El-P

Nia is basically a rookie with very average talent at best who has done jackshit in "Da Biz" and who's only where she is because she's big and from the Family. So yeah, if she indeed had an ego booboo because she had to do a job to Sasha Banks, who's been working her ass off and killing herself for a while now, she's a big pussy with an oversize ego. That's not "standing up for yourself". Seriously now, where are Chiggy and Satomura to kick some of these people in the fucking teeth ?

The Jeff Jarrett episode was absolutely fascinating stuff.

For fuck's sake. What I said about Kane yesterday. Again.

For a while, this was the most watchable WWE PPV in a long time. Enjoyed the two women's match a lot, although Asuka should have been put over much more strongly and the fact they played the "old" card for James is beyond stupid. The tag cruisermatch was very fun too. Didn't watch Enzo & Elias matches, because life is short. AJ Styles vs Finn Balor was legit great, and yet another proof Styles is one of the greatest ever. Balor really should binge watch every Great Muta match ever, because the Demon character is a bunch of cool looking paint and nothing more. The main event was like a fun clusterfuck of a match that turned so-bad-it's-good in a WCW 95/96 way (glad I'm not the only one who had Uncensored flashbacks), then the whole Kane kills Braun thingy happened and it became legit offensive. When you put the ratio of TV Time / terrible matches-angles-pushes together, Glen Jacobs has to be the all-time least enjoyable wrestler ever. Why the fuck is he on a PPV main event at 50, and getting the best of fucking Braun ? Anyway, Kane is one the worst ever and then the match became just awful and stupid as opposed to fun and stupid. Then Kurt Angle came back, as every guy who has to be carried back half-dead always does (how lazy can the booking get at this point with this shit ?) and at least they sent the fans home happy. I guess overly bloated garbage brawls are the brand new thing now, it's like a 1998 revival mixed with self-conscious epic or something....

Bret vs Shawn for the title was always the plan. It's been discussed at length before, including by Prichard on his podcast. Sid getting the title after the debacle was only a way to pass the belt onto Taker at Mania after all got fucked up.

As much as I love LU, this has become a pet peeve of mine. It really gets ridiculous at times.

Come on. Where's Savio Vega when you need him ?

I laughed.

Angle ? In a TLC match ? Seriously ? Wow. I wonder how that makes Daniel Bryan feel... AJ Styles vs Balor = sleeper match of the card now. This card suddenly looks more *interesting*.

Yes : Death of WCW match of the week : Ric Flair vs Hulk Hogan Bear with me people, this one is a definite checkpoint in a Death of WCW road. Ric Flair says it's a first blood match. That's news to me. Flair was the babyface until he began to act kinda heelish. Hulk is the super heel. Hogan kinda works like a face. Flair works like a heel. Flair bleeds 5 minutes into the match. Match doesn't stop. Hulk works like a babyface. Hulk wants a pinfall. Referee doesn't count because it's a first blood match. Hulk signals Flair is bleeding. Referee doesn't know what to do. Flair bleeds like a pig after Hulk uses razor wires. Flair uses a foreign object that he *hides in his knee pads*, in a barb wire cage match with a referee who obviously is biased toward him. Hulk hulks up. Remember Hulk has been the super heel who beat the shit of of David then turned him against his father. Flair bleeds like a stuck pig. David Flair and Torrie Wilson showed up. they are heels. Cheering for heel Hogan working as a babyface and getting cheered like crazy. Arn Anderson, babyface who helped babyface horsemen win earlier on, shows up and hits heel David Flair who cheers for heel/babyface Hulk. Arn hits him after spending the last few weeks telling Ric that David was a good kid who was manipulated by heel Hogan (who works face). Babyface Arn passes on a tire iron to heel Flair who beats up heel Hogan acting like a babyface. Ric Flair puts Hogan into a figure four. IN a First Blood match. Referee counts three. In a First Blood match. Crowd is silent. Heel David comes into the ring to check heel/babyface Hogan while heel Flair doesn't get a celebration for winning his 14th World Title and the control of WCW, as he leaves the ring with babyface Arn. THIS IS AWESOME !!!!!! Line of the night : "Well... uh.... are we told this is a First Blood Match ? .... Allright let's just forget about that." Tony Schiavone, dumbfounded.

My review from the WCW Highway to Hell thread : Shit booking match of the night : Hulk Hogan vs Ric Flair. The match itself is pretty good, even then Hogan was working harder than he did in 1995. What's interesting is that he's basically working almost like good old Hulk Hogan here, no chickenshit stuff, no begging, no stalling, just a more agressive and heelish version of his former self. Kinda odd. Flair is coming up very collected and calm, which is a nice touch. So yeah, match is actually good, but the ending reminds me of the infamous match they had in the Fall of 1994, in reverse (well, almost, since Hogan still wins) : stupid post match involving a woman (Torrie Wilson, hot and useless at this point) and a masked man who reveals himself as the closest man to Flair : David !!! More tazer stuff. Man this was getting old. David Flair had no business in the ring at this point, and his involment and stupid turn ruins the ending what should have been a cool grudge match. Another point, don't give me that Horsemen shit about Benoit & Malenko. They were nowhere to be seen here, they didn't jump the ring to defend Flair. Horsemen my ass. And where was Goldberg ? Hey, those guys stole your title, remember ?

This. Even by early 1999 they drew the biggest WCW PPV buyrate in a long while, and were still working quite decently together, with Hogan carrying the bulk of the work at this point (yeah, I said it, Hogan was better than Flair then). The first match in 1994 is everything it should have been and one of Hogan's best matches.

Well, fucking A.

Complete misuse of Kane. Should have been brought up to SD to feud with Jinder. Punjabi Prison. (I'm not even joking, that way maybe AJ Styles would not be the next victim of Fucking Stupid Business Plan Booking) Still... Kane... wow. 22 years of sucking on WWE TV.

ECW was old-school as shit. Raven vs Dreamer, Raven vs Sandman, Taz vs Sabu, Shane vs Pitbull, Terry Funk the old mentor coming back for a last ride, it was all classic 80's rasslin' at heart.

Babyfaces doing heelish things as been there forever : Hogan. Reversing dynamics ? Austin. Russo was exactly all about guys being good or bad depending of the feud, and even sometimes inside of a single feud, the perfect case being Val Venis vs Goldust, where the heel/face dynamic depended on basically whom the audience thought was the "coolest" this particular week (and JR being confusing as all hell blaming Terri, basically slut-shaming in action). This was his exact talking point in the infamous "Rebook the WCW invasion" shoot, to him it didn't matter if the nWo guys were heel or faces, as long as they "got a reaction". And this is precisely what we're talking about here with Reigns and the entire pseudo "shades of grey" main event scene.

This is carny as shit and WCWesque to the umptieth degree.

Agreed about the ladder match. Plus at this point it kinda felt like overkill after the Hell of War, which it couldn't follow in term of crazyness. Good match though, they made an effort to try and win, which is always a big point to me. The women's match was... interesting, considering what happened in AAA this year. I really grown to like Taya a lot. Those scars on Dante Fox... ugh... Nice six-tag match, great special outfit by Drago. That last vignette, yeah. Vamp has basically never been better than in LU to me.

And it's absolutely Russo's idea. "Heels and babyface don't matter, it depends on the feud". Except, it absolutely prevents them from telling any compelling stories (well, they can't even tell the simplest ones) and also prevents any kind of emiotionnal attachment to any character. And really, it's not a matter of them booking in "shades of grey", it's a sign of incompetent writing. Braun was never supposed to get babyface reactions, they didn't make him get those on purpose because it fit feud x as opposed to feud y where he's supposed to get heel reactions. The whole "flexibility on top" I see as a poor excuse justifying crappy, blurry and unimaginative booking, and their inability to actually book strong babyfaces. Every guy on top is basically a heel whom the crowd hates of loves depending on the context, which is why unless they murder each others in crazy brawls, there's nothing happening there in term of booking except yet another Roman Road to Mania. It may fit their business model, but damn does it sink the whole product into black hole of nothingness. No wonder why Lesnar is a perfect champ for this era… (they should have made Braun into Vader-champ, you know… but nope, gotta build to that part-time-wash-up vs Roman Mania Moments)

Listening to Prichard's podcast on Unforgiven 1999 reminded me of : Chaz, a regular guy from new Jersey. Who beats up his girlfriend Marianne. But not really. Because ya know, those bitches always accuse their men just to fuck wit'em. Damn those bitches. Yeah. Vince Russo in all his mysoginistic, rape-culture inducing glory.

"The hotter the heel, the hotter the babyface when it's time to turn". An old-school rasslin' lesson that the "students of the Game" have seemingly forgotten. Among others. This. The idea that "babyfaces and heels really don't matter" was the old Russo talking point. Whatever the fuck you want to twist it, even in 2017, the most successful formula will always remain "good" vs "evil". The rest is cop out bullshit. (Braun vs Roman was exactly that, only the audience picks up who they think is "good". That's another old-school rasslin' lesson, whomever the audience wants to cheer is babyface de facto and should be pushed as such, even staying a fucking monster/asshole, as Steve Austin demonstrated)

Hum… DX was hot as shit in 98 and 99, in the biggest boom period of the company ever. The Shield was super hot in the… early 2010's. I don't think there's even an argument there (and yeah, I didn't care for DX after Shawn left and yeah, it has aged very very badly and yes, Shield was on another level of in-ring work, although the context is different of course).

I never said it was designed to make him a heel, but it sure as hell wasn't designed to make him cheered. If Vince was wringing his hands backstage at every event worrying about whether Roman was going to get cheered like some people like to believe, they wouldn't have done that match at all. Honestly I think Roman and his matches would be LESS interesting if he was universally cheered and I think WWE probably sees it the same way. Yeah, I would agree with this.

That promo was the lamest "We admit we have no idea how to get you love that guy anymore, so whatever" cop-out. And the match was not designed to make Roman a heel, the ending was build toward a "Sorry I love you, you Legend" feeling. Roman is only the "most over" because he's been pushed like fucking crazy forever at this point. See : HHH in the early 00's. He's made the fans creatures of habits. He's not "the most over" in the sense Austin or Rocky were. Those empty seats speak for themselves too. The merch point has been talked about in lenght before. Of course he's gonna sell the most since he has the most to sell (and is pushed like crazy for ever). Chicken and eggs. Their current business model and complete lack of competition allows them to keep on going this way. It makes for baffling, predictably boring booking on top, with a guy their own audience don't want to accept. With a few oddly fun moments like the trolling at Royal Rumble last year, or "You deserve it !" chants when "The Man" is destroyed by Braun. A unique case, really.

The Shield is very obviously a case of the whole being way better than the sum of the parts. And yeah, the conclusion will be another Roman conoration that will get shit on.