Any WWE fans in the audience? (Part 1)

The Game Room
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Much to Vince McMahon’s dismay, “This is Sports Entertainment” chants were drowned out by “This is wrestling” chants. (Seriously, Vince… I’m going to take a page from the premier league and say: Vince, thanks for the memories, but it’s time to say goodbye.)

Reigns’s promo started to get some boos, but they very quickly switched the audio over onto a generic loop of crowd noise, IMO. This is your Superstar of the Year, folks, WHETHER YOU FUCKING LIKE IT OR NOT!!! Honestly, JR, Vince and I are not sure why you dont love this dude we keep telling you is the second coming of John Cena. WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU ANTISOCIAL BASTARDS!!! HE’S SOME SORT OF FUCKING SUPERHERO, DON’T YOU FUCKING GET IT??!??!?!

Anyway, for me Finn MOUTHNECK Balor stole the everloving fuck out of the show. Seriously, NXT, please get Hideo Itami away from this dude; Hideo is fine, but nobody can play second fiddle to MOUTHNECK and come out looking good.

Kevin “busted open” Steen? Yeah, pretty bad ass.

The worst thing about this PPV is that I can’t really cut and paste for my casual friend. Just about every match is bad ass. Best I can do for us is skip hype videos, and FFS, some of those are hard to skip too.

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I’ll also jump in and say that Takeover 3: [R]Ev0{l}ut|0n!?! was better than the last 3 PPVs.

In Order of appearance (as far as my memory works…)

Kevin Owens vs CJ Parker: A good opponent for KO. He’s not facing some super green obvious jobber, so his win looks stronger, and boy did he look strong. Did they intend the blood, or was it blind luck they were able to do that?

Lu-cha Lu-cha vs Vaudevillians: Two take(over)aways for this one for me: Maybe it’s Kallisto’s youth, but Sin Cara just looks like he’s about 2 steps slower on all his moves. But that Kallisto is one helluva firecracker and needs to be called up, like, yesterday, so he can be the new Rey. Second thing is was that a c’ie vou plais chant I heard when Gotch was pushed away by English? Lucha’s retain and that makes me happy.

Finn Balor/Hideo Itami vs. The Ascention: Ohhhhhh holy shit Balor. I was sooo hoping he would use face paint eventually, but I never thought it would be something like that. I think it was kinda cool the way that they had him premiere and wrestle a bit WITHOUT face paint so that we could get to know him, and then eventually bring it in…and boy did they. Loved everything about his entrance (including the shot of Viktor/Konnor with his “WTF?” face). The match was pretty good to except I hate his finisher, looks too boring for his character. I also enjoyed Itami’s Scorpion inspired dress. It’s funny to think that NXT has the complete opposite problem of WWE, they have to many good tag teams. I’m assuming they’ll be broken up soon though

Tye Dillenger vs Baron Corbon And the complete opposite end of the finisher spectrum, the “End of Days” is awesome. A good match since it was just used to set up an eventual Baron/Bull feud. As an aside: I remember the house show my girlfriend and I saw, and they were trying some weird "card player/poker player/“luck is in the cards and you were unlucky” character for Tye and it was godawful and we haaaaated it. Looks like that one was killed pretty quick.

Charlotte Vs $a$ha Bank$ I was watching the PPV a match before the other half (she was out with friends instead of watching wrestling…what a weirdo). And I told her “If I wasn’t watching this match and seeing the boobies, I’d have no idea this was two women wrestling…it’s that good”. And it was, because they ACTUALLY WRESTLED. No screaming, no hair pulling, none of that shit. Good spots, good action, good, healthy, technical wrestling. Kinda bummed that Charlotte won (because my Bayley won’t get the title then prolly) but otherwise it was a great match

Sami Zayn vs Adrian Nevelle: My biggest takeaway from this match is the story they told in the ring. I am new enough to wrestling that I don’t really notice that much…I’m not good at seeing the story within the match…but this one told it beautifully. Having them fight and fight, then stop to recharge, then have the face-to-face anger, then the “so tired we’re punch drunk” and teasing the two ref spots it was just perfect. The moves were great (a DDT through the ropes? and Sami being dropped on his head twice) and the ending was fantastic. Having two face’s fight is always tricky, but this was a good way to end it with the story still intact. Plus a KO heel turn is always good too!

So what’s this mean for Takeover 4: The Return Home? The obvious is Sami vs Owens in a classic face/heel matchup…should be good. Neville can go off to face Tyson Kidd who will invoke the “Well you don’t have the championship anymore so imma fight you” clause. Luchas will probably keep going against Vaudevillians or maybe the Leigonnaires (unless they’re still with Cass and Enzo…heck maybe they’ll switch?). Charlotte will keep the belt until either a heel takes it, or they have another kinda-sorta redemption angle with Bayley and do another dual face match before Charlotte gets called up. Baron Corbin and Bull will fight (which actually should be pretty decent). The only men out for me are Hitami and Finn…where do they go from here?

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NXT ®Evolution gets an A++++++++++++

This wasn’t just wrestling. It was art.

HHH keeps breaking Vince’s mold and shattering tropes. Case in point: usually new talent brought in from the Indies are kind of relegated as second class citizens. Thanks for coming. Here’s your mop. Get started. Daniel Bryan and CM Punk were treated like shit, sent through the WWE success formula machine, and found better success when they didn’t change.

This time, HHH builds on Kevin Steen-Owens’s actual history and not a kayfabe version. They put in little bits of foreshadowing: his promos stating that he was left behind while his friends were chosen first, the could-this-be-sinister-intent glances at Zayn backstage, etc. Kevin pulls out all the stops in his match with CJP, starting off with bruiser-style Assault & Battery, then a high-flying flip meant to be done by somebody 50 lbs lighter. Then he convincingly acts the part of the beleaguered babyface, looking helpless in the face of Parker’s retaliation, escaping defeat several times. The bloodied nose from the face-palm is an unexpected bonus, one he’s actually used to coping with, establishing further his tough guy persona.

The timing of Owens-Steen’s betrayal is perfect. I cheered like a 5-year old when Zayn won the belt, then laughed like a villain when Kevin turned on him after everybody had been warmly congratulating him. What a debut. What a fucking debut. Kevin Owens is instantly the main heel of NXT and none of the other heels can come close.

Just that would have been enough to make a satisfying show, but nooooooo. I want to watch Finn Balor’s entrance on continual loop all day now. He crawled like an alien spider through fog, showing glimpses of Venom teeth and Predinator dreadlocks, and then the fog is sucked away, like it had been filmed in reverse. How the fuck did they do that? Ascension looked at it like their 15 minutes of fame was expiring.

Usually, the Divas match is meant to be a dead zone between main events, allowing for restroom breaks and beer refills, but not in this case! Charlotte and Sasha looked positively brutal. Their match wasn’t spoiled by outside interference from Becky and Bayley either.

I have to catch my breath now. Maybe I’ll comment more later. If TLC is a tenth as good as this show, it’ll still be worth it.

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OH MY FUCKING GOD

The whole Finn Balor thing was an out of the park grand slam home run with the ball killing 3 rapists and a serial killer on it’s way out.

However, the feed gets an F from me as I was unable to watch the Sami Zayn/Neville match because it locked up and refused to cooperate.

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I’m just glad I’m not the only one who noticed Hideo’s Scorpion costume and the Ascension just sitting down staring at Finn as if to say “WTF is this?”

No way in hell TLC(s) is going to even be in the same league as this show. The only thing that really disappointed me about that tag match is that they teased Hideo using the Go-To-Sleep on Viktor and then didn’t do it. Hideo/Kenta invented the move, and the only other person who used it in WWE isn’t working for them anymore, so there’s no reason they need to protect it (unless they’re that afraid that anything associated with that guy will get people chanting his name again), so I really hope they actually let him use it eventually.

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My girlfriend said the exact same thing. People steal moves all the time, and it’s not like it’s a secret that he uses it

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The news out this morning is it was a botch on Parker’s part - Owens may have a broken nose and Parker got a pretty bad gash on his hand. (I hope the former isn’t true, because then he’ll probably be out of action for tonight’s tapings.) Notice how quickly the referee goes for his rubber gloves when he sees the blood.

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We’ll see. Probably some discomfort in how to introduce it without massive CM Punk chants.

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I totally missed the GTS attempt you guys are talking about. I do remember Hideo picking the Ascension guy up and the audience cheering, but I didn’t know the actual history of the hold to understand what was happening. I’m more into the “big picture” aspect than the technical details.

As far as move-stealing goes, I do remember an issue where Shaggy Too-Dope (or whatever his name is) from ICP doing an elbow drop from the top turnbuckle that Brian Knobbs said was a steal of his move. I don’t think he had to worry about some clown rapper hijacking his career, but I got mad when somebody copied my avatar of Aragorn with a chipped tooth once, so intellectual propriety is what it is.

One more thing: I think everybody here can agree that the Full Sail crowd was a big part of why the show was so awesome. They even chanted in French. Wrestling fans are cultural stimulators.

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I only 90% agree with you.

Chanting NXT? That was pretty dumb. Are you chanting because you forgot where you are? Or trying to remind me what I’m watching? Cuz for a moment I was like “Wow this TNA is great!” and then I heard the chants and thought “oh nevermind it’s NXT”.

Unrelated: Props to the “I’m here for the camera guy” sign. Hilarious and an easy way to get on TV

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You only get that “first time” pop once–there’s a lot more mileage to be had out of teasing it. Depending on their plans for Hideo, he may never do it on NXT, though I imagine he will.

Yeah, being paired with Kallisto does Sin Cara no favors. See also Finn Balor and Hideo Itami.

The trouble w/ the Lucha Dragons is that they’re very “main roster” in a not so good way: they’re faces because they wear highlighter yellow gear and we’re told that they’re faces. They haven’t done anything to make us care about them. There’s no doubting Kallisto’s athleticism and skill at doing flippy jumpy luchador shit in the ring, but that’s all we’ve got right now. NXT is usually much better about building characters and making us care.

Also, there’s an ACTUAL DRAGON over on Lucha Underground. If he hears that they’re calling themselves dragons he may show up and eat them.

They have to be. Honestly, KENTA’s WWE debut has not been everything we’d hoped, IMO, for a number of reasons, and you just cannot be bringing your B (or even B+) game and standing next to Finn Balor. No one will even notice that you’re there. Whether he gets teamed w/ someone else, or they just split off and work singles, Hideo Itami has got to get away from Finn Balor if he wants to succeed.

Incidentally, there aren’t really that many tag teams. Ascension is, well, ascending to the main roster to probably wind up jobbing to Los Matadores. (I’m actually cautiously optimistic that they’ll do well, but it all depends on booking and the Hand of God.) We’ve got the Vaudevillains and the Lucha Dragons. Les Legionnaires are broken up, presumably for good (which is fine w/ me, because I love the Hunchback of Notre Full Sail). There’s Enzo and Big Cass. Past that, we’ve just got your jobber tag teams–Jason Jordan and Tye Dillinger, the Mechanics, maybe another jobber team I forget. So there’s basically three “headline” tags and maybe three or four jobber tags. Not super deep—the women’s division is basically the same, except w/o the jobbers. (Which is weird, now that I think about it.)

Outside chance, but you could feud them with each other. Like I said above, Balor has completely outshone Itami; you could work that as the basis of the feud in a couple different ways I could think of.

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It’s basically an E-C-Dub chant. While these days that usually means “this person was in ECW” or “they’re doing something sort of like what they might have done on ECW”, at the time it was an expression of affection and loyalty for ECW. NXT chants are the same thing for NXT. Probably a certain amount of “this is the sort of awesome stuff you only get here” in there too.

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Ring of Honor crowds have been known to chant “R-O-H!” as well, and the LU audiences seem to have adopted the “LU-CHA! LU-CHA!” chant as their equivalent.

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Speaking of RoH, Alberto Del Rio signed on with them, and will be changing his last name to Patron. Isn’t he also supposed to be appearing on LU? He seems to be doing the AJ Styles thing, capitalizing on being a hot property and working with several federations simultaneously. Styles is flipping off TNA, and Del Rio is flipping off WWE. I bet Jeff Jarrett wants them to work for him as well.

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Del Rio was a big enough star in AAA and later WWE that he probably has flexibility to milk contracts from several smaller feds now, and probably makes more than a lot of the every-show guys from those feds. AAA is a pretty big deal, and pays its wrestlers well, I doubt Del Rio would work for LU or RoH exclusively unless they could pay him a commensurate wage, and they probably cannot afford to do so.

On the Stone Cold Steve Austin Show, Sean Waltman who has spent a lot of time working for AAA in the 2000s/2010s said he was making $200k/yr, and he wasn’t a top star in AAA, so likely Del Rio commanded a higher salary in AAA–so I’m assuming he’s not working for RoH or LU on the cheap, or if he is he’s not doing it full time.

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So Ambrose jobs to a TV. Last month it was a hologram. What’s next month, a laser disc player?

Seriously, they pay people to write this shit? I know where I’m sending my resume.

Ziggler/Harper was the match of the night. Everything else was crap.

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Shit sandwich of a ppv. First and last matches were the bread. Everything in between was shit.

Rollins vs Cena was cheapened by the security midgets’ constant interference, and knowledge that SuperCena would overcome them. One Cena is better than three of his opponents, which is dead horseshit repeated repeated repeated. On top of that, we’ll get to see Roman Reigns throw out 29 at Royal Rumble while Vince whacks off backstage.

Maybe I’ll watch NXT ®Evolution again so I can forget this ever happened.

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OK, now that I’ve slept on it, TLC wasn’t all bad. The shit pile had a couple gems on top of it.

First gem was the first match between Zig & Harper. Zig is always the master seller, and he will take some sick bumps and scar himself for life. Harper acts like a complete sociopath with his eyes glazed over and disregard for human welfare. Both guys tend to be show stealers, yet just under Vince’s radar enough to where their matches won’t be overbooked.

Second gem was the last match between Ambrose and Wyatt. Like Zig, Ambrose is a master seller and his facial expressions are the best. His mouth stretches like a rubber band to show pain, and then he assumes the homicidal maniac face when it’s time to get evil. Bray took all those ladder-high elbow drops like a champ. The ending was kind of cheesy, but appropriate for Dean’s caution-be-damned approach.

The BS-Rowan match wasn’t bad, in that it had big guys making lots of noise, so it was like giant robots and monsters slugging it out and destroying surrounding city structures. That’s always fun.

New Day vs the Dust brothers should have changed places with the Usos vs Miz & Mizdow. The stunt double act is getting tiresome. Kane vs Ryback and Rusev vs Swagger shouldn’t have been on the card at all. I didn’t even bother with watching AJ vs the Bellas.

I won’t comment any more on the Cena match. I don’t wanna get pissed again.

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You guys beat me to it, but I was essentially gonna say “This PPV wasn’t important enough for me to go match by match, so here are some thoughts as I think them”:

  • Ziggler Harper was the match of the night, and even THAT wasn’t all that particularly good. I think it’s Harper’s first time doing ladders and they wanted to go easy on him. Good for Zigs being champ again, he deserves it.

  • I hate hate hate hate hate Rusev. God what a pointless 20 min I have to spend every Monday/PPV. Pleas have him just lose to…I don’t care anyone…and actually write a story for him. He hasn’t REALLY beaten anyone of note either. Black people, swagger, big show, and a flirt with Sheamus…that’s it.

  • The Mizzuz were whatver. Walking out and getting the loss that way? Yawn.

  • Was anyone else scared that Aj’s ribs were going to burst from her skin?

  • I don’t care if you hate cena, he’s strong as a mofo.

  • Reigns is back…yaaaaaaaay. Now we can have both Cena and Cena Jr in the next PPV…just what we need. Has there ever been a more forgone-r conclusion than Reigns winning Rumble? Save us RKO

  • Ambrose and Wyatt were ok. Again, I don’t think Wyatt was to privvy on ladders so they stuck with chars and tables (which hurt less I’m assuming). The TV thing was stupid

Last observation: This was suuuuper pointless because it didn’t DO anything to any storylines. Other than Reigns coming back and maybe feuding with Show they didn’t do anything to advance any storyline whatsoever. They got the three letters wrong. They spellled RAW as TLC(s)
ETA: Oh yeah, meant to comment on Cosmic Weirdos vs. New Day. That was a good match. I like the speed and power pairing of Kofi and Big E. Plus I just love Kofi.

#pushkofi!

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Well, I don’t think anyone ever debated that. Moreover, he’s got a unique version of the Law of Conservation of Ninjutsu that applies to him; the more opponents he faces at once, the stronger he gets. (A bit like Fezzik in The Princess Bride, perhaps.) If ever they put him in a 100-vs-1 handicap match, he’ll be stronger than Superman and more prepared than Batman. He may quite literally ascend to godhood.

Also, I love Rusev, partially because he’s a secret babyface and partially because he’s got a better grasp on psychology and selling than most of the roster. Could use a second finisher, though, and definitely did not need to have another match with Swaggie. By the way, JBL, Swaggie is not another person who failed America; he failed America a few months ago (which you forgot about entirely because WWE selective amnesia) and did it a second time last night.

Anyway, well, that was a show that happened. I enjoyed the first and last matches, like everyone else, and had fun snarking about the rest in the open thread over on Cageside Seats. It was great hearing some NXT chants during the Show-Rowan match–guys, the WWE Unvierse is trying to tell you something. Maybe you should listen to them. Aside from the bookends, the best thing you can say about the rest of the show was that it was mostly inoffensive, setting aside the Cena match, which was the worst overbooked pile of shit I’ve seen lately and seriously, fuck John Cena.

I hope Ambrose enjoyed his moment in the sun; the Big Dog is back and so is Vince’s boner for him. Good to see those acting lessons really paid off when he [del]declit[/del] declared his Rumble entry. Jesus, this fucking guy. It’s a shame–I want to like him. I really, really do. But they’re fucking it up with this rocket they’ve strapped on him. How long before we’re getting “Die Roman Die” chants?