Given Orton’s two strikes, I was surprised he got even one more run with the title. But I guess he’s been clean long enough Vince was willing to chance him in a transitional spot. The Fastlane main event is going to suck, no two ways about it. I don’t care a bit about Ruby Riot, so that match and the women’s tag team, thrown together in about 30 seconds, are meaningless. Rusev/Nakamura should be good if they book it well. Usos/New Day is always good.
The tea leaves I’m reading have Flair/Asuka at WM, and Bliss/Jaxx for the Raw Title. Anyone see anything different?
I’ll drink your tea. It makes sense that Asuka would consider Flair a superior opponent to Bliss, and I would like to see that match. It doesn’t do much for continuity, but when has that stopped WWE before?
Bliss vs Jaxx would be like Miz vs Stroman, unless they make Nia sell her arm injury for the next several months. I hate the “wounded bird” matches.
Yeah, I’d go for those matches. Nia needs the win and doing it at Wrestlemania would be great. Bliss walks in to Wrestlemania as champ, which is cool factor for her.
Moves Asuka over to Smackdown to face Charlotte, Becky, Naomi.
I still can’t see Carmella as champion. How about a failed cash in on one of those two matches?
How about; Charlotte and Asuka beat each other up for 12 minutes (the most they’d ever give them), Charlotte barely pulls out a victory to break Asuka’s streak. As she’s being handed the belt after the match, Carmella blindsides her with the case, blasts Asuka out of the ring and then requests a cash in. She goes for the quick pin, no good. Stays on offense until Charlotte rallies, throws Charlotte out of the ring. Asuka comes up behind her and obliterates her. Charlotte piles on. Carmella wins by DQ, but no belt.
Tuesday, Carmella demands a rematch, saying she WON her match (by DQ).
At tonight’s NXT taping, William Regal announced that the first-ever NXT North American champion is going to be crowned in a six-man ladder match at Takeover. I’ve been thinking for awhile that NXT needs a midcard singles title, to give the up-and-comers a spotlight before they’re ready to main-event, so it’ll be interesting to see who’s in that match and who gets the rub.
The last thing NXT needs is a midcard title. The roster is entirely too small to be dealing with multiple belts and it’s going to hurt those on the roster way more than help them. It’s going to take the excitement out of 50% of the matches because, consciously or not, as soon as someone goes for/talks about the belt we are automatically going to think of them as a midcarder.
NXT is great because the talent level is so huge that ANYONE could be going for the belt at any time. Any one of the major stars of NXT could be champion right now and we wouldn’t bat an eyelash. Taking out the new guys, we would all be stoked for the champ to be: Almas, Black, Ohno, McIntyre (when he gets back), Johnny Garbonzo, Chiampa or Dream. And that’s not even counting the new people they just signed that could absolutely be champions Giving one of these guys the lowly midcard belt is just devaluing them.
I also don’t think NXT TV has enough time to add the additional belt storyline. I loved the rivalry between Dream and Black because it was such a unique and believable thing to be fighting over that I didn’t need or want a belt associated with it. Now the stoylines on NXT that are so refreshing and unique are going to boiled down to “wah I want a belt!”
I just got an email from WWE promoting a WEE Live Road to Wrestlemania event in Dayton on Monday, March 12. This is, of course, the day after Fastlane in Columbus. I assume I got the email because I bought tickets for Fastlane. But if I’m right, the email promotion appears to at least partially spoil the Fastlane outcome. It says:
[spoiler]See AJ Styles vs. Kevin Owens vs. Sami Zayne vs. Baron Corbin in a Fatal Four Way Match for the WWE Championship!
And then it lists other stars who will be there.
But if I read it correctly, we can assume that neither John Cena or Dolph Ziggler will walk away with the belt at Fastlane.[/spoiler]
Am I correct to infer something of a spoiler in there? Is that normal for a WWE promotion? This does appear to be an official WWE email, not something from the venue.
And what is this Road to WrestleMania event on Monday? Will it be on TV or on the Network? Or completely dark?
Agreed. I’m with the fewer belts, more people beating each other up just to get a chance at the belt contingent. Champions should always know their opponent in advance and never have to learn after the event has started (like on most Raw and Smackdown, at least before Brock was champ). And challengers should have to prove (barring Money in the Bank, which I like) that they are due a championship match. Not just “you spilled coffee on me, I want to beat you up and put your title on the line!”, “Ok”. Lastly, the champion shouldn’t be making/accepting the matches when there are GMs for every show.
I haven’t looked at these in a long time, but when I did, there was always a “Card Subject to Change” line in case some bozo with a belt that had been promoted was released because he’s a fuck-up. (Just an example pulled out of nowhere)
ETA: Despite what I said above, undoubtedly the 6-man Ladder Match at Takeover will blow away the clusterf**k about to go down at Fastlane. Guaranteed.
I would never trust the “this is what you’re going to see!” lines on any live WWE event. They change these things all the time and the marketing is really only to get you in the door.
Granted, WWE has had some lame titles in the past, such as the European Championship, the Hardcore Championship, and so on. NXT however, has not been tainted by WWE’s obsession with branding. I would honestly like to see some NXT stars *never *go to the main roster. They have too much talent to waste on Vince’s whims. A secondary title at least gives NXT more leverage to be their own fed.
In the meantime, they haven’t really done any more UK specials, and seem to be content with melding it into NXT. They’re having Americans compete for the UK title. That’s just wrong. Why make a UK division if the top star isn’t British? So, when they start the NA title, maybe the UK contingent can get its identity back.
I can see the value to all those guys who aren’t big enough for Vince to push on the main roster to come in, run NXT for a couple of years like Gargano. Get a reasonable paycheck, a nice schedule and hopefully a lot of WWE Network exposure, which will serve to raise your profile, name recognition and marketing value back in Japan or another promotion. Without playing Main Roster booking games, creative changes and the travel schedule.
Most of the indies don’t have the mentoring the WWE can offer, plus getting your name over even on the network can put you in a better position, money-wise, in the Indies. It’s a win to spend time in WWE, even if you know you are unlikely to ever get over big on the main stage.
Nope. They both, and this is 100% true, got boob jobs and have been recovering from that. They should be back in action soon enough though. Unfortunately for them they are pretty much only relevant when they’re together, and since there’s no such thing as a women’s tag division (yet…) they don’t have anything to do.
ETA: I’m not too terribly torn up on the releases. Abby Laith never impressed me much in the MYC and didn’t do much better in the house show I saw her at. Sage literally wrestled the show I saw last week, so that’s a bit more surprising. A Facebook group I’m in is super up in arms about it and calling it BS and this, that and the other thing. WWE has a ton of female talent down there, maybe they just weren’t that good?