The Wrestling Thread

[herzeleid]

They need to really get with the times and start offering alternative commentary. I can barely stand Cole, JBL, and ESPECIALLY King anymore. It's so much harder to get invested with matches when you have Cole rambling in his high pitched voice, JBL saying God only knows what in his hideous southern drawl, and King making fucking sound effects for moves.

[Jobdone]

I really hope they get JR in for the streak match.

That is the one thing that demands good commentary.

[herzeleid]

I'm not even looking forward to that. The Undertaker looks older than Hogan now, and there is no way Brock is beating him. I might take a break if WM turns out as bad as I think it well might, after the night after WM of course, because the occasional good crowds are always nice.

[Matty_the_Emo_Slayer]

I'm only getting round to watching RAW now which is indicative of my thoughts on the product now.

Heyman's bit at the start was brilliant, it was the perfect way to handle the fact they couldn't ignore uttering Punk's absence any longer by being in Chicago, and adding the personal element to the streak match was a good move. I didn't like seeing Henry get laid out so easily a second time, hopefully if he has a proper match with Lesnar as a warm-up to Mania it will be a more competitive fight. In the twilight of their careers it sucks to see Henry and Bigshow getting used as enhancement talent to Lesnar.

I skipped to the finish of the tag match. Great to see them win at last even if the feud had lost all steam. I think they could've done with getting Rikishi directly involved. And yeah, rematch clauses are a burden on low-intensity feuds like this but at least they got it out of the way quickly on main event and the New Age Outlaws can go back to their backstage roles. All in all their run was worthwhile, what I'd really like to see now is an in-ring promo/celebration next week from the Usos.

The Real Americans breakup angle is predictable, but the match could be one of the surprises of Mania. I don't think any of the top half of the card will go particularly long given the cardio conditioning of some of the competitors, with Cena vs Wyatt likely being the longest, so there might be more time for the undercard to really shine. Regardless of whether it is how the road agents want to book it I hope Swagger and Cesaro go out and put on the clinic they're capable of.

The Shield vs The Wyatts proved once again why they're alone worth tuning in for every week. The way they handled the Shield dissension wasn't as I expected it to be which was good, and some of the spots were incredible. Rollins' ROH-style quickfire topé suicidas and Ambrose's Nigel McGuinness-style thing where he falls through the ropes and springs out into a lariat were particular highlights. At one point I thought Rowan looked a bit unsteady, but he's still a solid and fairly innovative powerhouse. That pumphandle high backbreaker is like nothing i've seen, at least not in WWE. Reigns has shown in singles matches he's still the weakest of the six at least in that with much much less experience than the others he is no ring general, but all of them have a very bright future.

Everything I'd have to say about Batista and the authority angle has been said already, though I will add a big fat plus one to how much it really fucking sucks. As I've shown above though there's enough to keep me tuning in, and the future looks strong too. I haven't watched an Emma match yet but I was impressed to see from a video package that she uses a bridging Indian deathlock as her finisher, but makes it work in her gimmick by doing the dance in the set up. Still not as technical as any of the submissions Paige can do, but I don't think it'll be long til we see her on RAW too thanks to NXT Arrival being such a big hit. My only worry is her matches with AJ mightn't be so good if AJ Lee's ego gets in the way. She thinks she's a lot better in the ring than she actually is, which is still pretty decent, but Paige is a real wrestlers wrestler who I reckon could carry even the biggest bags of shit like Cameron and that's what you really want in a women's champ.

I also don't think it'll be long til Sami Zayn moves up to the main roster, and he's hinted at doing something with Christian for it. Two clean and lean ginger Canadians who are both ring generals and also great comedy wrestlers. They're a perfect match. There has been scant enough talk about having a cruiserweight division again over the past few years hinging on the network so I don't think it'll be long til we see the 2 current mid-card titles unified and the a belt for juniors brought back, with Adrian Neville being the centrepiece. I hope they also do something interesting in NXT with Solomon Crowe and whatever they decide to name Drake Younger as they're two of the most intense wrestlers of the past 5 years and have had some classics together in CZW already.


In other news, here's the results from the TNA vs Keiji Mutoh's Wrestle-1 in Tokyo on Sunday.

The Bad Influence beat Junior Stars (Minoru Tanaka and Koji Kanemoto)

Gail Kim beat Madison Rayne

Abyss vs Yoshihiro Takayama in a double DQ

Masakatsu Funaki beat Bobby Roode

Keiji Mutoh, Rob Terry and Taiyo Kea beat Samoa Joe, Masayuki Kono and René Duprée

The Bro-Mans defeated The Wolves and Kaz Hayashi & Shuji Kondo for the TNA tag titles

Seiya Senada defeated Austin Aries for the X Division title

Magnus successfully defended the TNA World title against KAI



Aside from some terrible booking on that card like The Bro-Mans being anywhere near a match with 2 such hard-hitting teams, Rob Terry being there fullstop and not having Samoa Joe in a one-on-one match against someone like Satoshi Kojima that actually sounds like a pretty awesome event, and some great possibilities for follow ups on TNA TV. It was broadcast live in Japan so should be able to be found with Japanese commentary online now, but the plan is for it to be a One Night Only PPV later in the year too, so while Aries has technically lost his title he will probably defend it til it airs in America and they will introduce and begin recognising Senada as X Division champ after that.

[Applecore]

Just read the results for Main Event because I couldn't be bothered to watch it.
Spoilers ahoy:
Bryan beats Kane and after the match Kane says to Josh Matthews that Bryan got lucky and something along the lines of how he'll "get him". Ugh.

Also Road Dogg has apparently hurt his leg, so Los Matadores stand in. Usos win, Old Age Outlaws give commentary for the match and Billy Gunn pushes over El Torito then gets the shit kicked out of him.

Blah.

[Matty_the_Emo_Slayer]

Has anyone else here got the WWE app on their phone? I've just inherited a HTC and it seems like I have to do something long and complicated to trick Google Play into thinking I'm in America for the app to become compatible. Is it worth the hassle?

[Jobdone]

Far as I know, the app stuff can usually be found on the website anyway.

[Applecore]

Only benefit I can think of with the app would be being able to watch the matches on Raw going on during the ad breaks, which would mean you'd have to be up at night watching the live show. If you stream/download it later then the ad breaks are cut out so it doesn't matter as much.
I was tempted because there's a fucktonne of ad breaks in it when you're watching it live, but meh, effort.

[Jobdone]

some damn good promos tonight on smackdown.

didn't watch any of the matches because they didn't interest me whatsoever. christian v ziggler, sheamus v del rio, the usual shit.

the wyatt promo is particular was wyatt lickin good. he's been fucking nailing this shit recently.

edit: also the new botchamania ending. the whole is great because botchamania but still. the ending.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqMAGPbPXho#t=763

[Jobdone]

well, now i know what cesaros new gimmick should be

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_iwdzdWSiU

[MetalBeast]

I reckon Adrian Neville should get fellow geordie Ross Noble to be his manager. Him joining the announce-team during matches would be well funny.

[Matty_the_Emo_Slayer]

well, now i know what cesaros new gimmick should be

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_iwdzdWSiU

So his old gimmick basically?


I think they should have Neville team with Barrett as The New British Bulldogs

[florencethemachine]

Had a quick bleacher report browse for Raw and Smackdown this week. Watched the Shield vs Wyatts match which was another solid bout. Both shows looked pretty dire tbh.

However I am glad that WWE has taken a punt on Sami Zayn and Adrian Neville. Absolutely loved the "Better than Batista" chants on NXT also.

Next week I'm going to be a bit more attentive as this week has just been too busy to catch up properly on the wrasslin'.

[Matty_the_Emo_Slayer]

Looks like it's going to be KENTA vs Tetsuya Naito at NJPW Invasion Attack. Potential feud of the year for me.

[Applecore]

I reckon Adrian Neville should get fellow geordie Ross Noble to be his manager. Him joining the announce-team during matches would be well funny.

Can you imagine him and JBL on the same commentary? He'd get fucked off with JBL and JBL would get fucked off with him and it would be hilarious.
That needs to happen, even if only for a one-off match.