This came out of a debate on ROHWorld about the current product, so many of the illustrative examples come from that, but I think the general rules apply anywhere.

I’m going to do this as a list because I think it will be easier than writing it out and getting lost in prose. Good booking does the following things (in no particular order):
1. Good booking treats the titles as important
This means title shots are earned, via winning several matches in a row or maybe some sort of big battle royale or by pinning the champion in non-title action, and such things are followed up on quickly, unless there is a kayfabe reason not to (in which case that reason should be part of the story). Former champions also shouldn’t wait months and months and months before asking for their rematches (again, unless there is a kayfabe reason to do so).
This also means that title shots should be made to feel like major occurrences, not just a thing we do just to have one, or because you’ve got a bunch of undercard guys you’re not doing anything with on a show so you throw them in a #1 contendership match for a title shot later in the night where no one thinks there is going to be a snowball’s chance in hell of the title changing hands. It also means no comedy in title matches. These are important championships in a sport. You don’t see four guys just drop the basketball and start dancing in the middle of an NBA Finals game, do you?

2. Good booking develops characters and gives you a reason to care about them other than just “Guy X does cool movez.”
It gives you reasons to care about these people and their journeys, and guides them in directions that change over time. WAY too many wrestlers (and especially talented young ones) have come through ROH over the past few years and gone nowhere because they didn’t have characters so much as Delirious just had a rough idea of what they were supposed to be and that’s it (Rush, Gresham, Dijak, Jay White, Shane Taylor, ACH, I’ll even throw Rhett Titus in here, etc., there was a point when you could have even made this case for Dalton Castle. Even Matt Sydal just came in and did nothing for a year).

3. Good booking is internally consistent
This has several facets to it. Firstly, it is consistent in its own morality. Something can’t be wrong when a heel does it but okay when a babyface does. To pull an example from New Japan, what makes Jay White despicable when he kicks someone in the nuts, but when Yano does it it’s all in good fun? You can’t have the babyface announcer screaming bloody murder when one heel Briscoe helps another, but giggling in mirth when Bullet Club does their stupid “ten boots!” spot, or playing Bobby Heenan when a babyface cheats. If a low blow is dirty when Adam Cole does it to Jay Lethal (RFTS: London) then it’s also dirty when one of the Boys does it to a Briscoe (BITW 2017). Unless the circumstances are extremely stacked against him/her, someone who cheats is not a babyface.
(Side note: I don’t totally subscribe to the “morality play” theory of pro wrestling. I am perfectly fine with heels winning clean and heels winning in the end of the feud, but I still firmly believe that one who is a cheater or is in some other way unlikable is not a babyface.)
Good booking is also consistent in the rules of the promotion. You can’t change the rules in every match (and certainly not during a match) based on what spots the wrestlers want to do. If your promotion has count-outs, you can’t be brawling on the outside forever unless someone is always rolling into the ring to break it up. You could say that this is not a “booking” thing so much as a wrestling thing, but a good booker will order his/her wrestlers to follow the rules, and punish them if they don’t.
(Theoretically you could establish that one ref is more lenient than another on count-outs or something like that, but even then you need to take time developing that and have that stay consistent every time that ref is out there. Things can’t change simply because the plot needs them to change at this exact moment.)
This also means that if something happens in one situation, it needs to happen in an analogous one. If you’re going to have a referee restart a match due to something he didn’t see himself (like Flip’s foot being on the ropes at Honor For All) then you need to also have the referee restart a match in any other situation where someone trustworthy is telling him he blew the call (i.e. every other heel finish ever). Or if management is going to get in such a tizzy about SCU jumping people before matches to that point that they come right out and announce “we’re not going to renew your contracts when they expire” because of it, then they should react that way to all of the heels who jump people. It can’t be a great thing when Jay Lethal takes the belt and defends it overseas but when heel Cody Rhodes threatens to do it I’m supposed to panic because “oh no! What if Cody loses the belt to someone from another promotion?!”

4. Good booking never forgets the premise
A professional wrestling promotion is supposed to be a professional combat sports league, and that premise carries with it certain requirements.
Firstly, the results of your matches need to matter. It doesn’t matter how popular the Montreal Canadians are; if they don’t earn a playoff spot and the Arizona Coyotes do, the Coyotes get that playoff spot even though no one gives a sh*t about the Coyotes and Montreal has one of the biggest fanbases in the NHL. There is zero excuse for Jay White being undefeated in ROH for EIGHT MONTHS and not ever getting a title shot. In-ring success should always bring rewards, and one who often fails in the ring should not be getting rewards simply because of his/her history (merely not being released after a bunch of losses in a row is more than enough of an acknowledgement of someone’s years of service).
This also means that the promotion should always do its best to right any wrongs. A dirty finish should be followed up on (and especially if it’s in a title match). There shouldn’t have been a reason for Matt Taven to even have to introduce his own title belt or go on these crazy conspiracy rants because ROH should have booked Matt Taven vs. Jay Lethal for the ROH World Title of their own initiative over the summer because Taven is completely in the right when he points out that he did, in fact, pin ROH World Champion Dalton Castle during a title match but the referee was down.
This also means that a promotion needs to act like a real professional combat sports promotion would if something comes up. There is no reason it should have taken MONTHS for Bully Ray to be removed from his position as “ROH Enforcer,” no reason the promotion should be allowing Matt Taven to refuse to wrestle right before his match and substitute Vinny Marseglia in his place in a match with no notice, and no reason the company should seem to just shrug its shoulders every time someone cheats instead of booking some sort of follow-up match in an attempt to correct the injustice. There is also no reason that when someone like The Addiction or The Kingdom come out and whine about a conspiracy against them, that someone from management has never come out and explained to us why the heels claiming to be conspired against are wrong. If such a thing happened in any real sport, the league would immediately put out a statement of some sort.
This also ties in with things like consistent applications of the rules, and things like people actually thinking Brandi Rhodes would be allowed to just put on a referee’s shirt and become a sanctioned referee.

5. Good booking tells its stories in a consistent manner
If something is the story in the beginning of an angle, that story cannot change without some sort of precipitating factor on-screen. For example, this year’s story with SCU has been that Joe Koff announced that ROH would not be renewing SCU’s contracts because they were being giant assholes and attacking people and doing other such horrible things, and thus SCU were trying to win and keep championships so that when their contracts ran out at the end of the year they would have leverage over ROH to force ROH to resign them. Then, at some point over the summer, SCU suddenly started getting cheered and so the angle then became that we all want to see SCU win titles and not lose them so that these wonderful and talented wrestlers aren’t forced to leave ROH, with no one seeming to remember that the story was something else entirely a mere few months ago. These two realities are not compatible. If SCU have changed their ways then why hasn’t Koff come out and said so and said that ROH would be happy to resign such talented wrestlers? Not doing so basically makes Koff a heel authority figure, threatening to not resign guys simply because he holds a grudge against them.
Or take the case of the Gresham/Lethal Ironman match. During the match, the announcers kept trying to tell some sort of story that Gresham hurt his leg in their first match and “Gresham came back too early” for their second match because “you don’t get many chances to face a guy like Jay Lethal” and was thus not at 100% for their second match and this caused him to lose. The problem is that this story did not exist during their second match, as Gresham’s knee was not really mentioned as an issue and it was, in fact Lethal who came into the match with an unhealed injury that Gresham worked over. Furthermore, the idea that Gresham “came back early” for “the chance to face Jay Lethal” is contrary to the evidence because Gresham wrestled several matches for ROH in the month before that during which the injured knee was not an issue for him at all. The story build to the Lethal vs. Gresham Ironman match is thus exposed as something extremely clumsily imposed in hindsight and doesn’t even mesh with the continuity. And stuff like this, where the company either doesn’t think I am smart enough to remember something from a few months ago or they don’t care if I remember it or not and are just too lazy to make sure their own storylines fit the continuity is something that I do find very insulting as a viewer.

6. Good booking follows the rule of “show; don’t tell.”
Pro wrestling- both on the micro level of the individual match and the macro level of big-picture booking- is storytelling, so important rules of storytelling like “show; don’t tell” apply. If MCMG are “mentoring” young guys like Gresham, Rush Dijak, etc. then actually show me segments where MCMG mentor them. If Cody and Scurll’s arguing is supposedly causing problems for Bullet Club then show me it causing an actual problem with actual negative consequences, like causing them to lose a match. If Adam Page is becoming a main-event talent then treat him like a main eventer and actually let him wrestle a singles match main event.
“Show; don’t tell” also applies in other ways than just the obvious. They have been a bit better lately, but it was often the case over the past few years that unless it was a main eventer, we wouldn’t hear the wrestlers cut promos but would instead be informed of their feelings by the announcers. Second-hand promos are never as powerful because not only is it not the wrestler’s own words, but hearing and seeing the wrestler articulate his/her problems helps show us that these feelings are important simply by virtue of it being given the airtime (never mind helping wrestlers develop their promo skills).
Also- this one should be obvious but unfortunately in ROH in the past few years it hasn’t been- the storyline needs to mesh with the visual evidence we are being shown. If Colt Cabana is going to turn on Dalton Castle because he thinks Dalton Castle is causing their tag team to lose by spending too much time farting around with Boys during matches, then you need to actually have them lose some matches because Dalton is farting around with the Boys instead of paying attention.

7. Good booking follows up on events in a logical manner.
This obviously overlaps with some of the things I’ve said above, but, for example, if the Young Bucks are clearly trying to kick Cody out of Bullet Club at Supercard of Honor XII then there needs to be some follow-up with Cody and the Bucks that explains how Cody is still in Bullet Club. If the Briscoes try to choke Daniels to death with a chain, then there should be some sort of gimmick match booked. If Matt Taven is claiming to be the real ROH World Champion and attacks Jay Lethal from behind on a PPV, then Lethal should be demanding a match with Taven to get his revenge.

8. Good booking answers as many questions and closes as many logic holes as possible.
Just like in any non-comedic storytelling endeavor, the fewer times I am saying “wait, this doesn’t make sense because X,” the better the job you are doing. If you get paid to book a wrestling promotion, you should be doing a good enough job that things aren’t jumping out at me as not making sense on a frequent basis. And this goes for everything from what matches are being booked to why SCU would voluntarily put the ROH World Six-Man Tag Team Titles on the line against The Kingdom when their angle is that they need to remain champions to have leverage to force ROH to resign them (and why they never tried to use their rematch clause, or any other number of things).

9. I don’t really have a good heading for this one, but over the past few years, there have been a lot of stories that either kept dragging on without ever going anywhere or ideas that got pretty quickly recycled. This Cheeseburger vs. The Dawgs feud, the Josh Woods vs. Shane Taylor, and the Rebellion vs. Seek & Destroy feud are examples of the former, while examples of the latter include “Cody is a free agent and him winning the title would be bad,” Shane Taylor “changing his ways,” the entire existence of The Cabinet and The Rebellion (they spent months saying they were “protesting” not being given opportunities by ROH but never once did they elaborate on this, or did anyone from ROH ever try to argue that they were wrong with concrete examples), or heels complaining about a “conspiracy” against them (first The Addiction, and now The Kingdom). That sort of meandering on such a frequent basis is, to me, the sign of a struggling booker.




Thoughts?

Oh boy, here we go. I think this will get out of hand easily since each point could easily be it's own topic and long discussion.

Before getting into points, I don't disagree with your premise, but I do think it's a really specific premise on certain points. The whole "Professional Combat Sports League" is completely dependent on the promotion and what that promotion is going for. I think a lot of your points have a small inheritance that everything needs to be super serious because it's a 'real sport', but that is not the case for every promotion. If every promotion were the same, then what's the point on following them all? A lot of people don't follow AJPW because it's pretty much the same thing as NJPW, but without the superstars. The whole reason why PWG/LU/CHIKARA/CZW/ROH all got over during their periods was because they all did something different from each other. If all promotions started doing the same 'seriousness', then it becomes a race to see who has the biggest names and thus devolves into a super indie. If I'm watching Kaiju Big Battel or DDT or Toru Yano challenge for a title, I go in perfectly understanding that comedy is fair game. If i'm watching PWG or Bar Wrestling, then I'm not gonna say it's bad because they played some funny spots that play to the fans, because that's what they are. I'll wait until Lesnar and Reigns bring out gummie bears into the main event of WM to complain, not when Candice and Joey do it.

Anyway....

1. I don't disagree, titles should be important. Title shots should be earned. I don't think they all need to come from having wins, sometimes it's ok to have them by provocation. And at the end, I don't mind if one person is less deserving than another in multi-man matches, because sometimes there is more value in having a champ overcome some odds in order to build to something bigger down the line.
Far-off rematches and people having winning streaks without title shots I think are perfectly ok. Rematch clauses are tools to have losing champs have something still going on for them after losing, so it's perfectly ok to keep those handy for later on, only ruling I'd say should exist is that you lose your rematch clause if the champ that beat you lost the title, UNLESS the former champ makes a storyline out of that. No wanting a title shot is also perfectly acceptable, Ryback's streak/first title shot was great because he only wanted competition, not gold, at least not until Heyman got in his head. If White or Ishii don't ask for a title shot, then there is no reason to force them into one.
Comedy too is perfectly acceptable if the wrestler/promotion is about that. Comedy is looked down on so much because mainstream comedy sucks so bad, but if Kikutaro or Yano or Fallah Bahh or a drunken fist Jack Evans manage to get a title shot, I want to see Kikutaro/Yano/Drunken Fist Evans/Bahh do their thing. Comedy doesn't mean that wrestlers can't take their matches seriously, because comedy is a wrestling style, not a taunt. Fallah Bahh took Austin Aries to the limit, but he still did his comedy spots, and they mattered, and ended up failing because Aries was a better wrestler, not because comedy sucks. Not accepting comedy in a championship match is like Dozer not accepting vanilla midgets in a top spot. And yes, i do constantly see people dancing in soccer/nfl/nba when they score

2. I'm just going to assume that none of this points refer to super indies and we're just talking about storyline driven promotions. I don't disagree, but I think sometimes it's good to have these type of guys and let them be spot monkeys and if the fans get behind them, you can start developing them more. That is Mustafa Ali to me.

3. I think morality is something that can change a lot within a promotion. Morality is mostly sold via the announcers, and I think is better to humans on the table, than robots. I like Corey Graves because he's a heel, but he also hates some heels. Or Vampiro is technically a babyface, but he appreciates violence and being 'smart' so much that sometimes he aligns with the heels. Going by this point, I think these opinions need to be consistent, you can't just hate Daniel Bryan and then love him because he turned heel. This applies to referees too, especially when a ref has more relaxed rules than others. This is why i don't mind commentary treating Yano and White differently with low blows, Yano is a likable person, White isn't.
As for wrestlers, I think it's for the most part ok to sometimes work a heeler style when the crowd dictates it. Tanahashi working heel when the fans are definitely behind Ibushi or Naito is ok. Cena working heeler when RVD is in control of the Hammerstein is ok.

4. I think most of this point i made in the intro, and I think this point makes more sense to me when it comes to consistency, especially when it comes to the existence of an higher NPC authority figure that sometimes books matches and sets up people with power, but then sometimes they completely disappear. On the same vein, i don't think all promotions should be treated as their own universes, sometimes a ruling like putting on a ref shirt and counting is treated as a universal wrestling rule that doesn't need explaining.

5. 6. 7. There is a lot into these, but I think the only problem here would be is a story is told out of order. Otherwise, if something is explained via another media like a blog or youtube show, if they take time to follow up on something, if things are not explained like if fans were 5 years old, is ok. I don't think everything needs to be spelled out for us. Sometimes as fans we want everything to be given to us on our hands on the spot, and all i have to say is what's the hurry? If we can remember inconsistencies from a year ago, are we really going to forget the last thing that happened betwen [x] and [y] two weeks later?
I do agree that if plans change mid season, they need to be described into the 'new' storyline, but i think this is mostly important on big storylines, not the week to week descriptions.

8. overall storytelling is like this, but i don't think a few loopholes and questions are that bad, i think sometimes loop holes are overrated and at least I see it in movies, that people just find them and make the effort not to like that other thing everyone loved (see Interstellar or Prometheus). Wrestling is an ongoing medium, that constantly evolves, a loop hole today, may be a plot point tomorrow.

9. Bookers are like main events, they need to be replaced every now and then. Those are indeed signs of a struggling booker, but not because of lack of quality, i see it more as being burnt out. You can be a flawless booker, but if you're doing the same 'points for championship' booking for 15 years, it gets to a point that you're gonna need a spot monkey to give a fuck about wins and loses. WWE has been booking wrestler vs authority for 20 years, to the point that we now latch on to backstage politics and pushes in order to get behind anyone. Dragon, Punk, Reigns, Becky, are all examples of storylines that fans had to pay attention to the real world in order to digest the fake same booking we've seen forever.
Having said that, I think we need to make a separation between dragging and having a long story. Brock vs Roman dragged becuase it ran its course and they kept going with it, Gargano vs Ciampa or Okada vs Omega, while a lot longer, haven't dragged because they have picked their spots. Sometimes there is far more value in dragging a story than just blowing it off or ignoring it, Riddle winning the EVOLVE title and going to WWE should had been dragged in the background instead of just taking it as it was a comment that didn't mean anything.

cero2k wrote: ↑Dec 2nd, '18, 13:08 Oh boy, here we go. I think this will get out of hand easily since each point could easily be it's own topic and long discussion.

Before getting into points, I don't disagree with your premise, but I do think it's a really specific premise on certain points. The whole "Professional Combat Sports League" is completely dependent on the promotion and what that promotion is going for. I think a lot of your points have a small inheritance that everything needs to be super serious because it's a 'real sport', but that is not the case for every promotion. If every promotion were the same, then what's the point on following them all? A lot of people don't follow AJPW because it's pretty much the same thing as NJPW, but without the superstars. The whole reason why PWG/LU/CHIKARA/CZW/ROH all got over during their periods was because they all did something different from each other. If all promotions started doing the same 'seriousness', then it becomes a race to see who has the biggest names and thus devolves into a super indie. If I'm watching Kaiju Big Battel or DDT or Toru Yano challenge for a title, I go in perfectly understanding that comedy is fair game. If i'm watching PWG or Bar Wrestling, then I'm not gonna say it's bad because they played some funny spots that play to the fans, because that's what they are. I'll wait until Lesnar and Reigns bring out gummie bears into the main event of WM to complain, not when Candice and Joey do it.

You're right that what I laid out was intended for a "serious" promotion, but I think that the point about consistency applies no matter what you're doing. If you are CHIKARA and are telling a "serious" story, you can't have Los Ice Creams doing Sprinkles spots in matches for that story. Joey and Candice shouldn't be doing gummy bears stuff in feuds with guys who usually do thumbtack spots.
I don't mind comedy matches. I mind comedy getting mixed with serious in the same match/feud. Stuff like Omega & the Bucks used to do in ROH and PWG where they would do five minutes of serious then five minutes of comedy and then five minutes of serious again kill matches for me.
With Yano my issue is not comedy, but rather consistency. I have not ever been given any reason why it's all good fun when Yano cheats but when Jay White does it he might as well be molesting a child while giving the Nazi salute. The answer always seems to be the circular "it's okay because he's Yano," which isn't a reason because by that logic Yano could show up with a gun and shoot someone and it'd be okay because "he's Yano."

cero2k wrote: ↑Dec 2nd, '18, 13:08 Anyway....

1. I don't disagree, titles should be important. Title shots should be earned. I don't think they all need to come from having wins, sometimes it's ok to have them by provocation. And at the end, I don't mind if one person is less deserving than another in multi-man matches, because sometimes there is more value in having a champ overcome some odds in order to build to something bigger down the line.
Far-off rematches and people having winning streaks without title shots I think are perfectly ok. Rematch clauses are tools to have losing champs have something still going on for them after losing, so it's perfectly ok to keep those handy for later on, only ruling I'd say should exist is that you lose your rematch clause if the champ that beat you lost the title, UNLESS the former champ makes a storyline out of that. No wanting a title shot is also perfectly acceptable, Ryback's streak/first title shot was great because he only wanted competition, not gold, at least not until Heyman got in his head. If White or Ishii don't ask for a title shot, then there is no reason to force them into one.

I have no major problem with title shots coming from provocations occasionally (I'd say don't do it too often just so it doesn't become repetitive, which I think is less of a problem with title shots earned via wins) or multi-man matches or anything like that, though I do want the person who didn't get pinned in non-elimination a multi-man match to still feel like they're close to the front of the line for a title shot because they themselves were never bested by the champion).
My problem with people not cashing in rematches is when those aren't actually doing anything in the meantime. If the belt is so important then you need to give me a reason why he isn't trying to get it back as soon as possible. Maybe he's mired in some other kind of feud, or maybe he's going for the tag titles or maybe he just wants to work out the kinks in his game before cashing in for the rematch, but give me a reason (and, in the case of the third one, how about telling me what said hole in his game is- whether it's an injured limb pr a move he needs to develop a counter to, or just shot confidence- and then show me the wrestler overcoming the problem). My big problem is situations like we've seen in ROH over the past few years where it feels like the only reason someone didn't cash in for their rematch is because the booker wanted to wait.

As for a situation of a guy on a winning streak, he absolutely should be given a title shot, because why do the wins matter otherwise, and why should I care that he keeps winning if winning is not going to get him anything?

cero2k wrote: ↑Dec 2nd, '18, 13:08 Comedy too is perfectly acceptable if the wrestler/promotion is about that. Comedy is looked down on so much because mainstream comedy sucks so bad, but if Kikutaro or Yano or Fallah Bahh or a drunken fist Jack Evans manage to get a title shot, I want to see Kikutaro/Yano/Drunken Fist Evans/Bahh do their thing. Comedy doesn't mean that wrestlers can't take their matches seriously, because comedy is a wrestling style, not a taunt. Fallah Bahh took Austin Aries to the limit, but he still did his comedy spots, and they mattered, and ended up failing because Aries was a better wrestler, not because comedy sucks. Not accepting comedy in a championship match is like Dozer not accepting vanilla midgets in a top spot.

"Comedy as a wrestling style" I have no problem with, but to me, that's Colt Cabana stuff. Over-exaggerated goofy/incompetent heel stuff a la The Addiction or some of the stuff the Bucks do or your old southern heel stuff fits into this category, too, although I don't like it in big matches or with top guys. But stuff that straight-up breaks kayfabe, or stuff like the Bucks talking about "psychology," or guys putting on masks just to put masks on when there is no reason to do it other than to get a laugh is the sort of thing I hate. No matter what you do, I should at least be thinking that you are trying to win the match. There's a HUGE difference between Omega vs. Danielson from PWG, and pretending gummy bears are thumbtacks or saying "I'm going to do a spot now!" or crap like that.
And with Yano, again, I don’t find him funny. I find him to be a cheater who gets away with his bullsh*t because he can make a goofy face.
A comedy promotion is different, obviously, but I don't think PWG qualifies as a comedy promotion anymore, and really hasn't for a long time. Not since 2011 or so. There is a difference between comedy and shtick, and way too much of what we see today is the latter, not the former.

cero2k wrote: ↑Dec 2nd, '18, 13:08And yes, i do constantly see people dancing in soccer/nfl/nba when they score

When they score. If you want to celebrate after winning a fall then be my guest. But I don't see guys on opposite teams engaging in a dance off or shoving their fingers up each other's asses and all walking around in a giant f*cking train.

cero2k wrote: ↑Dec 2nd, '18, 13:08 2. I'm just going to assume that none of this points refer to super indies and we're just talking about storyline driven promotions. I don't disagree, but I think sometimes it's good to have these type of guys and let them be spot monkeys and if the fans get behind them, you can start developing them more. That is Mustafa Ali to me.

Yes (although I think Ali is one of the few guys who actually tells stories with his high flying). That being said, if you’re not booking a storyline-driven promotion, I don’t really consider that “booking” in the classic sense. It’s not that difficult to take a bunch of top names and book them against each other in matches with zero consequences and thus have a show with a high work-rate. Truly good “booking,” to me, takes an Ilja Dragunov or a Darby Allin or a Fred Yehi who I have never seen before (or even a guy like TJP who I have seen many times but never really cared about before) and make me care about him/her.

cero2k wrote: ↑Dec 2nd, '18, 13:08
3. I think morality is something that can change a lot within a promotion. Morality is mostly sold via the announcers, and I think is better to humans on the table, than robots. I like Corey Graves because he's a heel, but he also hates some heels. Or Vampiro is technically a babyface, but he appreciates violence and being 'smart' so much that sometimes he aligns with the heels. Going by this point, I think these opinions need to be consistent, you can't just hate Daniel Bryan and then love him because he turned heel.

To me, this isn’t quite a morality thing so much as a nuanced announcer thing. When Graves (or Tazz before him) hates a heel, it’s because he doesn’t like a guy. An announcer who didn’t like babyface Bryan now loving heel Bryan should be switching tones on Bryan because Bryan has changed himself and done the things the heel has been saying Bryan is dumb for not doing before (like cheating, or ignoring the wants of the crowd).

cero2k wrote: ↑Dec 2nd, '18, 13:08 This is why i don't mind commentary treating Yano and White differently with low blows, Yano is a likable person, White isn't.

This is where I fail to understand the mindset. Yano is a goofball who usually can’t win without cheating. What’s likable about that?
And in most places, it’s not a Yano issue where he is the only babyface doing it. It’s straight up babyface announcers being outraged when the heel does it, but making excuses when a babyface does it.

cero2k wrote: ↑Dec 2nd, '18, 13:08 As for wrestlers, I think it's for the most part ok to sometimes work a heeler style when the crowd dictates it. Tanahashi working heel when the fans are definitely behind Ibushi or Naito is ok. Cena working heeler when RVD is in control of the Hammerstein is ok.

There is a difference between working as the heel in a match, and actually doing truly heelish things. You want to have the guy get frustrated and not break in the corner then that’s fine, but a babyface shouldn’t be using weapons or illegal leverage or kicking someone in the nuts without turning heel if the person hasn’t done anything to really deserve it.

cero2k wrote: ↑Dec 2nd, '18, 13:08 4. I think most of this point i made in the intro, and I think this point makes more sense to me when it comes to consistency, especially when it comes to the existence of an higher NPC authority figure that sometimes books matches and sets up people with power, but then sometimes they completely disappear. On the same vein, i don't think all promotions should be treated as their own universes, sometimes a ruling like putting on a ref shirt and counting is treated as a universal wrestling rule that doesn't need explaining.

I think there are certain things that are counter-intuitive that therefore would need explanation. If it’s a company official putting on a referee’s shirt, then yeah, count the pin. But for BRANDI RHODES to be able to do so defies logic because she has no authority within the company to designate herself in this position of power.

cero2k wrote: ↑Dec 2nd, '18, 13:08 5. 6. 7. There is a lot into these, but I think the only problem here would be is a story is told out of order. Otherwise, if something is explained via another media like a blog or youtube show, if they take time to follow up on something, if things are not explained like if fans were 5 years old, is ok. I don't think everything needs to be spelled out for us. Sometimes as fans we want everything to be given to us on our hands on the spot, and all i have to say is what's the hurry? If we can remember inconsistencies from a year ago, are we really going to forget the last thing that happened betwen [x] and [y] two weeks later?
I do agree that if plans change mid season, they need to be described into the 'new' storyline, but i think this is mostly important on big storylines, not the week to week descriptions.

The way you show an event is important the characters is in how they respond to it, and part of that is the urgency with which they do so. You can’t have someone do something to someone else that requires a response (like, say beat the sh*t out of them) on Show 1, then have them both on Show 2 and just going about their own separate business, then have the guy show up and furiously assault the other guy on Show 3 after doing nothing on Show 2. You can wait to do follow-up when it’s not something that requires an urgent response.
Also if you’re going to build something up over a long time, you have to keep going back to it to remind people, and you have to follow up on situations where follow-up would be logical. If you want to have Tama Tonga not say anything about Kenny vs. Cody, it’s much better to do an interview where he is asked the question and remains silent or says “no comment” than to not do anything that acknowledges the Kenny/Tama Tonga stuff from the G1 at all.

cero2k wrote: ↑Dec 2nd, '18, 13:08 8. overall storytelling is like this, but i don't think a few loopholes and questions are that bad, i think sometimes loop holes are overrated and at least I see it in movies, that people just find them and make the effort not to like that other thing everyone loved (see Interstellar or Prometheus). Wrestling is an ongoing medium, that constantly evolves, a loop hole today, may be a plot point tomorrow.

A few are inevitable, but you should do your best to answer obvious questions. There is no reason that after Bully Ray turns heel, Colt Cabana should spend months wondering whether or not Bully has been removed from his position as “enforcer.”

cero2k wrote: ↑Dec 2nd, '18, 13:08 9.
Having said that, I think we need to make a separation between dragging and having a long story. Brock vs Roman dragged becuase it ran its course and they kept going with it, Gargano vs Ciampa or Okada vs Omega, while a lot longer, haven't dragged because they have picked their spots. Sometimes there is far more value in dragging a story than just blowing it off or ignoring it, Riddle winning the EVOLVE title and going to WWE should had been dragged in the background instead of just taking it as it was a comment that didn't mean anything.

Brock vs. Roman is the same as the problems in ROH. Omega vs. Okada is more of an issue to me of “why the hell hasn’t this guy gotten a title shot yet when all logic says he should have.” It didn’t drag, but it didn’t make any sense that they weren’t booked against each other, either.
I don’t think Riddle winning the EVOLVE Title and then immediately going to WWE was ever the plan. It was just something said at first to give Riddle some motivation that they were then able to use to explain his absence in a way that gelled with previous storylines more than just “he got signed.” It’s like Ciampa’s firing from ROH due to the “zero tolerance” policy. I don’t think the original plan was ever for him to be fired, but because he decided to leave, they used a mechanism they already had in place to write him out.
I think the “no rope breaks” thing that Riddle was doing for the months before he won the belt and in his first few defenses are evidence that Gabe was going to turn that into Riddle’s thing and try to use it to differentiate the Evolve World Title from the WWN Title.