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On Cesaro:

Where should he be right now, exactly after his Battle Royale win? This is a legitimate question.

A face and right in the mix to potentially be in line at a title shot at Lesnar, probably in Zigglers spot right now. Certainly not a mid level heel, when the crowd was ready to cheer him.

That was a WrestleMania and post-WM crowd that cheered from him that are completely different from every other WWE crowd. That should be factored into the discussion.

And he's essentially at the spot where you'd like him at right now, just a heel as opposed to a face. Is it THAT objectionable?

There are also more worthy candidates in line against Lesnar: Cena, Orton, Rollins and Reigns when he comes back. Three of those guys are as good as Cesaro in terms of work (and Cesaro's excellent) and Reigns has had the narrative push for two years.

Two of those guys you mentioned are heels, and you can't sell a PPV on a heel vs. heel match unless both acts are incredibly special like SHIELD/Wyatts. Orton nor Rollins feel special. Cena/Lesnar has main evented 2 of the last 3 PPVs, and Reigns is A: Hurt and B: Not ready. They have no title threats beyond Cena that will headline a PPV right now. Fuck, it'd do more for Dean to go against Lesnar and lose in a match were he gets the shit kicked out of him then a feud with Wyatt will do. Why are we getting Cena/Lesnar instead?
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Tune-out triggers for me these days:  IWC, hive mind, etc.

Before I discovered the Internets, I knew that I liked Bret Hart and Randy Savage more than Hulk Hogan and Ultimate Warrior.  I dug those flippy WCW light heavyweights like Liger, Pillman, and that Benoit fella.  Those were my favorite guys to watch before I knew a damn thing about ratingz and buyratez and workratez.

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I think at this point, the IC/US straps are viewed at C-level titles. Thus, feuding over these titles actually pushes you down the card.

 

Sheamus, Ziggler, and Cesaro should all be in the title hunt. It doesn't mean they should be world champions, but they are all above the IC/US titles.

 

So, when you have a Cesaro dropping multiple falls for a title nobody wants it helps no one.

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Cesaro also isn't a great promo. They put him in with Heyman, probably the best manager of all-time, and it didn't click. That factors in, too.

 

Because the company literally had no plans for him beyond that. Even putting him with Heyman was a misstep.

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Cesaro also isn't a great promo. They put him in with Heyman, probably the best manager of all-time, and it didn't click. That factors in, too.

Because the company literally had no plans for him beyond that. Even putting him with Heyman was a misstep.

Seriously, the "he was with Heyman and it didn't work" thing is amazing to me. Heyman spent all of his promo time putting over managing THE MAN WHO ENDED THE STEAK which didn't do an ounce for Cesaro himself. It made Cesaro esteem secondary. The fact that they kept him involved with RVD and still heel Jack Swagger didn't help matters.
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Rusev flying around in a jetpack is gonna hit the Cena wall come about Wrestlemania.

 

I don't think Cesaro's ready for a PPV main event yet, but he needs some momentum to head him in that direction. If you're not pushing guys to the best of your ability toward being stars, what do you even have them around for? WWE needs all the stars it can create.

 

1) Let's complain about Cena beating Rusev when it happens and, if it does unfold this way, how it happens. It hasn't happened yet; ergo, you can't complain about it.

2) The WWE has a limited amount of time per show they can spend on each show. Pushes aren't as dependent on who wins and loses matches as much as they are devoted to the amount of TV time and stories a guy gets put into. They put time into Ambrose and Rollins and the fallout with Cena and Orton. And also Rusev's reign-of-terror. And The Bellas. And Titus/Slater vs. Rose/The Bunny. And MizDow. And AJ/Paige.

I would have rather seen Cesaro and Ziggler have something better than "let's feud over this title." But I get why everything else was done. Ambrose/Rollins and Cena/Orton are the main event(s). I think The Bellas are awful but they're from Total Divas, so that makes sense to use them.The Bunny stuff is their current comedy feud, which is the type of thing you need when you have a huge mainstream audience that also caters to kids. I don't really like MizDow all that much but I see why it's done. AJ/Paige is the serious woman's wrestling feud and I can get behind that. And Rusev and Lana are a money act (put over by two pros).

 

So there are people they're devoting their resources to over Cesaro. Any argument for him and Ziggler to get more time to develop a feud essentially comes down to my personal tastes as to what I'd rather see. But anything they've given TV time to has an understandable reason why it's there.

I know we complain about how there's too much TV time and we need less. Well, that would comes at an expense and the complaints change -- The matches aren't long, more guys don't get TV time, etc.

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Wait wait wait. Are you seriously trying to tell us a 3 hour show isn't enough time to get over a midcard angle? This company 10 years ago not only could do that in a 2 hour show, they were doing it for two different brands!

 

I think they could use their time wisely. But they have a gigantic roster. Even if you had three hours of TV every single night, someone loses out. Right now it's Cesaro. Or even someone like Zeb, who rules and is super over.

I'm sure even back in the 2-hour days I could find plenty of complaints online about who people wished had more TV time. Or I could find plenty of examples of people (myself likely included) complaining about how every match was three minutes long and weren't really all that good.

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Wait wait wait. Are you seriously trying to tell us a 3 hour show isn't enough time to get over a midcard angle? This company 10 years ago not only could do that in a 2 hour show, they were doing it for two different brands!

 

I think they could use their time wisely. But they have a gigantic roster. Even if you had three hours of TV every single night, someone loses out. Right now it's Cesaro. Or even someone like Zeb, who rules and is super over.

I'm sure even back in the 2-hour days I could find plenty of complaints online about who people wished had more TV time.

Yeah, I'm sure there was, but there were still over, strong midcard feuds were you bought people disliked each other and wanted to fight each other. Matt Hardy-MVP was the feud of the year over the US belt. They don't need to get everyone on the show. Fuck, they aren't even close. But you can use the time for the people you are actually booking wisely. The E has flat out failed at that this year.

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They don't really have that big a roster. In fact, that's why we're about to get a number of NXT callups, I'm guessing.

 

Really, what WWE needs to do is to more tightly structure the shows that they do have. Smackdown tends to be more of a repeat of what happened on RAW instead of a progression of story; in fact, what they should probably do is make angles that are primarily completed on Smackdown and that only cross over onto RAW in video package form or (very occasionally) in terms of progressing the story. Superstars and Main Event act as large RAW recaps with a match or two on them; they should cut the RAW recaps so that together, Superstars and ME recap the four biggest feuds on RAW and Smackdown, two each per show, and add a third match. This is where you have your midcard and lower fodder have Superstars/ME-contained mini feuds or allow your guys on the edge of the upper-midcard to come on the show and get wins over the midcard guys to cement their superiority over the guys in that range. 

 

Besides that, WWE now has a whole Network to give extra time to feuds that they somehow can't fit onto their tons of hours of network time per week. Why can't they have Network-exclusive in-studio specials that help progress feuds through interviews? Bring back Sean Mooney in the Control Center for an hour a week, just bookending promos by letting the audience know where the WWE is coming for house shows, RAW and Smackdown, and PPV events where people can see these feuds play out LIVE!~

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I think the bottom line for me is this:

The WWE has a lot of people it caters to in its viewing audience. It tries to give everyone a little bit of something. There are things for adult hardcore fans (Ambrose vs. Rollins) and more mainstream fans (Orton vs. Cena) and women (The Bellas) and kids (The Bunny). Not everything is going to work for everyone. They can do a lot of things better but they do a lot of things well.

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I think the bottom line for me is this:

The WWE has a lot of people it caters to in its viewing audience. It tries to give everyone a little bit of something. There are things for adult hardcore fans (Ambrose vs. Rollins) and more mainstream fans (Orton vs. Cena) and women (The Bellas) and kids (The Bunny). Not everything is going to work for everyone. They can do a lot of things better but they do a lot of things well.

 

Ban plz.

 

Sorry.  It's for your own good.  You apparently have no idea how the internet works.

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I disagree, but we are never going to agree on that.

In your first post in this thread post show, you said WWE is a soap opera. To me, at the moment, it's more of a sitcom. It's got catchphrases, it's got it's silly jokes, and at the end of the day, everything goes back to the status quo. And until that changes, I can't buy them being willing to create new stars when they seemingly don't want to do it.

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Last night, in the middle of the Rollins v. Ambrose match, Bray inexplicably breaks up the match. It was lazy because they could not think of a satisfying way to end the match. It was insulting because Bray doesn't have any motivation to insert himself into the feud other than, "he's Bray Wyatt, he doesn't need any motivation." And again, it does not appear that the distraction ended last night. Ambrose will now be more concerned with getting even against Bray than some guy named Seth Rollins. 

 

 

This was my initial reaction as well.  Now that I've had time to reflect I'm starting to wonder if they might be onto a great new form of story telling. Just imagine how much more interesting Romeo and Juliet could have been. Instead of them committing suicide King Claudius from Hamlet could have ran in at the end and poisoned them. Setting up the next play.  I don't think the audience would have left unsatisfied and would be ready to see Claudius get his comeuppance. When Hamlet is just about to kill King Claudius Macbeth could run in and lead a coup. We just need to alter our own expectations of what constitutes great storytelling.

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The pace in the Ambrose/Rollins match was a bit too slow for me. Loved the double drop from the cage, but it kind of hurt the flow of the whole match with the whole stretcher thing. Still I was really into the match and I did not mind the Wyatt interference at all.

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Bray Wyatt seems like a big step down for Ambrose. If you're an Ambrose believer, it's a clear sign that he's not their dude and they're not changing their direction.

 

Say what you will about Wyatt but it's never a great sign for a guy if you're doing a reboot a year or so in.  Not even a turn, just a "you won your big feud but go fuck off for a month so people might care about you again."

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I think the bottom line for me is this:

The WWE has a lot of people it caters to in its viewing audience. It tries to give everyone a little bit of something. There are things for adult hardcore fans (Ambrose vs. Rollins) and more mainstream fans (Orton vs. Cena) and women (The Bellas) and kids (The Bunny). Not everything is going to work for everyone. They can do a lot of things better but they do a lot of things well.

Point me towards what they're doing well.

And by this, I don't mean what you like. We all like different shit. I mean, as objectively as you can, point to where WWE is succeeding right now. Who's getting over?

Actually, there's a question. Who is more over than they were after Wrestlemania?

Ambrose, clearly.

Rusev, also clearly.

After that, it's a few maybes, (Rollins, Dust Brothers, possibly Mizdow, though I think that stretches the definition of "over",) and a hell of a lot of people in the same position or worse than they were 6 months ago.

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None of this wouldn't have happened if that pussy Daniel Bryan didn't get hurt.  IT's all his fault.  World's biggest heel.  Seriously though, the best thing that ever happened to D-Bry's championship reign was the injury.  I can only imagine the silly shit they would have him doing all summer.  

 

They'd probably drop him into a go nowhere feud with Kane where they go out of their way to ignore the history to two have. Oh wait.

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None of this wouldn't have happened if that pussy Daniel Bryan didn't get hurt.  IT's all his fault.  World's biggest heel.  Seriously though, the best thing that ever happened to D-Bry's championship reign was the injury.  I can only imagine the silly shit they would have him doing all summer.  

 

I'd imagine it would be Bryan who would have been destroyed by Lesner instead of Cena and everyone would have been crying about how he was being buried.

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Lesnar/Cena III is setting up Cena to get his win back. Explain to me how that's the most interesting thing they could be doing with Lesnar. Cena is a 15-time champion, who cares anymore? Clearly not anyone new because the network numbers are not good.. This was a perfect time to try something different but nope they refuse to do it.

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Here's an additional thought. This company has had Lesnar for two and a half years. His matches have been against Cena (3 times, about to be 4), Triple h (3 times), Punk, Big Show, and Taker. That's going to be 10 matches, and the only one that can be described as even being close to helping a young guy out, is someone who isn't even with the company any more.

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This discussion makes me want to get a group of people to read Raw and PPV threads like they were wrestling shows where the people who liked and disliked the show were the faces and heels, arguments are matches, and >4 paragraph posts are promos, then critique the threads like we do the WWE shows.

I bet the arguments would look exactly the same.

This idea has merit.

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Kayfabe wise this seems like an extension of the Wyatts-Shield feud.  Plenty of ppl here speculated that the Authority hired the Wyatts as their henchmen to take the Shield out before and after the Evolution feud, so i'm going to assume this is another of HHH's master plans to have the Wyatts take out Ambrose to free up the Golden Boy Rollins for his cash in.  HHH is just going to kick back and laugh about letting those 2 lunatics take each other out.  Hell we need a new Corporate Ministry while we're at it.  Maybe the Authority realize how incompetent Orton & Kane are as hired muscle and we get Harper & Rowan as the new enforcers for the Authority, so the Wyatts can back up Rollins against Ambrose, Orton, Kane & Cena.  (feel free to sub out Kane for Ziggler or something)

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I think that the idea that WWE is doing a lot right at this time is questionable in itself. The Network is struggling because they can't generate consistent interest in the shows. They had to go right back to NBCU with a deal for way less than NASCAR got despite the crowing of Vince McMahon to investors pre-TV deal. The company is staying level by riding John Cena and trying to diversify their revenue streams, but that doesn't take away from the fact that they really don't have a handle on how to create a bigger demand for this Network that they have hitched their wagon to now that they've dumped all over the PPV model.

 

The Network is somehow struggling when it is a slam dunk to buy even for people who only buy WM every year because it represents a better value. This should tell everyone something about how bankrupt the company is from a creative standpoint. They're trying to give away tons of content for the price of a Big Four PPV in HD and they cannot do it

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