Wrestling Entertainment - we know, you don't have to tell us!

[Vinjay]

On 26/05/2020 at 10:06, DE. said:

Honestly I've just stopped watching modern wrestling entirely. I still watch the odd Nitro or Raw from the 90s if I want something playing in the background that I don't have to pay much attention to, but wrestling without crowd reactions is just boring to me. I'm not sure I'll watch again until crowds are allowed back into the arenas. 

Have to wonder how the crowed may have responded to Tyson/Jericho pull apart. As someone old enough to have watched the Tyson/Austin incident under similar circumstances it was always going to come across as a weaker imitation especially with no crowd. JR's commentary reflected that as well because it was almost impossible to capture the same intensity as that moment. Jericho's a star but he's not Austin. Tyson is noticeably calmer these days as well (even after his daughter's death) so there's slightly less of an aura there. Of course if you're gonna bring in Tyson it makes sense to have him involved in a confrontation. Perhaps he will be in a match and that will certainly get some publicity. 

Edited May 28, 2020 by Vinjay

[DE.]

9 hours ago, Vinjay said:

Have to wonder how the crowed may have responded to Tyson/Jericho pull apart. As someone old enough to have watched the Tyson/Austin incident under similar circumstances it was always going to come across as a weaker imitation especially with no crowd. JR's commentary reflected that as well because it was almost impossible to capture the same intensity as that moment. Jericho's a star but he's not Austin. Tyson is noticeably calmer these days as well (even after his daughter's death) so there's slightly less of an aura there. Of course if you're gonna bring in Tyson it makes sense to have him involved in a confrontation. Perhaps he will be in a match and that will certainly get some publicity. 

There have been so many potential "big" moments in AEW that would have been amazing with a crowd reaction - Matt Hardy's first appearance, Brody Lee (who would have been debuting in his home state I believe), Jericho/Tyson, The Revival's debut... it really sucks that all of this stuff is happening with zero crowd. As you say the intensity that makes these kinds of moments memorable just isn't there. It's kind of depressing which is why I've stopped watching for now. Kudos to AEW for continuing to put out a great product but without the crowd reaction it just isn't the same. 

[Blue blood]

16 hours ago, DE. said:

There have been so many potential "big" moments in AEW that would have been amazing with a crowd reaction - Matt Hardy's first appearance, Brody Lee (who would have been debuting in his home state I believe), Jericho/Tyson, The Revival's debut... it really sucks that all of this stuff is happening with zero crowd. As you say the intensity that makes these kinds of moments memorable just isn't there. It's kind of depressing which is why I've stopped watching for now. Kudos to AEW for continuing to put out a great product but without the crowd reaction it just isn't the same. 

Absolutely. Great becomes good, good becomes decent and decent becomes meh. As a lot of content is just decent these days this means a lot of content at the moment is meh. I also feel bad for wrestlers who deserve the crowd reactions for some of the great stuff they do. Not watched AEW but just thinking of the Drew MacIntyre Vs Rollins match at MITB - it was excellent and deserved a crowd reacting to it. Like the examples you give as well, wrestling is designed to get crowd reactions. So no crowd, you're missing a big chunk of its purpose. 

[DE.]

35 minutes ago, Blue blood said:

Absolutely. Great becomes good, good becomes decent and decent becomes meh. As a lot of content is just decent these days this means a lot of content at the moment is meh. I also feel bad for wrestlers who deserve the crowd reactions for some of the great stuff they do. Not watched AEW but just thinking of the Drew MacIntyre Vs Rollins match at MITB - it was excellent and deserved a crowd reacting to it. Like the examples you give as well, wrestling is designed to get crowd reactions. So no crowd, you're missing a big chunk of its purpose. 

Completely agree. It's different with football because at its core it is a competitive sport so even though the crowd is a big part of it, the game itself is still interesting enough for me to watch without it. Wrestling is entertainment and as you say designed for crowd reaction, so when there isn't one it just feels weird and flat. It's a real shame as before the pandemic I was hugely into what AEW are doing, but now I'm just not that interested in watching until the crowds are back. 

Edited May 29, 2020 by DE.

[Blue blood]

2 minutes ago, DE. said:

Completely agree. It's different with football because at its core it is a competitive sport so even though the crowd is a big part of it, the game itself is still interesting enough for me to watch without it. Wrestling is entertainment and as you say designed for crowd reaction, so when there isn't one it just feels weird and flat. It's a real shame as before the pandemic I was hugely into what AEW are doing, but now I'm just not that interested in watching until the crowds are back. 

Yeah. Storylines don't work as well when there's no crowd to play off. Perhaps because it is more like a real sport the elements that for me have worked best are the competitive matches like the Rollins-MacIntyre, and the cruiserweight tournament because the main driver in both of these, over the story, is who will win the match. Even then it's not quite the same but it is interesting to note that where the outcome/winner is more important than the story, the interest is higher. 

[DE.]

There's a pretty huge sexual misconduct scandal exploding at the moment - originally started with David Starr and focused on the UK Independent scene, but is quickly branching out to OVW (specifically Jim Cornette and his wife) and NXTUK. Looks like some serious shit is about to hit the fan. Dark Side of the Ring won't have to worry about content for the foreseeable future.

[Dreyski]

Accusations against (among others):

David Starr

Jordan Devlin

Will Ospreay

Joe Coffey

Ligero

Joey Ryan

Mikey whiplash

Marty Scurll

Bubblegum

Kid fite

Alexander Dean

This could run and run...

https://twitter.com/ExposeWrestling

https://twitter.com/LeanneMarieWres

[Blue blood]

Well it doesn't half seem like a can of worms has been opened there. I can't say I'm surprised. Wrestlers or wrestling strikes me of being like footballer culture where lots of young men are given money and fame, without perhaps the maturity to go alongside it (NOT that this condones any of it if the alleged is true). Add in that unlike football you have a locker full of women athletes close to hand as well, and it feels like it could be a perfect storm. It's sad news, and terrible if true (which it sounds like it is), but  I don't think it's that surprising. 

 

On the topic of wrestling now that there has been time for people to catch up with the last two big WWE events here are my thoughts on them. 

Backlash was decent. Drew continues to excel as world champion and provides good quality matches and Lashley worked well with him. Shame about the ending as they were having a really good match and it spoilt it. Orton-Edge was better than I thought after the debacle of Wrestlemania, and was actually a good match. Two very watchable matches. For the rest it ranged from decent to meh. Asuka v Jax was good bar the ending, and the rest was ok without really being PPV worthy. Two good matches worth seeing but overall these PPVs don't seem to have the wow factor, impact or level of performance I would expect from a PPV. Worryingly I'm not sure if that's solely down to lack of fans either... 

 

In Your House Takeover I enjoyed. It was good, really good, although not one of their best by a fair way. The action ranged from solid to excellent, and had 3 excellent matches: the women's triple threat, Lee vs Gargano and Priest vs Balor. All were great matches making it the best non crowd event we've seen. The women's tag was solid too. I'm not a fan of these shot elsewhere events, so the back lot brawl didn't do it for me at all, and was a weak showing considering the calibre of the performers. Cross beating Champa so easily too was also a bit of a surprise. That said none of these matches were bad or dragged, so 3 great matches and 3 decent, makes for the strongest non crowd event yet by a country mile, and an enjoyable one at that. 

That said it it's the first time I've come away with reservations about NXT booking. As in multiple reservations. They are: 

1) Gargano and La Rae turn - it's huge given they are both pure baby faces and yet with neither picking up the win, there's no momentum to their change. Such a huge change in terms of star power and more importantly the type of characters they were needs to see some in ring success to mirroring the size of the story and character shift. 

2) Cross beating Champa so easily. Champa is one of the top stars of NXT. If he can beat Champa so easily it doesn't give Cross much further to go. Win a title and then what? Who's there to feud with, who can credibly beat him, if he can kibosh Champa so easily? A win after a more titanic struggle would have been a much better story and given Cross a lot more room for development in NXT. As it is, there's limited story line scope and limited plausible opponents for him. 

3) NXT can't make traditional faces any more. I'm a week behind with NXT (and don't know the results!) due to seeing it on the network, but it seems like Balor and Io are the latest two to turn heel, and then turn back to face in the space of 12 months. Now don't get me wrong being a heel and then turning face is a good way to go (The Rock being the best example of this) but I have two issues with this. Firstly it's not the only type and way of having a face character, and secondly the turning back to face is happening far, far too soon. It's not that long ago that they were bad guys, and their betrayals are still quite fresh. This limits the amount I for one can get on board with them as faces, and in general I think it detracts from their face turn. Add to which if you keep changing someone's character so often it gets confusing and farcial (e.g. Big Show in later years.) More to the point turning becomes less of a big deal. And turns really ought to be a big deal, 

What worries me most is that none of these ideas are dependant upon a crowd being present and makes me wonder if NXT is losing its touch. Rant over. 

[DE.]

Dave Lagana is also being accused now which could spell trouble for NWA Powerrr as he's one of if not the main force behind it.

[DE.]

As per my last post, Lagana has resigned his position and NWA has temporarily halted production: 

 

[DE.]

@Blue blood this is what Meltzer wrote this week about NXT:

Quote

NXT felt like this week’s Raw or Smackdown, with the vomiting angle, shorter matches, and vandalizing babyfaces cars. It’s either the people in NXT copying main roster thinking that’s the change needed, or more likely, the overseer believing these changes are necessary to bring up numbers and beat AEW. For a while it felt like NXT was on its own path and not really being reactive to AEW except on rare times. Since Mania it was built on Charlotte Flair from the main roster and NXT’s overall numbers declined less than the other shows, but that wasn’t the case in18-49 which dropped badly, so the gains were over 50. So now it looks like a change in the pacing and nature of the show. They are doing a quick build to a NXT vs. North American title winner take all match on 7/8 to go against the main event of Fyter Fest, which was very clearly totally reactive.

Looks like sadly it is on its way to becoming the C show.

[Blue blood]

8 hours ago, DE. said:

@Blue blood this is what Meltzer wrote this week about NXT:

Looks like sadly it is on its way to becoming the C show.

I just don't get it. The previous takeover in January, prior to the pandemic, was once again excellent and NXT was looking strong. It had adapted well to a longer format on TV. It was clearly differentiated from the rest of WWE and offering similar to AEW. If they change that then WWE is most likely giving a significant and loyal section of the market to AEW unhindered. 

[DE.]

It's just Vince being Vince. He was distracted by the XFL when NXT made the move to TV, so Triple H and Shawn Michaels were probably able to run it without any major interference. With the XFL on hiatus due to COVID Vince now has his eyes firmly set back on WWE and it looks like NXT is part of that. 

[DE.]

Jeez this sexual harrassment stuff just keeps coming out. 

She was 17 at the time, JFC. "I fucking love you dick head" - how did that line not win her back?

[Blue blood]

23 hours ago, DE. said:

It's just Vince being Vince. He was distracted by the XFL when NXT made the move to TV, so Triple H and Shawn Michaels were probably able to run it without any major interference. With the XFL on hiatus due to COVID Vince now has his eyes firmly set back on WWE and it looks like NXT is part of that. 

Don't get me wrong Vince has done a hell of a lot for wrestling, but I do think now he does more harm then good. Wouldn't have thought NXT would be a casualty of the virus because it got extra attention. 

[DE.]

16 minutes ago, Blue blood said:

Don't get me wrong Vince has done a hell of a lot for wrestling, but I do think now he does more harm then good. Wouldn't have thought NXT would be a casualty of the virus because it got extra attention. 

Vince has been and still can be a genius wrestling promoter, I don't think anyone could argue otherwise. With that said he is badly out of touch with the modern audience. His shows have been declining in ratings and attendence for close to a decade now. There are no new stars on the level of anybody from the attitude or ruthless aggression era. Those stars continue to be run into the ground despite their advanced ages, and are routinely put over the newer generation enhancing the percpetion that the old is better than the new. 

The only product that resonates with a modern audience is NXT, but even then it has a significant over-50s audience share, which also correlates with Raw & Smackdown's demographics. We have seen time and time again how NXT's brightest talents are misued and destroyed on the main roster. The vast majority see their value plummet in the space of months if not weeks. Eventually WWE is going to run out of older generation stars who are still able to go, and I have no idea what they will do at that point as they haven't built any replacements. Even Roman Reigns doesn't really draw outside of the current core fanbase.

[Blue blood]

22 hours ago, DE. said:

There are no new stars on the level of anybody from the attitude or ruthless aggression era. 

We have seen time and time again how NXT's brightest talents are misued and destroyed on the main roster. The vast majority see their value plummet in the space of months if not weeks. 

This I think is what irks me most. Especially from NXT they most definitely DO have the talent to have some huge, huge stars but every time they come onto the main roster they generally do fairly badly. 

Interestingly it's better for women then men. The division is built on NXT - the 4 horsewomen, Asuka and Alexa Bliss being key examples. 

But for the men the use of talent is lamentable. Take Ricochet- the guy can do it all, brawl, wrestle, fly high and sells stuff well with the bonus of being able to do stuff no one else can do in an era of athleticism. To me that seems pure gold but he is lost in the shuffle. Terrible use of talent. 

Then there's been some clear successors to the old stars who've been used so poorly that they clearly aren't. Alister Black could have been the next Undertaker type figure, (ironically his run was sacrificed to boost an opponent of, yep the Undertaker) although the Fiend also could have held that moniker, or as Bray Wyatt if booked better. Sami Zayne looked so over in NXT he felt like he could be the next Daniel Bryan as the plucky underdog. 

Tag team wrestling is even worse. The Viking Raiders or Authors of Pain could have been the next LOD. The Raiders in particular are hugely talented, have the look and could do that role well. The Street Profits have a unique level of charisma and connection with the fans. The Revival were a brilliant classic heel tag team. That should be the basis for epic tag team feuds and stories for years to come. Instead they are doing stupid other sports competitions. 

The problem has been that NXT makes the stars and has the future very safely secured. The issue is the main roster seems to break them through bad booking and poor use. If AEW do take a bigger market share, WWE only has themselves to blame. 

[Bigdoggsteel]

What is going on currently with the wrestling "metoo" doesn't sit well with me. A lot of the stuff is legitimate, but not all of it is and people are being cancelled regardless. Is there such a thing as due process anymore? 

[DE.]

4 minutes ago, Bigdoggsteel said:

What is going on currently with the wrestling "metoo" doesn't sit well with me. A lot of the stuff is legitimate, but not all of it is and people are being cancelled regardless. Is there such a thing as due process anymore? 

Yeah it's become a bit of a witch hunt - needs to be reined in a bit to separate the legit abuse stories from the stories that are more about personal issues or just somebody being a dick in general.

[Bigdoggsteel]

8 minutes ago, DE. said:

Yeah it's become a bit of a witch hunt - needs to be reined in a bit to separate the legit abuse stories from the stories that are more about personal issues or just somebody being a dick in general.

Ya, some of them are basically "wrestler X was mean to me once" with comments underneath saying to fire them. 

Would be gas if Cornette gets sucked(ahem) right into this as well 

[DE.]

10 minutes ago, Bigdoggsteel said:

Ya, some of them are basically "wrestler X was mean to me once" with comments underneath saying to fire them. 

Would be gas if Cornette gets sucked(ahem) right into this as well 

He already has - he and his wife were accused of sexual harrassment by some people who were in OVW. The jist of it was the Cornette liked to watch his wife with other guys, and they would pressure guys into being with her, threatening to essentially blackball them if they didn't go along with it.

[DE.]

I should note that the Cornette stuff is pretty flaky and far from proven. 

[Bigdoggsteel]

4 minutes ago, DE. said:

He already has - he and his wife were accused of sexual harrassment by some people who were in OVW. The jist of it was the Cornette liked to watch his wife with other guys, and they would pressure guys into being with her, threatening to essentially blackball them if they didn't go along with it.

Eugh...... Creepy Cornettes. I wonder will there be as much about this seeing as it sounds like it was boys and men who were abused. 

[DE.]

Just now, Bigdoggsteel said:

Eugh...... Creepy Cornettes. I wonder will there be as much about this seeing as it sounds like it was boys and men who were abused. 

There have been some guys speaking up as well (largely talking about other men being the abusers, though) but yeah the Cornette stuff was treated more like "ha ha" than outrage. With that said the Cornette stuff is nowhere near as clear cut as the allegations against the likes of Joey Ryan, David Starr, Jimmy Havoc, Jack Gallagher, Dave Crist, etc. These dudes have basically been outed as legit sexual predators/rapists which is seriously fucked up.  

Sammy Guevara has also been suspended from AEW for a comment on a podcast from 4 years ago where he joked that he wanted to rape Sasha Banks. An incredibly stupid and immature thing to say but it's weird to see that comment getting more attention than the actual stories of rape and sexual abuse.

[Bigdoggsteel]

11 minutes ago, DE. said:

There have been some guys speaking up as well (largely talking about other men being the abusers, though) but yeah the Cornette stuff was treated more like "ha ha" than outrage. With that said the Cornette stuff is nowhere near as clear cut as the allegations against the likes of Joey Ryan, David Starr, Jimmy Havoc, Jack Gallagher, Dave Crist, etc. These dudes have basically been outed as legit sexual predators/rapists which is seriously fucked up.  

Sammy Guevara has also been suspended from AEW for a comment on a podcast from 4 years ago where he joked that he wanted to rape Sasha Banks. An incredibly stupid and immature thing to say but it's weird to see that comment getting more attention than the actual stories of rape and sexual abuse.

It's all allegations at this point though, isn't it? Of those you mention above, who has been accused of rape? Ryan, lewd behaviour and sounds bad, but I haven't seen rape mentioned. David Starr, bad behavior too, the accuser mentioned "grey rape", is that an actual thing now? It goes on then kind of similar with the others. Some even being accused by anonymous accounts and this been held up as fact. Maybe I have missed some of the more clear cut accusations/evidence. Maybe some of them are pieces of shit, I just find this anonymous accusations and then immediate repercussions to be a fairly dangerous path. Especially with "famous people" like wrestlers. There are a lot of crazy fans out there. Or you could just have an ex who was hurt and decides to do this. I dunno, it just doesn't sit well with me. It's the climate we are in though.