WWE Royal Rumble

[SerPaladin]

Of all the mid-carders in SDs tag division, Ascension feels like they are the poorest at making me believe in their wrestling. They have a bad combination of botching some moves, obviously whiffing on strikes, having a derivative gimmick, and being bland on the mic. The Vaudevillains are stiff and have a fun hook. Hype Bros are fast and goofy. Slater is Slater-y. Even Breezango has some connection to the crowd, and the pretty boys are actually decent wrestlers when they are allowed to let loose. Ascension are not credible.

If Bo comes over from Raw and joins Bray's flock, as I am hoping, Bo and Erick Rowan would be an interesting tag team with a "monster". Man, the SD roster is thin.

[Joe Pesci]

On 9/12/2016 at 7:17 PM, GrimTuesday said:

I firmly think that no one is to damaged to be a player in pro wrestling, it just takes some work. They have to do is start booking them progressively stronger, stop having them job to everyone and their mother, and just make them look credible. I thought that their match against the Usos in the first round was pretty good, and though short, they looked like a credible threat for the time they were in control of the match. Sure, I'm excited to see Dash and Dawson on the main roster, but they fill two different roles, one doesn't have to block the other. I'm not saying that they have to be the top heels, just another team who you could conceive of holding the belts from time to time.

Well the Ascension just totally botched a big spot during their impromptu match for the titles, probably not getting a rematch or anything resembling a push after that. It was bad. Real bad.

[GrimTuesday]

2 hours ago, Joe Pesci said:

Well the Ascension just totally botched a big spot during their impromptu match for the titles, probably not getting a rematch or anything resembling a push after that. It was bad. Real bad.

Really, I didn't notice a botch, but I might not have been watching very close. I thought the match was pretty solid for being something of a squash.

[SerPaladin]

8 hours ago, GrimTuesday said:

Really, I didn't notice a botch, but I might not have been watching very close. I thought the match was pretty solid for being something of a squash.

I was just coming to the thread to note the botch on their tag move in the corner. Almost a complete whiff jumping off the rope.

In other news. Rollins pissing off Foley... If they want to turn Rollins face, and have a narrative for him, I think a "gauntlet" would be fun to sniff the title picture. Rollins one-on-one through the Raw roster. Would build huge cred, get the fans behind him, even create a suspenseful match involving Bron Strowman a couple months down the line. Plus it gets Rollins off Owens while Owens works through Zayn and Jericho, and Roman does his time in purgatory with Rusev.

Ambrose is leaning heel, away from his tweener-face status, and Rollins is going face eventually. Just waiting for Roman's flip and we might have our first wrestling triple turn in history.

[briantw]

Well, the Cruiserweight Classic wrapped up last night in spectacular fashion.  Two awesome semifinal match-ups, a fun tag team bout, and a great finals.  Ibushi was the clear MVP of the tournament.  Everyone he wrestled looked like a star.  It's a shame he wouldn't agree to a WWE contract, because I have no doubt that he'd have won the tournament and the new title if he had.  Same goes for Sabre, although he may end up in NXT anyway based on his comments.

Really love what Triple H and Regal and the rest of the NXT guys did with this tournament.  It was the best thing the WWE has done in ages, probably since they started making NXT a weekly program for hardcore fans.  I liked that they put over some guys who didn't wrestle for them as well, or at least guys who wouldn't fully commit.  That'll help bring in talent for future tournaments, as bigger names know they'll get at least a few rounds to showcase themselves and collect extra checks.

I think we saw a couple of future stars in this tournament.  Johnny Gargano and Cedric Alexander in particular stood out, and Perkins was great too.

[Joe Pesci]

Finally had a chance to finish the CWC. Easily the best thing wwe has done in quite awhile. It's a shame how badly they've bungled the cruiserweights on raw since the debut. Talk about a momentum killer for these guys.

[briantw]

Man, Jericho and Owens have absolutely been killing it lately.  Basically the only watchable parts of Raw tonight were the three segments with JeriKO and the women's main event.

[briantw]

Hot damn, Takeover: Toronto was an amazing show.  I'd consider it the best WWE show since Takeover: Dallas.  The tag match was a five star match, and the main event was the best Samoa Joe match I've seen since his debut.  The worst match on the card was probably the Dusty Rhodes Classic match, and even that was pretty good.

Hell, I knew who was going to win the tag title match (I had a Friendsgiving party tonight and the WWE app pushed the results of all the matches to my phone) and was still on the edge of my seat for the third fall.  Just an incredible match.  Arguably the best WWE match of the year.  Off the top of my head, the only competition is Zayn/Nakamura and the first PPV match between Zayn and Owens (don't remember which PPV that was on, but I remember it was great).  Styles/Cena was great too.

[Joe Pesci]

Haven't been following any wrestling too closely lately, but this was one of the better ones I've seen in a while. Solid top to bottom. What's more impressive is that NXT can still deliver like this with how their roster was purged by the brand split. Considering how stale the tag team scene is on both shows (at least it was is in Oct when I last watched), TM-61, Authors of Pain, The Revival, and DIY is probably the best tag team division going.

[briantw]

3 hours ago, Joe Pesci said:

Haven't been following any wrestling too closely lately, but this was one of the better ones I've seen in a while. Solid top to bottom. What's more impressive is that NXT can still deliver like this with how their roster was purged by the brand split. Considering how stale the tag team scene is on both shows (at least it was is in Oct when I last watched), TM-61, Authors of Pain, The Revival, and DIY is probably the best tag team division going.

That might have been the best WWE show this year.  I think it was a better overall show than Takeover: Dallas.

[briantw]

I still think it's pretty goddamn amazing that we can go from Takeover: Toronto, one of the best WWE shows of the year, to Survivor Series, which was just a collective sigh of a wrestling show.  None of the matches were really offensively bad or anything, but there also just wasn't anything that really popped, and poor booking hurt a couple of the matches.  The false finish in Zayn/Miz was yet another unneeded callback to the Montreal Screwjob (seriously, just let it fucking go, Vince), Corbin's interference in the cruiserweight match marred the ending, Sasha getting eliminated early in the women's match was idiotic, and having Owens and Jericho (two Canadians who were wildly popular in front of the Toronto crowd) get removed from the men's match so early was another dumb decision.

I did enjoy Goldberg/Lesnar, if only because it went completely against expectations and lasted about a minute.  Also, is it just me or is Lesnar starting to look more like Kevin Owens than Bill Goldberg?  He's getting a little chunky.  

They also really need to just turn Reigns heel already.  It just looks so damn tone deaf when they continually try to pretend he's a face as he regularly gets booed out of arenas.  Basically every heel in the men's match was cheered over Reigns, and he got hit with yet another "Roman's sleeping" chant, one of my personal favorites.

I just don't understand how the same company can put on Takeover and do damn near everything right and then Survivor Series the next night and do so much wrong.  It's baffling, especially when you consider the talent that was involved in Survivor Series.  The crowd was molten hot for the entirety of Takeover, but the poor booking at Survivor Series really sucked the life out of them at times.

[Joe Pesci]

10 hours ago, briantw said:

I still think it's pretty goddamn amazing that we can go from Takeover: Toronto, one of the best WWE shows of the year, to Survivor Series, which was just a collective sigh of a wrestling show.  None of the matches were really offensively bad or anything, but there also just wasn't anything that really popped, and poor booking hurt a couple of the matches.  The false finish in Zayn/Miz was yet another unneeded callback to the Montreal Screwjob (seriously, just let it fucking go, Vince), Corbin's interference in the cruiserweight match marred the ending, Sasha getting eliminated early in the women's match was idiotic, and having Owens and Jericho (two Canadians who were wildly popular in front of the Toronto crowd) get removed from the men's match so early was another dumb decision.

I did enjoy Goldberg/Lesnar, if only because it went completely against expectations and lasted about a minute.  Also, is it just me or is Lesnar starting to look more like Kevin Owens than Bill Goldberg?  He's getting a little chunky.  

They also really need to just turn Reigns heel already.  It just looks so damn tone deaf when they continually try to pretend he's a face as he regularly gets booed out of arenas.  Basically every heel in the men's match was cheered over Reigns, and he got hit with yet another "Roman's sleeping" chant, one of my personal favorites.

I just don't understand how the same company can put on Takeover and do damn near everything right and then Survivor Series the next night and do so much wrong.  It's baffling, especially when you consider the talent that was involved in Survivor Series.  The crowd was molten hot for the entirety of Takeover, but the poor booking at Survivor Series really sucked the life out of them at times.

Pretty spot on here. The Goldberg squash was amazing imo. There isn't anyone on this planet that saw that coming, and that's why it was so great. I think the biggest difference between NXT and WWE is simply that NXT runs more of a wrestling show while WWE considers their shows as sports entertainment and focuses more on interviews and segments than the actual wrestling. It sure seems like WWE couldn't suffer from trying to include some more focus on the wrestling side of things, the crowd from Takeover makes it kinda obvious that it would be well received.

[briantw]

28 minutes ago, Joe Pesci said:

Pretty spot on here. The Goldberg squash was amazing imo. There isn't anyone on this planet that saw that coming, and that's why it was so great. I think the biggest difference between NXT and WWE is simply that NXT runs more of a wrestling show while WWE considers their shows as sports entertainment and focuses more on interviews and segments than the actual wrestling. It sure seems like WWE couldn't suffer from trying to include some more focus on the wrestling side of things, the crowd from Takeover makes it kinda obvious that it would be well received.

Yup, and it was the same crowd, right down to them chanting "TEN" every time the ref tried to count, a carry over from the Dillinger match.

Also, if Tye Dillinger doesn't enter the Royal Rumble at number ten this year, there is no god.  That will get the loudest pop of the entire Rumble (short of someone like Zayn or Nakamura winning) if they do it.

[lessthanluke]

Nah Bobby Roode entering at number 2 will top it. Glorious!

[Joe Pesci]

Roode's entrance at Takeover was awesome. It's things like that that make NXT stand out over WWE.

[briantw]

2 hours ago, Joe Pesci said:

Roode's entrance at Takeover was awesome. It's things like that that make NXT stand out over WWE.

Nakamura had an awesome entrance too.  

I think the WWE only does stuff like that for major PPVs, which kind of makes sense given that they have dozens of PPVs a year compared to like four for NXT.

[briantw]

.

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

 George "The Animal" Steele eats his last turnbuckle pad...

http://uproxx.com/prowrestling/george-steele-dies/

 

/Autopsy notes his tongue was green. RIP 

[briantw]

1 hour ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

 George "The Animal" Steele eats his last turnbuckle pad...

http://uproxx.com/prowrestling/george-steele-dies/

 

/Autopsy notes his tongue was green. RIP 

He's one of the few guys in the wrestling business you never heard anyone say anything bad about.  Well, except for Bret Hart, but he hates everyone.

[briantw]

Takeover: Orlando ended up being on of the best wrestling shows I've ever watched.  Just a fantastic card from top to bottom.  

The tag team match was a MOTY candidate, and Moon/Asuka was the best women's match since Sasha/Bayley almost two years ago.  The other three matches all hovered somewhere between good and great.

Also, Asuka is so much better as a heel than I could have ever envisioned.  She's just so fantastic at being a cocky bitch.  Very impressed by how all of her little mannerisms have changed slightly to support her heel turn.