Hi, glad to be on the air…long time listener, first time caller.
I’ve actually followed this thread since page one, but since I don’t have cable (just Hulu) or the WWE Network, I’m usually a couple days behind current events.
Anyway, here’s my $.02 on random recent events.
Taker’s return. There’s no good way for this to end. Either Lesnar gets his ass handed to him by a 50 year old mostly retired man who’s been plagued with injuries or the Myth of the Undertaker is further destroyed. It’s not like we’ll get a mat classic from these two.
LOLCENAWINS. Was Vince in his hyperbaric chamber/steroid dispenser when they brought Owens in and he just found out? It’s like they had decent writers at first and then Vince was unleashed.
Rusev and Cesaro. I think these two have the exact same problem. They have the talent to be main eventers but the writers would have actually work to make them characters instead of two dimensional. boring caricatures.
The Divas. Lord, please let Vince stay away from their storylines and let the NXT crew continue their work with them. I hope that the NXT women wrestlers aren’t hobbled so the Divas can keep up with them. I’d love to see if the Divas talent is good enough to keep up with the NXTers.
You called it about Vince somehow being absent from WWE decision-making for a few weeks, then all the sudden retaking the throne and instituting Vinceocracy. Rumor has it KO is going to be working in the midcard. He’s kicked out of Cena’s trademark finishers and now he’s going to job to the Lie Detector. Balls, said the queen. If I had them I’d be king.
Even if one doesn’t like KO, the booking has been horrible. I thought his promos needed a lot of work, but to come in, pin Cena, then have two more hard fought matches just to be relegated to mid card obscurity - insanity. Hurts the product and we just end up watching Orton yet again (who should follow Cena’s lead and expand his repertoire)
Man, I feel like I’m repeating myself here, only with KO instead of Rusev
How are you immediately jumping from “fights cena” to “midcard obscurity”? I mean, good lord, dude has JUST FINISHED his cena stuff. What if he goes on to face Cesaro? Wouldn’t those two make great matches? I hesitate to think that would be “midcard obscurity”, and we just don’t know that yet.
Besides, I’m still in the camp of him eventually winning the US Title.
I’m not sure if I should be aghast at how remarkably tone-deaf a statement like that is, or relieved that they haven’t gone with typical WWE booking and turned him into a femmy interior decorator who comes to the ring in a tied-off shirt and denim booty shorts and calls Titus “sithter”.
As I said upthread the jury is still out on Rusev (feuding with Ziggler is hardly obscurity even if the storyline itself is godawful, Wyatt has since feuded with Ambrose and now Reigns (two guys at least on the upper midcard, if not main eventers) with a special appearance by Undertaker, I wasn’t really around for ADR so I can’t comment on him, Ryback was doing decent for a time as Rybaxel and is now upper midcard, and Khali was a ticking time-bomb to turn into Frankenstein’s monster.
I see nothing there that tells me they went into midcard obscurity.
There is a possibility that this Rusev angle dies and he feuds with Sandow or something, and KO could easily go and face Bo Dallas or something stupid, but other than the par for the course of losing to Cena, the guys have been doing a-ok for themselves
She did clarify that that simply haven’t done anything with it… yet. It’s good that it is not an angle, that it doesn’t come up at all, that Titus is standing by him. It means it’s as normal as Kane owning an insurance agency.
Cassie-Eva Marie never got out of first gear. At some points they were in slow motion, and before the end run, I thought “Wow, two hot women are actually managing to bore me!”
I haven’t seen the match yet, but unless Eva Marie has had a complete talent transplant, she only has two gears…first and flying off of a cliff as flaming wreckage.
I’m actually glad that they aren’t doing anything in regards to Young’s sexual orientation. All they would do, if history is any indication, is screw up his career by making him a stereo-typical “flaming queen.” I can see it now…“Delicious”* Darren Young beating Bad News Barrett and insisting on being called “The Queen of the Ring.”
KO as a jobber. Let’s build this guy up in NXT as a ruthless brute who’s only doing this to give his family a better life (the angles and storylines write themselves.) We’ll then give him a series of matches against a superstar who should be putting over new guys by now. Follow that up by demoting him to the main roster so he can end up engaging in meaningless feuds with a bunch of others who could put on main event matches if given the time and opportunity. Or, as I like to call it, WWE career path #3. Why not save time and slap some make-up on him so he can be the third member of The Ascension?
To end this on a positive note, Cesaro in a match next to Cena and Orton. Did somebody detract Vince with boobs or steroids so they could book this? It’s chances to see talent like him that keeps me from turning off WWE and searching YouTube for old matches from the territory days.
*Insert vaguely offensive nickname of choice here.
Does this mean you were not a fan of Adrian Adonis and The Flower Shop? Johnny B. Badd? Billy (Gunn) & Chuck (Palumbo)? Goldust (for a little while)? That well (gay-ish stereotypes) has been mined many times, never well.
Yes, times have changed, Confederate flags are coming down, gays can be married and enjoy spousal benefits, so we will have to find new ways to shock people without alienating them.
What kind of an action show has a contract signing as its most exciting part? Except for the Bayley/Emma match, everything else was a snoozefest. Dana Brooke needs to lose the Yankee whine, so she can have a chee-ance of getting over. Both she and Eva Marie are sow’s ears that don’t work as silk purses. This is the developmental part that we’re going to be sitting through for months now that the major talent has been called up.
As for as our gripings about Cena, he ain’t going away any time soon. The TV in the cafeteria at my workplace was showing some kind of human interest story about a cancer kid getting his make-a-wish with John Cena. He’s too integrated into the mainstream to go away. He even had a funny line in the Amy Shumacher movie trailer.
That was his “My Wish” on ESPN, also he has a pretty big cameo in the Trainwrecked movie where he plays…basically a gay character.
NXT was definitely boring. Jobber central with Angelo Dawkins (MVP adjace) and his tag partner, Mike Rawlin, or Rolin, or something, and the weird superhero lookin’ dude that Corbin destroyed.
Bayley actually won on TV! She then goes off to face…Charlotte? I guess she’s working her way up the roster but…hoo boy I dunno about that.
I don’t know what it is, but NXT needs to either tape less shows at once, go live more often, or something…cuz they’re getting stale.
Speaking of, I checked to see when their next Full Sail taping is, and it’s already sold out. I either neeed to check this thing like every week, or figure out how to get on some sort of mailing list or something. I’ll ask in a couple weeks at the house show, maybe they’ll know
The only way to do a gay angle, if they are going to do one, is to do it no different from any other relationship angle. Vince being Vince, and Stephanie being Vince, that’s not going to be what will happen. We’ll end up with a 21st century Flower Shop (talk about punishing Adrian Adonis for forgetting what the inside of a gym looks like - though the biker gimmick/leather jacket persona he had before may have been foreshadowing).
It’s also weird she said that because just before PTP won the belts they gave a promo saying that we should all be ready for their “coming out party”, to which DY then said “No man I already did that last summer!” and Titus said “Yeah boy and we’re all proud of you, but that’s not what I mean…”
Copy of my Open Letter to Stephanie McMahon that I sent to Wade Keller today;
Stephanie,
I have to take exception to your statement that Darren Young’s character is not gay.
Darren Young is gay. Full stop. We accept this, and we don’t really care. He is who he is. Saying that his character is not gay is a damned stupid thing to say, because there is no point at which we would expect him to act differently.
The only thing we, your fans – referred to as “the WWE Universe” fear is the idea that by making his character ‘gay’, Vince McMahon and Kevin Dunn would see fit to force upon him an offensive and outdated stereotype. They’d have him prancing around the ring, kissing or flirting with his opponents and the announcers somehow selling this as ‘mind games’. We’d be treated to veiled or even deliberately provocative homophobia sold as “humor". Darren would be pressured to act in an offensively stupid manner because that’s how two old men who are behind the times have sold this idea in the past.
We don’t need this, Darren doesn’t need this, WWE doesn’t need this.
So please, Stephanie, drop the pretense. Darren Young is gay. Darren Young’s character is gay. And nothing changes.
I’ve fallen behind on the last few episodes of Lucha Underground. I’m going to have to catch up over the four-day weekend I have coming up.
In the meantime, AAA has announced that on August 9th, the Sunday after Ultima Lucha airs, they’re going to be running this year’s edition of Triplemania, their WrestleMania-analogue and biggest show of the year - and for the first time, it’s going to be available live nationwide on American PPV with full English commentary. (Striker/Vampiro, I assume.)
They haven’t announced the full card yet, but so far the show will be featuring Rey Mysterio Jr. vs. Myzteziz, Alberto El Patron vs. Cage in a hair-vs-hair match, and the Psycho Circus (Psycho Clown, Killer Clown, and Monster Clown, who were trios champions until recently) vs. Los Villianos (Villiano III, Villiano IV, and Villiano V, three brothers who have each wrestled as subsequent incarnations of the same masked wrestler, and who you may have seen in WCW back in the day.) I’ll have to see the rest of the card before I decide if I want to spend $30 on it, but it sounds promising so far.
