OMG this is fucking stupid
Jesus quit the whacking off Stephanie
I think I’m just going to call it a night. I can’t watch this drek anymore.
Well, aside from Roman spearing Steph and actually getting a pop out of the crowd for it, you didn’t miss much. The inevitable happened.
This is the worst WrestleMania that I’ve watched live. And I watched WrestleMania 9 live.
The 10 Diva match was the worst match. Lana looked bad in her wrestling debut (if it was that. Don’t understand Zach Ryder as IC but do expect him to drop it tomorrow. Be funny if it was to Corbin.
Going to go back to it;
The Vince-Dunn Effect: When you’re so convinced of the genius of your vision that you ignore both critics and customers to see it to completion, regardless of the damage it does to your business.
And again, Shano taking that stupid dangerous fall had all the signs of Blood-In, Blood-Out.
It could have worse I guess. I’m not sure how. If I had to pay 70 bucks for this I’d be pissed. For 10 bucks I’m just annoyed.
Now imagine you’re the guy who paid thousands of dollars for a floor seat, missed the first hour of the show because the stadium crew didn’t have their shit together, and then had to sit through six hours of confusing, pointless booking decisions that establish nothing and change nothing.
Yeah, the only redeeming feature is that this cost $10/mo that I long ago just mentally built into my monthly recurring bills so don’t actively think about anymore (and I occasionally watch a bunch of old wrestling stuff on the network so feel I get at least some value out of the subscription even when I go weeks ignoring the WWE product.) This is among the worst Wrestlemanias I have ever seen, possibly the worst but I’ll look back later on and evaluate if it is truly the worst. But either way, way worse than last year and even last year was during a time of relative storyline “meh” and Vince and crew managed to turn out a pretty entertaining show.
Vince crows all the time that he uses the crowd for feedback and that’s how he knows if he’s doing a good job or not. But there’s really no way when you can hear it on the audio feed at home that Vince is listening to the crowd when he continues to push people that get boos because the fans simply don’t care or buy into them and ignores the guys who are getting huge pops.
This isn’t like the decade long John Cena situation where he has diehard fans who hate him, but also a huge contingent of (mostly younger) fans that love him and buy tons of his merchandise. Vince is legit pushing guys (primarily Roman) that get no positive crowd reactions at all, and just based on the “eye test” of what I see little kids we wearing in the stands I don’t think Roman is moving tons of merchandise either.
I’d go so far as to say it was booty.
All together now:
IT DOESN’T MATTER why The Rock had a flamethrower.
And the League of Nations may have joined them as well.
IIRC, the WWE record for the fastest match is 3 seconds, won by, of all people, The Undertaker’s ex-wife Sara when she pinned DDP (after Undertaker laid him out just before the match began). The NWA/WCW record, AFAIK, is 4 seconds by Magnum T.A. on on of the TBS Saturday shows in the 1980s.
Okay, I’ll ask; what was the whole point of the buildup with Shane taking over Raw if he won, if he was going to lose the whole time? Okay, we got a Van Shaneinator - er, “Coast to Coast” - and a jump from the top of the cage through an announce table, which I am not 100% sure went as planned (it didn’t look like the table broke the way it was supposed to), but was there a point to this other than perhaps Shane wanted to show off in front of the largest crowd in WWE, if not all of pro wrestling, history?
I am surprised it didn’t end with Cena and (choose one or more of: Rock, Austin, Foley, Undertaker - I’d add HBK but that might be treated as a turn on HHH) coming out after the match to celebrate with Reigns and send the message, “Dammit, start cheering for Reigns like you did when he speared Stephanie!” Okay, maybe not Cena…
Prediction for tonight: there’s a rematch of sorts of the 10-woman tag in which Brie Bella gets injured as a way of getting her off the show (I for one believe the retirement rumors - of course, being retired and having kids doesn’t mean that she can’t return for the occasional match - just ask Beulah McGillicutty). The only problem with that is, the commentators have to remember not to mention Brie whevener Nikki is in a match. Then again, there’s more than one reason the show is on a seven-second delay.
There are fan videos from inside the arena circulating now that show the booing for Reigns was much more intense than the TV feed showed. Even little kids were booing him. They obviously muted the crowd mics and/or sweetened the feed with pre-recorded cheers, because Vince is a stubborn old man who can’t accept that the world doesn’t love his golden boy as much as he does.
I think Shane’s appearance indicated fewer network subscriptions than they predicted. The table seemed to do it’s job. Remember that this was done before when Mick Foley was tossed off the top by Taker, and the table didn’t break apart leaving him virtually unconscious. Let’s clarify the facts too, the cage is about 16 feet high, not 20, and take away 3 feet for the table. I don’t want to minimize a 13 foot drop like that but I’m sure Shane had this well planned out. Shane’s going to be in charge some day and he may just be trying to re-establish his wrestling cred. Maybe that’s happening sooner than we think, but it’s still nothing but a stunt out of the normal storyline.
I live in the Dallas area, at one point I was seriously considering going. Sounds like it was a good thing circumstances prevented me from being able to go.
The only time I notice anything close to cheering for Reigns was right after the pin (well, that and when he speared Stephanie, but that doesn’t really count). When he held the belt up, the boos were back.
I’m tired and don’t feel like typing a whole lot, but after sitting on Mania I still feel kinda meh about it.
I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t love it either. It was painfully obvious that WWE muted the ever-loving shit out of the mics throughout the last match. I was also HIGHLY disappointed in Ambrose/Lesnar. Why call it a "no holds-barred streetfight? Just call it a no DQ and call it a day?
Good call on Ryder winning BTW!
Eager to see what happens tonight though.
Pretty sure they have the audience mics turned way down again.
But this time I don’t blame them cuz the RAW after Mania crowd is shit and the worst of the year
So far they just keep piling the stupid on the stupid. I assume at 10PM we’ll start to see Shane’s influence.
Such crap. I knew when Lillian flubbed the intro that Ryder wasn’t walking out the champion.
Looks like they pulled a Christian Special.
Devalues the title and disrespects the worker. Garbage.
How about that, Vince was right for once.
Poor Zack. They could be setting up a feud with Miz giving him a real push. I got no problem seeing more of Maryse though, and there’s plenty to see.
Actually, I liked RAW. Compared to the disaster that was WM32, anything’s an improvement.
There was no
[ul]
[li]big long speeches[/li][li]John Cena John Cena John Cena[/li][li]Stephanie’s milk curdling voice[/li][li]attempt by RR to win over the audience[/li][li]bogus celebrity appearance to get cheap heat[/li][/ul]
Apollo Crews, Baron Corbin, and Enzo & Cass made their main roster debuts, and Vaudevillains will follow suit this upcoming Smackdown. Enzo cut his best promo ever and the Dudleyz are a perfect team to feud against. Corbin didn’t squash Ziggler and actually worked more than two minutes.
Cezaro’s back! And he actually has flair with the ripaway suit and dark shades!
The announcers are still clueless about audience reaction. “They boo when they’re supposed to cheer, and cheer when they’re supposed to boo, but they sure are passionate, and that’s what we want.”
They threw the dart again to determine who the Wyatts will feud with. LoN kicked out Barrett, so it looks like the news of his imminent departure is true.
They actually tacitly acknowledged that Sami Zayn and AJ Styles have years of experience outside WWE and moved them into main event status. Sami’s feud with KO is back on track, and he once again establishes himself as the victim to KO’s abuse.
Zack probably put on the best match of his career and then promptly lost the title. Woo woo woe is me…
The Divas’ (oh wait, they’re called Women now) segment with Charlotte’s phony praise for her compatriots while Becky and Sasha were staring daggers at her…
It’s interesting, though, how the recurring theme of last night’s Raw seemed to be that nothing that happened at WrestleMania mattered.
Kevin Owens loses the intercontinental title and gets booked in a #1 contender’s match for the world title.
AJ Styles loses his match and becomes #1 contender to the world title.
The Miz loses a title match and gets another shot at the same title.
Shane loses the match for control of Raw and the Undertaker’s career - he gets control of Raw and the Undertaker retired (maybe) anyway.
Setting up AJ vs. Roman for Payback is interesting, though, since AJ is one of the most over babyfaces on the roster right now, and way more likely to get cheered than Roman. Either they’re going to have to face the facts and turn Roman heel, or keep muting the crowd mics and pretending a la 1995 WCW that the audience doesn’t hate the guy they’re being told to love.
I watched RAW for the first time in months and actually liked what they did.
Instead of trotting out battered and exhausted wrestlers and making them perform again in front of a surly crowd, they filled the show with NXT talent, which was awesome. Gives the right people a break and exposes what is generally their largest audience of the year to NXT wrestlers. Sells the network without beating their audience over the head with “BUY OUR NETWORK! 9.99!!!” every goddamned 30 seconds.