Kev

Not to be a downer on this thread but this is a genuine question. What is the point of Main Event? It just seems to have been completely inconsequential for years, with maybe a couple of months pretending it was relevant after launching however many years ago. And I suppose the same goes for various C-level shows over the years - Velocity, Jakked, Metal, Superstars, etc. My understanding with a lot of these shows was that it was about fulfilling contracts for international markets. But in the era of 3 hour Raws, Smackdown, NXT, NXT UK, 205 live, plus the random Network content they c

On a Cody note, having just caught up. In a wrestling landscape that’s full of finisher killing, he’s got to be one of the worst guys for it. He still ended up winning pretty decisively (which I think is totally the right call), but there’s no way QT should be kicking out of a tombstone and a Cross Rhodes. If a Cross Rhodes doesn’t finish QT, what level of guy can it even beat? Glad they seem to be pivoting that feud into more of a launching pad for Ogogo and Commorato. Keep QT as their coach but he really doesn’t need to be elevated as a wrestler. Although the announcement was a bit

IYH: Revenge of the Taker 5 match ppv and 3 end on some-sort of non-finish. LOD vs Owen/Bulldog - this is kind of worked as a sprint (as much as a 97 LOD match could be), with no big heat segment. LOD get the win but it’s on the illegal man, restart for a couple of mins, Doomsday Device and Bret in for the DQ. Rocky vs Savio for the IC title, there’s a split screen with Farooq on commentary for most of the match and the match just comes across like an afterthought. Ends on a count out after Crush heart punches Rocky, they tease some NOD dissension before a beat down on Rocky and

Yeah, I made a similar point in an earlier post about Flash Funk and Honky. This still feels like a bit of a transition period, the presentation has changed enough that the more gimmicky stuff feels out of place, but there’s still a fair bit of it - Flash, Honky, Roadie, Godwins, Bearer, Truth Commission, Sultan - and not all of them are just holdovers from previous eras. I think late 97/early 98 is when they fully commit to ‘attitude’, which I think is when they first start using the branding. And by mid-98 all those gimmicks are gone, even Bearer drops the cartoony look in the build up

I think there was good and bad examples of the slow-burn, roster rotation style of booking on the show. The Scorp stuff was good as you say. Well foreshadowed, without being completely obvious so the attack still had an element of surprise. Then there was the SCU thing, which was just a bit flat. The outline of the story is good - SCU announce the break-up stip, friendship/history with the Bucks established on screen, win streak leads to them becoming no.1 contenders, nicely aligning with the Bucks heel turn. The problem being that the win streak has pretty much all happened away from Dyn

She was was established as a heel in the shitty Rhodes feud with backstage attacks on Brandi and Red Velvet, plus picking the fight with Cody for no real reason. But yeah, cocky athletic freak is potentially an easy pivot to face. If she continues to improve and does cool shit in the ring then the fans may turn her face at some point.

Yeah, it feels like going into the early Chyna role would already feel like a step back at this stage. But, I wonder if some sort of power couple thing would work (kind of like she was introduced as an associate of Shaq, but do it with an actual worker and have them on an equal footing rather than her just being his valet). On the one hand, you want her out there as much as possible to learn, but then you don’t want to risk overexposing her. So having her as muscle let’s her learn from the apron as suggested and keeps her relevant on tv while limiting her actual tv ring time. Plus you can

I’m pretty sure Cage actually does a variation on it, a tope caught into a vertical suplex.

Some smart booking on this show. Echoing others in thinking Cage over Page was a genuine surprise and a good next step in Page’s journey. I was fully expecting a kick out and ready to criticise for Cage for killing off his own finisher. Cage, as in the Darby match, is much better when he just dominates. Even the flashy shit worked well here, as he missed the standing moonsault leading to a brief Page comeback. If he’s going to insist on throwing in those kind of spots that’s exactly what they should be - his weakness. Win was clean enough that it put Cage over and dirty enough that it protecte

Getting back to this. April 14 97, Raw is split between the US and South Africa. First match in the US is LOD vs Godwins. Hawk pulls out the piledriver no sell as a throwaway early spot. Godwins win after after interference from Bulldog. This just isn’t very interesting, kick/punch WWF heavyweight style. To SA, HHH vs Jessie James, real house show feel to this, which is compounded by no commentary due to technical issues. It’s fine but a bit dull, JJ is quite good in this, gimmick is a dead end obviously but he still shows charisma, gets the crowd behind him, and everything he does l

The Bucks are so much more tolerable when they’re being deliberately intolerable. Honestly, don’t see how there was ever any debate over whether they should be heel or not. Thought that match was fun and enjoyed their heeling. It still went a bit overkill towards the end, I can’t stand cutesy shit like that double poison rana spot. But, to be fair, it didn’t go into kickout overkill and had a nice heel spot for the finish. Jade/Red Velvet was fun. When I saw it was going through a break I thought they might expose Jade a bit by going too long but I thought that was really smartly worked.

I know it’s a stupid thing to complain about, but what’s the point of that womens champs bit? NXT is the 3rd brand/main roster feeder system, it seems completely unremarkable that all the current champs are from NXT, that’s the norm now. I know they’ve had rivalries but they’re not really associated with each other in a a 4 horsewomen sort of way. And it’s not like they’ve moved up together from working tiny indies so it hardly seems like a ‘started from the bottom, now we’re here’ thing. I don’t know, it just feels empty and self-congratulatory, plus it’s basically out of character

I think this is a bit of a false equivalence. Even shows like BB tend to have recaps at the start, plus wrestling has a lot more room for exposition (promos, commentary) which wouldn’t work in other shows. I think filling in plot points is perfectly reasonable and can easily be done in a way which doesn’t beat you over the head and go all recap overkill like WWE. If I’m understanding @Goodear’s point correctly, it’s that the Dynamite viewer shouldn’t need knowledge of BTE, etc. to understand key plot point/character motivations. I think it’s good to have stuff on the main show that refere

It’s strange because I think Nick is usually fine in the backstage bits, although maybe it’s because he just sinks into the background with Matt hamming it up. Matt is pretty objectively terrible at the acting stuff. So if you’ve got one guy who is presumably not that comfortable doing this stuff and one who isn’t good at it, why do they continue to force them into these roles? Fair enough if it was one or two times, but the conflicted Bucks shit feels like it’s been a recurring storyline for a year+. With the overarching Callis and Omega story there seems to be a bit of a disconnect betw

I think you could be right. I don’t watch regularly so I’m not sure how heel-ish she is generally but, although she was obviously in the dominant heel role, she didn’t do anything too heel-ish during the match. During her celebration I was thinking she seemed very smiley and genuine looking, which seemed odd for a monster heel. Kai noticeably didn’t come back out to celebrate either. Dominant ass-kicker, who can work, seems like a fairly easy sell to get over as a face, especially with Ripely now gone from that spot.