Hell In A Cell VIII

[Niners Fan in CT]

I didn't think Sasha and Charlotte was bad at all.  I liked it a lot more than Rollins/Owens.  It told a good story with Sasha's back and I thought Sasha was hitting everything, I'm not seeing the sloppiness that others saw outside of the bad table spot. 

The RVD "Spider-Man" spot was neat.  They were both laying in the slaps and chops too. I loved the powerbomb deal but I felt the no-contest aspect of it with the EMTS and referees went on way too long. 

The finish flat out sucked.  Very underwhelming.  The crowd was as silent as... fuck they were expecting somehow someway that they could not possibly be the end but no people, it was. Vince has no fucking clue what to do with this division so I guess we will have yet another rematch.

I know Charlotte has been good lately too but let's be honest guys...   nobody wants to see the title go back and forth.. back and forth...   it's terrible. Let someone have a fucking run already.

[Niners Fan in CT]

1 hour ago, matt925 said:

Every person watching knew that the match wasn't ending like that. It was a waste of time. 

This is a ridiculous complaint. Everyone in the UNIVERSE knew that Reigns was beating Rusev. They had a nice match but no heat. Reigns powered out of an accolade with a chain wrapped around his face and mouth and still won.   Was this a complete waste of time?

[Niners Fan in CT]

Coming out of this PPV it's clear that Charlotte and Reigns are headlining WrestleMania but they have one hell of a road ahead of them if they expect anyone to care. Reigns, I've been less critical of this push than most but it's not working.  The Cena 2006 stuff is not working for him at all. 

[blitzkrieg]

The Sasha stretcher spot went on for so long that I was hoping that they'd actually just have someone come out and replace Sasha and beat Charlotte for the title. Sasha getting stretchered out only for the crowd to cheer Bayley for beating Charlotte would have been perfect motivation for a Sasha heel turn. Plus since Raw can't book multiple women angles at once, they might as well put Sasha on the shelf for a month or two.

[Rev Ray]

I think someone identified 3.0 as the EMT's.  They managed to put a camera cable into Sasha's neck brace.

 

Overall, I like the women's match as the main.  Of the cell matches, it probably had the most of the heat of the three.  Sasha continues to wrestle like WWE has the AJW manditory retirement age.  That finish was all wrong.

 

I have really hated the build for TJ/Kendrick, but on the post-game show, Kendrick sort of made it clear it was all him working  TJ to sucker him in, but it seems like it went completely over Booker's head and no one will probably see it.

[Burgundy LaRue]

For the Reigns-Rusev match:  was Lana around?  I don't remember seeing her.  I wonder how that will play into future storylines.

[Guest Edwin]

2 minutes ago, Burgundy LaRue said:

For the Reigns-Rusev match:  was Lana around?  I don't remember seeing her.  I wonder how that will play into future storylines.

No. They even mentioned briefly on the post show that she wasn't around aside from introducing him for his entrance.

[Niners Fan in CT]

I worry about where Rusev and Sasha go from here. Neither are going to be in title feuds and there's nobody off the top of my head I can think of that they could feud with.  MAYBE Sasha gets Nia.  Rusev looks like he will be floundering around in the midcard scene but away from the U.S. title so what does that leave?

[Burgundy LaRue]

5 minutes ago, Edwin said:

No. They even mentioned briefly on the post show that she wasn't around aside from introducing him for his entrance.

Thanks, thought I had missed her while settling in to watch the show. I didn't watch Rusev's entrance.

[APO]

Found Owens/Rollins to be dreadfully boring. Seth basically no-selling the apron powerbomb from last week is some bullshit. There were a couple of good spots but I just found it hard to care about either guy when Jericho's the only interesting thing about the feud. Roman/Rusev was good, but it still feels like they had a better match in them, so meh. The Foley tribute stretcher deal in the beginning of Sasha/Charlotte was cute, the match was brutal, and Charlotte winning brought the apathy. Charlotte's won me over the last few months by being awesome on the stick and in the ring, but much like Seth, I'm tired of seeing her in the title picture.

Watched a stream of the World Series instead of Bayley/Dana. Cruiserweight Title match was meh, TJP being the focus of the division was a mistake from the get-go. Hopefully Cedric takes the belt from Kendrick down the road. Both tag matches were just there. Very middle-of-the-road show.

HIAC needs to be put on ice until a feud calls for it to make the Cell matches special again. So damn watered down at this point.

[Tim Evans]

Thought the show was pretty poor overall except for the preshow match and the main. Preshow was exactly what the cruiserweight division should be. Flying mixed the WWE style. It smoked the TJP/Kendrick match. Kendrick/Cedric should be a good feud for the Rumble.

I thought the Main Event told a good story and Sasha was trying to kill herself getting it over. I will be disappointed if she appears on Raw before at least Rumble. She can make the save for Bayley after she gets attacked by Nia Jax and Charlotte. Finish could have been better but I think they improvised after the table spots kept not working out like they wanted.

Rest of the show was normal Raw. Bunch of matches with little heat and questionable booking decisions. Can't beileve how much I don't care about guys I used to really like like Enzo/Cass, Owens and New Day. New Day should have dropped the titles to the Club last ppv.

[Rev Ray]

3 minutes ago, Tim Evans said:

Thought the show was pretty poor overall except for the preshow match and the main. Preshow was exactly what the cruiserweight division should be. Flying mixed the WWE style. It smoked the TJP/Kendrick match. Kendrick/Cedric should be a good feud for the Rumble.

I thought the Main Event told a good story and Sasha was trying to kill herself getting it over. I will be disappointed if she appears on Raw before at least Rumble. She can make the save for Bayley after she gets attacked by Nia Jax and Charlotte. Finish could have been better but I think they improvised after the table spots kept not working out like they wanted.

Rest of the show was normal Raw. Bunch of matches with little heat and questionable booking decisions. Can't beileve how much I don't care about guys I used to really like like Enzo/Cass, Owens and New Day. New Day should have dropped the titles to the Club last ppv.

 

I think the problem with Enzo and Cass is that their mic work is over, but they continually lose.  While I'm sure WWE thinks "oh, these guys are bullet proof, they can afford the losses", they have lost to the SHINING FUCKING STARS.  They're kind of in a holding pattern with New Day as champs.

[Charlie M.]

The problem is that stupid fucking tag team title record. Cesaro and Sheamus make for a pretty cool fresh team but they can't win because New Day have to get their record that no one cares about.

[Niners Fan in CT]

I don't think Hogan at his worst ever powered out of a camel clutch maneuver combined with a chain choking him. It's just...  I mean what the fuck is next?  How is that not a finish.  People complain about the indies..  yeah, they do a lot of stupid shit and they kill finishers at the speed of light but what was this? 

I need someone to explain how a man gets out of that move. You want to complain about a lack of selling, start there..  

[Burgundy LaRue]

8 minutes ago, Niners Fan in CT said:

I don't think Hogan at his worst ever powered out of a camel clutch maneuver combined with a chain choking him. It's just...  I mean what the fuck is next?  How is that not a finish.  People complain about the indies..  yeah, they do a lot of stupid shit and they kill finishers at the speed of light but what was this? 

I need someone to explain how a man gets out of that move. You want to complain about a lack of selling, start there..  

You'll do better with this once you realize that Roman Reigns will eventually develop a God complex and actually start marching around with a real empire of minions.  Make this happen, Vince.

[APO]

Anything that ends up with more Triple H on my TV is pretty much a no-go.

[APO]

32 minutes ago, Niners Fan in CT said:

I don't think Hogan at his worst ever powered out of a camel clutch maneuver combined with a chain choking him. It's just...  I mean what the fuck is next?  How is that not a finish.  People complain about the indies..  yeah, they do a lot of stupid shit and they kill finishers at the speed of light but what was this? 

I need someone to explain how a man gets out of that move. You want to complain about a lack of selling, start there..  

Y'know, you could just quote me next time. /shrugs

[Niners Fan in CT]

1 minute ago, APO said:

Anything that ends up with more Triple H on my TV is pretty much a no-go.

Add all authority figures to this list. It's so damn PLAYED

[Niners Fan in CT]

1 minute ago, APO said:

Y'know, you could just quote me next time. /shrugs

I don't think I was talking about anyone specifically, I had been reading some tweets, where do we disagree?

[Go2Sleep]

17 minutes ago, Charlie M. said:

The problem is that stupid fucking tag team title record. Cesaro and Sheamus make for a pretty cool fresh team but they can't win because New Day have to get their record that no one cares about.

Yeah, the obsession with getting New Day the tag title record is bizarre and crippling the Raw tag division. I just don't get it, Demolition is an inoffensive and reasonably well-remembered team. ND aren't booked particularly strong. There isn't an obvious end game with one of them getting a big singles push or any kind of group split. They could be just as relevant without the titles for a little while. Worse yet, everyone knows they're going to break the record, so there's no payoff when they do, and there's no benefit if someone beats them soon after. It's like they have a time limit on magic title-retaining powers.

The Charlotte streak might be worse, though. She already has 13 straight ppv wins, which as best I can tell, is an all-time record. That's cool and good, but the fact she lost in the Bayley debut tag at Battleground is making them do all sorts of linguistic gymnastics to keep some type of streak going. Never mind that a ppv streak/title match streak is irrelevant if you lose regularly on Raw. It's just very disruptive to what should be the natural flow of the booking, and she doesn't look any stronger for it.

Tonight highlighted that these ridiculous inorganic streaks and records are a big problem for me with Raw's direction. It feels like they're trying to re-create a Bruno/Koloff moment (or a Taker/Lesnar moment for our generation) without any understanding of why those moments were special. A streak or record in wrestling is only valuable if people buy the novelty of it. If it's apparent that the company is manufacturing a record for the sole purpose of breaking it, no one is gonna care. The only possible payoff is 20 years down the line when they can start over because the streak is just number without any context for the current audience.

[Burgundy LaRue]

21 minutes ago, APO said:

Anything that ends up with more Triple H on my TV is pretty much a no-go.

It's hard to disagree with this.  Though I would love for them to loop back to a year ago, when Rollins first got injured and HHH offered Reigns the WHC pretty much on a platter.  That all this time, while he went with Rollins and Owens, HHH actually wanted Reigns as his guy, even now despite how often Roman busted up Hunter.  It'd be interesting, but I don't know if it's worth it if HHH is back in the thick of things.  Then again, that's going to happen, anyway. Who knows. (shrugs)

As for New Day:  Demolition suing WWE + ND being a merch-selling machine = keep the belts on them.  It's annoying, but it's easy to see why it's happening.

[APO]

16 minutes ago, Niners Fan in CT said:

I don't think I was talking about anyone specifically, I had been reading some tweets, where do we disagree?

It seemed like that post was a bit of a response to me talking about Seth no-selling the apron-bomb from RAW. If it wasn't, my bad.

[Niners Fan in CT]

3 minutes ago, APO said:

It seemed like that post was a bit of a response to me talking about Seth no-selling the apron-bomb from RAW. If it wasn't, my bad.

Nah it wasn't but you are right on that too,  there was some bad selling tonight.  My response was more towards some folks who didn't think the women were selling enough, I felt they did a pretty good job.

[APO]

7 minutes ago, Burgundy LaRue said:

It's hard to disagree with this.  Though I would love for them to loop back to a year ago, when Rollins first got injured and HHH offered Reigns the WHC pretty much on a platter.  That all this time, while he went with Rollins and Owens, HHH actually wanted Reigns as his guy, even now despite how often Roman busted up Hunter.  It'd be interesting, but I don't know if it's worth it if HHH is back in the thick of things.  Then again, that's going to happen, anyway. Who knows. (shrugs)

As for New Day:  Demolition suing WWE + ND being a merch-selling machine = keep the belts on them.  It's annoying, but it's easy to see why it's happening.

Always felt he never should've shown up again after that ass-kicking. Hunter just can't help undermining anyone who gets booked against him and I doubt the upcoming Seth feud will be any different.

[APO]

6 minutes ago, Niners Fan in CT said:

Nah it wasn't but you are right on that too,  there was some bad selling tonight.  My response was more towards some folks who didn't think the women were selling enough, I felt they did a pretty good job.

I'm right there with you, then.