Bierschwale

But that is all ring-work. Ambrose was the talker and Reigns had the presence, Rollins didn't have a hook beyond "this dude can do some cool shit in the ring". I should probably cross out "don't care". There's a lot of psychoanalysis that you can do with Triple H. Do they want him to wrestle like a face despite being a heel, because that's what satisfies HHH's ego with Rollins as his surrogate? ESPECIALLY for that SummerSlam match which was just absurd, and of course it was against Cena, and I'm definitely working the conspiracy angle regarding HHH's resentment of Cena for being a much bigger star than he was. It's just a mess.

Got through Freedom Fight '02, so I'm already halfway through the one-two punch of Cross and Jacobs both completely fucking up their runs in the promotion in the span of a month and a half.

He was the only one of the three who didn't really stand out beyond his ability as a worker, though. Teaming with Ambrose & Reigns was great for hiding his deficiencies.

For a while. I've thought that if Cena turned heel that he should change themes to some kind of off-brand Yeezus track. I think that the question of what wrestlers in WWE want as themes is important to answering why there are so many shitty themes. Because how many good indie themes are there, really? It's not like there haven't been a ton of seemingly-inescapable licensed songs on TV and in movies that would have worked as entrance music.

Because HHH looks at him and sees his ultimate fantasy in a wrestler who can be a combination of himself and Shawn. He's always had great company support (great FCW push, first NXT champ, gets the starmaking spot from the Shield's first ever match) so they just don't care that he's spent all of 2015 wrestling like a babyface against anyone who isn't Ambrose and sometimes Orton. I mean, he's making a spot from a Danny Cannon-Kongo Kong match (the triple tope) into a signature move that he does against such imposing unstoppable monsters as Cena and Cesaro.

But he's Triple H, the future savior of wrestling! HAVEN'T YOU SEEN NXT? That's going to be RAW in a few years, it won't be anything like current product, you know, the last two years of bullshitting around at the top with him as the focus.

Anything that's meant to cause someone to bleed is incredibly stupid as a "foreign object". Yeah, they just spontaneously started bleeding while you weren't looking, ref! I'd also say that even when it was Jarrett at his most egregious, it was always supposed to be buffoonish. He's imitating a Hanna Barbera character and thinks that it's super-effective and cool, he's a dumb guy. A successful dumb guy, but still dumb. I mean, the "Jeff Jarrett points at his head to show how smart he is" move is ridiculous and will never fail to make me laugh when brought up (effectively used by Loss a few months ago), but it's not supposed to be an intelligent gesture, either. Triple H looked like the stupidest man on the planet but was NEVER supposed to seem like anything but a genius.

I felt like mentioning earlier that I thought that RoH should go through NJ to get CMLL to let them run a touring match version of DL-Kamaitachi at All Star Extravaganza. I think that a big part of it with CMLL which is much less of a problem with AAA (though it's kind of insane to see the third or fourth rebirth of Jack Evans: Indie Superstar which can only be explained by LU) is the lack of foreigners.

That last concussion seemed pretty brutal and they pulled him from the next night immediately. So, yeah, cover-their-ass better safe than sorry.

Serena-Venus is tennis's HBK-HHH.

The final death knell of lucha? Because of how spot heavy it was? The mixture of spots and general New Japan-style of selling. That was pretty much a sarcastic comment, but their matches do have an American indie quality that's very un-"CMLL like" in my mind.

I can't decide if DL-Kamaitachi is the best feud of the year or the final death knell of lucha. But it's awesome either way.

I didn't give it much thought, but yeah, this is his equivalent of getting money marks for his promotion. Him being able to show that he can do it.

Shoulder injury in May and was scheduled to return in September. If they're using Kane next week, it's so gonna be Kane as the third guy.

Tag teams existing as supplementary developmental for young guys.

Is there anybody who's right from NXT, though? Built up well-enough for it to be a big deal whom the promotion can spare (so not Balor)?

Is there a good reason for the mystery partner to not be Goldust? Yes there is. He has no reason to want to team up with the Shield members nor a reason to want to go up against the Wyatts. He is also stylistically not a fit with the other two. Hey that's 3 good reasons why not. He's a beloved babyface who wrestled the Wyatts a lot when teaming with Cody. Ambrose/Reigns will have been faces for a year and a half by NoC. Babyfaces back up other babyfaces. That's really simple. Aesthetically, Goldust isn't a stylistic fit with anyone, if anything, the clash between him and the other two gets the principle of the feud over even more. See: Canadian Stampede. They need to call in the "Bizarre One" to match up with the ECCENTRICITY of the Wyatt Family. As a worker, he's Dustin friggin' Rhodes, like he can't brawl? He can't play a good FIP? They keep selling this as "family vs. family". It's easy to play up that the Anoa'is and Rhodeses go back far, and what Ambrose/Reigns learned from Dusty in NXT. They can say that if anyone else is going to understand that kind of family feud, it's Goldust. And... it's in Texas, where the crowd will be hot for his return, and HIAC is the next PPV and logical blowoff point for the feud. It's a perfect WarGames feud.

Is there a good reason for the mystery partner to not be Goldust?

Those three set Serena Specials, man. Mattek-Sands had such a hope spot in the last game of the second set, too. And then come the six games of doom bagel at the end.

I think that it's the infinite possibilities presented and the immediacy of how they can be enacted. It's easier to picture how something might happen when you put X, Y, and Z together in wrestling than any other art form or sport. I can think that I'd like there to have been more of an actor or actress on a TV show. Friends needed a whole hell of a lot more episodes with Paget Brewster's character. But then I have to think of more specific elements and then who cares? I can think of how an F1 grid could be composed for more entertaining races, but is the interaction important enough for it to matter? The intense level of interaction is really important, in and of itself. I can watch Hashimoto-Zangiev and then immediately picture about 500 different matches involving them and other wrestlers. I don't know exactly how they'd go, but the idea of it is enough to make my mind race.

First instinct tells me to put Sampras, Agassi, Courier, and Chang as the Four Pillars. Does that make Mal Washington Kikuchi? I have no clue. But Sampras and Backlund is a pretty good pairing. The pre-Vince II era has a reputation for dryness not unlike the serve boom of the '90s, of course. I've always thought that Sampras was a bit of a heel promo, though. He's absolutely the heel against Rafter.

I'm too big of a Hingis fan to want to accept that, but that's probably right on the nose.

I think that last night's DA airing was the best episode that they've had on it, which I really wasn't expecting. I like Hanson a lot, lot more as a singles guy.

I think that Wawrinka is Novak's best feud and that it isn't close, though. Federer and Nadal are grossly overexposed as matches and Djokovic-Murray is like Angle-Benoit to me, they're so even that I just don't find myself engaged; Stan's inconsistency makes the Slam matches with Djokovic actually compelling. Cena-Cesaro is just too easy to make as the comparison but it's true. Last year's USO on the men's side ended up with some terrible booking. It needed to be Monfils-Nishikori in the final. Monfils was RED HOT over and Kei is an amazing babyface. Plus, a black Frenchman and a Japanese permanent resident of America? That's beyond leaving money on the table. I like Cilic, but that wasn't a story that needed to be told. You couldn't just escape the Federer match, but to put Monfils on Ashe on a Thursday night (the casual crowd of casual crowds) against Fed was such a hit job. I think that Halep should have gone over Sharapova at the French last year, too. I think that Sharapova's career Slam with only four tournament wins was a perfect way to describe her career.

Serena is like the "smark" view of Cena-- shitty babyface who always wins. And is super-doped.