RevPro Uprising 2018 (11/9/2018) Results

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RevPro Uprising 2018 (11/9/2018) Results

Post by Big Red Machine » Nov 12th, '18, 12:40

Singles Match
Taichi defeats Chris Brookes (15:03)

Singles Match
The Great O-Kharn (w/Gideon Grey) defeats Shane Taylor (7:14)

Singles Match
Josh Bodom defeats Chris Ridgeway (8:19)

Singles Match
El Phantasmo defeats El Desperado (15:58)

Singles Match
Satoshi Kojima defeats WALTER (11:40)

Singles Match
MK McKinnan defeats Mike Bailey (14:37)

RevPro Undisputed British Tag Team Title Match
Suzuki-gun (Minoru Suzuki & Zack Sabre Jr.) (c) defeat Aussie Open (Kyle Fletcher & Mark Davis) (21:50)

RevPro Undisputed British Heavyweight Title Match
Tomohiro Ishii (c) defeats David Starr (19:07)
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Re: RevPro Uprising 2018 (11/9/2018) Results

Post by Big Red Machine » Nov 12th, '18, 12:43

So new Japan guys went over in every single match other than El Phantasmo beating El Desperado, including the RevPro Cruiserweight Champion doing a job to Ishii. Even WALTER had to job to KOJIMA.

And their reward for all of this is what? Getting their title on the Tokyo Dome show? How well did that work out for ROH?
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Re: RevPro Uprising 2018 (11/9/2018) Results

Post by cero2k » Nov 12th, '18, 13:13

Big Red Machine wrote: Nov 12th, '18, 12:43 So new Japan guys went over in every single match other than El Phantasmo beating El Desperado, including the RevPro Cruiserweight Champion doing a job to Ishii. Even WALTER had to job to KOJIMA.

And their reward for all of this is what? Getting their title on the Tokyo Dome show? How well did that work out for ROH?
it worked wonders since ROH is doing great business actually, but aside from WALTER/Kojima, the results make sense. Are you forgetting Ishii is the champ? Cruiserweight Champ Starr shouldn't be beating the Undisputed British Champion Ishii unless they're gonna build something, which they're not. Then if Sabre is gonna challenge Ishii, it serves no purpose having him lose to AO here. It all makes sense to me, you're just jaded cuz you hate NJPW.
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Re: RevPro Uprising 2018 (11/9/2018) Results

Post by Big Red Machine » Nov 12th, '18, 14:19

cero2k wrote: Nov 12th, '18, 13:13
Big Red Machine wrote: Nov 12th, '18, 12:43 So new Japan guys went over in every single match other than El Phantasmo beating El Desperado, including the RevPro Cruiserweight Champion doing a job to Ishii. Even WALTER had to job to KOJIMA.

And their reward for all of this is what? Getting their title on the Tokyo Dome show? How well did that work out for ROH?
it worked wonders since ROH is doing great business actually,



ROH's business boom has nothing to do with the ROH World Title being defended at the Tokyo Dome. Those matches were entirely forgettable because they only got, like, twelve minutes, and having Kyle drop the belt right back to Cole was met with widespread outrage.
And at least New Japan occasionally gave ROH SOMETHING. Lethal got to beat Naito en route to a big title shot against Cole, and they would at least allow ROH main eventers to beat NJPW upper-midcard Goto-level guys and ROH midcarders to beat NJPW underneath guys. RevPro isn't even getting that.
The problem with New Japan in ROH wasn't/isn't that NJPW never let ROH win. The problem was that Delirious used "NEW JAPAN GUYS ARE COMING!" as a creative crutch, relying on the combination of that and Bullet Club (who are basically NJPW guys anyway) to draw, creating a situation where if New Japan ever decided to end the partnership and the Bullet Club crew chose NJPW because NJPW would let them do All In Championship Wrestling or whatever on the side, ROH would be left with Jay Lethal, Dalton Castle, Christopher Daniels, the Briscoes, Taven, MCMG, and a bunch of guys who they have spent years booking in circles as unimportant midcarders (Silas, Gresham, Flip, Kenny King- and I'd even stick Taven and Dalton in this category before last fall) now being thrust into a main event role with no real build, and a booker who has proven himself ineffective at getting characters over and bringing them up the card (everyone who has gotten over in ROH recently has done it entirely themselves via capitalizing on fans loving kitsch, or in Cody's case, putting on a Bullet Club t-shirt)
cero2k wrote: Nov 12th, '18, 13:13
but aside from WALTER/Kojima, the results make sense. Are you forgetting Ishii is the champ? Cruiserweight Champ Starr shouldn't be beating the Undisputed British Champion Ishii unless they're gonna build something, which they're not. Then if Sabre is gonna challenge Ishii, it serves no purpose having him lose to AO here. It all makes sense to me, you're just jaded cuz you hate NJPW.
Suzuki-Gun have had the belts for almost a year and haven't done sh*t with them. This was just their THIRD defense for belts they won in JANUARY. Not only that, but they then made the inexplicable decision to have Ishii drop the heavyweight title to Suzuki to ensure that during the limited appearances he made, only one championship would be able to be defended... and all for Ishii to just win the belt back in Suzuki's first defense. And Zack shouldn't be challenging Ishii at all, but even if he has to then let f*cking Suzuki take the fall.
The point of Aussie Open winning the titles here would be threefold. First of all, you would completely MAKE them by giving them this big win over Suzuki-Gun and letting them run with the belts. I'd have said the same thing about Zack dropping the heavyweight title to Ishii. Why have Ishii end Zack's year-long reign when you can use something like that to make a guy like Josh Bodom?
Secondly, they have been around and have been having great matches, so it's a good idea to reward them for this because you want to show people that if they work hard they will be rewarded and you will have faith in them to carry the titles. At the moment, it seems like if you work hard in RevPro and are very lucky, you'll be given the honor getting jobbed out to someone from New Japan. The UK scene is on fire, plus wXw is hot and Australia is heating up. You need to give talent a reason to work for you on a given weekend instead of PROGRESS or Defiant or MCW or Riptide or wXw, taking some American bookings.
Thirdly, it's a lot easier to promote your shows when you actually have titles around to defend. We've had absentee champions for every division other than the Cruiserweight Division this year.

I didn't forget that Ishii is the heavyweight champ. But just like Starr has no business beating Ishii if it's not going to lead to something, Ishii has no business being Starr if it's not going to lead to something, which it can't because of the weight limit (never mind all of the build for El Phantasmo), so why book the match in the first place? Doesn't it make more sense to have Starr demand the match only to be booked in a Cruiserweight Title defense instead, so that he can use this as evidence that RevPro management is biased against him and so that when he does eventually drop the the Cruiserweight Title El Phantasmo, you've got a ready-made angle for him and whoever the heavyweight champion is at the time?

I don't hate New Japan. I hate bad booking. This isn't New Japan's fault. Even if they insisted that their guys be protected, then it's still Quildan's fault for not figuring out how to work around that... and if that means not putting the belts on these guys then don't put the belts on them.
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Re: RevPro Uprising 2018 (11/9/2018) Results

Post by cero2k » Nov 12th, '18, 15:35

Big Red Machine wrote: Nov 12th, '18, 14:19
ROH's business boom has nothing to do with the ROH World Title being defended at the Tokyo Dome. Those matches were entirely forgettable because they only got, like, twelve minutes, and having Kyle drop the belt right back to Cole was met with widespread outrage.
And at least New Japan occasionally gave ROH SOMETHING. Lethal got to beat Naito en route to a big title shot against Cole, and they would at least allow ROH main eventers to beat NJPW upper-midcard Goto-level guys and ROH midcarders to beat NJPW underneath guys. RevPro isn't even getting that.
The problem with New Japan in ROH wasn't/isn't that NJPW never let ROH win. The problem was that Delirious used "NEW JAPAN GUYS ARE COMING!" as a creative crutch, relying on the combination of that and Bullet Club (who are basically NJPW guys anyway) to draw, creating a situation where if New Japan ever decided to end the partnership and the Bullet Club crew chose NJPW because NJPW would let them do All In Championship Wrestling or whatever on the side, ROH would be left with Jay Lethal, Dalton Castle, Christopher Daniels, the Briscoes, Taven, MCMG, and a bunch of guys who they have spent years booking in circles as unimportant midcarders (Silas, Gresham, Flip, Kenny King- and I'd even stick Taven and Dalton in this category before last fall) now being thrust into a main event role with no real build, and a booker who has proven himself ineffective at getting characters over and bringing them up the card (everyone who has gotten over in ROH recently has done it entirely themselves via capitalizing on fans loving kitsch, or in Cody's case, putting on a Bullet Club t-shirt)
Then if ROH getting their title defended at WK was inconsequential (aside from publicity), then RevPro gets the same, just some publicity since it's not even their 'guys', tho Sabre has alway's been RPW's guy. I'm not excusing Delirious relying so heavily on the BC, but it's not like they're hurting or doing bad business, so there's really no warning for RPW to take here.
Big Red Machine wrote: Nov 12th, '18, 14:19 Suzuki-Gun have had the belts for almost a year and haven't done sh*t with them. This was just their THIRD defense for belts they won in JANUARY. Not only that, but they then made the inexplicable decision to have Ishii drop the heavyweight title to Suzuki to ensure that during the limited appearances he made, only one championship would be able to be defended... and all for Ishii to just win the belt back in Suzuki's first defense. And Zack shouldn't be challenging Ishii at all, but even if he has to then let f*cking Suzuki take the fall.
The point of Aussie Open winning the titles here would be threefold. First of all, you would completely MAKE them by giving them this big win over Suzuki-Gun and letting them run with the belts. I'd have said the same thing about Zack dropping the heavyweight title to Ishii. Why have Ishii end Zack's year-long reign when you can use something like that to make a guy like Josh Bodom?
Secondly, they have been around and have been having great matches, so it's a good idea to reward them for this because you want to show people that if they work hard they will be rewarded and you will have faith in them to carry the titles. At the moment, it seems like if you work hard in RevPro and are very lucky, you'll be given the honor getting jobbed out to someone from New Japan. The UK scene is on fire, plus wXw is hot and Australia is heating up. You need to give talent a reason to work for you on a given weekend instead of PROGRESS or Defiant or MCW or Riptide or wXw, taking some American bookings.
Thirdly, it's a lot easier to promote your shows when you actually have titles around to defend. We've had absentee champions for every division other than the Cruiserweight Division this year.

I didn't forget that Ishii is the heavyweight champ. But just like Starr has no business beating Ishii if it's not going to lead to something, Ishii has no business being Starr if it's not going to lead to something, which it can't because of the weight limit (never mind all of the build for El Phantasmo), so why book the match in the first place? Doesn't it make more sense to have Starr demand the match only to be booked in a Cruiserweight Title defense instead, so that he can use this as evidence that RevPro management is biased against him and so that when he does eventually drop the the Cruiserweight Title El Phantasmo, you've got a ready-made angle for him and whoever the heavyweight champion is at the time?

I don't hate New Japan. I hate bad booking. This isn't New Japan's fault. Even if they insisted that their guys be protected, then it's still Quildan's fault for not figuring out how to work around that... and if that means not putting the belts on these guys then don't put the belts on them.
Maybe RPW doesn't want to put their eggs in the Aussie Open basket, who are the tag champs of their somewhat rival promotion and one of Triple H's kids, who at any point can be given the 'you can't wrestle for RPW anymore' note and get signed to NXT UK, they may be on borrowed time for all we know. Bodom could had been something similar, Ishii won the title the same month Bodom decided to join AJPW, which may have been a bad political move for him at the moment. His time will come i'm sure, but look at the title history, it's always been like that . Styles, Shibata, Cabana, RPW has always traded the title between their guys and outsiders. It's what brings eyes to them. But just because Suzuki/Sabre don't defend often it doesn't make it bad booking to put the title on any other team for the sake of defending them.

Cruiserweight vs Heavyweight is a great pairing, NJPW does it for the Anniversary show and it's awesome, because it's supposed to be a 'unique' match that you don't get often, so it doesn't need to lead to anything immediately. It's just an exhibition match and it can put both champs over. Imagine if Murphy or Ciampa took on AJ Styles right now and gave him a good fight, but Styles wins because he's THE champ. It be awesome. As long as they're not titles that are considered to be equals, it's a cool pairing in which the top champ of the promotion can win and not look like the other 'jobbed'.

If I was RPW i would had definitely tried to get one of my guys at WK like ROH did with Lethal and Cole, but their bargaining chips are small, so if NJPW is willing to make Ishii vs Sabre be around them, then it's as good as it gets. I'm sure the ROH world title will be Scurll vs a NJPW friendly guy too. This is pretty much what NXT did with EVOLVE except NXT won't allow for the EVOLVE titles to be defended this saturday.
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Re: RevPro Uprising 2018 (11/9/2018) Results

Post by Big Red Machine » Nov 12th, '18, 16:05

cero2k wrote: Nov 12th, '18, 15:35
Big Red Machine wrote: Nov 12th, '18, 14:19
ROH's business boom has nothing to do with the ROH World Title being defended at the Tokyo Dome. Those matches were entirely forgettable because they only got, like, twelve minutes, and having Kyle drop the belt right back to Cole was met with widespread outrage.
And at least New Japan occasionally gave ROH SOMETHING. Lethal got to beat Naito en route to a big title shot against Cole, and they would at least allow ROH main eventers to beat NJPW upper-midcard Goto-level guys and ROH midcarders to beat NJPW underneath guys. RevPro isn't even getting that.
The problem with New Japan in ROH wasn't/isn't that NJPW never let ROH win. The problem was that Delirious used "NEW JAPAN GUYS ARE COMING!" as a creative crutch, relying on the combination of that and Bullet Club (who are basically NJPW guys anyway) to draw, creating a situation where if New Japan ever decided to end the partnership and the Bullet Club crew chose NJPW because NJPW would let them do All In Championship Wrestling or whatever on the side, ROH would be left with Jay Lethal, Dalton Castle, Christopher Daniels, the Briscoes, Taven, MCMG, and a bunch of guys who they have spent years booking in circles as unimportant midcarders (Silas, Gresham, Flip, Kenny King- and I'd even stick Taven and Dalton in this category before last fall) now being thrust into a main event role with no real build, and a booker who has proven himself ineffective at getting characters over and bringing them up the card (everyone who has gotten over in ROH recently has done it entirely themselves via capitalizing on fans loving kitsch, or in Cody's case, putting on a Bullet Club t-shirt)
Then if ROH getting their title defended at WK was inconsequential (aside from publicity), then RevPro gets the same, just some publicity since it's not even their 'guys', tho Sabre has alway's been RPW's guy. I'm not excusing Delirious relying so heavily on the BC, but it's not like they're hurting or doing bad business, so there's really no warning for RPW to take here.
The publicity it got was inconsequential. ROH did not benefit one bit from their title being defended on New Japan's show. Booking-wise, it was a waste of a potential fantastic main event the first time in Lethal vs. Elgin for the title, and the second year having Kyle win the belt just for Cole to win it back at the Dome devalued the title, along with the the fact that being placed so early on the card both years and getting so little time did not make the ROH World Title look important at all (and then Cole jobbing to YOSHI-HASHI the next night didn't help, either).

Yes, Zack has always been one of their go-to guys, but blowing that match in Japan not only means they can't do it on their own show, but also, if Zack wins, you're still getting either the heavyweight title or tag titles not defended at High Stakes 2019 or any other future show until Zack drops one of them.
The warning for RevPro should have been clear to them from the start because they don't even have a Bullet Club to rely on. The closest they had were Ospreay, Scurll, and Zack, all of whom are NJPW now (or, in Marty's case, ROH). They need guys who can draw for RevPro shows, and don't really have too many who can do that anymore. Hence they need to be focusing on building up their own guys to do that, and you are going to need titles to be able to do so.
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Re: RevPro Uprising 2018 (11/9/2018) Results

Post by cero2k » Nov 12th, '18, 16:43

Big Red Machine wrote: Nov 12th, '18, 16:05
The publicity it got was inconsequential. ROH did not benefit one bit from their title being defended on New Japan's show. Booking-wise, it was a waste of a potential fantastic main event the first time in Lethal vs. Elgin for the title, and the second year having Kyle win the belt just for Cole to win it back at the Dome devalued the title, along with the the fact that being placed so early on the card both years and getting so little time did not make the ROH World Title look important at all (and then Cole jobbing to YOSHI-HASHI the next night didn't help, either).

Yes, Zack has always been one of their go-to guys, but blowing that match in Japan not only means they can't do it on their own show, but also, if Zack wins, you're still getting either the heavyweight title or tag titles not defended at High Stakes 2019 or any other future show until Zack drops one of them.
The warning for RevPro should have been clear to them from the start because they don't even have a Bullet Club to rely on. The closest they had were Ospreay, Scurll, and Zack, all of whom are NJPW now (or, in Marty's case, ROH). They need guys who can draw for RevPro shows, and don't really have too many who can do that anymore. Hence they need to be focusing on building up their own guys to do that, and you are going to need titles to be able to do so.
so if business doesn't get better or worse, then why are we even complaining? it's just a match at a show. it doesn't hurt or help, so it's neither good or bad booking. The two situations you mentioned were more bad moves in the talents relations side IMO.

There's no assurance that Sabre is winning, and having your title defended at a 2nd biggest promotion's biggest show is actually quite noteworthy. It's a match RevPro already saw live, it's not like they're taking something away from RevPro fans, this is more like RevPro sharing something they already have to world.
I really don't think RevPro has any worries if NJPW decided to pull Suzuki-gun and Ishii tomorrow, they still have some top guys they can use and the UK has a lot of talent, and worse case scenario, they just go and suck up to Triple H and get some of the NXT UK talent. RevPro has nothing to lose in this situation.
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Re: RevPro Uprising 2018 (11/9/2018) Results

Post by Big Red Machine » Nov 12th, '18, 17:55

cero2k wrote: Nov 12th, '18, 15:35
Big Red Machine wrote: Nov 12th, '18, 14:19 Suzuki-Gun have had the belts for almost a year and haven't done sh*t with them. This was just their THIRD defense for belts they won in JANUARY. Not only that, but they then made the inexplicable decision to have Ishii drop the heavyweight title to Suzuki to ensure that during the limited appearances he made, only one championship would be able to be defended... and all for Ishii to just win the belt back in Suzuki's first defense. And Zack shouldn't be challenging Ishii at all, but even if he has to then let f*cking Suzuki take the fall.
The point of Aussie Open winning the titles here would be threefold. First of all, you would completely MAKE them by giving them this big win over Suzuki-Gun and letting them run with the belts. I'd have said the same thing about Zack dropping the heavyweight title to Ishii. Why have Ishii end Zack's year-long reign when you can use something like that to make a guy like Josh Bodom?
Secondly, they have been around and have been having great matches, so it's a good idea to reward them for this because you want to show people that if they work hard they will be rewarded and you will have faith in them to carry the titles. At the moment, it seems like if you work hard in RevPro and are very lucky, you'll be given the honor getting jobbed out to someone from New Japan. The UK scene is on fire, plus wXw is hot and Australia is heating up. You need to give talent a reason to work for you on a given weekend instead of PROGRESS or Defiant or MCW or Riptide or wXw, taking some American bookings.
Thirdly, it's a lot easier to promote your shows when you actually have titles around to defend. We've had absentee champions for every division other than the Cruiserweight Division this year.

I didn't forget that Ishii is the heavyweight champ. But just like Starr has no business beating Ishii if it's not going to lead to something, Ishii has no business being Starr if it's not going to lead to something, which it can't because of the weight limit (never mind all of the build for El Phantasmo), so why book the match in the first place? Doesn't it make more sense to have Starr demand the match only to be booked in a Cruiserweight Title defense instead, so that he can use this as evidence that RevPro management is biased against him and so that when he does eventually drop the the Cruiserweight Title El Phantasmo, you've got a ready-made angle for him and whoever the heavyweight champion is at the time?

I don't hate New Japan. I hate bad booking. This isn't New Japan's fault. Even if they insisted that their guys be protected, then it's still Quildan's fault for not figuring out how to work around that... and if that means not putting the belts on these guys then don't put the belts on them.
Maybe RPW doesn't want to put their eggs in the Aussie Open basket, who are the tag champs of their somewhat rival promotion and one of Triple H's kids, who at any point can be given the 'you can't wrestle for RPW anymore' note and get signed to NXT UK, they may be on borrowed time for all we know. Bodom could had been something similar, Ishii won the title the same month Bodom decided to join AJPW, which may have been a bad political move for him at the moment. His time will come i'm sure, but look at the title history, it's always been like that . Styles, Shibata, Cabana, RPW has always traded the title between their guys and outsiders. It's what brings eyes to them. But just because Suzuki/Sabre don't defend often it doesn't make it bad booking to put the title on any other team for the sake of defending them.
The Shibata thing was okay, and I didn't have a problem with it at the time. In hindsight, though, it was the beginning of NJPW guys monopolizing RevPro's title. It wasn't even problematic when Zack had it because he didn't miss many shows and he still felt like a RevPro guy. But since then, the champion has barely been around, and that's not good. Having AJ as the champion was a similar problem, except that RevPro runs a lot more shows nowadays, with a lot more foreign talent who need flights paid for.

Cabana wasn't signed to any promotion at the time he was champion, and actually made half of the (non-student) shows during his reign.

I'm not saying to just randomly put the belts on anyone so that there can be title defenses on every show. But I am saying that make you you have a good number of dates on someone before you make them a champion if you're planning on having them hold the belt for a while. If not Aussie Open due to possible WWE issues, then they should be focusing on someone else (Brookes & Thatcher?).

Bodom has made (at least) 17 of the 23 shows since Zack lost the title. The RPW Undisputed British Heavyweight Champion has appeared on just five of the shows since Zack lost the title (if Ishii hadn't dropped the belt to Suzuki, there would be a sixth). He would have been a much better choice.



cero2k wrote: Nov 12th, '18, 15:35 Cruiserweight vs Heavyweight is a great pairing, NJPW does it for the Anniversary show and it's awesome, because it's supposed to be a 'unique' match that you don't get often, so it doesn't need to lead to anything immediately. It's just an exhibition match and it can put both champs over. Imagine if Murphy or Ciampa took on AJ Styles right now and gave him a good fight, but Styles wins because he's THE champ. It be awesome. As long as they're not titles that are considered to be equals, it's a cool pairing in which the top champ of the promotion can win and not look like the other 'jobbed'.
I think RevPro has done an excellent job over the past few years of making their Cruiserweight Title mean almost as much as their heavy weight title. I'd argue that the top belt was whichever one had two out of the three of Scurll, Zack, and Ospreay feuding over it at the time. Plus, RevPro's heavyweight champions had often been smaller guys like Zack, Ospreay, and Scurrl so there isn't this entrenched weight bias like there is in Japan or in WWE where it would be considered some sort of major upset if the heavyweight doesn't win.

And, personally, I think NJPW should change the traditional heavyweight champion vs. jr. heavyweight champ match at the anniversary show to a combination like heavyweight champ & NEVER champ vs. IC champ & jr. champ, just to make those other belts look like they're on the same level. And I do think it would be excellent if New Japan actually did have the jr. champ beat the heavyweight one year. I actually think I proposed a scenario at some point where they do that and then use it to set up the jr. champ vacating his title and moving to heavyweight to challenge for the belt in the main event of Dominion, and then you have the actual title be on the line in BOSJ that year to crown a new champion.

1. They shouldn't have done it because doing it hurts the David Starr storyline and there is no benefit to doing it.
2. Yes, it's cool to be able to have a situation where one champion can lose to another it doesn't feel like someone is being "jobbed out," but within the context of everything that has gone on this year in RevPro, it's hard to see it as anything other than that:
(none of this includes TV spoilers)
Starr: 2-4
- lost to KUSHIDA, Tiger Mask, Juice, Ishii
- defeated Tiger Mask via cheating twice

Aussie Open:
Team: 1-4
- lost to LIJ, Juice & Tanahashi, Bullet Club (Ishimori & Yujiro), lost to Suzuki-Gun
- defeated Roppongi 3K & Rocky Romero (teaming with El Phantasmo)
Individuals:
Davis: 0-1
-lost to Kojima
Fletcher: 0-2
- lost to Liger, Jay White

Chris Brookes: 0-5
- lost to Naito, Taichi, Liger, YOSHI-HASHI, Suzuki-Gun

Josh Bodom: 0-1
- lost to Juice

Adam Brooks: 0-1
- lost to KUSHIDA (his first loss in RevPro after going undefeated for months)

WALTER: 2-3
- lost to Ishii, LIJ, Kojima
- defeated Nagata, Yujiro

And that's not even counting guys who I don't expect to have any shot at winning anything, like Kurtis Chapman (0-2), or counting losses to O-Kharn because O-Kharn is full-time on excursion for RevPro now. But when you look at the overall picture it becomes clear that the only guys allowed to get wins on New Japan guys are either guys who are under contract to New Japan themselves (Zack, Ospreay, O-Kharn), or El Phantasmo, and even then Phantasmo only gets to beat guys like Rocky Romero unless there is a dirty finish, in which case it still has to be a New Japan guy causing the dirty finish to screw KUSHIDA so that Pantasmo can't even get a clean win in the big jr. heavyweight tournament.
Yes, obviously Kyle Fletcher isn't going to beat Jay White, but I think it really says something when the highest guy on the NJPW totem pole who has been allowed to lose cleanly has been either Yuji Nagata, who NJPW very publicly deemed to be too old to compete in the G1, or Roppongi 3K losing in a six-man tag team match.

cero2k wrote: Nov 12th, '18, 15:35 If I was RPW i would had definitely tried to get one of my guys at WK like ROH did with Lethal and Cole, but their bargaining chips are small, so if NJPW is willing to make Ishii vs Sabre be around them, then it's as good as it gets. I'm sure the ROH world title will be Scurll vs a NJPW friendly guy too. This is pretty much what NXT did with EVOLVE except NXT won't allow for the EVOLVE titles to be defended this saturday.
Getting your belt on the Tokyo Dome is nice, if they give you time (and NJPW might well do so, considering it's two of their guys), but are there really that many people watching the Tokyo Dome who didn't already see Power Struggle? And if you want to get your belt on the Tokyo Dome, have a New Japan guy win it in November, not in f*cking APRIL (or January!).

Yes, NXT won't let give a EVOLVE a spot to have a match on TakeOver, but the fact that they work for NXT hasn't caused the Street Profits or Aichner to miss a single EVOLVE show. RevPro's entire 2018 schedule has been published (they're already advertising 2019 events). In 2018, Suzuki and Ishii will have made a combined total of fourteen appearances for RevPro over the course of the entire year. Counting the Street Profits as one person, they and Aichner will have wrestled a combined of ten times times for EVOLVE over the course of ten weeks if they make their December dates.
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Re: RevPro Uprising 2018 (11/9/2018) Results

Post by Big Red Machine » Nov 12th, '18, 18:37

cero2k wrote: Nov 12th, '18, 16:43
Big Red Machine wrote: Nov 12th, '18, 16:05
The publicity it got was inconsequential. ROH did not benefit one bit from their title being defended on New Japan's show. Booking-wise, it was a waste of a potential fantastic main event the first time in Lethal vs. Elgin for the title, and the second year having Kyle win the belt just for Cole to win it back at the Dome devalued the title, along with the the fact that being placed so early on the card both years and getting so little time did not make the ROH World Title look important at all (and then Cole jobbing to YOSHI-HASHI the next night didn't help, either).

Yes, Zack has always been one of their go-to guys, but blowing that match in Japan not only means they can't do it on their own show, but also, if Zack wins, you're still getting either the heavyweight title or tag titles not defended at High Stakes 2019 or any other future show until Zack drops one of them.
The warning for RevPro should have been clear to them from the start because they don't even have a Bullet Club to rely on. The closest they had were Ospreay, Scurll, and Zack, all of whom are NJPW now (or, in Marty's case, ROH). They need guys who can draw for RevPro shows, and don't really have too many who can do that anymore. Hence they need to be focusing on building up their own guys to do that, and you are going to need titles to be able to do so.
so if business doesn't get better or worse, then why are we even complaining? it's just a match at a show. it doesn't hurt or help, so it's neither good or bad booking. The two situations you mentioned were more bad moves in the talents relations side IMO.

There's no assurance that Sabre is winning, and having your title defended at a 2nd biggest promotion's biggest show is actually quite noteworthy. It's a match RevPro already saw live, it's not like they're taking something away from RevPro fans, this is more like RevPro sharing something they already have to world.
I really don't think RevPro has any worries if NJPW decided to pull Suzuki-gun and Ishii tomorrow, they still have some top guys they can use and the UK has a lot of talent, and worse case scenario, they just go and suck up to Triple H and get some of the NXT UK talent. RevPro has nothing to lose in this situation.
I don't think we ever get reports of RevPro attendances, so it might well be hurting, and I'm certain they're not selling out anything other than York Hall where the big shows are, so I think it's probably a decent guess that it's hurting at least a bit.
RevPro fans didn't see Zack vs. Ishii live. It happened Mania weekend.
The worry isn't NJPW pulling Ishii and Suzuki; it's NJPW pulling Ishii and Suzuki and Zack and Ospreay, and also no chance of Scurll coming back or The Elite/DBSJ/KUSHIDA/CMLL coming in to give you a boost when you need it, and then suddenly RevPro is left with Josh Bodom, maybe Cabana (if ROH doesn't get in the way), Starr, Brookes (who really isn't a singles main eventer) and some guys who are about three quarters of the way to the top, but needed a big win over an established name to get them there, and now you don't really have any established names to give them that big win.
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Re: RevPro Uprising 2018 (11/9/2018) Results

Post by cero2k » Nov 13th, '18, 00:03

Big Red Machine wrote: Nov 12th, '18, 17:55
The Shibata thing was okay, and I didn't have a problem with it at the time. In hindsight, though, it was the beginning of NJPW guys monopolizing RevPro's title. It wasn't even problematic when Zack had it because he didn't miss many shows and he still felt like a RevPro guy. But since then, the champion has barely been around, and that's not good. Having AJ as the champion was a similar problem, except that RevPro runs a lot more shows nowadays, with a lot more foreign talent who need flights paid for.

Cabana wasn't signed to any promotion at the time he was champion, and actually made half of the (non-student) shows during his reign.

I'm not saying to just randomly put the belts on anyone so that there can be title defenses on every show. But I am saying that make you you have a good number of dates on someone before you make them a champion if you're planning on having them hold the belt for a while. If not Aussie Open due to possible WWE issues, then they should be focusing on someone else (Brookes & Thatcher?).

Bodom has made (at least) 17 of the 23 shows since Zack lost the title. The RPW Undisputed British Heavyweight Champion has appeared on just five of the shows since Zack lost the title (if Ishii hadn't dropped the belt to Suzuki, there would be a sixth). He would have been a much better choice.
Looking at the calendar since his win, Ishii pretty much made it at least once a month, and only missing those Live At shows. On those same shows, Suzuki and Sabre were either defending the titles or doing singles matches. It's really not that bad.

cero2k wrote: Nov 12th, '18, 15:35 I think RevPro has done an excellent job over the past few years of making their Cruiserweight Title mean almost as much as their heavy weight title. I'd argue that the top belt was whichever one had two out of the three of Scurll, Zack, and Ospreay feuding over it at the time. Plus, RevPro's heavyweight champions had often been smaller guys like Zack, Ospreay, and Scurrl so there isn't this entrenched weight bias like there is in Japan or in WWE where it would be considered some sort of major upset if the heavyweight doesn't win.

And, personally, I think NJPW should change the traditional heavyweight champion vs. jr. heavyweight champ match at the anniversary show to a combination like heavyweight champ & NEVER champ vs. IC champ & jr. champ, just to make those other belts look like they're on the same level. And I do think it would be excellent if New Japan actually did have the jr. champ beat the heavyweight one year. I actually think I proposed a scenario at some point where they do that and then use it to set up the jr. champ vacating his title and moving to heavyweight to challenge for the belt in the main event of Dominion, and then you have the actual title be on the line in BOSJ that year to crown a new champion.

1. They shouldn't have done it because doing it hurts the David Starr storyline and there is no benefit to doing it.
2. Yes, it's cool to be able to have a situation where one champion can lose to another it doesn't feel like someone is being "jobbed out," but within the context of everything that has gone on this year in RevPro, it's hard to see it as anything other than that:
(none of this includes TV spoilers)

And that's not even counting guys who I don't expect to have any shot at winning anything, like Kurtis Chapman (0-2), or counting losses to O-Kharn because O-Kharn is full-time on excursion for RevPro now. But when you look at the overall picture it becomes clear that the only guys allowed to get wins on New Japan guys are either guys who are under contract to New Japan themselves (Zack, Ospreay, O-Kharn), or El Phantasmo, and even then Phantasmo only gets to beat guys like Rocky Romero unless there is a dirty finish, in which case it still has to be a New Japan guy causing the dirty finish to screw KUSHIDA so that Pantasmo can't even get a clean win in the big jr. heavyweight tournament.
Yes, obviously Kyle Fletcher isn't going to beat Jay White, but I think it really says something when the highest guy on the NJPW totem pole who has been allowed to lose cleanly has been either Yuji Nagata, who NJPW very publicly deemed to be too old to compete in the G1, or Roppongi 3K losing in a six-man tag team match.
yeah, it be a great story to move someone to the heavyweight division, but if there is no plan to do that, and it's just a one off exhibition match, then who should win?
Seeing the booking, it just looks like RevPro gives the wins to who brings the fans to the seats, so kinda like 80% of the promotions out there, so If you don't like seeing the new japan guys go over the uk guys, why do you keep watching it? I stopped watching PROGRESS because i got tired of Glenn sucking up to WWE. If you want to see a promotion where Bodom and Phantasmo are your top guys then i'm sure there is a 5th tier promotion out there that does that.

cero2k wrote: Nov 12th, '18, 15:35 Getting your belt on the Tokyo Dome is nice, if they give you time (and NJPW might well do so, considering it's two of their guys), but are there really that many people watching the Tokyo Dome who didn't already see Power Struggle? And if you want to get your belt on the Tokyo Dome, have a New Japan guy win it in November, not in f*cking APRIL (or January!).
You can ask RevPro what they think like you would ask a wrestler, people already saw you at FastLane, so why be at Wrestlemania? And do you honestly think that they put the title on Ishii back in April because they already had plans to defend at WK? They put the title on Ishii because Ishii is awesome, the rest just worked out.

cero2k wrote: Nov 12th, '18, 15:35 Yes, NXT won't let give a EVOLVE a spot to have a match on TakeOver, but the fact that they work for NXT hasn't caused the Street Profits or Aichner to miss a single EVOLVE show. RevPro's entire 2018 schedule has been published (they're already advertising 2019 events). In 2018, Suzuki and Ishii will have made a combined total of fourteen appearances for RevPro over the course of the entire year. Counting the Street Profits as one person, they and Aichner will have wrestled a combined of ten times times for EVOLVE over the course of ten weeks if they make their December dates.
are we really comparing 3 lower card guys that barely make the TV cards every other two months, having time to go and do a weekend every other month or so, in the same state; against 2 top guys that always get used on New Japan, that live continents away from RevPro?
I don't think we ever get reports of RevPro attendances, so it might well be hurting, and I'm certain they're not selling out anything other than York Hall where the big shows are, so I think it's probably a decent guess that it's hurting at least a bit.
RevPro fans didn't see Zack vs. Ishii live. It happened Mania weekend.
The worry isn't NJPW pulling Ishii and Suzuki; it's NJPW pulling Ishii and Suzuki and Zack and Ospreay, and also no chance of Scurll coming back or The Elite/DBSJ/KUSHIDA/CMLL coming in to give you a boost when you need it, and then suddenly RevPro is left with Josh Bodom, maybe Cabana (if ROH doesn't get in the way), Starr, Brookes (who really isn't a singles main eventer) and some guys who are about three quarters of the way to the top, but needed a big win over an established name to get them there, and now you don't really have any established names to give them that big win.
RevPro are far more popular today and they got themselves a TV slot, that doesn't sound like they're doing bad.
And if NJPW decide to pull all those guys, then you book WALTER vs Starr like everyone else is doing it, and it's not like Bodom is completely ruined. They have a perfectly fine relationship with NJPW, no reason to believe they're just gonna suddenly get cut off.
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Re: RevPro Uprising 2018 (11/9/2018) Results

Post by Big Red Machine » Nov 13th, '18, 01:07

cero2k wrote: Nov 13th, '18, 00:03
Big Red Machine wrote: Nov 12th, '18, 17:55
The Shibata thing was okay, and I didn't have a problem with it at the time. In hindsight, though, it was the beginning of NJPW guys monopolizing RevPro's title. It wasn't even problematic when Zack had it because he didn't miss many shows and he still felt like a RevPro guy. But since then, the champion has barely been around, and that's not good. Having AJ as the champion was a similar problem, except that RevPro runs a lot more shows nowadays, with a lot more foreign talent who need flights paid for.

Cabana wasn't signed to any promotion at the time he was champion, and actually made half of the (non-student) shows during his reign.

I'm not saying to just randomly put the belts on anyone so that there can be title defenses on every show. But I am saying that make you you have a good number of dates on someone before you make them a champion if you're planning on having them hold the belt for a while. If not Aussie Open due to possible WWE issues, then they should be focusing on someone else (Brookes & Thatcher?).

Bodom has made (at least) 17 of the 23 shows since Zack lost the title. The RPW Undisputed British Heavyweight Champion has appeared on just five of the shows since Zack lost the title (if Ishii hadn't dropped the belt to Suzuki, there would be a sixth). He would have been a much better choice.
Looking at the calendar since his win, Ishii pretty much made it at least once a month, and only missing those Live At shows. On those same shows, Suzuki and Sabre were either defending the titles or doing singles matches. It's really not that bad.
It is bad when it's eleven straight shows. If you want people to come to those shows then you can't treat them like throw-away shows with the B crew. And it's even worse when you consider that when RevPro did these sorts of shows last year, they usually would have the champions there and usual would have a title defense, so switching away from that this year makes those shows look less important than they used to be as opposed to if it had been something they had never done in the first place.
Making one weekend a month isn't hard. That's why EVOLVE can get away with their champions working for NXT the other three weekends and also during the week. But when you're running a show three weekends a month and the champions are only there one, it's not good.
cero2k wrote: Nov 12th, '18, 15:35
Big Red Machine wrote: Nov 12th, '18, 17:55 I think RevPro has done an excellent job over the past few years of making their Cruiserweight Title mean almost as much as their heavy weight title. I'd argue that the top belt was whichever one had two out of the three of Scurll, Zack, and Ospreay feuding over it at the time. Plus, RevPro's heavyweight champions had often been smaller guys like Zack, Ospreay, and Scurrl so there isn't this entrenched weight bias like there is in Japan or in WWE where it would be considered some sort of major upset if the heavyweight doesn't win.

And, personally, I think NJPW should change the traditional heavyweight champion vs. jr. heavyweight champ match at the anniversary show to a combination like heavyweight champ & NEVER champ vs. IC champ & jr. champ, just to make those other belts look like they're on the same level. And I do think it would be excellent if New Japan actually did have the jr. champ beat the heavyweight one year. I actually think I proposed a scenario at some point where they do that and then use it to set up the jr. champ vacating his title and moving to heavyweight to challenge for the belt in the main event of Dominion, and then you have the actual title be on the line in BOSJ that year to crown a new champion.

1. They shouldn't have done it because doing it hurts the David Starr storyline and there is no benefit to doing it.
2. Yes, it's cool to be able to have a situation where one champion can lose to another it doesn't feel like someone is being "jobbed out," but within the context of everything that has gone on this year in RevPro, it's hard to see it as anything other than that:
(none of this includes TV spoilers)

And that's not even counting guys who I don't expect to have any shot at winning anything, like Kurtis Chapman (0-2), or counting losses to O-Kharn because O-Kharn is full-time on excursion for RevPro now. But when you look at the overall picture it becomes clear that the only guys allowed to get wins on New Japan guys are either guys who are under contract to New Japan themselves (Zack, Ospreay, O-Kharn), or El Phantasmo, and even then Phantasmo only gets to beat guys like Rocky Romero unless there is a dirty finish, in which case it still has to be a New Japan guy causing the dirty finish to screw KUSHIDA so that Pantasmo can't even get a clean win in the big jr. heavyweight tournament.
Yes, obviously Kyle Fletcher isn't going to beat Jay White, but I think it really says something when the highest guy on the NJPW totem pole who has been allowed to lose cleanly has been either Yuji Nagata, who NJPW very publicly deemed to be too old to compete in the G1, or Roppongi 3K losing in a six-man tag team match.
yeah, it be a great story to move someone to the heavyweight division, but if there is no plan to do that, and it's just a one off exhibition match, then who should win?
If you're just doing it for the sake of doing it then you shouldn't be doing it. Or go to a draw. For every other company that has an anniversary event, it's one of their biggest shows of the year, but New Japan purposely doesn't have two of their top titles defended?
Also, it's not like this is some long-standing Japanese tradition, either. They've only done it three times (2013, 2014, and 2018). Last year Okada defended his belt against Ibushi, and he defended against Naito in 2012.
cero2k wrote: Nov 12th, '18, 15:35 Seeing the booking, it just looks like RevPro gives the wins to who brings the fans to the seats, so kinda like 80% of the promotions out there, so If you don't like seeing the new japan guys go over the uk guys, why do you keep watching it? I stopped watching PROGRESS because i got tired of Glenn sucking up to WWE. If you want to see a promotion where Bodom and Phantasmo are your top guys then i'm sure there is a 5th tier promotion out there that does that.
Because the TV show has been really good. But I'm probably not going to watch Uprising because of this.

I don't understand your problem with PROGRESS. You act like they don't have a large chunk of guys who are on top of the promotion who aren't under WWE contract. They've got WALTER, Havoc, Haskins, Aussie Open, Ospreay, Thatcher, ZSJ, Paul Robinson is a thing again- and even their guys who are WWE guys were top guys in PROGRESS first, so it's not even like EVOLVE where these NXT guys just showed up and won all of the titles.

cero2k wrote: Nov 12th, '18, 15:35
Big Red Machine wrote: Nov 12th, '18, 17:55 Getting your belt on the Tokyo Dome is nice, if they give you time (and NJPW might well do so, considering it's two of their guys), but are there really that many people watching the Tokyo Dome who didn't already see Power Struggle? And if you want to get your belt on the Tokyo Dome, have a New Japan guy win it in November, not in f*cking APRIL (or January!).
You can ask RevPro what they think like you would ask a wrestler, people already saw you at FastLane, so why be at Wrestlemania? And do you honestly think that they put the title on Ishii back in April because they already had plans to defend at WK? They put the title on Ishii because Ishii is awesome, the rest just worked out.
This isn't PWG where you can just change the title all willy-nilly and it doesn't matter. This is a promotion with actual storylines and angles. They should have had a damn good idea in April of where the title was going to be in at least October, if not January. And they must have known by at least the end of June because Gedo had to book the G1, and I'll bet you anything he has all of his big WK singles matches figured out by the time he starts booking the G1.

cero2k wrote: Nov 12th, '18, 15:35
Big Red Machine wrote: Nov 12th, '18, 17:55 Yes, NXT won't let give a EVOLVE a spot to have a match on TakeOver, but the fact that they work for NXT hasn't caused the Street Profits or Aichner to miss a single EVOLVE show. RevPro's entire 2018 schedule has been published (they're already advertising 2019 events). In 2018, Suzuki and Ishii will have made a combined total of fourteen appearances for RevPro over the course of the entire year. Counting the Street Profits as one person, they and Aichner will have wrestled a combined of ten times times for EVOLVE over the course of ten weeks if they make their December dates.
are we really comparing 3 lower card guys that barely make the TV cards every other two months, having time to go and do a weekend every other month or so, in the same state; against 2 top guys that always get used on New Japan, that live continents away from RevPro?
1) EVOLVE is only in Florida once every few months
2) YES. Because their positions in the companies they're holding titles in are the same. On every EVOLVE show, Gabe gets to say "come see Evolve World Champion Fabian Aichner and Evolve Tag Team Champions the Street Profits!" while on most of his shows Quildan can only say "come see our show that has some matches on it" because it doesn't matter how much of a big international star Ishii and Suzuki are because they can't draw sh*t for RevPro when they're not on the card.
cero2k wrote: Nov 12th, '18, 15:35
Big Red Machine wrote: Nov 12th, '18, 17:55I don't think we ever get reports of RevPro attendances, so it might well be hurting, and I'm certain they're not selling out anything other than York Hall where the big shows are, so I think it's probably a decent guess that it's hurting at least a bit.
RevPro fans didn't see Zack vs. Ishii live. It happened Mania weekend.
The worry isn't NJPW pulling Ishii and Suzuki; it's NJPW pulling Ishii and Suzuki and Zack and Ospreay, and also no chance of Scurll coming back or The Elite/DBSJ/KUSHIDA/CMLL coming in to give you a boost when you need it, and then suddenly RevPro is left with Josh Bodom, maybe Cabana (if ROH doesn't get in the way), Starr, Brookes (who really isn't a singles main eventer) and some guys who are about three quarters of the way to the top, but needed a big win over an established name to get them there, and now you don't really have any established names to give them that big win.
RevPro are far more popular today and they got themselves a TV slot, that doesn't sound like they're doing bad.
And if NJPW decide to pull all those guys, then you book WALTER vs Starr like everyone else is doing it, and it's not like Bodom is completely ruined. They have a perfectly fine relationship with NJPW, no reason to believe they're just gonna suddenly get cut off.
RevPro has had a TV slot before when they weren't doing too well, so that doesn't really change much. The question is can they turn that TV slot into increased attendance/ VOD subscriptions?
Yes, there is no reason to expect that NJPW will pull their guys from RevPro, but it's a situation a booker should be concerned about. They should be building other guys up even just because those guys arne't on 80% of the shows. Or what if something as simple as what happened with Marty Scurll happens and Zack and Ospreay decide to move to the US? Or New Japan starts running even longer tours and you lose even more access to these guys (they have been increasing the length of the tours every year for the past few years)?
Booking Starr vs. WALTER sounds nice, but is it going to help you draw these new TV fans you've made if they've only seen these guys lose to old Japanese men?
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Re: RevPro Uprising 2018 (11/9/2018) Results

Post by cero2k » Nov 13th, '18, 17:51

Big Red Machine wrote: Nov 13th, '18, 01:07 It is bad when it's eleven straight shows. If you want people to come to those shows then you can't treat them like throw-away shows with the B crew. And it's even worse when you consider that when RevPro did these sorts of shows last year, they usually would have the champions there and usual would have a title defense, so switching away from that this year makes those shows look less important than they used to be as opposed to if it had been something they had never done in the first place.
Making one weekend a month isn't hard. That's why EVOLVE can get away with their champions working for NXT the other three weekends and also during the week. But when you're running a show three weekends a month and the champions are only there one, it's not good.
But they ARE B shows, they don't even get unique sounding names, or anything, and people still go. I'm sure if it came that one of those Live at shows wasn't making money, they either don't go back to that spot or stop coming, and it's only guys like Suzuki and Ishii missing, those shows still have some great wrestlers. It's 2018, the champion doesn't sell, it's the name that does, you could put your title on Bodom and Ishii will still sell more than him.
And making one weekend a month is a whole lot harder when you live continents away than crossing the US even if EVOLVE was on california.

Big Red Machine wrote: Nov 12th, '18, 17:55 If you're just doing it for the sake of doing it then you shouldn't be doing it. Or go to a draw. For every other company that has an anniversary event, it's one of their biggest shows of the year, but New Japan purposely doesn't have two of their top titles defended?
Also, it's not like this is some long-standing Japanese tradition, either. They've only done it three times (2013, 2014, and 2018). Last year Okada defended his belt against Ibushi, and he defended against Naito in 2012.
Those are actually the only 'anniversary' shows they've done, and well, traditions do need to start from somewhere. I don't see why everything always needs to have some big story repercussions before and after. CMLL wrestlers from the Day of the Dead show don't actually die when they get dragged to hell. If we ever see the heavyweight champ squash the jr, then maybe we can question the booking decision, but putting two champs together and having a competitive match is perfectly ok.

cero2k wrote: Nov 12th, '18, 15:35 Because the TV show has been really good. But I'm probably not going to watch Uprising because of this.

I don't understand your problem with PROGRESS. You act like they don't have a large chunk of guys who are on top of the promotion who aren't under WWE contract. They've got WALTER, Havoc, Haskins, Aussie Open, Ospreay, Thatcher, ZSJ, Paul Robinson is a thing again- and even their guys who are WWE guys were top guys in PROGRESS first, so it's not even like EVOLVE where these NXT guys just showed up and won all of the titles.
I don't have a problem with WWE contracted wrestlers, I have a problem with how they're portrayed against the ones that are not, and i'm not talking top guys like you could compare with Ishii or Suzuki, i'm talking the lower guys. I have a problem with the promotion sucking up constantly to WWE and when the contracted kids do come, everyone starts creaming themselves like if they had just booked John Cena. If PROGRESS got Randy Orton and Seth Rollins, I would completely understand the marking out and putting them over, but they get the lowest tiered wrestlers like Ohno and Gallagher and pretend like Tyler Bate is the second coming of jesus after he got the WWE rub. If your complain here was only focused on Taichi defeating Brookes and Oka, then I'd be more on your side.


Big Red Machine wrote: Nov 12th, '18, 17:55 This isn't PWG where you can just change the title all willy-nilly and it doesn't matter. This is a promotion with actual storylines and angles. They should have had a damn good idea in April of where the title was going to be in at least October, if not January. And they must have known by at least the end of June because Gedo had to book the G1, and I'll bet you anything he has all of his big WK singles matches figured out by the time he starts booking the G1.
So by April Gedo knows he wants Ishii vs Sabre at WK and thus books Sabre to defeat Ishii at the G1 and has told RevPro to put the title on Ishii since then (even though we saw the title change hands) because it be the perfect excuse to have that match. Yeah, that doesn't seem likely. I'm sure Gedo knew he wanted Tana vs Omega, Okada vs White, and Jericho vs Naito, MAYBE Ospreay vs Ibushi, but the rest I highly doubt he had ready since back then, to tell RevPro, hey, we know you have this guy that is flirting with AJPW, but how about you crown this other guy that pretty much everyone in the world thinks is amazing and is willing to travel to the UK for you guys. if Gedo is as bad as you say, I can't imagine he had Ishii vs Sabre booked since April.
Big Red Machine wrote: Nov 12th, '18, 17:55 1) EVOLVE is only in Florida once every few months
2) YES. Because their positions in the companies they're holding titles in are the same. On every EVOLVE show, Gabe gets to say "come see Evolve World Champion Fabian Aichner and Evolve Tag Team Champions the Street Profits!" while on most of his shows Quildan can only say "come see our show that has some matches on it" because it doesn't matter how much of a big international star Ishii and Suzuki are because they can't draw sh*t for RevPro when they're not on the card.
If Fabian Aichner and the Street Profits actually make a buck for EVOLVE, then RevPro has zero issues using their other champs and wrestlers to make the buck too. Champions don't draw, stories don't draw; but names and workrate does, it's 2018.
Big Red Machine wrote: Nov 12th, '18, 17:55 RevPro has had a TV slot before when they weren't doing too well, so that doesn't really change much. The question is can they turn that TV slot into increased attendance/ VOD subscriptions?
Yes, there is no reason to expect that NJPW will pull their guys from RevPro, but it's a situation a booker should be concerned about. They should be building other guys up even just because those guys arne't on 80% of the shows. Or what if something as simple as what happened with Marty Scurll happens and Zack and Ospreay decide to move to the US? Or New Japan starts running even longer tours and you lose even more access to these guys (they have been increasing the length of the tours every year for the past few years)?
Booking Starr vs. WALTER sounds nice, but is it going to help you draw these new TV fans you've made if they've only seen these guys lose to old Japanese men?
Aside from WWE, i'm sure all bookers constantly live with the idea that at any point, they won't be able to use some wrestler, because even now, maybe aside from Naito and Tanahashi, WWE could just go and buy anyone out. Booker's can't just go around being scared of losing talent, not in the last 20 years.
You're talking like RevPro fans are casuals that have no idea who WALTER is and because he lost to Kojima he's suddenly ruined, everyone in RevPro surely has a good idea who Ishii and Suzuki and all those guys are, losing to them doesn't hurt you. Just like losing to old man Taker doesn't hurt wrestlers as much as people pretend it does. they're not just some random old men, it's freaking Suzuki and Ishii. PAC is returning to RevPro soon, are they just gonna have Phantasmo go over him? hell no
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Re: RevPro Uprising 2018 (11/9/2018) Results

Post by Big Red Machine » Nov 13th, '18, 20:36

cero2k wrote: Nov 13th, '18, 17:51
Big Red Machine wrote: Nov 13th, '18, 01:07 It is bad when it's eleven straight shows. If you want people to come to those shows then you can't treat them like throw-away shows with the B crew. And it's even worse when you consider that when RevPro did these sorts of shows last year, they usually would have the champions there and usual would have a title defense, so switching away from that this year makes those shows look less important than they used to be as opposed to if it had been something they had never done in the first place.
Making one weekend a month isn't hard. That's why EVOLVE can get away with their champions working for NXT the other three weekends and also during the week. But when you're running a show three weekends a month and the champions are only there one, it's not good.
But they ARE B shows, they don't even get unique sounding names, or anything, and people still go. I'm sure if it came that one of those Live at shows wasn't making money, they either don't go back to that spot or stop coming, and it's only guys like Suzuki and Ishii missing, those shows still have some great wrestlers.

It's Ishii and Suzuki and Zack, and Ospreay, and Jamie Hayter (their women's champ, who works STARDOM a lot), and RingKampf are rarely on those shows.
And are these guys drawing that much for them? I tried comparing York Hall attendances, but it's hard to find a York Hall show without some relatively major New Japan guys on it, and of the ones that do, a chunk of them either had Kurt Angle or a bunch of ROH big names (Lethal, AJ, Sydal) or guys like Ricochet on them in in bunches, too. The one I found that did the best was High Stakes 2016, whose only New Japan representation was AJ, and whose only other big fly-in was Lethal (the only other foreigners on the show were Cabana and Speedball This was before Scurll, Zack, and Ospreay started in New Japan), which did 1,200. The second best seems to have been High Stakes 2017, drawing 1,183, which had Shibata and YOSHI-HASHI from New Japan, plus War Machine, Trevor Lee, Riddle, and still-on-excursion Jay White. The big show in December last year with Cody, the Bucks, Riddle, and Lethal (and also had Zack and Marty on the show in big matches, but no Ospreay) only did 1,100. High Stakes 2018 with Suzuki, EVIL, & Sanada (and also Zack) also did 1,100. As did this show here with all of the New Japan guys. Just two months before High Stakes 2016 then ran a big show in York Hall (Uprising 2015) with AJ, Tanahashi, Okada, Nakamura, Naito, KUSHIDA, Kojima, Tenzan, Liger, and Gedo (plus Kyle O'Reilly), and was the RevPro debut for Naito, Kyle, and KUSHIDA, and the UK debut overall for Naito and KUSHIDA. That show only drew 680. So it seems to be that at best they are break-even,if not hurting a little (and that's on the biggest of shows), and that what is actually happen is that the audience grew with the British indy boom.

(For the record, I got these attendance figures from CageMatch first, then went to Dave if CageMatch didn't have anything, because unless WWE, TNA, or Inoki are involved, Dave has a reputation for just taking promoters at their word, even if people in the arena clearly say it's wrong. For the purposes of transparency, Dave does have that 2015 show even with the 1,200 from High Stakes 2016, but even then, a HUGE show with New Japan guys is at best equal to a show with minimum New Japan representation, which has regularly outdrawn what they're going now by 100.
Again, in interests of transparency, there is a show from 2016 (Summer Sizzle 2016) that Dave lists as doing 1,500, but that seems like it must be a mistake to me, simply because no other show in that building has ever been listed as doing anything higher than 1,200, and Dave often calls 1,200 in that building a sellout [except when he calls even less than that a sellout], but even if it isn't a mistake, that is still a show with minimal New Japan representation- just Shibata and Ishii [and I guess technically Matt Sydal], and it did a chunk better than they're doing now)
cero2k wrote: Nov 13th, '18, 17:51 It's 2018, the champion doesn't sell, it's the name that does, you could put your title on Bodom and Ishii will still sell more than him.
But having Bodom as the champ for all of the shows Ishii isn't on will sell more than without the champ on the show at all. If it's the name that does most of the selling then you get no added benefit from having a belt on Ishii, but there is an added opportunity cost.
cero2k wrote: Nov 13th, '18, 17:51 And making one weekend a month is a whole lot harder when you live continents away than crossing the US even if EVOLVE was on california.
That's true... but that's why, for example, OTT tends to run their major shows the same weekend that RevPro runs theirs. So you have more people to bring the Japanese and American fly-ins in. Also, if the show is more difficult because of distance then just don't your belts on someone who lives far away.
But a lot of this is also down to the fact that New Japan won't give guys like Suzuki, Zack, and Ishii off from a weekend of "Road To..." shows to work for RevPro. NXT has made clear that they're willing to do that for EVOLVE, and I'm sure Gabe never would have put the belts on the guys otherwise.
cero2k wrote: Nov 13th, '18, 17:51
Big Red Machine wrote: Nov 12th, '18, 17:55 If you're just doing it for the sake of doing it then you shouldn't be doing it. Or go to a draw. For every other company that has an anniversary event, it's one of their biggest shows of the year, but New Japan purposely doesn't have two of their top titles defended?
Also, it's not like this is some long-standing Japanese tradition, either. They've only done it three times (2013, 2014, and 2018). Last year Okada defended his belt against Ibushi, and he defended against Naito in 2012.
Those are actually the only 'anniversary' shows they've done, and well, traditions do need to start from somewhere. I don't see why everything always needs to have some big story repercussions before and after. CMLL wrestlers from the Day of the Dead show don't actually die when they get dragged to hell. If we ever see the heavyweight champ squash the jr, then maybe we can question the booking decision, but putting two champs together and having a competitive match is perfectly ok.
Because the "day of the dead" show is pretty obviously a gimmick. But it this was, say Lucha Underground or even CHIKARA, you'd have reason to think that someone who you are told is getting dragged away to hell is actually now dead.
A champion losing is something that should matter. And in this particular case, I feel like it buries the whole division because they'll never let the junior heavyweight win, and they almost never let juniors pin heavyweights in any situation. The one time a year they do a big star heavyweight vs. a big star jr. we always see the jr. lose, but it's not like if KUSHIDA loses to Okada there, they do anything to rehab him like letting him beat Goto or Ishii or even a guy like Elgin or Makabe, never mind Naito or Tananashi. If they booked KUSHIDA vs. Tanahashi, Tanahashi could have the most f*cked-up shoulder in the world, and he'd still beat KUSHIDA clean as a sheet.

cero2k wrote: Nov 12th, '18, 15:35
Big Red Machine wrote: Nov 12th, '18, 17:55 Because the TV show has been really good. But I'm probably not going to watch Uprising because of this.

I don't understand your problem with PROGRESS. You act like they don't have a large chunk of guys who are on top of the promotion who aren't under WWE contract. They've got WALTER, Havoc, Haskins, Aussie Open, Ospreay, Thatcher, ZSJ, Paul Robinson is a thing again- and even their guys who are WWE guys were top guys in PROGRESS first, so it's not even like EVOLVE where these NXT guys just showed up and won all of the titles.
I don't have a problem with WWE contracted wrestlers, I have a problem with how they're portrayed against the ones that are not, and i'm not talking top guys like you could compare with Ishii or Suzuki, i'm talking the lower guys. I have a problem with the promotion sucking up constantly to WWE and when the contracted kids do come, everyone starts creaming themselves like if they had just booked John Cena. If PROGRESS got Randy Orton and Seth Rollins, I would completely understand the marking out and putting them over, but they get the lowest tiered wrestlers like Ohno and Gallagher and pretend like Tyler Bate is the second coming of jesus after he got the WWE rub. If your complain here was only focused on Taichi defeating Brookes and Oka, then I'd be more on your side.
I've only seen Gallagher in PROGRESS twice, and it was him filling in for someone on a US tour so I can't speak to the way commentary treated him, but just looking at the results, it seems like they got him for a more shows, gave him some wins as a prelude for something, but then he went to WWE full-time, then came back as a fill-in for Dunne being injured, then did two shows worth of angles to build up to the match he was supposed to have with Dunne anyway where he did a job (though having him beat Banks at the time he beat him was a bad idea).
I really can't speak to the way Bate was treated, either, as I don't think I saw much of him in PROGRESS before WWE got him, but nothing they did with him booking-wise seemed egregious to me, and he has been pushed pretty hard by WWE when you consider how little time he actually spent wrestling for WWE in 2016, so I don't think it's fair to lump him in as an underneath guy, and with Ohno, I don't feel that the way they've booked him the few times they had him since his WWE return is at all out of line with the way any indy promotion in the fast fifteen years has booked Chris Hero.

cero2k wrote: Nov 12th, '18, 15:35
Big Red Machine wrote: Nov 12th, '18, 17:55 This isn't PWG where you can just change the title all willy-nilly and it doesn't matter. This is a promotion with actual storylines and angles. They should have had a damn good idea in April of where the title was going to be in at least October, if not January. And they must have known by at least the end of June because Gedo had to book the G1, and I'll bet you anything he has all of his big WK singles matches figured out by the time he starts booking the G1.
So by April Gedo knows he wants Ishii vs Sabre at WK and thus books Sabre to defeat Ishii at the G1 and has told RevPro to put the title on Ishii since then (even though we saw the title change hands) because it be the perfect excuse to have that match. Yeah, that doesn't seem likely. I'm sure Gedo knew he wanted Tana vs Omega, Okada vs White, and Jericho vs Naito, MAYBE Ospreay vs Ibushi, but the rest I highly doubt he had ready since back then, to tell RevPro, hey, we know you have this guy that is flirting with AJPW, but how about you crown this other guy that pretty much everyone in the world thinks is amazing and is willing to travel to the UK for you guys. if Gedo is as bad as you say, I can't imagine he had Ishii vs Sabre booked since April.
I imagine Gedo probably knew he was doing Ishii vs. ZSJ at the Tokyo Dome by the time he had finished booking the G1 out, so let's say early July at the latest. And even if you take the matches you listed out there, that doesn't leave you with too many options for these other guys. What other big or even semi-big name singles guys do they have? Goto, Ishii, Suzuki, Zack, MAYBE Sanada & EVIL if they don't win the tag tournament or wind up in the six-man tag silliness... who else? Juice? Cody? Elgin? Makabe? Fale? Taichi? There aren't that many realistic possibilities to allow guys like that to have a big match, and with Suzuki especially they always want him in a singles match, and you can't do Goto vs. Suzuki AGAIN, plus you can't do Zack vs. Suzuki or Goto vs. Ishii because they're both in CHAOS, so Suzuki vs. Ishii seems pretty clear, and especially when you know they're going to have at least one more match because RevPro has probably told you they want to do a rematch.
But when Andy Quildan took the belt off of Zack I would imagine that he would have known where the title was going to be in at least October, if not later, and he should have known how protective NJPW is and that they probably wouldn't let their guys work more than just the big shows because all of that is stuff that should have been hammered out when he was first going to put the belt someone who was a New Japan regular.
I'd tell Gedo that's all well and nice and I'd love for you to let me use Ishii, but I want my belt someone who I can count on to be around for more than one show a month.
As for what to do about Bodom's flirtations with AJPW, you move your planned title change to Epic Encounter and tell New Japan that there is zero reason to be protecting Zack because he's on his way down the card now after losing to Okada, and if they still say no you put the belt on someone like Yehi or Brookes for a month and have him drop it to Bodom.
cero2k wrote: Nov 12th, '18, 15:35
Big Red Machine wrote: Nov 12th, '18, 17:55 1) EVOLVE is only in Florida once every few months
2) YES. Because their positions in the companies they're holding titles in are the same. On every EVOLVE show, Gabe gets to say "come see Evolve World Champion Fabian Aichner and Evolve Tag Team Champions the Street Profits!" while on most of his shows Quildan can only say "come see our show that has some matches on it" because it doesn't matter how much of a big international star Ishii and Suzuki are because they can't draw sh*t for RevPro when they're not on the card.
If Fabian Aichner and the Street Profits actually make a buck for EVOLVE, then RevPro has zero issues using their other champs and wrestlers to make the buck too. Champions don't draw, stories don't draw; but names and workrate does, it's 2018.
You say champions don't draw, but then why do even the highest of workrate promotions promotions (current New Japan, 1990s All Japan, Gabe-era ROH) protect their champions at all costs? If it's all names and workrate then who the f*ck should care how many jobs Omega or Okada do? But clearly Gedo does.
If stories don't draw then why did the Being The Elite Crew spend so much time on their little Bullet Club Civil War? Omega vs. Cody doesn't mean sh*t if they don't start a storyline in June 2017. If storylines don't mean anything then why is PROGRESS the biggest company in the UK when RevPro is the one that gets to use all of the world-class ***** Dave Meltzer wet dream NJPW talent, plus top guys from ROH? WWE isn't sending PROGRESS Rollins, AJ, Joe, and Bryan. They're not even sending them The Revival. They're letting them keep using a few guys they were already using, and yet it's PROGRESS that's growing a lot faster than RevPro.
If storylines don't matter then why did Becky Lynch get red hot having random, mediocre matches on Smackdown? And if championships don't matter then why did everyone get in such a tizzy when Becky didn't win one at SummerSlam?
cero2k wrote: Nov 12th, '18, 15:35
Big Red Machine wrote: Nov 12th, '18, 17:55 RevPro has had a TV slot before when they weren't doing too well, so that doesn't really change much. The question is can they turn that TV slot into increased attendance/ VOD subscriptions?
Yes, there is no reason to expect that NJPW will pull their guys from RevPro, but it's a situation a booker should be concerned about. They should be building other guys up even just because those guys arne't on 80% of the shows. Or what if something as simple as what happened with Marty Scurll happens and Zack and Ospreay decide to move to the US? Or New Japan starts running even longer tours and you lose even more access to these guys (they have been increasing the length of the tours every year for the past few years)?
Booking Starr vs. WALTER sounds nice, but is it going to help you draw these new TV fans you've made if they've only seen these guys lose to old Japanese men?
Aside from WWE, i'm sure all bookers constantly live with the idea that at any point, they won't be able to use some wrestler, because even now, maybe aside from Naito and Tanahashi, WWE could just go and buy anyone out. Booker's can't just go around being scared of losing talent, not in the last 20 years.
You're talking like RevPro fans are casuals that have no idea who WALTER is and because he lost to Kojima he's suddenly ruined, everyone in RevPro surely has a good idea who Ishii and Suzuki and all those guys are, losing to them doesn't hurt you. Just like losing to old man Taker doesn't hurt wrestlers as much as people pretend it does. they're not just some random old men, it's freaking Suzuki and Ishii. PAC is returning to RevPro soon, are they just gonna have Phantasmo go over him? hell no
The new fans RevPro hopes to attract with their TV show are casual, though.
And yes, a booker can't just go around being scared of losing talent, but there is zero reason not be developing your own talent anyway- and I'd argue that goes doubly so in the past few years with WWE being on a shopping spree and especially with the NXT UK expansion, I'd be very conscious of it if I were a British promotion, just like American indies have been for years. That's why Gabe never stopped developing talent. London and Spanky leave, plus Dragon moves to the UK for six months and I have limited dates on AJ coming up? Okay. I'd accelerate Punk and Homicide's pushes,. turn Maff into a singles guy, and start setting the wheels in motion to see what guys like BJ Whitmer and Matt Striker can do.
RF scandal happens and I'm losing AJ, Daniels, and Lynn? Well now Aries, Strong, Shelley and Evans will get pushed, and I'll see what Jimmy Jacobs and Nigel McGuinness can bring to the table. And on and on it went.
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Re: RevPro Uprising 2018 (11/9/2018) Results

Post by cero2k » Nov 19th, '18, 17:32

Big Red Machine wrote: Nov 13th, '18, 20:36 It's Ishii and Suzuki and Zack, and Ospreay, and Jamie Hayter (their women's champ, who works STARDOM a lot), and RingKampf are rarely on those shows.
And are these guys drawing that much for them? I tried comparing York Hall attendances, but it's hard to find a York Hall show without some relatively major New Japan guys on it, and of the ones that do, a chunk of them either had Kurt Angle or a bunch of ROH big names (Lethal, AJ, Sydal) or guys like Ricochet on them in in bunches, too. The one I found that did the best was High Stakes 2016, whose only New Japan representation was AJ, and whose only other big fly-in was Lethal (the only other foreigners on the show were Cabana and Speedball This was before Scurll, Zack, and Ospreay started in New Japan), which did 1,200. The second best seems to have been High Stakes 2017, drawing 1,183, which had Shibata and YOSHI-HASHI from New Japan, plus War Machine, Trevor Lee, Riddle, and still-on-excursion Jay White. The big show in December last year with Cody, the Bucks, Riddle, and Lethal (and also had Zack and Marty on the show in big matches, but no Ospreay) only did 1,100. High Stakes 2018 with Suzuki, EVIL, & Sanada (and also Zack) also did 1,100. As did this show here with all of the New Japan guys. Just two months before High Stakes 2016 then ran a big show in York Hall (Uprising 2015) with AJ, Tanahashi, Okada, Nakamura, Naito, KUSHIDA, Kojima, Tenzan, Liger, and Gedo (plus Kyle O'Reilly), and was the RevPro debut for Naito, Kyle, and KUSHIDA, and the UK debut overall for Naito and KUSHIDA. That show only drew 680. So it seems to be that at best they are break-even,if not hurting a little (and that's on the biggest of shows), and that what is actually happen is that the audience grew with the British indy boom.

(For the record, I got these attendance figures from CageMatch first, then went to Dave if CageMatch didn't have anything, because unless WWE, TNA, or Inoki are involved, Dave has a reputation for just taking promoters at their word, even if people in the arena clearly say it's wrong. For the purposes of transparency, Dave does have that 2015 show even with the 1,200 from High Stakes 2016, but even then, a HUGE show with New Japan guys is at best equal to a show with minimum New Japan representation, which has regularly outdrawn what they're going now by 100.
Again, in interests of transparency, there is a show from 2016 (Summer Sizzle 2016) that Dave lists as doing 1,500, but that seems like it must be a mistake to me, simply because no other show in that building has ever been listed as doing anything higher than 1,200, and Dave often calls 1,200 in that building a sellout [except when he calls even less than that a sellout], but even if it isn't a mistake, that is still a show with minimal New Japan representation- just Shibata and Ishii [and I guess technically Matt Sydal], and it did a chunk better than they're doing now)
I think your research here is the best example on how RevPro has booked since they became RevPro, I'm not gonna say full super indie, but pretty close to it, and maybe they used to be able to rely more on UK talent before WWE came in and divided where people can and can't work. If we're seeing a heavier relying on NJPW talent, it could be that groups like Mustache Mountain are gone now, some guys like Sha Samuels and Joel Redman i have no idea what happened to them (i know Samuels is back, but idk if he's staying), and then their other guys went full time with other promotions. Relying on big name talent from outside is probably the only reason that RevPro is even a thing since they changed from IPW, i think you're overestimating how much native wrestlers are drawing now a days, especially if your competition has the WWE backing. Remove the support of both NJPW and WWE and maybe RevPro could actually be doing a lot better than the rest of the UK scene.
Big Red Machine wrote: Nov 13th, '18, 20:36 That's true... but that's why, for example, OTT tends to run their major shows the same weekend that RevPro runs theirs. So you have more people to bring the Japanese and American fly-ins in. Also, if the show is more difficult because of distance then just don't your belts on someone who lives far away.
But a lot of this is also down to the fact that New Japan won't give guys like Suzuki, Zack, and Ishii off from a weekend of "Road To..." shows to work for RevPro. NXT has made clear that they're willing to do that for EVOLVE, and I'm sure Gabe never would have put the belts on the guys otherwise.
But look at the difference in talent that WWE sends against what NJPW sends. Suzuki and Ishii are easily in the top 10 of the company, they get to main event shows every now and then. WWE sends irrelevant people, it's easy to be willing to send talent to Gabe's necessity when that talent are irrelevant. I also don't believe that it's at Gabe's request, i'm sure they were sent there and WWE said, give these guys some champion experience.


Big Red Machine wrote: Nov 12th, '18, 17:55 Because the "day of the dead" show is pretty obviously a gimmick. But it this was, say Lucha Underground or even CHIKARA, you'd have reason to think that someone who you are told is getting dragged away to hell is actually now dead.
A champion losing is something that should matter. And in this particular case, I feel like it buries the whole division because they'll never let the junior heavyweight win, and they almost never let juniors pin heavyweights in any situation. The one time a year they do a big star heavyweight vs. a big star jr. we always see the jr. lose, but it's not like if KUSHIDA loses to Okada there, they do anything to rehab him like letting him beat Goto or Ishii or even a guy like Elgin or Makabe, never mind Naito or Tananashi. If they booked KUSHIDA vs. Tanahashi, Tanahashi could have the most f*cked-up shoulder in the world, and he'd still beat KUSHIDA clean as a sheet.
But there is no doubt in anyone's mind that the Heavyweight champion in NJPW is better than everyone else, NJPW has a true hierarchy of titles, aside from the IC champ, which has done a lot of work to be at that level, no one is bummed that the world champ defeated anyone else. It's not like we just saw with RAW vs Smackdown where we clearly see two titles that SHOULD be given wins over each other. If KUSHIDA takes Okada to the limit, that is a hell of a loss for KUSHIDA, and when we see Ospreay defeat a heavyweight in a tag match, it meant something big for him as you said it should. I'm not against the jr going over the champion, but it comes with a lot of work before and after, and it should be used sparingly.


Big Red Machine wrote: Nov 12th, '18, 17:55 I've only seen Gallagher in PROGRESS twice, and it was him filling in for someone on a US tour so I can't speak to the way commentary treated him, but just looking at the results, it seems like they got him for a more shows, gave him some wins as a prelude for something, but then he went to WWE full-time, then came back as a fill-in for Dunne being injured, then did two shows worth of angles to build up to the match he was supposed to have with Dunne anyway where he did a job (though having him beat Banks at the time he beat him was a bad idea).
I really can't speak to the way Bate was treated, either, as I don't think I saw much of him in PROGRESS before WWE got him, but nothing they did with him booking-wise seemed egregious to me, and he has been pushed pretty hard by WWE when you consider how little time he actually spent wrestling for WWE in 2016, so I don't think it's fair to lump him in as an underneath guy, and with Ohno, I don't feel that the way they've booked him the few times they had him since his WWE return is at all out of line with the way any indy promotion in the fast fifteen years has booked Chris Hero.
To me, guys like Gallagher or Ali in EVOLVE, are guys that if not because they got sent by WWE, they'd be just another name in the undercard, so pretending like they're a big thing is annoying. If Taichi or Oka or Umino were being treated as godsends in CMLL or RevPro, i'd find it equally annoying.

Big Red Machine wrote: Nov 12th, '18, 17:55 I imagine Gedo probably knew he was doing Ishii vs. ZSJ at the Tokyo Dome by the time he had finished booking the G1 out, so let's say early July at the latest. And even if you take the matches you listed out there, that doesn't leave you with too many options for these other guys. What other big or even semi-big name singles guys do they have? Goto, Ishii, Suzuki, Zack, MAYBE Sanada & EVIL if they don't win the tag tournament or wind up in the six-man tag silliness... who else? Juice? Cody? Elgin? Makabe? Fale? Taichi? There aren't that many realistic possibilities to allow guys like that to have a big match, and with Suzuki especially they always want him in a singles match, and you can't do Goto vs. Suzuki AGAIN, plus you can't do Zack vs. Suzuki or Goto vs. Ishii because they're both in CHAOS, so Suzuki vs. Ishii seems pretty clear, and especially when you know they're going to have at least one more match because RevPro has probably told you they want to do a rematch.
But when Andy Quildan took the belt off of Zack I would imagine that he would have known where the title was going to be in at least October, if not later, and he should have known how protective NJPW is and that they probably wouldn't let their guys work more than just the big shows because all of that is stuff that should have been hammered out when he was first going to put the belt someone who was a New Japan regular.
I'd tell Gedo that's all well and nice and I'd love for you to let me use Ishii, but I want my belt someone who I can count on to be around for more than one show a month.
As for what to do about Bodom's flirtations with AJPW, you move your planned title change to Epic Encounter and tell New Japan that there is zero reason to be protecting Zack because he's on his way down the card now after losing to Okada, and if they still say no you put the belt on someone like Yehi or Brookes for a month and have him drop it to Bodom.
I'm no promoter, but maybe Quildan sees more value in having his title be in Ishii's hands and realizes that having him once a month not only doesn't wash him out quickly, but it makes his appearances far more important. If you want to argue that Ishii should be feuding with guys like Brookes and Phantasmo instead of Suzuki and Sabre, i'll give you that.
Big Red Machine wrote: Nov 12th, '18, 17:55 You say champions don't draw, but then why do even the highest of workrate promotions promotions (current New Japan, 1990s All Japan, Gabe-era ROH) protect their champions at all costs? If it's all names and workrate then who the f*ck should care how many jobs Omega or Okada do? But clearly Gedo does.
If stories don't draw then why did the Being The Elite Crew spend so much time on their little Bullet Club Civil War? Omega vs. Cody doesn't mean sh*t if they don't start a storyline in June 2017. If storylines don't mean anything then why is PROGRESS the biggest company in the UK when RevPro is the one that gets to use all of the world-class ***** Dave Meltzer wet dream NJPW talent, plus top guys from ROH? WWE isn't sending PROGRESS Rollins, AJ, Joe, and Bryan. They're not even sending them The Revival. They're letting them keep using a few guys they were already using, and yet it's PROGRESS that's growing a lot faster than RevPro.
If storylines don't matter then why did Becky Lynch get red hot having random, mediocre matches on Smackdown? And if championships don't matter then why did everyone get in such a tizzy when Becky didn't win one at SummerSlam?
because when everything is properly worked, the champions are the biggest names and you protect the biggest names regardless if they're holding or chasing. Juice was a champ that lost all of the G1, but still would still pay to see Juice because he is Juice Robinson. Okada is not a champ nor chasing at this moment, and he's probably the biggest draw there is.

Stories matter because it's the vehicle to watch those names, but as we can see with WWE or the super indies, you can still sell out a house show or a wrestlemania just by name itself. Stories gives us the good feelings and it make improve our investment, but if Nakanishi and Iizuka suddenly get into the best storyline ever told, it's not necessarily gonna sell out the Tokyo Dome.

Big Red Machine wrote: Nov 12th, '18, 17:55 The new fans RevPro hopes to attract with their TV show are casual, though.
And yes, a booker can't just go around being scared of losing talent, but there is zero reason not be developing your own talent anyway- and I'd argue that goes doubly so in the past few years with WWE being on a shopping spree and especially with the NXT UK expansion, I'd be very conscious of it if I were a British promotion, just like American indies have been for years. That's why Gabe never stopped developing talent. London and Spanky leave, plus Dragon moves to the UK for six months and I have limited dates on AJ coming up? Okay. I'd accelerate Punk and Homicide's pushes,. turn Maff into a singles guy, and start setting the wheels in motion to see what guys like BJ Whitmer and Matt Striker can do.
RF scandal happens and I'm losing AJ, Daniels, and Lynn? Well now Aries, Strong, Shelley and Evans will get pushed, and I'll see what Jimmy Jacobs and Nigel McGuinness can bring to the table. And on and on it went.
promotions should definitely try to build up their own guys, but this is not the era we were when Gabe worked with ROH and he had really no worries building up people and competing against 100 other indies, and the same wrestlers were not taking bookings from another 50 promotions all over the world, and it wasn't as cheap to fly people over when they get hot. I'm 100% sure that if we stopped talent sharing tomorrow, we'd easily cut down about 80% of promotions out there on the spot, that's including some top names like Impact, RevPro, PWG, OTT, and EVOLVE.

Now a days the only promotions you really see developing people from scratch are either super traditional like Japan or CMLL, or the super lowest tier indies were guys get their first matches (unless you have a dojo like ROH/CHIKARA/PROGERSS I guess). All of PROGRESS/EVOLVE/ROH/NXT/IMPACT talent are imports that got over thanks to more than one place, mostly the super indies.
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Re: RevPro Uprising 2018 (11/9/2018) Results

Post by Big Red Machine » Nov 19th, '18, 18:41

cero2k wrote: Nov 19th, '18, 17:32
Big Red Machine wrote: Nov 13th, '18, 20:36 It's Ishii and Suzuki and Zack, and Ospreay, and Jamie Hayter (their women's champ, who works STARDOM a lot), and RingKampf are rarely on those shows.
And are these guys drawing that much for them? I tried comparing York Hall attendances, but it's hard to find a York Hall show without some relatively major New Japan guys on it, and of the ones that do, a chunk of them either had Kurt Angle or a bunch of ROH big names (Lethal, AJ, Sydal) or guys like Ricochet on them in in bunches, too. The one I found that did the best was High Stakes 2016, whose only New Japan representation was AJ, and whose only other big fly-in was Lethal (the only other foreigners on the show were Cabana and Speedball This was before Scurll, Zack, and Ospreay started in New Japan), which did 1,200. The second best seems to have been High Stakes 2017, drawing 1,183, which had Shibata and YOSHI-HASHI from New Japan, plus War Machine, Trevor Lee, Riddle, and still-on-excursion Jay White. The big show in December last year with Cody, the Bucks, Riddle, and Lethal (and also had Zack and Marty on the show in big matches, but no Ospreay) only did 1,100. High Stakes 2018 with Suzuki, EVIL, & Sanada (and also Zack) also did 1,100. As did this show here with all of the New Japan guys. Just two months before High Stakes 2016 then ran a big show in York Hall (Uprising 2015) with AJ, Tanahashi, Okada, Nakamura, Naito, KUSHIDA, Kojima, Tenzan, Liger, and Gedo (plus Kyle O'Reilly), and was the RevPro debut for Naito, Kyle, and KUSHIDA, and the UK debut overall for Naito and KUSHIDA. That show only drew 680. So it seems to be that at best they are break-even,if not hurting a little (and that's on the biggest of shows), and that what is actually happen is that the audience grew with the British indy boom.

(For the record, I got these attendance figures from CageMatch first, then went to Dave if CageMatch didn't have anything, because unless WWE, TNA, or Inoki are involved, Dave has a reputation for just taking promoters at their word, even if people in the arena clearly say it's wrong. For the purposes of transparency, Dave does have that 2015 show even with the 1,200 from High Stakes 2016, but even then, a HUGE show with New Japan guys is at best equal to a show with minimum New Japan representation, which has regularly outdrawn what they're going now by 100.
Again, in interests of transparency, there is a show from 2016 (Summer Sizzle 2016) that Dave lists as doing 1,500, but that seems like it must be a mistake to me, simply because no other show in that building has ever been listed as doing anything higher than 1,200, and Dave often calls 1,200 in that building a sellout [except when he calls even less than that a sellout], but even if it isn't a mistake, that is still a show with minimal New Japan representation- just Shibata and Ishii [and I guess technically Matt Sydal], and it did a chunk better than they're doing now)
I think your research here is the best example on how RevPro has booked since they became RevPro, I'm not gonna say full super indie, but pretty close to it, and maybe they used to be able to rely more on UK talent before WWE came in and divided where people can and can't work. If we're seeing a heavier relying on NJPW talent, it could be that groups like Mustache Mountain are gone now, some guys like Sha Samuels and Joel Redman i have no idea what happened to them (i know Samuels is back, but idk if he's staying), and then their other guys went full time with other promotions. Relying on big name talent from outside is probably the only reason that RevPro is even a thing since they changed from IPW, i think you're overestimating how much native wrestlers are drawing now a days, especially if your competition has the WWE backing. Remove the support of both NJPW and WWE and maybe RevPro could actually be doing a lot better than the rest of the UK scene.
But it's not WWE taking RevPro's talent (other than Mustache Mountain and Banks); it's NJPW and ROH.
RevPro was better than most of the rest of the UK indy scene in 2016 and 2017 (pretty much anyone other than PROGRESS, and maybe WCPW/Defiant, if you're into a more "sports entertainment" style of booking). They were able to take guys like Chapman, Magee, Bodom, Brookes/Lykos, and make compelling characters out of them. Now all they seem to be doing is putting over NJPW guys or El Phantasmo.
cero2k wrote: Nov 19th, '18, 17:32
Big Red Machine wrote: Nov 13th, '18, 20:36 That's true... but that's why, for example, OTT tends to run their major shows the same weekend that RevPro runs theirs. So you have more people to bring the Japanese and American fly-ins in. Also, if the show is more difficult because of distance then just don't your belts on someone who lives far away.
But a lot of this is also down to the fact that New Japan won't give guys like Suzuki, Zack, and Ishii off from a weekend of "Road To..." shows to work for RevPro. NXT has made clear that they're willing to do that for EVOLVE, and I'm sure Gabe never would have put the belts on the guys otherwise.
But look at the difference in talent that WWE sends against what NJPW sends. Suzuki and Ishii are easily in the top 10 of the company, they get to main event shows every now and then. WWE sends irrelevant people, it's easy to be willing to send talent to Gabe's necessity when that talent are irrelevant. I also don't believe that it's at Gabe's request, i'm sure they were sent there and WWE said, give these guys some champion experience.
The "at Gabe's request" was probably the particular guys that were sent. And if it came down to "EVOLVE but with WWE guys" or "no EVOLVE," I think Gabe (and probably even Sal) would pick having EVOLVE (especially if they got to do it their way).
Also, the talent WWE is sending EVOLVE is for the purposes of that talent being allowed to develop in EVOLVE. Suzuki and Ishii don't need to "develop." And be honest... Ishii and Suzuki missing a f*cking "Road to..." show isn't going to hirt the build to the match or hurt that night's card.
cero2k wrote: Nov 19th, '18, 17:32
Big Red Machine wrote: Nov 12th, '18, 17:55 Because the "day of the dead" show is pretty obviously a gimmick. But it this was, say Lucha Underground or even CHIKARA, you'd have reason to think that someone who you are told is getting dragged away to hell is actually now dead.
A champion losing is something that should matter. And in this particular case, I feel like it buries the whole division because they'll never let the junior heavyweight win, and they almost never let juniors pin heavyweights in any situation. The one time a year they do a big star heavyweight vs. a big star jr. we always see the jr. lose, but it's not like if KUSHIDA loses to Okada there, they do anything to rehab him like letting him beat Goto or Ishii or even a guy like Elgin or Makabe, never mind Naito or Tananashi. If they booked KUSHIDA vs. Tanahashi, Tanahashi could have the most f*cked-up shoulder in the world, and he'd still beat KUSHIDA clean as a sheet.
But there is no doubt in anyone's mind that the Heavyweight champion in NJPW is better than everyone else, NJPW has a true hierarchy of titles, aside from the IC champ, which has done a lot of work to be at that level, no one is bummed that the world champ defeated anyone else. It's not like we just saw with RAW vs Smackdown where we clearly see two titles that SHOULD be given wins over each other. If KUSHIDA takes Okada to the limit, that is a hell of a loss for KUSHIDA, and when we see Ospreay defeat a heavyweight in a tag match, it meant something big for him as you said it should. I'm not against the jr going over the champion, but it comes with a lot of work before and after, and it should be used sparingly.
Having a hierarchy of titles is unnecessary if they're not in the same division, and having one only hurts the titles that aren't on top.

cero2k wrote: Nov 19th, '18, 17:32
Big Red Machine wrote: Nov 12th, '18, 17:55 I've only seen Gallagher in PROGRESS twice, and it was him filling in for someone on a US tour so I can't speak to the way commentary treated him, but just looking at the results, it seems like they got him for a more shows, gave him some wins as a prelude for something, but then he went to WWE full-time, then came back as a fill-in for Dunne being injured, then did two shows worth of angles to build up to the match he was supposed to have with Dunne anyway where he did a job (though having him beat Banks at the time he beat him was a bad idea).
I really can't speak to the way Bate was treated, either, as I don't think I saw much of him in PROGRESS before WWE got him, but nothing they did with him booking-wise seemed egregious to me, and he has been pushed pretty hard by WWE when you consider how little time he actually spent wrestling for WWE in 2016, so I don't think it's fair to lump him in as an underneath guy, and with Ohno, I don't feel that the way they've booked him the few times they had him since his WWE return is at all out of line with the way any indy promotion in the fast fifteen years has booked Chris Hero.
To me, guys like Gallagher or Ali in EVOLVE, are guys that if not because they got sent by WWE, they'd be just another name in the undercard, so pretending like they're a big thing is annoying. If Taichi or Oka or Umino were being treated as godsends in CMLL or RevPro, i'd find it equally annoying.
But Ali is a big name if you watch 205 Live, and also was a big name in the Chicago scene before going to WWE. The guy is a phenomenal worker and is treated well by WWE's booking, so why not make a big deal out of him?
cero2k wrote: Nov 19th, '18, 17:32
Big Red Machine wrote: Nov 12th, '18, 17:55 I imagine Gedo probably knew he was doing Ishii vs. ZSJ at the Tokyo Dome by the time he had finished booking the G1 out, so let's say early July at the latest. And even if you take the matches you listed out there, that doesn't leave you with too many options for these other guys. What other big or even semi-big name singles guys do they have? Goto, Ishii, Suzuki, Zack, MAYBE Sanada & EVIL if they don't win the tag tournament or wind up in the six-man tag silliness... who else? Juice? Cody? Elgin? Makabe? Fale? Taichi? There aren't that many realistic possibilities to allow guys like that to have a big match, and with Suzuki especially they always want him in a singles match, and you can't do Goto vs. Suzuki AGAIN, plus you can't do Zack vs. Suzuki or Goto vs. Ishii because they're both in CHAOS, so Suzuki vs. Ishii seems pretty clear, and especially when you know they're going to have at least one more match because RevPro has probably told you they want to do a rematch.
But when Andy Quildan took the belt off of Zack I would imagine that he would have known where the title was going to be in at least October, if not later, and he should have known how protective NJPW is and that they probably wouldn't let their guys work more than just the big shows because all of that is stuff that should have been hammered out when he was first going to put the belt someone who was a New Japan regular.
I'd tell Gedo that's all well and nice and I'd love for you to let me use Ishii, but I want my belt someone who I can count on to be around for more than one show a month.
As for what to do about Bodom's flirtations with AJPW, you move your planned title change to Epic Encounter and tell New Japan that there is zero reason to be protecting Zack because he's on his way down the card now after losing to Okada, and if they still say no you put the belt on someone like Yehi or Brookes for a month and have him drop it to Bodom.
I'm no promoter, but maybe Quildan sees more value in having his title be in Ishii's hands and realizes that having him once a month not only doesn't wash him out quickly, but it makes his appearances far more important. If you want to argue that Ishii should be feuding with guys like Brookes and Phantasmo instead of Suzuki and Sabre, i'll give you that.
That's what I'm saying. With no Ishii and no Suzuki, you have no way to even build a title match up. At least if the challenger is a local he can be getting wins and cutting promos on every show.
cero2k wrote: Nov 19th, '18, 17:32
Big Red Machine wrote: Nov 12th, '18, 17:55 You say champions don't draw, but then why do even the highest of workrate promotions promotions (current New Japan, 1990s All Japan, Gabe-era ROH) protect their champions at all costs? If it's all names and workrate then who the f*ck should care how many jobs Omega or Okada do? But clearly Gedo does.
If stories don't draw then why did the Being The Elite Crew spend so much time on their little Bullet Club Civil War? Omega vs. Cody doesn't mean sh*t if they don't start a storyline in June 2017. If storylines don't mean anything then why is PROGRESS the biggest company in the UK when RevPro is the one that gets to use all of the world-class ***** Dave Meltzer wet dream NJPW talent, plus top guys from ROH? WWE isn't sending PROGRESS Rollins, AJ, Joe, and Bryan. They're not even sending them The Revival. They're letting them keep using a few guys they were already using, and yet it's PROGRESS that's growing a lot faster than RevPro.
If storylines don't matter then why did Becky Lynch get red hot having random, mediocre matches on Smackdown? And if championships don't matter then why did everyone get in such a tizzy when Becky didn't win one at SummerSlam?
because when everything is properly worked, the champions are the biggest names and you protect the biggest names regardless if they're holding or chasing. Juice was a champ that lost all of the G1, but still would still pay to see Juice because he is Juice Robinson. Okada is not a champ nor chasing at this moment, and he's probably the biggest draw there is.
Then why not just go by W-L record like early EVOLVE? Championships matter and draw because they are the culmination of a journey. They're your most important storytelling device.
cero2k wrote: Nov 19th, '18, 17:32 Stories matter because it's the vehicle to watch those names, but as we can see with WWE or the super indies, you can still sell out a house show or a wrestlemania just by name itself. Stories gives us the good feelings and it make improve our investment, but if Nakanishi and Iizuka suddenly get into the best storyline ever told, it's not necessarily gonna sell out the Tokyo Dome.
What super-indy has ever sold more than, like , 600 tickets purely by being a super-indy? None. PROGRESS has stories, ROH has stories, All In had stories.
Mania sells out because it has become a destination weekend for wrestling fans. It used to sell out because of stories, but I don't think it's a coincidence that the number of people flying in to Mania has gone up even though the regard for WWE's storylines among hardcore fans has gone WAY down. Those people aren't just coming for Mania. They're coming for everything (and many seem to go to Mania more to be part of the crowd and/or for the social experience than because something WWE booked made them want to buy tickets to the show). And a HUGE part of that everything has been storyline payoffs on the biggest shows of the year from promotions like ROH, DGUSA, and EVOLVE (and nowadays PROGRESS, CZW, etc. as well).
Iizuka is in extreme example because he's a comedy goof. But Nakamura vs. Iizuka with an excellent story is going to sell more tickets than Nakamura and Iizuka with no story.
cero2k wrote: Nov 19th, '18, 17:32
Big Red Machine wrote: Nov 12th, '18, 17:55 The new fans RevPro hopes to attract with their TV show are casual, though.
And yes, a booker can't just go around being scared of losing talent, but there is zero reason not be developing your own talent anyway- and I'd argue that goes doubly so in the past few years with WWE being on a shopping spree and especially with the NXT UK expansion, I'd be very conscious of it if I were a British promotion, just like American indies have been for years. That's why Gabe never stopped developing talent. London and Spanky leave, plus Dragon moves to the UK for six months and I have limited dates on AJ coming up? Okay. I'd accelerate Punk and Homicide's pushes,. turn Maff into a singles guy, and start setting the wheels in motion to see what guys like BJ Whitmer and Matt Striker can do.
RF scandal happens and I'm losing AJ, Daniels, and Lynn? Well now Aries, Strong, Shelley and Evans will get pushed, and I'll see what Jimmy Jacobs and Nigel McGuinness can bring to the table. And on and on it went.
promotions should definitely try to build up their own guys, but this is not the era we were when Gabe worked with ROH and he had really no worries building up people and competing against 100 other indies, and the same wrestlers were not taking bookings from another 50 promotions all over the world, and it wasn't as cheap to fly people over when they get hot. I'm 100% sure that if we stopped talent sharing tomorrow, we'd easily cut down about 80% of promotions out there on the spot, that's including some top names like Impact, RevPro, PWG, OTT, and EVOLVE.

Now a days the only promotions you really see developing people from scratch are either super traditional like Japan or CMLL, or the super lowest tier indies were guys get their first matches (unless you have a dojo like ROH/CHIKARA/PROGERSS I guess). All of PROGRESS/EVOLVE/ROH/NXT/IMPACT talent are imports that got over thanks to more than one place, mostly the super indies.
If talent sharing ended, the places that would thrive would be places with money (ROH, TNA) or places with talented bookers (Gabe, Quack, Prazak) who know how to identify top up-and-coming talent and make their own stars, which is mostly done through telling stories with them.

WWN just opened a training school with Sydal as head trainer, RevPro has had a school for a while (and is turning out some good wrestlers), CZW has a school, NXT has a school (Lars Sullivan, Alexa Bliss!, Braun Strowman, Duke, Shafir, AoP, Chad Gable, Big E., Roman Reigns, Bray Wyatt, and many more have all come out of WWE's development system, and that's not even counting people who were on the indies forever and no one ever gave a second look until they came to NXT and became stars (The Revival, Velveteen Dream, Sasha Banks). TNA doesn't have a school because they're too poor, but even back when they could afford such a thing, they didn't have one because they either were working with OVW or tried to rely on the Dudleys' school.
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Re: RevPro Uprising 2018 (11/9/2018) Results

Post by cero2k » Nov 20th, '18, 10:03

Big Red Machine wrote: Nov 19th, '18, 18:41 But it's not WWE taking RevPro's talent (other than Mustache Mountain and Banks); it's NJPW and ROH.
RevPro was better than most of the rest of the UK indy scene in 2016 and 2017 (pretty much anyone other than PROGRESS, and maybe WCPW/Defiant, if you're into a more "sports entertainment" style of booking). They were able to take guys like Chapman, Magee, Bodom, Brookes/Lykos, and make compelling characters out of them. Now all they seem to be doing is putting over NJPW guys or El Phantasmo.
They've lost Gibson, Jinny, Tony Storm, Martin Stone, Eddie Dennis, plus the occasional appearance of Webster, Mastiff, Nina Samuels, Rob Lynch, and I'm sure that just like EVOLVE and ROH, some people will rather stay away from RevPro with hopes of getting used in the NXT UK side of promotions. ROH and NJPW have only really taken LDRS2000 and that's it, but they've been sending people far before they took those guys.
Big Red Machine wrote: Nov 13th, '18, 20:36 The "at Gabe's request" was probably the particular guys that were sent. And if it came down to "EVOLVE but with WWE guys" or "no EVOLVE," I think Gabe (and probably even Sal) would pick having EVOLVE (especially if they got to do it their way).
Also, the talent WWE is sending EVOLVE is for the purposes of that talent being allowed to develop in EVOLVE. Suzuki and Ishii don't need to "develop." And be honest... Ishii and Suzuki missing a f*cking "Road to..." show isn't going to hirt the build to the match or hurt that night's card.
Exactly my point. NXT uses EVOLVE, while NJPW helps out RevPro. That is the difference I see, and I have no problem with the prophets and Aichner themselves, but they went there and won all the titles in their first night, straight up saying these guys from WWE lowest tier are better than all our guys. And yeah, Ishii and Suzuki could miss a Road To show, but NJPW is their main promotion, the only reason they're valuable to RevPro IS because they do their stuff in NJPW and those Road To shows. If Aichner and the Prophits worked every NXT show or RAW, they'd be far more valuable for EVOLVE too.
Big Red Machine wrote: Nov 12th, '18, 17:55 Having a hierarchy of titles is unnecessary if they're not in the same division, and having one only hurts the titles that aren't on top.
unnecessary, but it's there, an aside from the X-Division 12 yr ago, and maybe CMLL, I can't think of any promotion where the World title is not the top title against all other titles regardless of divisions.

Big Red Machine wrote: Nov 12th, '18, 17:55 But Ali is a big name if you watch 205 Live, and also was a big name in the Chicago scene before going to WWE. The guy is a phenomenal worker and is treated well by WWE's booking, so why not make a big deal out of him?
that's a big IF you watch 205Live and he wasn't really anyone until the Cruiserweight tournament, one of the lowest rated shows in WWE. That's like making a big deal out of David Finlay or Toa Henare.

Big Red Machine wrote: Nov 12th, '18, 17:55 That's what I'm saying. With no Ishii and no Suzuki, you have no way to even build a title match up. At least if the challenger is a local he can be getting wins and cutting promos on every show.
Of course you can build a contender, if a booker can't book a chaser without the actual champ there, then THAT makes him a bad booker, and it's not like they're gonna cut Japanese promos at each other.

Big Red Machine wrote: Nov 12th, '18, 17:55 Then why not just go by W-L record like early EVOLVE? Championships matter and draw because they are the culmination of a journey. They're your most important storytelling device.
Championship matches as the culmination definitely draw, because it is the payoff to the chase and the clash of the 'names', but just having your champion in every show doing squash matches or talking, that is not a draw in itself unless the champ is a big name in the promotion. Overexposure is as bad a lack of exposure.
Big Red Machine wrote: Nov 12th, '18, 17:55 What super-indy has ever sold more than, like , 600 tickets purely by being a super-indy? None. PROGRESS has stories, ROH has stories, All In had stories.
Mania sells out because it has become a destination weekend for wrestling fans. It used to sell out because of stories, but I don't think it's a coincidence that the number of people flying in to Mania has gone up even though the regard for WWE's storylines among hardcore fans has gone WAY down. Those people aren't just coming for Mania. They're coming for everything (and many seem to go to Mania more to be part of the crowd and/or for the social experience than because something WWE booked made them want to buy tickets to the show). And a HUGE part of that everything has been storyline payoffs on the biggest shows of the year from promotions like ROH, DGUSA, and EVOLVE (and nowadays PROGRESS, CZW, etc. as well).
Iizuka is in extreme example because he's a comedy goof. But Nakamura vs. Iizuka with an excellent story is going to sell more tickets than Nakamura and Iizuka with no story.
of the top of my head, PWG and Janela's shows are selling more than 600, and a lot tend to be sell outs, but they don't book bigger venues, so we can't really say how much would be the limit. ROH is hardly an indie, and PROGRESS doesn't sell because of stories, because otherwise, Wembley wouldn't sell out since the big issue everyone had going in was that the storylines going in were terrible, but it was a big show with big names.
People go to WM as a destination, but the destination IS wrestlemania, it's not the crowning of Reigns or the history making appearance of The Rock vs Erik Rowan, hence all the 'beach balls', people just want to be there, and I can assure you that if all the indies skipped a year that season, WM would still sell out.

Big Red Machine wrote: Nov 12th, '18, 17:55 If talent sharing ended, the places that would thrive would be places with money (ROH, TNA) or places with talented bookers (Gabe, Quack, Prazak) who know how to identify top up-and-coming talent and make their own stars, which is mostly done through telling stories with them.

WWN just opened a training school with Sydal as head trainer, RevPro has had a school for a while (and is turning out some good wrestlers), CZW has a school, NXT has a school (Lars Sullivan, Alexa Bliss!, Braun Strowman, Duke, Shafir, AoP, Chad Gable, Big E., Roman Reigns, Bray Wyatt, and many more have all come out of WWE's development system, and that's not even counting people who were on the indies forever and no one ever gave a second look until they came to NXT and became stars (The Revival, Velveteen Dream, Sasha Banks). TNA doesn't have a school because they're too poor, but even back when they could afford such a thing, they didn't have one because they either were working with OVW or tried to rely on the Dudleys' school.
Exactly, because people with money would keep the bigger names, and competent bookers would thrive, eventually, assuming they can rebuild fast enough to make a profit.
NXT wouldn't be selling Takeovers if not for the quarterly indie raids and that talent wouldn't be getting over as fast if not working with those indie raided talent. Takeover WarGames II featured only 1 home-grown talent, or at least the closest to home-grown since Patrick had previous experience and would had been a star eventually regardless of the promotion
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Re: RevPro Uprising 2018 (11/9/2018) Results

Post by Big Red Machine » Nov 20th, '18, 12:43

cero2k wrote: Nov 20th, '18, 10:03
Big Red Machine wrote: Nov 19th, '18, 18:41 But it's not WWE taking RevPro's talent (other than Mustache Mountain and Banks); it's NJPW and ROH.
RevPro was better than most of the rest of the UK indy scene in 2016 and 2017 (pretty much anyone other than PROGRESS, and maybe WCPW/Defiant, if you're into a more "sports entertainment" style of booking). They were able to take guys like Chapman, Magee, Bodom, Brookes/Lykos, and make compelling characters out of them. Now all they seem to be doing is putting over NJPW guys or El Phantasmo.
They've lost Gibson, Jinny, Tony Storm, Martin Stone, Eddie Dennis, plus the occasional appearance of Webster, Mastiff, Nina Samuels, Rob Lynch, and I'm sure that just like EVOLVE and ROH, some people will rather stay away from RevPro with hopes of getting used in the NXT UK side of promotions. ROH and NJPW have only really taken LDRS2000 and that's it, but they've been sending people far before they took those guys.
The "WWE won't sign you if you go to ROH" policy was exposed as not being true last year.
Dennis hadn't been a big part of the show for a long time (since his injury), Jinny and Toni could have been if the women's division had ever gotten off the ground, but that thing was a mess from day one, and people who they seemed to be trying to build it around like Bea Priestly have also disappeared. I'll give you Gibson and maybe Stone (I don't remember him being featured too much, but those guys were all midcard at best. They are nothing compared ot the importance of Zack, Ospreay, and Scurll, who were RevPro's three biggest stars.
cero2k wrote: Nov 20th, '18, 10:03
Big Red Machine wrote: Nov 13th, '18, 20:36 The "at Gabe's request" was probably the particular guys that were sent. And if it came down to "EVOLVE but with WWE guys" or "no EVOLVE," I think Gabe (and probably even Sal) would pick having EVOLVE (especially if they got to do it their way).
Also, the talent WWE is sending EVOLVE is for the purposes of that talent being allowed to develop in EVOLVE. Suzuki and Ishii don't need to "develop." And be honest... Ishii and Suzuki missing a f*cking "Road to..." show isn't going to hirt the build to the match or hurt that night's card.
Exactly my point. NXT uses EVOLVE, while NJPW helps out RevPro. That is the difference I see, and I have no problem with the prophets and Aichner themselves, but they went there and won all the titles in their first night, straight up saying these guys from WWE lowest tier are better than all our guys. And yeah, Ishii and Suzuki could miss a Road To show, but NJPW is their main promotion, the only reason they're valuable to RevPro IS because they do their stuff in NJPW and those Road To shows. If Aichner and the Prophits worked every NXT show or RAW, they'd be far more valuable for EVOLVE too.
NXT uses EVOLVE in exchange for money and talent access. NJPW "helps" RevPro by taking their titles away from them in exchange for a New Japan guy coming in and wrestling another New Japan guy while everyone else in the promotion (aside from El Phantasmo) does even more jobs for New Japan guys. New Japan got almost as many wins over RevPro on this one show than NXT has gotten over EVOLVE since this new deal started. Every time someone from NXT beats someone from EVOLVE it's a very long and competitive match that serves a clear storyline purpose. Not so with NJPW in RevPro.
cero2k wrote: Nov 20th, '18, 10:03
Big Red Machine wrote: Nov 12th, '18, 17:55 Having a hierarchy of titles is unnecessary if they're not in the same division, and having one only hurts the titles that aren't on top.
unnecessary, but it's there, an aside from the X-Division 12 yr ago, and maybe CMLL, I can't think of any promotion where the World title is not the top title against all other titles regardless of divisions.
EVOLVE right now, with the WWN Title and Evolve World Title?
ROH's tag belts were arguably the top belts in the promotion for a good chunk of 2007-2011.

But even so, there is no reason to go out of your way to emphasize that fact. If people want to argue that the IWGP Jr. Heavyweight Title is more important than the IWGP Heavyweight Title, there is no reason not to let them. As especially with a schedule like New Japan's where they're now up to three big shows on some tours and the heavyweight title isn't even defended on some tours, there is no reason not to do everything you can to let the junior belt be just as important. Every time I see the jr. champ job tot he heavyweight champ at the Anniversary Show it makes me think of the way WWE treated Jeff Hardy in the 2007-2008, or Morrison from 2009 until he left the company or RVD or Booker T until 2006 for most of his run where everyone wanted to see them be a main event star so WWE would build them up and give them these big title matches in which they would always lose, and each time it just felt like WWE was outright telling us "we will not let this guy rise above a certain level."
cero2k wrote: Nov 20th, '18, 10:03
Big Red Machine wrote: Nov 12th, '18, 17:55 But Ali is a big name if you watch 205 Live, and also was a big name in the Chicago scene before going to WWE. The guy is a phenomenal worker and is treated well by WWE's booking, so why not make a big deal out of him?
that's a big IF you watch 205Live and he wasn't really anyone until the Cruiserweight tournament, one of the lowest rated shows in WWE. That's like making a big deal out of David Finlay or Toa Henare.
1. People have been making a big deal out Finlay, and I think the guy has earned it with his performances this spring.
2. I think most of the EVOLVE audience watches 205 Live. It's as close as you'll ever get to a WWE show doing a real indy style, and the talent is top-notch. 205 Live really is WWE doing all of the stuff the IWC has spent most of the past twelve years begging them to do. If Buddy Murphy doesn't win Most Improved Wrestler in this year's WON awards, it will be theft.
cero2k wrote: Nov 20th, '18, 10:03
Big Red Machine wrote: Nov 12th, '18, 17:55 That's what I'm saying. With no Ishii and no Suzuki, you have no way to even build a title match up. At least if the challenger is a local he can be getting wins and cutting promos on every show.
Of course you can build a contender, if a booker can't book a chaser without the actual champ there, then THAT makes him a bad booker, and it's not like they're gonna cut Japanese promos at each other.
For the most part, yes, but NJPW's extremist protectionism makes it very difficult to believe that anyone will ever get a pin on the champion without seeing them do so first, or at least some big angle where they lay the champion out. It also wears thin much quicker if you have to do that with all of your titles at the same time. I've been saying that Quildan has been booking the promotion poorly since the belts became NJPW-exclusive (the utter destruction of Kurtis Chapman for the first few months of this year after his big rise culminating last December being a prime example).
cero2k wrote: Nov 20th, '18, 10:03
Big Red Machine wrote: Nov 12th, '18, 17:55 Then why not just go by W-L record like early EVOLVE? Championships matter and draw because they are the culmination of a journey. They're your most important storytelling device.
Championship matches as the culmination definitely draw, because it is the payoff to the chase and the clash of the 'names', but just having your champion in every show doing squash matches or talking, that is not a draw in itself unless the champ is a big name in the promotion. Overexposure is as bad a lack of exposure.
It's not about doing squashes. It's about being visible and getting wins over midcarders that are done in such a way that even though it's a clean loss, it feels like a step up for said midcarders.
Or how about doing things to set up other title chases? Just because you have one guy going the "collecting solid victories" route doens't mean you can't have another going the "get in the champ's face" route at the same time. The last title reign ROH has had that really felt exciting was Cole's first reign, when you had Elgin, Hero, Jay Briscoe, and Kevin Steen all chasing the belt at the same time.
It's only "overexposure" if you are doing things with the champ that aren't important.

cero2k wrote: Nov 20th, '18, 10:03
Big Red Machine wrote: Nov 12th, '18, 17:55 What super-indy has ever sold more than, like , 600 tickets purely by being a super-indy? None. PROGRESS has stories, ROH has stories, All In had stories.
Mania sells out because it has become a destination weekend for wrestling fans. It used to sell out because of stories, but I don't think it's a coincidence that the number of people flying in to Mania has gone up even though the regard for WWE's storylines among hardcore fans has gone WAY down. Those people aren't just coming for Mania. They're coming for everything (and many seem to go to Mania more to be part of the crowd and/or for the social experience than because something WWE booked made them want to buy tickets to the show). And a HUGE part of that everything has been storyline payoffs on the biggest shows of the year from promotions like ROH, DGUSA, and EVOLVE (and nowadays PROGRESS, CZW, etc. as well).
Iizuka is in extreme example because he's a comedy goof. But Nakamura vs. Iizuka with an excellent story is going to sell more tickets than Nakamura and Iizuka with no story.
of the top of my head, PWG and Janela's shows are selling more than 600, and a lot tend to be sell outs, but they don't book bigger venues, so we can't really say how much would be the limit. ROH is hardly an indie, and PROGRESS doesn't sell because of stories, because otherwise, Wembley wouldn't sell out since the big issue everyone had going in was that the storylines going in were terrible, but it was a big show with big names.
People go to WM as a destination, but the destination IS wrestlemania, it's not the crowning of Reigns or the history making appearance of The Rock vs Erik Rowan, hence all the 'beach balls', people just want to be there, and I can assure you that if all the indies skipped a year that season, WM would still sell out.
I didn't realize PWG sold more than 600, but then change the number to whatever PWG's new sellout capacity is +1. And PWG has been the only one able to do it successfully, due to a combination of atmosphere and the most influential member of the wrestling media having a major hard-on for them.
Janela... is a different type of thing. He has capitalized on certain things very well and created a product that- for certain major shows- works perfectly with the zeitgeist of indy wrestling right now. But most of the shows where Janela does well are WWE/NXT weekend shows with lots of fly-ins. That show where Janela got hurt? 300 fans. And well within driving distance of Philly- and really not even too unreasonable from NYC, either. ROH ran the same town in 2005 and drew 500 in the middle of a massive rainstorm (granted, New Japan was sending Kendo Ka Shin for that show, but we all know how that turned out).
How is ROH not an indy? We even heard straight from the horse's mouth that Sinclair isn't really pumping much money into it (although that might apparently change soon because the MSG sell-out caught the eye of the higher-ups at Sinclair). But even before the Sinclair purchase, ROH- at least in certain major markets like NYC, Chicago, Toronto, and Philly- would routinely draw more than 1,200.
How can you say that PROGRESS doesn't sell because of their stories? That's what has made them stand out from RevPro, WCPW, etc. Top-quality story-telling. What other than superior storylines can explain PROGRESS reaching the heights that they did last year and have continued to reach this year even though RevPro and WCPW were able to use not just the same Ospreay and occasionally Zack and Marty as PROGRESS but also guys like Rey Mysterio, Ricochet, the Young Bucks, War Machine, occasionally KUSHIDA, etc? The storylines going into Wembley weren't optimal, but they weren't terrible, either. I think people wanted to see Dunne prove CMJ wrong, and they wanted to see what would happen with Robinson vs. Havoc and the women's title (and that assumes they hadn't already bought tickets when the announced match was still Havoc vs. Ospreay).
I don't think Mania would sell out as well if all of the indies skipped it (and I'm including NXT in here- it's not "indies" so much as "other shows"), but if it did, it's because the indies being there turned flying to Mania and being a "WrestleMania crowd" into a thing. The draw isn't Mania on it's own; it's the fun wrestling fan convention weekend, and going to Mania has become part of that. Do you really think that Triple H vs. Roman reigns, with no Bryan, no Cena, no Rollins would have sold out that big stadium (if it even did sell out). What else was there? AJ vs. Jericho (which we'd seen on TV at least once at that point) Ambrose vs. Brock, Undertaker vs. Shane, and Charlotte vs. Becky vs. Sasha? I don't think that sells 100,000 tickets without other shows attached.

cero2k wrote: Nov 20th, '18, 10:03
Big Red Machine wrote: Nov 12th, '18, 17:55 If talent sharing ended, the places that would thrive would be places with money (ROH, TNA) or places with talented bookers (Gabe, Quack, Prazak) who know how to identify top up-and-coming talent and make their own stars, which is mostly done through telling stories with them.

WWN just opened a training school with Sydal as head trainer, RevPro has had a school for a while (and is turning out some good wrestlers), CZW has a school, NXT has a school (Lars Sullivan, Alexa Bliss!, Braun Strowman, Duke, Shafir, AoP, Chad Gable, Big E., Roman Reigns, Bray Wyatt, and many more have all come out of WWE's development system, and that's not even counting people who were on the indies forever and no one ever gave a second look until they came to NXT and became stars (The Revival, Velveteen Dream, Sasha Banks). TNA doesn't have a school because they're too poor, but even back when they could afford such a thing, they didn't have one because they either were working with OVW or tried to rely on the Dudleys' school.
Exactly, because people with money would keep the bigger names, and competent bookers would thrive, eventually, assuming they can rebuild fast enough to make a profit.
Which is exactly my point about why a booker needs to be keeping her/her wrestlers in a position where they are doing something and thus able to be moved up the card in case something goes wrong with someone else. Gabe/Sal and Quack would always be able to rebuild (and the wrestling schools help you make your money back pretty easily, especially if you know how to book a roster while keeping costs down, which is a big part of why Gabe has gone through periods of running shows that were five or six matches of twenty minutes each as opposed to a bunch of pointless tags and spotfests and stuff that wasn't essential to the storylines).
cero2k wrote: Nov 20th, '18, 10:03 NXT wouldn't be selling Takeovers if not for the quarterly indie raids and that talent wouldn't be getting over as fast if not working with those indie raided talent. Takeover WarGames II featured only 1 home-grown talent, or at least the closest to home-grown since Patrick had previous experience and would had been a star eventually regardless of the promotion
I disagree about Patrick eventually being a star. He needed the Velveteen Dream gimmick. A distinction needs to be made between being trained in NXT and becoming a star in NXT. To me, NXT deserves credit for someone like Banks as well who when you first see them in NXT you have no idea they did ever worked indies. There have been plenty of wrestlers who did very little on the indies but WWE signed and were able to turn into something, and over the years, NXT has turned a lot of nobodies into somebodies.
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