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Post by bearned on Feb 28, 2020 19:12:04 GMT -5
I don’t mind ‘old man Goldberg’ as he has a lot of charisma and against the right worker, he could probably have all his flaws hidden....but this trend of letting part timers win titles and beat full time talent is just a recipe for disaster down the track.
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Post by IgnahtaSempria on Feb 28, 2020 19:25:55 GMT -5
The difference between Undertaker and the Fiend is that the Undertaker has an undercurrent of logic to it. Is there any sort of real world basis for this man inexplicably being an unkillable zombie who can teleport and occasionally has lightning powers? No, but it's internally consistent. While there are times they've emphasized it more or less and there was the period where he was more of a cult leader than supernatural, not to mention the bike stuff, but the characterization stays largely consistent and his motivations and abilities don't change that much. The Fiend is, like, the living embodiment of all of Bray Wyatt's rage or something, except he mostly just gets his ass kicked, and his matches are all super obnoxiously red, except when they aren't. He's the muscle for the harmless Bray who was begging for mercy from Seth, except Bray is just as capable of shrugging off a beating to win with a single move when he wants to, and he's Bray's cruel side, except when Bray feels like hitting Ramblin' Rabbit with a hammer or something. There's no actual consistent logic behind it to latch onto and that makes suspension of disbelief more difficult. The only way the Fiend makes any sense at all is if you assume the entire thing is a bunch of bullshit Bray's cooked up to screw with people, he himself has trouble keeping up with the mythology he's made up, and none of the roster is smart enough to question it. This comment actually reminded me that Bray posted some stuff on his Twitter a while back before the Firefly Fun House vignettes started that seemed to be leading in to it. They seemed to be excerpts of therapy notes from a psychiatrist at a mental hospital, detailing Wyatt's treatment (and posted on Wyatt's Twitter, for some reason). That, combined with him mentioning in a promo once how he learned to just not feel pain in order to justify the Fiend's strength, seems like there was supposed to be a clear narrative. Wyatt gets sent to a mental hospital, forcibly undergoes invasive treatments to curb his anger and violent urges, and it causes a split into two distinct personalities: Funhouse Bray, and The Fiend. Then, if you look back to the really old Tweets where Bray claimed that he was a spirit using Husky Harris as a vessel to explain the gimmick change, it seems to me like Windham Rotunda has always had clear ideas for what he wanted Bray Wyatt's story to be, and the WWE writing team keeps getting in his way and making things more convoluted than they have to be. Would Wyatt's story be better without WWE's hand in it? Maybe not, but we'll never know now, unless Wyatt leaves and does a shoot interview at some point.
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Post by Starshine on Feb 28, 2020 19:34:33 GMT -5
Stock price is an observable metric, no? In terms of fan engagement, which is the only metric any of us have any reason to care about, no. The stock price is completely unrelated to WWE’s relevance to the public. Stock price also doesn't necessarily inform anything of a businesses health, it's just market perception. Plus it was over inflated anyway which is why it's been steadily dropping in the past year or so.
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Xxcjb01xX [PIECE OF: SH-]
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Post by Xxcjb01xX [PIECE OF: SH-] on Feb 28, 2020 20:10:55 GMT -5
Goldberg got booed out of the building on Smackdown tonight, and then when Roman entered for the big faceoff, the crowd turned into a "YOU BOTH SUCK" chant
So yeah, this was totally the right move!
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Dub H
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Post by Dub H on Feb 28, 2020 20:19:31 GMT -5
Goldberg got booed out of the building on Smackdown tonight, and then when Roman entered for the big faceoff, the crowd turned into a "YOU BOTH SUCK" chant So yeah, this was totally the right move! Cant wait for the youtube videos and the crowds to be muted
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Post by Deleted on Feb 28, 2020 20:22:42 GMT -5
Goldberg got booed out of the building on Smackdown tonight, and then when Roman entered for the big faceoff, the crowd turned into a "YOU BOTH SUCK" chant So yeah, this was totally the right move! Cant wait for the youtube videos and the crowds to be muted They were already prepping for it because Cole was screaming at the top of his lungs the whole time about how everyone loved Goldberg and was so happy he won.
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Post by HMARK Center on Feb 28, 2020 21:48:15 GMT -5
In terms of fan engagement, which is the only metric any of us have any reason to care about, no. The stock price is completely unrelated to WWE’s relevance to the public. Stock price also doesn't necessarily inform anything of a businesses health, it's just market perception. Plus it was over inflated anyway which is why it's been steadily dropping in the past year or so. Yeah, I should have specified before that in a discussion of television numbers, stock price also means nothing to the networks that WWE signs contracts with. It really only matters to investors in WWE, and the people with the majority of the shares are the McMahons, anyway.
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Xxcjb01xX [PIECE OF: SH-]
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Post by Xxcjb01xX [PIECE OF: SH-] on Feb 28, 2020 22:11:45 GMT -5
If you're wondering if The Fiend gives a shit about losing the belt to Goldberg, as expected he just walked out when Cena was out there and pointed to the Mania sign like a giant dork
His whole character might as well be dead as this point, if it ain't now it will be at Mania probably.
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Post by Brian Suntan on Feb 28, 2020 22:13:02 GMT -5
Stock price is an observable metric, no? In terms of fan engagement, which is the only metric any of us have any reason to care about, no. The stock price is completely unrelated to WWE’s relevance to the public. There are lots of metrics none of us have any reason to care about but discuss at length regardless - ratings, demographics, earnings calls, TV deals. Basically all of them. The only reason not to consider stock price is that it doesn't fit the narrative.
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Post by The Summer of Muskrat XVII on Feb 28, 2020 23:10:04 GMT -5
Ya know, I was fine with The Fiend losing time Goldberg. I personally wouldn’t have booked the match, but whatever. But Fiend coming out tonight and pointing at the Mania sign instead of attempting to murder Cena absolutely killed the gimmick dead for me. I couldn’t take him seriously at all when he was pointing
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Post by cabbageboy on Feb 28, 2020 23:25:30 GMT -5
SD was somewhat better tonight, or at least newsworthy, but good lord some of the booking. So Reigns is just facing Goldberg at WM with no actual match to get there? As in not even a Chamber match to win? He just says "I'm next" and voila? I guess that epic Corbin victory propelled him to the top, eh? Further, why did Cena even show up if he was going to announce that he didn't want to wrestle at WM? He could have stayed home and done nothing.
See, here is the problem with Goldberg having a title going into WM: We know this won't be a good match. It's going to be another 5 minutes or less bunch of silliness and that isn't worth paying full retail PPV price if that's what WWE expects.
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Post by HMARK Center on Feb 29, 2020 0:01:09 GMT -5
In terms of fan engagement, which is the only metric any of us have any reason to care about, no. The stock price is completely unrelated to WWE’s relevance to the public. There are lots of metrics none of us have any reason to care about but discuss at length regardless - ratings, demographics, earnings calls, TV deals. Basically all of them. The only reason not to consider stock price is that it doesn't fit the narrative. Ratings, demos, and TV deals can tie into larger discussions of whether the promotion is reaching people, building a new audience, appealing to the masses or to preferred niches, and whether the promotion will be aired on certain channels, on prime time, or on TV at all; these are all things that impact and are simultaneously reflective of the overall fan experience. If one is a fan of the promotion, it's all pretty damn important information, tangible data to measure what's working with the public and what isn't, and there's enough of that data available to allow us to discuss year-on-year trends in an informed way. The stock price tells us absolutely nothing about the company's connection with fans, its creative success or lack thereof, and its relevance in wider pop culture. WWE could play to empty arenas but still have a healthy stock price, or it could be drawing big numbers on a weekly basis yet lose share value for reasons that have nothing to do the actual product itself. It tells us nothing of the company's "success" outside of how investors are currently viewing it for any number of reasons, subject to change on a Wall Street whim. We can project nearly nothing from it in terms of how the on-air WWE product will be impacted, thus making it of negligible importance to fans, or to network executives who only care about what WWE can deliver to them, not how much they're going for per share. It's why using the Dow Jones, NASDAQ, and S&P as measurements of the health of the overall economy is a fool's errand, it's ultimately meaningless to everyone except those whose money is in that particular casino. In the end, the "narrative" is a non-fictional one: that WWE has steadily dropped in viewership, ticket sales, and overall popularity for nearly 20 years now, with recent years seeing particularly sharp year-on-year drops. It was incredibly fortunate to be viewed as a content provider in an era where networks are desperate for live programming, and it has fully embraced the "whale" philosophy of modern marketing (e.g. focusing on getting as much money as possible from hardcore fans who'll pay anything, the aforementioned "whales", rather than attract a wide base of new ones); the latter buoys the stock price while the former portends a long term demographic problem that has to be addressed sooner than later. Yet in the face of the oncoming problems is a continued over-reliance on nostalgia, going back time and again to the same mid 80s-late 90s fanbase (basically my generation and those a few years older than us) instead of focusing on the here and now in a constructive manner. It would be one thing if the old guard was being used to promote the new generation, but it's not, and hasn't been at any step of this process; even the brief moments when they do put something over in the short term, like Bryan beating Evolution at WM 30, fans know to expect the rug to be pulled out from under sooner than later, e.g. how Bryan was going to pretty quickly be fed to Lesnar and shuffled down the card after what was shaping up to be a typical lackluster WWE "Mania to SummerSlam" title reign. Nobody's allowed to be more than a B+ player today, but the 90s guys, even those who can't work anymore, are to be treated as golden gods in kayfabe. As the average age of WWE's audience continues to get older and older, this is going to become a really, really big problem.
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Post by nisidhe on Feb 29, 2020 13:58:20 GMT -5
Stock price means nothing to Vince McMahon, to be honest. He owns the company regardless of how many people hold "stock". The stock has no political value for most investors because it doesn't give them a vote. Your options as a shareholder are either to hold/buy or to sell.
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