Any WWE fans in the audience? (Part 1)

The Game Room
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No subs here.

I thought I knew where the match was going (Sexy Star helping BR out with the finish being them shaking hands as new friends, or at least respecting each other), but BR just went over in the only way that made sense for him as a new babyface–chivalrous, with the minimum amount of force necessary to pin Sexy (which, when you’re Big Ryck, is not very much at all). Sexy got some offense in after, but it didn’t really go anywhere.

Dunno. Right now, as with NXT, Lucha Underground has built up a lot of credit with me, so I’m willing to cut them quite a bit of slack on things like this–I’ll assume for now it’s going somewhere, and if it isn’t, I’ll probably give them a pass on it.

Meanwhile, I’ll clue you all in to a trailer for the next big wrestling DVD… The Rise and Fall of WWE.

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*BAWANNGAWANNNGAWAAAAANNNNHHH

BAAAANNNHHHH*

Continuing to dig LU. It is such a different world than the usual wrestling show. I like the way they begin the show with a musical group playing in the stands, like in El Mariachi and Dusk til Dawn. Whenever the music plays in a crowded scene, there’s sure to be violence to ensue.

Mil Muertes, Fenix and Catrina move into PG-13 territory with her licking MM’s body instead of just his face. They also incorporate MM’s kryptonite, the stone that remains of his birthplace that was levelled by earthquake.

I agree with LawMonkey about Ryck Fury and Sexy Star. Sometimes matches are not about wrestling at all, but to advance a storyline. No doubt we’ll be seeing those two teaming against The Crew in the near future.

That promo for Konnan was pretty intense. I liked the shots of him brooding in the rain, and the use of shadow and ambient light to show the outline of his head, but not so much his facial features, making his motives mysterious. Again, these are filmmakers, not just wrestling bookers.

Alberto El Patron is so in his own element now. The little vignette of his professional and personal history added so much more to his presence than anything WWE did. I like to think WWE is an Equal Opportunity abuser in that everybody is shit on equally regardless of race, but Alberto and Ray Mysterio seem to have gotten more of their share of caca. A change of environment is sometimes necessary. His match with Tejano was much more exciting than anything he did in WWE.

I also marked out for the scene with Cueto, Son of Havoc, Ivelisse, and Argentio. “Son of Havoc, you’ll be the referee. We’ll see if you can control your girlfriend inside the ring as much as she controls you outside of it.” Also, King Cuerno’s promise to mount Johnny Mundo’s head on Cueto’s wall. So much more than the usual heel threat to “destroy” their opponent. I wonder if their rematch will end in them fighting outside the ring to Cueto’s office and Cuerno putting Mundo’s head through the wall.

*BAWANNGAWANNNGAWAAAAANNNNHHH

BAAAANNNHHHH*

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NXT was apparently “night of 1000 jobbers”.

First match began with the Rosebuds coming out, so I immediately knew he was jobbing to someone…it ended up being Tyler Breeze. The match was fairly decent. I’m not a big mark for either guy so I really only half paid attention to it.

Second match featured the SupperHappyFunTime champs, and they were facing 2 guys that I’ve never seen before in my life. Some dude wearing a wrestling helmet (lets go steiner clap clap clapclapclap) and another dude. I got excited when I saw the wrestler guy because I thought it was my boy Bagels…but alas it was not. SuperHappies win.

Then we get a Baron Corbin sighting who is fighting ANOTHER no-name jobber (again not Bagels…where is Bagels?!?), boring match ends boringly.

In a decent turn of events we get BULL BULL facing Solomon Crowe. I again didn’t pay too much attention to this match since I was job searching the whole time, but this was an OK match too. Also speaking of Crowe this is what he looks like according to Ms Cups “It’s like Billi from Green Day ate the rest of the band”. HA!

Main event was a Sasha/Charlotte match. These ladies can go I’ll give em that. A good match with a bit of a weird ending, I think they botched the spot ever-so-slightly, but it still looked good.

Nothing really excited me in the show enough to stop job searching (other than Bayley…plus Emma!) so there isn’t too much to say. Not all can be winners ya know?

Bring back Bagels!

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OLAY OLAYOLAYOLAY OLAY OLAY

Tonight’s show demonstrated how much the audience contributes. Some of their chants are subtle enough to make you think for half a minute how it’s relevant. My favorite was during Finn & Neville’s match a few weeks ago: “We’re not worthy!” clap clap clapclapclap

I still can’t get over how much Kevin Owens owns NXT in the short time he’s been there. A man of few words, his is nevertheless a total dick to Alex Riley, provoking the latter to switch careers. I read where Riley’s wrestled in a few house shows. The last I remember of his in-ring work is when Miz was his mentor a few years ago and the two had a falling out. For some reason they made him a talking head instead of an “entertainer.” (I still don’t believe that’s what Brock Lesnar said to Vince when they first met, “I want to be an entertainer.”) I’m sure Riley’s going to get squashed when he and KO meet, but I’m looking forward to seeing what he’s got.

Speaking of squashes, Baron Corbin’s work is getting to be meaningless. They used it as background noise for KO pouring water of RIley’s head. Hopefully they’ll have him working with the ring vets soon.

I’m not into Solomon Burke just yet. He looks like a lesbian. The color scheme of his singlet makes it look like he has pointy Madonna boobs. His finisher is him bouncing off the rope and headbutting his opponent on the flank, and it doesn’t look that potentially devastating. I like that he’s short but deceptively strong, kind of like Rick Steiner, but he needs a better finisher.

How different is NXT from the main roster when the ladies not only have a match longer than 30 seconds, their match is the main event? The Ric Flair influence was strong on both opponents. Charlotte is so limber, she can almost sit on her head, and Sasha was doing all the smack talking. These chicks are brutal, and they schooled everybody else on the show.

Looks like Enzo & Cass are morphing into heel roles for their eventual showdown with Blake & Murphy, and Carmella is still posed to pull a Yoko Oh no! on their bond. B&M still need practice, but they’re getting there. The crowd’s not exactly behind them yet, but at least they’re not objecting to their sudden push a la Roman Batista.

Sami Zayn checked in, tugging at our heartstrings, the adorable kook that he is. Emma actually demonstrated more than one dimension in her talk with Bayley. NXT put in enough hooks for us to stay tuned. Vince continues to ignore.

ETA: Good luck with the job search STC. It can be soul-draining. Are you still working in Charlotte in the meantime?

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I wish I was working Charlotte (hey oh!)

Yeah I’m riding out the rest of my lease up here and continuing to do my job (I’m only contract) until the summer where I can FINALLY move down to Orlando and be with Ms. Cups. We’ve been together a little over 2 years, and a year and a half of it have been apart.

I definitely know that job searching is, IMO, top 3 worst experiences you can do and it can wear on you super quickly. So to keep myself disciplined with it while still giving me time to recover, I job search during wrestling. So Monday’s during RAW, Wednesdays during NXT, and THURSDAYS(copyright Ryback) during Smackdown I am whoring myself out to anyone who might hire me. And yes that does mean multiple applications to various jobs at Full Sail :).

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I know it would get some mainstream anger, but during B&M’s entrance, the music and lights makes me want to (and I did last night at home for giggles) sit in my chair shaking like I’m having a seizure. Would be hilarious if a large section of the audience did that during their intro.

I don’t think they should ever break up Enzo & Cass. They need each other. Enzo is the smack talking heel who you pay to see his ass get beat, Cass is the muscle who prevents that until the time comes for the big payoff. Hell, I can see Enzo in 20-30 years being his own version of Bobby Heenan - the weasely heel manager you pay to see get what’s coming to him.

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I guess I just don’t see really what was advanced. I’ll admit, I’ve only been watching for a few weeks, so was Ryck acting in a chivalrous fashion a character change for him? If so, the announcers didn’t really play it up.

Why should I care if they eventually decide to team up? Sexy Star has only shown a delusional sense of self-importance thus far, thinking that she could go toe-to-toe with Ryck, and thinking she could then beat the Crew in a 3-on-1.

She’s shown no actual impact in the situation thus far, she was getting beat up in the previous match with the Crew until she got a freak pin off of Ryck’s distraction, got no significant offence on Ryck, and in this week’s beatdown she annoyed the Crew a couple of times until they got tired of the fly buzzing around and swatted her down.

All things considered, Catrina’s had far more impact on the actual outcomes of matches from outside the ring than Sexy Star has from inside it.

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A 100% Third-party reason for Brock walking out the other night…

Listening to a podcast that says, basically, Brock and WWE had a deal in place for him to stay and creative wanted him to open RAW by interrupting DB and then CLOSING Raw with a match against DB for the title. In the match DB is about to win when he gets interrupted by Sheamus who then costs DB the title.

This leads to a DB Sheamus match where if DB wins he’s in the championship match at 'Mania, if DB loses then he faces Sheamus at 'Mania…and this decision apparently hadn’t been made yet.

Something about the contract and this open/close Raw thing is what caused Lesnar to walk out. This is what the podcast called “fact”.

The podcast speculates that the reason for the contract dispute is, surprisingly, on Lesnar’s end who wanted one fight with Frank Mir before he went to WWE full-time, but Vince probably said no and anger insued.

Lord knows if that’s right but it’s what I’ve heard

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hehehe… I knew these “pay per appearance” deals would bite WWE in the ass, especially when you’re dealing with Lesnar. He even wanted to join the Minnesota Vikings even though he never played football before. He’s obviously not 100% into the wrestling industry, and probably has no friends backstage except for Heyman.

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The other speculation I’ve read about the Brock/Vince feud is that Brock wants to work WWE and UFC at the same time, Vince wants an exclusive deal, but Brock wants more money than Vince is willing to pay for an exclusive deal. Which, since Brock doesn’t really give a shit about storylines and is only in it for the money, sounds like a perfectly cromulent explanation of things to me.

Just finished watching NXT. The main event was spectacular - I don’t think I’ve seen a submission hold applied that long since the '80s, and the ladies both put on a great show.

As for the rest of the show, the best stuff that happened was outside the ring. I loved Sami’s selfie promo, and Enzo & Cass, and the mini-feud between KO and Alex Riley. They announced that the KO/Finn title match will air on the March 25th episode - which is the last episode they’ve already taped, and interestingly enough, it’s four days before WrestleMania, and NXT doesn’t have any more tapings scheduled until after WrestleMania. I’ve deliberately avoided any spoilers, but this is just the perfect setup for their fight to have some sort of non-finish, with Regal then coming on at the end of the show to declare that they’ll have a rematch for the NXT title - at WrestleMania.

Please, Triple H, make this happen.

PS: Who was it that’s going to the Columbus show tonight? We’ll be expecting a full report forthwith.

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That’d be me. Unfortunately, I probably won’t be able to offer a “hot take”–I live in Cincinnati at present, so I’ll be driving home after and there’s work in the morning. Probably won’t get something up until Friday evening at best. I’ll be taking notes, though.

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From what the podcast said it was actually supposed to be one of his “appearances” only in name because he was supposed to sign their agreed upon contract that night, and then create a long storyline featuring Brock and DB.

I don’t doubt at all that Lesnar wanted to work UFC and WWE, but I can’t see how that can logistically happen. Sure he’ll remain in shape, but pulled punches and REAL punches are berry berry different and hard to just…account for

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Just finished watching LU. Most of what I have to say has already been said, so I’ll just say this;

It’s just not the same seeing El Patron do a superkick without then immediately hearing “THAT’S THE SAME KICK THAT WON HIM THE CHAMPIONSHIP MAGGLE!”

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Admit it! You’re a JBL mark! You know you are!

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That’s a conspiracy theory! Black helicopters and Amelia Earhart lives on the moon and JFK was shot with a magic bullet! It’s disrespectful! You can’t talk to Jeff Bezos that way! That’s a seventeen-time Intercontinental champion! Wah wah wah! FLYING USO!

Maggle.

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Will be interesting. The threat WWE has over any talent is that they’re the biggest show in the industry and pay a lot better. Very very few people are willing to risk pissing off Vince and never seeing another paycheck from WWE, even when you’d think that, logically, that person has an almost zero chance of seeing any meaningful payday out of kissing Vince’s ass.

Brock already has a ton of money and he may not ever look back at WWE or be interested in continually kissing Vince’s ass for years over the possibility of coming back some day for an appearance, or a Legends Contract. It may not be entirely “professional”, but if he chose to beat the holy hell out of Roman Reigns at WM and then walk away, the only other consequence of it would be that it would give him an even greater reputation as a legit badass who is not to be messed with.

(See Also: Andre the Giant)

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The man’s a grandfather! He’s an American hero!

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Uh oh! UH OH! THAT’S AN ANGRY GIANT! It’s what’s best for business, Maggle!

Anyhoo, SD was a little more interesting than usual. Granted, we had Rusev vs Swagger CXVIII, but they didn’t shove Roman Batista down our throats for more than a couple minutes and kept Cena off the show. The Divas match actually lasted over 7 minutes and the impending IC ladder clusterfuck match may actually be worth watching.

Kinda sad when the only way Curtis Axle can get over is to act like Hulk Hogan. Wonder how much graveyard dirt got displaced when Curt Henning spinned his coffin.

One thing I wish they had done was play more off R Troof’s “street black” image vs Byron Saxton’s “country club black” image. Saxton acted a little uncomfortable next to Troof, and I kept thinking Troof should say something like “What’s the matter, brother?” and try to get Saxton to break his whitebread character. Does anybody remember Kentucky Fried Movie from way back when? They had a segment about black people born without soul and showed examples, like a black kid sitting in front of a poster of Albert Einstein. Byron Saxton is that kid.

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Brief NXT columbus review: This is awesome! Better than Raw! NXT! NXT! NXT!

Details to come.

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The KFM bit is the funniest example of “black” black and “white” black that I’ve ever seen, and a great example to use right here.

Does Truth have a lisp, or is that part of his weirdness? I only ask because I think that’s a requirement for being in the WWE, having a lisp.

Do you think the divas match was a direct response to what happened earlier this week? They took their best (Save for maybe Nattie) and had them for a while. The only problem is the goddamn Bellas (whom I like! Really!) NEVER SHUT THE HELL UP. Quit talking, quit screaming, quit making noises!!! AJ doesn’t, Paige doesn’t (that much), only the shitty divas do.