Tag: wwe

“Hacksaw” AJ Styles?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I didn’t watch The Royal Rumble, because I’m too cheap to get subscribe to the WWE Network despite the fact that I probably have way dumber monthly expenditures, but it doesn’t take a genius to find out means to get the gist of every show, even if you don’t actually watch it.

From what I can hypothesize, there are probably a lot of people that are salty over the fact that Triple H won the Royal Rumble, thus making him the World Heavyweight Champion, because the roster is full of younger, more deserving talent that probably deserved it more, but deserving is only part of the equation to what makes champions.  I don’t care.  HHH as champion is fine with me, because ultimately Creative doesn’t want to crown a champion, only for him to lose it in three months at Wrestlemania, when a non-long-term guy like HHH can transition it instead.

I’m pleased to see Kalisto win back the United States championship, because it’s the most valuable belt in the company and Kalisto being relatively fresh and new to the upper-tier scene, has a chance to really revitalize and freshen up a lot of mid-card storylines, even if it will probably a rehashing of a Rey Mysterio Jr. storyline.

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Try to say “X-Pac” without laughing

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

If you’re a wrestling nerd like me, you’ll find it quite challenging to accomplish.

But anyway, what miraculously brought X-Pac to recent light is this story that came out about the alleged wrongly-accused suspect from Netflix’s Making A Murderer.  Now I actually haven’t seen this yet, but much like House of Cards and Master of None, I have a high amount of faith in Netflix’s programming, so I am interested in watching it when I have the capacity.

Supposedly, Brendan Dassey, the subject of the show, and the allegedly falsely-accused who is incarcerated, also happens to be a big professional wrestling fan (which clearly bodes well for all wrestling fans not wanting to be associated with potential murderers).  Aside from the trauma of being allegedly falsely-accused and allegedly being the fall guy for other, more allegedly guilty parties, one of Brendan’s anxieties include the fact that he is going to miss the next Wrestlemania, due to, well, imprisonment.

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WWE’s biggest current asset?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I came across this article that shed some light on Xavier Woods UpUpDownDown YouTube channel, just days after I stumbled across it myself, and it got me thinking about just how invaluable Woods must be to the company, whether or not they realize it themselves.

The interesting thing about such an assessment is that not a whole lot of it involves Woods’ actual ability to wrestle.  As high as I am personally, on Xavier Woods, the fact of the matter is that ultimately, he’s a pretty mediocre wrestler, or as much as the WWE will actually let him do, given their propensity to inhibit guys from cutting loose completely, due to fear of arsenal overlap.

But from what I’ve seen since his main roster debut, even to what he does in the ring now, there’s no denying that Xavier Woods might be an 11 on the microphone, I’d say that his ability in the ring is still somewhere around a 6-7; and that’s mostly on his strong ability to sell, and his general exuberance.  There’s a very obvious reason why the vast majority of The New Day matches are handled by Kofi and Big E.

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No walls left, apparently

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I was vaguely aware of Xavier Woods’ social media presence, and the general existence of his YouTube channel, Up Up Down Down, but it wasn’t until a randomly recommended video did I actually take the opportunity to check it out.  And I ask myself why I even took that long, since I’ve made no secret that I’m a fan of his, and all the fantastic work he’s doing as the more or less heart of The New Day.

To no secret, Woods, going under the name “Austin Creed” does a fantastic job of entertaining, engaging and being a fun guy to watch.  I think the appeal for me is the fact that he’s just such a charismatic guy that he could probably easily entertain people who have no idea that he’s also a professional wrestler, because so little of at least the clip that I watched, had really anything to do with wrestling, aside from the fact that everyone in it was basically a WWE guy.

Anyway, it was an innocuous link to a video that basically summarized The Miz playing Xavier Woods in Street Fighter II: Champion Edition, with an adequate thumbnail to get the point across.  And in no time, the video creates the scenario, where Miz and Creed play a best of five in SF2:CE, where I can’t remember what Creed had put on the line, but the Miz had wagered his replica of the white-strap Intercontinental title, that all wrestlers apparently get to commemorate the fact that they were a holder of it.

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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

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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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