Tag: wrestling

Women’s Tag Team Championships: WWE vs. NXT

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

One of my favorite mechanics in the WWE is the idea of floating champions.  Champions who aren’t limited to just RAW or Smackdown, and can really go anywhere within the company.  Throughout the years, the company has dabbled in floating championships, like when they consolidated all belts down to one world championship, women’s and tag team champions, and only those who held the belts could float between RAW and Smackdown.

When business was good rosters got big, old blets were re-established, and championships gained exclusivity to a particular brand.  Eventually, when creativity began stagnating, champions began jumping onto other shows for shock value purposes, and to randomly fulfill intriguing champion vs. champion scenarios, or when feuds between-show talents emerged and needed to be fulfilled.

Ultimately, it brings us to today where we’re kind of back to an age of all shows having exclusive titles, but there is one floating championship (that isn’t the farce of the 24/7 championship): the WWE Women’s Tag Team Championship.  It was decreed that the Women’s Tag Team champions could not only hop around from RAW to Smackdown, but it was heavily implied that they could also appear and be defended, on NXT.  That concept alone, whet my whistle, because I’m a huge mark for NXT, and I love the creative idea of an NXT team capturing some main roster gold, and the creative possibilities that could emerge from that.

To date, Creative actually came through with this mechanism, and on three occasions, the WWE Women’s Tag Team titles have been defended on NXT: Dakota Kai & Tegan Nox vs. Asuka & Kairi Sane, Tegan Nox & Shotzi Blackheart vs. Bayley & Sasha Banks, and most recently, Dakota Kai & Raquel Gonzalez vs. Shayna Baszler & Nia Jax.  Despite the fact that NXT has taken the L in all three instances, it has created intriguing television that main roster superstars have appeared in NXT, and had some fun matchups.

However recently, in storyline, there was a controversial finish to the latter matchup between Kai/Gonzalez vs. Baszler/Jax, where main roster stooge Adam Pierce interjected a main roster referee to call the match when the NXT ref was knocked out.  This prompted NXT general manager William Regal, to get upset and make a monumental decision, which ultimately ended up being the introduction of the brand new, NXT Women’s Tag Team Championship, and awarded them to Dakota Kai & Raquel Gonzalez, for winning the first edition of the Dusty Rhodes Women’s Tag Team Cup.

And just like that, the WWE Women’s Tag Team championship has most likely ceased its ability to float on down to NXT from here on out, with the exception maybe being Survivor Series, if they ever try to add NXT to the cross-brand competition.

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There’s a reason why I call it AEWCW

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment
I can’t see how far my career has fallen from here…

Although with each passing week, it stands to believe that it could very well be turning into TNAEWCW, based on the questionable decisions the company keeps making in spite of their bold proclamations that they are going to be the anti-WWE, not compete with WWE, and don’t really concern themselves over what WWE is doing.

So Revolution was over the weekend, and although there’s plenty to criticize about what seemed like a pretty wince-worthy show, there’s one thing that stood out the most to me.  And no, it wasn’t the embarrassingly pathetic “explosion” that was supposed to kill Jon Moxley that was set to the same timer that’s in the background of the battle against Emerald Weapon from Final Fantasy VII because Kenny Omega is huge FFVII fanboy, because as far as the actual match itself went, it wasn’t that terrible, and tried its best to harken back to the days of old Masato Tanaka matches in FMW, it’s just the post-match shenanigans were pretty cringe-worthy bad.

Or the face of the revolution ladder match to which the prize at the top of the ladder wasn’t a sack of money, the managerial services of Terri Runnels or a blet, but a giant golden ring that looked like the one that took you to the bonus stages in Sonic the Hedgehog, that was at least won by a guy with actual legitimate talent in Scorpio Sky, who really is one of the shining beacons of the entire promotion.

Leading up to Revolution, there was all sorts of buzz on the scuttlebutt about how AEW was going to reveal this big massive acquisition, and there were all sorts of predictions thrown about.  Some as grandiose as Brock Lesnar, some as wildly unlikely as CM Punk. My personal take was that since the W in AEW stands for Weebs, I figured it would be a Japanese wrestler that few in America had ever heard of, and since the so-called forbidden door is open between AEWeebs and New Japan, maybe it would be an on-loan Kazuchika Okada to threaten Kenny Omega in North America for a change of scenery.

And then there were the less-fun predictions of hardcore marks who actively scour and look for the contract status of active, or recently-retired-not-retired guys or potential free agents, out there like Kurt Angle, Christian, Marty Scurll or Tessa Blanchard.

All the same, AEW had successfully generated some buzz and hype, and even the most lukewarm of fans like me were remotely curious to who it possibly could be.

When it was revealed to be Christian, I literally laughed out loud.  As loud as a dad to a 1-year old in a nearby room could possibly laugh, but an actual, audible sound came from my mouth when I found out that of all the names that were thrown out there, it was a 47-year old WWE mid-carder who’s biggest success in the big leagues came as a metaphorical substitution to an Edge storyline when Edge himself had to call it quits at the time due to neck injury.  A former TNA world champion at a time when that belt was passed around to other “TNA legends” like Bobby Roode, Bubba Ray Dudley and a pre-renaissance Drew McIntyre and Bobby Lashley.

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A catch-up post

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It’s been a while since I’ve felt the inner need to do one of these, but at the same time, it’s been a while since I last posted too.  Not a day goes by when I don’t notice when I post, but between my job entering our busy season, the general busy-ness of raising an infant daughter, night classes, and I do mean night classes seeing as how they’re 9-11 pm, taking up two nights a week with often other nights of the week doing homework for said night classes, as I’ve stated a gabillion times at this point, I simply just don’t have any time.

And with what free time I do have, I’m either usually too gassed and fried in the brain to want to sit down and try and gather my thoughts and write about things especially when feeling unmotivated in the first place, and so I usually end up fast-forwarding through the week’s wrestling programs and when I have them available, catching up on TLC programming like My 600 lb. Life and 90 Day Fiancé.  And as much as I hate to constantly lean on wrestling and TLC to find things to about write about, I can’t remember the last time I had leisurely time to just casually surf the internet for local happenings to rap on, and often times general news around the rest of the world is usually sad and infuriating in the first place and I don’t want to feed into negativity that I can simply avoid.

One day, maybe, I’ll have more free time to write again in the future.  For the sake of my own sanity and gratification, I certainly hope so.

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I love Cameron Grimes’ new character

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It’s not that I’m an AEW hater, and want to see them fail, it’s just that I’m critical about how they run their shows, and I’m dubious that they’ll actually amount to anything other than being a distant #2.  I feel as if the power structure of the company AKA Cody/Omega/the Bucks spent year one trying too hard to disprove nepotism and booking themselves to the moon that they basically buried themselves, but with the start of year two, taking the shackles off, pushing themselves like crazy, where Omega and the Bucks are the world and tag champions respectively, and on a completely different island as the rest of the roster.

And as for the rest of said roster, they’re basically this strange island of misfit toys where you have Chris Jericho’s Inner Circle, you have the Dark Order, you have Death Triangle, you have Matt Hardy building a stable, and then there’s the obviously protected-like-religion Hangman Adam Page.  And because there’s no real intriguing storylines for the women’s roster, they’re just doing this TNA-like random tournament of nationalities, between the US and Japan, where the US side has several Japanese women anyway.

But the storylines and characters are all weak and predictable, and I’m having great difficulty in getting too interested in any one storyline.

And then I switch over to NXT, and I’m seeing a Lamborghini pulling up to the CWC.  Okay, classic who’s this moment, where it’s got to be some smarmy new heel character or something.  Camera pans up, and it’s none other than Cameron Grimes, the obnoxious, loud mouthed redneck, but why’s he pulling up in a Lambo, and more importantly, why and how is he suddenly rich and handing out real-looking Benjamins to all sorts of random people?

Okay, I’m curious.  I stay on the channel.  And then he cuts a promo, talking about how decided to start playing video games in his spare time, and then when he wanted more video games, he went to GameStop, and decided to invest in GameStop at the right place and right time?  Now I’m amused.  One DogeCoin reference later, and now I’m thoroughly entertained.  This new iteration of Cameron Grimes, a redneck Million Dollar Man, who got rich by capitalizing on the GameStop stock boon, this is entertaining.

And just like that, one character on NXT has proven to be more entertaining than a litany of loosely written and poorly developed personas in AEW.  And the difference is that anyone who knows the history of Cameron Grimes, or Trevor Lee, knows that the guy can really go, but now he’s got a character that can really play to his non-wrestling strengths, like being a loud-mouth and obnoxious, but now he’s got the cash to back it all up.

If there was ever a time for him to strike singles gold, I imagine when Johnny Gargano drops the North American title to some face, Million Dollar Grimes will probably be a good heel to step into that spotlight and finally try to buy himself to his first singles championship.  But belt or no belt, I can easily say that this is the first character in a while that I’ve been immediately interested in, and I look forward to see how this plays out.  Hopefully they run with it for a bit and don’t kill it immediately in a topical allegory to how it can end in the blink of an eye.

Of course there’s a BTE Championship blet

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It’s funny: despite Cody Rhodes’ insistence that he doesn’t believe in mid-card titles, he sure helps run a fed that seems to be utilizing a whole lot of mid-card titles.  Like most wrestling federations, AEW has a world champion, tag team champions, as well as a women’s champion.

But in addition to the trademark blets, AEW also has a TNT championship which I’m still not entirely sure of the logic behind it but is somehow more regarded to than the world championship.  Despite the fact that it doesn’t really count for anything, Brian Cage is running around wearing Taz’s old FTW championship blet from ECW, and despite the fact that they keep saying it’s not recognized by AEW, everyone knows it’s only a matter of time before it’s going to trade hands and suddenly become a thing.  Because Billy Corgan sucks and has basically killed the NWA, Serena Deeb is representing and defending the NWA women’s championship on AEW, and by virtue of regularly appearing and performing, has surpassed their own women’s championship, much like the TNT blet.

More recently, because AEW has interestingly enough opened the doors to collaborations with other feds, TNA Impact’s tag team champions, Karl Anderson and Luke Gallows have been usurping screen time on AEW programming to promote Impact shows.  And even more recently, KENTA from New Japan Pro Wrestling has shown up to advance his feud with Jon Moxley over the IWGP United States Championship, which has yet to physically show up on AEW, but has been referenced as the justification for KENTA’s run-in.

And although it’s not a blet, let’s not forget the AEW Dynamite Diamond ring that is a low-key title, twice held by MJF, and has won by virtue of a battle royale, that everyone is desperate to win.

Oh yeah, Kenny Omega is also Mexico’s AAA champion, and has brought that belt onto Dynamite, to antagonize Rey Fenix, the man he defeated to win it. 

So, for those keeping count, outside of the traditional standard championships in AEW, there are six seven titles-not-midcard-titles floating around in the AEW atmosphere right now.

For those who like to criticize the WWE universe for having too many blets, at least there are some fairly defined lines and separation between the jurisdictions of them, and six different weekly shows in which they are circulating between, and not one weekly show, and one YouTube show.

But speaking of YouTube, add one more blet to the mix of AEW-related championships, because of course there had to have been a BTE World Championship blet added into existence, because nothing is more epitomizing of the importance of BTE than giving it its own championship belt.

Continue reading “Of course there’s a BTE Championship blet” →

Thoughts on Royal Rumble 2021

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Of all the pay-per-view events of the year, the Royal Rumble is still my favorite.  More than Wrestlemania, and definitely more than Summer Slam, Survivor Series and all of the other tier-2 shows that permeate the rest of the calendar throughout the year.  It’s one of the only shows with gimmick event(s) that haven’t been mutated or removed outright too much, like Survivor Series, which does basically one elimination match per gender a year, as opposed to the old days where every single match was a 4 vs. 4 elimination match.

In fact, the Royal Rumble has only gotten better in time, mostly on account of the fact that they do a women’s Rumble as well, which means fans get two Royal Rumbles on the same night.  So needless to say, I was looking forward to this year’s Rumble, as I do just about every other year, because it’s the one show of the year where a fun gimmick event still happens, and the predictability of storylines can actually take a little bit of a backseat to some highly-improvised battle royal-ing.

At first, I was a little disappointed that the women’s tag team championship match was denigrated to the pre-show that few people actually watch, but from the standpoint that three of the competitors in the match would be pulling double-duty and showing up in the women’s rumble later that night, it makes sense to have them go early, so they can recoup and rest before coming out again later on.  As much as I don’t particularly care for Baszler and Jax as champions, it too also makes sense to put the belts on them, because it sticks them in hold, and out of any potentially meaningful singles storylines, although that’s not that fair to Baszler, whom I think has a lot of potential to be untapped, but I’m very much lukewarm on Jax.  Plus, it frees Charlotte up to do bigger and badder things, although she has to get through this cringey storyline with Lacey Evans kayfabe-banging Ric Flair first.

Good on the show for having Goldberg vs. Drew McIntyre start the official show off.  As much as fans are perplexed and disgusted with Goldberg’s frequent cameos, I have to imagine that the talent probably loves working programs with him.  When they get to their inevitable matches, they’re basically guaranteed a 4-minute spot-fest, a quick decision, and they can be out the door and asleep in their own beds by 10:30, which is ultimately what a lot of the more family-oriented performers really want.

I feel kind of bad for Kevin Owens, because I’m really high on him, but he was undoubtedly used as a stop-gap feud for Roman Reigns, to help hold him over until Wrestlemania.  But I think there was no doubt that he was going to go over, because as much as I like him, I can’t possibly see any ways Creative would have anything for him for Wrestlemania, while Reigns is still doing the lord’s work as the Head of the Table, and there’s still so much more potential to be tapped into before taking the strap off him.  Frankly, I could see him as champion for a whole other year if he keeps this persona going.

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Why Sting failed in the WWE

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Firstly, I like Sting.  But when I saw him show up on AEW, my first thought was, “wtf?  He’s . . . [checking my phone for Sting’s Wikipedia page] . . . 61 years old!  Whyyyy??”

And then my thoughts swirled around the fact that the show built the entire episode’s identity around his arrival, by constantly lifting Winter is Coming from Game of Thrones, conveniently compounded by the fact that they were wrestling outdoors in 40-50 degree weather, and most wrestling attire isn’t necessarily made for warmth.

But the appearance or the gimmick was no one-off cameo; in subsequent episodes of Dynamite, every time Sting showed up, it was the same song and dance, where the lights go out, fake snow is blown into Daily’s Place, and Sting is standing there, he points a bat, Team Taz runs away from the ring, and then he and Darby Allin stare at each other until JR blathers on about going to commercial, but not of the “restaurant-quality (whatever the fuck that means) picture-in-picture” variety.

Here’s the thing though – he hasn’t done a single spot in the ring, but already I think it can be safely said that he’s had a more successful run in AEW than he ever had in WWE back in 2014.  Frankly in my opinion, Sting in the WWE was never going to work, because Sting was the true one pillar of anti-WWE, seeing as how his entire career he never jumped ship at any point, despite guys like Flair, Arn, Luger, Steamboat, Rude, Goldberg, DDP, and all sorts of legends, having done so at least once in their careers.  Sting was the true bastion of integrity that held his ground and never did go, at least not until so much time had passed, and it seemed like he went solely because of legacy purposes, but honestly, even as a jaded fan, it just seemed like his heart was never in it at all.

Sure, it’s probably because he was immediately buried by Triple H and had his first match be at Wrestlemania, where he lost to Trips, and then nearly had his career permanently ended by a botched powerbomb while working with Seth Rollins, but the fact of the matter is that it’s pretty safe to say that Sting’s run in the WWE was a pretty embarrassing flop.

But the main thing I felt was the reason why Sting failed in the WWE where he seems to succeed and get over everywhere else, is the fact that he had no pop-culture sources that he could steal from.  I mean just look at his general history:

  • WCW, changed his entire gimmick to basically be The Crow; got over, won titles, succeeded
  • TNA, eventually transformed into The Joker from Dark Knight Returns; got over, won titles, succeeded
  • WWE, tried to be just Sting; fail
  • AEW, has adopted the gimmick of basically being a White Walker from Game of Thrones; got over and is currently succeeding; titles yet to be determined

Obviously, the WWE itself is mostly likely the reason why Sting couldn’t lift anything in the first place, as they tread more corporately carefully than everyone else, but the point of this is that as good of a worker as Sting historically is, he hasn’t really been able to get over solely on his own, since like the days of fluorescent tights, the blonde flat-top and colorful face paint.  Frankly, he probably would’ve been better off showing up to the WWE in 2014 with his old surfer Sting persona, it’s not like the WWE had any shortage of dark, brooding, silent icons.

Ultimately, I have a ton of respect for Sting, as he is the aforementioned legendary worker, has accomplished the world over in the industry, and is widely admired and revered as a genuinely good human being, which is more important than everything else mentioned.  But the reality is that his ability to get over throughout the years has leaned heavily on the popular culture being consumed in the world around him, rather than his own personality.  And when he was put into a situation where he had to work without a crutch, it seemed to expose such, especially when compared to when he returned to a setting where he could lift from pop-culture again, and is breaking merchandise sales records.