2010 Pro Wrestling Thread

Uh, what do you like then? Are you still upset that that punk Ric Flair could ever beat a legend like Harley Race, or something?

 

Maybe he just really misses the good ol' days of Adrian Adonis, Lou Albano, Andre the Giant, Bob Backlund and Blue Meanie ...

 

Historically, the WWE has always put the title matches at the end, rationalizing that the championship should always be the most important thing. However, last year, they put on the two title matches after 'Taker/Michaels, and the fans essentially didn't care. Maybe they'll change that this year.

I can see the lineup like this:

MITB
Mysterio/Punk
Hart/Vince
Some type of tag title match or US/IC title match
Trips/Sheamus
Edge/Jericho
Legacy/Orton
Some Divas match
Batista/Cena
Undertaker/Michaels

 

My understanding (as in "I read it on Figure Four Weekly") is that Undertaker-HBK II will definitely be the last match. This being WWE, "definitely" means" "check back in two hours". Had they not added the career stip, I could have seen HBK winning, then having Taker stalk him for a rematch around Royal Rumble time, then they have the rubber match at next year's Wrestlemania, loser leaves WWE. By that point, both will be close to done, so it'd be plausible for either guy to lose.

There's also some talk about possibly having someone win MITB, then cash it in that night. That would alleviate the logjam of briefcases that could result if the original holder didn't use it by the MITB PPV in June (Smackdown spoilers of note at end).

I'm a bit disappointed in NXT thus far, but I'm not sure what I was expecting, either, so that's probably unfair. A problem WWE seems to have is they want to shoehorn different ideas into the same boxes, and they end up being flat. I understand they didn't have the money or desire to have ECW be done on its own TV touring schedule (you'd have to have the TV setups in three places any given week), but by putting them in Smackdown arenas, then killing the ECW entrance ramp and having them come out the main entrance like the Raw and SD wrestlers, it was always going to be an odd fit. Same with NXT. It's Smackdown dark matches with fewer mid-carders and more young guys. But they could also tweak the formula for season 2 (they could also fuck it up, but hope springs occasionally).

Matt Hardy beat Drew McIntyre for a MITB spot, joining Christian, Shelton Benjamin, Kane, Dolph Ziggler, MVP and Jack Swagger. Presumably there'll be one more entrant. All of these guys are either mid-carders or guys with stop-and-start pushes. None of them approach me as possible World champions, at least the way they're treated now (I'm hoping they get behind Swagger once and for all, but who knows?) Also, John Morrison and R-Truth won some sort of qualifier to take on ShowMiz, probably at Wrestlemania, so they likely aren't in MITB.

 

I watched part of NXT last night and ended up flipping away before the 'main event'. Like Meat said, it just seems like a bunch of dark matches.

I would have liked for it to have been more like Tough Enough, see the wrestlers out of character, then have one match at the end of the show. Instead, it's a bunch of wrestlers that I've never heard of (outside of Danielson/Bryan) having matches and teaming up mostly mid-card WWE guys (Jericho and Punk not withstanding).

 

I will say this: All the other alternatives I can think of, short of taping stuff on a closed set, would require a ton of spoilers to leak out. I was about to suggest improving the TV set down at Florida Championship Wrestling, where all these guys wrestle anyway, and shooting NXT stuff there. But that's got its own problems -- you either need the pros there every week, or you need to tape a bunch of weeks at once, and stuff gets out. Or maybe they do matches there live/plausibly live every week, but have the NXT guys come up to Connecticut and tape vignettes with their pros in bunches.

Had they not gone in with the NXT format, I would have proposed changing the F in FCW to Future, investing in the TV setup and moving to a better location for taping, then treating it as ECW 2.0. The main differences being that they'd outwardly pitch themselves as the home of WWE's next superstars (instead of indirectly as ECW did at the end), and with a regular crowd coming out for them (as opposed to a transient crowd that came for Smackdown), they could develop followings more easily, which would make it easier to translate to Raw/Smackdown when the time comes. I guess they could still do that if they wanted down the line, changing the name of FCW to NXT, but who knows what they want anymore?

 

This could actually make sense. If Cena beats Batista, the MITB winner could come out and cash it in on him. Cena loses, thus making his last two title reigns end via a MITB situation and the one before that at the hands of Sheamus. Like you said, the only downside is that a mid-carder ends up with the WWE title. But if they play it up right, there's a couple different directions they can take Cena in after that.

 

I'm speechless. As in most things, it's all about the execution. And this card is chock full of guys who can/have put on great matches together. There's plenty of fresh matchups and payoffs to lingering feuds (Edge-Jericho, Legacy, Hart-McMahon). Cena-Batista, although it should be just a decent-to-good match, should be a good payoff to what's been a great feud so far.
Other than the inevitable Divas trainwreck and, oddly enough, MITB (mainly because of who's in it right now) there's not a match on the card that just screams to me "good time to take a dump."
Maybe the build up has been uneven, but the matches themselves look good. I don't even see any outcome as 100 percent inevitable, since with most of these matches there's a bunch of different directions they can go in either way they shake out.

 

The guest host concept lives!
WWE will follow up Stone Cold's appearance on March 15, and lead in to Wrestlemania with another WWE Hall of Famer.
Pete Rose.
Let's pray the Gobbledeygooker's costume is either safely tucked away in storage or at the dry cleaners.

 

I smell another segment with Kane.

 

They could bring Bobby Heenan out to apologize about betting on pro wrestling.

 

I can see Christian winning MITB and cashing it it on either Cena or Edge that night.