Actually, they were victorious at Elimination Chamber vs the Shield. It was a contender for (my personal) match of the year.
Since you’re soon to be an Orlandrone, are you planning to attend an NXT taping? If so, I want to get in on it. Get in your ticket block, make travel arrangements, get somebody to watch my dogs, etc.
Yeah absolutely!
I doubt it’ll be until the fall or so since I’m not planning the move until June (or, if fate smiles on me for once in my damn life and I get a job I’m interviewing for, mid-May) and I’ll have to find a job etc. etc.
I imagine that seeing a taping at Full Sail is on the top of the things to do list for me and Ms. Cups.
Once she and I get into the planning stages I’ll make a post on here aboot it and let everyone know
Totally off topic but relevant to ask here:
A band I rather enjoy (Apocalyptica) is going to be playing at the Lincoln theater in Raleigh. Since I’ve never been outside of Charlotte…how is that as a theater?
I’m like 90% sure I’m going by myself and I’m curious as to how the venue is
Hey, I’ll go with you. Send me a PM with deets.
Lincoln Theatre used to be a single movie theatre that now hosts shows for artists slightly under the mainstream radar. I’ve seen a few bands there, like the Codebreakers, OK Go and They Might Be Giants. It’s an Americana structure that stands out against all the modern cosmopolitan surroundings.
These are the NXT tour dates that have been announced as of now;
Thursday, May 14th: Tower Theatre, Philadelphia, PA
Saturday, May 16th: Washington Avenue Armory Albany, NY
Thursday, June 11th: Stage AE, Pittsburgh, PA
Friday, June 12th: Agora Theatre, Cleveland, OH
Saturday, June 13th: LC Pavilion, Columbus, OH
Nothing on the west coast yet, alas, but for any of you located in the northeast, the tickets go on sale May 1st.
*BAHWANGAWANGAHHHH
BANNNHHHH*
ANGELICO WINS LUCHA UNDERGROUND!
Tonight, the Trios championship would be decided. The three teams left would all compete in one match, and a single loss eliminates their whole team.
It started off as kind of a clusterfuck with Angelico suffering the most abuse. Despite being about 6 1/2 feet tall with long arms, he couldn’t reach his partners to tag out, while the other teams would come in two at a time. Ivelisse also had a knee injury, which she kept sitting out to tend to, and Son of Havoc was in a perpetual state of being knocked off the ring apron and taking 15 minutes to recover. Angelico was rarely inactive, spending most of the time getting beat up, and the match lasted 40 minutes.
In the meantime, Killshot pinned Texano, eliminating the latter’s whole team. Later, Angelico pinned either him or Mack, don’t remember which. It seemed like Team Disfunction won the belts, but then evil high priest Cueto emerged from his chamber and announced that they haven’t won yet: there’s one more team, and the match is now NO DQ. Here comes The Crew with kendo sticks. They lay waste to Team Disfunction. Mr. Cisco drags Angelico to the top of the temple, while Baal chokes out Ivelisse with his stick and Cortes Castro and Son of Havoc fight outside the ring.
In anticipation of Smapti correcting me, I look up LU’s Wikipedia page to see if I got the names right, and see that
a new team of Mil Muertes and two Disciples of Death have won the Trios titles. Stupid tape delays.
Amid the chaos, SoH throws Castro into the Les Grossman lookalike in the audience. Les gets mad and beats the shit out of Castro, then rips off his shirt, shows a Greek godlike body, and becomes Daivari, or whatever his LU name will be. Then, Ivelisse sees a kendo stick lying by its lonesome in the ring, and picks it up to administer a bitch lashing on Cisco and Baal. Then OMGHOLYSHITWTF Angelico leaps from the top of the temple 30 feet away and 30 feet high and lands on the Crew! I’m on my feet and screaming! Only Johnny Mundo has done that before, but he didn’t land on anybody. Angelico and SoH then do a double finish off the top corner turnbuckles to secure the victory. Team Disfunction wins! The crowd chants “You deserve it!” Awesome match, but credit goes to Angelico. He carried easily 90% of the match and performed the death-defying leap at the end.
I couldn’t watch NXT after that. I was too blown away, and didn’t want to risk the letdown, especially if it’s a pre-WM taping.
I wish they could have scheduled a different opening match than Sexy Star vs Pentagon Jr. I thought that deserved a more intense booking, and Star’s win wipes away the buildup of Pentagon’s previous reign of terror. Maybe they’ll continue the feud, but LU typically doesn’t linger on such plot developments. Once the deciding match is done, that’s it. Make way for the new angle.
*BAHWANGAWANGAHHHH
BANNNHHHH*
It’s late cuz I had an interview (!!!) this morning, but here are NXT comments as I remember them, so no particular order:
This was a full NXT! We had a good number of matches and even had a couple of backstage segments to boot
Remember when Bayley was relevant? Yeah, those were good times. My unrequited love for her nonwithstanding, she is a pretty big player in the game and hasn’t won in god knows how many weeks…are they just Ziggler-ing her? Using her popularity to try and rub on other Divas? If that’s their plan it isn’t working, she’s losing steam. The match itself was as good as it’s gonna get given it’s a three-way match. The ending was kind of interesting with the submissive/pin combo. Good job for Becky Lynch winning, I do like her.
Show started off with Finn Balor wrestling against…CJ Parker? I think? I am guessing this is CJs last show since he quit weeks ago. Can we use Balor’s snapback neck thingy as his finisher? Just sayin. Other than that, the match was fine. At the end we got a Tyler Breeze promo so apparently that’s happening. Doesn’t make THAT much sense to me since Breeze/Itami makes more sense but, you know, whaddyagonnado?
Rhyno over the ever-changing Tye Dillenger. Or did he face the Justin Gabriel knock-off? I dunno I can’t remember. Regardless, Rhyno and his gigantic freaking arms won
Itami vs Tye…or was it it CJ? Well regardless he won as well, no televised GTS yet
Dana Brooks is sooooo ugly and he voice is soooo weird. I’m sad that I will have to watch her.
What a weird interview from KO. He talked about the draft? and kinda meandered around and talked flaky. It was really odd.
-KO vs Alex Riley was good as well. It’s good to see KO fight because I’m not used to seeing him outside of a “PPV”. I hope that he continues to do matches and Zayn continues to do matches and they don’t actually face off until the next Takeover.
Considering how much shit some of these guys have been through, their salary makes sense. The richest of these however do the smallest amount of work.
Ladies and gentlemen, Angelico has just won wrestling. Everybody else can go home; this South African dude just won it all. Pentagon Jr, I think you’ll be last out of the building, so please turn off the lights and lock the door.
Since my slideshow deslideifier doesn’t work with this site, I’d love you forever if you’d just give us the damn list.
Those numbers are bullshit.
There is no way that Zach Freaking Ryder is making that much money and more than the people below him.
That gets a big nope from me
Unless I missed it, the article didn’t mention its sources. Zach Ryder at $535K? Maybe if they took his merchandise sales for the couple of months he was actually over with the public and extrapolated it.
For comparison, WWE has been the target of a couple of lawsuits by ex-wrestlers that have revealed some actual contracts. “Big Vito” had a downside guarantee of $75K, a 25% cut of merchandise featuring him (not sure if there was any…), and cuts of house show and PPV revenue determined by the WWE itself.
I’ve never understood how anybody can make money from social media myself, but somehow Zack Ryder stumbled across a gold mine. I’m amazed that Titus O’Neil is so high on the list and Roman Reigns is at the bottom, as much as he’s been pushed. Rusev is essentially a one-trick pony, but somehow he capitalizes on Cold War zeitgeist.
I wonder how much Erick Rowan makes off sheep mask merchandising?
I changed religions when I saw that.
Mention: Roman Reigns – $245,000
25. Bray Wyatt – $254,200
24. Jack Swagger – $275,000
23. Seth Rollins – $310,000
22. Titus O’Neil – $335,050
21. Kofi Kingston – $354,200
20. Bad News Barrett – $445,000
19. Zack Ryder – $535,000
18. Christian – $595,000
17. Ryback – $665,000
16. Daniel Bryan – $700,000
15. Miz – $712,000
14. Goldust – $725,000
13. Rusev – $725,000
12. Mark Henry – $877,000
11. Dolph Ziggler – $900,000
10. Kane, $905,000
9. Chris Jericho – $974,000
8. Big Show – $1.2 million
7. Sheamus – $1.3 million
6. Randy Orton – $1.6 million
5. Brock Lesnar – $2 million
4. Triple H – $2.12 million
3. The Undertaker – $2.25 million
2. John Cena – $2.75 million
So The-Handsome-Christian makes half a million dollars for what? Appearances?
That’s gotta be really old. Listing Jericho and Rock?
Well, with this Sunday’s pay-per-view coming up… this Sunday, I guess it’s time for a special EXTREME edition of Smapti’s Completely Infallible* Match Predictions.
Seth Rollins vs. Randy Orton for the world title, cage match, no RKOs allowed, Kane guarding the outside of the cage. Back in the day when steel cage matches were introduced, the idea was to guarantee the fans that there would be no outside interference or other shenanigans in the match. In today’s WWE, it seems like having a match in a cage is almost a guarantee of shenanigans, be it the cage being lifted up, creepy kids with auto-tuned hymns, or dancing holograms. I’d say it’s dead certain that Rollins retains the title here, the only big question is what shenanigan leads to it, except that, since we’ve been guaranteed the RKO is banned, we can be sure that someone is getting RKOed. Maybe Orton decides to RKO him anyway and gets DQed. Maybe Rollins RKOs Orton and deliberately DQs himself. Maybe Kane RKOs Orton, or Rollins, or both of them, or himself. (I just hope it leads to the end of the Corporate Kane gimmick - it’s impossible to be intimidated by a doughy middle-aged libertarian who wrestles in slacks.)
Daniel Bryan vs. Bad News Barrett for the IC title. WWE has been cagey about whether this match is even going to happen ever since Bryan injured his Nonspecific at some point in the last few weeks, but I think if they were going to cancel the match they’d have done so by now. I really hope they don’t take the belt off of him on Sunday, because, let’s face it - Wade Barrett is the worst Intercontinental champion ever. They throw it on him as a placeholder whenever they can’t think of a storyline for the belt, and then job him out constantly until he miraculously manages to win when the belt is on the line once every two months. I’ll go with Bryan to win here.
John Cena vs. Rusev for the US title, [strike]Yappapi Indian strap ma…err, Russian chain match. CENAWINSLOL.
Nikki Bella vs. Naomi for the Ladies’ championship. This is a placeholder match that’s only happening because AJ has taken her ball and gone home and Paige is off making a direct-to-DVD movie nobody will ever see, and I’m really not interested because I’m sure they’ve done this match like fifty times by now. Nikki (who I guess is a face again now because Reasons) is going to retain. When are Charlotte and Bayley going to get called up so we can have women wrestlers with character traits other than “Snotty bitch”, “Crazy bitch”, or “Lesbo bitch”?
Roman Reigns vs. Big Show, last man standing. Now that the pressure to hot-shot Reigns into the world championship is off, the time has come to rebuild him, focus on the aspects of his character that made him popular in the first place, and position him as someone who the fans will support winning the world title at Summerslam or at the next WrestleMania. Fans didn’t want Roman Reigns the wise-cracking, happy-go-lucky Cena clone babyface - they wanted the silent badass who just goes out there and kicks ass and dares you to try to stop him. This match is the beginning of their opportunity to put that Roman Reigns over. I saw Reigns and Show put on some pretty good matches on the house show tour last month, so I know they’re capable of putting on a good match here. I give this one to Reigns - he needs to go over here, and he needs to do so in a suitably impressive fashion (slam Big Show, maybe?)
Dolph Ziggler vs. Sheamus, “Kiss Me Arse” match. (For some reason I thought it was going to be Neville in this match at first. My bad.) This is a TV-PG show, right? There’s no way they’re actually going to have this match conclude with one of these two men having to smooch the other’s pasty white buttocks, are they? Does anyone even want to see that happen? (Well, I’m sure Vince McMahon would think it’s the funniest thing he’s seen since Stone Cold gave Arn Anderson a golden shower, and maybe some of the ladies would mark for Ziggler’s behind, but I digress.) This is going to be a comedy match at best, and I’ll say Ziggler wins it so that his transformation into Billy Gunn Jr. can finally be complete. (On that note, am I the only person out there who’d mark for a Billy Gunn vs. Dolph Ziggler match?)
Dean Ambrose vs. Luke Harper, street fight. Dean Ambrose has wrestled on all but two PPVs since the Shield broke up, he’s main-evented nearly half of them, and yet he’s lost every single match. FACT. It’s really rather odd that someone as over as he is (he goes on second-to-last at house shows and his merch is almost as popular as Cena and Bryan’s) has been turned into a jobber to the stars. My only guess is that they were worried about him being more over than Reigns and so tried to bury him to make Reigns more over by process of elimination. But, as I’ve said before, now that the need to do that is gone, the trend needs to change. Harper’s post-Wyatt career hasn’t been particularly impressive either, but he’s won enough matches that he represents a credible threat, and these two have worked hardcore matches against each other in CZW and elsewhere (look up Jon Moxley vs. Brodie Lee on Youtube if you’re so inclined and note how Harper didn’t even have to change his clothes when his gimmick went from “outlaw trucker” to “crazy cult follower”), so this match should deliver. My prediction: Ambrose by a nose.
The Cesaro Kids vs. New Day for the tag titles. I believe this is the pre-show match. New Day is a joke in their current gimmick and absolutely should not be sniffing gold. I haven’t watched Raw lately, but if I’ve heard correctly, they’ve been teasing a heel turn for the team, and that’s a good thing. They need to ditch the matching outfits and goofy dance routine and We-Like-Jesus-But-We’re-Not-Allowed-To-Actually-Mention-Anything-Specifically-Christian angle and become the angry black radicals they were supposed to be at first. If they pull the trigger and turn them on Sunday, then they should win the titles. Otherwise, count on Nattie’s Wife and The Man With No First Name to retain.
but only when speaking ex cathedra regarding solemn matters of smark doctrine
Noo-hoo Day-hee’s gimmick is that they think the reason the fans are booing is because they haven’t demonstrated enough of their positivity and need to do it more often. “You not singing enough! You not dancing enough! You not clapping enough!” The third member will interfere to some degree so that the other two can win the match. It has the side effect of making Cesaro and Kidd (and by extension Natalya) faces. Because of this, I’m thinking Noo-hoo Day-hee will actually win the belts this Sunday, then feud with the Prime Time Playahs.
Maybe it’ll work. Daniel Bryan and CM Punk used their moral codes to become sanctimonious heels, then evolved into fan favorites. Weird shit happens in WWE.
I’ll guess RKO to Kane after the match, so the fans don’t have to go home with the taste of Rollins still being the champion in their mouths.
I have a feeling that DB is going to be attacked, either backstage at some point before the match (maybe in the pre-show - “see what happens when you miss the pre-show?”), or as he’s making his entrance. Backstage is more likely, as they can do it without running the risk of him getting hurt further trying to sell the attack.
Please, please, please, pleasepleaseplease, please, did I mention “please”, please let the ending be anything other than:
(a) Rusev touches three turnbuckles, but each time Stealth Cena touches the same one right behind him
(b) Rusev reaches for the fourth one, but Cena invokes SuperCenaStrength to hold him back
(c) Lana interferes, and Rusev bumps into her just before touching the fourth turnbuckle, allowing Cena to touch it first and retain
(d) Rusev has had enough of Lana
(e) Elizabeth leaves Macho Man to be at Hulk’s side - no, wait, that’s what happened after WrestleMania 5 - make that, Lana leaves Rusev to be at Cena’s side