I think we’re judging “the new era of WWE” WAY too soon. There’s no REAL indication that it’s going to be all McMahons all the time, and Trips even said there’s going to be more of what we want including callups and matchups. It’s been a whopping one episode per show and, frankly, with what happened in the spoiler, it’s something we all want.
Let’s at least give it a month or so before we start immediately assuming everything is bad.
In other words, turn it into the 1980s syndicated WWF Championship Wrestling/Superstars shows, but with B-level wrestlers in place of the jobbers.
To paraphrase Tony Schiavone, “That’ll put asses in front of the TVs.”
As I saw mentioned on Reddit–Baron Corbin was so bad at the GM job he managed to get Paige fired. So they’re going away from the GM format, and I guess that doesn’t have to mean McMahon’s on TV making all the decisions all the time, but I’m not sure how else they’ll do it.
I just get cynical in my old age because I remember when the McMahons were booking themselves over the talent constantly, and it’s hard for me to believe leopards can change their spots. Maybe HHH convinced them the NXT model works, when the authority figure steps in for only a minute to resolve conflicts and make announcements for future matches. NXT UK’s GM hardly says or does anything. He’s just a figurehead from the past generation of UK wrestlers.
Corbin was really just the McMahons’ ventriloquist dummy. His job was to get heel heat, but he’s not a good “face” for the company and ratings went down. They used him as a scapegoat when the audience got more pissed at the shitty booking. If their takeover announcement really means “we’re not going to impose ourselves as much as we used to,” I’m all for that.
that was eric bischoff and superstars did have the gimmick skits like the barber shop ,brother love pipers pit ……
This sounds like a Saturday night main event type of show ….which the wwe needs more of
There’s only one solution to WWE’s woes and Vince won’t hear it.
Because the answer is to stop booking the shows for Vince’s tastes and ideas. For Christ’s sake he’s a 73 year old man who works so many hours micromanaging WWE that he has no idea what modern culture is about because he barely experiences it …and he’s 73 fucking years old!
Just watched the 1997 Great American Bash on the WWE Network, and I loved the Chris Benoit vs. Meng; Ric Flair and Rowdy Piper vs. The Outsiders; and especially DDP vs. Randy Savage matches. (The latter was Falls Count Anywhere).
You mean, I’m not the only one with the “Christmas night tradition” of a PPV? Mine was ECW November to Remember 1998.
Wrestle Kingdom is next week!
Here’s the card;
The pre-show will be featuring a 5-team gauntlet match to determine a #1 contender for the NEVER Openweight Trios Championship, which will be contested the night after Wrestle Kingdom.
If the rumors are true that Cody & company are planning on launching their own promotion this year, then I’d expect him, Omega, and the Bucks to lose their matches. Tanahashi is pretty long in the tooth at this point, but he can still go, and IMO he’s capable of pulling off one more run as the ace before passing the torch to someone like Naito. Jericho vs. Naito is a rematch from when Y2J won the title back at Dominion, and it could go either way. Okada vs. Jay White is a potential show-stealer, especially now that White has been named the new leader of Bullet Club after the Elite’s departure. ZSJ is likely to win his match, as it’ll put Revolution over in a big way and expand NJPW’s appeal to the British wrestling fan.
If you have New Japan World, the show starts around 2:30 AM Eastern/11:30 Pacific on the morning of January 4th/evening of January 3rd. I’m not sure what AXS’ rebroadcast plans are for this year, but they’ll likely be showing it in installments over three or four weeks as well.
Smapti, having never watched New Japan Pro Wrestling myself, would you say that one of the promotion’s current storylines is a desperation to get the World Heavyweight, Intercontinental, and U.S. Championships off of the gaijins?
If anything, they’ve got more gaijin champions than they’ve ever had and it’s by design. The new CEO, Harold Meij, is Dutch-born and has been working in Japan since the '90s, and Bushiroad (NJPW’s parent company) brought him in specifically to drum up interest outside of Japan. That’s been the impetus behind their running shows in the US and co-promoting ROH shows, creating the US title, and the heavy emphasis on Bullet Club (which is mostly white guys and Tongans with one or two Japanese members) as a top stable for so many years.
The Elite (Cody, the Young Bucks, and Kenny) are relortedly opening their own promotion in 2019 as an expansion of what they did at All In, which is probably why they’re all likely to drop their titles. Jericho is a free agent and can basically work anywhere he wants right now, and he’s a legend in Japan, so what happens with him is anyone’s guess.
As far as the US title goes, I’ll be surprised if it’s ever not a gaijin holding it - all four champs so far, being Kenny, Jay White, Juice, and Cody, have been Americans or Canadians.
You know, while I was watching it, I never thought of that. I think this is the first time I’ve had the WWE Network on a Christmas Day.
WCW was the promotion that I first watched; I left with Chris Jericho, and later The Radicalz.
I have had it since pretty much when it started, but I don’t remember Christmas night wrestling really being a “thing” in the Northern California NWA territory. Thanksgiving night, yes - there was a card in Sacramento every year - but not really Christmas.
I didn’t really associate Christmas with wrestling until an episode of Busted Open when somebody - I can’t remember if it was the host or a wrestler - mentioned how he would want Christmas dinner to end early so he could go to the wrestling matches that night.
WCCW held some of their “Wrestling Star Wars” events on Christmas. I presume they’re on the Network, if I ever get it, I want to watch them just to see if I can figure out which one of them my Dad took me to when I was a kid (I’ve looked up the lists of matches, but they don’t jog my memory at all).
wwe needs some cheap pops ……its gonna be cena on raw for new years bay MSN
I’ve spent a little time on the WWE Network watching the two shows I remember seeing live. (Easy enough to find them, because they both contained title changes). They both took place in Indianapolis. The October 8, 2001 edition of RAW was excellent, concluding with Stone Cold winning his very last WWE Championship, against Kurt Angle. By contrast, the November 8, 1999 edition of Nitro… Jesus, it’s horrible. They booked a match between Sting and Goldberg for the top of the second hour, and then it lasted less than three minutes. The segments in which David Flair stalked Kimberly were cumulatively longer than that. That Nitro’s not good if you’re one of those who actually enjoys wrestling.
<Nevermind; double post>
I was going to say that they didn’t have that many WCCW shows on the network, but apparently it’s been a while since I looked; they have pretty much every episode from the start of 1982 through October, 1988. They don’t have the PPV-level big shows, however - did WCCW even have PPVs? I don’t think nationwide wrestling PPVs didn’t start until 1987, which is when WCCW apparently had its last Christmas Day Star Wars show.
I remember Nitro had a real stinker of a storyline with Bret Hart. He appeared on a sketch on Mad TV, so they decided to make an angle out of it. It led to Hart having a 30-minute match with some fat guy from the show. WCW paid all that moolah to snag Bret Hart from Vince, then had him work a cross-promotion match that sure as hell didn’t increase ratings with a noticeable amount of Mad TV viewers. Bischoff was way too desperate to bring in mainstream celebrities.