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Dolfan Watches Every Wrestlemania On Lockdown


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At NXT Takeover: Brooklyn a young lady known to the world as Kana was sitting in attendance.  Within months she became known as Asuka and set the NXT women's division on fire. Her absolute dominance was characterized best by her undefeated record in her entire NXT run, including surrendering the NXT Women's Championship rather than losing it.  No one was ready for her there, and when she got called up to the main roster, no one there was ready for her either.   She crushed competition and won the first Women's Royal Rumble in January.  

Then she chose to challenge Charlotte Flair.  

Charlotte, for her part, was becoming the dominant figure on the main roster. I mean, I guess that's one of my main problems with her -- is she's vanilla ice cream. It's really good and an absolutely solid option all-around, but it frankly becomes a little boring if you have it every single day. (I'll say, I am very interested to see what happens with her now that she's been injured/away for months.)  So yeah, she's about 5 months into her reign as Smackdown Women's Champion and going in, I seem to remember the sentiment being:  No way she ends Asuka's streak right away.  That would be dumb.  

...

Charlotte is flanked by (masked) Tino Sabatelli, Riddick Moss, and Dan Matha.  I actually looked it up because I thought the tallest one was Dijakovic (or Rebar or T-bar or whatever the fuck Vince named him to make fun of antifa).  They did play Also Sprach Zarathustra for her, and I wonder why she didn't just use that for her music tonight.  

Asuka gets the debut of the giant CGI elements that plague WWE television to this day. I can already tell you, two years later, they look dated and rough.  Sometimes you don't need to reinvent the wheel -- music and pyro are usually more than enough. 

Poochie Count is up to 2. 

The match was solid, but I dunno... uninspiring?  It's solid, everything is done well, and I don't have any real reason to criticize anything they did.  But I just was not into it.  I guess I just knew what was coming this time.  

And yes, in one of the more infamous moments of WrestleMania's recent history, Charlotte had been trying to get Asuka into the Figure 4, gives her a humongous spear, and then locks in the Figure 4.  Asuka had been working her arm in preparation for the Asuka Lock, so Charlotte has to change the bridging technique for the Figure 8 to one hand instead of two.  Her facial expressions are very good and on the replay you see she braces her arm just before... 

Yep, Asuka taps.  

The crowd is in utter disbelief.  You can see several "What the fuck"'s in the ringside crowd's shot. Flair has ended Asuka's undefeated streak at over 900 days.  

And then in an absolutely infuriating spot, Asuka asks for the mic and puts over Charlotte again.  "Charlotte was ready for Asuka."  In what was clearly supposed to get a standing ovation or something, but gets at most polite applause and a smattering of boos.  

So, yeah, again, I just could not get into it.  It was technically sound, and well done, but knowing this is when Asuka became "just another girl"... that sucked. 

Poochie is bemused at ringside.  (#3)

End of Day 110. 

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9 minutes ago, odessasteps said:

Wasnt this also right after Asuka won the mixed match deal? Or was that later? 

The Mixed Match Challenge was before Wrestlemania. They made it clear mid-way through that Asuka's team losing would mean the end of her streak, which led to some fun bits but kind of telegraphed who was winning.

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I still maintain Asuka's streak was too limiting by this point, and most of people annoyed at it ending were annoyed purely that it was Charlotte who ended it. In reality the regular WWE audiences were not especially excited for it, and Asuka didn't really come up with any sort of strong character. The first Asuka/Charlotte match is quite good, and I think some sell it short because of the result. I will always feel Charlotte ending the streak was fine. It was the piss poor non-follow up that annoyed me. That should have been when Asuka turned heel and beat the shit out of Charlotte. Its a shame we never not got zombie clown face paint Asuka.

Edited by Eivion
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I think it would have worked if the match was a little longer, a little more 'epic', and if Charlotte won with a pin off her moonsault or big boot instead of having Asuka tap. Asuka can beat her at Mania, then rematch a month later and Charlotte wins.

That or you have Sasha Banks dress up as a security guard and hit Asuka with a cattle prod...

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Ah, New Orleans.  By rights I shouldn't have considered going when factoring in the cost of everything from hotel, airfare, and all the wonderful yet expensive food that we've had.  But I went anyway with some friends and had one helluva time.  Only thing is I took one plane which got there earlier than the one they took.  So with time to kill I made my way through Bourbon Street and figured I'll try some local brews but not go too crazy.  Nothing heavy percentage-wise, eating food and taking my sweet time.  Well it turns out one thing I didn't factor in was the medication I was taking at the time which turns out can make me drunk a lot quicker.  So by the time my friends get there without intending to I got trashed on Bourbon Street.  Which is pretty standard when going there but I figured I would wait for them get there before attempting that first.  Whoops.  But New Orleans is quite the lovely place and I hope to go back with my wife one day.

On 1/9/2021 at 12:40 AM, Dolfan in NYC said:

This is actually Finn Balor's WrestleMania debut and he's surrounded by a bunch of people from New Orleans wearing his new rainbow t-shirt. (Yeah, whatever idiot said he wasn't 'over' is owed a drink by Balor, because this shirt made a fuck-ton of sales.)  And I don't know what it was, but damned if this entrance didn't actually get me.  Welling up while riding a bike is a weird sensation.   

With us being in nosebleeds I could barely see Finn.  And I didn't see the people with him considering I wasn't looking at the screen that had him on there.  But what I did see was the one video wall that had his graphic and it changed at points to the pride colors.  I thought at first I was seeing things but when it happened again I took a picture and sent it to my wife and friends.  Turns out that this was all Finn's idea that Stephanie helped get off the ground which led to partnership with GLAAD.  So needless to say even though he's going back to the Prince deal I'll always be fan of Finn for doing that.  And yeah I got the figure and shirt that represented that entrance.

Oh, right, Asuka vs. Charlotte.  Good match but the ending was bullshit.  I like Charlotte but at the time it just felt like the completely wrong person to break the streak.  And I didn't realize how much they cut from the post-match for Cena until watching it back.  For as long as the show went they could have given it at least another minute.

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3 hours ago, Zimbra said:

OK I've been trying to put it together from context clues and failing: Who's the Poochie on this show?

It's Cena. This was the year Cena was begging for a WM match, lost in the Rumble, 'used his position' to get into Elimination Chamber, lost again, and then called out Taker and got ghosted.

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4 hours ago, James F'n X said:

It's Cena. This was the year Cena was begging for a WM match, lost in the Rumble, 'used his position' to get into Elimination Chamber, lost again, and then called out Taker and got ghosted.

Thank you, Cena does seem like a worthy heir to the Poochie name.

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DAY 111

I stopped yesterday with a certain someone looking bored after the women's match, but HARK!   THERE IS NEWS!    Poochie is summoned to the back.  And away he goes!

Now, I think I like Jinder Mahal more than most people. Like, I know he's terrible, but he's definitely got the charismatic part of pro-wrestling down.  In fact, a good friend of mine who is Punjab-Indian and mentioned Mahal to me out of the blue, and we shared a good little chuckle over the ridiculousness of someone calling themselves the "modern-day Maharajah."  Plus, his song is a banger and much better than he deserves. 

Jinder had somehow lucked his way into a several months long WWE Championship reign in 2017 in a period we'd all rather forget. Mainly because any of the other three guys in this would've been better choices.  Not the least of which is the next competitor out...

Aiden English is out on stage to inform us that today is in fact... RUSEV DAY~!  

Rusev is fully in the "fuck it" stage of his time in WWE (in a year it would be the "fuck this" stage, but we're not there yet).  Rusev has somehow turned having a heel second, heel music, and a heel catchphrase saying that every day on the calendar is dedicated to him... and it's made him one of the most over faces of 2018.  Fuck his pop is enormous for a guy that's being treated as a low-card heel. And I think that was one of the main issues, the WWE had no idea what they had in someone like Rusev.  A charismatic big man who could work and talk (albeit, with a slight foreign accent, which is utterly disqualifying to Vince).  I really try not to think about this time with him, because it's utterly infuriating.  

Next out is the United States Champion, who for some reason is Randy Orton. 

And then there's the man he won the US title from, the debuting Bobby Roode. This is another bit of frustration to see nearly 3 years later when they've done roughly jack and shit with him.  NXT proved he could work WWE style, he's got an incredible body, he can talk... they just haven't ever done anything with him.  And so, he again, just became another guy. 

So these guys are out to fight in a Fatal 4 Way, and I'll still never understand why they don't make these multi-person matches elimination matches by default.  It just adds layers of drama to a well-worked match.  And that's what this in fact is.  

Rusev gets a TON of shine put on him. He dominates the first third of the match in fact.  But instead of having him pin someone who doesn't need the title like Randy, he just has to play the cop, making sure everything is nice and quiet before he can finish the job. And so yeah, I guess that's the problem with this match.  

I don't even particularly mind that Jinder won (hitting the Khallas on Rusev), but knowing that this was not the start of a feud - Jinder would lose the title 8 days after this - just made it seem like this whole thing was a gigantic missed opportunity.  This was the big chance to finish making Rusev a star, giving him a huge title win and letting him run the mid-card as a face for whichever show he's on.  All kinds of money just thrown out the window for no real reason, except maybe Rusev has an accent and some racist hick will tweet about how he doesn't understand him.   

Blah.  Moving on. 

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I think Mahal was really fun in 3MB, but he both wasn't world title caliber, and his out of nowhere "jobber on RAW, moves to Smackdown and is champ a month later" thing didn't work.

I already said my piece on Rusev.

Roode... Sigh. At least the team with Gable was awesome before they abandoned it.

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So it's becoming clear that the WWE has become a retirement home for MMA fighters.  It makes sense, the skillset is similar, the schedule is similar, you get to make more money, and ultimately, the results do not matter.  So when you're an unbeatable champion in UFC and all of the sudden you lose twice, your career there is basically over.  Here, you can win or lose, and the only thing that matters is if the fans cheer or boo, as needed.  

Enter Ronda J. Rousey, millionaire, she owns a mansion and a yacht. 

Also, she lost two fights, so her MMA career is over. 

So, her debut at the end of the 2018 Royal Rumble was a big moment for WWE.  It got Vince his much craved crossover media appeal and (positive) attention. But the question remained, could she actually wrestle?  So, to hold her hand in her first match they gave her the closest thing to her career path they had, Kurt Angle. Additionally, there's the 14 time world champion Triple H.  

And then there's Stephanie.  

Time to sprint as Hunter decides to ride his spider motorcycle to the ring again.  You know... those things are just $30,000 tricycles.  They look ridiculous and just no.  He's being led out to the ring by a group of female bikers.   Did you know, the NYC Gay Pride parade is always opened by a female motorcycle gang?  Their name, and I am not joking here, Dykes on Bikes.  I'm trying to decide if the women on these bikes are members of the New Orleans chapter, but  with all due respect, having seen the NYC ladies up close and personal...  well, I'll just say these are girls playing pretend. 

Ugh, this is a long ass sprint.  Christ. 

Kurt Angle is out to wrestle his first WrestleMania match in over a decade and gets a very warm reception.  Of course, that's nothing compared to what happens when you hear Joan Jett telling you about her reputation.  It's still a pretty surreal moment and you can see Ronda's fighting herself between mean mugging and smiling ear to ear.  So you can tell she's clearly enjoying herself. 

Now my memory of this match was that people came out thrilled out of a match they were very tentatively optimistic about. Ronda's a super athlete, but that doesn't mean she's going to be a good pro-wrestler. Plus Kurt hasn't had a good match in a long, long time, so there's no guarantee he'll hold up his end.  HHH is also semi-retired, so he's not setting the world on fire either. 

And then there's Stephanie. 

So, the story they're clearly trying to tell is that Kurt is going to try to carry as much as he can before handing the reins off and unleashing Ronda on the world.  And I can already tell you, 5 minutes in with no Ronda, Kurt is going at half-speed from where he's been (because he literally can't go faster) and this isn't holding up.  His portion of the match is just, alright?  He and Hunter have wrestled hundreds of times, so they know exactly how/what to do.  And Ronda's doing her part, selling on the heat segments from Stephanie.  

Finally after what seems like forever, Ronda gets tagged in. Now, as I'm riding, the problem I have with this match really comes to the fore.  UFC Champion Ronda Rousey, who's literally female Brock Lesnar, should, under absolutely NO circumstances whatsoever, sell a bit of offense for Stephanie McMahon, a non-wrestling executive. None, whatsoever.  So, of course, they have 15 minutes where Ronda's offense is not enough to overcome Stephanie's mighty, um, fitness training?  

I mean, she is a top executive at a billion dollar plus company, so she's probably got a good trainer.  But no amount of burpees or muscle-ups that you do are ever, EVER going to stop Ronda Rousey from destroying you.  

Ronda's segment against Stephanie should have lasted no more than 2 minutes.  Really, probably 1.  You've got her for a year, let people know she can wrestle later.  Here she has to come off as, Shiva, destroyer of worlds.  She needs to be Kerrigan, Queen of Blades.  She needs to be scarier than Brock Lesnar ever could be.  Wrestling 15 minutes with Stephanie McMahon, who is perfectly competent in the ring, is NOT how you do that.  It just becomes tedious after a while because you know what's coming and you desperately want Itchy & Scratchy to get to the god damned Fireworks Factory already.  

So yeah, 20 minutes later, there's a struggle to get Stephanie into the cross arm-breaker, HHH gets put into an ankle lock simultaneously, but he counters by tossing Angle into Ronda. They eventually recover, Hunter gets thrown out of the ring, and there's nowhere for Stephanie to run anymore.  She taps within 1 second of being put into the armbreaker, which she could have done 10 minutes before.  

Yeah, I was very sad to see this did not hold up anywhere near to the match I remembered. On the plus side, yes, Ronda comes out looking like a star.  But frankly, she's a bigger star than all three of the others combined, and didn't need this match to bump up her cred.  If you're going to do a match to show Ronda can wrestle, you've got a long series of very good female workers who can do that role. 

As it was, it just wasn't up to snuff on the second watch.  It's overlong, Stephanie is the absolute wrong opponent, and Kurt has lost a step or three.   

Fortunately, my day is over, and we can finish the tale of Poochie tomorrow!  

End of Day 111. 

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Two things, off the top of my head. If I remember right, basically when Ronda was training, allegedly the thing everything at the PC was raving about her selling, so she ended up doing a lot of it even if it wasn't the best idea.

Second, Stephanie... It seems like every time she has a high profile match, the mood going on in is always "ugh, why" and after the match it's always "wow, that was way better than I expected" dating all the way back to the ppv match with Trish long before Trish was any good in the ring either.

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8 hours ago, Dolfan in NYC said:

Time to sprint as Hunter decides to ride his spider motorcycle to the ring again.  You know... those things are just $30,000 tricycles.  They look ridiculous and just no.  He's being led out to the ring by a group of female bikers.   Did you know, the NYC Gay Pride parade is always opened by a female motorcycle gang?  Their name, and I am not joking here, Dykes on Bikes.  I'm trying to decide if the women on these bikes are members of the New Orleans chapter, but  with all due respect, having seen the NYC ladies up close and personal...  well, I'll just say these are girls playing pretend. 

And this is one reason why I love your reviews so much.  That got a hearty laugh out of me.

As for the match the crowd really lost their minds for Ronda and we were loving the fact that Joan F'n Jett is out there for the entrance.  So for the live experience it was great, great stuff.  But it just sucks that since then my opinion about Ronda has soured so much for obvious reasons that it's hard for me to care about the match let alone watch it again.

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DAY 112, RIDE 1

It's been a couple of weeks since Jon Huber (the erstwhile Luke Harper) lost his life due to a lung issue.  It's still an incredible loss to the pro wrestling world and more importantly to his family. I am and will forever be baffled by how poorly his tenure in the WWE went. They had a million plans for him.  All of them were bad. And it always seemed like when they started something with him, it just petered out into nothing, either because they'd use him to put someone else over or he'd be injured or his partner would get injured.  It just always was something. 

Well, the last real push for him started about a month before this WrestleMania when Erick Rowan and Luke Harper got put together, yet again, and repackaged as The Bludgeon Brothers.  This is actually Luke's wrestling debut on the main card of Mania. 

And he and Erick have drawn The New Day and the Usos as their opponents, with the Smackdown Tag Titles on the line.  

We're a year from Kofi-mania, we're two years from a possible Uso-mania(?), but they are all here for Bludgeon-mania.  This is a total and complete annihilation.  A complete and total squash match for the Bludgeons.  Re-watching this, my thoughts were god DAMN, this team was fucking great.  Of course, that's as much on the other 4 guys making Luke and Erick look like mad dog killers in the ring.  

They would go on to hold the tag belts until August, which in WWE is a lifetime and a half, but I honestly don't remember any mind-blowing matches there.  Injuries of course derailed it again and they'd be gone by the end of the following year.  

So, SO much wasted potential.   

 

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18 minutes ago, Dolfan in NYC said:

They would go on to hold the tag belts until August, which in WWE is a lifetime and a half, but I honestly don't remember any mind-blowing matches there. 

Bets Bludgeon Brothers match was the final one where they lost them. Rowan worked the match injured. They should have had a better reign, but they weren't give much to do. There is a reason FTR left WWE. Even being tag champs doesn't guarantee a decent run.

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My favorite Harper/Rowan match was I think their last match together, vs Reigns/Bryan at HIAC 2019. Absolutely fantastic match, sort of an underrated gem since it was lost on that card with the terrible bray wyatt main event.

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