Well that was pretty entertaining. Yes, he addressed CM Punk. Vince made a public apology for Punk's termination papers arriving the day of his wedding. Wants to work with Punk in the future. Stone Cold said JR was the one who got him to come back after he refused to job to Brock Lesnar and unfortunately there's no JR figure to try to get CM Punk and Vince to talk. Stone Cold also asked if Randy Savage will be in the Hall of Fame and Vince said definitely yes. No time frame, though.
Vince tries to justify why Brock barely appears as him being a special attraction. When you see Jake the Snake bring out the snake the first time, you freak out. When you see him bring the snake out every week, you lose the same reaction. So Brock can't be there all the time and beat up all the baby faces, he would lose his appeal. Vince doesn't think the WWE World Heavyweight Championship is everything. Sting is another one he doesn't want to have appear every week.
I liked that they were running out of time and Austin was asked to wrap it up but Vince said he own the Network so he extended it another 15 minutes. Vince doesn't think he is out of touch with what the WWE Universe wants. Stone Cold was trying to get Vince to tell us how to tell him what we want since he says he is always listening. I guess you can try tweeting @WWE and @VinceMcMahon.
The three interesting points for me all came out early.
- The locker room is complacent and nobody has reached for the brass ring since Cena.
- Cesaro has a lot of talent, but lacks verbal skills and is Swiss. When asked how fix Cesaro again Vince says he doesn't know.
- The rambling pool story.
I thought the first point was total bullshit, the second honest but sad and the third was just a story told by an old geezer who forgot why he was telling this story halfway through it.
Austin seemed content spending a lot of the time going down memory lane and I didn't feel like going there so late st night. The whole thing was much better than Raw and I think it exposed Vince as an out of touch old man. He kept saying the business has changed with the times, but I don't know if he knows what that totally means.
There's still more questions than answers. I don't know if they needed more time or if this is all Austin had for him. I don't feel any better about the company after all this.
The bit about nobody else since Cena truly reaching for the brass ring was the one big bit of self-serving bullshit in what I thought was an otherwise excellent and surprisingly candid podcast.
Zack Ryder got himself over as a comedy character, c'mon. If anyone should be pissed at that remark it's Punk, Bryan and Edge.
I think he's blunt but basically honest about Cesaro. He's dynamite in the ring but he's yet to forge a connection with the crowd like Bryan or Punk or even Ziggler, and all three of those went through the same BS stop-starts that he has.
Originally posted by Amos CochranI think he's blunt but basically honest about Cesaro. He's dynamite in the ring but he's yet to forge a connection with the crowd like Bryan or Punk or even Ziggler
I thought he was well on his way until they suddenly stuck that yodeling gimmick on him. Then it was all downhill from there.
"You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life." - Winston Churchill
They gave him Heyman for a fantastic face turn, and that backfired when Heyman needed to be a full-on heel for the Brock push. The swing was over huge and got him the King of Swing nickname. Cesaro was right there until they turned him into a heel again.
"To be the man, you gotta beat demands." -- The Lovely Mrs. Tracker
Originally posted by Amos CochranI think he's blunt but basically honest about Cesaro. He's dynamite in the ring but he's yet to forge a connection with the crowd like Bryan or Punk or even Ziggler, and all three of those went through the same BS stop-starts that he has.
Except the mega-pop he got at WM30, or how *every* time Cesaro gets a 10-15 minute, he has the crowd oohing and ahhing by the end out of sheer workrate alone.
I mean, this is Vince freakin' McMahon saying this, a man who has made a career out of pushing musclebound lunkheads who weren't a tenth as legitimately strong as Cesaro or had a tenth of the in-ring ability.
"It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone." --- Bart Giamatti, on baseball
Originally posted by Big BadExcept the mega-pop he got at WM30, or how *every* time Cesaro gets a 10-15 minute, he has the crowd oohing and ahhing by the end out of sheer workrate alone.
Great. When do we start screaming in frustration because they ignored Fandango's megapops from the week of WrestleMania 29?
I think Cesaro could get over. I don't think it's a priority of Vince's, but I also don't think that what Vince said was a burial of him. He doesn't have that intangible yet, but Vince doesn't seem to want to give up and almost seems to be saying that he feels the responsibility to find that intangible. He quite obviously sees the value of Cesaro's in-ring ability, but he hasn't figured out how to translate that into being a main eventer yet.
Look, give Lance Storm ten to fifteen minutes back in the day and he could drag a crowd into responding simply because he knows how to work a match well. But tell me a multinational wrestling company should have built itself around Lance Storm and I'd just shake my head. Being an excellent pro wrestler will get you far in the North American scene. But if you're going to headline shows you need to bring more than just amazing workrate, because that's just half of the package. That's why Eddie Guerrero was always way more over than Chris Benoit - they were both tremendous workers, but only one could manipulate the crowd just as smoothly whilst outside the ring.
Originally posted by Amos CochranThat's why Eddie Guerrero was always way more over than Chris Benoit - they were both tremendous workers, but only one could manipulate the crowd just as smoothly whilst outside the ring.
It also is a matter of gimmick vs. character. Cesaro has been one-note all along. Is that because Cesaro can't expand it or because he's not supposed to? Is he being a coach-able talent or is he complacent? It sounds like the performers are in an impossible situation.
I read months ago that Cesaro was kept in a holding pattern -- a bullet in the chamber -- while the WWE pushes the Shield guys and the Wyatt Family. Last night seemed to be the graduation of Erick Rowan. Good for him. Meanwhile Cesaro is treading water, and Cesaro would be a far easier push because the crowd already knows him and wants to root for him (one swing on a heavyweight heel would spark the crowd). But he's another guy we've been conditioned to expect little of. Ziggler was in the same boat a few times.
So he behaves himself and does his job. And another. And another.
Not that I think Cesaro is going to be a transcendent performer, but he's certainly underutilized.
"To be the man, you gotta beat demands." -- The Lovely Mrs. Tracker
Originally posted by Amos CochranI think he's blunt but basically honest about Cesaro. He's dynamite in the ring but he's yet to forge a connection with the crowd like Bryan or Punk or even Ziggler, and all three of those went through the same BS stop-starts that he has.
Is it possible that Vince thinks Cesaro is actually really good, but he's trying to nudge Cesaro to find that thing that will make him a next-level guy? It's pretty clear they know they have *something* in the guy as he's pretty much always doing media and their Network shows. Maybe Cesaro's really missing a foil? (Or, "a foil better than Jack Swagger".)
Holy fuck shit motherfucker shit. Read comics. Fuck shit shit fuck shit I sold out when I did my job. Fuck fuck fuck shit fuck. Sorry had to do it....
*snip*
Revenge of the Sith = one thumb up from me. Fuck shit. I want to tittie fuck your ass. -- The Guinness. to Cerebus
"I have enough people telling me I suck online" -- lotjx
Originally posted by Amos CochranThe bit about nobody else since Cena truly reaching for the brass ring was the one big bit of self-serving bullshit in what I thought was an otherwise excellent and surprisingly candid podcast.
Is it, though? It's a well known fact that Cena went up to Vince McMahon and flat out told him that he wanted to be the top guy. And then he earned it. Has anyone else really took it to that level? Has anyone told Vince that they're better than Cena and then went out and proved it? Or have they all been putting in their best effort, just hoping that senpai will notice them? It takes a certain level of ego to make it to the top. Take the biggest names in the history of the WWE and every single one of them is an egotistical bastard. (The only possible exception I can think of is Mick Foley, but he was never quite at the transcendent level of Hogan, Austin, Rock or Cena. And even he wasn't afraid to step in and say something was bullshit when necessary.)
Originally posted by BigDaddyLoco- The locker room is complacent and nobody has reached for the brass ring since Cena.
Yeah, I'm also going to side with the "bullshit" line of thinking on this one. It can't go both ways. Guys like Ryder, Cesaro, and Ziggler can't be admonished for not reaching for the fictional brass ring and not WANTING IT enough, while they simultaneously get punished for doing anything out of the ordinary. Hell, they basically had to push Daniel Bryan kicking and screaming and nobody reached for that proverbial brass ring more than he did.
Really, that comes across to me more as them wanting someone to reach for the brass ring, but only when using their lousy ideas.
On top of that, Vince saying the championship isn't everything is a really damning statement. I understand that he probably said it, because Lesnar's deal is making putting the title on him a worse and worse idea with each passing day (especially if his exit is imminent), but again, you can't have it both ways. You can't tell the roster that they have to reach for the stars and also tell them that the thing they're reaching for isn't really that big a deal.
(edited by It's False on 2.12.14 0931)
"Playing guitars. It's hard to sing while playing...guitars."
A guy like Lance Storm was as techincally sound as anybody, but still not the kind of "Holy shit!" freakishly strong dynamo that Cesaro is. And even if he is/was, the well-reasoned move with a guy like Storm would be "put him in an angle where his in-ring skills are important" not "don't let him wrestle technically sound matches ever again" in the same way that the move with Cesaro should be "build a character around guy who does freakishly strong things that the crowd likes" not "stop doing freakishly strong things."
The idea that there's no way to push a guy who can do what Cesaro can in the ring is belied by Rusev, who is on par with Cesaro on the mic and a less explosive but equally solid performer in the ring. The handling of Rusev has to be considered a success by any realistic standard, maybe the only success of post-Wrestlemania 2014, and it shouldn't be that hard to realize thatthe solution is to give Cesaro a manager who doesn't forget that Cesaro exists and doesn't spend all his/her time talking about everyone except Cesaro.
The real disappointing takeaway in Vince's stance on Cesaro is that it seems to indicate that he's lost faith in/lost sight of the ability that talented wrestlers have to connect with a live audience and that connection's ability to carry over to viewers. You don't have to look very far into the past at all for examples of guys like Seth Rollins and Daniel Bryan who proved that they had It almost solely based on their ringwork. The work the two of them did in those six-man Shield matches and the Hell No matches going on around them got Bryan (who is probably just barely adequate on the mic) in particular, over to the point that crowds were begging for him to be pushed. And, unfortuntaely, crowds literally had to beg and plead and openly revolt to get that push, because for whatever reason, being a good Wrestler Man (or Lady Wrestler Man) is no longer something that Vince seems to directly value even though it's so obviously an imporant, worthwhile asset.
He talks about the importance of telling stories (he's right!), but again, for whatever reason (I admittedly don't know what he's talking about when he pushes it towards the company going public), forgets that this is an industry built on pantomime and physical action. If a guy like Cesaro gets halfway there himself based purely on what he can do in the ring, your job as the boss is: figure out the other half and get him all the way there. Your job is not: take away everything he's doing on his half, also make him yodel?. Use managers more. They work. Lana and, to a lesser (maybe? I don't know, he got Swagger over!) extent, Colter, work. Putting people in marquee matches where they get to do all those things that wake up the crowds put to sleep by those vital 20 minute story segments works.
He talks about the championship not being important relative the stories around them (he's right!), but the business you're in should, largely, be centered on storylines based around fighting for those champions. 90% of the characters in those stories you tell are wrestlers, and 90% of the stories you have to tell must be about wrestlers wrestling, or at least throwing each other into clangy pipes because their livelihoods depend on clangy-pipe throwing. They can't keep devaluing "winning matches" as a plot point, especially when belts are a valuable prop at your disposal for telling stories. It's OK (necessary, even) to have stories that aren't tied to the belts, but, they kinda don't do that either. What stories do they think they've been telling besides "John Cena, a guy you love, overcomes the odds and you love that he overcomes those idds!" and "The Authority exists and is important and you know this because listen to them tell you they are important!", anyway?
I mean, fundementally, I don't disagree with Vince. Pro Wrestling is equal parts match and character creating storytelling. "Good wrestling" in a void is not appealing to me, either. But, man, maximize those assets. If literally anybody is able to get a reaction out of increasingly moribund crowds (see Vince coming out in Englad last month and YELLING at a crowd for not being interested in the product), find ways to look at that thing they are doing and use it instead of taking it away. If you want to tell stories, actually have stories to tell and be good at telling those stories. We know they can do it, because they have done it. So do it. Be good at your job again, best person to ever do that job.
Has anyone told Vince that they're better than Cena and then went out and proved it?
Punk.
It takes a certain level of ego to make it to the top.
Punk!
Take the biggest names in the history of the WWE and every single one of them is an egotistical bastard.
PUNK!!!
* - and other people, but the joke flows better this way
It's really not a matter of people wanting it enough. It's WWE (it's Vince) to give it.
Maybe there's some awesome "Roman Reign went into Vince's office, screamed at him, put a finger in his chest and demanded to be the man!" story we'll get to find out about down the road. It'd be great if we got that story about Orton too. It just doesn't seem likely. It seems more likely Roman checks off all the boxes Vince likes* happened to come along at a time where they were ready to open to moving someone up to Cena's level. I find it really hard to believe that Roman Reigns wants it any more than Dean Ambrose or Seth Rollins, and I'd be vastly offended and disenchanted with WWE this morning if I was those guys.
* - Punk & Bryan obvious don't, but Edge probably would've given more if he came along 10 years later just from a timing perspective.
also I don't hope wrestlers unionize as much as form a line outside off his office next Monday and all take turns demanding to be given THE BRASS RING until he loses his mind.
I really enjoyed this. Agree or disagree with his opinions, it was refreshing listening to Vince talk about the business, but even deeper into the business than the most casual fan might expect. Not only that, but seemed to really enjoy the conversation, looking more comfortable than combative, extending the interview by 15 minutes, and before that, looking forward to the next time.
I think they have something special here. They could sit down, once a year, with the boss and discuss the business for an hour or so, and it would feel special. It would also provide a great piece of exposure for the Network, as Twitter was lit up last night during the event.
I thought the "complacent locker room" comment was to try and light a fire, especially considering all that's occurred, he still seems to be a Punk guy, and would love to have him back in the fold. He would rather deal with a pain in the ass like Punk, who had the drive to be a top guy, than guys that are easy to deal with but happy with their spot.
Originally posted by thecubsfanalso I don't hope wrestlers unionize as much as form a line outside off his office next Monday and all take turns demanding to be given THE BRASS RING until he loses his mind.
And what I certainly DON'T want is for this to somehow turn into on-air fodder, where I have to hear Michael Cole and every other wrestler promo yammer on every five seconds about GRABBING THE BRASS RING! Please don't turn this into the new RUTHLESS AGGRESSION, thanks.
"Playing guitars. It's hard to sing while playing...guitars."
Originally posted by Dr UnlikelyUse managers more. They work. Lana and, to a lesser (maybe? I don't know, he got Swagger over!) extent, Colter, work.
This actually adds more fire to the Cesaro debate, as it can be argued that the "We The People" movement wasn't really over until Cesaro joined. Sure, some people chanted along with Zeb before that, but it was deafening when Cesaro was doing it. Then, inexplicably, Zeb and Swagger got the face turn Cesaro should have gotten, and they kinda sorta managed to stay over.
As for the podcast itself: I still need to finish it, as I started kind of late, but it sure made me wish Vince would hire Austin to run the wrestling part of his shows. Give him the book and see what happens. It really can't be WORSE than things are right now, can it?
Uh you're both smoking something. Anyway, it's now "the Monday Night War" as has been stated elsewhere. jdw linked to an ad you can look at over in this article (otherarena.com).