Any WWE fans in the audience? (Part 1)

The Game Room
581

/lana: You seely Americans. You are so frightened of Ebola and ISIS… we do not have Ebola and ISIS in Russia. We shoot down their planes before they cross the border.

I didn’t give a shit about BS vs Rusev, Sheamus vs Miz & Dow, or the Bellas. I liked Zig vs Cesaro, Cena vs Orton, and Rollins vs Ambrose. I like Paige and AJ, but the feud is getting stale. Usos vs the Dust bros isn’t as intense as Usos vs Wyatts. It’s just OK. I’m sick of Big Show and Mark Henry, and it looks like they’re going to have a slug feud. Slug as in lazy slimy slow-moving creatures, not slug as in hits and punches.

I really do want Rollins and Ambrose to feud for all eternity, but Ambrose vs the Wyatts will do in the meantime. Bray said in an interview a while back that his favorite opponent was Ambrose, because they’re both crazy. It seemed like the bookers were trying to create Mankind vs Undertaker Lite with the fall and stretchers, while making sure nobody would spit teeth through their noses.

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I’m a happy network subscriber, so the cost doesn’t mean all that much to me. But I feel for the people who actually paid pay-per-view prices for this event. This wasn’t an event, this was a decent RAW. It wasn’t even a good RAW, just a decent one.

Zigs look strong. Like, really really strong. He took a ton of bumps in that match AND swept the board? I don’t know if the WWE is still in appeasing mode for the universe with him, but he certainly looked hella strong.

I literally could not care less about any of the in-between matches. I hate hate hate Rusev, and no it’s not just good-old-fashioned heat. It’s so boring. He’s sooooo goddamned boring. Every Rusev match ever:

Lana: blah blah Russia blah blah. Anti-America blah. Shut up blah!

(Random superstar): blah bah america! blah blah america! blah blah america

Bell rings

They fight. Rusev falls down! Near fall…Accolade! Superstar kicks out…Some other random submission move! Rusev counters…accolade…tap…finish.

They really really really need something else for him to do. He’s totally my bathroom break/get a snack match

RKO/Cena was pretty neat. Regular old Cage/TLC match though. Turning an AA into an RKO was really really, and I don’t know what the announcers were looking at at the time, but they barely mentioned it.

Ok, Rollins/Ambrose. The pacing of this match suuuuucccckkkkkeeedddd. Ambrose comes out and goes to the top of the cell and we are excited and cheering! The Rollins comes out and says he’s gonna go up! So we are excited and cheering! Then there is 5 minutes of banter with the 2 security guys and my mood is shot. Fast forward to their climb down from the cell where they were right above our announce table! Look at them fight, right above our announce table! They’re each above an announce table! (show a camera angle of everyone clearing the tables) they’re still going at it! Above our…ok you see where I’m going.

Then they fall on the tables, which was cool but I wasn’t impressed at all because…duh. Then another 10 goddamn minutes of “they’re hurt/stretchers/blah”. Then back in the cell, regular old cell/TLC match, then the ending.

As soon as the screen went black I knew. I knew who it was, I knew what would happen, I knew who he was going to hit…I just knew. Props to them for the cool smoke/hologram thing, but what a letdown ending. Have we seen Bray in a TLC match? Can he(or is he willing) to take those bumps? Hopefully he is because the extreme part is what makes Ambrose/Rollins so cool.

Overall I give this a C, and I would hate to have spend REAL money on this.

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A few thoughts…

I would have liked the main event better, had it not been for the fact that:
(a) you could tell that there would be something happening on top of the cage by the fact that there were conveniently placed (and sized) holes on two sides…or are those a permanent part of the cage? (I just found it coincidental that they had them on two sides, and two people climbed up from opposite sides at the start;
(b) they teased carting the wrestlers off for too long - it was obvious that there would be a match;
© Bray Wyatt must be more powerful than we thought - he not only turned out all of the lights in the arena, but he turned off all of the cellphones as well (or at least, that’s how it appeared on TV) until the lantern went on, at which time the cellphones and their flashlight apps mysteriously turned on simultaneously, only to all turn off again when the lantern went out.

Two things surprised me. First, a 2-out-of-3-falls match was won by the champion in 2 falls (the only time I remember a 2-out-of-3 title match ending in 2 falls was in the pre-Raw days when Barry Windham and However IRS Spells His Last Name This Week were the challengers and won two straight, but then Jesse Ventura conveniently reminded us that the first fall was a DQ, so the title would not change hands. Second, a referee remembered that if somebody reaches the ropes in a no-DQ match, you don’t bother counting as it’s no-DQ.

Okay, three things - I was half-expecting Big Show to tease a victory against Rusev, only for Mark Henry to cost him the match somehow.

Oh, joy, Brock has to defend the title against Cena again. If I was booking, I’d give serious thought to having them pretty much beat each other to a pulp outside the ring, resulting in a double countout…“Ladies and Gentlemen, Seth Rollins is cashing in Money In The Bank!” Then again, I wouldn’t be surprised if Cena wins somehow (probably with Lesnar being attacked behind everybody’s back - it’s too early to have Cena get a clean win over him), so he can bring the belt to Tribute To The Troops.

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Also in the unpopular opinion world: I would much prefer having a Cena champion than a Reigns one.

This is mostly spoken about Cena, but honestly the best thing for reigns is to come back as a heel.

He already looks like one, he needs a damn personality.

By the time he comes back, Rollins might be kicked out the Authority via RKO, have Reigns come back and turn on Ambrose just as Rollins did, join the Authority as their muscle (goodbye Kane) and then go from there

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The cage has had holes to climb it for several years now. I wish they would go back to the short cage that HBK and Foley used. In one of Jericho’s books, he was getting ready for a HIAC match and was thinking of jumping from it until he saw that it was the new really tall cage. He changed his mind.

586

Rollins’ promos are way too slow, and he draws things out too much. It was completely obvious where they were going with things and yet they stalled and stalled before they happened. Overall I wasn’t happy with the match because while there were a few seconds of ring work, there were minutes of wandering around staring at each other.

And yeah, four men walking around on the top of the cage is a dangerous situation and of course they were all trying not to be killed.

587

/lana: Drazir, drazir. You seely Americans. Your elections are coming up, and you fight and squabble over candidates who are weak and corrupt. In Russia, it’s very simple. No matter who’s running, vote for VLAH duh meer POO tin!

No Lana and Rusev on RAW to gloat about their victory? Are they dropping the angle that soon, or pushing it to Smackdown?

About time Zig is getting a push, even if it is to be Cena’s lackey. Unless Brrrock is the Authority’s team captain, looks like he’ll be sitting out another PPV. He really is getting paid big bucks to not do jack shit.

Yawn, Henry turned heel again. Go father another hand.

I’m liking Paige more and more. I like it when she joins commentary, goes all bipolar on the announcers, and makes them feel uncomfortable. She comes from a wrestling family and debuted when she was 13, so she grew up in the business.

It’d be funny if Ambrose’s actions leads to microphones being banned from the ring. THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP! Now we know what the inside of Cesaro’s head sounds like.

Cena vs Rollins: Excellent match! One thing I’ve always liked about Rollins is his ability to counter his opponent’s signature moves. Some wrestlers are supposedly very possessive about their sigs and don’t like it when others copy them. It comes as a surprise (to me at least) when it’s not only countered, but made to look completely ineffective. Rollins made up for it by selling Cena’s last AA like he had been shot out of a cannon. Usually, the opponent just flops over when Cena throws him, but Rollins flew over.

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Rumor has it Lesnar won’t be back until the Royal Rumble, which gives them time to do Cena vs. Rusev at TLC in the meanwhile.

If I were going to predict the lineup for the Survivor Series match, I’d say Cena/Ziggler/Orton/Usos vs. Trips/Kane/Rollins/Noble/Mercury, but a lot depends on how long they want to play out Orton/Rollins before one of them turns on the Authority - Orton could end up on the Authority team instead, in which case, they could round out the face team with, say, Ryback, or Roman Reigns if he’s ready for a return by then.

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Brock is paid per appearance, so he’s not really being paid to sit out. That being said, the only thing I can think at this time is that DBD returns and says;

“I was out with an injury for a couple of months and you stripped me of the title. Brock Lesnar wins the title and goes home for a couple of months - and you’re fine with that! So how about this. The guy who never lost the title… versus the guy who never defends the title.”

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Well, except for the whole epic “John Cena overcomes the odds, buries half the locker room and rises back… to where he’s always been” thing.

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I think Hell In a Cell was pretty weak to be honest. I actually like both Big Show and Rusev, which is a minority opinion, but Show actually has really good athleticism and in ring ability for a guy of his size and I think is always entertaining in the upper mid card. To be honest Henry is too, and he’s far worse in the ring. There’s a place in wrestling that wouldn’t be filled without really bad nonsense like fathering a hand or Sexual Chocolate.

I don’t see that Rusev has main event level in him, though. I think he’s good in the ring but the whole gimmick just doesn’t translate to anything consistent in the ME. He’s almost like a 1980s era traveling heel, who only works because he leaves the territory for awhile and pisses fans off in another region for some years and then comes back. WWE can milk a lot of cheap heat off of him but will have to find a way to rotate him out some to keep it fresh.

I like Bray Wyatt in the ring but his character has gotten really stale and boring. I know they were trying to recreate an Undertaker like villain, but it’s just not working. I want to see the guy stay around due to being an impressive 300 pounder but I’m not sure what direction creative should go with him–just a different one.

Cena being the #1 contender leaves me confused as to what WWE’s direction is. The sensible thing is to use Brock against guys other than Cena because he is paid per appearance and it’s almost like it’s a waste for all of them to be against the same guy. With Cena already booked to lead a team at Survivor Series obviously Brock won’t be defending the title there (I doubt the Royal Rumble rumors, though.)

Ziggler beating Cesaro clean and in convincing fashion suggests to me they may be toying with the idea of pushing Ziggler into the “non-Cena” main event face category, where he’d basically join Ambrose. There’s usually 3-4 guys at that rung so it would make sense they are trying to establish someone else up there. There’s been a lot of attrition of top faces to injury and leaving the company in the past two years.

I agree on the comments that Bryan probably didn’t have it in him to carry the company. To be honest I’m not sure how Cena does it, I think the WWE schedule is so deleterious to most people’s health very few people can handle it for years and years. Some of the rumored plans for “rotational” schedules with programmed in down time would probably have resulted in a lot of guys we don’t have around anymore being healthy enough to have continued wrestling for years.

To be honest knowing that many athletes use PEDs to help stave off and prevent injury I suspect the heavy steroid/etc use Cena almost certainly is involved in may be the only reason he can go like he does. A lot of the other big names I can think of who carried the torch for years and years (Hogan being one of them) were heavily using numbing agents and roids all the time, and I suspect since Cena probably is tacitly exempt from the testing most of the other superstars are subject to that may explain why he’s been so injury free for like ten years.

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So, did anyone else watch the series premiere of Lucha Underground?

The biggest thing that struck me was the degree to which they seem to be trying to be the anti-WWE. Whereas WWE shows try to maintain a live-to-tape, unfinished product, this show is produced to much more note-perfect degree than WWE is, which is no doubt assisted by the fact that this show is filmed well in advance of its air date. In contrast to the hard cam, mobile cam, and 1-2 handheld cams that WWE uses, there are cameras everywhere in “the Temple” (which as far as I can tell is an old warehouse somewhere south of downtown LA), which the producers have meticulously picked over to pick the best shots for any given moment in the match. The rooftop cam is particularly innovative and I’d love to see WWE use it in the future.

The promo segments were likewise excellently produced; Rodriguez and co. here seem to be reveling in the idea that the sport is worked, rather than trying to shy away from admitting it. The sketch with Dario Cueto and Konnan felt like it could have been cut straight from Quentin Tarantino’s filmography.

Likewise, the commentary team of Matt Striker (who was part of WWE’s B-commentary team until a few months ago) and Vampiro (who I best remember from '90s WCW) seem to be making an effort to be the exact opposites of WWE commentary; they spend much more time talking about the wrestlers themselves than anything else, and they openly acknowledge the existence of the outside wrestling universe, with Striker going so far as to tell the audience to go on the internet and look up the stuff the competitors have done.

Hell, they even did an intergender match, which is absolutely taboo in WWE these days.

The biggest difference I noticed between this show and WWE/ROH stuff is this; they put on three matches in the show, and none of them were interrupted by commercials. WWE has long relied on commercial breaks as a crutch to have a match turn from face to heel advantage while leaving out the in-between that only the live crowd gets to see, and I really enjoyed getting to see the whole uninterrupted matches here.

To an extent, they’re adhering to the classic WWE-established character tropes so far, with Dario Cueto as the corrupt billionare heel promoter, Prince Puma as the superman babyface, Konnan as the rebel anti-hero, and the as-yet-unnamed goon squad that attacked both Puma and Johnny Mundo (i.e. John Morrison) at the end of the show as Cueto’s henchmen, but it was done well enough that I want to see where they’re going with this.

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Totally slipped my mind. Wednesdays, 8pm, El Ray Network, TWC channel 145 in my area. Maybe OnDemand has it.

Glad to hear Morrison’s found work again. I don’t believe I’ve ever heard Vampiro talk.

It’s not endless high spots is it? That’s what turned me off from lucha libre in the past. It just seemed like they all took turns jumping from the top turnbuckle and landing on each other.

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It was there, but it wasn’t everything. There were only three matches on this week’s show, but it was a pretty good mix of styles. There was a pretty good amount of matwork and grappling in the Blue Demon vs. Chavo Guerrero match.

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Not a spectacular episode of NXT, but not the worst either–and a bad episode of NXT will usually beat out most episodes of main roster product. But there’s only so much you can do when your main event is a singles match featuring Titus O’Neill.

I liked the tag team battle royal–kind of a neat match setup, with either man being eliminated eliminating the team. If you wanted to, you could use it to start a team breaking up, or else just so a little dissension in the ranks to create drama–not that they actually did any of that, but it’s a handy thing to have in the toolbox. Nifty spot with the double-double elimination, too. No surprise to see the VVs sliding into that #1 contender slot; I wouldn’t be surprised to see them take it soon enough. We’ve been saying it for months, but the main roster is in dire need of tag teams and the Lucha Dragons are plenty ready, IMO. Mind you, I think Sin Cara is a bit of dead weight on Kalisto, who is set to step right into Rey’s shoes, but all in good time, I guess.

Bull Dempsey continues to exist, and continues to get pushed for some reason. On the bright side, a) he isn’t working his gimmick from the indies (look it up) and b) he beat the shit out of Mojo Rawley. Seriously, though, there’s just not a lot to like about this guy, IMO. I’m all for seeing different body types and stuff, but the combination of his build and the singlet… eeeesh. His finisher’s a joke too. I’ve decided I hope they feed him to Baron Corbin…

…who gave us the chant of the night, with the Full Sail crowd counting out the time before he hit the End of Days and got the 1-2-3. This guy is like the opposite of Bull for me; I just love him. Still a little concerned that we haven’t seen more out of him, but remaining optimistic.

Poor Emma jobs again, and apparently jobbed on Superstars as well. I was happy to see our favorite kangaroo back in the ring (I may or may not have been doing the Emma dance here in my chair), but man, I’d like to see her get out of the doghouse. Meanwhile, Carmella… is she supposed to be a face? I assume she is, because she’s associated w/ Enzo and Big Cass, but man, that promo was pretty heelish, as was the ring-work. It’s confusing.

I’m gonna come out and admit it: I am liking bald, demonic Marcus Louis. Dude’s scary lookin’. Not quite sure where he slots into things once he’s done beating the crap out of Sylvester LeFort. Oh, and we had another chant of the night candidate here, with “Oui! Oui! Oui!” Enjoyed this match–Marcus Louis chewing the scenery gave it some decent psychology to put it over as just a vicious ass-kicking.

As for the main event of the evening… even the great Sami Zayn cannot get a great match out of Titus O’Neill, but at least the man is off of NXT now; we can all thank Sami for that. And next week we’ve got Sami and Tyler locking up, which should be great. Charlotte’s teaming with Bayley! And Hideo is going to recruit some help dealing w/ the Ascension (instead of continuing to be stupid by going up against them 1 on 2). Hmmm, I wonder who he might find to lend him a hand…

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Yeah, this has always been my problem with the Mexican wrestling I’ve seen, just endless nonsense high flying moves. I honestly never gave a second thought to watching this because my assumption was it was just going to be an entire card like that.

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NXT 10/30 had one of the slackest Battle Royals I’ve ever seen. There were about a dozen instances of one guy grabbing another behind the head and pushing him towards the ropes, then turning around and acting like he thought he successfully threw the guy over.

Martin: Carmella’s the Yoko Ono to Enzo & Cass, so she’s the heel burden to the faces. I’m pretty sure this angle’s been done before, but I can’t think of an example offhand. She’s definitely got the attitude for the business, but her work needs a little polish.

Bull Dempsey looks like a big toddler. He’s got an oversized head and baby shoulders. Put him in a jumpsuit or something so I won’t feel like I’m watching child porn.

Undertaker’s now a consultant for NXT. I’m sure he’s mentoring Baron Corbin. BC’s definitely got the look and and the presence, and while the squashes are fun (for now), he needs to progress to longer matches. I’m sure he’ll be doing UT’s revenant hair toss before long.

Titus can now go back to the main roster and team with Slater and Hornswoggle to take on El Torito and the Bunny… hmmmm… he may want to rethink that.

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In one of Jericho’s books, he says something about how he thought it was just endless nonsense, until he went down there to wrestle. Then he confirmed it.

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Just got through watching the 1st Lucha Underground repeat. It looks really cool. Robert Rodriguez is a producer, and it looks more like an interactive movie than a live event. The footage has been run through high contrast filters with some increased red and yellow tint to give it more of a “savage” look. It reminds me of the Bloodsport movies Jean Claude Van Damme starred in.

It delves into Aztec history, showing scenes of ancient Aztec cities and their warrior culture. The ring canvas has an Aztec calendar imprint, and an overhead camera which catches shots of pin attempts atop the design. The matches aren’t silly high spot parades. Dario Cueto does a good job of acting the role of the corrupt owner who enjoys manipulating his talent to fight among themselves. Connan looks like a drug lord who enjoys throwing grenades at pigeons in the park.

I was kind of surprised to see Chavo Guerrero lose first off, but I liked the follow up scene of Cueto breathing down his neck and blaming him for the misfortunes that will ensue when he brings in some new menace he claims he will have no control over. The show has a great atmosphere, and hopefully they won’t screw it up when starts to see mainstream success.

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Been thinking about the Bray Wyatt promo all weekend. One bit that seriously bothered me when it aired and I hope they don’t repeat.
Bray talking about the feeling of power when you have a life in your hands. Geez, kids are a big part of this audience and it’s not like there aren’t any completely fucked up people watching it either. We’ve had years of “Don’t try this at home”, so let’s now walk down the path of insinuating or implying even remotely that killing small animals and other people might be fun.