The 2006 Royal Rumble thread

[Guest Bruiser Chong]

I'm confused...if Rey won the Rumble, why wouldn't he get a Title Shot at WM? Isn't that the rule still?

I believe Da Meltz reported earlier that this year's winner wouldn't be getting a main event at Mania. That isn't how it is now, but the way I understood, something will happen between now and then to prevent Rey from getting his title shot.

 

Maybe the crowd was just bad, but are there really this few guys left in the company who are actually over? I can't remember the last time I hear such indifference in regards to so many people from a crowd.

 

Oh, and from someone who hasn't seen a full such in ages, I think it's clear that Vince has clearly lost it. He's put himself in pointless angles before, but this one goes above and beyond those.

[Guest Bruiser Chong]

But there had to have been a reason they shoved the Rumble in the midcard this year.

The pointless ring collapsing seems to be the logical reason at this point.

[Guest DylanWaco]

I guess I"m the only person who really wasn't bothered with JBL losing the way he did. Maybe it's because the ringpost bump he took is one of the nastiest I've ever seen, but in that context it wasn't bad to me.

 

Not that I would have condoned it, but the roof would have come off that building if Van Dam had won the Rumble.

[Guest teke184]

Sounds like this card is up with Rumble 88, Rumble 96, and Rumble 97 for "All-Time Shitty Rumble Card".

 

 

At least some of the truly horrible cards like 95 and 99 had good matches to balance them out, like Bret-Diesel and Rock-Foley.

[Guest SweetMama Scaat]

....the WWE is like your loser Uncle with all the potenial in the world but an inate fear of success.

 

3 weeks ago things came out of left field and got crazy interesting. Then going into Wrestlemania when the need their shit to be as tight as it can be and by all accounts they "royaly" screw it up.

[Guest Famous Mortimer]

I'd have marked if RVD had won the Rumble. He's easily rehabilitate-able and could still do it for them. And Rey, also a great Rumble champion, is not going to get a shot. Fuck WWE.

[Guest Dorian]

...so Edge got his title reign scrapped and wasn't even informed of it till of the day, and then they jobbed him out so badly he's Jericho'd?

 

Do you think he ditches for TNA asap?

[Guest Famous Mortimer]

Nah. Until they get a bigger TV deal, no-one of Edge's size is going. If Angle gets injured worse and Batista doesn't make it back, then they're fucked for main eventers.

[Guest DylanWaco]

Edge wasn't buried.

 

He got in far more offense than Cena, and lasted a long time in Cena's shitty STF, much longer than I remember anyone before lasting.

 

I'm not saying I agree with the decision, but Edge wasn't tanked in quite the manner people on the net have been suggesting.

[Mad Dog]

I'm shocked that people actually thought Edge was going to survive this title defense. HHH/Cena at Mania has to be for the belt because HHH has to main event Mania.

[Guest Bruiser Chong]

I'm shocked that people actually thought Edge was going to survive this title defense.  HHH/Cena at Mania has to be for the belt because HHH has to main event Mania.

No kidding. I'm amazed that so many thought Edge wasn't a transitional champion. I don't watch much, but it didn't seem like there was any doubt about Cena regaining the strap last night.

 

I just view it as WWE realizing their mistake and fixing it.

[Loss]

Since Edge is a homegrown creation and they like him a lot, I think they'll try to make it up to him in another way. They wanted to get the belt off of him, but not necessarily bury him.

[Guest NYU]

I'm shocked that people actually thought Edge was going to survive this title defense.? HHH/Cena at Mania has to be for the belt because HHH has to main event Mania.

No kidding. I'm amazed that so many thought Edge wasn't a transitional champion. I don't watch much, but it didn't seem like there was any doubt about Cena regaining the strap last night.

 

I just view it as WWE realizing their mistake and fixing it.

I don't get it. What mistake are you talking about?

[Loss]

That there was no reason to take the belt off Cena in the first place and that the boos were no big deal and should have just been ignored, I think. That's my take on it anyway.

[JHawk]

That there was no reason to take the belt off Cena in the first place and that the boos were no big deal and should have just been ignored, I think. That's my take on it anyway.

They should have been ignored?

 

Fact: Cena has been built as Raw's top babyface since Batista was drafted to SmackDown in June. Even above HBK.

 

Fact: Cena was the most popular guy going into SummerSlam, and the crowd turned on him in midmatch and began rooting for Jericho.

 

Fact: Ever since then, Cena has been getting less and less popular, to the point that the vast majority of people who are cheering for him are women or young white kids who think emulating the hip hop culture is cool.

 

Fact: If your top babyface is getting more boos than your heel challenger every week, you've got two options. Move him out of the main event altogether, or turn him heel.

 

The fact that ratings actually went up following the post-NYR spike with Edge as champion shows me that Cena, in the long run, is more likely to cost Vince McMahon money than make him money.

 

It isn't like Cena was booed in one or two areas of the country. The only place Cena's been cheered lately was the last two weeks in the Carolinas where he was given a rub with Ric Flair. Take Flair out of the equation and Cena's reaction there is likely mixed at best.

 

Vince chose not to ignore it, ratings went up, and they screwed it up. Plain and simple.

[Strummer]

Cena v Edge rematch tonight on Raw

[Mad Dog]

The thing is though Cena wasn't affecting buyrates while still pushing the merch. Ratings spikes are meaningless now because the WWF gets exactly $0 from ad revenue. It's all about buyrates, DVD sales and merch.

[goodhelmet]

THey are meaningless to your dollars but are still a useful indicator of how many people are actually tuning in to your product.

[Loss]

THey are meaningless to your dollars but are still a useful indicator of how many people are actually tuning in to your product.

Yes, but does that mean anything if they don't profit at all from it? Ratings mattered as a comparison when Nitro was on the air, and they don't really matter at all now because they don't mean anything, except that USA can charge "x" number of dollars for ad revenue. House show attendance spiking after Edge won the title and the Rumble PPV buyrate being higher than it was last year would show an interest from the fanbase in spending money to see Edge defend the belt. As it stands, there's no proof of such a thing.

 

As far as ignoring the crowd reaction, there was no reason they couldn't acknowledge it on the air, of course, but unless Cena was actively turning fans away from the product, there was no reason to take the belt off of him. It was a reaction. If anything, the fans were reacting like they wanted instead of like WWE told them to, but it wasn't adversely affecting anything at all. I think the booing of Cena was like the "What?" chant in many ways; people saw it happening on TV and it caught on in the arenas, but eventually, fans would tire themselves out on it. It has little to do with actually hating Cena, and even if it did, unless he was pushing people away from the product, it's still a reaction and it doesn't really matter at all.

 

HHH is right that Cena has also been paired with guys who have no idea how to get heel heat. Not that HHH will do it any better or anything, but his point is correct.

[goodhelmet]

Yes, but does that mean anything if they don't profit at all from it?

Of course they matter. They can indicate who the public is tuning into watch. When Rey and Eddie were b umping the ratings by a million viewers in the Dominic feud, it clearly showed that the Hispanic market was turning in to see the soap opera. Whenthe feud ended, that entire market disappeared. How do we know this? A breakdown in ratings. I am not saying ratings affect the bottom line from a profit standpoint or how much ad revenue is generated by the ratings. I am saying they are a useful tool in assessing the watching habits of the public. How was that not clear from the first post?

[Guest DylanWaco]

I could see the argument that taking the title off of Cena was a mistake, but I can't see any argument that puting it back on him after a big bump in ratings was wise. Worst case scenario they could have carried Edge to Mania and have Cena go over there again, though I don't really know if he's gonna recover as a face or not.

[Guest Bruiser Chong]

That there was no reason to take the belt off Cena in the first place and that the boos were no big deal and should have just been ignored, I think. That's my take on it anyway.

They should have been ignored?

 

Fact: Cena has been built as Raw's top babyface since Batista was drafted to SmackDown in June. Even above HBK.

 

Fact: Cena was the most popular guy going into SummerSlam, and the crowd turned on him in midmatch and began rooting for Jericho.

 

Fact: Ever since then, Cena has been getting less and less popular, to the point that the vast majority of people who are cheering for him are women or young white kids who think emulating the hip hop culture is cool.

 

Fact: If your top babyface is getting more boos than your heel challenger every week, you've got two options. Move him out of the main event altogether, or turn him heel.

 

The fact that ratings actually went up following the post-NYR spike with Edge as champion shows me that Cena, in the long run, is more likely to cost Vince McMahon money than make him money.

 

It isn't like Cena was booed in one or two areas of the country. The only place Cena's been cheered lately was the last two weeks in the Carolinas where he was given a rub with Ric Flair. Take Flair out of the equation and Cena's reaction there is likely mixed at best.

 

Vince chose not to ignore it, ratings went up, and they screwed it up. Plain and simple.

Fact: Edge isn't any more over in his role than Cena is.

 

I love how everyone's defense for Edge is that the RAW ratings went up after he won the title. It's been THREE weeks. You can't judge much by that.

 

And watching the show last night, it was painfully clear that John Cena wasn't the only reason for their financial woes.

[Loss]

With Edge unhappy last year and considering quitting the company, I'm wondering how he's taking losing the belt so quickly.

[Guest Bruiser Chong]

With Edge unhappy last year and considering quitting the company, I'm wondering how he's taking losing the belt so quickly.

Wasn't it reported that he was so unhappy when he found out yesterday that Vince had to pull him aside and tell him they weren't giving up on him?

 

That's the only part that I find shady; why wait until the day of the show to suddenly change things around? I wonder what (or wHHHo) could've caused such a snap decision.

 

It just hit me that half the people whining about Edge losing the title were saying how bad he was when news of the Lita affair broke out.

[Marty]

HHH is right that Cena has also been paired with guys who have no idea how to get heel heat. Not that HHH will do it any better or anything, but his point is correct.

It's nice and convenient for him to say that too. Look at how Angle and Jericho, for that matter, have been booked in those feuds. Angle, for much of his feud with Cena, has reminded us that he's a better wrestler than Angle and has lived and damn-near died for this business (like that promo he gave on RAW). I happen to think he's really deteriorated like many others feel, but to the general WWE fanbase, he's absolutely correct. In other words, Angle should've never been booked to do that and many argue that his whiny promo helped him become a face because everything he said was, at least in a semi-kayfabe way, correct. When you have a heel as fodder for your champ, but part of the focus is on the heel's strengths, which are the babyface's weaknesses, to an extent, that only hurts your babyface.

 

As for Jericho, he was booked to bring up Fozzy, declare that "rap is crap", etc. Rap is VERY popular, but only to certain demographics, and if someone else brings up a different musical genre which is still very strong as far as a following goes, that person is going to get a positive reaction. They really should've booked Jericho, in my opinion, as a loudmouth who is going to "take over rap" or something like, but sound horrible in the process. Instead, they went with the rap vs. metal angle, which only brought about strong face reactions for Jericho.

 

The point being is that something HHH as a heel is criticized for is telling the truth way the fuck too much (heck, you've brought this up in the past) when he should be a otal lying ass who still believes his words, like a JBL for instance. However, for what HHH is criticized for is not limited to him as both Angle's and Jericho's roles certainly had them in that position to a good extent. Fuck, I'm not sure if Edge got any face reactions or anything since I didn't watch too many Edge as WWE Champ RAWs, but if he did, it's due to the edgier (no pun intended) character he played, which one can interpret as a nice flashback to the Attitude era, which Edge almost being an Austin-like rebel, but in a different way.

 

This all falls under the writing and booking, which you and I both know is the reason for this mess. I blame them for most of this. As you or someone else said once upon a time, a turnaround ain't gonna happen as long as the current team and direction is there. The wrestlers get criticized for inability to draw certain heat (which still may be true) but they're hardly given the platform at all. As usual, everything is booked in a vacuum as far as this company goes.