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Rusev Day


tiger_rick

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10 minutes ago, PunkStep said:

AND he's a proper indy darling, to the point where you've had big chants of 'psycho killer' over the past couple of years whenever he's wrestling. That is a true testament to the work him, Gargano and the NXT writers have done with this whole feud.

Absolutely. Though NXT have the benefit of a more or less captive audience at Full Sail - particularly when they're taping multiple shows at once - so they can basically guarantee that the audience will be following the story along closely, and they'll know the audience well enough to know what buttons to press. What NXT are very good at is recognising what those buttons are, and how to get even the exciting new indie darling over as a heel - whether that's by working on their investment in a beloved babyface (Ciampa to Gargano, Owens to Zayn), or playing on their prejudices (Bobby Roode heeling on them by wanting to take away NXT's "indie" identity and make it something classier, Kevin Owens mocking fans for booing "Brooklyn" for the first Takeover was held outside of Full Sail, Baron Corbin beating up indie darlings, and so on).

Another thing Ciampa is superb at is social media heel work - I'm not, like some, of the belief that a heel needs to be a heel 24/7, in and out of the ring, but social media can be a really effective tool when used right. Ciampa doing stuff like posting photos from Johnny Gargano's wedding, talking about how they would be ruined for Johnny & Candace forever because they have Ciampa in them is fucking gold. That's the sort of thing that should make TV.

Ā 

What WWE lack for not having the captive audience that NXT gives them is an unprecedented amount of access. If they want to get someone over as a heel (or a face for that matter), they don't just have one segment of a two hour show in which to do it. They have an ungodly amount of television hours, plus the Network, WWE.com and YouTube effectively giving them an infinite number of hours in which to flesh out and explore someone's character, and then social media on top of that.

You want to get someone over as a heel to the "indie darling" audience? Find out what pushes their buttons - have your heel say something on social media that'll piss them off and get them talking (off the top of my head, thinking of Randy Orton criticising indie wrestlers for high spots, and fans not knowing what made a good match), take a page from Jim Cornette's book, it doesn't matter if they hate you on social media so long as they're still tagging you and talking about you. Leak a story to the Observer, or the NEWZ sites, that backs up your preconceptions of the heel. Take advantage of the pseudo-reality shows on the Network and drop bits of that personality into Table for 3 or Ride Along, or whatever else, so the audience thinks it's "real". Maybe drop something in on a podcast interview.Ā All while gradually introducing elements of it on TV, having him work against the indie darlings.

Kayfabe isn't dead, any more than it was in the '80s or '90s, we just have a different set of tools with which to approach it. Never in the history of wrestling has a company had the number of tools available to them that WWE have, and it's frustrating how little they use them, and how cookie cutter and inconsistent their characters largely remain despite having all the time in the world and all the tools to flesh them out and develop them fully.

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1 hour ago, BomberPat said:

Kayfabe isn't dead, any more than it was in the '80s or '90s, we just have a different set of tools with which to approach it. Never in the history of wrestling has a company had the number of tools available to them that WWE have, and it's frustrating how little they use them, and how cookie cutter and inconsistent their characters largely remain despite having all the time in the world and all the tools to flesh them out and develop them fully.

The whole post was great, but I'm singling out thisĀ last paragraph as it's so bloody spot-on.

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