Banned ideas

[LaGoosh]

That bit in matches were they take turns to hit eachother and stagger about to show how "exhausted" and EPIC the match is supposed to be (but rarely is).

Edited November 17, 2021 by LaGoosh

[Hannibal Scorch]

Matches that start, get an interference so is then stopped and is then announced as a tag/triple threat/team tag match to start after the commercial break.

Also wrestlers doing their entrance before cutting to a break where they just have to stand in the ring with their music playing until the cameras are back. Stupid.

[Jazzy G]

53 minutes ago, WyattSheepMask said:

Open Challenges. As with most things, it’s a time filler while they actually figure out what the hell they’re going to do with someone.

How do they even work in kayfabe? Does everyone just pile it out of the changing room and whoever gets to the Gorilla Position first gets the shot?

I think briefly in WCW there was an open challenge for one of the titles (I want to say while Jarrett was world champion) where you'd sign up on a clipboard hanging from Russo's office door. 

I'd like to suggest randomly putting two singles wrestlers into a tag team because there's nothing else for them to do and, sometimes by extension, establishing tag teams for the express reason of splitting them up so they can feud with each other.

[Tommy!]

3 minutes ago, jazzygeofferz said:

I think briefly in WCW there was an open challenge for one of the titles (I want to say while Jarrett was world champion) where you'd sign up on a clipboard hanging from Russo's office door

They did this at least twice if I remember right, steiner and kwee-wee answered them and signed the papers unless I'm mixed up.

That said I'm sure I remember something similar with Rey, but that could have been the flair "names in a fish bowl" where ric rigged it but Rey just stole some nobody's number. 

[JimmyAnderson]

Four man commentary teams.

Three is difficult enough but can work well, especially when each person knows what they're supposed to be doing and have good chemistry with one another. But a four man team just always seems like they're either talking over one another or at least one of them is a spare part at a wedding.

[RIDDUM_N_STYLE]

Big or meaty wrestlers attempting Lucha moves, convinced one of these days Big E is going to botch his tope/spear through the ropes and fuck his neck up and famously we had the likes of Brock knocking himself loopy doing a shooting star press in a Mania main event, and Taker fucking up his dive on HBK at Mania 25 and nearly killing himself

[DEF]

Shaking the hand held cameras in an attempt to accentuate the impact of moves, particularly punches. TNA went through a period where this did my absolute nut in. Wrestling isn't a badly made action film. It can work if subtle but I'd much rather do away with it altogether. At best it takes me out of the action and at worst (in TNA's case makes the whole thing unwatchable).

[simonworden]

Long, drawn out "epics" happening all through the card that are over 10 minutes long on TV and 15 on ppv. If I can squeeze out a shit that's been brewing for days in under the time your match takes then it's too long if you aren't a well built up main event. 

 

[unfitfinlay]

Multiple personalities for me. It was great when Foley did it, because he managed to establish distinct personalities without it feeling forced.

Nowadays, with a few exceptions, it just feels silly and contrived: “You might have beaten me but you haven’t beaten me with a bit of make up or a mask on!”

The worst lately was Mickie James referring to “Hardcore Country Mickie James” in the third person as if there’s anything remotely different to her normal persona. At least Bray Wyatt put a bit of effort in. 

[Sheffbag]

14 hours ago, Tommy! said:

They did this at least twice if I remember right, steiner and kwee-wee answered them and signed the papers unless I'm mixed up.

That said I'm sure I remember something similar with Rey, but that could have been the flair "names in a fish bowl" where ric rigged it but Rey just stole some nobody's number. 

Isnt that how Chyna got the shot at Jarrett's IC Title, she signed an open contract on his door?

[tiger_rick]

15 hours ago, WyattSheepMask said:

Open Challenges. As with most things, it’s a time filler while they actually figure out what the hell they’re going to do with someone.

I like it as a gimmick. It's been over-used the last few years like pretty much everything, but it can be a fun gimmick. The old Kurt Angle ones were always good, the Cena run was obviously fun too. I quite like that the TNT title has an open challenge policy too, I think that works well as a way to have people come in and lose and then, hopefully, fuck off.

It needs to be something that's done sparingly and there needs to be a purpose to it. A pay-off that will see something significant affect the guy challenging. Too often they're just filler, as you say, and go nowhere. Also the pay-off shouldn't be Alberto Del Rio. Though that goes for everything, ever.

14 hours ago, jazzygeofferz said:

I'd like to suggest randomly putting two singles wrestlers into a tag team because there's nothing else for them to do

I love a good super team. Obviously the Mega Powers stand out to most of us as the standard bearer but Austin & HBK, Rock & Foley, HBK & Cena and Moxley & Eddie are some great ones. It's a good use of guys you need to keep ticking over if you can develop some chemistry.

Just don't give them one of those shit amalgamated names like Rated RKO, JeriShow or whatever Orton & Riddle are currently using. Now that's an idea I want banning. Fans are bastards for that too.

[air_raid]

I think there’s serious mileage in tagging two guys together that are main event level and mates for the pure purpose of going for the tag belts because they haven’t won them or want to be champions and currently aren’t, not because Teddy Long forced them or they’re feuding and “odd couple” is a thing. Have them struggle to beat a few of the contending tag teams because, you know, they’re singles guys not used to tagging, coming up against experienced tag teams. They earn their way to a tag title match at the PPV but get beat. The next couple of weeks they encourage each other to not give up and earn a rematch. They get beat again. One inevitably blames the other, turns heel, and you have a new feud while having strengthened the position of the tag team champions.

For some reason the sentence I couldn’t escape when I was thinking about this was “And of course at the PPV, Demolition beat them.”

[andrew "the ref" coyne]

2 hours ago, Sheffbag said:

Isnt that how Chyna got the shot at Jarrett's IC Title, she signed an open contract on his door?

Correct.

Billy Gunn asked her to guard the contract whilst he found a pen, then when he went around the corner she signed it herself.

[BomberPat]

like pretty much everything in this thread (or in wrestling in general), all of that stuff is fine when done well. But WWE have a habit of doing something well once, and then half-arsing it every other time.

I'll always point to Dude Love vs. Steve Austin at Over The Edge '98 as one of my favourite "sports entertainment" matches, the best match of the Attitude Era, and the best bit of "heel authority figure" business ever. And that's because it's perfectly constructed to tell that story. You're not far removed from Survivor Series '97, so you know Vince is more than capable of screwing over his champion, but Austin doesn't trust anyone, so he's not going to allow himself to be put in that position. Vince doesn't want Austin as champion not just because Vince is a baddy, but because he doesn't think Austin is the right class of character to be on top for the WWF; it hasn't really become an overly personal vendetta yet, it's all business. He needs to stack the odds, but in a way that - although transparently corrupt - he can justify; so Vince becomes special referee, and he gets his stooges there in completely nominal roles. One of the best bits of heel business is Pat Patterson tweaking the rules by saying, "I have been reminded that this match is no disqualification"; recently WWE did the same schtick with Lacey Evans, but she was never doing the "reminded" bit, just changing the rules as they went along - the conceit of this sort of match is that there's a wafer-thin line of plausible deniability for the heels, that they think they're getting away with it, and that's where the fan's outrage comes from. Foley, for his part in the match, is gullible enough and so desperate for acceptance that he doesn't realise how obviously he's being manipulated by McMahon as a means to an end. The Undertaker comes out as ringside enforcer, which gives you a justification for why the heels don't go too overboard (in kayfabe) and just disqualify Austin immediately, or whatever. Then Vince's "by my hand only" promo gives you the question of "how does Austin get out of this one?" and the satisfaction of paying that off in a way that works against Vince.

It's brilliant - it all makes sense, it all works, and it's a great match. But every subsequent time they've gone to the evil authority figure well, they've fallen short on all of those steps (with the exception of some of the Authority/Daniel Bryan stuff), where it just becomes the boss is a baddy and wants to keep the good guy just because they're a good guy, and there's no logical answer for questions like, "why not just fire him?", there's no plausibility to any of it. 

 

Similarly, I don't think there's anything wrong with throwing two singles guys together for a tag team run - some great teams started out that way - but there should be a story there. Why are they a team now? How do they perform as a team? And I don't mean "how can they co-exist", but show that there's a distinction between a singles wrestler and a tag team wrestler. Two thrown together singles wrestlers shouldn't be beating top teams on their first attempt, because full-time tag teams should be inherently better at tag team wrestling. So much in wrestling just misses the story points and the logic, because there's a sense of "because wrestling" behind everything. You always do what you've always done, without asking why any more.

Anyway, in terms of scrapping things, it would be "opening promo is interrupted to set up that night's main event". Aside from being boring and predictable, it's the biggest business-exposing thing there is. What was going to be the main event if someone hadn't just interrupted that promo? Why have you gone live on TV without even having booked a main event? There are ways around it when you use that kind of thing sparingly - WCW used to talk about having "reserve matches", the episode of NXT where Samoa Joe and Sami Zayn ended up wrestling for the entire show actually advertised other matches for that episode and then announced that they had been postponed until the following week. It gives everything a sense of plausibility and credibility - and can actually be a catalyst for storylines. Imagine AEW opens Dynamite with a CM Punk promo, it's interrupted by MJF, and they set up a match for that night that ends up (in kayfabe) bumping another match to Rampage, or to Dark. Now imagine that the match in question was an Eddie Kingston match. How he's going to react to being disrespected and tossed aside for someone else's match? There's an additional ready-made story there in just doing the little bit of joined up thinking required to make things make sense, and it's something wrestling consistently doesn't do.

[Jazzy G]

@tiger_rickI agree that if there's good cause for two singles wrestlers to be teaming, ie they've interacted on screen or it's known they're friends and they say "why don't we have a tilt at the tag titles" or something like that it'd make sense. Not just when they have nothing to do with each other and then just turn up as a tag team the following week at random and going forward. It doesn't take two minutes out of a two/three hour show to have the wrestlers interacting. @air_raidand @BomberPathave hit the nail on the head there.

I feel like a decent bit of this sometimes goes on in AEW. Lio Rush & Dante Martin's partnership, or even Matt Sydal looking for guys to tag with while his brother's injured.

I also know how much of a hypocrite it makes me to hate the idea but be a massive fan of the Hollywood Blondes. 

Also, Pat, I agree that the main event of the show being set up in the opening segment is daft as well.