rolling (non-millenials) grabbing the brass ring 2015

Honestly thought you were talking about the title v. title match.

After Takeover (read; Sasha v. Bayley) last night, Summerslam really felt flat. The women's match really overshadowed everything else on the card and really should have gone on last.

I can see what they were going for with the two wonky finishes, kinda commendable to at least try and do something to get people talking, given how average the rest of the show was. But the execution of those two finishes was fuckin rotten and what you're left with is four hours (!!!!!!) of competent wrestlers wrestling competently. Fine, whatever. Their own fault for trying to follow up Takeover, which wasn't perfect but was perfectly balanced, giving you just enough of everything.

Rumours have been going round ever since these NXT specials started that the main roster were fed up of going out there with handcuffs on and getting shown up by the supposed 'developmental' talent, wouldn't be surprised to hear more complaints of this sort in the near future.

ok now THIS is money

Brock Lesnar has been instructed to Bolieve

Fuck me that was a shit show. Still not seen takeover. Wcw is 1998 had the best roster ever and they went bankrupt two years later cos she fucking booking defeats all. 2015 wwe roster could be even better and i just really dont give a shiiiiiiiit. The timekeeper couldnt see taker tap out and the ref couldnt either and so... yawwwn. Fucking ruined an awesome match too. Takers sit up and the brawl was especially dope

Shit* booking not she obv

Eh, I think the fault was in the execution rather than the booking. The idea itself wasn't bad. They've clearly got it in their heads that this is their real money match this year, sure, whatever, I'm not really into it but I do see the logic. In theory having Lesnar pass-out while giving Taker the finger etc. was as a good a way to build heat for the rubber match as I can think of without killing Brock's aura. It's just that the whole thing felt entirely unrehearsed and everyone involved did a shit job of explaining what was happening.

Anyway, watch Takeover ASAP imo. Typically exciting work in the ring from most everyone involved, deceptively simple common-sense booking, awesome unique black-and-white look to the whole production giving it a very different feel to the usual stuff they put out. It's no great revelation to say that NXT a promotion firing on all cylinders right now, but I think taking it out of Full Sail and sticking it in front of a sold-out arena really drove home how well-booked the whole thing was and how much momentum they're building up. I'm not used to seeing shows that well put together taking place in these kind of venues with such a "big night" atmosphere.

The shit that the crowd were into as well!!! Mega-pop for fuckin Blue Pants! The Vaudevillians hot-tag! The Sasha-Bayley match was absolutely molten. It could've and should've main-evented, which is frankly kind of astonishing given this is the WWE we're talking about.

It's not totally beyond WWE to put on great and well-booked PPVs - I think Wrestlemania this year was an excellent show pretty much top to bottom, for instance (Sting shouldn't have shaken hands tho) but this particular show was bland as fuck and running it the night after the best NXT show so far has thrown a lot of the problems they have with the main roster currently into very sharp relief.

From the women's POV the Divas on MizTV segment last night was absolute flaming death and only made this worse

Sasha is now pretty much Daniel Bryan, in several key ways

so now sasha has wrestled my top 2 matches of the year, i think she's the best working wrestler

side note: aiden englsih and simon gotch are fucking excellent, i cannot wait to see more of them

side note 2: did they change their billing from "villains" to "villians" when they decided to go face with them? i see different spellings wherever i look! maybe it's a spellcheck thing?

Wcw is 1998 had the best roster ever and they went bankrupt two years later cos she fucking booking defeats all.

WWE won't be going under anytime soon (not that I'm implying you were saying that) but point taken. When was the last really satisfying payoff to a 6-12 month long feud in WWE? The main event of WM 30? Rock-Cena I? You could argue that neither one had a proper payoff considering how they followed up on them.

I still haven't seen Takeover either, but at least in NXT they understand how to book a big match -- Wrestler A beats Wrestler B, Wrestler A becomes the clear focus of the promotion and Wrestler B moves on to something else. At Summerslam it's all "Brock vs Taker, 16 months in the making!" but can't decide on a proper payoff so they book a fuck finish. If the goal is another match at Mania, why not just have Taker win clean (setting up the rubber match) or Brock win clean (continuing the theme of Taker never having beaten Brock), either option books itself.

As for Rollins vs Cena, they must have booked it to get a few more mentions on the E! Network rather than booking to set up future matches that people might want to see. It's really too bad because there was some great wrestling up and down the card on Summerslam.

When was the last really satisfying payoff to a 6-12 month long feud in WWE? The main event of WM 30?

Well if we extend this to include NXT then the Sasha-Bayley match on Saturday definitely counts. But yeah on the main roster this is a real problem. Match quality is as high as it's ever been across the board but they're giving us no reason to care about 95% of it.

if NXT counts, then sasha-bayley, sasha-becky, sasha-charlotte, zayn-neville and maybe zayn-owens (if you count that as payoff) all require inclusion.

I meant main roster only.

Craziest week in recent memory?

The champion Seth Rollins girlfriend is released after revealing she hangs swazticas around the house and shes said some other racist shit before too.

TNA's Bram, Charlottes former husband, has been arrested for domestic battery.

Snuka's case has been reopened and he has been charged for murder. What this means for Vince, who supposedly had a lot to do with why he wasnt charged in 1983, god knows. Also i presume Tamina's career is very much on hold, poor lass.

A man has been shot by the police outaide the performance centre after going at the officer with a knife. He was repeatedly turning up trying to stalk a female wrestler, supposedly lita or aj lee, who both definitely wouldnt work there anymore.

Its Only Tuesday.

imo it reflects badly on seth, not that i was assuming he was a saint before but there's no way he didn't know about 'that side' of her. a lot of the stuff that came out was already public knowledge, just got rehashed following Literal Nazigate

I would just like to say thank you to Sting and Ashley from HR for my new respect for Seth Rollins as a whole.

Best part of NOC was KO winning the IC strap from Ryback, who should have never had it.

can you believe his reign was 100+ days? he defended it what, twice?

worried about KO with the belt until they show they're going to book him decently and not just as a scared baby who walks out of matches twice a week

wowee wwe sure is bad nowadays

Pretty staggering that things could possibly be as shitty as they are right now given the talent they have at their disposal.

If you were dropping back in after a viewing break, a cursory glance at the list of champions might lead you to believe that the company was in the middle of something of a purple patch. It's just EVERYTHING ELSE that's wrong with the product.

just keep wondering when they're finally going to evolve

they need a sweeping change in "era" again, but they also don't, and it blows. i honestly think wrestling is more ready to crossover now than it's been since the AE, but it's never gonna happen because the risk isn't worth it this time. and honestly, out of all the overglorified crap they constantly brag about re: the AE, the #1 best thing about it was that people gave a shit.

omg sasha banks is the best heel in the world

lol when she made that little girl cry oh my god. feel like Sasha vs Bayley should be one of those once-in-a-liftime rivalries they come back to once every few years, they are just SO fuckin good together. also give me Asuka vs Sasha Banks ASAP plz, I would pay down cash money for this (or really like Asuka vs any of the "Four Horsewomen", they're all awesome.) I'd never seen Kana/Asuka wrestle before but based solely on that match with Brookes it seemed to me that she has unexpected reserves of physical charisma and I reckon she'll get over like gangbusters if they give her a decent build. otoh she is a Japanese wrestler working in WWE so who the fuck knows

Was disappointed that they had Tyler Breeze get beat again, I thought this might've been his night. Didn't see any real need to give Crews the win, he's a guy who just needs to be floating round doing awesome stuff in the ring whenever he's on TV and he'll be good to go whenever they decide to push him. Especially with Balor occupying the NXT top spot right now, I'dve thought building your heels would be more important than building your faces. Breeze is starting to look like a lost cause which sucks cause I think he is legit.

Remain utterly unconvinced by Baron Corbin, he looked good in that match from Brooklyn against Samoa Joe but eh, go figure. He looks like a rubbish rejected Shield member and I'm really not that interested in seeing him vs Balor or whatever else they're intending to do with him as top heel. They've gotta be turning Samoa Joe soon, right? Him vs Finn would be a good programme, would watch.

found both the semifinal results of the tag team championship disappointing. two legitimate tag teams getting beaten by two tag teams comprised of singles fighters. would've liked to see both of the losers win instead, esp jordan + gable who seem so over right now. crowd was going crazy for gable.

yeah Jordan and Gable as the new WGTT works for me, Jordan even did the pulling-the-straps-down spot off the hot tag

yeah, my jaw dropped when corbin got the win. seems like main roster booking, having two singles guys who don't need any more accolades winning a tag team tourney. was also hoping breeze would go over, hopefully they can actually spin his losses into a story going forward.

it sounds evil to say it but that shot of izzy turning to the camera sobbing took that match to another level

watched this tonight, here are my possibly challoppy notes.

NXT TAKEOVER: RES-POILERS

- i kinda wanted to see The Mechanics (a) win, and (b) actually be called the Mechanics, which is a pretty weird aborted tag team name. The Mechanics is fine! I like the idea of these two heel wrestlers who are basically really strong level 1 Final Fight badguys. The Mechanics is a perfect name. Get the announce table to use the word "dismantle" occasionally or something.
- when they didn't win, i was ok with that, but i really wanted to see corbin/rhyno win so that it wouldn't be gable/jj vs finn/joe, because that can go one of two ways: you either feed this over new tag team to the champ and joe in the FINALS, or you give them waht would feel like a pretty stupid win. i was glad when corbin/rhyno beat them. it didn't make sense for gable's cute tricks to work on two men made of steak and cocaine.
- i'm actually kind of interested to see more booking of rhyno/corbin as a tag team, i hope they hang onto it--papa hoss and baby hoss dynamic is pretty hilarious to me right now. in the finals, when they come out, corbin did this "pff whatever" move to the audience when they were booing him, and rhyno immediately threw his arms up like he already won/the crowd loved him and it was fucking hilarious. these two as anakin and beefcake palpatine forever.
- was half-expecting a heel turn by joe after the match but once they trotted out the rhodeses, was really glad they didn't & just let the trophy have some... uhh, respect.
- i might not be enough of a wrestling watching veteran to tell, but dana brooke either did a great job or asuka carreid the fuck out of her, because that was a really solid and entertaining match. i don't know who they'll book her against moving forward, i guess emma at first?, but damn she is legit. and dana brooke is getting great FAST.
- apollo needed to beat tyler because tyler's current trajectory is "losing to all of the hot new dudes" which i am hopeful that they can leverage into a grizzled veteran wilyness in the future. we know he can go and we also kno that nxt has a prety good track record for these guys. i'm confident that once this current crop of outsiders move up, he'll "have an edge" against the next group of outsiders and there's a great nxt champ heel reign in his future while indies try to challenge him. KEEP HOPE ALIVE.
- bayley is everything.
- sasha banks is everything.
- i said to my friend: "holy fuck, we are going to find out that izzy is a tv child actor hired to be bayley's superfan, and kayfabe inception will destroy us all" and i half-believe it.
- this is a really odd time in bayley's arc to have her go straight up DARK. using stairs and kicking sasha in the fucking head and shit. i was kinda like "what is even happening. why is izzy crying about bayley crashing into a wall, but not crying about her holding someone down & kicking their fucking brain in?" like, why is she alternate-timeline-sami-zayn NOW?
- i was so impressed by full sail's restraint until i realized they were saving up all of their obnoxiousness for the main event. jesus christ can the ascension just come back long enough to cast an ancient egyptian spell on them that turns them all into mummies or something (or at least cut out their tongues manually & wrap them in gauze)

that's all i can remember now

oh i forgot one note.
- jason jordan is so legit. i can't believe how great he's been. gable is fun to watch but basically every time he did anything i was mirroring jj and doing a golf clap. hopefully he can leverage his incredible talent into something that makes me feel something, and maybe that'll happen because nxt seems like a great place to learn that, but for now it's just a little too cute and a little too smark for me to give a fuck, you know? jason jordan's so legit though. ducks under a clothesline and shakes his head "no." that head-shake no is everything. he's got it. a bit more mic confidence and he's main eventing a years worth of wwe ppvs.

i just wish wwe in general would stick to idea that the two best singles wrestlers stuck together shouldn't be able to beat the best tag team in a tag team match (instead of having randy orton beat champions cesaro/kidd singlehandedly that one time)

like actually go with making your tag team division look like a division and not a trashyard for midcarders

yuss i agree with that, your best tag team should be able to beat your 2 best singles wrestlers in thrown-together tag team match any day. unfortunately that is just not how WWE does things (or has ever done things)

apparently breeze is going to the main roster

axs tv finally caught up to wrestle kingdom - damn what a promotion

i saw the thing from breeze and i'm pretty sure it's just danielle from uproxx seeing that he won a dark match and i guess not knowing that he's been working house shows/dark matches for a while now. which to be fair happens like once a week whenever someone reads house show results. with leather should be better than that though. it's weird how they function, they ignore 90% of the rumors from dirtsheets and then report the other 10% as absolute fact.

I really wish they had let an actual tag team win the TAG TEAM classic. Honestly, after reading about Dusty's relationship with Enzo, I was hoping that Enzo and Cass would finally win something. I thought that their tag team winning would be the most meaningful since they actually spent a lot of time with Dusty as a tag team. That being said, I guess they couldn't have the champ and one of the most over guys lose.
I can believe that Asuka carried the fuck out of her, but I also do believe that Dana is improving, both in the ring and as a character. Also, the "you fucked up" chant made me laugh until I cried.
Tyler Breeze losing is just disappointing because he went from being No. 1 contender to this. After he lost to Liger, I just figured that he would keep losing, and sadly, as far as televised matches go, I was right.
The Sasha/Bayley match was excellent for both of them. Hats off to both of them for having what may be my favorite match of the year (unless they fight again, because they get better every time) and for putting on a quality match both physically and emotionally.
Sasha is the best heel in WWE today. Her stuff with Izzy was perfect.
Bayley going dark felt like my dreams coming true (because for some weird reason, I am semi-obsessed with the idea of a Bayley heel turn).

only just checked in on the Raw report from this week, didn't realise they'd had Roman Reigns get a win over Braun Strowman already. Only a count-out I suppose but even so, that was a PPV semi-main a few months down the line. Not necessarily ever gonna be a real money match or a 5* classic, but this was... what exactly? Why would they do that? It doesn't achieve anything in any direction. See also Kane beating world champion Seth Rollins 2 weeks before their PPV match (or Kane having a world title match on PPV in 2015, for that matter).

they're so lost right now. will be interesting to see what they do if the ratings continue to plummet, especially with all this talk of Cena needing time off. Presumably Taker is gonna be out for a while if even survives a HIAC match with Brock, who is himself seemingly limited to major occasions only with a few promotional episodes of Raw thrown in. They're gonna have no one to draw if those three all drop out at the same time. And even if Cena soldiers through, giving him the belt and the top spot back and bashing the Cena-reset button might be less effective than it was in days of yore. I dunno, will it have affected his aura that every man and his dog has been allowed to kick out of his finish at least once this year after all those years of it being p. much the silver bullet against all but the very top opposition?

the counterpoint to all this doom and gloom is that this whole Evolve / NXT thing has the potential to be extremely awesome. I've only caught a couple of their more recent shows which I grabbed from a torrent site but there were a couple of guys who I would happily see come in and work with Balor / Breeze / Joe et al.

I will also share some miscellaneous NXT/WWE thoughts:

1. Backstage interview segments in WWE are almost always nigh-unwatchably awkward for me. But there's one wrestler who comes off as completely smooth, natural, and convincing in them, and that's Scott Dawson. Literally every other performer in the whole company, top to bottom, could learn from him.

2. I like the Vaudevillains, but the Whirling Dervish has to be the worst tag team finisher in all of wrestling. And this ties in to a general gripe I have with WWE. In general, I feel there's no excuse for a weak finisher. Giving a wrestler or team a strong, character-appropriate finish is one of the most basic thing you can do to help them connect with the audience. So it's perplexing to me that WWE has all these wrestlers ending matches with really unconvincing moves.

For a recent example from NXT, witness this thing they've got "Perfect 10" Tye Dillinger doing. Other offenders include Tyler Breeze, Big E, and, sad to say, Cesaro, whose Neutralizer looks weaker than most of the stuff he does beforehand in every match. Oh, and John Cena.

3. Finn Balor looks cool in a leather jacket, but he does not look cool in his "demon" getup, which is one of the corniest things going. The headdress, in particular, looks like it would pair well with some gigantic zipper-covered jeans from Hot Topic. But I guess his opponents are supposed to be intimidated when he puts this stuff on and crawls down the entrance ramp. I'm not sure the demon version even wrestles any differently.

4. On a positive note, how about that roll-through deadlift German suplex by Chad Gable on Baron Corbin? That was one of the coolest things I've seen in the ring in a while.

They're gonna have no one to draw if those three all drop out at the same time.

maybe they'd actually feel the pressure to build new stars!! lol jk

the problem with cena's us title reign is that i'm weak and automatically assume they'll actually use the tremendous value they built up and MAKE someone. should've been owens or cesaro. i just assume this. in reality i know it'll be wasted on someone who doesn't need it, and it won't be a clean transfer, because WWE sucks at booking. that's really all it comes down to. it's been like this forever. at their best they're great at making stars and entertaining drama, but they'll always suck at just plain booking. if they ever make a good booking decision they probably lucked into it somehow.

anyway their current slump is probably negated by the ESPN deal, right? how fucking lucky are they to have coachman on their side? that's huge, and probably another obstacle to vince/friends ever feeling the heat to take risks again.

also when i imagine a bayley heel turn i just see season 6 willow

also the whirling dervish is an amazing finisher because it's called "the whirling dervish", it could be a fingerpoke and it'd still be great

I admit, I can find no fault with the name

apparently meltzer confirmed the tyler breeze callup, rip tyler breeze

great shirt

I've heard a rumor that Tyler Breeze is crashing SmackDown this week?

and yes. I'm really glad that New Day is working out so well.

maybe he'll challenge for the us open title at hell in a cell and win it, hahahahaha right? :(

**spoilers i guess***

i read the spoiler and... i pray that they cut it from broadcast i guess. they threw him in the middle of the worst storyline in a way that doesn't reflect his NXT character at all. did he ever have a girlfriend? or anyone else? i think he was paired with carmella for a tiny bit? one of my favorite things about him is he's always alone, so narcissistic that no one else can really fit into his world.

So wait, who is he paired with? Summer Rae? Doesn't Prince Pretty have higher standards than that?
I'm not going to watch SmackDown for this, so please feel free to spoil for me as much as you want, even though I do like Tyler Breeze.

Maybe this is going to be a sort of character reboot with him like they sort of did with (Adrian) Neville?

hang on surely no one who posts here watches Smackdown ever? i can't remember the last time I even bothered to search for an individual SD match. hmmmm, maybe when Bryan wrestled Sheamus post-WM this year?

Tyler Breeze is so fucked man. Adam Rose waiting to happen. Sure some of the big-deal indy prospect NXTers are probably gonna keep coming up and doing well if they get the Kevin Owens treatment, but a lot of these other guys are going to start dreading the main roster call up, if they don't already.

yeah i can't watch smackdown at all anymore but the quality of matches at least tends to be better. wwe has this weird slope where the best matches are somehow on main event and the worst are on raw

used to be opposed to a brand split cause i've just never been a fan, but they should really do a brand split

yeah i know what you mean, but it's not especially weird, it's just that Vince McMahon thinks that people don't want to watch good wrestling. and perhaps to an extent he isn't completely wrong?

certainly if his target audience is primarily young people - i was 9 years old during my initial love affair with wrestling and one of the foundational memories I have of that period is of sneaking downstairs to watch WM X7 at 1 a.m. on a school night and loving every second of it - except for when Benoit and Angle were doing their thing, when I was bored stiff! and a month or two later that whole rehashed and warmed over Austin/HHH vs Taker/Kane deal had me on the edge of my seat! Terrible taste I had back then.

also of note - I teach kids English here in Rome, and a lot of boys between the ages of about 8 and 14 are into WWE, and they all fuckin HATE Daniel Bryan, because his matches are too long and he is boring and looks weird. They aren't especially into Kevin Owens, bcuz they think he looks like a fat slob (or at least that was the gist of what they said). They love Cena, and they are totally into Orton and Sheamus.

I think it's probably wrong to say that Vince is this entirely out-of-touch joke of a promoter. He clearly does know what good wrestling is, because once a year he will crank it up a notch in time for Wrestlemania and make sure that there is at least one blow-away match booked for the card. It's just that most of the time he doesn't really GAF about promoting good wrestling, bcuz he doesn't think his target audience are interested in it.

NXT, Main Event and Smackdown all have stronger in-ring action than Raw just cause Vince doesn't seem to care about them so much.