Go2Sleep

The problem with that move today is the tapout is a major visual for getting submission finishers over, especially in WWE.

Pro wrestling "lighter" weight classes are ridiculous because all their limits are well into heavyweight territory in any professional combat sport. Weight classes in pro wrestling are also ridiculous because no one's trying to hurt their opponent and you make your own results. If you book small guys strong, people will buy it. There's no reason to segregate guys by weight when the only criteria for featuring a guy is whether or not people like watching them. WWE's problem specifically with weight classes was that they always made the lighter guys work the same style as the heavier guys so they had no way to stand out. Combine that with never rotating which weight class gets the main event on big shows like UFC does, and over time fans can't help but associate lighter with less important.

Watching Raws and PPVs from 96, it's so easy to see how Austin got as big as he did. Just the perfect guy at the perfect time. Shawn, Taker, Foley, and Bret (when he was there) had nice years in-ring, but every time Austin was on screen post-KOTR, it just felt so different and exciting than everything else going on. Like you go from these over-the-top intense Austin promos then back to Freddie Joe Floyd vs. The Stalker or some shit. "Wait til Austin 3:16 meets Pillman 9 millimeter" would've blown away the OMG moment field if that was a Slammy in 96. Can't wait to get into 97 where the rest of the product starts to catch up. Also bitter heel JR was hilarious, even though fake Razor and Diesel stuck around way too long.

Well outside of the first couple of months, his raps were mostly juvenile poop/dick jokes that got progressively less complex in structure so it wasn't much of a leap. Modern Cena basically started in 2005, though. He had a brief stint as "the marine," which is when crowds started to sour on him. After some futile attempts to get crowds 100% back on his side, he settled into being "Just John Cena" the first half of 2006.

Isn't the whole match for the audience? I'm not sure I get that criticism. I prefer Brooklyn slightly since it was a little tighter with no wasted moves. Without the time constraints, there was zero filler and the one botch actually helped the match (Bayley landing on her head off the rana counter). The action escalated perfectly, there were quality nearfalls without crossing into overkill territory, and the pre and post match stuff just felt special in a way that can't be manufactured. Not that the ironman match wasn't extremely good (and the last two minutes was the the best finishing run in ironman history), but it wasn't quite the "perfect storm" that Brooklyn was.

I'd pay to see a Brock/ADR match, and I haven't been interested in Del Rio in years.

I really can't believe they didn't run the American Airlines Center after they sold out Barclays effortlessly 6 months ago. Maybe there was a conflict with the Mavs or Stars, but still. Not booking a huge venue for NXT when 100,000 die-hards are in town is just throwing money away.

It says a lot when the worst NXT special of the year is better than every main roster one. This show was well-written, but the execution was a bit lacking relative to other takeovers. The matches were all solid, but the show lacked a true MOTYC, which all the other Takeovers managed to produce. Asuka/Emma was good, but definitely had too much Emma offense. When Asuka was in control, she just hit this gear that Emma obviously doesn't have. That ass-based offense actually looks painful, and the way she snaps off her submissions, or that quick corner dropkick counter just shows that she's one of the most advanced wrestlers in the entire company. Emma tried hard and wasn't bad at all, but it's more of a testament to Asuka that having her sell so much for Emma looked silly. The finish was very well designed and got the right reactions from me, although the ref kinda looked like a goof. The tag title match was my favorite match on the show. I've been on the Dash/Dawson bandwagon since the Dusty classic and Enzo and Cass brought it. Not that there weren't a couple rough spots here, but the nearfalls were great, and the top-rope shatter machine was a killer big-match finish. Baron/Crews was pretty uninspiring. First dull match either man has had in a while, so I'm just gonna write it off as "not clicking on this night." I'm kinda glad Baron won since he was in danger of getting Breezed and there's no reason to saddle Crews with the undefeated streak baggage. Bayley/Nia was a fairly impressive carry, because holy shit did Nia look lost out there. I think she's got potential, but this moment appeared to be too much too fast in retrospect. Props to Bayley for salvaging what she could, although she destroyed Nia's finishers. The guillotine finish was nice, as was never even attempting a B2B. Ending the match on a different spot gives people something positive to remember and washes away some of the bad taste. Nia/Asuka looks like just a weekly main #1 contenders match now, but let Bayley Cena another couple of girls in the coming months and Bayley/Asuka is worth all the money in Dallas. Joe/Balor was definitely the most polished and well-executed match of the night, although it didn't seem to go above and beyond. I felt like a Kobashi/Sasaki style chop exchange would've bumped this match up considerably. With the roll he's on now, I really wanted Joe to win, but at the same time, it would be stupid to have "the demon" lose. There's serious money if they play that streak right. Hopefully Joe can rebound, but there aren't a lot of strong faces for him to go over. I'm torn if I want guaranteed good matches that he'd probably lose with Crews, Zayn, Itami, etc or take a gamble on him going to the main roster.

Titus O'Niell isn't a star. This would be the equivalent of losing to Mojo on NXT, which would never have happened. He's gone from JTTS to straight J.

Anecdote: My casual fan co-worker went out of his way to tell me how much he enjoyed this episode of Raw. They should've just had Roman run through HHH and Sheamus at Survivor Series, but now is obviously the time to see if he can be the man. Based on the reaction, they might still have a spark left even though it looked like they left him for dead since Mania 31. They need to get Sheamus out of the picture now, though. I think Rusev would be a good opponent at the Rumble. Roman's best Mania match up is Cena, but I hate the idea of Cena winning the Rumble.

Tyler Breeze :(

The worst part about the Roman pop at the end was that they got the exact same pop at Survivor Series with like 5% of the effort and Sheamus didn't have the title. It is also very likely that they will undercut him in the next couple of weeks and crowds will be indifferent/hostile to Roman again by the Rumble.

Joe/Zayn and Bayley/Asuka seems like a pretty viable card. If you wanna shoot bigger, do a Sasha/Asuka one-off special attraction match or a (I know I know) one-time Daniel Bryan match. They'll sell out American Airlines no matter what card they run, but Bryan/Zayn, Sasha/Asuka, and Joe/Itami could probably fill Globe Life.

I'm surprised anyone thinks Emma should win that match in any capacity. Asuka has two legit main events waiting to happen with Bayley and a built-up Nia Jax. There are no money matches that involve Emma. She's good in her role, but right now her role is "make Asuka look like a world beater" and that involves doing the job next Wednesday.

I think Asuka/Bayley is still the money match right now. Asuka's gotta work at least one of the horsewomen, right? And Asuka has *IT* right now, so putting Emma over her would be uncharacteristically stupid for NXT. For Bayley/Nia, I wouldn't normally encourage copying TNA, but following the Gail/Kong path might not be the worst idea here. Have Bayley sneak out the win this time, then have Nia squash her at a later date.

I actually do remember that, but it never translated to bad reactions for either of them live. Well, at least during the height of the attitude era, crowds did turn on The Rock in 2002.

I'd say the bigger problem is the people at the top aren't over. Of course people are going to want the over guys to move up the card when they don't care about the people who are positioned at the top. No one was clamoring for the New Age Outlaws or Crash Holly to be pushed over Austin or The Rock.

The thing that I miss most from the attitude era is the crowd heat, which was the product of giving the fans a reason to care about people up and down the card. I'll take maybe all but the bottom 5% of attitude angles over the current landscape where all but like 3 guys are interchangable and no one has any reason to get invested in anyone because the end game is always "will lose to Cena or a part-timer."

Eh, I can't really get behind this. New Day is the only act that feels organic in any way and they have good chemistry with BAD. Anything that allows Sasha to show some personality and build a connection with the audience is going to be very beneficial for her in the long run. For maybe 1/10th of a second, I thought something big was actually going to happen when the Wyatts interrupted the LON. Then my conscious brain kicked in and said "No it's gonna be gang warz, don't get your hopes up" and sure enough, out comes the unironic ECW nostalgia act in 2015. Owens/Ziggler was decent. I don't know if they actually announced this or not, but Breeze/Ziggler screams pre-show match, which is just sad for Tyler. Nice to see they have no idea where they're going with Charlotte/Paige. Did lol at Flair yelling "Get her" though. At least the Mex-America angle shows WWE will abandon some things that suck. Swagger and Del Rio feuding again, the circle of midcard life continues. If I said I needed one .gif from this show, you'd probably assume it was the Sasha booty dance, but nope... It's Xavier laying down and blowing the trombone in Sin Cara's face with his eyebrows moving to the beat.

Obviously it means Cena's returning.

Gotta be Rhyno or RVD.

I didn't expect him to go anywhere else, but in a perfect world, he'd at least be a protected midcarder instead of having a losing record and not even appearing to be an eventual IC/US title contender.

Yeah let's take the one likable babyface in an entire division, and make her a lacky for a midcard heel stable. If they can't get Bayley over then there needs to be a fucking major overhaul within creative(which let's face it a major overhaul is already needed). I'm starting to wonder if they wouldn't just make more money off acts like Bayley by leaving them in NXT as it continues to grow instead of being brought up to the main roster and being booked like a geek thus not getting over with that audience and tainting the wrestlers value in the eyes of the NXT audience. They desperately need a face like Bayley on the main roster the question is how long before they fuck it up one month, two months? There's no way they could translate Bayley to the main roster as is and have her get the same heat she does in NXT. The fans there have been invested in her journey for 2+ years. Look at a ready-made guy like Tyler Breeze and how he was just another midcarder in his first two weeks on the main roster. They'd probably be better off starting more people off fresh and seeing if something develops organically like it does in NXT.

I think Bayley in the Wyatts would be pretty cool actually. I'd love to see what kind of range she has character-wise and I especially want to see her work heel at least once. It sounds more appealing than introducing her as face (who only gets about 10% of the heat she currently does because most of the audience hasn't followed her journey) and feuding with the Bellas for 4 months.

Did anyone really get worse on NXT this year? It's such a well-booked promotion with so much talent, I don't think anyone can help but get better (even guys and girls that were already great). The worst I can think of are completely stagnant guys like Blake, Murphy, and Crowe, but even then, you could reasonably argue they actually maintained or improved slightly over the year, just not enough to matter or avoid getting passed by new arrivals. I think by the literal definition of "most improved" it has to be Chad Gable. At the start of the year, he was a jobber that looked like an indy-ripoff Kurt Angle. Now he's one of the most over guys, routinely has solid matches, and is making people around him better by proxy. Dash and Dawson would be sleeper candidates too.