Somehow I don’t think Itami is getting Big Show up for the GTS.
Or TNA - or did you forget where Sting has been for the last few years?
Actually, they did do something to put WCW over; they inducted Kevin Nash into the WWE Hall of Fame as “Kevin Nash” and not “Diesel.”
IIRC, Heyman was right next to the post when Brock hit it; I wouldn’t be surprised if Paul bladed Brock. Of course, when you’re sweating bullets - and it wasn’t exactly cold in Santa Clara on Sunday, especially under those lights - even a tiny cut to the forehead mixes with the sweat and makes it look like you’re gushing around a 6 on the logarithmic Muta scale.
I actually noticed that. But he’s also (ever so) slightly famous for being Kevin Nash even outside of wrestling, so maybe that was it. Then again I’m being pessimistic.
I realize now as I’m listening to Steel Cage that I forgot to mention the divas match.
Paige-ay vs the Bellas: This happened.
She’s off making a movie, which is why she was not on TV the past couple of weeks. She’ll probably be absent for the next couple of months, then written back into the storyline.
Lana and Rusev are a rl couple. They just bought a $600K house together.
I finally finished watching the replay. Now I can break my self-imposed 24-hour-moratorium on reading about wrestling on the internet!
This was a better show than I thought it’d be. It was tightly produced and there wasn’t as much filler as I expected there to be, and the Divas match actually ran longer than the musical number. The set and entrances were great, none of the matches bombed, and for the most part the people who should have won, won. Cena’s US title win just might actually make that belt worth something again, and Bryan winning the IC title makes him the WWE’s 26th Triple Crown Champion, and a de facto Grand Slam Champion since he’s won every title that existed during his time in the company.
It’s good that they didn’t put the belt on Reigns especially when the heat on him and the pop for Lesnar was even crazier than I expected, disappointed that they closed on Rollins as champion, because now we’re doomed to another several months of “chickenshit heel champion who has the Authority’s ear and so he always gets protected”, which we already had to suffer 8 months of during Randy Orton’s last run. Going forward, I think we can definitely expect to see a Reigns/Rollins/Ambrose triple-threat for the title, Rock vs. Trips (maybe that will be the match that finally puts the Authority angle to bed?), Bryan defending the IC title against anyone and everyone, and maybe, just maybe, Ronda Rousey vs. Steph at Summerslam.
I won’t break down the individual matches since that’s already been done, so I’ll just close with another edition of Shit Vince must have been saying backstage;
"Who left the house lights on? The script says we’re supposed to go to darkness for 'Taker’s entrance! What do you mean ‘that’s the Sun, sir’? It’s 10:30 Eastern time! Who do these damn west coast hippies think they are? Who runs the Sun? God, right? I’m 1-0 against God! Book a rematch for Extreme Rules. It’ll be 20 minutes of me flailing around under a spotlight. The Chicago crowd’ll love it!
"Ronda Rousey, huh? Do we hold the trademark on that name? Why the hell not! We’re losing out on merch sales by the second here! Who do you think I am, Ted Turner? We’ll call her ‘Blondie’ and give her a finisher named after her genitals. Call the E Network and tell them we finally found a butch girl to be Paige’s love interest!
"The hell do you mean ‘Actually, Big Show won at World War 3’? That’s impossible! It would have made sense for him to win it, and I’m the only person in the world who knows how to book wrestling, so they can’t have done it that way! Make sure he goes over and humiliates that Asian kid who jobbed out the Ascension. We don’t need little guys who the fans think are good fighters! Big Show is the future of this company, dammit!
“Why aren’t they cheering for Roman Reigns? Don’t they understand they’re supposed to love him? Didn’t they see him go over all those midgets they thought they liked? Can’t they appreciate the logo sewn into his shirt, his baby-blue eyes, his he-could-pass-for-white-in-a-dim-bar complexion, his bulging biceps, his thick muscular chest almost as firm and meaty as his…”
“Mr. McMahon? Mr. McMahon?”
“Oh, I’m sorry, Hunter, I guess I drifted off there. We were talking about Roman Reigns?”
“That was ten minutes ago!”
“Dammit, Hunter, you’re supposed to get the Shawn Michaels issue of Playgirl out when I get like that! How long do we have left in the timeslot? Three minutes? Fuck it, send out that idiot with the two cruiserweight weirdos, and we’ll figure out the rest later. If you need me, I’ll be in my office mainlining Ico-Pro.”
“Look at those gray-headed bone bags! Scott Hall had to be taught how to walk again! Kevin Nash sprained this knee first step he took when he came back! Hogan looks like Elmer Fudd with a shaved stripe vagina! I made the cover of Muscle & Fitness when I turned 70, BITCHES!”
“Hah! Something new to brag about! Because we put seats out into the field itself, we just exceeded maximum attendance! That means more people are here than for any San Francisco game! How about that, Forty Niners fans? WHERE IS YOUR GOD NOW?”
“You know, I faced down Jerry Jones in a better stadium than this one! It’s got a Titantron big enough for my cock!”
Anyone else see the vine that’s making the rounds of when Rollins was pinning Reigns he said “Thank you so much”
You can barely hear it, but it’s kinda there
Where the hell was Michael Cole running? Run out of the burning building idiot!
Brock has been booked perfectly. Why can’t they do this with the rest of the roster?
sigh
Adrian Neville becomes simply Neville, is forced to wear a crappy cape and do “flippy shit” as they would say. Quite literally in his first match.
You gotta know Vince keeps running the worst Arab stereotypes by Triple H for Sami Zayn’s debut.
“He’s an Arab and a Canadian? Where the hell are you finding these people, Hunter? We’ll call him ‘Muhammed Gretzky’ and give him a jersey and a ski mask, and before every match he demands that everyone stand and face Mecca so he can sing ‘O Canada’ in Muslimese! No, wait, that might go over in Montreal. Just book him in a feud with New Day where he freaks out and runs away everytime they wave some bacon at him! I’m a goddamn genius!”
DAAAAYYYYYYYUUUUUUMMMMMMMMM
Who would have expected RAW to kick ass and change so much shit after WM?
I don’t know why you guys are down on Neville’s debut. He dominated with his speed and looked suitably dangerous enough to me. Same with Kallisto. That flurry he did with Cesaro made my eyes spring out like Wile E. Coyote’s when he realizes the anvil actually landed on him instead of Road Runner.
I loved the Brock moment as well. True to form, Seth weasels out and leaves the innocent bystanders to suffer the consequences of his actions. “I’m feeling jet lag, and my foot hurts a little FROM CURB STOMPING YOUR FACE!” Brock takes out the entire announce team in his rage. No more Maggle. No more JBL and his black helicopters. No more Bookah T and his ducky ducky quack quack. Just good ol’ Brock Ness Monster laying waste and eating villagers.
The audience was fantastic. They’re like an NXT crowd times 100. They sang “John Cena Sucks” with the trumpets in his music and told Sheamus “You look stupid!” To his credit, Sheamus just smiled and waved his hands like he was conducting them. I wish Raleigh audiences were like that. They’re just stupid families that go to church and shit.
Hated to see Ambrose lose, but he and Cena had a good match nonetheless. Cena just had to be a good sport to the hostile crowd. When’s he going to crack, dammit?
Hmmm no Bray, no Luke Harper, no Eric Rowan… could this be a Wyatt Family reunification in the works? Please god oh please please please? Bray hurt his ankle in a warmup prior to his match with UT, which explains why it was tamer than expected.
The RAW after 'Mania! Where surprises happen…unless they don’t.
I honestly can’t remember it scene by scene, so the STC quick hits are a-comin’:
-
The angle was weird, but it almost seemed like Cole charged at (or was pushed?) into Brock. But this whole segment was pretty neat I think. Gave an excuse for Lesnar to be off TV and keeps the championship in house (as it should be). I liked how he went after the guys-he’s-totally-not-a-wrestler cameraman to further show his craziness.
-
The 10 or so minutes after Brock’s tirade were…weird. Saxton was either not commentating well, or was selling being overwhelmed a lot. He was mostly silent, when he talked it was quiet, and he almost seemed like he didn’t know what he was doing. Then when King came out it seemed more "normal’. I’m gonna go ahead and give Saxton the BOTD and say he sold the scene really well
-
Sheamus is back and…gasp!..is heel! No one saw that coming! (eyeroll). He also looks like a damn fool. The mohawk is fine, really it is, it’s the braiding of the beard that got me. I was really scared he was going to take DBs belt as a half flashback to when he took the championship from him, and half to give a belt to a heel. Thank the lord it didn’t happen.
-
WHY CAN’T PEOPLE HAVE FIRST NAMES!!! Neville sounds so gay. If you’re gonna make him have one name, just have it be Adrian. Ugh. I’m not as against the purple, and the cape and all that…his colors will change I’m sure. Still happy to see him there though, he definitely deserves it.
-
Speaking of. Lu-cha! Lu-cha! Glad to see the Dragons on there and glad to see them pick up a win. There was a small part of me that thought maybe Sin Cara would turn on Kallisto and set up a lucha rivalry, but WWE might want to stay against that so they don’t think they’re copying Lucha Underground.
-
Divas match was hella long. Good for them I guess.
-
The crowd started off fine…then just divulged into a bunch of toddlers. They were tired so they were cranky and acted out. The last match was infuriating to me. I don’t care if you chant things that are against the matches, but only if they’re relevant. Chanting for Sami Zayn and saying “we are awesome” during a match? Fuck you. Go home.
-
That being said, twitter was saying that Lillian was announcing the next WWE event in San Jose and the crowd started chanting “We don’t live here”. That’s hilarious
Yes, God forbid the crowd not meekly accept yet another Big Show/Kane/Reigns Raw main event.
This is what night-after-'Mania crowds do. They put themselves over because the show is usually mediocre coming after 'Mania. Go back on the Network and watch the one from two years ago when they invented Fandangoing, cheered heel Ziggler cashing in on a crippled ADR, and chanted for Big Show during a Sheamus/Orton match that ran way too long.
Look at it this way. They just sat through 5+ hours of Wrestlemania the night before, now they’re sitting through 3-4+ hours of Raw and whatever else they tape before it. That’s a long fucking time to be sitting through this stuff and it’s time to have some fun with it.
Would you rather have them doing this, or falling asleep?
Male wrestlers probably don’t have first names for the same reason most Divas don’t have last names. Also, I wouldn’t be surprised if “Adrian” would make some people think of Adrian Adonis.
As for “the next WWE event in San Jose,” I’ll believe it when I see it happen. I wouldn’t be surprised to see it suddenly cancelled with no official reason given, but “unofficially” it is Vince retaliating against the local crowds for daring to boo The New Chosen One, Roman Reigns.
They never bothered to turn the announcers’ table back over, so Byron was missing visual aids like monitors and such. That’s probably why he sounded lost, especially with Vince screaming in his ear.
At any rate, I’m wondering if there’s going to be some replacements in the announce team. Maybe Maggle will be off the air for a while and they’ll move up some talking heads from the undercard shows.
They kind of have to write Cole off tv for a few weeks–they kayfabe hospitalized him with a fractured vertebrae.
Trial by Fire. They put the guy out there alone on LIVE TV with Vince and Kevin Dunn in his ear. I’d probably have screamed in anger and frustration, then broke and ran toward the production truck with the singular goal of killing Vince. Then I’d be stopped and restrained by huge guys and taken to a hospital for a little rest before I start looking for the new job.
Seems like a lot of guys are “paying their dues” right now.
I dunno, sometimes it’s hard to tell Byron and Corey Graves apart, voice wise. But I’d still rather they give Corey Graves and Renee Young a shot at announcing Smackdown. Even just once.
Dean Ambrose had a shattered trachea in storyline on Smackdown a few months ago, and he was back in action on Monday. Cole’s recovery should take a week tops. 