Pretty much what I was going to say. Vince prefers to shit on fan favorites.
The problem with the Divas match wasn’t that it was bad, it’s that it didn’t fit the narrative that they created. They have the build-up to this feud get intensely personal, and then have the ladies go out and tie up?
I think Dean, and in some ways Bray, have the Piper curse. They don’t need titles to get over, so they don’t get them. The commentators seemed to be discussing that point quite a lot prior to the title match, hinting that Dean was going to be part of that “elite” company.
One of the commentators also referred to him “The Immortal One” at one point, without mentioning his name.
Yay. Cesarois the newest walking wounded.
Are more NXT callups imminent?
I’m the biggest advocate for keeping the NXT people IN NXT, but I’m like 2 seconds away from saying call up Sami and Hideo and get someone here.
I’m going to end up seeing no one at Rumble and that disappoints me greatly
Orlando Sentinel has released video of the day the crazy dude got shot outside of the performance center.
I have no issues with that shooting.
So I missed RAW, how was it? Anything actually happen?
Here’s the problem, in the old school territory wrestling days the style of wrestling was much slower paced and much more deliberate. A guy might take a big bump once a night. Now, almost everyone has a high impact style. Even the bigger wrestlers in WWE today use a more athletic, more high impact style than in the past. But they at least get to work somewhat of a more deliberate style. Have you ever wondered why Kane has had such a long career free of injury? Look at his work style. At 6’10" or so he can work like that, most guys cannot. When someone who is as big as Sheamus has to take big bumps just to have a spot on the roster to me it’s a sign these guys are all working a very aggressive style. Additionally, they’re working the same schedule that has always been worked, 300+ appearances a year.
Vince can continue to believe this is normal, acceptable, and feasible for human beings, and can continue to lose star after star to injury, or he can accept one of two things: a reduction in the work load, or a reduction in the number of stars who work a style too aggressive to be done safely 300+ times a year.
Or he can be an American Capitalist and say “There’s plenty more guys back at the Performance Center looking for those spots, so we’ll just dump the ‘injury prone’”.
That’s what he’s been doing since the early 2000s, it ends up you have John Cena and then a few of the bigger guys like Big Show / Kane / Mark Henry who don’t seem to end their careers early from this. I’d argue that’s a big part of why they’ve struggled to establish a big star (in terms of merchandise sales, crowd reaction etc) during this time.
Wrestlers today also just don’t have leverage. When he was paying his dues Hogan may have worked 300 days a year but he was unabashed about working a reduced schedule once he was on top, his perspective was he could work 1-2 times a week instead of 4 times a week and still make way more money than everyone else, so he wasn’t going to work more than that. When he went to WCW he often only worked PPVs and occasional Nitros.
It was “Get your heat back” night. Neville won over Mark Henry, the Wyatts beat the Dudleyz, Paige and Charlotte went to double count-out but Paige got the beat down. I fell asleep before Reigns took on Rusev, but we don’t need to look that one up. They’re also setting up New-hoo Day-hee vs Usos vs Lucha Dragons at TLC.
Oh yeah, this might become a thing: Byron Saxton remarked that somebody “took a gulp of evil juice” and JBL and Cole ran it into the ground the rest of the night.
News this morning is that Solomon Crowe has been released, reportedly at his own request. Can’t say I blame him - WWE gave him a goofy-ass gimmick and barely used him, and he hasn’t been on TV since the thing with Zahra fell apart. He’ll probably go back to CZW or PWG and knock 'em dead. (Who knows? We might even see him on LU.)
Yeah it seems he never really got a fair shake, we barely saw him in house shows even
For those “Old School” fans who subscribe to the Network (only $9.99!) they’ve started uploading episodes of NWA World Championship Wrestling. You know, the Saturday night TBS show. The dates jump around a bit and from what I can tell they’re showing the formation of the Original Four Horsemen. I’m pleased as punch as this was the reason I subscribed to the Network when it launched. Now they just need to upload Worldwide and Pro and my life will be complete.
Clarification–when I posted that last night there were only four episodes uploaded. Today there are over 20 and the dates make more sense. Truly something to be thankful for this Thanksgiving! And definitely worth the $9.99 this month!
Brad Maddox got canned for saying cocky pricks. They were probably waiting for an excuse to shuffle him off anyway. He wasn’t destined for anything better than dark matches.
NXT really pulled off a good way to book Eva Mannekin. They went with the angle that they were stacking the deck in her favor all along. Luckily, it was just a bridge to set up a feud between Bailey and Naia Jax. I’m not sure that’s a better option.
Cool Elias Samson promo. It looked like he could actually play and sing. I just hope they don’t have him do the Honky Tonk Man/Jeff Jarrett smashing the flour-filled guitar thing.
Were you at this taping STC? I only saw one guy in the front row with a green shirt, and it wasn’t you.
Did Corey Graves just insultingly accuse Brennan of “posting on message boards”?
This means war.
I wonder if any of the Gordon Solie era episodes exist (the problem may be, I don’t think they’re Jim Crockett shows), and even if they do, can they get around whatever heat there is between Ole Anderson (Solie’s co-host) and Vince McMahon so they can air? They aired part of one once, but it was clearly a recording of some sort as it had the “Superstation WTBS” tags on it, and Roddy Piper was the co-host at the time.