Jimmy Redman

Tamina has always frustrated me because she looks like she's got it all...until the match starts. She looks great (and unrelatedly I've always had a crush on her...don't know why), has this great menacing presence when she towers over other girls, and even more than that, like I said she does give off this weird kind of sexual, predatory vibe when she stares a hole through someone. She even has that great superkick and can really lay her shit in. But for whatever reason, despite all that she never puts it together to have good matches. I wish she did, truly, I'm willing her to get there because like I said, inexplicable crush. But I haven't seen it out of her yet. In that sense, she's the perfect bodyguard who shouldn't wrestle that much.

So I saw SD and yeah Rusev/Cesaro was great. I'm pumped about the Hoss Division right now. Too bad Sheamus is stuck in the Assholes That I Don't Care About Division instead. I'm also a big fan of Tamina staring at Jojo like she wanted to sexually assault her.

I haven't seen their NJ run, but their case would be built on their US indy stuff, particularly from their home base in PWG.

Well I don't really watch the TV that much so I'm the wrong man for the job, but start with these and someone else can fill in the gaps. Cena vs Cesaro, Raw 29/6 Cena vs Cesaro, Raw 6/7 Rusev vs Cesaro vs Owens, Raw 13/7 (plus Cena vs Rusev) Sasha Banks vs Charlotte, NXT 15/7 Rusev vs Cesaro, SD 16/7

Not really the place for that but nah Natalie Figueroa knows she is a heel. She knows no one likes her. Its just that she thinks she knows whats best for business...so yeah she's Steph. Well what I meant by that was while she knows she's hated, she still thinks that she's right and she's doing what's best for everyone. She just thinks she's misunderstood, that people are too stupid to see that her way is the best way. She's not out to get people, she just doesn't care who she pisses off along the way. It's almost a kind of martyrdom where they bear the heavy burden of being disliked because they're trying to do what's best for business, and the poor plebs just don't see it yet. It's one of the most dangerous kinds of heel, one that thinks they're doing the right thing.

Yeah but those are lesser workers she gets to work with within the confines of NXT with all its inherent advantages. Better booking, serious preentation, time for matches, an appreciative crowd. There's a difference between working in that environment with a lesser worker, and trying to work a 3-minute Divas sprint in the toilet break segment with no storyline or even discernible characters, which is what main roster girls have to deal with most of the time.

For anyone who watches Orange Is The New Black, I get a huge Steph vibe from the lady who runs the prison on the show, Figueroa or whatever her name is. She's a heel, but she doesn't truly get that she's a heel. She is, however, an enormously selfish glory hound who will latch onto anything popular and try to take credit for it, and then seek to control it. Which is why you get moments like this when Steph, supposed to be a heel, appears to be on the crowd's side and does something magnanimous. She's chasing that validation. There's nothing more ingratiating than someone in power claiming to start a "revolution". But it is a very Steph McMahon thing to do.

Vickie was kind of awkwardly bad in the very beginning, like we're talking 2007 or whenever exactly she started as a regular character. But she pretty quickly started getting it and developed into the performer that she became. Dixie has always been God awful.

Yep. The one that was the middle match of the Gauntlet.

From my memory it was a mind control thing, where Heyman had control over the urn and thus could get Taker to do his bidding, the same as Bearer and stuff had done in the 90s. But I could well be remembering wrong. EDIT: I looked it up and yeah you're right, the kidnapping of Paul Bearer is what forced Taker to do his bidding. But he was also doing things like bending the knee for the urn as Heyman held it and stuff, which is probably what I'm remembering. Man, reading those Smackdown 2004 results...eek. Keeping to theme, remember the time when Kurt Angle was GM, then Big Show went insane (possibly after losing and being forced to quit), terrorised Torrie Wilson and threw Angle off a balcony, leading to Kurt Angle: GM in a wheelchair.

Y'alls are sitting here talking about joshi ladies and luchadoras and Sara Del Rey and what not, and like to be honest...I just really want Tiffany back.

I remember it well, but I am a fan of the Rey/Swagger series. And I was super into watching Smackdown at the time. Speaking of Smackdown, in 2004 Heyman was managing the Dudley Boyz and feuding with Undertaker. This lead to the infamous 'bury Paul Bearer in cement' match stip, but what people may not remember is that before that, Heyman had taken control of The Urn and used to it make Taker do evil deeds and basically play heel for a while. During that time he and Cena had a long TV match where Taker was doing uncharacteristically heelish things, because he was under Heyman's mind control. That match, by the way, was one of Cena's best in his career up until that point. Anyway it was weird.

So I caught the three way from Raw again this morning. The first time I didn't even see the first three minutes where Cena talks about being a fighting champion who doesn't hide behind politics or bullshit with a COMPLETELY straight face, 15 minutes before he gets to beat the crap out of a guy who can't stand up anymore. That made it even better. Seriously I love Rusev/Owens/Cesaro so much. It lost nothing on second viewing and it's pretty much neck and neck with Sasha/Becky for my favourite match this year. Which is crazy given the amount of essays I've written on great Cena matches in the last two months. But I think I liked this better than all of them. It was like a perfect three way match.

I think this was the point I was trying to make about Bret the other day. Too much small stuff, not enough big stuff.

I am #1 on the Kelly Kelly Bandwagon. I don't care what anyone says, I loved that girl. She was having good matches by the end of her run too.

El McKell's list is perfectly fine for Parv as a starting point.

Oh haha kind of. I'm a carer for people with disabilities. It involves a lot of overnight stays, and I'm basically just doing two full days in a row. Sleep is included though, it's not as horrific as it sounds.

Fuck that'd be right, the week Sasha/Charlotte is on is the week I'm stuck at work for 40hrs straight and can't see it. First world problems.

Oh yeah no I wasn't arguing against you. If anything I was just arguing with myself as I thought about it more and more. I always find it funny that Cena's character is seen by so many as so one-dimensional and cartoony, when to me he has one of the most profoundly complex and rich characters I've seen in wrestling. I can (and do) literally write pages and pages on his motivations and character development and storyline progression after every significant match he has these days. It's crazy how deep the mine is.

Thinking more about this, I don't think it's that Cena puts himself first and everyone else second. He kind of puts his fans first, himself second, and everyone else third. Everything Cena does is for his fans, that's always been his raison d'etre, even to his own detriment at times where he ignores pain or overwhelming odds or whatever because he wants to perform for the fans. That's why he's such a company man. It's not really heroic or babyface-like to be such a shill, but Cena sees WWE as a means to an end, the "end" being connecting with the fans. WWE.allows him to do that, so he loves WWE. You see this when he ever gets involved with other wrestlers. Really the only time he ever talks about other guys is when they are a fan favourite who is being held down by The Man. That's when he speaks up and puts them over, because that's who the fans want to see, and that's the most important thing. Notice he never puts anyone over for being a great wrestler, not if they don't also have that crowd support. This tidbit probably says more about WWE's idiodic booking, but it's also interesting in this context to note that Cena is actually a 4-time Tag Team Champion. Every single one of those reigns was with someone he was.feuding with at the time. Shawn in 2007, Batista in 2008, Otunga as part of the Nexus in 2010, and Miz in 2011. Like I said it's more of a booking thing, but it also speaks to the fact that Cena has never had a tag team partner. All his title partners were his enemies, and he's had short-lived alliances with "little buddies" (Cryme Tyme, Bourne, Zack, etc.) But there's no one who was ever his partner, his equal, someone that Cena could actually care deeply about. He really does exist in his own little universe, an island unto himself.

Yeah I can't argue with any of that. That's what's so interesting about this run of his, because we see him in a situation he's never been in before - not winning all the time and everything coming up Milhouse, having to struggle for every TV win - and we see how he is reacting to that. And he's reacting in a very...human way. Cena's character has always been so flawlessly heroic (like you say, to the point where he doesn't resemble a real human being) and now finally, finally we are starting to see the cracks.

Yeah I wasn't saying that Baba's moves were indyriffic. Just Cena's. The point is that they were/are both adding moves to keep up with the current style du jour even though they've been on top for over a decade and don't really have to at this point. The style Cena is adapting to happens to be indyriffic.

Speaking of, Raw was fascinating this week because if you were a random who just turned on the US Title stuff and had no concept of the characters involved going in, you would think Cena was the heel. From the way the segment was booked, Cena's reactions and actions, the way he worked the match, the crowd not liking him...nothing in that whole thing would give you a single clue that Cena's supposed to be a babyface. It was interesting because apart from the first Rock match and MAYBE the RVD match to a certain extent, Cena has never actually 'worked heel' no matter how much the crowd dislikes him or how popular the other guy is. He can be the Hated Babyface, or even an Asshole Babyface (like the Rey title match thing), but never an actual heel. I assume it was just a weird one-night anomaly from how the segment was booked (i.e. I don't actually think he's turning heel...I'll believe that when I see it), but it was a perfect evolution of the intricate John Cena Midlife Crisis storyline I've largely invented in my own head, as he moves more and more into the downswing of his career on top. The added layer here, beyond how heelish he came across, was the sense of entitlement he showed on Raw. He's the US Champ, he's also the Being John Cena Champ, and he is very, very aware of this fact. So if guys want to kill themselves to get a shot at him? So be it. They SHOULD kill themselves just to get to him, as far as he's concerned. And if they have to work two matches in a row then they should just suck it up, like he would. ...like he would, but never actually has to do. Cena always gets title shots and matches when he wants them. So when he acts all righteous about it, it comes off as a certain level of out-of-touch. (In a weird way, kind of like how someone like Hunter comes across in real life telling young guys of today that they need to grab the brass ring and get themselves over. Like, yeah, okay...you're married to the boss' daughter. Keep telling us how to scratch and claw from way up in your office tower...) Cena can preach hard work and determination from up on his pedestal, but even accounting for all of the Evil GM feuds he's had, in kayfabe Cena has never really had it tough from a booking perspective. He's always been The Man. The thing is that now he's on this downswing, now that he's showing that he's human and coming back to the pack, that certain level of entitlement, of hubris that he naturally displayed while on top is starting to come off worse and worse. He's in the midcard still trying to act like The Man. Trying to act like the US belt is the World Title. So now that things aren't going his way like they used to, he's starting to act a little bit...petulant. Arguing with the ref's count like he never has before. No longer laughing at impossible kickouts but getting frustrated and angry. Resorting to heelish tactics like the methodical lariats he used on Owens at EC, or the dickish leg kicks and heel-control-style headlocks he was using on Rusev. And like I said yesterday, he had to face a worn out and defenseless Rusev, and he never acted like he felt remotely bad about it at any point. I don't think the John Cena of even two years ago wouldn't have at least acted a little apologetic about the situation on commentary. But it was like he was relieved that he finally had an easy night in the ring, which he hasn't had since he's been doing this stupid Open Challenge, which he regrets starting more and more every week, because every week he goes through a war and it's taking its toll, but he can't back out now because he's determined to be this Fighting Champion. I can't wait to see where the penny drops. I always assumed Owens was winning at Battleground, but there's still so much creative potential left in Cena's reign, so either way I'm intrigued.

Kind of like what Cena is doing now, adding indyriffic moves at this stage of his career to reflect the current style?