RavishingRickRudo
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Blog Comments posted by RavishingRickRudo
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So what are the odds the main event ends up being Sabu/RVD vs. Rey/Cena in typical ECW match-merging fashion?
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The only thing gayer than the man-sex in OZ is you having The OC and Dawsons Creek on your list.
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People know wrestling is fake. They don't like to be reminded of it, yes, but in this scenario it is necessary for Evil Heel UFC Owner Dana White. Plus, he is saying what most MMA fans think about wrestling anyways and is probably close to his own opinions. Nash and Hall "shouldn't" have said that everyone in WCW was old, because it made WCW look insignificant, but it was necessary for the "shoot" and "reality" aspects of the angle. To come in and ignore that the UFC Guys Are Real Fighters angle is to ignore the whole point. And it's not like Dana White gets away with saying all that he is saying, the payback comes in the form of a guitar shot.
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The 30 day suspension thing puts Joe in a "We need Joe!!" situation.
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It's not necessarily psychology. Psychology is the match making sense, and in most cases, fans respond to that. Not all. It is not an absolute that matches have to make sense. It is, however, an absolute that matches have to get the crowd reacting/responding.
Andres work in that match is actually very good. Limited, yes, but watch how many ways he works over Hogan. It's amazing how Andre used a bunch of normally weak moves (headbuts, bearhugs, clubs, chops), but given the pacing, given his size, given the crowds willingness to eat it up, it came off so much better than it should have. To make up for Andres lack of mobility between spots, Hogan over-sells and shifts attention off slow-Andre and onto himself. The match is not perfect, but there are features that normally don't get picked up on.
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"In Jan 2000, Eddie embarked on his greatest journey when he entered World Wrestling Entertainment"
Oh man.
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Watching the HOF deal, I laufed when the announcer -during the Mene Gene package- called the WWE a "cross-cultural phenomenon". I am not denying that the WWE has appealed to different cultures, but.... jesus christ, that sounds so pretentious and ridiculous, and indicative of how Vince is trying to shape his image.
And it's funny because Vince is kinda like the Christian/Conservative/Republicans, in trying to have it both ways, in regards to presenting himself as the underdog but really isn't. Vince is the underdog who is oppressed by big media while being the mega-giant-god of sports entertainment at the same time. And he uses both sides so conveniently. And people actually buy it too, which is the worst thing about it.
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I think it's not even that the business is better because of him, it's more like, he's better than the business.
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I think Vince will and is trying to make everything lead up to the WWE. That the WWE was the ultimate end, the highest plane, the top of the ladder. The stuff that other wrestlers did in other promotions was just to lead to them getting to the WWE. That the other promotions were stepping stones. Because those other promotions were wrestling, but the WWE is more than that and Vince McMahon made it more than that. The WWE was and is entertainment, the big show, the bright lights, the rock and roll and attitude and the stars and celebs and would never lower itself to be wrestling. Because at the end of the day, Vince McMahon does not want to be a wrestling promoter, he wants to be a multi-media mogul who took this small lil promotion from his father and blew it up into a world wide spectacle.
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Hogan is pretty much the benchmark for me and I found myself rethinking a lot of my dispositions and how I thought about wrestling after watching him vs. Andre WM III a few months ago. He did what he was supposed to do, he got the fans to go nuts, he got their money. That's what workers do. He did that better than the vast majority of wrestlers in history yet he gets called a horrible worker because he didn't fit into peoples perverted ideas of what a worker is. I worker is someone who works the crowd, it's as simple as that. What Hogan did wasn't realistic and that's where he gets the criticism, but he still some how made it real to those who watched him, and that's what really matters.
Hogan/Andre was a great match. It just was. It was iconic, it had 80,000 people going nuts and jumping up and down. It worked. I tried to find out why. I tried to justify it's greatness to prove to those who said it was a horrible match that it wasn't. It's like solving a puzzle. Lots of people, those that say it was a bad match, will write it off as being a bad match and not put any thought into why it worked, but my Hogan bias pushed me to see that side.
I watched it, I tried to find an indepth story that I could point to and say "look! it's good! look at what they did!", but it was pretty light and not very substantive. They build Hogans come back throughout the match and it lasts for a minute and then its over. That's not Misawa/Kawada or anything. But then it occurred to me that they didn't have to be Misawa/Kawada to get the fans going. That wrestling matches didn't have to be elaborate or technical or in-depth. They just had to get the crowd going and that's what they did. The opening Hulk up and failed Body slam, which paid off with the slam at the end. Andres control segments and the moves he used were varied as not to bore everyone. The spots on the outside. The bearhug. The clothesline. It was sufficient to keep the crowd interested and wanting to see Hogans come back and for Hogans come back to pay off. So while, on paper, a clothesline and a bodyslam and a few headbuts don't make a great match, great matches aren't made on paper.
Hogans selling in that match wasn't particularly consistent, but that didn't matter. He did it well enough. There's no nuances and subtlety in Hogans work, but that doesn't matter and it shouldn't matter. It worked. When he got slammed down he'd reach out and scream. Not the greatest acting job, but the fans saw it as Hogan getting beat up by the big man and they bought it. Job done. Things work or they don't work. If they work, you can't tell me that they didn't, you can only tell me why they did. If that match was horrible, then it wouldn't have worked, and you could have used Hogans selling, the lack of moves, the lack of story, the short payoff, as reasons why it didn't work, but since it did, none of that shit matters.
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And I was one of those people. That doesn't really matter as much to me any more, though. It's fruitless and unreasonable to expect everything from a wrestling match, mainly because it's not the wrestlers objective and goals to do most of the things people expect from them and because there are so many ways to get the crowd into it, and who is to say which way is the right way and which way is the wrong way when something works?
I think we, as fans who are interested in the "smart" aspects of the profession, would be better off looking at why matches are successful rather than deconstructing why the match wasn't really as good as the fans thought it was.
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The reason Vince isn't over it is because it's the only thing he has done that people have been passionate about for an extended period of time, so he keeps trying to recreate that. He doesn't get that it's because it was real that it was so compelling, not because one guy "screwed" another. It's clear that he doesn't get it when the Matt Hardy thing was going on last year and they never fully capitalized on it.
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This is why Hunter is going to be a babyface come Mania time. Him saying "I say what I am going to do, and I do it" is prime facebait. Plus, if you saw the Rumble, with his cool comedy stuff ("Candice, could you hold my balls"), there's no way the fans are going to boo him against Cena. HHH is the cool guy in the VIP room sippin on Cristal while Cena is on the dancefloor doin the robot and the running man hopin for the crowd to say "go while boy, go white boy go". He'll get eaten alive. We had this discussion with NiceGuyAdam on his show and LOTC made the point of saying HHH is going to get over exactly like Christian did against Cena - by calling him out and making fun of him for being Vanilla Ice 3.0.
I think the problem with the faces in the WWE today are that they are directionless. They wander around until it's their turn and then they wander around some more. Fans want to get behind the guys who are not waiting their turn, they get behind the guys who step up and take the spotlight. But that's not how it works in the WWE, no matter what they say. Fans aren't stupid, they recognize who the WWE wants to push and who the WWE won't push. And a lot of the times, who the WWE pushes are not the guys the fans like. The fans want to cheer who they want to cheer, but the fans don't know if they should fully get behind them. They get behind guys like the Boogeyman partially because they know it's a safebet. It's a comedy character, there's no chance to get burned by cheering him only to see him get squashed.. it was never meant to be taken seriously in the first place. How many times have the fans rallied behind someone only to see them hit their heads on the glass ceiling?
Think of how much more over Rey would be if the fans got the impression that the WWE was pushing him straight to the top?
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That's part of Chuck Liddells popularity in the UFC. He says he's going to knock out Tito, he knocks out Tito. He says he's going to knock out Vern, he knocks out Vern. He says he's going to knock out Randy, he knocks out Randy. Fans need to get the sense that they are backing the right horse.
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While I haven't given up on TNA, my interest in them certainly declined after 2 specific realizations. One was that Sting was the Big Surprise. I like Sting, but if that is their idea of something huge, I don't think their head is in the right place. The other was Team Canada. Team Canada continues to get pushed at some level despite being glorified jobbers. So what you'll get is 2 wins for every 3 losses, or vice versa. It's ineffective. And the only reason that is happening is because they are Scott D'mores boys and he has leverage when it comes to booking, and he is just lookin at keepin his boys in the spotlight no matter what.
I think TNA needs to have a rule that says those who are booking and writing the show have no role on the show. Because when I see stuff like JJ and Team Canada getting a certain focus of the show because they are in power, there is little to no hope of that ever changing because the power isn't going to change. Where it particularly hurts is that Team Canada and JJ don't interest me in the slightest and really aren't up to the standard of current television characters.
It's hard to book just for 2 or 3 guys, no doubt. Giving some guys a focus of 20 minutes, writing for 20 minutes, and having the rest of the roster get pissed because they are not getting used and are not getting paid. That's probably a big reason why TNA doesn't or can't go this route and instead decides to throw everything on screen and hopes something sticks, and continues to push for 2 hours on SPIKE. But if they don't know how to effectively use 1 hour, how can they use 2?
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I think that, when booking for a national audience, the philosophy should certainly change and differs greatly from booking for a local audience.
ROH books for a specific audience - the audience that shows up. This affords them certain luxuries, including rotating the top guys on a frequent basis because you know the audience is going to show up anyways. When you have a nationally televised show there is the certainty of someone flipping through the channels and seeing your product. And in that time they see it, there are several possibilities:
A. They watch it for a second and then change the channel.
B. They watch it for a few seconds and then change the channel at the next commercial.
C. They watch it until it finishes (or until they see something they don't like) and then doesn't bother to watch it the next week.
D. Something like B or C, but they do watch it the next week, repeating their viewing behaviour.
E. Something like D, but they watch it infrequently afterwards, continually on the fence until they make up their mind.
F. Something like D, but they watch it frequently and eventually becomes a full blown fan - incorporating it into their viewing schedule.
The odds of someone walking by the arena and going "Hey, let's pay to see a wrestling show" are pretty slim. When someone goes to an ROH show, what are the odds they are doing it on a whim, that they will get up and leave if they aren't interested, that they have little interest in the first place, or that they will react in any way that's close to being similar to a TV viewer? When people go to ROH shows, they want to go to ROH shows. TNA is not ROH. IMPACT! has more similarities to HOUSE than it does to ROH, when it comes to finding its audience.
This is where focus comes in. With a TV show -any TV, be it a wrestling show, a medical drama, a crime series, a sitcom- the focus needs to be there so when that person who is flipping through stops to see what's on, they "get it". When someone turns on TNA, particularly a wrestling fan, they need to see what TNA is all about in that single viewing. The best way for someone to "get it" is through specific, main, characters. It's easier for someone to "get" one character, because people can relate to each other. You don't see them cycling the role of Gil Grissom every week on CSI, you don't see them continually replacing Rory on Gilmore Girls. The lead cast members are the "anchor" for the viewer, the constant focus that will be guaranteed for them to see week in and week out.
This assurance means that the viewer can put their emotions and their heart into a show and get excited and not worry about it all going away. Shows tend to die when their main cast members leave, because it's just not the same for the audience to see someone else in that role. And yes, that is potentially damaging for a wrestling company, however wrestling fans are more accustomed and open to a change in guard. But we're not really talking about booking for wrestling fans when we talk about TNA at this stage in the game, we're talking about booking for potential wrestling fans, and the most important thing in looking for converts is the hook and the anchor. (Luckily, when they *do* become wrestling fans, it may get easier for the once regular television viewer to accept a change on top because wrestlings structure allows for a more open door.)
TNA needs to stop their current philosophy of "let's get every guy out there and try to get the light on all of them" and needs to adapt "let's put our best and most interesting guys out there and let's let the light shine brightest on a chosen few". That they aren't able to translate their TV numbers to PPV numbers shows how (un)interested the fans are in seeing the results of the storylines. My bet is most that do tune into the show (let's say 0.75 of them) are just doing so for an alternative, while the 0.35 that comes and goes represents what I'm talking about above when I talk about category E. They are on the fence. They are looking for a reason to stay and watch, but as the ratings flux shows, they haven't foudn it yet. And there's probably a lot more out there in terms of Bs and Cs that could turn into E's if TNA actually had a focus to share with the audience.
Most TV shows have a A and B storyline. This is particularly evident in hour longs. They usually include anywhere between 4 to 6 to 8 characters. How many characters who were a focal point of the show? 20+? In most TV shows you'll see the characters on screen for the majority of the program. How often would you see TNA Wrestlers? 5 minutes at best? How can a television audience form a bond with anyone when it's spread so thin? A television model of an A and B storyline each week (you could allow a C storyline, which are not uncommon), with 8 characters getting the focus week to week would be an effective way of building shows and building PPVs. You bring up UFC, well, they don't sell their PPVs on the whole card, they sell them on the strength of 2 matches (or in the case of 57, just one), because that's all the fans need to get them to buy a show. The same can be said for wrestling. The WWE has *never* been good top-to-bottom, and often it only had one good thing going for them, and that one good thing was enough because that's all the fans really needed.
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I was angry and I didn't mean it. Forgive me.
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Posting With Shadows
The story of a man who believes in smarks, in a world where the anti-smark is king
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You know, it really fucking sucks that you're stealing heat away from me. I just had to say that. Once upon a time, some in the WWE folder were called RRR Clones and yes-men as erroneously as people -INCLUDING ME!!!- are being called HTQ yes-men. This is so very wrong. People used to be willing to have themselves banned if it meant I would be banned as well. THAT'S HATRED! I put in more time here, dammit! I have tenure! I deserve that heat! BAH!!!
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And between you, me, and the syntax, the main page is a sinking ship even before leaving the dock.
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Nowhere have I said "The crowd was hot therefore it was a great match", I've said *what they did in the match* to get the crowd hot was what made it great. There is a specific sequence that got the crowd involved in the match, it's wasn't a fluke. I don't want to say this is over someone like Coeys head, but it seems to be over his head. It's one of those Can't See The Forest For the Trees deal... We're talking in circles now. This wasn't just any crowd, this was a dead crowd. If Angle/Benoit was able to get *that* crowd to its feet through their work, then they deserve high praise. Watch the match again, this time watch it to see how they manipulate the crowd. I'll put crowd manipulation over technique and psychology any day of the week.
At *any* point during that match did you see Angle and Benoit trying to be anything they weren't?
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The crowd is irrelevant?
This wasn't a match that had a hot crowd all the way through, they gave that crowd life strictly through their work. Do you know how fucking hard that is to do? How many bad matches have you seen do that? And they didn't do it by luck, they MADE that crowd get into it. The reason why that match is great isn't because the crowd was hot, the reason why that match is great is because they made a dead crowd care, and cared so much that in the end they gave a genuine standing ovation for the loser. You look at the nature of wrestling and you look at what they did, and the crowd becomes very relevant. If wrestling wanted to be realistic, it'd be a shoot. If wrestling wanted to be cohesive and smart, it'd be a play. Professional Wrestling's primary function is to get the crowd into it so they feel they got their moneys worth and will pay again next time the show is in town. The crowd is irrelevant? Jesus fucking christ... you're a smart guy, but think about that for a second.
My main problem with Indy wrestling is that it's too fake - it doesn't come off as genuine. It's two guys pretending to be Misawa or Lyger or whatever. They do shitty wrestling sequences for absolutely no reason other than to show "hey, we can do that~!". In that, it is masturabatory and convoluted. Benoit and Angle weren't trying to be anything other than Benoit and Angle in that match. But like I said, Coeys points were completely valid about that match, but THEY are irrelevant because wrestling isn't JUST that one thing. It isn't just about making sense, it's also about crowd manipulation and Benoit and Angle did a masterful job of getting the crowd into it.
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I think Angle/Benoit is a tremendous match and anything below **** is underrating it. Wrestling matches can't do everything, but they can do somethings well enough that they warrant high praise. Benoit/Angle is a great match because they took a dead crowd and brought it back to life and had them on their feet cheering the loser in the end. Coeys review is akin to an art critic looking at a 2000 year old artifact and saying "oh god, the detail is all wrong...". No doubt his points are valid, but that's not the entire story. Take that artifact to an archeologist, a religious figure, and cultural historian, and you would get an entirely different perspective.
When it comes to building the match _for the crowd_ and manipulating the audience, it is a BRILLIANT match. I like Coeys reviews, but the dude isn't looking at that match fully and appreciating that aspect of the match. That he doesn't talk about the double KO spot, then going to the sleeper spot, is indicative of how limited his views are.
And I think this is very important, especially to this match. Wrestling is all about getting the audience involved - because that's the way you make money. Angle/Benoit took this audience which was lifeless and almost ready to leave the building and affected them in a way that had them totally into it and forgetting all about the crap they saw before. How can you give that anything under ****?
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*MisawaGQ 4 MOD*
HTQ's Thoughts - 6/1/06. Inc. some MMA.
in Straight Shooting
A blog by Hunter's Torn Quad in General
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Does this include photos as well?