2014 Pro Wrestling Thread

Well, I was partially right. I swear, I think the E has someone reading this thread.


Oh, you're welcome.

 

Nice job on the Bryan stuff and Occupy Raw.

But I'm still fawning over the Bray Wyatt/Cena promo earlier. Wyatt is so damn good. Just unreal on the mic. And Cena fed off him well, too. Great stuff.

As for the 30 man battle royale becoming a Mania staple, I mean, I love a good Royal Rumble as much as the next guy but the Rumble is three months before WM and has a direct impact on the Mania card. Just seems goofy.

 

I hated Cena's promo. As someone put it elsewhere, he was basically just no-selling Wyatt's character, and that character is too good to deserve that.

I didn't think they'd actually do the WM gauntlet for Bryan. I was wrong. They've done a great job of responding to the crowd without just randomly throwing things around.

 

That was Batista's best promo ever.

 

Is it possible they've been planning Bryan in WM triple the whole time, and they actually let it slowly burn up until we started to think they really weren't going to do it? If so, great build up.

 

Loved the Occupy scene. That's something fans will remember for years.

Also liked Natalya sneaking in an Owen reference with her "enough is enough, it's time for a change!" line.

 

I think that's got to be the case, no? Are we giving them too much credit?
I mean, I'm sure they couldn't have predicted just how bad the reaction would be at Rumble but to put Bryan in the opening match and then leave him out of the Rumble entirely seems to me like it was intentional.
The fans were hot for him the whole night and there's no way they just 'forgot' to put him there.
There was talk a while back about McMahon wanting the largest 'Yes' chant ever at Mania. Maybe this was their way to get it?

 

I'd like to see it become a staple, but with fewer participants. Thirty just seems too much and, like you said, the Rumble is three months before Mania. We know why they're doing 30 this year, but hopefully they drop the number going forward.

 

Instead of a trophy, maybe they should give the winner a US or IC title shot right after.

 

A thought ... is there any belief that McMahon might be subtly sticking it to Punk by putting Bryan against HHH and then (when he wins) in the title match? Since Punk was upset with being saddled with HHH and not in the world title match ...

 

I don't know if they're doing this to stick it to Punk. My theory (stolen from a co-worker) is that after seeing how bad fans were reacting to Batista, they tried to get Punk back and were going to insert him into the main event. Then they'd have Bryan-HHH and Punk-Batista-Orton. When they didn't get punk, they moved to this as Plan B, a pretty decent Plan B, really.

 

the big question, now that bryan is in the main event, will he win? my guess—the winner is still Big Dave, and in the most heelish way possible. he does little for most of the match, then sneaks in late and throws Bryan for big powerbomb for the win.

after all this set-up, he could be a true money-drawing heel.