gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Feb 12, 2015 18:51:34 GMT -5
Nah, it actually kind of worse before TD. Yeah, definitely. As I said in the last paragraph, it's probably Vince that needs to go rather than Total Divas. That said, imagine an NXT-style women's division where the girls also appeared on an E! network show where they pulled each other's hair extensions out and talked about their sex lives while the camera looked up their skirt. Just wouldn't add up somehow. I wonder, if it survives into the Triple H era and he makes good on his promise to get serious with the women, what its fate will be.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Feb 12, 2015 18:34:12 GMT -5
So, NXT's women blew us away yet again last night, throwing the plight of the main roster Divas into yet sharper relief. I'm kinda torn on this one. On the one hand, it's led to the girls getting more time on TV and more women watching the product, which can surely only be a good thing and I don't want to condemn something just cos it isn't aimed at me. But then there's so many reasons to see it as the enemy. It paints them all as shallow, insecure, trashy and man-obsessed, and probably encourages Vince to stick to his instincts to book the division that way on the wrestling shows. It's ruined multiple storylines through WWE's inconsistent attempts at making the timelines match up and finding in-ring footage to accompany the reality show plots. And it's a reason to keep Cameron, Rosa and Eva employed on the main roster. AJ said no to it, and Paige apparently needed a heavy amount of coercion, and not a single female wrestler has been signed by WWE since it premiered, so it may be affecting their hiring policy and harming the prospects of those already with the company. No matter what a good job Sara del Rey is doing, I refuse to accept that the reason the NXT women's division is so good is anything other than the fact it's largely been comprised of girls who could already work a passable 15-minute match when they first showed up and didn't need any time getting to grips with the basics of the business. They've all improved immensely from their indy days, sure, but they already had the foundations from day one, which must have been a big help. So far the only girl with no prior wrestling experience to excel is the daughter of one of the greatest wrestlers of all time. If Sasha, Charlotte, Becky and Bayley all get called up or released, there's a huge void in their wake and it'll be a while before the Alexas and Carmellas of this world are in a position to fill it, if ever. Finally, it kinda makes me sad that the only way to get ahead as a woman in the company is to go on a show where you'll probably have to do a storyline where you get chlamydia or contemplate getting butt implants and the like and frequently bounce up and down in your underwear while the camera zooms in on your tits. Kinda makes it hard to be taken seriously as an athlete, no? Makes me feel like we never really 'progressed' from the Attitude Era at all. It just jars so fundamentally with what you see in NXT, it's crazy to think the same company is responsible for it. In summary Pros: Cons: But then, right now, it's probably the only reason there are Divas matches on Raw every week. It's not like things were exactly better before TD started, I just worry it's an obstacle to them improving in future. However, I think on the whole we're probably just stuck with this Divas division while we're still stuck with Vince, Total Divas or not. Thoughts?
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Feb 12, 2015 17:29:00 GMT -5
I can't believe people argue the point of 'Bryan did this, this and this at WMXXX' as proof that he's a 'top guy' in Vince's eyes. He would've been facing Sheamus, maybe even losing, and would be doing something similar this year if Vince had his way. How much more proof do you need that the whole B+ player thing is pretty damn accurate? To Vince's he's an upper midcarder worthy of the odd PPV main event and short title reign here and there, but he keeps getting main event reactions at the expense of the people he sees as the 'real' main eventers. The only main event push he got that the fans didn't have to beg for was mostly a vehicle to get Orton over yet again for chrissakes.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Feb 9, 2015 20:17:42 GMT -5
This is what it comes down to. Guys with a 'big time' look get chance after chance to succeed, less traditional guys grudgingly get the odd main event here and there due to being over in the hope it will satisfy the fans so Vince can move onto his latest project, which is almost invariably a bigger guy. Bryan and Punk are the two most over babyfaces of the last five years; Punk never headlined Wrestlemania and seldom main evented PPVs as champion (unless he was wrestling a 'real' star like Cena or Rock), Bryan never would have done either if Vince had his way. When did Mason Ryan get 'chance after chance' to succeed? If you disregard all the times Vince pushes smaller guys, all he does is push big guys. These guys who apparently Vince is giving token pushes to (Ambrose, Rollins, Bryan and Wyatt) were in the main event of all but three PPV's last year. When Vince gave his famous 'brass rings' comment the other month, the people he specifically mentioned as not being worthless millenials were Ambrose, Rollins, Reigns and Wyatt. He did not say Ryback, Eric Rowan, Titus O'Neal and Big E Langston. Do you not get even the slightest impression that he might just be behind these guys? As I've said, it's not as if he doesn't see the worth in smaller guys, or pushes every big guy that comes his way to the moon, but there's a definite ceiling on what he thinks a guy with a non-traditional superstar look can achieve, and it's the one Punk and Bryan have found themselves bumping against in recent years. Ambrose's PPV main events were the worst thing that could have happened to him. Imagine someone like Sami Zayn getting the sort of push Roman Reigns has had. It just doesn't happen. It's not smark whining, it's the reality, and recent events have underlined the extent to which it's still the case.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Feb 9, 2015 17:16:04 GMT -5
The question wasn't who is he going to build the company around. It was who he's going to get behind and push. The idea that he hasn't gotten behind Bryan (a four time World Champion who has been prominently featured since the day he debuted and loses clean about as often as Cena does), Rollins (pushed to the moon as part of The Shield, imminently about to win his first World Title) and Ambrose (again pushed huge as The Shield, main-evented a PPV in a singles match as recently as December) is ridiculous. Meanwhile, what were the Mason Ryan's of this world doing? The Shield are WWE's shiny toys, but Bryan as prominently featured as he is, has never been treated as a guy to beat. What was Mason Ryan doing? He was on NXT being over protected and kept strong for no real reason in the hopes that he'd eventually pull it all together until they were forced to give up on him because of money problems/The actual Batista coming back making him redundant. It Pisses me off that so much NxT screen time went to that guy when there were other guys in NXT AND the main roster who could've used that time. This is what it comes down to. Guys with a 'big time' look get chance after chance to succeed, less traditional guys grudgingly get the odd main event here and there due to being over in the hope it will satisfy the fans so Vince can move onto his latest project, which is almost invariably a bigger guy. Bryan and Punk are the two most over babyfaces of the last five years; Punk never headlined Wrestlemania and seldom main evented PPVs as champion (unless he was wrestling a 'real' star like Cena or Rock), Bryan never would have done either if Vince had his way.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Feb 9, 2015 11:03:03 GMT -5
This board has lost it's mind since the Royal Rumble. In recent memory Vince has gotten behind Bryan, Rollins, Ambrose, Reigns and Wyatt. Anyone in NXT has a chance. There's a certain randomness to it and I'm sure there will be talented guys overlooked for whatever bullshit reason. But I can't believe in 2015 we're back to 'Vince only loves hosses', when it so obviously isn't true. He doesn't 'only love hosses,' but his idea for a very top guy is very definitely still size and physique-driven. Not a hoss, necessarily, but a tall guy with a lot of muscle mass and definition. He still sees the worth in smaller guys and always has, but unless his hand is somewhat forced, he'd never consider building the company around them. Of those you mentioned: - He had to be blackmailed by the fans into running with Bryan, and still tried to brush him aside in favour of someone with more traditional star quality this year. - Rollins may be prominent but Rumble title match (where he still ended up taking the pin) aside he's been booked as an ineffectual coward who can't beat anyone important without help, - Ambrose's main event matches seemed designed to derail his momentum so the fans didn't see him as an alternative to Reigns - Reigns and Wyatt are both 6 foot 3 and over 250 pounds, they might not be hosses in the traditional sense, but these days they're definitely among the bigger guys, plus Wyatt was made to look like shit relative to Cena.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Feb 8, 2015 16:41:08 GMT -5
No one. At all. One of the things that gets hidden behind the Vince podcast changing it to "Vince vs. Millennials" and "Too Swiss" was that the longstanding story was that Vince (or Kevin Dunn) were deliberately ruining any NXT graduate out of sheer spite , solely because they viewed any NXT wrestler to succeed as a "point" to Triple H to claim HHH is better for the WWE than Vince/Dunn/his cronies. (Notice that in the Shield- HHH's pet project is Rollins, the first NXT champion, WWE's other pet project is Roman Reigns [exactly one match on the "new NXT", and in the middle was Dean Ambrose [never wrestled a match on NXT before his promotion].) With that, anyone who comes from NXT will get the tag of "I won't let this guy succeed just so Triple H doesn't get one over on me"- and that means pretty much no one from the new era will ever succeed. If Vince is planning to be around for more than the next two years then he'll have to book some NXT graduates strongly, and he already is. Like I said in the OP, it's not a rival company, it's his own young talent, even he's not that petty when it's his own prospects he's damaging. He's no more or less reluctant to build new stars than he's ever been. Plus, for the whole 'Vince and Dunn hate NXT and everyone it spawned' dirt sheet wet dream to work, you have to ignore the fact that the first NXT champion is now the top heel in the company, the former top heel from NXT is about to work a Wrestlemania programme with the Undertaker, another former major heel from NXT is currently undefeated and about to face John Cena at Wrestlemania, the first NXT Women's champion is probably the #2 or #3 female on the main roster of the active wrestlers... it's literally impossible for that to be the truth.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Feb 8, 2015 15:38:20 GMT -5
I'm sure he cares about women's wrestling way more than Vince does, but he doesn't seem to be trying very hard to get the Divas taken seriously right now. The division is as much of a joke as it's ever been in the PG era. Paige was supposedly one of his 'pet projects' and he's let her become just another girl. Replace 'pale' with 'fat' in this current storyline with the Bellas and it's the same tired old bitchy tale they've been telling with the women for years. I think we might have to wait til Vince is out of the picture completely before things change unfortunately. I'm not disagreeing with you about the division, but it has improved a little over the last year or so. and I think people overestimate HHH's "power". If HHH had any say in the product do you think His best friends daughter, the womens champ of NXT would have been jobbed out as bad as she was on Raw prior to redemption? He said on record he was pissed about this too, and it was Vinces call. He's pretty outspoken against Vince if people actually look for it. They get more time, but that's only really cos they've got a reality show to plug (where everyone's a histrionic, catty mess and the camera spends half its time buried in everyone's cleavage). The storylines and character development are still piss-poor and extremely generic and patronising. It probably will get better when Vince is gone, but right now it's still in the gutter, in multiple senses of the word.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Feb 8, 2015 15:23:26 GMT -5
Paige's rudderless title reign followed by quasi-lesbian antics and generic bitches be crazy/girls are mean shit says otherwise. I don't think Hunter cares enough about the women's division to go to bat for them. Maybe it'd be different with Charlotte cos of who her dad is, but I worry for the others. HHH has said on record MANY times including on the Stone Colf Podcast that he wants women to be feature more and in better light than what Vince does now. I'm sure he cares about women's wrestling way more than Vince does, but he doesn't seem to be trying very hard to get the Divas taken seriously right now. The division is as much of a joke as it's ever been in the PG era. Paige was supposedly one of his 'pet projects' and he's let her become just another girl. Replace 'pale' with 'fat' in this current storyline with the Bellas and it's the same tired old bitchy tale they've been telling with the women for years. I think we might have to wait til Vince is out of the picture completely before things change unfortunately.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Feb 8, 2015 15:21:19 GMT -5
Bull Dempsey as the next Big Show. I'm not sure Dempsey's even six feet tall, that would probably hold him back. I often wonder if that's what made Vince change his mind about taking Big E all the way. As soon as he got placed alongside the 'real' monsters he looked really dinky. When he was teaming with Henry, E looked like he could fit inside Mark like a Russian doll.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Feb 8, 2015 15:11:25 GMT -5
They banned them in 1997. Ahmed Johnson was distraught, to the point that he was willing to suck someone in order to have them reinstated. But he wouldn't dump on himself, not that time.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Feb 8, 2015 14:44:40 GMT -5
He's definitely the most obvious one. It's just weird how in the past, developmental would have been full of Baron Corbins, whereas now big ex-football player types are few and far between in NXT, yet Vince's tastes don't appear to have changed all that much. With the Divas, Charlotte is a definite can't-miss, but sadly I could see him bypassing Sasha, Bayley and Becky and attaching a rocket Alexa Bliss regardless of whether she's ready or not like he did with Kelly Kelly. Not like he seems to care too much about the women putting on good matches on the main roster after all. I have a feeling that when Charlotte, Sasha, Bayley, etc. are called up to the main roster, HHH will be pretty heavily in charge of booking them. Paige's rudderless title reign followed by quasi-lesbian antics and generic bitches be crazy/girls are mean shit says otherwise. I don't think Hunter cares enough about the women's division to go to bat for them. Maybe it'd be different with Charlotte cos of who her dad is, but I worry for the others.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Feb 8, 2015 14:37:46 GMT -5
He's definitely the most obvious one. It's just weird how in the past, developmental would have been full of Baron Corbins, whereas now big ex-football player types are few and far between in NXT, yet Vince's tastes don't appear to have changed all that much. With the Divas, Charlotte is a definite can't-miss, but sadly I could see him bypassing Sasha, Bayley and Becky and attaching a rocket Alexa Bliss regardless of whether she's ready or not like he did with Kelly Kelly. Not like he seems to care too much about the women putting on good matches on the main roster after all.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Feb 8, 2015 14:28:46 GMT -5
He's still wrestling on the indies, usually as The Patriot (allegedly without the original Patriot's permission). According to Cagematch he teamed with both Jake Roberts and Jimmy Snuka during 2014. God that must have been sad to watch, although I guess the fact Jake is still around to have plodding old man nostalgia matches is something to be thankful for.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Feb 8, 2015 13:10:53 GMT -5
We're always hearing about mortifying, degrading, undercard crap Vince and his team have allegedly proposed for major players in NXT (Adrian Neville as Mighty Mouse, Tyler Breeze as Heath's replacement in Slater Gator, Kalisto as a gay hair stylist), and it's generally agreed that the majority of NXT talent aren't the kind of guys who would be Vince's automatic choices for a main eventer. But at the end of the day, this is where his future talent is going to come from, it's not a rival promotion, he's not going to bury everybody just to spite NXT and its fans despite what some people think. Surely he has some say over the hiring policy, seeing as these are the people he'll be working with going forward? Surely there must be some people he has an eye on as a potential headline act in the years to come? Even he's not so short of foresight that he'd allow his developmental division to consist entirely of guys he only sees as B-plus players, right?
I just find it so odd that we're constantly told 'Vince doesn't like small guys/fat guys/guys with accents' etc, and it's been proven in the continual marginalising of Bryan in favour of Reigns, Vince's 'too Swiss' comment about Cesaro, and the general fact that non-archetypal performers only seem to make it to the very top in exceptional circumstances. And yet the developmental division centres around a group of guys who are mostly under 6 feet tall and less than 220 pounds, several of whom have strong foreign accents, and several others are what Vince would consider to be 'out of shape.' Plus NXT is extremely wrestling-focused, whereas anything major on Raw seems to be told through promos and wacky stunts, meaning it's not really preparing the talent for the realities of the main roster. As awesome as NXT is, it's almost unfit for purpose while Vince still calls the shots; a load of guys he probably won't want to push working with a style of booking he probably doesn't care for.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Jan 30, 2015 15:01:38 GMT -5
5. At least his wife and daughter love him (presumably)
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Jan 29, 2015 23:34:40 GMT -5
VINCE: So, we need the Bellas back together for when Total Divas starts, else the two shows' narratives won't match up. You know how stupid our fans are, they won't get it.
CREATIVE #1: But we already spent three months building up a breakup storyline!
VINCE: Just have them say they've forgiven each other. Blood is thicker than water or somesuch. You know how women are, changing their minds all the time for no reason. Maybe it was Nikki's time of the month when she said all that awful stuff.
CREATIVE #2: Nikki told Brie she wished she'd died in the womb on global television!
VINCE: The fans won't remember that, it was five weeks ago! Just get them back together, dammit!
CREATIVE #1: But how do we explain...
VINCE: So, anyway, John Cena...
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Jan 28, 2015 20:23:51 GMT -5
He'll be better than Vince, but let's not forget this is the man who was still in the top five hate figures of the hardcore fanbase as little as two years ago during his feud with Lesnar, and now he's the champion of all that is good in wrestling? Sure. Everything in his personality and way of doing business that people disliked about him back then is still there now. It's not a wrestling storyline, he hasn't turned face. And likewise, Vince isn't some evil tyrant who hates wrestling and wants to bury all of your favourites from NXT just cos he can. They both have their positives and negatives, it's just Hunter's negatives don't appear to outweigh his positives to the horrific extent that Vince's do these days.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Jan 28, 2015 20:08:02 GMT -5
Unless the Rumble reactions prompts any drastic changes of plan, Rollins is either cashing in and losing or not cashing in til his time with the briefcase is almost up, and maybe not on Reigns but rather whoever beats him.
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gr1990
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,485
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Post by gr1990 on Jan 28, 2015 19:59:37 GMT -5
Orton-Rollins and Bryan-Ziggler could be superb (although I have a horrible feeling Orton will be going over since he'll be the returning hero in storyline). The sad thing is they'll only get a fraction of the time of the plodfests further up the card, although Wyatt/Taker and Hunter/Sting could go either way with regard to actually being quite entertaining.
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