Wrestling isn't about wrestling.
>>16710476No kidding
>>16710476Without the wrestling it's not wrestling.
>>16710476oh great, it's another PG sloppErs pretend they watch high art episode
the SPORT of professional wrestling
Wrestling is Sports Entertainment
>>16710476*just about wrestlingWithout the soap opera for males aspect it'd be boring as fuck. If that wasn't true we'd be watching greco-roman wrestling tournaments, but absolutely no one cares about that.Likewise, without people pretending to beat each other up it would actually just be a soap opera.
Maybe on Planet Retard (the core world of The WWE Universe)>>16710492based. Paul & Cena owe him royalties.
>>16710680greco-roman wrestling is boring as fuck to watch, but of course you've never actually done that
>>16710476Wrestling is a carny act where a skinny heel would jeer fairground crowds until a strongman would step up to challenge him. The marks would bet that the strongman would win and the heel would out-technique him and win. After the show, the strongman and the heel would split the winnings.Simple as.
>>16710476Au contraire, if it's not about wrestling it's not wrestling.If I want to watch high drama and people talking at each other I can watch hundreds of other shows out there that do it way better.This is the real reason pro-wrestling is dead. It wasn't MMA that did it in. It was Breaking Bad.
>>16710492Based
>>16710476AEW is, WWE is about slop (sports entertainment)
>>16710476It's about talking and character relationships. The wrestling is the product but the characters talking and interacting is what sells it.
>>16711652AEW isn't about wrestling at all. It's about Tony fulfilling his gay fantasies of twinks doing shitty gymnastics.
>>16711653>It's about talking and character relationships. The wrestling is the product but the characters talking and interacting is what sells it.Shame it does neither of those things better than any other TV program, maybe that's why wrestling has been on the decline?Seemed to do best when it was focused more on, I dunno, actual wrestling. And I'm not talking about AEW slop either.
>>16711660>Seemed to do best when it was focused more on, I dunno, actual wrestlingWhat era was this? Because I know you aren't talking about the attitude era. Those boring, unwatchable 80s wrestling matches? Is that when you think the focus was on the wrestling, you think all those restholds made it popular and not the larger than life characters talking & interacting? Say what you mean, I'm down to hash this out.
>>16711640Pro wrestling was never about wrestling and it never will be. Even shit-tier bingo hall indies involve storytelling. If you want wrestling then go watch amateur wrestling. The kind that's actually real.
>>16711682Exactly. It's about a select few individuals conveying a level of realness and personal ethos that resonates with the audience who invests in their characters over time and become increasingly excited to see their clashing styles play out with and against each other in their chosen sport/workplace as they strive to be the best. WWE has failed at this for a long time with all the contrived suffering succotash scripted dogshit and endless humiliation rituals, and AEW has failed at this for most of its existence by putting 200+ guys a year on TV yet most rarely or never speak and are never seen more than once every week or two at most, with everyone always disappearing randomly for months at a time. AEW is the bigger mess but I like watching it more because the matches are much better (again, the matches are the product) and because WWE is the most dead-set on being slow, bad, and boring in every regard. But both are so far away from doing pro wrestling right.
>>16711682Nice attempt to evade the point.For better or for worse, it was always about *matches*. Yes, you have stories to drive the matches. But match-centric product, not story-centric.WWE fans want wrestling to be story-centric. Which is fine, kudos to you if you enjoy that. But there are a shit ton of other shows and movies that do story-centric programming way better. Normies watched wrestling when wrestling was centered around wrestling. They don't want to watch Monday Night Wrestling Theater. "But AEW" doesn't count as a rebuttal because it's just acrobatics and the story telling indeed sucks.WCW in its prime did it best and that's why it revived wrestling when it was on its last legs back in the 90s. WWF merely capitalized on that, was successful for a very short time, then bled viewership.
>edrones contort their brains into pretzels trying to justify watching shitty wrestling and hokey melodrama
>>16710476If this was true, LA Knight would be a world champion. Do you know why he isn't? Because at one point, after all the in-ring promos, interviews, entrances etc. the bell has to ring.
e-drones are fucking stupid
>>16710686Especially Paul. He even stole his hat.
>>16710697>>16711640>>16711653>>16711670>>16711682>>16711747if the matches dont matter why the fuck are you watching a pg show for the stories lmfaoo
>>16711853as Daniel Tosh once said>if technical superiority was all that mattered, Arn Anderson would be the greatest wrestler of all timeand then he threw up the symbol of excellence
>>16711920francine is still hotter today than stephanie was in 2000 i dont care what any of you idiots say
>>16711924who the fuck is saying matches doesn't matter?You know what doesn't matter? The Rock doing a 20 minutes promo about nothing...
I started watching pro-wrestling as a kid back in the 80s. I stopped watching for a while until the mid/late 90's, with WCW and the NWO. Watched that until it got bad, switched to WWF for a few years, then stopped watching for a good 15 years or so until around 2019.In other words, I was about as close to the "normie" world as you can get and still be a pro-wrestling fan at heart.As stated earlier, when wrestling is less about wrestling and more about stories, it offers nothing that can't be found elsewhere and it does it much more poorly. Why would I want to watch WWE storyline X when I could be watching Breaking Bad, or Better Call Saul, or Justified, or Yellowstone, or Boardwalk Empire, or any of the countless shows that tell a story infinitely better. WWE isn't competing against MMA or the indies, it's competing against real television and, insofar as it tries to be story-based, it's working against those other shows' wheelhouse.Yes, wrestling is a story-based medium. Wrestlers tell stories both in and out of the ring. But when it becomes about the stories themselves instead of the wrestling and the spectacle implicit in wrestling, it falls flat. This is why pro-wrestling has bled viewers all these years.I talk to other former wrestling fans once in a while. The reason they don't watch is because it's all talking and entrances with little going on in the ring.AEW sucks because it's run by a mark who thinks wrestling is acrobatics and tells shit stories around it. NJPW would never succeed in the US because it's *too* match-based. There are stories there but most people need them told a bit more directly than that.For wrestling to be good again, it needs to be centered around good matches that bring spectacle to people's lives. Sports-based, but with bits of story thrown in. AEW promised this and initially drew disillusioned fans back, but fell on its ass when it failed to deliver.
>>16712119AEW is exactly what you're talking about, you're just a herd animal who lets words on a screen dictate your reality.
>>16712119>As stated earlier, when wrestling is less about wrestling and more about stories, it offers nothing that can't be found elsewhere and it does it much more poorly>I talk to other former wrestling fans once in a while. The reason they don't watch is because it's all talking and entrances with little going on in the ringIn your own words, WWE doesn't even do stories anymore. It's mostly filler shit with a single small thing happening to advance any story at a pace of once a week or less. You aren't demonstrating that stories don't work in wrestling. TV shows actually have a lot of shit going on in almost every single ep. Stories in wrestling work just as well when this is the case. You need to give people a reason to tune in each week and reward them for doing so; WWE does neither. It's all just entrances and ads and meaningless fluff segments where nothing actually happens to advance any story beyond at a glacial pace.
>>16712119(continued)WWE, on the other hand, goes too far in the other direction. The matches have a ton of build up and often end up bland like what we saw on that Netflix Raw debut. It might spark some interest in old fans but it has a lot to do if it's going to keep them.There's quite a bit of hate for it around here, but part of what draws a lot of people into joshi these days is that it tells low-key stories built around wrestlers that get people invested in them. Sure, some are coomers and what not but the point is they watch and the shows are match based. Again, this is not something that would succeed in the US but it's a hint of the right direction to take.Prime wrestling in the US was what we saw in the territories and later in WCW. There were great stories, but you really just tuned in for some wrasslin' and it was okay to have filler matches with no real story behind them (which could potentially turn into stories if the workers did good things together).Point is, no one's getting it right. WWE's downfall was when corporate went public. Its storytelling was built around the type of spectacle that scares investors off. Instead, its focus moved from making money by entertaining people to just squeezing as much profit out of the product as possible while trying to be as inoffensive as possible. Moving to Netflix isn't going to change that.
>>16712156I liked a few weeks ago when Dynamite opened up with a recap package, if Tony was smart he'd start doing that every week. There's a reason shows like LOST and Breaking Bad open like that, it's to draw new viewers in and make them feel like they have the requisite information to participate in the show.
>>16712128>>16712156Please read what I'm saying more carefully.I'm not saying you don't need stories. What I"m saying is that when entrances and people talking are *most* of your two to three hour show, most people are going to tune out.You need some story and decent matches to back them up. Don't think AEW - think prime WCW.Those are two very different things.
>>16710476its about Stories plain and simple, smarks dont understand that, they always cry scream and bitch when the wrestling is lame on weekly RAWs and SmackDowns thats because they arent risking injuries before a PLE where the actual wrestling occurs, they are absolute buffons
>>16712156Sorry, I included you in this (>>16712176) but I think we're in agreement; it was aimed more at the other anon.
>>16712176AEW right now is better than prime WCW.
>>16712194
>>16710476And you let imbreed win
Wrestling is all that matters
>>16712209>*Tips Fedora*
>>16712194It's not though. No stars and the wrestling is more highlight-reel spot-fest than something which could be confused for actual fighting.Prime WCW had its flaws (and some shit booking) but it got its presentation right and that is what drew people. AEW, on the other hand, claims a gravitas it hasn't earned and comes across as too try-hard to keep anyone around.I give it a shot every once in a while, much as I do with WWE, and I always end up tuning out again after a few shows. But I will give it kudos for trying.
>>16712176What I'm saying is you're claim that tv shows fundamentally do "stories" better than wrestling isn't true. It's only true the way WWE does it where stories take months for anything to happen to advance them. The stories should be shorter and should be constantly advanced. Entrances and ads and "people talking" is shit if nothing is actually happening and no one is into who is talking and what is being said and know it won't go anywhere for a long ass time. I mean, obviously. You're citing WWE's awful state and saying that proves some truth about wrestling writ large, I'm telling you it doesn't. All it proves is that drip-drip-drip ""storytelling"" drives people away en masse because who the fuck would put up with that beyond autistic wrestling diehards? Nobody.
>>16712219look at this adhd zoomer
>>16712201>>16712218
>>16712192Ah ok, well here was my reply >>16712219
>>16712225you are the one coping, even WCW in 2000 is better then the slop peddled by AEW now
>>16710476heh, BoomerChad here
>>16712229nah you're just a fag
>>16712219I think we're in agreement actually, I don't disagree with any of that.I mean, I watch wrestling for the wrestling-based stories. My favorite story as of late was over in Stardom a couple years ago - there was a rookie (Waka) who just could not win. Worse, she always took the loss. Part of a team? That team was going to lose because of Waka. It culminated in a match where Waka had to have a match against a grizzled veteran (Nanae Takahashi) who wasn't putting *anyone* over and, if she didn't win, she had to quit.When she won that match, it legit brought a tear to my eye. I don't get that from much wrestling out there.It told a story. A great story, really. But it wasn't shoved in anyone's face and, like you said, it wasn't drip-drip-drip. And I guess what I'm saying is that it only worked because it was wrestling -- saying wrestling isn't about wrestling really misses the point.
>>16712231Stop trying to get yourself over. Wait for your push like everyone else.
