BigJackTaylor

3 hours ago, Devon Malcolm said:

Reported.

Scratches chin. Oh hi Jeremy 

Small Faces- Ogdens Nut Gone Flake 

Oasis - The Masterplan 

The La's- The La's 

As with most documentaries there are always unintentionally hilarious characters.

With the Fyre doc it was this guy.

And one of his brilliant stories.

Authority figures are so done. Have a faceless governing body who make the decisions and managers of factions who do the talking.

I feel making the concept of a Pro Wrestling Promotion different to what 'the norm' is, is paramount to creating a successful market so anything they can throw at it that is so far away from WWE can only be a good thing.  You aren't going to get very far just doing the same thing. Tony Khan as heel GM etc. WWE is just far too oiled and stable now that having another show that is similar will just die on it's arse. 

But maybe people just want the same but just not under the WWE umbrella?

8 hours ago, IANdrewDiceClay said:

Ranking system and win/loss records is the latest thing being touted by this company. Hope Cody Rhodes is around where Fulham end up, if that's the case. Opinions on this ranking thing?

Win loss records are a great idea but it's how you implement it which would be tricky.

If they aren't going to be a touring circus act doing 300 live events a year like WWE it might work. If your only seeing your world champions wrestle 12 times a year those results will matter. 

13 minutes ago, tiger_rick said:

It could be a useful device for enhancing anticipation. The problem is you can't have a pull apart brawl every single month but if they are sensible and do about 4 PPVs a year, then having a weigh in and press day brings a bit of legitimacy to the thing and a killer angle there could add eyes on the product through social media interaction.

I always liked the pre-Mania 14 presser. That gave a sense of legitimacy and the WWF felt really big time, even though they were still losing. Better than that one where they announced Flair's opponent for Mania 8 anyway.

Yeah. Say you do 5 or 6 big PPVs a year in Vegas with a presser and weigh ins it would give a big time feel. 

Get on the blower to Michael Buffer and get him in. 

Class.

2 hours ago, David said:

Actual weight classes would be far too limiting I think, but there's definitely some mileage in weigh-ins.

When a wrestler is announced before a match they tend to mention his weight, don't they? They have to find that weight out from somewhere, so why not do an actual weigh-in for PPV's the night before? It adds an extra level of hype, as we've seen in the UFC over the years...

It's an extra event for fans to attend the night before the show, and as long as it's not done to death there's scope for weigh-in brawls and guys losing control, which obviously would lead to them "being fined" like 20% of their purse and so on.

Agreed

I would also base fueds on faction conflict. Say you have the bullet club. That faction will have a manager/spokesperson who deals with the governing body to put matches together kinda like a Bob Arum or Eddie Hearn. 

Win and loss records would be a decent idea to explore too although I'm not sure how you could implement that with how pro wrestling is presented. Maybe allow talent to work elsewhere and kayfabe call them the amateurs or summat. 

It was always a dream to go and see the 123 boy 

Christ, can we please go back to talking about weight classes 

13 minutes ago, Maverick said:

Big Jack Knew.

My bleedin balls weigh more than thicko 

4 minutes ago, Keith Houchen said:

Got to chuckle at someone pointing out that Big Jack doesn't understand weight!

I lol'd 

Rememeber I weighed nearly 40 stone at morleys 

4 minutes ago, thicko said:

Not sure you understand how weight works?! 

Please educate.

18 minutes ago, HarmonicGenerator said:

If the lucha goes through the weight classes to get his chance against the big monsters, doesn't that negate the point of the weight classes because you'd be ignoring them? Or does the lucha guy have to gain 100 pounds to complete this angle?

If the lucha is that good it doesn't matter surely.

Like Manny Pacquiao beating Antonio Margarito at Light Middleweight when he was half the size.

If your good enough or over enough in wrestling terms you go up.

55 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

Well, for one, they're not going to have Batista, Goldberg and Ryback as heavyweights, and they may not even have Kenny Omega as middleweights.

All weight divisions - or divisions of any kind - achieve in wrestling is to impose needless limitations.

Because the first step in putting together an intriguing wrestling match is to put two wrestlers together that, either through their size, their characters, or their fighting style, makes the audience ask, on some level, "how will these two interact?" or, in many cases, "how could X possibly beat Y?". It's that question that fundamentally sells a wrestling match.

Same goes for stuff like @HarmonicGenerator's suggestions - they all sound well and good as a thought experiment, or an approach to booking an indie promotion marketed at workrate nerds, but it's insane to book a wrestling promotion aiming for mass appeal by removing every tool that allows wrestling to tell stories. By throwing in additional referees, instant replays, reversed decisions, you're adding a mock sense of "legitimacy" that no one will buy into because no one believes wrestling is legitimate, at the expense of storytelling tools that have served wrestling well for a century. There's a reason referees miss tags, make incorrect calls, or don't have decisions reversed, and it's because it's what best serves the stories pro-wrestling tells.

 

There are things wrestling can, and should, borrow from the world of legitimate sports (I like the idea of the Match of the Day style structure and punditry, that's largely how I would want to present TV wrestling), but not at the expense of everything that makes wrestling unique, and makes wrestling work.

Interesting.

Just because it's a work doesn't mean you can't create some sort of pseudo legitimacy. Hell, the fact that it is a work would mean although there were limitations with having the weight classes you could create a lucha  goes through the weight classes and gets his chance against the big monsters story. 

Your basically saying because it's fake just cabaret act it by which I mean make it hokey cos that's all people know.

Although NJPW has some sort of pseudo sport legitimacy and that seems to work doesn't it. 

19 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

What's the benefit of weight classes, though?

It makes sense in legitimate combat sports, but not in pro-wrestling. In wrestling, it just reduces the number of potential matches available to you, and takes away the simplest story wrestling can possibly tell - David vs. Goliath.

I don't know why anyone would want that, unless they were attempting to present wrestling as faux-MMA, and a promotion centred around the Young Bucks will be nothing of the sort.

To be different. To not do what has gone before. To also not be lazy and stick with a concept and have the discipline to see it through which would hopefully over time educate the fan base into realising that they were watching a different style of pro wrestling. I'd go as far as having time limits for matches and have a judges scorecard should the match to the distance. Think of the storylines that would create.  

Surely having big fuckers like Ryback, Batista and Goldberg as your heavyweight torch bearers and then underneath a middleweight division with Your omegas etc and then under that a lightweight or welterweight division helps create a real difference when watching a card. 

Then say if your middleweight champion has cleaned out the division he then goes up and then has a whole new group of fresh matches but against clearly bigger and tougher opponents.

We've been accustomed and normalised seeing David up against goliath that going in the opposite direction would be an interesting change imo of couse.

Ultimately AEW aren't going in that direction and it will be interesting how long they last when they realise going up against the wwe and a product that caters to everyone won't work.

22 minutes ago, Factotum said:

They shouldn't be trying to be competition, they should be trying to be a viable alternative. It will take a few years before they're even running as a fully functioning company (if managed well) I don't think any of those guys are expecting to go head to head with WWE.

Which is why they should have been all about been completely different from the very start.

*Weight classes 

*Weigh ins 

*use of studio analysis presentation 

*fueds based on factions/promotional groups.

4 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

Punditry, or some kind of in-studio framing device, is how I would approach wrestling on TV if I had the opportunity. On one hand it can be used to present a more real sports-like approach (I'm thinking of the "Bracketology" hype shows that WWE have done for the Cruiserweight Classic and Mae Young Classic combined with the pre-show panels and something like Talking Smack), but it also can be used for goofy, Tuesday Night Titans style comedy, Piper's Pit style talk show segments, or just setting up all kinds of angles.

Anything that takes you away from the presentation looking like the WWE and, more importantly, like the WWE has looked for decades. It doesn't need to be the WWE style "open with pyro, commentators welcome you to the show from a ringside announce table", but that's what everyone who gets on TV does. 

Yup. Agree 100%

With regards to weight classes it's about having a discipline to see it through. 

The one big issue if you went pseudo sport would be a lack of gimmick matches and how fans would take to just not having any. 

3 minutes ago, Carbomb said:

Whilst I can understand wanting to make a more professional sports-style product, I think anyone doing so needs to be careful as to which elements they take. Press conferences and weigh-ins, for example: pressers make sense for World titles, but I really don't think weigh-ins are a good idea. You'd have to have weigh-ins for every match, and it's important to bear in mind that wrestlers "fight" much, much more frequently than boxers or MMA fighters actually fight, and wrestling events are much more frequent in general than MMA or boxing ones. Imagine having weigh-ins, even just for the main events of TV shows, every single week? Would get old really quickly.

Let's assume you'd just have them for PPV - you'd have to establish early on that all other weigh-ins are behind closed doors, I guess.

Like you say, With weigh ins you can smoke and mirrors it and for the weekly shows you can just put the weight in the wrestlers graphic. 

It's about making it different to the competition. Look at the first cruiserweight tournament. There was a different feel and that's why it was a success. It wasn't that they were all doing flips and flops. 

Same thing with the press conferences. One a month before the big MGM event would be special.

They should have had a UFC style press conference with all the talent sitting there and bouncing off each other.

I'd have a backdrop of the logos, sponsors and the date and location of the MGM Event.

I'd get Michael Buffer in to be MC for the big events as he doesn't have HBO anymore.

I'd get Ryback and Big Dave in ASAP. That's a cracking world heavyweight title match to start with.

Tbh I would have waited until TV was confirmed and all of the major talent was signed before doing anything.

Make it look legit and important not naff and small time.

7 hours ago, King Pitcos said:

It doesn't. There are plenty of successful promotions that don't have a weekly TV show. But they're small-time.

Don't get me wrong. TV is massively important. UFC have TV rights and so do the major Boxing promotions. But wrestling seem to have this fascination with this live tv soap opera concept.

Why not a 1 hour or 90 min show that builds to the monthly big event.

I dunno. I guess I would go more sports than entertainment if I was to start a new promotion. Be as far away from  wwe as possible. 

The one thing I don't understand is why wrestling has this set plan of what is needed to be a success or indeed just be a wrestling promotion . Why does a successful wrestling have to have a weekly episodic tv show? 

Yeah it worked for wwe but times have changed. There are other ways to build and grow a promotion without just doing the same old same old. 

Why the stupid names for shows. 'Double or nothing?' It's a tad corny. Its the same overdone concept that will only end when a really progressive group come along and do something truly different.

From what I've seen so far AEW will be another wwe lite company that does nothing really different in front of the camera. 

Shame really as they clearly have a decent backer behind them.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.hollywoodreporter.com/amp/live-feed/making-a-murderer-part-2-details-premiere-date-revealed-1146768

Making a Murderer, 10 part return in 2019. Can't wait.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/sport/amp/boxing/45611289

Fury vs Wilder confirmed. 1st December 18.

Venue to be decided 

https://www.google.com/amp/www.latimes.com/sports/boxing/la-sp-boxing-newsletter-20180918-story.html%3foutputType=amp

Mayweather vs Pacquiao 2 from Toyko in December looks like it could be finalised this week. As much as Floyd will win again I would be up for it. 

When I was younger we had the guy (con artist) who lived over the road who sold me and my brother fake Rockport. They weren't RockFort or anything but they looked completely shit. £40 which was steep tbh. I think I wore them twice. The embarrassment when everyone at school knew they were fake was too much and they went suspiciously missing. Never to be seen again. Sorry dad.

Another neighbour back in the day who lived next door to the con man who knocked his missus around. I remember waking up to seeing 2 police cars over the road and that big twat getting carted off. I was friends with one of his sons too. Sad really.