rolling (non-millenials) grabbing the brass ring 2015

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

http://www.wwe.com/inside/nick-bockwinkel-passes-away-28215026

god they're trying so hard to get paige heel heat and charlotte face heat, how are they supposed to do that after years of establishing the divas as the division of no alignments? this is never gonna work

gotta start somewhere... eventually they'll start featuring sasha and eventually they'll call up bayley and all will fall into place. they need to set the groundwork now.

would broadly agree that it's not a bad thing for them to start reintroducing the face/heel dynamic in the Divas division but man why the fuck did they feel it necessary to bring Charlotte's dead brother into it? getting Pillman's wife on Raw might be the most egregious example of this kind of behaviour and this wasn't in the same league but ughh I hate it when they do this shit, it's the fucking worst of the business

ok that's not entirely true there are loads of other problems which are more pressing than the WWE's enduring crassness and lack of respect, but fuck man, just stop doing it. There are times that I quite like Vince McMahon (or at least I find him kind of endearing) but in reality he's such a classless vampire cunt

if they're gonna start somewhere i think they gotta at least try to start with establishing actual characters with real giveashitaboutable motivations, not flipping from "goth brit wants credit for a thing that barely happened vs ric flair's catchphrase" to HOLY FUCK DEAD BROTHER TIME

i just can't see paige ever getting real heel heat. she got some boos at raw but i'm guessing they're still gonna drown her in cheers on sunday. i'd like to be disappointed. then again no one really gets real heel heat these days. but they're structuring this feud so she has to. it always feels like everything has to go absolutely perfect with the women and it's constantly falling flat.

i don't think the angle itself is inherently horrible in theory -- apparently it was charlotte's idea -- but yikes charlotte was not ready for it. paige was a champ though.

The feud makes no sense. All the divas factions were arbitrarily thrown together (in storyline) by Stephanie so who really cares if they split up? PCB were together for about a month before starting to feud which isn't close to enough time to make their breakup into a big deal.

Also, according to Charlotte, "it's not about the title, it's about who's got your back". Seriously, WTF?? You never would see John Cena or the Rock or any real babyface champion complain about people not having their back. Heels need to stick together to be successful, babyfaces don't care if they need to fight against the odds, if someone stabs them in the back it gives them an excuse to kick more ass. For me the heel/face motivations are completely scrambled, and the live crowd thought so too because there was zero heat for the pull apart brawl after the contract signing (although maybe they were just shocked by the tastelessness of the segment).

having trouble getting through regular nxt episodes :\

really don't need to see an emma squash match for any reason and wrestling central just needs to be banned

vince, hogan and cena hopefully cut a joint promo on isis under an american flag tonight

good match, trainwreck crowd

spoilers?

cool, i guess. there was a long stretch of "...that's it?" there, and seeing how samey WWE's been all year, where literally nothing actually happens at the top of the card and none of these characters ever change, i was fully expecting roman to go over dean clean with neither of them turning heel and dean hugging him and getting him a room temperature water afterwards. that was disappointing. i felt good for roman! but i'm glad SOMETHING happened, yikes

trying to imagine a mindset where having a guy who's looked like an absolute chump for the last six months (including like an hour ago) as your world champion seems like a good idea.

maybe i'm just somehow more of a mark than most people who attend wwe shows but i would have been totally okay with roman getting to bask in his big moment, aside from the wonky scripted promos he's been great from wrestlemania onwards.

isn't the ideology at play "any heat is good heat"?

I for one love 2 watch Emma stamping on fools

sheamus got the briefcase and usually that = championship, plus he's a former multiple times champ. I don't see what's weird about it, he hasn't been booked to look much worse than seth during his run

also I think the people claiming he isn't getting the 'right' kind of heat are fooling themselves. good heat these days is always gonna fool smarks into thinking it's bad heat because he isn't out there acting like owens, who they love for acting like that. sheamus is getting a legit reaction out of people by being so unpleasant

like ko does good heel work but smarks cheered him when he destroyed sami. the heat sheamus has right now is the best they can hope for

everything is meta when kayfabe is this dead

Heat is heat and that's why Eva Marie is your new NXT woman's champion

Based on how much they keep leaning on this trope, I actually wonder if at some point someone made a plaque in the creative room that just says "Faces on chases that are traced to briefcases shall be the whole basis of our cash-making stasis."

There's also probably a little post-it note underneath saying "and make sure that TLC includes some staircases"

i'm done now

Cesaro out for upwards of 4 months, dude can't catch a break

Wrestlemania main event gonna be kane v heath slater at this point

there is a clear difference between eva marie's heat and sheamus's. eva marie wasn't even supposed to be a heel! sheamus is irritating and bland and unpleasant on purpose and also still a good wrestler and performer in general. people just don't like actually not liking a character. everyone wants to see him lose the belt, they just have the wrong guy taking it off him.

rollins recovery apparently ahead of schedule (yay)

https://twitter.com/WWESheamus/status/669965088959373312

a heel move as vile as sasha banks making izzy cry imo

next up him, barrett, and rusev should walk down the aisle very slowly and side by side while reigns is trying to make his entrance

i wish there was some website that told me whether it's worth it to watch raw before reading recaps/spoilers. i'm always worried i'll miss the 1 episode that doesn't suck.

time to watch royal rumble 97! it's getting good

should I watch raw

no

Shit didn't realise they'd uploaded all this old shit to the network. A full 18 months of nwa world championship wrestling from 85-87, a few new eps of wccw, plus little tasters of mid-south, awa and smoky mountain. I've never seen any of this stuff, looking forward to diving into it.

and now a few episodes of Stampede and Global Wrestling (was that the promotion's name? I get confused very fast when all those southern territories start merging and disappearing in the early 90s). The new episodes all seem to be focusing on the earliest days of major WWE stars -

Mid-South - Ted DiBiase, JYD, a very young Shawn Michaels
Smoky Mountain - Chris Jericho
AWA - Shawn Michaels
USWA/GFW/wahtever - Steve Austin
WCCW - Sting, Warrior
Stampede - Bret Hart, Dynamite Kid
The NWA/Crockett 85-87 stuff is obviously pretty heavily focused on Dusty and the Four Horsemen.

Just random episodes atm, except for the NWA WCW stuff which seems to be a pretty complete run of shows. I hope to god that this focus is just a promotional tactic to get eyes onto this stuff and they're gonna keep uploading and fleshing out each territory so that you can start watching and following the feuds and stories.

I know that some wrestling fans came to the Network hoping that we would see this kind of material get made available, but seeing all of the icons appearing for all of these territories in the "Vault" section really drove home to me for the first time what an incredible resource the Network might end up being.

We know already that they've got Mid-Atlantic and Florida stuff in the archives, not to mention all of their own pre-1985 stuff. If they could get complete (or near complete) runs of all of this stuff up over the next few years it'd be fuckin amazing.

I mean already the fact that you can start off with the Great American Bash 1985 as a little primer to where things were in the territory before jumping right in and following the tv from November 1985 right through to September 1987, stopping off to watch Starrcade and Great American Bash as you get to them - this is fucking magic! So much better than watching the events in isolation.

I watched one of the first episodes of Mid-South last night, very cool format - it featured Cowboy Bill Watts presenting a recap of one particular recent feud involving Butch Reed, Junkyard Dog and Magnum T.A., showing highlights of multiple matches and a couple of title changes - I like this format! Music is all overdubbed though, which looks/sounds weird as hell. The intro music to the show is so gooood though, I'd never heard it before.

Watched a bit of the first Stampede Wrestling episode earlier, would call it interesting rather than massively entertaining so far, but I'm looking forward to seeing the Hart bros as a tag team / a young Dynamite Kid

i highly recommend watching through 96/97. it's wild watching WWF emerging from rock bottom and seeing all the pieces being put in place, esp if you've never seen it before. shawn's about to lose his smile and i CAN'T WAIT

i decided to watch a random raw from that period, thinking it would be good nostalgic fun, but then it started with crush vs ahmed johnson and suddenly doing absolutely anything else felt like it would have been a better use of my time

they really are building to survivor series, this is so bad. desperation stables! everything went to shit so you definitely don't use this opportunity to push anyone, just place everyone in meaningless stables that do nothing for anyone

the league of nations is so bad, the reigns squad (Don't Blame It On The Reigns) is so bad. what does teaming dean and the usos with roman do for any of them? unless you're building to a traditional elimination match and you can discard everything right after