Board 8 > All-Purpose Wrestling Topic 450: NOBODY READY FOR.... Ellsworth

(+) Yeah! (+)

Smackdown's better than Raw, and AJ's antics with Nakamura, Rusev, etc. are much more entertaining than anything that has happened on Raw with Brock
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Panthera posted...

I don't know why your defense of Brock is always "but other things are bad" but it annoys me.

My defense is that because Brock is literally the absence of things so to improve over nothing you should in theory have something that improves the situation.

But we can see what Smackdown does with a present champion and it's arguably worse, at least lately.

Like I'll take most of Brock's feuds including some of the Roman ones over that nonsensical AJ Nak feud
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And like I wanna stress it's not "removing Brock 100% wouldn't improve feud builds on Raw"

I just think Brock as champion makes for matches I want to see almost by default (when it's not Roman) where another champion wouldn't.

So it's weighing the loss of that vs "potentially making some feuds for the Universal Title better"

And if you're trying to sell me on that, then you'd better convince me the feuds are going to be a decent amount better because you're paying a price for it. Like even if you think AJ/Nakamura or AJ/Rusev are good feuds because your standards have fallen off the earth, they're not good enough to offset the loss of Brock vs not Reigns being automatically something I'll probably want to watch.

Put it another way I don't think there's been a single feud since AJ Styles vs John Cena for the WWE Title that intrigued me enough to outweigh the appeal of Brock title matches. That was almost two years ago now.
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If you aren't blaming the writing for virtually everything wrong with a feud, you're doing this wrong
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Lopen posted...

Put it another way I don't think there's been a single feud since AJ Styles vs John Cena for the WWE Title that intrigued me enough to outweigh the appeal of Brock title matches. That was almost two years ago now.

Yuuuup

and yes scarlet is of course right.

The writing being bad is the main sin.

Brock is just the most able to be compelling despite it. Probably because he does not have to endure being written that often,
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See for me Brock matches do nothing at all. Well, that's not quite true. Brock programs annoy me. Removing his existence from the show is a net positive to me in the sense that it removes a part of the show I dislike. Your average Raw segment interests me more than pretty much anything relating to Brock could at this point.
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I've been thoroughly hyped for all of his non Roman matches since that non Mania match with Taker, which had 0 hype

And I enjoyed most of the matches at that

Cept that Strowman/Brock single that was so bad

Like if you just announce Lashley vs Brock and make no build for it whatsoever I want to see it like 10x as much as Styles/Rusev. Cause the build for Styles/Rusev has been so bad, and Styles has not been properly built as a champion, so I don't care whatsoever who wins. Like yeah, Rusev is cool, but I don't think winning the title makes him a star or anything like that. He'd more likely drop back to midcard right after he lost it (sup Jinder), so who cares.

Beating Brock still has some mystique though (likely because absence has protected him from toxic bad writing). It's like Mania Taker appeal every PPV for me.
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Beating Brock means nothing to me. Impossible to even take it seriously.

Styles has been built better as a champion in my eyes for the simple fact that he actually exists as part of the show and seems to give a damn about it. Having the title on a guy who isn't around because he doesn't care about it much (both in and out of character) and openly admitting on air that he can't be bothered to show up kills the credibility of the title and the title picture in my eyes worse than shit like giving the title to David Arquette.
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Styles is an excellent mid-card champion.

I think you just dont remember what an actually good main event picture looks like.
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I think Styles at his peak was a legitimate champion.

He was squandered though and now it's like whatever. He definitely feels more like an IC Title guy than the actual world champion right now. Probably in part because his last two contenders have never really been higher than IC Title level.
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Yes the problem is always the other person is too ignorant to know better like you do, I hadn't considered that angle

:p
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Yeah i just dont find Brock matches interesting at all

Like, when you say stuff like "I even wanted Brock vs Jinder," i just totaly don't get it. That would never be a good match in a million years, so unless Brock's presence just gives you a massive rager, I don't even remotely see the appeal
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Panthera posted...

Beating Brock means nothing to me. Impossible to even take it seriously.

Well, I can sort of relate. This is why I hate Roman/Brock

I feel like if literally anyone else beats Brock it will have a sense of feeling organic though, so I get hyped every time

Roman/Brock is just sort of just too meta for me though. It really feels like it's just a battle of wills between Vince McMahon and the fans more than an actual match. It certainly doesn't help that Roman's offense is utterly unbelievable and he's been completely destroyed in every match with Brock
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HashtagSEP posted...

Like, when you say stuff like "I even wanted Brock vs Jinder," i just totaly don't get it. That would never be a good match in a million years, so unless Brock's presence just gives you a massive rager, I don't even remotely see the appeal

Brock utterly dismantling him would've been a fun squash to watch. And the fact that you could seriously humor the possibility of a squash in a PPV champion vs champion title match gives it a sense of legitimacy for me that wrestling sorely lacks right now.

Put it another way, Brock feels a lot less fake than the entire product right now. If I watch a Brock match, I legitimately don't know what's going to happen. It feels like an actual honest to goodness wrestling match. If I watch anyone else, I all but know they're going to put on a match that goes X length of time, has a distraction finish, etc etc.
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Lopen posted...

Put it another way, Brock feels a lot less fake than the entire product right now. If I watch a Brock match, I legitimately don't know what's going to happen. It feels like an actual honest to goodness wrestling match

I just can't get into this mindset, personally. The whole thing feels equally fake to me no matter what you do, it's pro wrestling. I buy into it to a certain degree unless you try fairly hard to take me out of it, but as long as you don't cross a certain threshold of insanity it's all the same to me because if I start to compare and say "Well Brock is less fake than Roman", my mind wanders and I realize Brock is still totally fake and the whole show is fake and I don't care. So I don't let myself think like that obviously!
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Yeah back when Styles was feuding with Cena and right before he was feelling legit.

Its easier to be a legit heel champion.

As a babyface, he needs challengers that are worthy of him.

He hasn't had them but has 50/50'd them anyway which makes him feel like a midcarder, it does not make Nakamura or Rusev feel like Main Eventers.
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Well I only care if the show is fake if it feels fake.

I can watch 80s, 90s and 00s wrestling all the time and never get that feeling.

At some point we hit a critical mass of match scripting, formulaic feud building, etc etc, that a lot of it feels too fake for me nowadays. Like Matt Hardy vs Curtis Axel this Monday... if this were real, based on the Win/Loss records of both guys, Matt Hardy should win that easily. However, because they're trying to build up these new contenders, I just knew Axel was going to win. And because Axel was a heel, I knew it was going to be an unclean win. And because he has a tag team partner, it had to be a distraction finish. I didn't try to do this, I just did this naturally. And what makes it worse is there are plenty of ways to build up the B Team as contenders without having Axel just beat Matt Hardy via distraction finish.

Brock matches though I never have any idea of what's going to happen, other than feeling mostly confident Brock will win, which is awesome. That's how wrestling should be.

It's not like I'm trying to disbelieve as much as my ability to suspend disbelief drops to a critical level for a lot of stuff these days. It's not even all wrestling, either. I don't have this problem with Lucha Underground or NJPW.

Brock is the last holy bastion of WWE booking right now. I don't want him to win forever, but "we need to bail on this ASAP" is further away from how I feel for damn sure.
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Eddv posted...

Its easier to be a legit heel champion.

Aside from Brock himself at first, ironically, I'm not sure the WWE has had a world champion heel that felt legit to me since...uh...Mark Henry maybe...? Even he didn't hold it long but at least he didn't feel like a joke. Face champions at least don't tend to feel like they kill suspension of disbelief for the entire company.
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heres that insane pounce by the way

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuzhN11XHxY" data-time="
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They don't kill suspension of disbelief because they dont...DO anything.

Its just all the same booking.

The face and heel 50/50 book and have the exact same build as all the other face/heel feuds and then the ending is only different based on who they want to have go over.

The Nakamura feud was a LITTLE different because the dick kicking thing. I thought it was really dumb, but I admit it was at least dumb in a novel way.
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Dick punching feud could have actually been awesome if it had a logical progression of how dick punching evolved the feud, in the mentality of the competitors (this was sorta done but wasn't played off enough) and the stipulations (this was completely identical to any other feud even when it made no sense)
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Eddv posted...

They don't kill suspension of disbelief because they dont...DO anything.

The face wins clean when they win, the heel doesn't. Heel champions kill suspension of disbelief for me because eventually I start asking "why does the company allow their champion to undermine the legitimacy of every single match he's ever in?" and the only answer is "because it's all fake bullshit no one cares about anyway". I don't like booking that actively tells me I shouldn't even try to buy into what I'm watching.
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So you just dont like it when heels win period.
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In universe consistency is all I care about. Wrestling reliably says if the heel can cheat and get away with it the boss doesn't care. And realistically I think that's fine. As long as the match reaches a conclusion where one side won decisively who cares.

What I can't deal with is intentional DQ/countout finishes being tolerated because in universe there is no consistency on that. Stips get put in place like "if you get dqed you lose the title" or "no dq so we must have a winner" and it's like "why don't you always do that"
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Eddv posted...

So you just dont like it when heels win period.

Yes that's exactly what I meant, I'm so proud of you for figuring it out, all those words I type don't actually indicate anything at all. My true motives are kept hidden away deep inside but you found them anyway, what a pro.
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So the girlfriend and I are vacationing to Orlando next week and there's an MLW show there one night. Does anyone know anything about MLW and whether or not this may be a show she'll enjoy going to? She thinks she might like it, but I'm not entirely convinced.
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They have a weekly TV show

Its your average WWE alternative company with top indie guys
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I know nothing about MLW but I can tell you the venue is 10 minutes (3 miles) from my house.

Yeah, I know that I would personally like it, but I saw guys like Pentagon and while I love him, I have to go "Will girlfriend like Pentagon if he is licking his opponent's blood?" Basically, I guess, I just need to know if the quality of venue is good (important indicator for Indy wrestling) and if they get too hardcore sometimes.
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To add more to Brock's lengthy reign, I now know the following...

- He's the longest reigning world champion in WWE in the last 3 decades, since Hogan's first reign in the 80s.
- In 10 days, he'll pass Hogan's first reign in WCW and will have held his title longer than any single world title reign in WCW
- Only 2 people have held the RoH world title longer than Brock's Universal reign: Nigel McGuinness and Samoa Joe (and Daniel Bryan, but Brock's passing him on Monday)
- In the last 3 years, only 2 people have held the NWA World title longer than Brock's Universal reign: Dan Severn and Blue Demon Jr.
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PrivateBiscuit1 posted...

Yeah, I know that I would personally like it, but I saw guys like Pentagon and while I love him, I have to go "Will girlfriend like Pentagon if he is licking his opponent's blood?" Basically, I guess, I just need to know if the quality of venue is good (important indicator for Indy wrestling) and if they get too hardcore sometimes.

They get hardcore and there could be blood, but they dont cross the TV-14 line.
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PrivateBiscuit1 posted...

Yeah, I know that I would personally like it, but I saw guys like Pentagon and while I love him, I have to go "Will girlfriend like Pentagon if he is licking his opponent's blood?" Basically, I guess, I just need to know if the quality of venue is good (important indicator for Indy wrestling) and if they get too hardcore sometimes.

This is the venue

http://giltnightclub.com/venue

Thanks guys. If it's TV-14 then I can see it not being too raunchy and trash indy. Even if it's in a night club which looks really nice actually. We'll have to see how we feel about it when we're down there.

In other personal news, working on a court case that involves Dr. Maroon since he is centered in Pittsburgh and he is often part of sports medicine cases around here. It's really surreal in a way.
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It's not exactly off topic but you may consider posting that in your write-ups topic too.
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Oh shit. LMAO.
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Does anyone else here follow Being the Elite? Just want to talk about the framing of Stephen Amell :(
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I watch it. This week's episode may have been their best ever.
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I was thinking the same thing! Joey Ryan's funeral was amazing.
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bump
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do you guys think the workers are performing less at a high level because they are aware of the dvr culture in every home?
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See I want to like Lashley, I liked him before. This backstage promo with Roman may be his best yet. He doesnt screw around, comes and says it to your face and runs everything down. His voice is not great for him but what can you do. His stick skills are getting way better
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and his strong suit is just being a tough guy not Hey look at my sisters. He is a geniune american made badass

Roman on the other hand is such a natural heel just let him do it
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and sorry for posting so much but I am getting caught up and I just feel like talking

first segment for bayley and sasha and I am concerned because I do notf eel they have very good comedic timing. I'll see how it goes as it goes on though

and the dvr thing made me just think... WWE's best moments are Viral sensations before viral was a thing. The beer bash, the milk truck. That viral magic is what they need to recapture
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they also need to not immediately run it into the ground when they do recapture it

unless it's daniel bryan I guess
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Brock/Cormier who ya got

Brock was in the octagon for two minutes and managed to push Cormier and nearly take out a cameraman
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https://www.reddit.com/r/MMA/comments/8wz4li/spoilerbrock_lesnar_confronts_winner_of_main_event
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Daniel Cromier WE COMIN FO YOU NIKA
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We are in a timeline where barringanunfortunateRomanReignswin we'll have the WWE Champ fighting the UFC champ in a UFC match. What
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