Bierschwale

One last thing that bothers me about the Rollins push: him being the "architect" of The Shield doesn't make any sense. Not just because Ambrose was the group's talker and singles guy, but because he had been kayfabe banned from FCW and NXT after the second Regal match. If someone's going to assemble a group to wreak havoc on the WWE roster and go to an "outsider" in Heyman for work, it'd be him.

The last time that this came up, I remember the lineup being reported as Savage, The Rock, Nash, Rikishi, and Victoria. I was definitely pro-Stevens as the area rep "historical inductee". 32 will be interesting. Sting, 'Taker... no shortage of Texans but Hansen seems like the guy there, and for a guess that feels right, Pillman because they're not going to Ohio any time soon and Austin would tear the house down with his induction speech. Maybe DDP makes it this year. He's going to go in eventually, the only area tie that he has is with New Jersey and I can't see them waiting until WM XL to put him in. What's the deal with Ivan Koloff and his relationship with the company? Seems insane that he's not a HoFer without any well-known hostilities to have killed it.

I think that the character has worked very well outside of matches, but he's never really made it translate to a match, excluding the finish to the FCA which was foolproof.

His best match as a singles heel was the FCA against Ambrose where Dean ate the cinderblocks.

He just has no idea how to work as an actual heel. The Shield masked this, but in the Reigns/Rollins tags, Reigns is clearly the better heel of the two. He sells like Jeff Hardy. His offense is WAY too good for him to try to play chickenshit like Hennig/Michaels. He's an athletic freak. I don't watch him and think "hey, this guy's an asshole" based on what he does in the ring. I think that he's an ubermensch. This is why they gave him Mercury/Noble. Hell, last night they gave him twelve guys to get the heel heat for him. He's the WWE's AJ Styles, and TNA knew how to use AJ. He just needs to be REALLY GOOD and not go on about it. That's the entire gimmick. "You should like this guy because he's awesome." But he's Triple H's protege, the best of himself and Shawn all in one, and that means being the insufferable and intelligent heel, even when he constantly betrays this in his work.

Rollins looked like RVD in that match. And he needs 12 extra participants to get heel heat.

I was ready to put up with all of the bullshit that had preceded it just after Cesaro and Kidd's Doomsday Blockbuster on Big E..

The "better off" list: Rusev, Ryback, and Ziggler. The latter two were just kayfabe fired, and the former wasn't on the main roster. Arguments could be made for Barrett (who's only in his second week back and was just given the cat toy title) and Rollins (who has better stature but went from unimpeachable to... not so much).

I mean, even Orton returning to hit Trips with an RKO OUTTA NOWHERE would have been a real end.

That was just a cutesy version of Evolution, HHH-at-his-worst, "cake and eat it, too" heel bullshit.

I don't think that he's turning heel, but I just think that if he was and that match sets it up as happening at the Rumble, then he still saves Edge there. That's just the smart move-- do as much as possible to look like a good guy before you turn heel. Either way, it's completely irrelevant.

If it was to bring Triple H to put Rollins into the match for an easy win to get the title? I think that works. I understand him bringing the Authority back as part of his heel turn. If he was turning heel he shouldn't have saved Edge in the aftermath though. He wouldn't want to show signs that he's turning before he makes it unambiguous, though. Saving Edge is camouflage.

I really don't think that it's a big deal as long as Ziggler gets legitimately strong booking. If the character wants to be the most entertaining and exciting guy on the roster, and he's successful in his matches because he won't give up and won't think twice about doing the risky move (and it's not like that he doesn't give the impression of wanting to win, his "Hulk up" is really, really good and is absolutely focused on winning) but it occasionally costs him matches and there's awareness of that flaw, then it works. (I suspect that JBL's "He doesn't know when to stay down" lines are supposed to be that awareness and they're obviously not good enough.) It's the internal character of him knowing when to go "all-out"/when to not and when to not but not listening to his brain and doing it anyway that fails, and that's because almost nobody has an internal character. I'm a fan of Ziggler but I'd put him up as the #1 loser on the current roster of the WWE not giving a shit about the tag division.

Rollins is shockingly bad as a heel worker. It was one of those things where Dylan and others had mentioned that they thought that he would be a bust as a singles heel but I wasn't really feeling it, because they had made the character so contemptible that it had protected him well enough. But he still does a ton of Jeff Hardy-like "self-destructive" sympathy selling, and out-of-nowhere crowd-popper spots like the blockbuster and shiranui. I'm pretty sure that he's even thrown in one of his standing SSPs in a big match recently. His dive from the top of the cage onto Reigns as a save for Kane/Orton (after which he did a sympathy sell) on the RAW "season premiere" was a contender for dumbest spot of the year.

Not necessarily "MOTY"-level love, but absolutely as an "MOTYC". For most of them, I really don't think that it's anything more than that they enjoyed seeing Cena land on his neck a bunch of times.

I think of the Bryan match as Trips deciding to live out his Finlay and Regal fantasies and not his Flair and Race fantasies. Bryan was THE opponent for it.

JR's "Aww, son of a BITCH." response is immortal.

My first thought when he specifically announced that he'd be in the Rumble was that they had to do it if they wanted him in the match, because a surprise Bryan return would absolutely kill Reigns when he wins the match, and if Bryan already announced four weeks earlier that he'd be in it, it won't be as bad.

Waltman's dive off of the top into just a sea of people is fantastic (he was definitely touching the ceiling), and his jawing/pushing around the crowd to set it up is great. Lynn nearly gansos himself on that rana that actually sets up a nearfall for the Kid. The commentary is so proto-2000s indie that it's actually awesome. Lynn is definitely less crisp than Waltman at this point, but it works in his favor on that brutal-looking tilt-a-whirl headscissors. God, that ceiling is so low (again, another slight enhancer, because it makes the missed guillotine seem more organic because Lynn couldn't stand completely straight when he dove). Steiner bulldog! Kid going nuts after the match because he couldn't fully kick out is great and a perfect way to keep the ball rolling with the feud. The pre-WWF matches that show Waltman as the first true indie star of the post-territory days are so good that they're almost depressing because of how much he and his reputation as a performer plummeted.

It's hard to not think that's part of the motivation. At this point, I just think that he's the highest-tiered JTTS. But they're kind of making Ziggler into a cause celebre to counter Reigns, whether they realize it or not.

I said before that I only want them to bring the European title back if it's in tandem with the US title, and Rusev just has them both. Maybe you do a match with Jericho (as a former champion) where Rusev goes over to make it official. And then... he pursues my ultimate gimmick idea: a guy who has just decided to assemble his own version of the J-Crown. Even if you're building him towards a World title match, the idea of him squashing legends to claim their titles is awesome to me as just pure cheap heat, and nobody can deny the glorious image of Rusev carrying around every spare retired title belt that they have.

X8: 1) Sunday Night Heat: Bradshaw/Faarooq/Rikishi/Scotty 2 Hotty vs. Bubba Ray Dudley/D-Von Dudley/Lance Storm/Test. 2) WWF European Championship: Goldust vs. Diamond Dallas Page ©. 3) Kurt Angle/Booker T vs. Edge/Mr. Perfect. 4) WWF Intercontinental Championship: William Regal © vs. Rob Van Dam. 5) WWF Tag Team Championship: Billy Gunn/Chuck Palumbo © vs. Jeff Hardy/Matt Hardy. 6) WWF Women's Championship: Jazz © vs. Lita vs. Trish Stratus. 7) Scott Hall/Kevin Nash vs. Kane/The Undertaker. 8) Steve Austin vs. Ric Flair. 9) WWF Cruiserweight Championship: Christian vs. The Hurricane vs. Billy Kidman vs. Tajiri ©. 10) WWF Undisputed Championship: Chris Jericho © vs. Triple H. 11) Hollywood Hogan vs. The Rock. 1/5) Trim the tag title match down to its core components. The Hardys were the most popular team of the era; give them the WM win and put an early end to the Billy & Chuck bullshit to come. 2/9) A DDP-Dustin match at WM was too fun for me to resist. Swap out the Hardcore title and fucking Maven for the Cruiserweight title and a spotfest four-way that gets Helms/Kidman/Tajiri onto the card, and put Christian there. 3) I actually really like the Angle-Hennig idea... I just don't think that it'd be a particularly good match. Give Hennig that face turn and merge in the Booker-Edge match, with Edge playing the card of having watched him wrestle at VI and it being a dream to get to team with him. This gives the four a match that best plays to their strengths and just makes for a fun moment. 7/8) Nash wasn't hurt, at least significantly. They just didn't have a match for him, so he's available. The whole thing about the nWo is that they didn't give a shit if you were a face or a heel if you weren't wearing their colors, so Kane and 'Taker, despite being on opposite sides at the time could logically agree to facing off against them. I'm willing to take the risk on a Brothers of Destruction-Outsiders match in 2002 if it's at WM. The Outsiders were always a better team than fucking Kronik, so let's not use those matches to judge. And if we want to give 'Taker the best scalps possible in the streak, adding Hall to the list is a nice one. This frees up Austin. To me, Austin-Hogan isn't the Austin dream match; it's Austin-Flair. Hogan-Rock was the battle of the two stars who have most transcended wrestling; Austin-Flair would have been the battle of the two stars who have most exemplified wrestling. It'd have been face-face but they were going to end up feuding in a month anyway, so let's get this done now. It'd have been a Vince machination of some sort. They only ever had one televised singles match; let's make it count.

Most passe option, but I came up with one for XXX, winners in bold. 1) Preshow: Dean Ambrose/Roman Reigns/Seth Rollins vs. Billy Gunn/Kane/Road Dogg. 2) Daniel Bryan vs. Triple H. 3) WWE Tag Team Championship: Justin Gabriel/Tyson Kidd vs. Goldust/Cody Rhodes vs. Jey Uso/Jimmy Uso ©. 4) No holds barred eight-man elimination tag: Dean Ambrose/John Cena/Roman Reigns/Seth Rollins vs. Bad News Barrett/Antonio Cesaro/Brock Lesnar/Jack Swagger. 5) Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal: won by Antonio Cesaro. 6) The Undertaker vs. Bray Wyatt. 7) WWE Divas Championship: Emma vs. AJ Lee © vs Natalya vs. Tamina Snuka. 8) WWE World Heavyweight Championship: Batista vs. Daniel Bryan vs. Randy Orton ©. 1) Move the Authority-Shield squash to the preshow because it didn't need a "hot opener" and builds to that rivalry with them having to work twice. 3) Swap out Los Matadores and Rybaxel for International Airstrike and the Rhodes Bros., because it was a fucking crime that the latter didn't get a WM match, and Gabriel/Kidd are just a fun heel option for a sprint tag. 4) Well, Lesnar-'Taker was an in-ring disaster, and Cena-Wyatt just wasn't a "WrestleMania match". So let's throw it all out, and have an awesome brawl with booking run amok. BNB's re-debut is better used on the main stage show; he wasn't needed for the next night's RAW and this prevents the supreme indignity of Mysterio getting fed to the lions. Cesaro gets eliminated because of Zeb distracting him by doing something stupid, subsequently enters himself into the battle royal and becomes an actual face. The Authority's old fucks screw The Shield out of the match, leaving Barrett and Lesnar against Cena. Barrett gets a degree of revenge for SummerSlam 2010, and Lesnar gets his chance to destroy Cena and the pin. The Eddie Gilbert Memorial Battle of New Orleans. Cena and Cesaro align themselves against a Real Americans 2.0 of Sheamus and Swagger during the trophy presentation the next night. Cesaro doesn't become a "Paul Heyman Guy", he just stays awesome on his own and occasionally tags with Cena and friends. Barrett can become Heyman's proxy without having to sell himself to him because he's obviously a great talker, and Heyman can just go around being an asshole and squeezing the lemon on a pure Cena-Lesnar program. The Evolution-Shield showdown from the next night stays exactly the same because The Shield had already unambiguously turned face. So many balls in the air coming out of this. 6) A shorter match that can have the smoke and mirrors needed for a 'Taker match. He wins by out-SPOOKY MAGICKING Bray, but shows his most cracks ever. He either retires undefeated or Bray actually does things in the rest of 2014 and justifies becoming the ONE in TWENTY-TWO and ONE at 31, it works either way. 7) The Divas title match just gets truncated because... I don't know, maybe you could have had a series of entry matches to make getting into the match seem at least a little important. Sorry to everyone who lost a Mania payday.

So when does Rollins get a Motorhead theme song of his own?

They haven't acknowledged Bulgaria in a while but he is still billed as "NOW living in Moscow", and I can't remember them ever actually calling him a Russian, just doing the "hero of Russia" stuff instead. Him having both belts, one completely superfluously, is what I really love. He's just the European champ now, too, deal with it.