The Wrestling Thread~

[SLAB]

Heh. And, to the contrary, I hope that Kofi holds the belt until Mania, and I hope that he goes over clean in every feud between now and then. If he drops it before then, I hope it's only to someone else who, like him, has been on the main roster for a long time, for them to be a transitional champion to put a babyface over at Mania...

If I were "booking the territory," I'd give either Rusev or Cesaro a monster heel push, starting at HIAC, have them beat Kofi at Elimination Chamber, and give them an Iron Sheik/Ivan Putski run, before putting over a babyface Buddy Murphy or Ricochet at Mania.

Any of Buddy Murphy or Ricochet (throw Cedric Alexander and Ali in there as well) as WWE Champion sound niiiiiiiice.

As for my monster heel to destroy Kofi? I know it will never happen, but my dude Luke freakin’ Harper. Welcome back.

 

[SLAB]

NXT on USA knocked their debut episode out of the park today. Forget AEW pushing them, NXT on TV can be the kickstart that RAW and Smackdown need.

 

[SLAB]

Not as strong an episode in Week 2. The USA portion was good, not great. Keith Lee absolutely shouldn’t have kicked out of the top rope Canadian Destroyer... should have at least rolled over once to grab a rope. The street fight was a little clunky, and I despise Matt Riddle.

The Network portion was bogged down by that awful tag match.

 

[SLAB]

-John Morrison apparently resigns with WWE.

-And with the move to FOX both RAW and SD are getting new commentary teams.

RAW; Vic Joseph, Dio Maddin (a former NFL player turned wrestler, turned commentator now), and Jerry Lawler

SD gets the old RAW team; Cole, Graves, and Renee.

-Renee is also getting a studio show on FOX Sports to talk WWE.

 

[Mr. S£im Citrus]

Not as strong an episode in Week 2. The USA portion was good, not great. Keith Lee absolutely shouldn’t have kicked out of the top rope Canadian Destroyer... should have at least rolled over once to grab a rope. The street fight was a little clunky, and I despise Matt Riddle...

Yeah, but you don't like Kofi, so your taste in wrestling is suspect as hell.

 

[Mr. S£im Citrus]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1176930828154261504

Yo @SLAB, did you hack the Ringside News twitter account? You can be honest, man, you're among friends...

 

[SLAB]

Yeah, but you don't like Kofi, so your taste in wrestling is suspect as hell.

Hey now... I don’t like Kofi as WWE Champion/main eventer.

Stick him in a tag team or in the IC/US midcard and he’s great.

 

[SLAB]

Uhhh, so this is a thing that might happen. I will lose my entire mind if this man returns in any capacity at all.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1177760795800883200

 

[SLAB]

NXT killed it again.

 

[pdxKingsFan]

AEW was cool I guess. The opener looks like one of those cheesey color runs that was popular ~5 years ago but all in all not a bad way to debut. I'll be honest though, with the WWE network model I am never going to buy one of their PPVs and ultimately that will probably make me lose interest. Who knows though.

 

[SLAB]

That Brock/Kofi match was the best title match I’ve seen all year long. Lmao

On that note, SD is dead to me because I won’t deal with the tape delay. I’ll just read the results and do something better with my time.

 

[pdxKingsFan]

Kofi deserved better that's s#$%.

 

[Mr. S£im Citrus]

Great. The part-time headass has a belt again. Well, at least @SLAB is happy, I guess.

 

[SLAB]

Great. The part-time headass has a belt again. Well, at least @SLAB is happy, I guess.

Happier than Kofi, yes.

Brock can also kick rocks though. And straight into a fued with Cain Velasquez? Yuck. I wasn’t planning to be watching SD anymore because of the tape delay, and this does nothing to help convince me otherwise.

 

[Mr. S£im Citrus]

It's okay, @SLAB, we know you hate Kofi. You're still family.

 

[Mr. S£im Citrus]

Nah, **** it. I'm still mad. Even if you don't think that Kofi is "World Champion material" (and I really don't feel like re-litigating that argument), or whatever, there's no way that you can say that you don't hate Kofi, and also not think that he got done dirty. Like, ****ing forget whatever you may happen to think about his title run: just on the strength of him being a thirteen-year veteran, and him being well-respected by his peers, and reportedly well-liked by everyone backstage... Even if you thought that taking the title off him was Best for Business™, he deserved better than that.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1180564853586456576

https://twitter.com/x/status/1180543873082363906

https://twitter.com/x/status/1180364464991768576

 

[pdxKingsFan]

I felt a certain sense of certitude Brock would win but a 5 second squash not only buries Kofi but everyone he beat in a six month run.

Interestingly I fell asleep watching Youtube and a Honky Tonk man interview came on where he went at length how the plan to lose to Warrior was in the works for months. Maybe Kofi knew and agreed but it still just feels wrong since you can't make any excuses to explain away the way that Honky could with Warrior or in modern times Brock could make with Goldberg (and of course Brock got it back, and both were playing heel and so the fans got what they wanted).

I stand by my initial assessment.

 

[SLAB]

G1C was properly pissed at tonight’s show. That was horrible beyond words.

 

[pdxKingsFan]

Main event finish sucked and I know lots of folks didn't care for the whole card but I just wanna give props to AJ for selling that KO punch all the way to the dressing room.

 

[SLAB]

Main event finish sucked and I know lots of folks didn't care for the whole card but I just wanna give props to AJ for selling that KO punch all the way to the dressing room.

While the result was wrong, the ladies HIAC match was a banger. Those two brought it. Sasha should have won, but it doesn’t take away from the work the ladies put in.

The rest of the card was a proper trainwreck with some nice moments sprinkled in (AJ’s selling, Ali’s RKO counter)

—

As for the main event... I’ve never Experienced a crowd react like that. The boos were fierce and you could feel the anger rush through the building. I thought they were going to pelt the ring with trash. Loud “BULL****”, “AEW”, and “REFUND” chants. As people were filing out there was nonstop chatter in the concourse about how awful the company is and being thankful AEW is real now.

It’s amazing. They managed to unanimously pee off an entire sold out arena with asinine booking. It’s like they’re trying to drive people away.

 

[pdxKingsFan]

While the result was wrong

That's the real problem with the whole card. Most of the results were horrible. I'm ok with the ladies tag, though it didn't make any sense to have Alexa Bliss as a face/Sane as a heel, though I guess I'm ok with Asuka having the mist, maybe they can have a cool split if they set it up so Sane doesn't realize Asuka has to play dirty?

But I really wish Bayley had retained while Becky lost. Let Sasha and Bayley both have a run with Sasha as a full heel while Bayley plays the heel that thinks she's the face.

And the Fiend match should have never happened with such a new fresh character. I think they can actually salvage that in a cool way if Rollins has "snapped" and ends up losing the belt to a lesser competitor and the fiend keeps tormenting him instead of going after the belt? I dunno, they totally botched it for now.

Lacey Evans may have had an undeserved push but why they have her lose to Natalya is beyond me.

Ali nails that cool reversal only to lose 30 seconds later before they can even replay it? WTF? Also RKO is stale so what's the point in giving Ali shine and then making him lose. Give him a win and then separate the two on the draft.

Maybe they just needed to close whatever was going on before they do a full reboot now that the shows are on their new networks. But god, did they leave AEW an opening with this crap. This whole show is an argument for having less "PPV" shows and of course we're going to have the alternate universe Saudi show up next (won't watch, though I am sure my kiddo will).

 

[pdxKingsFan]

I know she's green AF and needs help but having Lacey do the deed twice to Natty does her no help. Surely they aren't going to push Natalya out of this (because they did make her look very strong last night), and I think having those two in a program will grow Lacey who is unique in an old-fashioned kind of way, but where do you go after there's a definitive winner?

Also, WTF are they doing with Lana? I missed RAW last week because I went on my son's overnight field trip. But jesus. When people say they want the attitude era back, that's NOT the part we want back.

 

[SLAB]

PWInsider is reporting Edge is in Pittsburgh on “WWE Business.”

Pittsburgh is the location of their head physician. Rumors have been circulating he’s been trying to get cleared, and with him being allowed to throw a spear recently it seems like it might be true!

If it happens, I’ll be right back to watching after “quitting” because of HIAC nonsense. Edge is one of my all time favorites, and there’s no way I’d miss his last run with the new blood.

 

[pdxKingsFan]

There was a report in my google alerts prior to HIAC that he had been cleared.

 

[SLAB]

NXT once again saves my wrestling fandom. Such a good wrestling show.

 

[Mr. S£im Citrus]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1182834916343435266

 

[SLAB]

Front week 1 to 2 on FOX Smackdown lost 900,000 viewers.

Everything’s fine, WWE. Everything’s fine.

 

[pdxKingsFan]

All out heel Bailey is both the greatest and silliest thing I have ever seen. I hope that it coming off so forced and unnatural is intentional and it stays that way. It could be comic gold.

 

[SLAB]

If NXT didn’t exist I’d be done with wrestling. This show is saving/preserving my love of this crazy sport.

 

[pdxKingsFan]

Have you watched the NWA show on youtube? Certainly feeds a certain 80s nostalgia though it lacks whatever it-factor Crockett, Mid-South and the other good territories seemed to have when I discovered the world outside of WWF.