WWE TV 08/24 - 08/30 HUGE News!

[sek69]

21 hours ago, Robert S said:

Bayley was damaged goods as a babyface on the main show. Trying her as a heel was the only way to go at that point. Similar with Dakota Kai, whatever they tried to do with her and Baszler when Kai came in ensured that she was done as a face at that point. With Kai it was booking, but Bayley when she was moved to the main roster, was pretty bad herself. I guess she had problems making the step from carefully laid out matches that she practiced in the PC to, well, improvise (or "work"). She got there eventually though, obviously. This might be another indictment for the PC, thinking about it.

The dirty secret always was that all of the universally praised NXT women's matches were endlessly practiced and walked through beforehand, which is great but wasn't preparing them for life on the main roster at all.  Which is the reason why they pretty much all struggled at first since all that alleged state of the art training ended up meaning approximately jack shit at that point.

I think that's probably why all the women praise Nattie, I have a suspicion she was either told or took it upon herself to be like "OK I know what you learned down there, but here's what you really need to know now you're up here" and guided them through the maze of surviving on the main roster. 

[Kadaveri]

 

1 hour ago, sek69 said:

The dirty secret always was that all of the universally praised NXT women's matches were endlessly practiced and walked through beforehand, which is great but wasn't preparing them for life on the main roster at all. 

I've seen this claim a thousand times on internet forums and nobody ever actually produces evidence of it. For one thing Bayley's most famous matches in NXT happened while she was on the Florida loop and Sasha Banks was working the main roster house shows, so they couldn't possibly have "endlessly practiced" them beforehand.

And anyway, the issue with Bayley on the main roster has never been the quality of her matches, it was her getting booked to look like a complete loser.

[Ricky Jackson]

Plus Sasha and Bayley spent time on the indies and would've called it in the ring then

[SirEdger]

Although one could argue that once they got signed by WWE, they probably might've been told "Forget what you learned on the indies, this is how we do things here" and taught to re-think everything they were doing on the indies. If you have tons of experience like Balor, Owens & Sami had on the indies, that's something that you can navigate throughout and come out pretty good. I don't know how long Bayley & Sasha worked the indies until getting signed by WWE but it might've been a bit more difficult for them.

[sek69]

6 hours ago, Kadaveri said:

 

I've seen this claim a thousand times on internet forums and nobody ever actually produces evidence of it. For one thing Bayley's most famous matches in NXT happened while she was on the Florida loop and Sasha Banks was working the main roster house shows, so they couldn't possibly have "endlessly practiced" them beforehand.

And anyway, the issue with Bayley on the main roster has never been the quality of her matches, it was her getting booked to look like a complete loser.

By the time Sasha and Bayley had their famous matches, they would have worked together enough times they already had their match down pat. Most of the time spent in the PC (other than the infamous football camp drills) was them working over the same spots until they were drilled into their brain. The Observer after nearly NXT back then would have notes on how all the top matches were worked out and practiced before hand (women and men both to be fair) which is why all the early Takeovers were so top notch. 

Part of what they wanted to do was change the expectation of women's matches from the 3 minute quickies they were doing on the main roster at the time. They wanted to make sure all the women at that time could put on high quality matches, and to do that everything was practiced beforehand. 

[Kadaveri]

30 minutes ago, sek69 said:

By the time Sasha and Bayley had their famous matches, they would have worked together enough times they already had their match down pat. Most of the time spent in the PC (other than the infamous football camp drills) was them working over the same spots until they were drilled into their brain.

That's not a plausible explanation. The famous Sasha vs. Bayley Takeover matches were nothing like their previous matches (none of which went more than 8 minutes), had way too much reacting to the crowd and playing off their current storylines to have just been them going through spots they'd practiced in the PC/previous matches. The idea they'd practiced stuff like poison frankensteiners off the top rope in the PC is absurd. They'd be banned from doing it.

The Observer may have been right about Takeover matches generally being practiced beforehand, but Sasha wasn't even in NXT anymore when the Bayley vs. Sasha Takeover matches  happened or even announced. She'd been working full-time on the main roster house shows 6 weeks before the Brooklyn match and 3 months before the Ironman match. So really the facts available is that Bayley was able to have really great matches on Takeover shows without getting to practice them. Plus her performances on the main roster don't show this being any sort of problem for her. Just watch her Raw debut against Charlotte where you can see Bayley physically dragging Charlotte around/putting her feet into the correct positions etc... that's the kind of wrestler she is. There's also the impromptu match with Ronda Rousey where Ronda was completely botching what was meant to be a long promo and Bayley was just sent out to salvage the situation by having a match and totally carries Ronda through it. Steve Austin spots stuff like this and he talked about being a ring general when she was on his podcast. There's an amusing segment where he forces her to admit that when her opponents aren't able to think on their feet fast enough she just physically takes them over even if they get roughed up in the process.

Anyway, whenever this 'Takeover matches are practised beforehand' thing gets brought up it's always directed at the women's matches for some reason, when there's no evidence this applied to them any more than the men. Yet getting to practice matches didn't stop Finn Balor/Samoa Joe etc having loads of subpar matches on those shows. Maybe practicing matches beforehand doesn't necessarily create great results.