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AUGUST WRESTLING DISCUSSION


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And don't even try to defend the Bryan/Kane idea. If others here are trying to say that the entire point of last year was WWE building up Bryan and not WWE realizing they were fucking up and changing things at the last minute, then why the fuck was the best they can throw on there champ that the fans loved get partnered with the "He's not a champion we are really behind, so let's stick him with this guy" guy? Why did they have much more solid plans for Cena, and the SHIELD/Evolution thing and nothing anyone really was gonna care about for their champ?

 

 

I agree entirely that it wasn't the best move to put Bryan with Kane immediately after 30. That being said, if they were dead set on doing that, it could have been done so much better if they had used a little more of the Team Hell No history. It seemed as though they really didn't touch on that other than a few throwaway comments, but for as fantastic as they were as a team in 2012/2013, they both deserved much better in that feud-- not just Bryan, but Kane too. Just my two cents on it.

 

 

 

 

I'm struggling to come up with names as far as who were amongst the first to be "tested" with a de-push. RVD in 2002/2003? Christian 2005? Sure, Mark Henry and Big Show had gone down to OVW in 2000 or so, but I think a lot of that was conditioning issues. What do you guys think?

 

Depends.

 

Jericho going from Undisputed Champion in the main event of WrestleMania to missing Backlash to losing to a rookie at Vengeance and tapping to an elderly Ric Flair at SummerSlam seems pretty glaring.

 

Booker coming in strong with a SummerSlam main event against Rock and then falling off the face of the earth after the Alliance is also worth consideration.

 

Do we consider people who never passed the "test?" Surely DDP's sharp fall after his angle with Taker enters into the discussion. 

 

 

Jericho is definitely a candidate, but really, the whole X8 story with HHH and Steph was dogshit (no pun) to begin with. Also, I get that Cena was a rookie, but he had pretty competitive matches with Angle and Brock and others after that, and he went on to be a massive star, so hindsight kinda helps there. Flair might have been elderly, but it's still Ric Fucking Flair, so I gotta give that one a pass too. Jericho might have cooled a bit in recent years, but he'll always get the part-timer pop, and he'll always be a guy who was a mainstay during the hottest period ever.

 

Booker I'm iffy on, since he got the WHC match with HHH pretty shortly after that, but if you put a gun to my head and asked what he did in between the Alliance and that... I couldn't begin to tell you. When was the Goldust team again? That was certainly a demotion, but it was fun as all get out.

 

Page CERTAINLY fits the bill, but hey, he got a European title run and a Mania match out of it, so it could've been worse. WCW dropped the ball with him way before the WWF did, though, in my estimation. He went from super over People's Champ, tearing it up with Savage and Goldberg, to the Jersey Triad. Now, I think the world of Bigelow's and Kanyon's work, but dying WCW was such a strange landscape that by the time DDP made it back to the top of the card, he was headlining with Jeff Jarrett and David Arquette instead of Sting, Hogan, Goldberg, Bret, Nash and other legitimate main event guys who initially helped WCW get hot to begin with.

 

 

 

 

 

I'm struggling to come up with names as far as who were amongst the first to be "tested" with a de-push. RVD in 2002/2003? Christian 2005? Sure, Mark Henry and Big Show had gone down to OVW in 2000 or so, but I think a lot of that was conditioning issues. What do you guys think?

 

 

It depends what you mean by "de-push." The Rock and Kurt Angle spent quite a bit of time slumming it the midcard after significant title wins, but they won most of their midcard feuds which probably helped them when they were quickly shoved back up the card.

 

If you're talking about guys doing a lot of jobs, it's probably the bigger names of the Alliance. Booker T really stands out since he was pushed as WCW's top guy by virtue of having the belt. He quickly and deciscively lost that to The Rock and spent rest of the invasion jobbing, as many non-defector Alliance-originals did. I honestly can't remember the first feud Booker won in WWE. Did he slip something in February of 02? I'm drawing a blank between getting beat up in the supermarket and losing to Edge in the shampoo feud. I remember he did end up winning a program with Show by the summer of 02 at the latest.

 

Edit: It was almost certainly the Big Show feud. I just remembered post-Mania he joined up with NWO 02, and got kicked out by Michaels which is what turned him face.

 

Unrelated, but was that NWO 02 stable weird or what? Didn't it go from Hogan/Hall/Nash to Michaels/Flair/Waltman/Booker/Show or something like that? What was up with that?

 

Maybe I'm alone in this, but I was actually intrigued by nWo 02 when Michaels joined. They started an angle where he was trying to recruit HHH to join them but then Vince came out and killed the whole damn thing.

 

 

 

Rock and Angle were already Rock and Angle though. No one on the planet Earth thought Mr. Ass was going to go over the Rock and become the next big star. And also thank you for solving the mystery of what the fuck Booker did for a year and a half-- I honestly forgot about so much of that.

 

I was also intrigued by NWO 2002. I was actually kind of weirdly hoping it would lead to the Kliq being an on-screen thing under the NWO banner, but I get why it had to be killed. Without Hogan, Hall or Nash it was kind of strange. X-Pac and Giant were original 1996 guys, though, and a case could be made for Booker being kayfabe grandfathered in through Stevie Ray's membership...

 

Also I saw Shawn in an Outsiders shirt in PWI once when I was a kid so there's that

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For some reason I thought Kane had a hell of a lot more face/heel turns than he's actually had.

 

I'm in the same boat. I always have the perception that, like Big Show, he doesn't turn face or heel, he just exists while turning in a full 360 at all times.

 

I feel badly saying this because I've always liked Kane (with the exception of when I was around 11-12 years old because Jerry Lynn-RVD had just happened and I got a high speed internet connection, and thus only appreciated movez) but man... every time he comes out as Corporate Kane it just sucks the life out of the show. Like I said in reference to Evolution-era HHH the other day, maybe "get this guy off my TV"-heat is the 21st century version of heel heat, but I'm just simply disinterested in anything he has going on.

 

Was this latest turn even really necessary? I mean, is Kane really doing anything right now that couldn't be done by Brad Maddox, or even a Paul Heyman killing time until the hype train for Brock's next match? He should have been kept off TV for awhile after the Wyatt beatdown until they had a better plan. Shit, I would take Kane as a babyface against The Authority as Bryan's proxy right now over any of this abysmal Bellas/Steph stuff.

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On Bryan feuding with Kane after Mania:

 

I actually think that was a really great post-Mania feud for him. Yes, Kane is generally terrible when he's pushed as a main eventer and deservedly has a reputation of being a filler feud for anyone of significance he's programmed with, but that's not a huge concern when you're talking about someone who was on pace to be the next super-face of this generation. The Kane feud was a tacit acknowledgement that Bryan had really made it. The fact that he was getting a throwaway match against a guy who had zero chance of winning as a ppv main event proved that he was on top of the mountain. That's a position normally reserved for Cena. The only thing they did wrong was the "serious neck injury" angle. One garden-variety beatdown to build heat and fill a video package would've been fine. Kane should've been stooging around for Bryan like he did during the actual match for the whole feud. Save the "serious" stuff for when the Lesnar feud rolls around, which I assume was the plan prior to Bryan getting (or realizing how bad he was) hurt.

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For some reason I thought Kane had a hell of a lot more face/heel turns than he's actually had.

 

I'm trying to catalog all of Kane's turns after reading this...

 

1997 - Debuts as a heel

1998 - Turns face for the initial BoD run

1999 - Joins the corporation as a heel (with some internal conflict)

1999 - X-Pac turns him face with the power of friendship

2000 - Turns on Taker out of the blue

2001 - ??? Face turn, perhaps catalyzed by his Rumble performance, was def. back in BoD by No Way Out

2003 - Turns heel after being unmasked

2005 - De facto face turn via Edge/Lita angle

2006 - May 19th stuff, turns on tag partner Big Show

2006 - ??? Face turn ??? was def. a face by the end of the year feuding with MVP

 

Hard to imagine he stayed clean for 4 years, but I honestly can't remember anything here

 

2010 - Turns after cashing in MITB on Rey, feuds with Taker

2011 - Turns face with Show to fight the Corre

2012 - Comes back with the mask as a heel for Cena/Ryder feud

2012 - Daniel Bryan and Dr. Shelby turn him face with the power of friendship

2013 - Hands over the mask to join the Authority

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I love Corporate Kane. It's the perfect wrap up character for the guy.

The perfect thing is too, if they choose to do so Kane can have one last face run as like a elder Clint Eastwood Liam Nieson type that is fed up with the Authorities oppressive power trip and decides to go out swinging trying one last time to bring down the machine. 

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