2015 Pro Wrestling Thread

Cena and Cesaro just went 30 minutes in front of that hot Chicago crowd. That was terrific.

 

Six months in, John Cena is my wrestler of the year. Dude is killing it week in and week out.
Tonight was incredible. Simply incredible. What a strong match between those two. I can't remember the last time the US title meant this much. So great to see.
The rest of Raw? A giant blah.
The Lesnar stuff was cool, sure, but who didn't see that coming?
The slowburn on the Paige-Bella stuff is too slow for my liking. Time to bring Charlotte and Sasha in.
Other than that, kind of a crap show.

 

Rusev's not supposed to be a comedy act but I think he's hilarious. He's over on my couch at least, not much on the show that's more entertaining than the angry Rusev stomp around. I'm not FF'ing through his segments which is more than I can say for many others.

Great for Cesaro. Hope they build a mega feud with him and Owens after this. Great match. Thought he might actually steal it. (The degree to which they're underselling him using Tyson Kidd's moves and kissing that arm band on commentary is criminal. Botched opportunity to keep Kidd over while he's shelved).

Totally agreed on the divas slow burn. They finally come up with an interesting story and they botch the timing because they're bent on burning AJ from the record books. That figures. (In other random diva observations, Nikki and Brie need to watch how Fox works heel and stop grinning like runway models).

 

The "lost" Piper's Pit featured "Stone Cold" Will Sasso, and it's Piper's new episode outside of Podcast One. It was played in its entirety, including the commercials (Dollar Shave Club! Shave time! Shave money! ... fuck, better than hearing about that Draft Kings shit ... by the way, it that something for pure suckers?). So unless Piper is setting himself up for more legal trouble, surely he owns his episodes and maybe PO was just a distributor and provided the servers for hosting the audio files. Probably explains why all 60-something episodes re-loaded to my phone Sunday night.

The episode was funny as hell, but I thought Sasso did a better Jesse Ventura than a Stone Cold. There were a lot of jokes at Austin's expense, but nothing personal. Just ribbing the guy for his rambling podcast shit when he doesn't have a guest, which I've went over, about his RV and Hershey the dog and his off-road vehicles. It really is the schtick Austin goes on about all the time. The funniest part was that Jim Duggan called in to the show, so he didn't know it wasn't Austin for a while.

But, Austin or someone at PO must not have had a sense of humor about it. It was a WrestleMania review episode, so this was recorded back in April. Makes me wonder if there were other things to Piper leaving PO months later.

Piper played it off as being fired, but who knows what kind of contract he had.

 

The Lesnar stuff was telegraphed, but at least it was fun. Also, at least the WWE was smart enough to give him an axe, and opposed to when WCW had Goldberg punch through a car window, severing a tendon in the process.

Jimmy, agree with you on Cesaro and the divas division. I'm worried that Cesaro is just going to be an afterthought though, and they'll move on to Cena-Owens 4, as opposed to having him split off with one of them.

And calling it even a "slow burn" for the Team Bella stuff might be charitable. This was the same shit as last week, but with Brie Bella getting a pin on Paige. Heck, why not have them form a stable with Tamina and Naomi while they're at it, if they hate Paige so much? And why not a divas tag belt, by the way? If they're going to insist on having those six on the main roster, plus others like Natalya and Summer Rae and Layla floating around, AND you have another whole division on NXT, you need to figure out how to give some TV time to them all.

 

Sam Roberts' podcast is on par, if not better, than Jericho's IMO. I have a hard time listening to Austin talk for an hour.

 

I've loved how they've worked Cesaro with Cena the last couple of matches. Really helping build up Cesaro, and Cena is showing he can reinvent himself in the ring.

BUT, one thing that's driving me nuts is the AA. It used to be he would beat people down until they couldn't fight, and then hit it, or he'd have them up and flipped over so quickly that they couldn't fight back much. At least twice in this week's match, including the finisher from the ropes, Cesaro was fighting him the moment before Cena put him up on his shoulders, and then suddenly Cesaro can't throw an elbow or anything. And he had fought out of two or three before that. It just doesn't work. Cena at least needs to do something to get a guy dazed a little before the move. Yeah, it's fake, but make it at least a little feasible.

 

Just listened to the Big Show podcast and I laughed my ass off when he talked about dropping deucers in Vince's can while he was in production meetings. He does really good imitations too, although I am sure that is not uncommon in that business. Very entertaining stuff, I had liked him when he appeared on Stern way back in the day.

No surprise that a good Canuckistani like Renee Young can swear like a hockey coach!

 

I'm not one to be a huge stickler for this, but yeah, that bugged me, along with how casually everyone's finishing moves are being kicked out of now even on Raw. I might be mistaken, but I think it took two AAs in the course of the match for Cesaro to be pinned, and he also broke out of a STFU. It gets worse when you factor in Super Cena, who shrugged off two crossfaces, a Sharpshooter AFTER the big spin, a Neutralizer (Neuralizer?), and a couple European uppercuts. I still loved the match, but I do think they're weakening all of these moves.

This also reminds me - Neville tapped to the Liontamer on the Beast of the East show, which probably makes it the first submission win for Jericho in seemingly 500 years.

 

I was happy that they addressed one of my pet peeves. When Cesaro sort of botched the pop up European uppercut toward the end of the match and caught Cena more on the chest than the neck, Cole went out of his way to point it out and explain why Cena was able to kick out. They even went to a replay to show that Cesaro didn't catch him perfectly.
I love that stuff.
You're not going to hit every move perfectly, or with everything you've got, especially when fatigue sets in late in a match. Pointing that out makes some of the finisher kick-outs much more believable.

BTW, while we're on the subject of the AA, can someone explain to me why it's such a devastating finishing move? How is it that much more effective than a suplex or slam from the same (relatively low) height?

 

I guess it's supposed to be that he's driving the opponent in the mat harder than it would be for a slam or suplex.

It takes some suspension of belief, although Lesnar's F5 is similar in height, just the opponent lands on his front.

I just find it nutty that Cesaro's swing is so over. It's a move that's been around 50 years, at least.

 

It's over because of this, from his days in CHIKARA: