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redfiona99Which I've broken down into
1 - So to prevent the evil Aces and Eights from taking over the Bound For Glory series, they're only allowed one entrant. But the Main Event Mafia have two. How is that even fair? It's like TNA haven't sat through story-telling 101, and don't realise that, you can't stack the deck in favour of the good guys if you want people to cheer for them.
2 - Okay so Bully Ray hitting people with hammers is wrong. It therefore follows that Sabin hitting people with hammers is wrong. Either that or we're saying only good guys get to use objects which kind of defeats the whole good guys thing.
3 - Um, Hulk, um, ripping things up does not remove lawyer powers. I think doing it on national tv opens you up to civil suits on the theme of tampering with evidence (or the civil equivalent). I hate it when they bring "lawyers" in anyway, because frequently they break the rules of law in a manner that utterly breaks my suspension of disbelief (see also - http://redfiona99.livejournal.com/385973.html).
I don't like the three-way match rule. I find it makes it harder to get involved with the matches and the wrestlers in them.
I don't like the Ultimate X concept. I think the risk of the match format outweighs the benefits of the HSQ.
I don't like Ultimate X being used on just a normal title decider. I don't like that feeling of "if Greg Marasculo (spelling so wrong) makes one wrong move this will be bad". I didn't like the ending which the announcers were selling as awesome but seemed to be Sonjay and Marasculo fighting each other while Manik snuck away with the belt (and not in the cool Daniels sneaking way).
This is not to say that there weren't good things.
Because Gail Kim and Mickie James are always good to watch. And ODB is getting to do things again. Although this appears to mean that Brooke Tessmacher has now been relegated to the land of "we'll do something with you when we remember you exist".
Admittedly they're still trying to get me to cheer for Velvet Sky, which is never going to happen, but hey ho! at least the Knockouts are getting to do non-naked things.
Remember the Claire Lynch mess, and how you almost thought that they were trying to turn Styles heel just because he'd already wrestled everybody (twice!) as a good guy. But that it didn't work because the audience love AJ Styles and the angle didn't have him doing anything bad enough to get the crowd to boo him.
Cue the present Emo!AJ Styles character, where he hates the crowd and doesn't do the flippy-flippy (which, all else aside, I wish to praise AJ Styles the wrestler, because he's changed how he wrestles) and we're supposed to boo him, only they've not had him do anything evil so instead the crowd is confused and going "wtf".
So he's wrestles Jeff Hardy and suddenly, out of nowhere, there's a flash of the old AJ Styles, all flippy-flippy and energetic, and the crowd flip their lids, Phenomenal 1 handsigns and all. Of course, when Hardy goes to shake Styles's hand at the end Styles ignores him, but no-one in the crowd cares because we all love AJ.
And I think that's what the TNA writers forget. The TNA crowd adore AJ because he is AJ Styles and it will take a lot for that not to happen and even the slightest deviation from "mean and nasty" is going to get him cheered because we love him and want him to win things.
Which I had hoped was going to be how the bookers eventually got rid of the Aces and Eights because no-one minds predictable when it's done well. But that doesn't seem to be where the booking is heading.
Unless the writers haven't, in fact, forgotten about Styles and the Sabin winning the title thing is just something they've thrown in in an attempt to keep everyone happy beforeSting defeats the nWo AJ defeats the Aces and Eights.
Unless, of course, they've now deviated from that plan in an attempt to swerve the audience so the whole emo!Biker!AJ thing has been for nothing. Which is what I fear is the truth.
1 - So to prevent the evil Aces and Eights from taking over the Bound For Glory series, they're only allowed one entrant. But the Main Event Mafia have two. How is that even fair? It's like TNA haven't sat through story-telling 101, and don't realise that, you can't stack the deck in favour of the good guys if you want people to cheer for them.
2 - Okay so Bully Ray hitting people with hammers is wrong. It therefore follows that Sabin hitting people with hammers is wrong. Either that or we're saying only good guys get to use objects which kind of defeats the whole good guys thing.
3 - Um, Hulk, um, ripping things up does not remove lawyer powers. I think doing it on national tv opens you up to civil suits on the theme of tampering with evidence (or the civil equivalent). I hate it when they bring "lawyers" in anyway, because frequently they break the rules of law in a manner that utterly breaks my suspension of disbelief (see also - http://redfiona99.livejournal.com/385973.html).
I don't like the three-way match rule. I find it makes it harder to get involved with the matches and the wrestlers in them.
I don't like the Ultimate X concept. I think the risk of the match format outweighs the benefits of the HSQ.
I don't like Ultimate X being used on just a normal title decider. I don't like that feeling of "if Greg Marasculo (spelling so wrong) makes one wrong move this will be bad". I didn't like the ending which the announcers were selling as awesome but seemed to be Sonjay and Marasculo fighting each other while Manik snuck away with the belt (and not in the cool Daniels sneaking way).
This is not to say that there weren't good things.
Because Gail Kim and Mickie James are always good to watch. And ODB is getting to do things again. Although this appears to mean that Brooke Tessmacher has now been relegated to the land of "we'll do something with you when we remember you exist".
Admittedly they're still trying to get me to cheer for Velvet Sky, which is never going to happen, but hey ho! at least the Knockouts are getting to do non-naked things.
Remember the Claire Lynch mess, and how you almost thought that they were trying to turn Styles heel just because he'd already wrestled everybody (twice!) as a good guy. But that it didn't work because the audience love AJ Styles and the angle didn't have him doing anything bad enough to get the crowd to boo him.
Cue the present Emo!AJ Styles character, where he hates the crowd and doesn't do the flippy-flippy (which, all else aside, I wish to praise AJ Styles the wrestler, because he's changed how he wrestles) and we're supposed to boo him, only they've not had him do anything evil so instead the crowd is confused and going "wtf".
So he's wrestles Jeff Hardy and suddenly, out of nowhere, there's a flash of the old AJ Styles, all flippy-flippy and energetic, and the crowd flip their lids, Phenomenal 1 handsigns and all. Of course, when Hardy goes to shake Styles's hand at the end Styles ignores him, but no-one in the crowd cares because we all love AJ.
And I think that's what the TNA writers forget. The TNA crowd adore AJ because he is AJ Styles and it will take a lot for that not to happen and even the slightest deviation from "mean and nasty" is going to get him cheered because we love him and want him to win things.
Which I had hoped was going to be how the bookers eventually got rid of the Aces and Eights because no-one minds predictable when it's done well. But that doesn't seem to be where the booking is heading.
Unless the writers haven't, in fact, forgotten about Styles and the Sabin winning the title thing is just something they've thrown in in an attempt to keep everyone happy before
Unless, of course, they've now deviated from that plan in an attempt to swerve the audience so the whole emo!Biker!AJ thing has been for nothing. Which is what I fear is the truth.
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no subject
Date: 2013-08-03 11:31 am (UTC)But yeah, AJ is AJ. There's a reason why all his previous heel runs were contingent upon a heel manager, and the moment he lost the heel manager, he instantly became face again. I'm not surprised to hear that his run as some sort of weird tweener is not going well, and yeah, if it all turns out for naught... sigh. There's a reason why I'm so fucking bitter about TNA.
no subject
Date: 2013-08-03 05:45 pm (UTC)Except possibly how good Samoa Joe looks in suit.
I feel bad about being mean about emo!AJ because he is trying. He is doing his damnedest. It's just not working. I think the only way you could do heel AJ nowadays is to do it as him getting too big for his boots, sort of like what they're doing with Mickie James at the minute.
I also hope that they let him keep the Calf Killer and some of the slower, more methodical or less "oh dear god they've killed AJ again" bits when the long awaited return to the side of good occurs.