State Your Case: Why do think TNA and WWE are good/bad?

[Bobo]

Originally Posted by Ultra Mantis I bet you haven't done a single one of those things.

Other than boning the bosses daughter why on Earth would I want to be a druggie break my neck! have a heart attack or die?

[Bobo]

Originally Posted by Shisen Kopf Wrestle-licious

Santino v Beth Phoenix in a boxing match would have been awesome.

[KIRA]

Originally Posted by whiteyford He was being pushed long before Stephanie was in the equation, and after HBK was out 'retired', so if this is going to be all you have outside asinine paedo comments I think you should take a break.

THIS (fucking hell I'm defending Triple H)

[owenbrown]

starting to have flashbacks of this thread....

http://www.tpwwforums.com/showthread.php?t=50308

[Nowhere Man]

I'm gonna attempt to steer this back on topic and State My Case.

WWE:

The Good:

*WWE has, without even a slight bit of exaggeration, the absolute best collection of wrestling talent in the world. If you're a snob for workrate like I am, you've got Daniel Bryan, CM Punk, Dolph Ziggler, Antonio Cesaro, Seth Rollins, etc. If you're into big-man power wrestling, you've got Mark Henry, Big Show, Langston, and company. If you like talkers with lots of personality, you've got (again) Punk, Bray Wyatt, John Cena (when he's motivated), mouthpieces like Paul Heyman and Zeb Colter, and so on. And if you like slow and boring wrestling like Steele, you've got Randy and Triple H

In all seriousness, though, WWE has something for everyone, and a lot of it.

*The in-ring action lately has been some of the best it's ever been. Guys like Daniel Bryan and CM Punk being elevated into main event spots certainly has a lot to do with that, pushing mainstays like Cena and Randy to step up their own game and put on some fantastic matches. And the whole card is packed with goodness-- the Tag Team division in particular has been on fire recently (though it'd help if the titles would change hands more). And that's to say nothing of the up-and-comers on NXT busting their asses in order to get noticed by the higher-ups (and yes, a lot of my love for NXT comes from me being totally in love with the women there and my giant man-crush on Sami Zayn, but sue me)

*On top of that, they've got the best production values, not just in terms of getting the biggest venues and having the coolest sets, but making their angles and moments seem so much more important than anything anyone else can manage. Seriously, whoever makes their video packages deserves a goddamn medal.

*While they rarely make mention of it on the main show, the fact that they've got all the assets to not just their own classic history, but that of WCW and ECW, gives them an incredible legacy to pull from. Nowhere is this more evident than on WWE.com, where they go out of their way to acknowledge old gimmicks, defunct promotions, etc. Seriously, wrestling history is pretty awesome, and WWE has pretty much all of it.

*The Big PPVs, namely Wrestlemania and the Royal Rumble. Even the worst Royal Rumble is still pretty damn fun, and even the weakest Wrestlemanias have at least one genuine classic moment. Summerslam is typically a great show, too, if not quite up there. If only they'd bring back King of the Ring and make Survivor Series worth a damn again, but still, at least three of the 'Big Five' keep my attention.

The Bad:

*Despite having the absolute best roster on Earth, Creative seems to only have worthwhile material for about 15% of them at any given time. Sure, it's awesome to see Bryan feuding with Bray Wyatt or the character development within the Shield that's leading to their inevitable breakup, but it's heartbreaking to see Dolph Ziggler, Damian Sandow, and to a lesser extent Curtis Axel, Kofi Kingston, the Miz, etc, just floating nebulously in the midcard having the exact same match over and over and over, knowing full well that it accomplishes absolutely nothing. Either hire better idea-people to make everyone on the show worth watching, or cut your losses and release the people you're not actually interested in utilizing.

*Ignoring their own history, or completely rewriting it. Yeah, I get that they wanted this recent Title Unification to be a big deal, but did we really have to do it at the expense of the original Unification back in 2001? So now they're telling us that the WCW World Title that Chris Jericho unified with the WWF Title somehow isn't connected to the original NWA World Heavyweight Title, but the one that Eric Bischoff broke out the next year because Triple H needed a Title somehow is. My own personal distaste for Trips aside, the fact that they needed to discredit a much better event to promote a match that wasn't even particularly good was cringe-worthy. This one gets downright infuriating sometimes, where wrestlers completely forget their own past as soon as one feud ends and another begins. I'm supposed to believe that Rey Mysterio and John Cena are just completely cool being buddies with CM Punk after all the shit he put them through in their respective feuds? And it's not like Punk ever had a change of heart-- he just went from "guy who is an asshole to faces" to "guy who is an asshole to heels."

*While I'm at it, all of the 'good guys' are total assholes. I am getting so goddamn tired of feuds where the heel is completely and totally right, and the face's only response is "Yeah? Well I'm just gonna kick your ass!" Sandow versus Sheamus was far and away the most egregious example this year, but there are so many times where a face will be motivated by the most petty negative bullshit--grossly disproportionate revenge for a slight, repeatedly mocking and bullying someone for being snobby (or often just for being Vickie Guerrero), etc. I know this happens in TNA and the indies too, but WWE is a multi-billion-dollar corporation reaching an audience of millions, and is intentionally marketing themselves as a family-friendly program. Going "Hey kids, being a violent, ignorant, arrogant, usually misogynistic, often homophobic, and generally abusive bully is totally cool as long as you're more popular than the people you're hurting!" is not an acceptable message to be promoting on a PG show.

*WWE currently has Joey Styles and William Regal on their payroll, and yet they choose to have fucking Michael Cole and JBL as their announce team. So even when the show is at its best, I still have to hear Bradshaw spouting his awful incessant redneck hate-noise at all times, at least when there's not a painfully long pause in the conversation or the corpse of Jerry Lawler belching out an un-funny grandpa joke.

*The Divas Division is a goddamn joke, and there's no excuse for it. Seriously, watch an NXT match of Emma or Paige or Bailey (also, anyone else think it's kinda wrong that most of the women don't get last names?) putting on the best match of the night on a show full of good-to-great matches, and then watch the Total Divas playing musical chairs with Lawler or linking arms to do horrible-looking chain clotheslines. It's fucking disgraceful, and it honestly feels even more dehumanizing and degrading than in the Attitude Era where they would just parade the women around in their underwear--at least then it was implied that they were adults and not a bunch of obnoxious awful high-school 'mean girls.' They obviously don't give a shit; you've got over a dozen of them on the roster, and half of them turn heel or face for no reason other than to balance the teams out. Just bring the NXT ladies up on the main roster, then fire all the Divas that aren't AJ Lee or Summer Rae (and I guess the Bellas if it keeps Cena and Bryan happy).

*Quit trying to do comedy sketches. You don't have comedians writing or performing them, so they are never, ever funny. They're just painful and go on forever.



I'll do one for TNA later, once I've cleansed my proverbial palette.

[Emperor Smeat]

WWE Good:
* Great tag and multi-man matches the past 1-2 years
* NXT has been really good
* The added hour of RAW has lead to a lot of great matches being possible
* Lots of great talent on the roster
* Brock Lesnar

WWE Bad:
* Creative and booking has been a really weak spot the past few years. Pretty much a mix of the WWE doing a poor job generating new top stars, relying way too much on Cena and past big stars, being really inconsistent in storylines or direction, and panicking way too quickly when something goes wrong.
* Authority angle has been a big mess with Orton and Bryan being impacted the worst.
* Ryback in regards to how badly he's been handled in recent times.
* RAW commentary team being bad a lot more than good the past few years. JBL has been a bit annoying assuming he really is Vince's mouthpiece while Lawler has been the weak link for years.


TNA Good:
* Lots of great talent on the roster
* Impact having its moments when it produces better overall shows than RAW.
* Bully Ray's rise in recent years.

TNA Bad:
* Aces & Eights storyline overall dragged on way too much.
* Hogan and Bischoff doing more harm than good during their time with the company.
* Creative and booking being the really big weak point of TNA for years.
* Being over-reliant on having big surprises that either end up as a huge laughing stock or ruined quickly.

[#1-norm-fan]

Crying Jericho pretty much sums up WWE's terrible "come up with something now, think of a reason later" booking technique. It's really something even the worst TV writers probably look at and think "Holy fuck, how do people get paid for this!?!?" Seems like one of the most basic things you would learn before becoming a professional writer is not to start a story without having any idea where the fuck to go with it.

[Tom Guycott]

TNA needs to get out of their own way and stop chasing WWE's shadow. Even WWE took over 3 decades to become WWE, and they need to quit convincing themselves they can re-create that in a year to 18 months. If they would have just kept all the things that had worked for them and scrapped what didn't as apposed to repeatedly hitting the reset button on the promotion, they could have been making decent noise for themselves by now.

WWE needs to stop losing interest in people in 6 months. If a noob don't hit megastar instantly anymore, WWE seems to treat them as if they're somehow a lost cause. Cena didn't become Cena overnight (neccessity at the time aside), The Rock didn't become The Rock overnight. Honestly, Hulkamania wasn't overnight. It took an investment in time from fans actually giving a shit about them- and part of that was because they were given a reason to in that time.

In both these things, TNA and WWE are kinda similar: impatience. They both want a quick fix for something that takes a lot more time than they seem to be willing to want to invest. For TNA, its their image as a company and for WWE it's that next crossover megastar.

[MIZantine Empire]

I watch both brands, and actually am entertained by the two.. But tna does some stupid shit sometimes.. They have Eric young trying to prove to Joseph park that he is abyss.. So of course he doesn't roll op parks sleeves to show him the tattoos on his arms... Lol just way too drawn out of a story line that is unnecessary.. Wwe does some dumb shit too, but tna makes me question why I watch it sometimes.. Lol

[Fignuts]

Fuckin' muties.

[Mr. Nerfect]

Are we still discussing Triple H? Have we accepted that he is one of the WWE's biggest stars ever whether you like him or not?

[Mr. Nerfect]

I am glad Nowhere Man mentioned that he finds it wrong many of the Divas don't get last names. This actually does bother me sometimes. I've gotten more and more used to it, but can you imagine a wrestler named "Blake" winning the World Heavyweight Championship? It was odd enough when Christian won the World Title as "Christian."

[Innovator]

Originally Posted by Tom Guycott TNA needs to get out of their own way and stop chasing WWE's shadow. Even WWE took over 3 decades to become WWE, and they need to quit convincing themselves they can re-create that in a year to 18 months. If they would have just kept all the things that had worked for them and scrapped what didn't as apposed to repeatedly hitting the reset button on the promotion, they could have been making decent noise for themselves by now. WWE needs to stop losing interest in people in 6 months. If a noob don't hit megastar instantly anymore, WWE seems to treat them as if they're somehow a lost cause. Cena didn't become Cena overnight (neccessity at the time aside), The Rock didn't become The Rock overnight. Honestly, Hulkamania wasn't overnight. It took an investment in time from fans actually giving a shit about them- and part of that was because they were given a reason to in that time. In both these things, TNA and WWE are kinda similar: impatience. They both want a quick fix for something that takes a lot more time than they seem to be willing to want to invest. For TNA, its their image as a company and for WWE it's that next crossover megastar.

I think if WWE doubles their rights fees (which they should considering they got hosed last time) and the Network takes off, it'll almost "creative-proof" the company where they can take time with guys rather than worry about the ratings and spiking them.

[Heisenberg]

WWE Good:

Mainstay of the wrestling world

Attitude Era and other parts of the past to lean on

Set the standard or improved a lot of things within the realm of wrestling

Big supporter of troops


WWE Bad:

PG atmosphere currently, has hardcore fans yearning for another Attitude era, but there is no WCW to watch until it happens like last time.

Feels like RAW is being decided that day mid-card wise. I remember enjoying the Steve Blackman and Al Snow shit, the stables like Right To Censor and all other middle man goodness. I rarely enjoy seeing Kofi and the Miz going at it. I love all the performers and all, but they need to stable everyone up and make it worthwhile. They are only using stables to form new talent like The Shield and Wyatts, Nexus too. Some of the older folk need to group up and sell some merch.

TNA Good:

Match quality

Lets you know when the talent arrive to the building, sometimes will show them arriving to make sure you know that they are there. Very important to me at times.

Shark Boy and Curry Man

House shows are on point and interactive


TNA Bad:

Rockstar Spud makes me turn off IMPACT

Dixie Carter started talking, major boner killa

Episodes are unbearable to sit through

[Heisenberg]

Got a .gif to lead off that super serious post

[Bobo]

Originally Posted by Noid I am glad Nowhere Man mentioned that he finds it wrong many of the Divas don't get last names. This actually does bother me sometimes. I've gotten more and more used to it, but can you imagine a wrestler named "Blake" winning the World Heavyweight Championship? It was odd enough when Christian won the World Title as "Christian."

Wrestlers without last names? Meng, Wrath, Haku, Sabu, Barbarian, Virgil, Vincent, Yokozuna, Goldberg, Mankind, Sting, Edge, Christian, Sheamus......................................... The last seven names, did you find it odd when they won?



I get your point though.....kind of......maybe.

[Sexton-Hardcastle]

Of all of those only Christian and Sheamus have anything that a sane person would class as a first name.... Goldberg IS the guys last name for christ sake..

The rest are all single 'character' names and thus nullify the point you are failing to make and accentuate the very valid point that Noid eloquently did make...

Well done.

[Rammsteinmad]

Both companies have great wrestlers on their rosters, and shit wrestlers on their rosters. They both have writers/creative people who know what they're doing, and they both have people that throw shit together with no idea where it's going. They both make mistakes, and they both do good things.

Only real difference is that WWE has the history and the budget to make it seem more important.

[Bobo]

Originally Posted by Sexton-Hardcastle Of all of those only Christian and Sheamus have anything that a sane person would class as a first name.... Goldberg IS the guys last name for christ sake.. The rest are all single 'character' names and thus nullify the point you are failing to make and accentuate the very valid point that Noid eloquently did make... Well done.

Oh go fuck yourself you little cunt face mother fucker.

[CSL]

Originally Posted by Fignuts Fuckin' muties.

[Mr. Nerfect]

Originally Posted by Bobo Wrestlers without last names? Meng, Wrath, Haku, Sabu, Barbarian, Virgil, Vincent, Yokozuna, Goldberg, Mankind, Sting, Edge, Christian, Sheamus......................................... The last seven names, did you find it odd when they won? I get your point though.....kind of......maybe.

Yeah, most of them are not first names, Bobo...

[Anybody Thrilla]

Wrath Smith

[Anybody Thrilla]

Barbarian Harris

[Mr. Nerfect]

Sting Peters

[Mr. Nerfect]

Mankind Goldstein

[Mr. Nerfect]

Yokozuna P. Jackson

[Mr. Nerfect]

Edge O'Reilly-James

[Bobo]

Just to pick up on a point I made in the WCW 2001 thread is despite it's shortcomings and criticisms, I think TNA right now is still a much better product than WCW ever was between 1999 to 2001.

I can only say that from a uk perspective but though I was a huge WCW fan back in the day other than recorded episodes of nitro and thunder on a Friday night on TNT, wcw's presence in the uk was non existent. Merchandise was hard to come by and had to be ordered by mail for extortionate prices, they never toured the uk and we never once had any of the Ppvs broadcast here either live or in their entirety and I suspect that was the same in other territories worldwide.

It wasn't until about 2000 that WCW even began touring the uk and or making promotional appearances and even then it was a pisstake and was already too late. So despite winning the Monday night wars outside the US WCW was nowhere near WWE i terms of popularity.

TNA however learned from WCWs mistakes at a very early stage perhaps having had the benefit of witnessing what happened before. But almost from its inception TNA had a presence in the Uk and worldwide with a specific TNA European website and shop, multiple programming other than just impact episodes including Ppvs either live or recorded. TNAs tours are not that bad either, they put on a decent show, the fan interaction events are great etc.

In other words TNA aimed to be a global product from its inception whereas even at the peak of their popularity, WCW seemed to care little about international markets and had they been a bit more considerate of that, they perhaps wouldn't have gone the way they did.

[Curd]

Originally Posted by Bobo As I said before since the demise of WCW, the quality of WWE programming has diminished. I mean seriously having the muppets, three stooges and Seth green on Raw? Just as bad as when they had Robocop and Chucky on WCW. The management are two faced hypocritical cunts too. I love how they unceremoniously sacked JR and then had the nerve to 'pay tribute' to him on twitter and on wwe.com.

Yeah, Seth Green was an iffy host because the PG rating held him back. Green would have been gold if allowed to do TV14 stuff like "Goldust got fingered".

[Innovator]

PG isn't holding them back, a lot of great tv and movies are PG. Shitty writing is holding them back.

[Innovator]

And go back and rewatch the almighty Attitude Era. 70% of it is unwatchable it's so bad.

[whiteyford]

Inno knows.

[whiteyford]

The Hogan era was PG, WCW for the most part was PG, never got the whole PG is ruining wrestling argument, XPW was far from PG and was generally terrible.

And yeah the Attitude era is vastly overrated, it had some amazing stuff but also some amazingly bad stuff.

[Anybody Thrilla]

Naked Mideon. Yikes.

[#1-norm-fan]

Originally Posted by Innovator PG isn't holding them back, a lot of great tv and movies are PG. Shitty writing is holding them back.

Pretty much this. I could care less what rating they wanna go. Just make it compelling.

I do think they've taken the PG rating as a reason to not try though. Kids are stupid. They don't need compelling storylines or anything. So just throw some random guys out in a meaningless match and throw in a comedy segment geared toward 5 year olds every once in a while and you're all set.

[scatterbrain28]

Originally Posted by Fastway Foley was nothing more then a glorified stuntman, a trash wrerstler and when you take that away you have nothing. While Jericho was a big star he was also known for injuring his opponents and botching spots on a regular basis While an awesome wrestler Eddie sucked on the mike and it took him juicing to go up the ladder. He was a good midcarder. Edge had the look but not the charisma, you take away the TLC matches and what do you have left? GORE GORE GORE!! Angle was an awesome wrestler but clumsy on the mike and still is

Man if you consider these guys amateur hour then I just wonder what your idea of great wrestling is and what a great promo looks like. I hope you at least like Stone Cold Steve Austin.