Don't mind me, just ranting about PWG...
My ASW9 DVDs finally arrived and this time they got flagged by UK customs (fuck you, customs & excise! Cunts).
With the customs charge & shipping, I paid a total of £41.60/$63.42 for my order and had to wait 15 days for the DVDs to arrive (12 days from the US, 3 days stuck in customs). Meanwhile, multiple rips of ASW9 appeared on every wrestling torrent/filesharing site 3 days after PWG shipped the DVDs on May 2nd.
I know PWG have zero control over what packages the shitty UK customs flag for additional charges (although, marking the package as 'gift' rather than 'optical media' would be a great help), but this and the rampant piracy of PWG shows only further illustrates why it's so fucking ABSURD that .mp4 downloads or even video on demand versions of PWG shows aren't available until months and months after the DVDs have released.
Releasing .mp4 downloads on the same day as the DVDs are released couldn't possibly increase the rate of piracy higher than it already is and those fuckers that download the pirated rips aren't the ones buying shows anyway. Might as well just release .mp4 downloads in a timely fashion and cash in on international customers wanting to avoid shipping & potential customs charges, as well as the goodwill of those who favour digital media over physical releases.
In closing, I'd just like to add that SMV offer DRM-free .mp4 downloads of pretty much every new show they carry and I know for a FACT that I wouldn't have purchased quite so many shows from companies like AIW, AAW, CHIKARA, Wresting Is, BattleWar, wXw, ACW & C*4 if it wasn't for the fact that I could download them as .mp4's on the day of release.
Really, it all comes down to an old philosophy that Baba really understood: the face is always better in the chase.
The longer you can keep a guy in the position where he looks like he's chasing that dream, the more if a face he'll be. And he understood that it's much harder to elevate a face further after he's gotten the gold than it is to build him up while he's still chasing.
Exactly this, which is the main reason why WWE is so lacklustre these days - the heels are all a bunch of chumps, nothing to be feared, guys who just can't get the job done and, if they do, are certain to fall in the face of the first conquering hero to take them on. There is no chase for the face any more and, if there is, it's lasting no more than a month or so between PPVs.
Pristine_Condition said:
Baba knew this, and for Kobashi, he did it just about as well as it can be done IMO. Certainly the best I've ever seen.
Definitely, no one got quite as good of a build as Kobashi - Misawa was always destined for greatness and I loved the way Baba cemented his stardom by letting Misawa beat him, then booking him to go over Jumbo and, later, Hansen, but Kobashi's star was built from the ground up, slowly and surely. I'm envious that you got to see it from the near beginning.
