Duke

 

Hes a top UFC fighter

 

I expected his push to be mid next year too, hopefully he isnt on top til then

WWE aren't going to push someone because they are the same nationality as some UFC bloke.

And the essay

There's been some...interesting how to save wwe posts in this topic, but I thibk C-Rocks needs to be saved for posterity. I genuinely didn't think anyone still thought like that. Hire Russo? more stip matches on raw? Yikes.

I remember meeting s girl from Charlotte, north Carolina who didnt know who ric flair is. Devestating

I meaning an actual group of religious zealots. There's load of people they could use who arn't doing much and you could have them come all in white and bang about how they've found The Lord.

 

I assume it's not been done because actual Christian groups would get upset about being misrepresented, and it's probably not that great an idea anyways

Yeah, but my understanding is that tjeure doing a preacher gimmick, they just didn't want to talk about God whilst doing it

Have they ever done a full on evangelist group gimmick before?

Apart from the Newday?

I’ve been thinking a fair bit about this whole “copy the style of Breaking Bad etc” thing and I honestly haven’t the faintest idea what that’s even supposed to mean. I mean, apart from “just write better”, I can’t work out what it’s supposed to look like. I mean, if Game of Thrones was 3 hours and every single week, it’d probably be pretty boring most of the time too. I guess having deeper characters is part of it, but that relies on good acting and good understanding of the characters, which the writers don’t seem to have. The former speaks for itself as to why it’s a problem for a significant number of guys, and the latter is the peculiarity of how they write. They don’t decide on characters and cast people, they have guys who come up with a character (or more likely are given one by Vince) and then have to write around it, which is significantly harder.

It’s also, largely, that the storylines are driven to matches, rather than for development of characters. Look at Bray Wyatt. He has, potentially, a really interesting character, but as we’ve talked about many times here, it’s meaningless because he never accomplishes anything. This is partly because he’s been brought into feuds to put people over, but it’s also partly because WWE doesn’t want to have anyone affected by feuds with him long term, because feuds aren’t about character development, they’re about the match at the end. (While I don’t know for sure, I assume the writers are told “hey, these guys are having a match at the next event, get them there” and no more, making serious character development really hard.

I’m not sure copying the superhero trend is a wise idea (any more than they already are) either. The whole larger than life heroes and villains thing is a big part of wrestling anyway, and culture is reaching saturation point with super hero films, if it isn’t already

One of the things that makes Raw as difficult as it is to watch at the moment, and as hard for the character work to mean anything, is the lack of any real structure, and anything overarching linking it all together. It’s all just stuff that happens. It’s not really nailed to anything, and so over three hours, with nothing building on anything else, it’s just like watching 3 hours of disjointed youtube clips, and presumably makes real character development harder. TV always has a grander motivation for people. Walter White needs money, House needs to solve a puzzle, Batman is a Bat man. Wrestling doesn’t have that anymore

The “wrestling isn’t wrestling” video talked about how wrestling is a show about a wrestling show, which is becoming less and less true. If it *was* like that it’d probably be easier to follow. I’m not suggesting “oh just make it all UFC” because that’s so two thousand and late, but taking a similar structure and applying to the show would be better.  If you had people ranked(even just invisibly), with matches effecting the rank and the number one contender being an actual number one contender you make the inevitable loads of matches mean a bit more. If the matches mean more, then costing people matches, for example, means more, cheating means more and feuds mean more (and pay per views mean more!).  It also provides people with that grander motivation, doesn’t it? Everyone’s trying to reach the belt, climb to the top, but they have to deal with this guy along the way. To counterpoint bray wyatt from earlier, look at Kevin Owens. His character was far easier to grasp because he is all about making as much money as possible for his kids and he doesn’t care who he steps on to do it. You can supplement loads of the matches with documentary type things, skits, hype packages, actual interviews (rather than the garbage they put out now) to get characters across and again, everything means more.  This then allows you to build some wacky storylines around that, rather than have them be the central plot point in a disjointed mess. Make Raw about a wrestling federation filled with larger than life characters, rather than a sketch show, and it’ll be much easier to do something with. Right now it’s collapsing under it’s own pointless weight.

He made an account once saying in passing that Boydy was either a) dead of suicide when posting under one of his 4,000 new accounts or b) close to the point of suicide due to depression because of here.

Depressing

Hang on, I completely missed boydy faking his death. What happened there?

As part of the PC gaming master race, it looks like FIFA is still my only option as PES looked absolutely atrocious from the demo. Looked like it was made in 2009. It's a shame because I was really up for playing PES this year.

If I mentioned the UKFF on the door to the charity event, will I get in free? I'm not cheap or anything but if the charity is anti Chinese I'm not sure I can give in good conscience.

On the Rajah site, it says "Credit: Wrestling Observer Newsletter" but I don't know if you are having a go at the site I got it from or me directly. Regardless, surely it is the news item itself that should be the focal point of the discussion.

Well, it's mostly because Rajah is complete gash. There's also a lot of misquoting of reputable sources on there, so they're pretty disliked.

As for the item itself, as Ian says, it was one guy printing them all out. He may well have just not been coming or given up himself.

I haven't watched the special, but I'm not surprised. He's actually really, really good.

I wish people would leave off Randy Orton.

He works so hard for you

Woah, careful, if you drop that name any harder you might hurt someone

To be fair, agents of shield was extremely biege at best until winter soldier came about. Gotham does, mostly, get over the self referential "stop with all the riddles Edward nygma. You're such a riddle telling person!" After a few episodes and gets a bit more interesting. Plus, they have all sorts of plot twists ready to go when they just decide to totally change the canon, which keeps things interesting

Does anybody else think that Gotham is like, really really bad? I watched the first two episodes, and really did not like it. Some stuff was a good idea, but the show as a whole just was terrible.

It does get better as it goes on to be fair. It's not great, mostly let down by tone shifting around way too quickly and feeling way too "hey look everyone batman villains", but it's not bad watching as time goes on. 

If it had come out alongside Agents of SHIELD when that first came out, rather than after Daredevil, I'd probably think it was better.

You said that working for the camera is 1% of the performance, or rather you said that 99% of it wasn't that. That's saying it isn't important.

I think my favourite part of this whole thing is her putting #peoplepower at the end of all the engagement tweets.

 

There was that thing where the nXt winner got to have a title shot against whoever. Barrett took the WWE title, obviously. Kaval took the US title and was roundly mocked for it.

And then Fandango's season, it was just a tag title shot for the rookie and pro wasn't it? Which took him about two years to get, and with a different partner.

I completely forgot about that! Man, nxt used to be so rubbish.

There was that thing where the nXt winner got to have a title shot against whoever. Barrett took the WWE title, obviously. Kaval took the US title and was roundly mocked for it.

Sorry, to clarify I meant physical training. Not wrestling training. He seems to do loads of parkoury stuff, much of which is on YouTube. Does his own stunts too. Honestly he's probably in the best shape of anyone in that much.

You know if they do that it'd be Kane. And rubbish

The undertaker debuted in 1990 and has evolved over 25 years. Also the undertaker is a great performer but when he started, being a zombie covered his weaknesses. Finn balor having a split personality or being possessed by a literal denizen of hell in, again, a performer that's shown no glimmers of having the potential to pull off that character is quite different.

Don't get me wrong, I think theyre turning him heel against itami, and I look forward to seeing him as a heel, because apparently he was great in Japan like that. As in actually, not like Albert

Yeah, he's done a fair whack of training before. He's not exactly got a snoop Dogg physique.