WWE SummerSlam 2022

[strobogo]

I just find it bizarre there are some fans still upset at the sanctity of THIS BUSINESS or some shit over outsiders coming in and being good or entertaining. Because they aren't REAL wrestlers, they didn't pay their dues in THIS BUSINESS or whatever. It's lol. Obviously the Bad Bunny/Pat Mac/Logan Paul types are true fans with true respect to train as hard and take as seriously as possible what the "real" wrestlers do. The Knoxville WM match was also extremely entertaining. It's 2022, no one in WWE, WWE itself, or the pro wrestling genre itself is going to be harmed by a celebrity coming in and looking like they belong. Particularly when it is guys that look and move like real athletes. 

[sek69]

17 minutes ago, Dav'oh said:

Off-topic, but for years the highest praise in wrestling was reserved for Ric Flair: he could carry an inanimate object (usually a broomstick) to a four-star match. But he never did. Yet Ibushi actually goes and does it and gets pilloried. SMH.

That largely came about when he was having main event matches with a barely past rookie stage Lex Luger that built him so strong he became a main event level guy practically overnight. That doesn't seem like that much of a big deal since Lex did eventually grow into that level but he was absolutely NOT there at the time it happened. 

[Dav'oh]

42 minutes ago, strobogo said:

they didn't pay their dues in THIS BUSINESS or whatever. It's lol

Can't a boy dream of a meritocracy?

You say "true fans" (let's not even get into that), I say "mercenary". I've never seen "mercenary" used as a compliment.

[Timbo Slice]

Here’s the bottom line: If more people got over in ways that stuck, you wouldn’t need the celebs to come in. It’s a harsh but honest truth. There are myriad reasons why it hasn’t worked in that company, but at the same time, you go that route when you don’t do a good job getting folks over. 

[KawadaSmile]

WWE's track record with celebrities being on high-profile events is pretty fucking good, if we are honest. I mean, this year's Wrestlemania had one of its best matches featuring Johnny Knoxville, Logan Paul is obviously a great athlete, and Bad Bunny was a terrific babyface. They know how to sniff out talent among the A-listers.

[Dav'oh]

1 hour ago, KawadaSmile said:

this year's Wrestlemania had one of its best matches featuring Johnny Knoxville,

I'd go with "biggest embarrassment". This was the match with the most mainstream exposure, the one they show highlights of, and all it did was reinforce negative perceptions of this "bullshit fakery". A giant mousetrap is what The World Was Watching. I can't stress that enough. Our sport is still so poorly understood by people, and we gave them Lowest Common Denominator (with the Jackass choads, of all the choads) on the Grandest Stage of Them All. Star ratings be damned - all that the lapsed or non-fans saw was the comedic "highlights".

"Here's some pro-wrestling bullshit to laugh at!" is not exactly putting our best foot forward.

[Lukeless]

13 hours ago, Embrodak said:

Also, why did they give Theory MITB if they were just going to book him like a fucking goober? He’s building up a stink it’s going to take years to wash off.

To be fair, didn't his whole giant push start by getting bullied by an 80 year old, sexual-abusing hobgoblin?

[strobogo]

Some real "it's still real to me" vibes in here

[Dav'oh]

It’s still sacred to me. 

Some real “it’s all fake buffoonery anyway so why give a shit about any of it” vibes around here

[strobogo]

Being precious about New Japan or something is whatever, but WWE? In 2022? Lol. I'm sure Miz and Corbin's careers are finished now that they lost to "not real" wrestlers.

[NintendoLogic]

Pat McAfee and Logan Paul aren't just guys off the street. They're legitimate athletes. By the way, it always amuses me when people are shocked that former pro athletes take to pro wrestling so quickly, as if it isn't primarily an athletic endeavor.

[El-P]

12 hours ago, Dav'oh said:

Getting a pop because people already like you and your music and can't believe! he's in the WWE! ≠ charisma.

This.

Plus, the whole "charisma" deal should be deconstructed anyway. As talked about when Scott Hall passed away, someone who seemingly has zero charisma (Big Scott Hall) can become someone with an incredible amount of charisma (Razor Ramon/nWo Scott Hall). All of this should be thought about through the lenses of sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, really. But anyway, to make it short (and very Bourdieuesque), these people come in with an already established symbolic capital. So of course they are gonna get more reaction than whoever has been grinding in the company for years without getting a good push or good booking. This has nothing to do with "getting" pro-wrestling or "getting over". This is just a matter of social status. Now, the fact they take it seriously enough to do their best at it is something different, and good for them and people working with them. Not forgetting that they also get very much privilege treatment (in term of training, rehearsals, production and presentations) though.

And really, I'm not criticizing WWE for doing it. I understand how things work. It's just not something I'm interested into for reasons cited above : I don't care about celebrities. Therefore I have no reason to find it cool or special that a celebrity shows up and does pro-wrestling at big shows. I just don't give a flying fuck, and whether they are good or not is irrelevant.

The whole argument of "taking" the spots of actual regular workers, well, that's an entire different argument, which has everything to do with economics and working conditions. Lots can be said about it without the arguments being reduced to "gotta pay your dues" and such.

[El-P]

Thought of this very basic analogy. If I'm going to a music festival, and on the main stage at one point there's this band comprised of TV personalities and Youtube influencers and whatnot, I'm not gonna care if they play guitar well and if they do a good cover of a David Bowie song or if the TV reality girl is actually a good singer. I just want to watch the bands I enjoy play the music I like. I'm not gonna care because these are some famous people playing music, even if the music itself is well played.

[Timbo Slice]

I think people are missing the forest for the trees here: There are many paths to pro wrestling. Much more than other industries, which have specific machinations that can churn up and spit out talent on the other end. That is how pro wrestling is. WWE’s goal has always been to break into the mainstream come hell or high water. They will team up with any entity they feel gives them an opportunity to get more eyes on the product. 
 

Hardcore wrestling fans who are into the product expect a certain output for the work folks put in on the indies. They get over in certain atmospheres and feel they should be able to translate. That’s just not the case for a good chunk of them unless the atmosphere they end up in is accepting of that wrestler. The reason AEW works is because it’s based on that concept; WWE has never really gone down that path and won’t go down that path. The fact we’re still having this discussion in 2022 when it’s been the case for literal decades is mind-boggling. It’s not that WWE hasn’t evolved; they serve a different master than AEW does. AEW literally got to start off with a clean slate of what they want to be and are doing fine with it. I don’t get why it’s such a big deal to folks when an actual alternative is thriving. We need to stop putting the round peg in the square WWE hole. 

[strobogo]

That's not what's going on here, though. What's going on here is more like there's a festival and on one stage is a band of some celeb. It turns out they're actually really solid and the audience enjoys them, but you (in the royal sense) aren't interested and go to a different stage or to piss or whatever. Then you (in the royal sense) start telling people that the band didn't deserve to be there and they were taking stage time away from a real band. And then when it turns out the audience that did stay to watch enjoyed the band and thought the celeb was actually pretty good at this music thing, you (in the royal sense) get more angry because even if the celeb band was good, they're just doing it for fun on the side and it isn't fair.

[Timbo Slice]

And if that real band was good enough that they’d do well enough on that same stage as the celebrity band, the celebrity band wouldn’t be there because more than likely the real band would be cheaper to bring on. It’s late stage capitalism and celebrity being more targeted as opposed to wide-spread today.

[Timbo Slice]

1 minute ago, Cien Caras said:

You can have a guy who looks like shit with no charisma doing choreographed big move, kickout, reversal, shocked face match (say someone like Adam Cole)

or you can have a good-looking celebrity with charisma doing choreographed big move, kickout, reversal, shocked face match (say someone like Logan Paul).

since wrestling has just devolved to athleticism, the celebrity is not at a disadvantage.

Cole isn’t a great example here because his error bars are too wide in regards to charisma. It’ll work in some places and not in all. 
 

Paul is a good fit with his particular character in the WWE environment currently. He would not do as well in AEW for the reasons laid out about folks “paying dues” and what not. There’s a reason why they didn’t take to Satnam Singh, and it’s the same reason why Paul works where he does. 
 

It’s not the worker; it’s the work environment. 

[El-P]

11 minutes ago, Timbo Slice said:

There’s a reason why they didn’t take to Satnam Singh

Nothing to do with "paying dues" and whatnot. Everything to do with no one fucking cares about a giant guy just because he's a giant guy in 2022. If the guy ends up being good, who knows. But the discourse about "paying dues" completely misses the point. A guy like Hook really has not "paid dues". He had his first match on TV. Over as fuck. Same for Jade Cargill (hell, her first match on TV involved a celebrity, she was pushed from day 1). Really completely different issues.

[strobogo]

13 minutes ago, Timbo Slice said:

And if that real band was good enough that they’d do well enough on that same stage as the celebrity band, the celebrity band wouldn’t be there because more than likely the real band would be cheaper to bring on. It’s late stage capitalism and celebrity being more targeted as opposed to wide-spread today.

 Alright now we're just getting silly about it

[Timbo Slice]

If the talent WWE had was good enough to fill Paul’s spot? They’d use that talent. Instead they pay Paul a ton of money because they know they at least get some of the investment back using him. Don’t get how that’s me getting silly about it given that’s what business is like right now. 

The “paying dues” part I talked about was more about someone being forced into a spot where it wasn’t merited. The guys El-P mentioned weren’t forced. There was an organic growth for both Hook and Cargill with a much better starting point, especially in Hook’s case, as he had been over for months without even wrestling a match. 

[Dav'oh]

28 minutes ago, strobogo said:

 Alright now we're just getting silly about it

You were  a lot more entertaining when you were Shodate 

[Blehschmidt]

1 minute ago, Dav'oh said:

You were  a lot more entertaining when you were Shodate 

annnnddd... Thread

[NintendoLogic]

Logan Paul vs. Volk Han would be dimes.

[strobogo]

I have no idea who Shodate is. There are hundreds of examples of late stage capitalism in the dystopian hellscape most of us live in, but a youtuber you don't like getting booked on a wrestling show is not one of them. Lmao.

[Strummer]

Wrestlingnews.co is reporting Sasha and Naomi are returning to wwe. Possibly even tonight.

 

don't know if they have broke any stories in the past so I'd wait for more confirmation