Go2Sleep
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Posts posted by Go2Sleep
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A "spooky Bray Wyatt appearance" finish is always worth -2* though.
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I actually like the Hype Bros (having a real team name helps). It's way better than Mojo as a singles guy, and gives him a decent shot of rehabbing his image by pairing him with an established fan-favorite who can carry a lot of the ring-work. He definitely needs to ditch that hammer time thing until he goes heel, though. That shit's gonna make the crowd turn on him in a hurry.
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Lost in Owens' tremendous commentary experience, I think his best asshole moment was in his promo with Itami. Itami said something really lost-in-translation like "Kevin Owen... I mean ke-VIN Owen" and Owens just did the douchiest "white guy mocking someone speaking english as a second language" smirk/head-shake combo ever (which is ironic given his language status). I felt so bad fo Hideo right there.
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If there's one thing Owens has learned from HHH, it's how to absolutely kill it as a guest announcer. Finn and Rhyno actually had a nice little match there too, but I was cracking up the whole time thanks to Owens. I'm not sure who's been abused worse by Owens now, Rich Brennan or Sami Zayn.
Also the Finn Balor video package was legitimately heart-warming. The pics with Albert were goofy and adorable, especially that clip with them on their bikes. And I've never felt a bigger personal connection to any wrestler than I did when Finn was talking about having wrestling tapes going in the VCR while building lego sets. If Finn and I were the same age and met each other when we were 9, we would've been BFFs for sure.
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Instead of bitching about Kane still being a featured guy even though the "plan B" pep talk was the perfect setup for Rollins to change his goon-squad, I will just point out how much I liked HHH/Steph actually watching the show and talking about an un-related angle (Cena/Owens I think) backstage during one of their segments. I always wondered why authority figures aren't watching their product at all times since they seem to need to make on-the-fly changes a lot, so good to see a touch of realism here.
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I've enjoyed Joe in NXT, but I didn't set my expectations real high. It's not 2005 and you can see the miles on his body are catching up to him, but he's been solid on the mic and showing a lot of effort in the ring even if the cardio isn't there anymore. The first few minutes of the Owens match was really good, but it looked like he was totally blown up by the time the show-ending brawl came around. If he can get some conditioning back, I think he could be a really good as a featured guy.
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Not exactly. What I would want is, if the champ is going over, why announce before it starts that match is less important?
I just don't think they should do non-title matches with the champion at all. If it's a singles match, title's on the line. If you want to showcase the champ or (ugh) have him drop a fall, do it in a tag match. The main reason the IC title has been such a joke for years is that the champ is rarely above the challengers. It's just a pool of 6 or so guys where they all trade wins at an equal rate, but one of them has the title because someone has to. The art of establishing contenders through non-title feuds has been completely lost.
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Oh I can't believe I forgot this one, it's gotta be number two behind the heel authority figure...
Fucking non-title matches. Especially since the champ loses 90% of the time. Could you imagine how ridiculous that would look in UFC? Imagine Anderson Silva losing a non-title match Chael Sonnen. It's like the laziest way to build a contender ever.
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The heel authority figure has been tired for over a decade, yet it still persists. I feel like no one in wrestling paid attention to the original two heel authority figure angles (Bischoff in WCW, Vince in WWF). Vince was getting shown up by Austin (or Rocky/Taker/DX in his absence) about 75% of the time. Vince had to scheme like crazy to get one over on Austin and it was always a big deal when he did, but usually Austin would get back to beating his ass the next week. Any physical confrontation never ended well for Vince, or whoever Vince's chosen one was at the time. This angle worked largely because of the charisma of the two main characters, but also in some part due to the strong face-oriented booking that's more conducive to satisfying fictional storytelling. Meanwhile, Bischoff and his cronies were the ones doing the beatdowns every week while the faces looked like dopes and had go through hoops to get any sort of payback. Bischoff himself never got shown up in any significant fashion in WCW. I'll let you guess which one of those angles led to the company making millions with record ratings and ppv buys going into the new century, and and which started sending the company into millions of dollars of debt before fading out of business with a whimper.
Anyway, while we're at it, throw out heel announcers too. There hasn't been a decent one since Ventura, and they always drag commentary down.
Finisher kickouts jumped the shark when Shawn kicked out of the tombstone at WM 25 (although it's been a thing since the tail end of the attitude era). Whatever happened to the art of finding creative ways to AVOID your opponents finisher?
Every Raw match needing a commercial break so we can have multiple uninterrupted 15-minute promos, resulting in the "[wrestler] is rolling" spot that's become pretty trite.
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I don't doubt that, but they're like 1998-NWO stale right now.
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I also get the feeling that Sheamus will become the new Authority golden boy by the end of the year if not the end of summer, and we will get out in the wilderness Rollins, fending for himself without anyone in his corner cause of all the sins of his past (rebuilding him also) until one day when the Authority is standing tall over someone and we hear, "Sierra, Hotel, India, Echo, Lima, Delta" and the place explodes in a pop reminiscent of the Attitude era
This is cool except it involves the Authority being around for another year.
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It's amazing how the perception of Rollins has gone from "WWE MVP" to "get him off my TV" in half a year...and between moveset restriction, scripted promos, and generally being booked to look like a pansy, I don't know how much of it is his fault...like maybe he'd be a terrible promo anyway, but who knows?
I think this is the "Authority effect." Rollins has had lots of good singles matches over the past year and the way he plays his character is spot-on, but the way he's been booked post-Mania has been pretty uninspiring. The Authority has been around for 2 years straight, though, and have been boring since after Mania 30. Rollins leading his own group with J/J booked a little stronger and neutral authority figure would have been way better for the "cowardly heel" angle. Standing in the background of segments designed to put HHH and Steph over and the awkward "feud" with Kane that seemingly has no payoff have made him pretty dull.
Also surprised that there isn't more talk about the bizarre choice of Sheamus winning MITB. That could very well be more shocking than Swagger. I have absolutely no idea what they do with Sheamus in or around the main event scene.
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Yeah, Blue Pants is a perfect jobber. She's like a female Scotty 2 Hotty, except her disproportionate pop for her card position is for her entrance instead of the worm.
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Even though it was a throwaway show without too much significant development, I thought there was a lot of enjoyable content.
Owens/Neville was a solid match, not as good as their NXT match, but still a good showcase for both guys. Cena giving all his "media savvy" generic answers and keeping his composure in the face of annoying repeated questions was a good touch for his character.
R-Truth interrupting the MITB dueling promos made the entire segment worthwhile.
The New Day continues to be great.
Everything with J/J and Rollins was great (save for Rollins taking the pin). Noble had a great fired up promo that was like a poor man's version of the time Ric Flair stood up to HHH. Rollins was a perfect douche that really made you feel sorry for J/J without making himself look funny or cool. The match was worked very smartly with J/J building sympathy and hope spots with simple moves while Rollins mostly dominated with his superior athleticism alone. Rollins actually losing is a pretty bad call that helps no one because it's not like Mercury is gonna go on to anything else. All 3 guys did great with what was written for them, though. I'm also pleasantly surprised Ambrose hasn't looked like a total chump for two straight weeks.
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Since it's July 4th how about "Great American Bash in Japan"?
Absolutely just for the absurdity of it also being headlined by an Irishman vs a French-Canadian.
"Our Independence Day"
In fact, if Kofi doesn't do a parody of the President Whitmore speech in preparation for his match with Brock, I'll be somewhat disappointed now.
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What arena is this show in? Budokan?
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Kofi finally wins a MITB, but foolishly puts it on the line against Brock who clowns the entire New Day in hilarious fashion to warm up for Rollins.
This card is delightfully random, and I hope WWE does more international shows like this for the network. If Kidd's out, I propose Cesaro vs. Harper.
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Test was way bigger than either of these guys and Albert had a unique look.
These guys are like the Dollar Store Mexican Action Figure Knock Off version of Beer Money
In terms of look and generic-ness, the best comp for Blake and Murphy is Croft and Baretta.
But with the Bliss/Trish comp being so easy plus the whole "2 reasonably talented but ultimately underachieving midcarders" thing they have going on, T&A has to be the best overall fit.
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Blake and Murphy really are T&A, just without any prior failed pushes. Bliss will be on to better things by next year, and those two will still be trying to find something that works in the midcard.
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They really just should've let Dean win the belt on the last show. Give him a Mick Foley style feel-good 2-week reign, Rollins wins at MITB, Brock returns, Seth shits pants, etc.
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What's with making the refs look like total dopes with these really obvious "twin magic" finishes that shouldn't confuse anyone? First Xavier/Kofi, now the Bellas who buried the twin magic thing years ago when Nikki got implants and then got their own tv show about different they are. I know wrestling refs are supposed to stupid, but this is pushing the limits of believability.
I'm actually curious if it was the same ref... Maybe they can make it a gimmick where wrestlers push the limits until eventually The Big Show is switching out with Heath Slater and the ref counts anyway.
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I didn't realize FTW meant "for the win" until like 2005. Thanks Taz.
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Re: Sheamus and the pod not opening, clearly the announcers were not tipped off about it. It looked like a legit malfunction until Sheamus went and pulled his cross out of there when everyone else was down. In hindsight, the camera should have caught him jamming the cross in there on purpose.
Wouldn't this spot have made a lot more sense if he was scheduled to enter #3, then did the reveal after everyone else came out?
I also figured Henry's thing was planned as a way to cut 5 minutes out of the match, but the whole thing was weird and not very good.
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Curious how they do the MITB match from here on out. I expect Roman to win it? Who else really if they want to do the Shield triple threat at WM?
When I heard Brock is supposed to work Battleground and then saw this lineup, it made total sense. Roman wins MITB, Brock vs. Rollins at Battleground (ticket purchase justified), then Roman either cashes in like Rollins at Mania and sets up a triple threat for Summer Slam, or he just waits and they do Roman/Brock 2 straight up.
On this show, I'm not sure what caused my jaw to drop more: Owens teasing the package piledriver, or Owens winning 100% clean.
Raw 6-29-15
in WWE PROGRAMMING
Posted
The opening and closing segments were ridiculous. I was trying to x4 them and stop at what looked to be a logical point of interruption, but then nothing would happen and I'd have to start over. I couldn't imagine sitting through that live.
That 8-man was pretty underrated. Titus had a nice hot tag sequence and Kofi was selling it like death.
Cena/Cesaro was really good in a vacuum, but I think the non-stop attempted epics with midcarders is devaluing Owens. You can only get so epic-y, and it doesn't make Owens look as special when he's having similarly competitive matches with Cena as guys like Stardust and Cesaro are. The key to the "movesy ace" being successful is establishing rank. You don't need to bring the big guns out in every match. Lower ranked guys should succumb to simple strikes and first-line finishers and shouldn't be landing a ton of offense. A strong sense of status and knowing how to give guys a rub while still protecting yourself so that you can give a rub is the difference between being Misawa and being Kurt Angle.