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Post by rnrk supports BLM on Aug 15, 2020 1:16:38 GMT -5
This has to go to Jericho vs. OC in a cage. The most logical next step. It should be a special orange-painted cage, where the gimmick is you can't climb over the top, but there are bars missing at the bottom so you win by lying down and rolling out of the ring.
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Post by rnrk supports BLM on Aug 14, 2020 21:40:38 GMT -5
Of course he does, he's practically the only interesting act left on the fulltime roster, so putting the Fiend alongside anybody else is just going to expose their mediocrity (and that's not a reflection on the performers, it's their stagnant presentation that keeps nearly everyone from breaking out).
I'd say turn the Fiend face and book him exactly the same, but with cocky asshole heels as the targets of his psychological and physical destruction, but they'd inevitably f*** it up and turn him into another wacky jokester reciting warmed-over Cena scripts.
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Post by rnrk supports BLM on Aug 12, 2020 20:42:14 GMT -5
So does AEW just employ smaller dudes for him to just throw around? Retribution's day job.
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Post by rnrk supports BLM on Aug 11, 2020 0:23:39 GMT -5
I only saw last week's, and I doubt I'll watch again, but in short:
-Don't feel obligated to stick to MMA. The tone isn't UFC, it's Jean Claude Van Damme. Have brawls go all over the building, have weapons, have lingering shots of guys taping shards of broken glass to their fists so they can really f*** up their opponents. Have blood. Have the losers get beaten to a pulp to the point where they need to be carried away.
-Have some sort of prize/consequences for wins/losses. Really, if you want to emphasize this as the anti-WWE, don't do championships, make it literally all about the money. Show guys betting on every match, stacks of $$$ thrown in the air when there's a big upset win, the last guy leaves in a pimp coat with one of the strippers on his arm.
-Ditch 90% of the camera cuts. Your gritty underground alternative fight club shouldn't look like it's produced by Kevin Dunn. Neither should the main show, for that matter, but that's another discussion.
-Drop the awful elevator music in the background.
-Take away Shane's mic and cut his role to a bare minimum. Every single thing about him screams "suburban dad going through a midlife crisis" and kills any transgressive vibe they're trying to give off here.
-At most, have Shane watching in the background and mention he's bankrolling this whole thing. Have somebody else announce the participants and winners who fits the aesthetic. MVP running the underground fight circuit could actually work. Or Luis Fernandez-Gil, but he's probably got better things to do with his time.
-No replays, certainly not using the exact same graphics as normal RAW.
-On real RAW, do not have your whitebread dork announcers f***ing putting this over or talking about how they're excited to see it. The reason you're doing this shit at all is that nobody under 50 thinks you're cool anymore. You do not want their opinion of the rest of your shitshow to bleed over to RAW Underground. You want the announcers nervously insisting that RAW Underground is unsanctioned by WWE and they're not responsible for anything that happens on there, and going on about how Shane's the only thing keeping the WWE Board of Directors from shutting the whole thing down right now, but he's really pushing his luck and it won't last.
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Post by rnrk supports BLM on Aug 10, 2020 15:33:13 GMT -5
That's nice and all, but which brand gets Chris Masters in a sombrero?
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Post by rnrk supports BLM on Aug 9, 2020 20:13:55 GMT -5
You can ask this about practically everyone debuting for WWE in the late '00s. The complacency rot was setting in, and the company gave up on looking for new stars so much as filler who could prop up the WWE brand while being otherwise interchangeable.
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Post by rnrk supports BLM on Aug 8, 2020 15:50:54 GMT -5
The generator is the one that still gets me honestly. Just because nobody in their right mind is going to have any connection at all to WWE's technical equipment. Why, it's almost as if the target audience for a villainous antifa/BLM analogue can imagine no deed more dastardly than the destruction of corporate property!
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Post by rnrk supports BLM on Aug 7, 2020 23:00:01 GMT -5
Wait they attacked Michael Cole AND they had a chainsaw BUT they didn't attack Michael Cole with the chainsaw?
And WWE wonders why they can't build new stars anymore.
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Post by rnrk supports BLM on Aug 7, 2020 22:05:57 GMT -5
They're all Kevin Nash.
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Post by rnrk supports BLM on Aug 7, 2020 10:42:57 GMT -5
I was so hoping this was going to be the three dancers on RAW Underground.
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Post by rnrk supports BLM on Aug 6, 2020 20:32:28 GMT -5
Showcasing a top star and having them win most of the time is *not* “incompetent booking”. Of course. What IS incompetent booking is showcasing a wrestler, having them win most of the time, and expecting that to inherently transform them into a top star without regards to their performing abilities or the reactions of your audience. I mean, FFS, they got Roman cheered beating Sheamus in Philly, when he got to actually look like a badass. A month later, Roman's doing crappy stand-up comedy promos because Cena could pull them off and the mental midgets writing this material aren't capable of comprehending that taking the exact same scripts they'd been handing the last guy won't magically transform Roman into a merch-moving machine on par with his predecessor. And the fans are back to hating his guts.
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Post by rnrk supports BLM on Aug 6, 2020 3:28:25 GMT -5
One more hot take: The dichtonomy of Cena spending a decade utterly loathed by the most dedicated and vocal segment of their audience while still drawing more than enough interest and merch sales to justify his spot utterly destroyed them. Ten years wasted squandering their roster and letting their product atrophy because they had a crutch who was able to keep the money rolling in despite rather than because of creative's efforts. All their bad booking habits went unchecked and grew ever more deeply ingrained, to the point we're at now, where they know things have gone horribly wrong and they need to dig themselves out of this hole, but they've no idea where to even begin.
"WWE should've listened to the smarks", you'll say, but f*** that, they listened to us too much. They listened to every dork on the internet railing that John Cena was a shallow, corporate-manufactured act and those women/children/casuals buying his t-shirts would be just as strongly behind anybody who was so heavily featured and always won, and the morons in Titan Towers actually BELIEVED IT. They bought their own hype that boos and cheers don't matter and their slick machine could churn out a new megastar whenever the last one dropped, and so they squandered another half of a decade in baffled disbelief that Roman Reigns wasn't drawing like Cena despite being booked just as incompetently, and they had no ideas except to keep doing the exact same thing year after year. Luger lasted six months before they bit the bullet and gave up on him for the boring workrate guy who couldn't talk but who was still a step up; this century, it's been five years of every potential lifeline they could've had thrown under the wheels of the Noveau Lex Express, and I'm not convinced they wouldn't still be driving it if Roman hadn't decided surviving the pandemic while immunocompromised was a higher priority than providing spank material for a crazy old man.
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Post by rnrk supports BLM on Aug 5, 2020 17:19:56 GMT -5
I wouldn't get the point of male dancers on the stage, because that eye candy is in the ring. Also, your seedy underground fighting league isn't exactly drawing an audience demanding male eye candy anyway. That being said, I do think Jessamyn and Shafir should get to beat the snot out of some PC extras at some point. Honestly imagine there were 3 male dancers there. It would look like an underground Gay nightclub. Not that there's anything wrong with that but how hilariously out of place would that look when there's a bunch of fiery tough guys beating each other up in the ring? Its not sexist or "homophobic" or whatever to not have male dancers. It's just not suited to the sleazy edgy setup they were looking to capture. Hey, I can't think of a more thematically-appropriate locale for pro wrestling than an underground gay nightclub.
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Post by rnrk supports BLM on Aug 4, 2020 20:02:38 GMT -5
Imagine if Lars is in it. Imagine if they're introduced in a segment beating up Lars Sullivan and declaring that they're "cancelling" him. And this is supposed to show what vicious heels they are.
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Post by rnrk supports BLM on Aug 4, 2020 15:49:05 GMT -5
They want to make "new" stars, but that just means slotting another guy they already like into the "heroic badass/wisecracking jokester who always wins" spot they'd already been writing for until the last one escaped their cult. From a creative perspective, the core purpose of the entire WWE product is to entertain Vince McMahon, and Vince McMahon likes it the way it is, so any necessity-forced innovation has to be as uninnovative as possible. Responding organically to fan reactions or trends in pop culture or even just writing around the strengths and weaknesses of their own performers to present them in the best light is all an unwelcome chore that'll probably end with somebody else in creative getting fired, because it runs the risk of not entertaining Vince McMahon.
It worked as long as they had the inertia and brand recognition to hold onto their monopoly on the industry. Now that there's a competitor with enough money and promotion behind them to get eyes on their product who's actually trying to put on a competent show, things are different.
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Post by rnrk supports BLM on Aug 4, 2020 0:08:18 GMT -5
I liked how they were just over there gyrating up on their platform out of frame the entire time, even when the matches were going on and the crowd wasn't watching the girls, so they could splice in a quick shot of them every now and then to cover a bad edit.
What a meaningless existence.
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Post by rnrk supports BLM on Aug 3, 2020 22:02:04 GMT -5
And then they have a "RAW Recap" with the exact same graphic as on the normal show.
They can't learn a thing. They can't reinvent their awful product because they can't wrap their heads around the idea that regurgitated comfort food for a 70 year old millionaire isn't already perfect.
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Post by rnrk supports BLM on Aug 3, 2020 21:49:18 GMT -5
Well, I'll give them something, this is the first RAW I've watched in months, but the underground hilarity isn't nearly enough to compensate for how stale and creatively dead the rest of this feels. So many commercials, so many recaps, so much stilted cadence in overlong promos.
The worst shit here is all the stuff that was the worst shit on RAW ten years ago, and for all the bells and whistles it's still 99% of the product.
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Post by rnrk supports BLM on Aug 3, 2020 20:42:46 GMT -5
So I see "RAW Underground" trending and get excited thinking this new faction is going to be some combination of Ricochet, John Morrison, Santos Escobar, Isiah Scott, Io Shirai, Karrion Kross, and Rey Mysterio just brutally murdering guys in cinematic sequences filled with supernatural powers.
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Post by rnrk supports BLM on Aug 3, 2020 17:37:59 GMT -5
I'd probably watch it, but I don't think it'd be in their best interests. TNA tried the "new Monday night wars!!!" hype and crashed like a lead balloon.
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