Travicity
10-21-2010, 04:20 AM
Hey everybody, I decided that since it's been a while since I've had a chance to write about EVOLVE, I thought I'd check in with a quick column and some thoughts and ruminations about current events in the company.
Let's start off with a few notes about the upcoming EVOLVE 6 event next month on November 20th. Not a lot of information has come out yet about the show, but we do know that it's going to be taking place in the Ace Arena in Union City, NJ, which was the venue they found when they were scrambling for somewhere to run their July show. Gabe Sapolsky has spoken very highly of the building, feeling that it provided a nice, intimate setting to run an independent wrestling show. I think it's a good place to have not just for that reason, but because I think that even if you run shows in a limited geographic scope, it still comes off looking a little bush league if you run in the exact same building every single show. Having the place in Union City in addition to the place in Rahway at least doesn't make it look like you're strictly limited to that one spot. Also, as they found out, the Rahway Rec Center might not always be available on a specific weekend that they want to run a show, so it's also good to have another building you can use as a backup.
The only match announced for EVOLVE 6 so far is Chuck Taylor vs Austin Aries, and they're doing exactly what I said they needed to do with Aries: use him to help elevate the homegrown EVOLVE guys and turn them into main eventers that can draw when Aries, Homicide, and whoever else they've had in isn't there anymore. I think Taylor was the right guy to get the nod for this match since he's the guy who EVOLVE seems to have gotten behind the most as far as pushing him as a main eventer, and depending on how long they think Aries is going to be around, what I would do is have Aries go over here and then have Taylor beat him in a rematch a few shows down the line. Other guys I can think of that EVOLVE might want to throw Aries in the ring with would be Jon Moxley, Bobby Fish, and Brad Allen, and I can't imagine that Aries can have a stint in this company without having some kind of interaction with Jimmy Jacobs.
Unfortunately, one of the problems with EVOLVE right now even with guys like Aries, Homicide, and the Kings Of Wrestling coming in and working with the core EVOLVE talent is that, with two months between each show, it gets really hard for them to build any kind of momentum because by the time the next show comes around, a lot of people may have forgotten what even happened on the previous show. This isn't a problem ROH had when they first started out because at least they were running every month, and Dragon Gate USA doesn't have that problem because they're an established brand with established stars, so they're able to only come by every two months or so and still draw. But no matter how good the EVOLVE shows are (and they are terrific), so much time passes between shows that I would bet a lot of people don't even think to regularly visit the EVOLVE website, especially since there are times when weeks pass without anything new going up on the site.
I don't entirely fault EVOLVE for this since there's only so much news they can post about the wrestlers and upcoming events, but one of the things ROH has done lately that I really like is having the wrestlers, officials, and other assorted personalities writing columns that go up on the ROH website. Even if there's no actual news about upcoming shows or talent coming in or anything like that, you can at least spend the in-between time doing features on the website developing the characters of the wrestlers. This serves two purposes: first, the more content that goes up on the EVOLVE website, the more people are going to feel like they need to check the website on a regular basis to make sure they don't miss anything. Just because the next show might not be for X number of weeks doesn't mean you have to stop telling the story.
But it would also address the fact that outside of what they do in the ring, fans really have little to no familiarity with most of the wrestlers as characters, and features like this would help us get to know them a little better. Okay, EVOLVE is all about pure competition and isn't meant to focus on who's jumping who in the parking lot, I get that, but we only get very brief snippets of backstage promos from a lot of the guys, and even with the main eventers who get more promo time, we get a couple quick shots of them warming up for their match throughout the DVD, a backstage or in-ring promo afterward, and not much more. I think that if you had more features on the website, whether they're told from the wrestlers' prespectives, a third party narrative, or anything else, it would help us get more connected with the wrestlers than we can if we only see or hear from them every two months.
Maybe you can have the mysterious, roving backstage camera crew that are backstage filming stuff at EVOLVE shows branch out, and also do written columns where they go around asking people what they think of Sean Davis and that other guy hanging around with Johnny Gargano and Jimmy Jacobs, or look at Bobby Fish's career and how he's been in the business for years but never really got a shot at being a top guy on the indies and EVOLVE is his shot to get in on the ground floor and make a name for himself as a headliner in EVOLVE. You could do a column about how Chris Dickinson, who is like 0-453 right now, trains all day, every day and has to deal with the mental baggage of having such a crappy record and how focused he is on turning it around so he's not the joke of the company. Write something where the reporter is calling up all the other wrestlers on the roster and asking them who they think is going to win between Aries and Taylor. Maybe do a column talking about the implications of how various win/loss combinations at the upcoming show will affect the rankings. There's a million things you can do that don't involve spending time filming and editing video, and you could literally take a long evening and kick out a week's worth of content in one night.
The point is that it's all well and good that EVOLVE is presenting a great, athletic product that, top to bottom, is usually at least on par with most ROH shows and actually surpasses a lot of them. I think it's great that we see the variety of different styles from technical wrestling to insane spots to MMA stuff to just all out brawling, which is a glowing example of an area where EVOLVE has a clear step up on ROH, which has more or less homogenized everything into one style. I like that the focus is on wins and losses and that everybody's goal is to be the best wrestler in the company and becoming the EVOLVE Champion. That's all great, but all that can only take you so far because fans need an emotional connection to the wrestlers that goes beyond what they do in the ring, and they've already planted the core seeds of everyone's motivations, but they need to develop them more. Okay, Brad Allen's doing it for his late mother and wants to get his hands on Chris Hero. What else? Kyle O'Reilly was supposed to main event EVOLVE 2 against Davey Richards and that was probably going to go somewhere, but Davey left town and Kyle never found a new direction and just had matches. What was his new focus now that his mentor had basically left him twisting in the wind?
I think that EVOLVE is doing a lot of things right, and I think doing all this would give EVOLVE an added dimension and something else for the fanbase to get excited about during those long stretches between shows. They've already got a great product, but the whole theme of the company is evolution, and EVOLVE has already EVOLVEd quit a bit since their first show as they tweak things to find out what works and what doesn't, and I think that extra written content would go a long way toward making an already good product even better.
But getting back to EVOLVE 6, Homicide will be making his in-ring debut in the company, and there are a few names on the list of announced talent that would make for some intriguing matches. Probably the one that stands out to me the most for having the potential to have a fun, violent match would be Drake Younger. I think highly of Drake and he's shown me a lot in the ring that you might not outwardly expect from a guy with his appearance, but he can also have some entertaining brawls as well, and we all know that Homicide knows how to have a good brawl. If you want to have Homicide go into a more wrestling-oriented direction, I think Bobby Fish would have the best match with Homicide out of the rest of the guys on the EVOLVE roster, but I don't see Homicide doing a job in his first match in, and I think that if Fish loses many more matches, he's at the point where it stops being an inspirational guy coming closer and closer to that big win and becomes a guy who's just a loser in the eyes of the fans. Maybe instead of doing a big match, just have Homicide kill Adam Cole or Kyle O'Reilly instead.
Jimmy Jacobs and Jon Moxley are both on the annuonced roster as well, and I'm not sure how much crossover Gabe intends to have between EVOLVE and DGUSA, but with these two feuding with one another in DGUSA, I think it would make sense to have them go against one another here, if not in a straight singles match then maybe a four way or a tag match or something like that. That way you can have something similar to the old ROH/FIP arrangement where the main focus is clearly on DGUSA and you're never going to see the blowoff to a DGUSA feud in EVOLVE, but you can have matches playing into the feud on EVOLVE shows to draw interest in that product as well. Then you can have the announcers on DGUSA casually mention that if you want more of the Jacobs-Moxley story, they were also in this tag match on EVOLVE 6, which you can pick up at www.evolvewrestling.com.
Then again, Moxley's involved in a feud with Brodie Lee in EVOLVE, and with Brodie suspended for one show for what happened at EVOLVE 5, they may just want Moxley to steamroll over someone else to build him up for the eventual rematch with Brodie. Or you could have him face Homicide. Moxley and Sami Callihan would be fun too. There's a ton of different combinations you can go with here, and I think it's a testament to how strong this roster is that you have so many possibilities that would work out so well.
I'm done for now, but for more information about EVOLVE 6 on November 20th or anything else EVOLVE-related, head on over to www.evolvewrestling.com for all the latest, ever EVOLVing news on the company.
PWI
Let's start off with a few notes about the upcoming EVOLVE 6 event next month on November 20th. Not a lot of information has come out yet about the show, but we do know that it's going to be taking place in the Ace Arena in Union City, NJ, which was the venue they found when they were scrambling for somewhere to run their July show. Gabe Sapolsky has spoken very highly of the building, feeling that it provided a nice, intimate setting to run an independent wrestling show. I think it's a good place to have not just for that reason, but because I think that even if you run shows in a limited geographic scope, it still comes off looking a little bush league if you run in the exact same building every single show. Having the place in Union City in addition to the place in Rahway at least doesn't make it look like you're strictly limited to that one spot. Also, as they found out, the Rahway Rec Center might not always be available on a specific weekend that they want to run a show, so it's also good to have another building you can use as a backup.
The only match announced for EVOLVE 6 so far is Chuck Taylor vs Austin Aries, and they're doing exactly what I said they needed to do with Aries: use him to help elevate the homegrown EVOLVE guys and turn them into main eventers that can draw when Aries, Homicide, and whoever else they've had in isn't there anymore. I think Taylor was the right guy to get the nod for this match since he's the guy who EVOLVE seems to have gotten behind the most as far as pushing him as a main eventer, and depending on how long they think Aries is going to be around, what I would do is have Aries go over here and then have Taylor beat him in a rematch a few shows down the line. Other guys I can think of that EVOLVE might want to throw Aries in the ring with would be Jon Moxley, Bobby Fish, and Brad Allen, and I can't imagine that Aries can have a stint in this company without having some kind of interaction with Jimmy Jacobs.
Unfortunately, one of the problems with EVOLVE right now even with guys like Aries, Homicide, and the Kings Of Wrestling coming in and working with the core EVOLVE talent is that, with two months between each show, it gets really hard for them to build any kind of momentum because by the time the next show comes around, a lot of people may have forgotten what even happened on the previous show. This isn't a problem ROH had when they first started out because at least they were running every month, and Dragon Gate USA doesn't have that problem because they're an established brand with established stars, so they're able to only come by every two months or so and still draw. But no matter how good the EVOLVE shows are (and they are terrific), so much time passes between shows that I would bet a lot of people don't even think to regularly visit the EVOLVE website, especially since there are times when weeks pass without anything new going up on the site.
I don't entirely fault EVOLVE for this since there's only so much news they can post about the wrestlers and upcoming events, but one of the things ROH has done lately that I really like is having the wrestlers, officials, and other assorted personalities writing columns that go up on the ROH website. Even if there's no actual news about upcoming shows or talent coming in or anything like that, you can at least spend the in-between time doing features on the website developing the characters of the wrestlers. This serves two purposes: first, the more content that goes up on the EVOLVE website, the more people are going to feel like they need to check the website on a regular basis to make sure they don't miss anything. Just because the next show might not be for X number of weeks doesn't mean you have to stop telling the story.
But it would also address the fact that outside of what they do in the ring, fans really have little to no familiarity with most of the wrestlers as characters, and features like this would help us get to know them a little better. Okay, EVOLVE is all about pure competition and isn't meant to focus on who's jumping who in the parking lot, I get that, but we only get very brief snippets of backstage promos from a lot of the guys, and even with the main eventers who get more promo time, we get a couple quick shots of them warming up for their match throughout the DVD, a backstage or in-ring promo afterward, and not much more. I think that if you had more features on the website, whether they're told from the wrestlers' prespectives, a third party narrative, or anything else, it would help us get more connected with the wrestlers than we can if we only see or hear from them every two months.
Maybe you can have the mysterious, roving backstage camera crew that are backstage filming stuff at EVOLVE shows branch out, and also do written columns where they go around asking people what they think of Sean Davis and that other guy hanging around with Johnny Gargano and Jimmy Jacobs, or look at Bobby Fish's career and how he's been in the business for years but never really got a shot at being a top guy on the indies and EVOLVE is his shot to get in on the ground floor and make a name for himself as a headliner in EVOLVE. You could do a column about how Chris Dickinson, who is like 0-453 right now, trains all day, every day and has to deal with the mental baggage of having such a crappy record and how focused he is on turning it around so he's not the joke of the company. Write something where the reporter is calling up all the other wrestlers on the roster and asking them who they think is going to win between Aries and Taylor. Maybe do a column talking about the implications of how various win/loss combinations at the upcoming show will affect the rankings. There's a million things you can do that don't involve spending time filming and editing video, and you could literally take a long evening and kick out a week's worth of content in one night.
The point is that it's all well and good that EVOLVE is presenting a great, athletic product that, top to bottom, is usually at least on par with most ROH shows and actually surpasses a lot of them. I think it's great that we see the variety of different styles from technical wrestling to insane spots to MMA stuff to just all out brawling, which is a glowing example of an area where EVOLVE has a clear step up on ROH, which has more or less homogenized everything into one style. I like that the focus is on wins and losses and that everybody's goal is to be the best wrestler in the company and becoming the EVOLVE Champion. That's all great, but all that can only take you so far because fans need an emotional connection to the wrestlers that goes beyond what they do in the ring, and they've already planted the core seeds of everyone's motivations, but they need to develop them more. Okay, Brad Allen's doing it for his late mother and wants to get his hands on Chris Hero. What else? Kyle O'Reilly was supposed to main event EVOLVE 2 against Davey Richards and that was probably going to go somewhere, but Davey left town and Kyle never found a new direction and just had matches. What was his new focus now that his mentor had basically left him twisting in the wind?
I think that EVOLVE is doing a lot of things right, and I think doing all this would give EVOLVE an added dimension and something else for the fanbase to get excited about during those long stretches between shows. They've already got a great product, but the whole theme of the company is evolution, and EVOLVE has already EVOLVEd quit a bit since their first show as they tweak things to find out what works and what doesn't, and I think that extra written content would go a long way toward making an already good product even better.
But getting back to EVOLVE 6, Homicide will be making his in-ring debut in the company, and there are a few names on the list of announced talent that would make for some intriguing matches. Probably the one that stands out to me the most for having the potential to have a fun, violent match would be Drake Younger. I think highly of Drake and he's shown me a lot in the ring that you might not outwardly expect from a guy with his appearance, but he can also have some entertaining brawls as well, and we all know that Homicide knows how to have a good brawl. If you want to have Homicide go into a more wrestling-oriented direction, I think Bobby Fish would have the best match with Homicide out of the rest of the guys on the EVOLVE roster, but I don't see Homicide doing a job in his first match in, and I think that if Fish loses many more matches, he's at the point where it stops being an inspirational guy coming closer and closer to that big win and becomes a guy who's just a loser in the eyes of the fans. Maybe instead of doing a big match, just have Homicide kill Adam Cole or Kyle O'Reilly instead.
Jimmy Jacobs and Jon Moxley are both on the annuonced roster as well, and I'm not sure how much crossover Gabe intends to have between EVOLVE and DGUSA, but with these two feuding with one another in DGUSA, I think it would make sense to have them go against one another here, if not in a straight singles match then maybe a four way or a tag match or something like that. That way you can have something similar to the old ROH/FIP arrangement where the main focus is clearly on DGUSA and you're never going to see the blowoff to a DGUSA feud in EVOLVE, but you can have matches playing into the feud on EVOLVE shows to draw interest in that product as well. Then you can have the announcers on DGUSA casually mention that if you want more of the Jacobs-Moxley story, they were also in this tag match on EVOLVE 6, which you can pick up at www.evolvewrestling.com.
Then again, Moxley's involved in a feud with Brodie Lee in EVOLVE, and with Brodie suspended for one show for what happened at EVOLVE 5, they may just want Moxley to steamroll over someone else to build him up for the eventual rematch with Brodie. Or you could have him face Homicide. Moxley and Sami Callihan would be fun too. There's a ton of different combinations you can go with here, and I think it's a testament to how strong this roster is that you have so many possibilities that would work out so well.
I'm done for now, but for more information about EVOLVE 6 on November 20th or anything else EVOLVE-related, head on over to www.evolvewrestling.com for all the latest, ever EVOLVing news on the company.
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