thirteen3
Dennis Stamp
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Post by thirteen3 on Jun 15, 2019 11:47:30 GMT -5
So what were Smith's complaints about New Japan?
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Post by corndog on Jun 15, 2019 11:51:11 GMT -5
Yeah the weird thing about ROH, despite losing the Elite, they have one of the strongest talent pools in a long time. But you can have a great talent pool but bad booking can kill it, just look at WWE right now and TNA 2010/11. They need to fire Bully Ray/Delirious and put someone like Colt Cabana in charge, I can't imagine he would do worse. I know a lot of people made fun of Caprice Coleman's commentary in New Japan, but it was kind of fun listening to him completely mark out because he's not used to that good of wrestling product. It's pretty demented; once the Elite guys were out ROH managed to generate some very positive buzz in early 2019 by snatching up Haskins, Bandido, Rush, Cobb, PCO, King, Williams, leveraging their NJPW alliance for Juice and Finlay, having Gresham around, etc., all seeming like a golden opportunity to get rid of the air of "people only watch this to see Cody and the Bucks!" that was permeating in some people's minds. You'd think that task #1 once that interest was generated would be to really get these guys over strong as a sort of "new generation" for the company, but while they've certainly protected Rush and Cobb, and while Villain Enterprises has been booked pretty strong, as well, the others just seemed to fade out, and I can't help but wonder if a big part of it is because they got caught in the Bully Ray booking vortex. It's not to say that all of these guys had to come in and dominate, not when you've still got names like Scurll, Castle, and Lethal around that they could have competitive feuds with, but we shouldn't have gotten to G1 Supercard with most fans not having any idea who Haskins and Williams are, for example. You've got a whole slate of new talent in, do something to highlight them! Hold a tournament, make one up on the spot, anything to draw in some attention from around the wrestling world and have people saying "You really need to check out this match that <so and so> had on the last ROH PPV", the type of buzz that a lot of the bigger indies and even Impact have been drawing in the past year or so. That, or a storyline with some real heat behind it where the featured stars and promos don't involve 50 year old Bully Ray...Bully being around isn't the end of the world, but he shouldn't be the featured player. I get the difficulties of a rebuilding period for any promotion, but they were able to get theirs off on the right foot with all the new signings, but again, outside of Cobb, Rush, and Villain Enterprises, they haven't done much of anything noteworthy with these guys. They have the talent that was capable of blowing people away at MSG, but chose to do cheap attention seeking angles that New Japan fans weren't buying. The sad part is ROH survived periods where their talent was absolutely strip mined by WWE, but could possibly die from obviously bad booking instead.
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markymark
Bill S. Preston, Esq.
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Post by markymark on Jun 15, 2019 11:56:40 GMT -5
Man, Lifeblood is (was?) such a pointless idea. It really felt like someone booking ROH said "hey, Bullet Club/Elite were really popular, so let's just create another stable of random people and they'll get just as popular". They have some genuine prospects involved with it, but it is so directionless and unnecessary it just makes everybody look like random goons. Hopefully with Juice gone they'll give these guys genuine build ups. To me it's more about execution with Lifeblood. The idea made some sense, let's bring ROH back to it's roots and have great matches. Lifeblood feels more like CHAOS than Bullet Club or Elite. What makes it so horrible is it acknowledges that they know what most ROH fans want, great matches and a promotion built on workrate. But they used it to put over Bully Ray and his friends. Bully Ray seems to come from the Vince Russo school of booking that is built on "getting heat" and trolling the fans by taking away what they like. It didn't work in WCW, TNA and it's not working now that the bad formula is 20 years old. Clearly ROH can't just be a workrate promotion when you have New Japan and other indies delivering strongly in this department. I think ROH could take something from southern promotions of the 70s/80s, where you can have great matches but also strong angles like Dusty getting his arm broken.
Bully did the same sht in 2014 TNA, when he was the face of the company back then because Dixie made him join creative. Idk why he cant follow his buddy Tommy Dreamers thinking and actually put over the young guys.
The only way I can see ROH recovering is if Billy Corgan takes over, his style would work in ROH, he has produced great matches like Aldis/Scurll for example.
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Convoy
El Dandy
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Post by Convoy on Jun 15, 2019 12:02:03 GMT -5
So what were Smith's complaints about New Japan? He felt overlooked as a singles competitor, mostly. Last year he put out a statement basically apologizing to his fans for not being in the G1. It was kind of awkward, since he hadn't been selected for one since 2014 anyway.
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Hypnosis
T
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Post by Hypnosis on Jun 15, 2019 12:14:24 GMT -5
Lifeblood always seemed randomly thrown together and utterly pointless to me. "Hey, we've got these talented people! Why not group them together because shutup?" And then yeah, Bully Ray had to shoehorn himself into the mix. Yeah, it was: Hippie Macho Man American and British guys in black trunks Mexican Hayabusa Sexy Australian Biker Chick At least Dave Finlay made a little sense due to his history with Robinson in NJPW.
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Post by 2coldMack is even more baffled on Jun 15, 2019 13:33:25 GMT -5
I mean, the Juice story isn’t that much of a surprise considering Will Osprey’s completing a move to Japan so is taking less international bookings, he’s wrapping up UK bookings this weekend. I mean, it COULD be something to do with ROH but it doesn’t seem that likely to me. With DBS Jr. it didn’t seem like he was used as much this year so he might have seen the writing on the wall and left. Which hey, probably why he started working with MLW. JUice leaving probably isn't all ROH, but it does take a special kind of incompetence to take a stable of Juice Robinson, Tracy Williams, Mark Haskins, and Bandido and make them boring Williams and Bandido are two of my favorite guys in wrestling right now, but holy SHIT, do I not give a damn about Lifeblood.
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Post by ANuclearError on Jun 15, 2019 13:38:58 GMT -5
Didn’t know Juice was moving to Japan, but if true, it adds an interesting layer to his post-match promo after losing the US title. He’s so loved by the crowds there, and is ready to contend for the IC belt.Smith complained fairly often about New Japan, which really became noticeable prior to last year's G1. I’m not the biggest fan of the guy, but can agree that being a “monster” in AEW is better than whatever he’ll get working NJPW. I dunno if he's quite ready for that. Keep in mind that the IC champ has to main event shows and draw crowds. He's great at getting the fans behind him, but I dunno how well he'd do as the draw.
I think that a team of him and Tanahashi would be a (needed) breath of fresh air for the tag division.
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Post by Some Baritone guy IS REDEEMED! on Jun 15, 2019 14:01:43 GMT -5
Didn’t know Juice was moving to Japan, but if true, it adds an interesting layer to his post-match promo after losing the US title. He’s so loved by the crowds there, and is ready to contend for the IC belt.Smith complained fairly often about New Japan, which really became noticeable prior to last year's G1. I’m not the biggest fan of the guy, but can agree that being a “monster” in AEW is better than whatever he’ll get working NJPW. I dunno if he's quite ready for that. Keep in mind that the IC champ has to main event shows and draw crowds. He's great at getting the fans behind him, but I dunno how well he'd do as the draw. I think that a team of him and Tanahashi would be a (needed) breath of fresh air for the tag division.
Yeah, the way I see it, the US belt is designed to draw overseas, so Jon Moxley is the guy to go with for that belt, but right now Juice finally winning the NEVER belt would be great, given that the Openweight division has been on fire this year. But I agree the tag division needs some new blood in it.
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Chiral
Salacious Crumb
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Post by Chiral on Jun 15, 2019 14:05:39 GMT -5
Dragon Ball Super Jr.
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EyeofTyr
Hank Scorpio
Strange and Mystical
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Post by EyeofTyr on Jun 15, 2019 14:26:41 GMT -5
KES had been on a downward slope for a while, honestly since the whole NOAH angle really. Their run in NOAH felt like the last time they were really seen and treated as a viable tag team threat of any kind to any division. They had pretty much been treated as padding and disposable in NJPW since, so in that sense good for DBSJr. I hope MLW and wherever else he goes pans out for him, he's really entertaining as apart of KES and in some capacities has been entertaining as a solo act in other promotions. This could be the thing he needs to really kick start upping his name value across the industry.
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Mozenrath
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Post by Mozenrath on Jun 15, 2019 14:58:04 GMT -5
I hope this means Juice will get pushed some more in NJPW, given he'd be a fuller time commitment for them. It also makes for one less tie between ROH and NJPW, so, that has to be a bit concerning on ROH's end.
Can't really fault SMITH for his choice. MLW seems like a bigger commitment for him, and NJPW hasn't been interested in using KES, despite the heavyweight tag division being completely barren right now. That had to be frustrating for him.
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Post by The Summer of Muskrat XVII on Jun 15, 2019 15:08:17 GMT -5
Boy, that sucks for ROH. I’d have been building to him beating Taven this summer if I were them. Juice could’ve had a solid run as champ
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Post by BitterAF on Jun 15, 2019 15:18:14 GMT -5
I've always seen $$$ all over DBS Jr. He would be a good big guy to build up for an Okada match for a smaller show. A guy you know won't win but put on a great match and make you doubt yourself as the match goes on. Realistically DBS Jr would be a great addition to the Never division along with Juice.
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Post by AwamoriRock on Jun 15, 2019 18:47:44 GMT -5
Pretty sure DBSjr has been pretty open about not being used how he wants to be and even somewhat critical of the style on Twitter sometimes.
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Chainsaw
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Post by Chainsaw on Jun 15, 2019 19:29:53 GMT -5
Man, Lifeblood is (was?) such a pointless idea. It really felt like someone booking ROH said "hey, Bullet Club/Elite were really popular, so let's just create another stable of random people and they'll get just as popular". They have some genuine prospects involved with it, but it is so directionless and unnecessary it just makes everybody look like random goons. Hopefully with Juice gone they'll give these guys genuine build ups. Lifeblood felt like it was going to be Chaos with all of the guys they had signed in the rush to get as much talent under contract, and then ROH ROH'ed it all up, like they always do. They didn't even win the 6 Man titles, did they? Like, they were made to win the 6 Man Titles, and they didn't even do that.
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Post by Jacy Derangement Syndrome on Jun 15, 2019 19:49:51 GMT -5
It's like I feel bad for Smith but at the same time like
I reallyreally can't fault New Japan for not being interested in this dude having a singles run, lol.
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Mozenrath
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Post by Mozenrath on Jun 15, 2019 20:13:41 GMT -5
It's like I feel bad for Smith but at the same time like I reallyreally can't fault New Japan for not being interested in this dude having a singles run, lol. Yeah, and, to be perfectly frank, he's his parents' kid, alright. He just seems like he's got some screws loose, and the whole Jake Roberts incident can't have helped inspire confidence in him.
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Allie Kitsune
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Post by Allie Kitsune on Jun 15, 2019 20:41:20 GMT -5
It's like I feel bad for Smith but at the same time like I reallyreally can't fault New Japan for not being interested in this dude having a singles run, lol. I mean, he's alright... ...but who is he? He doesn't have any sort of real personality to show.
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Post by fortknox on Jun 15, 2019 20:50:50 GMT -5
It's like I feel bad for Smith but at the same time like I reallyreally can't fault New Japan for not being interested in this dude having a singles run, lol. Yeah, and, to be perfectly frank, he's his parents' kid, alright. He just seems like he's got some screws loose, and the whole Jake Roberts incident can't have helped inspire confidence in him. So, what you're saying is that he's..... BIZARRE?
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Urethra Franklin
King Koopa
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Post by Urethra Franklin on Jun 15, 2019 21:22:24 GMT -5
Meltzer reported a couple of weeks ago that the WWE was interested in bringing back Davey Boy Jr.
In the following edition of the WO, Meltzer printed a follow-up straight from Court Bauer that he’s locked in on an MLW deal for two years, but can work MMA if he chooses.
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