2014 Pro Wrestling Thread

bryan-batista would be the best way to salvage what happened last night. it would be infinitely more interesting than orton-batista.

 

Difference there is that Big Show-Mayweather was a once-shot deal. They didn't have a plan for months of interactions that had to get scrapped; they just went with the flow. To audible into Bryan entering and winning on crowd reaction (as I've seen posted in a bunch of places) requires extensive rewrites that affect months of booking. And if there's one reliable thing about WWE, it's that they can't book on the fly very effectively.

 

He kind of looks like a dick. No, literally, a penis.

 

Somewhere in a parallel universe there's a WWE headlined by Miz, Ziggler, Cena and Bryan and alternateRick watches it ecstatically every week.

 

I was at the Rumble last night. My take:

1. The crowd was awful. A bunch of smart marks who spent most of the night Tweeting and text messaging on their phones instead of actually paying attention to what was going on. The guy in front of me was attached to his cell phone the whole night. He basically was spewing internet nerd opinions without forming his own. The "piss break" match was Orton-Cena, which should tell you all you need to know. As soon as Cena's music hit, dozens of people got up to go to the bathroom. They didn't even give the match a chance.

2. Yes. Batista flipped off fans as he was walking up the rant. And I didn't blame him. They were booing the hell out of him. I'm not sure how it sounded on television, but Batista was booed louder than anybody else the whole night. It was as though Ray Lewis and had brought his good pal Ed Reed to Pittsburgh with him.

3. The biggest pops of the night? Daniel Bryan (of course), Dolph Ziggler, Punk, Swagger and Cesaro (in that order). If that doesn't scream internet wrestling fan base, then I don't know what does.

4. You want to know why JBL was in the Rumble? To get Kane out there. While JBL was slowly getting into the ring, the fans were distracted. That's when Kane came back out and then hid behind a camera guy for what felt like 30 minutes. We knew he was going to do something to Punk. It was just a matter of when.

5. WWE is notorious for letting fans into the arena pretty late. And last night was no exception. We got in line at 6:15. Doors were supposed to open at 6:30. They didn't open until 7:10. We barely made it to our seat to see the Old Age Outlaws win the tag belts. And you better believe the smart marks didn't like that. They were complaining about being cold and yelling YES! YES! YES! at nobody in particular.

6. Daniel Bryan needs better merch. You didn't see a lot of fans wearing Bryan T-shirts last night. Lots of Punk shirts. Lots of Cena shirts. Lots of "We The People" shirts (believe it or not). Lots of Orton gear, mostly with the women. Saw a decent amount of Ultimate Warrior gear. But not a lot of Daniel Bryan merchandise.

 

Stopped reading at this point.

 

After last night, we need a reminder that wrestling can, in fact, be fun. I give you 3 minutes and 19 seconds of random Ultimate Warrior promos spliced together. It's like a Saturday Night Live skit of what an over the top wrestling promo would be.

 

LOAD THE SPACESHIP WITH ROCKET FUEL!!!!!!

 

I guess the crowd must not have been very good where Podunk was sitting, but that crowd was pretty hot the whole night.

 

From the "commentary lines you could not get away with anywhere other than tonight's town" department:

"We've got a lot of Browns and Indians in the audience tonight, you should be more respectful."

 

Considering their recent past, I can't imagine anybody but DDP inducting Jake the Snake.

 

Solid start and end to Raw tonight. Everything else? Meh.