Nah you can drop the Sir. Teacups is actually the nickname I have, I just added the Sir here so that people wouldn’t think I’m a girl…also thanks!
I’m not sure what just happened. I was watching Sportz Entertainment™ and a Wrestling Angle broke out!
Missed opportunity.
They point out before the match that only Cesaro and Cena have pinned Rusev. Then Orton pins him to win the match, and the announcers are silent.
The shine is off of Rusev. Next step - being pinned by Los Matadors.
Rollins v Cena for SummerSlam? Though the Raw after SS has Cena/Reigns/Ambrose vs Owens/Wyatt/Harper, so maybe not.
It’s been so long since UT was a regular on TV, I don’t even remember. His wiki page sez that he had a full docket in 2010 until Bragging Rights in October, when Kane defeated him in a Buried Alive match with help from the Nexus. He needed time off to recover from injury. He returned at WM in 2011 to defeat HHH, got carried off in a stretcher, then didn’t wrestle until WM 2012 against HHH again. He next appeared in July at RAW’s 1000th episode, but didn’t wrestle until… you guessed it, WM 2013 vs CM Punk. He worked an angle on TV as an homage to his former manager Paul Bearer, who had passed away, which turned into a confrontation with The Shield. They triple powerbombed him into vacationland until WM 2014 when he faced Brock Lesnar. You know the rest.
Everything was fine last night until we got to the main event, which was basically a Smackdown main event.
Loved the huge brawl though, that was fun.
Of course Rusev is being relegated to the Jobbers To The Stars list - that should have been obvious once they moved Lana out on her own.
Meanwhile, here’s my crazy theory of the day: when it’s time for Sheamus to cash in MITB, they’ll kill two birds with one stone by having Cena win the world title first, so he can tie Flair’s record, then have Sheamus cash it in immediately (or perhaps the next night on RAW after Cena is beat down for some reason).
The no sell finishers thing is a lack of art. First you try to put the finisher on your opponent but he wriggles out before you can get started. The next time he blocks it. The next time you can’t hit the move perfectly and he kicks out at the count of 1. The next time you make it to a 2 count. The next time he kicks out just before the ref’s hand comes down the 3rd time. Then finally you hit him with it (or the setup) by surprise, and then he stays down.
But that’s not the only problem, just like in boxing, styles make fights. In boxing nothing is worse than two slick boxers dancing all night and never touching each other, in wrestling it’s two guys who do nothing but power moves, especially if they’re just going to kick out each time.
We need that contrast of styles in wrestling, but it’s rarely seen anymore. Every wrestler goes out and uses their signature moves repeatedly. We’ve also lost the difference between the good guys and the bad guys, you wouldn’t know which is which without the announcers. The great Buddy Colt said you could tell the good guys from the bad guys by the way they moved. There was style and finesse once upon a time. But the fans keep watching and buying tickets to the big events, so there’s no incentive to do anything differently. I guess no one cares anymore.
Well, Santino is gone, so they can’t go the Kozlov route and turn him into the comedic tag team Russian…
Of course, doesn’t mean that Heath Slater won’t be his partner in a month.
Why is everyone writing Rusev off so quickly? He’s literally had two rivalries: Cena and this thing with Ziggler.
I know it’s catchy to just say once a popular star loses that he’s just done…but good lord let the guy have something here before shutting him down
I think he’s just going to take a vacation. He’ll be back.
I say it because it’s a McMahon pattern dating back to Daddy Vince, and especially with babyface champions. It’s more accelerated now, but the pattern is the same. Establish challenger as a beast, including beating a few name babyfaces on the way up. Go for belt, usually over 3 months. Re-establish secondary name babyfaces on the way down. Way, way back, when wrestlers had options and both the IC and World titles were babyfaces, that filled an entire 2 year run, then it’s off to reset in another part of the country. As McMahon gobbled up and spit out other promotions, now there is nowhere to reset. So when it’s time for Rusev to rise again, we are supposed to forget that one month ago he had been pinned by Torito. Not everyone can recover from that (see: Swagger, Jack et al). Others can, and despite that get sent back down the ladder again (see: Henry, Mark; Jacobs, Glenn).
I’m not blaming the wrestlers. It’s management and the writers spending so much time on a small number and basically ignoring everyone else. But hey, they can all get swerved (no, I haven’t watched).
Quick, name ONE MAN who has come in as a ball of fire, raced right to the top, lost to Cena and is still in the upper-midcard.
The other wrestlers are collecting on their receipts now, but they’ll re-introduce Rusev as a beast for at least one more run when the time is right. He’s had a good run but he failed to grow in the eyes of the audience, when Lana became the storyline it meant he had run out of tricks. He will be an old style cyclic heel a la Nikolai Volkoff. For a guy with a limited future outside of wrestling he’ll be very happy with that status with the WWE pay rates.
Sure, if he’s both good and lucky, he’ll stay on for awhile. If he’s average and/or not-so-lucky, he’ll be wrestling TNA/GWF/ROH or whatever other indy as former WWE star (new name).
For the various potential futures of Rusev, look no further than The Nexus, listed in what I consider the order of their (current) WWE success:
- Daniel Bryan
- Skip Sheffield (Ryback)
- Wade Barrett (tie)
- Darren Young (tie)
- Heath Slater
- David Otunga
- Justin Gabriel
- Michael Tarver
The good news is that 75% of them are still collecting WWE paychecks 5 years later (though how Slater and Otunga have escaped the WWE axe is beyond me). That bodes well for Rusev; he’s got a 3-in-4 chance of collecting through 2019. Most of these guys are lucky to get on a PPV and probably have no merchandise at the arenas. And let’s be honest with ourselves, Rusev is no Bryan, the only breakout of that group.
Regarding Rusev, this isn’t Cold War America any more. They made the most of the Russian invader angle, but there’s no way it was going to last forever. Russian heels such as Nikita Koloff and Nikolai Volkoff eventually got stale, reinvented as faces, and faded away. They’re now announcing Rusev to be from Bulgaria, and Lana isn’t going to be Russian anymore. They got the most heat they can from him.
He bears a resemblance to Ron Jeremy. Maybe they can make him into a porn star: The Bulgarian Bulge. Mark Henry went through a similar phase when he was Sexual Chocolate.
PG, that’s why not
Plus that idea is retarded
There’s a reason the attitude era isn’t around anymore
Meanwhile, the Dean Ambrose local morning show insanity tour marches on.
Fuckers, all I’m doing is spouting the bad idea to keep Vince from doing it!