WWE Raw 2nd April 2012 Discussion *SPOILERS*

[JLM]

They don't have to acknowledge it at all and the vast majority of their audience doesn't care.

[d-d-d-dAz]

Imagine if they were still pushing Mark Henry as 'The World's Strongest Man'. He actually entered the tournament & it turned out he wasn't 'The World's Strongest Man' then that would damage the gimmick no? Having the commentators say 'yeah but he's still a strong bloke' doesn't quite have the same effect.

 

You said in the Wrestlemania thread that you don't watch anymore, so i'll fill you in.

 

They still actively push Mark Henry as the World's Strongest Man. It's on his leotard. The commentators call him that, and often turn it on its head and say stuff like '...imagine what it's like to be stood across from the strongest man in the entire world.' Mark Henry, as it turns out, finished twelfth in the Arnold Classic or something, and finished tenth at the olympics. He has no legitimate claim that he is the strongest man in the entire world and that is common knowledge. It doesn't matter though, because the gimmick just adds colour and effectively puts across that he's strong bastard who's going to chuck you about, and split yo wig. Professional wrestling operates on its own axis.

 

And, yeah, I'd say that if you think a loss or two in an entirely separate sport compromises Lesnar's position in a scripted art form then you are struggling to split the UFC and WWE.

 

We'll ignore the fact that, like others have said, he's achieved far more in legitimate sport than anyone else on the roster and actually held the heavyweight title. That's a big deal. The fact that he lost once or twice won't matter for a bunch of reasons; they won't mention it for a kick off; it's not actually that important in the context of his other achievements and not every WWE fan is a UFC mark. I'd say hardly any are.

 

It's wrestling, revisionist history and exaggerations are it's foundations.

[ColinBollocks]

They don't have to acknowledge it at all and the vast majority of their audience doesn't care.

And they didn't, Cole calling him a "former WWE champion" when he came out, not a UFC one.

 

He's a star, that's all that matters.

[Polish Dad]

Not being able to qualify for the Olympics doesn't stop Angle from being an Olympic gold medallist, no? being beaten badly in UFC doesn't stop Lesnar from being a former UFC Champion, and they just have to present it that way.

 

I watched him loads in UFC, and I still see him as a huge, unstoppable-style monster.

[d-d-d-dAz]

I should also add that anyone who watched last night and thought '...he got beat pretty bad by Cain Velasquez, I think he's got his work cut out with Randy Orton, CM Punk and John Cena' needs sectioning almost immediately..

[ColinBollocks]

According to the Meltz, Lesnar is making more than anybody on the roster, bar Cena, and it's a schedule lighter than the one Goldberg had in WWE. Interesting times ahead.

[Dead Mike]

FFS Daz, I'm not sure if you're being deliberately condescending or you're just a bit of a dick? I questioned how they'd book him post UFC run. Said that for me his aura of invincibility has been diminished & you come back with 'OMG you can't tell the difference between MMA & WWE'? The simple answer, like JLM said was 'they'll ignore it'

[Egg Shen]

watched 'Mania last night then got up and went straight into Raw. Had a blast with both shows....

 

The best thing about Raw by far was the audience, that was possibly the best wrestling crowd in years, they reacted to everything and enhanced pretty much everything on the show, why can't wrestling crowds be like that every week? it was great, not in an annoying 'this is awesome' way either, you could just tell that the audience were having a great time and i think that reflects on the wrestlers.

 

Jericho falling got the biggest pop out of me, i laughed, rewinded them, then laughed again

[IANdrewDiceClay]

Brock is a huge star. Thats all that matters. If they brought Tyson back tomorrow, it would draw, because people remember him and he's good enough to sell the fight. Doesnt matter what you do when you get there, but selling the event is the thing thats important. And Lesnar is definitely a massive star. Surely a lot of Brock's UFC fights have been watched by audiences who had the mindset that he was a soft shite wrestler. Brock should be an unstoppable monster, because thats how the WWE audience see him and remember him. Its like Rock said the other week "take away all the shite and I'm a 6'4, 300 pound man who could rip your throat out". They arent marketing him as a former UFC champion. They are marketting him as the Beast. The Pain. The man wants to destroy John Cena and everything he stands for. In the pretend world of wrestling, Brock would have beaten Overeem. Brock cant no sell in real life, though. If you book someone strong, nobody is going to care if he lost a few MMA fights. What people care about is that a former star is back.

[d-d-d-dAz]

FFS Daz, I'm not sure if you're being deliberately condescending or you're just a bit of a dick? I questioned how they'd book him post UFC run. Said that for me his aura of invincibility has been diminished & you come back with 'OMG you can't tell the difference between MMA & WWE'? The simple answer, like JLM said was 'they'll ignore it'

[chokeout]

Well he walked away from UFC which was easily $1million a fight (He had a disclosed wage of $400,000 plus 'bonuses' and a percentage of the ppv buy rates) fighting 3 times a year. I'd be shocked if he wasn't earning something similar to that. I wonder how long it will take him to get back into 'WWE shape'

[ColinBollocks]

Well he walked away from UFC which was easily $1million a fight (He had a disclosed wage of $400,000 plus 'bonuses' and a percentage of the ppv buy rates) fighting 3 times a year. I'd be shocked if he wasn't earning something similar to that. I wonder how long it will take him to get back into 'WWE shape'

Meltzer said he is making just less than he would if he did two UFC fights in a year.

 

Also, if he did lose even a bit of his 'aura' THAT reaction brought it all back. As I typed, the audience reacted like he was the baddest dude on the Earth.

[d-d-d-dAz]

Surely he won't be wrestling at Extreme Rules though, is he...?

 

That's like serving lobster on a paper plate.

[NEWM]

Not meaning to be a Vito, but I'm still not getting too excited about Raw, and the more I watch it, the more the crowd can just fuck off. They got on my tits. It's occurred to me that Wrestlemania Weekend has basically turned into a giant internet fan convention that happens to allow families in too.

 

Most of the IWC-heavy, smark crowd would never drop money to travel to shows but billions of them will happily save up for the Wrestlemania experience, which now includes the following Raw. To debut Brock here was perfect because the crowd was hot and full of long memoried wrestling fans. You could quite clearly see the strongest demographic was the range of 25-35 year old male, who certainly won't make up the majority of the audience for the next eleven months and three weeks. I'm confident the pop for Brock will diminish in the upcoming weeks unless he's actually booked meaningfully. They've been given a free pass with The Rock the last few months, but had he been around for the last 12 months doing the shite he'd been doing, there's no fucking way he'd have got away with the promos he's cut in the lead-in to Mania.

 

Conversely, I feel more confident the "YES" thing will get over, and quickly, but it's D-Bry's job to be awesome at his job and try and turn those fans back to loving to hate him, rather than just loving him. It will fucking murder a really great thing he's got going with AJ if he suddenly becomes the cult favourite rather than the enjoyabley cuntish dick boyfriend, and WWE will give up on him for it. And it will be the fault of the smarks, but they won't see it that way.

 

If anything, the glowing praise from certain corners of the web that I normally disagree with has made me realise I'm still a proper big fan of the current all-year-round WWE product. It will be great to have such a cool guy like Lesnar back around, but unless there's more character development than just HE'S BROCK LESNAR, HE WAS HERE A WHILE AGO. HE'S HERE NOW, I'll be staying put on Team Fruity Pebble.

 

It does make me wonder how the populous of kids (who remember, are the future of the audience, not us) who put all their stock in Cena week after week after week feel after 48 crushing ours for him. I know I fucking hated it when Bret got served spoonfuls of shit at and after Wrestlemania 9 from a guy who just got a free pass because he'd been around before. (Obviously I know Hogan deserves free passes for infinity, but I think the analogy is fairly sound).

 

I dunno, I think I feel an even bigger divide forming between what people want these days. Me and one of my best mates refuse to agree on the Bryan/Sheamus debate, and the same mate was almost annoyingly blind to what I saw as horribly contrived and underwhelming Rock promos in the Mania buildup. I reckon he will cream himself over this Raw too. There's two distinctly different broader booking philosophies in play at the moment, and I don't doubt that they will come together more in the post-Mania 'slump'. But as I said, I think it's made me appreciate what WWE were doing a lot more, because I'm not sharing any of this excitement, and that's normally such a big part of the fun.

[Magnum]

It does make me wonder how the populous of kids (who remember, are the future of the audience, not us) who put all their stock in Cena week after week after week feel after 48 crushing ours for him. I know I fucking hated it when Bret got served spoonfuls of shit at and after Wrestlemania 9 from a guy who just got a free pass because he'd been around before. (Obviously I know Hogan deserves free passes for infinity, but I think the analogy is fairly sound).

 

You know I love your posts, even though we disagree on this issue. What you're saying about your childhood views on Bret is understandable, but Wrestlemania 9 was less than a year into Bret's big push. His young fans hadn't had time to get sick of him, yet, but 3 or 4 years later many of them were willing Austin to kick the shit out of him. The kids who watch Cena may be the future audience for wrestling, but they're equally likely to fuck off from it altogether when they grow out of his schtick - unless they're presented with something to cater to their gradually maturing tastes along the way. Remember, Cena's been on top so long now that the kids who bought into him 6 or 7 years ago are teens now who, if they're still watching, are probably looking for something a bit edgier by now.

 

I agree that the crowd did spoil it at times last night - the audible 'We want Lesnar' chants ruined his eventual entrance a bit, for me - but overall I'll always take a rabid, passionate crowd like that for a wrestling show than the ones who sit on their hands for 90 minutes of the show and then squeal when Cena comes out.