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Endorph posted:Hell, Cena's shown himself willing to put over midcarders as a threat. Why not have him randomly go a few minutes with somebody like Rhodes or McIntyre on Superstars? I don't expect him to lose clean to any of them, but the match would probably be decent, it'd get people to tune in, and even losing it'd make them look a bit more legitimate. This is exactly what I mean. By not having their main stars do anything on Superstars the ratings stay lower and because the ratings are lower the main stars don't appear on Superstars. Around and around we go. Like you said having a main level guy have matches regularly with a mid or upper mid level guy would help ratings for the show and would help those guys just outside the main event gain a bit more legitimacy during their climb to the top. It seems like an opportunity missed for an extra hour of character development every week. I don't have anything against just sending guys out to put on good matches but I don't think there is a need for Superstars to be WWE's best kept secret (or their bastard child depending on how you look at it) when it could be so much more even with just an hour to work with each week. Something exclusive to Superstars that fans might actually be bummed they missed would probably do wonders for that show. Orange Carlisle fucked around with this message at 23:00 on Jan 20, 2011 |
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Jan 20, 2011 22:57
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The first couple weeks they had people like Orton, Edge & Jericho on there, because the original premise was "anything could happen/anyone will be on here" because they used a slot machine style logo with uppercarders and lowercarders. But since, it's become Jobberstars.
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Jan 20, 2011 22:59
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It could also be a great show to have the occasional popular guy from brand A against popular guy from brand B match where you don't really need to worry about fitting them into storylines - but the cross brand match itself would be the draw to get people watching. If Superstars was just Raw against Smackdown matches with 2 or 3 a week I'd probably tune in regularly. I guess that'd get messy with how the shows are recorded being that the separate brands are doing separate house shows on the same nights and whatnot. It'd at least give some matchup variety right now. That's something WWE definitely needs more of.
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Jan 20, 2011 23:02
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I don't like the idea of main event stars being on Superstars regularly because they would need to also be on the main show so we'd get twice as much of them. If they aren't on the main show the fans/kids/whoever will be upset. After all, if the fans don't want to see them on RAW every week why are they in the main event? The mid-card belts would be awesome on Superstars. The matches shouldn't be part of a feud so they can still be against the Darren Young's of this world, but it would be awesome to see a tag/IC/US title match every single week.
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Jan 20, 2011 23:05
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I'm not saying have Superstars be Raw part 2 (they already do enough Raw Rebounds for that) I'm just saying sprinkle a main eventer vs a midcard guy match in here and there or a promo or interview from one of the bigger stars that is exclusive to Superstars. That way if someone is a casual fan they arent missing main story or feud points but if someone is a fan of a certain wrestler they'll tune in to see that wrestler's 'Bonus content' or whatever. Even showcasing the more popular midcard guys would do more than the stuff they normally show. Guys on their way up would get more screen time and ring time and Superstars would seem more worth watching. Hell, toss the Nexus guys on there to have matches being that they haven't wrestled in forever.
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Jan 20, 2011 23:10
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The absolute worst case of the A show vs C show mentality was when Christian and Shelton were going to have a PPV LADDER MATCH for the ECW championship...and it was completely skipped when the commentators go over the card on Raw. Not mentioned, no graphic shown, even once. It would have taken 5 seconds, increased interest in the ECW show, and increased buyrates. The match turned out to be really drat good too. I guess sometimes WWE just hates making money.
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Jan 21, 2011 00:51
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Mr. Carlisle posted:After seeing some discussion in the WWE thread about Smackdown being the B show and all that it's had me wondering.. aren't these shows sort of a ratings vicious cycle type thing? It's not simple. Would Cena being on Superstars boost it? Maybe. But you also expose Cena more, which makes him less valuable. There's also a limit to how much wrestling people will watch, regardless of who is on it. There's also less pressure for a show like Superstars. If the ratings it delivers are fine then there's little need to put big stars on it, it doesn't matter much to WWE. Since WWE doesn't get ad revenue for their shows the difference for a 3.0 and a 3.5 is not going to affect them on a regular basis. They get paid a flat fee for the programming. Tonfa posted:The absolute worst case of the A show vs C show mentality was when Christian and Shelton were going to have a PPV LADDER MATCH for the ECW championship...and it was completely skipped when the commentators go over the card on Raw. Not mentioned, no graphic shown, even once. It would have taken 5 seconds, increased interest in the ECW show, and increased buyrates. The match turned out to be really drat good too. I guess sometimes WWE just hates making money. On one hand you have a point and it's a dumb oversight. On the other, you're giving an ECW title match way too much weight. That match is not going to add a significant amount of buys. It wasn't going to help interest in ECW since they already had TV spots during Raw and people just didn't care about the show. The only thing that I remember did help ECW's ratings was Matt Hardy as champ. He had a strong fanbase that actually followed him to ECW and was interested in him headlining a TV show, even if it was the C show. WeaselWeaz fucked around with this message at 01:22 on Jan 21, 2011 |
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Jan 21, 2011 01:18
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So basically what you are saying is that they are coasting along with no real desire to make Superstars quality programming because they don't have a motivation to do so? I figured the network would pay more for the programming if it's flat fee based and the ratings are higher being that it then allows them to charge advertisers more based on those higher ratings. I see what you are saying - but it's still weird to me I guess.
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Jan 21, 2011 01:30
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WeaselWeaz posted:On one hand you have a point and it's a dumb oversight. On the other, you're giving an ECW title match way too much weight. That match is not going to add a significant amount of buys. It wasn't going to help interest in ECW since they already had TV spots during Raw and people just didn't care about the show. The only thing that I remember did help ECW's ratings was Matt Hardy as champ. He had a strong fanbase that actually followed him to ECW and was interested in him headlining a TV show, even if it was the C show. That doesn't mean they shouldn't try.
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Jan 21, 2011 01:32
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HulkaMatt posted:That doesn't mean they shouldn't try. He acknowledged it was a dumb oversight, I think he just meant that it wasn't going to cause a huge buyrate spike just because they promoted it. And that also mentioning it wasn't going to really cause a dent in ECW's ratings, either. As far as Carlisle's comment, I think what Weaz is saying is that Superstars is performing at a level both they and the network are happy with, then there's no real need to mess with the formula, especially if it could possibly cost them ratings from Raw or Smackdown. It's really a huge case of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." If they screw around with the formula they have now and it causes any of the shows to start underperforming, then it was a bad risk when they weren't required to take one. As long as the network and the WWE are happy with the results they're turning out, they're not going to try any huge experiments to boost ratings. It's not the Monday Night War and there isn't really a huge need to pop ratings every week. This isn't to say that this practice makes for consistently good television, or it's the best thing for product quality: but it makes sense from a business standpoint.
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Jan 21, 2011 01:43
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I just can't figure out why you would not advertise your full PPV card. Especially if it's a ladder match for a title. As I said having the match graphic on screen literally takes 5 seconds. Edit: As far as Superstars goes the last higher profile match I can think of was the pretty drat good Jericho vs Goldust during Jericho's title run. It would be refreshing to see something like Edge vs DASHING Cody Rhodes once in a while as a counterpoint to the Superstars regulars. Tonfa fucked around with this message at 01:47 on Jan 21, 2011 |
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Jan 21, 2011 01:44
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Superstars is also on a network that comparatively few people get. There are only so many viewers WWE can get to watch no matter who they put on it.
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Jan 21, 2011 01:50
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Mr. Carlisle is absolutely right, it is a self feeding cycle and I'm one of those people you describe who doesn't watch Superstars because I know it gets treated as the C show, so I know I'm not really going to miss anything in the sense of story progression.
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Jan 21, 2011 02:44
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Sue Denim posted:Mr. Carlisle is absolutely right, it is a self feeding cycle and I'm one of those people you describe who doesn't watch Superstars because I know it gets treated as the C show, so I know I'm not really going to miss anything in the sense of story progression. This. Also, I don't get it in HD, so I don't bother.
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Jan 21, 2011 02:46
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Mr. Carlisle posted:So basically what you are saying is that they are coasting along with no real desire to make Superstars quality programming because they don't have a motivation to do so? I figured the network would pay more for the programming if it's flat fee based and the ratings are higher being that it then allows them to charge advertisers more based on those higher ratings. I see what you are saying - but it's still weird to me I guess. WWE isn't really coasting so much as talent depth is as shallow as it has ever been. Even before they lot HBK, Batista and Jericho they were a bit shallow. So it is actually really difficult for them to spare talent. They could clearly do more with Superstars, do a US title defense there every month and an IC title defense, but they don't for whatever reason. Vince really wanted to strengthen Smackdown this fall, but when the time came they had lost so much talent they didn't feel they could. If they get higher ratings they will get a better deal the next time the TV deal comes up. But realistically the ratings in the middle of the deal mean next to nothing as the numbers in the year/months leading up to the new deal will be what gives WWE leverage to negotiate.
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Jan 21, 2011 03:24
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tzirean posted:Superstars is also on a network that comparatively few people get. There are only so many viewers WWE can get to watch no matter who they put on it. on the other hand, in the UK Superstars is on basic cable whereas RAW isn't.
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Jan 21, 2011 08:52
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Now that they've buried the hatchet,do you guys think there's any chance of Bret Hart inducting Shawn Michaels into the Hall of Fame?
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Jan 21, 2011 15:12
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Does anyone know of any similar youtube users to naitchgirl who just upload a lot of awesome stuff and are well worth subscribing to?
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Jan 21, 2011 15:14
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Magic_Ceiling_Fan posted:Now that they've buried the hatchet,do you guys think there's any chance of Bret Hart inducting Shawn Michaels into the Hall of Fame? A chance? Sure. Will it happen? Of course not, Triple H will do it. Sue Denim posted:Does anyone know of any similar youtube users to naitchgirl who just upload a lot of awesome stuff and are well worth subscribing to? Well, considering naitchgirl's account was deleted it's impossible to tell what you mean. And I have no idea who that was anyway. Are you talking about matches, shoots, promos, what? Usually just searching YouTube works for me.
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Jan 21, 2011 15:15
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She's up to version 3 of her account and she has a ton of videos. Really any wrestling related content that isn't extremely accessible, generally shoots, but anything really.
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Jan 21, 2011 18:59
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Has chris hero ever had a WWE try out? If not WHY NOT!?
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Jan 21, 2011 20:14
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Manwithastick posted:Has chris hero ever had a WWE try out? If not WHY NOT!? I think he has, but if he hasn't his poor physique prior to 2009 would be the reason. Hell, even now he doesn't have the body they'd want from someone his size.
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Jan 21, 2011 20:44
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Captain Charisma posted:That won't get over again, though. The only thing you really can do is something that's worked for dozens of years, the same thing UFC is doing to reach dizzying heights: Wins and losses matter. Championships matter. Keep storylines simple. More Megapowers exploding, less Randy Orton going to HHH's house. But can't people just get the simple thrill of competition from MMA? Aren't the melodramatics the one thing pro wrestling has that the UFC can't do?
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Jan 22, 2011 02:31
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Maxwell Lord posted:But can't people just get the simple thrill of competition from MMA? Aren't the melodramatics the one thing pro wrestling has that the UFC can't do? Keeping things simple does not imply "Pure sports build, no crazy stuff." You can do things like the Megapowers exploding, Savage/Steamboat, and plenty of other things. Keeping it simple means not trying to stay one step ahead of the viewer with nonsensical swerves (WWE has done this plenty in the past few years), ridiculous angles (Orton storming HHH's house), or nonsensical booking.
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Jan 22, 2011 03:19
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Captain Charisma posted:(Orton storming HHH's house). Yo I'm not making GBS threads on your point CC but wasn't this the other way around?
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Jan 22, 2011 04:45
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I seem to recall, years ago, Ezekiel Jackson being the bodyguard for some skinny capering dude whose name I cannot remember. So yeah, who was that and was he any good? Also what is a "fall" is it just a pin?
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Jan 22, 2011 07:30
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RentACop posted:I seem to recall, years ago, Ezekiel Jackson being the bodyguard for some skinny capering dude whose name I cannot remember. So yeah, who was that and was he any good? If you mean The Brian Kendrick, yes. Especially when he tagged with Paul London.
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Jan 22, 2011 07:33
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In my opinion he was even better as THE Brian Kendrick than he was in the tag team (he actually had a personality for one thing!), he played this fantastically coked-up little Napoleon/HBK/Ziggy from The Wire hybrid and seemed set to go places till they killed his push because he absolutely refused to stop smoking weed despite failing numerous tests, and when he still refused to give it up they fired his rear end.
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Jan 22, 2011 08:29
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RentACop posted:Also what is a "fall" is it just a pin? Fall itself is short for "pinfall". Clearly that's not the only way to win so scheduling matches for "one fall" seems sort of weirdly specific. I guess you could consider a submission a forfeit, and a countout either a DQ by proxy or a forfeit via incapacitation or cowardice, which would mean pinning your opponent is the only "true" victory as far as you earning a victory by beating him vs him conceding that victory to you (similar to a checkmate vs a resignation in chess am I seriously making a chess reference in WH2K it is time for bed).
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Jan 22, 2011 11:38
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HotPocketDropIt posted:Yo I'm not making GBS threads on your point CC but wasn't this the other way around? Whatever it was, it was garbage
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Jan 22, 2011 12:34
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oldskool posted:Fall itself is short for "pinfall". Clearly that's not the only way to win so scheduling matches for "one fall" seems sort of weirdly specific. The "two out of three falls" match was a lot more common in ye olde days, and in fact was the default in some territories. Unless I'm hugely mistaken, getting yourself disqualified or counted out only lost you "one fall". It's the same for Iron Man matches.
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Jan 22, 2011 15:50
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Umbra Dubium posted:The "two out of three falls" match was a lot more common in ye olde days, and in fact was the default in some territories. The traditional format being the first to score two pin falls, two submissions or a knock-out. Handicap matches in those days meant that one of the wrestlers started with a one-fall advantage and was often given to rookies wrestling their first match in order to make it seem like they had a better chance of winning. And the DQ or countout only count as one fall in an ironman match. I think Lesnar hit Angle with a chair costing him a fall but got two straight off the beatdown.
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Jan 22, 2011 18:38
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RentACop posted:Also what is a "fall" is it just a pin? The term comes from old catch wrestling and its predecessors, which were often contested not to a submission, but rather to a throw—the first man to put his opponent on the ground (i.e., to make him "fall" in a literal sense) would often win during these informal contests. Later, the term was expanded in the more figurative sense—a city falls during a siege, a government falls when it is overthrown—to include submissions and non-literal-fall victories, as wrestling became more focused on not merely knocking your opponent down, but forcing him to give up/keeping him down. So a "Fall" is a loss in wrestling; as others have said before me, a match can be contested to a set number of falls, whether one as standard today, two out of three as used to be more common; it can also be contested to a set length of time with no set number of falls needed for victory (the iron-man match, for example.)
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Jan 22, 2011 18:55
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Jerusalem posted:In my opinion he was even better as THE Brian Kendrick than he was in the tag team (he actually had a personality for one thing!), he played this fantastically coked-up little Napoleon/HBK/Ziggy from The Wire hybrid and seemed set to go places till they killed his push because he absolutely refused to stop smoking weed despite failing numerous tests, and when he still refused to give it up they fired his rear end. Besides, Kendrick seems like he's one of those guys who values his personal freedom over being in WWE as is evidenced by his previous request to be released from the company in the mid-2000's. I'm sure he makes a decent living doing independent shows and TNA, for better or worse, seems like an environment more suited to his personality. It sucks that he's not in WWE anymore because I am totally gay for Brian Kendrick, but it's definitely not a lifestyle befitting of everyone and I don't think a wrestler deserves condemnation simply because it's not their cup of tea.
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Jan 22, 2011 21:37
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Captain Charisma posted:Keeping things simple does not imply "Pure sports build, no crazy stuff." You can do things like the Megapowers exploding, Savage/Steamboat, and plenty of other things. Keeping it simple means not trying to stay one step ahead of the viewer with nonsensical swerves (WWE has done this plenty in the past few years), ridiculous angles (Orton storming HHH's house), or nonsensical booking. True, but the line between acceptable stupid craziness and totes ridiculous stupid craziness is kind of thin- I imagine it's hard to tell on paper whether something will play out as one or the other. I think the WWE as of late has been downright subdued compared to ye olden days, with Paul Bearer/Undertaker/Kane being the only really outlandish thing left.
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Jan 22, 2011 21:58
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I kind of think of it like this: It's a cliche to say that wrestling is a soap opera, but if you look at the most long lasting soap operas (especially in the UK), what you find is that the same round of themes get repeated in different forms over and over with new faces, sometimes new settings, but really only a hanful of themes: greed, lust, betrayal, interspersed with a bit of comedy, tragedy, and inspirational drama. There's nothing new in soap operas, but people aren't watching them for something new, they're watching them for a fresh version of the old. Wrestling is the same. The audience want to watch the bad guy be villainous and the good guy fight against terrible odds. They want to laugh at something, cheer for something, boo something, be shocked by something. Neither soap opera audiences nor wrestling audiences want to be confused. They don't want to be swerved time after time. What they want is variants on the morality tale that establish a hero or a villain and bring them to a victory, a downfall, or a realization. What people like Russo often do wrong is think that playing games with the audience is more important than giving the audience a story. A vince Russo cookbook would start off with a recipe for baked alaska, then get you to throw away the beaten eggwhites and start grilling a steak halfway through because nobody would expect that.
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Jan 22, 2011 22:50
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Lamuella makes an excellent point. Frankly, the most over angles in WWE over the last decade or so have been entirely expected but still magnificent. The textbook case is the way Batista turned on Evolution in the leadup to Wrestlemania 21. There was nothing new or novel about the way his turn was conducted. It didn't matter. That angle put him over with the crowd to immense levels of popularity and established him as a star.
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Jan 22, 2011 23:08
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I remember, vaguely, tuning into Nitro at some point and seeing Hogan doing an interview teasing an upcoming inter-NWO confrontation between the black-and-whites and the red-and-blacks and having no idea what he was talking about. That was probably telling. By contrast, last year when I tuned into WWE after a long, long absence, they had a promo with John Cena calling out Nexus and issuing the challenge that would lead to him being forced to work for them, and it was easy to work out "Okay, he's the good guy and that's a team of bad guys, so the good guy wants to destroy the bad guys." Hopefully there won't be too much inter-cine stuff between Punk's Nexus and Wade's Corre, they'll just be the bad guy factions on their respective shows.
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Jan 22, 2011 23:19
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There's an old picture of Triple H giving someone the Pedigree except the guy taking it is arched with his legs straight up, almost like a piledriver (I unfortunately couldn't find the picture). Anyone know what the story of that picture is? I've heard everything from that's how the Pedigree was originally done and changed for safety reasons to it was a jobber that didn't know how to take it and wound up spiking himself and loving up his neck. On a related note, is Triple H supposed to come back at all or is he pretty much done at this point now that he has 2 kids and set for life?
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Jan 23, 2011 03:38
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Orgophlax posted:There's an old picture of Triple H giving someone the Pedigree except the guy taking it is arched with his legs straight up, almost like a piledriver (I unfortunately couldn't find the picture). Anyone know what the story of that picture is? I've heard everything from that's how the Pedigree was originally done and changed for safety reasons to it was a jobber that didn't know how to take it and wound up spiking himself and loving up his neck. The guy was a jobber. He thought the Pedigree was going to be a double-underhook pile driver or suplex. He jumped into it, trying to flip. Triple H didn't know that, and dropped him on his head. Evidently he wasn't even injured. http://www.wrestlinggonewrong.com/video/tripleh_garner.html
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Jan 23, 2011 03:48
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