Professional wrestling thread

Royal Rumble is Sunday. Wouldn't it be great if one of the designated jobbers in this match would somehow eke out a RR victory? Talk about a chance to give someone a major push and do a true underdog storyline. Give the fans someone to rally behind (yeah, yeah, Rey Mysterio was done that way last year). Just once, it would be great to see that happen.

Everybody's top 4 seems to be HBK, Undertaker, Edge or Orton.

Wild card picks from me: CM Punk, RVD and Shelton Benjamin. Won't happen, i know, but it would be cool. I also find it weird that they've actually named the 30 people in it already. Unless they pull out another one of those beatdown segments and take someone out at the last minute with a late replacement (Hogan, Foley, Austin, Monty Brown, etc.) where's the surprise? Perhaps having someone go heel (HBK) or turn on the other one (Edge or Orton) is where it's going and that gets to be the surprise ending.

 

The problem with the Royal Rumble is that the winner gets a WM title shot, so you can pretty much narrow the pool of winners down quickly. You could sort of do that anyway, since you know a big name is going to win the signature event of one of WWE's Grand Slam of PPVs, but this makes the short list even shorter. There's no way someone random, like Punk or Benjamin or Carlito, can win because there's no way in hell they're getting a main even shot at WM.

I'm guessing Undetaker because a) it sets up the Taker-Batista match, which is obviously going to happen, and b) oddly enough, Taker has never won a Royal Rumble.

As for the lack of intrigue, having the winner get to pick which champion he wants to face at WM provides a little. It's only happened once, when Benoit jumped to Raw on 2004 to wrestle HHH, but it helped fuel 2005's best storyline (does Batista finally dump HHH or does he jump to Smackdown?)

I could see one of the Edge/Orton team eliminating the other and setting up a match for WM (they seem to be unsure of what to do with Cena at WM, so perhaps a four-way with Cena, HBK, Edge and Orton?) I can't imagine they'd still be doing Cena-Umaga by then.

 

Is anyone else sick of Umaga? I understand the need for a monster heel but come on, it's long past due he fade back into the woodwork a little bit.

 

MM, I concur with your assessment. The RR was originally going to be HHH's win, but that's been scrapped of course by the injury. I like your take on why Undertaker could win and it makes sense storyline-wise. I also like your 4-way title match idea.

 

Actually, I wasn't too high on Umaga to begin with, but now that I see them giving a heel push the The Great Khali, who they wouldn't even let in the ring a few months ago, Umaga doesn't seem too bad anymore.

 

Meltzer reporting these matches for WM:

Cena vs. Orton vs. Edge for the title
Shane McMahon (Khali in his corner) vs. Hogan
HBK (w/Trump) vs. Booker (w/Vince McMahon)
Taker vs. Batista

If these hold up, perhaps there's either Taker winning the RR or Edge and Orton tie at RR like Luger and Bret Hart did

 

Given McMahon's schitzo history, expect those matches to be changed a lot. Like that HBK-Booker T match, while solid-sounding enough, is gonna going to be really difficult to build to in two months in normal circumstances, much less when you graft on Vinny Mac and the Donald. Besides, HBK has been so balls-out awesome lately that I'd kind of like to see him get another run with the belt.

If you insist on having Hogan in a match (which thanks to his creative control he's guaranteed to win), at least throw Khali at him straight up for the sake of the epic showdown angle. Sure, the match will suck (how sad is it you need a semi-retired semi-wrestler in there to bump up the workrate?), but really, it's a Hogan match, what do you want?

A tie in the Rumble would suck. We've done it twice already (Luger-Bret, Batista-Cena). And it would be kind of an abrupt end to the DX-RKO feud.

I'm not sure who's going to get the Diesel spot (assload of eliminations) this year. I would have given Vladimir "I LOVE DOUBLE DOUBLE E!" Kozlov one of the first two spots and let him run roughshod over a bunch of jobber types before getting eliminated by a higher-card guy, but he's not on the show. Yet. Also, why have the Hardys and Johnny Nitro wrestle twice when you can get Kozlov, Monty Brown Marquis Cor Von and someone else in that spot?

 

That looks OK, but not terribly interesting. I think Cena/Edge/Orton could be fun, and Undertaker/Batista too. But anything involving Shane O Mac is generally crap, and since everybody knows Hogan's going to win, that match is utterly worthless. And HBK vs. Booker T -- for starters, they're on two different brands, which will make that feud harder to develop or feel forced when each one starts showing up on the other's show. Blah to that.

I'd rather see HBK vs. Cena for the title. Turn one of 'em heel at RR. And have Orton and Edge team up against Hogan -- bring back that quickly forgotten bit where Orton was pursuing Brooke, and have that lead to this match. We know Hogan will win, but anything that gets rid of Shane O Mac is a good idea in my book. Batista/Taker is good -- as long as Taker wins. And just for the fun of it, I'd like to see a Bobby Lashley vs. Umaga vs. Finlay, incorporating all three brands, although that'll never happen.

 

Wow. That potential card looks like a real snooze-fest.
According to The Observer, Vince and the Brainiacs are hesitant to put Khali in the ring on such a big stage. Why? Well, according to Meltzer's newsletter a few months ago, the main reason Khali has never been knocked off his feet is because he can barely get back up. Seriously. Meltzer said he's been told that it's almost pure comedy watching Khali struggle to get up. Having him do it in front of 80,000 fans live and close to 700,000 on pay-per-view would kill his career forever (not that I'M opposed to that).

Here's the card I'd book for WrestleMania:

John Cena vs. Batista - Champion vs. Champion. If you're going to book a huge stadium like this and expect to pop a huge buyrate, you need a main event that hasn't been seen yet. A couple of years ago, they teased to a slow build of Cena vs. Batista. Though the match would be hideous, both are very popular and would have the fans buzzing. I'd book Cena to win have have him "unify" the titles and defend them on both shows for a few months before dropping it.

The Undertaker vs. Chris Benoit - These two, to the best of my knowledge, have never wrestled. The angle of the match would be Benoit challenging 'Taker, saying something to the effect of "Before I can consider myself to be the toughest man in WWE, I know I have to make you tap." Imagine the tension of Undertaker in the "Crippler Crossface" looking like he's JUST about to tap out before rising up and tombstoning Benoit. Undertaker's win streak stays intact, while Benoit keeps his heat since he came soooooo close to making the Dead Man tap.

Hulk Hogan vs. Umaga - The Hulkster feasted on cartoonish villains in the 80s and Umaga has been built up much the way heels were 20 years ago. I'm not a big Hogan fan, but it's WrestleMania and he should be on the show. I think Umaga, while his gimmick is lame, is an entertaining enough wrestler to get a decent match from Hogan. And, of course, Hogan goes over (though not without a little inadvertant help from A.A.E.).

Shawn Michaels vs. Jonny Nitro - The Heartbreak Kid vs. The Future. Nitro's improvement in the past year has been startling and he has star written all over him. Who better to put him in with than Michaels? I'd convince HBK to do the job after about a 25 minute match (losing partially due to Melina's interference).

Rated RKO vs. London & Kendrick - Champion vs. Champion. I'd unify the tag titles and have the new champs defend them on both shows. Edge and Orton would go over here. The two would defend the titles until Survivor Series, slowly and subtly teasing the eventual breakup. I'd start leaning toward Edge as the future babyface (unless fans dictated otherwise). The eventual plan would be for these two to wrestle at 'Mania 24 in a much-anticipated bout that has been slowly built. ... As for London/Kendrick, these two would break up right away. Their breakup has already been teased, with Ashley being the center of their problems. It's mandatory that these two are given at least 15 minutes for all of their matches. Their feud would culminate in a ladder match at Summerslam, where Ashley's contract would be hanging. Whoever grabbed it first, wins her managerial services.

C.M. Punk vs. Jeff Hardy - The Intercontinental Title would go to Punk, who'd cut heel promos before the match. For those who didn't see Punk before WWE, he's one of the best wrestlers on the mic, today (unfortunately, Steph and Vince don't allow anyone to shine on the mic anymore). Punk would talk about Hardy's drug days during his first WWE stint and, instead of giving Hardy credit for overcoming his demons, would continue to belittle him. Punk definitely has the ability to be a big-time heel, if WWE will allow him to have some leeway with his character.

Two other matches I'd have include:
Matt Hardy vs. Rob Van Dam vs. Shelton Benjamin (Three of the best athletes in the 'E')
Carlito vs. King Booker (imagine King Carlito?!?)


So, there's my card. You may hate it, you may love it. I tried to think ahead with a lot of these scenarios. From watching Ring of Honor, I feel like I've gotten a feel for how to book people to lose without burying their credibility. What do you think?

 

That sounds like a great show Gimpyscribe, which is precisely why it wouldn't happen.

Wish you would have put in for that WWE writers job that opened a couple of months ago.

 

I don't have enough "sitcom writing experience" and I'm "too familiar with pro wrestling to be an effective writer."
As we fans know, logic rarely applies to McWWE.

 

Gimpy: Good card, particularly having CM Punk doing heel straight edge, which I've never seen but am told by ROHbots that it's a thing of beauty and a joy forever. I think there was a proposal to due Punk vs. Marty Janetty along those lines, but it fell through when they fired Janetty for the 13th time. And given enough room to breathe, he could cut some killer heel promos about the industry (hell, they've been using Eddy Guerrero's corpse to get Chavo over for a year now, why not have Punk point out he and Brian Pillman died because they didn't have the guts to live clean?) That would have been ECW worthy. You know, before Stephanie kicked it in the jimmy.