Promotional Tour (Semifinals – Pool A)

Hey homies. Welcome to the official kick start of the TripleBanger Promotional Tour Semifinals. Approximately half of the competitors have been sent home and the remaining six writers will clash this week to land a spot in the March 29th finale. The last stage will feature the survivor from each Pool (A, B & C). Which basically means in ten days (voting included), we’ll crown a new Main Page columnist. Yayyyyyyyyyy for progress. Now for the statistical fanatics out there, here are the overall standings from the tournament’s Quarterfinals.

[Pool A]

Priest – 20 (Advances)
Mavsman – 19 (Advances)
Jovanbkt – 15 (Eliminated)

[Pool B]

Bloodline – 13 (Eliminated)
OniBarubary – 19 (Advances)
Da_shee – 22 (Advances)

[Pool C]

Romeo – 12 (Eliminated)
ChrisBear – 21 (Advances)
Rey Ca$h – 18 (Advances)

Thus, giving us three separate match-ups: Priest versus Mavsman, OniBarubary versus Da_Shee and ChrisBear versus Rey Ca$h. Congratulations to each of them for even making it this far. P-Diddy & Mavsy are penciled in for today’s segment so why waste any more time? All votes for the participants should be sent via email to SkitzLOP@aol.com. Cheerleading will remain acceptable until 9pm Eastern US on Friday evening. The word cap has been set for 2,000 (which also goes for the other pair of Pools).

The Lord’s Lowdown: Letting Go

Ever since I fell in love with wrestling, I have been given stick from my friends as they fail to comprehend my fandom. You see, they cannot see past the ugly side of the WWE. They look at the childishness, the fakery, and all they can see is something juvenile. They can’t understand how I see them for something more. Their reaction is something that baffles me, too.

How can they not see the same beauty that I do? Perhaps it’s not something you see at first. I mean, at first glance, the WWE is hardly the most appetising thing in the world to a man of my age is it? Sure, when you’re a kid you let your emotions get the best of you and you let your romantic imagination run wild, but when you become older, you become pessimistic. I prefer to call it a realist. That’s the reason I fell for the WWE. I was young and impressionable.

Last summer, I introduced my best friend to wrestling again. They hadn’t embraced in years before my intervention. At first, he was a little apprehensive. Perhaps he had too many memories that he didn’t want tainted. He wanted to preserve them, rather than experience it again and be disappointed. But he gave it a chance, and he hasn’t looked back ever since.

Everything he loved about the WWE all those years ago was still there. The same charm was as apparent as ever. It may not have been the same as he remembered it, but that didn’t matter. For your Stone Cold, you have Randy Orton. For your Triple H, you have CM Punk. He didn’t fall into the trap many others do. He didn’t compare the past to the present. Reminiscing is a dangerous game that leaves the present helplessly lagging. Nothing can compare to what the past was in your head. You put it on such a high pedestal that anything else is insignificant. He didn’t make that mistake. He embraced the current WWE product for what it is; a damn fine entertaining one.

As time progressed, his love began to grow stronger. So much so, it began to affect our friendship. As with any relationship, his time was devoted to it. His only topic of conversation was wrestling. Any time we were together, I had to share him with wrestling. It was all he needed to make him happy, yet for me, I needed a break. I needed something to take my mind off of it; yet that’s what your friends are there for. The irony of it is, I was the one who reacquainted them in the first place.

The annoying thing was he seemed stuck in that honeymoon period. He was at that place where everything the WWE did was perfection. The slightest spot and he was marking out. The mildest of rib ticklers and he was LOLing for the next five minutes. I resented it. Mostly, because I remembered what it felt like to be in that position. Sadly, I left that paradise behind me a long time ago.

It’s funny how you remember certain periods in your life. When I was in my honeymoon phase, I remember every feud being magical. I remember the Cena/Edge TLC match to be a five star clinic. I remember every King Booker promo to be Oscar winning worthy material. When I remember it being that way, what chance does the current product have? What hope does my relationship with the WWE have if I build up the past so much? What I have come to realise is, you can’t. You can’t let your previous memories dictate what happens now.

I have also realised that, in order to appreciate the good, you need to experience the bad. You need to have those moments that leave you in utter despair and those which are truly shambolic. Not every match can be a classic. If it was, how would we know what a great match was? How could we appreciate moments like Michaels/Taker if every match was as gripping and emotional as that? Classics wouldn’t exist. Moments like that would mean nothing. In truth, it would take something away from those special matches that deserve to be up there in their own place in history.

The bad matches, the bad episodes, they all contribute to our appreciation of the good. More importantly, they allow us to savour moments like WrestleMania. That’s what sets WrestleMania apart from the rest. When it comes around, we know we are going to witness something special. It makes all the crap we put up with, all the irritating habits and the pointless dialogue, worthwhile. For just one little night, we can put our cynicism aside and enjoy the good times.

I realise that now. WrestleMania season has allowed me to be a hopeless romantic again. It was the spark that my relationship with the WWE needed. You see, for all the bitching I do about the WWE, I can’t tell you how much respect I have for them. I can’t tell you how much pleasure they give me. It’s for that reason I now know all I’ve been experiencing in the last couple of months was nothing more than a rut. It was an insignificant blip on the radar. My relationship with the WWE is more than that; it’s a long term thing. It’s serious.

My friend is still in his little bubble. Me? I’m not. I’m at that stage where I’m willing to put my ego aside. I’ve reached that point where I’m willing to let the little things go. Because, when it comes down to it, I know what it is that makes me happy. The greatest gift the WWE has given me is wrestling itself. Without the WWE, I never would’ve heard of the likes of Chris Hero, AJ Styles or Beer Money. The WWE doesn’t personify my love for wrestling; it was the catalyst.

I’m finally at that point in my relationship with wrestling where I’m not ashamed to admit I’m a wrestling fan. You’ll find as time progresses that you place a bigger emphasis on it than others do. Do my friends still give me stick for being a wrestling fan? Sure they do. But I know deep down they respect me a hell of a lot more for wearing that badge with pride rather than hiding it away in my bedroom like I did before.

Wrestling is what makes me happy. It took WrestleMania season for me to realise that, and I can only hope it does the same for you. It’s time to forget the past. Whether it was painful or pleasant, it’s in our history. What we need to do is focus on the here and now.

We’re not my friend. We’re not in the honeymoon period anymore. To keep our relationship with wrestling, be it the WWE or TNA, we’re going to need to work at it. That means putting up with the bad times. Because, as we all know, when the good times are here, there is nothing else quite like it.

>>> Click Here to Vote for Priest!

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>Wrestling with Character Development

I’ve watched WWE programming steadily for the last seven years. Rain or shine, Raw and Smackdown are there on TV, and I’ve always appreciated that consistency. However, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that they are my favorite TV shows. No, my favorite shows have varied over the years, from The Simpsons to South Park and Boston Legal to The Big Bang Theory. However, I recently had to say goodbye to my (at the time, current) favorite TV show, Friday Night Lights. Friday Night Lights was an amazing show because of its characters. The actors, Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton in particular, were given freedom to do what felt natural for their characters. It showed in the final product. There was a stunning, poignant realism to all the characters that made them so relatable and likeable to the viewer. When Coach and Tami had marital problems, I felt it myself. When Tim went to jail and Billy had a son, I felt the lowest of lows and the highest of highs. The connections I grew to the characters were unbelievable. It was truly golden television, and if you haven’t seen it, I strongly suggest you make an effort to watch it on DVD or Netflix.

I bring this show up because I think the WWE and its wrestlers could learn a lot from it. In all the glitz and glamour of sports entertainment, the foundation of the WWE’s success can often become lost. No, the wrestling isn’t the most important thing on the show. The development of characters, from their introduction to their final bow, is what drives the success (or failure) of WWE programming every single week. Matches are simply a vehicle to propel the character development. I believe that establishing emotional connections with the audience by building a solid character from the ground up is crucial for any aspiring main-event wrestler.

Obviously, the emotional connection of an audience with a wrestler starts when we are first introduced. Like any blind date, there is a feeling-out process. What does this person like? What does this person dislike? How do I feel about this person? Videos introducing characters are pivotal for this reason. Alberto del Rio was able to make such a large impact upon his arrival in large part because of the successful video promos that portrayed him as an aristocratic snob. The audience was preconditioned to hate him when he arrived. His actions subsequent to his arrival drove home that point and garnered him genuine heat.

There are occasions when the WWE will push a debuting wrestler like Alberto del Rio to the moon. But more often than not, the WWE will give the new wrestler a tepid storyline and see how he gets over with the crowd. If he does well, he’ll be given better feuds. If he doesn’t, it’s off to jobber status or the unemployment line. While this might not be the most efficient way to evaluate talent, it gets the job done as far as displaying new wrestlers on television. However, the margin of error in determining the potential of the wrestler is large. This is another reason why emotional connections with the audience should be of the upmost importance to a wrestler. The fans are his lifeblood. Without their initial support, he’s already three quarters of the way out the door.

Really a wrestler’s booking and his emotional connection with the audience is a two way street. We only care about the plotline if we care about the characters… but the plotlines are instrumental in helping us care about the characters. For example, say that the WWE were to develop a high profile storyline to push the company through the slow summer months. The storyline could feature murder, money, sex, whatever floats your boat. Regardless of what it’s about, it’s an amazing storyline that has the potential to keep fans on the edge of their seats. If the WWE were to choose Primo to star in the storyline… it would eventually flop. We just don’t have enough of a connection with him to make investing our emotions in the storyline worth it. However, by being involved in such a high profile angle, Primo’s stock would rise in our eyes. We’d care more about him than we did at the beginning, but the fact that we didn’t care enough about him in the beginning would cause the storyline to tank.

Is your head hurting yet? Hopefully not. All I’m trying to say is that plotlines thrive or bomb based on the audience’s relationships with the characters involved, but those same plotlines help build the relationships. The Nexus invasion angle initially succeeded based on shock value. However, that wasn’t enough to sustain it over the course of six months. We needed to see the dynamic of Wade Barrett as the leader, understand WHY he was doing what he was doing. Who was he as a wrestler? As a person? What about the other members of Nexus? In short, the angle became more effective when we knew who they were as characters. Different things drive different characters to act. Motivation in a scene is crucial for any actor, derived from the character’s unique life experiences. Wrestlers are extremely athletic actors, but actors nonetheless. Everyone plays a part. Everyone must know their role in order to deliver a believable performance and send the fans home happy.

So how do we build a character that can establish a genuine emotional bond with the audience, whether it’s loving or hating? First, the characters have to seem real in the context in which they live. Realism isn’t necessarily the goal, but it should it least be present in the character. Obviously, the WWE is an over the top world, filled with larger than life scenarios and characters. But as long as the character fits into the broader scheme of things, there’s a base to develop from that’s plausible and believable. Essentially, you don’t want your character to be a sore thumb (cough Kizarny cough) because it will be harder to gain acceptance. It’s interesting to note that the WWE has veered away from strange and bizarre characters in recent years. Sure, you still have Kane, Undertaker, and Goldust, but these wrestlers are products of a different era. They’ve lasted through to the current era, but you’re unlikely to see a character like The Undertaker debuting in today’s WWE and seeing lasting success.

The next step in establishing a character is throwing them into scenarios with other wrestlers. Knowing a back-story for a wrestler is a bonus, but people more than anything reveal who they are by what they do around others. Allowing wrestlers to establish relationships with one another shows the audience the fiber of that wrestler’s character. With whom does he choose to associate? How do they interact? Ideally, every wrestler on the roster should have an established relationship with every other wrestler on the roster. Who’s the “insane” one in the relationship? Who’s the funny guy? What are the differences in the interactions between Randy Orton and John Cena versus Randy Orton and Evan Bourne? It’s vitally important for there to be a well-defined dynamic between each and every wrestler to differentiate characters, as well as the overall product. It’s easy to fall into a one-dimensional interpretation of faces liking faces and hating heels and vice versa. However, in life, it’s not that simple. Portraying the different shades of friendship or antipathy between wrestlers causes a realistic blend of personalities that the audience can observe and relate to. As a result of this, emotional bonds will grow and flourish as the audience chooses who to hate and who to love based on what they’re seeing.

These flourishing bonds are what all connections should strive to become. As football coach Lou Holtz says, “You’re either getting better or getting worse. Nothing stays the same.” If the audience’s bond with a wrestler isn’t growing, it’s dying. Once the base emotional bond is built, the WWE must continue to allow the character to experience new things and situations. Complacency is the enemy. The viewer will ultimately move on to something else if he isn’t given a reason to stick around. Let the wrestler evolve as a character; his bond with the audience will evolve with him.

The WWE has no reason not to pursue strong emotional connections between the wrestlers and the audience. While there is more investment required, the end returns more than justify any costs. When the audience is interested in a character, they want to spend more time with him. So what do devoted fans do? They go and buy the John Cena DVD. They purchase tickets to the next local Smackdown taping so they can see Edge spear the hell out of Alberto Del Rio. They adorn themselves with the latest merchandise in an attempt to feel connected. At the end of the day for the WWE, wrestlers are a money-making venture. Not building strong bonds will eventually kill the company.

With a lot of planning and a little bit of luck, a bond that can’t be broken will be crafted. This is the magic spot, the point where every viewer feels they have their own unique connection with their favorite wrestler. Short of entering the Benoit zone, there’s nothing that wrestler could do to lose their devoted fans. Emotional bonds will lead to this most special viewing experience. It’s the pinnacle of the fan experience; a true, honest to god connection is felt.

Investing in character development as I’ve outlined isn’t easy. It takes a lot of hard work on the part of the bookers to put thought into matches. Instead of relying on the same old formulas, use some innovation and the nuances of each wrestler’s character to derive a new equation. Utilize the existing relationships between characters to add another level of complexity to matches. Additionally, the writers need to be familiar with the inner workings of the wrestlers’ characters when crafting storylines. They should have a deep understanding of how a certain wrestler thinks, acts, and reacts so that his storylines make sense. The wrestlers themselves bear a large burden of the responsibility. Wrestlers must develop their characters, spending time to get the ticks and tiny details ironed out. It’s said that the best wrestling characters are based on aspects of the wrestler’s real life personality. I can definitely understand how that’s true. You know best how you would feel about or react to a certain situation. It’s an easy shortcut to take, but it’s effective.

Ultimately, it will be the fans that decide what’s successful and what isn’t. They register their opinions through deafening cheers and debilitating silence. Fans make or break a wrestler. But it’s up to the wrestler and the entire production staff to provide the fans with a reason to give a damn.

Friday Night Lights made me give a damn. I legitimately cared about what happened to the characters throughout the show’s five-season run. One day, I would love to be able to say the same thing about Raw and Smackdown. Honestly, the day probably never will come where every wrestler’s character is extremely well-developed. But I want to at least be able to say that I’m seeing progress. And I think I am. I can detect in the progression of new characters an attempt at realism. The WWE wants to provide the fans with realistic heroes and dastardly villains, characters we can believe in. The WWE’s future depends upon their ability to build new stars. This process can’t be rushed. It’s organic and it takes time. But when successful, a new Rock or Stone Cold is born.

>>> Click Here to Vote for Mavsman!

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Pleased with your double dose of literature for the evening? The Semifinals of the TripleBanger Promotional Tour are 33% completed already. Dress formal and bring your reading glasses because OniBarubary & Da_shee are prepared to tussle this Thursday for a select spot in next week’s Final. Seeing as how there’s a sizable gap of time between now and then, I encourage you to vote VOTE vote VOTE vote VOTE vote VOTE vote VOTE vote VOTE vote VOTE vote VOTE vote VOTE! Then visit your favorite porn site(s), release a load or two and resume voting. Priest and Mavsman know from personal experience that feedback on the Main Page is virtually non-existent for CFers so how about dispelling that theory? Their respective email addresses are conveniently listed below so get to clicking, cock munchers.

>>> Email Priest
>>> Email Mavsman

Source: lordsofpain.net