My inner booker tells me Rusev’s first loss will be to Cena at WrestleMania (I’d make it a streak vs. career match to put some suspense into it, since Cena obviously isn’t going to lower himself to holding the US title). Maybe once Cena has softened Rusev up, he’ll be ready for a title match with Reigns at Extreme Rules.
I liked their look, but the Warlord was soooooo slooooooow. He could have been a real badass, but he just stood there and hammered on the opponent’s back. He had the build, the hair, and the facepaint, but no in-ring imagination at all.
Who’s “duck faced smirk”? Rollins? Because Rollins is WAY over the US title. I’ll go more into detail when I do my own rumble predictions (friday probably) but my idea for Rollins extends WAY beyond the damn US title.
Speaking of the Annoying Russian…I’m surprised he’s not doing a token defense on this PPV…probably cuz Ryback is “fired”
I only remember two specific matches that the Warlord was in. One where Tito Santana beat him in like ten seconds, and the main event of Survivor Series 1990, where the survivors of the heel teams went up against the survivors of the face teams, and Tito Santana again pinned him in like ten seconds.
Every other memory of him that I have is just him squashing jobbers.
Ryback and co. are un-fired as of Raw, for the record.
Rusev is in the Rumble match. I expect they’ll do a repetition of his entry in last year’s match, where it took like five or six guys to toss him over the ropes.
For what it’s worth, here’s the current list of everyone who’s been announced to appear in the Rumble, as of last night’s Smackdown taping;
- Ryback
- Dolph Ziggler
- Jimmy Uso
- Jey Uso
- R-Truth
- Damien Sandow
- The Miz
- Fernando
- Diego
- Fandango
- Justin Gabriel
- Goldust
- Stardust
- Big Show
- Kane
- Daniel Bryan
- Dean Ambrose
- Bray Wyatt
- Bad News Barrett
- Roman Reigns
- Rusev
Roman Reigns.
Rumor time!
The legends entry for the Rumble is rumored to be
Diamond Dallas Page
Other rumored entrants:
The Dudley Boys!
Please let the second one be true!
Man. Priorities around here are bizarre. Don’t you guys know that the two top wrestling promotions in the US at the moment, Lucha Underground and NXT were on tonight?
Lucha Underground–I know somebody else has the title, but I’m not sure we shouldn’t be calling Dario Cueto the innovator of violence. And clearly, alignments in the Temple are not as simple as face/heel; when Big Ryck’s chulos turned on him, it’s not like they turned face. They just turned a different faction of heel. That said, this might be enough to turn Big Ryck face. And look, I know it’s worked, but I still squirmed for the spot at the end–ouch. Guess somebody’ll be sporting a jaunty eyepatch next we see him. Curious about who Pentagon’s back up will be. El Patron? Anything’s possible. Sexy star is great. The “Last Luchador Standing” match was solid, and promises that this feud will burn for months to come before Drago finally vanquishes King Cuerno once and for all. Last thought: I love how over Pimpinela Escarlata and Mascarita Sagrada are. They’re both super-faces, and will be forever, I suspect. And the announce team doesn’t bury them. It’s amazing. (Well, the announce team is not great w/ Mascarita, but still.) I hope Torito looks at his giant pile of money one day, realizes he’s got more than enough to Scrooge McDuck in it every day for the rest of his life, and decides to retire in Lucha Underground so we can really see him shine.
NXT: Well, this was mostly set-up for Takeover 4: <mumble mumble insert clever thing here>. Mind you, the things it set up were pretty damned awesome–a Fatal 4-way for the Women’s title; a non-title encounter between Sami and Kevin Owens. I’m also gonna go ahead and call it that Baron is winning the title shot, but I wouldn’t put more than a few bucks on it. And… did we just see a Bayley heel turn? Is there something we don’t know about the belts in NXT? We know Lucha Underground’s belt is made from the gold of the seven Aztec kingdoms, but you get a top face into the general vicinity of an NXT belt they don’t hold and they go all Gollum over it. Did Sauron himself craft the NXT belts? Prince Pretty and Scorpion had a decent match, but it’s a reminder that guys like Tyler are jobbers to the indie stars until Hideo/Balor/Owens get demoted the hell out of NXT. 
Final thoughts: Don’t break up the Vaudevillains, guys. I love Simon Gotch to death, but I’m not sure his gimmick will work as a singles performer even on NXT, much less the main roster. Have them come in next week, wreck upper-tier jobber guys whose names I forget already, and set it up for another tag title bout at Takeover 4:ever, in which they get the belts. Seriously, this possible urge to break up successful tag teams is the most worrying thing about NXT creative right now, so just stop it.
Sorry for spoilers; IMO it’s fair game once it’s aired. There’s a reason I risked blowing my plan to rewatch seasons one and two of The Americans to make sure I watched LU and NXT on their proper night.
*BAWAAANNGAWANAAAGGGHHHHH
BWAAAAANNNNNNHHHH*
LU once again combines a throat-slashing pagan ceremony with street thuggery and acrobatics. Some interesting turns of events which on first glance are kind of random, but when resolved, make you want to see more. Big Ryck, for example. I thought he would firmly be established as the barrio enforcer presence, but now he’s a tragic figure. If this were WWE, he would have fought off Cueto’s goons in heroic fashion and hulked up for the camera. Not in LU. No no no nooooo. He’s brought down, beat up, and inflicted with insult to injury as his oppressors took the symbol of his power—the cigar—and extinguished it in his eye. Gravitas!
Pentagon has always been an interesting star to watch. Up until now, he’s been more or less enhancement talent, but with a unique look and mystique. Now, he’s revealing himself as a spirit quester, looking for a warrior companion to complete himself. He seemed like an odd pairing with Chavo, but he has acknowledged that, and plants an interesting angle to watch in the future.
Vampiro’s interview with Cage was another example of a wrestling trope rendered into something unique under the LU filter. The Face Interviewer and The Bad Guy trope. The interviewer addresses all the heinous things the bad guy has done with a tone of dismay and victim-like histrionics, and the bad guy shows no regrets and justifies his actions as proving himself. This time, the interviewer is not a clean-cut suit-wearing unhipster; this time it’s a battle-scarred tattooed Vampiro, who’s broken a few rules in his own day, dressing down Cage because he is not showing proper respect for the talent hierarchy. Cage retorts he’s not going to waste time having to prove himself. He’s doing this efficiently, like a machine. Thus, instead of good vs. evil, it’s old school values vs. new thinking that sees the old ways as useless and unnecessary.
My god, I’m getting purple. This is just a show about people pretending to beat each other up. Or, it’s a microcosm of symbolic battles not just between warring factions, but of human turmoil and the soul’s transformation to heroism and legend.
Anyhoo, what a fun match between Sexy Star and Mariachi Loco. He kept teasing her with seduction moves, so she kicked the shit out of him. Men, women, midgets, transgenders, they are all equals in LU and they all kick ass.
King Cuerno and Drago: again, this goes beyond the usual lucha style of ring acrobatics and probes the mental and psychological aspects of battle. Cuerno uses his hunter/predator personna to win the match in a perfectly reasonable manner for the Last Man Standing concept. Tie your opponent down so he can’t Stand. Makes perfect sense, and it’s not a silly gimmick.
I’m really jonesing for some peyote right now.
*BAWAAANNGAWANAAAGGGHHHHH
BWAAAAANNNNNNHHHH*
Ms. Cups was out with friends again last night (again with the social interaction…what a weirdo) so I didn’t watch NXT as normal…I’m trying really hard to avoid spoilers so I might not talk too much today…
That being said I’m mad that I opened the Royal Rumble spoilers…I would have marked out on the first one and now I’m expecting it! Grrrr…I always do this to myself…
OLAAAAY OLAYOLAYOLAYYYY OLAYYY OLAYYY
Now we translocate from the gritty underworld of LU to the bright lights and roller coaster world of NXT. This is great competition between two emerging wrestling shows that demonstrate more than prime-time family hour play acting.
Sami Zayn completely breaks out of his fair-play mindset and gives a jobber a beatdown. He’s no longer the happy-go-lucky success story. Now he’s PISSED! Kevin Owens has brought out his ugly side. KO’s not going to be the elegant Adrian Neville. He’s a brutal thug who betrays his friends to elevate himself. Sami’s going to take some bruises and cuts and broken bones to vanquish this foe, and we’re going to love him even more for it.
OK, let me just say I’m in to Finn. I like his entrance, his poses, and body paint. But, there’s something about him that doesn’t sit right with me, and I think I’ve identified it: he’s too “stage dramatic.” That is, he’s like the opera performer who projects to the back row of the audience to make sure everybody knows the emotion he’s trying to convey. When he gets off a good offensive move, he does his Jupiter Triumphant pose. When he’s dominated by his opponent, he’s Hector begging Achilles for an honorable funeral, only to be told dogs and vultures will devour his flesh. I mean selling pain is one thing, but he’s not as sincere as Dolph Ziggler or Daniel Bryan when they do it. It’s more like he’s doing a ballerina pose expressing tragedy.
Maybe it’s just me.
Anyhoo, since spoilers have already leaked out about the tapings, it’s useless to speculate on how NXT storylines are going to play out. For instance,
Blake and Murphy are going to win the tag titles, meaning Callisto is potentially going to be called to the main roster.
The Divas four-way will be a good match, but Bayley’s turn on Charlotte was kind of out-of-the-blue, and she didn’t look like she was really into it. Sami Zayn’s transformation has been building up for months, but Bayley’s is too sudden and random. Just remember, some angles will be nourished, and others will be changed or dropped without preamble. It’s the nature of the business. For instance, what happened to the Bunny? Sure he was stupid, but he was our stupid. Maybe he deserved to be dropped, but I need closure!
In the Breeze vs Hideo match, Graves said something like “What’s that? I thought I saw something on the upper right.” Then, the announcers were muted for about a minute, then went back to calling the action. Was something amiss? I thought for sure Marcus Luis was going to be shown brooding in the rafters, but nada. That distracted me from the match. Waah. Smapti always mentioned Hideo teasing the GTS, and I’ve never noticed it. I didn’t see it this time either. Double waah.
OK, back to work.
Re: said spoiler;
[SPOILER] If there’s anyone who deserves a short nostalgia run, it’s DDP. His brief WWF career after the end of WCW was a disappointment, and he’s accomplished so much in retirement since then, both in digging himself out of addiction and in helping so many other older wrestlers get out of drugs and get back into shape. Hell, just look at the before/after pictures of Jake the Snake.
It probably says something about where my priorities were as a young man that when I first heard “Smells Like Teen Spirit” on the radio, I wondered why they were playing an off-key version of DDP’s theme song. [/SPOILER]
Now then, my thoughts on the second installment of the Wednesday Night Wars.
Lucha Underground: The big theme of this episode seemed to be developing the moral shades of gray many of the wrestlers are in. WWE is always pretty simplistic with all this, with all the heels being friends all the time, no matter whether it makes sense or not with their character history. Here, the heels are at war with each other as much as they are with the faces. Big Ryck (who is definitely gonna be rocking an eyepatch for awhile) isn’t a babyface, but he’s now got a rivalry with his former Crew that’ll likely lead to a straight-up trios match - an unholy alliance with Johnny Mundo and Puma, maybe? Pentagon Jr. isn’t a babyface, but he has a goal - taking out Chavo Guerrero - that the audience can get behind.
The tag match was great. Memo to Vince - this is how you put a comedy team over.
I like the new backstory of El Mariachi Loco being a former busboy who works for tips. He actually is a relative newbie in the wrestling business - he wrestled for the first time in April of last year, and his LU debut a few months ago was his fourth match ever. He’s still paying his dues, but he’s definitely got a bright future ahead of him.
The main event was something else - I don’t think I’ve ever seen “tying your opponent up in the corner to stop him from answering a 10-count” as a finish before. I’m kinda surprised that they allowed the “FUCK YOU!” chant from the audience to go uncensored.
Next week’s episode is the last one from the first batch of tapings they did in September and October before the show premiered, so two weeks from tonight we’ll be seeing the first episode taped after the series went on the air, and we should be seeing the debut of Alberto El Patron sometime in the next few weeks as well. I can’t wait to see what they’ll do with him - he’s got plenty of babyface heat right now considering the way he got booted from WWE and that he was able to beat their lawyers and get back on TV, but his old “Mexican aristocrat” heel persona feels like it would fit in a lot better in LU.
NXT: This was a pretty good episode, but it seems like kinda rapid-fire booking to be building up Takeover 4: Live Free Or Take Over with just three episodes. Triple H must really love tournaments, considering that this is the third one NXT has done in a year. I loved Finn Balor’s match with Curtis Axel (and I now want his new shirt), though I’m disappointed that Tyler Breeze lost his match with Hideo Itami. (Memo to Tyler; please don’t give up. All us uggos are rooting for you.) Hideo and Finn are going to be facing each other next week, though, which ought to be a hell of a match.
Bayley’s freakout was unexpected - here I thought it was the Lucha Underground championship that was an unholy artifact of magical power that corrupts the souls of men. Still, it sets up what should be a great match at Takeover 4: Return of the BAE, which will probably lead to a Bayley title run since these kind of matches are a good way to transfer the title from one babyface to another without a transitional champ. Sami Zayn also had a pretty good freakout at the beginning of the show, and I almost expected him to deck William Regal during their staredown. Since they’ve booked Zayn vs. Owens as a non-title match, it raises the question of where this tournament is going - is Sami going to do double duty at Takeover 4: Takeover Genisys, or will he defend on the match the next night, or will they build it up all the way to Takeover 5: A Good Day To Take Over?
Wesley Blake and Buddy Murphy, who’ve barely been on the show except as jobbers, are an odd choice to face the Lucha Dragons. I suspect we’ll be seeing more of them in the future.
Overall, a solid showing from both promotions.
As an aside, Simon Gotch’s gimmick is fundamentally unchanged from the one he used in the indies prior to signing with WWE, when he was known as Ryan Drago. Here’s a promo from his indie days. You’re welcome. I always thought that he’d be good for a feud with Daniel Bryan on the main roster - have him call Bryan out as an unkempt blackguard with no respect for high culture or tradition and challenge him to a submission-only match. 
That being said, I do think he and English work better as a team than as singles talent (and the less said of Aiden’s old “pro wrestling will help me become a Broadway star” gimmick, the better), and they really deserve a title run at some point.
I don’t believe he teased it in this episode. Next week’s match against Finn would be as good a time as any to make use of it, or maybe they hold out for when/if Hideo (who, just to state this again for the record, invented and named the move) gets a title shot.
FWIW, that’ll play marvelously in big arenas, for the same reason operatic and stage performers do tend to be that way–they’re playing to the back row.
Also, you reminded me of Roland Barthes’ excellent essay, The World of Wrestling. It really ought to be required reading for any intelligent fan.
IIRC, this has been his backstory from the start–when the mastermind of lucha violence, Dario Cueto, brought him out in one of the early episodes, he told the story of finding him at the local cantina or whatever. It’s a great gimmick, regardless.
Saw that video back when I first was getting back into wrestling–somebody posted it over at Cageside in the Daily. And thus, I was an instant Ryan Drago/Simon Gotch mark. 
And that is a brilliant idea for a match. In fact, more generally, submissions would be a nice thing for Gotch to pad out, particularly if he’s going to continue working heel (which I doubt). Suits the strongman character to a T.
Well, as a friend said when I showed him this post, there’s something I can’t unsee now.
Ok, so, Ms Cups and I got through NXT so I’ll comment on exactly what everyone wants me to comment on:
I am all for a Bayley heel turn, makes her all the hotter, but this heel turn was too…random/pointless/sudden…everything everyone has already said. It didn’t even mean anything either since she attacked a defenseless Charlotte which means at Takeover 4: Overtaken it’s three heels against one face? And is your spoiler about NXT your guess? or is that what actually happens? Because what kind of storytelling is that? Kinda dumb if you ask me.
The rest of the show was fine I guess. I still hate Balor’s finisher, but the rest of him is fine. I’m intrigued as to how they’re gonna do the Bull/Corbin match. Because you’d think Corbin would win since he’s better and would want to advance in the tournament, but he has to lose eventually, and if he has to lose you’d think it would be Bull who does it. So I’m thinking maybe he’ll be disqualified eventually?
Bayley was wearing a knee brace…she really must have hurt herself. She might need a massage…
Having read reviews from my usual sources, I’m not entirely sure that what we saw was a Bayley turn. We’ll have to wait and see.
You know what doesn’t have to remind people every week that it’s a message board? The Straight Dope Message Board.
Vince: OK Roman, handle this promo yourself.
Roman: Hey Big Show! Andre the Giant was a giant, but he never called himself a giant!
Vince: Roman…
Roman: Jerry the King Lawler was a king, but he never called himself a king!
Vince: No, you samoan retard…
Roman: Macho man Randy Savage was macho, but he never called himself macho!
Vince: For God’s sake, somebody shut that idiot up!
I think I’ll retract my prediction the Reigns will co-win the RR. 
Reigns isn’t the only one to look like a chump. Erick Rowan is the only one of Team Cena to lose his comeback match and is supposedly dismissed from the RR. Maybe Bray will tell him brother, they have LIED to you. They TOLD you that you could succeed on your own, but they set you up, so they could LAUGH at you and DERIDE you and make an EXAMPLE of you. You said you were NAIVE. I would say you were INNOCENT, and they RESENT your purity. They want to bring you DOWN, brother… I will bring you back UP. LOOK TO THE SKY, BROTHER! FOLLOW THE BUZZARDS! DEPP!
Yes, I want the Wyatts back together.