Matt D
DVDVR 80s Project
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Everything posted by Matt D
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Tony doesn't strike me as a brave man, but he's a guy I sort of like. I could see another season of Fargo with him in the Martin Freeman role. -
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It was interesting that he all but said on Austin's show last week that when looking to redefine himself after KOTR, he didn't want to be another babyface Austin clone because there were a bunch of those popping up. Instead, he wanted to sort of work the nerds since they were a big part of the crowd. He said ti a little nicer than that, but not much so.
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Some of the restrictions that Batista talked about on the Jerciho podcast was interesting. I didn't realize they couldn't push the ref into the ropes to crotch an opponent on the top or really even do any nut shots at all.
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PN News would have been a success if he had Oscar.
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I have no use for Frenchy Martin or Coach. I'd take Fuji over Johnny V too. Whippleman was never very effective either. I think he took away from his guys more than helping them generally. Lord Littlebrook managing Morgan and Victory was awesome though.
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I know when I was younger, I was excited to see just even who was going to come out next, because I didn't know. What match were they going to put on next? I had to know, just like how I'd stay up half an hour later than I should to see the smackdown spoilers on Tuesday nights when they were on the west coast. I imagine there's an element of that. I'd almost put it more to a sports Draft, than the sport itself.
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Kayfabe wise, Fuji is the only guy out of the WWF managers of the post Three Wise Men era (the 80s boom into the early 90s basically) to actually manage the world champion over any meaningful period of time (With the possible exception of Hart with Hogan but come on). That trumps a lot. Even with a few stupid decisions. Smart-wise, I think he was fairly effective at ringside and had a definitely more menacing and dangerous presence than any of his peers except for maybe Sherri and frankly, a lot of his promos got the job they were supposed to do done. He wasn't supposed to be Bobby Heenan. Not great but not deserving of the award.
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I think there are plenty of baseball announcers who don't make the players look good, but instead knock them or are entertaining personalities in general. When you have to fill time for a nine inning baseball game, you have to keep people engaged that way. It's sort of the same for a long MSG show from 85.
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I think that's an oversimplistic way of looking at things. Different roles can be used in different ways to achieve different ends. At the end of the day, the goal is to make money over a prolonged period of time. How you add up to that can be done in different ways. The WWF machine was so pervasive and there was so little room for divergence, even down to the months and months that they ran the same house shows, that if people tuned into PTW for Gorilla/Heenan shitting on things, then that's more money for the WWF and with relatively little damage since they weren't doing any lasting harm to much of the core audience. Or at least that's an argument, and I think a valid one.
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The DVR-less nature is this: Raw, like sports, is live. If you miss it, then you're immediately behind in what's going on and the story doesn't seem as fresh. When you're watching it in that moment, you're part of something that's happening right then and there. I'm not explaining it well, but being live matters and it matters to this DVR issue.
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It's interesting that Heyman on the Austin podcast said that he was so interested in where the John Cena character goes next at NOC because the answer is "no where" or at least not for more than a night. He makes it all into a fun narrative though. "He said he wanted not to beat Brock but to beat his ass." "He has to go the places he refused to go vs Bray Wyatt at Wrestlemania." I think a talented wrestling personality has the ability to take all of the hasty bits of bullshit and to make some sort of narrative out of them.
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Hogan's weakness was coveting the wife of another.
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He's going to come back under a hood with a bad Texas accent.
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Revenue streams are an interesting point and maybe we should have a note on it. We know that TV has sort of hit a ceiling given what WWE is. What should they be most focused on? The Network? Live gates? International markets? Merchandise?
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I didn't mind it all that much. I don't think it's ultimately indicative of anything groundbreaking but then I hurt my finger scrolling through 3 MMA stories in a row on the phone, so by that point I missed the google trends. There were takeaways: WWE is up. UFC is way down. He explained why. Divas are up (Total Divas but not just?), but that doesn't always mean anything. Reigns has a lot of buzz. Ambrose has less but still beats out Rollins. People still care about Gina what's her face. Etc. Some of these things correlate with what I think are real trends.
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I have fond memories of the Briscoe vs Briscoe match at the first ROH show I went to in the Boston area, with some really fun finger-worker, but I don't know if I'd want to revisit that now.
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I liked the Niebla vs Niebla mask match.
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Schiavone told a pretty good story on Jim Ross' podcast which explained how he became the soulless hypeman he was for the last couple of years of WCW. It's so funny to go back to, let's say 1991, and how viscerally and desperately he was trying to get the action over and make sense of everything that would happen in a match whether it was Flair or Oz in the ring, and then listen to something, like, let's say this random Super Calo vs Barry Houston match I saw where he and Larry Z didn't actually call one move in the entire match until it hit the replay, and they were doing dives and all sorts of stuff too. Not one move because the PPV was that weekend.
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I get the argument that Hogan wasn't hot in 94-95 and that Cena is moving merchandise now, but I'd argue that Hogan sold a heck of a lot more merch after he went heel. I don't think that a turn would actually hurt Cena's bottom line that much, so long as they were able to produce a piece of merchandise that was iconic. What's his biggest shirt ever? The Rise Above Hate one? the NES one? Has he ever really had that Austin 3:16 or NWO shirt? They were nuts not to keep him in the Nexus for another month or two, even reluctantly, long enough to have a Cena-branded Nexus shirt to sell. I think we've reached this crazy point where people are as willing as ever to wear goofy gimmicky shirts. If they turn him, a ton of his current fans would come along for the ride. They did with Hogan since it felt cool. It'd also open up to a slightly older demo who might have more disposable cash. I don't know about the merch thing. I think they'd be fine there. The charity thing is trickier.