Damn, that Dunne-Dane-Damian match was doggone delightful! KIllian Dane is one of my favorites. He’s ugly, brutal and crashes through some pretty sick bumps! I remember watching Damian Priest as Punishment Martinez in RoH, and he seeemed destined for greatness. I love how they somehow always manage to take advantage of Dunne’s finger fetish, like when Priest had him and Dane i a double choke. Priest realizes he’s up against somebody even more psycho than him and starts quivering with fear. Best of all, Mauro’s proclamation that "Priest channeled his fellow New York borough compatriots The Beastie Boys to Fight for his Right to Party!
Steve Austin has the Undertaker on his Broken Skull show, and it’s fascinating to hear him talk in his normal voice. It’s interesting that he wanted to put on more athletic matches as UT, and didn’t want to be a no-seller. Vince told him “I don’t care how athletic you are. I care about getting you over.” He said he got his best advice from Jake The Snake on how to craft his stage presence and throughout the years realized he needed to prevent his gimmick from getting stale, thus the American Badass era. He really knows the business.
Addendum: UT said during his WM with Brock Lesnar, he had a concussion. He doesn’t remember the match at all. The last thing he remembered was talking to his wife before the match, then going to Gorilla position after the match, then being in the hospital. The doctors and nurses kept asking him his name and if he knew where he was, and he couldn’t remember. He doesn’t blame Brock for anything, but realized he needed to take better care of himself.
We never know the pain and rehab they have to endure after main event matches.
My takes on Survivor Series:
First of all, good call to change the rules of a 3-team Survivor Series match to allow each team to have a wrestler in the ring at once, and you can only tag in your teammates, instead of the usual triple-threat tag team rules where there are only two in the ring at a time and anybody can tag in anybody else.
No Cain Velasquez run-in in the Brock/Rey match? That surprised me.
Wait, don’t tell me, let me guess; Vince is trying to sell everybody on NXT as an equivalent brand to the other two - for no other reason than as an excuse not to watch AEW on Wednesdays. How soon before WWE Network doesn’t put new NXT shows on for a few weeks (or at least, airs it live, then keeps it off for a while), the way it does with Raw and SD?
And pardon me for asking, but (a) just when did they switch the WWE and Universal belts, and (b) how much attention did they give to the belt switch? I still remember how they handled Bob Holly’s change from “Thurman ‘Sparky’ Plugg” to “Bob ‘Spark Plug’ Holly”; the play by play announcers just started calling him by the new name one day, and they had to talk over Howard Finkel’s ring introduction, which still used the old name.
I can speak to the last question.
When “The Fiend” Bray Wyatt, a SmackDown superstar, defeated Seth Rollins for the Universal Title, it moved to SmackDown for the first time. The recolored belt was shown very recently. Last week, I think.
Brock Lesnar quit SmackDown so that he could go after Rey Mysterio, because Vince refused to let a RAW superstar compete for a SmackDown belt. So the WWE Title is on RAW now.
That had more to do with the network contracts. The networks, especially Fox, want to wring every last Penny of as revenue out of the product, and that includes revenue from on-demand playback.
I don’t think WWE will pull NXT off the network for the same reason the TV networks won’t demand that Hulu and other streaming services stop showing their sitcoms and dramas. Additional viewer numbers are a good thing, especially when there’s more platforms available like phones, laptops and tablets.
Besides, competition is a good thing. The Monday Night Wars made Vince abandon the hokey G-rated shit and give us the Attitude Era. Jon Moxley, Pac and the Rhodes brothers showed us what happens when their reins are taken off and they shed blood. The UE recaptures the Four Horsemen dynasty, and their angle doesn’t get abandoned/changed at the eleventh hour for short-term gains.
WWE wants as much stuff on the network as it can possibly get, as fresh, new content will help to woo new subscribers. The only reason something is not on the WWE Network right after airing is that WWE’s deals with FOX, USA, and Hulu likely give those platforms first crack at new content. I know that I could always watch NXT on Hulu the next day after airing, though I haven’t checked since it moved to USA, where it is available on-demand the next day after airing. (I liked watching on Hulu because Hulu’s interface was/is better than WWE’s.) FOX is weird though. I don’t follow it closely, but it used to be that programs on FOX wouldn’t appear until a week later, usually after the next episode aired. It does WWE no good to not have the product available as widely as possible as soon as possible, as the product sells the “PPV” (not really a good term anymore) and WWE tries to use PPV to sell subscriptions, as those are only available on the network.
A below-average taping yesterday with some above average moments.
If anyone watched NXT this past weekend and saw how the show started with all the wrestlers going into the audience, I had Ms. EST Biance Belair next to me and the beautiful IO Sharai right in front of me. She actually had to stand on the bench literally directly in front of me because she’s so short. I didn’t have a crush on her before but she’s very hot IRL. We were sooooo close to having Reah Ripley though. She saw our row was already filled and walked away…I would have died.
The other great moment happened after the show went off the air where Chiampa announced female ref Jessica is being moved to Smackdown. He said some nice things about her, the rest of the refs came out for hugs and trips eventually came out and forced her to say some words. I assume this is all going to be a part of some WWE Network special.
In between? I thought the show was “meh”. Having now been to a live NXT show I think I actually preferred the tapings. Despite them being so damn long, we actually were guaranteed to see almost every NXT star because they would be a part of SOME show in the next month. When the show is live we’re just one and done. They also didn’t have commercials so they really moved.
Still was fun…we’re heading back sometime in December.
Got any space on your Christmas list? 'Cause the Fiend’s custom title belt is now on sale for the low low price of $6499.99. :eek:
It’s a limited edition belt and they’re all hand-made by Tom Savini’s crew so it isn’t just another replica title like the $300 WCW world championship I have on my wall, but I really don’t know who they’re expecting to buy this aside from Saudi princes and indy promoters with more money than sense.
That’s a big enough number of people to make it worthwhile. Don’t know if you meant it this way, but I read it “Saudi princes and indy promoters (both of whom have) more money than sense”, though of course lots of indy promoters don’t have money, but those that do are often low in their ‘sense’ allocation.
But you get $5 off if you join The Club.
Godsakes, that thing is hideous. It’s even worse looking than the original Universal Title belt.
So does Orange Cassidy do anything else besides touch with his feet and look aloof?
I can see using his image on a stamp of acid.
Seems like I’m going to have a helluva show to see on the 18th! A Reah Ripley championship match AND a men’s championship match? Hot dog!
NXT had a cool camera shot towards the end of the main event. After Finn Balor took out O’Reilly, Dijakovic, Cole and the ref with his ambush, Cole staggered over to the upper left ring corner, and Finn moved over to the opposite diagonal corner, intent to use his coup-de-gras move on Cole. The in-ring cameraman did a closeup of Finn with his “about to fuck you up” expression, and then Keith Lee slowly rose up behind him like the Loch Ness Monster. That made me pop.
WWE has signed John Morrison to return to the company.
His last match with WWE was on the November 28, 2011 edition of RAW, when The Miz defeated him in a Falls Count Anywhere match by giving him a Skull Crushing Finale on the entrance ramp.
Since leaving WWE, Morrison has won the world title in both Lucha Underground and Impact Wrestling.
RoH has a new weirdo, Danhausen. He’s kind of a cross between the Joker and Broken Matt Hardy. They had him job to World TV Champion Shane Taylor, but he acted every bit the confidant idiot and pantomimed all kinds of shocked expressions of dismay.
He does some cool things with his hands in his pockets. But it’s a joke act and gets old very quickly.
But it makes Jim Cornette angry, which is worth it