Wrestling Thread 7: FTR Baldhausen • Page 52

I just feel like if you're not the person most invested in every facet of your character, you're never going to be that successful. And that failure shouldn't be pinned on a lack of access to a team of writers. All these people didn't have a team of writers working for them when they were coming up on the independent circuit, it was entirely on themselves to get over. And I feel like that's how it should be; that freedom is best for the wrestlers and ultimately the product.

 

why though? we don't except actors to write all their lines.

I'd rather a super charismatic, super athletic wrestler get help writing their promos and coming up with character concepts than a super creative wrestler come up with an interesting character concept and write a clever promo but be unable to deliver it or back it up in the ring cause the lack creativity and athleticism.

 

Did anyone there read or listen to Swole’s interview?!?!

 

Yeah, what he said is starting to get more attention than what’s supposed to be a really good match and that’s stinks too

 

Hook her up with some losses to Charlotte and some sweet catering. But she won’t be on the same brand as Cedric though!

 

Tony has really big cocaine billionaire energy. Also he’s still a dumb ass

 

If you wanted apples to apples, the equivalence of it is actors choosing which projects they do. That's the level of control they have over their careers.

A wrestlers' entire livelihood is their character. That's why they're the ones who should have the most control and be the most invested in it. If you're not, you can't be upset when you don't get over. We spend 90% of these threads complaining about a certain promotion ruining 'over' talent and not letting them be themselves, now we want the opposite.

The most popular wrestlers of all time are, disproportionately, much better characters than they were actual wrestlers.

 

Swole: "I believe that the company is making better strides than before, but a couple of things need to be fixed. You have to be able to call people out because not everything is perfect. I hope they listen to this with an open heart and not just, 'Ah, she's just saying this because of XYZ.' I genuinely want them to succeed."

TK: "I'M NOT RACIST YOU'RE JSUT BAD AT WRESLTING"

 

This thread is bad

 

But are they characters they came up with themselves? Or are they characters that they came up with the help of a team of writers?

 

If we want to talk WWE specifically, they are significantly more scripted and have less freedom now than they did in the past. And that's probably the biggest reason why we've had no generational, transformational characters in the last 20-25 years.

 

yeah but you're acting like its an all or nothing thing

most of my favorite TV comedies are ones that have writers, but also give the cast lots of room to riff and improvise and have input into the direction their characters go

why can't wrestling work the same way?

 

Because when things go wrong on your favorite sitcom, the actors aren't held responsible, the writers are.

When that dynamic goes wrong in wrestling, the wrestler is held responsible, not the writers.

 

I don't think I agree. I feel like if a segment falls flat or a wrestler isn't getting a push, most people tend to blame creative and not the wrestler. Wrestlers only really get the blame when they actually start doing lucha things and flub the promo.

 

*We* blame creative, but the person who ultimately pays the price for bad writing is the wrestler. It's easier to fire/replace one wrestler than it is an entire group of writers.

 

The guy has been a forum rat and poster almost his entire life. So yeah not surprising.

 

kinda happy I came from modest means cause I'd prolly be insufferable if I grew up with a billion dollars

 

Tony is literally a dude who happenened to have access to a billion dollars that also posted on the board and various other IWC forums for over a decade aka typically the worst kind of wrestling fan.

He should stay off twitter tbh.

 

When he was on football podcasts he was always a snobby turd, honestly. The way he boasted about the team was just silly. He made himself out to be a genius because the team started throwing the football deep a lot and it was successful.

 

no idea why he hasn't just apologized already and nipped it in the bud, that shows as poor judgment as the initial tweet

 

Yeah, Im talking more in the "grab the brass ring" side of things. Its one thing to be invested in your character, a whole other thing to have the skillset to comfortably walk up to the CEO of the company and say "push me in X story". Hell, Sasha Banks said she was scared of Vince...and she was main eventing NXT shows and being handled well generally!

Its incredibly difficult to walk up to those guys and say "you aren't booking enough women" when you are one of those women trying to get booked and the history of the entire business is that 99% of the time thats how you get buried

This, by the way, is a perfect example. Someone who is invested in their character and wrestling style, but who might not be comfortable advocating for the kind of promo time needed to build a feud that features on TV. And this feud started and stayed on Dark/off-tv for a pretty long time

AEW already has some of the structure to do this. They leave plenty of easter eggs in lesser moments and build things in a variety of ways...and use their mens division pretty broadly...but right now its not obvious than anyone besides TK actually has the longer-term plans in mind, and we're seeing the blind spots right now. And he just buried a person that spoke up

 

That TK tweet just made this so much worse. Compared to WWE i think AEW is ahead of the game when it comes to some aspects of representation (especially for Latinx and Queer wrestlers). they just have a lot of work to do on representation for black wrestlers.

TK could have just said something like "we need to strive to do better, but here are examples where we've made progress" and yeah some would be still upset, but it wouldn't have blown up. Instead he decided to be a petty dickhead, and he 100% deserves the criticism he's getting for it.