Topic: Wrestling?

WIZDOW IS BESTDOW

Oh my god Wizdow is great

Welp. Cena just went heel and Rusev and Lana's heat just got killed. Dammit.

Couldn't even wait for 'mania, huh. >_<

That lightning spot just now was awesome. o_O;

EDIT: This sums up the state of the WWE right now:

So I just caught the replay of Raw on my DVR, and....well here's some bullet points.

It wasn't all that good.

Ryback, Rowan, Big Show, and Kane completely and utterly killed the crowd dead. I blame part of it on Rowan's music, which, while I personally kinda like it, admittedly has nothing exciting about it and does nothing to get people pumped about who is coming out. Ryback hasn't gotten a good reaction since he got exposed in his match with Cesaro and, despite having him getting really hyped up beforehand, being the first man on Cena's team eliminated from Survivor Series. He cut one really great promo, where we finally got to learn more about him, but at that point, nobody cared anymore, and nobody cares about him now. Big Show and Kane basically need to just retire and work backstage now, because Kane had his last, and possibly final, good match at Extreme Rules last year, and Big Show had his against Sheamus about 3 years ago, and they are both beyond stale. All four of them are getting New Day heat.

Bray Wyatt cut a great promo, finally explaining what "Follow The Buzzards" meant, and I really like this story he's doing. He's not like Lesnar, who just wanted to do it because he could, or because it was fun. Basically, Bray Wyatt respects, or used to respect, the Undertaker and has gotten sick and disgusted by what he feels the Undertaker has become.

So, rather than let Undertaker go quietly on his own terms, Bray has taken it upon himself to give the Undertaker one last glorious battle to remember, before he finishes him for good and sends the old warrior to Valhalla.

Undertakers reason to accept is equally simple. To prove that the old dog, even with all of his battle scars and war wounds, still has one last fight left within him, and that he and he alone says when its over. It should be great to watch, provided Undertaker is in good enough health for it, and he can avoid getting hurt in the match like last year.

That being said, Wrestlemania is in trouble, and is in danger of being a not very good Wrestlemania (and for anyone who wants to claim Wrestlemania can't be bad, just looking into them should tell you about half of the 30 mania's so far have been pretty terrible, with certain standouts like 4, 7, 9, 11, 13, and 15 really taking the cake. The first Mania where the entire card could have been called good was probably 17, the rest were all known for having 1, maybe 2, really good matches, and the rest of the show sucking terribly, and for some, they didn't get any good matches.)

Roman Reigns is getting very little reaction. Not a negative "we don't like you" reaction, I mean a "we don't fucking care" reaction, and Brock Lesnar is being paid to do nothing. Paul Heyman is literally the main event and main build of the Wrestlemania main event right now, and while HE, at least, is doing a FANTASTIC job, the interest in the main event of Mania right now is the lowest its been in probably ten years.

The writers decided to get all cute with the Orton/Rollins story, apparently to try and "swerve" the audience, for some stupid reason. As a result, even though everybody knew that Orton was going to attack Rollins, and wanted to see him attack Rollins, we get two weeks of random nothingness before finally getting the actual beatdown of Rollins tonight. Plus, that opening was just dumb. Rollins is so smart, that he couldn't figure out something that JAMIE NOBLE of all people could!?

Sure, you could argue that they wanted to build up anticipation for it, but if they were, they completely failed. The crowd was dead for most of the beatdown, except the table spot. On top of that, the beatdown itself was too effective. Orton basically got his revenge already, so why watch Mania to see them wrestle?

The exact same complaint goes for Cena's beatdown of Rusev tonight. He knocks him out and makes him tap out? Before Fastline, where he knocked him out on stage, that was one thing, it was Cena being aggressive, that was fine before the first match, you just wanted to see who you wanted to win then. Now, the entire point of the story is seeing Cena, the all american face, get revenge for america against Rusev, and he DID that tonight. So why should we watch him do it again at Mania? Because he can win the U.S. Title, a belt he hasn't held or even lowered himself to bother competing for in 10 years?

This is no different than last september, when Roman Reigns beat Seth Rollins in a match clean less than a week before they were set to wrestle on PPV. That was stupid then, and its stupid now. We have 2-3 more weeks before Mania and they'll have to work very hard to make those two feuds interesting enough to watch.

I don't want to talk crap about the Ladder Match for the IC title, but I admit I have some issues with it. For one thing, these kind of multi man matches at Mania, while they ARE fun to watch, are honestly just busywork, a way of saying "Hey, the writing team has literally NOTHING for you to do, so we're gonna throw you into a clusterfuck match just so you can collect a Mania check" Which is kinda sad, considering who is involved:

Wade Barrett: Hasn't won a single match since he won the title, except for title matches, because that is how WWE feels he should be booked for some reason. You COULD say that "wins don't matter", but if you just keep losing over and over and over then whats the point of you having a title?

R-Truth: You know what, before this "Lets steal the IC title" story started, I thought R-Truth got fired.

Dolph Ziggler: He won the main event of Survivor Series against 3 guys to become the sole survivor, then gave all the credit for that accomplishment to Sting and John Cena. He then cut terrible promo's that went out of style 20 years ago, has no personality outside of "I like to show off" and, while he HAS had really good matches, he hasn't DONE ANYTHING IMPORTANT since Survivor Series.

Stardust: So, are we just supposed to forget that he and Goldust are fighting? I like Stardust, but I'm disappointed if this means that Goldust/Stardust won't get the Wrestlemania match they've been wanting for years.

Luke Harper: Same with Dolph Ziggler, he has done literally nothing of importance since Survivor Series, and we have no reason to care about him.

Daniel Bryan: The most popular star of 2013, who WWE has spent that last 2 months trying very hard to reduce the crowds reaction to him, and they've finally succeeded. He's still popular, yeah, but his reactions have been going down, and fans seem to have finally been broken down by WWE's insistence that D-Bry isn't a main event talent.

Guys like that, that get that kind of huge reaction without any real backing from the promotion, who just by being themselves manage to get everybody's attention and respect, are rare, and as a result of them NOT being company manufactured, they tend to get mishandled when they pop up, until the crowd stops giving a shit. Goldberg, Zach Ryder, Test, Cody Rhodes, Cesaro, Dolph Ziggler, Bobby Lashely, Booker T, and plenty of others were hot with the crowd due to their own efforts, were ignored or mishandled by their company, who thought their writing team knew better, and ended up losing their fan support because of it. Daniel Bryan can probably add himself to that list.

Dean Ambrose: The most popular guy of 2014, who, like Daniel Bryan, can add himself to the above list because he's been mishandled since the Shield broke up. He's still getting good crowd reactions, but once the casual fans realize he's not going anywhere fast, they'll get less and less as time goes on.

Rumor has it that the Tag Titles will be defended in a 4 way tag match, with the following opponents for Cesaro/Kidd:

The Usos: I've mentioned this before, early last year, when they were feuding with The Wyatts, they were doing AWESOME matches every PPV. Then that ended, and from August on, they have been very very boring, mainly because instead of finding ways to innovate their offense, or saving the big stuff for important matches, they've been doing every big spot they have to offer every single week, until now they are stagnant and now nobody gives two shits about them.

Los Matadors: I honestly thought they had gotten fired.


The New Day: I honestly wish they would get fired.

yeah, I see no reason to give a shit.


I have no issue with the Battle Royal, I think it could be fun, like last years, but I hope whoever wins it this year actually gets something out of it, unlike Cesaro did.


Undertaker won't be showing up until Wrestlemania itself, and I have no issue with that. They did it 11 years ago with his Mania 20 match with Kane, and it worked fine. The rumor that he's coming out to a Johnny Cash song though, is not one I like. If it's going to be his last match, let him come out with the classic Deadman theme, give him all the fog and fire and lighting in the budget, hell, let him come out with a variation of his original outfit from 22 years ago, but don't throw a Johnny Cash song in there just for shits and giggles, especially not "When the Man comes Around."


Now, Sting not appearing again till Wrestlemania however, I DO have issue with. Lesnar is barely here, and Taker won't be here till the show, and this is, if rumors are true, the only time Sting will be seen in WWE. It's a complete waste to not have him around as much as possible. Also, what the hell was the point of screwing with his voice? "Oh its a reference to the Black Scorpion gimmick for the old WCW fans!" That's stupid, because most old WCW fans STOPPED WATCHING WWE 10 years ago, hence why ratings have never been what they were back in 2001-2003.

Plus, for those that don't know, Sting wrestled The Black Scorpion at Starcade 1990. I was 7 months old at that time, and I'll be 25 this may. We aren't just talking about the usual 3-5-7 years it usually takes for wrestling to gain a whole new audience that they can reuse gimmicks and ideas with, we're talking about a gimmick that occurred my entire lifetime ago being given a partial reference to appeal to fans that have certainly more than moved on from watching wrestling since then, assuming some of them haven't died out in the meantime. This is a time where they should be reintroducing Sting to their audience, showing off just who he is, what he's done, and WHY he is a threat to Triple H, who the WWE audience has spend over a decade being told why he is better than everybody else.

So yeah, maybe this is too negative, and I'm sure that, if over the next couple weeks WWE gets its head out of its ass, and the talent work hard, Mania could be a success and a fun show, but as it stands right now, its rather uncertain, and sadly, Bray Wyatt's and Paul Heyman's promos while awesome, aren't enough to fix things.

I can only see three reasons why Booker T was depushed that hard: He is black, or he could not manage to pass around the clique and the good old boys club in WWF in general, or because he had a criminal record.
That may sound harsh and silly for reasons, but Booker T had everything a main eventer needed, and Vince wanted. He is tall, has acting skills and was a rather good wrestler, and people loved him so much that he could have programs with Steve Austin without looking silly.

Ryder, Ambrose, Cesaro and Bryan got depushed cause Vince did not want them to suceeed. But if he does not want to see people succeed, why employ them? I really don´t get it.
Ryder could have easily reached Dolph Ziggler level and sell merc like crazy, but with a program like he got against Kane, that was simply impossible. Would have wished that Edge would have pushed for both of his Edgeheads, I liked Curt Hawkins too.

Everyone, casual or smark, who has seen a match of Cesaro knows that the man is pure sports entertainment in the ring and probably the best wrestler in the company in general, even with Bryan, Kalisto or Rollins around. He needs a manager or a hot chick to show for him outside when he is not speaking to his own natives(he is great in LandVogTV here in the german version of smackdown.), and he can easily reach a Rusev level.

Regarding Lashley and Goldberg, that was just stupid and especially with Lashley, Vince pushed hard for him. I can see why he did not want to push Scott Steiner for example, that guy was a ticking bomb and had so massively degressed from a great wrestler into a belly to belly suplex suplemented brawler that it was really painful.

Regarding Ryback, I said this months ago:
Caveman feed me more Ryback is boring and utter garbage, basically Warrior 2.0 without the intentity. Sarcastic, big guy Ryback was great, and even refocused, tough guy Ryback was good.

Kane should retire. There, I said it. Not because he is so seriously bad as wrestler or with promos, he is probably still better than Wyatt in all regards if he is really forced to show it, but he has nowhere to go from here on and is probably on the level of J&J security. And he is also the nice guy as it seems, so he would only put people over like Jericho and only accept titles relucantly, so there is no point to let him dance like this. I guess he will be around until Cena says that he can´t go on his best of abilites, maybe in 2 or 3 years, and then give his real spot, a super uppercarder so to say, to Cena. Or to Sheamus, whose ship probably has also silently sailed at this age.

I'd like to think that Booker T's failures in WWE were more because of him being a WCW guy, and that his failures in WCW were cause of them being incompetent, but frankly Booker only got the title in WCW because they were getting served with a racial discrimination lawsuit, and having a black guy as world champ was basically damage control. That being said, WCW did some seriously racist shit back in the day (like Harlem Heat originally being known as "The Posse" Kane and Kole, with the gimmick originally being that they were plantation workers for a white guy named Col. Robert Parker and came out chained together. Did I mention WCW's biggest audience was in the south, and that the racial discrimination lawsuit was one of many?)


Cesaro HAD a manager. He's had 2 managers and a valet, and all of them did NOTHING for him.

Exactly, they did nothing for him. Aksana was only eye candy and not on the level of Lana, Zeb Coulter was primarily the manager of Swagger and Heyman has basically only one real client and Paul Heyman guy, Brock Lesnar.

Gets kinda heavy toward the end.

You're right Seth, it's not like what you did to the Shield, it's like what you did to Randy.