The Wrestling Thread~

I’m clinging to hope it just takes a minute to find his true heel character. Seth slummed it up in Shield gear for a minute before he got his tights and new music... hopefully the same for Roman. This heel turn won’t be nearly as exciting if he’s still just That Shield Dude.
And yet they can completely repackage popular NXT guys on a dime in ways that the fanbase loses their collective minds over. So I dunno. We shall see. I'll admit I'll probably watch Smackdown next week either way.
 

SLAB

Hall of Famer
Friendly reminder than NXT is moved to tonight with playoff hockey being on USA tomorrow.

Balor/Ciampa/Cole/Gargano in a sixty minute Ironman match for the NXT Title. Should be crazy.
 

Mr. S£im Citrus

Doryphore of KingsFans.com
Staff member



The last living person in this photo has passed away.

RIP Animal.


For the benefit of any casual viewers who decided to pop into this thread, this photo is just under thirty years old (1990 Survivor Series). Joseph Laurinitis (aka Animal) is the only one in this photo who lived to see sixty.
 

SLAB

Hall of Famer
This Fiend / Sister Alexa story has been very fun.

And Roman has found himself as a heel. Hopefully his in-ring style is also better suited to the role. I never especially thought he was great before (in singles).
 

Mr. S£im Citrus

Doryphore of KingsFans.com
Staff member
Roman is a great worker. Roman, like Cena before him, is one of the best workers in the company: not one of the best wrestlers, not one of the best technicians, but one of the best workers. The only real problem with his ring work is that he's spent most of his singles career working a style that hasn't lined up with his character. This heel turn should remedy a lot of that.
 
Roman gets a bad rap because he's been force fed to us. His look is aces and his moveset isn't as limited as he's been allowed and he's been in great matches (by WWE standards) and his opponent gets all the credit. This new turn has had its ups and downs but taking out Jey - and the whole promo before - show they might finally be getting it right.

I love Alexa so yeah. I'm cool with her getting a fun story.
 

SLAB

Hall of Famer
I just have never seen it with Roman as a singles guy. Maybe it’s the bias because he has always been so force-fed, but every single match felt so identical. Get beat down, Superman Punch false hope spot, beatdown again, Superman Punch Spear. I never liked Cena as the previous force-fed dude, but with him I couldn’t deny he was really good. That would have just been ignorant... I don’t think Roman’s close to that benefit.

Roman’s a fire hot tag though. He’s good in the right situation, so hopefully bad*** heel brings out the best. I’m cautiously optimistic, but won’t know until I see it in real action.
 
I just have never seen it with Roman as a singles guy. Maybe it’s the bias because he has always been so force-fed, but every single match felt so identical. Get beat down, Superman Punch false hope spot, beatdown again, Superman Punch Spear. I never liked Cena as the previous force-fed dude, but with him I couldn’t deny he was really good. That would have just been ignorant... I don’t think Roman’s close to that benefit.

Roman’s a fire hot tag though. He’s good in the right situation, so hopefully bad*** heel brings out the best. I’m cautiously optimistic, but won’t know until I see it in real action.
That's the thing though, he should never have been subject to the Hogan/Cena face script. He's too imposing as he is packaged. I don't want another Brock but with few exceptions, when someone got over on him it should have been through out smarting or cheating. But when he's been allowed to use more than 5 moves he's proven capable. His mic work has always been questionable though. Uso felt real since they are family. Most of the time he should leave it to Paul.
 
I hope he wears the flowers and demands to be called the Chief from now on.

I know Rock said he's done in ring but could you imagine a year of heel Reigns the family chief and then Rock showing up? If WWE ever pulled WM from the network sub and made it a premium event... there's your main event.
 

SLAB

Hall of Famer
Retribution has been a major joke so far, but it might be salvageable with my guy Ali at the helm.

I’ve been huge on his bandwagon for a long time, and it’s been a long time coming from his awful-timed black eye and losing his push to KofiMania.
 
SLAB gonna ride that forever. Retribution definitely more interesting with Ali. Was Ali supposed to be the secret camera guy? I wasn't following closely while that was going on. Strangely now that I have dumped my tv service, I have a login for USA network so I watch live. Sometimes even the EC feed.
 

SLAB

Hall of Famer
SLAB gonna ride that forever. Retribution definitely more interesting with Ali. Was Ali supposed to be the secret camera guy? I wasn't following closely while that was going on. Strangely now that I have dumped my tv service, I have a login for USA network so I watch live. Sometimes even the EC feed.
The realist in me says they kind of luckily fell into something that works and is interesting, but maybe there’s actually some long-term storytelling here.

Ali was supposed to be the hacker. Remember the Smackdown hacker? Well that got dropped / “dropped” and Ali was moved to RAW. Ali himself isn’t doing much, but the graphical glitches and lights start happening soon thereafter and the crew themselves finally show up. There’s a press release about this new group, did Ali “leak” the info? Could Ali have been pulling strings behind the curtain, directing when/where to attack? At the very least I’m going to pretend that’s exactly what was happening to make Retribution make a little sense.

All in all I like the direction they took last night, and I hope it leads to a main event Ali angle.
 

SLAB

Hall of Famer
Ember Moon looked fantastic in her return from a bad Achilles injury. Very happy for her, and the NXT Women’s Division is even more stacked now. Hopefully Toni Storm finally lives up the hype I keep reading about her online... have yet to enjoy her work.

Gotta feel bad for Ridge Holland. Getting a big break and he nearly snaps his leg on live TV. Hopefully it wasn’t as bad as it appeared. It was kind of surreal seeing an actual stretcher job with the thumbs up when they came back from break. Really reminds you how good these guys are at what they do, and how dangerous this stuff actually is.
 
Roman/Jey was INCREDIBLE.

Again. I can’t believe that didn’t main event. Good luck to the rest of the show following that up.
I didn't think too much of it but in hindsight I could probably turn the show off now and be happy that I saw that and didn't see the second half of the football match.