Greylocke

Totally agree, man. To me Jericho is not just the best thing in WWE right now, he's one of the only two guys in history that is a definite "draw" (speaking just for myself, of course). As in, it doesn't matter how much his character may have been jobbed out, how badly his storylines might be written, or even how horribly his matches are booked.....you stick Jericho's name somewhere on the card, and I'd want to watch the show just for him, because I know that whatever content he has to work with, he'd somehow make it entertaining, and I'd get my money's worth. Booking and context don't even matter when this guy's involved. He turns crap into gold and gold into some material that is infinitely more priceless than anything Ted DiBiase can ever afford. Random thoughts: - Drew Gulak finally gets something interesting to do. I hope they let him do what Samoa Joe used to do in TNA: just have him turn his back and casually walk away during matches when his opponent is going for some silly contrived high spot and let them crash and burn. That would be awesome and perfect for his storyline. - Glad that I decided to catch NXT from last week. Gallagher/Bates was one of the best things I've seen on the show in months. I hope when the UK show begins they'll move Jack over to that. He being wasted now.

Clearly, this new PPV is going to end with Kane randomly showing up and throwing a fireball into Lesnar's or Strowman's face in a Vintage WSX moment.

I think WWE got this part covered pretty well at least. Heel Jack Swagger and JBL were both patriotic SOBs.

While I'm happy they didn't go for the stereotypical foreign heel route for Mustafa Ali, he's anything but an interesting character at the moment. He's the generic "living my dream" young guy who "worked hard to get here" like 70% of the NXT young guys/girls mould. In fact, the most distinct part of his character is the WWE stressing repeatedly that he's not a stereotypical "I am an oppressed minority treated with the usual prejudice because of my ethnicity" guy. Which is a step in the right direction, but it's still pretty much making out his ethnicity to be the only interesting part about him. Not complaining, at least it's some progress. I'm more annoyed about the stable as a whole than about Jinder. Let's throw these guys into a random stable because they're Indians! That has always worked so well, right? New Day managed to develop an act that got over, but they initially got tonnes of "New Day Sucks" chant because everyone could tell that they were just 3 black guys whom Creative had nothing for and just randomly dumped together.

<blockquote data-ipsquote="" class="ipsQuote" data-ipsquote-username="liontamer" data-cite="liontamer" data-ipsquote-contentapp="forums" data-ipsquote-contenttype="forums" data-ipsquote-contentid="25169" data-ipsquote-contentclass="forums_Topic"><div>Brock and Goldberg was a very odd match. what was that, maybe 5 total different moves between the 2? <strong>I was shocked at how bonkers the crowd went for it</strong>. Is Goldberg just that limited now or that all they want him doing? Where's his MMA training (muay thai, right)? </div></blockquote><p> </p><p> </p><blockquote data-ipsquote="" class="ipsQuote" data-ipsquote-username="Crychon" data-cite="Crychon" data-ipsquote-contentapp="forums" data-ipsquote-contenttype="forums" data-ipsquote-contentid="25169" data-ipsquote-contentclass="forums_Topic"><div> 4. Spear, Jackhammer, German Suplex, F5.<p> That was it. <strong>I'm also surprised the crowd ate that one up</strong>. Two of the most boring dudes in the industry right now. </p></div></blockquote><p> </p><p> Well, personally I'm surprised that there are people who still find this surprising. <img alt=":D" data-src="//content.invisioncic.com/g322608/emoticons/biggrin.png.929299b4c121f473b0026f3d6e74d189.png" src="<___base_url___>/applications/core/interface/js/spacer.png" /> The two did less than that at Survivor Series and the crowd ate that up too, why should it be different here?</p><p> </p><p> I mean, it's <em>Goldberg</em>. He barely did more than 3 moves per match even in his prime, and that sure didn't hurt his popularity. And nobody with any sense would expect to see any vast improvement from a guy who hasn't wrestled for a decade, and even if he had improved there's no reason for him to do more than what he's always done before he's still making money with the same old formula .</p><p> </p><p> Basically, you can say this about Goldberg matches (and Hogan too, for that matter): other than new fans who never watched the guy wrestle before, every person who paid to watch Goldberg wrestle knows exactly what he's getting for his money. They got exactly what they ordered, so naturally they ate it up.</p><p> </p><p> </p><blockquote data-ipsquote="" class="ipsQuote" data-ipsquote-username="Rayelek" data-cite="Rayelek" data-ipsquote-contentapp="forums" data-ipsquote-contenttype="forums" data-ipsquote-contentid="25169" data-ipsquote-contentclass="forums_Topic"><div> <p> Barely watched the main event. I love Roode, but I haven't cared about Nakamura since he was done with Balor, and I don't enjoy his ring style. I really hope that Roode moves from here to another challenger, but I don't see another face who has been built up for him to fight right now. There's Tye, Roddy, Ohno and Jose, but 3 of the above are coming off losses and Jose didn't even get his Takeover match, so who knows?</p><p> </p></div></blockquote><p> </p><p> </p><blockquote data-ipsquote="" class="ipsQuote" data-ipsquote-username="The Final Countdown" data-cite="The Final Countdown" data-ipsquote-contentapp="forums" data-ipsquote-contenttype="forums" data-ipsquote-contentid="25169" data-ipsquote-contentclass="forums_Topic"><div>I'm kind of amazed at how little I care about Nak in WWE. His first match with Zayn was really good, but even there it seemed to me like he wasn't all in. I'm sure I don't need to tell you about his tendency to go through the motions when he's bored, and it feels to me like he's been doing that his entire time in NXT. (Granted I only watch the Takeover shows, but I can't imagine he's trying <em>harder</em> on the NXT TV show or random house shows in Florida.)</div></blockquote><p> </p><p> Heh, its been the opposite for me. For the past few months Nakamura was more or less the only "must watch" person that causes me keep watching NXT. Not that I dislike all the other guys, there were other people I liked (Oney Lorcan, Tye Dilinger, etc), but none of the others were enough to "draw" me to the show consistently. Many matches (most notably DIY/Revival) were highly enjoyable to watch, but I want more than just good action in a match, I want guys that I actually care about enough to love or hate, and those guys were too much of generic babyfaces/heels to make me emotionally invested. Nakamura has the ability to exude such personality both in and out of the ring that makes me feel I <em>want</em> to cheer for him. And surprisingly for someone who is not a fan of Puro, his ring style doesn't bother me.</p><p> </p><p> I felt that he brought life back to a title scene that was being smothered by the boring Balor/Joe feud (which was a 98% plagiarization of Owens/Zayn anyway). When he dropped the title, I thought I'd probably stop watching regularly once he's finished up his feud with Roode. I actually like Roode's gimmick, but I'm not a fan of the worker. The only time I enjoyed him was as half of Beer Money....and even then I always thought James Storm was the better half carrying the team (now James Storm....<em>that</em> was a big loss for NXT).</p><p> </p><p> But in the recent weeks I finally found some other things that may keep me watching: I've been <em>very</em> impressed by the new UK "division". I totally missed the tournaments because I'd been quite underwhelmed by the Cruiserweight division on the whole (except Gentleman Jack, he's awesome...and Kendrick's been in top form too). But the UK guys surprised me. I'm probably going to back and hunt down the tournament matches. I hope Smackdown gets the UK guys as their special feature as a counter to RAW's CW (and maybe their own show that will blow 205 out of the water).</p>

While I admittedly have not been following ROH for some time, has ROH really done anything so explicitly "non-PG" that it would not be allowed on WWE TV in recent years?

Well, he certainly deserves to be in it, but on the not-so-bright side, it's also an indication that WWE almost definitely doesn't want him in the ring any longer. Generally, they don't induct anyone who's still going to be competing in the ring (even on a part-time basis). I know there are rare exceptions like Hogan who still popped in for a couple of big matches after his induction, but I don't think that'll be the case here, except maybe one more match at WM itself.

I don't care who wins the Rumble, but I hope they put James Ellsworth in the match and have him somehow last till the Final 2. Basically, let him pull a Santino Marella, except the big pop will go to his opponent instead of him when the winner chucks him out.

Clearly, they're setting up for yet another HISTORY MAKING MOMENT with their Women's division by having Sasha Banks win the Royal Rumble match and using her title shot to challenge Charlotte AGAIN so that the women main event WrestleMania this year for the first time ever. <img alt="" data-src="//content.invisioncic.com/g322608/emoticons/tongue.png.ceb643b2956793497cef30b0e944be28.png" src="<___base_url___>/applications/core/interface/js/spacer.png" />

Faith being around would really do a lot for a SWF roster. SWF is sorely lacking in people with top-notch Psychology to train up their roster (a lot of which isn't even that young). With Faith and Enforcer Roberts both retired the only guy with Psychology above 90 is Angry Gilmore. And since the only way to reach that peak is to work with guys who are better than you, most of the younger guys likely won't ever get past the 80s in their performance stats unless you have Gilmore wrestle everyone. In fact Jack Bruce has to one of weakest Psychology guys to become the top guy in SWF history. Not counting those who only got 1-2 title reigns (like Runaway Train and Vengeance), the SWF World Title scene was dominated by the Psychology gods like Sam Strong, Rip Chord, Sam Keith, Christian Faith, Sean McFly, etc. Bruce doesn't seem to be anywhere close to their level in this regard.

Smackdown ALWAYS looks like the underdog going into those brand vs brand matches....and then they win at the PPV. Look at the SvS match back in the Bischoff/Long era. Kane and Big Show on Team RAW was taking everyone out, including SD' Champion Batista. Then on the PPV Smackdown won. Then recall the first ever Bragging Rights PPV. Smackdown's original team was a joke and had to get a complete overhaul the week before the event. DX was burying Team Smackdown on the mic. Then Big Show turned on Team RAW and Smackdown won. This year it's the same. Smackdown looks like the underdog (as usual). They can't even get 5 active wrestlers to fill up their main team and had to use their Authority figure. And Team RAW got the better of Team Smackdown the week before the PPV. That means Smackdown is winning this. Anyway for the rest of the RAW vs Smackdown matches, I agree with Blackman that RAW is winning the Women's match. Mainly because you can tell that they're really putting more spotlight on their Women's division (letting them main event shows). RAW will probably keep the Cruiserweight title (and division) because they're 3 hours long and need to fill time. Smackdown will keep the IC title because RAW already has more titles than them. And SD's Tag Teams will win just to keep the score even so that the main eventers' match still matter.

<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.