Seabs

Bray’s got the upper hand over the guy they’re positioning as the face of the company this year and beat Brock twice this year including clean as a sheet a couple of months ago. Why aren’t more people convinced that Seth retains? Because The Fiend is a new character with some momentum? This is WWE guys.

I’m baffled at how underplayed it’s been that a wrestler spat at a fan. That’s assault by law and fucking disgusting. Yet there doesn’t seem to be any backlash at all for Mandy to be fired over it. Exchanging unflattering remarks is one thing, spitting at a fan is a whole other level.

Why on earth do they think that announcing supposed must see matches during the show is the solution to people not tuning in. It’s a solution to losing people during the show but if stuff like that is to have any impact you have to promote it at the very least the day before. Which I know is impossible because they don’t know what’s on the show the day before and that’s the most tell tale sign of it. Or better yet, when they announce something on Raw for SD and it just never happens. Not that announcing a WWE Title match would get people back. It’s hilarious watching them try all these things while constantly ignoring that the actual problem is a systemic cultural issue that has driven people away. It’s not the wrestlers or the matches, it’s all on the presentation of the show and the writing. If Ronda and Brock and even when Cena came back at the start of the year don’t turn things around in an instant then it’s clear the issue isn’t star power related. And the worrying thing for us is that they refuse to acknowledge their “playbook” is the issue and the worrying for them is they know there’s no quick fix for that which allows them to continue presenting the show the way their internal culture aspires to.

Why are we pretending like they haven’t had Drew jobbing for Ziggler who they had no plans at all for afterwards. They’d be mad to beat Roman in his first singles match back, on Mania of all shows. They’re heating Drew up big atm which is even more proof he won’t win. Dave continuing to say Cena is definitely on the card but the plan isn’t to face Angle is so weird. It just seems so obvious the moment that they acknowledged everyone shitting on Corbin as his choice of opponent. If it is Cena then they needed something to cover the TV leading into the show and Cena hasn’t been available, either until the go home show or the show itself. Corbin is a guy they’re pushing while openly acknowledging that he sucks. It would make sense from that perspective for them to kick him off the show at the last minute. What would be really good actually is them going all the way to Mania with it. Kurt makes his entrance first, then Corbin. As Corbin is walking down the aisle, Angle cuts him off and mocks the idea of him wanting to face Corbin in his retirement match. He just chose him to embarrass him like he’s done to him. Then he announces his real opponent is this guy... cue Cena’s music. Cue shit finisher fest match.

The argument should be you’re not in a position to criticise if you don’t FOLLOW the shows week to week, not if you don’t watch them. There’s a massive difference. I don’t watch anymore outside of most of the PPV matches and if something gets rave reviews on TV (I’m a sucker for a mystery tease too even if I know the payoff will be lame). But I do follow what happens meticulously. That puts me in an informed position to have a valid opinion on the booking. Now if I was to say that Match X sucked and I didn’t even watch it, THEN that argument of you don’t watch so you can’t criticise would be totally valid. The reaction to the Charlotte title win is weird too. Everyone will moan about Mania being too long and having too many matches. They take the title off of Asuka to create one less match on the card snd everyone moans it’s unfair to Asuka to lose her spot on the card. It’s bullshit that they book nearly everyone to be on the main card, but that only counts if it’s not someone I like. Obviously Asuka deserves a marquee Mania match based on talent but nobody needed to see her vs any of the potential opponents she had. Mania being 15 minutes shorter because there’s no Asuka/Mandy match is a good thing. Charlotte winning the other title isn’t the problem. The problem is them leaving it this late. Rumble should have been Charlotte/Asuka with Charlotte winning the belt and Becky winning the Rumble minus the tainted overbooking. Then you work towards Becky challenging both Ronda and Charlotte. Make it for both belts too and give Becky the Conor rub of walking round with two titles. She can get screwed out of one relatively quicker by the heel chalenging for the other title and everything goes back to normal quickly thereafter. I really hope they don’t end up having Becky get the fall on Charlotte to win the SD Title as a copout win and keep the belt on Ronda if she doesn’t actually end up taking time off. That will be such a deflating ending and create so much bad will with fans already annoyed they added Charlotte to the match. The 3 way is the right match as evident by how angry it’s made everyone. It hasn’t lost them interest in the match (other stuff has but not the addition of Charlotte) and it’s added more heat to the angle. This is all under the assumption that Becky beats Ronda though. Anything else and all the praise becomes invalid.

So apparently Page/Janela went 4 minutes long (fair enough) and Okada/Marty went 12 minutes long which is so fucking unprofessional imo from those two in the semi main position. Pretty much killed the main event by doing that. Didn’t care for any of the wrestling on the show at all but I can appreciate that I’m not their target market for a show like this. Production was great though. It looked appropriately big time and it looked like a 10,000 seater crowd too. The pre-show had a lot of micing issues on both the crowd and the announcers but they were fixed for the main show. Cody/Aldis wasn’t very well executed but the presentation was fantastic. On paper they laid out something that could have been great but like I said the execution was poor. They told a story of Cody being a beaten mess in desperate danger but then none of the action actually backed that up so it came across as a forced scripted drama.

WWE don’t do angles anymore, they do PR announcements for clicks and views. Same with Bryan’s return. Why do a hot surprise angle when you send out a press release and get views on TMZ. A Trish comeback angle is an easy thing to get over but now instead of getting to capture these great organic reactions that happen live we just comments on a screen. This pretty much spoils Ronda winning the title tonight as well because there’s no way the champ is in a non title match. Also getting well and truly sick of Alexa being forced into every big spot when she can’t produce to the required standard post “revolution”. Some of her matches are decent but when the narrative is that the standard of womens wrestling has progressed so far and then you see her matches it just kills the whole idea of this new era. She’s great at everything else and I’m fine with her being pushed strong but it’s every single opportunity that goes to her and she just doesn’t deliver to the required standard when it comes to the end product.

He’s always fluffing lines and correcting his terms to the corporate terms during promos too which are signs of memory problems and was the same thing Foley was doing while GM. He looks old and broken and fragile. Which is btw a sign of getting old after living a hard life as much as it is brain injuries. But it wouldn’t shock me if he does.

Wow this sounds really exciting dude. Best of luck with everything, love the ideas that you’ve been floating around so far.

Okada wins and Okada/Omega again at the dome. Gedos booking is generally safe and Okada is still THE guy. Be shocked if he doesnt main event the Dome and there isnt really a non title match for him thats big enough on paper. Maybe Omega drops the title to Naito between then but they usually do a better job of giving someone in that spot more momentum than Naito has. Gedo booking would also point to Naito/Omega at KOPW and Naito getting his win back over Jericho at WK. If it was going to be Omega/Ibushi I doubt theyd give it away during G1 with being such a fresh matchup. Butcha never know.

I suppose if you label it a WWE production you set the excpectations higher than what theyre going to reach. In terms of star power and production and scope its much more in line with NXT than WWE.