....And It's Gone
 

Apparently there are rumors swirling that the NOD 2.0 angle with Big E, Kofi, and Xavier Woods has already been dropped before it got going. I for one wa sinterested in a new angle, possibly heel, for Kofi.


Discuss.

what the fuck man

i hope it isn't dropped, but let's not pretend like it will lead to anything that matters if it isn't. which is unfortunate, but about 99% likely.

call it blind optimism, but any time you give performers who aren't given much to do, something to do, it can fizzle into nothing eventually, but if its entertaining and can get a guy over, thats a win. like, i didnt know how good xavier woods was on the mic before they actually give him a chance to do somethin.

the fact is, the shit will get over if WWE actually tried doing something different, creative with it. and kept it up. along with a lot of their other guys who are kinda just floundering.

Wouldn't surprise me. It'd be hard to have a stable of all black guys banding together to demand opportunity and respect and not have it come off as a heel group. Whilst they face criticism for giving black guys stereotypical or non-existent characters, they'd start a shit-storm if they made them the bad guys.

I feel like it could have done a lot of good for guys with stale characters. At least given them something to do. Let the performers fail at getting over, then drop the angle, but why not at least give them a chance.

They told Austin he wouldnt get over just showing up in black trunks and drinking beer.

They thought a guy with a white rapper gimmick would never make it

They thought a just over 5 foot guy with a scraggly beard didnt fit the bill.

They all got over. Christ people still chant for Ziggler and dude lost almost every match he was in for a year.

It cant help to at least give them some TV time to try to connect with the fans.

I was really excited about it because I think it gives Kofi something important to do. The guy is one of the most talented wrestlers, but he is sitting in mid-card hell. A heel turn for Kofi would be perfect. I think he can play the heel card very well. Get him some new music and have him tone down his excitement and I think he can be a top guy.

i agree wholeheartedly. utilize his strengths, hide the weaknesses. but hey, whatever.

DAMN

And you guys just keep on watching it...and i know, im a member of this website, but i seriously havent kept up with it going on 2 years. I just look at DVDs, documentaries, and interviews. I just cant fatham the fact that a company gives its customers what they DONT want about 70% of the time, yet the customer keeps coming back.

We need to start looking at this as an actual BUSINESS. When people stop throwing money to it, then the company will go back to the blueprint of what got them to their previous apex. Yea, its the interest factor to know/see what will happen next, what type of character will be shown from Wrestler A, B, and C, etc but honestly, ive been a wrestling fan since i was like 6. Yea, i didnt get the ends and outs of it at that time, nor am i saying i do now, but you guys can agree that you FELT something different when things were being booked as if its "do or die".

I guess with WCW falling under and ECW just washing away, there isnt that sense of urgency from the WWE. TNA wasn't even competition, it was just somewhere to dump former WWE talent that had past their prime or didnt work out. I think that if i did have a magic lamp and had 3 wishes, legit one of them would be to have an existing, or new organization SERIOUSLY compete with the WWE. It just makes for better viewing and experience.

Ok, im off my soap box now. But seriously haven't watched more than two shows in a row since 2011-2012 ish..think because i was mad that John Morrison left...i mean, c'mon, SOMEBODY could've worked with this guy and made him a HUGE star

ALSO:

Would've LOVED to see Paul Heyman be the manager/agent for John Morrison, make him like a "must-see, box office" type of guy. I mean he (Morrison) had the style, moveset, and charisma in the ring to do it and come off as a "nobody can do what i can do" type of guy. Would've been amazing bc i know Heyman could've made people take him wayyy more serious.

This group probably could work. Seems silly to cut it already. Almost as silly as Johnny Vegas posting about whatever he was posting about in this particular thread.

Remember, the company toured Australia this past week. They may have already had certain wrestlers booked overseas and didn't want to mess with the card.

It looked like Rybaxel was going to split two weeks ago and that didn't happen.

The original poster didn't even cite where these "rumors" are coming from. I thought it was weird that Xavier Woods was acting like he normally did on NXT v. CJ Parker last week, but those are taped a few weeks in advance, right?

Yeah, I'll wait for a source of any kind.

Saw a news post from rajah on it.

http://i.imgur.com/U5gPEDu.png

They stood on the ramp together. THEY LIVE.

NXT is a separate continuity in some respects.

Pat Patterson looks entirely too content looking at Titus with white cream on his face.

I now assume that every time a wrestler gets a pie/cake in the face it's Pat Patterson's idea.

Along with Alicia Fox too. Manageress?

Cesaro can be the Owen of the group too.

Nation of Domination. \o

The stable is apparently getting new entrance music.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>Big ups to <a href="https://twitter.com/FlatbushZombies">@FlatbushZombies</a> &amp; <a href="https://twitter.com/Wale">@Wale</a> for working on music for us. Almost.</p>&mdash; Epsilon (@WWEBigE) <a href="https://twitter.com/WWEBigE/statuses/499329136242855936">August 12, 2014</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

I don't think them working as faces means anything. They haven't really turned heel yet...

They were definitely heels during their match against Slater Gator.

There's so much confusion with both of those teams' heel/face status I can't tell if you're joking or not...

New music?

but...but...we are the nation.

Nope, not joking.

What does he mean by almost though?

I agree with STD. It sounds like Big E is letting us know it has been dropped.

Yeah, they haven't done anything heelish yet. They've gotten more "serious," but they've only beaten up bad guys you are meant to beat up. They seem to be coordinating their attire -- things might not be dead.

Can I be honest though? I don't really care about this. I like Xavier Woods and Kofi Kingston is good, but I find it hard to care. Who are they going to feud with? The Usos? I'd still rather see The Wyatt Family in that slot.

While I've been on record saying there is an obvious bias against black performers in WWE (gimmick they're saddled with, for example), Ryan Clark is an idiot for this gem:

1. I don't find "black stable" offensive, as they had no identity yet.

2. Them losing to white dudes is irrelevant in his point.

3. The fact that he said "Dark Matches" and his brain would actually go there and piece that together is actually more racist on his part.

Fandango beat Big E???

YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

... It's a start.

I didn't have high hopes for this but anything is better than nothing, something might catch on from it.

Ryan Clark is a racist

And a terrible father allegedly.

Which is one reason I kinda miss Vince Russo.

Its why I miss the brand split, even if it just led to Smackdown getting raped every draft.

<font color=goldenrod>This better not have been dropped. I wanted to see Kofi as a heel god dammit. Nobody on the roster was in more dire need of an interesting character development. He's literally just been "guy who smiles and has great matches" for years. Zero depth to his character whatsoever.</font>

The Brand Split was the best.

:|

Genuinely.

It made more room for guys to be featured/get over, the cross-promotional matches were huge when they happened and the Draft was a high point of the year (sans SmackDown getting butt-fucked most years).

When they first did it and there was a genuine sense of "we want to be the better brand" it was the mutt's nuts. There's no "SmackDown Six" without the Brand Split.

Whether there ever needed to be 2 World Champions is another question.

ROFL that Ryan Clark quote was tremendous

<font color=goldenrod>I'm with XL. The brand split was boss from like 2002-mid 2006 when they added ECW and complicated things a bit. I actually felt the desire to watch both shows as they both had a distinctly different feel and featured different rosters. There were guys I liked on both shows so I'd always tune in to see them.

Nowadays there is very little reason to watch SmackDown. Nothing important ever happens there. You might get a good match here and there but odds are it'll be re-run on Raw anyway.</font>

<font color=goldenrod>Thinking about it, if you include NXT guys who are probably ready for call ups there would seem to be more than enough talent on the roster to justify bringing back the split.

It won't ever happen though. WWE's reason for ending it is that "they want the content to flow through all shows". Meaning a continuous story across all shows but like I said, anything important happens on Raw.</font>

That's the thing, Smackdown is pretty much Main Event with an extra bonus hour of Raw footage, footage they'll show on the following Mondays Raw anyway. They have all these PPVs that seem ideally suited for a brand warfare storyline from June through to the Rumble, KOTR/Bragging Rights, if nothing else it gives the midcard down something to do.

There's definitely things they could do to improve upon the original Brand Split set up. You'd treat SmackDown more as equal to Raw, as it was originally. Hard to believe that The Rock, Angle, and Hulk Hogan were all SmackDown exclusive after the first draft. Plus, didn't HHH go to SD! On his return from injury? Edge made his name over on the Blue Brand, Benoit's stock improved, Eddie became a star over there, Mysterio was debut and was exclusive there, Brock went exclusively to Thursday's too.

It gave you an easily established "attraction match" for big PPVs if you did inter-promotional matches, I remember Benoit vs. RVD at SummerSlam 2002 being a big deal as perhaps the first SmackDown vs. Raw match.

Bragging Rights was a decent concept that could have been great if there was more than a trophy on the line. Give the winning brand preferential treatment in the Rumble, or guarantee that the next Number 1 Contender comes from the winning brand, or a free pick from the other roster.

Titles is one thing that'd have to be addressed; I'd stick with one World Champion across both shows, keep the IC and US straps, one for each show. Give them meaning and purpose, don't job out the reigning champion in endless non-title situations. I wouldn't have gone the Divas/Women's, 2 sets of Tag champions route, I'd have made the whole Divison an attraction on one show. If you enjoy tag/women's wrestling you have to watch Raw/SmackDown to see it. In fact, you could apply the 1 champ for 2 shows across divisons.

Personally, if we were doing it today, I'd go with;

Champions defending on both shows -

WWE World Heavyweight Champion
WWE Tag Team Champions

RAW

Intercontinental Championship
Diva's Championship

SMACKDOWN

United States Championship
Cruiserweight Championship


I'm gonna leave it there.

I feel like I should dig through this forum and bump countless threads 10+ pages long with poeple ranting about how the brand split was killing the fed. Grass is always greener i suppose.

You'd get the same thing now I think, personally the only thing I wasn't fussed about was the brand specific PPVs, I can see the logic behind it but still seemed a bit much. I enjoyed the split until it became so watered down it was only there in name most of the time.

I really wouldn't trouble yourself. It's only my opinion.

I think if they didn't try to charge full price it would have been more well received. Why pay full price for half the roster? Could have been a good way to get more buys and people interested.

It also made what was on the non-PPV brand seem kinda irrelevant for the month because they weren't close to selling a ppv.

I liked the idea on paper that feuds would benefit by having an extra month's worth of build. Problem was after the first couple of ppvs, the WWE rarely used that extra time wisely and most feuds still ended with barely a few weeks worth of real build time.