- STING 64
- Oct 20, 2006
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In 2007 roh had a big weekend for final battle. Night 1 was a special ppv taping with Austin Aries vs Nigel McGuinness for the title with babyface Nigel defending the next night in a four way match to headline Final Battle. During the Aries match, Nigel took a bad bump into the guardrail and was concussed.
ROH did the logical thing the next night and announced that Nigel had to pull out of his title defense because of concussions to which the crowd absolutely poo poo all over and gave Nigel grief for the next few months. Does ROH use this opportunity to try and educate the fans that hey, this poo poo happens, and the wrestlers safety is important?
What they do instead is kind of pivot into it angle wise. For the anniversary show, the advertised main event is Nigel McGuinness, returning after a concussion, facing Bryan Danielson, who himself is still recovering from detached retina surgery. The psychology of the match is Danielson wants to beat Nigel, but not hurt him, so he tries to avoid hitting any moves that would affect Nigel's head. Nigel, eventually getting frustrated, starts going after Danielsons eye, and starts hitting elbows into it, turning heel and winning the match through a ref stoppage, his heel turn being blamed on the crowd's lack of empathy after he sat at home for over a month suffering through his concussion
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Dec 16, 2019 22:57
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ADBOT LOVES YOU
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May 16, 2024 01:20
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- STING 64
- Oct 20, 2006
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Thank you for capitalizing the words in the title of the OP
he forgot the and
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Dec 16, 2019 23:46
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- STING 64
- Oct 20, 2006
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conjunctions and articles aren't capitalized in titles unless they're the first word
its still a word
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Dec 17, 2019 00:14
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- STING 64
- Oct 20, 2006
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wwe at incredibly little, little cost, could afford to make deals with local hotels, charter a bus from the airport to the hotels to the arenas then from city to city.
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Dec 17, 2019 03:09
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- STING 64
- Oct 20, 2006
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The solution is to change how people are trained: in Japan there are plenty of examples of people who've debuted pretty quickly after starting and immediately looking great - admittedly in most cases they aren't pushed immediately and there's lots of time spent working opening matches but there are examples of super rookie pushes. Utami Hayashishita started training in Stardom February 2018, past her pro test (the test that most Joshi companies have their trainees do to make sure they are ready to debut; tests physical fitness, ability to do basic bumps, rolls and other fundamental things and an amateur wrestling/grapping portion to test those skills) in July 2018, debuted in August and got to the final of Stardom's G1 equivalent the following month and while she's a very unique example of someone who debuted and just got it there are others who look great within months of their debuts in Japan. I don't think that its because Japanese people are naturally more skilled so its either that Japanese promotions are better at identifying and signing talent (but a lot of those great wrestlers are from small companies that are often getting people right out of high school and can't afford top level natural athletes), have better training methods and approaches or that they work more dates, which in some companies isn't true since there are weekend-only companies around.
You'll also see than in a lot of the young lion tags on New Japan shows they'll either have a team of young lions or have teams of rookies+vets with the rookies working most of the match: that's because they want the rookie in there to learn, develop and improve while also meaning that the veterans on that time can do less and take less bumps which gets you the best of both worlds. That's quite common when you look through Japanese cards.
This is the key thing though: the reason why WWE crowds react to only entrances, catchphrases, big moves and finishers is that the WWE product has conditioned them that only those things matter. Meanwhile you look at Japan and you'll see crowds reacting big to a rookie going for a cradle to get a win on a big name only for it to be a near fall and the Okada dropkick spot or other very simple things because those crowds have a much deeper level of personal investment in those wrestlers.
I'll give a live take from going to EVE the last few years: there's a wrestler in EVE called Jetta who started as a comedy heel that was over the top and egotistical but she naturally turned face and became this underdog figure that everyone wanted to win. In 2017 she entered their big annual round-robin tournament called the SHE-1 and gets drawn in a death block that has Meiko Satomura, Emi Sakura and Viper in it and predictably loses every match; the matches against Meiko and Emi were basically squashes but she fights on valiently against Viper getting close to the time limit before losing; and leaving the tournament with 0 points. In the 2018 SHE-1 she qualifies again and gets drawn in a block with Command Bolshoi, Toni Storm and Kasey: the first two matches are a similar story to last year but in that final match against Kasey, an opponent much closer to her level, she valiantly fights hard, holds on and manages to get a time limit draw to get a point in the tournament and the crowd roars, like she's won the World Title. In 2019 she qualifies again and this time is in another very tough block: against Jazz, Mei Suruga and EVE Champion Rhia O'Reilly, who's also top heel in the company and says that while she doesn't think she'll win the tournament her goal is simple; to improve on last year, to get a win. She falls to Jazz and Mei while Rhia manages to defeat both and because of that she's automatically through to the final no matter what happens. They face in the third night; and while I think everyone has a good idea what they'll do by the end everyone has forgotten that. The last five minutes of the match is basically Rhia putting Jetta in various submission holds with Jetta holding on, fighting her way to the ropes several times but being dragged back several other times. The crowd is red-hot this whole match: and at this point everyone is screaming for her to hold on, continually checking the time remaining on the big screen to see just how long there is left. And then with ten seconds to go; Jetta manages to reverse the crossface that she was in into a cradle and manages to pin the champion; and get her big win. The roof was almost blown off the Resistance Gallery: everyone was happy and cheering; some people were even crying. And they managed to get that reaction not with a load of big moves or with a load of weapon spots: it was a simple, long-term story that everyone was into with a logical finish that everyone expected, but then forgot that they expected mid-match so that when it happened everyone was ecstatic.
There's one core rule with pro wrestling: if you can get people emotionally invested in your stories then it makes your life a lot easier and it helps to cover any flaws you might have since people want to like things and they'll overlook minor mistakes. And that's when you get little special moments in wrestling: like for example that moment in this years New Japan Cup where briefly, for just a few seconds, everyone in the crowd thought that Shota Umino genuinely had a chance to defeat Hiroshi Tanahashi and move on: people are only going to think that if you have them emotionally invested in him and in Tanahashi. And frankly if you can get people to care about your matches then you can do what Naito does: in the big matches he works he goes all out and puts his body on the line but in the random tags in between? He does gently caress all; usually wrestles with his shirt on, comes in to take maybe a couple of bumps at most and do some signature spots and maybe hit a destino to win the match if he's winning the fall. And yet the people in that building don't care because its Tetsuya Naito: they love him anyway and even doing barely that in an eight man tag is enough to make them go home happy. There's no one in WWE who could get away with that and that's the problem: in order to get people to react and to care they have to do a lot more and combined with the death schedule it kills their bodies quicker.
this does a real good job in explaining how wwe has managed to just grind to dust any semblance of their remaining fanbase and why the current fans are not going to be useful or enable any type of sustainence or growth
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Dec 17, 2019 03:48
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Dec 16, 2019 22:57
