rolling (non-millenials) grabbing the brass ring 2015

Not watched any wrestling in long and decided to catch the last hour of Raw - holy crap its fun with no cena and orton. 4way ladies match was great, even if paige won and then the survivor series match was full of stars and story, i dare any wrestling fan to find fault with it.

Last week was really good too

Yeah last week's Raw was absolutely superb. the structure provided by the four qualifying matches (all excellent) leading to the awesome fatal four way match for the number one contendership (with several spots from the qualifying matches played off of in interesting and inventive ways during the main-event!!!!!!! who the fuck produced this show?!!) was p. much the best possible use of their 2ish hours of airtime.

Feel like it's a bit harsh to blame Cena and Orton for the staleness of the product (Cena in particular, who's been amazing for extended periods of the year), although at root they are part of the problem I guess.

the real problems confronting the company have been analysed and explained to death elsewhere, but can basically be summarised as "nothing matters and no one cares". theyve done well to avoid the familiar lethargy in the last few weeks, let's see where they go from here.

it's a very weird state of affairs being a WWE fan in 2015. they've got their own set of rules as to how this all works that appear to be pure nonsense and entirely contrary to common sense for anyone that doesn't exist purely within their bubble.

Consider Cesaro - here is a guy who has literally never had a proper feud or storyline of his own on the main roster in WWE (I'm not counting his respect feud vs Sami Zayn on NXT here) but who immediately jumps to being at least the 3rd or 4th most popular guy on the show any fucking time they just let him off the leash and allow him to bust out some moves on his opponent. there's been a lot of chatter about how Vince doesn't see him as a "Superstar", whatever the fuck that means, and that he lacks charisma.

But it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you take a guy and bury him every week as a boring European chump who is "lacking in charisma", that's how the fans are going to see him. Of course. But just look at his fuckin uppercuts. Look at his deadlift suplex. I 100% believe that if they booked him as a badass with superhuman wrestling skills, Cesaro vs Lesnar could be a money match. PURE FUCKING MONEY.

I've focused on Cesaro here bcuz he is my fav but really there are any number of potentially hot draws that the WWE are suffocating right now because.... who the fuck knows

it seems like they're still protecting owens which is good - he was the second to last heel left in the survivor series last night (and he only got pinned bc rollins kicked him in the head) and he had some great spots last week main event too (and didn't take the pin iirc - who did roman end up pinning? zigler? remember when everyone was crazy over ziggler? he's no cesaro that's for sure)

owens was pinned. i don't think getting pinned in a fatal 4-way is a big deal. love how the nxt women's match handled it though, with sasha pinning bayley while charlotte had her in the leg lock.

thing is with cesaro, he's fallen completely off the map before. before teaming with kidd he was awol. i think they notice and want to take advantage of just how easy it is for him to suddenly "look strong". he could lose 50 matches in a row clean and win the next one and the entire internet would say "OMG HE'S GETTING A PUSH"

woulda booked sasha to win last night's F4W and then had paige screw her out of it or something. maybe that's annoying, but honest to god the only way they're gonna get heel heat on paige right now (like they desperately seem to want) is to pit her against sasha.

also: i'm watching through latter-half 1996 on the network and for as much shit as michael cole gets, he's got nothing on 1996 kevin kelly

fuck kevin kelly

oh god, rollins out 6-9 months, wtf

tournament for the belt at survivor series

oh no :(

cat very much among the pigeons then. sucks for Rollins but he's going to be so fucking over as a babyface when he makes his comeback. it'll be interesting to see how they book themselves out of this one. no Cena or Rollins for the rest of the year is gonna be extremely tough for them. and it scuppers any prospect of the mooted Shield triple threat at WM too.

do they pull the trigger on Reigns then? wouldn't quite feel like the crowning moment you expect they want it to be if they just give him the belt at Survivor Series. maybe they'll go for Orton as a safe pair of hands? a pity Wyatt is already booked into that feud with Taker, this would've been a cool opportunity to give him a short run with the complete Wyatt Family behind him. i wonder if it'd be at all feasible to just add an extra zero to Lesnar's paycheck and get him in for the last 2 big shows of the year?

randy is also out w. an injury!

oh god lol. so who exactly is gonna be in this tournament? Reigns Ambrose Sheamus Owens.....

Well fuck it, Sheamus is leaving Survivor Series with the belt, I keep forgetting that he's got that briefcase

has a money in the bank cash-in ever failed? because a wyatt win/sheamus cash-in/fail would be kind of amazing to set up wyatt as the lightning/fire/swamp monster heel leader

i also like the idea of sticking it on dean and having roman protect him from the MITB cash-in only to challenge dean for the next ppv, kinda feel like nxt has proven face-vs-face title matches can get ppl excited?

i think damian sandow mitb failed

Cena too iirc, cashed in on Punk but didn't win the belt cause of a cheap finish.

what's going on with Daniel Bryan at the moment? isn't he raring to go but they won't let him? desperate times

please no. i could hardly watch his matches when he was briefly back.

(due to the fact that i was terrified he was going to die.)

yeah it does seem like he's being a bit silly wrt this insistence that he'll be back in the ring, saying he'd be happy to work the indys again if WWE don't clear him to work etc. you'd think that as a lifelong wrestling fan himself he'd recognise that if the fuckin WWE, dark masters of the horrific laissez-faire exploitation of the workforce, are saying "No, this is going to be too dangerous" then he should probably just call it a day for good

if bryan comes back i can't see them putting any belts on him... maybe ever again

god what a shitty thing for rollins. a generally awful year-defining reign that always felt like it was about to get better before it ended, now it just ends as an awful reign, which makes me sort of worried for his career. hopefully he won't fall down the card after the inevitable babyface pop.

no way roman should be beating Vacant for the title. lesnar's really the only guy they have left. i was thinking they could actually put it on taker for a couple months but i forgot about the wyatt thing. i guess wyatt would be good but no way he goes into WM with the belt.

ever since wrestlemania 4 I always thoughts tournaments were the best.. even though generally they kinda suck

are they really gonna do the whole thing at the PPV? i can't imagine it going any deeper than the semifinals. vince hates tournaments apparently

All tournaments are awesome bar the obvious one (many shitty king of the rings, where winning didnt mean anything.)

There is no cena orton bryan rollins rusev sting, lesnar is unlikely to come back, taker kane and the wyatts are booked already and this leaves them the perfect opportunity to elevate some new guys. Bloody hell this is exciting. (Also lol im sure they can mess it up very easily.)

(Cesaro! Cesaro! Cesaro!)

plenty of time left for them to rewrite everything

Meltzer claims that the plan was for Reigns to win the belt at Survivor Series, so Rollins' injury may not have affected their long term plans that much.

I am fully 100% on board with Reigns winning the tournament and joining the Authority at the end of the night in a throwback to Survivor Series 1998, it would freshen the bezeejus out of Reigns and the entire promotion.

Kota Ibushi - who had a tremendous match at Wrestle Kingdom 9 w/ Shinsuke Nakamura (http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2qnx33) has a herniated disc and is out of commission indefinitely :(

Speaking of guys getting wasted by terrible booking, how far has Ibushi fallen? I hope he gets back soon but it doesn't sound good. Like post-back injury Shawn Michaels, he'll probably have to tone down his style.

meltzer also says plans might've changed to put it back on a heel

gonna guess roman wins the tourney, sheamus cashes in, rematch at tlc with a fucky dq, roman gets the belt back at RR

hoping for something less obvious

yeah, I'm hoping for anything but that ...

why the fuck does sheamus even have that stupid suitcase. ugh

the best possible thing (for lols) would be if he tried to cash it in tonight, and since there was nobody to defeat, triple h and stephanie look at rulebooks with puzzled looks on their faces for 3 hours of promos before eventually deciding that sheamus will face the two finalists of the tournament in a triple-threat match

whatever happens all i want is for former wrestlers to look at books with confused looks on their faces

Reigns turned down the offer to join the Authority on RAW but the giant SWERVE is still in play. I'm still hoping for a repeat of Rock '98.

But they'll probably have Reigns win at the PPV, defend against Big Show and Sheamus in the most boring matches ever for three months, and do Lesnar vs Reigns II at Mania.

Yeah just watched that opening segment with Reigns and Triple H, didn't quite realise until that point just how badly I want Reigns to turn at this PPV. There are so many places they could go with that. I mean shit man, I usually try to avoid fantasy booking these things in my head because inevitably they go in a different direction and I end up disappointed, but Roman Reigns cast as the Darth Vader to HHH's Emperor, a monster wrecking ball to be unleashed upon any dissenter, that'd work for me. He'd be able to turn the whole thing back on the fans as well, "I was a good guy, you reviled me, so here we are how dya like me now?" kinda thing.

Opportunity to push Ambrose opposite him as the plucky underdog babyface getting all up in the Authority's shit while trying to remind his erstwhile bro that he really is a good person underneath it all. Envisioning some kind of high-stakes scenario where Reigns has Ambrose beaten and is being goaded by HHH into destroying him while Ambrose appeals to his better nature, an obviously conflicted Reigns looking between them unsure what to do, HHH giving the thumbs down without a trace of mercy or pity in his craggy asshole face, Reigns capitulates and ruins his old friend before skulking away up the ramp with HHH but we know there's still good in him.

Fuck running Reigns/Lesnar II at WM, you keep Reigns heel and get Rocky in to do the job for his cuz in a massive marquee match to make him as a proper top-level deal. Then when Rollins eventually returns you've got a perfect ready-made storyline with him getting rinsed for being such a shitty Authority-endorsed heel champ compared to Reigns, play off what HHH was saying last night about Reigns being the first choice but them going after Rollins because he was the weakest, morally - instant babyface sympathy for Seth.

and eventually you have your (to return to the Star Wars analogy) Return of the Jedi moment where HHH is encouraging Reigns to re-injure Rollins, this time permanently, Reigns finally wakes up and realises what he's been doing and who the real villain here is, turns on his evil master and hey presto, you've got yourself a Shield reunion where everyone forgives everyone else for having been dicks and Dean Ambrose is just pleased to have his bros back because it's a lonely world when you're out there on your own and he knew they were pretty much good guys all along of course, and all is right with the world once more.

Then you can run your fucking Reigns/Lesnar rematch and make him as the official top babyface in the company, if you must. This also gives us another year of undefeated Lesnar, who has now taken a leaf out of John Cena's book and started accepting open challenges for anyone who dares try and make their reputation opposite the most dangerous man in the company. No one succeeds, of course, but the likes of Cesaro and Owens get made as top-shelf guys having gone in there and taken Lesnar to the wire (man fucking imagine Cesaro swinging Lesnar, or getting him with the deadlift suplex! book that fucking match you idiots!). Dolph Ziggler steps up for the challenge and gets rag-dolled into outer space by a particularly vicious suplex. There is much rejoicing and merriment.

It's a good job I'm no longer unemployed else I probably would've spent the better part of this week getting high and booking all this shit on TEW2013 and then felt guilty about it for months afterwards. Good that I can get it out of my system on here.

Basically what I'm saying is that this week's opening promo segment was p. fucking good by usual standards, and this storyline is p. fucking intriguing by usual standards, and boy oh boy is it ever gonna be disappointing when Reigns stays babyface, wins the belt and gets fucked by Sheamus cashing in. But it is not usual for the WWE to even have me thinking about this kind of stuff, let alone plotting it out month-by-month in my head, so I'm gonna try to enjoy this intrigue while it lasts.

lol I actually just wrote all that out and posted it, only god can judge me

has anyone here tried the new wwe2k16 and is it any good?

I like it and think it is good; matches are fun, lots of cool reversals, mat wrestling, near falls and stuff. Lots of people mad about glitches/omissions and stuff that I don't really care about, though the Four Horsewomen not being in it at all is unspeakably stupid. Lots of good stuff on the community creations though, with 100 slots I'm at the point of downloading like Will Ospreay and Marty Scurll edits that look creepily like them and wondering if I'll ever actually use them

I think the only Survivor Series outcome I could get excited about would be Ambrose selling out and getting HHH's help to screw [anyone but Roman] for the title in the final, then clocking Hunter with a chair midway through the post-match WE SWERVED YEWWW promo and running off cackling with the belt to get booked like 1998 Steve Austin for ~6 months

Every tombstone ever??

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_77986elNM

My problem with the idea of Reigns joining the Authority is that they kind of did that story already with Seth Rollins. Reigns would be the second ex-Shield member to turn on his partner(s) and link up with Triple H. Of course the context is a bit different now, and he's a different character, but it's fundamentally a retread. I know my reaction as a viewer would be "oh, this again."

It would be one thing if Rollins's tenure as hand-picked Authority champion looked enviable, since that would give Reigns a clear motivation. But it doesn't really, does it?

i just wrote a long-ish post about how it'll be a fundamentally different story IF they do it with reigns and IF they do it right (i.e. good guy makes mistake, later redeems self) but it was a boring post so i deleted it.

instead i want to talk about the new day. they are completely operating on another level at this point. well, specifically Xavier and Big E. Kofi is great but he is not blowing my mind. Big E's screaming followed by vocal fry. Xavier's final fantasy trombone. The bizarre worldview they keep building on every week (I feel like the original unicorn thing was just a weird ad lib, and they said afterwards, WELL I GUESS UNICORNS ARE PART OF OUR THING NOW), tricep meat, still calling rollins their captain after hanging out precisely ONCE, etc etc etc. Something weird is going on when the people getting the most cheers on-mic are the heels (New Day, Owens)... until they remind the crowd they're heels by saying something disparaging about the place they are (like, uhh, everyone knows European Magic is garbage. And Harry Potter sucks (thanks, Kofi)!)

when is the last time a main roster tag team had this much fun and hilarious personality? and how great will it be if they get embroiled in a feud with Enzo & Cass or the Vaudevillains in the future?

I agree with all of that re: New Day. I will add that's been really fun seeing Kofi be totally revitalized as a performer at this stage of his career.

New Day are sort of the PG version of DX in 1997 -- they're heels, they piss off everyone on the roster (in kayfabe) with their stupid antics, but they're so entertaining (and are clearly having fun with it) that it's only a matter of time before the crowds turn them into faces. Not to mention that every babyface on the roster save for Cena has been stuck in personality-free midcard hell for years. That's how DX (and Austin) got over too! Most babyface acts were generic 80's superhero types, and they were different.

It's not so much that Reigns joining the Authority would be a retread, it's that the past twenty years of storylines on RAW have been retreads -- their default storyline has been heel authority figure vs babyface hero, and people are sick of it, in part because there's never a payoff. But it's not going away any time soon, so we might as well learn to live with it and hope for the most interesting version of it possible with the characters they have at the moment.

on the new day though, did they start as a heel faction? like was it always the intent for them to be... what they are now? i seem to remember them being introduced as faces but in the most boring way, the crowd turning on them, then someone having the actually amazing idea to roll with it and make them sorta tone-deaf "positivity" heels... and then they became what they are now.

but also yes re: kofi! awesome to see him revitalized.

yeah they were originally put together as an awful, awful face group. terrible idea

according to their podcast with jericho i think? it was vince's idea and he genuinely thought they would go over huge as faces

their heel turn was sort of amazing too, these 3 pure, innocent babyfaces collectively realizing at the same time that cheating leads to winning. they could've gone further with it but i just love how they play it like they share a brain. i can't imagine any of them ever turning on each other, it's so weird to think about them disagreeing

the problem with dash and dawson is when i try to imagine "dash and dawson" it's just dawson standing next to a big question mark

I just realized earlier today that Dash and Dawson were the new NXT Tag Champs. I'm surprised that they didn't let the Vaudevillians run with it a little longer. NXT has been doing some interesting and pretty cool things for tag teams lately, though (JJ & Gable, Ciampa & Gargano, and even teaming Hype Bros with Bayley against BAMF). I love Enzo & Cass, but I also feel weird about a title run for their sort of tag gimmick.

The Table For 3 episode that featured New Day was actually great and gave me a new respect for them. I think they've been doing pretty good work for what could easily have been another 3MB.

found this list really useful

might be time for meltzer to start grading njpw on a curve

they put on great matches but i have a tough time swallowing SIX G1 matches being on the same level as grave consequences or bayley/sasha I.

also rip nick bockwinkel, one of the greatest