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Petty Annoyances


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Sorry if it's been mentioned in this thread already but on a similar note to the finisher thing, people hitting finishers outside of a match and the one taking it not doing anything to fight it off, best example being Cena on Brock's return 

Stare at each other, Brock gets him on his shoulders and Cena just lays still on his shoulders waiting for the F5, just looked daft

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This has been mentioned a few times and I think it can be logically explained, albeit in kayfabe.

Because you're not prepared for a match and don't have all the adrenaline, energy, awareness you would normally have, a move would affect you in a greater way.

Which is why one move often puts people down in an angle, backstage etc.

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8 hours ago, King Pitcos said:

Adam Woodyatt doesn't quit EastEnders and do a tour of the YouTube soaps as Pete Beale Jr, where he comes in for one episode to take over the pub, shag the main woman and do a speech to camera about how he hated the politics in the Walford territory. 

I'd watch it.

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9 hours ago, garynysmon said:

How, in many discussions, NXT has evolved into enjoying some kind of special status as a promotion in its own right, so you hear people refer to "WWE, NXT and AEW."

Fuck that, its nothing more than a WWE brand.

That's been the way for a long time. People have been saying "I don't watch WWE, just NXT" for almost the last decade.

It's WWE's greatest accomplishment after persuading Fox and USA to spunk hundreds of millions of dollars on their TV. Building a brand that people who say they hate you will watch, often in "defiance" is genius. From a critical viewpoint anyway, not sure it's worth dollars and cents.

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Getting anti-WWE fans to view NXT as a separate entity that they can watch to spite Vinny Mac remains one of the greatest works of the last decade.

The best example I always think of are those, “Are you watching, Vince McMahon?” chants from that NXT UK show.

What an achievement. Creating such a sense of counter-culture that this sub-section of fans actually thought they were witnessing something special watching Joe Coffee absolutely shit his pants  as a main eventer. I’m sure Vince was watching and laughing his tits off as Coffee kept falling off that top rope and looking like a complete amateur.

Do you think that sub-section of fans still exists? Surely there can’t be that many people still convinced NXT is this big deal, offering an alternative to Raw and Smackdown?

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7 minutes ago, Supremo said:

Do you think that sub-section of fans still exists? Surely there can’t be that many people still convinced NXT is this big deal, offering an alternative to Raw and Smackdown?

Possibly. There was an interesting discussion recently on why NXT is so shit now with many pointing out the lack of movement on the roster, validly, as a reason for the stagnation. There's probably a band of people though for whom that stagnation makes all those midgets who've been around for years like Cole and Gargano and Ciampa THEIR guys. That builds a feeling of loyalty amongst a certain section as much as it irritates others.

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1 hour ago, Supremo said:

The best example I always think of are those, “Are you watching, Vince McMahon?” chants from that NXT UK show.

I didn’t view those chants as them thinking it’s a separate entity - you’re probably right but I viewed it as “we’re proud of British wrestling, this stuff you barely mention on TV is the best wrestling you’ve got, you should be promoting this more”. Which I know is essentially the same idea, but with viewing NXT as part of WWE.

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Dives to the outside in modern wrestling has became a petty annoyance to me as it's became as regular as a wrist lock. Not only increasing the chance of injury massively but also diminishing a once special spot. 

When Taker used to dive to the outside once every two years it would put the hair on the back of my neck up. Now these cunts do it every five minutes and no sell the shit out of it. 

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I hate the way "dives" have become a shorthand for "not knowing how to work" or "no psychology". I blame Cornette for the most part, but JR's been on at it again, basically acting as if the two are mutually exclusive.

It can be irritating to see the same dive spot repeated, but then I get irritated seeing any spot repeated. That's poor agenting. 

But the idea that doing dives or high spots is somehow inherently lacking in psychology, it's nonsense. Same as recently you had Tom Prichard using "hurricanranas" as a byword for flashy new wrestling - a move that was invented more than a decade before Prichard was even born.

 

I've always felt that there's an ideal structure to booking a wrestling show, and I use dives as one of my examples when explaining this to people. I think the first match should take place entirely in the ring, while the second might feature someone getting knocked to the floor, or the heel leaving the ring to get a breather. Only after that should you be seeing the first dive of the night - first you need to establish that the ring is there to contain the action, then introduce reasons why the limits of the ring might not be enough, and only after that do you introduce the element of being able to cross the threshold with a dive. I don't want to be an old-timer "DDTs should still be finishers!" type, but a dive should be more an exception than a rule, because the whole point is that it's a break from the conventions of how wrestling is "supposed" to work - if you do it in the first match, you lose the sense of it as an unexpected transgression, and if you do it in every match it's just another move, and you lose the sense of urgency that comes with a well executed dive. 

Though, like everything else in wrestling, the people who are really good at it can still make it work regardless. 

Edited by BomberPat
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There needs to be a reason for the face to pursue the heel with that level of determination and recklessness, and that usually requires the heel to go to the outside loads to stall, as if they see it as a 'safe zone' that no one would dare go after them in. Even then, the face has to know to tease it still before going for it, and the heel can't just be standing there waiting.

Too often, the dive seems to come because the opponent is in place to receive one. Dives with theatrics like Kenny Omega's Terminator build-up, on par with Orton banging the mat before an RKO for telling the opponent what's coming, can go away. As can diving to the outside and immediately rolling the opponent back in for a two count.

Up there with Undi's biannual death plunge (and probably countering my own point), there's a great little match on WWE's Four Horsemen DVD, Sting & Nikita Koloff vs Tully & Arn, where fucking 6 foot 265lb STING hurls himself over the top onto the Brainbusters, lands on his feet(!), and immediately turns to fire up the crowd. Glorious.

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4 hours ago, BomberPat said:

I hate the way "dives" have become a shorthand for "not knowing how to work" or "no psychology". I blame Cornette for the most part, but JR's been on at it again, basically acting as if the two are mutually exclusive...

What i saw from a recent JR gripe with dives in relation to "not knowing how to work" wasn't merely the frequency of the spot being performed on a card, but how it is performed  - basically everyone grouping together and watching and waiting for someone to jump on them. There's ways of being creative and making the spot work and not seem so hokey, it's become a go to certainly, only with that generally executed in a lazy fashion for why it would be happening within the story of a match.

Which is a definite petty annoyance of mine, possibly just a byproduct of working a little myself with what you notice after the fact with different eyes, yet it does seem the effort to disguise things just isn't there so much these days. In training it'll be drummed into you not to look like you're waiting for your opponent to do something, hit their move, waiting for a spot, obvious feeding. Yet you see it all the time all over shows and from supposedly well respected good workers, sometimes the very ones bringing up this point in training. 

Also on a similar note to Pats about certain spots for certain parts of the card or certain workers. It's become all too common that if a slightly big lad can do something somewhat athletic it becomes one of their regular spots, despite their size and the rest of their presentation.  I  haven't seen them for ages so he might not be doing it anymore, but i abhor the fat viking fella doing his shitty handspring and cartwheel spot. 

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19 minutes ago, GeronimoJacksBeard said:

Which is a definite petty annoyance of mine, possibly just a byproduct of working a little myself with what you notice after the fact with different eyes, yet it does seem the effort to disguise things just isn't there so much these days. In training it'll be drummed into you not to look like you're waiting for your opponent to do something, hit their move, waiting for a spot, obvious feeding. Yet you see it all the time all over shows and from supposedly well respected good workers, sometimes the very ones bringing up this point in training. 

Definitely agree on this. I've never found the "diving out of the ring" spot to be as spectacular as many wrestlers seem to think it is, or can fully appreciate how dangerous it probably is to perform.

I think for many wrestlers they equate real-life dangerous moves with what the audience wants to see, but I don't think that joe public that's never taken a bump can always appreciate that. It was often said, wasn't it, that Foley's second fall off Hell in a Cell was way more dangerous and painful than the first (albeit accidental), but the first one looked so much more spectacular to my eyes at least.

That may be due to over use but these out of the ring dives get less and less of a reaction every time, and am convinced that a simple old-school finisher like a piledriver would get as much of a response these days. 

Edited by garynysmon
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