Rolling 2014 Haunted Rocking Chair Thread

To be clear, I'm well aware that the smaller guys get their chances these days, I'm just talking really about the readiness of WWE to push the big guys, relative to how hard the smaller ones have to work to get their shot

it's weird cos by this time last year Bryan was at this unexpected point where he was winning 80% of his matches clean and if it was against a bigger guy he'd just do it via sneaky tehcnical superiority rollup pin, and it was like wow he is Bret Hart now, he is actually at the top of the protected booking mountain

then by like two months later he was doing ultimate warrior comebacks and winning 90% of his matches clean by knocking everyone from Cena downwards unconscious with a knee smash while screaming

like even if they never intended for him to be champion, at some point he clearly overtook Sheamus as the second most protected guy on the roster, at 5'8

Hmmm maybe, he's definitely rocketed up the pecking order in the last 12 months, even by the end of last year that was obvious.

I didnt really watch the TV stuff enough last year to keep up, but on PPV I certainly wouldn't say he's been noticeably heavily protected though - he actually lost pretty consistently on PPV for the year from WM29 through to WM30.

Admittedly there were important exceptions at Summerslam and Survivor Series and he's now one of the guys who is always allowed to look competitive with everyone, but still feels like he's been taking quite frequent losses on the main shows.

Sorry, that looks like I'm one of the crybabys that thinks he should be winning every match every time he goes out there, of course I don't think that. I think he's been used pretty spectacularly well for a long time now. Just arguing the point for argument's sake really

pffft when hes fit he should get like a 2 year long title run never losing. noone else is actually ready yet, reigns still cant cut a promo or do a singles match, cesaro secretly doesnt have a character, wyatt cant beat a cena i guess and everyone and their dog is bored to fuck of cena, orton, sheamus etc. - it would build up the person he does win it at wm32 to be p damn important too.

should i attend this event? http://www.2300arena.com/event/details/wrestling-with-disaster-2014-june-14/

(sorry, not real WWE i don't think, but real famous venue!)

you might as well hit up the ecw arena. i live in philly and always forget the damn thing still exists

what's the deal w/ john cena? is he a "face" that fans are just tired of / maybe represents older WWE pre-reality era? do most fans like or dislike him?

It's split between the kids that worship him and the marks who love to hate him.

the snarky crowd have loved to hate him since 2006 (think about one night stand 2006) and it most probably peaked in 2011 with the miz at wm and the punk stuff etc. but afaic, if you can get over the occasional boring superhero promo or awful comedy segment, he's like the 6th best wrestler on wwe.*

*sure hes no technician but hes like hogan, who could ramp up that big fight feel into something terrific. and unlike hogan, he can hang with anyone, an umaga, a bryan or punk, a luke harper, a cesaro or mark henry etc. and not just other powerhouses/fat guys.

There's nothing really wrong with Cena, but he's stale after being on top with the same character for so long. Nobody was staler than HHH with his evil manipulator character from 1999-2006 but once he reformed DX and wasn't fighting for the title on every PPV he became interesting again. Now it's seven years later and he's playing yet another character and suddenly he's wrestling in main events against all the top babyfaces (Shield, Bryan) and even the snarks are into him again. It also helped a lot that he wasn't a regular in-ring competitor from 2010 onward.

So basically Cena needs some combination of a) a new character (which doesn't mean he needs to turn heel), b) fresh matches against people he hasn't beaten 100X already, c) time away from the ring. In the ring, he always tries hard and has chemistry with just about any style of opponent, that's a big reason he's been the top guy for so long.

He's basically irreplaceable for them outside the ring is the thing. Like, maybe in an ideal world you could ask for more from your top star in the ring or on the mic, but he's such an incredible PR guy for the company, absolutely works his ass off to do all the public appearances / ambassadorships / Be A Star things, he's amiable and likeable, a model professional (I think? occasionally you hear some shit about him but it never seems to stick), a fantastic positive role model for children etc. etc. There's a reason the guy always wins and is always the main-event, it's not just bloody-mindedness on WWE's part.

to add to that- he said on austins podcast that hes been going to mandarin classes to do chinese pr, to add to that. for a guy who seemingly works 24 hours a day for the company, still films total divas, also does so many charity gigs and has to work out a ton, for him to be at the forefront of cracking china is fucking mental. ok the smarky fans dont like him sometimes but you cant really get a more perfect face of the company. austin and rock combined didnt do that much.

i'm really liking NXT

whos good/whats happening?

i watched one like a month ago with just shitty squash matches and wasnt too impressed.

well i just watched the most recent episode. i thought the title fight was kinda blah. i've been enjoying the women's matches - charlotte (ric flair's daughter) is NXT women's champion. she won last week to replace Paige. this week she fought Bayley who has some kind of loltastic hello kitty fangirl shtick. the aiden english guy is hilarious. um, also like jason jordan who is in a tag team w/ tye dillinger. i also love the fact that the show is only an hour long. i don't have time for these 3 hour RAW events. there's also this that makes a better case than i ever could: http://uproxx.com/sports/2014/06/the-wrestling-hipster-5-reasons-watching-nxt-makes-you-better-than-other-wrestling-fans/

I can't watch 3 hours of Raw either. Thankfully, the 90 minute Hulu version covers all the salient bits.

ok, new question. i get that NXT is the up-and-coming talents show. what's the difference between smackdown + raw? do they showcase different characters or have different kinds of storylines?

They used to be treated as entirely separate brands with their own rosters and titles but that stopped making sense years ago. These days I think Smackdown is just the B-show? Little of importance ever happens there now, but there are occasionally still matches worth checking out

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

lol I kinda like this guy but he's got lower-card comic relief act written all over him.

Incidentally, this had me in stitches in last night, I must have missed it the first time. Love a Dusty Rhodes impersonation.

http://m.webn.com/media/play/dusty-rhodes-looking-for-the-4-22926742/

i had a little RAW party tnite at my place and invited some friends over to watch. stuff i liked from tnite's raw:

1. russian dude taunting obama by comparing his workout video to putin doing tae kwon do and riding horses (felt like kinda subversive having the heel malign the president + thereby earning sympathy for him w/ the crowd?)
2. bo-lieve. i find that guy hilarious. i'd like to see him fight cena in some kind of bizarroworld match
3. alicia fox forcefeeding her buddy popcorn (tho i wonder how often they can go back to the fox losing a match and then throwing a tantrum well before it gets tired)
4. rollins new clean-cut corporate look (still w/ double hair coloring)
5. bray wyatt beating up cena in the ambrose/reigns/cena v. wyatt family fight

did not like cesaro v rob van dam - boring. or sheamus v bad news barrett. tho i did find it interesting that the barret/sheamus fight had a kinda english/irish subtext to it - esp when barrett mocked sheamus' accent. do they play that up at all? i don't get the whole goldust thing. swagger v. marella (i don't even remember this one at all).

sorry, i don't know the protocol for this so... spoilers?

i think spoilers are fine unless its like wrestlemania or something massive. half the fun in wrestling these days is the stories from backstage, speculating about future storylines etc. so this weeks raw the day after is fine imo. i cant remember the last time a raw was so spectacular you'd have to put spoiler tags on it. the rock as the wm guest host? the jericho trolling vignettes?

reading Abdullah the Butcher's wiki page:

An amateur martial artist, Shreve also has knowledge of judo and karate, often including this knowledge in his professional wrestling matches. This knowledge was mainly displayed by him using judo style throws, and karate chops.

As part of his training regime he used to eat raw chickens with the feathers still attached.

raw chickens?????

also lol when was fat abby a judo martial artist? he was the guy who sat on you and stabbed himself in the face with a fork

WWE has released ELEVEN people today: Jinder Mahal, Drew McIntyre, Aksana, Curt Hawkins, Teddy Long, Camacho, Brodus Clay, Marc Harris (referee), Yoshi Tatsu, Evan Bourne and...JTG.
The real streak has been broken. 7 years, 28 days.

https://scontent-a-fra.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xaf1/l/t1.0-9/p720x720/10338251_805985379421065_4432100246754960366_n.png

also poor teddy long, no more playa play tag team matches

shoulda been Kofi

killing time until the football, i thought id pick a random show ive never seen: halloween havoc 93

so far tony schiavone have turned into a demon to scare children who said the main event isnt at all scary, jesse ventura made a joke about being a creepy gynocologist and the shockmaster got a maaaaaassive pop, a "whoop there it is" chant and pinned booker t clean.*

*no really, the shockmaster was OVER i guess.

Haha I watched the Shockmaster debut again last week, it just never gets old. Flair's "Oh God!" makes it

some stuff i liked from NXT this week:
1. Bo Dallas dressing up in a mask to sneak back into NXT. Half the crowd chanting "you can't fool us," the other half chanting, "yes he can," and then bo shouting from under his mask, "I'm not Bo Dallas! I'm not Bo Dallas!"
2. Adrian Neville, esp his red arrow finish - wow! It's at 1:40 in the video. esp the bounce and then the cover:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=31tBldYA-_g

3. the first appearance of Simon Gotch. i don't know a lot about him. just that he's an indie guy new to WWE and his shtick is an old-timey strongman. apparently him and aiden english are going to form a tag team called the Vaudevillains (!!!)

also rumor is that kevin steen is coming to WWE, so i went to watch one of his videos -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-m9UW4lTNk

the insane ladder package piledriver is at 7:40. crowd chanting, "please don't die, please don't die."

Steen is an old one. He's talented in ring, he can cut a nice promo but he's obviously not in great shape (rumour was his knees are p shot) and next to most of the wwe roster he looks like a schlub. Most I'd presume you can hope for, if he makes it past Chris Hero stage, is tag teaming with Generico again or tormenting midcarders and then easy fodder for a high card 'not cena or bryan' babyface? idk

otoh if he has a kevin steen zoo enthusiast midcard face gimmick he could be really fun to have on tv.

odd* one not old

Vaudevillains sounds awesome.

Anything happening with the SAWFT guys?

yeah i think one of them is injured and the other one by himself is so boring that i recognize the name but can't remember anything else about his act

i've heard ppl say about steen that a lot of what makes him wonderful is the extremely punishing ringwork he does - but that the WWE will probably not let him do most of it bc of risk of injury/death

http://i.imgur.com/lFrM0xE.jpg

i've only seen this one picture of them but i can already get on board with this gimmick, these guys look like they should be great fun

re: SAWFT: enzo amore is coming back within the next couple NXT episodes. about time, big cass doesn't really work solo

seth rollins looks like he just stepped out of a pool of garbage

lol bad news barrett just made a http://images.chron.com/blogs/askacat/hatcat.JPG joke

what does that fucking cat mean? ive needed to know for years.

not seen anything since before payback but the internet seems to think ambrose could legit be a face superstar? this makes me so happy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3n47fv1wAqw

He certainly picks up an interesting angle for this promo - "Scumbag Dean Ambrose being a bad figurehead for the company, potentially getting near the title scene" would be a decent progression for the HHH / Stephanie authority angle, given that there's no way they'll take a step back any time soon. Besides, they should strike while the iron is hot on Ambrose and Reigns - since Rollins turned they've been getting real good pops

i love scumbag dean ambrose

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=SVWTyA0lRt0

the pop for ambrose at mitb was the best

i heard raw last night was really good - i missed it though bc i'm working at a demo site all week away from home :(

also this is amazing <3 lana 4eva:
http://instagram.com/p/p4_d0fhK6l/

im only half way through mitb so maybe a polite ask for no spoilers for the last half of it/raw?

yeah, np. that's why i haven't really discussed anything from it yet.

Raw wuz good this week. MITB, I wasn't convinced.

MITB was weird because instead of a big finish to multiple story lines it was the big start of several. That never is as satisfying because the endings were only to opening scene of a story. Raw benefitted from telling the first chapter of the stories set up at MITB.