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SummerSlam XXX


HumanChessgame

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The existence of "cool heels" is entirely on Creative - you have to make the crowd want to support the faces over the heels. If you give the faces terrible material like Roman in general or Sasha on Monday night, they're going to revolt.

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I don't mean to derail the topic BUT...

I watched the SummerSlam main last night. My thoughts are probably clouded by having viewed it after a healthy chunk of people on my Twitter timeline were declaring it a MOTY, but it didn't meet expectations. It felt a lot like the Undertaker-HHH Wrestlemania 27 match, with a hardcore high spot, rest for a minute, hardcore high spot, rest formula. The Brock getting stretchered out of a multi-man only to return late and win spot was done very recently, and better, in the Cena-Rollins Triple Threat from the Rumble two years ago. 

It wasn't a bad match; it was good. But it wasn't MOTY caliber. 

EDITED TO GET BACK ON TRACK: 

Quote

If you give the faces terrible material like Roman in general or Sasha on Monday night, they're going to revolt.

AH-MEN, BUBBA! 

Iron+Sheik+spits.gif

WWE booking of faces is trash and has been trash for a very long time. What has Roman done since The Shield split to engender the desired reactions? The vignettes during his initial push injury felt like RNN, only those segments were designed to turn Randy heel. He still wears Shield gear, which makes him look like a knob still wearing his high school letter jacket at college. He got popped on Wellness. HE ATTEMPTED VEHICULAR HOMICIDE ON HIS RIVAL LAST MONTH. None of this is face stuff. 

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4 minutes ago, The Iron Yuppie said:

I don't mean to derail the topic BUT...

I watched the SummerSlam main last night. My thoughts are probably clouded by having viewed it after a healthy chunk of people on my Twitter timeline were declaring it a MOTY, but it didn't meet expectations. It felt a lot like the Undertaker-HHH Wrestlemania 27 match [...]

Whoah now, let's not say anything crazy.

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2 minutes ago, Cristobal said:

There irony in the fact that, because WWE Creative is still stuck in the past, Braun has been damn near turned into the badass babyface they wanted Roman to be, seemingly entirely by accident.

I'll admit I don't watch Raw regularly outside of matches I read getting a lot of praise. However, when I watch, it sure seems like Braun is organically and crazy-over. I don't understand how the ambulance angle wasn't the Bret-Austin moment. 

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4 hours ago, MORELOCK said:

It's unrealistic and uninteresting for you to expect or want anyone to "never lose."

I mean wrestle once a month until Wrestlemania, then lose to AJ Styles.  Or whomever.  Shinsuke should be Brock for Smackdown.  or he's just another guy.  like he is right now. 

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Has that ever happened in like the past 15 years? Shinsuke being protected as this god like wrestler who should win the title then wrestle once a month is IWC hyperbole at it's finest, that's just not how WWE works unless you're Brock.  In a perfect world he'd be attraction only, but he hasn't done anything worth that kind of notoriety since his debut.

AJ/Bryan/Punk are proof that you can overcome WWE's structured 50/50 spotty booking and stay over if you're good enough.

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2 minutes ago, Rick said:

Has that ever happened in like the past 15 years? Shinsuke being protected as this god like wrestler who should win the title then wrestle once a month is IWC hyperbole at it's finest, that's just not how WWE works unless you're Brock.  In a perfect world he'd be attraction only, but he hasn't done anything worth that kind of notoriety since his debut

And that's the problem, isn't it?  Cart before the horse. 

This guy should be a big deal.  But because he has to prove himself, he's not treated like a big deal.  Then, people don't think he's a big deal.  So why should we treat him like a big deal?  It's a circular argument for 50/50 booking that does nothing for no one.  If he was treated like a big deal like they seemed to want him to be, he shouldn't be wrestling the Baron Corbins and Dolph Zigglers, he should be wrestling the Randy Ortons and John Cenas and be treated as if he's on their level and beating them so that we all consider him a big deal.  If he was treated like Brock from the get go we wouldn't have this conundrum. 

Let him wrestle on house shows, but don't make him wrestle on Smackdown every week and don't put him in pointless tag matches or wrestle the same people over and over.  Make him a special event. 

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I'm not saying he's being booked perfectly, but for starters, he DID wrestle the John Cena and beat him. 50/50 booking sucks and the week-to-week booking of WWE in general is repetitive and boring, but I feel like the "IWC" fanbase just wants their NJPW/indie favorites to come into WWE and steamroll everyone and main event WrestleMania together. Not only is it unrealistic and uninteresting, it also shits all over everyone already on the roster and is terrible for WWE booking long-term.

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3 hours ago, The Iron Yuppie said:

I'll admit I don't watch Raw regularly outside of matches I read getting a lot of praise. However, when I watch, it sure seems like Braun is organically and crazy-over. I don't understand how the ambulance angle wasn't the Bret-Austin moment. 

That ignores the countless times Braun has bushwhacked Roman, beat him until Reigns coughed up (fake) blood, pushed Roman off a loading dock while strapped to a gurney, and tipped over a 5-ton ambulance with Reigns trapped inside. Braun isn't a face in any of that. Cool, sure. It was a feud of escalating violence that should have resulted in one being sent to SDL for safety's sake. As much as I want both guys to move to other feuds, I also recognize they should still be trying to kill each other on some level.

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27 minutes ago, Burgundy LaRue said:

That ignores the countless times Braun has bushwhacked Roman, beat him until Reigns coughed up (fake) blood, pushed Roman off a loading dock while strapped to a gurney, and tipped over a 5-ton ambulance with Reigns trapped inside. Braun isn't a face in any of that. Cool, sure. It was a feud of escalating violence that should have resulted in one being sent to SDL for safety's sake. As much as I want both guys to move to other feuds, I also recognize they should still be trying to kill each other on some level.

Sure, but Austin attacked Bret while he was in a wheelchair, beat up still babyface Vince when Vince was concerned about his wellbeing, broke Pillman's ankle, and insulted the crowds regularly. Fans ate it up and he became arguably the biggest star in the history of wrestling in this country.

Braun has been moving in a similar direction. The crowd at SummerSlam hated Roman, liked Brock, loved Joe, and were worshipping Braun.

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16 minutes ago, Victator said:

Reigns was most over as a face when he went berserk and beat HHH senseless, then pummeled an elderly man weekly. Then they gave HHH the title and that was it for Roman. 

I also read numerous people whine that Roman beat up a 70-year-old man and got sassy with poor little Stephanie McMahon. That big, bad Roman was just being a bully. Right now, these fans are mad because some of their ranks got roped into doing a dumb SI video on why they hated Reigns, which lead to him basically laughing at them in a tweet. Which, if you're a 35-year-old man wearing a bedsheet as a cape outside of Halloween, Comic Con, or your partner's amusement: what did you expect?

I see your point.  But it lends itself to the overall discussion here ATM. What do some of our fellow fans actually want? And why is it that if WWE does do something they claim to want, they promptly ignore it?

WWE has problems, no question.  But the smarks or whatever they call themselves these days do, too.

 

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Well the big fallacy people fall for online is if everyone is not satisfied, then that means its bad. Or it means people can't be satisfied. You're not going to get 100 percent satisfaction on anything. With the way things are now 75 percent is great. Reigns had more people cheering than booing during this period, that is a win. 

Now I did find PG WWE logic strange. Reigns can't attack Stephanie but pummeling an old man is cool. 

But one thing I know for sure, nobody cared he was mouthing off to Stephanie. 

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1 hour ago, Burgundy LaRue said:

That ignores the countless times Braun has bushwhacked Roman, beat him until Reigns coughed up (fake) blood, pushed Roman off a loading dock while strapped to a gurney, and tipped over a 5-ton ambulance with Reigns trapped inside. Braun isn't a face in any of that. Cool, sure. It was a feud of escalating violence that should have resulted in one being sent to SDL for safety's sake. As much as I want both guys to move to other feuds, I also recognize they should still be trying to kill each other on some level.

You're absolutely right -- and to the bolded point, that might be the difference in why crowds react positively to Braun and not Roman. In Braun's case, those instances looked impressive and showcased his strength. The ambulance angle was Roman having a fit because he lost a match, and using a car -- not his raw strength, like Braun -- to get revenge. 

It's minor details like that, which make a huge difference. Plus, Roman's booking in the years leading up to this particular feud -- not changing out of Shield gear, the RNN-esque vignettes, going over ultra-babyface Daniel Bryan on the way to WM 31, SUFFERIN' SUCCOTASH, the awful match with HHH -- have rendered him a de facto heel to audiences. When Braun pulverizes the de facto top heel, that makes him the de facto top face. 

EDIT: 

I should add crowds not taking to Roman how they've wanted, I think it may go deeper than the anecdotes I cited. This may have been on Killing on the Town; I don't remember exactly where I heard this, but I thought it made a lot of sense: WWE has spent two decades telling its fans that WWE itself is the heel; that the people who run the company and make decisions are inherently against the fans' best interest. 

Now, that's kayfabe, but at a certain point seeps into what the audience perceives as reality. Fans read online that Roman is "WWE's pick" to be the top guy, and it manifests in how he's pushed. He's worthy of being a main event guy: athletic, has GREAT matches, was getting over organically as The Shield's enforcer. However, because WWE has conditioned fans so long to hate the WWE Office, they'll reject whomever is offered up as The Guy. 

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Austin for months was attacking Bret and screwing him out of important matches. From a face/heel perspective, Austin had no justification for this. But people wanted to cheer him and the company went with it. Bret Hart in 97 was far more loved than Roman Reigns in 2017. 

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3 hours ago, The Iron Yuppie said:

I should add crowds not taking to Roman how they've wanted, I think it may go deeper than the anecdotes I cited. This may have been on Killing on the Town; I don't remember exactly where I heard this, but I thought it made a lot of sense: WWE has spent two decades telling its fans that WWE itself is the heel; that the people who run the company and make decisions are inherently against the fans' best interest. 

Now, that's kayfabe, but at a certain point seeps into what the audience perceives as reality. Fans read online that Roman is "WWE's pick" to be the top guy, and it manifests in how he's pushed. He's worthy of being a main event guy: athletic, has GREAT matches, was getting over organically as The Shield's enforcer. However, because WWE has conditioned fans so long to hate the WWE Office, they'll reject whomever is offered up as The Guy. 

There's definitely a contingent of smark fans who'll reject whomever the WWE is pushing as the top guy just because WWE is pushing them as the top guy. But I don't think overuse of the Evil Authority Figure is the reason. I don't know if you were online when Bret Hart was the guy, but he got shit from certain quarters over the quality of his ringwork. Bret Hart. 

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People keep referencing Roman beating up a 70-year-old man, and I completely forgot that Vince actually dusted himself off to have a mini-feud with Roman. Then I was gonna say that was at the height of WWE's thoroughly transparent desperation to get him over, but then I remembered that bit with The Rock at the Rumble which was like a year earlier...

Roman's career arc is like the most "lolWWE" thing ever.

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For the record - Big Dave gave the main event 4 3/4 stars

He gave the Usos/New Day 4 stars which I think has to be the highest star rating for a Kickoff Show match (the best Kickoff Show match is separate discussion)

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15 hours ago, The Iron Yuppie said:

I should add crowds not taking to Roman how they've wanted, I think it may go deeper than the anecdotes I cited. This may have been on Killing on the Town; I don't remember exactly where I heard this, but I thought it made a lot of sense: WWE has spent two decades telling its fans that WWE itself is the heel; that the people who run the company and make decisions are inherently against the fans' best interest. 

Now, that's kayfabe, but at a certain point seeps into what the audience perceives as reality. Fans read online that Roman is "WWE's pick" to be the top guy, and it manifests in how he's pushed. He's worthy of being a main event guy: athletic, has GREAT matches, was getting over organically as The Shield's enforcer. However, because WWE has conditioned fans so long to hate the WWE Office, they'll reject whomever is offered up as The Guy. 

I believe Lance/Cyrus talked about it on Killing the Town and Austin also made a point about it on his podcast. He was talking about authority figures and how if you really need to have one, they should be more like Bill Watts' onscreen persona. Come out, make the matches, run down what you're going to see on the show that week and make big decisions. The fans know someone is in charge. But don't go out of your way to feud or screw with anyone unless they fuck with you. Don't favor anyone b/c if you do, then the fans will reject them and the dislike the promotion b/c then the promotion itself is a heel.

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Four snowflakes for Ambrose/Rollins v Sheamus/Cesaro as well, which is probably where I'd rate it if I could be bothered. There's a pretty good show here if you trim some of the bloat and don't hide fun stuff on the kickoff.

As for the best kickoff match discussion, I still personally remember being over the moon for Rollins/Reigns v Usos from MitB a few years ago. 

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12 hours ago, Niners Fan in CT said:

Just give it the full 5 stars Dave who cares at this point :lol:

This.  What the fuck cost it 1/4 a star, no one collapsed from exhaustion to avoid a clothesline?

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On the one hand, I want to say, "who cares, it's Dave's dumb system." On the other hand, motherfucker is giving out 6 stars and 6 1/4 stars and still is able to short change a match from 5 stars. This is why the 6 stars was stupid and 6 1/4 was even dumber. It calls into question just why a match would fall that short of 5 stars. 

But again, it's his dumb system and it's not like these guys are getting paid more based on snowflakes.

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Meltzer seems to get more discussion and interest from short-changing WWE matches that 1/4 star than if he just gave them 5 stars -- ESPECIALLY since going 6 stars for New Japan. I don't condone it, but that seems to clearly be why he does it. 

Also: If any WWE match was unfairly short-changed this year, Cena-A.J. and Bate-Dunne were both better than the 4-way so there's that. 

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