NEWM

I always that Fludder chap came across super arrogant on here and in an interview he did in Power Slam about how class he was as a promoter. Not that I'm wishing him to be all fucked here or anything, but a bit of humility wouldn't have gone a miss at the time. I've noted before that I'm no fan of Jim Smallman constantly banging on about his show on the Scroobius Pip podcasts, but he is at least humble when discussing what they get up to.

Not remotely stupid. I've not dropped below semi for Nakamura since Dallas. I honestly cannot get enough of him.

Owens will be a monster babyface one of these days won't he? He just has to do his smart-arse act to heels instead of faces and the kids will be with him as much as the adults already are.

 

EDIT: and were we to assume it was Zayn who sat with him watching The Office and eating burgers in the hotel room to celebrate his title win?!

It was class wasn't it?! Even Owen on commentary noted how he never comes off the top.

 

Yeah, it wasn't a big dig, but I found it a striking difference compared to Main Event Bret that you can see at WM12 and SS96. Bret's still got the spot on pro wrestler physique for me. Not a little guy, but not a monster who couldn't have the sort of matches the Hitman has. On his most polished days, there's still nobody that defines the look of a perfect pro wrestler for me more than 95-97 Bret.

Not intending to be super critical, but I found it quite odd to see Bret's physical appearance differ after his summer off. He's not been arsed with the sunbeds and he looks decidedly littler, more 86 Hart Foundation arms about him. Certainly different from the Top Guy look he strolled back in with at the Survivor Series. He looked the bollocks in that comeback match. Did he ever wear the orange gear again??

Fucking HELLFIRE look at that gear!! I eagerly await something similarly audacious at the next Takeover.

Speaking of both of them, there's an AJ Lee/Bayley match from NXT that is genuinely an uncomfortable watch. I think Bayley's brilliant, and the match should in theory, be passable, but Bayley playing the simpleton superfan right down to her general movement was absolutely brutal to watch. Her character has progressed organically, which is admirable, but yeah, if that version of her had made it to the main roster, she'd have been fucked.

Discussion of the old model just made me think, what would people consider the first PPV of the modern era structure, where the vast majority (if not all) matches were based on feuds to be paid off at the PPV rather than at the houses. Even in say 92, big stories like Bezerker/Undertaker or Shango/Warrior were never destined for PPV blowoffs, and Mania that year was still following the 'throw two lads together' format and leaving lots of true payoffs for the house shows.

 

It's a pet peeve of mine when people do columns or podcasts or whatever rebooking shows from that era putting all the TV feuds into big payoffs like that's how the company 'should have' booked them. Misses the point entirely. Those gates paid the bills and told the stories of who should be where on the card, I don't give a shit if you think Savage/Roberts was Mania-worthy.

Totally agree, Nikki is great, and definitely from an in-ring standpoint the bridge between your overrated averages like AJ Lee, Natalya & Kaitlyn and the best women they've ever had in the 4 Horsewomen.

 

Can't decide where Trish sits amongst that lot actually. She shone in a fucking shite time, and from a character POV, I thought Lay-Cool was the finest act the WWE had ever produced in all their women's wrestling before the NXT lot came along.

Yeah, I was no huge AJ fan but her big promo, her tweets and her title run in general have been pretty aggressively whitewashed from the transitional period between the old Divas divisions and the new Women's league. Replaced in WWE-lore by the Bellas in fact. Proper history would probably show her to be quietly influential, but I don't imagine it's stuff we'll see much of on DVDs or the Network.

I hope Rusev fucks it up for Reigns next week, ties them back together fairly neatly for the next PPV.

I hope they don't put Bayley in the match - her beating Charlotte smacked of the great NXT-style booking where that's now planted in the minds of the viewers to be used when it needs to be. She's got that win, and now they can run Sasha vs Charlotte as unfinished business. If Charlotte gets through that, Bayley is a very viable contender because she's already got the win over her. In fact now I think about it, they ran the exact same thing with American Alpha and The Revival, with the Revival beating Alpha a week or so after losing to Gargano and Ciampa. That planted the seeds for one of the best matches of the year.

 

I'm probably talking bollocks and it'll just be a 3-way mind, but I'd rather they did it that way.

 

I've already fantasy booked a story in which Sasha loses to Charlotte clean again, Bayley gets her shot, then Sasha turns on her to screw her (jealousy of fan support when they teamed, and Bayley getting signed up when Sasha was injured, I dunno, owt like that), then viciously beats her up so much so it puts her out for a while. The beatdown is so awful that Charlotte actually makes a save, triggering a double turn. Sasha then wins the title from Charlotte and takes over as dominant heel champion to lead to Bayley making a surprise return to challenge her for the title at Wrestlemania. So when they dare to do their own thing and not cater exactly to my whims, I'll only be disappointed anyway.

Ryder and Cody Rhodes on Jericho's show talking about Disney and Universal was a good laugh if you've visited the parks or have any interest in that sort of thing. It totally strips away anything about them as 'superstars' or whatver and reminds you that them of the telly still want to beat the queues and enjoy the rollercoasters etc. Rhodes takes the piss out of Ryder quite a bit for all the quirks and rules he has about them, it's a really warm funny chat between a couple of mates, and Jericho doesn't trample over it as a result. One of my podcast highlights of the last couple of weeks.

Which is why they never all get called up in bulk like that (despite constant calls from NXT fans for them all to come at once) and you're left with plenty of decent names to keep the ship afloat whilst the new ones settle in a bit. I feel for the most part that they've got the balance just about spot on over the past 3 years or so, the only exception being the current women's division, but there's no harm in having Asuka and Ember Moon as two tippy-toppies head and shoulders about the rest.

I love the match because of Michaels' hotdogging. It's a proper main event too when you watch it out of week-on-week stories now, feels like the 2005 equivalent of a Rock or Brock PPV main event, even though Hogan had actually been in and out of things a bit more at the time. Despite how great Shawn's part in the build up was, it's a better standalone match without too much story when watched now. Not unlike Rock/Hogan from WMX8 actually, which actually suffers if you stick on that bloody nWo  truck segment beforehand.

And enough time has passed that nobody suffers for the content being out there. There's no way Bret is including 10 minute house show tags where he phones it in on his own set, but it can go on these things and nerds like us won't give a shit and get enjoyment anyway. This set also has the spot where Bulldog sells getting hit with a bag of popcorn in the middle of the ring by Dude Love - even ten years ago they'd probably not have included something like that for a need of protecting the industry or some horseshite. We're completely past that now, just about anything goes.

Probably looking a little too much into the ending but I'd like to think we'll look back on this as being Triple H putting his guy over Vince's #1 guy, sort of marking the beginning of the Triple H era, dammit.

Yeah, I'll take that, from a logic point of view, actually. They might as well go right through the looking glass and treat Roman as a postmodern experiment of a new kind of 'pushed star' that the fans hate, compared to HHH the seemingly unimaginable champion of the modern wrestling fan.

 

Alright, so it doesn't fucking marry up with about four years of HHH's character but we're blatantly not even supposed to be arsed what happened three weeks ago anymore, so let them do away with that.

re: HHH & HBK vs LOD, wasn't that the combo on RAW that ended with the LOD beatdown by DX and the Outlaws? I imagine the one on the DVD would have just been the house show equivalent, with more heel shenanigans.

 

How much from the house shows got taped (even with just one camera) back then? There's lots from over the years I've wanted to see and hoped it would come out. I remember when the Owen Rumble from '94 appeared on Youtube, a Shawn/Goldust ladder match I'd only seen pictures of, and a Flair/Warrior match popped up too. Did they have at least everything filmed just for the craic? Meltzer reckons Shawn's unprofessionalism in late-97 was causing riots, let's have a look at that! Or Bret and Shawn as a babyface tag team for odd shots in 95 and 96. Michaels and Warrior beating Vader in 12 seconds after Raw tapings in 96 that Fin would report with disdain in Power Slam. Be truly never-thought-of to get shite like that. I noticed on the listing we're getting the Sid/Shawn/Bret Triple Threat match that Raw Magazine reported on. Never ever thought I'd actually get to see the match play out.

Oh shit yeah, I meant to ask (because I watched Raw on the always-amazing Wrestling Reality youtube page and you couldn't really tell), was Bayley still over outside of the Brooklyn crowd? Her entrance and the winning fall seemed to get good pops, and I liked that they gave her the "excited to be here" role backstage with New Day as it's revisiting what helped her in the early NXT days, it's far and away the most important NXT-to-main roster transition they've ever had, in my mind.

 

The possibility/probability of mishandling it seems high, and the endgame for her as it stands has to be vs Sasha Banks at Mania. Through NXT, Breaking Ground, the Battleground tag match, and endless references to their Takeover matches that have all bled over to the main shows, you can't deny they haven't been doing a great job of building it (without actually building it).

Not that I think it'll happen, but I'd quite like HHH to go away again a bit now. It's clear the story is that Owens wasn't in collusion with him beforehand, but being a scumbag chancer, he's got no problem reaping the benefits. Owens can go on telly and claim he didn't ask for help and didn't need it, and just be a chickenshit champion, which doesn't bury him because he played that perfectly in NXT. In the meantime, Stephanie can be the 'authority' foil to carry on the story with Rollins and Reigns, because they appeared to be making the point that she didn't know what HHH was up to either.

 

I'd quite like Owens to have an unlikely challenger to beat for his first defence, whilst Rollins and Reigns can have a match at the next PPV leading to HHH hitting the Suit Pedigree on one of them again, and explaining his actions after. I don't know where you go from there like, but I too don't particularly want Owens front and centre of a new Authoritarian heel regime, because we're barely up and running with the Stephanie/Foley tandem. Somebody else in the power hierarchy isn't ideal.  

Had no idea that HBK/Mankind dark match from It's Time was finally getting released, always wanted to see that after them playing the footage of Michaels playing the arsehole in his entrance (spitting water, arrogant proto-DX sort of thing). Here's to any more bits they've still got locked in the archives finally making air. Bret Harr vs Tom Magee next??

If you suffer from insomnia though, check out the Street Fight between Sting & Booker T against The Road Warriors from the show.

Though, IIRC, is that the one where Book stepped in because Luger told Sting he was injured, but when they brawled backstage the camera caught Luger posing in a mirror?! That was a brilliant.

 

Loved that whole angle between those two before the Hall & Nash arrival meant they had to bin it.

Mad to think from the early days of NXT that we'd be at a point where Bayley and Sasha will be the ones carrying Paige, but there you go. Agreed though, I still think there's an awful lot of in-ring mileage out of matches between Paige and the Four Horsewomen, and I'd like to see her have a proper programme with heel Emma when she's fit too. They had great chemistry.

 

There's still plenty of time for Paige to get in amongst it when she's back, and I get the impression the company will give her lots of chances to succeed. She strikes me as the type to have an extremely dedicated fanbase.

 

I still hope ADR gets sacked yesterday, though.

I know to compare FCW and OVW to NXT is apples and oranges thanks ti budgets, autonomy and all sorts more, but is it arguable that HHH may have saved the WWE forever?

 

Their developmental now vs how it was even as recently as about 2011 are not even in the same galaxy are they?! Horror stories about careers going to die in front of 59 people in one of the shite territories and spewing out a load of guys that have no fucking clue how to get over or some indie ones that DID but had their spirits crushed on the way to the main roster.

 

Even the intials NXT are stained by the original NXT seasons, which were some weird experimental mess that almost put paid to somebody like Daniel Bryan even nearly didn't break through. Daniel Bryan! Can you even imagine?? It wasn't till they fucked off the original USP of NXT Redemption did that actually become a useful brand, having characters that 'lived' in that show, and could theoretically eventually find their way to Raw. And even then, they lost EC3 and the main roster never got to enjoy the Johnny Curtis sleaze bag character it deserved.

 

 

So yeah, can we thank HHH for wrestling enough stroke from Vince to take the reigns and save the mainstream industry forever? Surely it's agreed that the WWE has never been so well positioned to serve all masters? The new system, (as clunky as it can still be) has broke down countless barriers Vince seemed so happy to build up in the post-2001 era.

I can't believe I'm recommending it because I've always thought its both the very best and VERY worst interview podcast, but Art of Wrestling has some choice moments, a massive archive, and it was at least the originator. If you can stomach Colt Cabana (which I accept is a big if for some, me included), there's some winners. If you can get hold of earlier ones it'll be full of guys that are now in WWE/NXT too, because he started so long ago that it was the era where they still weren't really arsed about bringing in indy guys without smashing them to pieces for years in OVW/FCW.