Russellmania

why would they work an injury on Barrett who is on fire right now?

maybe we should create a new "Hot Tag" subforum and have a separate thread in it for each possible candidate

phew! glad that got resolved

jesus christ, Loss, way to overthink it.

Already done. The pic on the right is his new gear as of Smackdown.

there's no "formula" really, but two things that jump to mind are: 1. Remember that no matter what other comedy, skits, angles, etc. you have going on the real thing this business revolves around is FIGHTS. I know it's a PG era and it's all about putting smiles on faces, etc. but people ultimately watch wrestling to see some fights and in recent years they've done a shitty job of remembering that. Just look at Ambrose on Raw the other night. People are raving about him in part because he was just a house of fire...attacking Rollins, then coming back and attacking Barrett. 99% of the time they run that segment differently....we easily could have gotten the typical "face chaces the heel out of the ring and then stands there sneering" that WWE is so fond of now. Instead we got guys actually inflicting violence on each other. So yeah, they need more of that. 2. Have faith in the talent. Let the talented guys do their thing. Stop micromanaging everything, stop scripting guys to the point that their own personalities are completely hidden. It's to the point where the best promos in the last few months have been on RAW or PPV post-shows on the Network or on fucking Instagram of all places. When Big E puts up a video on Instagram that shows 100 times the personality and wit that we see from him on TV it becomes obvious that the company is stifling some of these guys' personalities. Guys like Rock, Austin, Foley, Angle, etc. would have never gotten over during the boom if they hadn't been allowed to go out there and infuse their own personality with their characters and just riff.

I can see where you'd get the analogy from, but I really hope all 3 guys are allowed to grow into their own characters. WWE has a terrible track record with anointing guys as the "next" one. With that said, Ambrose to me is cool because he's a lot like Brian Pillman and I always thought it was a bummer that we never got to see a healthy Brian Pillman in WWF during the Austin/Rock boom. Pillman could have been a big star alongside those guys or at least a really good foil for them ala HHH. Ambrose feels like a second chance at that.

yeah it's just like that time they burned Hogan/Warrior at the Royal Rumble and nobody wanted to see them wrestle after that. It's funny you mention Hogan/Warrior, because that was exactly what I was thinking of when I wrote that. I'm not talking about burning Reigns/Rusev as a matchup, even though teasing it at the end of a battle royale certainly foreshadows to it. (And, if you're going to foreshadow it and not build to it, you're wasting time.) I'm talking about giving it away on free TV, instead of saving it for a PPV finish like the Royal Rumble. Hogan/Warrior was a special moment because it happened at a special event and it foreshadowed the main event of a future show. Reigns/Rusev might end up going somewhere soon (though that would be baffling, since he's not even all the way out of the Shield breakup yet), but giving away a Hogan/Warrior-esque confrontation between the two as the final sequence to the third battle royale WWE has had in as many months leaves money on the table. I see your point, but It's apples and oranges really. Hogan and Warrior were already established guys and the plan was to have them main event Wrestlemania a few months later so the Rumble made sense as the context for teasing that matchup. Reigns and Rusev are still finding their way so a Battle Royal on RAW (albeit with high stakes) feels like an appropriate time to feel out what kind of reaction something like that would get. That was easily the best crowd reaction Rusev has gotten since his debut and it made both guys seem like a big deal so i think it was a success.

yeah it's just like that time they burned Hogan/Warrior at the Royal Rumble and nobody wanted to see them wrestle after that.

Rollins and Ziggler had a terrific match on Smackdown too. I'm torn about that because on the one hand I hate the modern WWE trope of throwing a match out there with no build on Smackdown and then repeating it on Monday with no real story advancement (probably assuming most people didn't see the first one). On the other hand these two have great chemistry and I would love to see them keep going for weeks. The problem is that they are going to burn out this matchup now while Ziggler is in limbo, rather than give them a feud and make it matter. Anyway I think these two work well together in part because neither guy has particularly strong offense, but they bump and sell so well for each other that they make each other's moves look like death.

wasn't her first gimmick in WWE literally that she farted in every segment?

the worst thing about it is that the commentary is so generic and non-descriptive that they could basically pre-tape it and reuse it. I sometimes feel like I'm listening to WWE video game commentary

I agree about Vince. Regarding Bryan I think HHH and Steph understand exactly why he's over since their contributions to the build-up and execution of WM 30 were masterful. It might have taken them a little too long to "get it" but by the time of around Elimination Chamber their performances were pitch perfect and really helped put the whole thing over the top. Vince is just fucking awful now though. I mean the difference in quality between the HHH-run NXT and the Vince-run WWE is so incredibly obvious at this point.

2006 had great TV matches. That's when you had Taker, Angle, Henry, Finlay, Rey and others on Smackdown having awesome matches every week. We also got that killer Angle/Taker match on PPV.

Evan Bourne has got to be the most underutilized talent in the world. Probably a top 3 high flyer in the world and they've done fuck all with him. It's really too bad.

Kevin Dunn is like the wormtongue of WWE

why the fuck wouldn't they take the title off him in person? The Beloved Champion relinquishing the titles is a heat magnet type of segment and they just squandered it for no apparent reason.

that's actually one of the few WWE quirks I agree with.

Instead of having a splinter division with the "real" women wrestlers, why don't they just treat them all like "real" wrestlers? And then the ones who are too shitty to fill that role should be either fired or used as valets.

I always assumed he has heat on him because he's constantly taking subtle shots at the company on twitter and such.

yeah seriously that would be the dumbest thing they could possibly do (having him immediately lose the title).

is that a real thing that happens anymore where fans feel ripped off just because a heel wins? If the MITB match itself was good but a heel came out on top, I'd have a hard time seeing the fans feeling like they didn't get their money's worth. Hell half their heels get cheered anyway. You really want people to feel ripped off, then have Cena win it.

I've said since the moment Bryan's surgery was announced that they should have stripped him of the title right away and made move to put it on Bray. Keeping the title on Bryan through all of this is doing nothing good for anyone. Stripping him wouldn't have hurt him and it's actually undermining the whole authority angle because why the hell after months of trying to run him down would they not take the first opportunity to strip him? The only reason anyone has given for why they haven't stripped him is a throwaway line from Stephanie that she didn't want to "make him a martyr"...uh what the fuck have you guys been doing since Summerslam then? It makes no kayfabe sense to keep the title on him and it actively hurts the rest of the show because it leaves a lot of guys in limbo. Plus getting stripped of the title and coming back to win it again would only make Bryan hotter. This company is so fucking obtuse sometimes.

anyone else see Smackdown? I thought Rollins and Ziggler had a real good match. If this Shield situation means we'll get months of Rollins floating around having awesome matches with everyone then I'm all for it.

I actually enjoy his work most of the time. I agree that his character is stale as hell, though. I actually thought his pseudo-face run from a few years ago was the best chance they had to draw money with him. I wish I could remember the context or exact time-frame, but he was basically a tweener lone wolf for a while. During this stretch he didn't talk much and would get huge pops whenever he RKO'd someone. He had almost a Stone Cold vibe where people loved to see him take people out for no reason. Sadly they didn't do a lot with him at this time b/c I think they still had cold feet due to his 2 strikes and then eventually they turned him heel and he became extremely boring again.