MoS Posted December 12, 2020 Report Share Posted December 12, 2020 24 minutes ago, Tenese Sarwieh said: I've seen glimpses on Khali's promotion and it's awful. I would question them trying to start this up during a pandemic but this is WWE. I guess they'll finally use Mansoor and the two dudes Michael Bibvens was managing. Also feel salty as you want and best of luck to you on employment. Thanks man. It's a weird time to look for employment in the US but paradoxically, for me, it was also the best time for me to do higher studies cuz I am a lawyer and my post-grad degree is one year, so if there was one year I could take off from work and study and generally enjoy, it was this academic year. Maybe if American employment doesn't work out, I rejoin my law firm as an associate in India and get some kind of season tickets for NXT India, with Khali as the general manager or something. But still, objectively, I think it's not a great idea. The depth of youngsters trying to become pro wrestlers in India is just not good enough for them to have an entire sub-promotion dedicated to it. People like watching wrestling here and buying tickets to watch an occasional WWE show, I am not sure if there are people - especially good athletic people - clamouring to be pro wrestlers. The last time they went to India, they had Jinder as the world champ and they were going to do back-to-back shows in Delhi. They must have thought the tickets would sell themselves for both shows but they didn't. Jinder was not a draw, and clearly the WWE brand was not a draw. Ultimately they cancelled one show and had just one show, and put Triple H in the main event against Jinder (of course Hunter went over.) They ultimately got a hot crowd but I don't even know if it was a sell-out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KawadaSmile Posted December 12, 2020 Report Share Posted December 12, 2020 Roman Reigns is the greatest act in pro wrestling in the moment don't @ me Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MoS Posted December 12, 2020 Report Share Posted December 12, 2020 The best wrestling thing this year has been Mox's run as the best babyface world champ since Austin in 1998, but Reigns has been so great too. Roman and Sasha are so far ahead of everyone in WWE, it's not even funny Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sek69 Posted December 12, 2020 Author Report Share Posted December 12, 2020 I think WWE is ribbing me by putting Carmella in the main event of Smackdown. Also Mansoor is there so a hometown guy can get a win on the Saudi shows. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KawadaSmile Posted December 12, 2020 Report Share Posted December 12, 2020 4 minutes ago, MoS said: The best wrestling thing this year has been Mox's run as the best babyface world champ since Austin in 1998, but Reigns has been so great too. Roman and Sasha are so far ahead of everyone in WWE, it's not even funny Mox has been great but not sure it's GOAT level tbh. Still, a career year and a career run, honestly. The Shield fellas have been doing great for themselves! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SirEdger Posted December 12, 2020 Report Share Posted December 12, 2020 I would've easily switched the Carmella/Sasha match with the Roman beating up KO backstage segment to close the show instead. Not a fan of several booking decisions Brucie Poo made tonight. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MoS Posted December 12, 2020 Report Share Posted December 12, 2020 4 minutes ago, sek69 said: Also Mansoor is there so a hometown guy can get a win on the Saudi shows. I will say this though: I dunno how well Vince and the WWE brass understand middle-east/south Asian dynamics, but if they think Mansoor would be a beloved local hometown face in India, then they are kind of deluded. Not saying he cannot get cheered or anything, but that would be a really stupid presumption. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MoS Posted December 12, 2020 Report Share Posted December 12, 2020 3 minutes ago, KawadaSmile said: Mox has been great but not sure it's GOAT level tbh. Still, a career year and a career run, honestly. The Shield fellas have been doing great for themselves! His matches have not been GOAT level, but in my opinion his promos and builds and selling of angles and storylines have been of that level and I don't think any babyface world champ has felt so cool and easy to cheer for since Austin/Rock. That's probably an indictment of modern wrestling and the terrible way they book babyfaces in general more than a compliment to Mox, perhaps Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sek69 Posted December 12, 2020 Author Report Share Posted December 12, 2020 1 minute ago, MoS said: I will say this though: I dunno how well Vince and the WWE brass understand middle-east/south Asian dynamics, but if they think Mansoor would be a beloved local hometown face in India, then they are kind of deluded. Not saying he cannot get cheered or anything, but that would be a really stupid presumption. I don't think they believe Mansoor can been a hometown face in India, I was saying he's basically only around so they can have a Saudi wrestler win a match on the Saudi shows. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MoS Posted December 12, 2020 Report Share Posted December 12, 2020 Urgh Carmella. Sorry, Mella is money and everything yada yada yada, but Sasha deserves so much better, even for a B-level PPV Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MoS Posted December 12, 2020 Report Share Posted December 12, 2020 Just now, sek69 said: I don't think they believe Mansoor can been a hometown face in India, I was saying he's basically only around so they can have a Saudi wrestler win a match on the Saudi shows. Oh I know you were not saying it. I was just thinking out loud in terms of their prospective plans for NXT India, sorry for the confusion Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sek69 Posted December 12, 2020 Author Report Share Posted December 12, 2020 TBF I think dude might have a shot at being a top babyface. He seems like he has some charisma and would probably flourish in an environment where he isn't put in deep freeze when there aren't royals to entertain. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WingedEagle Posted December 13, 2020 Report Share Posted December 13, 2020 21 hours ago, KawadaSmile said: Roman Reigns is the greatest act in pro wrestling in the moment don't @ me This is a fact and we are all worse off because it didn't happen years ago. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt D Posted December 13, 2020 Report Share Posted December 13, 2020 1 hour ago, WingedEagle said: This is a fact and we are all worse off because it didn't happen years ago. So many years ago that it was Cena. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coffey Posted December 14, 2020 Report Share Posted December 14, 2020 I have a lot of thoughts about the whole "send big men back to developmental so they can learn how to work" thing. Of course, it feels like a waste of time & energy to even rant or vent about it. Like an old man yelling at the cloud - which coincidentally is also how I view Vince McMahon, Jr. A couple quick points though & I'll try to keep it brief: • If they didn't know how to work, why were they called up in the first place? Why did you sign them? Isn't that the point of having a developmental territory? • Is "learn to work" just code for "lose weight?" Did Mark Henry & The Big Show have to "learn to work" as well? • Maybe "learn to work" is just about which cameras to face & shit? Who even knows anymore. Keith Lee has had good matches before. He's even had them under the WWE umbrella. We can't deny that Keith Lee had gotten over in certain moments & Otis too for that matter. • How can Vince McMahon, Jr. love Keith Lee one week, praise him & talk about him being a future huge star & then the next week sour on him like that? That quickly? Seems... bipolar. You put him over at Survivor Series with Roman Reigns. You put him over at Royal Rumble with Brock Lesnar. Now he can't work? The one thing I will say, which is a point I've been hammering on since 1999 watching ECW: if you have a 300lb man that can do everything that a 200lb man can do, what makes the 200lb man special anymore? Don't get me wrong, I loved wrestlers like Mike Awesome & Big Van Vader but would they have been worse if they never went upstairs? Mike Awesome didn't need to do a Frog Splash or Suicide Dive & Big Van Vader didn't need to do a Moonsault. Like, I get it, it's a pop spot that gets a reaction & lets people think "holy shit!" But if we're in the middle of the whole "people standing around waiting to catch guys is stupid" talk this week, maybe we could also talk about how a fat/big dude in the mid card doing cruiserweight spots might be counterproductive to the card & the rest of the roster? If you keep it super rare, like when Brock went for an SSP at Wrestlemania, or 'Taker doing his dive, OK. But if it just becomes an every match thing, where it's not special anymore, it feels more harmful than helpful to me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
El-P Posted December 14, 2020 Report Share Posted December 14, 2020 1 hour ago, Coffey said: The one thing I will say, which is a point I've been hammering on since 1999 watching ECW: if you have a 300lb man that can do everything that a 200lb man can do, what makes the 200lb man special anymore? The issue with that, is that when Mike Awesome was doing a simple plancha or top rope splash, the 200lb guys where doing twisting ranas and quebradas and whatnot. Not the same thing, sorry. This whole argument is totally skewed to me, because obviously the flying big guys are *not* doing everything that the 200lbs guys are doing. Even today, yeah, Lance Archer and Brodie Lee are super agile big guys. Are they doing the same thing Fenix (ok, not fair, no one is doing what he's doing) or the Young Bucks are doing ? Of course not. To me this argument, which I've heard countless times, doesn't work because it's simply fallacious. 1 hour ago, Coffey said: Mike Awesome didn't need to do a Frog Splash or Suicide Dive & Big Van Vader didn't need to do a Moonsault. The Vader case is interesting because Vader was absolutely unique. I heard people in the past saying Vader was working too fast, bumping too easily, doing the "little guys spots". Except... If Vader worked like say, One Man Gang or Earthquake, what makes Vader special ? Well, nothing, especially in the times when he showed up. He would be just another big guy. The fact he would do so much, including the moonsault, made him special and absolutely contributed to making him a star (not the only thing, but it was part of it). Also, who did the moonsault back then ? Actually, I can't think of even a bunch of "small guys" who did it on a regular basis in the US. The guy who got it over in the States was the Great Muta, who wasn't a small guy by any stretch of the imagination. Then you had 2 Cold Scorpio, who wasn't a small guy either, I mean by the standards of the time maybe he was and even that is debatable, but he showed up in WCW after Muta and after Vader. When the 200lbs guys from Mexico and Japan showed up in WCW, who worked like them ? No one. Hell, what big guy from today does everything the 200lbs guys from 25 years ago did ? Maybe Brian Cage (because he's a jacked up small guy) to some degree, but again, that sets *him* apart, not the other way around. Mike Awesome absolutely needed to do the Frog Splash, because doing great-flying-spots-for-a-big-guy was absolutely part of what got him over both in FMW and ECW. That and throwing people onto tables. If Mike Awesome doesn't fly around, what's left ? Well, he wasn't a really solid worker otherwise (and was a crappy promo), he was a big high spot guy so yeah you had a hundred powerbomb variations because he came from FMW, the land of the powerbombs, but what set him apart and put eyes on him was the fact he could do all this flying shit that looked, well awesome for a guy his size. Did it look like what Hayabusa or Liger or Sasuke were doing at the same time, no. It looked super impressive for Mike Awesome, but again he certainly wasn't doing the same spots as the great juniors of the time. The "for his size" is what matters here. So there, that argument never worked for me. (EDIT : actually I wonder if Bam Bam Bigelow is not the first guy in the US doing the moonsault regularly, which would make the moonsault a "big guy move" by default. Let's also note that Jimmy Snuka was a jacked-up dude and not a small guy at all. Like the Samoan Swat Team, who were also doing the top rope dives and stuff. Do we need to mention the Road Warriors with the flying tackles and TOP ROPE CLOTHESLINE in the 80's. Which is something Barbie was doing too. Yeah, the more I think about it, the less sense it makes. Tons of big guys were flying around and were doing more impressive stuff than you run of the mill dropkick/armdrag smaller babyfaces. The day every 300lbs guy works like Juvy in 96, yeah, then it's an issue probably, but until then...) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NintendoLogic Posted December 14, 2020 Report Share Posted December 14, 2020 Big guys doing cool acrobatic shit will always get over more than smaller guys doing the same shit. Sucks to be you if you're a smaller guy, but life's not fair. The flip side, though, is that smaller guys performing impressive feats of strength gets over more than big guys doing the same thing. That's why someone suplexing a much larger opponent always gets a huge pop. In fact, that's what made Vader so great. He may have taken some of the shine off the smaller wrestlers by doing moonsaults, but he made those smaller wrestlers look like world-beaters when he let them throw him around and bounced around like a pinball for their offense. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
funkdoc Posted December 14, 2020 Report Share Posted December 14, 2020 8 hours ago, El-P said: (EDIT : actually I wonder if Bam Bam Bigelow is not the first guy in the US doing the moonsault regularly, which would make the moonsault a "big guy move" by default. Quick nitpick: it was actually Lanny Poffo. He'd do it a bunch as a WWF TV job guy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
El-P Posted December 14, 2020 Report Share Posted December 14, 2020 Just now, funkdoc said: Quick nitpick: it was actually Lanny Poffo. He'd do it a bunch as a WWF TV job guy. Yeah I was thinking about Poffo but I did not remember if he was doing it as a job guy. Which makes it even worse, really, because that made it a total nothing spot. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robert S Posted December 14, 2020 Report Share Posted December 14, 2020 Didn't Edouard Carpentier already use some moonsault-like flips in the 1950ies? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
El-P Posted December 14, 2020 Report Share Posted December 14, 2020 Backflips landing on his feet yes. Moonsault off the top rope onto his opponent/mat, I don't think so. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NintendoLogic Posted December 14, 2020 Report Share Posted December 14, 2020 I believe Chavo Guerrero was the first to do what would now be called a moonsault, although it was called a backflip flying body press when he did it. It won the 1986 Observer award for Best Wrestling Maneuver. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SirEdger Posted December 15, 2020 Report Share Posted December 15, 2020 6 hours ago, Robert S said: Didn't Edouard Carpentier already use some moonsault-like flips in the 1950ies? Carpentier regularly used his gymnast background in his matches but I never ever recalled him doing moonsaults. I think he did front flips though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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