dawho5

So have him wrestle heel when it makes sense and face when it makes sense. Why is that not an option if that's already the reaction he gets?

In.

Oh, my plan was to book backwards as much as possible. Whatever it was, 6 months or a year between re-drafts, start at the end and figure out major plot points backwards. Seems like the best way to be sure that the lead-in to the big finale fits the actual results. But yeah, an outline of how to handle TV on a monthly basis seems like a good idea as well.

I understand why you are concerned with it, but I mentioned the names I did because all of them seem like they are the type to take this very seriously. One of the reasons I am on the fence is I know that I go in phases sometimes and can be unreliable. And I don't want to do that if other people are going to be giving it their all. Right now I'm trying to figure how much time it would take and how much I would be willing to give.

I don't know if I gauged this right or not. I looked at it as a long-term deal with a commitment to weekly TV write-ups with house show wraps included. There was an example earlier that I thought was pretty good as far as what the write-up would need to be. I'm sure it could be done in greater detail, but why do you need more than this? Flair did a studio interview talking about his upcoming match with Dusty Rhodes for the NWA Heavyweight Title. He focused on how he would be a far better champion than Dusty because he lived the life of a champion while Dusty was not what a champion should be. The Rock'n'Roll Express wrestled the Midnight Express in the main event with the Midnights going over in 17:38 after Cornette hit Gibson with the tennis racket behind the ref's back, allowing Eaton to get the pin. Given that most people reading that will know exactly how that Flair interview looks and sounds and that tag match would unfold, there's really not that much need for more. So basically you'd be writing a few paragraph's worth per week to cover it unless you wanted to do more. I don't see where that would be a huge chore. I also get the feeling that folks like KrisZ, Dylan, goc, Parv and Grimmas are in this for the long haul and where it goes based on what happens. So maybe it should be clarified what exactly it entails a bit more clearly.

Seems like that is more for keeping things fresh rather than having certain wrestlers stay in the same territory for 5-6 years straight. I would agree that only 5-6 seems like a small number as holdovers. I listened to the Exile 6 podcast today and all the talk of losing the big regional names seems to ring true. You'd have to be able to hang on to the guys you have built up as your big name faces and heels for the regular crowd if you ask me. And you're not booking your show entirely on 5-6 guys. You've got your midcard attractions, tag division and guys like Arn who can either be a low end main event guy or a high end midcarder. If you couldn't protect a core of 10-12 guys you'd have a hard time keeping an audience engaged the way you needed to. Yeah you would want to make new stars as you went, but making new stars every year because most of your roster left seems a bit over the top. You'd think the guys being let go would be the expendable midcard types and jobbers. The jobbers can do that anywhere and midcarders that are expendable in one place are often great in others. It all depends on how "fresh" you're looking to keep things.

I'm curious as to how the smaller promotions are being handled. Do they have smaller rosters, more local TV than regional? I don't know how functional I'd be in a project like this so I'd rather not be overly ambitious if I did it.

I don't in any way disagree with comments that were made above. But I love this podcast for a reason it's kind of hard to describe in a few words. There are times where the level of detail gone into on the nuts and bolts and how the moving parts affected the outcomes is tremendous. And there are other times where nostalgia, disappointment and personal recollections dominate the discussion. The parts of the show where things are discussed from a fan vs. business standpoint combine both to a point. I love how all of these flow back and forth as the discussion goes and all three panelists are at home in each environment. It makes for a fun journey through a lot of interesting facts and anecdotes that could very easily have come off as dry and overly long if done wrong. Keep up the great work.

His tags in NOAH vs. Kobashi are the highlights of his time there.

My feeling is that he stopped caring unless he was across from somebody he felt was worthwhile. Even then he wasn't the same Kawada. Most of his post 2000 matches I have seen are really disappointing. There are bright spots where he flips the switch back on, but for the most part he's like a shadow of his former self.

*points at Grahm Crackers' post* That. I did like their one tag in the 2000s project but seriously. How many opportunities did both get to do something worthwhile and not take advantage of? I would take NOAH Kobashi on his most overbearingly bad day over both.

Here's a question I had while reading through this. What is the difference between "they need to use the talented women wrestlers more" and "they need to use their talented midcarders more" arguments at all? Yeah, they give guys who can work maybe 10 minutes or a bit more to put on good matches on TV. But do they do anything worthwhile about them to make the fans care in any way about them? Or do those guys have to get themselves over with whatever crap they are give? I will agree that there is a huge increase in scale as far as how little respect the women are given in the WWE. But the reality is that both situations aren't going to change as long as certain people are in charge of how the TV works. So arguing about whether it would draw as vehemently as has been going on the last few pages seems a bit much. If it is ever tried it will be done incrementally. The women management has faith in will get a chance at enough ten minutes matches to see if it gets a better reaction. If it does then maybe they get a semi-main on a show after a long while. If that works then maybe you start to see fifteen minutes on a PPV. Same kind of deal for pushing talented midcard guys. I would argue that Bayley is heavily marketed towards young girls as an inspiration. It's pretty heavily put over by the announce team on NXT that way as well as by Bayley herself. I also feel like she plays the underdog role really well and Badlittlekitten is selling her well short of how good she is. But I will leave it at a respectful disagreement on that point. It is rather odd that they talk about how Bayley can inspire young girls to want to be wrestlers given the WWE's historical treatment of women.

I was actually wondering about that today. It would essentially be the same thing as what was done at the time. It would also be pretty interesting to see how different promoters looked at it. is it a boon or a bane? Is it great because you get the prestige of your guy being the champ? Is it bad because your #1 draw is off around the territories while you are running shows? With the prospect of national expansion that creates just another wrinkle. Also with regards to that aspect. How do the people playing promoters handle the idea of national expansion? The same way the promoters did at the time or with an eye to correcting their mistakes regarding talent and television? Also, I've been wondering how it is decided if/when a new act to a territory gets over. Obviously in the mind of the booker what they are doing will work. How is it actually decided?

I have two lists. Taue Kawada Misawa Kobashi That's where my heart lies. I love Taue so very much for the work he did as the guy nobody appreciated. If I have a spirit wrestler it is Akira Taue. I love how he puts matches together, I love the way he carries himself and how he does everything with an understated quality. The other three are the flashier, easier to love for the big stuff guys. Taue has far more limitations and knows it, but manages to be just a step behind all the way through. I would argue that once the new millennium hits he is the best of the four because he simply continues to work around his own limitations rather than having them imposed on him by time and finding the need to adapt. If we're going by purely by how much I love the character and the approach it is Taue by miles. A big part of this is that I tend to be very quiet and understated, don't care so much about how something looks as opposed to what it accomplishes and constantly battle with my own awkwardness and limitations. So yeah, my spirit wrestler. And here's the one that my brain imposes itself on. Kawada Misawa Kobashi Taue Kawada as a character is just up the street from Taue. I had a cranky, tough, never-back-down great uncle when I was younger that didn't give any part of a shit what anyone thought of what he said or did. But he also had such pride in everything he did that it came out looking pristine. And my understanding is that he was a straight ahead boxer who could take a punch with the best in his younger days. For a long time I wondered why I love Kawada so much and I finally figured it out. Oh, and Kawada was one Hell of an incredible pro wrestler. Misawa was and always will be the quintessential ace of a promotion. When he was on nobody could touch him and that came through in every big match. Kobashi in 1990-1994 was one of my favorite wrestlers of all time. I know he gets out of hand a lot after that, but damn when he was coming up through the ranks he was the best fired-up underdog babyface of all time. As much as I HATE some of his later performances I can't take that away from him. Taue is simply a great wrestler who can play babyface pretty well and heel to a T. In most companies during most time periods that makes you a #1 or 2 guy with a career downside of being the gatekeeper for the next generation. In 90s All Japan that means you end up being the guy to do a quick job to Akiyama to help put the young guy over and get him ready for Misawa while always being undervalued by the majority of fans. And since I mentioned Akiyama, he's probably got Taue beat on this one too as much as I hate to admit it.

I didn't think the announcers ever got quite to the place they should have while talking up Sasha's performance. She was essentially channeling the spirit of Ric Flair in the heat. Against Flair's daughter. As for the end I think they had another idea in mind besides finishing the story of the match. Look everyone, the girls can do fun spotfests just as well as the guys can! I just wish they had done that in a different setting because Sasha's heel work was again excellent. Instead of a blistering Charlotte comeback we get the forced "NXT women's division has arrived!" finish. What needed to happen if Charlotte was going to win is Sasha escaping a few predicaments during Char's comeback and using the outside escape/corner tactics again to get the upper hand before losing. Edit: I got this now. Charlotte puts on the Figure 4 after a big comeback to defend the family honor against Sasha. Sasha makes the ropes and manages a cheap shot as they untangle. A few big nearfalls later she throws the same tantrum and gives Charlotte time to recover. Charlotte reverses the next thing Sasha tries and gets a big nearfall before finishing her off. Sasha still out-Flairs Charlotte in the end despite losing, which keeps her heat.

In keeping with the current trends I thought it might be good to take a look at two other guys who will almost certainly finish high in the voting. This one interests me quite a bit because there are both direct and indirect comparisons to be made. They both worked as the ace of All Japan for an extended period of time. They worked against one another during the transitional period and that can come into play for comparison as well. I feel like an interesting comparison here would also be how Misawa worked with Kobashi during the years Kobashi overtook Kawada as the #2. It would be a very direct comparison to Jumbo vs. Misawa in my mind. On the flip side, one worked a very athletic, cutting edge style punctuated with stiff elbows. As well of having a long list of finisher level moves that dwarfs a listing of every move used by the majority of his contemporaries and wresters who came before him. While the other was a very simple, traditional wrestler with good athleticism for his size, but his calling cards were doing the little things exceptionally well, adapting to the moment, working pitch perfect across from whoever he was up against and using a limited amount of simple tools (in comparison to Misawa) to great effect. Another great contrast is their style as the ace. Jumbo was emotional, went with the flow and worked to his opponent to an incredible degree. Misawa was stoic, dictated the way the promotion was going and had a formula he plugged his opponents into with small variations. I'm not saying Misawa was always really formulaic, but when he was working somebody much lower on the card he didn't seem to make all that much seem different. I personally lean towards Jumbo for several reasons. I feel like he had a deeper grasp of the dynamics of a main event vs. midcarder match and that's a pretty big thing when you are the ace of a traditional Japanese wrestling company. I also think he adapted far better than Misawa did as time went on in his career. It doesn't hurt that I also felt like Kawada was the better wrestler than Misawa and should have been in Kobashi's spot.

I agree that Charlotte's run as champ has been the best female wrestling presented under the WWE banner that I've ever seen. And it's not just Charlotte. Bayley and Sasha are really really good at their roles with Becky Lynch coming in at least strong on the in-ring side of things. She needs some work on what exactly her character is, but she's definitely delivered during matches. I don't necessarily agree that female wrestling is going to bring in more female viewers. I do think that if done right it can do just as well with male viewers as the men's matches, but we can probably all agree that won't be happening on the main shows any time soon. That being said, I'm a huge fan of the women's division on NXT and how well the major players work in their face/heel roles. Sasha is an incredible heel, Charlotte is the strong face and Bayley is great as the female Sami Zayn. She doesn't quite have the level of charisma or in-ring panache Zayn does, but she's the lovable underdog with the right kind of charisma to keep the fans on her side through all the losses. Once Becky Lynch decides to be something besides Lita version 2.0 and finds a character of her own she will also be the complete package. Carmella and Alexa Bliss need quite a bit of work before they catch up. Edit: I kind of wish they had left Paige and Emma in NXT right now. They would have a really strong women's division with some very interesting rivalries instead of turning Emma into a glorified jobber.

One thing I really identified with was the discussion of neck/spine injuries. It's something I have thought for quite a while. If this current Bryan stuff is head/neck related I'm all for him retiring before things get too bad. As unfortunate as it seems there's no way around how fragile the human body can be and it's best to be safe about serious injuries. Great listen and I have to agree with Tim about the future of wrestling. Nothing is going to change much. I'll catch up on NXT and watch that weekly until too much WWE nonsense ends up moving it's way over there. Beyond that I don't have much hope for anything except highly pimped PPV/TV matches available on the Network. So I guess I agree with Will that it's a good thing there is all kinds of wrestling out there from the past and smaller companies that I can look to when the WWE isn't delivering.

Three words. Holy Demon Army. Kawada and Taue are my best and favorite tag team ever. Also, perhaps the coolest Japanese team of all time. They are both great at being their characters, which only makes the team work better because their characters have a lot in common. They are not traditional American heels, but they definitely have the "win at all costs" mentality. Also, there are few teams out there that are as fun to watch when they start kicking the shit out of somebody.

I feel like now we are getting down to the two big questions asked in this thread. 1. What is NXT supposed to be? and 2. What kind of contracts are these big indy names getting when they sign on to NXT? To the first question I think it is a way for the WWE to steal the thunder of the indies and get those fans who have gotten used to watching people like Zayn, Owens, etc. to watch the WWE. This is in addition to what it was originally supposed to be as a training ground for future WWE guys. If they did add touring I can only imagine it would be a limited schedule that allowed their big names the time to get back to FSU in time for the tapings. As to the second, I can't imagine they are getting main show money despite getting more than the raw guys who need to be trained from scratch. Before there were house shows it had to be less due to less benefit to the company. I also have a hard time believing that there is any kind of clause that says there are X amount of days you will spend in NXT before going to the main roster. To your point earlier, what if there are no openings that fit Owens when his NXT time is up? I would agree that there has to be enough money for the big name indy guys to draw them there because they have to know they aren't going to be the big star. They may get to main event NXT, but once they get to the main shows they are very likely stuck in that midcard cycle. And you know most of these guys are smart enough to realize that. So there has to be some contractual incentive for them to sign. But I still think it's less than somebody like Dolph Ziggler gets.

That's a fair point for sure, but how do you think the wrestlers in NXT are going to look at it? I wonder how long it will be until some of the bigger names start chomping at the bit. They all know the real money is in the WWE even if they get less chances to shine. Most wrestlers, if they come to the WWE, are looking for the payday way more than they are looking to be the next Hogan, Austin or Cena. You can't tell me somebody like Neville or Zayn truly thinks they are going to be a guy on that level. They have to be smart enough to know that they don't fit that mold and the best they can expect is that "B+ Player" spot.

It's not any kind of idea that somehow indy guys are any more qualified than home grown talent that I'm trying to put out there. I'm just looking at the tendency of the WWE booking and mindset when it comes to wrestlers in general. To be completely fair I think that the way NXT matches are structured is a big benefit to a lot of people who come in because it limits how much they are going to throw out there during finishing runs. There is something to be said for the less-is-more approach. One example I can think of to back up why I think the homegrown guys will always get an advantage is the Ascension. They were certainly over in NXT, but are you really going to tell me that they had developed to the point where they were better than Zayn, Neville, Breeze, Gabriel, most of the women or even a rejuvenated Tyson Kidd. At best they are the exact same thing you see on the midcard of Raw or Smackdown with the exception of Viktor's size. Generic power-based brawlers who are super intense. And they aren't even overly good at that. Part of the reason I think the WWE was so high on them was because they were the exact same act they have been trying to push for years with a pretty low success ratio. The flip side of that argument is that they fit into the WWE roster far better because of their almost cookie cutter nature than any of the other talent at NXT. How does somebody like Itami or Breeze fit into the current WWE climate? What is the likelihood that they become jokes the instant they hit SD and end up shuffled off to Main Event and endless jobs on SD? Which really brings into sharper focus the real question. What is the WWE trying to accomplish with NXT? It's possible that it has changed enough that they aren't quite sure themselves anymore. Which brings us to the question of contracts. Eventually these main event guys on NXT are going to get unhappy and want a piece of the pie. When that happens does Vince start paying them more like main show guys? Does he find a different way of structuring the contracts even if they don't tour? Because with the rate they call guys up to the main roster it's hard to see a lot of people they have now sticking around at the developmental contract rate until their call. Maybe they give main event guys/gals on NXT midcarder salaries. Give the young kids working in the PC something to look forward to. I tend to think they have some kind of plan for when the rumblings get too loud. They have to know that the NXT roster as it is now is not exactly what they had in mind when they started it up. The changes they've made to the show suggest that. So if NXT is to be it's own brand in addition to the training ground for the future, there has to be some plan going forward. I can't imagine they are going to pay them main event money and I would guess the contracts would be shorter with less guarantees. They are always going to treat it like the WWE "made" whoever it is they call up and it's a lot easier to do that when one of the things that comes from a jump to the main roster is a nice pay bump with more stability.

In 1990-93 All Japan the most common transition is a guy "telegraphing the back body drop." The truly great part of this is that once in a great while somebody hits a back body drop and it still manages to mean nothing despite being almost impossible to get it to connect.

Modern WWE has quite a few. The variant on the reversal, charge that Parv mentioned where the guy charging eats the post. The other variant on this where the charging heel (the above works for both heels and faces it seems, this one is more the heel or a much bigger face) gets the top rope pulled down and tumbles over to the floor. Anyone who is a high flier does an odd-looking jump off the top that could only lead to them getting hit. When somebody is on the apron and the opponent gets "too aggressive" and ends up getting draped over the top rope. Or the variant where the intended victim is on the floor and pulls their legs out from under them. 95% of the time a vertical suplex is attempted that is meant to be filmed. An interesting thing since the last two NXT main events I watched feature a vertical suplex into a resthold when the match returns from commercial. Those seemed like more mistimed commercial breaks on either the TV people or the wrestlers part. For a long time a short-arm clothesline was bound to miss.

It seems like they call up a few guys each year, but with the rate they are signing up big indy names that's what, 4-5 years down the road for some of them? And we know that Vince has no vested interest in things he didn't create. So if one of the PC guys picks it up in the meantime to the point where it is feasible to put them over a name guy, what do you think is going to happen? Will they choose Joe, KENTA, Owens, etc. or whatever one of the guys "they made" like a Baron Corbin to give a big push and then move up? It just makes more sense with the way that the WWE operates. You think that Cena and Batista didn't have a bit of an advantage being products of the WWE system in terms of push and how many chances they were given to get big? There will be big indy names that do make the big show in between, but given the choice the WWE run by Vince will be pushing "their" guys over indy guys any day of the week.