That’s the drawback to bringing back the WCW legends. They’ve gotten old and break down easy. Now WWE has to book around Oldberg’s failing body parts until WM 33.
Soooooo what’d I miss? lol.
Since Takeover is about the only thing I can talk about, do we think that Nakamura is being called up? Unless he’s a Paul Heyman guy, or they bring up (insert old manager here), I just don’t see it. You can’t have someone in the main event scene that you can’t understand. I know the dude speaks English, but you can’t understand a goddamn thing he says.
I think it’s less age than when you’ve had a long layoff you don’t know your limits anymore. Happened to Rock, happened to Warrior in 98. The older guys who were mostly continuous performers like Hogan, Savage, Sting, Taker, Hennig, etc. werent’ as injury prone because they felt themselves aging in the ring. “Wow, those suplexes are getting harder to take. I can’t throw a punch the way I used to, better do it this way. I’d better go easier on the splashes, can’t get the same elevation and I think I felt my MCL almost tear.”
But when you’re out of the ring for years and then you get back in, your first instinct is to do all your moves the way you used to do them, but your body doesn’t like that too much.
Goldberg-Lesnar was mercifully short. Much preferred to watching 20-30 minutes of stalling. Why did they do it? Why not.
Overall a good show, lots of action, minimal time wasted. The women continue to impress me, most of them are still young and inexperienced but they’re putting a lot more effort into it than many of the men. Overall a great display of talent, the roster is really packed with a mix of quality veterans and rising stars. The level of talent in the ring may be at an all time high, but the creative control isn’t up to that level.
There’s a lot of bitching about WWE right now online, but as someone who has watched almost nothing in the last 12 years, I enjoyed Survivor Series immensely. Yes, we need better booking and storytelling, but the performers are all great, the matches constructed well. I think they tell stories in the ring much better than they did 12 years ago. The entrances really rock too. If they can actually find some compelling stories to tell to make the matches mean more they’ll be headed for a boom period again.
I agree the overall state of WWE is light years beyond last decade. A lot of it has to do with their willingness to incorporate talent that wasn’t developed in-house and to (in most cases) abandon old formulas. They still have setbacks, but they’ve been able to bounce back quickly. Plus, they can make superstars out of unlikely nobodies like Slater and Ellmore out of thin air. They have the veterans behind the scenes who channel decades of hard experience into a couple years of training newbies.
I wasn’t optimistic about the Goldberg-Lesnar rematch at all, and last night justified my opinions, but otherwise SS was a fantastic show. I actually think they’ll find a way to salvage this debacle, but if they decide to drop Goldberg like he never happened, I’ll be fine with that, because everything else is running smoothly.
I dunno, is Vince souring on Brock and his constant off-script comments and profanity? Is he noticing that most of his fans don’t really give a crap about Brock?
God we can only hope so.
Doesn’t look like Vince is souring on either of them. Everything I’ve read says that Goldberg, Brock, and Vince alike see money in this feud, so it’s continuing to Wrestlemania.
If Goldie & Brockie continue their feud till then, I’m guessing they’ll eliminate each other at RR.
So which title will the Rumble winner go for at WM? RAM? SD? Both in a triple threat?
Funny quotes from last night’s RAM:
“So what we got here? A bunch of haters?”
“Dude, I can see your genitals. Put some clothes on.”
“How would you like to report to Nia Jax if you broke curfew?”
“Byron, I’m an adult male. I don’t report for curfew.”
“You got yourself disqualified and taken out of the match, and you used my LIST!”
“I was trying to save you, my best friend!”
“I know who’s to blame for RAW losing!”
“I know exactly who’s to blame!”
“ROMAN REIGNS!”
So I’m watching Raw now, I’m at the very beginning, and I’m wondering what is wrong with that crowd. “You still got it”? First, he’s never had it, but that’s my own personal bias. But last night showed nothing. If anything, the fans should be booing that crapfest of a closing match.
Bring back Gillberg. At least he knows how to sell.
Looks like in storyline terms Goldberg is back in the title hunt. I sure hope that’s where they go with him, but I suspect they just plan to do a match at Wrestlemania where they finally give Brock the win.
I knew Goldberg wasn’t probably coming back just to do a job, but killing Brock in 1 minute and probably destroying a few people at the Rumble before losing a hard fought match with Brock seems like a fitting comeback. Unless he’s got the bug again and actually wants to stick around for a few years as a part time special attraction. Goldberg’s act can wear thin really quick but I think there’s a lot of money for him in having 3-4 matches a year.
My guess would be that Brock eliminates Goldberg from the Rumble and they decide to have it out at Mania.
Although I would prefer to have an actual match between the two sometime before the Rumble, have Brock squash (or basically squash) Goldberg, then have them do something at the Rumble (eliminate each other or something) and then have a blowoff at 'Mania. Probably having Brock win since he’ll stick around longer.
Or, if [del]the money[/del] Goldberg is REALLY into it, have the two of them basically screw each other out of various things in a constant big of one upsmanship and THEN have the blowoff feud at 'Mania.
Royal Rumble. Everyone is afraid of both men and back into the corners while the two face off and clash in the center. They tussle around a bit and go against the ropes.
Braun Strowman charges over and eliminates both men.
I watched a couple of network shows, the ECW lookback and Traveler’s Tales.
I already have the Rise and Fall of ECW DVD, and this show added a little bit more of the untold story. Cory Graves moderated this, and it was interesting to see him play the straight man this time. They started with Paul Heyman, then Bubba Ray, then Taz, and finally Tommy Dreamer and Devon Dudley. They truly were the ones who ran ECW. Heyman was the mastermind, but Bubba took care of the menial business duties like paying bills, etc. Taz was actually in charge of merchandising, even though he had no graphic design experience.
They all took part in setting up and breaking down the sets, scrubbing the toilets, and cleaning up the venue after a show. None of them received steady paychecks, there was a lot of infighting, and they all confessed to lying to each other, but they had such fun running the promotion they didn’t want to leave. I wish they could have made the show last a few more hours, but maybe they’ll do more retrospectives in the future.
Traveler’s Tales had Gene Okerlund provide introductions, then show footage of a wrestler telling a road story, which then was brought to life by animation. Ric Flair talked about doing the wild thing with 6 stewardesses on flight to Hawaii, Bubba Ray Dudley reminisced about the time he and Big Dick Dudley sneaked into Atlanta Speedway and took a few laps, Ron Simmons talked about Teddy Long and JBL abandoning him in a snowstorm while he was taking a piss, and Jake Roberts talked about how his snake got loose at an airport and terrorized the luggage crew. Funny stuff.
Pardon me for being in pedantic mode (as usual) today, but the title is “WWE Story Time.”
I wouldn’t have taken it as pedantic if not for the first eleven words.
That seems to be the most logical thing to do, but they didn’t do the logical thing at Survivor Series so there’s a good chance of a more surprising outcome, such as Goldberg or Brock actually winning the Rumble and their WM match having title implications.
Someone mentioned that Goldberg could replace Brock as the “special attraction unstoppable monster”. Brock isn’t drawing like he used to and Goldberg’s hot. So it makes some sense to try putting the title on him and the road to that title could be pretty big business. So maybe Brock wins the Rumble by screwing Goldberg, but Goldberg gets a shot at Kevin Owens between the Rumble and Wrestlemania to set up their showdown?
BTW, some people cheered the result because they were sick of Brock, but give Brock credit. He SOLD that squash in a way few non-career jobbers do. When HHH lost in a minute to Ultimate Warrior, it was strictly “pin me, pay me”. Just took the moves, acted like he was out cold. Brock sold confusion, shock, fear, and being completely out of sorts in between each of the four moves of the match. And Heyman sold the fear for his client. The shot of him kneeling over Brock’s body as Goldberg walked away from the ring was awesome.
To get away from the Brockberg issue for a sec, I’m going to mark out about LU’s Rabbit Tribe. Paul London is the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland, and he wears an Elvis-type white jumpsuit. His partners are masked. One of them wears a checkerboard body suit and looks like something out of a fetish video. The other guy wears a sleeveless black shirt and some kind of green forelock thing on his mask.
They have got this surrealist dance routine where they lock hands and do a revolving circle around their fallen victim, like he’s spinning down the rabbit hole. At one point, London was acting like he was being rewound. He walked backwards on the ring apron, then did a quick spin and kicked a lucha on the side of the face as he was about to dive bomb on the outside participants. London’s always had a weird sense of humor despite being a straight babyface in WWE, so I like to see him flying his freak flag.
So I guess the Rabbit Tribe is one of the Seven Tribes being called forth for the ultimate showdown with the Aztec gods. There’s already the Jaguar, Moth, Dragon, and Serpent tribes, but this one stands out. I hope they mix it up with the Moth siblings eventually. That will be the apex of wrestling weird.
Slater’s not out of thin air, he’s been working his butt off for years and just finally managed to get a slight break that creative hasn’t pulled the strings out from under him this time (yet).
Nor is Ellsworth a newbie, just a newbie to WWE. Which I realize the guys in the back often think of as the same thing, but by that logic AJ’s a newbie, so screw that.