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Monday, October 27, 2014
OT: Wrestling Thread November 2014
Given that the old wrestling thread got shut down, here is a new one that shamelessly links to my Hell in a Cell review!
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Given the way it played out, it's hard to see how this whole thing doesn't make the crowds love Strowman - he won the match, did nothing wrong, looked like a total badass, and got unfairly attacked for it as a result. I love Strowman. I want to see Strowman and Lesnar, or Strowman and Joe. Or better, Strowman, Lesnar, and Joe in a triple threat match at Summerslam. Give them 15 minutes to beat the hell out of each other.
Yup.
Last night continued the recent trend of PPVs that start out horribly and get really good in the second half.
Somewhere, I hope, Mitsuhiro Matsunaga is raising a barbed-wire baseball bat in Pogo's honor.
The best story would have been to have Angle be the long-lost father of... El Torito. Then have El Torito fight Vince's illegitimate son (Hornswoggle) for control of the company in WeeLC II at the next Wrestlemania.
The Angle/Jordan story line is almost as bad as the short lived angle where The Big Show (then known as the Giant) showed up at Beach Blast 95 & threw a big Seinfeld-esque puffy shirt at Hogan who said "....this shirt....it's Andre's!!!!"
And I was just thinking that all this feud needed was to bring back a guy who was so immobile when he retired that he was reduced to a flute playing comedy act.
And how is it that Randy Orton will now get a 4th PPV main event in a row against the same guy. At some point, after losing 3 in a row, doesn't he have to go to the back of the line? Surely there's someone else on the roster stupid enough to keep being distracted by the Singh brothers. And if Orton wins the next one, then do we have to endure multiple PPV rematches from Jinder? Will the two of them really fight for 5 or 6 PPVs in a row?
Seriously, what a shitshow of an evening. They should have just sent everyone home after the tag match.
At least the next PPV isn't going to throw all of the women into one match again. Though the rest will probably get tossed into a tag match or something.
The company has been lost since Mania. Braun and Joe have been handled well but almost everyone else has been handcuffed in one way or another. We had two KO/AJ PPV matches and neither one was good! How is that even possible?
The title feuds have been entertaining for months, and the Fashion Police segments have kept the rest of the division onscreen. Having two ongoing tag feuds in a two hour show is a pretty good place for the division.
I said out loud last night that I think they're the ones who end up as the Fashion Police attackers.
I suspect Nakamura will be Jinder's next feud, as they were part of a Jinder/Dolph vs. Nakamura/Randy Orton tag team, and the two had a lot of ring time together. I have also never seen Randy Orton look like he was enjoying himself. When the crowd was chanting Nakamura's name, I caught him mouthing along and dancing to each syllable until he apparently remembered he is Randy fcking Orton and corrected himself and got back in character.
AJ and KO had another title match and after what happened at MSG a couple weeks ago, I was hoping for another AJ win. No dice, but still fun to see.
I think my favorite part about the whole night was the six year old girl next to me completely decked out in Cena gear. She was playing games on her phone and giving no fcks about the action until her man showed up for the Main Event, and then she went apeshit.
here's that promo. the most underappreciated aspect of it is the crowd was lukewarm going into the commercial break, but they were hot as hell when the show came back on. apparently jericho spent those 4 minutes talking #### about [local sports team] and he restarted the promo when the feed came back.
i'll allow it.
I also highly endorse this three-man banter-go-round.
You can't compare Flair's career performance to any modern wrestler because the nature of wrestling as a business has changed so much in the last 40 years. A modern wrestler like Jericho isn't expected to range from territory to territory doing big house shows with whoever the top draw was with no preparation, video to analyze, or anything more than a few minutes backstage to lay out some spots.
Also I just wanted an excuse to repost this story from Terry Taylor.
Flair threw out first pitch for the Marlins last night & didn't even come close to the plate--well short. He may be the 60-minute man but certainly was not the 60 feet 6 inches man last night!
Agreed, but I don't think that gets the attention of the Indian people the way they want.
On the topic of Mahal: I was into his elevation as a way to mix it up and give him a shot. Something similar worked for JBL back in 04-05 and WWE got a new main event heel out of it. I hope I'm not using rose-colored glasses, but I remember JBL getting more heat and attracting more interest as champ.
Jinder's acquitted himself well and proved he deserves a good long look... in the future. I just don't think he's ready to or capable of carrying SDL right now, and that's what the champ should do. Here's to Cena getting #17 in Brooklyn.
I think the difference here was that Bradshaw had been a WWE fixture for years before and was a multiple-time champion and recognized (by the fans) badass when he transitioned from the Bradshaw persona to JBL. The whole APA gimmick was wildly popular for a couple of years before the whole JBL thing ever started.
Jinder has been around for years, but before 2017 never rose above the lower card. He had no previous championship wins, spent most of his time as part of a joke stable (3MB) and/or going back and forth between the main roster and NXT (where he also never won anything of note). He was then released for about 2 years, came back, and immediately started losing again. He was essentially on the level of Darren Young. Then, all of a sudden, he was the champion.
If they wanted to pick someone in a similar position to Bradshaw (ie, promote someone with a strong history of mid-card success up the card), the choice would have been someone like Luke Harper - high profile group, multiple past champion. Keep him off TV a couple of months, bring him back with a new, harder-hitting gimmick. You could push him into the championship picture without much argument from anyone.
Reports are he's in a medically induced coma awaiting treatment for his alcoholic cardiomyopathy. My understanding is that this means surgery.
That's bad news all around. If he needs surgical treatment, he's pretty far gone. He may be getting an LVAD (left ventricular assist device) as a prelude to an attempted transplant. Though it's hard to imagine a transplant committee would be inclined to approve him given his lifestyle. If he gets it, it will be like the Mickey Mantle liver transplant - he gets it because he's Ric Flair, not because he's a good candidate.
I guess best case scenario would be a pacemaker of some kind, though you wouldn't expect he would need to be in a medically induced coma if that was all that was happening.
This sucks. Hard to imagine a world without Ric Flair out there styling and profiling.
EDIT: Meltzer reporting that apparently he's out of surgery but still in bad shape.
They're going to have to work really hard to screw up Strowman as their next big star. He's just on fire right now. The crowd was eating up everything he did.
They should be building to a Strowman/Lesnar 1-on-1 match down the line, where Strowman takes the title off of him, and then let Braun run with it for about a year just ripping through everyone.
That match saved what was a truly awful PPV. So many bad and pointless matches, topped off by the decision to have Jinder Mahal retain yet again with his finishing move, the Singh Brother Beatdown Distraction into a Single Weak-Looking Slam. It's apparently the only way he can win a match. Is there no two-person shark cage we can put these idiots into so that this experiment will end? How many T-shirts are people in India really ordering to justify killing the brand like this?
(I am happy to see Natalya win a title for the first time in forever. She's been the good soldier for years, helping put over everyone else, and I doubt she's got a lot of years left in her given that she's already 35. I also thought it was funny that Naomi was openly pouting during the match, thus giving away the outcome.)
Summerslam was a weak-ish show, but I thought the main event and tag matches were very good and the two women's matches were solid (though with an abrupt finish in the Raw match). Probably the best of the AJ/KO matches, but that feud still ends as a major disappointment from the best two guys in the company.
Big props to Lesnar for taking those slams through the tables and the spear through the wall. Those looked painful.
I completely buy the "unstoppable monster" Strowman now. Before, I thought he was just "big", but after watching him toss around Lesnar like a rag doll I'm all in now.
I wish they'd just make Reigns a full heel now. Have him betray his former Shield brothers or something. It's just weird watching him do his poses/bellows and the crowd boo him like that.
Such a big part of the Roman hate is that he seems like the chosen one in spite of fan resentment, so they might as well just let that perception linger. It's good for the heat.
The punches are the worst - that stupid hand-cocking move, particularly when he's trying to do them quickly in a fast-paced match, is just weird and totally out of place. I get that the "OOO-AAHH" is like Shawn Michaels tuning up the band, but it doesn't work if no one cares.
I have to say, I think last night's crowd reactions to him were the worst I've seen. Even when he was trying to do the 10 clotheslines in the corner, no one was counting along. They were just booing. No one cheered the set up for the spear, and people booed every time he stepped into the ring. I guess major PPV tickets are too expensive to attract the little kids and casual fans who make up the core of his support.
I would say the worst reaction was his entrance at Mania XXXI in Santa Clara. He was even worse as a character (that was in the sufferin' succotash era), his work was not as good as it is now, and there was the added resentment of him "taking" Daniel Bryan's place in the main event. I was at that show. It was even angrier than his reaction at Mania XXXII in Dallas against HHH. It was basically the polar opposite of the most exuberant crowd I have seen- the pro-Bryan hijacking of the Orton-Cena championship stare down in Seattle (here).
Sasha/Asuka is basically the best possible match available to women in WWE, and it works with either one as the babyface.
Sure seems like it. They pushed it too far - they made her look weaker and weaker, losing repeatedly, in hopes of building her back up as the underdog face. But now the crowds have turned on her, and she doesn't seem to know how to handle it. She never recovered from losing that kendo stick match to Alexa.
Not to mention that Paige is still supposedly coming back, plus they'll end up adding at least a couple of wrestlers once the Mae Young Classic is done.
I love the different reactions to Cena Roman. Over the last 5 months Roman has been getting more and more mixed reactions, some towns booing him uniformly and some who will get legitimately into the matches despite themselves, so seeing them lean into this is interesting. It's almost like they want the whole thing out there to see were the cards fall, and they've booked Roman in a way lately he could walk away as a face or a heel.
What I do find irritating though are the people who just lust to see Roman brought down as a performer. Go on one sight tonight and this segment was the death of Roman reigns, go on another you'll read it's his character at its best. I won't name the sights, but one is a smark echo chamber and the latter is a mainstream sports site. I keep thinking at some point the internet guys have to admit he's at least good at his job but it seems less and less likely.
I think Alexa is turning face in the Nia feud and Sasha is turning heel sometime soon. Alexa got a clean win and did the superplex spot, then got betrayed. Sasha was certainly more heelish last night, both in the early part of the match and in her promo beforehand. If she wins the title again they can do an angle where she cheats to finally defend it.
Asuka is likely going to Raw when she gets back from injury, and she can take the title relatively quickly. Sasha/Asuka at Mania is THE match, but of course they would want to squeeze Alexa and Nia in there so it would probably still be a crappy 4-way. I just want Sasha/Asuka in multiple 15+ minute matches on PPV.
Thinking back through the list of guys who have gotten the "rub" by beating up Vince, that puts Owens in some pretty good company.
The Mae Young Classic ended up fairly solid. No real standout matches, but lots of potential in the performers. Not only the established ladies like Kairi and Toni Storm, but also the NXT newbies like Bianca Belair and Rhea Ripley.
And he happened to be the wrong Guy at the wrong place, after a long string of "You'll eat it because we tell you to eat it" edicts from Greenwich, Connecticut.
How many times does WWE have to turn substantive criticism of their decision-making into "meta," "heat-getting" storylines, before they reconsider how the decision-making keeps leading them to damage control reboots? You never would have seen Paul Heyman in his ECW days turn Reigns' subpar line-reading skills into the central focus of an angle, the way WWE just did with the Cena faceoff.
Raise a glass to one of the best, fellow humanoids!
"Wrestlemania tickets are going on sale... That's right... Buy four for me, I'll pay you when I get the money... Don't get smart with me, chump, or I'll slap you across the mouth... Do you want me to knock you out?... Okay, I'll talk to you later, Mom."
It was a tragedy that throat cancer robbed him of his ability to speak, because he was one of the best ever.
I can read that in Heenan's voice.
No way he puts death over brother, gotta keep the Hulkster strong. The Grim Reaper is gonna get the same treatment Sting did at Starcade 97 brother.
The tag match in particular was great. Cesaro's got to be one tough guy to break his mouth up like that and keep going (and keep taking shots to the face). The woman's match was really good (though I'm not sure the right person won). Wyatt/Balor was surprisingly good. They were really cooking up something nice. And then...
Roman/Cena was the worst of WWE booking. One guy hits a finisher - kickout. He hits it again - kickout. Super finisher - kickout. Double finisher - kickout. Other guy hits one finisher out of nowhere - pinfall. It always used to be Cena on the kickout/kickout/kickout/pin side. It's no better when it's Roman (and honestly much worse). I get that Cena wants to go be a dad and a Transformer or whatever, so he's not sticking around for some long program. But if this whole "feud" was Cena calling Roman out for being the protected favorite son who is always made to look good even though he hasn't earned it, he kind of proved his own point. And this did nothing to make the crowds like Roman any better. I suspect the Monday night crowd is going to be brutal.
And Brock/Strowman was just a total waste, and they're obviously in "keep Brock strong so he can lose to Roman at WM" mode at this point. There's no reason why Strowman couldn't have run with the title between now and the Royal Rumble. He's as over as anyone in the company, and he could have some nice power matches over the next few months while he gets his run as a main eventer. Instead, we're going to get what we always get with Brock - he wins at PPV, then disappears for weeks/months while he gets the Poochie treatment from the announcers. I'm sure he'll be back for Survivor Series, or maybe not until the Rumble who knows. And until then, the top title is essentially vacant. And beyond all of that, it was the same #### they pulled in the Cena/Reigns match. Strowman hit Lesnar with multiple power slam finishers, and got either a kickout or no pinfall attempt. Lesnar hits one F5 and it's over. What do they do with Strowman now?
Great tag team match, though. I never thought I'd enjoy Sheamus matches as the best thing on the card, but there you go.
That's so funny - I noticed the same thing. And kudos to whoever miked those things, because the hits to the post (particularly the Nia Jax one at the end of the match) sounded like death.
It seemed like in every match the ring posts were put to the test and stood tall. I assume at the next PPV Roman will defeat the ring posts, and then they'll give a speech and say, "Roman, you're the real support structure."
It looks like the build toward a Shield reunion is supposed to be our intended distraction from once again going months without a Universal Champion appearance/title defense.
Great. What do we get out of a Shield reunion exactly? They worked as a group when they were 3 guys together climbing the ladder, with their ambiguous allegiances to both sides of the aisle. Now they're 3 former World Champions (and 2/3 of the current tag champions), including arguably the least popular person in the company. Why exactly do they need to reform this team? What would Seth/Dean get out of supporting Roman, given that both of them also want to be the champion?
Unless they're planning to complete the reunion, only to have Dean and Roman turn heel by beating down Seth for breaking them up in the first place, I can't imagine what the point is beyond popping the crowd a few times.
It's Vince's latest attempt to get Roman cheered. Dean/Seth are over, the Shield was over, maybe THIS is what gets Roman over. He's so focused on the one guy that he handcuffs everyone else in the company.
That's very true, although there have been a lot of PPVs lately that followed the opposite script (boring until a hot final hour). I think I liked Brock-Strowman more than the others here, but that's not taking into account whatever Brock does for the next few months. I think it makes more sense that Brock could finish Braun with one F5 because dropping a 400-pounder is inherently more damaging than dropping your garden-variety goliath.
Right, there is nothing even approaching a foil for the Shield on Raw. I was thinking it would be fun to do some gang warfare by bringing Harper and Rowan back to Wyatt's cult and having Finn finally team up with the Club. That might give some reason for the Shield to work together, but without a viable opponent, what's the point?
They might as well bring Harper and Rowan back, they're not using them. And Wyatt has basically become enhancement talent since he lost the title earlier this year.
I think Bill is right - people used to cheer the Shield, maybe they'll do it again, and then it will be like Roman is being cheered. I think it will be funny if either the crowds turn on Rollins and Ambrose and boos the entire lot of them, or if they somehow cheer Rollins and Ambrose but start booing every time Roman gets in the ring.
I wonder how many more years Vince will flog this before he gives up and turns his attention elsewhere. I suspect we've got at least until the end of the decade and several more title runs ahead of us.
A hidden problem here is that Roman hardly ever holds the title despite being the top guy destined to hold the title. So the show is frequently about whatever Roman is doing, plus the title picture being prepped for Roman. It actually works when Brock has the title because they let Heyman run things and he knows how to keep a Brock feud interesting, at least until the match itself. But the fact that everything is earmarked for Roman means they can't read the crowd and have Strowman win the belt when it really would have been a good idea. Strowman is just fodder for the Brock/Roman match, screw the fact that they had previously booked him perfectly and created an actual star.
The best periods for Roman were when he initially feuded with Vince and then the run with AJ after winning the title from HHH. When he was the champion and only influencing that part of the show.
But these were the best Hell in a Cell matches in years. The first one was brutal and fully contained, the second one crazy once they got up on top of the cage. I was on the edge of my seat with every move, wondering whether the ceiling would fall in, or who might get thrown off. And the surprise ending has at least assured that people will want to tune in on Tuesday and hear the explanation.
If they're going to continue to defy logic and book the top of the card around Mahal as champion, then they had better come up with some pretty compelling stuff elsewhere. And it looks like that's what they're trying to do. But man, that India tour cannot come soon enough. Get the crowds you want, then get the belt off of him and onto someone else to build toward WM. My hope would be AJ (now that he's freed up from the US title) beats Jinder, and they build to AJ/Nakamura at WM.
But who knows. Maybe they'll move the belt to Mojo Rawley, since he can have Gronk in his corner at the big show and entice football fans into buying the show, and that's all that apparently matters.
The main event Cell was about as much fun as I can have watching a wrestling match. I didn't see the Sami swerve coming at all- to the point that I hadn't even considered what he would be like as a heel- and I ended up loving it. In just a few years, KO has had a great NXT debut/run, a crazy main roster debut with classic wins over Cena, a Universal title run, the Festival of Friendship, a series of badass matches with Zayn, and now a great feud with Shane. He has had more memorable moments than some HOFers had in their entire careers.
This is exactly why I take comments about ratings, subscriptions, and buy rates with a grain of salt. The things that drive public interest in wrestling are often directly opposed to what I like in wrestling. For example, every time the Rock shows up these days, it pops the ratings, and it usually ends up being kind of a waste of time (certainly when he wrestles).
A LOT of my enjoyment of that match had to do with KO's non-wrestling performance.
Taunting Shane's kids with his mock dancing to anger the crowd.
His constant verbal abuse of Shane throughout the match.
When he climbs the cage and decides NOT to leap from it (three times going to the edge and backing off), and then Shane DOES leap off it later on...that's fantastic. The heel doesn't have the guts, but the face does...and pays for it.
The way that KO kept "stumbling" towards the edge when they were brawling up there made me think that he WAS going to fall off (as part of the story), or at least cling to the side of it in desperation.
Even his ability to be "out of it" when Sami pulls him off the table (other than a brief sit up to give Sami a hand to pull with) and then drags him over to cover Shane.
He's quickly moved up my list of all-time-must-watch performers.
I love Owens. He can do comedy, he can do vicious beatings, he can go in the ring. I think you could make him a face and the crowds would love him, which would make the subsequent heel turn that much more entertaining.
He's easily in the top 5 guys in WWE right now, and probably in the top 2 or 3.
Top 1. I don't think anyone touches him as an all-around performer who is great in the ring and can actually handle main roster talking segments. I think you're looking at tag teams as his only competition, since the Usos and New Day have been top notch this year and Rollins/Ambrose cover each other's weakness and are better together (same with Roman added in).
Sami's promo on Tuesday was really good. I think this will really turn him around and get him into a much better spot. The potential KO/Sami vs Usos feud could be dynamite.
He's not there right now, but Jericho is the one that can match him. When they were paired together or working against each other, it was an embarrassment of riches. A case could be made that they shouldn't cross paths again for a long time (when Jericho gets back) because it's better to have them working their own stories/feuds independently to get TWO great segments each night instead of just one.
If they were to do a tag team, maybe they find a third person and go up against the (newly reformed) Shield?
The singles guy who came to mind was AJ Styles. His mike work can be spotty, but he was so good last year with the Ambrose/Ellsworth feud, and with the Cena feud.
Cena can still go as well when motivated - both the Owens and Styles feuds were great, and he's always good with the talking. You always run the risk that he'll slip into full burying mode, though (like the Rusev feud).
Agreed on Owens/Jericho, though - that was a magical pairing of two guys who really understand what to do in the ring and on the mike.
If they were to do a tag team, maybe they find a third person and go up against the (newly reformed) Shield?
Someone go talk Neville out of quitting, because I want to see this.
Cena seemed to have lost a step this summer, which is why I put KO above him. Perhaps better than ever on the mic, but I think he's going to have trouble staying in ring-shape to live up to his 2015 run. I might just be reading too much into matches with a poor worker (Corbin) and a good worker whose style didn't mesh well with Cena's (Roman). But he really only had one good match this summer (Nakamura).
Jericho is in sort of the same spot as Cena, where his best days are behind him in the ring. Still good, but the standard is so high these days.
I think AJ is still the best in-ring guy, but KO is close enough that the mic work puts him ahead.
At this point I would put Miz surprisingly high on the list.
I'd like to see him expand what he does in the ring. On the mic, he's been great the last 12+ months. Would I put him in the top 10 in-ring guys in the WWE? No, but he plays his part very well.
If you could take Miz's promo work and combine it with something like Cesaro's ring ability, you'd have a superstar.
(As a side note, I'm going to be really sad when they break up Cesaro and Sheamus. First because I'll have to go back to dreading Sheamus the singles wrestler. And second, because this is the best use they've found for Cesaro since Zeb Colter retired. I've given up hope that the WWE will ever give him a shot at running with the top title, so I'll have to be happy with the marauding European tag team that he's a part of. Once they break up, he'll probably fall back down the card again and end up putting over guys like Baron Corbin and Big Cass.)
And was that a serious comment that "apparently the only thing that matters is getting people to buy the show?" Uh yeah that is the entire point. The object of wrestling Isnt to collect stars from Dave Meltzer and entertain smarks with flips.
In a non-title match.
Booking committee, you have outdone yourselves!
On the minus side, everything else.
Sometimes I think part of the part he plays is "not great in the ring." When the stuff with DB started up he added 3-4 DB sequences to his act overnight, and honestly he does the knee better that DB did at times. Combine that with the fact that he looks in control and reasonably fluid in the ring and I think we have some strong evidence that if he wanted to then he could show himself to be a much better worker.
- Roman is out of the main event, replaced by KURT ANGLE
- Bray is out of his match, replaced by AJ Styles. That is now a match of two former Bullet Club leaders, who never faced each other in NJPW. It could be an out of nowhere candidate for best WWE match of the year, if they let those two guys go all out.
Biggest surprise - Emma. She looked great in her match. I'm fully on board the Emma train, not that I think she'll get much of another shot.
The main event was nuts in a good way. I fully expected Braun to break the garbage truck open, step out, and resume beating everyone. Angle was noticeably slow and winded, but to be expected given that he had no time to prepare and doesn't work regularly. I'm not dying to see him back in the ring full-time, but as a special attraction that works OK.
Go mumps (or meningitis, or whatever it ended up being).
I would be willing to bet they had booked a typical Shield match, since this was a nostalgia trip match. The stretcher job was probably added last minute to save some wear on Angle who was apparently only cleared on Friday. As an unrepentant Shield mark I'm still bummed out we didn't get the Shield match and probably won't at SS either.
I'm curious what people here think of the end of Raw tonight? Maybe I'm too much of a details guy, but seeing heels and faces running together in a heel like fashion and attaching random and sometimes nonsense opponents was odd to me.
But then again, I liked the secret midget courtroom underneath the ring. I liked when Santino's snake glove was enchanted by Jinder Mahal and the Great Khali playing flutes. I liked Friendship the Magician.
How panicky does WWE have to be, to burn through that many special attractions (Angle's first WWE match in 11 years, the smarky Bullet Club battle, Kane's 33rd big red reboot) with zero notice or promotion? On a pay-per-view for which nobody pays per view? That airs on a 365-day pay channel they own?
Speaking of Kurt Angle, what's the point of abruptly approving him for a full match, and then inexplicably making him the one un-beat-up-able person the next night on "Raw"? Other than the Raw cameramen, that is. Even though the Smackdown hooligans had no problem attacking some nondescript backstage employee whose job is standing by a TV screen that no one's using. And man, WWE has really gotten in the habit of writing segments where Angle has to stand there stupefied, and then stand there some more, unable to leave the ring or retort.
Speaking of Kane, what's the benefit of feeding him Finn Balor as glorified cannon fodder? Aren't they supposed to be building Balor up as Lesnar's opponent, to fill the gap between Jinder and Vince's four-year tantric sex coronation of Roman Reigns?
Speaking of Jinder, how bad is it when Jinder Mahal's existential unfitness to be in the Lesnar match has to be acknowledged and turned into an overt angle by Paul Heyman? I guess this'll lead to a series of events where Mahal "proves" to Lesnar he's far more ruthless and formidable than Heyman or any of us recognized.
And apparently Braun Strowman is actually dead, crushed and murdered in a garbage compactor. Tragic.
Vince at his worst.
It was Balor because he had a big PPV. He was the biggest name they could use.
It's stupid, but I think they've decided vanilla Finn can lose a whole bunch so long as they book the demon to be strong. Which is dumb because 5 weeks ago Balor had the whole thing were he proved "the man who created the demon..." against Bray.
You'd think a decade of using briefcase holders after MiTB as enhancement talent would've taught them this doesn't work. It only ever leads to weak champs, and the natural end of this is how they want to go with Finn is that we won't care about him when he isn't painted.
Exactly. It's fine to use the demon gimmick as making his in ring character stronger, but to use "regular" Finn as essentially a jobber for an aging Kane is silly. I don't care that they are trying to get Kane stronger for Stroman. Use Matt Hardy in that spot to get squashed then.
Becky Lynch was super obnoxious when she was beating up RAW. I like her as a face but she'd make a real annoying heel
I was sad to see Emma go, especially after it seemed like she finally got a push
I am skipping through more parts of RAW/Smackdown than ever. One of the few wrestlers I always watch is Elias. I like his look & he can talk but he seems wasted with the whole I'll sing & then you'll interrupt me.
Not for five seconds do I buy Becky as someone who would laugh and cheer as pro-wrestlers beat down a non-wrestler.
Now Cena as special ref opens up the possibility of a screwy Jinder win...which would suit me just fine. A screwy loss doesn't hurt Brock one iota and I don't see how you can just pretty much bury Smackdown like that by having Brock destroy Jinder. I'm not nuts about the WWE Championship being diminished in favor of the Universal title, either.
Two friends and I were so tired of Raw that we decided to just start watching Raw from 1996 instead. Every Monday (or so), we watch the episode of Raw from that week in 96, and keep the PPVs in the timeline. When we have enough time, we also get to sample Nitro. It has been so much more fun. This week was the "Pillman has a gun" Raw. It was one of many where Austin has been outrageously entertaining. He is carrying Raw from week to week. Sid is super popular, Michaels is at his peak as an athlete and worker, and the 60 minute format is so refreshing.
On the WCW side, they struggle to fill their show. The quality of their CW division has been talked about to death. I have been surprised how much they lean on guys like Eddie, Benoit, Jericho, Booker T, Konnan, and Malenko throughout the card to just stabilize things and keep some of their big names who don't wrestle as much looking passable (hello Mongo). We just got through Slim Jim's Halloween Havoc with a crappy main event between Hogan and Savage. Piper returned at the end of the show to challenge Hogan. This period was exactly when WCW was crushing WWF in the ratings and their storylines were just NOT good.
I'd have liked to have seen Elias get the rub for injuring Jason Jordan rather than Bray Wyatt
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