anarchistxx

I was more comparing it in the sense of two smark demigods who have come through the ranks together finally getting their big moment to shine, rewarded for all the hard work and vilifying the IWC.

$19 is really cheap, is that the standard rate for WWE house shows lately? ROH shows cost more than that IIRC. BritWres shows are also in the same ballpark, even ones with few or no stars on them.

Yeah if they are going to push the button on this guy then now would be the time. Pretty much indisputably the best all round worker in the states. I wonder if they will give him a WMXX moment and hold off until the big show? Would be surreal if they recreate the Benoit/Eddie finish to that show exactly ten years later with Punk/Danielson.

Can you imagine paying $40 of whatever the going rate is to see that show? Serious, serious lack of star power, and it doesn't look like the sort of card that will make up for it in terms of workrate either. I remember seeing a show in early 2005 with Ric Flair, Shawn Michaels, Chris Benoit, Chris Jericho, HHH, Batista, Randy Orton, Edge, Kane along with other established names like Christian, Regal, Tajiri and others. And that was during the brand split, so half the stars were working the other house shows. They really have done a bad job of replacing top talent.

I can't imagine how strange it would be to be in a restaurant with Kawada cooking up food in the back.

The fact that you almost certainly would take a million dollars to write an article for BR.

1999-2000 WWF is full of examples of workers getting themselves over. 2 Cool, Rikishi and the Hardyz are examples of guys who were over way beyond any push they were given. Jeff Hardy might be the best example actually, a guy who remained hugely over however he was portrayed and who pretty much forced promotions to run with him at the top even though he was fairly unstable personally and couldn't cut an promo to save his life. RVD in 2001 is another perfect example, someone just ridiculously over from the minute he started.

I honestly don't understand WWE, and this absurd pattern of: - New guy comes in, gets a crazy push - Wins title - Loses title - Jobs for about a dozen shows straight It has happened so often now that it can't be just considered 'punishment', or wariness because of what happened with Lesnar in 2004. It can only be put down to incompetence and lack of ideas. How else could you account for the Antonio Cesaro booking? Ideally, The Shield should stay strong and then finally lose at a major event to climax a major feud. Then down the line one member wins the World Title, and slowly cracks start to appear before the group splits and feuds over the strap, with doubts over who the guy in the middle is going to side with. Realistically they get beaten decisively, move steadily down the card jobbing to Kofi Kingston, The Miz and Kane every other week.

Well this is hilariously bad. Helmsley is an abysmal actor.

I think Trips will probably lose tonight, no way they debut a guy than have him squashed. They already set up an excuse anyway with HHH 'ignoring medical advice' to compete. There will surely be some shenanigans as well. Disappointed the reveal wasn't RVD. At the very least I would have loved to see him bump for The Shield. Have seen nothing of Hennig Jr before but his look is fairly nondescript. Just seems like your average WWE development guy.

The traffic lights on the strap match deserve special mention. Is that a new invention? Seemed like a nice touch. The cage match was pretty average. They have destroyed Brock's aura with the way the Cena job was handled and the thirty minute HHH matches but he is still one of the more fun guys to watch on the card, especially with Heyman involved.

Thanks, just my luck to miss the good stuff - Show/Orton seemed unappealing and I expected Ryback/Cena to go on last. My punishment is half an hour of HHH...

Anyone care to quickly sum up the last two finishes? Skipped both matches to watch GOT.

Well that was superb as expected, match of the night. Daniel Bryan and Kane deserve an amazing amount of credit for how they have rebuilt that tag team division to the point where the belts finally mean something again, one of the best reigns of all time without a doubt. Hopefully there are a few rematches through the summer, if they are given twenty five minutes these guys could have a real MOTYC. All those knees by Tyler Black looked fantastic.

The strap match felt a bit awkward to me, especially with the commentators having explain every thirty seconds that you had to start again when you 'lost your momentum'. Wasn't especially brutal either, not compared to something like Austin/Vega. The whole show hasn't been especially extreme. Not expecting barbed wire bloodbaths in the current climate, but most of this isn't any different from what happens on Raw every week. Ambrose/Kofi looked the most brutal match and there wasn't a weapon involved. Oh, and Jack Swagger is woeful. Del Rio isn't much better. Both seem devoid of natural charisma or connection with the crowd, it all seems really forced. All cheap heat and fake aggression.

Fantastic little match - exactly how the second match on the card should be worked, the perfect style but didn't compensate on quality. The super underhook suplex looked amazing. Ambrose was ridiculously over, massive ovation when he got the pin, one of the biggest pops I've heard in the last year. If things carry on as they are he should be the world champion in the next twelve months.

A problem with WM29 was that all the marquee matches were worked almost exactly the same way. If you look at the NJPW card posted by JDW, the three last matches all had distinct styles, so you can transition them into one another without necessarily presenting the same product for ninety minutes. At, say, WMX7 you have a wrestling match (Angle/Benoit) followed by a short women's grudge match (Chyna/Ivory) followed by a soap opera style clusterfuck that climaxed a major angle (Vince/Shane) followed by a spectacular spotfest (TLCII) and then you have a comedy battle royal leading up to the two last matches. A lot of major matches on the show, but major matches with a lot of variety so as to keep up the interest, plus a few filler things in between. It is much tougher to sit through three matches of formulaic elongated WWE main event style at WM29, where the bouts really require an energetic crowd to pop for the never ending nearfalls, and almost invite the audience to be flat for the first 3/4s of the match where they are conditioned to believe nothing important will happen. This ties back in with what I was saying a few months ago about WWE workers not having a clue how to work the first half of a match anymore.

Wrestlemania 29 is a particularly weird one, in that they could easily have staggered out the big matches (and have done in previous years). Half the problem now is that too many guys are presented as main eventers: in 1999 you have Rock, Austin, Undertaker and Mankind as conceivable marquee match wrestlers, with guys like Kane/Big Show/HHH as second level. There was a clear hierarchy, so you could pace the show nicely. It helped that they had a lot of really over guys on the undercard, so they could open the show with a hot lower level match without it infringing on the heat later on. These days there are Rock/Lesnar/HHH/Cena/Undertaker/Punk/Orton/Sheamus/Jericho/Ryback/Del Rio as 'big match' workers, with Show/Kane/Swagger/Henry/Miz/Ziggler as former world champions. Whatever you book it is going to be big match after big match because they have built so many guys up to a top level. The hierarchy is gone - besides Cena and the lucrative part timers the rest are on the same level, and could conceivably have the marquee match on a show. It means less, and it hurts sequencing. That was the main drawback of ROHs egalitarianism. It is all well and good presenting all wrestlers as credible, and trying to make every match fantastic for the fans, but it leads to burnout when you are having multiple finisher kick outs in the second match on the card. That is why someone like Jimmy Rave stood out, despite being relatively unflashy - he wasn't trying to have a workrate classic, and it gave the crowd a rest. Wrestlemania X8 is a good example of pacing a stadium show - smaller matches in-between the big ones. Unfortunately you can't do that unless you have decent undercard acts like Trish Stratus or the APA. Zach Ryder is an absolutely perfect guy for breaking up big matches - over, but not seen as a threat and skippable if the crowd needs a break. Unfortunately that sort of act gets jobbed out and lost in the shuffle.

I saw the segment due to the hype here, it was decent enough. Interesting to see where they go with The Shield from her on in, the characters haven't really transitioned into anything after five months, and they will need a direction at some point that goes beyond this vague 'hounds of justice' stuff. Guess what makes the most sense is one guy going after a title and the other two feuding with Bryan/Kane for the tag straps.

I actually welcome things like that. Most feuds these days are so formulaic and boring, and many matches have no reason at all except that they need to fill time. It is good that there is a purpose or reason behind a rivalry/match, even if it is something as simple as a parking space. Mini feuds have been built on a lot less. Also, something like that has opportunities for amusing vignettes or scenes that don't feel forced. The whole Kane/Danielson anger management thing is a perfect example of a fairly silly storyline working great.

Ah right, I didn't really pay attention to anything from 2006-2011 so assumed they had been mainly kept apart. Still, Sheamus has been built up considerably in the last couple of years so I'd have thought they would at least save an Orton match for PPV. They could have even done the match last night on PPV, with the winner to face Big Show at the next event - mini feuds like that are a ton better than having repeated matches at every event. Even with escalating stipulations it still comes across as old hat when you have the same title match two or three PPVs straight.

I honestly think John Cena is the best face and the best heel in the promotion, which is pretty incredible. Reading the Raw results I can't believe they just gave away Sheamus/Orton on free TV in a throwaway match - that is one of their few fresh matchups isn't it? None of the upcoming feuds seem too exciting, Dolph/ADR especially seems typical of a midcard feud that shouldn't be anywhere near a world title, if they go that route. You half expect them to run two triple threats at the next event, with Swagger/ADR/Ziggler and Cena/Henry/Ryback. Having said that I imagine Swagger might be on his way out, especially after the whole arrest thing. It would be no surprise if he was jobbing to all and sundry on Superstars within a few months.

Oh, no need to hold the door for me - I am quitting WWE not the board. I still need somewhere to gush when I see a Kota Ibushi spotfest or self consciously epic NJ main event.

An underwhelming main event for an underwhelming show. They were treating the Rockbottom like a transition move, no wonder nobody popped for the nearfalls until everyone had hit their finisher at least three times. Shows how they have gone overkill in the big matches. The first half of the match was typically poor anyway, no real build or interesting work, just a sense of them killing time for fifteen minutes with a dead crowd. It only got halfway decent after the spot that recalled the match last year, and even then it was just a by-the-numbers my move your move main event. Cena winning was the most predictable outcome. Probably the most logical too, but still, when the entire fanbase is calling the finish to your major show a year in advance it isn't really a good thing. I was waiting for Cena to hurl him off the stage at the end or something, it would have worked great when it went silent after the fireworks stopped. It was a boring show when taking in isolation. But what is perhaps worse is that there was literally nothing to get you to tune in tomorrow night. You just know the next few months are going to be taken up with tedious, predictable feuds that drag on for PPV after PPV with matches being repeated time and time again. I think now is the time for them to become decisive and decide on a long term direction - have some more complex feuds, pick guys to push and actually go with them, instead of pushing them to the moon for three months and then jobbing them out time and time again to 'test' them like happened with Cesaro, Ziggler and pretty much every other guy they have got behind in the last few years. In summary, I should have finished watching Game Of Thrones Season 2 instead.

Hasn't really had a big night feel, certainly not compared to the last few Wrestlemania's where they have really ramped up the theatre and spectacle to make it feel special. Nobody even sang the national anthem, did they? Been very underwhelming when taken in the context of the biggest show of the year.