Royal Rumble 2023 aka 30 years of pointing at sign as Mania main event booking

[KawadaSmile]

If we look closely at Sami's journey in WWE, he was done dirtier than Bryan. When he was, in fact, the NXT top babyface, he kayfabe struggled to the point where he had to snuck in a Generico reference just to get a title shot and after YEARS of chasing it, won and was instantly double-crossed by Owens. Kevin then proceeded to beat him by REFEREE STOPPAGE.

He had zero title defenses and only had one shot at the belt four months later. Poor guy. 

[Timbo Slice]

He was also hurt going into the title match, IIRC, which is what led to the match being what it was. 

[KawadaSmile]

The match was pretty competitive, actually. He hurt himself with an Asai Moonsault to the outside, hitting his head. Then KO just started powerbombing him until the doctor stoppage. 

[El-P]

In other news, there is a new series of A&E revisionist historical documentaries coming up and the last one on March 26 before Mania is... Dusty Rhodes.

[Timbo Slice]

17 minutes ago, KawadaSmile said:

The match was pretty competitive, actually. He hurt himself with an Asai Moonsault to the outside, hitting his head. Then KO just started powerbombing him until the doctor stoppage. 

I remember injury was a part of it but couldn’t remember if it was during or before the match. 

[Robert S]

2 hours ago, El-P said:

By the Summer, the company will be sold and Vince is gonna take over everything anyway, so... 

Vince will never run a company that does not belong to him. If he sell, he is gone. Probably he will waste his money doing something like XFL run number 3 (this time fully financed by him). Or he'll try to convert as much money possible to coke and snort his children poor.

[Robert S]

21 minutes ago, El-P said:

In other news, there is a new series of A&E revisionist historical documentaries coming up and the last one on March 26 before Mania is... Dusty Rhodes.

So 5 minutes AWA & NWA, 30 minutes polka dots, 25 minutes FCW?

[El-P]

Just now, Robert S said:

So 5 minutes AWA & NWA, 30 minutes polka dots, 25 minutes FCW?

I have not watched the WWE produced Ric Flair documentary (I don't watch bullshit), but apparently it was "Yeah, he used to be the NWA champ, then was in WCW during the Monday Night Wars that WWF won then the really important part if how he had lost his confidence and how Vince and Triple H give him his confidence back and he was part of Evolution and that was very very important for him and then he retired against Shawn Micheals at Wrestlemania".

[Johnny Sorrow]

The Flair doc on Peacock is more about a man who became his character, was absent from his family, and is still an alcoholic in denial than it is about wrestling history. 

[SirEdger]

2 hours ago, Robert S said:

Vince will never run a company that does not belong to him. If he sell, he is gone. Probably he will waste his money doing something like XFL run number 3 (this time fully financed by him). Or he'll try to convert as much money possible to coke and snort his children poor.

Pretty sure that The Rock & his ex-wife now own the XFL. Vince sold it to them a few years ago shortly after the pandemic hit and they had to cancel their season.

[Ziggy_The_Iron_King]

13 hours ago, El-P said:

 

Cody winning it makes him close to be that guy, but there's no need to replace Roman Reigns as of now when he's at his best and most over ever, unless he wants to branch out into movies. Cody is also a banged up 38 years old guy who had said in the past he wanted to retire at 40 (yeah, I know). 

 

I'm sure Reigns does want to branch off to movies and things like that but he's legit banged up. I don't remember if it was Vinny or Bryan from the Bryan and Vinny show but one of them pointed out how banged up a Reigns was back around like the fall a while after his schedule got reduced. He could barely get up out of his seat during a backstage segment and he wasn't selling. I know some people didn't like that he has a reduced schedule but he's pretty much been on TV almost every week. Has he been off TV more than a 2 week period at once? He's always over delivered when he does work matches. At this point he can get away with doing less in the ring if he wants to. 

I do believe he'll probably take alot more time off once he drops the titles though. He really deserves it honestly 

[Alucard]

I just don't get buying Sami as the guy to beat Roman after all these years, like he's never been presented that way and Roman's been the most unstoppable guy for so long that not even Brock could beat anymore on multiple attempts.  Yeah it would get the big pop obviously but it just feels like such a stretch. that or it would be something heavily interference filled which would be a sucky way to end such a run.

Cody feels like a star with an aura, has been built up being unbeaten since returning including 3 straight PPV wins over Seth (and Seth was pushed as the guy Roman "couldn't beat", with the DQ finish at last year's Rumble) to the point where it feels believable/right. Only other time I maybe felt that was with Drew last year in Wales and he had been built up with wins for months to that point.

[El-P]

6 hours ago, Ziggy_The_Iron_King said:

I'm sure Reigns does want to branch off to movies and things like that but he's legit banged up. (...)

I do believe he'll probably take alot more time off once he drops the titles though. He really deserves it honestly 

Not to mention he has this illness over his head like a Damocles sword. For sure, I fully expect Reigns to be gone for a while. I also fully expect Reigns to be back for next Mania season at the latest and get back his title at Mania next year. In the mids of this there's the sell of the company happening, who knows what that'll mean for the booking ?

Fun question though. If Cody doesn't jump from AEW, does Sami gets the match ? I just can't get past the irony of the former "AEW guy" (remember how Cody was ridiculed by the same WWE audience for not being a star and a midcarder 4 Life at best when he was in AEW ?) being the one defeating Roman in the end. Tells a lot also about how the process of "moving from territory to territory" is absolutely needed to keep things fresh for everybody, the fans and the workers (Cody leaving when he did was the perfect choice for him). There's a reason why Cody is as over as he is, and that's become he came from a strong opposition company as opposed to coming back from IMPACT/ROH (same thing happened with AJ Styles, who came to WWE as a star, less so but still, because he came straight from a then very hot NJPW instead of straight from TNA). 

[Champagne]

8 hours ago, El-P said:

Fun question though. If Cody doesn't jump from AEW, does Sami gets the match ? I just can't get past the irony of the former "AEW guy" (remember how Cody was ridiculed by the same WWE audience for not being a star and a midcarder 4 Life at best when he was in AEW ?) being the one defeating Roman in the end. Tells a lot also about how the process of "moving from territory to territory" is absolutely needed to keep things fresh for everybody, the fans and the workers (Cody leaving when he did was the perfect choice for him). There's a reason why Cody is as over as he is, and that's become he came from a strong opposition company as opposed to coming back from IMPACT/ROH (same thing happened with AJ Styles, who came to WWE as a star, less so but still, because he came straight from a then very hot NJPW instead of straight from TNA). 

It can't be overstated how hard Cody worked to improve himself in virtually every aspect while he was away from the WWE and how much that has factored into him coming across like a star once he returned.

[Embrodak]

Also Drew rehabilitated himself without AEW, not his fault his coronation happened at the weirdest and most non-canonical time in wrestling history.

[strobogo]

Drew's rehab was mostly putting on 60 pounds of muscle and not shaving his chest 

[KawadaSmile]

16 minutes ago, strobogo said:

Drew's rehab was mostly putting on 60 pounds of muscle and not shaving his chest 

AKA the Triple H Method. Even JINDER MAHAL got a nice heel run because he was super fucking jacked.

[El-P]

10 hours ago, Embrodak said:

Also Drew rehabilitated himself without AEW,

Considering AEW was not around, yeah, no shit. But Drew did the exact same thing that Cody did, he went and work all around the indies for years and got hype for himself (and got better). The big difference is that when he came back, he was not slotted as a main event star immediately. Took him a while. Neither was Bobby Lashley, who followed more or less the same path, he really found himself in IMPACT where he became the total package in term of work/promo (his 2016 champ run is so much fun, he's really shining on every aspect). When he came back it took him like 3 years before he won the big one.

Neither came back the way Cody did, with a huge comeback win at Mania, then the Rumble win, then straight to Mania main event the following year. It's not even debatable that his AEW stint is the reason Cody Rhodes came back with the status he did, although of course of Vince had been a petty idiot then, he absolutely could have not capitalized on it. Context is as important as anything. There's a positive exchange of symbolic capital when you leave a company as a star to go to another that has the means to use it (which is part of why TNA was never able to really capitalize on Jeff Hardy for instance, because their own status did not allowed them to, although obviously there were other issues). 

If Cody comes back to WWE before All In happens, maybe he ends up as a big star after a few years, but it's obvious he comes back and is IC champ at best in their minds.

WWE is obsessed with owning the pro-wrestling business as a whole, but this is a perfect example of why it's beneficial even for them that it doesn't happen. 

[NintendoLogic]

On 1/31/2023 at 3:48 AM, Alucard said:

I just don't get buying Sami as the guy to beat Roman after all these years, like he's never been presented that way and Roman's been the most unstoppable guy for so long that not even Brock could beat anymore on multiple attempts.  Yeah it would get the big pop obviously but it just feels like such a stretch. that or it would be something heavily interference filled which would be a sucky way to end such a run.

This is why comparisons to Foley are so off-base. There may have been comedic aspects to Foley's character, but that was after he had built up years of equity as a dangerous lunatic capable of absorbing inhuman amounts of punishment. As a side note, I have to question how much credit HHH deserves for booking Sami in NXT. The golden age of NXT from a creative standpoint was when Dusty had the book and it became far more of an indy dream match promotion after he died. I'm hard-pressed to think of a single good NXT storyline after 2016.

Speaking of AEW, I saw an interesting theory that the creation of AEW is what got WWE fans to accept Roman as the top guy by causing the fans who would reject him no matter what to migrate away and creating a rally-round-the-flag effect for the ones who remained. I think there might be something to that.

[El-P]

1 hour ago, NintendoLogic said:

Speaking of AEW, I saw an interesting theory that the creation of AEW is what got WWE fans to accept Roman as the top guy by causing the fans who would reject him no matter what to migrate away and creating a rally-round-the-flag effect for the ones who remained. I think there might be something to that.

That's interesting. It kinda goes along the idea that @Embrodak mentioned earlier about how the part of the WWE audience that could has rejected Cody have already left.

Which is probably why the tribalism is at its worst also (well, that and social medias and echo chambers effects), because the audiences of both company seem to be very much split with a small shared part only. The overlap between audiences of each wrestling companies is one of the most fascinating aspect of the business that I'd love to know more about, including with the smaller companies like IMPACT, MLW, GCW, NWA and the Japanese and Mexican promotions.