SirSmUgly

I had This Week in WWE on streaming in the background, and I just saw Summer Rae on MizTV. She was TREMENDOUS. Her throwing shoes while yelling "YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH" was the icing on the delicious cake that was all that soap opera bullshit.

I pretty much think all these ladies are at least objectively attractive even if some of them are not particularly your thing, but I've always been way over looks as a crucial component of what make awesome pro wrestlers anyway. Yeah, you want some good looking types for blowjob tag teams and shit, but man, you need some Kevin Owenses and Bull Dempseys and shit to balance it out. Plus, as a fan of the everyman character in pro wrestling, having non-models to stand in for the rest of us is nice. Bayley isn't a supermodel, but she doesn't need to be because we actually want to relate to her. Same with your Zayns and Bryans and Blue Pantses and such. I firmly believe that they're all over because they are all, in their own ways, millennial everymen and women.

I listened to this over a bunch of car trips. What I got from it is that Xavier Woods and Joey Mercury are legit brilliant. Actually, it's funny because I just saw Breeze on UpUpDownDown and Woods mentioned that they used to room together in that house they were in, and I think it would have been interesting if they mentioned doing all those different characters (including Breeze) on a greenscreen in that very house.

I have to give Debra credit though. I just saw her slip Mongo the Halliburton so that he could catch Hugh Morrus in the head with it off a No Laughing Matter to get the pinfall. The bell rings, Mongo celebrates, the camera cuts to her, and she goes right into the camera, "Now that's funny...hee hee hee." It was the stupid giggle that really got me. Hilarious. Proof that even the seemingly most useless people make TV because they have something in them that makes for good pro wrestling television.

I think Jordan and Gable have way better odds than the Ascension ever did or than Blake and Murphy or the Vaudevillains do. They have charisma, can work, and don't have a really specific gimmick that plays to the NXT crowd in a way that it never will on the big show.

I'm pretty much with Rippa that even if they were just WGTT all over again, that would be fine as I really enjoyed those guys. Jordan's matwork is more engaging than anything either Hass or Benjamin did in that team, though.

OH GOD EVA MARIE'S SHITTINESS IS KILLING US. Let's talk about much better things, like Bayley or the meltdown that will happen when Eva Marie wins the NXT Women's championship from Bayley

It's PWI, so I didn't know anyone even took their lists seriously. It's all for fun and for laughing at.

Seth Rollins vs. Dolph Ziggler (WWE Main Event, 6/10/2014) Seen it before?: Maybe. It was this or the Smackdown match they had around this time. I don't remember having any concrete opinions about it. These are two of my least favorite guys in the company, so I have low expectations. I'm going to get really sick of hearing Rollins's entrance music here over the next few weeks that I write these up. HATE IT SO MUCH. Rollins with a bit of stalling at the start as he tries to work heel, and I would have liked to see him work that a bit more before going right to the headlock. One of the things that I think is an issue with both of these guys is that they work SO quickly. Heat segments get blown through, babyface shine is blown through, the opening stalling was just for a bit. I forgot that Rollins was using such a clear face spot like Eddie's Three Amigos. That's a dumb thing to do as a heel because it generates those EDDIE chants. There are some things he does that are fine, like talking shit to Ziggler during an eye gouge spot near the camera, but he works too quickly, does face offense as a heel, and rushes through everything. Sure, this was a Main Event match, but they still got some really good time, so there was no need to run through everything so quickly at the beginning. Ending sequence is counter-heavy, but it's worked just fine except for Ziggler whiffing on the Fame-ass-er. Not bad, but I do feel like this opening match raises some of the issues that I have with Rollins. Roman Reigns vs. Bad News Barrett (WWE Friday Night Smackdown, 6/13/2014) Seen it before?: Nope. This is a short match, but I think that Reigns looks pretty explosive here. He's trying to figure out his offense, but he has some nice spots that the crowd gets into like the ten-count corner punch -------> clothesline over the top rope. We come back from break with Reigns fighting up out of a chinlock; he's got some good energy coming up from underneath and also has some decent facial selling of Barrett's offense. I think the limited match time helps Reigns because he doesn't have to figure out what to fill time with before he goes to his comeback, which is likewise explosive and gets the crowd chanting for a spear until 3MB comes in and causes the DQ. I wonder if they ever had Slater bump in a one-on-one match for Reigns's offense. I'm going through Cagematch, so I'm hoping that I run into a Slater/Reigns match on Superstars or Main Event in the next couple weeks of watching. Anyway, Reigns looked solid, and I wonder if there will be a gap between his TV output and his PPV output early on in terms of quality. Dean Ambrose vs. Bray Wyatt (WWE Friday Night Smackdown, 6/13/2014) Seen it before?: Nope. These two had awful matches against one another just a few months later on. Bray can throw a wicked lariat and a nasty right hand every once in awhile. The crowd might be tired out because I liked the spot where Ambrose raked Bray's eyes across the ropes a couple minutes after Bray did it to him, but then again, they're pretty loud otherwise. Maybe it just didn't translate. Ambrose is such a theatrical seller and IMO has the tools to be a better "never say die" face even than he does to be a sleazy heel. His offense is shitty, decent DDT aside, but he does the little things like trying to slam his shoulder that Bray has been working on back into its socket. I used to love when Perfect would start striking his knee after it gave out, so I am a sucker for that type of selling. Bray is better when cutting a pace than he is when he's being methodical. His offense goes straight to shit. Ambrose is really great at garnering sympathy physically, though, and I appreciate him sticking to the selling of the shoulder. He uses headbutts instead of punches to block a superplex, for example. That rebound lariat always sucked, though. It looks stupid here, too, so contrived. He drops selling his shoulder to do it, then goes back to selling his shoulder. Really, except for his terrible offense, I dig Ambrose as a scrappy face. He's got all the other tools to be great in this role.

I want to see Neville and Jason Jordan have a ten minute match after seeing that tag match tonight. I enjoyed their mat sequences immensely as well as Neville's hot tag. Jordan is a beast. I'm calling him Baby Lesnar from now on. Someone should tell Eva Marie to stop doing that terrible senton splash. I still think Eva Marie had a better performance than Viktor tonight, though. I'll never get sick of Apollo Crews talking shit while in the process of hitting guys with offense.

That pic of Big E just makes me think of Dave Chappelle in the Mad Real World sketch for whatever reason. "Katie got some big ass tittays."

Chuck Taylor screaming at kids and a bunch of WoS-style joint and limb work...yeah, NXT is going to be even better than it already is somehow.

I'm going to start this tonight, I think, after I compile an initial short list. Thanks for suggestions, BTW. I'm really interested to re-watch Rollins/Ambrose lumberjack, which people really loved and which I hated so much that I had it as the worst PPV match I saw last year.

As a jumping off point from the Summerslam thread, I thought that it would be fun, with what is left of my summer break, to do a little project that covers the Shield members' growth as singles competitors from their breakup in June 2014 to where they are now. I want to do this in part because there is such a disparity in how people think of these guys not just here, but in general online, and in part because I have my own opinions about these guys that I want to re-evaluate. It's also always helpful to do this sort of exercise because it helps me to re-think what I really find important about pro wrestling and what my preferences are, particularly as they change with the more wrestling that I consume. On that note, I want to pare down a list of ten to twelve matches for each Shield member to watch and quickly write up. I have an idea of some of the matches that I want to see, and with the Network archiving RAW, SD, Main Event, the PPVs, etc., this should be an easy job to find matches that would best represent the singles/non-tag work of the Shield members. I have an idea of some of the matches that I'd like to use to do this project, but I'd like to start by asking those of you who are interested in this idea to share what matches that you think I should look at, with show and date if possible. Some stuff is obvious that I won't really need suggested (Reigns: v. Lesnar at WM, v. Bryan at Fast Lane; Rollins v. Ambrose in all their singles matches), but there are probably numerous TV matches that have slipped through the cracks. Whatever you want to suggest - what you think showcases these guys at their best or worst or whatever - I would be grateful for. I suppose that I should also mark down how I would rank each of these guys and my current perceptions of them before this rewatch in order to have it here for myself, at least. 1. Reigns - He's a decent worker. I appreciate that he is willing to take a beating, but I don't think he's ever had a singles match outside of the Lesnar mauling that has transcended "quite solid," and that includes the Bryan match. He was awful right after the break-up, but he's definitely improved. He's passable at worst on most nights, generally. Sometimes he seems to get stuck and revert to signature spot spamming, but I'm encouraged that he seems to be getting better at a good pace. 2. Rollins - I compared him to Dean Malenko in the Summerslam thread, and I think it's a fair comparison in that he does lots of crisp moves and is a great athlete, but his matches often look like a slideshow of a bunch of different nice moves with nothing that holds them together in the types of interesting narratives that make matches feel complete. Even working de facto face at Summerslam, he did nothing for me, but working like this as a heel, I find him almost unwatchable many nights. Maybe Neville in NXT until about the Tyson Kidd matches is a better comp. 3. Ambrose - He has the biggest and most organic connection with the crowd to me in many ways, but he is the worst offensive wrestler in the company except for maybe some of the women who have never graduated past model-turned-wrestler status. Ziggler actually has better offense than this guy. He's so hard to watch and was actively dragging down that tag match he had at Summerslam in some ways. He can take a beating though and easily has the best facial expressions and sympathetic body movements of the three...but his offense is such a minus that I have to place him here. Anyway, I'm excited to dig deep into these matches again, and I hope that people are interested in this, even if you want to call my tastes in wrestling totally shitty or tell me that secretly I hold the company's booking of Bryan against Reigns (I don't, and actually, I like Reigns a lot and feel pretty badly for him that the crowd still kinda shits on him). Also, I love reading reviews other people do of matches, so if you wanted to chime in with your own, that would be cool. Hopefully, this thread takes off.

I don't quite think your point is fair, G2S. Neville got tons of praise here for developing into a very good big match worker, particularly in the back half of his NXT title run. AJ gets lavish praise here and PWO and places like that. I respect where you and Burgundy are coming from, but ultimately, I think it's a somewhat dismissive way to approach this type of criticism. "Once hated, always hated" is not true here and in Rollins's case specifically, you can check the archives and see that he was basically universally loved as a member of the Shield. I am typing on my phone now, so I will respond later in more detail to Rollins having good facial expressions or him being the best Shield member right now (I think it is Reigns, but that is a very low bar to clear IMO).

Hey man, if you like movez~ ueber alles, Rollins is right up your alley, and more power to you. But I'm not impressed with his selling, heeling. or anything else that makes a good pro wrestler. He's a great guy to show off cool spots, but fuck no, he's not a complete (or good) pro wrestler. People getting crazy with praise for this dude like they were with Reigns after a couple matches with Bryan and Lesnar. And to note, I was down on Rollins before most of DVDVR was if you check the March Madness threads.

I've been down on Rollins ever since the Shield breakup. He's a great athlete, but he's not a good pro wrestler IMO. Kinda like Neville's first-half of his NXT Championship run or Finn Bálor.

Debra is fucking awful. I'm not quite sure she's supposed to be irritating in that way even though she's a heel. Plus Woman's not around very often and when she is, it's ruined by her being with Benoit. Man, fuck. I need to go back to a few of those early 1996 Nitros with Woman and Liz together in the Four Horsemen to clean out the Debra stank she got on all my Horsemen watching.

Woof, no. Not in my estimation. Not close. I just watched Dean Malenko wrestle Ultimo Dragon on a Clash in January of 1997. It was a match where Malenko and Dragon did a shit-ton of moves, many of them crisp and cool, all one after the other. Nothing meant anything - there was a legwork tease that was immediately shook off in order to do more cool moves. It was less a match and more an exhibition of wrestling moves. I'd give it like three stars because while it was crisply wrestled, I could go on YouTube and watch a "50 Greatest Moves of..." compilation and get the same enjoyment out of it. Cena/Rollins was that match except with Cena looking like shit and Jon Stewart on a poorly-done, poorly-conceived finish. It gets two snowflakes from me for that, but even if it had the ending you proposed, I can't imagine caring about it more than Malenko/Dragon on that Clash show. I think Summerslam matches for the WWE WHC should aspire to be more than a Malenko/Dragon opener on a Clash.

WWE statement. Mankind?

Man, I bet Seth Rollins and his Nazi chick having sex was basically like the Palestinian Chicken episode of Curb. That's my explanation for him just sidestepping the Nazi thing.

Bram did punch a cop, so it's not like he hasn't had issues with anger in the past. On another random note, I love that the only person who indulges The New Day's antics is Renee Young, and Big E affectionately calls her "Nene."

He's involved in one of my most "wish it happened" aborted angles when the Four Horsemen splattered him on the concrete for disrespecting Brian Pillman.

Get inFamous: First Light, too. I loved Second Son, but First Light is even better as far as gameplay. I second MLB The Show, Resogun, Rocket League, and I want to throw Rayman Legends out there if you haven't played it on another console yet. It's still my favorite game on the PS4. Oh, and go download your IGC games for August now because today is the very last day to do so.

Questions: First, are the matches completely scripted on the NXT specials? Stuff like Sasha stomping on the hand seems improvised. Not that it matters in the end because it was awesome either way. Second, are the matches on the NXT tapings also rehearsed? Do those give us a better idea of the women calling it on the fly? Maybe they call it at house shows? But yeah, letting them do so at a big show or two would be conducive to them working on PPV each month.