JR stepping down as Head of Talent...

[Guest Memphis]

The following tidbits come re-written from the Pro Wrestling Torch Newsletter. Subscription details and prices can be obtained at pwtorch.com.

 

The latest on Jim Ross is that he will step down as the head of talent relations from WWE at the end of this summer. Word going around backstage in WWE is that Ross is stepping aside either to free himself up or is being forced out in favor of John Lauranitis (also known as Johnny Ace). Lauranitis has gotten over well and undoubtedly has grown very popular amongst wrestlers backstage. It is a secret to no one that Lauranitis has been trying to secure more power in the company, however, Ross’s move is said not to be based on power, but rather a move that Ross himself has decided to make.

 

Ross has been slowly giving up duties in the department of talent relations in WWE, even so many that he no longer is required to attend the SmackDown tapings each week. Ross will continue to announce RAW along side Jerry Lawler and is expected to return next week, being brought back by Steve Austin as the new co-general manager for the show.

 

credit - RajahWWF.com

 

M

[Guest El Psycho Diablo]

Please let this be true, please..

 

Not watching Raw anymore because of that stupid fuck. Maybe they can fix the talent situation without Ross there to drool over every ex-football player that walks in.

[Guest RavishingRickRudo]

WHOOO HOOOO!

[Mecha Mummy 0]

To Matt Hardy:

 

Run like hell.

 

Sincerely,

 

Gosunkugi

[Guest j.o.b. squad]

well i guess their is only so long you can do 2 jobs in a company before you get burnt out and have to take a break.

[Guest Anglesault]

Does this mean we STILL get another Albert push?

[Guest AndrewTS]

This will make absolutely no difference.

 

Ace is a hoss-lover too.

[Guest Memphis]

Johnny Ace in a position of scouting talent and suddenly Road Warrior Animal has a job.

 

Uh huh.

 

M

[Guest webmasterofwrestlegame]

Err...and anyone think LOD coming in has anything to do with Ace? I mean, his brother IS Animal.

[Guest RavishingRickRudo]

Ace pushed for Lance Storm to win the 3 titles in WCW.

[Guest Trivia247]

kinda makes sense don't it?

[Guest Memphis]

If Ace continues with his usual style of booking that was evident in the building of stars in WCW, then i can tolerate injury-prone over 40's tag teams that haven't been worth watching in 10 years.

 

Hey, they're bound to injure themselves or someone important eventually.

 

M

[Guest RavishingRickRudo]

Thursday, August 10, 2000

 

Johnny is WCW's Ace in the hole

By JOHN F. MOLINARO -- SLAM! Wrestling

 

Besides being the wrestler of the 90s, besides setting the highest standard of excellence in the ring, besides changing the face of Japanese wrestling forever, Mitsuharu Misawa can also be credited for something else: saving WCW.

 

Had it not been for Misawa leaving All Japan Pro Wrestling to form his own Pro Wrestling NOAH promotion, WCW would never have been able to make their most important talent acquisition in years: Johnny Ace.

 

Who?

 

Ace, for those of you who don't follow Japanese wrestling, was a perennial mid-carder in All Japan Pro Wrestling for most of the 90s. While there, he worked with some of the top domestic and foreign talent in Japan: Misawa, Toshiaka Kawada, Kenta Kobashi, Stan Hansen, Steve Williams.

 

Ace is also the guy who recently acquired a seat on the WCW booking team. He's made it possible for the average fan to watch Nitro and Thunder without snickering hysterically -- well not the entire show but at least a lot less.

 

He's been working with WCW booker Vince Russo, fine tuning and tweaking his ideas and coming up with finishes for matches; sort of like a newspaper editor checking over a reporter's news copy before it goes to press. Ace is the man to thank for WCW matches having more logical finishes lately. He's the one behind matches being put together a lot better. And he's the one that's been working with the talent to get their finishers over.

 

Although he's behind the scenes, Ace's contribution is immeasurable. He speaks softly but carries a big pencil.

 

Ace is a student of the game. Always has been. During his tenure in All Japan, he learned the wrestling business in a classroom that was the best in the world, soaking up knowledge from a true master of the art of booking.

 

The rings of All Japan were Ace's classrooms, booker Giant Baba his professor. He saw how matches in the most physically demanding promotion in the world were put together and executed before the most knowledgeable and critical wrestling fans anywhere.

 

Wrestling fans on these shores who moan and complain about the number of run-ins and screw job finishes that plague the WWF, WCW and ECW should consider this: during the entire decade of the 90s, there were a grand total of three non-clean finishes in All Japan.

 

That's right. You read that correctly, folks.

 

Three!

 

Save for a count out finish and two double DQs, every All Japan match ended in a clean finish. Every one.

 

No run-ins. No outside interference. No screw job endings. No evil owner and his dysfunctional family screwing wrestlers over. No NWO-like cliques and their political bulls--t. No mind-numbing chair shots done to the point of nausea.

 

Just a stringent policy of 100 per cent clean finishes.

 

Talk about efficiency. Talk about getting wrestler's finishing moves over. Talk about fans popping for those finishes. Talk about the credibility the promotion established. And talk about legitimacy in wrestling.

 

That's what Ace brings to WCW.

 

Since Ace's arrival, matches and storylines suddenly make a hell of a lot more sense in WCW. Finishing moves actually mean something. And there's a more logical progression of storylines in matches, culminating in finishes that are starting to get a fair bit of heat.

 

You need not look any further than this past Monday to see Ace's influence. Ace's fingerprints are all over the Lance Storm versus Booker T. match.

 

Over the previous three weeks, Lance chalked up clean, submission victories with his Canadian Maple Leaf finisher. The viewing audience following along at home became educated to the fact that Storm's finisher was legit and that he could end a match with it.

 

Flash forward to the match with Booker. As soon as Lance cinched it in, people in the building popped big thinking they were going to see a title change. A big reason for that is because Lance is over these days and has really sold the move very well.

 

As much credit goes to Storm and Booker, credit also goes to Ace who helped put it together. Submission victories are a staple booking practice in All Japan and the Japanese audience buys it because they ve seen so many matches end that way.

 

You'll also notice that when Lance put it on, not one head turned towards the runway, expecting to see who was coming down the aisle for a run in. That's because in previous regimes, when a top guy put his finisher on, people knew it was the cue for a run-in.

 

Not on Ace's watch. Since he's been in town, run-ins are virtually a thing of the past. Clean finishes appear to be the new norm.

 

That's Ace's contribution. A contribution, that while still a long way from fixing everything wrong with WCW - hell he ain't a miracle worker - has helped nonetheless. It's shown in the ring and it's shown in the reaction of fans to the shows.

 

His work is also being praised by the wrestlers themselves.

 

"(Johnny Ace) has helped out tremendously," Shane Douglas told SLAM! Wrestling over the phone yesterday. "The level of the matches have really improved (since he arrived)."

 

Ace has also gotten over the art of the false finish, those near falls where a guy almost scores the pin. Remember those?

 

Well, they're just about commonplace in All Japan. Since All Japan has educated its audience to the fact that finishers can end the match, they've simultaneously educated them that a finish can come at any time. That's why if you watch any All Japan match, you'll see fans gasp and that they're sitting on the edge of their seats for every pinfall attempt. As a result, matches have a bottomless reserve of heat.

 

The same thing is starting to happen in WCW matches. Fans are beginning to pop for pinfall attempts and all the false finishes. As a result, WCW matches have a new source of heat. Go figure?

 

That's Ace's influence.

 

"I think that's one of the places that Johnny's really contributed well is that a lot of the matches now have those false finishes and the fans are beginning to buy those false finishes. Matches have a lot more heat," Shane Douglas added when we spoke.

 

Is WCW still out of the woods? No. Is there a lot more to do? Yes.

 

But, they've made progress. They're on the right track. And given more time so that Ace can incorporate more All Japan booking ideas into the product, WCW could be on the right path to having an all-around respectable product again.

 

Who could have imagined that Misawa's bitter departure from All Japan would have been the best thing to happen to WCW in years?

 

And who would have thought that a Japanese concept would help out a failing American company?

 

Johnny Ace, that's who.

[Guest Anglesault]

If Ace continues with his usual style of booking that was evident in the building of stars in WCW,

M

Like how he fucked Matt Hardy?

[Guest Memphis]

That's just one example. RRR mentioned before his work with Lance Storm whom he turned from nobody into superstar in about a month. Given, it was WCW and bound to fuck up, and it did, but that was a different company and a different situation.

 

It's better than Jim by gawd Ross. ANYTHING is better than JR.

 

M

[Guest RavishingRickRudo]

How exactly did he screw Matt Hardy?

[Guest Trivia247]

well geez

 

Ross was one of those Hoss Lovah's

 

and Ace is one of those Old Age home lovah's

 

Maybe...finally

 

Abdullah the Butcher will make his golden Year tour in the WWE. Since he been wrestling since 1950's and he is like in his 70's

[Guest AndrewTS]

That's just one example. RRR mentioned before his work with Lance Storm whom he turned from nobody into superstar in about a month. Given, it was WCW and bound to fuck up, and it did, but that was a different company and a different situation.

 

It's better than Jim by gawd Ross. ANYTHING is better than JR.

 

M

Yeah, we know that WWE isn't ANYTHING like WCW.

 

Oh...wait...

[Guest Memphis]

Abdullah is actually the ripe age of 602

[Guest Kotzenjunge]

How exactly did he screw Matt Hardy?

There were rumors of Ace wanting to halt Matt Hardy's Version 1.0 gimmick and push to make him into a face because of the female reaction and because he didn't feel that Matt got any real heat. This was a story before Wrestlemania though, maybe even before No Way Out. From what I can tell, not much really materialized from it.

[Guest RavishingRickRudo]

JR was responsible for bringing in Nathan Jones.

 

Nuff Sayed.

[Guest pinnacleofallthingsmanly]

A) Half of the stuff said in that article was extremely exaggerated.

 

B) Your sig picture is to goddamned big.

[Guest Anglesault]

How exactly did he screw Matt Hardy?

By fucking him out of two huge feuds and at least one PPV match in favor of ALBERT

[Guest Memphis]

That sig is fucking huge....

[Guest RavishingRickRudo]

1)Yes, a lot of the stuff in there was greatly exaggerated, but the point remained true. WCW for that brief period of time (From late July-mid Aug) was excellent and showed a lot of Johnny Aces finger prints (clean finishes, they even lifted some All Japan spots)

 

2) Don't be hatin.

 

3)Rey Mysterio returned with no fanfare at all - who is to say that Matt Hardy would have been better off had he took Alberts position? I look at Hardy right now and he is still pretty well-off. Hardly 'screwed'.

[Guest Kotzenjunge]

Considering Edge was injured soon after the story of Matt being taken out of the program with him, I'm kinda glad that Albert was put in his place.

[Guest Anglesault]

3)Rey Mysterio returned with no fanfare at all - who is to say that Matt Hardy would have been better off had he took Alberts position? .

An Edge feud as well. And by that I mean a feud with Edge, not an Edge Feud (A horribly one sided feud where the heel looks like shit and the face just outsmarts him on a constant basis.) Edge stopped that.

 

I look at Hardy right now and he is still pretty well-off.  Hardly 'screwed'

 

He holds a title no one cares about, has no feud, gets left off the PPV and is a Velocity regular.

[Garth 0]

Well he's not booking though is he, he's becoming Head Of Talent, so he'll just be deciding who gets pushs etc.

[Guest RavishingRickRudo]

Ok, and this is different from the norm... How?

 

Matt Hardy will never be a main event contender - that's Vince McMahon's influence and no one elses - he was Brock's whipping boy before the Albert thing, I'd say what he is now is a step up. He would just have been squashed by Nathan Jones by now.

[Guest RavishingRickRudo]

Head of Talent basically means signing new Talent and organizing current talent - the main benefit in terms of pushing guys is having Vinces ear. Ace worked with the top wrestlers in the world in All Japan, so I think he has (or would have developed) a pretty good eye for talent. He is a former worker and Storm seems to say only good things about him on the website, so he more than likely has a good relationship with the boys.