Coffey

My problem with the Royal Rumble match itself was there were 1. no surprises and 2. way too many people that didn't matter. Mojo, Ellsworth, New Day, Big Cass, Enzo, Gallagher, Apollo, Dolph, Tye, Kalisto... it was like ALL filler. Just killing time until the "real" stars (Goldberg, Brock, Taker, Reigns) came in. Out of the first 20 entrants, I think the only two that mattered were Strowman and Corbin. There wasn't any suspense. The final four sucked. And the winner sucks. So yeah, I didn't like it. John Cena Vs. A.J. Styles was great though, so glad I tuned in. Plus the countdown for each participant in the Rumble will never not be fun, even if I felt disappointed about 25 times out of 30 this year.

That match was insane. Holy shit.

Look forward to people overrating that Charlotte Vs. Bayley match. I mean, both women did a top rope move AND Charlotte had some blood. Gotta be at least 4-stars! Can't wait to see what Meltzer says about that one. Charlotte still wins on PPV. Sasha got squashed on the preshow.

EDIT: moving to other thread per what Childs said.

No, the NXT crowds and the recent booking both stink. I'm not saying that the booking is good, I said it says more about the shitty fans than the booking. I'm saying that Bobby Roode is only over because of his theme song. The same way Tye Dillinger is over for that stupid 10 chant and how Blue Pants was over. If that Glorious theme song was on literally anyone else, they would also be over. Regardless of good or bad booking. That crowd is cheering that song. Period.

People on Twitter are going bananas over this show but I thought it was very lackluster with a few disappointing outcomes. Maybe we'll get both Samoa Joe and Shinsuke Nakamura on the main roster soon? Not really a lot of reason left for me to keep tabs on NXT. I certainly don't care about Bobby Roode, Eric Young or Billie Kay. Authors of Pain are... woof.

Says more about the shitty NXT fans than the booking, honestly. Bobby Roode is over because of his theme song, so...

He's a jobber. Just so happens that his gimmick got over with the NXT fans, much like Blue Pants. He's just simply in the role that CJ Parker used to fill but he left, so now we get Tye.

Yes to Dunn/Bate from the UK Tournament. No to Dunn/Andrews from the UK Tournament. No to Goto/Shibata from Wrestle Kingdom...but it's really close. HARD NO to Kushida/Takahashi from Wrestle Kingdom

The problem is Parv and none of you will say it. He's been here a long time & contributed a lot but at this point, he's purposely just trying to piss people off. Look at the Jimmy Snuka thread. Look what he did during GWE. Look at the Puro Vs. Lucha thread. It's just him shitting on people & acting like everyone else is stupid.

I'm surprised with as big as WWE is that they don't do more with music. Some of those old themes, either written by Johnson (I think that is his name) or Jimmy Hart, were pretty over & still inspire some nostalgia. WWE have some bands that do some themes for some of the talent. But why do they not have more original music that they make & compose for their wrestlers that aren't just instrumental? Like, Samoa Joe's theme song, for example, is terrible. And, to me, it really takes away from his aura when he's coming out to what sounds like free domain music off of YouTube. The best thing that ever happened to Mark Henry was getting the Three Six Mafia theme.

Snuka, for me, was more about moments than matches. The Cage leaps, the Piper's Pit coconut, that sort of thing.

What a tremendous, amazing & entertaining show. WWE took 16 people that I didn't know anything about and over the course of two days, made me care about who won & who lost, made me buy into false finishes & made me care about the storyline(s) of the tournament. Michael Cole was great. Dunne and Bate were great. Just good, old fashioned professional wrestling. 2017 has been awesome for being a wrestling fan so far.

Pete Dunne, Tyler Bate, Wolfgang & Danny Burch all made a positive impression on me. Devlin seems quite green/bad. Looked like they blew that finish to me which would explain Burch losing. Maybe that's why Dunne attacked his second round opponent? They can do an angle where the cheap shot blinded him in one eye, so he can't be medically cleared & Burch takes his spot? I don't know. I'm hoping we get Bate/Dunne as that would probably be the best match from these guys - but I say that with my knowledge of each only being what I saw during the first round of this tournament today. I can't believe Tyler Bate is only 19.

I'm also saying No to Okada/Omega. That's not what I want my pro-wrestling to be & not what I want the future of pro-wrestling to look like. We don't need 50-minute "epic" matches where moves like a Guardrail Elevated DDT to the Concrete, A Springboard Moonsault into the crowd and a Top Rope Dragon Suplex don't mean shit. Meanwhile, after two Tombstones, the match ends with a Shortarm Clothesline. We also don't need a bunch of pro-wrestlers trying to recreate or worse, one-up that match. I actually think, if anything, that match hurts pro-wrestling. Just like Mankind being thrown off of Hell In A Cell.

Absolutely second this. Best of the card to me and probably my favorite match in the Dome since they started calling it Wrestle Kingdom.

"That must be an American joke because I don't get it!" - Rusev

Ship their worthless asses back to Japan. No idea why WWE brought them in in the first place.

Why can a good near fall not exist from a Powerslam, Russian Leg Sweep, Spinebuster, Neckbreaker or Backbreaker? Why does it always have to be some ridiculous, outlandish spot to get the fans to buy into the near fall? The crowds need reconditioned. I was watching an old WCW Monday Nitro on the WWE Network yesterday and over the course of the show, several matches ended and all of the finishes were believable. Wallstreet beat Mike Enos with a Samoan Drop after Ted DiBiase distracted Enos. Chris Jericho defeated Bobby Eaton after Eaton missed the Alabama Jam, then Jericho hit a Superkick followed up by a Missile Dropkick. These aren't generic moves and the finishes were believable. The crowds nowadays have just continually been reconditioned over and over again throughout the years. We had Mick Foley being thrown off of Hell in a Cell and then the match continuing. Then he gets Chokeslammed through the Cell and that doesn't end the match either. We had a lot of the craziness that was ECW. Nowadays we have a whole bunch of Money in the Bank ladder matches that try to keep one-upping the last insane highspot. Shane McMahon, not that long ago, just jumped off of a Cell again. So of course in non-gimmick matches the wrestlers feel like they have to do a ton of craziness to get the crowd to notice. There is at no time in pro-wrestling history that a freakin' Top Rope Dragonplex should be a 2-count. That's insane. But here we are. The first time I ever saw a Moonsault was by the Great Muta in the late 80's. It blew me away. I had never seen anything like that. It was incredible. Then the years go by and you see Shawn Michaels do a Moonsault, and Hugh Morrus on Nitro and 60-year-old Terry Funk in ECW, and awful-ass Blue Meanie... and then when you see a Moonsault in 2017, suddenly you don't really care anymore. Look at the DDT. When you have Torrie Wilson doing a DDT in pillow fight matches, it's hard to remember the days of when Jake Roberts was killing people with it. No one seems to care about protecting moves anymore. Everyone wants to keep trying to up the ante. It's frustrating. Wrestling is becoming about the moves for the "ooh" and "awe!" from the crowd instead of about the story or psychology. A bunch of people wrestling like Kurt Angle where they think the hell with selling, I gotta get my next spot in.

Here's what I don't get and something that I was talking with a buddy about today: when we were kids, growing up in the 80's & the early 90's, the top guys at the time, at least in WWF which was the TV we got locally, were wrestlers like Hulk Hogan and The Ultimate Warrior. When we were teenagers, in the late 90's and even through the early 2000's, the top guys were wrestlers like Stone Cold Steve Austin and The Rock. If you were a kid that grew up in that era, either era, and you fell in love with pro-wrestling to the degree that you wanted to become a pro-wrestler yourself, why are so many modern wrestlers marks for highspots? I just saw an animated .gif on Twitter of a dude at an Indy show doing a Top Rope Moonsault Styles Clash in front of about maybe two-hundred people. I just don't get it. It's so stupid to me. You're willing to risk your health and your opponents health on something that risky for basically no money in front of no one? Hogan, Warrior, Austin & Rock all made bank. And it appears as if the majority of wrestlers on the Indies today grew up as bigger fans of wrestlers like the Luchadores on WCW Monday Nitro (whom were all basically job guys to the stars), some ECW wrestlers (that were a lot of garbage) or WWF guys like Jeff Hardy. Nowadays, someone like Braun Strowman gets a bad rap because he's a big hoss whereas someone like Kenny Omega gets called the greatest wrestler alive because he's doing Moonsaults into the crowd and top rope Dragon Suplexes. I'm starting to feel like Kevin Nash over here as I don't fucking get it. We need more wrestlers like The Revival and less wrestlers cosplaying as highspot Shawn Michaels.

For me, there's usually a lot of outside factors too. Did I watch the show in person, or on TV? Did I watch it live, or after the fact? Did I go into the match ignorant, or had I already read what people were saying about it? Did I watch it alone, or did I have company over? Was it a match in a vacuum, or as part of an entire event I watched? Was it from years ago, or recent? Even shit like watching a match when I'm hungry can affect how I view it sometimes. I can be more cranky and thus jaded.

As long as the internet has been around, within the confines of the wrestling community or not, you will have people that vary wildly in their opinions. The nature of the internet, due to anonymity sometimes, leads to some pretty outlandish remarks. If a bunch of people say that a match is great, you saying it is "pretty good" suddenly becomes something that people can attack. If a bunch of people say a match is great, you saying it is "the greatest ever" suddenly gets people on your side & talking about you. Like Meltzer's bullshit 6-star rating. But if you think a highly praised match was "just OK" or "not my cup of tea" or whatever, suddenly you're the bad guy & there's something wrong with you & your opinion is wrong. Some people relish on being the bad guy & I think purposely try to get people against them for attention. It's hard to tell the difference between someone being a troll, or someone with a legitimately varied opinion. Especially in a text-based medium, or when you're limited to 140 characters, and you can't look them in the eye. PWO is no different.

...for a 2-count.

I can't wait until JvK and Meltz get into it 'cause Meltz thinks he's just being contrarian by not giving it six stars! This has been a great couple of days of wrestling banter.

I can not wait until you finally get to review Okada/Omega. Just from reading what you said about the KUSHIDA match, I know it's going to be glorious.