WWE General Discussion - November 2007

[Enigma 0]

Cade has a job for life because he's one of HBK's students.

[Mecca 0]

OVW is in some major trouble. HHH and Shawn Michaels visited OVW last month and sent a very negative report back to Vince about what they saw. Today, WWE sent out a press release announcing that their Florida territory was their number 1 training ground. Internally, this was seen as a major slap in the face to OVW and a clear sign that they better shape up or they will be removed as DSW was a few months ago.

[The Truthiness 0]

Where you hear that at, Mecca?

 

[Mecca 0]

Where you hear that at, Mecca?

 

It was on another board.......I'd say take it with a bit of a grain of salt but they haven't exactly been thrilled with OVW lately. From the Tony Atlas shit and all sorts of shit going on there.

 

Also there will never be a wrestling show in Georgia ever again...

 

Read the funniest thing ever, the proposed wrestling rules from the Georgia Athletic and Entertainment Commission. It was the weirdest thing you ever saw, this strange mix of work and shoot, and it made for fabulous reading. The money issues are going to really hurt the indies in the area. Promoters must get licensed; provide a $10,000 security bond; notify the commission of the time, date and location of an event at least ten days in advance; pay the 5% of gross revenue within ten days of the conclusion of the event; and have a physician at ringside, an ambulance and 2 EMTs on hand.

 

As far as rules, "Wrestlers MAY NOT deliberately cut themselves and all wrestlers must be over (18) years of age"; "No one under the age of 18 is allowed in any area of the venue other than their seat except when accompanied by a guardian"; they must pay $100 for a commission representative to be present (!!!); they have to announce changes to the advertised card before the show starts and offer refunds; wrestlers can not physically or verbally threaten any member of the audience. There were all sorts of rules about what guys can and cannot wear. Your gear must be clean. I'd have been kicked out Chikara Sunday. You may wear 2 pairs of trunks one over the other.

 

No grease, lotion or foreign substances on the body. Female wrestlers must wear trunks and a top. "The inspector present at the event may disallow the use of inappropriate attire or disqualify a wrestling participant for the lack of appropriate attire." YOU MUST HAVE REAL GEAR. You also must have your fingernails trimmed close. There are lots of instructions about the barriers required. It's like God giving Noah the blueprints for the ark. And then we get to the fun stuff, a legitimate RULEBOOK OF WRESTLING. Matches have a maximum 60 minute time limit. A wrestling contest shall be determined by one fall or best of three falls. "A fall is scored by a wrestler when the wrestler’s opponent has both shoulders touching the mat for a count of three (3) seconds. The referee shall signal the wrestler scoring a fall by immediately slapping the mat." Someone clearly got confused when writing these rules. A two minute rest period is allowed between falls.

 

Also, it's now a TEN COUNT in Georgia for breaking a hold, not five. That's extreme. You can't inhibit breathing by covering the nose and mouth at the same time. "Unsportsmanlike or physically dangerous conduct" -- not allowed. If you keep it up, you must be disqualified. No blading, but you may use blood capsules. Seriously. "If a wrestler refuses or is physically unable to continue a match, the match shall be ended and the decision awarded to the wrestler’s opponent." Ever wondered what a tag match is? Well, it's "a contest between two (2) teams each composed of two (2) or more wrestlers." Let's get more specific: "A tag team contest shall be conducted as follows: The contest shall begin with one (1) wrestler from each team inside the ring while the respective partners remain outside the ring on the apron; The wrestler(s) outside the ring may not enter the ring unless a fall is scored or his/her partner has tagged his/her hand; In order to be eligible to receive a tag, the wrestler’s partner shall be outside the ring on the apron in the proper corner with both feet on the ring apron and only receive the tag over the top ring rope;

 

When the tag is made, the wrestler making the tag shall leave the ring as the partner enters the ring; Only two (2) wrestlers from opposing teams shall be permitted to be in the ring at any one (1) time; After the scoring of a fall a wrestler may relieve the partner; If a wrestler is unable to continue; the wrestler’s partner shall continue the contest alone; The referee may call time after an injury to permit the injured wrestler to be removed from the ring; and Release the rope provided in the team corner until officially tagged by the partner."

 

I am not making any of this up. A wrestler may have a second accompany him to the ring, but if the second interferes he can be ejected. Refs must be properly attired within 30 minutes of bell time and must "enforce the regulations of the commission".

 

That's from F4W

[Jingus 0]

Yeah, I already reported that in my thread in General Wrestling, check it out for some a little spirited debate over exactly which rules are stupid, plus a lot of name-calling towards the Georgia athletic commission.

[USC Wuz Robbed! 0]

Mecca: Bringer of Weeks Old News.

[Mecca 0]

That's because f4W recaps the week........I'm sure there's some stuff in there that wasn't posted....I however am not going to sort through that whole report then read this whole thread to see what was and wasn't posted.

[DangerousDamon 0]

Lance Cade reminds me of a young Steve Austin. Maybe he should start using the Stun Gun/Lariat combo Austin used to use.

[Thanks for the Fish 0]

OVW is going on the shitter, half the guys they use is from Derby City these days. Look no further than where wwe sends all of the legacy developmentals - FCW.

 

WWe should get out of the developmental school business. Let kids cut their teeth touring the indies and the world. Harry Smith had the right idea, however he got impatient when he would have been better served with 2 or 3 more years of international seasoning.

[Jingus 0]

Huh? Harry has been wrestling for, like, at least six years now, all over the world.

[Hunter's Torn Quad 0]

WWe should get out of the developmental school business. Let kids cut their teeth touring the indies and the world. Harry Smith had the right idea, however he got impatient when he would have been better served with 2 or 3 more years of international seasoning.

So, you not only want WWE to get out of teaching their future superstars the way they like their wrestlers to work and act, but you want those future superstars to work in places (Indies) where they'll learn a style that is counter to everything WWE likes, thus getting them tagged as 'not knowing how to work' when they get brought up, which will then see them either let go or, if the company feels like it, WWE sending them to school anyway, so they can get taught to work and act the way WWE wants.

 

 

[Thanks for the Fish 0]

What did the wwe do for talent before OVW?

[Hunter's Torn Quad 0]

What did the wwe do for talent before OVW?

You mean when they had different attitude towards their future superstars than they do now?

[The Truthiness 0]

What did the wwe do for talent before OVW?

I think they used A Dojo ran by Dory Funk. They also used USWA to develope some guys also.IIRC

 

[spman 0]

Oddly enough, the guys that come from OVW over the years have usually ended up being flash in the pan wrestlers that get released or turned into jobbers within a year of their TV debut. Quite a few of WWE's big name players have come from Rick Bassman's UPW.

[Hunter's Torn Quad 0]

Oddly enough, the guys that come from OVW over the years have usually ended up being flash in the pan wrestlers that get released or turned into jobbers within a year of their TV debut. Quite a few of WWE's big name players have come from Rick Bassman's UPW.

Apart from John Cena, who didn't spend half as much time in UPW as he did in OVW, where he got the majority of his training, what big name players have come from UPW? Heidenreich? Nathan Jones?

[The Truthiness 0]

Oddly enough, the guys that come from OVW over the years have usually ended up being flash in the pan wrestlers that get released or turned into jobbers within a year of their TV debut. Quite a few of WWE's big name players have come from Rick Bassman's UPW.

Cena, Batista, Orton, Nitro, Melina, Shelton Benjamin, Elijah Burk, CM Punk, and Kennedy all say HELLO.

[Hunter's Torn Quad 0]

Bryan Alvarez's column on The Fight Network a few weeks ago, about WWE developmental:

 

By: Bryan Alvarez

The Fight Network

 

WWE's quarterly report came out earlier this week. It was a bad period for the company. Chris Benoit died, which caused many aspects of business to tumble, both because of the negative publicity and just because people really didn't feel like watching wrestling for awhile afterwards. The company also didn't put out any major DVDs, which of late has been a major source of revenue. Profits ended up down nearly 10 percent.

 

With all that said, they still made $8.5 million when all was said and done. Sometimes you'll hear people mutter that WWE used to be doing great but now they're losing money. The reality is that they're not even close to doing so, even in a horrible period, and because of the success of WrestleMania this will very likely end up being their biggest financial year in history. Yes, in history, and that includes the 1997-2001 period.

 

So they're not going out of business anytime soon. But it is important to look at things that could affect them down the line. Obviously, the biggest would be a loss of television. The fact that ECW dipped to a 1.1 and Sci-Fi still re-signed them for a year tells you that Raw and particularly Smackdown (which is holding up remarkably well) aren't being cancelled anytime in the near future.

 

Besides Benoit's death, one of the things that hurt WWE over the last several months was the loss of a number of top stars due to injury. Say what you will about the wrestling content of the shows, but the reality is that pro-wrestling is a star driven business, and whether the top stars are any good in the ring doesn't necessarily have anything to do with whether they can draw money. The lifeblood of WWE over the next decade will be whether or not they can create new superstars. This is a concern.

 

There was a time during the wrestling war when comparing the median age of the superstars in WWE and WCW was almost comical. WWE had a ton of guys in their 20s and early 30s, and WCW had a ton of guys in their late 30s and early-to-mid 40s. For awhile, it didn't matter. The WCW guys were stars and thus WCW won many battles. But as time wore on, the stars just kept getting older and older, and when you're in your late 30s and early 40s it catches up faster than your late 20s and early 30s.

 

Today, with the exception of a few guys like Randy Orton, most of the top stars, the Undertaker’s and Batista’s and HBK’s and HHH’s are in their late 30s to mid-40s. Undertaker, Batista and HHH have all torn muscles, the latter two multiple times (in fact, Batista is working on the triceps tear that he was told years back would end his career), and Shawn has a bad back and two largely useless knees. These guys can't keep going forever. Most of the young guys on the undercard, even champions on other brands, have been positioned as guys who are not going to make it to the tippy-top superstar level. Where are the new superstars going to come from?

 

The answer, ideally, is developmental. Some of the biggest stars in company history went through the developmental system in some form, from Rock (Memphis) to Kurt Angle (OVW) to Batista (OVW) to John Cena (OVW) to Brock Lesnar (OVW). What giant superstars has developmental turned out of late? The answer is nobody. The closest we've gotten are MVP on Smackdown and Mr. Kennedy on Raw, who latter of whom nearly got both the Vince McMahon illegitimate son role and a world title earlier this year until circumstances caused otherwise.

 

WWE has two developmental territories, Ohio Valley Wrestling and Florida Championship Wrestling. OVW has been part of the system for a decade, and FCW rose from the ashes of Deep South Wrestling in Atlanta, which crashed and burned earlier this year in spectacular fashion. I cannot blame the folks at OVW for any of these problems since the trainers are the same trainers that helped groom all of the aforementioned superstars. The issue is in the system itself.

 

Two small territories are not nearly enough to provide a regular influx of new talent to all three WWE brands. On top of that, WWE has earmarked only around a half million per year for developmental. Think about that. They will gross nearly $400 million this year and exactly $500,000 goes towards building towards the future. They expect their developmental territories to run most aspects of the business themselves, from getting TV deals and running tapings to booking regular house shows so talent can gain experience. Nobody in charge of a developmental group is getting rich, and in fact Jody Hamilton lost money for over a year trying to get Deep South up and running to WWE's satisfaction.

 

On top of that, WWE, despite claims to the contrary, still hires and brings people up to the main roster based more on physique than talent. Some of the best wrestlers in the history of OVW ended up called up to WWE, saddled with pointless gimmicks, placed in the mid-card, used for a year or two, then fired. I'll always get sad thinking about how great Nick Dinsmore (Eugene), Rob Conway, Doug and Danny Basham were in OVW, how their talents were wasted in WWE, and how nobody outside OVW hardcores every really knew how good they were. Plus, there is always the issue of talent being brought to television too early, not getting over in a couple of weeks, and then being slotted into mid-card hell for the rest of their careers.

 

WWE needs to invest better in their future. They need to earmark more money for developmental, and they need at least five territories throughout the US. They dropped the ball with Booker T, since he could have run a great developmental promotion in Houston. A developmental group on the west coast and another in the Northeast would be ideal. With more talent to choose from, there would be less of a rush to bring people up to television early. WWE also needs to regularly be sending main roster talent to each of the promotions to work with the rookies. If a guy isn't being used in a program, he should be helping out in developmental instead of sitting at home. A green guy isn't getting any better working another green guy, no matter how many times they wrestle each other at house shows. To improve, one must work with someone at a level above themselves. Part of the reason OVW turned out so many great wrestlers in the late 90s and early 00s was because guys like Kurt Angle would regularly show up and have matches with the top OVW stars.

 

It's important to remember that even if developmental churns out 50 Shelton Benjamins who have all the potential in the world but end up being wasted, or even fifty complete failures, one Rock or John Cena can help boost business for several years. And it's simple mathematics -- the more developmental systems and the more guys in the system, the better the chances of finding the next huge superstar. WWE business is down a bit, and thus there will probably be some cost-cutting. But the last place they need to cut costs is developmental, and if anything, they should greatly increase their spending. Developmental is like a savings account; it's something to ensure that there is always something there in case of an emergency, and something to give you peace of mind about the future.

[Jingus 0]

Also, don't forget that even after most of the old territories dried up there was still WCW and second-tier feds like ECW, Smokey Mountain, and Memphis to poach talent from. None of those are still around, and the WWE doesn't give a shit about stealing anyone TNA has.

[Thanks for the Fish 0]

OVW has done better than I gave it credit for. It's likely wwe's fault for calling up the kids too soon or burying them once they get the call-up. OVW is really hurting right now, but even then I'm sure there is politics involved as wwe road agent Steve Keirn runs the Florida developmental and got a lot of the finished talent down there when he was putting a roster together. Maybe OVW is a mess, I dunno.

 

I think the developmentals should be more of a finishing school than building the kids from the ground up. I mean how homoginized is the ring work going to be if they're all being taught the same things the same way by the same teachers?

 

[spman 0]

Didn't WCW do open tryouts at the Powerplant a couple of times a year where anyone regardless of experience could tryout and get trained to wrestle?

[Enigma 0]

Jim Ross confirmed in his latest blog that Monday Night Raw will be moving to HD at some point in 2008.

[Jingus 0]

Didn't WCW do open tryouts at the Powerplant a couple of times a year where anyone regardless of experience could tryout and get trained to wrestle?

Yeah, provided you could get past them making you do 500 squats in a row, and many other "exercises" which would have Amnesty International up in arms if we tried them at Guantanemo. Plus you had to pay a fee, forget how much exactly, but something like a couple hundred bucks. Basically, if you weren't already a serious pro athlete, you didn't have a chance.

[cabbageboy 0]

That would be great if USA was in HD at all in my area. At least CW already is.

 

The main thing I consider with WWE developmental is this: Historically WWE has tended to suck with developing their own guys. Take a look at a WWF show from the 70s and compare it to a typical NWA or AWA show. The WWF sucked in comparison. It really wasn't until they started really raiding the hell out of other promotions in the 1984-89 period that they got some actual workers worth a damn.

 

In other words, developmental is something that goes against what WWE has always been about, which is namely taking guys from smaller feds and giving them a shot at the big time in NYC. It doesn't help that they are obsessed with making these new guys wrestle ONE particular style and thus all these green rookies do the same tedious 5 spots and can barely hold a match together. Thus when a Matt Sydal or Colt Cabana shows up in OVW and actually knows what he's doing that sort of guy stands out.

[Mecca 0]

Didn't WCW do open tryouts at the Powerplant a couple of times a year where anyone regardless of experience could tryout and get trained to wrestle?

Yeah, provided you could get past them making you do 500 squats in a row, and many other "exercises" which would have Amnesty International up in arms if we tried them at Guantanemo. Plus you had to pay a fee, forget how much exactly, but something like a couple hundred bucks. Basically, if you weren't already a serious pro athlete, you didn't have a chance.

 

In his book Batista trashes the Power Plant and the trainer down there Buddy Lee Parker, saying that it was total garbage and they purposely did shit to run guys off. He calls Parker a total piece of shit assshole and then wonders how many guys that could have been something that the Power Plant ran off.

[Scroby 0]

Didn't WCW do open tryouts at the Powerplant a couple of times a year where anyone regardless of experience could tryout and get trained to wrestle?

Yeah, provided you could get past them making you do 500 squats in a row, and many other "exercises" which would have Amnesty International up in arms if we tried them at Guantanemo. Plus you had to pay a fee, forget how much exactly, but something like a couple hundred bucks. Basically, if you weren't already a serious pro athlete, you didn't have a chance.

 

In his book Batista trashes the Power Plant and the trainer down there Buddy Lee Parker, saying that it was total garbage and they purposely did shit to run guys off. He calls Parker a total piece of shit assshole and then wonders how many guys that could have been something that the Power Plant ran off.

That was pretty well known of the Power Plant. Lets face it, if you made it through the power plant there was a good chance WCW was going to pay you a lot of money, which means a lot of guys were just trying to get through the power plant for WCW's money, not because you wanted to be apart of the buisness. Also the fact it was looked at if you made it though the power plant and started working shows like Nitro, you didn't pay your dues. Knowing the fact you made it through the Power Plant when Parker was putting all new and current guys though hell was a good thing.

[Mecca 0]

- Matt Hardy's Appendix burst actually had him on his death bed. If he didn't get to the hospital in time he could have died due to the toxins poisoning his body. As reported he is expected to be out for 3 months then return to continue his feud with MVP until Wrestlemania.

 

- There is brief talk about putting MVP in a short feud with Jeff Hardy.

[Matt Young 0]

Mecca never posts sources, does he?

[The Flamboyance 0]

Man, I feel for Matt. My appendix burst some years ago too and that was the worst pain ever and I had no idea what was happening to me, but I was too afraid to go to the hospital so I took the pain in for a few days. It got to the point where I couldnt walk or even stand up straight. The Doc said another day and I would have been toast. Glad Matt will be ok.

[The Truthiness 0]

WWE was making stars way before 1984, cabbageboy. They probably didn't have better cards then NWA in the 70's, but they never had a problem drawing with guys like Bruno, Pedro, and Backlund.