Board 8 > All-Purpose Wrestling Topic 451: Clocks are banned so it's no longer Vader Time

(+) Yeah! (+)

I'm watching

Super Abridged Raw
Super Abridged Smackdown (sometimes I actually watch it live)
Lucha Underground (through Netflix, currently in season 2)

Then I also watch NJPW and Impact sporadically-- mostly just matches here and there for NJPW and for Impact it's usually just random episodes on Pluto TV when I get bored.

Also I actually like Castlevania 2 along with a lot of things AVGN hates on (Double Dragon 3 and Ninja Gaiden come to mind) but I do think AVGN is generally correct on LJN so I'm skeptical I would actually like Friday the 13th. Skeptical enough to never want to bother playing it, in any case.
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I'll try to catch all WWE Network Specials/PPVs or whatever they call them now
Sometimes Raw
Sometimes SD

I'd like to get into some of the NJPW stuff but I don't have the time to learn about all of the other people there, so I'm unfortunately stuck with WWE only for now.

Man I loved Castlevania 2, more than any of the other numbered entries. Definitely no Symphony of the Night, but the comparison there really isn't fair. Loved Ninja Gaiden as well. Clearing 2 with no game genie is still one of my prouder gaming moments.
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Also LJN eventually made one of the best games ever in Maximum Carnage. They were an odd duck of a company
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- Impact
- Lucha
- random CMLL and NJPW irregularly
- whatever OSW Review is watch ing
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RaidenZeroX posted...

I'd like to get into some of the NJPW stuff but I don't have the time to learn about all of the other people there, so I'm unfortunately stuck with WWE only for now.

this is the best time of year to do so! the G1 is being broadcast entirely in English for the first time ever, which means near enough every other day for the next month there will be 5 singles matches between top NJPW guys, telling an overarching story building to the final on August 12. Watching the G1 is how I got hooked on New Japan, and back then it was substantially more difficult - only broadcast in Japanese and half the shows were single camera with no commentary at all.

If you're interested, but just don't know where to start, come talk to me on discord (http://discord.me/board-8) where I'll be happy to give you pointers and talk the shows with you.
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I'd say that there's no issue if you know no one in NJPW. You just have to start watching and pick up on it. Wrestling is easy that way. I likely would've started watching it by now if I had any free time of my own to watch it.
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NJPW
NXT
205Live
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-CHIKARA

And I'll watch LU whenever it goes on Netflix.
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I'll never stop watching Raw no matter how bad it gets and how much I hate it because me and my brother always watch Raw and every PPV and comment on it together from across the country since that's the most vivid memory we have with our father before he passed. He never missed an episode and we always watched it with him even when we kinda grew out of it for awhile before I got back into it
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Also I watch Raw, Smackdown, and 205 but would like to watch other stuff

205 is by far the best though so it'd be tough for anything else to match it to me

I started Lucha Underground and wanna get more into it
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NJPW and Being the Elite are the only things I watch regularly because I fell behind on a lot of things and I'm only now catching up. Working on EVOLVE and PWG at the moment. PROGRESS completely lost me with the Banks title run.
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RaidenZeroX posted...

GTM posted...

Wait i remember people explicitly telling us they are no longer watching raw and wanted us to know about it and now theyre watching raw?

I said I wasn't watching for a few weeks, not that I was never watching again. Didn't realize that having something better to do than watch a product that I wasn't interested in put me on MWC levels with you. Sorry that I was actually interested to see where they went after Extreme Rules, and felt like discussing it. I'll try to do better next time.

In fairness to GTM, he's only bringing it up because you felt the need to tell us you were specifically not watching and what you were doing instead, every single time. You could have just not said anything, like the rest of us do when we don't watch, which is clearly very often.
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HashtagSEP posted...

I'll never stop watching Raw no matter how bad it gets and how much I hate it because me and my brother always watch Raw and every PPV and comment on it together from across the country since that's the most vivid memory we have with our father before he passed. He never missed an episode and we always watched it with him even when we kinda grew out of it for awhile before I got back into it

Yeah similar to this I'd say the main reason I sorta follow WWE these days is to have stuff to chat about with my mom. She's been pretty down on the product too lately though so I could honestly see her dropping it before I make a point to which would basically end it outright. I actually have got her to watch Lucha Underground as well since it's on Netflix. If only NJPW had a good Roku friendly streaming service.
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davidponte posted...

In fairness to GTM, he's only bringing it up because you felt the need to tell us you were specifically not watching and what you were doing instead, every single time. You could have just not said anything, like the rest of us do when we don't watch, which is clearly very often.

Every single time = twice. You're acting like I did this every week for a year. You both got upset after it happened two times. Two. You say in fairness to him, but you're just defending yourself as well.

As far as the NJPW stuff goes, the time commitment is the bigger thing for me. I have two kids so if I'm lucky I end up with an hour, maybe two after they go to bed. Sometimes I'll end up going to sleep early, others I'll want to play more Friday the 13th, or whatever other game I'm working through on the backlog. With WWE stuff I know enough of what's going on where I can just have it in the background and look up if it seems like it's interesting. It very rarely has my full attention. If I start NJPW I'd want to be watching a lot closer, so it couldn't be background noise (if I'm making any sense there).
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I've been exposed
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RAW was meh this week but the sad thing is it's actually BETTER than its been in weeks.

They opened strong as usual but it all seemed to go South pretty quick.
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I'm strictly a youtube guy unless I'm told something really, really good happened on RAW or Smackdown.
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Speaking of bad and Raw, I need to find a clip of Sasha and Bayley's little segment last night.

Edit: Found it. What. The. Fuck.
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^ You don't, trust me.

That's one of the stories I'm currently skipping.
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Hardcore_Adult posted...

^ You don't, trust me.

That's one of the stories I'm currently skipping.

Yeah, now I'm wishing I would have refreshed this before opening a new tab and finding it.

At least Sasha didn't sound as bad as she normally does... I guess?
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I used to watch cringey segments for the novelty of it but this year has had them in so much abundance I'm doing the thing a sane person would do and skip them.
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The Sasha and Bayley segment was magical. My girlfriend and I re-enacted it constantly last night with the same awkward tones that Sasha Banks uses because she is incapable of reciting lines without a weird inflection.

Like honestly, I could believe English wasn't her first language if that segment was the only thing I ever saw her do.
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PrivateBiscuit1 posted...

The Sasha and Bayley segment was magical. My girlfriend and I re-enacted it constantly last night with the same awkward tones that Sasha Banks uses because she is incapable of reciting lines without a weird inflection.

Like honestly, I could believe English wasn't her first language if that segment was the only thing I ever saw her do.

How did you manage to deliver Bayley's lines? She sounds like a professional actor who is playing a character who isn't a trained actor and is intentionally reciting all of her lines with the wrong vocal expression, only in her case it's not pretend, she's just bad.

How does someone write that and think it's suitable to put on TV with two people who can't act.
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The whole Sasha/Bayley story is liquid ass.

Both are just beyond stale now.
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I know people will tell me I'm full of shit, but the WWE's decision to make Alexa Bliss the focus of the women's title for so damn long has ruined the women's division on RAW.

These two should be fighting over the belt.
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TheRock1525 posted...

These two should be fighting

I don't know about Alexa Bliss but you lost me here.
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The Women's Division on RAW has been kind of bleh since this modern era Brand split.
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Lopen posted...

TheRock1525 posted...

These two should be fighting

I don't know about Alexa Bliss but you lost me here.

Considering how good their Takeover matches were, yes they should be wrestling each other instead of trying to carry bad storylines.
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Ah, but Main Roster is something entirely different.

All that is once great down in NXT is "sanitized" when they "go upstairs".
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TheRock1525 posted...

I know people will tell me I'm full of shit, but the WWE's decision to make Alexa Bliss the focus of the women's title for so damn long has ruined the women's division on RAW.

These two should be fighting over the belt.

I agree with this, if that means anything.
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TheRock1525 posted...

I know people will tell me I'm full of shit, but the WWE's decision to make Alexa Bliss the focus of the women's title for so damn long has ruined the women's division on RAW.

These two should be fighting over the belt.

I'm one of Alexa's biggest fans, and I still agree with you completely. There are too many talented women (at least in the ring, Alexa's one of the best on the mic) to have several years with one person always being in the title picture. Give someone else a chance to shine, and see what they can do.

This whole Sasha "I love you" thing would definitely have a lot more to it if the belt was involved. It becomes a possible mind games scenario, where Sasha is trying to get in Bayley's head. What's the reason for that now? Because of a zero stakes match they might eventually have? Is she secretly in love with Bayley, even though her prior actions don't add up when you look at it that way?

It's like this is fanfiction written by an 8th grader.
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I don't know, the Sasha/Bayley story is okay in my eyes, it's probably unintentional but I find the whole thing kind of funny. It gets dragged out for an eternity for no reason and has multiple points where they start to fight only to pretend it never happens, Bayley snaps post-match and gets cheered for it, the therapy stuff was kind of dumb but now we're on to acting like these two have always been best friends and barely acknowledging Bayley's attack on Sasha a while ago. Pretty amusing. Granted I don't exactly have the highest opinion of wrestling stories in general so a wrestling story being unintentionally funny for how bad it is is honestly close to as good as it gets for me
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The Psych crap only works with certain people and it's NOT *those* two.
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Well I think I missed the part where making them fight means they get to avoid the bad storylines. Alexa vs Bayley for the belt was probably a worse storyline than this one! Some good matches would be nice but this feud would be ass with or without a belt involved because they don't know when to pull the trigger and it should've ended months ago.
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Maybe if it was Ruthless Aggression era Smackdown, I'd find it more palatable.
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I think Nia Jax being anywhere near the title is damaging too because she's so utterly bad and unsafe. I'm okay with Alexa being in the title picture, but I don't think there's been more than two months where she hasn't been on the title picture on both Raw and Smackdown.
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There is a skeleton for a good women's division on Raw

Using Mickie James and Natalya more would fix it a lot more than anything rooted to Bayley, Alexa Bliss, Sasha, or even Nia.
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At this point, I'd rather the RAW Women's title got Alundra Blayzed.

Or before that happened, at least give Mickie that 7th Reign she's crying for.

Okay, she's got a few more miles on the clock than the rest but it'd be really a good career capper instead of being Alexa's whipping girl. Even if was for 1 night/7 days/etc.
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8 p.m. 3.12 million viewers
9 p.m. 2.86 million viewers
10 p.m. 2.62 million viewers

Big first hour but then a descent to the average level

They successfully hooked people with the Brock thing but didnt keep them
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Well, RAW as of 2018 usually does its best work/business in Hour 1.

After that it's all downhill.
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I wonder at what point people stop tuning in for promises of Brock because they realize there's a good chance he won't show up even when advertised anyway
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It's almost like the prospect of Roman vs Lesnar doesn't appeal to people.

Also, I think the worst thing they did with Alexa's reign (except for murdering Bayley's career) was not giving the title to Mickie James when she was so red hot. People were going crazy for her when she feuded Alexa.
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^ It's because

* It's been done to death.
* People hate/have given up on Roman
* People are TIRED of Brock and this Suplex City shit, not to mention HEYMAN GOING ON AND ON AND ON AND ON ABOUT HIS CLIENT BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAROCK LESNAAAAAAAAAAAAR. zzzz
* Vince, who I respect for all he has done, is a numbnut when it comes to modern booking
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PrivateBiscuit1 posted...

It's almost like the prospect of Roman vs Lesnar doesn't appeal to people.

Also, I think the worst thing they did with Alexa's reign (except for murdering Bayley's career) was not giving the title to Mickie James when she was so red hot. People were going crazy for her when she feuded Alexa.

Nah, the WWE doesn't need more one month nostalgia act title runs.

The real problem was two fold:

Never committing to a long Sasha title run.

Giving Bayley her first title in the worst way possible.

Bliss getting swapped for Charlotte just made things worse for everyone involved.
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TheRock1525 posted...

Nah, the WWE doesn't need more one month nostalgia act title runs.

I'm more a fan of capitalizing on momentum, when Mickie was the only one with any of it at the time. WWE rarely capitalizes on momentum, which is arguably their biggest flaw right now.
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It's been their biggest flaw for the past 10-15 years or so.
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Hardcore_Adult posted...

Ah, but Main Roster is something entirely different.

All that is once great down in NXT is "sanitized" when they "go upstairs".

Has nothing to do with Sanitation.

NXT is a pre taped show where you have the ability to rehearse your big matches. The Grind of the main roster makes it so that's not possible unless you can rehearse during house shows (which they've stopped doing in the advent of live event reports)
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WWE is giving away Almas vs. Styles on free TV tonight because they dumb.
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TheRock1525 posted...

WWE is giving away Almas vs. Styles on free TV tonight because they dumb.

Because Almas isn't a main roster draw...
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Lmao "giving away" Almas as if he's something of value at this point
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