Professional Wrestling

Did anyone happen to catch Defiant: No Regrets? Simon Miller made his in ring debut and I hope he did well, but I missed watching it happen.

Heh.

Braun Strauman comes out. No boos.

Bobby Lashley comes out. No boos.

Roman Reigns comes out. Guess what happens?

Seriously WWE. Just let him go Heel already. This is ridiculous. He's not gonna be the guy you want him to be. The audience just won't accept it. They've never been this stubborn about making a dude popular before.

John Cena?

I mean Roman Reigns doesn't have the same level of Merch money, or anywhere near as many Make A Wish granted. He also doesn't have the good PR Cena does, but WWE have refused to put their handpicked guy and make him heel before.

I guess, but it feels like they are really just trying to hard to force a round peg into a square hole.

Plus, I actually got a few chuckles out of Cena's hate (and some people cheered for him too. Hell, he literally makes a show out of lets go Cena / Cena Sucks chants).

It feels very different with Roman though.

But getting on a new topic, Rey Mystery showed up at the Greatest Royal Rumble. That's two appearances in only 3 months. I recall some rumours of the possibility that Rey might be coming back, and it's getting more and more believable.

I'll say it again and again - Roman isn't the next John Cena type, he's the next Randy Orton type.

I'm currently in the middle of contemplating my angst/ issues over this ongoing Rollins/Balor angle, and ATM I can only think about it in TV Tropese.

In hindsight, it's clear now that this entire Intercontinental title feud is being set up as Seth's Redemption Quest of sorts. But the obvious problem here is where that leaves Finn. At the outset of the feud people expected Finn to win the title, which implies him and Seth being on equal footing against Miz. But now it's clear that Seth is the hero of the story, while Finn is The Rival at best. (Finn's dynamic with Seth is very different from Dean's, which had more of a We Used to Be Friends flavor.)

Speaking as a shameless Balor mark, this development disappoints me a little. At the very least I hoped they'd give Finn enough development to elevate him to at least Deuteragonist level in this feud. But Seth is blatantly being set up as Finn's Always Someone Better, and unless they force Finn to use the Demon I'm legit paranoid of WWE misusing him again.

Is this the same ATM who was in the first mach I posted back on page 77? The masked luchador who was having a garbage match with his daughter? He's in WWE now?

Anyway, I sadly haven't been keeping up with Defiant. I'm not keeping up with as much pro wrestling as I usually do, because things, and when I'm not watching a whole lot of wrestling the UK is usually one of the first things I cut out of my schedule. Nonetheless I'm glad to see I was right about Defiant being fine, despite their talent shakeup and youtube problems.

Yeah, I also haven't been keeping up with Defiant. The World Cup was great, but since the branding change I just haven't felt into it.

I'm hoping to go to All In, assuming I can get a ticket before it sells out. Jay Lethal and Okada were the ones that sealed the deal. Anyone else?

I'm just ready for them to do something more meaningful.

edited 8th May '18 7:51:48 PM by wanderlustwarrior

You know what?

I love The New Day, but the amount of Pancakes they probably wasted actually pisses me off a little.

@Simon Miller: I thought he had already made his debut at the GRR as Dan Matha. J/K

@Roman Reigns: I don't hate the guy, but the way creative has handled him is just sad. They essentially turned him into a glorified choke artist. When Jinder Mahal gets cheered by saying he's going to kick his ass, might as well call it a push and have Roman take time off.

Pretty much.

Right now, outside of Brock, anyone who goes up against Roman receives a huge pop from the crowd purely for beating him up.

I feel like they've ruined the guy by just refusing to change gears with him. And the funny thing is, there was a point where people legitimately wanted him in the top spot too I believe, but WWE missed their chance to capitalize on it.

If you watch the match where Roman won the belt from Sheamus, he was actually getting a decent pop, they really should have had THAT be his coronation as "the guy".

I heard fans were walking out of Backlash in droves.

Ouch.

WWE, for both Roman's sake and your, make him a heel...

...or is it already too late?

I'm annoyed that people are still putting down or underrating Jinder. Not that the above post was doing that. I'm just in "old man yells at cloud" mode, I guess.

For some reason, he keeps being called a jobber despite him and Drew returning and winning championships at about the same time. His coworkers acknowledge his work ethic and excellent work as a heel. But no...

I'm honestly increasingly annoyed with wrestling fans in general. A lot of the talk is just "push the guy I like! I don't like this other guy, so he's bad! she's hot, so more of her! what have you done for me lately? attitude era had no flaws!"

edited 10th May '18 12:56:37 AM by wanderlustwarrior

On a more positive note, Ciampa is killing it as the main heel on NXT. They should just put the belt on him, so the inevitable final showdown between him and Gargano will mean more (I like Black, but I never saw him as world championship material, even for NXT).

I'll have to take your word on it.

I haven't been able to watch NXT for weeks now. 205 live either.

@wanderlustwarrior It's more of the fact that Jinder went from "Losing to Mojo Rawley in the ATGMBR" to "Defeating Randy Orton for the championship." Not helping that the majority of his title defenses ended 90% of the time with assistance from the Singh brothers so he doesn't even look credible (I don't hate Jinder, don't get me wrong).

This brings up another issue I have with the IWC is the fact that had an internet/Indy darling got the same push Jinder did (The exact same way), there would be little to no complaints. But that can be said for a lot of things.

edited 10th May '18 1:01:04 PM by LLSmoothJ

Part of that first one comes to us misreading the Andre, and assuming winning it meant some sort of push. It has actually never been the case that it has led to a successful singles run on its own. Ironically, back when I was still one of those under that misconception, I took him being in the final two as being a sign that he was actually going to get a push. I didn't expect to be as right as I was. As for few clean wins, on the one side, he's a heel, and he did beat several talented people lower on the card cleanly (Harper, Woods, et al), while on the other side, they really should've booked him at least a little stronger, particularly in the Nakamura feud (which did no one any favors).

As for that second point re IWC, absolutely agreed.
see generally: Tye Dillinger somehow not being constantly lambasted as a jobber, or "push Cesaro" despite the lengthy success in tag being a several years push, or crediting the more popular person with everything good in a match, or the 180 that talking heads had on Broken Matt, etc.

I really need to make that Broken Universe page. Especially post Arc Welding with Bray Wyatt, and the naming of their essences.

I agree with heels cheating to win, don't get me wrong. But tell that to the Smarks whining about heels not winning cleanly (enough).

I mean... I'm one of those smarks at time. Over the course of 2017, it stretched disbelief that Jinder and Miz couldn't win cleanly on tv as often as they did. More cheap wins can help the heels be believable wrestlers/champions, if not necessary for heels.

For an extreme example from last year, I figure I (a muscular average guy) could fairly easily beat up Enzo. I shouldn't be able to think that of a supposed "champion".

I missed getting an All In ticket only while making Mother's Day calls, since I thought the tickets went on sale tomorrow...

Don't suppose anyone here has an extra ticket for sale at a reasonable price? IAT, please tell me you do!

edited 13th May '18 6:09:58 PM by wanderlustwarrior

I actually agree with the IWC on a lot of things. Frankly, WWE's product has been awful for a long time not even because of it's workers, but because the Mc Mahon booking team running the two A Shows couldn't seem to book consistently good shows, (not saying never, notice the word "consistency)" from 2003-2015 and has only gotten better recently. If we hadn't complained we never would have had DB as champion, probably would have actually had a boring Main Event barely fit for an episode of Raw as a wrestlemania main event, (I would never pay to see Orton vs. Batista. Only if it was on the card with something cool) Great Khali vs. John Cena probably would be hailed as the Greatest Match of all Time, and Triple H would be considered the best ever and some variation of Trips vs. Cena or Roman would lead almost every wrestlemania.

Frankly, the only reason WWE is even close to good right now is because people kept calling them out. I get Vince wants to play to a mainstream audience, but if you booked almost anyone like Cena I assure you they could get over.

Interestingly, Daniel Bryan shoots on the Miz and being an Indie Darling.

Weird. Steph is pretty much lamp shading all the things I've thought about with the Nia vs Ronda Rousey match.

Especially the part about how she's never fought anyone as big as Nia in UFC even if the WWE is more scripted.