Rolling Chris and Kevin's Bogus Journey 2017

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

it is a truly terrifying look into vinces mind* that i read that and just immediately assumed its because vince hears cancer, he thinks weakness and disrespects and distrusts you... and ive sat on this comment for 5minutes to see whether i could think of another logical explanation, but no, i just presume vince is a psychopath.

*and i guess his team in washingtons mind

I really don't think it's anything twisted like that on Vince's part. He has a fixed idea of what is marketable and what isn't and he only changes his mind if it's unavoidable like with Daniel Bryan for WM30. He doesn't care about the character development of anyone besides a few hand picked main eventers, and doesn't pay attention to 95% of the content on his own network.

i vaguely recall seeing something about how zack ryder himself didn't want to make it a character point. tho i guess he's okay with making it a second-level character point for the character of zack-ryder-the-person-not-the-tv-character. uhhhh

but yeah, wwe's characterisation of its wrestlers remains baffling and feels 20 years out of step with what you'd think the brand direction should be. heck, just think about how much they managed to wring out of mick foley's irl boyhood dreams, yet as far as i recall they haven't remotely tried to replicate that success

Fastlane was sad. The bar was laying on the ground and they still managed to trip.

i think i need to give up on wwe yall

can't make it through fastlane, this has been torture, can't even press unpause on a braun strowman match. i can't even make it through a recap.

it's all just dead. i can't care anymore. the brand split has killed any desire to watch any of these matches or care about any of the performers in any way.

probably working 12 hour days isnt helping things. i could've spent these past 2 hours catching up with njpw though and it would've been time well spent

this is a total bizarro world bc the only wrestler i want to see wrestle anymore is john cena

People will miss Cena now that he's off to be a movie star. The Rock faced plenty of backlash when he was full time (fewer years than Cena, but still) but staying away did wonders for his legacy.

I spent some time yesterday catching up with NJPW, Day 1 of the New Japan Cup is skippable outside of Evil vs Tanahashi, the Day 2 tournament matches are worth seeing all the way through.

I spent some time yesterday catching up with NJPW, Day 1 of the New Japan Cup is skippable outside of Evil vs Tanahashi, the Day 2 tournament matches are worth seeing all the way through.

Thanks for that, I can compress both shows into one sit-down before the weekend.

Thoughts on Southpaw Regional Wrestling?

A++++: Farmer Rusev, the theme song
A: most of the rest

Sea creature reveal, rusev and what greg valentine did were my personal favs.

Also shame on the internet to its reaction to paige, although i am intrigued as to what it means for xavier and the new day.

Smash cut to Rusev screaming "IT IS A DEVIL" was magnificent

Jericho only has one schtick; Cena was sort of incredible

Also shame on the internet to its reaction to paige, although i am intrigued as to what it means for xavier and the new day.

It's all best forgotten. Draw a line under it and move on. As I read elsewhere, Seth Rollins set the precedent for this kind of thing. No punishment for Tom Phillips, by the way.

Paige should pursue the matter legally of course, if that's her call.

Speaking of shaming bullshit: all this speculation about Mauro Ranallo and his health needs to stop, too.

As for Southpaw, Tyler Breeze was my favourite. That sea creature bit was magnificent! Better than the references.

Cena's mid-80s Vince impression was glorious.

It's sad that Southpaw Regional Wrestling is the best thing they've done in years.

"Chad 2 Badd, It may be true that my right arm has gone dead because you somehow squandered up the money to send Gregg Valentine over to my trailer and put me in an armbar for two and a half hours..."

I feel like this entire thing wouldn't exist if Luke gallows hadn't demanded a way to resurrect Sex Ferguson for a WWE audience, and I am so glad he did.

It's not even sad that this is the best thing they've done in years. I hope an indie decides to roll with it and makes a really smart 80s throwback league inspired by this. TNA needs a new hook, right? Broken Matt was leading to this. Lean in, Impact.

"i feel like i can hear chad 2 badd in my right ear. we'll never be able to compete with vince if we don't up our production values."