Oh ho ho that doesn’t say “Die Roman Die”, it’s German for “The Roman The”
Someday someone is going to complain about Vince’s chronic masturbation while watching these big guys throw punches and he’ll end up being a sex offender.
Damn, I thought Harper legit broke his arm in that spot. Made me think, and put it in my mind for the rest of the night - how utterly fucking unnecessarily dangerous and STUPID these TLC matches are. Match definitely slowed after that, so I wonder if they cut it short.
LOLCENAWINS. Fuck that noise. At least it wasn’t the main event.
I assume they’re saving his “first” loss for somebody who has USA written all over him - someone “real big” and “real American.” No, I did not just say Real American, so if anybody in Stamford is reading this, get that thought out of your mind.
My first thought was Steve Austin, but is he in any condition to wrestle? (A few other non-Cena options: The Rock; The Undertaker; maybe even Sting. I say “non-Cena” because I don’t see him “settling” for the US title.)
I did come up with one scenario, but I don’t know how plausible it is:
- Swagger wins the Rumble
- Somehow, Cena pins Brock and wins the title at the Rumble, but right after that, Swagger cashes in MITB and takes the title from him.
- Since Swagger can’t wrestle himself at WM, there’s a gimmick match of some sort at WWE Fast Line - possibly an Elimination Chamber match, as the PPV replaces the Elimination Chamber PPV - to determine the WM challenger, which Cena wins
- Cena beats Swagger again at WM - and how about that, now he has one more career world title than Ric Flair.
BTW, the San Francisco area is under a strange weather pattern this year - I would not be one bit surprised if there’s some heavy rain at WrestleMania, which is going to be outdoors.
Don, you mean Seth instead of Swagger?
Why, yes. Yes, I did. I don’t know why I keep getting those two mixed up.
There’s also Yet Still Even Another Rumor going around that Rollins will cash it in tonight on Raw.
This show… was OK.
Ziggler vs. Harper was a classic. I don’t think I’ve seen that much blood in a WWE match ever since Vince decided that cleaning up the product would get his wife elected to the Senate. They did the same “Dolph is almost at the top of the ladder, then Luke comes to life and knocks him down” spot like five or six times, which made me wonder whether they felt a need to pad for time, but in the end it was a great match.
Ambrose vs. Wyatt was pretty good. The wrong guy won and the ending made no sense, but I’ve come to expect that from Wyatt matches.
Cena vs. Rollins was an overbooked clusterfuck. Why doesn’t the ref eject Mercury and Noble when it becomes clear they’re going to continuously interfere in the match? Why, when he’s arguing with the other two referees about who went through the table first, do neither of them mention that Cena put Rollins through a table while he was out cold? Why doesn’t he refer to instant replay, as was done in Del Rio vs. Swagger at Extreme Rules 2013? What was Big Show’s reason for interfering? What was Roman Reigns’ reason for interfering? Was he just sitting backstage in his ring gear, despite not being scheduled to wrestle, just in case a state of affairs developed that would require him to interfere? Why do Noble and Mercury even work for Rollins anymore now that the Authority has no power? Why does Rollins feel any loyalty to the Authority or want to force Cena to bring them back? This entire match makes no sense. At least they achieved their goal of letting the Golden Boy do his One Move of Doom so that we’ll forget that he hasn’t done anything worthy of winning the world championship other than giving Vince a hard-on.
The filler matches… were filler matches. Rusev won. Nikki won. The Mizdow gimmick continued to make no sense. At least they have six full weeks to book the Royal Rumble.
I assume the referee doesn’t have that authority in No DQ matches. (The Divas title match wasn’t no-DQ, which is why Brie could be ejected.)
If the rumor of Brock showing up on Raw tonight and somehow getting knocked out, then (let me make sure I got it right this time) Rollins cashes in MITB, the match makes sense in that it teases that Cena can beat the man he’s now going to wrestle for the title at Royal Rumble…plus, it confirms that Cena will wrestle him at Royal Rumble if it does play out that way.
Yes, but Rol-I mean, Swagger almost powered his way out of the Accolade, so it shows that Rusev has a weakness.
I went to a house show last year where one of the main event matches was a no DQ match, Dolph Ziggler vs. Big E, where the latter had AJ in his corner, and the ref got ejected for trying to interfere. I know that house shows are on the ass-end of canon these days, but it demonstrates that logically, the referee should have the power to eject cornermen from a no-DQ match.
Dang. Rain changing to ice and I can’t get my gaming group to cancel for just one night. So I’ll be off fighting Frost Giants.
Clown Giants
I can personally guarantee that there is no way in hell Brock is showing up tonight*, much less wrestling, much less in a position for Rollins to cash in on his MITB, much less win it so that the rumble match would be pointless?
I don’t see how this can be a thing.
*ok he MIGHT show up, but the rest still stands
/lana: Vnimaniye, vnimaniye… In America, you have radar and social media to track Santa Claus. In Russia, we have KGB. We stuck tracking device in his big red babushka years ago.
“And for Super Smackdown… both Dean Ambrose and Bray Wyatt will be on the show!” Wow, could a bait-and-switch be even more obvious? Maybe the audience will find themselves trapped in an insurance seminar.
Rollins wins really cheaply, with help from the security munchkins and Brrrrrock, but he gets to demonstrate his amazing cross-fit skillz, almost climbing out of the cage like a spider. Cena thought he was fast, but he was only half-fast. He looked sluggish compared to Rollins, and that’s why this pairing hasn’t really fired on all cylinders. Maybe Orton will pop back into the picture soon to feud with Rollins. He’s a better match for speed.
Argh, can the stunt double angle just end already? Turn Miz & Mizdow into the Vaudevillains or something. ANYTHING!
Back to Rollins… I like his look, I like his athletics, I like his ring talent, I like the way he taunts his opponents, and I like the way he smartly counters their attacks. But his promos are whiny and boring. At least with the Shield, he only got the mike a third of the time.
I have every reason to proclaim the suckiness of Roman Reigns, but dammit, I just can’t help myself. When he does the Superman punch, I mark out. It just looks so cool.
Chimera, you game on Monday nights too? Our group’s playing as pirates in Pathfinder.
Who’s the most important part in a comedy duo? It’s not the goofball, it’s the straight man.
Who’s the most important piece in your baseball’s defense? The utility guy who can play every position
Who’e the most important guy in the WWE right now? The guy who makes everyone look better and that’s Rollins. He’s doing everything so right and perfect that this group of storylines just wouldn’t work without his always-there, always in control method.
Good for him
Well, it’s working for him because it is something different than the Chickenshit Heel trope they insist on forcing onto every heel.
You misspelled “Heyman.” He gives everyone he works with credibility. For whatever reason he is free of the foolishness the writers hang on everyone else. Put Adam Rose with Heyman and Rose is in the world title hunt within a year.
With the security team’s constant interference that’s exactly the role he’s been placed in! Last night it took the security team AND Lesnar’s interference to win. How many matches has the security bozos interfered in and Rollins did the job anyway? It makes him look weak. Then when he comes out and whines that the match was stolen from him, when in fact he would have only won with interference? That is a total Chickenshit Heel move.
The difference, in my opinion, is that he’s not being booked as a modern Chickenshit Heel. He’s being booked more as an old school NWA/Memphis heel. And that’s why it works for him.
Hate to break it to you…but Heyman doesn’t DO anything anymore. He’s there as a poster child to remind us that the championship actually exists.
Once everyone figured out that Brock isn’t appearing on television, his role was reduced and we stopped paying attention to him.
Rollins makes everyone he wrestles against look good, everyone he works with look like an all star, and immediately jumps everyone who appears with him up a notch. I mean, hell, He’s made Joey Mercury a star again
Worked well for Ryback and umm…Hennig’s son… what was his name?
Yeah, ask Cesaro how that worked out for him. Or Ryback. Or Curt Axel. Or anyone not named CM Punk or Brock Lesnar.
I’m not putting this on Heyman, by the way–don’t get me wrong, he’s awesome and if it were up to me I’d think about makin him head booker. But he still dances when Vince pulls his strings–he’s no magic talisman over shit booking. ETA: He also cannot necessarily turn chicken shit into chicken salad, which I think has a lot to do w/ Ryback and Curt Axel.
Actually, he hasn’t even done this since Lesnar won the title. After Lesnar defeated the Undertaker’s 21-0 undefeated streak at WrestleMania, Paul E. was on pretty much every Raw, reminding us about Mike Lient and this swiss guy cesare borgia i think. After Brock won, Brock, the title and Paul E. all pretty much disappeared. It’s… really been poorly handled. Not Paul’s fault, again, but they took would could’ve been something pretty great–making title defenses, and by extension the title itself, something really special–and instead went with “THE TITLE NO LONGER EXISTS WHAT TITLE WHAT ARE YOU EVEN TALKING ABOUT”.
Anyway… urgh. WWE. Oh well. After trying Raw and SD again this week, I am back on hiatus until Rumble. Looking forward to some Lucha Underground action (while it lasts :() on Wednesday and NXT on Thursday, though.
I am under the impression that there has been backstage heat between Heyman and Stephanie (and, as a result, Heyman and Triple H) for some reason ever since the WCW/ECW merge into WWE, and even after Heyman left, anything that even remotely looked like “a Paul Heyman idea” was shot down before making it on air.
Or is that just the paranoiac in me acting up again? I mean, the fact that he’s even on air, and not given the Droz treatment*, should tell me something.
*
Name one time when Droz has been mentioned on the air since the Smackdown taping match something like 15 years ago (edited out of the broadcast) that paralyzed him.
I’m pretty sure I’ve heard of heat with some McMahon element and Heyman somewhere along the line, but I’m pretty sure it’s settled. Anyway, I’m pretty sure he was booking Smackdown during the brand extension.
…pretty sure pretty sure pretty sure.
Meanwhile, Raw posted its lowest ratings in nearly twenty years on Monday. Think it could have anything to do with follwing that turd of a PPV with a turd of a Raw (other than Brock showing up)? Hey, maybe they’ll notice that ratings were lowest in hour 3 and conclude that John Cena can’t draw money. Nahhhh. Probably Rollins’s fault. Or the TV audiences were confused by the repeated “N-X-T” chants and tuned out. Yeah, that’s it. We’ve gotta shut down that NXT thing, it’s sabotaging the product!
sigh