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Growing up watching Hogan, Savage, and Warrior - it seemed like WWE’s specialty was booking strong babyface champions. Now, numerous babyface title reigns fizzle out and reigns are cut short in every case except Cody Rhodes. What is WWE doing wrong now with their babyface champion booking - and what could be done to improve it?
Nothing that I see. I hated the babyface booking that you liked back in the day. I like things to be more realistic and I never liked the booking of Hogan or Warrior or John Cena as supermen. That has no appeal to me. I love that Cody has gotten over the way that he has, and Jey Uso as well, because I like babyface that are real and identifiable.
I didn’t like the booking limitations of the original WWE brand split. Then, I came to appreciate seeing 2 sets of different rosters. Later, when the original brand split dissolved, we saw the same talent on both shows; with emerging talent was stifled. Now, it appears we have a soft brand split, which is cool for unpredictability. However, as a writer myself, I need logic. What’s the canon AND meta logic as to how HHH is running this soft brand split? Ex: Who is allowed to appear on both shows - and why?
I think what we see now is that if there is a logical reason for someone from Raw to be on Smackdown, like being in a tournament, that's what we get. And when someone from the other brand shows up on Raw they generally say, "Smackdown's so and so". I am OK with that.
My question is regarding Solo. I really loved his serious always ready-to-beat enforcer character who squashed John Cena once.. but now he's changed into some goofy always doing comedy type of stuff.. It's entertaining though but It might hurt his overall stature in the long run. What do you think?
I think that they got off of the rails with him a little bit. Part of it was probably due to how quickly Jacob Fatu got over and they adjusted. I hope they get him back on track. The US Title win is a great starting point to do that. He has a ton of talent.
I saw the following attributed to Dave Meltzer from one of his podcasts concerning the apology that CM Punk made in Saudi Arabia before Night Of Champions and I was curious what you thought about it. I laughed when I read it.
“That obviously, you know, that obviously was planted… I mean that never, you know what I mean? It was, it’s, it’s really interesting how, you know, they, whatever it was, you know, obviously somebody wanted him to apologize and he did because he’s, he’s not exactly the apologetic type for one thing. I thought he came off just horrible… They made him apologize. Triple H was like, oh, you know, it’s so grown up of him to apologize and it’s like, you know, perfect, it, it… But you know, whatever. I just thought, you know, it couldn’t be worse, but it’s wrestling and it’s to be expected.”
OK, first and foremost I didn’t hear about this because Dave Meltzer has nothing of importance to say in my opinion so I avoid him like COVID. With that said, the quote reads exactly like the ear breaking way that he speaks so I can believe he said that. Obviously it was plant? Well, I truly believe to him it was “obvious” because where Punk is concerned, he always gets that kind of treatment from Meltzer. Punk could give Meltzer a million dollars and Meltzer would probably take him to task for giving it to him in 20s instead of 100s. I laugh at it too, I really do.
What is Meltzer’s problem with Punk anyway?
I haven’t read his work since before I got into the business so I can’t say if he had this animus towards Punk during his last WWE run. All I can say is that ever since Punk was in AEW, it seemed like he was in Meltzer’s crosshairs. Why? Only he could answer that one, but he probably won’t.
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