WWE Suvivor Series 2014

[goc]

I thought the booking of Rusev's elimination was good. Otherwise a pretty shitty main event and Sting looked really old and I do not care that he is "finally" in the WWE. I wasn't exactly waiting with bated breath.

 

I have never cared for Ziggler and nothing about tonight changed that for me. Would have much rather had them put the spotlight on Ryback or even Rowan to tell you how much I don't care for a guy who has nothing but cartoonish bumping and overly contrived looking offense.

[El-P]

Me neither, I don't get the love for Billy Gunn 2.0 at all. The beatdown took forever and was quite boring too.

 

I thought the Sting vs HHH face-off went forever, to a ridiculous degree. Especially since Trip was doing one of his empty "I'm so intense" look that just doesn't work at all. At some point I thought they both had blanked. Cool intro though, although 13 years too late. So, Sting is the big nostalgia selling card for this year's Mania. Okay. Even with the make up, he actually looks old. Meanwhile, the two younger guys in the ring who were featured totally took a backstep to this year's 56 years old nostalgia act. The "This is awesome" chants really sounded like people trying to convince themselves. Really ? Sting vs Triple H in 2014 is awesome ? Sting doing the silent Crow gimmick and reverse DDT that he was doing 17 years ago against the nWo is awesome ? At this point even Jeff Jarrett hitting Steph with a guitar would get a "You've still got it" chant it seems...

[Eduardo]

The commentators really bugged me at the end, and I rarely get annoyed to the extent I did last night. I can understand why they were trying so hard to put it over, but they sounded so phony. Especially JBL.

 

I only saw the main event last night. Thought the body of it was solid, and fun at times. The stuff with Rusev was good, and loved how he was eliminated. But as soon as the main event was over, I was thinking, "I missed tiny Cole Beasley and Dez Bryant scoring touchdowns during the 3rd quarter for this?"

[Zoo Enthusiast]

I watched football. Glad I did after watching the Sting thing on YouTube. The commentators definitely killed it for me.

[soup23]

I was low on the main event too. The action was not bad up until the finish but not all that inspiring either. Dolph bothers me with his selling sometimes in that he relies on playing complete dead and then finding a sudden burst of energy way too much. A little subtlety would go a long way in his overall babyface act. Sting's pop coming out honestly felt about as low as it possibly could be to me for someone of his stature debuting in a new environment. It didn't feel organic at all like the Mizdow stuff and the crowd had to talk themselves into the "this is awesome" chant. Also, we just got done recording a show discussing heels. HHH's reaction when Sting came out is indefensible to me. Compare it to Arn at Clash 17 and see who got the better heel reaction. HHH just stared at him for five minutes with a wont back down attitude. Steph carried the ending segment showing ass for him.

 

The Dolph moment is nice and I will reserve some of the qualms I have on him or his ceiling until I see what the follow up is.

 

However, THIS was the free show to drive up network viewers and coming out the biggest thing is Dolph without a ready made feud for him (I guess they could maybe do Rollins again) and a 55 year old facing HHH at Mania. That doesn't exactly seem like a great idea to me into gaining eyeballs and past fans of a bygone era to invest in your network.

[Zoo Enthusiast]

Nailed my exact thoughts, Chad. Have the same feelings about Ziggler and definitely don't understand why I am supposed to be excited by Sting. I loved him in 1997 - like majorly loved him - but this is going to wear off fast. He will get a good reception at Mania, though the smark narrative needs some tightening up. "Push the young guys (unless the old guy is a guy I liked when I was a kid)!"

 

The franchise!!!

[anarchistxx]

Surprised by the love for the main event. Thought it really dragged myself, except for a few exciting moments. The last five minutes with Dolph fighting the odds got me into it and was suitably dramatic. The Sting thing made no sense and he looked washed up, although it sort of worked. Other than that, Ryback went far too early, Kane stayed far too long, Big Show continues to be pointless as a character and stale as a wrestler.

 

Rusev still does nothing for me and his exit was ridiculously predictable, and made hardly any sense because the referee didn't bother utilizing any count outs before or after, just the usual convenient yet nonsensical booking. Harper/Rowan are going to have a job being successful as singles wrestlers, it is pretty crowded out there with guys at that level trying to push on. Cena felt like an irrelevance which was strange. Ziggler was MVP although he was put in the position to me and they worked to his strengths e.g. big bumps, face in peril, desperate offence. The jury is still very much out on Rollins, don't think he is anywhere near as good as WWE thinks he is and he is in danger of becoming a bit stale. Did enjoy him being portrayed as the sneaky strategist of the team, always getting in there with a kerb stomp from nowhere or sneaking up on behind on someone to score an elimination. It was like the Edge 'ultimate opportunist' stchick, which is appropriate as that is the ultimate level someone like Rollins could get to.

 

The rest of the card was awful, was hoping AJ/Nicki would go a bit longer. The shoddiness of WWE booking never ceases to amaze me either, they have this massive roster and they still end up having to fill time on a PPV with embarrassing shit like Adam Rose. Don't get the point of him at all, I fast forward every one of his segments on Raw but from what it looks like he has been doing exactly the same thing on every single episode for eight or nine months? Don't think the booking has ever been so short sighted and repetitive, it is the same with a guy like Bo Dallas, they debut him and every single segment is the same week after week and nobody ends up giving a shit.

 

The divas division is strong at the minute but the tag was too long because it had no story behind it, nobody had any motivation and you need that for these long elimination matches. In the past it would generally be people who had been feuding as part of the bouts, whereas this honestly felt like eight random people wrestling for no good reason. Most matches on Raw feel like that as well, there is no rhyme or reason they just throw a match out there to fill time. Zero creativity or direction.

 

As a Network showcase that was pretty mediocre, luckily the crowd was decent or it could have been even worse.

[anarchistxx]

 

 

Bray Wyatt is probably the most overrated guy on the roster at this point.

 

This. Don't think he has had a singles match that I've ever got into. His mic work is corny and mostly makes me cringe, and his in ring work isn't spectacular either. For all his feted promos the character never seems to have a motivation or a raison d'être that goes beyond the tired WWE booking trope of 'heel beats down on a face and/or costs him a match for no reason, feud begins'.

 

They tried with the Cena feud but it never really worked.

 

 

 

At this point even Jeff Jarrett hitting Steph with a guitar would get a "You've still got it" chant it seems...

 

The scary thing is that it would. We live in a culture where people can be endlessly monetized for their rose tinted nostalgia. Look at all the mediocre boy bands and cheesy 90s pop acts who return for sellout reunion tours as promoters cash in on the childhood memories of a generation who seem stuck in a perpetual adolescence.

 

You could bring Gangrel and Mideon out and they would get a massive pop.

[Loss]

Setting aside the Sting debut, which I really don't care about, that main event was pretty much what I want from WWE - lots of crowd-pleasing spots, a sharp face-heel divide, angle-driven twists playing themselves out in a wrestling match and a bonafide effort to elevate someone who is over. If they were like that all the time, I'd be happy. I would much rather see matches full of pomp and circumstance like that than attempts to create a good yet unimportant match of the year between talented, underutilized guys with no clear booking direction.

[El-P]

You could bring Gangrel and Mideon out and they would get a massive pop.

 

 

Well, Gangrel's intro ruled. I wish Gangrel had been paired with Luna and pushed as a mid-card garbage brawler actually.

 

But yeah. It will be interesting to see how Mania will be built in a few years from now, because there aren't much people from the last golden era left, and by then guys from this generation will have been overexposed like none others (they are already infact) in the history of pro-wrestling. When I read that Randy Orton showing up could have constituted a "surprise", I'm legit gobsmacked.

[Eduardo]

Bobby Green just used Gangrel's "The Brood" entrance music at the UFC Fight Night card in Austin.

[bradhindsight]

Given Orton's role in the authority, it would have been fitting for him to be a part of their demise - maybe after Triple H knocks out the first ref. Kane/Stooges etc come back out and tackle him and drag him away. Then you have Sting make his appearance after Triple H does the Pedigree.

 

I'm in the minority but the entire authority angle being overshadowed by the setup for Triple H's WrestleMania match is bleh to me. Now if Sting is a new face authority figure through Mania (and there at Vince's request), I'm feeling much better about the booking.

 

I didn't have any issue with Triple H starring Sting down with his "What the fuck are you doing here?" stuff before Sting hit him. I don't think him cowering would have played off well.

[anarchistxx]

 

 

Setting aside the Sting debut, which I really don't care about, that main event was pretty much what I want from WWE - lots of crowd-pleasing spots, a sharp face-heel divide, angle-driven twists playing themselves out in a wrestling match and a bonafide effort to elevate someone who is over. If they were like that all the time, I'd be happy. I would much rather see matches full of pomp and circumstance like that than attempts to create a good yet unimportant match of the year between talented, underutilized guys with no clear booking direction.

 

I agree with this in principle - the best WWE matches are usually the ones with a lot of booking, that focus on character and motivation rather than just a 'pure' wrestling match. That is why they can have Cesaro constantly wrestling really good fifteen minute matches on television every week and it bores me to tears - without a decent story and some compelling booking and a good angle, these matches become meaningless. And with three hours to fill there are usually two or three of these matches every week.

 

At least with, for instance, Smackdown Six booking the television matches were always situated in some greater feud and there was an aim and purpose and forward motion to it all, rather than just picking a random face and heel and having them wrestle to fill twenty minutes after The Authority does a twenty minute promo and before Adam Rose comes and does his thing.

 

My only issue is that a lot of the booking for that match was either predictable [Rusev] or plain bad [big Show], and I felt the match was without momentum for quite a while. They definitely sucked me in for the stretch though, and the overbooking worked well in the context.

[Childs]

Setting aside the Sting debut, which I really don't care about, that main event was pretty much what I want from WWE - lots of crowd-pleasing spots, a sharp face-heel divide, angle-driven twists playing themselves out in a wrestling match and a bonafide effort to elevate someone who is over. If they were like that all the time, I'd be happy. I would much rather see matches full of pomp and circumstance like that than attempts to create a good yet unimportant match of the year between talented, underutilized guys with no clear booking direction.

 

This is exactly how I wanted to feel about the main event. But in actuality, they failed to make me care about most of the moments within the match. I enjoyed the Rusev elimination and Luke Harper, but otherwise, it kind of drifted along. Cena, the focus of the build-up, was irrelevant. They pissed away Henry and Ryback. Rollins looked off with a lot of his offense. And I didn't see it as a star-making performance for Ziggler. I saw it as Ziggler doing his normal routine (which admittedly, I dislike more than many) and then having to sell a pedigree for five minutes so he could be bailed out by an old man. In the end, it was a star-making performance for fucking Sting.

 

Now, obviously, I'm out of step, because a lot of people loved it. But if that's a promotion clicking, it isn't the promotion for me right now.

[TRMD]

I thought the main was very good. I legitimately didn't know what was going to happen, which is always great. I wish Ryback was the sole survivor and took Ziggler's place, but I think I understand why he wasn't (The Cesaro match on Raw was obviously his test run to see if he could go 30).

 

Overall, exciting match. Absolutely loved Rusev's flat belly bump on the table.

[shoe]

I will say that the main event did get me on an emotional level at the finish. I did scream ZigZag at the t.v at the last desperation ZigZAg. I'm not even a Ziggler guy. Then we get the Sting thing complete with Titantron and slow walk hurt the whole finish.

[Loss]

I'm not a Ziggler guy either. But he's too over to not be pushed at the top level.

[shoe]

I'm not a Ziggler guy either. But he's too over to not be pushed at the top level.

I agree. People love him as a face. I liked him better as a heel.

[anarchistxx]

Ziggler's triumph and his undoing is that he remains over regardless of the booking. Under normal circumstances this would lead to him getting pushed to the moon, but in actuality it just makes WWE really complacent and feel they can do whatever with him to help get other people over and it doesn't matter. Someone who is as over as he is shouldn't be jobbing every other week in meaningless matches.

 

Instead of running Cena/Lesnar once again they should be feeding the likes of Ziggler to Brock. he is the perfect opponent in terms of the bumps he can take, how over he is and his dynamic, desperate offence. Under ideal circumstances you run Lesnar against Ziggler, Ryback and Orton before he jobs on the way out to Daniel Bryan/Roman Reigns at Wrestlemania. Might as well get fresh, money matches out of him if he is going.

[JerryvonKramer]

I'm not going to watch Survivor Series, but like some others I think it's a shame that Sting has appeared in WWE.

[soup23]

You should at least watch the main event Parv.

[C.S.]

Some random observations about out of the ring matters:

 

- Putting aside the wrestling quality of the women's match, what really struck me was how fucking generic most of their costumes were. Practically interchangeable. The men would never be allowed to get away with that. Then again...

 

- It struck me last night that Dean Ambrose's costume is just a cleaner version of Luke Harper's dirty swamp outfit - and both of them are only a couple of shades removed from the Brooklyn Brawler. Just terrible.

 

Even in the mid-90s, everyone looked unique and memorable. Even the shittiest gimmicks - Mantaur, etc. - stood out costume-wise. Now? It's a race to see who can be the most generic.

[Loss]

Having binge-watched a lot of Shonda Rhimes TV in the last few weeks, it really stood out to me in that match how WWE could stand to be a lot more racially and ethnically diverse at the top of the card. It's nothing new, but it does lead me to believe that's at least part of what holds them back.

[TRMD]

Some random observations about out of the ring matters:

 

- Putting aside the wrestling quality of the women's match, what really struck me was how fucking generic most of their costumes were. Practically interchangeable. The men would never be allowed to get away with that. Then again...

 

- It struck me last night that Dean Ambrose's costume is just a cleaner version of Luke Harper's dirty swamp outfit - and both of them are only a couple of shades removed from the Brooklyn Brawler. Just terrible.

 

Even in the mid-90s, everyone looked unique and memorable. Even the shittiest gimmicks - Mantaur, etc. - stood out costume-wise. Now? It's a race to see who can be the most generic.

 

Same with theme music. Rollins and Ambrose's themes literally sound like the generic songs you get on WWE games. Attire and Entrance themes legitimately matter to me. And current WWE doesn't give a shit about it. Aside from Wyatt and the Usos.

[NintendoLogic]

 

I'm not a Ziggler guy either. But he's too over to not be pushed at the top level.

I agree. People love him as a face. I liked him better as a heel.

 

 

Zigger is awful as a heel. His lack of offense isn't really a big deal when he's getting his ass kicked for 90% of the match, but it becomes really noticeable when he has to work a control segment and busts out a million chinlocks.