Paid Members IANdrewDiceClay Posted January 14, 2019 Paid Members Share Posted January 14, 2019 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? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Devon Malcolm Posted January 14, 2019 Paid Members Share Posted January 14, 2019 Haven't they tried rankings systems in TNA before? If they want to bring back old stuff that won't work, why not bring in the Code of Honor too. Surely nobody wants this shit, or weigh-ins, who gives a shit about those? Just fucking fight. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BigJackTaylor Posted January 15, 2019 Share Posted January 15, 2019 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members garynysmon Posted January 15, 2019 Paid Members Share Posted January 15, 2019 9 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? It may be a less than subtle dig at the WWE’a 50/50 booking. Personally I don’t think you need to be that elaborate, TNA tried something similar with a league table during the Bound for Glory series which was well intentioned but came off as a bit meh. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members air_raid Posted January 15, 2019 Paid Members Share Posted January 15, 2019 55 minutes ago, garynysmon said: TNA tried something similar with a league table during the Bound for Glory series which was well intentioned but came off as a bit meh. "Meh" would have been preferable to what actually happened, with multi mans involved and all manner of bullshit and a battle royal worth fifty million points negating the previous three months of important-feeling matches. "Farce" more like it. Devised by a fool and executed by morons. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Factotum Posted January 15, 2019 Share Posted January 15, 2019 Though Cody is pretty bland in the ring, I do think he has a good feel about wrestling. The way he has got himself over is a credit to that. I imagine they're throwing a number of ideas out and seeing what sticks. Like any TV venture they will need 6 months to a year to tweak the format to get it right. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boytoy Posted January 15, 2019 Share Posted January 15, 2019 AEW's strength is on expanding the style of Being The Elite which approaches kayfabe in a slightly different way. I could see a ranking system work within the take on kayfabe they have adopted. In a scenario where two wrestlers are feuding and the heel wrestler is ranked higher than babyface wrestler. Heel can duck out of fighting as the babyface's wrestler isn't ranked high enough. Good guy has a reason to fight other wrestlers to improve his ranking to finally challenge his foe. I think you could do some fairly interesting stuff with that and it does help build to the big match which seems to be the way they are interested in booking wrestling. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members air_raid Posted January 15, 2019 Paid Members Share Posted January 15, 2019 1 hour ago, boytoy said: In a scenario where two wrestlers are feuding and the heel wrestler is ranked higher than babyface wrestler. Heel can duck out of fighting as the babyface's wrestler isn't ranked high enough. Good guy has a reason to fight other wrestlers to improve his ranking to finally challenge his foe. I think you could do some fairly interesting stuff with that and it does help build to the big match which seems to be the way they are interested in booking wrestling. This WOULD be a fairly novel approach to doing wrestling in slightly more of a sporting rivalry fashion. A chase without a title involved and not having to resort to the soap opera of "you hit on my girl" or tag partners broken up - just a good old fashioned "one guy wants to prove he's better than another." New Japan do a lot of really simple builds around one guy just coming to the ring after someone wins a (usually championship) match and throwing a challenge down, or two guys are randomly paired opposite in a tag or six man, things get feisty and BOOM, you have a rivalry leading to a singles match. The simplicity (repetitiveness?) sometimes crosses my mind as being too narrow for the average attention-deficient modern Western fan but there's still room, if handled well and not over-used, to build on the "sports" element of "sports entertainment" without going overboard with weigh-ins or a Code Of Honor type nonsense and to re-establish to the fanbase you want to catch that YES, wins matter. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members BomberPat Posted January 16, 2019 Paid Members Share Posted January 16, 2019 I don't like the idea a ranking system. While it allows for some interesting storytelling opportunities, as you watch someone climb the ranks and get closer to a title shot, and is preferable to constantly relying on automatic rematches and "pin the champion in a non-title match" scenarios, it's just fiddly. It's asking the fans to keep track of too much data, and removes a lot of potential stories from the equation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Accident Prone Posted January 16, 2019 Paid Members Share Posted January 16, 2019 The idea of rankings is good, it just needs a more modern take for it to be presentable these days. Obviously you want storylines and angles to exist, and rankings can subdue those very important elements. You need to adjust the needle for match types that involve multiple opponents and any other gimmicks. I've always liked the idea of a single division being ranked, whilst everything else on the show is typical pro-wrestling storytelling. The tag division, usually one of the weaker points of a wrestling promotion, makes a great breeding ground for a ranking system and gives people a reason to invest where there isn't a story. Match types like three ways and four ways should only be used when there is a tie for points at the top, with the winning team getting the title shot. Keeping the rankings based in the tag division allows for the typical zaniness wrestling to carry on elsewhere whilst giving some variety and flavour to the show and not overdoing the whole numbers game. This is pro wrestling not baseball, after all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members BomberPat Posted January 16, 2019 Paid Members Share Posted January 16, 2019 The way CHIKARA do it is that a win earns you a point, and getting three points grants you a title shot, but a loss resets your points to zero. Some matches are specifically exempt (usually if they're for another championship, or part of a tournament), and in a four-way eliminator, each person you pin counts as a win. That's the closest to a working "ranking" system I've ever seen in wrestling. Anything else becomes fiddly and over-complicated, because you start having to account for DQs, count outs, injuries, Dusty Finishes, and every other wrestling trope that came into being because bookers needed to work around any kind of legitimate trappings. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Carbomb Posted January 16, 2019 Paid Members Share Posted January 16, 2019 42 minutes ago, BomberPat said: The way CHIKARA do it is that a win earns you a point, and getting three points grants you a title shot, but a loss resets your points to zero. Some matches are specifically exempt (usually if they're for another championship, or part of a tournament), and in a four-way eliminator, each person you pin counts as a win. That's the closest to a working "ranking" system I've ever seen in wrestling. Anything else becomes fiddly and over-complicated, because you start having to account for DQs, count outs, injuries, Dusty Finishes, and every other wrestling trope that came into being because bookers needed to work around any kind of legitimate trappings. I dunno, I was thinking that they could have a very simple ranking, not based on points, but simply by position, a bit like combat sports' informal rankings. Say you have a tournament at the beginning to decide the No.1 contender, and people's rankings thenceforth. Then you have a simple system via which people move up or down the rankings depending on whom they beat in the pecking order, or by how many wins in a row they put together. You could have angles where placements are put on the line; say, for example, a storyline where a popular underdog or jobber on a losing streak, rooted to the bottom of the rankings, is being bullied by a much higher-ranked villain - the blue-eye finally stands up to him and challenges him for his place, and obviously the villain accepts, arrogantly believing he can't lose. Cue maybe some interference by another blue-eye feuding with the antagonist to cost him the match and his place, and all of a sudden the jobber is in a Cinderella story, climbing his way painfully yet steadily towards a title shot. There are all sorts of possibilities; if wrestling's shown us anything, especially WWE at their best, it's that you can book anything to happen and it'll get over with enough thought and effort put into it. Who'd have thought we could have four Wrestlemanias on the trot where the Undertaker could defend his streak against the same two guys, and everybody would not only buy into those matches, but hail them as classics too? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted January 16, 2019 Share Posted January 16, 2019 Jericho’s podcast this week is just him talking about his journey to signing for AEW. Funny story about the Rusev Taker casket match that everyone seen it as shitting on Rusev, when it was flicking Jericho about cause of his new japan deal Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members air_raid Posted January 16, 2019 Paid Members Share Posted January 16, 2019 4 minutes ago, Carbomb said: I dunno, I was thinking that they could have a very simple ranking, not based on points, but simply by position, a bit like combat sports' informal rankings. Say you have a tournament at the beginning to decide the No.1 contender, and people's rankings thenceforth. Then you have a simple system via which people move up or down the rankings depending on whom they beat in the pecking order, or by how many wins in a row they put together. The simplest way to get these across to your viewer in a way that makes sense is a re-establishment of "the championship committee" who determine the rankings. This gives you easy stories to tell where the heel gets to be a whiny bitch about their latest challenger or the fiery babyface gets to go all out to prove that they deserve a title shot all in the direction of the faceless committee without having to adhere to the worn out trope of the visible in-ring/on-screen authority figure taking too much mic time away from the talent and boring the viewer to death. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members IANdrewDiceClay Posted January 16, 2019 Paid Members Share Posted January 16, 2019 What a 5 star burial of Cody Rhodes in Forbes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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