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WWE Raw 7-14-14


MGFanJay

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I'm waiting for the flop where they have them drop Cesaro and start using his real name.

That wouldn't be a bad thing. Claudio Castagnoli is a great name. The guy is blessed with a name that makes a great ring name.

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You can only push so many guys at once. They're going all-in with Roman Reigns as the strongman. And this is deservedly so, since they expertly timed The Shield break-up. He had a few years of build-up to get him to the "next big thing" point, and now it's time for that pay-off.

They can pull the trigger on Cesaro anytime they want/need to. He's so talented and great. It's awesome they took The Swing out of his arsenal for now. When he turns face, and he breaks that out on Heyman or whoever, it's going to get a gigantic pop.

But seriously -- how many guys can get pushes all at once? Someone has to lose to make other guys look good. If Cesaro beats Kofi a few times, what does that do? But Kofi upsetting Cesaro (and Big E. getting involved, too) at least puts a little intrigue into their storyline. And it gives Kofi some credibility when he goes back to jobbing in a few months.

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They can pull the trigger on Cesaro anytime they want/need to. He's so talented and great. It's awesome they took The Swing out of his arsenal for now. When he turns face, and he breaks that out on Heyman or whoever, it's going to get a gigantic pop.

 

Is there a time limit for how long you can keep a guy in a holding pattern?  What are the examples of a guy on the rise being put into a sideline program before being given a strong push without being harmed?  (The decision to sideline him in favor of pushing someone else can be bad, it just has to be something that doesn't lower his peak of overness.)

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I won't lie, I just wanna hear a packed arena blow up with the "HEY" when he comes out as Claudio.

Abso-fucking-lutely! It was awesome in smaller buildings like the Hammerstein. I could imagine what MSG would be like "Heying" along with Claudio.

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Guys who are awesome and great will always find a way to make what they do compelling. Cesaro beating the hell out of Kofi after losing to him is certainly that. He beat his ass like a dog. He looks like a total sore loser AND also like someone who has to find that next gear somehow, and once it's there the world is his.

If a guy can't survive not getting pushed for a spell -- sort of just being there -- then he's not that good. Punk led the New Nexus, which was a pretty DOA group of flunkies he had and came out of it the hottest character in years. Daniel Bryan got massively over with Team Hell No and lost to Sheamus in the biggest squash of them all.

If you're truly talented, they can find a lot and get you in there for good.

Look at Dolph. Dolph's STILL over despite not really winning all that much. He figured out a way to do so. They might not necessarily push him again for whatever reason, but they COULD push him and it would work.

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You can only push so many guys at once. They're going all-in with Roman Reigns as the strongman. And this is deservedly so, since they expertly timed The Shield break-up. He had a few years of build-up to get him to the "next big thing" point, and now it's time for that pay-off.

They can pull the trigger on Cesaro anytime they want/need to. He's so talented and great. It's awesome they took The Swing out of his arsenal for now. When he turns face, and he breaks that out on Heyman or whoever, it's going to get a gigantic pop.

But seriously -- how many guys can get pushes all at once? Someone has to lose to make other guys look good. If Cesaro beats Kofi a few times, what does that do? But Kofi upsetting Cesaro (and Big E. getting involved, too) at least puts a little intrigue into their storyline. And it gives Kofi some credibility when he goes back to jobbing in a few months.

 

I think the problem is that there's not a well-booked midcard. It seems like the only well-booked programs are main event programs now.

 

Back when you could push, for example, Steve Austin, The Rock, and HHH at the same time by sticking HHH as a second to Shawn Michaels against the Undertaker, pushing Austin vs Bret and then Owen, and pushing The Rock as an agitator within the Nation of Domination, this wouldn't be a problem. If they would just have Cesaro and Big E having a meaningful midcard feud over who is the strongest while Ambrose and Rollins work each other and Reigns gets the main event feud by being paired with Cena, we wouldn't be having this issue.

 

It's just that we know that WWE is so bad at doing anything coherent as far as mid-card feuds go. 

 

EDIT: Just saw your second post, Gregg. I agree that a guy who is really, really good can keep himself over, but I don't think that is a good argument for de-pushing or sidelining a guy. At best, you just aren't getting full mileage out of someone that you should be utilizing. Bryan got sidelined to some degree, and now that they're finally ready to use him, his career might be over (though I would say that the Bryan/Kane pairing is one of the best, most consistent mid-card acts that they've actually developed in a few years; they actually do really well with telling the stories comedy tag team pairings - see Black Gold/Bookdust/whatever for another example). 

 

At worst, when you don't protect a guy, you don't get what you could have gotten out of him. Let's say Cesaro cannot recover from this, which I don't believe, but let's go with that. This is a guy that you could have gotten a compelling run out of opposite Bryan (or Cena once Bryan got hurt) for at least a couple months that would have found better reception than Bryan's work with Kane. If you're trying to sell the Network, you have to rope in as many hardcores as possible, and Bryan/Cesaro or even Cena/Cesaro is more likely to do that than Bryan/Kane. 

 

Furthermore, isn't a mark of admiration for some promoters that they got more out of guys than they should have? Isn't this why people exalt Paul Heyman? He was able to get 911 over or whoever by being creative and milking what he could for all it was worth. We should expect good bookers to emphasize the strengths and play down the weaknesses of their wrestlers, not just say "Oh, well, he couldn't stay over on his own, so forget him."

 

One last thing re: Dolph being over. He is over, but he's over for meta-reasons; the fans wanted him on top, and WWE never gave them that. It's actually funny because while Dolph got over by being super-athletic and cocky, he stays over purely because the fans are doing a miniature version of what they did with Bryan for him as well. I don't think that he is a fair example of guys who stay over even when being crapped on just because his circumstances are so weird. 

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Yeah, the attitude that you can just push guys or not whenever you want if they're good is exactly why the mid-card has been such a mess for years now. It's created this amorphous blob of guys who have all beaten each other, all had extended losing streaks and been made to look like idiots on television, and all won secondary titles before and after (and hell, during) said losing streaks and idiot-booking. No one is any better or worse than anybody else, so it's just an inerchangeable mess of guys whom the crowd still likes but will never see as "special" again.

That's why the Shield was so remarkable: they were treated like a big deal, rarely lost, and always had something to do. And now, lo and behold, all three still look like future top-level guys. And that's why sending a guy like Cesaro through ANOTHER losing streak phase makes no sense, no matter what sunshine and rainbows spin you try to put on it. If he's a special talent, stop going out of your goddamned way to tell the fans otherwise.

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I like how Ebbie is trying desperately not to use the "He's boring" cliche. 

 

As a heel at the time that shows....incompetence in his role?

 

Like Steve Austin in 96. 

 

If you listen to his podcast Austin is the first to say that he was a good hand in the ring, a technician and what-have-you but that isn't enough to get you to the top....he makes this point about Cesaro too that he's a physical specimen but his character is non-existent and he needs to begin defining it

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He's already over, the thing that hurts is when they try to help him. 

It feels like he is given a new character every other month and as soon as he adjust, he is changed again. 

Who cares if he is getting face reactions as a heel, run with it, They are not rich enough to be choosy. 

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He's already over, the thing that hurts is when they try to help him. 

It feels like he is given a new character every other month and as soon as he adjust, he is changed again. 

Who cares if he is getting face reactions as a heel, run with it, They are not rich enough to be choosy.

I can understand the thinking, though. Remember this was right after Mania. They'd just pushed Bryan into the top spot, the Shield had turned face and Cena wasn't going anywhere. They probably figured they were set at the top of the card for babyfaces, but for heels, they had HHH who doesn't wrestle full-time, Batista for just another month, Orton, and Kane. Looking at that, if I had someone moving up towards upper-card status, I'd prefer he be heel, too.

Which isn't to say they shouldn't be correcting their mistake right about now, but this is WWE were talking about. They don't let go of a bad idea just cuz.

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The entire "you have to get yourself over" talking point has been proven time and time again to be bullshit, at least when it comes to anything WWE related over the past decade or so.  It flies in the face of everything that has been stated many times over about Kevin Dunn's penchant for having such a stranglehold on the production and creative process and being unwilling to let anything in the storytelling organically develop on its own, without his trademark hamfisted approach to a given narrative.  The only time there ever seems to be any doubt as to what's going to happen with a storyline is when you run into a situation like Daniel Bryan's road to Wrestlemania, where the right thing to do in order to satisfy the audience seems so blatant that you wonder whether or not it will actually happen just because it flies in the face of the cookie-cutter formula for building an angle that's been employed for what feels like an eternity at this juncture.  The unwillingness to trust someone like Cesaro with the prospect of getting over on his own is why he swapped Zeb for Heyman in a virtual like for like mouthpiece substitution, because they apparently cling to a deep-rooted and unsubstantiated fear that his accent = immediate failure to communicate what his character is about on the microphone and backstage.

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 Claudio Castagnoli is a great name. The guy is blessed with a name that makes a great ring name.

 

 

If you think about it, Dean Ambrose is on the list of "Wrestlers who's real names would be great for Wrestling, but would be a terrible fit for them."

 

Him and Ricky Steamboat is about it though. Maybe Bruiser Brody.

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