Rolling Chris and Kevin's Bogus Journey 2017

pretty weird (for me at least, as someone that hasn't watched at all since last summer) that 14 years after his last prominent appearance Goldberg appears to be the most over guy on the roster

hahahaha Goldberg just banged Lesnar AGAIN. it's so crazy that they've taken one of the most historically hilarious main-event programmes of all time and turned into their 2017 Wrestlemania main-event feud

christ almighty i don't wish ill on any man but surely someday soon The Undertaker is gonna be too decrepit to stand up unaided, let alone dominate major annual WWE gimmick matches

tbf they are doing a decent job of setting up multiple WM programmes that would work tonight - Reigns / Taker, Taker / Goldberg, Goldberg / Lesnar, Reigns / Strowman

shit i just realised that i don't actually want to see ANY of those matches

Fatal five-way with all those clowns.

hahahahaha so it was Orton after all. and even now after everything, they felt that the best way to get that shit over was by having Reigns be the final elimination. so
Wyatt wins the belt off of Cena at Elimination Chamber then?

ugghhhhh i hate that after a brief moment of hope in which it seemed like they were setting up various surprising things for WM it really is just gonna be

Lesnar v Goldberg
Cena v Taker
Orton v Wyatt
HHH v Rollins
Reigns v Strowman

all matches which were called months ago

and which on reflection is a pretty fucking sucky card. again.

should have let Jericho win it and pay off the buddies storyline.

To me it looked like Strowman vs Reigns will happen at Fastlane and Taker vs Reigns at Mania.

If they wanted Taker vs Cena then Taker would have/should have won the Rumble.

It's kind of sad that the Rumble has underachieved for so many years in a row. There was way too much laying around while one guy cleaned house or two guys worked in the center of the ring. Jericho seemed to get injured early in the match and didn't play much of a role (and didn't win) so I have no idea why he was in until almost the end. What was the point in having Reigns in there? There also wasn't a single surprise entry -- including no Balor and no Joe. Really disappointing Rumble overall.

Cena vs Styles was great though. I didn't catch Owens vs Reigns, will have to watch it later. Does this free up Styles for a match vs Joe at Mania?

i thought jericho was deviously playing the waiting game while e.g. braun wasted everybody, but i dunno why he gave up on that to then get wasted himself. also there was ONE surprise entry, tye dillinger, and sure fine that's nice for him. maybe jack gallagher counts too.

reigns at #30 and then eliminating undertaker is the most astonishing troll, unless they're finally turning him heel. why would he even be part of it, was his plan to hold both universal and world titles at the same time?

overall the rumble did v little to hold my interest. building it around three guys who then didn't arrive till the end and got what, fifteen minutes of ring time between them, low-key eliminations for a bunch of people who deserved more (e.g. ambrose, zayn), generally v little drama except for when the big lads decided to clear house. maybe i am too harsh, maybe the royal rumble has been ruined for me by aztec warfare.

was really hoping for a jericho win (i can't believe im saying this in 2017), to finish off the team chris and kevin storyline (or at least give it a proper build instead of having them split up every week for a month).

also he was the only person who seemed to have a chance that i can tolerate watching. they have a roster full of amazing workers but most of the wrestlemania matches will have at least one crap worker or be mutiman spotfests

why would he even be part of it, was his plan to hold both universal and world titles at the same time?

And why Reigns and not AJ Styles? Did Sheamus and Cesaro want to lose the tag titles so they could focus on winning the Rumble? I guess we're not supposed to use logic and stuff when thinking about this.

Thinking about it some more, it really was a boring Rumble. They didn't even bother with all the usual Rumble tropes -- guys fighting in groups near the ropes and trying to throw each other out, timing updates from the announcers ("Sami Zayn has been in the Rumble for over 26 minutes!" "Rusev has been in the Rumble for over 31 minutes!"). Two thirds of the match was literally guys lying around waiting for their cue to stand up and take somebody's finisher, and then lying around waiting for the next entrant.

On the other hand I can see them bursting such a bubble with something that will piss fans off like craaazy, like cena winning and orton winning and being like "omg they have never fought at wrestlemania (1 on 1) lets do itttttt" and it being worse than the mega sheamus push from a year or so ago.

― plums (a hoy hoy), Saturday, 28 January 2017 14:14 (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Man this company knows how to make a great thing into a turd. Strowman was boss but... the Kofi spot was crap, the announcing was bad (notimebeforetime otm), the half hour or so of watching people lie on the floor was inane as hell, the "old guys are the only ones who can eliminate anyone" thing just sucks, especially when it makes guys they are trying to build as legitimate like corbin and ambrose and rusev etc. look like chumps, taker looks like my nan, the only surprise entrant was the least over guy on the roster who had already lost a match (when it could have been joe or angle or someone)...

But the worst part is fucking mr. headlock himself winning. How the fuck can a guy who can't cut a promo or wrestle an interesting match be main eventing again? If you count taker matches and title matches the guy has been in the main event 6 times in 12 years. Its fucking obscene. He's more boring than Ziggler. He's got some kane/big show PLEASE RETIRE *clapclapclapclapclap* heat over here but at least Big Show does shit. He's just the absolute opposite of what I want to see in a pro wrestler. He's fucking BLAND. I can't remember the last time he even had a character (and I don't think being wyatt or triple h's bitch boy counts) 2009? Legacy was 8 years ago. You had Zayn and Jericho sit on the floor for an hour for that?

That AJ-Cena match was legit tho. As good as any 6 star matches i've seen recently.

Wrestlemania could have been the greatest card, full of guys who had an excellent year and they could have easily built feuds built on passion and heat.

Instead guys like AJ Styles might have to hope they make it into the Andre Battle Royal I guess, so Lesnar can get his win back from a guy who debuted 20 years ago and Roman Reigns can be a fan favourite beating up a grandad who wrestled his first match 4 decades ago.

The rest of the show was really fun though. I liked Bayley-Charlotte, they are building this ppv streak thing so well. The finish on the side of the ring was great, its nice for them to use something thats always described as being more painful to actually win and not as a bridge before the real finisher. The shark cage thing was pointless and that was just a big mess, but I liked Owens just deciding to CZW it up anyway. And yeah, Cena-Styles was fucking excellent, Cena's best match since Bryan as SS13.

There's no way Orton main events Mania. Maybe Bray Wyatt wins the belt from Cena at Elimination Chamber and faces Orton in a match 4th from the top at Mania, but that's it. But I would bet on him losing the title shot at some point in the next month.

I still don't get why they won't do Taker vs Cena (with or without the belt on the line, it doesn't really matter). That match was set in stone last year before Cena got injured, but for some reason they've decided against doing it this year (although Vince may change his mind another ten times about it).

Man this company knows how to make a great thing into a turd. Strowman was boss but... the Kofi spot was crap, the announcing was bad (notimebeforetime otm), the half hour or so of watching people lie on the floor was inane as hell, the "old guys are the only ones who can eliminate anyone" thing just sucks, especially when it makes guys they are trying to build as legitimate like corbin and ambrose and rusev etc. look like chumps, taker looks like my nan, the only surprise entrant was the least over guy on the roster who had already lost a match (when it could have been joe or angle or someone)...

I pretty much agree with all of this. Definitely the bit about making most of the active roster look like chumps. I've been so tired of that since Brock came back last year. I don't care if he's over, it's too harmful to the long term health of the company. The message it sends is 'why give a shit about any of these guys when the old farts will rag doll them around as they please'. And then they wonder why they haven't repeated the Rock or Stone Cold magic. I've said this before but it bears repeating.

As for Orton winning: I've always found him bland and boring too. I've literally fallen asleep during his matches. The only good moment I can remember from his entire career is thanks to Seth Rollins. But he has his fans, inexplicably. And I popped too, as a reflex, but it was a relief pop. I would have cheered for anyone but Roman at that point as my cynicism took over as soon as he walked out.

One more thing: that teasing of a Rollins run-in from TakeOver and then only ever making reference to it on the Rumble preshow - I feel like there was a clip during the main PPV too but they more or less pretended it never happened. That's some WCW level 'let's pop the Monday rating' shit.

Oh and the Undertaker is an embarrassment to himself at this stage. Props to him for staying under the ring for however many hours (unless there's a trap door under the Alamodome floor) but he's so clearly not anywhere near in ring shape. He looks like when Jake the Snake was strung out on indie shows.

Two weird things about Randy Orton:

1) As a kid, I loved it when DDP would hit the Diamond Cutter from various angles. And yet Orton doing an even more varied and athletic version of the same bit has never been all that exciting to me.
2) Other wrestlers seem to love Orton. Karl Anderson, for example, who's worked with all of your main New Japan critical darlings, regularly cites Orton as one of his favorites. And he's far from the only one! Yet Orton remains mysteriously bland.

They hyped Stephanie coming to RAW on Monday to deal with the Rollins situation. But it was a bit strange that the supposed #2 face on Raw didn't appear at all on the #2 PPV event of the year.

Undertaker looked horribly immobile and out of shape, yes, and it was sad.

It's beyond ridiculous to even say it at this point, but I still can't understand the booking of Roman Reigns would make anyone want to cheer for him. He lost his championship match when Strowman interfered, fine. According to booking 101, he should get revenge on Strowman later and screw him during the Rumble. Did anything like that happen? Hell no! He was nowhere to be seen when Strowman was out there, and got a second chance for a title shot by entering the Rumble even after losing his match. Did he have to fight through hell to make it to the end? No, he had the biggest advantage of anyone in the match by getting to come in at #30! And then he lost anyway! To a glorified tag team wrestler!

undertaker's immobility and goldberg struggling to run the ropes does not bode well for wrestlemania's marquee matches

imo the worst thing is that the only real rumble storylines going in were based around part-timers, who were all introduced at the very end and did nothing of note before getting cheesed. and then randy orton, the guy who was blood sacrificed to make brock lesnar's return to a different company seem more important, wins, and who could possibly give a shit. the gulf between the part-timers and full-timers is so massive right now it's like they're not even in the same universe. and it's even worse when 2 of them are feuding with each other.

and this was the second year in a row there were no surprise entrants (excepting legitimate debuts) which is honestly 90% of the fun of the rumble

taking some insomniac time to note that on this week's raw and smackdown the respective primary, secondary, and women's title holders all lost, all but kevin owens by pinfall. can't say i have much of a grasp on the logic behind wwe booking

http://rumblemetrics.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/2017-royal-rumble.html

as per usual, yer man at Rumblemetrics is (rather wordily) otm. his stuff on AJ / Cena is spot on, nails exactly how I feel about that match / those sorts of matches

mad respect to anyone who can get through a paragraph of that

lol yeah the style gets less wieldy with each passing Rumble but I still enjoy the guy's approach to the subject matter

I unashamedly <3 rumblemetrics

http://www.espn.com/wwe/story/_/id/18598469/wwe-seth-rollins-suffers-injury-monday-night-raw

Lol was just coming to say you know mania season has started, someone is seriously injured.

Thank god for no hhh-rollins. It was gonna be a terrible match. If they could spin it quickly to be hhh-joe i would like that so much more.

Even with three years of build I had no interest in seeing that match.

After EC, Cena won't have anything to do. HHH vs Cena hasn't happened in nine years, and the match would be a crazy heat machine.

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1197735140342083&id=100003168241103

http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2017/02/07/513883586/in-mexico-the-crowd-loves-to-hate-pro-wrestler-who-plays-trump-supporter

NJPW New Beginning(s) -- the second show was excellent, as expected, Dragon Lee vs Hiramu Takahashi was off the charts, Naito carried Elgin to probably his best match in NJ, Ospreay vs Shibata had a really cool chemistry and felt like the first chapter of a soon to be great feud. KUSHIDA is one of my favourite guys in NJ and I thought he did a great job of carrying the junior division, but Takahashi has a superstar presence that even most of the heavyweights can't touch.

The Okada worship is getting totally out of hand, I'm really not a psychology snob but when someone works on your knee for 40 straight minutes, including about 10 minutes in submission holds, and when it's time for your comeback you start throwing dropkicks like it's nothing, that's some bullshit. No, doing all your normal stuff at full effectiveness but grabbing the knee once in a while for a half a second isn't selling. Elgin vs Naito was a textbook example of how to have a long match focusing on a body part, while keeping the match within the realm of realism when it's time to build to the finish (and to have that work factor in to the finish).

jfc even with corino gone i can't listen to the english commentary

Kevin Kelly is awful, like wtf stop shouting destino all the time

Corino was useful because he could understand Japanese and would give live translation of promos. Callis doesn't add anything, but he doesn't take away anything either, unlike say Matt Striker who was the absolute worst. Kevin Kelly is OK, he comes off like a genuine fan of the product, but I think he'd be so much better even with a halfway decent colour commentator.

don't give two hoots what kind of knowledge they bring to the table if they're gonna remain dead set on calling exciting matches like they're calling the puppy bowl (and puppies make them sort of uncomfortable)

no lawler attitude era jokes please it took a while to come up with the right metaphor

"A new list! ... why is my name on this?" Wrestling is the best theater in the world sometimes.

bogus :(

i watched that segment again, so great

the gasp of horror from the crowd was incredible, Jericho probably felt such a warm glow of professional fulfilment at turning a comedy list into that payoff

It was Owens' genuine tears that made it. He didn't attack Jericho because he wanted to, he did it because he had to. I thought storytelling of that calibre was beyond WWE these days.

i think it kinda is? but fortunately for us all Chris Jericho is a mastermind and he's allowed to bring his own ideas to the table. what an amazing heel turn.

great episode top to bottom actually

I kind of feel bad for Owens now, it's reminding me of Kurt Angle's first title reign in 2000-1 where he was booked like a paper champion for months, then took his character to another level and became an awesome psycho killer just in time to get steamrolled by the guy main eventing Wrestlemania.

Man, I remember around this time last year, people all over the internet were saying Jericho was played out, couldn't make it happen in the ring anymore, and should basically get lost. For him to go from that to pulling off maybe his best character-reinvention yet, topped off with this instant classic TV segment, all in his mid-40s, is just fantastic.

the gasp of horror from the crowd was incredible

yes i loved this. it's impossible for wwe to get the fans invested in tough guys being mean to each other, but two jerks having a sweet friendship? this we care about

Bummer that George "The Animal" Steele and Ivan Koloff both died. Not enough love given to these two in recent years.

been watching the most recent WWE 24 documentary thing on the Network (the one about WM 32) and it got me to thinking about the wider presentation of the product today, particularly the whys and why nots of a realer, more "pure sports" approach to promoting their guys

for instance, i had never previously heard that Zack Ryder had suffered with multiple bouts of cancer as a kid, had tumors removed from his lungs and shit. they accompanied this info with a little highlights package of him talking about how all he ever wanted to be when growing up was a "WWE Superstar (TM)" replete w. pics of him as a nipper done up as Hulk Hogan / stripper-era HBK

like.... why the fuck would you NOT assume that this is something that I as a wrestling fan would respond? the fact that its cropping up in this documentary would suggest that Ryder isn't averse to its being used by the company to develop his character. i mean sure i lolled when Ryder won the IC title in the ladder match later that night (in order to facilitate a bad punchline in an advert later in the show), and I felt good for the guy seeing him celebrating with his dad immediately afterward, but I feel like there was actually way more of an emotional punch to that victory than the show itself let on, and that was probably a directorial / production choice, for reasons unknown