Tag: wwe

WWE Power Rankings, revisited

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

While watching RAW, I was asking myself what the heck was there to look forward to after The New Day had finished their segment? Needless to say, it’s a really dark time for the WWE right now. With John Cena taking a well-deserved break from television, and the unfortunate timing of Seth Rollins’ injuries set to shelf him for almost a whole year, the sheer lack of depth in the WWE is being brutally exploited right now.

There are a lot of guys on the roster, but not nearly enough of them have been developed to the point where they could shoulder more television time and not bore the audience of start generating X-Pac heat, and it’s times like these where I’m curious just how big of a challenge it is to fill a three-hour block now.

With Sheamus cashing in Money in the Bank, the WWE has basically burned its biggest creative get-out-of-jail-free card, but I can’t help but feel that they jumped the gun on it just a little bit. Ultimately, my opinion on the MITB case is that it serves as a hard-reset to storylines, just in case a storyline doesn’t go the way it really should have, and instead of trying to phase it out, simply pull the plug on it with the MITB; however, by Sheamus having cashed it approximately five minutes and fifteen seconds after Roman Reigns had won the World title, they basically pulled the plug on a title run that didn’t even have a chance to fail.

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Paige, the WWE Divas and the progression of the industry

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It’s funny; in my life, I’ve taken my share of whimsical flack, criticism and questioning the fact that I’m a fan of professional wrestling.  How it’s “fake,” which is true that all results are pre-determined, but the physical action is still very much real, and how it’s the equivalent of watching a men’s soap opera, which I also cannot really refute.

And that “it’s stupid,” because it’s a closed-minded good ol’ boys club where grown men in spandex tights bash each other in the heads with chairs in some rehearsed homoerotic dance that only rednecks like.

Now there was once a time and place where this was a more succinct description of the industry, but that time is in the past, and this is where I disagree such an assessment.

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It’s about time Kane got an interesting story

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Over the last few weeks, I realized that I was actually stopping the fast forwarding of RAW whenever Kane showed up on screen. Since his return from injury at Night of Champions, and the start of his current split-personality storyline, I’ve found Kane to be entertaining and fun to watch.

When the inevitable commercial break faded to black, I said to myself “this is the best Kane storyline since . . . since . . .”

And I couldn’t think of a single other Kane storyline that wasn’t just disturbing, wasn’t cliched, or wasn’t completely fucking bad.

Since Kane debuted in like 1998, he’s pretty much put into bad storyline after bad storyline when he wasn’t simply jobbing to the stars (usually while simultaneously portraying a bad storyline). Whether it’s one of the several times he’s stalked “his brother” the Undertaker, knocking up Lita and then having her miscarry when feuding with foot-fetishist Gene Snitzky, and of course one of the worst wrestling storylines in the history of the industry, the necrophiliac storyline involving Triple H unearthing Kane’s past, and his dead girlfriend, Katie Vick.

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That’s going to make storylines interesting

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I saw on Facebook trending stories the other night that WWE superstar, Rusev recently got engaged to his real-life girlfriend, also WWE superstar, Lana.

That’s great and all, because the two of them have looked like the happiest couple over the last year, to those who occasionally see them on social media posting pictures of themselves.  The two of them at Florida State games, the two of them at tourist attractions seen while both being on the road together, and the two of them simply looking like the lovely couple that they are, regardless of the fact that he’s a Bulgarian monster, and she’s over-the-top Russian eye candy, when on screen.

However, as nice and sweet as this story is for their real-life lives, it does make things interesting as far as WWE storylines go.  Currently, on-screen, the two of them are “broken up,” and are in this terrible false drama storyline of the two of them basically trying to make the other jealous by having relationships with new partners, with Rusev picking up Summer Rae, and Lana becoming involved with Dolph Ziggler.

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Over Alert: The New Day

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’ve mentioned numerous times that I pretty much glaze over wrestling these days.  I still enjoy it, and I’m still a fan of it, but the fact of the matter is that I really loathe how RAW is presented.  Full of commercial breaks, always in the middle of matches, far too many matches that are always pushing storylines and not showcasing much actual wrestling, and then more commercials when they aren’t plugging the next pay-per-view or the WWE Network in general.

I’ve gotten watching RAW on DVR to a science; for the most part, I can knock out the three-hour long program in probably 90 minutes or less, seeing as how an hour alone is pretty much lost to commercials.  But really, I’ve learned that pushing the 30-seconds ahead button to the equivalent of 4:30-5:30 minutes pretty much nails every commercial break, and that any Sheamus or Randy Orton match is usually around eight total minutes, and a Bray Wyatt diatribe is usually about 6-8 minutes.

Needless to say, I fast forward a lot of matches, and the biggest rub from me as a viewer, is if I stop and watch a particular wrestler’s segment.

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Wrestling gone Hollywood, and not in the PPV subtitle kind of way

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I came across this article that was taking odds on whom the next WWE star would be, that could break into Hollywood.  At first, I was kind of like “pffh no way” when they had ranked Seth Rollins to be the #1 choice to possibly make it onto the silver screens of Hollywood (and not just WWE Film productions), but then it dawned on me that frankly, I’d never actually given it much thought about who the next guy really could be.

Typically I watch wrestling, because I’m a supersmark that likes to think I’m smarter than everyone else when it comes to wrestling, but I’ve been kind of caught up in the cat-and-mouse game between the fans and Triple H, who is doing a damn admirable job of taking the predictions and perceptions of supersmarks like me that think we’re smarter than everyone else, and turning them in all sorts of less-predictable directions.  That being said, I’m not really thinking about the future endeavors (see what I did there) of the talent beyond what they’re doing on RAW.

But it’s an interesting idea, and upon giving it some thought, I took a little bit of time to actually think about who could follow in the footsteps of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, and the more recent emergence of John “John Cena*” Cena, who did some show-stealing in Trainwreck with Amy Schumer, actually acting, instead of being a stone-faced Marine or vigilante.  Especially since with the more recent partnerships the WWE has flexed with relevant and popular celebrities such as Jon Stewart and Stephen Amell, instead of the days of when they used to bring in people nobody cared about like Snooki, such crossover pots could actually be stirred.

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Some words for the fallen

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It’s been a rough stretch for the wrestling industry this summer.  Within the last 60 days, two iconic names of the business have passed away, in Dusty Rhodes and now Rowdy Roddy Piper.  Given the fact that the life expectancy for males in the United States is at roughly 80 years old now, it is accurate to say that at 69 and 61 years old respectively, both Dusty and Piper left the world too soon, which is pretty much the epitomal statement made whenever any wrestler passes these days.  The lifestyle of the business, especially back when those guys were touring towns, was quite self-destructive, and it would be a bigger surprise if the causes of their deaths weren’t aided in some way or fashion by drugs or substance abuse.

I didn’t write anything publicly when Dusty Rhodes died, but now that Piper has so quickly followed, I think it’s a decent time to put some words down, because ultimately, I felt the same way about both guys, and it’s quite easier to turn this into something of a post that I’m hoping has some substance to it.

The truth is, I was never really a fan of either Dusty Rhodes or Roddy Piper.  This doesn’t mean that I don’t care about their deaths, far from it; they’re both unfortunate and absolutely horrible for the families that they left behind, but at the same time, I don’t see any reason to pretend like I was ever a big fan of either wrestler when they were still active.  Nor did I see any point of waxing poetic about great they were in the business, because I frankly don’t agree to such as fervently as many other wrestling fans do.

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