2012 Pro Wrestling Thread

Holy shit, what a lame show.

 

Spoken by the lamest lame to ever lame

(All kidding aside, it didn't look like a good one at all).

 

My wife and I are about two weeks behind on wrestling right now and we skipped this show outright. First PPV we've missed in a year and a half. I am not sad.

 

Yeah, at this point the only ones I'm buying are Mania and the Rumble from here on out

 

What a colossal waste of time.

The Raw Chamber was just lame. They made Jericho look terrible. Hell, he could have taken a pin from Miz or Kofi or someone to help push them instead and it would've been better than that.

The Smackdown Chamber was even worse. Look, I like Santino, I find him entertaining but unless they are ready to push him to at least the upper mid card there's no reason for him to pin Barrett and Cody and come within an eyelash of winning Goldy. They really blew a chance to have Cody and Barrett solidify themselves as legit contenders, even if they weren't going to win.

As for how this sets up Mania, I think you HAVE to have the world title on the line for Punk-Jericho. If you did Punk-Jericho with no belts on the line, you'd have your WWE title match as the fourth biggest match on the card at best. Having them fight for the title of "Best in the World' makes even more sense when you have the belt that signifies it on the line.

Having the Sheamus run in on Bryan afterward was a good idea but it was lame the way it was executed. Hope that turns out to be a decent feud at least.

So much for having some sort of big payoff for Cena-Kane. Horrible, just horrible.

 

The world title is around the waist of D-Bry, FS.

But to me, it doesn't matter if a championship isn't involved in that match. It's two of the best in the world going at it, and that's more than enough for me. Having the belt on the line is just the gravy on top, so to speak.

 

The matches were pretty good, but with so much of Wrestlemania locked in or generally assumed, there wasn't much suspense attached to the results. I thought they'd give Jericho the win to set up a WM rematch with Punk, but instead they'll probably use his injury angle/non-elimination to put him in that match. What little chance Bryan had of losing his died when Orton was pulled from the match. Beth Phoenix seems destined for a showdown with Kharma, so Tamina was just the latest diva to pop up and get shut down in short order, following Alicia Fox and Eve. And there's no way in hell Cena loses when he's wrestling the Rock.

I liked the underdog thing they had going with Santino, though it might have been more credible in the hands of a non-comedy midcarder (maybe Justin Gabriel, instead of squashing him in a clumsily-built throwaway match with Swagger?) But fans do like the guy, so it helped them buy in.

I guess they built up the idea of Cena channeling his inner hate to win, and somehow this builds to his match with Rock, but why do we need it? How hard is it to promote Rock-Cena as a battle of eras, Attitude legend vs. current face of the company? You have to give Cena something to do while waiting for WM, since clearly Rock isn't going to do much to promote it outside social media until the final few weeks. But this doesn't make me any more or less likely to want to watch Wrestlemania.

 

Apparently Rock will be at the Raw on 2/27 (Oregon I think). That should be good.

 

Question for those that know better than me (i.e. most of you): What happens to Kane now?

 

He probably gets forgotten for a few weeks and if they decide to have the MITB match, he'll most likely be a late entrant, with the announcers just ignoring the fact that he had a pointless two-month feud with Cena for no reason.

 

They'll probably resolve the Zack Ryder issue, either at Wrestlemania or Extreme Rules. Perhaps he kidnaps/continues to harass Eve until her real love interest (not Cena, not Ryder) comes to her rescue.

 

Raw - It had it's moments. It was pretty clear that the only wrestlers who mattered were Punk and Jericho, so everything with anyone else fell flat for me. Truth ended up being a waste of a space and I'm rather surprised that they didn't have him interact with the Miz at all. Wasn't that the logical reason why you add The Truth to the match? Despite being the runner up, Miz didn't do much to warrant any praise. He was just a guy and when it came down to him and Punk, the crowd didn't even bother to pretend he had a chance at winning. Kofi served his purpose of being the spot monkey due to Morrison being gone. I wasn't too blown away with any of the spots though. Ziggler was my biggest disappointment though. Yeah, he had the cute little spot where he's working out on the Chamber, but that's about it. I didn't get the impression he meant anything more than the other random non Punk/Jericho guys in the Chamber. While I liked the Jericho angle, it did stop the action when it was already fairly dull for me. It just felt like this was your average Chamber where it's not even close to being an early MOTYC. Just a good match that will be forgotten about once the end of the year comes around.

SD - The superior Chamber match. The wrestlers were used a lot better in this despite the fact that the outcome was even less unpredictable than the Raw Chamber. Make no mistake about it, Bryan was going to win. The Raw one had the outcome being Jericho or Punk. It didn't matter though. Wade Barrett really impressed me with the booking. The guy may not have had a chance to win, but unlike the Raw guys, he still made an impact. His beat down on The Big Show was pretty nice. Show ripping apart the steel chains to get in Bryan's pod is one of the cooler spots in the Elimination Chamber history. Despite all of the hate Santino got for earning his way in the Chamber, the guy had the crowd's support. Hell, he probably got the biggest reaction out of all 12 men in the Chamber. The fans were willing to pretend that Santino had a shot and it greatly helped the ending of the match. Khali was Khali. The poor guy can barely moved and as expected, his stay was very brief. They really should have just let Booker T in the Elimination Chamber instead. Cody Rhodes was my unexpected disappointment of the match. He was a lot like Dolph Ziggler where he was just another guy. I dug his teamwork with Barrett, but Barrett did a lot more to make an impression than Rhodes. Thanks to how great the SD Chamber matches have been, this one may be the worst (Still better than half of Raw's though).