WWE T.V 1/21 - 1/27. The last gasp to the Royal Rumble

[Captain Redneck]

Hopefully RAW will get better soon...….

[...TG]

Man, Brock did not seem particularly interested in catch Finn on that dive. 

[sek69]

Building up a feud via bodybuilding posedown is the most Vince thing possible.

[TheDuke]

well they did a great job shitting on EC3 in the main roster in like 5 seconds right off the bat by having him be a joke character that Elias walked by on the way to the ring. I hope he comes back out later tonight.

[KawadaSmile]

EC3 was really hyped up in NXT and then he had to wrestle. Let him be built in those sketches before making him go all-out in the ring.

 

Also Ambrose fucking suuuuuuucks. Horrible, horrible in every aspect.

[KawadaSmile]

My boy Otis is the man

[sek69]

Zack getting TV time! Clearly teaming him back up with Hawkins is the one thing that will get the Revival to rethink asking for their releases.

[tallmike]

Yeah, that's a DOA program to be sure, but I did love all of the old-school ref spots in that tag match.

[Strummer]

Wow Ronda badly botched that promo at the beginning but recovered pretty nicely

[KawadaSmile]

Zack Ryder is still over and they found a way to end Hawkin's streak. Should be a fun littke program bubbas.

Also Ronda's promos aren't.... good.

[sek69]

I get the impression Ronda would be a much better promo as a heel.

[sek69]

Also FFS give her normal wrestling gear. I get they want to keep the MMA look, but she looks like a fidgety child constantly pulling on her gear. 

[KawadaSmile]

This main event was a delightful piece of chaos.

Sasha and Ronda will absolutely murder each other come Sunday.

[SomethingSavage]

18 hours ago, KawadaSmile said:

Also Ronda's promos aren't.... good.

I've always found her to be excellent in sit-down settings, and her natural trash-talk in UFC was MONEY.

"I'm the CHAMP now! Champ don't come looking for you; you come step to the champ!" is still an all-time awesome victory speech.

I realize it's been beaten to death as a talking point, but I really feel like it's the shitty scripted promos that hinder her the most. She's a reactive, raw personality. Very few people excel in a faked, forced atmosphere with such repetitive, unnatural dialogue - ESPECIALLY if it goes against their actual strengths as a performer in the first place.

You can see it in her matches. Ronda comes alive right away in terms of actual athleticism & physicality. But woof. The material they give her and the situations they place her in leaves a lot to be desired, more often than not.

[KawadaSmile]

The problem is I believe she's the one writing her own shit. She would actually benefit from following a script because last night's promo was some Scatman Jones type deal.

She nearly didn't breathe during her promo and I doubt if that was the creation of some writer.

[Ricky Jackson]

She's basically still a rookie. With time, she'll be fine

True, I dont watch Raw or even bother to track down videos of her promos, so i actually dont know HOW bad she has been 

[SirEdger]

I feel the same way too. She hasn't literally 1 year of experience under her belt. You can't become a good promo this early. I know that Vince doesn't want her to work with Paul Heyman on-screen but man, it would be such smoother for her. Let her athleticism speak for her.

[sek69]

So it seems like Sasha is trying hard on social media that there's legit heat between her and Ronda and/or dropping hints she wants to go to AEW.

On the first point, yeah I can buy that there were some ruffled feathers that Ronda came in and was put ahead of everyone who built the foundation, but it's Ronda FFS. One thing the old timers got right is no one ever bitched that an attraction like Andre got top billing over the regular crew since it meant everyone made more money. Complaining about a big star wanting to work for your company makes you look dumb no matter if it's part of the storyline or not.

The second point? I guess maybe she sees how making waves to get people to believe you want to jump is a good career move, but really? It's one thing for Zack Ryder and the Revival to want out, but Sasha joining in just comes across as trying too hard. 

[C.S.]

56 minutes ago, sek69 said:

One thing the old timers got right is no one ever bitched that an attraction like Andre got top billing over the regular crew since it meant everyone made more money.  

Well, they may have bitched, but there was no social media or even internet then - and the media certainly wasn't talking to wrestlers or taking them seriously back then. Not to mention, kayfabe would've prevented them from complaining about Andre that way in public. 

[NintendoLogic]

1 hour ago, sek69 said:

 One thing the old timers got right is no one ever bitched that an attraction like Andre got top billing over the regular crew since it meant everyone made more money.

This presumes that everyone actually is making more money because of Ronda. I don't see why they'd care about the TV deal she helped get them if it just means more money Vince can funnel into the XFL.

[sek69]

They signed the biggest TV deal ever in no small part due to having Ronda. Now if all the money goes in to the XFL, it's not her fault and it's still stupid to get mad at her about it. 

[SomethingSavage]

1 hour ago, KawadaSmile said:

The problem is I believe she's the one writing her own shit. She would actually benefit from following a script because last night's promo was some Scatman Jones type deal.

She nearly didn't breathe during her promo and I doubt if that was the creation of some writer.

Not that I'm making excuses - although I fucking love Ronda anyway, so there - but let's not forget that she's dealt with verbal apraxia since childhood.

You wouldn't know it from the way she speaks in public now, or even when she was cutting killer promos in UFC, but that shit shook her confidence and made her really self-aware about talking to groups of people. She's spoken about how she felt "slower" and more stupid than other kids her age because of it.

Again, I'm not saying this has anything to do with that. But you never know, man. It's one thing to talk shit when you're feeling it or when you're just coming from a real place, but it's something else to recite nursery rhymes or basically narrate a recap of your matches from the past month.

I feel like they've literally lost all knowledge of what it means to protect top stars and present them as being in a league all their own. Time & time again, they just can't get out of their own way or overcome their own little obsessive hang-ups.

[Strummer]

Damn that Mustafa Ali promo was great

[ZThomas]

I don't believe Sasha has actual heart with Ronda, its possible but, I don't believe so,  but she's the same person who has heat with Alexa for not being able to tell the Hardy Boys apart.  I believe Sasha is going to try to have best possible match with Ronda at RR to say she had Ronda best match. Its funny that I see her crying about Finally having Women's tag titles and the next minute she joking about wanting to leave. Openly complaining isnt going to do you any favors booking wise and especially now they aren't going to let you go easily. 

[FMKK]

7 hours ago, ZThomas said:

I don't believe Sasha has actual heart with Ronda, its possible but, I don't believe so,  but she's the same person who has heat with Alexa for not being able to tell the Hardy Boys apart.  I believe Sasha is going to try to have best possible match with Ronda at RR to say she had Ronda best match. Its funny that I see her crying about Finally having Women's tag titles and the next minute she joking about wanting to leave. Openly complaining isnt going to do you any favors booking wise and especially now they aren't going to let you go easily. 

She's not openly complaining though. It's just her working some Twitter bs.

 

I can see there maybe being some bitterness on Sasha's part because she's been somewhat sidelined from the top of the women's division while her other contemporaries like Becky and Charlotte are tearing it up and the likes of Ronda, Alexa and Nia have been pushed ahead of her in the last year. There was a non-character video of Ronda doing the rounds recently where she talked about how excited she was to wrestle Sasha and how she can do things in the ring that none of her other opponents so far can do. She put her over big time. So I don't think there's any personal heat there, even if there may be some professional jealousy.