2016 Pro Wrestling Thread

The more I think about it, I think they keep Bayley in NXT through the summer. I think Balor or Samoa Joe shows up. Corbin will make an appearance, too. I was hoping we'd see one of the tag teams brought up, but right now you gotta think they'll have an Enzo/Cass-Revival finale before they do that. I'd bet Enzo and Cass cost the Revival their rematch, and that leads to their last match, and then Enzo and Cass gets called up, but I'd think that doesn't happen for a month or two.

 

I'm going to guess we get Corbin for sure tonight (Feuding with Kane maybe?) and we're almost certainly getting Enzo and Cass. With that smarky crowd, the pop for those two will be massive.

Outside of that, I could *maybe* see Joe OR Balor Club debuting but I don't think we're getting both. I really hope we don't get Joe anytime soon. He's so g-d boring.

As for Bayley, I don't see any room for her on the main roster. Not till SS anyway.

 

WM thoughts:

• The U.S. title match told a simple story effectively: Big bully Ryback pushes around Kalisto but the underdog figures out a way to win. WWE has been looking for their next Rey Mysterio, so they'll continue to go all in on Kalisto until there's a reason not to.
• The 10-Divas match was unobjectionable and Brie was the predictable but appropriate choice to get the win. Nikki coming out was a nice touch, though I cringed as she got in the ring, fearing she'd paralyze herself if she tripped. It sounds like both might be retiring tonight, so this was a nice way to put a bow on the Divas Era of WWE women's wrestling.
• The ladder match was fine, though there's only so many tipping-over spots you can watch in a match without zoning out on them. I liked Ryder winning because one of the things that never made sense to me was that the top wrestlers would win all matches regardless of the type. It's one thing to not expect a jobber to beat Brock Lesnar in an Iron Man match, it's another thing to act like the best wrestlers in the world are also far and away better than everyone else at climbing a ladder slowly. Everyone else was in varying degrees of dead, Miz acted cocky, Ryder took advantage, and in possibly the only realistic circumstance in which he could win a title, he did. So excelsior to him. He'll drop it to some NXT callup tonight.
• I thought Styles/Jericho was the best match of the night; the two are obviously very comfortable around each other now and it showed. They might have leaned on the kickout-of-finishers button too often, but it was one of the few matches that had something approximating legitimate drama. Not sold on the booking decision to put Jericho over, unless it's some sort of lifetime achievement award because he probably doesn't have many Wrestlemanias left. Though a Codebreaker on a guy jumping from the top rope should be enough to win a match, so that part made sense. I guess Styles will win at the next PPV, maybe a Loser Leaves Town match, and Jericho will go do his non-wrestling thing.
• The Women's title match was fairly good, though I'm seeing a lot of people saying this was far and away the match of the night, and I'm not convinced. It suffered from the same troupe that infects most triple-threat matches — all three wrestlers start, Wrestler A is incapacitated and Wrestlers B and C have a singles match, then A returns, B gets knocked out and it's A vs. C, then B returns and, well, you see the pattern. They seemed to be halfway committed to giving Sasha the push; on the one hand, she got the Eddie tribute look and Snoop rapping her down the aisle, but a triple threat seems like an anticlimatic way to do a changing of the guard. So in that respect, leaving the title on Charlotte is the right call. Sasha can have a clean moment in the sun at Summerslam, presuming they don't foul it up.
  (Aside: I've also seen people upset because "an old white male" was the fulcrum for the finish of the match that was kicking off the more-respectful era of women's wrestling, but c'mon, it's Ric Flair. The dirtiest player in the game is not going to not cheat. You might as well ask Sheamus to get a tan).
• Liked New Day's Booty-O entrance. I presume that's going to get a national rollout at some point. As for the match itself, it spoke to the screwy way WWE books things: set up a heelish-vs.-heel handicap match, then change it to a normal 3-vs.-3 match, then have the dull heels go over. If they wanted to feed the League of Nations to the Loose Confederation of Legends, then they could have set that up without a match and given New Day something better to do. HBK looked good. Foley and Austin ... well, they were wearing shirts for a reason besides gimmicks or marketing.
• The tag match was eh. The Usos do nothing for me, and whatever extra sizzle the Dudleys got by going heel has been long extinguished. The only way they can get anything other than a once-every-six=months nostalga pop is if the give Bubba Ray some run as a character more akin to his Bully Ray.
• The Andre the Giant battle royal was fun. It was the perfect use for Shaq; surprise appearance, staredown with Big Show, eliminates an NPC (Sandow), then gets bulled out by the rest of the match. He doesn't make anyone look bad, he doesn't take a bump, everyone has a good time. As for Corbin, he's got a good look, he's decent on the mic and he's really developed in NXT in the past year. He has Kevin Nash potential. In a good way.
• The major matches were all complete letdowns. Brock vs. Ambrose should have been a crazy-go-nuts brawling spectacular that brought the glory days of ECW to mind. Instead, it was a more-prominent Ryback vs. Kalisto with weapons and the big guy winning without much doubt. It would have been a fine Raw main event, but it did not live up to the build.
• Undertaker vs. Shane felt like a random-opponent match on a WWE 2K video game. Way too plodding for way too little payoff. Shane's Fosbury Flop off the cage was impressive in that a non-wrestler who hadn't seen the inside of a ring in years was doing it, but once you got past the audacity of it, you were left wondering "why bother?" And this will seem like a weird complaint, but Taker gave too much and got too much; under no circumstances should Wrestlemania Taker be giving that much offense to Shane when it took a fully-powered Brock to be the only one to beat him, and at the same time, Taker winning does absolutely nothing. Shane winning sets a whole range of possibilities into motion. Taker winning just leads us to another Raw with The Authority in indisputable control. Maybe they'll handwave it tonight and introduce a new threat to their reign, or use some sort of legal trickery to put Shane back in the picture, but as of now, bleh.
• And speaking of Reigns, I've almost given up on him. He doesn't connect to the fans, he doesn't carry himself like a champion, and while he has surprisingly good matches when they count the most, he did not step up to the bar here. In fact, neither of them did. A dull-as-dishwater main event that painted itself into a corner because either guy winning leads to an unpalatable result: either Reigns inevitably wins and we get the tone-deaf push turned up to 11, or Triple H wins and the long-past-sell-by-date Authority somehow comes out of Wrestlemania stronger than ever with the title in cold storage until Summerslam or Survivor Series.

Not sure what happens tonight. They'd better bring whatever they have to the table because the North Carolina-Villanova game has the makings of an honest-to-goodness slobberknocker. Presumably a threat to The Authority emerges tonight, but if not Shane again, then who? I don't think Bayley comes up until after Summerslam, because presumably that road's leading to Charlotte-Sasha, and Asuka has no peers in NXT if Bayley leaves. Samoa Joe is ready, and he could pummel the crap out of Ryder for the IC title right quick. There's talk of a Bullet/Balor Club callup, but I don't see it happening here. And does Cena do anything, or was that just a special guest role he played and he's back on rehab until August?

 

They're teasing Cena Reings from Romans today show stint, which Charlotte completely stole the spotlight of too.

Maybe Joe will go straight for Reigns.......all their other potential challengers lost momentum last night. Unless Trips decides to make Roman fight Lesnar next....maybe that would buy enough time for Rollins return?

 

Wrestlemania thoughts as I watch!

- Man, Ryback vs. Kalisto is in front of a ¾ empty arena, it seems like. Plus, they’re cutting away to commercials! Good times. Also, Mauro Ranallo is soooo much better than Cole, except that Lawler keeps stepping all over his shit.

- Renee Young is basically wearing a white sports coat and the world’s longest necklace.

- Hey, they actually are letting this 5-on-5 women’s match go on for a bit! Still amusing to see the crowd shit on Eva Marie; I wonder how long she’ll stick with wrestling because of it though. At least they’re finally having her acknowledge the boos and that she’s a heel. Really sick bump taking by Naomi when she basically air-tackled herself into the ropes, and then, when Emma was stepping on Paige’s hair and yanking her upward. Unsurprisingly, Eva Marie and Lana were tagged in for about 30 seconds total.

Naomi is hella athletic, way more so than the other divas in this match. She’s a little sloppy on some of the stuff though, as is Brie; the final minute or so, it looked like Brie got her legs up too slow on the corner spot, and then, Naomi was way too far away to make Brie going to the top rope look plausible. Also, weird that they brought Nikki out at the end. Why bother? With so much other stuff going on during Mania, why bother having Nikki make an appearance? If this is their swan song, it's wasted on the pre-show for Mania, when it could instead anchor a segment of a three-hour Raw.

- Usos vs. Dudleys, meh. It could have been a Raw match, except for the table spot at the end, which probably (thankfully) ends the feud. Usos need to turn, though, as they’re now getting booed. I’m not sure if that’s the Reigns halo effect, or just if they’re stale as faces. (Again to fantasy book: A Samoan heel stable with Reigns, the Usos and The Rock in his sporadic appearances could be good.)

- Unless I missed something, they seemingly introduced the new women’s belt in an untelevised segment on the pre-show, which was stupid. The promo card for the title’s match also had the old one still in there, which was stupid as well.

- Corey Graves on the pre-show is interesting, as he actually brought up that Roman Reigns was going to get shit on and he needed to focus it out. He also had a good line as they introduced Michael Cole. “Is that 100,000 people booing Michael Cole?”

- Ziggler’s twitter is still HeelZiggler, and I don’t think he’s been heel in like two years. Also, in a ladder match, is there anything preventing the first or second guy from trying to get the belt during the introductions? They should have someone try to do that some year. Unsurprisingly, Kevin Owens is hella over, so I’m guessing it’s a smark crowd here at Mania.

As usual with the ladder match, there are plenty of “holy shit!” moments, such as Sin Cara’s dive on Stardust. But yikes, that finish! Zack Ryder?!?! Woo woo woo, who knew it? I guess this could free up Owens to feud with some others, but geez, the IC belt had been regaining some stature as he did a good job of holding it. That takes a hit now that it’s on a guy that has solidly jobbed for about two years.

- As expected, Jericho vs. Styles is a perfectly professional match with plenty of false finishes. But wow, the actual finish! Through two main show matches, it’s like WWE is trying to make-up for a probably-predictable upper card by putting a bunch of surprises in the opening matches. While I don’t think that’s the worst idea overall, geez, it’s hard to see why Jericho needed the win over Styles. Maybe their program is going to continue after Mania?

- The New Day’s prop game is on point tonight. Also, at some point this match went from 4-on-3 to just a straight 3-on-3, as Wade Barrett is apparently sitting it out. It’s not entirely surprising, since he’s reportedly gone once his contract expires, but I figured that would mean he would be in the match and taking the pin.

We’re 3-for-3 on confusing decisions, at first, as League of Nations gets the pin. They’re all so friggin’ dull, who cares? Rusev is the only one who might be salvageable as a single to me. But then, it makes sense with the post-match cameos. Also, Rusev sold the hell out of that stunner!

- Lesnar with the win isn’t all that shocking, but I thought Ambrose had a really nice showing. It was also a good touch that he tried to kick out just after the count. It was a good match that didn’t really hurt either one of them, and may have helped to elevate Ambrose a bit.

- Confusingly, they show a Snickers commercial with champion Zack Ryder, except it’s actually Charlotte feeling like someone else because she’s hungry, like their other commercials. Blah.

- I don’t have much to say about the women’s title match because it was really well done! Good intro with Snoop and Lady Rapper, and good action and spots throughout.

- Holy shit, that was a crazy leap from the top of the cage by Shane McMahon! Good lord. Storyline-wise, it seemed like Shane was going to win somehow, since that would give them way more options going forward and pop the rating for Monday Night Raw. However, they played it pretty straight, with Shane only getting in occasional offense against Taker.

- Hey, it’s the Andre Battle Royal! I forgot it was happening. And hey, it’s Tatanka and DDP! And Shaq! Hahaha. How bizarre! Brawn Strowman was the odds on favorite for a while, but he and the rest of the Wyatts aren’t even in this.

It’s been quite the fall for Sandow, from a fairly-over Miz clone to being eliminated by Shaq in a battle royal. And wow, Big Show is out early, so I guess we’re going to get a somewhat surprising winner! (Unless it’s Kane.) After some decent eliminations, Baron Corbin is the winner, so I guess we know who’s coming up to the main roster soon.

- Unpopular opinion alert, possibly: I can do without more eight minute promos from The Rock. So, I’m glad to see Bray Wyatt out here to break it up. But, ugh, not so glad to see him just immediately squash Rowan. And once Cena came out, I vaguely held out hope that he might attack The Rock instead… Nope. It’s not the long-awaited heel turn.

- Okay, title match time… What the fuck, Stephanie McMahon? Jesus. She’s trying her best to channel Cruella de Vil or something. It felt like a last-ditch effort to get the crowd against Triple H, and he still got cheers during his intro, and Roman got absolutely crapped on. Yikes. Anyway, the inevitable happens, despite the crowd booing anytime that Roman got any offense in. He’s your new champion, and I guess we’re headed for some rematches on Raw and at the next few PPVs, since Shane lost his match.

ODDS AND ENDS

- There’s speculation that Bayley or Finn Balor could be up soon, but Jesus, I’m not sure how the hell they’d fit in. Baron Corbin is seemingly going to be a heel, and you have a slew of established talents returning from injury in the next couple of months. Bayley and Finn would just get lost in the shuffle quickly, a la Tyler Breeze.

- I have no idea how they’re going to fill 3 hours on Raw, and I don’t mean that in the good way.

- I think the love for the women’s match is wayyyy too much course correction on the part of fans. When the division has been chicken shit for 10 years, then it doesn’t have to be chicken salad to seem excellent.

And, I’ve been complaining about the optics on Ric Flair for months. You have a six-foot women’s champion that’s built like a brick shithouse and her geriatric dad is a major component in how she wins matches. Ugh. Charlotte should have been built up as a Female Lesnar. It would have been better if Ric stayed down after taking that hit from Becky, and Charlotte still could have won in a heel manner anyway. (A ruthless, blindside hit on Sasha when she had Becky in a submission hold, for example.)

 

The Apollo Crews era begins.

 

Cass and Enzo linked with Ryder in some way tonight? And I wouldn't mind seeing the Wyatt Family get some kind of momentum tonight but just attacking everyone who comes out.

 

Well, Ryder was a short-term champ after all. About 25 1/2 hours.

On the bright side, at least we got to see Maryse.

 

God I hope KO wins this four way........actually, Roman vs and of these 4 would be an improvement over what I expected

 

JBL and Cole don't have a clue about Bayley do they? It's pretty cool seeing the other 3 smiling a little while the audience was singing,

 

They actually said she wasn't there. Which is funny, considering she's never even been on the show.

Charlotte looked like the crowd was throwing her off her promo for a bit. Nattie kinda looked like she was trying to keep a straight face during it.

 

Ending of the tables match looked botched.

But here are Enzo and Cass.