HDNet is free this month, although I have no desire to drop another $10 a month to get it, no matter how awesome the MMA offerings might be. Seriously, random K-1 history shows? AWESOME.
Anyway, point being, I finally got a chance to sit down and watch an ROH TV show on Monday, and it wasn’t terribly impressive. I know it’s probably at the end of a taping cycle and the crowd is burned out, but it just didn’t feel like anything special, and what’s with booking a no contest in the Briscoes-Bucks match? This is supposed to be the land of clean finishes! Nice to see Nigel putting over Colt Cabana clean on the way out, but it was only like a ** match. I’ve got another three weeks of shows to catch, though, and it’s something different, so what the heck.
I also watched a good chunk of TNA Impact this week because I was laid up on the couch with a 100 degree fever tonight and little desire to change the channel before Deadliest Warrior came on, and man, this show is every bit as Russo-riffic as advertised. They hype up a big Homicide-Red title match at the PPV, then have Bobby Lashley squash Homicide like a bug, and then Red gets his revenge already. What? And what’s with giving away a Styles-Daniels match for free, putting Styles over clean, and then expecting us to pay $40 to watch a rematch with Samoa Joe involved as well? AJ just beat his challenger clean in the middle of the ring, where’s the suspense? A four year old could book this show better. Bring on Hulk and his friends, I say, it can’t be any worse.
Watch Desmond vs Angle Street Fight. Funniest ending ever, as they botched something and it jumps straight to the Lariat from Desmond WOLFE~
And Desmond just takes soooooo long to set something up….
Why would you book ****+ matches everytime on TV? What would be purpose of PAYING for the product (PPV? DVDs?) if you are seeing the main product for free?
When ROH had no TV and just ran shows (to be made for DVD) before HDNet, then of course you HAD to book clean finishes.
Now that they have TV, they can run more of a real wrestling show (DQs/non-finishes et al) so they can convince you (the paying customer) to purchase the PPV/DVD so the heels can get thier comeuppance.
TNA…
1 step forward, 3 steps back.
Push AJ/Daniels/Joe…. Push them 3 years too late
Sign McGuiness and push him to the moon…. Sign Hogan
I will say this, Imapct has been better the last 2-3 months in all honesty.
You can’t just jump into a pool of Russo booking head first, you’ll crack your head on the shallow end.
Just put your toe in and feel the water out….for several weeks.
The problem: ROH PPV have nothing to do with their HDNet Shows, so unclean finishes = bullshit!
And if I see mediocre matches, then why would I buy PPVs?
Yeah, but ROH works on a different business model than everyone else. The DVDs and PPVs are so out of line with the TV tapings that it’s silly to try to sell them any way other than showing highlights of the great matches therein and then asking people to buy based on that. And with the PPV business being almost nonexistent for them and DVD sales declining, you’d think they’d use the TV to hook people and drive business that way. It’s very clearly a company that is looking for a direction at this point and hasn’t found it yet.
So in essence you’re syaing that ROH needs to build TV… for TV?
The practice (in my eyes) is that you build TV for PPV. Hence the non-finishes, run ins and ** matches.
When they had no TV, and just DVD, They had the **** matches cuz there was no PPV match payoff, so blow your wad everytime you step in the ring.
Now with TV you can slow down. Build backstory for the wrestlers. Have storylines and such so you don’t have to rely on WORKRATE every time out to sell your product.
ROH actually doesn’t have ppv anymore.
and it’s not like they didn’t have any great matches on their show at all (prime examples: Danielson vs. Black, Danielson vs. Aries)
I watched the ROH tv show for a couple of months before I gave up. I found it pretty mostly lacking on any real angle building. There have been some pretty good matches on the show like guy incognito says above; but overall, it wasn’t what I was expecting as a new viewer to ROH. I hear next Monday’s show will be the first one produced (and hopefully booked) by Jim Cornette. This will help tons so I’ll be checking it out again.
just curious: what were you expecting?
Something more akin to the old NWA Saturday night show. Obviously they weren’t going to have all jobber matches like in those days, but there was hardly any real feud building. Don’t get me wrong, there were things I liked such as the pre-match info on each wrestler and who they’re feuding with; but we never really got any hot feuds on the show…not while I watched. In fact, for the first month, it felt like they were just introducing wrestlers to the uninitiated like myself so I felt patience was the key on my part as a viewer. However, that pace never changed. Now that Cornette is there, i’ll be tuning in again in the hopes that he can inject some life into the show.
They actually have had feud-building in the more recent shows, with a lot of the emphasis being on Prince Nana’s Embassy feuding with Colt Cabana, Necro Butcher, Grizzly Redwood, and Brent Albright. That even culminated in an awesome 8-man tag where Colt finally got his comeuppance on Nana, along with some cool spots (the crowd helping the faces cheat).
I understand if the first few shows set you off but the recent stuff has been more in line with traditional wrestling shows. You get angle advancement (the A-Double L-double), good to great matches (Aries/Danielson from two weeks ago), and some interesting vignettes (Skullcrusher Rasche Brown channeling, of all people, Baron Von Raschke). It’s not amazing but it’s more hit-than-miss than most episodes of RAW or Impact.
I’ve tried RoH before, but nothing about it excites me. The only fed that has been remotely entertaining for me on a consistent basis is CHIKARA. The Lucha Libre styles wrestling, combined with hilarious costumed characters and some great comedy-based wrestling all makes for a great package to me.
Unfortunately, it’s also hard to support them, especially as a starving university student. Their DVDs, such as their giant 3 (or more)-disc weekend tournaments, cost $20 PER DISC, which is too rich for me.
TNA is ridiculous, like a poor man’s WCW. ROH’s matches are pretty good, but the stories or angles don’t really do it for me. I’m hoping Cornette does something with it, honestly. And WWE? It’s been a stale, repetative product for years, save only for a few brief, shining moments (Taker/HBK, Santino, etc). Half the wrestlers look the same, most of the matches progress similarily and Vince just keeps trying desperate measure after desperate measure to get back the media’s spotlight, rather than just focusing on putting on a good product.
On one bright side, however, I DO support the idea of them marketing towards kids, again. I grew up on wrestling and I really think that’s where the best audience is. Pixar proves that just because it’s for kids, it doesn’t mean it can’t be good. Hell, WWE proved that in the 80s and early 90s. They’re trying to grow a new audience, one that like us, still support the product or business in some way, shape or form, like we have since we were kids. Groom them as kids, make them hardcore fans that will stick through anything. Plus, it means less “shock TV”. I’d much rather have a PG product than necrophilia, meaningless hardcore matches or women wrestling in pudding.
I’m not really averse to a PG product either – like you say, so long as it’s good then it doesn’t matter.
I can’t imagine that I’ll ever stop watching WWE, particularly as it occasionally drops in some really good stuff amongst the crap (Smackdown this summer, the recent storyline with Orton-Dibiase and the development of Kofi). But I remain optimistic that, at some point, Vince will say to himself, “Damn we’d better start giving wrestlers serious storylines because none of them are credible anymore”.
I particularly hope that someone in WWE (hopefully the wrestlers themselves) will see how badly they’ve ruined the Cena-HHH-HBK title match, which had a world of potential (with DX fighting), by building it around insider DX commentary and Cena talking about how they all beat each other.
Kofi’s totally another bright spot. I’ve been a Kofi mark from the day he debuted. Ditto for Punk’s development and Jericho’s return where he’s been pretty much on fire ever since.
It’s everything ELSE that bogs down the product for me. The same recycled crap month after month. But mind you, WWE has fallen into this a few times, already. It happened with Hogan, just before Bret’s big rise to the top; it happened with Bret/HBK, just before Austin and Rock hit it big and it also happened thanks to the split. People might hate the split, but honestly, it HAS given them a chance to build up stars by having two world championships (3, if you count ECW).
Wrestling is cyclical and right now, it’s in the down cycle. Given how that works, there will be a guy that will either just come out of nowhere and dominate (Hogan, Rock) or someone that’s suddenly given the ball and just runs with it (Bret, Austin, Cena).
Is wrestling cyclical though? There was a boom period in the 80s and also during the Attitude/Monday Night Wars era. That’s only two boom periods–shouldn’t there be at least 3 before we say it’s cyclical?
Please note, I’m not trying to cause you any offense, nick; I just enjoy discussing and debating things.
I don’t agree on the “wrestling is cyclical”. That is McMahon propaganda explaining away why his product has been decreasing (business wise) every year since what, 2002, 2003?
Scott used to have a great quote about the wrestling is cyclical logic, anyone remember?
I’ve never understood what wasn’t to like about Flair era WWF. I know business was down. But I think it was more kids growing up (like me) and not that the product was bad. Honestly the talent in WWF in 1992 (look at the RR) was off the charts. They actually had some edgier stuff during 91 and 92 than the 80s or the mid 90s with Jake/Savage, Flair and his pics of Liz, Sherri actually being manhandled a few times (see WM 7). The workrate wasn’t bad either. I think it was better than much of the 80s stuff.
Comdukasis:
I would say ‘92ish time was still WWE’s heyday. It was toward the end of their 80s explosion and things were starting to cool off and get silly, but there was still a lot to like around that time.
For me, I NEVER get tired of watching the ‘92 Rumble that Flair won. If it was one of those “desert island” questions, that would be very near the top, if not #1.
No worries, Darryl! I think it’s a great topic, too and I’m glad people are enjoying it.
I don’t know if it’s McMahon propoganda, honestly. When business is red hot, wrestling is a HUGE form of entertainment that all other venues of entertainment just gobble up. You can usually tell a hot period by how the live crowds are. Look at how they react during the 80s and the Attitude era. To paraphrase Gorilla Monsoon: “those places were going bananas!” Hogan wins the main event? Crowd goes effing nuts. Hear glass breaking? Crowd goes ballistic.
Basically, it usually boils down to ONE guy who is absolutely red hot, fans eat up and buy tons of merchandise and the rest of the fed basically rides his coattails and hope to be his next contender. The rub they get from the red hot guy will shoot them to the top, as well (Foley, HHH, Savage) or have crazy chemistry with the red hot guy that it works for both of them (Andre, Rock).
I guess there could be only two boom periods, as far as that level of boom. As someone else mentioned, there’s also the boom in business for certain territories in those days.
I’ve said this before on this blog, and others have agreed; it’s time to apply the Hogan formula to Cena. Enough with the constant title changes. Give the guy the belt for a year. Have him win clean. Build a formula match for him and have an array of different contenders every couple of ppv’s.
As a work rate fan, of course this is not my preferred way of doing things; but Cena is the type of guy that I believe can carry the promotion. I am by no means a huge Cena fan; but I totally get the appeal. Back when Hogan was champ, all kinds of different guys challenged for the belt on SNME and ppv’s. Same with Flair over at the NWA. For God’s sake, Hawk got a title shot on a major show.
Having the PG rating probably even helps this formula. I always laugh at HHH, especially that interview he gave, about putting over talent. The funny thing is Jericho and Cena have taken more pins in the last year than HHH has in the last 10 years. Now i’m guessing here, but I might be pretty close to the truth.
Chikara puts out a free, weekly Podcast a-Go-Go on iTunes. If you can’t afford to pay for their shows then you can at least follow them that way.
there was plenty of boom before the 80s. Hell wrestling was all over network TV in the 50s. The difference is that before the 80s the cyclical booms were generally by territory, not nationwide. Wrestling is cyclical because the bookers are always needing to stumble on the next big angle or the next wrestler who captures the fans attention. Right now WWE and TNA lack a wrestler that is capturing the imagination of the fans the way Hogan or Rock or Austin or the NWO did. Territories would get hot based on a hot feud or a new heel coming in. The bust cycle always hits because, as we saw with WCW, companies are always slow to let go of what is working. They then beat it to death and fans leave in droves until the next “big thing”. I think it’s even harder with a public company like WWE because as long as profits come in like right now, they are reluctant to take a chance and change anything major. I think it would take an Austin type (meaning charisma not character) to just force the company to push them to the moon and draw new fans.
Is there anyone out there like that right now? Not just in WWE or TNA but anywhere?
who knows??? Did anyone know that Austin would be what he was back when he was just a good worker as stunning steve in WCW or even way back in Texas? If it was so easy to find them, they business wouldn’t be cyclical I guess.
I don’t know about the next “big thing”, but I effing love Ophidian in CHIKARA. He looks, wrestles and moves like a snake and it’s quite amazing to watch him work.
On many occasions, I’ve pictured him wrestle Mysterio and saw good things. Maybe not “main event” or “red hot” levels of big, but certainly a good mid-card character.
I just don’t see fans “rediscovering” wrestling again, but history has certainly shown the opposite.
Going with that logic though, I do think that if it booms again it’s going to have nothing to do with “Cena turning heel and Attitude 2.0″ and all that. People make this out to be an inevitability and that history will repeat itself. Just as it has in the past, wrestling is going to have to completely reinvent itself to get over with the mainstream public. I doubt it’ll happen in the WWE either — Vince has a pretty stable operation running now and I think he wants to keep things that way as he gets up there in the years. He’s going to play it to safe and hope to luck into something, but I don’t see him trying anything radical. TNA or someone else is going to have be the one to shake things up.
This is a good topic.
Totally agree that TNA is the answer. Of all the stupid things Bischoff did, his philosophy of attacking the #1 company (WWF) and doing things differently in as many aspects as possible (i.e. go Live, put on more ppv quality matches, etc) worked to get WCW pretty even ratings wise with the WWF before the NWO explosion. This is exactly what TNA should focus on. Make the product a big enough alternative to the WWE, build some new stars, keep some veteran names and go live on Monday night against the WWE. This could get some older fans back from the Monday Night Wars and can only benefit both WWE and TNA.
Of course, this would take firing Russo. His WWE Lite approach just doesn’t cut it. For a guy (Russo) who claims to be on top of the IWC (i’m ashamed even writing IWC), he hasn’t learned jack shit. Everyone hates him and yet, he’s still doing the same shit over and over.
The latest quote from Hogan is that he’s going to be in charge of the general creative direction. Like Krusty the Klown taught me, a typing monkey is better than Vince Russo.
Why are you ashamed of the term “IWC”?
A theory I read somewhere said that the Attitude Era was simply ECW on a global stage and that Shane was the one that talked Vince into doing it. So it raises a few questions (for me anyway):
If we accept that as true, that means Vince himself has only come up with the driving idea behind the first boom and not the second. Does Vince have it in him to reinvent the business again? Whether he would want to or not is a different matter as ably pointed out by nwa88.
With Shane gone, is there anyone left in WWE that could get Vince to change the way he does things if someone else was to come up with a different, possibly better way of doing things?
Is there anyone out there that could change the game?
I suppose I’ll just put this out there–if he would agree to work with Bischoff and wanted to come back to wrestling (big IFs, I know), would Paul Heyman be the man to reimagine things? I think Heyman running a federation with someone else looking after the money could be a force to be reckoned with but maybe I’m wrong?
I guess shame wasn’t the proper word. I just really can’t stand the term because it incorporates “people that look at online wrestling sites” all under one flag. In my opinion, in today’s day of facebook/twitter/etc, I venture that 90% of the audience checks out websites about wrestling. It’s not like the olden days when you had to call Mean Gene on the special hotline to get information.
You know what I’ve always found interesting too — the ratings for Nitro were pretty much at parity with the WWF right out of the gate. It’s not like WCW had to build an audience for Nitro to catch up with RAW — from day one it was practically already there. I don’t know what RAW’s ratings were from before September 1995 — I would guess a % of their audience was already tuning into to WCW at this point.
So what do you think contributed to this? Had WCW already made some substantial gains in overall popularity throughout 1994 and 1995 and pulled closer to the WWF then they had ever been before? Or was it more that the WWF had fallen so far since 1992, and at a faster rate then WCW’s audience? Clearly WCW’s buyrates and overall attendance went up a lot in 1994 and 1995 (for Hogan PPVs at least, pretty crappy house show business still vs the WWF).
94 before the “Hogan Love-in” as Scott puts in his books was on fire. WCW Saturday Night had a built in audience already and with Turner owning both TBS/TNT it was easy to say.
“Tune into our new Monday show”
Not to mention, Hogan/Flair despite its one sided-ness did good business. The old WWF guys who showed up still had a shelf-life. I think this attributed to when Hogan left the WWF, ALOT of fans did as well. And when he showed up in WCW, it piqued interest, then you saw the different product WCW put on.
Plus the WCW die-hards wanted to see Sting/Hogan Vader/Hogan etc. so that held interest.
And as a 15 yr old kid, the Macho/sting/hogan/luger thing had me. Tweener Luger was awesome.
then the NWO happened.
Yeah, plus I guess another big draw for Nitro that might have got them off to a big start was the promise for main event matches versus JTTS on RAW. That’s probably a big part of it.
Definitely. WCW and Nitro singlehandedly changed what wrestling fans could come to expect from a weekly wrestling show in terms of star power and “dream matches” with top stars going at it on a weekly basis.
As has been discussed here in the past, WWE today has never gotten out of the habit from the late 1990s during the Monday Night Wars of displaying its top talent on every major show every week in the ring. Cena wrestles practically every Raw. Unthinkable in the pre-MNW era.
On this topic, TNA’s booking right now is–surprise, surprise–downright horrid. Everything Scott says against this latest Impact is on the mark. They’ve even botched the very promising Angle/Nigel… er, Desmond Wolfe build. That phone call from Angle was hilariously bad. Tara/Awesome Kong is still all right and it’s kind of amusing to see them try to use Scott Steiner to make Lashley seem appealing–it seems like something Vince would try to do with Lashely from a few years back–and they’ve finally made Samoa Joe seem like a serious heel, but aside from those few bright spots, TNA’s Russo-rific booking is suffocating their product.
As others said earlier, the PG product of WWE is not necessarily a bad thing. The Punk/Hardy feud from this summer showed that PG does not need mean simplistic or stupid, much less immature. It also showed that when WWE is good, it can be truly fantastic. Watching WWE every week is a bit like sifting through all of the boring crap to get to the occasional great stuff. For a long while, it doesn’t seem worth it, and then they finally pull the trigger on something (like Kofi on Raw, or the intricate build to DiBiase’s face turn) and they inspire fans’ imaginations again.