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Post by El Cokehead del Knife Fight on Jun 19, 2021 19:05:54 GMT -5
Okay but there's a difference between making someone look strong and making your heel champion look invincible and face no setbacks. It’s why the nWo eventually went stale. It’s why 2003 Champion Triple H went stale. It’s why the Authority sucked. Nobody wants to watch a show where the bad guy wins all the time and never has any resistance. Even Kenny Omega gets to be shown up and have his plans foiled from time to time and the Elite might as well be the nWo. Jericho as heel champ in AEW got the shit kicked out of him all the time and still looked like a strong heel because he played up his veteran craftiness.
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Post by sarkerpolseng on Jun 19, 2021 19:06:33 GMT -5
Okay but there's a difference between making someone look strong and making your heel champion look invincible and face no setbacks. It’s why the nWo eventually went stale. It’s why 2003 Champion Triple H went stale. It’s why the Authority sucked. Nobody wants to watch a show where the bad guy wins all the time and never has any resistance. Roman has been paired with nothing but elite workers and he has held more than his own in the ring. Some people are absolutely terrified to confront/face him in person. The whole storyline about the conflict in his own family is top notch. Triple H and NWO contained none of this.
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Post by Final Countdown Jones on Jun 19, 2021 19:07:15 GMT -5
Roman acts confident and gets challenged, Roman beats them in a match, Roman beats them down afterwards. That's his booking. WWE is obsessed with having one star and it kills the show because it means that everyone else is a geek that doesn't matter. Let Roman have ocassional tag matches that he loses because he's not a tag team wrestler and is an egomaniac. Let him face a setback for once. He dominates on a week to week basis and then wins at the PPV. Pro wrestling and especially WWE-style pro wrestling has a weird wrinkle to its stories and how it builds them that gives it some pretty unique problems. Each successive feud Roman has isn't meant to lead into the next one and pay off in some interesting way where elements from each of his past victories come back to be his undoing. Roman punks someone out and then moves on to the next one. Which in and of itself isn't necessarily a bad thing; I wouldn't call it great writing in a vacuum because it leaves so much possibility on the cutting room floor, but sure. The issue then becomes how you make each step feel like it matters and not drag on. That's where they've faltered so badly. It's a miserable formula that isn't progressing anything, it's just establishing name by name that he really is the coolest and besterest and has no weaknesses.
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Fade
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Post by Fade on Jun 19, 2021 19:16:32 GMT -5
What if the only genuine narrative setback Roman gets comes from Cena busting out those trash tier fourth wall shattering promos again lmao Oh, I’ve been mentally preparing myself for that for weeks now. However, I’m certain that regardless of what happens in the program for Cena, it too will function to make Roman look strong. Maybe a face turn? The wild card in this is how the crowd reacts to Roman. But ultimately all of this is just leading to the match with Rocky. Roman’s title reign isn’t going to “make a new guy”. Helped Cesaro a bit, one could argue 🤷
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Chiral
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Post by Chiral on Jun 19, 2021 19:19:02 GMT -5
Another thing is I really don't see a reason to give the slightest semblance of a f*** about this Usos storyline. They're not on his level, it's been firmly established that they're not on his level, neither of them is going to be the one to take the title from him, so why is family drama the entire focal point of SmackDown right now? I feel like the family drama lost all its momentum once it fell into the house show booking of them saying the same things every week so they can reuse as much as possible without having to come up with anything new. It's always like: Show opening promo Backstage segment Ending segment: repeat x ∞
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Chiral
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Post by Chiral on Jun 19, 2021 19:29:00 GMT -5
It’s why the nWo eventually went stale. It’s why 2003 Champion Triple H went stale. It’s why the Authority sucked. Nobody wants to watch a show where the bad guy wins all the time and never has any resistance. Even Kenny Omega gets to be shown up and have his plans foiled from time to time and the Elite might as well be the nWo. Jericho as heel champ in AEW got the shit kicked out of him all the time and still looked like a strong heel because he played up his veteran craftiness. On the note of Kenny, I think him and Lashley are probably the most vulnerable in a good way of the current crop of pretty much all heel champions. If Roman had like one moment per feud where he has this look: If we just had that moment where Roman's like " I'm scared I'm not gonna win this one." it'd be SOOO much stronger even if he retains the belt. I even remember I remember HHH having moments like that too over the years. But they've steadily Flanderized all Roman's interesting/vulnerable traits after HIAC 2020 and just leaned full on into "he's really cool" more and more each week. (And I'm not trying to make this AEW vs. WWE at all so I don't wanna debate there I'm just using this as an example, I think the Bucks are getting to Reigns tier outside of the Great Shoe Comeuppance of 2021 with how often they're coming out on top.)
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Post by Final Countdown Jones on Jun 19, 2021 19:29:45 GMT -5
Also when you build up an invincible villain over say the last five weeks of a TV season, a movie, a book, even a thousand hour RPG that you f*** off from the main quest to play eight hours of Space Soccer in, there's always an element to it that it's not going to be forever. That level of despair is something you can pull a variable number of hours out of depending on the medium you're in, but when someone is unbeatable in a movie, that's usually wrapping up within an hour of whatever big drama no-hope moment comes up. Know what happens when you aggressively build up an agonizingly long period of the villain showihg up, calling every good guy a bitch, and beating their ass every week? You get Arrow season 4. Nobody should want Arrow season 4.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jun 19, 2021 19:37:47 GMT -5
WWE took Zoom's words way too f***ing literally.
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Post by Friday Night SmackOwn on Jun 19, 2021 20:11:41 GMT -5
It’s why the nWo eventually went stale. It’s why 2003 Champion Triple H went stale. It’s why the Authority sucked. Nobody wants to watch a show where the bad guy wins all the time and never has any resistance. Even Kenny Omega gets to be shown up and have his plans foiled from time to time and the Elite might as well be the nWo. Jericho as heel champ in AEW got the shit kicked out of him all the time and still looked like a strong heel because he played up his veteran craftiness. Even when Jericho and the Inner Circle were laying out Moxley in their feud, Jon still ultimately got by through fighting back and being able to outsmart Jericho -- especially when it came time for the title match.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 19, 2021 20:23:02 GMT -5
I like a bad ass dominate world champ. So it’s a weird thing I’m enjoying the run but at the same time the Uso drama is f***ing lame. I’m ready for a guy like Big E, Cesaro, or Keith Lee to dethrone him. As some guy “not in Romans league” beating him is the pay off this run needs. I feel it’s run pretty much run it’s course and Summerslam would be a perfect time to end it.
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Post by Starshine on Jun 20, 2021 5:57:18 GMT -5
Also when you build up an invincible villain over say the last five weeks of a TV season, a movie, a book, even a thousand hour RPG that you f*** off from the main quest to play eight hours of Space Soccer in, there's always an element to it that it's not going to be forever. That level of despair is something you can pull a variable number of hours out of depending on the medium you're in, but when someone is unbeatable in a movie, that's usually wrapping up within an hour of whatever big drama no-hope moment comes up. Know what happens when you aggressively build up an agonizingly long period of the villain showihg up, calling every good guy a bitch, and beating their ass every week? You get Arrow season 4. Nobody should want Arrow season 4. So what you're saying is Reigns is Lan Di from Shenmue.
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Post by Main Event Mark on Jun 20, 2021 7:26:42 GMT -5
On this week's Smackdown, when Cole specifically noted what Big E had to say before the Mysterio / Reigns cell match, it made me think Big E must be the next challenger.
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Post by polarbearpete on Jun 20, 2021 8:27:30 GMT -5
On this week's Smackdown, when Cole specifically noted what Big E had to say before the Mysterio / Reigns cell match, it made me think Big E must be the next challenger. Maybe he’ll challenge and lose to Roman at MITB. I can see that.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 20, 2021 16:01:03 GMT -5
On this week's Smackdown, when Cole specifically noted what Big E had to say before the Mysterio / Reigns cell match, it made me think Big E must be the next challenger. It's not something I really WANT to see, but I wonder if they'll end up bringing Kofi and Xavier back to SD in the draft and doing The New Day vs. The Bloodline.
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Post by HMARK Center on Jun 21, 2021 7:42:43 GMT -5
I think we've got a twofold issue here, one very simple and the other a little more complex:
-Simple issue: Roman is a heel. There have been lots of dominant champions over the years, but in the cases of people like Hogan or Tanahashi or whomever we've usually had longterm babyface champions, or in the cases of people like Samoa Joe or Kazuchika Okada we've had guys who were either tweeners or "lean toward babyface" types, basically champions who could subtly change their alignment depending on who their opponent was or what story they wanted to tell. In the cases of long-term heel champions, most of the time we're used to seeing guys who might be talented and worthy of the title (Flair and the like), but who will still face a regular comeuppance or clearly demonstrate weakness during their matches (e.g. opening up that Flair can be beaten "if I can just keep those damn Horsemen away!", etc.)
But doing a dominant champion run with a heel? Yes, Roman does cheat, but it's not like that's the crux of what they seem to want people to take away from his matches, his dominance is what's selling him. This can be fine, but there's a reason most promotions don't play it out too long: audiences want hope, so even if the heel stands tall at the end of a show they still want the feeling that "it's always darkest before dawn", that kind of thing. To make that work, you really need to build up strong babyface/tweener challengers for the dominant heel; heel Vader could win titles in Japan, but there was never a sense that Fujinami, Choshu, Misawa, Kawada, or whomever else didn't have what it took to dethrone the monster, just that it would be a massive challenge.
This leads to the more complex issue:
-A title reign, particularly a lengthy one, needs to tell a story. The story can be character-driven, it can focus on the champion his/herself, it can focus more on a top challenger or multiple challengers, it can be more of a meta story concerning a promotion as a whole, etc., but there must be a point, and people should want to see that point reached.
People brought up Okada before, but again, Okada didn't "rule with an iron fist" or something as IWGP champion. Instead, the story told was about him eventually usurping Tanahashi as ace, but his longest title reign revolved around demonstrating his ability to adapt to an array of different opponents, all on his way to setting the record for most defenses. This meant we'd see him subtly change his demeanor to be more of a good or bad guy depending on the match, he might try to match a great striker like Shibata and learn it wasn't smart to do that, and his match with Omega at Wrestle Kingdom told the larger "NJPW going global, who'll be the face of the promotion?" story. Eventually, the story shifted to "who can unseat this guy?", and the allure became that people wanted to buy tickets just in case this was the show where Okada finally lost. In other words, you had a reign that first focused on telling Okada's story, but then shifted toward the story of the people chasing him. Okada's challengers had their own stories to tell, weren't treated as disposable, and Omega's eventual win was built up over the course of a year and a half and told Kenny's story as much as Okada's.
Samoa Joe was the long reigning ROH champion from 2003-2004; again, Joe began that run largely as a tweener, and the goal was to have him bring legitimacy and stability to the ROH title after Low Ki's initial reign was cut short by the scheming of The Prophecy, which got the belt on "not really ready for this yet" Xavier. Joe accomplished this, and his success in doing so started having fans regard him as a babyface...yet even then Joe wasn't above being brutal, or selfish, or even one time straight-up cheating (the feet on the ropes in Joe vs. Punk 3 is one of the all-time great moments of making a loyal audience feel betrayed in a way that served the story being told) to keep the belt, because the pressure of being champion for so long was huge, and again the appeal after awhile was fans just wondering what it would actually take to beat this guy, and buying tickets to be there when it finally happens; it was less about Joe as face or heel, and instead, like Okada, was about Joe as "THE champ", the ultimate obstacle.
I'm wondering if people feel like there's just not enough of a story being told with Roman's defenses; by the sound of it the reign started out with some really good character work, like Roman showing mental and emotional vulnerabilities that likely hinted at what it would take to finally defeat him, but this seems to have given way to more repetitive booking that just ends with Roman on top nearly all of the time in every segment, making his reign feel more pointless than it should. Or, perhaps there IS a story, but it's not one a lot of people really want to see told right now: that the end goal, as many have postulated, is to turn Roman babyface again by just establishing him as so damned dominant now.
Either way, if you're going to do a dominant heel champion for a long time, you must tell a story that assures fans that this is all going somewhere; if you fail to do that you get the accusations of "misery booking". That tells me that Roman either needs to slide into being somewhat more of a tweener champion, or else WWE needs to do a much better job of highlighting what his vulnerabilities are (even if it takes a long time for someone to successfully capitalize on them) and of keeping his list of potential challengers stronger than they do...given WWE's inability to book strong babyfaces most of the time I can see that latter one being a problem.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 21, 2021 10:05:15 GMT -5
I'm wondering if people feel like there's just not enough of a story being told with Roman's defenses; by the sound of it the reign started out with some really good character work, like Roman showing mental and emotional vulnerabilities that likely hinted at what it would take to finally defeat him, but this seems to have given way to more repetitive booking that just ends with Roman on top nearly all of the time in every segment, making his reign feel more pointless than it should. Or, perhaps there IS a story, but it's not one a lot of people really want to see told right now: that the end goal, as many have postulated, is to turn Roman babyface again by just establishing him as so damned dominant now. This is a big part of it for me. As much as I rag on the WWE style of "monologuing loudly into the camera for minutes on end" that those early heel Roman matches had, they at least offered an opportunity to tell Roman's story - is he a sociopath faking an emotional breakdown, or is he legitimately torn about having to brutalize a family member? Is he genuinely doing what he believes is best for his family, or is he using that as a crutch to justify his actions? The problem is that WWE has not bothered telling any of those stories beyond the initial pitch - hell, we never even got a kayfabe explanation as to why Roman and Heyman are aligned. WWE set up all these potentially intriguing story beats and did nothing with them, in favor of family drama and ceaseless run-ins. Roman's entire run, face and heel, has been defined by him doing his absolute best despite creative having no idea who he's supposed to actually be.
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Post by kingoftheindies on Jun 21, 2021 11:42:32 GMT -5
I think if you clearly build someone up as a hero that the crowd can view as a threat. Only person who I've ever thought made sense is Big E... or if they moved Drew to Smackdown in the summer him.
Like on the nWo you had moments throughout where there were moments the faces got to get one over. Even during the Triple H reign of terror their were moments where the faces made Trips look bad. Those moments were few and far between but they still happened.
You need that still for Roman. I think he plays his role well but you still need a moment where he shows some weakness
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Post by Finish Uncle Muffin’s Story on Jun 21, 2021 11:49:12 GMT -5
I think if you clearly build someone up as a hero that the crowd can view as a threat. Only person who I've ever thought made sense is Big E... or if they moved Drew to Smackdown in the summer him. Like on the nWo you had moments throughout where there were moments the faces got to get one over. Even during the Triple H reign of terror their were moments where the faces made Trips look bad. Those moments were few and far between but they still happened. You need that still for Roman. I think he plays his role well but you still need a moment where he shows some weakness Drew not being allowed to challenge for the WWE Title anymore makes me think Drew is going to end up on SD sooner v. later. If they can't get Rock for Dallas, a Drew that's been unbeatable vs. Roman would be a fair substitute. They had great chemistry in that one off at Survivor Series.
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Post by A Platypus Rave is Correct on Jun 21, 2021 13:00:04 GMT -5
I think if you clearly build someone up as a hero that the crowd can view as a threat. Only person who I've ever thought made sense is Big E... or if they moved Drew to Smackdown in the summer him. Like on the nWo you had moments throughout where there were moments the faces got to get one over. Even during the Triple H reign of terror their were moments where the faces made Trips look bad. Those moments were few and far between but they still happened. You need that still for Roman. I think he plays his role well but you still need a moment where he shows some weakness I think they could have had Cesaro in that role too... unfortunately they've kinda completely cut him off at the knees after the Roman match. But yeah, how often did Vince look like a fool in the feud against Austin while still being the top heel of the company? Yeah, Vince wasn't the Bad ass destroyer but him and his corporate champions were punked out all the time by Austin. the heel has to look vulnerable at some point to tell an interesting story... you can have him win the matches hell you can have the set backs to make him angrier and more brutal in the actual matches... but Roman has not had anything that has even shaken his facade since Last year.
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Post by Finish Uncle Muffin’s Story on Jun 21, 2021 13:04:41 GMT -5
I think if you clearly build someone up as a hero that the crowd can view as a threat. Only person who I've ever thought made sense is Big E... or if they moved Drew to Smackdown in the summer him. Like on the nWo you had moments throughout where there were moments the faces got to get one over. Even during the Triple H reign of terror their were moments where the faces made Trips look bad. Those moments were few and far between but they still happened. You need that still for Roman. I think he plays his role well but you still need a moment where he shows some weakness I think they could have had Cesaro in that role too... unfortunately they've kinda completely cut him off at the knees after the Roman match. But yeah, how often did Vince look like a fool in the feud against Austin while still being the top heel of the company? Yeah, Vince wasn't the Bad ass destroyer but him and his corporate champions were punked out all the time by Austin. the heel has to look vulnerable at some point to tell an interesting story... you can have him win the matches hell you can have the set backs to make him angrier and more brutal in the actual matches... but Roman has not had anything that has even shaken his facade since Last year. I haven't gone through this whole thread but the response to the title reign kind of reminds me of how Walking Dead audiences rejected Negan. People wanted him to show up for years, and then everything became super depressing. I actually love the Roman character but I do see why people want him to show a little more ass. I honestly wouldn't mind Cena taking the belt from him at SummerSlam for a month or two just to freshen it up, but I doubt it.
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