SirSmUgly

As a jumping off point from the Summerslam thread, I thought that it would be fun, with what is left of my summer break, to do a little project that covers the Shield members' growth as singles competitors from their breakup in June 2014 to where they are now. I want to do this in part because there is such a disparity in how people think of these guys not just here, but in general online, and in part because I have my own opinions about these guys that I want to re-evaluate. It's also always helpful to do this sort of exercise because it helps me to re-think what I really find important about pro wrestling and what my preferences are, particularly as they change with the more wrestling that I consume. On that note, I want to pare down a list of ten to twelve matches for each Shield member to watch and quickly write up. I have an idea of some of the matches that I want to see, and with the Network archiving RAW, SD, Main Event, the PPVs, etc., this should be an easy job to find matches that would best represent the singles/non-tag work of the Shield members. I have an idea of some of the matches that I'd like to use to do this project, but I'd like to start by asking those of you who are interested in this idea to share what matches that you think I should look at, with show and date if possible. Some stuff is obvious that I won't really need suggested (Reigns: v. Lesnar at WM, v. Bryan at Fast Lane; Rollins v. Ambrose in all their singles matches), but there are probably numerous TV matches that have slipped through the cracks. Whatever you want to suggest - what you think showcases these guys at their best or worst or whatever - I would be grateful for. I suppose that I should also mark down how I would rank each of these guys and my current perceptions of them before this rewatch in order to have it here for myself, at least. 1. Reigns - He's a decent worker. I appreciate that he is willing to take a beating, but I don't think he's ever had a singles match outside of the Lesnar mauling that has transcended "quite solid," and that includes the Bryan match. He was awful right after the break-up, but he's definitely improved. He's passable at worst on most nights, generally. Sometimes he seems to get stuck and revert to signature spot spamming, but I'm encouraged that he seems to be getting better at a good pace. 2. Rollins - I compared him to Dean Malenko in the Summerslam thread, and I think it's a fair comparison in that he does lots of crisp moves and is a great athlete, but his matches often look like a slideshow of a bunch of different nice moves with nothing that holds them together in the types of interesting narratives that make matches feel complete. Even working de facto face at Summerslam, he did nothing for me, but working like this as a heel, I find him almost unwatchable many nights. Maybe Neville in NXT until about the Tyson Kidd matches is a better comp. 3. Ambrose - He has the biggest and most organic connection with the crowd to me in many ways, but he is the worst offensive wrestler in the company except for maybe some of the women who have never graduated past model-turned-wrestler status. Ziggler actually has better offense than this guy. He's so hard to watch and was actively dragging down that tag match he had at Summerslam in some ways. He can take a beating though and easily has the best facial expressions and sympathetic body movements of the three...but his offense is such a minus that I have to place him here. Anyway, I'm excited to dig deep into these matches again, and I hope that people are interested in this, even if you want to call my tastes in wrestling totally shitty or tell me that secretly I hold the company's booking of Bryan against Reigns (I don't, and actually, I like Reigns a lot and feel pretty badly for him that the crowd still kinda shits on him). Also, I love reading reviews other people do of matches, so if you wanted to chime in with your own, that would be cool. Hopefully, this thread takes off.

I don't quite think your point is fair, G2S. Neville got tons of praise here for developing into a very good big match worker, particularly in the back half of his NXT title run. AJ gets lavish praise here and PWO and places like that. I respect where you and Burgundy are coming from, but ultimately, I think it's a somewhat dismissive way to approach this type of criticism. "Once hated, always hated" is not true here and in Rollins's case specifically, you can check the archives and see that he was basically universally loved as a member of the Shield. I am typing on my phone now, so I will respond later in more detail to Rollins having good facial expressions or him being the best Shield member right now (I think it is Reigns, but that is a very low bar to clear IMO).

Hey man, if you like movez~ ueber alles, Rollins is right up your alley, and more power to you. But I'm not impressed with his selling, heeling. or anything else that makes a good pro wrestler. He's a great guy to show off cool spots, but fuck no, he's not a complete (or good) pro wrestler. People getting crazy with praise for this dude like they were with Reigns after a couple matches with Bryan and Lesnar. And to note, I was down on Rollins before most of DVDVR was if you check the March Madness threads.

I've been down on Rollins ever since the Shield breakup. He's a great athlete, but he's not a good pro wrestler IMO. Kinda like Neville's first-half of his NXT Championship run or Finn Bálor.

Debra is fucking awful. I'm not quite sure she's supposed to be irritating in that way even though she's a heel. Plus Woman's not around very often and when she is, it's ruined by her being with Benoit. Man, fuck. I need to go back to a few of those early 1996 Nitros with Woman and Liz together in the Four Horsemen to clean out the Debra stank she got on all my Horsemen watching.

Woof, no. Not in my estimation. Not close. I just watched Dean Malenko wrestle Ultimo Dragon on a Clash in January of 1997. It was a match where Malenko and Dragon did a shit-ton of moves, many of them crisp and cool, all one after the other. Nothing meant anything - there was a legwork tease that was immediately shook off in order to do more cool moves. It was less a match and more an exhibition of wrestling moves. I'd give it like three stars because while it was crisply wrestled, I could go on YouTube and watch a "50 Greatest Moves of..." compilation and get the same enjoyment out of it. Cena/Rollins was that match except with Cena looking like shit and Jon Stewart on a poorly-done, poorly-conceived finish. It gets two snowflakes from me for that, but even if it had the ending you proposed, I can't imagine caring about it more than Malenko/Dragon on that Clash show. I think Summerslam matches for the WWE WHC should aspire to be more than a Malenko/Dragon opener on a Clash.

WWE statement. Mankind?

Man, I bet Seth Rollins and his Nazi chick having sex was basically like the Palestinian Chicken episode of Curb. That's my explanation for him just sidestepping the Nazi thing.

Bram did punch a cop, so it's not like he hasn't had issues with anger in the past. On another random note, I love that the only person who indulges The New Day's antics is Renee Young, and Big E affectionately calls her "Nene."

He's involved in one of my most "wish it happened" aborted angles when the Four Horsemen splattered him on the concrete for disrespecting Brian Pillman.

Get inFamous: First Light, too. I loved Second Son, but First Light is even better as far as gameplay. I second MLB The Show, Resogun, Rocket League, and I want to throw Rayman Legends out there if you haven't played it on another console yet. It's still my favorite game on the PS4. Oh, and go download your IGC games for August now because today is the very last day to do so.

Questions: First, are the matches completely scripted on the NXT specials? Stuff like Sasha stomping on the hand seems improvised. Not that it matters in the end because it was awesome either way. Second, are the matches on the NXT tapings also rehearsed? Do those give us a better idea of the women calling it on the fly? Maybe they call it at house shows? But yeah, letting them do so at a big show or two would be conducive to them working on PPV each month.

Bray Wyatt lost his luster as soon as he started losing. The Wyatts were basically beating everyone left and right up to the Cena feud. I know people will argue that you should be able to lose and come back from it, but the Wyatt Fam was still cultivating that 'Taker-like aura of invincibility when they suddenly started jobbing to Cena/Jericho/the Usos and were just killed dead. There was a time in late 2013-early 2014 where the crowd obviously accepted them as special and it all just went away. It was mostly the losing, but I don't know that all the convoluted stuff with the kids being converted to Wyatt-ism or whatever was executed properly either; it could have worked, but it hurt Wyatt more than it helped him.

Wreddit putting in work on digging up other stuff from the neo-Nazi lady: https://i.imgur.com/Gtn16mu.jpg Yeah, probably not worth the trouble for WWE. On the other hand, Jarrett just added someone's name to a certain database! EDIT: Here's the original foolishness: http://imgur.com/a/dgi1Z That is cool of you to admit, knowing that at least one person will be shitty about it. No snark. I don't agree, but I'd love to actually hear more about why specifically you rate Dolph's stuff better than the Shield's, in general.

Dolph has his uses, but they're as the midcard dude that bumps around and gets crushed by the debuting star as a way to signal that the debuting star is no one to fuck with and as the occasional spot-holder for the IC or US championships. Being in a long-term midcard feud over a valet exposes him as having sort of shitty charisma and not much of a PPV match worker (at least one-on-one because no one can ever take that Survivor Series performance from last year away from him). He should basically be used as early '90s Tito Santana to make the debuting heel look like a threat.

I totally forgot that Punk was feuding with Alberto Del Rio within like a month of winning that MitB match. I stand corrected.

Is wasting Cena's U.S. Championship Challenge on Rollins the biggest waste of an ongoing hot angle this company has had since the Angle/Steph/HHH love triangle? Can you imagine if they don't book Reigns to fail earlier in the year and then have him end it in a big match at Summerslam where he wins cleanly? Instead, Reigns is dropping falls to Bray Wyatt in the midcard and winning the second title didn't really do anything for Rollins either.

Good list. I'd add "still uses 'Sexy Boy' for entrance music even though he's a rapidly balding 40+ year old man with a frog face and permanently crossed GHB eyes." Also the funniest thing anyone has ever said about HBK, Dylan's "psychosexual hold over Vince McMahon." That's definitely one for the list. On the other hand, we could instead list our top five Seinfeld eps. Here are mine: 1. The Opposite 2. The Marine Biologist 3. The Soup Nazi 4. The Race 5. The Contest

I missed this thread while on vacation. I love Hamada. She's one of those wrestlers that does cool shit while making it look effortless. I also enjoyed her short-lived tag team with Awesome Kong a whole lot. Huge mark for that team. This was on the first Impact of the Monday Night Wars, Part II, with WWE playing the part of the UK and TNA playing the Falklands. I did stop flipping to watch the hell out of this, though.

Good news: This is true. Bad news: She looks like the star of a reality show, not a wrestling show.

Linda Miles was renamed Shaniqua, so...yeah, that was a miss.

They fucked up the finish on the women's fourway. Charlotte was supposed to win. Emma accidentally winning works just fine, though.

That's a great hire! I really like Sarita. I hope they do put her on TV, even if just for a brief NXT run before she transitions fully to behind-the-scenes work.

I just watched the '97 Rumble, and they did SUCH a better job of getting over Austin cheating via ref fuck-up so that it was easy to understand compared to this show with the Undertaker/Lesnar ref fuck-up. Like, man, is this the same company?

EDIT: Wrong thread, but throw my hat into the ring for a Dudleys/Ambrose/Reigns vs. Wyatt Family tables match.