Is It Chilly In Here? I Feel a DRAFT - Smackdown - 7/19/2016

[Ace]

20 minutes ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

Of course, this whole thing was doomed from the start because not even Shane McMahon can be seen as getting one over on Stephanie. Until she is no longer a focal point of storylines that gets to cut the balls off the actual wrestlers; this is what we're going to get. There are some on this board that have been noticeably absent from this thread that will misconstrue this as me having an issue with a successful women in a traditionally male dominated industry or me wanting to see Stephanie the victim of domestic violence or whatever her apologists come up with. I don't see how some can simply chalk it up to a heel getting heel heat. 

It's literally why I stopped watching the show with any regularity. One person has literally gotten one over on Stephanie in the last 5 years of this never-ending angle. And that was Vicki Guerrero on her last night.

 

[Nice Guy Eddie]

31 minutes ago, zev said:

Bo Dallas and Braun Strowman will be the NWO B&W version of the Wyatt Family.

Also, I am happy for all the people in this thread that are happy Lawler won't be on RAW or SD.

 

 

 

The thought of the Wyatt b-team makes me want to hear a mash up of the nWo b-theme and "Broken Out in Love".

[evilwaldo]

The last time someone went over Stephanie in an angle was Jericho way back at the end of the Attitude Era or at least that is the last time I remember.

I can't stand Stephanie and worry that the women will not get enough time on the new shows.  I worry that they will bomb with Bayley because they have no idea how to handle her as a character on prime time television.

I think Cena, AJ, Dean, Rollins, etc. will get the bulk of the TV time leaving 2-3 minute matches for the women and cruisers. 

When there are 5 titles for 3 hours of television time and 4 titles for 2 hours of television time if you are not in a title segment you will be fighting for time.  If the WWE title gets 15-20 minutes a night to sell PPV's and the secondary titles (US/IC and Tag Team) get 10-15 what is left for the CW and women?  How do you build secondary feuds?  Too many titles and too many divisions for too little television every week.

My fear is the women get a total of seven minutes for two matches and vignettes every week.

You see, you can have it both ways.

[Burgundy LaRue]

The last times anyone got anything over on Steph:

-- Vickie's last night as she pushed Steph into the mud pool

-- WM 31 where Rhonda Rousey put Steph in an armbar

-- WM 32 where Roman Reigns accidentally speared her (they made sure to frame it as unintentional)

Both Reigns and Sting also prevented Steph from slapping them at times.

[StretchMediatedHypertrophy]

I'm going to be the guy who says let's wait and see. The truth is that usually Smackdown ended up with what looked like a crappy roster,but it usually ended up being the more consistently watchable show.  I don't expect it to be much different this time.

Traditionally being on RAW was more dicey but I think a 3 hour show will mitigate that. Yeah Cesaro likely isn't getting a push, but if so that's because they don't want to push  him. He won't get the additional chance to have workrate matches on Smackdown, but mini-classics that don't end up meaning anything has actually hurt the product more than it has helped.

We're likely 7 months off the next draft.

[piranesi]

14 minutes ago, Burgundy LaRue said:

The last times anyone got anything over on Steph:

-- Vickie's last night as she pushed Steph into the mud pool

-- WM 31 where Rhonda Rousey put Steph in an armbar

-- WM 32 where Roman Reigns accidentally speared her (they made sure to frame it as unintentional)

Both Reigns and Sting also prevented Steph from slapping them at times.

In a larger more meta sense remember HHH is in the process of slowly putting himself over her and the whole clan.  He's just waiting for

1) Vince to die

2) The moon door to be finished

[Marty Sugar]

11 hours ago, Matt D said:

Ok, so despite my positivity it's a little hard to put together a SD PPV right now.

Wyatt vs (here's where the problems start) Kane? Crews? Del Rio?
 

Bray vs. Crews could be interesting, especially worked-shoot promos about how Crews was supposed to be a big deal and then immediately got forgotten about.

Bray vs. Del Rio is also interesting for the potential shootfight. I always enjoyed Bray on PPV when he didn't give a shit and stiffed guys like Ryback and Reigns...imagine if you have both guys getting angry and trying to knock each other's block off.

[AxB]

How's this for an idea: The World title* lives on whatever show the person holding it works, BUT he has to defend it on every PPV, so if the champ's on WWE Red, he defends on WWE Blue PPVs (against blue opponents) every sixty-or-so days. So the onus is on the GM of the brand without the title to pick the best possible challenger to send at him, so they can try to steal the belt and have the champ on their show instead of the other one. Whilst the GM of the show that has the champ can send a bunch of lame ducks to give him easy defences and keep him fresh (or alternatively a series of unstoppable super legends to strengthen their hold on the belt by having a stronger champion holding it). Makes it more of a team game, then.

* And possibly other titles as well. Women's and Tag Team, IC and US can stay brand exclusive.

[Marty Sugar]

I had hoped they would truly set it up like the territory days and use all three shows (Raw, SD and NXT) in just such a scenario AxB mentioned. You could have each main champ (World, Women's, Tag), touring each show for a month, wrestling non-title or tag matches (if a singles champ), setting up angles and leading to PPV/Takeover showdowns.

[RIPPA]

Per Alvarez

If he hadn't failed his now two tests - Brock Lesnar was to be the #1 overall pick

[Spritenaut 32]

12 minutes ago, RIPPA said:

Per Alvarez

If he hadn't failed his now two tests - Brock Lesnar was to be the #1 overall pick

And.....?

I mean, it's a worked draft.  It's not real.  Brock still gets paid the same.  He still works the same amount.  And he still got drafted to the same show.  Am I supposed to somehow care that he got drafted 5th or 7th or whatever it was.  It's not a real punishment.

I kinda want Vince to throw that out as a defense against the people calling for him to suspend Brock or whatever.  No, wait, actually what I want is for Vince to cite due process and say he can't suspend Brock for failing a drug test administered by (?) the UFC because Brock never failed a WWE wellness test.  That would be amusing.

Edit: Actually, I do expect the WWE to punish Brock for the two failed tests.  Now that he can't threaten to go to UFC (I'm assuming he'll be banned for two years?), I expect Vince to force Brock into a worse contract next time and make the Beast work house shows or some such if he wants paid.

[odessasteps]

I wonder if Vince low-balled brock, he would try to go back to NJPW.

[zev]

1 hour ago, piranesi said:

In a larger more meta sense remember HHH is in the process of slowly putting himself over her and the whole clan.  He's just waiting for

1) Vince to die

2) The moon door to be finished

3) His daughters to be old enough to compete for the Women's Title. Or the IC Title, for I just don't see them letting Chyna be the only woman to ever hold that belt.

4) Enough years to pass before Hollywood decides that yes, he can star in the latest reboot of Conan.

[JCM]

3 hours ago, Marty Sugar said:

Bray vs. Crews could be interesting, especially worked-shoot promos about how Crews was supposed to be a big deal and then immediately got forgotten about.

Then Crews would tell Bray he's been in WWE 3 years and never won a title or a WrestleMania match.

[Marty Sugar]

1 minute ago, JCM said:

Then Crews would tell Bray he's been in WWE 3 years and never won a title or a WrestleMania match.

Like Crews has the promo skills to get all that out in one go...

[Spritenaut 32]

For some reason, I want to see Kallisto become a manager.

I may be a bad person.

 

 

[Niners Fan in CT]

A lot of people are concerned with Smackdown's roster and it's very true as we've discussed, it's very thin.  But it does leave some potential for guys like a Corbin or a Crews to be elevated. Just using them as examples. 

Cesaro was very frustrated and I think that speaks to a bigger issue. The RAW roster is great on paper but I feel that guys like Cesaro, Zayn, Owens are going to have a very tough time moving up the card. Not much has changed for those individuals.

[Kyuubi]

17 hours ago, Matt D said:

Ok, so despite my positivity it's a little hard to put together a SD PPV right now.

Ambrose vs Styles
Cena vs Orton
Miz vs Ziggler 
American Alpha vs Usos
Wyatt vs (here's where the problems start) Kane? Crews? Del Rio?
Nattie vs Becky (fight forever?)
And... then what? Kallisto vs Corbin? 
Hype Bros vs ... Breezango?
It's pretty rough at this point.

The only match on that card I would want to see is Styles vs Ambrose...and I've already seen Styles vs Ambrose. I've seen all of these matchups. Unless they picking up dudes from the CWC, this is a shitshow for Smackdown that probably would have better utilized guys like Cesaro, Sami Zayn, and Kevin Owens.

Aw fuck, I am not even sure AJ Styles would be enough to make me listen to JBL.

[The Natural]

WWE's had all this time to plan this. Yeah, plan and WWE,

The writing and decisions of Daniel Bryan/Shane McMahon reminded me how JJ Dillon was made to look like a fucking idiot in WCW when he produced contracts for Sting to wrestle a member of the n.W.o. at Starcade 1997. The manager of the Four Fucking Horseman finally realized that its Hollywood Hogan Sting wanted. Dammit.

Cesaro deserves better but we've said that fir ages. Owens deserves a bigger push as well.

[The Natural]

On 20/07/2016 at 3:41 AM, Big Fresh said:

Wyatt Family is over.

Once they were before getting fed to John Cena and Undertaker/Kane.

[Curt McGirt]

12 hours ago, piranesi said:

The thing is, what is logically supposed to be the end of that he was going for?  I'm here to make a good lucha what?

make a good lucha impression?

make a good lucha proud?

make a good lucha sandwich?

 

[RIPPA]

Per Meltzer - there will be another round of NXT call-ups in Sept.

So most likely a lot of the Takeover card folks.

Specifically regarding Bayley - there is still the chance that she will be Sasha's mystery partner but Sasha specifically said it wouldn't be Bayley (I don't remember when that happened)

[Technico Support]

Holy shit this fucking draft.  Seriously.  Holy.  Fucking.  Shit.

Remember all the cool ideas and speculation leading up to this?

• Maybe the second brand wouldn't be Smackdown, but NXT instead. 
• Show-specific divisions (all women on one show, all cruisers on the other).
• Mystery wrestlers like MVP getting drafted.
• Bayley, Joe, Nakamura or (insert worthwhile NXT wrestler here) getting a call up.
• Smackdown becoming the show for the hot young talent.
• Smackdown getting a different set and different look.

And look at what we got.  The opposite of all of that. 

• Nope, it's Smackdown.  A passe name that's been around almost 20 years and is indisputably recognized as the B-show.
• Cruisers and women are spread everywhere with no rhyme or reason so half have nothing to compete for.  Same goes for teams
• Zero wrestlers from outside the company.
• Instead of the obvious call-ups, we got Nia Jax and Mojo fucking Rawley.  What the fuck is the value in Nia Jax?  This has got to just be a favor to The Rock to keep him happy, right?   Both are untalented and absolutely useless.  Is somebody trying to sabotage HHH?  "Man, these call-ups are not good."
• Cena, Orton, Miz, Kane are the opposite of hot young talent
• Same old look.  Can't upset Kevin Dunn's lazy, cookie cutter, McDonald's approach to his "craft."

And the steaming turd on top of the shit sundae, Owens and Zayn's hot feud losing all its steam to make a 49 year old look strong.  It really takes commitment to reach this spectacular level of incompetence.  WWE could fuck up a wet dream.

Oh and how has nobody mentioned Stephanie talking all over every single video package?  Every god damn time a guy was picked and then ran a video, there she was yapping like the attention seeking buffoon she is. 

[MORELOCK]

13 hours ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

There are some on this board that have been noticeably absent from this thread that will misconstrue this as me having an issue with a successful women in a traditionally male dominated industry or me wanting to see Stephanie the victim of domestic violence or whatever her apologists come up with. I don't see how some can simply chalk it up to a heel getting heel heat. 

Not sure why you're indirectly taking a shot at Gregg here for calling Nate out on his shit. Maybe he's absent because he doesn't want to constantly argue with the people that ride his ass all over the board for liking the product. I know *you* didn't say it, but this is a direct quote from the locked thread:

'I actively hate Stephanie McMahon.  Everything she does, everything she says, how she says everything, how she walks to the ring, how she stands in it.  She's no actor, so I'm almost 100% convinced based on her body language alone that she is a most loathsome person.  I imagine that HHH has had several more-than-passing fantasies of killing her in her sleep (or at least farting in her mouth) after some argument over the toilet paper roll or dishes piling up or some shit.

It's not at "I hope she dies in a mass shooting" levels, but I'm at a point where I'd settle for at least "nicked".'
 

Stephanie's presence on WWE TV is quite irritating, and not in a heelish way, but that is some seriously vile woman-hating bullshit - and it's not the first time that particular dude has spoken that way.

[MonteCarl]

The current rosters after the Draft are not going to be the long standing final rosters moving forward. Why/How would a returning guy like MVP or whomever else has been rumored end up in a draft of current WWE superstars? Now that the current roster has been drafted, the GMs can now go outside the roster to build up their brands more.

Don't get me wrong, the Draft itself was a shitshow, but people trying to make PPV cards or talking about how weak the rosters are now are being shortsighted. I know it's cliche and almost never really applies, but "wait and see" is most applicable here. Let's see what happens on SD after Battleground and the week after before shitting on the weak roster.