WWE TV 2/22 - 2/28/16

[jcmmnx]

I'd rather see a 20 minute Owens/Zayn match treated like a big deal on Smackdown with proper build than a 20 minute Owens/Zayn match on Raw treated as a time filler until the important stuff happens with the so called real stars.

[El Dragon]

I will say, in retrospect, getting rid of the Brand Split appears to have been a big mistake to begin with. The main reason people argued for the brand split is that it led to having more over stars that didn't get in each others way. Now we are about 5 years later without it, and the main problem is there are so few people give a shit about because the old timers ate all of them up.

[joeg]

Smackdown 2002-2004ish is probably my favorite WWE stretch that I can remember. So I wouldn't mind a brand split. Gives a chance for some of the younger guys to get over the way Smackdown got Angle, Lesnar, Benoit, Edge, Eddy, Cena, and Mysterio over.

[Death From Above]

Of all the things to complain about, I don't know that the handling of Styles would make my top 20? Let's see!

 

1) Roman Reigns having no discernable personality traits. Seriously, without discussing his push or look, describe Roman Reigns. Can't be done.

2) See also The Usos

3) New Day having no actual program despite being the most over act in the company

4) Dolph Ziggler being a featured part of the show despite sinking multiple angles with poor performances

5) Doing nothing with Bo Dallas despite having the opportunity to run with the Flo Rida thing

6) Booking the unstoppable monster of the WWE against the grey-haired son of the owner of the company who hasn't appeared on the show in 6 years as one of the featured attractions of WrestleMania.

7) The Wyatts being defanged over and over and over

8) 40 Year Old Triple H being the lead heel in the promotion

9) Summer Rae being given nothing after a successful performance in the Rusev angle.

10) Tyler Breeze having nothing to do despite having a gimmick you could write an angle for in 2 minutes

11) Neville having nothing to do despite demonstrating he could be at least a solid piece in NXT

12) Miz being a jobber despite having a career renaissance where he's done nothing but successfully put people over.

13) The League of Nations having no reason to be together whatsoever. No stated goals. No direction.

14) Damien Sandow not being on the show ever despite 100 hours of television a week.

15) There being 100 hours of television a week.

16) All the regulars continuously having put over guest stars for the last 10 years

17) Titus O'Neil being suspended

18) Ryback turning heel again for no reason because he actually gets a positive reaction, can't have that!

19) No sense of tier system where everyone trades wins despite that method proving ineffective for years

20) The company focus on having the characters seek to 'have moments' rather than win the damn match.

 

 

Boom. Done.

 

I smiled way too much at this,

[Strummer]

apparently the word going around as of now is Shane is just sticking around till mania. A short term deal. Man them teasing removing Hunter and Stephanie and then remaining status quo would bite. And I'm not even a big Shane fan or anything

[NotJayTabb]

Maybe Shane wins control and hires someone to run the programme for him in lieu. Post-Mania is always a good crowd to bring in a surprise return as GM.

[SteveJRogers]

 

 

GIF/photo replies are better than just ripping into someone. They're good for civility.

However they are dismissive and end discussions. Therefore they are not good at all.

Sometimes internet "discussions" need dismissive endings like a GIF or meme.

 

Especially if being reminded how off the wall and not self aware the target seems to be.

[Al]

apparently the word going around as of now is Shane is just sticking around till mania. A short term deal. Man them teasing removing Hunter and Stephanie and then remaining status quo would bite. And I'm not even a big Shane fan or anything

I would have more confidence in Dusty Rhodes losing a "loser leaves town" match and following through than Hunter and Steph leaving tv and actually sticking with it.

[Migs]

Maybe Shane wins control and hires someone to run the programme for him in lieu. Post-Mania is always a good crowd to bring in a surprise return as GM.

 

Like Daniel Bryan?

[The Fray Movement]

 

I definitely would not mind a new brand split. The brand split was better than what we have now. If you didn't like Raw then you had a whole different set of talent on Smackdown to watch. I'm not sure if they have enough depth to do it now though, at least not without really depleting NXT.

Well the restocking of NXT iis going on big time right now, so raiding NXT to make Smackdown a great show again wouldn't be a bad idea.

 

It really depends, if Dunn/Vince are still running both shows then it will still be shit. If Vince/Dunn focus on one and the other had a different focus then it's a whole new ball game.

 

 

Smackdown already is the best weekly show they do. Vince Jr doesn't even go to Smackdown. It's run by HHH, Ryan Ward of NXT, and Brian James. It already is a completely different product than what they do and present on Monday night Raw.

[shoe]

 

 

Bryan also seems to think we are getting another brand split post mania. Well that would be lame

Depends. One man champion. US and IC on separate shows as their main titles. Keep them separate. They each have different feels and styles. It could work that way. Of course I have no confidence they would do it right.

 

The only brand split I would want to see is an NXT invasion, leading them to take over Smackdown.

You know an NXT brand split would just bury NXT as false stars.

[Matt D]

If they do this, I wouldn't want them to change the NXT formula at all. elevate some guys out of NXT, have some enhancement matches on every show, debut the new NXT guys, and have separate brands of the current roster plus some of the elevated NXT wrestlers. They could loop in a crusierweight title out of the tournament this year, could run with a six man tag title on the Raw show (if it's going to be Raw and Smackdown) to fill time. Have the US challenge each week too. Smackdown could have the Cruiserweights. Use the Total Divas cast on one show, maybe with a Divas Tag Title so that they can focus on multiple of them at once, and the others on another, etc. It's not rocket science the ways they could do this.

[Coffey]

On the Wrestling Observer Radio show today, Dave Meltzer insinuated that there are as many as 20,000 unsold Wrestlemania tickets. Am I misunderstanding what he's saying here? It's around the 55 minute mark of the show.

 

"This year should be interesting. They got a lot of tickets sold but it ain't like they sold 70,000 tickets. And now we're already at the point where there's not a lot of people buying tickets anymore. It's not like they're selling 20,000 tickets between now and show time."

[Slasher]

Is this difficulty to sell tickets a result of them coming up with a poor card or is it simply that Jerryworld is just too damn big for them to sell out?

[sek69]

Is this difficulty to sell tickets a result of them coming up with a poor card or is it simply that Jerryworld is just too damn big for them to sell out?

 

Little of column A, little of column B I would guess? Either way I'm sure they'll make it rain with comps to make sure the place is filled up.

[...TG]

If they're having difficulty selling tickets, it sure isn't reflected in Ticketmaster, where only the super expensive seats and blocked-view sets are available, or StubHub, where you'll pay a hefty markup even for general admission.

[sek69]

Sounds like scalpers must have grabbed a lot of the available tickets and are probably going to take a bath like they did on NXT.

[Sean Liska]

I'm not sure what Dave is talking about. Decent seats haven't been available for months. They're going to shatter the gate record. I've never seen anything like this. The cheapest Takeover ticket on StubHub is $350. The HOF sold out in minutes while last year was thousands short of a sell out.

[Woof]

Can someone remind me again what exactly it is that Triple H has against Roman Reigns to begin with? I mean, the storyline is they want to keep the belt off of him and specifically him. What is the authority's reasoning? Are they really just clinging to the idea that he was part of the Shield-Evolution fued back in 2014? Because that doesn't feel like it has much traction to me, but I don't follow the weekly shows close enough to catch everything.

With Bryan it was clearly "he's not big enough/cool enough to be the face of WWE", but that's not Roman's issue. In fact, the whole meta thing where the on-screen angle ("ANYONE BUT YOU, ROMAN!") is the mirror image of the off-screen situation ("ONLY YOU, ROMAN!") makes it even cloudier.

 

I'm honestly confused as to the crux point of the current fued. A little help?

[Migs]

Use the Total Divas cast on one show, maybe with a Divas Tag Title so that they can focus on multiple of them at once, and the others on another, etc. It's not rocket science the ways they could do this.

 

This bit is brilliant. While the NXT women are terrific, it absolutely muddies the way they're able to move fans from Total Divas to the actual show. If they did a brand split, splitting the women along these lines would be great (except for Paige, I guess).

[fakeplastictrees]

I'm not sure what Dave is talking about. Decent seats haven't been available for months. They're going to shatter the gate record. I've never seen anything like this. The cheapest Takeover ticket on StubHub is $350. The HOF sold out in minutes while last year was thousands short of a sell out.

 

What do you mean by decent? I just checked Ticketmaster and I see offers for seats in Section E (camera left, stage right) and C. The ringside seats go up to 10,000 dollars per ticket?

 

I am all for a brand split and I would perfer everyone I don't like to be on one brand with HHH and Stephanie so I can make sure to never watch that show. In order to accomplish this WWE will need to re-brand the women as mentioned above. Total Divas would need to be re-casted to include retired/non-wrestlers so they can be on the HHH/Stephanie brand and the other brand can be for the actual workers and NXT calls ups. Again, WWE can have its cake and eat it to. The new Total Divas would be: Rosa, Cameron, Eva, Summer Rae, Lana, Jo Jo, and of course The Bellas.

[Grimmas]

 

I'm not sure what Dave is talking about. Decent seats haven't been available for months. They're going to shatter the gate record. I've never seen anything like this. The cheapest Takeover ticket on StubHub is $350. The HOF sold out in minutes while last year was thousands short of a sell out.

 

What do you mean by decent? I just checked Ticketmaster and I see offers for seats in Section E (camera left, stage right) and C. The ringside seats go up to 10,000 dollars per ticket?

 

I am all for a brand split and I would perfer everyone I don't like to be on one brand with HHH and Stephanie so I can make sure to never watch that show. In order to accomplish this WWE will need to re-brand the women as mentioned above. Total Divas would need to be re-casted to include retired/non-wrestlers so they can be on the HHH/Stephanie brand and the other brand can be for the actual workers and NXT calls ups. Again, WWE can have its cake and eat it to. The new Total Divas would be: Rosa, Cameron, Eva, Summer Rae, Lana, Jo Jo, and of course The Bellas.

 

I don't think you can have divas on one show and women on the other.

 

One show can have actually wrestling the other the "divas" are there to do what? Have shitty matches? The "divas" show is only people on Total Divas? How would this work?

[cm funk]

They could totally have the serious female wrestlers on one brand and the "attitude era" eye candy girls on the other. I like both, but a separation between the two wouldn't be the worst thing, and it would spare us from having to watch pretty girls who have no business in the ring struggling and failing and dragging other girls down with them

 

I so welcome the idea of a brand split. I was actually a big fan of it in the mid 00's. The shows were different. Just the fact that they had different writing teams and different creative was a good thing. It also created a lot of intrigue when they had the few co-branded shows where you'd see guys interact who hadn't crossed paths before or at least in some time. Of course they ended up watering it down and the drafts hurt it......but the concept was very solid and worked for quite some time. And they absolutely have a deep enough roster to do it again. SD already feels different now with Mauro announcing and a clear deviation where it doesn't just feel like RAW's sloppy seconds every week. But.....I'd like them to go a step further. I don't need to see Roman Reigns and Dean Ambrose on both shows every week. And on the flipside, there is a ton of good talent on that roster that barely gets used. Tyler Breeze could be a star on the main roster.......but it's never happening the way things are set up now. As a SD talent where he gets character time like had in NXT.....absolutely

[jushin muta liger]

 

 

I'm not sure what Dave is talking about. Decent seats haven't been available for months. They're going to shatter the gate record. I've never seen anything like this. The cheapest Takeover ticket on StubHub is $350. The HOF sold out in minutes while last year was thousands short of a sell out.

What do you mean by decent? I just checked Ticketmaster and I see offers for seats in Section E (camera left, stage right) and C. The ringside seats go up to 10,000 dollars per ticket?

 

I am all for a brand split and I would perfer everyone I don't like to be on one brand with HHH and Stephanie so I can make sure to never watch that show. In order to accomplish this WWE will need to re-brand the women as mentioned above. Total Divas would need to be re-casted to include retired/non-wrestlers so they can be on the HHH/Stephanie brand and the other brand can be for the actual workers and NXT calls ups. Again, WWE can have its cake and eat it to. The new Total Divas would be: Rosa, Cameron, Eva, Summer Rae, Lana, Jo Jo, and of course The Bellas.

Decent meaning that the $150 tickets that decent seats are selling for $500 on StubHub.

 

But what is there end game number for paid attendance in a reality sense? They want to claim 100k but what's the real number paid that they want to get? 70 or 80k?

[Grimmas]

They could totally have the serious female wrestlers on one brand and the "attitude era" eye candy girls on the other. I like both, but a separation between the two wouldn't be the worst thing, and it would spare us from having to watch pretty girls who have no business in the ring struggling and failing and dragging other girls down with them

 

 

It's 2016. There is no reason to have eye candy girls matches anymore. They haven't even done that in years. They are on the right track, as you see all the new hires in NXT are good or have potential. Also they don't freaking need models.