2013 Pro Wrestling Thread

Word.

 

Not necessarily. I can see a situation where either the MITB match is three members of the Shield vs. three others and Reins/Rollins help Ambrose win (which would be a cool and neat twist on the 'every man for himself' mantra and further hammer home the idea of this faction being a solid unit) or see Ambrose be the only member of the group in the match and he wins thanks to their help.
Giving Ambrose the MITB win and a title at some point doesn't HAVE to establish him as the leader of the group. It would just take more sophisticated writing than we're used to seeing to keep the group on the same playing field when one member inevitably gets a singles push.

 

Not right away, but a clear division of positioning would eventually make it obvious. Take Nexus. At the beginning, Nexus was a group of no leaders, no followers, just a group of equals that demanded change and caused chaos to illustrate it. But right from the onset, people thought of Wade Barrett as the leader. He did all the heavy lifting on the mic, he did a lot of the directing of traffic, and he carried himself in such a way that you knew exactly who the man was.

The Shield is a little different (for starters, Barrett was the only one with a WWE contract, so it made sense that he was the ringleader). But at the same time, having one guy going for the WWE title sets him apart from the other two, no matter how hard you try to book them all evenly.

What I'd do with Shield and MITB is have them recruit someone for a spot by having them attack everyone except their target, who wins easily. I'd do it for the World title shot because nobody gives as much of a crap about it. Either that person eventually joins, he says no and the Shield attacks, or it was a ruse all along just to troll him.

 

I seem to remember Daniel Bryan as the leader of the original group, not Barrett.

 

No, it was Barrett. Bryan was "fired" after the tie choke-out during the initial Nexus invasion, remember?

 

That's right. The whole Nexus thing is just a blur anymore.

 

And it started so promising too. What a shame. Although, I guess it wasn't a total waste as most of those guys (Sans Otunga) have done well for themselves.

 

Yeah. Barrett has lingered in the midcard with a few IC title runs, Skip became Ryback, Darren is in tag team purgatory, Heath is in the new JOB Squad, Gabriel is ... uh? Tarver got released. Don't know what happened to Otunga. So, out of the original group, only one really flamed out. At least the others are earning a paycheck.

Bryan's gotten the biggest push, with a world title run and a lengthy tag title run, even though he was part of the group for about 30 seconds.

And every time I hear a siren, I keep thinking Scott Steiner is showing up, not Ryback, who I believed legit killed Kofi.

I've been keeping up with Impact more, and they've got a fairly solid card for Sunday night. I kind of hope Sting is put out to pasture. I can't believe that guy's still in the main event, getting world title shots. It's time to move on. Time to build a great face to eventually knock off Bully Ray, who's having a hell of a second act to his career.

 

Given the splash the Nexus made when they debuted, I think it's disappointing that the only lasting effect is a couple midcarders. Daniel Bryan didn't really get much of a rub from the group, and he was kind of an established property anyway. I'm not sure if it was the bad booking - although they technically beat Cena a few times, they usually looked more like punk bitches than bad asses - or that they weren't really ready for primetime. Barrett was the only one who could talk and wrestle, and it probably didn't help that he missed about six months with a dislocated elbow at one point.

Re: TNA and Bully Ray, it's shocking that he's redefined himself so much, and it's been fairly credible at that. He belongs in that main event; Sting doesn't. This is TNA's big PPV of the year, and the winner of the belt will either be the heel or a 54-year-old face. Or, since it's TNA, there is a high chance there will be a Dusty-finish anyway.

 

Given that Sting is the first inductee into the TNA Hall of Fame (that's going to be a short list as it may be only one name per year), I think maybe he's winding down and this is his last big main event. Match stipulation is he never competes for the world title again. No way he goes over Bully.

 

I think a big part of the Nexus' problem was that it was too damn big. Any stable with more than four guys is trouble, because there's too much competition within the group for promo time. You end up with a couple that break out as the leaders and stars, and the rest fade into the background. As a result, the entire group is lessened. See the NWO as Exhibit A. When that was a tight, elite group, it was great. Once they got past Waltman, and started adding the scrubs like Norton and Bagwell, it became lame.

It also didn't help that they separated Bryan from the group. It seemed like the whole NXT/Nexus thing was his ticket into WWE, then the choking incident happened and it all got dumped on Barrett. Instead of two solid promo guys they ended up with just one, and the others weren't able to pick up the slack at that point in their careers.
It worked out great for Bryan, of course, and even for Barrett. The rest of them have taken a more normal route to where they likely would've settled.

The whole Nexus angle and its legacy is going to make a tremendous one-hour special on the WWE Network in 2024. For all its faults, it really did kickstart the current emphasis on young, homegrown talent and has served as sort of a prototype for upcoming stables like The Shield and the Wyatt Family. I think WWE learned a lot of lessons from it. When it's all said and done, and these guys' careers are winding down, we're going to look back on that group like college basketball fans remember Michigan's Fab Five -- a ton of tremendously talented guys that were together for a moment, had solid if not HOF-worthy careers, but still had a tremendous impact on the game.

 

Who the hell are the Fab Five?

Anyway, I read over the results of Slammiversary, and I sounded more eventful than Wrestlemania. Bully retained. Sabin won the X title, Abyss won the TV title, Storm and Gunner won the tag titles. Angle beat AJ.

Kurt Angle is going into their Hall of Fame before The E's Hall. It'll probably be a long ass time before VKM puts Angle in his Hall now. I wonder if Sting would even allow VKM to one day put him in The E's Hall?