. NXT for a long time, pretty much ever since Triple H took over, and the main roster since they started pushing guys like Kevin Owens & Seth Rollins to the main event just feels like ROH back in like 2008. Every match trying to be match of the night & trying to get the crowd to chant "this is awesome" meanwhile no one remembers the match the next day because they're all interchangeable fluff that doesn't mean shit in the grand scheme of things.

Good matches in a vacuum I think actually hurt wrestling more than help it. 

So I actually value someone like The Miz in WWE higher than most because to me, he's a wrestler that managed to get over without it all being because he's a great in-ring worker. 

It would be different if everyone trying to do the match of the night was a Daniel Bryan kind of guy... but you only have one Daniel Bryan. And an endless parade of Ciampa/Gargano matches trying to cosplay as peak insufferable HBK isn't going to miraculously make all the fans that left in droves return thinking "wow, I can't believe I was missing this level of talent!" If anything, you should only have one Daniel Bryan kind of guy because then he stands out a lot more & feels more special.

I read it elsewhere, I don't remember if it was here, Reddit, Twitter or where, but someone said that wrestling would be better as a whole if the wrestlers were going out trying to get the loudest boo or loudest cheer of the night instead of trying to have the best match of the night. I agree with that. We need to get back to basics. And now with no fans in the building but WWE continuing to run shows anyway, would be a good time to try some new shit. If they just weren't so damn stubborn.

[FMKK]

I know what you mean in that someone who's in the second match of the night should work like they're in the second match of the night. A midcard six-man tag should just be a midcard six-man tag. People playing for the 'this is awesome' chant instead of trying to tell a story with their match is annoying to me. But I think you can have all those things while still having good, entertaining matches instead of the same old patterned stuff.

You can do characters and good matches. But I think WWE is so out of touch with the fanbase and the general zeitgeist that they don't know what a compelling character looks like in 2020. And I honestly cannot remember the last time they told a good story from start to finish that made sense and resulted in character development for anyone. And I don't think that's on the roster for trying to work PWG matches. That's on Vince for having the attention span of a moth and for creating a product that is totally bogged down by alienating verbiage and aesthetics and endless self-reference that makes it impossible for someone to jump in and start watching from fresh. The average WWE fan is so starved of good and compelling characters that they try to convince themselves that The Fiend is a work of artistic genius instead of a geek who watched a couple of low budget horrors on Amazon Prime! 

The absolute lack of hierarchy on the roster is also a huge issue in that regard. How can you tell if your favourite character is progressing through the ranks when everyone in trapped in the midcard vortex of doom?

[gordi]

42 minutes ago, Coffey said:

... wrestling would be better as a whole if the wrestlers were going out trying to get the loudest boo or loudest cheer of the night instead of trying to have the best match of the night. I agree with that.

So true.

[Strummer]

but then again it might be a situation where the person getting the biggest cheer isn't the person wwe wants to be getting the biggest cheer or the the person getting the loudest boo isn't the person wwe wants getting the loudest boo. And then wwe once again fighting against their audience

[Loss]

I'm a firm believer that nothing in WWE happens by accident because everything, even the matches, are so micromanaged. If guys in the second match are working that way, it's probably because they have been told to do it. 

[sek69]

Has it come out at all that anyone in WWE has willingly opted to stay home during all this as opposed to those with valid medical issues (Roman, Kyle O'Reilly) or stuck in another country not able to travel? I'm sure it will end up being top names like Orton and no one on the mid or low card, despite WWE's claims otherwise.

[C.S.]

10 hours ago, MoS said:

Dolph is interesting. I don't think his promos are good and his selling is what it is, but I can imagine him getting over as part of some heel tag team in NJPW. 

Arn Anderson thinks he's a top-flight worker, so the door definitely seems open for Ziggler in AEW if he ever wants it. 

[Rocco]

I’d probably tune out for awhile if Dolph showed up in AEW. 

[sek69]

As much as I don't care for the guy, Dolph seems like someone no longer giving any F's (and not in a "Batista on his way out" good way) and a change of scenery might do wonders for him.