Wrestling

[The Unknown Poster]

Heard mostly good things about the winnipeg show. Some of the work was sloppy according to people I know. But crowd was tremendous. 

Winnipeg is long overdue for TV. 

[Atomic]

Yeah I was there.  You know Saturday in Winnipeg the crowd is always ready to rock.  And the crowd was going off last night.  Absolutely massive reception for Jericho.  Say what you want about Y2J but the man is a legend and the crowd let him hear it.  It was really something else.

Highlights were New Day vs Vaudevillians (even though it was the exact same finish as Extreme Rules!), Six diva match - Sasha returns with Paige and Becky on one team and Dana Brooke and Summer Rae teamed with LANA , triple threat between Del Rio, Kalisto and Rusev, and of course the Winnipeg Street Fight main event between Dean and Jericho.  I've been to every WWE show here since 2013, I think that's four shows now, and this one was probably second best.  

You're not kidding when you say Winnipeg deserves a TV opportunity.  What a crowd.  Not sure the crowd would bring it like that on a Sunday or Monday though.  

[Goalie]

From my understanding, mostly every time WWE comes here, the crowd is pretty much full and loud as loud can be. Give us a PPV (i'd prefer the PPV to Raw or Smackdown) because at least you know what you'd get before hand, I think the crowd would be loud. I remember when Raw and Smackdown were here not so long ago, the back to back shows, the Crowd was hot as hot can be. 

[The Unknown Poster]

Winnipeg was always one of the highest revenue per head cities. Especially when business was down. Problem is, business went up and so the major US cities are all better. 

They did the very rare back to back TV here because it's too difficult to get from Winnipeg to anywhere else for TV. And that's the real issue. 

When they did the In Your House PPV here it was not very good and they did RAW in Brandon which was really not good. Brandon is a dead town for wrestling. 

So they have to make it work with the Dakotas and Minneapolis is closer. It's just the way they schedule that makes it hard. 

Might get ROH one day though 

[Jpan85]

It was fun to watch Ambrose be the heel last night.

[Atomic]

AJ Styles vs John Cena feud incoming!  Sweet!

[Goalie]

Yup. Winnipeg is what they refer to as a stand alone town. Ppv here would be easier cuz they could probably do raw the next night in minny 

[Goalie]

45 minutes ago, Atomic said:

AJ Styles vs John Cena feud incoming!  Sweet!

Should be very good. With that said tho the rest of raw was total crap. You know it won't be good when you get a 20 minute promo to open the show that's main point was that they don't have any idea what they are doing with the brand split yet 

[iso_55]

Dumb promo because brand split is still month & a half away.

[Goalie]

16 minutes ago, iso_55 said:

Dumb promo because brand split is still month & a half away.

That and just... dumb because they pretty much said we don't know what we are doing but hey watch tonight. I think they saw nhl playoffs and NBA game 7 and mailed it in. 

[iso_55]

They can't break up the New Day. What would Xavier Woods do on his own except lose?

[The Unknown Poster]

They had to acknowledge it since the news was out but they should hbe framed it as having ideas to release later and build it up rather then "we have no clue". 

Stephanie is the single worst thing to ever happen to WWE. She is like Godzilla consuming and destroying everything on her path. Her ego (and Hunter who is clearly pulling the strings) is so destructive it over shadows the good things that happen on raw. 

Shane needs to use what little stroke he has to stand up for himself because his sister is cutting his balls off repeatedly. The idea was the crowd would heel on steph's dance getting cut off because she was wearing tiny shorts. Except no one likes her. She's inherently unlike able and the only reason she's a face now is to cut Shane's balls off 

Her promo on Charlotte is the perfect example of how not to get someone over. It's like they did the flair angle to build Charlotte up as a super heel just so Steph could brow beat her this week. Just awful.  She needs to go. 

Anyway....raw was generally awful.  But the big angle was good. Cena is just terrible when he uses his "serious" voice. So pretentious and unbelievable.  Great angle with AJ turning heel. 

Seth/Roman was terrible. Sometimes there are angles that look good on paper but bomb live. There is no way that even looked good on paper. They were trying to time it around the tip off of the NBA game. Meh. So determined to get roman over they don't care if they drag Seth down.  Self destructive. 

The backstage segments with the six man main event guys shows the stark difference between guys who are great performers (the heels) and guys who are not (the faces) though to be fair the faces had horrendous material written for them. 

Seems like holding pattern until the split with a few attempts to elevate some guys for post split, like Titus (who I like). 

[The Unknown Poster]

The best part of raw might have been the Goldberg video. 

[iso_55]

What would have been the best thing they could have done with Seth when he came back? make him a face to a huge pop! But oh no, Vince is  so stubborn to get Reigns over he'll even do it at the expense of Seth Rollins. Never thought I'd see that. Been saying for years that Stephanie is the worst part of Raw. She just got worse & worse as The Authority dragged along for 3 lonnnnnng years.

Break up The New Day? Break up the New Day? BREAK UP THE NEW DAY? Please. Their stupid promos suck.

[The Unknown Poster]

They won't break up the new day. Although they would have during the original brand split. It's just a tease.  They need top acts and it's a top act. Unless they split two of them off and give the other one a partner and have two new days but I doubt it 

I understand why they wanted Seth as a heel since everything is about Roman. But I agree. They prepared the sympathetic show about Seth coming back....makes no sense they'd present him as a weak heel instead of a strong face. 

I would have let him be a face to work Roman with Roman acting like Seth is a heel. And get through the match before turning Seth back.  Supposedly house shows are going to be Seth vs AJ vs Roman so it's another way to try and turn the fans by putting Roman against two "heels" even though fans will cheer both those heels. 

[Atomic]

Put Big E as the final competitor in Money in the Bank, have him win it and subsequently the WWE title.  Now Kofi and Xavier are the tag champs and Big E is the WWE champ and they can all appear whenever and wherever they want.  Haha.  Yeah right!

Did someone say Stephanie is trying to be a face?  Well that's never going to work, lol.  I wasn't sure what they were getting at with her.  She is just not likeable, not one bit.

[The Unknown Poster]

Funny that Shane gets a huge face reaction and Steph suddenly decides to be a face. Uh huh. Out of control ego. 

[The Unknown Poster]

Interestingly, someone managed to find within the Goldberg video that while he's in the police car he stares down a Suplex City sign.

There is chatter that NXT could be getting either shut down or gutted.  They cancelled their SummerSlam week show which was their biggest show last year.  Their upcoming Network special is called "The End", thought to refer to the end of Joe vs Balor program...but now people are reading into it differently.

The feeling is that for the brand split to work and this whole "new era" concept to work, both RAW and SD will be flooded with NXT talent.  NXT would likely still exist in some form but more as a traditional development territory for green guys rather then a place where top talent works because they need that talent to draw.

I think it would be very short sighted.  But you never know...

Edited May 31, 2016 by The Unknown Poster

[Mike]

RAW was awful last night - how on earth did they think running the "run to the ring, back off, run back to the ring, back off, run back to the ring, back off" garbage was going to work ONCE, let alone TWICE?

It was unbearable. Seeing Seth do it was terrible, they're doing all they can to give that guy heel reactions but the crowd just hates the angle instead. Then AJ does it shortly after?

Garbage. Who wrote this ****

[The Unknown Poster]

Yup.  Aj doing it was good because he actually attacked.  Seth doing it was abysmal.  I just dont know why they fight the crowd's reactions so much.  They really are going to convince themselves that reactions dont matter anymore when in fact they surely do.  Reports are now that Roman's houseshows are dropping and AJ is getting bigger reactions.  Vince used to use house shows as one of his key metrics in determining the strength of the business, so we'll see how long he plans to go with Roman.

Historically, Post WM is a down time.  Notice who took themselves off TV during the down time? 

[Mike]

31 minutes ago, The Unknown Poster said:

Yup.  Aj doing it was good because he actually attacked.  Seth doing it was abysmal.  I just dont know why they fight the crowd's reactions so much.  They really are going to convince themselves that reactions dont matter anymore when in fact they surely do.  Reports are now that Roman's houseshows are dropping and AJ is getting bigger reactions.  Vince used to use house shows as one of his key metrics in determining the strength of the business, so we'll see how long he plans to go with Roman.

Historically, Post WM is a down time.  Notice who took themselves off TV during the down time? 

The problem with AJ making something out of it is that it already seemed stale because the same schtick had just bricked a few segments earlier.

[The Unknown Poster]

For sure.  Im just saying at least AJ did it well.  Its very WCW-during-its-downfall type of stuff.  Just last night I was reading about a Nitro episode in 1998 where they did a partner during on their friend angle in Hour One with Meng/Barbarian and did the exact same angle in Hour Three with Hall/Nash. 

I imagine WWE realised they were doing the same thing and decided it enhanced both characterizations because AJ actually running in made him look brave (even though he had two other guys) and Seth look cowardly.  I dont think they want AJ to be a traditional heel because he's a big draw on the house shows.  Whereas Seth, they want heel.  They planned for Seth vs Hunter before Seth's injury and if they are going to go back to that, Hunter aint working a guy that is wishy washy.  Its still stupid though.  I also think they thought the will-he or won't-he attack thing with Seth would keep viewers from turning to the NBA game.  Which is absurd.

[The Unknown Poster]

On 5/23/2016 at 11:27 PM, The Unknown Poster said:

 The way AJ is doing jobs they might be turning him heel. 

Quoted for accuracy ;-)

[Atomic]

Who is getting that final slot in the MitB match?  Bray Wyatt?   

[The Unknown Poster]

Cody Rhodes first Indy match will be August 27th against Kurt Angle for North East Wrestling.  That match has tons of potential.  Im sort of hoping he ends up a surprise at the ROH shows the week before since I will be at them.