Go2Sleep
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Posts posted by Go2Sleep
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Shane McMahon had a heel faction called The Conspiracy that lasted a week in 2000. It was Benoit, Big Show, Angle, and E/C. I think they scrapped it because Show got hurt, but that would've been an interesting group. Shane did continue to manage Benoit for a month or so, though.
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12 hours ago, Sky Blue Sam said:
The precedent was set when Rollins got in the Universal title match last week
At least that's played as shameless favoritism by Steph. Why would Bryan and Shane reward the Usos for injuring their #1 tag team pick? Well, I guess it does make about as much sense as most of their decisions thus far...
9 hours ago, Vader does my taxes! said:Edge won one of his titles by beating up someone and taking their place in the Elimination Chamber match, irrc.
Oh yeah, poor Kofi...
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I haven't been crazy about Dar at all, but he seemed more comfortable in there with ZSJ. I thought they did a good job with the dueling arm/leg work. The leg-kick countout attempt was a good nearfall. I like that Zack has won each match with a different hold, and this week it looked particularly nasty. I know Zack's first match was pretty blah, but getting a good match out of Noam Dar definitely moves him toward the top of my rankings for best worker in the tournament. He'll move up even farther if he can get past the Gran Metalik "That was pretty good I guess" plateau.
I've also liked TJP more in this tournament than I ever have before. It's gonna be a shame when Ibushi no-sells his submission that he's done a great job building up next week.
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It seems like a bad precedent to set allowing guys who lose in a tournament to injure whoever beat them and be re-entered with a chance to win it all.
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10 hours ago, Smelly McUgly said:
Dory Funk Jr. is the matwork equivalent of your typical spot monkey. Does lots of holds, doesn't bother to show much struggle, and seems disinterested in selling half the time.
Imagine a world where DVDVR existed in 1969...
"Wrestlers these days don't know how to work. A body slam should mean something, but you have a guy like Dory Funk Jr who spams 5 of them in 2 minutes. Way to kill a great-looking move."
"Thesz could make you care about a short-arm scissor or a double headlock that lasted 5 minutes because it was all about the struggle. Funk doesn't even bother to try telling a story in there, he just tries to get cheap pops with business-exposing moves like those arm whips where his opponent bounces back off the ropes and the laughable sunset flip."
"God bless Kaniski for selling the back and trying to make some sense of this mess, but it's tough to make anything work with fucking Dory Funk Jr."
"NWA is pretty much unwatchable these days, I'll just stick to my film reels of Lou Thesz and Ray Gunkel."
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Zayn and Joe had a 2/3 falls match earlier this year.
Ziggler and Cesaro had one a couple years ago.
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1 hour ago, Burgundy LaRue said:
You can certainly have two faces, but I don't think you can have two faces with similar approaches when one is nearly flawless at said gimmick.
Isn't that kind of for the crowds to determine, though? I'd agree if Sasha's reactions start dropping off, but if they both maintain strong face reactions, it doesn't really matter that they have the same gimmick.
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So I watched the Thesz/Gunkel '51 match for the sheer novelty of seeing a match that old. I wouldn't say it's particularly exciting (there's a lot of 5-minute holds), but it's neat when you take a historical/academic approach. In some ways, it shows how timeless a lot of wrestling tropes really are. Gunkel works as the upstart babyface and Thesz works as the semi-heelish grizzled vet that's caught off guard by a lower-ranked opponent. Gunkel controls most of the mat action, while Thesz resorts to body punches in the ropes to get most of his advantages. Gunkel gets the first fall after wearing Thesz down with headlocks and body slams. He controls a lot of the second fall too, until Thesz hits a standard powerbomb which might as well have been an avalanche burning hammer in the context of this match. They sell the move like death, to the point where the ringside doctor won't let Gunkel continue to the third fall giving the Thesz a TKO win to retain his belt.
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You can have two strong faces at the same time. Just because Bayley's around doesn't mean that it's automatically better to force the square peg in the round hole when it comes to Sasha. Like I said, there will be a time and place for an organic turn, but it ain't now.
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I think Sasha works better as a face right now. Normally the blue-chipper "just happy to be here" gimmick is shitty, but it's so true-to-life for her that it actually works this time. In NXT, she always undermined her own heel character when she got sucked in by the emotional gravity of her work. She clearly wears her heart on her sleeve, so she's better off working as an extension of herself, even if her real self is a cliche babyface trope right now. There will probably be a time somewhere down the road where she can pull off an organic heel run, but it's not until she wins a big Mania match and/or has ppv main as a face most likely. Most crowds cheered for her when she was a heel anyway, so why fight it?
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The worst part about the Old Day segment was that New Day was one of the acts the crowd was most hyped for. They were getting lots of chants pre-show, then they show up, and that's what we got.
That said, I'd probably pick that over fake retirement angles and shit like "did Owens know he was booked to win?" trying to work the internet.
Not crazy about the Roman stipulation either, since they did the exact same thing with the last SD title match. I'm pretty sure Owens will cheat to win and we'll get Roman/Jericho at the Clash.
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3 hours ago, jstout said:
That burning hammer was rude, especially on a surgically repaired neck. If I were Ibushi, the second anyone brought up that move, I'd say "I'm good, thanks."
There's about a 100% chance it was Ibushi's idea.
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No, the spacing isn't right. You'd have quick turnarounds between Survivor Series, The Rumble, and Mania, and then you'd have excruciatingly long gaps before and after Summer Slam. Throw Full Sail a bone with at least one TO in May. I can see why they'd hold off this go around since they have so many new wrestlers they need to build, but generally speaking, I think it upsets their flow. I think an ideal TO timeline would be something like
- Mid October (Full Sail)
- Mid Dec/Early Jan (International)
- Late Mar/Early Apr (Mania)
- Late May/Early June (Full Sail)
- Mid August (Summer Slam)
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Well they were right that all of them did have at least a decent amount of success in NXT after that video was made. Graves did it by becoming their flagship announcer instead of as a wrestler, but close enough.
I'm impressed that they picked Sasha and Bayley out of the women over Charlotte, Paige, or Emma who looked like safer picks circa Arrival.
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There's definitely a feedback loop to booing Roman. I'm pretty sure he's ruined as a top guy. At this point it would take so long to rehab him, the talent pipeline WWE has right now will completely drown him by the time he's ready (or people are ready to accept him, as it were).
50 minutes ago, Smelly McUgly said:There's a point at which all this could have been avoided, but I'm not sure where that point is.
Probably the Shield break-up, although I think they could've salvaged it as late as the 15 Rumble. Ignoring the hindsight of how beat up Bryan was and how good Brock/Roman actually turned out to be, Bryan challenging Lesnar while Roman got the US title push they gave to Cena would've looked better for all parties at the time. They could've even done the same Mania finish with Rollins, and it would've been an easier pill to swallow for Bryan's fans for his push to end at the hands of Seth instead of Roman. Plus you know, the heat would've gone on the guy they wanted to be their top heel instead of the guy they wanted to be their top face.
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I feel like Metalik is "run of the mill good." Yeah he's got some cool moves, and his matches are solid, but there's just nothing that makes me want to see him more. There's nothing compelling about his character. His matches have the same baseline "goodness," but it takes a special opponent to move the needle much further for me (which is why I unsurprisingly liked the Tajiri match the best).
It's how I imagine a lot of people here felt about Finn Balor.
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I think ZSJ is the only compelling match for Ibushi from the other side of the bracket, though. Dar is easily the worst guy remaining, and Metalik keeps winning but doesn't feel like a big deal at all.
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Does anyone (Rippa, since he always knows these things) have the full list of guys from the CWC that have deals in place with WWE going forward?
Maybe spoiler tag it, though, since it could potentially give away some results.
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Honestly this thread might be the first time I've seen someone here even mention Bray/Orton, and that angle started 2 weeks ago.
This show looks mostly inoffensive, but probably skip-able outside of maybe AJ winning the actual WWE title. Gonna be tough to pry me away from NFL week 1.
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Wouldn't ZSJ be the best foil for Ibushi in this tournament? A guy who can keep him grounded and can snap off subs or tight pinning combos as counters to anything?
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I know it would've gone against his character, but shouldn't Kendrick have stopped the ref's count when realized Ibushi wouldn't make it back in? Shoddy as the reasoning is, it's somewhat impressive they came up with that solution on the fly. I wonder what would've happened if it was just after a routine dive.
I can safely say I never thought I'd see a burning hammer on WWE tv.
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Itami's English has improved tremendously over the past year. Solid promo from Nakamura too.
Aliyah should've saved that submission until she's supposed to start winning matches. That would've been a great hold to give the "who can break out of it" build. Liv needs a new finisher. That's a "whiff or potato" move if I ever saw one.
Am I the only one who really wants to see Revival/AoP? I hate the idea of using DIY or TM61 as transition champs. Just let the two badass teams go at it, the crowd will get into it one way or the other.
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The worked shoot era is bizarre.
Vince Russo was ahead of his time.
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1 hour ago, Smelly McUgly said:
Papa HHH is a massive face to the hardcores because of NXT and the CWC.
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To go back to HHH, he was reviled by the fans as late as 2008, when he was the dude standing in the way of Jeff Hardy.
I think you're underestimating the historical popularity of HHH. He's been really over with most of the WWE audience since his face turn in 2006. He had the heel run with the authority which got the right reactions when he had Bryan to play against, but the Sting feud came off as more legend vs. legend and he was pretty much a de facto face against Roman. I'd agree that NXT has given him a boost from the remaining haters, but he's had that attitude era/long tenure cred with most of the audience since 2011 at least.
I know it's kind of weird because most of us remember watching HHH when he was trying so hard to be a legend in the early 2000s and it came across pretty forced a lot of the time, but he really has been in that B-tier legend group with guys like Bret, Shawn, and Taker for several years.
CWC EPISODE NINE - Quarters (9/7/16)
in WWE PROGRAMMING
Posted
I guess I was the only one that didn't mind ZSJ's selling. He's built up as a technical genius who can escape any hold so alternating between "Fuck, I'm caught, how can I turn this around?" and "Oh shit, this actually hurts" made sense to me. He sold his leg/arm throughout the match, even when he was on offense, so it didn't come across like he was completely discrediting Dar's offense. More like he just was just trying not to show weakness in battle and plan his next counter because he believes he should able to escape anything.
Of course, I love John Cena's "deep breath -> calm no" approach to I Quit matches too. There are other ways to react to pain besides wild screaming and flailing. It all falls under the "sometimes less is more" blanket for me.