Wrestling Thread [ARCHIVED] • Page 964

They're gonna have to Dean/IC title book that. Some random RAW 5-way match for the title where Bo Dallas eats the pin for Rusev (Breeze ate the pin for KO to take the title)

Its just amazing the krytopnite that Roman is. He got boo'd for a Shield reunion and multiple table spots. He needs desperately to take some PEDs and get popped for 60 days so storylines can move on.

 

He ruined the JeriKO reunion. The boos were inevitable no matter how he did it.

 

and what is HHH doing? Its now 4 months since he appeared. The last 2 people he crossed are now re-united against his chosen winner. His former enemy is now the guy keeping the title alive. In kayfabe, there's no reason hes still gone.

Unless tomorrow night is real crazy, feels like they'll waste any logical momentum by the rumble

 

Yeah I guess, but i think we're learning that sometimes we care a bit too much about a belt. To me Reigns ending PPVs like that is just annoying/poor/shit as him ending with wins.

And the sad part about it is now it looks like he's taking Rollins down with him. Rollins looks second fiddle to reigns again

 

I wonder if they'll even go with Universal/US title matches at Royal Rumble or have some kind of stipulation tag team match instead.

 

I missed Roadblock but my friends gave me some highlights...
New Day lost - Happy with this, love New Day but it was time. Plus I think it helps build the division with them chasing more than having a monopoly on the titles. Too bad The Club got jobbed en route to their record.
Charlotte won - I'm over the Sasha wins the title on RAW and Charlotte wins it back 2-3 weeks later at the following PPV. WWE has literally done this 3 times in a row now and I'm over it. Love Sasha. Love Charlotte. Love women getting the bigger stage. But this feud is tired and I'm tired of Charlotte always coming out on top. - If the goal is getting Charlotte a ton of reigns like Ric find a better way than this since this is corny now.
Neville heel turn/joining the Cruiserweight division - THANK FUCKING GOD. ITS ABOUT DAMN TIME. More so to the Cruiserweight division part than the heel turn, we'll see about that but I'm not mad at it. Neville belonged in the CW Division from jump but I get they wanted to have some time to establish the new talents.

 

Really wish they would have had Rusev retain the US title at HiaC and maybe lose it next month to Big Cass. Brings a title to a new wrestler and gives Cass something to do / starts building him up while having Rusev in the mean time have maybe a quality title reign.

 

It's easily my most hated booking decision of the year. The US belt is a fucking waste on reigns right now.

Big Cass and rusev fighting for the US belt right now would be perfect.

 

PPV thoughts:

Tag Titles
-Did not realize New Day had JUST broken the record. Thought it happened before Survivor Series. Probably would've picked them to lose had I known that, downside of not watching much of the product I guess. Who would've predicted that this would be match of the night? Is that more of an indictment on this show or praise for Cesaro and Sheamus? Honestly not sure.

-On that same point, this trend of people holding belts justtttttt long enough to break records, then immediately dropping them is getting bad. They did it with Dean over MVP, it was nauseating when they did it with Nikki over AJ, and now here with the New Day. It's just not compelling storytelling to try and sell us that the records matter and then do contrived shit like this.

Braun/Sami
-This felt so boring. So many better ways to do this and they chose the laziest route possible. No drama whatsoever at the end - Sami is busy executing finishers as the clock hits zero. Also Sami declared the winner because ??????? logic. The Foley thing also took way too fucking long as a spot. No tension at all, just a "can we get this over with yet?". WWE seems to just have this problem in general where their supposed-to-be-meaningful spots just drag on and on and on and onnnnn until they're nothing (Sasha stretcher at HiaC, Seth/Dean's opening HiaC segment).

CW
-Neville coming back from the dead is an actual way to utilize a returning talent to basically no-decision a ppv match. By that I mean the result is irrelevant because the only thing that matters is the post-match. 99% of the time (and I fucking mean 99%) WWE completely screws this up and it turns into a farce (Hi Charlotte/Bayley at Survivor Series). Not here. Good job.

Main Event
-Ending was cute. There were like 3 or 4 different ways they could have gone with this match that would've been perfectly acceptable. This one is the worst of the "good" ways because all it did was reset the status quo. Nothing was progressed forward and no new programs/ideas were set up, I'm guessing because a lot of their future plans are still undecided. Seth/Roman were already basically a "team" and obviously this is like the 3rd or 4th time JeriKO has "broken up" and reunited. Whatever.

-Definitely a Raw ending (Rollins/Reigns & the tables). That shit I could've done without.

Women
-I intentionally spoiled the result of the Diva's match for myself, and skipped it when I saw Charlotte won. It probably was a good match - I just don't care. I want nothing to do with it and I refuse to support what they're doing in any shape/form. Haven't watched a Raw Divas segment in months and now I've moved on to deliberately skipping ppv matches! THAT'S HOW BAD THIS INSUFFERABLE PROGRAM IS.

-Before bones quotes this and calls me a whiner, this is not a "Wah wah, Sasha should have won" post, although, yes, Sasha should have won. Charlotte needs to get out of the main event scene ASAP. We're going on 2 years now of her being front and center. Regardless of how much she's grown as a performer (and she has, though she's still occasionally awful) - she's worse than Cena at this point. But even that, as much as I hate it, I could deal with if this fucking feud would end. I'm STILL not convinced it has. Above ALL else, that is what is killing my interest in the Raw women. It should have ended at Summerslam with Sasha finally winning the belt and pushing Charlotte down the card. Today, after 20 more matches, 40 more title swaps (which guarantees the shiny, newly-established belt means absolutely nothing) and FOUR MONTHS LATER we are still going!!!!

This result was an embarrassment. Anyone who actually defends any of this will never see eye to eye with me on 95% of wrestling. So disappointing. I'll count cards later.

 

y'all got worked so hard

 

I'm surprised that people are surprised that the tag match was good

Cesaro matches are always good, and everyone else in there is a good worker

 

Times like these where I'm really happy about the Brand Split. Don't how how RAW is managing to literally ruin Owens, Rollins, and the Women's division. I agree with most the only enjoyable parts were Cesaro/Sheamus winning and heel Neville.

 

You look at that card, and on paper it should have at least one MOTY contender. Instead, everything ended up being C+ work, save for the tag match.

Still love the wrestling in the womens match...but the more I think about it, the booking is brutal for Sasha. She basically took the heel comeuppance.

 

I'll admit it was a very good match for the girls, but the booking just overshadows it for me. Which really sucks.

 

I know it's been discussed on here but I hate the way the book heel champions now. Literally EVERY match they have to win dirty. Why can't heels be booked with a mix of strong clean wins and dirty wins? It makes the belt feel so meaningless.

 

I was totally in the same boat of thinking the new day dropping the belts directly after breaking the record is lame and fake as all hell...especially when they're facing someone they've faced before and it's not like anything changed. In Kayfabe it doesn't make sense that Cesaro and Sheamus finally figured it out all of a sudden. Like perhaps if they did that bar fight thing two weeks ago aka the "they finally decided to cut the crap and work like a team angle" AND THAT'S what got them to win..Okay cool...but that's not what this was. Sigh.

Or if like someone took out Xavier woods before the match thereby getting rid of their numbers and that's why they lost...Okay cool, but thatd not what we got. Sigh

Or it was a new team...someone they hadn't faced before...say enzo and cass...that would make sense. Sigh.

In the end I'm not pissed. I'm happy the new day dropped the belts cause I think their popularity will jump up a bit now that they have a new motivation and as a fan of theirs that's great. And obviously Sheamus and Cesaro will put on stellar matches

 

Yeah, the Cesaro/Sheamus transition was fast, but, they did get screwed by the New Day at HIAC. And again 3 weeks ago on RAW. And bonded on being screwed.

So, I buy it in the same way I buy Dean Ambrose at Roadblock v HHH...he came in with a game plan for a specific opponent that keeps relying on the same trick. Also makes it believable if they dump the tag belts at the Rumble cause they only had the one plan

 

I know right! And it also gives every heel champ a bit of chicken shit to their character because they look scared to take a clean match. I understand occasionally winning dirty but when it happens every match it makes matches less fun because you know that the heel champ is gonna cheat and then win.

 

E&C have faced New Day before though

 

Charlotte since leaving Ric has been incredibly well booked as a heel. A loss at HIAC probably would have been just about perfect for her, to then turn to a new feud.

I feel like Brian kendrick is booked well too...he cheats, but, his character has the right desperation for it.

KO and Rusev though....yeesh

 

Raw universal title - held by heel
SD world title - held by heel
SD tag titles - held by heels
IC title - held by heel
US title - held by heel (because of hate)
Raw women's champ - heel
SD women's champ - heel
Who's NXT champ? Is that a heel too?
Is the CW champ a heel?

Can't remember the last time so many heels held titles simultaneously, but then there never used to be so many titles

 

none of the current nxt champions are heels and neither is rich swann, but yes a lot of heel champions going into wrestlemania season

 

The official Roadblock: End of the Line review

 

And they burned the momentum of multiple babyfaces to get there by hot-shotting titles.

Dolph lost the IC for no good reason. Sasha trading titles. Becky didnt have a legit defense win. And decent odds Swann is losing the title to Neville sometime soon, while TJP fades

At least with Becky and Dolph, theres potential redemption story lines.