WWE 2024: Give me The Big Meaty Men Invitational

No Raw after September?

RIP the Network? Watch your Spring Stampede 94s and Aharchy Rulz 99s this year because they are gonna soon disappear forever.

Next year moving to Netflix for such an obscene amount of money that this boom is just gonna keep getting bigger and bigger.

The Rock is a boss now and likely to be taking Cody’s spot at Mania.

Seth might be out for Mania if he doesn’t rehab in time.

50/50 chance Okada turns up.

NXT is supposedly as hot as it has been in years.

The roster is ridiculously good, before on the men’s and women’s side. If they could actually have some good storylines and change Rollins’s XPac Heat character, it might be worth watching. They even supposedly made a solo Uso into a star.

Idk though, I will most probably still just watch the 3 shows a year like always.

(Just to clarify Raw will be back in January 2025 on Netflix. Absolutely crazy that for the first time there will be a 4 month gap.)

https://www.wsj.com/business/vince-mcmahon-accused-of-sex-trafficking-by-wwe-staffer-he-paid-to-keep-quiet-0b19b21c

fuck the fed

Holy fuck that I started the thread just before the Vince news.

Genuinely one of the most horrific things I’ve ever read and I don’t think I’m ever going to watch ever again. I don’t care that I love the rumble, fuck it. Vince is evil in disgusting ways I didn’t want to know existed. I felt ill reading what he did.

Seriously, Vince is evil. But if you value your sanity, don’t read the details on what he did. Keep it to the blurbs. Because the details are just too stomach churning.

Rollins called the Rock Diarrhea Dwayne and the crowd started chanting it lmaooo #WWERaw pic.twitter.com/IlwIRkhKaw

— Roman Reigns SZN 💥 (@reigns_era) March 5, 2024

I’ve just looked back at the cards for WM30-39 and dear god, what a mess. How the hell this company is bigger than ever after all of that shite is just wrong! Daniel Bryan and the women did so much to keep any momentum. If there is a match worth saving in the past ten years, chances are it involved Bryan, Charlotte or Sasha. It’s like the first twelve years, where you could say the same about Macho and Bret.

But the bad stuff, omg. Dean Ambrose worst no holds barred match loss to Brock? Corbin retiring Angle? All those horrible HHH matches that lasted forever, including the Sting one that was hell, the Roman one that was up there with Yoko-Hogan for worst WM main event and the Rollins one that just wouldn’t end. This year will be the Rock’s first match since… Erik Rowan. The Taker-John Cena match. Pat McAfee had two matches in a row. The possibility of a 4 horsewomen match and they had Nia Jax instead of Becky. I could go on for days.

I don’t know whether I’m gonna watch this years. The Vince allegations are still fresh in my mind, although that doesn’t seem to have put off most people. And two days based around 3 star Cody, Reigns who clearly doesn’t give a shit anymore, Rollins doing a bad mid card model gimmick that has X Pac heat with me and the guy from Jumanji seems a bit much. A friend sent me a really cringe soap opera like training montage where Sami was training to fight Walter, that could be fun, maybe I’ll check that out. I presume Collision is basically an old repeat of Dark, maybe ill check that out too

Omg I just remembered last year with the super advertising and auschwitz. I wonder what dancing nazi cereal happens this year.

the roh ppv last night freaking cooked, i recommend watching that instead

WM has gotten much better since they split it over two nights. Those pre-2020 six hour shows were impossible to watch. And of course match quality and booking has improved in the HHH era.

Last night's show was a bit disappointing, the mid-card tag matches meant nothing but were fun I guess, the twelve man tag team ladder match was a confusing mess that should never be repeated. I thought Becky vs Rhea would have a better spot on the card, but the commentary team kept talking about how Becky was sick all week so that gets a pass. It was good that Sami got his moment, and I thought the main event way overdelivered. I expected a safe 15-20 match with a long post-match angle (since 3/4 of the participants have to work again tonight), but they really went all out to deliver an epic match. It didn't need to go 45 minutes, but the Rock is the most entertaining thing in wrestling these days and sits on the RKO board, so if he wants to be out there for 45 minutes then what the hey.

the Rock is the most entertaining thing in wrestling these days

depressing sentence

and sits on the RKO board hmmm ... RKO outta nowhere in that sentence. Should be TKO obv.

depressing sentence Austin came back for one match at WM38 and was the best thing on that show too. It's a combination of being an all-time great and not overexposed on TV every week. Seth Rollins broke up the Shield ten (!!!) years ago already and is really good but I almost never look forward to his matches. Rock came back and has presence that none of the current guys have, then he tweaked the Hollywood Rock character that hadn't been on TV since 2003 and was the biggest heel in the business in a matter of weeks.

Thought I’d give the last two matches a go. HATED the finish to Zayn-Gunther. Made Gunther look like the biggest fucking idiot.

Now after like 30 mins of build and adverts… Cody has kissed the Prime logo. What a fucking geek. And Seth Rollins is dressed like Henry VIII. These are the faces of the biggest boom since x7????

Now the Rock has come out with a fake belt? Wtf is this shit? Seriously how is Homelander, a blackadder character and a cosplay belt holder the biggest main event ever? Roman doing a lot of heavy lifting for a guy that hasn’t really been around for a year

Pat McAfee saying The Rock wrestled in front of 50 people in the Attitude era to grow the company to what it is today.

It’s been about 40 minutes since the last match and it’s just all garbage. Ok a collar and elbow, maybe it can finally be on.

Face: Seth spits Prime drink at The Rock

Heel: The Rock spits water at Cody.

America!

Match turned out to be decent. If I cared about any of the wrestlers, I could see how I’d get invested. Nice to see Roman can now do a powerbomb without needing a couple fellas to lift them up for him.

Holy fuck the end of night two makes Cody look like a fucking geek. How does Triple H still end up going over?

I mean there was some decent matches and it was generally a good spectacle of a weekend. But this was just a long PR exercise, and that ain’t for me. Bringing out Pritchard seems odd too - if ever there is a guy who is presumably going to get named in the Vince stuff, it’s gonna be him. I’ll guess ill illegally stream next years, see ya then. I’ve even recently dropped my Netflix account.

Also one thing that annoyed me - do WWE wrestlers have moves that aren’t finishers? And then if you don’t finish someone with them, what’s the point? Drew v Seth was a million “stand in the corner, wait for them to stand up, try to hit the claymore/stomp” spots repeated, with their few other finishers like Drew’s ddt. If it was a five minute sprint like Brock-Goldberg then fine, but it felt like they were standing in the corner waiting, then, now, forever. I think the last time I tried to actually watch a modern WWE PPV, Seth and Roman had a similar match and it was just insipid (at a recent Rumble?). It is like watching a broken video game.

Now I think about it, so many WWE wrestlers do the same god damn spot. It’s just as bad as any complaint about super kicks or suicide dives imo. Randy, forever waiting to RKO. Sami, forever waiting for the helluva kick. Roman, forever waiting for the superman punch or the spear etc. (AEW are pretty bad with it too, loads of people wait around to do a spear or a punch or a kangaroo kick). Like somebody just go and deck them! You can’t all be HBK!

I agree that the finisher spamming in Drew vs Seth was overdone, but the Punk angle and the cash-in were great and set up six months (at least) of storylines and matches, so overall I enjoyed it.

Bayley vs IYO ruled, the US title match was solid, and the main event delivered the chaos that was promised.

Overall I think WM was a great show. The production, camera work, directing, etc. are so much better post-Kevin Dunn. I'm not a huge fan of slapping a brand name on everything like in UFC but it was inevitable once the TKO merger went through.

The HHH era really does feel a lot different. And unlike past years, where they'd blow their wad on Mania and tread water until Summerslam with endless rematches, HHH has months of fresh storylines ready to go. Cody has storyline reasons to face Sami, Drew (who beat him on RAW recently), Jey, Solo, and Rock. Gunther dropped the IC title and will presumably challenge for the top belt at the PLE in Berlin. He has 15+ years of history with Orton and presumably that match will happen at a major show too. And then there's the rubber match with Roman.

man wipes

45 minute promos

(the triple h era is so different!!! *everyone still fast forwards through raw*)

NTBT otm really. Not that I could watch anymore than 1 weekend a year.

I think the timing of the merger/hhh/vince stuff helps with the over-branding stuff too. People are busy noticing other stuff and its easily backdoored its way in.

https://www.josephmontecillo.com/2024/04/09/roman-reigns-vs-cody-rhodes-wwe-wrestlemania-xl-sunday-4-7-24/

Some things are so obviously improving that you can’t fail to notice it.

The commentary is better than it was (Cole is good, Graves still sucks, McAfee can go one way or the other). as is the camerawork, although they haven’t yet shaken off all their shitty habits. The presentation generally feels sharper and more modern.

The booking basically makes sense and is starting to reward fans for getting invested in characters, which is the striking change in terms of future outlook.

By their own admittedly low standards they’re in a very good place right now and there’s optimism that things will continue to get better.

I thought Zayn / Gunther and Iyo/ Bayley matches were very good, the US title triple threat was fun and good, the main events each did exactly what they needed to and everything else was inoffensive, in terms of in ring at least.

Obviously Raw and Smackdown will continue to be unwatchable on principle but who needs to watch the show when you can just catch the highlights on YouTube?

ivy, that link puts it a lot better than I ever could. im still recoiling in horror. could you imagine hogan at wm3, or warrior at wm6, shawn at wm12, STEVE AUSTIN AND TYSON AT 14 etc. etc. having to cut off celebrations to bring Vince out and make it all about him? It would have been instant death.

agreed, feel like Cody self-sabotaged everything great he'd done for AEW, and then just trots on back for an undeserved title run that more of the talent that actually stayed with WWE and didn't bail ship earned. like... does Andrade think he's going to be getting this treatment in the near future?

Cody is (somehow) the most popular wrestler in the world right now so i don't think that's quite right tbh

Cody bailing on WWE is certainly ... one take on it.

I think Cody may have gone a bit off script with calling our Pritchard and HHH the way he did. A lot of this "new era" stuff is a form of rebranding to distance themselves from the Vince lawsuits. But that's not really the point I want to make.

The writer of the piece ivy linked to fundamentally doesn't understand pro wrestling, he's conflating gimmicks with characters. A gimmick is an idea on paper, people buy tickets to wrestling shows to see characters in action. Once the character gets over (I'm not a big Cody fan but there's no denying that he's the biggest star in the company now) then nitpicking the gimmick on paper is pointless and obtuse.

On paper, Cody's gimmick might have contradictions but he just drew $35M in two nights, and fans clearly wanted him in the main event instead of the Rock. Whatever he's doing is working, that's a fact. Whether the gimmick makes sense or not (working class hero turned self-made millionaire who cries about his mom and dad on TV every week) is irrelevant now. Similarly, it made no sense that Shawn Michaels danced to "Sexy Boy" when everyone knew he was a born again Christian, and it makes no sense that Undertaker can still get away with doing spooky magic when kayfabe died decades ago. The gimmick is just an idea, the person gets the character over playing the gimmick, and once people are willing to pay money to see the character wrestle, then the game is won.