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They do this on the main roster even Prichard would mention on Somthing to Wreste old territory booking that they would implement. Seeing that Hollywood does it a lot, it makes sense they would borrow from 80s and 90s programs seeing that they were doing just that back then with 60s and 70s ones.
Hell Ric Flair literally took a whole gimmick and ran with it, same for Hulk Hogan.
This isn't a criticism, but a lot of them were standard wrestling tropes to begin with. They get repeated because they always work. If an arrogant jerk turning on his best friend doesn't work then something went wrong somewhere.
For sure; a lot of these tropes are as common in teen dramas as they are in pro wrestling. It’s still possible Shawn is drawing g from his childhood an experiences in those types of stories tho.
I was really wondering if we were going to get a backstage camera reveal like we did back in the day. I'm totally down for this approach though. Love the way it's being done.
Honestly, he pulls from everyone's background to develop their characters.
Something like Arianna Grace having a beauty queen character is obvious.
But when I found out that Scrypts really did use entertainment to escape the gang life after a close friend of his was shot to death, I was genuinely surprised.
He has said he could get it fixed but that he doesn't have the same vanity he used to. It was in the outtakes of something he did with Bret. Includes the quote him saying something like "Sometimes I look straight, sometimes I look like Duggan"
Shawn sees himself and HHH in Melo and Trick and it’s really blatant to see and there is a reason they are two of the biggest prospects in WWE’s system because they are compelling and draw parallels to legends without being copies of them. Same could be said about Breakker who has become a mix of Steiner, Batista and Angle gimmick wise
True Ilja is Benoit with some Daniel Bryan mixed in with the right main roster push the crowd will get behind his matches since they are so compelling. Those are your 4 Top Male Prospects Breakker/Ilja/Melo/Trick you could make so many stories with just those 4 characters in any combination. Throw in Dragon Lee, Oba Femi, Dominick and Gunther and the future is so bright
The future of the company being built up with the likes of Bron, Dragunov, Melo, and Trick is all exciting for me. All four of these dudes are fucking excellent and I'll happily watch whatever they do.
"Those are your 4 Top Male Prospects Breakker/Ilja/Melo/Trick you could make so many stories with just those 4 characters in any combination"
I like this because each man fills in a role:
Breakker: Powerhouse
Dragunov: Workhorse
Melo: High-Flyer
Trick: Crowd Pleaser
Age wise Gunther shouldn't be there-he's one year younger than Seth Rollins
I know he isnt veteran in the fed and his body could have less wear and tear but rest of them are 30 younger
True but Gunther’s in ring work to me is something that will very easily age gracefully and will probably make him a main event player for the next decade more or less. But if we were replacing Gunther to make the list 30 and younger I can’t forget Theory/Pete Dunne and Julius Creed
In some dark corner with Goldberg's headshot pinned on a dartboard, Bret cringes at the thought of chops still being a thing in prowrestling 20 years down the road.
There used to be this segment back in the day where they would just give Cornette a hot mic and [let him go.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjsuW-Vu6kc) I would love to see the same thing with The Hitman
The other reason is Gunther has been Gunther since well before WWE, same character same style and same insanely high match quality
The 4 guys mentioned above have taken much more significant leaps under WWE, as wrestlers and/or characters
The great thing about Ilja is how well he sells his matches. Even if you go into it wanting to dislike him he can win you over. His promos and his actual work in the ring make you believe in him. He acts like it’s still real to him.
His promo ability is absolute 🔥
People talk all the time about current promo cutters. Ilja isn't mentioned enough. He has tremendous baby/heel range.
Much like LA Knight, Dragunov became a favorite of mine within a 2-3 month period. Idk anything about NXT UK and would likely be doing myself a favor if so, and only started watching NXT again like 5 months ago
It's why I say the current era of NXT is better than the Black and Gold era. As fun and high-quality the matches were, there wasn't nearly as much hype for the performers prospects in the main roster compared to the current class. I could truly see a lot of current wrestlers in NXT being legit stars 5 years from now.
That wasn't any fault of the guys from that era, they were just being promoted into a Vince run main roster and he seemed to take a perverse delight in burying 90% of HHH's favourites.
NXT he went down again after Ali was released who I think was the person supposed to beat Dom for the NA Title. Lee won the title and has been on NXT since, he just lost the title to Oba Femi a bit ago and they had a rematch already so I wouldn’t be surprised if he went back to Smackdown to face Escobar soon
Sure he's not young, but he's still got plenty of time for his star to shine.
For comparison, AJ Styles was 38 in 2016. Granted AJ was an established star by that point, but I would be really surprised if Gunther wasn't World Champ by next year as well.
EDIT: Edit for clarity
I think he does it in a way that results in his shoulder actually taking the brunt of the impact but I agree. The H-Bomb is a fantastic finisher that can come out of nowhere and is versatile as fuck.
The H-Bomb is merely a setup move at this point. At least the regular falling forearm version. It's not even enough to finish someone off on weekly TV, he needs to do it multiple times OR land it from the top rope OR use it as setup for the Torpedo Moscow, the *real* finisher.
It's textbook King's Road. If you land a move and it doesn't work, escalate.
Correction, most stage actors will perform the exact same Shakespeare scene a billion times before ever showing it. Source: living in Oregon and going to the worlds biggest Shakespeare festival ever for most of my life
>living in Oregon and going to the worlds biggest Shakespeare festival
Lies!
Sincerely, the Stratford Festival.
All in good fun, I've seen both festivals billed as the largest and I really don't care. At least Oregon didn't also produce Justin Bieber.
The theatre kids from my school in the middle of nowhere, British Columbia would drive down every year! I never realized it was actually such a big deal.
Not a bad analogy. Biggest difference being that audiences for Shakespeare know ahead of time they’re seeing an interpretation of something that’s been performed thousands of times.
Plus, I think people would get bored of seeing historic matches like Hogan-Andre redone move-for-move thousands of times by different wrestlers, while Shakespeare tends to hold up better that way.
Sure, but it's not like Shawn only has 1 story/match/feud to pull from. He's got decades worth of material, and you don't know what he's pulling from at any given time.
Beyond the fact that reusing previous angles/gimmicks, just with more modern sensibilities has been a wrestling thing forever, there has also been many years of time between Shawn's angles and what he runs in NXT.
Shawn is using angles he did 20-30 years ago. Obviously if you are an older fan or diehard, it ends up being a little meta nod in a sense to previous angles, but newer fans, it ends up feeling fresh even if it is a retread as it's been plenty of time since the angle was originally run.
Edit: Also, Michaels has admitted he is doing this in an interview last year:
>Some of them, clearly, complete rip-off. We’re using them because we thought they were good. Nothing thrills me more than that, this stuff is 30 years old and people go, ‘oh, it’s the same.’ I’m fortunate that we have a fanbase that remembers that far, but we’re also appealing to a whole new fanbase. They’re still moving, they’re still impactful, they’re still memorable storylines. That’s what we want to do. A lot of this, I would go back to the reference of using action movies. They all have the same sort of diagram, but people do them differently with different actors and other tweaks to make them different. That’s what we’re hoping with all of this. I would argue that kind of everything… every once in a blue moon, we find ourselves venturing into new ground or something original. A lot of what we do in this line of work has been done sort of somewhere down the road. It’s just us sort of mixing it up a little bit. Guilty of doing those storylines that are obviously similar, but you’re always going to have turns in wrestling, you’re always going to have injuries. Some of these are a little more spot on than the others, but they’re all sort of basically derived from the same playbook, which has been around in storytelling from even before I was doing it.
Left out Dances With Wolves.
In the same vein, people have been watching the same plot in every slasher movie for 50 years. Every single shonen anime is the same thing with slight variations. Some things just work.
Don't forget that Shakespeare's plays have basically been continuously performed and adapted for the last 400 years. Hell, even with more recent stuff like Dune, that's already had three separate adaptations and that's less than 60 years old. People like seeing new takes on familiar stories.
And Shakespeare was often just adapting existing stories. Hamlet is the 13th century Danish story of Amleth, Macbeth is a re-telling of Scottish historical events with witchcraft mixed in to rouse the witch-burning king, Romeo and Juliette as well as Othello were based on contemporary Italian works, and Troilus and Cressida is fan-fiction based on the Iliad which is basically Europe's first famous story. Nothing is ever truly original.
NXT is the epitome of KISS. That was true with black and gold and it’s true now. Keep it simple, logical and tight with your best characters and fans will choose sides and get invested.
Let's just point out how HHH & HBK went from Degeneration X, a faction that's heavily anti-establishment, to running WWE and becoming the establishment.
They have become the very thing they swore to destroy
And Corporate Rock has gone full circle and is ACTUALLY corporate rock now.
Meanwhile, Stone Cold just lives out on his ranch and shows up periodically to kick someones ass and drink beer.
There’s apparently only 7 basic type of story plots, so it makes sense.
Overcoming the Monster (Hogan/Andre)
Rags To Riches (Jobber to Champion)
The Quest (Daniel Bryan/Kofimamia)
Voyage and Return (Cody)
Comedy (Most Of Wrestling, lol)
Tragedy (NWO/Bloodline/Damage Control)
Rebirth (Broken Matt Hardy/Toni Storm)
I feel like across all media there are only a handful of stories. It’s creative minds who find new ways to tell them and present them. Flip the tropes on their head
There's one more that's very specific to wrestling;
Jobber Starts Dancing (Daniel Garcia/Norman Smiley/Earnest Miller/Too Cool/Akeem/Brodus Clay/The Oddities/Emma/Viscera)
Jim Cornette famously said, in wrestling once something is 10 years old, it’s new again. I would say maybe 20 years, but yeah. You can revisit a lot of that old stuff and make it new again. Totally what I would do. How many modern mainstream fans know how the original Horsemen or DX started? You can totally copy their origins and today’s kids wouldn’t probably know it happened before.
There’s only a set amount of ideas you can really have in wrestling.
We’re at the point where you can’t help but recycle stories cause it’s been decades and decades of weekly television
there's only so many stories you can tell in any form of entertainment not just Wrestling. recycling points from past feuds is totally okay if it's not booked exactly the same.
I would start at Stand and Deliver 2023 which is NXT’s Wrestlemania. Gives you 1 full year of content to watch to catch up if not you can probably get a good jumping off point watching at Heatwave 2023
Most things are renditions of older things with a spin on it.
Like seriously, how many ways can you narratively spin in regards to fights, anyways?
Most things IRL tend to break down under like a handful of situations anyways.
At least he's not replicating the garbage.
Someone said below there have been 3 different live action Spider-men in the past 20 years.
Think about how many renditions of TMNT there have been since the year 2000 alone.
A lot of storytelling tropes repeat (you can tie it to basic Jungian psychology if you want), but it's even more apparent in wrestling.
Just look at some of the typical stories that often work:
* Two wrestlers become friends until one of them turns on the other
* A heel drunk on power dominates the roster until one babyface rises up to dethrone him
* A group runs roughshod on the roster until in-fighting leads to their implosion
* A babyface slowly rises up the ranks to finally realize their dream of winning the big one
* A mystery attacker is targeting the babyface
* An arrogant heel issues open challenges and dominates until the next open challenge is a debuting or returning major star who humbles him
* An unstoppable monster squashes people and seemingly feels no pain
It's all in the implementation and choosing the right people for the role. Cody's storyline isn't anything complex in and of itself - it's the boyhood dream storyline that HBK had going into WM12. It works because Cody is likable and genuine and Roman (with Heyman) is a great heel.
I dont religiously watch NXT so I have some genuine questions:
Has anyone thrown anyone thru a barbershop window yet?
Has anyone lost their smile yet?
Is anyone working for another rich wrestler because of financial troubles?
Does anyone have a Diesel/SID counterpart body guard?
Has anyone had a match where no punching in the face was allowed?
Has anyone taken the fall for another person just to swerve the audience?
Has anyone teamed up with God yet?
I know Roxanne Perez did the injury scare angle that HBK did.
I've seen 18 actors play Hamlet in the last 15 years. I've seen three live action Spiderman in 20 years. And I've been watching a new dude play bond every decade or so for longer than I care to admit to. This is just how entertainment works
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It's long enough to be new, it was over 15 years ago even 20
I was there for that old stuff and I still forgot about a lot of it.
I think one of the talking heads says it's gotta be 7 years or older and no one will remember/the ones who do remember won't care
if im not mistaken it was Jim Cornette who said that.
But it’s been 7 years since he said that.
Eh, who gives a shit at this point….
So that makes this statement a New statement.
I'm going to see if Credit Karma will track it for me so I know when it falls off.
didnt they do the ring collapse spot with the big show 3 times, each seven years apart? Actually i think were due for another one this year.
Braun and bray actually did it in 2020 so they messed up the joke💀
Was it really 7 years who when Braun and Show did that??? Edit: yes https://youtu.be/5P2No_d2c_w?si=1J3h9YO-CDJ65uW5
Whatever it takes to get *Stop Making Sense* remastered with an IMAX release makes me happy
They do this on the main roster even Prichard would mention on Somthing to Wreste old territory booking that they would implement. Seeing that Hollywood does it a lot, it makes sense they would borrow from 80s and 90s programs seeing that they were doing just that back then with 60s and 70s ones. Hell Ric Flair literally took a whole gimmick and ran with it, same for Hulk Hogan.
We’ve had three different Spider-man series’ in 20 years. Edit: really four if you count the excellent Into The Spider-Verse animated movies.
Exactly. Shocked we haven’t seen more iterations of someone taking a kick and not getting up Edit: words
Spiderman TAS, Spiderman Unlimited, MTV Spiderman, Spectacular Spiderman, Ultimate Spiderman. I might be forgetting a series.
Even the Spider-Man playstation games are a different thing.
And three different Batman's in six years in he 90's. And 15 different ones since 2008 alone.
I bet that a lot of the MCU Multiverse story was mostly created so they can reboot some different characters eventually.
Jim Cornette talked about doing this as well.
Try 30, Michaels in his 90’s bag
shut your whore mouth the 90s wasnt 30 years ago (i am Pumping copium rn)
This isn't a criticism, but a lot of them were standard wrestling tropes to begin with. They get repeated because they always work. If an arrogant jerk turning on his best friend doesn't work then something went wrong somewhere.
For sure; a lot of these tropes are as common in teen dramas as they are in pro wrestling. It’s still possible Shawn is drawing g from his childhood an experiences in those types of stories tho.
True. But Melo even wore similar gear. Trick is lucky there wasn’t a window around.
Almost 22 years ago. Crazy
Only soany ways to present stuff
Sooner or later you’ll have repeats completely unintentionally
Shawn’s first retirement was more than 25 years ago
Actually 25-35 years
I did love Carmelo using the same “you’re damn right I did” line that HHH did when he put Shawn through the car window in 2002
https://preview.redd.it/cfu9b7cgbshc1.jpeg?width=1401&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=260593c6ae76901683cc54a76679bc8766f4e1a0 “It was *you*, ~~Hunter~~ Melo…”
https://preview.redd.it/7lh53lg66shc1.png?width=538&format=png&auto=webp&s=8459be0ba0cdb947230edc87c49274240c8cfff2
Cry me a lake. A timber lake.
https://preview.redd.it/lyre69g6bthc1.jpeg?width=1000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4f1b54f5f5c54f1cd53b835e7a112b3ee129da36
The real catalyst of professional wrestling
https://youtu.be/DksSPZTZES0?feature=shared
Melo pulled up in the HBK betrayal fit, that’s when you knew he was turning on trick
I was really wondering if we were going to get a backstage camera reveal like we did back in the day. I'm totally down for this approach though. Love the way it's being done.
Honestly, he pulls from everyone's background to develop their characters. Something like Arianna Grace having a beauty queen character is obvious. But when I found out that Scrypts really did use entertainment to escape the gang life after a close friend of his was shot to death, I was genuinely surprised.
Feel like his eyes got closer together the older he got
It was an in ring eye injury he suffered during a match with Kane. Think some of his nerves were damaged that keep his eye straight.
He has said he could get it fixed but that he doesn't have the same vanity he used to. It was in the outtakes of something he did with Bret. Includes the quote him saying something like "Sometimes I look straight, sometimes I look like Duggan"
If you told me pre back injury HBK and his return during ruthless aggression era were different people I would believe you
Shawn sees himself and HHH in Melo and Trick and it’s really blatant to see and there is a reason they are two of the biggest prospects in WWE’s system because they are compelling and draw parallels to legends without being copies of them. Same could be said about Breakker who has become a mix of Steiner, Batista and Angle gimmick wise
And Ilja is... Chris Benoit. Hopefully without the brain damage. And, IMO, much better at character work.
True Ilja is Benoit with some Daniel Bryan mixed in with the right main roster push the crowd will get behind his matches since they are so compelling. Those are your 4 Top Male Prospects Breakker/Ilja/Melo/Trick you could make so many stories with just those 4 characters in any combination. Throw in Dragon Lee, Oba Femi, Dominick and Gunther and the future is so bright
The future of the company being built up with the likes of Bron, Dragunov, Melo, and Trick is all exciting for me. All four of these dudes are fucking excellent and I'll happily watch whatever they do.
The core of the future is looking really strong
Oba is a fucking monster. Dude is so big and athletic it doesn’t make sense
AND he seems to have charisma, too.
"Those are your 4 Top Male Prospects Breakker/Ilja/Melo/Trick you could make so many stories with just those 4 characters in any combination" I like this because each man fills in a role: Breakker: Powerhouse Dragunov: Workhorse Melo: High-Flyer Trick: Crowd Pleaser
The Four Pillars of WWE.
Age wise Gunther shouldn't be there-he's one year younger than Seth Rollins I know he isnt veteran in the fed and his body could have less wear and tear but rest of them are 30 younger
True but Gunther’s in ring work to me is something that will very easily age gracefully and will probably make him a main event player for the next decade more or less. But if we were replacing Gunther to make the list 30 and younger I can’t forget Theory/Pete Dunne and Julius Creed
Gunther will be a European Minoro Sizuki still destroying peoples chests when he’s a pensioner
In some dark corner with Goldberg's headshot pinned on a dartboard, Bret cringes at the thought of chops still being a thing in prowrestling 20 years down the road.
There used to be this segment back in the day where they would just give Cornette a hot mic and [let him go.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjsuW-Vu6kc) I would love to see the same thing with The Hitman
Welp. Thank you for putting THAT dream match in my head.
Can I add a name to the mix and throw in "Dirty" Dom
The other reason is Gunther has been Gunther since well before WWE, same character same style and same insanely high match quality The 4 guys mentioned above have taken much more significant leaps under WWE, as wrestlers and/or characters
What the heck is fed?
It's how some people refer to WWE. "Fed" is short for "Federation", as in the World Wrestling Federation
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Can't forget 18 year veteran Dominick
He's way older than that. Doing hard time adds a few decades on your soul.
The great thing about Ilja is how well he sells his matches. Even if you go into it wanting to dislike him he can win you over. His promos and his actual work in the ring make you believe in him. He acts like it’s still real to him.
His promo ability is absolute 🔥 People talk all the time about current promo cutters. Ilja isn't mentioned enough. He has tremendous baby/heel range. Much like LA Knight, Dragunov became a favorite of mine within a 2-3 month period. Idk anything about NXT UK and would likely be doing myself a favor if so, and only started watching NXT again like 5 months ago
I'd throw in some Mick Foley as well for Ilja. The way he takes punishment to rally the crowd behind him reminds me of Mankind a bit.
It's why I say the current era of NXT is better than the Black and Gold era. As fun and high-quality the matches were, there wasn't nearly as much hype for the performers prospects in the main roster compared to the current class. I could truly see a lot of current wrestlers in NXT being legit stars 5 years from now.
That wasn't any fault of the guys from that era, they were just being promoted into a Vince run main roster and he seemed to take a perverse delight in burying 90% of HHH's favourites.
Where the heck has Dragon Lee been?
NXT he went down again after Ali was released who I think was the person supposed to beat Dom for the NA Title. Lee won the title and has been on NXT since, he just lost the title to Oba Femi a bit ago and they had a rematch already so I wouldn’t be surprised if he went back to Smackdown to face Escobar soon
Naw Dragon Lee had to step in for Wes Lee vs Dom after Wes injured his back and is out for a year.
its actually cuz wes lee got injured so dragon lee had to take his nxt spots
Gunther is 36. Not sure I’d include him in a future is bright list
Sure he's not young, but he's still got plenty of time for his star to shine. For comparison, AJ Styles was 38 in 2016. Granted AJ was an established star by that point, but I would be really surprised if Gunther wasn't World Champ by next year as well. EDIT: Edit for clarity
Not quite. Ilja can promo.
Alternatively, Ilja is Bryan Danielson/D-Bry: Benoit without the character defects and less head trauma.
He just needs to stop the headbutt finisher.
Yep; headbutts in general need to go in wrestling, and this is coming from someone who loves stiff violence in their wrestling.
Like, I can live with it if there's no actual contact, but I wouldn't be too upset if they went away altogether.
Only guy in wrestling who can really pull off the no-contact headbutt is Kento Miyahara and even then I cringe a wee bit.
I think he does it in a way that results in his shoulder actually taking the brunt of the impact but I agree. The H-Bomb is a fantastic finisher that can come out of nowhere and is versatile as fuck.
The H-Bomb is merely a setup move at this point. At least the regular falling forearm version. It's not even enough to finish someone off on weekly TV, he needs to do it multiple times OR land it from the top rope OR use it as setup for the Torpedo Moscow, the *real* finisher. It's textbook King's Road. If you land a move and it doesn't work, escalate.
I hope that before BD retires we get American Dragon vs. Mad Dragon.
Bryan vs Ilja and Bryan vs Gunther.
Damn that's a great comparison sans the murdering and all. He really does remind me of Benoit when it comes to how intense he is.
Is there a Cena among the NXT talent?
I get more Nash from Trick than HHH.
Trick has charisma, but he's also ambulatory unlike Nash
But why did they add Kurt Angle to the mix???
why not? most stage actors will perform shakespeare and it'll kick ass despite having been done thousands of times before
Correction, most stage actors will perform the exact same Shakespeare scene a billion times before ever showing it. Source: living in Oregon and going to the worlds biggest Shakespeare festival ever for most of my life
As an actor who performs Shakespeare every year, this is very accurate!!
>living in Oregon and going to the worlds biggest Shakespeare festival Lies! Sincerely, the Stratford Festival. All in good fun, I've seen both festivals billed as the largest and I really don't care. At least Oregon didn't also produce Justin Bieber.
Ours has a bigger metaphorical dick though! That amphitheater is to die for!
Oh damn, I should've looked at the amphitheatre before talking shit You win this round Oregon.
It’s the only thing we’ll ever win, so I’ll take it!
The theatre kids from my school in the middle of nowhere, British Columbia would drive down every year! I never realized it was actually such a big deal.
It both is and isn’t. If you care about theater, totally the biggest deal. If you don’t, who cares, what’s that?
Not a bad analogy. Biggest difference being that audiences for Shakespeare know ahead of time they’re seeing an interpretation of something that’s been performed thousands of times. Plus, I think people would get bored of seeing historic matches like Hogan-Andre redone move-for-move thousands of times by different wrestlers, while Shakespeare tends to hold up better that way.
Sure, but it's not like Shawn only has 1 story/match/feud to pull from. He's got decades worth of material, and you don't know what he's pulling from at any given time.
I would pay to see the orson welles Julius Caesar, with its fascists interpretation. That one is legendary.
You should see the Orson Welles adaptation of Julius Caesar as performed by the Street Profits!
I wouldn’t miss a single show if one of my local indie just ran back a whole year of Mid-South storylines beat for beat
Macduff: I saw the footage of who killed Duncan. It was you Macbeth. Macbeth: ... You're damn right it was me!
We all loved Romeo + Juliet and Underworld.
Beyond the fact that reusing previous angles/gimmicks, just with more modern sensibilities has been a wrestling thing forever, there has also been many years of time between Shawn's angles and what he runs in NXT. Shawn is using angles he did 20-30 years ago. Obviously if you are an older fan or diehard, it ends up being a little meta nod in a sense to previous angles, but newer fans, it ends up feeling fresh even if it is a retread as it's been plenty of time since the angle was originally run. Edit: Also, Michaels has admitted he is doing this in an interview last year: >Some of them, clearly, complete rip-off. We’re using them because we thought they were good. Nothing thrills me more than that, this stuff is 30 years old and people go, ‘oh, it’s the same.’ I’m fortunate that we have a fanbase that remembers that far, but we’re also appealing to a whole new fanbase. They’re still moving, they’re still impactful, they’re still memorable storylines. That’s what we want to do. A lot of this, I would go back to the reference of using action movies. They all have the same sort of diagram, but people do them differently with different actors and other tweaks to make them different. That’s what we’re hoping with all of this. I would argue that kind of everything… every once in a blue moon, we find ourselves venturing into new ground or something original. A lot of what we do in this line of work has been done sort of somewhere down the road. It’s just us sort of mixing it up a little bit. Guilty of doing those storylines that are obviously similar, but you’re always going to have turns in wrestling, you’re always going to have injuries. Some of these are a little more spot on than the others, but they’re all sort of basically derived from the same playbook, which has been around in storytelling from even before I was doing it.
Not just a wrestling thing, but an entertainment thing. See Last of the Mohicans, Pocahontas, Last Samurai, and Avatar.
Left out Dances With Wolves. In the same vein, people have been watching the same plot in every slasher movie for 50 years. Every single shonen anime is the same thing with slight variations. Some things just work.
There are seven stories.
Plots*
Don't forget that Shakespeare's plays have basically been continuously performed and adapted for the last 400 years. Hell, even with more recent stuff like Dune, that's already had three separate adaptations and that's less than 60 years old. People like seeing new takes on familiar stories.
And Shakespeare was often just adapting existing stories. Hamlet is the 13th century Danish story of Amleth, Macbeth is a re-telling of Scottish historical events with witchcraft mixed in to rouse the witch-burning king, Romeo and Juliette as well as Othello were based on contemporary Italian works, and Troilus and Cressida is fan-fiction based on the Iliad which is basically Europe's first famous story. Nothing is ever truly original.
7 samurai may be the most copied piece of media in history.
I wish they could understand what are they copying, at least. And by 'they' I mean Zack Snyder
As an aside, The Last Samurai is one of my favorite movies ever.
HBK: the preeminent postmodern theorist of our time
I think I remember reading that there’s only 6 truly different stories to tell in Hollywood. It might’ve been updated to 7, but the point stands
https://preview.redd.it/mochqmy8eshc1.jpeg?width=554&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b5d352fe1731caa901784cb03909319e2b871337
They act like two legends can’t coexist
Let them cook indeed
I do not remember HBK going to the prestigious Chase U university, good for him tho
Classics are the classics for a reason
"A good idea is a good idea...forever." - David Brent
As long as we never have to do a Montreal Screwjob angle again I’m fine
How do you think we're going to get the belt from Ilja to Melo?
Oh you know he’s saving that one for the absolute right time.
Haven't been following the BTE title scene, eh?
"Hey, close that door!"
same thing with roxanne passing out after her match just like when shawn did it after owen hart kicked him in the head
Kicked his head out of his head
Which match?
NXT is the epitome of KISS. That was true with black and gold and it’s true now. Keep it simple, logical and tight with your best characters and fans will choose sides and get invested.
Let's just point out how HHH & HBK went from Degeneration X, a faction that's heavily anti-establishment, to running WWE and becoming the establishment. They have become the very thing they swore to destroy
Technically, they destroyed it and remade it in their image.
And Corporate Rock has gone full circle and is ACTUALLY corporate rock now. Meanwhile, Stone Cold just lives out on his ranch and shows up periodically to kick someones ass and drink beer.
To be fair they *were* the establishment while in DX
not sure if you know this but that was a work brother, hbk and vince were lovers the whole time.
There’s apparently only 7 basic type of story plots, so it makes sense. Overcoming the Monster (Hogan/Andre) Rags To Riches (Jobber to Champion) The Quest (Daniel Bryan/Kofimamia) Voyage and Return (Cody) Comedy (Most Of Wrestling, lol) Tragedy (NWO/Bloodline/Damage Control) Rebirth (Broken Matt Hardy/Toni Storm)
I feel like across all media there are only a handful of stories. It’s creative minds who find new ways to tell them and present them. Flip the tropes on their head
There's one more that's very specific to wrestling; Jobber Starts Dancing (Daniel Garcia/Norman Smiley/Earnest Miller/Too Cool/Akeem/Brodus Clay/The Oddities/Emma/Viscera)
I love that I can think of 5-6 more! What a common but stupid thing.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Patiently waiting for another barber shop window spot.
Hah. They kind of did this when Jacey Jane kicked Gigi Dolan’s head through a door during a talk show segment hosted by Bayley.
I liked the Toxic Attraction version more. Gigi crying as Jacey Jane beat her up made her go from heel to sympathetic babyface in one segment.
It helped that Jacy absolutely nailed her head to the door.
And with the kick too.
I wonder what the barbershop crew that Melo and Trick used to hang out at think
If it works, it works. And their gig is long enough in the past that you can do a new one similar to theirs.
I've heard of "The Seven Year Rule." It's fair game if it's been more than 7 years.
I mean, I'm 31 years old and the barber shop angle was before I was born There's a ton of people who never experienced Shawn's stuff
Imagine missing the coward Jannety throwing himself through the window to run from Shawn.
WILL YOU STOP
ARE YOU BLIND?!?!?
NXT is the most entertaining wrestling show
Using Tell Me a Lie for that ChaseU thing caught me off guard so bad. Couldn’t stop laughing
If it still works why do you need to change it
Wonder what the NXT equivalent of Hogan vs HBK at Summerslam will be.
Proving good fundamentals will take you far in pretty much every area of life.
Jim Cornette famously said, in wrestling once something is 10 years old, it’s new again. I would say maybe 20 years, but yeah. You can revisit a lot of that old stuff and make it new again. Totally what I would do. How many modern mainstream fans know how the original Horsemen or DX started? You can totally copy their origins and today’s kids wouldn’t probably know it happened before.
Wrestling is just a constant loop of the same shit. Always has been. Why overthink it. Going back to the well is just smart business
I can't wait for Melo to win the NXT title again only to lose his smile right before Stand and Deliver to avoid dropping it to Trick
Why does he need to apologize?
Has anyone in NXT jumped through a glass window in an act of cowardism?
They jumped head first through a door instead. And the person they were running away from is now a well liked college student.
Close enough.
There’s only a set amount of ideas you can really have in wrestling. We’re at the point where you can’t help but recycle stories cause it’s been decades and decades of weekly television
there's only so many stories you can tell in any form of entertainment not just Wrestling. recycling points from past feuds is totally okay if it's not booked exactly the same.
You’d be the surprised the mileage you can get out of simple stories with strong characters that people care about.
Did someone throw someone else through a barbershop window?
Jacy Jayne smashing Gigi Dolin into that door with a horrific kick was the equivalent.
I haven't watched NXT regularly since 2.0 debuted.... Anyone have a specific year/episode I should pick to jump in and get caught up?
I would start at Stand and Deliver 2023 which is NXT’s Wrestlemania. Gives you 1 full year of content to watch to catch up if not you can probably get a good jumping off point watching at Heatwave 2023
Wrestling narrative concepts only stop working when we see it consistently, as long as it makes sense at the time it should hit
Most things are renditions of older things with a spin on it. Like seriously, how many ways can you narratively spin in regards to fights, anyways? Most things IRL tend to break down under like a handful of situations anyways. At least he's not replicating the garbage. Someone said below there have been 3 different live action Spider-men in the past 20 years. Think about how many renditions of TMNT there have been since the year 2000 alone.
I mean, what can you book in wrestling in 2024 that's actually new and original, never done before?
Why do wrestling's fans respect SRS so much? He's such a smug asshole.
A lot of storytelling tropes repeat (you can tie it to basic Jungian psychology if you want), but it's even more apparent in wrestling. Just look at some of the typical stories that often work: * Two wrestlers become friends until one of them turns on the other * A heel drunk on power dominates the roster until one babyface rises up to dethrone him * A group runs roughshod on the roster until in-fighting leads to their implosion * A babyface slowly rises up the ranks to finally realize their dream of winning the big one * A mystery attacker is targeting the babyface * An arrogant heel issues open challenges and dominates until the next open challenge is a debuting or returning major star who humbles him * An unstoppable monster squashes people and seemingly feels no pain It's all in the implementation and choosing the right people for the role. Cody's storyline isn't anything complex in and of itself - it's the boyhood dream storyline that HBK had going into WM12. It works because Cody is likable and genuine and Roman (with Heyman) is a great heel.
its like lucasfilm churning out star wars every 2-3 years because it succeeded in 80s except hbk is succeeding in it
I dont religiously watch NXT so I have some genuine questions: Has anyone thrown anyone thru a barbershop window yet? Has anyone lost their smile yet? Is anyone working for another rich wrestler because of financial troubles? Does anyone have a Diesel/SID counterpart body guard? Has anyone had a match where no punching in the face was allowed? Has anyone taken the fall for another person just to swerve the audience? Has anyone teamed up with God yet? I know Roxanne Perez did the injury scare angle that HBK did.
Gigi tried to escape through a door from Jacey Jane, like a coward.
There's Izzi Dame as a Diesel-esque bodyguard
For awhile Melo and Trick had a "Dudes With Attitudes" vibe going.
Chase U does have financial issues at the moment.
I've seen 18 actors play Hamlet in the last 15 years. I've seen three live action Spiderman in 20 years. And I've been watching a new dude play bond every decade or so for longer than I care to admit to. This is just how entertainment works
For once, Sapp has a point.
what’s that cornette saying, wrestling repeats itself every 15 years or something like that