Ambulance Chaser Posted August 29, 2017 Share Posted August 29, 2017 That Macho Man get up hahaha Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Duke Posted August 29, 2017 Paid Members Share Posted August 29, 2017 1 hour ago, wooly said: Roman came out after Cena saying he wanted to fight 1 guy and everyone thought/thinks its Roman but joe was in the picture. Cena never gave a name. Roman came out to him. Then joe so joe was in the picture before his injury. Except when Cena says "you are exactly who I've been looking for" to Roman. That's a hint. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Undefeated Steak Posted August 29, 2017 Share Posted August 29, 2017 Captivating promo. At some points, Roman looked like he was about to rip Cena's head off. But as someone else said, Reigns also looked like he'd forgotten his line. Reigns did well but he was completely overshadowed by Cena. At times it was reminiscent of Triple H's "His one good move is pumping his Reeboks" promo on Cena himself. Cliched, but it really is about booking people to their strengths. Strowman is proof they can still get the job done. If Cena can do to Roman what Edge did for Cena then this could be blinding feud. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Arch Stanton Posted August 29, 2017 Paid Members Share Posted August 29, 2017 I hate the fourth wall breaking stuff, but it was a tremendously engaging segment nonetheless. Cena is still the man when a money promo is required, nobody can touch him. Reigns not in his league. That said, I love it when Brock gets on the mic too. He doesn't say a lot but he always looks like he means it. Suplex City, Bitch! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TildeGuy~! Posted August 29, 2017 Share Posted August 29, 2017 No reaction what so ever for the mini Bullet Club reunion during the battle royal 😔 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Doog Posted August 29, 2017 Share Posted August 29, 2017 There was some lads on the front row in bullet club shirts as well and they didn't bat an eyelid! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members air_raid Posted August 29, 2017 Paid Members Share Posted August 29, 2017 Poor Sasha. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members LaGoosh Posted August 29, 2017 Paid Members Share Posted August 29, 2017 This Cena/Reigns stuff is so boring for me. Cena is just doing a variation of the same promo he's been doing for the past 5 years with the same smug comedic face, Reigns is saying the same shit about Cena that Punk, Miz, Bryan, AJ etc have said about Cena before and it doesn't even fit his character. There's no stakes at all. No one is coming out of this looking good. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Statto Posted August 29, 2017 Paid Members Share Posted August 29, 2017 2 hours ago, TildeGuy~! said: No reaction what so ever for the mini Bullet Club reunion during the battle royal 😔 Zero reaction for the mention of Southpaw Regional Wrestling either. Think that might be the end to any suggestions of a Southpaw live event/one-off ppv match. I keep getting thrown by Raw, for the first time I can ever recall, cutting straight to adverts with no bumper of any kind (guess the 2K sponsorship has has ended which seems odd timing with the new WWE game imminent) but occasionally cutting to promos/vignettes - spent 10 seconds wondering why I hadn't heard anything about a female wrestler who looked EXACTLY like a young Kate Moss they were running a vignette for before I realised it was a perfume advert. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pinc Posted August 30, 2017 Share Posted August 30, 2017 (edited) As compelling as Reigns and Cena were and as stellar as I expect the match to be it was depressing watching them call eachother failures for being booed while the crowd booed them both. This was the first time they've pushed an inter-generational dream match where both guys rose to prominence after the Attitude era. A comparison with the cheers for Hogan and Rock's first face-to-face in 2002 - the closest historical precedent - shows that something's gone really wrong between WWE and its fanbase in the years since. I put the blame more with the fans being contrarian bell ends, but the company need to have a think about whether this is how they want these big moments to look in the highlight reels of the future. If you were channel hopping and came upon this you'd be confused as to why the audience seem to hate both of the show's main protagonists, and I don't think you'd stick around to figure it out. Edited August 30, 2017 by Pinc Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members BomberPat Posted August 30, 2017 Paid Members Share Posted August 30, 2017 While there's no shortage of contrarian bell-ends in the crowd, some of the blame has to lie with WWE. A fan tends to think that a promoter's job is to give the audience what they want, a good promoter knows that their job is to convince the audience that what they're given is what they wanted all along. There are myriad causes for the problem WWE have with top faces being rejected; they've spent at least a decade presenting themselves as the bad guy - someone once described WWE, as presented on WWE television, as being "an evil organisation that everyone wants to work for". The on-screen bosses are villains, actively not giving the fans what they want. We're actively encouraged to cheer for guys like CM Punk and, before him, "shoot" promos by the likes of Joey Styles and Paul Heyman that insult the company and its creative direction. We root for Daniel Bryan, who the company tells us isn't good enough, and then feel like we, the fans, have achieved something when Daniel Bryan gets in the main event. Even before you take in external factors like WWE being more concerned with pleasing sponsors and shareholders, and moving into new markets, than appealing to its core fanbase (rightly or wrongly), even within their own programming WWE has conditioned us to think that anyone hand-picked by WWE to be "the top guy" isn't for us, because the company actively hates its own fanbase. They told us as much every week for years. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
King Pitcos Posted August 30, 2017 Share Posted August 30, 2017 13 hours ago, LaGoosh said: This Cena/Reigns stuff is so boring for me. Cena is just doing a variation of the same promo he's been doing for the past 5 years with the same smug comedic face, Reigns is saying the same shit about Cena that Punk, Miz, Bryan, AJ etc have said about Cena before and it doesn't even fit his character. There's no stakes at all. No one is coming out of this looking good. It's a bit different, in the sense that none of those guys were in Cena's league or any real threat to him. This time it's against a guy on Cena's level, who is booed for the same reasons. But it's not different enough from all those other times. It's just pandering to the internet and surely drags Reigns vs Cena down a notch to normal people by making it about backstage politics, the sort of stuff CM Punk was doing every week to turn off viewers six years ago. We're a bit fucked now because insider bullshit is all they can seem to do to interest us, and we're the ones giving them the most feedback. This sort of thing is how they placate/interest the internet without giving Cesaro the belt. It's just diminishing returns and means we can't get another Hogan vs Rock moment. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members BomberPat Posted August 30, 2017 Paid Members Share Posted August 30, 2017 I think "insider bullshit" is, more or less, the direction WWE have to take for the older fanbase now. Kids, and to a lesser extent emerging markets like India, are far more likely to just like the babyface who wins all the time and buy all their merchandise regardless. But the older, perhaps more jaded, fans need something else to hook them. There's still a strong argument to be made for the Johnny Valentine quote I use all the time - "I might not be able to convince you that wrestling is for real, but I can sure as hell convince you that I am". On some level, we want to believe in the people we're watching - a huge part of the reason Brock Lesnar is such a star is that the fans still absolutely believe in Brock Lesnar; they think he's legit. A win over Lesnar, or just holding your own in a fight with Lesnar, still carries weight, even knowing it's predetermined. People bought into CM Punk because they believed he was everything he said he was, believed he was the underdog, punk rock, counter-culture hero, even while he was drawing six figures from a multi-million dollar corporation. Kayfabe never really dies, the boundaries just shift a little - the current state of "kayfabe" isn't the fanbase thinking that everything they're watching on television is real, but between what we see on TV, what we see on supplementary pseudo-"shoot" WWE TV like Total Divas, WWE 24 or even the likes of Talking Smack, social media, and internet gossip, we think we know just about everything about these people, how they feel about each other, and their place in the pecking order. We know who's "in the doghouse" this week, and we know who's earmarked to be the next "top guy" by management. All of those give us unprecedented access to WWE and their wrestlers, but they also give WWE a near limitless number of ways to work the audience on levels they don't even realise they're being worked on. So when Reigns and Cena are dropping references to "out of character" or insider rumours, that's the moment for the fans to think, "well, shit, the rest of the show might be fake, but this is for real". And I think wrestling in general will move more and more in that direction, because that's where "kayfabe" has taken us. It's a world apart from WCW circa 2000 dropping insider terms and doing angles about Goldberg not following the script. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Jazzy G Posted August 31, 2017 Paid Members Share Posted August 31, 2017 I see they found a way to ruin the Southpaw thing, then. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted August 31, 2017 Share Posted August 31, 2017 I'm guessing that was Vince checking out the vids, seeing the Elvis parody and being like "well I get that bit!" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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