rolling Jericho calls The New Day trap queens 2016

The mishandling of Roman Reigns is definitely one of the most bewildering things I've ever encountered in my years following WWE. You'd think you'd really have to try hard to screw him up. And apparently that is a popular theory going around the internet these days (although I still think incompetence is the better explanation, for now).

Yeah I am dubious at some of the conspiracy theory stuff that's being posited, seems like a combo of vince being stubborn and out of touch, and hunter just not being able to help himself.

Kind of awesome and hilarious the way his rep has been rehabilitated what with nxt and so on, Cause I think you can make a pretty cohesive argument that he's still all about putting himself over at all times whatever the cost, and that has never not been the case.

He'll happily lose in big matches but he always makes sure to look as strong as possible during the buildup and in the actual match. I get that you want to keep the champion strong so that beating him means something. But for this particular feud, they really needed for HHH to screw Reigns out of the title at the Rumble, run away from him for weeks before Reigns can kill him, get forced into a title match through some shenanigans, and getting bulldozed at Mania to put Reigns over for good. In other words, Sting vs Hogan (the buildup, not the match itself). Instead it's HHH winning the Rumble more or less cleanly, beating the piss out of Reigns whenever he wants, and actively campaigning to have the match at Mania. And I'm sure the match will be 3/4 Reigns getting his ass kicked and making a big comeback at the end (to a chorus of boos).

The only way it works afait* is it has to go on last, i know i know, and reigns has to flip the fuck out. Like worse than austin at wm17. Hes gotta go fucking mental. Hes gotta have motivation. Preferably a manager or a faction. Possibly bring the cage down just to throw ambrose or hhh off it. Make him a scary motherfucker. If Shane wins, and he should, itll be the first time in 200 years the booker wont be the main heel and they should establish it immediately.

*obv not in the biz, ive just had 2 days off work watching lots of wrestling

If Shane wins, and he should

i think whatever happens - and right now it seems plausible that they are banking on Cena being fit or someone else coming in to fight as Shane's avatar, with Shane going into the cage only in the last extremity - there's just no way that Shane McMahon gets a Wrestlemania pinfall on The Undertaker. I know, nepotism etc. but this is Taker at Mania, that still means something. He'd lie down for Lesnar because it's Lesnar, but no way does Shane-O go over in any scenario if that's the match we get, imo.

I don't know what they're going to do about Reigns/HHH and it'll be interesting to see them figure it out. I think even the scenario you've outlined wouldn't help a great deal, this guy is just dead in the water right now, whatever happens it's got to happen before the PPV to try and shake some life into this match.

itll be the first time in 200 years the booker wont be the main heel and they should establish it immediately.

yeah lol see this is what i mean about HHH, sure he'll lie down for younger or less established guys on the PPVs when the moment calls for it (which is actually a massive step forward, lest we forget CM Punk in 2011 or Lesnar at WM29) but if you think there's any way that the show doesn't continue to be all about him all the time i think you're crazy

Shane/Taker at Mania is gonna be a schmozz in any case. Taker's greatest hits: Kane pop up from the canvas for a helping hand, Papa Shango does a run in, caskets and fire and lighting and shit. As Gorilla might put have it, it'll be a happening. I'll get my workrate itch scratched with NXT TakeOver; on WrestleMania Sunday I just want to be entertained.

To clarify:

I meant 'Shane'. I really don't think Shane fights, although he'll fall off something or through something.

I also don't expect any of that scenario to happen.

WM will be and needs to be SCHMOZZFEST 2016, at least Taker-'Shane', the title match, presumably a multi man ladder match type thing, whatever crazy tag team thing they have going on and of course the streetfight. Only whatever AJ, KO and the womens title match will be legit. And being SCHMOZZFEST is p much the best way to go, being all serious about the three match ups we currently know about would be criminal. Especially knowing nxt will be a masterpiece.

Went to the OTT Wrestling show in Dublin last night, mostly to see Will Ospreay before he heads off to New Japan. He's a phenomenal performer, oodles of charisma to match his athleticism, he's gonna be a star over there (watch out KUSHIDA!).

Sadly I didn't get to see the end of his main event triple threat, as the show ran long (my bus home was across the city, a 25-minute brisk walk). And the venue/show management left a lot to be desired: the atmosphere changed as the evening went on and the audience necked back more and more cheap lager. So many drunks, a couple getting all up in my face. Had to fight my way through the crowd to get to the only exit. I'm a 35-year-old man, I've never been in a fight but I think I can handle myself, yet I did not feel very comfortable.

I don't need that bullshit with my wrestling - nor the sexist macho/lad-culture replies to my complaints on Twitter - so I won't be going again. And I'm having second thoughts about attending tonight's ICW show, too.

(Update: I went to the ICW show in the end and it was a blast - even if I'd much prefer a seated show.)

MacDara the thread-killer strikes again ha-ha!

Anyway, what did everyone think of Raw? I'll check back in later after I've watched it.

steph promo was a+ (albeit in the classic format of "i am a heel but i'm going to say lots of things that are otm because i'm also kind of not a heel i suppose"), dean-trips stuff was v good, becky-sasha was decent but obviously setting up for bigger things, rest was not really worthwhile

tho i am looking forward to this hilarious odd couple-style sitcom, coming soon on usa network

http://411mania.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Undertaker-Vince-McMahon-Raw-22916-645x370.jpg

Kota Ibushi in "come and get me plea" to WWE Executive Vice-President of Talent Triple H.

i wish no harm upon any man but 4 real i can't wait until Vinnie Mac has checked out and Hunter has the freedom to extend his smart-mark EWR fantasy booking tendencies to the main roster.

in some alternate reality AJ Styles / Kevin Owens is yr WM IC title feud and it's hot-as-hot-can-be, and we're getting 20 mins of them tearing it up in a classic WM match to be remembered forever after.

in this actual real life reality AJ Styles is teaming with your most embarrassing uncle ahead of an inevitable split/heel turn giving us a match we've seen 5 times already in every possible combination that is entirely predictable and does nothing to elevate anyone. Kevin Owens just lost by count out to the muthafuckin Big Show. No one at the top of this company has any fucking clue at all what it is that ppl like in 2016.

AJ Styles has been w the company for 2 months, they've already had him pinned clean by one of their over-the-hill Attitude Era holdovers, killed the Styles Clash as a finisher, labelled him as a redneck and a rookie, mocked his height, dismissed his ability to cut a promo.. are these guys allergic to money or what

Styles was never going to be a main event star in WWE though. Daniel Bryan was a once in a generation exception (i.e. indie star not known for his mic work or having much of a character beyond "guy who likes kicking people" who unexpectedly developed both and was embraced by the fans while still being at the top of his game in the ring).

The Styles Clash has always been a dumb finisher too, and can't be safely or realistically applied to guys bigger than him (which is 85% of the WWE roster). They've been putting the calf killer/crusher over strong, so I have no complaints about any of this.

Jericho can still go in the ring, so he's not the problem, and Jericho/Styles vs New Day in a 15 minute tag title match at Mania could rock bells. The "redneck rookie" crap didn't help, and they've compensated for his mic work (which is poor by WWE standards) by having Jericho as the svengali behind all of his feuds so far.

I dont really mind jericho styles/new day or jericho-styles as pairings. Its gonna be alright for his first mania and hes still being booked kinda strong despite the problems. It'd be sweet if he can come out strong into a high-ish profile fued for post-mania and a good spot for summerslam (beat jericho at wm, wrestle owens for a few months, face a return like cena or orton at ss?).

Its still wwe though.

i take the point about the Styles Clash.

didn't mean to imply that AJ was ever going to be a main-event level star in WWE, just complaining in a general sense that they had this nice shiny new thing that people were totally excited about and they've managed to take most of the shine off it less than 3 months into his run. nothing's really been "ruined" or whatever, the problem is that they seemingly never run with the hot hand anymore when the opportunity is there.

Jericho beating Styles hasn't killed AJ's ability to be a big guy for them in the future, in the same way that Triple H pinning CM Punk in Summer 2011 didn't kill off Punk (I'm aware there are significant differences). but they're both examples of them hitting the brakes on guys who had momentum because... why? i just don't get why they don't run with it when they stumble into something cool and exciting.

Jericho is part of the problem here imo, not specifically wrt to Styles but with the WWE generally. any of the guys who've been knocking around for more than a decade now are part of the problem. you watch WWF/E throughout history, picking years at random and look at how different the rosters are between, say, 1984 1987 1991 1994 1999 2004 - things used to change up all the time. having so many long-termers on the roster makes everything feel so stale. as soon as anyone new and interesting gets involved with them the gloss immediately wears off a bit because it's 2016 and i don't wanna watch the Big Show wrestle anymore

I think i can think of like 5 spur of the moment booking-the-hot-guy examples in 10 years.

Punks contract
Hall of pain
The new day
The rhodes brothers
Something something daniel bryan
...that time rtruth actually got to headline a ppv match against cena?
...
...
...

I just remembered that when rock and cena tagged for a big 4 ppv main event their competitors were... the fucking miz and r truth, because of a laptop. Really puts in perspective the current lot.

Remember Ziggler at Survivor Series or when he won the title the night after Raw? He lost to miz in a minute i heard on Raw.

You've discussed Aj.

Kevin Owens beat Cena in his first match and less than a year later hes fueding with ziggler and big show.

Rusev went on a winning streak and got a fucking tank and now hes Sheamus' lackey.

Lol wyatts.

Neville had the best title non-win in a million years last year and is he even still on the show?

There are most probably a million other examples.

This is what they do.

Fuck its depressing. Come on trips.

last thing i wanna do is defend wwe, but like... i feel like everyone complains about dudes not being booked heavily enough if they're not in the immediate heavyweight title picture? i mean for better or for worse, there's a story with that title now, they can't put everyone in that story. they've already got at least 4 dudes in that story right now!

for real as long as Kevin Owens gets occasional WWE.com exclusive interviews where he has to be reluctantly roused from reclining on some kind of pallet backstage I will be happy

xpost to Will M

nah it's not about wins and losses and titles i don't think, not directly. like, i absolutely am not demanding that AJ Styles (but this goes for loads of guys) easily win every match he's in and be in the world title picture or w/e, of course not, only idiots think that good workrate = deserving top star in that way. BUT there is such a distance between that kind of myopic smark view and the reality, there is a middle ground that could be taken.

when you've got guys on your roster who are fresh, new, exciting, capable of putting together different and interesting new feuds with excellent matches PUT THEM TOGETHER! take these things which are fresh and new and exciting and let them reinvigorate your show! it'll get over! don't put them with fucking Jericho or Big Show or Kane or whoever because then I'm just an asshole sat in a room watching Big Show or Jericho or Kane or whoever AGAIN in 2016.

"________ vs Big Show"

it doesn't matter who you plug into this equation, it's still a case of same old shit and it's nothing i as a viewer want any part of. beating Chris Jericho in 2016 means nothing. feud them with fucking Neville or Breeze or Rusev or Harper or WHATEVER, just get these old fucks off my screen, give me something different. it's not like any of it could possibly hurt ratings or buy-rates. stop having fun new guys get beat by 25 year vets on your main tv show. no one's gonna get over like this

yeah, lot of fresh talent that could be feuding w/ each other but it feels like they're saving all these guaranteed straight-fire matches for a future that may never come

the new guys never get properly introduced, which is a bummer, and i blame 3 hours of live tv. their video package department is so damn good, why are they doing 20-minute individual one-act plays with shaky actors in front of 10000 people when they could do 5-minute intro things? like the nxt vids, minus the "reality" ness of it all. more kayfabe-y intros. like Lucha Underground. idk, if i'm someone who never watched nxt, how am i supposed to know ANYTHING about neville? occasional mic spots? while 10000 people say WHAT? ...i just feel like before someone gets on a mic, it'd be nice if we KNEW a lot about them.

seriously, show me a 3-minute video of neville, invent a backstory where he idk used to be a trapeze artist in the circus with a violent streak, left to join THE REAL CIRCUS of wwe.

or show me a 3-min video of breeze at his summer home in XXXXXXXX being a general vain doofus and make it clear that he hates uggos, then put him in a feud with an uggo. there are so many uggos to choose from!

i honestly do feel even though they WAY overdid it that the wyatt videos WERE effective for a while!! short, weird, developed character and to a lesser extent established motivation in a way that trying to do it in the bright lights on a mic live just can't do concisely!

otm.

i tried thinking about it and what i could come up with in recent times

2010 alberto del rio is a rich guy in a mansion
2012 chris jericho has faux taker cryptic vids and comes out saying nothing
2012 lord tensai isnt prince albert, hes got a face tattoo now
2012 brodus clay is a killer, who they then forget about and hes a funky dinosaur
2012 brock comes back from ufc
2013 wyatts
2013 team hell no anger management

im clutching at straws, and in the past 6 years there has definitely been 100+ men and women on the roster they could have done this with. to fill a 3 hour fucking show. or the other 2 hour one. or the other ones they have on top of those.

they maybe did it with sin botchy too? icantremember

were hell no's anger mgmt videos live sketches backstage or actual produced vids? i never saw them (only got back in like... 2ish yrs ago)

I think it was a mixture of both, those segments were dumb but they got THN 10x more over than I would have thought possible.

didn't mean to imply that AJ was ever going to be a main-event level star in WWE, just complaining in a general sense that they had this nice shiny new thing that people were totally excited about and they've managed to take most of the shine off it less than 3 months into his run. nothing's really been "ruined" or whatever, the problem is that they seemingly never run with the hot hand anymore when the opportunity is there.

I completely agree ... he showed up at the Rumble to a huge reaction and it might turn out to be the highlight of his WWE career. They could have put him in an IC title feud for him to get his feet wet, and let his push develop organically from there. Instead he's trading wins and losses just like every other WWE midcarder, after two months he's already in the Ziggler zone where he's stuck in this infinite loop of midcard matches with the same guys 4 life.

RIP Hayabusa.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izYE04Zko5c

caught up with the two most recent episodes of NXT today, and boy that Zayn / Joe two-out-of-three-falls match is really something, eh?

I hate sounding like a boring old-school-wannabe Steve Austin mark, but I have been watching a lot of old wrestling recently and I'm finding it increasingly difficult to deal with the style of match that Balor / Neville work in their match from last week. It's all kicks and dives art 100 miles an hour, I hit you then you hit me, two faces trying to "outperform" each other with no one selling shit and nothing getting to breathe at all. I mean it was all very technically proficient I'm sure, but was I meant to believe in or care about anything that happened? Rubbish match.

Night and day when compared to this Sami / Joe match. Obviously it's much easier to do when you're going 40 minutes rather than 12 and I'm not discounting that, but jesus, the difference that it makes just having a good guy and a bad guy, having that bad guy beat the living tar out of the good guy and milk the boos, having the good guy make fired-up comebacks and play to the crowd.... it's all so much more engaging this way.

still haven't been able to plough through all of the first season of Lucha Underground yet (i'm enjoying it much more than that sounds) so i won't be getting to this week's triple threat any time soon, but apparently it was also a barnburner of a match? what with the tag match on Raw as well, seems like a good week.

lucha underground triple threat was great, yeah, maybe my second fave lu match behind grave consequences. (i know what you mean about ploughing through it, i caught up thanks to the blessing of unemployment. thirty hours of anything is going to be tough going at points...)

xpost I get what you're saying re the difference between Balor/Neville and Zayn/Joe but I loved the former; as I was watching it I never felt like they weren't selling, I was totally taken in by them being so fired up. Especially that ending, when Balor hit the Coup (a finisher I don't like, it's too 'real' with no pro wrestling oomph) and then followed up with the brainbuster (or was it a brainbuster-Bloody Sunday mashup? I think he got a single underhook?) because he needed that extra something.

The only thing lacking in the match for me was a story, it was more of a New Japan style bout where they're just two top guys fighting to prove themselves. That's where Zayn/Joe had the edge, they've built up some great heat between those two, but the ending of their second match kinda ruined it for me, and I'm sitting here convinced that the third fall in their best-of-3 match next week will end in another screwy finish, like a double countout or double DQ or something (though they're gonna have to wrap it up before TakeOver).

(Oh wait, that third match was this week - I haven't watched NXT yet, oops! I'll be back on the weekend when I've done that.)

i haven't seen the balor / neville match but sc's description reminds me of the kind of refocusing i had to do to appreciate the most lucha-y of lucha underground's matches, not really being familiar with the lucha style before. often so much of it seems like a spectacular thing happens, then everybody moves into position for the next spectacular thing, and so on. i think for that reason i slightly prefer fenix to prince puma (though i love prince puma too), fenix is a bit meatier, more physical, prince puma tends towards something less believable, not even in a wrestling sense but in a human sense - immaculate springboard 450 to the outside through a table? ya i remember doing that on n64, didn't seem physically plausible then, still doesn't now that i've seen an actual person do it

certain moves now trigger an almost instinctual negative response from me when i see them in a match, the superkick is possibly the worst case but i would include shitty not-really-suicide--dives and those spinning thrust kicks to the mid-section that Balor and Neville O'Ded on during their match.

i don't want to be a boring miserablist motherfucker and i'm not about to come out like some guys and claim that Jerry Lawler is the greatest pro wrestler to have ever lived or whatever, but i do have sympathy with those boring miserablist motherfuckers like Austin or Cornette who complain that so much of what is generally considered "good" contemporary wrestling essentially feels like a video game with nothing at stake and no one even pretending to make it feel real. dudes doing moves in the hope of getting a "this is awesome" chant when actually if someone just lay on the floor and sold for a bit it'd all work 100x better.

the understanding of this distinction is why Samoa Joe and Sami Zayn are two awesome pro wrestlers and Finn Balor in partic. is a kind of an athletic nothing who badly needs to work out what he's good at and who the fuck he is beyond "i was once New Japan jr heavyweight champion". Hopefully the Bullet/Balor club will help with this

i do like finn and that maybe more spotty style but i get where you're coming from, i v much appreciated the first 15 mins of zayn - joe which was basically nothing happening in a very intense way. also king cuerno has ruined the suicide dive for everybody else

Yeah, agreed - I thought the first chunk of Zayn/Joe was the best of the match, IMO. I kinda lost interested in the middle of it but that's more on me being tired when I watched it last night.

I also completely get the criticisms of Balor, though I don't think his matches suffer as much from it as lucha libre. I've never been able to get into straight lucha - I've watched some CMLL and AAA and been like 'uhhh' - but Lucha Underground has been an easier adjustment, because it adds the American-style story and psychology that's lacking from the orthodox stuff.

Yeah Lucha is an odd one, it's way more impenetrable than u.s. and puro stuff, I've found.

The closest I've come so far aside from LU was this pretty extraordinary match I watched the other day, the highly-spoken-of ms-1 vs sangre chicana from 1983. Starts with ms-1 assaulting chicana outside the ring before the bell, immediately busting him wide open by smashing his head off the ring apron and it just goes from there.

There's all these little old Mexican grannies in fancy hats clustering round him wringing their hands and trying to help him to his feet while cussing out me-1, it's rad. Totally different kind of match to what we would think of as lucha though, no masks or flips or anything, just a wild wild 80s brawl. Not really sure what what stage in the development of the form lucha became all about the ranas and that

I was torn on Zayn/Joe, they worked hard but I felt they overdid some things for the sake of having a 40-minute match. The slow opening minutes telegraphed the fact that they were planning on working a long match, that took away some of the believability for me (I knew that it was a long match before I watched it, but still). How many fired up underdog comebacks can you have in one match, even from Zayn?

There was a sequence where Joe kept attacking Zayn on the outside and trying for a countout, where the match should have been accelerating toward the big finish but instead it slowed right down while Zayn laid around on the floor for five minutes.

any opinions on Roadblock? thought it was a bit of a nothing show tbh, cool seeing the NXT guys in their tag, Enzo and Cass have come a long way ito having engaging matches. Ambrose / HHH was good with a shitty finish (how many times have we said that in the last year or so?)

They need to do some more interesting shit with Lesnar. I know that him squashing fools by repeatedly throwing them onto their heads as hard as he can is the gimmick, but they've done enough now to establish him as the boss to end all bosses. they could've very easily let Harper be at least a little bit competitive and made more of a match of it. obviously you still have Lesnar win comprehensively and with ease, just let the victims try and find strategies for coping with him that give more of a story to his matches than "15 german suplexes and an F5". also vary the offence a little plz. i love watching him smash dudes but it'd be more interesting if he had more than 3 moves

the less said about Sami Zayn / Stardust the better. fuckin idiots

I watched most of the New Day match (and promo), Jericho's promo and match, the NXT tag match, and the main event. I didn't bother with the bait and switch in the Brock match, not like I particularly want to see Wyatt vs Lesnar either, but what was the point of any of that?

Jericho doesn't get enough credit for what he does. He comes back when he feels like it and couldn't care less about where he is on the card or even whether he's on TV (during one comeback he only worked house shows). He has more than enough money to retire or to come back once a year for a WM payoff/ego boost, instead, he seems genuinely interested in going on the road and having feuds with guys he's never worked with before and putting them over.

Ambrose/HHH started slow, but really picked up by the end. The crowd reaction to the false pin was huge -- was anybody in WWE paying attention?

I'm all for more of these glorified house shows (Roadblock, Beast in the East) from WWE.

been reported that Bray's got a fucked-up back and wasn't up to working the match apparently, dunno how far ahead of time this was known

i suppose there's no reason to expect anything interesting to happen on a glorified house show but it would be nice if wwe could do something surprising ever. nevertheless it was a solid card, apart from sami-stardust mess. really enjoyed charlotte-natalya too, patented divas match finish aside.

xpost

Well, Bray and Heyman both cut backstage promos about the match during the show itself, so ...

That Enzo/Cass vs. Revival match was fantastic. As earlier posts of mine in this thread will attest, I am a big Scott Dawson supporter. And I love Enzo's high-speed crossbody. That's a beautiful move.

yes ^ and they looked like they belonged on the big stage even enzo. cass looked great.

Taker vs Shane is really going to be the main event at Mania, isn't it? At least they won't have to worry about Reigns getting booed by 100K people to close the show.

Supposedly there's still backstage heat on HHH for appearing on NXT Takeover when he "should" have been selling the beating he got from Reigns on RAW in December. This stuff is baffling, even for WWE in 2016. They've got a network that airs 8293854 different kayfabe breaking shows, but HHH not staying off TV long enough to sell his fake injuries is what's killing Roman Reigns' push? IDGI.

hey so uhhhhhh NAKA-FUCKIN-MURA was on NXT last night. for real i don't think i actually care at all what they do with Mania at this point - actually this isn't quite true - i hope Dean Ambrose goes full CZW on Brock Lesnar and gets F-5ed through a titantron screen or sthing, I hope Shane O'Mac goes off the top of the cell through a table, i hope they fully follow through on Reigns/Triple H in the most obvious way possible and the fans vomit all over the whole thing from start to finish, i basically hope that it's an entertaining car crash of a show

BUT the point I'm making is that it doesn't really matter if WM is a busted flush bcuz this NXT special is gonna have me forgiving all their sins. which, as has been previously noted itt, is exactly what it's there for. 2 weeks man, I AM HYPED for this show and i am gonna be STAYING HYPED, believe dat

is aztec warfare the same week as takeover dallas and wm32 and i guess the post wm raw? cos that could truly make it the best ever week in wrestling history (if wm isnt shit)