Putting Reigns up against Rusev is a quick and easy way to get him over again. Then someone can steal the title from him and he’ll be everyone’s hero. Why they want him to be a face I don’t know. They want someone to move merch like Cena but Reigns ain’t gonna get there.
Eh, I don’t think he should be winning a title anytime soon.
Seriously, I expect (or at least hope for) a cooling off period of 6 months to a year where he may move in and out of contention for the IC or US titles, but doesn’t win either strap. Use this little punishment period to have him learn more about selling , losing and putting people over. After all, he’s been on one long push straight to the top, for years now, and he blew it when he got there. He really hasn’t ever had that idle time of sitting in the midcard waiting for his turn to come around again. Let’s do that now, use him to put people over and build more organically and I don’t think people will reject him holding a mid-card title if he shows he deserves it.
Just don’t let him anywhere near a Grand Mal* championship match for at least another year, or people WILL reject him.
- Fuck it. Both main title names are too long. I’m just going to refer to them as the Grand Mal (which translates as “Big Bad”) titles from now on.
I hate Eva Marie so bad.
Although kudos to Creative for effectively making X-Pac heat into a storyline.
I thought you were making some reference to grand mal seizures.
So, WWE is booking Eva Mannikin to suck, just like irl. OK, you had your inside joke and you’re all meta, and you know the smarks hate her, and you acknowledge she really is just only worth cheap heat for Total Divas ratings. Vacuous bimbos equal money, wrestling’s a joke anyway, and the writers get free blow jobs. Good for you. Eventually her 15 minutes will expire and you’ll have to find another way to fill the void of air time since you can’t do RAM recaps anymore.
Looks like the main event next week will be the Wyatts vs Dolph & Dean. SD is actually weaving some interesting storylines here in building up heat between the top faces. Since Dean’s no longer the shit-upon underdog anymore, he’s shifting back to his SHIELD personality. I think we’re also going to see a gradual shift in Shane and Daniel to the dark side, as they’re finding out it’s harder to control the talent by being nice. Didn’t the head writer of NXT get promoted to SD? It shows.
What happened in the Becky/Eva match?
My cable went out literally as Eva was walking out, and came back on as she was limping away.
Did she really get hurt? or is it a thing?
Nothing happened. Eva pretended she was hurt before the match started. This is pointless, everyone already hates her. We don’t want to see her finally wrestle and get beat, we just want her to go away.
Yup, big long special entrance, then just put her hand on her thigh and told the ref she couldn’t compete.
She’s performing other moves on people backstage, probably Vince, or she’d have never lasted this long with so little actual talent and personality.
Hard to believe she has that much talent doing anything. In the world of wrestling this makes no sense. Of course in the world of wrestling nothing makes sense.
Amazing episode of CWC tonight.
I absolutely loved Jack Gallagher vs. Adrian Eichner. The contrast between Eichner’s power moves and Gallagher’s old-school British style worked really well. Eichner’s powerbomb looked devastating, and I loved Gallagher’s cartwheel counter and his ending the match by doing Bryan’s finisher better than Bryan ever did. WWE needs to sign Gallagher after this tournament is over; he has an amazing ability to electrify a room and he could be the next Daniel Bryan if he’s given an opportunity to shine. I cracked up laughing when Mauro told Bryan “I thought you were gonna lose it if that was a bear hug”, seeing as Bryan’s passion for bears is well-documented.
Gargano vs. Ciampa was also good, but it was definitely more of a “WWE match” than the matches we’ve seen in the CWC so far. I’d personally have saved this for the second round or the quarterfinals myself - these guys have a tag titles match coming up in two weeks at Takeover, so it’s a bit jarring to see them both acting like cocky heels and attacking each other with such brutality. They made up at the end, at least.
Something I noticed tonight; Bryan likes to punctuate big spots by yelling “OH MY GOSH!” That’s a remarkably conservative thing to hear coming from the mouth of a liberal hippy vegan. I wonder if Bryan is secretly super-Christian and isn’t comfortable with dropping the G-Bomb? It’s not as if Vince has anything against letting his commentators use the word - JR used to throw it around all the time. I also noticed a kid in the front row wearing a Lucha Underground shirt; I’m kinda surprised they didn’t make him turn it inside out or move him to the back.
Anyway, here are our matches for the second round;
- Jack Gallagher vs. Akira Tozawa
- Tajiri vs. Gran Metalik
- Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Drew Gulak
- Noam Dar vs. HoHo Lun
- The Bryan Kendrick vs. Tony Nese
- Kota Ibushi vs. Cedrick Alexander
- TJ Perkins vs. Johnny Gargano
- Rich Swann vs. Lince Dorado
I can easily say I’m looking forward to all of these.
Thank you for that link Smapti, I didn’t know that was a thing and it was friggin hilarious.
I am very disappointed that Gallagher and Eichner were against each other because I want to see them both go further in the tournament. Basically, the people I want to win generally have lost and it bums me out. Especially when people I wasn’t impressed with at all (Hoho, Tajiri Sabre jr.) have gone through. I understand WHY they went through, but it’s still disappointing nonetheless that kickass talent like Eichner and Petiout (or however you spell it) are never to be seen again.
I kinda thought the same thing, especially when the announcers are selling their one-off appearance as the highlight of their career.
Then I remembered the hope that this would be an annual thing. Guys falling in the first round, then going farther the next, then winning the whole thing their third year and being signed with WWE could be a thing.
Rich Swann definitely had the crowd. He’s wrestled a few times in RoH, and he looked really good here.
I agree Gallagher vs Aichner was Match of the Night. I thought Gal was going to be another Vaudevillain, but he really maintained a professional cool and unflappable grace, clever and limber. I hope Aichner gets signed too. He has the Finn Balor marble body look and tremendous talent. Sean Maluta is already jobbing in NXT, so that means other CWC losers will be signed up.
I knew Ciampa was going to turn heel, but I’m grateful it was just for the one match. He 's really been holding back since joining NXT. This was the mean, scary and vicious RoH Tomaso Ciampa come back to life. Gargano really took a beating.
I’ve seen Swann a couple times in the house shows.
He was at our most recent one last week and did the standing 450 just like he did yesterday.
Man, what a spectacular move.
So, who does everybody pick to win the whole shebang?
I really have no friggin’ idea, but I’ll go with Ibushi.
WWE Wrestler Rhyno Wins Republican Primary for Michigan House Seat
His opponent in the general election is Abdullah Hammoud. Is that a heel name or what?
Republican? I thought he supported Gore.
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Ibushi
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Zach Sabre jr
Superdarkhorse 3: Gallager
Also: HAHAHAHA I just now got that joke. That was good. CSI Miami worthy
Yeah, it was better than mine, dammit.
Well, if Simon Gotch continues to have heat and issues, I imagine they could, in short order, replace him with Gallagher.
Ryback has future-endeavored himself.
It’s been a long time coming - every time WWE started giving him a push, they got distracted, shuffled him back into midcard hell, and forgot about him.
Maybe he’ll be able to find a spot in ROH.