I was a fan of WWE when i was younger but stopped watching it a long time ago. But still play the games: hate the newest but LOVE All Stars 
Alberto Del Patron made his RoH debut over the weekend. He worked the crowd like a master and told them “The man where I used to work said I was a sports entertainer. I’m not a sports entertainer! I’m a wrestler!” The crowd chanted “Welcome back!” He was classy enough not to harangue VKM, though nobody would have blamed him if he did.
Alberto will go against Christopher Daniels next week, and they set him up for a feud with Jay Diesel/Lethal. Similar to ADP, TNA didn’t know what to do with them, and they wound up with a much better suited RoH.
I believe part of the deal he worked out with WWE that got him out of his no-compete clause was that he will refrain from on publicly haranguing WWE any more than he already has.
In any event, I spoilered it last night, but since El Rey put out an official press release this morning on the matter I think it’s safe to say out loud; Alberto El Patron is coming to Lucia Underground as well.
Daniel Bryan curtain-jerking in the match of the night? Check.
Secondary champions jobbing in non-title matches? Check.
Rusev squashing a black guy? Check.
An Uso in a singles match with Miz? Check.
The New Age Outlaws being booked in a major angle? Check.
John Cena undoing a firing storyline? Check.
Yep, this was a filler episode.
As much as I usually have something to say, I just don’t and I completely agree with you…filler.
The DB match worked because it gives fodder for Thursday’s Smackdown (which I’m all for). It’s funny that the Old Age Outlaws are wrestling again because during their segment the Female Cup and I were talking about how frigging massive Billy Gunn looked…now we know why.
All that being said it wasn’t a bad episode, I mean, Ron Simmons came back with JBL and Sting is always neat right?
Lastly, Next Year’s mania is in The House That Jerry Built in Dallas. Interesting, my former roommate lives in Dallas…
Bokaboo bwank bwank a bakaboo bwink bwank
I mark out for the NWO theme. The pimp guitar provides for a slow entrance at a cool, languid pace, allowing each entrant to mug and preen and make a cocky gesture of dismissal like throwing a toothpick at the camera…
Bokaboo bwank bwank a bakaboo bwink bwank
Yes Smapti, it was a filler episode, and we could expect no less… admittedly, I held down the FF for a lot of it, but I did enjoy the walks down memory lane, if for nothing else but to see how the OGs coalesce for these modern times. Scott Hall was actually healthy enough to walk out without collapsing, Kevin Nash got cleared for beating up his drunk son and didn’t sprain his leg on the way out, and X-Pac managed not to puke. Plus, Ric Flair showed that despite his advanced age, he can still take a bump, something none of the other 90’s veterans were willing to do.
The New Age Outlaws are being pulled out of the mothballs to put The Ascension over this weekend, and we know from the Legends Panel who the winner of the RR won’t be. None of them mentioned Roman Reigns, and he “rescued” them from Big Show, another remnant of the Attitude Era, who despite his size and age, is still taking huge bumps and putting on decent matches. I couldn’t help but mark out for Sting’s reappearance, and undoubtedly HHH’s meltdown means the two will meet at WM.
It was also worth it to see Brrrrock be a bit more interactive, instead of just sitting at home counting his money. His feats of strength are fucking amazing, and Seth once again escapes his just desserts and leaves his comrades to suffer the fate intended for him. Yay, Cena brings his friends back before everybody forgets about them. So, while 90% of this week’s RAW was filler crap, the other 10% was worth watching.
Something else I mentioned to Female Cups. He just picked up big show and walked around with him like I would pick up a damn body pillow, it was just nuthin’ to him.
And proceded to beat the crap out of The Ascension, along with every other old man they could find. When I was watching that last night, all I could think of was Alex DeLarge…
I swear, if there isn’t a conspiracy to make NXT callups look bad, they are working the hell out of us to make it look like there is. I’ll believe they aren’t doing the job for the Old Age Outlaws when I see it.
Vince has admitted that he doesn’t even watch NXT, let alone concern himself with what storylines and characters Hunter is playing with down in Florida. I think the failure of so many NXT call-ups to get over is simply a case of Vince not being familiar with the characters and why they’re popular, and trying to fit them in to his own narrow, outdated mode of how to get over.
That being said, I’m pretty sure the Ascension will go over the Middle Age Outlaws, because Vince definitely likes them and wants to make them the Next Big Thing in the tag division (and it’s about time that every single tag titles match stopped being just the Usos, the Rhodeses, and Mizdow over and over again on repeat).
Vince: The Ascension huh? Look at those guys! They’re huge and look all dark. Let’s make them the new Road Warriors, people loved them right? Not their character? Look at em, OF COURSE it’s their character, do it now
To be fair, I’m not really sure what the Ascension’s character was supposed to be in NXT, other than “they like to fight and win and use Illuminati symbolism for some reason”. I’ve tried reading the Wikipedia page on them, but it’s a jumbled mess and the group apparently went through several tweaks and repackages before taking its current form (Ricardo Rodriguez was a founding member, if you can believe that).
Ascension could always wear bowlers. They already have the eye make-up.
Their promo, prior to their match at RR:
*Ho, ho, ho! Well, if it isn’t fat stinking billy goat Billy Gunn in poison! How art thou, thou globby bottle of cheap, stinking chip oil? Come and get one in the yarbles, if ya have any yarbles, you eunuch jelly thou! *
You’d have to change their I intro theme to Beethoven’s Ninth, thus dropping the best thing about them, much though I do love me a bit of the old Ludwig van.
Basically what they were. They could have been LIKE the Road Warriors in that they are big guys who are wreck dudes. It’s turning them into ersatz RWs that is the issue.
They were the kids in high school who read Anne Rice, watched The Lost Boys a bit too many times and changed their name to Damien, Vampiro, and Shade.
and sported emo hair cuts and smoked clove cigarettes.
Well, with the Royal Rumble just a few days away, it’s time for yet another edition of Smapti’s 100%* Accurate Match Predictions!
(Note: Some of my speculation is based on spoilers from last night’s Smackdown taping, so if you really don’t want Smackdown spoiled for you, feel free to wait until Thursday night to find out what I think.)
- The Royal Rumble match. Roman Reigns is the safe bet to win this - he’s been Vince’s hand-picked Chosen One (apologies to Drew McIntyre) since before last year’s Rumble, and the booking philosophy in WWE these days is to stick to the script regardless of whether it goes over or not. (Recall that they spent six weeks after last year’s Rumble trying everything they could think of to put Batista over as a babyface.) However, I’m not entirely sure that that’s what’s going to happen here - Reigns is getting into the position where he’s over with some of the crowd, but others are starting to sour on him because of the perception that he’s getting pushed too hard before he’s ready. He’s been lackluster in singles competition since returning from injury and his awkwardly-written, poorly-delivered promos (“cock this here fist and make it rain in that bitch”, “sufferin’ succotash”, the Jack and the Beanstalk thing, etc.) haven’t helped him any. In most cities, they could still go with Reigns winning and it’d go over just fine, but the Rumble this year is in Philadelphia - the cradle of ECW, the birthplace of hardcore, and home to the smarkiest smarks who ever jumped the smark. If Reigns goes over in the main event - especially if he does so by eliminating a smark favorite like Daniel Bryan or Dean Ambrose on the way - the crowd is going to go nuclear in a way that’ll make Batista’s win last year look like a rousing round of “Let’s go Cena Cena sucks!”
The only other viable alternative, IMO, is for Daniel Bryan to win and main-event WrestleMania for a shot at the title he never actually lost. It makes sense from a storyline angle, Bryan is way more over than Reigns despite having been out of action for three times as long as Reigns was, and in terms of wrestling proficiency he’s far more capable of putting on a main-event quality match than Reigns is. It could go either way, but I’m going to go with what I think is best for business and predict Bryan wins.
Nobody else who’s competing in the Rumble really matters from a booking standpoint, but as of today, they’ve only announced 21 names, which leaves quite a bit of space for surprise entries. Given that it’s in Philly I’d be surprised if we didn’t see a few ECW veterans - RVD or Chris Jericho maybe (and what’s Raven up to these days?) I, for one, would be amused if the Authority sent in an nWo Sting to try to muck things up for Bryan.
- John Cena vs. Seth Rollins vs. Brock Lesnar for the WWEWHC. This is another hard one to predict, since it sets up the other half of what the WrestleMania main-event will be, and I think who wins this one is tied in to who they decide to have win the Rumble. There’s almost no chance that Cena walks out as champion, since it doesn’t really lend itself to solid booking for WrestleMania. There are two ways they could go. They could have Brock retain clean and go into 'Mania as champion, which I think would work well if Bryan wins the Rumble - Bryan vs. Lesnar is a dream match people have been talking up since last year’s 'Mania, and Bryan himself has said in interviews that Lesnar is his dream opponent for WrestleMania.
The other possibility I see as likely is a little more intricate - Cena wins by pinning Rollins while Lesnar is out of the picture, maybe on the floor or getting advice from Heyman. When Lesnar realizes that his Precious has been taken from him without his losing the match, he goes into BROCK SMASH mode and pounds the living daylights out of Cena, which leads a relatively unscathed Rollins (perhaps with urging or assistance from Heyman) to cash in MITB for a quick pin and the championship. This works better if Reigns wins the Rumble, since he and Rollins have a built-in storyline that hasn’t been resolved yet (remember, it was supposed to be Reigns vs. Rollins the day that Roman had to have his emergency surgery), and it could also play into my dream booking of a Reigns/Rollins/Ambrose triple-threat for the title, with Bryan and Lesnar having a #1 contenders match slightly lower on the card.
Either possibility is good, and the latter would honestly be more interesting story-wise, but since I’ve already committed to Bryan winning the Rumble, I’ll go with Lesnar retaining and becoming his opponent.
-
The Ascension vs. the New Age Outlaws. I guess that since half of the Road Warriors and one-third of Demolition are deceased, and the Powers of Pain have obviously returned to Parts Unknown never to be heard from again, that the New Age Outlaws were the best “classic” tag team they could scrape up to work a program with the Ascension. This will be an easy squash win for the Ascension, but at least it should be an entertaining one.
-
The Usos vs. Miz and Mizdow for the tag titles. How many times has this match happened already? By my count, they’ve had this match on TV eleven times since the Mizdow angle got started. The tag division needs some new blood badly, because it’s just the same three or four teams over and over again. The Usos win this one so they can get fed to the Ascension at WrestleMania.
-
Paige and Natalya vs. the Bella Twins. I literally do not care about this match at all. The main roster Divas division hasn’t had a decent televised match in ages, the storylines barely ever rise above “these bitches be crazy” in terms of character motivation or behavior (side note: The Bella Twins feud just won Wrestlecrap’s 2014 not-particularly-coveted “Gooker Award” for the worst thing to happen in pro wrestling in all of 2014), and I honestly have no idea whether Paige is even supposed to be a heel or a face at this point. Why is this match even on a pay-per-view? This is a throwaway match you do on Main Event. Having a singles champion in a tag match on a PPV that isn’t Survivor Series makes absolutely no sense. (For that matter, there is not one singles match on this entire card.)
Let’s see… Nattie beat Nikki at the Smackdown taping last night, and on Raw the night before that, so via bog-standard WWE 50/50 booking, that means the Bellas win this one.
- Pre-show match - Cesaro, Tyson Kidd, and Adam Rose (because apparently they’re a stable now) vs. the New Day. The New Day were originally supposed to be a new Nation of Domination before what Lana might refer to as RECENT CURRENT EVENTS got people to thinking that maybe a group of militant black extremists wasn’t the best thing to be showcasing on TV right now and they got watered down into three guys who wear matching clothes for some reason and dance around to gospel music. This is a comedy match at best, but it’ll probably be better than the Divas match. I give the New Day the rub on this one.
*for certain low values of 100
Welp, I think your predictions are valid Smapti, but there’s a few X factors.
Brrrrock is still positing a return to MMA, and he’s been using that as leverage for his negotiations with WWE. Dana White has said no to UFC, but there’s still other MMA leagues such as Bellator that could enter the bidding. Besides, White did let CM Punk in to UFC after all, so even UFC is not out of the question. At this point, it’s all a web of rumors, which could all be bullshit and Brrrrock is actually planning to stay. Plus, he may wait until after WM to make the jump. So, Brrrock’s status is not verifiably set in stone just yet.
That being said, the way they’re promoting Brrrock is a lot more “intimate” than before. He’s actually deigning to interact with other stars besides Cena, even to the point of pushing Heyman away as his mouthpiece. Does this mean he’s turning face? Not that it matters, but fan reaction might determine whether he stays with WWE. They won’t likely be repelled by him like they were with Batista. In any event, the wrestling business has no problem with changing things at the last minute.
Here’s the case for Seth becoming WWE champ: First, he’ll always be around, unlike Brrrock. Second, he’ll have potential matches defending the title against a whole slew of opponents like Cena, DB, Reigns, Ambrose, Orton, and even Brrrock if he stays around. Third, he’s young and malleable and doesn’t have a Hogan-sized ego, at least not yet. Fourth, he could lose the belt in spectacular fashion at WM to whoever the “chosen one” is at the time. Heel champs always lose the title at WM, and at this point he’s a bigger heel than Brrrrock.
Because there’s so many unknowns with Brrrock, and WWE may not have the patience for his capriciousness, I’m favoring Seth.
As for the RR winner, too many talking heads have already inked in Reigns as the winner, but I’m not so sure. He’s young and improvable, so WWE may not decide to make him their top draw yet. They pushed Jack Swagger to champ, and that didn’t go over so well, so they may decide to draw Reign’s push out a few months longer. Plus, Dean Ambrose could do the turncoat elimination like he did last year, or they might do a Lex Luger/Bret Hart thing, have both eliminate themselves, and set up a three-way at WM with Seth, which would be ideal. I’m going to go with that, even though I’m sure it won’t happen. But I would love to see the Shield tearing each other apart for the belt!!!
Otherwise, I’ll go with Usos win leading to Miz/Mizdow breakup, Paige & Natalya over the Bellas for no reason, Ascension over the Middle-Aged Outlaws, and Cesaro/Kidd/Rose over the New Day because the heels need to win at least one time.
I think there’s one way Cena walks out with the belt. Cena wins so he can tie Flair for the most world heavyweight titles (this works better if Flair is actually there), but Cena gets involved with Lesnar and Heyman the next night on Raw, and gets flattened, immediately followed by Rollins, accompanied by The Authority, to cash in MITB, most likely at the end of the show so the thought of Rollins being the champion can sink into everyone’s minds. It also makes it clear that Rollins is the Corporate Champion.
They could have the run-in during the PPV - I can even see a Flair heel turn and have him (maybe with help from Arn and Tully, if they’re up to it?) attack Cena somehow, if he’s there - but I think there needs to be a little more time to celebrate Cena’s record-tying win
I just don’t think Duck Faced Smirk is ready to be champ.
Season him up with a run at the US Title vs. Rusev. Let him hold that belt for a bit and see how he handles it.
As a postscript to this joke, I decided to look up what the Powers of Pain have actually been up to since they left the WWF.
Turns out the last time they wrestled as a team was at a Chikara event in 2012, where they lost to the team of - and I swear I am not making this up - Marty Janetty and X-Pac.
“Parts Unknown” might actually be an improvement over their true destiny.