Boku AKA Da Green Guy
El Dandy
WC's Resident Pirate Otaku and Official Scapegoat
Always and Forever, Hurricane.
Posts: 8,371
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Post by Boku AKA Da Green Guy on Feb 7, 2007 2:32:23 GMT -5
I don't deny that WCW was a sinking ship before Russo got there. But I'm not neutral either.
Russo helped WCW to it's early dismise. With the inclusion of himself as a onscreen character, a barely C list actor winning the main championship, and booking himself to win the title... It's no wonder people think that Russo killed WCW. Because none of that was a good idea, it does not help anyone. And Russo will never allow anyone to change his view that those were good ideas.
Russo was all about getting the fans to tune in, which he did well for WWF due in part to the filter placed upon him. But when he is given the book, he doesn't have that filter that's when companies fall to ruin. He can scream until his last breath about "da politics" and how everyone is out to get him, but in the end WCW is dead and TNA is on shaky ground.
Russo's whole booking philosophy is flawed simply because while he gets attention with a publicity stunt, he forgets that you have to substance to keep people there. And if you're too busy trying to get new viewers, you will lose old and loyal ones.
I've said this before and I'll say it again... The worst kind of people in this world are those that refuse to accept their faults and what effects their actions have caused. And with Russo, he's never wrong. Because he got high numbers.
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Post by I Got Heat on Feb 7, 2007 2:43:46 GMT -5
Yeah, but you know when he signed to WCW, they wanted some big ratings right away. The only way he could have gotten the quick ratings that management demanded was to do something insane to get people to tune in. That's one of the reasons people say WCW was going to die no matter what. If your boss, management, tells you to get the rating up an entire point or more higher in 2 months, what do you do? Book a ROH style show? He would have been fired for doing that, too, because the rating would have been crap. It's funny because even if he had known that doing all of this shock TV would kill the product, management was begging for it by being so focused on getting ratings way up immediately. If he had been told he had 2 years to work on getting it up a point or so, then he could have booked very slowly and not did anything shocking, but that was never the case. He did the job they wanted him to do, and it failed because what they asked of him was ridiculous.
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Boku AKA Da Green Guy
El Dandy
WC's Resident Pirate Otaku and Official Scapegoat
Always and Forever, Hurricane.
Posts: 8,371
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Post by Boku AKA Da Green Guy on Feb 7, 2007 2:51:28 GMT -5
No arguments there.
But that doesn't excuse any of his faulty booking ideas.
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Post by I Got Heat on Feb 7, 2007 3:13:09 GMT -5
Yeah, he has done some bad booking, but I can't think of a booker who hasn't. He has done more good angles than bad, IMO. Look at WWE today, they're still making money off of his work. They had to dust off DX because they haven't had anything that hot on their own since he left..and it's still hotter than anything they've done without Russo. Shawn and Hunter are way more over under the DX banner even coming out by themselves than their non-DX characters were coming out to their own entrance music. Not to mention that the DX love isn't JUST about DX...it's the way they feel about that era when Russo was at the helm. An era where they had storylines that mattered, when you tuned in every week, when WWE could actually be called hot.
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Boku AKA Da Green Guy
El Dandy
WC's Resident Pirate Otaku and Official Scapegoat
Always and Forever, Hurricane.
Posts: 8,371
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Post by Boku AKA Da Green Guy on Feb 7, 2007 3:44:15 GMT -5
And it's no wonder the midcard is miserable.
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HRH The KING
Bill S. Preston, Esq.
HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS
Posts: 15,079
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Post by HRH The KING on Feb 7, 2007 3:44:41 GMT -5
If he has such a low opinion of wrestling, why even be involved in the wrestling business at all?
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kkliq
Trap-Jaw
Posts: 467
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Post by kkliq on Feb 7, 2007 3:54:02 GMT -5
If he has such a low opinion of wrestling, why even be involved in the wrestling business at all? $$$
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Joekishi
Fry's dog Seymour
Posts: 20,490
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Post by Joekishi on Feb 7, 2007 3:58:17 GMT -5
Well, he can keep telling me what I like and don't like. I'll continue not watching TNA. Same here. It's a shame. i was really enjoying having a show that really did feel different from a WWE show, now it's not what I wanted it to be. It changed back into WCW Russodomy
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Joekishi
Fry's dog Seymour
Posts: 20,490
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Post by Joekishi on Feb 7, 2007 4:09:51 GMT -5
You could if it had any real effect on WCW. People like to think that WCW was the greatest thing in the world and Russo single handedly destroyed it. Long before Russo came along the company was already a joke. By putting the title on himself he just changed what the joke was. Yeah putting himself at the top of the company. This was bullcrap and I hated russo in WCW just as a character, and him saying he's writing everything. I mean the shoots on tv where everybody stopped giving a crap from Steiner, Nash, Hogan, hell even Chris Benoit. Everybody saying watch WWF it's a better show, along with that Awesome Hogan promo: "The reason the company is in the shape it's in is because of the bull**** you put the talent through"
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Post by DSR on Feb 7, 2007 4:19:12 GMT -5
The thing is, that's not UFC's only show on Spike. They've got Ultimate Fight Night LIVE, which is a show composed entirely of fights.
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hollywood
King Koopa
the bullet dodger
The Green Arrow has approved this post.
Posts: 11,122
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Post by hollywood on Feb 7, 2007 10:02:02 GMT -5
"I've heard it all before." No, you haven't. And that's where you fail to form an opinion. I have no problem with people forming opinions, I form them all the time. Many facts can be taken both ways. I just prefer people form them owith all of the avaliable data. Which you don't seem to. In fact you admit you don't use all of the available data. Let's do this again, shall we...? No, I haven't heard ALL of the available data. And I'm not going to. I've got better things to do than listen to Russo ramble on about why less wrestling is better for business, even though history would suggest otherwise. For the record, I haven't failed to form an opinion. I've formed a damn strong opinion about Russo. You just don't seem to like it. Maybe there is more to Russo than meets the eye. Maybe underneath that brash, Brooklyn accent is a compassionate and caring man who truly wants to help an up-and-coming promotion establish itself. I'm sure he really does pride himself on his efforts to get new talent over. And that's all well and good. But his style just plain sucks. Since entertainment is all a matter of taste, I don't have to justify that opinion. I actually took the "wait and see" approach when he joined the TNA booking team. I read reports that Jarrett tried telling guys like Cornette that Russo was a changed man. I saw Angle and Joe getting ready for the feud of the decade. I saw Kevin Nash returning to the X-Division promising to help it regain its prominence. And LAX continued to to be awesome. Then, Angle and Joe fizzled out. The X-Division was reduced to dumbass PCS vignettes while the X-Division title was tossed around like a cheap whore. And LAX never really went anywhere (sorry, I don't think defeating WWE reject teams really makes them look all that great). Sting and Abyss got into a feud that the writers of "Days of Our Lives" would cringe at. The NWA title changed hands on a DQ, even though Sting apparently said he'd job CLEAN. Do I need to go on? This show just sucks now that he's on board. Granted, it was never stellar, but now it's abysmal. And again, since entertainment is a matter of taste, I don't have to justify that opinion. While you never came out and said I called Russo the only bad booker, it just came across that way. While he's certainly the worst I've seen--again, in my estimation--I just felt I should make it clear I didn't think he was the only bad booker out there. I've already acknowledged that Russo might've come up with a few good ideas in WW(F)E, but I just question how much his ideas were filtered through Vince and Co. before they hit the screen. It's obvious they needed more of that with him in WCW. It comes down to this, though. When I measure Russo's good work with his bad work, his bad work just FAR outweighs his good. No matter what he does, the demise of WCW will always be a dark spot on his controversial legacy. It would take a lot of work to move past that. Problem is, he's slowly turning TNA into his era of WCW. Once again, Jim Cornette and Lance Storm are right. But hey, that's just my opinion.
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Post by I Got Heat on Feb 7, 2007 11:18:06 GMT -5
The thing is, that's not UFC's only show on Spike. They've got Ultimate Fight Night LIVE, which is a show composed entirely of fights. They didn't have one of those until months after the first season of The Ultimate Fighter ended. The reality show got the UFC over, not the live card.
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Post by I Got Heat on Feb 7, 2007 11:26:38 GMT -5
And it's no wonder the midcard is miserable. That right there, to me, is a disgrace. Do those guys honestly believe they'll get over just by going out there and doing flips? The only chance in hell that Sonjay Dutt (just an example) has of being remembered in this industry is if he develops a character. Russo is attempting to give these guys characters. They had at least a year or more to get over prior to Russo getting there and none of them did it. If they just want to wrestle and not develop a character then by all means they should head to ROH.
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Post by mysterydriver on Feb 7, 2007 11:37:06 GMT -5
And it's no wonder the midcard is miserable. That right there, to me, is a disgrace. Do those guys honestly believe they'll get over just by going out there and doing flips? The only chance in hell that Sonjay Dutt (just an example) has of being remembered in this industry is if he develops a character. Russo is attempting to give these guys characters. They had at least a year or more to get over prior to Russo getting there and none of them did it. If they just want to wrestle and not develop a character then by all means they should head to ROH. The thing is they don't JUST want to flip. They want to wrestle. Their chosen profession. Russo wants them to be actors. The same thing he was bashing the WWE for in the RD interview. What had Russo done for Dutt? Besides try and down play his talents for the amusing "He's on the gas!" comment that was repeatally thrown throughout the PCS. I kind of wish they'd go to ROH, at least there they do their real job and get respected for it.
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Post by I Got Heat on Feb 7, 2007 11:42:20 GMT -5
Part of being in wrestling is being able to talk, have a character, and get over with the audience. You can have a character that doesn't talk and just wants to wrestle, but TNA already had like 15 of those characters and most weren't over. They seem to think it's OK that they aren't over as long as they can wrestle every night, that's wrong. It's a waste of TNA's money to even keep a guy who won't put in the effort to get over because he "just wants to wrestle". I'd like to see them just release a crapload of these guys in one day like WWE does.
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hollywood
King Koopa
the bullet dodger
The Green Arrow has approved this post.
Posts: 11,122
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Post by hollywood on Feb 7, 2007 11:52:14 GMT -5
Part of being in wrestling is being able to talk, have a character, and get over with the audience. You can have a character that doesn't talk and just wants to wrestle, but TNA already had like 15 of those characters and most weren't over. They seem to think it's OK that they aren't over as long as they can wrestle every night, that's wrong. It's a waste of TNA's money to even keep a guy who won't put in the effort to get over because he "just wants to wrestle". I'd like to see them just release a crapload of these guys in one day like WWE does. Not over? The crowd was insane during their matches. People actually cheered for goofballs like Sharkboy and others. They WERE over. It's not like the crowd went to sleep during X-Division matches before Russo came in. The X-Division was the part of TNA that everyone was raving about because of their awesome matches. And now they have pogo stick challenges.
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Post by I Got Heat on Feb 7, 2007 11:54:29 GMT -5
Everyone was over in the Impact Zone. That doesn't count and we both know it. When they start buying tickets we'll talk.
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hollywood
King Koopa
the bullet dodger
The Green Arrow has approved this post.
Posts: 11,122
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Post by hollywood on Feb 7, 2007 11:59:40 GMT -5
Everyone was over in the Impact Zone. That doesn't count and we both know it. When they start buying tickets we'll talk. If everyone was over, why did half the crowd leave during one of their 2-hour tapings there?
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Post by Michael Coello on Feb 7, 2007 12:01:18 GMT -5
Part of being in wrestling is being able to talk, have a character, and get over with the audience. You can have a character that doesn't talk and just wants to wrestle, but TNA already had like 15 of those characters and most weren't over. They seem to think it's OK that they aren't over as long as they can wrestle every night, that's wrong. It's a waste of TNA's money to even keep a guy who won't put in the effort to get over because he "just wants to wrestle". I'd like to see them just release a crapload of these guys in one day like WWE does. Not over? The crowd was insane during their matches. People actually cheered for goofballs like Sharkboy and others. They WERE over. It's not like the crowd went to sleep during X-Division matches before Russo came in. The X-Division was the part of TNA that everyone was raving about because of their awesome matches. And now they have pogo stick challenges. Course, that affected everything else in a bad way. The crowd wouldn't care about anything, if it didn't have a bunch of flips and dives and high spots. No respect for anything other than a bunch of flippy stuff in a match. Also, the PCS thing is over,even though it was generally a fun thing to do by most people, and we have 2 actual feuds in the division: Senshi vs The Austin Starr and Chris Sabin vs Jerry Lynn.
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Post by Michael Coello on Feb 7, 2007 12:02:58 GMT -5
Everyone was over in the Impact Zone. That doesn't count and we both know it. When they start buying tickets we'll talk. If everyone was over, why did half the crowd leave during one of their 2-hour tapings there? Cause they're tourists? Not wrestling fans? Who came to see the Jaws ride at Universal more than watching wrestling?
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