lazorbeak
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Posts posted by lazorbeak
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This has been a really great show so far. Posting this now in case I hate the finish of the main event.
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I really thought Hogan was going to come back out during the Rusev anthem spot. Now I'm hoping Rusev can gingerly put Hogan in the Accolade on Raw tomorrow.
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Common sense doesn't always win out when you're angry. And there really needs to be a different word than "assault" when it's a slap or the like. Assault makes me think that the victim was brutalized, not that their cheek might be a little red.
I get punishing him for stepping out of line, regardless of how justified I think he might have been, but did he really do something worth a firing? Especially considering the not exactly "professional" history of WWE, it seems a bit hypocritical to me.
Legally, "assault" doesn't even require any contact at all. And yes, in most any job, physically striking somebody is grounds for termination: this isn't a locker room dispute between athletes, it's an athlete physically striking an office worker.
The issues I think you are talking about are between wrestlers. This was a wrestler vs a regular employee. Most of the stories involving wrestlers vs non-wrestlers always end up with the wrestler at fault. Such as Vader and the foreign interviewer or the John Stossel vs David Schultz interview.JBL and Joey Styles got in an actual fight, and again, both still work there.
And Vader actually being arrested and missing shows while he was waiting to come back to America didn't result in his firing, so it's really not a very comparable situation. Vader probably would've welcomed a firing, considering in 1997, he could've easily signed a new deal in Japan or jumped to WCW without missing much of anything, instead of being jobbed out and called fat on TV for 6 months.
But we're not that far removed from Cameron trying to bribe cops to avoid a DUI, or AJ getting into a fight backstage with a non-wrestler. One was slated to be in a reality show and one was seen as having some value down the road, and both are still in the company. ADR was unlikely to stick with WWE unless he took a significant pay cut, and this way they avoid having to deal with him at all. Again, it was just a convenient excuse for WWE to let the guy go, regardless of whether he was at fault.
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The company that still employs guys with "old school" bully mentalities like JBL complaining about their independent contractors not conducting themselves in a "professional manner" is pretty funny.
Obviously ADR isn't 100% in the right to touch anybody backstage, but I think we've all been there in TEW where an incident saves you the trouble of paying a guy his final few months.
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Spoiler post about RAW. Highlight below
Was the main event of RAW really HEATH SLATER vs Seth Rollins? With Slater winning?! I know it wasn't a clean win or even close, but still! This is fantastic!
Also tonight I really loved the HHH trolling of the internet about over promotion of the WWE Network. I can't wait to watch Summerslam...for $9.99!
No, the main event was an angle to further a match between a diva and a non-wrestler.
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Yeah I don't enjoy action or platformers if they're too drawn out. For me, stuff like the N64 Zelda or Batman, Arkham Asylum or God of War is about the right length in terms of an action game. I'd rather play a good game multiple times rather than slog through collecting fractals of 3 for 30 hours.
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It's more of the mindset that smaller guys DIDN'T draw as opposed to big guys drawing. Now with that being pretty much a non factor and consistently disproven as time goes on, I think it's the frustration that the big guys will always get the nod over the smaller guys in a coin toss type of deal or having to be "proven wrong" on a smaller guy whereas they would give a bigger guy all of the tools from the start.
There is no such thing as size drawing on a consistent long term basis anymore (as seen by the horrendous drawing power of Big Show and Kane). Spectacle is what draws above everything, and massive size is indeed spectacle, but eventually there has to be more to it.
Did I hit my head and miss a decade of Batista, John Cena, Randy Orton, and Brock Lesnar being top names? The idea that size doesn't matter any more in drawing power is curious, to say the least. Kane and Big Show are monsters, but that doesn't disprove that all things being equal, big guys of course win the coin toss, because they've consistently drawn more money on top. Even ignoring that two of the smallest attempted top guys are both dead, both were pretty massive flops in basically every metric that mattered while on top, which is why both moved down the card after their runs ended.
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It's because Vince McMahon is a big buff guy, and a massive fan of bodybuilding. Therefore that's the image he has in his head of what makes a believable champion. Even with UFC showing that legit fighters have different body types. Vince likes it. Fans accept it. Why change? Not saying it's 'right' (there are certainly exceptions, Rey and Bryan in terms of height, Punk in musculature) but I can certainly see why you'd want to keep to that old standard.
In terms of workrate, Reigns was definitely being carried for that first year by Rollins and Ambrose. No question. Ultimately, workrate isn't all that important though. John Cena isn't the smoothest grappler on the planet, but he's the biggest star. Roman Reigns has a lot of the same qualities. I can see why he's the chosen one.
I agree he could do with shortening up his matches on TV. Save the long matches for house shows, where he can improve his selling with fewer eyes upon him.
I love this old canard, because it ignores the fact that big buff guys with charisma, historically, are what drew enormous, business-changing crowds. It must be because Vince has some weird fetish for drawing crowds.
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So I'm currently using the Marvel Unlimited app on my phone/iPad to run through all of the Ultimate Marvel comics in order. There's a lot of fun stuff here, especially Spider-Man and the Daredevil/Elektra stuff. That said, a lot of The Ultimates stuff is just flat out bad. Captain is a huge jerk, everyone's a jerk to Banner himself, Pym's bad traits are amplified, and the big villain of the first series was just lacklustre. That said, I do like Stark and Thor here, and Wasp isn't too bad.
Yeah 12 years ago everybody loved the Ultimates. Before Millar made his "cynical jerk heroes" part of the Marvel Universe with Civil War and everyone got tired of it. I think they hold up decently, but mostly because of the art.
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<blockquote data-ipsquote="" class="ipsQuote" data-ipsquote-username="jwt13" data-cite="jwt13" data-ipsquote-contentapp="forums" data-ipsquote-contenttype="forums" data-ipsquote-contentid="25170" data-ipsquote-contentclass="forums_Topic"><div>Yeah it looks like ATM they are still talking, this is why I take everything from dirt sheets with a grain of salt. Plus Meltzer has tried to put the nail in the coffin since 04. Hope everything works out well.</div></blockquote><p> </p><p> The year they lost huge amounts of money and needed to be bought out by an energy concern, and promptly changed their entire approach away from running weekly PPVs in Nashville? Weird that he'd report on financial issues like that. <img alt=":p" data-src="//content.invisioncic.com/g322608/emoticons/tongue.png.ceb643b2956793497cef30b0e944be28.png" src="<___base_url___>/applications/core/interface/js/spacer.png" /></p>
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I also think that "one million viewers" claim is extremely deceptive, because a huge percentage of that number is people who left the TV on, and won't follow TNA to a graveyard spot on Fox Sports 4 or whatever. TNA's actual buys were so bad they went away from a monthly model, but they struggled to sell their PPV's to 10 thousand people, and their live shows have struggled to fill high school gyms. Part of it might be the PPV system in general is dead or dying, but that's not good. There's maybe 100K people on the planet who care about TNA enough to support the product. WWE can't even find 1 million people to buy the network in America, and is counting on lapsed fans who miss the Attitude era to try to push them to the break-even line.
Wrestling has always scared away advertisers, even before you get into the man on woman violence or stalker angles that means that Spike probably isn't making any more money airing Impact over airing Cops re-runs, especially when Spike has to foot the bill for the "legends" that are paid enough to not need to bartend on weekends.
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There was way more development on this episode of Raw then that 3 hour thing that used to cost money to watch live.
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Average PPV. Still miles better than they were doing two years ago but considering hot good the shows have been since the network launched it was more noticeably lackluster.
Not getting Ambrose v Rollins was weak sauce.
Hmm... well the rumored card is Cena vs Lesnar and Reigns vs HHH. We'll probably get Orton v Kane and finally get Rollins v Ambrose so I tink Summerslam will actually look quite different. Which matches do you think will be repeat bookings?
As mentioned, AJ/Paige, Jericho/Bray, Usos/Wyatts, and Swagger/Rusev all had lame finishes that seem to be setting up for another month of the same action, as well as Ambrose/Rollins, which was advertised for this show. Maybe WWE will have the good sense to wind down one or two of these programs, but worst case, we're looking at over half the card to Summerslam being the exact same card.
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Wow, this sure has been a poorly booked, dull as dirt PPV from WWE. Can't wait to see all these matches again/for the first time next month at Summerslam.
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this has nothing to do with the current convo, but am watching Old RAW on YouTube, and my golly gosh can Billy Gunn sell Bradshaws Clothesline
its amazing Dolph Ziggler sort of reminds me of Gunn, looking back i wished i liked Billy more
I think Billy's a bit underrated because he couldn't talk and didn't have a ton of personality, but he was a fantastic athlete and a pretty good worker.
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Love to see how they will bring this into the MCU
'Sorry girls, I know you enjoyed staring lustily at Chris Hemsworth as Thor, but we've decided to change Thor to female and will now be played by Kaley Cucuo.. but we're doing this for you women.. right?'
I can't see this working.. Unless they nail the transformation (Not sure how she can be Thor Odinson now anyway. He's Odin's Son. Its in the freaking name), all its going to do it send people fleeing from the magazine and possibly pick up a few women readers.
What they haven't said is what universe they will make the change in. If its 616, then its going to be a temporary change until Avengers 2 comes out. If its Ultimate Verse, then it will probably stick.
However, its a pretty moot point as Thor has been a dull read for ages and will probably continue to be dull as a women.
You at least touch on the actual issue in this post, which is that Thor doesn't have a lot of readers or interest as a comic anyway. I'm not sure how what's very clearly a short-term gimmick is going to send people "fleeing" from the magazine. I don't think comic readers are that incredibly stupid, but I have been wrong before.
Why does it have to be a problem that there are more male than female superheroes, anyway? Superheroes are, essentially, warriors - and through history, warriors have been predominantly male.I'm not saying that there shouldn't be strong female superheroines as well, and I enjoy that X-Men has a fair share. But I don't see a need to push for 50/50.
Thor suddenly becoming female is nothing more than a short gimmick to boost sales and get attention, just like Dr. Octopus becoming Spider-Man, Captain America dying, Wolverine dying, etc... things will get to normal soon enough.
Who said it was a problem? I just almost-laughed at the idea that 85/15 is a ratio that's so good there's no need to do anything, the problem's solved! One Avenger with no powers. Clearly ideal status is achieved!
Edit: also the reaction to people calling this a "publicity stunt" is pretty funny. Yes, I accuse this corporation of making this change for MONETARY interests, not in the pursuit of art! That's why they appeared on a television show and promoted it!
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Care to explain why you spit out your drink? Was it crap or did you happen to be baffled by my statement/perception?
Imho and based on my limited knowledge of comics, it seems they do treat women equally. I mean: Wonder Woman is part of the trinity, and Batgirl has a valued spot among the Batpeople. Add several who have leading roles in some of the mainstay comics, and I fail to see how the statement is inaccurate at all. I'm not talking about their roles being sexualised. Mainly the ratio. I guess it depends on whether you think a 90/10 or 80/20 ratio is "equal." With the exception of the X-franchise, which is still putting out about half a dozen series spotlighting its male heroes (Wolverine, Cyclops, Magneto, Nightcrawler, etc., and that's just this month), both of the big two have a ratio of 80/20 or worse when it comes to titles with female leads. DC has about 5-6 books with female leads out of 50+, and Marvel barely does better, and that's after Marvel made a recent commitment to focus on building female readership. And of those that do support their own title, the majority of them are knock-offs of more popular male heroes (Batgirl, She-Hulk). And this with Marvel finding that almost 40% of its reading audience is female, and almost 45% of the total comics reading audience. And there was what, two women in the Avengers movie, one of whom was Nick Fury's sidekick and one who was maybe the least helpful member of the team? So, yeah, I just about spit-taked at the idea that comics have a "good ratio" of male to female characters, because as far as I can tell, they have a pretty terrible ratio.
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It's plan "C" for client. As in "my client Brock Lesnar broke the Undertaker's streak."
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Ok, thanks. If I find it lying around, I might check it out, though the art doesn't seem all that great.
Heard that Marvel's going for a female Thor. What's up with that? I get that they want to keep things fresh, but why do you need to change things so much? There's got to be one constant. Let that be characters, please. I get gender equity and gender-bending and all, but comics seem to have a good ratio of male/female characters, including women in leadership roles. So why change? Thor's got some female characters too, so are they going to change those to male roles? I always thought the female Thor was Valkyrie (at least in appearance, never read her stuff). In the end, we get the same story but with different characters.
I almost spit out my drink reading the underlined bit. Anyway, it's something new to do with a character that quite frankly is the most boring character in his own story (see also: Steve Rogers Captain America in any book he appears in), so it should make things interesting for a couple of years before he becomes dull again. I like Jason Aaron, so I'm sure he'll do something fun with it.
Also, I enjoyed the Wolf Among Us on Steam and went back and re-read the first two trades of Fables. Man, that is some tough sledding. The murder "mystery" is awful, and the exposition is never-ending and incredibly clumsy (Bigby asks at one point how Bluebeard can afford a magic apartment). I guess the target demo was teens that don't read comics (except for a couple issues of the Sandman), but the nudity and lazy jokes come off as so adolescent and lame. It does get a bit better, but the game really shows how much more can be done with the premise than the comic does.
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I think Punk's peak would be about 87-88 with clear potential to go higher but then they beat him 4 straight PPVs when he returned in 2011 and it was clear he was never at the same level arguably until the Rock and Taker feuds as a heel and he lost both of those too.
I would generally agree, the obvious exception being Chicago, where he's pretty obviously an A-A*.
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Just thought of a potentially fun Royal Rumble scenario. Every time Adam Rose gets thrown over the top, he body surfs on his Rose Buds. I chuckled just thinking about it.
Even better if another comedy heel like Fandango or Sandow tries to do the same thing, and the Rosebuds just don't catch him.
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It's cool to see Emma be reinstated but that's a potentially worse punishment than being released. WWE will not forgive her easily, I wouldn't be surprised if she just becomes a female jobber and loses every match she wrestles until her contract is up, at which point she is inevitably cut loose. It's a shame because she's shown in the past that she has plenty of talent.
With regards to what she did being an honest mistake, I don't believe that to be the case. I find it hard to believe that you could steal an iPad case by accident, especially in a self-serving checkout. They very loudly let you know if you've put something in your bag that you didn't scan. Maybe she put it in her handbag and forgot? I don't know, I just don't know you shoplift by accident...
In other WWE related news, yesterday was a historic day in the career of Zack Ryder. He now has absolutely zilch items of merchandise on WWE Shop. Good luck in your future endeavours Mr. Ryder.
First, she hasn't worked a match in a month anyway, so being jobbed out would probably be an improvement. Second, it doesn't take much effort to find hundreds of comments from people saying they've done or almost done the exact same thing on the various reports of this story. It really isn't that hard to "shoplift by accident." We don't really have the facts, but it's a bit too early to say if WWE really plans on doing anything punitive about it. Unless there's Visa issues involved, I can't see it being a big deal, really. It's been mentioned elsewhere but Cameron and Jack Swagger both have more serious charges in the past couple years, and nothing was really done in either case, except maybe keeping Swagger from getting a token world heavyweight title run when the belt was basically a glorified IC belt.
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<blockquote data-ipsquote="" class="ipsQuote" data-ipsquote-username="Self" data-cite="Self" data-ipsquote-contentapp="forums" data-ipsquote-contenttype="forums" data-ipsquote-contentid="25169" data-ipsquote-contentclass="forums_Topic"><div>Emma came onto the main roster and sunk. The Funkadactyls came onto the main roster and swam. Easy to see why they'd keep Cameron and lose Emma.</div></blockquote><p> </p><p> I assume you're talking about Total Divas, because the Funkadactyls didn't do anything in August 2012.</p>
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<blockquote data-ipsquote="" class="ipsQuote" data-ipsquote-username="bigtplaystew" data-cite="bigtplaystew" data-ipsquote-contentapp="forums" data-ipsquote-contenttype="forums" data-ipsquote-contentid="25169" data-ipsquote-contentclass="forums_Topic"><div>I despise the term XPac heat as I always disagreed with the origin anyway. Xpac got booed with Kane and all but like... I'm sorry that whole storyline was lame. Maybe my memory is playing with me and is tainted by the Network's selective editing or something but Kane with the crappy talking and Tori and the for-no-good-reason silly face turn... Xpac took the blame for crappy attitude era writing that the increasingly smarter fans saw through.<p> </p><p> I just never think people booed Xpac because they hated him as much as the internet thinks they did. He DID get booed despite being a babyface for awhile, no doubt. But Kane became a weaker character with Xpac and he took the heat when it was the dumb writing's fault. There were many performers who got booed for sucking back then. X-Pac really wasn't the worst offender and I wish history didn't remember him that way as he WAS, at one point anyway, a brilliant in ring performer with good versatility and impressive ring psychology.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> OK I'm off my soapbox. To your point, RKO, I think Rusev is being booed for the RIGHT reasons. It's a well built heel run and flat out designed from the ground up to get thunderous boos. I too think he's pretty good in the ring. I was marking out big time as I always liked Swagger and I'd love to see a face run with the patriotic gimmick. BigE just wasn't pulling that angle off very well. And on a separate tangent I follow Big E on twitter and instagram and stuff and the dude IS a funny guy. I wonder why he isn't really getting that side of him across on TV. Are they booking him to be too serious or is he not skilled enough to make a looser, more fun version of himself work?</p></div></blockquote><p> </p><p> I've been on my soapbox for years about that term, it's dumb and always has been. I think it's better to picture face/heel on a sort of spectrum. On one end of the spectrum you've got guys like Austin (biggest pop when Sandow mentioned him), who everyone loved. Then you've got guys that will get booed if they get in the way of guys more babyface than them: Rey Mysterio for the past few years (remember when the fans cheered Batista killing him?), John Cena since forever, even the Rock when he was in there with the wrong guys. The same way, there's levels of heels, and X-Pac was booed even compared to other heels, mostly because he spent months beating up Kane's girlfriend and then stole her from Kane, then proceeded to beat Kane repeatedly, with the announcers constantly talking about how he was Triple H's buddy. And X-Pac didn't even really get "booed as a face," they never really tried to turn him, and they immediately paired him up with Kidman, a guy that just can't really work heel but is a great sympathetic babyface. Anyway, it's a dumb term that gets used to mean about three different things.</p>
Imho and based on my limited knowledge of comics, it seems they do treat women equally. I mean: Wonder Woman is part of the trinity, and Batgirl has a valued spot among the Batpeople. Add several who have leading roles in some of the mainstay comics, and I fail to see how the statement is inaccurate at all. I'm not talking about their roles being sexualised. Mainly the ratio. 
The Official WWE / NXT Discussion Thread *May Contain Spoilers*
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