The current scuttlebutt is that it’s going to be Raven, who showed up in the crowd at Dynamite this week, but it’s possible that he was just there as a fan.
AEW is just toying with the rumor mill that is the internet. They were in Johnny Polo’s home town, not surprising he’d be at the show. All it’s doing is drawing the scent off of Matt Hardy for a little bit as every wrestling “journalist” tries to milk the new rumor for views. And let’s not forget that even Hardy is just a rumor, and he’s also playing the game. At least if it’s Hardy, AEW can get matches out of him. Raven’s tank is on empty.
A Moment of Bliss with the Bellas was pukilicious.
Brie: OMIGOD, WE OWE EVERYTHING TO THE FANS, IT’S SO CRAZY, WE’RE SO EXCITED TO BE IN THE HALL OF FAME, OMIGOD
Nikki: OMIGOD, WE’RE BOTH PREGNANT, IT’S SO CRAZY, WE’RE SO PROUD OF THE WOMEN, OMIGOD
Hehe, Orange Cassidy is going to “try” going against PAC at Revolution. Maybe Cody saw my post, but couldn’t work in an angle with Darby Allin because he’s slated to go against Sammy Guevara.
It seems like whenever Chris Jericho takes on Jon Dean Moxley Ambrose, he gets heinously injured. Last night, Moxley head butted Jericho so hard on the eyebrow he required seven stitches. Last time they met in WWE, Jericho got pincushioned with a bunch of thumbtacks. Fozzy’s scheduled to start touring in April, so I wonder if Jericho will drop the title? Has he been a slave to the Judas in his mind?
yay SDMB bugginess…
Today, the most exciting show of shows…Saudi Super Showdown. Today we ask, “What if WWE held a PPV-type event and nothing happened…again.” Maybe they’ll get stuck in SA again and we’ll get an awesome Smackdown with a 1 hour Daniel Bryan versus a broomstick match. /yawn
Also, in other news, Samoa Joe out on Wellness Violation. This was reported much earlier, but maybe he appealed it and the violation was upheld, or maybe the report weeks back was wrong. Who knows?
Super Showdown – more like Super Letdown.
Utter fucking crap. Riyadh went vegetarian for this show – squashes.
UT pathetic-looking chokeslam on AJ - match over.
Brock tosses Ricochet a couple times - match over.
Most boring cage match ever.
Goldberg and Fiend use two holds - match over.
Vince created a literal world of suck. I hope they hold up his plane this time.
Now I know that Ricochet and Lesnar are capable of having a fantastic match against each other, but more than half the time he shows up, Lesnar can’t be arsed to go more than a few minutes.
God, I’m still pissed. If it weren’t for NXT, I’d drop the network.
Seriously, if you haven’t seen Super Shitdown, don’t waste your time. Vince abandoned talent for name recognition.
Literally a “take the money and run” event. Now we have two part-timer champions. Vince needs to be involuntarily committed.
Thank you AEW. You eliminated the diarrhea of Super Showdown from my mind. That was the most fun thing to watch. I especially marked for PAC vs Orange Cassidy. Freshly Squeezed is an enigma in a conundrum covered with special sauce. From “wherever,” weight “whatever,” ability to hang like a limp dishrag, getting the audience to chant FIGHT FOREVER after he does his signature soft slaps, O Cass is a fucking genius. The King of Sluff Style is going to inspire a new wave of spaghetti noodle wrestlers.
The Young Bucks vs Kenny Omega and Hangman Adam Page had me on the edge of my seat. Maybe they are spot hogs, but the Elite knows how to tell a story. They ended the battle, but not the war. Hangman is still the odd man out, and I’m expecting a swerve any second.
Cody just turned MJF into an A-lister. He really has inherited his dad’s talent for booking, and completely spiced it up on his own. Vince, he’s showing you how much you sold out creativity for cheap heat.
I learned something new today: The Blade used to be Braxton Sutter in Impact, and he’s married irl to Bunny. The Butcher had been a rhythm guitarist before AEW.
SDMB bugs up again.
The differences between Super ShowDown and Revolution are a very good example of why WWE needs competition. I mean that in a good way towards AEW. They’re putting on an exciting product.
An obviously-animatronic spider that the announcers have to try to sell as real. If this wasn’t Vince’s idea all along, you know he approved of it and probably thought it was a good idea. That was bad. That was really bad. There probably was no way to make the reveal pop, but that was hopelessly bad.
ekedolphin, I wholeheartedly agree that WWE needs competition, but I don’t think comparing Super ShowDown is appropriate. That’s nothing more than an extended episode of Raw. The Saudi shows are throw-away PPVs - they barely moved the progression to Wrestlemania on that. All it really did was get in the way of the WM build (and the Elimination Chamber build). I do think it will be appropriate to compare Elimination Chamber to Revolution, and right now, I think AEW will still come out on top.
They did put Goldberg over The Fiend in convincing fashion for the Universal Title though, for no other reason than “more people probably want to see Goldberg vs. Reigns than Fiend vs. Reigns”. So now we’ve got a guy who can’t go more than 5 minutes without getting blown up, as the Universal Champion. Not to mention two part-time world champions.
What if a gimmick PPV came and went, and it felt like little more than yet another episode of Raw/Smackdown simply with more wrestling per hour? Given TV is the big money earner today, it gets harder and harder to hold off something special until a PPV, and one ends up with PPVs that are indistinguishable from over-the-air.
Elimination Chamber wasn’t a bad show, but the Saudi show sucked all the life out of the build-up, and being “the last step on the Road to Wrestlemania” meant that there would be no satisfying conclusions. Standouts were that fall from the German release-suplex Bryan took, the top-of-the-chamber shooting star press, and Bayzler banging Liv Morgan around into the chamber walls. The booking, though, should have had less time of Bayzler catching her breath in an empty ring.
I think the main problem was, neither main title was on the line. That’s usually the selling point of Elimination Chamber.
I agree that the novelty of gimmick matches wears off pretty quickly. I used to think cage matches were cool, but now I hate them. All they have to do to win is crawl over the top and drop, but they never do.
EC has had some good moments throughout the years, and Otis crashing outside was definitely one of the highlights of this year’s. The match still felt overpacked and useless. It involved a lot of laying around, waiting for group X to finish their set.
DBD still takes bumps on the head despite being borderline crippled. He and Drulak still put on a clinic, and he somehow got scars all over his body from a scientific match. He’s too method.
The women’s EC was kind of a turd drop in that they all had to treat Shayna like she was the female Brock Lesnar. I love me some Liv Morgan though. She’s really good with facial expressions and getting ragdolled.
I really hope UT’s WM match is he and Aleister vs AJ and OC. UT can still get pops, but he’s lighter on the touch than he used to be. His chokeslam on AJ still looked weak.