asuka007
Fry's dog Seymour
Posts: 20,853
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Post by asuka007 on Jan 15, 2022 17:30:15 GMT -5
Also Okada and Tanahashi’s matches together were consistently excellent. Not so with Brock vs. Roman.
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Post by polarbearpete on Jan 15, 2022 20:04:45 GMT -5
Given the general flow and results of the matchup in the past, Brock vs. Roman really is WWE's Tanahashi vs. Okada and--wait why are you laughing no come back In all seriousness, it’s kind of amazing to look at Tanahashi vs. Okada and see how it worked so much better as an overarching story, but that’s because NJPW booked it that way from the get-go, not all stop and start and constant last minute changes and whatnot. They knew the narrative they wanted, they knew they wanted the two mens’ stories to intertwine at decisive points, so that’s exactly what they did. Said this in another thread, but what’s jarring here isn’t doing Roman/Brock again, it’s doing it again and there being absolutely zero indication that there’s anyone else being built to be in that spot on one day who isn’t already well into their career, ala guys like Edge and AJ already being older at this point. It’s just utter stagnation. Belair getting a big spot is the exception there, but yeah, can’t really play this up as a “crowning” win for her when that already came last year, and the division that title represents is basically torn down to the roots. There are plenty of guys that either are built up enough to main event Mania or could be by next year up and down the roster, old and young. McIntyre, Priest, Riddle, Rollins, Big E, Lashley, Owens, Styles, Bálor, Edge, Orton, Becky, Charlotte, Sasha, Bianca, Bayley, Ripley, eventually Breaker, Theory, Ford. Granted, they didn’t do themselves any favors thinning out the options by cutting guys like Bray, Aleister, Keith Lee and Braun.
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Post by HMARK Center on Jan 16, 2022 6:28:26 GMT -5
In all seriousness, it’s kind of amazing to look at Tanahashi vs. Okada and see how it worked so much better as an overarching story, but that’s because NJPW booked it that way from the get-go, not all stop and start and constant last minute changes and whatnot. They knew the narrative they wanted, they knew they wanted the two mens’ stories to intertwine at decisive points, so that’s exactly what they did. Said this in another thread, but what’s jarring here isn’t doing Roman/Brock again, it’s doing it again and there being absolutely zero indication that there’s anyone else being built to be in that spot on one day who isn’t already well into their career, ala guys like Edge and AJ already being older at this point. It’s just utter stagnation. Belair getting a big spot is the exception there, but yeah, can’t really play this up as a “crowning” win for her when that already came last year, and the division that title represents is basically torn down to the roots. There are plenty of guys that either are built up enough to main event Mania or could be by next year up and down the roster, old and young. McIntyre, Priest, Riddle, Rollins, Big E, Lashley, Owens, Styles, Bálor, Edge, Orton, Becky, Charlotte, Sasha, Bianca, Bayley, Ripley, eventually Breaker, Theory, Ford. Granted, they didn’t do themselves any favors thinning out the options by cutting guys like Bray, Aleister, Keith Lee and Braun. Dude, we've talked about this before and you're not listening to what I'm saying.
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Post by polarbearpete on Jan 16, 2022 7:28:36 GMT -5
There are plenty of guys that either are built up enough to main event Mania or could be by next year up and down the roster, old and young. McIntyre, Priest, Riddle, Rollins, Big E, Lashley, Owens, Styles, Bálor, Edge, Orton, Becky, Charlotte, Sasha, Bianca, Bayley, Ripley, eventually Breaker, Theory, Ford. Granted, they didn’t do themselves any favors thinning out the options by cutting guys like Bray, Aleister, Keith Lee and Braun. Dude, we've talked about this before and you're not listening to what I'm saying. What am I missing then? I was responding to the notion that there’s no one being “built up to be in that spot one day” to be at a Reigns/Lesnar/Becky/Charlotte level to main event Mania, while I don’t see that as being accurate.
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metylerca
King Koopa
Loves Him Some Backstreet Boys.
Don't be alarmed.
Posts: 12,479
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Post by metylerca on Jan 16, 2022 15:45:44 GMT -5
The Rock suffered a pretty bad injury in his last full match that halted filming of a project he was working on. And that was a Mania 29. Even if he is willing to go, I could totally see studios and/or insurance companies not wanting him to. Also does anyone really care about Roman beating him at this point anyway? Like they was probably a time when that made sense. But that time passed awhile ago. Ahem, excuse you, sir! The Rock was in a perfectly sanctioned and FRESH matchup at Wrestlemania 32 against Rowan. No film productions were shut down following the match. Therefore, Rock can still go.
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Post by Magic knows Black Lives Matter on Jan 16, 2022 17:11:41 GMT -5
Buns, tbh.
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Post by MrElijah on Jan 16, 2022 18:19:35 GMT -5
The only WM XXXVIII news I want is will the Iron Shiek be there?
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spagett
Hank Scorpio
Great Job!
Posts: 5,649
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Post by spagett on Jan 16, 2022 19:08:22 GMT -5
Dude, we've talked about this before and you're not listening to what I'm saying. What am I missing then? I was responding to the notion that there’s no one being “built up to be in that spot one day” to be at a Reigns/Lesnar/Becky/Charlotte level to main event Mania, while I don’t see that as being accurate. The original point was WWE are doing a horrible job building for the future, anyone outside of about 6 or 7 people on the roster are constantly booked like shit. You have to be 40 plus or have been in the company for like 10 years for them to give a shit about you. Bobby Lashley and Edge and AJ Style are not for the future. I mean even Balor is 40 and has been in the WWE for 7 years at this point. And he's been booked horribly for most of that time, especially since he went back to the main roster last summer. They need to start pushing new people, it's just the same guys in the main event over and over. And I mean properly push them, not Big E style dogshit title runs.
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Post by polarbearpete on Jan 16, 2022 23:34:15 GMT -5
What am I missing then? I was responding to the notion that there’s no one being “built up to be in that spot one day” to be at a Reigns/Lesnar/Becky/Charlotte level to main event Mania, while I don’t see that as being accurate. The original point was WWE are doing a horrible job building for the future, anyone outside of about 6 or 7 people on the roster are constantly booked like shit. You have to be 40 plus or have been in the company for like 10 years for them to give a shit about you. Bobby Lashley and Edge and AJ Style are not for the future. I mean even Balor is 40 and has been in the WWE for 7 years at this point. And he's been booked horribly for most of that time, especially since he went back to the main roster last summer. They need to start pushing new people, it's just the same guys in the main event over and over. And I mean properly push them, not Big E style dogshit title runs. They can certainly use some fresh main eventers and I imagine eventually in the near future Riddle, Priest and Ripley will get there (and way down the road Breaker, Theory and Ford), but they also just made how many new main eventers in the last 3 years? Becky, Bianca, Drew, Lashley, Big E, that’s not a terrible output. And no one 40 or older can count for the “future” when realistically they can be main eventing anytime in the next 5 years? It’s not like everyone is on the brink of retirement. Push new stars the next couple of years sure, I just don’t think things are that dire.
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Post by EoE: Well There's Your Problem on Jan 17, 2022 0:34:02 GMT -5
Truth is, ANYONE can be built up to being a credible main event-level talent capable of headlining a WrestleMania with the right character and/or the right story.
Also truth, nobody expects WWE to do that with anyone. Hell, how often do even their chosen ones get thrown into bad characters and stories? Actually, I’ll do you all one better… Tell me a good story they’ve done recently that ISN’T rooted in a previous bad one. Does “KofiMania” have the same emotional resonance if they’d actually followed through on his 2009 push and actually gave him a proper run? Does “The Man” end up in a WrestleMania main event if Becky Lynch actually wins the belt at SummerSlam?
That’s why 99% of this fanbase has put up this brick wall of cynicism.
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Post by DZ: WF Legacy on Jan 17, 2022 0:34:51 GMT -5
The Most Must-Skip Show in WWE History!
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asuka007
Fry's dog Seymour
Posts: 20,853
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Post by asuka007 on Jan 17, 2022 1:04:44 GMT -5
The original point was WWE are doing a horrible job building for the future, anyone outside of about 6 or 7 people on the roster are constantly booked like shit. You have to be 40 plus or have been in the company for like 10 years for them to give a shit about you. Bobby Lashley and Edge and AJ Style are not for the future. I mean even Balor is 40 and has been in the WWE for 7 years at this point. And he's been booked horribly for most of that time, especially since he went back to the main roster last summer. They need to start pushing new people, it's just the same guys in the main event over and over. And I mean properly push them, not Big E style dogshit title runs. They can certainly use some fresh main eventers and I imagine eventually in the near future Riddle, Priest and Ripley will get there (and way down the road Breaker, Theory and Ford), but they also just made how many new main eventers in the last 3 years? Becky, Bianca, Drew, Lashley, Big E, that’s not a terrible output. And no one 40 or older can count for the “future” when realistically they can be main eventing anytime in the next 5 years? It’s not like everyone is on the brink of retirement. Push new stars the next couple of years sure, I just don’t think things are that dire. Ripley already was there, until WWE screwed it up for no good reason. Big E wasn’t treated like a top guy even when he had the belt. And yeah, that is pretty bad when you can only name four maybe in YEARS!! They need to stop screwing around.
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Post by polarbearpete on Jan 17, 2022 5:41:19 GMT -5
They can certainly use some fresh main eventers and I imagine eventually in the near future Riddle, Priest and Ripley will get there (and way down the road Breaker, Theory and Ford), but they also just made how many new main eventers in the last 3 years? Becky, Bianca, Drew, Lashley, Big E, that’s not a terrible output. And no one 40 or older can count for the “future” when realistically they can be main eventing anytime in the next 5 years? It’s not like everyone is on the brink of retirement. Push new stars the next couple of years sure, I just don’t think things are that dire. Ripley already was there, until WWE screwed it up for no good reason. Big E wasn’t treated like a top guy even when he had the belt. And yeah, that is pretty bad when you can only name four maybe in YEARS!! They need to stop screwing around. I named 5 in the last 3 years. And that’s to go along with the other 10-12 main eventers they already had established prior and are still active, and the temporary main eventers they created like Kofi, the legend main eventers that reappear sometimes like Cena and Goldberg, the main eventers that left like Bryan and Moxley, and main eventers they (inexplicably cut) like Wyatt and Braun. If you have more main eventers than that, then at some point everyone is a main eventer.
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Timeless Hayterade
Dennis Stamp
Rhea's the Tribal Chief now. ACKNOWLEDGE MAMI!
Posts: 4,675
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Post by Timeless Hayterade on Jan 17, 2022 6:10:43 GMT -5
The only WM XXXVIII news I want is will the Iron Shiek be there? This is the real question here.
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Post by This Player Hating Mothman on Jan 17, 2022 6:36:37 GMT -5
Truth is, ANYONE can be built up to being a credible main event-level talent capable of headlining a WrestleMania with the right character and/or the right story. Also truth, nobody expects WWE to do that with anyone. Hell, how often do even their chosen ones get thrown into bad characters and stories? Actually, I’ll do you all one better… Tell me a good story they’ve done recently that ISN’T rooted in a previous bad one. Does “KofiMania” have the same emotional resonance if they’d actually followed through on his 2009 push and actually gave him a proper run? Does “The Man” end up in a WrestleMania main event if Becky Lynch actually wins the belt at SummerSlam? That’s why 99% of this fanbase has put up this brick wall of cynicism. Shield reunion storyline, Ambrose very justifiably being burned by Rollins's attempts to seek forgiveness and reconcile their past, culminating in moments of actual emotional vulnerability for the characters (or at least as much as WWE will ever allow) and a satisfying payoff to Dean giving Seth that forgiveness and moving on to be brothers again. Contained things as far as continuity, logical character motivations based on their past interactions, and actual emotional peaks that sort of resembled how a person might act, and it came out good for it. WWE doesn't really put in a lot of those things for most stories, but when they bother and follow through with reasonable progression beat by beat, it succeeds just fine.
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Post by EoE: Well There's Your Problem on Jan 17, 2022 6:38:38 GMT -5
Truth is, ANYONE can be built up to being a credible main event-level talent capable of headlining a WrestleMania with the right character and/or the right story. Also truth, nobody expects WWE to do that with anyone. Hell, how often do even their chosen ones get thrown into bad characters and stories? Actually, I’ll do you all one better… Tell me a good story they’ve done recently that ISN’T rooted in a previous bad one. Does “KofiMania” have the same emotional resonance if they’d actually followed through on his 2009 push and actually gave him a proper run? Does “The Man” end up in a WrestleMania main event if Becky Lynch actually wins the belt at SummerSlam? That’s why 99% of this fanbase has put up this brick wall of cynicism. Shield reunion storyline, Ambrose very justifiably being burned by Rollins's attempts to seek forgiveness and reconcile their past, culminating in moments of actual emotional vulnerability for the characters (or at least as much as WWE will ever allow) and a satisfying payoff to Dean giving Seth that forgiveness and moving on to be brothers again. …F***. The one time I try to be like “Show me something good” like the rest of you and I STILL get shown up.
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Post by theironyuppie on Jan 17, 2022 6:53:59 GMT -5
Truth is, ANYONE can be built up to being a credible main event-level talent capable of headlining a WrestleMania with the right character and/or the right story. Also truth, nobody expects WWE to do that with anyone. Hell, how often do even their chosen ones get thrown into bad characters and stories? Actually, I’ll do you all one better… Tell me a good story they’ve done recently that ISN’T rooted in a previous bad one. Does “KofiMania” have the same emotional resonance if they’d actually followed through on his 2009 push and actually gave him a proper run? Does “The Man” end up in a WrestleMania main event if Becky Lynch actually wins the belt at SummerSlam? That’s why 99% of this fanbase has put up this brick wall of cynicism. On the other hand, the thing with the Becky story is that she already beat every heel on Smackdown clean between MITB and Summerslam. Had she just won the belt as a face there wouldn’t have been any storylines beyond a moment and a ‘Becky Balboa did it again’ promo, and there wouldn’t have been the ‘WWE is holding Becky back in favour of Female Roman’ meta-narrative that resonated among fans and which Becky skilfully leaned into. Though in her case what absolutely guaranteed the Mania main event/win was Nia punching her on the go-home to Survivor Series and what ensued. Sorta like how Kofimania got going after Ali got hurt and missed out on Elimination Chamber.
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mistery
King Koopa
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Post by mistery on Jan 17, 2022 8:44:51 GMT -5
I mean for every single "good" push they've done like KofiMania and Becky's push, there have been just as bad, if not worse attempts at pushing the wrong people. Look at them trying to push Nia Jax as the "most dangerous woman in all of WWE", for all the wrong reasons. Or my personal favorite bad angle, the horrid Lacey/Ric/Charlotte angle. Where the angle was set to resolve with Asuka dropping the title to Lacey (whose character sucked and she couldn't wrestle her way out of a paper bag), while WWE was pushing the angle of Ric screwing her. All to give Charlotte another moment at Wrestlemania.
WWE more often than not has really bad ideas for main event pushes, and has to be forced kicking and screaming into pushing the people fans want to see, and even then its not foolproof.
As for the current card, it's the worst looking Wrestlemania in quite some time. And I fear this is going to set a very dangerous standard going forward when it comes to Bianca in that if she ever gets even slightly less than favorable booking, they'll sacrifice everyone else to "fix" it. It's why the women's main event scene in particular is so stale. Because unless you are Charlotte, Becky, Bianca, Sasha, Bayley (to an extent), or Alexa, you aren't going to get any sort of meaningful time on TV as a woman. Because unless the woman is in the title scene, they literally don't matter. It's pretty telling that both the men's and women's main event matches this year for Mania are likely going to be recycled matches we've seen several times this past year.
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asuka007
Fry's dog Seymour
Posts: 20,853
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Post by asuka007 on Jan 17, 2022 12:02:40 GMT -5
WWE so often falls ass-backwards into their best stories these days. And they fight hard to NOT do them in many cases until they’re forced to.
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Post by HMARK Center on Jan 17, 2022 12:24:25 GMT -5
What am I missing then? I was responding to the notion that there’s no one being “built up to be in that spot one day” to be at a Reigns/Lesnar/Becky/Charlotte level to main event Mania, while I don’t see that as being accurate. The original point was WWE are doing a horrible job building for the future, anyone outside of about 6 or 7 people on the roster are constantly booked like shit. You have to be 40 plus or have been in the company for like 10 years for them to give a shit about you. Bobby Lashley and Edge and AJ Style are not for the future. I mean even Balor is 40 and has been in the WWE for 7 years at this point. And he's been booked horribly for most of that time, especially since he went back to the main roster last summer. They need to start pushing new people, it's just the same guys in the main event over and over. And I mean properly push them, not Big E style dogshit title runs. Yeah, I think it's a pretty dire situation when it's 2022 and you have to rely on Brock/Roman and Charlotte/Sasha to sell Wrestlemania. These are matches that have been going on for years now; Brock and Roman's first WM main event was like 6-7 years ago, right? That's not inherently bad, like I said before NJPW stretched out the Okada/Tananashi "passing the torch" rivalry and storyline over the course of about four years, but NJPW doesn't do weekly TV that risks quicker burnout, the feud's story beats were pretty clearly laid out from early on, and during that entire time NJPW was never lacking in other top names who could step into a Tokyo Dome main event at a moment's notice and bring credibility plus an interesting character angle or story with them in the process (e.g. Nakamura and Styles circa 2015, Omega and Naito after that, then Ibushi and Jay White, then Shingo and Ospreay, etc.). And credit where it's due, Brock/Roman with Roman as the heel now and with Heyman in between is at least a wrinkle that wasn't there before, so again I'm not saying them facing each other is inherently bad; hell, doing Charlotte/Sasha again isn't so bad, they're both talented and people will probably like the match. In isolation, there's no harm in using bigger names on the biggest stage to sell interest in your show, of course. The problem is that it's 2022, most of these names have been in prominent "main event Mania" positions for pushing a decade, and there's basically no one new lined up to be near their level, outside of Belair in one of the women's divisions (and her push has been weird to follow, anyway), and the older wrestlers who are currently there are firmly established as being well beneath the top champs. None of this is to say that Kevin Owens or whomever is "buried", but in terms of having enough credibility to challenge Roman or Brock? You had Roman definitively beat Edge last year at Mania, they shot Balor's credibility dead, you've had him repeatedly beat Owens, you had Lesnar easily handle Big E and Zayn and he's likely going to put Lashley aside, if this rumor is to be believed than Seth isn't beating Roman either...you've gotta to be building to something, right? Shit, that's not even touching on how shredded their main women's rosters are with all the releases and the huge gap between the handful of top women and literally everyone else. I think back to Samoa Joe being ROH champion for a long time; after the CM Punk trilogy there were many who on the indies would ever beat him. But even during all that they kept a couple of well-protected red herrings (neither Bryan Danielson nor Low Ki ever challenged Joe while he was champion) and spent a good amount of time building up the next slate of potential main names for the promotion (e.g Alex Shelley, Austin Aries, etc.), and eventually it was a newer guy who dethroned him. Right now, where is WWE going that doesn't leave a feeling of "these people have been on top for years, they're going to continue being on top for years, nothing is changing"?
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