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Post by Mid-Carder on May 11, 2019 16:15:49 GMT -5
How scripted everything feels.
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Post by romanstylesiii on May 11, 2019 16:16:56 GMT -5
The camera cuts. The same guys facing off every week before the have a PPV match. Champions losing non-title matches so often.
How many champions have a below .500 record once they win the title? Look who wants to pay to see someone who loses most of the time?
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Post by I'm Team Bayley and Indi on May 11, 2019 16:36:57 GMT -5
From a personal point of view -
I started watching the company in 1992 - I survived the New Generation era, the reign of terror, the guest hosts - but now I'm hanging on by a thread,
I don't give a crap the MITB is coming up, I used to watch highlights on Youtube (can't get access to Raw and Smackdown) but for a month now I haven't even bothered with that, I saw last week's Raw top 10 and knew I wasn't missing anything
it's sad that there is so many of the roster I like, including some of them as current champions. But the current WWE is just so hard to enjoy
I also recently cancelled my network subscription for the first time since it came to the UK
I genuinely do hope they win me back over again, but at the moment it doesn't feel likely.
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Zone Was Wrong
Bill S. Preston, Esq.
Currently living off the high that AEW brings every Wednesday and Friday
Posts: 16,081
Member is Online
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Post by Zone Was Wrong on May 11, 2019 17:01:02 GMT -5
-Saudi Arabia trips. Hard to watch some of my favorite wrestlers perform for the entertainment of the upper echelon.
-champions not feeling important
-meaningless matches
-taking people who get over big in nxt only to have nothing to do when they're called up. What became of Sanity is such a damn shame. Ember Moon and Auska as well.
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Venti
Unicron
Posts: 2,994
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Post by Venti on May 11, 2019 17:08:20 GMT -5
The smark fans who do nothing but complain.
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Allie Kitsune
Crow T. Robot
Always Feelin' Foxy.
Celestial Princess in Exile.
Posts: 46,094
Member is Online
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Post by Allie Kitsune on May 11, 2019 17:09:30 GMT -5
That we've got to the point where watching it genuinely makes you have to question if you're a garbage human being or not.
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King Devitt
Grimlock
It gets better the longer you stare at it
Posts: 13,738
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Post by King Devitt on May 11, 2019 18:18:31 GMT -5
Vince. Every stupid decision comes from him ultimately.
We can't even have hope for anything, because anything good is just smothered.
You have to be cautiously optimistic. You can't lose yourself 100% as a fan.
Like Wyatt's Firefly Funhouse is amazing. Really ground-breaking character work, but we all know it's a matter of time before Vince ruins it like he does literally everything.
I mean Roman's already starting to get booed again b/c we just can't have nice things. HHH may help fill up the toybox, but Vince breaks all the toys and then wants new ones.
I know lots of people disagree, but honestly once Vince is gone from wrestling it will finally be allowed to breathe again.
And the only reason I still watch weekly is due to doing reviews. If not for that I would have abandoned ship. Something I'm seriously thinking of doing once AEW goes weekly.
I grew up with wrestling, since I was 6 years old, and I want to be happy, get lost in the moments, and enjoy being a fan.
I can't do any of that with WWE.
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Post by ellisdee on May 11, 2019 18:24:24 GMT -5
How scripted everything feels. This. It's quite a thing to make wrestling feel more fake than it already is.
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Post by arrogantmodel on May 11, 2019 18:41:52 GMT -5
The smark fans who do nothing but complain. *sigh* And what about the fans who have stated, multiple times, that they are just tired of the same boring shit week after week? The product is dull. Numbers are dropping. Morale is dying for fans AND WWE employees. People's complaints are legitimate. If you enjoy this overproduced repeating garbage...good for you. But the things people are listing here are real problems. The WWE is making lifelong fans, not just smarks, turn away. Smarks will watch no matter what to critique and criticize the product. The fans who want to be entertained, and who have ridden the bad times with the good, are the ones checking out. That tells you that the product today is trash.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on May 11, 2019 18:51:39 GMT -5
3 person announce teams
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Cranjis McBasketball
Crow T. Robot
Knew what the hell that thing was supposed to be
Peace Love and Nothing But
Posts: 41,905
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Post by Cranjis McBasketball on May 11, 2019 18:52:37 GMT -5
Everything that isn’t Daniel Bryan.
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Post by sportatorium on May 11, 2019 18:58:26 GMT -5
I hate it that the talent and expertise is there to make it great, and they settle for it being somewhere between forgettable and bad. Part of me thinks they are cooling down wrestling in general as a way of getting at their competition.
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Post by RI Richmark on May 11, 2019 20:03:13 GMT -5
The smark fans who do nothing but complain. Hi Vince.
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Post by Sponsored by Groose Wipes on May 11, 2019 20:16:40 GMT -5
That they could be good like NXT is but refuse to. It doesn't bug me that it's bad, it bugs me with how good it could be but it's just... not.
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Post by RI Richmark on May 11, 2019 20:23:53 GMT -5
If I had to pick one thing it's the sheer number of easy decisions they blow. "Hey Braun's more popular than anyone's been in years. And people are so annoyed by Brock that we had to make it part of the storyline. So let's job Braun to Brock repeatedly and then wonder why he's not over anymore."
It's to the point whenever anything interesting happens on Raw or Smackdown rather than wondering where this is going to go next you're wondering how WWE is going to f**k this up.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
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Post by Deleted on May 11, 2019 20:26:07 GMT -5
I hate that Kofi Kingston is the champ and the shows are so bad that I can’t even bring myself to watch and support him. Sucks so hard for him in that regard..
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Post by Instant Classic on May 11, 2019 20:29:14 GMT -5
They do the same matches for months in end. Like Corbin vs Strowman or Balor vs Lashley.
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Post by HMARK Center on May 11, 2019 20:40:55 GMT -5
In general, its business practices.
I get it: pro wrestling can be a very scummy industry, I'm not naive about that. However, WWE's size and financial clout means it has the ability to make major changes to the way wrestlers are treated, paid, and able to navigate the business side of things, yet they still cling to the "independent contractor" label, do that while trying to own everything about their talent, they maintain the 200-300 days a year on the road, they took the Saudi money and ran, and through it all they engage in unethical, petty bullshit like what we've seen lately with Harper and The Revival. It's not to say that all other promoters are always more ethical than Vince and company, but again, given WWE's size and financial clout I choose to hold them to a higher standard than I do other promotions, especially since WWE so severely restricts their wrestlers' movement, options, and even their dress code.
It's part of why that God awful "Triple H buries the roster after they walk out on him the week before" angle irks me so much to this day; it was Vince, and by extension WWE, crapping all over workers rights and the very idea of treating wrestlers like more than slabs of meat. I had stopped watching WWE with any regularity well before then, but that made me say "Yeah, no, they're not getting another dime from me."
In terms of the on-air product, it's the utter lack of an identity in their shows.
Old school WWF presented itself as a straight forward sporting event that just happened to be populated by coke-fueled steroid lunatics. The main puro companies are presented like honest to goodness sporting events, something which informs the in-ring style, but obviously with the added drama of pro wrestling storytelling and flair of pro wrestling pageantry. Lucha Underground was a supernatural telenovela. ECW was am underground grunge festival come to life. Today MLW is trying to recapture old school Crockett-style storytelling with a modern, often noticeably Latin-influenced flair.
But WWE today pooh poohs all of that, and instead just feels like a collection of tropes and buzzwords strung together around some relatively bland, repetitively laid out matches in order to sell advertising slots. There's a whole kayfabe corporate hierarchy on the show, but it doesn't inform the environment the characters exist in. The show opens all the time without a set card, but it's not presented as an anarchic environment where anything goes. There are 30 minute promos, but no compelling characters being developed or narrative arcs being shaped, since everything stays the same all the time. The matches even on free TV often go +15 minutes, but they don't emphasize in-ring storytelling or long-term storytelling that rewards viewers for paying attention every week. There are a million titles, but no indication given why people really should want to compete for them.
A lot of us have long said that WWE seems like it wants to be everything to everyone, and as a consequence ends up being nothing for anybody. If they could actually pick an identity and shape their show and presentation around it, then things would feel like they were happening with a purpose; that way, even if the show wasn't good, it'd at least feel like it had a point and was trying to say something, which is really the least you should have to ask for from a wrestling show.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on May 11, 2019 21:13:11 GMT -5
In general, its business practices. I get it: pro wrestling can be a very scummy industry, I'm not naive about that. However, WWE's size and financial clout means it has the ability to make major changes to the way wrestlers are treated, paid, and able to navigate the business side of things, yet they still cling to the "independent contractor" label, do that while trying to own everything about their talent, they maintain the 200-300 days a year on the road, they took the Saudi money and ran, and through it all they engage in unethical, petty bullshit like what we've seen lately with Harper and The Revival. It's not to say that all other promoters are always more ethical than Vince and company, but again, given WWE's size and financial clout I choose to hold them to a higher standard than I do other promotions, especially since WWE so severely restricts their wrestlers' movement, options, and even their dress code. It's part of why that God awful "Triple H buries the roster after they walk out on him the week before" angle irks me so much to this day; it was Vince, and by extension WWE, crapping all over workers rights and the very idea of treating wrestlers like more than slabs of meat. I had stopped watching WWE with any regularity well before then, but that made me say "Yeah, no, they're not getting another dime from me." In terms of the on-air product, it's the utter lack of an identity in their shows. Old school WWF presented itself as a straight forward sporting event that just happened to be populated by coke-fueled steroid lunatics. The main puro companies are presented like honest to goodness sporting events, something which informs the in-ring style, but obviously with the added drama of pro wrestling storytelling and flair of pro wrestling pageantry. Lucha Underground was a supernatural telenovela. ECW was am underground grunge festival come to life. Today MLW is trying to recapture old school Crockett-style storytelling with a modern, often noticeably Latin-influenced flair. But WWE today pooh poohs all of that, and instead just feels like a collection of tropes and buzzwords strung together around some relatively bland, repetitively laid out matches in order to sell advertising slots. There's a whole kayfabe corporate hierarchy on the show, but it doesn't inform the environment the characters exist in. The show opens all the time without a set card, but it's not presented as an anarchic environment where anything goes. There are 30 minute promos, but no compelling characters being developed or narrative arcs being shaped, since everything stays the same all the time. The matches even on free TV often go +15 minutes, but they don't emphasize in-ring storytelling or long-term storytelling that rewards viewers for paying attention every week. There are a million titles, but no indication given why people really should want to compete for them. A lot of us have long said that WWE seems like it wants to be everything to everyone, and as a consequence ends up being nothing for anybody. If they could actually pick an identity and shape their show and presentation around it, then things would feel like they were happening with a purpose; that way, even if the show wasn't good, it'd at least feel like it had a point and was trying to say something, which is really the least you should have to ask for from a wrestling show. I honestly believe that Vince feels ashamed that he produces wrestling, on some level, so he does everything in his power to make his wrestling product anything but. What you get instead is weird "comedy" that would have been old-hat 20 years ago mixed with buzzwords created by a PR department that clearly has no idea how social media works. It's homogenized shit, because Vince checked out of trying anything new a long time ago. As you said, New Japan has a very "sporting" feel to it, and when I watched the G1 supershow, I was pleasantly surprised at how engrossing the simple story of "Jay White has beaten Okada every time they've faced off, can Okada win and get the monkey off his back?" Just because it's a work doesn't mean you have to beat it over my head that it's a work by presenting me with lamesauce writing. Lucha Underground is on the other end of the spectrum, where the product is very much so treated like a comic book that takes place in a wrestling ring. It still works better than the WWE does currently, however, because the producers of LU treat their product seriously. Vince treats the WWE like a child he hates, but has to exploit to keep his billionaire status.
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Rave
El Dandy
Perpetually Bored
Posts: 8,100
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Post by Rave on May 11, 2019 21:29:32 GMT -5
How friggin' sterile everything feels.
Seeing the same people doing the same things every week.
Three person announce teams trampling all over each other and spouting overproduced garbage.
How they have to be dragged kicking and screaming into changing things up.
KEVIN DUNN.
Vince's obsession with celebrities and mainstream attention.
Face turns where the turnee loses the parts of their gimmick that made them popular in the first place.
The disconnect between NXT and the main roster.
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