2011 Pro Wrestling Thread

Dunno, but their entrance song sucks.

Intriguing Raw so far.

 

Between Mason Ryan and Rob Terry, I've concluded there are anabolic steroids in the water in Cardiff, Wales...

 

Dear WWE writers,
Enough with the Rumble before the Rumble endings to Raw. They're lame, and over done.

Signed,
Every WWE fan you have left

 

This.

I knew as soon as all the Nexus/Corre guys were in the ring that a whole bunch of guys were coming down from the locker room. It was way too predictable.

I had high hopes at the beginning of the Punk/Barrett match that it would be a pretty good one, just to blow off any remaining questions of Barrett's response to getting kicked out of Nexus. Nope.

Instead, we got Cena goofing around again. Heck, they could have had a serious match that ended in a double-countout, or a real double-DQ (as opposed to saying swear words), and have the GM overrule Cena. Instead, we got that joke of a match, followed by the same lame ending they've done before every Rumble match.

The rest of the show, I liked. Good Edge/Miz match, although the ending also was predictable. Gee, Ziggler interferes on Edge, Orton comes down, RKOs Riley (for the 874th time), Ziggler (not in his match, oh well) as Miz runs off. Same old, same old.

Divas title match was OK. I liked how Natalya and Melina did the same finish as Bret Hart did to Curt Hennig at Summerslam in 1991. I was thinking LayCool was going to bring out Awesome Kong, but I guess they'll save that for the Rumble.

So now Bryan is going to be with Gail Kim. Maybe they'll turn him more serious than he's been with the Bellas. Found the insults between Gail and the Bellas to be pretty funny as well, especially Gail's remark that the Bellas have nothing to do since there's no more guest hosts.

Oh, and Jay Cutler can take a lesson from John Morrison.

 

I too get tired of Cena's goofiness, but I also think it's too early to do much with Nexus/Corre than tease (plus they could swerve everyone and reveal the two groups have been in cahoots all along to give Punk or Barrett the RR win, though that has its own issues). The easy thing would be to not book the two groups like that, but at the same time, they should acknowledge one another in some form.

One good thing about the Corre/Nexus relationship is that it provides a secondary story for the Rumble match. Conceding that all but a half-dozen wrestlers have a reasonable shot at winning, you have to come up with other ways to stimulate interest in guys who aren't going to be there at the end. Nexus/Corre is one way to do that, fitting in with traditional RR troupes such as the cocky guy who gets eliminated immediately, the tag partners that try to eliminate each other because the prize is too tempting, the Kane/Diesel dominanting performance and WHEN MONSTERS COLLIDE

I'm curious about what they'll do with Michael Tarver (at least to the degree that any sane man can be curious about Michael Tarver). Hard to imagine him getting a big push, because he's not that good, but maybe he'll have better luck than Darren Young, currently killing time with Yoshi Tatsu and Zach Ryder on Superstars.

Melina flexibility --> best Sharpshooter EVER

 

The Cena thing was just awful, and they missed an opportunity there. If they HAD to go the goofy Cena route in that match, they should've had the GM penalize him by giving him the No. 1 spot in the Rumble. It would've made his actions have real "consequences" and built a little more tension into a storyline that gets more boring by the day.

 

That would have been an excellent idea.

They've had chances to take good risks, and they've failed to do so.

 

It's the PG (purely garbage) era. They don't take risks.

 

Thing is, if they slotted Cena to win this (and they probably have, and will again before we get to Sunday), having him win from the No. 1 spot wouldn't make too many people here happy either.

I don't mind an offscreen GM, but this guy's (girl's?) actions are borderline schitzo. Too much so for there not to be a reveal of some sort. Cynical me thinks this would be a shock spot for HHH, but they could have done this months ago, since he doesn't have to be 100 percent healthy to do that job.

KY: The Miz, Dolph Ziggler, Sheamus and a bunch of kids from Florida Championship Wrestling have been or are at the top of the card. Sounds like they're taking risks to me.

 

I was talking about what Batman and Baron said.

 

But you made a declarative statement: They don't take risks. Sure they do. Maybe that aren't taking the risks you want them to, but they're taking them. Turning Cena heel (the move most requested on this thread) would not be a smart risk for what he brings to the table out of the ring (and they really don't have any superstrong faces beside him, since Orton will never be Stone Cold and HHH likes being a heel more anyway). WCW turning Goldberg was a risk, and we all saw how well that worked.

 

In the big picture, yeah they do take risks. Putting the belt on both Miz and Sheamus was a huge risk, but both moves have paid off (agree or no?).

But last night, they had the chance to make the Barrett-Punk match something special -- make it mean something heading into one of the biggest PPVs of the schedule.

Instead, we get Cena rolling out of the ring just as Barrett's going for a pin and signing autographs at ringside, or shoving both wrestlers and then saying they couldn't retaliate or they'd be DQ'd, or throwing both factions out even before the match started (which was actually a smart move, looking back on it).

The whole making Cena "apologize" to Barrett and Punk was stupid, just like the Rumble before the Rumble ending we've seen every freaking year for the last decade or however long. Surely they could have done something different, but the writers/McMahon/Trips didn't want to take that risk.