WWE Backlash 2017

[Jmare007]

[SmartMark15]

For the first time in a long time, I thought Orton was the better half of a match. Sure, Jinder had some good facials and charisma but when Orton decided to go nuts and kill people, it was pretty entertaining. Those shoulder submissions were deathly boring and Orton slowing down is the same thing. Not really mad at Jinder winning. I just kind of laughed when it happened. I'm willing to see where it goes. Certainly a match with someone like Zayn would do some good.

[sek69]

Motivated Orton always makes things better, which is why it's so frustrating when he spends most of his time in quarter speed. Nearly killing the Singh brother aside it was probably his best effort in months.

 

As far as Jinder winning, I don't really care too much other than it being pretty blatant pandering. Like Loss said, it doesn't matter who the fans want to see pushed anymore rather than what's the next market to explore. The steroid stuff is just something to chuckle about the next time someone in the company brags about the Wellness Policy,

[Mad Dog]

I don't care for the move but I just think Jinder is boring. I think I would find him more interesting if he just sucked in the ring. To me he's just unremarkable and average in every sense and boring.

[Matt D]

One upside to this is that he is a guy who someone like Sami Zayn (or man, even Tye, right?) could believably chase.

[shoryukens]

It's new, it's different. Orton hasn't exactly been lighting the world on fire with his reign which makes me a little more accepting of the fact that Jinder is champion. I'll give it a chance. Those awesome AJ Styles championship matches from a couple of months back seem like a distant memory now.

[Infinit]

Jinder is probably dropping the belt before Summerslam, but he will probably be challenging for the title throughout the upcoming India tour and the WWE's fan base is going to grow in one of it's biggest markets. The smark tears are just a bonus for them lol.

[El-P]

Agius & Chereau rule. I have to state it every damn time.

 

Nakamura vs Doph Ziggler. Well. Way to not showcase Nak at all. Average, fakely epic borefest. Ziggler is working at a snail pace. Wonder if that's a Mutah tribute or he's just emulating Paul Roma circa92 at this point. Anyway. Nak is coasting. Glad for him he got the money, because he's not doing a third of what he used to do in NJ. Probably saves his body. Good for him. That being said, his WWE story to me is the Sami Zayn match before Mania last year. Still, he should be in the main event scene yesterday (especially THESE DAYS). Instead of that, we get Ziggler dominating 80% of the match yet not being able to finish his opponent. No one wins.

 

Tag team match ? WWE comedy. You know, I do have some other things to do. Like, I dunno. Search for leaks or something. Anything more interesting.

 

Sami Zayn vs Baron Corbin. I still don't see shit in Corbin. He's ok at best, has no charisma, terrible hair. Still, this was a good, solid match because Sami is your regular Ricky Steamboat here. Totally worked around that *big stiff* (I'm so vintage, hell, I have an AOL email adress) with his excellent offense and great selling. Made Corbin look better than ever. Still. Switch Corbin with your generic big guy with no charisma and you get the exact same match. Switch Sami Zayn with some scrub and you get a shitty, boring, nothing match. Well, that's what we used to call a *carry job* back in the days, ya know. They should totally push Sami to the moon. Don't tell me he wouldn't sell merchandise to the kids. Nor draw women' attention. Nor sell tickets to the hardcores. He's a great worker and terrific babyface.

 

Charlotte & Becky & Naomi vs Tamina & Natalya & Carmella. So Charlotte is a babyface now ? Damn. What's the point ? Kinda kills the momentum she had as a heel. Naomi's entrance is still glorious. The match isn't. Carmella is legit awful. Tamina doesn't have a purpose. Wow. What happened to the women having killer matches ? Charlotte & Becky want their talented opposition back, they can't do everything by themselves.

 

AJ Styles vs Kevin Owens. Funny to see this get no love here. I thought this was a great match. Built into a sprint which goes faster and harder. Some brutal spots including that awful suplex on the ring apron. I love how they cut to a woman in the crowd who was very clearly saying "What ! The Fuck !". Got into greatness territory with the knee injury. Finish was creative. AJ Styles is a top ten GOAT contender (and no, I'l not saying that because of a few years in NJ and WWE, going through TNA is enlightement as far as overlooked workers, and I've not even seen his ROH stuff).

 

Wyatt feud. Ah ah, like I care one bit.

 

That Indian Guy vs Das Black Hole.

 

Like it's been said, Mahal is not even bad enough to be entertaining. He's mediocre at very best but dull. Orton on the other hand manage to fuck up a guy's neck, that great worker that he is. Bad, boring match, although Mahal made Orton look good in comparison.

 

 

From "that Indian guy" to WWE Champion...wow.

 

You don't say. I probably had some sort of odd foreshadowing back then. Or the WWE is trolling ME !

 

And really, I understand the Indian market stuff yaddi yaddi yadda, but at the end of the day, who fucking care ? I have no WWE stock. This is a bad deal. It felt like Ron Simmons vs Barbarian, only way worse. And really, despite the Indian part being most, if not all, of it, no one can ignore the steroid part and the terrible message it sends. The Wellness Policy is once again looking like a complete joke. And really, Mahal's skin is disgusting. Who wants to inject chemicals into their body to look like this ? Repulsive.

 

So there. "That Indian Guy" is WWE champ. From bad to bad. Probably won't last very long though.

 

Well, there was one great match at least, but otherwise a pretty bad show. I have kept Takeover on the side. Probably a good idea.

[Coffey]

I think I would genuinely rather have Jinder Mahal on top than Kevin Owens. I don't know if that says I like Jinder too much, dislike Owens too much or my tastes are just... odd. I know that Owens wasn't in that match but I just keep thinking how he's in the top mix & I'm not a fan at all.

 

Smackdown should be built around A.J. Styles. He's the best thing they have going right now & it would let them build to A.J. Styles Vs. Shinsuke Nakamura down the road.

 

I would watch the fuck out of Ron Simmons Vs. The Barbarian. Especially if we're talking WCW early 90's era Ron Simmons. I loved his feud with Lex Luger & prefer Barb over Lex usually.

[El-P]

Smackdown should be built around A.J. Styles. He's the best thing they have going right now & it would let them build to A.J. Styles Vs. Shinsuke Nakamura down the road.

 

Of course. Although it would simply be a lesser version of their NJ classic, for obvious reasons. But that's the way to go. I guess the Indian market is more important than the Japan market (although they raid Japan now, which sucks for small companies like Stardom).

 

 

I would watch the fuck out of Ron Simmons Vs. The Barbarian. Especially if we're talking WCW early 90's era Ron Simmons. I loved his feud with Lex Luger & prefer Barb over Lex usually.

 

 

Yeah, but that match was the epitome of Simmons not being a main event player and Barbarian being a JTTS pushed in the main and failing to deliver since he's just there to do a job. This felt like so not a World Title match. Just like Orton vs Mahal.

[Jmare007]

Agius & Chereau rule. I have to state it every damn time.

 

Nakamura vs Doph Ziggler. Well. Way to not showcase Nak at all. Average, fakely epic borefest. Ziggler is working at a snail pace. Wonder if that's a Mutah tribute or he's just emulating Paul Roma circa92 at this point. Anyway. Nak is coasting. Glad for him he got the money, because he's not doing a third of what he used to do in NJ. Probably saves his body. Good for him. That being said, his WWE story to me is the Sami Zayn match before Mania last year. Still, he should be in the main event scene yesterday (especially THESE DAYS). Instead of that, we get Ziggler dominating 80% of the match yet not being able to finish his opponent. No one wins.

 

 

 

Nakamura has always coasted though. That was always his "issue" in New Japan. When he had a big match he showed out but otherwise he just went through the motions. He's whole career he's been inconsistent as a performer.

[Coffey]

This felt like so not a World Title match. Just like Orton vs Mahal.

 

This is how a lot of the matches on the brand-specific Pay-Per-Views feel to me. It's a big part of the reason why I didn't like the Brand Split the first time around. They have to fill up each PPV card with matches that even if they were on free TV, I wouldn't care about. If they ran that exact same card from Backlash last night on Smackdown instead, other than being an extra hour, it still just feels like a normal Smackdown episode. None of those matches feel special to me at all. A 6-woman tag, a Dolph match, Styles/Owens would probably main event the TV show, Zayn/Corbin... it was a lot of nothing. Even the Smackdown in-ring debut of Nakamara felt sort of just like your everyday normal Smackdown TV match, not something special.

 

It doesn't feel like they use the TV to build up to the PPV show anymore. It feels more like the TV and PPV shows blend together and the PPV show is just another episode of the TV. Which might in part be because with the WWE Network the model has changed, or because WWE is overexposed & there's too many shows nowadays. There's multiple reasons. There's not really a lot of reason to invest in individuals in WWE nowadays as a fan other than if you think the guy is a good wrestler or not. There's no emotional connection. It's a lot of "can this guy have a good match?" not heat or wanting to see someone win or lose.

 

It feels like we're sort of in a meta-era of pro-wrestling in WWE where the heels are the people that suck, either because they're not good wrestlers or because the WWE machine pushed them to the top, and the babyfaces are the guys that are really good wrestlers, regardless of if they're portrayed on TV as heel or babyface.

 

We're at the end of May, Wrestlemania just happened & it feels like WWE is in coast mode already. So now I guess we're just killing time until SummerSlam.

[Gutenberger]

One thing I found to be interesting was the crowd. There were two times I heard a beginning CM Punk chant, and both times it got booed down quickly. Maybe it was edited, but if not it seemed as though there was a great part of the crowd that, even though they didn't care about what happened in the ring, they didn't want to have the match acitvely destroyed. Especially in the Wyatt Family match, where shortly after it slight Harper chant started up.

 

Whatelse I'm gonna remember from Backlash is the really amusing Tag match, which had me literally laughing out loud and that indian Guy becoming champion.

[El-P]

Nakamura has always coasted though. That was always his "issue" in New Japan. When he had a big match he showed out but otherwise he just went through the motions. He's whole career he's been inconsistent as a performer.

 

Agreed (although I haven't watched his career in detail, but I know that's always been his reputation). That being said, he has coasted in *every* match in WWE thus far. There's a reason for that too as of now, his body is broken down after years of abuse in Japan, so it's very understandable.

 

 

It feels like we're sort of in a meta-era of pro-wrestling in WWE where the heels are the people that suck, either because they're not good wrestlers or because the WWE machine pushed them to the top, and the babyfaces are the guys that are really good wrestlers, regardless of if they're portrayed on TV as heel or babyface.

 

 

There's that, but there's also that whole India deal that comes to mind. We have a guy who sucks (basically), who's roided to the grill, who was a JTTS his whole career, and who only gets a world title push because of a TV deal in India, where WWE doesn't even tour (yet). It's like, fuck the audience who's actually paying to watch the show in the building, what matters are the executives of some TV channel in India where, if you believe Meltz, they don't even sell shit in merchandise (yet).

 

Charles said earlier in this very thread that the audience that mattered today was Wall Street. Surely that's a topic that should go in the MIS but it's kinda depressing when you think about it because it fucks up the product like never before because basically, the viewing audience *doesn't matter*. And no matter how hard people are defending the Roman Reigns push, the reality is that in any other era, a guy rejected as he is would simply not be pushed as a babyface like that or would be turned heel to try and make it a success in another way. Today, it doesn't matter anymore and we indeed get the kind of meta booking that is funny 1 out of 1000 time (like Reigns at the Rumble) but mostly makes the product pretty unwatchable in the grand scheme of things. It's all shallow "writing", trolling the "smarts" and checking the value of your stocks.

[El-P]

that indian Guy becoming champion.

 

I should have copyrighted that stuff.

[EricR]

I'm (fairly pointlessly) "live blogging" a show that's been over for 16 hours. I was out late last night and am off today, and know nothing about the show, so I figured why not.

 

http://segundacaida.blogspot.com/2017/05/wwe-backlash-2017-one-day-removed-from.html

[goc]

Another thing about building that fan base, if they are really serious about getting this WWE India think going then he has to be a champion for at least a 2 or 3 months after their tour. They can't just have him drop quickly once they got what they wanted like they did with Khali. I know they aren't the "smartest" (in the business side not the intelligence side) fan base. I mean they thought that Raka Kin thing TNA did was really good. But they would have to smell something fishy.

Ring Ka King was awesome and all of your posts in this thread have been bad.

 

Sooo....that match was actually pretty fucking awesome. Is Jinder really that good or is Bray Wyatt that bad?

A little bit of both I think. I wouldn't go so far as to say Jinder is REALLY good but there's no denying his match with Orton was better than either of Bray's PPV matches with Randy. I thought he was also way better at working holds and focusing on an injured body part than Kevin Owens was when going after AJ's knee in their match.

[stro]

Jinder isn't really good, or even good. He's serviceable enough, but he did bust ass last night and Orton weirdly was more motivated than he had been in about 3 years, so the match came off a lot better than expected. Like, I swear to christ that Orton/Jinder was a better match than the Orton/AJ match before WM. Orton couldn't get motivated to put in the effort against the best dude in the world, but was for Jinder. It's pretty weird, but Jinder can be fine with good opponents. The thing is to me that he really looks and sounds like he truly believes he should be champion, and that confidence will carry him.

 

Also El P, if you skipped Usos/Breezango, you fucked up. That match was probably the most I've seen the crowd, wrestlers, and announcers enjoy themselves in a long, long time.

[El-P]

Also El P, if you skipped Usos/Breezango, you fucked up. That match was probably the most I've seen the crowd, wrestlers, and announcers enjoy themselves in a long, long time.

 

Maybe, but I don't give a fuck about any of them (and that includes the announcers whom I don't have to suffer through anyway, and the crowd who sucked).

[stro]

That's the best Chicago crowd in years. They self corrected and booed people trying to start CM Punk chants. IN CHICAGO.

[goc]

The Jinder title win is getting all the focus but I want to point out just how fucking terrible that debut match for Nakamura was. If the idea was to have a "great match" in his debut then it was a failure. If the idea was to make him come across as special it was a COLOSSAL failure because he spent the match pretty much being dominated by Dolph, having Dolph avoid/counter his moves, barely being able to kickout of Dolph's shitty Zig Zag and then having the briefest of comebacks at the end to win.

 

If Dolph called that match himself he should have immediately been fired. Or shot.

[stro]

It FELT like Dolph was calling the match himself, as he'd do something, then yell or roar, then stand around very, very slowly picking Nakamura up like he was thinking about what to do next, which would inevitably be something ultra basic like a chinlock/elbow drop/body slam, then back to the yelling and standing around confused part. It was fucking weird.

 

But really, Dolph spent the past 5 months having trouble with and regularly losing to legit lower card guys in Crews and Kalisto, and I think 2 weeks ago on SD he got dominated by Sin Cara and barely eked out a win. So of course he then goes toe to toe and controls most of the match with Nak, because a heel has to control the match I guess. While they were repeatedly talking about how Dolph is a former 2 time champ and all his accolades, that doesn't match up with the past 5 months of TV where he's been a joke and regular punch line that no one takes seriously.

[EricR]

I thought this was a pretty satisfying show overall, with really only the women's trios being a total throwaway.

[Strummer]

WWE has already announced three rematches from the show for the June 13 Smackdown from New Orleans

 

Orton v Jinder for title

 

AJ v Owens for US title

 

Nak v Ziggler

 

cool they are building this up Clash of Champions style

[Jimmy Redman]

BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA JINDER FUCKING MAHAL.

 

I am laughing to cover my pain. Get fucked.

 

In January Bray Wyatt won the Rumble to challenge for this title and John Cena won it to tie Ric Flair's 16 world titles record. Now...just get fucked, everyone.

 

Also yeah Nak/Dolph sucked ass in all possible respects. What a shitshow that was. WWE has this weird ass habit of taking the most anticipated debuts and saying 'You know what? We're really trying to get behind this guy, here's our chance to showcase him in the ring for the first time, soooo this match should be all about...the other guy!"

 

Tag title match was a fucking riot though. I am all in on Tyler Breeze: Deep Undercover and Master of Disguise.