Am I crazy or did I just see Brrrrrrrrock Lllllllesnar in a burger king commercial?
Hardee’s, actually. The “Bacon Velveeta Patty Meltdown Thickburger”. The footage of Brock is recycled from when he trashed Triple H’s office in the buildup to WrestleMania a few years ago; a shame they couldn’t get him on the set, because a much more extreme stunt would have been to have him actually eat the sandwich.
Just looking at that burger makes my heart thud in pain and my bowels flare up.
Finally got around to watching this week’s NXT, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Most of what I wanted to say has already been said above - the Ascension left NXT on their backs in a hell of a match, the slow build to Corbin/Dempsey has been great, Enzo is always awesome, and I can’t recall the last time I’ve seen a straight-up old school ham & egger (as in she doesn’t even have a WWE contract as far as I can tell) get over the way Blue Pants has. (I was calling her Kitty Pryde after her first appearance because of her X-Man-ish ring gear, and apparently the cosplay thing is a big part of her indie gimmick; the photo on her Wikipedia page has her as The Bride from Kill Bill.
They once again teased Hideo using the Go-To-Sleep and then had him abort it, which lead to the crowd getting a “GTS! GTS!” chant going. Sooner or later he’s going to have to actually use the move, and it could be anywhere between when he fights Curtis Axel next week to whoever he ends up facing at Takeover 4: Live Free Or Take Over.
Speaking of Axel, do you think he’s there to replace Tyson Kidd as the “veteran in the minors” role?
I guess Sin Cara is kinda like that too, but I always thought the reason TJ was there was to give some good business insight to the young’ns. And now that he’s so over with the crowd and back in the big show where he belongs, I wonder if they relegated Axel for that matter
T-Cups, I think it might be because Axel has the personality of a piece of cardboard.
Wow, what a fantastic episode of RAW last night. Why can’t they all be this good? The entire night told a good story with a hilarious ending. Each match told its own really good story, with great endings, and it intrigued me as to whats going to happen next week, or even Smackdown for that matter since they won’t have the staples of Ryback, Ziggler, and Harper to feature.
Since each match had the heels winning I thought it was generally funny as to how they made the team Cena matches the “oops I forgot match” (hey how’s that for a gimmick match?) and I noticed all the heels winning about an hour or so into the program.
Thought the Tyson/Cesaro interference was a bit off, but I guess if it establishes them as heels it got the job done. I kinda dig the thought of heel Adam Rose. The ultimate party guy that violently asks “why aren’t you having fun?!?” A less flashy/extreme version of The Joker kinda.
The ending was hilarious (if not a bit too long). I was genuinely giggling like an idiot when the balloons and the confetti started raining down, then the song played and I just lost it.
Even though I don’t have a long post about it, this was one of my favorite episodes in a good while
I only watched this episode of Raw for the Dean Ambrose/Bray Wyatt match. And at least that was a good match with a clean finish (albeit the wrong one, because Dean has committed the unforgiveable sin of getting over without permission and so he has to be punished by being made to look weak so that you’ll stop cheering for him and LIKE WHO YOU’VE BEEN TOLD TO LIKE DAMMIT.)
As for the rest of the show, well…
…does anyone remember nWo Souled Out?
Back in the golden age of WCW, once a year they would run an “unsanctioned” pay-per-view that was entirely run and operated by the New World Order, but which the WCW babyfaces would show up for and compete at for some reason. And since the nWo were all a bunch of chickenshit heels, every single match was the same - if it wasn’t a squash for the heels, then the heels would all run in the ring to beat down the babyface, or the crooked ref would refuse to count pins for the face, or some other bullshit.
And WCW thought they were entertaining people by building up the nWo as being unstoppable and giving the fans a reason to hate them. But instead, they were just killing the audience’s interest, because letting the heels run wild with impunity ruined the suspense. You can’t root for the babyface unless you believe that it’s actually possible for them to win, and when you set up the rules of the game so that the heels have a great big “IWINLOL” button they can press whenever they want, then you don’t believe the good guy can win.
That’s pretty much what we saw tonight. Not one, not two, but three matches where the Authority rigs the game with impunity and wins because they say so. Not one, not two matches based on Total Divas storylines. (I don’t watch Total Divas, but according to what I’ve read, the season premiere on Sunday night featured Natalya trying a pot brownie - which, since it’s a “reality show” and is in no way scripted or worked, I’m sure will be followed next week with an episode where Natalya is suspended for violating the Wellness Policy.) There was not one match tonight where the babyface got over. The only actual win for a babyface was Big E, and only then by DQ after interference by, for some reason, Tyson Kidd and Cesaro.
The Ascension are being severely underutilized here - I loved their promo, but the match was over in the blink of an eye, and for some reason JBL turned face for about 30 seconds and started whining about how the Ascension were disrespecting the legacy of the Legion of Doom, and accusing the ham-and-eggers (and yeah, apparently we’ve gone back to using ham-and-eggers on Raw now) of being illegal immigrants. As awkward and uncomfortable as Booker T was on commentary, JBL nonetheless managed to rise above, reach for that brass ring, and be even worse.
The main event segment is much the same as the intro segment was, and much the same as almost every Raw of the last year and a half - a protracted, overwritten, 15-minutes-longer-than-it-has-to-be Triple H segment where they try for the millionth time to tease John Cena turning heel even though we all know it’s never going to happen, and some midcard babyfaces are “fired” in a storyline segment which we all know is going to get undone in a few weeks anyway. They didn’t even try to send the crowd home happy - they just ended the episode with Trips and Steph celebrating and dropping confetti and playing Stars and Stripes Forever as if they were saying “HA HA HA WE HAVE NO MAJOR COMPETITION SO YOU’RE STUCK WITH US WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT”.
This show suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucked. Hard. If I were in Triple H’s position, booking a show as consistently excellent as NXT and then having to oversee this phoned-in crap for his father-in-law, I’d be frustrated as hell.
And if I had paid $100 or more to actually attend this show, I’d want a refund.
If there’s one gold nugget to be gleaned from this mountain of shit, it’s that putting Rollins in the title match at the Rumble provides them an escape hatch from a potentially disastrous Reigns/Lesnar match - if Rollins leaves the Rumble as champion, they can put Lesnar on the undercard at 'Mania and instead do Reigns/Rollins, or Bryan/Rollins, or my dream match, a Reigns/Rollins/Ambrose triple threat.
Oh, and just as a reminder - Lucha Underground is back with a new episode tomorrow night.
Man…I don’t think we’ve ever had two more opposite posts in this entire thread history.
The NWO running wild wasn’t bad for a PPV, and it’s not that that killed WCW…it’s that NWO did it for 12 STRAIGHT MONTHS, and treated everyone like shit.
But for a “celebratory” episode where the obvious heels who are mad at the obvious face make sure their guys win simply because they can is a great change of pace.
This show wasn’t a rehash of the inmates running the asylum, it was a very special RAW entitled “don’t fuck with the Authority”
Remind me again how long the “Authority running wild and treating everyone like shit and never getting any lasting comeuppance” thing has been going on for? 
11 months and 59 seconds 
/lana: Vnimaniye, vnimaniye… you know what you call Russian with Tourette’s Syndrome? Yukanol Fukov!
I’m with T-Cups here. This ep was just one night of heels on parade. WWE actually plans long-term storylines occasionally. Cena and the faces will eventually get revenge. I remember the NWO days. WCW had no long-term plans. They weren’t much for short-term plans either. They managed to capture a hot spark by being the first to jump the fourth wall, and they thought everything they shit was pure gold after that. WWE doesn’t have that kind of short-sightedness. We might bitch about Vince’s prevalence, but nobody can accuse him of being lazy.
I thought the Authority gloat-fest was brilliant, especially the way they kept damning John Cena with faint praise. The “you’re fired” trope is kind of cliche by now, but maybe they’ll have a reverse Seth-threatening-to-break-Edge’s-neck situation and Cena will have Kane in a similar scenario where he’ll send him back to Hell unless the Authority re-hires Zig & Ry & Row. Maybe they’ll even let it happen.
Something I forgot to mention about RAW…
When the roster was in the ring at the beginning of the night, did you guys SEE what Darren Young looked like? Hooooly Crap
Millions of Steroids! Millions of Steroids! Millions of Steroids!
*BOWAAANNGAAAAWANGAAAAA
BAAAAAAANNNNHHHHH*
This week’s Lucha Underground had their Aztec Warrior tournament. The match rules were similar to WWE’s Royal Rumble, in that contestants appeared every 90 seconds. Instead of being thrown over the top rope however, contestants were eliminated by pinfall or submission, and there were no DQs. Also, when they took commercial breaks, they resumed back to when the action broke, and viewers didn’t have to look at an app to see what they missed.
The LU women are some tough chicks. Catrina took a superkick on the side of the head from Johnny Mundo that was loud enough to make all the battered women shelter doors pop open. Sexy Star and Ivelisse brawled just as hard as the men.
Mascarita Sagrada is always fun to watch. He got off some hurricanranas and stage dives that no one his size should be able to do. He also kept wanting to mix it up with Big Ryck, who’s three times his size. Johnny Mundo showed he’s this federation’s Ric Flair, being the first to enter and the last one to be eliminated. He’s also turning more and more into a prick. He kept helping Prince Puma and then turning on him. Pimpinella got to freak some luchas and the referee out with his homoeroticism, and Mariachi Loco, Fenix and Son of Havoc got off some high-flying stunts. Other luchas known for similar acrobatics didn’t get to showcase too much because of all the activity, but they’ll still be around.
Chavo was the only one who took advantage of the no-DQ situation by bringing a chair to the ring. He and Mil Muertes are the only ones in LU as far as I can tell who don’t seem to have that “snap” ability the other luchas have. Maybe it’s because all the other luchas have worked with each other for years and can effectively read other’s minds, but Chavo and MM seem to be a mite slow to pick up cues. Big Ryck works well with the faster guys surprisingly.
Prince Puma won the belt with a 630 splash. He’ll be a rare silent champ, going by nothing but talent and adrenalynn. He looks like a braided whip cord ready to crack the air.
Vampiro’s getting all bi-polar on us. He’ll get mad at Stryker for some reason, then praise him up and down later. It could be worse. At least the CEO’s not telling him what to say over the feed (I hope).
*BOWAAANNGAAAAWANGAAAAA
BAAAAAAANNNNHHHHH*
You just about said it all, Knowed Out. After this match, the Royal Rumble has a tough act to follow. We definitely got some interesting character development on Mil Muertes, for whom his valet getting kicked in the face is the one thing that gets an emotional response out of him. He seriously needs to get a new pair of pants, though - with the striped slacks he looks more like Corporate Kane than like an avatar of death. I unfortunately knew how this match was going to end ahead of time (because Wikipedia apparently didn’t consider that a big enough spoiler that it couldn’t be above the fold on the entry for LU) but I loved the journey there nonetheless.
So far, everything we’ve seen was taped back before the show even started airing, but next week LU is holding its first set of tapings since the series premiere. It’ll still be a month or two before we see any of that, but I look forward to seeing what they’ve learned from the fan reaction so far and what they’ll do differently. It hasn’t been officially confirmed, but I’d be surprised if Alberto Del Rio (or Alberto El Patron, as he’s now known) doesn’t turn up at that taping, since he’s already AAA’s world heavyweight champion and has been working matches in pretty much any company that’ll have him - he made his Ring of Honor debut over the weekend, he wrestled last month in House of Hardcore (a fed run by Tommy Dreamer that tapes out of the old ECW Arena in Philly), and just a few days ago he additionally won the WWL world title in Puerto Rico (in a match against Mil Muertes, even) and is rumored to be appearing in TNA sometime this year. I’ve also read that LU is negotiating with Jim Ross, of all people, to do commentary for a future live special.
I haven’t seen anything on the sheets about Alberto appearing on LU, but he would be perfect. I could see him as an old colleague of Dario Cuerto, called in to school Mundo and Puma.
It would be interesting to have good ol’ JR call the action, but it would be kind of a styles clash. JR is associated with large family-oriented venues, whereas LU is the seedy underground event that takes place in a warehouse. He also comments on the wrestlers’ RL accomplishments, but LU not so much. They prefer to make their stars look otherworldly. It would still be worth it to hear JR shriek in astonishment as Fenix or Puma defy gravity. The star of LU is Robert Rodriguez as far as I’m concerned. They don’t need to call in other famous wrestling personalities to make their show better, but it would be interesting if they did.
I’m wondering who else would be on LU’s shortlist. Vicki Guerrero maybe?
Kind of a ho-hum NXT for my tastes
A semi-decent promo from Sami/Neville that ended in a title defense announcement next week
There were a lot of matches that were only decent in their match, and also ended badly. I’m pretty much just shrugging it off as “they can’t all be winners”.
Most interesting thing for me was the Tyler Breeze return. I think that the jobber he faced looked really good, but this ending pissed me off the most. Breeze was barely winning all match, did a random kick, and wins? It wasn’t even a good kick, much less looks like a finisher. Also who was the stalker guy? Tyson??
Well, I don’t know, but he looked kind of… Bald.
Loved Sami’s promo–we are all Zayniacs.
He looked like a pretty big guy tho, so I’m actually gonna go with Finn.
If Hideo is gonna play by himself then I think they need someone for Finn to fight