rolling (non-millenials) grabbing the brass ring 2015

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.

i got into it when it was bret owen shawn razor etc and boy did i not give a fuck about diesel or mabel or yoko or taker or luger. just me i guess but they were so fucking dull.

It's just a shame, I guess. I don't know how much I can judge because my favorite wrestler as a child is still my favorite wrestler (Cactus Jack), though I have noticed that as I've gotten older, I'm more able to look past the flashiness of some other wrestlers.

bray wyatt's theme still sound like love is strange to me

so much blood!

huh that was a good episode of raw wth

maybe i should miss episodes more often

or just watch the ones after conclusive PPVs? WWE storytelling goes from A to B to B to B to B to Z, but that first A to B can be kinda great sometimes

inspired by how much I enjoyed watching HIAC and intrigued by the positive feedback I've heard from a number of different places, I'm actually watching an episode of Raw start to finish for the first time since April. only just starting out but feeling cautiously optimistic.

lol Roman Reigns is NOT good with these scripted promos, is he? they need to work that out. He's so close to being amazing apart from that. his matches are consistently enjoyable and have been for ages imo. he's obviously no technician in the ring but he strikes me as belonging to that category of dude who is capable of going up a gear when he's in a big match.

he's begging to get made right now, they just haven't figured out how to do it. do they desperately need him right now as their next top babyface? i suppose they do really, there's no one else on the horizon that could even function as a stand-in. Daniel Bryan should've been that stand-in, damnit!!! :(

If they could afford to hold back on Reigns' inevitable push into the top spot then a good heel run right now would do him the world of good. Turn him, let him brutalize bitches and ffs don't make him talk too much on TV (or at least don't try and make him sound "cool") and I reckon he'd be about there. But it isn't going to happen that way because they've booked themselves into a corner, what a surprise.

Also unsurprising - this Roman vs Kofi match is p. dope so far

what was it that Cesaro did to upset the office again? no problem with him losing to Kevin Owens in an awesome and hard-fought tv match, but this guy should obviously be getting 20 minutes at every PPV to do his thing. I don't remember him having an actual storyline yet, really? they've pushed people with way less charisma than Cesaro before, seems kinda arbitrary tbh. maybe Vince doesn't like his face or something

they're not gonna turn him as long as he's getting the response he's getting

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 :(

Hope he doesn't stay out for long, he's one of the few guys they've got who could potentially freshen up the top of the card.

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.