Tag: wwe

Looks like the WWE was finally ready for Asuka

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Sometimes I wonder if my posts are too long, mostly on account of me rambling about something in the long form that sets up what I’m actually intending on writing about, and then five paragraphs later, I really actually get to the point of the impetus for writing in the first place.

That being said, I’ll keep it short about how much I cringed like OJ Simpson in court, when fucking Otis won the men’s Money in the Bank briefcase.  Sure, I’ll give the WWE a little bit of credit for actually taking a stab at some pure unpredictability, but based on the lineup of contenders, Otis had to have been the one guy that nobody and their mothers from their basements would have actually considered winning MITB, but here we stand.

Needless to say, I’m disappointed that fucking Otis is going to be the get-out-of-jail-free card for WWE Creative for the next calendar year, and I have to assume that he’ll end up like Damien Sandow or Baron Corbin, as dudes who will inevitably have failed to successfully cash in their championship opportunities; or, they’ll go very radically, and have Otis cash it in on tag titles, or do some revisionist history to where he can cash it on any brand and any title, which might actually make it a little more interesting.

Anyway, the point of this post wasn’t to talk about fucking Otis, but to applaud the WWE for their choice to get back on the Asuka train and actually give her a god damn push.  She went from being one of the hottest talents in the company with an undefeated streak that eclipsed Bill Goldberg, but once the streak came to an end against Charlotte Flair, she was dropped down to the mid-card faster than television ratings during an X-Pac match.  Sure, she had a Smackdown women’s championship in this time, but again was jobbed out to Charlotte Flair, and relegated to tag duties, which she actually spun gold from shit, with Kairi Sane and their cringeworthy Kabuki Warriors name.

Regardless, I was excited to see Asuka win the women’s Money in the Bank briefcase, but before I could even write about it, the following night on RAW occurred, where Becky Lynch announced her pregnancy to the world, and relinquished the RAW women’s championship over to Asuka, for winning the MITB contest.

Now it’s no secret WWE loves to build their company on “moments,” and it was widely reported that absolutely nobody other than Lynch, Seth Rollins (the father) and only a few key creative bigwigs knew about it, and not even Asuka was informed before the segment, so it’s safe to say that Becky’s announcement and the bequeathing of the RAW women’s championship over to Asuka was an entirely unscripted and about as genuinely real moment as one could see in professional wrestling.

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The path to the IWGP World Championship has just been opened up

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

When the first wave of future endeavors was announced, my initial thought was, meh, no real loss.  Maybe Karl Anderson and Luke Gallows, but anyone with a pulse who follows wrestling knows they’ll be back in Bullet Club t-shirts by the end of the month in Japan, so they’ll be fine.  It sucked for Drake Maverick and Sarah Logan who are/were in championship programs literally right now or weeks ago.  And it also sucked for Heath Slater, who I figured was going to be one of those company lifers, and whose sole shirt was one that said I GOT KIDS | I NEED THIS JOB.

But really, it didn’t seem like anyone particularly consequential was axed from the company in light of coronavirus screwing things up.  That is, until a second wave of future endeavors was announced shortly afterward.

Introduced Alexander Rusev, and then gradually shortened to just Rusev, he was always one of those guys that I was always high on since his ascent to the main roster.  I appreciated that even in spite of being the archetypical evil foreigner, he showed a tremendous amount of respect for the ring itself and the business, and I loved the way he was originally built up, with a different face of the month being put in front of him, before he would ultimately meet them at the next pay-per view and then finish them with the Camel Clutch he called The Accolade.

Riding this burgeoning undefeated streak, Rusev would eventually capture the United States championship from Sheamus and hold it for several months, before having an eventual Wrestlemania program with none other than John Cena, whom he’d lose it to at the Showcase of the Immortals™, but not before having an epic entrance where he rode to the stage in a literal tank.  Seriously, if this moment couldn’t be considered the pinnacle of his WWE career, then I don’t know what else could.

Either way, Rusev maintained a pretty strong presence for a while afterward, and even managed to turn face, when he for whatever reason, started christening every day as a holiday known as Rusev Day.  I mean whatever, the fans ate it up, and it got him over, even if his win-loss record wasn’t nearly as sparkling as it was during his initial run.

Eventually, for reasons I don’t really particularly care to research beyond Wikipedia, WWE seemed to sour on him, and such was easily reflected in how he was treated on screen, if he was even allowed to make it on television.  I’m going to guess there was some sort of contract dispute or something of the sort, and Creative basically took him to the woodshed with his character.

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I thought Ric Flair loved his daughter

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The intentions may have been pure, but to me, comparing anyone to Randy Orton may as well be telling them they’re vanilla ice cream, so when Ric Flair said his daughter Charlotte was akin to the female equivalent of Randy Orton, well, that’s not necessarily a compliment as far as I’m concerned.

Frankly, Ric probably should’ve stuck with naming all the attributes he thinks Randy Orton has that he loves, and applied those to Charlotte without actually naming Randy Orton, but what’s done is done.

Ric Flair thinks Charlotte is boring, stale, never-changing, and getting put into a program with her is getting put into the friend zone of WWE Creative for the women’s division.

To which by that logic, is completely untrue and unfair to Charlotte, to compare her to Randy Orton.

Randy Orton, is exactly what I said he is, and he genuinely is the equivalent of being put into the friend zone.  Poor Edge, makes this monumental comeback after nine years of forced retirement, and then is immediately thrown into the slammer of WWE Creative, being forced to run a months-long program with Randy Orton.

Most wrestling fans can only guess the queue of younger guys salivating at the dream of getting to work with Edge, and I can only imagine the potential four-star+ matches that could be had if he got to work with guys like Kevin Owens, Sami Zayn, Johnny Gargano or Tommaso Ciampa.  But instead, the WWE welcomed Edge back with a soul-crushing program with Randy Orton.

Charlotte Flair, on the other hand is in my opinion, genuinely the best female superstar in professional wrestling, bar none.  Ric is definitely not wrong about that part, it’s just not fair or cool to compare her to Randy Orton.

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Well that was predictably not great

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Unsurprising to me, considering the fact that professional wresting kind of needs fans and atmosphere to really excel at being the spectator event it’s supposed to be, that a Wrestlemania with no fans and no real atmosphere, just was not that great.  It didn’t help that as a result of coronavirus running wild, there were some massive impacts to the card, like Roman Reigns pulling out because as a leukemia survivor, he’s already immunocompromised, and then the Miz pulling out because he had some ailment that scared the shit out of all other roster and personnel and probably gained him a ton of heat, things were becoming a steeper and steeper uphill battle, even before circumstances made the company turn the whole thing into a closed-door private affair.

In spite of their best efforts and making it a two-night event, very little could’ve really been done to have made the event remotely palatable to an old smark like myself.  The importance of crowds and the atmosphere they bring has been completely understated in the last few weeks of both WWE and AEW putting on empty venue shows.  But as much as I don’t like having to praise AEW, I have to give them credit for at least having the wherewithal to put their superstars in the audience so that there’s some sort of crowd noise or interaction to gain.

WWE on the other hand has literally nobody in the stands whatsoever, and it’s almost an eerie silence when matches go on.  I have to imagine as performers, it’s really jarring and awkward to them to have to perform for nobody but the camera, but act like that there’s a crowd at all, and go through with ring entrances and staring out into nothingness like there’s a sold out show.  I imagine those who are WWE grown struggled with it the most, whereas those who worked their ways through independents and alternative federations are probably no stranger to low-attendance or near-empty gates.

Regardless, the show as a whole was pretty weak, and it was entirely too difficult to get into many of the matches.  I fortunately watched each night of the show the day after, so I had the luxury of being able to fast forward and skip the rest holds and extended promos in order to chew up time.  As well as Rob Gronkowski segments, where the only thing I want to see out of him is to team up with Zack Ryder and Matt Riddle and make a douchey white guy bro stable, and have one program with The New Day since they’re a group of black nerds, and then get the fuck out of the WWE forever.

Undertaker vs. AJ Styles was about as bad as I imagined it would be, considering the fact that it was a gimmicky “Boneyard Match” that wasn’t so much of a match as much as it was an episode of WMAC Masters from back in the 90’s.  It hid every bit of the Undertaker’s lack of mobility and stamina, and AJ Styles had to work his ass off to make it look remotely passable.  It wasn’t really entertaining, but more cringeworthy that the WWE went off in this direction, but given the fact that the Undertaker is like 55 and can barely move, they didn’t really have that much of a choice.

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Randy Orton is the WWE’s Friend Zone

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It’s not often where I feel like I’ve hit an analogy home run, but I think I hit the nail on the head with this one.  After watching Edge’s return to the ring in the Royal Rumble, and the subsequent segment on RAW the night afterward, where he was brutally attacked by Randy Orton, it dawned on me much like the sun rising: Randy Orton is basically the friend zone for WWE wrestlers.

I feel like the analogy works so perfectly, because not just in the case of Edge, but any wrestler who has the unfortunate situation of being put into a program with Randy Orton, they have to know it’s a dead-end feud with no gain to be had from doing it, much like any sad schlub of a guy who thinks they have a chance with a girl, but get put into the friend zone, and they’re the only ones who don’t realize that they’re in it.

Randy Orton has just enough name and face value to where anyone stashed with him retains some degree of relevance, but he doesn’t have enough of either to really elevate them beyond the holding pen point of relevance.  He’s basically keeping budding stars warm, but for guys that are trying to re-climb the mountain, or in the case of Edge, come back and rise through the ranks, a feud with Orton is literally being put into the friend zone, where there is no happy ending in sight, but he’ll still work like hell trying to prove something, because he doesn’t realize that he’s in the friend zone.

I mean, just look at the last few guys Orton has been paired up with: AJ Styles’ went nowhere working with Orton. Kofi Kingston not only didn’t go anywhere, all the momentum he had from Kofimania came to a slow stop, and not long after vanquishing Randy Orton, ended up jobbing to Brock Lesnar in 4 seconds to drop the WWE Championship.  It’s debatable that it wouldn’t have mattered who he was paired up against, but Jeff Hardy fell off the wagon after working with Orton.  Rusev will never get a main event push in the WWE, and working with Orton couldn’t have helped that cause, and the list goes on and on, really.

But it really sucks for Edge, considering the nine years he’s been away from the business, and as soon as he gets back, he’s thrust into a feud with Randy Orton.  I mean, this is a feud that could have just as easily happened back in 2011, and in fact have faced each other before several times in the past.  But in a company that’s chock full of young guys and guys from different companies, you’d think they’d try and pair Edge up with any one of them before Randy Orton. 

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WWEShop fail

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

In 2000, the WWE changed from the WWF to the WWE because the World Wildlife Fund out in Europe kept suing them over the acronym WWF, or something along those lines, I don’t really care to cross-research the whole story in order to sound smart.  Either way, the WWE ran this whole campaign for about a month afterward, where they showed all these bumpers about how the WWE was “getting the F out” on a sophomoric play on words, but also literally, explaining that they were eliminating the F from the company’s name effective immediately.

Well, if it were up to me, I’d like to give the WWE their F back, mostly as it pertains to WWEShop.com, because their selection of replica title belts, fucking fails.

Despite the fact that the number of championship belts in my collection continues to grow and mythical wife continues to ask me how many more belts I need, there’s one belt in particular that I would really like to get my hands on: an NXT UK Tag Team championship belt.  It’s the one belt in all of NXT UK that I like the most, and it would kind of put a nice cap on my collection of NXT belts in general, as I have the NXT Championship, the NXT North American Championship, and the NXT UK Tag would represent the one tag title for the NXT brand outright.

But for whatever reason, the WWE and WWEShop have yet to make the NXT UK Tag Team championship belt available in their shop of replica belts.  As it stands right now, it is the only active championship belt in all of the WWE that they are not selling replicas of currently, and I don’t really know why.  The excuse of it being the newest belt doesn’t apply anymore, since the WWE introduced the 24/7 Championship, which once R-Truth isn’t in the picture holds any importance, but WWEShop is selling replicas of it already.

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Not a fan of split NXT

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

When it was announced that NXT was going national, I was most definitely in the camp that met the news with a feeling of dread.  Not just because I’m a cheapskate that doesn’t have access to the USA Network, much less cable television in general, but also because I was very puzzled and dubious about the whole planned execution of NXT, with the first half of the show being exclusive to the USA Network on cable television, and the second hour being exclusive to the WWE Network streaming.

When the day is over, the medium that brings in advertising revenue is going to win out, and I didn’t have to watch New NXT to have guessed that they were going to stack the first hour and then take their foot off the gas once the cameras switched over to streaming for hour two.  Look no further to the hour by hour comparison in matches/segments and come to your own conclusion:

Hour 1 (Nationally televised on USA):

  • Io Shirai vs. Bianca Bel Air vs. Mia Yim vs. Candice LeRae, Fatal 4-Way for #1 Contender to NXT Women’s Championship
  • Cameron Grimes vs. Sean Maluta
  • Roderick Strong vs. Velveteen Dream for NXT North American Championship

Hour 2 (Exclusive to WWE Network subscribers):

  • Pete Dunne vs. Arturo Ruas
  • Xia Li vs. Aaliyah
  • IMPERIUM promo
  • Lio Rush vs. Oney Lorcan for #1 Contender to WWE Cruiserweight Championship
  • Matt Riddle vs. Killian Dain

Sure, it’s hard to count the Grimes/Maluta match considering it was a squash where the entrances took 5x longer than the match itself, but two long-form matches featuring the top talents in both the men’s and women’s divisions, it’s clear that WWE is putting nationally televised first, and taking their foot hard off the gas in hour two, because fewer things denote a reduction in effort than an Aaliyah or Arturo Ruas match, regardless of whom they’re up against.

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