Greylocke

<p>Bray and Strowman on opposing sides in a match?</p><p> </p><p> Are they going to have Strowman walk out when he's in the ring with Bray, and give him a protected elimination/loss? No way they're giving him his first pinfall loss in a SvS match, and I don't think RAW is winning this one.</p>

Lord......I know they're eager to prove that OUR WOMEN ARE AS GOOD AS THE MEN, but seriously, they need to tell Charlotte and Sasha to stop going for those big spots that they're not certain they can pull off. I swear, every single title match between them has had at least one horrible botched spot that makes me cringe and wonder if one of them is going to get crippled for life. When they're not doing those the wrestling was actually pretty good, but the awkward spots really ruined the match for me. In TEW terms, they feel like workers with good Performance stats except for Safety.....

<p>The funny thing is, both WWE and TNA managed to create a child/surrogate company that seemed to have grasped the concept of coherent storyline/booking, but their respective parent companies continue to be a mess. They might not be ground-breaking or terribly creative, but they're solid and consistent and get the job done. Booking-wise, Ring Ka King's quality blew TNA's out of the water, and it's a real shame it wasn't continued after the first season.</p><p> </p><p> Likewise for NXT vs WWE.Not that they're perfect by any means, and I've voiced my complaints about them before (mainly that they seem to be putting zero efforts in packaging most of their characters with an actual gimmick beyond "that guy/girl who worked very hard to get here and is living his/her dream" or "that big indie/foreign star who is very good at wrestling"), but at least none of their storylines have been outright insulting the viewer's intelligence. I may not be too interested in most of the guys they choose to push other than Nakamura, but their booking clearly gets the job done and the crowd consistently reacts well to their blow-off matches.</p>

<p>I don't know.....when your company's brand has been sullied to the point where the potential new owner is thinking of getting rid of it and rebuilding from scratch, that "national coverage" (which hasn't translated in terms of ratings btw) may harm the industry more than it helps. In the same way the shady deeds from McMahon and Cater has done more to damage the business' reputation compared to Ian Rotten and Rob Black thanks to the national media attention.</p><p> </p><p> Anyway ratings indicate that WWE has dominated the industry for so long that the popularity of wrestling in US literally rises and falls with the WWE's popularity. ROH, LU and TNA can get all the national coverage they want, but they're simply not drawing in any significant new fansbase that aren't already wrestling fans. Literally the only good thing that that comes out from more smaller "alternatives" existing is that they provide more places to work and thereby more potential new workers. But again, given how reports indicates the way TNA treats its employes, I'm not sure keeping a company like that around is a good way to encourage young budding workers.</p>

There are still quite a few "low budget alternative" left, so TNA dying doesn't really change things in any major way. It doesn't affect WWE one way or another. Does them no favour, sure, but no harm either. Really, the only people hurt by this are TNA's poor employees (and quite frankly, going by how often we've heard reports about TNA workers receiving bounced paycheques or late payment, some of them might even be better off!). Really, at this stage, ROH, PWG and LU (and hell, even NXT) all stand out as bigger "alternative" in terms of product compared to WWE. Without the financial status and TV presence it used to have, TNA's existence means less to the industry than those other companies in my view.

They finally started booking Rusev like an actual bad guy and Reigns as a good guy for once! Shocking! I hope this lasts more than 1 week.

<p>Paige just got suspended again for violating Wellness Policy for the second in a row.</p><p> </p><p> Trying to get herself fired so she can work with Del Rio?</p>

<p>Am I the only one who's feeling a little paranoid for Owens' health? For the past 2 years and more, every time a "smark favourite" won the World Title they ended up getting a bad injury and vacating the belt: Daniel Bryan, Seth Rollins, Finn Balor.</p><p> </p><p> The omens are not favourable. <img alt="" data-src="//content.invisioncic.com/g322608/emoticons/tongue.png.ceb643b2956793497cef30b0e944be28.png" src="<___base_url___>/applications/core/interface/js/spacer.png" /></p>

<p>Hi Everyone!</p><p> </p><p> Not sure if this is the right place, but can I request for pics of the 3 Operation Lullaby members dressed in the old SWF Underwater Union outfit? I'm going to have Eisen hire these goons and put them in the old comedy gimmick as a show of what he thinks of them and their employers. <img alt="" data-src="//content.invisioncic.com/g322608/emoticons/biggrin.png.929299b4c121f473b0026f3d6e74d189.png" src="<___base_url___>/applications/core/interface/js/spacer.png" /></p><p> </p><p> Runcord as the Calamari Chick, Tex as the fat Shrimp, and Renluenn as the new Lobby.</p><p> </p><p> Thanks!</p>

<p>As usual, I'm about 1 week behind normal schedule in watching my weekly wrestling. Finally saw what the fuss was about at Payback's Women's Title match. No idea why they kept re-hashing this stuff. Even disregarding the disrespect to Bret I see no point in bringing this back. It's been milked to death over the past 2 decades, they're not going to get any shock factor or media attention from pulling this stuff, the main people involved in the original incident have both made up, retired and clearly both want to put this behind them. There's absolutely no reason to do this beyond the laziness to write something original. The reaction from the crowd feels more of a "God, not this stupid crap again" rather than "OMG did it just happen again".</p><p> </p><p> Pity, really. The Women's Title match at WrestleMania was by far the most well-executed match on the entire card, and one month later it became the opposite - the most disappointing one (not counting the unfortunate accident in the opening tag match). Other than this and the opener there wasn't a single match on the PPV that I didn't enjoy.</p>

Actually, I think Snooki did better in her one match than Eva did for most of her WWE tenure....which just makes it even sadder. I can actually understand WWE wanting to capitalize on the heat she's getting....and she was used very well against Bayley, but like I said she;s the worst kind of opponent for someone like Asuka because the latter needs opponents who can sell convincingly, and Eva has to be the last on that list. Make her a TV personality like Vickie Guerrero, by all means, but I really think they need to give up on trying to make her an active competitor.

With regards to Apollo.....I used to feel the same about Tyson Kidd, but NXT showed that good writing can work around any wrestler's lack of range....maybe not enough to really make him a star, but it can certainly give him his own niche as a character. It just looked like there isn't enough effort put in here. Jordan and Gable are definitely my biggest reason to still watch NXT these days, especially the latter. Gable is possibly the only "mat technician" that makes me like his in-ring style. I'm personally not a big fan of the technical style, but boy, Gable makes it fun. He entertains me in the ring in a way that even Kurt Angle and Daniel Bryan couldn't (although I'm a big fan of both due to their chararcters). And the partnership storyline with Jordan was certainly solid while it was going, although now that's been resolved, they seem to be going back to the same old "how hard they've worked to get here" stuff in all their interviews, which is just so much like what Balor and Co are doing. And with Enzo and Cass gone (man, I just saw their match with J&G, and it'll be some time before we see another match with the same level of reaction in NXT), they're going to be sorely needing opponents with interesting characters. Dash and Dawson are good in the ring, and they make perfect foils for those with flashier characters, but on their own they just don't spark that much interest in me. Blake and Murphy don't seem to have much of an identity without Alexa. I didn't even realize how much Enzo and Cass meant to the tag division on NXT until they're gone. Right now they certainly have the best possible team on top of the division, but they need to work more on the brickworks below, because Enzo and Cass just took a big chunk off with them. The Women's Division is eerily similar. They have the best on top of the ladder, but the rest of it is shaky. Bayley and Asuka are the only ones to guarantee a good reaction no matter who they are facing (in fact Asuka may get better reaction destroying faceless jobbers). This is what happens when you export 3/4 of your most over workers in the division and not having enough talent to replace them. Carmella, Alexa and Jax have some overness, but not enough to get people to care if they're not wrestling more over people (Carmella's match with Aliyah....you can hear a pin drop in that match. Whereas Bayley can still get the crowd to care when working with Liv Morgan). Also, I like what Asuka is supposed to be....but they don't always pull it off right. Part of the reason is that she needs opponents to sell her offense like death every time, and besides Bayley not many of them do a great job of that (don't even get me started on Eva). The angles don't always come off well either. Remember her feud with Dana where Regal showed her and Emma some clip of Asuka and they looked scared to death? That was well done, I thought, it had me wondering what exactly they saw: Asuke bloodying and mutilating some opponent? Snapping off someone's arm? Choking someone out? Then at the end of the show we see the contents of the clip......Asuka hitting a sand-bag???? Hardly the most intimidating thing in the world. They're better off not showing that clip at all and leaving it to the audience's imagination. Also, one of the great things about having Bayley as champion was that her character allows almost anyone to step up as a contender and still look like a legit threat (even Eva) while at the same she herself can still believably face up to monster like Jax and Asuka and possibly still come out on top (in fact I was pleasantly surprised that they actually had her trade holds competitively against Asuka and hold her own instead of just getting beat down for most of the match like the typical generic underdog babyface at Takeover Dallas). The thing about having Asuka on top is that you need to have her dominate her opponent's 95% of the time to maintain her killer mystique (Nia, too), which makes it hard to build up another legitimate contender at the same time. That's probably one of the reasons they still haven't promoted Bayley yet. They absolutely need her around at the moment to help build up more stars.

I may be in the minority, but I'm really not liking the direction NXT has been going.....and it's not just because of my general disinterest in Finn Balor or the fact that the Balor/Joe feud felt like an inferior copy of Zayn/Owens with less interesting players. I have no objections to them hiring loads of established indy and foreign talent and trying to capitalize on their existing fame outside WWE.....but it feels like that's all they have been doing recently. When is the last time we're told anything about these wrestlers beyond how many years they've spent in the business wrestling all over the world, how big they were in Japan/Europe/etc, and how hard they worked to finally get here? Again, I've said this before, I don't think there's anything wrong with them using the wrestler's legitimate history as a character background, but I need to see more than that. It's becoming a cookie-cutter character mould for current NXT, face and heel alike. A good character on any program should be able to get a viewer's interest on the program's own merit, and not require the viewer to go dig up their old matches and read up their histories in other companies. So far, the only guy in the recent batches of established talents that really entertains me is Nakamura (who just oozes so much personality on his own that they simply don't need to do much with him....at least, not for some time). It's almost like the NXT writers are thinking: "So...this guy was a big star in the indies, most of our fans know them, I'll just put these guys in the ring, bring up their history a bit, and the crowds will cheer, so I won't bother writing anything for them." Where is the NXT that gave us such memorable characters like Bo Dallas, Tyler Breeze, Bray Wyatt, Bayley.......hell, even Tyson Kidd, who isn't the most charismatic guy or a fantastic speaker, but actually managed to gain more character development in a single year with NXT than the rest of his WWE career combined. Or how about the Ascension, who pretty much got over just on their gimmick and booking (there's certainly nothing remarkable about the ring work). That's the NXT I miss. Right now, the only recent "unique" character they've given us is.....Elias "Drifter" Samson. Seriously? That's the best you can come up with? Even Bull Dempsey was bizarrely released just after it seems like he's finally found his character niche. I just don't understand this shift. I've heard much general comments about how the booking and characters of the WWE main shows have been stagnant compared to NXT....well, recently I'm seeing the opposite. RAW has done more interesting things with Styles, Gallows and Anderson in the short span of 3 weeks than NXT has done with the likes of Aries, Balor and Joe. (Apollo Crews is, sadly, still boringly one-dimensional as ever). I'm staring to wonder if Dusty Rhodes' passing had something to do with it. It maybe that WWE lost more than just a legend and great trainer, but also possibly the heart and soul of the NXT I loved. I really hope I'm wrong on this.

That would make sense....especially considering Brock Lesnar's opponents do nothing but bump for 90% of the matches these days. Bray can certainly do without one of those. They certainly don't need another Daniel Bryan.

Santana Garrett's entrance theme sounds like.....a remix of Emma's? The similarity is extremely obvious when they faced each other last episode. Was that deliberate?

Yikes, apparently, according to Bryan's interview on ESPN, the guy has had like 10 documented concussions and seizures over the years. Whatever WWE's motivation might have been, selfish or altruistic, I'm pretty sure they just did Bryan a favour. Let the poor guy retire while he can still enjoy life. Chris Benoit would probably wish the WWE had "forced him to retire".

Finn Balor is apparently injured at a live event. Supposedly not a major one, but he's on crutches at the moment. But to me, the major thing is this: https://www.facebook.com/wwe/videos/10153518033521443/

They don't actually need new tag teams to be brought up. Sin Cara getting injured was a big blow, but they have plenty of guys on the main roster that they can use but are somehow choosing not to use in the tag team division. There was no real reason to break up Titus and Darren. I mean, I understand if they want to give Titus a singles push, I even like him personally as a singles competitor, but the guy is not even really doing anything as a singles star at the moment. He doesn't have a real feud despite getting put of TV quite often. As for the rest, Los Matadores have disappeared for no apparent reason The Wyatt Family are still around but is never in the title picture. Again there's no reason not to use them there, even if they're supporting characters for Bray's feuds. Being HHH's lackey's never stopped Evolution from going after the tag titles, and being JBL's or Edge's lackeys never stopped the Bashams and Hawkins/Ryder, so I don't see why they have to be kept away. Same with Social Outcasts. You have a new faction formed and not really doing anything. Why not the tag titles. Yeah, they're jobbers and joke characters, nobody said they have to win the titles, but again, what's the point of having teams and factions around when none of them are interested in going after what's supposedly the biggest prize for teams? On that note, even the League of Nations can get involved. It's not like any of them are getting any success on their own right now. It's not a matter of them not having enough tag teams, it's them choosing not to use what they have. If they do bring in new teams, I'm pulling for Jordan and Gable. I don't know if Enzo and Cass' shtick will work on the main roster, but I definitely have high hopes for the Alpha Americans. They look like they can fit in any time.

I don't see why the big guys should exist only to sweep the ring. In this case, their purpose is quite apparent. All of them (besides Lesnar) are there to be swept by bigger/higher-tier monsters than themselves. Titus and Ryback were there to get tossed by the Big Show (the bigger guy). The older established monsters (Show, Kane, Mark Henry) were there to put over the new monsters that the WWE are trying to establish (Wyatt Family....especially Strowman). And of course the Wyatt Family in turn get swept by the Ultimate Monster (Brock). It's not a particularly brilliant or groundbreaking concept (using established big guys/monsters to make another monster character to look even more unstoppable), but is it really any worse than the same old tired formula of "big guy comes in a toss a bunch of middle/lightweight midcarders"? In fact the latter would be exactly the kind of "repetitive booking" that you were talking about in the later part of your post, since they happen in every battle royal. I actually think it helps someone like Strowman a lot more to have him throw out Big Show, Kane and Henry as compared to just throwing out the likes of Neville and Stardust.

Wow, this Rumble crowd hates muscular big men. It's not just Roman, all the prototype big men got booed besides Superman Lesnar. Guys like Titus O'Neal usually get good reactions with the fans, but not on this night.

There's always a place for entertaining jobber groups in wrestling. That's why I said previously that Slater should form random jobber stables every couple years or so. Slater is not someone I'd ever want to see hold the World Title, but he's excellent at what he's been given to do. 3MB was awesome and could get a reaction no matter how many times they were buried. And 3MB calling out the Shield was way more memorable than any of the other random trios of super-faces going against the Shield.

OMG, I heard they actually did Wyatt Family vs Slater's new stable like I was hoping for! Pity it's not at the PPV, but I'd take what I can get. Can't wait to watch RAW this weekend.

Heath Slater needs to form random jobber stables every couple years or so with whomever that happens to be jobbers at the time. Hoping for an encounter between Slater's new stable and the Wyatt Family during the Rumble!

Of course the polls are legit. If WWE had been rigging their polls then Evan Bourne wouldn't have been so shocked at Mason Ryan accidentally winning the votes over Sin Cara due a to technical glitch several years back. Caught last week's NXT.....now that was an main event where the crowd is actually into the characters. A match between a returning top face and a midcarder, with predictable results, but the crowd reaction alone was enough to make it more entertaining than the Balor/Joe title match. I know they were getting ready to promote Zayn to the main roster before he got injured, but I hope he sticks around on NXT a bit more until they build up another top face I can care about. It says something about the lack of personality in your champion when a midcard heel is getting better reactions. The Sasha/Becky match on RAW illustrates the WWE's major problem at their "Divas Revolution". 5 minutes into the match and the crowd found it boring. It certainly wasn't because they didn't care about the competitors, because they were red-hot during the first 5 minutes. They were certainly more into Sasha than they were into the League of Nations. Great ending sequence woke them up again, but a crowd like that probably isn't going to react well to 30 minute Iron Women matches.

<blockquote data-ipsquote="" class="ipsQuote" data-ipsquote-username="lr10540" data-cite="lr10540" data-ipsquote-contentapp="forums" data-ipsquote-contenttype="forums" data-ipsquote-contentid="25169" data-ipsquote-contentclass="forums_Topic"><div>In fairness,most baby faces are boring. It's why I'm a pro heel fan. The only baby faces I like, generally, are the ones more in the middle; edgy type characters, or cocky and charismatic a la Enzo and Cass. The vanilla, white meat baby faces suck.</div></blockquote><p> </p><p> That's why I think Bayley is an absolute gem. Most of the fans these days have been demanding "cool" and "edginess" from the babyfaces and absolutely refusing to get behind the pure innocent and fun-loving babyfaces, but Bayley somehow manages it to win the fans over with a character like that. She's one of the very few (in fact the only one in recent years) who manage to get to this level of popularity without ever being forced to be "edgy" or "show a darker side to her character", or (as so many women had been made to do) use sex appeal as a tool to get over. She's just a nice girl who genuinely likes what she's doing and really wants everyone to enjoy it with her. A talent like that is rarer than one who's good at being cool or edgy, because everyone is trying to do the latter these days, and frankly I'm getting a bit turned off by that. <img alt=":p" data-src="//content.invisioncic.com/g322608/emoticons/tongue.png.ceb643b2956793497cef30b0e944be28.png" src="<___base_url___>/applications/core/interface/js/spacer.png" /> Wrestling can a form of "wish-fulfilment" fantasy to some, and in that regard it's occasionally nice to see genuinely nice guys and girls actually having good things happen to them by staying nice, and people (the fans) actually feeling happy for them as a result. It's nice momentary escape from the cynical real world we live in. :/</p><p> </p><p> So many of the teens and smarks had been leery about the WWE's "PG" and kid-pandering approach, and the clash in interest is understandable. But it <em>is</em> nice (and undeniably good for business), I think, to be able to have a strong babyface who can make children smile by stepping into the shoes of their fantasy heroes and heroines without having the other parts of the fanbase turning on them. Bayley is one of the few who proved she can manage that, and I think the WWE needs to hold on to her for dear life if they wants someone like that as the face of their women's division.</p>