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WWE TV Oct 9-15


sek69

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None of them were able to connect individually as much as they did as a unit. The company will probably end up convincing themselves that the Shield getting huge reactions means the people accept Roman, only to be puzzled when another Mania coronation gets met with booing.

How long are you and other people gonna keep on with this narrative? Do you think Vince was still expecting the crowd to suddenly going to turn around on John Cena after 3 years of him getting booed and them still sticking with him?

They were at least smart enough to eventually go the Bret Hart route with Cena and make it part of his character that some people like him and some people boo him. Cena also had several years as the Doctor of Thuganomics at US title level before being pushed as the franchise guy. Roman was framed as the top guy immediately after the Shield breakup when he really wasnt ready to be in that position. Of course the Bryan stuff didnt help, but the biggest issue has clearly been the company seeing fan resistance to him as a bug rather than a feature. Especially when they keep trolling by trotting out the old the fans dictate what we do line when that clearly isnt the case, at least not when their likes and Vinces differ.

 

So no, I wasnt expecting them to give up on Cena back then, and Im not expecting them to suddenly change their minds on Roman either (unless he gets caught with a dead hooker in his trunk or something). Its just amusing to me to see them spend more effort on trying to get people whove made up their minds to suddenly start liking him than they have on literally everything else in the last five years.

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So no, I wasnt expecting them to give up on Cena back then, and Im not expecting them to suddenly change their minds on Roman either (unless he gets caught with a dead hooker in his trunk or something). Its just amusing to me to see them spend more effort on trying to get people whove made up their minds to suddenly start liking him than they have on literally everything else in the last five years.

Are you sure you're paying attention? They gave up on that back in April 2016.

 

If everything was planned around trying to get Roman cheered he wouldn't have retired The Undertaker.

 

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That promo was the lamest "We admit we have no idea how to get you love that guy anymore, so whatever" cop-out.

 

And the match was not designed to make Roman a heel, the ending was build toward a "Sorry I love you, you Legend" feeling.

 

Roman is only the "most over" because he's been pushed like fucking crazy forever at this point. See : HHH in the early 00's. He's made the fans creatures of habits. He's not "the most over" in the sense Austin or Rocky were. Those empty seats speak for themselves too. The merch point has been talked about in lenght before. Of course he's gonna sell the most since he has the most to sell (and is pushed like crazy for ever). Chicken and eggs.

 

Their current business model and complete lack of competition allows them to keep on going this way. It makes for baffling, predictably boring booking on top, with a guy their own audience don't want to accept. With a few oddly fun moments like the trolling at Royal Rumble last year, or "You deserve it !" chants when "The Man" is destroyed by Braun. A unique case, really.

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And the match was not designed to make Roman a heel, the ending was build toward a "Sorry I love you, you Legend" feeling.

I never said it was designed to make him a heel, but it sure as hell wasn't designed to make him cheered. If Vince was wringing his hands backstage at every event worrying about whether Roman was going to get cheered like some people like to believe, they wouldn't have done that match at all.

 

Honestly I think Roman and his matches would be LESS interesting if he was universally cheered and I think WWE probably sees it the same way. He's essentially the New York Yankees of wrestling where people either love him or hate him but no one is indifferent to him and he's always talked about even when he's not on top.

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And the match was not designed to make Roman a heel, the ending was build toward a "Sorry I love you, you Legend" feeling.

I never said it was designed to make him a heel, but it sure as hell wasn't designed to make him cheered. If Vince was wringing his hands backstage at every event worrying about whether Roman was going to get cheered like some people like to believe, they wouldn't have done that match at all.

 

Honestly I think Roman and his matches would be LESS interesting if he was universally cheered and I think WWE probably sees it the same way.

 

Yeah, I would agree with this.

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Having an extended babyface Shield run will also get Roman some significant goodwill. The Shield is arguably the best stable in WWE history (I do not even think it is that arguable to be honest) and looking back Roman was the best worker of the three. Him being portrayed as a cool badass leader of a highly popular stable is nothing but a good idea.

 

I can see an argument for 97 Hart Foundation for the promos alone. Plus they had way better rivals.

Even DX had better feuds and were a better stable than The Shield.

I hate DX except for late 1997 and early 1998 when Shawn was a heat magnet, so we will have to disagree on that one. DX was at best a fun midcard act after Shawn retired the first time, and it was never anything that shook up the company the way The Shield did. I think Shield was objectively an exponentially better stable than DX ever was, but they have not had the WWE machine telling everyone for 20 years that they were a revolutionary act that turned the tide of the Monday Night Wars and changed the industry forever.

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WWE has deliberately adopted the idea with their top guys that it's more important that they be strong than liked or disliked. I think it's a good move. Reigns isn't the only one that applies to lately, by the way. Braun and Brock sometimes show babyface tendencies, as did Samoa Joe in the Lesnar feud. When you're booked strong but they stop caring if you're specifically cheered or booed, maybe that's how you know you've made it to the top in WWE. I think they gave up on trying to get people to "like" Roman a long time ago. Now it's about people agreeing that he belongs at that level, whether they like him or not.

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I hate DX except for late 1997 and early 1998 when Shawn was a heat magnet, so we will have to disagree on that one. DX was at best a fun midcard act after Shawn retired the first time, and it was never anything that shook up the company the way The Shield did. I think Shield was objectively an exponentially better stable than DX ever was, but they have not had the WWE machine telling everyone for 20 years that they were a revolutionary act that turned the tide of the Monday Night Wars and changed the industry forever.

 

Hum… DX was hot as shit in 98 and 99, in the biggest boom period of the company ever. The Shield was super hot in the… early 2010's. I don't think there's even an argument there (and yeah, I didn't care for DX after Shawn left and yeah, it has aged very very badly and yes, Shield was on another level of in-ring work, although the context is different of course).

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WWE has deliberately adopted the idea with their top guys that it's more important that they be strong than liked or disliked. I think it's a good move. Reigns isn't the only one that applies to lately, by the way. Braun and Brock sometimes show babyface tendencies, as did Samoa Joe in the Lesnar feud. When you're booked strong but they stop caring if you're specifically cheered or booed, maybe that's how you know you've made it to the top in WWE. I think they gave up on trying to get people to "like" Roman a long time ago. Now it's about people agreeing that he belongs at that level, whether they like him or not.

 

 

WWE didn't have much choice but to adopt the idea though, since the last two guys they've tried to anoint as top babyface got swatted back in their faces. Now they're trying to pretend it was their plan all along to create a world where it doesn't matter if someone's cheered or booed when it absolutely was not the plan at the start. We've seen them do this multiple times, they will fight tooth and nail when something doesn't go the way they wanted it to, and then finally when it's clear the fans won't budge the company just pretends that's what they were trying to do the whole time.

 

If the plan was to just make Roman a top star, there were about a thousand opportunities where he could have been turned heel and probably been a much bigger star than he even is now. But the idea was to make him the top *babyface* star, even if that meant repeatedly trying to ram the square peg into a round hole. It was only after years of that not working did we get the "I'm not a good guy, not a bad guy" stuff. They finally just started tailoring his character to the reactions he was already getting, yet all signs point to another WrestleMania being booked to end with him standing tall at the end despite knowing damn well how that will go over to the crowd in attendance.

 

So WWE really shouldn't be lauded for finally being able to create the "shades of grey" world Vince famously mentioned in the 90s. Fans absolutely want to cheer the good guys and boo the bad guys, they just don't want it jammed down their throats in a ham fisted a manner as possible who that would be.

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"The hotter the heel, the hotter the babyface when it's time to turn". An old-school rasslin' lesson that the "students of the Game" have seemingly forgotten. Among others.

 

So WWE really shouldn't be lauded for finally being able to create the "shades of grey" world Vince famously mentioned in the 90s. Fans absolutely want to cheer the good guys and boo the bad guys, they just don't want it jammed down their throats in a ham fisted a manner as possible who that would be.

 

This. The idea that "babyfaces and heels really don't matter" was the old Russo talking point. Whatever the fuck you want to twist it, even in 2017, the most successful formula will always remain "good" vs "evil". The rest is cop out bullshit. (Braun vs Roman was exactly that, only the audience picks up who they think is "good". That's another old-school rasslin' lesson, whomever the audience wants to cheer is babyface de facto and should be pushed as such, even staying a fucking monster/asshole, as Steve Austin demonstrated)

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So WWE really shouldn't be lauded for finally being able to create the "shades of grey" world Vince famously mentioned in the 90s. Fans absolutely want to cheer the good guys and boo the bad guys, they just don't want it jammed down their throats in a ham fisted a manner as possible who that would be.

What bygone magical era are you thinking of when you're saying this? Because I've sent A LOT of old rasslin and they did way more back then to beat you over the head with "this is the good guy you're supposed to cheer and this is the bad guy you're supposed to boo" back then than WWE does now.

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To be clear, I'm only lauding WWE for reacting to changing circumstances and going with the tide instead of fighting it, which is what we want from them. I'm not praising them as coming up with some new concept entirely of their own creative devices. It doesn't matter if it is or isn't a proactive idea anyway, nor does it matter how much credit they should get. All that matters is if it works. Is the idea that wrestling is only good and praiseworthy when ideas are spot on from their conception? Really?

 

I'm also starting to wonder a few things that I haven't really seen anyone go into:

 

- What would a Reigns heel turn look like? What would he do to turn, and what dimension would we get from him, performance-wise, that we're not already getting? Would he have new opponents? Would he have new ways of winning? How exactly would this work? Think it through.

- What does "giving up" on Reigns look like? Firing him? Making him an opening match guy? A midcarder? A top guy but not *the* top guy? Going with someone else as *the* top guy? If so, who specifically?

 

I'm the first to criticize WWE for stuff when I think they deserve it. I'm not going to criticize them for adapting when they've made a guy a star but he doesn't get the "right" reactions to build an infrastructure around him of other top guys who can also be cheered or booed, depending on what suits the feud at that moment. That's a good thing.

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Each feud does have a babyface and heel, El-P. It's just that it's fluid and changes from feud to feud, instead of having wrestlers in permanent roles. I don't see WWE giving up on the idea of babyfaces and heels as much as I do that they want the flexibility to book anyone against anyone, so they'd rather book their top guys in a way that they can turn them back and forth month to month if it suits them. Criticize that if you like, but there are still babyfaces and heels within that idea.

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Each feud does have a babyface and heel, El-P. It's just that it's fluid and changes from feud to feud, instead of having wrestlers in permanent roles. I don't see WWE giving up on the idea of babyfaces and heels as much as I do that they want the flexibility to book anyone against anyone, so they'd rather book their top guys in a way that they can turn them back and forth month to month if it suits them. Criticize that if you like, but there are still babyfaces and heels within that idea.

 

And it's absolutely Russo's idea. "Heels and babyface don't matter, it depends on the feud". Except, it absolutely prevents them from telling any compelling stories (well, they can't even tell the simplest ones) and also prevents any kind of emiotionnal attachment to any character. And really, it's not a matter of them booking in "shades of grey", it's a sign of incompetent writing. Braun was never supposed to get babyface reactions, they didn't make him get those on purpose because it fit feud x as opposed to feud y where he's supposed to get heel reactions. The whole "flexibility on top" I see as a poor excuse justifying crappy, blurry and unimaginative booking, and their inability to actually book strong babyfaces. Every guy on top is basically a heel whom the crowd hates of loves depending on the context, which is why unless they murder each others in crazy brawls, there's nothing happening there in term of booking except yet another Roman Road to Mania. It may fit their business model, but damn does it sink the whole product into black hole of nothingness. No wonder why Lesnar is a perfect champ for this era… (they should have made Braun into Vader-champ, you know… but nope, gotta build to that part-time-wash-up vs Roman Mania Moments)

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A big part of making a successful babyface star is having a proper heel foil. Austin would be a star no matter what due to his charisma, but he is one of the biggest stars of all time because of Vince. Mr. McMahon is probably the greatest heel character ever created, the way he would bump and stooge made anyone he faced seem like a bigger star because of it. He even did it recently for Owens. There's no one for today's babyfaces to play off of since we've had a decade plus of the Authority castrating everyone and even steven booking that cuts off anyone's momentum.

 

It's all a vicious cycle, or a self fulfilling prophecy. They can't book babyfaces, and their heels end up getting cheered because they end up being the only ones booked worth a damn, so instead of trying to improve your writing it's easier to just say "well heels and faces just don't matter anymore!"

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Each feud does have a babyface and heel, El-P. It's just that it's fluid and changes from feud to feud, instead of having wrestlers in permanent roles. I don't see WWE giving up on the idea of babyfaces and heels as much as I do that they want the flexibility to book anyone against anyone, so they'd rather book their top guys in a way that they can turn them back and forth month to month if it suits them. Criticize that if you like, but there are still babyfaces and heels within that idea.

 

And it's absolutely Russo's idea. "Heels and babyface don't matter, it depends on the feud". Except, it absolutely prevents them from telling any compelling stories (well, they can't even tell the simplest ones) and also prevents any kind of emiotionnal attachment to any character. And really, it's not a matter of them booking in "shades of grey", it's a sign of incompetent writing. Braun was never supposed to get babyface reactions, they didn't make him get those on purpose because it fit feud x as opposed to feud y where he's supposed to get heel reactions. The whole "flexibility on top" I see as a poor excuse justifying crappy, blurry and unimaginative booking, and their inability to actually book strong babyfaces. Every guy on top is basically a heel whom the crowd hates of loves depending on the context, which is why unless they murder each others in crazy brawls, there's nothing happening there in term of booking except yet another Roman Road to Mania. It may fit their business model, but damn does it sink the whole product into black hole of nothingness. No wonder why Lesnar is a perfect champ for this era… (they should have made Braun into Vader-champ, you know… but nope, gotta build to that part-time-wash-up vs Roman Mania Moments)

 

 

No, the Russo thing would be to do a feud with guys we're supposed to cheer doing heelish things and vice versa. This is guys being good in one feud, bad in the next. Not the same thing.

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A big part of making a successful babyface star is having a proper heel foil. Austin would be a star no matter what due to his charisma, but he is one of the biggest stars of all time because of Vince. Mr. McMahon is probably the greatest heel character ever created, the way he would bump and stooge made anyone he faced seem like a bigger star because of it. He even did it recently for Owens. There's no one for today's babyfaces to play off of since we've had a decade plus of the Authority castrating everyone and even steven booking that cuts off anyone's momentum.

 

It's all a vicious cycle, or a self fulfilling prophecy. They can't book babyfaces, and their heels end up getting cheered because they end up being the only ones booked worth a damn, so instead of trying to improve your writing it's easier to just say "well heels and faces just don't matter anymore!"

 

Sure. But that's where we are. And their current solution is an improvement over force feeding. It's not perfect or beyond reproach.

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It is, but the hard part is getting them to see it's not a binary choice of what they are doing now or force feeding.

 

Maybe the workload needs to be better balanced, we know Raw and Smackdown have their own staffs but who comes up with stuff for 205 Live? With all the writers they employ it seems like it shouldn't be difficult to spread the workload to help avoid burnout and raise the quality of all their programming.

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A big part of making a successful babyface star is having a proper heel foil. Austin would be a star no matter what due to his charisma, but he is one of the biggest stars of all time because of Vince. Mr. McMahon is probably the greatest heel character ever created, the way he would bump and stooge made anyone he faced seem like a bigger star because of it. He even did it recently for Owens. There's no one for today's babyfaces to play off of since we've had a decade plus of the Authority castrating everyone and even steven booking that cuts off anyone's momentum.

 

It's all a vicious cycle, or a self fulfilling prophecy. They can't book babyfaces, and their heels end up getting cheered because they end up being the only ones booked worth a damn, so instead of trying to improve your writing it's easier to just say "well heels and faces just don't matter anymore!"

Sure. But that's where we are. And their current solution is an improvement over force feeding. It's not perfect or beyond reproach.

Booking babyface successfully > turning ones that are not working out > what they do > forcefeeding

 

It's a distant third.

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No, the Russo thing would be to do a feud with guys we're supposed to cheer doing heelish things and vice versa. This is guys being good in one feud, bad in the next. Not the same thing.

 

Babyfaces doing heelish things as been there forever : Hogan. Reversing dynamics ? Austin.

 

Russo was exactly all about guys being good or bad depending of the feud, and even sometimes inside of a single feud, the perfect case being Val Venis vs Goldust, where the heel/face dynamic depended on basically whom the audience thought was the "coolest" this particular week (and JR being confusing as all hell blaming Terri, basically slut-shaming in action). This was his exact talking point in the infamous "Rebook the WCW invasion" shoot, to him it didn't matter if the nWo guys were heel or faces, as long as they "got a reaction". And this is precisely what we're talking about here with Reigns and the entire pseudo "shades of grey" main event scene.

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One of the things I dislike the most about the current product, and one of the things I miss the most about the kind of wrestling that existed when I was a kid, is the lack of clear "good guys" and "bad guys." I know I am out of touch with the current product and I am not suggesting that they are "wrong" in the way they are approaching things (although TV ratings and attendance suggest that could very well be the case) but I just don't like it. I find it very difficult to get emotionally invested in today's wrestling, and to me the quality of the match is only half the battle when it comes to compelling pro wrestling. You have to be emotionally invested to get the full impact of a good pro wrestling match, and I can't remember the last time I felt really emotionally invested in a pro wrestling match. I freely admit that I am probably stuck in the past, nostalgic for a simpler time.

 

Having said that, let's look at other forms of entertainment. The top grossing movies from the past five years are all Superhero and Star Wars movies. If there is a genre of entertainment where there are clear heroes and villains, it has to be stories like Marvel movies and Star Wars. Vince himself has famously said he doesn't promote pro wrestling, he "makes movies." So make a good movie, then. I think wrestling fans would react positively to stories where there are heroes who do good things, and villains who do bad things, if these stories were written intelligently. I think the fact that wrestling has changed so much doesn't necessarily point to an evolution of character dynamics. I think it is far more indicative of a lack of creativity and poor writing on the part of the WWE writing staff.

 

If WWE was capable of presenting well written storylines, I really do think the fans would buy back into the traditional face/heel roles. But it would have to be done right, and I don't think they know how to do that, I really don't. Or maybe they just aren't inclined.

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Really, ECW ruined it for everybody. Well, that and banal early-90s cartoon WWF and WCW booking

 

Maybe, but even in some of ECW's most famous feuds, there were clear good guys and bad guys. Raven was the bad guy, Tommy was the good guy. Raven was the bad guy, Sandman was the good guy. Shane Douglas was the bad guy, Pitbull #1 was the good guy. The lines may have been blurry, but they were there.

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