2012 Pro Wrestling Thread

Blood is back in vogue for the WWE

 

Cena is looking a bit like Bobby Clarke, circa 1974.

 

Gotta love the "Albert! Albert! Albert!" chants.

 

The Three Stooges are getting boo'ed out of the arena here.

EDIT: Oh, Kane. Great.

 

That was painful, but at least Sasso's impersonation was pretty good.

 

Biggest pop of the night should have went to Kane ending that Three Stooges garbage.

Yeah, the originals were funny, but they don't work out of their own time. Now it's just corny and embarassing.

So, who throws stiffer punches? Moe or Santino?

 

Went to Raw tonight. It was pure aids outside of the opening/closing. I swear, the reason the crowd is so dead is because there are SO. MANY. COMMERCIAL. BREAKS. AND. WASTED. TIME. There was, what, 30 minutes or so between the final two matches? Then the show ends with a 5-6 minute Super Cena match? Tons of Daniel Bryan "Yes!" signs in the crowd and he's not on the show.

 

WWE has/needs to find a far better balance of actual wrestling and "sports entertainment." Tonight started as if it would be a classic Raw, but ran a Randy Moss go route to hell once you saw Santino's bunk ass search for the Three Faux Stooges. I'm venturing there had to be less than 25 minutes of actual wrestling tonight, far, far, less bang for the paying fan's buck.

 

Catching up on Raw this morning. I'm really not entirely clear why the locker room would care that Lesnar and Cena are fighting in the ring.

 

I know, but it looked good and a little blood never hurts. Was Tony Garea in the middle of that?

 

Maybe, maybe not . . . but all I know is Mike Rotunda/Rotundo/IRS/pick any of the dozens of names he wrestled under, was.

 

Laurinaitis waved people into the ring. In context, maybe he would have told the roster to be on standby after last week's Brock-Cena confrontation and to swarm in to break it up on his signal.

The more confusing thing is Laurinaitis yelling at Teddy for not controlling Cena. Sure, he's going to ride Teddy hard until he quits or Triple H/ the phantom executive committee steps in again, but how on earth can a small man with no authority hope to keep Cena from marching to the ring? And why not yell at the production people, who cued up his music and Titantron graphics? My theory is that wrestlers either have a tag on their outfits or an implant that triggers the music/Titantron when they pass a certain point. Maybe they can override it when they want to perform a sneak attack or the occasion isn't appropriate for the full entrance.

Cena looked pretty good taking color in the opening segment, and his confrontation with Laurinaitis reminded me more of the early face Cena than the pandering mess he's been the last few years. Maybe that's what a bloody mouth does to your character.

Three Stooges thing did nothing for me but was at least kept to Santino and Kane. The old school Stooges fan in me wanted someone to play Pop Goes the Weasel so Curly could make the bananas comeback, but very few in the audience would have gotten it.

It seems like the Funkasaurus pinning Dolph Ziggler clean as a sheet should mean something, but not the way the announcing team underplayed it. Ziggler looks more and more as though he'll be following the Mr. Perfect career arc -- a technically-sound bumping machine who'll never get a run at the top.

Lord Tensai will eventually get over, but not before they make some evolutionary changes to his character. The Japanese garb is over the top, and nobody ever gets over using a string of ref stoppages. You'd think it would work, but it never does. You'd also think there'd be enough examples of American badass gaijins wreaking havoc and earning respect overseas (Bruiser Brody, Stan Hansen, Steve Williams, Terry Gordy) that he could draw from them and be a Japan-tested shit-kicking machine with sickly-strong strikes and ultra-stiff beatdowns.

Good gravy, I hope they don't go the drunk Punk mode next week to garner sympathy.