gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Apr 15, 2017 6:19:17 GMT -5
AJ says in her book that she had permanent damage to her cervical spine, so she likely would've retired soon even if Punk hadn't left. Hopefully she could've worked a program with Bayley, Alexa and Sasha in particular though. Yeah, I'm hoping fans stop with the problematic line that she left because of Punk. She's her own person. She stayed for a long time after and only worked a reduced schedule because of the neck/spine issues she was having. Does she say in the book if WWE knew ahead of time that she was leaving after Wrestlemania? Ditto with the 'she's phoning it in' talk during her final year, like there was no possible explanation for her being less agile in the ring other than 'she doesn't care anymore and just wants the money.' Continuing to work for the company that fired your husband on your wedding day whilst probably being in constant physical pain and getting more and more dirty looks and snide remarks backstage as the Punk/WWE situation worsened probably took more conviction than anything else in her career had to that point. If you didn't find her entertaining then fair enough, but all the trying to read between the lines to find evidence she's also a terrible person was troubling and very similar to what some people like to do with Punk. She could easily have left when he did but she held on for another year, possibly to prove a point as much as anything else. Nikki Bella worked a reduced schedule due to injury in her final run and bowed out with a Wrestlemania victory and didn't get half the shit for it that AJ did (nor should she have done, I'm just sayin').
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Apr 11, 2017 12:41:05 GMT -5
If the plan was to keep her as a face, she'd probably have been a more LOLrandom version of what babyface Emma was on the main roster, or what everyone feared Bayley would be once she got called up. And then cos it was 2012 and she was a Diva, they'd have got bored of it after three weeks and she'd have been back making up the numbers in six-woman tags, switching from heel to face week on week. Turning down an angle that early in her career could have finished her, but it ended up making her instead.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Aug 22, 2016 16:49:28 GMT -5
Doesn't surprise me, Nikki in 2016 is more widely admired on forums than supposed 'internet darlings' like Paige and AJ who seemed to jump the shark at some point in the eyes of many. And this is the section of the fanbase that supposedly hates the Bellas, that's before we get into their popularity with the casual audience from Total Divas. She'll never be Sasha/Bayley/Becky beloved but she's hardly the smark punching bag people make her out to be, Bella fans on forums are not a tiny, derided minority by any stretch of the imagination. Mention Nikki in a thread and then mention Paige or AJ and see who gets more hate, the roles are almost the reverse of what some people claim.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Jul 21, 2016 3:31:55 GMT -5
I think we need to wait til the we see how their relationship is handled on the next season of Total Divas before we know if all this is legit. The whole getting into a fight and getting arrested thing screams reality TV, they may have even agreed to be drafted to separate shows for the purposes of more TD drama. Then again, people born into wrestling families seem to be almost uniformly a little odd, so two of them in a relationship may well look like this.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Jul 17, 2016 19:11:27 GMT -5
It's gotta be the Title Ceremony. Everyone's screaming Bryan's name, Cena and Orton trying and failing to ignore it, Triple H talking about how it's the biggest match in WWE history while Punk laughs. Almost everyone in that ring knew no one gave a shit about the match. I think the point at which Punk laughed was when Hunter was proclaiming himself the greatest champion in history (or Steph was proclaiming him to be) like a big arrogant heel, so at least it made sense in kayfabe, even if it was probably a genuine 'what the f*** are these idiots doing?' reaction.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Jul 17, 2016 18:30:23 GMT -5
Does the "hijacked" ceremony count with the Daniel Bryan chants on Raw? Has to be one of my favourite non-match moments in WWE history. 100 years in the making! The greatest rivalry in sports-entertainment history!
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Jul 17, 2016 18:20:17 GMT -5
There's been many over the past 10 years, and they're always the most forced, awkward, poorly-received 'epic' moments in modern WWE, which ones stick out in your mind for all the wrong reasons?
I just re-watched the Fatal 4-Way PPV from 2010 (there's a reason they only did one of these) and stumbled across perhaps the definitive one. It has it all; the otherwise lively Long Island crowd suddenly falling flat, but with just enough disinterested murmuring that they can't sell it as awe or tension. Cena pausing to look around at the non-existent cheering masses before locking up. The announcers talking about goosebumps and the building shaking when the crowd's actually the quietest it's been since the Divas match.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Jul 17, 2016 13:00:59 GMT -5
Nope. and There are two NXT's there is the touring TV brand and the performance center brand. To use Baseball terms The PC Brand is like AA to TV NXT's AAA and while they have a lot of former indy and Japanese stand outs on the TV brand at the moment they also have people like. Alexa Bliss, Gable and Jordan, the Revival, Tye Dillenger, teh Authors of Pain, Elias Samson, Mojo Rowley... etc. etc. that make TV on a pretty regular basis. Yep agreed. The PC brand probably has a roster of developing talent that outnumbers the active TV roster by like 5-1. The reason why you don't see too many homegrown guys coming up as rapidly as you saw in FCW? Because in Big Johhny's era, talent were quickly elevated based on looks alone and were left out there to fend for themselves when they were still green as grass. In NXT, the wrestlers down there will probably spend YEARS in PC darkness where they will have to hone and perfect their craft the hard way and likely won't be on television until they're close to 30. But it's for the best. NXT has been under Hunter's control for about 3 years now so it will take a another few years before we really see the true impact of NXT and the Performance Center. My only worry is that as the NXT TV roster is getting more and more crowded with veterans, it's just not as easy for the unknowns to get on TV, get experience and get over anymore because the percentage of the TV roster they comprise has shrunk dramatically. The main roster doesn't call up people regularly enough (although that may change with the brand split) for the current model to work if they're gonna sign so many thirtysomething veterans of the indies, TNA and Japan and even people like Gargano and Ciampa who more-or-less go straight to TV. Then they get called up to the main shows and replaced with more veterans so they still have 'names' for the NXT tours. There'll be less and less homegrown successes as time goes on if the composition of the roster is skewed towards proven quantities, unless people are going to skip Full Sail altogether like Braun Strowman, but that may hurt their development. Most of the 'homegrown' talent getting regular TV time on NXT currently debuted before the policy of stocking up on veterans really got going.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Jul 17, 2016 12:42:45 GMT -5
It is too early to tell, lets see what happens when the brand split is in full force. I have a feeling that many NXT wrestlers will be drafted to the main roster, while NXT will have to rely on less named indy stars. ROH will still be safe, because all of their top guys (besides Jay Lethal who should have been signed a long time ago)do not have what it takes to be stars in the WWE. We all thought Kevin Steen "didn't have what it takes" and they scooped him up. They're not, and never will be, killing the indies, because even WWE has a limit to its finances, and definitely a limit to its roster spaces. New stars will always be created on the indies, people will always leave WWE and return to the indy circuit, it's self-replenishing. In fact, WWE acknowledging the 'minor leagues' and treating people's achievements there as a big deal is arguably boosting the wider wrestling business. They have no competition anyway, so there's nothing wrong with the indies being a breeding ground for WWE stars of the future, it's how a lot of people have been wishing the business would be for years. You're more likely to go to your local indy show if you see it as where stars are born rather than a poor relation to what you watch on TV. I'm more saddened about the fact that NXT seems content to be this indy superfed now when it built its reputation on creating its own stars, either training people from scratch or taking lesser-known indy talents and giving them the extra training and the gimmick to make them into stars. Now they're just signing 35-year-old indy vets, saying 'do what you've always done' and sending them out there. NXT is losing its identity and its creativity, but WWE's homegrown talent is having its path blocked by 'name' talent who are always going to get the nod when you've only got an hour of TV each week, and the whole thing has become very dry and lazy. People leave WWE and return to the indies but are the indies really getting a fair trade? WWE released these guys for a reason, whether it be "WWE didn't think they were good enough", or the "talent quit because they felt underutilized". WWE will scoop up top indie names for NXT, but the guys they send out into the world are generally stuck slumming it in shindies because they were hamstrung by WWE's poor training methods in the past. Nobody's going to an RoH or PWG show to see Damien Sandow vs. Sylvan Grenier. But then neither are WWE likely to sign and hold on to every established indy workhorse, they've already released two back into the wild in Chris Hero and Sami Callihan, Cody Rhodes has the potential to be another and Drew Galloway/McIntyre is carving out a pretty good reputation for himself too. It's a financial and logistical impossibility that everyone people want to see at ROH, PWG etc will end up with a WWE deal. There'll always be someone new, both in terms of young talent working their way up the indy ranks and WWE departures returning from whence they came.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Jul 17, 2016 4:45:54 GMT -5
They're not, and never will be, killing the indies, because even WWE has a limit to its finances, and definitely a limit to its roster spaces. New stars will always be created on the indies, people will always leave WWE and return to the indy circuit, it's self-replenishing. In fact, WWE acknowledging the 'minor leagues' and treating people's achievements there as a big deal is arguably boosting the wider wrestling business. They have no competition anyway, so there's nothing wrong with the indies being a breeding ground for WWE stars of the future, it's how a lot of people have been wishing the business would be for years. You're more likely to go to your local indy show if you see it as where stars are born rather than a poor relation to what you watch on TV.
I'm more saddened about the fact that NXT seems content to be this indy superfed now when it built its reputation on creating its own stars, either training people from scratch or taking lesser-known indy talents and giving them the extra training and the gimmick to make them into stars. Now they're just signing 35-year-old indy vets, saying 'do what you've always done' and sending them out there. NXT is losing its identity and its creativity, WWE's homegrown talent is having its path blocked by 'name' talent who are always going to get the nod when you've only got an hour of TV each week, and the whole thing has become very dry and lazy.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Jul 15, 2016 16:14:06 GMT -5
She was one of the worst actresses in all of WWE when she started in NXT as the smiley rookie with the secret admirer, so she's done very well to go from that to someone who excels at playing her character in the ring, but her charisma is still very much physical rather than verbal. Unfortunately her character is one that really needs to speak confidently and frequently to be believable. She'll need to either up her promo game if she's gonna be the face of the division, which based on every other aspect of her performance she 100% deserves to be.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Jul 15, 2016 15:16:55 GMT -5
It makes literally no sense in a sport with no judge's decision. It really irks me how wrestling trying to disguise itself as MMA is seen as 'progressive,' not really lame and endemic of (professional) wrestling's huge inferiority complex and chip on its shoulder when it comes to 'real' combat sports. No one is impressed by stuff like that and the pre-match handshakes. It's an artistic medium, not a sport, and no one will ever see it as one nor should they, why introduce unnecessary repetition and structure to it that limits how creative and varied you can be? Let wrestling be wrestling. It's not really a suspense thing, they don't think we're so dumb that we can't figure out on our own who won and lost. They do this in MMA whether it's a decision victory or a knock out/submission. I like it, it puts emphasis on the benefits of winning and losing, instead of the announcer having to talk over music and crowd noise, you go out of your way to make it explicitly clear who won and how. Yeah, I'll admit to being completely unaware that it wasn't just decision victories where they did the arm-raising until people here pointed it out, probably should have checked up on that before sounding off, my bad I'd still prefer it if WWE employed its own ways of adding drama/making wins and losses matter rather than just stealing from 'real sport.' I guess it's harmless enough as a novelty in this tournament setting where everyone's new and there's no pre-established rivalries, but I'd hate if a big match at the end of a blood feud ended with both guys stood side by side (unless they were doing some sort of mutual respect angle), makes it seem less final.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Jul 15, 2016 15:05:34 GMT -5
There's an ebb and flow to this sort of thing, there's gonna be some gaps once the draft comes and we'll see what kind of characters we get then. Right now we have a good slew of some pretty well established guys. I still think their shows are great. It's not a completely lost art, Austin Aries' recent big swindle against No Way Jose was one of my favorite segments all year. I hope so, the Aries/Jose segment was great, just about the first thing this year that looked like it belonged in the old entertaining and unpredictable NXT.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Jul 15, 2016 15:04:01 GMT -5
I think with Dusty's death and Ryan Ward moving to Smackdown, we've learned who the real geniuses behind NXT were.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Jul 15, 2016 12:43:21 GMT -5
Well, that's me exposed as someone who's never watched a full boxing match or MMA fight in his life Still think it looks weird in a wrestling context and that copying 'real' sports isn't a good look for wrestling at all. Unless it's a flash pin or you're doing a staredown/handshake afterwards, the loser standing side-by-side with the victor negates the victory somewhat in my eyes, plus on a live show the loser would either have to get up really quickly after being dropped with the finisher or there'd be a lot more waiting around than usually occurs in wrestling while they wait for them to get up. I do like the losers are usually selling while standing there. Yeah, that's something at least
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Jul 15, 2016 12:42:07 GMT -5
At the end of the Balor/Nakamura match when they were placing it alongside Sasha/Bayley and Zayn/Neville as an all-time NXT classic, it really highlighted how it's gone from being a show full of great, well-developed characters that the audience has watched grow and whose matches are elevated massively by the story surrounding them to just putting name talent in the ring together, using the same character and iconography from their pre-WWE work, and the inevitable good-to-great match happening, but it feeling completely hollow because WWE has done nothing to develop or enhance these people.
Aside from No Way Jose (who is pure novelty sideshow), does anyone who debuted in NXT in 2016 even have a gimmick/character that WWE can take any kind of credit for? Is there ever gonna be room on the roster for that to happen if they've only got an hour long TV show and so many shiny indy toys to show off? A lot of them have become flops on the main roster, but the likes of Tyler Breeze, Bo Dallas, Enzo and Cass, Emma, Bayley when she still hugged people, and the Vaudevillains were entertaining as hell and all virtually unknown before WWE. They've been replaced by guys who trade entirely off reputations gained elsewhere and often have no gimmick beyond their wrestling style. Remember when NXT was fun AND full of good wrestling? You could almost call it po-faced today.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Jul 15, 2016 11:44:16 GMT -5
It's easily the worst thing about the CWC for me, it just seems desperate (and nonsensical when there's no judges). It's not like UFC and Boxing (which is where it's from) only do the arm raise thing by judge's decision. They do it on obvious knock outs and submission victories as well. Well, that's me exposed as someone who's never watched a full boxing match or MMA fight in his life Still think it looks weird in a wrestling context and that copying 'real' sports isn't a good look for wrestling at all. Unless it's a flash pin or you're doing a staredown/handshake afterwards, the loser standing side-by-side with the victor negates the victory somewhat in my eyes, plus on a live show the loser would either have to get up really quickly after being dropped with the finisher or there'd be a lot more waiting around than usually occurs in wrestling while they wait for them to get up.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Jul 15, 2016 11:33:49 GMT -5
It's easily the worst thing about the CWC for me, it just seems desperate (and nonsensical when there's no judges). The less wrestling tries to be MMA the less pathetic it looks, no dyed-in-the-wool 'UFC is real fighting, WWE is fake and for pussies' guy is gonna change his/her mind from seeing that, who is it for? Stop worrying about looking 'legit,' we know it's a show, just make it a good one where people's motivations for fighting are clear and consistent and match endings are believable within the parameters you've set out. I like to think there's a happy medium between Dean Ambrose losing a match when a television set blows up in his face and just copying MMA with every match starting and ending with the same visual, which puts unnecessary limits on how creative you can be. It's art, not sport.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Jul 15, 2016 11:23:20 GMT -5
I liked the majority of it, the winners hand being raised seemed stupid though. They get the pin, the music plays... they celebrate then the ref brings them together and the music stops, they announce the winner and the music starts again... The only time i've ever liked that is for a decision finish in MMA where there's suspense. It makes literally no sense in a sport with no judge's decision. It really irks me how wrestling trying to disguise itself as MMA is seen as 'progressive,' not really lame and endemic of (professional) wrestling's huge inferiority complex and chip on its shoulder when it comes to 'real' combat sports. No one is impressed by stuff like that and the pre-match handshakes. It's an artistic medium, not a sport, and no one will ever see it as one nor should they, why introduce unnecessary repetition and structure to it that limits how creative and varied you can be? Let wrestling be wrestling.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Jul 14, 2016 11:12:02 GMT -5
If I recall correctly, AJ beat Kaitlyn clean at Payback & MITB, as well as in a tag match prior to SummerSlam, beat Natalya clean following Payback, won clean at NOC in a F4W match and won clean against Naomi following NOC. It really wasn't until Tamina joined her following NOC, where AJ stopped getting clean wins at all. Yeah, people act like AJ never won clean, but she did. Literally the only cleanish win I can think of from Nikki was Beast in the East, and that was her last defense before the 10 week "up yours AJ" layoff I know Nikki had few if any clean title defenses, but she seemed to win clean on TV in the mean time a lot more than AJ and other heel midcard champions of the era tended to. Not saying she was booked as a dominant monster or anything (and she bowed out with two clean losses to Charlotte), just slightly stronger than AJ, who some people also misremember as some unbeatable juggernaut.
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