Mr.Nice Guy wrote: » Brock Lesnar's title reign is taken very seriously and his feuds always evoke interest and are treated as important so that opening gambit is another wildly inaccurate assertion, but yes I'm aware the Young Bucks are in New Japan and are you aware that the Tokyo Dome hasn't sold out? Strange considering this is their version of Wrestlemania and supposedly they represent "what the majority of people want". It just feels like you vastly overrate the significance of the niche stuff you like. The fact you just said fans sh*t on Rock vs Cena is a classic example: I believe that was the most successful Mania of all time. Just because die-hards don't like it doesn't indicate anything about the overall audience. Cena generally embodies that seeing as he is purposely not booked for the niche die-hards that will chant Cena sucks but the overall audience. I remember there were several people a few weeks back saying Vince would be outraged that Jericho was going to New Japan, he'd be furious, etc. Really OTT reaction because as it turns out - and which I predicted at the time - Jericho had called Vince in advance to let him know because, in his own words, he's a WWE guy. And he admitted on the podcast with Meltzer and Alvarez that he wouldn't have gone to New Japan if he saw them as a legitimate competitor to WWE. Fans of this niche stuff vastly overrate its importance. What the majority of wrestling fans want is a product that treats things seriously, hence why the Wyatt/Orton stuff, worms on the ring etc, was so poorly received. Hence why Brock vs Goldberg - presented as a serious contest improved business. Same deal why the 4-way with Reigns, Strowman, Joe and Lesnar improved business. There is nothing intelligence-insulting about taking the profession seriously. The Omega/Jericho angle thus far is a classic old school rasslin' angle. No phony nonsense, imaginary hadoukens, flipping people with genitalia, but serious emotion. The dismissive attitude towards trying to make a viewer suspend his or her disbelief is really baffling when compared to other entertainment forms. It would be seen as bizarre to defend an actor in a film or TV show not taking a role on screen or on stage seriously, or a ventriloquist not bothering to try and make it look like their lips aren't moving, or a musician not trying to present his or her act as legit.
Omackeral wrote: » My point was you can't use niche and numbers to detract from the Bucks act if you're gonna, in the same breath, say the Attitude Era is where things were best because the ratings were highest. They were highest but not because unreal 5 star matches! People enjoyed the silly stuff. They enjoyed seeing Vince McMahon p*ssing his pants during BANG 3:16. That's hardly a technical in-ring master class is it? What's it even got to do with actual wrestling?! I still loved it though. Pro Wrestling and WWE is a bit of everything. It's a 3 ring circus. You get serious stuff, you get daft stuff and you get things in between. I reckon the people complainig about the drop kick spot have done more to highlight it and showcase it than if they just rolled their eyes and said nothing. I only heard about it from online complainers, otherwise I doubt I'd have seen it at all. Kinda like the Streisand effect in a way.
DM_7 wrote: » Attitude era was pop culture, it was not a majority serious fanbase, that is why it went away so quick.
Originally posted by Mr Nice Guy WWE had its best years in that period in 2000 and 2001 where the product was taken seriously.
The art of pro wrestling ... feigning violence as a wrestling contest : using emotion , facials, body language , good vs evil , good selling and evil getting heat ... set up by angles & promos to get maximum mileage out of anything & everything ...
Mr.Nice Guy wrote: » On the contrary, I haven't been "bitchy" or passive aggressive despite plenty of thinly veiled insults thrown my way, including above. I have tried to be patient in the face of repeated straw men arguments and Gish Galloping on the part of yourself. The original issue was several fans, myself included, agreeing with Cormier and other MMA fighters that the spot in question was trashy, i.e. taking issue with the artistic merit of it. You and others then tried to deflect attention away from this by pointing out the irrelevant tidbit that they happen to make money from what they do. As far as I can tell, not one person that criticised the spot mentioned anything about finances, or their ability to sell t-shirts; rather, this was something introduced to suffocate discussion on the perfectly valid criticism of the spot, and indeed what it means for the industry as a whole, when it paints wrestling in such a poor light. You have repeatedly kept saying that they made money from it. Over and over. It is irrelevant to the issue. That is why the reference to Cowell was made because plenty of people take issue with what he does artistically to music, regardless of the fact that he makes money from it. Making money from an endeavour is not an argument that it has artistic merit. The point about them being "niche" was in response to your inaccurate assertion that:"the fact that they are successful means that people are paying to see it, therefore it's what the majority of people want" The statement in your second clause is total rubbish as I suspect you well know. Cody Rhodes is currently in the midst of trying to win a bet to see if he can get 10,000 fans to watch a show that will no doubt include his pals the Bucks on it. If what they do is "what the majority of people want", then they wouldn't need to make such a bet in the first place. Again, I suspect you know this. There are fewer people watching wrestling now overall than ever before. What we have is a small but admittedly passionate niche fanbase that enjoys this type of entertainment and are willing to go to these spot monkey shows and applaud the phony gymnastic spots, invisible hand grenades, and whacky dance numbers in the midst of their chants of "fight forever" and "we are awesome". Good for them and good luck to them but they don't represent me, nor the majority of the wrestling audience, not to mention the overall general public audience. You can gnash your teeth all you want and call me all the names under the sun that you want but I stand by my view that this is embarrassing garbage wrestling that will ultimately do long-lasting damage to the reputation of a business that I happen to enjoy. In my view it's not wrestling, nor is it even sports entertainment, it's spot monkey entertainment. People go to these shows not to see a simulated athletic contest between two people taking their craft seriously, but rather to see an obviously phony gymnastic show wherein you sit there and wait for a cue, i.e. spot, when you go crazy for the self-indulgent acrobats in the ring. As Dutch Mantel put it, "I liked the business better when the marks were in the front row."
Itssoeasy wrote: » If he did straighten it I didn't see it.
Omackeral wrote: » This feud is decent.
J. Marston wrote: » Is this legit?https://i.imgur.com/HhC0C5c.gifv I'm trying to see if he straightens his finger before the stamp but it looks legit to me. Nastiest thing I've seen in wrestling recently!
leggo wrote: » Dude, you're so unnecessarily bitchy and passive-aggressive here. You're using the word niche as a stick to beat them with, yet in your other example you're saying that Simon Cowell and the X Factor is ruining music to equivocate you're examples...that's about as mainstream as it gets! Which matters? The art or the platform they're on? You can't have both. Nvm the fact that, in Ireland alone, they've been headline acts twice this year alone for shows that sold out to over 2,000 people. In two weeks, they're featured performers on a show that will sell over 30,000 tickets. They're on national TV in multiple continents. They've been profiled in Rolling Stone. This is not what the word niche means. A wrestling YouTube channel has a niche audience. My parties and podcast have a niche audience. When you're world famous, selling out stadium shows regularly, and beefing on Twitter with the Light-Heavyweight Champion of a $4billion company...you've shaken the niche tag. They're not in WWE, so what? I bet Cedric Alexander or the Authors of Pain would trade bank accounts with them in an instant. The New Day are probably the only tag-team in the entire WWE who are richer than them. They're not sorry they're not in WWE, they've rejected contract offers multiple times. So are they ruining wrestling? Again...to you, maybe. But that's your opinion and you're allowed it. You can't substantiate that with facts. Their act has been a feature part of making wrestling outside of WWE way more popular than it ever has been in this country, in Japan and in America. When people are buying tickets to see you, when you are creating fans that weren't fans before, when you are selling merch faster than you can have it made...one thing that is absolutely not is causing damage. You don't like it? That's allowed, nobody is forcing you to, boo-hoo, I'll light a candle for you. But own that and stop being such a combination of arrogant and needy that, if you don't like something, you feel like it validates saying that wrestling is ruined. It's not. It's palpably better than it ever was for a lot of people now than when a bunch of sweaty neckbeards pretended men punching each other in the face repeatedly and not bleeding was real. In case you didn't realise, an awful lot of the mainstream saw that as insulting people's intelligence.
PTH2009 wrote: » I wonder will they do Demon Finn Balor vs Woken Hardy at mania ??? would not surprise me if they had Reigns lose the intercon title to the miz (by way of a screw type finsh) and they do Finn vs Miz at mania for the intercon title ?
Mr.Nice Guy wrote: » I haven't tried to minimise their success for if they had no success then there would be no issue because there would be nothing to discuss. What I did take issue with is your statement that because they are able to reach out to a niche audience that this is evidence that it is "what the majority of people want". The numbers show what the majority of wrestling fans want to watch is WWE. Yep. Having thought about it I suspect they use this excuse because there is no other form of entertainment spectacle where making the whole artform look bad is excused. Hell, if I went to see Twink performing Punch and Judy at a church charity gig I would still expect her to take her performance seriously. And I certainly wouldn't feel better about an intelligence-insulting display by being told she's made a load of dosh from it!
J. Marston wrote: Never really understood fans using the money excuse. Comes off a little as trying to be insider/above it all. Think we should be looking at it from an entertainment/critical standpoint not an accountant's view.
leggo wrote: » No, it is relevant, because the fact that they are successful means that people are paying to see it, therefore it's what the majority of people want. If Star Wars did what you said and it was unanimously agreed as awful, a lot of people wouldn't go back (there's precedent: like when they over-saturated the market with books that were overly-contrived and stopped selling) and they would have to reboot based around what the market wants.
CastorTroy wrote: » Just noticed this week, all the unmanned cameras. How long have they been using them? Is that why all the camera angles?
Deleted User wrote: » The worst is when someone has a person in the corner and is throwing a few punches and it cuts to a different camera around 10 times in a row.
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