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The Figure Four - ALL Things ECW-WWF-NJPW-TNA-ROH-AEW


TK

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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 ----------

Going back to the well for guys like Sting or Lesnar or whoever just isn't a formula for sustainable success. I'd be ok with Sting in a manager/leader of a stable type role. But not as a performer.

We've gone circles in this thread on what to do, and I think we'd do a better job than Vince's writers with a storyline.

#1. Get rid of the brands and combine the two world championship belts.

#2. Put real effort into developing tag teams that are together for years.

#3. Divas division back to Women's division.

#4. Return of the cruiser weight.

I could keep going with bigger stables, the end of Cole being a character, getting rid of this tired GM storyline nonsense.....etc.

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.

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Man I had a nice response to K-Dawg's post, but I had to reset my computer :(

1.Get rid of the brand extension, it was nice at first, but it is too lame now.

2. Longer story lines with bigger payoffs. They should have let Chris Jericho win the title at Extreme Rules and not have him defend against Punk until he is ready to go back on tour with Fozzy. In the meantime, they should've had Daniel Bryan sabotaging CM Punk's bid to get the title. Have them go one on one in a steel cage ultimate submission match for the #1 contender.

3. This All-World management angle needs to pick up, they are dragging it out too long.

4. Stop trying to create these random tag teams (Kofi/Truth Kofi/Bourne Kofi/anybody :wtf:) and start bringing in tag teams from outside. (Beer Money's (Storm and Roode) contract in TNA is about to end.)

5. For the love that is all good, stop wasting the talents of Ziggler and Kingston. Thees two should be in the title match by now, but for some reason they are keeping them down.

6. Screw The Great Khali. He sucks and they keep on putting him in thees important matches...

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I'm sure you make a very good living LKB, but I really wish WWE would give you a good gig running the wrestling side of things for them.

The ideas you post on here are better and make more sense than anything I've seen out of WWE since the early 2000's. It's crazy that they've fallen so far.

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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' date=' 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.

I agree about Bryan. The problem is they raise guys too fast and then others who might be deserving get stuck. This is also why titles like the Tag, U.S., Inter-Cont, and Cruiser need to be treated like they are really extremely important and not just a stepping stone to the world title.

Stables are important because it can give a bunch of people TV time without them performing. Maybe have them do the dark matches. But 2nd Gen DX didn't always have HHH, the Outlaws and X-Pac going the same night....but they'd roll out and cut a promo together, and be at ringside. That's development stuff there.

I think they should combine the world titles but in a way that nobody is the champ for a few months and its bracket style all the way to one of the main PPVs.

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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?

He's Sting.

If I were in charge I'd do things a little bit differently.

One: No tag team should come out to an individuals theme song. Ever. Have tag teams come together via storylines if you want to take already existing single characters and pair them together' date=' but you should never just slop a pair of guys together. Ever.

Truth and Kingston would have been a much better edition to the tag pool if their storylines clashed enough to have it make sense for pairing them. Perhaps they both had an issue with the Miz. And Miz kept finding ways to beat them in 1v1 because he'd cheat to win to get himself back to the top. Finally, one of them is wrestling and the other comes out for the save. That's the beginning. They're still not a team. Now Miz takes on one of the two again, and in the middle of the match Miz hires the Usos to come out and beat on his opponent. Miz laughs as he's disqualified, avoids the pinfall loss and exits. As the Usos are beating on, say, Kingston, Truth comes flying out for the save.

Laurinatis is pissed off about Truth's interference in the beating, but claims it is People Power that wants to see the two of them team up against the Usos next week on RAW. They come out as individuals and defeat the Usos after Miz interference backfires. The next week on RAW they come out in matching garb and to their own theme song with a unique tag team name. Boom, you have a reason for a tag team and you bring them together.

They should also hold off debuts and redubts of people that they think could be a team. I like what they did with O'Neill and Young. They could form a pretty good team. But they need a name and a common theme song.

Again, fantasy booking, but just an example of how you can do things.

---------- Post added May-10th-2012 at 10:26 AM ----------

I think they should combine the world titles but in a way that nobody is the champ for a few months and its bracket style all the way to one of the main PPVs.

GREAT idea. Tournament like the Survivor Series Deadly Games tournament years back where The Rock sided with the Corporation. You could develop a ton of rivalries and heat in that structure that can carry on after the tournament concludes.

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I'm pretty sure that in the past, Sting knew he would have been buried if he went to WWE. Like DDP and others. Now, I think it's because TNA is easy for him

After what the WWE did to Dusty Rhodes, it was beyond me how any WCW wrestler went there.

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I'm pretty sure that in the past, Sting knew he would have been buried if he went to WWE. Like DDP and others. Now, I think it's because TNA is easy for 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 ----------

After what the WWE did to Dusty Rhodes, it was beyond me how any WCW wrestler went there.

In the Polka dots?

Well, Dusty was a) Dusty and B) 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.

Edited by Lombardi's_kid_brother
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From what I can tell' date=' 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).[/quote']

BS, just because you didn't draw, doesn't mean you weren't over. Simple fact is that the NWA/WCW didn't draw between 89-95. I was at a couple of NWA/WCW cards in 89 that was headlined by Flair and Funk and there was a few hundred people at both cards. In other words, they didn't even draw when Flair held the strap. But don't tell me Sting wasn't over.

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LKB,

Just because Russo overused them doesn't mean that there isn't a niche for them. King of the Ring helped to make tournaments grossly overused. The Royal Rumble is successful because it's one match, every year, that showcases a bunch of superstars and has surprises. King of the Ring took place over several shows and culminated at a pay per view.

I think the key is to have a mix of everything and to not overuse anything.

I also hate the fact that Survivor Series went away from being, you know, Survivor Series. A 4v4 matchup where team captains selected teams. To this day I don't understand why they got rid of that portion of the event. It's a great way to showcase talent and put it on the radar (Rocky Maivia, anyone?).

How about, as far as tag teams go, more tornado tag matches? Or a tag team Hell in a Cell match every once in awhile?

I remember War Games was an outstanding PPV, elimination team matches in a cage? Sweet.

I liked World War 3 matches, too, even though many people didn't.

WWE tends to overuse match types, and then they lose their luster.

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BS, just because you didn't draw, doesn't mean you weren't over. Simple fact is that the NWA/WCW didn't draw between 89-95. I was at a couple of NWA/WCW cards in 89 that was headlined by Flair and Funk and there was a few hundred people at both cards. In other words, they didn't even draw when Flair held the strap. But don't tell me Sting wasn't over.

This is true. Bret Hart...Shawn Michaels...Flair....Sting...ALL super over but they weren't "draws" Their runs at the top saw declining ratings and PPV buys. But they were all super over

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This is true. Bret Hart...Shawn Michaels...Flair....Sting...ALL super over but they weren't "draws" Their runs at the top saw declining ratings and PPV buys. But they were all super over

Shawn Michaels title run in the mid 90's is probably one of the biggest reasons why the WWE is currently in existence. He kept it afloat during the nWo angle in WCW when the WWE was getting murdered in the ratings department

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If that is the case, do you think that we need to re-define the term over?

I always thought "over" meant the fans cheered or booed them, they had heat... I didn't think it had to do with draw... I always called that drawing power...

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True. That makes perfect sense....

I think the over Wrestlers in WWE right now are:

Cena

Punk

RKO

Lesnar

Bryan

Jericho

Kane

Show

Mark Henry (probably not anymore)

Lord Tensai (If he isn't there, he is slowly getting there)

Mysterio (can't forget about him)

I think these wrestlers are close but need some more work:

Shaemus (He could get better reaction)

Del Rio

Ziggler

Kofi

Rhodes

Miz (Don't know what is going on with him)

Now, I know I am forgetting some people, but I think these two lists are a good list to have them go ahead and abolish the brand extension and let these people be the contenders for the championships.

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Seamus, Del Rio, Kofi, and Miz are all more over than Mark Henry - That dude is so boring and slow to watch.

They are now, but when Henry first got that Hall of Pain push, he was third behind Cena and Punk to me. He got injured and I think that is why they forced Bryan to cash in that MITB. I think the plan was to wait until Wrestlemainia to do it. Jericho probably would have won the Royal Rumble. I don't know what would had happened with Sheamus....

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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.

Edited by Lombardi's_kid_brother
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[/color]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' date=' but he's not over in any real sense. When he's not in the ring, no one thinks about him.[/quote']

And that is why he wasn't on my list.

But your ps statement brings me back to Mark Henry. That man was a beast before he got injured. I wasn't really surprised though because when he was the (new version) ECW Champion he was the same way. I really wish he didn't get injured. It was a shame they made The Rock punk him like that before Wrestlemainia (Even though the execution for the moment was done perfectly)

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But your ps statement brings me back to Mark Henry. That man was a beast before he got injured. I wasn't really surprised though because when he was the (new version) ECW Champion he was the same way. I really wish he didn't get injured. It was a shame they made The Rock punk him like that before Wrestlemainia (Even though the execution for the moment was done perfectly)

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?

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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?

It depends on what city it is in, and what performers could they use. On top of that, how much promotion would it get? I think they would be able to get 5,000.

I agree with you on the wins and losses. It would be nice to see a heel of the WWE title for like 18 months, have him lose it to some underdog at some random RAW show. Then, have that heel go on a rampage until the next PPV. Have him lose again, keep the rampage continue but then put that heel in another feud against somebody that is close to the big stage. Or something like that. :whoknows:

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I agree with you on the wins and losses. It would be nice to see a heel of the WWE title for like 18 months, have him lose it to some underdog at some random RAW show. Then, have that heel go on a rampage until the next PPV. Have him lose again, keep the rampage continue but then put that heel in another feud against somebody that is close to the big stage. Or something like that. :whoknows:

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.

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