goddamn it shut the hell up about what happen afterwards. Goddamn it Josh. What happen sucked yes, we fucking know we all know. I am talking about the fucking journey, the story. The Yes movement, all that other shit. You want another good basic story, look at Evolution vs The Shield. The past vs the future. Basic, but it fucking worked. Thanks to that storyline, Seth, Roman, and Dean all are going to be the fucking future of WWE. This indy bs of match after match after match with no story may work in PWG because sometimes they can only afford a guy for one fucking night. But WWE isn't PWG, it's a whole different fucking beast.

I never even watched PWG

The Yes movement was a fucking accident.

WWE rolled with it, yeah against their will, but it was still an epic journey and the fans got to be apart it.

You talked about fucking NXT, I will tell you who the best mother fucker who is book on there. Sami Zayn. His journey to the NXT title was epic. Struggling to win the big one, putting on epic matches yes but he always came up short. Started doubting himself a few times. A guy who is meant to be his friend like Neville taunting him about it. Everytime it looked like Sami was close he come up short. Then finally the night comes and he wins the big one and he wins the NXT title.

And now he is going to be in another epic story with Kevin Owens. About friends who struggled to make it to the big time, one made it before the other. the other is jealous about that it took him so fucking look to get to the big time, so he takes it out of his best friend. Now I didn't like how it started, I think they should have waited. But its going to be a good fucking story between these two. It won't just be match after match after match.

Well sorry Bull when you say story line I assume you mean something like WWE always does like throw a girl in there to fight over. Fight over who's going to GM the show. Some stupid WWE bullshit like that.

But The Yes Movement happened because WWE treated Bryan Danielson like he was a indy nobody. His promos challenging John Cena sold me and I bought Summer Slam that year. What WWE did with him after that night turned me off their product and I haven't bought a WWE pay per view since. So when you say this was an epic journey I don't see that at all.

that seems to be problem people tend to assume what I am trying to say instead of asking me what I mean. We be fighting over two different things and getting mad at each other

YJ wrote:

You can connect with the fans by telling a good story in the ring.

And then murdering your wife and child!

#JusticeForKripenWah

Kripen Wah was a nice person who didn't do nice things

Chris Benoit was mentally ill, depressed, and drunk.

Who's Chris Benoit?

This thread shouldn't be this long when the answer is clearly "number of different suplexes they can do."

Don't forget the superkicks.

don't forget the flips and kicks. High spots. Zero selling. False finishes.

Dats the best

Alive wrote:

don't forget the flips and kicks. High spots. Zero selling. False finishes.

Also the kicking out of at least three finishers.

I think "connecting with the fans" is right. A wrestler needs to be able to help the viewer suspend belief. Whether that's on the microphone or in a well thought out storyline or through ring work, the wrestler has to make an emotional connection with a fan that gets that fan invested.

^^ or the going through 8 flaming tables and kicking out at 2.9

I like the "connecting with fans" bit, that sounds like the closest to actually answering the original question (I'm not entirely sure how this thread became focused on WWE's writers, who are a completely different element to the product than the wrestlers). Ian's got a point, though, that different wrestlers connect with the fans in different ways. If you look at some of WWE's top talent, they all do it in different ways. Often times, though, even for casual fans it is the actual work in the ring that sells people.

I watch wrestling with my grandma and my little sister, neither of whom are smarks by any stretch, but it's almost always the ring work they react to. My grandma will sometimes react to something funny Dean Ambrose does, but usually both she and my sister are invested in the wrestling, but my grandma has no idea what a suplex is. I think people tend to oversell the idea that casual fans don't care about the ring work, or that it's not as important, because at the end of the day if someone tuned in to a wrestling show, they want wrestling. Grandma complains constantly about the opening promos on Raw each week, and she tends to make fun of WWE's storytelling a lot of the time. Now, that may say more about WWE's method than their approach, but it's colored my opinion on the matter.

Mink mentioned Wrestle Kingdom 9, and I watched that show with the same two people. It made my sister into a smark, and we've been watching a lot of indy stuff that she'd never heard of or seen before now. Grandma needed some backstory for the matches, but J.R. and Stryker did a good job of filling her in and she was really invested in matches like Suzuki vs. Sakuraba, even though she'd never heard of either man and couldn't tell you their names now.

When shit gets to complicated, the stories can be laughable, but to me the story is just as important as the in-ring. Because if there is no story, I am just watching a bunch of guys doing fake wrestling that has no point. If I wanted to watch flips and kicks for no reason I watch Circus De Soleil. If your into the wrestling aspect more then fine, but I don't believe it is the most important element of Pro wrestling. It's important but a wrestling company can't just relay on good wrestling. Wrestling is a new form of theater.

^ If the wrestling is good, then the flips and kicks aren't for no reason.

And I'm not saying that a story is unimportant, but if we're talking what makes a good wrestler, the story is kind of outside their control. Sure, the way they cut a promo can effect how engaging the story is (I don't remember who it was, but somebody earlier in the thread mentioned Bryan's promos leading to SummerSlam), but the best way for a wrestler to tell their story is in the ring. The two aren't mutually exclusive.

Ok I went off topic when people said that Wrestling aspect was the only thing that mattered. which is fucking bullshit and anyone thinks that I wanna smack in the face.

but onto topic at hand that I started, connecting with the fans is most improtant and like Ian said that can be done in many ways. Through storytelling, through promos, through the in-ring work.

I don't think we said it was the only important thing, just the most important thing.

and I think that is bs. Really you have to have a balance of everything imo. one can shine over the other. Too much story and you get 30 mins of HHH talking, too much wrestling then you get a bunch of random matches that mean nothing, doesn't do anything for anyone and the people in the match are stuck in the same place.

A bit of everything, throughout the show, makes for best.