BomberPat

3 hours ago, Accident Prone said:

I'm sure SBA has me on ignore but I'm highlighting the parts here that are laughably wrong.

Like it or not, Progress and the Havoc/Ospreay saga are a massive reason why the UK scene exploded like it did.

Absolutely. I'm not a PROGRESS guy - I've never been to one of their shows, have been pretty critical of them over the years, and generally recognise that they're not really my thing, so this isn't me as one of their "Ultras" giving them way more credit than they're due - but you can't deny the impact they had on the UK scene.

If nothing else, pre-PROGRESS, London didn't have a wrestling scene to speak of. The previous British wrestling "boom" barely broke into London, in the late '00s you could literally count the number of documented shows in London by British companies on your fingers. PROGRESS were the first promotion to regularly run central London, and laid the groundwork for a scene where, most months, you're pretty spoiled for choice. PROGRESS aren't the be all and end all, but you don't have the latest British wrestling boom without the emergence of London as a viable scene, and you don't get the emergence of the London scene without PROGRESS. The Havoc/Ospreay angle was a huge part of their success, and bought them a lot of goodwill as "good storytellers" long after their booking stopped warranting it, and it was largely the brainchild of Jimmy Havoc and Jim Smallman.

I'd disagree there. PROGRESS doesn't get where it is today without the Havoc/Ospreay feud.

I don't think Havoc will ever be anything more than a midcard hand for them, and I think that's the right spot - not everyone is going to be main eventing, they need a fleshed out undercard as well. He's got a fantastic mind for wrestling, though - I've seen him give the sort of feedback that really gives people the "lightbulb moment" they need to make something click, or to bring things into focus, and I've known him to spend a lot of time with newer talent offering advice for no real gain of his own. If they can make use of that side of him, he's a worthwhile signing for any company.

I've been pretty dreadful at watching new films for the past few years, and comedies for probably even longer, but the first to come to mind when reading the thread title was The Death Of Stalin. Then probably the 2011 Muppets movie.

8 minutes ago, PowerButchi said:

But even the set-ups haven't neccessarily been great. The Dustin vs Cody story was some arse water about killing off the attitude era when the match itself told the story that should have been told alll along. That of the aging gunslinger trying to turn back the years one more time.

You're not wrong. Wrestling so rarely gives you a genuine, compelling story with that much truth behind it, and that many layers behind it - you had Dustin as the old-timer trying to prove he could still go, Cody as the younger wrestler wanting to prove that he had made it to the top, but layered with decades of real life drama; Cody as the "favourite son", Dustin as the fuck-up, fighting over Dusty's legacy, decades of unresolved step-sibling tensions and generational struggle, plus the added backstory of their WWE run, Dustin having come to terms with the role Goldust plays in his career, while Cody has never fully accepted Stardust as part of him in the same way...then instead we get this "killing the Attitude Era" bollocks from Cody, and him effectively positioning it as Cody vs. Triple H by proxy. A real mis-step, that one.

By the end, though, you could reduce it all to Dustin's promo package, the match, and the "I need my older brother" aftermath, and it's a great self-contained piece. But, like the Spears angle, like the match with Nick Aldis at All-In, they're on and done. They're "here's why we're having the match, here's the match", and then on to the next one. You can do that when you're working PPV to PPV, but it's not a good sign for working weekly TV, or trying to drag one of those feuds beyond one match and into a three match series or beyond.

3 minutes ago, HarmonicGenerator said:

On the ‘announce vs surprise’ front, The Rock being on this week’s SmackDown was big enough news to make it onto the big news screens at Edinburgh train station this morning.

The screen also said he retired in 2004, but the fact he was on there suggests a certain level of importance you wouldn’t get from a surprise.

I’m not suggesting Punk would command anywhere near that level of attention, but an announcement gets your eyes on the product in advance of the moment. You can’t miss out on it like if it was a surprise and you found out later on Twitter.

I don't disagree but, again, this is AEW's first TV show, with a lot of hype behind it. Smackdown has been on the air for 20 years, and the hype of this week's episode being a "series premiere" doesn't make sense outside of the US market, so you're much less likely to look to Smackdown for "must see TV" after years of it being an afterthought. So WWE need to go the extra mile to say, "this show that hasn't been important enough to watch live for a decade, you should make an exception and watch live this week", in a way that, "AEW TV for the first time ever" doesn't.

I suppose the question is that if you hype CM Punk for show one, where do you go for show two? You need the mixture of hooks and cliffhangers. You want to get people watching, but you also need to get them to come back. Where WWE routinely go wrong in wheeling out the legends for the big shows is that it rarely if ever translates into an ongoing narrative, so they don't give you a reason to watch the next episode.

It just occurred to me that it would be a typically WWE Ruining Everything dark bargain of a news story if it was revealed that CM Punk was returning....to join Team Hogan in Saudi Arabia.

It's difficult to say with AEW, as we have no frame of reference for what AEW weekly TV looks like, but from their PPVs, I'd say they're not risking overplaying their hand. 

When AEW first formed, the rumours around who they were interested in signing were insane. You had your CM Punk, of course, but there was Meltzer suggesting that half the WWE roster wanted to jump ship, gossip sites saying that they were talking to Randy Orton, Undertaker being booked for Starrcast had some people convinced he'd show up in AEW, with the Sportskeeda-type sites even suggesting that we might get Undertaker vs. Sting in AEW. I even saw someone on Twitter say that they were "confident" John Cena would go to AEW because he was friends with Cody Rhodes.

From day one, they've been a company having to manage expectations that they never realistically gave anyone - and I think they've done a good job of it. They talk a big game, but generally on things they can back up. They're not presenting themselves, by and large, as bigger than WWE, or as somewhere where anyone could show up a la '90s WCW. I think walking that line of balancing expectations while still delivering an impressive product is going to be one of their first stumbling blocks, though they've managed reasonably well thus far, along with their ongoing identity crisis. Cody is one person I can see suffering from weekly TV - he's developed the reputation as being the more "old school" guy and the "storyteller", but the "stories" he's had to manage have worked in isolation - Cody vs Dustin was a set-up and a match, Cody vs. Spears was a set-up and a match. The "story" was one and done. I'm curious how he's going to adapt to more long-form storytelling.

Barrie Masters of Eddie & The Hot Rods.

Still a banger.

10 minutes ago, DavidB6937 said:

You can have the 'anything can happen' vibe with someone else, but Punk? That's a guy that will make people choose to watch AEW over NXT, or even if you're a lapsed fan.

Broadly, I'd agree.

But, thinking only slightly outside the box, it's a way to get people to watch next week. Tonight already has the hype and the intrigue of being the first episode, but episode two can't rely on that. Ending episode one with as big a shock/surprise as CM Punk showing up, though? That's going to make you tune in again, and potentially make every episode "must see".

I saw people complaining that they revealed LAX as Jericho's partners early, rather than on the show. But the hype in some quarters around this company is such that people will have worked themselves up into believing just about anyone could be partnered with Jericho, so it would have been a disappointment to have the "surprise" turn out to be two guys already on the roster. They would run the risk of becoming TNA, over-promising and under-delivering on every "surprise".

I take it all back, I've just seen a spoiler on Twitter that makes me love this now.

He was a miserable sod when I met him as well. Meet and Greet before one of his stand-up shows, so the whole thing was very perfunctory and mechanical anyway, but just seemed to put zero effort into pretending that he was interested in people. I don't know how many nights he'd already been touring, but just that one parade of neckbeards, black t-shirts and checked shirts was probably hard work enough, in fairness.

I did laugh when I got home and realised that he'd signed my photo, "To Patrick, Mick Foley", while my then-girlfriend got, a "Nice to meet you" added to hers. Wasn't nice to meet me, obviously.

Back on topic, one of my best charity shop finds was a completely untouched 1989 Ghostbusters colouring book.

21 minutes ago, uklaw said:

As for the matches, I saw a report from Night 1 that suggests that most of the matches were under 5 minutes in length and that only Aldis vs Storm went over 10 minutes. No spoilers here, as the match was announced ahead of the tapings.

Not necessarily a bad thing - if you watch old Memphis wrestling, you're not getting twenty-minute classics, you're getting a few four minute squashes and a ton of promos and character development, and it feels like that's the vibe they're aiming for here. I assume that when it makes TV it'll maybe be interspersed with promo footage and edited highlights of other matches? 

I guess the question is what, if anything, they're building towards, and whether there's still a market for this kind of wrestling presentation.

2 minutes ago, Accident Prone said:

With the exception of a couple of names, the roster looks dreadful so I'll be giving this a miss. It's a great concept though!

Yeah, looking at results from the tapings there's maybe three people that have piqued my interest, one of whom I can easily see elsewhere, and a couple of people who would actively turn me off a product.

Been taking a break from being a horrible goose to catch up on Final Fantasy VIII Remaster.

Backstory - I did not like this game when it came out. I adored VII, and went back and played previous games in the series, so could not have been more hyped for it on release. But then along comes this game with a wonky battle/stats system, a storyline that feels made up as they go along, and it just felt like a huge letdown.

I'm enjoying it a lot more this time around. Being older and "wiser", I'm enjoying the junctioning system of stat management a lot more, and playing a lot more tactically than I've probably ever played a Final Fantasy game before. There are still aspects of it than annoy me - characters having a maximum number of different magic they can stockpile, having to "junction switch" every time the story forces me to change party members, being limited to four commands so having to choose between whether Zell uses Magic or Items - but it's a lot more coherent than I remember. The fast-forward option is an absolute godsend when it comes to drawing a ton of magic from one or two monsters, and I've basically played the whole game with it switched on.

Because I've spent less time grinding/exploring than I would have done first time around, it's all gone by rather quickly (I'm up to Disc 3 now), so the story hasn't felt quite as cobbled together as it did previously. And there's some lines of dialogue, and weird hard to find supplementary text, that foreshadow some of the odder plot developments so they're not quite as out of nowhere as I'd always thought. Though the "here's a significant, insane bit of backstory, but I guess none of us remember, and the only who does just didn't think to mention it" reveal is still unforgivably ridiculous even with two lines of dialogue ten hours earlier to allude to part of it.

Lance Russell and Jesse Ventura for me, even moreso than Russell and Heenan.

While Heenan was amazing, and at times could add so much to a story, Ventura on a match-to-match basis felt like a more believable heel analyst - he wasn't just supporting the baddies because that was his job, or making excuses for them, he fundamentally believed that they were in the right.

That combined with Lance Russell, who wasn't just a by-the-books babyface announcer, but also a welcoming, familiar Saturday morning TV presence, would be wonderful.

2 hours ago, The King of Old School said:

Actually looking forward to NWA Power, do we know who is on commentary yet?

Joe Galli (me neither) and Jim Cornette

Oh that reminds me of this one from a few years back;

Picked up Mick Foley's novel for a quid or two, got it home and realised it was signed. I think it's personalised (to Dylan, IIRC), but still.

Boring typography nerd explanation, but "Back Spacer" was the correct terminology, as rather than an input key, it's an actual physical lever to perform the function of moving the page back one space. 

There's probably a whole sub-category of this thread for, "comments in reply to local news stories", and 99% of them seem to be somehow blaming whatever the story is on immigrants, but this took me by surprise.

That's gorgeous, and reminds me that I bloody love a Shift Lock key.

5 minutes ago, Accident Prone said:

I still think that excuse is just a front. WWE can peddle out that reasoning until the cows come home, but the Big Trump Fundraiser letting their independent contractors work in Saudi whilst pulling them from the dangerous Quildan territory just feels bogus. 

I think it's dubious - as I said, RevPro have been on the blacklist since day one anyway - but the incident was absolutely on WWE's radar, and there is a difference between their talent working Saudi Arabia where they're lauded, wined and dined, and probably micro-managed from the moment they arrive to the moment they leave, so not actually in any danger at all, to working indie shows where WWE have no control over them. 

The main reason WWE get involved on indie bookings for NXT UK talent is out of concern that their talent might get hurt, and be unable to work WWE dates. If they feel that what happened with Aaren - and how RevPro managed it - doesn't satisfy them, that feels like a justified decision. Because chances are it wasn't just Ligero and Conners pulled from this show, but NXT UK referees too, and if WWE feel that they can't guarantee their safety, they'll make that call.

Of course, it could all be four dimensional chess designed to make AEW look like pricks for offering their support to the company that battered a ref, who knows?

In which case, fair fucks to them. 

I don't know if it's true or not - RevPro have pretty much always been on the "don't work" list for NXT UK talent, after all - but it's good for WWE to be able to set a precedent. 

Makes AEW look a little more foolish for rushing in to help out, though.

The key difference here is that it sounds like he would be signing with FOX to host a WWE recap show, not working for WWE directly. It wouldn't necessarily translate to him wrestling. Though you know once that foot's through the door they'll likely be trying to talk him into it.

On the same topic, just seen this on Twitter;

From the pilot of a Jerry Jarrett/Jim Cornette pitched project that's basically "American Idol for wrestling", with Cornette as one of the judges.

So Jim Cornette, complaining about wrestlers exposing the business, is actively exposing the business and presumably wants a broader audience to see it. Jim Cornette, who every day seems to be insulting some wrestler or other as not belonging in a ring, is working on a format which positively ensures that inferior wrestlers will receive a platform and a paycheque. It's almost as if it's got nothing to do with him protecting the imagined integrity of the wrestling business, and everything to do with him working a gimmick that allows him to be an arsehole with impunity.

3 minutes ago, Otto Dem Wanz said:

You know what they've never done before that could disrupt WWE's creative malaise or even just provide a bit of a short term publicity boost - SEND IT TO THE FANS.

Select a random sample that includes all demographics - men, women, kids, "casuals" (however many are left now), old-timers/saddos like most of us, lapsed fans, etc etc, and have them write storylines. 

Kayfabe's dead anyway so its not like it would be "exposing" the biz.

This is a half-baked post because my lunch break is nearly over but wondered what everyone thought the troubles or potential benefits of this could be. 

It would be the Itchy & Scratchy focus group. "You want a realistic down-to-earth show that's completely off the wall and swarming with magic robots?"

And one thing that becomes abundantly clear in conversation with a lot of wrestling fans is that being a fan of wrestling doesn't remotely equate to having the know-how to write wrestling.

That one's been around forever. Obviously it's the schoolkids that are booking holidays in foreign countries, driving 4x4s, and making the purchasing decisions for the family.