Rolling 2014 Haunted Rocking Chair Thread

wwe NOT signing them rather

each to their own, i really enjoyed some of their ROH stuff a few years back. Had good matches with quite a few already signed guys (Bryan, Rollins, Steen, Zayn)

I've grown to really like Breeze.

i like all those other guys tbh, i'm just being a hater

(this show was a total blast btw)

i'm going to watch the nxt show lataz but just came to say lolz at signing the briscos (nothing like hiring people who are racist and homophobic to your multinational corporation) and the wolves (wrestlers still need to sell and not just drop people dangerously on their head). also iirc when the young bucks were close to being signed, they were such dicks backstage that they never got invited back, was dirtsheet buzz for a while etc. supposedly they really pissed off booker t and holla holla tag match teddy long.

is that one appalling superplex gif representative of Davey Richards' general work? I have never watched one of his matches because of it

http://i43.tinypic.com/2poyw6u.gif

I unironically enjoy the corny fake sport of pro wrestling and this is the dumbest shit I've ever seen

I have watched a lot of the ROH PPVs he was kinda on top for (10-12ish period) and yeaaaaaah... that gif is about right. He takes himself waaay too seriously, he makes Bret Hart look like a guy who knows its fake.

Fair fair fair, I was unaware of much of the backstage shenanigans wrt briscoes and young bucks, I was simply reeling off tag teams where I have watched and enjoyed a couple of matches that came recommended, I am not and never have been an avid fan of independent wrestling

its quite simple for me - generico gave up wrestling, so the indies are pointless now

the bucks might get signed btw, they buried the hatchet w/ booker t

Please tell me that Hideo Itami's gimmick isn't going to be "generic martial arts-loving Japanese guy".

giving away a scheduled 1 on 1 match on tv 6 days before it's due to air on PPV and having the face win clean is maybe the stupidest thing I can remember the WWE booking team doing in several decades worth of doing stupid shit on the regs. not necessarily very important or harmful in the long run, but wtf are these guys thinking

all the PPVs are now going at a fixed monthly rate on the Network, they figure that they're not gonna persuade anyone else to buy into that at this stage as all the likely customers have already got it so why worry about them right, now they're prioritizing TV ratings over non-Network PPV buys to try and draw more casual Raw viewers onto the Network? that's ridiculous and ill-thought out (and i should know cause it's a crap theory i just pulled straight out my ass) and i just do not get these people at all atm

apologies am tired, my posts are about as coherent as WWE's current creative direction

http://grantland.com/features/tna-professional-wrestling-dixie-carter-jeff-jarrett-wwe/

now they're prioritizing TV ratings over non-Network PPV buys to try and draw more casual Raw viewers onto the Network?

This sounds right. They booked RAW to have the important segments during the halftime of Monday Night Football!

this might also be the answer to the question of why monday raw after summerslam had a much better/longer ambrose/rollins fight than summerslam

yeah but how ass-backwards is that logic? inviting people to lay down a monthly sum in order to watch the precise fucking match that just aired for free on television (and a pretty average match it was too), when they already gave up the clean finish?

i don't get who they're pleasing here. if this was some parallel bizarro universe where they had interesting money matches up the wazoo and were in a position to throw some of them away on free tv in order to say "you've just seen and enjoyed this awesome showdown, well here's this other totally badass match you definitely don't wanna miss that's happening on the PPV" then I guess I could understand it. but they don't. surely ppl are just gonna think that there's absolutely no point plonking down a subscription fee if they get the PPV match given away 6 days ahead of time.

this also all sucks balls bcuz Reigns was supposedly "doing it for Ambrose" which completely cuts Ambrose's legs out from under him, as no one gives a shit about him getting his revenge on Rollins cause Reigns has just done it all for him.

eh, i shouldn't care about this and it may just be a particularly egregious one-off example of the booking team being fresh out of ideas of stuff to do in a 3 hour Raw, but i still think that no matter how the business model is changing it can't possibly be a good idea to devalue your PPV like this

Ambrose is so great that I think he can easily pick up where he left off with the Rollins feud. The clean finish to Reigns/Rollins makes no sense, definitely, but I don't think it'll hurt Ambrose.

I think the PPV's are going to be promoted as one-match shows now (except for Mania, RR, and Summerslam). For 40-50 dollars per show they had to at least attempt to book a solid card top to bottom, but now they figure that for 10 bucks, plus all the other content you get on the network, people will get their money's worth as long as the main event delivers.

personally my beef started when reigns got hit from behind with the chair so he didnt care about shield stuff or helping ambrose for like 4 months after until he had his skull crushed in and then thought maybe he should avenge his forgotten bud

sorry i forgot he had the more pressing issue of who can be a more boring scripted supposedly dramatic slow nothing promo with orton

reigns is the worst tbf

Kinda ready for him to be mercilessly turned on by the wwe universe

it doesn't help that he has that playground-looking looking superman punch and the spear spear spear, a move wwe has relied on too much and constantly cried wolf that it's ultra-devastating and exciting even though it has literally only ever looked good when Goldberg was doing it so absurdly hard his opponent's life was in danger

I'm jim cornette and that's m

it doesn't help that he's far and away the most boring former member of the shield.

he's already slowly being turned on online, give it a few months. i have the bad feeling when bryan comes back that they'll try to book reigns anyway and we'll get the same thing that happened this year

he seemed vicious in the shield, how could you not get behind him with the big survivor series & royal rumble performances and being the real tough motherfucker in the group? and then when they split, he... still couldn't work a match on his own, do more than 4 moves, cut a money promo.

i'm hoping ambrose gains 96/97 austin momentum, as he was ramping it up before he went to film his movie and fights brock at the royal rumble, only for bryan to come out #30 and fight brock at wm31. ambrose v bryan at summerslam or wm32. if bryans not fit, ambrose v brock with ambrose winning the title at wm31. and instead its gonna be reigns.

he will be good one day, but he needs ROCKY SUX chants or something.

So the Chicago Film Archives have been uploading a whole stack of 1950s matches featuring all sorts of big names in thoroughly watchable quality, and it's, erm, quite something...

It's totally alien basically, just completely different to anything you'd see today (and pretty boring for the most part tbh) but it definitely has its moments. For example, check out the spot at around 30 mins in on this video, Buddy Rogers dummying out of running the ropes and strutting off around the ring - very cool to see the origins of the sort of gimmicky stuff that would come later in the midst of this dirge of headlocks and rope-breaks

shit, link would be good

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqIHV0m29FU

Watching now.

i finally caught up on takeover and this weeks nxt. when did tyson kidd become good? also the lucha dragons are my new favourite wrestlers

I'm really enjoying this Lou Thesz v. Buddy Rogers match. I don't find it boring at all.

Yeah? I dunno, I think I'm more interested in it than actively enjoying it. I find 40 min+ matches a bit of a struggle with anyone other than my absolute favs though tbf

I love the psychology. I find most current matches too much about high spots and too little about storytelling through action.

Now I'm watching Verne Gagne versus Dick the Bruiser. This archive is amazing. Thanks so much!

Yeah I might spend a bit of time with this, try and work out what I'm missing. I'm one of those fans whose wrestling viewing and knowledge starts in about 1987, so the older slower paced stuff has never made too much sense to me. That said, I watched a Haystacks Calhoun match earlier and that was a joy - I went in expecting him to move like Mabel, but he was actually pretty mobile. Commentator was adding to the fun, doing a hilarious hillbilly accent imagining what haystacks might be saying to the opponent. As I said, thoroughly watchable

i've been reading Shooters and i really wish i could find some of the early matches they discuss online - i guess recordings of like gotch, farmer burns, ed lewis, etc don't really exist?

I've never seen any. But more and more stuff keeps popping up so keep searching now and again.

You might want to ease your way in with some of the early 80s WCCW and WCW stuff on the Network. The southern style hewed a lot closer to the old school until the early 90s, while the WWF got cartoony and over the top much earlier.

That said, this Gagne v Bruiser match is much more varied than the Thesz v. Rogers one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCMapMVXWG8

I stumbled across this a while back and really enjoyed it. The middle-aged women that seem to make up most of the front row are super into Thesz's dropkicks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cmzAhCWkV4

if you can track it down (there's some on youtube), i'd actually recommend some Memphis stuff, which is right at the balance of old school and cartoony

reigns gets emergency hernia surgey, missing night of champions:
http://www.wwe.com/shows/nightofchampions/2014/roman-reigns-breaking-news-26669136

hey, I wonder if that's why they had the match on Raw.

woo - loved this first match

http://uproxx.com/prowrestling/2014/09/brodus-clay-revealed-how-the-wwe-locker-room-dealt-with-darren-young-coming-out/

so I've started watching some of the WCCW stuff on WWE Network as EZ Snappin recommended, just finished the first episode. they seem to have intentionally started with an episode that sets up the very beginning of the Freebirds / Von Erich feud - the main story on the show is the arrival of Michael Hayes, who delivers a pretty fun promo trailing the appearance of Terry Gordy in a few weeks time.

The secondary story being that Kerry Von Erich has been put out of action by Great Kabuki who was reputedly trying to claim a $10000 bounty placed on the Von Erichs by Ric Flair, which I assume is gonna lead to the infamous Flair / Kerry Xmas match that kickstarts the Freebirds / Von Erich feud.

Best bit of the whole show is a taped interview where Flair answers the charges made against him and accepts Kerry Von Erich's challenge. Man I know it goes without saying but really it's not even funny how much better he was than every single other person involved in the show. What a great promo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EQ0qeccjrg

Hallelujah.

lol Kerry Von Erich was such a terrible promo

The Von Erichs all cut shitty promos.

https://twitter.com/theisb/status/516743482996977664

been digging monday night war mini-docs