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Post by HMARK Center on May 10, 2024 14:46:46 GMT -5
Man, this is heartbreaking if it's really the end of the road for Chuck, who's always been one of the more underrated guys out there, but if it is then I'm thrilled he got to go out with one more really good match to put one of his best buddies over, and I'm thrilled he'll be around drawing a steady paycheck and still in the industry, hopefully one day delivering us a new up and comer he can christen "No Gimmicks Needed" Steve the Samurai. So yeah, most guys don't get to go out on their own terms, but if it this is the end then at least Chuck got a pretty sweet sendoff, which is often more than you can ask for in this industry.
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Post by HMARK Center on May 10, 2024 14:38:51 GMT -5
I dont blame them if MJF is going to be out far longer than expected that they plan to get Cole out of the Undisputed Kingdom.
Been thinking about this as a possibility for multiple days now: Undisputed Kingdom got off on the wrong foot, no pun intended, thanks to Cole's ankle injury and MJF's now prolonged absence, so while I really enjoy Roddy and Taven/Bennett have had some strong showings there's no getting around that they've been left floating in the wind, given they were supposed to be the team that felt like they were kind of "taking over the show". Well, the Bucks went into EVP mode, Okada was brought in, Perry's returned, and you know you need to protect all four of those guys; you've got a real life close friendship between the Bucks and Cole, all of whom are heel right now; and you know the Undisputed guys can more easily eat pins if need be, and it'd make the Bucks look even stronger having more people to call on to go after their enemies...all kind of adds up, doesn't it? Cole also became a pretty strong prime demo ratings draw last year while paired with MJF, so integrating him into the main storyline for the promotion right now could pay some dividends on that front. Now, while this is incredibly doubtful to me, what'd be kind of incredible is if Steen's contract was due up soon and he could join in and fully remake those old PWG angles, but that's some indie golden era dreaming on my part.
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Post by HMARK Center on May 10, 2024 9:59:31 GMT -5
The whole POINT of asking things like this is to ask them at the worst possible time for the person being asked. You don't want them to be able to wash it away with weasel words. It's supposed to do damage. That's what a good question does. If Triple H doesn't like being asked questions about the sexual harassment happening in his company (something that's been a consistent pattern since Velveteen Dream), he could always try running a company where people don't do sexual harassment. Some executives just don’t want that kind of grind…
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Post by HMARK Center on May 10, 2024 6:08:56 GMT -5
Man, haven't been to AC in a good while, just thinking about that now.
I decided I want to attempt a summer that involves a lot of baseball-centered stops where I follow the Mets on a couple of road trips: I'd love to get back to Chicago in late June, since my first trip there ended up being incredibly short (and rainy), which would mean a game on the South Side before getting up to Wrigley for the Mets/Cubs series. Might also do an overnight to the DC/Baltimore area; haven't been to Camden Yards since I was a kid, and the Mets will play the Nats around the Fourth of July.
The absurd one I'm mulling over is if I can realistically work out a trip that involves going to LA, then Denver, then Seattle in the course of just over a week. Only been to LA once, haven't been to Denver or Seattle, but just feels like a pricey balancing act I'd have a hell of a time trying to keep from tipping over. Still, I'd like to try...
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Post by HMARK Center on May 10, 2024 5:53:30 GMT -5
How about we stop impugning the motives of other posters, say our piece, and move the @#$% on. The rest is just people swimming in circles.
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Post by HMARK Center on May 9, 2024 21:09:42 GMT -5
The Rangers' ability to often be the worse team on the ice yet win all the time is insanely frustrating and awful to watch.
For all that is holy, don't let these assholes win the Cup this year.
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Post by HMARK Center on May 9, 2024 19:25:32 GMT -5
Main thing I think AEW would like going into the finalizing of the new media deal is probably making sure that demo average is as close to or over .25 as possible, seems that's kind of a sweet spot.
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Post by HMARK Center on May 9, 2024 17:46:59 GMT -5
Of note, the countdown with Swerve and Christian and featuring them in the biggest usual quarter is a great sign that AEW doesn't want to do to Swerve what I think they inadvertently did to Hangman during his reign: they came off such a huge angle to get him the title, but then didn't carry through on making him feel like the most important part of the show afterwards, as it all coincided with Punk coming into the company and getting a lot of the premier quarterly spots.
Combine that with them giving Swerve what they knew would be a massive lead-in on Collision when he cut his first full promo as champ and it at least tells me their aim is in the right place, even if you can argue it wasn't smart to give away Swerve vs. Claudio without at least a week or two of build.
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Post by HMARK Center on May 9, 2024 17:43:38 GMT -5
I think a developmental system like WWE's really only works if you want to groom your talent to work a specific style like WWE does. Otherwise, having connections with the indies, various wrestling schools, and other smaller promotions they do already does a lot of the legwork an internal developmental system does. I'd say the one weakness they have is promos outside of the wrestlers naturally good at them, so a dedicated promo course could do a lot to help shore that up. This was part of why a few months in NJPW was great for Jack Perry: once the guy was being featured for an entire tour, that meant he got to do a post-match promo every single show. Same thing as talking in front of a crowd? No, but it's a huge way for a wrestler to discover their voice and what kind of tone/mannerisms/inflections/whatever they think best communicate who they are and how their character should be perceived. But yeah, ultimately I don't really see the purpose of copying a WWE style system for this; the elephant in the room is that the PC just really hasn't churned out a lot of high end names for WWE, at least wrestlers who weren't already well established elsewhere and just needed a brief run in NXT to get used to the "WWE style", something I'm admittedly not a fan of. To be fair it's done better for the women, I think, but even then the number of draws they've built from the ground up isn't anything to write home about. A dedicated training system is a lot more straightforward for a live events-based promotion, like NJPW and other puro companies. You allow your new, young, raw recruits to go out and open shows against one another and eat pins in tag matches with veterans they get to work with, and the crowd accepts it because they know they're basically just watching a preliminary match, they've already paid their ticket and gotten into the building (or paid money for your streaming service), and most of these promotions have a history of developing that talent and some fans like that feeling of "I watched this guy grow from when he was a young boy!" This lets the guys go out, work a super basic style when they're beginning, work 5-10 minute matches in front of crowds on the regular, build themselves up to slowly add more moves and more personality, then build all that up to an excursion and character/gimmick development, where they're literally away for months on end. You can't really do that as much with American TV, depending on what networks want from your product. When you're worried about quarterly or even minute-by-minute ratings, when you can't dedicate lengthy matches to unproven draws just learning the ropes, when your audience will tune out quickly if you're dedicating time to raw recruits, etc., it's just a lot tougher to put a system together that both gets people their needed reps and doesn't do anything that derails your product.
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Post by HMARK Center on May 9, 2024 17:14:09 GMT -5
Huh, seems like they had a weaker lead-in than normal. Also interesting to notice the ad breaks and how evenly they're distributed before Q7; guessing Jericho and/or Copeland volunteered to eat that extra break.
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Post by HMARK Center on May 9, 2024 17:10:58 GMT -5
The idea AEW has to stay with the tired trope of "real babyfaces get beat down every week" is a weird. Swerve was a calculating ruthless character that why he got popular. He wanted the top prize as was willing to do anything to get there. Now he's getting his ass handed to him because reasons. Eh, you've gotta give him adversity now, and if we're gonna get the vibe that the EVPs are stacking the deck against him, this is one of the ways to forward that. Obviously not a good thing if it starts happening week-in, week-out, of course, but two weeks to establish first they're sending him a challenger who'll play just as dirty as him and then that they can take his support system away is a start; they've got two and a half weeks until the PPV, so he'll likely be getting one (or more) over on Christian before then.
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Post by HMARK Center on May 9, 2024 12:52:32 GMT -5
If there's a complaint to be had about someone like Eddie, it's the main reasonable complaint I've heard people have about general AEW booking: that you'll often get a crowning moment for some wrestlers, but it feels rare for someone to really break through to the next level. Eddie's won a triple crown and beat each senior member of the BCC between fall and winter of '23-'24, but the follow-up booking still largely has you feeling like he's perpetual underdog Eddie, which makes it feel like he's kind of staying level. He's by no means in a bad place: dude's feuding with Kazuchika-@#$%ing-Okada, for God's sake, and he could easily challenge for the World title at any time and it'd feel legitimate. But it's also true that he's had these big moments that didn't feel like they translated into something much bigger than where he was before, you know? It makes overcoming the BCC guys, especially someone as protected as Moxley, not seem as important.
That said, again, the way the story was presented here was that Kenny and/or FTR put out an open call for roster members to sign up to take on the Elite, so in kayfabe it wouldn't at all be shocking if Eddie physically knocked everyone out of the way as he ran full-speed to sign up first.
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Post by HMARK Center on May 9, 2024 8:17:21 GMT -5
So Edmonton, uh...kinda shit the bed, huh?
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Post by HMARK Center on May 9, 2024 8:12:28 GMT -5
I will say of the Nintendo 64 games: to me they're a great example of a game (well, plural in this case) being more interesting due to having a lot of ambition behind it even if the execution didn't fully hit the mark...and when you read about the development history of the game you can tell there was plenty more they wanted to do, but likely couldn't due to the limitations of the era. They got a lot of flack from people over the years, but were reviewed strongly early on in large part due to that ambition showing through - the day/night cycle, having a waxing and waning moon (would've loved for that to be more of an influence on things like enemy strength), vampiric status effects, and one of the most ominous atmospheres of any games in the series, actually getting closer to that 'horror' feeling than the series typically does.
But, again...the execution, particularly that first generation 3D stuff (wonky camera, some imprecise platforming, etc.), is a legitimate concern.
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Post by HMARK Center on May 9, 2024 7:02:39 GMT -5
Dude today I watched a 2018 RAW where commentary said Liv Morgan loves to refer to herself as a "juvenile delinquent" I want my f***ing cheese in the mail You waived your right to legal compensation when you ignored the stated health risks assumed by viewing most Raws from the 2010s, particularly 2017-2019.
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Post by HMARK Center on May 9, 2024 6:47:33 GMT -5
Hangman's music is gonna hit during this match, and it'll lead to an incredibly tense two minutes or so as he decides who he's gonna Buckshot...
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Post by HMARK Center on May 9, 2024 6:41:13 GMT -5
She's so turning heel, stealing the title, and setting up Willow to chase her through the summer.
Count me in.
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Post by HMARK Center on May 9, 2024 6:39:51 GMT -5
Had to get to this point with the Embassy; hard to make Swerve a full babyface if he's got a trio of jacked up monsters protecting him. Also gives you a bit of intrigue on if Nana is going to stick with him, or if he got paid off, too (guessing he stays with Swerve).
But tying it in with the Bucks works, too; you can basically set things up where the Bucks keep Swerve at arms length, not necessarily wanting to deal with him personally but always trying to make his life harder. Eventually, they likely push the Hangman Button and bring Page in with the promise that they'll give him full backing to destroy Swerve, and then you can let these guys have a full-on, multi-month, multi-match main event title feud.
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Post by HMARK Center on May 9, 2024 6:28:06 GMT -5
I know Metroidvanias really took over, but I'll always think the core nature of Castlevania is an action platformer where it feels like the castle itself is an entity actively trying to stop you. My biggest qualm with the Metroidvanias has usually been that the environment just feels kind of flat, since it's not as emphasized in the gameplay style...well, that, and just how easy you can make the bosses with enough leveling up, but that's just something inherent to a lot of RPG style games.
Doesn't change that Symphony of the Night has a pretty killer soundtrack, though.
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Post by HMARK Center on May 9, 2024 5:34:26 GMT -5
Mongo McMichael and Jim Duggan to fend off the NWO in WarGames. I mean, they *are* going to lose, since that's likely the narrative right now before a younger, more "homegrown" Team AEW takes the Elite down after awhile, but Holy Hyperbole, Batman.
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