- Oct 28, 2013
- 42,726
- 178,515
Last edited:
Wrestling Thread May 5-18 | 5/16 Black Friday for WWE - Stock Price Crashes
- Thread in 'General' Thread starter Started by 4wrestling,
- Start date
- Oct 15, 2000
- 30,184
- 1,991
Scott Hall skipped a booking in California this weekend. He wouldn't get out of bed, even when his son was trying to get him up. He texted the promoter saying he was in a bad place. Hopefully it's just a bad weekend and not something more serious.
- Sep 1, 2012
- 3,142
- 1,904
Damn
- Feb 2, 2008
- 40,884
- 47,000
Wonder if the WWE plans on referencing Vince losing that 350mil. Maybe make it into some sort of ring plot.
And now that I think about it, maybe HHH isnt really trying to bury Bryan with these crappy angles on purpose moreso than testing him to be more vocal about his character.
I mean alot of the ppl with great title runs werent pushovers in the back. Maybe paul's trying to teach him that...
Just a thought lol
And now that I think about it, maybe HHH isnt really trying to bury Bryan with these crappy angles on purpose moreso than testing him to be more vocal about his character.
I mean alot of the ppl with great title runs werent pushovers in the back. Maybe paul's trying to teach him that...
Just a thought lol
- Jun 1, 2011
- 107,063
- 79,470
Yea definitely hope that's nothing serious
WWE Developmental Through the Ages
WWE Developmental Through the Ages
411's Wyatt Beougher looks at the history of the WWE developmental system and explains why it is something that WWE is doing very right.
Introduction: So it occurred to me over the last seven days that I've written five columns about professional wrestling right now, and 80% of what I've written has focused on the negative. Because I don't want to be labeled as another negative internet wrestling writer, I figured I'd use the next two weeks' worth of columns to look at the one thing that I think the WWE has absolutely gotten right. (Note: This isn't to suggest that this is the only thing WWE is doing correctly, just the thing that I think they're doing the most correctly.) So what is it that the WWE has done so well? The current iteration of their developmental system, between the Performance Center and NXT.
View media item 977226
This week, we'll start with a history lesson, as we look back at what got us to this point. Prior to the opening of the WWE Performance Center, WWE assigned its talent to Florida Championship Wrestling, which is where NXT actually began. But FCW wasn't the WWE's first developmental promotion, as they had working relationships with smaller promotions dating back at least to 1996, when Jerry Lawler and Jerry Jarrett's Memphis-based USWA was officially designated as the promotion where green WWE-contracted talent went to improve before debuting on WWE television. The most famous alumni of this relationship are easily The Rock and Sock Connection, as Mick Foley fine-tuned his Mankind gimmick there and Dwayne Johnson cut his teeth as Flex Kavana. Some other notable WWE talent that spent time in the USWA included JBL (back when he was still just Justin Hawk (sometimes Bradshaw), Kane (as both Doomsday and Fake Diesel), and even Sunny as a color commentator. Based solely on the strength of Johnson and Foley's respective runs in the WWF (and WWE), it's hard to argue with the success of the the WWF's relationship with the USWA. If the USWA hadn't been sold and then closed in 1997, maybe the WWE Performance Center would be in Memphis instead of Orlando.
But the USWA did close, and less than six months later, WWE started sending their developmental talent to Memphis Power Pro Wrestling, which is where Kurt Angle, Charlie Haas, Sean Stasiak, and Tensai/Albert among others, cut their teeth. After Doug Gilbert's controversial shoot promo where he revealed that Brian Christopher was Jerry Lawler's son, that PPW owner Randy Hales allegedly smoked crack, and called Jerry Lawler a child rapist, the WWE pulled their talent out of PPW and the promotion floundered before eventually closing in 2001.
View media item 977227
As a result of the controversy surrounding Gilbert's interview, in 1999, the WWE opted to put their development eggs into two baskets: Jim Cornette and Danny Davis' Ohio Valley Wrestling, based in Louisville, Kentucky, and Terry Golden's Memphis Championship Wrestling, based (obviously) in Memphis, Tennessee. Both of these promotions produced their fair share of stars, with OVW alumni including Brock Lesnar, John Cena, Randy Orton, Batista, Shelton Benjamin, CM Punk, Bobby Lashley, Charlie Haas, Victoria, Dolph Ziggler, Johnny Nitro/John Morrison, Joey Matthews/Joey Mercury, and more. On the other side of the coin, MCW featured Daniel Bryan (as "The American Dragon" Brian Danielson, Brian Kendrick (then going by Spanky), Paul London, Lance Cade, Victoria (again), Rosey and Jamal before they were 3-Minute Warning, and R-Truth (then called K-Kwik/K-Krush). This arrangement lasted until the WWF purchased WCW in 2001.
After acquiring WCW and a whole slew of their talent (including many wrestlers who were trained in WCW's developmental Power Plant), the WWE opted to end their relationship with Memphis Championship Wrestling, keeping only a handful of wrestlers from that roster. They added Les Thatcher's Heartland Wrestling Federation, which, like OVW, had already enjoyed success as an independent promotion, with the added benefit of being only 90 miles or so from OVW. This allowed WWE to more easily ship talent from one developmental roster to the other and also to save on production costs by taping both promotions' television shows in the same location. Because of this roster co-mingling, HWA can also claim a lot of the same alumni that OVW can, although they also have a pretty famous alumnus who made his way through FCW and NXT in Dean Ambrose, whose stint as Jon Moxley in HWA started roughly two years after the WWE ended their association with the promotion in 2002 after releasing the majority of the talent they'd acquired from WCW.
That left OVW as WWE's sole developmental promotion until 2005, when they decided to add Deep South Wrestling based on the strength of the pitch from former WCW Power Plant trainer (and one-half of the famous Assassins tag team) Jody Hamilton. DSW was pretty much doomed from the start, as Hamilton hadn't actually run DSW since 1988 and had no facilities with which to train the talent he was being sent. While the school was being completed, the talent assigned there could do little more than calisthenics and conditioning exercises. The WWE pulled its support from DSW in April 2007 after less than two years of working together, allegedly because of how substandard the whole operation was being run. Some of DSW's biggest alumni are the Miz, Mike Knox, Ryback (who wrestled as "The Silverback" Ryan Reeves), "Roughhouse" Ryan O'Reilly, who is one-half of the current NXT tag team champions as Konnor of the Ascension, and Deuce and Domino.
View media item 977228
After WWE unceremoniously ended its relationship with DSW, they chose Florida Championship Wrestling, which was run by Steve Keirn, and, like DSW, which wasn't actually a promotion at the time they received their deal from the WWE. Thankfully, Keirn (who wrestled in the WWE as Skinner and later as Doink in the mid-90s) managed to get his act together and FCW flourished until 2012 when it was rebranded as NXT Wrestling. They also became the only WWE developmental promotion in 2008, after after a series of events that started in 2005, when Jim Cornette had been fired from OVW for slapping Santino Marella (then going by Anthony Carelli, his real name) for laughing at the Boogeyman. He was replaced by Paul Heyman, but when WWE opted to bring back ECW, Heyman was pulled from OVW to run that brand. In Heyman's absence, neither Greg Gagne nor Al Snow could run the promotion to the standard that the WWE wanted, so they ended their nearly decade-long relationship with OVW to focus their developmental efforts in a single area. While Keirn and a few other FCW executives were let go when the WWE moved operations to their Performance Center in July of last year, the NXT we have today wouldn't exist if not for FCW, and their list of alumni is almost as numerous as OVW's, although it remains to be seen if the likes of Jack Swagger, Sheamus, Curtis Axel, Heath Slater, Justin Gabriel, Bo Dallas, Adam Rose, Seth Rollins, Roman Reigns, Dean Ambrose, Luke Harper, Erick Rowan, Bray Wyatt, Fandango, The Usos, Damien Sandow, and a whole slew of others will be able to capture the same level of success that the OVW alumni achieved.
And it's worth noting that while it wasn't an official developmental promotion, the then-WWF had a working agreement with Extreme Championship Wrestling, having hired ECW promoter Paul Heyman as a consultant. It was in ECW where Heyman took New Rocker Leif Cassidy and turned him into the Head-loving Al Snow that delighted fans for a decade. Also, PJ Polaco, who hadn't connected with audiences as "Portuguese Man of War" Aldo Montoya in the WWF, was shifted to ECW when the USWA closed its doors. He eventually made it back to the WWE, but it wasn't until after he'd been reinvented as Justin Credible in ECW. ECW ended up being more of a feeder fed for the WWF, where Heyman would develop the talent and then Vince would sign them to more lucrative WWF contracts (see: Austin, the Dudleys, and Taz, among others), as well as those ECW stars who came to the WWE after the closure of the promotion (most notably RVD and Tommy Dreamer during the inVasion angle and Sandman during the WWECW relaunch).
Clearly, some of these WWF/E development promotions were hugely successful, both in their own right and in churning out WWE Superstars (probably none more so than OVW). So what is it about the current set-up that I think is so much better than in the past, especially considering that the current setup isn't all that different from FCW?
Introduction: So it occurred to me over the last seven days that I've written five columns about professional wrestling right now, and 80% of what I've written has focused on the negative. Because I don't want to be labeled as another negative internet wrestling writer, I figured I'd use the next two weeks' worth of columns to look at the one thing that I think the WWE has absolutely gotten right. (Note: This isn't to suggest that this is the only thing WWE is doing correctly, just the thing that I think they're doing the most correctly.) So what is it that the WWE has done so well? The current iteration of their developmental system, between the Performance Center and NXT.
View media item 977226
This week, we'll start with a history lesson, as we look back at what got us to this point. Prior to the opening of the WWE Performance Center, WWE assigned its talent to Florida Championship Wrestling, which is where NXT actually began. But FCW wasn't the WWE's first developmental promotion, as they had working relationships with smaller promotions dating back at least to 1996, when Jerry Lawler and Jerry Jarrett's Memphis-based USWA was officially designated as the promotion where green WWE-contracted talent went to improve before debuting on WWE television. The most famous alumni of this relationship are easily The Rock and Sock Connection, as Mick Foley fine-tuned his Mankind gimmick there and Dwayne Johnson cut his teeth as Flex Kavana. Some other notable WWE talent that spent time in the USWA included JBL (back when he was still just Justin Hawk (sometimes Bradshaw), Kane (as both Doomsday and Fake Diesel), and even Sunny as a color commentator. Based solely on the strength of Johnson and Foley's respective runs in the WWF (and WWE), it's hard to argue with the success of the the WWF's relationship with the USWA. If the USWA hadn't been sold and then closed in 1997, maybe the WWE Performance Center would be in Memphis instead of Orlando.
But the USWA did close, and less than six months later, WWE started sending their developmental talent to Memphis Power Pro Wrestling, which is where Kurt Angle, Charlie Haas, Sean Stasiak, and Tensai/Albert among others, cut their teeth. After Doug Gilbert's controversial shoot promo where he revealed that Brian Christopher was Jerry Lawler's son, that PPW owner Randy Hales allegedly smoked crack, and called Jerry Lawler a child rapist, the WWE pulled their talent out of PPW and the promotion floundered before eventually closing in 2001.
View media item 977227
As a result of the controversy surrounding Gilbert's interview, in 1999, the WWE opted to put their development eggs into two baskets: Jim Cornette and Danny Davis' Ohio Valley Wrestling, based in Louisville, Kentucky, and Terry Golden's Memphis Championship Wrestling, based (obviously) in Memphis, Tennessee. Both of these promotions produced their fair share of stars, with OVW alumni including Brock Lesnar, John Cena, Randy Orton, Batista, Shelton Benjamin, CM Punk, Bobby Lashley, Charlie Haas, Victoria, Dolph Ziggler, Johnny Nitro/John Morrison, Joey Matthews/Joey Mercury, and more. On the other side of the coin, MCW featured Daniel Bryan (as "The American Dragon" Brian Danielson, Brian Kendrick (then going by Spanky), Paul London, Lance Cade, Victoria (again), Rosey and Jamal before they were 3-Minute Warning, and R-Truth (then called K-Kwik/K-Krush). This arrangement lasted until the WWF purchased WCW in 2001.
After acquiring WCW and a whole slew of their talent (including many wrestlers who were trained in WCW's developmental Power Plant), the WWE opted to end their relationship with Memphis Championship Wrestling, keeping only a handful of wrestlers from that roster. They added Les Thatcher's Heartland Wrestling Federation, which, like OVW, had already enjoyed success as an independent promotion, with the added benefit of being only 90 miles or so from OVW. This allowed WWE to more easily ship talent from one developmental roster to the other and also to save on production costs by taping both promotions' television shows in the same location. Because of this roster co-mingling, HWA can also claim a lot of the same alumni that OVW can, although they also have a pretty famous alumnus who made his way through FCW and NXT in Dean Ambrose, whose stint as Jon Moxley in HWA started roughly two years after the WWE ended their association with the promotion in 2002 after releasing the majority of the talent they'd acquired from WCW.
That left OVW as WWE's sole developmental promotion until 2005, when they decided to add Deep South Wrestling based on the strength of the pitch from former WCW Power Plant trainer (and one-half of the famous Assassins tag team) Jody Hamilton. DSW was pretty much doomed from the start, as Hamilton hadn't actually run DSW since 1988 and had no facilities with which to train the talent he was being sent. While the school was being completed, the talent assigned there could do little more than calisthenics and conditioning exercises. The WWE pulled its support from DSW in April 2007 after less than two years of working together, allegedly because of how substandard the whole operation was being run. Some of DSW's biggest alumni are the Miz, Mike Knox, Ryback (who wrestled as "The Silverback" Ryan Reeves), "Roughhouse" Ryan O'Reilly, who is one-half of the current NXT tag team champions as Konnor of the Ascension, and Deuce and Domino.
View media item 977228
After WWE unceremoniously ended its relationship with DSW, they chose Florida Championship Wrestling, which was run by Steve Keirn, and, like DSW, which wasn't actually a promotion at the time they received their deal from the WWE. Thankfully, Keirn (who wrestled in the WWE as Skinner and later as Doink in the mid-90s) managed to get his act together and FCW flourished until 2012 when it was rebranded as NXT Wrestling. They also became the only WWE developmental promotion in 2008, after after a series of events that started in 2005, when Jim Cornette had been fired from OVW for slapping Santino Marella (then going by Anthony Carelli, his real name) for laughing at the Boogeyman. He was replaced by Paul Heyman, but when WWE opted to bring back ECW, Heyman was pulled from OVW to run that brand. In Heyman's absence, neither Greg Gagne nor Al Snow could run the promotion to the standard that the WWE wanted, so they ended their nearly decade-long relationship with OVW to focus their developmental efforts in a single area. While Keirn and a few other FCW executives were let go when the WWE moved operations to their Performance Center in July of last year, the NXT we have today wouldn't exist if not for FCW, and their list of alumni is almost as numerous as OVW's, although it remains to be seen if the likes of Jack Swagger, Sheamus, Curtis Axel, Heath Slater, Justin Gabriel, Bo Dallas, Adam Rose, Seth Rollins, Roman Reigns, Dean Ambrose, Luke Harper, Erick Rowan, Bray Wyatt, Fandango, The Usos, Damien Sandow, and a whole slew of others will be able to capture the same level of success that the OVW alumni achieved.
And it's worth noting that while it wasn't an official developmental promotion, the then-WWF had a working agreement with Extreme Championship Wrestling, having hired ECW promoter Paul Heyman as a consultant. It was in ECW where Heyman took New Rocker Leif Cassidy and turned him into the Head-loving Al Snow that delighted fans for a decade. Also, PJ Polaco, who hadn't connected with audiences as "Portuguese Man of War" Aldo Montoya in the WWF, was shifted to ECW when the USWA closed its doors. He eventually made it back to the WWE, but it wasn't until after he'd been reinvented as Justin Credible in ECW. ECW ended up being more of a feeder fed for the WWF, where Heyman would develop the talent and then Vince would sign them to more lucrative WWF contracts (see: Austin, the Dudleys, and Taz, among others), as well as those ECW stars who came to the WWE after the closure of the promotion (most notably RVD and Tommy Dreamer during the inVasion angle and Sandman during the WWECW relaunch).
Clearly, some of these WWF/E development promotions were hugely successful, both in their own right and in churning out WWE Superstars (probably none more so than OVW). So what is it about the current set-up that I think is so much better than in the past, especially considering that the current setup isn't all that different from FCW?
- Oct 15, 2000
- 30,184
- 1,991
Not a chance it makes it to TV. Vince and other executives will be having a conference call at 11am et on Monday though which should be very interesting.
- Jan 8, 2006
- 30,560
- 33,906
Yeah Vince ain't gonna have a single mention of the loss on TV 
- Dec 8, 2006
- 51,387
- 42,065
Dope vid
- Jul 20, 2012
- 5,399
- 2,784
smh,he sounded real positive on the sc podcast.i hope its nothing major.ill never get that image of him from that sad documentary out of my head
- Jul 20, 2012
- 5,399
- 2,784
i just really hope they dont **** up cesaro's growth with some terrible booking/feuds.same with shield.unfortunately theyve already started with the wyatts smh.
i remember on the sc podcast heyman says he brings in college kids and whatever to help his company he has stay relevant and up to date with the times and what people 18-35 want or some **** like that.i really wish the wwe would bring some the dudes from this thread to help them with some stuff.lol never happen i know but they could use it
i remember on the sc podcast heyman says he brings in college kids and whatever to help his company he has stay relevant and up to date with the times and what people 18-35 want or some **** like that.i really wish the wwe would bring some the dudes from this thread to help them with some stuff.lol never happen i know but they could use it
- Dec 5, 2006
- 816
- 218
So zigs wore the NWO shirt into the ring.... How is this allowed lol
They tried to run it past Vince but he was too busy quietly sobbing in a corner.
- Nov 15, 2007
- 9,908
- 839
- Oct 13, 2001
- 160,854
- 142,704
ROH Show was sweet man. Just a few notes.
1. My man "UltraLiger" (fake Liger dude), was funny all nigh. Watching him all night and imagining, "What if Liger was doing this" made him somewhat entertaining. He was standing behind me in line and ROH went back there, grabbed him and took him up front. Next thing I know he was sitting front row. Good stuff ROH.
His account: https://twitter.com/UltraLiger
His pics: https://twitter.com/UltraLiger
2. Let me say this and get this out of the way. It is so annoying how a lot of these fans conducted themselves. Does there need to be a chant for everything done? It gets to the point where it is annoying because you should chant when people do things above/beyond the norm right? Really annoying. And the dude sitting next to me started 50% of those chants.
3. The end of the Liger match was a disappointment. He tapped after that 2nd Figure Four. I was really like WTF man.
4. There were 500 Superkicks done last night. 300 done by the Young Bucks.
5. Speaking of the Young Bucks, their match vs reDragon was the match of the night. reDragon really stole the show, I have to look up some of their old stuff. Dudes impressed me a lot. Young Bucks had some nice moments as well.
6. Tanahashi's High Fly Flow to the outside of the ring as a thing of beauty.
7. Good to see my man Liger live. Both of them.
8. Was wild being around so many wrestling nerds. Dude's sitting behind me were discussing the Great Sasuke and how he never took his mask off for any political appearances. They had a lot of convos that I was eavesdropping on. Only at an indy show
9. Got to see an Okada dropkick. Never a complaint there. That 3 match wasn't much though.
10. Steen/Nakaura was solid.
Overall, good show. Probably the best wrestling show I have ever been to. My mind just has a hard time adjusting to indy wrestling. So many big moves done and people kicking out of them doesn't sit well with me. But they have their formula, who am I? I would like to see things toned down just a tad. Young dudes killing themselves, for what?
But yea man. I want to see the telecast.
1. My man "UltraLiger" (fake Liger dude), was funny all nigh. Watching him all night and imagining, "What if Liger was doing this" made him somewhat entertaining. He was standing behind me in line and ROH went back there, grabbed him and took him up front. Next thing I know he was sitting front row. Good stuff ROH.
His account: https://twitter.com/UltraLiger
His pics: https://twitter.com/UltraLiger
2. Let me say this and get this out of the way. It is so annoying how a lot of these fans conducted themselves. Does there need to be a chant for everything done? It gets to the point where it is annoying because you should chant when people do things above/beyond the norm right? Really annoying. And the dude sitting next to me started 50% of those chants.
3. The end of the Liger match was a disappointment. He tapped after that 2nd Figure Four. I was really like WTF man.
4. There were 500 Superkicks done last night. 300 done by the Young Bucks.
5. Speaking of the Young Bucks, their match vs reDragon was the match of the night. reDragon really stole the show, I have to look up some of their old stuff. Dudes impressed me a lot. Young Bucks had some nice moments as well.
6. Tanahashi's High Fly Flow to the outside of the ring as a thing of beauty.
7. Good to see my man Liger live. Both of them.
8. Was wild being around so many wrestling nerds. Dude's sitting behind me were discussing the Great Sasuke and how he never took his mask off for any political appearances. They had a lot of convos that I was eavesdropping on. Only at an indy show
9. Got to see an Okada dropkick. Never a complaint there. That 3 match wasn't much though.
10. Steen/Nakaura was solid.
Overall, good show. Probably the best wrestling show I have ever been to. My mind just has a hard time adjusting to indy wrestling. So many big moves done and people kicking out of them doesn't sit well with me. But they have their formula, who am I? I would like to see things toned down just a tad. Young dudes killing themselves, for what?
But yea man. I want to see the telecast.
- Jun 1, 2011
- 107,063
- 79,470
@ 500 superkicks
- Sep 14, 2008
- 238
- 10
Is there a full video of this? You rarely see taker smile like that.
MarvelSux
formerly brucewayne
- Jul 19, 2012
- 2,233
- 1,296
Is there a full video of this? You rarely see taker smile like that.
- Sep 11, 2008
- 7,389
- 237
^ Vince
"No chance" is such a underrated theme
"No chance" is such a underrated theme
- Nov 15, 2007
- 9,908
- 839
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- Oct 28, 2013
- 42,726
- 178,515
- Nov 15, 2007
- 9,908
- 839
ROH/NJPW War of the Worlds:
- Aug 30, 2012
- 18,717
- 9,235
The YB's don't call it a superkick party for nothing.
I've been complaining on another message board but it just plays into the wrestling is fake complaints. Super kicks are supposed to knock you out. Five of them in a match is ridiculous. But an arm bar will stop you...
RoH has some great action and workers but the ridiculous near finishers, no selling, etc bring the product down a little.
I was just listening to Solomonster and he was saying the same thing.
- Jun 1, 2011
- 107,063
- 79,470
Not totally sure, but I think this was one of those 1cent PPVs I bought back in the day, I think I ordered every 1 cent PPV TNA had
- Oct 13, 2001
- 160,854
- 142,704
Yea man there were instances last night where I was like, "That should be a finisher." But I complain alot so don't mind me.
- Jun 1, 2011
- 107,063
- 79,470
I think Ariane has leapfrogged Cena as the corniest person on the roster. 1) Ariane 2) Cena 3) Eva Marie
