WWE TV Megathread

[Coffey]

10 hours ago, Timbo Slice said:

Oba Femi eviscerating Brock is satisfying on multiple levels. 

Two weeks in a row Oba has looked great & gotten the upper hand on The Beast... but if Brock just beats him at WrestleMania, I don't know if that stuff will matter. They have a can't-miss prospect in Oba imo. He could main event for a long time. I don't see any reason to not pull the trigger now. 

[C.S.]

I don't see Brock losing at WrestleMania, sadly, especially with Oba getting the upper hand now. They'll think that's enough. It isn't. 

[The Thread Killer]

You certainly can’t fault the way that Lesnar has been building Femi up. They went toe-to-toe in the Rumble, and during the confrontation last week you could actually see Lesnar telling Femi to put his foot on Lesnar’s chest when he pointed at the sign. And again last night, Lesnar’s facial expression when Oba fought his way out of the F5 and sent Lesnar over the top rope certainly portrayed fear. It’s pretty obvious Lesnar must like Oba Femi. Just ask Jon Moxley and Braun Strowman what happens if he doesn’t like you.

If Lesnar doesn’t put Femi over clean at Wrestlemania, it should at least be a double DQ or a countout or something like that. I agree that Femi losing to Lesnar isn’t going to do much for either guy. Lesnar doesn’t need that win.

[sek69]

Yeah, Brock doesn't mind doing business if he likes who he's working with so I don't see him having an issue putting over Oba. What will be interesting to me is at some point Brock has to get heat on him in order for this to not look like a total squash, and Oba hasn't really been put in that kind of position on the main roster. 

[The Thread Killer]

Yeah, at some point between now and Wrestlemania, Brock is going to have to throw Oba a beating, for sure. This whole deal has been pretty one sided so far.

[sek69]

Hearing the pop Danhausen got from the Pittsburgh crowd made my heart feel all warm and cozy. 

[sek69]

i dont care what anyone says this gimmick is officially over with me now. 

[sek69]

Dang, Jelly Roll out here looking like he's working the JCP houseshow loop between concerts. He's stupidly good at this for someone who's only did this like 3 times in his life. 

[sek69]

HA having a couple of Steelers shotgunning beers ringside at a wrestling show is the most Pittsburgh thing they could have possibly done. 

[The Thread Killer]

I appreciate the fact that WWE has been scrambling to cover for the injuries to a number of their best performers, that’s why we are not getting Gunther vs Mysterio, Knight vs Reed and Rollins vs Breakker at Wrestlemania, which is clearly where they were heading with all of those guys.

Having said that, if one of their solutions is to book The Usos & LA Knight vs Logan Paul, Austin Theory and fucking IShowSpeed, I swear…

[sek69]

But think of the MOMENTS they can have!

[sek69]

Is it me or has the build for this Wrestlemania been really piss poor? Other than Oba/Brock, it's been really jumbled and rushed. Beyond the injuries previously mentioned apparently they also had a Vince-ian "tear everything up" moment after ticket sales weren't hitting the the numbers they were expecting.

[TheDuke]

I love Cody but I kind of wonder if he has run his course as a babyface main eventer and should be put lower on the card and let someone new step up. Somebody else here I believe said the thing about finishing your story, it means the story is over. Cody could still have like a mid-card "Cody-verse" where he has interesting feuds with different guys that WWE may not have any future plans for but could sill have entertaining matches and storylines without burying guys they still need to keep strong. 

[Timbo Slice]

Cody reverting to end stage AEW run status because he can’t be booked as a convincing heel would be hilarious. This show is gonna be a misfire on several levels. And this is with All In not looking promising for Wembley III, too. Folks are strapped for cash, man. 

[sek69]

Man, another #1 contender match ending up in a screwy finish leading (probably) to a three way title match on NXT. In a vacuum it wasn't bad but they are doing SO MANY of these its turning into go away heat.

[The Thread Killer]

That whole organization badly needs a creative shakeup, but I don’t see it happening.

[strobogo]

8 hours ago, The Thread Killer said:

That whole organization badly needs a creative shakeup, but I don’t see it happening.

Didn't they literally just do this in the last month? Road Dogg gone from SD, both Raw and SD have new head writers. It's still dogshit? 

[sek69]

NXT has been creatively dogshit for over a year now. They had Je'von last year and spent the whole time having him never win anything of significance. Any woman who got over with the fans got immediately put in their place, all while showing the world that Toni Storm did for Blake Monroe what the Young Bucks did for Private Party. 

[The Thread Killer]

2 hours ago, strobogo said:

Didn't they literally just do this in the last month? Road Dogg gone from SD, both Raw and SD have new head writers. It's still dogshit? 

Raw is by far and away the best of the 3 shows. More often than not, it’s a fairly easy watch, with at least a couple decent matches every week. The problem is, they are so stubbornly reliant on an incredibly stale formula. Face-to-face promos in the ring, which get broken up by security, referees, and Adam Pearce. Backstage segments. Distraction finishes. Contract signings. It’s the same shit every week.

SmackDown is so much worse because that show is 3 hours, plus the SD roster is significantly weaker than the Raw roster. For example, Solo and his crew and the Wyatts get tons of TV time and nobody cares about them, because most of them suck. The SD Tag Division is a joke. Thank gawd they finally sent Gargano back to NXT.

@sek69 pretty much summed up the problems with NXT. I don’t know who is writing the TV there, but they need to be fired. That show is at the point where I won’t even watch it, unless a match has been announced ahead of time that I want to see. When Oba, Trick and Je’Von all got called up, that roster took a huge hit.

I actually find myself enjoying the AAA show on YouTube on Saturday Nights. The crowds are always insanely hot, there’s usually a good match or two and it’s only an hour long. Plus I actually enjoy the commentary team of Graves, JBL and Rey Mysterio.

[Timbo Slice]

So with flailing sales and folks being disinterested in a vast majority of the card, the juice they think would help push Orton/Rhodes over the top is…Pat McAfee. 
 

The post-WM cuts when they lose millions on this is gonna be something else. 

[sek69]

Truly stunning. That's all I can say really. 

[Coffey]

13 hours ago, Timbo Slice said:

So with flailing sales and folks being disinterested in a vast majority of the card, the juice they think would help push Orton/Rhodes over the top is…Pat McAfee. 

Speaking from a strictly on-air product perspective, WWE has done a ton of stupid shit over the years, certainly. I don't want to make a hyperbolic statement & say this is one of the worst things they've ever done as that would be nonsense, but at least recently, this genuinely had me shaking my head & saying "what the fuck are they thinking?" Maybe I'm living in an alternate reality but even being an ex-NFL player & having his podcast & ESPN ties, Pat doesn't seem like a big deal or a star to me. They spent weeks doing a mystery man build-up where people were interested in seeing who it would be only to shit the bed entirely with someone that zero people were clamoring to return.

Granted they're using IShowSpeed & Jelly Roll as "stars" too, so what the hell do I know? We've come a long way from Muhammad Ali, Cyndi Lauper & Mr. T.

This Wrestlemania feels mid. The build-up, the intrigue, the card. It feels like most people just don't give a fuck.

[DMJ]

To the WWE audience and many current wrestling fans in general, Pat McAfee isn't just a non-celebrity, he's actually less than that - he's a wrestling commentator, full stop. He's an ex-NFL player and he hosts a TV show and he's a media personality, blah blah, but many wrestling fans tend to be wrestling fans and not necessarily fans of other sports or fans of sports-based talk shows or college football pre-shows. I had no idea who Pat McAfee was before he popped up in NXT. I still have never seen him do anything that wasn't directly related to the WWE. 

Pat McAfee appearing on WWE TV for months and months depleted any "star power" he had. He became just another commentator, not really any different from Wade Barrett or Corey Graves or whoever else. Sure, he sometimes gets a special entrance, but that's always felt, to me, more like something they were doing for him and that the crowd response is Pavlovian (s it is for almost everybody on the show). Fans like entrances and "Seven Nation Army" is a banger.

Him being used in this storyline is worse than Disco Inferno being "the third man" (a reference to an angle from 30 years ago, an inadvertent and cringe-inducing admission that, yes, the WWE's Creative has been bad for decades now). It is more like if the third man had ended up being Nitro commentator-era/non-Horseman Steve McMichael. 

But, hey, when Travis Scott was at Mania, I thought it was terrible but heard many younger fans thought it was pretty cool, the same way I thought Dennis Rodman being in the nWo was cool when I was 13. I will readily admit my ignorance if Pat McAfee is a bigger star than I'm giving him credit for, but even if that is the case, to the wrestling audience, especially younger fans*, he's mostly known as commentator. As far as I know, there's no evidence that him being on commentary caused any sort of rating bump or helped sell a single ticket. 

* Again, maybe I'm wrong, but I work at a middle school and have never once heard a child mention watching College GameDay or The Pat McAfee Show but have seen kids come in wearing a Yeet shirt.

[The Thread Killer]

As a Football fan, I knew who Pat McAfee was before he showed up in NXT, as most (even casual) NFL fans probably did. And full credit to him, his show on ESPN is pretty popular. I’d say he qualifies as a mainstream star.

But I still find him annoying, and don’t see the point of shoe-horning him into this Cody/Orton angle. But at least he won’t be wrestling, unlike “IShowSpeed” whoever the fuck he is.

[sek69]

6 hours ago, The Thread Killer said:

But I still find him annoying, and don’t see the point of shoe-horning him into this Cody/Orton angle. But at least he won’t be wrestling, unlike “IShowSpeed” whoever the fuck he is.

To quote my favorite WWE commenator, I'm afraid I have some bad news. It looks like the plan is the Usos and LA Knight vs the Vision and IShowSpeed.  To be fair he's a very popular streamer so it's not like he's some Z list celebrity even if us Olds may not know about him. 

And yes, as much as I personally would wish otherwise, Pat's a pretty mainstream star considering he's got the juice to go on his show and talk shit on ESPN execs with no consequences. What I hate though is apparently this was all an Ari Emmanuel deal like the Rock was before, and folks are starting to get annoyed in the company at TKO meddling in creative. Cody in particular wasn't happy about this and he was told to go out there and basically shoot on Raw in his response promo (with the Disco Inferno remark being a callback to the time where he famously clowned him on Twitter).