BRM Reviews PWG All-Star Weekend 14: Night 2

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Big Red Machine
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Re: BRM Reviews PWG All-Star Weekend 14: Night 2

Post by Big Red Machine » Jun 23rd, '18, 22:24

cero2k wrote: Jun 22nd, '18, 16:13
Big Red Machine wrote: Jun 21st, '18, 23:31 There's no difference. A heel acts like a dick in the ring, just like guys win and lose matches in the ring.
no, because by your whole argument, a win/loss only matters if it builds to something or it comes from somewhere, a win in itself in the ring means nothing if it's just there, which is indeed how a heel acts inside the ring. Hero was a dick to Liger on BOLA, was Hero a heel? did he become a heel the next show? was it all leading into him becoming a dick that day? no, he was just a heel that match and fans reacted to it and booed one of their favorites.
My whole argument is that the very premise of pro wrestling requires wins and losses to mean something, and booking the shows in a way that fails to make the results of the matches matter is bad booking.
Hero's entire second indy run had him being a dick to people so it didn't bother me in the Liger match because it was totally in character for Hero to be disrespectful to someone he views as an old man whose time has already passed.
But in general, guys should not cross certain heelish lines (like cheating) if they're not going to turn heel because of it.
cero2k wrote: Jun 22nd, '18, 16:13
Big Red Machine wrote: Jun 20th, '18, 17:22 You said above that the title is important because the champion is the guy who drives the card. Now you're saying that everything drives the card. If the winner of Thatcher vs. Riddle is irrelevant then the title is irrelevant two because you don't earn a shot at it; you just get lucky that the booker happens to pick you when he's booking the card... which makes it no different than the way he picked Riddle to face Thatcher or any other match on the card. If there is no pretense of earning a title shot then it's no different than being booked in any other spot on the card.
It's no different than the Women of Honor Title where it doesn't mean sh*t because the people getting the title shots are totally random women who didn't do sh*t to earn it while the women's match that has felt the biggest this year was the Kelly Klein vs. Emma match in London because they're the two women who win the most often and thus they come off like the biggest stars.

because there can only be one driver?

Of course there can be more than one driver. But if the thing that makes the title special is that it is a driver then the fact that other things are a driver means the title doesn't mean much.
cero2k wrote: Jun 22nd, '18, 16:13 or you may earn a shot by putting on awesome performances on every show and getting great responses and maybe that leads to you getting a title shot one day whether you win or lose all those matches.

If an NFL team goes 6-10 but they lose all of their games in overtime or in the last play of regulation they don't get to go the playoff just because they came really close in all of their losses. They're still 6-10. If you can't win any of your matches then you're a loser and shouldn't be anywhere near the title. If the guys has a great performance in the title match and loses should they just give him the f*cking belt?
cero2k wrote: Jun 22nd, '18, 16:13 Kelly Klein vs Emma felt big because Emma is a former WWE wrestler and is freaking hot, that is literally the only reason. Not excusing the booking, but let's not pretend that Klein vs Emma was this awesome build up.

I never said there was awesome build-up. In fact I'm saying quite the opposite. But the match felt big because Emma has only lost one or two matches so far and because Kelly went undefeated for so long and was clearly the top dog of the division for years and still rarely loses, and now they were facing off one-on-one and that meant one of them would have to lose. Compare that to the title matches that have happened with Sumie Sakai defending against women like Jenny Rose and Chardonay who never did sh*t to earn the title shot and rarely ever win, and Kelly vs. Emma feels a lot bigger even though the other matches had the title on the line and had tag matches and one post-match brawl beforehand that were theoretically building them up.
cero2k wrote: Jun 22nd, '18, 16:13
Big Red Machine wrote: Jun 20th, '18, 17:22 Dude.. you just described exactly the feeling that there has been towards basically every top babyface ROH has ever had, plus Steen & Generico and the Briscoes in the tag division, plus Jimmy Jacobs during Jimmy Loves Lacey, Cabana and Punk every time they went to Chicago, Homicide every time they were in New York, a well as Banks in PROGRESS last year, Ilja and WALTER in wXw, AJ in TNA, and many, many others. PWG isn't special. It's ECW all over again but unlike ECW it has Dave putting it over.
Then there you go, WALTER can be our guy without a fake journey.
I never said he couldn't be your guy; just that I find it very weird that you all picked him to be your guy after a mere five matches.
And without those "fake journey's" you'll never get pops like this:


cero2k wrote: Jun 22nd, '18, 16:13
Big Red Machine wrote: Jun 20th, '18, 17:22 I'm not saying workrate and/or well-written storylines are the only things that matter. I'm saying wrestling fans seem to be changing their minds about what they like or even about certain wrestlers for reasons that appear to me to have become increasingly arbitrary (or in cases like Naito even completely contrarian). If Santo or Big Daddy started to kick dudes in the nuts for no reason or walking out on matches, they'd have gotten booed. You'd have never seen Inoki or Hogan treat their title like it a piece of trash and get cheered for it.
I'm saying that whatever people think pro wrestling is supposed to be about, whatever it is that gets people to cheer or respond positively seems to me to be changing on a dizzying basis, with no rhyme or reason behind any of the shifts, and it sometimes seems like it happens due to the whims of a few random people in the crowd, with everyone else deciding to join in because that's the thing to do.
Of course it's gonna change, society changes, everything changes. What you identify with in the 80s is not gonna be the same in the 90s. you'd be making the same Naito argument in the attitude era for Stone Cold, if you're not willing to change with the industry. Cena wouldn't likely get over in the attitude era, but he did in the post 9/11 years. Hogan wasn't over in the attitude era for a similar reason.
Right, but there was some amount of uniformity about it. It's not like Austin got over but someone doing a similar gimmick in the same time and place wouldn't have. Austin and Hunter both got over by being that rebellious guy who could beat people up and make obscene gestures. If someone other than Cena had tried to be the goody-two-shoes babyface who always wins in 2006-2013, people would have quickly turned on that guy, too. Nowadays you can have one guy do something and the fans flock to it but someone else does it and they hate and think it's lame. Yano hits people in the nuts and cheats to win and he's a babyface while Nakamura does it and he's a heel?
I also think the speed at which large groups of fans latch onto things has accelerated quite a bit, to a degree that I just don't comprehend. It very much feels like people pick a thing not because they like it so much as they want something to chant (e.g. Rusev Day).
cero2k wrote: Jun 22nd, '18, 16:13 Naito, btw, (in Japanese) gave promos about why he disrespected the belt and authority and the fans, and if one can identify with those words, that's a good enough reason to cheer for him disrespecting that second had title.
Then the American announcers (and Meltzer, and Sempervivie & Adam Summers and all of the others who constantly put New Japan over for every little thing they do) have done a horrific job of getting the message across because this is the first I'm hearing of it.
cero2k wrote: Jun 22nd, '18, 16:13 I do believe the hive mind exists, especially in WWE, but it's a mindless hive mind, they don't all think Naomi deserves the title. But regardless, there's still nothing wrong if people want to cheer for shtick over perfectionism. Both limits are bad for the industry.
I think it's just as bad in ROH as in WWE and equally mindless, and I can see it starting in New Japan with sh*t like Archer and the water. If people want to cheer for shtick over perfectionism that's fine, but there need to be limits for guys being pushed to a certain level. You can't be the ROH World Champion and be putting on matches like Cody was. Someone who sucked that much shouldn't have been cheered just for doing his shtick when he was anywhere the title picture.
I also think that in certain rare enviornments, total perfectionism can still work (think UWFi-type stuff), but when you've the point of total shtick and totally abandoned the premise (that the wrestlers are here to win wrestling matches) in favor of just doing funny sh*t inside of a wrestling ring then it's not pro wrestling anymore. It's a comedy show making use of a pro wrestling ring.
cero2k wrote: Jun 22nd, '18, 16:13
Big Red Machine wrote: Jun 20th, '18, 17:22 Yes, although I think for it to work someone has to be at least as big as (of not a little bigger than) the champion, or else have some other reason that they seem like someone who doesn't have to visually prove themselves to be a threat to the champ (like if they were an MMA person or doing a one-punch KO gimmick or whatever).
yeah, like a big mean motherfucker in a ski mask like Brody King towering over both Rascalz. Size and look will always matter in wrestling, if even for a first impression.
King looks the part; Bateman doesn't. And even if he did, I think the effect is negated if the first time I see them face-to-face with the champions is the day after I've seen them lose to some other team. As you said, it matters for a first impression. Our first impression of Violence Unlimited as a unit was them losing to RingKampf.
I also think it kind of negates the effect if we know that the match is a title match before getting that first visual of them towering over the champs. It makes it feel more like the booker is telling us "I am booking this title match because the challengers are big the champions are small" rather than giving us that first chance to think "if these teams faced off, the titles would be in grave jeopardy. It's stripping away a layer of kayfabe, in a sense. It'd be like Dana White coming out and saying "I am booking Miesha against Kaitlin Young because Young is a tomato can I want Miesha to get more wins so I can justify having her challenge Ronda again" rather than him talking Young up and pretending she has a chance.
cero2k wrote: Jun 22nd, '18, 16:13
Big Red Machine wrote: Jun 20th, '18, 17:22 It's necessary to book them in advance if you want to ensure the guy you want to put the belt on will be around so you're not hot-potato-ing your title. And while super-indies are reactive to wrestlers' moment changing, once a guy is over to a "put the title on him" level, he's still going to be over to that level for at least four or five months unless something totally crazy like criminal charges happens.
Like i said, PWG knows their schedule, I know for the most part their schedule, i'm sure Super Dragon can just hit up WALTER and say, hey, don't take bookings for such and such weekend, and he's already booked, either change the weekend or book the tag champs to main event, and if everything else breaks, you book a Mystery Vortex and see who you can book last minute and still sell out in 5 minutes. I don't think you really need to book 5 shows in advanced. PROGRESS has a show every other weekend, i'm sure most common wrestlers know that and consider PROGRESS whenever taking bookings, especially the champs.
And PROGRESS' schedule is out well ahead of time (most European promotions' tend to be. I think you can find stuff for RevPro, PROGRESS and wXw a nine months ahead of time) so you can book around those shows. If you want your champ to be there on every show so that you can ensure that he doesn't go elsewhere and you're stuck with an absentee champion, then that's what you have to do.
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ROH/CMLL Global Wars Espectacular: Day 3

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