Another great edition of the Wednesday Night Wars. Hard to say which was the better show - Neville vs. Kidd was a great match, and I loved how William Regal lampshaded that contract signings always just end in a brawl and he was having none of that in his ring, thank you very much. Finn vs. Hideo is going to be a great match next week, and now that Zayn vs. Owens is a title match I’m starting to wonder if they’re actually going to put the belt on Owens so quickly, since everybody going forward in the #1 contenders tournament is a face.
The six-man tag on LU was great, as well as was Fenix handing Mil Muertes his first singles loss.
The main event was pretty good. I didn’t like the DQ finish, but the aftermath was amazing. I’m astounded that Konnan is taking bumps at his age and in his condition - that cane isn’t just a prop. Actually tearing the title belt in half - now that’s going to get the gods of the Seven Aztec Tribes pissed off at Cage (to say nothing of their earthly representative, Dario Cueto.)
The mysterious Asian woman who’s been stalking the Temple for weeks finally steps out of the shadows - we still don’t know who she’s looking for or what “Matanza” has to do with it, but it’s an interesting plot thread.
Wellity wellity wellity… WWE Network is free for February. Looks like they’re trying to smooth over the RR backlash. Has Vince seen the error of his ways? If this results in more subscribers, then definitely not.
A relatively young 28, though he’s already been wrestling for eight years. He’s been all around the American indie circuit as well as AAA, where he was the first wrestler to play Octagon Jr. (Pentagon Jr’s rival). In the indies, he teamed with El Generico (the future Sami Zayn) and had rivalries with Mil Muertes and Cage.
“The what of my ways? I’ve never made a single mistake in my career! The Gobbledygooker was gold, I tell you! The kids loved him. Kids still love ‘Turkey in the Straw’, right? Call Hector up and tell him he can have his job back as long as he’s willing to job to the Bunny.”
“So our “fans” are bored huh? They don’t like knowing what’s going to happen? Well then I’ll shock them! Wait, Shock? What was the genius thing I did back in the day? The Shockmaster! That’s right! Call up Johnny Carson and put Shockmaster on his show! Dead you say? Well then get me his replacement! I want this on the Buzzhut, or Feedbag or whatever the kids are looking at”
WCW actually made quite a few vastly stupider decisions than RR. The clusterfuck Tower of Doom match, Eric Bischoff telling the audience Mick Foley won the championship “on that other federation” and getting crapped out in the ratings when everybody switched over to RAW, and sowonnn…
You missed perhaps the most important purpose this match served: it established, at least for a while, that title changes don’t only happen on PPV-style-events. That won’t last forever–titles have changed hands on regular WWE tv before, but it’s been so long ago that none of us have any reason to think it’s going to happen if, say, Bad News Barrett defends the title on some random episode of Raw. So, for lat least the next six months or so, title bouts on regular NXT tv will have some element of unpredictability. (Note: This is a problem Lucha Underground doesn’t have, and won’t unless they start doing special events. Just having regular tv has the happy side effect of offering the freedom to schedule feud enders and the like whenever it makes sense to.)
Aside from that, a little respect for a couple of guys who have been putting in the work as jobbers for as long as I’ve been watching (and longer) and now get to have a moment in the sun. It may (and probably will) just be a moment, but there’s a possibility they’re gonna push them–I’ve heard TPTB down there are fairly positive. I mean, FFS, they pushed Mojo Rawley for what seemed like ever, and they insist on continuing to sort of push Bull despite him being a jobber to the star[del]s[/del].
Talk about damning with faint praise. This was the match (though not the moment) of the night, as you’d expect with Adrian Neville and Tyson Kidd involved. FACT. And so far as it goes, NXT rarely does things “for no goddamn reason.” I don’t catch all of them, but there are a lot of things that’re done that are callbacks to a pair’s match history; similarly, they’ll do things just to set them up for later. If this were main roster WWE, I wouldn’t be surprised for all of Neville’s flipping around being nothing but a crowd-pleasing display of athleticism (which, incidentally, is reason enough to some extent). On NXT, I mostly trust them to pay this off later. Here’s just one possible theory: They’re setting up a bit of hubris that’ll play into Adrian’s match with Baron Corbin next week. Ordinarily I wouldn’t expect Adrian to job to BC, but Adrian is probably going to be demoted soon. Baron’s been booked so goddamn strong Roman Reigns is getting jealous–it wouldn’t surprise me if he wins the whole damn tournament and the title not long after, since the rumours were that Owens, Itami and Balor’s contracts all specified a short stay in NXT before their eventual demotion. (Why anyone would want to be demoted is another thing entirely…)
Just my own WAT. Maybe not likely to pan out, but I’d say it’s likelier than “no goddamn reason.”
Are you my wrestling evil twin or something? :dubious: With his current gimmick and look, no feud of Bull’s can be called “great”, even if it consisted more than Bull getting squashed a bunch of times. I will admit that I like Brandon Stroud’s suggestion that Bull should just be this guy who keeps challenging Baron Corbin and getting swatted down like a gnat. “You got lucky the first 16 times, Baron Corbin, but there’s no way you’re getting lucky 17!”
That said, um… Baron, guy, I love you. I would have your babies (or do the fun part of trying to make babies with you). You have got a ton of physical charisma. But man, you need to go back to The American Dream Dusty Rhode’s Promo Boot Camp, because you SUCK on the stick. Alternatively, get a manager or just be the silent, hot guy who wrecks shit.
This was the moment of the show. Kevin Owens is really, REALLY fucking good at pro wrestling. Better than anyone has any right to be, honestly. The man is magic.
Gotta stick this somewhere, but the IWCier bits of the internet where I hang out all kinda marked out over this. I haven’t hunted down his stuff yet, but this post from Cageside gives a few details. Hopefully I can be arsed to look up some of his CZDub stuff with Moxley–CZW is one of the more “extreme” promotions around, so should be interesting.
I am going on record to suspect that this has something to do with Dario’s key and whatever he’s got locked up in the underground of the temple.
While it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if this was a hasty response to the RR backlash, it also wouldn’t surprise me to find out that it was planned from the start–offering a free month during the Road to Wrestlemania makes plenty of sense on its own. That said, if you think Vince has seen the error of his ways, you shouldn’t listen to JR’s podcast. With the caveat, as always, that these are rumors, Mark Madden claims that his sources tell him that TPTB still think it’s the “YES!” chants that are over rather than D-Bry himself. If that’s true, Vince’s head is so far up his ass that it’s coming out of his mouth.
Hey now! While we all know that El Generico and Sami Zayn were good friends, I will not have you slandering El Generico by suggesting that he did not, in fact, go to help orphans in Mexico.
Honestly, at this point I’m ready to blame Vince for everything. A wrestling version of the “Thanks, Obama” theme, if you will. I’ll get it started with something fairly innocuous:
Manchester City knocked out of the FA Cup by a Championship side? THANKS, VINCE!
I seem to’ve deleted any posts about Lucha Underground, so I’ll just tack it on the bottom here: I love NXT, but for this installment of the Wednesday Night Wars, at least, it’s Dario Cueto who’s captured my heart. From start to finish, that was just as good an hour of [del]wrestling[/del] lucha as I’ve seen anywhere. Not that I’m a terribly seasoned veteran, but I don’t know that we’ve ever seen something like the finish to the Mil Muertes/Fenix match. The trios match was just sick–Steve Austin sometimes talking about how, when you’re telling a story in the ring, you need commas and periods, not just exclamation marks. Well, this one was all exclamation marks, but they made it work ANYWAY. It’s been a while since I’ve been as glued to my screen as I was for that one. Cage… also needs to spend some time with Dusty working on his promo skills, but fuck it–he’s huge, he’s evil, and it’s Lucha Underground so he’s not going to try to spend more than like, two minutes at a time trying to talk. We’ll let it pass. And hell, fair play to Konnan for getting in there and bumping like a man half his age. We’ll see if I’m as enthusiastic about LU after a year–I still love NXT, which I started watching just under a year ago, but the passion has faded a bit. But for right now, it is the highlight of my wrasslin’ week.
(Dunno if any of the rest of you follow @RealDarioCueto on the Twittah machine, but he’s had some words to tweet about Cage disrespecting his championship belt. I’m not 100% certain it’s an official account, but I’m probably about 85%. It’s worth following anyway–this is [del]a man[/del] an account that responded to the question of “why do you keep tables under the ring” with “Where else would we keep the tables? Besides, the real purpose of furniture is Violence”.
Official, unofficial–whoever is running that account has clearly captured the essence of the Dario Cueto character.)
They just announced that they finally hit the million-subscriber mark, so it’s not even certain that “backlash” is even actually happening in a financially significant way yet.
I suspect it’s all tied into the Network being available in the UK and other international areas now. The die-hards subscribed as soon as it was available, now they can try a free month to get people on the fence hooked up.
No, it’s just that they are counting new subscribers and probably not consistent accounts.
So if I were to cancel my network tomorrow I would still be counted as a subscriber. So include all the people who use it, the ones who signed up for the free month in Survivor Series and then probably the ones at the beginning of the month who wanted Rumble it all equals a million, but active users are probbly somewhere in the 700,000s
I still haven’t thought of an intro for SD reviews…
Reigns triumphs over Big Show as if this were a regular match and not one to settle their feud. We all know Reigns is going to pushed to oblivion at this point, but just having him knock BS over the ropes a few times isn’t as amazing as what Brrrock has done to The Giant. Brrrock actually superplexed him and broke the ring down. Brrrrock has also F-5ed BS many a time. BS is like a flyweight in Brrrrock’s hands. Anybody could have taken BS’s place and it would have been the same match.
Oh look, they’re setting up the Cena Three vs Seth and J&J. Let me guess how this is going to turn out. Ryback will toss them around, Rowan will toss them around, Zig will get tagged in, Zig will get beaten up for 15 minutes, Ryback will get the hot tag and toss everybody around, then Rowan will get tagged in, become the STUPID, get beaned with the MITB briefcase, and lose.
Byron Saxton is so vanilla. He’s reading from the heel template. He’s always been an interviewer/house show host before, so he doesn’t have any heel cred. I’d like Paige to be the heel commentator, so she can be all mood swingy and say inappropriate stuff. “Oh, Jerry, let me put my tongue down your throat. Oh, get away from me you repulsive toad. Hey guys, I wrestle much better when I’m menstruating. I need a pickle badly…”
Daniel Bryan vs Kane FINALLY comes to an end (until next week), but this match was annoying. Lawler kept squealing and squeaking and talking like Shaggy when he and Scooby Doo see ghosts. “Aw, I’m so scared of that coffin. Eeek! Aaah! Hold me Michael!” 50% of the match was one guy trying to prevent the other from putting him in the coffin, like it’s an automatic death trap that instantly seals itself when occupied. When Kane retires, he has a future in hosting cheesy horror movies on cable.
OK, I know a couple of our thread regulars eschew watching RAW and SD and only watch the PPVs, and I can see why. But, there is fun to be had in giving these shows the MST3K treatment sometimes, provided they at least do something so bad it’s still interesting.
No mention of the Trips promo? I thought it was great and did a wonderful tease to Monday. It’s one of those things that almost almost makes me think they had Reigns win the Rumble on purpose and actually have this be the storyline…almost.
Yeah I was dying at King’s constant mention of the casket as if they are literally going to die in there. They are put in there for all of 2 seconds and that’s it, they aren’t even buiring it or lighting it on fire like they used to…calm ya tits son.
Apparently Bad News Barrett lost to R Truth in a dark match. What’s up with BNB? He’s lost to R , Truth, he lost to Mizdow (I believe) and he’s lost to Sin Cara…all while holding the belt. They really hate the IC title don’t they? I mean, I guess you could say Mizdow was because he’s so over, and Sin Cara is getting a push because I believe the Dragons are being reunited on the main roster…but R Truth? Really?
"We need to cut the roster again! Let’s cut Mark Henry, Titus O’Niell, Darren Young, Big E and Xavier Woods. None of those guys are worth a damn. GODDAMN IT, don’t tell me we can’t do that in Black History Month! I don’t give a damn about that! We’re not releasing Kofi, so it’s not like we’re releasing ALL of our black wrestlers. Call someone up from NXT then. What do you mean there are no black wrestlers in our development territory? Triple H must be doing that to make me look bad.
Ok, fine. We’ll also release Heath Slater, Zach Ryder, Rosa Mendez, Emma and Fandango. Happy now?"
I am always floored that poor Fandango is stuck with his poor gimmick because he has a great look about him. He’s taller than you think, bigger than you think, and as good looking as they come, but he’s stuck with the damn dancing thing
Spoony (a former TGWTG reviewer who occasionally does vlogs about wrestling) described the IC title thusly a few months ago - it’s the “just think of how strong this wrestler will look when they beat HIM!” belt. The IC champion gets used as a jobber so that (in their minds) the viewer will say “Hey, R-Truth beat the champion, he must be good!”
