TLCJR4LIFE

I know this may seem really strong but MJF has a charisma on the microphone that I haven’t seen since The Rock:

<p>PAC isn’t as smart as he thinks he is.</p><p> </p><p> Grabbing barbed wire by the barbed side is not a good idea.</p>

<p>AEW is seemingly doing a terrible first</p><p> hour ratings wise. Not sure why but it’s looking NXT levels bad</p>

The same reason “mandatory challengers” have existed in boxing for generations. In boxing, since again we are using the pseudo sport comparison, the champ would always defend his title when having a fight even if it was against some bum no one ever heard of. In fact WWE’s own Tyson Fury just got done fighting some no bane in the leaduo to his second fight with Deontay Wilder, the only difference is that boxers, although extremely unlikely due to skill difference, can technically actually lose these fights.

That doesn’t make sense. Casual fans have no idea the Young Bucks have executive roles in the company, they aren’t advertised heavily nor is the Elite as a stable in general. Secondly I don’t believe anyone ever “buries” themselves on a TV match unless something particularly egregious occurs. Also AFAIK the Bucks still have a really good overall record and probably will still that way. Pretty sure in terms of kayfabe it’s supposed to be a tune up match for Jericho and that’s why PAC wasn’t chosen based on win loss record. They are already advertising a match with Cody at Full Gear so you sort of get the idea here.

Agreed. Even worse that again years of the character building were thrown out, the fact that WWE failed to see the big picture yet again is just special. See you could have built to a huge Sasha vs Bayley blow-off, knowing good and well these two have excellent chemistry in the ring together. You have Sasha the manipulator totally diva it up while complicit heel Bayley is pushed to the very limits of her personal ethical code out of loyalty to Sasha, Sasha eventually gets tired of Bayley for being soft and turns on her, ending a 6+ month run of Bayley as a soft heel. Then boom, Wrestlemania quality blowoff feud. See how easy that is? Meanwhile Bayley doesn’t lose the only interesting thing about her character and can easily switch back to her babyface persona without it being total BS. Again, I’m almost positive in a year or so Bayley will revert her character and just be like “Haha guys she was just going through a phase shes back to normal now” This is why WWE is seen as a joke and has trouble losing its stigma as a kids show, because of fan slapping continuity issues like this

It’s legitimatley so corny it hurts, it blows my mind that wrestling Twitter ate it up but then again as stated smarks have never seen a heel then they didn’t love. She’s so much edgier now! Oh, you mean she’s a generic whiny heel, just like every other heel woman on the roster? With Emma the history went from her having this super dorky gimmick with a dance to wearing sunglasses and frowning like she was a huge badass. No one bought it then, no one bought it when Brodus Clay did it wither, and no one bought it when they put crappy facepaint on Mojo and his cracked mirror persona. Why, because it all comes off so phony and cheesy. The whole “broken babyface gets a meanstreak” motif is so played out and tired and never worked in the first place. Heel turns require storytelling, charisma and they require not insulting the viewer with some dumb stuff. “Waaaah I lost a title match, I’m going to dye my hair and scowl now!” If you say so. The only time I’ve seen that sort of angle work was Broken Matt, but he was willing to take that places it honestly had never gone before in wrestling history and he was willing to take a chance on being immortalized in a WrestleCrap tier angle. At first, Broken Matt was seen as kind of a joke, then it became sort of must watch in a train wreck sort of way until it became legitimatley over. But again, that was the opposite of generic, wrestling really hadn’t seen a character like that before.

I highly doubt Vince deals with most of these NXT signings. That being said, the glut in indie talent is mostly intentional, as they are intentionally trying to tie up all of the talented and known indie talent to their brand so that competitors can’t use them.

Exactly. But post this on r/squaredcircle and you will get nuked into orbit. I don’t see how WWE brass finds NXT acceptable for what it is at all. Cole will probably be a big deal in the WWE, but honestly I had heard about Adam Cole literally a half dozen years ago, he is nothing new, he was an inevitability. Riddle and Dream are the only interesting guys you could consider young fresh talent, just because Riddle has only been doing this for a few years. And honestly again, I don’t really know what HHH or any of the NXT fans expect WWE to do with most of these guys. Bobby Fish is very old, pushing 40. Roderick Strong is an old vanilla midget. O’Reilly is a vanilla midget but at least somewhat young. Johnny Gargano, again, middle aged vanilla midget. Ciampa, glorified vanilla midget who’s middle aged and broken down with multiple severe injuries. The hell has WWE historically been able to do with generic CAW looking dudes under 5’11 that have no gimmicks or microphone skills? Nothing. Cole has charisma and can at least play a character so he’ll likely be a factor, he’s also a spring chicken compared to most of NXT despite being like 30 and around Indy circles forever. I don’t think the smark fan will ever accept the reality around NXT when Vince ultimately gets rid of it or overhauls it. If I’m willing to bet, I bet Vince gave the NXT guys a chance to beat AEW as a third brand and if they dont(and they aren’t going to even come close) he’s going to take it over is my guess.

Nothing smarks love more than an arbitrary heel turn. I quite liked the heel Bayley as a codependent best friend complicit with the manipulative Sasha Banks. But then again, that’s far too subtle and layered for WWE and probably WWE fans to get. No, we need yet another character throwing away years of character development and consistency for a quick heel run inspired by everyone’s teenaged daughters rebellious years. They did the same exact thing with Emma right before she was released. So great, Bayley legitimately lost her one standout feature she has, and is now just a below average looking heel with an “attitude”. Good luck with that.

<blockquote data-ipsquote="" class="ipsQuote" data-ipsquote-username="BuddyGarner" data-cite="BuddyGarner" data-ipsquote-contentapp="forums" data-ipsquote-contenttype="forums" data-ipsquote-contentid="46105" data-ipsquote-contentclass="forums_Topic"><div>I hope there's stuff in the products to simulate Lucha underground(obviously not the two elements in the title but the revolutionary way it handled storylines).</div></blockquote><p> </p><p> There’s essentially nothing there to simulate as it pertains to TEW. </p><p> It’s a little more angle heavy than the average fed and that’s literally all that would reflect in the booking.</p><p> </p><p> The only way LU differered from most companies is its usage of pre-taped backstage segments and heavy editing as the show wasn’t a live show.</p>

Darby has bypassed my natural dislike and bias against small guys and made me a fan. That skateboard run in was one of the coolest things I’ve seen in a while. There’s some Jeff Hardy in Darby.

<blockquote data-ipsquote="" class="ipsQuote" data-ipsquote-username="Jaysin" data-cite="Jaysin" data-ipsquote-contentapp="forums" data-ipsquote-contenttype="forums" data-ipsquote-contentid="25169" data-ipsquote-contentclass="forums_Topic"><div>Edge is denying it, but there’s been a lot of reports that he’s been cleared to return to the ring. That would be insanity.</div></blockquote><p> </p><p> </p><p> We saw a similar thing with Shawn Michaels after he retired for a long while. </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> The long break does wonders for neck and back injuries.</p>

<p>So Raw on social media did notably terrible numbers, lot sure if HIAC fallout. Ratings are incredibly unreliable due to the unscientific way they are collected but we’ll see if the ratings reflect the social media downswing.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> Numbers are out, 200,000 viewer decline from last week, 10 percent drop overall, and a peak drop of 400k viewers.</p><p> </p><p> HIAC fallout was real.</p>

The WWE has legitimate problems. The fans like the edgier gimmicks with more character. So the result is you get this extremely low tier babyface champion, Seth Rollins without exaggeration being one of the weakest in recent company history(only rivaled by Kofi) and because he has no character or charisma the fans want the edgy hot bad guy to win. The WWE has formula booked for 30 years now so they don’t know any better. They were unprepared for the hot new heel act to basically dwarf the stale corporate face of the company in popularity and didn’t know how to book their way out of it while maintaining the interest in The Fiend but keeping the title on Rollins. The answer was simple, put the title on The Fiend and wait until you get a babyface that’s actually over so you can have him beat the Fiend. Or turn a hot heel babyface and have him keep the majority of his character ala Stone Cold and The Rock. It’s not impossible, Becky is super over as a babyface, so even in today’s heels rule the roost climate you can still have a viable babyface draw, they just need to be really good, have literally everything because the entire concept of a babyface is everyone likes them because they are so awesome. On the male side, Reigns is the only one who moves the needle as a aface, but he’s also the only one who’s been seriously pushed outside of Rollins who is a huge flop and it was obvious he wa going to flop because he possesses no main event babyface qualifies at all. Half of his run they had him trying to leech off Becky to get over for god’s sake.

Pre curb stomp spam the main event had one of the most tense, big match feels in wrestling in a long time. After that basically the worst booked match in the history of pro wrestling took place. The Fiend’s over the top durability(there’s a threshold here of looking abnormally durable and stupidly so, after a point they crossed well into the match, t basically doesn’t become believable for the Fiend to ever lose a match), coupled with a no contest finish where The Fiend just laid in the middle of the ring for the last 5 minutes. Rollins didn’t even look like he knew what he was doing. Hell in a Cell ending in a no contest is absurd. I think my interest in this company depletes by the event. AEW is gonna WWE the WWE and just let the other show kill itself a la WCW at this point.

She’s not quite at Becky’s level but Sasha is probably legit the greatest performer I’ve seen in the women’s division. If she didn’t run concurrent with two other GOATs she’d be Trish Stratus level of megastar

<p>Too much flack on social media for the Hager spot.</p><p> </p><p> AEW isn’t going to be bringing in monster signings every week there aren’t even that many free agents. Out of all of them, Jake is one of the better ones, he’s bi, athletic and at one point actually drew money as a main brand champion of WWE.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> When he was headlining house shows business was actually up. Great look, marketable. Just needs some solid booking behind him. He’s also a pretty good wrestler more importantly. Super athletic for his size. I think it’s a coup.</p>

<p>Couple of extremely interesting social media trends.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> 1. NXT is an actual footnote, smarks somehow worked themselves into thinking it would be even close with AEW, it’s not. More alarmingly, AEWs social media trends are actually comparable with WWE RAW, which is ridiculous considering the huge headstart RAW had and the fact that Synamit is on its first show.</p><p> </p><p> 2. Cody is probably a huge draw.</p><p> </p><p> 3. Jericho similarly is a large draw, comparing to social media numbers we see from WWE main eventers like Lynch(and well above Rollins)</p><p> </p><p> 4. PAC/Hangman did numbers similar to random WWE midcarders, nothing surprisiing, a typical non needle mover match.</p><p> </p><p> 5. Rose/Riho was decidedly below average, this is concerning because WWE best non Fiend/Reigns SM draws are women, notably Becky Lynch. The gap here is huge.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> Will be interesting</p>

<p>AEW has a lot of sleepers, especially on the heel side. Just wish they gave Luchasaurus a better gimmick, dude has a great look and great size.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> Riho isn’t it. AEWs women division is lagging so far behind WWE, but WWEs women division is the only thing they have ever done right, it’s absolutely stacked, and for my money if AEW can get even a few stragglers from the WWE they can draw money.</p>

<p>Balor going back to NXT along with NXT overwhelmingly getting absolutely trounced in the ratings signifies what a colossal failure NXT has been as a whole.</p><p> </p><p> Smarks will prop it up as the greatest thing ever because it’s essentially the WWE Abrams ties to a glorified Indy, but in terms of actual business it’s borderline castatrophic and an unprecedented failure. But yes, and I can’t stress enough this is the result of constantly trying to appease the IWC, and internet sub-cults of fans rather than mainstream audiences who actually keep you in the black.</p><p> </p><p> NXT was supposed to be about developing future stars for the WWE, only no one in the 5 or so years of the brand being a thing has actually drawn any money except Braun Wyatt, and he was classically trained and developed in FCW, not brought through the NXT system. </p><p> </p><p> The WWE essentially failed massively at their goals because instead of looking for John Cenas, Batistas, Randy Ortons and such to put through developmental, they signed a bunch of Indy darlings on the wrong side of 30s who did nothing but work in bingo halls their entire lives. As a result everyone they called up was already a near post prime finished product with a really linear skillset, basically smark spot wrestling. We see it with Owens, Zayn, Balor and countless others.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> Now the WWE is shipping these old midcarder peak type dudes back to NXT and reintroducing it as a “brand” rather than developmental to make it seem less of a bust, only the brand will probably get outdrawn by its competitor by over 100 percent.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><blockquote data-ipsquote="" class="ipsQuote" data-ipsquote-username="Greylocke" data-cite="Greylocke" data-ipsquote-contentapp="forums" data-ipsquote-contenttype="forums" data-ipsquote-contentid="25169" data-ipsquote-contentclass="forums_Topic"><div>Took a look at the new 2-hour NXT from last week....well, I guess I'm really not the target audience for this show. I actually tend to find 1-hour weekly shows more watchable in general since they tend to rotate the guys on the roster every week and feature different people, which helps prevent characters from getting stale or overexposed too quickly. Now, they're getting to be more like RAW and Smackdown, showing the same "main event stars" every week. If you watch RAW/Smackdown and are sick of Seth Rollins, Roman Reigns, Becky Lynch or Charlotte, you have to be resigned to the fact that they WILL take up at least 15 minutes of screen time every week. But if you watched the old NXT and are sick of Gargano and Cole at least you <em>didn't</em> have to see those guys every week. That's not the case anymore. Even if you do like the guys they're pushing, them not showing up every week makes one look forward more to the episodes where they DO show up.<p> </p><p> And to make things worse (for me), they also doubled up on my most hated trope - dominating heel stable. As much as i like Walter, I don't need to see TWO heel stables, one dominating each hour of the show. And if a stable wants to establish themselves on a show and "take over", make a statement, etc, why are they targeting a random babyface who hasn't accomplished anything yet (yes, I know Kushida's "undefeated"....but like 80% of the shiny new indy/foreign stars get one of those during the first few months of their debut, so it's not even special anymore). Why not go after a title holder? Oh wait, they can't, because ALL the titles are held by the other heel stable and they don't want the heel stables to fight each other. <img alt=":rolleyes:" data-src="//content.invisioncic.com/g322608/emoticons/rolleyes.png.4b097f4fbbe99ce5bcd5efbc1b773ed6.png" src="<___base_url___>/applications/core/interface/js/spacer.png" /></p><p> </p><p> Even the Women's title is controlled by <em>another</em> heel stable. So basically every title feud on this show will have the same story of the outnumbered babyface(s) fighting against superior numbers. That feels like even lazier writing than the main roster shows that I remember.</p><p> </p><p> I always watch these shows late, so the "Wednesday Night Wars" don't make a difference to me, but I know which show <em>I'd</em> watch if i had to choose.....</p></div></blockquote><p> </p><p> </p><p> The UE is 3 vanilla midgets and a Shawn Michaels clone with a good catch phrase. Of course a heel stable is the best way to book them. They can also draw too probably if WWE pulled the trigger on them. The tag team are excellent in the ring and Cole has the camera skills to carry the rest.</p>

One aspect that usually is small but could be in play here is if your top workers are losing popularity or have been outright lost to another company. This can also decrease momentum .

<p>Enzo was several legions more over than Neville.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> Neville is just a guy. Literally had and still has no drawing power whatsoever. But the fact that he thinks he’s bigger than the show and the companies booking him is the issue, there’s no place for guys like that.</p>

WWE didn’t screw up anything with Neville, he was feuding with the biggest star in the cruiserweight division when he decided to take his ball home because he was too big of a mark for himself. Good riddance. I’m honestly hoping AEW isn’t pigeonhold into using him too much because he pulled the same stunt with them earlier this year where he refused to do a show because he didn’t want to take a fall.

Feels like with the new TV deal and the AEW threat, WWE is FINALLY realizing they need characters and storylines and not vanilla midgets doing floppy dos in 25 minute “Epics” with a million near falls and This is Awesome Chants. The Fiend has mainstream appeal/potential due to its simplicity and visceral, instant appeal. Lashley/Lana is a step in the right direction, but it’s tasteless and I’m wary of the depths WWE will take that angle in particular. Overall, with the Fiend, the Lana angle, and Becky Lynch, Raw has at least 3 big angles that will actually draw, and that’s been extremely rare for them in the last several years. Smackdown is also doing work with the Brock stuff. Time to see what the Khans will do as a counterpunch. I’m not sold on them being super on board with this mega indie show idea, indie wrestling stays indie for a reason. I think they need to turn it up and get some hot angles themselves, they probably have the talent for it and with the caveat of being more adult oriented have more wriggle room than PG WWE does(although I question how much a cuckold storyline fits into PG programming)