wrestling / Columns

Ask 411 Wrestling: Is The Bullet Club Becoming Like The nWo?

December 21, 2016 | Posted by Mathew Sforcina
Bullet Club - ROH - The Young Bucks

Hey there, welcome to Ask 411 Wrestling! I am your host, Mathew Sforcina, and I just want to share with you the news.

See, a couple weeks ago, I asked you, my dear readers, to assist me by voting for my preferred choices in the Vloggies, the awards given out by Unsocial Jordan, a fellow wrestler and all round good chap down here. And my word did you pull through. You can see for yourself here!

Now, if you’re unable or unwilling to click the video, the basic upshot is that thanks to your kind readers, my three choices all got the most votes, especially the one where I was nominated for Person of the Year!

But then Unsocial Jordan kinda changed the rules, and by changed the rules I mean he basically ignored most of the votes that were of that exact combination of choices.

But then I found out that the awards were jars of Nutella, and given that I don’t like Nutella, I’m not really that mad.

But thank you all for trying anyway. Although now I realise that if you weren’t going to click the first video, you’re unlikely to click all these and get the ‘joke’. Ah well.

So, onto… Oh wait, one more video.

So now, onto the stuff you’re hear for, assuming you didn’t leave when you heard I don’t like Nutella.

Got a question for me? Preferably not Nutella related? [email protected] is where you send it.

BANNER!

Zeldas!

Check out my Drabble blog, 1/10 of a Picture! Nutella free!

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The Trivia Crown

Who am I? I was part of the birth of a celebrated thing right now. In a famous Indy company, I was part of a group with a name that was, if nothing else, totally accurate. I made a couple appearances in another major Indy fed, each one of which was a tag match with a guy who appears to be heading to WWE soonish. I’ve gone through two major gimmicks in the big leagues, one of them teaming with the son of a very infamous tough guy and the other which I am working under today. From the streets to the skies, I am who?

Mitch Awesomefoot had the answer, but I’ll give you mine so as to clarify a couple things.

Who am I? I was part of the birth of a celebrated thing right now (was involved in the match where New Day won the Tag Titles). In a famous Indy company, I was part of a group with a name that was, if nothing else, totally accurate (Los Luchadores de Mexico in CHIKARA, which I’ll admit was a mistake upon closer inspection). I made a couple appearances in another major Indy fed, each one of which was a tag match with a guy who appears to be heading to WWE soonish (Teamed with Chris Hero in ROH). I’ve gone through two major gimmicks in the big leagues, one of them teaming with the son of a very infamous tough guy (Camacho, Son f Haku) and the other which I am working under today. From the streets to the skies, I am who? (Sin Cara/Hunico)

Who am I? Although I’ve never held a singles world championship, I’ve both controlled one and been a champion of the world. My first tag partner on a major stage would later go on to gain a biblical name. I’ve been involved in a match that was deemed perfect, and also a match that was the worst of the year. I’ve utilized Freebird rules, won a briefcase in a match, and am currently signed to a major company. A man who once got involved with Oyl, I am who?

Getting Down To All The Business

Manu Bumb has a couple questions to start us off.

“There’s been plenty of ‘wins’ that did go the right way but the ending wasn’t exactly as planned (Batista winning the ’05 Rumble, Cena winning MITB, Sheamus winning the WWE Title at TLC over Cena), but those results were right, just in the wrong way.”

I know about the batista/rumble thing, but what wasn’t right about how Cena’s MitB win and Sheamus’ TLC win went down? Don’t think I’ve ever heard those stories.

We’re not talking major issues, just small matters of timing and such. With the Cena MITB win, the briefcase wasn’t supposed to break away in his hands like it did, he was supposed to knock Big Show off the ladder and then grab it normally. So while it was a ‘botched ending’, it wasn’t really.

Similar to the Sheamus Table match, the ending was always Sheamus over, but I’ve heard that the finish was meant to be both men going through tables but Sheamus was just a little later (John hits first so Sheamus wins) sort of thing. It was meant to be a fluke in such a way that Sheamus then crowing about ‘beating’ Cena was meant to be heat getting.

Before WWE had the network, they had to use satellites to broadcast their PPVs live….right? I remember when the WCW PPV was supposed to be 3.5 hours long instead of 3, and I heard they forgot to reserve the satellite for the extra 30 mins, and people didn’t see the main event as a result. (Did I get any of that right?)

Not the WCW bit, no. It wasn’t that they didn’t reserve the satellite, it was that they didn’t tell all the cable companies, and thus some of them, once three hours were up, they ended the broadcast because that was as long as PPVs went. Some of them did show the whole thing, someone was obviously watching the show in some companies.

As for the satellite bit, they did used to transmit shows via satellite back to Titan Towers, which is why if you had a dish and did some searching you would be able to find the unedited feed.

(Assuming I did,) does WWE still do that for live televised events? I’ve seen lots of people saying that with the network, wwe no longer has time constraints for PPVs/special events, but is that really true? If they don’t need satellites anymore, then I guess shows like 205 live or special events like takeover might not necessarily have time constraints, but, contrary to what they say, PPVs are still aired on……you guessed it, PPV. So those shows still have some constraints, right? when the PPVs started going longer than 3 hours for the main show, I looked at a channel guide, and sure enough, the PPV channel had enough time blocked off to let the PPV (and subsequent replay) go over 3 hours each (4 hours each for the big 4).

Are the PPV providers getting the show via the internet like those of us with the network, or does WWE still need to use satellites to get the show on PPV (and USA, since raw and SD are both live too)?

In theory, perhaps, they might well have issues if they decided to run a show long and didn’t tell anyone. But WWE seems to have their stuff in order a lot more than WCW did, so I’m sure they have someone on hand to, worst case scenario, call up the cable company and go “don’t cut off”, assuming that was possible, I’m not sure how that works in this modern age, presumably they would have computers talking to each other and such.

As for how WWE broadcasts their stuff, I presume it’s now all digital and via the internet, although that could, in theory, be via satellite. But either way, the problem was never the satellite, it was the cable companies who were providing the PPV to customers, they cut it off, not the satellite. So I sincerely doubt WWE would ever have an issue with a satellite cutting out on them in this day and age.

… Let’s try for an easier question I might actually be able to answer. Michael?

Has Sasha Banks become the IWC’s female version of Daniel Bryan where every time she loses fans are up in arms and cry and that she looks weak despite being a multi-time world champ? Just like whenever Bryan lost it was outrageous , the same keeps happening with Banks. So originally it was “She didn’t hold the title long enough,” to “She shouldn’t lose the title in her hometown” to “Why would she tap with three seconds left in an ironman match.”

Friggin ridiculous. Why can’t she lose and just lose and that’s it? If anything, all these posts do is make Charlotte look inferior and unworthy to be champ because how can she defeat the immortal Sasha Banks after all?

Do you find this whining and excuse making to be as tedious as I do? Wrestlers, especially in a lengthy feud, do trade wins and titles often. It’s not new (Look at Rock-HHH, Rock-Foley, Taker-Foley, Vader-Sting, Flair-Sting, etc.) so why is this an issue for both Bryan and Sasha to lose?

Because of the way it happened and what it says about the company’s stance on the person involved.

I’ve had a specific claim for a while now that whenever someone shouts that ‘Cena should turn heel’, what they’re actually saying is that ‘Cena should be interesting’, or more interesting at least. Turning Reigns heel is a similar deal, it’s just that he’s not interesting, and a heel turn is the default way to turn a boring face interesting.

I think at this point I can take it a step back and make a general rule that for the most part, when the IWC demands a specific storyline outcome and/or part, what they’re really calling for is just a better class of storytelling, and/or treating the characters involved better.

You can absolutely trade a belt back and forth and have it make the two people involved look better and get hotter out of it. Out of the ones you listed, Rock/HHH is the best example, their run in 2000 where the belt bounced back and forth between them did huge business and made them both bigger. But merely trading wins isn’t a magic solution, it’s just a storytelling method, just like losing all the matches except the last one, or refusing to fight until finally you agree to just one match or whatever.

The main thread that links together most of the IWC’s lost causes over the past few years, Sasha, Bryan, Sandow, Ryder, Ambrose before he stopped caring for whatever reason, the point was not that they won or lost matches, is that the way they were treated was that they weren’t new big stars, they were geeks who got lucky a few times, and then once their ‘chance’ where they looked somewhat ineffectual, they were moved back down the card. The WWE didn’t use them as stars, didn’t take their popularity with a segment of the audience and use that to make them into genuine superstars, they just milked it for a little bit then made damn sure to cool them off so they could push who they wanted to.

So with Sasha specifically, yes, you can look at each segment of the story and defend it by itself, independent of the surrounding issues.

Hometown people lose all the time, and it adds to the heartbreak of the moment, which should put heat on Charlotte.

If someone talented puts you in a shoot submission hold, you’re tapping out no matter what the clock says.

If two people are evenly matched, they can in theory trade wins back and forth.

But the thing is, throughout the whole thing, Sasha never defended the belt against anyone else, never got one successful title defence across three reigns, plus WWE kept pushing that frankly stupid-ass “Charlotte is undefeated! On PPV! In WWE Specifically! In Single Matches Only!” stat which after the first title win kinda killed any heat, because it became clear that they weren’t breaking that anytime soon.

Bryan got one solid moment of glory, a couple years too late, and then was shoved into a feud with Kane that was focused more on his wife, before breaking down and then used to try and shore up Roman Reigns before he had to step away.

Sasha got a bunch of moments, but was never allowed to be a champion, it was always a case of her being the woman Charlotte had to beat to get the belt back.

Now, thing is, regardless of how Vince sees Sasha, which is another issue, Charlotte/Bayley IS a stronger WM match, in terms of storyline, and Bayley getting the TakeOver: Brooklyn 1 moment of beating Charlotte should, in theory, make her for a good long while. But that’s assuming WWE doesn’t mess that up.

And their track record on messing up people the IWC isn’t great. Hence the bitching. So I understand the bitching, but no, I don’t find it tedious. Just slightly misaimed and sadly irrelevant…

Nightwolf has a couple questions.

1. There’s something that has bothered me for quite sometime. Why did they have Tazz team up with APA to take on the Right To Censor at WM 17? Was this ever mentioned in a storyline? I don’t seem to recall them mentioning it.

In storyline, sure, there was justification. Tazz at that point had begun to do commentary, and was now a member of the Smackdown commentary team after Lawler left the company, but he was still wrestling as well, he would bounce between the two. RTC were fighting with the APA, and then on an episode of Smackdown, Steven Richards was interfering with a Buchanan/Goodfather V Sexay/Blackman tag match, so Tazz locked Richards into the Tazzmission to shut him up, leading the RTC to lose the match. This led to a few weeks of the RTC targeting and trying to censor Tazz, which then led to the six man tag. So there was justification in storyline.

(Although I know the original idea was for The Kat to bonk her way through the group to break them up, I can’t help but wonder if you replace Tazz with Lawler in that run… That kinda makes sense, right?)

As for why Tazz in the match, they needed a sixth, obviously, and since they were only going to go with one commentary team, Tazz would have had nothing to do otherwise, why not use him? Give him a payday and all that.

2. With Cody Rhodes being named the newest member of the Bullet Club, the Bullet Club now has 13 members. Do you see the Bullet Club becoming like the NWO and having as many members as they did in the 90’s?

Not really, no, because the nWo recruitment drive had a specific purpose that most people don’t seem to get.

Although there is something to be said for having an army of guys to really put over the notion that you’re an invading force looking to take over, and in retrospect the nWo membership ballooning is often pointed to as the first wrong step, at the time, it made sense, because the point by then was not ‘create a stable’ but ‘create a brand’.

The nWo had gotten hot by the end of 96/start of 97. Really hot. Like, the nWo was the biggest thing in the wrestling world hot. Like, the nWo was one of the biggest things in all media hot.

Well maybe not that far, but it felt like it.

So much so that the idea of the nWo becoming not just a part of WCW but its own brand, its own show, that seemed like a brilliant idea. Bischoff, according to accounts, always wanted to have two separate brands so that one day you can do a giant card of inter-promotional matches that make everyone squillons. Because he’d seen it happen in Japan, where the nWo idea came from originally.

So the nWo was to become its own brand, that would run its own shows, and then possibly run its own house shows, and then possibly its own PPVs, then you can run two PPVs a month and double your payouts and make all the money and yeah WWE so ripped this off.

But the problem is that to have an entirely separate brand, you need a lot more than six or eight wrestlers. Hence the nWo recruitment drive was meant to be the start of a whole new wrestling company, which is why it happened.

To drag this kicking and screaming back to the Bullet Club, I sincerely doubt that Gedo has any plans to form a second brand, although the Bullet Club actually would be a fairly good choice to do so, in that given the point of them is that they run American spots in an otherwise Japanese card, having them split off to become an American style company would actually make some sort of sense, and thus I don’t think the Club will balloon out its membership like the nWo.

I can certainly see it fracturing a little, if they don’t stay on top of it, where New Japan will add a guy, and then ROH would add a guy in for their shows, and then PWG merges it with Mount Rushmore 6.0 or whatever they are up to by then.

Side note, why didn’t they become 2.5 when Cole joined?

But that’s not going to happen. The Bullet Club is probably not going to allow itself to become fractured like that, and New Japan sure as heck isn’t going to split itself for the sake of an inter-promotional feud, so the Club’s membership shouldn’t get to a stupidly huge level, probably.

I mean, if they wanted to do an inter-promotional thing, New Japan probably would have done something with NOAH, had the NOAH guys not gotten horrible reactions whenever they made appearances in New Japan. But given the Jado/Gedo thing, maybe there is one planned in 2019 or something…

*3/4 of a Chandler*

Matthew has a great name, and a good question.

In the go-home show for WrestleMania 13 the final angle is this great segment where Undertaker costs Bret the championship in a cage match with Psycho Sid, and he flips his shit and shoves McMahon on his ass and starts cussing out everyone saying there is no justice etc. Stone Cold (who also tried to interfere to give Bret the championship, so that it would be on the line in their match at Mania) berates him for losing the match which makes Bret even angrier, talking about how he is the real champion, and that causes Psycho Sid to come out and they start brawling, then Stone Cold and Taker come out and join the brawl and they are fighting all over the place.

It builds to this moment and it’s getting a huge reaction from the audience, then Shawn Michaels comes out and the crowd is wondering what he is going to do. He walks up to the ring and picks up a piece of the cage, then puts it back down, then goes to the other side of the ring and picks up a chair, then gets in the ring… then the show ends. Throughout all that the other 4 are brawling like he isn’t there.

What’s up with that?

What’s up with that? Well, Shawn is probably high on something at this point at the very least.

That said, I don’t know what Shawn Michaels is doing King, we better buy Wrestlemania 13 to find out!

Shawn’s inclusion in that show, and WM itself, was a last second thing given that his decision to come back was a last second thing, given that he couldn’t stand the fact that the program seemed to be doing well without him his knee injury was totally fake not as bad as previously thought. He couldn’t wrestle, but maybe the fact that he’d be in attendance as a wild card might sway a few extra last minute buys. He could do anything.

He could cost Sid the title to Taker, still bitter about how Sid beat him for the belt and turning on him and all that.

But he could also cost Taker the match, he was once aligned with Sid, maybe he’s doing that again?

But he could cost Hart his match, he certainly had a long history with Hart.

But then again, Austin doesn’t play well with anyone, and him and Michaels could well come to blows.

Anything could happen, you don’t know, he’s a wildcard and you just gotta buy the PPV to find out what he’s gonna do! Plus his being ignored puts over how much Hart/Austin and Taker/Sid really don’t like each other. That’s the thinking, as I understand it.

Devon! Get the questions!

Oh to hell with it.

Kofi has been a big part of the undercard for close to a decade now having been a multiple time IC, US and Tag champ. He’s never gotten into the main event. My question is twofold, he’s truly the quiet workhorse of The New Day, do you see a day where he could ever get a main event run? And with his body of work in WWE, can you see him as a potential two-time Hall of Famer; one, with his singles work and his incredible run as a member of The New Day?

Actually he did get close into the main event, end of 09, dude pinned Punk and Orton within 10 seconds of each other.

And his run ended over something stupid.

But anyway, could he get a main event run? Sure, part of me is thinking/hoping that New Day will end up as a sort of Shield 2.0 in the sense that everyone involved goes onto big things afterwards.

Woods is Ambrose, obviously.

Kofi’s got a lot of ticks in the right columns, both in terms of being good at the wrestling thing, and also with the intangibles WWE likes, like being able to be counted as an ethnic group for timeshare, and for taking ‘punishment’ well.

Big E is the obvious candidate for a big big push, but there’s no reason Kofi can’t be a main event guy too. Apart from logjam and/or Reigns, of course.

But as for a double HOF induction, no. I’m fairly certain that’s not something WWE is going to do too often, and only for really big names like Flair and Hogan (the nWo), although if some minor names get in twice in order to get them in, that’s ok. Inducting Nash and Hall in twice is acceptable to get Hogan in twice, that sort of thing.

Unless, of course, they do ever go ahead and start inducting matches, which is something they’ve been supposedly floating for a long time. Every year there’s a small hint of a possibility that Hogan/Andre from WM3 might be inducted, because if you start putting matches into the hall of fame then you literally cannot put any other match in before that one. But of course, Hogan is still not totally cool to bring up, so maybe in a few more years…

But if they put matches in? I can totally see him getting in twice under that method. Just for being awesome as is though? No. New Day, unless someone does something stupid, I mean really stupid, not Orton stupid, will be inducted as a group in 15 years or so. And that’ll be it.

Stu now asks me a question specifically because I’m an Aussie.

Wait…

1. As an Aussie (you, not me), do you feel that the WWE (or indeed any other promotion) should have more of an established base there? The two main physical sports you have there (rugby and Aussie Rules) both have players who retire young but could be classified as elite athletes. Especially Aussie Rules, you have guys that are tall and somewhat muscular but often have their careers cut short in their 20s due to knee injuries, and you can easily have successful wrestling careers with the types of injury that would otherwise squash your elite sporting career. It just seems the ‘E are missing a trick here.

Yes and no, but it will probably be irrelevant soon anyway.

I still hold that the Global Domination plan that I keep harping on is a good one, and so of course I think there should be an Australian part of that, if only for my own selfish desires. And yes, there is an argument to be made that if you’re looking for elite athletes to stick in your beginner class, Australia is well represented in all sorts of sports, with both men and women, so you’d think that would be a good bet.

But on the other hand, WWE did have an office down here for a while, and they didn’t sign anyone from down here, plus a lot of former footballer players tend to move into TV if they’re famous enough, or they open gyms and such if they’re not. I’m not sure how well you could sell the WWE to them, at least not as enough to justify a permanent base, unless you paid them a lot, and I’m not how many of them would be worth it. Plus frankly, there’s enough talent here in Australia out of the actual wrestlers that you wouldn’t need to start dipping into sports stars for a while. WWE seems to have grown out of the “We only want to build people from the ground up” phase they went through, they’d prefer that to a degree, sure, but they’re widening the net somewhat.

But honestly? I think before 2017 is out, Asia is going to get a WWE UK style announcement, as WWE will set up a semi-permanent Asia brand/focus, aiming for China and Japan for the most part, but including Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific region generally. I don’t know about a WWE Asian Champion or anything, but they’ll aim to shore things up over here, and probably do some sort of tournament or something. The focus will be mostly on China, sure, but it’ll cover us as well.

And hell, I’ll call it now. There will be two of them actually, a male tourney and a female, and the winners will be Shazza McKenzie and Sean Kustom.

Shazza will win the female one, I mean, and vice versa. Kustom’s Harley Quinn look was great but not THAT great…

Let’s move on before everyone local kills me.

2. Are the WWE catering too much for the fans that they’re always going to have rather than targeting new demographics? It looks like they’re trying to at times but they can’t seem to expand beyond their own level at the moment.

And the reason for that, ironically, is the expansion. There’s just too damn match on offer, and they keep tying everything together.

If I’m a lapsed fan, perhaps, and I maybe am thinking of drifting back into watching, I need to invest, in theory, three hours every Monday, and another two hours on Tuesday if I want to see everyone, and they both reference stuff on the Network which has this NXT thing that is another hour a week plus more, plus if I want proper cruiserweights that’s another separate hour…

Giving people options and choice is great, but if they’re all connected, you’re asking a lot of them, plus having the main, flagship show be 3 hours a week is just insane, that’s far too much of an ask for casual fans.

WWE wants to get new demographics, their audience keeps shifting older, which is the kiss of death, and they really want kids and women and families and all that, and every sort of marketing advice will tell them to do that. But the problem is, it’s a hard sell.

But the flip side is, in theory, that appealing to hardcore fans is also the wrong move since what they want is totally not what is mainstream and thus if you appeal to them, you can’t grow and thus only shrink and thus will die. It’s catch 22.

In theory.

My take is that the idea of the ‘hardcore’ fan and the ‘casual’ fan being these separate groups of people that have no overlap is the wrong approach. You need to think of the fans as a sliding scale, where you have “young person who thinks Reigns and/or Sasha is hot” on one end, all the way to “@ECWFan696969 on twitter” at the other end. Not two different groups, one giant one. And so you draw an audience from that scale, a slice of it. You might get some outliers, but you’re drawing one big segment.

Now sure, the casual end is bigger in terms of numbers, and you can argue that the other end is more likely to stick around regardless, but honestly, the hardcore fan, as much as they bitch, isn’t hard to please. They just want a good wrestling show, and if it involves people they like, so much the better.

Focus on doing that, and the casual side will eventually grow. Austin and Rock hooked people back in the late 90’s, but the show was solid long before that, and that’s the point. Make the show as good as it can be, the hardcores will love it, and the casuals will come.

Eventually.

Maybe.

I mean really, if I knew how to draw a crowd, I would…

3. Is the lack of animals involved in wrestling just a generational thing in that trends change? Or it is an animal welfare issue given the length and breadth of travel international companies have to make?

A little of both, I think. Certainly having writers who mainly come from a TV sitcom/soap/etc background, they’re less likely to think about having animals involved, but I’m fairly sure that the travel for WWE is much more strenuous and this means that you can’t just take animals around with you all the time. Add in animal rights groups, and yeah, it’s not an ideal angle to take. If you really an animal for a one shot, I’m sure you can hire them, but long term, it’s just not viable.

And on that note, have a wonderful holiday season, see you next week for a very special edition of Ask 411 Wrestling!

Special for me, not you. Guess what I mean below, why don’t you?