Russellmania

it seems really obvious to me that Lesnar bladed on the ringpost shot and bled hardway when hit with the steps. I keep seeing people insist that he hit the ringpost hardway and I just don't see it.

man how killer would it be if you had Taker, Kane, and Ambrose as your first 3 members and then the surprise 4th member ended up being Brock?

I want Reigns to win the title and hold it until Mania. I then want Brock to enter number 2 at the Rumble and eliminate literally all 29 other guys one by one. then we get Brock/Reigns 2.

Undertaker in his couple of matches since WM 30 has been really good because he has stopped trying to wrestle like 2007 Undertaker and wrestles more like a wily veteran.

the problem is that the main roster has kind of an imbalance of heels/faces IMO. Charlotte, Paige, Nikki, Brie and Sasha are all natural heels. that leaves Becky, Naomi, and Nattie as natural faces, but Naomi is a heel for some reason. Foxy is a good heel, but I have a hunch should could be a killer loose cannon face if they booked it right. I wish they'd give Becky more of a push because she's the best natural babyface they have (not counting Bayley yet).

she was just trying to salvage that abortion of a figure 4 that charlotte fucked up

I really find this whole "is it the wrestler or is it the gimmick that gets a guy over?" question really fascinating. Ultimately I'm inclined to agree more with cm funk on this. Loss' assertion that the push matters more than the personality seems refuted by numerous instances of guys failing despite huge pushes. The ideal situation is that you have a guy with a ton of charisma who's a great performer who also gets a solid push and booking. Austin, Rock, Goldberg, Hogan, etc. are all examples of this. They are cases where the personalities perfectly converged with a well-timed, well-executed push and it resulted in huge success. But I totally disagree with the notion that other guys put in the same exact circumstances would have been as successful (or successful at all). IMO the personality matters way more than the push. It's way easier for a guy to get over on his own without the support of management than it is for management to force a guy to be over just by pushing him. A really strong push and smart booking can definitely hide a guy's shortcomings, but it only goes so far. A guy like Brock, however will always be over and considered one of the biggest threats just because of how visceral and terrifying he is regardless of his W/L record.

I didn't see RAW but saw mentions of Rusev apparently getting punished for the whole engagement thing. How did that manifest itself? did he get jobbed out or something? if he is indeed getting punished then it's really absurd. On the one hand I can see how it's maybe not smart to tweet about that given the timing. But on the other hand the company is so frigging inconsistent with their social media policies. Nobody is ever really fully "in kayfabe" or "out of kayfabe" on twitter so i can't blame the talent for not knowing where to draw the line. When you have Stephanie acting like an evil heel on RAW and then tweeting about philanthropy on the same day then how can you really blame Rusev and Lana for keeping it real on Twitter as well. I mean New Day and friends have their own video game web series, the heels are always participating in charity work, etc. Now suddenly the company cares about kayfabe on twitter? it's just such a bullshit double standard.

I actually think the fact that they're just going to abruptly abandon the Lana/Rusev split is a big wasted opportunity. A Ziggler heel turn and subsequent Lana/Rusev reunion could have been pretty great.

that would be really smart booking actually. fuck, now I really want that to happen.

if they're smart they'll have Brock take the title from Rollins and run Brock/Reigns II at WM for the title.

Speaking as the husband of a woman who owns two Nikki Bella t-shirts - if Total Divas works to get women watching, the Bellas are going to be babyfaces. The show treats them as such (really, it treats almost everyone that way, other than Eva Marie and Summer Rae, when she was on). In some ways, Total Divas has given them the chance to do some more nuanced character building with the women. Whereas the women used to get no time to build a character - now they have a whole television show that has, over time, developed the on-screen personality of many of them, and could push them beyond more traditional face/heel dynamics. The Bellas are a good example - they can both do very unpleasant things on the show, but the overall response to them is positive, even if one may be positioned as in the wrong in a particular episode. Will WWE ever actually write to that level of nuance on Raw? Probably not. a big problem is that the women on Total Divas are nothing like their gimmicks on the actual wrestling show. It makes for a really strange dynamic where whatever crossover audience you get might show up to a show and cheer for someone they like on Total Divas even if it's totally inconsistent with the kind of reaction they're trying to get. yeah TD needs to be scrapped ASAP. More people buy into it, from a realism standpoint, than wrestling, so what does anybody get out of for example Ziggler horndogging on Nikki Bella other than make him look a pest? well another big problem is that Total Divas does more to make me care about any of these women than WWE does.

Speaking as the husband of a woman who owns two Nikki Bella t-shirts - if Total Divas works to get women watching, the Bellas are going to be babyfaces. The show treats them as such (really, it treats almost everyone that way, other than Eva Marie and Summer Rae, when she was on). In some ways, Total Divas has given them the chance to do some more nuanced character building with the women. Whereas the women used to get no time to build a character - now they have a whole television show that has, over time, developed the on-screen personality of many of them, and could push them beyond more traditional face/heel dynamics. The Bellas are a good example - they can both do very unpleasant things on the show, but the overall response to them is positive, even if one may be positioned as in the wrong in a particular episode. Will WWE ever actually write to that level of nuance on Raw? Probably not. a big problem is that the women on Total Divas are nothing like their gimmicks on the actual wrestling show. It makes for a really strange dynamic where whatever crossover audience you get might show up to a show and cheer for someone they like on Total Divas even if it's totally inconsistent with the kind of reaction they're trying to get.

I will be *shocked* if this happens. They're more likely to nominate Charlotte. Sasha has been on fire, but it has been mostly in NXT so as far as WWE is concerned it practically never happened. Charlotte winning the title on the main roster > anything Sasha has done in WWE canon unfortunately.

Really I think Corey Graves is the best colour man they have had since Bobby Heenan. he's tremendous. when he started he was obviously green but he has improved massively since his start and is the best commentator they have now in the whole company IMO. His act is basically a modern Jesse Ventura without the camp and he's just so damn good at it. Best part is that he's 'smart' without pandering to the smarks if that makes sense. Like he calls the names of moves and is detail-oriented but he does it naturally and doesn't sound like he's trying too hard to be a "wrestling" announcer.

Rusev should be a babyface anyway. My dream booking scenario is Dolph turning heel and dumping Lana in humiliating fashion. A broken Lana is then brainwashed by Bray Wyatt. Wyatt and Lana have an evil cult wedding on Raw, and when the reverend asks if anyone objects, Rusev's music hits, and he destroys the wedding. Then at Wrestlemania you have Rusev Vs Wyatt. Rusev wins. After the match Lana slaps Rusev, but then realises she always loved him, and the two embrace and reign over wrestling for roughly forever. Summer fades into obscurity. holy shit i now want this more than anything ever the only tweak I'd make is that by this point Bo Dallas would have joined the Wyatt's and become "Reverend Bo Dallas" and he'd be the one performing the ceremony. Rusev would leave him laying while the others scramble.

He put the Shield over, they're all doing great in WWE. He put Bryan over, he's going to be the #1b baby face if he ever gets back. He put over John Cena, he's the biggest star in WWE for the decade since. He put over Batista 3x and he was the #2 guy for 5 years and damn good for his last run in '14 He was the only top guy to not put over Brock in his first run -Brock couldn't handle his spot, took off for the UFC, returns after 8 years and THEN puts him over(he did win the big Mania rematch, and then lost at the next show in the cage blowoff match, so this ones a push) He put over Chris Benoit 2x then cut his legs out and had Michaels as #1 face anyway -Benoit went on a murder-suicide rampage and gave WWE the worst PR ever He cooled off CM Punk's push when he was at his peak -Punk couldn't handle his spot on the card, took off for UFC He beat Sting at WrestleMania, but cheated to set up a potential rematch if Sting worked out -Sting has a great match, top of the card for Sept, and gets a major injury and may never return I dunno I think he's good judge of who's worth laying down for. And Brock has been my favorite wrestler since the day he debuted, to the day he left, and ever since he returned. Sting, Benoit and Punk all are in my top 20 all time, but Triple H is the constant and has to have his jobs mean something when they happen. That is incredibly misleading stance there. He put over the Shield, kind of. The Shield was the hottest act in the WWE (next to Bryan) after Hunter was done they had broken up and Ambrose has not been the same, Rollins is in the top spot but is nowhere near a top guy and Reigns is on the fence right now. Sure he lost to them, but they were more over before the Evolution feud. He put over Daniel Bryan? Bryan was the most over act in the company before Triple H got involved. Sure he jobbed to him in a match that shouldn't had happened and then the next month he was stuck facing Kane in an undercard match while Triple H and Evolution took on the Shield in the real main event. He did put over John Cena, true statement. Cena was over before the feud, but still that cemented him. He made Batista over ten years ago. As for the other section. Brock was a monster built as a big deal and here he is trading wins against Triple H. He barley recovered from that, what a waste of a year of him. Notice how Triple H, again, puts him self in with hot acts. For Benoit he put over Benoit the same way he put over Bryan. Don't see how they are in different categories. Punk could totally had handled the spot on the card? He left a few years later after being killed off after being the hottest act in the company with Triple H and left because Triple H was so shitty at putting everyone else down. Yes, Sting recovered for his return later in the year, doesn't mean that WrestleMania with Triple H was not pure and utter shit. Wow, what a great record Triple H has. your response shows just as much of a bias as the OP, namely with the bolded. I'm not saying HHH doesn't have his self-indulgent moments, but I really disagree with your assessment of the Shield and Bryan points. The Shield was more over before the Evolution feud? What? By what metric? If that's just your opinion then my opinion is that the Evolution feud was the peak for them. They came out of that looking like a million bucks. They unequivocally defeated the top WWE faction of the last decade and were left standing tall (remember the final fist bump pose at the end of that final Shield/Evolution match?). That whole program was designed to make all 3 guys look like a billion bucks and it worked. I think it was also a natural time to break up the group and it did a good job of launching all 3 guys as singles (even of the booking afterwards sucked). As for Bryan, HHH has never shown more ass than he did for Daniel Bryan. Remember the go-home RAW before WM 30? The show ended with Bryan savaging HHH and HHH bumping around like a pinball for a guy half his size. Bryan then beats him clean as a sheet at WM and then beats his 2 buddies the same night while overcoming interference from HHH and Steph, so he in fact got over on HHH twice in the same night (3 times in one week). I fail to see how the shitty booking of putting Bryan with Kane has anything to do with or takes anything away from HHH's efforts to put Bryan over. HHH really went over the top in putting Bryan over and it really helped Bryan...he'd probably be the first to say that.

yeah bringing in Brock Lesnar to (presumably) run an angle with Big Show is the definition of self-defeating.

there is so much wasted potential on this roster that it really baffles me when someone says "there isn't much they can do". Like...how bout start by writing a better show and putting your most talented people on TV more often? when Kane and Big Show are in your two biggest programs at the same time then "there isn't much they can do" really doesn't fly.

in the year 2015 we have Kane challenging for the world title and Big Show challenging their top draw. This is the darkest timeline.

Orphan Red

It wouldn't be terrible or anything but IMO it's not the best use of either woman. Charlotte is not really likeable or sympathetic and Sasha already has a huge smark cult following. Funny you use the Reigns example because I could see the crowd completely turning on the Sasha/Charlotte dynamic. They'd see Charlotte as the handpicked beneficiary of nepotism and Sasha as the smark darling getting screwed out of the spot she deserves. People would be booing babyface Charlotte and cheering heel Sasha inside a month. It would backfire on them just like how it did with Reigns/Bryan.

as an aside, I'd write "team BAD" off of TV for a while. Have Sasha be positioned as the clear leader and have her bring the other two down to NXT with her to try and resolve her "unfinished business" with Bayley. Then have her come back up and go after the title once you have a babyface champ (again i strongly prefer Becky for this spot. Easily the most sympathetic one of the whole bunch).

he's saying she'd keep the title long enough to beat the record, but lose it just minutes later. Then she could win it back at NoC and be a total heel about how she broke the record and is still champ when everyone watched Charlotte beat her on RAW. I think it would be a really clever move. I'm actually not clamoring for Nikki to lose the title just because i think there's a lot of untapped potential there as a heel. If they actually booked her better they could get people really dying for her to lose the title and I think this move would be a step in that direction. I also think Charlotte is the totally wrong choice as a babyface to be the one to beat her. Charlotte is a natural heel and is not even the best woman on her team (let alone compared to Sasha). IMO Charlotte should be like the Jericho to Nikki's HHH. Tease Charlotte taking the title from her permanently, but don't really run with it. Just use her to build up heat for the eventual real challenger to take it from her (IMO it should be Becky who is the best babyface on the main roster). I agree that attempting to generate more heat for Nikki would be a good idea in theory, I just have my doubts she'd live up to it. Sure the Bellas are kinda naturally dislikeable, but it's tough to put my finger on why I don't think they're actually particularly worthy heels. Perhaps it's that they don't WANT to be booed? I can see that very easily, they'd much rather be loved for what they do it seems at times. I see a lot more potential in Alicia Fox in that regard than Nikki or Brie. I will accept it's unlikely the Bellas will fade into irrelevancy though, nor am I necessarily saying they should be, so it's not a bad idea. I disagree that Charlotte isn't the best contender of the faces though. No one at PCB is a particularly good promo and that might have held back this 'revolution' more than most aspects, but Becky is still in a really awkward stage and though I'm a fan, I wouldn't have bought her out of developmental yet. Paige has fought Nikki 60 billion times and her hype is pretty much dry, not to mention her consistently dreadful promos and seemingly declining ring-work (my granddad could throw himself off a ring apron with more purpose than Paige, and he's just had three of his toes amputated). Charlotte is definitely the one, Becky may be the slightly better worker but this just makes 1000x more business sense. I also think with the whole three-team mess, we need to be moving on to the next chapter soon enough and that should involve Sasha as the primary heel. Team BAD was a pure mistake, not having Sasha on her own first of all, but especially introducing them on the same night when they're a third-wheel team and would continue to be for weeks. So the sooner focus starts to shift towards Sasha the better for me, so I would book a pretty simple Charlotte victory at NoC. Either that or some kind of screw then a rematch, but yeah Charlotte should definitely be the next champion. see, I would have Paige turn heel and screw Charlotte out of the title at NoC out of jealousy and let those 2 work a program for a couple months while Becky chases the title. Once Becky becomes champ you have Sasha come in as the top heel challenger and her and Becky can start the real revolution. Then you have 2 solid programs and buy a couple of them some time. one of the great lost arts of wrestling in the last 10 years is that they do a bad job of giving potential title challengers good reasons not to challenge for the title. Charlotte and Paige both belong in the title picture but giving them their own really personal feud is a smart way to keep them out of the title picture for a while while still making them seem important.

he's saying she'd keep the title long enough to beat the record, but lose it just minutes later. Then she could win it back at NoC and be a total heel about how she broke the record and is still champ when everyone watched Charlotte beat her on RAW. I think it would be a really clever move. I'm actually not clamoring for Nikki to lose the title just because i think there's a lot of untapped potential there as a heel. If they actually booked her better they could get people really dying for her to lose the title and I think this move would be a step in that direction. I also think Charlotte is the totally wrong choice as a babyface to be the one to beat her. Charlotte is a natural heel and is not even the best woman on her team (let alone compared to Sasha). IMO Charlotte should be like the Jericho to Nikki's HHH. Tease Charlotte taking the title from her permanently, but don't really run with it. Just use her to build up heat for the eventual real challenger to take it from her (IMO it should be Becky who is the best babyface on the main roster).