WWE SummerSlam 2022

[sek69]

Yeah there's at leash two giant video boards in that stadium.

[KawadaSmile]

Roman Reigns is the greatest wrestler ever

[hammerva]

As great as the 1st Brock vs Reigns WM match was, this may have blown it out of the water.   This should be the end but knowing the WWE I expect 2 more in the future 

The only negative was them after the match basically telling over and over what everyone already knows which is Drew McIntyre has 0% chance of winning next month

[strobogo]

Wrong: Drew has a sword and swords are legal in castles

[Johnny Sorrow]

1 hour ago, SteveJRogers said:

I’d imagine the Titan Tron and/or the other boards in the arena were showing the action.

1. Fuck the rich people who can afford those seats and sit on their hands every show.

2. If I WAS sitting ringside I would have lost my shit watching Brock almost flip a ring with a tractor in front of me.

[Jimmy Redman]

That was actually a really fun show.

The chaos of Brock vs Roman delivered and made it worth doing it once more I guess. I went all the way to New Orleans for Wrestlemania and literally slept through the main event because of this stupid match up. The first half seemed more of the same, and while the entrance and first jump was cool I thought most of the tractor stuff during the match was a little too slow and cute, but demolishing the ring was amazing and made the whole thing into a unique spectacle.

MITB sucks as a concept so much. That dork hanging around threatening to cash in is stupid.

Liv seemed like such a dork compared to Ronda. Finish obviously leads somewhere, but not sure what you can do to make Liv beating her look credible, unless you just put the belt back on Ronda.

Surely building up to Bianca vs. Ronda for WM is the move?

Don't really understand what the point of Jarrett was, apart from Jeff making money. And why they did all that just to have the Usos win the blow off cleanly too. Montez is putting on singles push muscles so I guess they're not long for the world?

It's funny, WWE putting on a good PPV never convinces me to try giving them another go. They can bring out all the bells and whistles for a major stadium show, but they can't book for shit. It DOES however, make me want to go and fantasy book WWE. It reminds me that they have all these tools at their disposal: an insane roster, celebrities, the production budget, HUGE stadium shows to build to... and they do nothing with it. It frustrates me.

[Jmare007]

Second best Roman/Brock match. It took like 7 years but they finally were able to bring some of the WM 31 magic back.

Are Last Man Standing matches the most reliable WWE gimmick matches ever? I feel they always deliver and they specially give us matches that are better/way better than expected initially.

[sek69]

It should be noticed that the show was largely babyfaces going over, and one of the times heels won (the Usos) is probably leading to an angle with the Street Profits splitting. Makes for a much different feel to the show when it's not hours of heels making faces look like geeks for the all important HEAT. 

[Jesse Ewiak]

To the " if a Youtube kid can walk in and out-wrestle half the people on the roster" point.

Indeed - perhaps that should be the point. If any athletic guy from the outside can be 80% as good as 90% of wrestlers as far doing impressive athletic stuff with a few months of training, than those wrestlers should maybe focus on stuff an athletic guy on Youtube can't do, like actually learning how to cut a good promo, or tell a story in-ring that doesn't need a frog splash through a table to get huge reactions. 

It's not 1997 anymore - everybody can do a plancha, so being able to four flips instead of three does not make you that special. 

 

[sek69]

Wrestling fans have always been appreciative of someone coming from outside the wrestling and actually performing well. So many celebrities have come in and were obvious in only being there for the check and taking it as a joke. Even if a celebrity kinda sucks but you can tell they really were into it and having fun (like the Johnny Knoxville stuff) people tend to give it a pass more or less. When a celeb comes in and not only took it seriously but actually ended up being good at it, they almost always get a big pop for that. 

It's actually even more impressive in a way that a guy who built his brand on being a douchebag took the time to train and take this WWE adventure of his seriously. 

[El-P]

Please tell me this got no reaction at all. Please.

That piece of shit displayed on the show goes a long way in telling how WWE culture is still the shits. I'm sure the women on the roster were glad. 

(oh, and Kid Rock was showcased too ? This was really Sumagarslam )

Yeah, I thought about watching the first post-Vince WWE show, but really apart from minor stuff, it's obvious everything was planned way ahead, plus Kevin Dunn is still producing. Probably should wait for like Royal Rumble to get the most out of a "fresh" eye, with the first post-Vince road to Mania. Although honestly people like Logan Paul are legit turnoff to me. The last thing I want in pro-wrestling is actual real-life influencers douchebags (the latest worst step in human evolution).

Surprised Io Shirai is still there. Great for them, too bad for me (already wanted to see her back in Stardom and show up on NJPW shows and stuff !).

[Dav'oh]

How does the new, improved, uber-homoerotic Mansoor show his face in the Kingdom ever again?

[El-P]

Also, with Paul obviously getting back some people that got let go by Vince, odds on Naomi and Sasha Banks ending back into the fold ? If I'm Trip, I make everything possible to get Sasha back, show up as a surprise at the Rumble and win the thing. And win at Mania against Charlotte (who embodies the company). I mean, doh. 

[Jmare007]

Paul should book Logan vs Bad Bunny for Mania. It would get huge publicity and nuclear heat. That match would probably be a dope 7 minute sprint as you know both would praxtice every spot in avance and do their best to execute them properly

 

[Dav'oh]

I don't like people who a) play wrestling b)are there for shits and giggles.

Bunny and Paul and JackAss et al are rich enough to form their own play-fed. 

[El-P]

Celebrity wrestling sucks. I don't care about it, never have, never will. I understand why it's done but then again, I also realize that most of the time, the pro-wrestling I enjoy the most came from promotion/cultures with next to none celebrity wrestling. 

Also, I gotta roll my eyes everytime a celebrity does well and we get the usual "X gets pro-wrestling better than 90% of actual pro-wrestler", because it totally misses the point about so many things, but whatever.

I guess that's me being a hardcore fan at heart, and also, in many more ways than one, always enjoying smaller scale stuff. I also don't give a flying fuck about celebrities. That means nothing to me. I'm not star struck, I'm not impressed by famous people more than I am with the cashier at the supermarket. They're shit and piss and they are gonna die just like me. So they are some famous people (whether I know them or not) and I'm supposed to care because of it ? Sorry, I don't. 

And really, in a very selfish, self-centered way, part of me wishes AEW actually never gets too big. Their attempt at mainstream attention via Cody's shitty ideas never appealed to me. I for one would be happy to just have them be this big but not too much, hardcore alternative working with every promotion around so we get cool combinations of pro-wrestling stuff, as opposed to another big entertainment juggernaut. Hell, I was super happy with having Lucha Underground.

In the end, there's something about WWE that is off putting to me that goes beyond the pro-wrestling industry. Which makes me miss on some really good actual pro-wrestling but then again, choosing is renouncing. 

[Embrodak]

Yeah the reasons celebrities fit in in modern wrestling is they put all their XP into the speech and charisma stats, which most modern wrestlers just don’t have as much of as their predecessors, and wrestling has become so much less specialized and psychological of a physical art that the actual athletics are not super hard to learn, especially if you’re in a position to have your match choreographed for weeks or months beforehand.

[Embrodak]

Also, why did they give Theory MITB if they were just going to book him like a fucking goober? He’s building up a stink it’s going to take years to wash off.

[NintendoLogic]

18 hours ago, Jimmy Redman said:

Becky vs. Bianca ruled, I liked it a lot. I take it down a star because they opened with a collar and elbow and didn't do a big nearfall to play off the 30 sec deal from last year.

They already did that at Mania. No need to do it again.

15 hours ago, strobogo said:

Wrong: Drew has a sword and swords are legal in castles

Brock couldn't beat Roman with a fucking tractor. What's Drew going to do with a measly sword?

14 hours ago, Jmare007 said:

Are Last Man Standing matches the most reliable WWE gimmick matches ever? I feel they always deliver and they specially give us matches that are better/way better than expected initially.

Strongly disagree. Almost all of them are dragged down by the referee's count being way too slow and an overreliance on contrived set pieces. The only ones that managed to overcome those obstacles were Cena/Umaga and maybe HHH/Jericho. Brock/Roman still had those issues to a degree (not to mention the ref having an absurdly generous definition of what constituted being back on one's feet), but I appreciate that their focus was on beating the hell out of each other rather than setting up elaborate arrangements of furniture. I'd peg it as the #3 LMS match in company history, which I guess makes it the #3 LMS match period. I still need to check out AJ Styles/Bully Ray from TNA, which has gotten rave reviews from people whose opinions I trust.

[Timbo Slice]

It's not even Roman's best LMS match, as the Big Show match is one of the best uses of the gimmick with a fantastic finish.

[strobogo]

I can not believe in 2022 that there are people getting tight about celeb matches in WWE, which has been doing celeb matches since 1985, and especially about the celebs actually being good.

[Embrodak]

I actually don’t mind it as a general thing, I just can’t stand the Paul brothers and wish he’d be a douchebag heel so I could see him get pummeled.

[Timbo Slice]

Cherry picking through the card:

-Bianca and Becky had good ideas but the execution was sloppy more often than not. Bianca has a tendency to just move through her cadence, which takes away from the flow of the match sometimes. It was like they were on two different paces throughout. Becky's Joshi Outfit Update: Dynamite Kansai at DreamSlam II. 

-Paul/Miz was one of those things where they tried to tell a story, but the crowd wasn't buying it. Even when Paul hit the big splash, it led to kind of a dull reaction when he did win. I agree that he had a good performance, and his athletic background really showed out, but he needs to figure out how to connect to the crowd more.

-Meanwhile, McAfee had the crowd behind him and while I don't think it was his best performance, Corbin held his end together pretty dang well. McAfee knows how to string things together better than Paul, feeds into Corbin's offense better, but at the same time, his spots were a bit sloppy here, whereas they were much better at WM. The slippery ropes probably didn't help him.

-Brock/Roman was actually a bit paint by the numbers in regards to the big spots that led to counts, but was executed well. Kind of a natural progression: Brock dominates early, Reigns progresses through his stuff, then Brock does his. Once the tractor ring lift spot happened, things got a bit more interesting. Brock as Jason Voorhees works for me most times, though, and this was one of those times. Middle tier of LMS matches, leaning upward, but they should have mixed in more of the more creative elements as opposed to just progressing through things. Related to story and execution, it was really well done, but it didn't really hold much drama or suspense.

[strobogo]

Bianca/Becky was a bit sloppy from the start, but things definitely got wonkier after Becky fucked her shoulder up early on. I'm surprised there hasn't been any update on that, there's a pic that looks like a separated shoulder or broken collarbone.

[Dav'oh]

4 hours ago, strobogo said:

WWE, which has been doing celeb matches since 1985

Chuck Wepner in 1976 is the earliest WWWF/E match I can think of. Celeb involvement (usually boxers) is as old as wrestling itself. 

4 hours ago, strobogo said:

the celebs actually being good

Not at wrestling. Lawrence Taylor was good at being carried by Bam Bam and Pat Patterson. Paul excelled (YMMV)as Miz's Dancing With the Stars partner. Looking good in one or two matches doesn't mean you are good; I mean, with the exception of your Pete Rose and Drew Carey-types, they're all booked to look good - it's sorta the whole point. Logan Paul vs a blow-up doll would stink to high-heaven*

6 hours ago, Embrodak said:

they put all their XP into the speech and charisma stats

Getting a pop for going through a table ≠ charisma. Getting a pop because people already like you and your music and can't believe! he's in the WWE! ≠ charisma.

I thought Paul's whole "appeal" was that he's a cockwomble slash human spitoon, which would be anti- or dark-charisma

6 hours ago, Embrodak said:

which most modern wrestlers just don’t have as much of as their predecessors

For every Hulk Hogan or Bruno Sammartino there were fifty Ron Basses or Geto Mongols. 

*Off-topic, but for years the highest praise in wrestling was reserved for Ric Flair: he could carry an inanimate object (usually a broomstick) to a four-star match. But he never did. Yet Ibushi actually goes and does it and gets pilloried. SMH.