King Pitcos

9 hours ago, Onyx2 said:

A detailed blow by blow of the Funhouse match by Wai Ting. 

https://www.postwrestling.com/2020/04/06/deconstructed-a-breakdown-of-john-cena-bray-wyatts-firefly-fun-house/

Reading this now. It’s interesting, Bray saying he had to work for everything and Cena was handed everything. Bray Wyatt as a character isn’t defined by hard work, so it seems like it’s supposed to be a “shoot” reference - but the real life fella was given a job because of his dad, has been primarily used as an upper card talent for the last seven years despite having barely a handful of really good matches, and goes to McDonald’s more than he goes the gym.

1 hour ago, FUM said:

I'm surprised no-one has mentioned yet how the new supposed bad ass champ who fears no-one actually refused to fight someone until provoked because he was too tired.

I thought that was pretty odd as I was watching it, then forgot about it straight after, but yeah it’s a bizarre move. There must have been at least Drew, Show, Heyman and Vince or HHH involved in that. One of them should have realised, but perhaps they thought nobody will care anyway and the refusal stuff will fill another couple of minutes of airtime.

I’ve booked my hotel for next year. Take that, COVID!

@tiger_rick agreed. It’s a great point about the Street Profits and Bianca Belair - for the people they’re using anyway, there’s ample opportunity now to flesh out the characters instead of contriving ways for them to have three matches in a row. 

I hope that they do the Drew McIntyre build-up stuff next week, and that the reason they didn’t do it this week just because of the hook to make it seem like he may have lost the title. He’s always talking about his past with Sheamus in interviews as well, they could use that as a way in to Sheamus as a short-term contender and save the matches with Rollins/Orton/AJ for when they get back in front of crowds. 

If they’re not able to get a venue now anyway, they might have to focus on interviews and documentary footage from next week. I can’t imagine that being worse than this show was.

16 minutes ago, Sheffbag said:

is there any way i can watch last nights Raw on the Network? 

Yeah, but not until next month. And nothing happened anyway.

This was a real for-the-sake-of-it episode. Nothing of note, and some of what threadbare content was there went on for ages. Which is understandable, under the circumstances - the less people in close contact filling up more time, the safer it is. But it isn't worth watching.

5 hours ago, garynysmon said:

A sentiment that's echoed on here, both directly and indirectly, is the obsession with shoehorning every single roster member onto the card. It just brings down the overall standard and tacks on filler matches that no-one is frothing at the mouth to see.

I can't fathom why they are on intent on following through with this when the roster is so big. In years gone by, even when the roster was much leaner, there were always a couple of upper mid carders that were left out.

They still leave people off. Jeff Hardy wasn’t on this show, though he’d maybe have been in the battle royal if it was normal service. Kevin Owens wasn’t on WrestleMania at all last year, same for Samoa Joe a year or two before that. 

The annoying thing for me is that the battle royal gives them a way to get everyone onto the show without needing filler matches for loads of them.

4 hours ago, tiger_rick said:

It is hard though. Your last three hated heels were all babyfaces. Your actual heels were hated for being shit, though Miz has got better.

That’s the thing - you’re never going to get a proper heel in this day and age who has Internet points, and that applies more to AEW and NXT than it does to the big boy shows, because AEW and NXT have 0% normals in the crowd 100% of the time. (Raw and SmackDown at least have a chance of being in Bumblefuck, Alabama on occasion.) 

And in AEW, wrestlers can’t yet lose internet points for the same things that wrestlers can in WWE. So the only near future option I could see is by having someone be “shit” and wrestle like a heel, without doing flips and such. Like Cactus Jack in ECW when he was doing his pro-WCW rest hold gimmick. But even that would potentially be turned into a semi-babyface comedy thing pretty quick, even as I think of it now I can already see it being funny against Orange Cassidy.

The more I think about it, the more I think it won’t matter for a while yet and something might fall into place by the time it does - like a turn on Hangman. But there was a spell of about fifteen minutes the other day where I was trying to work out who’d be easiest on the roster to make a proper top bad guy.

5 minutes ago, tiger_rick said:

That's fair, there was debate on here about whether Jericho should lose but that was all from the "we could book wrestling" angle that we all come at it from. On the shows leading up to and on those PPVs, the fans were for the babyfaces. Which is the goal.

I'm not convinced we'll ever get a purely hated heel again. Who was even the last one? You give Cena/Punk as an example of having a character to truly rally against but the guy to rally against was the promotion's #1 babyface.

The last one was Rollins. Before that, Reigns. Before that, Cena. Which again comes from the "we could book wrestling" angle - the most hated heel is a babyface "being shoved down our throats" when there's another babyface who is "buried" but would (in our fantasy booking) draw more money than the one who actually has the belt. In terms of actual heels, there's Corbin and Miz, but even with them it's the meta thing of not doing flips and never wrestling for NJPW, and being pushed ahead of guys who do flips and worked for NJPW. Of course there's Shane McMahon, and the Authority before him, but both of those were about the bookers booking "burials" and putting themselves over the talent etc etc.

I don't see a hated heel happening without the meta element, and I don't know how that's achievable in AEW because the company/fan dynamic is still Kool-Aid rather than toxic. Even when MJF is being a right bastard to Cody, we know that it's Cody who has booked it to be this way - so it's nowhere near as upsetting as Daniel Bryan getting screwed out of a title shot by Triple H, the creative head who (we assume) doesn't rate Bryan like we do. And so you never get the WrestleMania 30 moment of pure catharsis, or the WrestleMania 31 moment of Rollins saving the day from Roman Reigns. I guess that's my point - WWE can work fans into getting apoplectic by using history, Internet gossip etc, and those fans then treat the big match result like it's life or death. How can AEW do that, and who do they have who is viable as the target of the rage? Is it even important that they do it? I'd probably say it isn't right now, but it will become so once the new car smell has worn off.

Eh, that's saying that a character actually getting heat is useless and not necessary. I suppose it might not be - Kofi vs Daniel Bryan at last year's WrestleMania is a good example of fan sentiment being driven by the babyface even though the heel is popular. But even in that, Bryan was Vince's proxy. Jericho is more or less the same sort of villain that Eco-Bryan was, but lacking the meta element of Kofimania, nobody was desperate to see Ambrose or Cody beat Jericho. Everyone was up for him having another six months with the belt. Without a character to truly rally against, it's hard to imagine anything having that same urgency as stuff like Cena vs Punk, or Sting vs Hogan. Although by the same token, it's hard to imagine a dissension angle in WWE getting fans as invested as the Matt Jackson/Hangman Page stuff does, so AEW has got a different palette to paint with there. Shades of grey drama with the Elite and friends might make up for the lack of real baddies.

I reckon in front of a crowd, that Charlotte Flair vs Rhea Ripley match would've been one of the best women's matches they've ever done. Charlotte was on top form working the leg with a focus we rarely see anymore, like Bret Hart with a personality. Ripley, fair fucks to her, put in a good shift as the up-and-comer who hasn't had many setbacks yet and got herself into this without realising how unprepared she was for that level of competition. Great foundation for character growth and a rematch down the road where Rhea has leveled up enough to avenge this loss and best the Queen. 

After a year spinning her wheels on Raw, a move to NXT with a bunch of fresh matchups seems a solid move for Charlotte as well.

18 hours ago, Supremo said:

Listening to Brodie Lee on Jericho's podcast, his blind spot for this Vince gimmick couldn't be more obvious. To him, having put up with Vince for years, suffering through all his oddball shit, it's the ultimate heel character. To anyone who hasn't worked directly under Vince though, who just hears what a fucking weirdo he is from stories ex-WWE guys share on podcasts

To be fair, so far he’s only imitated stuff that’s been referenced on podcasts and is well-known on forums, Reddit etc. It’s unlikely that Harper himself has ever been in the production meetings where Vince makes the writers wait for him to eat. Surely the idea is more to pop the niche audience that AEW/NXT are targeting than it is to be a proper heel.

Speaking of which, I’ve been wondering who the first proper AEW heel is likely to be. Not a wink-wink “great heel so funny I love him lol” like MJF and Jericho, but the first wrestler that the AEW fanbase will hate and want to see lose. It can’t be any of The Elite (except maybe Hangman) without the promotion itself turning heel. I feel like Swagger is the most likely candidate, I’m not at all sure how to reach that point with him though. Every hated WWE character in the last decade and a half or so has been that because they’re some kind of Vince/creative proxy. Even Jeff Jarrett in TNA’s early years was only hated because he was in charge behind the scenes and booked himself like reign of terror Triple H. 

Fuck it, it’s Randy Orton or nobody, isn’t it? The old fantasy booking of him from last year when he teased going. Turning up acting like he’s above everyone, playing nothing for laughs and doing his chinlocks.

13 hours ago, Keith Houchen said:

STOP CALLING HIM BORIS 

Fuck yo deadnaming shit, it’s 2020. Since my Equality & Diversity training, I call people by what they prefer to be identified as. He want to be called Boris, I call him Boris. Also he seems like a right laugh, so I prefer to call him by his first name anyway.

18 minutes ago, Undefeated Steak said:

If every Bray PPV match is even a 5-7 minute match piece like that they're going to finally have their next star. 

It won’t be, and he won’t be. It was a fantastic culmination of circumstance and talent - there aren’t many he could have that kind of match with. Triple H and Undertaker for sure, but it seems unlikely.

When things are back to normal, Bray will be doing what he’s been doing for the last year, but that doesn’t take away from how special this match was. This WrestleMania will surely be the most meme-inspiring of all time.

Oh my days! The Funhouse match was very different to the Boneyard match, and just as brilliant. Full surreal madness. Loved it. No idea what normals would’ve thought of it, mind, it was completely aimed at wankers like us. Massive kudos to the two of them for the creativity and performances there. And proper big dick energy from Cena, being up for a pisstake of his whole career to put someone over. A lot more memorable and impactful than a loss in the stadium would’ve been.

Echoing what Maxwell said earlier in the thread, I don’t know if this stuff will work when the shows are back in front of a crowd, so we should relish these two. When you pay your WrestleMania ticket money, it’s not to watch a video of a match for half an hour. And even from a TV viewing perspective, it’s hard to follow something like that with a normal match. McIntyre vs Lesnar was pretty much going through the motions for a big Lesnar title match, nothing unexpected there. I can’t imagine anyone was watching that and not still thinking about the funhouse match.

Ian hit the nail on the head with Edge vs Orton. Went on forever and so dull. I think this one suffered due to the Boneyard battle the night before. It was out of the ring weapon/environment wackiness, but very much of the standard wrestling fare, and without a big memorable spot like Owens the night before. I figure it was meant to be the most dramatic, serious match on the show... The drama just didn’t come across like it had in the build up though. Crazy how Edge looks in much better shape than he did twenty years ago, mind.

The Otis stuff would’ve been so much better with a crowd. Which is the case for almost everything on the two nights.

Fair play to them for putting on the event, and turning the situation into a massive positive for a couple of the megastar matches. For Drew, it’s a shame it played out like this. For Braun, I’d say the same except if there’d been a crowd, it wouldn’t have been him in the Universal match anyway.

Nvm

32 minutes ago, Callum1993 said:

Strowman and Goldberg had the worst world title match in Mania history. 

No way. I preferred it to HHH vs Jericho, HHH vs Orton and HHH vs Reigns, purely because it didn't go on forever.

Quite enjoyed that show overall! Main event was fantastic, and nothing on the card dragged for me, except Corbin vs Elias. It was awkward as expected, but really the weirdest thing about it is that it finished two hours earlier than a one-night WrestleMania does.

The boo baton was passed to Roman Reigns five years ago, then to Seth Rollins, and McIntyre will be running with it in a few months. JC is long removed now from being the full time top dog. If the goal is to hate Raw and SmackDown every week, you go for who is there every week. There’s no Tuesday morning rant fuel in hating Big Match John anymore, so he’s dropped out of that boo zone. 

If Cena wins at WrestleMania though, there will be an awful lot of REEEEEEing online.

So there was no explanation at all for the switch to Braun Strowman, just a graphic of the match and "Goldberg is now defending his Universal title against Braun Strowman." They could have done that last week!

6 hours ago, TheBurningRed said:

WWE have done it again and reeled me back in. I was never going to watch this years Mania when they still had an arena and crowd. It might only be night 1 depending on how it goes tomorrow, but I’m more intrigued for this than any of the past years. 

That’s what I find odd about all the moaning. People are complaining that it’s going to be shit because it’s being done differently, yet they think it’s shit every year the way it’s normally done anyway. So at worst, it’s another WrestleMania they don’t like, but it’s at least going to stand out a bit from the last ten WrestleManias they didn’t like.

Fair play to them, they've put a fair few post-cancellation shirts together. They've got:

• Two variations of the "I Wasn't There" design, both of which look like something from a seaside town souvenir shop
• That In Your House one
• A Road to WrestleMania shirt where the fan just stays in the house
• A Bray Wyatt vs John Cena match one that says "I WAS THERE HOME"

Some new ones:

1 hour ago, Factotum said:

Hogan to come out and leg drop it while Cole shouts 'ANOTHER VINTAGE WRESTLEMANIA MOMENT'

This is probably the only year they could still have had Hogan do another match. He could hobble off the ropes, and they could cut to a closeup of someone else wearing his leggings doing the legdrop. He never did get his win back from Goldberg, did he?

13 minutes ago, Loki said:

When did he retire then?  Did he have a retirement match or just a random match on Raw and that was it?  Seems a bit shit.

It’s not a documentary.

2 minutes ago, Otto Dem Wanz said:

The Brodie Lee is stuff is comedy really, the only thing it does when he makes a subtle or overt reference to what we know about Vince is make me laugh, it's not intimidating or intriguing at all really.

That's gonna be the struggle, I think. His voice doesn't have any conviction or menace to it, so whenever he speaks it tends to make him less scary. It's early days, but his appearances so far have shown why he's mostly been in a bodyguard/tag team spot previously.