gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Feb 25, 2015 21:46:21 GMT -5
Great piece, although I really don't like the novel analogy, it seems to run counter to what he's saying. I think it's interesting the point about Ricky Morton not being accepted as a main eventer. Handsome guy, really over in a tag team, but without the individual skill, charisma and star power to fully convince as a top-line singles guy. Sound like anyone?
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Feb 25, 2015 16:35:59 GMT -5
Not really. You can still feud without putting your opponent down. Her "talent isn't sexually transmitted" comment did loads to build up the divas champion Nikki Bella didn't it? Blatantly scripted though. She's never said anything like that out of character. You can't hold someone's gimmick and scripted promos against them personally. It's like saying the Bellas are arrogant mean girls cos that's who they play on TV.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Feb 25, 2015 16:27:02 GMT -5
Yeah, her whole "no other diva compares to me, I've saved the division" talk. Way to build up the division. That's just what arrogant heels do. Is Seth Rollins burying every other young talent by saying, in scripted kayfabe promos, that he's the future and no one compares to him? Even her 'pipebomb' wasn't the personal attack some people made it out to be, it was basically a trailer for Total Divas. All the 'personal issues' she mentioned were storylines from the show. Meanwhile you had the Bellas and Natalya taking time in out-of-character interviews to trash AJ by name and say how they would be much better champions.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Feb 24, 2015 23:19:41 GMT -5
Seeing someone who spent part of their childhood homeless humiliate a millionaire corporate heiress will never not make me feel warm inside.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Feb 24, 2015 21:04:09 GMT -5
STEPHANIE: AJ, I'm fine with you calling me a hypocrite in public, but refer to our talent as wrestlers ever again and YOU'RE FIRED!
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Feb 24, 2015 16:44:19 GMT -5
The kind of international fans who travel to Wrestlemania won't boo Rusev for having storyline allegiance to a despot. There's probably gonna be ironic 'Putin' chants at the post-Mania Raw. I can't wait.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Feb 24, 2015 16:39:01 GMT -5
Last night was indicative of everything wrong with the Diva Division. They had a 20-second match. 20 Seconds. I'm going to state an unpopular opinion, but honestly back when the division was good, I did not find Trish particularly that good. She was passable, just like the Bella's. The primary difference was she actually had the opportunity to actually develop character and had more lengthy matches with more talented opponents. So I find singling the Bellas out as "cancer" to be really unfair. I agree, the notion that Trish and Lita were once-in-a-lifetime talents that today's Divas can't begin to compare to is nonsense, especially in terms of wrestling ability. Molly, Jazz, Victoria and Gail Kim made that division what it was wrestling-wise. Trish and Lita carried themselves like stars, cut decent promos and were very good ambassadors for the company due to coming across as very intelligent and personable in interviews, whereas I don't think the Bellas quite have any of those things down, but I don't think Nikki or Brie is significantly worse than them in the ring. Just like NXT, the main difference between the Divas of a decade ago and the Divas of today is the opportunities the Trish/Lita generation were given were so much greater.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Feb 24, 2015 11:23:13 GMT -5
I said it my thread and I'll say it here, on the tremendously rare occasion they've actually given a Diva a discernible character and time to get said character over, she's gotten decent reactions. It can work. No one's expecting 25-minute main events from the women, but a good 10-15 minute match with a story that the crowd is at least semi-engaged with really isn't too much to ask or too hard to achieve. We had it in 2002 and fleetingly in the years since, we can have it again.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Feb 23, 2015 17:58:20 GMT -5
LAW has never been great with Women's Wrestling IMO. The sad thing is, it's not as if they're being complete chauvinistic pigs and saying 'women can't wrestle/bring back lingerie matches' etc. They just have a misapprehension, and they're far from alone, that all the Divas are terrible and all good female wrestlers work outside of WWE or in NXT, except Natalya, who must be leagues ahead of anyone else cos she's a Hart. Meltzer (who's on LAW every week anyway) is pretty much the same as far as elevating Nattie and Charlotte way above anyone else due to their family background. I remember at one point there was debate on this here forum over whether Nattie was in fact any good or just presumed to be. Then she went to NXT, got to work some long matches and now it's almost universally agreed she's at least above average. Coincidence?
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Feb 23, 2015 14:51:05 GMT -5
"WrestleMania NY/NJ" in the "New York/New Jersey area" is enough to tell you that. Half the time Jersey didn't even get a mention, it was 'Wrestlemania in the shadow of *NEW YORK CITY*!' usually. To be fair, East Rutherford barely exists as a place outside of the Meadowlands, the population is less than 10,000. Santa Clara's pretty big though, and too far away from San Francisco for them to even say 'in the shadow of...' Where are most people going to be staying? In San Francisco or in Santa Clara? My only frame of reference for Wrestlemania weekend is XXX where everything was a short walk from downtown New Orleans and wrestling fans basically colonised the city for a weekend.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Feb 23, 2015 14:34:31 GMT -5
The entire division is scorched earth at this point. I've said in the past it's time to just get rid of it entirely. Let NXT have women's wrestling as a way to make NXT different, but on the main roster? Forget it. Here's some reality: WWE has so conditioned fans that women's wrestling doesn't matter that giving them 12-15 minutes on a PPV would likely produce crickets. The one recent time they tried heavily hyping a women's match was the whole Steph/Brie thing and that cratered ratings in a big way. They are right though. The Bellas do truly suck and have no redeeming value. It's not as bad now as it was during the truly horrific Steph/Brie garbage from this past summer and subsequent Nikki heel turn (where you couldn't even avoid the Bellas on TV). Here's the dilemma with WWE booking as well. Let's say Sasha Banks and Becky Lynch came in and became the top heel divas. They would be used and booked the exact same way, the same mean girls crap that the Bellas are doing and that Lay-Cool did before them. I don't agree. All they need is characters. AJ got a character while she was working with the guys and so when she started wrestling regularly again she stayed reasonably over, it was only after months of barely speaking and nothing happening to evolve or reinforce the character that people gradually lost interest. Alicia Fox was getting good reactions for her tantrums too. Give any talented performer something entertaining to do and people will react. Any time they care to give a Diva a character, she gets over. It's taken them a while, maybe more chances then other people would've been given, but the Bellas really have improved a lot as wrestlers, and a little as characters (though they're still quite robotic, Brie especially), there's definitely more useless people in the company's employ.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Feb 23, 2015 10:53:31 GMT -5
Just listened to the Live Audio Wrestling lookback at Fast Lane, when they got to the Divas match (which was admittedly lousy), they described the Bellas as 'the cancer of the Divas division,' ranted about how much better the Takeover 4-Way was as if it was a like-for-like comparison and concluded with something to the effect of 'get rid of all these girls and call up everyone from NXT,' presumably forgetting that Paige was the one blowing everybody away on NXT a year ago. These are also the same guys who said 'who could she possibly face apart from Nattie?' with regard to Charlotte coming up to the main roster.
Are people really that blind to the fact that the main difference between the two divisions is the NXT girls having more time, less 'don't upstage the guys' restrictions, and much, much better booking? I'm not saying Sasha Banks couldn't wrestle rings round both Bellas, but the cancer of the division? Unless we find out Nikki and Brie are booking the division or specifically asking for short, basic matches with roll-up finishes and catty mean girl storylines then that's far from the case. I'd like to see Sasha and Charlotte work a good match with that little time and that shitty finish to work toward.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Feb 22, 2015 9:04:11 GMT -5
Paige has been wrestling since 2005, Charlotte has been wrestling since 2012, of course Paige is better. Doesn't mean Charlotte isn't very good for someone with only two years' experience. As for this, I'd like to think it's just kayfabe since I'd imagine Paige was more sensible and professional than to pick fights with her colleagues on social media, especially the daughter of one of her bosses' close friend and idol.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Feb 20, 2015 13:34:45 GMT -5
I have no desire to see her comeback. She's average in the ring and cringeworthy on the mic. "I am the divas division"... Yeah, no thanks. Yeah, not like she was playing a delusional heel speaking lines that had been written for her. Rag on people's delivery all you want, but it's amazing how much people blame wrestlers personally for the content of their promos when we've seen for a fact that Raw is rigidly scripted and unless you're John Cena you can't really deviate from it.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Feb 20, 2015 13:31:00 GMT -5
It's what the Bellas, Brie specifically, mentioned very clearly at a recent public appearance. Wow, I never knew any current Diva had actually flat out said that about NXT relative to the main roster. Good for Brie for being so honest about it rather than towing the company line, though.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Feb 20, 2015 8:29:57 GMT -5
Once they took her away from the Bryan storyline...it began her decline. Yeah, she went on to win the belt but by then people were caring less about her. Has anyone else fizzled out so quickly? 2012 was her year though...after that not so much. Unless they were actually going to do anything with the Divas division, she always was gonna fizzle out as soon as she stopped interacting with main eventers and started having three minute matches and rarely talking. That said, considering they don't care about the Divas, she was about as prominent and as over as one could be in that environment while she was champion in 2013. She's got nothing left to accomplish now, though, and she can't put over the people she wants to put over cos they're not on Total Divas. Some people backstage probably hate her cos of Punk, I don't know why she keeps coming back other than to avoid being labelled a quitter. She looked visibly embarrassed to be there during the month before she got injured, but then it's hard not to be when you're given lines like 'Lesbehonest, talent isn't sexually transmitted.'
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Feb 20, 2015 8:24:13 GMT -5
Meltzer said with a straight face that Raw was better than NXT a few months ago. I can't take his opinion on anything in current WWE seriously anymore. Plus he's ignored the talent of the NXT women not named Flair so much that you'd think Charlotte was wrestling herself every week. Stick to New Japan, MMA and sentences that begin 'see, back when you had the territories...' Dave.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Feb 19, 2015 15:35:45 GMT -5
That was the worst thing about the Invasion, the Alliance wrestlers spent the first two months being completely interchangeable and having no discernible character (apart from the top two guys being a pervert and a moron), and when they finally got round to giving them one, they were all jokes and bore no resemblance to their previously-established characters, cos God forbid WWF Creative watch a few hours of WCW to get a feel for who these people were. Kanyon with his lisp, Stasiak constantly knocking himself out trying to attack people, Shane Helms becoming a superhero, Dreamer as an Austin mark. Only RVD and anyone who 'defected' from Team WWF got treated with any credibility. Some of the gimmicks were enjoyable and everybody did their best with them, but you essentially had a stable of comedy wrestlers as the heel faction that every show revolved around.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Feb 19, 2015 15:24:30 GMT -5
True, but even with no professional training I can upscale SD footage without it looking... like that. Its not a matter of can its a matter of giving a shit to do so Or they could just buy some more up-to-date stock footage of people dancing in clubs, I doubt it's exactly expensive or hard to come by. Even without the shitty quality, the clothes and hairstyles in that video place it in about 2000 at the most recent. Reminds me of serious heel Val Venis' tron set to his old theme buried beneath a pounding techno beat.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Feb 16, 2015 7:41:45 GMT -5
Lack of performing lions
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