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Post by Deleted on Feb 25, 2015 21:10:56 GMT -5
Meltzer was all over the place in that article.
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Post by Speedy Cerviche on Feb 25, 2015 21:12:25 GMT -5
I think that's just one of those things which comes with how corporate WWE is nowadays.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 25, 2015 21:15:38 GMT -5
Meltzer was all over the place in that article. I'm just glad the formatting wasn't all ridiculous like.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 25, 2015 21:16:06 GMT -5
I don't even feel bad as a fan or anything. I feel bad for Daniel Bryan. And yeah "he gets to bang Brie Bella and travel the world and do what he loves" and all that. But this is career, his life's work, he earned something and was told no because of, basically, his appearance, because one guy doesn't like how he looks and assumes everyone else won't. I've experienced that on a much smaller level, and my morale just plummeted, even though I kept a stiff upper lip and laughed it off. It's gotta bother him. I just hope it doesn't leave such a sour taste in his mouth that he doesn't enjoy performing anymore. By all accounts, Bryan is one of the most selfless guy on the roster. Sure here cares about his match quality, but he cares more about just being out there wrestling, regardless of his place on the card. He never wanted to be "the guy". As for the Reigns thing, honestly I'll be shocked if his reign isn't pure trash. I'm not a hater, I'm not a "I'M NOT WATCHING FOREVER!" guy, but putting him in there with Kane and Big Show ft. Seth Rollins as his opponents..well I'll sell you my house if you can tell me why that's gonna be entertaining the slightest. He's human though. Being selfless is one thing, but being a logical human being and taking the pride he does in his abilities, there's no way it just doesn't bother him at all. I've actually seen interviews of his from 2012-2013 where he does talk about wanting to be THE guy. He's not about the money and fame and all that, but it's professional pride, he's gotta have some.
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Post by Apricots And A Pear Tree on Feb 25, 2015 21:18:22 GMT -5
Tough.
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Post by froggyfrog on Feb 25, 2015 21:21:06 GMT -5
this was a great read
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Post by TWERKIN' MAGGLE on Feb 25, 2015 21:22:18 GMT -5
Yeah, Dave's f***ing wrong here. Wrestling isn't a book, or a movie, it's not a television show. It's a live performance where fan interaction is supposedly encouraged to shape the future storytelling.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Feb 25, 2015 21:23:39 GMT -5
Tough? It's f***ing borderline class segregation and eugenics. What's next for Vince, blonde hair and blue eyes only? Oh yeah, apparently Roman wears coloured contacts. Its one thing of Bryan is against Hogan but he isn't - he makes more money and quality work than Reigns. He just does not give Vince an erection so he is not good enough. It's a casting couch for that c***. *Edit - I am not ranting at you, just at Vince. Your message just fueled said rant so apologies if it came off that way.*
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Sephiroth
Wade Wilson
Surviving
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Post by Sephiroth on Feb 25, 2015 21:24:56 GMT -5
Sometimes I hate that the WWE brought back Brock Lesnar. Now they have to jump through hoops to accommodate a guy who shows up for maybe 4 matches a year, cutting out the legs of guys who kill themselves week in and week out only to reach a certain ceiling not because management isn't behind them, but because the next logical step would be a World Title match that they can't have because they have to save those for something really important. Bray Wyatt got screwed a lot worse in all of this then Daniel Bryan. If Lesnar wasn't around, Wyatt probably would've been the one to get the title after Bryan. If Lesnar didn't end the streak, this years Taker-Wyatt match would have a lot more interest going into it. I said then and say again-Brock certainly had as much credibility as anyone else to be the one to end the streak, but he was also one of the guys who needed that rub the least. And now that WWE have booked themselves into such a corner, it feels like the greater pity they tossed it out when they did.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Feb 25, 2015 21:25:25 GMT -5
I wonder how the company will react when this "Reigns Experiment" fails and it not only screws up Reigns and his plans, it'll also have f***ed up Taker, Lesnar AND Bryan.
Out of all the things I've seen in wrestling since the 90s, predictions, things you see, the "Reigns will fail" experiment has to be the #1 thing that's I can predict. I just don't know why they won't do what's best for everyone. Oh I do.
This is the WW-f***ing-E.
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tms
Don Corleone
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Post by tms on Feb 25, 2015 21:26:01 GMT -5
Say whatever you want to about NEWZ and all that...Meltzer's a must-read when it comes to columns like these. Captivating article; totally spot-on.
The fact that a talent like Bryan, who's more uniformly over with the fans as a face since the Rock, is being and has been marginalized and sabotaged for such a thoroughly mediocre, unspectacular performer like Reigns continues to be utterly baffling.
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Post by HMARK Center on Feb 25, 2015 21:32:05 GMT -5
Depressing read, but a necessary one.
Dave's making the point a ton of others have made, and is drawing more on history to make it even clearer: it's nearly impossible to think of a wrestler who has gotten the type of crowd responses and mainstream attention Bryan has gotten not at least experimented with at the top of the mountain. Yes, he got injured, we know, but remember that crowd reaction when he announced he wasn't retiring and would be in the Rumble? That's the crowd's choice, right there; run with him. Maybe they'd get the belt on him, let him topple Brock, but wind up not having things work out; ok, at least you tried. You did the logical thing, respond to your fans, and it just didn't work out. But your odds of it working out are MUCH higher when, as Dave says, you're starting from a position of "this babyface has momentum", which is something Reigns does not seem to have right now.
It's a great point to make: "good promoters listen to their fans, great promoters manipulate the fans". You can't always give your audience what it says it wants, because the audience isn't paid to put stories, narratives, and character arcs together; YOU are. Ideally, you know more about these things than they do, and you can use your expertise to craft a story the crowd will take to. It may not always work, but that's the goal.
Vince totally missed the boat here, because he has no idea what works in wrestling anymore. The age of the bodybuilder superman is over; it's not that fans don't like big guys, they definitely do, but the business has been completely exposed, and fans who have stuck around want to know that they'll get the type of action they can suspend their disbelief for while watching, the type of action guys like Bryan can provide. This isn't 1998 anymore; it's not just "basement-dwelling smarks" begging for Benoit or Guerrero to win a World Title, it's actually a huge portion of your consistent audience.
I'm in agreement with what others have said here: this could go down as one of Vince's greatest, and maybe one of his final, blunders. Daniel Bryan isn't going to be Hulk Hogan; nobody likely ever will be again. But Daniel Bryan is the guy the fans gave a huge response to, and for reasons we can't fathom, Vince said "doesn't matter, don't even roll the dice with him", something he has never done before. He's gone with the guy who isn't even in the top 5 most over babyfaces in the company, who had any momentum he had killed by a surgery and awful promo writing, for reasons that go nowhere beyond "he looks good." Bryan looks and wrestles more like the type of guy people are responding to these days, and looks and wrestles more like the new generation of people they have bubbling up in NXT, but Vince isn't biting; hell, he's an old man now, maybe it's just the way he's wired.
I still can't bring myself to watch Raw, but when I heard about this whole situation it made me come back to reading WWE news, because, as a long time wrestling fan, it's the type of decision-making that I could never imagine seeing before. Dave really drove it home on this point: you can't go forward on something like this if you're going to have Lesnar break the streak, destroy Cena, and basically be the most built up in-ring competitor in WWF since 1987 Andre the Giant before WM III. You can't just say "Roman will beat him, and the people will love it, because I say they will!"; if you're going to go THAT whole hog with Lesnar, you need to KNOW that the guy who beats him will have the crowd totally in his corner, and Roman clearly isn't that guy.
My cousin has the Network, and I usually watch the Rumble and 'Mania with him; I honestly can't look away this year, because this could be an enormous turning point moment for WWE. Bryan's fans may well have been beaten into resigned acceptance of Bryan's fate...that doesn't mean they're likely to latch onto Reigns. This could be a dire, dire WM ending.
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Crappler El 0 M
Dalek
Never Forgets an Octagon
I'm a good R-Truth.
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Post by Crappler El 0 M on Feb 25, 2015 21:37:54 GMT -5
That was a great column from Meltzer, though I'm not sure you should post the entire thing on here if it's from his newsletter or on the membership side of his site.
I do want to point out that Wade Keller was saying right after Mania last year that Vince might have made the decision to beat the Streak so that next year Roman Reigns could be the one to beat Lesnar to set up Reigns as the next big star. This speculation/prediction was right on. Also, months ago Keller made the Bret Hart/Lex Luger comparison before we really saw the Rumble play-out.
Meltzer made so many great points injecting a ton of history.
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Post by Brother Nero....Wolfe on Feb 25, 2015 21:40:03 GMT -5
Yeah, stories never change based on how the audience reacts to them. That's silly! No memorable character was ever created because the show changed gears based on... Uh but well it's not like a writer going back on his plot because of the audience ever went well... Writing doesn't exist in a vacuum. While the audience doesn't get to write the plot, pretending they don't exist is absurd enough when you are writing a book, but it becomes just ridiculous when you can hear the audience's feedback exactly as the plot you wrote plays out and decide to ignore them. Now granted, to be fair that is sort of his point. I'm not sure 'telling a story good enough that fans like it' qualifies as manipulating them, but yeah. I mean really - Vince is like that one kid in every writing class who writes this invincible Mary Sue protagonist he loves to death at the cost of a good story and who basically goes "Bah" to everyone who criticizes him. Only in his case he's rich enough to ignore all criticism and his bad writing still makes him money. So I guess what I'm saying is that Vince is Terry Goodkind.
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Post by HMARK Center on Feb 25, 2015 21:41:34 GMT -5
That was a great column from Meltzer, though I'm not sure you should post the entire thing on here if it's from his newsletter or on the membership side of his site. I do want to point out that Wade Keller was saying right after Mania last year that Vince might have made the decision to beat the Streak so that next year Roman Reigns could be the one to beat Lesnar to set up Reigns as the next big star. This prediction was right on. Also, months ago Keller made the Bret Hart/Lex Luger comparison before we really saw the Rumble play-out. Meltzer made so many great points injecting a ton of history. You know what, good point. I have to ask now: was this article behind a paywall?
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Perd
Patti Mayonnaise
Leslie needs to butt out for fear of receiving The Bunghole Buster
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Post by Perd on Feb 25, 2015 21:43:42 GMT -5
I wonder how the company will react when this "Reigns Experiment" fails and it not only screws up Reigns and his plans, it'll also have f***ed up Taker, Lesnar AND Bryan. Out of all the things I've seen in wrestling since the 90s, predictions, things you see, the "Reigns will fail" experiment has to be the #1 thing that's I can predict. I just don't know why they won't do what's best for everyone. Oh I do. This is the WW-f***ing-E. If Reigns fails, they'll just throw that saddle right back on Cena. I like Roman, but I think this is inevitable.
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andrew8798
FANatic
on 24/7 this month
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Post by andrew8798 on Feb 25, 2015 21:45:36 GMT -5
That was a great column from Meltzer, though I'm not sure you should post the entire thing on here if it's from his newsletter or on the membership side of his site. I do want to point out that Wade Keller was saying right after Mania last year that Vince might have made the decision to beat the Streak so that next year Roman Reigns could be the one to beat Lesnar to set up Reigns as the next big star. This prediction was right on. Also, months ago Keller made the Bret Hart/Lex Luger comparison before we really saw the Rumble play-out. Meltzer made so many great points injecting a ton of history. You know what, good point. I have to ask now: was this article behind a paywall? It is
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gr1990
Don Corleone
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Post by gr1990 on Feb 25, 2015 21:46:21 GMT -5
Great piece, although I really don't like the novel analogy, it seems to run counter to what he's saying. I think it's interesting the point about Ricky Morton not being accepted as a main eventer. Handsome guy, really over in a tag team, but without the individual skill, charisma and star power to fully convince as a top-line singles guy. Sound like anyone?
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metylerca
King Koopa
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Don't be alarmed.
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Post by metylerca on Feb 25, 2015 21:47:24 GMT -5
That was a great column from Meltzer, though I'm not sure you should post the entire thing on here if it's from his newsletter or on the membership side of his site. I do want to point out that Wade Keller was saying right after Mania last year that Vince might have made the decision to beat the Streak so that next year Roman Reigns could be the one to beat Lesnar to set up Reigns as the next big star. This prediction was right on. Also, months ago Keller made the Bret Hart/Lex Luger comparison before we really saw the Rumble play-out. Meltzer made so many great points injecting a ton of history. You know what, good point. I have to ask now: was this article behind a paywall? yes.
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Post by HMARK Center on Feb 25, 2015 21:47:27 GMT -5
You know what, good point. I have to ask now: was this article behind a paywall? It is Well, crap. Sorry guys, gonna have to edit this down.
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