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ROYAL RUMBLE 2021 Post Event Discussion


RIPPA

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The Bayley elimination of Ruby Riott was [chef's kiss!]

 

Is it my imagination or does Rhea start potatoing Bayley after the powerbomb apron spot with Dana?

One sec Rhea eliminates Dana, makes it back in the ring, Bayley tussles her hair as Rhea sits there foot tangled in the bottom rope,, giving Rhea this RAGE look in her eyes and she's all over Bayley moments later as Bayley tries to run away and Rhea is just hammering away and Bianca has to pounce on Rhea to break it up 

Either fantastic acting or I'm just over imagining it?

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3 hours ago, RIPPA said:

Yeah - the reason Bayley, Alexa and Charlotte are each at 3 is because each missed a year due to being champion at the time.

Makes sense that the list of women who've been in all four is a parade of jobbers, then.

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3 minutes ago, RIPPA said:

It also doesn’t help that the first Rumble was half filled with returning Divas


lol remember Michelle McCool back for one night to get to be the ring-clearer/Elimination Queen was so hilariously bad.

would still be the nadir of the women's rumbles so far if actual fucking Santina hadn't shown up last year.

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17 minutes ago, RIPPA said:

It also doesn’t help that the first Rumble was half filled with returning Divas

It was, but they didn't leave any top stars on the shelf that night to make room for those divas, did they? I'm pretty sure the main reason nobody of significance is a four-timer is that most of their top women have been in the world title match at least one of those years.

Spinning off into general discussion of the women's rumble - I enjoyed the "memory lane" schtick they did the first year, but I remember thinking they'd need to hire and push more women to prevent having to do it every year. It bugs me a lot that they haven't done that. Instead, the last three have been padded out with women the audience has no reason to give a rat's ass about, and the match has suffered for it.

I'm actually surprised so many people here have said they preferred the women's rumble to the men's this year, and that's the reason. Sure, I'm happier to see Bianca Belair get a 'Mania title shot than Edge, but the quality of the match is not a function of who won IMO.

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I'm into Edge winning, he's a home province guy, he seems like a genuinely nice dude these days, and he's got a great comeback story. I don't think he warrants a Mania main event, I'm not sure he has that much nostalgia value, but he's going to give it his all and I'm pulling for the guy.

First time seeing Goldberg in a while and he looks decidedly old now. At least his matches are always short, the most dangerous two minutes of any wrestler's life.

Belair winnings was fantastic. Great moment and position for one of their top prospects for a long term draw imo. If WWE can figure out how to market her properly, which is one of your bigger Ifs.

 

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15 hours ago, tbarrie said:

It was, but they didn't leave any top stars on the shelf that night to make room for those divas, did they? I'm pretty sure the main reason nobody of significance is a four-timer is that most of their top women have been in the world title match at least one of those years.

My comment was purely from numbers perspective in that you are already winnowing the potential pool of repeaters by having folks who are just there basically a thank you for being around during all the shitty times.

But that is the issue in general with the WWE in general regarding the women's division since the start of the "Women's Revolution" - the heavy reliance on the same less than 10 number of women. It has been the 4 Horsewomen, Asuka, Alexa and Nia Jax.

I would also argue about the list being a "parade of jobbers" (fully accepting that some creative license might have been employed with the original sentiment). Carmella has won the SDL Women's Title, MITB (technically twice), won the Not Moolah Battle Royal and was the challenger in the title match earlier on the show. Naomi is 2 time SDL Women's Champ and won the Not Moolah. Nattie - another SDL women's champ and obviously been around enough to have the Divas title run too. At this point, she is basically the female Kane (or Big Show). Can be a face or heel. Person used to be in a feud with someone they want to elevate. Will get a random title shot occasionally. I don't think anyone considers Kane or Big Show a jobber. That is half the list. Unless we are requiring women to be on heaters where they lose once in the span of a year to not be considered jobbers now.

And there are a few "bigger" names would be at 4 if not for reasons other than the title matches

Nia Jax - missed 2020 due to injury

Kairi Sane - missed 2021 due to retiring

Ember Moon - missed 2020 due to injury

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20 minutes ago, RIPPA said:

But that is the issue in general with the WWE in general regarding the women's division since the start of the "Women's Revolution" - the heavy reliance on the same less than 10 number of women. It has been the 4 Horsewomen, Asuka, Alexa and Nia Jax.

I have thoughts about this, but I'll leave them for the end of my post.

20 minutes ago, RIPPA said:

I would also argue about the list being a "parade of jobbers" (fully accepting that some creative license might have been employed with the original sentiment).

There may have been some creative license used, yes.:) But since I'm slacking off at work, I'm going to discuss your counter-examples individually anyway.

20 minutes ago, RIPPA said:

Carmella has won the SDL Women's Title, MITB (technically twice), won the Not Moolah Battle Royal and was the challenger in the title match earlier on the show.

Carmella is an interesting case. She was Smackdown champ, but she was totally cast in the "undeserving champion who relies on chicanery to retain the title" role. I mean, she "won" that first MitB by having her manservant climb the ladder for her and hand her the briefcase. Does being the Honkytonk Man disqualify you from being a jobber? I'm honestly unsure.

But I'm also not sure it really matters, because when I said "jobbers" what I should have said was "women who the audience has been given no reason to care about". And as far as I can tell, they've actually done a decent job consistently giving Carmella something to do, even when it was just comedy bits with R-Truth. So I'd say she's an exception.

20 minutes ago, RIPPA said:

Naomi is 2 time SDL Women's Champ and won the Not Moolah.

I completely missed that Naomi was on the list (because apparently noticing one name on a list of seven is so hard). Yeah, she's not a jobber. But she's a lot closer to being irrelevant than I'd like - it seems the bookers forget that she exists for extended periods.

20 minutes ago, RIPPA said:

Nattie - another SDL women's champ and obviously been around enough to have the Divas title run too. At this point, she is basically the female Kane (or Big Show). Can be a face or heel. Person used to be in a feud with someone they want to elevate. Will get a random title shot occasionally. I don't think anyone considers Kane or Big Show a jobber.

Yeah, Nattie's another interesting case. She's sporadically booked as if she matters - but I don't think many of the audience members would agree. Big Show and Kane are pretty good comparisons, really. I'm kind of on the fence whether she's an exception or not. She's not a jobber per se, but it's not like anybody pops when she shows up.

Circling back to WWE's heavy reliance on seven women - I actually find it slightly ironic how that criticism gets brought up so often on a board that also frequently repeats that "50-50 booking sucks" because you have to pick somebody and elevate them. Well, WWE picked seven women and elevated them. And I wouldn't say seven people is a particularly small number for a division's top tier. As an example, people here seem to generally agree that the AEW men's division is better booked than WWE's, but how big is their top tier? Five guys? (Omega, Moxley, Jericho, MJF, Cody) Seven competitors who've been established as being in the elite echelon is pretty healthy IMO.

The problem, again IMO (and I suspect I'm not actually disagreeing with you here), is that healthy booking would dictate that your second tier should be at least as large as your first, probably larger. You need a pool of competitors who are kept busy most of the time, ready to be pushed to the next level if they catch on with the crowds. And WWE's women's division barely has a second tier at all, as far as I can tell. Other than the three mentioned above, who would be in it? Ember? Ruby?

Final caveat, though - I haven't actually watched Raw since before it went to three hours, and I stopped watching the monthly PPVs after last year's Rumble. (I did watch some of the Roman Reigns-J Uso stuff.) So it's possible they've actually gotten better when I wasn't looking. That's not the impression I get from the discussion here, though.

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1 hour ago, RIPPA said:

Kairi Sane - missed 2021 due to retiring

She didn't retire. She went back to live in Japan and is under an ambassador deal like Funaki was. She can wrestle. Its more a case were she is having trouble wrestling in the place she wants to in Stardom.

7 minutes ago, tbarrie said:

Final caveat, though - I haven't actually watched Raw since before it went to three hours, and I stopped watching the monthly PPVs after last year's Rumble. (I did watch some of the Roman Reigns-J Uso stuff.) So it's possible they've actually gotten better when I wasn't looking. That's not the impression I get from the discussion here, though.

Raw is mostly terrible outside of the Hurt Business. Smackdown is generally solid. NXT is generally good. The pandemic era ppvs have actually been mostly solid.

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4 hours ago, Eivion said:

She didn't retire. She went back to live in Japan and is under an ambassador deal like Funaki was. She can wrestle. Its more a case were she is having trouble wrestling in the place she wants to in Stardom.

I knew someone was going to nit pick this - I should have known it was going to be you ?

What I wrote was way easier than what you wrote to get the point across

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On 2/2/2021 at 9:20 PM, RIPPA said:

It also doesn’t help that the first Rumble was half filled with returning Divas

This last Women's Rumble benefited from non having so many legends with token entries. I think the first one they felt like they had to give alot of the Legends a chance to participate, seeing Jacqueline and Molly and even Victoria out there in these Rumble matches working it like they are trying win instead of doing token spots is fun. Especially in Jacquelines case because she was being phased out during the time period divas were actually given a chance to have competitive matches. You can tell when the women are excited to be working with alot of these legends in the same way when Christian was in the Mens Rumble 

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Meltzer had a throw away line the WON that was something I totally forgot about (which ties into a lot of stuff we have been talking about)

Alicia Fox was basically forced into retirement by the WWE because she was "too old". (and a product of being with the company for what seems like forever)

A) She is 34. That is the same age as Charlotte and younger than Lana, Nia Jax, Nattie and Shayna Baszler

B) She would have been one of the younger competitors on the men's side (she is basically the same age as Big E, Xavier Woods, Seth Rollins and Mustafa Ali)

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2 hours ago, RIPPA said:

Meltzer had a throw away line the WON that was something I totally forgot about (which ties into a lot of stuff we have been talking about)

Alicia Fox was basically forced into retirement by the WWE because she was "too old". (and a product of being with the company for what seems like forever)

A) She is 34. That is the same age as Charlotte and younger than Lana, Nia Jax, Nattie and Shayna Baszler

B) She would have been one of the younger competitors on the men's side (she is basically the same age as Big E, Xavier Woods, Seth Rollins and Mustafa Ali)

Wait, wasn't the main reason because she had an issue with alcoholism?  I know she went to rehab and it seemed like things were a lot better.

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4 hours ago, RIPPA said:

Meltzer had a throw away line the WON that was something I totally forgot about (which ties into a lot of stuff we have been talking about)

Alicia Fox was basically forced into retirement by the WWE because she was "too old". (and a product of being with the company for what seems like forever)

A) She is 34. That is the same age as Charlotte and younger than Lana, Nia Jax, Nattie and Shayna Baszler

B) She would have been one of the younger competitors on the men's side (she is basically the same age as Big E, Xavier Woods, Seth Rollins and Mustafa Ali)

 

1 hour ago, NikoBaltimore said:

Wait, wasn't the main reason because she had an issue with alcoholism?  I know she went to rehab and it seemed like things were a lot better.

Yeah I'm going to call bullshit on this. Its not remotely a secret Fox's alcoholism is what lead to her being retired. Nattie is older, been in WWE as long, and mostly annoys fans. She isn't close to being retired by WWE. I could buy this claim with Mickie but not Alicia.

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