Lombardi's_kid_brother

That's the way it used to work. You would get general direction from the booker and the finish. Basically, "You are going 15 minutes and the finish is a ____ hitting ___ with a chair after a ref bump to get a pin." The most important part of a match is the finish. There were bookers who were legendary for their finishes, and bookers who were terrible at it. Pat Patterson was never a booker but he was considered the go-to genius when it came to finishes in the WWF. He also used to map out the Royal Rumble. Today, my understanding is that Michael Hayes maps out the Rumble (I think Hayes has a good wrestling mind, but I think the Rumble is not what it used to be). I don't know who comes up with finishes. I know the agents like Arn Anderson have a big role in planning out the matches. Now, the promos are almost entirely scripted and the matches are largely scripted ahead of time. I do think they give more flexibility to the vets like Taker and guys who can really go like Punk. But do guys still "call it in the ring?" I don't think so. Kevin Nash tells a great story on a shoot about working with Bob Backlund in the 90s and agreeing to let Backlund lead the match (generally heels always led the match). Backlund actually called for Nash to do a sunset flip at one point. On one of Cornette's shoots (and really, everyone should watch a Cornette shoot), he tells a story of Dennis Condrey taking an extremely young Rick Rude around the ring three times in a headlock before having Rude tag out because Rude could not understand the instructions. Condrey said "Shoot the ropes, drop down, hit Bobby, back to the head." Rude said, "Wha?" Condrey said, "Shoot the ropes, drop down, hit Bobby, back to the head." Rude said, "Wha?" Condrey said, "I am going to throw you into the ropes, when you come back, I will fall to the mat, and you will jump over me. You will hit the other ropes where Bobby Eaton is waiting. You will punch Bobby, come back to me, and put me back in a headlock." Rude says, "I don't get it" and Condrey says, "Tag the F out."

Stephanie and her comedy writers. The attitude era had a lot of talent. But all the problems they currently have stemmed from that. Here is the #1 problem in the WWE right now: Everything is driven by the writers. They write the promos. They script the matches. The wrestlers are just trained seals right now. Before Russo, that was not the case. No one ever handed Hogan or Flair or Piper or Savage a script. No one ever told them how a match was to go. You were told "Talk about X" and you talked about X. You were told "The match is 20 minutes long. The finish is a DQ when Orton hits Hogan with the cast." And you had the match. I also think Lawler needs to retire. He checked out mentally a decade ago. I'm not even sure he knows who the heels and faces are half the time. I know he doesn't watch Smackdown which makes him hopeless on PPVs. I wish they would open a school in Memphis called "Jerry Lawler's How To Throw a Worked Punch Camp." Pay him $100 grand a year to teach dudes how to throw punches. That would be the greatest contribution he could make right now.

I don't buy that. Kids are kids. They can be trained to like whatever you want them to like. Kids worshipped Hulk Hogan. And they cared about the title belt because Hogan cared about the title belt. The biggest problem I have with Cena is that he is training the audience to view everything has a huge joke. Get beat up by Brock Lesnar? No big deal. Have a match with the Evil GM? Treat it as a joke. Lose to the Rock? Eh...it happens. When Cena's neck or hip or whatever eventually goes, the WWE is going to be screwed because they have a generation of fans who have been trained to believe that being John Cena is more important than being a champion. And the next person won't be able to do Cena as well as Cena.

All the great tag teams have been just two guys slapped together. But you need to make them a team. It can be outfits or double team moves or any number of things. I have no idea why tag teams are so out of favor now. Anyway, Raw is just awful now and it's going to get worse when they go to three hours.

Before they do that, they have to make titles matter again. (And start calling belts "belts" again. That would be nice). I don't think long title reigns by heels work at the top of a promotion. The IC Belt or Tag Belts are good for heels, but the face of the company generally needs to be, well, a face. There are two ways to make it work though: 1. Do a Honkytonk Man run where the heel consistently gets his ass beat but escapes with the belt. This is dangerous though, because it's thin line between Honkytonk Man run and Dusty Finishes. You can't jerk the fans around too much. 2. Do a Vader Run, where you have a monster heel that just kills people. Brock could do this. I think that kind of run has a max time limit of maybe six months. The worst kind of heel run is a HHH run where he's a heel and he just beats people. That's just depressing.

They were booking Henry perfectly until they stopped. The modern WWE is really bizarre because winning and losing don't seem to matter to the writers, wrestlers or Vince. Henry was over because he was killing people. And there was a lot of air left in that balloon. He could have been an unstoppable force for months and months. And then when you decide to put someone else over him, THAT person gets over with the crowd. And hopefully you do it in such a way that doesn't kill Henry off. I always like Kevin Sullivan's booking philosophy (though, weirdly, not his actualy booking). He need to put heat on the heels so that when the face wins, it means something. Everyone in the WWE just trades wins and losses right now. To be honest, I'm not sure ANYONE in that company is really over right now. WWE right now sells tickets and gets ratings based on its name and special attractions. Here's a test: imagine almost any PPV not named Wrestlemania or the Rumble. Have an Indy promotion book that card in a 5000-seat barn. No pyro. No WWE t-shirts for sale. Would that card sell out?

I consider "over" to mean that the fans want to pay money to see you. I don't think just getting a pop is the same as being over. I went to a lot of NWA shows in the 80s. The biggest pop of the night always went to the Rock n Roll Express (teenage girls are deafening) but the Boogie Man Jimmy Valiant was #2 on the list. No one, however, wanted to see him headline a show or carry a title belt. The NWA/WCW was always kind of a mess because it was at its heart a regional company that insisted on being a national company (at least until 1995). Flair always could draw in the Mid-Atlantic, Florida, parts of the South, and Louisiana. He never drew in the big East Coast cities outside of Baltimore. He could draw in Texas with the right opponent. We was nothing on the West Coast. But that's a two part problem: 1. Heels, in general, don't really draw fans to arenas. 2. Until WCW emerged, the NWA champion wasn't supposed to bring in fans himself. He was supposed to be a prop in the territories. Flair and Kerry Von Erich sold out Texas Stadium because Kerry Von Erich was that over in Dallas and Flair could hold up his hand of the feud. Flair-Luger as part of WCW was not going to sell out Texas. The NWA/WCW were always kind of a mess in the cable TV age, because that company loved Heel champions. Until the Attitude Era, a face held the WWWF/WWF title 95 percent of the time back to the Bruno Era. The NWA/WCW problem with Flair was always this: "Hey, Chicago! Come see the stars of the NWA - including our biggest star, Ric Flair. You know, the cheating prick that you want to see lose but never does....." Meanwhile, the WWF always sells "Comes see Your Hero Hulk Hogan/Bret Hart/Steve Austin/The Rock/John Cena beat up the evil doers tonight." Back to Sting...I don't know a city where you could say "Sting is wrestling a mystery opponent tonight" and people would automatically buy a ticket. You could do that with Flair in Atlanta, anywhere in the Carolinas, Richmond, Pittsburgh, and Baltimore at the very least. You could do that with Jerry Lawler in Memphis today and it might still sell. Hogan, in his prime, could sell out any arena in North America (that may be a smidge overblown). I probably listen to Jim Cornette too much, but he makes sense about the basics. Flair-Luger could sell out the right arena. Flair-Sting could sell out the right arena. Luger-Sting never sold out anywhere. Sting was a very good wrestler with good charisma who needed a fair amount of help from the booker to really make an impact. In 2012, I don't think he offers anything to any company not named TNA. I think he does give them a little credibility, though I think they need to book him like WWE books Undertaker at this point. ---------- Post added May-10th-2012 at 03:54 PM ---------- PS. Do not equate "over" with "getting a pop." All wrestlers who are over get a pop but not every wrestler who gets a pop is over. Like Santino gets a pop, but he's not over in any real sense. When he's not in the ring, no one thinks about him.

From what I can tell, Sting seems to have saved every dime he ever made - and he made a lot of dimes. The other dirty little secret about Sting is this: He was never all that over even when he was over. The only times he ever really drew in his career was when he was paired with Flair and during the Crow/rafters storyline. Every time WCW gave him a run with the belt, it turned into a disaster. Granted, a lot of things turned into a disaster in WCW but Sting seemed to always need a great partner (Flair) or a great storyline (Crow) in order to generate big time heat. And it never seemed to last beyond that. No one has ever gone from as superhot to irrelevant faster than Sting did after '97. (Which I should point out was 14.5 freaking years ago. The fan that the WWE is currently targeting was not alive then). ---------- Post added May-10th-2012 at 10:05 AM ---------- In the Polka dots? Well, Dusty was a) Dusty and had no other choices. Vince burying Dusty was not just a case of Vince burying an NWA wrestler. Vince never had a problem pushing NWA/WCW wrestlers during the 80s and 90s. Big Bossman is a good example of that. Rumor has it that Vince's dream match for Wrestlemania 2 was Hogan versus Nikita Koloff. (And that's a shame because that match could have been really good). Dusty got buried because he was not just an NWA wrestler. He was the NWA booker. And kind of a prick. The other issue is that Dusty was bargaining from extreme weakness. He had just been turfed by Turner because he was told explicitly to have no blood on TBS and then immediately went out and spilled a bucket when the Road Warriors put a spike in his eye. The funniest thing of all is this: Dusty got the polka dots over. There's a lesson there for everyone. There are some gimmicks that are dead out of the starting gate, but it's a much smaller number than you think. If you are good enough and charismatic enough, you can get the dumbest gimmicks and angles to work. (Ric Flair got every stupid angle that Russo handed him over in the dying days of WCW. I think you could have built a stable out of the insane asylum patients once Flair got that going). The difference between today and now is that Dusty was allowed to work his match and deliver his promos even though he was dressed like an idiot. His inherent Dustyness still came through. Today, he would be handed a lame script and his match would be laid out for him before he hit the ring and he would just die.

Here's the thing about tournaments: they never get people over the way you think they will. I think you can do them right, but they rarely are. And Russo overexposed them to a ridiculous degree during his runs in WWF and WCW. If you are going to unify the belts, just have the champs do it.

Sting is 53 years old and has been off the casual fan's radar for a decade. What exactly does he bring to the table right now? With Brock and Rock, the WWE is already overdosing on nostalgia right now. Bringing in nostalgia for another company would be a bridge too far. ---------- Post added May-10th-2012 at 09:00 AM ---------- I like 2 and 4, because it would do something that is really needed. Bring some wrestling back to WWE. I think the last Raw had 30 minutes of wrestling, 30 minutes of commercials and over an hour of talking. I used to complain about cruiserweight glass ceiling in WCW, but at least the cruisers had jobs, matches, and storylines. At least there was something going on in the ring while they talked about the big angles. As for tag teams, Vince just seems to hate them now for some reason. But tag teams have always served two important purposes: 1. They allow you to pair two guys currently doing nothing into one unit that can do a lot. The New Age Outlaws are the all-time example of this. You had one guy who could talk a little but couldn't work and one guy who could work a little but couldn't talk. They were absolute death as singles wrestlers. Together, they could headline shows. 2. It's a good place to train someone to become a star. Austin, Hart, and Michaels all got credibility and experience as tag team wrestlers. It's always been the best training ground to learn to work. And if the team gets over, it always leads to an over program when you finally break up the team. Tag teams also buy you about two years worth of times to hide a wrestler who you don't know what to do with now. Daniel Bryan is over, but there really is no room for him. Give him a partner and the belts and then in 18 months or two years when Brock is gone and Cena is completely burned out, you can stick him in the upper card again and he is somewhat fresh.

Only the modern WWE would bring in Paul Heyman.....and make him read a scripted promo about contract terms. Why is this so hard to book? Brock Lesnar wants to punch people in the face and make money. Heyman wants to help Brock Lesnar punch people in the face and make money. Put them in a ring and let Heyman talk about how Brock Lesnar wants to punch people in the face and make money. Then...have Brock Lesnar punch people in the face. At some point in the future, someone stops Brock Lesnar from punching people in the face. Maybe Cena. Maybe someone else that you want to make a star. That kind of angle has never failed in the history of pro wrestling. Here is how you make a zillion dollars. Lesnar comes in and starts killing people. Cena finally steps up and challenges him because this is his company and no one is doing this. They have a match. Maybe Cena wins. Maybe he doesn't. Regardless, he is exhausted and afterwards, Brock cripples him in some way so he can go make his movie. Brock goes on a rampage, eventually winning the title maybe in some kind of contrived tourney. You spin off from this in fun ways. Punk comes out and acts like he is going to defend the WWE but then says something like "You are a real athlete. I'm a real athlete. I don't care how many of these corporate caricatures you cripple." Maybe in all this someone gets a fluke win over Lesnar because Lesnar is screwing around and getting ****y. Someone like Ryder would be perfect for that role. Cena then comes back but his confidence is gone. He knows he can beat Brock, but he's not sure he can survive Brock. And that brings out...the Rock now playing the role of Apollo Creed in Rocky IV. He knows Cena can do it, because he's been in the ring with him blah blah blah. And he will help him on one condition. Once he wins the title, he gives the first title shot to the Rock. (You can even make up some BS about how the Rock doesn't deserve a title shot because he is not an active wrestler. Maybe Johnny Ace makes this point and you end up with some PPV match where someone (maybe Rock maybe Cena maybe some third party) has to beat someone in order for the Rock to cash in a title shot or something. Maybe you put the Rock in the Rumble. I don't know). At Wrestlemania, Cena with the Rock in his corner finally beats Brock and does it in a real non-fluky way. Cena's a good enough hand that he may be able to pull out a slightly different style of wrestling to drive this point home. You keep Brock off tv for a while after this. That leads to a PPV of Rock versus Cena II. After that match, Brock kills the winner and that sets up Brock-Rock. You can easily do this with limited schedules for all three, especially if Heyman is around to do a lot of the talking. Maybe at some point, Brock gets an apprentice - like Albert, who God knows needs something because he is dying right now. That gives you all sorts of tag matches and combinations and also allows you get get your money's worth out of Albert. I don't like fantasy booking, but I don't get why this is so hard. Make these guys fight each other for reasons and let the rest sort itself out. You don't need stables to make this work, just stand ins. Once you have Cena and the part-timers cordoned off you have an endless array of PPV main events and can let everyone else (Punk, Bryan, Sheamus, etc) have their issues below that.

I missed that. I just can't imagine that the Lakers hire parking attendents with Kobe's input.

I think that decision was Kobe's. For all his faults, Brown does know defense and has dealt with a superduper star before. Kobe probably didn't want to feel like he was training Shaw, you know?

This is how you book Lesnar: Have him beat people up. I was bored with authority figure storylines in '99. I can't believe that is still the main formula they use.

So, the WWE spends a gazillion dollars on Brock, jobs him out to Cena on a nothing PPV, and now has him in a feud with HHH. Who on earth is going to buy a PPV to see Brock-HHH and Johnny Ace-Cena? Did they really bring in Brock in order to use him to transition Cena to Prince Freaking Albert? I stopped understanding this company a decade ago.

Bagwell never came across as the brightest bulb in the string.

There is nothing new in wrestling. Paul E turned a skinny, ugly referee into the biggest heel in his company by doing this. Bill Alfonso banned the choke slam and would disqualify anyone using it. Hell, Memphis banned and unbanned the piledriver dozens of times. To this day, if you piledrive someone in front of a Memphis audience, they react as if you just pulled out a gun. I do like your idea, because - as I said - I love Johnny Ace as the uncaring beauracrat. I'm so tired of evil authority figures in the Mr. McMahon mold. The best villian in Harry Potter was not Voldemort; it was Dolores Umbridge.

He's a tubby computer guy.

If an owner treats a hockey franchise more seriously than he does a basketball franchise, he is out of his mind. No matter how successful the Caps get, it's still a hockey team in a city south of the Mason Dixon line. It simply can't get that big. But a successful NBA franchise in DC - arguably the #2 basketball town in the country? It would be a license to print money. Just think for a second. Imagine John Wall became as big as - well - not Lebron but maybe Carmelo. How many jerseys do you think he would sell in PG County alone? My God...Gilbert Arenas was this close to owning DC. Gilbert Arenas!!!!!! It blows my mind that the NBA has always had dysfunctional teams in NYC and DC.

Please stop saying that. I can't take anyone seriously who uses that phrase. I could probably handle everything that the WWE is currently doing - including the endless Twitter hype and Three Stooges appearances - if they just stopped that. ---------- Post added April-24th-2012 at 11:22 AM ---------- They aren't allowed to do that anymore. As far as I can tell, the only people allowed any flexibility on promos is Cena, HHH, Michaels, Rock, and Taker. Only one of those guys is a full-time wrestler. It seemed like Punk had that freedom for a few weeks, and it was awesome. Now, he's back to do silly skits with everyone else. I don't understand why they don't get it. They clearly know what gets people excited. They did it with Nexus. They did it with Punk. They did it with HHH-Taker. They did it with Lesnar's comeback. Let the fans think that something "real" is happening and they will connect emotionally with the wrestlers - either by booing or cheering. I'm not even sure Cena is that good when he goes off-page. He's okay at it, but there is nothing to compare him to.

I don't mind that, because I've desperately wanted wrestling to get back to some rules for years. That was the biggest problem of the Attitude Era: wrestling no longer had any rules. It's really tough to be a rule breaker, if there are no rules. I kind of wish that they would acknowledge this sort of thing though. I actually really like the Johnny Ace character and this sounds like the type of thing that he would implement: a perfectly reasonable rule that still manages to piss people off. It would make sense for Jericho to come out and read from a memo that Johnny mailed out a few weeks ago or something: "According to paragraph 17, subsection 2 of the WWE employee handbook...." Actually, how much more awesome would this Jericho-Punk feud be if Jericho kept trapping him in obscure rules instead of pushing this lame drinking thing? (Seriously, this is so lame. Both these guys are capable of so much more).

That, in a nutshell, is why I hate John Cena. Screw the WWE Universe. This is not DC Comics. This is what I want out of my wrestlers. I want them to want titles, money, and fame in some order. Or I want them to just enjoy beating people up. Babyfaces want those things through honest means. Heels want them via any means. Cena's whole character is that he is a sincere WWE performer who is a superstar because he is a superstar. Aside from that, I have no idea what motivates him. He is a perpetual motion machine.

The problem I have with Cena is that he needs to pick one approach - sincere or ironic - and stick to it. Hogan stuck to his sincere Hulkamania drivel way way way past its expiration date. But at least he was committed. Austin and the Rock always acted like they were too cool for McMahon's Hee Haw senisibilities. And they stuck with it. Cena will give a ten minute speech about believing in yourself and never giving up and then get in a confrontation with a heel and smirk like he's above it all. He was smirking while Brock was dropping him on his face a few weeks back. It's like he's saying to the adults in the audience "I know this is BS but I have to sell t-shirts to the kids." This problem came out last night. That segment was deader than dead before Cena came out because some genius decided to let Brock talk for 20 minutes. But Cena came out and no one had any idea what emotion he was trying to convey: Fear? Confusion? Constipation? Since nothing has ever affected him, he doesn't know how to sell any emotion outside the ring.

You know what Brock Lesnar excels at? Talking for 30 minutes. Jesus Christ. Just have him punch someone in the face. He's not Ric Flair on the stick.

Only WWE would decide that this was the week to have Daniel Bryan in the building but NOT on the actual show. I remember a time when a wrestler getting over was a good thing. Now, Vince punishes you for getting over without his permission. If Vince always ran the company this way, he would have followed the Austin 3:16 promo, but having Austin lose to Leif Cassidy. ---------- Post added April-10th-2012 at 12:47 PM ---------- A. Flash Funk was awesome. B. Jim Cornette says the statute of limitations for stealing angles is 7 years. I think that goes for gimmicks too.