AlexROH wrote: ↑Fri Nov 10, 2017 12:00 pm
This is a never-ending story BRM, you know, I know it ahahaha. You aren't going to change your mind but man, how in the hell can you say ROH is making the same mistakes that TNA did ? Makes no sense for me:
- You say Delirious hasn't replace the guys who left, but he has signed Chuck Taylor (and made Baretta a regular), Bully Ray, Cody, Flip Gordon, Jonathan Gresham, Shane Taylor, Josh Woods and has made Martinez and Coast 2 Coast relevant.
He's replaced them with bodies, yes. There are now other people taking up the spaces where their pictures used to be on the roster page. But he hasn't replaced them in terms of their spots on the card. No one has been brought in or elevated to replace the consistently high workrate and star power (or at least ROH-level star power) lost by the departures of Cole, O'Reilly, Fish, Roddy, and Elgin,(and that's leaving aside guys like Rush, ACH, and Dijak who should have been bigger stars when they left but were hobbled by Delirious' go-nowhere booking). Yes, he's pushed Cody hard, but that's just one guy, and he comes nowhere close to replacing the workrate of any of these guys. I don't think Dalton is that much more over now than he was a year ago, and has only on rare occasions in ROH shown how great he can be in the ring, and while Kenny King has definitely been pushed, the impetus for that was pretty clearly is appearance on The Bachelorette rather than his wrestling and promo ability because if the reason he was getting pushed was his wrestling and promo ability, he would have gotten this push years ago- and even with this push he doesn't feel quite like a main eventer yet.
Whenever Gabe lost a top talent, he had other guys on the rise to take their place. Delirious has not done that. There were definitely guys he could have tried to push into those spots- Taven, Scurll, Shelley, Gresham, Silas, Page- but he didn't. I understand keeping Sabin & Shelley together, but there was no reason to stick Scurll in Bullet Club where he will be at best a fourth banana, no reason to bury Gresham (and Dijak, and Rush) in this go-nowhere stable with MCMG, no reason to continue booking Page as Bullet Club's job-boy, and no reason to allow Silas to once again meander his way down into midcard irrelevance after getting the win in a big feud.
AlexROH wrote: ↑Fri Nov 10, 2017 12:00 pm
- They've been building Martinez well and slow. They have given him some big victories and matches with NJPW talent and top stars. You can dislike The Kingdom, but they are a well-booked heel stable that always get reaction. The only time Taven was "lost" was during O'Ryan's injury! Scurll hasn't done anything, yeah, he has only been TV champ for six months having awesome matches, he has joined Bullet Club and now he's IWGP Jr. Champ. Yeah, KUSHIDA is also a very bad worked and, if you didn't notice, he was IN EVERY SINGLE ROH SHOW when he was TV champ. Page is trios champ and has grown a lot this year too. And yeah, Cedric, Rush and Dijak left bc they hated Delirious, not because they wanted to sign with WWE, how stupid I am.
I highly disagree with a lot of your characterizations in this paragraph. Martinez has been built slowly, yes, but it's been so slow tha the barely even feels like he's going up. You say he's gotten some big victories, but the biggest name he's ever beaten is Ospreay. Aside from a random one-off against Ospreay and a world title match that no one thought he'd have snowball's chance of winning because it was one of Delirious' lazy "take a bunch of random dudes and stick them in a match where the winner gets a title shot later tonight" gimmicks.
Scurll might have been having great matches, but they were almost all against guys who either weren't on the roster or who everyone knew were on their way out the door. His two matches with Lio Rush were the only thing he did as champion that could even generously be called a program. That's very bad for six months of what is supposed to be a major title. As for joining Bullet Club, as I said above, is going to doom Scurll to never being a top guy because he's now stuck underneath Omega and Cody.
As for KUSHIDA, absolutely nothing of his success is anything Delirious deserves credit for, and, like Scurll before him, didn't have any real programs for the belt.
Page is one third of the trios champions? You mean those belts that he and the Young Bucks won from a comedy act, who won them from a team that had a grand total of zero programs for them, who won them when the inaugural champs- three dudes who dress like idiots, call people "Melvin" like it's an insult, and include Vinny Marseglia- had to vacate them due to injury? Those belts don't mean sh*t. I can literally count on one hand the number of times someone has had to win two or more matches in a row to earn a shot at those gigantic paperweights. Hell... when was the last time that, barring a tournament, ROH did an angle where someone simply earned a title shot by winning a few matches in a row? We've got tag champs and a TV champ giving out title shots like they're Halloween candy, one heel champion trying to dodge real challengers, and six-man titles that are defended against completely random trios with no rhyme or reason (including when none of the actual champions are around via the Freebird Rule just so we can have a title match on the card) and the one time when the champs got intentionally DQed to stop themselves from losing the titles- i.e. the one time we did something so that there were now guys that logically deserve a title shot- they never got one.
Page is a great wrestler, but he has been crippled by the way he has been booked. It's like whenever WWE has been beating a guy like a drum for years but decides that they want to push them into the midcard title picture so they give them this big title win and tell us that it's a major turning point in his career, then proceed to take the belt right off of him and treat like a jobber again but always push to us that he's a former champion and expect us to see him like one even though he's lost 90% of his matches since losing the title. That's what Delirious does with Adam Page. They even had him f*cking tap out clean to TV Champion Bobby Fish at GBH last year even though Page was getting a shot at Fish's title two weeks later, and the logical finish for that match would have been either Page beating Fish to set up for their title match or O'Reilly beating Cole to set up for Final Battle.
If you're looking for direct TNA analogues to things like this, I'd point to the attempts to elevate the likes of Chris Sabin and Gunner to main event status only to keep shoving them back down into the midcard, and the stop-and-start pushes if guys like Matt Morgan which totally destroyed the fans ability to take any attempt to push them seriously when TNA tried to go back to them. there is also the issue of not building anyone up to be ready to replace an AJ or Daniels or Joe when they decided to leave, resulting in TNA trying to make Eric Young a serious world champion after spending the vast majority of the previous decade as a comedy jobber.
You say the only time Taven was lost was while O'Ryan was injured. I'd actually be a little more generous to Delirious and give him everything through Taven's ROH World Title shot as not being lost but my response to that is that it still shouldn't happen. Part of a booker's job is adjusting for injuries. Just give them some wins and set them up for a tag title shot against the Bucks and you've got a fine main event either for an episode of TV or a DVD/VOD show. And when I say that I don't mean the half-assed bullsh*t Delirious did where he gave them three wins over jobber teams interspersed with pointless losses against every team they faced that was above jobber level. I mean have them beat Silas & BCB at SCOH, have them beat MCMG at
Unauthorized, swap them with Silas & BCB at WOTW: Toronto so that BCB & Silas can do the job for Naito and give the Kingdom rather than The Briscoes the win in the three-way (which, since the Briscoes are the six-man tag champs, also builds up to them inevitably getting another shot at the six-man belts when O'Ryan returns), and if you actually want to put some real thought into it, change around the card in Chicago the night before their title shot so that they get a win instead of doing pointless singles jobs to Cabana and Bully- maybe have them beat two members of The Rebellion so that the stable that is about to be forced to break up is doing a job to guys about to get a title shot rather than going over the trio that is about to get a shot at the six-man tag titles on PPV later that month?
Whatever people's reasons for leaving were, Ciampa, Cedric, ACH, and Elgin have all cited Delirious as a major reason for leaving, and Dijak and Kyle have both been so eerily silent on the issue that's pretty clear they were just trying to avoid saying anything that would provoke ROH/SBG into trying to make things more difficult for them. I'm not saying that money wasn't a factor in many of these guys leaving, but to ignore the role Delirious has played in Ciampa or ACH leaving before their contracts were up, Elgin not coming back for the occasional show, is is being willfully ignorant. These are also far from the only guys Delirious has had problems with (Monster Mafia, Rasche Brown, Sullivan, Whitmer, and I think Aries as well). It's also a major mistake to ignore the factor that the lack of upward mobility shown to guys like ACH, Silas, Dijak, Rush, Sydal, and Dalton has played a factor in guys like Keith Lee choosing to go to a booker with a better track record of making stars, or guys like David Starr not being used because they refuse to sign contracts that essentially but their professional lives in Delirious' hands.
AlexROH wrote: ↑Fri Nov 10, 2017 12:00 pm
- "pushing old dudes who suck in the ring because of nostalgia and letting them dominate the show, losing the identity of the promotion" this makes 0 sense. Who is pushing old dudes? The only old dude was Bully, and he was trios champ bc O'Ryan got injured and he has always stayed in the midcard. My god, you are comparing this to TNA making RVD or Mick Foley champ? Has ROH created stables like Main Event Mafia, Fortune or Inmortal with Booker T, Nash, Flair, Hogan or Bischoff in it?
Yes, when I say bringing in old guys who can't work I am mostly referring to Bully, but there are other guys who are either advanced in age and are having bigger roles than they really should based on their talent level (Kazarian), or guys who are younger but were on WWE TV so long that they have that "WWE/TNA cast-off" feel that ROH really should be trying to avoid, and who can't carry the load they're being given in the ring (Cody).
The more important part of that, though, is the idea of losing the identity of the promotion. TNA started to truly go downhill when it stopped feeling like TNA. The six-sided ring and an actual focus on titles and divisions that weren't the world title- particularly the women and X-Division, but the tag division was important as well; there were the things that made TNA TNA. I'm not saying that TNA was well-booked (Mr. Russo saw to that, and those that came after him were no better), but up until about mid-2010, TNA at least felt like something different than WWE.
ROH used to as well. The focus used to be on in-ring action, quality storytelling, results mattering, and longer matches with an emphasis on
clean finishes. All of that is now gone in favor of this generic bullsh*t booking where the results barely matter, there are dirty finishes everywhere but management doesn't do sh*t about it, Jay White goes undefeated for eight months and doens't get sh*t while guys with a grand total of zero wins are just coming in and getting titles shots, referees turn a bind eye to anything that should be a DQ becuase LOL it's funny sometimes, Delirious decided that rather than blow-off a feud that had been going for over a year and a half in a Fight Without Honor in a clean finish we needed to turn it into the story of Kevin Sullivan, Boo-Zar Moo-Can, the Golden Spike of the Thirteenth Pyramid of the ghost of Dusty Rhodes or whatever the f*ck and I'm supposed to believe that Punishment Martinez is now the reincarnation of The Purple Haze, Bull James- a guy cut from WWE developmental because he wasn't good enough- gets booked in ROH and totally sh*ts the bed in a match against Adam freakin' Cole and is rewarded by being brought back and put o national television, and guys get over for being funny rather than for having good matches, and we've got fans cheering a heel running in during a PPV main event ROH World Title match. That's not being ROH. That's just trying to be WWE/TNA, and not being very good at it.
And for the record, I had no problem with RVD as TNA World Heavyweight Champion. And if you had an issue with Fortune because Ric Flair was in it, then you missed the entire point of that stable.
AlexROH wrote: ↑Fri Nov 10, 2017 12:00 pm
- "hot-shotting title changes to try to get attention," Other no sense. Daniels won the belt with a big story and then Cody won it at BITW. TV Title --> Scurll, KUSHIDA and King all with good reigns and coronations. Tag Titles --> They only gave The Hardys the titles so fast bc of the problems with TNA and then signing with WWE before expected. Trios title --> only changed hands quick bc of O'Ryan's injury.
Hot-shot/pointless title changes include:
1. Cole to O'Reilly and then back to Cole.
If you only want to put the belt on guys willing to sign contracts then don't put the belt on Kyle if he hasn't already resigned, and certainly don't change the belt right back just to get it off him with the logic being that you're not hurting the title by doing so because you're doing it at the Tokyo Dome. It was a ten-minute match in the middle of the card, and the fact that they put the belt on Daniels so quickly after that contributed to the feeling of hot-shotting even more.
2. Bucks to Hardys and then back to Bucks.
You'll get all of the attention you need merely with the Hardys making their surprise early appearance at
Manhattan Mayhem VI. There was no reason to put the belts on them. If you want there to be something for the Bucks to win back, put the stupid "Superkick Titles" that the Bucks were carrying around for months that never went anywhere on the line for the Hardys to win. Or even just have the Hardys be about to win but the Bucks shove the ref to get themselves DQed and have the Hardys lay the Bucks out after the match and take the Superkick Titles that feel they had won, use this DQ victory over the ROH World Tag Team Champions to add the Hardys to the match at the Anniversary Show for the ROH World Tag Titles where The Bucks pin Roppongi Vice so the Hardys are still viable challengers, then have the Hardys offer to return the Superkick Titles to The Bucks if The Bucks are willing to hang the real belts with them high above the ring for a Ladder Match at SCOH.
3. Roddy to Ishii to Fish
There was no reason for this to happen other than to have a title change in Japan and have a New Japan guy walk around with the belt for three months, during which he did nothing of any consequence with it.
In addition to titles, they have also hot-shotted angles that could have been turned into actual stories. The most glaring to me was Cole's departure from Bullet Club. Why tease it at the tapings in March but have everything be totally normal on all of the April shows, only to go back and basically change your mind about it and have them kick him out again on his last weekend in the company? Seems to me like it would be a much better story to have Cole get kicked out of Bullet Club at the March tapings just like they did, then have him spend April being a thorn in Bullet Club's side so that they decide to bring in Scurll- who just beat Cole clean at SCOH to take him out (have Scurll attack Cole after his match with Tanahashi at the PPV to set up their Street Fight at the tapings where Scurll takes Cole out. Scurll would drop the belt to KUSHIDA on the PPV, then KUSHIDA would defend against Sydal at the tapings). This would not only tell an actual story, but also let Cole go out as a babyface (because he's going to get cheered anyway), and avoids having KUSHIDA win the title from Scurll off of a f*cking distraction finish which involved Adam Cole suddenly gaining magical powers. This is supposed to be ROH, not TNA or WWE.
AlexROH wrote: ↑Fri Nov 10, 2017 12:00 pm
- " Yes, they draw a lot of people with Bullet Club" Is it bad that your DRAWS,
people that you've build to do that, are the ones that bring people to your shows? I will say it again, Soaring Eagle Cup, 1000 people with no matches and only one Young Buck. You are talking like BC are the only thing over in the company. Cody was over before joinning the BC.
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Except that part isn't true. None of Bullet Club drawing has anything to do with the booking. It's all stuff that The Bucks and Omega did on their own in New Japan. They were ahead of the curve and noted how people love goofy things nowadays and love nostalgia so they were goofy and turned Bullet Club into an Attitude Era nostalgia act but with flips and superkicks, and made "Superkick Party" a thing.
Cody had all of two matches in ROH before joining Bullet Club, and one of them no one cared about because it involved that Boo-Zar Moo-Can bullsh*t. He was over at the level you'd expect him to be at coming in for the first time. He explodes in popularity after joining Bullet Club, and would not be anywhere near as over as he currently is had he not joined.
AlexROH wrote: ↑Fri Nov 10, 2017 12:00 pm
- "You could say Silas, but I'm afraid that this will be just like every other push that Silas has gotten, where he just fades into the background afterwards and loses all of his momentum", Silas's current push has nothing similar with his only big push in 2014 when he had the feud with Steen.
And Delirious gave him a big win over Mark Briscoe at
Final Battle 2013 and then did nothing with him for the next five months until the Steen feud started. And then there was last year where they gave him the win in the Honor Rumble and put him in a feud with Lethal and gave him a world title match with Cole that went thirty minutes... and the proceeded to do nothing with him for a few months until he started feuding with Fish.
AlexROH wrote: ↑Fri Nov 10, 2017 12:00 pm
I can understand that you don't like the current booking, but saying is THAT bad and comparing it to TNA is just too much. There's a big difference between don't liking something and hating about everything.
To be clear: I'm not comparing the booking to TNA. ROH right now is like a 4/10, but TNA has been about a 0/10 since about 2010, and wasn't too much better than that before then (like, since D'Amore got replaced with Russo) I'm comparing the general decision-making in the company to that of TNA. They are making the same kinds of mistakes that TNA made that let to TNA's total irrelevancy within the world of pro wrestling. Yes, ROH is growing right now, but they're not doing so out of anything then people in charge of ROH have done. ROH has lucked into Bullet Club the same way that the people running TNA lucked into Panda Energy deciding to buy them, and like with Panda and TNA, things would be looking a lot worse for ROH right now if not for this major stroke of luck.