Paid Members Carbomb Posted October 25, 2019 Paid Members Posted October 25, 2019 (edited) 51 minutes ago, BomberPat said: It's a boring answer but, ultimately, we don't know what goes into the decisions made in booking. Sometimes there's a wrestler who your audience really respond to, and looking from the outside, it would seem like common sense to get behind them as a major babyface. But from within the company, maybe you know he's got a reputation for forgetting spots and being unreliable to work with, or he has some skeletons in his closet, or some other reason you don't want to take the risk. Maybe he's just a dick. The Invasion is this on an insane scale - do you assume that "WWF vs. WCW" is enough of a draw in its own right that it almost doesn't matter who the talent on either side are (which the buyrates for the initial Invasion PPV arguably support), do you risk making the extremely damaged WCW brand look superior to the WWF, or do you fork out millions to buy out the Turner contracts? People will always say, "Vince could have afforded it", and that he should have put up the money to bring in Goldberg, Sting et al in 2001. But then what happens to the likes of The Undertaker, Kane, Kurt Angle, Chris Jericho and so on, to say nothing of midcarders wanting to break through to that upper echelon, suddenly earning less than a crew who just walked through the door and started earning that huge money from day one? You're risking a locker room mutiny. Apologies for the double post. The Invasion - I don't know, but I just figured he didn't have to buy out all the contracts in one go. Maybe he could've started off with wCw being led by one big name, i.e. Flair or Luger. Then, as they recover cash, gradually get the bigger names showing up, culminating in a big showdown with Goldberg, the end-of-game boss. Quote With Zack Ryder, someone summed it up as, "he did really well, considering he's Zack Ryder". There's a difference between being popular and being a viable star - Ryder was getting cheered, but was it translating into anything? Were the ratings higher when he was featured, was he shifting merchandise in any great numbers? Even aside from all that, on a purely character-based note, Ryder's popularity was based on a YouTube show in which he presented himself as a schmuck - so you can't really complain that he was booked as a schmuck as a result. I was under the impression he was shifting merch? Any merch at all is money they wouldn't have otherwise have; outside of Cena, Mysterio, and Jeff Hardy, was anyone shifting merch beyond the usual T-shirts at the time? I'm not saying he should've been in the main event - he was more of a Santino-type, a super-popular comedy character that seemed to have gotten over against all expectations. Quote I don't think Vince has ever really run with someone getting organically over unless his hand was forced. People point to Steve Austin, but that was a long and grueling process to establish himself as more than a midcard hand, and more or less after Vince had exhausted all other options, and had his back to the wall. If anything, the key talent Vince has really lost over the past ten years is the ability to dictate to the audience and convince them of what they want - a good promoter doesn't necessarily give the audience everything they want (because the audience don't always really know what they want), a good promoter convinces the audience that what they're being given is what they always wanted. I don't know if I agree with that. The Rock got over fairly organically, although, to be fair, that was after Vince gave up on trying to push him deliberately. Edge got over pretty organically too - he wasn't pushed from Day One; if anything, he got to the main-event a lot slower than most top guys do. And whilst Batista is physically the type that many would argue Vince would've pushed from the get-go, it did seem like his push was unexpected - he was just expected to be henchman muscle in the upper midcard, but ended up being the natural choice when Orton's deliberate push bombed. Also, going back a bit further, might it not be argued that he might not have pushed Hart or Michaels if they hadn't got themselves over in their midcard tag teams first? EDIT: Ooh, and Jeff Hardy. The guy doesn't look like a wrestler and can't talk for shit. But he's just got that intangible factor that no-one can ever legislate for - he's got natural physical charisma, and despite not being anywhere near as spectacular a flyer as Mysterio or Sin Cara, people just love to watch him. This got him over enough to the main event, and I'll happily bet VKM never saw him coming. Edited October 25, 2019 by Carbomb
Guest Posted October 25, 2019 Posted October 25, 2019 Should this now massive posts heavy Vince chat not be in a wwe thread?
Paid Members Accident Prone Posted October 25, 2019 Paid Members Posted October 25, 2019 Getting back to JR needing a kick up the arse;
wordsfromlee Posted October 25, 2019 Posted October 25, 2019 2 minutes ago, Ralphy said: Watched it this morning on the itv hub at 4am, not sure what time it went up though It wasn’t up when I checked at about 11pm which is annoying considering they’re supposed to upload it at 7pm. I’ll probably just wait and watch it on ITV4 tonight.
Snitsky's back acne Posted October 25, 2019 Posted October 25, 2019 (edited) 4 hours ago, BomberPat said: I don't think Vince has ever really run with someone getting organically over unless his hand was forced. Unless I've misunderstood I would argue that is one of the things that he used to be best at. I would argue that Vince's 'eye for talent' is actually not as good as some may think - we've all heard the stories that he didn't think Foley or Austin were worth a shit at first, that he was going to fire John Cena because he couldn't see anything in him and could not see the appeal of CM Punk and Daniel Bryan for the longest time - hell, Eddie Guerrero was just 'too damn small, dammit' - and that what he was good at was going with the tide when it changed and helping make them into stars. Edited October 25, 2019 by Snitsky's back acne
Paid Members JNLister Posted October 25, 2019 Paid Members Posted October 25, 2019 I get the impression the Vince "We're not wrestling, we're sports entertainment/we make movies" thing is resentment that in the circles he moves in (including among all the snobs in Connecticut) his successes just get dismissed as invalid because it's just rasslin. That's surely the reason he's always obsessed with succeeding in other fields like football, movies and politics.
Paid Members BomberPat Posted October 25, 2019 Paid Members Posted October 25, 2019 (edited) 30 minutes ago, Snitsky's back acne said: Unless I've misunderstood I would argue that is one of the things that he used to be best at. I would argue that Vince's 'eye for talent' is actually not as good as some may think - we've all heard the stories that he didn't think Foley or Austin were worth a shit at first, that he was going to fire John Cena because he couldn't see anything in him and could not see the appeal of CM Punk and Daniel Bryan for the longest time - and that what he was good at was going with the tide when it changed and helping make them into stars. Perhaps, but I tend to think of Vince as like the old adage about America, "can always be relied upon to do the right thing, after exhausting all other options". As much as Cena had a stint teaming with Billy Kidman, even before the rapper gimmick he debuted against Kurt Angle, feuded with Chris Jericho and was positioned as part of a clear "this is the future of the brand" babyface group alongside Edge and Rey Mysterio. If there was a period in Cena's career where Vince wasn't trying to get him over, it can't have been for more than a couple of months in late 2002; by 2003 he was fighting Brock Lesnar and The Undertaker, and being very clearly positioned as a top star in the making. Similarly with CM Punk - putting aside the weirdness of the ECW brand, he was a featured part of WWE TV from the moment he made it on to one of the "main" brands, multiple time holder of just about every title there is, consistently pushed and given near unprecedented creative freedom for the time period. The idea that Punk was ever held down or unappreciated just doesn't really ring true with how he was actually booked. Going back to only making people stars once he had no choice - WWE like to condense history into key moments, and one of the big ones is "Steve Austin did the 'Austin 3:16' promo at King Of The Ring, and became a mega-star". But we all know Austin was, at best, the second choice to win that tournament. The next PPV he was in the midcard against Marc Mero, at Summerslam (were, generally, you'd expect the winner of King of the Ring to be in a featured match) he wasn't even on the main card, he then didn't make the next PPV at all, was in the opener at Buried Alive in October, and it was only really by Survivor Series '96 that he started to move into a main event picture, in his first PPV match with Bret Hart, and then on the Royal Rumble where he cements himself as a top guy. That period isn't exemplified just by Austin getting himself over at a main event level, though - it's typified by Triple H being punished and having his push temporarily curtailed, by a failed Ultimate Warrior comeback push, by the relative failure of Vader in the WWF, by the main event push and departure of Sid, and so on. And then Austin becoming the absolute megastar he became off the departure of Bret Hart, and the McMahon feud...I'm not saying Austin wouldn't have got there one way or another, but it wasn't just a case of "Steve Austin got himself over, and made Vince McMahon take notice". Every step of the way, Vince was trying something else, up to and including negotiation with Warrior again in '97/'98, and potentially with Hogan and/or Savage in '98 too, before 100% committing to Steve Austin as the guy. If Warrior had stuck around, if Sid had stuck around, and if WCW weren't piling on the pressure, would Vince have taken a punt on Austin? The inverse of that is the John Cena era - why take a chance on making anyone else a potential top star when you have the most reliable top star in history showing up to work every day for a decade? It's been too long since Vince's hand was forced. Edited October 25, 2019 by BomberPat
Snitsky's back acne Posted October 25, 2019 Posted October 25, 2019 4 minutes ago, BomberPat said: It's been too long since Vince's hand was forced. Agree wholeheartedly with that and I don't know if it ever will again, sadly. It is actually crazy that WWE has so much talent and not one single star. Not even Brock is a significant needle shifter these days [if he ever was]. I think wrestling as a whole is cold these days [and I know people will wheel out a myriad of examples to show why it's not] but we are talking about a share of just under 2 million viewers on average as opposed to a share of about 9-10 million twenty years ago.
Paid Members BomberPat Posted October 25, 2019 Paid Members Posted October 25, 2019 (edited) I'm also generally not convinced by "WWE has sabotaged people who were over" - because, again, we don't have access to the same metrics that they do. I don't know who shifts the most merch, has the most social media engagement, sees the biggest increase in ratings or house show attendances when they're on the card, let alone who's moving even less publicly visible metrics for them, like who's turning up earliest to every show, who's prepared to learn Mandarin for their Chinese press conferences, who's fitting in the most public appearances and charity glad-handing, and so on. One of the biggest shifts in recent years has been the make-up of the live audience, in my opinion; ticket prices have increased drastically over the years, to the point that I think the make-up of a TV taping crowd is completely different to what it would have been twenty years ago, even factoring in for the decline of WWE as a "hot ticket" event the way it would have been in the Attitude era. In a major market, good WWE TV or PPV tickets are prohibitively expensive (cursory glance tells me ringside tickets for an upcoming taping in Boston vary from $100 to $300, $30-40 in the cheap seats) - so you're not going to see many families of four forking out for wrestling tickets, despite years of attempting to pivot to a "PG" audience, which means you're not going to see the "casual" WWE fan in a TV audience. Your ringside seats, at $300 a pop, are the exclusive domain of the people either wealthy enough, or a big enough fan, to justify forking out for them. So they're skewing the live TV audience towards people far more likely to be invested in rumours, in backstage gossip, and everything else that would make them more inclined to root for a Daniel Bryan over a Randy Orton, rather than what makes up the vast majority of WWE's actual viewing audience - people who watch it as a Monday night TV show, for a couple of hours, and barely give it a moment's thought once the TV is switched off. It wasn't that long ago that WWE fan surveys showed that the overwhelming majority of WWE viewers couldn't name a single other wrestling promotion. What that means is that we watch TV, and see everyone boo John Cena or Roman Reigns. Then we go online, and see everyone say that they hate John Cena, or they hate Roman Reigns. And it creates a perception of WWE stubbornly plowing on without regard to the fans' wishes, clearly doomed for failure as they put all their stock behind someone no one likes. But then, the person "no one likes" sells a shit-ton of merch, draws viewers, sells PPVs, and so on, and we can't square that circle. Because we're all in the bubble, and we still only see things from the perspective of probably less than 10% of the WWE's total audience. Not that I think WWE don't carry on stubbornly without listening to the fans - they absolutely do, but they pick and choose which fans to listen to. And, by and large, they listen to the ones spending money. And, again, it's only when someone forces their hand that they do something different - and at the moment, Vince's "forced hand" move seems to be to rely on Brock Lesnar, or Triple H, or The Undertaker - but is that so different to him bringing Warrior back in '96, before having to try something new? If Vince had access to Hulk Hogan in '95/'96/'97, do you think he'd have been wasting his time trying to seriously push anyone else, or would he just go back to the well again? Edited October 25, 2019 by BomberPat
Snitsky's back acne Posted October 25, 2019 Posted October 25, 2019 Yeah I think like you say it's not just one thing. I think WWE is genuinely confused by what the fans want, as are the fans themselves to be honest - 'You wanted longer matches - we gave you longer matches!' etc. I also think if you ate McDonalds every day for 20+ years you'd be absolutely sick of McDonald's and go looking elsewhere. It's an interesting quandry.
Paid Members garynysmon Posted October 25, 2019 Paid Members Posted October 25, 2019 (edited) 33 minutes ago, BomberPat said: Not that I think WWE don't carry on stubbornly without listening to the fans - they absolutely do, but they pick and choose which fans to listen to. And, by and large, they listen to the ones spending money. You rightly mention that casuals are priced out/losing interest in attending shows etc and that you have to be a reasonably big fan to fork out a tenner a month for the network (i.e you want more wrestling than the 6 hours a week they pump out on tv). So wouldn't it be true to say that the hardcore (think they're 'smart') fans make up a bigger proportion than ever of the paying fanbase? Edited October 25, 2019 by garynysmon
The King of Old School Posted October 25, 2019 Posted October 25, 2019 Is DDP going to wrestle for AEW? I find it odd that he got involved in that angle if he isn't, which I absolutely loved. Probably because the crowd is hot but everyone came across as a star in that segment, MJF's pop was rediculous. I love what they are doing with him, keep him as a prick who wrestles like a heel but keep him as Cody's best pal. I hope they don't rush the inevitable turn on either.
Michael_3165 Posted October 25, 2019 Posted October 25, 2019 1 hour ago, The King of Old School said: Is DDP going to wrestle for AEW? I find it odd that he got involved in that angle if he isn't, which I absolutely loved. Probably because the crowd is hot but everyone came across as a star in that segment, MJF's pop was rediculous. I love what they are doing with him, keep him as a prick who wrestles like a heel but keep him as Cody's best pal. I hope they don't rush the inevitable turn on either. He is about 90 isn't he? Never the best worker as it was!
UK Kat Von D Posted October 25, 2019 Posted October 25, 2019 2 hours ago, Snitsky's back acne said: I also think if you ate McDonalds every day for 20+ years you'd be absolutely sick of McDonald's and go looking elsewhere. Well you would probably also die if you only ate McDonalds for 20+ years
Paid Members Statto Posted October 25, 2019 Paid Members Posted October 25, 2019 I've always liked Cody, all the way back to when he did his dad's HoF induction. But he's given himself an obnoxious amount of pyro.
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