Glitch
King Koopa
Not Going To Die; Childs, we're goin' out to give Blair the test. If he tries to make it back here and we're not with him... burn him.
Watching you.
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Post by Glitch on Jun 13, 2022 5:12:41 GMT -5
I will still say that booms are caused by hype, not "broad appeal". The NWO story-line had very much smark friendly elements. Same with Austin versus McMahon. It has always been about people hyping up the product and spreading it through word of mouth.
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Legion
Fry's dog Seymour
Amy Pond's #1 fan
Hail Hydra!
Posts: 22,900
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Post by Legion on Jun 13, 2022 5:28:04 GMT -5
I dont know how the thread has turned in to an argument over attracting new fans.
That is a problem AEW will have to address at some point, and this is a part of it, but it's not the point of the thread.
The point is I am already an AEW fan and viewer and they currently have a big event going down they have just assumed I am interested in and know the players of.
I don't. I doubt I am the only one.
AEW needs to think just a little more about how they present things like this. It really wouldnt take much, and certainly isn't in the realms of expecting them to copy WWE.
It's just doing a better job of introducing and promoting the exciting thing you are doing so we can all share the excitement, instead of feeling excluded. Because that's now I feel right now, a bit excluded from enjoying something because they haven't done their job well enough, so far anyway.
That was the point. It wasn't an invitation for another round of fighting over who does what best. Just an observation that AEW in this particular moment is failing to generate interest in something for me, and I am sure others, because of the assumption they have made that everyone knows who these guys are and what it all means.
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Post by xCompackx on Jun 13, 2022 6:51:39 GMT -5
Personally, I don't think you really *have* to know who the NJPW wrestlers are to enjoy Forbidden Door. I see it the same way I saw Danhausen joining AEW or AJ Styles joining WWE; YouTube's there if you want to learn more or let the company explain who they are in their own universe.
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lucas_lee
Hank Scorpio
Heel turn is finished, now stripping away my personality
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Post by lucas_lee on Jun 13, 2022 8:41:47 GMT -5
The lingerie pillow fight thing is just weird and wrong as well as horrible sexist and shit. Even back then the women were disposable, piss break segments, the women who were over and draws were the ones who actually did cool things like Chyna and Lita, no one was tuning in for Terri Runnels and the Kat. Then you get into stuff since then we've had many examples over multiple companies that women are now an integral part of the show as wrestlers, including, but not limited to... um... headlining Wrestlemania, just a little thing like that. You pick The Kat and Terri Runnels because it doesn't suit your argument. You and I both know that Torrie Wilson, Stacy Keibler and Sunny were massively over and they never had to wrestle. This is an off topic debate anyway. I just used it as an example of how AEW do things that don't appeal to the masses. Like I said, they can stick to their niche and the hardcore fans can enjoy it. Even if its 18 thousand of them. It won't make them any more popular or known to the casuals. People act like that's not what they're trying to do which is complete bullshit. Of course Tony Khan wants more viewers and more money. That's the aim of every business. You make it seem like selling out an arena of 18,000 fans in minutes is an easy feat. You make it seem like its a bad thing theyre sticking to their lane. Most companies go under when they try to expand too quickly, I dont know if you want those things you mentioned because they entertain you. But a lot of the AEW diehards would hate the product you're trying to peddle.
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Post by polarbearpete on Jun 13, 2022 9:13:54 GMT -5
And the notion that "No casual fans will watch or care about Forbidden Door" is just as ridiculous then. If "New fans come every day", then by your logic, they are also coming in right now, seeing the talk of Forbidden Door, and seeing what it's about, even potentially ordering the crossover PPV. The notion that no one ever would, even ignoring the sellout gate, makes absolutely no sense if you're also going by the logic that "new fans come every day", it's contradictory in itself, and it's why I said the take itself is nothing but a headache. Selling out The United Center plus extra seats goes well beyond "Niche", that's a huge crowd, for all we know, someone's first ever wrestling event is going to be Forbidden Door, and the notion that it isn't and "AEW will never get casual fans this way and it's a mistake", doesn't work, at all. They're coming in right now, seeing this New Japan stuff and probably tuning right back out. Again, you would have to be a smark fan to enjoy Puroresu. Most Japanese wrestling fans seeked it out cause they enjoyed the workrate and wanted an alternative. That means they were already watching wrestling before. Whether people want to admit or not, this won't catch NEW fans attention in droves. There's a reason the Attitude Era was the most popular. It was because they did things non wrestling fans would be interested in... Even if it was sexist or offensive, it got views and interest. People say stuff like "Nobody would watch a Lingerie Pillow Fight"... In actual fact, that would get loads more viewers than Serena Deeb vs Hikaru Shida. I am not saying its right, I'm just saying that's how the world works. On the flip side, more people would tune in to see Mike Tyson vs Chris Jericho than they would Will Osperay vs Dante Martin. This PPV is great for the niche fans. The hard cores. And if AEW want to keep pleasing them, then great. But they will never evolve by doing this. If they want to be the number 1 company, they have to cater to the masses. The casual fans who probably stopped watching years ago cause it became "too PG" or the new fans who happen to be flicking through the channels and see something crazy. That's what will grow their popularity. Hardcore smark fans like us will watch regardless. They can do things the rest of the year to try to expand their audience. This is a one-month build to a specialty show, that while it may be niche is underselling how big New Japan is in the States and in Japan. You’re not even taking into account that they may be able to add a good amount of Japanese fans to their fanbase with both this PPV and the deal that has Dynamite streaming on New Japan World. And not sure if you’re advocating for it or not, but adding lingerie pillow fight matches to their shows would most likely have a negative effect on their ratings. That’s the type of thing their current audience doesn’t want to see and it’s not something that brings in viewers in 2022.
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Post by TOK Hehe'd Around & Found Out on Jun 13, 2022 9:41:52 GMT -5
Are we doing that thing again where we pretend that AEW isn't pulling massive viewership numbers by 2022 standards
Like there's a lot of critiques of the booking and how new talent are still introduced but let's just say that and not try and make objective statements about "fans being pushed away" when the A show is the highest rated cable program and is getting just under 1 millon live viewers while going head to head with the NBA Finals
If it was as simple as "wrestling fans will watch anything" then Impact wouldn't have been forced to be only on the network that they own and it wouldn't have taken 20 years for anything resembling competition to WWE
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Post by Raw is Doodie101 on Jun 13, 2022 12:24:07 GMT -5
I dont know how the thread has turned in to an argument over attracting new fans. That is a problem AEW will have to address at some point, and this is a part of it, but it's not the point of the thread. The point is I am already an AEW fan and viewer and they currently have a big event going down they have just assumed I am interested in and know the players of. I don't. I doubt I am the only one. AEW needs to think just a little more about how they present things like this. It really wouldnt take much, and certainly isn't in the realms of expecting them to copy WWE. It's just doing a better job of introducing and promoting the exciting thing you are doing so we can all share the excitement, instead of feeling excluded. Because that's now I feel right now, a bit excluded from enjoying something because they haven't done their job well enough, so far anyway. That was the point. It wasn't an invitation for another round of fighting over who does what best. Just an observation that AEW in this particular moment is failing to generate interest in something for me, and I am sure others, because of the assumption they have made that everyone knows who these guys are and what it all means. Yeah, I agree with this. Forbidden Door doesn't have to be a show about attracting new fans. It's ok to treat your base to something that they will like every once in a while. Personally, I don't care about NJPW so I am just tuning out this month for the most part. Which is fine, I am the mythical casual AEW fan and AEW doesn't need to try and capture me all the time.
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Dr. Bolty, Disaster Enby
Grimlock
Blanket burrito season is back, and I never left the blankets
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Post by Dr. Bolty, Disaster Enby on Jun 13, 2022 14:45:58 GMT -5
I’m so sick of the idea that they should be chasing big mainstream success above all else. I care way more about the show being good. As long as AEW is successful enough to make money and stay in business, I’d rather they focus on having good wrestling. There’s nothing wrong with catering to your actual fans. There’s nothing wrong with being niche. You don’t have to be a Call of Duty, you can be a Persona. Persona is a great comparison too, because like. Microsoft just did its big summer showcase today, featured footage from the new Forza game (the last game in the series having had 20 million players) and Starfield, a game people have been waiting for years for footage of and the first single player release from Bethesda Game Studios since 2015. New Overwatch footage. New Diablo 4 footage. And Persona 3-5, games that have existed for years and hwich will not receive any new content, being on Windows and Xbox, stands out as just as huge a story people are just as excited for. Hell, an indie 2d action game getting not even a release date but just footage is standing as just as big a story. AEW's 'niche' still gets it great ratings and a competitive chance at being the top of its night on cable when big 4 sports aren't in overdrive. It's succeeding in drawing money, drawing an audience, and monetizing that audience. The media landscape right now is as good as it has ever been for niche programming. Ever. The reach you can get for something that doesn't fit neatly into the mainstream, the visibility you can create, and the access to the audience who wants your product has never been as good as it is right now, and AEW has proven that if you put out a wrestling product with the right mix of factors and make a good show with it, you can pull in close to if not a million weekly viewers. AEW would be insane right now to try and jump at courting WWE fans by changing their show to be more of what WWE fans might want and historically, that has been a disaster. TNA downplayed its best traits to try and be a half-baked WWE and its ratings declined. They tried to chase storylines and comparisons and it got them a warehouse full of fake beards they couldn't move. WWE fans didnt' come over in droves to watch it. Fans of niche things tend to be forgiving and loyal, but the easiest way to burn them is to turn away from them. If you use your audience as a stepping stone to something else then they're going to leave. Then who have you got left? Countless musicians have gone pop, failed to find an audience, and trashed their cred as an artist in the process. Hell, amid all the complaints of tribalism and mud slinging, will AEW even be able to attract those kinds of "I'm not checking AEW out until it's more like what I want" people? Or will they just keep shitting on it for not being WWE? AEW is way more likely to become a Liz Phair than a Green Day. I'll throw out another video game comparison that does show a movement outside of a niche and into the mainstream, to add on to the great examples here: the Souls series. Demon's Souls did well enough to keep going. Dark Souls did better than that. The series consistently did better by continuing to refine what it did well, which was fast-paced combat with ponderous animation and sharp learning curves - things that were decidedly not mainstream when the series began, and which remained the fervent enthusiasm of weird nerds who liked the challenge. The various Souls games and Bloodborne made adjustments to the formula, but they never forsook the oddities and anti-mainstream design choices that brought them to the dance. And over the last decade, a lot of video games copied this or that from the games. The novel find-your-body mechanic became a common form of video game death; tough-but-fair became a more common form of video game design; eventually, the influence of the game was everywhere, and the Souls games kept doing better alongside that phenomenon. And then Elden Ring was a huge, unqualified mainstream hit that's sold better than any previous game in the series. Elden Ring does add a few things that are arguably more mainstream-attracting: the big open world is a trend right now, the double-jumping horse makes traversal and enemy avoidance fairly easy, and the George RR Martin involvement got some attention. (Notably, though: GRRM's involvement came after Game of Thrones became a thoroughly discredited franchise, so it's hard to gauge how that affected anything.) But the game is still doing all the things that Souls games are known for, and in fact, it's more that Souls gameplay became the norm rather than the series changing to better fit the market. I'll throw myself out as an example: by the time I got to playing Elden Ring, I had already thoroughly enjoyed games like Hollow Knight and Breath of the Wild that had taken cues from the previous games, and had also heard from various internet personalities what made the Souls games interesting - both of those contributed to my trying the series out for the first time, and neither would have gotten me into Elden Ring if Elden Ring had forsaken the design ethos that was so aggressively anti-mainstream as of Demon's Souls. If AEW gets a surge in popularity beyond what it has now and outdoes WWE (and it should always be emphasized: they don't really need to, especially if Tony Khan remains content to run a wrestling promotion for the sake of getting to make his own wrestling), it will probably come after years of the differences between AEW and WWE getting sanded down. WWE giving more wrestlers the Cody Rhodes treatment is probably going to do more to puff up AEW than anything AEW actually does, so AEW stands to benefit from just keeping up what actually makes their existing fans prefer their product.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jun 14, 2022 8:23:09 GMT -5
We're two weeks out from the PPV and one of the only big NJPW names to appear on TV lost. I absolutely love the idea of Forbidden Door but it feels like there are some politics getting in the way of the build which was always a concern. At the very least it's causing them to really take their time deciding and promoting the matches and I think it's affecting the hype and build of the PPV. I wish we got to see more NJPW people wrestle in AEW and I wish that there had been some AEW representation at Dominion. None of the matches feel very heated outside of Mox/Tanahashi and that's solely because Mox cuts a promo on the dude in every promotion he's in and I wish there was more of that. These matches come across as more like exhibitions which is fine, but makes it a less interesting story for me.
I'm sure Forbidden Door is going to be great I have no doubt, but I wish getting there had been a bit more interesting.
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Post by polarbearpete on Jun 14, 2022 8:48:39 GMT -5
We're two weeks out from the PPV and one of the only big NJPW names to appear on TV lost. I absolutely love the idea of Forbidden Door but it feels like there are some politics getting in the way of the build which was always a concern. At the very least it's causing them to really take their time deciding and promoting the matches and I think it's affecting the hype and build of the PPV. I wish we got to see more NJPW people wrestle in AEW and I wish that there had been some AEW representation at Dominion. None of the matches feel very heated outside of Mox/Tanahashi and that's solely because Mox cuts a promo on the dude in every promotion he's in and I wish there was more of that. These matches come across as more like exhibitions which is fine, but makes it a less interesting story for me. I'm sure Forbidden Door is going to be great I have no doubt, but I wish getting there had been a bit more interesting. I assume they’ll go into overdrive now that Dominion is done with. Unfortunately, it looks like a lot of the top names are booked in Japan through Tuesday June 21st so may not have a lot of actual representation on Dynamite this week from NJPW.
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chrom
Backup Wench
Master of the rare undecuple post
Posts: 85,087
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Post by chrom on Jun 14, 2022 9:57:55 GMT -5
We're two weeks out from the PPV and one of the only big NJPW names to appear on TV lost. I absolutely love the idea of Forbidden Door but it feels like there are some politics getting in the way of the build which was always a concern. At the very least it's causing them to really take their time deciding and promoting the matches and I think it's affecting the hype and build of the PPV. I wish we got to see more NJPW people wrestle in AEW and I wish that there had been some AEW representation at Dominion. None of the matches feel very heated outside of Mox/Tanahashi and that's solely because Mox cuts a promo on the dude in every promotion he's in and I wish there was more of that. These matches come across as more like exhibitions which is fine, but makes it a less interesting story for me. I'm sure Forbidden Door is going to be great I have no doubt, but I wish getting there had been a bit more interesting. I assume they’ll go into overdrive now that Dominion is done with. Unfortunately, it looks like a lot of the top names are booked in Japan through Tuesday June 21st so may not have a lot of actual representation on Dynamite this week from NJPW. Jay White, United Empire, Sabre and Bullet Club are all not listed for New Japan Road so they are likely stateside now.
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Post by polarbearpete on Jun 14, 2022 10:05:11 GMT -5
I assume they’ll go into overdrive now that Dominion is done with. Unfortunately, it looks like a lot of the top names are booked in Japan through Tuesday June 21st so may not have a lot of actual representation on Dynamite this week from NJPW. Jay White, United Empire, Sabre and Bullet Club are all not listed for New Japan Road so they are likely stateside now. Yeah, makes me wonder if Naito and Okada are coming at all or not. The TV build will likely focus on Tanahashi-Mox, White-Hangman-Cole, and Sabre-Danielson.
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Post by "Gizzark" Mike Wronglevenay on Jun 14, 2022 14:58:51 GMT -5
Jay White, United Empire, Sabre and Bullet Club are all not listed for New Japan Road so they are likely stateside now. Yeah, makes me wonder if Naito and Okada are coming at all or not. The TV build will likely focus on Tanahashi-Mox, White-Hangman-Cole, and Sabre-Danielson. They can't possibly have Hangman hint at working either Okada or White and only have one of them show up. Not bringing Okada vastly reduces the prestige of this show
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Post by polarbearpete on Jun 14, 2022 15:02:21 GMT -5
Yeah, makes me wonder if Naito and Okada are coming at all or not. The TV build will likely focus on Tanahashi-Mox, White-Hangman-Cole, and Sabre-Danielson. They can't possibly have Hangman hint at working either Okada or White and only have one of them show up. Not bringing Okada vastly reduces the prestige of this show Who would he even fight unless they break Cole or Hangman off the title match?
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Allie Kitsune
Crow T. Robot
Always Feelin' Foxy.
HaHa U FaLL 4 LaVa TriK
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Post by Allie Kitsune on Jun 14, 2022 15:12:59 GMT -5
Jay White, United Empire, Sabre and Bullet Club are all not listed for New Japan Road so they are likely stateside now. Yeah, makes me wonder if Naito and Okada are coming at all or not. The TV build will likely focus on Tanahashi-Mox, White-Hangman-Cole, and Sabre-Danielson. I'd have to think Naito's not coming. Shingo has said that Naito wants nothing to do with American wrestling, while doing Japanese commentary for Dynamite.
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Post by "Gizzark" Mike Wronglevenay on Jun 14, 2022 16:12:56 GMT -5
They can't possibly have Hangman hint at working either Okada or White and only have one of them show up. Not bringing Okada vastly reduces the prestige of this show Who would he even fight unless they break Cole or Hangman off the title match? I dunno, my job isn't booking wrestling shows, I feel like if it was my job to and I couldn't find something for Okada to do I'd be an idiot
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Post by lockedontarget on Jun 14, 2022 16:16:42 GMT -5
I think Okada vs Bryan is still on the table. I know ZSJ challenged Bryan, but it was in a backstage comment and there’s been plenty of times where someone called out another wrestler in the backstage comments and it didn’t lead to a match right away.
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Post by "Gizzark" Mike Wronglevenay on Jun 14, 2022 16:20:15 GMT -5
I think Okada vs Bryan is still on the table. I know ZSJ challenged Bryan, but it was in a backstage comment and there’s been plenty of times where someone called out another wrestler in the backstage comments and it didn’t lead to a match right away. I sure hope not, I will absolutely buy this show for Zack v Brian but nothing else appeals much to me yet
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Kalmia
King Koopa
Happy to be here
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Post by Kalmia on Jun 14, 2022 16:32:13 GMT -5
Okada's wife is pregnant so if he doesn't want to leave Japan right now that's understandable. It'll be disappointing if he's not at Forbidden Door, but not important in the grand scheme of life.
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Post by EP 54 is banned from Collision on Jun 14, 2022 18:17:54 GMT -5
Hear me out: a five minute video, going through each NJPW guy, showing their name, them at the top of the ramp, a high spot, their finisher with a caption of the name, then match graphic, to a banging tune. Kind of like how fighting game trailers introduce their characters. Play it once a show (including Dark) and that's literally all you need.
So for Suzuki, you show Suzuki on the ramp, him exchanging chops with Danielson, Gotch style piledriver, match graphic.
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