Windy City November Tour "Quincy, Illinois Tri State Area"

[steve]

Tour ending show posted!

[jp1985]

Some good, some bad, some ugly for me there. The 1 thing that overrides it all though is that the action in the ring would have been great on that last Fight Night. From the wrestling standpoint, if I just turn that show on, watch it for the wrestling, it is fantastic. You have a good eye for matching up wrestler A vs wrestler B in ways that have not been overdone in real life, but seem like they would be pretty good quality. Not 1 match was bad.

I also really enjoyed the Cena vs Bully Ray segment to start the show. Again, it seems like a perfect fit in real life if you were to have taken Bully Ray out of Impact and onto WWE that a feud with Cena could have been highly entertaining. Glad we're getting to see it. While I personally don't see Bully Ray as a legit threat to take the title from your booking of him in terms of wins and losses, I do still see this as good enough that it would have my interest. It might not be saying much, but this has been the best booked feud of the 5 title matches in my opinion as you really got some good heat to the match and made it feel personal. Also, great use of Rockstar Spud. While I would much prefer to see him wrestling full time rather than in an office spot as he is a good young talent with potential, it does beat him doing absolutely nothing as an alternative, and at least you're not using him poorly. Here is hoping though that at some point in 2015, he can get back onto your main roster and get involved with the Zero Gravity stuff or the World Junior title even.

The pairing of Bray Wyatt with The Briscoes has a lot of potential. Long term Jay Briscoe is a better talent than Wyatt as an overall package, but as an introduction to the roster, great move. Better than Jimmy Jacobs anyway if he's out of the group now. If Wyatt resorted to that to win the quarter final too, he is going to be pretty hard to stop him going forward.

Was not a fan of the 4 way being on this show. It took an amazing match, probably the best match of the night, and rendered it to being a complete after thought that for me does more harm than good to anybody involved. Main eventers of the entire league wrestling each other, and by the end of the night, the result isn't even anything memorable to the show. It was also a bit strange as by date, Jericho & Rollins were still very much associated in Impact, which is clearly in part what this match was booked off of. Here, there was a completely missed opportunity to use that to tell a story beyond the 2 lines you gave it. Working together, tension, a miscue. There just could have been way more there.

The Shamrock vs Puder stuff is not catching my interest at all. I think the idea started with something but Puder just keeps falling further and further down your roster as you add more, he gets less and less time, never wins, barely even wrestles with 1 match over 2 months (3 counting December). There is still something there, just you need to take 5 minutes and rank your roster from 1 to 35. Figure out where Puder stands and book this accordingly. I feel like you think Puder's still a top guy for you, but you will find out pretty fast if you did that, he's not. And that's how it comes across reading it. Ok, all this to get to a match with Shamrock, then what? More of nothing? lol

I don't think anybody can question Kingston vs Mysterio as a match. You delivered there. Spending so much time though, building to a hair vs mask stip, and then not delivering like that as the final match of the show, it really let the air out. It felt rushed when you introduced it right off the bat, and if you didn't want Kofi to lose his hair or Mysterio to lose his mask, why bother with the stip at all? Could have been a big moment for Kingston with a big win, and instead the parting feeling is just deflated and not caring go forward for the character. The last Fight Night ended in a similar way with McIntyre winning a Royal Rumble by doing nothing and entering at #30 to an empty ring. Or Fall Brawl where Paige wins a First Blood match by April Davids having Paige's blood on her. It feels like you're trying too hard to surprise or be creative time after time at the expense of just delivering what people are paying for as the pay off.  If they were long term stips with differences, but the lesser feeling keeps coming immediately at the conclusion of the match itself so the matches are just instantly coming across that way.

And then there is the Waltman and Heyman stuff. I just don't at all understand why Heyman, your color commentator, cares so much about this subject to go to these lengths? Or why Waltman of all people is the one getting singled out? The part with Waltman speeding off, dropping his bag, Heyman picking it up and smiling, that was amazing. It's like Lucha Underground meets "Rock: This is Your Life". I don't want to be too critical on this one as I really, really want to see where this goes without any outside input to at all change the direction you're going with it.

[steve]

Thanks for the input.

The 4-way was originally meant to be something different, involving Joe & Masters but plans obviously changed there. I think Rollins is a great talent who's taken a few losses recently elsewhere so I had him go over the least valuable talent in Jericho, albeit I could have done more there between those two in the writing but let's just pretend there was lol,. This gets Rollins on winning ways and helps build another possible challenger to Bryan. Again it wasn't the match I wanted, but I had to honor the bookings I made a while ago for these guys and make a match.

Puder is around 8th for me at the moment out of 35, so mid-card to upper-mid, but the roster is fluid and people move up and down the card all the time. The Shamrock/Puder stuff has been downsized to the upper-mid-card and this was intended, lower than originally planned though after it didn't originally take off the way I wanted. Puder is a Windy City original and will always have a place on my roster.

Kingston/Mysterio - the lack of a real pay-off, for the fans, is kind of the whole point. This will be expanded upon on the next Fight Night.

Waltman - again, wait and see.

[jp1985]

Yeah, Rollins did take some losses, although based on calendar, this actually took place before any of that so it doesn't do much to get him on winning ways since he turned around and lost 3 times after this lol. And that's not to say anything about the losses as I think joe has been doing a good job keeping him strong with minimal loss to his credibility while using him to bring up others around him.

If Puder's your 8th best talent, all I'll say to that is use him like that and show the value. This goes back to the 35 discussion. He's your 8th best guy in your mind, yet you don't want to actually put him over anybody on your roster it seems. If he's your 8th best guy, that to me means he should be able to beat numbers 9 through 35 which he never, ever does, and if he's your 8th best guy as a seldom used attraction, he shouldn't be feuding with another guy that also never wrestles. He comes across to me as a very easy guy to book in this feud. Every show, Daniel Puder beats Crash Test Dummy in 45 seconds due to ref stoppage, Daniel Puder beats Marion Fontaine in 90 seconds due to ref stoppage, Daniel Puder beats Jake Crist in 50 seconds due to ref stoppage. He doesn't even have to beat #s 10-30 even or be #8 and could be #20 and it still works, but that's what 30-35 are there for and could have benefited you tremendously to getting Puder over again after going down to Cena and Steen repeatedly several months back. Then as a fan, that's all been erased and I'm thinking Jesus, what could he do to the 50 year old Shamrock? Or is Shamrock the guy to put him in his place? Instead it has just been a pissing contest between 2 non wrestlers where it feels like after the match, Shamrock just goes back to nothing, Puder continues barely wrestling, so where is the story after it takes place? Puder may end up winning your title for all I know and you know what's next, but the unknowing fan doesn't and can only go off what is being presented. The match itself will still have heat when you get there, no doubt about that, it has just been the getting there process that smells of a missed opportunity because it's not doing much to elevate Puder back up when it could.

With Kingston and Mysterio, I get it was the point, but the point is that's not good to do that because it goes beyond the wrestling, which now becomes secondary. It's like you led me into caring about the match and suspending disbelief in pro wrestling just so you can turn around and laugh in my face for caring and call me an idiot for giving you my money. When it happens at that exact moment like here, the fan heat from me is not at Kingston for not removing the mask, it's at the promoter big time for not delivering what I paid to see in the main event on your big card of the month, the money match for essentially the entire promotion over the month of November. I have no doubt it gets expanded upon, it's not like it's a bad idea to turn Kingston or his reasoning won't make sense based on what you presented, but the execution of how you did it just hurts the promotion's credibility with the fans. If that's where you wanted to get, Kingston turning heel and being disgusted by the fans, you could have easily found another way to get there that doesn't end with that same fan dissatisfaction in the promotion itself. To use a recent example, this isn't like buy the Network to see Survivor Series and if the Authority lose then they are out of power, only to have Cena bring them back a month later or even the next night on Raw ... it's the equivalent of buy the Network to see Survivor Series and if the Authority lose then they are out of power, and then 10 seconds after the match ends Cena takes the mic and brings them back lol.