The Official UKFF RAW Thread...

[TildeGuy~!]

Nah Cena/Taker will happen I reckon.

I see Cena challenging Nakamura to a match at Fast Lane tonight, Nakamura wins after some form of Taker interference. 

[tiger_rick]

Fuck sake. Wrestlemania season bringing back numpties to tell us they don't watch in eight thousand words.

[The Dart]

2 hours ago, BomberPat said:

There's a lot of problems with the WWE product at the moment, for sure, but this "let's take it back to how it was!" approach simply isn't the solution - for one, enough of WWE is stuck in the past as it is, trying to rehash prior successes will only make that worse. It needs to look forward, not backward.

Secondly, an awful lot of the Attitude Era was shit. It worked at the time because it was a rare instance of WWE being in tune with broader pop culture, because most of what they were doing hadn't been done on a national stage before, and because the war with WCW and the possibility of talent crossing over created a more immediate "anything can happen" vibe (though I'd argue that, in more subtle ways, wrestling as a whole is far weirder and more unpredictable now than it was then).

It won't work now, because the context has changed. And most of the time they try it down, its met with derision. When Dean Ambrose was attacking people with hot dog carts and whatever else, he was ridiculed, called a prop comic, yet the same people moaning about what a PG joke it was were pining for a time when Steve Austin was doing the same shit every week. People complaining about Roman Reigns or John Cena being overexposed and winning all the time are pining for a time when Steve Austin used to interfere in every single match on the card, and barely ever be off-screen. People complaining about how silly it was when Roman Reigns tried to kill Braun Strowman in an ambulance are pining for a time when Steve Austin was getting hit by cars, or cars were getting dropped off forklifts, and whatever else.

It's not the trappings of the Attitude Era that people want - they just want it go back to how it was when they were a kid. 30 year olds want it go back to the Attitude Era, 16-18 year olds want it go back to 2011, 40 year olds want it go back to 1987, and so on. People want wrestling to be how it was at the exact moment they fell in love with it, regardless of when that was, and that's impossible.

Excellently said.  Another example is the absolute bitching that went on was Cena was 'fired' during the Nexus story and still had the nerve to appear on Raw the next night, despite the fact that the exact same thing happened to Steve Austin in 1998.  That was ok though, because attitude era.

Last paragraph sums it all up nicely.  There's plenty of 18 year olds out there saying "WWE isn't as good as it used to be, I wish it was like it was in 2010"

[MEGABUCKS]

John Cena will 100% face Undertaker at Wrestlemania. They will never say it loud if that wasnt the plan. The story will probably be Cena turning up every Raw and Smackdown trying to figure out a way to get on the card. And maybe on the last week before Mania Taker will show up and challenege John Cena. I just think Undertaker might show up in his street clothes and say facing Undertaker is impossible and that he will be facing Mark Calloway

[AshC]

Zero chance of the above. Less than zero. Minus zero.

[boytoy]

NXT can tell better stories than Raw is that there is a constant changing of the guard so the comparison is unfair. Once a wrestler is on the main roster they are there until they are injured/retire/do something really dumb and there is only a certain amount of patience can have before an act gets stale.

Randy Orton won his first title in 2004, Cena in 2006 and Lesnar in 2002 which would be like Hogan, Savage and Warrior being the main draw on a 2000 WWF show. WCW tried that and went under. At Summerslam 14 when Lesnar killed Cena, Roman Reigns wrestled Randy Orton that night. Perhaps it would have been a lot better if it had have been Reigns who had have dominated Cena that night, on the back of the Shield run and before they exposed his weaknesses too much. There never was an obvious younger replacement for Cena which is why they decided to play it safe and succeed him with Lesnar as the top guy. The only problem is that it hasn't worked.

 

[zep81]

So the whole Lesnar/Reigns angle from last night was just a work wasn't it so Reigns could cut that promo?

[thevestofdeanambrose]

4 minutes ago, zep81 said:

So the whole Lesnar/Reigns angle from last night was just a work wasn't it so Reigns could cut that promo?

Thought that was quite obvious and it worked well.

[Chris B]

I'm liking Cena getting desperate. In fact, I want them to take it further. After he challenges Nakamura and fails (which I like), he should turn up on Raw next week with Taker's hat, coat and gloves from last Wrestlemania and burn them as an attempt to goad him into a match.

[Wrasslin]

3 hours ago, boytoy said:

NXT can tell better stories than Raw is that there is a constant changing of the guard so the comparison is unfair. Once a wrestler is on the main roster they are there until they are injured/retire/do something really dumb and there is only a certain amount of patience can have before an act gets stale.

Randy Orton won his first title in 2004, Cena in 2006 and Lesnar in 2002 which would be like Hogan, Savage and Warrior being the main draw on a 2000 WWF show. WCW tried that and went under. At Summerslam 14 when Lesnar killed Cena, Roman Reigns wrestled Randy Orton that night. Perhaps it would have been a lot better if it had have been Reigns who had have dominated Cena that night, on the back of the Shield run and before they exposed his weaknesses too much. There never was an obvious younger replacement for Cena which is why they decided to play it safe and succeed him with Lesnar as the top guy. The only problem is that it hasn't worked.

 

To be fair Hogan was Champion in 2002 and headlining Summerslam in 2005

[BomberPat]

The rate of change - or lack thereof - is astonishing, though.

The space of time between Wrestlemania 17 and today is the same as between Wrestlemania 1 and Wrestlemania 17 - yet this year's Wrestlemania will most likely feature Triple H, Kurt Angle, The Undertaker, Stephanie McMahon and potentially Shane McMahon in marquee matches, as well as potentially having room for Kane, Big Show, and Matt Hardy on the card, all of whom performed at Wrestlemania 17.

An equivalent would have been if Wrestlemania 17 prominently featured Tito Santana, King Kong Bundy, Roddy Piper and Greg Valentine in the bigger matches on the card, which rightly seems preposterous.

 

Putting my childhood fandom aside, I got big into wrestling in mid-2000; Kurt Angle was involved in a storyline with Triple H and Stephanie McMahon back then. That we're seeing a storyline play out eighteen years later with those same players, and it's a main event level story, is mental.

[The Dart]

Nutty to think that Hogan's first main run was about 10 years, Austin's was 8 years, Rock's was 7 years, yet Cena and Orton have been around for 16 years nearly!

[d-d-d-dAz]

27 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

The rate of change - or lack thereof - is astonishing, though.

The space of time between Wrestlemania 17 and today is the same as between Wrestlemania 1 and Wrestlemania 17 - yet this year's Wrestlemania will most likely feature Triple H, Kurt Angle, The Undertaker, Stephanie McMahon and potentially Shane McMahon in marquee matches, as well as potentially having room for Kane, Big Show, and Matt Hardy on the card, all of whom performed at Wrestlemania 17.

An equivalent would have been if Wrestlemania 17 prominently featured Tito Santana, King Kong Bundy, Roddy Piper and Greg Valentine in the bigger matches on the card, which rightly seems preposterous.

 

Putting my childhood fandom aside, I got big into wrestling in mid-2000; Kurt Angle was involved in a storyline with Triple H and Stephanie McMahon back then. That we're seeing a storyline play out eighteen years later with those same players, and it's a main event level story, is mental.

That's more to do with Wrestlemania 1 being around the time WWWF/WWF/WWE became the centre of the wrestling world. If there had been a Wrestlemania ever since 1960, you'd probably have had similar issues.

Also, the age at which people used to come into the WWE has changed, right? In that you'd import a big star from the territories, who was maybe in his mid 30's, and then he'd be burnt out within 5 years, or he'd jumped ship to WCW or whatever else. Cena, Orton and that cohort came into WWE quite young so it makes sense they'd stick around. With the intake of indie stars late in their career, in 10 years time you'll imagine it'll have come full circle and people will be saying 'THE TURNOVER IS CRAZY, in the last few years alone we've lost Aj Styles, Nakamura, Samoa Joe, Balor, Lesnar etc etc'

[ColinBollocks]

Iron Shiek and Nikolia Volkoff find your remarks very hurtful, BP. Highlight of 17.

It's also worth noting the lack of real alternatives to work and make big coin ever since WCW shut down in 2001. Back during the 80s and 90s, you had WCW, Japan and the territories etc. WWF was the big time game in town, back then, but there were very good options for talent to leave for better money or a happier working environment. Of course, these days you can make a good living on the indies and Japan (which is why some are jumping off ship WWE), but for years you had shitty TNA, but they rarely got more than what WWE didn't want to hire anyway; John Cena or Randy Orton were never going to make the money they make today in TNA - the only perk was limited dates for good money. I'm sure if WCW was still around and doing ok, that list of names wouldn't be so mental.

If the wrestling business was the same way during that WM 1 to 17 period as it is today we'd have more Hogan, Piper, Macho, Nash etc appearances.

Edited February 27, 2018 by ColinBollocks

[BomberPat]

You could say the same of a much shorter space of time, though - if you take Wrestlemania in 1996 to Wrestlemania in 2000, the only person on both shows is Triple H, who had undergone a significant gimmick change or two in the intervening period.

If we say 2000 is an outlier because Austin and Undertaker were both injured, then from Wrestlemania 13 to 17, then there's only six people the same across both cards - The Undertaker, The Rock, Steve Austin, Triple H, Bradshaw and Faarooq; all of them, except Austin, having undergone significant gimmick and alignment changes in the intervening years.

Yet, from Wrestlemania 29 to 33, you have John Cena, Triple H, Brock Lesnar, The Undertaker, Roman Reigns, Seth Rollins, Randy Orton and Sheamus across both shows, and only Reigns and Rollins could be argued to be playing a noticeably different role to who they were four years earlier.

That, to me, is an indication of how stale the product is, and how little the roster changes in comparison - it's the problem with weekly TV, and little or no incentive for significant change. If you look outside of Wrestlemania, you see the likes of Dolph Ziggler that have had no significant change to their character in years.

 

And, again, one of the featured storylines going into Wrestlemania is a feud involving Triple H, Kurt Angle and Stephanie McMahon. They were carrying the central storyline when I started watching eighteen years ago. Nearly twenty years later, and they're still relying on the same names to sell the card - it would be like Wrestlemania 25 having Hogan and Savage in the most promoted match. And if that were the case, people would rightly be questioning how they were still having to rely on these old-timers instead of having managed to build someone else to the position where they could be the name on the marquee.  

 

I agree that it's external factors that have made it this way as much as anything - people have, up until recently, had nowhere to go if they leave the WWE, so no one tries their luck. But that doesn't change the end result that, to the audience, it's stale and feels dated - if you look to the territory days, the likes of Andre The Giant, Bruiser Brody or Abdullah The Butcher didn't stay in one place very long, because they knew it would diminish their drawing power. Yet in WWE, we see the same people on TV every single week, and are still expected to care about them come Wrestlemania season - even if they've been at every Wrestlemania for the last ten years. It's a big part of the reason no one's special any more.

 

 

Oh, and @ColinBollocks, I did not mean to talk down on the Gimmick Battle Royal, which is one of my favourite things the WWE ever did.

Edited February 27, 2018 by BomberPat