anarchistxx

Seth Rollins is going to be a huge star, unless they fuck it up. He is the best hot tag in the business right now, reminds me of when Daniel Bryan was on fire a year ago, ironically in matches against The Shield. The Real Americans are fantastic as well, annoying if they break up - if Cesaro goes face he could do with Colter still as his mouthpiece, although it won't happen. I hope neither team break up - both are awesome and factions need to stay together longer. Have there ever been as many hot young/fresh acts in a wrestling company? The likes of The Miz and Alberto del Rio must be worried, how long are they going to be kept around on decent salaries when they have been completely usurped by acts who are just way above them in terms of look, character and in ring ability. The New Age Outlaws and Kane is suits is hilarious, they need to keep those guys around as corporate muscle for a few more months. They look suitably enough like aging, smirking office sycophants. Who would have thought in 1998 that 16 years later Road Dogg and Goldust would still be on WWE in a prominent role?

The lack of an unusual big name or any 'dream matches' is hurting the show this year, especially as the biggest star Brock Lesnar hasn't been involved in much of the build and is involved in a pretty meaningless feud. Doesn't help that loads of guys have just been tossed into a pointless battle royal which we have no reason to care about. Harper/Cena is superb thus far, great night of in ring action. 'Follow the buzzards' has to be one of the worst WWE catchphrases of all time. I cringe everytime I hear it.

I don't really use social networks, so if he is funny and has personality online the booking team are doing something wrong. To be fair he doesn't get much to work with, always in 'feuds' rather than actual storylines.

Anyone find Big E really bland? There is no reason he deserves to be the IC Champion. The wrestler should make the title, not the other way round. They surely need to imbue him with some kind of character, unfortunately his promos are horrible from what I've heard. The Fatal 4 Way was indeed excellent. Ziggler continues to be really over despite the awful booking he has had to endure, they should run with him for a while after Wrestlemania, see how he lasts as an upper midcard face who actually wins from time to time. He could easily be elevated again within a year.

The promos have been fantastic since Orton & Batista ceased to be the focal point. Things have seemed a lot less forced, Batista is always better when he is laid back and given room to play with it. Even Randy is coming off really well.

It's kind of funny how Orton/Batista have basically become a total afterthought for the show. They've gone from the principal stars and headliners to just props in the bigger storyline, roles that could be filled by basically anyone. Props to WWE for changing their mind for once and listening to the fans.

Because you are running a thirty man battle royal two months after running a thirty man battle royal which you sell as a unique, one off annual event, one that consistently gets good buys because of that.

He's certainly made the most of his attributes, however much we criticize him for the way he has gone about it.

Raven for me had a better look and more natural charisma than Bray Wyatt is demonstrating now. He probably benefited from not having a big budget behind him, with Bray Wyatt you have that irony of a lot of money and makeup going into making him look unkept and wild and quirky. Raven just looked like your typical slacker, it was a product of the time. I certainly agree that Bray Wyatt needs motivation. This isn't a problem exclusive to him - so often in WWE the heels start a feud by doing random beatdowns, without any particular rhyme and reason except the bookers wanted to put the guys together. This goes back to the conversation about not having enough midcard feuds. Look at Armageddon 2000 - they had a six man tag based on the fact that Malenko was this sleazy guy who wanted to date Lita and got humiliated in the process, they filmed some fun little scenes in restaraunts and hotel rooms, it made the feud stand out from the rest of the card and not just another match. Kane/Jericho on the same card was based on spilt coffee and Kane being angry that Jericho was better looking and cooler than he was. Val Venis vs Chyna has to angle of RTC wanting top censor scantily clad divas. These aren't amazing exampled of booking, but it gives lower card wrestlers time to devlop their characters in a way that isn't just some boring linear promo backstage or a scripted back and forth exchange. I wrote a long post a couple of years back on how WWE needs to become more of an episodic drama with proper storylines, with the wrestling just being part of it - they need to have affairs, jealousy, incorporate real life problems and issues, have characters rather than performers.

I think a lot of matches will go long. HHH/Bryan is sure to get 40 minutes if you include the videos/entrances. The main event will likely be kept relatively short considering how blown up Batista is, although the triple threat dynamic will give him time to rest. Presumably there will be some angle with Hogan taking up twenty minutes. Cena/Wyatt and Lesnar/Taker will both go long. Still, I dread to think how they will fill a lot of the time, especially if they are shunting The Shield down to the pre-show, which seems a bit silly considering how heavily they have been featured all year. Not a fan of the battle royal really, devalues the Royal Rumble a little bit.

When people look back on eras of WWE, the period of time when The Miz and Alberto Del Rio were in world title matches at Wrestlemania will surely rank as a low point.

It was only a big deal because Linda was running for the senate at the time and they didn't want the bad press, especially since it could have been equated to the Benoit thing.

They should have gone with Undertaker vs Cena this year - nobody knows how long Taker has left, and Cena wasn't in an essential program, the stuff with the Wyatt's could easily have waited until Backlash. It would have been a much more exciting match. Lesnar could have worked Sheamus or Roman Reigns or whatever. If he isn't involved in any of the promotion of build up, it doesn't matter a great deal who he is facing. He is almost like The Undertaker in that it is a big match autumatically. Cena/Taker and Lesnar/Reigns would have felt so much fresher as well, everyone saw Taker/Lesnar multiple times more than a decade ago.

I loved the Orton sideways backbreaker done off the apron when Bryan was wrapper round the post. Some of the kendo stick shots were nice and stiff as well.

Isn't it better just having a thread for the individual show? Bit of an effort to post thoughts in five different topic, and must be a lot of work to put it all together, especially if you are going to do it for multiple shows a week.

Agreed, Stephanie has always been way better than someone like Vicki Guerrero, who I'm astonished was on television for that long. She's had more years with WWE in a prominent role than Eddie did. Steph had the whiny, immature 'daddy's little girl' schtick down to a tee in 2000.

Who was it who said they were just waiting for that elongated beatdown section from HHH? They got it last night. Every feud, seriously. The beating seemed to go on forever, and there wasn't much he could do except endless fake looking punches and throwing him into the barricade about a dozen times. Would have been far more effective over a couple of minutes, although the chair shot was cool and unexpected. Could have done with blood, though. Anyone catch Cena claiming he had wrestled over 3,500 matches since his debut? That must be a work, surely? It would equate to about 300 every year, and he has had a few spells off for injury. Bray Wyatt is very underwhelming to me, and doesn't deserve such a big Wrestlemania slot in the slightest. His character is like something you would see in an embarassing fifth rate made for television horror movie, I've seen more believable characters in backyard wrestling. Ridiculous corny and they overplay it. That character has no legs long term unless they change it up. Wonder what they are doing with The Shield at Wrestlemania? Reigns beating Kane in a quick semi-squash wouldn't be the worst idea, but what about Amborse & Rollins? After the work they have done getting over this year, and their ability in the ring, it seems a shame to waste them in some battle royal. A tag match with The Usos feels like a backward step. Maybe Kane/New Age Outlaws vs The Shield? Would maybe work as an opener.

Alex Riley and Zach Ryder would be a great little underdog face tag team. They could at least play the 2 Cool role as over guys with cool offence that are over with the fans and aren't really hurt by losses.

This is fairly moot, since I'm not sure casual fans attach much importance to match quality, or even view it in the same terms that we and Meltzer do. I remember watching Backlash 2000 and spinning on the Benoit/Jericho and Guerrero/Rios matches I felt were deathly boring to get to the title match where we really wanted to know the outcome and the build up had really excited us all with the DX Express explosion, the 'will Austin show up' angle etc.

Paul Heyman as the despicable sleazeball manager?

Whole post reminded me of this scene:

I said that it was an unimpeachable opinion amongst smart fans in 2004 that Kobashi was amazing. Later I said that a good proportion of smart fans would have known about Kobashi, even if they hadn't necessarily watched a match of his. Again, depends how far you want to take the term 'smart fan'. Most fans who were 'smart' to the extent that they kept track of backstage news, posted on message boards and bought a lot of footage would have known about Kobashi. People who glanced the Wrestlezone site and posted on the Lords of Pain forums, maybe not. Not sure what you are getting at here. I was using the reaction to Kobashi as proof he was someone well known in the ROH fan community. They weren't excited because ROH were making him out to be a big deal, they were excited because they already thought of him as a big deal, and most of them probably thought they'd never get to see him wrestle in person.

Well no, but that isn't relevant at all in this discussion. All The Boys Love Mandy Lane sold fuck all next to The Da Vinci Code in 2006; that doesn't mean it wasn't well known and popular amongst the cult horror movie internet community. The Shawn and Flair DVDs weren't exclusively selling to smart fans, which is what we are talking about here. My only point was that Kenta Kobashi was well known amongst the ROH audience and fairly well known in the internet wrestling community as a whole before being an 'internet fan' became normality. Only a couple of months to recall. Kobashi came over because a big enough audience already wanted to pay to watch him, not because ROH had spent ages promoting him to their crowd. Samoa Joe had often been put forward as a dream opponent and they thought they could sell a lot of DVDs.

That truly is appalling, for a company with twelve years to build up a fanbase and live television every single week. TNA is beyond retrievable now, it is a case of when not if. The brand is too stale, too old, too damaged. We have established that nobody is going to compete with WWE in the modern market, but TNA didn't even offer an alternative creatively. It was the same old, same old, and they really began to decline rapidly when they started singing anyone remotely assosciated with WWE. They should have stuck with getting the bigger stars and building up their own talent. Wrestling isn't like soccer, where Manchester City can spent a few hundred million on players and compete. It is art and television, and if the last decade has taught is anything it is that you need a brand, an image and a definitive product, regardless of what talent you put out there. Hulk Hogan, Kurt Angle or whomever isn't going to jolt ratings, not in the long run - the only thing to do that is by putting on a unique, brilliantly written product that creates a buzz and gets people talking. They don't even look remotely modern. There is space for a second promotion, but you aren't going to get there if you employ Eric Bischoff and Vince Russo or Christian or Mike Tenay or Ken fucking Kennedy. Try something new for fucks sake. At least ROH catered to a niche for a while, had a specific feel and structure to their shows that pleased the fanbase, even if it wasn't a fanbase that was going to make you money in the long run. Who do TNA cater to? Who do they look to cater to? I doubt they even know, which is half the problem. When this thred first started the answer was 'no'. They had grown as a company, put on some good matches, and there was a decent amount of talent amongst the awful booking, dreadful content and constant ineptitude. Now, seven more years of embarassment later, the answer has to be 'Yes'. Has any company squandered so many opportunities to compete? Wasted so much big name talent? Even when the WWE was at a creative and commercial low during 2006-2010 they failed to make any sort of mark.

Surely they are going to work the wedding into some sort of angle? Marriage + babyface title coronation on the Raw after Wrestlemania sounds perfect. It also allows Batista/Lesnar or whoever is challenging after Wrestlemania to get into some shenanigans and start the feud. I wonder if HHH is considering coming out of semi-retirement for a post mania title program with Daniel Bryan?