2012 Pro Wrestling Thread

It was a one-move match. The only reason it lasted 18 seconds was AJ kissed Bryan and left the ring. It's not like Sheamus hit all his moves five times, debuted a new funky bouncing off the ropes legdrop/kneedrop and pinned him with one finger.

I get that people wanted to see Bryan win a long, chain-wrestling heavy match. But he got caught by a knockout blow. It was enough to take out Mark Henry. Why wouldn't it be enough to put away a much smaller guy?

 

I don't even think most people genuinely expected to see Bryan win the match. I'm almost positive they could have avoided the current situation by even having Sheamus win a mediocre 7 minute match.

 

Then that would have been a letdown, and people would be all OH FIGURES TRIPLE H'S BUDDY GETS THE WIN, GUESS IT'S ON TO SUPERSTARS WITH DANIEL BRYAN. 10 years ago, this was how people acted any time Chris Benoit lost or wasn't booked strongly.

I don't think they had many good options, since clearly another long match on a card with HHH-Taker, Cena-Rock and Punk-Jericho wasn't in the offing. Guess they decided a 18-second fluke beat a 3-minute blah match.

 

Well, it certainly did get one guy over.

(They also had plenty of time to give the match 15-20 minutes.)

 

You've crossed from "I can't imagine any possible benefit" to "I don't like it, therefore there's no benefit."

 

In Florida. The key will be how this plays away from Wrestlemania. There's a reason they didn't completely scrap booking plans based on fan reactions in Calgary or Philadelphia.

 

Did they really?
They overbooked the card by one match. Kane-Orton could've easily been folded into the 12-man tag, and it should've been either a battle royal or an elimination match. That said, they had four matches in the first hour. They blasted through the undercard to get to the three other main events.
It sucks that Sheamus-Bryan went down like that. Like everyone else, I wanted to see them put on a good long match. But this was sudden and memorable. Both guys are getting big-time heat from the smarks, who are sympathetic to them getting the shaft again, Sheamus looks good and it leads to what seemed to be the consensus next move for Bryan (dumping AJ).
So, it sucks. But it works.

 

I disagree that they overbooked the card. I just think they had poor time management and it was patently obvious with the way things ended up.

Think about it. As you said, they got through half the card in the first hour. That left them with three full hours for four matches.

I won't be critical of the Taker-HHH match itself as that was a five-star classic but the match lasted 30:52 according to WIkipedia and it took up an entire hour of the card. Did you really need the same amount of time to set up and conclude the contest as you did to hold it?

And, even if you think it did, did you really need TWO hours, aka half the PPV, for three matches, one of which deserved about 10 minutes of total air time?

Cut out the BS "rapping" and the Rock's 25-minute intro and you've got plenty of time for a quality match for the WHC.

This card was not overbooked. It was poorly booked. There is a difference.

 

I agree with this. The WWE does a shitload of packages and what not at things like Mania, which is a PPV audience. Almost a quarter of the show is now routinely taken up with non-action, non-entertainment like highlight packages and recaps.

Also, music never ever works at these things. Yet the WWE and WCW and TNA and every other promotion seems to waste our time with it anyway.

 

Eating up the better part of an hour is SOP for the "big" matches at Mania, Scheiza. If those three matches had gotten any less than 30-40 minutes apiece (including intros and post-match), the outrage would be even greater than it is now.

How long does Undertaker's entrance take? How long for Triple H? 10 minutes between them? Throw in an extra entrance for HBK, and the lengthy post-match sequence (which made that match better, IMO), and that's how you get to 45-50 minutes. And I guaran-damn-tee you more people were buying that PPV for Taker-Hunter than Bryan-Sheamus. Same with Rock-Cena.

I do agree about the music. If I wanted to hear that crap, I'd drop a few bucks on iTunes. Sadly, it's also SOP for Mania and has been from the beginning. Damn you, Cyndi Lauper.
But bottom line, Wrestlemania is just a different animal from your standard PPV. They're trying to appeal to a wider, more casual audience (which is a large piece of that particular PPV's audience).

 

Again, I'll grant you the Taker bout as, like you said, the ending really enhanced everything.

But there is ZERO reason why Rock-Cena took up the full final hour but still only actually had 30 minutes of bell-to-bell time. Take a look at last year's Mania. The promos they did for Cena and Miz were awesome and the intros really worked because of it. They didn't need Florida to sing for 20 minutes. They didn't need Cena taking up 15 minutes getting to the ring.

I get the idea of the "big match" buildup but there was NO need for the final three matches to take up two hours. None whatsoever.

 

Plus, let's not forget Brodus Clay bringing out his Gramma and her bridge club. Could get a few minutes easy there.