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Post by Tenshigure on Oct 24, 2017 12:05:35 GMT -5
This is all personal opinion, but I feel it needs to be shared.
Outside of a small handful of guys (namely, Owens and The Shield), nearly every single person who comes out of NXT gets absolutely dismantled by the booking; it's not until they've gotten a few years under their belt and have changed their gimmicks to be what Vince thinks they should be. The bigger the star in NXT, the farther you fall when you hit the main roster. Guys like Bo Dallas, Apollo Crews, and Tyler Breeze; girls like Bayley, Becky Lynch, to a lesser extent Sasha Banks with her inability to defend her titles...not to mention tag teams like The Ascension and American Alpha...every one of these people were extremely high caliber stars in NXT; booking decided to bring them all in as total jokes and kill any heat they have.
Even those who come in strong with a lot of fanfare (Nakamura, Zayn, Neville, most recently Asuka) get derailed by either misinterpretation of their gimmicks, or thrown to the wolves with terrible booking decisions that take away a lot of the strength their characters have. It's not even the fact they aren't as strong as they were in "the minor leagues," it's that they look inept in the process. Balor goes through an arduous feud with Bray Wyatt for 6 months, has the match of the night at TLC with a strong victory over a fan favorite...and proceeds to get fed to Kane and pinned clean. Had Asuka debuted in NXT the same way she debuted in the main roster at TLC getting dominated by her opponent for a 70/30 booking, nobody would take her as seriously as they did when she made a statement knocking Dana Brooke out and making her think SHE won the match. I digress.
All of these situations have reminded me of how Vince used to treat WCW guys when they finished up withe Invasion. A lot of the best people on the WCW Roster (Booker T, DDP, Goldberg's 1st run, Sting) were booked terribly in an almost vindictive way all to show that the WWF/E was and always will be the superior product. No matter how loyal these guys became to the new boss, it still felt like nothing they could do would be to make any of the guys who "weren't groomed by Vince and Co." were good enough.
The irony is that the majority of these talents, while gaining their fame from the indies, were developed in the WWE-style in their own developmental league. The problem is that it feels Vince is treating Triple H like he's the competition now that no other major players have really taken hold in North America (not to mention that the loyalty most NXT alum have for Hunter is pretty endearing at times).
Anyone else feel the same way?
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Juice
El Dandy
Wrong? Oh he can tell ya about being wrong.
I'm the one who raised you from perdition.
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Post by Juice on Oct 24, 2017 12:35:00 GMT -5
Its turned me away from the product as bad as anything else.
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AlexaBliss4Life
Unicron
Alexa Bliss is the Queen the wrestling world needs!
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Post by AlexaBliss4Life on Oct 24, 2017 12:44:07 GMT -5
2 matches and you think Asuka's buried.. Wow.
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Post by 111111 on Oct 24, 2017 12:51:03 GMT -5
Wrestling in front of a few hundred die hard fans in a TV studio and 15,000ish die hard fans once a quarter is alot different to wrestling in front of an arena of families in a flyover state.
It takes time to introduce characters on the main roster, I like the way WWE will build someone slower nowadays
They can't have everyone come in and be Brock Lesnar on their first night. It takes time to get gradually introduced to a wider audience the vast majority who don't watch NXT and might watch Raw once every now and then.
I see people complain that everyone who debuts on Smackdown wrestles Ziggler, I'd imagine they do this because Ziggler is a veteran who can teach them some good tips for performing on the main roster and will sell for them.
Not everyone who caught on in NXT will catch on on the main roster for lots of different reasons (some down to the talent, some down to the company, others down to things out of anyone's hands)
If there's one thing that needs refining it's Michael Cole shouting about "having fun" every 10 seconds. Does the new wrestlers no good at all
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Post by eJm on Oct 24, 2017 12:58:48 GMT -5
2 matches and you think Asuka's buried.. Wow. I mean, maybe I misread that wrong but the OP didn't mention anything about being 'buried' in their entire post. They talked about, fairly, the lack of fanfare given to talents making their debuts from NXT which is a fair point to make. I'm not even saying everyone should come in, go on this undefeated streak and win the title, but the main roster picked that person to be called up for a reason and they saw something in them in some cases to make a big deal about their debut (Nakamura and Asuka). If they didn't want to go through with that or follow up with the reaction they get afterwards...why call them up at all? Like, it feels like an almost funny pattern that goes on every time someone big gets signed to NXT. They get used well or at least put in a prominent spot, people who watch the Network get attached to them, they get called up to a huge pop at a certain event, get treated like just another person on the roster, people think they're not worth the hype they were given (which WWE can control as they see fit, they're not actual sports), someone new gets signed and the cycle starts anew. |
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Post by Tenshigure on Oct 24, 2017 13:06:07 GMT -5
2 matches and you think Asuka's buried.. Wow. The number of people I've spoken to outside of the hardcore IWC all continue to be unimpressed by every single NXT graduate, and it's in no fault of the stars themselves moreso the booking demanding a certain narrative be told during their matches and in their promos. They are shown videos of these up-and-comers that show them to be "the next big thing" (pardon the pun), only to be disappointed by the performance in the ring. Asuka is simply only the most recent person to get thrown into this pattern cycle, and yet because many (myself included) vocalize our disappointment that she's becoming "just another performer" for the main roster, people are inexplicably defending the WWE's choice. I really don't understand this mentality. Are we really getting to the point where it's acceptable to see everyone buried "to make everyone else look on even ground" because LOLWWE? |
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Post by Deleted on Oct 24, 2017 13:07:48 GMT -5
Did we suddenly forget the other competitive matches Asuka had in NXT with Nia Jax and Emma?
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Post by Tenshigure on Oct 24, 2017 13:10:15 GMT -5
Did we suddenly forget the other competitive matches Asuka had in NXT with Nia Jax and Emma? The WWE Raw booking team did when they had Emma on a losing streak for the majority of 2017. She has a record of 5-26, with only 3 of those being singles wins, and the 5-man being the first time she's won in over a month). EDIT: I want to further emphasize that I LIKE Emma, and I am very happy they're finally booking her as a strong contender for the show. It just felt like really poor timing to give her this sudden credible push when even her sole win leading up to this night was as a result of taking advantage of distractions. Had they given her a few more clean wins leading up to TLC it'd make more sense. Instead, they had her on the losing side of a tag match in the go-home show. Mixed signals across the board. |
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Post by eJm on Oct 24, 2017 13:10:47 GMT -5
2 matches and you think Asuka's buried.. Wow. The number of people I've spoken to outside of the hardcore IWC all continue to be unimpressed by every single NXT graduate, and it's in no fault of the stars themselves moreso the booking demanding a certain narrative be told during their matches and in their promos. They are shown videos of these up-and-comers that show them to be "the next big thing" (pardon the pun), only to be disappointed by the performance in the ring. Asuka is simply only the most recent person to get thrown into this pattern cycle, and yet because many (myself included) vocalize our disappointment that she's becoming "just another performer" for the main roster, people are inexplicably defending the WWE's choice. I really don't understand this mentality. Are we really getting to the point where it's acceptable to see everyone buried "to make everyone else look on even ground" because LOLWWE? I don't think it's even that. Like other people coming in, they're taking away what made them over with people and giving them a WWE coat of paint instead and putting WWE buzzwords or whatever with them. Which brings up the question, if that's their intention in the first place...why not have them do all that in developmental? Why the need to make them stand out at all? It's what the system is there to do, right? Prepare them for the main roster. You don't get trained to use a Windows PC in the new job you just had to immediately get told as you start proper employment that you're working on a Mac. Yeah, they still have a screen and a keyboard but everything else around it is fundamentally different. |
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Post by Deleted on Oct 24, 2017 13:16:49 GMT -5
I don't think it's out of malice or anything. I think Vince is just out of touch, it's only vaguely important what guys have done in NXT, by the time they come up Vince will follow a very loose guideline of what the character was but you can tell in his implementation that he doesn't really "get" them on a very thoughtful level. Bayley's a nice girl. Shinsuke Nakamura is an enigmatic Japanese man. Sami Zayn is an underdog. He "yadda yaddas" their general persona without really going deep enough to satisfy anyone who watched them grow elsewhere, and the length of time it takes for the performers to get the stones to brute force their way into better things is pretty agonizing.
Vince just has a lot of bad habits and I think he's been complacent. Buzzwords, 50/50 booking, bad finishes, really clean corporate presentation, "tell don't show," Finn Balor can lose to Kane but when it's time to wrestle Brock Lesnar you can just say Finn's great and is Brock's biggest challenge, and hope everyone believes it. I don't think it's contempt or anything because there don't really seem to be any particular person who goes unscathed by his current way of working.
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Post by This Player Hating Mothman on Oct 24, 2017 13:18:41 GMT -5
The number of people I've spoken to outside of the hardcore IWC all continue to be unimpressed by every single NXT graduate, and it's in no fault of the stars themselves moreso the booking demanding a certain narrative be told during their matches and in their promos. They are shown videos of these up-and-comers that show them to be "the next big thing" (pardon the pun), only to be disappointed by the performance in the ring. Asuka is simply only the most recent person to get thrown into this pattern cycle, and yet because many (myself included) vocalize our disappointment that she's becoming "just another performer" for the main roster, people are inexplicably defending the WWE's choice. I really don't understand this mentality. Are we really getting to the point where it's acceptable to see everyone buried "to make everyone else look on even ground" because LOLWWE? I don't think it's even that. Like other people coming in, they're taking away what made them over with people and giving them a WWE coat of paint instead and putting WWE buzzwords or whatever with them. Which brings up the question, if that's their intention in the first place...why not have them do all that in developmental? Why the need to make them stand out at all? It's what the system is there to do, right? Prepare them for the main roster. You don't get trained to use a Windows PC in the new job you just had to immediately get told as you start proper employment that you're working on a Mac. Yeah, they still have a screen and a keyboard but everything else around it is fundamentally different. I think a part of it is that Triple H is trying to prepare people for Triple H's WWE more than anything; not a great method, but he's looking at the future and at a roster who will are loyal to him and trained to put on the show he wants to put on. Past that, I think the problem is that there is nothing that can prepare you for the main roster booking. For someone like Nakamura feeling like just a guy on the main roster because Vince put him in a t-shirt and had him spend most of his debut match selling. Even if they had Vince come up with everyone's developmental schtick, given a few years to go through NXT and come up, Vince would have stopped caring and moved on to something else, and either half-heartedly roll with it from the start or revamp them all over again. There is no elegant way to solve this problem of everyone serving two masters when one of the masters is insane. |
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Post by Mayonnaise on Oct 24, 2017 13:20:52 GMT -5
Did we suddenly forget the other competitive matches Asuka had in NXT with Nia Jax and Emma? In NXT Emma and Nia were threats and Asuka was established as a badass, none of that is true for Raw. They hyped Asuka as a killing machine and had her struggle with a joke character which takes the shine off her. Emma dominated her both matches then Asuka would get lucky and win. How does that help make Asuka look special? That is the issue I have. |
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Post by Bungle on Oct 24, 2017 13:24:31 GMT -5
I disagree.
The big graduates names are on top and fighting and winning titles,the "lesser ones" need to adapt and find something that works.There are even some unexpected success stories like Carmella or Elias.
Even Daniel Bryan and AJ Styles had to prove themselves.
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Post by Can you afford to pay me, Gah on Oct 24, 2017 13:26:34 GMT -5
2 matches and you think Asuka's buried.. Wow. 2 matches that she won may I add. Yeah I don't get how that buried either? |
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Post by Deleted on Oct 24, 2017 13:30:00 GMT -5
Did we suddenly forget the other competitive matches Asuka had in NXT with Nia Jax and Emma? When you have her previews and the narrative surrounding her main roster debut being focused around her "dominating and annihilating", let alone going against Emma who's heavily fallen off from her other days, nah it doesn't work out. |
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Post by Jokaine on Oct 24, 2017 13:32:30 GMT -5
This is all personal opinion, but I feel it needs to be shared. Outside of a small handful of guys (namely, Owens and The Shield), nearly every single person who comes out of NXT gets absolutely dismantled by the booking; it's not until they've gotten a few years under their belt and have changed their gimmicks to be what Vince thinks they should be. The bigger the star in NXT, the farther you fall when you hit the main roster. Guys like Bo Dallas, Apollo Crews, and Tyler Breeze; girls like Bayley, Becky Lynch, to a lesser extent Sasha Banks with her inability to defend her titles...not to mention tag teams like The Ascension and American Alpha...every one of these people were extremely high caliber stars in NXT; booking decided to bring them all in as total jokes and kill any heat they have. Even those who come in strong with a lot of fanfare (Nakamura, Zayn, Neville, most recently Asuka) get derailed by either misinterpretation of their gimmicks, or thrown to the wolves with terrible booking decisions that take away a lot of the strength their characters have. It's not even the fact they aren't as strong as they were in "the minor leagues," it's that they look inept in the process. Balor goes through an arduous feud with Bray Wyatt for 6 months, has the match of the night at TLC with a strong victory over a fan favorite...and proceeds to get fed to Kane and pinned clean. Had Asuka debuted in NXT the same way she debuted in the main roster at TLC getting dominated by her opponent for a 70/30 booking, nobody would take her as seriously as they did when she made a statement knocking Dana Brooke out and making her think SHE won the match. I digress. All of these situations have reminded me of how Vince used to treat WCW guys when they finished up withe Invasion. A lot of the best people on the WCW Roster (Booker T, DDP, Goldberg's 1st run, Sting) were booked terribly in an almost vindictive way all to show that the WWF/E was and always will be the superior product. No matter how loyal these guys became to the new boss, it still felt like nothing they could do would be to make any of the guys who "weren't groomed by Vince and Co." were good enough. The irony is that the majority of these talents, while gaining their fame from the indies, were developed in the WWE-style in their own developmental league. The problem is that it feels Vince is treating Triple H like he's the competition now that no other major players have really taken hold in North America (not to mention that the loyalty most NXT alum have for Hunter is pretty endearing at times). Anyone else feel the same way? I was discussing this topic last night so I'll kind of reiterate what I previously wrote. The idea that Vince "dismantles," NXT talent is something some folks work themselves into thinking once they get pissed about a match result. Asuka hasn't been buried, or dismantled. Granted I would have booked her debut different but she still came out with 2 wins. Commentary, which seems to carry a lot of weight on this board when people are determining show quality, repeatedly sold the idea that Emma is legit when she focuses on the ring and used the Asuka matches as proof. It actually kind of worked. As far as the other people in your opening paragraph, you mentioned Sasha and Neville. Neville was always protected in terms of wins and losses and had am entire show build around him. No amount of revisionist history or anger over Neville maybe leaving over money changes that. Sasha has been placed in a spot where she and Charlotte (who you left out of the topic altogether) are perceived as the class of women's wrestling. Not being able to retain the belt after she wins it? Yeah, Wilt couldn't win shit until he was an old man and somebody else carried the team but nobody thought he was a second-tier player. Balor showed up and was booked like a megastar from Day One. His first night on Raw was an insane debut. He went on to win the Universal title at Summerslam. I have no doubt the following 12 months would have been much different Balor had he not gotten injured. Yeah, it sucks Kane beat him last night. I wouldn't have booked that either, but that doesn't change the fact Balor has been presented as a big deal his entire time on Raw. Guys like Bo Dallas, Tyler Breeze and the Ascension were always going to be mid-card at best. Seriously, did you think any of those guys showed any signs of a future Big-4 headliner? Apollo Crews wasn't ready. Period. He shouldn't have been called up. To be fair, I'm not sure you could even say he was booked as a big deal in NXT. Sami Zayn, while not a main eventer, has been on TV the entire time he's been on the main roster and has gotten a lot of wins. Nakamura hasn't been dismantled. He just hasn't won the World title in his first 6 months. He's also beaten John Cena and Randy Orton clean. How many people can say they've done that in a six-year span of time, let alone 6 months? Now for Bayley. She is an example of what someone else posted. She got super over with a small indy-ish crowd and somehow a lot of message-boarders thought she would be the women's equivalent of John Cena. That wasn't going to happen, so anything short was going to be seen as WWE screwing up a surefire lottery ticket. I agree with American Alpha. A lot more could have done with them. Good thing is, they both have a lot of talent and a lot of years left. Finally, you left off Enzo and Cass. Like it or not, they stayed over and have moved a ton of merchandise which means they weren't buried or dismantled. Sorry if this came off as a rant, but I can't disagree enough with this line of thought. |
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Post by Tenshigure on Oct 24, 2017 13:33:23 GMT -5
He "yadda yaddas" their general persona without really going deep enough to satisfy anyone who watched them grow elsewhere, and the length of time it takes for the performers to get the stones to brute force their way into better things is pretty agonizing. I will concede this: the number of stories I hear about NXT graduates going to Triple H instead of Vince for advice/info when in the main roster is a little disheartening to say the least. It seems that those who have had their time on the indy circuit are more likely to chase down Vince and grab his ear with their wants/needs as opposed to the talents that are grown in-stable (the most obvious ones in my mind are Tyler Breeze and Bo Dallas, both of which didn't spend much of any time outside of the WWE system). This is the key thing that I wanted to discuss in this thread, not "Asuka's done pt. 2," so thank you for contributing. It just feels like 2017 has been absolutely brutal to the roster as a whole, but none more so than the fresh blood that came up this year. |
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Post by freeze Austin on Oct 24, 2017 13:37:31 GMT -5
Did we suddenly forget the other competitive matches Asuka had in NXT with Nia Jax and Emma? Competitive matches are perfectly fine at the appropriate time. The first two matches on the main roster aren't the time to do that, especially against one of the weaker booked women on the roster and especially after you've hyped Asuka up for a month with emphasis on how dominant she's been. The casual audience sees those first two matches and thinks "Huh, what was all that hype about? She must not be that good if she can't beat Emma, who has lost to everyone, in under 5 minutes." Which is fine if you want to establish her as just another body on the roster that loves to have fun and sports entertain, but not if you're trying to get her over as a star. |
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Post by The Thread Barbi on Oct 24, 2017 13:42:34 GMT -5
Maybe it's what Jericho said - once you work for Vince McMahon, past accomplishments are worth nought. You have to prove yourself all over again.
Maybe Vince McMahon doesn't see NXT as his show, so puts the graduates under the same old, same old
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Post by Deleted on Oct 24, 2017 14:05:43 GMT -5
Well, Vince has his guys and regardless if they come from NXT or picked off the street - if he wants you to get over they'll move mountains, tell the announcers to flat-out lie about what the audience is saying and sacrifice anyone's more organic momentum to make it happen. That's just the WWE system, right there.
That ties into WWE's bigger problem of not knowing how to make new stars. So, you've got this "developmental" league which you think would be something the main show would build up as this THING, you know? Like this REALLY impressive place where future stars come from. And so when someone comes from NXT to WWE (not EVERYONE, but you know - the people they want to run with) it should be documented on the main show more.
When Finn was called up, they should have been teasing it out for weeks on RAW.
"Oh, have you seen this new guy Finn Balor down in NXT? Let's play a quick clip of his work. What a potential superstar, I feel bad for anyone not watching NXT right now." and so on.
That lays the ground work. Then you get some current roster guys do talk about him like, "I'd love to have this guy up on the main roster to really show him what's what." or "I've heard about this guy before - he's impressive, but I'd want to wrestle him first to see if he can handle it up here..." That kind of thing.
Basically make it seem like this is a big coup to get this guy, right? Then maybe the Smackdown GM comes out and is like, "Hold on, RAW isn't getting Finn Balor because we're ALSO negotiating to bring him up...." so on and so forth.
And this goes on until he actually gets called up and the do some contract signing in the middle of the ring (preceded by a video package out lining all this) and then you have him sign the contract and maybe some dude comes out to lay down the gauntlet or some such nonsense, you know - wrestling stuff.
Right now, guys MIGHT get a 30 second video package "FINN...is coming to RAW." and that's it. It's like, man - who the hell is going to care about that. Unless someone watches NXT - a show they barely promote on RAW, they're not going to understand what a big deal this guy is supposed to be.
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