WWE Thread

[monkeyman576]

Do I want to watch Crown Jewel or the Cubs/Brewers tonight?

Edit: nevermind I didn't realize it was already over.

[Cobra Mgr]

Not WWE, but.........Dudley Boyz vs Hardy Boyz 4 the "final" time.

[Amazin69]

Technically, "The Hardys" vs "Team 3-D". (The "boyz" names are WWE trademarked.)

I'm just glad D-Von made it through without any health issues. Some people were worried, especially after what happened with Sabu. But TNA is a better promotion than that.

[Amazin69]

Wow, not only has HHH's utter incompetence destroyed WWE's viewing audience, but the live show attendance is drying up, too. They actually booked Smackdown for tiny Mullett Arena in Tempe AZ last Friday, which only holds 5000 people…and couldn't even sell that out.

Show sucked, too…but that's par for the course, nowadays. They're lucky that Almost-Extinct Wrestling continues to light itself on fire (sometimes figuratively, sometimes literally…) or WWE would be in serious trouble.

(I mean TNA drew over 11,000 to a show this spring. Now the big company can't even pull half of that? I guess going from drawing 65,000+ in Indianapolis in January for the Royal Rumble to barely selling 15,000 tickets [in a 19,000-seat Field House] in the same city for WrestlePaloozer eight months later really did mean what I thought it meant…)

[Cobra Mgr]

Originally Posted by Amazin69

Wow, not only has HHH's utter incompetence destroyed WWE's viewing audience, but the live show attendance is drying up, too. They actually booked Smackdown for tiny Mullett Arena in Tempe AZ last Friday, which only holds 5000 people…and couldn't even sell that out.

Show sucked, too…but that's par for the course, nowadays. They're lucky that Almost-Extinct Wrestling continues to light itself on fire (sometimes figuratively, sometimes literally…) or WWE would be in serious trouble.

(I mean TNA drew over 11,000 to a show this spring. Now the big company can't even pull half of that? I guess going from drawing 65,000+ in Indianapolis in January for the Royal Rumble to barely selling 15,000 tickets [in a 19,000-seat Field House] in the same city for WrestlePaloozer eight months later really did mean what I thought it meant…)

It's that. But I also hear TKO is driving admission prices sky high. Sports and entertainment have paid little attention to inflation and the cost of living. They are not recognizing we don't have the $ to waste on recreation like we used to.

[Amazin69]

Yeah, obviously there was a post-COVID consumer bubble (since people were itching to get back out) but that was 3-4 years ago. You can't cling to that paradigm forever.

Heard "Kingdom" being played at Nashville during the Kings game last night, and "John Cena Sucks", er, "My Time is Now" during Cowboys-Broncos, so clearly WWE still paying other sports to use their music. Doesn't seem to be working out so well.

[Cobra Mgr]

WWE terminates Ridge Holland's contract early. They took revenge because he remarked his contract was not renewed while he was still out long term because of injury. So he cannot work, thus cannot get paid, thus can't pay his bills.

[monkeyman576]

Who?

[Amazin69]

The other half of the Brawling Brutes, who was shipped down to NXT once they decided that Sheamus having a "crew" was unnecessary.

"Butch" went back to calling himself Pete Dunne, got some lower-card work, failed to do anything in the tag division with his pal Tyler Bate (they got one unsuccessful title try, at Elimination Chamber 2024 in Perth) and after waiting out an injury to Bate, are now the auxiliary masked Americanos, Rayo and Bravo.

(The fact that all of the "Americanos" are currently-foreign born [Marcel Barthel, aka "Ludwig Kaiser", the current El Grande Americano, is a German of French ancestry] is basically the same joke as when Canadian Chelsea Green was the Women's US Champion, with an all-Scottish Secret Hervice [Piper Niven and Alba Fyre]. Never let be said that Michael Hayes, who writes RAW [allegedly with help from "God"] is above stealing Road Dogg [who writes Smackdown]'s material. Apparently, "God" knows mediocre humor when He sees it.)

Last week's Smackdown drew a viewing audience of roughly 933,000, the smallest Smackdown viewership of all time. That was down by ONE-THIRD over the same episode last year.

(In contrast, the worst-ever-rated episode of WCW Thunder back in the day…not Nitro, but Thunder…drew over 2 million viewers, and that was before the past 24 years of births and immigration boosted the US population. Now WWE can't even pull half of that.)

RAW's ratings are also in the toilet, but at least they're doing better than Smackdown. "God" may not be able to work infinite miracles, but at least He's a better writer than Road Dogg.

(It's darkly hilarious that Brian James [real name] was known for delivering kick-ass ring introductions for himself and his cohorts back in the DX days, but he can't put any better words in Cody Rhodes's mouth than "I luff yew, I rethpect yew" time after time. You've got barely anybody on that show who can do a promo without being rehearsed to death, and the Miz is completely buried and Drew McIntyre is taking more Ls than the Jets.)

Promo highlight of last week's Smackdown came when Jade Cargill forgot her lines and [I think] had to wait until a producer fed her the lines through an earpiece. I think Jade's new "wet look" hairdo is so that hey can hide the earpiece that the old upsweep wouldn't conceal

Second "best" promo of the night came when Rey Fenix literally stood on a box to be able to get in Talla Tonga's face backstage. I think that Fenix's tag partner, Shinsuke Nakamura, should start carrying a box at all times, just so Fenix can stare down future opponents.

Later in the evening, Fenix and Nakamura, who don't yet have a team name, rushed the ring to try to save the Motor City Machine Guns from the various Tongans. The taller Tongan choke-slammed both Fenix and Chris Sabin in succession…and botched both of the moves, depositing neither foe in position to take the bump on their back, as designed. And yet that wasn't the worst botch of the night, compared to Nathan Frazer nearly killing himself.

With quality shows such as that, it's no wonder that WWE is sinking to new depths in the ratings. Last one watching, turn off the TV.

[monkeyman576]

I think modern teens and 20 somethings aren't as into wrestling as they were in previous generations. Partly because of dull characters and storytelling.

[Amazin69]

Triple Fail certainly isn't endearing himself to the Short Attention-Span Generation by stretching out matches to 20+ minutes so that the workers can "get their stuff in" and feel positively towards management and he can tell the advertisers that by stretching the matches through multiple ad-breaks he's ensuring the viewers see their products. Apparently Levesque has never heard of a FF button.

Periodically, I go back to a presumed "bad" year of WWE and see what they were showing to contrast to the modern product. One thing I notice is that they have plenty of matches that go 5:00 or shorter, keeping the pace up and getting more matches on the show.

I mean, nobody wants to see 25 minutes of Nathan Frazer. Quite possibly not even his mum.

ETA: Review of the October 25, 2019 SmackDown, entitled "Oh, This Was Bad". And it was, probably even worse than last Friday's show. But at least the matches were shorter. Only the main event went 15 minutes.

(A six-man tag where the babyfaces were Big Dog Roman Reigns [who was rapidly squandering the goodwill he got by beating leukemia and who would need to turn heel very soon], Mustafa Ali [who is a natural heel if I ever saw one] and Chad Gable trying to be a rapper named "Shorty G"? Ye gods.)

[monkeyman576]

Some are speculating the "masked man" angle at Survivor Series is Austin Theory. I think it needs to be someone with more visibility to have a proper payoff. Maybe someone like Alberto Del Rio or Chris Jerico.

[Cobra Mgr]

Originally Posted by monkeyman576

Some are speculating the "masked man" angle at Survivor Series is Austin Theory. I think it needs to be someone with more visibility to have a proper payoff. Maybe someone like Alberto Del Rio or Chris Jerico.

I didn't see the matches, just read about them. Whole PPV looked horrible.

[Amazin69]

Mediocre at best. The women's wargames was slapped together (Lash Legend hasn't even MET 60% of the babyface team; what's her reason in kayfabe to want to step in a violent match with them?) and ends with the same old "Iyo puts a trash can on her head and leaps down wiping out the idiots who stood below her" spot. Which is all except Becky Lynch, who taps out to AJ Lee's weak submission (the "Black Widow" where you can just walk to the ropes and force a break) but apparently this is "closure" to the Becky/AJ feud, because AJ either isn't in shape or inclined to work regular matches.

John Cena gets beat up by three girls, which has to be political on some level. Yes, Dominik is doing a great job building his character…but he's sitll a skinny comedy heel and it feels wrong for Cena to be losing his penultimate match this way. And everything was so obviously fake. I need some illusion, dammit. (Yes, the 619 has always been a stupid move since it requires the recipient to just hang on the middle rope forever [I do love the 2018 Royal Rumble where Miz is clearly checking over his shoulder to see when Rey is going to show up…], but Dom is clearly just grazing Cena so the selling looks very bad, IMO.). And since Cena can hardly get physical with women, it felt too cartoonish,

The Steph V match was decent enough; not sure it was PPV-worthy, though.

And ending the PPV on a "mystery attacker" angle is just stupid. You've got 10 people in the ring already, why should I care what Montez Ford or whomever adds to the chaos? What, Roman and Brock and everybody else aren't enough? They should have saved this bit for when Punk was defending the title (higher stakes) against Bron (narrower focus). Here it felt like a fan jumping in to take a random shot. Very underwhelming.

And of course, 4 matches streeeeeeeeeeched over 3:13 of show. I'm glad I can skip forward, but this is just ridiculous.

JMO.

[Cobra Mgr]

Speaking of Ford, what is WWE's prob w/their tag teams? They have some of their best since the Hardy/Edge&Christian/Dudley days. And they are barely used.

[Amazin69]

No real idea; some people speculate that he just doesn't like them.

(Others notice that there are two prominent black tag teams, but that may be painting HHH with a wide brush.)

The bizarre part is that Trips or Michael Hayes (or "God") or someone apparently looked at that endless fustercluck from earlier in the year where all the Smackdown tag teams would constantly brawl with each other and decided "yeah, let's do that with the women, too!" So we had five women's teams in that pointless brawl last night. (Nia and Lash must be pissed that their invites got lost in the mail or whatever…)

One of the foolish bits (apart from starting it off with a Faces v Faces confrontation, but Trips seems to actively want to kill the idea of Faces and Heels) is that Rhea said that she wanted first chance at the Kabukis and Charlotte and Alexa said that, no, as the former champs they were entitled to a rematch first, it somehow turned into a #1 contenders match, even though that's essentially Charlexa giving away their point that they had the right to take first crack. (I have no idea why WWE decided to do away with rematch clauses, but that's another story.)

And so it became a big schmozz (oh, joy…) with the Kabukis coming out and then… "Here come Bayley and Lyra!" to quote TessiSNORE. Er, first of all, didn't Lyra used to have a last name? And secondly it's a joke that they're trying to sell Bayley and Lyra as an "oooh, ****'s getting real now!" pair. Who next, Michin and B-Fab?

********************
It was nice that they gave Breakker the big promo slot and they decided to stop bull****ting about how Punk is supposedly much happier now and he's no longer the toxic asshole backstage that he used to be (although I don't know that this makes much sense given that he's one of the babyface champions…), but it's weird that they gave Bron the stage given that HE ****ed up so badly in the match on Saturday. Twice.

First he nearly killed himself trying to take a "Wrecking Ball" move from Punk. Not the "Dudley Device", where Bubba would fall back and take the victim with him for a flat-back bump. Not the Road Warriors' "Doomsday Device" where Hawk clotheslines the guy off of Animal's shoulders and the victim takes the back bump on his own. No, they went for the "Wrecking Ball" that the Destruction Crew would do in the dying days of the AWA (after Vince already took Curt Hennig and the Rockers), where Mike Enos would hit the diving clothesline and knock the jobber off of Wayne Bloom's shoulders and the jobber would do a 270° backflip and land on their face. It was great, but it was dangerous, which is why Vince didn't let Bloom and Enos do it as "The Beverley Brothers" and didn't let anyone else do it either.

Because you can really only do it to a skinny, flippy job guy. You try and do to a big muscled guy like Bron and he can't do the flip and lands on his neck and nearly kills himself…and they're going to reward him for this?

(Edit: I've had it shown to me that the Warriors started using the device in their last couple of years before coming to WWE; I thought that was a "Legion of Doom" special. And some of their foes did do the flip, mostly jobbers but even Sting. I just remember that most of their big-name opponents took the simpler bump

Ironically, I just saw Bron's dad, Rick Steiner, take the back-bump. Should have listened to your old man, Bron. And I don't know which team debuted the move in 1988 first; they were both doing it. IIRC, the Road Warriors were still also doing their original "What a RUSSSSH" running clothesline finish, which is why I noticed the device more with Bloom and Enos [and ESPn reran the old AWA shows about a decade ago, so those are fresher memories], but who knows?)

And then when Cody and Logan Paul are trading punches sitting on top of the cage and Bron whacks Cody with the chair in the ankle and Cody descends awkwardly and then he tells Bron "YOU BROKE MY ANKLE!" I mean, you can hear Cody say that! And so Bron backs off of his next move and wanders over to where Logan and Drew are on top of Punk and Jimmy Uso and taunting them.

So Bron breaks the ankle of the (theoretical) top star and they reward him for that???? Ridiculous! As much as I'm glad to know that Punk is still the same toxic asshole he's always been, I really don't like that they're rewarding Bron for his double ****-up.

But apparently they have no idea how they're going to deal with Cody's injury (they haven't even mentioned it yet on camera) so they're just acting as if it never happened. Probably they'll have the "mystery man" attack Cody and write him off TV, never mind that they haven't yet figured out who "attacked" Jacob Fatu…not that I give a fork about Jacob Fatu, but still. Blehh

[Cobra Mgr]

WWE is known for force feeding their audience wrestlers they think should be on top. When they make them heels it works a little cause they build up the hatred. But when they shove a face out there, it ends up a disaster.

[monkeyman576]

To be fair, you can't blame a billion dollar corporation for thinking it knows better than the masses. If wrestling was a popularity contest it wouldn't be good either.

[Cobra Mgr]

Originally Posted by monkeyman576

To be fair, you can't blame a billion dollar corporation for thinking it knows better than the masses. If wrestling was a popularity contest it wouldn't be good either.

In some cases. But Amazin makes a good point in this circumstance. WWE is advancing live stories, not competition. When one of the main characters gets hurt, months of planning (or from the looks of it now, hours of planning) get thrown out of the window. You can't promote a guy who is either going to put himself at risk, or put others at risk, and thus ruin the scripts.

[Amazin69]

CHEF IN TAMPA RESTAURANT: We'll serve you the full menu, but you gotta put the beat-down on Jacob Fatu for me.
BRAUN STROWMAN: I'd love to, if I could get my hands on him. I'm getting tired of him attacking me out of nowhere.
—Everything on the Menu, episode 1.08

So, let me get this straight…Adam Scherr ("Braun"), whose contract the WWE declined to renew, is keeping kayfabe on his food show, but WWE can't be bothered to do that on the show that sets up John Cena's final match????

(Tonight's Smackdown featured an interview with Cena where he talked about how wrestling used to be a "private carnival" thing, as we show pictures of Cena yukking it up backstage with Seth Rollins and doing a charity event with Kevin Owens, who apparently are not crazed and dangerous heels, after all.)

For ****'s sake. I mean, I know that Sarah Michelle Gellar isn't really slaying vampires, but they didn't have her break character and go hang out with the guest actors in her trailer in the middle of the show…