Makhai
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Posts posted by Makhai
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1 hour ago, Matt_Black said:
The problem with resetting with how things were in NXT? NXT was never as good as some people like to claim.
NXT was better than most people claim. The Gargano era was literally the best wrestling produced in North America since the 1970s from a quality perspective. From Takeover: Philly to Takeover: Portland the quality of each of those events was off the charts. Between them and what NJPW was doing pre-pandemic it was unbelievable stuff.
If we're resetting to that, on a primetime TV timeslot, with the full WWE production barrel behind it. And no body dysmorphic, rapey NYer around to body block it.
That's the dream.
When McMahon started to meddle with it during the pandemic it declined by a lot. But let's not whitewash what was NXT, even the Dusty era was dramatically better than the WWE. Bayley and Sasha still live off the fumes of that Ironman match. When they close their eyes at night they probably see that little Hugger mark crying.
Give me that back, all day.
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20 hours ago, Self said:
That seems to be the Go To move of the Triple H era. Bring back gimmicks/wrestlers from a couple of years ago. Keep hitting the Undo button.
I mean, he's so far just using the Fall to re-assemble his crew. And undo MacMahon booking. I don't see the harm in it. And the product is way over performing atm. The MNF games have to actually be decent to affect them right now.
Also, the shows are mostly watchable. Which is a goddamn miracle if you told me this 6mos ago I'd have never believed it. 2M .45s for 3hr RAW in MNF season? No way. But here we are.
I can tolerate some tactical retconing, considering the situation.
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5 hours ago, Mecha Kaji said:
Fuyuko Higa mark here! I seem to be hell bent on getting her into the Hall Of Immortals.
Has been the case for me for multiple versions, and as long as I keep her off the belt, she usually is fine while I meddle her into a beneficial relationship and cross my fingers.
These days though my girl Black Diamond becomes a star in every save. She's a cheat code.
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48 minutes ago, Aura said:
This thread is pretty useful, because I had similar fears about workers with Explosive Ring Style. I always assumed that they were sort of Goldberg-esque figures that were fantastic in short squash matches, but were badly exposed if they had to wrestle a longer, more competitive match.
It can be that. The advantage of it is that guys/girls can be significantly worse than what you would normally consider, but because they have this bonus, and because they have underlying traits and/or star power or something that makes them marketable, or menacing, this gives you a way of pushing them beyond what their base working stats would normally allow and with good booking and momentum management get them over.
Eventually though, you will find people, or develop them into actual workers. And then this style actually becomes a small penalty which at the absolute endgame means you can't abuse slow build, which means they won't be putting on 90s which means they have a ceiling.
This is why I book them the way I book them. They are incredibly nice to have early, meh mid-game, and a hard cap late.
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Here's the QR code from tonight's Smackdown. So you don't have to get phone cooties. Seems like we're going split-personalities. WWE really wants to sell merch.
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3 minutes ago, chm39 said:
Quashes. The Time Penalty doesn't make that big a Deal if you don't expect it to be in the 90s. I'm pushing one now and as long as she keeps getting high (around the Pop of my Company) its good.
This. Just book them to squash everybody, and then when they get to your ME, keep them away from your title. When they max out momentum job them to someone you want to put over and transfer the momentum off. Rinse repeat.
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On 10/18/2022 at 10:34 AM, Teh_Showtime said:
I think a sensible scenario is that the National School of Wrestling and a bunch of it’s grads breakaway from 21CW just leaving them with an old card and few options for the future.
The talent they have stashed there could kickstart the entire continent and bolster a few abroad promotions as well.
The 21CW competitor is the AEW story, if you want an AEW story.
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6 hours ago, Jaysin said:
Ugh. Just ugh. The Kingdom are the worst. I do not understand what there is people like about them. Maria's promo didn't even make sense. In what world are Matt Taven or Mike Bennett responsible for any part of AEW forming? My memory is turning to swiss cheese, so it's definitely possible I'm forgetting something they've done that was ever remotely worth sitting through.
Matt Taven was a key player on that abomination of an MSG show, that killed ROH, it's relationship with NJPW, and paved the way for AEW.
Other than that I'm clueless as to why this bloated company needs Taven + Hotwife and Cuck. Already have a zillion tag teams that don't get any camera time. A zillion better workers that can't get on TV, just an indefensible hire.
I hope they are quickly jobbing out on Dark and they are not on 3+ year deals.
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10 hours ago, Dorian said:
I'd make the case Joanna Silver is the comparison. Now is she as good as Stratus? No, she isn't there yet. However, I do believe we'll probably see her at the top of some big company eventually. As she continually improves her wrestling and has a great amount of charisma to go along with her improving skills.
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On 10/11/2022 at 6:23 PM, James The Animator said:
It’s funny that right now there is no AEW equivalent in the C-Verse, but TCW founder JK Stallings was basically Tony Khan many years before AEW was founded.
There is an AEW equivalent. It's ACPW. The only reason AEW exists now is because they were the ones who saw a nearly 2 decade market vacuum, got sick of ROH dropping the ball, and filled it. C-Verse doesn't have that vacuum. In fact, TCW's biggest problem is likely that it's just getting squeezed out by a massive USPW and SWF. Only so many eyeballs, only so much money in people's pockets.
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On 9/29/2022 at 2:07 PM, lavelleuk said:
That was my thought too, in terms of eye candy-turned good worker
Although Zoe Ammis always reminds me of Trish. Started off as sex appeal (I assume with the gimmick agent 69) but eventually became a more serious wrestler and then developed into a top worker.
Both Canadian too
She's the only female to graduate out of the DeColt Dojo. She's basically been the daughter George never had. Which is nothing like the Trish story of "Trashy blonde pin-up hired to be a valet and then be a homewrecker for Vince McMahon, takes out fake breasts and goes brunette after her run to become a generational-level worker."
Mostly because, she still hasn't gotten over on a mainstream level, or worked for a big company at all. She is also an actual wrestler. In order for this comparison to work you've gotta literally go from zero to hero.
Closest is probably Belle Bryden. But even as Wanda The Dish, she won the Femme 5 times and was an indie darling when she got her call. None of the BoSC girls made it, which is surprising, I was expecting Dharma Gregg to wind-up a big star and be this kind of character. But nope.
Adam is too uptight to actually put over a "trash bag ho."
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1 hour ago, milamber said:
I was expecting this when her Oral Sessions podcast numbers fell off a cliff. But then she got the Bengals gig made me think she was gonna stick it out for a while longer. Seems like the end for Tony and JR though. We'll see.
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On 10/9/2022 at 12:14 AM, Matt_Black said:
As long as we get the Firefly Funhouse bits back. Those were solid gold every time.
I would prefer that the Firefly Funhouse was retired and this new gimmick was just let be what it is without having to shoehorn a bunch of his previous gimmicks into it to sell merch. I'm fine with the going through his previous gimmicks idea to pad out the reveal so the crowd got a full theatrical entrance.
But that should be the long and the short of it. I don't want Bray Wyatt's greatest hits. I want a fresh act, in a gimmick he can actually work a real match in. For as wacky as The Fiend thing was, it couldn't go anywhere, it couldn't build up wrestling matches. It was just a stream of consciousness thing on TV that happened. Almost killed his career.
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2 minutes ago, The Swanton825 said:
Really? Because I always saw them as the World title as the I-Can't-Believe-It's-Not-Bullet-Club and also Jericho belt, the TNT title as the Cody Rhodes belt and the Tag titles as the afterthought belts. Everyone always talked about how much they "meant something" the same way they talk about "long term booking" but honestly even the NWA World Heavyweight circa Adam Pearce and the Impact World title immediately after Victory Road 11 still had more prestige than any AEW belt has ever had. Seriously, who has held the AEW World title and could conceivably hold any other main event title right now? A Chris Jericho ten years past his sell-by date? A banged-up, unmotivated Kenny Omega who just wants to go back to Japan but is stuck in this venture because he couldn't tell his friends no? The millennial anxiety cowboy? No, no and no. That leaves us with Moxley when he cares enough to tell a story and not just do his Atsushi Onita impression and a healthy CM Punk, a being so rare and mythical that Mountain Monsters is filming a special episode in search of him.
Oh and I guess the Women's title has been there since the start too, but it's hard to tell with how rarely it's on TV. Something, something, ratings drop. Something, something, other excuses lazy bookers always use.
The Women's belt was the second biggest in the company until the TBS was minted and the deathmarch began.
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14 minutes ago, The Swanton825 said:
I feel like Battle of the Belts would be a better name for a show for champion vs champion matchups but they'd probably need to have other promotions belts on the line and I imagine Impact is only willing to have their championship change hands on AEW TV so many times.
Nothing devalues champions, like having a bunch of useless titles so you can fill out an event on your calendar. One of the refreshing things about this company was that there were like 3 belts, and they all meant something.
Now there are 40, and I don't care about any of them.
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12 hours ago, milamber said:
Jericho helped Sammy by virtue of securing him a huge amount of screen time in the last 3 years he wouldn't have had on his own. He was elevated from a random indie flippy guy into a known name. Of course things went downhill for Sammy during the TNT booking fiasco and he now gets an undeserved amount of hatred from fans.
I honestly can't think of anyone who has earned more justifiable backstage heat relative to card position in his career than this guy. Everyone says the exact same thing about him, it's been 5 years of hearing this. And Andrade was just a textbook example.
He should not be in that company after the Andrade thing. Knowing the PR, and the state of the company after the Punk-EVP scandal. Just going to get worse to keep a mid-card flippy guy that you have 100 of on Dark right now.
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4 hours ago, BrokenCycle said:
Grading on a curve, I gotta say USPW in every database they've been a relevant promotion in. I'm aware this could be user error, but I always feel very tense and on edge that something horrible will go wrong on every show I book. I love the idea of booking a promotion with really bad wrestlers, but the lengths you have to go through to strategize good shows really breaks my brain, and feels like you're taking advantage of how the game operates.
It's pretty chill now, once you get the hang of how pop-feds function and skew towards big angles and not matches, so much. They actually have the talent to swim now. Back in like 2010... When it was a bunch of old guys, Nicky Champion who wasn't over yet, and an unbelievably expensive Enigma, all way under their pop. It was quite the struggle.
I remember the literal only way I could do it was to book Sam to be in every angle possible.
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10 minutes ago, Self said:
Chris Jericho absolutely made Sammy Guevara. There's an irony to Sammy tweeting about how other wrestlers are favour hires who should "be grateful", when he himself should consider himself the luckiest boy on earth that Jericho's first choices for a stable were unavailable. Being with Jericho put Sammy in an amazing position to develop and learn, when alone he could have been a Kip Sabian. Decently talented, but fading into the background through lack of creative.
Hager? Nah. Jack Swagger was a regular midcard presence in WWE for years. More well known and interesting back then.
I think Santana and Ortiz were hindered by the Jericho association. Slightly. They were lumped into multi-man stable wars when they could have been a strong tag team threat... but that isn't entirely on Jericho. To counter the above post by djskeemask, while AEW have always had an array of good tag teams, it's never felt like a strong division to me. No cohesion. No consistent booking. A midcard afterthought, booked as poorly as the Women's division, but with more flips. When the champions are rarely the best team, how important are the belts, really? So once Jericho was finished with Santana & Ortiz, there was nothing for them to do. And then they split.
While there's no way in hell I agree with the Hager thought, I will agree with the Sammy-Kip comparison. Go watch their opening level match from pre-TV era when they both were just signed. Tell me those two aren't the same goobers with different accents.
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16 hours ago, The Blonde Bomber said:
The lore of some companies could use some updating to make them interesting.
You mean that only smushing two underperforming companies together in Canada, not even attempting to make that make sense financially, and ignoring basically everything else for a decade even as half of it turns 40, leaves your game world stale? You don't say.
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On 8/24/2022 at 1:59 PM, Pteroid said:
Ok but at least that's funny (and doomed to failure in the long run as he declines and someone inevitably snaps the little headache up)
SIR! I'LL HAVE YOU KNOW HIS SON IS GOING TO CARRY THAT FED TO THE MOON!
THE MOON, SIR! I WILL NOT HAVE YOU BISMERCH THE BEST FED IN THE GAME SIR! PFFT! I SPIT ON YOU! PFFT!
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I have not been able to get into the C-Verse at all in 2020 because of how bad the retirement epidemic is, but EWA and 5SSW are my comfort picks.
On 10/6/2022 at 1:30 AM, The Blonde Bomber said:NYCW was fun for me did a year in a half with the original goal of making Milano my Bruno. Never let him lose the belt. Despite him not being a great talent after changing his pic I loved his look. Made him a superstar the likes USPW or SWF would love.
SWF is also my go to of the big three. Always have been since I first played the 2013 demo. I’ve tried USPW and TCW but could never get into them quite the same. TCW intrigues me more now though as I could see doing a sports based wrestling show with them. USPW just comes off as SWF but more pg.TCW has always been the best of the 3 big US companies to book, and USPW the hardest, despite the gameworld story of USPW building a tsunami that topples the SWF by beating it to streaming and taking an old-school product and beating everybody with a very new-school business model, SWF being completely caught in it's own internal crap to fight back and TCW being a dinosaur that is slowly crumbling under its relic of a style, waiting for the glory days to comeback.
One of my biggest complaints with the C-Verse this year, is just how imba the game is in this regard. Stories are being told in bios, that are not reflected in the reality of the game world. This has always been the case, it's just not nearly as ignorable now.
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11 minutes ago, James The Animator said:
“Hager came in as a guy who was a jobber in WWE and was gotten over enough to have wrestled Moxley for the WORLD TITLE, and Sammy was literally a prospect guy when he joined, his babyface turn went very well. ”
Wow, I can’t even argue with these claims. I’m just completely gobsmacked. Jake Hager was OVER… and Sammy’s babyface turn went well?! I feel like I live in another dimension!
You're being intentionally dishonest, it's not even arguable that Sammy and Jake were both more over after their time with Jericho then they were when they started with him. Those are the layup cases. Santana and Ortiz are the ones you can make an argument were worse off, but only because of an ACL injury just before, or just after, the group disbanded; both were in the tag title picture prior.
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4 hours ago, Dawn said:
I'm guessing the Mauro bridge is burnt. And I definitely hope Barrett sticks around for the long haul even after McAfee returns - he is excellent! Booker isn't the most thorough analyst but he is just hilarious and a name casuals will recognize which is probably a good way to go for colour of a brand introducing so many new characters to fans.
Mauro is locked down with Showtime/Bellator. He'll probably be doing the Paul-Silva fight this month.
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The Official WWE / NXT Discussion Thread *May Contain Spoilers*
in The Dog Pound
Posted
Nothing Vince McMahon ever did got anyone emotionally invested. He made fart jokes, and buried guys. I don't know how you could watch anything between 2004 and now and think otherwise, I really can't. If you liked it, it was purely accidental.