Brock Lesnar and Kane end the show arguing over The Devil’s taste in professional wrestlers, Finn Balor realizes he has two friends on the roster, Samoa Joe and Renee Young early frontrunner for “Best Feud of 2018” and all of the details announced for the women’s Royal Rumble.
I don’t see much in keeping Brock around much longer, I mean if this is their idea of using him well then you can tell there’s a problem there. This reminds me of him working with Big Show a few years ago. Brock is working with a way past his prime Kane and Braun again. Like John said I would be way more interested in just a Brock/Braun but only if Braun had a chance of winning, there’s no way Brock is losing that title until Mania.
You guys care about character too much. Just watch AMC, HBO, or FX if that’s what you want. I want to see grown adults pretend to try to kill each other.
The problem with that Asuka match was that it was just another typical bullshit WWE style match. The problems with this company won’t change until Vince either dies or is forcibly removed from his job.
Not sure if this is widespread, but on my iTunes feed this show only came up as 1 second. I was able to download the full show from the site, so an easy fix for me.
I think there are tons of places to see that. I think the one thing WWE has more power than anyone else to do is tell stories and run compelling angles. Indies don’t get to do that nearly as much because their talent is nowhere near as consistent most of the time. The best way to DO that storytelling is to have compelling characters that people give a shit about.
I mean you are correct technically, Pollock and Ting clearly care about character, but I don’t see that being at all a negative. Character is part of the show, full stop.
I think there tends to be better natural sort of in-ring storytelling in the indies, and I feel like the sport of it all comes out a little bit more, but I think the idea of angles, of programs, of feuds whatever you want to call them TENDS to somewhat take a backburner to cards that get sold by “Name X” vs “Name Y”. Like I saw Final Battle (though ROH isn’t an indy) and I saw a few angles there and I’m SURE I was missing some details because I don’t follow its weekly product or anything, but WWE just has a stupid amount of resources to make 100% sure that every motherfucker watching the show has 100% of the information for almost every match. You can even argue that’s to a fault (if i see that damn women’s rumble ad spot one more time) but it’s still undeniably true that if I see the Royal Rumble card I can tell you the history of every match, the meaning of every match, where it can lead to, and I genuinely care about the winners and losers virtually 100% of the time. Part of that is the amount of time I’ve spent watching - but I think part of that is just what gets emphasized in the shows.
And like, yeah, okay guilty I definitely don’t watch independents as closely, I tend to stick to WWE with big NJPW and ROH cards thrown in, but if that was flipped, I’m pretty sure I’d still know what was going on if I took a three month break and came back at Mania because that’s what WWE is best at. So that’s kind of where I personally come from when I say that. And I do stand by the idea that WWE have more consistency with their performers and can therefore run angles with a little bit more confidence.
To like, clarify, I’m not saying other promotions are shit at storytelling at all. My whole point is that the WWE has that as an absolute balls-to-the-wall main focus which is something other promotions don’t have. That’s not a bad thing, ROH got big because of this exact reason but they still managed to HAVE good stories.
Pro-wrestling - all pro-wrestling - is a variety show, as such people watch it for a variety of reasons and not everything is going to appeal. Saying anyone cares about character too much is like saying, someone cares too much about the PG rating or the workrate or how much blood is a part of the show. Everyone cares about something different because everyone watches for different reasons… but the WWE is built on character, it requires character to really work and the fact that characters aren’t shining right now is a reason why people (like me and many others) are looking elsewhere for out wrestling fix. WWE are failing at the one thing that they’re supposed to be able to do better than anyone else, I think caring about that is kind of important in the long run.
