**World Soxtalk Championship Wrestling Thread VI**

[iWiN4PreP]

Now, ELIAS IS a character. 

Whether you like his steez or not he is undeniably a unique character, one of the FEW in the WWE. That's why he has such an aura around him.

It's too bad they have no idea what to do with him in the ring and he hasn't had a real meaningful match. I mean, he was in the elimination chamber or something? Right?  But outside of that, nothing. 

Oh look, another MITB 1on1 match is scheduled.. roode vs. Owens... so 'creative'. 

[iWiN4PreP]

Changes I would make to the WWE:

1) Limit PPVS. Have less of them. I don't know if this means just the 5 big ones... RR, WM, KOTR, SS, Survivor Series, or if it means going with say 7-9 with additions of WWE classics like Starcade, Great American Bash. I'd probably go about 7 PPVs. 

This would allow time for real feuds to grow. With the recent rise in Raw/Smackdown being much more important than PPVs this makes additional sense. It would help creative A LOT while keeping both weekly shows AND PPVs meaningful as the shows would develop almost a soap-opera feel with the storyline development and the pay offs would be the special PPVs. 

2) Bring back KOTR clearly. Make things 'important' again and CREDIBLE. 

With the limited PPVs, everything would feel much more special. Instead of useless shitty PPVs like "Hell in the cell" or "Money in the bank" or "TLC" you have meaningful matches. One MITB match at WM. One PPV KOTR where a true King is crowned with credibility. A RR winner with credibility. 

No nonsense like Mojo Rawly winning the WM andre royal rumble and then being forgotten about. Everything will have a purpose. 

3) Try to avoid mid match commercial breaks as much as possible. Self explanatory.

4) Stop the annoying advertisements from announcers and treating every match like it is the best ever and every PPV as if it is the best PPV of all time. This is degrading.

This would instantly make the show much more watchable. These announcers are spoon-fed and forced to be marketers. Anyone remember how great Bobby Heenan was? Or the heel Jerry Lawler? Gimmie some more character and less telemarketers.

5) STOP with the 3 hour Raws and 1.5 hours of it is replays and flash backs. 

This is fucking AWFUL. They have 3 hours and a full roster of characters but instead they give us 50% replays of last week or video packages of what just happened or replay over replay of the same shit. There needs to be SUBSTANCE in the 3 hours all the way through. They ABSOLUTELY have the packed roster to make this happen.

6) Eliminate Brock Lesnar

Seriously, this one is killing Raw. Be done with him. 

 

 

There's many more, but that's a good start.

[iWiN4PreP]

Once again, everything with Rollins is GOLD right now. Great fun match up with Jinder with Rollins attacking him with the Steel chair to end the match...

 

...Then Elias connects with the guitar on rollins. Very smart. Elias will likely get the IC match at MITB against rollins which will be good for both competitors.

 

[iWiN4PreP]

As much as I dislike Nia Jax, that was a good overall segment setting up their MITB match. 

[Brian]

[Y2HH]

12 hours ago, iWiN4PreP said:

As much as I dislike Nia Jax, that was a good overall segment setting up their MITB match. 

It was the best segment Jax ever had to carry on her own, but that being said, it was a tremendous character break to shoehorn in this Rousey match at MITB. They literally spent 6 months telling the "bully's never win" story and Jax overcoming it, just for Jax to literally turn around a week later and bully a jobber. So for that reason alone, I thought it was pretty terrible.

[iWiN4PreP]

2 hours ago, Y2HH said:

It was the best segment Jax ever had to carry on her own, but that being said, it was a tremendous character break to shoehorn in this Rousey match at MITB. They literally spent 6 months telling the "bully's never win" story and Jax overcoming it, just for Jax to literally turn around a week later and bully a jobber. So for that reason alone, I thought it was pretty terrible.

Lmao. Indeed.

That's the kind of shit that happens when WWE needs to push Rousey into this match. There just was no reason for it to be done. Good analysis. 

[iWiN4PreP]

3 hours ago, Brian said:

This is the wrestling forum part of Soxtalk. Please keep all discussion in this thread regarding Wrestling and commentary there of. Useless spam like this will have to be reported to the administrators of this site and corrective action may need to be taken. Please try to keep civil in your discussions.

 

[Brian]

What about name calling, like you did in the NBA thread? 

Triggered by a gif

[Kyyle23]

you can call everyone plebes and basic, but you cant take it when someone throws a gif at you?  

 

Brian, your hand is now slapped.   Slightly.   Corrective action taken

[Brian]

2 minutes ago, Kyyle23 said:

you can call everyone plebes and basic, but you cant take it when someone throws a gif at you?  

 

Brian, your hand is now slapped.   Slightly.   Corrective action taken

#TooSweet

[thxfrthmmrs]

45 minutes ago, iWiN4PreP said:

This is the wrestling forum part of Soxtalk. Please keep all discussion in this thread regarding Wrestling and commentary there of. Useless spam like this will have to be reported to the administrators of this site and corrective action may need to be taken. Please try to keep civil in your discussions.

 

Very well played Ron, bully calling others bully. That's the WWE storyline you're putting to mockery right?

[iWiN4PreP]

I have never been a bully to anyone on this site -- that's not who I am. Calling someone a normie or basic is not being a bully, in some respects -- people love being normal.

I will have to ask that you guys stick to the discussion at hand. Is there any insight that you have on the posts? @Y2HH brought up a great point that I overlooked in regards to the Nia situation (as I only casually have been following some storylines). It's amazing the lack of structure WWE storyline writers have. Some would consider them extremely basic and pandering to a less than intelligent fan base. It's an insult.

 

Look guys, I'm not trying to be captain douche, I come here to talk wrestling -- but if you guys can't see the problems with WWE, then it is my job to show you their logical inconsistencies.

[Kyyle23]

12 minutes ago, iWiN4PreP said:

I have never been a bully to anyone on this site -- that's not who I am. Calling someone a normie or basic is not being a bully, in some respects -- people love being normal.

I will have to ask that you guys stick to the discussion at hand. Is there any insight that you have on the posts? @Y2HH brought up a great point that I overlooked in regards to the Nia situation (as I only casually have been following some storylines). It's amazing the lack of structure WWE storyline writers have. Some would consider them extremely basic and pandering to a less than intelligent fan base. It's an insult.

 

Look guys, I'm not trying to be captain douche, I come here to talk wrestling -- but if you guys can't see the problems with WWE, then it is my job to show you their logical inconsistencies.

actually it is being a bully, it is you telling people that they are dumber than you because their opinions dont align with yours.  And you can stop doing that

[Brian]

 

[Brian]

5 minutes ago, Kyyle23 said:

actually it is being a bully, it is you telling people that they are dumber than you because their opinions dont align with yours.  And you can stop doing that

Unless someone has written weekly tv or booked pro wrestling, nobody can tell me what’s logical or illogical. I can watch for myself and suspend disbelief and pick out things I like instead of picking stuff I don’t like to sound smart.

And if you don’t like WWE, sign up for NJPW World or ROH’s Honor Club. Content is so accessible now. Don’t understand watching one thing and hate on it.

[y2chae]

WWE, while they are making more money than ever, is not in a good place creative wise at the moment. Anyone here follow NJPW? Dominion is looking to be a stacked card.

[Brian]

25 minutes ago, y2chae said:

WWE, while they are making more money than ever, is not in a good place creative wise at the moment. Anyone here follow NJPW? Dominion is looking to be a stacked card.

I come and go with my NJPW World subscription. I'll be coming back for that show.

I could see Omega/Okada going 90 minutes.

Edited May 31, 2018 by Brian

[iWiN4PreP]

Has there been any less impactful star than Bobby Lashley?

This guy comes in and is the most boring act I've seen since I last watched Randy Orton (speaking as a fan of Orton -- he's just really boring as a face in the past 2-3 years). 

Bobby Lashley has been given terrible storylines and matches. It's as if they were like, ok this guy is a star so we need him on the show, but we have no f***ing clue what to do with him so make him a babyface and give him random matches then will have this crazy fucking feud with Zayn.

[iWiN4PreP]

I'm half-way through this article and it is such a good article I had to post.

This article beautifully demonstrates the flaws of WWE as I do in this thread, but not only does it do this -- it also showcases why we still watch wwe. We no longer are fans, but rather more interested in asking ourselves wtf is WWE doing? 

 

http://whatculture.com/wwe/how-wwe-became-so-terrible-it-altered-the-way-we-watch-it

 

[iWiN4PreP]

Raw has virtually no stories at the moment. It's horrible.

The only story they have is Zayn and Lashley and that is complete shit.

Their formula is: We have MITB coming up, put all matches on raw with different combinations of opponents from their matches.

Lazy.

[Y2HH]

12 hours ago, iWiN4PreP said:

Raw has virtually no stories at the moment. It's horrible.

The only story they have is Zayn and Lashley and that is complete shit.

Their formula is: We have MITB coming up, put all matches on raw with different combinations of opponents from their matches.

Lazy.

Practically the only character on RAW with any sort of consistency is Alexa Bliss. They stick her with two babyfaces yesterday and I loved the fact she "got injured" and left them in response to the horrible booking decision.

This Nia/Rousey 'feud' is terrible so far. Rousey has great staredowns but other than that I don't get why they protected Natty so much. She's lost like 80 matches in the past year and now they have her put up a fight against Jax? Why. Jax should have run over her, but now they're waffling on Jax's sudden heel turn last week by making her "Nattys concerned friend".

Braun and Rollins are over as hell.

And so is Elias.

They need some writers with a fucking attention span. They have stories, but nobody can follow them because from week to week they're completely inconsistent for the most part.

[iWiN4PreP]

3 hours ago, Y2HH said:

They need some writers with a fucking attention span. They have stories, but nobody can follow them because from week to week they're completely inconsistent for the most part.

Absolutely. 

The talent is there by far, I just can't tell if the writers are the main problem or if its upper management. I can't imagine anyone is this bad at writing storylines on a week to week basis. It's shockingly bad. I'd take a third graders essay-story over most of the writing in wrestling right now. 

[Y2HH]

20 minutes ago, iWiN4PreP said:

Absolutely. 

The talent is there by far, I just can't tell if the writers are the main problem or if its upper management. I can't imagine anyone is this bad at writing storylines on a week to week basis. It's shockingly bad. I'd take a third graders essay-story over most of the writing in wrestling right now. 

It's mostly because nobody wants to rock the boat. From Vince on down, they play it safe, and why? Because they have no viable competition AND they're getting paid huge money to keep the status quo. Even in NXT, they really don't do much in the way of risk taking with characters or storylines. They find their favorite few and basically stick with them until they're bumped to the main roster. Let's take Asuka as an example of this lack of risk taking. She should have lost while in NXT to complete the story and help create another star, but nope. After she got "indy-popular" -- a term I use for wrestlers that only the most die-hard of wrestling fans decide to like -- they basically buried the entire NXT womens roster beneath her and then brought up to the main roster because they didn't want to rock the boat or take chances with Ember Moon or anyone else dethroning her stupid streak.

Now wait for it...

Yes, that same streak they shattered by having Charlotte beat her right before Carmella beat Charlotte twice, cleanly, and then bragged about it and deservedly so. So the streak ended up meaning fucking nothing, and nobody got a rub from it. I just question so much of what they do story wise it's not even funny. Bobby Roode went from having an actual dickish, arrogant character that proved to the world that he was the best in NXT to being a guy that comes out to music and then ceases to have any personality or character whatsoever.

Ember Moon? What exactly is her character or her motivation? Is she a wrestler that think she's a werewolf? I'm not sure. Why is she a babyface? Why does she hate Alexa Bliss? Who or what does she fight for? It's like ... the most basic of storytelling elements, from character to motivation just don't exist anymore.

That being said, with these billion dollar deals being thrown around right now, I hold out hope someone gets the idea that with the right infusion of cash, a place like RoH could become a viable alternative to becoming the next WCW quite easily because a competing product that's rated PG-14 and more adult-centric? I got a feeling it wouldn't only compete with the WWE, it'd make waves. It just can't come off as low-rent like it does now...and it needs to compete directly with WWE like WCW did. Live on Monday, and force the audience to choose. If RoH has the likes of Cody Rhodes vs Omega in a blood feud telling an actual story of trying to prove they're the best in the world ... I'd fucking watch that over the drivel the WWE is putting out right now.

[iWiN4PreP]

7 hours ago, Y2HH said:

Ember Moon? What exactly is her character or her motivation? Is she a wrestler that think she's a werewolf? I'm not sure. Why is she a babyface? Why does she hate Alexa Bliss? Who or what does she fight for? It's like ... the most basic of storytelling elements, from character to motivation just don't exist anymore.

You make excellent points throughout your entire post. I think this quote could be said for a lot of the wrestlers (maybe over 90% of them). Lack of direction is a huge problem.

7 hours ago, Y2HH said:

Yes, that same streak they shattered by having Charlotte beat her right before Carmella beat Charlotte twice, cleanly, and then bragged about it and deservedly so. So the streak ended up meaning fucking nothing, and nobody got a rub from it.

The streak ending leading to no pay out is probably the biggest failure on the booking team since they destroyed Bayley at the hands of Bliss (mainly the 'this is your life Bayley' segment). 
 

 

7 hours ago, Y2HH said:

That being said, with these billion dollar deals being thrown around right now, I hold out hope someone gets the idea that with the right infusion of cash, a place like RoH could become a viable alternative to becoming the next WCW quite easily because a competing product that's rated PG-14 and more adult-centric? I got a feeling it wouldn't only compete with the WWE, it'd make waves. It just can't come off as low-rent like it does now...and it needs to compete directly with WWE like WCW did. Live on Monday, and force the audience to choose. If RoH has the likes of Cody Rhodes vs Omega in a blood feud telling an actual story of trying to prove they're the best in the world ... I'd fucking watch that over the drivel the WWE is putting out right now.

You are damn right. If there was a company that I felt put out a compelling wrestling product and was head to head with WWE, I'd choose it 10 times out of 10 over the current product.  The key thing that WWE has is its time slots are great for viewing. I have no idea how to watch things like TNA or even when they are on. I want a weekly show that I can sink my teeth into, and unfortunately, WWE does that well by having MON/TUE and then the PPVs on Sat/Sun.