WWE TV 2/24-3/1 Filling in for Brother KawadaSmile Edition

[FMKK]

6 minutes ago, sek69 said:

It's that, and also the abject failure of the WWE to create new stars so that only names from the past can draw money.

They're intertwined. WWE won't push stars and instead emphasises the brand. So they super stans worship the brand like a God. And then lose the plot when the inevitable failure of that strategy rears its head once again every Mania season.

[KawadaSmile]

Look what if Roman feuded with Keith Lee? There's only Wyatt left and Roman might be unable to say "no" when booking says he's putting over the goddamn Fiend.

Or just do Roman/Sheamus part II.

[Strummer]

43 minutes ago, FMKK said:

They're intertwined. WWE won't push stars and instead emphasises the brand. So they super stans worship the brand like a God. And then lose the plot when the inevitable failure of that strategy rears its head once again every Mania season.

Exactly. There is blame on both sides. Everything is connected. Wwe is guilty as well .

and they pretty much have to move someone from Raw after Mania to feud with Roman. SD is scarce on heels. Unless they plan on building Bray back up by going over Cena at Mania but that won't be popular among many obvs.

[Badlittlekitten]

Brilliant. Goodbye Fiend. Imagine that clown headlining Mania. The shows shaping up quite nicely.

[FMKK]

27 minutes ago, Strummer said:

Exactly. There is blame on both sides. Everything is connected. Wwe is guilty as well .

and they pretty much have to move someone from Raw after Mania to feud with Roman. SD is scarce on heels. Unless they plan on building Bray back up by going over Cena at Mania but that won't be popular among many obvs.

I know he probably doesn't give a shit but if I was Cena, I wouldn't be coming back to job for this dork.

52 minutes ago, KawadaSmile said:

Look what if Roman feuded with Keith Lee? There's only Wyatt left and Roman might be unable to say "no" when booking says he's putting over the goddamn Fiend.

Or just do Roman/Sheamus part II.

I can see them doing Roman and Sheamus but that just seems stale af.

[KawadaSmile]

Remember when the crowd went nuts for this? I remember. Let's do this. 

[sek69]

I mean, it's the best match for Roman in terms of star power but not when you consider Bill's best matches had to be kept short in 1998 let alone 2020. 

I suppose it's better than having Bill do another match in Saudi heat and nearly kill someone  due to exhaustion and/or concussing himself, but I don't really want to see Mania turned in to  series of 30 second matches because the old men involved will gas out too fast. 

[RingoPlaysDrums]

2 hours ago, DMJ said:

Criticizing the company is fair (hell, I love doing it myself), but I don't get why "part-timer" has become such a dirty word when much of the "good ol' days" of wrestling that these fans bring up - even during the Attitude Era - featured special attractions and stars from yesteryear and guys that came in, got major pushes, and then left for softball season.

Like who? I'm not contesting that there were by the way, I'm generally just struggling to think of who you're referring to.

Anyway, I'm not a fan of the way they did Brock/Ricochet or Goldberg/Fiend. At all. I don't have as big a problem with the winners, it's just the way they did it. I'm a big fan of both Lesnar and Goldberg and always have been, and I'm probably more into Goldberg/Reigns and Fiend/Cena than Reigns/Fiend and Cena/Elias is that's what has been changed as suggested. I've been a bit on the fence regarding the Fiend but I do think Bray Wyatt is a real talent (and perhaps most importantly, someone different from the rest of the roster) so I do think casting him aside like this after he reinvented himself and ended up back on top after most people were saying he was dead in the water is a misstep. I guess Reigns will go over him at Mania. Is that much better or worse for him than going over the Fiend at Mania? Not sure really. But it's surely not as good for the rest when Goldberg disappears and Wyatt doesn't have as much value....?

[Log]

Guys, they can wring six more months out of the Corbin feud for Roman!

[NintendoLogic]

Anything that takes the belt off the Fiend is an unqualified good in my book, but Goldberg at this stage of his career is painful to watch. He can't even do a jackhammer properly.

[sek69]

Conversely, I didn't expect that Ricochet would actually win or anything, but  it did him no favors to go out there and get Kofi'd either. He was supposed to be one of the guys Heyman was trying to build Raw around, I wonder if he tried to suggest having a competitive match and Brock decided that didn't work for him brother. 

[hammerva]

He didn't get Kofi'd because at least he got to last for 90 seconds.  Kofi barely made it out of 10 unfortunately

Quote

Guys, they can wring six more months out of the Corbin feud for Roman!

You mock but I guarantee you that is Roman's first title defenses after WM.  

Again with Bray it was a question on whether he gets buried on this show or he gets buried at WM for like the 4th time.  Might as well get it out of the way.   you can recreate him 10 more ways he career was pretty much done after that shit fest in Orlando against Randy Orton with the ring showing the video of maggots and stuff.  If you can't beat Orton that glass ceiling is made out of concrete

 

 

[KawadaSmile]

Even before that WM shitshow, bubba. Dude writes his own promos and pretty much had carte blanche to do whatever with it and it still sucked because he sucks.

Sure, The Fiend character was a nice idea. Looked great, great entrance, interesting concept, but then dude had to wrestle. He never was and never will be an engaging dude in-ring. We talk about how many modern wrestlers don't have any character and instead focus on workrate, yet Bray has almost total focus on character and still he absolutely sucks. The moments where you could say he had some great stuff, he was always playing 2nd fiddle to someone else.

Be it some fun garbage wrestling with the Wyatt Family against the ECW Originalz or with Matt Hardy or Orton taking on the RAW or SD Tag Belts, he never stood out as a singles guy. Hell, his most noteworthy moment was teaming up against Roman against The League of Nations, if I'm not mistaken. That fingerpoint and all that.

He's that dude that craves the spotlight yet when he's finally in it, doesn't know what to do. He calls for the ball yet always turns it over.

[sek69]

The Wyatt Family vs the Shield faceoff was a legit holy-shit inducing moment the crowd was going nuts for. Also I thought the brawl with the New Day at the Wyatt Compound was stupid fun even if if was clearly WWE doing a discount Broken Universe idea.  I get the impression a lot of the problems Bray runs into are from Vince and/or the rest of creative not "getting" his ideas and not knowing what to do with them. Like I can't believe it would have been Bray's idea to invest all that time and effort into a new gimmick, get Tom Savini involved in design, and then have all his matches in a stupid fucking red light that doesn't let anyone see a thing. 

[Burgundy LaRue]

The Fiend shouldn't have been in the title picture this soon. He could have gone a year or longer without it. WWE backed themselves in a corner. They not only put Fiend in the main event, but against Seth Rollins, a babyface on shaky ground. With how poorly they handled HIAC, they had no choice but to belt Fiend and try to salvage Rollins with a heel turn.

I think Vince/creative had a decent understanding of The Fiend, at least at first. But when they saw how much money he was making, they went too far and began overbooking him.

Ultimately, Goldberg's win comes down to it being Mania season. If WWE looks to sell the rights to their Big 4 PPVs one day, it's easier by showcasing Goldberg/Reigns in the moment. Fiend still can get a top match if they put him with Cena. Reigns/Fiend can happen later, and likely be better with Fiend chasing a champion Roman. Like Joker chasing Batman. 

WWE definitely put themselves in a bad spot, but they used the Goldberg loophole to get out of it as best they could.

[MoS]

Goldberg-Reigns sounds more exciting than Fiend-Reigns, but it was a bit funny how Goldberg paused for a few seconds before hitting the jackhammer, and then could barely get Wyatt up. It was a snap suplex more than a jackhammer, and it's made even funnier by the fact that Fiend had basically kicked out of multiple murders against Rollins. 

He should never have challenged for the world title. Daniel Bryan got a couple of great matches out of him but that's Daniel Bryan. Have Cena and Wyatt ever had a good match? I remember most of their matches being so-so, and a couple being awful due to overbooking.

[Burgundy LaRue]

I seem to recall Cena having at least one good match with Wyatt, but I'm fuzzy on the specifics. Reigns managed to do pretty well with Bray during their singles feud in 2015. Bray's a solid enough worker with the right opponent. Bryan no doubt has done the best with him, though.

[MoS]

Yeah I might have come off as harsher on Wyatt than I intended. I don't think he is bad. I have no idea why they put the world title on him. Of all promoters in wrestling history, you would think that Vince McMahon would know how to book a supernatural unstoppable force of nature. 

I am guessing they will use Goldberg-Reigns to sell WM PPV rights to some streaming platform, like they discussed at their last conference call. I don't have an issue with them going last and having a 5 min match, cuz Wrestlemania will probably be 12 hours long and by the end everyone will just be wishing it gets over quickly. 

[kas]

 

 

 

 

7 hours ago, MoS said:

Have Cena and Wyatt ever had a good match?

I'd say their Mania match was pretty good and their LMS match was damn fun. Cena was one of the few who could bring out something good in Wyatt.

[Dav'oh]

13 hours ago, DMJ said:

then left for softball season.

Once, he was told to stay home and put on some weight (after his punctured lung) and figured he'd play a little softball, seeing he had time off. Then, after he had quit WWE, there were three or four months left before he could start with WCW,

"And during that time, I played some softball. So, those are the two times I played softball when I wasn't wrestling. Any other time than that, it never happened. Now, I played when I came home on my days off, but it never affected the business. But that's the deal, it got blown out of proportion". Jan, 2018 

 https://www.bleedingcool.com/2018/01/15/sycho-sid-denies-blowing-off-wrestling-softball-whenever-felt-like/

[NintendoLogic]

I don't remember any of the Cena/Wyatt matches being any good (although I'm pretty sure I've only seen the cage match). And Bray has somehow gotten even worse since then while Cena is a shell of what he was even a few years ago. On the plus side, concentrating their collective suck in a single match means one fewer unwatchable match on the Mania card.

[Blehschmidt]

Wow, wrestling Twitter really is an amazing place.

Ricochet squashed in 65 seconds.... Nothing.

Styles beaten by the Undertaker..... Nothing.

Wyatt defeated by Goldberg..... Fucking Meltdown.

 

The diehard WWE fanboys are an absolute different breed as they blame Goldberg for winning the title and ruining Bray Wyatt's "amazing" gimmick and rebirth. Yet somehow they fail to place any blame on the company for continuing to value nostalgia acts over the talent that is there every week, or just for generally having shitty booking for the better part of the last 15 to 20 years.

Then furthermore, they are harping about it devaluing the title, which is hysterical considering that none of the belts in WWE have meant a thing since probably the late 90's.

I knew these derelicts were bad, but Wow, I apparently had no idea.

[DMJ]

Just to clarify when I'm discussing part-timers, etc. coming in and taking prime spots on the card having historical precedent...

- WrestleMania 11: Lawrence Taylor main events the show. I'm starting this far back because, if you go earlier, we're talking about a vastly different landscape with way less TV and PPVs where the biggest stars were all "part-timers" in the sense that you wouldn't see Hogan or Warrior wrestle a match every week like you see Seth Rollins today. Moving on...

- WrestleMania 12: Roddy Piper* and Ultimate Warrior come back and are immediately thrust into major positions after several years off. Warrior squashes the guy who was supposed to win the King of the Ring in under a minute. 

- WrestleMania 14: Mike Tyson comes in, knocks out the former World Champion with one punch. I'm not criticizing it, in fact, I think all the Tyson/Austin/DX stuff is about as perfect as could ever be - but I can see the WWE stans crying foul if it happened in 2020 because, well, that's what they do in 2020.

- For the next couple of years, the WWE didn't really need any older stars to bolster their roster because they had Austin, Rock, Mankind, Taker, and Vince himself. Of course, that didn't stop them from eventually bringing in Shane McMahon and putting him in a prominent spot despite not being a trained wrestler. 

- The Rock and Austin distance themselves from the company in 02' and actively resist and turn down offers to come back. I don't have any concrete evidence, but I'm willing to bet money that, between 03' and 07', Vince sent offers that they turned down. And we do know that, in that same 4-5 year time frame, Vince did bring back Hogan for a major run and then a couple one-off PPV main events, signed Bill Goldberg to a 1-year deal, brought back and pushed Kevin Nash a couple times, and was able to get Austin back a couple times in non-wrestling roles that still made him come off as the biggest SOB in the company. Shawn Michaels also came back in 02' (I think) and, despite being an asshole in the 90s, put right into PPV main events for pretty much the rest of his career. **

- Starting with WrestleMania XXIII, Vince has attached a major celeb or once-in-a-lifetime return for nearly every subsequent WrestleMania. They may not be getting booked over the rest of the roster, but more and more TV time is spent in their matches than, say, on whatever Finlay was doing that year. Donald Trump. Floyd Mayweather. The Mickey Rourke stuff from 25. Bret Hart at XXVI (plus, could be wrong, but by this point, weren't Shawn and Taker working considerably less shows a year?). The Rock being booked as the focal point of WrestleManias 27, 28, and 29. 

I could go on from there, but the recent history doesn't need to be gone over. Has the over-pushing of "part-timers" increased and become more glaring this decade? I'd agree that it has...but all I'm saying is that it is nothing new.

 

* Piper would come in for brief stints and get pushed very hard as a top guy multiple times in both WWE and WCW in the 90s.

** To be clear, I'm not saying these sorts of pushes weren't warranted or what the fans wanted. They mostly were.

[MoS]

The most baffling piece of booking for me was Taker pinning Styles in 5 seconds with a chokeslam. How on Earth is that supposed to make me interested in a WM rematch?

[KawadaSmile]

Speaking of part timers and non-wrestling stars, Tyson Fury was quite the draw in his rematch against Wilder, huh? The numbers that match reportedly did...

I mean, I guess some people are about the sanctity of the sport but who the fuck wouldn't try to feature a dude who drew the most people to a HW match since Tyson/Lewis in 2002?